images of the future
In 1995 Robert B. Silvers published a little book entitled “Hidden histories of science”. The book is actually a collection of essays, some by the hand of prolific authors such as Oliver Sacks, R.C. Lewontin, Daniel Kevles etc. One of these, entitled “Ladders and Cones: Constraining Evolution by Canonical Icons” written by Stephen Jay Gould, dealt with the dominance of certain images, visualizations of concepts such as evolution in scientific literature and the effects of this on the scientific discourse.
It would be very interesting to learn how different conceptualizations of time and thus also concepts of past, present and future, influence the way in which people look ahead (does ahead still make sense in a circular world?), think about things that are not there yet, the future etc. We know that ‘images’ of time are culturally biased. While we grew up with a ‘timeline‘, some Eastern cultures have a more cyclical image of time, also spiral notions exist.
In his lecture for the Long Now Foundation, “Embracing Uncertainty – the secret to effective forecasting”, Paul Saffo talked about the way in which the future is cone-shaped, as uncertainties grow as we look further ahead, widening the cone. He also mentions how our expectations are often linear, yet change is not. New technologies come in S-curves.
I would very much like to hear from people who use or know of different conceptualizations of time, different images of the future. Hence you are invited to leave a comment or send a note.
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