I have always been fascinated with methods for predicting the future. Actually, not just me but everyone alive is driven to see what’s coming so they can either embrace it or avoid it. The future contains the outcomes of all of our efforts. Will we stay ill or get well? Will our pensions last? Will we get laid off next week? Will some nutball toss a bomb in our direction? As you can see, the future is pretty important and knowing it is the ultimate skill.
Originally man used religion to predict the future. It gave us rules to live by that when followed would lead us to enlightenment or heaven or nirvana. The system was that they (religious leaders) would learn to read and write and then teach or preach the lessons to their followers. Most religions worked on the principle that someone more powerful than you knew the answers and would look after you if you followed the rules.
New religions would poo-poo the old beliefs as nonsense and, accuse them of being ineffective at exposing or accurately predicting the future, the newcomers would attempt to replace the old as the “Only True Faith” and the only path to the “real truth” or more specifically, predictability.
Modern religions such as Logic or Scientific Method (Science) have gotten quite good at prediction provided the thing to be predicted follows their basic beliefs.
Logic, which is based on the belief that all things follow a sequence of some sort, or Scientific Method (Science), which believes that all things must be repeatable to be real, are sometimes a little tedious as they don’t accommodate the most important subjects requiring prediction such as love, luck, exceptional ability, general creativity, the paranormal, art, or spontaneous unpredictable miraculous events such as unaccounted for disease remission or “found” fortunes.
We sit at a place in time like all points in time where it seems very important that we, the common man, be able to predict the future. Our jobs and families depend upon it as does our survival and our quality of life and that of future generations.
Traditionally, if we saw a train barreling down on us we could just step off the track and have the problem solved but in these times the metaphorical trains of destruction are not necessarily noisy and following traditional tracks. Sometimes they are hidden in our economies or our cells or our redesigned societies. Sometimes we know the train is out there and headed right for us… and all we need to do to relieve our constant apprehension is to predict the future. Toot Toot.
What makes me qualified to predict the future? Well, aside from a lifetime of studying philosophy, engineering, law and a dozen other predictive technologies and building all manner of never-before-built things, I am an inventor, connected to numerous incubator organizations and subscribe to and read piles of science and research journals that give me the clues to what will cause change and what change will dramatically rearrange our lives. I know which ones are the good trains that you should climb aboard and which ones to avoid.
Using this information, I used to write a syndicated weekly newspaper column that circulated around the world from the San Diego Union-Tribune to The South China Morning Post. The column was on empowerment technologies, Macs mostly, that allowed the average person to accomplish amazing things. I preached to the tech companies at every opportunity that if my grandmother could use their technology their market share would be 10,000 times as lucrative. Some listened.
I started writing the column when the local newspaper editor wrote that Apple was going out of business just days after they released the iMac. The column ran for 10 years and was very popular.
One of the things that made the column popular were the occasional columns that attempted to illustrate a brand new future based on one technological advance or another. It was fun and rewarding work but then the changes came too fast and trains became loose cannons and prediction became less precise.
Well, here we are in that future staring nervously at another intimidating future and I have had the opportunity to see the effects of my predictions on individuals and companies over the years. I have seen many who took my advice and flourished. I have also learned much about the art of anticipation and deduction. Enough to once again feel confident as to where the trains are headed and whether or not to step aside. Welcome to the future. Toot Toot.
Future Insights 