Influx Insights Tag Feed: future

17 thoughts and ideas on forecasting the future from paul saffo

Influx Insights — 2008-01-12T14:52:43Z

Paul Saffo, the godfather of forecasters, gave a really fantastic talk at the Long Now last night.

It was full of lots of sensible thinking suggesting, that despite the negative press against forecasters, of course, he thinks it’s more important then ever.

Saffo views the current uncertainty as opportunity, rather than an impossible challenge.

Here are some of the highlights from his talk

1.    Here’s how he graphically views his job.

2.    Every technology adoption has an S curve.

3.    We tend to over-estimate the speed of short-term adoption and under-estimate the diffusion of the technology.

4.    Most big tech trends take 20 years to develop.

5.    We are entering the age of robots-sensors are everywhere- he used the rapid progress of the technology in the DARPA challenge and Nike as examples.

6.    Look for wild cards- crazy ideas at the fringes- they help you find the boundaries

7.    His final slide was a photo of a tip jar in his local coffee house on which is written “If you fear change, leave it in here.”

8.    If you look back far enough, twice as far as you are looking forward, if you want to see early signs and signals- Y2K was first mentioned in 1985, Lucas Film developed Habitat in 1985, it’s pretty similar to Second Life today. You need good backsight, but because things are slow, even if you miss an indicator, you still have time.

9.    It’s important to be detached from your forecasts- separate what you wish for from what’s is likely.

10.    Sophisticated computation will make a radical difference to forecasting.

11.    The biggest problem for forecasters isn’t being wrong, it’s persuading people to act on forecasts.

12.    He believes the nation state is collapsing and will be replaced by city states.

13.    Things aren’t accelerating, every society has always complained that things were getting faster, even in 1503. However, more things are happening at once.

14.    He forecasts, he doesn’t predict, very important distinction.

15.    Science fiction can be a good place to look. Middle-age scientists tend to be influenced by the books they read as teenagers.

16.    Look at failures. Silicon Valley has been built on the ashes of failure; one of the catalysts for the first web revolution was developed by US Web, formed by a group of ex-interactive television developers who were given space by Apple in their old Interactive Television Department.

17.    Uncertainty is the currency of the times; the strange thing is that indicators are moving in opposite directions. Gold and Google should not be experiencing increases at the same time. Big things are happening!

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx quote of the month- william gibson

Influx Insights — 2007-07-17T22:03:30Z

William Gibson maybe one of the greatest sci-fi writers of his generation, he is also the best friend of planners everywhere. He even wrote a book about them. His new book, Spook Country, looks intersting, as usual.

In a recent interview, he gave us planners the perfect quote.

"There’s a character in my previous novel, Pattern Recognition , who argues that we can’t culturally have futures the way that we used to have futures because we don’t have a present in the sense that we used to have a present. Things are moving too quickly for us to have a present to stand on from which we can say, “oh, the future, it’s over there and it looks like this.”

Without a present, there can be no future.

Via Pasta and Vinegar

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx interview- matt of paleo-future

Influx Insights — 2007-05-17T10:05:38Z

Paleo-Future is a blog that explores the future(s) that never happened. It showcases the visions of the dreamers, artists, corporations and writers who’ve tried to imagine what our future would become.

The blog is the brainchild of Matt a 23-year-old student who’s currently finishing up a journalism/advertising degree.

Influx fired some questions off to him and here are his responses are below.

1. Who are some of history's most interesting visionaries?

My favorite visionaries tend to be those that think big without claiming to know the future. I’ve had an odd fascination with Walt Disney my entire life.

People like Disney are interesting to me because they had an optimistic sincerity that the world could change for the better. As I’ve written about on the blog, we live in an era of postmodern paleo-futurism. We don’t own our visions of the future. We co-opt past visions of the future (see Futurama, Meet the Robinsons, etc) with an ironic
detachment. I often wonder if an era of sincerity will ever return.

2. Who did you think in the mid C20th came closest to seeing what the C21st century would be like?

I think post-WWII America had a blank canvas of consumerism to work with. For that reason, the corporations were usually the most accurate in projecting the technological advancements 10 and 20 years out. Predicting the world of 50 years hence is quite a task, and no one in the mid-20th century did that with much accuracy. One of the lesser known futurists of that era I recommend checking out is Victor Cohn. He was a science and medical journalist that had the fantastic visions of
the future you’d expect from the 1950s futurists but he approached futurism with a journalistic ethic which provided the input of MIT engineers and the like.

3. What' are some of the things that no one saw coming?

There are few things that no one saw coming. The things no one saw coming were accidents like Scotchgard and Post-It notes. We still haven’t caught up to the fanciful future envisioned in 1900! Personal flying machines, weather control, meals-in-a-pill; none of these things have yet become commonplace, often for very good reason. I think one of the few things people didn't see coming was how little the world would
change.

The world is quite obviously a better place thanks to advancements in public health but we still haven't cured cancer. People were expecting flying cars but didn't necessarily see the ability to hold 20,000 songs on a portable music player.

4. What do you think of the role of the futurist today? What's changed?

The role of the futurist is still to excite our imaginations. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the tone. If the 2007 equivalent of Walt Disney pitched an idea like EPCOT today he would be laughed off the face of the planet.

That is not to say I advocate the idea of an authoritarian community like EPCOT, but 2007 seems to be missing the positive thinking futurist that can be taken seriously. We dwell on the negative rather than emphasizing the possibilities of the future.

5. Who would you recommend Influx's readers check out who has an
interesting take on the next 50 years?

Ray Kurzweil is the most interesting futurist of our time but quite frankly he predicts a rather bleak future for humankind. His ideas about the coming “Technological Singularity” and using technology to achieve immortality are interesting but if researching for the Paleo-Future blog has taught me anything, it’s that no one is
omniscient.

6. What's your current reading list- blogs, books, etc...

The Anarchist in the Library by Siva Vaidhyanathan (after you’ve read
Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture, pick this one up.)

Where’s My Jetpack? By Daniel H. Wilson (the very definition of
paleo-future)

The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman (I flip through this quite
often. John Hodgman is brilliant. Read the section about the Mall of
America if you get a chance. It is hilarious.)

Dilbert Blog

Boing Boing

AdvertisingLab