When you hear the word futurist, what comes to mind? You might think about those fortune tellers to learn about your future. Where fortune tellers will root their predictions in mystical unexplained powers, futurists make their predictions based on facts. A futurist is a consultant who makes predictions based on future trends they identify. Their point of view can even impact how companies design products or how communities run their outreach.
The
art of being a futurist is a necessary skill in today’s world. Thinking like a
futurist shouldn’t be reserved for a select group of people. It is a basic
skill set that anyone can learn. The ongoing problems the world is facing like
poverty and climate change cannot be solved with short-term thinking. If we
want to move forward and create the future we want, we must adopt long-term,
futuristic thinking. Below are core principles for future thinking:
Create a Community-Being a
futurist or thinking about the future is not a solitary affair. I have a lot of
distrust for people who say: "I'm a futurist. I went to a mountaintop, and
I saw this vision, and this is your future." That's not real futurism.
Thinking about the future is a collaborative and highly communal affair. It requires
a diversity of views. We need to involve experts from many different domains.
When we think about anything, from higher education to work, we need to include
people who bring different perspectives on the topic—demographics, economics,
technology, artificial intelligence, organizations. We need young people in the
room.
A robust forecast is a collective endeavor; it's very much a
product of collective intelligence. So, if you're going to create a sensing and
signaling mechanism in your organization, make sure you're not bringing in
people who all think the same way. Be sure to create a diverse group of people
who can contribute their varied experiences and their differing knowledge to
give you much more robust views of the future.
Focus on Signals-What tools do
we have to help us systematically think about the future and develop foresight?
There is no data about the future. All the data we have is about the past.
Historical data is useful when things continue as they are. You can just
continue planning for the same trajectory. That's fairly easy. The situation is
different when things are changing and there are inflection points. I think we
are in this space right now: notions of what learning is, how and where people
learn, and the value of degrees and who grants degrees are all changing. What
tools do we have to help us think about the future in this landscape? A signal
can be anything. It could be a technology, an application, a
product/service/experience, an anecdote or personal observation, a research
project or prototype, a news story, or even simply a piece of data that shows
something different.
This idea could be carried into many different arenas, and
it was. Today, all online transactions rely on some sort of a reputation
system. We've talked about how the whole world can become infused with media,
and that has happened. We can access content almost anywhere and interact with
it. If you are a futurist, you will get into the practice of looking for
signals all the time. When you wake up in the morning and read the news, you
will look at everything through the lens of these signals. You will naturally
ask about events: "Is this a signal of something? Why?" This kind of
curiosity and the ability to continually sense while also sharing with others
is very important.
Forget about Predictions-If
somebody tells you they can predict the future, don't believe them. Nobody can
predict large socio-technical transformations and what exactly these are going
to look like. We are getting better at making point predictions. There are
prediction markets and all kinds of data-rich tools with which we're trying to
predict elections, market share prices, and the success of product
introductions. One way to think about this is to look at the difference between
waves and tides.
Waves are what we see on the surface. They are fleeting
events. They come and go, appear and disappear. But there is something bigger
underneath that is causing these waves. Underneath the waves is the tide,
causing all kinds of disturbances of which waves are just one sign. Our work
involves trying to understand those tides, the deeper forces underneath the
waves.
Look Back to See Forward-I
said earlier that there is no data about the future; the only data we have is
about the past. While we cannot fully rely on past data to help us see the
future, there are larger patterns in history that we tend to repeat over and
over again. Thus, we need to look back to see forward. I've started to think of
myself as a historian as much as a futurist. I'm trying to understand the
larger story and to place what is happening today and what we see on the
horizon into a larger context. We don't repeat our history completely, but we
do repeat patterns.
If we look at the invention of the printing press and the
debates and worries that people had at that time, we see that those concerns
are very similar to our current debates and worries about fake news,
computational propaganda and how they skew our public opinion. It's almost
eerie. People were talking about fake information and propaganda and lies all
those years ago. What is the larger pattern? Changing our fundamental
information, communications, and infrastructure changes our society in very
dramatic ways. New media tools alter who has the voice, who has the platform,
and who has the ability to shape opinion.
Uncover Patterns-The goal of connecting
signals to the larger historical context helps us understand patterns of
change. It helps us understand how we got to key developments shaping our
future. What is the larger story? What are the tides of change? I strongly
believe that we are all immigrants to the future.
We are all moving
somewhere new, so it is good to have the mindset of an immigrant. When you're
an immigrant, you must learn a new language, a new culture, a new way of doing
things. These are exactly the attitudes and skills we need to bring to thinking
about and shaping our future. We must be open to learning a new language, a new
culture, and a new way of doing things.
“Much like the rhythm of a beating heart, the sounds of tomorrow creates
a rhythm for our lives today. The future creates the present.”
(Thomas Frey)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“5 tips to think like a futurist” by Andrew Bolwell
·
“Five Principles for Thinking like a Futurist” by Marina Gorbis
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