Change is everywhere — mankind is fundamentally in its technological and scientific infancy. Every day we are presented with new gadgets, medicines, means of transportation, and ways of looking at the world. With such an overload of novel information, it is often hard to make sense of it all — what to buy, what to invest in, and what to worry about can become overwhelming. In response to the feverish activity, there are futurists — individuals who specialize in synthesizing all the chaotic activity and data, working to make sense of it all. As practitioners of an interdisciplinary approach to global trends, futurists are more than armchair predictors; they try to look insightfully at what changes are most likely to occur, and how best to prepare for them.
Perhaps surprisingly, their insight is highly valued — individuals such as James Hansen and Ray Kurzweil have achieved success through their forecasts of environmental change and technological progress, respectively. Massey College has even appointed a “Resident Futurist,” Sanjay Khanna, who is studying the Ontario health care system as well as climate change in Africa.
Even for professionals, figuring out the future is fraught with difficulty. Our moon bases, jetpacks, flying cars, and robot servants have all failed to appear. Some predictions, however, have been extraordinarily spot on. We now have the capacity to bring species back from extinction, as seen in Jurassic Park (though sadly, not dinosaurs). Star Trek gave us a sneak peak of the cell phone and 2001: A Space Odyssey contained precursors to the touch screen.
With futurist predictions, we find all the traits that make us the interesting species we are — visions of great hope and predictions of impending doom, guesses of great insight and others with a little less (Thomas Edison tried to create and market concrete furniture, for one).
Our desire to figure out what will happen next is universal and extends back to pre-history: before science fiction and futurists, there were oracles and sages. Before them, cave paintings and ceremonies tried to change or “see” what the future would bring. Whether that meant a bigger harvest, a more successful hunt, or more recent speculations on the “singularity” (where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence), futurism is an attempt to envision a greater tomorrow. Khanna said that his aim was to: “…help make people and organizations healthier, more resilient, and successful… to be a force for good.”
Looking ahead can be a difficult proposition, and yet everybody does it. From everyday speculation on what tomorrow will bring to professional scientists trying to decode the future from what’s happening today, we like to think forward. It is easy to see why — our ability to plan, imagine, and create make us unique. Through trying to envision possible futures, we set ourselves up to create the ones that make our world better. Futurism is a reflection of the human desire to dream, and to dream big — even if those dreams seem outlandish and risky. In doing so, we create a foundation to make those dream a reality.