If you don't want to be wrong about the future, don't make any
predictions. That is the simple lesson of journalist Laura Lee's fascinating
collection of "bad predictions."
Still, we can't help ourselves, and even good futurists are seduced to
go out on the limb as far as they can, peer over the horizon, and make bold statements
about what's on the other side (or what isn't): "Man will never fly."
"We will live in a paperless society." "There will be no very rich or very
poor."
Why do perfectly reasonable people--many of them experts in the field
they're describing--make such poor forecasts? Quite simply, they fall into some very
common traps, says Lee: They're too pessimistic, too optimistic, or merely lack a
long-term perspective. Also, predictions of dire outcomes such as the Y2K computer crisis
are "bad predictions" only in the sense that they did not come true--because
people were forewarned and worked hard to prevent them from happening. (See
"Predictions That Missed by a Mile," page 20 in the print edition.)
Good futurists may very well continue making "bad
predictions," but what they will focus on is observing trends, analyzing potential
outcomes of those trends, and reporting what they think.
The good futurists contributing their insights to this issue include
work-force expert John A. Challenger on "24 Trends Reshaping the
Workplace" (page 35 in the print edition), former diplomat Harlan Cleveland on
the coming of a "nobody-in-charge" society (page 52), business instructor and
consultant Mark L. Alch on the impacts of the young echo-boom generation on
tomorrow's economy (page 42), and independent futurist Glen Hiemstra and the PIARC
Committee on Intelligent Transport on how information technology will help solve much
of our traffic woes (pages 31 and 26, respectively).
