Futuring

Every once in awhile I rant.

In the last week four reports have made the headlines with human induced climate change playing a principal role in each.

In the 16 years since I founded The Futures Lab, Inc., I have been frequently quoted as saying: “My role is not about knowing the future, but creating it.” I am sure I am not the first person to articulate this concept, but it has proved to be the guiding premise on which my practice, expertise, and development as a futurist have been based.

Today's EVs require the purchaser to find places to recharge their vehicles. The problem -- there is little in the way of infrastructure out there, at least nothing even close to what is available for diesel or gasoline-fueled vehicles. That means EV purchasers must install special recharging stations in their home garages.

I was recently asked a question that I hear all too often:

You have been studying today's most favored methods of working for many years. What are the big headlines about that? Just where are we going? Or rather, are we all going to stay home and work from there all the time ?

No, we’re not all going to “cocoon” and never leave our home offices! That would be insane.

When is the last time you heard a statement that caused you to stop dead in your tracks? I wanted to focus on eight shocking statements made in 2012, and discuss briefly how they will invariably shift our outlook on the future. Here are the eight statements we’ve judged to be trend-setters for 2013 and beyond.

Futurists deny making "predictions," noting that that is not a central purpose of futurism. Still, real futurists make forecasts that look a lot like predictions all the time -- and the accuracy of these forecasts can illuminate the quality of their foresight.

We would be in a Golden Age for innovation, were it not for beggar-thy-neighbor national policies in the global innovation race. Encouraging the theft of intellectual property, discriminating against foreign tech firms, and manipulating currency are among the practices referred to as innovation mercantilism.

In previous postings on this blog site I have described the changing face of our world cities both in the Developed and Developing World. Much of human population growth is in urban centres. In the Developing World, A mass migration from rural to urban settings is creating a housing and infrastructure crisis that desparatelyneeds solutions. So when I read about Synergy Thrislington, and InstaBuild, a ultra-fast building technology, I was intrigued.

It’s incredible to think that my car, which is parked in the garage, is, in reality, moving. That’s because our world is a 4D space-time continuum and things move through time, as shown by the ageing process, even when they are at rest in space. The parked car is travelling through time. It’s undergoing change. It’s getting older and rustier. A person who is asleep and motionless in bed is also moving. Not only is this person moving through time, but the space-time world as a whole is always travelling at incredible speeds in our expanding universe. Nothing that exists is ever at rest in space-time, even when they appear to be stationary.