Self-styled futurists often point out emerging trends as indicators of the future. Trends however are rarely a good forecasting tool. A trend can be relatively short-lived (a fad) or it might have a longer life. Even when a trend has staying power, however, it is not always evident, in its initial phase, how it will interact with its environment and how other variables will interact with it to shape and modify it. Moreover, “trends” are something that happens in the present. They are a current expression of deeper underlying changes and there is no assurance that those changes will continue to manifest themselves in the same way. In other words, what we call trends is often the symptom not the cause of more profound changes. To simply project a current trend forward as an indication of the future makes as much sense as looking out the window on a rainy day and “projecting” that if it keeps raining we will end up underwater. Technically that’s true, but in reality we realize that it won’t keep raining forever. Eventually the clouds will run out of available moisture, the rain will stop, the clouds will dissipate and the sun will come out.
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Seeing the future in the context of developing trends has one other drawback, it limits our appreciation of future events to those scenarios that are currently being expressed. In other words, it limits our sense of the future to events that are currently on our radar; it defines the future in terms of events that we can currently experience. Missing from this view is any appreciation of the things we can’t imagine or yet currently see even though such events are no more or less likely than “trends” that are presently developing. In other words, using “trends” as a forecasting tool is an exercise in anticipating the future by looking at what we believe is the cutting edge of the present. An alternative approach is to look at the range of possible futures however unlikely or obscure, what some futurists have called the “unbounded universe,” and instead look for any evidence that one or more of these future developments are in fact beginning to take shape.
There is an old adage that “the bus that hits you is the one you don’t see coming.” In other words the future we anticipate, the risks and the strategic threats or opportunities that we perceive, are shaped by our experiences and our perception of the present. We are sensitive to such developments, especially threats, because they are consistent with our experience and because an apparent threat is clear and unmistakable. In short, such threats immediately show up at the center of our radar. Often times, however, strategic threats appear on the periphery, on the margins of our consciousness. They are on the very edge of our radar so they don’t necessarily appear relevant, much less threatening, to us. Our perception of the future often follows along similar lines. We tend to define the future in the context of the present. Depending on our outlook on life, it may be a more optimistic or a more pessimistic view of the present. In other words, it is the present on steroids. It may be a future of better drugs, faster planes, nutraceuticals, virtual immortality or one of big government despotism, social chaos, resource scarcity, and a grim “lord of the flies” existence. Either way, it is a future that is recognizable in the context of the present.
Regardless of whether one’s view is optimistic or pessimistic, what such approaches have in common is that they see the future as a continuous development from the present, a gradual evolution from an existing template. What such scenarios fail to capture is discontinuities, the “black swan events” that have no historical precedent; those futures that begin with a sharp break from an existing trend line. The Bolshevik revolution is an example of such a discontinuity, so is the collapse of the Soviet Union some three-quarters of a century later. The development of nuclear weapons is another example of such discontinuities, so is the commercialization of inexpensive birth control pills. Hindsight is 20-20, such discontinuities are obvious when looking back as are the consequences of their occurrence. Anticipating such occurrences, however, is an altogether different matter, especially if one’s view of a potential future is held hostage by our perception of the present.
In recent years a variety of websites have been created to catalog possible future event scenarios. These sites range from the academically rigorous to the fanciful. Some are available free of charge others require subscriptions. A number have been set up as wikis, and solicit input about possible future events from any interested party. See for example the site: http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page. One of the more interesting and more intellectually rigorous sites is: http://www.changesignals.com/indexA.php. Developed by noted futurist Ted Gordon, the co-founder of the Millennium Project (http://www.millennium-project.org/) the site catalogs 748 possible future events in the form of “headlines.” The user can scan these “headlines” by specific category or generate a random selection of five randomly chosen future events. The latter feature is particularly interesting because it can generate scenarios that are “outside the box” of a user’s thinking. This is particularly useful when the user is engaging in “stress testing” an organization and needs to consider potential futures that are not on any participant’s radar. To access the site, use the password: whatif
In short, trends are not the future they are simply a current symptom of important underlying changes. The ultimate expression of those changes, the future, will ultimately be shaped by the interactions of those developments with a range of other variables and will, in all likelihood, eventually be expressed differently from their initial manifestation. Simply extrapolating current trends into an expression of future events will invariably prove to be simplistic and incorrect. The present is part of the future but the future is not always, necessarily, part of the present.
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