Today / tomorrow

The other day, I said I want to become a latter-day Walter Lippmann and that I will write something once a week – even if it’s only something short. For my first post named after Lippmann’s column, I thought it appropriate to write about the future.

I don’t really read science fiction but I feel I ought to, especially as two quotes from masters of the genre are stuck in my head right now. The first is William Gibson, the second Frederik Pohl:

The future is already here – it just isn’t evenly distributed.

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

They make me think about how futurology is essential to good strategy.

All kinds of guesswork are required. My definition of strategy is that it’s achieving your ambitions as stuff outside your control tries to stop you. One aspect of this “stuff” may be an opponent or a competitor. They are working hard to frustrate you and you need to anticipate how. Yet there is so much more to consider – which is where the quotes above come in.

The future washes up against the present like the tide. As Gibson suggests, the waves can run up further over here than over there. These waves may be social, technological, economic, or environmental. But as Pohl suggests, you need to anticipate both the positives and the negatives if you want to ride them successfully.

Now, the past can seem like a good steer. The study of strategy is bound up with the study of history. Look at what great men did and follow their example, etc. Although I often do this, I also think it’s important to be open to the completely new. We live in a world in which things exist that humans had no conception of until sixty or seventy years ago. Not only the Internet or green technology, but even stuff as seemingly mundane now as TV and radio. Some of us are also living in societies that made space for women, non-white people, and queer people only thirty or so years ago. It’s easy to forget what sea changes all these are for life on earth – and why the past can only teach us so much.

I wanted to write down these thoughts because they've been swirling around my mind for weeks now. At some point, I'll build on them to look at guessing when a tide might be coming in (the impact of free clean energy on world politics) and when it's going out (the AI bubble).

Share your thoughts! And recommend any science fiction I might like!