Mirrors of the future
Listening to the MP3 of a LongNow seminar given by Forcaster Paul Saffo, he explains that the best, indeed the only tool for forcasting is a mirror. A way of looking at history to make informed explorations of the future. In particular, he suggests looking for inflection points.
Inflection points are those changes in patterns – and as Saffo points out, although we often think change is linear, it’s much more like an ’s’ curve. The inflection points then, are those tight curves of the s.
So how can we look for these inflection points? First, Saffo suggests looking for things that don’t fit – juxtapositions of emerging techno/science developments and real life problems (Safo’s example of road accidents and huge developments in robotic cars). But another suggestion is the mirror – to look back in history for the weak signals that have led to big changes. A good overview of the whole seminar can be found here where Saffo gives some examples of those weak signals in history’s mirror that can help us think about the future. Although, as Edward de Bono reminded me in a presentation, once you’ve made a new connection, hindsight makes that achievement look easier than it was.
So, as it’s Friday – your weekend homework: Think about something that you do relatively regularly that seems like a pretty recent addition to your daily/weekly routine – recycling, blogging, using Facebook etc – and spend a bit of time trying to trace when that first came into your consciousness. Google it, talk to your friends, look at news archives. What were the weak signals in the past that have had an effect on your daily/weekly lives? Where those signals social or technological etc?
It’s not an easy piece of homework but there are no marks for anything but effort! I’ll report on my findings in a later post.
