Archive for September 17th, 2005

No Professional Study of the Future Has Anything to do with the Future

Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 09/17/2005

This is a followup to the piece below, “Highly Qualified People Predict the Future.”

There is a group of professionals who call themselves Futurologists. A professional, by definition, is someone who gets PAID for his work. You can only be a Futurologist if someome PAYS you to be. So in order to be a professional futurologist you must produce a future which someone will pay you to produce.

By definition a PROFESSIONAL Futurologist says that things to come will be what those with money today consider plausible and desirable.

A professional predictor does not get a dime for being correct. It makes not the slightest difference whetheranything he foresses happens or not. All that matters is that his idea of the future is approved by the right people NOW.

So Futurology has absolutely nothing to do with the future.

Futurology, like every other professional field, has a sign on the door that says, “Heretics not welcome.”

And there is one thing about things to come that one can say with absolute certainty:

The future is ALWAYS heresy.

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