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.
#1 by joe rorke on 09/17/2005 - 2:19 pm
I am not a prophet. Never claimed to be. I have no idea what the future holds. The first thing that struck me about this piece was, “boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring.” To a large extent I think I live by that. I think it was in the early 1970s that someone wrote a book (I can’t remember the name) about what was going to happen in the future in terms of the whole world. I read some of it, I think,and I didn’t like what I was reading. The people that raised me were born in the 1880s and they had what people call “oldfashioned” was of thinking. Their ways became my ways. I don’t like change. I don’t like technology. I like the oldfashioned ways. “Future Shock.” Yes, I think that was the name of the book I just mentioned. I can’t remember anything about it except that I didn’t like what was being said. I like the Scripture. It says, “stop shooting your mouth off about tomorrow; you don’t know half what you’re talking about you arrogant…..” A little humility will do just fine.
#2 by Elizabeth on 09/20/2005 - 7:20 pm
I _loved_ FUTURE SHOCK, which came out in 1970 or 1971. (The author wrote 2 sequels,
neither of which I read.) I didn’t agree with all of it, but it explained the
American educational system (then and still largely designed to develop good
little assembly line workers)and explained that change can really upset people.
I’ve found since that a lot of historical commotion can be explained as
a natural reaction to rapid or major change.
Only the insane or the comatose sail through major social commotions
without getting upset and wanting to take out their anger on the
changers.