In the name of the future, we must be protected from the future.
| Rebekah Sheldon, The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe
Could, Should, Might, Don’t
I believe that the use of foresight — particularly scenario-based planning — is essential to avoid being blindsided by the future.
In You’re Probably Thinking About the Future All Wrong, Sarah Kessler — a favorite of mine — interviews Nick Foster about his soon-to-be-released book Could Should Might Don’t, in which he lays out the history of ‘the future’, meaning the myriad ways people have wrestled with our uncertainty about what may be looming over the horizon.
The interview bogs down, maybe because his work in the past decades has been behind the scenes at major tech players, and he’s probably tied up with dozens of NDAs. I would have liked to hear some stories about his work with tech co.s, but we instead land in the tar pit of AI, a dead zone.
I wish it included a thumbnail of the four kinds of foresight in the interview, but we only get two definitions, for 'should' and 'don't' foresight:
Foster:
What I call “should” futurism is being certain: using historical trends to project dotted lines into the future, which is how we’ve treated business strategy work in the past.