I wrote earlier this year about a recent study into the art (or science) of forecasting. They looked at three century’s worth of technological projections, identified three kinds of technological anxiety:
- that technology will substitute for labor, leading to large unemployment and inequality
- a concern about the moral implications of technological process on human welfare
- that technological advances are grounding to a halt, with the big developments largely behind us
These concerns have been remarkably consistent throughout the last few centuries, with thinkers ranging from Mill to Marx all writing worryingly about the impact technology has on the human condition.
In other words, predicting what is about to come is incredibly difficult, and some of the smartest people of the last few century’s have gotten it rather wrong.
Lessons from the Ganges
Frenchman Pierre Wack took an altogether different approach to matters. He proclaimed that not only was predicting the future impossible, but that attempting to do so was dangerous.
He was equally scurrilous about experts, suggesting that they are at their most dangerous when they have just been proven right, as a false prediction is almost certainly just around the corner.
So what can you do? As I’ve advocated myself many times, he suggested that the future has already presented itself in some way, and he used the example of the Ganges river to illustrate his point of view.
“From spring to mouth,” he said, “it is an extraordinary river, some fifteen hundred miles long. If you notice extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains at the upper part of the basin, you can anticipate with certainty that within two days something extraordinary is going to happen at Rishikesh, at the foothills of the Himalayas.”
At a later date, there would almost certainly be floods in Allahabad or Benares, and it’s quite possible that the residents of both towns will be caught completely unaware.
Similar glimpses of the future are all around us, if only you are open to what is happening outside of your industry or outside of your territory.
If you would like some ideas on how best to do that, then a post I published earlier this year might provide you with some good start points.
Nice analogy – I like it.