“The past is the mirror that reflects the future” — Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, c. 1220
“Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction, their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.” –Alexis de Tocqueville, 1836
“The future isn’t what it used to be” — Arthur C. Clarke
Around this time of the year, the air is full of… predictions. I wrote before about this seasonal affliction and the very predictable failure of forecasting what will happen in the year to come (recent glorious examples in this BusinessWeek list). The current global economic crisis highlights even more than usual how Giant Brains tend to spin themselves in a trance of self-delusion, driven to lie to themselves and others by what they want the future to be, by dogma, or by what they are familiar and comfortable with.
I have in my files a great example of the genre, a report published in 1976 by the Long Range Planning Service of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), titled “Office of the Future.”
Recent Comments