What is Future Now?

It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. It is also the first draft of the future: hidden in the daily flow of information coming from newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, conferences, books and blogs, are articles that can be read as signals from the future, signs of what the future could be like.

As part of their research, all forecasters scan newspapers, popular magazines, and professional journals. When we do this, we're doing two things: keeping up with fields that we know are important and deserve our continuing attention; and looking for interesting, offbeat, or inexplicable events that might signal some new trend or innovation. Normally, this work remains private, the prelude to the "real" products-- the position papers, thick reports, etc.-- but it can generate vast quantities of notes, Internet bookmarks, reprints, etc.. Blogging offers a platform for turning this private resource into a public one. There are several reasons for doing so.

First, the Institute is a non-profit research institute, commited to communicating our research and thinking to the public at large. White papers are one way to do this; but it can also be useful to have a more modest but regular scan of the horizon.

Implicit in the Institute's mission is a mandate not just to release findings, but to share something of its way of thinking, and to encourage others to think more regularly and systematically about the future. Publications are often like buildings with the scaffolding removed: you see the finished object, but can't see how it was built. In contrast, the informality of blogs makes them a great venue for authors to share works in progress, or to think out loud. My hope is that Future Now can provide a glimpse of the process underlying futures work, and in so doing help some readers do their own thinking about the future.

The informality of blogs also means that they can serve as a cross between research notebooks and venues for testing ideas. One of things I plan to do on Future Now is write about things that aren't part of the Institute's core research, but could become important later. Most of those won't pan out. A few will.

Comments

[Jill Shomer]

I am writing from Popular Science magazine, seeking permission to publish the comments of Bill Cockayne of 11/29/03.

We have added a section of blogger comments to our letters page. Comments will be published (with minor edits possible for length and clarity) along with the blog name and url.

Please respond to the above email. Thank you very much.

Best,

Jill Shomer

Managing Editor

Popular Science

[askpang]

Thanks for the kind thoughts. I'll try!

[Don Walsh]

Future Now! Emerging Technology! How about a renewable energy source with real social benefits and progressive implications?

Cosmic rays from inter-stellar space will provide unlimited electrical energy from the atmosphere - - - for homes, business, industry and transportation.

With a little research money and effort, the electrical, mechanical and catalytic characteristics of gold could be employed to capture and collect cosmic rays from the atmosphere and convert the electrically charged particles into conventional electricity.

Cosmic rays have an affinity for gold as documented by photographic emulsion records obtained at 2,000 and 12,000-foot depths in gold mines in Montana and South Africa.

[Timothy]

Nostradamus, good luck anticipating the future! Time Cop - great movie