IFTF Foresight Essentials

It was about 2500 years ago that the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus first declared that “the only constant is change.” And to be sure, a lot has changed since then. But astute observers of humanity might be inclined to add a second item to his list: “The only other constant is that people will react poorly to change.”

One of the side effects of working in foresight for a while is that you not infrequently get glimpses of impending change before it hits the mainstream. This is in many ways the central purpose of foresight — witnessing small-scale signals of new behaviors or capacities playing out within fringe communities, and recognizing when there’s potential for that change to grow much larger in scale before it happens.

In the early days of an emerging new medium, technology, or policy, you often find small communities of curious and creative folks looking to do things in a new way. My first real exposure to this was in the dawn of digital video in the early 2000’s. I was just finishing high school, and was drawn towards the primitive digital video tools of the time, which didn’t require the massive budgets and heavy machinery of traditional film techniques. Having grown up watching movies with my dad, it miraculously seemed possible to imagine making my own film as an 18-year old with no money. In those early days, I joined other enthusiasts on online forums, where everyone was teaching themselves how to work with digital media and the first versions of modern editing software like Final Cut Pro. Nobody outside this community felt threatened by the new processes yet, because the results were laughably mediocre compared to what was being produced in Hollywood.

But then the technology got better. And people who had dismissed digital video before started becoming more aware of it. As I had been eagerly learning the new tools myself, I remember feeling excited for other people to find out about them, to see the possibilities that I saw. I did not anticipate the waves of disdain and despair that I would encounter from long time editors, directors and film lovers. “This isn’t real film!” “This is going to destroy jobs and culture!” “We’re going to be flooded with low quality garbage!”

Of course, this transition period was relatively brief and hardly remembered, as only a few years later a new startup called Youtube appeared, inviting millions of young people to create and share videos in ways that were literally unimaginable before. The democratization of video production and Internet publishing has had its ups and downs, but fundamentally it has offered a megaphone and a platform to countless perspectives, niches, and marginalized voices that had no such reach before.

And the thing is — these empowering possibilities were latent within these tools from their very inception, but nobody had ever experienced those possibilities before, and so it wasn’t what most people were thinking about in their first exposure. Many people’s first thought was, understandably, ‘I don’t know what this is, I don’t know what it’s going to do, and I’m afraid it’s going to ruin what we already have.’

Today we sit at the cusp of several new technologies, media, and policies that seem poised to transform our cultures and communities in new ways. The tinge of excitement I felt when I first encountered digital video reverberates among the early explorers of generative artificial intelligence on Discord forums and Facebook groups. And as the laughably mediocre outputs of early AI models give way to more impressive outputs, the mood in many circles once again turns from curiosity to catastrophizing. Change is coming, more people can see it now, and many don’t like it.

Again, this is understandable, and everyone is entitled to their own perspective and emotional journey. There are legitimate concerns to be worked through. There will be winners and losers as new technologies assert themselves on existing processes. There will be short-term uncertainty and disruption in people’s livelihoods, especially for those who are already established.

But if you are feeling worried, concerned, and upset about the unceasing onslaught of change, I invite you to adopt the futurist’s prerogative. For every safe assumption about the world today that might be threatened by new ways of doing things, consider what previously unattainable possibilities might finally be achievable.

What is something you’ve always wanted to do that has been too difficult or economically non-viable before now? Have you ever wanted to create your own board game, children’s book, or app, but didn’t have the skill or budget to make it happen? How many 18-year olds will be able to make their own immersive video games by leveraging generative AI tools in the coming decade?

What endemic problems or sources of suffering feel unsolvable today that might be influenceable with new approaches? Could generative AI help us moderate the inflammatory tensions of online discourse, guiding people to better understand others’ perspectives, and to see the limitations of their own? As climate change forces us to adapt more quickly and continuously to our environment in the coming decade, how much suffering might be mitigated by the prototyping superpowers of generative AI?

Change is inevitable, as Heraclitus reminds us from an unimaginably different past. But what’s not inevitable is how we respond to it. Change brings new possibilities, both good and bad, and the futurist’s prerogative is to scan those possibilities with curiosity and an open heart, looking always for opportunities to increase our potential, to mitigate the suffering we already live with, and to perhaps experience something that prior generations only dreamed of.

#foresightlessons #futuresthinking #foresight

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