Imagination into Action

We can be better at inventing the future

It was June of 1964— 60 years ago— when I entered the cheerful chaos of New York World's Fair. My stepfather, who worked there, had arranged a discount of that high-priced $2 entry ticket.? His job was driving the first electric vehicle I’d ever seen.

The Fair was designed to be futuristic, even science-fictitious. Naive and a little silly? Definitely. Much more positive and less anxious than today’s view of change? For sure.

That na?ve event is a reminder how much, how quickly, things change-- and how important it is to be adaptable and ambitious. Those who shape the future harness the greatest, most iconic human power of all: venturing. This means daring to imagine, experience, create, and take advantage of the new. The real celebration of the hyper-corporate exhibits was venturing.

Forging the Future

Two exhibits generated the most excitement: IBM's pretend version of personal computers, and AT&T's mock-up of a "Picturephone" that let you see the other person talking. We waited in long lines to see these, but never expected to use a computer— picturephones seemed even more preposterous.

What are today’s equivalents? Obvious current examples of rapid change are quantum computing, AI, functional robots and gene splicing. Each reflects a hunger to re-imagine and re-engineer.

Some people hope for greater social justice and cooperation which, because they don’t have the drive for profit and prestige of the list above, seem less likely even though they can do much more to increase human welfare.

What's the Trick?

Can anyone train themselves to envision, evaluate, shape and harness the future?

Yes. Like the visionaries of 1964, we can learn to “enter the venture zone” every day. To be more proactive, less reactive. It isn’t foolhardy, but alert— like all pioneers, we venture because we accept misfires as steppingstones, not stone walls.

But we can also learn to avoid the problems that tend to outpace the benefits. Dramatic examples? Climate change, social media, obesity, lung cancer, opioid addiction, and environmental destruction. All these are being wrought by innovations whose design and use didn’t mitigate harm.

Lessons

The key is anticipating and minimizing problems, while spreading the benefits of change, as we now need to do with the descendants of personal computers and picturephones.

What are today's hopes and opportunities that echo those of the World's Fair? Can we be less starry-eyed— courageous but realistic? How can we improve the ways we make change become the future?