Post-diction over Pre-diction: Trend-diligence at a time of infinite uncertainty.

Pick an industry, any industry and you will read a report by someone predicting the future. 

There will make a ‘Top 10 Trends of 202...’ list of the most important things that are changing about it, and they will predict those changes as changes. 

The list changes, but the outlook stays the same. 

Of course, there is a big difference between prediction and a "sure thing," but in the past thirty years prediction has become a dominant attribute of the research papers. It is so dominant that the very act of reading the title of the paper often asks you to predict the outcome of the study, no matter what it actually finds. The most famous phenomenon to describe prediction is the CRISPR-Cas9 system. Being able to predict our biological future based on our generic present. 

What’s different this year is it does feel like the technological future as 2020 seems more into the future that was 2019. If you look back at all of the innovations that we talked about there's only one where it just doesn't have the same reverberation in today's society that it did in the '90s. It's self driving. The technological future really is closer to a present reality than a distant future. 

The dawn of a new technological decade brings with it the mental barrier that comes with exponential thinking ahead to a year that seems more future than the present. 

The transition from wondering what the future will bring to certainty that it's here already is a compelling reason for us to get psyched up. If we wait until the technology barrier is crossed, it could be several years or even years. This is by no means a time to sit on the sideline, wait, and hope the pendulum swings back the other way. This is the time to be part of the political and social transformation of the new age that is happening right now.

Having read and re-read a lot of these future technological predictions, its interesting to see which futurists are right and which are wrong. There is a bit of a perfect storm of key influences. Most futurists would seem to be in the laboratory and use solid scientific processes. 

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data and multi-disciplinary research labs have created a situation where it has become increasingly difficult to predict the future of our technology, scientists and engineers say.

For every optimistic future-builder, there's another whose optimistic future is actually their past. Take futurist Buckminster Fuller, whose Futurist Primer (1964) might seem pessimistic. He depicts a society in which all resources are publicly owned. The result is a society of "free" citizens but poor amenities, as he reports: "No more privacy for individuals, no more privacy in children, no more privacy in the whole community of individuals. The group of individuals have become as anonymous as the satellite dishes that scatter their noise in the sky

These days everybody is a social media expert but like money, where It seems easy to get rich quick. The real wealth is in playing the long game and creating a name worthy of the contributions you share with the world. 

Being successful isn't about fame, it's about what you bring to the table for the greater good of humanity. 

So you start building your online presence as soon as you can.For those of you, who have been after big names in their industry will understand, the things that go in to creating a public image, such as a career blog, are the same as traditional PR; having references, interviews, and comments by well-known media personalities. Every contribution you make helps other individuals make their own media presence and business. That is the reason why you should start sharing your expertise with others for free.

There is a trend towards popular thought leaders openly disclosing their predictions on media channels in which they use those platforms to make bold predictions. This is a common practise among celebrities, who have more to lose if their predictions go awry, so they are more interested in promoting their predictions than focusing on framing their behaviours and initiatives. This is also true tech or media career which are dominated by people who make billions a year. My predictions cannot take the focus off the lack of adequate resources and knowledge to counter global threats. 

The Futurists and thought leaders I respect are those that audit themselves and admit when they were wrong. They increase the stakes by using the public as a watchdog of truth. 

Once you look to yourself you will notice the last thing you will want to see is as much accountability as possible. The media is just as bad. The idea of doing an experiment on oneself and sharing it as a community seems like it would be terrifying. Worse, it means no one can be a "self-biased observer". Because we spend so much of our time looking at people we are scared of being seen as one of them. We avoid the acceptance that others will see us differently.

When you want to believe anything, all you have to do is to self-audit your life and see what is happening. This lets us know where we need to be guiding ourselves and guiding others. When we are self-auditing our lives, we are not fearful of what others may say, we are creating our own reality. 

When the society as a whole is empowered by transparency, the margin for error for truth gets smaller and smaller. 

We each need to take ownership of the power we possess in shaping our own "ocean" of future trend predicting ‘truth’ especially with the access to platforms (like this one I am writing on) and audiences we either seek to server or influence.

The choice is yours as a leader and as a follower.

By Will Green et al

@WilljnGreen