The Future

The Future
with many rabbit holes along the way.
A thought provoking Sunday Read from David Amerland 

Originally shared by David Amerland

Seeing the Future

If no one’s yet traveled on a “whale bus” it’s because the future that contains it, never quite came to pass: https://goo.gl/v7WaCY. Trying to predict the future, some suggest, is a matter of survival: https://goo.gl/2033cL. If we know what lies ahead, goes the argument, we can take steps to prevent the parts we find unpalatable and enhance the aspects we like, which is a fairly reasonable approach.

Historically, however we have never managed to see far enough into the future even when we used performance data in specific areas of our activity horizon: http://goo.gl/SzYAiy.

When neither economists - http://goo.gl/Y7rZ4e, nor weathermen: https://goo.gl/4XJEUh can accurately predict what lies ahead, despite the fact that they usually have reams of data and powerful number-crunching machines at their disposal, the suggestion that the future can somehow be divined cannot be considered irrespective of time. For those of you who during this holiday period have some of that to play with a rather longish lecture on the nature of time and quantum reality will unfurl fresh possibilities: https://goo.gl/izDu0q.

A much shorter video presented at the ISODA Tech Summit: https://goo.gl/WP44PN frames the question about why we want to see the future and how we might actually achieve that aspiration, somewhat differently. Jason Silva (https://goo.gl/thakwF) director, futurist and all-round tech enthusiast, looks at the future and technology and suggests that our models for thinking about the future need to be different because the way the future used to happen has changed: https://goo.gl/xxbIHZ [there is a brief clip in this video where the sound is missing and that can be found here: https://goo.gl/bjZFhZ].

Our desire to predict the future, psychologists suggest, is predicated upon our attempt to predict our emotions: https://goo.gl/afn0TZ. Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert says that our attempts to predict the future are linked to our attempt to somehow control the rate of change we experience: https://goo.gl/DEl3Tw.

Does any of this matter? Buddhist thought has always said “no”: http://goo.gl/1YAzW. Those who dabble with Quantum Mechanics understand that “Causality is a two-headed arrow and the future might influence the past.” - http://goo.gl/UelJ6V Physicists have shown that time can run backwards: http://goo.gl/AdLQ0n and that “whether a tree [that] fell in the woods not only may depend on whether anyone ultimately saw it, but also on whether something somehow knew it would be seen.”

If this is too much of a mind bend, if all you want to know is whether the future is predictable at all; whether reading coffee grounds, tea leaves or wine sediments (Tasseography for those who would like the slightly more scientific term: https://goo.gl/mLiXXD) will tell us anything meaningful the answer may lie in one of those memorable moments in Back To The Future (https://goo.gl/72lhqH) – where Doc, tells Jennifer and Marty exactly what their future holds: https://goo.gl/bySoTF.

It is however in the Terminator franchise that we may have the strongest reminder: http://goo.gl/WFU5Bk. The future is truly not set. Our every choice and every action are part of the steps we take as we move through the journey that is the narrative of self in the world. That suggests that nothing is without value, that we all have a part to play, that everything and everyone matters and that we are responsible for the change we see and the world we end up with.

Kinda heavy, right? I know. It bears down on me too. But this is the 21st century and we are all more knowledgeable within it than at any other time in our history. Knowledge is power. Power requires responsibility. We have to learn to use ours better.

And just like that we reach the end of the year as far as the Sunday Read is concerned. I hope you had sufficient predictive foresight to know you’d need a whole lot of coffee and mountains of donuts, croissants, cookies and chocolate cake. I would like to thank all of you who have taken part in this journey of musings and explorations that I put together every week. There are a whole lot of things I plan to explore in the year ahead some of them unknown right now, even to me. In the meantime here’s to a 2016 that will hold true happiness and success for each of you. Have an awesome Sunday, wherever you are and see you on the other side of New Year.