Forensic futurology

One approach to understanding the future is to look at futures past. We can look back to previous times and examine how they thought about the future.

How were people thinking before train travel, recorded sound, human flight, the radio, television, the Web, SmartPhones? What was their concept of the future?

In each case, were there people during those times who predicted the change that was about to happen with any degree of accuracy? If so, who were those people?

Were they scientists, industrialists, poets, philosophers? Were they writers of popular fiction?

It might be useful to do some forensic futurology: the study of how and when the future was accurately predicted in times past. We may very well be able to apply what we learn to our current times, and thereby better predict our own future.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *