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hy study the future? Because our
existence depends upon the anticipation
of what is to come and our preparation and
policymaking responses.
Writer H.G. Wells called for a "science of
prediction" in 1902 in his "The Discovery of
the Future." Since then, the study of the future
has gradually become more formalized. Most futurists,
scientists, and long-term thinkers today say the
acceleration of technological change over the past
decade has greatly increased the importance of
strategic vision.
Technology innovations will continue to impact us in
unstoppable waves of developmental destination. We will
precognize and plan as well as we can
for potential new realities or we will
be caught unaware and unprepared. If the
developmental record of 20th century computing
continues for only another 30 years, we will rapidly
and permanently move to a different world. Are we
prepared to react in ways that will make that world a
good one?
This site is all about the contemplation of the
future; on this page, we share a collection of
statements about the future.
"If
one does not know to which port one is
sailing, no wind is favorable." - Seneca,
Roman philosopher, 3 BC-65 AD
"We tend to overestimate the
effect of a technology in the short run and
underestimate the effect in the long run." -
Roy Amara, leader at the Institute for the Future, a
think tank
"We are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we truly may be; for who can imagine what we may become under circumstances not now imaginable." - Thomas Jefferson to Jedidiah Morse, 1822
"Discovering which technologies hold the
greatest promise and preferentially advancing
those in a beneficial manner, while regulating and
delaying destabilizing ones, is the essence of our
individual and social choice." - Part of the
mission statement of the Acceleration Studies
Foundation, led by John Smart, 2005
"The emergence in the early 21st century
of a new form of intelligence on Earth that
can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed,
human intelligence will be a development of greater
import than any of the events that have shaped human
history. It will be no less important than the creation
of the intelligence that created it, and will have
profound implications for all aspects of human
endeavor, including the nature of work, human learning,
government, warfare, the arts, and our concept of
ourselves. - Ray Kurzweil, scientist and futurist,
"The Age of Spiritual Machines,"
1998
"In the end, what will shape the
future is a creative potential that inheres in the new
technologies." - Ithiel de Sola Pool,
"The Human Use of Human Ideas,"
1983
"The future is already here -
it's just unevenly distributed."
- William Gibson, author and futurist, a statement
he repeated throughout the 1990s
"What makes the future different
from the past is the choice that the
participants are obliged (and privileged) to exercise
on the basis of their imperfect understanding."
- George Soros, founder of the Open Society
group
"Without expectations, there's
no future, only an endless present."
- François Jacob, Nobel Prize winner
"Law XLC: One should expect that
the expected can be prevented, but the
unexpected should have been expected." -
Norman R. Augustine, "Augustine's
Laws"
"All plans imply an attempt to
impose the values of the past...on the
future." - Alvin Toffler, 1969
"Looking at the future disturbs
the present." - Gaston Berger, French
futurist, 1964
"The trouble with our times is
that the future isn't what it used to be."
- Attributed to French poet Paul Valéry in the
mid-1940s and to many others since then
"What we call our future is the
shadow that our past projects in front of us." -
Marcel Proust, "A l'ombe des jeunes filles
en fleurs," 1918
"If the future is predetermined,
then we can know it in advance. But if we can know it
in advance, we can change it, so it's not
predetermined." - futurist Bertrand de
Jouvenel
"Any useful statement about the
future should at first seem ridiculous." - Jim
Dator, American futurist
"The past resembles the future
more than one drop of water resembles
another." - Ibn Khaldun, Arab philosopher of
history, "The Muqaddimah"
"Time present and time past - are
both perhaps in time future - and time future
contained in time past." - TS Eliot,
"Four Quartets"
"No two men living at the same
time live in the same time." -
Elliott Jaques, psychologist and expert on human
organizations, "The Form of Time,"
1982
"In reality there is only the present,
because the past no longer exists and the
future does not exist yet. Of the past and the future
only the images exist, and these only in the present in
our minds. The future, like the past, is but an
'extension' of our minds." -
Jean-Claude Schmitt, French
medievalist, "Medieval Futures,"
2000
"All futurity / Seems teeming with
endless destruction never to be repelled /
Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless
rage." - William Blake (1757-1827), "The
Four Zoas - Night the Eighth"
"It may be the case that Fortune is the
mistress of one half our actions, and yet
leaves the control of the other half, or a little less,
to ourselves." - Niccolo Machiavelli,
"The Prince"
"Life can only be understood
backwards, but it must be lived forwards." -
Soren Kierkegaard, 19th century philosopher
"The future cannot be predicted,
but futures can be invented." -
Dennis Gabor, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in
Physics, "Inventing the Future,"
1964
"There are two futures, the future of
desire and the future of fate, and man's
reason has never learned to distinguish between
them." - Bernard Berenson, Renaissance art
expert, "The Decline of Art"
"The knowledge of future things is, in a
word, identical with that of the present; it
is a knowledge in repose and thus a knowledge
transcending the processes of thought." -
Plotinus, Roman philosopher, early 200s
"The only possible guarantee of
the future is responsible behavior in the
present." - Wendell Berry, 20th century
essayist and philosopher, "The Unsettling of
America," 1977
"The only certain thing about the
future is that it will surprise even those who
have seen the furthest into it." - E.J.
Hobsbaum, 20th century historian
"We are called to be architects
of the future, not its victims." - R.
Buckminster Fuller, 20th century engineer,
mathematician, and architect
"Thoughtful people
are concerned with the future because that is
the only area of experience about which anything can be
done. We cannot change the past, and the present is
gone as soon as it is reported, but the future is that
in which we can make a difference." - Elton
Trueblood, "The Future of the Christian,"
1971
"If we can change our priorities, achieve
balance and understanding in our roles as
human beings in a complex world, the coming era can
well be that of a richer civilization, not its
end." - Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982)
"As for the future, your task is
not to foresee but to enable it." - Max
Jakobson, 20th century Finnish diplomat
"The only way you can predict
the future is to build it." - Alan
Kay, turn-of-the-millennium technology
innovator
"The future is purchased by the present.
It is not possible to secure distant or
permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some
immediate gratification." - Samuel Johnson,
1751
"Who controls the past controls the
future... Who controls the present controls
the past." - George Orwell, mid-20th century
journalist and writer
"The solutions to our problems depend
less on technological advances and economic
growth than on human will guided by a 'moral
compass' requiring a change of heart about how we
live and work, how we produce things and how we treat
other people and other species." - Charles
Birch, in the magazine 21C
"The search for the truth is in one way
hard and in another easy - for it is
evident that no one of us can master it fully, nor miss
it wholly. Each one of us adds a little to our
knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled
arises a certain grandeur." - Aristotle, Greek
philosopher
"It is far better to foresee even
without certainty than not to foresee at
all." - Henri Poincare. French mathematician,
physicist, and philosopher, in the book "The
Foundations of Science," a compilation of his
writing between 1905 and 1914
"The future has waited long enough. If we
do not grasp it, other hands, grasping and
bloody, will." - Adlai Stevenson, American
politician, 1963
"This is the first age that's ever
paid much attention to the future, which is a
little ironic since we may not have one." -
Arthur C. Clarke, 20th century writer and
visionary
"I did not say the future could be
foretold, but I said that its conditions could
be foretold." - H.G. Wells, science fiction
writer, late 19th century to early 20th
century
"Sooner or later, we sit down to
a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis
Stevenson, writer, 1885
"It is the business of the
future to be dangerous." - Alfred
North Whitehead, philosopher
"If you want to know how much
darkness there is around you, you must sharpen
your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the
distance." - Italo Calvino in the book
"Invisible Cities"
"I have seen the future, and it
is still in the future." - James Gleick,
American writer
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