The Futurism business is a tricky, controversial but necessary one. It poses multiple challenges. There are futurists who are primarily in the business of trend-spotting and intelligence reporting -- they provide a crucial real-time as well as "anticipatory" service... and then there are the predictors. In The Global Futurist Blog, I do a bit of both for my readers.
The near-term predictors tend to be judged much more harshly because their predictions will be early-on proved either accurate or inaccurate. Many a predictive guru has back-pedaled to explain (rather like an errant child, a central bank economist, or a politician) what unforeseeable circumstances or "wild cards" caused him to be off the mark. Yet, as a predictor of things, you are not truly permitted the latitude of explanation unless you have prefaced your prediction with a list of assumptions and 'ifs."
The more preconditioned your forecast upon qualifying assumptions, the less useful it will be. Near-term (i.e., within a one- to three-year time horizon) predictions are very difficult.
Those longer-term extrapolators of trends who paint brilliant futurescapes which can be expected to materialize 15 to 50 years from now have much more latitude than their more closely scrutinized and accountable shorter-run colleagues in the prediction arena. They will not be held to account with as much severity.
And let's not forget that an influential futurist can actually make a prediction turn into a self-fulfilling prophesy by his or her own hints and the series of interrelated events which follow - almost like (in investment terms) making the market instead of calling the market.
In the coming days, weeks and months, I intend to enrich my content and your experience as my guests to include serious looks into not only my views of current intel, emerging trends, short-term predictions and far ahead futurescapes -- I will be adding much more of my colleagues' respective views on these aspects of Global Futurism to give you are better perspective of what my colleagues are thinking to compare and contrast with my individual views on the future.
My objectives are nothing short of making this particular destination the best resource for information regarding all aspects of trending, analysis and prediction available on the internet, and to make the related Twitter accounts a source of deeper, richer, more diversified content from the best sources.
It is my wish that you invest some of your future with me, and I thank you in advance.
Douglas E. Castle for The Global Futurist
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