The Future of Futurists

I once again had the privilege of joining Bonnie D. Graham to discuss the future. This time however, there was a great twist — the show happened on Zoom. All previous shows had a radio format, so Bonnie and I never actually saw each other. Well, all that changed last week as Bonnie did what most of the world has done — shift to a virtual video format.

Joining Bonnie and I were Futurists Tom Raftery, Alexandra Whittington, and Mike Bechtel. I thoroughly enjoyed our discussion. The abstract along with the full video of our discussion is included below.

ABSTRACT

The buzz: Futurists are people who attempt to predict the future — authors, consultants, thinkers, organizational leaders and others who engage in interdisciplinary and systems thinking to advise private and public organizations on diverse global trends, possible scenarios, emerging market opportunities and risk management. Futurists are motivated by change. Not content merely to describe or forecast, they desire an active role in world transformation.

Futurology is concerned with ‘three P’s and a W’, i.e., ‘possible, probable, and preferable’ futures, plus ‘wildcards’, which are low-probability, high-impact events. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin distinguished futurology — the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists — from novelists, whose ‘business is lying.’” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist We’ll ask futurists Mike Bechtel, Frank Diana, Tom Raftery, and Alexandra Whittington for their take on The Future of Futurists, Futurology and Crystal Ball Tech.

Originally published at http://frankdiana.net on October 28, 2020.