Ask HN: Why do futurists skip the near future? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do futurists skip the near future?

8 pointsRichardHeart5 comments

It's like corporations focus on the quarter. Futurists focus on the century. What group of people focuses on the decade?

All their arguments live in the farthest distances of time frames. So far, that they really may as well be science fiction. It seems quite odd to me, as a technologist, that they seem allergic to shorter term time horizons. I'm guessing it is some kind of mental anguish avoidance? For instance, if you know your'e going to die within 100 years, and all this amazing world changing tech is going to happen in 150 years, then you can just let your brain soak in all the cool and fun 150 year ideas, and skip the part where you die 50 years before they happen. Feels good, and you can think you're making progress somehow.

Maybe its just more exciting and fun to think about, like science fiction. Perhaps its pseudoprogress. It could be like procrastination, where instead of doing that thing you're supposed to, you learn more, or watch something educational. It seems like progress, but is it? I guess its better than video games. Shifting your focus onto opportunities that occur only after shorter term problems are solved, at the cost of those short term problems is a bad deal.

Fix todays problems today, and tomorrows problems tomorrow. Obviously for non serialized problems, the parallel approach is good, however in the case of futurists they appear to focus on the dreams and not so much the doing? 10 million members in /r/futurology. Post about how hard a thing is and watch the downvotes roll in. There's nothing wrong with hard things, only if you never get to actually work on them, because you were too focused on the problems of the future, to focus on the problems at hand.

> It's like corporations focus on the quarter. Futurists focus on the century. What group of people focuses on the decade?

Entrepreneurs, VCs, governments

It's always the same Idealism vs Realism dichotomy. Thinkers and Doers. Design and Implementation.

In order to achieve anything non-trivial, you need to aim a step above. You need a direction, a vision that's bigger than what can be achieved in the short/medium term.

My skill as an idealist/thinker/designer is to come up with pure, abstract, and consistent models. I try not to consider reality (the present) in order to keep my models pure. I try not to consider implementation details as this will introduce exceptions and inconsistencies that will weaken the model and dilute the vision. I come up with the what, not the how. Anyone who doesn't strictly adhere to these methods will ultimately produce mediocre and short-sighted models. Sadly, it seems like those people are often the ones whose models are adopted.

We don't really care about living to see those visions become reality. We are selfless and do this out of moral duty. Even if things improve, we will inevitably remain unsatisfied with reality as we discover additional problems. We care about the process, not the result.

The one thing we feel an urge to fix, is your ignorance. There is nothing worse than witnessing people being content with the way things are.

"I try not to consider reality (the present) in order to keep my models pure." I think what you are describing is perhaps not a model then, maybe it's a construct? I'm unclear whose ignorance you are referring to "trying to fix". I can think of worse things than content people. Perhaps people who advertise the wrong ideas thinking they're making the world a better place, when the ideas are so stupid, they should have known better.

If you spent more time on the how, you may discover better whats.

It is easy to talk (just talk) radical things about future, write few books, give talks, become famous. All things leading to easy money.

> It's like corporations focus on the quarter. Futurists focus on the century. What group of people focuses on the decade?

Corporations focus on the decade. But the focus on the quarter part is what is made public.

Disclaimers abound: Obviously not all corporations. Some are good, some suck. Some are very public with their long term plans/thoughts, some are very secretive about R&D and their thinking beyond the fiscal year. There are groups within corporations (some with billion dollar budgets) focused on the 5-15 years out period. There are many corporate consulting firms specializing in exactly this 5-15 years out period too.

Right or wrong, this ~10 year secular horizon is also sweet spot where secrecy about it does have value if you want a return on investing in it.

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