Life in the Far Horizons

by John Bullaro

Where will you spend the rest of your life? Along the Central Coast, on a mountain top, traveling America in your RV? Maybe. The correct answer is the future. To paraphrase a local TV news channel, The Future Starts Now.

A recent publication of The Futurist magazine states, "We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future."  What I am referring to is not fortune telling, guessing, or playing what if. I am referring to a tactic that helps anticipate what events are likely to shape the future in a chosen area of life that could affect you.

If you are like me, you see change coming way too fast. Technology, globalization, and the financial fiasco—all have left me reeling. When I look back to the year 1900 (in history books, I might add) our world today is so vastly different that someone alive as an adult at the turn of the twentieth century who was reincarnated today would think they were on another planet: they'd face space travel, cell phones, iPods, heart transplants, genome mapping, television, the Dow surpassing 10,000, gold selling for over $1,000 an ounce,  life span increasing twofold to an average of 75 ( projected to top 100 years in ten years), wireless internet ( or just the internet), solar energy, and the world population approaching seven billion.  The list could go on. No doubt they'd have, as Alan Toffler described, Future Shock.

Now think about a rate of change accelerated one thousand times in the next ten years as projected by futures researchers. We will see a decade of momentous change that will require us to keep up by looking ahead. How can we anticipate these changes? Tarot cards and Ouija boards are fun to play with but are not scientifically validated tools to anticipate the future. There's not enough space here to cover all the research methods shown to make reasonable assessments of how the future "might" unfold. But there is one scientific tactic shown to have solid statistical validity in anticipating future changes—one used by many major corporations (Royale Dutch/ Shell Oil) to anticipate how they must be prepared for what's coming: that tactic is called "Scenario Writing."

First, you must narrow your thinking to segments of the world you think will most likely affect you and your family. This could be travel trends, real-estate trends, medical technology, urban policies, beach erosion, or any other sub-section of the world around you. Next, do a Google search on your chosen area and begin collecting data on what has happened and when, and on the present state of affairs. Remember the local library? There is still value in visiting the library and seeking advice from a knowledgeable librarian on books dealing with your subject area. Finally, sit down with friends, family, or alone, and, based on your data, write what your subject area might look like in ten or twenty years. That's the world you'll likely be living in. Could you be wrong: certainly. But not knowing could be disastrous.

The art of scenario planning is taking the known and projecting it into a limited number of internally consistent views of the future. For more on the subject, type "Futures Planning" in your browser and go for it. You'll find the exercise fun, enlightening, creative and may even relieve stress and confusion about your future.

Originally printed in the February, 2011 Journal

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