“The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create it.”
– P. Drucker & A. Lincoln.
This statement is often cited and seems so profound and in many ways, it is. However, have you ever stopped to really think of the meaning and implications? For instance, when it comes to "predicting" the future in terms of technological development, is that really the case? As an example, Star Trek has long been hailed as a predictor of future technologies, with communicators, universal translators, tablets, voice activation, virtual reality and the list goes on.
But they didn't predict the future.
They created it.
A long time ago I wrote an article about the concept of the architect and the engineer being a symbiotic relationship, where the architect designs what isn't currently possible, and the engineer figures out ways to close the gaps. When the engineer closes the gap and makes it a reality, the architect didn't predict the future, they created it. The defined the design for the future, and even though the available materials might not have been suitable at the time, they spurred the ongoing development to improve.
As an example of this, most people who are old enough will remember renting movies on videos and then DVDs from places like Blockbuster. And of course, we know that it is no longer necessary, since streaming took over. However, Netflix, Facebook, YouTube and all the other types of streamers are only possible because the internet speeds have developed to be fast enough. Prior, it was just not convenient enough. For those who remember downloading cracked software, the first PC version of Photoshop I used was about 250MB in size and too six days to download. Those who remember downloading torrents (which significantly sped the process), still probably couldn't get a movie in a single evening, because there weren't enough seeders.
I am on a midrange 5G connection at home.
It is something like 1000 times faster than what I had twenty years ago. Or is it ten thousand? I don't know, but it doesn't matter, because it is fast enough for me to do everything I need to do without having to worry about how long it is going to take. And what that means is that all other services needn't worry too much about the speed of the internet as a limiting factor in their design - like it was when my brother and I were designing websites a million years ago - stretching a tiny 1x1 image to create a background colour for a banner, because it was smaller in size.
But, it isn't just technology that gets created from our ideas, it is also the processes of the world. Yet, a lot of people struggle to imagine a world different to what they already know, and will quickly discount any suggestion that isn't possible within the current conditions, as if the conditions of the present are going to remain the same in the future.
For example, I have talked about shifting the economic power away from the US for the best part of a decade, and it has nearly always been met with scepticism and put in the "will never happen" category, because most believe that they have too much control and are too big to fail. Yet, history has tells us that there is yet to be a centralised power that is too big to fail, no matter how strong they are.
Everything eventually fails.
Everything.
Yet, when it comes to the US at the top of the economic food chain, there has been rumblings of change for the last couple decades, with attempts to break away from the US dollar gaining momentum, and the latest actions of the US government pushing more nations to take responsibility and control for their own situation. The break away from the US might be painful at first, and might be good for the US at first, but ultimately, it will weaken the US stranglehold and reduce their influence.
And while all centralised systems fail, decentralised systems are far more robust. And the shift in the direction of decentralisation is gathering momentum, and it isn't only in the cryptosphere through tokenisation. It is happening in many capacities and corporations are a big part of it, where they are looking to maximise their revenue by being more faceless in terms of their economic activity. Not only that, earning possibilities are also shifting, with more content creators earning outside of traditional business.
Culture is changing.
And that means, conditions are changing, and demands are changing, and then supply is changing. As we imagine more and more possibility, the engineers of the world make it happen. They close the gaps and make what has been created in theory or even in fantasy, a reality. And as the development takes place, different options become available and the few architects out there can imagine more possibility, and the engineers have more thought to work with.
Make no mistake, we are creating the future with every decision we make, even if we don't always know what the outcome is going to be. We needn't know all the answers now though, and we needn't be both the architect or even the engineer to make a difference - because consumers make a difference also. The adoption of the changing technology drives more change and eventually, the culture of the consumer will be so removed from the actions of centralised control, that the difference will become too great, and the irrelevancy too blatant to ignore any longer, and then more change will happen.
We are predictive creatures, but what makes us so good at being able to predict the future, is that we are also creative problem solvers. We are able to see a gap, and find ways to close it. Yet, the majority of us rarely if ever use this skill intentionally, or for anything more important than working out how we are going to avoid our boredom, or bad feeling, through finding something more to consume.
It is easy to say "It will never happen" when hearing something that isn't possible right now, but is that really the kind of person you want to be in life? Are you an architect of your future, an engineer to make it a reality, or someone who is powerless to do anything, or even think anything other than what you already believe you know?
Taraz
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