Another Person’s Account of the WFS Conference

Michael Rogers, a columnist, for MSNBC also attended the conference. He published his account on MSNBC’s website. It is already getting criticism from some futurists who call the article “negative”. But, I believe the article is accurate and conforms to my perceptions. Because of the diversity of the group, the word Futurist tends to conjure up negative impressions with some people. Sometimes when I call myself a futurist I still get asked, “Where are our flying cars?” Some will immediately ask me, “So, what’s the future?” This is a very narrow viewpoint of what a futurist is. Basically, to me, a futurist is a thought leader. We try to make people aware of the possibilities that exist and the consequences that may follow. Predicting the future is another area more properly known as Forecasting. Forecasting has a very short time horizon because you really just can’t predict the future, you can only speculate. Futurism, on the other hand, has long time horizons and attempts to make “educated” speculations. Because no single future can be described at longer time horizons a number of possible futures, called scenarios, are used. These scenarios can then be used to, “Change people’s minds.”