Doc Searls Weblog

8 responses to “What everything isn’t”

1. 

   Joseph Ratliff

   November 30, 2015 at 9:11 am

   But we sure do think highly of ourselves, don’t we Doc?

   I LOVED this part “Must we all be -ists?”

   We love to label everything, including groups of people, so we can put it all into a nice, little, simple box we call “life.”

   And that wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself, because we’re hardwired to do it. Heuristics and all that.

   But then, the rest of our “human nature” shines through…

   We want to be “first” … “best” … “recognized” … etc… and we want excess, when we find efficiency we use that efficiency up etc…

   All of that, at the expense of our lives.

   As Eric Hoffer put it (In Between the Devil and the Dragon) … the process of evolution left us incomplete, and spend the rest of our lives completing ourselves, sometimes at any cost.

   Reply
2. 

   Josh Bernoff

   November 30, 2015 at 2:02 pm

   I once had the misfortune to have to give a speech directly after a “futurist.” Said futurist had left everyone in the room a little dazed with all the futures he was spinning out. I was concerned about how I would follow that. So here is what I said:

   “It’s great to hear from a futurist. I’m a little different. I’m a presentist. I will tell you what’s happening now, what that will lead to in the near future, and what you should do about it.”

   The glazed looks disappeared and the notebooks came out.

   If I’m going to be an “ist” I’ll be in a category I make up, I guess.

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3. 

   Jon Lebkowsky

   December 1, 2015 at 5:32 am

   Being a “futurist” or “futurologist” is an actual thing. Some people are trained and work hard within this discipline. I’ve worked with futurists before, and appreciate the discipline required and the years of hard work necessary to understand trending and relevance, to be able to make an assessment of practical futures and present options to clients, which often include large corporations. I frankly think it’s insulting to dismiss a profession that you’re unfamiliar with, just because you don’t quite get it. But part of the problem is that so many folks self-label as “futurist” without study and without learning or evolving a methodologist, i.e. they aren’t really professional futurists and can create confusion about the profession. I’ve been called a “futurist” from time to time, but I refute that title, because I haven’t done the hard work to get there – just because I think about the future and might have a vision for it doesn’t make me a professional futurist.

   Reply
   1. 

      Doc Searls

      December 1, 2015 at 8:06 am

      Apologies, Jon. I didn’t mean to be dismissive. In fact I’m quite fond of the futurists John & Doris Naisbitt, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Paul Saffo and others. In The Intention Economy I source Jon Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler, and point out how right, in retrospect, their predictions in the ’80s proved out. Like you, I have sometimes been called a futurist as well, and dismiss the claim in deference to those (such as the above) who put in the work and deliver the goods.

      Mostly I was poking fun with too straight a face at the graphic there, and bringing up reasons life gives all of us to be humble.

      Here’s the Wikipedia article on the subject.

      Reply
      1. 

         Jon Lebkowsky

         December 1, 2015 at 8:27 am

         Got it… I think that graphic does invite a poke; I have issues with it (e.g. “Health 2.0” is not really aligned with “life extension” or “futurism,” though some proponents might be future focused. And I think they’re using the wrong term, futurism, though I use it, too. Futurism was an aesthetic and cultural movement in Italy. Futurology is a better term for what they’re describing, but I suppose that word “futurism” rolls trippingly off the tongue… A semantic rabbit hole, I suppose.

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4. 

   Bob Jacobson

   December 2, 2015 at 9:39 am

   I remember taking my field exam — the prelude to writing one’s thesis — at UCLA’s then No. 1 in the nation planning program, a part of the now-disbanded (too politically hot) Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning (GSAUP). It was my option rather than take the more standard exams. But what to write about, given infinite degrees of freedom?

   My Taoist (and for that matter, Jewish) forebears were wanderers, learning something of value here, then traveling and sharing it over there, repeating the process over and over again. I decided to depict in prose (regrettably lost to passing decades) the life of the typical future planner-sage, a mendicant rather than a professional rooted in an institution, a place, or pervasive conservatism. Such a life would be a risky business: you might not learn anything valuable; you might travel to the wrong destination (a resistant one), even though toting relevant lessons; other planner-sages may already occupy the region’s lesson-dispensing stalls; an orthodoxy chases you out of town; or worst of all, you might not be able to travel in the first place, given all the crises becoming imminent.

   Nevertheless, this is the life I have crafted — or rather, fallen into — over my lifetime. I respect the past, consider the future, act in the present. I travel a lot, not just for business but to actually relocate myself in different places and cultures. I’ve worked on public policy, technology, social innovation, regional innovation platforms, as a titled futurist (I agree with Josh, in practice, we’re all “presentists”), open planning, citizen media and engagement, even desert ecology (I’m now living in Tucson mostly, having reduced my commitments in the Nordic region). Today I’m writing up a Smart Citizens urban-resiliency prospectus, in order to begin raising funds for Smart Citizens Baja Arizona, a potential contributor to progressive Southern Arizona’s much-desired economic and cultural autonomy. Tomorrow I’ll continue with my book describing America’s 21st-Century devolution. And so on, always collecting, traveling, and dispensing.

   In return for rice. We planner-sages do it all for love … or to be honest, because we can’t be any other way.

   A great essay, Doc. Timely. Essential.

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   1. 

      Doc Searls

      December 2, 2015 at 10:49 am

      Thanks, Bob. Not sure the post was an essay, but I’ll take the compliment. 🙂

      Great work too, btw. Keep it up.

      Reply
5. 

   Tubidy

   December 18, 2015 at 4:23 pm

   your replay is good one and we all can not know about future we only know about past and i like this phrase: Most of what I can understand is located in the past, but I’ve only lived through a few dozen years of that

   Reply