Ian Pearson, Futurologist
“Anyone can predict stuff,
but only a few get it right”
Contact, conference and media data
Latest: Carbon (tech v
muddled thinking)
The Pearson Guide to the Future (older stuff)
The Futurizon Guide to the
Future (more recent stuff)
About
futurology
Just
occasionally, everyone else is wrong!
I work as a Futurologist. I study the future. My day to day work with Futurizon involves tracking developments across the whole field of technology and society, figuring out where it is all going next, and how that will affect our everyday lives. I take account of as many technology and social factors as possible. My main tools are: a strong background in science and engineering, trends analysis, common sense, reasonable business acumen, knowing when to listen to other people, and a whole lot of thinking. I usually get it right, but since the future is never totally predictable, I sometimes get it wrong too, about 15% of the time. But I specialise in doing long term stuff, so I have a lot of fun. I hope to be retired before anyone can prove me wrong.
Although I use the slightly wacky sounding title of futurologist, I’m just an engineer making logical deductions for tomorrow based on things we can already see happening. For example, if someone is investing heavily in a particular development, and there aren’t any obvious barriers to success, there is a good chance that they will succeed in due course. Keeping up with externals such as political, economic and social factors helps improve judgement as to whether products are likely to succeed, and how they might be used. Anyone with reasonable intelligence can do it, but it takes a lot of time to internalise the very many factors involved before you start getting it right. I learned from experience that computers are of limited use, because although there are many computer tools on the market, it usually takes longer to explain all the interconnections to a program than it does to analyse them yourself. I make no claim to be able to predict the future with absolute accuracy, but I think of it as like driving a car through fog. You can’t see a very clear picture of what is ahead, and sometimes you will misinterpret an apparent shape in the distance, but few of us would drive through fog without bothering to look out the window. Blurred vision is a lot better than none at all! The same is true for business.
Some people claim to be able to predict the future by more dubious means. Astrologers, mystics, psychics, tea-leaf readers (and almost all other new age craft practitioners) generally talk total twaddle, often dressed up to look like science. They use scientific terms such as ‘energy’ and ‘vibration’ a lot, but in a nonsensical way. There are two kinds of such practitioners: fools and frauds. The fools actually believe what they say and are simply misguided. The frauds know it is rubbish but persist because it offers them a living. Both often use woolly language so that their predictions can be interpreted to fit almost any set of circumstances that arise. Occasionally they get it right by pure coincidence. Don’t be taken in by them. If these practices aren’t accepted by the scientific world, it’s not because no-one has checked them out. It’s because these things have been thoroughly checked out and they simply don’t work. It’s as simple as that. Check out the sceptics society for more information. They successfully debunk a large number of these so called professions.
By
way of light-hearted evidence that it is all nonsense, even though I have no
idea who you are or when you will read this, I offer the following ‘Mystic Meg’
style lottery prediction for this week: I see a plumber in