It’s my great pleasure to be
here today with two very
good friends and colleagues,
fellow futurists.
Glen Hiemstra,
a long-time friend and also
a long-time futurist,
a very long time,
owning the URL Futurist.com.
And Anton Musgrave
from Cape Town, South Africa.
And he’s also a fellow
team member of mine.
So we have gathered
here today to talk
about the meaning of futurism
and what does it mean to be
a futurist based on what’s
happening today and
how is our job changing?
And in general,
what does it mean
to be a futurist
and what does it entail?
So welcome, everybody.
And I would suggest
that we dive right
into the first topic.
I would like to hear from you,
I’m going to do the same thing.
I’d like to hear from you
how do you define your job?
And how has it
changed, possibly,
in the last decades or so,
and how do you think it
will change going forward?
Well, let me take
a stab at that.
And I’ll just do part of it,
and then we’ll come back to
the other parts of the question.
I always define my job as trying
to understand the relationship
of the future, the present,
and the past.
How the future
influences the present,
how the past did that,
and then how we’re doing
things in the present
that influence the future.
I do that by asking three
questions about the future,
that I try to work with
organisations to wrestle with,
or in some senses to play with.
And those are not mysterious,
they are what is probable
in the future,
what is possible in the future,
and what is
your preferred future?
And then depending on what
the assignment might be,
we might spend more or less time
on one of those questions.
So that’s in a nutshell,
how I’d define
being a futurist.
And how has that changed
since this crisis came about?
Because everybody now wants
to know what the future is.
You’re still using
the same approach,
or is it more short-fused?
It is temporarily
more short-fused.
I think we’re
in this crisis moment,
and it’s actually
quite challenging, I think,
to think about
the long-term future
because the uncertainties
are so high around the virus.
You can draw scenarios that,
in one scenario,
you get a vaccine
and two years from now,
the whole thing is behind us.
And in another scenario
you don’t have that,
and then you have very,
very different futures.
And so actually,
I’ve advised my ongoing
clients to not make
long-term decisions right now,
to just try to
preserve their assets
and their employees,
to keep looking at scenarios
and to be thinking
about their preferred
future beyond this.
But I’m not actually trying to
advise them to make long-term,
permanent decisions
during this crisis.
Yes.
Anton, how do you think about
your job today and tomorrow?
It’s certainly
fascinating right now.
And it has changed,
Gerd, so we’ll get
back to that piece.
But for me,
it’s always been about getting
a team of leaders to think
beyond the obvious and to think
beyond their current,
short-term business plan.
If you look at the demands
of the capital markets,
leaders are short-term focused.
It’s quarterly results,
it’s interim interviews,
it’s one-year plans.
And so that engrosses
the attention span
and the intellectual headspace
of most executives.
So I see the job,
as a futurist,
as getting them, helping them,
provoking them to think just
beyond their horizon of comfort,
if you like.
And to ask the questions
what happens after the two
or three-step changes?
What’s coming over the horizon?
And yes, I agree with Glen,
as to try and understand
the possible outcomes
which may arise.
It’s absolutely not about
predicting the future,
that should be avoided
at all cost.
But it’s to get their minds
to open up to possibilities
outside the short-term thinking,
and outside the
tramlines short-term,
tactical business planning.
And to get them
excited about that,
to awaken their memories
of possible exciting futures
and to evoke in them an ambition
to at least think about.
And then obviously,
with our business advise role,
to choose a different future
that’s aspirational,
exciting, will require lots
of different things to be done,
things they wouldn’t have done.
So perhaps for me,
the ultimate test
is will they,
in working with a futurist, take
different business decisions?
Interesting.
And my approach is very similar,
and it has changed a lot
in the last couple of years.
But the concept of predicting
the future is always
being presented to me as
desirable by the clients,
because clients are saying,
we want to know
what’s happening,
which stock should we buy,
and so on and so on,
and what’s going to happen,
what will happen?
And now the last
couple of years,
I’ve been able to morph
that over into saying,
you know what?
The future is basically…
Of course, it’s unknown
and it’s unpredictable.
But also, basically
in ten years,
we’ll be pretty much capable
of anything we want to do
because technology is
exponentially enabling us.
So the key question is no longer
what is possible,
but what do we want?
So I’ve shifted a lot
in the last few years,
exponential change and all that,
by saying, basically,
the future is not about saying
what can we do and
what will happen,
but what do we want to do?
So as you were saying,
Glen, the preferred future.
And the other thing is
that in my work,
I really try to take more
of a therapist role.
I sometimes jokingly call
myself the future therapist,
because really what I
do is I tell them
what they already know.
They already are aware
of all of these things,
but they haven’t realised
what it means.
It’s just like when you go
to therapy with your wife or so
and you know this issue exists
but, it’s always
been uncomfortable.
And now, you’re head-on into it
and you could lose or win.
So that brings me
to my next question,
and we should have
a back-and-forth on this.
The next question is,
the enormous pressure
you are getting,
and that I’m getting,
from clients to give
them precise instructions
for the future,
and to tell them
what’s going to happen,
and to give them recipe.
Again, it’s like
when you go to a therapist,
a therapist doesn’t say,
your wife is not happening.
You should move on.
He doesn’t say that.
He waits for you
to discover that or not.
But the clients come
to me and say, now,
what’s going to happen and
where should we put our money?
So I’m sure you’ve
seen that situation.
What’s your response?
I’ve seen that
situation many times.
But apropos to what you
were just saying earlier,
one of the ways
I’ve thought of myself,
and I’ve often said this
to groups that I’m working with,
I’m here as your excuse
to talk about the things
that you would like to talk
about but don’t really ever have
permission to do so.
Which is, Gerd,
as you said,
people know a lot more
about the future than they
give themselves credit for.
And so I don’t surprise
them nearly as much
as you might think.
And you don’t surprise them
as much as… They think, oh,
they’re going to say something
I’ve never heard before.
And occasionally that happens,
but mostly, they know.
But they’re trapped in systems
in which they’re forced
to look at the next year
or the next two years
or the next six months,
and they don’t get this chance
to think longer-term.
So I may not have presented
myself as the therapist,
but as the excuse
to have the conversation
that you’ve always
wanted to have.
I think it’s interesting when
you talk about this position.
I can’t tell you
how many times I’ve
been hired by people
who want to use me as
a shield to get to the really
important questions.
So if they were to bring
those important questions,
they would be fired
or disregarded or hated
ubiquitously by everybody,
so they bring me and they say,
he’s probably going
to say the same thing.
And this is what I mean
with the therapist role.
A therapist can say,
your wife is really
rejecting you or so.
But it’s hard
for the wife to say that.
So it’s that feeling.
I’m sure, Anton,
you had the same experience.
Absolutely.
And it’s one of the things I
tell a client right up front,
is that I promise
never to tell you what to do.
And that rocks
them a little bit.
And the next thing,
similar to you,
Glen, I say to them,
if I tell you something
you don’t know,
you should be, really,
way more scared
than you thought.
But what I will help you do
is think about those things
that you know, differently.
One of my favourite questions is
to ask a team of leaders to talk
to each other about
their own children.
Tell me one thing
that really scares or excites
you about your own kids.
And there’s this amazing,
animated conversation
about their children.
It’s fantastic.
And they talk about
all sorts of things.
And then when they’re done,
I say, now,
what does that mean
for your business?
And there’s this stony
silence in the room
because they realise,
they’ve been looking at the
future over every dinner table,
but never understanding
what it means in relation
to their business.
And there’s this, wow,
I never thought
of it like that.
And to me, that’s a test
of a good futurist.
If someone talks
about something or thinks
about something in a way
they’ve never thought of before,
mission accomplished.
And so for me, Gerd,
if clients want me to give them
the paint-by-numbers answers,
I’m the wrong guy.
Go and hire a consultant
that’s got an army
of 28-year-old MBAs
and they’ll tell you
a whole bunch of stuff.
The fact is, you’re never going
to execute the difficult stuff
with passion anyway,
so I don’t know why you want
that, but… Yes.
And I think
the other difficult part
that I encounter a lot,
and that’s also changed
since the COVID crisis,
is that the American view
and the Anglo world view
of futurism is one thing.
And then there’s
a European view,
or the German view
which is mostly,
this is suspect.
This is like here’s a saucer
or something like that.
The German Chancellor,
I think, Helmut Schmidt,
or was it Schröder before that,
he said 20 years ago,
if you have visions,
you should go see a doctor.
And this was
the Chancellor of Germany.
And you can’t say
that about Merkel,
she has lots of visions.
But this is really
a difficult part.
And this is why I think that’s
one of the real difficulties
for doing this job.
You’re always somewhere
between the sorcerer
and the magic wand guy
and then the other guy who’s
making a mess out of things.
Well, it’s one of the issues
between the whole
concept of prediction
and preferred futures.
Well, on the prediction side,
people do tend to think
that the future can
be predicted and that
if we just study it enough,
it will become very obvious
what we should do.
And that’s a fallacy
that I try to break
the organisations that
I work with of.
Because, in fact,
if you start looking
at future trends
and all the alternatives
that are out there,
all the things
that could happen,
it actually becomes more
confusing instead of more clear.
And that’s a challenge
that people in the organisations
have to get through.
But on the preferred side,
people get suspicious of that.
Particularly I’ve had,
when I’ve worked
with European clients,
they’re suspicious of that
because there are alternatives,
of course, in
terms of preferences.
The President of
the United States might have
one preferred future,
but somebody else might have
a different preferred future.
And just because it’s somebody’s
preference doesn’t mean
that it’s good.
And so sorting
though what actually is
a truly preferable future
for most of society is
actually a big challenge.
But this is part
of the intuition.
To me, I always say this is
really not a science.
At least it’s not for me,
I’m not a scientist.
But for me, futurism
is a bit of an art,
because we have to choose
and we have to match and we
have to use our intuition.
We can’t just measure.
I think there
were other futurists
that are more measurable,
but everybody’s different.
And this is one
of the key things.
In the end,
you will not get
a conclusive answer.
No matter how much you study and
how many focus groups you run,
you’re still going to have
to sit down and say,
I think it’s this.
Gerd, I absolutely
agree with you.
I think the point, also,
to understand is there ’s
no one right answer.
So for business A,
you might choose
to do something different,
because for you
and your team and your skills
and your customers,
that’s preferred.
And for the next business
that does exactly
the same thing,
the future may hold an entirely
different preferred future.
So it’s really to distil
the options out.
There are many, many options,
many, many choices.
And how do you take
a team on a journey,
a process to distil out
what that means for them?
And then help them choose
what will inspire them,
what will unlock their full
potential and their ambition,
and frame that in
a coherent plan and get
them excited about that?
But to do it from
a future perspective.
So imagine this outcome
five years from now,
seven years from now,
whatever the timeline really is,
and get excited about that.
And then teams of people
do amazing things
when they’re inspired by what
the destination looks like.
It’s like taking
your kids on a holiday.
You don’t bundle
them into the car
or the aeroplane and say,
I’m not sure where we’re going,
but be excited.
So let’s talk
about one key question
that I have been looking
at the last six months.
It seems like the COVID
crisis has destroyed
any wider-scale future thinking,
because everything you say now,
people will say, well,
what does it mean now?
And what is changing now?
And my entire catalogue
of topics and questions
is now being put in context
with the COVID crisis.
And it seems
like all people want to know is,
how does the COVID
crisis impact this?
So have you
noticed this phenomena
where people are saying,
never mind the future,
tell us about post-corona?
I think for me,
what I’m trying to do right
now is actually not talk
about futurism or the future
through a COVID lens.
We’re all in the middle of it
and everyone’s coping with it.
And I agree with Glen,
it’s about cashflow
and your people
and your customers.
But really, to get
the team to think.
COVID will end at some point.
It might be 12 months,
it might be 18 months.
And the future
that I certainly work
with is longer-term than that.
And the term differs.
It differs per industry, almost.
And the term,
for me, is what is
that timeframe in which
you are uncertain of everything?
And that’s the context in which
you need to have
this future conversation.
And that’s clearly post-COVID.
So if you want a COVID
conversation, to me,
that’s tactical, it’s survival,
but it’s not what futurism or
being a futurist is all about.
Yes, I’ve seen the same thing.
People, of course,
are… And I’ve been here stuck
in the United States,
where the COVID crisis
is quite extreme,
and so it’s really
top-of-mind for everybody.
Everybody’s just trying
to survive it and cope.
And yet, there’s lots
of conversation about
what does it mean
for the very long-term?
There’s lots of people
making claims that it means
that either various things
have changed forever
because of the COVID crisis.
And I count myself something
of a sceptic of almost any claim
that something is never
going to be the same
because of this crisis.
I went back and I read a journal
of the Plague Year,
the last time the plague
came through London.
Well, one of the times
it came through in 1665,
and it killed 20%
of the population.
And two, three years later,
things had gotten
back to normal.
So people are
amazingly resilient.
So if we get
through this, that is,
if there’s vaccines and in fact
that this particular
virus issue is behind us,
there would be a few things
that have changed quite
significantly because of this
and will not go back
to the way they were,
that’s for sure.
But it’s not so easy
to say what those are.
And so I agree with Anton
that to get an organisation
to look beyond this,
to just say… And in fact,
I was just proposing this
with an organisation
a couple of weeks ago,
that the project we
should do would be to look
at the future ten years from now
in this particular
organisation’s case,
and just assume
that the whole virus
thing is behind us,
as though it
almost didn’t happen.
Of course, it had some impacts
on various things,
but let’s take a look
at the future as though that
that’s not the most
significant factor.
In fact, not a factor at all.
And I think
that’s quite powerful.
My work, by the way,
I’ve tended to push
organisations to look
much further ahead
than they typically do.
They resist that some,
but ten years,
15 years, 20 years,
occasionally even
longer than that.
I think also to get back
to the COVID issue, Glen.
It’s not COVID on its own
that’s going to change things.
It’s the combinatorial effect
of a growing inequality
in the world,
rampant capitalism,
and all of the obvious ills
that we’ve seen in recent years.
Executive renumeration,
some of the behaviours
of some very large companies
in the world,
shifts in society,
the generational stuff.
And these things
combine to create
different futures out there.
And that’s the
rich conversation.
So it needs to go way
beyond this two-year pandemic.
And of course,
the other thing that I talk
about is there will be
COVID-20 and COVID-21,
and then there’ll be
an environmental event
of equal proportion.
So talk about these things.
Don’t just talk about one thing
that we happen to be
living in right now.
Yes.
To me, the whole discussion
about COVID has been a really
interesting learning journey.
I’ve looked at this
is different ways
and I’ve published
a bunch of things
about the post-corona future,
and now I’m changing it
to the with-corona future.
Yes, yes.
Because both are
maybe the same thing.
So basically, I’ve used
my intuition by saying, okay,
what’s going to happen?
And one thing I said
in my 12 bullets is that,
for example, the populists,
and the people
who are utterly useless
in running countries,
will be sunk as a part
of this experience.
And this is really what’s
happening in the US right now.
This is the end
of the administration no matter
how we look at it,
no matter whether you
like Trump or not.
So I think there’s
a couple things
that are really… When you talk
to a 25-year-old person today
or talk to my son who’s 30.
For him, this COVID
crisis has as big
of a cutting effect in his life,
because it’s a young life,
as World War II in many ways.
And for us,
it’s like, okay,
that’s one of the bumps.
But this is not Fukushima,
this is not September 11th,
this is not the 2007
financial crisis.
It’s a fundamental reset,
I think, for so many
neighbouring facts that changes
the narrative, the way
that we look at the world.
And this is why, I think,
that whatever normal is,
we don’t really know
what normal is.
There is no such thing.
Everybody lives in
a different normal.
It’s the context
that’s changing.
And I think we’re going
to look back at this time,
we’re going to say, wow,
we went through some
really amazing changes,
like the government
is telling us what to do now.
And in many countries,
the government is paying us.
We have a basic income.
Well, of course,
not in America or
in South Africa.
Well, yes,
America’s also paying a lot
of people just to stick around.
So this is why I think
the COVID thing,
my position has
changed completely,
because here in Europe,
people are saying,
well, don’t tell us
about digital ethics.
Don’t tell us
about the future of
artificial general intelligence.
All of that stuff
is off the table.
We’ve got more
important things to do.
And that is European solidarity,
the start-up package,
the politics around this,
the geo-politics,
what’s going to happen to China.
And the entire questions
have shifted for me.
That’s a challenge.
I think that’s a really
great moment for Europe.
So what’s Europe’s
preferred future?
And the things that shape
that are including
new forms of manufacturing,
artificial intelligence.
And COVID, absolutely,
is one of those inputs
into shaping the context
in which Europe chooses
its preferred 2050 future.
I wish more countries,
mine included, would have
that conversation.
What is our ideal country ten,
20 years from now?
Well, what’s interesting
to see is that whatever
was bad before has gotten worse,
that’s certainly true
for South Africa.
And whatever has been good
before, in many cases,
has gotten better.
Sure, absolutely.
Absolutely.
We’ve seen industries
transform more digitally
in the last four months,
than in the last five years.
Yes.
Satya Nadella from Microsoft
said the other day, he said,
there’s been more
digital transformation
in the last three months
than the previous three years.
And it’s so true.
I think that’s
a good thing even though,
yes, it can be
disconcerting for people.
So this is one of the key
challenges, I think.
Putting all this together
in a new context
and re-evaluating.
And this is in fact what
I’ve been thinking about,
if the term futurist
is still a good term,
because it implies,
you’re not here, you’re there.
And it’s also such a discovered
view in different countries,
how people look at futurism.
It’s normal in the US
or in Anglo world,
and here it’s kind of weird.
It’s like, well,
you know the future.
So that’s one
of those constantly
recurring challenges, I think.
One of my least favourite ways
of being introduced
is as a futurologist,
because really sounds very…
That’s real crystal ball stuff.
But I agree with you, Gerd.
I think what COVID
has done for us, of course,
is everyone with an opinion
and a microphone and a modem is
suddenly a futurist.
So perhaps the word needs
to become a future strategist
or some such thing.
But to me,
it’s all about understanding
these waves of change,
and then guiding
a business to have
a real business conversation
about choices and outcomes.
Well, I think when you look
at really successful people
from the digital era,
from the digital economy
in the last 20 years,
you can tell that all
of those people are very
heavily-steeped in technology.
And they look at data,
and they do all these things.
But in the end,
it’s always about
the art of creating.
Like Steve Jobs said,
Apple is about
technology and art.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And it’s not about
building a magic box.
And then Jeff Bezos
said the other day,
you know what?
I look at all this data
and everybody has
to show me data.
In the end,
I use my intuition
and imagination and I go
for that, right?
And I think this is also
a key message for organisations.
You cannot sit down
and take out a map
and execute on the map and then
you’re safe in the future.
Absolutely, no.
Especially not now.
If you look at some
of the businesses
that I’ve experienced
that have made
an incredible digital transition
in the last four months,
every single one of them has
designed the human experience,
at every touchpoint,
through a human lens.
Sure, they’ve built
the interfaces and the APIs
and the payment platforms
and all of that,
as have many the big retailers.
But the big retailers
have done the logical,
sequential thing,
planning thing,
and the others have actually
sat down and designed
the human experience.
And they’ve done so
with incredible impact.
When someone’s thought
through the pre-order,
the order, the delivery,
and the post-order experience
and created moments around that,
all it’s taken is actually,
it’s not about technology,
it’s about understanding
human beings and emotions
and feelings and experiences.
And for me,
that’s been a real insight.
Everyone’s got the balance sheet
and the IT department.
That’s not what it’s about.
But it seems like that’s
a little bit connected
with our age.
It’s that we
have this background.
Yes, when you talk
to a 25-year-old futurist,
and I know I’ve been talking
to quite a few of them lately,
I don’t get that impression
that it’s entirely steeped
in the same background.
It’s very technological-driven.
It’s very driven by
what is possible,
rather than what is desirable?
And these approaches
really bore me a lot,
when you’re saying
this is possible rather than
what is desirable.
Well, it’s just
one of a process.
What’s possible is
just the first step.
So what?, is the big debate.
Yes, let me ask
this question to both of you.
I think it’s a key question.
When you look at our icons,
Alvin Toffler, Marshall McLuhan,
Arthur C. Clarke,
when you look
at all those people,
how are we different
and how is the future going
to be different for people?
Will we ever have people again
like Toffler or was this just a…
Marshall McLuhan was
a very iconic figure
and he didn’t really use
the term futurist very much,
I don’t think.
But we look at him
like this today,
and is it going to be
like that in five years?
Are we going to have
people like that?
Or was it just the sign
on the times?
That’s a really good question.
There are a couple of people
who are in the futurist
field, academically,
who compare to that.
I think you know them.
Sohail Inayatullah from
Australia is the primary one
that comes to mind,
who’s a philosopher
of the future,
as all three of the names
that you mentioned.
One of my observations,
and I don’t know
that this is really fair,
but that the academic community
and future studies,
which has actually grown
around the world
in the last couple of decades,
has made an effort
to change the terminology
to their term of art,
which is strategic foresight
rather than futurism.
And made an effort to make
the field a little bit more,
and again, this may not be
quite a fair term,
more technocratic,
more tool-driven.
Here are some really
good tools for analysing
and assessing the future.
And as the field academically
goes that direction,
then I think it loses some
of the larger historical,
philosophical perspective
that a Toffler or a Marshall
McLuhan would bring.
And so we may not see those kind
of people associated with
futurism again anytime soon.
We’re in this strange period
of such major historical shifts
that are coming closer
together in time,
that is, they happen
faster and faster,
that I think it
would be wonderful
if another Alvin Toffler
would appear to help make sense
of what it all means.
Because just doing
the technocratic,
strategic foresight
thing is useful.
It’s more useful
than not looking
at the future at all,
but I don’t think
it necessarily develops
that depth of understanding
that those people
brought to the field.
The power of what Toffler
and Arthur C. Clarke…
And I really just remember
one of my favourite
expressions of his is,
unless your view of the future
is thoroughly unbelievable,
you have no chance
of being correct.
Which is amazing.
But he said that in an era where
there’s always been volatility
and uncertainty and change,
but it happened
within a relatively
narrow band of variability,
if you like.
And so to come out
with these big, powerful,
bold insights and statements
was shocking, it was scary,
and it served a purpose.
And maybe that’s
where the term futurist
was even valuable.
Today, of course,
you don’t need to shock
execs all that much.
They get the message
that this future is going to be
very different ,very soon,
in very many ways.
And so the role,
Gerd, is as you said,
it’s maybe as
a psychologist almost.
Just to get them have
their conversations they
should be having,
but, because of the nature
of business today,
they’re not having.
But it’s not new
or shocking anymore.
Yes, I see people like Toffler
or Buckminster Fuller
or others more like polymath,
going back to Leonardo Di Vinci.
And I strive to go
in that direction,
even though that’s not something
you can probably get,
it’s something that
you are, I suppose.
But for example,
I try in my work
to create momentable moments.
And I make a conscious effort,
because I know
that’s really important
for the audience.
When I say, for example,
you will not find happiness
on the screen or in the cloud,
I think it could be something
that Marshall McLuhan
would have said.
For example, he said,
we can always extend
ourselves in media.
But when we extend ourselves,
we also amputate ourselves.
And those very simple sentences
are very powerful,
because they bring
down the moment
into something precise.
And I think this is
something I’ve learnt form
from those people I’ve read
and watched and looked at,
as opposed to as you say,
Glen, the technocritical,
theoretical view of the world.
I think it’s
all about the story.
But then again,
that’s my approach
to doing this job.
Yes, so.
No, I hear you.
Give yourself credit.
You’re quite good at that,
at creating those moments
and those phrases,
similar to what McLuhan
and others did.
One other thing that’s
interesting to think about,
those people from that era.
I was a very young person
when they became
the spokespersons.
I was a high school student
or a college student.
But it came from an era
of infinite possibilities.
Come out of World War II,
great technological progress,
a lot of economic
progress in the world,
at least the parts of the world
that they were in.
And when they looked
at the future,
I think they tended
to see more a sense
of unlimited possibilities than,
say, a young person
today might or even
that we might.
We see more limits.
And we have to struggle
with those limits,
I think, and ask ourselves,
can we get beyond those limits?
Whether they’re environmental
or economic or class-based
or whatever they might be.
And that could be why
we’re not seeing a similar kind
of literature come
out right now.
Because they just assumed that
virtually anything was possible,
that we could do
whatever we wanted to do.
At some base level,
I still believe that.
But there are a lot
of people who don’t.
And I think we struggle
with it on two poles between
the future is more limited
than we want it to be
or the future is unlimited.
Yes, I think that’s a challenge.
Yes, the way I look
at this is basically
saying that those people
that we mentioned,
that we listed earlier,
they pointed towards a future
where it’s basically,
the sky’s the limit,
anything is possible.
Now it turns out today,
that’s actually true.
It was hard to imagine
in the 60s or 70s or the 80s.
I talked about music
in the cloud in 1995
and people were saying,
this is madness.
It’s going to destroy
everything, and so on.
And that’s what we have now.
So we’re actually at the point
where we don’t have to worry
about that anymore,
if it’s possible,
because we can probably
say pretty much
anything is possible.
Can you upload your brain
to the internet?
Well, not today,
really but in ten years,
20 years, possible.
So the real question for me is,
what is good for us humans and
what is the right thing to do?
And this tags
onto my next question.
Politics, ethics,
social context.
It seems like I’m
in that position today
where everything that I
do somehow touches
on politics or on policy,
at least,
or on social governance
and social contracts.
Because for example,
when you talk about COVID
and what is happening,
you can see that the countries
that have a large amount
of inequality, again,
South Africa, Chile,
the US, the UK,
and of course Brazil.
They are the worst off.
There’s a direct relationship
between inequality
and the impact of COVID.
And as soon as you
talk about inequality,
you’re talking about politics.
Everything is so intertwined
with politics now,
so I find that to be
quite a challenge.
When you’re speaking
to people about what is
the right thing to do,
you’re essentially
talking about politics.
So have you had
similar experiences?
I think from our perspective,
Gerd, you’re right.
We’re at the forefront of COVID.
We’re, I think,
the fifth most impacted
country at the moment.
And certainly socially,
the consequences are
absolutely dramatic.
So bad that I imagine
that by middle of next year,
we could have more
than 50% unemployment.
And there’s only two ways
that’s going to be fixed.
It’s through really
successful business and
appropriate government policy.
And so again,
it’s not one or the other,
it’s the interconnection
between the two.
And I think that’s
a feature of this world
that is more pronounced
than, I think,
in previous eras,
is that it’s the interconnection
and the interdependency
between all of these things.
Societal attitudes, politics,
technology, and business
possibility coming together.
The problem, of course, is
as that disparity grows,
the cynicism between
and the distrust grows.
And so parties, entities
that should be collaborating
and thinking together
and redefining a new future,
new outcome,
are actually increasingly
mistrustful of each other.
And that’s a very scary reality.
Yes, that’s really
well-said, Anton.
Yes, I wrestle with
the political question always
as it relates
to being a futurist.
The person who mentored me
into doing this was a guy
who was the Director
of Program Planning
for Apollo back in the day.
And then he became a college
president and a futurist,
and that’s how I got started.
And he argued when I knew
him in the late 1970s
that to be a futurist,
you should stay away from
politics because you’re going
to antagonise one group
of people that you
otherwise could work with.
So just stay away from it.
The forces that a futurist
would deal with or talk
about to look at would
be bigger than politics,
it would be historical forces
and technological forces
and so on that are
larger than politics.
But more recently,
as Gerd just pointed out,
everything is so influenced
now by political decisions,
that I think it behoves
futurists to address
politics in some way.
It’s a challenging thing to do,
because you’re going to alienate
potentially a group of people
who you don’t want to alienate.
But the decisions that are going
to be made around environment
and around future pandemics
and around economy
and around global balance
of power are all
wrapped up in politics.
And so I haven’t written
anything on this yet,
but I’m trying to play
around in my mind
that this is the time for
futurists to be more political
than they’ve ever been.
And by that,
I actually mean,
don’t just talk
about the political forces
that are shaping the world,
but actually take
political positions to say,
as a futurist
or even just as myself,
I just happen
to be a futurist,
we need to do X
or Y in our country or in
our political system.
Because I think
that to ignore it,
is to ignore probably
the most important force
in the world right now
which is what direction,
politically, are various
countries going to go?
Because if they go
in a particular direction,
we’re not going to do anything
about the environment.
If they go in another direction,
we will do something
about the environment.
And so, if you talk
about the environment and say,
but I’m not going to talk
about politics, well,
then nothing’s going to happen.
So I’m not quite sure
how to do this,
but I think it’s
time to be involved
in politics as a futurist.
Yes, I think that we’re really
in a very unique position today,
because we’re in the middle
of this shift from what
or how, to why.
And the why question
is always going
to be political and cultural,
because the why question has
to do with values and goals.
It’s not tactical.
It was Tim Cook
the other day,
or it was about a year ago.
I went to this event
in Brussels and Tim Cook
was speaking there as well.
And he said technology
can do great things
but it does not want
to do great things.
It doesn’t want anything.
That’s good.
That’s good.
And that’s so true.
It’s so true.
And I think for us,
the problem is today,
my view is we have all
of the amazing tools
available to solve pretty much
any practical problem.
Whether it’s food
or water or energy,
we have the tools.
But do we agree on what we want?
And do we agree
on distribution of benefits?
Do we agree on the ethics
and the values
and the principles?
And the Dalai Lama once said
that ethics is more
important than religion.
So this is not about any
of those things,
it’s about the bottom line,
what do we want?
And I think this is
the key question
that also rubs a lot
of people by saying, okay,
if I say, for example,
that there’s no way
around the carbon tax
for airlines and for meat.
I’m making a projection
into the future that’s
something completely obvious,
just like music
moved to the cloud.
Yes, a lot of people
are not going to like it,
but this is what it is.
And those are political things.
I think that’s a real challenge
to set that forth.
I think there’s
never a better time
for a futurist to be involved
in a political conversation
without being political,
and by embracing
the party-agnostic position.
Take yourselves back
to the late 80s
when the future of South Africa
was being debated
and negotiated between
the then-minority government,
the ANC who were banned,
a communist party,
and many others in between.
When they were talking about
the framework of a constitution,
there was massive
collision of philosophy,
or ideology, etc.
etc.
And they could make
absolutely no progress
until a very wise man
who’s I believe,
today, our president,
said, let’s just press pause.
We come from two diverse
backgrounds to have a debate
around what we should do.
Let me ask you
a different question.
Describe the country you
would love your children
to grow up in.
And everyone,
whether they were
the communist party,
or the banned ANC, or
the minority white government,
we all had the same answer.
And so when everyone realised
that the outcome was common
and what everyone wanted,
then the what and the
how become much easier.
And you addressed
the political conflict,
having established
a common future outcome.
And business strategy,
of course, is exactly
the same thing.
Let’s get excited
about the destination.
We’ll close this department,
stop selling that,
stop making this.
That becomes much easier to do.
Whereas, if you start
from that premise,
as you would
in the political conversation,
it becomes much more difficult.
Yes, that’s why I’ve started
using the word humanist
in my job title,
because I want to shift
the attention back
from the possibilities
of what technology does,
to what we actually want.
And when I talk
about the future of capitalism,
for example, I use the phrase
People, Planet, Purpose,
Prosperity to describe
where we are going.
And I believe that
what we have today,
because of the COVID crisis,
our society is
forced to consider
that there’s something
more than making money.
Because we know the current way
of capitalism is broken,
it will not lead us
to a good future.
It will lead us
to more emergency situations.
First COVID, then AI,
then geo-engineering, the,
genomic engineering.
And we can’t solve any
of those like this.
So this is why…
And we’re still
not any happier people.
It’s not making us happy,
whatever it is.
Yes.
Yes, I think this is
the other thing.
I think it’s very important
to think of a positive future,
a Star Trek economy,
you could say,
is to think of that
in a positive light of saying,
we have all the possibilities.
We can invent our way
out of so many things.
But we have to agree on
what we want to achieve.
And I think this is
the primary mission for my work,
is not to show the cool ways
that we can invent our way
out; the cool robots,
the cool cars,
or whatever, but to help
invent the consensus.
It’s about mindset.
It’s about calibrating mindset.
Jack Ma of Alibaba said,
on his singles day
where he does $39 billion
of turnover in 24 hours.
The tech behind
that is unbelievable,
but he said,
it’s not about that.
It’s about the attitude
and mindset of humans
that made that possible,
that came up with the idea.
That was the dream
and then the funky stuff
made it easy to execute.
Well, I was just thinking
there’s another guy
that goes back
a ways, Ron Lippitt,
who came out of organisational
development world
who began doing
futurist work in the 1980s.
And he wrote a paper called
Future Before You Plan.
I was thinking of it
when Anton was describing
the political move
to imagine the future country
that you want your children
to grow up in.
And he was at one
of the Michigan universities,
I can’t remember which one.
And he did this research project
in which he had groups of
people try to plan the future,
first of all,
by making plans,
identifying problems,
for example, and making
plans to deal with them.
And then other groups who
imagine their preferred future,
let’s say the preferred future
of South Africa,
and then work
backwards from that.
And the paper that he wrote
was Future Before You Plan,
which I’ve always remembered.
And what he found was
that the sense
of enthusiasm was higher,
the solutions were better,
the commitment to follow through
and actually do something
was much higher,
and the ability
to sort of overcome
differences that existed
when they walked
into the room was much higher
when they started off
with their preferred dream,
their preferred vision for what
they really want in the future.
And that still
is quite powerful.
You’re right, I’ve been thinking
that it would be good
to try to somehow do
that one a global scale,
or on a national scale,
in these times
if you could.
If you could figure out
a way to enable people
to sit down and say,
what is the role
that we really want,
we’d find that there
would be so much commonality
that then the solutions
would be easier to agree to.
Yes.
And the corporate boardroom,
you talk about the future.
Everyone walks into the
boardroom and they’re thinking
about their retirement date,
their share option maturity,
their business department
and their empire.
And how do you break that?
So you’ve got to take
the conversation away
from all of that.
And then those things,
they’re still difficult,
but they’re much easier
to solve afterwards.
Well, okay, I’ve got
two more topics
and then I think we
should wrap, okay?
First, I want your opinion
on science-fiction
and science-fiction movies.
Useful, not useful?
Does it relate
to futurism at all?
I get this question
all the time.
And my personal view is,
just to preamble this,
is that I like watching
science-fiction movies
but I want to keep
that separate from my job,
because it does taint it to be
in certain directions.
You watch too
many Hollywood movies,
your view of the future
is going to be very dim.
And so what is your take
on science-fiction as a tool?
I don’t use it at all,
only in hindsight.
So it’s useful to show clips
of the movie Back to the Future
when he says, roads?
We won’t need roads.
So historical science-fiction,
old science-fiction
might be useful,
but only for a light
moment of entertainment.
For the rest,
it has no place in what we do.
Well, I take the opposite view.
I’ve been a fan of
and a friend of a lot
of science-fiction writers
over the years,
and they’ve actually referred
to me as a futurist
who embraces them.
What I have found is
that science-fiction writers,
the best ones and,
of course, those are
the ones I like.
That’s how I define
the best ones,
are the ones I like.
They’re better storytellers than
the average futurist, by far.
And so they’re very good
at taking technological
socio-political trends
of the day, extrapolating
them into the future,
and then telling very
human stories about
how it plays out.
And so a science-fiction writer
like Kim Stanley Robinson,
for example, and one
of his more recent books,
I think it was called
New York 2041.
I think that’s the right year.
And it’s New York
partially underwater,
because of sea level rise
because of global warming.
Yes, great book.
I’ve read it too.
And he’s just very good
at helping you imagine
alternative futures
and how people behave
in those futures,
in ways that the average
futurist is just not as good
at in terms of storytelling.
So I’ve used science-fiction.
I’ve used science-fiction films
on corporate retreats to watch,
just to stimulate
the imagination.
And I tell audiences
that everybody, even if you
don’t like science-fiction,
you should read one
science-fiction book a year just
to stretch your mind
in ways that regular
literature won’t do.
So I embrace it.
I try to use it.
Not all science-fiction,
of course, is equal.
But I am a fan and I’ve used it
in my work in various ways.
And so I think there’s
more of a connection, Anton,
than you might think.
Although, your view I’ve heard
from… Most futurists
I’ve ever been around say
no, I’ve stayed away
from science-fiction.
It doesn’t have much
to do with my work.
Gerd, what about you?
And Anton?
It is my style.
I have a great quote on this.
I always say science-fiction
is becoming science-fact.
And when I watch Black Mirror,
I have to say, well,
this is already a fact.
When I read Cory Doctorow,
I’m saying, yes,
he’s describing the president.
And when I look
at other things like humans,
I think it’s inspiring.
The bad part
of science-fiction is
that many clients
and many audiences are tainted
by Hollywood science-fiction,
which is basically
death and mayhem,
because that’s what sells.
And that makes them afraid.
And I really
think it’s important
that we don’t go
into the future with fear,
but with caution and excitement.
And a lot of fear
is being installed in people.
All of the latest Hollywood
productions are about
how AI will kill us,
robots will kill us,
we’ll kill each other,
we’ll have another nuclear war.
And it’s all about that.
So I think that is
the science-fiction we
don’t really need.
That’s overkill.
But yes, I think it’s
an important role
of science-fiction in my work.
Glen, I love your point
about storytelling,
because to me,
that’s the hallmark of a great
or a good futurist,
is the ability to tell
a story that your team
or your audience, your client,
can identify with,
that moves them
intellectually and emotionally.
And if you can’t, as a futurist,
do those two things
through storytelling,
then you should be
an academic researcher.
Because being a futurist
in the business context is
about moving businesspeople,
customers, clients,
to do more exciting,
more ambitious, better,
different things.
Storytelling is massive.
That’s a good point.
I think to our colleagues,
fellow futurists,
there’s also, I think,
everybody has different skills
and different talents
and different personality.
I don’t try to convince
people with numbers.
As somebody has said,
if you torture
data long enough,
it’ll confess to anything.
So you take Ramez
Naam, for example.
I love his work
and he’s brilliant
at taking these numbers
and convincing people.
And that’s what he does.
He does a great job at this
and I admire his work.
Personally, for me,
I do a narrative.
I tell a story.
And I use some numbers,
but for me, it’s
all about the story.
I think stories have more impact
on people than numbers.
Numbers are a foreplay to this.
And this is how I do it.
I think everybody
does it differently,
so it’s not by any means
a general rule.
Let’s wrap up with a question
about where you are.
So what is the immediate future
for South Africa,
or for the US, for Europe?
I have an opinion
about the US and for Europe,
but not so much
for South Africa.
But what is your vision,
and what would you like
to see happening there?
That would be, I think,
of interest to people.
From a South
African perspective,
the challenges are
absolutely enormous.
We have a huge diversity
of wealth ownership
in the country,
it’s made strides
over the last couple of decades.
Wealth disparity is
absolutely massive.
Unemployment is a huge thing.
Unfortunately, our government
seems stuck in policies
that were framed
in previous decades.
And the breakthrough
for this country will be
small business development,
entrepreneurship development,
harnessing new ways
of doing things,
enabled by the new technologies.
And I think
our most serious problem,
post-COVID, is the education
system ill-equipping young
learners in the country
to be relevant in the future.
Followed up by a set
of regulatory policies
that enable easily small
businesses to grow and flourish.
That’s the only way we’re going
to break through this.
The big corporates,
the big employers, yes,
they have a role to play.
But the mass impact is
at grassroots level.
And for me,
I despair sometimes when I hear
some of the government thinking.
Some of it is good and
has great potential,
but then I despair
on the execution track record.
And for me,
I wish there’d be
greater collaboration between
the policymakers and people
that are very good
at executing grand plans.
I think ,not only
will South Africa,
I suspect the world,
will need a marshal
plan post two years
of COVID to reinvigorate
the global economy,
global trust in everything
from airlines to restaurants
to hotels to institutions.
And so we need that new
form of collaboration.
And to me,
that’s one of the biggest risks,
is the breakdown of trust
when we need trust
and collaboration more now than
ever before across countries,
politics, countries,
regions, etc.
Let me add onto
the USA debate, okay?
Here’s one theory and then,
Glen, you can go.
Yes, I want to hear your theory
and then I’ll respond.
Yes.
Here’s my theory, okay?
I call this is
the New American Renaissance,
okay?
And I think what’s
happening right now,
America’s going close
to civil war.
It’s utterly dysfunctional,
it’s a total mess,
and everybody’s saying,
yes, it is.
There’s very few people left
who don’t say that anymore.
And that’s going to go
on for the summer,
and that’s going to be very,
very painful in so many ways.
And my view is that
because of this enormous hole
that America has
gotten itself into,
a Democratic president backed
up by a Democratic congress
could mean the biggest change
ever since Ronald Reagan,
who had the same situation,
I think, to actually
completely reboot America.
And I think this is
what may be happening in 2021.
And this is, of course,
what Americans do.
It’s always the utter change.
And this is what makes America.
That’s true.
You pivot on a dime.
We would never do
that in Europe,
it would take us 50 years.
So in America, it’s very likely
that people are going to say,
enough of that.
Now we’re going to do
everything completely different.
And that’s my hope for America.
I don’t know.
What’s your take?
Well, that’s a wonderful hope.
And I think you’re right.
It’s certainly when I put
on my optimistic lens,
I think you’re right.
Yes, it’s going to be
a miserable rest
of the summer and fall,
into the election here.
The battle lines are
very, very stark.
The violence level goes up,
and nobody has as
many guns as we have.
Not only economic inequality
and political issues
that we have,
but we also are flooded
with weapons in this country,
which makes
everything more scary.
When you use the term civil war,
that actually becomes something
involving a lot of weapons,
if it was real.
Number one, I think that the US,
what the current
government crisis with
the current administration,
now with COVID on top of it,
has revealed is the degree
of systemic rot
within the American political
and economic system,
that has been covered up by
basically good economic times
and the continual support
of entrepreneurial drive,
which has always characterised
the United States.
Now all the holes in that system
are being revealed by
the crises that we’re in.
And so if,
as the polls would suggest,
there’s an election
in the fall and we do end up
with a Democratic president
and a Democratic congress,
then I think
it is quite possible
that we’ll see as big a shift,
even bigger than during
the Ronald Reagan era,
more comparable to
Franklin Roosevelt,
in terms of reinventing
the American system.
And that would be looking
at economic inequality
and healthcare inequality,
and probably looking
at the whole issue of weapons
and looking at the environment
in a serious way.
In a way in which actions
actually then occur.
It isn’t just a conversation,
there are new policies put
in place and things
that will actually
happen as a result.
What we don’t know is
the degree to which,
as we approach this election…
And I am serious about this.
We don’t know the degree
to which the elections
could be manipulated
by both foreign
and nefarious American forces,
we really don’t.
It’s kind of bizarre
to be in the US,
the land of free elections,
the country that has spent
the last 50 years monitoring
the world for free elections,
and calling this election free
and that one not,
now approaches election
in which nobody in the country
is really quite sure
whether it will be
a free election.
But if we assume
that it will be or that
the numbers will be so large
as to overwhelming any effort
to manipulate the polls.
And by manipulate the polls,
I mean keep people… In the US,
there are two primary things
that are possible.
Number one, prevent
people from voting
who want to vote.
And there are various ways
and means by which that is done.
And the second is
because more and more polling
is done electronically,
literally to manipulate
the actual outcome
of the election.
And people are seriously
concerned about that.
Of course, both sides
would accuse the others
of being the manipulators,
and both have teams
that are gearing up
to try to stop that.
Gerd, back to
science-fiction for a sec.
Kim Stanley Robinson
wrote a three-book series
about global warming, basically.
And within that book series,
there is one American election
in which there’s
a massive effort to hack
the election by one party,
but then the other party has
a massive counter-hack team.
And so the election
rides on who has
the better hackers, basically.
And now people are actually
seriously talking about that.
It sounds like our reality.
Yes, it does.
All right.
I’ll give you
a short take on Europe,
and then I think
we should wrap up.
So I think what’s happening
in Europe right now is
that the COVID crisis has forced
us to either stand together
with pretty much unlimited
solidarity, or crash.
And basically,
what has happened,
in the beginning in March,
it looked like it
was going to crash.
But now we’re in a world
where the European government,
the commission,
and of course the parliament,
has just approved
this bail-out package,
which is basically a completely
unlimited solidarity with Italy,
Spain, Portugal.
€100 billion for Italy,
without conditions;
a flat-out grant.
So the lesson has arrived,
if we want to be something
together of a world power,
we have to have
unlimited solidarity.
And even the Danish and
the Dutch have finally agreed.
So that’s very, very hopeful.
I think this crisis is forcing
Europe to come together as
what I call the United
States of Europe,
which has been
debated many times.
I think this is really
where we’re going.
Here is Switzerland,
we are part of that,
whether we want to
or not, already.
There’s many illusions
that we have in Switzerland
about our complete independence,
but we are in Europe.
In fact, you could say
the Swiss political system
is probably going
to be the system
that will be used to create
the United States of Europe,
with the cantons having
independence and so on.
So I see a great
future for Europe.
I’m very hopeful for this,
especially after the crisis
because when we move together,
we can be a powerful
player in the world
like the US “was”, China.
And so that’s my positive
view on the future.
Gerd, can I just
make a quick comment?
I totally agree with you.
I think it’s great.
I think Angela Merkel has played
a huge role in achieving
this breakthrough moment.
And two of my most
admired global leaders are
both woman Prime Ministers,
there’s Angela Merkel
and Jacinda Ardern.
Of course, of course, yes.
It’s era of women
leadership, gentleman.
Well, this is just
the final comment,
but we can also see the rise
of women around the world
in this crisis,
and that’s going to continue.
So it’s going to be
women, minorities,
and younger people
going into politics.
And on top of that,
you have really wise people
like Socrates kind of people
who will be drawn
into this as well.
That’s my hope.
But if we had more
Jacinda Arderns and more,
what’s her name
from Taiwan…And Denmark
and Iceland and what-have-you,
we’d be much better off.
Absolutely.
So I think that’s what’s coming.
I often say women are the future
for so many reasons,
but this is one of the reasons,
that you have
this combination of compassion
and sharp intellect
that Jacinda has, for example.
But then again,
of course, New Zealand…
Military language in politics
and business is over.
Yes, yes.
It’s not really a question of
killing the competition anymore.
And that gives me hope that we
can actually achieve this.
My hunch is,
and I said
that a few times already,
in 20 years when we
do have a world government,
the global leader
will be a young woman.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
Yes.
And we’ll probably see
older or very old people
in that inner circle,
like we did in ancient Greece,
Socrates and people like.
So that sort of thing.
But to pull this off,
I think that’s… That’s
a brilliant vision.
Yes, yes, love it.
So I want to thank you
very much for your time.
And I hope I was able
to share some important
feedback with you.
And I look forward to seeing you
at our virtual discussion.
Thanks very much,
and see you down the road.
