The professionals who predict the future for a living | MIT Technology Review

"forecasting the future is a complex and absolutely critical job. So how do you do it—and what comes next?"

Fascinating series of short interviews with futurists. Some selected quotes:

• "When it comes to the future, you have two choices: ... build a great big wall to keep out all the bad news. Or you can build windmills and harness the winds of change...
• (so it's not just governments:) A lot of companies... think they want to hear about the future, but really it’s just an exercise ... tick that box, do a report, and put it on our bookshelf.
• we use ... Trend Atlas that considers both the scientific dimensions of society and the social ones. We look at the trends in politics, economics, societal drivers, technology, environment, legislation—how does that fit with what we know currently? We look back maybe 10, 20 years: can we see a little bit of a trend and try to put that into the future?
• Good Judgment Project... track the accuracy of commentators and experts ... take a big debate and break it down into a series of testable short-term indicators.
• I think the next big social tipping point is people actually starting to really care about their privacy... But at the same time, by 2030 almost every Chinese citizen will be completely genotyped
• Prediction for 2030: We’re going to see a lot more humble technology..." from flying cars in the 50s to bicycles in green cities today. A lot of predictions are fantasies reflecting today's society, not tomorrow's: "we live in an era where a lot of us feel like we live inside computers ... So of course we have fantasies about digitizing our brains and putting our consciousness inside a machine...
• Prediction for 2030: Humans and machines will make decisions together ... you should be able to do better than either system alone."