January 05, 2004
My Flight Home
The futurist introduced himself. Normally I would have avoided conversation with him, but I was bored, and it was a crowded flight, and there was a longing in his eyes that compelled me to talk to him. He offered me his card.
“What do you mean when you say you are a futurist?" I asked. "Is that like a business consultant?”
“Yes, occasionally I consult for businesses, but I am also a writer and a speaker. There are many people who need to know what the future holds.”
“How exactly did you get started in the futurism industry?”
“Well, I have a background in technology; which helps, since so much of what we think about has to do with the increased pace of technological change. For example: In the future, scientists will combine pharmacology and farming to create Pharming, with a ‘P’.”
“Pharming, with a ‘P’?”
“Say your body doesn’t produce enough of a certain protein. You could add that protein to the cells of an ear of corn, then grow a crop of corn that would deliver the protein you need to fight off disease. You could make popcorn out of it, and when you are at the movies you could be eating medicine that will cure you of cancer.”
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. The problem, of course, is that once you start introducing human biology into the ecosystem you run the risk of creating mutants…”
“Like Swamp Thing.”
“Well, I don’t know if they will be like Swamp Thing, but they could be dangerous. Take the corn example: How many fields of corn can we grow? Would everybody get their own field? Or would there be a single field with different strains of corn for each person? The management of such an endeavor would be incredibly daunting. It would be like the collectivization of agriculture, only in addition to the risk of starvation, we might end up in a position where our own food is mutating out of control.”
“That’s not a very comforting thought.”
“No… the future isn’t a very comforting place these days.”
The stewardess came around and offered us something to drink. The futurist had a coffee, black, no sugar. I had a V8.
“Did you know that there is a market that sells futures on the likelihood of a nuclear weapon detonating in a major city?” he asked.
“Really?”
“Yes, it is online, and it is an actual market. You can trade futures on catastrophe there.”
“God, that’s horrible. Markets suck.”
“They don’t suck. They are inevitable. There is no value to markets, and no value without markets -- markets create value.”
“I don’t like to think that the value of our world is an economic calculation. A person’s value should not be determined by their contribution to the economy. There should be something else to it. Or rather there should be nothing to it. We shouldn’t think about people in terms of value at all.”
“I can see you are a socialist. And naïve to boot. Well, you had better toughen up. The rate of change is incredibly fast, and it is going to outpace you and your first-world pieties very soon.”
I was a little taken aback by this. What had started as an ordinary conversation was becoming increasingly hostile, so I decided to not say anything to the futurist for a few minutes. Eventually he smiled and tugged playfully at my sleeve.
“In movies, when the action speeds up, it means something is about to happen. It’s an old narrative trick – the faster the turning of events, the more likely it is that something important is around the corner. Consider the speed of technological innovation in the last few years. Computers, genetic engineering … why there are some physicists who claim that they are on the verge of discovering the Theory of Everything. There are already time travel machines in operation. They can take an atom and send it to the future. It’s not much, but it’s a start. And who knows what happens once we can send things into the future. We could send out morse code a million years hence. We could…”
Before he could finish his thought, I shook my sleeve free of his grasp. “Why should I believe you at all? A futurist is like a historian, only you don’t have any documents to go on. At least a historian has a list of events. Sure, they are subject to interpretation, but they are events. You’re just basing all this crazy speculation on your knowledge of technology. But what does technology really tell us about the way the world works? Why is everyone these days convinced that technology is the key to the future? It's never been the key to anything. We landed on the moon and what good did it do us? For every disease we conquer a new virus emerges. More people are hungry and without homes today than ever before in human history. Where's the progress? Ipods? Flat-screened tvs? Social networks? You call that progress?
“Let me show you something.” The futurist reached into his pocket and pulled out a sealed envelope. He handed it to me.
“Go ahead, open it.”
I peeled back the flap and there was a folded piece of paper inside with a handwritten note on it.
It was dated this morning, 9:30, just an hour ago.
It read:
I knew that you wouldn’t believe me, that’s why I took the time to write this before getting on the plane. This is what futurists do. It was inevitable that we would meet, inevitable that I would talk to you about my job, inevitable that you wouldn’t trust me, inevitable that I would hand you this envelope. The future was never in doubt because there is only ever right now.
I know what you are thinking: you’re thinking that every morning I wake up and get a stack of note-paper before I leave the house, and that I write a letter just like this whenever I have a spare moment, so that if someone comes along and refuses to believe me I can whip it out as if to prove that I know what is going on in the future. You’re probably thinking that right now, and I’m sorry about that, because there is nothing that I can say or do to change your mind on this point. There isn’t much I can do to defend myself if you don't believe me. But you have to ask yourself whether this letter was written with you in mind, or if I could have given it to anyone who sat next to me. Does the letter seem specific to our conversation? Does it seem to confirm what we have been talking about? I hope it does, because as much as I would like to, I can’t travel back through time and change it. And it is important for me to convince you that I wrote this letter for you alone.
Before you dismiss my work entirely, let me impress upon you how important it is that you consider the vagaries of time and the mysteries of the past and future. Try to accept that predictions of the future are not always foolish -- that occasionally what we envision in the future comes to pass because we have envisioned it; just as I envisioned talking to you this morning.
And yes, it is true: had you believed me, the envelope and this letter would have remained in my pocket. I would have taken it with me to my destination and, while waiting for my baggage, I would have realized that I am not very gifted at seeing the future. I would have crumpled it up, thrown it in the trashcan, and decided then and there to contact my estranged wife and make a go of things. I’d have called her from the taxi kiosk and said “darling, I’ve made a mistake. I was wrong. The future looks bright.” But that didn’t happen either. It didn’t happen because I cast out a line for someone to doubt my predictive abilities, and I caught you. And now both our futures and our pasts are intertwined. I couldn’t change this if I wanted to.
I folded up the letter and put it in my pocket. The futurist was looking at me expectantly, but I decided to treat him from now on as one would treat someone who had sent an unwanted love letter.
He’s sitting there now as I write this, his eyes wet and longing, like a sad-eyed lemur. I have resolved to ignore him.
