Despite getting stories published in major magazines, he never made much money. He died at the age of 53 from an overdose. A former cabin boy in the Merchant Marine, Morgan Robertson had tired of sea life, spent a decade as a diamond setter, and eventually turned to writing about the sea. Despite getting stories published in major magazines, he never made much money. He died at the age of 53 from an overdose.
Before he died, Robertson wrote a novel about “the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men,” called Futility. The ship was the embodiment of “every science, profession, and trade known to civilization” and was a true technological marvel. The boat was deemed “unsinkable” and attracted famous people from around the world to journey across the Atlantic in unrivaled comfort and style. Nineteen water-tight compartments assured safety as she could sail with nine flooded. And because the vessel was deemed indestructible, it carried lifeboats adequate to carry only 1/6th of the passengers. The name of the ship was the Titan. In Robertson’s tale, on a voyage through the North Atlantic one April, the ship strikes an iceberg and sinks. The story goes on to describe the drama associated with a disgraced naval officer who worked as a deckhand on the Titan, John Rowland. Rowland rescues a young girl and was then accused by the girl’s mother (who was also his former lover), of kidnapping her. Very Hollywood-esque drama, for sure. Given that authors have often looked to historical events for inspiration, you might dismiss Robertson’s novel as being in the same vein as James Cameron’s blockbuster 1997 movie Titanic.
Don’t. Why’s that? Because Futility was written 14 years before the actual Titanic sank. Aside from the obvious similarities of name and method of demise, consider these facts:
| Futility (1898) | Titanic (1912) | |
| Vessel Name | Titan | Titanic |
| Ship Length | 800 ft | 882 ft |
| Ship Displacement | 45,000 tons | 46,000 tons |
| Ship Speed | 22.5 knots | 25 knots |
| Popular Description | “Unsinkable” | “Unsinkable” |
| Life Boats | 24 | 16 |
| Passengers and Crew | 2500 | 2200 |
| Cause of Accident | Iceberg impact | Iceberg impact |
| Location | North Atlantic | North Atlantic |
| Precise Location | 400 nm from Newfoundland | 400 nm from Newfoundland |
| Date | April | April 14, 1912 |
| Survivors | 13 | 705 |
| Propellers | 3 | 3 |
After the sinking of the actual Titanic, Robertson was celebrated by many as a clairvoyant, as possessing extraordinary skills of precognition. He dismissed these claims, suggesting it was his knowledge of maritime matters that gave him the ability to write about ships with detail. Yet the world refused to give up on the possibility that he had, in fact, “seen the future.”
It’s such an intriguing story that the 1990s American TV series Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction featured the Titan-Titanic story in an episode, highlighting during the short segment that “the only difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction hasn’t happened yet.” Host Jonathan Frakes (yes, the one of Star Trek fame) tells the story from the perspective of a struggling author, and ends the story by asking viewers if the coincidence was “another example of art foreshadowing life? The same way Jules Verne wrote of submarines long before their invention? Or da Vinci sketched flying machines centuries before the Wright Brothers?” At the end of the episode, he reveals that the story was, in fact, true.
Coincidences happen, for sure. And anyone prognosticating on the future has likely heard the clichés “even a broken clock is right twice a day” and “every now and then a blind squirrel will find a nut,” statements that suggest mere luck as the reason for Robertson’s supposed ability to see the future. In fact, Robertson’s title states the primary criticism directed at those who think about the future—it’s an act of futility. And, as the saying goes, “it’s dangerous to make predictions, especially about the future.”
One need only look to some expert predictions to see just how inaccurate they can be. Consider, for instance, two books that made it to the top of the bestseller lists: The Population Bomb and The Great Depression of 1990. The first, by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, noted in 1968 that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over… in the 1970s, the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people will starve to death…” Ehrlich failed to appreciate the possibilities of the “Green Revolution,” which dramatically increased agriculture’s productivity. Incidentally, the Green Revolution was already underway when Ehrlich wrote his book; he just didn’t grasp the potential impact. The Great Depression of 1990, by Southern Methodist University economist Ravi Batra (which stayed on the bestseller list for 10 months in hardcover and over 19 months as a paperback), totally missed the technological developments that made the 1990s among the most productive decades ever. And in 2001, Gordon Chang wrote The Coming Collapse of China, a persuasively argued case that the Middle Kingdom was destined to fall apart. In the decade that followed, China boomed.
Yet despite this mixed (at best) track record of those in the predictions business, we humans seem to have an insatiable appetite for their prognostications. Nobel Laureate Ken Arrow eloquently captured the desire for predictions in recalling his work for the US Army Air Force. Despite concluding that the weather predictions upon which his superiors relied were entirely useless (i.e., statistically random, no better than a guess), he was rebuffed, told that “The Commanding General is well aware that the forecasts are no good; however, he needs them for planning purposes.”
As comical as that statement sounds, I find it quite useful—and helpful. The blunt reality is that accuracy cannot and should not be the criterion upon which to evaluate thinking about the future. Usefulness, I propose, is a far better standard. Mechanical as it may be, thinking about various scenarios of how the future may unfold has proven to be among the most useful ways make decisions amidst radical uncertainty.
It’s important to note that scenarios are not predictions, or mere extrapolations of trends. Scenarios are stories of possible futures. There may be high or low probabilities associated with each scenario, but the act of articulating scenarios can help us appreciate our assumptions about the future and give us a map of the terrain that we may encounter.
There is a long and storied history behind the use of scenarios as a means of navigating uncertainty. Although the professional use of scenarios originated in military circles, Royal Dutch/Shell’s Group Planning Department (under the leadership of Pierre Wack) showed its usefulness in non-combat domains beginning in the 1960s. At the time, the group considered scenarios such as worldwide spikes in the price of oil driven by the newly formed Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) flexing its muscles. When the oil shocks of the 1970s occurred, the company was able to make better decisions in the face of the overwhelming uncertainty. One result of this early success was that Royal Dutch/Shell began publishing a regular series of future scenarios.
I recently took the time to go back and find the company’s public summary of their Global Scenarios to 2020, published in 2002. The scenarios presented two distinct futures; one was called “Business Class” and the other “Prism.” Here’s how Philip Watts, then chairman of the Committee of Managing Directors at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, summarized the scenarios:
“Business Class” offers a vision of “connected freedom,” as global elites and the dominant influence of the United States lead the world towards continuing economic integration. […]. In “Prism,” “connections that matter” reflect the persisting power of cultural values, driving multiple approaches to modernity… [as] countries combine to follow their own development paths—based on their particular economic, political, and social circumstances—in the context of new regional structures.
In the aftermath of the technology bubble bursting, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, differing development paths centered around regional structures rather than global institutions did not appear particularly likely. But had you been thinking about the “Prism” scenario, you might have been better prepared for the rapid rise of nationalism and protectionism beginning around 2016. And, perhaps you wouldn’t have been shocked by the launch of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
The world is uncertain; we all know that. But we need not be surprised by developments within it. In fact, by hiding from the uncertainty, rather than embracing it, we might miss obvious risks and forego tremendous opportunities. We can and should regularly think about possible futures. Not doing so can be tragic. The 9/11 Commission, chaired by former Governor of New Jersey Thomas Keane, concluded in its final report that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 on the United States were a “failure of imagination.” (Relatedly, no one has suggested that Pearl Harbor was a failure of imagination because the Japanese had 36 years earlier conducted an almost identical surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet based in Port Arthur).
Imagination and creativity of thought—surprise, surprise—are critical components of building visions of futures that can help us think through how the world may unfold. Unadulterated imagination will produce some wacky thoughts, for sure, but some of them may prove to be revolutionary. One method many of the world’s best futurists have used to keep their imagination sharp is regularly consuming fiction (novels, movies, or otherwise) to help them imagine different worlds, possible scenarios, and alternative futures. Stories tend to help us get out of our own heads and to think about scenarios that may not naturally enter our frame of view.
Just think about how the opening lines of the movie Armageddon fundamentally force the viewer to think differently. It begins with an image of the Earth from afar. The voiceover begins: “This is the Earth at a time when the dinosaurs roamed a lush and fertile planet…” and the scene then shows an asteroid heading toward it. The voice continues, “A piece of rock just six miles wide changed all that…”
After showing the asteroid impact on Earth, the narrator explains, “It hit with a force of 10,000 nuclear weapons… a trillion tons of dirt and rock hurled into the atmosphere, creating a suffocating blanket of dust the sun was powerless to penetrate for a thousand years…” As the image shows the entire Earth covered from the blast, the music turns ominous, and the voice warns: “It happened before. It will happen again. It’s just a question of when…”
If you think this is just Hollywood dreaming up fantastic stories to help us escape the reality of life, consider that the Economist on August 1, 2015, proposed a scenario for consideration titled “What if an asteroid heads for Earth?” Published as part of the magazine’s annual 17-page set of scenarios called “The World If,” the collection is meant to accompany their heavily read “The World in XXXX” set of predictions. Yet the scenarios have enormous standalone value in forcing readers to think.
Other topics explored in the 2015 edition of “The World If” included the possibility of Russia breaking up, India’s monsoon failing, and the building of a canal in Nicaragua that rivals the Panama Canal. The following year’s scenarios, published in July 2016, led with a story that was dismissed as highly unlikely: “What if Donald Trump was President?” The story they wrote, fictionally dated April 2017, foreshadows much of what actually transpired during the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Other 2016 scenarios include the collapse of the North Korean regime and a mass hacking of the financial system. And the 2017 “The World If” raised the prospect of an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on the United States that brings down the entire electricity grid, the emergence of a true fiduciary standard, and drumroll please… that Donald Trump’s popularity surges, leading to his reelection in 2020.
Hollywood is great at the storytelling business, and visual stories tend to be more effective at having a lasting impact on thoughts than does text. So let’s consider another scenario: the possibility of California disconnecting from the mainland of the United States. Probably sounds as far-fetched as an asteroid hitting the Earth, right? What if I told you there were serious thinkers focused on this exact possibility?
Just watch the movie San Andreas. Yes, the human drama was an emotional hook around which the story is told, but the part that struck me as really jarring was the scene of boats driving through downtown San Francisco. Is this a possibility? How real is it? Aren’t we just wasting precious brain processing power and limited attention on a very remote possibility? Maybe, but maybe not.
Kathryn Shultz is a writer for the New Yorker and author of a book called Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. In addition to authoring this fabulous book about handling error, she also penned a page-turning article about the possibility of an earthquake that completely transforms the Pacific Northwest. The subheading for her June 2015 New Yorker piece titled “The Really Big One” was “An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.”
A word of caution. While it’s easy to dismiss San Andreas and Armageddon as mere movies about low-probability natural disasters, doing so would miss their real value. By forcing us to think about radical scenarios, stories can broaden our imagination about what the future may bring.
Because the value of scenario planning can be so high, we need to be careful not to overly define the various situations for which we’re prepping. We need to allow a certain amount of fuzziness when preparing for contingencies. If we’re too focused in our preparation, we may not be able to respond well. We want to focus on planning, not plans… because as famous boxer Mike Tyson has noted, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” We need to retain the ability to adjust dynamically to accommodate new conditions as they emerge.
If dealing with the accelerative thrust of the past 50 years drove our collective future shock, might anxiety from overwhelming uncertainty in the next 50 years drive our collective after shock? This uncertainty anxiety already stems from an innate discomfort with complexity, ambiguity, volatility, and unpredictable outcomes. In fact, the acronym “VUCA” (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous), used heavily in military circles, describes just such a situation. Might our current predicament be a result of ubiquitous VUCA, and if so, what are we to do?
The bottom line, as eloquently captured by baseball great Yogi Berra, is that “the future ain’t what it used to be.”
Uncertainty has been viscerally increasing for almost everyone in all walks of life. Consider economic and financial markets. The inability to fully comprehend how protectionism, cryptocurrencies, shifting central bank mandates, algorithmic trading, the rise of a global middle class, and the seemingly unstoppable march of passive investing strategies affect the future? Likewise, automation and artificial intelligence are sure to affect life on Earth in very profound ways, in domains as diverse as transportation, health care, education, etc.
In describing the psychological dimension of Future Shock, Toffler explicitly described the pressures of information overload, highlighting how increasing data access will drive decision stress and other ailments. Today, drowning in data is an all-too-common condition, leading many to analysis paralysis. Poor decisions and misunderstanding how the future might unfold are commonplace. Further, our natural default condition is to outsource our thinking to siloed experts and technologies that can help us optimize choices amidst the data deluge. But has this outsourcing of thought made us better at navigating uncertainty and making decisions in the face of ambiguous choices? Sadly, the answer seems to be “no.”
Navigating uncertainty is about thinking in futures and connecting dots. It’s about painting your own mosaics of the futures, drawing on the insights of those deeply engaged in a domain, and making your own decisions. To these ends, the insights contained in these pages are like a collection of Lego pieces. Take from them what you need to create your own futures, for as EO Wilson, the legendary biologist, has noted: “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”
Vikram Mansharamani is a lecturer at the Harvard John Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Profiled by Worth as one of the 100 most powerful people in global finance, he has also been twice highlighted by LinkedIn as their #1 Top Voice for Money, Finance, and Economics. Dr. Mansharamani is the author of Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles before They Burst (Wiley) and Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence (HBR Press, 2020). He has a PhD and two masters degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University. He lives in Lexington, MA, with his wife, two kids, a golden retriever, and two cats, one of which he thinks may be clairvoyant.