You may realize by now that this book is not just about predicting the future; it’s also about your role in the future. You are the change agent, the Game Changer that can influence the future. The change starts in your mindset; you embody this change. I know this may sound radical to consider that you could affect climate change or the future of medicine, but that is exactly what I mean—you can.
Individuals have always been the Game Changers of history, so why wouldn’t they be the Game Changers of the future? The new Einsteins, Steve Jobs, Ghandis, Teslas, Edisons, and Bill Gates of the future are alive today. Game Changers of the Future have a common trait about the future—they believe that they can shape the future with their innovation, ideas, and grit. Great minds in energy, computing, peace, energy, and communications have all changed our world for the better. This is a compelling common denominator that links these innovators across time with us. Are you ready to become a Game Changer of the Future? That is my challenge for you.
At any time, from anywhere, regardless of class, identity, or education, it is possible to invent the new. The power of new ideas to transform should be celebrated and studied. Think how education would be different if we focused on studying the amazing innovators of history—what could we learn?
That is the Big Idea here—to inspire you to take action and manage your future by embracing innovation and to Dream Big. Your imagination, invention, or leadership will play a major role in making the future a Not So Far Future. What I mean is that you don’t need to wait for the next twenty years to see how things work out. You don’t need to wait on the sidelines to see what is going to happen.
You can make it happen. You can become Future Smart by harnessing innovation, inventing the Next Big Game Changer, collaborating with others, educating yourself, embracing change, or taking on a social or business planetary issue. You have the power to make the difference that you want in being a Game Changer of the Future.
You are either a passive witness of history or you are going to make history. Which is it going to be? This is a choice that everyone, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, accept it or not, must make at some point in their life. Will you be a Game Changer of the Future or a bystander? If you’re reading this book, then perhaps you already have made a choice, and this is your choice to make.
You are a fundamentally important part of the Global Network of Ideas that can change the future. You can have impact. Individuals who have radical ideas about altering the future are all around us. Some of these Game-Changers are reading this book now. They are the Future Smart Leaders of tomorrow. Are you one of these?
An Evolutionary Moment in Time
You are living through an Evolutionary Moment in time that is unique in history. I think this Evolutionary Moment has been building for over one hundred years: Will we, as a civilization, be able to invent the social, economic, and technological solutions to meet the global challenges of our future? This will be the defining outcome of our time. I do think we shall meet the challenges successfully, but it will take empowered leaders and individuals to do so. It will take you.
This will take an entirely new way of thinking in order to invent the future. Some of the ideas explored here in Future Smart may point to the way ahead. Many more insights will be needed than what this book can contain. I think if you digest this book that it may catalyze some of your ideas about the future. Maybe you will be inspired to start a new business or transform an existing one. Perhaps you have an innovation or invention in mind that could make a difference that solves a global problem or prevents one from emerging. The world needs new ideas; even radical ones that seem a bit crazy today may be just the fix that will help make a better tomorrow.
The Courage to Innovate
The recognition and use of Game-Changing Trends is a not an easy task. It will require perhaps above all a special type of courage—the courage to innovate, to explore the new, invent the possible, and, in the end, take a risk. A new type of mindset will be required. A bold, experimental, even a radical mindset, which can predict and innovate fast, will be required. Most of the innovations that have shaped our world have come from the courage of people who envisioned something that was not thought to be possible at the time.
What might be possible tomorrow? How might you play a role in taking on a Big Global Challenge that could create a shift in some critical area? How courageous could you become? What is the Game-Changing Trend you want to take on? Your purpose, as corny as you may think it is, may be larger than your survival; it may be about shaping the future, taking on a challenge that has global impact. It is a global challenge in education, energy, health care, or you name it.
Why the Future Needs Us
One of the idea viruses in the way is the Surplus of Pessimism. There is a surplus of negativity, made evident by the many dystopian critics of the future who are gladly ready to describe with fanfare why we are doomed. From climate change–impending disasters, to the many dysfunctions of cowboy capitalism and rampant social inequality, to war and nuclear annihilation—the reports of our impending demise are plentiful though misguided. The embrace of dystopia has become a knee-jerk response by too many that does little to contribute to solving the global challenges that actually do face our future. Giving up, surrendering to the dystopian worldview, embracing our doom is illogical given the risks and challenges facing our future. We must do better and take responsibility to create change, to become Game Changers of the Future.
Are there serious and even perilous global risks that we should be aware of in our future? Yes, many, there is no argument. But for the first time we have the tools, innovations, and awareness as well as the collaborative communications between nations, organizations, and citizens to forge a different future for our world—to take on solving these grand challenges. We have never, as individuals, organizations, or nations had the power to do so much to create a better future. But will we take action?
There is plenty of evidence that we can manage climate change, invent new clean energy sources, create more economic prosperity, and reduce tensions between nations. There are significant results and many new ideas in creating innovations to improve health, education, commerce, and peace. Globalization and trade among nations has opened up new possibilities and lifted many into a new era of prosperous possibilities. The rising New Middle Class, the increase in globalized wealth, and the reduction of war, all point to a New Future, a better future if we unleash the courage, leadership, and innovations lying in wait for the Game Changers of the Future to embrace.
We have the potential to create positive and productive global change. We have the potential to create a better future just as we have been doing for thousands of years, facing down war, inventing tech breakthroughs, extending lifetimes, improving health and education. It has been a long journey—we are not done. This is why the future needs us. The reports of our impending demise are a dismissal of the innovation and social progress that has shaped the last hundred years.
I am convinced that the next fifty years shall be better—more just, prosperous, inventive, and Future Smart because we have the tools, technologies, and intent to craft a more productive global future—this is a choice we can all agree is a preferred future. I think we are on the cusp of knowing how to create a better future. But that shall require more of the grit and courage that has defeated disease, unlocked the human genome, invented the Internet, and made globalization possible. We need to look ahead with foresight built on the reality of how far we have come in history. We are Darwin’s children. We are the fittest to survive. We are the Game Changers of the Future.
There is this strange irony in what I see coming. At the exact time when so many specific challenges face our world, the very tools and technologies we need to better manage these challenges are being invented. It may be that an effective and sustainable future could not have been managed prior to this time because we didn’t have the tools to manage climate change, increase global commerce, make the Internet and communications universally accessible, extend life and health, or provide education to all. In a way I see humanity evolving into the future with the precise tools we need to navigate that future effectively more so than ever before.
The timing of this explosion of tools to address global challenges has an uncanny logic to it. Perhaps the right tools are being created just in time to manage the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face. This is how I explain why certain strategic innovations are showing up just now. Hubris aside, we may be on the cusp of creating a new global civilization that must harness the right innovations at the precisely right time to forge a better future.
Accelerating Innovation
The laser sat on the shelf for almost ten years until we could figure out how we could create the new fiber optics of the communications system. The Internet was developed in the late 1970s, but we didn’t understand how to use it for commerce, education, or communications for almost twenty years. The personal computer was rejected by every large computer company, as not worth the time to develop until the personal computer was brought out and the rest is history. For many decades the experts thought the human genome was impossible to decode. Often it has takes years for society to accept and understand the Game Changers.
Each of these innovations changed the future of our world. We are in the midst of a turbulent sea change, and the waves of innovation are increasing and for good reason. We are sorely in need of solutions to fix the big challenges facing our future.
Even today innovations that sit on the foundation of the Internet, computers, quantum computing, Neurotechnology, and nanotechnology have yet to fully make the mark on our world. There is so much we don’t understand. The artificial cell has been developed, but we don’t know yet what we can do with it. Smart Machines that could invent new drugs to fight cancer are not quite that smart yet. Big Data holds greater potential than reality as yet. Medicine that can regenerate whole organs is not ready to go into production. Geo-engineering is not thought to be a credible science. Quantum computers have not been invented, and fusion has a long way to go before it can fuel the planet or take us to the stars. Humanity is a work in progress, and the Game Changing trends in this book point to the trial and error, the investigations, and explorations that I believe will shape a better future.
This Far Future may truly surprise many who have embraced a dystopian view of tomorrow. But one thing is clear that few could argue: humanity is a species of curious and relentless survivors. We are used to facing down risks and surviving against all odds. We have gotten this far—through wars, economic global turbulence, stared down the nuclear threat, and survived an ice age as well as numerous infectious diseases that wiped out much of humanity at times. My bet is that we have perfectly created the next generation of tools to resolve the future challenges that are coming, and we shall survive them. We will manage effectively the future that is coming. We are the Game Changers of the Future.
Fast and Furious: Emergent Change
We have lived most of the last few centuries such that change has plodded along in linear paths. Mostly slow fits and bursts except for flashes, such as the industrial and computer revolutions. The difference is that this far future of ours will be a product of Emergent Change, where leap-frogging innovations and tools will create new ideas faster than at any other time in the history of our world. Maximum velocity will define the future. Explosive changes may come. A convergence of Game-Changing trends and individual Game Changers will define the future.
Emergent Change—fast, disruptive, kinetic, and shaped by a fantastic exponential convergence of innovations—will accelerate our future. Certainly these radical innovations will define the future. We will need a new language to describe the future of what is coming. The proliferation of these tools, from computers, networks, and smartphones to nano, bio, neuro, and on to quantum tools, will converge, collaborate, and connect us to create Emergent Change. This type of change will be hard to understand and control—it will take new tools to manage the new tools to become Future Smart. I believe in the human instinct to look to the future and to craft a better human. We are all Game Changers of the Future. We just need to be reminded every few millennia of how we got here. The future needs us to create a better future, a future that, successfully, meets the challenges of the twenty-first century.