Projecting the Future

  

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT LIMIT YOUR VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

So, I was talking to my Father today about the decline of the retail industry, and how he says a business is unfeasible in the current economic situation because, for small independent shops, the High Street shopping centre is dying, and Supermarkets are taking over, monopolising products, and kids are all staying at home getting deliveries from Amazon and internet shopping more than going out.

He said he thought this was definitely the future, and the only future. I put forward that this seemed pessimistic, and made the point that the future isn't a set thing that you can know. I mean, you could follow the trends and try to see the world and get an overview of everything, but you can't know the entire world, there's always going to be unpredictable things going on that you can't see, and thus can't predict the trend of.
For instance, my Dad doesn't really observe the culture of Youtube vloggers, which reveals a very different picture of the younger generations to me, a lot more optimistic. They are still getting out on the High Street, and travelling, using their smart-phones [read as: handheld computers] to stay online. The real world feeds into their digital experience, with photography, travel, friends and vlogging or tweeting. An emergent trend (especially with the promises of 'Augmented Reality' glasses - a possible successor to mobile smartphones) is that the kids are taking their digital world outside with them, and mixing it with the sights of the real world by tagging digital meanings onto locations and such. This was one area of the world that my Father missed, because although he tries to stay ahead of the times, he limits his intake of knowledge to certain areas (as, I'm sure, do I - but opposing ones).  We all see our own versions of the world, based on what our overview allows us to predict.

The best way to get around this if you want to be a Futurist, as I like to think of myself, and following the examples of people such as H.G.Wells and Arthur C. Clarke, is to present multiple kinds of future. Not sticking to one single Dystopia or Utopia, but presenting varying stories of possible outcomes, based on the unpredictable events in the world which could easily slip one direction or another.

Just like my Dad tells it, (future #1) a Supermarket mega-corporation dominated town could exist, with one lone, fat shop standing in the centre serving as the only depot in town to get goods.

But to limit yourself to one predicted view of the world is unlikely to prove you correct, so why not try to see some other futures:

#2. The collapse of the Supermarkets, due to a mistake of their making (by monopolising milk from Farmers who used to sell to many businesses besides Supermarkets that are now gone) making them give up on selling their produce as they do not make enough for worth.

#3. The Amazon-dominated internet-to-home delivery option overtakes Supermarkets, leaving no shops at all, but a need for increase in delivery drivers and vehicles, and perhaps new infrastructure instead of roads to take the added traffic to the homes of many individuals.

#4. The public backlash against the Supermarket monopoly grows, and by principle many shoppers cease going to Superstores, as indie stores promise to purchase all the products their regulars require.

#5. Amazon sales and deliveries crumple as science-led invention allows most people to create the products they want in their own homes, 3D printers thrive, and efficient compartmentalisation and tutorial guides allows physical items to be built from scratch provided raw materials (in lower diversity) are purchased. In food: arrival of Synthetic Meat leads to no more slaughtering of Farm animals, converting them all to a surplus of pets and Professional chemists as a new primary vendor of meat-based food.

...obviously some things I have chosen to see appear fanciful, and others more worrying, but there are multiple twists and turns in the pathways of an uncountable mass of people (no, not just 7 billion, uncountable) - how can we know what will happen? The best way to 'predict the unpredictable' is the way that Weather people at the Meteorological Office do it, by providing thousands of different models of what could happen and picking the most likely few and mixing them - which even then as we know, is never that accurate.

-Des