Although, understanding the past would be a good place to start.......................

 

     It is no longer sufficient for Johnny to understand the past.  It is not even enough for him to understand the present, for the here-and-now environment will soon vanish.  Johnny must learn to anticipate the directions and rate of change.  He must, to put it technically, learn to make repeated, probabilistic, increasing long-range assumptions about the future.  And so must Johnny's teachers.

-Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (1976)