We will be testing his theory......

 

    We may define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism's physical adaptive systems and its decision-making processes.  Put more simply, future shock is the human response to overstimulation.

------------------------------

Change is not merely necessary to life; it is life. By the same token, life is adaptation.

     There are, however, limits on adaptability. When we alter our life style, when we make and break relationships with things, places or people, when we move restlessly through the organizational geography of society, when we learn new information and ideas, we adapt; we live. Yet there are finite boundaries; we are not infinitely resilient. Each orientation response, each adaptive reaction exacts a price, wearing down the body's machinery bit by minute bit, until perceptible tissue damage results.

     Thus man remains in the end what he started as in the beginning: a biosystem with a limited capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the consequence is future shock.

-Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (1970)

Interesting................

 

..............Us boomers are now outnumbered by our kids.  Back story is here.

Predictions are hard................

 

This data is fairly well known. The problem, though, is that trading activity generates revenue for the brokerage industry, so it has an interest in keeping investors engaged with the market. That’s why brokerage analysts are on TV every day, offering their forecasts for individual stocks, for the overall market and for the broader economy. To be sure, this makes for interesting television. The problem, though, is that it’s been shown to carry almost no value. According to research by Joachim Klement, the accuracy of Wall Street prognosticators is approximately zero.

-Adam Grossman, from here

Who knows...............?

 

In other words, so far, AI is replacing tasks, not jobs.

-Noah Smith, thinking about the future of work

a choice................

 

Your economic future is not going to be determined by the economy, but rather your own philosophy.

-Jim Rohn, as culled from Leading an Inspired Life

Ten rules........................

 

.......................for dealing with uncertainty:

9. If all else fails, simplify. Einstein supposedly said the five levels of intelligence are smart, intelligent, brilliant, genius and simple.

As the world gets more complex you have to fight harder to keep things simple.

The solution to complexity is not more complexity. It’s simplicity.

Emergence....................

 

The pattern is remarkably consistent. We either wildly overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies (remember when blockchain was going to replace every institution within five years?) or we catastrophically underestimate their long-term consequences. Nobody building the early internet imagined it would reshape elections, create trillion-dollar companies, or leave millions of people psychologically dependent on dopamine hits from their phones.

It isn’t just that we fail to predict which technologies will emerge; we fail spectacularly at predicting the second- and third-order effects of the technologies we already have. Social media was supposed to connect the world. It did. It also polarised it. The smartphone was a communication device. It became an anxiety machine for an entire generation of teenagers. Nobody planned these outcomes. They emerged.

-Nicholas Bate, from here

pondering the future.......

 

Albert Robida         The Release of the Opera in the Year 2000       c. 1882, lithograph

Their every day will be caught in the wheels of mechanized society, to the point where I wonder how they will find the time to enjoy the most simple pleasures we had at our disposal: silence, calm, solitude.  Having never known them, they shall not be able to miss them.  As for me, I do—and I pity them.

-Albert Robida, from his short story "1965," written in 1920

on processes..................

 

     The key to focusing more on process is to understand that good outcomes follow good processes.  Without understanding the underlying process, good outcomes could just as likely be due to dumb luck as to skill.

     You should be reminded of this every time you read the disclaimer "past performance is no guarantee of future results."  What you are actually seeing is an admission of random outcomes.  When past performance is the result of luck, then it provides zero insight into what future results might look like.

-Barry Ritholtz, How Not To Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth—And How To Avoid Them

They'd say you're a good man....................

 

Then again . . . I can’t help but try to resurrect all the ancestors — the ancients of days — who I’m sure would have birthed the same or similar thoughts bearing on the time left to them, and the speed with which life slipped through their fingers.

And I’d wonder what they’d say to me . . . ?

-Julian Summerhayes, from here

About those free lunches...........

 

Improved confidence in the future is a good thing in and of itself, since it surely promotes greater saving and investment, which ultimately translate into more and better-paying jobs and higher living standards. On the other hand, finding good values in a period of tranquility becomes harder, and the market becomes more susceptible to disappointments. There's no free lunch, but things could certainly be a lot worse than they are today.

-Scott Grannis, from this post

Going boldly........................

 

..................................into the future.

Too present to imagine...................

 

Age saw two quiet children

Go loving by at twilight,

He knew not whether homeward,

On outward from the village,

Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.

He waited (they were strangers)

Till they were out of hearing

To bid them both be happy.

"Be happy, happy, happy,

And seize the day of pleasure."

The age-long theme is Age's.

'Twas age imposed on poems

Their gather-roses burden

To warn against the danger

That overtaken lovers

From being overflooded

With happiness should have it

And yet not know they have it.

But bid life seize the present?

It lives less in the present 

Then in the future always,

And less in both together

Than in the past.  The present

Is too much for the senses,

Too crowding, too confusing—

Too present to imagine.

-Robert Frost, Carpe Diem

the future......................

 

nowise...........................

44.  Make the best of today.  Those who aim instead at tomorrow's plaudits fail to remember that future generations will be nowise different from the contemporaries who so try their patience now, and nowise less mortal.  In any case, can it matter to you how the tongues of posterity may wag, or what views of yourself it may entertain?

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Eight

 

AI versus EI........................

 

Innovate. Break the rules, or at least use them to the human advantage. Be unpredictable in the best possible ways. Look up from that screen. Be a human.

-Kurt Harden, as he ponders Michael Wade's latest substack

Let's see AI do this....................

 

We don't just need our brains and our brawn, we need a capacity for self-insight, trust, cooperation, and a mix of big-sky visioning with pint-sized actions.  And let me grab my megaphone for this one: We absolutely cannot talk about the future without inviting emotion, intuition, and awe back into our lives and our decision-making.

Ari Wallach, Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs

On sorting out the future..................

 

In fact, many of its founding faculty were misfits in the most productive sense: outsiders in their own disciplines, a veritable Salon des Refusés. We weren’t solving problems. We were developing solutions without knowing the problems. That’s how breakthroughs happen, at the edges, where curiosity is free to wander and orthodoxy is politely ignored.

-Nicholas Negroponte, from this post

shaper.......................

 

It is the sovereign individual who is shaper and potentially master of the indeterminate future—or, more accurately, it is the consciousness manifesting itself within each individual who is such a master.

-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine

I'm conflicted...............................

 

...................is this cool - or is it scary?