Gaining ground
The future connects to the past
A conversation with futurist David Zach
AWARE: What do futurists do?
ZACH: We don’t predict; we guide. We help people understand what’s going on today and relate it to the not too distant future. It’s connecting the bottom line with the horizon.
AWARE: What should we know about the future?
ZACH: We’ve created amazing tools of communication, such as the iPhone® mobile digital device, which is so much more than a phone. These devices help us connect to unlimited information, and we can communicate with anyone, anywhere – but do we really have anything important to say?
AWARE: What is the result of all the choices?
ZACH: We are good at designing things for what people want. The problem is we now offer everyone three million rather than – as the original Disney genie granted – three wishes. It’s easy to know what you want if you only have three wishes, but if you have three million wishes it’s overwhelming, making it difficult for us to know how to choose.
The primary result of all the connectedness and ubiquity of communication devices is that the majority of our attention is now focused about 18 inches from our faces. Other than family members or friends, few people get that close to us. We are outsourcing or downsourcing companionship through technology. People who work on computers touch those computers more than anything else in their lives. The majority of Generation Xers sleep with their smart phones.
AWARE: Why is that a problem?
ZACH: We bought these devices on the promise that they would let us to talk to anyone, anytime. But mostly we talk to people we already know who think like us. As a result, we’re becoming more intolerant of new ideas and new ways of thinking.
AWARE: Is it important to talk with people we don’t necessarily know?
ZACH: Strangers provide stories and different points of view. Strangers help us see a much bigger world. Leo Tolstoy said, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
AWARE: Is there a positive side to all of this?
ZACH: We can decry the distractions, but there are some great things coming about as a result of technology innovation. The Internet is connecting like-minded people through innovation and creativity. Websites such as www.quirky.com and www.kickstarter.com help people bypass traditional processes to get something to market. Wikipedia is considered more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
AWARE: What does this bode for the future?
ZACH: As we get better and better at figuring out how ideas come together, we become better at innovation and how to use the tools for good. The technology magnifies our abilities.
Right now many people are working on an idea called augmented reality. You can hold up your smart phone camera to certain buildings and it will superimpose historic photos over that scene. In another application you can pull up reviews of bars or restaurants as you walk by them. Also emerging is technology that could put screen technology into our eye glasses or contact lenses. That screen can overlay information on the world you see through those lenses – from historic photos to a yellow line that shows you how to get to a particular destination.
AWARE: Anything else?
ZACH: GK Chesterton said, “The world will never lack for wonders, only for a lack of wonder.” We are obsessed with finding what’s new, but by being too adaptable and too responsive to change we can lose our connection to the past or to tradition. Without tradition, you have a heavy burden of having to decide everything on your own – and that would be exhausting.
David Zach is a futurist who has spoken to over 1,400 audiences about choosing between change and tradition. The older he gets, the more he appreciates the value of things with a past. He lives in Milwaukee.
