Journalists, hello! Have you noticed a lot of people referring to themselves as futurists lately? It's true -- this is a thing.

But interestingly, it's not the first time in history that "futurist" has been a trendy job title.

Very quick thread on this

Throughout history, there have been times when humanity faces rapid change and deep uncertainty.

Here's a story from Ladies Home Journal just after the 1893 World Fair in Chicago and the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. These were game-changing events.

Around this time, H.G. Wells, who was a novelist and journalist, developed something he called “predictive writing.” Aside from his later work involving foresight and eugenics (), Wells was pretty dreamy, right?

While Wells is known best for The Time Machine, his most important work was actually “Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought.” Using signals from the present, he wrote about next-order implications of science and tech.

Wells argued for an academic approach to futures studies, and thought that there should be a methodical approach to foresight. That’s important because Wells himself didn’t use a methodology — it was clear that he thought there ought to be a formalized process.

Wells was super popular because everyday people were FREAKED OUT about all the emerging science and tech that's commonplace today. All that uncertainty! They wanted answers about the future.

And so, a new cluster of people got involved in foresight.

In the decades since, there has been a direct, positive correlation between lots of change happening fast -- or big technology/ science advancements -- and people using the term "futurist" or "futurologist" to describe their work. I used the NYT archives to collect data on this.

1940’s - 50’s: World War II, Communism, Anti-Semitism, Atomic Age, women entering the workplace...

• Olaf Helmer, helped found the Institute of the Future
• de Jouvenel Proposed a second Parliament
• SRI founded (1946), RAND Corporation founded (1948), MITRE founded (1958)

During this time, there were ALSO a whole bunch of people starting to refer to their work as "futurology" who didn't have academic training. Some were simply interested in tracking change... others were interested in the science and tech... others were capitalizing on the hype.

1950’s - 70’s: Korean War, Communism “Domino Theory”, Space Race and USSR’s Sputnik, Cuban Missile Crisis, Brown vs Board of Education...

• Increasing number of mentions: futurology/ futurist & geopolitics, military strategy, government policy
• Futurist gets linked to space

1970’s - 80s’: Cold War, Lunar exploration, desegregation, genetic engineering (insulin), “test tube baby” born, Chernobyl, USSR falls, Persian War, EU formation…Oil Shocks!

• Futurist moves from government only to private sector
• Beginnings of corporate strategic foresight

We're in an intense period of sudden complexity and deep uncertainty... but even before Covid, I've noticed an uptick in the number of people calling themselves futurists since 2008 or so. I'd say that initially had to do with the acceleration of the internet, mobile ecosystem

Then AI came out of its winter period, we saw lots of advancements in computer vision, NLP, NLU... proliferation of social networks... collapse of blue chip companies... emergence of HFT and quant funds... plus all the crazy interesting stuff happening in biotech...

So the futurist trend accelerated, especially between 2014 - 2020. Interestingly, between 2017 - 2020 I also started to see a lot of big consulting firms promoting their strategic foresight divisions.

All of this makes sense! Deep uncertainty leads to deep questions.

Then, Covid. We want to know what's next. WHAT IS THE FUTURE? History proves true: a whole bunch of people are interested in tracking change... interested in the science and tech... some are capitalizing on the hype. So the term "futurist" is being used **a lot.**

So what is a futurist? We're trained in methodologies, frameworks, processes and tools. A quant inside a hedge fund uses models and frameworks to make decisions about investments. An economist uses frameworks to calculate energy costs. Futurists model change using the same rigor

Some futurists focus mostly on disruptive forces and signals of change. Some are specialists in modeling scenarios. Applied futurists do near-term forecasting and something called "backcasting," to get to strategy and decision-making. Trained futurists aren't speculating.

Foresight work is sometimes super tedious and horrible. I was working with a pile of data last night until around 11:30pm and was getting no where trying to model the future of synthetic biology's trajectory in Asia. I'll come back to it tomorrow, but it was no fun.

Sometimes, foresight work leads to horrible, plausible stories about the future that you wished you'd never thought of... and then you get the fun task of trying to get a senior exec or government leader to make a change or invest in something that might not happen for 10+ years

Sometimes, foresight work leads to plausible futures and alignment within the team you're advising... and then they can't or won't work together to map those futures back to present-day strategy. No challenge, no change. But they're dealing with day-to-day fires.

But the reason futurists learn how to do the work and spend countless hours actually doing it is because we're motivated by creating positive, durable, sustainable change. We DON'T WANT you to be blindsided by the next disruption. We want to reduce uncertainty!

So! In conclusion...

...because I said this thread was going to be short and now here we are...

If you are interested in foresight work, BY ALL MEANS hop aboard! Learn the tools of futurists! Here are ideas for you! https://medium.com/swlh/how-and-why-to-budget-now-for-strategic-foresight-in-2021-2a5f5d4c3d76?source=friends_link&sk=b4f92f8cdfa1e84e36291bac385dea45

My colleague @Leah_Zaidi is working on a terrifically researched piece about why futurists are important in organizations -- but only if you're using them correctly. And why the title "futurist" shouldn't be thrown around. Look for a piece from her soon!

Journalists, please remember:

• Sudden use of "futurist" isn't novel
• The term "futurist" is used more in times of uncertainty
• Strategic foresight/ futures goes back 100+ years
• Futurists use frameworks, models, methodologies

...and finally...

Tell the copy desk that if they wouldn't use " " to describe an "economist" or "quantitative analyst" or "science" teacher, they shouldn't use " " to describe a futurist, quantitative futurist, applied futurist, health care futurist, education futurist, media futurist.....

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