The Provocation of Predictions
I have just returned from the Dubai Future Forum – the world’s most dedicated convening of futurists. It would be impossible to deliver it full justice on paper – it must be seen and experienced, not least thanks to its venue, the Museum of the Future, which has the power to arrest even the most foresightful of practitioners.
We were treated to talks by astronauts, inventors, investors, public policy makers, museum curators, academics, advocates, and provocateurs. A truly plural meeting of brilliant minds, all dedicated to deciding what comes next.
Yet, despite its unanimously appreciated opening by His Excellency Khalfan Biloul in the form of seven potential predictions for 2025, the very notion of prediction itself seemed to cause consternation and near-universal agreement that predictions were impossible, perhaps even implausible. I must say, I disagree.
Moving Beyond the Impossible
Throughout the forum, I heard many brilliant perspectives on the future that I believe are underexplored in the corporate foresight space. For instance, the highly likely prospect of 2025 blurring humans with machines in new ways – as we explore embedding computer chips in the brains of perfectly healthy humans. The doubling of our solar energy capacity in the next year. The vast expansion in our genome bank sampling and perhaps even the prospect of a first corporate board to appoint an AI member to its team.
We were stretched to consider how far forward we should project our outcomes. Several projects put 100 years plus on the table. Consider the Future Library project of Norway, where artwork will only be published in the year 2114. And yet we were reminded that ‘cathedral thinking,’ the building of concepts that we simply cannot project the outcomes of when we begin, is not a new notion. It began in the Renaissance, and knowledge of our deep past helps us grapple with the distant future.
A Call for Hopeful Futures
We were urged to consider the future as hopeful, and that we could design a landscape with the mindset of practical utopia as our guide. We were challenged to consider borderless geographies as an answer to mass climate migration. We were presented with practical solutions—if only we could inspire our policymakers—to tackle issues like social connectedness and long-term illnesses. Longevity cities are already in the early stages of development, not just in the UAE, but also in the UK, USA, Singapore, and beyond.
It was particularly inspiring to browse the Prototypes for Humanity exhibition, where the brightest young minds from all over the world showcased their innovations for the future. Low-speed wind turbines to even out supply, four-wheeled eBikes to replace inner-city car use, potato waste cotton production, and biodegradable fruit and vegetable preservation solutions to reduce methane and minimise waste were just some of the ideas waiting for the funding saviours to show up.
Innovation Pushing Boundaries
On a personal note, it was truly touching to see the evolution of robotics being pushed to new frontiers by Dr. Jordan Nyugen’s Innovation Centre, with young people with special needs at the forefront of neural pathway inventions and VR therapy. This work is expanding minds and improving accessibility to learning and relearning (for instance, after traumatic accidents) for all.
The Intersection of Art and Science
We were reminded that futures is both an art and a science. And creating new routes, methodologies, and cultural pathways into the future will be required to embolden us to provoke sufficient action across both the public and private sectors. Liam Young’s protopian Planet City, a provocation of extreme future densification where all 10 billion future humans live in a single city, will be firmly lodged in my brain for the foreseeable future.
What’s Truly Predictive?
At Foresight Factory, we’ve spent 20-plus years building and pioneering the art and science of predictions. And most of them are incredibly accurate indeed. It’s not a complex sport – you just have to agree on the difference between what can be usefully & contextually modelled (versus an extended projection of the past) and cast into future uptake, and what cannot. You then need to accept that pace should be split into appetite and adoption. And you must discern what is plausible vs possible, still considering certain ‘predictions’ as provocations, not necessarily hardline takes on what will definitely come to pass.
I think rationally this works for most foresight professionals, but resistance arises in favour of scenarios and plural futures because it’s impossible to predict everything, especially across multiple horizons. No one wants to be dismissed as naïve for their over-simplified views nor as absurdly creative for their far-reaching crystal-ball forecasting. But, as a pedant of language and futures, I would argue that even scenarios remain predictions. And even entirely quantitative predictions will have a range. This range, regardless of how it’s derived, is valuable because it narrows our focus to a manageable set of possibilities.
A Guide for the Future
Personally, I favour a more affirmative approach to predictions. At the risk of oversimplifying, they are essentially informed viewpoints, ideally backed by evidence. I heard many brilliant predictive points of view in Dubai worth leaning into. I, for one, will be back for more next year.
