A Boy Observes

In 1970, when I was in high school in New Jersey, a book called Future Shock was published by Alvin Toffler. I was so impressed I dashed off to the library to forage for more on this guy Toffler. I found some biographical stuff that described him as a “futurist.”

Short of actually being elected the Wizard of Oz, I couldn’t imagine a more fascinating and viable profession. I wanted to be a futurist. Prestige, power – business leaders at my side awaiting my next forecasts. What could be a more perfect career? It was a nonviolent way to have influence over others. As long as people listened to me and followed my advice, everything would work out just fine for them and me. If I modeled myself after Toffler's genius, I was bound to succeed.

Toffler’s predictions in Future Shock were happening right before our eyes. He described how the Industrial Revolution, which had begun in England in the 18th century, would draw to a close, and a new age would dawn thanks to the culture of office workers, a service-oriented society rather than a manufacturing one. Already there were California ex-hippies and cutting-age behavior therapists referring to themselves as “new age.” In Big Sur, Esalen Institute was founded to focus on humanistic alternative education. Esalen played a key role in the “human potential movement.” Next would arrive new age music and culinary choices.

I remember telling my friends in high school they should read Toffler, but of course they ignored me. In college, I continued preaching Toffler and the beauty and value of futurism. No one paid any attention to me because now Future Shock was on the bestseller list; Toffler was too bourgeois for my radical crowd. One friend said, “The guy writes about stuff that’s happening. What’s so great about that?” Toffler became so famous he was soon hosting some of the most famous interview subjects. He interviewed Ayn Rand and Vladimir Nabokov for Playboy.

By the time I finished college, Toffler had come out with a new book, The Third Wave, which followed the same arguments from Future Shock and elaborated on them. In a nutshell, the first wave had been primitive mankind, as hunters and shepherds and then farmers; the second wave was manufacturing industrialization, which brought us cars and electricity and airplanes; and the third wave was about to happen now. Toffler predicted the service industry would replace manufacturing while computers revolutionized our daily lives to the point of no return.

Toffler's agenda for humanity was so simple and elegant that it seemed more like a tautology than a prediction. Why hadn't I seen this? Or anyone else? It was so obvious.

Today, 40 years after The Third Wave, I'm still amazed at how accurate Toffler was. We are confronted with a new age of blue-collar workers who are falling under the unemployment umbrella as manufacturing sector jobs dry up. Few of them are able to adapt to the new world and descend into depression and substance abuse.

Once again, I missed the boat on a successful and lucrative career, which is no surprise. I’m the guy who has the ideas before they’re popular but never puts them into practice. I see trends coming. For example, I predict one day the new millennium, the 21st century, will be referred to as p.g. for post-Google. With Google searches and translations, every question we have has an answer, but nobody cares what I think.

I’d hoped to make futurism my career, but I missed the boat and now there are many futurists. What’s worse, these guys are seriously educated and brimming with research to back up their claims. They have Ph.D.'s in economics and statistics, like Ray Kurzweil. They express their predictions in formulas which take years to substantiate and months to collect into a text. They are scientists and inventors and speak in a language that previously only Buckminster Fuller could understand. They are talking now about AI and robotics. Kurzweil’s website is entitled, “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.”

Everyone is digging these guys now. There’s a National Inventors Hall of Fame. These futurists has turned prediction into a science, which sounds suspiciously like an oxymoron. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. Futurists are people too and forced to make a living; they can predict they’ll be better rewarded for predictions that come true.

The infusion of statistics is a way of guaranteeing the predictability of predictions. In my mind, they are more like careful observers than futurists, like Levitt and Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics, who use mathematical/economic formulas to substantiate their observations. Their most famous “discovery” is that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s was the most probable cause for the fall in street crime at the end of the 20th century.

These days I've decided to stop beating myself up over another career misstep. I'm going to declare myself not a leader, but a follower. In following, I'll have lead-time to assess the current trends, observe patterns, make generalizations. I'll be satisfied to be a keen observer. Seeing the world around us clearly is as valuable as seeing the future.

It's all about observation. As Freud's biographer, Peter Gay, noted: “[Freud] was only about 5'7” but he stood out in a crowd with his authoritative presence, neatly groomed appearance, and observant eyes.” One of Freud's closest friends called Freud's eyes “beautiful” and “serious,” and they “seemed to look at man from the depths.”