Prospection: the act of looking forwards in time, is a quintessentially human endeavor.
In fact, some even consider it THE quintessential human endeavor:
“The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.” - Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Dennett has noted that “the fundamental purpose of brains is to produce future... brains are, in es- sence, anticipation machines.”
We spend much of our time projecting ourselves forward.
We do this to motivate ourselves to reach towards our desired future, using the lens of that future as a way to understand what we should be doing now.
I'm fascinated by old predictions.
When we started thinking about the future of mobility for the BMW Documentaries, we realized there is a lot to learn from how we thought about it in the past.
Predications show us a great deal about the concerns of the time - they encode the hopes and fears of the present.
Electric vehicles aren't the first exploration of alternative fuel concepts for cars.
In the 1950s Ford unveiled a concept car called the Ford Nucleon - a car powered by a small nuclear reactor - because in the 1950s nuclear was the great new technological hope.
Sometimes, science imitates science fiction - Google Earth and Second Life were both inspired by the novel Snow Crash.
This is why I love what Syd Mead says in Episode Two of the BMW Documentaries above:
'My particular bent is to render an optimistic future because we're rehearsing for our own future.
Why not do it as pleasantly as possible?'
Head over to the site to discuss the future of the past, and the future of the present.
