The End is Nigh...

I know that there has been a lack of postings over the last couple of weeks, but this is because my spare time is focused on either learning those @!%£%$£ lines for AEWGL, or buying / selling turnips on Animal Crossing...

However, here is our Wiki inspired topic of the week - futures studies. Not sure how I got there but I think it was a case of six degrees of separation, starting with ontology.

Futures studies is about trying to predict the future, but in a slightly more scientific way than all that business involving tarot cards, runes, tea leaves and pricking of the thumbs. Rather, it relies on being able to interpret / process information about our world, both now and historically in such a way that allows us to describe a plausible future.

The scope of futures studies would seem to be as broad as the methods that are employed, and is perhaps analogous to the way that weather forecasts are made, in that however much is extrapolated from all the data accumulated over the decades, there is still an element of playing the odds and plain old guesswork involved. For every geosynchronous satellite there is a Sinclair C5.

It would seem that the difficulty is sifting through all the noise to focus on the import and and plausible predictions:

• Who would have considered that the paper written in 1900 by Constantin Perskyi the Russian Professor of Electricity and titled 'Television by means of electricity' would have been worth reading?
• How about George Orwell's world of 1984 where everyone would be watched over by telescreens (CCTV?)
• Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' in 1932 was populated with designer test tube babies...

Perhaps another useful barometer is to monitor all the web addresses, patents and copyrights that are registered globally each year. If it is a possible future money maker, then someone will have registered their interest. Cocaine, LSD and cannabis are all registered trade marks, as are Bored Silly, Sad But True and Armageddon. The Patent Office's website is also worth a browse - my favourite world changer is the 'Sheep-protector and coyote-exterminator' from 1920.