Could, Should, Might and Don’t are the four types of futurism that Nick Foster describes in this detailed exploration of how we all think about the future. This book takes the expertise of someone who works as a futurist (with a refreshing cynicism of the field), and applies it to the experience of those of us who don’t.
The key message is that we don’t think methodically or rigorously about the future. Instead, our thoughts are informed by a looping, corporate informed, sci-fi influenced samey version of the future. Foster suggests that the rapid acceleration of change in our world, in not only technology but broader society, demands that we address this shortcoming.
The four categories create the book’s structure, with a detailed section to define and analyse each one. This feels at first a little laboured, but as we move through, the value of the detail becomes apparent. The reader identifies with the types of futurism that prevail in society and how their own experience maps on. I’m a Should Futurist, for example, as are most people in the political space – we frame our future thinking with the ideology that underpins our politics.
Of much greater value is the Might Futurist, according to Foster. These are the analysts and strategists who we don’t even think of as futurists and who fine-tune methods similar to our innate and subconscious scenario planning instincts.
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The book is rich with treasures – that the Romans practiced oomancy to predict the future using eggs; how Foster’s grandmother used a Cumbrian vernacular of “yan, tan, tether, mether and pip” as an alternative to count to five; or the concept of a Cone of Possibility to manage multiple potential future outcomes. He takes us on a fascinating journey from the world exhibitions of yore to today’s CES, via EPCOT and elsewhere.
If the goal of Foster’s first book is to raise awareness among ordinary people that our visions of the future are limited, and that this in turn limits us as a species, then job done. It’s impossible to come away from reading it without thinking differently about the projections, predictions and patterns that we all encounter in board rooms, popular culture and our own brains.
Sinéad Gibney is a Social Democrat TD for Dublin-Rathdown
