Futuríveis
terça-feira, janeiro 03, 2006
The result of naive extrapolation is overestimation of the pace of short-run change and underestimation of the scale and nature of long-run change.
...
But the most important events in business and politics are generally those that we cannot observe today but will observe tomorrow, such as the (almost universally unforeseen) fall of the Berlin Wall. There is little reward for those who predict these happenings. Richard Clarke, a White House terrorism adviser, spent years unsuccessfully trying to alert his masters to the dangers of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. He was disparaged before September 11, 2001 – people who worry about problems others are not worrying about are irritating – and disparaged after it – people who were right when others were wrong are even more irritating. Naive extrapolation is easier. Those who ignored the terrorist threat before 9/11 and exaggerated it afterwards still have their jobs.
The result of naive extrapolation is overestimation of the pace of short-run change and underestimation of the scale and nature of long-run change. None of us is very good at visualising worlds that are fundamentally, rather than incrementally, different from the one we know: and the things that change the world fundamentally are usually things that are not yet widely identified or understood.
Prediction is hard, especially when it concerns the future. It is safer, and more common, to predict the present: and such predictions are much better received, so that is what most futurologists do. The lesson for those who must nevertheless prepare for the future is to be uncompromisingly cynical and recognise that those who claim to know what the future holds reveal only their own ignorance. Listen to people who are genuinely expert in specialist fields rather than those who profess to understand how the business world will evolve. But most of all, recognise how little about the world we can ever really know.
...
FT.com
But the most important events in business and politics are generally those that we cannot observe today but will observe tomorrow, such as the (almost universally unforeseen) fall of the Berlin Wall. There is little reward for those who predict these happenings. Richard Clarke, a White House terrorism adviser, spent years unsuccessfully trying to alert his masters to the dangers of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. He was disparaged before September 11, 2001 – people who worry about problems others are not worrying about are irritating – and disparaged after it – people who were right when others were wrong are even more irritating. Naive extrapolation is easier. Those who ignored the terrorist threat before 9/11 and exaggerated it afterwards still have their jobs.
The result of naive extrapolation is overestimation of the pace of short-run change and underestimation of the scale and nature of long-run change. None of us is very good at visualising worlds that are fundamentally, rather than incrementally, different from the one we know: and the things that change the world fundamentally are usually things that are not yet widely identified or understood.
Prediction is hard, especially when it concerns the future. It is safer, and more common, to predict the present: and such predictions are much better received, so that is what most futurologists do. The lesson for those who must nevertheless prepare for the future is to be uncompromisingly cynical and recognise that those who claim to know what the future holds reveal only their own ignorance. Listen to people who are genuinely expert in specialist fields rather than those who profess to understand how the business world will evolve. But most of all, recognise how little about the world we can ever really know.
...
FT.com
posted by CMT, 10:31 da manhã
