Before we start investigating the future, I want to take some time to think about how we might be able to predict the future more accurately than through simple guessing.
I believe that our predictive effectiveness is a function of three principles. The power of these principles originates from the fact that they tell us the long term choices that people will collectively make. By understanding these choices, we understand humanity’s future actions — and with that, our most likely future.
Here they are:
Principle 1 (Principle of progress):
In any given situations, humans envision a more desirable situation and attempt to change their reality into that direction.
In any given situation, we experience our current reality A. There is always something about it we don’t like; and we automatically envision a more desirable reality B. Our mind than goes to work and engineers a logical pathway to this new reality B. We then start putting this pathway into action, and start doing things we believe will change the world from reality A to reality B.
This is the principle of progress: it makes us create value over time by transitioning our current world into a more valuable world in the future.
Of course, we can make all kinds of mistakes — we can envision the wrong goal; or we can take the wrong actions. But if we do, we just start over, and try again.
This is the principle that underlies all human behavior. We have literally nothing else to do in life and our civilization is nothing more than a tool to advance the speed at that we can generate our progress.
Principle 2 (Wisdom principle):
At any point in time, a group of humans will always choose the best available option as their goal and action towards that goal.
“Available” means that the group of humans has to know about this option, and it needs to be an actionable option.
“Best” means that this option has to be logically and emotionally more consistent than the alternatives: if option A has 3 logical contradictions and goes against 3 emotional needs, and option B has 1 logical contradiction and goes against 1 emotional need, the group of humans will choose option B.
I love the wisdom paradigm because it is tremendously powerful in predicting human behavior — and with that, the future — once we develop a deeper understanding of it.
The wisdom paradigm does not mean that human groups always do what’s best for them. It means that over the long run, we collectively choose the best option that is available to us. Often, there is no good option available — for example, because no one came up with it. In that case, we chose the least bad option. But once a better one is thrown into the mix, we will ultimately gravitate towards this better one. We naturally want what’s best for us, and chose the best option we know of.
The wisdom paradigm also doesn’t mean that any individual human will always choose the best available option for himself. Individuals can stay dumb forever. But the social dynamics in a human group make the group as a whole gravitate towards the best option that all group members know of.
The wisdom principle doesn’t state that human groups act wisely at any given point in time. It states that in the long term, the best option known to everyone becomes its inevitable choice, because in the end humans want progress for themselves.
Principle 3 (Engineering principle):
Everything can be engineered
While many of us look back on the last 16 years in this millennium and think of the expanded internet, Twitter and the iPhone as its great innovations, I believe that we made a leap in the garages of Silicon Valley that is much more important for humanity’s future:
we figured out a process how to engineer reality.
This new process is fundamentally different from our old approaches to create innovation. It doesn’t involve planning procedures, budgeting and resource management. It is not even a linear process. Instead, it is circular, iterative and designed to learn about reality, to imagine wiser alternatives and to engineer the unknown.
Here is a brief description of this omnipotent process:
A small team gets together and envisions a more desirable future in the form of a product, a company, a new movement or any other structure that would change the world.
The team then engages in an iterative process:
It first imagines a potential the transformative pathway from our current reality into the desired future.
It then builds rapid prototypes of this pathway and implements them.
It then observes its implementation failures and successes and learns about the incremental effects on reality.
The team then takes these new insights to repeat this process: It re-imagines, re-builds and re-learns.
By applying this iterative process at the highest possible speed and efficiency, the team inevitably achieved success: it builds the critical amount of wisdom to engineer a viable solution to its challenge. It achieves the transformation of reality into their desired future.
This process is being applied by every successful Silicon Valley technology startup. It has been more or less accurately described by thought leaders like Eric Ries and steve blank.
But even many the innovators who apply this process haven’t realized yet the full power of this process:
It is the blueprint to engineer progress itself.
By optimizing it, we can maximize the pace of progress.
I call this process the engineering cycle; and the people who apply this method the Pioneers.
By deciphering the engineering cycle, humanity has gained a capability whose consequences are not sufficiently understood today:
We have gained the ability to engineer any future we want in a short period of time.
This ability is still unknown to the largest share of humans, including those in charge of creating innovation. It is mostly unknown in academic science; in government and large corporations; in think tanks and NGO’s.
The only people equipped with this new wisdom of progress are the entrepreneurs and some financiers in Silicon Valley and its most successful technology companies. They control only a tiny fraction of humanity’s resources. But their influence is growing rapidly. A superior pace of progress grows their power; and the wisdom of the engineering cycle is expanding.
When we combine the three principles — the principle of progress, the wisdom principle and the engineering paradigm — it becomes clear that the world we live in is not going to last.
All people strive for progress. All people choose the wisest option available to them. A new option has become available to all who know: to engineer any future more rapidly than we ever dreamed.
Where do we go from here? We now understand the three principles that will determine people’s choices in the future. We understand that these principles point towards inconsistencies in our current world: predetermined breaking points that lead to seismic shifts in the way we structure our world.
I call them the big inconsistencies. To understand them in greater depth will allow us to understand the direction our society is going to take; the new meaning of progress and the pioneers; and how everything will be engineered. I will explain more here.
