The Future: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
When I was first introduced to the Guild of Future Architects I was inspired by its mission to serve as “a home, refuge and resource for people collaboratively shaping a kind, just, inclusive, and prosperous world.” The timeline — a century — seemed consistent with the ambition of the work to be done: animating enlightened cultural, social, economic, and political systems. The current global pandemic has revealed in startling clarity the failures of the current systems and imbued a greater sense of urgency to the shared work of creating shared futures.
So, let’s start here: many of us are already living in The Future. The writer William Gibson, whose 1984 book Neuromancer introduced the world to the term “cyberspace,” has been quoted as saying, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
On April 9, 2020 a Guild of Future Architects’ Futurist Writers Room met in cyberspace, or at least on Zoom, to imagine a more equitably distributed future by looking back at 1990 and forward to 2050.
Central to the shared work of envisioning an equitably distributed future is creating a room that embodies design principles of diversity, equity and inclusion: juxtapose multiple perspectives and lived experiences, leave room for serendipitous encounters with difference. Start from a place of openness, generosity, curiosity and inquiry then see what happens.
One group was asked, “What would the world look like if things had happened differently between1990–1999?” and was invited to identify inflection points where different events or outcomes might have changed the present day.
The other group was asked, “What might the world look like in 2050 if we apply our imaginations and our economic, social and political will?”
What followed were wild conversations and serious fun, with no idea too big or too out there, structured improvisational ideation: a better future starts with fearless acts of radical imagination.
Looking back to see now
Re-writing the past reveals our aspirations for the current moment and for the future.
So, the 1990s. What if? A few thoughts from the group: What if George H.W. Bush hadn’t started the first Gulf War? Or, if he had gone all the way to Baghdad and captured Saddam Hussein? What if people had believed Anita Hill and there was no Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and from that day forward women were taken seriously about sexual harassment? What if Hillary had divorced Bill?
Or, what if Jerry Brown had won the Democratic nomination in 1992 and named Jesse Jackson his Vice President? Back then the New York Times wrote of his campaign, “A Brown administration would be fiercely independent of big-money interests, strongly pro-consumer, the most exciting since Jack Kennedy and the most experimental since Franklin Roosevelt.” What if they had won the election? Would we have gotten campaign finance reform? Living wage laws? Maybe no Prison Industrial Complex?
What would our country look like if all those young men of color imprisoned in the 1990s had been given opportunities to lead productive lives in society rather than being permanently sidelined with unfair sentences for nonviolent offenses? What if Biggie and Tupac had lived to make more great music and inspire other young men? What if Kurt Cobain didn’t kill himself because gun laws had been strengthened and he lived, getting into recovery instead and encouraging alienated young white men to seek help rather than shooting people in schools, at malls, at sporting events, at bars…
What if NAFTA hadn’t been passed? What if the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had made the Internet a public utility? What if South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission had inspired a worldwide restorative justice movement that resulted in reparations for slavery and redress of the grievances of indigenous people everywhere?
In 1990, 2020 seemed unimaginably distant. Even the year 2000, though a mere decade away, seemed like some far-off time. But here we are, in the future. What would you want for an alternate version of now?
A few thoughts from the group: Universal health care; equity in housing and education; functional structures for equitable participatory democracy; a fair and even-handed political system that values human beings and serves the public, not profits; care for the elderly and vulnerable; more arts in schools; less waste and mindless consumption; wider voter enfranchisement. To name a few.
Looking ahead, together
Before we start, think back to what 2050 looked like in 1990. Consider that in 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh via an Orwellian 1984-themed television ad shown at halftime of the Super Bowl and The Terminator introduced the world to a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to kill Sarah Connor. What once seemed far-fetched now seems plausible. As recently as 2002 the film Minority Report imagined an all-seeing surveillance state in 2054 that is not terribly unlike today, only instead of precogs we have Clearview AI.
In 2020, it is common for people to have personal computers, we actually live in a surveillance state, and it is plausible that a tech company could create a Cyborg assassin by 2029. Time travel remains highly improbable. We are more likely to accurately predict the future if we intend to shape it. So let’s start by considering some projections.
By 2050 it is projected that the global population will hit 9.8 billion people with a population shift to Africa and India. Two billion people, mostly in the Middle East and North African regions will live in countries with absolute water scarcity. Rising seas will erase more cities and there will be a massive shift in weather patterns. Food production will need to change significantly to feed population growth.
At the same time, more people will be educated than ever before in history. Advances in neurotechnology will enable some people to interact with their environment and other people by thought alone; bionic enhancements will improve mental and physical capabilities with the possible emergence of divergent human and cyborg classes. Autonomous vehicles will make up 90% of all global car sales.
Dystopia is a choice. What do you want the world to look like in 2050?
A few thoughts from the group: Equitable redistribution of global resources, reorganization of food systems around regional strengths, access to health care and food are universal human rights, international minimum wage, co-operatives as default business organizing system (rather than corporations), re-defining productivity where development is measured not by economic growth but by sustainable wellbeing of people and the planet, widespread adoption of Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Economics”, a 2-day work week, Universal basic income, free universal health care, ethical technology. A demographically representative government.
A demographically representative, democratically elected government in the United States by 2050? It doesn’t seem implausible or even unreasonable.
But consider this: In 1776, when John Adams wrote his treatise Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies, imagining a radical new structure for governing a country that did not yet exist, he envisioned a representative body that “should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.”
In 1789, when the Constitution was adopted as the “operating system” for representative democracy in America, the total population of the thirteen states was under 4 million people, nearly 18% of whom were slaves. Despite a few significant patches and updates, the system is still largely the same. Maybe it is time for a complete redesign?
The Futurist Writers Room is a first step on a long journey and The Future is always a work-in-progress. The visionary futurist Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The global pandemic may have revealed that our systems are broken, but it has also revealed how not-broken we are. All around us people are taking care of each other, reconnecting with each other, leaning on each other, supporting each other and rising to the occasion.
Here in Los Angeles the sky is bright, clean, smog-free blue; the water in the creek in my neighborhood is clear; birdsong is louder; the ambient noise of traffic and busy-ness has subsided from a deafening roar to a manageable hum. We are slowing back down and being given a glimpse of possibility. Let’s not return to “normal,” let’s learn from this moment and re-imagine the next world.
Future Architects, unite!
