David Zach, futurist

The Future of Suffering & Happiness

Be Happy: The American Refusal to Deal with Suffering by Jude Acosta is worthwhile article addressing the issue of happiness in American culture. When I've asked audiences of young people, "Do you have a right to be happy?" most all of the hands go up. Trying to gently explain to them that they, in fact, DO NOT have that right doesn't settle well with many of them. Having to actually work for it, such a bother.

And why wouldn't they believe in a right to be happy? The linked article points out that in modern times, sadness and suffering are for losers. I've also found a fascinating number of people who believe that anyone who is not happy is probably to blame for such a fault. This new-age guilt trip leads to a belief people getting what they deserve. There's a popular sentiment that fate is not something to fight against, it is inevitable.

The virtue of hope has only temporary standing with this sort of mindset. If not immediately rewarded any effort will be discarded as something that was false, even deceptive. This attitude helps explain the constant turnover in self-help, self-esteem gurus, books and talk-show topics. Afraid to go and look back at what was lacking in those once popular ideas, we rush forward into the next great idea that will take away your worries.

What can be said for a society that treats sadness as a disease to be treated with industrial strength meds –backed up by industrial strength marketing?

Update: Can Money Buy Happiness?, an article by Arthur C. Brooks explaining that in fact, it does not. I suspect that this really doesn't have much to do with money, but with the expectations that we attribute to money. I have often heard pretentious people say that money is the root of all evil. It is not. It's the love of money that roots us so deeply in unhappy things.

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a website that gathers articles and other websites on how to use technology and access the digital world around you. Check out the TimeTube that makes a timeline of your search terms as they have shown up on YouTube. What becomes more and more obvious is that as the flood of innovation continues, and we get the feeling of being more and more overwhelmed, that these innovations will drive other innovations in design of interface and presentation.

Elegance and eloquence should rule the day. The goal of the Age of Information is not more information, it is less information, or perhaps all the information filtered, refined, aged (think of fine wine, not old newspapers) to the point where what actually reaches you has more style than it does bulk. It is beauty that should kill the beast.

Modern Times Poster Handout

Here's a small poster for one of my concluding themes, that of the future is most real when you're holding it in your arms. Children are the message we send to the future. What are we trying to say?

(I'm planning to add a second page to this handout that explains the specifics of the Modern Times list of the messages that children take in today, but the poster was requested by audience members from the New York Social Services audience. Here you go!)

Download Modern Times Poster pdf

Volvo to end Death and Injury by 2020?

Saw this on Drudge linked to Reuters about Volvo having the plan to end death and injury in their vehicles by 2020. I've been impressed by what I'm seeing from Volvo innovation, such as the blind-spot sensors, and I do like this goal.

My concern is not with the design, but with the um, design of humans and their personalities. As with the notion of with hubris comes nemesis – how is human behavior likely to be affected by the notion of being impervious to injury? Most likely to take more risks. Then again, I would feel safer with the typical Volvo driver [i.e. my brother] taking more small risks than say some of the drivers of behemoth SUVs who believes their beast has built-in right-of-way. Just as youth take more risks because they have little sense of mortality, adding speed and power to that sense may not bode well for those who get in their way. This sort of thing can be seen with extreme sports, with easier recovery, better medicine and safety equipment, more people take risks to see how far the notion of extreme can go.

Leadership Tulsa Speech

Spoke with Leadership Tulsa yesterday (after an impressive art deco tour of Tulsa - this really is a beautiful town for architecture) and got the question from an attendee regarding a quote from G. K. Chesterton about the importance of amateur, everyday people being able to the most important things in life – and that when things are done too perfectly, it means that the average person is no longer involved ...

Well, as the Memphis Airport is shut down and I'm here for an extra five hours, here's a marvelous source for Chesterton quotes: http://www.chesterton.org/discover/quotations.html

On the topic, GKC said that Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

He also said that: It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on." Patriotism and Sport, All Things Considered

And from The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist:

Freedom is glorious, but freedom is enjoyed only within the rules. We are defined by out limits, like the frame around a picture. You can free a tiger from his bars, but you cannot free him from his stripes.

Freedom gives us the privilege to govern ourselves, which is the essense, of course, of democracy. And Chesterton is a great believer in democracy.

He says that there may be some things that we do not want a man to do unless he does them well: discover the North Pole, play the church organ, write poetry. But the exercise of democracy is not one of those things. Democracy means writing your own love letters and blowing your own nose. Democracy means "that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves–the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young", and the making of laws. [Chesterton also mentions that 12 ordinary citizens are the best group to decide a court case and that someone once founded Christianity by the same means, 12 ordinary men ...]

Now Chesterton extends this defense of democracy in a surprising direction: into the past. He connects democracy with tradition. Tradition means giving the votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

And, regarding being stuck in the airport because of Memphis not having electricity, I stood in line and listened to a gentleman behind me who was calling everyone (and of course, speaking at full volume) on his list to complain about about his delayed fate ... and I was reminded of Chesterton's notions of gratitude. This guy takes too much for granted, whether that is air flight, cell phones or just life itself. The fact that we can fly through the air and live to tell about it is not to be taken for granted. It is a miraculous thing no matter how often one has flown. We should still marvel at it, even through the delays and cancelations. I would prefer not to be delayed, but I also prefer to be alive and wonder at that startling occurrence.

Chesterton said that, We should be startled by the sun, not by the eclipse; we should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. He also said that the test of all happiness is gratitude. And, The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

Executive Director of Leadership Tulsa, Wendy Thomas wrote up the talk here.

The Tulsa World newspaper reports on the talk.

Fads, Trends & Principles Handout

Here's the two page handout defining the notion of Fads, Trends & Principles. The basic mantra here is that we should play with fads, work with trends and live by principles. This is easier said that done because what you will mostly find out there is that we are seduced by fads, ignorant of trends and resistant to principles.

Download Fads, Trends & Principles pdf

How to Think Like a Futurist

And here's the one so that you too can be a futurist in the privacy of your own home. (Don't try this in public.)
Download Think Like a Futurist pdf

The Future Value of Old Ideas Handout

Download Future Quotes pdf

Here's the two page handout of quotations about the future, including most of the quotations that I typically use in my talks. If all goes well, my book, Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas will be coming out in June. Stay tuned.

G. K. Chesterton Handout

Download Chesterton Quotes pdf

The first of a series of new handouts. This one is a collection of quotations from G. K. Chesterton. For more on Chesterton (if you haven't spotted them on my blog already ... ) visit the American Chesterton Society and to the Chesterton Society blog.

Talking to the Wall-paper

Light emitting wall paper. One more step along the way to really expensive, really customized architecture. The notion of passive architecture is a dated concept. With things like RFID tags and more and more things becoming "smart" the fact of being able to interact with your physical space is not that unreasonable.

And just think - the more time one spends "in" technology, the more one will want to reshape the outside world to match the flexibility of the inside world. I used to think that reality would have a difficult time competing with fantasy and reality would be increasingly abandoned. But, because so much of our time is spent interacting with technology that customizes our experiences, it seems only reasonable that we'll start demanding of reality the same payoffs that we get from the digital world. We will not abandon reality as much as we will try to reshape it. That's worse.

No matter what, it would seem that Pandora is one myth that should not be forgotten. As Chesterton suggested, myth are not true about one man, they are true about a thousand men. [ed. note: I do not rewrite timeless quotations to fit modern sensibilities] We must not lose the truth of how our tools and toys always have implications upon implications upon implications. We cannot know them ahead of time, but we must not fail to try or at least consider the full range of possibility. And, make sure that we let Hope out of the box.