He’s sitting right over there. I  know you can’t believe this spry looking gentlemen wearing a crisply ironed guayabera and sipping a locally produced beer could possibly be a day over 80. That’s one of the advantages of living in 2055.

From all the noise you can tell Miguel is not alone today. Far from it. Five generations of his family  have come together to celebrate this most important day.

Most of them didn’t have to travel very far. You see in this future, where work is distributed and often virtual, young adults don’t scatter in search of the good life.  Families stay closer together.

So today, some of the younger partygoers walked the few blocks back to the family home. Others rode their electric bikes.  Most of the older folks took the incredibly efficient mass transit. No one came by car. In fact,  only a couple of the older uncles in the family even bother to own personal automobiles anymore. Why put up with the hassle when the local mass transit system is so good? Besides there are plenty of share car services available if you need one.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Miguel’s daughter Allison, she’s in the kitchen right now helping to fix the dinner, she came from Atlanta.   Her 200 mile trip took about 45 minutes on the new electric bullet train.

There are lots of things that Miguel enjoys about this world he’s living in. But, like most people his age, sometimes he just can’t resist talking about the Good old days. In fact, that’s what he’s doing right now to a group of quietly attentive great grandkids.  They’ve heard these stories hundreds of times before, but Pap-Pap is entertaining and besides their mothers have all told them to be respectful or else. Some things aren’t so different in the future.

“You should have seen the house your Mamaw and I lived in, back in the day. Nearly 5000 square feet. It was so big that we could lost in it. In fact, I remember the time we lost little Allison. We looked everywhere for a almost half a day. Finally, Mamaw  found her buried under an avalanche of clothes in her closet. That girl never could keep her room clean.”

Little Inez, Pappa’s 13 -year old great granddaughter always perks up when he gets to this part of the story.  Like her great aunt Allison she loves clothes, but she can’t imagine anyone having enough clothe t cause an avalanche. What a waste of space and time that would be.

Inez designs almost all of her own clothes. She uses the family 3-d fabricator to print out the final product. Whenever she gets tired of an outfit she just chucks it in the recycler and it becomes the raw material for her next design.

The best part is when she post her designs online for others to rate. She’s even had a couple of her outfits copied by other girls. Inez doesn’t dream of an avalanche of clothes, but an avalanche of thumbs up appearing next to her designs  would be pretty cool.

Inez has been to the place where Pappas house use to be, even though the houses are long gone–cleared away because it was too expensive to bring them up to modern environmental standards. In their place is one of the most beautiful parks in this city filled with green spaces.

She even knows what happened to some of Pappa’s  house. It was recycled to use in building the affordable city owned apartments where her friend Bobby lives.  He might be more than just a friend but she’s not sure about that yet. She is sure that she is jealous of his way cool apartment complex.

It generates more than 100% of its energy onsite, has the latest rainwater recycling system and the  most beautiful windmills in the entire city.

Inez’s daydream is interrupted by Poppa’s booming voice. For an old man he can still command attention.

“One thing I don’t understand is why you kids don’t  go to school. Why when I was your age I had to get up at daybreak every morning for nine months out of the year and trudge off to school . We took our education seriously.

Inez tries not to laugh out loud. Some of Pappa’s ideas are so old fashioned. Why would anyone only learn nine months out of the year? Inez is always learning, and she loves it. Right now she’s learning Mandarin from her friend, Kim, that lives in Shanghai.  She’s learning botany while working with her mom in the community garden.  She can’t imagine how Pappa could have learned anything sitting in a classroom all day.

“And another thing,” Pappa is on a roll now. But here comes  Inez’s mother, Susan, just in time to rescue the captive audience.

“C’mon kids we need help setting the table for dinner.”

Inez grabs the hand of her 5 year old cousin Lilly and escapes with the rest of the cousins.

Pappa looks a little disappointed that he’s losing his audience, but he smiles. He knows they’ll be back soon enough.

I don’t know about you, but I would really love to live in that future and I believe that we can. We have the ability to create a world of Sustainable Abundance where it is possible for all of us to live fulfilling lives, to be part of stronger communities, and to enjoy higher levels of well-being without destroying our planet.

We’re already making some important strides in that direction. The green movement is certainly here to stay. But there is one piece that we have not paid enough attention to. If we really want to create a positive sustainable future we need to create a New Story to go along with it.

I’m not suggesting a new green pr campaign of eco-propaganda or any of the conventional external ways we think about story. I’m talking about story that lives at such a deep level that we rarely acknowledge its existence. It’s a story that we often call, for lack of a better name, our culture. It informs our fears and our dreams, tells us what we value, and most importantly shows us how to put those values into practice.

The problem right now is that we are telling the wrong stories about  sustainability. We focus on  impending doom and disaster. We  believe that we can scare humanity into going green.

Our sustainable future does not have to be so bleak. It can be a world filled with abundance, where sustainability is a core value. This is not some vision of a far-fetched green utopia.  It is grounded in what is possible.

This new story will keep the best of the past, recognize the realities of today, and provide us a blueprint for building a better tomorrow.  In this world sustainability will be accessible to everyone, not just a privileged few who can afford to pay a green premium.

For the past century we have defined abundance in terms of consumption.  We have been persuaded that prosperity was directly linked to having more things. We now know that this mindset has caused very real damage to our planet.

What we are learning is that it hasn’t been doing much for us either. A whole slew of recent  studies suggest that the link between material wealth and well-being is much more tenuous than we believed. In fact, many of those studies find that after a certain level the relationship is actually negative. The more stuff we have the less happy we are. It turns out that if everyone in the world had as much stuff as the average American we would have 6 billion very unhappy people living on one very unhealthy  planet.

Sustainable Abundance does not reject materialism. It recognizes the real value and true cost of objects. Let’s be honest, to live in this world we will have to give up our Hummers and McMansions. In their place we will design objects that have both beauty and utility, are built to last and easily repurposed when their usefulness has ended.

Some would argue that we cannot afford a world of Sustainable Abundance.  They see consumption as the only path to economic growth. That view is locked in an old story where economics is a zero-sum game. If I win you must lose.

An abundance economy is based on monetizing those things that are not limited — knowledge, creativity, innovation, and altruism. It is up to us to decide the relative value of things vs. ideas vs. social participation.  There has been much talk about a new triple line balance sheet for business. Why not the same for individuals and families and communities?  Why shouldn’t happiness have a value? As we redefine success to include being a part of the community, finding time to laugh, love and live fully, we will find new ways to extend the good life to many more people. Isn’t  that the real purpose of any economy?

This World of Sustainable Abundance is within our reach. Many people are already working to help create it. These individuals are already living our new story. Most of them can’t articulate it, many don’t even realize it, but they are the heroes of this positive future.

It is time for the rest of us to step up and join them in creating this story. We must share with others our vision for a world of Sustainable Abundance. We must begin to show that we really do value equity, individual fulfillment, and protecting our planet. By our words and actions we can inspire humanity to embrace this new story.

Speaking of Story, let’s check back in on Pappa’ birthday celebration.

Looks like the kids did a great job of setting that table. Wow that is some spread. The table is covered with homegrown and locally sourced foods, handmade breads and homemade pies.

The family band, a group of cousins, aunt and uncles who share a love for playing music, are warming up. In just a few minutes they’ll be playing Happy Birthday.

Pappa’s sitting at the head of the table, eyes slightly closed, tapping his foot along to the music. He has a big smile on his face and I know what he’s thinking. He’s proud of his family. They’ve created a world that really is much better than the good old days. He’s just glad he’s here  to share it with them.

I hope we all get to share in that world too.

In the introduction to his latest book, It’s your Future…Make it a Good One, my friend and fellow futurist, Verne Wheelwright offers one of the most succinct explanations of the difference between prediction and foresight. It’s so good that I thought it would be useful to share here.

 In the 1950s and 1960s, think tanks and academics developed theories about anticipating the future. What was it that the think tanks found that the wizards and fortune tellers of earlier centuries had not? The answer seems so simple. The fortune tellers had focused on the future, assuming there was only one fixed, or preordained future.

The twentieth-century thinkers changed that main assumption. They were convinced that the future is not predetermined. That realization altered everything about the way we see the future.

Now, it became obvious that if the future is not fixed or predetermined, then more than one future must be available. Finally, they realized that it is possible to change the future through the actions we take in the present. This was a whole new way to look at the future!

While there have been some great examples of organizations that have understood and embraced this distinction, in general I am afraid that most of us still try to predict the future. Certainly the fact that the recent worldwide economic meltdown came as such a surprise is evidence of our continued tunnel vision about tomorrow. 

So how can we use this distinction to improve our efforts to create better tomorrows? The first and most important realization is to understand that these futures are filled with possibilities. Some will help us reach our goals, others will present real obstacles to those goals. Some can be anticipated, others will blindside us no matter who well prepared we might think ourselves.

The second realization is that a futures filled with possibilities does not negate the need for a vision for the future. In fact, it makes this vision even more important if we are to avoid being lost in the many streams and currents that will create tomorrow. All efforts to create change have to begin with a compelling vision of the tomorrow we hope to create. This first part comes naturally for most change organizations. A vision of a different future is what motivates the drive to change.

The much more difficult part of creating the future comes in maintaining, growing and evolving that vision. Once we know where we want to be, it is possible to imagine those possibilities that might help us get there and those that might become obstacles.  The tricky part comes in becoming aware of the early indicators as to which of these different possibilities might come to fruition. Even more important is learning how to identify and leverage those opportunities when they are still just possibilities.   

There are lots of tools and techniques for accomplishing this active foresight, but the most important one is the understanding that, no matter how beautiful your vision for tomorrow is, it must be flexible and open to change.

Oh, how we used to love the future. We dreamed of flying cars, back yard nuclear reactors and even colonies in space.  It was all going to be just so wonderful, we could hardly wait for tomorrow to get here.

So what happened? Why did we fall out of love with the opportunities that were just over the horizon? When did the future go from being a great big beautiful tomorrow to a looming nightmare of cataclysmic proportions?

To be honest, the end of the love affair had a lot to do with reality. Tomorrow got here and it turned out not to be quite as beautiful as we had imagined. Sure, the last century saw some incredible advances in technology; Advances that profoundly improved life for the vast majority of the world. There was a lot of unexpected baggage that showed up along with those improvements. By now, we know all the stories. Energy for everyone meant pollution everywhere. An explosion of cheap consumer goods led to landfills spreading across the countryside. And the list of unexpected byproducts of that optimistic future goes on and on.

It seems that the lesson we have taken from our excesses is that we must fear the future. We have come to accept as absolute truth that the worse possible scenarios are the most likely to occur. I’m pretty sure that’s neither an accurate, nor more importantly, useful lesson.

The great big beautiful tomorrow of the 20^th century failed because of tunnel vision. Optimistic futurism was focused almost completely on the promise of new big technology.  In hindsight it’s easy enough to see that we were one dimensional in our visions of better tomorrows.  But, to be fair, at the turn of the last century technology was producing some amazing revolutions. Imagine just how the widespread introduction of electricity, for example, must have felt at the time. As the world literally moved out of the dark ages, in just a few years, how could we have not been enraptured by the power of technology?

Now, we seem to have gone to the other extreme. Any optimistic vision of the future, whether technology fueled or not, is often dismissed as naïve or worse. We assume that anyone who promotes these positive visions must have some hidden agenda they are trying to sell us. But our postmodern cynicism is robbing us of the key element of those earlier visions – the power of optimism.

Quite simply, better tomorrows are never created out of fear. Creating change is difficult, even when we are guided by the most positive vision. Confronted with a choice of selecting the lesser evil, most people simply give up and wait for the Armageddon to arrive.  The only hope we have of making substantive changes is when we believe the end result will make the world better off than it is today. Positive visions are necessary to inspire people to do the hard work to build better tomorrows.

How do we create positive visions of the future without being intellectually naive? We must be able to combine our optimistic outlook with a systems view of the world. If we can avoid tunnel vision then we can create compelling, and realistic, visions that have the possibility of creating positive change. 

Creating such balanced optimistic visions is difficult and time consuming.  But it is the essential first step if you’re going to have any chance of building better tomorrows.  And that first step begins with understanding the limitations of our own worldview. Start today by taking a look at the stories that already define your vision of tomorrow. Are they nightmares or dreams of a better world?

Ask any self respecting social change agent about their issue and they will quickly drown you in data. They can reel off facts on how pervasive the problem is today, how fast it is growing, what segments of the population are at greatest risk, and most importantly, the exact date the problem will become an irreversible catastrophe. Usually this presentation ends with an impassioned plea that goes something like; “Problem X is HUGE and getting worse every minute, I just don’t understand why people are ignoring this. When are they going to realize that they have to (select one) eat less, eat local, eat organic, conserve energy, use alternative energy, save more, spend more, get screened, recycle, stop smoking, ……..Etc. Why don’t people get it?” And they are truly amazed that the rest of us are not moved to immediate action.

You almost feel sorry for them. You think that all this data would give them power. And in fact all the data we have at our fingertips these days is powerful. It helps us understand what can be done to make better tomorrows. But data does not create change. That requires a completely different kind of knowledge.

You have to start where your intended audience is, not where you want them to be. Instead of spending all your research effort on dissecting “the problem” spend a healthy chunk of it meeting your audience where they live.  Approach them as an anthropologist might approach a foreign culture. Once there, you have to learn, really learn, about all the factors that influence their everyday decision making.

Try this exercise some time and it doesn’t take very long to realize that your really HUGE problem is actually pretty minor in the face of day to day survival. The frighteningly high odds of falling victim to your problem really don’t mean much when the potential victim has a 100% chance of having to negotiate all the demands of modern life –family, job, putting food on the table, social status, education, crying babies, each and every day. 

In short, life is full of challenges already. And it seems that everywhere you turn there is some harbinger of doom ready to demand that you put all those other problems aside right now and focus on the only one that really matters. Is it such a surprise that most people tune out, turn on the tube and have a strong drink? The last thing most people have the capacity for is to take on another serious change effort.

Does this mean that all your good efforts are wasted? That the best you can ever hope for is change in the single digits of the population? That depends on what risks you’re willing to take. If you can’t escape from the literal-sclerosis that afflicts most social change agents then you likely will remain frustrated. On the other hand, if you can step outside the world of data and into the world of story you will be amazed by the power of your efforts.

Your first task as a story teller is to really get to know your audience. That means at a personal, emotional level not just as statistics and data points. This really is hard work. It can’t be done in a conference room brainstorm or sitting at a computer. It requires getting out there and getting dirty, getting close, walking a few miles in their shoes. Try it and you’ll be amazed by what you learn, even if you’ve always considered yourself an compassionate grassroots organization.

Once you’ve completed that task then you need to ask yourself one question. “What does this audience need most?” Not as relates to just your issue but in the very broadest terms. When you can answer that question you’re ready to start the work of creating your story of a better tomorrow.

More about that next time.

The topic of using analytics to predict future events has been generating a lot of buzz lately.  Much of the current excitement was caused by Google’s announcement that it was buying start-up Recorded Future, whose Temporal Analytics Engine will make it possible for you to “visualize the future.”   It seems that Google not only will know every thing about you today, but will even be able to tell what you’ll be doing tomorrow.

Of course, efforts to predict the future are not new.  The ancient Geeks had their oracles, and medieval kings employed astronomers to search the heavens for foresight into the tides of fortune. There is even evidence that humans were practicing the art of prediction while still living in caves.

It is only in the last half century that we have elevated prediction into a “science.”  Modern efforts rely upon the power of computers to collect massive amounts of data and then employ sophisticated programs to crunch these numbers. The resulting equations are claimed to offer an almost magical window into the future. With such tools at their disposal, today’s soothsayers have wrapped themselves in a claim of legitimacy that is hard to breach.

All of this concerns me on two fronts. First, and most obvious, is the fact that for all its “science” prediction still has a lousy track record. Being able to analyze massive amounts of data does make it possible to create a fairly accurate picture of those things known to move in a consistent pattern. But, the really big issues, the ones most likely to be influenced by unexpected events, or irrational acts of individuals or groups, are rarely consistent. For those events, reliance on prediction can mean more than just missed opportunities; it can mean being blinded to huge disasters.

THE MORE SERIOUS PROBLEM WITH PREDICTION IS THAT IT SEPARATES US FROM OUR FUTURE. Whether we rely on sophisticated data analysis or reading tea leaves, prediction carries with it a promise of inevitability. This is what the future will be because the data tells us so. What it ignores is that futures do not just happen. They are the result of a vast network of action and choices.

When we predict we subconsciously remove ourselves from that process.  The result can be psychologically numbing. When we give up our free will to create the future we lose the power to build better tomorrows. Even if our predictions are for a world filled with promise, it is not our tomorrow, but THE tomorrow.  Imposed, not created. If we are to have any chance for better futures, we have to put all our efforts into the process of understanding options, uncovering challenges, and working to create the outcomes we value.

Certainly, our ability to mine and analyze massive quantities of data can be a useful tool for discovering potential trends and possible patterns.  Seeing these possibilities can help us anticipate opportunities and obstacles. When we find them, we need to focus our efforts on creative ways to foster the opportunities and avoid the obstacles. We also need to look for ways that we can connect many different trends and possibilities into holistic networks for building our tomorrows.

Most importantly, we must remember that these tools do not possess any magical power to shape what will happen. No matter how sophisticated our analytical tools become, it is our passion for creating better tomorrows, and our hard work to create change, that will make the future ours.

A recent study from the University of Maryland provides more evidence that the tools of social media; texting, tweeting, instant messaging, and online posting, are taking over the lives of a generation. I’m particularly intrigued by this discussion for a couple of reasons. First, I do believe that digital technology is creating fundamental shifts in culture. As a futurist, I’m interested in tracking those changes and, most importantly, understanding how they might be used to help us create better futures.

The second reason is more personal. I live with one of those social media addicts. I have been observing, and dealing with, the disruptions this phenomenon causes for the past year. My 14-yr old daughter’s relationship with social media borders on obsessive. In some ways this is not surprising. It’s a classic example of what happens when a technology comes along that perfectly enables an underlying need. 14-yr old girls are all about social relationships; texting did not create anything new in that sense. A colleague pointed out that hours spent talking on the telephone was used by earlier generations to fulfill the need to constantly reconstruct social narratives. What seems to make these new technologies fundamentally different is the way they are being used virtually 24-7.  The question this raises is what kind of futures might we expect to see as this generation of social media addicts matures.

I’ve heard and read many of the arguments on both sides of the issue. Those who see promise in the practice argue that this younger generation is actually rewiring their brains to be superior multi-taskers. While I am hopeful that will prove to be true, I can tell you that thus far it just ain’t so. My daughter, like most of her peers, assumes they can multi-task, but constant texting and old-fashioned homework do not mix well.

If it turns out that this promised multi-tasking skill is illusionary then the critics of these technologies might be right to warn us of dire results. Some even suggest that we are creating a society that will be even more attention deficit, with the most effected individuals unable to complete anything other than the simplest tasks. That scenario certainly suggests a bleak outlook for success in our knowledge economy.

Of course, all that assumes we continue to define tasks and measure success in the same way that we do today.

For a different experience of how knowledge might be transformed to suit the skills of this new digital generation I would suggest taking a look at the “book” Imagologies by Mark Taylor and Esa Saarien. In digital terms it was written during the days of pre-history (early 1990s). It draws its inspiration from an experience the two had teaching a teleseminar connecting their university classes in Helsinski and at Williams College in the USA (no small feat at the time). What they construct out of that experience is an interesting, if often obtuse, meditation on what they call the mediatrix.  One of their most interesting assertions is that in the future “personal knowledge will be inches deep and miles wide.”

This certainly feels like an apt description of the world we are creating with these digital tools. Whether it is a good or bad future has a lot to do with your point of view. A traditional western scientific mind would clamor that this is the end of centuries of great knowledge and accomplishment produced by the deep dive of specialization. One might also be tempted to suggest that that this is a perfect example of what the Buddhists call “monkey mind”– constant and destructive distraction.

On the other hand, when I watch my daughter simultaneously text, instant message, and post to Facebook, I am impressed by how hard she is working.  I can’t imagine being able to manage a dozen or more conversations at once. While many, if not all, are banal in content, it is clear that there is a structure and order to the process. There are special languages to learn and rules of etiquette that must be followed.  Maybe it’s just the naïve hope of a fretful father, but I can’t help but think that there is some skill being acquired here, even if it is not in sync with an education system based on old technology. What will be interesting to see is if this younger generation can translate these skills into useful habits within today’s structures or if they will have the power to truly transform the ways we create useful knowledge.

The futures we encounter will contain many threads and, consequently, many paths to success. For some, the strength to swear off digital distractions could prove to be a huge advantage in achieving success. Undoubtedly some of these will create prodigious works of art, knowledge and commerce. For others, life might be a constant battle against their debilitating digital addictions as they fail to sync up their skills to society’s measures of success. Of course, that story carries all sorts of interesting threads as we invent new way to rehabilitate these digital addicts.

But, at least some members of this generation will figure out how to use these tools to create new opportunities and new measures of success. And if these always on, social media multi-taskers, can figure out how to capitalize on the skills they are developing as 14-year olds, I’m betting they will crate some of the most interesting futures for all of us.