prolific experimentation
We often rely upon so-called futurists to dazzle guide us with their vision of what the future holds. They are often correct, but many times not, and all of us that are not futurists just sit back and soak in their predictions as quasi entertainment / information.
We envy the ability futurists have to spot trends, understand how they will shape the future and convince us of their predictions. Maybe I’m the only one, but their job sounds fun: speculate about the future, people believe you on faith, and there is minimal accountability - sounds great. In a way, they are like magicians, but that’s a whole different topic for a different day.
The interesting thing is that we can all be futurists by embracing prolific experimentation. I read the following quotes this morning, which got me thinking about this topic:
Seth’s blog: “When you read big ideas online, do you nod your head knowingly, do you argue in favor of the status quo or do you actually do something?”
Clay Shirkey: “Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.”
Instead of waiting for a futurist to tell us the future, we can instead shape it by creating experiments, a great number of experiments. The goal isn’t to have each experiment succeed, it’s to have a few experiments succeed. In baseball, getting on-base 30-40% of the time is considered successful, which means players fail most of the time. Perhaps a similar model for success should be considered in predicting creating the future.
