The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream

Trends can be profitably predicted, according to this windy treatise on business futurism. Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute consultancy, insists that prognosticating is a “learnable skill” and lays out a labyrinthine, acronym-heavy conceptual framework for pondering the future, featuring three rules, six instructions, 10 “sources of change,” a six-part “CIPHER model,”and a six-part “F.U.T.U.R.E test” to “pressure-test any strategy created to address a technology trend.” It all amounts to a tangle of vague truisms—rule one says, “The future is not predetermined, but rather woven together from numerous threads that are themselves being woven in the present”—that leave the impression that futurology is still a dark art navigable only by hiring experts such as the author. Webb’s own predictions are sometimes bizarre—she asserts that drones will make America dependent on imported food and that “pods” hooked to maglev trains will replace airplanes—but when she’s predicting trends in digital technology, which is most of the time, the future sounds both grandiose and boring. (Google, she reports, is “creating a ubiquitous exo-brain... that could anticipate my every need” and will eventually become “some kind of digital life assistant.”) Webb’s futurism is not compelling, but her insightful retrospectives on why some innovations succeeded and others failed make for an engaging study of technical trends of the past. [em](Dec.) [/em]