Question 151 of 365: How do we predict the future?

Everyone is trying to devine the next big thing. Reading the tea leaves on Twitter or letting the alerts drift in to the inbox of your choice. We are all looking to get in on the ground floor of the next version of the web (3.0, 3d, etc.). We are looking for what could be, in every cute logo or interesting color scheme.

I keep thinking that I will know it when I see it, too. I look back on what was the next big thing, and I knew it then, right? I saw Google way before they were Google. I was searching with them back in high school. I should have just invested in them when they went public. I didn’t, though, and so many other people are in the same boat. And that is why we keep looking for the next Google.

That’s not the only reason, though. We keep looking because we want to know the future. We are looking for reasons enough to invest our time or effort, if not our money. But we keep looking in the same places. We are looking toward app stores and startups with vowels missing.

Predicting the future requires a little bit of crazy. It isn’t going to be the same companies, although they will be major players. It will be someone that sees something completely different from the same set of rules and situations.

While I know this isn’t going to be it exactly, here is something that the future might be:

There are a special glasses for making things appear to be in 3d, but I believe that there are new glasses coming. I believe that there are glasses that block out every other frame of a movie. The reason they do this is because there are two movies playing, interlaced so that the glasses will display only one and block out the other. The sound will match for the one you are watching. You will be able to sit in the same theatre or in front of the same screen and watch two separate films.

This is crazy talk. It doesn’t exist, nor will it. There are two many unanswered questions. There are too many things that don’t make sense about something like this, but this is the future. The future of ridiculous technology that seemingly is more intrusive and convenient at the same time. These glasses are impractical. They are the unfortunate offspring of wanting to be completely immersed by the media you are consuming and wanting to be with others who are interested in being with you but not in consuming the same media that you are.

The future is in sharing the same space but not the same experience. The future is in finding connections without having to know all of the same people or the same facts. Differentiation is the future, whether that is with glasses or with a single online profile that knows more than it lets on.

The next Google is going to be the first company to let people be who they are with one another. They will present technologies to get people together. People have been trying this for years, but it is the one thing that is still severely lacking. The physical devices have presented screens to separate our learning and understanding. The ones that are coming are ones that bring it all together.

The ones that have already had their shot at this rather elusive prize probably won’t get it quite right. Google, Apple and Microsoft pay lip service to the future, but they really are trying to shore up the markets that have made them profitable. They won’t see someone coming up on the outside with a crazy gadget such as those glasses. They will see it as something that can’t possibly catch on, and then once it does, they will try and copy it or buy them out. But it won’t work this time. This time, the future will be too interested in creating itself anew. And it will.

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Question 65 of 365: How do we get there from here?

As much as I try to get excited about of the journey, there is still a really big part of me that just wants to arrive. The point A to B stuff gets tiresome, and I just want to do be done with it. I wan’t to claim victory and not have to see everything through just to prove my point.

In essense, I would like to have a map already laid out and know what the mile markers are going to say. If StreetView can put together a viewpoint of the inside of stores, surely I can see my way to the end of the year or the coming collisions within my life, right?

In Maine they have a saying, “You can’t get there from here.” And I believe that this holds true for a lot of what I am trying to do in starting a new business or in starting a new school. The progression doesn’t seem logical. It seems as though we will have to jump over vast lakes that stand in our way. And if that is the case, what will those jumps be?

I would like to proclaim now that my ideas will be profitable within a year. I would like to proclaim now that education will be better because we have rethought it in this time and space. I would like to proclaim that the networks that I live in will be forever changed because I have taken part. These proclamations are not made out of hubris, but rather, out of passion for making them happen.

And yet, what jumps will let these proclomations come true?

I believe that the first jump will be because of a single person. I believe that a single person that I do not yet know will see what we are trying to do and decide that he or she wants to invest their time and money into breathing them to life. I believe that this person will have a unique perspective that I have never considered. He or she will be able to better see my goals than me and will be better able to articulate them to a wide audience. This person will become my muse for a while. He or she will make me want to work nonstopped to figure things out and prove my worth. This person will not wait for me, but will encourage me to keep up. And I will.

The second jump will be because of a technology that doesn’t yet exist. It will help me listen better to everything going on around me and let me iterate upon my ideas more efficiently becuase of it. This technology will focus my energy on creating something new rather than monitoring what I have already created. It will single-handedly change my discourse to be about making connections and sustaining them. It will change me too.

The third jump I will make to get from here to there will be because of a loss I will undergo that I cannot yet see. I will have to give up a very large part of my ideas or of myself in order to prove that I can go on. I will lose so completely that it will be hard for me to pick up the pieces, and yet I will. I will continue to pursue what I have always pursued: an authentic way to work and learn. And that is what will still be there. The loss will haunt me, but it will solidify my resolve to get things done and I will work even harder to make sure that what I have lost will not have been sacrificed in vain.

While these predictions are somewhat ominous, I think that they are completely true. I beleive that the only way that we can make true strides toward our vision of the way things should be is through loss, disruptive technologies, and supportive mentorship (not an exhaustive list, however). I shall have all three.