I think of futurists as people who have a particular attitude about the future. They're advocates for a certain kind of outcome. As a forecaster I am something very different. I am a professional bystander. I have opinions about the future, of course. But my whole posture is to be detached and to identify what I think will happen and not allow my judgments of what should happen to get involved.

Paul Saffo

Categorized in : Thinking Attitude Bystanders

Before the iPhone, cyberspace was something you went to your desk to visit. Now cyberspace is something you carry in your pocket.

cyberspace iphone pockets

The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present

goal meaningful needs

It turns out it takes 30 years for a new idea to seep into the culture. Technology does not drive change. It is our collective response to the options and opportunities presented by technology that drives change.

technology opportunity years

My driving style is alert. As a forecaster, I can't help but think about who else is on the road and how little attention they are paying to their driving.

style attention thinking

"Point of view" is that quintessentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum... In a world of hyperabundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources...

information age views

Each time you toss out a 'singing' greeting card, you are disposing of more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950.

singing cards world

Never mistake a clear view for a short distance. by Paul Saffo

Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.

distance views mistake

We invent our technologies and then we turn around and use our technologies to reinvent ourselves as individuals, communities and cultures.

technology community culture

I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, "There are two kinds of information in this world: that what you know and that what you know where to get." The tools help the latter, and that's what keeps us from going nuts. The sense of overload comes from the gap between that sudden jump in volume (of information) and the tools we have to make sense of it.

nuts two thinking

Never mistake a clearer view for a short distance just because the technology looks like it's about to arrive in the very near future. Chances are there will be some surprises and in the long run even the most expected of futures tends to arrive late and in completely unexpected ways.

distance mistake running

I think it is just a matter of time before we have literal ghosts in the machine so you can create an alter ego of yourself that learns from your social experiences and extends a life even if you're no longer in the game or you are no longer alive.

ego games thinking

I worry about a society that can remember everything. by Paul Saffo

I worry about a society that can remember everything.

remembers-everything worry remember

Microsoft is a big intellectual roach motel. All the big minds go... by Paul Saffo

Microsoft is a big intellectual roach motel. All the big minds go in, and they don't come out.

roaches intellectual mind

The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.

design tools player

I would say digital technology probably doesn't have much impact on us so far. We've seen photographs of people from when they are alive. We see home movies. We have videotapes now and e-mails. When it's going to get interesting is in massively multiplayer online games where you have avatars (online personas). You could actually create an avatar that's semi-autonomous. It could do things for you while you get off the game to run the rest of your life.

technology home running

Sometimes I think we're on this world for three reasons: to be useful, to tell each other stories and to collect stuff. It's the only explanation for eBay. We love to collect stuff, and at least if we're collecting stuff in cyberspace we're not deforesting the Sierra Nevada.

ebay cyberspace thinking

Hipness is the only asset that matters. by Paul Saffo

Hipness is the only asset that matters.

assets matter

We tend to use a new technology to do an old task more efficientl... by Paul Saffo

We tend to use a new technology to do an old task more efficiently. We pave the cow paths.

entrepreneur technology tasks

The curse of cyberspace is that everything we want to preserve will get lost and everything we want to lose will be preserved.

cyberspace want lost

The Web is a compelling new medium being put to all kinds of uses, by everyone from banks to Cub Scouts to flying saucer cults. That said, it can also be a powerful folly amplifier.

flying powerful use