Why Thinking About Tomorrow Still Matters Today
Four years on, Future Rising seems more relevant than ever in a world on the cusp of transformative change
A couple of things happened this past week that got me thinking about my book Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow. The first was this week’s episode of the Modem Futura podcast, where we explore the growing importance of nurturing future-oriented thinking from an early age with Professor Ruth Wiley. The second was a fundraising email from the XPRIZE Foundation with the heading “You can be an architect of the future” — a phrase eerily similar to one I use in the book.
Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s rarely a good idea to talk about your own books. But breaking that rule for a moment, I was gratified to find that Future Rising has held up surprisingly well — despite being four years old. Re-reading the opening introduction and the later chapters, it feels more relevant than ever in the face of today’s social, political and technological upheavals.
Whether it’s the guide we need to nurture fresh ways of thinking about the future is, of course, for others to decide. And I must confess that, while I suggested that “humans are, in a very real sense, architects of the future” back in 2020, I’m still not entirely sure how useful this metaphor is.
And yet, there’s a growing hunger for new perspectives on how we collectively and individually approach the future. And my sense is that Future Rising still addresses this need in ways that that few other books do.
If you’d like to know more, this interview with Steve Goldstein on NPR/KJZZ’s The Show offers a great introduction. You can also download the book’s introduction here.
But honestly, the best way is to pick up a copy and dive in!