Perhaps the biggest story this quarter was the death of Alvin Toffler. As expected, it brought forth a “demise of futurists” story. This time from the New York Times: where are the futurists? and a follow-on from Slate on “the muddled legacy of Alvin Toffler.” Toffler’s prominence triggers a quick reflection on where foresight stands that inevitably ignores the lower-profile work that continues to go on, and emphasizes a perceived lack of high-profile items, thus the demise story. We’ve seen this pattern over the years. On the one hand, there seem to be far fewer of these negative stories than there used to be – we have a collection of real doozies from the past. On the other hand, as a field we have not filled the media void with positive stories about the work that is going on. I suspect we have an opportunity here. And there are some positive stories appearing. For instance, the Times had a nice story featuring the work of Houston Foresight alum Jerry Paffendorf Mapping Detroit, Inch by Inch.
To our credit, we are working on the foresight story. It didn’t “pop” in the media, but the APF published a competency model that was featured on the Department of Labor’s site regarding “competency models in action.” It’s solid stuff, but not a very sexy media story. It is a piece of the story, as we slowly move toward some consensus on who we are and what we do. More work in that regard is happening. In the meantime, though the void exists, and most of what is covered are keynotes on futures-related topics.
The Q3 FIM stats include 137 articles focused on “futurists,” which is down from Q2 – likely that the summer is a bit slower. Our analysis suggested 41 of these were “fresh” mentions (some were repeated on multiple days) of relevance to foresight and professional futurists. Our media savvy friend Jack Uldrich came in at 14 mentions this quarter, while normally prominent Ray Kurzweil of Google came in with just two mentions this quarter. tied Uldrich this quarter with nine mentions as his public speeches continue to draw the attention of media outlets. So, 41 unique mentions in 90 days is one unique mention every three days. As we continue to see — the public is [still] not being overwhelmed by professional futurists!
