the future is evenly distributed, it's just not here
I've recently seen a couple of slightly disappointing futurologists quoting that famous William Gibson line. (And I'm the first to admit, I've done it too.) But it made me realise that it needs flipping around now. The future is everywhere, it's just that if someone's quoting this line, it's probably not where you are.
saw this somewhere: the content is here, it's just unevenly distributed.
Posted by: speedo p | February 17, 2008 at 07:50 PM
reminds me of the utah phillips / ani difranco CD
"the past didn't go anywhere"
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | February 18, 2008 at 02:40 AM
Great inspiration for my first blog post...
Digital is here, it's just not evenly distributed.
Posted by: Tom Sneddon | February 18, 2008 at 01:22 PM
Easy lines are tempting, and as you say, you've reached for it too. The hard part is getting people to focus on what's emerging now that should be noticed, logged, placed into larger emerging patterns. As Sterling said after LIFT, that line has been restated in many different ways in the past 10 years but the point remains valid. My point, however tiresomely made, was that discussing the distant future is not a very useful practice when making critical decisions about the near future is much more important and thus the need to be well informed and aware of the non-obvious is also critical.
But I like the term "futurologist" as an epithet. Only in Britain. Now, where's my Nathan Barley DVD...
Posted by: Scott Smith | February 18, 2008 at 07:34 PM
You're right Scott, and I apologise for my flippancy. I was too pleased with my smart-arse line to think about the merits of your argument. And your points are more considered and worth attention than mine. Sorry.
Posted by: russell | February 19, 2008 at 12:52 AM
No, its worth being aware of how the listener takes it. And you're right, using a cheap line can undercut the impact of what's intended. It's a fair point.
And you are also right, in many cases the future is clearly not where the powerpoint slide is at that moment (you may be onto an interesting theorem - that PowerPoint is in fact the opposing force to progress - call Virginia Postrel!).
The cool thing about LIFT is that the opposite was true: a lot of the future was in that room at the time. I'm sorry we didn't get to meet and compare impressions.
Posted by: Scott Smith | February 19, 2008 at 07:29 PM
Russell,
Your post prompted us to think about how and why we use that Gibson quote in our work...
http://blog.hchlv.com/2008/02/20/the-future-is-already-here/
Posted by: Andrew Curry | February 20, 2008 at 07:16 PM