If humans could see the future, this post would probably have not existed. Because there’s nothing quite like failing the test of time. All the things you believed and said look more or less absurd in retrospect. Unless your job is predicting the future for a living.
Mysterious as it sounds, seeing what comes next is complex, critical, and quite a different job than the myths suggest. Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster in Silicon Valley, wrote in a piece for Harvard Business Review that “prediction is concerned with future certainty.” And that alone sounds quite paradoxical.
Paul explains further: “forecasting looks at how hidden currents in the present signal possible changes in direction for companies, societies, or the world at large.” Thus the goal of forecasting is to “identify the full range of possibilities.”
Plus, “unlike a prediction, a forecast must have a logic to it,” says Paul. That means that the forecaster must always be able to articulate, explain, and defend this logic. “That’s what lifts forecasting out of the dark realm of superstition,” argues Paul. In the end, forecasting is “nothing more (nor less) than the systematic and disciplined application of common sense.” And that common sense is something we all have.
