Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

One task which many of us either choose or have thrust upon us is predicting the future. We usually perform this task poorly. An aid to declaring “the future will be thus” is reframing with a few introductory words.

The future will be awful.

There is no way out of this. We are doomed.

We will run out of oil reserves before 1995.

I have heard these and countless other predictions of the future. The third quote came from a fellow grad student in 1985. He had worked several summers for oil companies and had seen inside information on oil reserves. He had inside information; he knew we would run out of oil. He was buying bicycles and parts now while they were cheap because once 1995 came around bicycles would replace cars and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

As a systems engineer and sometime project manager, I predict the future daily. I tell people that our system under construction will be:

• Three weeks late
• On time
• A day early

And so on and on, all variations of

The future will be thus.

I wish people would insert a phrase in front of the future will be thus. Change it to

Unless something happens, and something often happens, the future will be thus.

I know this has more words, takes longer to say, longer to type, and sounds like your are “hedging your bets” and every other bad indecisive quality we can imagine, but it is much more accurate.

My fellow grad student’s prediction from 1985 would have been

Unless we find more oil reserves, and people have been finding more oil reserves for a hundred years now, we will run out of oil reserves before 1995.

Many of today’s predictions of gloom can be reframed.

Unless we have a breakthrough in battery technology, and breakthroughs happen, hybrid cars will not be practical.

Unless we make gasoline engines more efficient, and efficiency improvements often occur, we will all have to drive hybrids.

Unless we have some true leaders in Washington, and such leaders come around every generation or so, we will never get out of our financial mess.

The last reframe above is the least likely, and unless we beat all the odds, and we tend to beat all the odds now and then, we may be in trouble.