The late Alvin Toffler, in the first minute of this clip, explains the role of a futurist.
Written by Steve Emig, The White Bear
"A futurist devotes more time to thinking about the long term future, not just what's going to happen next... And we write books, and we go around the world talking to people who are, in fact, making the future...(It's) an attempt to find out who are the people that are changing, or will be changing, our lives, in the years and decades ahead."
-Alvin Toffler
How I became an amateur futurist
As a dorky kid , I spent a lot of time daydreaming about the future, as many kids do. My family was more dysfunctional than most, and our house was always a place of incredible psychological tension. It was miserable. To escape the daily drama and misery of life in our house, I would often play and pretend to be somebody successful in the future. Along with reading and wandering around the woods, "the future" was a form of escape for me, like many other kids. But I was a really voracious reader of non-fiction, which included my dad's Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines, which was not really what "normal" kids did. I began to focus on the future more than most kids, thinking that the pain and fear I dealt with as a kid must be survived, and that maybe someday, many years in the future, I would do something amazing, that would make the pain of childhood worthwhile. That's not the most sophisticated thinking, but it gave me a reason to cope with the day to day drama. So I began to just spend more time thinking about the future than most other kids, as my family moved around rural and small town Ohio.
By the time I started my sophomore year of high school, my family had moved west to Boise, Idaho. As a high school kid in the early 1980's, I got seriously into the weird sport of BMX racing, and then the brand new sport of BMX freestyle, or trick riding. Everyone in my life, family and friends, thought I was completely wasting my time learning tricks on a "little kid's bike." But BMX gave me a place to vent my teenage frustration at life, blow off my anger, and it kept me out of a lot of trouble, by giving me something to focus on. In addition, after sucking at every sport my whole childhood (except dodgeball), I finally stuck with a sport long enough to get pretty good at it. Much to everyone's surprise, not only did I wind up competing in national competitions, BMX freestyle turned into a career for me for several years.
Meanwhile, in school, Boise High students had to take one year of economics. I found that class really interesting, and turned out to be naturally good at it. I don't think that was so much academic, as it was something close to the way I thought about the world already, and fueled by much of the non-fiction I had read as a kid. Officially, "economics" is "the study of scarce resources." In reality, economics is about the world of money and finance, and how business and financial trends interact. It's about predicting the future of the financial world, something I was already interested in. I found the economics class in high school fascinating. I'm weird like that.
In the spring of 1984, when I graduated from Boise High School, I didn't have the money to go to college. I didn't really have a strong direction I wanted to go in, either, except to focus on BMX freestyle. My high school friends and I were all outdoorsy oriented types, and collectively talked about becoming wildlife biologists. But that meant needing the money to head north to the University of Idaho, and the money just wasn't there, so I "took a year off." I did manage to save up $1,000 that summer, while working in a small amusement park, for $2.10 an hour. But my family ended up needing that money for a family emergency. As we headed into the fall of 1984, I rode my bike as much as possible, and worked nights at a large Mexican restaurant. My freestyle teammate Jay Bickel and I did a shows with our trick team, the first BMX freestyle team in Idaho, and we rode in parades around the area.
In the spring of 1985, I still didn't have money for college, and my dad got laid off. He wound up finding a new job in San Jose, California. I worked my summer job at the Boise Fun Spot, managing the day to day operations of the small amusement park, and 12 employees. My pay was still low, $3.15 an hour, but it was great experience in management for an 18-19 year old. In late August, I packed up my ugly, brown, 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo to San Jose. I got a job at a local Pizza Hut, and continued riding my bike all day, and working nights. I started publishing a BMX freestyle zine, and soon met the NorCal freestylers, as I mentioned in the last chapter.
A year later, I took the job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, and became part of the little BMX/freestyle industry. At 20 years old, without ever taking a college course, I was suddenly working at national magazines, and responsible for proofreading both magazines. I quickly began to learn how media works, and the influence advertisers had over the traditional media of the pre-internet world. The pro riders who had been my heroes a year or two before, became friends and acquaintances.
At the time, the BMX freestyle world was focused in a few dozen small scenes, small groups where a couple of guys had seen a trick show, got interested in freestyle, and then started a trick team in their area. Almost everyone had their own trick team, and promoting our weird, new little sport was important to us. As BMX freestyle grew exponentially over the next 3 or 4 years, I not only saw, but was in the middle of, a new movement. BMX freestyle was an idea growing and spreading through society. I saw how small groups, which I now call Creative Scenes, are born, grow, attract others, and spread a new idea. At the time, I didn't realize what I was seeing, except that I began to sense that there was something important to these scenes. I saw how some scenes were better than others, and the differences between them. The Golden Gate Park scene was the most cohesive, the tightest group, and others were a bit more informal. But all were innovative, creative, and influenced new people, and attracted new riders into our sport, as BMX freestyle sparked into the national scene in its first wave of popularity. I also noticed the same was true with skateboarding, the older sport of surfing, the tiny (then) sport of snowboarding, inline skating, and mountain biking. While us BMX guys were wrapped up in our own sport, we often rode with skateboarders. As the late 1980's rolled by, I began to realize all of these weird action sports had more in common than we wanted to admit. I began to wonder why all of these individual, session oriented sports, where competitions weren't the most important thing, were happening at the same time.
Then, at the bicycle industry trade show in January 1989, talk was in the air. Industry people were walking around, actually saying, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." Every company pulled its support from BMX racing and freestyle, and put money into the new mountain bike idea. Our industry collapsed as the world declared BMX was dead. But us hardcore riders kept riding. We got "real" jobs, if we didn't have them already, and scrimped and saved to get to contests. BMX went into recession in early 1989, a year before the national economy did. BMX freestyle went underground.
At the same time I was working in the BMX and skateboard industries in the late 1980's, the Southern California real estate market was soaring. Two different people I worked with bought a house one year, and made $100,000 on it in a single year. Everywhere in SoCal we were hearing stories of people making fortunes off of real estate. I was a young guy in my early 20's, not making much money, and every Saturday I'd eat breakfast while "Make Money in Real Estate" infomercials playing in front of me on TV. I thought that if I could learn about real estate, and make a bunch of money, I'd have more time to ride my bike. I bought one of the courses about real estate, and began to read books on the subject.
In the spring of 1984, when I graduated from Boise High School, I didn't have the money to go to college. I didn't really have a strong direction I wanted to go in, either, except to focus on BMX freestyle. My high school friends and I were all outdoorsy oriented types, and collectively talked about becoming wildlife biologists. But that meant needing the money to head north to the University of Idaho, and the money just wasn't there, so I "took a year off." I did manage to save up $1,000 that summer, while working in a small amusement park, for $2.10 an hour. But my family ended up needing that money for a family emergency. As we headed into the fall of 1984, I rode my bike as much as possible, and worked nights at a large Mexican restaurant. My freestyle teammate Jay Bickel and I did a shows with our trick team, the first BMX freestyle team in Idaho, and we rode in parades around the area.
In the spring of 1985, I still didn't have money for college, and my dad got laid off. He wound up finding a new job in San Jose, California. I worked my summer job at the Boise Fun Spot, managing the day to day operations of the small amusement park, and 12 employees. My pay was still low, $3.15 an hour, but it was great experience in management for an 18-19 year old. In late August, I packed up my ugly, brown, 1971 Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo to San Jose. I got a job at a local Pizza Hut, and continued riding my bike all day, and working nights. I started publishing a BMX freestyle zine, and soon met the NorCal freestylers, as I mentioned in the last chapter.
A year later, I took the job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, and became part of the little BMX/freestyle industry. At 20 years old, without ever taking a college course, I was suddenly working at national magazines, and responsible for proofreading both magazines. I quickly began to learn how media works, and the influence advertisers had over the traditional media of the pre-internet world. The pro riders who had been my heroes a year or two before, became friends and acquaintances.
At the time, the BMX freestyle world was focused in a few dozen small scenes, small groups where a couple of guys had seen a trick show, got interested in freestyle, and then started a trick team in their area. Almost everyone had their own trick team, and promoting our weird, new little sport was important to us. As BMX freestyle grew exponentially over the next 3 or 4 years, I not only saw, but was in the middle of, a new movement. BMX freestyle was an idea growing and spreading through society. I saw how small groups, which I now call Creative Scenes, are born, grow, attract others, and spread a new idea. At the time, I didn't realize what I was seeing, except that I began to sense that there was something important to these scenes. I saw how some scenes were better than others, and the differences between them. The Golden Gate Park scene was the most cohesive, the tightest group, and others were a bit more informal. But all were innovative, creative, and influenced new people, and attracted new riders into our sport, as BMX freestyle sparked into the national scene in its first wave of popularity. I also noticed the same was true with skateboarding, the older sport of surfing, the tiny (then) sport of snowboarding, inline skating, and mountain biking. While us BMX guys were wrapped up in our own sport, we often rode with skateboarders. As the late 1980's rolled by, I began to realize all of these weird action sports had more in common than we wanted to admit. I began to wonder why all of these individual, session oriented sports, where competitions weren't the most important thing, were happening at the same time.
Then, at the bicycle industry trade show in January 1989, talk was in the air. Industry people were walking around, actually saying, "BMX is dead, mountain bikes are the new thing." Every company pulled its support from BMX racing and freestyle, and put money into the new mountain bike idea. Our industry collapsed as the world declared BMX was dead. But us hardcore riders kept riding. We got "real" jobs, if we didn't have them already, and scrimped and saved to get to contests. BMX went into recession in early 1989, a year before the national economy did. BMX freestyle went underground.
At the same time I was working in the BMX and skateboard industries in the late 1980's, the Southern California real estate market was soaring. Two different people I worked with bought a house one year, and made $100,000 on it in a single year. Everywhere in SoCal we were hearing stories of people making fortunes off of real estate. I was a young guy in my early 20's, not making much money, and every Saturday I'd eat breakfast while "Make Money in Real Estate" infomercials playing in front of me on TV. I thought that if I could learn about real estate, and make a bunch of money, I'd have more time to ride my bike. I bought one of the courses about real estate, and began to read books on the subject.
I was really shy, and didn't have the guts to really try and buy a house, but I began to learn about the Southern California real estate market. Like my interest in economics in high school, a big part of real estate is predicting where the market and the economy would be a year, or two, or five, in the future. I began to pay attention to the dynamics of the real estate market, and wondering where things were headed.
By Christmas time 1989, after the BMX world had collapsed, things at Vision Skateboards, the parent company of where I worked, were starting to head downhill. I worked at Unreel Productions, a video production company that was trying to sell TV shows of skateboarding, bodyboarding, BMX racing and BMX freestyle, six years before the X-Games started. The TV industry wasn't ready for those sports yet.
My parents had moved from San Jose, California to Greensboro, North Carolina, and they wanted to fly me back east to spend Christmas with them. I decided to not take my bike, though I was staying there a week. My first night in Greensboro, I went with my parents to the grocery store, and I went to the book rack, looking for a book to read. I knew I was going to be bored as fuck that week, for the most part, and I needed something to pass the time. I picked up a book called, The Great Depression of 1990, by economist Ravi Batra. Yeah, I nice little up lifting book of light reading about economics and a complete financial collapse. Like I said, I'm weird like that.
The book explained a lot about long term economic cycles in the U.S. economy, mostly 10 year, 30 year, and 60 year cycles. Being the geek I am, I found it fascinating. Now, the reality is that we didn't go into in a Great Depression in 1990, as Batra predicted. But we did go into a recession, with a collapse in the stock markets and the real estate markets. It turned out to be a good thing that I didn't buy a house in 1989, which I almost did. The economic downturn dragged on into a stagnant economy that lasted through 1996. The mainstream economists called it a "double-dip recession." While we didn't get the full great depression Ravi Batra predicted, almost everything he predicted did come true, just not to the full extent he was expecting.
By Christmas time 1989, after the BMX world had collapsed, things at Vision Skateboards, the parent company of where I worked, were starting to head downhill. I worked at Unreel Productions, a video production company that was trying to sell TV shows of skateboarding, bodyboarding, BMX racing and BMX freestyle, six years before the X-Games started. The TV industry wasn't ready for those sports yet.
My parents had moved from San Jose, California to Greensboro, North Carolina, and they wanted to fly me back east to spend Christmas with them. I decided to not take my bike, though I was staying there a week. My first night in Greensboro, I went with my parents to the grocery store, and I went to the book rack, looking for a book to read. I knew I was going to be bored as fuck that week, for the most part, and I needed something to pass the time. I picked up a book called, The Great Depression of 1990, by economist Ravi Batra. Yeah, I nice little up lifting book of light reading about economics and a complete financial collapse. Like I said, I'm weird like that.
The book explained a lot about long term economic cycles in the U.S. economy, mostly 10 year, 30 year, and 60 year cycles. Being the geek I am, I found it fascinating. Now, the reality is that we didn't go into in a Great Depression in 1990, as Batra predicted. But we did go into a recession, with a collapse in the stock markets and the real estate markets. It turned out to be a good thing that I didn't buy a house in 1989, which I almost did. The economic downturn dragged on into a stagnant economy that lasted through 1996. The mainstream economists called it a "double-dip recession." While we didn't get the full great depression Ravi Batra predicted, almost everything he predicted did come true, just not to the full extent he was expecting.
That got me interested in the financial markets. I began watching them every day in the newspaper, watching to see if the market went up or down, and then reading the thoughts of the business people, investors, and economists on why they thought it went up or down. By doing this, I began to get a feel of why the stock markets ticked up and down day to day, and a sense of why they moved up or down over the longer term. Like real estate, I wound up as interested in the dynamics of the market, and wanted to understand it, as much as I wanted to just make a bunch of money.
In his book, and a follow-up book, Batra also introduced me to a theory called the Law of Social Cycle by a thinker from India, named P.R. Sakar. This theory says there are four basic mentalities in every society, and one of those mentalities dominates the society at any given time. This mentality shapes society, and there are ultra long term cycles involving these cycles, which gives yet another way to get a sense of where the world is heading in the future. This added to the ideas about predicting future trends percolating around the back of my head. I lived in the BMX and skateboard world of the early 1990's, where top pro riders ate ramen on a regular basis, because sponsorships were few and far between. The Law of Social Cycle became more influential on my thinking later on, when I realized it explained other trends I was watching happen in the world. I'll get deeper into that theory in a future chapter.
In his book, and a follow-up book, Batra also introduced me to a theory called the Law of Social Cycle by a thinker from India, named P.R. Sakar. This theory says there are four basic mentalities in every society, and one of those mentalities dominates the society at any given time. This mentality shapes society, and there are ultra long term cycles involving these cycles, which gives yet another way to get a sense of where the world is heading in the future. This added to the ideas about predicting future trends percolating around the back of my head. I lived in the BMX and skateboard world of the early 1990's, where top pro riders ate ramen on a regular basis, because sponsorships were few and far between. The Law of Social Cycle became more influential on my thinking later on, when I realized it explained other trends I was watching happen in the world. I'll get deeper into that theory in a future chapter.
Blogger's note- 8/27/2023- I haven't changed anything in these posts since I wrote them in 2019-2020, except for these notes at the bottom. I even left the original typos in. My thoughts about the 2020's make a lot more sense now that we're 3 1/2 years into the chaos. you can read more of my writing on my Substack:
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