E-Future. Thinking Future

By Adina Riposan
Director, e&m Global Perspective – Editorial, December 2000

 

Foreseeing Future has proven to be one of the biggest dreams ever since humankind first started to understand the concept of Time and became aware of the Temporality. “What is going to be Next?” is the Question that, throughout ages, succeeded to prove longest lasting and haunting in the minds of both erudite and spiritual people and common individuals as well.

It is obvious that achieving this dream was seen, through the battle over surveillance, as a mean to secure their future or, at least, to obtain the certainty of their becoming.

At the beginning of a New Millennium we keep asking ourselves obsessively “What is the humankind going to become?”. Time is relative, Space is relative, there is no doubt any longer. But the Question still asks for an answer.

We find ourselves in the middle of a digital revolution, being confident that e-Future is the horizon we are stepping towards. The moment and the future, the way we can see it today, undoubtedly belong to the world of bytes and digits. But, looking back, we shouldn’t forget that human society has previously lived the same kind of certainty about future belonging to different other worlds: the world of coal, of petroleum, the world of machines and computers. It happened before and we are currently living it again. Today, we are living the conquest of the Cyberspace, but what is seemingly to be Next?

“Follow your times” used to be the governing principle for the 20th Century. It used to be appropriate, we agree, but yet it was appropriate for the 20th Century. Stepping into the Next Millennium, following times becomes superannuated, cause we don’t follow them any longer, we actually seem to be a step ahead.

Today, the need for rethinking is unavoidably created, from strategies to business practices and human resources policies as well; sometimes, even life principles change. At present, we start learning “intensively” and become aware that “extensive” growth will keep on losing field. Development turns into a two-ways street, and we can only notice that, while devising ways for improvement, emerging sciences act as driving forces themselves. It is therefore a fact that getting stuck in fixed ideas and self-sufficiency would only lead, these days, to people losing their path and being withdrawn from the uninterrupted flow of emerging life “snapshots”. However, what we can take for certain at present is that, whether we call it e-Future or not, it is not going to wait for us.

It has been proven so many times before that biggest discoveries start with most unachievable dreams. This is exactly what Internet used to be 60 years ago. Still, if we look at the biggest names in science ever we see Visionaries, people able to see Future and foretell its becoming.

Da Vinci used to be a dreamer, but what we are actually witnessing today are most of his dreams turned real. We see dreams become reality and fantastical projects come into existence. So, what is the use of obsessing about what is our Future going to be like? Maybe the Question does not have a specific answer, or maybe the matter was not meant to be solved.

Indisputably, on-line or off-line, the Future is the One we create.