Forecasting the future and what technology will look like is challenging. Here are some musings on looking past the horizon.

1. The Future
and Innovation

2. Cautionary
Those who don’t study
the future, are doomed
to live in it.

3. Think
• "The future is not
something we enter.
The future is something
we create." --Leonard I.
Sweet
• "If you don't think about
the future, you cannot
have one." --John
Golsworthy

4. Invent
• "The best way to predict
the future is to invent
it." -Theodore Hook
• "The only way you can
predict the future is to
build it." -Alan Kay

5. Antique Futures
• "Never let the future
disturb you. You will
meet it, if you have to,
with the same weapons
of reason which today
arm you against the
present." --Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus

6. Imagination
• "The future belongs to
those who prepare for it
today." -Malcolm X
• "Our imagination is the
only limit to what we
can hope to have in the
future." --Charles F.
Kettering
• "The future will soon be
a thing of the past." ~
George Carlin

7. Future Shock
• The illiterate of the 21st
century will not be those
who cannot read or write;
they will be those who
cannot learn, unlearn,
and relearn. --Alvin
Toffler
• "The future always arrives
too fast... and in the
wrong order." --Alvin
Toffler, futurologist and
writer

8. The Age of Possiblities
• "The vast possibilities of our great future will
become realities only if we make ourselves
responsible for that future." --Gifford Pinchot
• "It was never easy to look into the future, but it is
possible and we should not miss our chance." --
Andrei Linde
• "A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter
lessons from the past, he is one who is
prematurely disappointed in the future." --Sidney
J. Harris

9. Beyond 2001
• If an elderly but
distinguished scientist
says that something is
possible he is almost
certainly right, but if he
says that it is impossible
he is very probably
wrong. --Arthur C.
Clarke
• Geo-Synchronous
Satellites

11. Bucky
• "We are prisoners of
our own metaphors,
metaphorically
speaking..." --R.
Buckminster Fuller

12. Explanation and Prediction
• "We have no right to
assume that any
physical laws exist, or if
they have existed up
until now, that they will
continue to exist in a
similar manner in the
future." --Max Planck

13. Innovation
• "The empires of the
future are the empires
of the mind." --Winston
Churchill
• "If I had asked people
what they wanted, they
would have said faster
horses." --Henry Ford

14. Knowledge is Power
• "As the births of living
creatures, at first, are
ill-shapen: so are all
Innovations, which are
the births of time." --
Francis Bacon
• "We must beware of
needless innovation,
especially when guided
by logic." --Winston
Churchill

15. Extrapolation
• "It don't matter as long
as you get where you're
going, cause none of
the shit is going to
mean shit where we're
going." --Eminem
• "You can never plan the
future by the past." -
Edmund Burke

16. Dream Big
• "If you can dream - and
not make dreams your
master." --Rudyard
Kipling

17. Paradigm Shifts
• "An important scientific
innovation rarely makes
its way by gradually
winning over and
converting its
opponents: What does
happen is that the
opponents gradually die
out." --Max Planck

18. Get There
• "Keep on the lookout for
novel ideas that others have
used successfully. Your idea
has to be original only in its
adaptation to the problem
you're working on." --
Thomas Edison
• "I have more respect for the
fellow with a single idea
who gets there than for the
fellow with a thousand
ideas who does nothing." --
Thomas Edison

19. Understanding
• "Too often we forget that
genius, too, depends upon
the data within its reach,
that even Archimedes could
not have devised Edison's
inventions." --Ernest Dimnet
• "Even for the physicist the
description in plain
language will be a criterion
of the degree of
understanding that has
been reached." --Werner
Karl Heisenberg

20. Think Different
• "For I dipt into the future,
far as human eye could see,
saw the vision of the world,
and all the wonder that
would be." --Alfred Lord
Tennyson
• "The present is theirs; the
future, for which I really
worked, is mine." --Nikola
Tesla
• "I'm looking for a lot of men
who have an infinite
capacity to not know what
can't be done." --Henry Ford

21. Thinkers Futurists
• Caroline Buckee
• Regina Dugan
• Tony Fadell
• Mary Lou Jepsen
• Sugata Mitra
• Elon Musk
• Andrew Ng
• Jennifer Pahka
• Bre Pettis
• Shyam Sankar