Kind of sounds like the title of a movie. But it's the job title of a guest speaker at our Library Board meeting a few weeks ago. I heard the term "futurist" and I thought, "You can make money doing that??"
Our unabridged dictionary defines a futurist as someone who practices or advocates "a point of view that seeks life's meaning or fulfillment in the future rather than in the past or present: utopianism."
Trying to process the speaker's world view through the lenses of my world view was a bit of a struggle. He spent considerable time talking about the amount of information that is available to us 24/7, and the speed with which we can access that information. He seemed to marvel at the means and speed with which we will be able to access even more information in the future.
No talk of cultivating human relationships. Just acquisition of facts. No talk of how to separate the wheat from the chaff in the huge sea of information. Just more so-called knowledge. Faster.
Quite telling is this fact. On the same dictionary page as futurist, is the term future farmer (a member of Future Farmers of America). If I got to pick a lunch companion...I'd go with the future farmer. I know I'd learn more facts. Only, it'd be a lot more enjoyable!
Kind of like utopia! Right now!
No comments:
Post a Comment