Back to Lockdown ThoughtsWhen I was a kid, there was a program on UK TV called Tomorrow’s World. It was a live show each Thursday night covering some of the latest scientific breakthroughs and inventions. It regularly foretold of a future with portable computers the size of a suitcase, chemicals that would stop people ageing and robots that would do the housework. These were usually accompanied by a demonstration of the latest tech. My favourite episodes were the ones where the new device failed to function and the presenters had to cover for a few minutes while the inventor fiddled with his gadget to make it work! Whilst entertaining, it was a great show to get you thinking about what the future might hold.
Imagining the future is a difficult thing. We often underestimate how much change will happen, and can famously overestimate it too. Take the classic 1978 film Blade Runner. It was released in 1982 and told of the world in 2019 where Los Angeles is even more overpopulated, climate change has made it constantly dark and rainy, humanoid androids roam the city undetected, cars fly, and people make video-calls, but still use pay phones too!
It is interesting how much of this is wrong, but also how close it is in many ways. In fact the book it was based on was written in 1968! What an amazing piece of foresight, and however wrong it was, it tells of a world vastly different to the one at the time of imagining.
I mentioned that the leadership team will be doing some ‘futures thinking’ work at the next Strategy Summit later this month. It is my hope that we can create some idea of what our future might look like in 2040, and what we can do today to influence our chances of getting there. It is going to be a fun exercise for sure.
In the meantime, I am still waiting for a robot that will do the housework…
Ben Reed
Managing Director - HamiltonJet
