Fun with GIS 331: The Future of the Future
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09-25-2023 05:29 AM
As a college undergrad in the early 1970s, my coursework centered on geography, anthropology, and futures studies. My final class involved a 3-week workshop in which futurist John McHale presented a small aphorism he had written:
The future of the past is in the future.
The future of the present is in the past.
The future of the future is in the present.
He said to interpret “The future” beginning each phrase to mean “the outlook.” In other words, the outlook of the past would be determined by how people in years ahead assessed it, while the outlook of today comes from what people did in the past, and the outlook of tomorrow depends on what we do today.
In 1969, McHale published a dense 300+ page book called “The Future of the Future,” looking at society and technology. It is sobering to look back on this. But what I remember most from that time was the simple translation he gave us, and his underscoring of choice and action. Studying systems — feedback systems, ecosystems, climate, air traffic, demography, and so on — I saw accelerating change. For instance, world population was at 3 billion when I started first grade and hit 4 billion while I was in grad school studying climate change; now, less than 50 years later, we’ve passed 8 billion. Atmospheric CO2 has been on a relentless march upward since the Industrial Revolution. We face today great and accelerating stresses because of choices made in the past. Today, we craft tomorrow — the future of the future is in the present. We are running out of time to reach some goals. But there are options.
Geography is about patterns and relationships. Understanding a situation is necessary for making good decisions and solving problems. Even complex puzzles can be solved, given the will to accept facts, to seek multiple perspectives, to grasp the interplay between relevant systems, to choose wisely, and to act. Choosing not to change is a choice, as is aiming for a low goal, or choosing a high goal, or deciding to pretend. We all choose and act, constantly. Helping learners today understand the dangers of our world — traffic, disease, tempests, and beyond — is important. Helping learners understand the future, and how we shape it, is essential. We need collectively to make better choices, and act in support of them. Promoting geography education may be the easiest powerful thing we can do.
