The Future We Already Know

The signals all around us, and why they matter

It is 1903. Transportation, for goods and people, is largely the same as it’s been for centuries. Except for railroads, everything that moves is powered by horses, mules, and the occasional donkey.

Manure was a fixture in the lives of pretty much everyone, but a far more difficult issue for city dwellers. At the turn of the 19th century, New York City had about 3.5 million residents and somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 horses. It’s estimated that each day, upwards of 2200 tons of manure are dropped on the city’s streets. Every day.

Lots of people must have longed for a better option, but it is 1903. How realistic is it to think of replacing 20 million horses when only about 20,000 horseless carriages have ever been built? There are about 150 miles of paved roads in the whole country. We have no true assembly lines. A horseless carriage for everyone? Sure, and electric lights and phones in every home and office too.

Henry Ford is often credited with saying that if he asked people what they wanted, they would have said “faster horses.” There’s no record of him actually saying that, but the fact that the quote persists tells us something about the limited expectations of the day.

But what if you could go back to 1903, the year Henry Ford incorporated his company, and tell people that, yes, if they make certain compromises and commitments, the automobile will indeed become the dominant mode of transportation for the country and eventually for the world.

Would they say yes? The answer seems obvious.

But what if you could tell them about the future they didn’t know?

What if you could tell them that, over the next 120 years, almost four million Americans would die in automobile accidents and tens of millions more would be injured. More deaths and injuries than all the wars the United States would ever fight.

What if you could tell them that automobiles would become the greatest environmental scourge the planet would ever face? That building, fueling, driving, servicing and parking automobiles will pump unimaginable pollution into the air. That millions of acres of land will be destroyed for highways and parking lots. That traffic jams, stretching for miles, will clog every city in the nation and leave people stuck in their cars for hours every day.

Cities and neighborhoods will be reshaped. Historic buildings will be torn down. Communities will disappear. Crime will soar. Unimaginably massive factories will be built, and they will be manned by workers increasingly dissatisfied with their working conditions, leading to nationwide work stoppages and mass violence.

What if you could tell them that the automobile will also turbocharge a sexual revolution?

So let’s ask the question again: Do you want to proceed?

I tell you this not to rewrite history, not to question our path, not to discount the endless benefits the automobile has brought to society. I’ll say this plainly: Nobody loves cars more than I do.

I tell you this because the more we can see into the future, the better prepared we are to face it.

Of course, it’s impossible to fully predict the future. But there are hints and signs all around us that give us a window on tomorrow, tidbits that I call “The Future We Already Know”. I’ve spent decades looking for these hints, studying them, and advising leading organizations how to use them to prepare for what’s coming.

The hints are all around us, but we’re usually too busy to see them or think about their long-term impact. Every day, I’ll share one thing that caught my eye, stopped me in my tracks, and made me think. Sometimes it will be a statistic. Sometimes it will be a trend. Each time, though, I hope it will point us toward where the world is going.

Why orange juice, beer, milk, and liquor sales are tanking.

What’s behind the staggering increase in cremations?

What it means when China builds 91,000 miles of new highways over 30 years, and the United States builds just 5,000.

I had to check that number twice.

Why the U.S. could launch a new aircraft carrier every 14 days during World War II while it takes 14 years to build one today.

Why are young men missing on college campuses?

And what we should think about the explosion of gambling.

What Costco, the NFL, and Harvard have in common … and should fear.

When people ask me about our future with AI, I think about 1903 — about how much we didn’t know, and how much we still don’t know. But there are signals. Tomorrow, I’ll start sharing them.