Films love predicting the future. Books have been imagining the future for a hundred years. H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley tried to envision the real world of tomorrow. So did James Cameron. Are these highly creative minds considered futurists? If not, then what is a futurist? The answer, like most of futurism, is complex. Let's dive right in. What Is Futurism? According to the dictionary, futurism has a couple of meanings. a) An adherence to the future; b) The study of the future and predictions about the future Both definitions are a little vague but that's the dictionary for you. They're also not entirely correct. You see, futurism is more than movies and sci-fi books. It affects every major discipline, particularly in the sciences, but also in economics, politics, design, and even law. Futurism is indeed the study of the future, but real futurists avoid making predictions. They look for trends and attempt to follow those trends through to their logical development.
Author and award-winning journalist from Canada.