“Could Should Might Don’t” by Nick Foster

This was worth reading, but ultimately a touch frustrating. It is written by a man who devotes his life to undertaking serious, informed speculation about the future, but here actually says very little about what he thinks is or is not likely to occur over the coming decades. Instead the book is concerned with exploring different ways in which we do in practice think about the future. There is, in truth, more included about successful and unsuccessful past attempts to predict the future than there is about the future itself. That is thought-provoking and interesting, but not really really interesting.

The central argument is that we tend to think about the future using four distinct mindsets:

‘Could Futurism’ is focused on what steps we might take, for example in respect of innovative technological development, and where this may lead us in practice. This is what I would think most of us consider futurologists do most of the time. Nick Foster argues that a lot of the time we take a somewhat utopian approach, hyping up possibilities in a manner that is impractical and not so well-grounded.

The second mindset is labelled ‘Should Futurism’ and concerns debates about what we ought to do in the future. This approach is more data-driven and practical, but often tends to assume that current trends will continue into the future, which often doesn’t happen in practice as unforeseen discontinuities typically change things.

The third mindset ‘Might Futurism’ which is more accepting of uncertainty and involves preparing thoughtfully for multiple possible future scenarios. I found this section to be the most compellingly argued in the book. Nick Foster introduces a conceptual framework called the Voros Cone, named after one Joseph Voros which he describes as follows:

This model projects a consistently broadening region out into the future along the same axis as we are currently travelling, which is named ‘the probable cone’, and indicates what we think is most likely to happen. Outside this sits another concentric cone flaring a little wider than the first. this is ‘the plausible cone’, and it’s home to the things that are a little less likely to happen. Beyond that cone is a third, which is wider still – this is ‘the possible cone’, and it defines every potential outcome that we can imagine.

Finally, in the last part of the book, a fourth mindset is introduced in the form of ‘Don’t Futurism’ which is much more pessimistic in outlook, being associated with risk assessment and caution when planning and preparing for the future. The term ‘reckless conservatism’ which is sometimes used in the context of overly-cautious pension investment strategies cam to mind when I was reading this.

The conclusion is a very sensible, moderate one. We should neither be recklessly utopian, noir recklessly conservative when thinking about the future. We should stay grounded, learn from history and prepare thoughtfully for a number of possible futures.