What If -- Examples of Forcing Your Thinking

-- a university of arizona course on methods and approaches for studying the future

Forcing yourself to ask a series of 'what if' questions makes you think about new possibilities, and that makes you think more fully about the future. Here are some examples from the book "The 500 Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next". 1997. Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker. Harper Business. 302 p.

The Next 500 Days (less than 2 years)

• Your most important employee will quit and go to work for your biggest competitor.

• You will have a joint venture with your biggest competitor.

• You will be sued for being right.

• Fat will be drug controllable.

 

The Next 500 Weeks (about the year 2010)

• Multinational corporations will have their own embassies.

• You will be in a career for which you never had any formal training

• Being unknown will be a status symbol

• A computer operated by biomass will be fully functional

 

The Next 500 Months (about the year 2040)

• Most hydrocarbons will come from the ocean floor.

• We will know that we are not alone in the Universe.

• The leading cause of death will be epidemics.

• A nuclear bomb will have been set off by a terrorist organization.

 

The Next 500 Years (about the year 2500)

• There will be fewer people alive than there are today

• The average age of first marriage will be seventy-five years

• There will be no money standard

• The five things anyone can never have too much of will be unchanged from the time Aristotle first identified them: health, knowledge, self-esteem, friends, and love.