The future is forever unfolding. From the perceptive of the present, it starts now. That means, in the future, everything is dependent on what is happening now and that has happened in the past in ways that determine or bind the future. Therefore, our view of the future must also begin from where we are now. How we view the present and how we understand the past impacts materially our view of the future. We must understand both what changes and at what rate, what stays the same, and how they interact and how peoples’ actions, interactions, transactions and reactions weave together to create the future. But we must be realistic and objective about where we are now — that is often the hardest step.

It simply is not realistic to project forward historic changes in to the future and expect any measure of reliability. The present is complex and the future is both contingent and path dependent. Very few things in human society happen with the predicability of the natural world, itself a continually evolving discovery. Human variability, intent, will and unpredictable action and reaction mean that we cannot simply forecast; we must draw on our imaginations if we are to understand more adroitly the future that we will co-create.

Despite requiring imagination and dealing with unpredictability — or perhaps because of those things — we must be disciplined about our approach to the future. Interpreted assiduously and judiciously, the past, captured as history, offers parameters of previous relationships of causes and effect. We must be disciplined in how we search for and apply these guides to foresee plausible futures and use the best tools at our disposal to apply our acquired knowledge to portraying the range of futures that may unfold.

Any given moment it time is, as Augustine of Hippo observed in 401 AD, a collection of temporal perspectives: (1) our knowledge of the past, (2) our perspective of the present and (3) our expectations of the future. Every future that unfolds is dependent on the paths taken and not taken to get there. And, as Hannah Arendt pointed out (1958), by happening as it does, the present renders irrelevant all alternative presents as they mat have unfolded as influencing the future (although they may remain salient as counter-factuals). We cannot foresee either the shocks that will occur or how the contributing factors of the past will combine in to our future. The future is wholly contingent on the events, human actions and reactions that have gone before it.

It is human nature to expect the future to look very much like the past. Continuity is less troubling than having to adapt to new realities and surrendered know and often valued ways of doing things. But the Baconian or scientific revolution ensures that constant efforts at discovery, and translation of discoveries in to new technologies and methods, mean the future will differ from the past. No longer will our existence move unchangingly from generation to generation of bucolic toil.