Understand the future from the history

(ENG) These days and in my part of the world, everyone is interested in the future. How will cell phones change our communications? How will big data change the way we work with marketing? How can social media change our networks, both professionally and personally?

We are constantly seeking the answers to these questions, and I would like to be a source and a channel for the best ones.

But from time to time – and with a healty distance to the answers, we need to look back and to where we came from in order to understand where we are going.

The important thing is not to preserve things (even if that could be true as well). It’s a better strategy to embrace the future instead of trying to stop it.

But there is some different reasons why we need to have that historical perspective to be able to be better at coping with the future.

First: there is always lessons that we don’t need to learn again. There is so many things that has been tried, and where the evidence and knowledge is so overwhelming that you are better off avoiding them. (Might be hard to generalize like this, but let’s take nazism or racism as two obvious examples. If we understand why we should embrace all humans and individuals alike, we need not try other options.)

Second: You will be better off and doing smarter things if you are aware of when you are doing stuff that hasn’t been done before. If you know that you are breaking an old rule, you will probably do it smarter than if you didn’t know that this was a rule that used to be important.

Thirdly: Everyone is not on track here yet. Even if we are many that are looking for new answers, everyone is not. And some might be very reluctant to check in in the new world of digital communications and technology. The respect for those, who still is struggling and maybe is looking in the old direction (maybe even back into history), it’s a good idea to learn their world and their paradigm. We will help them better – and we will be moving faster together – if we better understand everyones agenda and missions.