Could, should, might, shouldn’t – A taxonomy of futurists
Nick Foster&#x27;s matrix might be revealed in a mix of principles:<p>Technology is the study of <i>means</i>, as John Stuart Mill put it.  (Mill contrasts this with science, the study of <i>causes</i>.)  A technology is a verb, a process to obtain a result.  We often see the manifestations (tools, mechanisms, products), but those merely support and guide the process.<p>- Any intervention has both <i>intended</i> and <i>unintended</i> effects.<p>- Effects may be <i>manifest</i> or <i>latent</i>, similar to Robert K. Merton&#x27;s notion of manifest and latent functions.<p>- Effects, whether manifest or latent, may be short-term or long-term.<p>- The overall process may be readily communicated (learned, sold, advocated, adopted), or difficult.<p>- Implementations and interactions may be simple or complex.<p>That&#x27;s five dimensions rather than two, though there&#x27;s a strong correlation between most of the last five might be collapsed to a simple&#x2F;complex or easy&#x2F;difficult axis.  And of course, the distributions aren&#x27;t binary but continuous, though they&#x27;re probably not strictly normally distributed.<p>Optimists deal with the intended, manifest, short-term, and readily grasped.<p>Pessimists deal with the unintended, latent, long-term, and that grasped only with difficulty.<p>In discussing latent and manifest functions, Merton makes the observation that:<p><i>Discovery of latent functions represents significant increments in sociological knowledge .... It is precisely the latent functions of a practice or belief which are not common knowledge, for these are unintended and generally unrecognized social and psychological consequences.</i><p>Robert K. Merton, &quot;Manifest and Latent Functions&quot;, in Wesley Longhofer, Daniel Winchester (eds) <i>Social Theory Re-Wired</i>, Routledge (2016). <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldcat.org&#x2F;title&#x2F;social-theory-re-wired-new-connections-to-classical-and-contemporary-perspectives&#x2F;oclc&#x2F;1062283702" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.worldcat.org&#x2F;title&#x2F;social-theory-re-wired-new-co...</a><p>There are other elements to this, including positivity bias and the power of denial over unpleasant truths.  These seem fairly evident in the futurist trade.<p>I read Alvin Toffler&#x27;s <i>Future Shock</i> for the first time last year, on its 50th anniversary.  My overall impression was that the book actually holds up quite well, though its best points are generally those looking at the long-term complications of technology.  Individual technology advocates are most likely to be wrong, almost always because they were grossly overoptimistic (again, with a few exceptions).  Many of the social predictions seem quaint, but that&#x27;s almost always because they did in fact come true, and we&#x27;re living in the world that&#x27;s resulted from this, such that the view from the other side seems naive.  The psychological elements, the ongoing psychological strain of dealing with continuous change, seems highly apropos.