Futurist Gathering

An article describing a recent Futurist gathering It mentions that some futurists do not think accurate predictions are the main thing but being useful and stimulating creative thinking.

I think that being in tune with technology, business and how society works to be able to make fairly accurate predictions is necessary. Many predictions are dependent upon the actions and choices of people but others are driven by how business works and many different groups chasing personal gain. The overall progress is a measure of that competitive success. Divergence from that path means something big has made the competition more intense or has slowed the whole process. A futurist saying that accurate predictions do not matter is saying that they do not want accountability for their predictions or do not get whats happening and is admitting it.

The Practical Futurist asks What if society decides they don’t want to pay the bills to make baby boomers a permanent fixture of the American landscape? (referring to radical life extension.)

Then baby boomers who cannot pay for radical life extension treatments will not get them initially, but there will be big incentive to make it affordable for everyone. (think Aids drugs). Just as now we have high cost medical intervention that not everyone can afford. However, radical life extension treatments will mainly not be high cost and nearly last minute intervention procedures. It will be perform once or infrequent gene therapy, iRNA and daily therapies and drugs.

Aubrey de Grey writes about why it will not only be for the rich People will want it too badly to let it be restricted, forcing laws and rules to be changed. There will probably be about ten years of lead time for society to adjust and for a society wide push to occur.

Societies will adjust or the blockages will be circumvented. If people are given the choice of circumventing or dieing, they will go to extreme measures to circumvent.

So it is important to know specifically how it will done, how it will be developed, where we are at now and what are the historical parallels.

Either the Practical futurist does not get it or he is not really thinking about it.