Are you a faroid?

Futurist, foresight professional or faroid?

I spoke before about being a modern shift worker. It is not necessarily in shifts of 7.x hrs but rather in bits and pieces across the 24hr clock. What do we call that?

Things change in the way in which we live, often due to technologies. The fundamentals remain but how we do it changes. More precisely often technology evolution or revolution takes away previous hurdles and limitations.

Often in the foresight field we struggle with what to call new products, services, phenomena. How to name something very new? It has happened in human history many a time. Difference is futurists tend to live it over and over and have to deal with it in less than energised decision making situations.

As a corporate futurist one often has to present in 20minutes what tends to take the team months of work. That’s when you invariably hit the proverbial futurist wall, how do I bring these people up to speed in 20minutes on business concepts.  It is fun though when the presentation can be turned into a demo, but this is often where the funds run out….

If you want to see some cool about 20min presentations on interesting new things you should try this. It does not bring you quite to making a decision to invest or buy or even what for at times, but it works my imagination on those points.

The futures field struggles with the same issue of how we call ourselves. Some people call themselves futurists. That word has had its bad or strange connotations. Strategic foresight and so foresight professional is typically favored by those who work in applied futures and often in corporate or government contexts rather than as a freelancer, writing about it.

As things evolve and new understanding comes into play and one wishes to mark that somehow – a new word is often necessary to denote the changes. So how about faroid as the 21st century futurist/foresight professional?

Oh and the other new word I’d like to find – what do we call the modern shift worker – the person who works a bit early in the morning, then during the day and some more late at night or at times in the middle of the night? A liquid worker – a worquid?