Joe: Alright Lewis, I'm going to say a phrase, and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind. Ready? "The Future." Lewis: A flying car that's stuck in traffic, a robot that can't find my keys, and a t-shirt from H&M that says something vaguely inspirational about tomorrow. Am I close? Joe: You are terrifyingly close. That's almost exactly the starting point of the book we're diving into today: How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby. Lewis: Wait, really? The H&M t-shirt part? Joe: Especially the H&M t-shirt part. And it makes perfect sense, because the co-author, Madeline Ashby, is a professional science fiction writer. She literally builds future worlds for a living, for clients like the World Health Organization and the Smithsonian. So she knows better than anyone how easily the concept of the future gets turned into a cheap, marketable slogan. Lewis: Okay, a sci-fi writer and a futures consultant... that's a fascinating combo. So this idea of the future as a cheap slogan, like on a t-shirt—unpack that for me. Why is that the starting point? It feels a little trivial. Joe: Because the book argues it’s the most important, and most overlooked, problem we face. We've stopped thinking critically about the future because we're too busy buying it off the rack.

Joe: The authors kick off with this brilliant story. Scott Smith is in Singapore right after the Brexit vote and the 2016 US election. The world feels completely unmoored. He's in an H&M with his daughter, and he starts noticing the slogans on the clothes. Lewis: Oh, I can picture this. Vaguely optimistic, probably in a cool font. Joe: Exactly. He sees a t-shirt that says "The Future is Female." Then a sweatshirt that says "Undo The Future." Then another top with "Future Designed for the Present." And finally, a trucker hat that just says "Alternative Futures." He leaves the store and sees someone with a shopping bag from another store that screams in all caps: "THE FUTURE DOESN'T WAIT." Lewis: Wow. That is an entire philosophical debate happening in the fast-fashion aisle. It's like the future has become a brand, like Coca-Cola or Nike. Just slap it on something and it feels edgy. Joe: That's precisely their point. They call it "futurewash." You see it everywhere, especially in airports. Ads from banks and software companies proclaiming "Welcome to the Future" or "Future Ground Zero." It's all designed to make you feel like the future is a single, inevitable destination that's already been planned, and your only job is to get on board… preferably by buying their product. Lewis: But isn't this just marketing? Companies have always sold us a vision of a 'brighter tomorrow.' What's different now? Why is this a problem? Joe: The problem is that it dumbs down the conversation. The book argues that public discourse about the future gets polarized into a simple, false binary: it's either a shiny utopia or a grim dystopia. Think Elon Musk's vision of Mars versus a scene from Blade Runner. There's no room for the messy, complicated, nuanced reality in between. Lewis: And that paralysis is the point. If you think the future is either perfect or doomed, you don't feel like you can do anything about it. You either just wait for the tech savior to arrive or you give up. Joe: You've nailed it. And the book has this killer line from Madeline Ashby that just stops you in your tracks: "Your utopia is always somebody else’s dystopia." That idea of a single, perfect future is a dangerous illusion. The "smart city" that's a utopia of efficiency for one person is a surveillance dystopia for another. Lewis: Huh. That really reframes it. The problem isn't the t-shirt itself, it's the thinking behind it. It's selling us what the authors call 'flat-pack futures'—pre-assembled, easy, and totally devoid of any real thought or agency. You just follow the instructions and hope for the best. Joe: Exactly. And the whole point of How to Future is to give you the tools to reject the flat-pack and start designing your own.

Lewis: Okay, so if we're supposed to reject these 'flat-pack futures,' what's the alternative? We can't all be professional sci-fi writers. Most of us just do what the book describes: we wake up, check our phones, and hope the world hasn't ended. That feels like the opposite of agency. Joe: It is, and the authors use that exact behavior as the entry point to the solution. They say that in their workshops, they ask people what they do first thing in the morning. Overwhelmingly, the answer is check their phone for news and messages. We are desperate for information, for signals about what’s happening. The problem is, we're doing it passively. We're just letting the algorithm's firehose blast us. Lewis: Right, it's doomscrolling. We're consuming information, not sensing anything. So what's the difference? How does one 'sense' instead of just scroll? Joe: The book makes a beautiful distinction. It says "The future is a verb, not a noun." Futuring is an active process. It’s a mindset. They identify five key characteristics of people who are good at it, but the one that really stands out is the idea of holding "strong insights, weakly." Lewis: Strong insights, weakly held. What does that mean in practice? Joe: It means you form a hypothesis based on the evidence you see, but you're not married to it. You're actively looking for information that disproves your theory. Most of us do the opposite. We find a belief we like, and then we only look for evidence that confirms it. A futurist, the book argues, treats their beliefs like hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be protected. Lewis: That is a huge mental shift. It's moving from being a lawyer defending a position to a detective following the clues, wherever they lead. Joe: Perfect analogy. And that's where 'sensing' and 'scanning' come in. Scanning is the formal process, the research. But sensing is the personal habit. It's about training your brain to notice the weird stuff, the 'thin wisps of tomorrow' as one historian called them. Lewis: Okay, but what does a 'signal' even look like in the real world? Give me an example. Is it a news headline? A stock market dip? Joe: It can be, but often the most powerful signals are smaller and stranger. The book highlights the work of an anthropologist named Nicolas Nova who practices what he calls 'peripheral ethnography.' He doesn't look at the big, obvious tech trends. He studies the margins. He looks at how people repurpose old gadgets, the weird rituals they develop around technology, the things that are broken or don't quite fit. Lewis: I love that. So, instead of reading another article about the new iPhone, a futurist would be more interested in the weird, elaborate case someone 3D-printed for their ten-year-old iPod. Joe: Precisely! Because that behavior is a signal. It’s a clue about human needs and desires that aren't being met by the mainstream market. It’s a hint of a future that might be emerging. Lewis: So it's about looking at the weird stuff on the fringes, not the big trends everyone is already talking about. It’s like being a cultural sommelier, not just chugging the news. You’re looking for the subtle notes, the strange aftertaste, the terroir of the present moment. Joe: That's a fantastic way to put it. You're developing a palate for the future. You're not just consuming, you're discerning.

Joe: Exactly! You're a sommelier of signals. But, as the book points out, all that tasting can be incredibly overwhelming. There's a fantastic, almost dark-humor story they use to illustrate this... Lewis: I'm intrigued. Don't leave me hanging. Joe: They reference a novella by the writer Warren Ellis called Normal. It's about a secret rehab facility deep in the Oregon woods called 'Normal Head.' And its sole purpose is to treat futurists, strategists, and analysts who have completely burned out from information overload. Lewis: Wait, a rehab for futurists? That's both hilarious and terrifying. It makes the problem feel very real. Joe: It is real. The book quotes a line from the novella that is just chilling: "Gaze into the abyss all day and the abyss will gaze into you." That's the danger of this work. You're swimming in a sea of often-negative, always-complex information, and it can be psychologically crushing. The book even cites real-world studies about how news consumption raises cortisol levels. Lewis: So you become a brilliant futurist, but you're a nervous wreck who can't function. What's the solution? How do you gaze into the abyss without it consuming you? Joe: With structure. This is where the book transitions from mindset to method. It provides a toolkit for taking all those chaotic signals you've gathered and making sense of them. The goal is to turn the data into patterns, and the patterns into stories. Lewis: And how do you do that? Joe: One of the core tools is the STEEP framework. It’s a simple but powerful way to categorize signals: Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political. By sorting your signals into these buckets, you start to see where the energy is. Are most of your signals about technological change? Or are you seeing a huge cluster in the environmental space? It helps you see your own blind spots. Lewis: Okay, so you categorize. That gives you some order. But how does that become a story? Joe: That's the next step: mapping and scenario development. You take your most important trends and drivers and you start to build 'what if' narratives. The book uses the classic example of Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s. Their planners used scenario planning to imagine futures that seemed impossible at the time, like a world where OPEC would form a cartel and oil prices would skyrocket. Lewis: And because they had already 'visited' that future in a story, they weren't caught off guard when it actually happened. They had a plan. Joe: They had a massive strategic advantage. And that's the power of this process. The book provides tools like the 'Impact Wheel' to help you brainstorm the ripple effects of a single trend. For example, if autonomous vehicles become mainstream, what's the first-order impact? People stop getting driver's licenses. What's the second-order impact? The insurance market gets totally restructured. What's the third-order impact? Police departments retrain officers for more technical roles since they're not writing speeding tickets anymore. Lewis: I see. The structure isn't to predict the one true future. It's a creative and analytical process to manage the psychological burden of thinking about multiple futures, so you can actually do something useful with them. It turns the terrifying abyss into a manageable map of possibilities. Joe: A map of possibilities. That's the perfect summary. You're not forecasting a destination; you're wayfinding. You're building the capacity to navigate whatever comes next.

Joe: And that really is the whole journey of the book. It takes you from being a passive consumer of someone else's branded, flat-pack future to becoming an active architect of your own possibilities. It's a profound shift in agency. Lewis: It really is. It feels empowering. So, after all this, what's the one thing people should do differently after hearing this? What's the first step on that journey? Joe: I think the most practical and accessible takeaway from the book is this: start a 'signal journal.' Don't analyze, don't judge, just notice. Once a day, write down one weird, surprising, or contradictory thing you saw or heard. Lewis: Like what? Joe: It could be anything. A strange ad on a bus. A new slang word your kid uses. A product in the supermarket that seems to solve a problem you didn't know existed. The point isn't to find something 'important.' The point is to practice the art of noticing. That's the first step to developing your sensing muscle. It's the first step to becoming a futurist in your own life. Lewis: I love that. A signal journal. It's so simple. If you spot a great signal this week—something that feels like one of those 'thin wisps of tomorrow'—share it with us. We'd love to see what you all are finding out there. Joe: It’s a powerful practice. And it’s a reminder that the future isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something we can all learn to read, interpret, and shape. Lewis: A skill, not a prophecy. Joe: Exactly.