## 34 I'm not a good futurologist

If I'm sometimes gifted at one thing, I have problems with some parts of my human behaviour. I'm not good at remembering things, but I've found ways to compensate. And oddly enough, I'm also good at remembering strange things. I'm not good at chess, because of my memory and ... because I'm not good at defining all the possible combinations in my head. I could say that I'm definitely not good at medium and long term predictions. I'm like a meteorologist who can't predict more than 3 days. And although I'm creative, I'm not original enough to design the future. I've tried designing cars and I'm not that good at designing something new. Most of the time I'm copying something, and if most designers today are doing that, I don't think it's a good thing. But most people don't realize that. Look at what the AI is doing...

None of this is very important to me in my work. I'm just trying to anticipate the future to make measurements with new equipment ... and my bosses are doing the opposite, trying to anticipate to make more money without innovation. That's life. But when I try to write something like a novel, it's a problem. It's been 5 or 6 years since I started writing a sci-fi novel. It's not good because I can't see anything futuristic in what I've written. It's like an old PK Dick or something. Again, most sci-fi writers copy and are inspired by the great books and writers of the genre. And if I love to write, I don't enjoy the novel and all the backbone and narrative anymore. If the idea was interesting 10 years ago, I don't think it is now. Pierre Boule has made better and more recent great authors, even in series and films. I did not like the Russian-Ukrainian war and Putin's invasion .... because I thought like a normal person, not like a dictator or something like that. And maybe that's the point!

I don't understand this world, except for the geopolitics of the big lines. I don't understand what other earthlings are doing, knowing the effects of global warming. They are back on planes, travelling as if everything is normal. We invest in AI... with more and more energy needs, when an intelligence would say it's less energy that we need. We, humans, are still "using" this planet as one of our games, leaving rubbish everywhere, consuming more than it can absorb, etc... So how can we be optimistic, see a better future? I have written a kind of apocalyptic future for some countries in the world, but also something very similar to our near future world, as we can imagine now. Social networks, holograms, faster trains, flying cars and trucks, AI... and some people resisting. Cities that are either glittering and modern or ancient and partially destroyed. And I can't imagine what some parts of the planet I've never been to will be like. It's a lot, of course...

I have realized that my "vision" of the future is linked to my own experience, to what I have seen or perhaps studied. Maybe it's to reassure me, and all these "copies" of what I've read/seen before are to reassure me in the same way. I think a good futurologist is able to detach himself from what he is and what he knows in order to imagine ruptures, something unknown, look at how we can see aliens. Most people see them as creatures with legs, more or less arms and a head, in other words something not very far removed from us humans. It's very hard to imagine something that doesn't walk, that isn't a solid, with a brain, etc... And scientists look for this kind of "life" on planets, most of the time. But others think that it could be completely different from our life on Earth, far from "our" animals. I can imagine that, but once again I'm repeating what I've read on the subject. 

But I remember something that many parents will remember. Children often ask us to tell them a story. But they are looking for something new, but not very different from what they know. If there's a prince or a princess, that's good. If there's a unicorn, that's fine. But don't try to do it with a tiny gaseous life form with a brain shared by individuals in a community. It's either too complex and too new for them. But maybe you can find a child who might like it. And maybe that's why we have this behaviour with global warming. We are not good at seeing a future other than the one we have today. We are not good futurologists and we are afraid of this pessimistic future.  Look, today to say that the future is to eat like a vegan and not to use cars or petrol engines is a nightmare for many people. Many young people can't imagine life without smartphones and social networks. We limit ourselves with our fears. 

I was listening to a mountaineer on the radio. He said that mountaineering is not a sport. It's their life and it's about limits and fear. He loves it because there's always the fear and the desire to discover more despite the fear. He and very few climbers open up new paths, climb new peaks, and maybe one day they will die doing so. That's how they choose to live. They try to anticipate what might lie ahead and have the means to react to get out of it. But sometimes the unexpected happens. So I come back to chess and the fact that I can't predict all the combinations of the game...

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