I don’t know what you do, but for a long time I was in the oracle business. Just when I was breaking into the profession, in the late 1990s, we future-workers became the evangelists of the corporate world, so there was plenty of demand. You’re probably skeptical. You’re thinking: How come you know this stuff? Actually, my track record is pretty good. It’s the others I worry about. In a wholly unregulated profession such as futurology, there are always going to be a few duds. Built into the discipline is a tendency to exaggerate the shock of the new – it helps to drum up business. Pull a startling prognostication from the hat – flying cars by 2030, for example – and you win cachet and kudos; by the time it’s failed to materialize, it’s a fair prediction you’ll have scarpered. 

It’s my fault. If I had told my audience what would happen next, which was after all my job, I might have averted the 2008 financial collapse.