“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” –Voltaire Question #21: How much of the earth is water? Did you say somewhere between two-thirds and 75 percent? If so, you are incorrect. As John Lloyd and John Mitchinson explain in their delightful book, The Book of Ignorance, “Seven-tenths of the earth’s surface is [...]
Futurist Jack Uldrich on the Future … And Unlearning
February 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Dear Readers: I was recently interviewed by a prominent blogger on my responsibilities as a futurist. As I’ve done with past interviews (such as this one on the business of unlearning), I’d thought I’d also share my responses on this website. How or why did you become a futurist? By accident. In 2003, I wrote [...]
The Future Requires Unlearning & Uplearning
January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
By Jack Uldrich & Rick Smyre On August 5, 1949 Wag Dodge and a team of fire-fighters were air dropped into Mann Gulch in Montana to battle a raging fire. The conditions were hot and dry. As evening approached, the fire changed directions and hot embers flew over the heads of the crew and ignited [...]
Being in the “I Don’t Know.”
September 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Everybody likes to be “in the know.” The problem with this is that it’s an impossible goal to achieve because knowledge is being created at an ever accelerating rate. This knowledge creation is a wonderful thing but it also implies that our ignorance is growing even faster (in the sense that it is impossible to [...]
The Anti-Cemetery of Unlearning
September 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment
In my new book, Higher Unlearning: 39 Post-Requisite Lessons for Achieving a Successful Future, Lesson #1 is entitled “Unlearn or Die.” In the short chapter, I recount the story of how it took the British Navy 247 years from the time it discovered citrus fruit prevented scurvy to the time it actually implemented an official [...]
