Stanford Social Innovation Review
Futurists often have to imagine things that seem impossible today. This is why we have to be as much historians as future thinkers. People are naturally predisposed to think about the future as an extension of today. We tend to assume that many established ways of being and doing are immutable—that they are a part of the natural order of things. It is difficult today, for example, to see how one might live without having a job. It is hard to imagine an alternative economic system beyond capitalism or communism.
Immersing oneself in the past widens the repertoire of what we might consider possible. When we read history, we discover that wage employment—the idea that our labor is a commodity we can sell to others—is a relatively recent concept (about 300 years old). We learn that throughout the span of our human existence, societies and communities have developed many different systems of gifting, transacting, and trading that did not fall into traditional communism-capitalism dichotomy.
In light of today’s spread of “fake news” and debates about post-truth society, I’ve been re-reading the history of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention dating back to the mid-1400’s. Probably the most exhaustive exploration of the subject is in Elizabeth Eisenstein's two-volume book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. In her writings, Eisenstein refers to the “Unacknowledged Revolution” that followed Gutenberg’s invention, which encompassed not only the Protestant Reformation, but also the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Print media allowed the general public to access ideas and information not previously available to them. This in turn led to the growth of public knowledge, and enabled individuals to formulate and share their own thoughts, independent from the church. Hence, new, non-church authorities and influences grew, and the arts and sciences flourished.
