Uncharted Future: Learning to Navigate an Unpredictable World | Margaret Heffernan

Hidden Forces

Demetri Kofinas

Business, Government

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Episode 151 of Hidden Forces, In Episode 151 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker Margaret Heffernan, whose best-selling book Willful Blindness, was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. Her latest book, "Uncharted," addresses many of the core themes and subjects that have captivated our attention on this podcast for years.

In today's conversation, Margaret and Demetri explore many of the various phenomena that arise from our unhealthy relationship with the future.

Whether it's the on-air financial host pumping & dumping stocks to his viewers, the policymaker forecasting unemployment figures and growth rates, or the Silicon Valley executive predicting autonomous fleets of vehicles, telepathy, and jobs on mars, all within a decade, it is our discomfort with uncertainty and simultaneous craving for reassurance that fuels so many of the commercial and political operations of daily life.

And yet, history is an incomplete data set. We know this because the future is full of things that have never been here before. So, if we want to successfully confront the unknown challenges to come, we need to begin by acknowledging that we cannot plan for them. The best we can hope to do is prepare, and fortunately for us, Margaret Heffernan is just the person to help us do it.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 07/27/2020

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode of Hidden Forces is made possible by listeners like you.
0:04.4	For more information about this week's episode or for easy access to related programming
0:09.7	visit our website at hidden Forces. I.O. and subscribe to our free email list.
0:16.4	If you listen to the show on your Apple Podcast app, remember, you can give us a review.
0:21.5	Each review helps more people find the show and join our
0:24.9	amazing community. And with that, please enjoy this week's episode. And the What's up everybody? My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is Margaret Heffernan,
0:54.1	former media CEO, award-winning journalist, BBC documentary filmmaker,
0:59.4	and best-selling author, whose book, Willful Blindness, was named one of the most important business
1:05.5	books of the decade by the Financial Times, and whose latest book, Uncharted, addresses many
1:11.8	of the core themes and subjects that have captivated my attention
1:16.1	on this podcast for years.
1:19.4	In today's conversation, Margaret and I explore many of the various phenomena that arise from our unhealthy
1:25.9	relationship with the future by tackling some of the misconceptions we hold about predictability
1:32.4	and the dangers associated with trying to extrapolate
1:35.6	from the past an unknowable future.
1:39.4	History, after all, is an incomplete data set. We know this because the future is full of things that have
1:46.4	never been here before. New technologies, new drugs, new genes, new people and new horizons previously unimagined.
1:57.7	It's why we rely on analogies to describe the unprecedented.
2:02.3	It's because we don't have words for it. They haven't been
2:05.5	invented yet. If we want to successfully confront the unknown challenges to come in
2:11.5	this century, we need to begin by acknowledging that we cannot
2:15.7	plan for them. The best we can hope to do is prepare. And fortunately for us,
	...

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