Upside Downturn

This week I was fortunate enough to see the futurologist Ray Hammond speak. He used to live next door to Steve Jobs dontchaknow. He managed to cover pretty much the whole of life within 45 minutes from the past to the future, the local to the global and the real to the virtual.

He touched on the recession, which is why I’m mentioning him here, and he said a few interesting things:

The first thing he said was about the virtual quality of money – the fact that it’s not real. It’s been said before but is always worth repeating. If you think about that for a while your mind takes you to some interesting places and provide some interesting thoughts about your work and how you do it.

Secondly, he said that we were on our way out of trouble, or would be very soon, and that after that we would see an extended period of unprecedented growth.  This I thought was overly optimistic and didn’t take into account the constant wrong turns the government is making.

The third thing was that he gets very annoyed with pundits on the news comparing it with recessions of the past (‘82, 70’s, 30’s) as globalisation has made this recession completely unique and therefore incomparable He was frustrated that nobody on the political stage had picked this point up. This is a really good point, and if like me you listen to the news too much it might be worth keeping in mind; there are no historical precedents for this and although we know what caused it, we don’t know how it will pan out. This time there are millions and millions more people in the world who a) have more and b) want more than any other time in the past.

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andy downturn, recession, the future