WHAT CAN WE BET ON?

Humans have always tried to see into the future. Periods of crisis, in particular, fuel the desire for prognoses, although the prognoses in turn fuel the crisis, because the (mostly) hostile future forces people t take action in the present. So in fact prognoses probably say less about the future and more about the present in which they are formulated.

One of the most interesting futures institutes in the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. Cleverly combing serious mission with a bit of fun, you can bet on the future at longbet.org. A few examples. By 2040 'Chi' will be recognised as 'Life Force' in traditional medicine, by 2060 there will be only three currencies world wide, in 2100it will be almost impossible to tell the difference between humans and machines. Anyone who bets has to explain reasoning behind his or her bet, with the result that the site generally attracts real experts with sometimes abstruse but never absurd ideas.

Long bets is part of of a large NGO which with the help of patrons including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has itself an ambitious task to change our fast/cheap thinking into longer term- better thinking. We Shouldn't just be thinking as far as our next birthday or up to the next legislative period, but in longer time spans. The project also confronts us with an uncomfortable question: do we really care what happens to the human race after we and our families are gone?

Kevin Kelly co-founder of the initiative, has bet that by 2060 there will be far fewer people on the earth than today. His rationale is that the trend towards small families with fewer than three children will spread the 'This world'. Is Kelly's predictions visionary or deeply racist? His explanation implies that the rest of the world needs to adopt our small family model and all the problems over over population will be solved.

What is going on here exactly? While we are being encouraged to think about the future, we are also being given a platform to question precisely these prognoses. The negative bets on the site are also interesting: The last video store will close in 2015. The computer mouse will disappear by 2030. By 2035 the Aral Sea will no longer exist. By 2020 taxes will no longer be levied. Our favourite: in 2100 there will be no racism.

'I prefer to remember the future'. Salvador Dali