have a nice future

Archival audioclip (Back to the Future): I'm from the future.Lauren Goode: Alright, I'm gonna ask the question that everyone's wondering about: What is a futurist? Is this a real job?Gideon Lichfield: Well, I mean, I think some people imagine it's just, you know, a guy who sits around making predictions about the future, and there are probably some people who do just that. But Noah calls himself an applied futurist, by which he means that he studies trends—technological, economic, demographic, political, you name it. And…

Gideon: What? What did he even mean by that?Lauren: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, here's just one example. One of the things he said to me right out the gate was that he thinks in just 30 years we’ll all be part cyborg—that we're gonna be paying for things through some kind of chip in our body.Max (audioclip): Something like contacts that have been enhanced with electronics beyond kind of the basic optic value, um, that you can actually take out and rid yourself of the, uh, of the enhancements if you, if you want it…

Archival: It spans the globe like a superhighway. It is called the internet. Lauren: People were really excited about the transformative potential of the web. The editors at WIRED certainly were; I found this letter to the editor in an old issue criticizing WIRED for being a little too “orgasmic” about the internet.Gideon: Orgasmic. Lauren: Yeah. And I don't even think they were talking about specific websites. Gideon: Hmm. Archival: For years they've been saying these things would change. The world would mature from…