In 2021, a client asked me for a virtual keynote on #futurism. Pandemic rules: no live audience, no room to feed off, just me and a camera in a studio I rented for the occasion.

I rewatched it this week. I cringed. The delivery, the pacing, the energy you can only get from real people in front of you. There are a million things I’d change today, and most of them I already have.

The argument, though, I’d give again tomorrow.

The first thing people ask when they learn I’m a #futurist is what comes next. I’ve come to think it’s the wrong question. The weather doesn’t care what the forecast says. The future does, and that changes everything about how we should approach it.

Five years on, most #AI labs, investors, and pundits are selling certainty about where we’re headed. That makes this rough little COVID-era talk feel more relevant now than when I recorded it.

Isaac Newton, quantum physics, Wayne Gretzky, a 100-foot wave and Frank Herbert all show up. So does the question I think we should be asking instead.

Watch it, cringe along with me, then tell me: whose image of the future are you living in right now?

Here’s the full keynote, video and audio: [ https://snglrty.co/4ebtapU](https://snglrty.co/4ebtapU)

The most common question people ask as soon as they find out I am a is to predict the future and what comes next?