“When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened.”

I recorded this conversation with Brian David Johnson 14 years ago, back when he was Intel’s futurist with 25 patents to his name and a mandate to build an actionable vision of computing for 2020.

Read that again. 2020 was the far horizon he was paid to imagine. We are now well past it.

So here is the uncomfortable question worth sitting with: how much of the future he described did we make happen on purpose, and how much simply happened to us while we wondered what was going on?

Brian’s whole method was a refusal to be passive about it. He used ethnographic fieldwork, trend data, and even science-fiction prototyping as a #design tool because he believed the future is not a forecast you wait for; it is an object you construct. His line still lands harder every year: own the fact that you can build the future.

A few things he said in 2012 that read very differently in the age of generative #AI and ubiquitous #robotics:

Getting it right matters more than being right. Forecasting is not about protecting your ego; it is about steering.

Geek is defined by passion, not by what you happen to know.

And the one I keep coming back to: don’t let the future happen to you.

Fourteen years on, I will let you decide how well his vision aged and whether we listened. The full interview is one of 300+ on SingularityFM and you can watch or listen here: [ https://snglrty.co/4nupUKt](https://snglrty.co/4nupUKt)

Did Intel’s futurist call it, or did the future call us? #futurism

Want to find out what does it mean to be Intel’s Corporate Futurist?! Check out Brian David Johnson’s interview for SingularityWeblog.com to find out!