{"id":237699,"date":"2026-05-25T10:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/futurists-dont-have-crystal-balls-how-to-hire-a-futurist-keynote-speaker"},"modified":"2026-05-25T10:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:09:14","slug":"futurists-dont-have-crystal-balls-how-to-hire-a-futurist-keynote-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/futurists-dont-have-crystal-balls-how-to-hire-a-futurist-keynote-speaker","title":{"rendered":"Futurists Don\u2019t Have Crystal Balls: How to Hire a Futurist Keynote Speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/futurists-dont-have-crystal-balls-how-to-hire-a-futurist-keynote-speaker2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assembled what was then the most credentialed group of forecasters in the world. He called it the Brain Trust.<\/p>\n<p>He asked them to map the next 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>They missed transistors. They missed atomic energy. They missed antibiotics. They missed faster-than-sound travel. They missed space probes. They missed World War II.<\/p>\n<p>I have spent the last 16 years interviewing 300 of the most credentialed futurists alive. From Ray Kurzweil to Peter Diamandis to Marvin Minsky to Sir Martin Rees.<\/p>\n<p>They agree on almost nothing.<\/p>\n<p>That is my report from inside the room.<\/p>\n<p>There is now a professional class that sells certainty about an inherently uncertain thing. Call it the crystal ball industry. The product is confidence. The buyer is the anxious executive. The medium is the keynote stage.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/futurists-dont-have-crystal-balls-how-to-hire-a-futurist-keynote-speaker\">Continue reading \u201cFuturists Don\u2019t Have Crystal Balls: How to Hire a Futurist Keynote Speaker\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assembled what was then the most credentialed group of forecasters in the world. He called it the Brain Trust. He asked them to map the next 25 years. They missed transistors. They missed atomic energy. They missed antibiotics. They missed faster-than-sound travel. They missed space probes. They missed World War II. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2020,2018,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-peter-diamandis","category-ray-kurzweil","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}