There are really different ways to come up with a finite set of outcomes that don’t overlap and that represent the different realities that the future could hold. This could be the topic of one stand-alone MOOC. In this particular example, I provide one first approach that you should feel free to think about and adapt as you see fit. Ultimately, thinking about the future, as we’ve said before, is really more an art than a science. The more you carry out this little exercise, the better you’ll get at it. The very basic example I’d like to apply this to, is technology and its future in market-oriented economies. If I think about this from a historical standpoint, I need to remember that new technologies and new inventions were not always well received by people. During the industrial revolution, in the late 18th and the early 19th century, the so-called Luddites destroyed machines that were stealing the jobs of human beings, or so they argued. More generally, it seems that the rate at which technology changes has always been far more significant than the rate at which people, you and me, accept that change. So I would argue that a major driving force is the rate of acceptance of technology by people and society. At one extreme, when acceptance is very low, society basically rejects any kind of new technology. At the other extreme, when acceptance is very high, society welcomes any new type of innovation automatically. There are of course some variations in the middle. From a more current and future standpoint, the issue of the future of technology sets another question. Namely the extent to which technology will have as significant an impact today and tomorrow as it did in the past. Many economists have pointed out that the newest forms of technology have not necessarily been the source of the same productivity gains as in the past. Technology, in other words, won't be as transformational in the future, according to this view. Others, and you’ll get a chance to think to this debate after this video, have argued that new technologies are as impactful as in the past, we might not just understand these changes as much as those of the past. So I would argue that another major force driving the future is the overall impact of technology on the economy and the broader society. At one extreme, the impact is quite insignificant. At the other extreme, the impact is transformational. And again, there are some variations in the middle, obviously. Where does this leave us? Two fundamental driving forces (acceptance and impact) and four different alternatives! A world in which technology has little transformational impact and is not very well accepted by society seems to mean that we’re “back to the past,” that is, a world in which technology won’t occupy the position it does today. At the other extreme, in a world in which technology is transformational and well-accepted, we enter the “society of the future” that so many movies and books have imagined. The two other possibilities are as interesting. In a world in which technology is not transformational, yet society accepts innovation, and probably expects a lot from it, we are likely to be in a world of frustration. That is, in a world in which there is a lot of disillusionment about the promise of a better technological tomorrow. Alternatively, when technology is transformational, yet society doesn’t seem to accept it, we’re back to the Luddites, those individuals who refused technological change because it reduced the number of total jobs in a given economy, or so they claimed. With those four options, we seem to cover a lot of ground in terms of what the future of technology might hold. Essentially, we’ve got here a map of the future of technology, describing different potential trajectories and final outcomes.