SmilingMonk.com Becomes Leading Employer of Futurists
Posted 02-15-2008 2:49 am by admin admin

It's fake news, but life would be more interesting if it were real

By John Copperpot, Associated Press Writer

What Makes a good futurist?
That's a great question. Let me start by telling you what makes a bad futurist--being wrapped up in the past, that's what. A lot of people, you know, are concerned about the past. Maybe they have some regrets about something they did, maybe at summer camp when they were young and impressonable. Or they are thinking about something that happened years ago and letting it affect them--a divorce, some sort of incurable disease they acquired, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be vulgur here John, but it's the truth. Letting bankruptcy affect their credit. These are all things that a futurist can't be worried about.

So what makes a good futurist then?
If you were to take someone that was not a good futurist, someone that really is always thinking about the past, as I talked about before, letting those types of things get to them. And you were to build a machine--a machine that would transport them to a different world. And in this world everything is the opposite, day is night, black is white, and even [Mr. Judgan laughs] and even in this world, you would be good looking John [Mr. Judgan laughs some more]. Oh, man, I'm sorry, John, I just couldn't resist. Oh, I crack myself up. But like I was saying, in this world everything and everyone was opposite of how things were here on earth. So if you were to take that person, that bad futurist, and you were to transport them to this world, using this very modern, very futuristic machine, in fact the machine would probably be designed by a futurist. If you were to transport that bad futurist to this opposite world. And then you were to take some sort of space craft, again, probably designed by a futurist. And you were to find this opposite world using some sort of advanced radar or GPS system. And you were then to take that bad futurist, see he use to be bad, but then he got transported to opposite world. And then you were to bring him back to earth, to our world here using that spacecraft. Well that would be what a good futurist would be like.

What do you think the future will be like?
I really envision a dynamic future, with three main breakthroughs. First, I think that Chinese restaurants will dominate the midwest. There's just such a huge market for that. There are virtually no Chinese restaurants in the entire geographical middle of our country. Just think about that. The cheapness of a standard Chinese food restaurant along with it's perceived health conscience menu--it's just a recipe for success.

The second innovation is what I call home photography. This is where you or your family would hire a photographer that would come to your home. They would just follow you around taking pictures of your everyday life--you sitting around on the couch, eating dinner, reading bed time stories with your kids. They might even follow you to work or on a family vacation. These are the kind of pictures that you see in those Pictures of the Week on the news magazine websites or maybe at a photography exhibit. It is those candid, spur-of-the-moment kind of photographs that really capture life as it happens, and I think people are willing to pay for that kind of service.

The third breakthrough is the breaking of the speed of light barrier. I know some people will say physics is not on my side here, but being a futurist is really about imagination, if I can imagine it, it should be able to happen. So think about this: on a WWI style biplane the inside of the propeller didn't have a large linear velocity, but the outside edge, the outside of that same propeller went nearly 1100 mph. That's because the inside and outside were turning at the same angular speed, but because of the length of the propeller, the outside edge carved a much larger circle in space. Now with today's technology, the types of super lite and super strong materials we are producing, I think it's completely possible to build a giant version of that propeller. A long poll that is maybe 5 miles high, and a very robust oscillator to swing that pole back and forth very quickly. When that happens--a 5 mile long pole being oscillated super fast--the tip of it has to be going faster than the speed of light, it just has to.

Why does SmilingMonk feel the need to hire so many futurists?
SmilingMonk is really leveraging futurists to innovate the art of innovation itself. We want to be forward thinking. You know John, most people don't know this, but YouTube is actually the leading employer of folklorists. That's fine if you are obsessed with the past and like telling stories, if you are stuck using antiquated technology, and operating your business like a 1930's factory. But we're not about that here, we are about creating new technology in new ways to create new results."

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