My Cameo in Brian David Johnson’s “The Future You”

My good friend and colleague Brian David Johnson – former chief futurist at Intel, now head of the Threatcasting Lab at Arizona State University –  published a self-help book earlier this year titled The Future is You. In addition to practical tips for applying futurist techniques to envisioning your own post-pandemic life, he’s weaved in a few asides with fellow practitioners, including me. Here’s how he sets the scene:

As long as we’re on the subject of place, I thought I’d take a quick detour into the origins, and evolution, of futurism. Throughout my twenty-five years in the business, I’ve collected a cast of colorful, not to mention incredibly bright, characters. These are the experts I call on for insights on a range of subjects, from economics to politics to social sciences. When it comes to the topic of futurism itself, my go-to is a guy called Greg Lindsay.

Greg is officially an urbanist, specializing in the future of cities, technology, and mobility. Beyond that, he has the deepest understanding of the history of futurism of anyone I’ve ever met. He also happens to be the sharpest-dressed guy in the biz–putting the “urbane” in urbanist, as I like to say. I’ve never seen him without a tie. He was even wearing one when he sent me from the hospital a picture of himself with his new baby. Whenever we get together, there’s always a bit of the Odd Couple to us, with Greg in his bespoke suits and polished shoes, and me in my blue jeans and beard.

That was very much the case when we last got together in New York City, soon after I started in on the research for this book. Greg and I had talked before about the origins of futurism, our chosen career, but I wanted to get the complete story once and for all. I was especially interested in hearing more about futurism’s somewhat controversial past, as well as how Greg was feeling about the future of futurism. Greg’s mind is amazing. He is a two-time Jeopardy! champion and the only person to go undefeated in a game against IBM’s supercomputer Watson. Over martinis at the Bemelmans Bar, in the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, we went deep into the future.

To learn more, you’ll just have to watch the video above, or better yet, buy the book!