Futurists are Visionary scholars and scientists who attempt to predict the future by analyzing patterns and trends across a range of social and global topics. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies the first use of the term “Futurism” in English in 1842, but perhaps its first widely known use relates to the artistic and social movements that originated in Italy in the 1920s and emphasized subjects like youth, speed, technology, violence, and other “future” themes.

It does seem like some Futurists have an uncanny ability to look into a crystal ball: H.G. Wells, the noted science fiction author, wrote about genetic engineering, a lunar landing, lasers, and the atomic bomb decades before these any of these came to fruition in real life.

Other well-known Futurists include Buckminster Fuller, who was an American architect, author, and inventor who lived from 1895 to 1983 and was perhaps most famous for his work with the geodesic dome; while he was not the original inventor of the structure, he held patents on the infrastructure that allowed the domes to be popularized. Fuller was committed to innovative design and technology that achieved “more with less” and thereby improved the human condition.

More recently, Ray Kurzweil, a Director of Engineering at Google who has been called “the ultimate thinking machine,” has been a pioneer in the fields of artificial intelligence, life extension technologies, speech recognition technology, and many other fields..

Other Examples
Elon Musk, Alvin Toffler, Ferran Adria, Marshall McLuhan

Strengths
Futurists have incredible minds and are tenacious about achieving their goals.

Weaknesses
Because they can live in their dreams, they can be hard to pin down and may not always do well with the practicalities of daily life.

Passions
Reading, imagining new technologies, experimentation

Reading

Words
“We all have our time machines, don’t we? Those that take us back are memories…And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”  -H.G. Wells

Click here to meet the whole Visionary family