Future Perfect
The future was already here – it just wasn't evenly read.
“It is the historian’s function, not to make us clever for the next time, but to make us wise forever.”
― Jakob Burkhardt, 1905
Dr. Conrad Gessner was one of the first people to raise a concern. He was respected by his colleagues and his professionalism made him a serious thinker.
So when he warned the world about the effects of information overload, people took note.
In one of his five books, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with information and that the human mind would be confused and irreparably damaged if something wasn’t done.
We’re living in an era of information overload: oversaturated algorithms, the claims of fake news, and constant interruptions from notifications.
We see how Dr. Gessner’s concerns were real.
We bemoan the unprecedented risks of living in a digital world that doesn't seem to have an off switch. We look for digital detox opportunities and quiet spaces. Our digital quagmire is a byproduct of the 21st century, and it requires a modern sensibility to address it.
Dr. Gessner was proven right, after all. How did Dr. Gessner prepare himself for this expected onslaught?
Well, he took his own advice to heart: he never once used e-mail and didn’t even own a computer.
Not because he was a curmudgeon about technology. He was very well-read and had interests in a number of fields: physician, naturalist, philologist, and bibliographer.
But he wasn’t concerned about Facebook updates, selfies, TikTok videos, text messages, emails, or even the Internet itself.
How did Dr. Gessner manage to avoid all of this?
If you’d like to unlock Dr. Gessner’s secret, join us in the Ampersand Guild, the community for our paid members.
What’s Past is Prologue
Socrates famously warned Phaedrus against writing because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.”
In the 1700s, the French statesman Malesherbes railed against the trend of getting news in print, arguing that it socially isolated readers and detracted from the spiritually uplifting group practice of getting news from the pulpit.
The point is we’ve been through these arguments before, and yet we still seem to find our way back to them through modern technology. The same principles apply, even though the tools are more modern.
The world of retail is no different. We’re watching one of the most fascinating battles happening daily on a massive scale: Amazon versus Walmart. But as you watch it, the funny thing is that as Walmart tries to become more like Amazon, Amazon tries to become more like Walmart.
Case in point: Amazon plans to open large, department store-like retail establishments. They’ve gone from being online-only to a multichannel retailer.
Amazon’s Predecessor
But decades ago, long before Amazon Prime was a requirement in many families, households were receiving another regular delivery: the Sears catalog.
When they first printed catalogs in the late 1800s, Sears capitalized on the growing mail and package delivery process in the United States. At issue was how the postal system delivered to rural addresses. This was also at the same time that the American shipping industry began to rise.
Montgomery Ward took advantage of the rail system. As long as you could get to a train station, you could pick up your goods. But in the early 20th century, 65% of America’s population was rural, and didn't have access to mail or parcel delivery.
Sears and Montgomery Ward had to lobby for parcel delivery — it was called “rural free delivery.” Infrastructure grew to support it and the U.S. Postal Service eventually expanded its parcel service to postal delivery as well.
Does this strike you as similar to any other modern merchant and its impact on logistics, delivery, commerce, and lobbying?
“What’s past is prologue.”
— William Shakespeare, 1610
Stories like those of Gessner, Socrates, Sears, and others are not just history; they are in many ways a travel guide for the future.
So many CEOs are always looking for a futurist, when what they need is a historian.
A sense of history is an antidote to self-pity and self-importance. It is an essential ingredient in crafting strategy.
To know history is to be prepared for leadership.
“Trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.” — Daniel Boorstin
I.
How Sears and Mongtomery Ward changed the face of American shipping. (Atlas Obscura)
II.
The soap industry serves as an effective introduction to the history of marketing. (The New Yorker)
III.
The history of the jet age: Jet-age glamour was more than just aesthetic: its promise of motionless movement reshaped perception of time and space. (Aeon)
“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.” ― Robert M. Pirsig, 2006
I.
Toys 'R Us is opening 400 stores within existing Macy’s department stores. (USA Today)
II.
Historian and filmmaker Ken Burns talks about his concern with many Americans’ hypersensitivity about the past and its connections to the present:
“This moment of all these intersecting viruses, of novel coronaviruses and of racial injustice — [a] 402-year-old-virus. And it’s an age-old human virus of lying and misinformation and paranoia and conspiracy. This is the pill that will kill us unless we do something.” (The 11th Hour)
III.
Historians have lost influence to economists and political scientists. Is that because the latter are more willing to court the powerful? (The Guardian)
“History is philosophy taught with examples.” — Lord Bollingbroke
🎧 On The Secret History of the Future, The Economist’s Tom Standage and Slate’s Seth Stevenson examine the historical precedents that can transform our understanding of modern technology, predicting how it might evolve and highlighting pitfalls to avoid.
📚 In Confronting the Classics, Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people―the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women. How did they live? Where did they go if their marriage was in trouble or if they were broke? Or, perhaps just as important, how did they clean their teeth?
There’s so much to learn,
