Welcome to my blog concerning technology and the future! I'd like to make my inaugural post on technology be an explanation of how technology relates to me as an aspiring futurist, writer, and individual. As a person somewhere in between the stages of being a very old kid and a very young adult figuring out "what I want to be when I grow up" has been a difficult process. I wrestled with a lot of options throughout undergrad and I did a lot of soul searching, but towards the very end of it I finally stumbled upon the field of futurism and strategic foresight. Looking back it seems like the obvious field for me to pursue because I was (and still am) so obsessed with the way biological evolution and technological innovation relate to one another, but at the time I was still filling in the pieces of the puzzle and asking a lot of questions that nobody had or has the answers to.
As an avid fan of the writings of Ray Kurzweil, especially The Singularity is Near, I have to give a lot of credit to his work for inspiring my pursuit of futurism as a profession. Another author, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his book, The Phenomenon of Man, also left a deep impression on my outlook for technological growth and its implications for mankind. I spent a lot of my early collegiate career waking up to the exponential growth of technology, and I became aware of it as an obvious extension of biological evolution prior to any knowledge of Ray Kurzweil or his concept of the singularity. After making the profound realization about the rate in which technology was growing I spent a long period of time in a state of existential crisis, but eventually I resolved myself to find a way to be a part of the outcome of the unfolding future and thus my goal for becoming a futurist began. It seems sensible to me that if I am going to spend a vast majority of my time considering the possible outcomes of the future based upon the changing dynamics of technology then I should try and make a profession out of it. Now I am in my final semester of undergraduate school at Tennessee Technological University, and my plans for after graduation include pursuing a Masters Degree in Strategic Foresight, traveling the world extensively, and writing as much as I can.
This website is a tool for me to convey my life to the world, and this blog is purposed specifically for discussing the exponential growth of technology. It is exciting and bizarre to realize that we are alive in a time where dreams become realities in the matter of mere days, weeks, months, or years. The paradigms of life on planet earth are shifting and we are lucky enough to be here to experience these changes. I hope that you will find my personal exploration of science, technology, and innovation to be relevant to your life and that you will give feedback to my work whenever you have something to contribute.
Thank you,
Austin Cleek
As an avid fan of the writings of Ray Kurzweil, especially The Singularity is Near, I have to give a lot of credit to his work for inspiring my pursuit of futurism as a profession. Another author, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his book, The Phenomenon of Man, also left a deep impression on my outlook for technological growth and its implications for mankind. I spent a lot of my early collegiate career waking up to the exponential growth of technology, and I became aware of it as an obvious extension of biological evolution prior to any knowledge of Ray Kurzweil or his concept of the singularity. After making the profound realization about the rate in which technology was growing I spent a long period of time in a state of existential crisis, but eventually I resolved myself to find a way to be a part of the outcome of the unfolding future and thus my goal for becoming a futurist began. It seems sensible to me that if I am going to spend a vast majority of my time considering the possible outcomes of the future based upon the changing dynamics of technology then I should try and make a profession out of it. Now I am in my final semester of undergraduate school at Tennessee Technological University, and my plans for after graduation include pursuing a Masters Degree in Strategic Foresight, traveling the world extensively, and writing as much as I can.
This website is a tool for me to convey my life to the world, and this blog is purposed specifically for discussing the exponential growth of technology. It is exciting and bizarre to realize that we are alive in a time where dreams become realities in the matter of mere days, weeks, months, or years. The paradigms of life on planet earth are shifting and we are lucky enough to be here to experience these changes. I hope that you will find my personal exploration of science, technology, and innovation to be relevant to your life and that you will give feedback to my work whenever you have something to contribute.
Thank you,
Austin Cleek