Today, the future is everywhere we look, and it doesn't look good.

In the face of impending climate change, rising fascism and nationalism, systemic inequality, and technology that creates more problems than it solves, for many the default image of the future has become more Blade Runner or Black Mirror than The Jetsons. But where did our visions of tomorrow - and our belief in our ability to manifest them - come from? What is the history of 'the future', and how has that history formed the so-called 'futures industry' of today?
Part cultural history and part radical critique, What Was the Future charts the twisting path of "futures thinking" from its ancient roots in prophecy and fortune-telling, to its emergence as a formal practice in the Cold War era, to the adoption of "futures thinking" in business and the rise of the "trend forecaster," to the digital technology that emerged in Silicon Valley.
While the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos perpetuate a vision of the future as a literal exit plan-an elitist, techno-solutionist escape to the stars-some of the sharpest thinkers in the field are trying to use the tools of futurism for global survival, transformation, healing, and liberation. Introducing the reader to some of these artists, inventors, activists, sci-fi writers, hackers, sociologists, and all-round weirdos, What Was the Future? is a gripping, eye-opening and fascinating adventure through a subject that could not be more relevant to us all. The stakes are nothing less than our survival as a species.