My regrettable Steampunk phase
And how lifelong learning is an antidote for uncertainty
Innovation doesn’t occur in isolation, as few if any ideas are so novel as to flourish independently of the human circumstances of a given timeframe.
Innovation ultimately occurs in the midst of other human forces, such as politics, ethics, or infrastructure. Our modern world, ever in flux and fertile for disruption, can be understood as waves of new technology washing across the shifting sands of assumptions that define human experience at any given time. Some advances lay dormant until the world catches up1, while others crash the landscape of human assumptions, rewarding those who go with the flow and casting aside those clinging to the past.
Consider someone2 born in England or the United States around 1840. As he approaches the prime of his life, he faces a world defined by steam, railways and the telegraph that was unrecognizably advanced compared to his past. He might also be forgiven for investing heavily in a steampunk aesthetic just as oil, steel, electricity and telephones were right around the corner.
You laugh, but Steampunk Gentleman can get to steampunk Paris in six days
My anecdotal steampunk gentleman represents a cautionary tale for individuals, corporations and societies at large. The pace of change today outstrips anything experienced by previous generations. What once took centuries now unfolds in decades or years, demanding greater agility and foresight to navigate shifting dynamics.
We all risk becoming steampunk if we calibrate too much on our existing landscape that rapidly becomes the past. Lessons and regrets from my own career actually reflect a similar cautionary tale as our steampunk gentleman.
Early on, a well-intentioned mentor told me,
“You get this experience and degrees, and you’ll write your own ticket.”
I diligently followed this path, only to discover that my firm’s view on leadership had shifted by the time I secured these qualifications. Like the steampunk gentleman, I failed to anticipate oncoming shifts and had written my own ticket to nowhere. This highlighted a critical lesson that applies beyond me: adhering too rigidly to a static landscape of assumptions is a high risk strategy in a rapidly evolving world like ours.
The question then becomes, how do we ensure we adapt to unforeseen changes?
It starts with an honest assessment of where we are today and pressure testing our understanding of the present and the future. As individuals, corporations and societies we must regularly evaluate what assumptions remain valid and what has or is prone to become obsolete. Ongoing recalibration and reinvention can serve as both a defensive and proactive measure to seize and understand emerging opportunities.
Going forward, to thrive in dynamic environments will require continuous learning as part of our daily routines and decision making to stay just a touch ahead of the times. This requires the courage to explore new ideas, to invest in understanding emerging technologies, and to boldly cross disciplinary divides in novel ways3. Coupled with a dose of faith and luck, such a strategy should prepare us not only to adapt but lead the world where barriers between old and new become more opaque.
I am energized and excited about a future that values creative problem solving, continuous learning and technological fluency across domains more than our siloed past accomplishments. By embracing challenges and expanding our capabilities, we can ensure making our mark by moving society forward in some degree towards a better and more resilient future.
Armed with bolder learning with interdisciplinary applications, we can rise above our flawed albeit charming steampunk gentleman or my earlier career self anchored on past assumptions. As we have mere years or months to tackle some of our challenges, to avoid regret requires thoughtful and frequent action with educated foresight to ultimately stay engaged and influential through unprecedented change4.
Artificial intelligence comes to mind first as the underpinning applications need significant leaps in computational power and data organization that have coalesced more rapidly in recent years.
I pick a steampunk gentleman as opposed to a steampunk lady as that represents a very different shifting landscape outside the scope of this essay.
While novel is in the eye of the beholder, I bring many of my day-to-day observations and reflections to a new domain and network that is the Soaring Twenties. This has felt like crossing a new domain from bridging risk management and critical thinking into a more literary application and recommend exploring it.
Written for the Soaring Twenties Symposium on “Regret.”
This raises an interesting question about what aesthetics of this period will become a retro-futurist subculture when our underlying assumptions are abandoned. One of my favorite futurist statements is actually boilerplate financial disclosure: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
This was such an interesting read. For one, the power aesthetics have to anchor you to a given "era". Like... what the f*ck do I do now with my collection of rockband Tshirts when I did not want/need to be a groupie anymore?
On the other hand, it also underlines the power of jobs that cover basic needs. You will write your own ticket if you can provide food to the hungry (I am so making at least one of my children be a farmer), ailment for the sick (doctors, nurses and dentists might be hated, but never go out of style) and plumbers... because we all need our pipes to function. So the way to never be obsolete is to have a career the modern world disdains as de modé.