Predicting the Future By Staring at a Piece of Art

Last week I had another Twitter ‘Ten Questions with Marc Andreesen’. In one of my throw away’s aimed at laughs I asked him which rendering of the ‘madman’ (two pieces of boxed art) he was. See below:

He chose the guy on the right.

I love both of these pieces. They help me think about the future even though they are more than 20 years old.

In my twenties I bought these two pieces which I stare at them when at my desk. I like to discuss these with people that come to visit. While the artist was contemporary in style I doubt he was an investor and I doubt he understood how culturally ‘dead on’ he was about life as a consumer.

Let’s dig into the piece that Marc likened to him that day:

IMG_2523

Today…that guy…lets call him ‘Howie’ – would be in the back seat of a Tesla (or an Uber of course) drinking Soylent or eating McDonald’s, drinking a coffee (Starbucks), on his smartphone. The police are out of the equation for the most part in the future because autonomous cars and or Uber.

To make money in 5, 10, even 20 years you only need to reimagine this piece of art with your imagination and or own the consumer products and brands that will rule.

In hindsight, smartphones, the internet, Uber and autonomous cars seem so obvious in watching ‘Howie’.