From Ray Kurzweil to Kanye West, everyone’s a futurist now

In 1963, in the depths of the Cold War, all of the futurists in the world could probably assemble in a largish conference room and still have space for an overhead projector. Half a century later, it would take a small stadium to hold all of the people who use the title in some form. The world of futures is a broad church today populated by everyone from author and inventor Ray Kurzweil and his obsessive focus on the singularity to Kanye West with his future-esque fashion fetishes. While it’s been a relatively quiet profession for a long time, suddenly it seems like futurists are all around, feeding a growing appetite for all things strange, metallic, and digital.