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Start preparing for the future today, because it is where you will spend the rest of your life.

Failing to succeed – a futurist's confessions

These lines were written to the soundtrack of Coldplay, perhaps fitting, given my long-time love affair with the band. Whether I am newly in love, deeply connected with a partner or undergoing the tempest of a break-up, Coldplay seems to have composed a song that is in tune with my emotional vibrations. One of these songs that captured my heart was ‘The Scientist' in 2003. Yes, I can obsess nostalgically about a song for a long time. I was living in Vienna, Austria, when I first became obsessed, and completing my specialisation in International Law at the University of Vienna. The album had come into my hands during a train trip with my good friend, Mark, when we travelled from Stockholm via St Petersburg, Moscow, through Belarus, to Warsaw in Poland and Berlin in Germany, all the way down back to Vienna, after spending a few summer weeks in my native Sweden. I bought the album, I remember, from a street vendor in St Petersburg, and judging by the fact that I picked up about fifteen CDs from him, I don't believe I paid the normal retail price. However, the CDs were really good quality for pirated copies, and A Rush of Blood to the Head became the soundtrack during a challenging six-month period in my life.

Whenever a song really resonates with me, as my brother will attest, the song will be on repeat, usually because my ego tells me the song was penned just for me. This was the case with ‘The Scientist', which just so happened to be in the same register as my emotional state – influenced as it was by the break-up, reunion, long-distance relationship, near-infidelity and eventual long-term commitment with my girlfriend at the time, Hema. But let us go back to the start. Let us explore ‘The Scientist' for a moment. In the interest of the convergence between digital and analogue worlds, if you want to listen to the song while reading these next few lines you can do so legally and digitally by using this link on Spotify: ow.ly/WvTqb. It will literally take you back to the start.

Anyone who has ever experienced the turmoil of a tumultuous relationship and important life decision can relate, I am sure, to the lyrics in the song and the feeling of wanting to go back to the beginning of a relationship and start it all over again. Beyond the lyrics, there was also something magical about this idea of returning to a point in the past, especially when it became the inspiration for the song's video clip (which you can watch on YouTube at ow.ly/WvTOT and which won multiple MTV Video Music Awards for Best Group Video, Best Direction and Breakthrough Video in 2003). The video is so powerful because it employs an innovative reverse narrative that begins at the end and goes back to the beginning, taking us back to the start, using a reverse video technique. This technique meant Chris Martin, the band's lead singer, had to spend one month learning to sing ‘The Scientist' in reverse, so that when you view the video, his lip movements perfectly sync up with your auditory input of the song, while he is walking backwards in reverse from the end of the scene to the beginning.

As a futurist, and sometimes described as a reverse historian, this creative warping of time and going back to the source is something I want to curate for you now. Let me take you back to the start of a futurist's confession. Because my journey as the futurist mentor in one of my life's most dearest relationships didn't go to plan, was by no means ‘seamless', was filled with friction, and failed to achieve success(ion) in the short term. So this movement between friction and seamlessness plays out within this book. However, in set-backs lie the green shoots of future success, so please indulge me in sharing my futurist's confessions as we embark on a hero's journey of digital disruption, adaptation and transformation. Let me take you back to the start.