Is there a formula to predict the future? Not just the future, but THE INEVITABLE? Here's my draft. It challenges everything we believe about ideas, innovation & our future. And explains why Elon Musk and Donald Trump are powerless against fate. But we are not. A feast for your imagination...with a few halfway-decent jokes sprinkled in.

Links from the episode:

Mike Bloomberg energy editorial

Who killed the electric car? documentary

Calestous Juma’s excellent book ‘Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies’

Amy Schumer, thief? You decide.

 -> Hyperloop?

Why Even Musk Can't Trump The Inevitable

I started thinking about inevitability when President Trump signed an executive order to consummate his weird love affair with “clean coal”. Trying to breathe life into their black lungs is like me trying to impregnate Betty White. Not happening, no matter how I phrase the consent form. (I’m not her type. Word on the street is she’s really into Shaq.) Coal is never coming back. Neither are typewriters, VHS tapes, or Cato Cailin. As Mike Bloomberg explained in the New York Times, alternative fuels have already won. Wind, solar and hydro are cheaper, cleaner, and in-demand. Entire countries like Germany, are almost completely converted. Hell, Kentucky’s Coal Museum runs on solar! You can’t make this stuff up! So, no matter what Trump does, clean fuels are inevitable. But so is everything else.

Then I started thinking about all the other battles we're fighting right now.

Taxis versus Uber

China against free speech, or basically any kind of freedom

Islamic fundamentalists versus women. Working or voting or pretty much doing anything outside the house.

Vegans vs carnivores

Robots/AI vs workers

Climate skeptics vs climate fixers

Health insured vs uninsured

Pro-gun vs anti-gun

Pro-pot vs hardliners

CRISPR superbabies vs regular dumb babies

What if every one of these outcomes, policies and innovations is both foreseeable and inevitable. Just like renewable energy.

I even created a formula that could help predict all this. How to predict the future; all the things that cannot be denied. I call it the 3I’s of Inevitability, which is really weird, considering that inevitability literally has four I’s in it. I didn't say I was finished. Or damn mathematician.

Actually, there is a fourth “i”. That's something I'll leave you a hint at the end - and reveal over the course of this season of The McFuture. I’d be curious to see if you can guess it.

Hot Tub Time Machine

First, hop into my Hot Tub Time Machine. We're going to the year 1788. To visit Thomas Jefferson, you know the wise founding father…and slave owner. What do you think would happen if you and I sat down on his super uncomfortable couch and asked, “Hey Tom, do you think your great grandkids are still going to own slaves to work your fields for free?”

Take a second. What do you think he'd say?

Now let's jump back into the hot tub. We're going to go to the year 1900. And all these American dudes are casting ballads for President William McKinley versus William Jennings Bryan. Two big Willie's. What percentage of these guys, if you ask them, would think women - who are half the population and half of their own households - would still not be allowed to vote in let's say, 50 years? Or 100? or 200?

The Founding Fathers based the Constitution on freedom and equality. They knew slavery was wrong. Same goes for American men in the late 1800’s. They knew that if Europeans couldn’t keep women away from polls, neither would they.

Even when they didn’t create them, beneficiaries of lopsided rules are fully aware of their good fortune. How could they not be? Deep down, every single person with some sort of advantage, knows it won't last. What they don't know is exactly when or how our luck will run out. Might be a warning shot, like a wikileak or billion-dollar dick pic. Or, might be actual shots, like the French Revolution.

It's why people who have advantages spend so much time, money, and sometimes blood, defending their fleeting fortunes from the inevitable. They know what's coming. History is littered with this stuff.

There’s been all kinds of resistance to unstoppable change:

Textile workers fought against weaving machinery, afraid of looming job losses. Get it - looming.

Or the church and Islam tried suppressing the Gutenberg printing press, which was the original internet. They saw education and literacy as a threat to their power.

And the US it tried prohibition in the 20s. That didn't work. Drunks, they rose up, then wobbled a bit, then crushed it with their limp, whiskey-soaked bodies.

Auto and oil companies tried to kill the electric car. There's a whole documentary about this. There are people who argue that the technology wasn't ready, but realistically they had no incentive to invest. It took outsiders from Japan and Elon Musk to start poking holes in their cartel. (I'm quite the pundit.)

Music and movie companies resisted digital downloads and streaming. They sued anyone who typed “Napster” or “Bittorrent” into their computer. Metallica couldn’t stop their fans from doing it. Or themselves from crying in their documentary. It’s that what people wanted. The downloading, not the crying. One way or another they were going to get it. Guess what? That’s how they make all their money now. Streaming is the only game in town. Spotify or iTunes or Netflix. Only grandpa is buying the new Neil Young remaster.

Just a couple of years ago newspapers sued Google for stealing their content because they showed snippets in search results. And now they're BFFS, at least in the US. Europe is still trying to do the same thing. Bet you can predict how that will go.

From coffee to tractors, the fear of loss has driven resistance over and over again. Read more about this resistance in Calestous Juma’s book, ‘Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies’.

So how do we know who the winners are going to be? Who's going to win all these battles we're fighting right now? Which outcomes are inevitable?

What makes something inevitable?

Let’s talk about the 3I’s of Inevitability formula.

THE 3I’S OF INEVITABILITYSM FORMULAInevitability = (Idea + Incentive) x Impetus______stevefaktor.com/inevitable

I'll get into exactly what each one means. Let's start with the first one, ideas.

IDEA

All progress starts with an idea. To create anything, anything at all. Even something freakin horrible. You have to imagine it first.

Back in our cave days. Almost every idea was TERRIBLE.

“Why did Jeremiah get the plague?” “The witch did it.” “Let’s burn the witch! Let’s kill the witch!”

“How do we defeat all these Mongolians?” “We must summon the ghosts of our elders with this special dance.”

“How do we get our crops to grow?” “Sacrifice this virgin!”

The only time any of this made sense was when the virgin was also the witch. At least then, you can cut the death toll in half.

It wasn’t their fault. Primitive minds have malnourished imaginations. They subsist on fear, ignorance and superstition. Today, we take for granted how fast bad ideas get snuffed out — by grade school science or a delightful Twitter mob.

Knowledge tames the wildness of our ideas but deepens their quality. All our virgins get to live.

As our brains, knowledge, tools, experiences and communication advanced, so did our imaginations.

Walt Disney is famous for saying, If you can dream it, you can do it. This is the first time in human history where reality is finally catching up to imagination.

We can finally comprehend the enormous scale of human potential. And we're rocketing towards it faster than ever.

Why?

We've uploaded our entire body of work all of our inventions, books, scientific discoveries, fantasies, all of it is up on the internet.

The internet is the world's biggest brainstorming session. It's where no idea stays precious for long.

YouTube, alone, is a massive driver of innovation. It’s this crazy archive of everything that’s possible. When someone ambitious sees a great skateboarding or cooking trick. Not only are they going to copy it, but they’re going try to top it. They’re adding bacon. Or, jumping down four flights of stairs…while holding a cat and chimp under each arm. Then, they’ll post how they did it. That third guy? He’s setting those stairs on fire. Kids, try not singe the chimp.

This cycle is helping us unlock infinity for human potential - give or take an occasional smoky chimp.

Every invention imaginable is incubating in this infinite global soup. And no matter what patent laws say, no one owns any of them. And never has. Every idea, every invention is the offspring of everything that came before it, the collective of human knowledge. Everything – and everyone is both a product and an ingredient.

Nowhere is this more evident than in comedy.

Amy Schumer, Robin Williams, Conan O'Brien and dozens of other comedians have been accused of “joke theft”. Sure, Carlos Mencia and Denis Leary were pretty blatant about it, but those cases are rare.  Even identical-sounding jokes are unlikely to be products of theft.

Here's why.

Imagine two young comedians – one in NY, the other, LA. Both are single, quirky, work nights, and constantly travel. They’ve spent years eating bottom ramen, clawing their way to top ramen. They read the same blogs, listen to the same podcasts, and though they’ve never met, their circle of friends is maybe one degree apart. Is it that hard to imagine both of them coming up with a similar premise or identical joke? Or, someone else, with a similar profile, doing it eventually?

This concept is called parallel thinking.

This concept is called “parallel thinking”. We could live in completely different countries and both be thinking about pastrami sandwiches.