DConstruct 2012 James Burke
2012.dconstruct.org/conference/burke/transcript
From the page
Saved with the link. Notes from 2007 to 2016 are mostly the page's own words, so this is probably an excerpt.
As one or two of you older people may know, Ive wasted my life as a television journalist and historian writing books and articles and making TV shows about technology and science and their social effect, and just so you get into proper perspective what Id like to say this afternoon, let me remind you of something the late, great Mark Twain once said, when you might have been talking about people like me and my colleagues, he said, in the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place at the right time. It is the task of journalists and historians to rectify this error. So in order to rectify the future I want to spend most of my time looking at the past because theres nowhere else to look: (a) because the future hasnt happened yet and never will, and (b) because almost all the time in any case the future, as youve heard more than once today, is not really much more than the past with extra bits attached, so to predict, Im saying we look back.