One way of defining innovation is as ability to predict the future. Yes, innovation builds upon existing problems and find ways to solve them, but in order to create something that will be successful you need some ability to foresee how your solution will be received.
In this case however I doubt that there was any intentional prediction, rather its more of an uncanny, accidental vision of the future. Yesterday I was at a dinner party with friends, and saw an interesting coffee table book with close up portraits, by the German photographer Martin Shoeller. At first I didn’t react too much to finding Barack Obama and Donald Trump next to each other, but there were something about the images that was a bit unsettling; they were both quite a bit younger than today.
I looked at the fact section of the book and it turns out it was published in 2005, when Obama was a newly elected senator and Trump still just a loud guy from a reality tv show. There has been a few other predictions of Trumps precidency, like the well-known Simpson episode from 2000, but this is the first occasion where I´ve seen Obama and Trump in a sequence long before any of them where running for the presidency.
So whats next? Well, if we are to believe Shoellers ability to predict US presidents, the next one will be a woman. The portrait following Trump in the book is of the photo artist Cindy Sherman.
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