Reading a book about 1913 Vienna illuminates a 2013 book about a future of inevitable progress.

While the surreal drama of the Marathon Bombing and the subsequent manhunt was going on last week, I was reading two books about the future.

I was expecting to be annoyed by Al Gore's book The Future, and to be energized by Byron Reese's Infinite Progress. But it didn't quite turn out that way.

Lawrence Krauss says we know more about where the universe came from right now than beings in the far-distant future possibly could. 

Things that happened on March 5 knowledge of which might spark some ideas for scenario planning.

March 4th... but not before doing some scenario planning.

Scenario planning (or its lack) through history - March 3.

Things that happened for which scenario planning was or might have been useful on this date in history.

537: Ostrogoths begin a siege of Rome. Belisarius almost gets caught outside the walls, but makes it inside in time to lead a successful long-term resistance to the siege (probably thanks to a primitive form of scenario planning).

Things that happened on March 1 through history with which scenario planning might have helped.

It's not what you don't know that gets you, it's what you don't do scenario planning for.