This post is kind of a Time Part 3, since I already wrestled with the concepts of time here and here.

I’m not a big fan of hindsight. Looking back in time serves no real purpose for me, except if it helps to guide us as to what might happen in the future.

As the financial service companies are forever telling us – while they forever cover themselves – past performance is no guarantee of future performance. It’s no indicator either. It’s a pattern that may or may not repeat itself.

Of course, what we really want is foresight, the ability to look ahead. We often use the word in a phrase beginning something like ‘she had the foresight too…’ when we really mean ‘she had the good sense to’. Anticipating something and playing the probabilities is wise but is still not the same as looking ahead, because we can’t do that. That’s messing with time.

The really powerful form of sight that is definitely within our grasp is insight. Insight comes from high quality and time-sensitive information, and gives us an idea why the concepts of big data, artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence hold so much promise and are maddeningly close to our grasp.

Insight is what we should strive for, because it’s more useful than hindsight and more real than foresight. It’s important not to forget that, because to do so would be an oversight…