Could Should Might Don’t: How We Think about the Future

An invaluable guide for how to think--and not to think--about the future, from one of the leading futurists of our time.

You might not know the name Nick Foster, but after just a moment of googling you’ll realize he’s been guiding the missions of companies that have been shaping the world you live in. From Sony, Nokia, and Dyson to Google itself, where he was the head of design at Google X, Foster has been at the forefront of innovation for over twenty-five years, but his name might be unfamiliar because until this point, he’s been hidden behind countless NDAs.

Could Should Might Don’t is Foster’s public debut, the first time this much-sought-after designer is free to share his perspectives, explore how other people approach the future, and suggest how we can all improve our thinking about what might lie ahead. But this isn’t a book filled with predictions and prophecies, and it makes no assertions about what the future will hold. It’s a book that unpacks how we think about the future.

Foster has identified Could, Should, Might, and Don’t as the four primary mindsets we all adopt when thinking about what’s over the horizon, but he doesn’t advocate for any one of them. Instead, he explores how humanity has grappled with the concept of the future throughout history, tracing the emergence of distinct schools of thought and exploring the virtues, blind spots, and inevitable shortcomings of each. The book is, in some ways, about the history of the future and the history of the different futures that we have imagined, designed, or projected for ourselves.

But most of all, Could Should Might Don’t is a no-nonsense appeal to every one of us--whether we’re busy creating future ideas or trying to understand them--to radically improve how we think about the future, so we can improve what we leave behind for those who will follow.

Nick Foster is a designer and futurist based in California. He has worked at the intersection of technology and design within globally recognized organizations, including Google, Sony, Nokia, and Dyson, and has established himself as a pioneering figure in the field of futures design. In 2021, he was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry in recognition of his significant contributions to this field--the highest accolade for a British designer. For more than a decade he was a partner at the Near Future Laboratory, the seminal futures collective that developed the practice of design fiction, and published The Manual of Design Fiction in 2022. Foster is a visiting professor at London’s Royal College of Art, of which he is a Fellow, and he frequently lectures and tutors students at colleges and universities across Europe, Asia, and the United States.