Looking back on the future

Time works against us, it flees, flows despite us. Like the water of a river that does not flow back to the source, time flies; we cannot jump, leap into the future, even less go back there. No stopwatch, time does not exist. The past cannot be redone, the present flees and becomes the past. In fact, the past is an expired future. So what to do with the future before it becomes obsolete? The future is the favorite time of procrastinators; day by day, they throw there the waste of negligence. Preachers, prophets, harbingers of doom, think tanks, the incapable of the moment, historians of the future, futurologists, politicians, among others, literally wallow in the future. Without assets to their name, they present the future as a reality. Politicians conjugate in the future during election campaigns; one promise follows another. After the election, all turn to some past, seeking the remains of a glorious or pitiful future. Disarming conclusion: our past is truly gone, our failures forgotten, our future increasingly cluttered with promises or worse, fabricated visions. Our past, strewn with failures, does not bode a bright future. Yet, if you frequent social networks, you see only jovialism, bragging, excitement coming from the health sector. If you leave this blind circle, on the street, in the noise of the day, you see only distress, blocked emergency rooms, lengthening lists. How to explain this gap between endemic self-congratulation and the quality of services rendered? Nothing simpler: these jovialists are busy with the future. “It’s going to be okay!” Now a famous expression, used everywhere. The minister said it in response to the (current) emergency problems: in 8 years, with Epic, we will have all the solutions. Urgent means 8 years. Since 2011, Optilab was created by jovialists, but 13 years later, we see that the technology was futuristic. The future should borrow from the past, the future perfect. To paraphrase a famous commentator, one would say: “In 10 years, I will have finished when it’s done.” We urgently need to get some DeLoreans to finally reach that green future, where all software works without bothering nurses and doctors. Not to forget all the software we don’t yet know we are missing. 

— Jacques Gagnon, Eng. President and CEO of Imagem