We live in a prediction society.

That's another way of saying we live for the future, our minds restlessly casting forward to some concatenation of forces, energies and tendencies that will produce a certain effect at a specific time: a sunny day, high of 87, meteor shower at midnight or, better yet, Dow 36,000. Homo sapiens has undoubtedly always needed to peer ahead through the banana leaves to an uncertain future, if only to get that next meal. But our fixation on the future, our deep, often subconscious belief in progress, is an aspect of modernity, fueled by the acceleration of technological change, and the rise of growth-oriented economies driven by free markets. In a performance culture, the future always beckons. Our success in those areas, particularly in the ability of...