The Problem With Futurists (Faith Popcorn's Amazing, Search-Invisible Website)

There are many problems with futurists, but none so great as the fact that they simply refuse to live in the present. Case in point: Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve, the Web site of futurist Faith Popcorn, located at the domain faithpopcorn.com. This site is the most egregious example of Flash overkill that I've ever seen: all of its content and its navigational structure is embedded within Flash, making it completely invisible to search engines. Much of the text of this site doesn't even exist as text, but as images, which are impossible for search engines to parse.

Popcorn, writing in the site's "What We Do Section (I'd link to this section directly, but linking to any page within this site is impossible, which means that its PageRank will forever be zilch), claims that her firm "collaberates with clients on the process of weaving the future into the everyday texture of their companies and brands."

Well that's all well and good. But the way she's woven the future into her Web site denies the reality that Google and other search engines are the way that most people find content today. The fact that a woman who is taken so seriously for her ability to predict future trends is apparently unable to direct the construction of an accessible Web site says much more about her clients (which tend to be cash-rich old media companies with nary a clue) than it does about Popcorn herself.

My advice to Faith is this: don't preach to us anymore until you've gotten your own house in order in the here and now, not in future never-never land