The Future of Luck

When Fortune Becomes Something We Can Engineer

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Algorithms are getting better at placing the right opportunity, person, investment, or idea in front of us at exactly the right moment. What happens when luck becomes something technology can manufacture?

Think about the luckiest moment of your career. Maybe it was a chance introduction at a party that led to a job. Maybe it was an offhand recommendation from a casual acquaintance that changed the direction of your business. We tend to tell these stories with a shrug and a smile, as if the universe simply rolled the dice in our favor.

Now imagine that a machine rolled those dice. Not randomly, but deliberately, having calculated that this specific person, at this specific moment, would be the one introduction most likely to change your life.

That’s not a thought experiment anymore. It’s an emerging reality, and I believe it will force us to rethink one of the oldest ideas in human culture: that luck is something that happens to us.