the best way to predict the future is to invent it _ is a widely circulated phrase attributed to computer scientist Alan Kay. It speaks to agency, design, and technological authorship: the future is shaped by those with the imagination and resources to build it. Unlike most terms in the Stratosphere series, this is not aviation phraseology. It interrupts the procedural vocabulary of clearance, navigation, weather, and performance with a more human proposition.

The phrase still belongs comfortably inside the world of flight. Modern aviation is full of futures that had to be engineered into reality: pressurized cabins, composite airframes, fly-by-wire systems, computational design, and the ability to cross continents above weather and terrain. In the frame of a business jet window, the quote shifts from general optimism into something more specific. It points to flight as one of the clearest examples of ambition becoming infrastructure.

Art historically, the work expands the series beyond technical language into the territory of belief and address. The lowercase typography makes the phrase feel closer to an interior thought than a command. The trailing underscore is essential. Here it reads as a prompt, leaving the statement open rather than settled. On a mirror, the phrase returns the question to the viewer, asking what kind of future they are helping to produce. On a sky painting, gradient, or cloud field, it turns the horizon into a place of projection, where atmosphere and ambition briefly meet.

Edition
Unique work, mounted to float on a shaped panel finished in automotive paint. Signed and dated on an affixed label. Accompanied by a signed certificate of authenticity and embedded RFID authentication chip.

Materials
Automotive paint, acrylic, polymer  and varnish on sealed engineered wood fiber panels. Executed with proprietary airbrush and silkscreen techniques.

Year
2026

Dimensions
15 x 22 x 3.25 in (38 x 56 x 8 cm)