Futurology

Evolving the field - Programs in Futures Studies(by region)

North America

1975 saw the founding of the first graduate program in futures studies in the United States of America, the M.S. Program in Studies of the Future at theUniversity of Houston-Clear Lake;^[24] there followed a year later the M.A. Program in Public Policy in Alternative Futures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.^[25] The Hawai'i program provides particular interest in the light of the schism in perspective between European and U.S. futurists; it bridges that schism by locating futures studies within a pedagogical space defined byneo-Marxism, critical political economic theory, and literary criticism. In the years following the foundation of these two programs, single courses in Futures Studies at all levels of education have proliferated, but complete programs occur only rarely. 

As a transdisciplinary field, futurology attracts generalists. This transdisciplinary nature can also cause problems, owing to it sometimes falling between the cracks of disciplinary boundaries; it also has caused some difficulty in achieving recognition within the traditional curricula of the sciences and the humanities. In contrast to "Futures Studies" at the undergraduate level, some graduate programs in strategic leadership ormanagement offer masters or doctorate programs in "Strategic Foresight" for mid-career professionals, some even online. Nevertheless, comparatively few new PhDs graduate in Futures Studies each year.

EDUCATION

Education in the field of future studies has taken place for some time. Beginning in the United States of America in the 1960s, it has since developed in many different countries. Futures education can encourage the use of concepts, tools and processes that allow students to think long-term, consequentially, and imaginatively. It generally helps students to:

1. conceptualise more just and sustainable human and planetary futures
2. develop knowledge and skills in exploring probable and preferred futures
3. understand the dynamics and influence that human, social and ecological systems have on alternative futures
4. conscientize responsibility and action on the part of students toward creating better futures.

Thorough documentation of the history of futures education exists, for example in the work of Richard A. Slaughter (2004).^[26]

While future studies remains a relatively new academic tradition, numerous tertiary institutions around the world teach it. These vary from small programs, or universities with just one or two classes, to programs that incorporate futurology into other degrees, (for example in planning, business, environmental studies, economics, development studies, science and technology studies). Various formal Masters-level programs exist on six continents. Finally, doctoral dissertations around the world have incorporated futurology. A recent survey documented approximately 50 cases of futures studies at the tertiary level.^[27]

The largest Futures Studies program in the world is at Tamkang University, Taiwan. Futures Studies is a required course at the undergraduate level, with between three to five thousand students taking classes on an annual basis. Housed in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies is an MA Program. Only ten students are accepted annually in the program. Associated with the program is the Journal of Futures Studies. The founder of the program is Clement Chang.

As of 2003, over 40 tertiary education establishments around the world were delivering one or more courses in futures studies. The World Futures Studies Federation has a comprehensive survey of global futures programs and courses. The Acceleration Studies Foundation maintains an annotated list of primary and secondary graduate future studies programs.^[28]

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Professor Lucasian

List of Lucasian Professors

1664	Isaac Barrow
1669	Isaac Newton
1702	William Whiston
1711	Nicholas Saunderson
1739	John Colson
1760	Edward Waring
1798	Isaac Milner
1820	Robert Woodhouse
1822	Thomas Turton
1826	George Biddell Airy
1828	Charles Babbage
1839	Joshua King
1849	George Gabriel Stokes
1903	Joseph Larmor
1932	Paul Dirac
1969	James Lighthill
1979	Stephen Hawking
2009	Michael Green

Futurology

HISTORY

Future Studies emerged as an academic discpline in the mid-1960's, according to first-generation futurists Herman Kahn, Olaf Helmer, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Dennis Gabor, Oliver Markley, Burt Nanus, and Wendell Bell.^[9]However, some intellectual foundations of future studies appeared in the mid-19th century. In 1997, Wendell Bell suggested that Comte's discussion of the metapatterns of social change presages future studies as a scholarlydialogue.^[10].

Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah^[11] go further back arguing in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians that the search for grand patterns of social change takes us back to Ssu-Ma Chien (145-90BC) and his theory of the cycles of virtue, though a more intelligible - to modern sociology - would be the work of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) and his The Muqaddimah^[12] It is here that we gain a coherent theory of social change. One might make a stronger argument that futurology as a field originated in the early 20th century, intertwined with the birth of systems science in academia, and with the idea of national economic and political planning, most notably in France, theSoviet Union and Eastern bloc countries.

Differing approaches arose in Western Europe (mostly in France), in Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union), in the post-colonial developing countries, and in the United States of America.^[13][10] In the 1950s European people and nations continued to rebuild their war-devastated continent. In the process, academics, philosophers, writers, and artists explored what might constitute a long-term positive future for humanity as a whole, and for their own countries in particular. The Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries participated in the European rebuilding, but did so in the context of an established national economic planning process, which also required a long-term, systemic statement of social goals. The newly-independent developing countries of Africa and Asia faced the challenge of constructing industrial infrastructure from a minimal base, as well as constructing national identitieswith concomitant long-term social goals. By contrast, in the United States of America, futurology as a discipline emerged from the successful application of the tools and perspectives of systems analysis, especially with regard to quartermastering the war-effort.

There is a perceived schism - though given the globalization of knowledge, generally no longer relevant - between future studies in America and future studies in Europe: U.S. practitioners often seem to focus on applied projects, quantitative tools and systems analysis, whereas Europeans seem to investigate the long-range future of humanity and the Earth, what might constitute that future, what symbols and semantics might express it, and who might articulate these.^[14][15]

With regard to future studies within the former centrally-planned economies, or within the newly-developing countries, differences with U.S. futures practice exist primarily because futures researchers in the United States have no opportunity to engage in national planning, nor do their fellow-citizens call upon them to construct national symbols. This is changing in the early 21st century, as early signs of overshoot and collapse are apparent, and modern applications of futures studies techniques found in the UNESCOSustainability Education materials.

By the late 1960s, enough scholars, philosophers, writers and artists around the world had begun to question and explore possible long-range futures for humanity to form an international dialogue. Inventors such as Buckminster Fuller also began highlighting the effect technology might have on global trends as time progressed. This discussion on the intersection of population growth, resource availability and use, economic growth, quality of life, and environmental sustainability — referred to as the "global problematique" — came to wide public attention with the publication of Limits to Growth, a study sponsored by the Club of Rome.^[16] This international dialogue became institutionalized in the form of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), founded in 1967, with the noted sociologist, Johan Galtung, serving as its first president. In the United States, the publisher Edward Cornish, concerned with these issues, started the World Future Society, an organization focused more on interested laypeople.

The field currently faces the great challenge of creating a coherent conceptual framework, codified into a well-documented curriculum (or curricula) featuring widely-accepted and consistent concepts and theoretical paradigms linked to quantitative and qualitative methods, exemplars of those research methods, and guidelines for their ethical and appropriate application within society. As an indication that previously disparate intellectual dialogues have in fact started converging into a recognizable discipline,^[17] at least six solidly-researched and well-accepted first attempts to synthesize a coherent framework for the field have appeared: Eleonora Masini's Why Futures Studies,^[18] James Dator's Advancing Futures Studies,^[19] Ziauddin Sardar's Rescuing all of our Futures^[20], Sohail Inayatullah's Questioning the future,^[21]Richard A. Slaughter's The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies,^[22] a collection of essays by senior practitioners, and Wendell Bell's two-volume work, The Foundations of Futures Studies.^[23]

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Futurology

Trend analysis and forecasting

Mega-trends

Trends come in different sizes. A mega-trend extends over many generations, and in cases of climate, mega-trends can cover periods prior to human existence. They describe complex interactions between many factors. The increase in population from the palaeolithic period to the present provides an example.

Potential trends

Possible new trends grow from innovations, projects, beliefs or actions that have the potential to grow and eventually go mainstream in the future (for example: just a few years ago, alternative medicine remained an outcast from modern medicine. Now it has links with big business and has achieved a degree of respectability in some circles and even in the marketplace).

Branching trends

Very often, trends relate to one another the same way in which a tree-trunk relate to branches and twigs. For example, a well-documented movement toward equality between men and women might represent a branch trend. The trend toward a minimizing differences in the relationship between the salaries of men and women in the Western world could form a twig on that branch.

Life-cycle of a trend

When does a potential trend gain acceptance as a bona fide trend? When it gets enough confirmation in the various media, surveys or questionnaires to show it has an increasingly accepted value, behavior or technology. Trends can also gain confirmation by the existence of other trends perceived as springing from the same branch. Some commentators claim that when 15% to 25% of a given population integrates an innovation, project, belief or action into their daily life then a trend becomes mainstream.

Other suggestions for thinking about the future

• "Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous." (Jim Dator)
• "Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you." (Patrick Dixon)
• "The future is clear to me. What I don't understand is the present." (Gerhard Kocher)
• "There are no future facts." (Fred Polak)
• "A part of our future appears to be evolutionary and unpredictable, and another part looks developmental and predictable. Our challenge is to invent the first and discover the second." (John Smart)
• "The problem with the future is that it keeps becoming the present." (Calvin)

(Wikipedia)

Futurology

Weak signals, the future sign and wild cards

In futures research "weak signals" may be understood as advanced, noisy and socially situated indicators of change in trends and systems that constitute raw informational material for enabling anticipatory action. There is confusion about the definition of weak signal by various researchers and consultants. Sometimes it is referred as future oriented information, sometimes more like emerging issues. Elina Hiltunen (2007), in her new concept the future sign has tried to clarify the confusion about the weak signal definitions, by combining signal, issue and interpretation to the future sign, which more holistically describes the change.^[6]

There are some tools for utilizing weak signals in organizational environment. One tool is called Strategy Signals, which aims to collect weak signals inside of organization. The tool is developed by the Finnish company Fountain Park.

Another tool for using weak signals in organizations is called the Futures Windows, in which images of weak signals are shown in organization facilities. All the employees in the organization can send their images about weak signals to this tool. The purpose of that tool is to disseminate weak signals in organizations easily and increase futures thinking and innovating in the organization.^[7]

"Wild cards" refer to low-probability and high-impact events. This concept may be embedded in standard foresight projects and introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to increase the ability of social groups adapt to surprises arising in turbulent business environments. Such sudden and unique incidents might constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend or system. Wild cards may or may not be announced by weak signals, which are incomplete and fragmented data from which relevant foresight information might be inferred. Sometimes, mistakenly, wild cards and weak signals are considered as synonyms, which they are not.^[8]

Near-term predictions

A long-running tradition in various cultures, and especially in the media, involves various spokespersons making predictions for the upcoming year at the beginning of the year. These predictions sometimes base themselves on current trends in culture (music, movies, fashion, politics); sometimes they make hopeful guesses as to what major events might take place over the course of the next year.

Some of these predictions come true as the year unfolds, though many fail. When predicted events fail to take place, the authors of the predictions often state that misinterpretation of the "signs" and portents may explain the failure of the prediction.

Marketers have increasingly started to embrace future studies, in an effort to benefit from an increasingly competitive marketplace with fast production cycles, using such techniques as trendspotting as popularized by Faith Popcorn.

John Naibitt

John Naisbitt (b. January 15, 1929 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies. His first book Megatrends was published in 1982. It was the result of almost ten years of research and is one of the biggest successes in the publishing world. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, mostly as #1. Megatrends was published in 57 countries and sold more than 9 million copies

External links

• John Naisbitt's official home page
• USA Today ("Naisbitt turns lust for life into mega book career") 25-Sep-2006 (archived copy at archive.org)
• Financial Times Deutschland
• http://stockpunkt.com/2007/11/28/john-naisbitt-its-china-stupid/ John Naisbitt today
• Complete book summary of Megatrends - Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives

Bibliography

• Megatrends. Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. Warner Books, 1982
• Reinventing the Corporation. Transforming Your Job and Your Company for the New Information Society. Warner Books, 1985
• Megatrends 2000. Ten New Directions for the 1990s. William & Morrow Company, Inc., 1990
• Global Paradox. The Bigger the World Economy, the More Powerful Its Smallest Players. William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1994
• Megatrends Asia. Eight Asian Megatrends That Are Reshaping Our World. Simon & Schuster, 1996
• High Tech/High Touch. Technology and our Accelerated Search for Meaning. Nicholas Braely Publishing, 2001
• Mind Set! Reset Your Thinking and See the Future. Collins, 2006.

Futurology

Shaping alternative futures

Futurists use scenarios - alternative possible futures - as an important tool. To some extent, people can determine what they consider probable or desirable using qualitative and quantitative methods. By looking at a variety of possibilities one comes closer to shaping the future, rather than merely predicting it. Shaping alternative futures starts by establishing a number of scenarios. Setting up scenarios takes place as a process with many stages. One of those stages involves the study of trends. A trend persists long-term and long-range; it affects many societal groups, grows slowly and appears to have a profound basis. In contrast, a fad operates in the short term, shows the vagaries of fashion, affects particular societal groups, and spreads quickly but superficially.

Sample predicted futures range from predicted ecological catastrophes, through a utopian future where the poorest human being lives in what present-day observers would regard as wealth and comfort, through the transformation of humanity into a posthuman life-form, to the destruction of all life on Earth in, say, a nanotechnological disaster.

Futurists have a decidedly mixed reputation and a patchy track record at successful prediction. For reasons of convenience, they often extrapolate present technical and societal trends and assume they will develop at the same rate into the future; but technical progress and social upheavals, in reality, take place in fits and starts and in different areas at different rates.

Many 1950s futurists predicted commonplace space tourism by the year 2000, but ignored the possibilities of ubiquitous, cheap computers, whileMarxist expectations of utopia have failed to materialise to date. On the other hand, many forecasts have portrayed the future with some degree of accuracy. Current futurists often present multiple scenarios that help their audience envision what "may" occur instead of merely "predicting the future". They claim that understanding potential scenarios helps individuals and organizations prepare with flexibility.

Many corporations use futurists as part of their risk management strategy, for horizon scanning and emerging issues analysis, and to identify wild cards - low probability, potentially high-impact risks.^[5] Every successful and unsuccessful business engages in futuring to some degree - for example in research and development, innovation and market research, anticipating competitor behavior and so on.

(Wikipedia)

Futurology

Futures techniques

Main article: Futures techniques

While forecasting -- i.e., attempts to predict future states from current trends -- is a common methodology, professional scenarios often rely on "backcasting" -- i.e., asking what changes in the present would be required to arrive at envisioned alternative future states. For example, the Policy Reformand Eco-Communalism scenarios developed by the Global Scenario Grouprely on the backcasting method. Practitioners of futures studies classify themselves as futurists (or foresight practitioners).

Futurists use a diverse range of forecasting methods including:

• Anticipatory thinking protocols:
• Causal layered analysis (CLA)
• Environmental scanning
• Scenario method
• Delphi method
• Future history
• Monitoring
• Backcasting (eco-history)
• Back-view mirror analysis
• Cross-impact analysis
• Futures workshops
• Failure mode and effects analysis
• Futures biographies
• Futures wheel
• Global Prescience
• Relevance tree
• Simulation and modelling
• Social network analysis
• Systems engineering
• Trend analysis
• Morphological analysis
• Technology forecasting

Futurology

METHODOLOGIES

Futures practitioners use a wide range of models and methods (theory and practice), many of which come from other academic disciplines (includingeconomics, sociology, geography, history, engineering, mathematics,psychology, technology, tourism, physics, biology, astronomy, and aspects of theology (specifically, the range of future beliefs)).

Future Studies takes as one of its important attributes (epistemologicalstarting points) the on-going effort to analyze images of the future. This effort includes collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the possibility, probability, and desirability of change. The plurality of the term "futures" in futurology denotes the rich variety of images of the future (alternative futures), including the subset of preferable futures (normative futures), that can be studied.

Practitioners of the discipline previously concentrated on extrapolatingpresent technological, economic or social trends, or on attempting to predictfuture trends, but more recently they have started to examine social systemsand uncertainties and to build scenarios, question the worldviews behind such scenarios via the causal layered analysis method (and others) create preferred visions of the future, and use backcasting to derive alternative implementation strategies. Apart from extrapolation and scenarios, many dozens of methods and techniques are used in futures research (see below).

Future Studies also includes normative or preferred futures, but a major contribution involves connecting both extrapolated (exploratory) and normative research to help individuals and organisations to build better social futures amid a (presumed) landscape of shifting social changes. Practitioners use varying proportions of inspiration and research. Futures studies only rarely uses the scientific method in the sense of controlled, repeatable and falsifiable experiments with highly standardized methodologies, given that environmental conditions for repeating a predictive scheme are usually quite hard to control for. However, many futurists are informed by scientific techniques. Some historians project patterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to anticipate what will happen in the future. Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West" argued, for instance, that western society, like imperial Rome, had reached a stage of cultural maturity that would inexorably lead to decline, in measurable ways.

Future Studies is often summarized as being concerned with "three P's and a W," or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low probability but high impact events (positive or negative), should they occur. Many futurists, however, do not use the wild card approach. Rather, they use a methodology called Emerging Issues Analysis. It searches for the seeds of change, issues that are likely to move from unknown to the known, from low impact to high impact.

Estimates of probability are involved with two of the four central concerns of foresight professionals (discerning and classifying both probable and wildcard events), while considering the range of possible futures, recognizing the plurality of existing images of the future (alternative futures), characterizing and attempting to resolve normative disagreements on the future, and envisioning and creating preferred futures are other major areas of scholarship. Most estimates of probability in futurology are normative and qualitative, though significant progress on statistical and quantitative methods (technology and information growth curves, cliometrics, predictive psychology, prediction markets, etc.) has been made in recent decades.

(Wikipedia)