FUTURISTS

FUTURISTS AND FORESIGHT THOUGHT LEADERS

Joel A. Barker[42] Arthur C. Clarke[43] Edward Cornish[44] Jeff Cornish[45] Scott W. Erickson[46] Frank Feather[47] Fabienne GOUX-BAUDIMENT[48] Herman Kahn Arthur Harkins[49]

Stephen Hawking[50][51] Sohail Inayatullah[52] Earl C. Joseph, Sr.[53] Richard Lamb[54] David Passig[55] John Tomsyck[56] Natasha Vita-More Joseph Voros[57] Ray Kurzweil Kim Stanley Robinson

Futurology

Fashion and design

Fashion is one area of trend forecasting. The industry typically works 18 months ahead of the current selling season. Large retailers look at the obvious impact of everything from the weather forecast to runway fashion for consumer tastes. Consumer behavior and statistics from companies such as Datamonitor for a long-range forecast are also important.

Artists and conceptual designers, by contrast, may feel that consumer trends are a barrier to creativity. Many of these ‘Startists’ start micro trends but do not follow trends themselves.

RESEARCH CENTERS

• Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies [1]
• Futures Studies Department, Corvinus University of Budapest
• Department of Futures Studies, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India^[30]
• Futures Research Committee of Hungarian Academy of Sciences^[31]
• Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration
• Foresight and Futurology Unit, a BT Group think tank
• Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa
• Institute for Alternative Futures, Alexandria, Virginia
• Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California
• Laboratory for Investigation in Prospective Strategy and Organization, CNAM Paris^[32]
• National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Washington DC, ^[33]
• Tellus Institute, Boston MA
• UK Horizon Scanning Centre, London^[34]
• World Future Society
• The Futures Academy, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
• Futuribles,^[35]
• SUBITO! Research&Futures, Europe/Norway^[36]
• Zukunftsinstitut, Europe/Germany ^[37]
• proGective, Europe/France ^[38]
• World Futures Studies Federation, world ^[39]
• Instiute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment, Europe/Germany ^[40]
• Future-Institute, Europe/Germany ^[41]

Futurology

APPLICATION OF FORESIGHT TO SPECIFIC FIELDS

Practical foresight

The most significant trends affecting organisations know no borders or markets and affect every part of society today. Global trends, uncertainties and wild cards have the potential to significantly change the way the world works tomorrow. They may impact on you far faster, and more profoundly, than you might think.

Organisations too face additional new challenges including:

• Severe competition
• Market convergence
• New entrants
• High volatility in all aspects of their activities

Greater prospects for global, national and local disruption and shock are increasingly in evidence. Forecasting models projecting past patterns can therefore no longer be relied upon to predict the future. Shaping the world we want to live in means being more aware of the future and seeking better approaches..

A new, more agile and resilience focused, approach is being led by smart, forward-thinking organisations. They have learned that searching for emerging trends, tipping points and weak signals is a vital intelligence tool to help them survive and thrive in an ever more competitive future.

What can be done? In a world where only uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity seems to be the norm these days organisations need wider global knowledge obtained from many more external sources and a new set of cognitive skills to determine their best future responses.

The following critical cognitive skills need to be mastered:

• Trend assessment: the competency to understand trend directions, weak signals and wildcards, assess their likely impact and effect on one another and respond in a timely and appropriate manner
• Pattern recognition: the ability to see patterns rather than individual factors
• System perspective: the capability to envision the entire system rather than the isolated components
• Anticipation: to anticipate short and long term consequences over time, novel situations and geography
• Instinct and logic: to rely on a combination of instincts and logic rather than purely rational analysis

Organisations that inspire, engage and enable their people to use foresight through developing their strategic competencies can acquire and maintain a sustainable futures-orientated edge in their global marketplace(s).

Next practice Leading organisations use systematic, collaborative and strategic foresight capabilities to see what's coming next and respond ahead of the competitive curve. This guide serves as a documented description of how our clients, and others well known to us, achieve successful outcomes, avoid upcoming risk, innovate and thus create next practice through practical foresight.

Source: First chapter - 'Practical Foresight': www.shapingtomorrow.com

(Wikipedia)

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]

^(Wikipedia)

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]

^(Wikipedia)

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)