What is the Future?
We need to be aware that we use a kind of ‘everyday foresight’ in order to conduct our daily lives, based on certain assumptions, such as public transport being reliable, travel bookings being trustworthy, and weather forecasts being mostly right.
Jennifer M. Gidley • The Future: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Design professor and philosopher Cameron Tonkinwise echoed this idea in a recent social media post when he noted,
“We think creatively (not predictively) about the future in order to decide what to do now in order to make possible different futures. There is no reason to be ‘future-oriented’ other than to try to change things, from now on . This mea... See more
The Future Thinker’s Dilemma
The science-fiction writer William Gibson suggested that in his lifetime, the future ‘has been a cult, if not a religion’, but that this has waned.4 Future fatigue has set in instead.5 The Brazilian polymath Roberto Unger put the problem starkly: we suffer from a dictatorship of no alternatives.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
On the other end of the spectrum is where we experience the “Pull of the Future,” or the intentional thinking and acting around aspirational and transformational futures. As you might have imagined, this part of the spectrum aligns with the emerging novelty and anticipatory imagination of “Ontological Unpredictability.” Here — where the very nature... See more