INTERVIEW:
Question 1
What are the philosophical foundations of Future Studies?
Answer
The philosophical foundations of Future Studies are really interesting. I like to draw the
comparison between Future Studies and history. There was a time when people did not record
history the way we do today; history was essentially myth and legend, it was for the
purpose of teaching moral lessons and for maintaining the coherence and cohesion of
societies. Back in ancient times, however, a few people wondered what it would be like to
actually recorded what people did, and what they said, what the events actually were. That
was a revolutionary thought at that time. We may actually be at that same point in history
where we decide that we are worried about the future, and have talked about it a lot, but
is there anything that we can do about it? At the University of Houston we believe that we
can actually study the future as we study the past, using the trends in events and a
healthy dose of our imagination to understand what now is not only likely to happen, but
what might happen in a truly novel and different type of future.
Question 2
What are the relations between Future Studies and sociology? And what is the status, space
and role of Future Studies in US academia today?
Answer
Social science in general is also a relatively new discipline in the 20th
century, and Future Studies is related to social science because it is changes within
society, and that is one of the things that we study a great deal. But it is not just
social science, it is psychology and the study of technology, the study of demographics,
environmental science. So there is really no study that is outside Future Studies:
sociology is one of the important studies, but anything that has to do particularly with
human systems.
Even though, or perhaps because, we are on the edge of what might be an intellectual
revolution, university disciplines in general have not come to accept the fact that Future
Studies is a valid study. One difference between Future Studies and other, particularly
scientific disciplines, is that the sciences, through the accumulation of data and the
testing of theories, do converge onto truths and generalizations that are more true than
they were in the past. Astronomy and physics and chemistry are good examples. In Future,
however, we know that the future will be full of novelty, and it is impossible to be able
to come up with a theory of social change, which once you know what the theory is, does
not become itself part of the phenomenon that you are studying. It is like the theory of
the stock market: if you were to figure out a way to make lots of money on the stock
market, the last thing you would want to do is to publish it in a book, because then
everybody would be using that theory and it would no longer be an advantage. So Future
Studies has a process by which its predictions, and its forecasts, and even its
techniques, become part of that which influences the future, and then in a recursive type
of fashion it is impossible therefore to settle on generalizations which are always true.
Question 3
Where can we identify the origins of Future Studies?
Answer
You can go back as long as people have been interested in the future, which is as far as
we can go back into history. Actually, the eighteenth century was when people first
started explicitly to focus on the future, and it came in the form of utopian writing,
during the Enlightenment and the late eighteenth century. Thomas More, the first book
called Utopia, was set in other geographical places because people at that time
were fanning out from Europe and finding unusual places, and people imagined places where
there were different types of perfect societies. The French Enlightenment, the
Encyclopedists, came up with a new form of utopia, and that was the form of utopia in the
future. Lemercier was the first to write a book on the year 2200, in which he forecast the
perfection of society due to the application of scientific principles; very optimistic, as
most of the Enlightenment thinkers were. That translated into nineteenth century science
fiction: Jules Verne, H. G. Wells. Edward Bellamy's book, Looking Backward, was a
major social treatise on the possibility, the perfectibility of society.
As a profession, however, Future Studies is really a phenomenon which arose after World
War II. In many ways, the US military needed to know things about the future that had
never been known before. For instance, in preparing for a nuclear exchange, that worst of
all catastrophes, they realized that all the planning would have to go into that exchange
before it actually took place; once the missiles were on the way it was too late to sit
down and figure out what to do. They also needed to understand the nature of the new
technologies, because in planning long term military systems they had to understand not
only what technologies were available today, but which ones would be available in the
future. And that resulted in technological forecasting. The RAND Corporation was a think
tank created by the Defense Department to do that, and futurists like Ted Gordon then
developed a lot of Future techniques, like the Delphi technique, in that environment, and
began to publish that in the open literature in the 1960s. Of course the 1960s were full
of social change and social turmoil, and many people turned their eyes to the future. The
first courses were offered at Yale University, in Virginia Polytechnic University. The
World Future Society and the World Future Studies Federation were both formed in the late
1960s and early 70s. The program at the university of Ohio in political science was
created at that time, as was the Study of the Future master's degree at the University of
Houston-Clear Lake. Since then Future Studies has been an active and very interesting
movement, but it has not yet expanded too far beyond those early roots.
Question 4
It has been claimed that predictions or forecasts are vital, even when they are falsified,
because they may affect decisions, and contribute to policy changes. What do you think
about this claim?
Answer
People often ask me how right I am, when I go back and look at the predictions that I have
made in the past, and unfortunately they are not asking the right question. The question
we ask in Future is: how useful is a forecast? A forecast can be wrong and still be
useful, particularly a negative forecast, forecasting problems or catastrophes. If people
take a forecast seriously, they will work to prevent and avoid those problems. The
forecast itself is wrong, but the forecast is useful, because it created a better future.
Which are the forecasts that give people images of the future that are not necessarily
accurate predictions of what is going to happen, but give them an understanding of the
dynamics of change, and how things could occur, given certain circumstances, and secondly
empower them to choose the right future for them, and begin to try and create that? Those
are useful forecasts which, whether they are correct or not, can still be useful for
making a better future.
Question 5
What do you answer to those who say that Future Studies cannot be objective, and are
therefore useless?
Answer
Basically we don't agree with anything that is purely anything. So there is objectivity
and subjectivity both in the study of the future. On the objective part, in fact, trends
do exist, and we can measure those, and we can extrapolate those with mathematical
techniques. But we know that surprising things will happen as well. And those surprising
things are generally a function of what our assumptions are. What is possible, what will
work, what is possible and impossible is an important thing to understand. We are often
surprised because things happen that we didn't think were possible, or were not likely. So
Future is a balance of objective study of trends, in the analysis of forces of change, and
a very strong dose of imagination and creativity to try and appreciate the fact that
surprising and novel things will emerge in the future, and we have to prepare for them as
well.
Question 6
You just pointed out that Future Studies require imagination as much as scientific
knowledge. Could you tell us if there is any risk that, at least in some practitioners,
imagination ends up instituting a prophetic dimension?
Answer
I believe that there is a danger in both the objective and the subjective characteristics
of Future. If one confines oneself purely to objective conditions, then you get an
extrapolation of the present which by definition includes no novelty, it is simply working
out the forces of the present, and therefore you will miss the novelty. If one were purely
an imaginative and speculative futurist, however, and not paying attention to what these
trends and objective data say, one can come up with highly speculative futures which we
would consider not necessarily impossible, but certainly implausible. In all of the
different forecasts, it is important to focus on those which are not necessarily probable,
but surely are plausible. So it is a mix of both scientific analysis and creative
imagination which brings the most useful form of Future Studies to bear.
Question 7
Do you think that technological determinism has affected or may affect Future Studies, and
if so, do you think as a theoretically sound practice?
Answer
Any time we get into an area of determinism we have a problem, because we do not believe
that the future is completely determined; it is partially constrained by forces and
conditions. In other words, currently we do not believe that we could travel faster than
light, maybe some day we will figure that up but right now that is a real constraint. And
there are many others, economic, political, and cultural constraints. On the other hand,
there is still discretion within those constraints: people have some choice, though that
choice is not unlimited. So any time one talks about a determinism, one is essentially
saying that you have no choice and Future would dispute that. The choice is not infinite,
but it is there, and they can use their discretion as they wish. Things are determined by
various conditions, as I said, economics, and politics and culture, and technology is one
of the things that helps to constrain the future and create, by the same token,
opportunities. But it does not determine the future because technology, like everything
else, is just a tool. It has its effects, but people in the long run can choose whether or
not to adopt a technology, to use a technology, or how to use it, and to some extent can
have some control over its effects.
In terms of whether technological determinism has affected Future Studies, there are
various forces which we pay particular attention to. Technology is one of them. Some
people have favorite forces, and I would say that the Western view favors technological
forces over other forces. Other cultures in the world favor other forces, such as
political, or cultural, or social forces, and believe that the focus the West has on
technology is misplaced, that technology is a factor but it is not the one thing that
determines the outcome of society. To the extent that a futurist, or someone calling
themselves a futurist, would focus simply on the effects of technology that would be
harmful to that study.
Question 8
What kind of impact do you think that Future Studies should have on education?
Answer
Part of this revolution that I spoke about before, that fact that we may be creating a new
academic discipline, is that this discipline should be offered to people of all ages. We
offer the study of the past, in history classes, to every public school and every college
and university in our country and I am sure in Italy as well. We should be offering the
same in the study of the future. What are possible outcomes, what are probable outcomes,
what do people prefer, how do we deal with change? These are questions that we should be
addressing directly in our educational system, rather than simply crossing our fingers and
hoping that everything will turn out OK.
Question 9
You have said before that people do have some choice to build their own future; what is
the role of "choice" in Future Studies, and how much can all of us have that
choice?
Answer
Choice is an interesting phenomenon in Future Studies. First of all, it is one of the
reasons that we believe the future is unpredictable. If there is choice, then by
definition that choice is free, and people cannot be predicted to make choices. If they
are determined to make choices, then obviously they are not really making a choice, they
are being determined. So the fact that we have choice, human choice, means that the future
is essentially unpredictable. I believe that choice varies depending on the situation; the
choice that a person has in a concentration camp for instance is extremely limited if not
nil, and the choice that a very powerful and wealthy political person is fairly high. It
also, interestingly, depends on the time horizon; the time horizon is the length of time
that we are looking into the future. Many people look into the future for a month, for a
year, for three to five years, or for twenty to fifty years. Actually the greatest choice
exists not in the short term, what we choose today or tomorrow or next year, because that
is already pretty well determined. What we choose for twenty years from now, and stick
with that choice, and continue to work for that choice, is where our real power comes
from. And even regular people can have a long term effect on the future, if they make
choices in a strategic fashion, and continue working those choices for the fifteen or
twenty years it will take to bring it about. That is how amazing things happen: they don't
happen suddenly, and they don't happen by magic; they happen by making an early choice and
consistently working towards that choice as the future unfolds.
Question 10
Some exercise in forecasting. Do you think that Future Studies will end up in the next few
years having the major role within academia that you think is necessary?
Answer
When futurist are asked to give forecasts they never give one, so I will give both. On the
one hand we may be on the threshold of an intellectual revolution that appreciates the
fact that prediction is only one of the possible and useful statements about the future.
There are two other possible statements: one is what is plausible, not necessarily
probable. If we could tell a story about how the future will emerge in surprising
fashions, and we prepare for that, then by definition we are more prepared for the future
than if we just based it on the predictions. And a third kind of statement is our
preference, what is sometimes called our vision. What are the choices we are making for
the long term, and how will that unfold, and how will we move forward? Those are the kinds
of statements that we believe are valuable for the future.
Now, in terms of a prediction, futurists don't make predictions, but in terms of
alternative futures, we may be developing a trend towards the fact that the speed of
change and the complexity of decisions these days require a longer foresight and more
understanding of the dynamics of change for people to get good results. By the same token,
Future Studies could be a temporary phenomenon, which has run its course. After the year
2000, it may be that people are simply tired of talking about the future and they say that
we don't have to talk about that now for another hundred years or another thousand years.
There may be a short term decline after the year 2000. Personally, I am confident that the
value of systematically studying and understanding the future is important, and the
decision-makers and others who are making choices in the future need to have this
information and this perspective at their fingertips, and I think that the 21st
century will see a lot more people practising Future Studies than we do today.
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