24 important questions that should be answered by the futurists

Thinking about the future in a systematic manner makes theoretical foundations of futures studies. Many questions have been replied by the futurists or experts of other fields, yet the most fundamental ones may be listed as following. The list is not complete, as it is just a selection from an e-book "The Next Three Futures" by W. Warren Wagar, but it addresses many of those questions which have been occupied the minds of many people for a long time.

1.      Why we study the future? We do not study the future so that we can know in advance just what is going to happen, but rather to create a better future for ourselves and for others.

2.      How is our future? Our future is fundamentally undecided, and therefore unpredictable.

3.      Can we influence the future? Yes, we can. Our power as ordinary people to influence the future of the world at large has recently received unexpected support from the mathematicians and computer scientists studying chaos.

4.      How are we responsible for the future? The scientists studying chaos talk about the “butterfly effect”—the fact that a tiny action such as the movement of a butterfly’s wing can have enormous effects on a complex and apparently random system. This means that when we as individuals make choices we are inevitably making choices for the entire human race. This knowledge should give its all an added sense of responsibility for what we do.

5.      What has been a burden to make better futures? Short-term thinking aimed at immediate benefits to oneself or one’s class has, of course, always been a major obstacle to the creation of a better future world.

6.      Why people want to learn Futures Studies? They want to know what to expect of the time in which they, and their children, and their children’s children, will spend the rest of their lives. They want to know if they can help make the future better than it might otherwise be. … Only the future lies open to human enterprise. Only the future can be changed.

7.      What is the great challenge that the futurists face with? The challenge is demonstrated in such questions: "Is there really such a thing as the future? Can it be known? And if so, can our study be a science, or at least scientific?"

8.      Do futures-oriented scholars produce knowledge? Of course not. Selfrespecting futurists do not claim to know anything at all about the future. As the Yale sociologist and futurist Wendell Bell commented in his letter to Gregory, speculations about the future and even predictions well grounded in present-day scientific knowledge cannot be defined as knowledge, as long as the events or trends foreseen remain in future time. What futurists do, rather, is to construct visions of plausible alternative futures: plausible in terms of the best currently obtainable knowledge of nature, earth, and humankind.

9.      How the future should be studied? The future, like the past, must be continually reexamined and rediscovered.

10.  What are two great challenges in futures? In futures research, however, since the future has not yet happened and, to some indeterminable extent, lies within the power of living men and women to shape, scholars must grapple not only with probabilities but also with desirabilities. They must confront the question not only of what might happen; but also of what should or could be made to happen.

11.  Which kinds of futures research do exist? 2 kinds: Empirical and normative.

12.  What is the real reason to study the future? Man is fortunate, when the desirable and the probable coincide! The case is often otherwise, and thus we find ourselves trying to bend the course of events in a way which will bring the probable closer to the desirable. And this is the real reason why we study the future.

13.  What is the place of wishful or apocalyptic thinking in futures studies? Wishful thinking and apocalyptic hyperbole have no legitimate place in futures research, no matter how lofty the motives of the researcher.

14.  How futures studies can be divided? Futures studies may be divided into “hard” and “soft,” corresponding to the distinction between the methods and perspectives of the (so-called) exact sciences and those of the humanities. We need both hard and soft futurism to capture the full range of human possibility.

15.  How hard and soft futures research approaches find their advocates? In futures research, the “hard” approach is favored by scholars who engage in economic and technological forecasting, and the “soft” approach by those primarily interested in cultural and political change.

16.  How do hard and soft FS researchers perform their inquires? Hard futurists analyze, for the most part, short-term trends in business, industry, communications, demographics, resources, and other areas that lend themselves well to rigorous quantification. Soft futurists focus on trends, often longer-term, in society, governance, politics, thought, religion, the arts, and other areas more amenable to qualitative analysis.

17.  What kind of science fiction applies in “scenario” technique to investigate alternative futures? There is a more durable and serious variety of science fiction, which consists of detailed anticipations of real worlds coming into being, often transformed by new technologies, cultures, or institutions and ways of thought.

18.  What is the only difference between the scenarios of professional futurists and the novels and stories of writers of science fiction? In the stories of writers of science fiction, story line is more centered on the lives of imaginary characters, and more fully fleshed out, with attention to artistic as well as scholarly values.

19.  What is world-system theory? It was developed by the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and others in the 1970s as a way of explaining processes of social change in the post-medieval world. Simply put, world-system theory holds that over the past five centuries the most advanced capitalist countries have created a single global economy with an integrated division of labor.

20.  What is a futurible? The possible becomes futurible, “only if its mode of production from the present state of affairs is plausible and imaginable.... A futurible is a descendant of the present, a descendant to which we attach a genealogy".

21.  Who “founded” the study of alternative futures? The English novelist H. G. Wells. His book, "Anticipations" was the first comprehensive and widely read survey of future developments in the short history of predictive writing.

22.  What are five layers of futures-relevant thought? Divination, Revelation, The idea of progress, Historicism, and Social science.

23.  What is a world view? A conception of the nature of cosmic area human reality that discloses the meaning of life. World views furnish answers to the largest questions that human beings can ask about their condition.

24.  How the futurists' world views have been shaped? Images of the future hinge on the “world view” of the futurist, defining a world view as “a comprehensive set of values, basic assumptions about the way the world works and derivative understandings of complex events and processes. It implies as well derivative prescriptions with respect to individual, social, and political behavior.” The values held by futurists do structure their images of the future.

Notes: "The Next Three Futures" by W. Warren Wagar