By: Alireza Hejazi

Surely an informal opportunity for scientific cooperation with other futurists specially the open minded ones would be more valuable than attending a formal study program. My experience has shown me that this kind of friendship is more fruitful, because everyday you can learn new ideas from those professionals who think creatively about the future. This can be a good way for becoming a futurist.

Here are tips and my personal suggestions to become a futurist. 

 1. Be Open to New Ideas

Have you ever heard anything about "bicameral mind" theory offered by Julian Jaynes? He was a Princeton University psychologist who died at the age of 77. He is famous for one book only: "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", first published in 1976. Although Jaynes' perspective is not directly related to Futures Studies, he gives a new trend in thinking about the future of human and humanity.

His book is really worthy to be read several times and I urge you read it if you found it at your university library. I hope you would find it useful and share your comments with other futurists and even psychologists as your ideas can be valuable for them.

 2. Participate in Course Planning Activities

If you are really interested in Futures Studies, you can come to more serious tasks such as arranging Futures Studies university programs and courses. Let me talk about my personal experience. The syllabus I had proposed to my university for arranging a MA course on FS was a threefold program. The first layer was based on FS primary rules and principles (BA). The second layer aimed at introducing different aspects of FS (MA) and the third layer was working on personal futuristic capabilities (PhD).

My main target was zoomed on the third layer that embraced the last term of doctorate course. My desired course was going to foster post-graduates who would be potential futurist thinkers rather than just memorizing machines of FS theories and concepts.

 3. Think about Tailored and Flexible Programs

Since futuristic thinking can be regarded as the precondition of futures studies, every kind of curriculum should be made enough flexible to futuristic thinking and improving futurist attitude and capacity especially in young futurists.

So what kind of curriculum can meet this essential need? Should we return once again to students' self-designed courses and programs? This can be a real challenge in futures studies as mainly important issues are designed trough a systematic approach rather than a negotiated solution between the student and the teacher.

Those students who are studying futurology do know that they are in urgent need of futures knowledge basics and principles, but what should they do with their own preferences? How can they freely think about the futures with out making their minds preoccupied by traditional futures teachings?

I think a tailored program or course can be a good response to our modern age educational needs. In a tailored course the professors design the main framework of studies for the students. On the other hand, the students negotiate about their preferences and incorporate their desired configuration as much as possible within the designed program in choosing those units which are more connected to the subject of their thesis.

4. Build Your Personal Digital Library

Thanks to my past occupation experience, I remembered Greenstone Digital Library software that was so much useful for me in such cases. I started the job with the new version of software downloadable at this link: http://www.greenstone.org

Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM.

The Greenstone Digital Library software is a tool developed jointly by UNESCO and University of Waikato, New Zealand for collecting documents, adding metadata and then building digital library collections. It provides access to your documents with a satisfactory functionality and a searchable interface.

 5. Try Participative FS Methods 

Using interesting practical methods can also raise your interest in informal education. For those futurists who have had considerable experience in scenario building and scenario-based planning it is good to have more knowledge on one of the most interesting methods in scenario planning. The method is called Carousel as it is a circling activity among the related posters and enriching scenario planners' ideas in order to offer better scenarios.

The method is being used for groups working on specific topics within a success scenario - but the method can be used with groups that had been working on different scenarios, too. Particular purpose is to start collecting suggestions for action that came out of the deliberations in the workshop. By using this method we want (a) to give people some time on their feet, since they had been sitting all day; (b) to get them to rapidly generate a lot of suggestions, rather than to spend a long time thinking about the background, or going back to earlier discussions.

6. Never Get Hypnotized by New Methodologies

I should say that I'm not an advocate of conservative attitude on Futures Studies; rather I think that sometimes it is necessary to have a vivid and distinct identity in our way of futuristic thinking. Thus if I'm talking about a balanced view on methodologies, my intention is focused upon providing a realistic attitude regarding the mixed usage of those methods which can provide us the maximum capability in studying the future.

Although the future may not be essentially the extended form of our present time, we may sometimes get so much hypnotized by the changes of the future that become unintentionally blind with current trends leading us toward a better knowledge about the future.

Today we understand the shortcomings of Naisbitt's method and also its capabilities, but when we come to the "Content Analysis" we do the same that Naisbitt and his fiends unconsciously: "Choosing and providing supporting evidence"!

Should we remember again that a trend starts in local communities not in New York and Washington or remain hypnotized with new methodologies?

7. Make Your Top 10 Future Trends List

We should remember that from the very beginning of Futures Studies there has been a great deal of opinions concerning the main future trends. This has become a tradition for many futurist think tanks to publish a predictive report at the beginning of each year describing main future trends in a top 10 format.

For instance, Mr. Richard Watson published his top 10 trends http://www.nowandnext.com/ in January 2009. He had mentioned 10 top future trends as: Fear & Loathing, De-Leveraging, Back to Basics, Digital Diets, Enoughism, IMBY’s, Seriousness, The Human Brain, Eco-Wars, and Fear of the Unknown.

Again, World Future Society published its own top 10 future trends in the form of 10 forecasts for 2009 and beyond at: http://www.wfs.org/foresight/index3.htm

This situation can be even seen in the State of the Future published annually by UN foresight team.  Some of other futurists had also their own speculations about top future trends. Although many of these trends or forecasts were similar, you may wonder which "top 10 list" is the mother of all!

If you take a look at STEEP approach in defining top 10 trends, you may find similarities in regional trends and differences in global ones, as well. As a futurist what is your own top 10 trends list?

Think for a while and just prepare your preferred list of top 10 future trends as the first step toward becoming an active futurist!

8. Seek for Good Links

Googling or surfing the Internet can always give you new and unpredicted results. One of the biggest ambitions of futurists is that their most needed links be put together on just one page. Fortunately this has been done through the nice effort of Future Files' author at this page:

http://www.futuretrendsbook.com/sources/

This is a list of sources, links and reading for most of the significant statistics and ‘facts’ quoted in the book. The list is not totally comprehensive or foolproof but it should point you in the right direction if you want to track down any original sources.

If you can’t find something it’s probably because there isn’t a web link available or that the link is to a password protected site. Anyway, take a while to view this page and I'm sure you would find it helpful.

9. Be Alert with Futuristic Events

The World Future Society will hold its annual conference at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts, July 8–10, 2010. The meeting will offer a wealth of sessions on technology, health, governance, values, education, societal trends, business, environment, and more. Conference discussions, workshops, and informal conversations will enable you and other participants to exchange ideas, increase your knowledge about the future, and share insights.

At least for listening talks we futurists usually love to attend such events. If it is not possible for you to attend the conference just follow its news and reports that will be available through http://www.wfs.org and other futurist websites.

10. A Non-Futuristic Method Can Be a Matter of Attention

You should be always open to unpredicted opportunities. Some of these opportunities can be made by the scientific methods applied by scientists who may not be essentially futurists. A real case can be interesting in this regard. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist, professor at New York University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he specializes in international relations, foreign policy, and nation building. He is also one of the authors of the selectorate theory, and is also the director of New York University's Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.

He has founded a company, Mesquita & Roundell that specializes in making political and foreign-policy forecasts using an unpublished and proprietary computer model based on game theory and rational choice theory.

He was featured as the primary subject in a documentary on the History Channel in December 2008. The show, titled Next Nostradamus, details how Bueno de Mesquita uses computer algorithms to attempt to predict future world events.

11. Enjoy an Independent Futuristic Thinking

Another important point that I think should be reminded about becoming an active futurist, is the joy of independent thinking. Thinking about the futures requires a personal awareness at the first step. While we are engaged too much with our daily and usual activities (even apparently scientific ones), how can we really think more than today, for tomorrow? Most of the times, people are not conscious with their own personal futuristic abilities and capacities. This is that they refer to others' perspectives and thoughts on futures or imitate great thinkers' ideas. Normally such persons disregard their own preferred ideas on futures or try to assimilate their thoughts to others' opinions.

They do not know how enjoyable the felling of independent thinking can be. They may have a great deal of experience in studying futures studies great works (articles & books), but they rarely have personal knowledge on their own pattern of futuristic thinking. The reality is that every one has his or her own pattern of thinking when he or she thinks about future. They may never elaborate their ideas on the most personal aspects of life such as life style, marriage, intimacies, job and etc. These kinds of people usually use other well-known persons' phrases and words when they want to talk about their lives.

So what should we do if we want to keep powerful our competency among different competitors who are all offering futuristic items? I think the answer is laid in the first sentence of this note: personal awareness. Through personal awareness we recognize our inherent abilities. When we know our own futuristic capacities, we will put our efforts in the line of duty and making them more fruitful. The tree of our futuristic thinking can bear new fruits even kinds that we may have never known before. Harvesting new fruits from the tree of personal futuristic thinking changes our past imitated behavior into a new one that can be called independent futuristic thinking. The independent futuristic thinking is a way towards innovation in the field of futures studies and also an enjoyable experience. Try it and let's have a new world of new branded futuristic ideas and opinions.

12. Inspire Yourself with Ancient Myths

Studying mythological literature and reviewing ancient myths can be very helpful. Of course, if we might not be trapped in the same bicameral thoughts and attitudes. Rather, re-determine those factors they were searching for and find ways to reach them in our contemporary world. A bicameral mind just as what has been described by Julian Jaynes[1] is the one confronting with the world and nature and at the same time carrying past thoughts. Such a mind may not be able to process freely and directly its own received data trough five faculties of perception. A bicameral mind is always under the shadow of other persons' perceptions which are not belonged to it and it has accepted them intentionally or unintentionally as a part of its own understandings and inputs.

One of the most significant and ancient mythical literatures remained from very old times is Gilgamesh that is from Mesopotamia and may be regarded as a masterpiece made by Sumerian civilization. Historic evidences show that Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Orok and the son of Lougalbanda who ruled Sumerian people (after Noah's great flood) over 125 years.

The myth tells us that Gilgamesh was a tyrant king and also an athlete. He was a semi heavenly filled with gods and human's characters. The story begins with Gilgamesh's works and victories introducing him a great man in the fields of science and wisdom. He could forecast storms. The death of his intimate friend Enkido disturbed him very much and Gilgamesh went on a long and hard trip to find eternity. Then he returns tiredly and hopelessly writing his travel story on clayey tablets.

Gilgamesh's efforts for finding the secret of life and his arrival before the gate of darkness, talking to guardians and walking within the valleys of darkness are vivid signs of this long ambition.

If we confront with the idea of "how to eternize human" in Gilgamesh epic, the same idea can be found in the exhaustless efforts of genetics scientists and physicians who are trying to prolong humans lives and ages trough conquering diseases such as cancer and etc.. The hero of Gilgamesh epic is not human but the gods of nature appeared in a man. In our modern era we may also find scientists who do godly activities by manipulating genetic characteristics and properties within living cells.

 13. Learn from Surprises and Wild Cards

Caring about surprises and wild cards specially undesired futures can provide new opportunities of indirect learning for you. Recent massive earthquake in Haiti showed a great sign of poor care about undesired collective futures. News and reports released from this baled country show that there is no coalition relief force in this country. Then the question is: "Who should care about collective futures?"

There are some kinds of desired and undesired futures making collective impressions on the situation of all people around the world. Natural calamities are regarded as remarkable kinds of such futures. While a huge volume of aid shipments arrived in Port-au-Prince, lack of coordination among relief groups caused a vivid inefficiency in rescuing the victims. Think about a similar situation caused by a military conflict or war. Should we see no cooperation with similar depth again?

Thanks to so-called US led coalition against terrorism; there is always a significant military cooperation and preparedness among coalition forces, but what about a natural disaster?

The natural and governmental potential of Haiti was not enough proper to response the accident effectively, but what about US and allied countries' capabilities? The reality is that we are always ready for war but not for relief and rescue missions. The lack of comprehensive planning and communication among those nations who pioneered in helping Haitians was vivid and sensible.

14. Remember Ten Commandments on Futures Studies

Last year I established a "ten commandments" statement for the futurists. This can be also a customary task in Futures Studies and every futurist may present his or her own mind priorities or concerns in the format of Ten Commandments. The main goal of providing such commandments or scientific and ethical rules is not limiting the scope of thinking for the futurists, but showing useful hints which may help them in having fruitful thoughts on futures. So, I offer following commandments humbly to all of those guys who are interested in Futures Studies or care about the future, hoping that they may help them in better futuring:  

1. Never regard your predictions as "imminent".

2. You need a change before making any future.

3. Future problems can be solved in methods different from those ways in which they are created.

4. Get sure with the truthfulness of your data and information before making any prediction.

5. You are not the only one who cares about the future.

6. Prediction is different from prophesy.

7. Never try to represent futuristic concepts to reactionist persons.

8. If you can not accept other futurists' thoughts, at least respect them.

9. Membership at futurist associations is good for co-thinking and nothing more.

10. Consider futurology as a way of learning about the future.

 I hope that these tips and suggestions may help or encourage you to become an active futurist.