Created 27/11/2011 9:45:03 AM

Imaging the future can serve as a social process (Slaughter, 1991). In this process the main purpose of considering images of futures, is not to predict what will happen, nor even to select from alternatives. It is to distinguish the wider ground from which images are constituted so as to take an active part both in creating and nurturing those which seem worthwhile.

If we consider some of the major works of antiquity-the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and Persepolis-it is evident that they would never have been built without a strong guiding image. According to Slaughter (1991), the right image can act as a cultural force to bring new projects to fruition.

In our modern world, we live longer, travel further, and know more than ever before, but the social capacity to imagine new and different futures has clearly declined. What has happened to us? We need to initiate a new social process whereby people are encouraged to participate in imagining the kinds of futures they would like to live in. We need to manage social innovations of many kinds within a 'critical' framework of futures studies (Ramos, 2003).

A historical review (Morgan, 2002) shows that for a period of time utopian and progressive futures images increasingly gained control of the social imagination, spurred on by the industrial revolution and actual scientific inventions and discoveries. Morgan (2002) believes that the progressive image of the future contains the idea of continuous and perpetual social change that supposedly 'progresses' due to developments in science, technology and social organization.

What is (or can be) the current focus of future imaging in our contemporary civilization and how will it be in the near future?

References:

Morgan, D. (2002). Images of the future: a historical perspective, Futures, 34, pp. 883–893.

Ramos, J. M. (2003). The Emergence of Critical Futures, in From critique to cultural recovery. Hawthorn, Australia: AFI Monograph Series, vol. 2. http://foresightinternational.com.au/catalogue/resources/Emergence_Critical_Futures.pdf

Slaughter, R. (1991). Changing Images of Futures in the 20^th Century, Futures, June 1991, pp. 499- 515.