Futurists are our future

So what separates a futurist from a basement-dwelling “theorist” who foretells the enslavement of humanity by robots next year? Well, a lot of credibility, study and hygiene, for starters.

Kyle Lamothe, Staff

Predictions, predictions, predictions — they are being poured onto us from everywhere in our hyper-information world. Flip on the crap-box boob-tube and see how many forecasts are out there for your viewing enjoyment: meteorologists telling us if it might rain tomorrow, business experts telling us to “buy” or “sell.” Hell, if it’s late at night you might even be able to catch some fortune-telling.

Selling us insight into what hasn’t happened yet is a huge business that is far from tarot card readers on the street or psychics that can somehow see into our souls through a 1-900 number connection. In the past, science-fiction novels and cartoons like The Jetsons showed us our lives plus 100 years; now, experts who study the future academically, making predictions for a living, are the people businesses and governments and the rest of us rely on for a window into what could happen.

We call these people futurologists, futurists, future studies professors and a host of other titles. But there are also people who work with the future from almost every discipline but don’t put “future” on their business cards, possibly because the public expects someone who puts that word in their title to put a foot in their mouth. Areas including economics, engineering, business, history, mathematics, psychology, physics, sociology, biology and theology use tools of futurology — you or your professor might even be one.

What the hell is a futurist?

So what separates a futurist from a basement-dwelling “theorist” who foretells the enslavement of humanity by robots next year? Well, a lot of credibility, study and hygiene, for starters. Foresight International, an organization that exists to “help create and sustain” the study of the future, defines a futurist as: “. . . someone who has learned how to study the future and how to use this knowledge to enable others to identify options and choices now.”

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “So, I can just read a science fiction book and then start to wear a Star Trek uniform and a tin foil hat and start telling people when the world’s going to end?” Well, if you want to collect spare change outside a gas station then go ahead, but Foresight International says that “you cannot become a futurist simply by calling yourself one.” Darn.

Dr Lynn Burton of Simon Fraser University is probably the only professor in Canada who teaches courses specifically on the study of the future. She said that talking about what future studies isn’t is included in the discipline:

“Future studies is not divination; it’s not will of the gods. It’s trying to apply scientific method to an area where really there are no facts — you’re extrapolating from what you see in the present. You learn from the past and you plan for the future,” she said.

Burton explained that studying the future entails working with the methodologies that have already been established, and taking part in the futurology community to develop an understanding of what will, might or could happen in the future, depending on what we do now.

So what does it take to be accepted into the futurology community?

To Foresight International, becoming a futurist includes several activities: mastering an area of futures literature, writing futures literature, understanding one of the ways of studying the future, taking a course in futures studies, teaching futurist skills, attending futures conferences, being involved in a social innovation, helping the field, talking about future studies and “. . . listening to ‘other voices’ and bringing them into the global futures conversation.”

The history of the future

Science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and H.G. Wells are considered to be early futurists, but Clarke didn’t write 2001: A Space Odyssey after taking a course on the future. Had he lived in his future/our present, he could have studied a methodology as to why the HAL 9000 wanted to kill those futurenauts.

In fact, there are 19 universities in the world where you can receive a degree in the study of what hasn’t happened yet. There are also 24 schools where you can take a course or two in the study of the future, including Simon Fraser University in B.C..

It is tough to place a date on when the study of the future became academic. Some trace roots to the early 20th century in the eastern European countries and the Soviet Union. There, public policy foresight for developing the communist nations was needed to decide where to place resources and when the rest of the world would jump on the “communist revolution” bandwagon.

After WWII, scholars in the rest of Europe and North America started looking not just backwards and at the present, but forward. Philosophers, political scientists, economists, scientists and others were needed to look at the problems of rebuilding the European continent. The future of the West was uncertain, so the field developed to give a framework of what could potentially happen, to act as goals and guides, and also to dream about what could come out of it all.

Burton explained that the specific field of futures studies started showing up in universities about 25 years ago, and despite the lack of universities in Canada with futurology on the curriculum, it is more prevalent than you might expect.

“It’s popular, but it’s disguised and in different areas. It’s in public policy, it’s in economics, it’s in business, it’s in science . . . it’s a very common thing in the university now. So it’s imbedded in different areas,” she said.

One reason why we might not hear about futurology as much as it deserves is because the field of “future studies” can also go by other names, such as “applied foresight.”.

“Futurists may have, as a group of people, had their halos tarnished . . . [by] getting confused with diviners or with people who have made predictions that didn’t come true and all of these kinds of things. In terms of the legitimate academic study, it’s an area that has to work hard for people to understand what it’s all about . . . . [The name shift] is a legitimizing thing, but also a recognition that the study has changed over the years, and when we talk about applied foresight, we are talking about using it within a context,” Burton explained.

Futurist skillz

Burton teaches a course called Introduction to the Study of the Future. She explained what tools and skills the students learn about:

“I teach [students] how to develop issues papers to analyse critical issues . . . [useful] if you are working for a company or you’re working for government and you have a particular issue. [They learn] how to develop alternative scenarios and overlay the possible, probable and preferable and then make recommendations, but to do it in a succinct way that a very busy prime minister could listen to.”

Another large part of the education is learning how to use various kinds of methodologies, such as the Delphi method and scanning. The Delphi method is a system of developing consensus where a futurist would send out a questionnaire to some carefully selected experts in a particular field, asking them when they think particular advances will take place.

After the results are tabulated, they are sent back to the experts, who are able to look at the range of answers anonymously and change their predictions if they would like. It is thought that after this second round, the ranges zero in on a more correct timeline and predictions can be made.

Burton also explained that futurists look at the world through four Ps, and that when it comes to projections, there are people who lean every which way. The first P is what would be a preferable future, which is where you would like things to go. Next is the probable future, which entails looking at current and past trends and projecting that into what will happen if the current trends continue. Then you look at the possible future, which can be anything from a way-out, utopian or dystopian idea to a very reasonable one. Finally, the first three are overlaid and a plausible future emerges:

“It is something that you can afford to do, something that is desirable, that people will buy into, and something that is a reasonable way to go given all that you know. And you could apply these Ps in any way that you would like,” said Burton.

Then you tie it all together in a nice, little, down-to-earth package: “Of course, the difference between the preferable and the probable is the actions you take, so then you define your actions between your probable and your preferable, and you see what it is you can do to achieve your preferable.”

And that, kids, is how policy is made.

Where are all these futurists?

Where don’t they play a role might be a better question. Large businesses can choose either to employ futurists on staff or to work with large consulting companies who can give them an idea of where their industry is going so they can be ready to capitalize on what’s ahead.

Then there are those in government who work on predicting foreign affairs, planning education, designing roads to service future populations and preparing for how people will be dying in 20 years. Then there are the security concerns, such as to how to prepare for “wild-card” events like the World Trade Centre attack or Hurricane Katrina.

In any case, these forward lookers, these future thinkers, these human telescopes of tomorrow are scattered everywhere, helping society move into a preferable tomorrow. Of course, the farther ahead you look, the less accurate the predictions get (I was promised flying cars and I expect some flying cars), but letting humanity run with its collective eyes closed into the future would probably take us right off a cliff — maybe futurology is our future.