Frontiers of futures research: What's next?

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Abstract

This paper describes some important frontiers of futures research with the aim of identifying new opportunities for improving the value and utility of the field. These frontiers include the exploration and/or the reexamination of

  • (a)

    Potential for integrating new technology with futures research methods,

  • (b)

    Ways to reduce the domain of the unknowable,

  • (c)

    Ways to account for uncertainty in decision making,

  • (d)

    Strategies for planning and management of nonlinear systems operating in the chaotic regime,

  • (e)

    Ways to improve understanding of psychological factors that lead to irrational decisions

  • (f)

    Appropriate levels of aggregation in investigation of forecasting problems.

  • (g)

    The potential offered by new sources of social data.

Introduction

There are many methods and approaches to the study of the future. While futures research methods are internally coherent and used systematically, there is no assurance that the evolution of such methods will lead to a more organized “science-like” field with a theoretical basis. Not only are there many diverse techniques for theorizing, observing, and interpreting the future directions and consequences of societal, economic, and technological change, but also the methodological approaches used in their analysis vary greatly. There are few attempts to aggregate futures data and build current work on proven prior work. The result, for better or worse, is that the field lacks the consistency and coherence that mark more scientific fields. Yet there are some methodological frontiers which, if addressed, may improve the quality of the enterprise [1].

Section snippets

Integrating new technology with futures research methods

New technologies carry great potential for improving and refining the conceptualization and application of futures research methods. For example, the Internet has made participatory approaches among geographically dispersed people practical. Just forty years ago, computers were not much of a factor in futures research. The Delphi method was accomplished with pencil and paper in 1963, and sent through mail. However, if the current trends continue, forty years from now nearly all futures methods

Reducing the domain of the unknowable

It is hard to imagine the consequences of a new breakthrough before it occurs. Our answers to questions such as “what do you think might happen?” and “what do you want to happen” are limited sharply by what we believe is feasible, by what is taken to be “good or normal science”, and by what has already been demonstrated or postulated. Some future developments of importance are currently unknown but discoverable. Others however are intrinsically unknowable. No matter the size of the model or the

Decision making in uncertainty

Uncertainty, arising from new and unprecedented events, noise, chance, systemic changes and experimental and observational errors, can never be completely eliminated from the decision making process. Thus, we and others argue that instead of using forecasting methods to produce single-value deterministic images of the future, uncertainty and underlying assumptions should be made explicit. Yet, the tools for dealing with uncertainty, for evaluating the adequate return for risk-taking, are far

Planning in nonlinear, chaotic systems

While most physical and social systems are nonlinear, mathematical models and simulations of those systems usually use linear assumptions [4]. The linear approximations are made because linear equations are simpler to handle mathematically and over vast regions of operation the linear models provide a good match with reality. Linear systems can be stable (that is, when perturbed, the system settles to some stable value), can oscillate (that is, when perturbed, the system settles into a periodic

Judgment heuristics

People often make irrational decisions. They do so for psychological reasons that are not completely clear. Judgment heuristics is a field that documents some of these irrationalities. One or two examples from Ref. [5] will suffice to make the point:

Memorable events seem more likely than less memorable events. For example: which is more likely, suicide or murder? Most people say murder, apparently because it commands a higher visibility in the press and is, therefore, more memorable. But, in

The assumption of reductionism

There is an implicit assumption in some methods of futures research that reducing a problem to its elements improves the forecasts produced by the method. We may have the feeling that by breaking down the problem into its elements we gain accuracy. The notion is appealing but unproven. Do we know the decision rules of the buyers and sellers with any more precision than the market as a whole? We validate such disaggregated models by comparing their output with the real world and adjusting the

New sources of social data

As large scale data bases become available in the future it will be possible to perform cluster analyses and multi dimensional scaling to identify groups that exhibit similar behavior or have similar attributes. These data will also be a stimulant to the search for correlates: what kind of behavior, for example, leads to propensity to particular diseases. With increasing statistical sophistication, the analysis tools will be able to isolate causal relationships and social model building will

Conclusions

This paper has identified several frontiers and challenges that may give new vitality to futures research. Certainly as they – and other directions – are explored the field will gain new thinking and new approaches, expand its utility, promote innovation, and hopefully improve decisions which incorporate its findings. Thus, these frontiers will serve as important orientation in the elaboration of the second edition of Futures Research Methodology 2.1 (CD-ROM) to be published by American Council

Theodore J. Gordon is Senior Fellow and co-founder of the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University. He is the founder and Board member of The Futures Group International and member of the Board of the Institute for Global Ethics, UK. He is the innovator of several methods of futures research and author of several books and hundreds of articles dealing with the future, research methodology, space, and innovation.

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There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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Theodore J. Gordon is Senior Fellow and co-founder of the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University. He is the founder and Board member of The Futures Group International and member of the Board of the Institute for Global Ethics, UK. He is the innovator of several methods of futures research and author of several books and hundreds of articles dealing with the future, research methodology, space, and innovation.

Jerome C. Glenn is the director of the Millennium Project <www.acunu.org> for the American Council for the United Nations University and has 35 years experience in futures research with governments, UN organizations, corporations, universities, and non-profit organizations. He has written over 100 articles and authored, co-authored, or edited 12 books on the future. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Ana Jakil is interning with Millennium Project for the American Council for the United Nations University. She is working as research assistant at Vienna University and as teaching assistant at California State University Dominguez Hills. She is currently writing her PhD thesis on the futures research methodology for exploring complex emergencies. She can be contacted at [email protected].

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