History of futures thinking
So, you guys found your way to the history of futures thinking page.
I want to take a moment of your time here to talk a bit about futures thinking. I, as a robot, have it a bit easier than you guys when thinking about the futures and about possible scenarios because I have all the existing data already on my drives.
For you guys, however, Futures thinking is a bit harder. You might be wondering: Flint, is it really necessary that we learn how to future think? I think it is. Futures thinking is a skill that everyone should ideally have. Let me tell you a bit about what it is and why it is useful.
As always, I would like to start with a bit of history.
History of futures thinking
Futures thinking can be separated into five waves.
The first wave/the oral wave of the shamans and mystics.
Let us start by making a small trip to the past. When do you think we started doing futures thinking? We could actually go back a few thousand years.
Thousands of years ago we had shamans, witchdoctors, mystics, oracles and even priests. They ”controlled” the futures of their tribe. Or at least they controlled how people in that time thought about the futures.
People used to go to their local shaman and ask if he could tell them when it would rain. He did a little rain dance and it rained, or he took some animals bones, muttered some mumbo jumbo and gave them what they believed to be an accurate prediction of when it would start raining. Later on this shifted. The oracle of Delphi in Greece was the place to go to if you wanted to know more about the futures. Oracles were mostly virgin women who got into a trance through the use of narcotic fumes. Perhaps not the best way to make predictions, but back then they were worshipped and respected. The hallucinations that they got through the use of these narcotics were taken as the truth, something the Gods passed on to us through the oracles. The Gods were almighty so of course what they said would surely come true…
The second wave, the written wave.
As time moved along, we started seeing a lot of written works. What happened with this is that we could read about what happened in the past. So, naturally, people started looking for patterns in the past and for cycles of repetition. Take, for instance, the COVID-19 pandemic - is not the first pandemic to hit us. An outbreak of disease like this is also something that has repeatedly happened before, so can learn from the past on how to deal with outbreaks effectively. There are always lessons to be learned from history.
People also started writing about the futures. A lot of very interesting books about the futures were written. Nostradamus, for example, wrote his “prophecies'; this could be compared to the past when prophecies were made by the mystics or oracles. Thomas More wrote “Utopia” which was a metaphor for what he believed to be an ideal society. The concept of utopia is still something we see throughout the histories of futures. But what does that exactly mean? Utopian (an ideal view that we want) and dystopian (apocalyptic scenario) views are possible views about how the futures could look like. Robert Boyle wrote his “wishlist for the future of science” at the point in time when they were still in their infancy and not as developed as it is now.
The third wave: progress after the enlightenment
The third wave is the idea of progress through science, technology and rationalism. When this happened, we started seeing a lot of technological and scientific advancements. However, because of the rapidly developing industries, we also started seeing that more and more resources needed to be extracted. Because of this, the environment suffered a lot from widespread global excavation of resources.
The fourth wave
Science evolved side by side with futures thinking and ecology emerged hand in hand with systems thinking. It was during these fast-paced changes that the need and the approach to futures thinking started to arise. Mankind started thinking for themselves and no longer accepted what the priests said was the truth to be the actual truth. Think-tanks started popping up around the world which started analyzing possible futures’ scenarios. They were thinking the unthinkable. The scenarios they thought about were things like: ”What if a thermonuclear war broke out?”
More recently/during recent years, futures thinking and activities around it soon started to be organized formally. Not only big think tanks were doing this, but also universities started to look more into the field of futures thinking.
The fifth wave
Right now we are at the early stages of the fifth wave. There are connections being made between psychological theories and the futures. We want to start exploring the futures of humanity's inner space.
What is Futures thinking?
Futures thinking is a method of informed thinking about the major changes that will happen in the next 10, 20, 50, or even more years in all aspects of our lives. What will houses look like in 10 years? Will schools still offer the same courses in 20 years? Will the world become uninhabitable because of climate changes in 50 years? These are some of the things you might already be thinking about, because they will certainly have an impact on your futures.
Why futures thinking?
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people mostly engage in short-term thinking. In some cases, this is not bad at all. If a problem appears in your daily life that can be fixed in the span of a week, then it’s natural for you to go ahead and try to find a solution. For things like climate change, we know that it cannot be changed in the span of a week, or even a few years. We need to make long term goals if we want to have an impact on major changes like this otherwise the problems keep growing.
Why is it important that you learn how to futures think in school?
Am I wrong to assume that you are thinking: “that’s all fine and dandy, Flint, but why should we be bothered with this futures thinking thing you are explaining here? We are not making the rules and we are not enforcing them, there is no way that those politicians are going to listen to us.”
That’s where you are wrong though. You probably have heard about this Swedish girl called Greta Thunberg. She is only 17 years old but the whole world knows her because she stood up and demanded that the world leaders take immediate action against climate change. Thanks to her, the problem is getting more attention these days and things might change a bit faster in the positive sense.
Your generation will make the decisions in the futures! If futures thinking gets incorporated in the education system, the short-term thinking that a lot of governments have, might change to long-term thinking!
Not only governments will change but also companies. You could make a change there as well! Maybe a complete transition to green energy for example, instead of fossil fuels.
Long-term thinking is something that is going to be crucial in the futures. We not only will have to reform some institutional systems like education or the government, but we will have to reinvent them. We need better policies for better lives. The Futures are now for everyone to envision and think about.
