Futurists (also known asfuturologists,prospectivists,foresight practitioners andhorizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest isfuturology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present, whether that of human society in particular or of life on Earth in general.[1]
The term "futurist" most commonly refers to people who attempt to understand the future, sometimes calledtrend analysis. Futurists include authors, consultants, thinkers, organizational leaders and others who engage ininterdisciplinary andsystems thinking to advise private and public organizations on such matters as diverse globalfads and trends, possiblescenarios,emerging market opportunities, as well asrisk management. A futurist is not an artist in the sense of the art movementfuturism.
TheOxford English Dictionary identifies the earliest use of the termfuturism in English as 1842, to refer, in atheological context, to theChristian eschatological tendency of that time. The next recorded use is the label adopted by theItalian and Russian Futurists, the artistic, literary and political movements of the 1920s and 1930s which sought to reject the past and fervently embrace speed, technology, and often violent change.
There are a number of organizations that specialize in this field including the World Future Society, the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) and the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF).
Visionary writers such asH.G. Wells,Jules Verne andAldous Huxley were not in their day characterized as futurists. The termfuturology in its contemporary sense was first coined in the mid‑1940s by the German ProfessorOssip K. Flechtheim, who proposed a new science of probability. Flechtheim argued that even if systematic forecasting did no more than unveil the subset of statistically highly probable processes of change and charted their advance, it would still be of crucial social value.[2]
In the mid‑1940s the first professional "futurist" consulting institutions likeRAND andSRI began to engage in long-range planning, systematic trend watching, scenario development, and visioning, at first underWorld War II military and government contract and, beginning in the 1950s, for private institutions and corporations. The period from the late 1940s to the mid‑1960s laid the conceptual and methodological foundations of the modernfuturology field.Bertrand de Jouvenel'sThe Art of Conjecture in 1963 andDennis Gabor'sInventing the Future in 1964 are considered key early works, and the first U.S. university course devoted entirely to the future was taught by the lateAlvin Toffler at theNew School in 1966.[3]
Economists have defined the forecasting time range, so an explanation can be offered for predicting when an economic event will occur. Economists are in particular concerned about calculating when arecession oreconomic growth will set in. Futurist writers may not be precise abouttiming. However, futurists tend to engage in deep analysis about the speed of change. Economic forecasting for 5 to 20 years going forward is the middle-range future. 20 to 50 years from now is the long-range future in economic analysis. Futurists are frequently concerned with the middle- and long-range future, while economic planners working for the public or private sector typically publish on the middle-range future as well as the near-range future, which is 1 to 5 years going forward from the time of publication.[4]
More generally, the label includes such disparate lay, professional, and academic groups as visionaries, foresight consultants,corporate strategists, policy analysts, cultural critics, planners,marketers, forecasters, prediction market developers,roadmappers, operations researchers,investment managers,actuaries, and other risk analyzers, and future-oriented individuals educated in every academic discipline, including anthropology,complexity studies,computer science, economics, engineering,urban design,evolutionary biology, history, management, mathematics, philosophy, physical sciences, political science, psychology, sociology,systems theory, technology studies, trend analysis, and other disciplines.
"Futurology"—or "futures studies", futures research, and foresight—can be summarized as being concerned with "three P's and a W", i.e. "possible, probable, and preferable" futures, plus "wildcards", which are low-probability, high-impact events, should they occur. Even with high-profile, probable events, such as the fall of telecommunications costs, the growth of the internet, or the aging demographics of particular countries, there is often significant uncertainty in the rate or continuation of a trend. Thus, a key part of futures analysis is the managing of uncertainty and risk.[5]
Not all futurists engage in the practice offuturology as generally defined. Futurists who engage inpositive science are historically associated with the cult of theFuturism art movement. At the turn of the 20th centuryGiacomo Balla was thrilled at the prospect of machines rendering many daily aspects of traditional labor obsolete, leaving humans with responsibility only for fragmented and repetitive tasks. Key figures in the Futurism art movement progressed to forge a alliance between artists and scientists.[6] And while religious futurists, astrologers, occultists, New Age diviners, etc. use methodologies that include study, none of their personal revelation or belief-based work would fall within a consensus definition of futurology as used in academics or by futures studies professionals.
John McHale, author ofThe Future of the Future, published a "Futures Directory", and directed athink tank called The Centre For Integrative Studies at theState University of New York (SUNY) in 1968.[7] Futurists have startedconsulting groups or earn money as speakers, with examples includingAlvin Toffler,John Naisbitt andPatrick Dixon.Frank Feather is a business speaker that presents himself as a pragmatic futurist. Some futurists have commonalities withscience fiction while some science-fiction writers, such asArthur C. Clarke,[8]Alvin Toffler, andHerman Kahn were merely celebrities who nevertheless were used as credible sources by futurists engaging in Up Wing optimism. Science fiction visions therefore provided policymakers with ideas, which were challenged previously by theenvironmental movement.[9] In the introduction toThe Left Hand of Darkness,Ursula K. Le Guin distinguished futurists from novelists, writing of the study as the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists. In her words, "a novelist's business is lying".
A 2001 survey of 108 futurists[10] found the following shared assumptions:
The term has also been used to refer to popularelectronic music acts who emerged in the late 1970s, such asOrchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark andThe Human League.[11][12]