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Change and the future
326
Editorial
Change and the future
In a period of rapid change the wise will seek to pause for reflection-on the forces propelling change, on the nature of change itself, and on one’s own relation to it. The recent editorial changes on Futures have motivated us to pause and take soundings amongst the futures community; subsequent discussions are already providing evidence of a range of challenges and opportunities which both lie ahead and which are already present, not only for this journal but for the futures field as a whole. Scientific and technological advances can undoubtedly widen the range of possible futures, yet they may also foreclose options through the political, economic and social forces operating on (or appropriating) what such advances make possible. The ‘human dimension’ has not always been present in forecasting. The current dearth of forecasts relating to individual technologies, as compared to the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s (excepting of course those from the research consultancies which tend to restrict themselves to a given industrial structure, thus catering to the needs of their clients) may derive from the complexity of the global environment in which science and technology are not simply neutral ‘tools’. Straightforward reviews of the state-of-the-art of a given technology and identification of current trends, followed by a projection based on trend extrapolation, may provide useful indicators of where an industry or an economy might end up and what science and technology might make life like in the future. Yet the numerous critiques of works such as The Limits to Growth, and indeed contemporary criticism of such notions as a future ‘information society’ or ‘biotechnology society’ through straightforward projections of current blueskies research, point to the importance of locating technological forecasting in the broader social context. The danger of course is that futures thinking then becomes a tool of the present rather than a pointer to the future. Riccardo Petrella’s comments on the first five years of the FAST programme, of which he is the head, may be taken as a demonstration of the extent to which forecasting itself is not a ‘neutral’ activity. According to Petrella, FAST has not been concerned to develop a methodology for forecasting and has not sought to make a contribution to forecasting techniques or methods. There is thus no ‘Brussels method’ as there is a Delphi method or a ‘Monte Carlo method!‘. Rather, the first five years of FAST have witnessed the development of an esprit -the introduction of an awareness of social, political and cultural considerations. Petrella states that, “The aim is not to predict the future, but to identify options for action’ ’ . Perhaps the deliberate exclusion of predictive intent derives from FAST’s location within a directorate of the European Commission-FAST is thus profoundly susceptible to the economic and political context in which the programme is operating. Yet a dynamic of wider significance may well be at work, manifest in the apparent switch (somewhat surprisingly at a time when technological and industrial change seems to be occurring rapidly) from general long-
FUTURES October 1983
Editorial
327
range ways of thinking and a preoccupation with the long-term future to restricted, short-term, goal-oriented planning. Leaving aside for now the deeper consideration that such a phenomenon may well derive from the profoundly unsettling (at political, sociocultural and psychusocial levels) nature of rapid technological and industrial change and its accompanying ruptures and dislocations in established patterns of life, there does seem a clear scepticism and perhaps even cynicism concerning long-term futures thinking and its ability to be of practical value. A way out of this has been suggested by Christopher Jones, who contends that “We should perhaps drop the naive idea that the future is to be predicted. It is something to be chosen, on the basis of informed discussion, and not on the basis of attempts to extrapolate the present, or else to ‘normatively’ induce, or given in to, utopian or dystopian wishes. ’ ’ This does not mean that the futures-oriented work of the late 1960s and early 1970s now retains little of value, despite critics’ dismissal of much of it as idealistic and methodologically unsound. Rather the identification and projection of a vast range of concerns has entered into the collective consciousness, even though there has been a subsequent ‘splintering’ of futures concerns into discrete issue areas or policy foci. Jay Gershuny has provocatively argued (albeit somewhat whimsically) that futures research itself is influenced by a long-wave cycle, and that the futures community now finds itself subject to the forces accompanying the trough of the cycle. We should of course not simply await a forthcoming upturn! How are we to react? We must initially try to understand fully the nature of the changes that are occurring-therein lie the challenges and the opportunities. Only from this source can be defined the likely major questions concerning our futures, the ones with which futures researchers should be concerned. We may here be able to extend the boundaries of the current futures debate. In this spirit, many of the themes and issues raised here will be appraised in a series of specially commissioned editorials, thereby providing a focus for defining and undertaking the substantive and methodological work ahead.
FUTURES October 1993
Editorial
Change and the future
In a period of rapid change the wise will seek to pause for reflection-on the forces propelling change, on the nature of change itself, and on one’s own relation to it. The recent editorial changes on Futures have motivated us to pause and take soundings amongst the futures community; subsequent discussions are already providing evidence of a range of challenges and opportunities which both lie ahead and which are already present, not only for this journal but for the futures field as a whole. Scientific and technological advances can undoubtedly widen the range of possible futures, yet they may also foreclose options through the political, economic and social forces operating on (or appropriating) what such advances make possible. The ‘human dimension’ has not always been present in forecasting. The current dearth of forecasts relating to individual technologies, as compared to the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s (excepting of course those from the research consultancies which tend to restrict themselves to a given industrial structure, thus catering to the needs of their clients) may derive from the complexity of the global environment in which science and technology are not simply neutral ‘tools’. Straightforward reviews of the state-of-the-art of a given technology and identification of current trends, followed by a projection based on trend extrapolation, may provide useful indicators of where an industry or an economy might end up and what science and technology might make life like in the future. Yet the numerous critiques of works such as The Limits to Growth, and indeed contemporary criticism of such notions as a future ‘information society’ or ‘biotechnology society’ through straightforward projections of current blueskies research, point to the importance of locating technological forecasting in the broader social context. The danger of course is that futures thinking then becomes a tool of the present rather than a pointer to the future. Riccardo Petrella’s comments on the first five years of the FAST programme, of which he is the head, may be taken as a demonstration of the extent to which forecasting itself is not a ‘neutral’ activity. According to Petrella, FAST has not been concerned to develop a methodology for forecasting and has not sought to make a contribution to forecasting techniques or methods. There is thus no ‘Brussels method’ as there is a Delphi method or a ‘Monte Carlo method!‘. Rather, the first five years of FAST have witnessed the development of an esprit -the introduction of an awareness of social, political and cultural considerations. Petrella states that, “The aim is not to predict the future, but to identify options for action’ ’ . Perhaps the deliberate exclusion of predictive intent derives from FAST’s location within a directorate of the European Commission-FAST is thus profoundly susceptible to the economic and political context in which the programme is operating. Yet a dynamic of wider significance may well be at work, manifest in the apparent switch (somewhat surprisingly at a time when technological and industrial change seems to be occurring rapidly) from general long-
FUTURES October 1983
Editorial
327
range ways of thinking and a preoccupation with the long-term future to restricted, short-term, goal-oriented planning. Leaving aside for now the deeper consideration that such a phenomenon may well derive from the profoundly unsettling (at political, sociocultural and psychusocial levels) nature of rapid technological and industrial change and its accompanying ruptures and dislocations in established patterns of life, there does seem a clear scepticism and perhaps even cynicism concerning long-term futures thinking and its ability to be of practical value. A way out of this has been suggested by Christopher Jones, who contends that “We should perhaps drop the naive idea that the future is to be predicted. It is something to be chosen, on the basis of informed discussion, and not on the basis of attempts to extrapolate the present, or else to ‘normatively’ induce, or given in to, utopian or dystopian wishes. ’ ’ This does not mean that the futures-oriented work of the late 1960s and early 1970s now retains little of value, despite critics’ dismissal of much of it as idealistic and methodologically unsound. Rather the identification and projection of a vast range of concerns has entered into the collective consciousness, even though there has been a subsequent ‘splintering’ of futures concerns into discrete issue areas or policy foci. Jay Gershuny has provocatively argued (albeit somewhat whimsically) that futures research itself is influenced by a long-wave cycle, and that the futures community now finds itself subject to the forces accompanying the trough of the cycle. We should of course not simply await a forthcoming upturn! How are we to react? We must initially try to understand fully the nature of the changes that are occurring-therein lie the challenges and the opportunities. Only from this source can be defined the likely major questions concerning our futures, the ones with which futures researchers should be concerned. We may here be able to extend the boundaries of the current futures debate. In this spirit, many of the themes and issues raised here will be appraised in a series of specially commissioned editorials, thereby providing a focus for defining and undertaking the substantive and methodological work ahead.
FUTURES October 1993