The Future Thinker’s Dilemma

“The Official Future” tells us to “think exponentially, act incrementally,” beckoning us to utilize foresight in service of the ever-expanding present systems of quantifying, micro-analyzing, extracting, consuming, and automating. This way of futuring is at the heart of Epistemic Uncertainty. “The Emergent Future” instead challenges us to “ think t... See more

our thinking and acting toward the future must challenge the systems that would seek to short-circuit the very future in which we hope to prosper. As author and philosopher Bonnitta Roy would say, we must “dream ourselves awake.”

Why are we futuring to find solutions to the problems created by extrapolative, exponential, and extractive systems, when we should be futuring to imagine emerging novelty and construct transformative realities that would allow us to elevate our human, planetary, and universal experience above and beyond those systems?

Why are we futuring to find solutions to the problems created by extrapolative, exponential, and extractive systems, when we should be futuring to imagine emerging novelty and construct transformative realities that would allow us to elevate our human, planetary, and universal experience above and beyond those systems?

“The Official Future” tells us to “think exponentially, act incrementally,” beckoning us to utilize foresight in service of the ever-expanding present systems of quantifying, micro-analyzing, extracting, consuming, and automating. This way of futuring is at the heart of Epistemic Uncertainty. “The Emergent Future” instead challenges us to “ think t... See more

Here is the problem: The future visions that are put out there into the world are either commonplace, boring, meaningless, (corporate) agenda-driven, uninspiring, or all of the above together.

The reason for that, in my opinion, is that our minds are stuck in old ideologies, old systems, and old narratives, which prevents us from thinking outside th

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