Social studies of technology show that future economic and social innovations are rarely the outcome of linear processes but involve unpredictable combinations of elements, as elaborated by Arthur in the context of ‘new’ technologies (2013). Similarly, futurist Ray Kurzweil said: ‘most inventions fail not because the R&D department can't get th

We will also see below that it is necessary to distinguish between three kinds of futures: the probable, the possible, and the preferable – distinctions drawn from Wendell Bell (Bell, Wau 1971; see Kicker 2009).

has been shown that time should be viewed as historical, with past and future being deeply intertwined with the present. This notion of time, the A-series, is broadly consistent with that found within the physical sciences.

According to Adam and Groves, futures are told, tamed, traded, transformed, traversed, thought, tended and transcended (2007). Especially significant is trading in futures, which involves a major break in the trajectory taken by societies.

This can be distinguished from the A-series, which involves the relationships of ‘past-to-present-to-future’.

is only if a potential innovation comes to be successfully inserted within specific social practices that it will become core as people's lives get reorganized around it. Innovations thus presuppose transformations in underlying social practices. New practices can be difficult to engender by hierarchical policy imposition or by commercial advertisi

the effort to solve one problem reveals or creates other problems; solutions depend on how each issue is framed, and vice versa; different stakeholders have radically different frames for understanding what actually is the problem and the solution; the constraints that the problem is subject to and the resources needed to solve it change over time;

Most people are unaware of the ‘systemness’ of their daily practices and how they ‘bear’ systems as they go about their weekly shop or commute or daily shower or participation in a cultural event. People can be said to ‘bear’ such system relations; – this notion generalizing Marx's thesis that people are Träger (bearers) of class relations and not

The future may present a promissory note that helps to transform the present in the direction of progress