Futures thinking
Imagination
Futures thinking
When the mind searches for the future, it sees the past.
Sohail Inayatullah • Foresight in Challenging Environments * Journal of Futures Studies
Those of us who recognize that we’ve been here before are the ones who have to call attention to where we are heading.
Digital feedback loops are helping us see that our media, technology, culture, economy, and natural world all have at least as much of a cyclical character as a linear one.
It’s not a matter of banishing linearity and progress
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figure of merit
the imagination is a neurological reality, that it is lodged in specific parts of the brain, that it consists of an identifiable set of components and processes, that these components and processes have adaptive functions, and that in fulfilling its functions imagination has been a major causal factor in making Homo sapiens the dominant species on... See more
Joseph Carroll • Imagination, the Brain’s Default Mode Network, and Imaginative Verbal Artifacts
Novel technologies like artificial intelligence or neurotechnology are expected to have social implications in the future. As they are in the early stages of development, it is challenging to identify potential negative impacts that they might have on society. Typically, assessing these effects relies on experts, and while this is essential, there... See more
On The Social Complexity of Neurotechnology: Designing A Futures Workshop For The Exploration Of More Just Alternative Futures * Journal of Futures Studies
While it’s tempting to play with scenario planning and leave it at the implications, we must not hide behind the data, deck or titles of our roles, protecting us from the vulnerability of getting out there and doing the messy work: making the futures we wish to see.
Matt Klein • Foresight as Activism: Researching vs. Making Culture
Unlike humans, AI can’t flexibly navigate changing environments yet because it does not have a notion of its “self” and what it can do with it.
Rachel Layne • How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change
We can use the shadow imagination as a mechanism for uncovering our future power. When we’re introduced to how bad things could get, we’re at a choice point. We can turn away, we can dive into the waters of the worst-case scenario and allow them to drown us, or we can touch the suffering that’s possible and remind ourselves of our own abilities. We... See more
How to Embrace Shadow Futures with Mindfulness
Just like other iconic duos you already know — Simon & Garfunkel, Kirk & Spock, Sherlock & Watson — strategy and foresight are better together, because they amplify what each element could achieve alone. Strategy without foresight makes companies vulnerable to outside disruption. Foresight without strategy renders scenarios unactionable. Each on... See more