Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is future studies or futurology 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.
Definition
Past futurists and the emergence of the term The term "futurist" most commonly refers to people who attempt to understand the future, sometimes called trend analysis. Futurists include authors, consultants, thinkers, organizational leaders and others who engage in interdisciplinary and systems thinking to advise private and public organizations on such matters as diverse global fads and trends, possible scenarios, emerging market opportunities, as well as risk management. A futurist is not an artist in the sense of the art movement futurism. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies the earliest use of the term futurism in English as 1842, to refer, in a theological context, to the Christian eschatological tendency of that time. The next recorded use is the label adopted by the Italian 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). The term futurology in its contemporary sense was first coined in the mid‑1940s by the German Professor Ossip 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. In the mid‑1940s the first professional "futurist" consulting institutions like RAND and SRI began to engage in long-range planning, systematic trend watching, scenario development, and visioning, at first under World 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 modern futurology field. Bertrand de Jouvenel's The Art of Conjecture in 1963 and Dennis Gabor's Inventing 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 late Alvin Toffler at the New School in 1966.
Modern futurists 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 a recession or economic growth will set in. Futurist writers may not be precise about timing. 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.
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
"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.
Futurists and futurology
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