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I think we futurists need to do a better job of telling our story. Almost daily it seems (probably more like weekly), I hear from someone who has never heard of foresight or futurists. We are still relatively unknown and under-appreciated by potential clients and the public. We are still explaining themselves and what we do on a regular basis.
A key challenge in explaining futures work is a lack of consensus around key questions about the field. While a variety of perspectives is valuable to futures work, for those new to the future, the wide range of answers to core questions — such as who futurists are, how futurists work, and how long have futurists been doing it — creates unnecessary confusion. Even the very basic question of a name for the field is not settled on (I advocate for “foresight.”). The recently developed Foresight Competency Model is a step towards consensus on how futurists work. In general, futurists prefer to have a wide range of views, explanations, and options. While this serves us well in our work, it is a public relations disaster. Thus one of my objectives is to work towards useful consensus that will help us explain ourselves more clearly when introducing people to the future.
About a year ago, I participated in and informal listserv discussion among professional futurists on the origin of the field. The discussion revealed a wide range of disparate views, with some small degree of consensus around WW2. It sparked my interest in addressing key questions about our work that remain murky and create confusion. In my role, I am fairly regularly asked about when Foresight began, and have used “around WW2.” So, I was delighted to take on the question of trying to pin that down more rigorously. In the piece, I indeed conclude that the end of WW2 – 1945 to be specific – makes the most sense as an origin date. While we say we are a young field, we have been around for 74 years. That’s “new” in comparison to more established fields, but I think it’s fair to say that we could be further along in the journey.
My exploration into the origins of the field — When did it start: origin of the foresight field — was recently published in World Futures Review. – Andy Hines
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