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There is a well-intentioned – and possibly correct — movement to establish foresight as a science. From blogs to online discussions to journal articles (I just reviewed such a piece). Some of my colleagues are referring them to themselves as foresight scientists. And there is the new journal Futures and Foresight Science. Maturing as a discipline…being more scientific….the attraction makes sense.
I think an element in play here is the concern about more and more people referring to themselves as futurists. For instance, over 15,000 people use futurist as a descriptor in LinkedIn. Thus we should differentiate from them, right?
I also think it reflects our ongoing search for identity (witness also the Anticipation movement).
My view is we are more like historians than scientists. My shortest elevator speech is: “Historians study the past; futurists study the future.” Historian is a nice one word occupation title. Not historical scientist or historical professional – just historian. Same for futurist – a nice one-word title. And the fact that people want to identify as futurists – awesome, wonderful, and terrific news!! I remember the days when futurist was the “f” word and we advocated stealth foresight. Now that it’s popular, let’s embrace it, rather than run from it!
Historians do history. Futurists do foresight. Simple one word names. (Futures would have been fine, if it weren’t already claimed by those dealing in pork bellies).
My goal is to introduce high-quality foresight to as many people as possible. Let’s make our story as simple as it can be, bring people into the fold and we can ladder ‘em up from there. In my view, foresight science is a move is in the opposite and wrong direction. But I may be wrong about that – Andy Hines
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