Futures最新文献

Foresight methods help us to think about the future and overcome a bias toward short-term thinking in decision making. However, many approaches to investigating the future tend to leave implicit how individuals involved in the interventions relate to the present and to the future in practice and over time. To address this gap, our study highlights the affordances of two methodologies —Scenario Planning and Future Design. In a pilot study combining these methods, we report the results of the novel hybridized approach applied in strategic planning workshops across four corporations. Initial reflections and learnings from the pilot case study and literature review helps to build understandings of the practical and theoretical workings of the methodological innovation. By investigating this combination of foresight methodologies, this research opens up new ways for thinking about futuring and proposes a theory of Futures Empathy. Futures Empathy harnesses a person’s capacity for empathy in a novel way by applying it toward a future context. It consists of an iterative double looping process between self and a not yet existent future. Through imagination and reflection, foresight methods that build Futures Empathy can enhance personal connection and integration with a longer time horizon, thus overcoming presentism. By proposing a theory of Futures Empathy, we hope to contribute to better present and future relating in practice and over time across a multitude of foresight interventions.

The Future of Work (FoW) has garnered significant attention among scholars and practitioners, with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) playing an important role in shaping this discourse. Despite the common perception that intelligent machines pose a threat to workers in routine roles, AI technologies are increasingly being utilized for advanced tasks carried out by knowledge workers. Drawing on state-of-the-art research and real-life examples we develop an integrated framework to explore the future of academic work. Our focus is on academics, an essential yet under-researched group of knowledge workers, and we discuss their work in relation to AI across space, time, and task dimensions. Our analysis reveals that the usage of AI technologies can have implications for the research, teaching, and service activities of academics and thereby also for the creation, acquisition, dissemination, and application of knowledge. Based on our framework we develop scenarios and propose a future research roadmap.

As climate warms and modern technologies advance, the Artic waters may offer new opportunities for shipping, notably in the Euro-Asian Arctic. This paper presents five alternative scenarios for commercial destination and transit shipping in the region until 2050. Using a pluralistic backcasting approach to foresight, these scenarios were co-created by the authors of this paper together with thirteen experts in relevant fields from seven different countries. The scenario-building exercise integrated global and regional factors and demonstrated that the future of commercial shipping in the Arctic is subject to vast uncertainties in global politics and global development trajectory alongside the sea ice conditions and technological progress. While the current volumes of commercial shipping in the Euro-Asian Arctic are insignificant, its future will largely depend on the development of these factors and how they will interface with each other. Plausible futures of commercial shipping in the region range from extensive international transit shipping through the Northern Sea Route to restricted shipping by vessels with Arctic flags only or even no shipping, to shipping over the transpolar route. The scenarios presented here can be used to inform national policymaking as well as to support strategic decision-making within corporate entities operating in related industries.

The ongoing debate on space bioethics has thus far focused primarily on issues pertaining to human beings. However, in the existing literature there is a shortage of articles raising the issue of whether animals can be used for space settlement expeditions. Consequently, the aim of this article is to present some initial considerations regarding the ethics of using animals for this particular purpose. Specifically, four potential reasons for involving animals have been put forth. These can be categorised as follows: (1) to use animals as a food resource; (2) to use animals for research purposes; (3) to use animals for company purposes; and (4) to provide new habitats for those animals whose ecosystems on Earth are endangered. Within the afore-mentioned space bioethics debate, the possibility of genetically enhancing human beings has been a topic of considerable discussion. For this reason, the article also addresses the ethical implications of genetically enhancing the animals used in space expeditions. A Welfarist approach has been adopted to determine which uses of animals are ethically permissible and which are not, with the understanding that any use that compromises the animal’s ability to lead a good life is unacceptable. Accordingly, mere survival is not ethically relevant.

Our problem is to express intertwined existential, epistemological and ethical aspects of a scientific method for informing action under conditions of high stakes and urgency. Addressing situations where, taking Descartes at his word, “…the pressure of things to be done does not allow us to stop and make a meticulous check,” we set out a framework for multi-actor multi-criteria deliberative evaluation for building knowledge partnerships within wicked problems of action. With the metaphor of Borges' Library of Babel, we suggest a cataloguing process whose effect is to signal, or assign, the Qualities of a knowledge proposition along several axes of the context of their mobilisation. The protagonists in a controversy are actors de facto in a KQA deliberation process, contributors (willy-nilly) to a collective resource of putative knowledge claims, participants in Borges' eternally-unfinished Congress of the World. Finally, with urgency and high stakes is associated the passage - repeated, traumatic, ineluctable - through dilemmas. These passages, irreducible to rationalisation, are often painful and always transformative. Adopting a third Borges metaphor, The Garden of Forking Paths, we argue for a reflexivity accepting the ethical complexity of our status as vulnerable actors engaged hastily, in necessarily value-laden terms, in matters of life-and-death.

This paper presents a method for future-building based on the journey we undertook as Design and Arts researchers in POR EL Páramo project (2021–2022) in our aim to bring closer the different actors involved in the Paramos (high Andean moorlands in Boyacá region, Colombia). We did this by understanding their everyday life better, and co-designing potential pathways towards holistic sustainable futures that serve the various communities’ needs. Through a series of social innovation workshops, we applied transdisciplinary approaches aimed at decolonising the methodologies used and its facilitation dynamics. The outcomes include our contribution to design and arts-based methodologies that aids continuity to the process of reflection: In(ward), Out(ward) and On(ward). In deploying this decolonisation-based methodology, a more powerful underlying principle came to light too: the use of arts mobilises forms of knowledge that are rather unconscious, but also extremely efficacious in generating proactive mindsets and generating bottom-up ideas. In this paper we build on and argue further, from an empirical perspective, for the utilisation of the tacit knowledge that can be transmitted through non-verbal means in social research dealing with contexts of conflict, reconciliation, and future building.

This paper discusses the applicability of the cultural sociologist Ann Mische’s (2009) nine “dimensions of projectivity”, or modes of orientation to the future, as methodological tools for narrative analysis to identify cultural formations of future orientation. Future orientation is understood here on the level of cultural regularities, rather than individual cognition. The paper discusses the exploratory process of operationalising Mische’s dimensions on texts produced by the volunteer panel of the Mass Observation Project (MOP) on the topic of ‘Futures of Consumption’. We explore how the difficulties encountered were addressed to utilise the dimensions for analysis. This exploratory process led to the classification of these dimensions into three categories, which specify their methodological utility. Firstly, literary components, suitable to analyse projectivity in professionally produced future narrations, such as corporate or NGO reports. Secondly, cognitive competences, suitable to study texts for the capacity for future thinking they demonstrate. And thirdly, formative orientations: the implicit, cultural repertoires from which actors construct their orientations to the future. The latter proved operationalizable in the analysis of the MOP data to identify cultural formations of future orientation. The paper provides a nuanced understanding of the application and utility of methodological tools for the study of future orientation.

This article explores conceptualizations of future relationships between humans and nature in urban planning, introducing the special issue³. It initiates by examining how the future of human-nature relationships can be seen as a consequence of resilience, or lack thereof, to global challenges. The special issue explores distinct visions of what nature may mean in desirable futures, and its relations to humans. Preferable futures portray harmonious interactions between nature and humans, recognizing nature's intrinsic and relational values, as well as acknowledging its agency in the context of urban planning. Additionally, the evolving role of technology in shaping these desirable futures is a growing area of exploration, potentially challenging established definitions of nature and paving the way for the construction of new natures in prospective scenarios. Another facet of exploration is the spatial dimension of human-nature relationships. Articles investigate various contexts where these relationships may unfold, spanning from within cities to envisioning revised approaches at the urban-rural interface for a radical transformation of our connection to the natural world, including the consideration of distinct entities, such as mountains or non-urban territories, as potential focal points for evolving human-nature relationships. The special issue helps deepen our understanding of the intricate interplay between humans and nature in urban planning, exploring diverse visions of the future and the spatial dynamics where these relationships may manifest. By integrating these elements, the aim is to contribute to a more comprehensive and forward-thinking approach in urban planning that embraces sustainable and harmonious futures for both humans and the natural world.

Despite recent rapid advances in technology, a skilled workforce continues to play the most important role in the development of national economies. People’s roles as operators, managers, or innovators are rapidly evolving to meet changing social needs. Traditionally, universities and higher education (HE) systems have been responsible for supplying the required knowledge and human resources. However, in the modern world, the nature of these needs is constantly changing, and uncertainties are dominating the socioeconomic future. To address this need, many researchers have attempted to explore how HE can cope with future uncertainties and evolve as a social system, yet there is no comprehensive analysis of methodological guidelines that provide insights into how to develop HE future scenarios. To fill this gap, this research takes a deep literature review approach, conducted by the authors, to examine published and peer-reviewed studies in the area of HE scenario planning over the decade from January 2010 to 2023. This study investigates the exploration of plausible futures by research teams at three levels - global/international, regional/national, and local/university. The findings show that there is a lack of foresight knowledge, which increases the risk of failure exponentially over time. To address these shortcomings, this study proposes a framework for future studies, including environmental factors that will impact higher education and methodological recommendations to equip researchers for the challenges ahead. It also emphasizes the need to appreciate the complexity of HE systems and the role of wildcards and weak signals in shaping future disruptive trends. This research offers valuable guidance to researchers seeking to engage in scenario development for HE in the face of uncertainty.

The aim of this study is to investigate the utility of speculative, fictional utopian narratives to be used as a comparative and critical tool to expose taken for granted ideas, discourses and norms in the five shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP1–5) that are used by the IPCC to build future scenarios. To achieve this goal, we first invited citizens to write stories about fictional utopian futures, which they perceived as good for “both people and the planet”. We then compared these utopian stories with the SSPs by (1) a semi-quantitative thematic analysis, and (2) a critical literary analysis. Based on the thematic analysis, we found strong similarities between the utopian futures and SSP1 (“Taking the Green Road”) at a superficial level. Based on the literary analysis, we found that this apparent similarity obscured fundamental differences between the implicit mindsets that was found in SSP1 and the utopian futures; with the former underpinned by collective anthropocentrism and the latter by collective ecocentrism. We conclude that speculative utopias, that are not bound by the requirement of perceived plausibility, can provide a powerful tool to scrutinize and extend science-based future scenarios, such as the SSPs, to consider other aspects, such as different mindsets and norm-breaking solutions.