Futuring

Our interaction with the future—as individuals, groups, and nations—is an expression of both personal and national identity. Regardless of what may or may not happen, the future as idea continues to shape buying, voting, and social behavior. We interact with the future in a myriad of ways, but none is more conspicuous than the prediction.

Today (December 18th, 2011) saw the passing of a wonderful artist, a courageous dissident, a great statesmen, and a member of the World Future Society, Vaclav Havel. On 1995, Havel contributed the following piece to THE FUTURIST magazine.

Anyone interested in becoming a futurist can’t afford to miss these seven tipping points. In addition to the essential need of learning futures methods, theory, frameworks and philosophy, a futurist needs to be a disciplined guy in his profession.

Recently (October), the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) held a very interesting event. Something like a webinar, but it lasted eighteen hours, starting in Europe and the U.K. in mid-day, moving on to Washington D.C., Houston, Hawaii and ending in Australia, mid-afternoon. Lots of speakers who offered several new ideas or challenges.
My contribution was to suggest that the field or profession was about to experience serious change, starting with substantial growth. I came to that conclusion largely through my work with the APF Student Recognition Program, which began in 2008. That year, we found eleven universities around the world that were offering Masters’ degrees for work in Foresight and Futures Studies.