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Contents

Chapter 1. Explorers of the Future
This first chapter lays the groundwork for the rest of the book by introducing readers to the seven important lessons that history’s greatest explorers teach us about any journey. When facing the unknown, preparation, anticipating future needs, gathering information from all sources, expecting the unexpected, thinking long-term, dreaming productively, and learning from your predecessors will keep any adventurer on a successful course toward an unknown future.

Chapter 2. The Great Transformation
Change is linked to change: Environmental change causes economic change, for example, which can lead to technological change. And it’s all happening faster and faster. This is the Great Transformation, the process by which our futures are created. The causes and implications of this metamorphosis, as well as a glimpse at three technological revolutions, form the focus of this chapter.

Chapter 3. Six Supertrends Shaping the Future
Identifying the large-issue trends for anticipating the future is necessary in order to understand the Great Transformation. This chapter explores the importance of technological progress, economic growth, improving health, increased mobility, environmental decline, and increasing deculturation for comprehending today’s rapid cultural evolution. The chapter projects these trends forward to 2040, providing a glimpse the world if they continue at their present, accelerated pace.

Chapter 4. Understanding Change
With this chapter, we begin to look at principles and methods of futuring to use for better anticipation and assessment of future events. Here, we examine linear, straightforward change—the kind with identifiable patterns—including cycles and progressive stages.

Chapter 5. Systems, Chance, and Chaos
This chapter focuses on change that is discontinuous, nonlinear, and quirky. We look at the significance of possibility and the importance of and enormous freedom for shaping our own futures.

Chapter 6. Futuring Methods
A look at four approaches to futuring: consulting the experts, role-playing and other kinds of gaming, modeling and simulation, and visioning. This chapter examines the strengths and weaknesses of each and the purposes for which each is best suited.

Chapter 7. Knowing the World around Us
Scanning and trend analysis are perhaps the most popular ways of thinking about the future seriously. This chapter explores these techniques by explaining trend classification and extrapolation, causes and impacts, and the effects of trends.

Chapter 8. Using Scenarios
Another futuring technique involves making scenarios—conjectures about what might happen. How futurists create scenarios, their implications, the "backcasting" approach, and some pertinent examples—including careers scenarios—are the essence of this chapter.

Chapter 9. The Wild Cards in Our Future
Wild cards are completely unexpected events with important, life-changing consequences. Preparing for them, and learning from them, are important tools in the futurists’ kit, and this chapter offers a different way to look at what may seem like catastrophe.

Chapter 10. Inventing the Future
The tricks of the trade for creating thinking, an important requisite for many futurist techniques. This chapter explores the secrets of creative geniuses (Galileo, da Vinci, Einstein), the role of chance in creativity, the science of discovery, and the importance of choices and planning. .

Chapter 11. The Past as a Guide to the Future
What can the past tell us about the future? A lot, since the lessons of the past can hold the key to what has yet to occur. How to use history in decision making is the focus of this chapter, including values to be derived from looking at both the recent and the distant past.

Chapter 12. Predicting the Future
Can we predict the future? Sometimes. This chapter reviews past attempts to anticipate future events, touching on forecasting follies and postponed miracles as well as educated guesswork leading to realized predictions. We also look at the world as optimistically envisioned 100 years ago and a century ago, and examine the growth of stealth technologies, those like the computer that became far more important than anyone ever dreamed.

Chapter 13. How the Future Became What It Used to Be
This chapter looks at those optimistic father figures that drove the idea of progress, including Francis Bacon, the Marquis de Condorcet, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. We explore the flourishing of utopianism and the advent of positive science fiction before the coming of the twentieth century, followed by dystopia, pessimism, and hopelessness characterized by the two world wars and their aftermath.

Chapter 14. The Futurist Revolution
Optimism collapsed in the twentieth century, and this chapter attempts to uncover the reasons why. The horrors of World War II altered thinking about the future, but out of this bleak and frightening period emerged a new futurist vision. Emblematic of this new optimistic period are the birth of the think tank, the exploration of space, and the rebirth of forward thinking driven by the worldwide futurist movement.

Chapter 15. Improving Our Futures
Futurism vs. fatalism—which rules your life? Fatalists take life as it comes, while futurists challenge this notion. The secret weapon in the futurist’s armory is the development of foresight—the ability to make decisions that are judged to be good not only in the present moment but over the long run. This chapter examines the importance of continuity between past and future, the improvability of the future, and the urgency of the future.

Chapter 16. Future Generations
What responsibility do we have to future generations? This final chapter looks at what we can do for our children and our children’s children, and explores humanity’s potential for growth, change, and ensuring that the future is a good one.