What does a futurist do?

"Why should we spend more time imagining the future?" people often ask. "We'll probably be wrong, and whatever we come up with needs to change anyway." I sympathize with this skepticism. After all, futurists have a history of erroneous, often humorous predictions.

In addition, as ordinary people, we are constantly pressured to think about our future. Do we take care of our health in the right way so that we can age in a good way? Do we create the best conditions for success for our children? Are we saving enough to retire one day? With these complex preconceived notions marking our relationships to the future, it is understandable that so few of us are actively engaging in foresight.

The modern discipline of futures studies dates back to the 1950s, an era when scientists and strategists sought to create structured methods for engaging in an unknown future. From these early days, an entire academic field has emerged, united by the notion that "we can not work towards an improvement that we can not imagine." (Elise Boulding) Framsynsstrateger uses methods and principles that provide structure and basis for their imagined future.

Futures are simply fictional constructions that help us explore the unknown, create visions, shape discourse, build consensus and formulate plans. There is no "right" future, and each of us can imagine several futures. These different futures are often mutually exclusive, but reflect a combination of positive and negative qualities, such as the world we know.

We can imagine futures in three levels. The most obvious are those who look like the world today - "extended present" - according to Sardar and Sweeney. In addition, we see the "familiar futures" - the images of futures that have been shared by others. The third level of images is "unimaginable futures" - those that have not yet been created.

I help organizations and practitioners to think like futurists, to build structure and foundations for a rigorous future work. In the summer of 2021, I was hired by Vinnova to give advice on a public future vision initiative. Part of my role is to help Vinnova consider how future thinking can serve the public. In my discussions with the team, two key actions emerged.

First, there is an ambition to encourage a culture of public vision for the future, which provides space for unimaginable futures. We believe that joint sharing of unthinkable futures will give rise to important social and technological ideas. The call for prototype prototypes will serve as a forum to promote and incubate unimaginable futures from a variety of perspectives.

The second key measure in the call is to shape new formats for talks between the public and the government. The call provides a forum for visions to emerge and be seen, heard and discussed by the general public, government employees and decision-makers. These conversations will complement existing forums, centered around what our worlds might look like and how we feel about them.

We hope that this call for proposals does both and - encourages a culture of exploratory foresight among the public and creates a new environment for conversations between government and the public about unthinkable futures, which breaks new ground for the innovative project we can work on together. We look forward to working with both efforts and hope you want to join us.

Read more about Elliott and his work on his website