What is futures work?
Futures work is about identifying future trends and emerging issues, so that we can understand their potential impacts.
But futures work is not about predicting the future.
Prediction would be to say with accuracy what will happen before it happens.
Instead, we can look to forecast alternative futures, to say what 'might' happen, given certain circumstances, rather than what "will" happen.
Futures work can be an extra tool to help us think strategically about the implications and links between policies and long term trends as they develop.
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Why do it?
So why bother thinking 20 or 30 years ahead?
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
Albert Einstein
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At its most basic, looking ahead is important because the decisions we take today will have long-lasting impacts and, as our technological capability increases, those impacts are likely to be felt ever further into the future (think of climate change). If we act to anticipate the future, we can more usefully shape it, by changing our actions today.
"If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions.
If you want to know your future, look into your present actions."
Buddhist Saying
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There are now a whole range of tools and techniques that can help us to undertake futures work and make best use of our role in building what the future brings. Such tools and techniques can assist us in understanding alternatives or preferences for the future, probable developments and to articulate and work towards a desired future.
"When it comes to the future there are three kinds of people:
those who let it happen
those who make it happen
and those who wonder what happened."
John M Richardson Jr 