The business of predicting the future has a long history. Several millennia ago in ancient Greece, people would consult Apollo, the god of prophecy, to learn if fortune favoured their chosen course of action. The tradition has changed considerably since then. Today, futurology is a science that drives a thriving business - its three main consumers being the military, big business, and national governments. Modern futurists do not predict that a certain event will occur at a particular time. Instead, they look at what is happening now to see what this may lead to further down the line. Alternatively, they start with a desired result and work out how people and organisations can be manoeuvred into realising that ambition.
The oil company Shell has been one of the major producers of future studies. It recently published a comprehensive study looking at how people may live in 2020 and 2050, given the type of energy which is purchased. Philip Watts from Shell says, 'This is not an exercise in prophecy. Rather it is designed to challenge our thinking so that we can make better choices in today’s business world.'
The short-term attitudes and bureaucracy of many governments can be frustrating to futurists, but this mutual wariness is slowly changing. The Scottish Parliament recently hosted a conference of 150 futurists from across the globe. The parliament is setting up a forum to look at where Scotland is heading in the next 20 years. Among the issues are demographics and economic competition within Europe and with Asia. It’s a first for the United Kingdom, although not for Europe - this strategy has already been put into practice in Finland.
Eamonn Kelly, head of the San Francisco-based Global Business Network futurist group, was one of those who attended the conference. According to Kelly, 'There are many different tools a futurist can employ but essentially there are three main ingredients. First, there is the “science”, which can encompass everything from environmental studies to psychology. Then, there is the “craft”, which may include interviews and the creation of maps of cause and effect. Finally, there is the “art”, the intuitive ability to meld all this into a coherent whole.'
Dr James Canton is founder of the San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures and has been an adviser to leading US companies. Like many futurists, he started in the private sector but is also comfortable in academia and has an urge to change things for the better. 'A futurist is an alchemist who mixes the qualitative,' he says. 'He needs intuition and has to work with people from a range of academic backgrounds gathering primary evidence about what motivates people. Futurists are constantly discussing ideas with their peers, but they do not simply surf the net picking up on the latest fad.'
New Zealand futurist Robin Gunston says, 'I don’t believe you can train yourself to become a futurist. A certain amount of this is to do with how your brain is hard-wired and we know this is difficult to change. Futurology requires extensive life experience and a broad education to test theories against. Much of modern teenage culture is about me, what I want and what the world owes me - that does not make it easy to see different kinds of futures and pose the hard questions about how we will get there.'
Those best able to respond to futurists are the most agile. 'Large corporations beholden to shareholders and governments burdened by bureaucracy are often simply too slow. Asian companies tend to be better prepared because they take a longer perspective. Sony, for example, is very forward-looking,' Canton says. 'There will be sunset and sunrise nations and corporations, in terms of prosperity in the 21st century. The winners will be those corporations and governments which conduct future studies and take steps to become future-proofed.'
According to Alan Beckley, a former West Mercia chief inspector and past president of the Police Futurists International (PFI), getting public bodies in the UK future-proofed could be a long process. 'People are concerned about the methodology and the reliability of future studies,' he says. 'They are more likely to follow their political masters than go to them and say, “We have done this scenario, and this is what we should do.” However, as the Scottish Parliament has shown, there are a few examples of government exercises. Also, in 2003, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) published for the first time its strategic thinking for the next decade. This document was drawn up with the help of in-house and outside futurists. FCO minister Bill Rammell says, 'We do occasionally look further ahead than the next ten years on issues such as demographics. But the period chosen for the strategy was deliberately a decade. Even assumptions about technology get very shaky beyond that.'
American futurist Steve Brant stresses the importance of remembering that the road ahead has yet to be chosen. 'People can create the future they want using various points of leverage,' he says. 'We have much more influence over what the future will be like than many of us realise.' Futurists used to be like firefighters - they tried to work out what to do if things went wrong. Now, the aim of this profession is to imagine the best possible future for society and start creating it today.