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“Learning, the Future, and Complexity: An Essay on the Emergence of Futures Literacy”

Authors:
  • Ecole des Ponts Business School; University of New Brunswick; University of Stavanger

Abstract

Futures Literacy is the capacity to design and implement processes that make use of anticipation, generally with the purpose of trying to understand and act in a complex emergent context. This article examines the potential of Futures Literacy to contribute to the realisation of a better balance between learning that is shaped by the supposition that what needs to be learned is knowable in advance, what I will label ‘push’ education, and ‘pull’ learning, that starts from the discovery of not knowing something, initiating the search for hypotheses, experiments, and evidence that eventually lead to understanding. Insufficient Futures Literacy impedes the expansion our anticipatory activities beyond preparation and planning, with the result that at both the individual and institutional levels it is difficult to find the motivation and capability to undertake and organise learning that goes beyond ‘push’ education, or what people ‘need’ to know now in order to get: a ‘good job’, be ‘good citizens’, etc., in the future. As a result humanity may be less able to embrace complexity or pursue a diversification approach to resilience.
Learning, the Future, and Complexity. An Essay
on the Emergence of Futures Literacy
Riel Miller
Introduction
The claims made in this article start from six simple propositions:
The first proposition is that the phenomena that make up the emergent
present can be divided into two very basic categories, those that display conti-
nuity and those that display discontinuity. Phenomena that repeat from one
moment to the next are characterised by continuity. Phenomena that are dif-
ferent display discontinuity or manifest a difference between a previous
moment and one later on.
The second proposition is that there are different kinds of discontinuity or
change, some that follow on from the past, like a child growing taller over
time, others that are inherently unknowable in advance, such as the invention
and implications of the atomic bomb, birth control pill or Internet.
The third proposition is that humans use sensing and sense-making capabil-
ities to identify and distinguish the continuity and discontinuity of phenom-
ena in the world around them.
The fourth proposition is that part of the human capacity to identify and give
meaning to continuity and discontinuity arises from the ability to use our
imaginations, in a variety of ways, to anticipate what does not yet exist. The
always imaginary future plays a key role in being able to distinguish and tell
stories about different kinds of continuity and discontinuity.
The fifth proposition is that the anticipatory systems and processes that
enable humans to think about the imaginary future influence sensing and
sense-making in ways that can make it easier or harder to discern or invent
different kinds of discontinuity.
The sixth proposition is that the basic learning cycle starts from the appre-
hension of forms of discontinuity or something that is unfamiliar or inexplica-
ble, the realisation of not knowing.
All these propositions form the foundation for the claim in this article that a specific
change in the conditions of change, the diffusion of Futures Literacy, is one way of
improving the capacity of individuals and organisations to: a) detect and give mean-
ing to discontiniuty, and b) thereby become more capable of initiating learning
processes (undertaking research of all kinds, from the banal to the sublime).
Put negatively, today’s dominant anticipatory systems and processes impede the
identification and invention of discontinuity (difference/change) and hence the ini-
tiation of learning. The lack of Futures Literacy (or the widespread state of Futures
Illiteracy) helps to explain why it is so difficult to achieve a better balance between
learning that is shaped by the supposition that what needs to be learned is knowable
in advance, what I will label ‘push’ education, and ‘pull’ learning that starts from
the discovery of not knowing something, initiating the search for hypotheses,
experiments, and evidence that eventually lead to understanding. Lacking Futures
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European Journal of Education, Vol. 50, No. 4, 2015
DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12157
Literacy, we are significantly less able to expand our anticipatory activities beyond
preparation and planning. As a result, it is difficult to find the motivation and capa-
bility to undertake and organise learning that goes beyond ‘push’ education that
rests on the presumption that we can know the future or impose today’s idea of the
future on the future and therefore know now what people ‘need’ to know in order
to find a ‘good job’, be ‘good citizens’, etc., in the future.
Using the Future: an anticipatory systems and processes perspective
The term ‘using the future’ is somewhat awkward in the English language and not
yet in common usage. Most people do not think of using the future as they might
use a hammer to sink a nail or use a car to take a trip. Furthermore, strictly speak-
ing, the future does not exist like a hammer or a car; it cannot take material form.
In this sense, it is more than rare, it is non-existent. Yet if we think of the future as
anticipatory systems, processes, and assumptions, then the non-existent later-than-
now is all around us. For instance, evolutionary processes have introduced non-
conscious anticipatory systems into trees. A tree cannot ‘know’ the future, but it is
an organism that, in functional terms, integrates anticipatory assumptions that
cause the shedding of leaves as winter approaches.
Human immune systems engage in a form of anticipation when the detection of
a potential threat, even one that turns out not to be a danger, provokes greater pro-
duction of white blood cells. Pedestrians deploy anticipatory systems and processes
when they cross the street. Indeed, calculating the trajectory of an oncoming bus in
order to decide when and at what speed to cross the street engages such familiar
anticipatory systems and processes that we do not even notice them. Similarly, no
one pays much attention to anticipatory systems when they plan to go to a movie,
easily thinking through when, with whom and how to get there on time. Again and
again, anticipatory systems and processes are largely taken for granted as we build
houses to protect ourselves from a range of potential threats or plant crops in the
hope of having food for next year.
Even less remarked is that these everyday uses of the imagined future, central
for our survival and viscerally connected to our emotional status (hope, fear, etc.),
generally engage only two out of three basic kinds of conscious human anticipation.
For the most part, humans’ conscious anticipatory systems and processes, including
everything from horoscopes and weather forecasts to bookmaker’s odds and the dis-
count rates used by an economist to estimate current value, belong to only two out
of three basic categories of conscious anticipation (please note that, unless other-
wise stated, the remainder of the article uses the term anticipation to refer to con-
scious human anticipation, which remains just a sub-category of all the different
kinds of anticipatory systems and processes).
The first two are preparation and planning, or what might be considered efforts
to: a) be ready for identifiable or known contingent events or risks
1
, and b) discern
a target and the optimal path to the target so as to impose today’s vision of tomor-
row on tomorrow (colonize the future). Both these kinds of anticipation are closed
in the sense that it is impossible to prepare for something if it is not knowable
2
and
planning requires making assumptions or fixing the goals, means and rules that will
be used to construct the plan. There is, however, a third general category of antici-
patory systems and processes that targets the discovery or invention of the unknow-
able. Such anticipation is pertinent for novel phenomena or what might be called
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discontinuity. These anticipatory systems and processes enhance the capacity to
make sense of change (difference) in the emergent present.
This third category of anticipatory systems and process offers humans an avenue
to use their consciousness to sense (invent, discover) and make sense (explain, tell a
story) of differences such as discontinuity in the present. New phenomena happen all
the time, at many different levels, from inventions that are generalisable such as the
printing press, electricity, penicillin and urbanisation to the unique or locally meaning-
ful realisation that something is new here and now. Initially, such changes are often
invisible, even unnamed. Discontinuity, the emergence of unknown unknowns is often
rendered invisible or unimaginable because past futures – the imaginary futures gener-
ated in the past – that we use in the present do not include these new phenomena and
therefore we do not try to understand or even name what was unknowable moments
before. By becoming more adept at expanding the futures we imagine beyond the con-
straints of both probabilistic thinking and agency as preparation/planning we can use
our ability to detect and invent, sense and make-sense of the ‘new’ in ways that enable
a greater appreciation of the constant differences that emerge in our creative universe.
Futures Literacy (FL) is a capability built on an understanding of the nature and
attributes of anticipatory systems and processes. A Futures Literate person has the
ability to select and deploy different anticipatory systems and processes, depending
on aims and context. This skill can assist in overcoming some of the confusion and
ignorance that arise when the future is reduced to a discoverable target for the pur-
poses of preparation and /or planning. FL exposes the anticipatory assumptions and
conceptions of the relationship of action to consequences, human agency, that shape
the imaginary futures that human consciousness is able to conjure. As a result, it
brings greater clarity and depth to sensing and sense-making in the present. FL is
not to be conflated with decision-making, since the futures we imagine first play a
role in what we see and only once we have searched or identified the menu can we
move on to making choices. Because FL helps to make sense of emergent change in
the present it is a critical pre-condition, in terms of both content and confidence, for
taking both a more improvisational and spontaneous approach to learning, it is a
way of enhancing our capacity to be free.
FL provides an ability to take into account all three categories of anticipatory
systems and processes. One of the implications is an enhanced capacity to seek and
design learning systems that go beyond education ‘push’, as per most of the formal
educational curricula that aim to prepare young people for what is expected to hap-
pen and plan the future to learning provoked by the pull of more easily and continu-
ously discovering or inventing difference (not knowing) that is the impulse for
seeking to know. Through a better grasp of the role of anticipatory systems and
processes in the search for difference FL enhances our ability to appreciate the
unknowable as it emerges
3
. From this perspective, it can help to establish a better
balance between push and pull because it enables a more diversified view of human
agency, one that enlarges what it means to exercise our capacity to be free. The
next challenge, posed in a way that parallels the largely solved problem of how to
acquire the ability to read and write, is how to become futures literate?
Futures Literacy and the Microscope of the 21
st
Century
Let us start with two thought experiments and a very brief true story. The first
thought experiment runs as follows. One day you meet an old friend in the street.
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After exchanging the usual ‘how are you?’ and ‘nice to see you’, she starts to whis-
per, acting as if she was telling you a valuable secret. But what she is telling you
seems pretty incredible, even a bit crazy. She claims that there are immense resour-
ces all around us, but that we cannot see them. Furthermore, she asserts that there
is an easy way to see these resources and put them to good use. You exchange a few
more pleasantries and then you walk away scratching your head. Muttering under
your breath, ‘What the heck?? What is this treasure I’ve been missing? How come I
don’t know how to see it?’ Then you just conclude that she has lost it and that it is
best to forget all about her strange ideas.
For the second thought experiment, imagine that you are illiterate – unable to
read. All around you are amazing resources in the form of written texts. Someone
might tell you that it is not all that hard to learn to read and that if you did know
how to read there would be amazing resources at your disposal, resources that
would help you to navigate in everyday life, find new opportunities and share
what you know with others. In a society of illiterates, with few books and few
people able to read, you might come to the same conclusion as the thought
experiment above – what is this crazy notion that there are hidden resources, easy
to acquire, all around us. Nonsense. But if you are illiterate in a literate society,
with the written word all around, the opposite conclusion makes the most sense:
I must learn to read.
Now, a very brief history of the microscope. When the microscope was first
invented around 1670 it offered an amazing surprise. Hidden in a drop of water,
invisible to the naked eye, were all sorts of creatures. People exclaimed: how
amusing, how strange! Some 200 years later, after many breakthroughs in how to
conduct research and many demonstrations of the vast power of research to alter
people’s lives, the connection was made between the creatures seen in the drop of
water and the infections killing patients in hospitals. Doctors started to wash their
hands. Terrific, but it had taken 200 years to make sense of the invisible things
the microscope made visible. Today, a new microscope is being invented,
deployed, and tested. Like the microscope of old, it renders the invisible visible,
and like many scientific tools before, it takes time to fully grasp its utility. In this
case, the tool is collective intelligence knowledge creation processes. What I call
KnowLabs for short (see Box). KnowLabs take many and varied forms and are
being designed and implemented in many parts of the world by a wide range of
pioneers and practitioners. All these processes share a common operational goal:
to tap into the knowledge of a specific group of people at a specific time and
place in order to sense and make sense of phenomena of all kinds (see list of
topics in the box). The mechanism used to tap into this collective intelligence is
conversation and the catalyst or fuel that turns the heuristic is the challenge of
sensing and making sense of some aspect of the world around us. People bring
tacit and unarticulated thoughts together with the capacity to invent and negotiate
variables and meaning.
There are similarities with ‘crowd sourcing’ mechanisms, such as stock markets,
polling and Delphi techniques that collect and give meaning to diverse views. But
the difference is that the granularity or localism of KnowLabs points to a different
purpose and hence a different way of working. KnowLabs are about time-space
specificity, the uniqueness of every moment and place – the amazing richness of the
ephemeral. Here, collective intelligence is yoked to the elucidation of the here and
now, what is gone and no more soon after. This may seem futile and the opposite
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Futures Literacy KnowLab
4
FL KnowLabs are a specific example of the more general tool for harness-
ing collective intelligence to generate descriptions of reality. The FL
KnowLab uses anticipatory systems and processes as ways to structure
and direct a conversation about a topic (Miller, 2006, 2007, 2011).
Experimentation over the last decade aimed at testing designs and out-
comes of Futures Literacy Knowledge Laboratories (FL KnowLabs) has
demonstrated the effectiveness of collective intelligence knowledge crea-
tion processes designed with an understanding of anticipatory systems in
generating new questions (making sense of difference). This is not the
place to present the design principles and specific operational rules that
shape the customisation of the FL KnowLabs (UNESCO, 2011), however
the point of departure is indicative: The fundamental source of data in
intentional human anticipation is the descriptive model and vocabulary,
the assumptions and variables that enable us to consciously imagine some-
thing that does not yet exist – the future. Thus, the easiest way to map
and make sense of human anticipatory systems and processes is to ask
people to describe the future. To do so, they have no choice but to reveal
the assumptions and variables that allow them to generate an imaginary
later than now. Their ways of using the future are made explicit. This is
the first step to becoming Futures Literate.
In 2013 and 2014, as part of UNESCO’s role in advancing knowledge
creation, FL KnowLabs were conducted around the world (UNESCO,
2014). The aim of this project was to reveal anticipatory systems and
processes in different contexts and work on testing and refining the FL
KnowLab design so that it could be used easily and effectively to build
FL capabilities and better understand the emergent attributes of local
situations.
20-21 June 2013, Paris: Knowlab Design Test Session “Scoping the
Know-Lab: Tomorrow’s Knowledge Creation Microscope” A Primer
and Images
1
st
June, 2013, Baku: Scoping Global Anticipatory Capacities
11-12 July 2013, Brasilia: The Future of Science
15 July 2013, Sao Paolo: Changing the Way Universities Use the
Future?
19 July 2013, Chicago: The Future of Futurists
21-22 October 2013, Oslo: Innovation as Learning, Knowing as Learn-
ing, Knowing as Science: Imagining a Universal Innovation Society in
2040
25-26 November 2013, Bogota: Using the future to think about local
labor markets
28-29 November 2013, Rio de Janeiro: Imagining the Future of Science
in Society
13-14 January 2014, Paris: Imagining the Future of the Transition from
“Youth” to “Adult”
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of what is considered the purpose of knowledge creation and the tools we apply to
creating knowledge. But it is the critical 180 degree flip needed to hone our capacity
to appreciate novelty through a tool that makes it easier to make sense of specificity
– the difference and repetition of every moment. This is the microscope of the 21
st
century and, even as we deploy it, we hardly know what it is good for.
Convergence: bringing together anticipatory systems and processes with
Collective Intelligence Knowledge Creation
Two convergent innovations are occurring ‘in the wild’, meaning developments are
emerging from the actions of daily life without being embedded in pre-existing
rationalities or institutions/norms. People are inventing and exploring both anticipa-
tory systems-processes and collective intelligence knowledge creation processes (the
tool for rendering the invisible visible) which makes the specific, rather than the
general, more discoverable, meaningful. Taken together, these two breakthroughs
can transform humanity’s relationship to reality, rebalancing our attention, long
dominated by the search for norms, standards, scale and common denominators. It
is not that statistics, averages, samples and mass-products are ‘bad’, they are just
incomplete and, if too dominant, become a source of poverty in our appreciation of
the richness of the now because difference is harder to discern or invent. Brought
together Futures Literacy and the microscope of the 21
st
century can facilitate the
discovery or imagining of the meaning of novelty – the spontaneously invented steps
or notes that enable the inspiration of the steps and notes of improvisational dance
or jazz.
20-21 January 2014, Freetown: Youth & Rites of Passage in Sierra
Leone
5-6 February 2014, Munich: Imagining the Future of Sports in Society
27-28 March 2014, Paris: Inhabiting Planet Earth 2100: Beyond Cities?
26 April – 1 May 2014, Calceta, Bahia de Caraquez, Monta: A Series
of Future Literacy Knowledge Labs in Ecuador
2-3 May 2014, Rangoon: Addressing the future of education in
Myanmar?
21-24 May 2014, Laoag City: Resilient Cities, Brighter Futures -A
Forum-Workshop on Anticipatory Thinking and Strategic Foresight
Methods for Sustainable City Futures
26-28 May 2014, Johannesburg – All Africa Future Forum
4-5 June 2014, Ottawa: The Future of Innovation Ecosystems in the
Public Sector
FL KnowLabs as action-research experiments generated: a) significant
amounts of data on anticipatory networks and systems, providing impor-
tant evidence regarding the theory and practice of the emerging Discipline
of Anticipation; b) valuable insights on how to best design and adapt the
generic FL KnowLab architecture – as a research-action method – to local
settings, and c) capacity at the local level and amongst participants in the
UNESCO global foresight network on how to be more effective at using
the future for decision making.
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At present, this hypothesis may seem far-fetched and perhaps incomprehensible.
Lacking the ability to read, to be Futures Literate, we are like an illiterate in an illit-
erate society who is told about the treasures of being able to read, but we cannot
even understand the promise. There first needs to be a change in the conditions of
change, a chicken and egg problem, how to convince the illiterate of the utility of lit-
eracy before the society as a whole becomes literate? As for the microscope of the
21
st
century, we are still stuck with an old way of seeing the utility of collective intel-
ligence knowledge creation processes – the search for the common denominators of
mass society. Lacking these two ‘breakthroughs’, we keep treating uncertainty as an
enemy and complexity as a curse. The improvisational leg of a two-legged approach
to reality fails us and we hop along on the deterministic thinking of preparation and
planning.
Five Observations by Way of Conclusion
The claim made in this article that Futures Literacy combined with the microscope
of the 21
st
century enable more learning may be easier to understand by taking into
account five observations.
Beyond Statistics: The first observation is that we are currently pre-occupied with
generality, scale and statistics based on variables that have common denominators.
As a result, there is relatively little interest in specificity and information that do not
easily find a common denominator that enables statistical collection, aggregation
and comparison. However, much of complex emergent reality, generated by the
fact that the information around us is always time-place specific, does not fit into
the powerful but mostly reductionist point-of-view of statistical descriptions of real-
ity. Consequently, processes for observing and describing time-place specific infor-
mation seem like bad statistical approaches, with poor samples and no common
denominator; useless for generalisation, bench-marking or scaling up for mass solu-
tions. Nevertheless, as noted in the next observation, alternatives are emerging.
Epistemology of the Unique (or how to sense and make-sense of different kinds of dis-
continuity): The second observation is that we are witnessing a proliferation, world-
wide, of experimentation with collective intelligence knowledge creation processes
(CIKC) (Scharmer,2007, Inayatullah, 2004, 2008, Hassan, (2014)) that are effec-
tive in revealing ephemeral specificity – time/place unique sensing and sense-
making. This is occurring in the face of the still dominant belief (noted above) that
the best and most important way to describe reality from the pointofview of deci-
sion making is by using models and variables that provide common denominators
that can be aggregated and compared across space and time. Evidence is mounting
that CIKC processes, despite often being poorly designed and misused due to a fix-
ation with seeking and describing generalities, do generate, detect and give meaning
to conjunctural emergence of both continuity and discontinuity. The power of this
‘microscope of the 21
st
Century, is that it gives practical expression to the desire to
grasp and make use of specificity, time-space uniqueness and context – rooted in an
interest and need to respect the locally or contextually distinctive past and present.
Enlarging Agency: The third observation is that the dominant view of agency
today is typically constrained to the search for cause-effect interventions – where
what is done now has consequences later on. Today’s ‘make-a-difference’ obses-
sion, rooted in the immodest heroic model of leadership and revolution (humans
are like gods, they engineer the future), depends on the anticipatory systems and
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processes for determining targets in the future and mapping the best way to get
there. This preoccupation with causal or instrumentalist approaches to creating or
imposing today’s idea of the future on tomorrow largely crowds-out non-causal per-
spectives (or what has been called, long ago, ‘not-doing’). In effect, this results in a
lack of interest in spontaneity and improvisation; as well as a bias towards actions
that promise, through path dependency or sunk cost constraints, the ‘colonisation’
of the future. Choices that are ‘uncertainty proof’ have the attributes of pyramids
and monuments that last thousands of years, demonstrating that today’s ideas can
be imposed on tomorrow. To this kind of physical proof of the power of planning it
is worth adding the dominant form of narrative about the past, the story of the her-
oes who knew what they were doing and won the day. Again, this reduces interest
in mechanisms for sensing and making-sense of unknown unknowns as such phe-
nomena emerge. Focused on inventing or implementing the genius plan that will
impose today’s idea of tomorrow on tomorrow there is less interest in developing
the skills that underpin the capacity for spontaneity needed to take advantage of the
richness of difference: specificity and novelty (unknown unknowns) in the present.
Futures Literacy or How to Live With Complexity and Love It: The fourth observation
is that we can take advantage of the fact that we live in an anticipatory universe, which
is chock-a-block with anticipatory systems and processes, in order to become Futures
Literate. This is a learning-by-doing strategy that invites people to think about the
future in structured ways that help reveal the nature and functioning of anticipation.
Using the future to understand how we use the future. Certainly there are other ways
to learn about a subject, but since anticipation enters into so much of what we do and
is so central to both psychological and physical well-being, it helps to take a rather
practical, solution oriented approach. Furthermore, this strategy dovetails nicely with
the need for a pragmatic, user oriented response to the first three observations regard-
ing: the dominance of statistics in the way we describe the world, the lack of familiarity
with tools for grasping the unique, and the tunnel vision of action hero agency.
4
Not-doing: The fifth observations is that an old ‘solution’ now seems very perti-
nent. Lao Tsu (1972) offered insights into the meaning and power of ‘not-doing’ in
the Tao Te Ching some 2500 years ago. Now, in 2015, not-doing takes on new sig-
nificance because it offers a practical way to understand and act on some of the key
discoveries of the 20
th
century. What I am referring to is a long and somewhat
familiar list of scientific advances that help us to better appreciate the richness of
reality, ranging from quantum physics and mathematical category-theory to theo-
ries of complexity, reflexivity and Senian freedom as a capability (Sen, 1999, 2009).
In effect, after a long period during which much of humanity sought various forms
of certainty, including ‘scientific certainty’, there is a new problem – how to inte-
grate the open creativity of the universe into our thinking. Close to 30 years ago,
Edgar Morin put the challenge this way: ‘We are still blind to the challenge of com-
plexity...This blindness is part of our barbarism. It makes us realize that we are still
in the era of barbaric thought. We remain in the pre-history of the human spirit.
Only the capacity to embrace complexity will allow us to civilize our thinking.’
5
Finally, more as an invitation to further reflection than as a conclusion, I want
to point out that a ‘push’ approach to learning, rooted in the planning and prepara-
tion roles attributed to education, may bias human decision making towards
choices that generate excessive path dependency and undermine a more robust
resilience strategy – diversification. To be very speculative, this could ultimately
reduce the survival chances of the species. Or to condense down the hypothesis –
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education, as it is practiced today, dominated by aspirations to prepare and plan for
the future inhibit the development and acquisition of Futures Literacy and may
therefore be inimical to humanity’s capacity to understand complexity in all its rich-
ness, undermining diversification and diversification strategies for continued
survival.
Riel Miller: rielm@yahoo.com
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riel_Miller2/publications or
http://www.rielmiller.com
DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author in a private capacity
and do not in any way represent the positions of UNESCO or any other organisa-
tion or institution.
NOTES
1. Such contingent events are usually characterised as being from low to high
probability, low to high impact and can be incorporated into probabilistic
anticipatory systems by making a series of assumptions that close the model.
Yet, strictly speaking, even a trend as probable as the sun rising tomorrow is
only an assumption and our ability to know what will happen under the sun
remains non-existent, unless it turns out that time machines can be built.
2. The exception, of course, is the topic of this article: preparation that enhances
our capacity to make sense of the unknowable when it happens. This distinc-
tion is sometimes referred to as the difference between risk and uncertainty
(North) and it is one of the primary contentions of this article that preparing
for the unknowable involves significantly different anticipatory systems and
processes than closed system risk estimation.
3. Novelty can be entirely ‘local’ in the sense of being a new or ‘ah ha’ moment
for anyone, anywhere. This idea of novelty starts from where consciousness is
at, the couplet of realisation that ‘I do not know, so I seek to know’.
4. UNESCO will publish a book on the subject: Transforming the Future: Anticipa-
tion in the 21
st
Century, in 2016.
5. ‘Nous sommes encore aveugles au proble
`me de la complexit
e. (...) Cet aveu-
glement fait partie de notre barbarie. Il nous fait comprendre que nous
sommes toujours dans l’e
`re barbare des id
ees. Nous sommes toujours dans la
pr
ehistoire de l’esprit humain. Seule la pens
ee complexe nous permettrait de
civiliser notre connaissance’. Edgar Morin 2005, p.24.
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... Ключевые слова: образ будущего; будущее России; ориентация на будущее; концепция будущего; молодежь; базисные ценности; диспозиционный оптимизм; удовлетворенность жизнью; futures-грамотность Введение Реализация практик, направленных на развитие психологических ресурсов молодежи, связанных с осознаваемым конструированием образа будущего в условиях динамических изменений, является важной задачей современного образования. Эта проблематика стимулирует исследования отечественных (Нестик, 2018, 2021а, 2021б; Петрова, 2019; Шестопал, 2021; Великая, Шушпанова, 2021; Комаровский и др., 2021; Туркулец, Туркулец, Листопадова, 2021) и зарубежных ученых (Rubin, 1996;Miller, 2015;Ahvenharju et al., 2021), центральным мотивом которых является изучение психологических феноменов, связанных с личностными и коллективными образами будущего. В период возрастающей неопределенности и усложнения условий жизни способность грамотно выстраивать индивидуальную концепцию будущего (futures-грамотность) является не только мощным инструментом личной продуктивности, но и катализатором интенсивных изменений как отдельно взятого сообщества, общественных институтов, государства (Miller, 2015). ...
... Эта проблематика стимулирует исследования отечественных (Нестик, 2018, 2021а, 2021б; Петрова, 2019; Шестопал, 2021; Великая, Шушпанова, 2021; Комаровский и др., 2021; Туркулец, Туркулец, Листопадова, 2021) и зарубежных ученых (Rubin, 1996;Miller, 2015;Ahvenharju et al., 2021), центральным мотивом которых является изучение психологических феноменов, связанных с личностными и коллективными образами будущего. В период возрастающей неопределенности и усложнения условий жизни способность грамотно выстраивать индивидуальную концепцию будущего (futures-грамотность) является не только мощным инструментом личной продуктивности, но и катализатором интенсивных изменений как отдельно взятого сообщества, общественных институтов, государства (Miller, 2015). Сегодня на фоне серьезных трансформаций в структуре мирового порядка это особенно актуально для России, которой требуется наличие долгосрочной продуманной национальной стратегии развития. ...
... Исследования образа будущего нашли свое продолжение в работах, посвященных изучению отношения к перспективе (Durance, 2010), ориентации на будущее (Trommsdorff, 1983;Beal, 2011), futures-грамотности (Miller, 2015), концепции сознания будущего (Ahvenharju et al., 2018). S.J. Beal пришла к выводу, что ключевыми составляющими ориентации на будущее по отношению к достижению результатов целесообразно считать четыре ключевых фактора: долгосрочную ориентацию; познание, ориентированное на будущее или, по мнению автора, актуальную цель / будущее «Я»; детализацию будущих целей; переживания, связанные с достижением целей (Beal, 2011). ...
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The purpose of the study is to examine the image of Russia's future in relation to indicators of dispositional optimism, life satisfaction, and value orientations of modern university students. The research sample consisted of 535 university students from Tomsk, with an average age of 20.1 ± 3.6 years. Research methods included the semantic differential technique to assess the characteristics of the image of Future Russia, the Dispositional Optimism Test (DOT-II) by M. Scheier, C. Carver, and M. Bridges (adaptation by T.O. Gordeeva, O.A. Sycheva, E.N. Osin), the questionnaire "Subjective Assessment of Feasibility of Basic Values" (SAFBV) by S.A. Bogomaz, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) by E. Diener (adaptation by E.N. Osin and D.A. Leontiev), and a custom-designed questionnaire aimed at determining the images of the Future Citizen, Future Russia, and Future World. Exploratory factor analysis of the semantic differential scales characterizing the image of Future Russia revealed two factors: Self-Development of Russia (36.9% of variance) and Security of Russia (36.8% of variance). Both factors showed significant positive correlations (p<0.001) with meta-values of existential and public self-realization, as well as life satisfaction indicator (p<0.001). Cluster analysis identified four clusters within the overall respondent group, with representatives differing significantly in the mean values of the explored variables at a statistically significant level. For the majority of respondents (66.7% of the total group), a pronounced positive modality of perceiving the image of Future Russia was characteristic, along with relatively high scores on the measured psychological variables. The obtained results lead to the following conclusions: a) the majority of young people form positive images of Russia's future, which are important life guides, determining their successful selfdevelopment; b) key psychological factors associated with the formation of a positive image of the future for young people may include characteristics of the feasibility of basic values and life satisfaction; c) there is a need to develop psycho-pedagogical technologies aimed at fostering positive life attitudes and developing futures literacy among target groups of youth who demonstrate negative or ambivalent evaluations of the future image.
... Furthermore, the inclusion of different demographic scenarios (median, best, worst) in the simulations supports the understanding of the potential variability of demographic trends and their impact on the historical commons. This aligns with the need to consider multiple future trajectories, beyond the median or the most probable one, in line with the key principle of futures studies and strategic foresight [65]. ...
... For this reason, the future perspective of the study is linked to the opportunity of group model building [52] or participatory modeling processes [6,71,72] in which to engage and enable the affected communities and other stakeholders in understanding how each part of the interested system interacts and how they can contribute to system behavior. This approach to multiple possible futures could provide local communities and stakeholders with tools for anticipation literacy and anticipatory governance that promote adaptive institutions, decision-making, strategy formation, and social resilience [65,73]. ...
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This study investigates the long-term effects of demographic trends and admission rules on common properties in the Province of Trento, Italy, which we refer to as historical commons. Historical commons have evolved into socio-ecological systems over the centuries, meaning that communities governed collectively natural resources and lands essential for community survival. Communities and the admission rules that determine their composition are an important constituting element of historical commons because they have developed local ecological knowledge and practices of sustainable use of natural resources. Our study hypothesizes that commons continuity is endangered because of the declining trend of the size of communities being influenced by demographic trends coupled with admission rules. Grounding our research in systems dynamics, we use empirical data including demographic projections and existing admission rules to simulate their effect on the site of the community using the Province of Trento, Italy, as our study region. To achieve that, three types of historical commons are identified: open, semi-open, and closed, each with different admission criteria based on inheritance and/or residency. Results indicate that inheritance-based admission rules can significantly reduce the number of commoners over time, potentially endangering the continuity of these self-governance institutions. The study discusses the results in light of the literature on historical commons’ continuity to evaluate different policies affecting the size of the community grounding on different mental models. The study concludes that a simulation approach can promote an anticipatory approach to the co-design of policies to ensure inclusive continuity of historical commons.
... The following educational design is based on Otto Scharmer's (2016) concepts of "learning from the future as it emerges" and Emergent Innovation (Peschl and Fundneider, 2017;Peschl, 2020). It is a transformative and future-oriented approach to innovation that is centred around the Theory U framework (Scharmer, 2016), anticipation and futures literacies (Miller, 2015(Miller, , 2018Poli, 2021;UNESCO, 2021), as well as dealing with selftranscending knowledge (Scharmer, 2001), future purpose and making use of future potentials (Glaveanu, 2022). These approaches propose that the most important sources of innovative change do not come primarily from traditional data, trend analysis, design thinking methods or extrapolation from past knowledge; rather, they claim that (radical) novelty arises from deep and mindful engagement with the world and its possibilities that are unfolding in the present moment and directing towards an emergent future purpose. ...
... The primary objective of this curriculum is to foster processes and capabilities of collaborative knowledge creation as well as futures literacies (Miller, 2015(Miller, , 2018Ehlers and Eigbrecht, 2024). The goal is to develop an innovation (project) that culminates in the realization of a tangible prototype over the course of the semester. ...
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Recent publications in the field of KM emphasize the importance of topics such as Spirituality (e.g. Bratianu, 2017; Kaiser, 2023; Rocha & Pinheiro, 2021), Phronesis (practical wisdom) (Kragulj, 2022; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 2019; Rocha et al., 2022; Serenko, 2024), Organizational Purpose (Kerschbaum, 2022), dealing with future potentials and future-oriented innovation (Peschl, 2018, 2020) and Responsible KM (Durst, 2021) as future avenues for KM research. However, it seems that these topics have not yet entirely found their way into practice, or, although the phenomena described are inherently present in organizations, they do not receive much attention from practitioners these days. With this paper we seek to initiate discussion on how to deploy research results on topics like Spirituality, Practical Wisdom, non-rational Knowledge, future-oriented knowledge work, and Organizational Purpose into applied contexts. We argue that an essential step is to adequately train students at universities with the new content. Todays students are the leaders, entrepreneurs, and managers of tomorrow. Therefore, we present selected educational concepts that help students build competencies in understanding and applying non-rational forms of knowledge. The intention of these newly designed teaching concepts is to move our field of research out of the metaphoric ivory tower towards the application in organizations. We argue that this is a necessary step for the development of the field of KM, enabling our research to remain relevant in modern-day business and organizational environments.
... Expanding and developing skills and techniques to facilitate futuring engagements (Hines et al., 2017), futurists shift focus away from prediction, control, and optimization (Miller, 2015;Miller et al., 2018) to understand, encourage, and support emergent, transformative possibilities (Miller, 2018). Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) (Inayatullah, 1998(Inayatullah, , 2008 is an approach to futures inquiry that acknowledges and supports efforts to challenge core myths and metaphors in support of transformational change at individual and social levels. ...
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Blockchain technologies have been used for a variety of sophisticated data management applications, most noteworthy being used as the infrastructure for cryptocurrencies. This paper explores the potential of using blockchain technologies in education, focusing on the opportunities and potential futures for flexible and adaptive credentialing and certification. Using social inquiry methods, the futuring tool of Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) explored the potential and desirable futures of blockchain credentialing and the potential impact of blockchain credentialing for transforming education. Especially valuable was the disruptive potential to formal education blockchain credentialing might present, opening possibilities for nonformal and informal educational opportunities. Taking a whole-systems approach, the utilization of blockchain technologies for intricate record manipulations, accounting, and credential certification offers a more comprehensive perspective on the issues, promises, and challenges tied to their use in education. This study’s implications extend to the recognition of broader social factors that play a crucial role in effecting transformative change within education. These factors pose challenges to the conventional K-12 and higher education curriculum, as well as the overall educational infrastructure.
... Futures literacy is defined as "the capacity to explore the potential of the present to give rise to the future" (Miller, 2007, p. 347). It involves using anticipation to understand and act in a complex emergent context (Miller, 2015). Terminologically, "futures" in plural form highlights the assumption of possible alternative and multiple scenarios which concurrently suggests why foresight, imagination and anticipation are conducive to futures thinking (Miller et al., 2018). ...
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Science education bears the broader objective of nurturing students today to be scientifically-literate citizens of tomorrow who are able to foresee challenges, invent solutions and make responsible decisions for global issues. As a prelude to the new focus of agency in the Anthropocene, this paper presents an intervention on climate change with upper secondary students in a museum of natural history in England. Instructional strategies such as infusing scenarios and arts into scientific discussions were adopted to induce imagination, future-oriented thinking and emotional responses. Statistical results showed that the intervention significantly enhanced participants’ futures literacy, environmental agency and positive emotions. However, it did not increase their interests in learning science in out-of-school context. Implications of this study will shed light on futurising science and climate education in research and practice.
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URL: http://royesh.tums.ac.ir/article-1-82-fa.html
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Futurists are haunted by an unresolved problem – how to deal with the unknowable and novelty rich future. Most futurists in the APF and elsewhere have accepted for some years now that prediction and probability are limited ways of thinking about the future. But knowing what does not work is not the same as knowing what does. The paradox of futures is that we can’t find ways to ‘know’ the future, but rather we need to find ways to live and act with not-knowing the future. This requires the discipline of anticipation (DOA).
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As a founder and managing director of Global Business Network, James Ogilvy helped develop the technique of scenario planning, which has become an integral part of strategic thinking in both business and government. Now Ogilvy shows how we can use this cutting-edge method for social change in our own neighborhoods. In Building Better Futures, Ogilvy presents a profound new vision of how the world is changing--and how it can be changed for the better. Ogilvy argues that self-defined communities, rather than individuals or governments, have become the primary agents for social change. Towns, professional associations, and interest groups of all kinds help shape the future in all the ways that matter most, from schools and hospitals to urban development. The key to improvement is scenario planning--a process that draws on groups of people, both lay and expert, to draft narratives that spell out possible futures, some to avoid, some inspiring hope. Scenario planning has revolutionized both public and private planning, leading to everything from the diverse product lines that have revived the auto industry, to a timely decision by the state of Colorado to avoid pouring millions into an oil-shale industry that never materialized. But never before has anyone proposed that it be taken up by society as a whole. Drawing on years of experience in both academia and the private sector, where he developed both a keen sense of how businesses work best and an abiding passion for changing the world, James Ogilvy provides the tools we need to create better communities: better health, better education, better lives.
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Theory U is a framework and social methodology that integrates systems thinking, leadership and organizational learning from the viewpoint of an evolving human consciousness. It presents a matrix of social evolution in which the current crisis of our global system is seen as a possibility to co-create a generative social field. The condition for that transformation is a shift of the inner place from which a system operates (open mind, open heart, open will).
Article
Graham Molitor's article provides a timely prompt for reflecting on the value of scenario prac-tices, especially given several data sources indicating their usage has increased significantly since 2001 (e.g. Ramirez, Selsky, & van der Heijden, 2008, p.9). Molitor is not alone in his struggle to clarify the effectiveness of scenario practices. Others, including myself, are endeavouring to address similar questions: how to judge effectiveness and what do we mean by 'effectiveness' when referring to such practices? As he implicitly suggests, his critique does not imply that we should throw the scenario 'baby out with the bathwater'. It is all too easy to agree with some of the criticisms of scenarios raised by Molitor. Three aspects are particularly relevant: The first is that futures work seems to be characterised by highly personalised practices. Such practices can be introduced by someone who thought it was "a good idea" but who failed to fully reflect on the complexity of the situation and bases their choice of techniques on sound theoretical principles. Secondly, as much of scenario work is secret – particularly in military and corporate sec-tors-and/or difficult to assess, it is very hard to engage in comparative research. Thirdly, common to other practitioner-led fields, scenario practices are blessed with a high degree of innovation and entrepreneurship and cursed by a lack of reliable accounts that render explicitly what has worked and what has not, why and for whom in different settings. In the limited space available, however, I would like to raise three areas that I feel are worthy of further reflection: 1. Scenarios Are Not Forecasts By implicating scenarios with "any technique that may advance forecasting capabilities", Molitor contributes to the already considerable methodological confusion that characterises the futures field, in general, and scenario practices in particular. In fact, scenarios – i.e. many futures -and forecasting – one future -have different ontological and epistemological underpinnings.