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Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
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Futures Literacy:
The Capacity to Diversify Conscious Human Anticipation
Riel Miller1 and Richard Sandford2
Introduction
This chapter offers an introduction to a capability called Futures Literacy (FL), a
framework for making sense of the anticipatory assumptions that distinguish different
kinds of FL, and one specific research tool called Futures Literacy Laboratories (FLL) that
has been designed to explore anticipatory assumptions. The chapter points to the
following conclusions. First that FL is a practical skill that develops as people gain a better
understanding of anticipatory assumptions. Second that our understanding of
anticipatory assumptions requires a robust theory of anticipatory systems and processes.
Third, FL has potentially important implications for the conceptualization and
deployment of human agency, particularly with respect to our relationship to complexity.
I: Futures Literacy as Anticipation
Futures Literacy (FL)3 is a human capability, similar to the currently much more
familiar form of ‘literacy’, the ability to read and write. FL is a skill, and like all skills it
must be learned. Someone who is Futures Literate has learned how to consciously and
deliberately ‘use-the-future’ for different reasons and in different ways depending on
the context. Conceptualising the ability to ‘use-the-future’ (i.e. FL) in this instrumental
fashion makes clear the roots of FL in the ‘anticipatory systems and processes’
perspective as per the Robert Rosen formulation cited by Roberto Poli at the outset of
this Handbook: “An anticipatory system is a system containing a predictive model of
itself and/or its environment, which allows it to change state at an instant in accord
with the model’s predictions pertaining to a later instant” (Rosen, 1985, p. 339). Along
with many of the authors in this volume, we believe that this hypothesis is a critical step
towards integrating both time into our understanding of life and creativity (as non-
1 Head of Futures Literacy, UNESCO, Paris.
2 Professor of Heritage Evidence, Foresight and Policy, UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage.
3 Note: the capitalization of the term Futures Literacy and Futures Literate is for the purposes of signalling
the distinctive nature of this skill in the context of its initial emergence. Such demarcation may eventually
disappear once the unfamiliar becomes familiar.
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deterministic novelty) into our understanding of complexity (Bergson; Kaufmann;
DeLanda; Poli; Akomolafe).
Taking the Rosen perspective on anticipatory systems and processes as a starting
point also draws attention to the difference between conscious and non-conscious ‘use-
of-the-future’. Although for some it may seem self-evident, it is important to underscore
that there is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, the non-conscious
anticipatory systems and processes that characterize an amoeba or a tree and, on the
other hand, learned human anticipation as conscious and deliberate Futures Literacy
(FL). This reinforces the point that FL is a skill that must be acquired in order to be
manifested. Skills are learned, in part by doing, even if the processes and outcomes that
characterise a skill can be described or observed in a passive way (DeLanda, 2016, p.
80). As a result, deploying a skill involves, of necessity, explicit situational and
performative decisions. In the case of FL these decisions are about why to ‘use-the-
future’ and how to imagine it. Consequently, a Futures Literate person satisfies Rosen’s
definition of an anticipatory system because they activate their knowledge of why and
how to ‘use-the-future’ – a form of model – to “change state in accord with the model.”
Call it anticipation of anticipation.
Such conscious human anticipation, as distinct from reflex and unconscious
expressions, covers a broad range of reasons and methods, from the predictive and
locked-in kind that Rosen mentions to the non-predictive – Anticipation for Emergence
(AfE) – that make up a critical part of the Futures Literacy Framework presented in this
chapter (see Figure 2 in Section 1 below). When it comes to FL the ‘change of state’
that constitutes the action arising from the functioning of an anticipatory system is the
action of thought or perception that occurs prior to taking any external action
understood in the conventional way as a physical or virtual commitment. Thus,
exercising one’s FL is a form of anticipatory action, the choice of why and how to ‘use-
the-future’, that occurs before actually imagining any specific futures or making bets, on
imagined futures, that are external to the mind. As a result conscious human
anticipatory systems and processes can include ‘uses-of-the-future’ that go beyond the
constraints imposed when the futures we imagine are confined to the probable and
desirable. In the Futures Literacy Framework (Miller, 2018), as depicted in Figure 2 in
the next Section, conscious human anticipation encompasses both the conventional and
familiar Anticipation for the Future (AfF) and rarely considered Anticipation for
Emergence (AfE). Futures imagined in the latter category are not constructed with the
goal of inventing ex-ante probable or normative outcomes. Stated more exactly, futures
imagined when the aim is AfE adopt narrative and analytical assumptions that are as
open as appropriate and feasible to invention and novelty, improvisation and
ephemerality. As Roberto Poli explains:
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“…if we expand our consideration of change to fully incorporate novelty –
discontinuity that is unknowable in advance – there is the challenge of being in two (or
more) frames at once. How to develop the capacity to see and act in ways that take
incompatible systems into account? These are situations where taking the point-of-view
of one system not only renders the other invisible but often expresses an existential
conflict with the new system. The problem that surfaces here is dramatically urgent:
while we well know how to build a bureaucratic structure meant to act within the
existing framework of agency – i.e. we know how to use the future for optimization and
contingency – we are still in the deepest fog about how to build anticipatory structures
able to deal organically with complex problems and systems.” (Poli, 2017, p. 185)
Being Futures Literate enables anticipatory activities that are about why and how
to ‘use-the-future’ depending on a what kind of future we want to imagine: AfF or AfE.
Certainly, in both cases, the later-than-now matters and an action ensues. What is
different is the purpose and hence the choice of anticipatory systems and processes. One
way to illustrate this idea is to imagine that anticipatory systems and processes are like
special visual filters that when changed also alter what we can see, name, and invent.
From this perspective, it is easier to understand the nature and importance of the
difference between someone who is Futures Literate and someone who is not. A Futures
Illiterate person, unaware that they use anticipatory filters cannot explicitly choose from
amongst familiar ones or explicitly attempt to invent new ones. Someone who becomes
Futures Literate, by acquiring the capacity to select and create anticipatory
assumptions, is not only aware of the filters but is able to decide why, how and when to
change filter. Of course this does not change the fact that they cannot know what the
future will bring and so the selection of filter is inevitably a blind bet. Still, such a
choice, as per Rosen’s definition, remains an anticipatory action resulting from an
anticipatory system. As already noted, but worth underscoring, the choice of filter
happens prior to actually imagining any specific future, be it probable or preferred. A
choice is being made based on why you want to ‘use-the-future’ – to plan or not to
plan, that is the question.
At first blush this option appears like the distinction between being active or
passive, trying to ‘make a difference’ or ignoring one’s capacity for agency. After all
who does not want to plan? Planning is good. We plan for the future and prepare for
eventualities. There is no reason, from the point-of-view of shaping the future through
chains of causal power and prescience, to entertain the idea of ‘not-doing.’ Such an
approach seems like an abdication of our capacity for action, irresponsible at best and
immoral at worst. From this point-of-view the utility of imagining the future is
narrowed down to a single plane, the possibility space defined by causal ambition and
actions meant to realise that ambition. But what if there are other dimensions of
complex emergence, possibility spaces that are not confined to causality or make-a-
difference-to-the-future agency? A form of taking-action that exists in the non-causal
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and non-actionable spheres of complex emergent reality? Could imagining the non-
existent future without the imperatives or the framing anticipatory assumptions of
causal agency provide access to another window or point-of-view on the emergent
world? Or a role for ‘action’ related to perception unsubsumed by planning and the
expectation or hope of being able to control or at least influence the future?
Figure 1
Locating Human Agency in the Context of Repetition and Difference in Complexity
Repetition in system
conditions
Difference in system conditions
Agency
Specificity
Generality
Incremental
internal
Novel
internal
Non-contiguous
external
Non-
conscious
Inertia
Improvisation, spontaneity, invention, serendipity
Reflex
adaptation
Chance
Ignorance
Conscious
Preservation
through
continuity
Success in achieving
stasis without change
Endogenous change –
within system reform
to maintain system
conditions
Co-existence
Preservation
through
discontinuity
Success in achieving
stasis with change
Disruptive
coexistence
Exploiting
novelty
Transformation
Figure 1 offers one way of depiciting an expansion of human agency beyond
preparation and planning; to instrumentalise the future differently, to identify conscious
‘uses-of-the-future’ that do not exclusively originate from the goal of realizing a
particular future. Figure 1 attempts to provide a categorical map for locating ‘where’
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human agency can potentially play a role, without at all claiming that the outcomes
from the exercise of such agency can be known in advance. As odd and yet as obvious
as it may seem it is crucial to repeat that the exercise of Futures Literacy through the
choice and intervention of any particular set of anticipatory systems and processes, like
the selection of a filter for looking at the world, cannot be done on the basis of prior
knowledge of what will happen. We cannot see what we will see before we see it and so
the selection of the filter is in this sense arbitrary. Perhaps, it is the case that in order to
be good at detecting change and recognising patterns, humans rather automatically
rotate filters – like when the optometrist checks a patient’s vision. Maybe the
evolutionary steps that stack-up behind our relatively young and immature species have
provided us with anticipation patterns of anticipation that are effective at an
evolutionary level. Just like trees that lose leaves as winter arrives. Yet, as powerful as
the evolutionary processes may be, the point of Futures Literacy is to see if we can
consciously, through the development of scientific hypotheses and testing, both
understand the world a bit more – particularly novelty – and enhance our capacity to
be free (Sen, 2011). Figure 1 is one foray towards mapping this ambition.
Figure 1 helps to map different ways human agency might ‘use-the-future’ with
respect to repetition and difference, but it does not and cannot claim that “success” or
causal impact can be established ex ante (even in cases where the likelihood of predictive
success – such as the sun rising tomorrow – appears extremely high). Accepting such
unescapable uncertainty often generates considerable discomfort or rejection from
within the currently dominant conventional mind-set, and seems to attack the
motivational underpinnings and basic functioning of human agency (Ogilvy, 2011) that
depends on establishing, at least with some degree of probability, that ‘best laid plans’
will in fact ‘make-a-difference’. But what research into Futures Literacy shows is that
this association between probability and outcomes can be inter-mediated differently. By
running experiments, Futures Literacy Laboratories (see Section 2), that expose the
anticipatory assumptions upon which Futures Literacy functions, it may be possible to
find ways of accepting the radical equality of uncertainty as a way to more fully
embrace complexity.
The evidence generated by these Labs does not deny or ignore the critical
relationship between assumptions that allow for the calculation of probability and the
choices that humans make on that basis. Quite the contrary, since the action-learning
processes deployed in Labs to develop participants’ Futures Literacy are designed to
render conventional Anticipation for Future (AfF) reasons and methods for ‘using-the-
future’ more explicit. Then, building on a better awareness of AfF anticipatory
assumptions it becomes easier to develop and explore other reasons and methods for
‘using–the-future’, including those related to Anticipation for Emergence (AfE). In this
way the acquisition of Futures Literacy makes ‘walking-on-two-legs’ or alternating
between AfF and AfE a question of choice. And, by rendering this choice explicit,
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Futures Literacy opens up the potential to imagine and construct human agency, at
least in part, outside a causal deterministic framing. In other words, outside the logical
contraints imposed by anticipation that uses the past to determine probable and
preferable targets for human agency. These are indeed two different ‘legs’. When
‘using-the-future’ to sense and make-sense of aspects of the present that are invisible or
non-sensical on the basis of probable or preferable futures it is necessary to seek
inspiration from outside the logic of probability and preference. A task that appears, in
most cases, to be of no interest from the point-of-view of Anticipation for the Future
(AfF).
Discovering the value and logic of Anticipation for Emergence is rendered even
stranger, from the perspective of AfF by the fact that when we act to choose different
anticipatory systems and processes there is no way to know if we are making the right
choice. In other words, we can only experiment. The observation that much of the time
the experiments work out as expected does not deny our fundamental ignorance at the
moment we selecte a particular set of anticipatory assumptions and processes. From the
stance of AfF it is disturbing that the only aspect of this process that is amenable to
being less blind is the choice of anticipatory systems and processes. In other words, we
can be a bit more Futures Literate. Still, this begs the question, so what? If the future is
complex and fundamentally uncertain what good does it do to be aware that we can
acquire the capacity to choose different filters or not? The answer offered here may not
be particularly satisfying from the point of view of the old determinist, colonise-the-
future perspective but it provides a reasonable rationale for becoming Futures Literate.
In a nutshell, people who are Futures Illiterate run a double risk. One possibility is that
they get stuck using one or a limited set of filters without even being aware. Two is that
they are unable to consciously and deliberatively ‘use-the-future’ to search analytically,
systematically and more intentionally serendipitously for meaning in the emergent
present. This makes them less able to: ask new questions, sense and make-sense of
novelty, appreciate ephemerality because its connection to already imagined futures is
not evident, and in general, improvise on the basis of constantly emerging unknowables
– the wellspring of uncertainty that makes up the difference and repetition of the
emergent present.
Of course, being Futures Literate or Illiterate does not change the indeterminate
nature of complex emergence. Consequently, there is no way to be certain if in the end
being skilled or unskilled in anticipatory systems and processes will play a role in better
or worse outcomes. Humanity’s resilience, for instance, will always be an open question
– since uncertainty is the only certainty. But, we do have proof-of-concept level
evidence (Miller, 2018) that being Futures Literate does ‘make-a-difference’ for why
and how people ‘use-the-future’ and that the acquisition of this skill has an impact when
it comes to detecting and inventing novelty as ontological expansion (Tuomi, 2017).
Obviously this novelty can only exist once it has emerged, or at least the conditions for
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the ‘creative’ moment (Boden, 2004 ) are in place. There is still no way to really know if
we will ‘make-a-difference’, but as we shift onto the leg that uses the assumptions that
seek probable futures, one of those probabilities can be greater openness to novelty. By
getting better at ‘using-the-future’ by switching between AfF and AfE it seems we can
also enhance our capacity to sense and make-sense of novelty. Once again it is worth
stressing that getting better at a means for perceiving the world does not guarantee
better outcomes.
Whatever the rationale, the only way to gain a better understanding of the nature
and role of conscious human anticipation is to conduct further research (Poli, 2017).
The contribution to such an endeavour made by this chapter and the on-going work
around Futures Literacy (Miller, 2018) is to focus on discerning the attributes of the
capacity to ‘use-the-future’ for different reasons and in different ways in different
contexts. The rest of this chapter provides an initial look at research along these lines.
It offers a brief overview of the Futures Literacy Framework (FLF), used to define and
work with anticipatory assumptions, and describes some preliminary evidence that
suggests Futures Literacy Laboratories are one productive methodological format for
conducting research into anticipatory assumptions. The chapter concludes by
examining the relevance for policy formation of getting better at determining the
assumptions that define “strategic boxes”.
II The Futures Literacy Framework (FLF)4
The Futures Literacy Framework (FLF) presented in Figure 2 below has the
ambition of providing “handles” or descriptors for characterizing the attributes and
utility for a broad range of anticipatory systems and processes. The goal of the FLF is
not only descriptive but also to assist with the explicit choices of conscious human
anticipation. To continue the analogy to filters, the FLF assists with the effort to match
filters to contexts, tools to tasks. The FLF is one way of discerning different reasons for
deploying our imaginations – ‘using-the-future’ – and applying relevant methods for
describing these imaginary worlds. The FLF as can be seen in Figure 2 classifies
anticipatory systems and process along two axes – the ontological and epistemological,
with a bias to diving deeper into conscious human ‘uses-of-the-future’. The ontological
categories are on the left-hand side and the epistemological ones are on the upper right.
Drawing the intersection between these two sets of characteristics situates FL in six
distinct clusters of anticipatory assumptions (AA1 to AA6).
4 This section leans heavily on Miller (2018, Chapter 1).
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This framework for describing why and how people ‘use-the-future’ is useful
because it contributes to:
▪ developing FL by helping to construct the learning processes that enable
people to ‘use-the-future’ in different ways depending on aims, means and
context;
▪ exploring FL by helping to identify existing and new topics for research;
▪ determining the best methods to conduct research into FL by helping to
select the appropriate design criteria; and
▪ FL as a practice by helping to determine which tools for thinking about the
future are most appropriate for the kind of future being thought about in a
given context.
Anticipatory assumptions
The FLF describes anticipatory systems and processes on the basis of a common
unit of analysis: anticipatory assumptions (AA). The relevance of the term ‘assumption’
is relatively obvious in the context of the future since by definition the future does not
yet exist. The future is imaginary, generated out of a set of assumptions, whether such
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premises define the 5‘possibility space’ of a predicted future that is locked into non-
conscious anticipatory systems and processes, at least for the present iteration, or
conscious flights of fancy, the gamut of fictional inventions that humans exercise
constantly. Putting AA at the analytical centre of efforts to understand anticipatory
systems and processes also makes it easier to take into account the point raised above
about the distinction between conscious and non-conscious anticipation. When
anticipation occurs without explicit conscious imagining, such as with trees or single-cell
creatures or through the functioning of capitalist competition, the AA at a systemic level
are of an inherently non-volitional, non-agency based character. This is why the bottom
of Figure 2 designates non-conscious anticipation as the kind of imaginary futures that
are relevant to fields like biology, physics, mathematics, sociology, economics etc. In
these fields the later-than-now, at an ontological ‘what-is-it?’ level, is defined and
incorporated into anticipatory systems, at least up until very recently, by exclusively
non-conscious evolutionary processes.
AA are also the descriptive and analytical building blocks of research into FL
because conscious human anticipation can only occur on the basis of AA of one kind or
another. AA are what enable people to describe and invent imaginary futures. The
frames and models that are used to invent the content of the fictions that are conscious
human anticipation can be described using AA. This means that FL can be described as
the capacity to identify, design, target and deploy AA. One of the virtues of designating
AA as the theoretical and practical core of human anticipatory capabilities (FL) is that
AA can be described and situated on the basis of the intersection of different
Anticipatory Systems and Knowledge Creation Processes, as per the FLF depicted in
Figure 2. Conscious anticipation is fundamentally about producing fiction. As a result
the KCP that are relevant are restricted to those frames (Kahneman, 2012; Lakoff,
2006; Bakhtin, 1981; Goffman, 1974) that enable meaningful descriptions of imaginary
futures.
III: Initial Evidence from Futures Literacy Laboratories
This section briefly summarises some of the evidence generated by some of the
FLL6 run at the outset of UNESCO’s efforts to explore anticipatory systems and
processes. The results examined in this section focus primarily on two issues, one the
5 For a more in-depth discussion of so called ‘block time’, in which the past, present and future all coexist
see the chapter by Tibbs in this Handbook. For the purposes of this chapter, however, it is assumped that at
a practical level even if the future may exist simultaneously with the present, it is not accessible for the
purposes of consciously deliberative human anticipatory activities.
6 This initial research was conducted at the beginning of UNESCO’s efforts to explore Futures Literacy,
starting in 2012 and running through 2014, as discussed in Miller (2014)
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extent to which people’s anticipatory assumptions were revealed by being participants
in FLL and what were the signs, if any that participants were becoming FL.
Overview of the FLL format and data collected
The core features of the FLL process, as presented to participants, reflected a set
of common design principles that underpin each distinct FLL. These design principles
were informed by previous work undertaken in a number of different settings. In
particular, initial evidence of the nature and role of ‘futures literacy’ emerged from work
at the OECD’s International Futures Programme that provided an opportunity to
experiment and observe both collective intelligence knowledge creation and using the
future together (Miller, 2007). Efforts to elaborate and test the role and nature of
anticipatory systems continued through experiments conducted by the Irish and
Romanian governments as well as the European Commission (Miller et. al., 2010;
Miller, 2010; Miller 2008). This work also connected researchers from a range of
disciplines and designer/facilitators who started building communities of practice
around different aspects of anticipatory systems and processes. Many of the researchers
were part of an informal network called FuMee that emerged from a larger undertaking
funded by the European Commission’s COST program7. Many of the practitioners
were part of the Association of Professional Futurists or the Futures Oriented
Technology Assessment network sponsored by the European Commission’s Joint
Research Centres. All of these different strands of action-research were drawn together
with the launch of the Scoping Global/Local Anticipatory Capacities project
undertaken by UNESCO and sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation, CGEE Brazil
and Innovation Norway (Miller, 2014). The core purpose of this project was to engage
with participants’ anticipatory systems and processes in order to generate new
information and specific questions regarding the nature of the way people use the
future, through exploring specific topical issues in context.
These aims were given practical expression by undertaking FLL. The intention
was that the FLL would materially contribute to efforts to address specific local
concerns, tackling a complex, dilemma-filled situation not considered effectively
tractable through traditional planning approaches. Each Lab was designed in
collaboration with a local sponsor with a remit to address such a topic, convening local
stakeholders (NGOs, policy makers, academics, activists, citizens) in a process running,
in most cases, over one or two days. The Lab took as a starting point the existing
assumptions and practices regarding the future that participants brought with them to
the event, situating them within a domain of inquiry set by local priorities and concerns.
Through making these existing future-facing ideas visible to participants, setting them
in a novel and unfamiliar frame to examine and assess them anew, and using this
reframing process to generate new questions regarding the topic under consideration,
the process aimed to produce new perspectives on this domain, and to demonstrate the
value of engaging with uncertainty and using the future differently. All FLLs were
custom designed to take into account the specificity of each context. Reflecting the
aspiration that the process embody the principles of enquiry through action learning,
7 http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/isch/A22
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there was an overarching general architecture to the cognitive process – a learning-
curve structure that guided the sequencing of the heuristics or a generic agenda. The
following is a typical example of the design of an FLL event as a collective intelligence
knowledge creation process that ‘uses-the-future’:
Phase One: revealing existing anticipatory assumptions.
In groups, participants discuss their understanding of the subject and their current
beliefs and ideas about its future development. The conversation is conducted in two
parts that distinguish hopes or preferred futures from likely or predicted futures.
Afterwards, these breakout groups report back to a plenary session, sharing their
imaginings of likely and hoped for futures: the facilitators help lead a discussion that
identifies and elaborates the anticipatory assumptions as articulated by the participants
– the largely tacit models used to imagine the future become more explicit.
The entire process relies on the same source, the ‘collective intelligence’ of the
group, or shared meaning-making through a conversational process that obliges
participants to examine and articulate what they imagine about the future of the chosen
topic. Such conversations can be more or less structured, longer or shorter, mined for
meaning or just skimmed, but in most cases comprise the easy (or at least less-steep) part
of the learning curve. This is when people make their assumptions explicit, and try to
find common meanings without necessarily seeking agreement or consensus.
Phase Two: reframing, inventing new anticipatory assumptions
In this phase participants take a further step in developing their understanding of
the nature and role of the anticipatory assumptions they use to frame their imaginations
and how the imaginary future can influence their perceptions, priorities and actions. In
this way the collective intelligence process continues to develop their FL. Again, in
practice, there are as many ways to undertake a reframing exercise as there are
contexts. The central aim, however, is to enable participants to gain a better
understanding of the nature and role of anticipatory assumptions by projecting
themselves into a scenario or narrative that is radically discontinuous from the most
familiar or dominant imaginaries or narratives. Then, on the basis of these ‘odd’ or
difficult to assimilate anticipatory assumptions the participants try to describe the
systems, structure and modes of agency, forms and mechanisms of knowledge creation
and use, processes of communication, elements of social structures for trust and so on.
The challenge of the reframing exercise is to enable participants to immerse themselves
fully in this ‘alternative’ scenario through a process of ‘rigorous imagining’: the aim is
not to explore the ways in which such a scenario might come to pass, nor to assess the
extent to which such a scenario might be likely or desirable, but to accept it and ‘think
oneself into it’ as completely as one is able.
One heuristic, deployed in a number of events, uses a detailed framework
constructed to be radically different from current models of societal functioning, called
the ‘learning intensive society’ (LIS) (Miller, 2006). Participants are provided with a
series of analytical tools that enable them to describe a society in which the processes
and structures of production and consumption have been fundamentally transformed.
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On this basis, enabled by technological and capability changes, learning becomes the
predominant value creating activity: society operates as a dynamic and continually-
shifting set of interacting networks in which identities are more fluid, people participate
in a culture of creative experimentation and rapid failure, and learning is something
that happens continuously through this process. The LIS scenario is intended to
challenge fundamental ideas about responsibility, agency, causality and the nature of
the self, giving participants the opportunity to re-examine their anticipatory
assumptions and thereby gain a better understanding of how the models they use and
the ensuing ideas about the future alter their perception of the present, in addition to
providing indications of the methods and communities they work with when using the
future.
Phase Three: new questions, a capacity to think about changes in the conditions of change
In the third phase of the process participants are invited to revisit the anticipatory
assumptions they articulated during the first phase and reconsider their models for
describing the imaginary future in the light of a heightened awareness produced during
the second phase of the process. The reframing phase offered participants a new
vocabulary or palette with which to imagine and describe the future, making it possible
to ask new questions that might, in the context of the old frame, have seemed
unimportant or inconsistent or unimaginable. This session gives participants a direct
experience of the way our sense of the current moment is shaped in part by the models
and expectations we use to think about what happens next. Once again the purpose is
to provide participants with an opportunity to articulate their anticipatory assumptions
and become more aware of how the future enters into the perceptions and activities of
their specific community of practice.
Data collected
The intention throughout the Networking to Improve Global/Local Anticipatory
Capacities project (Miller, 2014) was to use FLL to generate data that would inform the
sponsors’ understandings of the way different groups make use of the future, and of the
effectiveness of the process in developing FL. A set of general research tools intended to
support this process were drafted by members of the project design committee (Miller,
2014). For a variety of reasons, including significant differences across places and
cultures in the ways time and the future are represented and approached, a crucial
design parameter for the design of FLL is co-created contextualisation. Collective
intelligence knowledge creation processes that ‘use-the-future’ cannot work if the design
does not take into account differences and variations in the organisation and
expectations of each context. Such customisation, while indicative of the degree to
which each event was a local product rather than implemented top-down, limits the
ability to assess the relationship between formally identical processes and specific
outcomes. With this in mind a number of surveys were carried out in order to generate
qualitative data that could be analysed for indications that the sought-for impact was
achieved. In addition, several summary reports were created by the organisers and
facilitators of various events.
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There are consequently a number of caveats regarding the data presented here,
given the contingencies surrounding its production. The survey responses from each
event (what might be considered ‘primary’ sources, consisting of participants’ reports)
are in general from a subset of those participating, in response to surveys written in
English that offer a number of leading questions and assume particular understandings
of key concepts. The reports from organisers (which might be considered ‘secondary’
sources) are necessarily partial and mediated accounts from a particular perspective.
There is little empirical data available (some of the sessions were recorded, but
resources for in-depth analysis were not available). The data shared should be
understood as arising from different cultural and societal contexts, and not
representative of the entire population of those attending these events (indeed, given the
low response rates it should be understood as representing a minority). Consequently,
the claims made from the analysis will be limited.
The data examined here is drawn from the following material:
Item
Event
Responses
Post-event survey
Youth to Adult Transition, Paris
13
Pre-event survey
Future of Cities, Paris
13
Post-event survey
Future of Cities, Paris
14
Post-event survey
Future of Universities, Sao Paolo
24
Event report
Future of Universities, Sao Paolo
-
Event report
Future of Local Labour Markets,
Bogota (see case studies)
-
Analysis
The analysis of the evidence generated by the participants in FLL is structured
around two research questions, derived from the aims of the Networking to Improve
Global/Local Anticipatory Capacities project:
1) Do participants reveal anticipatory assumptions they use to imagine the
future?
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
14
2) Are there indicators that participants have developed an understanding of FL?
Textual analysis of the responses to the Paris post-event survey (the item with the
richest material from respondents) was carried out using a thematic coding approach.
The research focus was embedded in the structure of the forms employed by
participants to generate their responses, making it possible to begin by applying
descriptive codes to participants’ responses, then clustering these emergent themes into
key categories that spoke to the overarching research questions. Having produced a set
of codes capable of organising responses in relation to this analytic focus, they were
used to analyse the remaining surveys from the Future Cities event and Sao Paolo,
producing a revised iteration of the set of codes used to understand participants’
representations of the process they went through during the event. This set of codes
were used to structure an investigation of the reports from Sao Paolo and Bogota,
looking for the presence of similar themes in the observations of the report authors.
Findings
In this section we describe what can be seen of the nature of the anticipatory
assumptions from participants’ responses, and assess the indications that they have
developed FL. We briefly discuss the reflexive anticipatory assumptions made visible, the
different framings of the future employed by participants, the different ways in which they
suggest they use-the-future, the motivations that are offered for using-the-future, and their
responses to the notion of FL.
Reflecting on personal anticipatory assumptions
Any investigation into the assumptions towards the future held by participants
using the data collected will be limited, since the surveys presented a pre-defined and
limited set of stances towards the future for respondents to choose amongst. A change
between the options selected by participants before and after the events would be a
relevant indicator, assuming that they originally held a different perspective towards the
future. This was visible in a few cases: for example, in the Future Cities event one
respondent offered these two responses to a question about how they think about
uncertainty.
Pre: The future is uncertain. I look at the future sometimes with fear.
Post: Uncertainty – is not a threat, can be taken as a challenge.
A colleague at the same event noted that they were now able to:
take the time to question some of my own (and shared) assumptions that I use
in my work in education/training policy about what young people will “need”
to live, learn, be citizens, and work in the 21st century.
Others reported a new awareness of their thoughts towards the future.
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
15
When I think about the future, I think of many challenges of different sort :
environmentally, politically, economically. At the same time I have a quite
optimistic image of the future and for example when thinking about
environment many new technologies come to my mind
After the Paris event, some participants noted a change in the way they
considered the future:
New awareness of complexity of defining what an adult is; of the tension
between social and administrative definitions and personal and tacit
understanding and needs. Became aware of my own habits of mind about the
subject through my interactions with the group and seeing their
presuppositions
It made me question the definitions and social norms we adhere to when
thinking about what characterizes that transition.
The workshop facilitated my out-of-the-box thinking about what those terms
mean, whether they should mean anything at all, who defines those
categories, and how they are shaped by and influence other systems
Became aware of my own habits of mind about the subject through my
interactions with the group and seeing their presuppositions
the future as a construct is a very effective tool to make me aware of my own
'idées reçues' (received ideas) and also to loosen and stir up my creativity
And this respondent from the Future Cities event got to the heart of the issue:
After the workshop I had a feeling of uncertainty: I understood that the
dominant structures in life (the paradigm) are not fixed and taken for granted.
I now understand that this can be a source for real new ideas and insights. I
guess that these methods really enable you to think out of the box.
Frames from personal and professional futures.
Participants noted a variety of ways in which they were asked to make use of the future
in their personal and professional lives:
I use and think about the future all the time. For planning things, making
decision, imagining projects
I usually use the results of data mining, participate in building scenarios and
morphological analysis in urban and territorial design and planning, given
that data mining, scenario methods and morphological analysis have the same
meaning for an architect/planner, as I am, and for a ‘future expert’
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
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Managing risk
I have to think about my future first and how to plan what I want to do and
be
There are, even in these short quotes, a range of approaches to the future:
“imagining” projects and thinking about “my future”, creating visions of a desired future;
planning and decision-making, projecting ideas of a desired future forwards from the
present; “managing risk”, envisaging different futures with varying degrees of probability
and preparing accordingly. One respondent names a set of techniques associated with
formal planning practices used across disciplines. It can be seen, here, how different
communities of practice might develop a practical familiarity with particular techniques
and approaches towards the future that resonate with the concerns of the group.
Indeed, two such communities are named — architects and urban planners, and ‘future
experts’ — and their overlapping interest in specific tools noted. These tools might be
considered ‘boundary objects’ (Star and Griesemer, 1989), facilitating the exchange of
knowledge and ideas across different contexts.
Different ways of using the future
Some participants’ responses suggested different approaches towards their ‘use-of-
the-future’:
I try to pay particular attention to the present and try not to lock myself into
projections and imaginings about the future
The workshop has confirmed what I thought deep inside, that the future is not
linear and that anticipating the evolution of things can help in designing my
future
The issue here is not especially disciplinary — the concern is not immediately
with asking whether engineers share a sense of the future with chemists or historians, for
example, but rather with how different modes of knowing the future interact within
subjects. These participants identify a number of different modes of knowing the future
that co-exist: internal intuition (“what I thought deep inside”), constraining “projections
and imaginings”, the contemporary technosocial problematique that frames our
thinking about future conditions (“many challenges of different sort”) and personal
visions that might be as much affective and dispositional as grounded in content (“a
quite optimistic image of the future”). Again, these different ways of imagining the
future are not presented here as inconsistent or in conflict with one another: as set out
earlier, the FLF recognises that individuals have multiple ways of considering the future,
whether formally as described above or on a more personal level.
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
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Motivations for using-the-future
For many participants, engaging in anticipatory thinking was naturally linked to
their wider concerns about social justice and the survival of future generations:
The main questions I have are concerned with global equity and if we will
manage to share what we have so that people in the developing world can also
have an adequate level of well-being.
I wish humans will survive forever on the planet. That's why I give a great
importance to future literacy (decision making capacity) and the endeavour to
change the conditions of change.
Do we need existing institutions (governments, rules, traditions, etc) or can we
create new systems which could lead to more creative, happier, healthier,
equal societies?
Here two characterisations of agency can be seen: action intended to create
change, and action intended to create the conditions for the desired change. Both are
part of AfF, in different clusters – the former in AA1 and the latter in AA3.
Developing futures literacy
The notion of ‘futures literacy’ appealed to many participants. One, at the Future
Cities event described it as how:
to learn how to use the future in a better way. (For myself, for the society I am
living in.)
While another at the Youth to Adult Transitions FLL in Paris was pleased to have
learned about the existence of formal future studies.
It is great to know that there is a field that welcomes and encourages
uncertainty, spontaneity, and a break from existing patterns in regards to
futures-thinking
Some participants used language that recalled notions of complexity and
emergence, concepts at the heart of futures literacy. One participant described their
new understanding of
how [systems] are shaped by and influence other systems.
While others showed an awareness of the nature of connected factors:
I am more aware of the importance of networks (people, videos, internet,
FaceBook, etc) in the exchange of knowledge and skills
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
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impacted by many different evolving factors
New questions regarding the subjects of the workshops were generated:
What can we do with education in order to adapt to the transition to an
evolving world?
How will universities and firms adapt to this new system of learning skills and
studying?
Who decides? What is responsibility? What are the parameters of childhood?
How and by whom to judge the completion of transition process? What
happens if the "young" is unable to complete the transition for "adult"? Is
he/she regarded as failure of adulthood due to the transition?
There was reference made by participants to the value of embedding futures
literacy within institutions (particularly universities — perhaps unsurprising given the
number of attendees affiliated with academic institutions):
The main contribution can be teaching them "Future Literacy" which is an
original idea and not used a lot in the curricula of universities.
All these can be done by arranging some courses (short term, longer term,
summer schools etc) covering these issues. I am working in a university that
my organization is partly doing this directly or indirectly through different
activities.
My job is to help my institution 'develop' and so a big part of my function is
encouraging (goading!) people into looking ahead and attempting to set
objectives in the future
The immediate conclusion suggested, then, is that, notwithstanding the many
limitations with respect to the collection of data, there is preliminary evidence that the
FLL events did make the attributes and role of anticipatory assumptions clearer, and
that they have the potential to develop the kind of FL described in the first section of
this chapter.
III: Conclusion
In this paper we have offered an introduction to the idea of FL as a capability and
FLL as a tool for revealing two aspects of FL: the shift from tacit to explicit anticipatory
assumptions by participants, and indications from participants that they have developed
an understanding of FL. In exploring these key aspects of FL we analysed some limited
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
19
preliminary data generated through surveys completed by FLL participants, identifying
responses that indicated a new awareness of their anticipatory assumptions and changes
in the way they represented the future. While the available data is still rudimentary, it
does provide affirmative answers to the research questions. Participants in FLL did
reveal assumptions regarding the future that were previously tacit, and provided a
venue for them to engage with notions of complexity, uncertainty and possibility that
enlarged their perceptions of the present. This offers a proof-of-concept level illustration
of the potential of FLL processes to build FL and develop peoples’ capacity to make
‘use-of-the-future’ in their decision-making processes. This is a preliminary conclusion,
and it is clear that much additional research into the ideas introduced here is needed in
order to generate evidence of the different attributes of FL as a capability and FLL as
an effective and efficient tool for researching, learning and applying FL.
Even at this early stage in the research it is worth drawing attention to the
implications of FL for understanding the relationship of human agency to both
perception (search) and decision-making (choice). Figure 3 offers one way of explaining
how being better able to ‘use-the-future’ can be useful. Succinctly, FL is one way to
sense and understand change because the identification of anticipatory assumptions and
the related imaginary futures generates clearer differentiation of endogenous changes
that pertain to systemic continuity from exogenous changes that may be ‘weak signals’
of systemic discontinuity. In more prosaic terms we can think of this as a way of both
generating items on a menu as well as categorizing them according to different courses.
As everyone knows putting an item on a menu and assigning it to the category of
appetizer, main course or dessert, does not determine what someone will choose from
the menu, nor in what order. And of course many people skip dessert altogether.
Furthermore, as every restaurant goer knows, what we imagine when we order may or
may not correspond to what is delivered.
FL does not overcome the unknowability of outcomes, the fundamental inability
to know if there will even be consequences of a particular choice (will what we ordered
actually arrive) and if there are consequences will there be any congruence with what
was intended or expected (did it taste as hoped). What FL does offer is greater clarity
and capability to ‘use-the-future’ in ways that take into account the differences of
perception and choice that arise when planning, preparing or exploring novelty. FL as a
capability enables people to understand that the choice of reasons and methods for
thinking about the future alter what we see and do. Being futures literate changes the
meaning of trying to ‘make a difference’, be it through policies or laws or norms as
collective actions, or through the personal experiential and preformative dimensions of
meaning making and inter-connectedness.
FL makes the role of the imaginary future explicit and thereby allows us to choose
amongst different anticipatory systems and processes depending on what we are trying
to do. As Figure 3 attempts to illustrate, it could be a desire to reform or adapt or
valorize the past or sense and make-sense of novelty. Each of which has value, none is
inherently better than the other. Only the complex evolving world of which we are a
part invites us to understand all four spheres of human agency and FL assists with that
rich challenge.
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
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In closing it is important to underscore that the work presented here on the nature
and potential of FL is not proposed as a way to exclude particular approaches to ‘using-
the-future’. As Poli (2013) points out, there are many varieties of futures work, and
some have more in common with practices such as medicine or architecture which do
not necessarily require a theoretical base in order to make important contributions to
society. What can be claimed here is that engaging with a theoretical perspective on
anticipation and the future in order to design and interpret the outcomes of FLL shows
some additional benefit. Using anticipatory systems theory offers a deeper
understanding of the thought processes set in motion by FLL and provides frameworks
for distinguishing different ways of knowing the future, and ontological tools for
resolving what seem to be inconsistent or contradictory representations of the future (in
particular the notions of categories of the future, levels of reality and the ‘thick present’).
Engaging with theory also helps articulate more compelling arguments for developing
the capacity to make use of the future: it offers an account of why some forms of
knowing the future fail to support decision-making, by illustrating the contexts in which
linear or probabilistic thinking is not appropriate, making a case for developing other
ways of knowing the future, and it reveals something of the nature of our moral
obligation towards the future, making the limits of our agency better known to us and
illustrating the need to give proper consideration to why and how we use the future,
rather than leaving it unexamined.
Author’s version – Forthcoming in Handbook of Anticipation – July 2018
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