Futures 2.0: rethinking the discipline

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang of The Institute for the Future has been working recently on a think-piece on what futures would look like if it started now:

“If instead of starting during the Cold War, in the middle of enthusiasm for social engineering, computer programming, and rationalistic visions of future societies, futures was able to draw on neuroscience and neuroeconomics, behavioral psychology, simulation, and other fields and tools.” […]

“If there was no Global Business Network, no IFTF, no organized or professionalized efforts to forecast the future– what would the field look like? What kinds of problems would it tackle? What kinds of science would it draw on? And how would it try to make its impact felt?”

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Also from Alex, the “The Evil Futurists’ Guide to World Domination: How to be Successful, Famous, and Wrong“. According to Bruce Sterling, Pang’s “evil futurist” is “a morally-certain holy prophet with a scripture“.