The four spikes

The unintended impacts of human appropriation of the planet's resources have become so numerous, voluminous, and entangled in feedback loops that they often overwhelm the capacities of decisionmakers to cope with current crises, much less prepare for a sustainable future. The difficulty may be alleviated by viewing global change from a broader perspective than is normally offered either by specialists (whose views are necessarily narrow) or by mainstream media (whose interests are usually fragmentary and parochial). From this broader perspective, it can be seen that four “megaphenomena” began sweeping the planet in the past century. Graphed on a time-line of millennia rather than years or days, they appear as four enormous “spikes” — of human population, materials/energy consumption, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, and extinctions of species. These megaphenomena account for the proliferation of afflictions swamping humanity at the outset of the 21st century. Understanding the nature of the spikes may offer the most viable means of managing — by attacking the roots — of what could otherwise escalate into an increasingly disastrous cascade of impacts.     

The future quantified

The results reported in this paper demonstrate that the qualitative (group) research and quantitative (individual) survey techniques that have been developed now offer a viable means for mapping current expectations and the possible future directions these will take. Sensible use of these should provide governments, and large organisations in general, with a powerful new set of tools for positively managing the future. In terms of the issues themselves, the group which emerged most strongly from the quantified responses of the individuals are those which might be seen as relating to the ‘green' environment. On the other hand, our qualitative groups looked upon these key issues as representing matters of survival for humanity as a whole. Such a focus on survival may seem selfish, but it can also be seen as altruistic not concerned with personal survival. It also represents a sound, rational approach to long-term planning, where the respondents focused instead on how governments might positively, and safely, manage all the long-term issues threatening the future of humankind. If we move away from ‘green' issues, it is also clear that even individuals recognize the globalisation of issues in particular the globalisation of business, the possibility of a global financial crash and the (threat of) domination by Pacific Rim countries. At the opposite end of the spectrum are worries about the significant problems faced by the underclasses—and, in turn, the significant threat these present to society as a whole. In general though, apart from technological issues, the emphasis was—across almost all areas—on survival in the face of events ranging down from catastrophes to mere crises and stresses!     

The city: heaven-on-earth or the hell-to-come?

Polis is the Greek for city; and, like so many things in our civilization, the never-ending debate about the ideal human environment began with the Greeks. To think about the ideal city, as Plato knew, is to think about the desirable, about the not-yet-achieved, about the future. There has been no end to the building of cities—from the Athens of Pericles to the Chandigarh of Le Corbusier. As I.F. Clarke shows, there is no end to the fiction of future cities for the reason that the applied sciences come like the Greeks bearing gifts; and these gifts can so affect the condition of human existence that the citizens have to plan their cities to meet growing populations, new means of communication, and ever-rising expectations. Before 1914 heaven was the organized, industrial metropolis. Since then the city of the future has moved through a history of hell-on-earth, first displayed in the dazzling images of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926), to the most recent space cities of the galactic age.     

Forecasting the world's problems : The Last Empire: the corporatization of society and diminution of self

A future scenario is postulated—‘The Last Empire’—based on concern with the ramifications of increasing corporatization and moves away from individualism. The globalization of the marketplace is marked by increasing cultural, psychological, social and ideological homogeneity, politicoeconomic centralization and the threat to individualism. Personal demands for autonomy and a liberalization of the human spirit provide the counter-thrust. These competing trajectories are the context within which major global problems are viewed. Five major issues are treated here: the global economy; nationhood and cultural determinacy; the economic dimension; the educational agenda; and the individual's outlook. In each area the clashes between individual involvement and corporatization, and their outcomes, provide the key to forecasting and dealing with the world's future problems.     

The curse of globalised culture: the fall of Indian cinema foretold

Indian popular cinema, at the present juncture, is caught in a fix marked by two opposite trends—the overall decline in quality of the modern film resulting in rejection by audiences (as seen in endless commercial failures) and the nostalgic reverence among people about the classic films of earlier years, which had entertained and mesmerised them in a discourse that was beautiful, exciting and emotionally satisfying. This paper argues that the current decline in quality is part and outcome of the wider globalisation processes, consequently delinking cinema from the earlier creative roots. In this context, it makes some projections about the future of this cinema (and television) and suggests a set of future options to resurrect it from its present decline and to help the medium reinvent its past glory and social relevance.     

Futures dreaming outside and on the margins of the western world

In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focused on the good society as created by technological progress, while non-western science fiction and futures thinking has focused on the fantastic, on the spiritual, on the realization of eupsychia—the perfect self.However, most theorists assert that the non-west has no science fiction, ignoring Asian and Chinese science fiction history, and western science fiction continues to ‘other’ the non-west as well as those on the margins of the west (African–American woman, for example).Nonetheless, while most western science fiction remains trapped in binary opposites—alien/non-alien; masculine/feminine; insider/outsider—writers from the west’s margins are creating texts that contradict tradition and modernity, seeking new ways to transcend difference. Given that the imagination of the future creates the reality of tomorrow, creating new science fictions is not just an issue of textual critique but of opening up possibilities for all our futures.

Science fiction has always been nearly all white, just as until recently, it’s been nearly all male

(Butler as quoted in [1]).

Science fiction has long treated people who might or might not exist—extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, however, many of the same science fiction writers who started us thinking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life did nothing to make us think about here-at home variation—women, blacks, Indians, Asians, Hispanics, etc [1].

Is all science fiction western? Is there non-western science fiction? If so, what is its nature? Does it follow the form and content of western science fiction, or is it rendered different by its own local civilizational historical processes and considerations? Has western science fiction moulded the development of the science fiction of the ‘other’, including feminist science fiction, in such a way that anything coming from outside the west is a mere imitation of the real thing? Perhaps non-western science fiction is a contradiction in terms. Or is there authentic non-western fiction which offers alternative visions of the future, of the ‘other’?     

The futures of the colonised

A reading of Rabindranath Tagore’s last testament—Sabhyatar Sankat [11] (published in English as Crisis in Civilization [12])—reveals that it is an instance of how the colonised have shown at times astonishing capacity to make a transition from realistic criticisms to utopia, which serves as the most volatile critique of the colonial situation. Utopian thinking in the colonial world counters the reality of power, inspires and becomes the basis of hope and resistance. Dissolution and farewell—the two recurrent strains in Tagore’s essay—express the meaning of the rite of dreaming by the colonised. They also spiritualise the dangerous act of dreaming the future by those who feel their fate to be sealed. While politics of the present goes on, all along that, and all through that time, parallel attempts go on to re-make the nation into a new political society based on the incipient ideas of those times of justice and freedom. An overlapping historical sense prevails in a critical time, as it prevailed at the time Tagore wrote his last testament, and the clue to the overlap can be found only in an awareness of the contentious politics of the present, which a later-day chronicler will read as an act of seeing the future. History’s excess is future—the excess that defies rationality, like Tagore’s expectation of the advent of the Man from the East that defied logical explanations about the politics of his time.     

When courts are overgrown with grass: the role of courts in the 21st Century

What will be the social role of courts over the future? This essay explores this question by examining the “five dimensions” of judiciary—the judiciary as a branch of government, subsystem of the legal system, as a forum for resolving dispute, as public agency, and an institution of a changing society. It considers the duty of courts to safeguard the interests of future generations; the place of courts during “the end of authority”; the increasing use of artificial intelligence in formal adjudication, and concludes with a time when “the courts of justice are overgrown with grass”.     

Future kinship and the study of culture

Throughout the 20th century, body and machine have provided distinctive parallel metaphors for the concept of culture. But now these metaphors are merging as human lives are increasingly engineered through technonatural processes. In one imagined future, biotechnology will give us the means to determine our own genealogy and the potential to play a role in the ‘culturing’ of the future, as the natural and unpredictable transmission of human characteristics is transformed into a predictable process arising from the manipulation of the gene pool. New procreative possibilities—fertilization in vitro, gamete donation, maternal surrogacy etc—challenge us to reconstrue notions of identity and kinship; the article speculates on the implications of this for possible cultural futures.     

The critical role of history in scenario thinking: Augmenting causal analysis within the intuitive logics scenario development methodology

The historian Eric Hobsbawm stated that ‘The safest empirical generalization about history is still that nobody heeds its obvious lessons much’. Whether at a macroeconomic level or within individual organisations there are numerous examples of this, such as the economic crash of 2008, the causes of which had many parallels with those that caused the great depression 80 years previously. On the other hand however, overly-relying on the past as a guide to the future has its own obvious dangers—not least that important future events may have no past precedent. As such, the present paper firstly provides a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using the past as a guide to the future. It then examines the role of history in scenario work, arguing that history should receive greater emphasis as part of the scenario planning process. We suggest changes to the standard Intuitive Logics (IL) approach to scenario planning which would render learning from history a more central component of the scenario process, in contrast to its current peripheral role. Rather than diminishing scenario planning’s ability to facilitate a consideration of how the future may differ from the past, we show how a greater emphasis on history can enhance consideration of the causality of future change. An adapted IL that has more emphasis on historical analysis can augment scenario planning’s effectiveness as a tool for consideration of the future.     

Population decline and the new nature: Towards experimental “refactoring” in landscape development of post-industrial regions

From an everyday perspective, a consequence of population decline and de-industrialization is the growth of natural areas: less industry and less people means more nature in the future. In the real word, the situation is more complicated. Using the development of a new lake district as a successor of brown coal industry and strip mining in the southern parts of the city of Leipzig (Germany) as a touchstone, this paper will explore some of the challenges and future opportunities for the design of ‘new nature’ in post-industrial landscapes. To discuss how fields such as ecology and engineering can fulfill their role as innovative players in times of population decline, two seemingly contrasting strategies for making decisions under conditions of depopulation in landscape development—called here scientific non-knowledge—are introduced: refactoring and public experiments.     

East German capital stock deficits remain high

Conclusion Since the government cannot anticipate any more precisely than private investors which sectors will turn out to be particular growth areas in the future, it should not follow a course of sector-oriented structural policies — not even in east Germany. The achievement of virtually similar investment conditions as in west Germany has, given the investment in infrastructure over the past five years, come a long way. Since infrastructural consolidation takes time, however, and since, as west German regional policy experience has shown, an adequate infrastructure alone is no guarantee for average or above-average growth of a particular region, broadly based investment support measures were, for a time, sensible. In order to gradually allow for the market selection process to take over and to reduce the burden on public spending, however, consideration should now be given to tightening investment support measures. With all the problems that selecting particular sectors to support brings with it, one must acknowledge that, given the specifics of the east German transformation process, the manufacturing sector was — and continues to be — exposed to the greatest pressures. For this reason, support should be concentrated in this area, especially since various spillover effects from manufacturing can be expected to manifest themselves in other areas, such as services. Friederike Spiecker     

Men, children and the future of the family in the third millennium

This paper examines the effects of demographic change on the foundations of the family. The “first” demographic transition — the massive declines in fertility and mortality — is shown to have undermined the traditional male–female relationship based on parenthood. This has led to the gender revolution in the public sphere. The “second” demographic transition — the increases in divorce and cohabitation — is shown to have undermined the father–child relationship, reflecting women's control over children, a control that increased continually during the first demographic transition. This paper argues that the gender revolution needs to be brought into the family, increasing women's ability to compete in employment and men's ability both to choose whether to assume parental responsibility and to maintain active parental roles with their children.     

World War II, or, what did the future hold?

World War II appears in the history books as a series of moments when major events—Pearl Harbour, Operation Barbarossa, Hiroshima—suddenly transformed the image of the future for nations and, indeed, for most of the inhabitants of Earth. As l.F. Clarke notes, the war years were the time when future-think engaged the minds of all combatants—from the briefing of battalions for the operations of tomorrow to the labours of the decrypters who sought to discover the intentions of the enemy. The intelligence staffs interrogated the future—what? when? where? how many?—and the planners in operations decided the day, hour and place when the battle would begin. These labours of anticipation and prediction did not end with the Japanese ceasefire on 15 August 1945. They carried over into the immediate postwar period to provide models for the first think-tanks. Indeed, they are still with us. On 26 October 1993 the US Central Intelligence Agency introduced the R.V. Jones Intelligence Award for those who had displayed ‘outstanding scientific acumen in the cause of intelligence’. The medal was named for an Englishman, the Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) who had located the V2 rocket site at Peenemünde. The first recipient was the former Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen, R.V. Jones.     

Emerging and re-emerging infections: the societal determinants

Emerging and re-emerging infections have changed the course of human history from the beginnings of human civilization. Currently, emerging infections such as HIV-AIDS and re-emerging infections such as cholera and diphtheria are plaguing our society. There is now increasing concern about future emerging and re-emerging infections — arising on their own, induced by excessive or inappropriate use of antibiotics or deliberately inflicted on society (biologic warfare).There are multiple approaches to prevention, early detection and control of these infections. At present, the major focus is on achieving better surveillance, developing more sophisticated diagnostic techniques, and creating more effective public health infrastructures. An additional approach, which may be the most effective in minimizing the frequency and severity of these society-threatening epidemics, is amelioration of critical societal determinants that provide the milieu in which emerging infections arise and flourish.Excessive population growth and global warming are the two superordinating variables, in particular because once they have supervened, it would take decades, even centuries, to effectively mitigate their consequences.Other variables include: massive urbanization; wars; poverty; malnutrition; forced migration; human behavior (particularly sexual behavior); massive irrigation projects and dam construction; extensive travel; and planetary population aging. These determinants which, for the most part, are closely inter-related, are virtually all modifiable by individual actions, by small but important changes in our educational system, and by political actions.     

Reclaiming the future : Futures studies in Africa

This article considers the status of futures studies and research in Africa. Compared to the position two decades ago, African planning services today represent a real achievement, and can act as the basis for advanced public policy analysis. Futures studies in Africa can act to stimulate and extend the national planning function, and also provide a unified approach at the regional and continental levels. Futures studies can never be value-free—Africans embarking on futures studies must first rediscover their past and assert their present before they are able to ‘reclaim their future’.     

Women can change the future

This article examines the role of Asian women—particularly the Asian village woman who holds a key to revitalizing the economic system. A change in the method of cloth production to a system of women producing cloth in thousands of villages and city slums with spinning-wheels would provide the basis of social revolution and economic change. Other future scenarios for Asian women are outlined and the rudiments of an Asian feminist perspective are presented.     

Shared Tax Sources and Public Expenditures

This paper deals with a specific vertical assignment of public functions in a federation: Two levels of government share both the same tax source and expenditure on a productivity increasing public service. We consider surplus maximizing Leviathan governments which provide public services in order to increase their potential tax base. The Nash equilibrium is characterized by overtaxation and relative to surplus maximization—depending on whether or not the public goods are sufficiently complementary with the entire tax base—either underprovision or overprovision of the public service. The implications of these results, in terms of welfare and potential use for earmarking taxes are also considered.     

Multiple pasts, converging presents, and alternative futures

This paper introduces a variant of scenario planning, supported by some related new concepts in futures studies. The traditional snapshot and chain portrayals of scenarios are replaced by a network, which enables the consideration of multiple views of the present and the past, occurring in multiple systems (e.g. global and local). A fractal “leaf of goals” metaphor is developed, illustrating the argument that activities, events and objectives lie on a continuum: any one event is itself a composite of an indefinite number of component events.Using this concept, network scenarios are developed, consisting of nodes (representing events) and links (representing influences). Because events are socially constructed, each node can be seen as an end-state summary of a smaller network scenario. The networks are created (typically in workshops with participants from the systems being studied) using modified versions of the futures wheel and backcasting, as well as a new variant entitled middlecasting. By working iteratively between past and future events, the networks are steadily refined.A further departure from conventional scenario planning is that scenario networks do not begin at the present time, but extend about as far into the past as they do into the future. By beginning in the past, the roots of network fragments can be identified more clearly in the context of their multiple presents.The method is illustrated with an example of a project to democratize public radio in Indonesia. A scenario network was successfully created, but the delineation of multiple pasts and presents turned out to need further clarification.