A Constellation of Possible Futures
The Civil Society Foresight Observatory Discovery Report
3
What is foresight?
To paraphrase Cynthia Selin, foresight is a way of coping with the future.[10]
Unlike forecasting, foresight does not aim to create accurate predictions of future events, but instead draws on the present to shape what might come next.
As the US agency IARPA puts it, foresight is frequently used to “mitigate technological surprise” and “discover patterns of emergence for concepts that will likely emerge in several years”.[11]
Formal foresight practices emerged throughout the 20th Century through the conjunction of militaristic forward planning and invention, consumer marketing techniques, and Science and Technology Studies.
Partly because of its origins, there is a tendency for formal foresight to be “top down”, re-enforcing the requirements of those with existing power, and it is likely to be positioned as a high-status activity, not usually democratised or given over to participative practice, and is often characterised by trust in the inevitability of technological innovation.
However, “informal” foresight practices happen all the time in civil society, with less focus on technology or the movement of capital, but because it is necessary for those who operate outside of traditional power to anticipate and hold the potential of multiple futures — responding to and trying to divert the reality of the present, sometimes speaking the unspeakable, while trying to shape something new.
This kind of foresight can be more implicit than explicit: rather than being captured and shared in shiny reports, it tends to live in the spirit of activism, informed by lived experience and impelled by the need for justice. While this informal and unofficial foresight is highly influential within communities, it can have a hard time cutting through to influence decision makers. One recent exception to this is the impact of Greta Thunberg’s advocacy and the School Strike for Climate, which elevated the concerns of children across the world (the ultimate guardians of the future, who have little traditional influence) to the attention of both policy makers and market makers.
[10]
Cynthia Selin, “The Sociology of the Future: Tracing Stories of Technology and Time,” Sociology Compass 2, no. 6 (November 2008): 1878–95, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00147.x.
[11]
“Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition (FUSE)” (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, n.d.).
One recent exception to this is the impact of Greta Thunberg’s advocacy and the School Strike for Climate, which elevated the concerns of children across the world (the ultimate guardians of the future, who have little traditional influence) to the attention of both policy makers and market makers.
While informal futures can remain unspoken in the public domain, “official futures” can more easily become mistaken for self-evident truths and “present barriers to open, flexible consideration of new possibilities”.[12] For instance, influential reports about topics such as artificial intelligence or the “future of work”[13] that contain pithy and easy-to-understand concepts have, in recent years, had outsized influence in shaping decisions across governments and the corporate sector precisely because they have succeeded in turning difficult decisions across multiple uncertainties into realisable and memorable axioms. Despite this there is certainly nuance in the ways futures become “self evident” and the cycle through which this happens is facilitated by the role of rhetoric and the power of language through future imaginaries. It is worth noting that such imaginaries and rhetoric sometimes emerge into self-evident truths through unofficial means, and due to entrenched power dynamics, they are quickly enrolled into the narrative of “official futures”.
In this instance, the speculative (and often unproven) potential of AI to deliver efficiencies in the workforce has been privileged above measures of wellbeing or, indeed, broader economic reality. This is because much official foresight privileges the more cohesive needs of the traditionally powerful, such as investors and consulting firms, rather than the more diffuse requirements of the broader working population. This also fits with a wider narrative of technological innovation, that assumes a neat linearity to progress, one that demonstrates economic growth and constant improvements in technological development. This narrative predominantly conceptualises technology as separate from the “human” or “social”.
As such, influential foresight can have transformative effects on government policies and corporate decision making. The impact of this work is not always solely related to the quality of the foresight practice itself, but to the networks of influence, the quality of the accompanying communication, and the relative ease with which “modern” and “future-facing” plans and policies can be created.
[12]
Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin, “The Coming Battle for the COVID-19 Narrative,” VoxEU.Org (blog), April 10, 2020, https://voxeu.org/article/coming-battle-covid-19-narrative
[13]
For instance, Christopher Chu et al., “New Workforce Skilling for Innovation and Growth | Accenture,” accessed August 9, 2021, https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/strategy/new-workforce-skilling-innovation-growth; Jacques Bughin et al., “Automation and the Workforce of the Future | McKinsey,” 2018, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/skill-shift-automation-and-the-future-of-the-workforce.
3.1
Building relational foresight
We have examined how established foresight practices relate to traditional power dynamics. This analysis has helped us identify the behaviours needed to generate relational foresight.
These are:
Not top down, but relational
Oriented towards justice not just technical possibility
Embracing distributed potential rather than focussed certainty
Rejecting reductionism, and embracing problem making rather than linear solutions
Weaving together lived, learnt and practice experience, not prioritising technocratic expertise
Aiming for transformational change, not just measurable impact
The following summarises our more detailed analysis of foresight methods, given in Appendix A (published separately).
Top down
Foresight is often the domain of corporations, consultants and specialist government agencies –– established decision makers who may have interests in particular outcomes or in supporting the status quo. As Andrew Stirling points out, this means that “incumbent interests” — whether political, economic or social — most frequently “condition the unfolding of particular scientific or technological pathways”.[14]
For instance, the UK government has a long history of using foresight methods to inform policy and set priorities dating back to the 1960s and the development of the UK Foresight Programme. Historically, the focus of this foresight work was related to science and technology but, since the 1990s, has expanded to include more sectors and departments within the government.[15] This has meant that the people whose perspectives are most engaged in government foresight work are MPs, policy advisors, business leaders, and others who are already in or connected to government. This kind of public policy-related foresight work rarely engages with civil society and voluntary sectors or the general public.
Since the early 2000s, corporate foresight has become a relatively common way of predicting consumer trends and developing new products, influenced in part by the ease of communicating new concepts with material design and the speed of technological change.[16] While design-led firms such as Nike, IKEA and Apple have in-house foresight functions, businesses with less confidence in the field are able to draw on a wide range of consulting firms for foresight services, from big consultancies including Arup, PWC, Deloitte, Bain, McKinsey and BCG to boutique, specialist agencies.
A few of the funders we spoke with in our stakeholder workshops had established foresight programmes or commissioned specific research to inform their future funding strategies and investments, but it is not yet a common practice, and we did not discover a unified approach or use of a set of repeatable or shareable methods or principles.
[14]
Andrew Stirling, “Precaution, Foresight and Sustainability,” in Sustainability and Reflexive Governance, n.d.
[15]
Beat Habegger, “Strategic Foresight in Public Policy: Reviewing the Experiences of the UK, Singapore, and the Netherlands,” Futures 42, no. 1 (February 2010): 49–58, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2009.08.002.
[16]
Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby, How to Future: Leading and Sense-Making in an Age of Hyperchange, 25.
Technically oriented
Formal foresight activity tends to happen within the realm of technology and innovation, this is in part because of the origins of formal foresight, but also because increased technical capability is often perceived to be an irresistible driver of the “future”. Technology and the accompanying movement of capital are by no means the only arbiters of possible futures; the social and environmental impacts of human activities are seen in both the climate emergency and the current pandemic. It is therefore of paramount importance for foresight that we find ways to understand how systems, manmade and natural, are interlinked, codependent and fragile.
Focussed certainty
In surveying a range of existing foresight practices, it is evident that they can have the effect of smoothing away the edges and extremes of human experience, creating generalisable futures rather than addressing peripheral issues pertinent to specific publics or communities.
The most commonly cited goals of foresight exercises are to better define a problem, ensure stakeholder engagement, and facilitate policy implementation.[17] Other desired outcomes might include a shared understanding of priorities, networks to support innovation systems and harmonised visions of the future for all stakeholders. Such objectives can lead to identifying the most probable future,[18] rather than creating the conditions to realise preferable futures.
[17]
Selin, ‘The Sociology of the Future; Harro van Lente, “Navigating Foresight in a Sea of Expectations: Lessons from the Sociology of Expectations,” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 24, no. 8 (September 1, 2012): 769–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2012.715478.
[18]
Totti Könnölä, Ville Brummer, and Ahti Salo, “Diversity in Foresight: Insights from the Fostering of Innovation Ideas,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 74 (June 1, 2007): 608–26, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2006.11.003.
Foresight techniques attempt to establish a degree of collective certainty
What this highlights is that through social negotiation foresight techniques attempt to establish a degree of collective certainty about the future, when perhaps the more needed thing is to put a name to collective uncertainty and create space for collective problem making.
![Joseph Voros’s Futures Cone [19] Cones of potential project from the present in to the future, extrapolating possibilities. The projected “baseline” future has a small footprint. Probable “likely to happen” futures are close to the baseline. Plausible “could happen” futures are a larger possibility space, and possible “might happen” futures are wider still. Preposterous “impossible” futures have the widest spread. Across all of these increasingly unlikely futures is a slice of preferable futures, which would be judged valuable. All possibility spaces increase over time.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dc968e72502ee46b88c1a4a/1631741109875-K0G23RKXYWTHQLSJDUAS/diagram-voross-futures-cone.png)
Joseph Voros’s Futures Cone [19] Cones of potential project from the present in to the future, extrapolating possibilities. The projected “baseline” future has a small footprint. Probable “likely to happen” futures are close to the baseline. Plausible “could happen” futures are a larger possibility space, and possible “might happen” futures are wider still. Preposterous “impossible” futures have the widest spread. Across all of these increasingly unlikely futures is a slice of preferable futures, which would be judged valuable. All possibility spaces increase over time.
Mary Warnock’s 1984 “Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology” gave recommendations that were both actionable and anticipatory, looking ahead to discern the pitfalls and opportunities created by human assisted reproduction. While this was not a conventional piece of “foresight”, the Committee’s report needed to surmise far-reaching future implications of fertility technologies and embryology while also positing a moral framework. Warnock’s foreword said that their recommendations must “[bear] witness to a moral idea of society” even though “in our pluralistic society it is not to be expected that any one set of principles can be enunciated to be completely accepted by everyone”. The Committee’s report acknowledges complexity throughout – negotiating between public opinion, clinical and academic needs, fast-paced technical change and religious perspectives – and ends with notices of dissent from Committee members who disagreed with the final recommendations. The current chair of HEFA described Warnock’s achievement as “balancing the many different interests in this area for the good of patients and families”, and this relationality and acknowledgement of complexity and the limits of the Committee’s knowledge are one factor in the longevity of the recommendations.
[19]
Joseph Voros, “On Examining Preposterous! Futures,” The Voroscope (blog), December 28, 2015, https://thevoroscope.com/2015/12/28/on-examining-preposterous-futures/
[20]
Mary Warnock, ‘Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology’ (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1984).
Technocratic
The type of knowledge that is respected within traditional foresight can depend on the purpose of the exercise, but there is a strong tendency to skew towards technocratic and traditional notions of expertise.
Cynthia Selin[21] argues that foresight methods have their own epistemological schemes that specify what counts as anticipatory knowledge and designate the proper channels through which such knowledge should be generated and shared. However, this flexibility does not often extend beyond what would be considered a technocratic notion of expertise[22] because, in order for expectations about the future to be legitimated, they require the backing of ‘expertise’.[23] For instance, many foresight events are by invitation only, open to a few recognised practitioners.
This risks assuming that anticipatory knowledge can always be codified and cited or embodied by the traditionally powerful, and leaves little room for the introduction of lived and emerging knowledges and experiences.[24]
For instance, a Delphi study is one that works with an appointed set of experts to arrive at a group decision. Examples include the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s recent (2021) expert forum exploring AI and misinformation[25] and Salamanca-Buentello and others’ 2005 investigation into democracy and nanotechnology. These techniques value expert understanding and privilege anticipatory knowledge created through formal expertise, which is intended to build a sense of objectivity, but they risk only accounting for perspectives that are already evidenced through research, and miss out on weak signals that are observable to those with relevant lived experience.
[21]
Selin, “The Sociology of the Future.”
[22]
Harry Collins and Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)
[23]
van Lente, “Navigating Foresight in a Sea of Expectations.”
[24]
Selin, “The Sociology of the Future.”
[25]
Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, “The Role of AI in Addressing Misinformation on Social Media Platforms,” GOV.UK, accessed August 8, 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-role-of-ai-in-addressing-misinformation-on-social-media-platforms.
Impact not engagement
Rather than developing techniques to directly involve the public in foresight, there has been greater emphasis on measuring “social impact” within existing foresight methods. López Peláez argues, “in democratic societies… people want more information and greater participation in the development and implementation of technologies that affect their daily lives”.[26] Because of this, methodologies in future studies increasingly include analysis of social impacts. For example, real time technology assessments[27] or the development of Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) research. However, few of these methodologies actively engage citizens, instead they seek only to take account of perceived social factors.
[26]
Antonio López Peláez, ed., The Robotics Divide: A New Frontier in the 21st Century? (London: Springer-Verlag, 2014), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5358-0.
[27]
David H. Guston and Daniel Sarewitz, “Real-Time Technology Assessment,” Technology in Society, American Perspectives on Science and Technology Policy, 24, no. 1–2 (2002): 93–109, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-791X(01)00047-1.
Conclusion
In conclusion there are many ways in which our analysis of foresight practice can create a taxonomy within which our project sits. What is most important to note, is the limitations of this report, primarily that there is nuance within our definitions of “official” and “unofficial” futures, some of which we may have not have addressed in order to keep this report as succinct as possible. It is useful to acknowledge and reiterate here that the categorisation of foresight into official dominant narrative futures, and unofficial emergent futures is imperfect, but this distinction acts to frame our project in a constructive way. It acts as a framing from which we believe we can build a model for relational foresight. One that might lead to insights that strengthen the practice of foresight in the future, and build collective foresight in the present.
A Constellation of Possible Futures
The Civil Society Foresight Observatory Discovery Report