Nuestro primer involucramiento con la prospectiva tuvo lugar a mediados de los años 1970. Fue en ese tiempo inmemorial que nos familiarizamos con el método de los escenarios de Shell y la DATAR francesa, que leímos a Alvin Toffler, a Gaston Berger y a Michel Godet. Que nos asociamos a la World Future Society. Que asistimos a convites internacionales en USA y participamos de la inolvidable First Global Conference on the Future de Toronto junto a Miguel Grinberg y Heloísa Primavera, donde le dieron un premio in absentia a un Marshal McLuhan ya convalesciente que moriría a fines de ese año 1980.
Época en la que devoramos los informes del Club de Roma -en especial Los límites del crecimiento de 1972- y los trabajos de Jay Forrester & Donella Meadows sobre simulaciones y complejidad. Que nos familiarizamos con las respuestas del Modelo Mundial Latinoamericano (MML) de la Fundación Bariloche de 1975 a los escenarios catastrofistas del MIT.
Todavía hoy contamos con varios estantes de libros de aquella época (algunos donados por la Biblioteca Lincoln cuando cerró sus puertas en la era de la guerra sucia) con libros atrapantes como:
Clarke, I.F The pattern of expectation 1644-2001.Basic Books, 1979.
Emery, F.E & Trist E.L Towards a social ecology. Plenum Press, 1973.
Emery, Fred. Futures we are in. Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.
Esfandiary,F.M Optimism One.Popular Library, 1978.
Fowles, Jib (ed) Handbook of Futures Research. Greenwood Press, 1989.
Freeman, Cristopher & Jahoda, Marie World futures. The great debate. Universe Books, 1978
Griffiths, Sian (ed) Predicciones. 31 grandes figuras pronostican el futuro. Santillana, 2000.
Linstone, Harold & Clive Simmonds, W.H. Futures research. New directions. Addison-Wesley, 1977.
Loye, David The knowable future. A psychology of forecasting and prophecy. John Wiley, 1978.
McHale, John World Facts and Trends. Where man is headed- a multi-dimensional view. McMillan, 1972.
Mesarovic, M & Pestel, M La humanidad en la ecrucijada. FCE, 1975.
Vacca, Roberto A proxima idade media. A degradacao do grande sistema.Pallas, 1975.
Aunque en aquellos idus siempre nos interesaron tanto las anticipaciones cuantitativas como las cualitativas, si algo hemos ganado a lo largo de estas cuatro décadas es una formidable tormenta de datos que han convertido los tanteos de entonces en anticipaciones mas certeras de la mano del Big Data pero también del Warm Data (Nora Bateson).
Paradójicamente en el ínterin también brotaron divisiones epistemológicas brutales y el ascenso de las fake news de la mano del irracionalismo anti-científico dificulta cada vez diseñar de un modo no-ideológico el futuro (si eso quiere decir algo).
Algunas técnicas no sobrevivieron demasiado bien al paso del medio siglo. Nos referimos al método Delphi, a los análisis morfológicos o a los análisis de impacto cruzado. Otras en cambio se fortalecieron y fueron combinando mejores conceptualizaciones, un uso intensivo de las computadoras y herramientas provenientes de muchos otras disciplinas como el diseño, la ciencia-ficción, las simulaciones multinivélicas, los análisis multicausales, y en particular el método de escenarios combinado con las ciencias de la complejidad y el paradigma de la indeterminación.
Tenemos por consiguiente un decantado de excelentes propuestas conceptuales de la época histórica de los inicios de la prospectiva (aqui no factorizamos su pre-historia que incluye análisis que volvieron a ser mas que actuales como la propuesta de Hermana Kahn en El año 2000) junto con títulos y ejercicios mas recientes indispensables si queremos convertir al futuro en algo mejor que un mundo indecelable, o peor aún que se muerde a si mismo lo cola, como la actual invasion de Rusia a Ucrania lo deja de manifiesto. Borrando de un plumazo decenas de años de pronósticos blandengues y complacientes.
Esta breve taxonomía encapsula algumno títulios (de entre miles o decenas de miles) que pueden mejorar nuestras habilidades como Homo Prospectus.
1 Marcos conceptuales
2 Métodos de escenarios
3 Técnicas y metodologías
4 Apocalysis Now
5 El futuro y la reinvención de la raza humana
6 Desde lo retroprogresivo a lo indeterminado
7 El futuro como diseño de experiencias
8 El futuro y la reconceptualización de sujetos y objetos
1. Marcos conceptuales
Seligman, Martin E. P. Homo Prospectus. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Our species is misnamed. Though sapiens defines human beings as «wise» what humans do especially well is to prospect the future. We are homo prospectus. In this book, Martin E. P. Seligman, Peter Railton, Roy F. Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada argue it is anticipating and evaluating future possibilities for the guidance of thought and action that is the cornerstone of human success.
Much of the history of psychology has been dominated by a framework in which people’s behavior is driven by past history (memory) and present circumstances (perception and motivation). Homo Prospectus reassesses this idea, pushing focus to the future front and center and opening discussion of a new field of Psychology and Neuroscience.
The authors delve into four modes in which prospection operates: the implicit mind, deliberate thought, mind-wandering, and collective (social) imagination. They then explore prospection’s role in some of life’s most enduring questions: Why do people think about the future? Do we have free will? What is the nature of intuition, and how might it function in ethics? How does emotion function in human psychology? Is there a common causal process in different psychopathologies? Does our creativity change with age?
In this remarkable convergence of research in philosophy, statistics, decision theory, psychology, and neuroscience, Homo Prospectus shows how human prospection fundamentally reshapes our understanding of key cognitive processes, thereby improving individual and social functioning. It aims to galvanize interest in this new science from scholars in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, as well as an educated public curious about what makes humanity what it is.
2 Métodos de escenarios
van der Heijden, Kees Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. Wiley, 2005.
Scenario planning allows companies to move away from linear thinking and better understand external change. Eight years (and 30,000 copies) after publication Scenarios is still acknowledged as the definitive work in the field. Now, Kees van der Heijden brings his bestseller up to date, following up on his original case studies and adding significant new material. The Second Edition changes focus slightly by providing more in-depth analysis and application of the concept of the ‘strategic conversation’. While maintaining the underlying rigour of the first edition, van der Heijden revisits the text to make it far more practical and accessible, and in doing so gives you the tools you need to set out and negotiate a successful future course for your organization in the face of significant uncertainty.
Rafael Ramirez & Angela Wilkinson Strategic Reframing: The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Traditional strategy assumes stability and predictability. Today’s world is better characterised by turbulence, uncertainty, novelty and ambiguity – conditions that contribute disruptive changes and trigger the search for new ways of coping. This book aims to become the premier guide on how to do scenario planning to support strategy and public policy. The book presents The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (OSPA). The book is centred on how learning with scenario planning is supported by re-framing and re-perception; how this iterative process can be embedded in corporate or government settings, and how it helps those that it supports to do well in today’s world.
Kahane, Adam Transformative Scenario Planning Working Together to Change the Future. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012.
People who are trying to solve tough economic, social, and environmental problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They can’t solve their problems in their current context, which is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They can’t transform this context on their own—it’s too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And the people whose cooperation they need don’t understand or agree with or trust them or each other.
Transformative scenario planning is a powerful new methodology for dealing with these challenges. It enables us to transform ourselves and our relationships and thereby the systems of which we are a part. At a time when divisions within and among societies are producing so many people to get stuck and to suffer, it offers hope—and a proven approach—for moving forward
Are trade wars the new normal? Who will control AI? Will China take the US role in politics and economics? To answer these questions among others, Nordic West Office, together with 16 Nordic companies, has developed four Global Scenarios to describe plausible futures ranging from 2021 to 2026.
Hannerz, Ulf Writing Future Worlds: An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
This volume presents a comprehensive analysis of global future scenarios and their impact on a growing, shared culture. Ever since the end of the Cold War, a diverse range of future concepts has emerged in various areas of academia―and even in popular journalism. A number of these key concepts―‘the end of history,’ ‘the clash of civilizations,’ ‘the coming anarchy,’ ‘the world is flat,’ ‘soft power,’ ‘the post-American century’―suggest what could become characteristic of this new, interconnected world. Ulf Hannerz scrutinizes these ideas, considers their legacy, and suggests further dialogue between authors of the ‘American scenario’ and commentators elsewhere.
3 Técnicas y metodologías
Bruno de Mesquita, Bruce The predictioner’s game. Random House, 2009.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a master of game theory, which is a fancy label for a simple idea: People compete, and they always do what they think is in their own best interest. Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory and its insights into human behavior to predict and even engineer political, financial, and personal events. His forecasts, which have been employed by everyone from the CIA to major business firms, have an amazing 90 percent accuracy rate, and in this dazzling and revelatory book he shares his startling methods and lets you play along in a range of high-stakes negotiations and conflicts.
Looking as ever to the future, Bueno de Mesquita also demonstrates how game theory can provide successful strategies to combat both global warming (instead of relying on empty regulations, make nations compete in technology) and terror (figure out exactly how much U.S. aid will make Pakistan fight the Taliban).
Silver, Nate The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t, 2015
Nate Silver is the Kurt Cobain of statistics. His ambitious book, The Signal and the Noise, is a practical handbook and a philosophical manifesto in one, following the theme of prediction through a series of case studies ranging from hurricane tracking to professional poker to counterterrorism. It will be a supremely valuable resource for anyone who wants to make good guesses about the future, or who wants to assess the guesses made by others. In other words, everyone.»
4 Apocalypse Now
Lovelock, James Rough ride to the future. Abrams Press, 2015.
Now in his 102th year, James Lovelock has been hailed as “the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin» (Independent) and “the most profound scientific thinker of our time» (Literary Review). A Rough Ride to the Future introduces two new Lovelockian ideas. The first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning what Lovelock calls “accelerated evolution» a process that is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution. The second is that as part of this process, humanity has the capacity to become the intelligent part of Gaia, the self-regulating earth system whose discovery Lovelock first announced nearly fifty years ago. A Rough Ride to the Future is also an intellectual autobiography, in which Lovelock reflects on his life as a lone scientist, and asks—eloquently—whether his career trajectory is possible in an age of increased bureaucratization. We are now changing the atmosphere again, and Lovelock argues that there is little that can be done about this. But instead of feeling guilty, we should recognize what is happening, prepare for change, and ensure that we survive as a species so we can contribute to—perhaps even guide—the next evolution of Gaia. The road will be rough, but if we are smart enough, life will continue on earth in some form far into the future.
Old, Toby The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Hachette Books, 2021.
If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years – enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes – those from which we could never come back. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late.
Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies that can safeguard humanity.
Phillips, Tom Humans A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up Hanover. Square Press, 2019.
Humans is a thoroughly entertaining account of unintended consequences, of arrogance and ignorance, of human follies and foibles from ancient times to the present. It seems history has taught us nothing—we are doomed to keep suffering the antics of both well-intended and ill-intended fools. As I was reading I wondered how I could be so disheartened and yet at the same time be laughing out loud.
5 El futuro y la reinvención de la raza humana
Enriquez, Juan As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth. Crown Business, 2001.
Juan Enriquez puts you face to face with a series of unprecedented political, ethical, economic, and financial issues, dramatically demonstrating the cascading impact of the genetic, digital, and knowledge revolutions on your life. Genetics will be the dominant language of this century. Those who can “speak it” will acquire direct and deliberate control over all forms of life. But most countries and individuals remain illiterate in what is rapidly becoming the greatest single driver of the global economy.
Wealth will be more concentrated and those with knowledge to sell–both countries and individuals–will be the winners. As the Future Catches You resembles no other book. A typical page may contain just a few dozen words. But each seemingly discrete fact is like a chip in an intellectual mosaic that reveals its meaning and beauty only as you step back and see the big picture. Technology is not kind, it does not say “please,” but slams into existing systems and destroys them while creating new ones. Countries and individuals can either surf new and powerful waves of change–or get crushed trying to stop them. The future is catching us all. Let it catch you with your eyes wide open.
6 De lo retroprogresivo a lo indeterminado
Venkataraman, Bina The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age. Riverhead Books, 2020.
Instant gratification is the norm today—in our lives, our culture, our economy, and our politics. Many of us have forgotten (if we ever learned) how to make smart decisions for the long run. Whether it comes to our finances, our health, our communities, or our planet, it’s easy to avoid thinking ahead. The consequences of this immediacy are stark: Deadly outbreaks spread because leaders failed to act on early warning signs. Companies that fail to invest stagnate and fall behind. Hurricanes and wildfires turn deadly for communities that could have taken more precaution. Today more than ever, all of us need to know how we can make better long-term decisions in our lives, businesses, and society.
Bina Venkataraman draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time. With examples from ancient Pompeii to modern-day Fukushima, she dispels the myth that human nature is impossibly reckless and highlights the surprising practices each of us can adopt in our own lives—and the ones we must fight for as a society. The result is a book brimming with the ideas and insights all of us need in order to forge a better future.
Akama, Yoko, Pink, Sarah, Sumartojo, Shanti Uncertainty and Possibility: New Approaches to Future Making in Design Anthropology. Routledge, 2018.
Uncertainty and possibility are emerging as both theoretical concepts and fields of empirical investigation, as scholars and practitioners seek new creative, hopeful and speculative modes of understanding and intervening in a world of crisis.This book offers new perspectives on the central issues of uncertainty and possibility, and identifies new research methods which take advantage of disruptive and experimental techniques. Advancing a practical agenda for future making, it reveals how uncertainty can be engaged as a generative ‘technology’ for understanding, researching and intervening in the world. Drawing on key themes in creative methodologies, such as making, essaying, inhabiting and attuning, chapters explore contemporary sites of practice. The book looks at maker spaces and technology design, the imaginaries of architectural design, the temporalities of built cultural heritage, and interdisciplinary making and performing. Based on the authors’ own academic work and their applied research with a range of different organizations, Uncertainty and Possibility outlines new opportunities for research and intervention. It is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners in design anthropology and human-centred design.
7 El futuro como diseño de experiencias
Candy, Stuart & Potter, Cher Design and Futures. Independently published, 2019.
As Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon famously observed: ‘Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.’ Designers and futurists, it turns out, have a great deal in common. This mutual recognition is reaching critical mass as each comes to appreciate how their respective traditions have much to offer to making urgent change in the world, and even more so, together.
Design and Futures is a landmark collection of essays, manifestos and peer-reviewed articles, edited by Stuart Candy (Carnegie Mellon University) and Cher Potter (Victoria and Albert Museum), documenting ‘design futures’ discourse and practice around the world. Originally appearing in back-to-back issues of the open access Journal of Futures Studies (Tamkang University Press, Taiwan), the present compilation preserves the original formatting while unifying all 30 pieces between covers for the first time. Topics range from worldbuilding and curriculum design to temporality and decolonisation, as well as new methods and processes that build on over a decade of experiential futures, speculative design and related practices.
Charlotte Smith, Rachel (Editor) Design Anthropological Futures. Routledge ,2016.
A major contribution to the field, this ground-breaking book explores design anthropology’s focus on futures and future-making. Examining what design anthropology is and what it is becoming, the authors push the frontiers of the discipline and reveal both the challenges for and the potential of this rapidly growing transdisciplinary field.
Divided into four sections – Ethnographies of the Possible, Interventionist Speculation, Collaborative Formation of Issues, and Engaging Things – the book develops readers’ understanding of the central theoretical and methodological aspects of future knowledge production in design anthropology. Bringing together renowned scholars such as George Marcus and Alison Clarke with young experimental design anthropologists from countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Brazil, the UK, and the United States, the sixteen chapters offer an unparalleled breadth of theoretical reflections and rich empirical case studies.
Yelavich, Susan & Adams, Barbara (Editores).Design as Future-Making. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.
Design as Future-Making brings together leading international designers, scholars, and critics to address ways in which design is shaping the future. The contributors share an understanding of design as a practice that, with its focus on innovation and newness, is a natural ally of futurity. Ultimately, the choices made by designers are understood here as choices about the kind of world we want to live in. Design as Future-Making locates design in a space of creative and critical reflection, examining the expanding nature of practice in fields such as biomedicine, sustainability, digital crafting, fashion, architecture, urbanism, and design activism. The authors contextualize design and its affects within issues of social justice, environmental health, political agency, education, and the right to pleasure and play. Collectively, they make the case that, as an integrated mode of thought and action, design is intrinsically social and deeply political.
Blauvelt, Andrew & Fanning, Colin Designs for Different Futures. Yale University Press, 2019.
Designs for Different Futures records the concrete ideas and abstract dreams of designers, artists, academics, and scientists exploring how design might reframe our futures, socially, ethically, and aesthetically. Encompassing nearly 100 contemporary examples—from wearable objects to urban infrastructure—this handbook interrogates attitudes toward technology, consumption, beauty, and social and environmental challenges. The projects examined include a typeface unreadable by text-scanning software, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a dress incorporating the sound-wave patterns of birds in flight, a shelter for cricket farming, and a speculative prosthetics catalogue for the “post-human.” Commissioned essays and interviews from figures such as Francis Kéré, Bruno Latour, Neri Oxman, and Danielle Wood give voice to issues faced in futures near and far. With perspectives ranging from historical visions of the future to the use of biological materials in production processes, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how design might shape the world to come.
8. El futuro y la reconceptualización de los sujetos y los objetos
Norman, Don The Design of Future Things. Basic Books, 2009.
Donald A. Norman, a popular design consultant to car manufacturers, computer companies, and other industrial and design outfits, has seen the future and is worried. In this long-awaited follow-up to The Design of Everyday Things, he points out what’s going wrong with the wave of products just coming on the market and some that are on drawing boards everywhere-from «smart» cars and homes that seek to anticipate a user’s every need, to the latest automatic navigational systems. Norman builds on this critique to offer a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow’s thinking machines. This is a consumer-oriented look at the perils and promise of the smart objects of the future, and a cautionary tale for designers of these objects-many of which are already in use or development.
Beckert, Jens Imagined futures Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics Harvard University Press, 2016.
In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future’s unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come. Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies―or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place. Actors pursue money, investments, innovations, and consumption only if they believe the objects obtained through market exchanges will retain value. We accept money because we believe in its future purchasing power. We accept the risk of capital investments and innovation because we expect profit. And we purchase consumer goods based on dreams of satisfaction.
Rothkopf, David The great questions of tomorrow. Simon & Schuster/ TED, 2017.
We are on the cusp of a sweeping revolution—one that will change every facet of our lives. The changes ahead will challenge and alter fundamental concepts such as national identity, human rights, money, and markets. In this pivotal, complicated moment, what are the great questions we need to ask to navigate our way forward?
David Rothkopf believes in the power of questions. When sweeping changes have occurred in history—the religious awakenings of the Reformation; the scientific advances of the Age of Exploration; the technological developments of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution—they have brought with them, not just new knowledge, but provoked great questions about how we must live.
With the world at the threshold of profound change, Rothkopf seeks the important questions of our time—ones that will remake the world and our understanding of it. From the foundational questions: «Why do we live within a society?» and «What is war?» to modern concerns such as «Is access to the internet a basic human right?» The Great Questions of Tomorrow confronts our approach to the future and forces us to reimagine fundamental aspects of our lives—identity, economics, technology, government, war, and peace.
Frase, Peter Four Futures: Life After Capitalism (Jacobin). Verso, 2016.
An “invigorating” vision of four post-capitalist futures that consider the intersections of technology, the environment, and modern politics (The Guardian)
Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism, socialism and exterminism might actually entail.
Could the current rise of real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender’s Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there’s no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of “likes,” wouldn’t rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.
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