Foresight

“Foresight” and “forecasting” are related concepts, but they differ in terms of their focus, purpose, and methodology:

1. Focus:

1. Foresight: Foresight is a broader and more forward-looking process that aims to anticipate and understand potential future developments, trends, and scenarios. It involves a holistic exploration of various factors that may shape the future, including social, technological, economic, environmental, and political factors. Foresight often deals with long-term planning and strategic decision-making.

1. Forecasting: Forecasting, on the other hand, is a more specific and quantitative process focused on making predictions about future events or outcomes based on historical data and statistical models. It typically involves estimating specific numerical values, such as sales figures, stock prices, or weather conditions, within a defined time frame.

2. Purpose:

1. Foresight: Foresight is used to inform long-term strategic planning and decision-making. It helps organizations and policymakers prepare for a range of potential future scenarios, identify emerging opportunities and risks, and develop adaptive strategies. Foresight is often used to guide innovation and long-range policy development.

1. Forecasting: Forecasting is primarily used for short to medium-term decision-making. It provides specific numerical predictions that are valuable for day-to-day operational planning, budgeting, and resource allocation. Forecasting is often employed in business, finance, weather prediction, and other areas where precise numerical predictions are essential.

3. Methodology:

1. Foresight: Foresight employs a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including scenario planning, trend analysis, expert opinions, and stakeholder engagement. It emphasizes a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to understanding the driving forces behind potential future developments.

1. Forecasting: Forecasting relies heavily on historical data, statistical models, and quantitative techniques. It aims to provide precise numerical estimates based on past patterns and trends, often using tools like time series analysis, regression analysis, and machine learning algorithms.

In summary, while both foresight and forecasting involve looking into the future, they differ in their scope, purpose, and methodology. Foresight is a more comprehensive and strategic approach that explores a wide range of potential futures and their drivers. Forecasting, on the other hand, is a more specific and numerical process focused on predicting specific outcomes within a defined time frame based on historical data and quantitative models. Both are valuable tools for planning and decision-making, but they serve different purposes and are applied in different contexts.

“7 types of alternative futures defined below (or 8 if one also includes a specific singular ‘predicted’ future, which I generally don’t do any more) are all considered to be subjective judgements about ideas about the future that are based in the present moment, so the categories for the same idea can obviously change over time as time goes on (the canonical example of which is the Apollo XI Moon landing, which has gone through most of the categories from ‘preposterous’ to ‘projected’ and thence into history as ‘the past’). In brief, these categories are:

• Potential – everything beyond the present moment is a potential future. This comes from the assumption that the future is undetermined and ‘open’ not inevitable or ‘fixed’, which is perhaps the foundational axiom of Futures Studies.
• Preposterous – these are the futures we judge to be ‘ridiculous’, ‘impossible’, or that will ‘never’ happen. I introduced this category because the next category (which used to be the edge of the original form of the cone) did not seem big enough, or able to capture the sometimes-vehement refusal to even entertain them that some people would exhibit to some ideas about the future. This category arises from homage to James Dator and his Second Law of the Future—“any useful idea about the future should appear ridiculous” (Dator 2005)—as well as to Arthur C. Clarke and his Second Law—“the only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible” (Clarke 2000, p. 2). Accordingly, the boundary between the Preposterous and the Possible could be reasonably called the ‘Clarke-Dator Boundary’ or perhaps the ‘Clarke-Dator Discontinuity’, since crossing it in the outward direction represents a very important but, for some people, very difficult, movement in prospection thinking. (This is what is represented by the red arrows in the diagram.)
• Possible – these are those futures that we think ‘might’ happen, based on some future knowledge we do not yet possess, but which we might possess someday (e.g., warp drive).
• Plausible – those we think ‘could’ happen based on our current understanding of how the world works (physical laws, social processes, etc).
• Probable – those we think are ‘likely to’ happen, usually based on (in many cases, quantitative) current trends.
• Preferable – those we think ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ happen: normative value judgements as opposed to the mostly cognitive, above. There is also of course the associated converse class—the un-preferred futures—a ‘shadow’ form of anti-normative futures that we think should not happen nor ever be allowed to happen (e.g., global climate change scenarios comes to mind).
• Projected – the (singular) default, business as usual, ‘baseline’, extrapolated ‘continuation of the past through the present’ future. This single future could also be considered as being ‘the most probable’ of the Probable futures. And,
• (Predicted) – the future that someone claims ‘will’ happen. I briefly toyed with using this category for a few years quite some time ago now, but I ended up not using it anymore because it tends to cloud the openness to possibilities (or, more usefully, the ‘preposter-abilities’!) that using the full Futures Cone is intended to engender.”

[Source: Voros, J., 2017. The Futures Cone, use and history – The Voroscope [WWW Document]. URL https://thevoroscope.com/2017/02/24/the-futures-cone-use-and-history/ (accessed 2.14.24). Voros, J., 2003. A generic foresight process framework. foresight 5, 10–21.]

Imaginary 1: Technocracy for the common good

Imaginary 2: Unity in adversity

Imaginary 3: The great decoupling

Imaginary 4: Ecotopia

https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/scenarios-for-a-sustainable-europe-2050

Identifying elelement that impact exploratory scenarios in several dimensions, and analyse their interaction

S - Society T - Technology E - Economy E - Environment P - Policy V - Values

~~DISCUSSION|Discussion Section - PAGE OWNER: Klaus Kubeczko~~