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History of future studies 2

Studying the future has captured the minds of not only scholars and leaders, but also the general public. In the late 1930s, people became so intrigued with predicting and planning the future that the magazine Tomorrow: the Magazine of the Future, first published in 1938 to call for studying the future using specific methodologies, suggested the creation of a Ministry for the Future to collect data from around the world for studying and comparing the effects of the latest developments and discoveries on the human race.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, much of the research on the future focused on promoting military planning. For example, the RAND Corporation worked with the Manhattan Project and other organisations to set up special plans to deploy armed forces and later to develop space programs. Such work required a long-term perspective about using means to achieve great goals, such as landing on the moon and justifying space missions both socially and economically. The RAND Corporation also contributed specifically to developing the "scenario technique", which was influenced by military strategist and systems theorist Herman Kahn. He discussed this technique in his thesis about thermonuclear war, in which he attempted to analyse the relationship between weapons development and military strategy in order to study the potential consequences of a nuclear conflict.

History of future studies 1

In 1947, Theodore Von Karman published Towards New Horizons, a report commissioned by U.S. Army General Henry H. Arnold, which set the stage for our current approach to studying the future by asserting that people could predict future technological capabilities. This report paved the way for the emergence of a legacy of technological foresight which resulted in the establishment of the Long-term Technological Foreseeing Agency in the U.S. Army (Cornish, 1983). Consequently, even political leaders started to engage in forms of future studies and predicting and altering the future. However, their purpose has been less philosophical and more pragmatic. For instance, Lenin’s first five-year governmental plan to provide electricity to the Soviet Union in 1928 highlighted the importance of planning (a process for looking towards the future) in every aspect of contemporary affairs — namely, government, education, research, manufacturing, work, and family affairs. The importance of such governmental or strategic planning has also increased due to pressure from economic fluctuations, automation, lack of educational parity, urban inflation, and environmental pollution (Zaher, 2004). Studying and predicting the future are important activities not only because of growing concerns about the possible future, but also because people are growing more aware of the high costs of dealing with problems as they appear rather than avoiding them completely.

Introduction

People have long sought to know what the future may bring and whether they can change their fates. The Ancient Greeks turned to the famous Oracle of Delphi to learn of their destinies and the outcomes of their choices (Bishop, 2010). Today, rather than turn to oracles, we strive to study and predict the future ourselves. Modern philosophy has adopted a “becoming” perspective in which people can influence their paths and manage the future. As Gabor said, “We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it” (Hardin, 1970, p. 74).

The sense that people can control their futures is common nowadays, at least in Western cultures. For example, McHale argued that no future exists except the future that we want. Jean-Paul Sartre contended that every human being creates his future, and he should bear full responsibility for this creation (Zaher, 2004).

In the early 1970s, the public was becoming more convinced that studying the future was possible and that the future was modifiable and not fixed (Cornish, 1983). Hence, humans do not need to walk blindly towards a compulsory world lacking the freedom of choice, but are rather constructive partners in creating the future. Therefore, figuring out the future was not merely a pastime for people interested in reflecting on their fates, but also an essential—and perhaps necessary—adventure for everyone.

In these modern times, many governments and companies attempt to improve their operations and shape their destinies by studying their futures. The UAE government should be one such organisation. Because the government aims to improve its performance through development, innovation and creativity in areas such as science, technology, innovation policy, public health, national security, the environment and economics, it must learn how to predict possible futures and apply what it learns so that its decision-makers can adopt and apply appropriate practices. To understand the approaches the UAE can use to study the future and develop policies and practices, it is important to first understand how such foresight studies evolved and how they have been used. After reviewing this history, we can explore examples of how the UAE government can apply different methodologies to improve its operations.

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