The Futures Foundation

The capacity to use futures thinking, or foresight, is born in every child yet we seem unable to use it successfully at a social level in Australia, said Dr Richard Slaughter, director of the Future Studies Centre.

Dr Slaughter offered a quick overview of the field of futures studies, ranging from the empirical/analytical tradition most often associated with corporate work in North America through the global research programs of "deep futures" to the critical tradition in which thinkers like Hazel Henderson challenge prevailing opinion and seek to encourage change.

"At the deeper level some of the most powerful work in the futures arena is being done by people who are willing to sit down and tease through the contradictions embedded in the industrial worldview which prevails in our societies today.

"The futures area is broad and it is deep. It is an area that some people think is flaky, but in fact the reverse is true. Because the subject matter of futures studies is so obviously challenging, it actually requires the best thinking. It calls for a carefully understated mode of discourse, and the most carefully constructed methodologies."

Although he is editor of the new Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, Dr Slaughter was quick to point out that in futures studies a knowledge base is far from a static foundation.

"There is a danger using the term "knowledge base" that it will suggest an unchanging base. I think if we have learned anything from the post-modern period it is that there are no such foundations. I prefer to think of the knowledge base as an evolving process. The knowledge base of futures studies in 1997 is not what it was in 1987 and not what it will be in 2007. Indeed this is one of its strengths. It is very important that in futures studies there are processes at work to incorporate but not neutralise new views from different cultures, for example. The point of that is to bring into discourse, into the arena of understanding, a lot of voices that have so far been left out.

"So our knowledge base is a set of concepts, materials, techniques, institutes which, when knitted together, form a strong core of futures material that is actually the foundation for practice."

Lest that should all sound too complex, Rick Slaughter added that the fundamental concept of futures work was in fact child's play.

"Futures studies or foresight is something which is not strange, not esoteric, not something which you have to learn, but something we all inherit, simply by being possessor of a normal human brain /mind system and the higher order of consciousness that that involves.

"It is embedded in everyday life. Imagine you are taking a group of kids into the bush in two weeks' time. How do you go about planning that? What processes do you go through? What kind of knowledge are you generating? Remember it hasn't happened yet... the kind of knowledge generated in that task and many others in everyday life is propositional, exactly the same kind as in futures."

Yet for all its simplicity and its profound importance, the foresight principle has not yet found a home in Australian national life.

"There is minimal debate in Australia about the future. I do very strongly hope that the Futures Foundation and everything that flows from it will help to generate discourse about the future in our society. We need to be looking decades ahead, and the time frames of government are only two or three years.

"For example, the ideology of economic growth is something we have to challenge. It doesn't work any more. In fact it is going to give us major pains. We should be questioning growth and redefining it. Old style growth is now part of the problem. We have to figure out other sorts of growth. We have to come to terms with the global impacts of human activity and the key thing is the shift of thinking, moving out of short-term time frames."

Rick Slaughter's plea is for the practice of foresight to be institutionalised in Australia. A national foresight strategy would at minimum need to focus on business, education and government. He does not see it in government, but institutionalised alongside government as an executive resource with special responsibility for long-term futures.

"The whole point of foresight strategy is not for me or anyone else to impose a blueprint on society, but rather for a whole lot of people to discuss what the alternatives are and then to develop appropriate foresight strategies. Perhaps the single most important thing we need to do today is to gain understanding of futures concepts, and to build a futures discourse."