อนาคตศึกษา (Futurology)

อนาคตศึกษา (Futurology)
ประกอบ คุปรัตน์
Pracob Cooparat
E-mail: pracob@sb4af.org

Keywords: การบริหารการศึกษา, ความเป็นผู้นำ, อนาคตศึกษา, เขตพื้นที่การศึกษา

จดหมายเปิดผนึกผ่าน http://pracob.blogspot.com

เพื่อการแลกเปลี่ยนเรียนรู้และการทำวิทยานิพนธ์ เรื่อง "อนาคตภาพเขตพื้นที่การศึกษาของไทยในทศวรรษหน้า"

ผมจะได้มีการปรับปรุงบทความนี้บ่อยๆ และจะใช้เป็นสื่อในการประสานงานติดต่อกับผู้มีความรู้ในประเด็นที่จะศึกษานี้

ถึงอาจารย์อิสสระพงษ์ แสงตะวัน

การจะศึกษาเรื่อง "อนาคตภาพเขตพื้นที่การศึกษาของไทยในทศวรรษหน้า" หรือในภาษาอังกฤษว่า The Scenario of Educational Service Area Offices in Thailand" นั้น ผมเห็นด้วย ชื่ออาจมีการปรับเปลี่ยนบ้าง แต่ในเชิงแนวคิดนั้นดีและมีประโยชน์

อนาคต 10 ปี

การศึกษาในช่วงเวลายาวไกลสักเท่าใดนั้น ระยะเวลาสัก 10 ปีของเขตพื้นที่การศึกษานั้น นับว่ามีความเหมาะสม ไม่มากหรือน้อยเกินไป

ความหมายของคำ

คำว่าเขตพื้นที่การศึกษา ภาษาอังกฤษที่ใช้ว่า Educational Service Area หรือเรียกย่อๆว่า ESA นั้นเป็นลักษณะเฉพาะของไทย ควรทำความเข้าใจเกี่ยวกับหน่วยงานในลักษณะอย่างเดียวกันของประเทศอื่นๆ เช่น

• สหรัฐอเมริกา - School districts, Education Districts, School Boards, Boards of Education, etc.
• สหราชอาณาจักร - Local Education Authorities
• ญี่ปุ่น -
• จีน
• มาเลเซีย
• ฯลฯ

วิธีการวิจัย
Research Methodlogy

ก่อนที่จะเลือกใช้ Delphi Technique ลองศึกษาแนวทางของ Futurology ให้ได้มากที่สุดก่อน

ลองคุยกับ ดร.จุมพล พูลภัทธรชีวิน, ดร.พีระศักดิ์ วรฉัตร, ดร. สวัสดิ์ โพธิวัฒน์ และอื่นๆ ตลอดจนเข้าไปศึกษาขั้นเบื้องต้นจาก Wikipedia ภายในสัก 1 สัปดาห์ แล้วลองบอกมาว่ามีการศึกษาในรูปแบบอื่นๆอย่างไรบ้าง
ลองติดตามงานจากบุคคลต่อไปนี้เป็นเบื้องต้น

• เกรียงศักดิ์ เจริญวงศ์ศักดิ์, ศ.ดร.
• วิทยา พรพัชรพงศ์,
• จิตติมา เหมรัตนากร,
• นลินี ทวีสิน ผู้อำนวยการสถาบันอนาคตศึกษาเพื่อการพัฒนา (ไอเอฟดี)
• สถาบันอนาคตศึกษาเพื่อการพัฒนา (ไอเอฟดี)

ในประเทศไทยมีใครบ้างที่ศึกษาเรื่อง "อนาคตศึกษา" และกระทำในสายวิชาการด้านอะไร ลองเข้าไปค้นในหัวข้อวิทยานิพน์จากจุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัยและอื่นๆในช่วง 10 ปีที่ผ่านมา

ในวิธีการต่างๆ ลองศึกษาวิธีการ BlogCon หรือ Blog Conference, หรือการใช้เวที Blog เพื่อการจัดเก็บข้อมูลจาก[บุคคลผู้เชี่ยวชาญ (Experts) ในสาขาวิทยาการต่างๆที่เกี่ยวข้อง และจากคนที่สนใจในประเด็นดังกล่าว และคนที่มีวิสัยทัศน์ทางด้าน อนาคตของเขตพื้นที่การศึกษา ในประเทศไทย

ผมได้แนะนำให้อาจารย์ประภาพร บุญปลอดได้ใช้เทคนิคนี้ ซึ่งไม่ยาก

ง่ายๆ ลองสร้าง Blog ขึ้นมาเป็นภาษาไทย จาก Blogspot.com ซึ่งมีระบบสืบค้นอย่าง Google ลองรับ สามารถใส่ภาพได้ ใส่เสียง และไฟล์อื่นๆได้ สำหรับผู้เชี่ยวชาญที่เขามีเนื้อหา (Content-Based Experts) แต่ไม่มีทักษะหรือเวลาที่จะสื่อผ่าน Web ผู้วิจัยก็ทำหน้าที่เป็น Facilitators ช่วยบันทึกเสียงหรือนำข้อเขียนของท่านเหล่านั้นมานำเสนอ ตลอดจนแนะนำการเปิดอ่านจาก Blog ที่ได้สร้างขึ้น

ระยะเวลาในการวิจัย

ผมคิดว่าเมื่อทำจริงๆ คงจะใช้เวลาในการเก็บข้อมูลประมาณ 8-12 เดือน สำหรับช่วงเวลาภาคฤดูร้อนนี้ ควรใช้เวลาให้ได้มากและเต็มที่ ส่วนผมเองในช่วงกลางเดือนมีนาคม - สิ้นพฤษภาคม 2553 ผมอยู่ต่างประเทศ แต่จะสามารถติดต่อถึงผมได้
ตลอดเวลา โดยผ่านทาง E-mail, Blog, และ Skype

ใครคือผู้เชี่ยวชาญ

ความเชี่ยวชาญด้านการวางระบบ การจัดองค์การ (Organization Restructuring, Organization Design) น่าจะเป็นแกนกลางของการศึกษา

• การจัดทำ Scenario Building
• ลองศึกษา Environmental Scanning

การจัดทำ Biography List ของนักอนาคตศึกษา และบุคคลที่จะสนใจเรื่องเขตพื้นที่การศึกษาของประเทศไทย
อนาคตศึกษา

ความหมายของอนาคตศึกษา
Furology หรือ Future Studies

Futurology (may also be referred as futures studies or foresight) is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. It is considered as a topic in philosophy. Some claim it is a science, or art. In general, it can be considered as a branch under the more general scope of the field of history. Futures studies (colloquially called "futures" by many of the field's practitioners) seeks to understand what is likely to continue, what is likely to change, and what is novel. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to determine the likelihood of future events and trends. [1] Unlike Science where a narrower, more specified system is studied, futurology studies a much bigger and complex world system. The methodology and knowledge are much less proven as compared to natural science or even social science like sociology, economics and political science.

ภาพโดยรวม
Overview

Futures is an interdisciplinary field, studying yesterday's and today's changes, and aggregating and analyzing both lay and professional strategies, and opinions with respect to tomorrow. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in the attempt to develop foresight and to map possible futures. Around the world the field is variously referred to as futures studies, strategic foresight, futurology, futuristics, futures thinking, futuring, futuribles (in France, the last is also the name of the important 20th century foresight journal published only in French), and prospectiva (in Spain, Portugal and Latin America). Futures studies (and one of its subdisciplines, strategic foresight) are the academic field's most commonly used terms in the English-speaking world.

Foresight may be the oldest term for the field. In a 1932 BBC broadcast the visionary author H.G. Wells called for the establishment of "Departments and Professors of Foresight," presaging the development of modern academic futures studies by approximately 40 years.[2] Futurology is a term common in encyclopedias, though it used almost exclusively by nonpractitioners today, at least in the English-speaking world. Futurology is defined as the "study of the future."[3] The term was coined by German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim in the mid-1940s, who proposed it as a new branch of knowledge that would include a new science of probability. This term may have fallen from favor in recent decades because modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and the limitations of prediction and probability, versus the creation of possible and preferable futures.

Three factors usually distinguish futures studies from the research conducted by other disciplines (although all disciplines overlap, to differing degrees). First, futures studies often examines not only possible but also probable, preferable, and "wild card" futures. Second, futures studies typically attempts to gain a holistic or systemic view based on insights from a range of different disciplines. Third, futures studies challenges and unpacks the assumptions behind dominant and contending views of the future. The future thus is not empty but fraught with hidden assumptions. For example, many people make predictions of the fall of this Earth's ecosystem, in the near future.

Futures studies does not generally focus on short term predictions such as interest rates over the next business cycle, or of managers or investors with short-term time horizons. Most strategic planning, which develops operational plans for preferred futures with time horizons of one to three years, is also not considered futures. But plans and strategies with longer time horizons that specifically attempt to anticipate and be robust to possible future events, are part of a major subdiscipline of futures studies called strategic foresight.

The futures field also excludes those who make future predictions through professed supernatural means. At the same time, it does seek to understand the models such groups use and the interpretations they give to these models.

ความเป็นไปได้และความสามารถในการคาดการณ์
Probability and predictability

Some aspects of predicting the future, such as celestial mechanics, have been discovered to be highly statistically predictable, and may even be described by relatively simple mathematical models. At present however, science has yielded only a special minority of such "easy to predict" physical processes. Theories such as chaos theory, nonlinear science and standard evolutionary theory have allowed us to understand many complex systems as contingent (sensitively dependent on complex environmental conditions) and stochastic (random within constraints), making the vast majority of future events unpredictable, in any specific case.

Not surprisingly, the tension between predictability and unpredictability is a source of controversy and conflict among futures studies scholars and practitioners. Some argue that the future is essentially unpredictable, and that "the best way to predict the future is to create it." Others believe, as Flechtheim, that advances in science, probability, modeling and statistics will allow us to continue to improve our understanding of probable futures, while this area presently remains less well developed than methods for exploring possible and preferable futures.

As an example, consider the process of electing the president of the United States. At one level we observe that any U.S. citizen over 35 may run for president, so this process may appear too unconstrained for useful prediction. Yet further investigation demonstrates that only certain public individuals (current and former presidents and vice presidents, senators, state governors, popular military commanders, mayors of very large cities, etc.) receive the appropriate "social credentials" that are historical prerequisites for election. Thus with a minimum of effort at formulating the problem for statistical prediction, a much reduced pool of candidates can be described, improving our probabilistic foresight. Applying further statistical intelligence to this problem, we can observe that in certain election prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets, reliable forecasts have been generated over long spans of time and conditions, with results superior to individual experts or polls. Such markets, which may be operated publicly or as an internal market, are just one of several promising frontiers in predictive futures research.

ระเบียบวิทยาการ
Methodologies

Futures practitioners use a wide range of models and methods (theory and practice), many of which come from other academic disciplines, including economics, sociology, geography, history, engineering, mathematics, psychology, technology, tourism, physics, biology, astronomy, and aspects of theology (specifically, the range of future beliefs).

Future Studies takes as one of its important attributes (epistemological starting points) the on-going effort to analyze alternative futures. This effort includes collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the possibility, probability, and desirability of change. The plurality of the term "futures" in futurology denotes the rich variety of alternative futures, including the subset of preferable futures (normative futures), that can be studied.

Practitioners of the discipline previously concentrated on extrapolating present technological, economic or social trends, or on attempting to predict future trends, but more recently they have started to examine social systems and uncertainties and to build scenarios, question the worldviews behind such scenarios via the causal layered analysis method (and others) create preferred visions of the future, and use backcasting to derive alternative implementation strategies. Apart from extrapolation and scenarios, many dozens of methods and techniques are used in futures research (see below).

Future Studies also includes normative or preferred futures, but a major contribution involves connecting both extrapolated (exploratory) and normative research to help individuals and organisations to build better social futures amid a (presumed) landscape of shifting social changes. Practitioners use varying proportions of inspiration and research. Futures studies only rarely uses the scientific method in the sense of controlled, repeatable and falsifiable experiments with highly standardized methodologies, given that environmental conditions for repeating a predictive scheme are usually quite hard to control for. However, many futurists are informed by scientific techniques. Some historians project patterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to anticipate what will happen in the future. Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West" argued, for instance, that western society, like imperial Rome, had reached a stage of cultural maturity that would inexorably lead to decline, in measurable ways.

Future Studies is often summarized as being concerned with "three P's and a W," or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low probability but high impact events (positive or negative), should they occur. Many futurists, however, do not use the wild card approach. Rather, they use a methodology called Emerging Issues Analysis. It searches for the seeds of change, issues that are likely to move from unknown to the known, from low impact to high impact.

Estimates of probability are involved with two of the four central concerns of foresight professionals (discerning and classifying both probable and wildcard events), while considering the range of possible futures, recognizing the plurality of existing alternative futures, characterizing and attempting to resolve normative disagreements on the future, and envisioning and creating preferred futures are other major areas of scholarship. Most estimates of probability in futurology are normative and qualitative, though significant progress on statistical and quantitative methods (technology and information growth curves, cliometrics, predictive psychology, prediction markets, etc.) has been made in recent decades.

เทคนิคการศึกษาอนาคต
Futures techniques

Main article: Futures techniques

While forecasting—i.e., attempts to predict future states from current trends—is a common methodology, professional scenarios often rely on "backcasting" -- i.e., asking what changes in the present would be required to arrive at envisioned alternative future states. For example, the Policy Reform and Eco-Communalism scenarios developed by the Global Scenario Group rely on the backcasting method. Practitioners of futures studies classify themselves as futurists (or foresight practitioners).

Futurists use a diverse range of forecasting methods including:

• Anticipatory thinking protocols:
• Causal layered analysis (CLA)
• Environmental scanning
• Scenario method
• Delphi method
• Future history
• Monitoring
• Backcasting (eco-history)
• Back-view mirror analysis
• Cross-impact analysis
• Futures workshops
• Failure mode and effects analysis
• Futures biographies
• Futures wheel
• Relevance tree
• Simulation and modelling
• Social network analysis
• Systems engineering
• Trend analysis
• Morphological analysis
• Technology forecasting

การสร้างภาพทางเลือกอนาคต
Shaping alternative futures

Futurists use scenarios - alternative possible futures - as an important tool. To some extent, people can determine what they consider probable or desirable using qualitative and quantitative methods. By looking at a variety of possibilities one comes closer to shaping the future, rather than merely predicting it. Shaping alternative futures starts by establishing a number of scenarios. Setting up scenarios takes place as a process with many stages. One of those stages involves the study of trends. A trend persists long-term and long-range; it affects many societal groups, grows slowly and appears to have a profound basis. In contrast, a fad operates in the short term, shows the vagaries of fashion, affects particular societal groups, and spreads quickly but superficially.

Sample predicted futures range from predicted ecological catastrophes, through a utopian future where the poorest human being lives in what present-day observers would regard as wealth and comfort, through the transformation of humanity into a posthuman life-form, to the destruction of all life on Earth in, say, a nanotechnological disaster.

Futurists have a decidedly mixed reputation and a patchy track record at successful prediction. For reasons of convenience, they often extrapolate present technical and societal trends and assume they will develop at the same rate into the future; but technical progress and social upheavals, in reality, take place in fits and starts and in different areas at different rates.

Many 1950s futurists predicted commonplace space tourism by the year 2000, but ignored the possibilities of ubiquitous, cheap computers, while Marxist expectations of utopia have failed to materialise to date. On the other hand, many forecasts have portrayed the future with some degree of accuracy. Current futurists often present multiple scenarios that help their audience envision what "may" occur instead of merely "predicting the future". They claim that understanding potential scenarios helps individuals and organizations prepare with flexibility.

Many corporations use futurists as part of their risk management strategy, for horizon scanning and emerging issues analysis, and to identify wild cards - low probability, potentially high-impact risks.[4] Every successful and unsuccessful business engages in futuring to some degree - for example in research and development, innovation and market research, anticipating competitor behavior and so on.

ประเด็นเกี่ยวกับ Weak signals, the future sign และ wild cards

Weak signal หรือสัญญาณอ่อนหมายถึงอะไร

In futures research "weak signals" may be understood as advanced, noisy and socially situated indicators of change in trends and systems that constitute raw informational material for enabling anticipatory action. There is confusion about the definition of weak signal by various researchers and consultants. Sometimes it is referred as future oriented information, sometimes more like emerging issues.

สัญญาณอนาคต คืออะไร

Elina Hiltunen (2007), in her new concept the future sign has tried to clarify the confusion about the weak signal definitions, by combining signal, issue and interpretation to the future sign, which more holistically describes the change.[5]

Wild cards หมายถึงอะไร

"Wild cards" refer to low-probability and high-impact events. This concept may be embedded in standard foresight projects and introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to increase the ability of social groups adapt to surprises arising in turbulent business environments. Such sudden and unique incidents might constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend or system. Wild cards may or may not be announced by weak signals, which are incomplete and fragmented data from which relevant foresight information might be inferred. Sometimes, mistakenly, wild cards and weak signals are considered as synonyms, which they are not.[6]

การนำนายอนาคตอันใกล้
Near-term predictions

A long-running tradition in various cultures, and especially in the media, involves various spokespersons making predictions for the upcoming year at the beginning of the year. These predictions sometimes base themselves on current trends in culture (music, movies, fashion, politics); sometimes they make hopeful guesses as to what major events might take place over the course of the next year.

Some of these predictions come true as the year unfolds, though many fail. When predicted events fail to take place, the authors of the predictions often state that misinterpretation of the "signs" and portents may explain the failure of the prediction.

Marketers have increasingly started to embrace future studies, in an effort to benefit from an increasingly competitive marketplace with fast production cycles, using such techniques as trendspotting as popularized by Faith Popcorn.

การวิเคราะห์แนวโน้มและการคาดการณ์
Trend analysis and forecasting

Mega-trends

Trends come in different sizes. A mega-trend extends over many generations, and in cases of climate, mega-trends can cover periods prior to human existence. They describe complex interactions between many factors. The increase in population from the palaeolithic period to the present provides an example.
แนวโน้มที่มีศักยภาพ

Potential trends

Possible new trends grow from innovations, projects, beliefs or actions that have the potential to grow and eventually go mainstream in the future (for example: just a few years ago, alternative medicine remained an outcast from modern medicine. Now it has links with big business and has achieved a degree of respectability in some circles and even in the marketplace).

แนวโน้มในแบบแตกสาขา
Branching trends

Very often, trends relate to one another the same way in which a tree-trunk relate to branches and twigs. For example, a well-documented movement toward equality between men and women might represent a branch trend. The trend toward a minimizing differences in the relationship between the salaries of men and women in the Western world could form a twig on that branch.

ช่วงอายุไขของแนวโน้ม
Life-cycle of a trend

When does a potential trend gain acceptance as a bona fide trend? When it gets enough confirmation in the various media, surveys or questionnaires to show it has an increasingly accepted value, behavior or technology. Trends can also gain confirmation by the existence of other trends perceived as springing from the same branch. Some commentators claim that when 15% to 25% of a given population integrates an innovation, project, belief or action into their daily life then a trend becomes mainstream.

ขอเสนอแนะอื่นๆเกี่ยวกับแนวคิดเกี่ยวกับอนาคต
Other suggestions for thinking about the future

"Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous." (Jim Dator)
"Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you." (Patrick Dixon)
"The future is clear to me. What I don't understand is the present." (Gerhard Kocher)
"There are no future facts." (Fred Polak)

"A part of our future appears to be evolutionary and unpredictable, and another part looks developmental and predictable. Our challenge is to invent the first and discover the second." (John Smart)
"The problem with the future is that it keeps becoming the present." (Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes)

ประวัติศาสตร์
History

Future Studies emerged as an academic discipline in the mid-1960s, according to first-generation futurists Herman Kahn, Olaf Helmer, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Dennis Gabor, Oliver Markley, Burt Nanus, and Wendell Bell.[7] However, some intellectual foundations of future studies appeared in the mid-19th century. In 1997, Wendell Bell suggested that Comte's discussion of the metapatterns of social change presages future studies as a scholarly dialogue.[7]

Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah[8] go further back arguing in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians that the search for grand patterns of social change takes us back to Ssu-Ma Chien (145-90BC) and his theory of the cycles of virtue, though a more intelligible - to modern sociology - would be the work of Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) and his The Muqaddimah[9] It is here that we gain a coherent theory of social change. One might make a stronger argument that futurology as a field originated in the early 20th century, intertwined with the birth of systems science in academia, and with the idea of national economic and political planning, most notably in France, the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries.

Differing approaches arose in Western Europe (mostly in France), in Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union), in the post-colonial developing countries, and in the United States of America.[7][10] In the 1950s European people and nations continued to rebuild their war-devastated continent. In the process, academics, philosophers, writers, and artists explored what might constitute a long-term positive future for humanity as a whole, and for their own countries in particular. The Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries participated in the European rebuilding, but did so in the context of an established national economic planning process, which also required a long-term, systemic statement of social goals. The newly-independent developing countries of Africa and Asia faced the challenge of constructing industrial infrastructure from a minimal base, as well as constructing national identities with concomitant long-term social goals. By contrast, in the United States of America, futurology as a discipline emerged from the successful application of the tools and perspectives of systems analysis, especially with regard to quartermastering the war-effort.
There is a perceived schism - though given the globalization of knowledge, generally no longer relevant - between future studies in America and future studies in Europe: U.S. practitioners often seem to focus on applied projects, quantitative tools and systems analysis, whereas Europeans seem to investigate the long-range future of humanity and the Earth, what might constitute that future, what symbols and semantics might express it, and who might articulate these.[11][12]

With regard to future studies within the former centrally-planned economies, or within the newly-developing countries, differences with U.S. futures practice exist primarily because futures researchers in the United States have no opportunity to engage in national planning, nor do their fellow-citizens call upon them to construct national symbols. This is changing in the early 21st century, as early signs of overshoot and collapse are apparent, and modern applications of futures studies techniques found in the UNESCO Sustainability Education materials.

By the late 1960s, enough scholars, philosophers, writers and artists around the world had begun to question and explore possible long-range futures for humanity to form an international dialogue. Inventors such as Buckminster Fuller also began highlighting the effect technology might have on global trends as time progressed. This discussion on the intersection of population growth, resource availability and use, economic growth, quality of life, and environmental sustainability — referred to as the "global problematique" — came to wide public attention with the publication of Limits to Growth, a study sponsored by the Club of Rome.[13] This international dialogue became institutionalized in the form of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), founded in 1967, with the noted sociologist, Johan Galtung, serving as its first president. In the United States, the publisher Edward Cornish, concerned with these issues, started the World Future Society, an organization focused more on interested laypeople.

The field currently faces the great challenge of creating a coherent conceptual framework, codified into a well-documented curriculum (or curricula) featuring widely-accepted and consistent concepts and theoretical paradigms linked to quantitative and qualitative methods, exemplars of those research methods, and guidelines for their ethical and appropriate application within society. As an indication that previously disparate intellectual dialogues have in fact started converging into a recognizable discipline,[14] at least six solidly-researched and well-accepted first attempts to synthesize a coherent framework for the field have appeared: Eleonora Masini's Why Futures Studies,[15] James Dator's Advancing Futures Studies,[16] Ziauddin Sardar's Rescuing all of our Futures,[17] Sohail Inayatullah's Questioning the future,[18] Richard A. Slaughter's The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies,[19] a collection of essays by senior practitioners, and Wendell Bell's two-volume work, The Foundations of Futures Studies.[20]

วิวัฒนาการของศาสตร์ แนวทางการศึกษาเกี่ยวกับอนาคต

Evolving the field - Programs in Futures Studies (by region)

ในอเมริกาเหนือ
North America

1975 saw the founding of the first graduate program in futures studies in the United States of America, the M.S. Program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston;[21] there followed a year later the M.A. Program in Public Policy in Alternative Futures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.[22] The Hawai'i program provides particular interest in the light of the schism in perspective between European and U.S. futurists; it bridges that schism by locating futures studies within a pedagogical space defined by neo-Marxism, critical political economic theory, and literary criticism. In the years following the foundation of these two programs, single courses in Futures Studies at all levels of education have proliferated, but complete programs occur only rarely. As a transdisciplinary field, futurology attracts generalists. This transdisciplinary nature can also cause problems, owing to it sometimes falling between the cracks of disciplinary boundaries; it also has caused some difficulty in achieving recognition within the traditional curricula of the sciences and the humanities. In contrast to "Futures Studies" at the undergraduate level, some graduate programs in strategic leadership or management offer masters or doctorate programs in "Strategic Foresight" for mid-career professionals, some even online. Nevertheless, comparatively few new PhDs graduate in Futures Studies each year.

ในด้านการศึกษา
Education

Education in the field of future studies has taken place for some time. Beginning in the United States of America in the 1960s, it has since developed in many different countries. Futures education can encourage the use of concepts, tools and processes that allow students to think long-term, consequentially, and imaginatively. It generally helps students to:

• conceptualise more just and sustainable human and planetary futures
• develop knowledge and skills in exploring probable and preferred futures
• understand the dynamics and influence that human, social and ecological systems have on alternative futures
• conscientize responsibility and action on the part of students toward creating better futures.

Thorough documentation of the history of futures education exists, for example in the work of Richard A. Slaughter (2004) [23], David Hicks, Ivana Milojević [24] and Jennifer Gidley [25][26][27] to name a few.
While future studies remains a relatively new academic tradition, numerous tertiary institutions around the world teach it. These vary from small programs, or universities with just one or two classes, to programs that incorporate futurology into other degrees, (for example in planning, business, environmental studies, economics, development studies, science and technology studies). Various formal Masters-level programs exist on six continents. Finally, doctoral dissertations around the world have incorporated futurology. A recent survey documented approximately 50 cases of futures studies at the tertiary level.[28]

The largest Futures Studies program in the world is at Tamkang University, Taiwan. Futures Studies is a required course at the undergraduate level, with between three to five thousand students taking classes on an annual basis. Housed in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies is an MA Program. Only ten students are accepted annually in the program. Associated with the program is the Journal of Futures Studies.[29]
As of 2003, over 40 tertiary education establishments around the world were delivering one or more courses in futures studies. The World Futures Studies Federation [30] has a comprehensive survey of global futures programs and courses. The Acceleration Studies Foundation maintains an annotated list of primary and secondary graduate future studies programs.[31]

นักอนาคตวิทยา
Futurists

Main article: Futurist

Several authors have become recognized as futurists. They research trends (particularly in technology) and write accounts of their observations, conclusions, and predictions. In earlier eras, many of the futurists were attached to academic institutions. For example John McHale, the futurist who wrote the book The Future of the Future, and published a Futures Directory, directed his own Centre For Integrative Studies which was a Think Tank within the university setting. Other early era futurists followed a cycle of publishing their conclusions and then beginning research on the next book. More recently they have started consulting groups or earn money as speakers. Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt and Patrick Dixon exemplify this class.
Many business gurus present themselves as pragmatic futurists rather than as theoretical futurists. One prominent international "business futurist", Frank Feather, coined the phrase "Thinking Globally, Acting Locally" in 1979.

Some futurists share features in common with the writers of science fiction, and indeed some science-fiction writers, such as Arthur C. Clarke, have acquired a certain reputation as futurists. Some writers, though, show less interest in technological or social developments and use the future only as a backdrop to their stories. For example, in the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote of prediction as the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists, not of writers: "a novelist's business is lying".

A study (The study consisted of 108 entries; 78 were men and 30 were women. Those from OECD nations accounted for 75 entries and non-OECD 33 entries)[32] on what futurists think found the following shared assumptions. The shared assumptions were:

1. 1. We are in the midst of a historical transformation. Current times are not just part of normal history.
2. 2. Multiple perspectives are at the very heart of futures studies. Multiple methods, finding ways out of the box of conventional thinking, internal critique, cross-civilisational conversations, are among the ways they are expressed.
3. 3. Creation of alternatives. Futurists do not see themselves as merely value-free forecasters but as creators of alternative futures.
4. 4. Participatory futures. Futurists generally see their role as liberating the future in each person. Creating enhanced public ownership of the future. This is true worldwide, for the African or European futurist.
5. 5. Long term policy transformation. While some are more policy oriented than others, almost all believe that the work of the futurist is to shape public policy so it consciously and explicitly takes into account the long term.
6. 6. Part of the process of creating alternative futures and of influencing public (corporate, or international) policy is internal transformation. There was no divide between institutional and inner transformation that one so often notices at international meetings. Futurists saw structural and individual factors as equally important.
7. 7. Complexity. Futurists believe that a simple one-dimensional or single discipline orientation is not satisfactory. Trans-disciplinary approaches that take complexity seriously are necessary. Systems thinking, particularly in its evolutionary dimension, is also seen as crucial.
8. 8. Futurists in general were motivated by a passion for change. They are not content merely to describe the world, or to accurately forecast it. They desire to play an active role in transforming the world, or playing a part in its transformation.
9. 9. The significance of hope cannot be stressed enough as a pivotal force in creating a better future.
10. 10. However, even with hope as a “strange attractor”, pragmatism is not lost sight of. Most believe they are pragmatists, living in this world, even as they imagine and work for another. Futurists understand that they are in a business or mission for the long term. Merely one article, book or vision does not make for transformation. Rather it is consistent effort over a life time that can help create a better world future generations.
11. 11. Sustainability was a given. It almost didn’t need to be mentioned. Sustainable futures, understood as making decisions that do not reduce the options of future generations, that thus include the long term, the impact of policies on nature, gender and the other, appears to be the accepted paradigm. This is so for the corporate futurist and the NGO. Moreover, sustainability, in its green sense, appears to have been reconciled with the technological, spiritual and post-structural ideal of transformation. It is thus not a simplistic ideal of sustainability (ie, back to nature) but rather a paradigm that is inclusive of technological and cultural change.

การฝึกการมองไกลสำหรับสาขาวิทยาการต่างๆ
Application of foresight to specific fields

การฝึกการมองไกล
Practical foresight

The most significant trends affecting organisations know no borders or markets and affect every part of society today. Global trends, uncertainties and wild cards have the potential to significantly change the way the world works tomorrow. They may impact on you far faster, and more profoundly, than you might think.
Organisations too face additional new challenges including:

• Severe competition
• Market convergence
• New entrants
• High volatility in all aspects of their activities

Greater prospects for global, national and local disruption and shock are increasingly in evidence. Forecasting models projecting past patterns can therefore no longer be relied upon to predict the future. Shaping the world we want to live in means being more aware of the future and seeking better approaches..
A new, more agile and resilience focused, approach is being led by smart, forward-thinking organisations. They have learned that searching for emerging trends, tipping points and weak signals is a vital intelligence tool to help them survive and thrive in an ever more competitive future.

What can be done? In a world where only uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity seems to be the norm these days organisations need wider global knowledge obtained from many more external sources and a new set of cognitive skills to determine their best future responses.

The following critical cognitive skills need to be mastered:

• Trend assessment: the competency to understand trend directions, weak signals and wildcards, assess their likely impact and effect on one another and respond in a timely and appropriate manner
• Pattern recognition: the ability to see patterns rather than individual factors
• System perspective: the capability to envision the entire system rather than the isolated components
• Anticipation: to anticipate short and long term consequences over time, novel situations and geography
• Instinct and logic: to rely on a combination of instincts and logic rather than purely rational analysis
• Organisations that inspire, engage and enable their people to use foresight through developing their strategic competencies can acquire and maintain a sustainable futures-orientated edge in their global marketplace(s).
• Next practice Leading organisations use systematic, collaborative and strategic foresight capabilities to see what's coming next and respond ahead of the competitive curve. This guide serves as a documented description of how our clients, and others well known to us, achieve successful outcomes, avoid upcoming risk, innovate and thus create next practice through practical foresight.

Source: First chapter - 'Practical Foresight': www.shapingtomorrow.com

ในด้านแฟชั่นและการออกแบบ
Fashion and design

Fashion is one area of trend forecasting. The industry typically works 18 months ahead of the current selling season. Large retailers look at the obvious impact of everything from the weather forecast to runway fashion for consumer tastes. Consumer behavior and statistics are also important for a long-range forecast.
Artists and conceptual designers, by contrast, may feel that consumer trends are a barrier to creativity. Many of these ‘Startists’ start micro trends but do not follow trends themselves.

สถาบันวิจัย
Research centers

• Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies [1]
• Futures Studies Department, Corvinus University of Budapest
• Department of Futures Studies, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India[33]
• Futures Research Committee of Hungarian Academy of Sciences[34]
• Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration
• Foresight and Futurology Unit, a BT Group think tank
• Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa
• Institute for Alternative Futures, Alexandria, Virginia
• Institute for Futures Research, South Africa
• Prospective 2100 [2], France, Brazil, Cameroun
• Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California
• Laboratory for Investigation in Prospective Strategy and Organization, CNAM Paris[35]
• National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Washington DC,[36]
• Tellus Institute, Boston MA
• UK Horizon Scanning Centre, London[37]
• World Future Society
• The Futures Academy, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
• Futuribles,[38]
• SUBITO! Research&Futures, Europe/Norway[39]
• Zukunftsinstitut, Europe/Germany [40]
• proGective, Europe/France [41]
• World Futures Studies Federation, world [42]
• Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment, Europe/Germany [43]
• Future-Institute, Europe/Germany [44]
• Pakistan Futuristics Institute[45]
• University of Houston Futures Studies [46][47]

นักอนาคตศึกษาและผู้นำด้านอนาคตศึกษา
Futurists and foresight thought leaders

• Daniel Bell
• Joel A. Barker[48]
• Peter C. Bishop[49]
• Nick Bostrom
• Yoonsik Choi
• Arthur C. Clarke[50]
• Edward Cornish[51]
• Jeff Cornish[52]
• Thierry Gaudin [3]
• Scott W. Erickson[53]
• Frank Feather[54]
• Jennifer M. Gidley[55]
• Fabienne GOUX-BAUDIMENT[56]
• Herman Kahn
• Arthur Harkins[57]
• Stephen Hawking[58][59]
• Sohail Inayatullah[60]
• Mitchell Joachim
• Earl C. Joseph, Sr.[61]
• Richard Lamb[62]
• David Passig[63]
• Alvin Toffler
• John Tomsyck[64]
• Natasha Vita-More
• Joseph Voros[65]
• Ray Kurzweil
• Kim Stanley Robinson

หนังสือที่ควรศึกษา
Books

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

• Bold New World
• Brave New World
• The Communist Manifesto
• Future Frequencies
• Future Primitive
• Future Shock
• Futurewise
• Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead
• Limits to Growth
• Macroshift
• Our Final Hour
• Phoenix: A Tale of the Future
• The Revenge of Gaia
• The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
• The Skeptical Environmentalist
• The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler
• Visions of the Future in the Last Century
• Analyzing and Modeling Global Development

วารสารที่ควรศึกษา
Periodicals and Monographs

• Five Regions of the Future[66]
• Forecasting
• Foresight[67]
• FutureOrientation[68]
• Future Survey
• Futures
• Futures Research Quarterly[69]
• Futuribles
• Futurics[70]
• Futurist[71]
• GTI Paper Series
• Integral Futures[72]
• International Journal of Forecasting[73]
• International Review of Strategic Management
• Journal of Futures Studies[74]
• Long Range Planning
• State of the Future
• Technological Forecasting and Social Change
• WFSF Bulletin[75]

องค์การด้านอนาคตศึกษา
Organizations

• Acceleration Studies Foundation
• Applied Foresight Network
• Association of Professional Futurists
• Club of Rome
• Global Business Network
• ScenarioDevelopment
• Global Scenario Group
• Hudson Institute
• Long Now Foundation
• Millennium Project
• NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
• Project 2049 Institute
• RAND Corporation
• Tellus Institute
• The Arlington Institute
• World Future Society
• World Futures Studies Federation

ศึกษาเพิ่มเติม
See also

Main lists: List of futurology topics and List of basic futurology topics

• 11th millennium and beyond
• Anarcho-primitivism
• Applied Foresight Network
• Calculating demand forecast accuracy
• Clarke's three laws
• Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
• Emerging technologies
• Eschatology
• Extropianism
• Forecasting
• Foresight (futures studies)
• Futures techniques
• Hubbert peak theory
• Kardashev scale
• List of futures scholars
• Moore's law
• Morphological analysis
• Omega point
• Optimism bias
• Planetary Phase of Civilization
• Planning
• Prediction
• Prediction market
• Reference class forecasting
• Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth
• Sociocultural evolution
• State of the Future
• Strategic foresight
• Superintelligence
• Technological singularity
• Technology
• Technology forecasting
• Thought experiment
• Timeline of the future in forecasts
• Transhumanism
• Delphi method

การอ้างอิง
References

• ^ futurology. Wordnet.princeton.edu.
• ^ Wells, H.G. (1932) 1987. Wanted: Professors of Foresight! Futures Research Quarterly V3N1 (Spring): p. 89-91.
• ^ Science Glossary
• ^ A sample presentation on risk management
• ^ article about the Future sign
• ^ Article by Hiltunen describing the differences of weak signals and wild cards
• ^ a b c Bell, Wendell (1997). Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era. New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-271-9.
• ^ Galtung, Johan and Inayatullah, Sohail (1997). Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. Westport, Ct: Praeger.
• ^ Khaldun, Ibn (1967), The Muqaddimah, Trans. Franz Rosenthal, ed. N.J. Dawood. Princeton: Princeton University Press
• ^ Masini, Eleonora (1993). Why Futures Studies?. London, UK: Grey Seal Books.
• ^ Slaughter, Richard A. (1995). The Foresight Principle: Cultural Recovery in the 21st Century. London, England: Adamantine Press, Ltd..
• ^ Sardar, Ziauddin, ed. (1999). Rescuing All Our Futures. Praeger Studies on the 21st Century, Westport, Connecticut, USA.
• ^ Meadows, Donella H.; D.L. Meadows, J. Randers, and William W. Behrens III (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York, New York, USA: Universe Books.
• ^ Kuhn, Thomas (1975, c1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
• ^ Masini, Eleonora (1993). Why Futures Studies?. London, UK: Grey Seal Books.
• ^ Dator, James (2002), Advancing Futures, Westport: Ct, Praeger, 2002
• ^ Sardar, Ziauddin, ed.,(1999) Rescuing all our futures: the futures of futures studies. Westport, Ct: Praeger
• ^ Inayatullah, Sohail (2007), Questioning the Future: methods and tools for organizational and societal change. Tamsui: Tamkang University (third edition)
• ^ Slaughter, Richard (2005). The Knowledge Base of Future Studies.
• ^ Slaughter, Richard (1997). The Foundations of Futures Studies.
• ^ Markley, Oliver (1998). This program continues at the University of Houston under the guidance of Dr. Peter Bishop. "Visionary Futures: Guided Imagery in Teaching and Learning about the Future," in American Behavioral Scientist. Sage Publications, New York.
• ^ Jones, Christopher (Winter 1992). "The Manoa School of Futures Studies". Futures Research Quarterly: 19–25.
• ^ Slaughter, Richard A. (2004). Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• ^ Articles by Ivana Milojević
• ^ Futures in Education: Principles, Practices and Potential, (Monograph No 5, The Strategic Foresight Monograph Series, 2004)]
• ^ The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University (Westport, Ct., Bergin and Garvey, 2000)
• ^ Youth Futures: Empirical Research and Transformative Visions (Westport, Ct. Praeger, 2002)
• ^ Welcome to the World Futures Studies Federation
• ^ Journal of Futures Studies
• ^ WFSF Directory of Tertiary Futures Education
• ^ "Foresight and Futures Studies - Global Academic Programs". Accelerating.org. 2005-11-04. http://www.accelerating.org/gradprograms.html. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ Sohail Inayatullah, ed., The Views of Futurists. Vol 4, The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies. Brisbane, Foresight International, 2001.
• ^ "University Departments". Keralauniversity.edu. http://www.keralauniversity.edu/universitydepartments.htm#ncvzx. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "MTA Jövőkutatási Bizottság - nyitó lap". Budapestfutures.org. http://www.budapestfutures.org/jkb/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "LIPSOR : Laboratoire d’Innovation, de Prospective Stratégique et d'Organisation". Cnam.fr. http://www.cnam.fr/lipsor. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Welcome to the National Intelligence Council (NIC)". Dni.gov. http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_home.html. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ http://www.foresight.gov.uk/HORIZON_SCANNING_CENTRE
• ^ "Futuribles - Revue - Formation - Etudes". Futuribles.fr. 2009-01-26. http://www.futuribles.fr. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "SUBITO! Research&Futures". Subito.as. 2008-01-04. http://www.subito.as. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Zukunftsinstitut | Wissen für die Wirtschaft von morgen". Zukunftsinstitut.de. http://zukunftsinstitut.de/about_us.php. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "futures-oriented solutions". proGective. http://www.progective.com. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Welcome to the World Futures Studies Federation". Wfsf.org. http://www.wfsf.org. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "IZT - Institut für Zukunftsstudien und Technologiebewertung: Homepage". Izt.de. http://www.izt.de/en/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ FUTURE-INSTITUTE international. "FUTURE-INSTITUTE international | Zukunftsinstitut, Trend-Academy & Future-University - future studies, mega-trends, forsights, scenarios, timelines, utopia, visions". Future-institute.com. http://www.future-institute.com/2008/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Pakistan Futuristics Institute". Wfsf.org. 2008-05-28. http://www.wfsf.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=159%3Apakistan-futuristics-institute&catid=82%3Ampf&Itemid=108. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ http://tech.uh.edu/Programs/Futures_Studies/
• ^ http://houstonfutures.org/
• ^ Barker
• ^ http://tech.uh.edu/Directory/Bishop/Peter/
• ^ "Compressed Data; On a Futurists' Forum, Money Backs Up Predictions," The New York Times, April 1, 2002
• ^ TAI
• ^ Cornish
• ^ Erickson
• ^ Feather
• ^ Jennifer Gidley
• ^ GOUX-BAUDIMENT
• ^ Harkins
• ^ Alter our DNA or robots will take over, warns Hawking
• ^ Our species must move to another planet
• ^ Metafuture
• ^ Joseph
• ^ Lamb
• ^ Passig
• ^ Tomsyck
• ^ Dr J Voros online bio page with weblinks to journal articles etc
• ^ ISBN 1591840899 - Joel A. Barker and Scott W. Erickson
• ^ "Welcome to Emerald Management First: focus on business". Managementfirst.com. http://www.managementfirst.com/strategy/journals/foresight.php/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ http://www.futureorientation.com/
• ^ "Futures Research Quarterly Main Page". Wfs.org. http://www.wfs.org/frq.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Minnesota Futurists". Mnfuturists.org. 2007-02-23. http://www.mnfuturists.org. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "THE FUTURIST magazine". Wfs.org. http://www.wfs.org/futurist.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ ISBN 0415302692 - Joseph Voros
• ^ "Volume 25, Issue 2 | International Journal of Forecasting". Forecasters.org. http://www.forecasters.org/ijf/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Journal of Futures Studies". .tku.edu.tw. http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tddx/jfs/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
• ^ "Welcome to the World Futures Studies Federation". Wfsf.org. http://www.wfsf.org/. Retrieved 2009-07-20.

การอ่านเพิ่มเติม
Further reading

• Bindé, J. (2001). Keys to the 21st century. New York: Berghahn Books.
• Bishop, Peter and Hines, Andy. (2006). Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight. Social Technologies, Washington, DC.
• Cornish, Edward (2004). Futuring: The exploration of the future. Bethesda, MD: World Future Society.
• Dixon, Patrick (1998,2003,2007). Futurewise: Six Faces of Global Change. Profile Books.
• Ferkiss, V. C. (1977). Futurology: promise, performance, prospects. A Sage policy paper. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
• Flechtheim, O. K. (1966). History and futurology. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain.
• Galtung, Johan and Inayatullah, Sohail. (1997). Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. Perspectives on individual, social and civilizational change. Westport, Ct, Praeger.
• Gidley, Jennifer, Bateman, Debra., & Smith, Caroline. (2004). Futures in Education: Principles, Practices and Potential
• Gidley, Jennifer, & Inayatullah, Sohail (2002). Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions
• Godet, Michel (2004). Creating Futures Scenario Planning as a Strategic Management Tool. Economica, 2001.
• Goldsmith, Mike The Knowledge, Fantastic Future
• Gordon, Adam (2009). "Future Savvy," American Management Association Press, New York
• History & Mathematics: Analyzing and Modeling Global Development. Edited by Leonid Grinin, Victor C. de Munck, and Andrey Korotayev. Moscow: KomKniga, 2006. P.10-38. ISBN 9785484010011.
• Hostrop, R. W. (1973). Foundations of futurology in education. [Homewood, Ill: ETC Publications].
• Inayatullah, Sohail (2007). Questioning the future: Methods and Tools for Organizational and Societal Transformation. Tamsui, Tamkang University. Third Edition.
• Inayatullah, Sohail, & Gidley, Jennifer. (Eds.). (2000). The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University
• de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1967). The Art of Conjecture. (New York: Basic Books, 1967).
• Lindgren, Mats and Bandhold, Hans (2003). Scenario Planning-the link between future and strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire and New York.
• Lindgren, Mats et al. (2005). The MeWe Generation. Bookhouse Publishing, Stockholm, Sweden.
• McGaughey,William (2000). Five Epochs of Civilization: World History as Emerging in Five Civilizations. Minneapolis, Thistlerose.
• Retzbach, Roman (2005). Future-Dictionary - encyclopedia of the future, New York, USA.
• Rescher, Nicholas (1998). Predicting the future. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, ISBN 0-7914-3553-9.
• Rohrbeck, R., S. Mahdjour, S. Knab, T. Frese (2009) Benchmarking Report - Strategic Foresight in Multinational Companies Report of the European Corporate Foresight Group: Berlin, Germany.
• Schwarz, J.-O. (2008) Assessing the future of futures studies in management, Futures, Vol. 40, Iss. 3, 237-246.
• Shakhnazarov, G. K. (1982). Futurology fiasco: a critical study of non-Marxist concepts of how society develops. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
• Slaughter, Richard A. (1995), Futures for the Third Millennium. Prospect Media, St. Leonards, NSW, Australia, ISBN 1-86316 148-1.
• Slaughter, Richard A. (2004), Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight. RoutledgeFarmer, London, UK, ISBN 978-0-4153-0270-8
• Slaughter, Richard A. (2005). The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies Professional Edition CDROM. Foresight International, Indooroopilly, Australia
• Thompson, A. E. (1979). Understanding futurology: an introduction to futures study. Newton Abbot [Eng.]: David & Charles.
• Woodgate, Derek with Pethrick, Wayne R. (2004). Future Frequencies. Fringecore, Austin, Texas, USA

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External links

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Categories: Anticipatory thinking | Environmental economics | Futurology | Interdisciplinary fields | Prediction | Technology forecasting | Theories