Futurists: Helping a Nation Think About Its Futures - by Steven Cork, Kristin Alford, Nicky Grigg, John Finnegan, Beth Fulton, Michael Raupach

 The term “national conversation” seems to be gaining traction as a desirable activity where people talk with one another at a national scale about matters of national concern—the United States talking about the security state, for instance, or Australia calling for discussions on population, the structure of future economies, and attitudes towards people seeking asylum. These issues are part of the bigger question of how nations might define and achieve progress and well-being. And behind all of this is concern over what sort of future we, the people making up a nation, would like to have.

But having a conversation about the future is difficult. So how might a nation go about doing it?

In her seminal advice for English society in 1912, Mary Greer Conklin distinguished conversations from other forms of communication. Conversations, she said, are dialogues, not monologues; they are partnerships, not individual activities; they involve listening as well as talking; they are ways to learn from and understand others but are not necessarily a vehicle for information; and they should be polite and respectful.

Conversations among friends are still common, but at community and societal levels we tend these days to argue our case. More often than not we try to convince others that our ideas are best. We often end up in lawsuits or battles to capture media attention. On top of this, humans tend to develop simplified mental models of how the world works; and we are very good at only letting in information that agrees with those models.

This gives rise to a range of so-called thinking flaws, including confirmation bias (only seeking information that agrees with our views) and selective recall (only remembering information that agrees with our views).

Behavioral economist Daniel Ariely describes human decision-making as “predictably irrational.

So how can we have sensible conversations about the future when we don’t manage politeness and respect and are often unaware that our view of the world might differ from the view held by our conversant? The discipline of strategic foresight tries to address these problems, and thereby help us talk about the future. It combines strategy (how and why we do things) with forecasting and insight (casting our minds into the future and seeing things from different perspectives, thinking beyond the obvious).

Read more: Helping a Nation Think About Its Futures | Solutions

The Future: High Stakes for Humanity’s Future - by Rick Docksai

Americans once thought that landing astronauts on the Moon would be impossible, but the U.S. government’s Apollo program made it happen within a mere 10 years. It is now time for China and the United States to jointly marshal an Apollo-like program to tackle climate change and boost renewable energy, argue the authors (Gerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, Elizabeth Florescu) of the 2012 State of the Future report which can be purchased from Amazon.

The report praises global progress in many areas of life but sounds warnings about our overall future.

“It is increasingly clear that the world has the resources to address its challenges. It is also increasingly clear that the current decisionmaking structures are not making good decisions fast enough and on the scale necessary to really address the global challenges,” the report states.

The Millennium Project, an international, participatory think tank, has been publishing the State of the Future reports annually since 1996. Like its predecessors, this year’s report drew from ongoing surveys of 3,000 contributing researchers to compile a list of 15 Global Challenges that world leaders will have to address collaboratively, as well as a State of the Future Index (SOFI) that delineates areas of life that are improving and others that are worsening or remaining unchanged.

Read more: High Stakes for Humanity’s Future | World Future Society

Futurists see the world changing, from food to technology - by Amanda Kwan

What is a futurist? Not a fortune teller, oracle or prophet. Futurists are simply people who take foresight seriously, applying past and emerging trends to envision how our lifestyles and industries will develop in the years ahead.

But the future isn’t what it used to be: What was once a field dominated by experts such as Future Shock author Alvin Toffler or artificial-intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil is now becoming one that involves more amateurs, as large-scale information and the processing power to analyze it become more accessible. And that’s a welcome development to most of the pros.

“Really, anybody who has a prefrontal cortex is a futurist,” says Patrick Tucker, communications director of the World Future Society. “We spend the vast majority of our time thinking about the future. This is where we plan, where we create actions we are going to commit ourselves to.”

Next weekend, Toronto will host the World Future Conference, bringing together people from disparate fields to discuss how the world is changing – and how it ought to.

Read more: Four ways futurists see the world changing, from food to technology - The Globe and Mail