Dictionary Definition
futurist adj : of or relating to futurism;
"futurist art" [syn: futuristic]
Noun
1 a theologian who believes that the Scripture
prophecies of the Apocalypse (as in the Book of Revelations) will
be fulfilled in the future
2 someone who predicts the future [syn: fantast]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Noun
Adjective
- In the style of futurism.
Translations
- Italian: futurista
Extensive Definition
Futurists, or futurologists, are those who
speculate about the future.
Definition
The Oxford
English Dictionary traces earliest English usage of the term
futurist to 1842, referring to
Christian scriptural futurists. The next usage occurs with the
Italian and
Russian Futurists of the early 20th century (1900s-1930s), an
artistic, literary, and political movement that sought to reject
the past and rather uncritically embraced speed, technology, and
violent change. Curiously, early modern visionary authors like
Jules
Verne, Edward
Bellamy, and even H.G. Wells
were not characterized as futurists in their day, but rather as
philosophers of foresight, a
closely related term.
The use of futurist and its synonym futurologist
in the modern context of thinking about and analyzing the future
began in the mid-1940s, when German professor Ossip
K. Flechtheim coined the term futurology and proposed it as
a new science of probability. Flechtheim argued that even if
systematic forecasting did no more than unveil the subset of
statistically highly probable processes of change and charted their
advance, it would still be of crucial social value.
Also in the mid-1940s the first professional
"futurist" consulting institutions like RAND and SRI
began to engage in long-range planning, systematic trend watching,
scenario development, and visioning, at first under WWII military
and government contract and, beginning in the 1950s, for private
institutions and corporations. The period from the late 1940s to
the mid-1960s laid the conceptual and methodological foundations of
the modern futures
studies field. Bertrand
de Jouvenel's The Art of Conjecture in 1963 and Dennis
Gabor's Inventing the Future in 1964 are considered key early
works, and the first U.S. university course devoted entirely to the
future was taught by futurist Alvin
Toffler at the The New
School in 1966.
Today the term futurist most commonly describes
authors, consultants, organizational leaders and others who engage
in interdisciplinary
and systems
thinking to advise private and public organizations on such
matters as diverse global trends, plausible scenarios, emerging
market opportunities, and risk
management.
More generally, the label includes such disparate
lay, professional, and academic groups as visionaries, foresight
consultants, corporate strategists, policy analysts, cultural
critics, planners, marketers, forecasters, prediction market
developers, roadmappers, operations researchers, investment
managers, actuaries and other risk analyzers, and future-oriented
individuals educated in every academic discipline, including
anthropology, complexity studies, computer science, economics,
engineering, evolutionary biology, history, management,
mathematics, philosophy, physical sciences, political science,
psychology, sociology, systems theory, technology studies, and
other disciplines.
Futurology
Futurology or "futures studies" is often summarized as being concerned with "three Ps and a W," or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low-probability but high-impact events, should they occur. Even with high-profile probable events, such as the fall of telecom costs, the growth of the internet, or the aging demographics of particular countries, there is often significant uncertainty in the rate or continuation of a trend. Thus a key part of futuring is the managing of uncertainty and risk.Futurists and futurology
Not all futurists engage in the practice of
futurology as
generally defined. Preconventional futurists (see below) would
generally not. And while religious futurists, astrologers,
occultists, New Age divinists, etc. use methodologies that include
study, none of their personal revelation or belief-based work would
fall within a consensus definition of futurology as used in
academics or by futures studies professionals.
Futurists
See also
References
External links
- Futurist (ASF definition) Twelve developmental types of futures thinking.
futurist in Serbian:
Футурологија