BOOK REVIEWS
A Short History
of the Future by
Jennifer Gidley
Jennifer M. Gidley’s The Future: A Very
Short Introduction by David Lorimer,
Editor of the Network Review: Journal of
the Scientific and Medical Network (2017)
No. 123, Issue 1: 54-55. https://global.oup.
com/academic/product/the-future-a-very-
short-introduction-%209780198735281
Jennifer Gidley was President of the World
Futures Studies Federation (2009-2017) and
is also an educator and psychologist. In this
brilliant and concise overview – part of the
OUP Very Short Introduction series - she gives
readers multiple insights into the field and
ways of thinking about the future. She defines
futures studies as ‘the art and science of taking
responsibility for the long- term consequences
of our decisions and our actions today.’
She is careful to emphasize that the future
is not just something that happens, nor is
it inevitable, but we co-create it through
our thoughts and actions within both a
cultural and global or planetary context.
The notion of the future is closely tied to the
way we think about time. The French word
means what is to come (a-venir) while the
English word first appears in the 14th century.
Gidley traces the origins of linear time to the
emergence of philosophy in Greece, while prior
societies lived in a more embedded, cyclical
sense of time. Taming time is equated with
measurement and control and is represented
by the emergence of calendars and clocks
as well as predictions. Early predictions
were prophetic or oracular as we sought
to grapple with uncertainty with a measure
of both hope and fear. Coming up to date,
we find that the US Department of Defense
coined a new term in the 1990s: VUCA,
which stands for volatile, uncertain, complex
and ambiguous - terms we can certainly
recognize today, and which are also reflected
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in scientific developments. The author looks
at the thinking of Roger and Francis Bacon
and the emergence of a mechanistic and
engineering metaphor, which still dominates
science today and which is associated with
control and precision. However, both Newton
and Francis Bacon embodied the tension
between modern and hermetic science, and
the author correctly notes that Bacon was
both the father of empiricism and leader of
the Rosicrucian movement in England.
More scientific predictions emerged with HG
Wells and JBS Haldane about a hundred
years ago, then with Aldous Huxley’s dystopic
A Brave New World. Forecasting becomes
more scientific, but there is a danger of simply
extrapolating current trends and discounting
the unexpected. The German physicist,
economist and sociologist Rolf Kreibich
warns us about a singular future approach
based on ‘the scientific- technological-
industrial expansion of all aspects of life’,
which he sees as a tunnel vision and which
Gidley contrasts with a more participatory
and integral approach. She considers the
implications of the development of robotics,
which is partly being driven by the military and
aims to bridge the human-machine divide.
This brings her onto transhumanism, which
is ‘inextricably linked with technological
advancement o
r extension of human
capacities through technology.’ (p. 92) It is
a systematic attempt to overcome some
of our biological limits, but it is important
to realize that it is based on an ideology of
technological determinism and a mechanistic
view of consciousness and the human being.
These people envisage a new, hybrid species
and the creation of a technotopia through
techno-fixes. However, as Lewis Mumford
was already writing in the 1940s, there is a
danger of dehumanization in this post-human
vision that many of its proponents regard as
an inevitable development. Cleverness has
to be balanced by emotional intelligence and
the expression of moral and aesthetic values.
Chapter 5 is in my view the key of the book,
focusing as it does on technotopian or
human-centred futures as diverging streams
already identified by the futurist Willis
Harman in the 1980s. He saw two broad
possibilities: evolutionary transformational or
technological extrapolations - the latter, as I
already mentioned, is based on a mechanistic,
behaviorist model of the human being, and
while the ethos within the Network favors a
more human-centered model also promoted
by holistic medicine, organic agriculture
and publications like Resurgence. Gidley
explains the varieties of transhumanism,
including Teilhard de Chardin, Sir Julian
Huxley, Nietzsche, Bergson and Steiner,
all with different visions. She then looks at
conscious human-centered futures as a
counterpoint and based on the evolution of
consciousness in a transpersonal direction.
Here again, she is exceptionally well informed
and points out that we have a choice of either
continuing to invest heavily in ‘technotopian
dreams of creating machines that can operate
better than humans. Or we can invest more of
our consciousness and resources on educating
and consciously evolving human futures with
all the wisdom that would entail.’ (p. 115)
The final chapter reflects on grand global
futures challenges, especially urbanization,
education and climate. Her tables on pp.
119-20 summarize both the challenges and
alternative possible responses under various
headings such as governance, economic,
health, energy, leadership, technology and
conflict. As Al Gore notes, many of these
challenges are the consequences of short-
term economic thinking and the reckless use
of our planet’s resources. However, we can
contribute to co- creating an ecological and
regenerative future rather than continuing
extraction and exploitation. The French
philosopher Edgar Morin, like Gregory Bateson,
put his finger on the educational challenge:
‘one of the greatest problems we face today
is how to adjust our way of thinking to meet
the challenge of an increasingly complex,
rapidly changing, unpredictable world. We
must rethink our way of organizing knowledge.’
(p. 131) In this sense, it becomes very clear
that our ‘old fragmented, mechanistic, and
materialistic ways of thinking are not capable
of dealing with the growing complexity of
global environmental, economic and societal
change.’ The situation is not helped by the
dominance of linear analysis in our universities,
so that young people are coming into the world
with inadequate ways of thinking. However,
as the author points out in her conclusion,
‘we all have the capacity to create our desired
features, for more than most of us realize’
and we can work collaboratively for positive
change and towards the future we prefer.
It seems to me that there needs to be much
more public discussion and reflection about
the nature of the future that we are creating
together in a technological, economic,
ecological, cultural and personal sense -
and especially of the tensions between the
technotopic and human-centered visions.
This book not only raises the issues in a highly
readable manner, but also raises awareness,
and as such I can recommend it unreservedly.
M AY 2 0 1 8
Storytelling about the
future. Introduction
to Prospective.
by Guillermina Baena Paz
Ten years ago the fragmented
history the future begin to build.
After during three years more,
I was writing the book.
Once upon a time, I find the future that place
was happening the improbable and the
impossible. Yes, tomorrow is a lovely puzzle,
and we can’t fall so deeper as we want in the
rabbit’s hole or select the train to a utopic place.
What we are finding: the w orld was change
just one think change: everything.
Then we need new instrumental for
knowing and for enter in the uncertain
cone with trends and then it will find with
weak signals and wildcards every step.
(Baena Paz, Guillermina, La narrativa del
futuro… Introducción a la Prospectiva.
México, UNAM, 2016. 278 p.)
Future is the raw material of Prospective.
Future is building twice: first in mind and after
as a social construction. The issue is not
prospective, anyone applies techniques, the
issue is to be prospective, able to transform
to help build a future shared with others.
Future is a disruption of current time: can
we remember the future and build the
past? Yes oriental thinking say that, andino
thinking say future is back, past is front us
because we see it, and future is uknown.
Future is not that was.
In a first stage was divination and prophecies
In a second level was literature and
visions of utopic societies.
Going Past Limits
to Growth
Going Past Limits to Growth: A report
to the Club of Rome EU-Chapter,
Wiley-ISTE, 2017, 240 pages
Review by Patrick Corsi
Growth is a dominant economic driver
accounting for the wealth of nations and
organizations alike. However, in the face of
environmental pressures, widespread social
and economic imbalance, and the reigning
climate of uncertainty we are experiencing
today, there is now a need for a viable
interpretation of what growth really means. In
this book, it redefines the limits to economic
growth and tackles the issues involved in three
parts, in order to study a variety of international
issues, including the world economic system,
climate change and environmental degradation.
The book has three Chapters:
Part 1. A Present-Day Imperative
1. A Present-Day Imperative To
Think or Not To Think…
2. Situating Growth in Time–Space.
3. Dominant Thinking of the Past Century.
4. The Historical Contribution
of System Dynamics.
HUMAN FUTURES
The tree stage is a methodology
building by arquitects of future:
both man and organizations.
Prospective is about power, will and freedom
for building all kind of futures specially the
desirable future, and the plausible future.
Prospective is that particular way to write
history before happens. It is a social science
with transdisciplinary thinking considers past
for go to the future through the visible, non-
vissible and invisible readers of here and now.
It is a methodology of planning, is an
unfinished essay, a conjecture art, and
a management of uncertainty.
We need the adoption, adaptation, and
creation of new technics, methods to
understand post-normal times. The process
is a strategic planning prospective were
think scenarios and planning scenarios.
It about takes the better decisions for
all the possible futures that coming.
Many people repeat Keynes idea about
in long view everybody will be dead, but
the real think of Keynes (1937) said this:
“…the idea of the future being different
of the present is so repugnant to our
conventional modes of thought and
behavior that we, most of us, offer a great
resistance to acting on it in practice.”
That is is the prospective’s challenge.
Part 2. A Methodology for Tackling
Growth Problematics
5. In Search for New Approaches
Fit-For-Purpose.
6. Angling the Core Subject Appropriately.
7. Cracking Open a Growth Concept.
8. Opening Up New Growth Axes.
Part 3. Going Beyond the Notion of GDP
9. New Growth Operational
Formulations with Examples.
10. Discussing Work, Labor and Money.
11. Case Study: Growth Through
Cooperation, Work, Time and Space.
12. A Society’s New Clothes.
Part 4. Appendices
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