In a letter to the Smithsonian Magazine, this page's author wrote:

Barbara Holland's light-hearted history of forecasting was fun to read. Yet it was unfortunate that she went out of her way to lump together potentially serious efforts with the frivolous and foolish (at least from our modern perspective). Perhaps this was only to heighten the reader's pleasure. 

Serious studies of the future can help society in many ways. Let me mention two. First, trend lines do exist, and no matter how wrong we can sometimes be, we can know something about them. An example is the apparently predictable rate of increase in the speed and miniaturization of computer chips. Like all trends, it surely will run into limits. The speed of travel has also been on a trend line. Again, there will be limits. Most see the speed of light as the outer limit, although others see a way around this restriction. Second, broad-brush visions of the future, eutopias and dystopias, based on general knowledge of past and present, are useful explorations of the future that allow present generations to consider the directions they wish to take or avoid, and the conditions that might make more possible desirable directions. If the future were really just "one damned thing after another" human action would lose much of its meaning.

Futuristics is a handy term to refer to the disciplined consideration of the future. While no one is able to actually predict the future beyond a very few years, it is possible to encompass the future within a net of probabilities and possibilities in a manner that provides us with an improved orientation to the intellectual or practical problems we face. As such, its consideration forms a necessary part of any social analysis - in so far as the analysis is not confined to an attempt to better understand the issues and events of the past.

The simplest form of futuristics is extrapolation from the past. Generally those enamoured with the idea rely on statistical extrapolation, on the discovery of trend lines, for example of growth in automobile ownership, and then projecting these trends into the future. To an extent, all future studies are extrapolations from the past. Murders have occurred as far back as we have records - we cannot reasonably project futures in which they do not occur. We can refine such a common sense projection by noticing how murder has varied over space and time. This may suggest factors or subtrends that will give us a better understand on future murder rates in particular societies or under particular conditions in the future.

In looking at the future, we must use many of the standard analytic tools that have served us so well in understanding existing systems. Too of the most important are positive feedback and negative feedback. Positive feedback means that the products of a series of actions will be the cumulative result of the products of past actions. With growing availability of food, for example, populations tend to reproduce exponentially, with each generation responsible for yet more escalating growth. However, growth eventually must produce negative feedback as well, feedback that eventually slows and then reverses the pattern. The negative feedback may result from variety of social and technical causes, but it may also simply be "in the nature of things". For if it did not occur, no organism, including the human, could sustain itself. (It was once said for example, that if world population were to grow as it has in this century for several more centuries it would soon become little more than a ball of writhing, intertwined individuals who could exist only on the backs of the mass under them. The same could be said for any organism). For a graphic example of the relation of these two types of feedback to projections of future human population growth, click here. Understanding how such mechanisms will work in the future is the key to every field of endeavor, whether it be enjoying travel, developing a new product, or controlling crime.

In my own work I have found it useful to break down a futuristics problem into subcomponents, project these, and then recombine them. For example, at a time in the 1960s, when it was still believed that there would be a continuing high birthrate in the United States through the 1970s, I was able to look at subpopulations of childbearing women about which social surveys of "intended births" already existed. Given social trends at the time, the size of these subpopulations could then be extrapolated into the 1970s. When predictable changes in the size of these groups were combined with the "intended births" for each group, the overall expected total births in the 1970s were much lower than in the standard government projections at that time.

We must always understand that the future will not be simply a replay of the past and that the values and goals we have now will gradually erode and be replaced by others. There are universal principles, but it is extremely easy for even the most open-minded and "liberal" to imagine something is universal and eternal when it is not and cannot be. The values of the past were produced by the interplay of the technologies and possibilities of the past with concerned and well-meaning individuals trying to make a future for themselves and their communities. As these technologies and possibilities change, these values must be seen in a new light, and often that will mean that those who come after us will choose new goals and standards. America was built by the pioneer who cleared the land and protected his family against the animal and human dangers he believed threatened them. While his heroism was laudable at the time, the heroes and heroines of today may act quite differently. Many now see "heroism" in campaigning for the return of the wolf to the lower forty-eight states. They now regard the plow quite differently than people a scant one hundred years ago. Understanding the possibilities, limits, and consequences of such changes in issues large and small is essential to social analysis.

Finally, in studying the future for a society, a corporation, or an individual, we must be clear about the purpose of the enterprise. Often, it is not as important to "get it right" as it to alert the "customer" to the range of probabilities that he or she faces in an uncertain world. Low probability events, such as an asteroid hitting the world or a large nuclear war, can be of utmost importance to a political planner looking at the long-range future of a society. Catastrophic climate changes in the next few generations cannot be predicted with certainty. Yet they may be likely enough for society as a whole to take out "insurance policies" in the form of new policy initiatives that will substantially reduce the probabilities of such changes. A corporation might view the chance of a substantial decline in demand for a commodity or profitable line in the same manner, taking out insurance policies against the perceived probabilities.

For some of the author's longer studies of future possibilities and opportunities, particularly as they relate to world order, the reconceptualization of life, and the evolution of suburban America, click here. For a more recent discussion of the general global requirements for the 21st century, go to Saving the Future.