by We were fortunate to have futurist Wendy Schultz of Infinite Futures as a guest lecturer in “Intro to Foresight” class last night on the topic of “The image of the future.” She observed that science fiction was key influence on her interest in the future and that Marshall McLuhan’s work was influential as well.
She observed that since there are no future facts means, that we must rely on images of the future instead. She thinks it would be a neat project to do a content analysis on images [I agree, and think we could come up with a student project around this] She suggests that we don’t pay enough attention to the images of the future that area already out there today. Looking at past and present images can help us unpack our assumptions about the future. She suggests an interesting exercise would be to watch some broadcast television and look at the ads and see what images of the future are being suggested. Religions are typically based on an image of some sort. Political parties also, for instance Conservative often have some version of a “golden age of the past.” “We are actually swimming in a sea of images.” She observed that futurists are in essence “competing” with the existing images out there.
We could use an analytic framework for this. Images involve hopes, fears, extrapolation and imagination. They do not have to be just visual; they can be stories, songs, poems, artifacts, etc. At the individual level, they are part of our interior landscape – the “left-hand side” of the integral matrix. Look at images and analyze them, using criteria like timeframe degree of distance from the past, etc. One possibility is using the Integral matrix. She noted how artists often produce images in the upper left (individual interior quadrant). She suggested Integral quadrants and CLA’s levels. Sensemaker from Dave Snowden could be used for this. It has people tell a story (about their image) and then respond in their words to some questions analyzing what they shared.
Referenced the work of Anton Nelisson at Rutgers in working with communities in which he shows the community what it looked like before, what it looks like now, and then asks what they would like it to look like in the future. He’s been doing it for thirty years and a pattern has emerged to things like walking distance [AH: what we might call “livable communities]
She feels there are about 5-7 generic stories about the future, building off of Dator’s four archetypes.
She notes that provocative images can be a way to critique the present (as we discuss in Alternative Perspectives class).
We are seeing more collapse images – still see some grand-design tech-driven images and sustainability ones. Digital art is providing great visual images that can be used to stretch people’s thinking
She shared some of her key points from Polak’s work, citing it as one of the most influential works in futures. She noted a difference in the US and European foresight traditions. Europeans have tended to be more interested in the rational (more reliance on reasoning) compared to the empirical tradition in America. Thus, Europeans have tended to be more interest in the idea of the image than in the US. Polak researched how images influenced the dynamism of a society. Those societies that believed changed was good (essence positive) and that people could influence change (influence positive) [discussed in a recent post] were most likely to have a dynamic guiding image. He believed at the time that Western civilization lacked a dynamic guiding image and wrote the book as a call to develop one. In terms of Polak’s challenge, she does not see that a cultural or civilizational scale image has emerged – does see some possibilities around images relating to sustainability, but in general notes that in the US, for example, there is an extreme polarization of views trying to come up with a replacement for the American Dream. She is a bit alarmed by the rise of fundamentalist images that suggest a preferred outcome of a constrained or highly controlled future.
Wendy’s insights were a terrific addition to our class and given the timing of my recent posting on the topic, I thought this would be a great way to keep the conversation going. Andy Hines
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