Sci Fi Futures Draft Agenda | Hinesight....for Foresight

Our Annual Spring Gathering is an opportunity for our extended futures family to come together and socialize, and dig a little deeply in new, emerging, or even neglected topics. The influence of science fiction on futures is our focus this year on April 17-18. We’ve got an awesome line-up of presenters and topics ready to go! We’ve been talking about doing this topic for a few years and finally I was able to persuade alum, futurist, and sci fi guy Tim Morgan to teach a summer elective on Sci Fi Futures, so we decided to get the ball rolling by focusing our Spring Gathering on the topic. Tim is a past chair of FenCon, a literary science fiction and fantasy convention.

In our curriculum, we’ve been exploring the pioneering work of futurist Brian David Johnson on “science fiction prototyping.” In short, the method uses science fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. It’s a significant shift from reading sci fi for provocative ideas to applying it as a distinct project methodology.

Sci Fi Futures joins a list of previous topics since we started meeting regularly every Spring:

Introducing the Future (2019)
Scanning the Fringe (2018)
Good Futures Work (2017)
Blockchain (2016)
Technology Acceleration (2015)
Student Needs 2025+ (2014)
City Making in the 21^st Century (2013)
After Capitalism (2012)
Methods and Values (2011)

If you’d like to attend the Spring Gathering in Houston on Friday April 17 and Saturday the 18^th, shoot Laura (laura.schlehuber@gmail.com) an email. — Andy Hines

About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

Comments

Karl Schroeder says

February 26, 2020 at 9:28 am

This is great, and I fully support the expanded use of SF in futures work. I’d like to hear about the results of the workshop.

Don’t forget that literature reviews and science fiction prototyping are good but don’t exhaust the use of science fictioning in foresight. I’ve written a fair amount about the use of SF as a tool for synthesizing findings. Brian’s SF prototyping is a way to explore idea spaces, but what writers actually get hired to do, as often as not, is to use fiction to deliver a set of ideas that have already been developed by foresight practitioners. This is a very different activity; it’s what I wrote my Master’s thesis on. In this case, the story author is trying very hard *not* to come up with new ideas, but rather is trying to synthesize and deliver the ideas provided by the foresight professionals. This demands a different approach than the prototyping method.

Reply
- Andy Hines says
  
  February 26, 2020 at 9:47 am
  
  Hi Karl,
  
  Thanks for that helpful addition. I know Tim’s kept in touch. It would be super-awesome if you could make (it’s a long drive!). We’d find you some time on the agenda. If not, we’ll try and take good notes.
  
  Reply

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