Futures Thinking
Futures Thinking
“Forecasting skills help you see hard-to-imagine futures before they happen. They enable you to consider possibilities that others might never see coming or refuse to accept. With this foresight, you can evaluate which futures you want to make more likely and which futures you want to prevent.” – Jane McGonigal
‘Futures Thinking’ is an interdisciplinary set of methods for considering different versions of the future. I consists of tools and approaches you can use to help realize the most desirable of those futures and guard against the not-so-great ones.
The Long View Project can help you incorporate futures thinking into your work or teaching. To request a futures thinking consultation or workshop, email us at longviewproject@ncsu.edu.
Futures Thinking Resources
“Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.” – Jim Dator
Future Scenarios
Picture lifelong AI-powered tutors, the end of personal cars, and societies unconstrained by energy. Are these dreams we hope to manifest? Are they nightmares we wish to avoid? Future scenarios are challenges to engage your imagination that can be used as prompts for discussion, creative writing, or other projects engaging various audiences.
The Long View Project has collaborated with NC State University Theatre to offer one-day script-writing intensives based on future scenarios. Our future scenarios have also been used by Cli-Fi Imaginarium, a writing group imagining bold thriving within planetary boundaries.
Gaming the Path to Transformative Futures
FutureScape is a serious game that transforms complex climate scenarios and uncertainty into a collaborative, actionable exploration. Designed to envision how climate change may reshape North Carolina’s coastal plain, players take actions to resist, direct, or accept projected changes while balancing the needs of multiple sectors. Discover how FutureScape sparked big-picture thinking at a 100-person climate futures event.
Visualizing Future Land-Use Change
Land change modelers have long worked to anticipate future urban growth and evaluate the tradeoffs of land-use decisions. Through probabilistic, scenario-based simulations, these models enable the visualization and quantification of impacts associated with alternative pathways of growth and adaptation to environmental change. Developed at NC State’s Center for Geospatial Analytics, the FUTure Urban-Regional Environment Simulation (FUTURES) model is an open-source platform that enables exploration of such scenarios and their social, ecological, and environmental implications.
“In dealing with the future, it is far more important to be imaginative than to be right.”
– Alvin Toffler
100 Ways Anything Can be Different in the Future
100 Ways Anything Can Be Different in the Future is a foresight exercise designed by Jane McGonigal to challenge assumptions about the next decade by listing 100 current truths and reversing them. It helps teams and individuals “unstick” their minds, imagine alternative realities, and identify potential risks or innovations by flipping present-day constraints.
The Long View Project used this game with the Sustainable Futures Fellows to help teams imagine ways their industries could be different in the future.
The Thing From the Future
The Thing From the Future is an imagination game created by Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson to spur creative and critical thinking. To play the game, you draw a set of cards that prompt you to create an object from an alternative future. You can print out a paper version of the game, or use this digital adaptation created by the NC State University Libraries.
Writing Speculative Micro-Fiction
Micro-fictions, or extremely short stories, can serve as a basis for exploring possible futures. The Cli-Fi Imaginarium is a writing group that uses micro-fiction to boldly imagine futures of thriving within planetary boundaries.
Contact Us
To request a futures thinking consultation or workshop, email us at longviewproject@ncsu.edu.