Glossary
23 terms I work with. Each comes with a definition, sources and the areas where it appears.
Core concepts
- Futures studies →Futures studies is the scholarly and practical work with possible, plausible and desirable futures.
- Futures →Futures stands for the many possible, plausible and desirable developments that are conceivable from today.
- Desirable futures →Desirable futures are futures a group can actually want, beyond what is expected.
- Critical futures studies →Critical futures studies is futures studies that works on the present.
- Plausibilisation →Plausibilisation is the practice of laying open the reasons and preconditions behind ideas of the future.
- Tolerance of ambiguity →Tolerance of ambiguity is the ability to perceive and bear ambiguity and uncertainty.
- Real utopias →Real utopias, as the sociologist Erik Olin Wright called them, are alternatives that already exist today and can grow.
- Mission →A mission is the guideline for action that belongs to a vision, the answer to the question of how the desirable is supposed to happen.
Methods
- Three Perspectives on Futures →The Three Perspectives on Futures are a thinking tool that sorts a group's images of the future: projected-official, plausible-alternative and absurd-utopian.
- Scenario →A scenario is a coherent description of a possible future, built from assumptions that are made explicit.
- Horizon scanning →Horizon scanning is the systematic search for early signals of change.
- Futures wheel →The futures wheel is a method that fans out the consequences of a development in rings.
- STEEPLE →STEEPLE is a grid for analysing the environment with seven fields: social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal, ethical.
- Worldbuilding →Worldbuilding means building a world dense enough to play decisions and stories through in it.
- Future workshop →The future workshop is a participatory format by Robert Jungk in three phases: critique, utopia, implementation.
- White Mirroring →White Mirroring is a speculative storytelling process in three steps: scenario, character, conflict.
youngk
- Robert Jungk →Robert Jungk (1913 to 1994) was a writer and futurist.
- Agency →Agency means the capacity to act, that is, people’s ability to help shape their future.
- Agency³ →Agency³ is the positioning of the youngk collective, in which agency has three meanings.
- The 3K: Kompetenz, Konstruktion, Kommunikation →The 3K are the organising principle of youngk's knowledge base: Kompetenz (competence), Konstruktion (construction), Kommunikation (communication).
- Freelancer collective →A freelancer collective is an alliance of self-employed people who take on larger commissions together.
- Scenario2Agency →Scenario2Agency is an offer from the youngk collective.
- CustomGPT scenario tool →The CustomGPT scenario tool is an AI-supported tool for scenario work.