Futures studies
Futures studies is the scholarly and practical work with possible, plausible and desirable futures. It asks which developments are conceivable, under which assumptions they could happen and who shapes them. What it offers is orientation for decisions today, with its assumptions laid open and no claim to a reliable forecast.
The field has no shared standards. Scientific, market-driven and political-normative logics each produce their own futures studies, from modelling to design fiction. In Germany, one place to study it is the master’s programme in futures studies at FU Berlin.
What this looks like in practice shows in four years of trend reports for the Kultur- und Kreativpilot*innen (U-Institut): a picture of their own sector built from trends and how they change, from hypes, weak signals and the scenarios that grew out of them.
Since 2018 Jonas Drechsel has worked as a futurist and completed his master’s at FU Berlin in 2020. His view of the field is set out in the essay “Was machen Zukunftsforscher*innen?” (what do futurists do?) on Einbildungskanal.
Guiding questions
- Which future are you currently taking for granted without saying so?
- Who decides which futures get discussed at all where you are?