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==== The Art Of Futuring ====

<blockquote>To describe the creative process of exploring futures, we use the term 'futuring'. We could have chosen other phrases such as 'future studies', 'speculative design' or 'strategic foresight', but 'to future' as a verb encapsulates the engaged, active attitude that we believe is essential when sending probes into these realms. Futuring can be a complex activity involving many facets, or it can be as simple as telling a story that begins with 'What if…'. The process can be individual but is often a collective, participatory exercise. It tends to work best when different modes of knowing and learning are involved – from analytical to generative and synthesising, rational to somatic, intuitive and interpersonal. 
</blockquote>

  * https://fo.am/events/art-futuring/
  * https://fo.am/events/art-futuring-workshop/

==== Techniques from the workshop ====

Experimented with a series of techniques to probe possible futures. 
The techniques included:

=== Divination ===

Using [[http://superflux.in/index.php/and-now-for-something-completely-different/#|Instant Archetypes]] from Superflux:

{{>https://vimeo.com/296869333}}\\ 

<blockquote> a toolkit for anyone looking to open up possibilities, surface questions and untangle stubborn challenges. A reimagining of the timeless tropes of the Major Arcana for the 21st Century where the Fool is now the Consumer, the Chariot is a Drone, and the Moon is a Meme. </blockquote>

=== Futuring card games ===

Learning to work with constraints, wild cards, Four Archetypal Futures and speculative artefacts
  * [[https://www.kunsten.be/dossiers/internationaal-samenwerken-2/reframing-the-international/about-reframing-the-international#!|Reframing the International]] by Kunstenpunt
  * [[https://situationlab.org/project/the-thing-from-the-future/|The Thing from the Future]] by Situation Lab. 
   * Print your own cards [[http://situationlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FUTURETHING_Print-and-Play.pdf|here]]
        
      
<blockquote> The Thing From The Future is an imagination game that helps players generate countless ideas for artifacts from the future; to amuse, delight, explore, and provoke. </blockquote>


=== Asking questions ===



Non-predictive strategy: 

4. KPUU (Known, Presumed, Unknown, Unknowable)


Horizon scanning: 

5. Macro Trends/ Weak Signals
6. Mapping change drivers into STEEP categories
    (Social, Technological,Environmental, Economic, Political)

7. Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)

8. Dot-voting

9. Ranking Critical Uncertainties

10. Sociometry

11. U process (presencing/silent reflection)

12. Scenario building (alternative futures)
    • 2x2 double uncertainty (GBN/Shell)
    • scenario logic/scenario skeletons/plot elements


Incasting:

13. Answering core question from different vantage points

14. Visualising scenario answers


First-person scenarios:

15. Closed eye visioning / mental time travel

16. Personal backstory


Prototyping

17. Personal profile page (within scenario logic)

18. Postcards from the future (tableau vivants)

Preferred futures

19. Appreciative Inquiry: Discovery phase (1 of 4)

20. Theory of change: Outcomes Framework



Prehearsal / pre-enactment 

21. Backstories for preferred scenario
22. Speculative Experience Design for concrete situation


Open Space
23. hosting workshop sessions

Adaptive Action Cycle
24. What? So what? Now What?

25. Invocation


==== Quotes/excerpts ====

<blockquote>The general purpose of futures studies could be regarded as the provision of tools for the invention and pursuit of preferred futures; that is, the reconciliation of hopes and expectations. But it begins and ends, finally, with what any individual does in relation to those things. (…) [It is] the most potent political tool, to enable people to systematically redistribute the sensible at will and on their own behalf. (…) development and spread of futures tools rather than the outcomes of their application [is our concern]. 

—Stuart Candy, The Futures of Everyday Life 
</blockquote>

<blockquote>The conundrum of the Unthinkable and the Unimaginable is everyone’s issue – certainly not just ‘futurists’, nor designers, nor those who happen to have dedicated themselves to political theory or activism; nor just the displaced former residents of New Orleans, nor yet the casualties of Detroit’s seemingly inexorable decline. It is everyone’s problem. Futures studies is a community of thinkers that has defined and directly addressed it as such. But the Great Conversation needs to belong to us all, as do all the discursive technologies, principles of experiential futures design, and other paraphernalia of wiser, ongoing conversation and political self-reinvention.

—Stuart Candy, The Futures of Everyday Life 
</blockquote>

<blockquote>Imagine a future where the most revolutionary changes in our world have not come from nanotech, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence or even space development–but from cognitive science and a deepening understanding of how humans function (or not) in groups. What would such a future look like? 

—Karl Schroeder in [[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/rewilding-etiquette.html|Rewilding Etiquette]]
</blockquote>


<blockquote>Scenario planning is not, or rather should not be, about forecasting the future. Instead, it is a tool for collective learning; what matters is what the scenario team learns in creating it. As an exercise, it is useful; as a strategic map for outsiders, it is relatively useless. Therefore, instead of using it as a map for your organization, ignore its conclusion, ignore the scenarios themselves, and think about the trends, forces and events that the NIC identifies, and then add your own, based on your intuition and expertise. 

—Silberzahn & Jones 
</blockquote>


<blockquote>How can you craft strategy in nonlinear environment? […] instead of putting effort into better prediction (no matter how modest), in many cases strategists must take the opposite approach and learn to focus their effort purely on a better understanding of the present. [By] mitigating the impact of surprises [and] anticipating the consequences of their own actions.

—Silberzahn & Jones 
</blockquote>

<blockquote>We’re conditioned to see the present moment as “normal,” with all the banality that implies. This is not a banal moment. It’s the sort of intense, chaotic moment, full of strange things, that we previously only found in science fiction. “Right now” feels like all of science fiction happening at once, and needs to be considered in that context 

—Warren Ellis 
</blockquote>

==== References ====
  * https://libarynth.org/futurist_fieldguide/start
  * https://libarynth.org/future_fabulators/background
  * https://www.zotero.org/groups/235804/future_fabulators/items/collectionKey/92CX4HZR
  * https://www.zotero.org/groups/235804/future_fabulators/items/collectionKey/I55D6MNC
  * {{ ::future_of_the_world_jenny_andersson_9780198814337_print.pdf |Future of The World}}