Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

Interest in the future is nothing new. Nor is the fear and fascination it inspires. Previous to the 17th century, thinking about the future was predominately religious, hermetic or astrological. Pre-modern European societies understood a future that would, in fact, be the end of all futures: the Final Judgement. Today, few people expect such an end to the future, but the emotional charge associated with the future is no less intense. We are, in this sense, less modern that we think. We are less modern, as well, in our intellectual disposition towards the future. Contradictory ideas of the future as either completely unknown or the fulfullment of harsh prophecies live side by side in the collective imagination. It is conceived as something about which we can formulate no coherent notion, but something nevertheless already written, but as yet undeciphered. These vague notions explain the sudden interest in figures like Nostradamus, considered by some the great prophet of the September 11 attacks on the twin towers in New York.

The prospective approach to the future, an interdisciplinary field of research, arose almost fifty years ago in contrast to this inheritance of scepticism, determinism and fatalism. It responds to the sense that historical time is accelerating and to the concept of the future as risk. It is understood not as an academic discipline, whose activities are circumbscribed by knowledge, but rather as a planning tool, whose purpose is to increase our capacity to foresee and mold the future of human society. Freed from the illusion of prognostication, the prospective approach is concerned more with the construction of the future.

This issue of the Revista Universidad de Guadalajara offers a succint vision of the development and scope of this relatively new discipline. We have gathered diverse texts which recount its goals and principle focus. We present, among others, three previously unpublished texts, two of them by recognized authorities in the field.

Jorge Ramirez reviews briefly the evolution of the prospective approach, whose main thread is the pluralistic conception of the future. He explores how the scientistic concept, which develops prognoses on the bases of a future considered as essentially determined, has been transformed into a concept of the future as open and indetermined, and for which human action is decisive. He recounts recent developments in futurology which are concerned more with the strengthening of strategic thinking and learning within human organizations.

Gaston Berger, to whom we owe the name and general philosophical principles of he prospective approach, reminds us that it is an attitude rather than a method or a discipline. In his essay, published originally in French in 1958, Berger traces the outlines of an intellectual enterprise whose center is the human being. His principal interest is not to wonder what kind of future we will have, but to ask what kind of future we want.

Herman Kahn (1922-1983), one of the most prestigious pioneers in the field of futurology, and creator of the "scenario method" in the sixties, evaluates the diverse philosophical and methodological alternatives in future studies. He advocates a pluralistic treatment which combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, which served as the basis for some of his most representative works, considered classics of the area: The Year 2000, The Next 200 Years, and What Must Happen.

The prospective approach (normally referred to as "future studies" in English), has had great influence in the world of business. Ged Davis, who heads up planning for one of the world's largest oil companies, explains the logic of this planning tool, and highlights its value for risk management among decision makers.

Marco Antonio Cortes Guardado relates his experience as a leader of the project "Jalisco a Futuro," a research project of the Center for Strategic Development Studies of the University of Guadalajara. Cortes recounts the theory and method that were employed in the first systematic study of the future of Jalisco in the year 2025. His article is interesting for the experience of a researcher confronted with the difficult task of formulating an integrated vision of the future of a complex entity.

The issue closes with an interview with Antonio Alonso Concheiro, one of the most respected futurologists in our county whose work has been decisive in the formulation of various prospective futures for Mexico. In this interview, Antonio Alonso recounts the devolopment of future studies in Mexico, and offers a few comments on Mexico's current state and offers a vision of its future for the year 2030.

Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

Diverse Futures: The Heart of the Prospective Approach

Jorge Ramirez Plascencia

There is no single future. This is perhaps the fundamental claim of the prospective approach. To understand its scope and meaning is key to the conceptual core of a discipline which constructs visions for future planning of societies, regions and organizations. The prospective approach does not offer an ontology of future time. It is not interested in definitions of either time or the future. Rather, it affirms, for methodological purposes, that the future is essentially open and undetermined. In other words that there is a plurality of futures.

Behind the notion of a multiplicity of futures there has been an evolution of theory and method. Since the sixties and into the seventies future studies entertained a scientistic hope that a single narrative of the future could be elaborated that would predict the necessary actions of future generations. Previous research was burdened intellectually and technically by the logic of prediction, similar to the idea that all scientific knowledge is bound by certain laws. Their intention was to anticipate events of the future whose occurence would be necessary, either the result of present (irreversible) tendencies or the result of immutable, pre-established laws.

In the sixties, certain thinkers began to question these assumptions. The "rebellion" began in different countries, apparently without any connection to each other. But by the end of the seventies, a certain consensus was beginning to emerge. Some of the earlies contributors were French: Gaston Berger, Bertrand de Jouvenel and Pierre Massé.

From this group came the powerful impulse to revise the foundations of a discipline that seemed condemned to waiver between intuitive speculation (exemplified by the work of Alvin Toffler in the seventies) and deterministic visions of a predictable future. Not only the name but the central focus of the prospective approach were first formulated by this group of researchers.

Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

The prospective attitude

Gaston Berger

More than a method or a discipline, the prospective approach to the future is an attitude, that is to say, the adjective should precede the noun.

The sense of the term "prospective" is formed in the same way as the term "retrospective": opposed to each other in that the first expresses looking foward and not back. A retrospective study goes toward the past and a prospective one toward the future.

These two adjectives are not perfectly symmetrical as to meaning, but are symmetrical in form, because we tend, out of habit, to represent time as a line on which past and future correspond to two possible directions.

In fact, yesterday and tomorrow are heterogeneous. As for yesterday, we can only visualize it because there is no longer anything else we can do about it, while tomorrow means projects with open possibilities. To pass from retrospective thinking to prospective thinking doesn't only imply a reorientation; it requires a preparation for action. We can be prospective historically.... Reciprocally, not all thinking about the future is prospective: one can dream in the same way in the year 2000 as in the Egypt of Ramsés II.

When we meditate about the importance that the future has for people and what kind of future is offered to our children, we cannot help but be surprised at the small place occupied by the topics of the future and the past in the writings of philosophers. There are numberless pages in which these terms don't appear, and when they do figure in some text it is not as a central concept of the discussion. Possibly, it was necessary that man develop his power in this way and only now is able to understand that the future is neither an absolute mystery, nor a relentless destiny.

Bergson understood that the increase of our power over nature is capable of modifying our conception of time. Before it became convenient to distinguish between a mystique of duration and one of eternity, he responded that the distinction is indeed excellent, but that it decreases to the degree "to which it tends to increase our power over matter."

Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

Perspectives on the future

Herman Kahn

While facts should speak for themselves, it is typical in study or speculation about the future to choose a perspective or relatively narrow theory and to accommodate everything, as much as it is possible, within that framework. This also happens in conclusions reached. When a change in perspective arises, it is usually at some intermediate stage of the investigation. We have suggested the necessity of choosing between neo-malthusian and postindustrial visions of the future; we will argue that data and analysis can help make the choice.

A number of other things can be pointed out; for instance, a very common concept in the past was that the future is static, and that a certain number of ideas and traditional topics are repeated in some kind of historic cycle. Almost as common as this idea, was the pessimistic vision: that culture and society exhibit a process of decadence, that the past is a lost golden time. This is a tragic vision of history (often involving nostalgia and conservative concepts), or a feeling that a particular society is no longer competitive or viable. Also common is the Malthusian belief in a coming catastrophe due to the assumed or demonstrated inability of nature or society to meet important physical needs; or because economic and technological growth had become counterproductive; or perhaps, due to some type of decadence, the members of a society could no longer solve their problems.

In the last two hundred years, first western culture and later most of the world has maintained a basic perspective that is progressive and optimist. There has been a universal revolution of rising expectations: a vision of the future as an enormous improvement on the present or the past, at least in regards to material aspects of life. An additional implication has been that more people will participate in that improvement and have the right to do so. In traditional liberal thought, as well as in Marxist and postindustrial scenarios of the future, this concept of progress is sustained. These perspectives frequently have included considerable utopian or millenialist thinking. There are variations on these perspectives that are worth exploring if we are to propose any alternatives to them.

Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

Scenarios for the future

Ged Davis

Scenarios are histories of a plausible, pertinent and alternative futures. They are powerful tools to refer to what is at the same time fundamentally significant and deeply unknown: the future.

Many have tried to understand the future purely by means of prediction, in spite of flawed models and inadecuate tools. Forecasters extrapolate from the past, imposing on the future patterns of the past, and they forget the proverb that says "a tendency it is a tendency until it breaks". And the rupture is generally the most interesting thing because it is what involves the biggest risk or offers the greatest opportunities. Those that trust only in prognostic thinking about the future can pay a very high price. In a study about the recent experience of the petroleum industry, McKinsey estimated that 103 companies eroded the value of their stocks by nearly 300 trillion dollars between 1980 and 1993, primarily through underestimating future development and by investing in oil at high costs.

The scenario approach recognizes that only some events can be subject to prognostication, while others are essentially unknown. Scenarios are related more to strategic thought than strategic planning. When we participate in these alternative histories, we are guided by a flexible approach to the future, prepared for the rupture of tendencies by means of experimentation with different world scenarios.

Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

A Future for Jalisco

Marco Antonio Cortes

"Jalisco a Futuro" was the first long-reaching future study carried out in the state of Jalisco, with the purpose of recognizing the tendencies of development in the state, to glimpse the alternative scenarios that are plausible in the middle and long-term future, and to elaborate a proposal of social development for the state. As well, it was the first study of social development in Mexico that incorporated as a substantial part of the project an empiric study of the social values that provide moral, cultural and political identity to the society.

Besides being a pioneer study in the state, "Jalisco a Futuro" allowed for innovations in the field of prospective studies, by combining, in risky but original ways, different methodologies and integration of results in a coherent and well structured corpus, published as the final results of the project ("Jalisco a Futuro"), by the University of Guadalajara in 1999.

Procedures common to social research (library research, surveys and qualitative analysis) were amalgamated with prospective methodologies (structural analysis and the Delphi method), together with some elements characteristic of strategic planning (foda analysis). The study was completed by a survey of values among the state's population. In this way, the information was profuse and appropriate for the project.

Translated By

Stephen W. Gilbert

Interview With

Dr. Antonio Alonso Concheiro

Jorge Ramirez

Antonio Alonso Concheiro is a doctor in Engineering for the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England. He was Managing Director of the Center of Prospective Studies of the Javier Barros Serra Foundation and he is consulting partner of Analytic Consultants, S.C. He also works as Director of the magazine "This Country" and is responsible for the Operative Unit of the "Vision of Mexico 2025" Project, an initiative with presidential support, that will serve as a base for long term Federal Government planning. Antonio Alonso is one of the most competent specialists of the future in the country and one of the most internationally prestigious. He has been consulted by numerous future studies projects, among them "Jalisco a Futuro", carried out by the ceed and published by the University of Guadalajara. Among his many published works: "Studies of the xxi century" (in collaboration with Gerald O. Barney);

"A prospective of the Mexican food industry and its implications for science and technology"; "Energy Alternatives" (in collaboration with Luis Rodríguez Viqueira); "Information and Telecommunications" (in collaboration with Federico Kuhlmann) and, more recently, "Mexico 2030" (coordinated jointly with Julio Millán). The present interview was conducted in August of this year by Jorge Ramirez exclusively for this issue of Revista Universidad de Guadalajara.