Futuríveis
domingo, março 06, 2005
Futurologia como ciência e o lugar do futuro no actual discurso politico...
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Futurology may not be dead yet - the World Future Society, a kind of industry association, boasts 16,500 members in 80 countries (most of them in the US) and companies are still keen to predict the immediate future of their own markets - but full-throttle futurology is certainly no longer with us.
One plausible reason is the regularity with which the predictions of futurologists failed to materialise. A special millennium survey conducted by the British women’s magazine Bella in 2000 found that Britons were disappointed with how the future had turned out. At the age of 15, half of those surveyed had been led to believe that moon travel would now be routine, and one in 10 thought that taking a trip to Jupiter or Mars would be just another package holiday. Nearly one in five believed they would be doing the daily commute by flying car. More than a third had counted on scientists discovering a cure for cancer. For the vast majority, the brave new world promised by the futurologists in the 1950s and 1960s had been a fib of spectacular proportions.
But the failure of futurology’s predictions should not on its own have been enough to shake it so badly. The discipline has, after all, been failing to make its predictions come true for centuries. In the past, glorious failures simply sent its practitioners back to the drawing board. What is on the defensive now is not so much the discipline of futurology itself as future-thinking, the creative evaluation of possibilities for improving the human condition. And in place of future-thinking, many of the forecasters have changed tack and are propagandising about the myriad ways in which the human race might wipe itself out.
...
If the demise of futurology cannot be explained by the failure of its predictions, then perhaps a more profound insight into its decline can be gleaned from its relationship to political thought. Remember that politics, too, has depended for its existence for most of the modern period on a contest between competing, rosy visions of the future.
Spurred on by the technological optimism during the postwar period, politicians were fond of promising the masses unlimited goods and wealth in return for hard work in the here and now. In 1956, in his book The Future of Socialism, the Labour party intellectual Tony Crosland assured the British working classes that they were heading for cheap foreign holidays and a life of consumer plenty. Likewise, in his famous Great Society address, delivered in 1964, Lyndon Johnson promised to use the US’s growing wealth to provide “abundance and liberty for all” within the following 50 years.
Cut loose from those ideological moorings, however, the politics of the future take on a very different role. Almost invisibly, and in the course of just two decades, governments in Europe and North America have shifted from promising us good things over the rainbow to protecting us from future dangers. They no longer motivate us with the promise of jam tomorrow, because few of us would believe them if they did. Instead, they are prone to arguing that contemporary society is characterised by an accelerating pace of change; that we are hurtling into a dangerous future at an unparalleled speed.
This idea has been repeated so regularly by politicians and futurologists that it has become one of the cliches of our time. If things are moving so fast and the future is so unpredictable, runs this reasoning, then there is very little that politicians can do.
But the notion that we are experiencing a rate of social change comparable to that which separated depression-era Britain from the affluence of the postwar generation is simply absurd. Many of the advances in biotechnology or reproductive sciences that raise public concern are still at the laboratory stage and may never materialise. Beyond all the hype about the internet - and the real benefits it brings - its impact on our lives scarcely rivals the invention of the colour TV or the simple washing machine.
Our failure to find inspiration in a robust vision of the future today is evidence of a profound political conservatism. Amid a mood of public cynicism about their promises and motivations, most politicians have retreated to the safe ground of promising not very much.
...
FT.com / Arts & Weekend - Didnt see that coming, did you?
Futurology may not be dead yet - the World Future Society, a kind of industry association, boasts 16,500 members in 80 countries (most of them in the US) and companies are still keen to predict the immediate future of their own markets - but full-throttle futurology is certainly no longer with us.
One plausible reason is the regularity with which the predictions of futurologists failed to materialise. A special millennium survey conducted by the British women’s magazine Bella in 2000 found that Britons were disappointed with how the future had turned out. At the age of 15, half of those surveyed had been led to believe that moon travel would now be routine, and one in 10 thought that taking a trip to Jupiter or Mars would be just another package holiday. Nearly one in five believed they would be doing the daily commute by flying car. More than a third had counted on scientists discovering a cure for cancer. For the vast majority, the brave new world promised by the futurologists in the 1950s and 1960s had been a fib of spectacular proportions.
But the failure of futurology’s predictions should not on its own have been enough to shake it so badly. The discipline has, after all, been failing to make its predictions come true for centuries. In the past, glorious failures simply sent its practitioners back to the drawing board. What is on the defensive now is not so much the discipline of futurology itself as future-thinking, the creative evaluation of possibilities for improving the human condition. And in place of future-thinking, many of the forecasters have changed tack and are propagandising about the myriad ways in which the human race might wipe itself out.
...
If the demise of futurology cannot be explained by the failure of its predictions, then perhaps a more profound insight into its decline can be gleaned from its relationship to political thought. Remember that politics, too, has depended for its existence for most of the modern period on a contest between competing, rosy visions of the future.
Spurred on by the technological optimism during the postwar period, politicians were fond of promising the masses unlimited goods and wealth in return for hard work in the here and now. In 1956, in his book The Future of Socialism, the Labour party intellectual Tony Crosland assured the British working classes that they were heading for cheap foreign holidays and a life of consumer plenty. Likewise, in his famous Great Society address, delivered in 1964, Lyndon Johnson promised to use the US’s growing wealth to provide “abundance and liberty for all” within the following 50 years.
Cut loose from those ideological moorings, however, the politics of the future take on a very different role. Almost invisibly, and in the course of just two decades, governments in Europe and North America have shifted from promising us good things over the rainbow to protecting us from future dangers. They no longer motivate us with the promise of jam tomorrow, because few of us would believe them if they did. Instead, they are prone to arguing that contemporary society is characterised by an accelerating pace of change; that we are hurtling into a dangerous future at an unparalleled speed.
This idea has been repeated so regularly by politicians and futurologists that it has become one of the cliches of our time. If things are moving so fast and the future is so unpredictable, runs this reasoning, then there is very little that politicians can do.
But the notion that we are experiencing a rate of social change comparable to that which separated depression-era Britain from the affluence of the postwar generation is simply absurd. Many of the advances in biotechnology or reproductive sciences that raise public concern are still at the laboratory stage and may never materialise. Beyond all the hype about the internet - and the real benefits it brings - its impact on our lives scarcely rivals the invention of the colour TV or the simple washing machine.
Our failure to find inspiration in a robust vision of the future today is evidence of a profound political conservatism. Amid a mood of public cynicism about their promises and motivations, most politicians have retreated to the safe ground of promising not very much.
...
FT.com / Arts & Weekend - Didnt see that coming, did you?
posted by CMT, 7:47 da tarde
