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Abstract

Based on 25 years of involvement, the author evaluates the generic characteristics of future studies, their usefulness, and pitfalls, with special reference to the perspectives of JHP readers. Future studies are necessarily based on no reliable theory of social change, no definitive historical referents, and on the inherent ambiguities of language. Psychological and cultural factors also shape content. Therefore they are ontologically and epistemologically questionable. Nevertheless they are imperative contributions to thinking about the directions of our turbulent world. Functionally, future studies are stories, and they do and should contribute to understanding in that spirit. Incentives and disincentives for their use are described as well as the kinds of morals to be drawn from them regarding their message and regarding appropriate comportment for the users and producers of these stories. Well done, future studies demand great methodological sophistication as well as insight into one's motives for using and producing them.

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On Thinking about the future

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