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Abstract

The relationship between concepts of time and concepts of futures has been in an ever-changing and dynamic evolution for thousands of years. Yet, time has been relatively underexplored in the futures studies literature until recently. Furthermore, the transdisciplinary fields of “time studies” and “futures studies” have operated in relative isolation within the siloism of twentieth- and twenty-first-century academia. This article draws substantially from my recent book The Future: A Very Short Introduction, which places this piece into the larger historical context of what we humans have done in the past with these deeply interwoven concepts. I discuss here how we relate to them today, and what is emerging regarding new concepts of futures and time in our current era. By understanding how humans in the past have storied and framed both time and the future, we can gain a deeper appreciation of the significance of time consciousness on futures thinking.

Keywords

futures studies time studies human agency planetary emergency evolution of consciousness

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Imbuing Futures and Time with Agency and Urgency: Reframing Concepts for a Planetary Emergency

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