Quote of the day

New technologies carry great potential for improving and refining the conceptualization and application of futures research methods. For example, the Internet has made participatory approaches among geographically dispersed people practical. Just forty years ago, computers were not much of a factor in futures research. The Delphi method was accomplished with pencil and paper in 1963, and sent through mail. However, if the current trends continue, forty years from now nearly all futures methods will be conducted in software, through networks, with diverse and changing sets of people, continually cross-referenced data, and monitoring decisions. Hence, the image of a few bright people, using a few interesting methods to forecast the future, may be replaced by the image of many people interacting with many combinations of methods to shape the future by blurring the distinctions between research and decision making. (Gordon, Glenn and Jakil, "Frontiers of Futures Research: What's Next?" Technological Forecasting and Social Change 72 (2005), 1064-1069, quote on 1065.)