Ted Fuller on the humane attitude to the future and foresight practitioners’ responsibility

The first session of the Foresight Conference devoted to new trends and tools in futures studies opened with a presentation by Ted Fuller, professor at the University of Lincoln (UK) and editor-in-chief of Futures scientific journal. He analysed specific features of foresight methodology’s evolution, highlighting several drivers prompting the changes.

The increasing volume of knowledge, emergence of new knowledge types and structures are the main incentives to look for new tools. Interaction between people is changing and rapidly accelerating, including knowledge exchanges; machines are beginning to communicate with each other, creating a flow of information which people do not fully control. Without understanding how new knowledge is created, who and how participates in data exchanges, and which effects these processes produce, it would be impossible to assess the potential of foresight techniques.

New knowledge creates new relationships with the future: people’s understanding of what’s happening and what’s expected in the long term resonates with their hopes and fears about the future. People note various effects of technological impact on the environment, including negative ones. “We have unjustified trust in scientific knowledge, but lately an anxiety has been arising regarding “unknown unknowns”, and all that creates uncertainty”, noted professor Fuller. Citing the latest research in strategic management and long-term foresight [Sardar and Sweeny (2015)], the speaker described the unknown as follows: “Our future has certain surprises in store, the so-called “black elephants”; everybody knows about them but nobody mentions them. Then there’s a familiar future with “black swans” which hint at possible changes in the concept, but strictly speaking we know nothing about them. Moving on, there’s unimaginable future — e.g. “black medusas” about which nobody even thinks” (Figure 1).

Figure 1

So when we consider the future in the scope of a foresight study, what is important is not just obtaining codified knowledge (and researchers invest their main efforts in doing that), but also analysing people’s attitude to this future, and the relationship between stakeholders which determines which scenario is ultimately going to come true. This means that we should concentrate on people, professor Fuller concluded, and described foresight as cause-and-effect process which must be based on ethical principles and responsible practices. “As futurists, we must bear responsibility for the sphere we affect”, stressed Ted Fuller. “In the scope of foresight studies it’s very important to remember about that responsibility, because values are a part of our vision of the future. Our moral obligation is to make sure the future is humane”.

Answering the question by the session moderator Philip Shapira, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) and University of Manchester (UK), if there’s a way to foresee future evolution of the responsibility concept, Ted Fuller gave the example of people’s attitude towards the concept of work: “Currently it’s a virtue; if you don’t work you are definitely not virtuous. But when in future we’re replaced by robots, would work still be seen as a virtue? In other words, today you question not the ability to create a particular new technology, but how people would live with that technology being available”. He deliberated on the issue of responsibility in perspective of foresight practice. Implementing foresight projects involves meeting certain requirements, e.g. contractual obligations — which is certainly a responsibility, and how deeply each participant of the foresight project feels it largely affects the project’s results.

During the discussion following Ted Fuller’s presentation, Alexander Sokolov, director of HSE ISSEK’s Foresight Centre, raised the issue of supporting particular research areas in the light of changing political interests and ethical values currently shared by the society. “E.g. certain countries do not develop GMOs while others, on the contrary, do all they can to promote such research”, noted the HSE Foresight Centre director. “Thus countries which do not develop GMOs lag behind in technological progress and lose control over certain market segments”. When asked to comment on whether to support or not support prospective research areas in terms of responsibility to the society and future generations, Ted Fuller replied that ethical principles always, in one way or another, remained in the background of his decisions regarding whether to support specific research or not, and they certainly had changed with time. Therefore experts participating in S&T foresight studies among other things must take into account that these ethical categories are going to change.

See the final slide of Ted Fuller’s presentation below (Figure 2).

Full Ted Fuller’s presentation is available here.

By Elena Gutaruk