Shaping futures, story by story

We humans are creatures made of words, just as we are made of atoms. Within any language, metaphors are essential instruments of thought, shaping how we perceive, conceptualize and act in the world. As more complex tapestries, stories have always been fundamental to the human experience, helping us understand the world, connect with others, navigate our emotions, preserve our heritage.

Foresight, and more generally futures thinking, is no stranger to these sense-making devices. They are integral to crafting rich, imaginative, and plausible scenarios, or articulating visions and preferred futures and the pathways to achieve them. Also, they are crucial in communicating foresight findings and driving meaningful action towards shaping the future.

Here are five articles I recommend, very different in their angle and scope, on issues related to present and future metaphors, use of data, stories, narratives, imaginaries.

The themes in these articles resonate, to different extents, with recent foresight projects or future oriented initiatives showcased on futures4europe, which I also invite you to explore. They are linked, under each article, for your convenience.

• Metaphors make the world. Woven into the fabric of language, metaphors shape how we understand reality. What happens when we try using new ones?

>> Explore on futures4europe: "Stories shape futures" workshop presentation by Claire Marshall - part 1 on stories, narratives, and meta-narratives and part 2  on common collective narratives and possible counter-narratives.

• How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI. The concept of a frontier used as a metaphor for AI, or technology in general, may exacerbate moral exceptionalism, especially with regards to American big tech.

>> Explore on futures4europe:  Futures of Big Tech in Europe (Sandro Mendonça, Daniele Archibugi, Anna Gerbrandy, Lena Tsipouri). Four scenarios for 2040 are fleshed out, together with implications for Europe, especially in terms of research and innovation policy.

• In June 2024, the EU will unveil Destination Earth, a digital replica of the Earth. This planetary digital twin will enable monitoring, simulating, and predicting the interaction between natural phenomena and human activities, in order to achieve the goals of the green transition and support the fight against the consequences of climate change.

>> Explore on futures4europe: The case study “Data as Representation” (Radu Gheorghiu, Liviu Andreescu, Philine Warnke) proposes three scenarios  on the way data is understood and used in relation to the human and natural ecosystems by 2050. The case study is part of the project S&T&I FOR 2050. Science, Technology and Innovation for Ecosystem Performance – Accelerating Sustainability Transitions

• What the ‘future histories’ of the 1920s can teach us about hope. If we look back 100 years, how was tomorrow imagined back then? A century ago, there were dystopias and utopias, but many writers and thinkers also approached the future in other ways: with an open, nuanced and often playful perspective. And they did so despite the grave challenges they faced in their societies. What might we learn from these visions?

>> Explore on futures4europe: "How will we disgust our descendants"?, conducted by 4CF - The Futures Literacy Company. The answers provided to this question by 60 futurists from around the world were grouped into 93 contemporary “barbarisms” ranked in a public vote according to how eye-opening they are.

• AI is contentious among authors. So why are some feeding it their own writing? Some authors are actively using these technologies — even attempting to train AI models on their own works. These experiments, though limited, are teaching their authors new things about creativity.

>> Explore on futures4europe: "Sound of Contagion – An Artistic Research Project Exploring A.I. as a Creative Tool for Transmedial Storytelling" on human-technical collaborations that may inspire and enhance artistic expression in the future. By Wenzel Mehnert, Robert Laidlow, Chelsea Haith & Sara Laubscher.