Applications of Futures Research to Society’s Problems

Abstract

What I would like to start now is a demonstration session, trying to explore some changes that may occur between now and the end of the century. Before I explain all the details of how this session will work, I’d like to give you a little background on how this technique came into being. Planning and long-range forecasting is very important today because the pace of change is so rapid. I think we all appreciate that this pace of change is brought about by man himself, and by the resources and the range of man’s control. So, in many ways, the forecasting problem is one of predicting man’s conscious actions, and man is a most unpredictable animal. But since man produces change and we are forecasting changes that man will make, we must always be concerned with the human perceptions of problems and of what is possible, what is desirable and what is affordable.