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Futures studies

About: Futures studies is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2996 publications have been published within this topic receiving 49505 citations. The topic is also known as: futurology & futurism.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The sociology of the future is an emerging field of inquiry that works to understand future consciousness drawing from a mix of Science & Technology Studies and the practice of foresight as mentioned in this paper, and suggests some ways the field is taking definition.
Abstract: The sociology of the future is an emerging field of inquiry that works to understand future consciousness drawing from a mix of Science & Technology Studies and the practice of foresight. Through an exploration of the theories, methodologies, and quagmires of anticipation employed in the study of nanotechnology, this piece introduces the sociology of the future and suggests some ways the field is taking definition. Exploring the future tense provides a means of taking responsibility for what is to come; yet, the movement of the social sciences into the tricky terrain of the future presents tensions. Understanding plausibility, how different communities use anticipatory knowledge, and the performative role of expectations in innovation remain areas of research rich with dilemmas and delights. As social scientists begin to weave their own accounts of futures, they should pay attention to the politics of such rendering. Extension of the technological reach Scholarly attention to the development of new technologies and to exploring the sociologic tools and methods we have for grasping their emergence is exceedingly important not only for the dual nature of technology as blessing and curse, but also because our technological reach into the future is growing. Our ability to produce technologies that have a lasting impact on social systems seems to be growing given the biological, chemical, and material technologies of late. Nanotechnology is one such novel technology area that is regularly promised to radically alter what it means to be human, our systems of production, and our environmental landscapes. Whether expectations of seamless interactions with nature, non-polluting instantaneous production, or unprecedented wealth and health, nanotechnology is presented by promoters as the elixir for post-industrial ills (Drexler 1986; Roco and Brainbridge 2001; Wood et al. 2003). Yet, this brazen optimism is also balanced by visions of self-replicating nanobots out of control and more tempered analyses about nanotechnology’s ability to

137 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Feb 2004-Futures
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an overview of the most important ideas in the recent literature on innovation systems, technological dynamism and local economic development, and show how the actions of individuals to shape collective local visioning exercises interact with larger institutional structures to produce local outcomes.

137 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Adaptive Foresight has been developed at the crossroads of foresight and adaptive strategic planning as discussed by the authors, and it is the careful combining of commitment and opportunism that best enables actors to pursue their superordinate values and objectives.

136 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the potential and empirically observable value creation of strategic foresight activities in firms, and show that it is possible to capture value through an enhanced capacity to perceive change, an enhanced ability to interpret and respond to change, influencing other actors, and through enhanced capacity for organizational learning.

136 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20241
2023323
2022665
2021145
2020155
2019173