Knowledge Base of Futures Studies

Just published this month is The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies 2020, the latest in an edited series collecting key works in foresight over time.

The original version of KBFS was released in 01996, the same year I first encountered the futures/foresight field; the most recent update came out in 02005, the year I went to study with Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii's 'Manoa School' of futures. So it's been a long while, and a huge amount has changed in the field over that period.

I'm excited to have two pieces in this collection, both coauthored with terrific colleagues –– Kelly Kornet and Peter Hayward. Both articles are adaptations of work previously published, and speak to aspects of how the field has evolved over the past decade and a half towards more participatory, playful, experiential and inclusive modes.

The Polak Game (aka "Where Do You Stand?"), written with Peter, is about a classic workshop and classroom game in the futures field, which Hayward invented, inspired by the remarkable work of Dutch sociologist and proto-futurist Fred Polak. The game offers a user-friendly structure for facilitating far-reaching conversation among foresight students and clients, introducing "images of the future" as a basic property of both cultures and individuals, thus helping pave the way to more advanced tools and frameworks. It first appeared in 02017 as a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Futures Studies (JFS).

Ethnographic Experiential Futures (EXF), written with Kelly, introduces a framework for hybrid design/futures research and practice that is all about making images of the future more legible and concrete, and seeing what one can learn from doing so. The piece sets out a practical structure and set of prompts for devising projects and interventions, with a view to promoting the availability of a more diverse and deeper array of scenarios for consideration, in all sorts of contexts, ultimately in service of developing a social capacity for foresight. It first appeared in 02019 as a peer-reviewed article, Turning Foresight Inside Out, in the JFS special double issue on Design and Futures co-edited with Cher Potter.

Fifteen years is a long time, and to be fair not all of the changes that the futures/foresight field has seen are (or could be) reflected in a selection which, as this version's co-editor Andy Hines points out, was subject to real constraints. But there are over 500 pages of material from contributors around the world, and I'm looking forward to digging in! Meanwhile the next edition, we might hope, will appear sooner rather than later, and will also seize the opportunity to push even further in surfacing the tremendous diversity of views and approaches to futures research, scholarship and practice from all corners of a burgeoning and multifaceted global conversation.

Well done to the three dozen contributing authors, and to editors Richard Slaughter and Andy Hines, for this valuable contribution! While previous editions were sometimes hard to find, this new collection is electronically available directly from the publisher, the Association of Professional Futurists.

Related:
> Ethnographic Experiential Futures / full-text pdf from KBFS 2020
> The Polak Game / full-text pdf from KBFS 2020
> Design and Futures book release / full-text pdf
> Transforming the Future book release / full-text pdf
> Ghosts of futures past
> A History of Experiential Futures

Where do you stand?

A crucial part of foresight work, whether it's in a corporate boardroom or an undergraduate classroom, is helping people surface and test their assumptions about the future.

The Polak Game offers a simple, powerful, and generative way of doing just that.

Introducing the Polak Game (with Jake Dunagan) at our first Design Futures Masterclass at CEDIM. Mexico City, 02015 (Photo: Jorge Camacho)

Named after the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak whose work inspired it, the game is also alternatively called "Where Do You Stand?" Aided by the facilitator, players are invited to use the physical space they are in to demonstrate their understandings of the future, in terms of expectations, on one hand, and their sense of personal agency to effect desired change, on the other.

The heart of the activity is a guided conversation aimed at understanding diverse perspectives across these dimensions, including the way that people's different views are grounded in their different experiences of the world. It helps us make explicit the importance of certain aspects of our thinking about futures that are always present, yet almost always invisible. The discussion can often become quite profound.

Playing the game as part of a course in the Media Design Practice program at ArtCenter College of Design. Los Angeles, 02016 (Photo: Stuart Candy)

Participants on a sound stage for a feature documentary film shoot, directed by Shannon Owen, about Australia's South Sudanese community. Melbourne, 02017 (Photo: Stuart Candy)

It is now over a dozen years since Peter Hayward (until recently the coordinator of Swinburne University of Technology’s futures program in Melbourne) ran the game for us in Honolulu, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa futures program. Since learning it from him there, I’ve staged it many times, for classes, workshops, and even a feature documentary shoot on a sound stage; with participants in different kinds of organisations, communities, cultures, and parts of the world. The game has also begun to spread, appearing in the toolkits of more and more practitioners, as useful tools do; changing as it goes.

People sometimes ask whether there are any published works to reference that describe and unpack the Polak Game. Until now, the answer has been no.

But we have just co-authored a piece aimed at filling this gap; precisely because "foresight craft genealogies often escape not only documentation, but even our explicit notice". For collective learning in the field there's a value to capturing how, where, and why these tools of the trade emerge and evolve. The same reason applies for sharing the work here in this post.

The article is in two parts. Hayward's deals with the "Origin and Orientation" of the game, and mine focuses on its "Exploration and Evolution" as it has played out in my experience over the past dozen years.

I'll finish this post with his conclusion:

It is when I have used it with groups trying to create a vision of a shared future that I think the power of the Polak Game has become most apparent. Humans construct narratives from their own experience and sense of the world. You could say that we stand on our individual ontology. What the game can reveal to players is that we each need to meet others where they are, and listen to their ontologies, before we have any chance of creating a shared one. During the game, it often becomes obvious who in a group feels that they have power and opportunity, and who does not; who has been treated fairly in the past, and who has not. By bringing these hidden dimensions to light, those with power may feel humbled by their privilege, and those with disadvantage can feel acknowledged and heard. And from there, an enduring sense of what "our" future could be starts to emerge.

The full article, including detailed instructions for facilitation of the game, appears in the December 02017 issue of the Journal of Futures Studies: The Polak Game, Or: Where Do You Stand?

Related:
> Dreaming together
> Brand runner / Colonising the future on film
> The technology of public imagination
> Design fiction is a fact