The influence of future-oriented technology analysis: Addressing the Cassandra challenge§Ron Johnston a,,*Cristiano Cagnin b a Australian Centre for Innovation, Australia b European commission, DG Joint research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Spain‘‘Cassandra was a daughter of Hecuba
Another pointed to the historical limitations of any attempt to Futures 43 (2011) 313 316 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
or prophesying the future in favour of developing insight into possible futures and preparing for them.
Contents lists available at Sciencedirect Futures journal homepage: www. elsevier. com/locate/futures 0016-3287/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
All rights reserved. doi: 10.1016/j. futures. 2010.11.008 influence the future:‘‘‘‘Uncertainty about the future is always there.
If you take a likely scenario with twenty components, each with a 90%probability, then the overall probability is only 12%.
%Hence unexpected events will always happen''.''It was argued that many foresight studies had pointed to the possibility of a collapse in the global economic system 2
Decision-makers need a global vision of the future that addresses financial structures, climate change, poverty, etc''.
R. Johnston, C. Cagnin/Futures 43 (2011) 313 316 314 The first FTA Conference in 2004 gathered predominantly the EU-US community together to take stock of the developments
and explore future needs for FTA. The focus of the Conference was on foresight, technology forecasting and technology assessment methods and tools.
The greatest challenges may be in developing mechanisms to reach out to the other communities professionally engaged with the future
and a stronger platform on which to promote the vital need of addressing the future to individuals at all levels
and capability, to address the future in a more systematic way. These conditions, however, do not imply an automatic rise in the use of foresight or FTA TOOLS.
and may well resort to other guides to the future, or apply them (as we have seen with scenario planning) with little comprehension of their essential components.
R. Johnston, C. Cagnin/Futures 43 (2011) 313 316 315 Ricardo Seidl da Fonseca UNIDO, Austria.
Future Choices, 2007, http://www. foresight. gov. uk/Ourwork/Activeprojects/Obesity/Obesity. asp. R. Johnston, C. Cagnin/Futures 43 (2011) 313 316 316
Guest editorial FTA break new ground in response to grand challenges Vicente Carabias, Peter De Smedt and Thomas Teichler Abstract Purpose This Guest Editorial aims
sound approaches of futures thinking will help to better address the grand challenges. Research limitations/implications From a large set of excellent papers presented at the FTA 2011 Conference,
The presentations comprised themes surrounding creative futures, energy, governance, health, horizon scanning, innovation and sustainability, law, mobility, nanotechnology, and others.
sound approaches of futures thinking will help to better address the grand challenges. A first example looks at the application of fta methods to transport planning.
Four scenarios were constructed by looking back to the present from the future state of 2050 The main purpose in using the scenario approach was not to predict
they were still in the range of predictable futures (energy efficiency, restraining urban sprawl, self-sufficiency, and new technologies).
Major findings were obtained on the feasibility of a systematic approach that provides anticipatory intelligence about future disruptive events,
Thomas led several foresight projects, among them the FP-financed SANDERA study on the future interaction of security policy and the European research area.
In Cagnin and Keenan (2008, p. 4) it is emphasised that FTA is based on principles such as future orientation, evidence, multiplicity of perspectives,
multidisciplinary coordination but also on a strong action orientation by supporting actors in actively shaping the future.
An ex ante assessment of future effects is always based on assumptions and simplifications. In general, these assumptions and simplifications are based on knowledge of different type.
2005, p. 1066) emphasise that, instead of forecasting methods to produce single-value deterministic images of the future,
the future is and will remain uncertain. However, as it was pointed out in the beginning of this paper,
PAGE 292 jforesight jvol. 14 NO. 4 2012 Kosow, H. and Gaßner, R. 2008),‘Methods of future and scenario analysis:
which can always influence the future; once any change has happened, a system cannot go back to where it was as the initial conditions have changed now.
and policies) and not cut off future options. But some of these options may not make any sense now they may only do so as the landscape evolves
they interact in intricate ways that continually reshape their collective future. From a foresight perspective however, Axelrod's (1985) is the most useful:
B Enable the generation of a range of future options and alternative potential strategies through both optimisation and exploration, including some that sound negative,
or more simply as reframing the future landscape and potential strategies, options, and potential policies.
Whatever we say about the future has an implicit idea of change underlying any inference
Axelrod and Cohen (2001) call it the‘‘shadow of the future''.''From the perspective of applying foresight the benefits of reframing are:
and outcomes (futures) resulting from a change process, rather than working with (in) interactions of the systems components itself.
Promoting variation can provide a response to several of the requirements of foresight techniques identified above in Section 2. For example it can contribute to generating a range of future options and alternative potential strategies through both optimisation and exploration.
and why future disruptive changes may happen in a system. It also provides insight into how foresight techniques need to be developed to perform better in complex systems to enable better decision-making and policy making.
Foresight techniques must provide policy makers with the ability to generate a range of future options
Policy making needs Foresight techniques to enable the generation of a range of future options and alternative potential strategies through both optimisation and exploration, including some that sound negative, ludicrous,
Commission on the Future of Healthcare in Canada, Ottawa. Goodwin, B. 1994), How the Leopard Changed Its Spots, Phoenix, London.
and reconstructing the future: predictive, cultural and critical epistemologies'',Futures, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 115-41.
PAGE 302 jforesight jvol. 14 NO. 4 2012 Mendonc¸A s.,Pine Cunha, M.,Kaivo-oja, J. and Ruff, F. 2004), Futures, Vol
. 36 No. 2, pp. 201-18. Mikulecky, C. 2001),‘The emergence of complexity: science coming of age
the futures community at a turning point? A comment on Jay Ogilvy's‘Facing the fold'''Foresight, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 24-34.
Miller, R. and Poli, R. 2010),‘Introduction to a Special issue on anticipatory systems and the philosophical foundations of future studies'',Foresight, Vol. 12 No. 3. Mitchell, M. 2009), Complexity:
a response to Ziauddin Sardar'',Futures, Vol. 42 No. 6, pp. 633-9. Schwartz, P. 1991), The Art of the Long View:
Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, Bantam Doubleday Dell, New york, NY. Strogatz, S. 2003), Sync:
since it allows the key characteristics concerning the state of the future to be fixed according to the goals policymakers have set to achieve.
what is considered to be highly significant to the nation's future at the time. Topics of some previous reports have included issues such as regional development and the effects of ageing of population.
which consisted of two rounds of web questionnaires and of two futures workshops, which were connected closely to each other via their phrasing of questions and goals.
Together these four elements formed an integral process where each stage produced a deeper understanding of different socio-technical interconnections that affect the way the future unfolds,
Invitations to the two futures workshops were sent to a slightly smaller group (N1 and N2 about 40.
The people invited to futures workshops were selected in co-operation with the scenario team of the Prime minister's Office
Scenarios are manuscripts of the future; they are a meta-technique not just a single method.
is a scenario coming back from the future to the present. A classical predecessor of modern backcasting is Edward Bellamy (1951) with his Table
specifying the end future state that the development paths are aiming and based on this material,
Presenting the desired end state to the expert group and asking their views on the possibilities and prerequisites for the realisation of this future state.
which climate and energy policy should focus Futures workshop October 2008 Futures workshop, ACTVOD futures process Building alternative scenarios that all fulfil the two-degree target 2nd Delphi round November 2008 Delphi:
online survey targeted for expert group (with Webropol survey software) Testing and specifying the development paths constructed in the first futures workshop:
what actions and which actors play key roles After this round the preliminary versions of the result of the scenario process,
four distinctive scenarios, are constructed Futures workshop November 2008 Futures workshop, ACTVOD futures process Analysing and specifying the four designed scenarios Final report December 2008 Final report in electronic format Report gathering together the results of the process:
four different paths for the desired end state PAGE 306 jforesight jvol. 14 NO. 4 2012 book Looking Backward 2000-1887.
which is a process of predicting the future on the basis of current trend analysis,
''Backcasting, instead, envisions futures from the opposite direction‘‘from then to now''.''Its aim is to illustrate the logical path
in order to reach a given future state. Backcasting is thus a normative method: it sets a preferred goal (Ho jer et al. 2011, p. 11.
long-term problems where trend-breaking futures are required: they call for creative and radical solutions (Hickman and Banister, 2007, p. 378.
backcasting aims to liberate images of the future from today's mental fixations and dominating trends.
but rather as a giant leap directly to the future. Then a subsequent link of logical steps preceding it is formulated.
in formulating the path from the future to present external factors need to be taken account (Robinson, 1990, pp. 830-831).
In this scenario task the participatory process was carried out as futures workshops (see chapters 2. 2 and 2. 4). Here,
i e. they are adopted in search for prerequisites for preferred futures (Robinson, 1982); and 2. growing interest towards backcasting scenarios had been shown in Finland,
and through what kind of mechanisms the future unfolds. VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012 jforesight jpage 307 First futures workshop The goal of the first futures workshop soon following the first Delphi round was to collect views
and visions on the ways to achieve the desired low-emissions future. The participants represented various fields of societal expertise such as government administration
NGOS, energy business and researchers of various fields, as well as representatives from various business areas. The results of the first questionnaire were sent in advance to those who had confirmed their participation to the workshop.
the imaginary phase (futures wheel), systematic phase (futures table) and explanatory phase (drafting an array of scenarios for sustainable Finland 2050.
Jungk emphasises that ordinary citizens should be invited to participate in futures workshops to elaborate issues that affect their lives.
regarding to climate change mitigation as well as a variety of futures visions of sustainable Finland. This material was used as building blocks for the next phase of the exercise,
Second round of Delphi questionnaire The second questionnaire was based on the material of the previous two stages (i e. the first Delphi round and the first futures workshop)
the goal of the second questionnaire was to fill in the gaps in the information required to forma solid general view of the future.
Second futures workshop By the second futures workshop the FFRC team had taken into account the results of the second round questionnaire and,
and actions leading to these futures to come back to the present from the future and go back to the future again.
The goal of the second workshop was to view, assess, and complete the scenarios. As with the first workshop, the results so far were sent beforehand to those who had confirmed their participation in the workshop.
The desire to have numerical values to compare different future paths is understandable. In a political process there is a need for practical and easily digestible information,
All in all, three evaluations of the government futures report were conducted where the scenario process was discussed also:
and two external evaluations one being the official statement given by the Committee for the Future in Parliament (2011),
The Committee for the Future (2011) supported the government foresight report. The Committee had its own analyses of the Finnish climate policy made on three aspects:
as a result of the scenario approach which provided concise narratives of long term futures with one robust national goal:
Towards a user's guide'',Futures, Vol. 38, pp. 723-39. Committee for the Future (2011), Tulevaisuusvaliokunnan mietinto 1/2010 vp.
Valtioneuvoston tulevaisuusselonteko ilmasto-ja energiapolitiikasta: kohti va ha pa a sto ista Suomea, Parliament Report by the Committee for the Future, Helsinki (in Finnish.
Dunlop, I. 2009), Club of Rome activities of Australian members, Club of Rome General assembly, 24 october, Amsterdam.
Ho jer, M.,Gullberg, A. and Petterson, R. 2011), Images of the Future City. Time and Space for Sustainable development, Springer, Dordrecht.
Jungk, R. 1987), Futures Workshops: How to Create Desirable futures, Institute for Social Invention, London. Lauttama ki, V. and Heinonen, S. 2010), Va ha isten pa a sto jen Suomi 2050.
. 1991),‘In search of an evolutionary paradigm for futures research'',Futures, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 349-72.
Robinson, J. 1990),‘Futures under glass: a recipe for people who hate to predict'',Futures, Vol. 22 No. 8, pp. 820-42.
Robinson, J.,Burch, S.,Talwar, S.,O'Shea, M. and Walsh, M. 2011),‘Envisioning sustainability:
Further reading Committee for the Future (2011), Valtioneuvoston tulevaisuusselonteko ilmasto-ja energiapolitiikasta: suosituksia ja yhteenveto kokemuksista.
and the future of communities. On these topics she has conducted several research projects and written research reports.
He has worked on a number of futures-oriented research and development projects with several Finnish ministries and security organisations and in several EU-funded research projects.
and enable future activities. To trace the emerging irreversibilities we focus on the dynamics of expectations and the agenda building processes.
nevertheless lead to significant future rigidities (in terms of technologies, applications and stakeholders). If one does not just await the outcomes,
which means that options for the future are unclear, although slowly become clear. For example, there is a visible increase in the number of linkages between the heterogeneous actors together in search of defining the newly emerging field or technology.
The future of nanotechnology has become an important topic for technology firms, policy makers and research institutes.
Here again, we see topics that relate to the very far and speculative future such as nano-systems that control
Future scientific advances might improve the architecture of nonvolatile memories and eventually to the realisation of the ideal solution (Figs. 5 and 6). The same advances might also lead to more advanced architectures for other type of computer chips (e g.,
and nonvolatile memories based on nanotubes (Fig. 8). We have shown that results of research groups directly give rise to expectations for promising applications and change the agendas for the future.
which supports the actors to formulate their views on the future. These views are directly related to the social perspectives on the new technology.
R. O. van Merkerk, H. van Lente/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1094 1111 1109 5 H. Van Lente, Forceful futures:
Contested Futures: a Sociology of Prospective Techno-Science, Ashgate Publishing company, London, 2000, pp. 43 64.6 M. Callon, Technological conception and adoption network:
34 J. W. Schot, A. Rip, The past and future of constructive technology assessment, Technology Forecasting and Social Change 54 (1997) 251 268.
Design/methodology/approach These assumptions are tested in a scenario design exercise that explores the future evolution of the sustainable development paradigm and its implications in the Spanish urban development model.
Findings Major findings are obtained on the feasibility of a systematic approach that provides anticipatory intelligence about future disruptive events that may affect the natural environment and the socioeconomic fabric of a given territory.
Keywords Territorial foresight, Scenario design, Urban planning, Sustainable development, Strategic planning, Forecasting Paper type Research paper 1. The oblivion of future studies in urban planning Since its origins in the nineteenth
century and its full development during the twentieth century, one of the key concerns of urban planning has been to foresee the future and limit uncertainty.
visionaries such as Daniel H. Burnham, Lewis Mumford and Le Corbusier made an effort to depict the future of cities in drawings and words.
The oblivion of future studies in the urban planning field was denounced several years ago by practitioners and researchers (Isserman, 1985;
are very reluctant to use future studies in their plans and projects. This withdrawal from future studies can be explained by historical reasons.
PAGE 316 jforesight j VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012, pp. 316-335, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1463-6689 DOI
The need to think about the future and formulate long-term development visions makes strategic planning a perfect client for futures studies.
future intelligence gathering and vision-building process aimed at present-day decision making and mobilising joint initiatives in the urban and territorial realm.
which enable current actions to tackle the future successfully. Figure 1 Conceptual framework for urban planning PAGE 318 jforesight jvol. 14 NO. 4 2012 4. Participation.
First, it systematises the debate about future prospects for socioeconomic development amongst a wide variety of agents by building up plausible and coherent future visions.
) The European Spatial Planning Observation Network (2007) has published also the findings of its project‘‘Scenarios on the territorial future of Europe'',in
On the other hand, when looking at the future, urban planners tend to focus on forecasting tools, disregarding most foresight methods as frivolous exercises.
The proposed approach shows the way that a future urban vision can be VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012 jforesight jpage 319 translated into practical, measurable strategies to guide territorial development in the long term.
they can be downloaded to a geographical information system (GIS) to observe future urban implications from the spatial perspective.
Since the Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as‘‘the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs''(World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987),
For most foresight practitioners, scenario development is the archetypal product of future studies because it is profoundly creative and capable of handling uncertainty.
This axis encompassed all future uncertainties related to social behaviour, economic models and public policies towards SD. 2. Horizontal axis. Showed the availability of resources needed to achieve the sustainable development goals in the future.
which each future scenario may develop. Scenario A: green paradigm (circa 2025. This scenario takes place
This goal may be achieved by analysing the in depth implications of each future scenario for functional systems, parametric indicators and spatial patterns. 4. 2 Step 2:
the proposed methodology establishes a set of functional implications that each future scenario poses for the urban planning process.
Meadows, 1998) is established to assess the potential impact of each future scenario on urban development patterns (see Table I). A base-line scenario (2010) is estimated,
Future spatial patterns are visualized through the location and extension of urban areas, transport infrastructures and open spaces in a small territory located in the northwestern periphery of the Madrid metropolitan area.
parametric and spatial implications, formulating strategies for future urban development appears to be a quite logical and deductive step in the proposed methodological approach.
which gaps between the future scenario and the present situation can be perceived easily. The identification of gaps
Interviewees were questioned systematically about their attitude toward future studies and their perceived barriers to the implementation of these studies. 2. Scenarios regarding social attitudes towards sustainable development were adopted from the foresight exercise carried out by Fundacio'n OPTI in 2007.
bringing futures into planning'',American Planning Association Journal, Vol. 67 No. 4, pp. 372-83. de Tera'n, F. 1996),‘Evolucio'n del planeamiento urbani
European Spatial Planning Observation Network (2007), Scenarios on the Territorial Future of Europe, ESPON, Belgium.
an essay on the role of the future in planning practice and education'',Town planning Review, Vol. 56 No. 4, pp. 483-91.
a new window on the future'',American Planning Association Journal, Vol. 67 No. 4, pp. 367-72.
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), Our Common Future, Oxford university Press, Oxford. World Summit for Social development (1995), Declaration and Programme of Action, World Summit for Social development, Copenhagen.
Originality/value Future-oriented legal studies are rare and, what is worse, the ones that exist lack proper methodology,
This paper attempts to fill the gap produced by this notorious lack of methodology in the legal analysis of the future
Keywords Law, Future-oriented analysis, Foresight, Scenario planning, Modelling, Strategic planning, Forecasting Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Future and Law 1 are two words that are rarely found in the same phrase.
while forgetting the future. In their efforts to establish a legal framework characterised by the fundamental values of order, stability and predictability, legislators,
Future-oriented legal studies are rare and, what is worse, the ones that exist lack proper methodology,
This paper attempts to fill the gap produced by this notorious lack of methodology in the legal analysis of the future,
and in some cases shape technological futures 2. It was used first by the European commission's (EC) Joint research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) as a common umbrella term for technology foresight
has provided a common place and platform where various communities dealing with different aspects of future envisioning (such as technology foresight,
along with the broader field of future studies) have come together to discuss and learn from each other.
and shape technological futures (Rader and Porter, 2008). In addition, this particular community of scholars and practitioners has managed also to provide a collective definition of FTA,
legislative drafting and law enforcement, will be examined. 3. 2 Legal research 3. 2. 1 Law of the Future Joint Action Programme.
the Law of the Future Joint Action Programme''(Muller et al. 2011) 7. As stated by its organizers and promoters, the project‘‘is based on the premise that prospective thinking about law is not only desirable
This programme (also denominated as The Law of the Future project LOTF) ventured into the study of the future by posing one fundamental question to the legal community of scholars and practitioners:‘‘
The consultation of experts as a methodological approach to the study of the future of law resulted in a very original and creative exercise.
but it also made possible the very first publication of a legal nature that addresses the future of law in such a broad
This innovative application of the Delphi method to Law resulted in an impressive collection of themes and visions, encompassing topics as diverse as the future of international law, national constitutional orders and private law,
along with the future of legal theory, the future of space law and the alternative futures of crime and prisons.
which tends to lead to consensual assessments of the future (Blind, 2006), the objective of these think pieces was to collect, within a legal context, a range of varied ideas about the future.
Scenario planning law scenarios for 2030. Based on the analysis of the various expert think pieces submitted,
the Law of the Future Joint Programme Action advanced to its second phase: scenario planning. This was, in fact, the strategy tool chosen by the project to reflect on alternative futures for law and legal systems.
Scenario planning constitutes one of the most common FTA METHODS used in future studies 10, as it allows experts in foresight to define their own visions of the future,
creating their own narratives and visualisations of forthcoming developments. Unlike other disciplines, such as economics and business science, scenario planning is not very common In law.
As such, the scenarios used in these few cases constituted descriptive visions of techno-futures, illustrations
and not to problematize or present alternative visions of the future. Furthermore they were not of a legal nature (of
They thus constituted isolated and factual narratives of a future technological world, which aimed to alert the policy maker to the legal implications of such prospective scenarios.
The Law of the Future project embraced scenario planning in a very distinctive manner. The idea was not to describe what the world will look like,
which legal experts were consulted for their visions of the future of Law in their respective areas.
After this preparatory phase, the Law of the Future project followed a meticulous methodology. As such, the LOTF team first identified a series of major global trends, both societal and legal.
In this respect,‘‘The Law of the Future Monitoring Mechanism''seems especially promising, as it opens the doors to the application of other FTA TOOLS to legal research,
speeding the present towards the future by providing knowledge about tomorrow through data about today.
or knowledge databases such as Wikipedia) to construct a model of society capable of simulating what the future holds for us.
the anticipation of the future is increasingly being carried out through the advanced tools that help process, search,
moreover, how the techniques used to envision the future have grown in complexity and sophistication. 3. 3. 2‘‘Future-verification''assessments.
In order to render upcoming laws as‘‘future-proof''''the obligation to perform‘‘future-verification''assessments of longstanding laws may be seen as a possible example of FTA instruments
or procedures applied to the legislative making and revision processes. Accordingly, and before a given law is enacted or revised,
legislators would need to explain both the future need and the future consequences that a particular piece of legislation would address (preferably through the support of scenario planning and/or the use of modelling analysis). In order words,
legislators would define their desirable futures in laws, using the latter as enablers of their vision of the future.
This modus operandi goes by the name of backcasting a method according to which the desired future is envisioned first and only after this,
the steps and actions to attain that future are defined. It is a process that goes backwards,
connecting the future to the present. After a given period of time, a law of this kind would go through a‘‘future verification''assessment, in
which the desired future envisaged by the legislator would be compared with the future effectively attained (that is,
the present) by this piece of legislation. 3. 4 Law enforcement Faced with increasing budgetary constraints,
which portrays a future where criminals are caught before they commit their crimes, www. imdb. com/title/tt0181689),
/‘‘predictive''analytics are intended obviously not to target individuals for future crimes that they have not yet committed
but not one of the future''(Miles and Keenan, 2003). Along these lines, I believe that Law schools would very much enrich their programs by creating the post for Professors of Legal Foresight
and by establishing the course of Legal Future (in the same way as they provide the well established and fundamental courses of Legal History).
because one could predict the future, but because: Such studies, even if only partially successful, contribute to interesting lectures, provocative teaching,
and legislators to identify future regulatory gaps and needs. These surveys constitute adequate tools to collect information
In this context, the greatest virtue of the scenario planning technique is not to predict how the future may look like,
but to allow for the future to come into being in the minds of the people of the present, that is, to allow for the future to be imagined,
communicated and problematized. Through the use of scenario planning techniques, the future leaves the realm of the unknown and the impossible, transiting to the domain of the Possible future,
in other words, becomes a hypothesis. In a more schematic way, scenarios constitute an instrument of construction, communication and problematisation of the future.
First, and regarding the constructive aspect, scenarios are building processes: they give a form to the future,
translating it into compelling narratives, stories and visions. Second, scenarios constitute channels through which such visions and narratives are communicated to larger audiences.
scenarios allow for different imagined conceptualisations of the future to be transmitted, communicated and shared. Scenarios, in brief, allow for people to‘‘access
''and‘‘learn''about the future (that is, about a particular imagined version of the latter). Third, scenarios not only build and communicate, they also problematize the future.
Through the use of this strategic tool, the future is laid down in an operation table,
being diagnosed then and scrutinized. In procedural terms, scenario planning at the meta-level conceptualises the future as an open question,
advancing then various possible answers and solutions. This is particularly so in the case of the construction of alternative scenarios, in
which the future is segmented in a number of different (and sometimes conflictive and opposing) hypothesis. In this way,
and in the legal context, the production of scenarios is extremely useful for dealing with the inexorable uncertainty of the Future 18.
rather than as a claim to know the future''(HIIL, 2011). Furthermore, the methodological integration of scenario planning with other FTA TOOLS also promises to bring important benefits to the study, drafting and enforcement of law.
By extrapolating future trends and drivers, as well as by assessing alternative visions of the future, scenario planning can be associated with modelling analysis to allow legislators to test different legal options and regulatory solutions within simulated environments.
The alternative set of visions provided by scenario planning can be used to formulate and simulate different data-models of the future world.
Jurists will then be able to assert for instance, the potential impact that different legal reforms can have applied
and simulation techniques aimed at uncovering future societal, economic and environmental trends. Through the use of modelling instruments, legislators would
not only be able to receive relevant information of future societal trends (which would certainly aid lawmakers to better determine the content, objectives and direction of their legal reforms proposals),
Still within the field of lawmaking, modelling systems could be combined with other FTA METHODS, such as backcasting and future verification procedures.
but also an improvement of the design and implementation of future policies. FTA can thus contribute to the fulfilment of these two goals,
With the incorporation of FTA instruments, the revision of laws and the design of future ones would be complemented with better quality assessment procedures.
On this point, backcasting and‘‘future verification assessments'',processes which evaluate existing laws and their performance by contrasting their initial (and desirable) visions of the future with the one effectively accomplished;
together with the use of scenarios, models and simulations to anticipate the set of possible implications that a new proposed law may produce, bear important similarities with the combination of ex ante with ex post impact assessments.
also in its enforcement phase, can benefit from the use of future-oriented methods and instruments.
and evaluated according to the future effectively accomplished. The problem we face with such proposal is how to exactly measure the performance and degree of success/failure of a given law.
in effect, came close to the future they aimed at designing and constructing? This problem, moreover, may also affect the application of fta to legal research.
Given the systemic unpredictability of the future 20, how can FTA-based or oriented laws and legal research be evaluated effectively?
The attachment of a specifc law to a given idea of Future renders the former (at least to some extent) dependent on the vicissitudes
and manipulations that may affect the production of such idea or vision of future. In other words, we may run the risk of having a specific vision of the future directly produced
in order to attain the passing of a given law. The problem we here face is the one of having foresight used as a lobbying instrument
The future, in this respect, should be envisaged in an objective and neutral way, at least as much as possible. This, one should bear in mind,
The future is the site of conflicting and competing discourses and ideologies, it is the site of politics,
Means and procedures to control the neutrality of the future when linked to legal activities should be researched further,
avoiding thus the risk of having the future (either envisaged in the form of scenario,
In this respect, future work should be conducted regarding the boundaries between Science and Law, as a way to render Law a future-oriented activity that uses scientific methods without transforming itself into one of them. 5. Conclusions This paper has proposed a new methodological approach to Law,
reflecting on the application of fta tools and methods (such as Delphi surveys, scenario planning, backcasting and modelling techniques) to the legal sphere,
Bearing inmind that the Future is ultimately unpredictable, one should always be aware that the aim of the application of fta to Law is not to foresee exactly what the future holds (which is,
moreover, impossible) or to apply in the present the most perfect laws for the future.
The aim is, instead, more modest but nonetheless important: to equip the various legal activities, from research to lawmaking, with a set of tools,
more important than foreseeing the future is to actually discuss it, or as Henry Bergson (1948) has put it:‘‘
‘‘The idea of future is more fecund than future itself''22. Notes 1. The term‘‘Law'',written in capital letters,
and prioritizing the future areas of regulation. 6. These were the cases of the future-oriented technology assessment exercises conducted during the period 1974-1995 by the US Office of Technology assessment (OTA).
The FIDIS project (Future of Identity in the Information society) aimed to shape the requirements for the future management of identity in the European Information society (EIS)
Signposting the legal space of the future. 14. A concrete example of a combination between quantitative and qualitative methods in FTA, namely between scenario and modelling analysis, can be found in the so-called International Futures (IFS.‘‘
‘‘Ifs''is integrated a large-scale global modeling system which acts as a powerful tool for the exploration of the long-term future of closely interacting policy-related issues (including human development, social change and environmental sustainability).
The central purpose of IFS is to facilitate exploration of global futures through alternative scenarios,
For two views sustaining the impossibility to anticipate the future, see Staton (2008); and Tuomi (2011.
For two views sustaining the impossibility to anticipate the future, see Staton (2008); and Tuomi (2011.
Regarding the latter paper, Tuomi reconfirms the thesis of the unpredictability of the future, arguing that foresight has missed systematically important future developments due to its reliance on categorizations
failing to grasp the truly creative and novel aspects of the future. This paper, furthermore, explores the basic ontological and epistemological concepts that underlie foresight and FTA. 21.
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and manage our future, available at: www. futurict. ethz. ch/data/Whatfuturictwilldo4media. pdf HIIL (2011),‘Law scenarios to 2030.
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