How will human societies evolve in the rest of the 21st century? Can credible scenarios be proposed? Which realistic narratives can engage people in building positive futures?
These questions are addressed by the 2100 Foundation and the French Foresight Society (Société Française de Prospective) revisiting a “Narrative of the Century” published in 1990 – a study of which the predictions have so far been relatively accurate (2100 – Récit du prochain siècle, coordinated by Thierry Gaudin, published by the French Ministry of Research).
For this new work, we have identified and documented megatrends, challenges and bifurcations concerning climate, technology, geopolitics, anthropology and demography – among other things. Differing collective choices made at several crossroads lead to contrasted trajectories for Mankind at the 2100 horizon.
The objective is to propose several scenarios (rather than a single one, as in the 1990 book), and then to invite groups in the international foresight community to elaborate their own narratives, particularly in relation to the regions where they live.
We propose to facilitate such a narrative exercise in the context of the WFSF’s 50th-anniversary conference. The exercise would take place within a 3-hour session with a few groups of 20-40 participants willing to experiment with narrative techniques, stimulated by savvy facilitators.
This WFSF experiment would help improve scenarios, make them more diverse, and shape a broader dissemination of the project towards a variety of international fora – using both distance and face to face events.