ANTICIPATION

 

PREDICTING FUTURE…

Mainly in Europe, after its «Renaissance» intellectual movement (15th-16th centuries), the «Modern» cumulative increase of knowledge in very different fields and directions and the subsequent advance of science and technology – a process strongly increased and supported by a colonial global course of expansion – led to profound cultural ruptures and social changes, deeply affecting common people’s way of living.

The inside perception of such a powerful movement has been a challenge to figure out how a future world and its societies would become; and, since middle of the 18th century, several essays have been made attempting to anticipate that new and different world to come…

That process started earlier, with Roger Bacon (ca.1220-ca.1292) and his insights from a future world where knowledge based on experimental science would lead to deep social and cultural changes.

Roger Bacon (ca.1220-ca.1292)

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)

Jean Bodin (1530-1596)

From the fictional descriptions of different and better societies, as those proposed by Thomas Moore in his «Utopia» («Eutopia») or …

 

—

—

The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man’s ability to invent which has made human society what it is. The mental processes of inventions are still mysterious. They are rational but not logical, that is to say, not deductive.

[Dennis Gabor in: “Inventing the Future”, 1963]

Such kind of exercises are based on projecting how science, technology, economy and other cultural and social aspects could develop in times to come.

Substantially different from them are those other kind of procedures intending to shape a future ideal society into a predefined mold.

such as those developed by …

According to the the low or high possibility of their achievement and/or to the emphases given to positive or negative aspects of the predictions,
anticipations can be assumed as:

UTOPIA
a non-existing place to live in; an imaginary place where one can figure out a good – though impossible – future life

• SOCIETY
• SCIENCE
• TECHNOLOGY

EUTOPIA
an imaginary place to live in; a pleasant place where one can figure out a future enjoyable life

• SOCIETY
• SCIENCE
• TECHNOLOGY

DYSTOPIA
a bad imaginary place; an inadequate place where one can figure out a future unsuitable life

• SOCIETY
• SCIENCE
• TECHNOLOGY