William Gibson’s glorious observation that “the future is already here; it is just not evenly distributed” is one of the best arguments I know for high quality ethnographic research. Undertake enough observation and you will start to get user insights about what the future will be.

Nevertheless, it is always useful to get a helping hand when it comes to predicting the future. I am no great fan of “futurology”; it always seems either too simplistic (extend the trend) or too complex (study the chicken entrails).

Courtesy of those brilliant people at Experientia I was directed to a recent collection of papers called Sigma and Delta foresight scans that look ahead at developments over the next 50 years. The research was commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation’s Horizon Scanning Centre, and complied by futures researchers, Outsights-Ipsos Mori partnership and the US-based Institute for the Future (IFTF).

The papers look forward at emerging trends in science, health and technology. As well as assessing the current state of thinking they also examine the possible implications for society. The sites are clunky but the insights are very sound.

Posted by: Toby Scott

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 11:31 am and is filed under R&D, Report, User Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.