Futures Thinking

How do we address the Future of the Future? Sunday National, 29 June 2025 Gerry Hassan How we perceive the future is central to how we organise society, government, democracy and power. Thinking about the future has always been part of being human, since we first began organising and living in complex civilisations and cultures. However, there is now a growing feeling that the very idea of the future – how we think, imagine and act upon it – is in deep crisis affecting how we reflect and behave in the present and see our capacity to bring about change.

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Making our own collective future in Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday National, January 3rd 2021        Until it arrived, 2020 was seen by many as a symbol of the future. It was a benchmark and distant date with destiny – aided by phrases like ‘2020 vision’. But 2020 didn’t feel like the future that had been predicted - or like any other year. This is a salutary lesson. Much of the future is always surprising, unimagined and unpredictable - while other parts are predictable or ‘inevitable surprises’. To think, dream and conceive of the future is part of what

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Fear of a Red Planet: The World in 2050 Today! Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, January 8th 2011 The future is going to work out fine. Beyond the crash, uncertainties and ‘unknown unknowns’. We have it from no less an authority than HSBC and their ‘The World in 2050’. It is going to be alright for the world, for the West and Britain, which is despite all the problems and competition still going to be a Top Nation in 2050! Forty years on world economic output will have tripled, food and water scarcity will be avoided and Malthusian predictions proved wrong

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