Futuring: The Exploration of the Future

By Edward Cornish

Book Overview

The most important thing happening today is not reported in newspapers or on the TV news. It’s a global transformation of technology and society that is creating an age of hyperchange. Since the future is hurtling toward us at breakneck speed, foresight is the great need of our times. We must think ahead if we are to cope with the hurricane-force changes now bashing at every aspect of our lives. This acceleration of change brings enormous opportunities as well as great dangers. Most of us know better than to drive down a highway at eighty miles an hour without looking at the road ahead. But when it comes to steering our careers and businesses, we hardly ever consider what’s coming toward us. We often wind up in a nasty "crash" that we could have avoided if we had better anticipated possible developments. This is where futuring can help. Futuring is the art and science of exploring the future. It offers methods and techniques that can help you understand trends, identify opportunities and avoid dangers. Futuring can help you understand possible future developments, make better decisions, develop worthwhile goals, and find the means to achieve them. Futuring is a powerful way to help you and your organization to create a better future. Virtually anyone can benefit from learning the skills and perspectives of futuring: * Businesspeople can anticipate profitable new markets and innovative products. * Investors can be ready to get in on the ground floor of emerging industries and new technologies. * Educators and parents can help ensure that young people are properly prepared for the new world they’ll inherit. * Students can plan out careers in highly rewarding professions. * Concerned citizens and policy makers will find practical ways to help guide their communities and organizations to a successful future. Futuring will open your eyes to the world of the future and how you can prepare for the opportunities and risks ahead. In addition, Futuring will guide you through the history of serious thinking about the future, including the development of the idea of progress in the seventeenth century to the disillusionment with progress that came in the twentieth century. You will learn how far-sighted military planners, trend-watchers in business, and scholars in think tanks developed ways to think scientifically about the future so that leaders in government and business could prepare for the opportunities and risks ahead. Now you, too, can benefit from their discoveries. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0930242572
• ISBN13: 9780930242572
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: World Future Society
• Length: 313 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Futuring

An excellent read...........hard to believe that you can get a book for a college class for under $20 new and for it to be such an enjoyable read.

Excellent Futures Overview

Ed Cornish is a leading thought leader in the futures industry and has written an excellent overview to understanding what futures work is all about. As a practicing futurist who also teaches futures forecasting, this book has been valuable for my clients and students to better understand theory, practice and methods. I would highly recommend this book for business, social or public leaders who want to know how to use the...

Futuring - Its for all of us, Its the future

First, I want to say that the topic of "futures" is not for all people. One must want to be able to think beyond and use available tools in the area of forecasting. Cornish's Futuring - The Exploration of the Future is one of those tools. Cornish truly has written a book that assists the Future's reader in forecasting the future via exposing risk and the effects of that risk on one's managing or potential management of either...

Recommended for science fiction fans

Edward Cornish is editor of The Futurist Magazine, and while his Futuring: The Exploration Of the Future could easily have been featured in our nonfiction columns, it's recommended here for science fiction fans used to considering the future. Cornish's focus is upon the trends, ideas, and innovations driving the world: his Futuring envisions the job of exploring the future as a trailblazing pioneer of prediction, considering...

A very important book

Thinking ahead is the great need of our times as the rapid pace of technological and social change affects work, home, education, health, amusements, environment and even religion. Futuring helps to understand trends, identify opportunities, and avoid dangers; it is a powerful way for individuals and organizations to create a better future. We cannot predict the future in detail but long-term shifts in population, land use,...