The Future of Futurists, Futurology and Crystal Ball Technology

The buzz: Futurists are people who attempt to predict the future – authors, consultants, thinkers, organizational leaders and others who engage in interdisciplinary and systems thinking to advise private and public organizations on diverse global trends, possible scenarios, emerging market opportunities and risk management. Futurists are motivated by change. Not content merely to describe or forecast, they desire an active role in world transformation. Futurology is concerned with ‘three P's and a W’, i.e., ‘possible, probable, and preferable’ futures, plus ‘wildcards’, which are low-probability, high-impact events. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin distinguished futurology – the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists – from novelists, whose ‘business is lying.’” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist We’ll ask futurists Mike Bechtel, Frank Diana, Tom Raftery and Alexandra Whittington for their take on The Future of Futurists, Futurology and Crystal Ball Tech.