Stories of the future - science fiction, foresight and the future

Royal Dutch Shell is the pioneer of the Scenario Planning process. From their website:

Scenarios provide alternative views of the future. They identify some significant events, main actors and their motivations, and they convey how the world functions. Building and using scenarios can help us explore what the future might look like and the likely changes of living in it.

There is a natural cross over between Scenarios and Science Fiction. Both seek to create ‘future histories’ through narrative which allow us to explore future worlds and what they may hold for. IIt’s not uncommon for science fiction writers to be used to write the narratives for the scenario planning process.

For more info visit http://www.shell.com/scenario

To quote from the KurzweilAI.net website:

Wild Cards are low-probability, extremely high-impact events that are social and technological developments or natural phenomena sharing four characteristics. Wild Cards are:

* global in scope and directly effect the human condition;
* potentially disruptive (negatively and/or positively);
* intrinsically beyond the control of any single institution, group or individual; and
* rapidly moving.

Developing an understanding of such events (and trust me….there is lots of literature on the web about them. Everything from meteors hitting earth to global communication meltdowns) can help SF writers (and everyone else) explore the future.

Read more at http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0138.html?