2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
Combined with the paradigm shift which will come to the social sciences, will be the ability of society to do almost anything it wants to do; unlimited by the resource constraints which have traditionally applied.
The net result will be that, in society - as described in the social sciences - what will happen in the future will be what society decides will happen! This may not always be an obvious process - certainly not for the first few years, until everyone realises what is happening - but the future will be made by decisions, albeit often by the unconscious ones of many millions of individuals.
Some parts of the future will, though, clearly be made by a relatively few deliberate decisions; such as the moves into space and the federations of states - but such deliberate decisions will in general be the most important ones, and are the ones on which this database concentrates.
Where no such obvious decision-making process exists, or even where it does, the best measure of what is likely to be decided - by the consensus - is in the expectations of those making up that consensus (rather than their wishes, which is often what current research measures). The future can, therefore, be planned; taking into account the consensual expectations of those whose future it is.
The paradox is, therefore, that by abandoning the notion of mathematical predictability, which had led to uncertainty because nobody could determine the equations, we can now predict the future, merely be observing the present! This is, of course, the major assumption underlying the conclusions reached in this database.
16 May 2003
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