Futurology - Foresight and Visions

In the 1940's, after the WWII, the greatest requirement for futurology was to create a vision for a peaceful future. To support this vision the UN, body devoted to fostering international peace, was established.

In futures thinking it was also important to include socio-cultural factors, in order to face the future without famine, sickness or poverty. Democratisation was one of the key terms for this anticipation. Environmental issues for a sustainable future were also launched.

During the 1950's and 60's these ideals were swept almost entirely away. An example of this tendency is the US RAND-corporation developed Delfoi-method that was utilised almost entirely for military purposes. During these decades another prominent method to produce future-oriented knowledge was trendextrapolation that enabled production of quite predictable knowledge for economic growth, technological development, urbanisation and industrialisation factors.

In the US still during the beginning of the 1970's futurology was still strongly geared for predicting the economic growth through technological development. This outlook almost completely disregarded any societal, cultural or environmental factors when creating anticipations. In Europe, already during the 50's some critical voices to this type of futures thinking started to raise often in a literary form. Humanist as well as hermeneutic aspects started to become more prominent and they played an important role in peace-movement, demilitarisation and development research.

During the 1980's the humanist futures thinking gained more importance through global communication. The UN commission report "Our Common Future" was published. This trend has since gained even stronger popularity together with futures thinking through technological development. During the 1990's the futurists started gearing their interest in developing theories and methodologies of futurology towards the so-called complexity paradigm. Since then, through this new paradigm the multi-faceted and parallel futures of information and knowledge based societies have been studied.

Cloud Gate is the first public outdoor work of Anish Kapoor, installed in the United States. The design of the Cloud Gate is inspired by liquid mercury.

The structure of the sculpture is composed of steel plates that have been seamlessly fitted together and further polished. The sculpture weighs almost 100 tons.

Beneath the sculpture pedestrians are invited to wander through it. Cloud Gate is situated in Millennium Park, Chicago, which is also home to Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion.

image ©Anish Kapoor

' All ideas grow out of other ideas '


Anish Kapoor