Anticipatory Assumptions

Increasing our awareness of assumptions underpinning the types of futures we can use in different contexts at different times.

In the context of how we use the future in the present, Riel Miller, in Transforming the Future, Anticipation in the 21st Century (2018), identifies six anticipatory assumptions (AA) which shape how we imagine the future. He describes the assumptions as:

a descriptive mapping of the ontological and epistemological attributes of anticipatory activities … these assumptions are necessary for all ‘uses-of-the-future’ because ‘imagination’ can only be elaborated on the basis of the underlying assumptions. Conscious human AA include choices about what kind of future to anticipate and which methods to use to think about a particular kind of future. AA … may even be applied to non-conscious anticipation. In this universe, anticipation is a ubiquitous activity and the AA needed to describe the diversity of specific ‘uses-of-the-future’ covers a range of great breadth and depth.

Miller writes that we can use the future in the present to define a preferred future or to seek emergence. Each way of …