Academic literature on the topic 'Foresight literacy'

Public interests in coming futures of Korea continue to be increasing. Fears on uncertainties and pending challenges as well as demands on a new but Korea-own development model trigger a quantitative increase of futures research and relevant organizations in both public and private. The objective of this paper is to review history of futures studies and national development plan and strategy linked with foresight along with its challenges and recommendations. This paper identifies drawbacks and limits of Korea foresight such as misapplication of foresight as a strategic planning tool for modernization and economic development and its heavy reliance on government-led mid- and long-term planning. As a recommendation, an implementation of participatory and community-based foresight is introduced as a foundation for futures studies in Korea. A newly established research institute, the National Assembly Futures Institute, has to be an institutional passage to deliver opinions of the public, a capacity-building platform to increase the citizen’s futures literacy, and a cooperative venue for facilitating a participation and dialogue between politicians, government officials, and researchers.

Despite the accelerated dynamics of the environment, higher education institutions slowly update their curricula in entrepreneurship education according to global challenges and market needs. Moreover, knowledge and good practice exchanges between educators of futures studies, business representatives, and academics is limited. This article aims to present a methodology for prototyping an online course for individuals to become more future-oriented in their professional and personal settings. The main research problems tackled by the authors relate to: 1) the identification of competences that would help academics, entrepreneurs, and students to deal with uncertainty and to 2) convey the competences to the target groups through learning topics selected from futures studies and the entrepreneurship repertoire. The authors of the article undertook and coordinated theoretical and empirical research on foresight and Futures Literacy and its correspondence with entrepreneurship within the beFORE project funded under the Erasmus+ program’s Knowledge Alliance scheme. The research process resulted in the identification of 12 key competence items and the development of a free, approximately 34-hour-long online course consisting of seven self-standing modules, 25 lessons, and 79 learning topics corresponding to these competences. The originality of the paper is in its contribution to the discussion on the competences and online course content that efficiently increase the capacities of using the future(s) in professional, academic, and personal settings.

This article reviews the research approaches, the object of which is future as an element of relevant social reality. The author familiarizes the Russian audience with such trends in studying future as “realization of future”, “orientation towards future”, “foresight”, “projectivity”, “futures literacy”, “anticipation”, and “image of future”. An original interpretation is given to the concept “image of future” as a reflective of collective representations of future that imply a complete or almost complete picture, but yet non-existent social reality.  The author examines the existing methodologies for studying the images of future and proposes the original one – comprehensive humanity analysis, which allows finding common denominator of social expectations in various types of sources. Unlike other angles of viewing the representations on future, the image of future enables reconstructing the pictures of future that functioned in the past, ant correlate them with realistic future. Examination of the image of future allows assessing the inclusion of society into time perspective, its attitude towards the present, level of content with reality, as well as particularize the perceptions of the purpose of social development and social values, within which it exists. Studying the images of future functioning in the past can also help to understand the connection between representations on future and future itself; and in case of establishing such connection it can be extrapolated upon the images of the future of our present and our future.

The author of the article assesses the special editorial vision of Nikolay Nekrasov, from the first works of the future great writer who saw his sight in Leo Tolstoy, and in Nikolay Strakhov – a person close to literature, but who initially had the makings of a critic, not an artist of the word. The article notes the special merit of Nikolay Nekrasov in the discovery of new talents and support of novice writers, we analyse the manner and specificity of the first works of Leo Tolstoy and Nikolay Strakhov, sent to Nikolay Nekrasov's journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary). The author of the work turns to the origins of the literary path of the writer and critic, denotes their peculiar convergence in themes: both novice authors were strongly influenced by the sentimental tradition and were attentive to spiritual quests, but that at the same time explains the difference in the talent of Leo Tolstoy and Nikolay Strakhov, which manifested itself even in relation to their own first works of fiction, as can be judged by their letters to Nikolay Nekrasov.

It is common knowledge that history repeats itself! Maybe not literally, but patterns of behaviour likely dependent of the human nature, are probably prone to repeat themselves. So, one may wonder if looking back could help us prepare for a better future. Moreover, by looking back at the history of people and societies, we should all be able to have a better understanding of why things happen the way they do. This seldom happens, and when it does, it is happening within very limited circle of the society such as scholars and some politician circles, rarely overflowing to the whole society.The point is that, what we see today is not very different from what has happened in the past. Let us go back to November 13, 1460, the day Prince Henry the Navigator, passed away in Sagres, leaving Portugal with an enormous debt. Despite that fact, Prince Henry was the “guiding force behind Portugal’s assimilation of nautical knowledge and its vast extension of maritime exploration for nearly four decades” (Kock, 2003, p.59). It is interesting that by that time intellectual property was already being managed. (...)

Wisdom is foresight. Philosophical thought of Seneca the Younger about the virtue of prudentiaOne of the most important themes in the literary legacy of Seneca, a Roman stoic philosopher and tutor of young Nero, is the science on virtues. Withing its aretology there is the virtue of prudence, prudentia, whose definition is: facienda providere. By way of example, we may understand it as predicting the effects of, for instance, enacting a specific law. The virtue of prudentia refers also to proper counseling, actually in different situations: prudentia suaserit; it recommends to make good use of present times, to care for the future, think and deliberate. To live prudently means to live for the moment, to take advantage of our life time of in a good way.

В данной статье рассматривается экзегеза текстов книги пророка Иеремии (1, 5 и 7, 18) в сочинениях Оригена разных периодов его богословско-философской и эгзегетической деятельности. Эти тексты Ориген использует в качестве библейских свидетельств для обоснования трёх положений своего учения, взятых из платоновской философии: одушевлённости небесных светил, предсуществовании душ их телам, предвидении Божием. В более ранний александрийский период своей литературной активности Ориген в произведении «О началах» даёт им христианское понимание и даже пытается сделать церковным учением. В кесарийский период, напротив, он отходит от положений платонизма и рассматривает данные тесты Иеремии, в особенности Иер. 1, 5, с позиции церковного учения в традиционном библейском контексте, понимая их как свидетельства учения о божественном предвидении. В статье рассматриваются сочинения двух вышеуказанных периодов деятельности Оригена, в которые александриец, истолковывая Иремию, приходит к разным богословским выводам. При помощи данной методологии исследования автор статьи стремится показать эволюцию доктринальных взглядов Оригена и его экзегезы. This article discusses the exegesis of the texts of the book of the prophet Jeremiah (1, 5, 7, 18) in the writings of Origen from different periods of his theological-philosophical and exegetic activities. These texts Origen uses as biblical evidence to justify the three provisions of his teachings, taken from Plato’s philosophy: the animate of stars, the pre-existence of souls to their bodies, the foresight of God. In the earlier аlexandrian period of his literary activity Origen in the work «On the principles» gives them a Christian understanding and even tries to make the Church teaching. In the caesarean period, on the contrary, he departs from the provisions of Platonism and considers these tests of Jeremiah, in particular Jer. 1, 5, from the standpoint of Church doctrine in the traditional biblical context, understanding them as evidence of the doctrine of divine foresight. The article deals with the works of the above two periods of Origen, in which the Alexandrian begins to interpret these texts of Jeremiah, coming to different theological conclusions. With the help of this research methodology, the author seeks to show the evolution of the doctrinal views of Origen and his exegesis.

Many people do not like thinking about the future. If they do, over 50% of Canadians think “our way of life” (p. 7) will end within 100 years and over 80% of Canadians think “we need to change our worldview and way of life if we are to create a better future for the world” (Randle & Eckersley, 2015, p. 9). There is a good reason for this. Alarms have sounded over global urgent complex problems with potential for catastrophic consequences such as the development of artificial intelligence, climate change, mass extinction, nuclear war and pandemics (Marien & Halal, 2011). Society is also increasingly fragmenting as imminent crises build on lack of understanding, the sense of incapacity to act, fear, distrust, blame and a lack of hope. This struggle for humanity’s survival is complicated by the turbulent global environment in which institutions continue to follow path-dependent trajectories set forth in a different time and context. Governments at various levels face a problem of “fit” between current structures and processes, that have not progressed sufficiently to meet changing needs of a global society mired in complexity and governance challenges. However, hope exists. Incremental progress on many fronts and a massive amount of efforts and resources are being engaged worldwide. There are emerging fields, lenses and tools that can potentially alleviate complex problems and address this emergency. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand and assess dialogue-based foresight practices being applied towards complex problems in Canada to provide insights into how these practices can assist society to alleviate global urgent complex problems and their impacts, within this backdrop of looming crises. Foresight, alternatively known as future studies or scenario-building, is a forward-looking practice recognized and used globally with over 100 research organizations focused on foresight, widespread usage by firms and over 18 countries involved in foresight activities (Berze, 2014b). Overall literature findings suggest foresight is widely and at least incrementally effective with a number of impacts in various areas (Calof, Miller, & Jackson, 2012; March, Therond, & Leenhardt, 2012; Meissner, Gokhberg, & Sokolov, 2013) but the extent of this effectiveness, the mechanisms involved, and the specific foresight benefits per type of project needs further research and evidence. For instance, limited literature exists on whether foresight can transform complex situations and if so, under what conditions. Thus, opportunities exist for assessing and increasing foresight’s impact. This dissertation is a contextualized, systematic empirical study that taps into transdisciplinary literature and practice, case studies of how foresight has been used to address specific types of complex problems in Canada, as well as surveys and interviews with foresight experts and participants. This dissertation uses a foresight community scan and a comparative case study approach to provide practical and theoretical benefits to foresight and complex problem area stakeholders. The research focuses on studying the broad interactions of foresight and identifying the impacts of dialogue-based foresight projects on people and the outcomes of complex problems. The dissertation concludes that dialogue-based foresight is a valuable and unique practice for ameliorating complex problems and their consequences. Insights are offered towards dialogue-based foresight’s potential contributions within the context of other efforts directed at humanity’s struggle for survival and global complex problems. These insights can then foster the further development and application of dialogue-based foresight on a global scale to alleviate complex problems and their effects. The dissertation outlines recommendations on key next steps to realize these potential contributions.
Graduate

This chapter links the period’s visions of the far future with modernism’s engagement with deep time in order to show how the big historicising that begins in the nineteenth century is not solely about the expansion of historicity but the multiplicity and alternative futurity that follows from it. While the heterochrony of modernist temporal zoom includes the dissolution characteristic of immense expansions of perspective, it is not centred solely on the absorption of a small frame into some more certain, fundamental backdrop. The incongruity between the aesthetic’s imperative to scale itself to what we care about and the immensity of things that can only be registered from far away – temporal hyperobjects, speculative outsides, far-futural risks – is valuable not only for the critique of modernity’s compressed timescapes that it enables, but also for the way it reveals the plurality of times that cannot be nested within one another. This chapter constructs a relationship between genre fiction’s scope and modernism’s long-range aesthetics – the connection between SF’s literal movement away from earthly temporal units (days,years, events, lives, the career of the human as such) and modernist attempts to picture human life from an estranging distance.