Time’s Calling: Time, Timing, and Transformation in Futures Work

Abstract

Futurists work with time, yet we rarely consider the full implications of what this means. It could equally be said that futurists work within time, navigating the cultures and ecologies of time that shape the worlds they seek to enable. The most interesting result of this way of looking at what futurists do, with and within time, is that it opens up a space for human action that is creative and reflexive. Futurists work with time not because their work concerns the future but because they are interested in change. Change is the work of heads, hands, and hearts over time. It is the result of both accident and intention and dominates our experience of Modernity. The futurist enters a change-context to help individuals, organizations, and communities enhance their adaptive potential. This paper works with thinking about time from a futures perspective. My goal is to drill down into the temporal inventiveness of futures work by dwelling on the linguistic and conceptual aspects of temporal discourse. What really interests me in this is how futurists can leverage a variety of temporal concepts to better achieve their goal of making elements of time, timing, and transformation explicit to their clients and students.