Managing the Future: A Guide to Forecasting and Strategic Planning in the 21st Century

Stephen M. Millett Managing the Future: A Guide Forecasting and Strategic Planning in the 21st Century Axminster Devon, UK: Triarchy Press, 2011.Reviewed by Howard A. Doughty.The future isn't what it used be in the days of speculative fiction in the manner of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. It's not even like the worlds of the often pessimistic Harlan Ellison, or of preternatural optimists like Buckminster Fuller, Walt Disney and Dr. Tomorrow. There's an added layer of darkness in the lens. We are more attuned postmodern films and novels which detach us from historical narratives altogether and transform us into cyborgs of various sorts.Comfortable Enlightenment-era assumptions about ending tyranny and ignorance, poverty and disease are not taken terribly seriously anymore. More likely, we identify postmodern apocalyptic horsemen when we choose think about such matters at all.Our world is becoming more and more complicated. And, although no one doubts the importance or the impact of technological innovations from supercollider-superconductors in the quest for the God particle emerging nanotechnology, we are more familiar with the limited literacy that is forced upon us by hand-held electronic communications devices. Restricted 140-character versions of reality, the global conversation on the Internet now affirms the triumph of banality while simultaneously invading what used be called privacy and establishing surveillance systems for massive corporations-both public and private-which is not quite what Marshall McLuhan may have meant when he invited us frolic in boundless global village. We are living the future day-by-day and most of us do not grasp even its most obvious features.The verb to is also slippery. A quick perusal of my modest collection of print and pixelized dictionaries assures me that it has a good deal do with exercising control. The implied degree and kind of control, however, varies.At its most formidable, involves domination:* In labour relations management rights are typically those aspects of an organization that are wholly within the purview of the executives of an enterprise or their delegates and outside the influence of trade unions-never mind individual employees;* Management may also involve the legalities of administration in, for instance, cases like estate supervision where, for a fee, a firm of lawyers and accountants may be empowered take care of the assets of a deceased person, assume the obligation exercise fiduciary responsibilities, and act in the best interest of the beneficiaries of a last will and testament and not itself;* in medicine, physicians are said manage a patient by providing diagnosis and treatment, even in the case of a terminal disease; and,* in common language, we may find not success but merely survival be the best possible outcome, as in I managed survive the sinking of the ship, despite having been alone at sea for many hours before rescue.With such an array of possibilities, what does it mean manage the future? Do we expect a guidebook for forecasting and strategic planning predict otherwise unanticipated events and circumstances. Should we think that we can be told how dominate our environment years or decades hence? Or, is it enough explain how foretell and desperately avoid immediately impending disasters, or see opportunities that we can exploit our advantage next week, month or year?I have been reading books by alleged futurists for close fifty years and, speak plainly, most of them can generously be called scams and shams. That does not, of course, mean that they have not been influential. Some of the popular titles which admittedly rose slightly above the level of snake-oil are:* Future Shock (1970) by Newt Gingrich's favourite public intellectual, Alvin Toffler;* The Coming of Postindustrial Society by Daniel Bell, who famously declared. …

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