Anticipatory Democracy and Aspirational Futures

Anticipatory Democracy

Anticipatory democracy is Alvin Toffler's prescription for humanity's response to the challenges of the future in his 1970 bestselling book, Future Shock. A few years after Future Shock was published, he asked me to edit a book, Anticipatory Democracy, which reviewed experiments in looking ahead and involving the public. In his introduction Toffler wrote: "The simplest definition of anticipatory democracy ... is that it is a process for combining citizen participation with future consciousness" (Bezold, 1978)...

Aspirational Futures

The aspirational futures model has much in common with other approaches to visioning. For example, being aware of the "plausible" and the "preferable" is critical. The plausible considers what might happen, whereas the preferable considers what we want combined with some commitment to making it happen. Scenarios offer a powerful way to explore plausible future space, what is expectable and challenging, and to imagine paths to visionary outcomes. Developing scenarios that explore the expectable, challenging and visionary paths is a feature that distinguishes our aspirational futures approach to scenario development from others...