Projecting the Future: Foresight Frameworks Through Cinematic Artifacts
Hollywood has spent a century imagining the future. Some of those futures have already arrived. Most reveal more about the anxieties of the present than any credible forecast. This session treats science fiction films as foresight artifacts. We will watch clips, categorize the futures they portray using Jim Dator's Four Futures framework, then dissect those futures using Causal Layered Analysis to uncover the assumptions, systems, and myths buried underneath. The audience drives the conversation. Your phone captures the room's reaction in real time via Mentimeter.
The Approach:
Every film gets two analytical passes: Dator's Four Futures categorizes the film. Jim Dator, one of the founders of academic futures studies, argues every vision of the future falls into one of four archetypes: Growth (the system works and scales), Discipline (society imposes control), Collapse (systems fail), or Transformation (the rules themselves change). One of the session's hypotheses: Hollywood gravitates heavily toward Collapse and Discipline and largely avoids the other two. Causal Layered Analysis dissects the film. Developed by Sohail Inayatullah, CLA peels any issue through four layers: the surface narrative (what happens in the plot), the systemic structures that produced this future, the worldview assumptions the film takes for granted, and the myths or metaphors driving the story underneath. The panelist delivers this as a real foresight reading. The audience responds.
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3564000-0
Booking: https://go.evvnt.com/3564000-2
