For our Season 3 launch, the Futures Hub podcast moves from naming trends to working with tensions.
Rather than predicting what’s next, this episode invites listeners into a personal futures practice designed to help make sense of the futures we’re already living inside.
Listeners are invited to hold one future they care about and move through a series of tools, guided by three core tensions impacting many futures today:
- moral urgency vs. material capacity
- forward motion vs. remembering
- individual vs. collective agency
This episode adapts tools from management, foresight and systems thinking and offers them to listeners for private reflection, establishing a longer arc of shared sensemaking across the season.
The episode is designed to be paused. It is best experienced slowly. Grab a paper and pen, or download the complementary Season 3 Tensions Map here to as a companion for your experience.
Timestamps
00:50 – The Importance of Tensions in Foresight
03:41 – How to Listen to this Episode
06:24 – Reflecting on a Desired Future
07:25 – Tension 1: Urgency vs Capacity
11:43 – Tension 2: Forward Motion vs Remembering
15:30 – Tension 3: Individual vs Collective Agency
19:50 – Weaving the Collective Tapestry
People, Organizations & Initiatives Mentioned in This Episode
- Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning by Rittel and Webber
- Futures Room by Futures Hub
- Impact vs. Effort Matrix
- Causal Layered Analysis by Inayatullah
- Actor-Network Theory
- Design Journeys through Complex Systems by Kristel Van Ael and Peter Jones (check out the Actants Map on p. 9 of the downloadable templates for the source of inspiration for Exercise 3)