Forecasting the Future: Our Future, Your Future

Narrating the future, picturing the future

Module details

  • Offered to 1st years
  • Tuesdays 16.00-18.00
  • 8 weeks (autumn term only)
  • Planned delivery: On-campus (South Kensington)
  • Non-credit only
How to enrol

The world is changing and changing at an accelerating rate. Graduates need to prepare for the world as it will be, rather than the world as it currently is. The trouble is almost all depictions of the world in the future are wrong - sometimes hilariously wrong. But, however absurd past predictions can sometimes seem in hindsight, creating workable models of the future is and will always be an urgent imperative.

This module is an introductory course to scenario-building, inviting you to study technological, political and economic trends in a serious, evidence-based way, but also to use your imagination to its fullest extent to think through the consequences of innovations. We will be using materials devised by Imperial’s Tech Foresight team, together with a range of visual, literary and cinematic depictions of future worlds.

The module will not tell you for certain what will happen in the future, but will give you some data of current trends, some imaginative prompts and starting points, and some techniques for forecasting. You will be asked to construct plausible scenarios for the future in order to make sure you are ready for a world radically different from this one.

Information blocks

Learning outcomes

By the end of this module you will be able to:

  • Use data of current trends to build plausible scenarios for the future
  • Demonstrate the interconnection between politics, economics, society, technology etc. (PESTLE), in order to show how changes in one can affect the others in the future
  • Critique fictional and speculative accounts of the future, taken from a range of different media
  • Make an informed choice of how you might orient your own career in the light of these possibilities

Indicative core content

The Prediction business:

  • Forecasting techniques
  • Tech Horizons
  • Work and Money
  • Anarchy and Order: the politics of the future
  • Cities and dwellings

Putting it all together. Narrating the future, Picturing the future.

Learning and teaching approach

Classes will be given face-to-face on campus. They will be largely student led, with a short teacher-led presentation, followed by group-work and final whole-class discussion. A wealth of material will be given to students to discuss in groups and they can select, as a group, which topics they wish to concentrate on.

Informal formative feedback on your progress will be provided in class by your lecturer throughout the course. Verbal feedback will also be provided on the early sections of your final speculative exercise, which will be started in class. Marks and written feedback on the completed version of this final assessment will be provided via our VLE platform, normally within two weeks of submission.

Assessment

  • Coursework (100%)

A written, critical speculative forecasting exercise based on established scenario building techniques. 1000 words, to be started in class and handed in the week following the end of term.

Key information

  • ECTS value: 0
  • Requirements: You must be prepared to attend all classes and to spend about an hour a week preparing for each session.
  • This module is designed as an undergraduate Level 4 course. For an explanation of levels, view the Imperial Horizons Level Descriptors page.‌