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

Got any questions?

Contact the lecturer
Dr Matthew Wraith
m.wraith@imperial.ac.uk