Future thinkers: 'We are all a bit of a director of the future'

This time of year calls for looking back but also for looking forward. Perhaps you have good resolutions. Exercise more often or use the car less? Or, you are planning a vacation, will you fly or not? It all affects the future. And we are gloomy about that future. For example, figures from the Social Cultural Planning Agency (SCP) show that some 60%, 3 out of 5 inhabitants, are pessimistic about the future of our country. This negative feeling can lead to the view of not influencing the future. For instance, young people believe that the government and companies have much more influence on the future than their parents and themselves, according to research by research firm Motivication.

To find out exactly how we can then change our view of the future, I spoke with several future thinkers who participated in the recently launched National Future Course. This is the first article in a series of three stories. Today, we speak with Rudy van Belkom and Roanne van Voorst.

Medicine against despondency

“Future thinking is actually about today. Today, you prepare for tomorrow because if you don't do that until tomorrow, you will be too late,” says Rudy van Belkom, director of the Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek (Future Vision of Technology Foundation, STT). “Even if you do nothing, you have influence.” He says this gloomy sense of the future, prevalent in society, can lead to “collective apathy” and a “passive society.” “A society that doesn't dream anymore.”

To turn the tide, Van Belkom initiated a National Future Course. Trend watchers, strategists, futurologists, scenario thinkers, transition managers, and speculative designers contributed, and the course has been available online for free since November of this year. Working on the course was connective, Van Belkom says. “The course is a medicine against despondency.”

Rudy van Belkom

Big and small visions of the future

More hope is needed in this time of various crises, says Van Belkom. The course is therefore designed to raise future awareness. “Future literacy,” he calls it, is the ability to relate to the unpredictability of what is yet to come. This is not so much about predicting the future and whether or not those predictions will come true. “It is primarily about preparing for possible scenarios and proactively working toward desirable futures.”

That picture of the future can be anything. Small, big, near, far. “Having trouble with money matters and deciding to start saving, for example. Or an organization like the Department of Public Works considering what bridge maintenance should look like in the next 30 years. How will we move around, and what kind of bridges will be needed? Or an Elon Musk who wants to go to Mars because he thinks it will be too hot on Earth in a few million years, and we won't be able to live here anymore. That all falls into future thinking.”

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Future awareness as a skill

Van Belkom was challenged by Brave New World Conference founder Alexander Mouret with the question: shouldn't there be - like a National AI Course - a National Future Course? Van Belkom sees many similarities in how people view AI and the future. “There is quite a bit of noise and also some fear when it comes to those topics,” he says.

At the annual Brave New World conference, which deals with topics at the intersection of technology, art, and science, Van Belkom provided an interactive session with the audience in 2022. To do so, he drew on a future consciousness test developed by researchers at the Finland Futures Research Centre and the University in Turku, Finland.

According to this so-called Futures Consiousness Profile Database, future consciousness consists of five dimensions that can be learned and measured. For example, the ability to view time: Are you aware of the past, the present, and the future and how events follow each other in time? And do you believe that your actions affect the future? Are you open to alternatives?

Van Belkom used the test to see what it would yield. He asked the audience if they thought about the future and to what extent they felt they could influence it. Those questions mostly led to a lot of resistance. People wondered if a poor score meant they were not future-aware and what that meant. It might be better to teach people the skills involved in being future-aware. Thus, the seed for the course was planted.

Incredibly sad

To test whether a National Futures Course could count on support, Van Belkom then knocked on the door of Roanne van Voorst, futures anthropologist, president of the Dutch Future Society (DFS), and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam.

She is currently in Paraguay for a large-scale international study on the increasing use of AI among doctors. Because the network connection is poor and calling is impossible, she gives her answers via WhatsApp.

Van Voorst agrees that young people, in particular, “have very little belief that they can shape the future.” “In part, of course, it is also true,” Van Voorst says. “I can indeed, unfortunately, not make the war in Gaza stop.” What matters, she says, is that people begin to feel “in a realistic way” what they do have control over.

Van Voorst says the cynicism among young people also makes them “incredibly sad.” “It's a nasty way of life if you believe it doesn't matter what you do because the future is already determined. Besides, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you believe that taking action makes no sense, you won't do anything. And then we know for sure that nothing will change.”

Cross-section of society

So, yes, Van Voorst certainly saw fit to take the course. According to their website, DFS even considers the National Future Course a gift to the Netherlands. People could participate for free, and all the experts contributed free of charge. Van Voorst: “I think it's important that people know what they do have a grip on. They feel they can make the world more beautiful or friendly, even by participating in a neighborhood project. Those small projects often make people happy, too. It gives inspiration and courage.”

Another reason Van Voorst felt the course needed to be created was because today's “future-thinking field” is still far too exclusive. “It is a wonderful field. It teaches governments, for example, to think further ahead. It thinks about how companies can become more sustainable. It initiates radical changes. That is now done by - fortunately through an ever-growing group - professional future thinkers. In that, not everyone is represented; we are mainly with white, older, highly educated people.”

Instead, Van Voorst wants a cross-section of society as future thinkers, including very young people. “I always find it so crazy that we talk a lot about our young people; we see them as the generation that will solve climate change. That puts a mountain of responsibility on their shoulders anyway, while we often don't involve them in policy-making.”

Roanne van Voorst

Taking young people seriously

That's why the team of The National Future Course commissioned the research firm Motivication to survey the image of the future among young people. With the course, the creators want to meet the implicit call of young people to take the future, and therefore young people, seriously.

The course moves from awareness to insight, giving participants concrete practice skills and applications. To properly construct the curriculum, Van Belkom and Van Voorst knocked on the door of Tessa Cramer, lecturer in Designing the Future at Fontys University of Applied Sciences. Sessions followed with various future thinkers who eventually developed nine modules.

Loving the future

Van Belkom's motivation for making such an effort to become more future-aware is to help people see that the future can also be hopeful. “We can start loving the future a little more,” he says. He acknowledges by nature that he likes structure, control, and overview. It's pretty antithetical to future thinking, especially since it's also often associated with uncertainty.

“I have a lot of trouble accepting that we see something coming but still let it happen,” Van Belkom explains. He cites the last century's Delta Works as an example. Implementing the well-founded plan an engineer suggested in the 1930s took a flood. “Even though the future cannot be predicted, not everything is a surprise. The choices we make now determine the future. I don't know what it looks like, but I know what I do matters. I also want to convey that realization to others: we are not victims but directors of our choices.”

It is clear to me that I, too, play a role in making the future look brighter. But how do I play that role? What should I do and especially not do? That is reason enough to take the course. In a subsequent story, I will delve into the skills needed and explore how to explore the future.

The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations partly funded the National Future Course. STT administers the course.