Feature 10 December 2025

Future Tense

We’re obsessed with thinking about what’s to come – but not very good at doing it. Identifying four ways of thinking could help change that

Nick Foster, RDI

Futures designer

Behaviour change Design People & Place Technology

Summary

Nick Foster, RDI, FRSA argues that, while we’re preoccupied with imagining what lies ahead, we’re surprisingly poor at thinking about the future with rigour. Drawing on decades of work in technology and design, he identifies four common modes of futurist thinking – Could, Should, Might and Don’t – each with strengths and pitfalls. Foster calls for greater balance, scepticism and accountability in how we create future visions, urging us to question assumptions and demand more responsible thinking about the future.

^{Images by Nick Foster, RDI}

^{Caption main image: Max and Sally}

When I was born, there was no World Wide Web, Wi-Fi or GPS, and there was an ugly wall separating East and West Berlin. Airline passengers could freely smoke cigarettes on flights, gay marriage wasn’t legally recognised anywhere on Earth and the global population was less than half its current level.

I’m not even 50 years old, yet there’s been an immense amount of change in the political, environmental, technological and cultural landscape during my relatively short life.

This sheer volume of change has led to a palpable feeling of uncertainty and queasiness about the future, which seems like it’s building towards something. I appreciate that it’s a fairly crude way of sampling sentiment, but Google searches for ‘what will the future be like’ have almost tripled since 2020.

As a child, I developed an almost uncontrollable curiosity about the future, and a relentless urge to try and squeeze it, just to see what oozed out. Fortunately, I discovered design as an outlet for that curiosity, which grew into a fulfilling career. Over the past 25 years I’ve worked on a huge variety of projects, from cell phones and domestic robots to water purification, healthcare devices and nuclear fusion. Along the way, I’ve collaborated with all types of people – designers and engineers, scientists, strategists, investors, ethicists, executives – and what has become clear is that our appetite for making sense of the future is enormous, yet our ability to do so with appropriate rigour seems to fall worryingly short.

That’s not to say we don’t talk about the future enough – quite the opposite.

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Predictions and fictions

Our lives are absolutely swamped with conjecture, projections, ideas, prophecies and hypotheses about the future, but just as with an all-you-can-eat buffet, quantity doesn’t often correlate to quality. A lot of future-oriented work is mistimed, misinformed, imbalanced, wilfully shallow, poorly aimed and sloppily executed – and that’s predominantly due to where it was created, why it was created, and by whom. The list of future ideas is all but endless, and we all seem to enjoy discussing the merits and pitfalls of these individual examples. It seems we’re very comfortable discussing and debating the ‘what’ of the future, but we don’t spend enough time exploring ‘how’ we think about the future, which feels important, especially now.

I think we’re all starting to realise that many of the issues we’re facing today are the result of the actions of previous generations. While we may feel as though the present-day world belongs to us, the reality is that we’re all inhabitants of a giant time capsule that was accidentally planted by our predecessors, and it’s now our job to address the implications of their decisions. Many of today’s challenges were not created by our generation, but by grainy people from blurry photographs, the majority of whom are long dead, and whose ability to think seriously about the future (or inclination to do so) was every bit as frail as our own.

Holding patterns

Over my career I’ve had perhaps thousands of conversations about the future with people from all backgrounds and all walks of life, and over time this saturation has revealed a few underlying patterns to me. It seems that every thought about the future appears to fit into one of four distinct domains – Could, Should, Might and Don’t – each of which has its own strengths, weaknesses, benefits and drawbacks.

In reality, just as with any kind of thematic categorisation, these ways of thinking all overlap and collide, and their boundaries are more blurry than crisp. These shouldn’t be considered in isolation from one another, but by viewing them as the four corners of a map, perhaps we can better understand the shape of the territory.

As I’ve shared these ideas, I’ve noticed a temptation among some people to convert this taxonomy into some sort of creative matrix or workshop tool, which is not my intention. We don’t need any more of that kind of thing, and I have no desire to contribute to that particular pile of intellectual clutter. I’ve identified these four channels simply as a means to encourage reflection and as a call to action. By their introduction, I hope we can all become more aware of them as they crop up in our lives, or whenever we catch ourselves falling into their seductive traps.

“… the most problematic aspect of this type of thinking is that it treats the future as somewhere else, happening to other people”

Could

What I call ‘Could Futurism’ is a remarkably popular way of thinking about the future as a place of limitless opportunity and progress.

The unwritten nature of the future inevitably creates a vacant space stretching out in front of us which begs to be filled. Thanks to the lingering influence of modernism over the past century, we have largely obliged by populating that space with emerging technologies and inventions. As a result, the world of Could Futurism is where you’ll find humanoid robots, flying cars, magical devices and towering glass cities. It’s also the kind of futurism you’ll see delivered from conference stages, on popular TV shows and from a great many of our leaders. Encouraging hope and optimism about the future is important, but, unfortunately, while Could Futurism prides itself on its imagination, this way of thinking is crushingly repetitive.

If you ask Google Images for pictures of ‘the future’, you’ll see a disappointingly familiar parade of the same tired old tropes, repeated over and over again. This way of thinking is also dominated by the language, aesthetics and ideas of science fiction cinema, which forms the backbone of how a great many people consider the future. Many people (indeed many of the world’s most powerful people) lean lazily on the ideas, devices and concepts found within science fiction cinema to describe the world ahead. These act as convenient and enticing placeholders, but actively prevent people from doing rigorous, independent thinking for themselves.

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of this kind of thinking is that it treats the future as somewhere else, happening to other people. The visions brought about by Could Futurism often feel grand, escapist, simplistic and dreamlike, encouraging wide-eyed wonder rather than pragmatic discussion. They treat the future as something ‘over there’ in the distance, a vague ambitious ‘other’ place, filled with heroic characters leading unattainable lives. In truth, of course, the future is simply an evolution of the present, and we’ll all need to pass through the weekend to reach it.

Should

Should Futurism represents a way of thinking about the future with some level of certainty, and is typically characterised by projections, forecasts and predictions. For centuries this desire to ‘know’ the future has been a deeply human impulse, and we’ve used a huge array of techniques to try to identify points of light glimmering out there in the distance. When people find out what I do for a living, their first instinct is typically to ask for a prediction of some kind, which is telling.

Within contemporary industry we typically demand significantly more reassurance than star charts or goat entrails to guide our decisions. There’s a desire to generate something rational to point at and pick over, something that feels more robust and reliable than ancient prophecies or tarot card readings. We’ve collectively responded to this need with the creation of a profoundly persuasive tool: data.

Once we can measure and record something we can start to uncover patterns, and once we can uncover patterns the temptation to project them forward becomes irresistible. This way of viewing the world as a system to be decoded lies at the centre of many people’s approach to the future, and we’ve become remarkably good at it. In business circles, this kind of work is rarely referred to as ‘futurism’, but instead by the more pragmatic title ‘corporate strategy’. In situations where stakes are high and decisions need to be made, this kind of numeric orientation toward the future can be very useful, and can feel remarkably reassuring, yet this level of certainty in our numbers and algorithms frequently conceals the inherent volatility of the world in which we live.

The uncomfortable truth facing Should Futurism is that when a line on a chart changes from solid to dotted, it ceases to be data. That dotted line might look rational, pragmatic and logical, but it’s actually a piece of numeric fiction, a story made of numbers rather than words. Anyone who has ever made an investment, placed a bet or planned a picnic in October knows there are no ‘facts’ in the future. Beyond the simplest, most reliable systems, the majority of the networks we are now attempting to map (and certainly any of those involving humans) are inherently volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Any statement of certainty about the future – and any claims of predictive ability – should therefore always be treated with a high degree of scepticism.

Might

Might Futurism involves thinking about the future in a plural way, rather than as a single point sitting confidently in the distance. This is something we all do instinctively every day, running through multiple scenarios and assigning a probability to each. In games such as chess, this type of thinking becomes more formalised, and the mathematical assessment of these strategies led to the game theory and scenario-planning approaches which emerged during the cold war.

This way of considering the future is powerful, and if you were to hire a ‘strategic foresight’ team today, this is the type of work they would typically do. They would gather massive amounts of data, competitive analysis, societal trends and contextual signals to construct many different potential scenarios for the future. In doing this work, the goal is rarely to select the ‘perfect’ answer, rather to focus on understanding the range of possibilities ahead.

The first issue facing this way of thinking is that we never have all the information we need to completely plan out every potential scenario. Indeed in some cases (such as during the cold war), our competitors might actually be deploying false data to mislead and distort our scenarios.

The second (and more troubling) issue with Might Futurism is our inability to imagine the future with sufficient breadth. Studies show that when people are placed within an MRI machine and asked to imagine the future, the same regions of their brain light up as when they are asked to remember the past. In other words, our imagination about the future is utterly defined by what we have already experienced, and we find it extraordinarily difficult to create entirely new scenarios. This is why magic tricks work. When a magician pulls an object out of a previously empty box, it feels astonishing not because it’s magic, but because it breaks our own internal laws of experience.

Might Futurism is a valuable way to stretch our thinking and prepare us for the issues and challenges which might lie ahead. But even when we are able to imagine very different future scenarios, we have a tendency to push them out into the ‘impossible’ territory, or way off into the distance. Just ask Nokia, Kodak or Blockbuster.

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“As the tempo and magnitude of change continues to increase… the ability to think rigorously about the future is a skill we must all cultivate”

Don’t

The final way of thinking about the future is what I call ‘Don’t Futurism’. This involves looking to the future and identifying all the things we want to avoid or stop. Fear is a powerful force, and can be a very effective means to steer people away from undesirable or unintended outcomes. From the Big Bad Wolves in our fairy tales, the frightful domains of Hell and Purgatory in our religions, and the countless dystopian stories featured in science fiction, humans have always sought to re-steer the present by confronting the futures they fear the most.

Don’t Futurism often forms the root of oppositional politics and protests, seeking to offer critique and, occasionally, feisty resistance. It also exists in art, and in disciplines such as Speculative and Critical Design, which aim to provoke deeper consideration about the full scope of impact of new ideas, and to instil a broader sense of accountability in those introducing change. This way of imagining the future can be immensely useful, as it can help raise awareness of the consequences of our decisions and encourage increased responsibility, but it’s not without its own flaws.

To dwell too long in the realm of ‘Don’t’ is to risk seeing the world through a purely oppositional lens. It can unhelpfully divide populations, corporations, technologies, policies and ideas into simplistic pugnacious factions of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. In an age marked by the climate crisis, antagonistic global politics and deepening inequalities, this mode of thinking has grown increasingly dominant. The psychological toll of this shift is evident, particularly among young people, many of whom now exhibit what psychologists refer to as Ambient Adolescent Apocalypticism: a pervasive, low-level sense of impending doom.

Don’t Futurism offers an important perspective, but if deployed poorly (or in isolation) can lead to crippling feelings of hopelessness, fear and despair.

Rethinking tomorrow

Whenever we talk about the future – whether professionally or during casual conversation – we inevitably find ourselves slipping into one of these four ways of thinking. We each have our favourites and we all feel more comfortable describing the future from one of these corners, which results in ideas which are frequently imbalanced, unresolved and fragile.

As the tempo and magnitude of change continues to increase across almost all the forces that shape our lives, the ability to think rigorously about the future is a skill we must all cultivate. Many people are involved with creating ideas, images, projections and stories about the future and they need to significantly improve their work – but this won’t happen without pressure. That pressure will come from us all becoming significantly better consumers of the future.

But how? Every day we’re either told (or sold) some sort of idea about the future, and we all need to get more comfortable demanding more detail, more clarification and significantly more balance. When you see some exciting Could Futurism happening in front of you, stop and think how it might look on a wet Thursday in suburban Leeds. If someone declares with great certainty what’s coming next, politely interrupt and ask, ‘what makes you so sure?’ If someone is talking about the world in five years’ time, ask: ‘what might we see next summer?’ When you’re confronted with another hopeless version of the future, don’t just shake your head and tut – ask what we could do to prevent it, or better yet, propose some ideas yourself.

We all need to hold our futurists to account and expect significantly more from them. If not, we will continue to drift through the months and years ahead, shambling onwards and being perpetually surprised by where we find ourselves. This could become the critical failing of our generation, and it’s unlikely that subsequent generations will look kindly on this oversight.