Worldviews Part 3: Worldview Futures Indicators

How can we surface the assumptions that underpin our thinking about futures? Artefact indicators are one way.

Part 2 identified the types of questions we can ask when thinking about futures. But, we usually don’t ask ourselves these sorts of questions as part of a foresight process. How then can we identify the assumptions that underpin our thinking? When we think about futures, we produce artefacts of some sort that allow us to make our images of futures explicit which we can use to find the underpinning assumptions.

One approach is to identify worldview indicators that can identify assumptions about futures and make our thinking about futures explicit. What are indicators?

Worldview indicators are images, metaphors, descriptions, terms, phrases, assertions, and assumptions that enable the components of taken-for-granted beliefs about futures to be identified and articulated.

The table below brings together Vidal’s worldview questions with suggested worldview indicator categories and questions adapted for thinking about futures. The seventh question - Where do we start to answer the previous qu…