We are finally starting to learn how to give a post hoc narrative thick description of what should have been visible in the gathering that brings a thing together (similarly, after the shuttle’s explosion a tough inquiry was pursued). And yet we still don’t know how to assemble, in a single, visually coherent space, all the entities necessary for a thing to become an object…when we have learned how to do that, we might finally get our (material) materialism back – and our cosmic things to boot. That’s when the plot will really thicken.
Latour, 2007, Can we get our materialism back, please? in: Isis, p. 142
Summary
High technology, frontier technology, and so on, appear crucial underpinnings of foresight. The OECD talks about “synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum technologies” as the pivotal exemplars (although others cite a wider range).
Foresight as we typically experience it relies on a kind of undeclared ex-ante technological determinism that makes specific assumptions about the sources of invention – recent, goal-directed, science as a primary authorial force of historical change. Recency and goal-direction are very important. If the science on which “the future” is based were more than a few years old, but had slipped from memory, it would not be picked up. Furthermore, even if the science were to be recent, but did not name the explicit application in mind, it would remain undetected.
While it might involve consultation with citizens on the desirability of its predictions (inclusive foresight), the approach fundamentally boils down to scanning the English-language scientific literature, alongside consultation with prominent scientists in relevant fields, typically from the USA or, at the least, the Global North. A self-reinforcing phenomenon in which corporate science policy priorities expressed through taxpayer-funded research feed back into foresight, and vice versa.
The underlying mental model is at least decades old. It was given clear expression in reports such as «Sources of Medical Technology: Universities and Industry» published in 1995 by the US National Academy of Science. The model, furthermore, reflects its origins inside the US military-industrial complex and American Cold War and post-Cold War capitalism.
The centrality of Moore’s Law, the idea emerging from Silicon Valley that transistors could be packed onto chips at every greater density, intentionally, as a business strategy, is one aspect of this doctrine, but not the only one. There seems to be, also, a contagious psychology of national prestige that formed around nuclear weapons now spilling over into other fields of technology such as AI.
I am not going to summarize the complex intellectual history of foresight (please read others, e.g., Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, 2023, The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future through Science). But I think there are two further points to consider. The first is that the present model is often conservative and even reactionary in that it imagines social and economic relations remaining the same. A hypothetical future without Western billionaires, or even without billionaires, for example, is not conceived (but if it were to be, “technology” might look different).
A second is that foresight makes heroic assumptions about the sources of innovation, namely, that recent, goal-directed, science is becoming an ever-more dominant source. This is an unstudied assumption. We know that innovation emerged from many different sources, including trial and error, reverse engineering, prototyping, as well as generally unspecified phenomena like tinkering, strokes of genius, flashes of insight, false premises, etc. A credible foresight process would, therefore, have to develop a more even-handed understanding of innovation.
The practical question is whether we have a sense of how the material world is changing, and how it might change in the future, and on this point I believe methods could be improved.
Examples that could challenge us to think
Melt-blowing technology,* invented in the 1950s and later used for cigarette filters, was the basis for face masks that found mass use during the COVID pandemic (and later against dust, pollen, air pollution and facial sun damage). While, of course, infectious disease experts predicated a pandemic, I am not aware of any foresight process that anticipated melt-blowing technology as a crucial material factor.
Of the multiple Western studies of face masks before COVID, few appear to have developed a detailed discussion of materials. Often, the focus was on evidence of masks being effective and whether members of the public would wear them.†
Another anecdote. During the Arab Spring (early 2010s), the totality of discussion about technology referred to social media. However, a colleague of mine pointed out the obvious, the pictures from Libya showed heavy weapons welded to frames on the back of pickup trucks. This second technology was presumably of enormous significance, perhaps of far greater significance than social media, but passed without comment.
With hindsight, we might ask if that idea would have led us to an understanding of military conflict in which “improvised weapons” i.e., developed and produced outside the dominant US military-industry complex, have always been prominent and, accordingly, to ask detailed questions about how they were innovated. This is not to say such an analysis was unavailable, for example, among specialists, but it was not centered in discussions.
The Libyan rebel groups widely use hillbilly armour plates on their technicals [armed pick-up trucks] and gun shields to protect the technical’s crew from small-arms fire. These are ad hoc affairs constructed from whatever materials are available rather than actual armour plating. The Libyans also sometimes cut the entire cab off their vehicles, lending a wild and ragged Somali look to many of their technicals, most of which retain their civilian paint jobs rather than be resprayed in more tactical tones. Rebel groups even affix colourful decals or hand-painted slogans and symbols on the doors of their technicals.
Neville, 2018, Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces, p. 33
In my view, therefore, we need to ask ourselves how we could design a foresight methodology that would plausibly detect similar phenomena in the future.
†E.g., Gautier, et al., 2006, Enquête Nicolle 2006: Connaissances, attitudes et comportements face au risque infectieux (pp. 178-179); van der Sande, et al., 2008, Professional and home-made face masks reduce exposure to respiratory infections among the general population, in: PLOS One; Davies, et al., 2013, Testing the efficacy of homemade masks: would they protect in an influenza pandemic? in: Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness; Guha, et al., 2015, Effectiveness of facemasks for pediatric populations against submicron-sized aerosols, in: American Journal of Infection Control
Imminent but unrealized new methods
David Edgerton’s 2006 book Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, never produced the kind of deep reflection that could have improved foresight processes (beyond relatively marginal commentary such as noted in the first table beneath). The “lessons” of that book, such as they are remembered, tend to be generic, namely, “risks” of conflating “innovation” with “technology” and “innovation” with “use”.
I believe a deeper reflection would have been helpful with a view to developing a practical new approach to foresight. This would have required collaborative work by many people over years and is unfortunately not something that I can spontaneously produce. Nevertheless, I would try to make some suggestions about how we could operationalize these points in terms of foresight methodology. As the citations in the first table below suggest, the following general notions might be helpful:
- Understanding the relationships between old and “new” devices as they make up our material world and how these relationships might change in the future.
- Historical metaphors intended to inform foresight that draw on insights from a range of perspectives among professional historians.
- Asking why our material world changes over time; identifying the main characteristics of these changes.
Furthermore, I would also consider some other specific points:
- The face masks example suggests the need to think through the objects that are important in our daily lives as well as objects that are likely to become important in foreseeable crises, and then ask how these objects are made and how the way they are made is changing. The latter is a difficult question to answer because we lack a schematic understanding of production; although, of course, experts in each industry are likely to have some answers, they may not wish to share them as the answers have commercial value. Analysis is primarily a task of synthesizing what is already known.
- Challenging the idea that there is a single frontier of science and technology; rather, a more complicated picture prevails. The wide availability of regional scientific databases (see the second and third tables beneath), as well as online translation, means we can read widely from the comfort of our desks. The mindset of the analyst is also important, avoiding both overblown “high technology” as well as racist “appropriate technology” paradigms but, rather, letting frameworks emerge from what they are reading.
- The politics of horizon scanning often skews right reflecting its origins in the military industrial complex and dominant American forms of capitalism. Progressive political change is therefore typically excluded from analyses because it is politically unpalatable, for example, the idea of resurgent social democracy. Yet, politics interacts with the dimensions of science and research. For example, socialized medicine, as opposed to privatized medicine, might suggest different innovations.
- Asking how innovation has operated in the past, how it operates today, and how it might operate in the future. Again, this is a very difficult question to answer. If the answer was known we would already all be rich. “The paradigm of artisanal research” in L’horizon des sciences en Afrique by Yaovi Akakpo opens up the question but, in truth, potentially relevant literature is vast.
- Looking specifically at the EU, there seems to be, on the one hand, a renewed emphasis on strategic foresight by officials and experts, which is possibly chefsache, or at least an activity for elites. The second, but now mostly forgotten aspect, was the “Conference on the Future of Europe” which I believe was intended to engage citizens. The two initiatives appear to be in separate compartments and lack a shared framework for discussion. For example, why does the Joint Research Centre’s foresight use « 14 global megatrends » while the Conference on the Future of Europe used « four themes »?
- Detecting large infrastructures, planned, or being built, and speculating on and/or understanding their meaning (see, e.g., Showers, 2011, Beyond Mega on a Mega Continent: Grand Inga on Central Africa’s Congo River, in: Engineering Earth).
A final point for the moment. David Edgerton also believes that the word « technology » ought to be avoided; he wants us to describe what we are actually talking about. This is an important point. We can think about why we would lump together such distinct inventions as “technology”. Frontier technology is often based on claimed abilities to bend the emergent properties of silicon (computers) and carbon (biotech) to human will. But the objects themselves have little obvious commonality in physical terms. A computer is not an enzyme, for example. These thoughts, to my mind, raise telling economic and political questions that have an historical basis, such as common ancestry in the petrochemical industry.‡ Common ancestry is also revealed in material terms.
Data
Policy commentary that sought inspiration from Shock of the Old (examples)
| Source | Commentary |
|---|---|
| Smith, 2021, Observations on electric vehicle’s first hurrah – horse, steam and electric tram technology adoption rates in the UK 1860s to 1960s (Australasian Transport Research Forum) | “The technical limitations of new technologies and the barriers that need to be overcome to replace incumbent technologies can be quickly forgotten. Also missed is the success and persistence of older and intermediary technologies, the interplay between old and new technologies and the multiple factors that need to be in place to support a new technology transition.” |
| Marr, et al., 2019, Identifying the Mode and Impact of Technological Substitutions, in: IEEE Access¶ | “Edgerton has contested the role of ‘bleeding-edge’ technologies, noting that conventional technologies have a remarkably long shelf-life, sustained impact, and are capable of resurgence…Taking [Edgerton’s] notions of non-linear development into account…this study focuses specifically on failures relating to the ever more demanding performance expectations that human users impose on their technologies.” |
| Zimmer-Merkle and Fleischer, 2017, Eclectic, random, intuitive? Technology assessment, RRI, and their use of history, in: Journal of Responsible Innovation | “Typically, producers of anticipatory knowledge randomly employ an intuitive handling of the historicity of their subject matter; when it comes to the selection of literature they proceed eclectic ally…we call for a more deliberated treatment of ‘historical knowledge'” |
| Joly, 2015, Governing emerging technologies – the need to think out of the (black) box, in: Science and Democracy- Making Knowledge and Making Power in the Biosciences and Beyond | “[I]t is necessary to shift from attention to novelty to a heuristic of continuity, and from a focus on uncertainties to attention to what we know. The second idea is that we have to pay attention to the diversity of processes occurring at different scales, since such processes and their interactions are at the core of the emergence of a technology. Applying both ideas, we end up with an attempt to identify the main characteristics of current emerging technologies.” |
| Rejeski, 2011, Public policy on the technological frontier, in: The Growing Gap Between Emerging Technologies and Legal-Ethical Oversight | “The organizational challenge is dealing with three types of technologies simultaneously: old technologies from the past, old technologies combined in new ways, and the truly new and novel.” |
Regional science databases by continent
| Scholarly papers | “Grey” literature | |
|---|---|---|
| Africa | AfricaBib (closed 2026), African Scientists Directory, *AJOL, Langaa RPCIG, Mukanda, “National Science and Technology Forum Awards” (since 1998) | ACTS |
| Americas | Google Scholar, PubMed, SciELO | |
| Asia | *CNKI, GARUDA, Indian Journals, KoreaScience, J-GLOBAL, Science and Technology Policy Commons, VIP, Wangfang Data, “Top Ten Advances in Chinese Science” (since 2005) | ASEAN Centre for Energy, CNAIS, CSTEP, ThinkAsia |
| Europe | CAIRN.INFO, CEEOL, DigiZeitschriften (closed 2025), LIVIVO, Rivisteweb | Haut-commissariat à la Stratégie et au Plan, Think Tank Review |
Topics from Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that could inform a foresight project (an equivalent list could be prepared from any of the other regional databases)
| Topic | Explanation |
|---|---|
| «Marine ecological security barrier» | «Research on the construction of inter-regional collaborative platform in the process of building the Bohai Sea marine ecological security barrier» |
| Carbon emission accounting | «Near-real-time carbon emission accounting technology toward carbon neutrality» |
| «CropWatch Innovative Programme»§ | «Free and indefinite access to the CropWatch, the satellite-based crop monitoring system, along with comprehensive training and capacity building» |
| «Low-altitude economy» | «Benefits and challenges of constructing low-altitude air route network infrastructure for developing low-altitude economy» |
| S&T in the «Greater Bay Area» | «Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area among world’s bay areas: How to build an international science and technology innovation center that leads country to overcome middle technology trap» |
| «Underground space» | «Suggestions on development and industry layout of special underground space in Western China» |
Notes:
A predictive model for future inventions
AI and scientific discovery bibliography
Ex-ante technological determinism, or where to place bets
Technological determinism bibliography
Lu Gao, 2026, Rethinking global technology governance at a crossroads: China’s role, historical turning points and future imaginaries, in: Cultures of Science
Kang, et al., 2025, Limited diffusion of scientific knowledge forecasts collapse, in: Nature Human Behaviour. “Our analysis emphasizes that restricted diffusion, implying a socio-epistemic bubble, leads to dramatic collapses in relevance and attention accorded to scientific knowledge.”
*Salmanton-García, et al., 2024, Predicting the next pandemic: VACCELERATE ranking of the World Health Organization’s Blueprint for Action to Prevent Epidemics, in: Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease. “Influenza viruses received the highest rankings among the pathogens, with 79% of participants including them in their top rankings. Disease X, SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and Ebola virus were also ranked highly. Hantavirus, Lassa virus, Nipah virus, and henipavirus were among the bottom-ranked pathogens in terms of pandemic potential…In comparison to the WHO R&D Blueprint, we included three additional pathogens to be ranked: influenza viruses, hantavirus, and henipavirus…Hantavirus ranked 10th, and henipavirus ranked 13th, placing it just above Rift Valley fever. Although these three pathogens are currently not included in the WHO R&D Blueprint, they are indeed recognised as diseases of concern…our results suffer from a lack of participation from infectious disease experts in Africa and Asia, despite the fact that most outbreaks related to the analysed pathogens have occurred on these continents. Future ranking initiatives should prioritize incorporating perspectives from Africa and Asia, which could potentially influence the final ranking of different pathogens.”
Warren Chin, 2023, War, Technology and the State
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, 2020, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (American Institute for Economic Research). The right take a maverick stance, stalling intellectual debate on the left.
van der Vleuten, 2020, History and technology in an age of” Grand Challenges”: raising questions, in: Technology and Culture. Tensions of Europe “transnational scholarly network and hub for transnational research, education and outreach initiatives on history, technology and Europe”.
Neri, 2020, The Risk Perception of Artificial Intelligence
Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Ben Wubs (eds.), 2018, The Fashion Forecasters: a Hidden History of Color and Trend Prediction
Mody, 2017, The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science
Nordmann, et al. (eds.), 2014, Science Transformed?: Debating Claims of an Epochal Break
Wilkie, 2010, Prototypes in design: materializing futures, in: Protoyping Prototyping
Hymans, 2006, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy
Rosalind Williams, 2003, Retooling: a Historian Confronts Technological Change
Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge (eds.), 2002, Converging Technologies
for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science (NSF/DOC-sponsored report). This is an odd report concerned with “changing the societal ‘fabric’ towards a new structure” (p. vii) with the main recommendation being “a national R&D priority area on converging technologies focused on enhancing human performance” (p. xi). It has not really played out as described over the subsequent couple of decades. “An NBIC system called ‘The Communicator’ would remove barriers to communication caused by physical disabilities, language differences, geographic distance, and variations in knowledge, thus greatly enhancing the effectiveness of cooperation in schools, corporations, government agencies, and across the world. Other areas of focus are in enhancing group creativity and productivity, cognitive engineering and developments related to networked society.”
Pearton, 1982, The Knowledgeable State: Diplomacy, War, and Technology since 1830. “Advances in technique, once assimilated into society have also fudged the distinction between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ creating uncertainty about their respective meanings which affects the forming of policy…The fudging…raises an entire range of complex problems. Industrialization during the last [19th] century increased the options open to policy; it has now reached the point of multiplying the ambiguities.” (p. 258)
Dr. William Burns PhD MSc
Email: william@resorg.news
Science Think Tank 