The futures. One cone and multiple flavours

In the early 2000s, Australian scholar Joseph Voros democratized the use of the "futures cone" as a tool to explain the taxonomy of potentiality for the future. His work relied on others that used similar representations and taxonomies to represent plausibility since the mid-70s, like Amara, Bell, Hancock, Bezold, Taylor and others. 

Still today, the futures cone is one of the most well-known and useful artefacts used by futurists and foresight practitioners around the world to explain the potentiality of the future. It is clear, simple, and easy to understand, a quick diagram to display all the futures' potentiality as seen from today. Everything is potentially possible, as well as everything is potentially impossible, beyond the present time.

Let's start at the very beginning: the projected future, a line going straight into the future from the present time. No diversion. It is the assumption of the future unfolding if business as usual is the norm and nothing changes. It is an extrapolation of the present into the future, a familiar expectation of what might come, that spans into the infinite. It is the "official future". For example, we assume the global economy will continue to grow with the U.S. and China leading economic growth.

Adjacent to the "official future" are the probable futures, those that seem likely to happen. Forecasting and trends provide a glimpse of near-term outlooks and events, and organizations tend to rely on these low hanging fruits to strategize. Nonetheless, probable futures also include emerging issues that are currently off-the-radar and not discoverable through forecasting trends. For example, a probable future will be the impact of climate change in coastal cities, producing floods and disruption. 

Moving away from the "official future" and the present time increases uncertainty about specific futures' probabilities. It becomes less known, less predictable, and less common. 

Just a step beyond "probable futures" are the plausible futures, those that, given our current knowledge, could happen. Although plausible, the probability is lower hence the discrepancy with current trends and data. However, describing plausible futures enable organizations to explore and prepare for uncertainty and increase resiliency. For example, a plausible future will be the sudden stop of purchasing vegetables at grocery stores because everyone will grow vegetables at home. 

It becomes less probable, as many things might need to change before that, but it is still plausible and might happen in certain circumstances. It becomes more speculative, although in the realm of reality.

A bit further away from "plausible futures" are the possible futures, those that, developing future knowledge, might happen. Although possible, the experience, technology, research, experiments, or even policies, required are still missing, even if we can theorize on them. Possible futures enable people to envision long-term opportunities that drift far from the current world. For example, a possible future will be settling colonies across the solar system catapulted by new technologies around space travel.

It becomes less plausible and further away in time, but it is still possible given the development of specific knowledge to get there. It becomes even more speculative and closer to the realm of aspirational thinking.

Both plausible and possible futures usually require vision, motivation, investment, and outstanding leadership to shift the future's line. It is a bet for an alternative future that not many dare to chase.

The furthest from the "official future" are the preposterous futures, those that, given our reasoning, seem ridiculous or assumed as impossible. Although you can imagine impossible things, most of the preposterous futures are highly speculative and difficult to defend given the lack of technology, knowledge or evidence. For example, an impossible future will be creating a dense rain forest or jungle in the Arabian Desert.

Strategising towards preferredness and uncertainty...

The futures cone creates a taxonomy for futures' potentiality, including probable, plausible, possible, and preposterous futures, anything beyond today. Beyond classifying likeliness, the cone also serves to identify preferable futures.

Prefered futures are those that, as an organization, institution or individual, are desired to happen for any specific interest or motive. A preferred future might be in whatever category of the futures cone, and it provides a clear vision, mission, and direction to shape the future. It could be probable, plausible, possible, or simply impossible. For example, the European Union's preferred future is achieving zero-net emissions by 2050, also reflecting a plausible scenario.

In the futures cone, it is also easy to find specific events with a low-probability that will have a very high impact in case of occurring. These type of events are wild cards and can be anything beyond the area of the probable futures. For example, a wild card scenario will be an unexpected failure in the water infrastructure providing fresh water to the city, leaving citizens without a water supply.

The spectrum of probability or likeliness for futures to happen is not fixed in time. As time passes, our knowledge, technology, and expertise increases and something that seemed impossible and unlikely can suddenly shift to probable. For example, in the Middle Ages, any idea about digital communication was preposterous, although today, smartphones are a commodity, an extension of ourselves.

In the above depiction of the futures cone, Peter Bishop and Andy Hines from the University of Houston demonstrate how different elements configure possible alternative futures, the implications, and a different set of issues and offerings that could be integrated into the strategic approach of many organizations. Hines describes the most recent changes to the cone, in 2020, in his "Evolution of the Framework Foresight" article, where he navigates towards creating a stronger connection with strategic outputs.

Shifting plausibility by adopting new narratives

Although it might be difficult to appreciate in Joseph Voros' cone, different versions, like Elliot P. Montgomery's, envision each cone taxonomy with a blurred end pointing to our current knowledge's limitations. 

Montgomery envisions the future as a spectrum of malleable narratives that shape our expectations and images of the future. The process is straightforward and highly related to the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campell's study of the monomyth underlying human storytelling and published in his 1943 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

New narratives aim to shift our view of the world, our image of the future, either individually or collectively; then, the new view of the world shifts our mindset, our way to interpret reality; new interpretations of reality and mindsets shift our actions, tasks and daily chores; and finally, it is our actions that shape our lives and what lays ahead; the future.

Bigger narratives have a bigger impact, and smaller narratives change almost nothing. In every case, new narratives expand each area's reach in the spectrum of plausibility; no matter how far or how fast, change usually happens slowly.

Interestingly, the cone might come from physics

However, with all the scholars and practitioners' efforts in the Futures Studies field, the cone represents highly intertwined concepts with time and space. We usually envision the future as something happening somewhere sometime ahead of today.

That approach to the future seems to connect an interesting link with a more physic and relativistic approach to spacetime, as proposed by Einstein-Minkowski's Light Cone.

Special and general relativity theories create a beautiful synergy between the Futures Cone and the Light Cone, anticipating causality both for the past and the future. It demonstrates, empirically and theoretically, that forces in place shape events in a certain moment of space and time, driving perceptual change for the observer.

The futures, after all, seem to be not only possible but happening all simultaneously; we seem to squeeze time and space to create the present and alter the natural distribution of certainty, as suggested by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.