HISTORICAL FUTURES BOLDIZSÁR SIMON, ZOLTÁN; TAMM, MAREK
History and theory :Studies in the philosophy of history,
March 2021, 2021-03-00, 20210301, Volume:
60, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
ABSTRACT
This article outlines the agenda of a collective research project that aims to explore modalities of historical futures that constitute our current historical condition. To present the ...collective work adequately, we have teamed up with History and Theory and initiated a long‐term serial publishing experiment. In the coming years, each issue of the journal will feature contributions to this research endeavor. In our project‐opening piece, we briefly introduce the experiment and the premises of the collective research agenda. We begin by recounting the many ways in which increasingly towering novel future prospects have begun to capture the scholarly world's attention across disciplinary boundaries. We then introduce the notion of historical futures. Crediting theoretical inspirations and paying intellectual debts to conceptual relatives, we define “historical futures” as the plurality of transitional relations between apprehensions of the past and anticipated futures. At the core of the article, we formulate our call for a collective investigation of modalities of historical futures and sketch three basic sets of concerns that the explorative works in this experiment may address: kinds of transitions from past to futures, kinds of anticipatory practices, and kinds of registers as interpretive tools that position such practices on a variety of spectrums between two poles (for instance, a value register with the poles of catastrophic and redemptive futures). Finally, we close with a brief note about the necessity of collective endeavors.
Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also ...produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes and focuses in particular on the process of imagining or simulating events that might occur in one's personal future. Simulating future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as remembering past events, which may help to explain why imagination and memory can be easily confused. The article considers both pitfalls and adaptive aspects of future event simulation in the context of research on planning, prediction, problem solving, mind-wandering, prospective and retrospective memory, coping and positivity bias, and the interconnected set of brain regions known as the default network.
•Studied relationships between general self-efficacy and other variables.•Specifically with future planning, future consequences, and life satisfaction.•Significant correlations between all variables ...were observed.•Implications are discussed.
In this study we investigated relationships between general self-efficacy, the propensity to plan for the future, the consideration of future consequences, and overall life satisfaction. The sample consisted of 242 university students, with ages ranging from 16 to 31 (M=18.5, SD=1.7). Participants completed the New General Self-Efficacy Scale (NGSES), the Continuous Planning Scale (CPS), the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFCS), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). Analyses demonstrated that all variables were significantly intercorrelated, with general self-efficacy being most strongly related to the SWLS, followed by the CFCS and the CPS. Implications are discussed.
Los estudios de futuros ofrecen un marco de ideas y disposiciones a partir de las cuales desarrollar imágenes más productivas del futuro y formas de trabajar con este. Aunque existen múltiples ...esfuerzos por trasladar estos planteamientos a diferentes ámbitos educativos, aún sigue siendo un campo por desarrollar. El objetivo central de este artículo es exponer y discutir los últimos avances y contribuciones académicas internacionales de estudios de futuros en educación. Para ello, se ha realizado una revisión sistemática de la literatura usando las bases de datos Web of Science y Scopus considerando artículos publicados entre 2012 y 2022. Se ha contado con una muestra inicial de 437 artículos que, al aplicar criterios de exclusión, se redujo a 50 que vinculaban directamente los estudios de futuros a temas educativos. Los hallazgos muestran que las publicaciones contienen propuestas educativas, que existe un equilibrio entre estudios teóricos y empíricos, que se concentran en revistas especializadas, en determinados países y que la multidisciplinariedad es limitada fuera de las Ciencias sociales. Asimismo, encontramos que el enfoque predictivo y las visiones negativas no tienen presencia. Se concluye que la alfabetización en futuros es un elemento clave para acercar las ideas de estudios de futuros al ámbito educativo, que los estudios de futuros contribuyen a cambiar las formas de trabajar y conceptualizar el futuro en educación y que promueven dinámicas transformadoras.
The authors extended research linking individual differences in consideration of future consequences (CFC) with health behaviors by (a) testing whether individual differences in regulatory focus ...would mediate that link and (b) highlighting the value of a revised, two-factor CFC-14 scale with subscales assessing concern with future consequences (CFC-Future) and concern with immediate consequences (CFC-Immediate) proper. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the revised CFC-14 scale supported the presence of two highly reliable factors (CFC-Future and CFC-Immediate; αs from .80 to .84). Moreover, structural equation modeling showed that those high in CFC-Future engage in exercise and healthy eating because they adopt a promotion orientation. Future use of the two-factor CFC-14 scale is encouraged to shed additional light on how concern with future and concern with immediate consequences (proper) differentially impact the way people resolve a host of intertemporal dilemmas (e.g., health, financial, and environmental behavior).
Zhang neural network (ZNN), being a special type of recurrent neural network, has shown powerful abilities to solve a great variety of continuous time-varying problems. In order to solve future ...problems (or termed discrete time-varying problems), discrete ZNN (DZNN) models should be developed. In this paper, four kinds of future problems, i.e., future linear system (FLS), future division (FD), future quadratic minimization (FQM), and future equality-constrained quadratic programming (FECQP), are investigated. The DZNN models of Adams-Bashforth (AB) type are thus proposed for solving four kinds of future problems. Compared with conventional DZNN models of Euler type and Taylor type, the performances of DZNN models of AB type in terms of accuracy are better. Meanwhile, the numerical results substantiate the efficacy and superiority of DZNN models of AB type for solving future problems. Furthermore, the motion control of mobile robot manipulator is conducted to substantiate the efficacy of DZNN models of AB type for solving future problems.
•Ecological Civilization is the Chinese government’s response to environmental degradation, and it is a vision for our global future.•Which values and visions does this highly profiled state project ...actually entail?•We argue that EC seeks to construct a sense of national continuity while placing China at the center of the world’s environmental efforts.•EC is a sociotechnical imaginary that integrates certain cultural and moral values with technological and political goals.
Ecological civilization (shengtai wenming▪) has been written into China’s constitution as the ideological framework for the country’s environmental policies, laws and education. It is also increasingly presented not only as a response to environmental degradation in China, but as a vision for our global future. In this article, scholars from the disciplines of media science, anthropology and sinology analyse media representations of eco-civilization in order to explore which values and visions this highly profiled state project actually entails. The article argues that eco-civilization is best understood as a sociotechnical imaginary in which cultural and moral virtues constitute key components that are inseparable from the more well-known technological, judicial, and political goals. The imaginary of eco-civilization seeks to construct a sense of cultural and national continuity, and to place China at the center of the world by invoking its civilization’s more than 2000 years of traditional philosophical heritage as a part of the solution for the planet’s future. It is constructed as a new kind of Communist Party led utopia in which market economy and consumption continue to grow, and where technology and science have solved the basic problems of pollution and environmental degradation.
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The ability to foresee, anticipate, and plan for future desired outcomes is crucial for well-being, motivation, and behavior. However, theories in organizational psychology do not incorporate ...time-related constructs such as Future Time Perspective (FTP), and research on FTP remains disjointed and scattered, with different domains focusing on different aspects of the construct, using different measures, and assessing different antecedents and consequences. In this review and meta-analysis, we aim to clarify the FTP construct, advance its theoretical development, and demonstrate its importance by (a) integrating theory and empirical findings across different domains of research to identify major outcomes and antecedents of FTP, and (b) empirically examining whether and how these variables are moderated by FTP measures and dimensions. Results of a meta-analysis of k = 212 studies reveal significant relationships between FTP and major classes of consequences (i.e., those related to achievement, well-being, health behavior, risk behavior, and retirement planning), and between antecedents and FTP, as well as moderating effects of different FTP measures and dimensions. Highlighting the importance of FTP for organizational psychology theories, our findings demonstrate that FTP predicts these outcomes over and above the big five personality traits and mediates the associations between these personality traits and outcomes.
A range of psychiatric disorders are characterised by impairments in episodic future thinking (EFT), and particularly simulating specific, spatiotemporally-located future events. No study has ...examined whether training can lead to sustained improvement in specific EFT. In this study, participants (N = 60; M age = 31, SD = 13.2) were randomized to a two-session, group-based future thinking program (Future Specificity Training; FeST) or wait-list. At follow-up the training group, relative to wait-list, showed large, statistically-significant improvements in the ability to mentally simulate specific EFT (d = .82), increases in detail (d = 1.32), use of mental imagery (d = 1.32), anticipated (d = 1.78) and anticipatory pleasure (d = 1.07), perceived control (d = 1.20), and likelihood of occurrence (d = 1.09). Some effects were also observed on positive, generalised future self-states. In the context of inherent limitations of subjective reporting in trials, this study provides evidence that EFT specificity can be enhanced, and the effects of FeST indicate a possible avenue to disrupt psychopathological processes.
•Difficulty imagining future events is observed in a range of psychiatric disorders.•This study examined the first program to improve specificity in future thinking.•Specificity, detail, and imagery significantly increased.•Anticipated/anticipatory pleasure, perceived control, and likelihood increased.•Increasing specificity may be an avenue to disrupt psychopathological processes.
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