Editorial Issue #1
THE FUTURIAN #1
The Futurian is a new on-line foresight magazine designed for a general readership. Our focus is upon a longer horizon of ten to fifteen years from now. We would like to explore what the world will look like at that point in time. This naturally makes our articles more descriptive than analytical, although it will not always be easy to disentangle the two. We appreciate that such futures must be, by their very nature, speculative. However, we plan to ensure that the writing does not fall into wishful thinking or an exaggerated dystopian future. We believe that the future will have both good and bad elements and we wish to capture the flavour of both of these.
The original Futurians were a science fiction fan club that was based in New York in the 1930s and 1940s. The club contained a number of illustrious writers such as Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, and Cyril Kornbluth. What strikes us about the club is that not only did the members have a clear vision of the future, they actually went out and built that future in later years. We find that an inspirational story, and if we can emulate a fraction of it we will have done well.
The writers of the magazine are predominantly futurists. We hope to bring futures thinking to a wider audience through a sequence of engagement. This is not only the case of warning about unfortunate futures ahead — there are quite a few of those — but also inspiring the reader to embrace a positive future. If the reader can be inspired by a positive vision, they may well go out and build that future for themselves.
Issue #1 is largely devoted to the areas of technology, consumerism, and our planetary future. We have three articles on the theme of whether or not we can trust technology. These are followed by three articles on on a more practical approach to technology and the future. Finally, we have a pair of articles that remind us that our decisions about technology today have an impact beyond our own generations.
We hope that you enjoy this range of articles. Please feel free to contact us if you have any feedback on the articles. If you would like to write for future editions of The Futurian, please contact us. We are currently looking to expand our writers group.
Look out for Issue #2 of The Futurian, which is due to be published late June 2021, and which will cover aspects of the Post-COVID world.
Stephen Aguilar-Millan (Editor)
