Le "foresight" britannique. Un nouvel instrument de gouvernance ?

In the futures studies literature, much is made of how diverse the factors are that influence the future of our societies. Among them, however, technology has always held a special place, undoubtedly because of the speed of technological change and the wide range of impacts, especially economic and social, that its applications are thought to have.
The special attention given to technological change is reflected in the vast number of studies that, in the wake of the famous Delphi studies undertaken by the Rand Corporation in the 1960s, tried to identify the major advances in science and technology that could be expected, and their likely impacts. In the same tradition, work has lately been done on “key technologies” and “critical technologies”.
More recently, under the term “foresight”, a new generation of forward studies based on technological considerations have given greater emphasis to the economic and social aspects. The British contribution is particularly interesting. Rémi Barré describes here the activities undertaken first under the Technology Foresight programme between 1993 and 1998, and then under the larger Foresight programme begun in 1999.
His evaluation of this experience leads him to reflect upon the role that futures studies could play in “the governance of knowledge-based societies”.