I decided to write about the world future society (WFS) for a couple of reasons. One is a need to come to terms with my varied experience of it over more than two decades and, in so doing, to perhaps resolve some conflicting impressions. Another is that the USA has been generating and receiving what might be called 'heavy critique' for some time. Like most non-Americans I admit to a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, I cannot imagine a world without American art, music, literature, film and so on. On the other, I can certainly imagine one without its fundamentalist heartland, its cultural and economic imperialism, its chronic exceptionalism and its often disastrous foreign policy. It would be a far better world. The WFS is clearly not responsible for any of this. But neither has it demonstrated the slightest interest in finding a credible role or strategy for responding to the dilemma and dysfunction of early 21st century America. Its modest offices in Bethesda, Maryland, are on the fringes of Washington, the outer edge of the cultural core. From the start, it has been a cultural sideshow and will likely remain one. Yet it has a unique presence in the world of futures studies (FS) and applied foresight for one reason-it is the largest such organisation in the world. What, then, does it amount to forty years after its inception?
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