Forty years is a very long time in publishing, so Futures is to be congratulated not only for having survived this time but also for having continued to break new ground and to sustain its role as the 'flagship' journal of the field. That said, the latter has passed through a number of stages and is currently in a state of 'structural ambiguity'. Why is this? A recent study into the State of Play in the Futures Field (SOPIFF) confirms that futures ideas, thinking and methods have diffused into countless different contexts around the world [1]. There are few people anywhere, for example, who have not heard the term 'scenario' and, indeed, many thousands have actually used them for a range of purposes. By contrast, and more generally, few would nowadays be unaware of the profoundly diminished futures heralded almost daily in the world's news media by the latest IPCC up-dates and similar reports of environmental and other major problems.
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