Used futures are seductive because they feel inevitable. For those not familiar “used futures”, this is a a concept that futures pioneer and professor Sohail Inayatullah introduced in a paper called “Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming”. The term “used futures” refers to the backward-looking insights and ideas of possible futures loaded down with the baggage of past experiences.
Used futures present the future as a continuation of familiar trajectories: more efficient, more automated, more optimised versions of today. When these futures dominate, change starts to feel predetermined, and agency quietly drains away.
This is when it’s easy to be cynical and dismissive of the futures that emerge in futures sessions.
After all, if the future is already written, then why bother engaging? Why question assumptions, experiment, or take responsibility for shaping what comes next? Cynicism becomes a rational response to a future that feels closed. I see this is the work I do with climate futures in communities and it’s a common pushback when I start introducing discussions about the different levels of climate action that people might engage in.
In futures facilitation, I’ve come to see part of the work as gently reopening that closure.
Not by offering “better” visions, but by loosening the grip of inherited ones. That means helping people notice when they’re defaulting to someone else’s idea of tomorrow, and creating breathing space for possible futures that are less polished, less certain, and more human.
This also creates space for hope (which, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, isn’t about optimism). And hope allows us to have conversations about how to restore the sense that the future is still under construction, that it’s shaped by choices, relationships, and values, not just trends and technologies.
Used futures flatten possibility. Questioning them doesn’t guarantee better outcomes, but it does mean that we can invite people to think about agency, and their “sense of agency”. And yes, everyone will have different levels of agency, and that’s fine, too.
In these uncertain times, that is, I think, no small thing.