Looking like a cone-shaped diagram, the Futures Cone is a descriptive tool useful to futurists in visually representing the variety of alternative (potential) futures.

As a method, it has its own history. It was the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor who first referred to a cone graph – referred to in his writings as the ‘plausibility cone‘ – in 1990. His cone “defined a range of plausible futures extended over an explicit timeframe, including a kind of “back cone” in the past“, explains Australian futurist Joseph Voros in a brief historical excursus on the topic.

But it was in 1994, at the hands of the futurists Trevor Hancock and Clement Bezold, that the Futures Cone was employed to theorise the first taxonomy of potential futures, elaborated by Norman Henchey in 1978 – then a professor of educational sciences at McGill University in Montréal – who distinguished between possible, plausible and probable futures as futures-studies. And, in representing it graphically, the original taxonomy was expanded to include ‘preferable futures’.

Finally, from 2000 onwards, Voros began to employ the cone diagram in the context of foresight teaching and practice, and over the years reinterpreted it by adding more classes of futures to the four already outlined and thus developed the most recent version of the Cone of Futures, as he himself illustrates in the anticipation handbook “Handbook of anticipation: Theoretical and applied aspects of the use of futures in decision making” edited by Roberto Poli, director of the Master’s in Social Forecasting at the University of Trento and president of the Italian Futurists Association. But let’s go deeper.

What is the Futures Cone

Thus, Hancock and Bezold’s Futures Cone of ’94 is the first graphical representation of the four types of potential futures identified at the time (possible, plausible, probable and preferable), where the tip of the cone (located to the left of the diagram) is the ‘present’ and its base (to the right) visualises the futures.

It is a model that first led the way in understanding the meaning of ‘futures’ in the plural, centred on the thesis that there is more than a single future to explore.

Within their diagram – observes Joseph Voros in his paper “A primer on Futures Studies, foresight and the use of scenarios” – the two futurists indicate ‘scenarios’ as

“regions within the realm of ‘plausible’. Also visible are the ‘wild cards’, i.e. those events or mini-scenarios with low probability – and, therefore, outside the realm of the probable – that, if they occurred, would have a very high impact. Examples might include a collision between an asteroid and the Earth, which is considered plausible, or very high-speed interstellar space travel, which is considered possible” [today, January 2023, as we write, current examples of Wild Cards are the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine – ed.], “regions within the realm of ‘plausible’. Also visible are the ‘wild cards’, i.e. those events or mini-scenarios with low probability – and, therefore, outside the realm of the probable – that, if they occurred, would have a very high impact. Examples might include a collision between an asteroid and the Earth, which is considered plausible, or very high-speed interstellar space travel, which is considered possible” [today, January 2023, as we write, current examples of Wild Cards are the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine – ed.]

In particular, with regard to the fourth class of futures graphically described in Hancock and Bezold’s cone (the preferable futures), in highlighting how this refers to what the individual or company ‘wants to happen’, with the emphasis on the emotional and, for that reason, subjective nature of this type of future, Voros cites a historical achievement of mankind that has become a classic example in Future Studies, namely man’s landing on the Moon.

From a future only desired, ‘preferred’, by US President John Kennedy, but initially (this is 1961) not considered plausible due to the lack of knowledge, knowledge and means to make it a concretely attainable goal, in the lead-up to 1969 it became at first a ‘plausible future, then probable and then realisable as a reality.

This example,’ Voros emphasises, ‘is an important aspect in the creation of future scenarios:

“judgement of what is possible, plausible and probable depends on ‘being in time’ and tends to change with the passage of time“.

This means that preferable futures can be so desired that, over time, the knowledge needed to realise them, to make them concrete facts.

“It is this ability to imagine and, therefore, to move towards ‘preferred’ futures or, conversely, to consciously move away from undesirable futures, that offers humanity its greatest chance of further survival“.

The types of futures in the futures cone

From the Futures Cone/futures cone devised by Hancock and Bezold to Joseph Voros’ 2003 version, which, in total, includes seven types of alternative futures, which he considered

“subjective judgements, based on ‘ideas’ of the future based on the present moment, which can obviously change with the passage of time, as the example of the Apollo XI landing teaches us”.

The following is a brief summary of the future categories represented by the Voros cone.

Potential

By “potential future” is meant everything that goes beyond the “here and now” and that adheres to the idea of a future that is neither determined, mechanistic, nor fixed but, on the contrary, open, dynamic and evolving, as is the deep meaning of Future Studies. Anything can happen beyond the present moment.

Preposterous

This typology encompasses those futures “that we judge to be “ridiculous”, “impossible” or that “will never happen”” writes Voros in the cited article. And it is conceived as a tribute to the futurist James Dator and his Second Law of the Future (“any useful idea about the future should appear ridiculous) and to the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and his Second Law of the Future, which states: “the only way to find the limits of the possible is to overcome them in the impossible“.

Posssible

It is possible the future that we think ‘could happen’, provided, however, that knowledge is acquired that we do not yet possess, but which could one day be ours. “This category includes all those types of futures that, in the present, are only possible to imagine, no matter how far-fetched or improbable,” Voros points out.

Plausible

In contrast to the possible future – which points to future knowledge – the plausible future is the future we think might occur based on current knowledge about the world, certain dynamics, processes, laws of physics or technologies.

Projected

Conceived as a variable of the probable future, the predicted future is, in Voros’s conception, “the “reference future”, understood as a continuation of the past through the present“.

Probable

The probable future is one that, in part, is rooted in the present, in current trends. But such trends,” warns Joseph Voros, “are not necessarily continuous over time and may undergo discontinuities. Some may, even, vanish suddenly, while new ones may emerge unexpectedly‘.

Preferable

As already mentioned, the preferred future refers to what we would like to happen. Parallel to this typology, there is also the opposite typology, given by the future that we ‘would not like’ to happen (the non-preferable futures), including, for example, global climate change scenarios.

The classes of future graphically described in his cone are not regarded by Voros as something rigidly separate. There is fluidity between one category of future and the next, since “every future is a potential future, including those that cannot even be imagined, because they are still outside the cone, in the “dark” zone”.

Uses and applications of the futures cone

“This taxonomy of futures finds its greatest utility when undertaking the Prospection phase of the Generic Foresight Process, especially when presented in reverse order, from the projected category to the preposterous category“

says Joseph Voros himself in his ‘The Futures Cone, use and history‘, after describing his own version of the Futures Cone.

The reference is to what, today, is one of the most popular models within the strategic foresight activities, aimed at developing business-oriented foresight processes, to help them make more informed decisions on the basis of the analysis of alternative futures.

In particular, the Generic Foresight Process – developed by Voros from 2000 onwards and for which he drew inspiration from earlier work by colleagues at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne – refers to a methodological framework in which the focus on the strategic part is predominant.

More in detail, the ‘Prospection’ phase mentioned by the Futurist is a key step within ‘Foresight work’, the second of the four elements (after Inputs and before Outputs and Strategy) on which the framework rests.

After an initial analysis to identify emerging trends, the Generic Foresight Process focuses on their interpretation, on the search for their deeper meanings. The third step (Prospection), finally, is that of “wading forward”, in which the Futures Cone intervenes – through the classes of futures it contemplates – as a kind of graphic map supporting the visual representation of scenario planning.

Baptised by Voros with a term he himself coined – where ‘pro’ stands for ‘forward’, ‘spect’ for ‘look’ and ‘tion’ for the nominal form of the action – Prospection is that step in the anticipatory process in which “various visions of alternative futures are created, in the broader process of foresight“ the author points out.

The Cone of Futures also finds application within the Futures Thinking, discipline that explores alternative scenarios not with the aim of anticipating the future and making predictions, but rather with the intention of stimulating thinking about complex problems and dynamics, to imagine new possibilities, new solutions and make better choices in the present or to respond to challenges in the future.

In such an exploratory (not anticipatory) process, the Futures Cone acts as a tool capable of guiding the futurist in identifying a series of alternative scenarios within which to theorise his or her strategies and focus on certain signals, also on the strength of the flexibility and fluidity of the future categories it represents, according to which each scenario explored is not fixed, nor given forever, but is liable to change in the course of time and events.