by Dana Klisanin
Introduction
We are now well aware that advances in information and communication technologies enable us to exercise an influence that extends, not only across the globe, but well into the future. This influence is not limited to a few, but is increasingly becoming the province of many. How can we use our enhanced technologies to communicate the importance of foresight? How do we transmit the “cognition and imagination of possible and desirable futures”? While there are many answers to this question, none is perhaps more fundamental than narrative, for it is through our stories, our mythos, that we co-create our shared experience of the world (Campbell, 1993; Krippner, 1994). Currently we find our communities, societies, and the natural world, in an unsustainable place, in large part due to continued adherence to outdated positivistic, mechanistic, materialistic worldviews—narratives that support fragmentation and competition. Foresight, by its very nature, requires something more than opposition and struggle for resources— It requires cooperation, empathy, and the willingness to share resources. Thus, if we are to effectively communicate foresight, we must begin by communicating the holistic narratives that have unfolded within and throughout the scientific and philosophic communities (Laszlo, 1972; Bateson, 1979; Capra, 1982; Bohm, 1980; Macy, 1991; Wilber, 1995; Sahtouris, 2009).(continue…)