ABSTRACT
An unfortunately all-too-common viewpoint is that the future is the concern only of the futurists, that is, only of the professional forecasters and planners. This chapter gives suggestions for involving non-futurists in the study of the future deserve careful attention. In a super-industrial society, knowledge of the future is enormous power, and ignorance of the future may prevent the powerless from feeling revulsion and anger until it is too late. Not only the Americans among the participatory futurists, but also some of the Europeans, were influenced by ways in which some American social movements of the '60s had turned images of the future into potent political action in the present. Thus the participatory futurist begins with a mythical vision, a provisional vision, of the future as an open-ended future; a future free to decide on its own future; a society in which politics can happen, in which different groups of people are able to press toward change in the society.
