ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the rise of futurism in the immediate post war period in the ideas of a number of intellectuals central to its making: the American urbanist Lewis Mumford; the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak; the economist Kenneth Boulding and his equally prominent wife, peace activist Elise Boulding; the German journalist Robert Jungk; the Norwegian international relations theorist Johan Galtung; and the former RANDian, systems theorist Hazan Ozbekhan. In this chapter, author argues the ideas of these intellectuals and scientists, the future reemerged as a utopian category. The red thread of futurism was the appeal to the human imagination and the rejection of the idea of science as something distinct from and superior to, the human imagination. As futurists organized through a series of conferences in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they envisioned themselves as not only the saviors but as the midwives of a future yet unborn but in urgent need of delivery.
