STUDYING THE FUTURE

Humanity has always been intrigued by the future: what lies beyond the horizon, what risks and opportunities await, and how can we predict it? Those who are interested in the future today – economists, politicians, demographers, sociologists, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and futurists – often use a different set of concepts: analyzing trends, forecasting effects, modeling scenarios and processes, and making futurist predictions.

Representatives from different countries, fields of activity, and schools of modern future studies will gather at “Studying the Future” session to introduce the results of their latest projects and discuss their prospects. Experts from Russia and the symposium’s participating countries will talk about the effects of multipolarity and other global megatrends, universal and unique challenges of the Global North and Global South, technological forecasting, and the future of technology. They will also address which future challenges can only be solved through the united efforts of different countries – or never solved at all. They will debate the fate of human-centricity in a tech-driven world and who and how will create the future, opening new frontiers in science and writing new pages in the history of a multipolar world.