Futures studies. Moore's law is an example of futures studies; it is a statistical collection of past and present trends with the goal of accurately extrapolating future trends.
Futures studies (also called futurology and futurism) is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science. In general, it can be considered as a branch of the social sciences and parallel to the field of history. In the same way that history studies the past, futures studies considers the future. Futures studies (colloquially called "futures" by many of the field's practitioners) seeks to understand what is likely to continue and what could plausibly change. Nanotechnology - Foresight Institute. Association of Professional Futurists - What Is A Futurist?
A professional futurist is a person who studies the future in order to help people understand, anticipate, prepare for and gain advantage from coming changes.
It is not the goal of a futurist to predict what will happen in the future. The futurist uses foresight to describe what could happen in the future and, in some cases, what should happen in the future. About the Millennium Project. Purpose: Improve humanity's prospects for building a better future.
Mission: Improve thinking about the future and make that thinking available through a variety of media for feedback to accumulate wisdom about the future for better decisions today. Vision: A global foresight network of Nodes, information, and software, building a global collective intelligence system recognized for its ability to improve prospects for humanity. Chaîne de WorldFutureSociety. Tomorrow is built today.