1st APFN, Tamkang University

March 19-20 2015

The first APFN conference aimed to:

1) explore how Asian perspectives and traditions, critically understood, inform Futures Studies;

2) spread foresight from government focus to civil society, small businesses, and corporate sectors;

3) strengthen existing informal networks;

4) build a stronger link with other future-focused networks and international organizations around the world; and

5) explore emerging issues that might likely challenge current trajectories of the Asia-Pacific region.

Learn more about the first APFN in this article by Shermon Cruz, John Sweeney and Mohammadali Baradaran Ghahfarokhi, published in the Journal of Futures Studies. Together they explore the aforementioned aims, the many insights generated, and early visions for the futures of APFN.

“So what is the future of Asian futures? Futures could transform, as this APFN research report notes, into many different and well, of course, weird things. As it innovates, it may likely disrupt and violate current systems, versions, archetypes, and worldviews of futures and foresight. Asian futures may likely violate everything, we mean everything, especially those things that we ought to know or know to be valid and true. Keeping the weirdness and strangeness factor will make Asian futures diverse and different from others.” (Cruz, Sweeney, Ghahfarokhi, Journal of Futures Studies, September 2016, 21(1): 93–104