Futuureissa

Futuureissa is a term used in speculative futures discourse and science fiction to describe a practice or orientation that seeks to explore multiple plausible futures through imaginative travel across timelines, geographies, and social orders. The concept treats futures as navigable spaces rather than fixed outcomes and is not tied to a single doctrine or school of thought.

Etymology and scope are unsettled. The word appears to blend the English word future with a suffix or inflection that evokes movement or journeying, suggesting a methodological stance of traversing possible worlds rather than predicting a single path. In various texts, futuureissa is used as a metaphor for the iterative exploration of futures through storytelling, design, and dialogue.

Applications and methods commonly associated with futuureissa include participatory scenario work, speculative design, narrative worldbuilding, and critical inquiry. Practitioners emphasize inclusivity, reflexivity, and the examination of how power, culture, and environment shape imaginable futures. Techniques may involve collaborative workshops, fiction and artefacts, data-driven projections treated as navigational tools, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to surface underrepresented or marginalized futures.

History and reception are heterogeneous, with no universally accepted origin. The term appears across academic essays, design discourse, and science fiction, where it functions as a heuristic to encourage pluralism, ethical reflection, and action-oriented thinking about governance, technology, and society. Some critics label it as vague marketing, while supporters argue that it helps reframe futures as a spectrum of possibilities that people can choice into or resist.

See also: futures studies, scenario planning, participatory design, speculative design, futures literacy.