Yogyakarta, 23 August 2019—Prof. Dr. Jianbang Deng, from the Graduate Institute of Future Studies of Tamkang University, Taiwan, provoked the audience to predict the future. This Studium Generale, entitled “Future Studies in Sociology”, was held by the Department of Sociology. The lack of future studies-related resources in Indonesia motivated the Department of Sociology to organize this event. “At the same time, nobody can guess what will happen in the future,” Deng stated.
Deng opened the discussion by explaining several data published by Edison Research and the National Election Pool. These data focused on the demographic composition of the population of the United States during the last presidential election. These data were utilized by the campaign teams of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton widely.
Afterwards, he provided a definition of future studies. “Future studies is a field of science that attempts to predict the possible and expected future trends,” while stressing on “possible” and “expected” as the keywords. Future studies seeks to predict the future socio-economic conditions of our lives. Deng stated that both future studies and sociology are closely related. Sociology focuses on studying the society, while one of the aims of future studies is to predict the future aspects of the society.
Deng was optimistic that there is a bright prospect for future studies. He referred to the implementation of future studies with the case study of government policy in Finland in the 2016-2018 time period. For around two years, the Finnish government has conducted an experiment by giving $ 650 monthly to its citizens as a universal basic income. “The experiment was done to understand further on the economic endurance of the citizens and to predict the future of the Finnish economy,” Deng explained.
Eventually, the Finnish government withdrew this policy. According to the government, this practice has downgraded the work ethics of its citizens and exhausted the state’s budget. Despite the failed experiment, Deng is still convinced that trying to predict the future is a must, whatever it takes.