THE WORLD CHANGES-AND THE FUTURISTS' PROFESSION, TOO
Given earlier years' sometimes heated debates between the different contingencies in the foresight, technology assessment, and forecasting communities, respectively, it is very welcome that the Journal of Forecasting dedicates this issue to foresight. This can, in fact, be seen as something natural at a time when S&T developments have profound impacts on all policy fields.
Because of the overarching importance of S&T, it has become essential to make improved choices in this field, choices that help turn public and private investments into technological and societal innovation, and into lasting improvements in terms of competitiveness and quality of life. Hence the widespread concern about the difficulties to come to grips with the complexity of S&T developments, and to reduce the uncertainty and ambiguity of their impacts on our highly interdependent multi-actor governance systems.
Indeed, 'labelling' is of secondary importance as decision makers are willing to use whatever methodologies and instruments support their tasks. The professionals in foresight, technology assessment, and forecasting are adapting to this changing reality, by adjusting concepts and tools (Coates et al., 2001), and by focusing on the relatedness of their fields (Kuhlmann et al., 1999).
Implicitly and explicitly, these efforts are discernible throughout this special issue which, as a whole, is concerned with the common objective of improving policy-making and the communication on S&T issues relevant for society. This is by far not surprising, given that the underlying problems and the concerns discussed are quite similar. Although the individual articles deal with a broad variety of subjects-national exercises, sector studies, methodological questions-there rapidly crystallizes a common set of key topics: ž 'How do we set priorities?' ž 'Whom do we involve, how deeply, and how?' ž 'What are the impacts and outcomes; and, what is more important, content results or process results?' and, last but not least, ž 'Do the outcomes justify the large inputs?'