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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Futures Studies in the European Ex-socialist Countries 30 YEARS OF FUTURES STUDIES IN POLAND: Experiences and Conclusions Andrzej Karpinski Professional futures studies in Poland were initiated in 1969. First projects of this type were created by the institutes and committees of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at a few universities.

Initially the University of Wroclaw was the leader in these studies, while currently the University of Lodz is the leader. Before 1989, the year of the breakthrough associated with Poland’s entrance on the road of market economy, some achievements in this area were accomplished also by some of the democratic opposition groups at that time, such as the group “Experience and future”. Government agencies began the activities in this field much later.

Currently the main role among them is played by the Governmental Centre for Strategic Studies. From classic prognoses to strategic studies on the future This study is limited mainly to the presentation of the situation in futures studies conducted by the Polish Academy of Sciences. These studies began with the foundation of the Futures Studies Committee “Poland 2000” in 1969. The Committee has been working unceasingly for over 30 years now, including nowadays[^7] .

However, after 1989 fundamental changes took place in the approach to these studies and the methodologies used in them. The direction of these changes may be characterised best if one confronts them with the main world currents in these studies. For on the world scale today one may distinguish three main trends in the thinking about the future. The first one may be called: ”the current of global visions”.

For it seeks the answer to the question: what will the world or the particular aspects of the economy or society look like in 10, 15, or 25 years ahead, i.e. it seeks to determine the vision of the future. This trend of studies is represented by such researchers as: Bell, Kahn, Wiener, Naisbitt , the Tofflers , and many others. Those who represent this trend use mainly the typical methods of making prognoses with a broad use of econometric methods and mathematical models.

In some prognoses of this type there are also some elements of normative character, i.e. attempts at answering not only the question what will the future look like, but also what should it look like. The second current of these studies is worst-case scenarios or warning prognoses .