Futurology is child of the cybernetic revolution which confronts man, in a new way, with the old problem of means & ends. The concept of culture denotes the great detour which man has to make in order to realize himself. He is the only living being that, in order to reach its ends, has to break ways which at the same time threaten to become blocked by the accumulation of means as the products of his inventiveness. That is why he is always 'on his way' & subject to the dialectics of means & ends, to the tension between what 'he' aims at & what 'it' results in. Sci & technology are the main causes of the rapid changes that have taken place in recent times. With the help of these means, futurology tries to predict & to direct developments that may be expected over a shorter or longer period of time. However, philosophers & theorists disagree on the predictability of soc events. Cooperation between diff fields of study is a primary prerequisite for any sci'ly reliable futurology. History shows that man's simple & rectilinear predictions are again & again frustrated by the irrational, the contingent, the not-thought-of. The question is not whether sci is able to formulate predictions or forecasts about itself, but about the whole of soc reality with which it is closely interlocked. The main problem for any policy starting from the findings of futurology will be the problem of preferences & allocations. AA.
