Future-Bored: Why We Need New Future Archetypes, Pt1

Think ‘Future.’ Close your eyes. Observe what comes up. Open your eyes. What did you see? Fly­ing cars and humanoid robots, space­ships, blue… dried out or flood­ed land­scapes? What­ev­er it was, it prob­a­bly holds you back from har­ness­ing what the future can do for you. It’s not your fault; too many futures are recycled—visions meant to pro­voke or pre­pare us echo famil­iar tropes. This text is our attempt to make sense of that rep­e­ti­tion and respond not with cyn­i­cism, but with a pro­pos­al: New Future Archetypes—our frame­work for mak­ing futures more imag­i­na­tive, res­o­nant, immer­sive, play­ful, and above all, useful.

Futures Deja Vu

Our stu­dio, N O R M A L S, blends design, fic­tion, and futures—as in fore­sight and future stud­ies more broad­ly. You could call what we do Spec­u­la­tive Design, Design Fic­tion, Futures Design—pick your label. We design things that may or may not ever exist, but that help us engage seri­ous­ly with what the future could look like before deci­sions are made.

We’ve spent the past decade as active guests at the table of the estab­lished futures practice—testing new for­mats and col­lab­o­ra­tions, and adding unex­pect­ed fla­vors to the menu. Often, we brought dessert or a starter—something unex­pect­ed to shift the fla­vor of the meal. Along the way, we met bril­liant futur­ists, made last­ing friend­ships, and had both exhil­a­rat­ing and unset­tling con­ver­sa­tions. But grad­u­al­ly, we began to notice some­thing:

We were being served the same futures, again and again. Nutri­tious, yes, but increas­ing­ly bland. Per­haps you’ve had the same feel­ing: flip­ping through sce­nar­ios and think­ing, “I’ve seen this before.” A rur­al eco-com­mune. A green-blue smart city with self-dri­ving cars and wind tur­bines. Maybe that’s just what the future might hold—and we have also used all these ingre­di­ents. But there seems to be a pair­ing of cer­tain kinds of themes, aes­thet­ics, metaphors, and future tropes. That has pro­duced repet­i­tive, recog­nis­able forms much like arche­types. They are arche­typ­al not in Jim Dator’s sense of the eter­nal­ly valid four futures of Con­tin­u­a­tion, Lim­its and Dis­ci­pline, Decline and Col­lapse, and Trans­for­ma­tion. But one lev­el higher—as spe­cif­ic themes that con­jure up a par­tic­u­lar future inven­to­ry of things and forces at play. As if LEGO cre­at­ed a set of mod­ules, lit­tle pack­ages of par­a­digm, tech­nol­o­gy, cul­ture, and social order, that can be freely com­bined as long as they are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. And the mod­ules come with spe­cif­ic man­i­fes­ta­tions. We have rock­ets, fly­ing cars, lab­o­ra­to­ry aes­thet­ics, gooey mate­ri­als, robots, mil­i­tary vibes, beveled angles, and all-know­ing com­put­ers. It’s cer­tain­ly not the lack of smart and cre­ative peo­ple in the field but the future, it seems, is on repeat. 

Many Futures are Boring. Why?

Is it the pur­pose, the method­olo­gies, the mar­ket, the atten­tion span or cul­tur­al fatigue?

Maybe that’s nor­mal, we’re just get­ting a lit­tle bit bored. This is to be expect­ed. At first every­thing feels new and fresh; with time in a field you start notic­ing repeat­ing pat­terns. But once you see things too often, you lose inter­est. You prob­a­bly don’t under­stand, but you recog­nise and get bored. That’s entire­ly pos­si­ble and that’s prob­a­bly alright, but it is also a chance to exam­ine the caus­es and assump­tions more close­ly.

What do peo­ple or organ­i­sa­tions want from the future? How are they cre­at­ed? Under what con­di­tions, and what is reward­ed in that process? Maybe we are fetishis­ing nov­el­ty and fresh­ness as design­ers. Pos­si­bly they aren’t real­ly that essen­tial? In some cas­es, future tropes are cer­tain­ly good business—robots and fly­ing cars have been around for ages, every­body knows them, they rep­re­sent The Future with a big ‘F’ and if you want to be suc­cess­ful, you build The Future, what­ev­er it is. No need to elab­o­rate fur­ther on this, just read the news. In this case, nov­el­ty is far less impor­tant than some­thing old and estab­lished that mere­ly acts as a car­i­ca­ture of nov­el­ty. The humanoid robot is just fine, thank you—never touch a run­ning system.

The Limits of Strategic Tools

Nov­el­ty isn’t always what’s need­ed when you think strate­gi­cal­ly about the future either: What could hap­pen, and how do we respond? The task of a strate­gic futur­ist is to iden­ti­fy key uncer­tain­ties and study how they might play out in all their per­mu­ta­tions. These process­es stay in the abstract for a long time. They might begin with sig­nal scan­ning, doing inter­views, iden­ti­fy­ing trends, build­ing 2×2 matri­ces to exam­ine inter­ac­tions, or fill­ing mor­pho­log­i­cal box­es to struc­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties. But once you arrive at an abstract out­line, you are back at your LEGO box—the toolk­it of clichéd tropes and famil­iar imagery wait­ing to fill in the blanks. These sce­nar­ios might still serve their pur­pose while also rein­forc­ing the very future arche­types we seek to chal­lenge.

Sce­nar­ios can be incred­i­bly prag­mat­ic: they help us under­stand what might lie ahead and how to pre­pare. But this also implies a rather pas­sive con­cep­tion of the future as some­thing shaped by exter­nal forces, where our role is sim­ply to be ready. Even if the analy­sis is deep, the mes­sag­ing is often sim­ple. For your hik­ing trip: pack a cam­era if every­thing goes per­fect­ly and you can focus on the beau­ty, take some addi­tion­al snacks if it gets unex­pect­ed­ly tedious, maybe a swim­suit if you find hik­ing isn’t your thing, and an emer­gency bea­con just in case you get cov­ered by a land­slide. Start by going west. Fair enough.

Nov­el­ty still mat­ters when antic­i­pat­ing how others—competitors, adver­saries, allies—might act. But here, cre­ativ­i­ty often stays with­in exist­ing para­me­ters. It’s not about chang­ing the game, just play­ing it well. That kind of think­ing doesn’t chal­lenge assump­tions; it details con­se­quences. And by doing so, it often solid­i­fies the tropes it draws from.

In fields such as risk man­age­ment, dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness, and logis­tics, estab­lished sce­nario frames are often not just efficient—they’re essen­tial. These fields rely on struc­tured assump­tions to stay pre­pared and cut uncer­tain­ty. Yet even here, nov­el risks arise and break inher­it­ed mod­els. Nev­er­the­less, too much cre­ativ­i­ty might also be per­ceived as a dis­trac­tion, while pro­duc­ing results that are con­sis­tent across the field might rein­force credibility.

Why We Need New Futures

In con­trast, when­ev­er we aim to shape some­thing new—be it a strat­e­gy, a prod­uct, a social vision, or a policy—new futures become essen­tial. Not because nov­el­ty is a virtue in itself, but because think­ing cre­ative­ly about what could be is a way to break out of inher­it­ed con­straints. It’s the dif­fer­ence between prepar­ing for what might hap­pen and prepar­ing to make some­thing hap­pen.

Count­less ini­tia­tives of Futures Lit­er­a­cy advo­cate for devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy and chal­lenge the assump­tions behind cul­tur­al­ly shared or man­u­fac­tured visions of the future—often designed to serve spe­cif­ic inter­est groups. Mas­ter­ing this skill is increas­ing­ly rec­og­nized as vital. As such, con­struct­ing per­son­al or col­lec­tive futures becomes a pow­er­ful way to gain agency and free­dom. In this case, nov­el­ty is not the point, rather than tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for your own futures. Since estab­lished futures are often analysed in terms of whom they serve, cre­at­ing alter­na­tives nec­es­sar­i­ly implies novelty—at least as a way to ques­tion the sta­tus quo. Uncer­tain­ty, then, is not a regret­table gap to be con­trolled through pre­dic­tion, but quite the oppo­site: a force that tick­les exist­ing pow­er struc­tures. The future's not set; make it your own. 

Futures as Cultural Capacity

Beyond tools and tech­niques, there’s some­thing deep­er at stake: the cul­tur­al func­tion of futures. Draw­ing on the dis­tinc­tion between present futures (the futures we cur­rent­ly con­sid­er pos­si­ble) and future presents (the futures that will actu­al­ly unfold), we can think of futures as form­ing a cultural—and personal—reservoir. This reser­voir con­di­tions how we inter­pret the present and what we believe to be pos­si­ble. You might think of it as an immune sys­tem, or more con­struc­tive­ly, as a form of evo­lu­tion­ary poten­tial. The diver­si­ty of futures we hold shapes our capac­i­ty to respond to com­plex and shift­ing real­i­ties. And that’s why updat­ing and expand­ing this reser­voir isn’t just useful—it’s essen­tial.

But it’s not only about the diver­si­ty of futures out there. It’s about our abil­i­ty to appro­pri­ate, man­i­fest, and expe­ri­ence them in ways that let us derive mean­ing and insight. Ulti­mate­ly, we need to be able to project our­selves into these futures—in all their granularity—to under­stand, ques­tion, and evolve them further.

Introducing New Future Archetypes (NFAs)

Now this thread of think­ing about the use­ful­ness of futures—or the hes­i­ta­tions, ques­tions, and intro­spec­tions that wove it—isn’t worth much if we were to just dump it here with­out offer­ing a path ahead. After all, this is what we promise as pro­fes­sion­als, and to us, the path is very clear: we need new future arche­types. And this is pre­cise­ly how we’ve decid­ed to encap­su­late our prac­tice into a sim­pler and more direct frame­work, which we apt­ly call ‘New Future Arche­types,’ or ‘NFAs’ for short.

NFAs are immer­sive, authored future worlds designed to help peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions think dif­fer­ent­ly about what’s ahead—and what they could cre­ate. They work like sand­box­es: spaces to explore unfa­mil­iar futures, shift per­spec­tive, and gen­er­ate new ideas.

Each NFA revolves around a dis­tinct future log­ic, sourced and ampli­fied from the present—a com­bi­na­tion of social val­ues, emerg­ing dynam­ics, and imag­ined real­i­ties. This log­ic comes to life through vis­i­ble signs: objects, spaces, tech­nolo­gies, and ways of liv­ing that feel both unfa­mil­iar and strange­ly plau­si­ble.

While we do refer to them as arche­types, they aren’t designed in a detached, soul­less way, but rather strive to offer emo­tion­al­ly res­o­nant, con­text-rich envi­ron­ments that we believe bet­ter sup­port futures-led inno­va­tion. They help iden­ti­fy strate­gic ques­tions, stim­u­late ideas, open up design oppor­tu­ni­ties, and uncov­er pos­si­bil­i­ties that often remain hid­den in abstract or ana­lyt­i­cal set­tings. They are not pre­dic­tions, but explorato­ry tools—inviting reflec­tion, inven­tion, and exper­i­men­ta­tion from with­in the tex­ture of a world that could emerge.

Take Pyr­ia, for example—a New Future Arche­type that reframes col­lapse not as a dis­as­ter but as a strat­e­gy. In Pyr­ia, the state acknowl­edges that the exist­ing order can­not last and guides an order­ly descent: cities are redesigned for dura­bil­i­ty rather than expan­sion, sup­ply chains favour local resilience, and cit­i­zens learn skills for life beyond growth. Pyr­ia enables teams to imag­ine and test poli­cies, prod­ucts, and cul­tur­al choic­es against a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent oper­at­ing log­ic.

NFAs like Pyr­ia sup­port inno­va­tion that begins where it should: not in abstract assump­tions, but in tan­gi­ble, res­o­nant envi­ron­ments where futures can be felt, test­ed, and transformed.

Can Archetypes Be Designed?

But wait—if out­dat­ed arche­types are part of the prob­lem, why pro­pose new ones? Wouldn’t that just replace one set of clichés with anoth­er? And can we even design new arche­types at will? We don’t think so—not exact­ly. The pack­ag­ing of themes, aes­thet­ics and future inven­to­ry makes arche­types pow­er­ful to share, to remem­ber and to work with. But they need to be dynam­ic, liv­ing and grow­ing to help us respond to our present in use­ful ways. And no, we can’t just design arche­types at will, after all, they are cul­tur­al forms, not inven­tions. But we do believe in work­ing towards them: as shared, res­o­nant struc­tures that blend abstract sys­tems with con­crete imag­i­na­tion. When we talk about New Future Arche­types, we use the term programmatically—we pro­pose start­ing points towards what could become New Future Arche­types and a way of engage­ment that can con­tribute to bring­ing them about, while pro­duc­ing strate­gic insights, design oppor­tu­ni­ties and new per­spec­tives on the way.

Ear­li­er we glimpsed at Pyr­ia; return­ing to it now shows what NFAs can do. By guid­ing col­lapse strategically—redesigning cities for dura­bil­i­ty, local­is­ing sup­ply chains, and teach­ing post‑growth skills—Pyria elab­o­rates on the nit­ty grit­ty of a foun­da­tion­al shift and demon­strates how an arche­type can enlarge the space of action rather than mere­ly describe it.

What Makes Futures (and NFAs) Useful 

Con­cepts, ideas, and futures only become mean­ing­ful when they are con­nect­ed to real chal­lenges and active­ly appro­pri­at­ed. How do you under­stand their impli­ca­tions and how can you use them to cre­ate new answers and per­spec­tives? For that, NFAs need to be immer­sive, detailed, play­ful and rel­e­vant. We’ll explore how NFAs are used in practice—and what they can do in an upcom­ing Part Two.