The Prediction Machine: science, technology, and futurology in British Government, c. 1970-2010
Please note this seminar will be held in the Lecture Theatre, Faculty of History, George Street
By the end of the 1960s, public planning had seemingly failed in the United Kingdom. But that did not mean an end to public prediction. Instead, throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, ministers and senior civil servants set up various units and programmes that brought the sciences of prediction to bear on national and global problems: energy crises, technological change, public health. This paper starts by exploring the prediction units of the 1970s and early 1980s, such as the Cabinet Office’s “Committee on Future World Trends”, the Ministry of Technology and Department of Industry’s “Programmes Analysis Unit”, and the Advisory Council on Applied Research and Development’s “Foresight” project. All these projects either failed or met with limited success and were not institutionalised in any lasting form.

This paper then moves onto the 1990s and 2000s, when prediction was successfully re-institutionalised in British government. In 1993, the Government Office for Science and Technology began the Foresight programme, which runs to the present day – making it the most enduring institution of UK science policy in the post-war era. In 2001, the Cabinet Office’s Strategic Futures Team published A Futurist’s Toolbox: Methodologies in Futures Work, a futures handbook for UK government departments, the latest edition of which was published by the Government Office for Science this year. The paper thus concludes by reflecting on the historical changes that finally led to the successful institutionalisation of prediction in UK government in the 1990s.
Date: 11 November 2024, 16:00
Venue: History Faculty, George Street OX1 2RL
Venue Details: Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Dr Jacob Ward (Maastricht University)
Organising department: Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology
Part of: Oxford Centre for the History of Science Medicine & Technology (OCHSMT) Seminars and Events
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Belinda Clark