<!doctype html public «-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en»> http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859–1"> Between 1950s and the 1970s, visions of the ‘future’ became a key notion for Western industrial societies. Future research was grounded on the assumption that there were many different ‘futures’ that could be predicted and controlled. At first, future research was the source of expertise for a veritable planning boom, but later, future research entered a period of decline, as the limits of predicting future events became increasingly evident.