Analysis of Ignorance from Future Signs Based on Semiotics

Most often the social and political changes do not happen suddenly. In other words, they are today’s clues and signs that provide us with hints of possible futures, events, wildcards and trends. In this line, the main question of this paper is: why do policy-makers face with challenges of futures blindly, and how weak signals and potential future changes can be made sense? Therefore, the focus of this paper is to examine weak signals as a fundamental approach in futures studies in an attempt to open up the past and present to create alternative futures. With regard to the question, we find that understanding future’s weak signals is a social phenomenon related to social reality. So the theoretical framework for clarifying the blindness is discourse. It is crucial to be aware of social and political discourses. Obviously, the short-time discourses exclude the signals of future as well as policy consequences and significations, thus long-term efforts often fail dealing with short-time articulations. But the hegemony of existing discourse is temporary and is not necessarily consistent, and understanding temporary state opens up alternative futures. Having investigated the ignorance from future signs, the present paper can be useful in FS, policy-making, organizational strategizing and etc.