ESPELETIA: The Complete Framework

In previous posts, we’ve introduced the ESPELETIA dimensions (Ethics, Society, Politics, Environment, Legislation, Economy, Technology, International and Arts) and the ‘key drivers’ (AI, IoT, Big Data, Robotics, Communications and the ‘X Factor’). We now build this into a complete futurology tool for projecting into the future, and provide a complete set of documentation for research and/or classroom exercises.

It’s recommended that both A New Futurism Tool: ESPELETIA and The Futurology Grid are read before this post. These contain some extra detail that will only be summarised here.

If you’re simply looking for the Word documents, they’re here:

Technology Drivers mapped against ESPELETIA Dimensions (for a sequence of years)

Technology Drivers projected into the future (for each ESPELETIA Dimension)

ESPELETIA Dimensions projected into the future (for each Technology Driver)

But the full explanation follows …

To recap … In A New Futurism Tool: ESPELETIA, we introduced the dimensions of the new ESPELETIA framework.

And, in The Futurology Grid, we identified the key future and emerging technology drivers, and mapped them against the ESPELETIA dimensions.

Recall the ‘?’ represents the ‘X Factor’: the disruptive future technology (or technologies) that’s not currently visible.

Each cell, with an X dimension and a Y technology, should be read as:

“How will Y impact upon, or be influenced by, X?”

This allows for a complete analysis, either currently or for any given point in the future. A succession of such mappings projects into the future.

It’s impossible to combine ESPELETIA dimensions, Technology drivers and yearly progression into a single table (three dimensions in a two-dimensional format) but it may often be more appropriate to focus on a single ESPELETIA dimension or Technology driver and project this into the future.

The following tables allow each of the Technology drivers in turn to be analysed (in more detail) against the ESPELETIA dimensions over a succession of years.

There may be more than one ‘? Factor’ (or ‘X Factor’) table, of course, if needed. The following tables allow each of the ESPELETIA dimensions in turn to be analysed (in more detail) against the Technology drivers over a succession of years.

Remember always though that this framework is not a formal one: it’s simply a tool, a checklist, an aide-memoire, for trying to consider a futurology problem or discussion from all relevant angles.

For convenience, the editable Word versions of these (repeated from above) are as follows:

Technology Drivers mapped against ESPELETIA Dimensions (for a sequence of years)

Technology Drivers projected into the future (for each ESPELETIA Dimension)

ESPELETIA Dimensions projected into the future (for each Technology Driver)

Any combination of these should allow for whatever analysis of projection is planned.

Some case studies will follow …