1. Prognostics Slovak University of Technology
Faculty of Material Science and Technology in Trnava
Prognostics
doc. PhDr. Eva Odlerová, PhD.

2. Content 1.5 Criticizm and defense of liberalism
1.6 Liberalism and social democracy
2 FUTUROLOGY
2.1 Futures studies' methodologies
2.2 Model of social communication

3. 1.3 Criticism and defense of Liberalism
Collectivist opponents of liberalism reject its emphasis on individual rights, and instead emphasize the collective or the community to a degree where the rights of the individual are either diminished or abolished. Collectivism can be found both to the right and to the left of liberalism. On the left, the collective that tends to be enhanced is the state, often in the form of state socialism. On the right, conservative and religious opponents argue that individual freedom in the non-economic sphere can lead to indifference, selfishness, and immorality. The liberal answer to this is that it is not the purpose of the law to legislate morality, but to protect the citizen from harm.

4. Beyond these clear theoretical differences, some liberal principles can be disputed in a piecemeal fashion, with some portions kept and others abandoned (see Liberal democracy and Neoliberalism.) This ongoing process - where putatively liberal agents accept some traditionally liberal values and reject others - causes some critics to question whether or not the word "liberal" has any useful meaning at all.
In terms of international politics, the universal claims of human rights which liberalism tends to endorse are disputed by rigid adherents of non-interventionism, since intervention in the interests of human rights can conflict with the sovereignty of nations.

5. 1.6 Liberalism and social democracy
Liberalism shares many basic goals and methods with social democracy, but in some places diverges. The fundamental difference between liberalism and social democracy is disagreement over the role of the state in the economy. Social democracy can be understood to combine features from both social liberalism and democratic socialism. Democratic socialism seeks to achieve some minimum equality of outcome. Democratic socialists support a large public sector and the nationalization of utilities such as gas and electricity in order to avoid private monopolies, achieve social justice, and raise the standard of living. Liberalism also emphasizes equality of opportunity, and not equality of outcome, citing the desire for a meritocracy.

6. 2 FUTUROLOGY
Futurology is the detailed critical inspection and reasoning of the state in which things will develop in the future on the basis of existing circumstances in history. The term literally means the "study of the future". The term was coined by German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim in the mid-1940's, who proposed it as a new branch of knowledge that would include a new science of probability.
In a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the timeline that has yet to occur, i.e. the place in space-time where lie all events that still have not occurred. In this sense the future is opposed to the past and the present.

7. Such names include foresight, futurism, prospective and futuribles (in France, the latter is also the name of the important 20th century foresight journal published only in French), and prospectiva (in Latin America). Futures studies has become the common term in the English-speaking world.
Futurologists attempt to apply Strategic Foresight for forecasting alternative futures. While forecasting -- i.e., attempts to predict future states from current trends -- is a common methodology, professional scenarios often rely on "backcasting" -- i.e., asking what changes in the present would be required to arrive at envisioned alternative future states.

8. The modern multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural discipline of futurology, known more generally as futures studies, emerged in the mid-1960's, according to first-generation futurists Olaf Helmer, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Dennis Gabor, Oliver Markley, Burt Nanus, and Wendell Bell.Futures studies reflects on how today’s changes (or the lack thereof) become tomorrow’s reality. It includes attempts to analyze the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in order to develop foresight and to map alternative futures.

9. The Limits to Growth by Dennis Meadows is a good place to start
The Limits to Growth by Dennis Meadows is a good place to start. It is widely used by corporations, as a discipline to challenge strategies composed for long term growth. Education in the field of Futurology has taken place for some time. Beginning in the United States of America in the 1960s, it has since developed in many different countries. Futures education can encourage the use of concepts, tools and processes that allow students to think long-term, consequentially, and imaginatively.

10. 2.1 Futures studies' methodologies
Several authors have become recognized as futurists. They research trends (particularly in technology) and write accounts of their observations, conclusions, and predictions. Some futurists share features in common with the writers of science fiction, and indeed some science-fiction writers, such as Arthur C. Clarke, have acquired a certain reputation as futurists. Some writers, though, show less interest in technological or social developments and use the future only as a backdrop to their stories. For example, in the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote of prediction as the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists, not of writers: "a novelist's business is lying".

11. Practitioners
Alvin Toffler, Arthur Harkins, Aurelio Peccei, Bertrand deJouvenel, Bill Joy, Charles Babbage, Clem Bezold, Daniel Bell, David Absalam, David Passig, Derek Woodgate, Eamonn Kelly, Earl Bakken, Earl C. Joseph, Sr., Edgar Morin, Edward Cornish, Homer A. McCrerey, Hugo de Garis, Ian Baker, Irma Wyman, Jacque Fresco, John Brunner (novelist), John McHale, John Naisbitt, John Smart, Mahdi ElMandjra, Mária Törőcsik, Max More, Michael E. Arth, Michael Walzer, Peter Bishop, RADM Grace Hopper, Ray Kurzweil, Richard A. Slaughter, Robert Prechter, Scott W. Erickson, Sohail Inayatullah, Stelawart Brand, Wendy Schultz, William Knoke, Willis Harman.

12. Futurology is the study of the future to obtain knowledge of it on the basis of present trends. Beginning in the 1960s, it is a relatively new field of study. The word futurology was first used in 1943 by Ossip Flechteim, a political scientist, to describe a new scientific field of human knowledge based on a critical, systematic, and normative analysis of questions related to future. However, future studies (or futures studies), futures research, futuristics, prognostics, and futurible are also used for the term futurology.

13. Interest in the future of humanity, society, and the world in general is an age-old phenomenon. In a two-volume extensive scholarly work, Fred Polak (1961) has outlined "the close relationship between the history of images of the future and the general course of history itself" and shown that "positive images of the future, in and through their own history, have foreshadowed the outlines of the oncoming course of general events." In his study the images of future are largely those presented by the utopia.

14. Idea that man has within him the power to create a desirable future conducive to the general well-being of man and nature has guided this new field of futurology. Dramatic events, such as the successful completion of the Manhattan Project during World War II and later development in space research leading to the successful landing of a human being on the Moon, opened people's eyes to the new power of science and technology—that it can be harnessed not only to help humans determine a future desired goal, but also to achieve it in a stipulated time.

15. Thank you for attention