Vocab words that are Important AF!
Important terms for understanding and practicing Affective Foresight
When the two of us began discussing what it would take to build an Affective Foresight community, we quickly realized something: we didn’t yet share a clear language for talking about it.
Some of the terms being used—and the assumptions behind them—needed greater clarity.
Building a shared vocabulary of the future is a critical role of foresight in any organization. Over time, this vocabulary helps shape culture. Words become triggers that can be used as short-hand code for future scenarios and ideas shared in the minds of people in your community (or organization) without requiring further explanation.
For example: “That’s an Ostrich idea!” or “We don’t want to be a Lame Duck!” were famous retorts that were references to the Mont Fleur scenarios developed in South Africa at the end of Apartheid.
Building on this idea, we added the word “énouenent” to our future vocabulary and previously referenced it on our blog here.
Because Affective Foresight is a new and emerging area of practice, it requires a rich, hybrid vocabulary—one that draws from emotion research, futures thinking, neuroscience, and technology. Together, these concepts help build a shared culture and framework for understanding.
Below, we offer a first (and short) collection of terms that may help shape the emerging language of Affective Foresight.
Affective Foresight Vocab List #1
affective forecasting: Predicting future emotional states/responses
anticipatory nostalgia: Feeling that you are missing aspects of the present before they are gone (Batcho & Shikh, 2016)
autonoetic consciousness: The ability to be aware of oneself as an individual in subjective time, allowing for “mental time travel” into the past and future
default mode network (DMN): A system of connected brain areas that show increased activity when a person is not focused on what is happening around them. The DMN is especially active, research shows, when one engages in introspective activities such as daydreaming, contemplating the past or the future, or thinking about the perspective of another person
emotional AI (EAI): AI that focuses on understanding and using emotion to impact human behavior
énouenent: the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, finally learning the answers to how things turned out but being unable to tell your past self.
episodic foresight: The primary neural mechanism that enables humans to construct images of the futures, providing explanatory power to further define and understand the processes that are invoked in futures studies and foresight activities
episodic memory: A type of long-term, declarative memory that involves the recollection of personal experiences or events, including the time and place they occurred. It allows you to travel back in time to relive past experiences, like remembering your first day at school
executive attention network: The neural network responsible for decision making and action
forestalgia: An individuals yearning for an idealized future (Barnwell, Collier, & Shanahan, 2023)
imagination network: The neural network that allows humans to daydream and brainstorm (and imagine the future)
implicit memory: Memory for a previous event or experience that is produced indirectly, without an explicit request to recall the event and without awareness that memory is involved
psychology of inspiration: The combination of three brain systems 1) the Default Mode Network (Creativity Engine), 2) the Dopamine System (Reward Center), 3) Prefrontal Cortex (Ideas into Action). Starts with curiosity, then starts an inspiration/action reinforcement loop, then ties those actions to meaning
mental time travel: Focused imaging of the experience of living in a future (day in the life)
procedural memory: A type of long-term memory that stores information related to motor skills, habits, and actions
salience network: The neural network that is responsible for focus and attention
semantic memory: A long-term memory category involving the recollection of ideas, concepts, and facts commonly regarded as general knowledge