A future is a hypothetical segment of a timeline, a set of events that have not yet occurred, but can occur.

The future has always occupied a special place in philosophy and in the human mind in general. According to one theory (Indeterminism), the future is not predetermined, and people can create it themselves. According to another theory, the future is predetermined. It is also possible that people create the future themselves, but their decisions and actions to create the future are predetermined. Within the framework of the cyclic model of time (universe), in the future what was already in the past is repeated.

Many religions offer prophecies about life after death as well as the end of the world. The conflict in Christianity between the knowledge of the future by God and the free will of man leads, for example, to the doctrine of predestination.

The importance of the future is emphasized by the fact that people are in great need of predictions and predictions of what will happen to them. It is possible that the development of the human brain in its large part is the development of cognitive abilities necessary in order to predict the future, that is, imagination, logic and induction.

The concept of the human future in the minds of civilizations, which represent time as a line running from the past to the future, is closely related to the concept of progress. Objectively, quantitatively measuring progress is difficult. Measurement of industrial progress can be carried out by increasing the level of energy consumption. This is the basis of kardashev's scale of civilizations.[

In the information age, the measure may be the speed of microprocessors , a similar classification of civilizations put forward by Carl Sagan. This criterion, like the previous one, can be considered technocratic.

With the development and improvement of weapons, mankind has received in its hands more powerful means of destruction, despite the fact that in the XX century in the first, second world wars and other conflicts more than 100 million people suffered and weapons of mass destruction exist and continue to be developed, one can doubt that progress consists only in the development of technology. The most important factor of progress is human potential.

In accordance with the concept of Humanism - "in the center is the idea of a person as the highest value in relation to the person himself and relative among other values of the world and society", progress can also consist in the dissemination of high moral and ethical standards.

Despite the transition from the industrial era to the information age, the number of resources consumed is growing every year. In this regard, it is suggested that the colonization of space is inevitable, since on planet Earth there are only a limited number of available resources and places for life.

The future can also be thought of as a collection of projects, and it can and should be about constructing it.

Imagination allows us to "see" a plausible model of a given situation without the risk that accompanies its real embodiment. Logical reasoning allows you to predict the inevitable consequences of certain actions in a variety of situations, and therefore provide useful information about future events. Induction allows you to establish the relationship of cause with effect, and is a fundamental concept for building a forecast of future events.

Despite the availability of these cognitive tools useful for understanding the future, the probabilistic nature of many natural and social processes has made the task of predicting the future a difficult but desirable goal of many people and cultures over the centuries.

People have always sought to see images of the future. Therefore, prophets and soothsayers have always had great social significance. The biblical view of the future predicts the onset of the Apocalypse, which includes the birth of the Antichrist, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the end of the world and the last Judgment.

In order to predict the future, esoteric teachings, astrology, palmistry, and superstitions arose. The development of much of physics is also easy to explain as an attempt to make objective predictions about future events. Fiction arose as a means of ultra-long-range forecasting with the help of artistic imagination.

However, the modern speed of scientific and technological progress has reached such a level that fundamental changes occur many times during the life of one generation, therefore, in a completely different light, a vision of the future is built, and, consequently, the task of predicting the ways of further development. Until now, people have lived traditional lives, and in that constant, unchanging world, the problem of planning was a normal, correct task. It was staged and with some degree of probability solved. Now we find ourselves in an area where the very formulation of the problem of long-term development forecasting is incorrect, the horizon of any reliable forecasting is obviously narrowing. However, it is this unpredictability that makes any reliable predictions especially popular, so it is in this new situation that even minimally correct forecasting becomes critically relevant.

Predicted futures include both pessimistic pictures of the future (ecological catastrophe, World War III, nanotechnology catastrophe) and a utopian future in which the poorest people live in conditions that today can be considered rich and comfortable, and even the transformation of humanity into a posthuman form of life.

Alvin Toffler warns of new difficulties, social conflicts and global problems that humanity will face at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries in connection with the transition of civilization to the super-industrial (post-industrial) phase.