FUTURES Futures 40 (2008) 173–189 ‘‘Every today was a tomorrow’’: An integral method for indexing the social mediation of preferred futures $ Mark G. Edwards à Business School, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia Available online 5 December 2007 Abstract The visions we hold of the future, whether they are of utopias or dystopias, are not simply a matter of personal imagination. Our conceptions of the future are mediated to us as much as they are privately created by us. To this point, futures studies have not developed an integrative and broad-based framework for considering the social mediation of futures. Understanding how social mediation impacts on our futures visioning requires an interpretive framework that can cope with the multilayered nature of futures visions, the worldviews that are associated with them and a theory of mediation that can be applied within such a context of ‘depth’. Using theory-building methodology, the current paper attempts this task by describing a theory of social mediation that builds on the integral futures framework. An application of the framework explores the relationship between various scenarios of health care futures, their associated worldviews and the mediational factors that influence our visions of future health care systems. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Creating our shared future A drawing by the Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig, depicts a timid yet hopeful human figure marching along a pathway that is being laid down at his feet as he walks. The pathway is coming out of the top of the figure’s head. It curls gracefully through the air, then circles down to become the path on which he expectantly treads. The caption reads [1]: Let it go. Let it out. Let it all unravel. Let it free and it can be A path on which to travel. This beautiful image conveys a hopeful message of personal spontaneity and creative freedom that we might all aspire to on our pathways into the future. We might also imagine a similar drawing with a hopeful community of such figures creating a broad pathway into its own collective future. While such images portray a scenario of self-creation and of self-determined futures, the reality is that the pathways appearing before us ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/futures 0016-3287/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2007.11.014 $ Christopher Edwards, Grade 1, West Coast Steiner School. à Tel.: +61 08 9448 9246. E-mail address: mark.gerard.edwards@gmail.com