The Great Future Debate and the Struggle for the World.

FUTUROLOGISTS; FORECASTING; PREDICTION models; COLD War, 1945-1991; INTELLECTUAL history; RAND Corp.; HELMER, Olaf; GORDON, Theodore J.; TOFFLER, Alvin, 1928-2016; BELL, Daniel, 1919-2011; TWENTIETH century

The article discusses the Cold War history of a general theory of prediction first developed in the 1960s at Rand Corporation by logician and futurologist Olaf Helmer and futurist and engineer Theodore J. Gordon. Such prediction models, forecasting, and future studies were created with a goal of dealing with future problems being faced in the present and were applied to fields such as economics, sociology, political science, and international relations. Notable people discussed include American sociologist Daniel Bell, Russian prognostician Igor Bestuzhev-Lada, French political economist and futurist Bertrand de Jouvenel, and author Alvin Toffler.