Casting the runes
By Jackie Tracy
Since antiquity, humans have sought to foretell the future – from casting runes to reading entrails. Now, two prominent alumni futurists tell Lumen, the future is ours to imagine and create.
At a time when pop culture is predicting a future that’s more Blade Runner or Black Mirror than Jetsons, Professor Ariella Helfgott is in the hope business – with a caveat.
“I believe in the Stockdale Paradox – we need to face brutal realities yet maintain our commitment to creating positive futures – and hold on to unwavering hope,” the foresight expert and founding Director of the SA Futures Agency says.
“Dystopian nihilism and toxic positivity are both cop-outs that lead to a lack of action to shape a better future.’’
Amid the dizzying velocity and scale of change we are experiencing – from our climate to geopolitics and the rise of artificial intelligence – the need to predict and plan for future generations rather than the next financial year or electoral cycle has never been more pressing.
With metropolitan Adelaide’s population projected to hit two million by 2051, far beyond the wildest dreams of Colonel William Light, housing affordability and infrastructure are critical parts of the equation, along with sustainability.
There’s no crystal ball gazing for Ariella, a mathematician with a penchant for probability, whose foresight capabilities were nurtured at the University of Adelaide (PhD Electrical Engineering, 2015), put to work simulating complex situations at the Department of Defence, honed at the universities of Oxford, Utrecht and Wageningen, and augmented in both big business and government.
She draws on the power of the compass – navigation, rather than prediction. She is rigorous about qualitative and quantitative data, systematic and rigorous scenario mapping, and hard questions. But that’s not to say she doesn’t like a little colour and movement.
“I see no reason for the future to be cast in corporate black, navy and grey,” she says over breakfast on North Terrace, bright-eyed despite a 5am phone hook-up with the World Energy Council, a 100-year-old global network of more than 3,000 organisations across 100 countries of which she is the Director of Foresight and Strategic Learning.
True to that ethos, the new SA Futures Agency, launched in May and housed in CBD innovation hub Lot Fourteen, is committed to bringing “joy, colour, humanity, warmth and accessibility” to the futures and foresight scene.
To underscore that point, Ariella’s start-up partner is artist Stavroula Adameitis, of powerhouse fashion and textile brand Frida Las Vegas, and the agency’s logo and website is awash with neon hues.
“Navigating the future could not be more serious – and we can be serious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be approached with loving and joyful resolve,” Ariella says. “What are our values? What do we want the future to look like? What do we believe is possible? The answers to these questions will impact our vote, our choices, what we are prepared to pay for.’’
A critical aspect of foresight is that the future is not fixed or predetermined, it’s all in play, and we are facing significant uncertainty, which can be a challenge to the human brain, according to neuroscience.
“We all have blind spots, that’s why foresight is a participation sport,” Ariella says. “That means bringing together people with
really diverse world views, lived experience and subject-matter expertise – scientists and storytellers, entrepreneurs and elders, frontline workers and futurists, policymakers and passionate youth – each contributing unique experiences, insights, and dreams about what’s possible.”
She believes South Australia is uniquely placed to build successful outcomes from significant global trends. It’s a key reason she launched the Agency, alongside her other roles, including Professor at the University of Adelaide, and Program Director of Foresight and Decision-Making for the One Basin CRC, supporting Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, as well as her role at the World Energy Council.
“On the global energy transition, we are a unique leader. We are far ahead of the curve,” she says. “We have a green reindustrialisation roadmap. We have mineral deposits that are significant to the transition, with demand projected to increase. Copper is massive. Humanity needs to mine as much copper in the next 20 years as we’ve mined in our entire history to have 30 per cent penetration of electric vehicles.’’
Importantly, Ariella says all the regions of South Australia have important parts to play in taking up future economic development opportunities and our ability to respond to global trends.
“In one inspiring scenario, we will have thriving regional hubs, where South Australia is not just a city state. There are new energy jobs, mining, minerals processing, advanced manufacturing and space development. There’s an entire supply chain from the South-East with Construction 4.0 changing the future of housing.
"What are our values? What do we want the future to look like? What do we believe is possible? The answers to these questions will impact our vote, our choices, what we are prepared to pay for."
“To attract talent to the places we need it, we’ll need to deliver the right housing, transport, services, culture, and more.”
But of course, she points out, nothing is set in stone. Another plausible scenario might see a surge in FIFO jobs and short-term financial gains for a few, but not thriving, reinvigorated regional communities. Is this what we want?
“Everyone has a shadow scenario – their set of assumptions about the future, that determines what they think we should do now. Exploratory scenarios become like wind tunnels for stress-testing our assumptions and our strategies, policies and plans.
“So that also involves wearing black hats, too. People need to contemplate the bad outcomes, so we know how to avoid them. But I’ve found positive visioning can be the hardest and the most missing from our society and from our culture.”
Town planner and urbanist turned futurist Stephen Yarwood, a former Lord Mayor of Adelaide, believes we must re-engineer our values and principles to create a contemporary Australian ambition, rather than mourning the Great Australian Dream.
“We’ve made some really big mistakes in Australia,” he says. “We have the largest houses in the world – number one. We have some of the lowest densities of any city on the planet. We’re incredibly car reliant and cherish the V8 in a world where Scandinavia is at 90 per cent electric vehicles. We consider driving a car and having a car park as basic human rights, akin to water and oxygen. Then we complain about sitting in traffic jams – which costs us billions in lost productivity – the price of petrol, the cost of parking, and the cost of housing.
“On top of that, we save all our spare money to fly on holidays to cities that are higher density, where we walk everywhere and say, ‘isn’t this beautiful?’ – but we live the opposite way in Australia.’’
Stephen’s own compact and energy-efficient home is in Bowden, one of the nation’s most environmentally sustainable communities, with a vibrant central hub and communal green spaces.
“Our current housing stock is kind of like an apartheid model, where we oppose anything other than the Great Australian Dream to the point of being quite aggressive and opinionated and anti-choice,’’ he says.
“We need to talk about housing choices and good quality density. We need to have a grown-up conversation around how we use our infrastructure.
“We’re seeing an overwhelming rate of loneliness and mental health issues and social isolation, largely driven by bigger allotments, big houses, a car-centric culture where we don’t walk past our neighbors or connect with them in the main street of the communities in which we live. There needs to be a fundamental change.’’
How we build our homes is just the start, from new materials to quicker construction methods. But the former civic leader and University of Adelaide alum (MBA, 2012) believes a more profound disruption is on the cards and speaks of new kinds of shared ownership models.
“We’re going to have to look at our community housing models, the idea of shared equity,” Stephen says. “Potentially even like a Netflix or Spotify version of housing, where someone will pay a subscription fee, but that means they could live in Adelaide, spend time in Sydney, go to the Riverland, for example, and they’ve always got a house, like a shared model.’’
Ariella Helfgott sees huge future housing potential in the intersection of trends between manufacturing and construction, where as much as possible is modular and prefabricated after being planned on a digital platform, enabling a focus on sustainability, circularity and reduced emissions, with components assembled on site.
“We could have a future where all that technology is harnessed to provide diverse, affordable, sustainable housing for everyone, along with new ownership models,” she says. “The trends I’ve mentioned are going to disrupt the current economic model for housing, so there will be opportunities for a rethink.’’
With Adelaide rated Australia’s happiest city in 2025, and our continent considered among the world’s safest places, it would seem there is scope for shaping a future that is, if not utopian, something we can bequeath to the next generations in good faith.
Stephen Yarwood considers it a moral imperative to build societal optimism, unity and resilience in facing the future. “This is a part of having a mission,” he says. “This is a part of having a great education system, rebuilding trust in government, rebuilding trusting communities.
“Instead of going around picking fights and arguing different points of view, what we really need to do is bring people together. If there is an ‘anti’ narrative, it’s because the people who aren’t anti are not doing enough to enable and educate people in the power of being optimistic.’’
For Ariella, it is imperative for citizens to consider the future they want to see.
“I want all South Australians to have this agency, which is why we called it SA Futures Agency. I like the double meaning. The point is to give everyone in South Australia the agency to shape their own futures.’’
Jackie Tracy is Communications Coordinator for the University.
Photograph of Stephen Yarwood by Isaac Freeman, photographic editor of Lumen. Image of Ariella Helfgott by Elle DS Photography. Main image sourced from iStock.