In the first type of futures studies (most comfortable to planners and policy analysts), by and
large, techniques such as linear regression, multiple regression, factor analysis and
econometrics are used. All these assume that the future is based on the linearity of the past.
They also assume that the empirical world can be known and that the universe is fundamentally
stable, with reality primarily sensate. But given that specific events can throw off a forecast,
empirical futurists have re-invented Delphi, or expert event forecasting. Delphi polling is done in
many rounds so as to gain consensus and done anonymously so as to reduce the influence of
a particular opinion maker. More recently through crowdsourcing, Delphi has taken an even
more dramatic twist becoming not an oracle of the expert priest (futurist, economist, scientist)
but a representation of the most up-to-date perspective of the user. While in Delphi and other
similar systems, hierarchal expertise is primary (one expert or multiple experts in anonymous
dialogue) in new peer-to-peer systems, information of the future is derived through the wisdom
of the many, argue Michael Bauwens, Elina Hiltunen (2011) and Jose Ramos (2012). Moreover,
the wisdom of the many is not only derived through rational means, but as Stuart Candy (2010)
suggests, through direct immanence, wherein a possible scenario of the future (an ecotopia) is
enacted in a public space.