Works
- The Futures Field: Searching for Definitions and Boundaries, The Futurist, 1981
In Thinking Tools
Known for
President of the Institute for the Future, known for Amara's law: people tend to overestimate a technology's effect in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. His 1981 articles in The Futurist set out the field's premises and its distinction among possible, probable, and preferable futures.
Caveat: Some futures scholars trace the possible, probable, and preferable taxonomy to Norman Henchey (1978); Amara's 1981 articles are an early and widely cited statement of it.