Past and current futures. Cultural policy attempts to look ahead

Looking at how cultural policy has analysed, responded to or aimed to influence an upcoming future, this article describes a notable difference between what is called past and current futures. The article discusses how technological development, digitalization, and more recently, AI, is integrated in different policy visions of the future. This analysis is based on a selection of documents from (primarily) the 1970s and the 1980s on the one hand, and policy documents from the last five years on the other hand. While the prospects of the future in the Norwegian cultural policy documents of the 1970s and 1980s were characterized by a will to envision a future development and the role of policies as part of this development, there are much more resigned, directionless and less confident policy narratives in the cultural policy of the last five years.