---
id: people/jim-dator
about:
  label: Jim Dator
  description: >-
    American futurist, long director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures
    Studies, known for four generic images of the future used in scenario work.
  tags:
    - futures studies
    - alternative futures
    - scenarios
person:
  affiliation: University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  role: futurist
  homepage: 'https://manoa.hawaii.edu/futures-center/'
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: Jim Dator - Wikipedia
      url: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Dator'
    - title: Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies
      url: 'https://manoa.hawaii.edu/futures-center/'
    - title: >-
        Alternative Futures at the Manoa School (Jim Dator, Journal of Futures
        Studies 14(2), November 2009)
      url: 'https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/142-A01.pdf'
    - title: Institute for Alternative Futures
      url: 'http://www.altfutures.org/'
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
James Allen Dator was born in 1933.[^1] He was a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and director of its Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies.[^1] The centre says its activities are overseen by him, and that he was Secretary General and then President of the World Futures Studies Federation.[^2] He was one of the three founders of the Institute for Alternative Futures in 1977, with Alvin Toffler and Clement Bezold.[^4] Since retiring he has advised the UK-based School of International Futures.[^1]

He describes how the centre uses alternative futures, or scenarios, in a visioning process for a community or organisation: appreciating the past, understanding the present, forecasting, experiencing alternative futures and envisioning a preferred one, usually 20 to 50 years ahead.[^3] The futures to be experienced are four generic ones: continuation, collapse, discipline and transformation.[^3] "There is no single future 'out there' to be predicted," he writes; there are many alternative futures to be anticipated.[^3]

The entry on [foresight and anticipation](/terms/foresight-and-anticipation/) names him at the Hawaii centre and quotes his four generic futures and his limits on prediction.