“Queste personas non esistono (ancora)”: strumenti e linee guida etiche per l’uso delle semiotic futures personas, tra immaginazione critica e prefigurazione del reale

Abstract

The manipulation of reality through digital and narrative artefacts is reaching an unprecedented scale: from futurewashing (Mereu, Preira, 2024), the production of false or misleading claims about preparedness for the future, to limit cases such as the recent editorial project Ipnocrazia (Xun [Colamedici], 2025). This contribution proposes an alternative use of personas within foresight: semiotic futures personas, future identities built from Floch's semiotic square (Floch, 1990) and designed to test scenarios before those scenarios are even defined. Two research questions guide the work: how does the manipulation of reality alter the boundary between fact and fiction, and what role can speculative and performative practices play in defining an ethical use of these tools. The paper presents an experimental toolkit that assembles and reframes instruments drawn from diverse disciplinary traditions (backstory, curriculum, STEBNPDILE analysis, Johari window, empathy map, Proust questionnaire, symbolic speculative object), built with the complexity needed to sustain iterative use over time. These identities are then brought to life through artificial intelligence, Boal's invisible theatre (Boal, 1979), and speculative design (Dunne, Raby, 2013). Finally, six guidelines for responsible use are proposed, grounded in the principle of declarative transparency: every persona must be accompanied by an explicit statement of its fictional nature, "these personas do not exist (yet)". From this convergence emerges the proposal of Slow Foresight, an approach that restores slowness and care to the construction of futures.