> "What does this mean?"
I have a Masters in Foresight and I'm a member of the Association of Professional Futurists. The field is commonly referred to as foresight and futures studies. We're sort of an awkward field, so at some universities, future studies program can be found under the school of design, political science, and technology.
In terms of careers, academically-trained futurists can be found in a few industries: defense, energy, and pharmaceuticals. My schoolmates from my program work at Disney, CPGs, and governments (defense, prime minsters office). In tech, I think Facebook and Mozilla also have foresight people.
Our field is by definition multi-disciplinary, so we had to learn a bit of everything: systems thinking, scenario planning, social change, business strategy, etc.
> "The future as it is and has been coming to pass? How we, today and recently, culturally portray the idea of the future?"
More so how we culturally portray the future. There are a lot of cultural preconceptions that are incorporated in visions of the future.
I grew up with Star Trek (TOS) and my dad is ex-NASA, so I'm well acquainted with the traditional American view of the future, but I'm also a strong supporter of the need for a diverse range of alternatives.
For example, Sohail Inayatullah of UNESCO writes a lot about alternative Muslim futures. They're not tech-based at all but thinking about political, economic, and social changes.