In the area of digital humanities, modelling is seen as a core topic, both for practical implementations and for theoretical studies, with a significant creative potential when the practical and theoretical aspects are combined. While the use of computers in the humanities has always been based on modelling data and on modelling as part of the development of a computer system, modelling is also used as a means to better understand the targets of an application. Indeed, this combined aspect of instrumentality and meaning making in modelling is closely linked to the ways in which several of the core political questions being discussed in modern societies are framed around the generation and use of models. The present article will apply this multi-perspective understanding of modelling to discuss modelling as a strategy of preparing (for) the future, with miniature worlds as the main example, bringing in scientific, scholarly, artistic, religious, as well as ethnographical perspectives. On this basis, ‘modelling literacy’ is being established as a central part of cultural literacy.