Jamais' 12 + Jim's 7

Jamais Cascio has posted "Twelve Things Journalists Need To Know to be Good Futurist/Foresight Reporters."

I must disagree with one of his listed items--number 5 "The Future is usually the present, only moreso." This is what we call the "official" view of the future--continued growth. It is the model of the future for virtually every political and economic system on the planet. While it has defined the poltiical-economy of the industrial age, there is no reason to believe that the future will simply entail more of what we have now. Peak oil, pandemics, war, or global resource shortages could all lead to a drastically altered future that is ANYTHING BUT more of what we have now. Also, high-tech transformations, "the singularity" and other kinds of transformations could subvert a continued growth outcome.

Nonetheless, many of Cascio's items will be familiar to those who have read Jim Dator's work. See for example Dator's "Laws of the Futures:"

Dator's "Laws" of the Futures (and of Futures Studies)
by Jim Dator

Futures Studies is generally misunderstood from two perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who believe it is, or pretends to be, a predictive science which, if properly applied, strives to foretell with reasonable accuracy what the future will be.

There is no such futures studies worthy of your attention. Whatever might have been the case of most societies for millennia before ours, very little in society today beyond the most trivial can be precisely predicted. Also, whatever might have been thought to be the case in early modern times, we should all know by now that society is not some gigantic machine, the future states of which, if its inner workings are properly understood and its operations carefully calculated scientifically, can be precisely pre-determined.

On the other hand, it is not the case that it is hopeless to try to anticipate things to come, or that anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's. Even though the future cannot be predicted (and certainly no prediction of the future should be uncritically "believed"), there are theories and methods which futurists have developed, tested, and applied in recent years which have proven useful to individuals, institutions and communities as they attempt to anticipate and create viable futures for themselves and their communities. Understanding and applying the theories and methods of futures studies will enable people to anticipate the future more usefully, and to shape it appreciably more to their own preferences.

Over the thirty years that I have been teaching futures studies and doing futures research, I have come to see that there are several basic things to understand about the future, and hence about futures studies. I have, somewhat jokingly, framed them as "Dator's Laws of the Future." They are stated here in capsule form.

I. "The future" cannot be "studied" because "the future" does not exist.
Futures studies does not--or should not pretend to--study "the future." It studies ideas about the future--what I usually call "images of the future"--which each individual (and group) has (often holding several conflicting images at one time). Understanding these images is important because they serve as the basis for many individual and collective actions in the present. Individual and group images of the future are often highly volatile, changing according to changing events or perceptions. They often change over the life of individuals and institutions. Different groups often have very differing images of the future. Men's images may differ from women's. Western images may differ from nonwestern images, for example.

II. The future" cannot be "predicted," but "alternative futures" can, and should be "forecast."
Thus, one of the main tasks of futures studies is to identify and examine the major significantly alternative futures which exist at any given time and place. The futures should always be understood to be alternative, plural, open--the arena of possibility, struggle, and hope, and not of inevitability, helplessness, or despair.

III. There is no such thing as a "best case scenario" or a "worst case scenario."
There is a dark side--someone often loses (it might be you)--even under conditions which you might have considered to be "best". At the same time, there are ample opportunities for you, and/or others, to thrive and succeed under even the bleakest situation, especially if you have prepared for it thoughtfully.

IV. What is often popularly, or even professionally, considered to be "the most likely future" is, in all probability, one of the least likely futures. Given the volatility and fundamental unpredictability of most important facets of society, it is a common mistake to believe it is possible to determine what is "the most likely future " or "the probable future" and then to plan for that. Unfortunately, "the most likely future" seldom eventuates, and often is among "the least likely futures" in reality.
Thus, alternative futures should be cast as true alternatives, not as "high," "low," or "middle" scenarios around a single set of assumptions, nor as "ideal," "failed," or "probable" futures with only the latter being assumed to be the "true" and viable alternative.

V. "The future" cannot be "predicted," but "preferred futures" can and should be envisioned, invented, implemented, continuously evaluated, revised, and re-envisioned.
Thus another major task of futures studies is to facilitate individuals and groups in formulating, implementing, monitoring, and re-envisioning their preferred futures. "Preferred futures" are not impossible "utopias," incapable of achievement. And they certainly are not "dystopias"--bad, fearful, thoroughly undesirable futures (both "utopias" and especially "dystopias" are characteristic of many stories, movies, and television shows said to be set in the future). Preferred futures are "eutopias"--the best possible real world we can imagine in the present, and achieve through our effort and luck.
Neither are preferred futures "blueprints" to be followed blindly and inevitably forward. They are one's current vision of the best which can be achieved. They are articulated joyfully, implemented carefully, and constantly monitored, re-evaluated, changed, or strengthened on the basis of new information, fears, and hopes learned as time goes by in pursuit of the dream.

VI. Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.
While some of the future is contained in the present (and/or the past) and thus "known" (and/or "knowable") to everyone in the present, much of the future is novel and not currently or previously experienced. When these unprecedented aspects of the future are presented to people, they often react in shock and disbelief because of their unfamiliarity, declaring it to be a "ridiculous" or perhaps even "obscene" idea.

VII. If futurists expect to be useful, they should expect to be ridiculed and for their ideas initially to be rejected.
Some of their ideas may deserve ridicule and rejection, but even useful ideas about the future may also be ridiculed since they lie outside of the ideas, beliefs, and experiences of anyone who has not yet thought seriously about the future.
Thus, decision makers, and the general public, if they wish useful information about the future, should expect it to be unconventional and often shocking, offensive, and seemingly ridiculous. Futurists, however, have the additional burden of making the initially-ridiculous idea plausible by marshaling appropriate evidence and weaving alternative scenarios of its possible developments which ultimately do make sense and are actionable by people in the present.

____________

One day Stuart and I will get around to finishing our "7 sins of present/past-oriented thinking," which will cover similar problems.

Jamais blog is a must read for futurists. As I might say in my hung-lish or engl-arian: IT IS Jó.


Jake.

Al's Bender

towards a longer now?

A few months back, when the Futures Center did a small project for the Korean government on construction and transportation, I was put in mind of a service I'd heard about in London, involving pay-as-you-go access to cars scattered around the city (sort of halfway between a taxi service and car rental, but automated). I didn't know the business name then, and couldn't locate a reference, but today I stumbled across a neat link on it. Arguably, this exemplifies a trend from ownership to access (or products-->services). Why own something outright if a more limited arrangement will suffice?

Another, deeper way this trend manifests, I'd say, is in the Bill McDonough-Michael Braungart (Cradle to Cradle, c.f. sustainability) concept of "products of service", whereby non-consumable, hard-wearing products like TVs, cars and carpets are seen as "rented" rather than bought from the manufacturer, which takes responsibility for the fate of those molecules when the product reaches the end of its life cycle. (Consider the European Union directives which apply this notion of producer reponsibility to products including vehicles and electronic goods.)

If this represents a taking of greater responsibility for, or internalisation of, what economists used to be pleased to call "externalities", could it, in turn, be seen to speak of a gradual deepening in our understanding of time? (The "longer now"; a tendency toward what we could call "temporal holism" -- and applaud).

Let's see: there may be interesting higher-order implications here... On realising that physical products, and the consequences of manufacturing them, outlast their human "owners" by many, many generations, the traditional conception of ownership comes to seem a rather absurd conceit. Life's short! A quote from the film Crocodile Dundee (01986, dir. Peter Faiman): "See those rocks sitting up there? Been standing there for six hundred years. Still be there when you and I are gone. So arguing over who owns 'em is like a couple of fleas arguing over who owns the dog they're living on." (See also this post about The Rocks video which makes more or less the same point.)

Optimistically, then, perhaps our callow Western civilisation is edging towards recognition of the wisdom of what I understand to be the Australian Aboriginal relationship to land -- that people belong to it, not the other way around. Granted, this kind of radical inversion of current "common sense" may seem a far cry from D.I.Y. car rental -- but in light of the above, we could venture to say that they may be not so far apart after all.

(A post from The Sceptical Futuryst weblog.)

The past 35 years of futures

In honor of the 35th anniversary of the Hawaii Legislature's establishment of the HRCFS, over the next few weeks we will be posting blog entries from among the hundreds of students, alumni, and friends of the Center. Jim Dator and the HRCFS has been a 'strange attractor' (or attractor of the strange) for future-oriented folks for decades. We hope to reflect the intelligence, creativity, and breadth of our community, and remind the world of the vitality and necessity of the Manoa brand of futures studies.

prediction will eat itself

A London Financial Times article (subscription required) was published last week, on a recent book called Expert Political Judgment. Author Philip Tetlock is a psychologist "who has spent 20 years asking pundits to predict who will win elections, what countries will acquire nuclear weapons or enter the European Union and how the first Gulf war would end. He has tested 30,000 predictions from 300 experts against outcomes. Mr Tetlock finds that his respondents are not very good. They do better than a chimp who answers at random, but not much, and worse than simple forecasting rules based on extrapolation" (John Kay, "The world needs more foxes and fewer hedgehogs", Financial Times, 20 June 02006; see also this excellent review of Tetlock's book by Louis Menand, "Everybody's an Expert", The New Yorker, 5 December 02005).

For those who expect the future to be predictable, assuming that in principle it can be known but that they simply don't quite have the expertise, tools or funding to get at it, this conclusion may come as a surprise. But Tetlock's findings are very much in accord with the approach taken here at the Hawaii futures program. In fact, Dator's First Law of the Future is, "The future" cannot be "predicted" because "the future" does not exist.

Based on many, many conversations I've had on this point, at this stage quite a few people start to wonder what the hell is going on with a self-proclaimed futurist who believes there's no future to study. As well they may. What we look at, since the future itself is perpetually unavailable for comment, is images of the future. These are the beliefs, hopes, fears, desires, intentions, fantasies, expectations and, yes, actual images of one sort or another, that people carry around in their heads, and express in their art, stories, and above all their decisions; thereby bringing "the future" into being from among the countless possible futures that might have been.

What this means for predictive discourse is that predictions can make a useful, interesting point of access into futures-oriented discussion (constituting, as they do, a major example of images of the future, albeit a conspicuously overconfident variety). It also means that predictions should not be mistaken for statements of fact about things that have not happened yet. Simply put, what people predict is a useful guide to what they believe and how they plan to act, but one of the dangers of prediction is that, while you're arguing over what the future will be, you're missing the more important discussion about what it could be, and other people may be making the crucial decisions without you.

So there's an important challenge in diverting some proportion of the prodigious amount of energy that people seem to devote to figuring out what the future "will be", and redirecting it into the exploration, invention and pursuit of what they would like it to be. Dator again: "The point is not to try to predict a better future, but to strive to create one." Similarly, sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling once said in an interview, "Future is not a noun, it's a verb."

An effective broad-based futures education and communication strategy (including that of the futures program at this university) at first exploits the apparently timeless allure of "the future will be thus and so", but then deepens the discussion unexpectedly and problematises the predictive stance. People may come expecting a noun, but will end up getting verbed.

(This is an edited version of a post at The Sceptical Futuryst weblog.)

An offer you can't refuse

this post is from our comrade and fellow futures student Takuya Murata, currently interning at the Institute for Alternative Futures.


...


Remember the article about the high tech future
where cars don't start, etc, and the world is safer
but big brother is watching us all?

This is from April, but here's something Philips is developing...

"Philips tries to stop viewers channel surfing during ad-breaks
Posted by Seán Byrne on 20 April 2006 - 00:00 - Source: Reg Hardware

Pretty much everyone who frequently watches DVDs has already experienced what it is like for the DVD player to prohibit the fast forwarding or skipping of the initial ads on the disc, such as the anti-piracy warnings. However, when it comes to broadcast content, it is still possible to avoid the ads by either fast forwarding through a recording or changing to another channel. Now, imagine what it will be like if the broadcaster had the ability to lock your TV to the tuned in channel until the current ad-break finishes.

Well, hard to believe, this is a technique Philips is attempting to patent, which can be taken advantage of by the Multimedia Home Platform, a feature included in most Interactive TVs. If broadcasters, PVR, DVD player and display manufacturers take on this technique, the viewer will be forced to keep the channel tuned for the duration of the ad-break or in some cases pay a fee to change channel or fast forward (for a recording). The technique would work much like the broadcast flag in that the ad-breaks in programmes can carry flags to force the TV, PVR or other compliant playback device to keep the ads playing until the ad-break finishes.

While Philips has admitted that this feature may not be taken lightly by the viewers, they suggest that broadcasters and device makers provide suitable warnings when the flag is being detected and used to avoid consumers wondering why their TV will not change channel all the sudden when the ads start up. Thanks to yronnen for letting us know about this news:


Philips is attempting to patent a technique that would prevent viewers from skipping through ads embedded within recorded programmes or even channel surfing during broadcast ad breaks - or force viewers to cough up cash if they want to avoid the ads.

"A viewer may either watch the advertisements or pay a fee in order to be able to change channels or fast forward when the advertisements are being displayed," Philips" potential patent states.

If DRM is not bad enough as it is, this is clearly a good example where the entertainment industry is more interested in controlling its viewers as opposed to just sticking with protecting their content against piracy. I seriously would not like to see such a measure put into broadcasts. For example, if this feature is not enforced properly, it could make channel surfing itself very tedious since each time the viewer would land on a channel showing a flagged ad-break, their TV may prevent them switching any further until this ad-break finishes first! So much for Philips' "Let's Make Things Better" slogan.

yronnen added: "Philips admits this might by greatly resented by the viewers "...really? I think that I'd simply love the idea of my PVR controlling me instead of me controlling it. So what is the future for PVRs? DRM to control what and if we can see a movie and this new technology to make sure we see the ads? Maybe they should give us a lubricant..."

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13324

oh, and an interesting post to this piece
that's an interesting possibility, that the pirated version is better than the "real" version:

"yup this wouldn't make even more people flog to the internet to download high quality commercial free episodes of tv shows.

and about the dvd player thing, when i buy a dvd player i tend to make sure theres a region free hack, i also like to see if theirs a UOP hack, so you can skip past the warnings and stuff on a dvd, i already bought the thing leave me alone and let me watch the movie i paid for.

its getting the point where the pirated version of things are going to offer better products then the pay for it version. Download a dvd off the net, those opening commercials are usually removed, and the UOP protection is stripped so you can skip past warnings. TV shows can be downloaded in higher resolution then standard tv with 5.1 sound.

These companies have to get a grip, not profit, for the thrill of it encoders who don't make money off it, are making better goods for consumers then companies trying to turn a dollar."

the new look

Notice anything different? Yes, I have had a haircut. And our website has been redesigned. This new look for the Hawaii Futures website is a result of the miraculous efforts of our friends at bigwidesky, a highly inventive marketing and communications company based in St Louis, Missouri (branch office opening on the moon shortly - check their website for details). The dynamic duo of Matthew Jensen and Eliot Frick have, in consultation with Jake and myself, managed to distil the irreverent Manoa School of Futures sensibility and render it, full colour, in two glorious dimensions for the infotainment of us all. For their next assignment, we'll have them working on a futures fragrance, so you can smell when one of our futurists enters the room (if you can't already). We will also continue to refine and develop this site as time goes on, but in the meantime your comments and feedback on their first stunning efforts are most welcome. Mahalo nui loa, gentlemen.

why futurists

While almost always exciting, sometimes trolling the 'net and seeing the latest technological or intellectual achievements can be disconcerting for a futurist. With accelerating change, a subterranean panic occasionally manifests itself in my consciousness. This panic comes from the fear that no matter how informed, or tuned in to emerging issues I am, I will never be able to keep up with the pace of change, and thus I will be irrelevant as someone who's job is to look ahead.

Discussing this with Jim Dator, I mentioned the need to be REALLY ridiculous (Dator's 2nd Law) in order to stay ahead of the next wave. But he offered another perspective, one that has assuaged my fears of obsolescence.

Dator:

"While looking over Massive Change I was thinking about your comment about how hard it is to be a futurist now. Dator's 2nd Law might be one response, as you said, but another is that most folks like Mau et al are interested in the fact and artifacts of change. We are more interested in also understanding the causes (or at least processes underlying) change (and nonchange). Mau et al describe THAT. We try to understand WHY (and why NOT)."

This also reflects the idea that futurists are process experts, not necessarily content experts. We give people the tools to look ahead usefully within their own content context. We (hopefully) understand the conditions for change, upon which the manifested specifics and particularities take place.

Even still, it sometimes feels like the conditions and the "why's" of change are accelerating also--but maybe at a different pace than the "whats" of change. It would be interesting to map out "why" and "what" change, as compared to the differing rates of change for biological, cultural, social, and aesthetic dimensions or layers. As an analogical exercise, I'd like to know if "why's" change slower than "what's" for similar reasons that biology changes slower than culture or politics or art/fashion?

It seems there is a similarity, at least so far in the story. Tomorrow things may change, and why not?