a thousand tomorrows » foresight

the quantum parallelograph

Nik — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:25:25 +0000

Designer and University of Dundee graduate, Patrick Stevenson-Keating became inspired “by the pioneering work of Professor David Deutsch of Oxford University, and the earlier work of Professor Hugh Everett, who argue for infinite copies of ourselves existing within multiple universes”.

As such he developed the quantum parallelograph, a device enabling users to explore the lives of their parallel selves in parallel versions of the universe. At the turn of a knob and the touch of a button, the device spits out a cash-register like receipt of your life in another parallel world. Hence, through a glimpse at their alternative selves and the world they live in, people are implicitly provoked to question their uniqueness and ponder about physics in general. Another subtle example of critical design or design for debate, a field we are particularly fond of and like to experiment with over here at Pantopicon.

The direct link with alternative worlds links this particular example even more closely with the realm of foresight and scenario analysis. Imagine a few extra knobs or levers to set parameters on future developments and you’d have a tangible future scenario-generator, yourself as persona included!

Keep up the good work, Patrick!

WFS: 20 forecasts for 2010-2050

Nik — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:25:40 +0000

In a special report The World Future Society shares 20 trends and breakthroughs – recent forecasts from WFS members and its magazine, The Futurist – which they consider “likely to affect your work, your investments and your family” between 2010 and 2050.

The Race for Genetic Enhancements Will Be What the Space Race Was in the 20th Century

Water Becomes the New Oil

WiMAX Networks Will Soon Create Country-Wide Wireless Internet Access

By 2025, the Worldwide Average Life-Span Will Be Extended by One year Per Year

Bioviolence Becomes a Greater Threat

Invention Becomes Automated

Japan Dominates the Race for Personal Robots

Holographic 3-D TV

The Holy Grail of Computers Becomes a Reality

Electric Cars Become Fully Practical by 2020

Religion Growing in China while Secularism Grows in the Middle East

New Oil from Old Wells

Green Gold: Algae’s Huge Potential as Biofuel

Nanotechnology May Alter the Value of Diamonds and Other Precious Commodities

The Millennial Generation Will Have Major Impacts on Society

Quantum Computers Revolutionalize Information Around 2021

Breakthrough DOUBLES Solar Energy Output

Consumers Will Take Active Roles in Inventing New Products and Services

Virtual Education to Enter the Mainstream by 2015

Genetic Research May Soon Conquer Most Inherited Diseases

resilience economics

Nik — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:51:05 +0000

Triggered by the crisis-discourse on designing a systemic overhaul of our financial and economic world, our futurist colleague Jamais Cascio, over at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, recently wrote an interesting blogpost on resilience economics. Undoubtedly inspired by biological/ecological systems, he imagines a world which is driven by our search for resilience. It counters the current logic of systems deemed “too big to fail” and features decentralized diversity, flexibility, collaboration, openness and tranparency (the many-eyes effect) etc. as core values. Even horizon-scanning, the consideration of possible alternative futures ahead is standard practice.

“The focus is on something entirely new: decentralized diversity as a way of managing the unexpected. [...] This comes at a cost to efficiency, but efficiency only works when there are no bumps in the road. Redundancy works out better in times of chaos and uncertainty — backups and alternatives and slack in the system able to counter momentary failures.”

The draft scenario is set in a post 2020 world.

wicked problems

Nik — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:56:03 +0000

The Rotman School of Management dedicates its winter issue (pdf) to wicked problems, a concept not unknown to futuregazers. Jeff Conklin of the CogNexus Institute once characterized wicked problems as follows:

The problem is not understood until after formulation of a solution.
Stakeholders have radically different world views and different frames for understanding the problem.
Constraints and resources to solve the problem change over time.
The problem is never solved.

Aside from an interview with him, the magazine is chock-full of insightful articles on topics such as Confronting the World’s Most Important Strategic Challenges: The End of Oil, Strategy as a Wicked Problem, Peter Senge et al. on The Next Industrial Imperative: The 80-20 Challenge, Creativity, Improvisation and Organizations, The Designful Company, IDEO’s Fred Dust and Ilya Prokopoff on Designing Systems at Scale, Managerial Algorithmics: Thinking Strategically About Thinking Strategically, Artistry for the Strategist. Muhammad Yunus shares his ‘point of view’. There are Q&A’s with Prof. William Duggan on strategic intuition, reverse brainstorming etc., with Prof. John Broome on the ethics of climate change, with Prof. Sarah Kaplan on the origin of our cognitive frames, with Nigel Cross on the differences between abstract and concrete thinking, with Prof. Lucy Kimbell on the importance of a ‘design attitude’, with Prof. Dolly Chugh on the human foibles of bounded willpower, bounded awareness and bounded self-interest, with Prof. Ingo Walter on new alternatives for microfinance institutions, with Cary Fowler on protecting the world’s food supply via the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Prof. Heather Fraser shares insights on tackling wicked problems in healthcare.

In other words: an issue to devour.

interactive city futures

Nik — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:00:26 +0000

Games, simulations, … have long entered the arena of what-if In fact they have always been in the position of luring our minds into the mode of unfocussing and thinking in terms of multiple possible outcomes, alternative scenarios, strategies etc. Ecofootprint calculators allow us to play what-if with our own (un)sustainable behaviours, GIS-enabled knowledge and simulation systems serve as decision support tools for everyone from urban planners to policymakers, etc.

In true W3 (weird-ways-of-the-web) style, we recently stumbled upon MetroQuest … an interactive scenario planning tool allowing stakeholders (e.g. in the future of a city) to experiment with the future, the outcomes of policy choices, external drivers of change etc. According to their website, MetroQuest can help:

   Communicate complex planning concepts easily to lay people.

   Generate excitement and public awareness for your initiatives.

   Increase public and stakeholder participation in your planning initiatives.

   Help the community develop an understanding and acceptance for policy decisions.

   Create broad-based consensus for your community’s future vision.

The tool appears to be mostly focussed on quantifiable and quantitative change. Besides a process-embedded version of MetroQuest using handheld keypads in stakeholder workshops, the system also has been deployed online (see the Yellowknife and Niagara cases).

three horizons

Nik — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:53:35 +0000

Futurewheels, scenario planning axes and several other methods & techniques in the land of futures studies all have in common that they bring structure to the process of thinking about the long term in an insightful manner. They lower the threshold for futures thinking beyond the academic context. Exploring and analyzing possible futures is one thing, the step towards visioning, strategy-development and action for change another.

In this respect, Andrew Curry of the UK’s Henley Center HeadlightVision (now aka The Futures Company) and Anthony Hodgson from Decision Integrity recently published an insightful article in the Journal of Futures Studies (August 2008) entitled “Seeing in Multiple Horizons: Connecting Futures to Strategy”. Their paper describes …

“[...] a futures method called the ‘Three Horizons’ which enables different futures and strategic methods to be integrated as and when appropriate. [...] It can relate drivers and trends-based futures analysis to emerging issues. It enables policy or strategy implications of futures to be identified. And it links futures work to processes of change. The paper connects this latter aspect to models of change developed within the ‘social shaping’ school of technology.”

The initial work on the Three Horizons method – in its present form and scope, a systems thinking-based approach looking at the strategic fit between a system and its context over time – was done by Anthony Hodgson and Bill Sharpe when they used it to think about long-term technology change for the UK government’s foresight project on Intelligent Infrastructure Systems. The method is now being further developed under the umbrella of The International Futures Forum.

Taking a closer look at the fitness-landscape- or phase-like curves, the fade-out S-curve of the first horizon points reminds one of the urgency to change with respect to a future scenario. Also worth noting is that the third horizon’s S-curve is also recognized as a core component of the transition management methodology as put forward by Rotmans et al. also pointing towards enabling change in context of high systemic complexity and uncertainty (e.g. societal change in view of sustainability).

The paper argues that the Three Horizons method features several strengths compared to more classic scenario-approaches:

the method brings several perspectives together which help to bridge future exploration, visioning and action: horizon 1 helps to uncover the values and assumptions underlying current business of usual, horizon 2 helps to assess whether one is focussing on incremental change to keep up or systemic change/radical innovation of its core values, horizon 3 opens up and explores the enabling pathways towards such radical change
emerging issues and weak signals receive more attention
action is incorporated in the assessment, thereby increasing the constructivist notion of the future as something one can – at least partly – design or shape.

seeing, believing, acting

Nik — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:21:25 +0000

At the outbreak of any major crisis, there is always the question of ‘why didn’t we see this coming?’. The financial crisis? Oh, many saw it coming alright … yet few managed to make others believe a meltdown was not only possible, but most likely, and none managed to mobilize believers-decision-makers to act upon their belief to an extent that would have prevented the crisis from happening (or the latter proved insufficiently equipped/organized to do so).

Adam Gordon of FutureStudio reflects upon the relationships between belief & action in foresight contexts in his most recent post over at The Future Savvy Journal. He refers to a letter from Peter Schwartz explaining the added value of scenario thinking in assessing and acting upon future challenges. They help to keep various options open, alternatives about what the future might be like, hence serve as a tool-to-think-through & to learn, and pave the way for action. According to Peter Schwartz:

“The problem is that decision-makers believe that they are forced to pick one right answer: the most likely scenario. Their approach to decision-making does not afford them the opportunity to consider apparently low probability but highly consequential scenarios. The answer, therefore, to the “believe” half of the question is a decision-making process that considers several scenarios: compelling stories about alternative futures that incorporate the analysis of “outliers” and describe three or four plausible paths forward.
Good scenarios force decision-makers to challenge their own assumptions and reconsider what is possible. As a result, they can take seriously those scenarios that seemed less likely at first, but whose plausibility increases over time.”

It is also a people matter in the sense that to make radical, systemic changes happen, various roles or skills are needed (e.g. to understand the complexity of the challenge at hand, to network and form the necessary alliances to tackle it, to draft innovative solutions, to scale and sell these, to monitor progress and motivate etc.). Seldomly these are found in one person or one type of person, even one group of people only. Also because of this aspect, the action part of the equation of systemic change is a complex one and no one, easy recipe can be prescribed to orchestrate massive change as such. Nevertheless, insight in these matters is growing, both academically and practically, which will hopefully serve as well in the many futures and societal challenges ahead of us.

Crossposted on Kashklash.net

wfs outlook 2009

Nik — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:47:45 +0000

The World Future Society recently published their top ten of future developments to keep an eye on in view of 2009 and beyond:

Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030.

Bioviolence will become a greater threat as the technology becomes more accessible.

The car’s days as king of the road will soon be over.

Careers, and the college majors for preparing for them, are becoming more specialized.

There may not be world law in the foreseeable future, but the world’s legal systems will be networked.

The race for biomedical and genetic enhancement will — in the twenty-first century — be what the space race was in the previous century.

Professional knowledge will become obsolete almost as quickly as it’s acquired.

Urbanization will hit 60% by 2030.

The Middle East will become more secular while religious influence in China will grow.

Access to electricity will reach 83% of the world by 2030.

As 2008 flies by and 2009 approaches, prepare for more lists.

obesity system influence diagram

Nik — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:20:48 +0000

Within the ‘Foresight tackling obesities’ project, which we blogged about earlier, our friends over at Shiftn created an amazing map depicting the forcefield surrounding obesity. Congrats Philippe & Co.!

The causal loop map provides systemic insight into the wide variety of factors influencing the obesity epidemic. A thorough analysis of about 40 science reviews led to the identification of 108 drivers of obesity, interrelated through positive and negative effects.

Reflecting on the potential of maps like these: a next step of increasing the interactivity of the map could further enhance its value as an information insight or what-if tool. For example, select a relationship arrow and see what the relationship stands for. Or furthermore … select a few drivers, confirm or alter the parameters of their cause-effect relationship, push the action button and see what happens. Or … describe an effect (wishful or to avoid) and see which buttons need to be triggered in order to change the outcome as mentioned. In other words: the map, as an information visualization tool, can be a first step toward a full-fledged knowledge tool.

future of sustainability

Nik — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:12:42 +0000

Across the Atlantic, the Ten Year Forecast Team of the IFTF recently published a future map laying out the various developments related to sustainability in view of the coming decade, for their client, the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI). Think: slums as centres of innovation, rogue eco-states, collaborative eco-mapping, bioteaming, biohacking, biocommons, environmental defense forces, deep localism, distributed energy, etc.

Get the map and dive right in. There’s a wealth of information up for inspiration, interpretation and innovation for all.