Posted by Adam Gordon on Sep 14, 2009 in 2025, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, foresight tools & methods, managing uncertainty, Perils of Prediction, technology change
I note from a link on the Ian Miles Futures blog that “2025: Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology” by Coates, Hines, & Mahaffie, is now available free for full-text download.
For full disclosure, I should say I worked in the Coates office in Washington D.C. during the mid-late 1990s (but got there just after the book was done.)
There are deep and ultimately overwhelming problems with the book itself. It sees science-technology as the primary driver of change, when what science is done and what technology is produced is often the product of policy or economic or values / zeitgeist decisions further up the chain. It also has an astoundingly poor conceptual framework (‘Worlds 1, 2, 3′) for dealing with non-US societies and cultures, and their economic and social development: one that would make Tom Friedman (‘World is Flat’) giggle and Hans Rosling surely cry. Truly there are many reasons they have to give this book away for free.
But its importance is elsewhere. It remains remarkable for one thing — the thing that the Coates & Jarratt foresight firm was known for — a willingness to speculate confidently and in detail (and sometimes even stupidly) about future changes. The book is likewise exemplary in its commitment to concrete, interesting, ‘fearless’ long-range speculation, in a world where most analysts waste most of their foresight ink timidly equivocating and covering their back.
Quality, reloaded
Evocative, concrete speculation is important, even if it is wrong. It is commonly misapprehended that the purpose of foresight work is to “predict the future,” (and someone with this perspective is going to pop up in 2025 and say “so, how right or wrong was this book?”) But, nobody can be right. The real value of foresight work is other: to know as much as we can about the present, and the forces and factors changing it, to be able to preconceive the full range of possible future outcomes that pertain, in order to make decisions today towards an outcome we prefer. (Who “we” are and what “we” prefer — social welfare; shareholder value maximization; environmental sustainability, etc., — will vary hugely among interest groups of course.)
This preconception (of a range of scenarios, if you like) is what allows truly effective discussions and debates to take place in considering alternatives, and therefore promotes better decision-making regardless of whether the scenarios ultimately turn out to have been, in themselves, ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ High-quality scenarios are to be preferred of course, but quality is in the ability to stimulate and provoke management attention to the right areas in a timely manner, not in having been right in prediction. As Coates used to say (and I echo this to my Industry Foresight students): “You don’t have to be right, you just have to be interesting.”
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Aug 20, 2009 in 2015, 2025, all, emerging technologies, forecast filtering, Future Savvy, strategic foresight, systems dynamics, trend tracking
Arsenal FC manager Arsène Wenger this week made a big prediction about the future of football in Europe. Now it’s hardly news when a sports coach predicts the future, but that’s because their forecasts are of the day-to-day variety and restricted to their own micro-climate: “Ronaldo has been going well in practice, I predict he’ll get on the scoresheet come Saturday.’ Or, ‘We’ll beat Chelsea in next months return leg,“ and so on.
Arsène Wenger
But this was different. Wenger (on the eve of the Arsenal vs Celtic Rangers Champions League match) predicted a “European League” in 10 years featuring the continent’s top clubs – that is, he offered foresight into potential structural, industry-wide change in multi-billion-dollar UK and European soccer industry.
Currently clubs play in their national domestic leagues. And all Europe-wide competitions are cup (pool stage + knockout) competitions.
Although not fleshed out, the form is not hard to see: the top four-or-so clubs from each major country (fewer from smaller countries) in one annual league competition. This means that Manchester United, Liverpool, AC Milan, Porto, Juventus, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Roma and so on would all be playing each other on a weekly basis throughout the year (and, presumably, playing in no other league competitions).
Drivers of Change
The point of Future Savvy is that one can judge the validity of predictions like this before time. In this case, part of the way to assess Mr Wenger’s future view would be to gauge the strength of driving vs blocking forces behind his outcome.
There is evidence of strong drivers in favor of a European Super League. These are:
1. The rise of “super-teams.” In the UK and across Europe the same few teams dominate their domestic league year after year. The reason is a simple reinforcing feedback loop where winning teams get more money (from TV rights, from gates, from merchandising, etc.) which means they can buy better players, which means they win more. Over the last decade the English Football Premier League has become, effectively, a competition between Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal. (In the US the “draft–pick” system mitigates against any franchise getting too strong in this way, but no such system-balancer exists in European football.)
2. The growing ease and ubiquity of continental travel. Whether fans will follow their teams across Europe is a key issue, but indicators from cup competitions is that fans can and will travel.
3. The growing role of, and technological sophistication of television, particularly Sky Sports. Despite the many who travel, most people these days follow games at home or in sports bars. Television’s coverage and choices (the remote control options “red button”) have exploded, and screens themselves have got bigger and better. And genuine personalization of camera feed and other forms of interactively is emerging. In this, football, and professional sports as a whole, is becoming more about the screen as the stadium, accelerating a long-term trend. The reality is it makes little difference to most fans if the game is being played 50 miles away or 500.
4. The move to high-level, star-packed, events. There’s a clear trend across sports in general for events featuring the best players playing each other in all-star environments, not as a special “all-star” game but as an everyday occurrence. In cricket, for example, the Indian IPL has ridden this trend, offering franchised matches of, effectively, one mixed team of global superstars versus another. The fans love it.
There is also the financial do-or-die logic that soccer clubs face. The money feedback loop means they must continually drive up their revenues. It’s not possible to stand still. A European Football Super League would compel participation from the top teams for this reason alone.
vs Blockers
Adequately assessing the likelihood of the Wenger view of the future further requires investigation of blockers – factors which will prevent the outcome. In this case these may be overwhelming logistics of moving teams around to this extent week in and week out; limits on fans’ travel energy and budget; extent of fans’ loyalty to the relatively minor (non-super) domestic teams; and domestic league administrators’ determination and ability to keep domestic leagues from loosing their cash cows and following their own downward spiral into television obscurity.
These blockers on the European football league forecast are real. The question is whether they stop the future or how long they delay it. I’d judge the blockers as considerably weaker than the drivers and so I’d go with Wenger in predicting a European Super League (even richer and more “glamorous” than anything soccer has seen before) in about 10 years from now.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Aug 13, 2009 in 2025, all, emerging technologies, social change, strategic foresight, technology change
I’ve been following a fun little foresight project organized by Rohit Talwar of “FastFuture” contributed to by many members of the Association of Professional Futurists, which looks at new jobs that may emerge in the next 10-20 years as the result of science and technology advancement.
One of the benefits of thinking about science and technology foresight in terms of jobs is that doing so encourages a reality check, forcing the question: will someone get paid to do this, if so, by whom and why (how will it be profitable to the job giver?) In other words, the question is taken beyond whether one can imagine a job that will need doing or a job that someone might like to do it – that’s just mental bubble gum – to the more interesting and taxing issue of whether such need will justify enough paying customers such that the job will exist at all.
Of course, in all this science and technology progress will make new products and services possible partly by reducing the price point of providing them.
Not all of the jobs of the future listed below, I feel, pass this test. But many do. And it’s an interesting thought experiment. It’s a work in progress (see below.) The list as exists so far is:
1. Body Part Maker
Due to the huge advances being made in bio-tissues, robotics and plastics, the creation of body parts – from organs to limbs – will soon be possible, requiring body part makers, body part stores and body part repair shops.
2. Nano-Medic
Advances in nanotechnology offer the potential for a range of sub-atomic ‘nanoscale’ devices, inserts and procedures that could transform personal healthcare.. A new range of nano-medicine specialists will be required to administer these treatments.
3. Pharmer (sic) of Genetically Engineered Crops and Livestock
New-age farmers will raise crops and livestock that have been genetically engineered to improve yields and produce therapeutic proteins. Works in progress include a vaccine-carrying tomato and therapeutic milk from cows, sheep and goats.
4. Old Age Wellness Manager / Consultant Specialists
Drawing on a range of medical, pharmaceutical, prosthetic, psychiatric, natural and fitness solutions to help manage the various health and personal needs of the aging population.
5. Memory Augmentation Surgeon
Surgeons that add extra memory to people who want to increase their memory capacity and to help those who have been over exposed to information in the course of their life and simply can no longer take on any more information – thus leading to sensory shutdown.
6. ‘New Science’ Ethicist
As scientific advances accelerate in new and emerging fields such as cloning, proteomics and nanotechnology, a new breed of ethicist may be required. These science ethicists will need to understand a range of underlying scientific fields and help society make consistent choices about what developments to allow. Much of science will not be a question of can we, but should we..
7. Space Pilots, Architects and Tour Guides
With Virgin Galactic and others pioneering space tourism, space trained pilots and tour guides will be needed, as well as designers to enable the habitation of space and the planets. Current projects at SICSA (University of Houston) include a greenhouse on Mars, lunar outposts and space exploration vehicles.
8. Vertical Farmers
There is growing interest in the concept of city based vertical farms, with hydroponically-fed food being grown in multi-storey buildings. These offer the potential to dramatically increase farm yield and reduce environmental degradation. The managers of such entities will require expertise in a range of scientific disciplines, engineering and commerce.
9. Climate Change Reversal Specialist
As the threats and impacts of climate change increase, a new breed of engineer-scientists will be required to help reduce or reverse the effects of climate change on particular locations. They will need to apply multi-disciplinary solutions ranging from filling the oceans with iron filings to erecting giant umbrellas that deflect the sun’s rays.
10. Quarantine Enforcer
If a deadly virus starts spreading rapidly, few countries, and few people, will be prepared. Nurses will be in short supply. Moreover, as mortality rates rise, and neighborhoods are shut down, someone will have to guard the gates.
11. Weather Modification Police
The act of stealing clouds to create rain is already happening in some parts of the world, and is altering weather patterns thousands of miles away. Weather modification police will need to control and monitor who is allowed to shoot rockets containing silver iodine into the air – a way to provoke rainfall from passing clouds.
12. Virtual Lawyer
As more and more of our daily life goes online, specialists will be required to resolve legal disputes which could involve citizens resident in different legal jurisdictions.
13. Avatar Manager / Devotees – Virtual Teachers
Avatars could be used to support or even replace teachers in the elementary classroom, i.e., computer personas that serve as personal interactive guides. The Devotee is the human that makes sure that the Avatar and the student are properly matched and engaged.
14. Alternative Vehicle Developers
Designers and builders of the next generations of vehicle transport using alternative materials and fuels. Could the dream of underwater and flying cars become a reality within the next two decades?
15. Narrowcasters
As the broadcasting media become increasingly personalized, roles will emerge for specialists working with content providers and advertisers to create content tailored to individual needs. While mass market customisation solutions may be automated, premium rate narrow casting could be performed by humans.
16. Waste Data Handler
Specialists providing a secure data disposal service for those who do not want to be tracked, electronically or otherwise.
17. Virtual Clutter Organizer
Specialists will help us organise our electronic lives. Clutter management would include effective handling of email, ensuring orderly storage of data, management of electronic ID’s and rationalizing the applications we use.
18. Time Broker / Time Bank Trader
Alternative currencies will evolve their own markets – for example time banking already exists. (Time banking facilitates reciprocal service exchange based on units of time.)
19. Social ‘Networking’ Worker
Social workers for those in some way traumatized or marginalized by social networking.
20. Personal Branders
An extension of the role played by stylists, publicists and executive coaches –advising on how to create a personal ‘brand’ using social and other media. What personality are you projecting via your Blog, Twitter, etc? What personal values do you want to build into your image – and is your image consistent with your real life persona and your goals?
I added a few of my own to the database (trying to avoid repetition) which would both be needed and economically justifiable:
(1) Organ Agent: person who sources and negotiates real or artificial organs on behalf of those in who want them. Interacts with donor, manages prices or bids if applicable, negotiates with hospitals, and so on.
(2) Automated Systems Monitor: person who oversees automated systems (e.g. smart highways) and intervenes and corrects as necessary. “ASMs” would each need specific expertise in their field — transport or manufacturing or surgery or whatever is automated — but would share the specific skill of being a complex-automated-system monitor, evaluator, and emergency troubleshooter.
(3) End-of-Life Planner: person who helps people plan and manage their own death (combating the fact that medicine/technology will be able to keep most people technically alive pretty much forever).
You can add your own thoughts by taking the survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229HP2J3ALX closing date: August 19th, 2009.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on May 28, 2009 in 2025, all, emerging technologies, innovation, policy, strategic foresight, technology change
College graduation is a fabulous time and place to think big, and therefore a good place to have a futurist do the thinking. Peter Schwartz recently gave the valedictory address to the 2009 graduating class of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (he graduated there in 1968) and offered a grand 10-point challenge list for techies of the future:
Allowing for the usual pep-talk style of these things, it’s possible to boil the list down to five key things, which will indeed be essential to technology enabled industry and social change in the lifetime of today’s college graduates:
1. Non-pulluting, inexhaustible energy. Schwartz mentioned potential sources including fusion and gasoline-excreting molecules. “We need something new for the long run, and it will require new physics, new chemistry, new materials, new biology, or likely some combination.”
2. A “bio-industrial revolution” to make production of goods more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable.
3. Advancing understanding of the human brain, and developing new means to combat aging effects.
4. Improving agriculture to raise yields while reducing environmental costs.
5. Better urban planning, civil engineering, and smart architecture for more sustainable cities.
A fairly well known list – yet these are the key issues. But the most interesting thing of all that Schwartz said was this:”graduates should not assume they can do it alone. Collaboration is a key ingredient of progress.”
“At some point in the next few years, probably by the time you are 30 … you will have to make a life trajectory decision that no one tells you about: Are you mainly going to work on your own or work through others?” Schwartz said. “Many engineers, scientists, artists, poets, writers have great lives working mostly by themselves. But there are many things you cannot do on your own. If you want to lead research teams in larger organizations, or design and construct new buildings, or make movies or start new businesses, the skills of human collaboration are essential to success.”
In other words, collaboration – the means to and willingness to and resources to collaborate (globally) – is a key enabler of important breakthroughs. In theory everyone knows this and everyone agrees. But how much of competitive and legal process is all about protecting individual or national work, that is disrupting collaboration?
So in addition to the grand technology challenges for coming lifetimes, I offer a similar grand policy challenge (perhaps for Kennedy School grads of 2009): create the policies that genuinely promote and encourage collaboration. Do not encourage people, or companies, or countries to see benefit in working on their own. Facilitate and reward information sharing at every level… and then the Rensselaer grads and their equivalent around the country and the world will really be able to create the future that Schwartz envisions.
For event report see Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2585
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Apr 22, 2009 in 2015, 2025, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, forecast filtering, Future Savvy, horizon scanning, innovation, lifestyles & values, Perils of Prediction, social change, technology change
A basic tool of foresight work is horizon scanning, that is, scanning for signals of change, early portent of trends, straws in the wind of change. Futurists do it habitually, and if not habitually then – the wisdom is – do it routinely by consciously scanning sources of information you don’t normally. Buying an agricultural weekly or teen idol rag at the airport, rather than your standard dose of the Economist.
It was in this spirit that I picked up the UK launch issue (aka May 2009) of Wired. Actually it’s not the first launch. Wired was in the UK ten years ago, but Condé Nast withdrew it in the dot.com crash. In the US at the time, I remember when Wired, the poster child of the Silicon Valley / Nasdaq bonanza, was almost as thick as a phone book each month. But those days were soon over.
Anyway, who could resist an offering that was about to tell me about my “Life in the future. “Fake Meat, Robots and Electro-Sex: the World is About to Change.” On the cover are, I kid you not, flying cars!
Now, I wouldn’t take this stuff seriously for a moment, if everyone else promised not to. But they don’t. So here we go. In the “What’s Next?” cover story 46 experts make 99 predictions about the next 40 years, and none of them will happen, or not in the time frame expressed.
Oh, moon settlement?
I shrink from sharing the list. Meal replacement patches, check. Moon settlement, check. The male pill, check. Every techno-fantasy of the jockish sci-fi world, check. Well, let’s stop on the male pill for a moment. Can we not do it? Sure we can do it – today. What’s stopping it is not technology. It is attitudes (machismo, essentially). So Wired experts are telling us that this will go away in a decade. Puh-leez.
I hardly need mention there’s no method given behind any of these expert forecasts.
Don’t you think Wired should be asking themselves why, in 2009, they are producing 186 pages of dead tree and carting it around the country in carbon-emitting trucks? Technology-vision may lead you to a view of the future. But it’s unreliable. The future is determined by what consumers are ready for. Well, that’s one of the 20-or-so key forecast filtering principles of Future Savvy.
Perhaps we should look at the cover story for what it is really about – which is selling magazines. Because, there’s no doubt that tech is changing, and many new capabilities are coming on stream, and this is very, very fascinating to imagine uses for. And this fascination is what Wired packages and sells. Don’t bet any money on the predictions though, certainly not their timeline.
But sturdy in some areas
Aside from the predicting lark, it’s a good magazine of its kind. The features are well-conceived, well-written, for example, one about how the BBC iPlayer business was built; a feature on sea salvage; a profile of PayPal founder Elon Musk; the David X Li formula and how it mis-calculated risk, and so on. Great stuff. Actually quite a sturdy business-oriented-view of techno-change, if you can get past the boys-with-toys riff of the magazine as a whole.
So, actually, much to like. Just, please, don’t think a lad’s mag is going to tell you anything coherent about the future.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Mar 16, 2009 in 2025, all, economy & finance, emerging technologies, forecast filtering, lifestyles & values, Perils of Prediction, policy, social change, technology change, trend tracking
It’s all in a day’s irony when Guinness releases its 250-year view of the future on the day that the UK Chief Medical Officer pleads for a minimum price for alcohol (and Gordon Brown, for now, says no, but don’t bet on that holding for long.)
Guinness' view of the pub of 2259. Image credit: Chris Bainbridge
The Guinness Pub-of-the-Future is a St. Patrick’s day (March 17) promotion. Nothing wrong with a little bit of fantasy foresight. But what they come up is so “20th-century-futurism” it’s hilarious. Among various reports on the project – for example in the Telegraph – the following features are foreseen:
- robotic doorman, greets you by name
- cash obsolete; orders via RFID; payments deducted automatically
- your product tailored to you on the spot
- touch-sensitive tables, send your order straight to the bar
- socializing via virtual / hologram technology
- a running tally of the number of units consumed.
Yawn. Even on it’s own terms (minimal constraints of realism) this is a totally derivative piece of foresight. These “innovations” are the staples of an infotech view of the future, and they have all been thought and spoken of countless times. Also many of the elements and services cited are already here, or not more than a decade away. What we have is the current pub assumptions + digital steriods, while the year 2259 will be, truly, another world.
The limits to growth
But all this leads us to more interesting industry foresight problem. Will there be pubs in even a generation, never mind 250 years? What the Telegraph dryly observes at the bottom of its report is that 39 pubs are closing every week Why? A number of driving forces are coming together:
First is strict drink-driving limits, which makes “the local” literally local or nothing. Second, pubs in the UK have traditionally been a refuge from housing that was poor and/or underheated. Unprecedented waves of affluence (credit-crunch notwithstanding) have led to widespread housing “do-ups.” It’s now a valid option for most people to spend their leisure time at home and entertain at home.
Then there’s the where’s-my-friend trend. You’re likely to go down the pub if your friends are there, but not if they are where most people’s friends are: on Facebook.
The social-legislative clock
Fourth, no matter how you dress it up, pubs are retail outlets. So, like all retail they are under the cosh in a Wal-mart / Tesco world. The price gap between store and pub has become too great for most consumers to cross with good conscience.
Which brings us to the current price-floor legislation bid. Alcohol is a huge social cost in terms of health care and violence. Drink costs the NHS £3bn a year, and the total price of alcohol to the taxpayer is estimated at five times that. Eventually these costs will become unjustifiable so, like smoking before it, the social-legislative clock is ticking for booze. As the 2-martini lunch has become the 2-seltzer lunch, the trend to social stigmatization is clear, and legislators will follow (not with Prohibition, but with a much more subtle community-endorsed squeeze).
Like the good politician he is, Gordon Brown won’t let his party get ahead of the trend. But the trend is clear and it bodes ill for pubs.
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