Posted by Adam Gordon on Mar 10, 2009 in all, failed predictions, foresight tools & methods, history, Perils of Prediction, politics of the future, strategic foresight
One of the more alarming mistakes in foresight work is that forecasters don’t see themselves as operating within their own world view, and the preconceptions and priorities of their own time. In fact the very idea of foresight – why do it and how to do it – has changed quite markedly through human history. Knowledge of this historiography is of course important in assessing current forecasts. This is why Oona Strathern’s A Brief History of the Future (Robinson, London, 2007) is an important book.
One doesn’t start reading a “Brief History of” book in a series that includes A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis and A Brief History of British Kings & Queens, without a certain trepidation. But, in fact, A Brief History of the Future is well-considered and well-written summing up of the characters and concerns that have shaped and continue to shape the future studies field.
Strathern, is a British journalist-turned-futurist, based in Vienna. One of the key attributes she brings is a journalist’s (and sub-editor’s) critical “don’t-bullshit-me” faculties, which is welcome in a field that is often short on common sense.
The book is hardly brief (at 300 pages) so there’s no sense that it’s a potted history. And it’s not compromised by what one – alas – expects of this kind of setup: pandering to all characters in positive or equal terms. In fact a key value of the book is its clear-headed and plucky judgment of who the key figures are (and who are not) and what their contributions have each been (vs what they might have thought they were). It is also unusually even-handed in balancing US and European inputs.
The book follows the obvious structure, starting with the oracles of Ancient Greece, Plato, moving through Leonardo de Vinci, and Thomas Malthus and so on through to the 19th century (Jules Verne, Karl Marx, etc.) and on to the present. In this Strathern argues for and operates with a wide definition of futures work – including in the dreamers, social reformers, and sci-fi writers in addition the more formal analysts and planners.
20th Century Weltanschauung
The book really hits its straps in the 20th century – in discussions of Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Arthur C. Clarke, Herman Kahn, Buckminster Fuller, Alvin Toffler, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Mead and many lesser known figures. What is most interesting here is how the links between foresight approaches and the evolving broader existential and political “weltanschauung” of the century is knitted together, inserting “futurology” into the 20th century world of ideas at each point.
Although the book deals with institutions of foresight pretty well, the one angle I missed was the development of foresight education over the past 40 years. Part or full university degrees in foresight methods are an important part of the evolution of the field. Much has been learned in the debates over what and how and where to teach it. Ironically, the book – as intelligent a summary of the “future studies” field as you will find – would be an ideal text for an introductory course in such a curriculum.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Nov 20, 2008 in all, failed predictions, foresight tools & methods, Future Savvy, lifestyles & values, policy, social change, systems dynamics
The foresight news story of the day is undoubtedly the breakthroughs in stem cell use in facilitating human organ donation. Instantly one can add decades to the human lifespan in places where this class of treatments will be available and affordable. But that’s a topic for another time. What I’ve been mulling over is a Columbian government media tour in the UK, aimed at drawing middle class “recreational” drug consumers’ attention to the environmental cost of drug production, particularly cocaine. As reported in the Guardian yesterday (November 19), Columbian VP, Santos Calderón told a police conference that 300,000 hectares destroyed each year in Columbia for coca plant, that is, 4sq meters of rainforest for every gram of cocaine produced. (Savvy says: what’s the validity of these numbers and who do they favor? Place a question mark there.) But it’s probably safe to assume the profit motive behind drug production overrides Green sensitivities, and the environmental cost is severe.
The environmental pitch is a new salvo in the old “war on drugs,” which has been waged backwards and forwards, over decades now, without being won. It’s worth stopping to think why it has not been won, because it’s a salutory lesson in thinking about the future. It has nothing to do with the morals of “pushers” or willpower of “addicts” or the “the youth of today.” It is perfectly explained by the reinforcing loop (aka viscious/virtuous cycle) that dominates the drug-prevention system. This can be diagrammed as follows:
Alternatively the identical idea may be represented as a “fixes that fail” archetype, as defined in “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook” (Peter Senge et al, Doubleday, 1994, p125).
For more on systems thinking see The Systems Dynamics Society. The role of systems thinking in improving our understanding of change (or non-change) is also the topic of Chapter 8 of Future Savvy.
So, yes, these are simple charts. We could make them more complex by filling in details of all agents and institutions at work in drug supply, demand, and prevention – but this would only elaborate, not alter the logic of the system. Either way, the chart allows us to see the wood for the trees, which is that drugs and their prevention are in a reinforcing loop. While it appears that preventive laws and their enforcement will lower drug use, in fact law enforcement constrains availability, pushing up the price, which makes production more attractive, which creates incentives to farm (incl, in rainforests), which raises supply, which leads to drug pushing (marketing by another name), which leads to drug trial, usage and addiction, therefore social concern, and therein renewed pressure for stricter legislation and crackdown, which sends the loop round once again. (There are many side effects of this main loop, including increased street crime – funding drug habits; the creation and enrichment of gangs and warlords; and so on.)
Scratching doesn’t help
Nobody in their right mind wants this to happen. But even a kindergarden child can see that policing and jailing, like a good scratch, feels good in the short term but just drives the wheel of the problem in the long term. What are the alternatives? From time to time pressure is brought to bear on production, for example, trying to obliterate coca or poppy fields, or disrupt supply chains. But this is also hopeless because as long as there is a good price to be had, the systemic reality is that drugs will be grown, produced, and shipped. What shows great promise is tackling price. The legalization lobby is all about capping price by making drugs legal, supervised, available, and free (or low-price), removing the superprofits from the industry and thereby blunting the primary interest of drug bosses and warlords. (This is what happened when Prohibition was repealed).
From a systemically informed viewpoint, only a solution that changes the system (interrupts the reinforcing cycle) can change the future. In other words nothing significant will occur in the future until the system changes, and removing drug barons’ price interest is the only way to do it. Until this happens the savvy forecast must be: no change.
Educating consumers
But the public is not ready for such policies. So we are left with the holding pattern we are in. And this includes exhorting the consumer, as Vice-President Calderón is doing. (The same story and interview was featured earlier this week on Radio 4′s “Today” Show.) He’s targeting the middle class, occasional, and recreational drug users who, he says, otherwise recycle, and compost, and “drive a hybrid” and buy fair trade coffee, and so on, and so should be desist from drug use because of it’s environmental impact.) This is not the first time that consumers have been “educated” – school and public education programs consistently target, inform, and discourage consumers and would-be consumers (including, of course, in the laughable “Just Say No” campaign.) All good or at least harmless work, in a good cause.
Into this Calderón has added a new-to-the-industry category of demotivator – the environment. Sure, this should work in giving middle-class consumers pause. But if environmentally sensitive cocaine customers are a big part of the market — and it’s hard to tell if they really are — expect producers to just respond with Green reassurance, real or fake: “No trees were ploughed under in the creation of your snort.”
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