Posted by Adam Gordon on Apr 30, 2009 in all, forecast filtering, history
There’s an interesting Information Week article Google Tracking System Suggests Swine Flu Is Spreading posted yesterday (April 29) that investigates the possible predictive power of Googling (human search) activity, suggesting increased searching / monitoring of swine flu on Google could be predictive of rising levels of infection. Google says country-specific (Mexico) data for 19-25 April shows a spike in flu searches.
Pic: thisislondon.co.uk
Google introduced “Google Flu Trends” (US) in November as a way to visualize correlation between flu infections and flu-related searches. It maintains search levels provide early warning of flu spread because search data can be gathered and analyzed almost instantly, unlike traditional epidemiological reporting methods. (More on the goal of the project is in a post on swine flu on the official Google blog.)
The predictive power of Google spikes is hardly clear. Yes, a spike could suggest increased levels of infection. But it could be cause by media coverage and rising levels of pandemic concern.
Google predicts “no pandemic”
More broadly, however, the Google search phenomenon, and information saturation that goes with it is, I believe, highly predictive in epidemic situations. It predicts they are very unlikely. Generally, knowledge is power. Specifically deep and easily searchable public knowledge of where the epidemic is, and what to do to avoid it, and avoid spreading it, is a new condition in human history, one which in fact reliably predicts that no pandemic will happen. Yes, strains become more virulent and dangerous and even drug resistant, and yes, airlines transport it around the world in hours. But the power of knowledge in the labs and in the public at large is immense and ubiquitous in a way it never was before.
One of the debates in futures studies is how much and in what way to look at the past as a guide to the future. Paul Saffo says: look back at least as twice as far as you are trying forecast, and I agree with that. In thinking about a major modern global health epidemic our minds are in fact deeply conditioned by a 90-year-old event: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million worldwide. In that epidemic there were particular conditions, not least four year of devastating war where more were lost to disease than fighting; associated drain on resistance and infrastructure; and forced mobiization of troops under poor conditions, that greatly facilitated the spread of the disease. Most importantly, ordinary people were operating in a knowledge vaccum that is unimaginable today.
This is not to say that we should not be vigilant and prepared. But the future that we most likely face is many-and-regular outbreaks like the swine flu, the avian flu, and so on, which we will move fairly quickly to contain. The dystopia of world pandemic is appealing to the health crisis community and its service providers, but the future will not be history (1918-1920) repeating itself.
read morePosted 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.
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