Post on 04-Mar-2023
“…for there is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.” Wendy Schultz Infinite Futures
ICT2013 Vilnius Lithuania
7 November 2013
“…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Wendy Schultz Infinite Futures Vilnius Lithuania
7 November 2013
• Today, I’ll leave the facts and forecasts to others • I’m here to suggest how to think about the facts and forecasts they’ve offered
BEWARE OF STRAIGHT LINES
xkcd
• Change in living systems – parPcularly in human systems – is neither simple nor ballisPc
• Because we are curious, creaPve, invenPve, playful – and contrary, addicPve, and perverse
CHANGE EVOLVES IN OVERLAPPING WAVES & TURBULENCE
THREE HORIZONS FRAMEWORK
MANAGER VISIONARY ENTREPRENEUR
Eg, MUSIC, MOVIES, CDs, DVDs
Eg., MUSIC, MOVIES – transformaConal disruptor -‐
iTunes
Eg, MUSIC, MOVIES – paradigm buster -‐
Napster
CHANGE EVOLVES IN OVERLAPPING WAVES & TURBULENCE
THREE HORIZONS FRAMEWORK
• The operaPng assumpPons of today are built on successful responses to past waves of change: Those assumpPons create stability, but also resist change
• The visionaries and inventors of today challenge those assumpPons – but oTen in ways that are ulPmately unworkable: they disrupt paradigms and perspecPves
• Entrepreneurs build on visions to create the marketable goods and services – they transform capacity – and create new operaPng assumpPons
The Crapularity 3D printing + spam + micropayments = tribbles that you get billed for, as it replicates wildly out of control. 90% of everything is rubbish, and it's all in your spare room – or someone else's spare room, which you're forced to rent through AirBnB.
Source: Alternatives to the Singularity, online; also at Journal of Futures Studies: “The Singularity is Boring: An Open, Collaborative ‘Mock-up’” http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/17-1/S06.pdf
A pile of worthless "crapjects" (neologism coined by @iftf)
The Crapularity 3D printing + spam + micropayments = tribbles that you get billed for, as it replicates wildly out of control. 90% of everything is rubbish, and it's all in your spare room – or someone else's spare room, which you're forced to rent through AirBnB.
Source: Alternatives to the Singularity, online; also at Journal of Futures Studies: “The Singularity is Boring: An Open, Collaborative ‘Mock-up’” http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/17-1/S06.pdf
A pile of worthless "crapjects" (neologism coined by @iftf)
• You may have invented something ‘insanely great’
• But when you set it free, it will immediately and unpredictably interact with everything else in its context
• Try brainstorming the impacts – and the impacts of the impacts – of three different new ideas you’ve heard discussed today
• Now ask yourself, ‘what next new thing will the colliding impacts of those three changes generate?’
MANOA SCENARIO BUILDING
The Grouponularity In which aggregate consumer purchasing power + pricing algorithms + applied captology, allows your mother (working in concert with everyone else's mother) to reduce the price of 99% of mainstream consumer goods to ~0. The global economy is replaced by something almost equally improbable. Unfortunately, it's comprised entirely of jet-ski adventure days, bread makers, and underwhelming restaurant meals.
Source: Alternatives to the Singularity, online; also at Journal of Futures Studies: “The Singularity is Boring: An Open, Collaborative ‘Mock-up’” http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/17-1/S06.pdf
The Grouponularity In which aggregate consumer purchasing power + pricing algorithms + applied captology, allows your mother (working in concert with everyone else's mother) to reduce the price of 99% of mainstream consumer goods to ~0. The global economy is replaced by something almost equally improbable. Unfortunately, it's comprised entirely of jet-ski adventure days, bread makers, and underwhelming restaurant meals.
Source: Alternatives to the Singularity, online; also at Journal of Futures Studies: “The Singularity is Boring: An Open, Collaborative ‘Mock-up’” http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/17-1/S06.pdf
• How will those colliding impacts affect society?
• What counter-‐intuiPve results emerge when a change that’s good on a small scale goes global?
BEWARE the LONE WOLF FUTURE
h[p://bethwalshphotography.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/lone-‐wolf/
• Change is not binary, and the future is not monocular
• We don’t face a single future – no ma[er how compelling new technologies are, or how much momentum they seem to have
CHANGES GENERATE MYRIAD POSSIBLE FUTURES
• MulPple emergent futures are possible given different iniPal condiPons; complex interacPons of mulPple onrushing changes; and a complex context that includes cultural diversity and all of your individual points of view
BEWARE OF INTENTIONS
• So you’ve invented a new technology, or a new service, or a new form of organizaPon
• What you designed it to do is not necessarily what your fellow humans will actually do with it.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ABOUND
BEWARE OF INTENTIONS …or, as with so many media,
a new avenue for porn
WHERE WILL UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ARISE?
Verge General PracCce Framework for Futures Studies
and Foresight
Verge General PracCce Framework for Futures Studies
and Foresight Dr Richard Lum
• ArPsts will use the invenPon as a new medium
• Children will turn it into a game
• … and of course, someone somewhere will use it to create porn
• Use guides like Verge to explore how your invenPon will reverberate through all the arenas of human endeavour
WHERE WILL UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ARISE?
BE AWARE OF YOUR LENSES
• How do you see the world? • Who else sees the world that way – what are the embedded values, myths, metaphors of your assumpPons?
• How do different values, myths, and metaphors drive responses to your invenPons / ideas / policy iniPaPves?
OTHERS MAY USE DIFFERENT FILTERS
• You can’t just change the buzz • You can’t just invent a new system • You need to engage with, and develop, different worldviews
• Re-‐perceive the world with a different metaphor, a new myth
• Ask the next five people you meet for their myths and metaphors for the worlds and fuures we are invenPng.