“…for there is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.”Wendy SchultzInfinite Futures
ICT2013Vilnius Lithuania
7 November 2013
“…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Wendy SchultzInfinite Futures
Vilnius Lithuania7 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
xkcd
BEWARE OF STRAIGHT LINES
BEWARE OF STRAIGHT LINES
xkcd
• Change in living systems – particularly in human systems – is neither simple nor ballistic
• Because we are curious, creative, inventive, playful – and contrary, addictive, and perverse
CHANGE EVOLVES IN OVERLAPPING WAVES & TURBULENCE
THREE HORIZONS FRAMEWORK
MANAGER VISIONARYENTREPRENEUR
Eg, MUSIC, MOVIES, CDs, DVDs
Eg., MUSIC, MOVIES – transformational disruptor -
iTunes
Eg, MUSIC, MOVIES – paradigm buster -
Napster
CHANGE EVOLVES IN OVERLAPPING WAVES & TURBULENCE
THREE HORIZONS FRAMEWORK
• The operating assumptions of today are built on successful responses to past waves of change: Those assumptions create stability, but also resist change
• The visionaries and inventors of today challenge those assumptions – but often in ways that are ultimately unworkable: they disrupt paradigms and perspectives
• Entrepreneurs build on visions to create the marketable goods and services – they transform capacity – and create new operating assumptions
The Crapularity
3D printing + spam + micropayments = tribblesthat 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 = tribblesthat 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
MANOA SCENARIO BUILDING
• 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 GrouponularityIn 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 GrouponularityIn 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-intuitive results emerge when a change that’s good on a small scale goes global?
BEWARE the LONE WOLF FUTURE
http://bethwalshphotography.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/lone-wolf/
BEWARE the LONE WOLF FUTURE
http://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 matter how compelling new technologies are, or how much momentum they seem to have
CHANGES GENERATEMYRIAD POSSIBLEFUTURES
CHANGES GENERATEMYRIAD POSSIBLEFUTURES
• Multiple emergent futures are possible given different initial conditions; complex interactions of multiple onrushing changes; and a complex context that includes cultural diversity and all of your individual points of view
BEWARE OF INTENTIONS
BEWARE OF INTENTIONS
• So you’ve invented a new technology, or a new service, or a new form of organization
• What you designed it to do is not necessarily what your fellow humans will actually do with it.
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ABOUND
BEWARE OF INTENTIONS
A diagnostic toolbecomes
an artist’s medium
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ABOUND
BEWARE OF INTENTIONS…or, as with so many
media, a new avenue for porn
WHERE WILL UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ARISE?
Verge General Practice Framework for Futures Studies
and Foresight
Verge General Practice Framework for
Futures Studies and Foresight
Dr Richard Lum
• Artists will use the invention 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 invention will reverberate through all the arenas of human endeavour
WHERE WILL UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES ARISE?
BE AWARE OF YOUR LENSES
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 assumptions?
• How do different values, myths, and metaphors drive responses to your inventions / ideas / policy initiatives?
OTHERS MAY USE DIFFERENT FILTERS
OTHERS MAY USE DIFFERENT FILTERS
Causal Layered Analysis
Sohail Inayatullah
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 inventing.
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as great and sudden change.”
Mary Shelley
Thank you.Wendy Schultz
@wendyinfutures