riel miller, xperidox: futures consulting, 2009 novelty and post- secondary education: an exercise...

Riel Miller, xperidox: futures consulting, 2009

Novelty and Post-Secondary

Education: An Exercise in Futures

Literacy------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Riel MillerMutual Learning Workshop 1

Systems Thinking for Foresight:The case of Romanian Higher

Education System23-25 September 2009Bucharest, ROMANIA

Photo credit: Mark Schacter ©


“The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course – its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick


1. Anticipation Systems and Futures Literacy

• Anticipation matters for decision making

• The future is fundamentally indeterminate

• Integrating indeterminacy into foresight in a consistent way – three dimensions of the future

• Futures Literacy


Bugs Bunny Anticipates


Every-day anticipation

Make your bets – now (in the present)


M – the model of the future:How and what we “see” and “tell” about tomorrow

changes what we see and DO now

S : object system

M : model of S

E : effector system

Source: Robert Rosen, Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical, & Methodological Foundations., Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1985. Slide by A. H. Louie, Mathematical Biologist


Potential of the Present

Anticipatory Models: Different ways of “seeing” the potential of the present

Projected Futures: Bears, GBU and

Planned

ImaginableFutures

??

?

?

?

?

?


Bear Scenarios: Papa, Mama and Baby


DemographicsPopulation

Time

Baby

Mama

Papa

Riel Miller, xperidox: futures consulting, 2009Ennio Morricone

http://spaghettiwesterns.1g.fi/music/Ennio_Morricone_-_The_Good_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly.mp3


The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Global Warming:

Scenarios

New Agreement(good)

No agreements(bad)

Muddle through

(ugly)Human impact

on climate change reduced

Massive climate disruption

Moderate human induced

disruption of climate

Build composite scenarios combining trends & preferences


The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Bear Scenarios Knowledge Driven

Commercially Driven

Mixed Model

Low rate of tech change

Low enrollement growth

Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3

Medium enrollment growth


High Enrollment growth


High rate of tech change

Low enrollement growth


Medium enrollment growth


High Enrollment growth



Desire for Predictive Models?

Subject: Social Changes Due to Climate Change

Time


The End of Certainty

… we are now able to include probabilities in the formulation of the basic laws of physics. Once this is done, Newtonian determinism fails; the future is no longer determined by the present….

Mankind is at a turning point, the beginning of a new rationality in which science is no longer identified with certitude and probability with ignorance. … science is no longer limited to idealized and simplified situations but reflects the complexity of the real world, a science that views us and our creativity as part of a fundamental trend present at all levels of nature.Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos and the New Laws of Nature


Actualization, instantiation,

the simultaneity of

variably thick presents in

variable and multiple

temporal states

Time

Cloud of now - phenomena


Defining the Future:

Distinguishing three

dimensions of the potential

of the present


Contingency futures: a tsunami


Contingency futures: winning the lottery


Optimization futures: chess, farming, assembly line

• Goal is given• Rules are given• Resources are given


Exploratory futures: imagining the potential of the present


Future Contexts: From Simple and Closed to Complex and Open

Exploration

Degree of complexity

Complex

Degree of Openness

SimpleClosed Open

Optimization(chess game)


Less managable – less clarity of

goal

More reflexivity

More managable – more clarity

of goal

Less reflexivity

Greater freedom and ambiguity - spontaneity

Regime 1 (Agriculture)

Regime 2 (Industrial)

Regime 3 (Learning society)

Why Futures Literacy? Changing Contexts

Over time and in different contexts the extent of optimisation (known goals with known resources and values) and exploration change and therefore the

foresight methods that need to be used.

Different contexts and times?


What is Futures Literacy?Changing our capacity to think about the future


Futures Literacy• Futures Literacy is a way of thinking about the future

(foresight) that is consistent with the principles of an exploratory context – non-probabilistic, spontaneous and experimentalist.

• Futures Literacy is the capacity to imagine the present differently using techniques that help identify/escape present assumptions and continuously invent/recount (tell/describe) stories/pictures that detect symptoms of inter-systemic dissonance and helps to re-establish shared sense making/meaning.

• Futures Literacy is to a spontaneous society what text literacy was to industrial society. It is the way to use the reality of complexity, heterogeneity, heterarchy and ambiguity to live freedom responsibly.


FL – A more consistent approach to linking ontology and epistemology in

anticipatory thinking• Contingent – the potential to be acted upon by an

outside force– Functioning of AS: simulation and practice, learning by

doing, early warning, transparency• Optimization – the potential to be subject to control

– Functioning of AS: Better calculation – models, projections, clarity and “certainty” of rules

• Exploratory – the potential to be without precedent, arising from inspiration, creativity and discovery– Functioning of AS: non-teleological imagining of changes

in the conditions of change, rigorous imagining and enhanced narrative capacities for spontaneity


Learning by doing• Level 1 futures literacy

– Temporal awareness, values, expectations – defining the subject and choice of anticipatory focus: contingency, optimization or exploration

• Level 2 futures literacy– Rigorous imagining: narrative, analytical

framing – for policy iso-probable, iso-desirable

• Level 3 futures literacy– Questioning anticipatory assumptions and

assessing current choicesNot “a tool”, a way of thinking about the learning process that

futures processes take – refining anticipatory systems


Thinking about the potential of the present

Subject(model)

TimeNOW


Imagining a Learning Intensive Society: Shifting the Anticipatory Assumptions for Thinking about Education

2. Changes in the Conditions of Change


Systemic Economic Transformation

“Next stage” of market economy – beyond mass-production and mass-consumption

• Nature of production & consumption

• Organisational attributes of wealth creation

• Predominant type of economic activity

• Scope of transaction systems


Sequential Production, Consumption, Resource

Deployment Process

Supply Demand Allocation Supply Demand Allocation Repeat cycle


Conception

Management

Execution


Unbundled (individuals

)

Top down

Personal creativit

y

Bundled

(firms)

From Hierarchy to Heterarchy

Mass-era worker

and consumer

Empowered team-worker,

informed shopper

Artist

Future consumer/ producer - cyber

creator

Unique Creation: Beyond supply & demand

Organisation of Value Added

Relationship between conception & execution


Clouds of value creation – transformation of the anticipatory conditions of the economy

& society


Industrial(goods & services,public & private)

Craft/Creative

Household

Agriculture

AgriculturalSociety

IndustrialSociety

LearningSociety

Compositional TransformationShare of total wealth creation by source


What is a learning intensive society?

Source: Riel Miller, XperidoX Futures Consulting; [email protected]

Average intensity of know-what

Average intensity of know-how

Average intensity of know-who

Average intensity of know-why (decision making capacity)

Agricultural SocietyAgricultural Society Industrial SocietyIndustrial Society Learning SocietyLearning Society

ccruz

Procedural knowledge (methods/processes)

ccruz

Declarative knowledge (facts)

ccruz

Networking knowledge (contacts, resources)

ccruz

Causal knowledge (foundations, reasons)


Changing Composition of Output

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040

Time

Perc

enta

ge S

hare

Industrial products Innovation (S&T/R&D)

Personal products Creativity (Refinement of taste)


What role for the university - now? What are the anticipatory

assumptions?

• Oppositional?• Marginal?• Enabler?

Photo credit: Mark Schacter, www.luxetveritas.ca


Living knowledge(stock)

Discovery(flow)

Knowledge Stocks and FlowsWhere does the university fit?

All knowledge

Public sectorPreservation Net

new

Private sectorPreservation Net

new

Cover it allNon-institutional


Are universities – post-secondary systems – part of the problem or part of the solution, or both? What are our anticipatory assumptions? Acting on values now!


Policy: Making a Difference• Long-run change is compositional

– The old co-exists with the new, reallocation leading to shifts in the share of the total

• There are two basic types of change (both are dialectical and usually only partially rational, explicit):– Incremental improvement (continuous refinement of

existing system)– Incremental transformation (cumulative alterations that

eventually create a new system)• What role for universities? Choices now based on

anticipatory assumptions…


Post-Secondary Role?

Interdependency

Time/space flexibility of

daily life

Limited

Unlimited

?

Limited Full

Conditions for transparency & trust: fluidity and spontaneity

?

?


Post-Secondary Role?

Use of information

Practical complexity of

networking

Limited

Unlimited

Limited Full

Embrace complexity and freedom

?

?

?


“Virtually every step in the history of human innovation and invention has come about in the wake of someone asking about imaginary possibilities, speculating about what would happen if and reflecting on yet-unrealised and perhaps unrealisable possibilities.” Nicholas Rescher, Imagining Irreality

Thank you

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

riel miller, xperidox: futures consulting, 2009 novelty and post- secondary education: an exercise...

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