Communication Futures Alex Burns ([email protected]) 20 April 2006 Smart Internet Technology CRC.

Communication Futures

Alex Burns ([email protected])

20 April 2006

Smart Internet Technology CRC

Dated 20 April 2006 The Disruptive Internet Stream (NGIU) Slide 2

Agenda

• Part 1: Communication Futures (CF)

• History• Discourse: Futures Studies (FS) and Applied Foresight (AF)• Contexts and Frameworks

• Part 2: Methodologies

• Individual methodologies and practices

• Part 3: Applications

• Part 4: Professional Development

• Professional Development issues

Part 1: Foundations


Why Study The Future?

• Foreseeable Dangers and ‘Mega-Events’:

• ‘Challenger’ space shuttle disaster (Roger Boisjoly)• Enron and corporate governance (Sherron Watkins)• September 11 and counter-terrorism (John O’Neill)• Cassandra Archetype: ‘early warnings’ yet ignored

• ICT History and Future Visions

• J.C.R. Licklider and ‘human-machine’ symbiosis• Doug Engelbart and interface design (GUI)• Ted Nelson and Xanadu• Tim Berners-Lee and the ‘Semantic Web’


Challenger Launch Decision

• Roger Boisjoly discovers leaks in primary seals. Morton Thiokol pressure about O-ring warning (Jan. 1986)

• NASA and Morton Thiokol engineers discuss temperature forecasts. NASA over-rides ‘no launch’ decision (27 Jan. 1986)

• At T+73 seconds Challenger explodes—killing all 7 crew members (28 Jan. 1986)


Sherron Watkins & Enron

• Warned Enron’s Kenneth Lay of ‘an elaborate accounting hoax’ (15 Aug. 2001)

• Enron files for Chapter 11 (2 Dec. 2001)

• Individual investors lose millions, Arthur Andersen collapses

• Corporate Governance and Triple Bottom Line (TBL)

• The Smartest Guys In The Room (2005) book and film

• A Conspiracy of Fools (2005)


John O’Neill & Al Qaeda

• FBI began tracking Al Qaeda in mid-1990s

• Investigated first WTC (1993) and USS Cole (2000) bombings

• Warned US Government of global terror networks

• May have prevented September 11 terrorist attacks on United States

• PBS Frontline episode ‘The Man Who Knew’


Anticipatory Not Predictive

• Futures Studies is popularly believed to be about prediction

• Retro-causal (‘what if?’) rather than predictive (‘this will happen by x’)

• ‘The cause lies in the future’ – Heinz von Foerster

• Future ‘possibility’ space to consider implications for now

• Conjectural thinking about evaluated possibilities (Bertrand de Jouvenal)

• The ‘sense of context’ to model different choices (Mihai Nadin); our ‘sixth sense’ (Kees van der Heijden)

• Epistemology (ways of knowing) becomes crucial


Strategic Foresight and Futures Studies

• Strategic Foresight:

• ‘The ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent, and viable forward view whose insights can be used in organizationally useful ways.’ (Richard Slaughter, Swinburne University)

• Critical Futures Studies:

• ‘The attempt to generate new knowledge about the construction of human futures.’ (Richard Slaughter, Swinburne University)

• A type of transdisciplinary strategic thinking rather than traditional strategic planning (links with Governance and Knowledge Management)

• Futures Studies is not crystal ball-gazing, pop imagery or linear extrapolations

• Goes beyond ‘future of . . .’ studies and single-point forecasts


Futures Studies: Introductory Examples

• The following are introduced early on in Swinburne University’s Strategic Foresight program:

• The 200-Year Present (Elise Boulding)• The Futures Cone: possible, probable and preferable futures• The Clock of the Long Now (Stewart Brand)• The Calvert-Henderson indicators (Hazel Henderson)• ‘Tsunamis of Change’ (Jim Dator)• Mindsets: open versus closed thinking (Milton Rokeach)• The sustainability ethic as an FS practical realm


Futures Studies: Key Texts

• The following are often used in Swinburne University’s Strategic Foresight program:

• Richard Slaughter’s Futures Beyond Dystopia (2004) and Futures for the Third Millennium (1999)

• The multi-volume Knowledge Base of Futures Studies (3rd edition on CD in 2005) edited by Slaughter, Sohail Inyatullah & Jose M. Ramos

• Sohail Inayatullah’s Questioning The Future (2nd edition, 2005)

• Peter Schwartz’s The Art of the Long View (1991) on scenarios

• Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline (1990) on systems thinking

• Ken Wilber’s A Theory of Everything (2001)


Communication Futures: Definition

• Interdisciplinary discourse to examine ICT strategic landscape

• A strategic context and problem domain that draws on Futures Studies (theory) and Applied/Strategic Foresight (application)

• Places activities in forward-looking context

• Inputs to corporate strategy and policymaking cycles

• Major themes:

• The evolution of socio-technical systems• Technology trajectories and their social impacts• Responses by societies, culture and political actors


Communication Futures: Key Studies

• Influential CF Studies:

• SIT CRC’s Smart Internet 2010 report (2005)• ACA’s Vision 2020 scenarios exercise (2004)• Networking the Nation (1997)• Networking Australia’s Future (1994)• Telecom Australia’s Telecom 2000 Report (1975)

• Policy Briefs (Communication Futures & Futures Studies):

• DCITA’s Digital Action Plan for Australia (2006)• Communications Policy & Research Forum• Australian Treasury’s Inter-generational Report (2002-2003)• CSIRO National Energy Scenarios


Technology Foresight

• Technology Foresight

• Domain application of national Science & Technology Foresight• Mobilisation for ICT sectoral development• Builds collective vision and social imaging for growth• Regional trade blocs and comparative advantage (David

Ricardo)

• Battelle Science & Technology

• Singapore Infocomm Foresight 2015

• Malaysia Multimedia Corridor

• OECD Foresight Forum


Major Institutions

• ‘Big Science’: Bell Laboratories, NASA space program, Atlas rockets, ARPANET, Human Genome Project

• Defence and Civil Society Planning: RAND and Hudson Institutes (Herman Kahn on nuclear war: ‘thinking about the unthinkable’), Arlington Institute, Institute for the Future, Global Business Network

• Technology Research: Xerox PARC, MIT Media Lab, AT&T Labs, Microsoft Research, BT, Google Labs

• Thomas P. Hughes’ Rescuing Cassandra (1998) as key study

• Stewart Brand’s The Media Lab (1987) on MIT’s initiatives

• Michael Hiltzik’s Dealers of Lightning (1999) on Xerox PARC


Contexts and Frameworks: Overview

• Three introductory paradigms:

• Normative: pragmatic, goal-directed, conventional planning• Critical: evaluates agendas, norms, values and worldviews• Emancipatory: idealist and identity, oppositional to normative

• Three CF outlooks (Warren Wagar):

• Techno-liberal (libertarian and ‘free enterprise’)• Radicals (Democratic Left and Social Marxist)• Countercultural (New Age and Eco-feminist)

• Each gives a ‘true but partial’ map of reality (Ken Wilber); however, ‘the map is not the territory’ (Alfred Korzybski)


Framework 1: Pragmatic Futures

• Dominant context in Western Futures Studies work

• The norm for business and commercial applications

• Timeframe: 3-5 years

• Knowledge Interests: Technical-Instrumental

• Discourses & Methodologies: Trends, Environmental Scanning, Scenario Planning, Business Intelligence

• Example Book: Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad’s Competing for the Future (1995)


Framework 2: Progressive Futures

• Emerged in late 1960s and early 1970s in the West

• The norm for academic applications in arts/humanities and ‘post-normal’ science (Jerry Ravetz)

• Timeframe: 20-50 years and longer

• Knowledge Interests: Emancipatory

• Discourses & Methodologies: Critical Futures Studies, Science & Technology Studies, Simulations, Systems Thinking

• Example Book: Hazel Henderson’s Building A Win-Win World: Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare (1996)


Framework 3: Alternative Global Futures

• Emerged in late 1970s and 1980s in the West

• Anthropological, cross-cultural, post-colonial and postmodernist

• Timeframe: 50-100 years and longer

• Knowledge Interests: Emancipatory, Multitude

• Discourses & Methodologies: Causal Layered Analysis, Anticipatory Action Research and Anthroplogy, Post-Colonial Studies

• Example Book: Ziauddin Sardar’s Rescuing All Our Futures: The Future of Futures Studies anthology (1999)


Framework 4: Civilisational Futures

• Cyclical themes from 1960s to present

• Deals with civilisations, cultural scripts, social imaging

• Timeframe: 100 years, cyclical/spiral models of temporality

• Knowledge Interests: Deep Time, Gaian, Macrohistorical, Dominator/Partnership paradigm (Riane Eisler)

• Discourses & Methodologies: Causal Layered Analysis, Social Imaging, Macrohistorical, Peace Studies, Deep Ecology

• Example Book: Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah’s Macrohistory and Macrohistorians (1997)


Framework 4: Integral Futures

• Cyclical themes from 1960s to present

• Breadth and depth, different ways of knowing, ‘transcend yet include’, All quadrants all levels (AQAL)

• Timeframe: The extended Now

• Knowledge Interests: Transpersonal, Integrative, Pluralistic

• Discourses & Methodologies: Transpersonal and Integral Psychology, Integral Methodological Pluralism, Metascanning, Contemplative/Meditative practices

• Example Book: Ken Wilber’s Sex Ecology Spirituality (1995) and Integral Psychology (1998)


Framework 5: Embodied Foresight

• Has emerged over 2003-2006 as novelty and synthesis

• Meta-methodology: Individual practitioner as holonomic

• Timeframe: Self-reflexive awareness of the Aion/Aeon

• Knowledge Interests: Anticipatory, Enactive, Self-Reflexive

• Discourses & Methodologies: Anticipatory Action Learning, Enactive Cognition, Integral Futures, Self-Reflexive methods, Trialogues, Presence

• Example Book: Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski and Flowers’ Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (2004)

Part 2: Methodologies


Methodology History

• 1950s Forecasts & Trends Analysis

• 1960s Delphi Method & Social Indicators

• 1970s Global Forecasts & Systems Models

• 1980s Scenarios & Risk Management

• 1990s Layered & Depth Methods

• 2000s Integral, Multi-Civilizational & Embodied


Strategic Landscape

• Defined by critical uncertainties, compounded risks and systemic crises (Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Arjun Appuradai)

• Risk as defining factor in globalisation (Beck)• Structuration model of agency-structure debate (Giddens)• Liquid modernity and reconnaissance zones (Bauman)• Socio-, techno- flows (Appuradai)

• Neo-liberal globalization, deregulation and privatization

• ‘Information is bound up in uncertainty’ (Norbert Wiener)

• ‘Knowns, known unknowns & unknown unknowns’ (Donald Rumsfeld on the 2003 Iraq War and WMD debate)

• Hardin Tibbs’ model of business insight and competition


Taxonomy of Futures Methods

• Predictive (‘expertise and colonization’):

• Forecasting (linear/extrapolative), Trends, Data-Mining, Simulations, Delphi Method, Social Indicators, ‘Inevitable Surprises’ (Ageing, Demographics, the Realist tradition in Geopolitics), Technology Mapping, Pattern Recognition

• Interpretative (‘agency, structure, relationship’):

• Environmental Scanning, Scenarios (technology/user), Technology Assessment, Strategic Anticipation, National Science & Technology exercises, Business Intelligence, Blind-Spot Analysis, Wild Cards (‘high impact low probability’ events), Visioning

• Critical (‘undefining the future by questioning assumptions’):

• Causal Layered Analysis, Critical Futures Studies, T-Cycle, Macrohistory, Integral Studies, Action Learning


Methodological Issues

• Futures Studies has a transdisciplinary knowledge base

• Potentially an ‘infinite toolkit’ of resources (Richard Slaughter)

• Integral Methodological Pluralism as framework (Ken Wilber)

• The emergence of meta-methodologies

• ‘Methodological renewal’ as an imperative (Richard Slaughter)

• Challenges:

• Difference between method, methodology, process, and practice• Role of commercial interests and secrecy• Cultural transmission of methodologies between practitioners• ‘True Believer’ (Eric Hoffer) interpretation that frames specific

methodologies as the solution to problem domain


Creativity Techniques

• Problem domain application of Applied Foresight

• Synergies with humour, pattern recognition, visualisation

• Lateral Thinking, Six Thinking Hats, Po (Edward de Bono)

• Mind Mapping (Tony and Barry Buzan)

• Synectics (William J.J. Gordon)

• Brainstorming and Concept Mapping

• Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner)

• ‘Flow’ states of optimal psychology (Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi)


Forecasting and Trends

• Forecasting developed in 1940s and 1950s

• Econometrics: linear, extrapolative, time-series, statistical

• Trends developed in 1950s and 1960s

• 3-5 year time-span rather than fads• Social Indicators movement in 1960s sociology• Cross-impacts, social impacts

• Applications

• Demographic/psychographic profiling and data-mining• SRI’s Values and Lifestyles monitor (VALS II)• John Naisbitt’s Megatrends (1982)• Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980)


Environmental Scanning

• Environmental Scanning developed in 1960s and 1970s

• Links to business strategy, portfolio management, competitive intelligence and media monitoring

• Organisational ability to track external signals and ‘hits’

• Swinburne Foresight Planning & Review (FPR):

• Established in 2000 to conduct university-wide ES• 15 to 20-year timeframe: long-term trends and impacts• Maree Conway (www.universityfutures.org) was FPR head• Major scenario planning exercise (2002) on higher education• Prospect bulletin, scanning ‘hits’ database and workshops• Replaced by Strategic Planning and Quality (SPQ) Unit in 2005• Statement of Direction 2015 (Swinburne)


Wild Cards

• ‘High impact low probability events’ (i.e. deals with blind-spots, warning signals)

• Can be foreseen: pre-September 11 intelligence hearings

• Surfaces blind-spots and assumptions in trends analysis

• Popularised by Arlington Institute and John Petersen’s Out of the Blue (1999)

• Links to Beck’s risk sociology, chaos/complexity sciences, simulations and systems thinking

• Used to test decision-making under stress and in high-velocity environments (Cass R. Sunstein)


Scenario Planning

• Different models in early 1960s, early 1970s and 1980s

• Synonymous with Futures Studies and Visioning for many

• Key figures: Herman Kahn, Pierre Wack, Peter Schwartz

• Popularised by the Global Business Network, Royal Dutch Shell’s unit and Schwartz’s Art of the Long View (1991)

• Extended by Art Kleiner, Stewart Brand and Jay Ogilvy

• Different traditions: Prospective (France), ICT Use Cases

• Problems: GBN’s scenario logics deal with 2-3 key factors, chaos/complexity models are a challenge, groupthink (Irving Janis), mirroring, ethical dimensions in application


GBN’s Scenario Planning Process

• 1. Identify the focal issue or decision

• 2. Identify key forces, trends and scanning ‘hits’

• 3. List the driving forces

• 4. Rank key factors & driving forces by importance and uncertainty (choose 2 or 3 that will form 2x2 axis)

• 5. Select scenario logics: create axes for key factors

• 6. Flesh out the scenarios: narratives

• 7. Explore implications, assumptions, blind-spots

• 8. Select leading indicators and signposts


Causal Layered Analysis

• Developed by Sohail Inayatullah in the early-to-mid 1990s

• Post-structuralist theory of knowledge (Michel Foucault, William Irwin Thompson, P.R. Sarkar, Fred Polak and others)

• Useful to ‘surface’ hidden assumptions and current frameworks

• Can be used to evaluate and validate scenario ‘logics’ and narratives: provides vertical depth to horizontal tools

• Four layers:

• Pop: ‘litany’, sound-bites, media imagery• Social Causes: problem-oriented analysis and policy• Epistemes/Worldviews: ways of knowing, truth and values• Myth/Metaphor: Deep symbols, narratives and structures


Simulations

• Developed with computers in 1960s and 1970s

• Jay Forrester’s work on systems dynamics as pivotal influence

• Donella and Dennis Meadows’ World-3 model in The Limits To Growth (1972) created controversy for The Club of Rome

• Domain applications in econometric modelling, environmental sustainability, financial services

• Adopted by business for innovation and war games

• Michael Schrage’s Serious Play (2000) on innovation cases

• Videogame designers: Will Wright (Sim City and The Sims), Sid Meier (Civilization), Peter Molyneux (Black & White)


Systems Thinking

• Deals with large-scale complexity, emergent behaviour, interdependencies, whole-systems views, cybernetics

• Links with action learning and simulations

• Surfaces assumptions, mental models and cause-effect relationships (balancing and reinforcing loops)

• Ludwig van Bertalanffy’s General Systems Thinking (1968)

• Popularised by Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline (1990) which also dealt with action learning and organisations

• Systems archetypes such as ‘overshoot and collapse’, ‘shifting the burden’, ‘fixes that fail’, ‘escalation’, ‘accidental adversaries’ and ‘Tragedy of the Commons’


Action Learning

• Has evolved from anthropology, cybernetics, education

• Adopted in MBA and postgraduate programs as pedagogy

• Concerned with ‘learning how to learn’ and knowledge transfer

• Theory Action Review cycles (aka Kolb learning loop)

• Skills: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence and conscious competence (Argyris)

• Key figures: David Kolb, Donald Schon, Chris Argyris, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer

• Enactive Cognition consciousness model (Maturana & Varela): ‘All knowing is doing and all doing is knowing’


Macrohistory

• Histories of social systems, patterns of change (nomothetic, diachronic): individual, social, civilisational, world-systems

• Deep structure models of what changes and what doesn’t

• Linear, cyclical and spiral metaphors/models of temporality

• Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah’s Macrohistory and Macrohistorians (1997) compares 20 macrohistorians

• Exploration of different cultural-historical epistemes

• Each can be used to isolate key variables for discussion

• Imposes limits on what can be created in the future

Part 3: Applications


Yourdon, Edward. Death March (2nd ed.), Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River NJ, 2003.

Death March projects:

∙ The norm for IT not the exception

∙ High-profile BHAG projects

∙ Budget, resource & estimation limits

∙ Unrealistic deadlines by 2x or more

∙ Critical Chain and Systems Thinking

∙ Project ‘flight simulators’


Disruptive Technologies

• Professor at Harvard University and founder of the consulting firm Innosight LLC

• ‘Thought leader’ on Disruptive Innovation

• Promoted by Intel’s Andrew S. Grove

• Author of The Innovator’s Dilemma (1999), The Innovator’s Solution (2003), and Seeing What’s Next (2004)

• Focuses on industry and market analysis

• Disruptive vs. Sustaining Technologies

• Applies insights to e-health, financial services, and telecommunications domains

• Deals with firm resources allocation and decision-making, not just ‘killer app’ technologies


Pattern Recognition

• Mercer’s Adrian Slywotzky has collated over 20 generic patterns in Value Migration (1996), Profit Patterns (1998) and subsequent books

• Pattern Recognition and ‘learning how to learn’

• Business Designs: “a totality of customer selection, market positioning, business processes and profit capture”

• Challenges the idea that markets/industries are caught in macro patterns such as Disintermediation: value networks are fluid, signalling, counter-moves

• Provides a context to integrate environmental scanning and organisational learning

• Applied in financial services as Strategic Anticipation


Augustine, Sanjiv. Managing Agile Projects, Addison Wesley, Upper Saddle River NJ, 2005.

• Agile Project Management rules

• Organic Teams• Guiding Vision• Simple Rules• Open Information• Light Touch• Adaptive Leadership


Cockburn, Alistair. Crystal Clear, Addison Wesley, Upper Saddle River NJ, 2005.

• A methodology for small teams:

• Frequent Delivery• Reflective Improvement• Osmotic Communication• Personal Safety• Focus• Easy Access to Expert Users• A Technical Environment with Automated

Tests, Configuration Management, and Frequent Integration

Part 4: Professional Development


University Postgraduate Courses

• Postgraduate programs:

• Swinburne University of Technology• Sunshine Coast University• Central Queensland University• Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of

Sydney

• Tamkang University (Taiwan)• University of Houston, Clear Lake (US)• Manoa school at University of Hawaii (US)

• Survey of Futures in Higher Education (2003) by Jose M. Ramos (Swinburne University alumnus, WFSF)


Professional Organisations

• Futures Studies has several professional organisations:

• World Future Society (WFS): US-based, pragmatic, technology, 50,000 members at peak in late 1980s

• World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF): diverse global membership, critical/emancipatory and civilisational, several hundred members

• Association of Professional Futurists (APF): US-based, spearheaded by Dow’s Andy Hines, professional development

• Swinburne University’s AFI Alumni group


Professional Models

• Professional certification in specific methods

• Proprietary-based, e.g. GBN’s scenarios methodology

• European classical model of study with Teacher

• Access to domain experience and insights• Often reflects the Critical/Emancipatory tradition in FS

• Medieval Guild model of professional development

• Closer to an artistic craft than an empirical science• Novice, Journeyman and Master phases• Links to Action and Self-Reflexive modes of research


Professional Qualities

• Communications Futures practitioners will hopefully develop the following professional qualities:

• Cognitive complexity and pattern recognition• Insights grounded in both intellectual inquiry and practice• Appreciative inquiry, multiple intelligences, ways of knowing• Radical doubt and conscientization (Paulo Freire)• Can deal with ambiguous information without polarisation• Self-reflexive awareness of biases and blind-spots• Awareness of the ‘knowing-doing’ gap, groupthink, mirroring

Questions?

Communication Futures Alex Burns ([email protected]) 20 April 2006 Smart Internet Technology CRC.

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Transcript of Communication Futures Alex Burns ([email protected]) 20 April 2006 Smart Internet Technology CRC.