farsight

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”  Charles Darwin

“What is a futurist?”  This is a question I am often asked as a member of the world’s relatively tiny community of academically trained, professional futurists.  Accompanying this question will be an array of looks, from fascination and interest, to skepticism and out-right condescension.  Looks of interest often come from folks who spend their working days fighting operational fires; they’re intrigued that someone specializes in looking at the long term.  Looks from the other end of the spectrum tend to come from other forecasting professionals whose fields, shall we say, compete with each other to predict the future for clients and employers.

In fact, most people I encounter have never before met a real academically trained professional futurist, and most have never heard of a field called “futures studies.”  For those who have heard of “futurists,” they have often come across people sporting that title quoted in magazines or books, predicting the big trends of the future.  Based on these passing impressions, people generally expect futurists to dazzle with flashy images of a future with flying cars and android servants.  In fact, most folks assume a futurist’s job is to predict the future.

I’m a Futurist, Not an Economist
The reality is, as with so many things in life, both more prosaic and more useful.  A futurist is not trying to predict the future; they don’t believe that true prediction is possible.  A futurist uses theories (of change and stability) to develop plausible possibilities about what tomorrow will look like (and why).  The futurist uses these to expose you to new ideas about what drives change in your world, to expand your understanding of what is possible, and to motivate you to to take action to influence what ultimately comes to pass, that is, to shape the future you want to see.

My teacher, Professor Jim Dator, has been known to say that “everyone is a futurist.”  Indeed, in some way, every day, everyone on this planet thinks about “the future.”  But, if everyone thinks about the future, and if most academic fields work to understand and anticipate their slice of the world, what then is a futurist and what distinguishes them from, say, an economist or a policy analyst?

Whereas an economist might be asked to forecast next quarter’s unemployment rate or a policy analyst asked to anticipate the effects of a new government program, a futurist will be asked by a client, “how will changing economic trends interact with several new government policies to produce our future?”  While some futurists develop specialty areas, say the future of energy or transportation, what distinguishes the field as a whole is its constant attempt to connect the knowledge of many fields to create a larger and more complete picture of the forces creating change.

In order to answer these types of questions futurists have to become broadly familiar with many issues, and deeply familiar with questions about how things interact and create change.  Clients, faced with making decisions in the face of genuine strategic uncertainty, are often unsure about how exactly the many driving forces in the environment will interact to produce a particular future.  Working at the intersections of many fields, futurists connect the concepts of the economist with those of the sociologist and the scientist to uncover the often hidden relationships that generate critical change in the client’s unique situation.

To push the earlier example just a bit further, an economist will often work on producing forecasts of something like GDP growth for the next eighteen months.  In contrast, a futurist will work on identifying and playing out developments that could fundamentally alter the structure of economies, things that could reorder business rules and relationships, things like personal fabrication or distributed personal energy.

In other words, a futurist’s job is not to make forecasts assuming that today’s systems will work exactly the same way in the future (it’s the same factory, just with new stuff running through it); rather their job is to question those assumptions and anticipate how and why those systems will themselves look different in the future (maybe we’re not using factories to produce stuff at all…).

When your question is about how something works today or over the next 18 months, be it the book publishing industry or petitioning for community grants at the legislature, you seek out a subject matter expert, someone narrowly and deeply knowledgeable about how that specific system operates, that is, how decisions within that issue get made or how outcomes are produced.  As you start to hit the three year mark, however, contemplating changes beyond the next couple of years, then the futurist’s perspective and approach to anticipating change begins to add an increasing amount of unique value.

The reason why is actually quite simple: with each month and year that you move outward into the as-yet unwritten future, more and more variables, possibilities, and indirect relationships come into play in creating the future.  Before long, even the most gifted subject matter expert could not possibly keep track of the number of possible developments from diverse (and future) actions, technological developments, and random events that could potentially rearrange the rules of the issue they study.  Uncertainty and the range of things that could possibly shape our future increases dramatically the further ahead we look.  In futures studies, there is an illustration that is often used to visualize this: we call it the “cone of uncertainty”. Essentially, the farther from today you get, the more uncertain is the future.

Well-trained futurists really are excellent big picture thinkers, drawing on a wide variety of knowledge to make connections between things you yourself don’t have time to look at and to create a context for you to better understand how and why important changes will ripple through your business.  Futurists are, in many respects, skillful integrators of multiple issues, perspectives, and possibilities.  While your job at work might keep you focused on managing the minutiae of the marketing department, part of the futurist’s job is to stay focused on the many developments and relationships reshaping the larger environment, which will impact your customers and your organization, which in turn will impact your marketing department.

For Hawai‘i this futurist perspective is becoming much more important as this new decade of the 21st century unfolds. The time has come for more people to become aware of futures studies and to better understand the value that professional futurists bring to strategic discussions.  The questions of “who are we,” of “who do we want to be” as the world reshapes itself, are pressing questions for which we as yet have no clear, shared answer.  Yet the forces shaping tomorrow are shaping that future right now, and collectively we have to do a much better job of aligning our society with these “tsunamis of change.”

The last few years have seen an interesting convergence in trends in movies and TV that has resulted in programming that educates people on the complexities and interdependencies of our modern civilization.

The first trend comes from the disaster movie genre, which made a come back after 2001 and has been basically going strong ever since.  The Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) aired a number of not-so-memorable flicks like Earthstorm, Meteor Storm, and Megafault, while other shows like 10.5 and 10.5: Apocalypse aired on major networks and movies like The Day After Tomorrow came out in theaters and continue to be staples for cable channels like FX.

At about the same time, the zombie horror genre began making a come back and helped to kick off what is now recognized as “survival horror.”  In addition to George Romero’s “Dead” movies, video games like Resident Evil spawned a series of zombie/action movies that continues to be produced.  Movies such as 28 Days Later played off of the zombie genre and placed the protagonist in a world emptied of everyone except the manic infected.  The sequel 28 Weeks Later debuted in 2007 and showed the characters attempting the repopulation of a deserted London.  This trend culminated that year with the release of the newest adaptation of I Am Legend, in which one man (Will Smith) finds himself the last surviving human after a viral plague transforms everyone into manic mutants (vampires in the original book).

At this point in 2007 a third trend emerges, that of the post-apocalyptic/post-human world, perfectly timed with the appearance of I Am Legend.  In 2007 the book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman was published, exploring what would happen to our built environment if humans suddenly disappeared.  The following year the History Channel aired what is claimed to have been the most watched program ever on the History Channel: Life After People.  Competitor National Geographic Channel aired Aftermath: Population Zero that same year.  Life After People has since been turned into a popular series and a host of similar “what if” documentaries exploring major disruptions to civilization have been produced, such as After Armageddon and Aftermath: World Without Oil.

Even reality TV entered the arena in 2009 with The Discovery Channel’s The Colony, wherein a group of people had to figure out how to band together and survive in a city after calamity.

Fueling at least some of these trends has of course been the mainstreaming of environmentalist concerns, most recognizably in the sustainability/green movement.  Debates about climate change, dependency on oil, and seemingly unsustainable industrial practices have heightened interest in the processes and systems that maintain modern developed life.

Finally, the very popular show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe has done an excellent job of educating people on the many critical but thankless jobs that have to get done to make modern life possible, jobs that are often invisible to the average person going about their urban day.  Along with the many other shows on the Discovery, History, and NatGeo channels that document how food, energy, and machines are produced and maintained, Dirty Jobs calls attention to the many critical links that keep things flowing in society.

Aside from the entertainment value of it all, together these trends have converged to produce a healthy amount of programming that often does a very good job of not only explaining the intricate relationships between people and systems that makes modern civilization possible, but also leads the viewer on an exploration of the implications of those relationships, specifically highlighting the fragile nature of certain key aspects of our built society, and our civil nature.

This kind of understanding about our world, as well as the practice of considering how and why things could change to disrupt these vast and complex systems, is very important as we move deeper into the 21st century.  The success of many “movements”, sustainability not least among them, will depend upon more and more people explicitly and intuitively understanding the systemic relationships that define our modern world and through which flow our decisions and actions.

The December 19 edition of The Economist had an article exploring modern views of progress.  As it points out, the feelings people have about progress and the strategies they believed would lead to progress have changed over time.  Today, it is fashionable to equate the term progress with an oppressive, techno-Newtonian approach to life, wherein technological change and material affluence are driven by self-interest and powered by out-of-control resource consumption.

I think the notion of “progress” is highly relevant and timely for Hawai’i.  Based on surveys and anecdotes, many people in Hawai’i would say that things are not as they would like them to be, and that they are in danger of getting worse.  Clearly, many in Hawai’i would prefer something else, or at least something “better.”  But what, exactly, is that “better”?  What is “progress” to Hawai’i?

There are many lists of specific demands out there, many “agendas” that individuals and groups are pursuing.  But there is no explicit consensus on progress for the state, largely because there is nothing close to a consensus on an actionable vision for our future.  If you don’t have a destination in mind, then you don’t have a sense of progress, only of motion.

Certainly there have been many “visioning” and future-oriented projects for the state over the years: Hawaii 2000, State 2050 Sustainability Task Force, the Hawaii Statehood Conference.  Yet, for the sometimes impressive amounts of passion (and money) that are sometimes spent on creating a vision and the requisite metrics of progress, most people seem to feel that we are no closer to some of those grand (and sometimes vague) statements of tomorrow.

How might we move towards an actionable vision and from there to a clear sense of progress?

• Establish “visioning” as an ongoing process rather than an event or initiative
• Continually invite and engage all residents in the ongoing conversation
• Entrust several organizations with roles in supporting this ongoing process, rather than putting all into the hands of a single agency or group of individuals
• Make the content of the vision truly grassroots through the innovative use of collaborative media
• Encourage and commission continuous measurement and reporting
• Celebrate the conversation

If done right, this becomes an ongoing conversation, a discourse, an interesting and provocative part of the civic life of residents.  Since the future is always approaching, this conversation should always be unfolding.  Without it, we can have no shared sense of progress.

The Worldchanging article “Creating 1.7 Million Clean Energy Jobs to Drive Economic Recovery: The National Strategy and the Pennsylvania Opportunity” presents testimony given before a Senate field hearing on job growth and tax incentives that took place in Pennsylvania.  The article reminds me of the conversation that we are currently trying to construct here in Honolulu: where are we with clean energy and what does it really mean for Hawaii’s long-term future?  While everyone seems to have the terms ’sustainability’ and ‘carbon footprint’ on their lips, it’s a little more difficult to witness a broadly and deeply informed conversation about the challenges of building a meaningful clean energy industry in Hawaii and what the real potential for such an industry looks like.

At the moment, there are a number of smart, knowledgeable people from business, government, and industry that have concerns that Hawaii will miss this opportunity to create an impactful clean energy industry.  When we talk with folks, they cite a range of challenges that they perceive:

• Hawaii is not large enough in population, business, or its ability to attract capital investment
• Hawaii does not have large enough local funding sources to propel such an industry development
• Hawaii does not have the local work force needed or the education programs to produce them
• Hawaii lacks the leadership on the ground to “make it happen”
• Key members of Hawaii’s power “elite” are not supportive
• The public hates high energy costs, but isn’t supportive enough of deep structural and economic change
• Local politics will continue to squander the opportunity to focus on this particular future
• Other places around the world are pouring billions of dollars into these industries; we can’t compete with that

Such a list of challenges obscures a number of details and specifics, but we do sense a general anxiety that Hawaii has a short window of opportunity to become a global exemplar in energy and that we may be missing, or have already missed, such an opportunity.  This, at least, is the issue we are currently trying to get at and flesh out with some of the deeply knowledgeable people in Hawaii.

Hawaii has one of the most diverse and multicultural populations in the country, with what we all recognize as a high percentage of us having multiple heritages and multiple identities.  This has never truly been seen for the future advantage it is, especially in the context of a increasingly networked, interdependent, and globalized world.  Hawaii’s people are ideal for global work and global relations, having the natural affinity for and sensitivity to the importance and value of cultural differences.  As we look forward to the next 50 to 100 years, Hawaii will need to increasingly look at how it “projects” itself onto the world stage, not simply in marketing message (a la the visitor industry) but rather in truly exporting value and competencies into the global and regional markets and arenas.

The US State Department recently began a program that Hawaii should have been part of from the beginning (from the information available it wasn’t clear that Hawaii was one of the participating universities).  As we trace the historical arc that Hawaii will take in the decades ahead, we will need to really rethink some of our notions about education, socialization, and economies.  Take a look at the State Department’s Virtual Student Foreign Service program:

One set of technologies that we’ve been watching since at least the late 90s is personal fabrication or ‘fab.’  Inspired in part by rapid prototyping, the easiest way to imagine personal fabrication is to think of it like printing: desktop fabrication is to a traditional factory what a desktop inkjet or laser jet printer is to a traditional offset press.  There are several categories or types of fabrication approaches, but in total they have always pointed the way towards a distinct evolution of at least part of traditional manufacturing.  Now the desktop/garage-level capabilities are slowly being woven together, as evidenced by 100kGarages.com, a site inspired by Tom Brokaw’s question to the 2007 Presidential candidates: should we spur our development through a single, massive project or should we support one hundred thousand garage businesses in the image of Silicon Valley?  100kGarages.com is a site that links individuals with fabs with those that don’t but want to make something.

The 100kGarages.com site points the way to how both business and manufacturing can change, enabling what Alvin Toffler heralded in the 70s as the return of the ‘prosumer.’  The technology for manufacturing items at home, especially manufacturing other machines, is moving down to the level of the individual, and it’s possible to foresee a future when every household has its own fab.  But even if that particular future doesn’t happen yet, sites like this one show how we can evolve new home and community-based businesses by networking people from across the city and around the world to connect people with ideas and wants with people who have the new means of production.

Probably the best book to read as an introduction on the subject is Fab: the coming revolution on your desktop – from personal computers to personal fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld.

Fabrication is definitely the kind of technology that a place like Hawaii should be automaticlly drawn to.  The potential benefits for local economic development (individuals and communities creating more of what they exactly need rather than what ‘the market’ has gambled on producing) and for the creation of new, literally, cottage industries around design and production is fantastic and inspiring.  Technologies like fabrication, combined with the increasingly powerful desktop information tools and the ever-expanding reach of the internet provide places like Hawaii historically unique opportunities for its communities to participate in globally networked economies in ways and on scales that make sense for it.

For those who are not familiar with Chris Anderson, he wrote the article (and later book) “The Long Tail,” describing the nature of markets, customers, and niche markets in a web-enabled, digital age.  His new book, available initially free in at least audio book form, is Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  It’s a very interesting narrative, and one that people need to become familiar with and think about the possible outcomes of this phenomenon.  Why do things seem to go to free on the Web, and what does this mean for value, products and services, and business in the next few years?

When we do stop to seriously consider the futures of Hawai’i, we are certainly concerned with not just our available resources, but with our relationship with the land and the environment of which we are a part.  Considering “economies” and industries for our future, it should go without saying that Hawai’i, being so geographically isolated, being negatively impacted by the not-inconsiderable costs of shipping and production, should be much more interested in businesses, industries, and lifestyles that have a dramatically lower “footprint.”  A perusal of Free (and the Long Tail)  should be required reading for everyone who considers themselves a serious thinker on our economic future.

I spent the last two days at the Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit (#APCES09) down at the Sheraton Waikiki.  There was the usual number of presentations that reiterate general themes and information (”clean energy is important”), but there was some interesting information that actually educated on particular technologies and where / with whom various clean energy companies are looking to partner for development in Hawai’i.  One of the disappointing observations I made was the noticeable dearth of local Hawai’i residents that were in attendance.  I know from conversations over the last two days that the organizers (among them, DBEDT) want to increase local awareness and participation for next year, but as I observed the demographics of the attendees, it struck me that for all the (pervasive) hype that Hawai’i wants to be a renewable energy state, the lack of local awareness of the summit and the lack of local participation is an indicator of something concerning our energy futures that needs to be looked at.

To place this in a larger context, Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute and co-author of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, who spoke at our annual Hawai’i Futures Summit last year, gave a morning presentation on Wednesday and laid out the sheer scale of the (global) energy challenge and presented the argument that direct public investment in producing new technological innovations is key to “decarbonizing” energy systems and economies.  He introduced the audience to the realization that Asia is now taking the lead in developing and deploying clean energy, with China, Japan, and Korea investing $50 B while the US may (depending on certain decisions going through) be investing about $10 B.  And as so many other professionals and experts have pointed out, the US has long lagged behind other countries and regions in its investment commitment to developing new renewable energy technology.

Within this larger context, one has to ask, what really must be Hawai’i’s commitment to becoming a leader in clean energy?  What must this commitment actually look like?  While Hawai’i is incapable of making up the $40 B differential in overall US investment, what should Hawai’i be doing if it is to play a meaningful role in developing and deploying clean energy solutions?  Are we, as decision makers and “concerned” citizens really understanding the scale of the challenge and the size of the commitment that may be required to realize what otherwise is a sound bite daydream of being a leader in renewable energy?

Without trying very hard, one can imagine Hawai’i missing it’s one window of opportunity to becoming a clean energy leader and in the future having to, as with just about everything else, purchase and import from others the solutions that we use.

A recent New York Times article on solar panels being made in China provides the implication that China may be poised to pass the developed world, the US and Europe in particular, in production of solar energy components.  As with most daily and weekly journalism, the article itself does not provide enough of a context to conclude one way or another for America’s falling behind the clean energy development curve.  It does, however, prompt those of us in Hawaii to once again stop and ask if we, despite all the wonderful TV commercials and public advocacy for “sustainability” and “clean energy,” have yet again missed an opportunity to take one of our strengths, in this case our renewable-energy abundant environment, and develop not only “energy security” but also expand our economy.

We have to wonder what the lead and lag indicators of such a “missed window” would be; federal funding? state resources? solar energy companies?  public opinion polls?  How do we know whether or not the world has passed us, leading us to a future with one more category of material well-being that we purchase for other people living in other places?

Any thoughts?

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