Communication Futures
Alex Burns (aburns@swin.edu.au)
20 April 2006
Smart Internet Technology CRC
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
Dated 20 April 2006
The Disruptive Internet Stream (NGIU)
Slide 2
Part 1: Foundations
Why Study The Future?
• Foreseeable Dangers and ‘Mega-Events’:
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‘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
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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’
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 4
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 5
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 6
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’
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 7
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 8
Strategic Foresight and Futures Studies
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Strategic Foresight:
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‘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:
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‘The attempt to generate new knowledge about the construction of
human futures.’ (Richard Slaughter, Swinburne University)
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A type of transdisciplinary strategic thinking rather than
traditional strategic planning (links with Governance and
Knowledge Management)
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Futures Studies is not crystal ball-gazing, pop imagery or linear
extrapolations
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Goes beyond ‘future of . . .’ studies and single-point forecasts
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 9
Futures Studies: Introductory Examples
• The following are introduced early on in Swinburne
University’s Strategic Foresight program:
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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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 10
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 11
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
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Slide 12
Communication Futures: Key Studies
• Influential CF Studies:
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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):
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DCITA’s Digital Action Plan for Australia (2006)
Communications Policy & Research Forum
Australian Treasury’s Inter-generational Report (2002-2003)
CSIRO National Energy Scenarios
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 13
Technology Foresight
• Technology Foresight
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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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 14
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 15
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)
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Slide 16
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 17
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 18
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 19
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 20
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 21
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)
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Slide 22
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 24
Strategic Landscape
• Defined by critical uncertainties, compounded risks and
systemic crises (Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt
Bauman, Arjun Appuradai)
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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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 25
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 26
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:
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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
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Slide 27
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 28
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
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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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 29
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):
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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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 30
Wild Cards
• ‘High impact low probability events’ (i.e. deals with blindspots, 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)
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Slide 31
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
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Slide 32
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 33
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:
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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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 34
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)
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 35
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’
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Slide 36
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’
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 37
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 38
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’
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 40
Disruptive Technologies
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Professor at Harvard University and founder of
the consulting firm Innosight LLC
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‘Thought leader’ on Disruptive Innovation
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Promoted by Intel’s Andrew S. Grove
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Author of The Innovator’s Dilemma (1999), The
Innovator’s Solution (2003), and Seeing What’s
Next (2004)
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Focuses on industry and market analysis
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Disruptive vs. Sustaining Technologies
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Applies insights to e-health, financial services,
and telecommunications domains
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Deals with firm resources allocation and decisionmaking, not just ‘killer app’ technologies
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 41
Pattern Recognition
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Mercer’s Adrian Slywotzky has collated over 20
generic patterns in Value Migration (1996), Profit
Patterns (1998) and subsequent books
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Pattern Recognition and ‘learning how to learn’
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Business Designs: “a totality of customer selection,
market positioning, business processes and profit
capture”
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Challenges the idea that markets/industries are
caught in macro patterns such as Disintermediation:
value networks are fluid, signalling, counter-moves
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Provides a context to integrate environmental
scanning and organisational learning
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Applied in financial services as Strategic Anticipation
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 42
Augustine, Sanjiv. Managing
Agile Projects, Addison
Wesley, Upper Saddle River
NJ, 2005.
• Agile Project Management rules
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Organic Teams
Guiding Vision
Simple Rules
Open Information
Light Touch
Adaptive Leadership
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Slide 43
Cockburn, Alistair. Crystal
Clear, Addison Wesley, Upper
Saddle River NJ, 2005.
• A methodology for small teams:
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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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 44
Part 4: Professional Development
University Postgraduate Courses
• Postgraduate programs:
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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)
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Slide 46
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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 47
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
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Slide 48
Professional Qualities
• Communications Futures practitioners will hopefully develop
the following professional qualities:
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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
Dated 20 April 2006
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Slide 49
Questions?