State of the Future

Denis Loveridge (Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK)

Foresight

ISSN: 1463-6689

Article publication date: 13 April 2012

125

Keywords

Citation

Loveridge, D. (2012), "State of the Future", Foresight, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 179-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636681211222447

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


In its 15th year the annual State of the Future report from the Millennium Project remains an enigma and is no easier to write than it ever has been. It will be greeted with accolades by some people (there is a handsome list on the back cover) while it will infuriate others: I am nearer to the latter than the former. Make no mistake reports of this kind are infuriatingly difficult to write, needing to present highly diverse material with a degree of authority throughout. Inevitably this gets to be difficult so that when combined with the human trait of selective attention a feeling of ennui is suddenly interrupted when an unknown known jolts the reader into attention. So what is one to make of a booklet that attempts so much that it cannot help failing at some points and succeeding at others according to the readers predilections?

The State of the Future project revolves around 15 “global challenges”: in themselves these are not unusual and almost all have been around since the 1970s or earlier. There are other “global challenges” of similar age that do not appear in the Project's list (larger sets are given in a European Patent Office (Pompidou, 2007) report and by others). Generally, the context of each global challenge changes only slowly, though sometimes there are discontinuities similar to catastrophic shifts. It is the content of each challenge that either accelerates or retards its evolution as a dynamic situation rather than as a problem or problems with solution(s), as the authors refer to them in a typical but inappropriate mode of thought. Why is the problem‐solution mode of thought inappropriate? Because as the authors indicate apart from being dynamic, the 15 global challenges are complex in themselves and intensely interdependent: this is one reason why reports of this kind are so difficult to write and why the eclectic mixture chosen by the authors is both exciting and infuriating at the same time.

The report comes in two parts: a printed “summary exploration” of each challenge in turn in its own silo and a much longer exposition on an accompanying CD though the silo format persists. The quantity of information is formidable and generally the sources are made clear. These depend heavily on web‐based material, press reports and similar material. Conventional references, as in peer reviewed journal papers, are less in evidence: this brings out two interesting points namely the usefulness of the material as signposts to interesting material, many of which are unknown knowns, and the question of veracity. Web‐based material is of notoriously variable quality, an issue that John Wales is well aware of. The CD material is deeper but more of that later. Many questions arise from the printed summary that conventionally begins with an executive summary. Despite its length this presents a helter‐skelter journey through the “full” report drawing out few real guideposts for the enlightenment of the busy executive who may also wonder what was in the missing Box 3 referred to on page 3. The busy executive may also wonder about the notion of a World Score Card as presented in Box 2 and some of the claims made in it (e.g. life expectancy at birth may be increasing but so is dementia – a long life is not necessarily synonymous with quality).

A total of 15 short silo sections give an impression, through eclectically chosen material, of the “content” of each challenge. The choice to shape part of these sections around “regional considerations” is in some senses unfortunate as the growth of international “blocs” (e.g. The Russian Federation, the EEC and its transmutation into the EU, ASEAN, LAFTA, NATO, OECD, UN and the BRICs) has had major influences on the world since the end of second world war and continues to do so. The stereotypical regional treatment is interesting but makes dull reading. Relief comes in the many signposts to richer original sources giving the reader the choice of pursuing them or not. Much of the numerical data included in these silos needs to be regarded as indicative leaving the researcher to verify them according to the needs of research. The misuse of the term energy and its creation or conservation grates: this is not simply fussy linguistics but indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of thermodynamics that leads to slipshod ideas about how the generation of electricity, which is fundamental to the continuity of all modern societies, can be ensured. Energy cannot be created and is always conserved: it is fuels (of all kinds) that can be.

The Latin American scenarios are interesting while the section on anything to do with the “Arab Spring” already is likely to need revision already so uncertain is the dynamic situation which exhibits behavioral contagion throughout the region.

Four other parts of the report need comment; these are “sustainability” (dealt with on the CD (chapter 8)); “indices” that figure strongly throughout the report (State of the Future Index and Sustainability); “The Future of the Arts, Media and Entertainment”; and the “background to ‘futures research’” (Appendix K3).

Indices are slippery concepts that are much sought after, but without a strong grasp of how they are constructed (or should be) and their consequent limitations, they can be misleading. One of the best known series of indices is related to the general performance of stock markets. While the trends in these indices convey subjective messages, based on millions of daily transactions, they need careful interpretation. Investors interests lie in the value of their portfolios which is somewhat removed from the directions taken by an appropriate index. Indices for the state of the future and the “measurement” of sustainability are made up of less frequent assessment of a mixture of subjective qualitative and uncertain quantitative opinions using a set of complex interdependent factors (see Moser and Kalton (1971) and the nature of expertise referred to elsewhere (Cooke, 1991)). Often the mathematics behind the index forces assumptions that move away from reality to a more or less limited extent (one is referred to below). Use of these indices in policy formulation then requires of the policy maker a deep understanding of how each index has been constructed, to allow policy makers to reach their own subjective appreciation of the trends exhibited by indices. Appreciation (Vickers, 1963) of the components of the index as an interactive portfolio, in which the policy maker is about to “invest”, brings perspectives to governance that may affect millions (maybe billions) of people. Each component of the index will have its own distribution of opinion (subjective or not) more than likely with long tails (sometimes confused with Taleb's (2007) “black swans”) that will in due time cause policy to fail. Indexes give little guidance about these events. Indexes that climb forever upwards need careful examination. The indices quoted in the report need to be seen against this background

The State of the Future index needless to say is a, if not the dominant feature of the report. Many claims are made for its usefulness but, as outlined above, it suffers from computational features that flow from some of the assumptions that are necessary mathematically, and from the subjective elicitation of the weightings used in the computations. The claim that the Index can be extended into the future may be unusual but the extent to which it makes the Index a unique tool in futures thinking and policy making remains a conundrum.

Sustainability has become a notion in “good currency”. Whilst it is pleasing to see the Brundtland (1987) definition of sustainability adopted, the chapter's sole concern is for the sustainable development of human societies and their ways of living: it omits the complex ways in which that desirable condition depends on all forms of life on the planet, in which indicators are of limited relevance. In this sense there is an overlap, which is not drawn out, between chapters 8 and 9. In the latter the preferred definition (option 1 with the dominant score among respondents to a survey) embraces and expands on the Brundtland definition though the implied emphasis of the chapter (9) is toward military security and its influence on sustainability. The two sections might well have been amalgamated as some of the components of the sustainability index relate to military expenditure. The major concern with matters relating to sustainability, bearing in mind that it requires the sustaining of all life on the planet, is that no one knows what those sets of conditions might be and they certainly cannot be captured in an index. There are new indications that human life is becoming unsustainable in regions of the planet (e.g. shortage of water in the Yemen, frequent droughts in parts of Africa, etc.) while there may be the faintest indications that the carrying capacity of the Earth is being reached.

There is little to say about the chapter on the “Future of the arts, media and entertainment” other than that it is interesting and likely to provoke much debate. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the chapter is that it occurs at all as far too many reports about the future omit references to human behavior with all its complexities.

The scenario chapter is interesting and in many ways interestingly contrived. However, as Dator records in Appendix K, there is little public evidence that even the most thoroughly researched scenario exercises have guided interventions in the real world. Without doubt this comment can be challenged but where, when and how these exercises make their influence felt remain out of sight except on very rare occasions that “futurists” are not privy to.

Lastly, appendices are rarely read but my attention was drawn to two of them Appendices IIIB and K. Dealing with these out of order, Appendix K sets out a “background to futures research.” Presumably, this is the background to the authors thought processes with considerable influence on the report itself. The section conveys the impression of futures research, an oxymoron if there was ever one, as a chaotic assemblage of methods with dubious capabilities: that is probably nearer to the mark than many would wish to admit. It would be as well if Wittgenstein's dictum that “methods pass the problem by” was given greater prominence. For a long time there has been a theme that thinking about the future is a learning activity that proceeds from (1) awareness of what is going on in the world (the context and one purpose of the report), through (2) foresight (care or provision for the future) to identify the content of the dynamic situations generated by appreciation of the features of (1) to (3) forecasting how the forecastable items from (1 and 2) might proceed, together with their uncertainties: only at this point do methods become useful. It is not appropriate to extend this discussion in this review.

Appendix IIIB discusses the procedure for computing the state of the future index. A key factor is the weight attached, by respondents, to individual components in the index. It is not immediately apparent that these elicited weights are based on a 1 to 10 Likert scale. Reporting this judgmental data to two decimal places seems a little ambitious to say the least.

About the reviewer

Denis Loveridge is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester's MIoIR. His 44 years in industry included analytical chemistry; filtration engineering; fuel research, as a Principal Scientist, at the British Coal Utilization Research Association; and corporate venturing at Pilkington plc. Since retiring: 21 years at the University of Manchester where major publications include the UK Technology Foresight Programme Delphi Survey, Technology Foresight: Perspectives for European and International and Co‐operation, and Foresight: the Art and Science of Anticipating the Future. Present interests are in converging technologies under the BNIC acronym. Denis Loveridge can be contacted at: denis.loveridge@ manchester.ac.uk

References

Brundtland, G.H. (1987), Report to the World Commission on Environment and Development, October.

Cooke, R.M. (1991), Experts in Uncertainty, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Moser, C. Sir and Kalton, G. (1971), Survey Methods in Social Investigation, Dartmouth PublishingSudbury, MA.

Pompidou, A. (2007), Scenarios for the Future: How Might IP Regimes Evolve by 2025? What Global Legitimacy Might Such Regimes Have?, European Patent Office, Brussels.

Taleb, N.N. (2007), The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random HouseNew York, NY.

Vickers, G. Sir (1963), “Appreciative behaviour”, Acta Psychologica, Vol. 21, pp. 27493.

Related articles