Digital Dreaming ''' Or ''' Digital Nightmare Richard A Slaughter

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Digital Dreaming ... Or ... Digital
Nightmare?Richard A Slaughter
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Essence of the Problem
The most interesting puzzle in our times is that
we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of
reconstituting the conditions of human
existence. Langdon Winner, The Whale and the
Reactor, University of Chicago Press, 1986, p 10.
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The Central Contradiction
At a time when human societies are altering the
fundamental conditions of life on planet earth,
the dominant outlook remains focused on short
term thinking. Short term thinking is a major
systemic defect within the industrial
worldview. The world we are creating may well
lead to futures no sane person or organisation
would choose.
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The Forward View
A collective interpretive construct which
provides an evolving structural overview of the
coming decades. The forward view tells us
clearly that we face a period of upheaval and
transformation - a civilisational challenge
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The Civilisational Challenge

• Defects in W. Industrial worldview
• Dominant powers not interested in real future
• Key areas of human experience marginalised
• Technologies are silent on Qs of purpose, meaning
• Environmental decline well established
• Ideology of material growth not viable
• Now need to design our way forward

Slaughter, R. A Personal Agenda for 21C, Futures,
2000
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Individual Foresight

• A normal capacity of the human mind
• The challenge is to take it from being an
  implicit unconscious process taking place in a
  single mind to being an explicit conscious
  process taking place in many minds

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Social Foresight

• The movement is from implicit and unconscious to
  explicit and conscious
• Also from individual to collective
• In organisations this requires explicit foresight
  processes to be created to support existing
  strategic processes

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Social Foresight

• An emergent capacity
• Fluidly uses diff time frames for diff purposes
• Sees the future as zone of engagement,
  influence
• Takes responsibility for directing change
• Sets compelling stretch goals for human systems
• Actively works to design foundations of next civ
• Builds on the Knowledge Base of Futures Studies

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Strategic Foresight
The ability to create and maintain viable forward
views and to use these in organisationally useful
ways For example to detect adverse conditions,
guide policy, shape strategy explore new
markets, products and services A core competence
for all organisations
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Aims of the Aust. Foresight Inst.

• To provide a global resource centre for strategic
  foresight
• To run world class professional courses
• To focus on the implementation of foresight in
  organisations
• To work toward the emergence of social foresight

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AFI Professional Courses
Grad Cert in Strategic Foresight Unit 1 Intro to
the Knowledge Base of FS Unit 2 Implementing
foresight in organisations Unit 3 Foresight
methodologies Unit 4 Dimensions of global
change Grad Dip, Masters Prof Doctorate
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KBFS CD-ROM

• Volumes 1-4
• Foundations
• Orgs, Pracs, Prods
• Directions, Outlooks
• Views of Futurists
• Global dimension

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The Dangerous Future
The 21st century technologies - genetics,
nanotech and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful
that they can spawn new classes of accidents and
abuses. Most dangerouslytheseare widely within
the reach of individuals or small groups. They
will not require large facilities or rare raw
materials. Knowledge alone will enable use of
them. Bill Joy, Chief
Scientist, Sun Microsystems Wired, April 2000
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As enormous computing power is combined with the
manipulative advances of the physical sciences
and the new, deep understandings in genetics,
enormous transformative power is being
unleashed. These combinations open up the
opportunity to completely re-design the world,
for better or worse. Bill Joy, Chief Scientist,
Sun Microsystems Wired, April 2000
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Enormous Transformative Power

• Technical devt is rapid and additive
• Driven by some of worlds most powerful
  organisations
• Human and social devt is slow
• Social learning is uncertain and problematic
• These two processes are out of sync
• Mediating ethical frameworks are relatively weak
• A technologically over-determined world is likely
• Emergence of the singularity

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Four 21C Spikes

• The C02 spike
• The extinction spike
• The consumption spike
• The population spike

Ed Ayers, The Four Spikes, Futures 32, 6,
2000 Also, Gods Last Offer, 2001
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Tsnamis of Change

• Change processes never erupt without notice
• Ripples occur on the horizon
• The ripples become waves
• The waves become storms or tsnamis
• Hence, successful organisations are always
  scanning the horizon for signals of change
• Being prepared, they ride out the storm or use it

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Congruence of Insights?

• A healthy culture would re-define limits
• People can be seen as layered beings
• Social values must moderate tech. driving forces
• There are grounds for the recovery of meaning
• Institutions of foresight are part of the
  answer
• Humans can look reflexively on their assumptions
• Human societies can should change course

Slaughter, R. A Personal Agenda for 21C, Futures,
2000
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Warnings from 20th Century Writers

• EM Forster The Machine Stops (1909)
• HG Wells Wanted Professors of Foresight (1932)
• Lewis Mumford Pentagon of Power (1970)
• Frank Herbert New World or No World (1970)
• Donella Meadows Limits to Growth (1972)
• Lester Milbrath Envisaging a Sustainable Society
  (1989)
• Alan AtKisson Believing Cassandra (1999)

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The Rush to Digital
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Whats the Rush?

• Marketing push - not consumer pull (little
  demand)
• Market share, position search for the killer
  app
• The lure of cyberspace on-line transactions
• Misidentification of high tech with the
  future
• Pragmatism rules can we? not should we?
• Present pay-offs (eg. flexibility) override
  future uncertainties. (Future discounting)

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Digital is Flexible - but Vulnerable
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Key Issues in Digital Continuity

• Increased dependence upon complex tech systems
• Increasing vulnerability to disruptions over time
• Substantial costs to make digital durable
• Organisational viability social memory at stake
• Cannot be resolved by librarians/archivists alone
• Wider social issue - but few aware of
  implications
• Total costs enormous - who will foot the bill?

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Solutions?

• There is no simple solution
• Carefully targeted research needed into DC issues
• New organisations may be required
• Eventual establishment of a data guardian
  authority
• State support not optional - vital
• Should not keep tackling issues on individual
  basis
• DC as part of a high quality national foresight
  agenda

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The Human Iris - Inner Outer World