p23: Learning from the future

Lynn Elen Burton once said “there are no facts in the future” and it is certainly ambitious to
try to learn as much about the future, from the future, as we have historically attempted to do
by extrapolating observable trends from the past. However, as futures studies have gained in
popularity over relatively recent years, that is precisely what has tended to happen.
Visualisation of where we may be going, rather than being based on predicted extensions of
where we’ve just been (historically, the dominant approach), now tend to look for new trends
and new paradigms that represent more than just a simple extension of current practice. This
is the philosophy that has given rise to the popular ‘3 Ps and a W’ approach.
The 3 Ps represent our attempts to imagine possible, probable, and preferable future
scenarios, which is in itself an interesting approach. It recognises two key elements straight
away—first that there are likely to be multiple possible outcomes related to the future of any
aspect of civilisation—employment, personal relationships, health, technology, transport etc.
—and, second, that some form of analysis can be applied to prioritise the likelihood of each
of these outcomes actually resulting. More importantly, however, the inclusion of ‘preferable’
indicates a belief that, at least to some extent, humankind
is capable of choice, of influencing the priorities attached to each possible outcome in order
that a more desirable future may be realised. Once the ‘preferable’ future has thus been
identified, the inclusion of a ‘W’ element is all but automatic.
Module 1 - Page 22‘W’ stands for ‘wild card’, or an event of such unpredictability, and of such
major significance, that the generally accepted equilibrium of world affairs is upset to the
point where many of its contributing principles are negated. In recent times, many have
argued that 9/11 was such a wild card event. Yes, we always have had, and always will have,
random acts of violence resulting from passionately held beliefs around certain philosophies
and value systems but, until 2001, these acts were generally aimed at drawing attention to ‘the
cause’ or generating minor irritation to authority figures. After 9/11, and subsequent attacks in
both America and elsewhere, perhaps the single most important outcome has been a new
understanding amongst Western populations of
just how fragile and insecure their daily existence actually is. In effect, the biggest victim of
9/11 could well have been smug complacency, as witness the extraordinary subsequent
expansion of the personal security industry.
What then might the next ‘wild card’ be? By their very nature, wild cards are extraordinarily
difficult to predict, and the more outrageous they seem in their imagining, the more influential
they well be in retrospect. True ‘wild cards’ do not change paradigms of thought, they destroy
paradigms of thought. Having said that, wild card identification is the subject of our first two
hour workshop, and we will at that time attempt to generate a range of realistic possibilities.
This of course has been done before—any Sunday newspaper worth its salt will in all
probability begin each New Year with a list of confident predictions, and most of the time we
(quite correctly) read them and laugh. However, despite the quite tragic errors of judgement
revealed in reading 1.4, we should not be deterred from continued thought and action on the
futures prediction front. Perhaps if we think long enough, hard enough, and carefully enough,
we may yet extend this logic into some method for successful prediction of lottery numbers !

Learning task 1.5—The wisdom of generations

We have tried to suggest in this opening topic that consideration of possible

future events is inevitably coloured by the particular perspective that is adopted
to do the considering—and that this perspective is likely to be a function of your
own age, gender, upbringing etc. For this task, we wish to demonstrate to you the
extent to which alternative perspectives exist.

Interview a person who is a generation older than yourself, of opposite gender to

yourself, and preferably of another culture (though thoroughly familiar with
your own culture). Now select a number of broad topics— employment,
relationships, leisure, religion, politics etc.) and ask that person to tell you what
s/he believes are the biggest differences in attitudes to these topics between
people of your two generations.

At the end of this exercise, you should clearly be able to see something of the
extent to which any two individuals are likely to differ in their approach to
thinking about the past and the present—in our view, this automatically
translates into a parallel difference in ways of thinking about the future.
Learning task 1.6—Words
Consider the meaning of the words futures, change, progress What do they have in common?
What are some common sayings about the future? Record them in your diary.
As you progress through the course, consider their worth.

p24: Topic 2: Establishing a perspective

A foundation component of the study of academic research methods is the identification of a
particular research ‘paradigm’, based on the idea that each individual researcher’s attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviour patterns are significantly influenced by the philosophical stance from
which these conceptual components are derived. In short and to simplify, what we see and
what we experience is dependent on the vantage point from which we choose to do our seeing
and experiencing, and our choice of vantage point will inevitably affect what we believe to be
appropriate. In research, this choice is conventionally presented as a continuum, anchored at
one end by a ‘positivist’ outlook that proposes the existence of a single unambiguous truth,
waiting to be discovered by an unbiased and objective explorer; and at the other by an
‘interpretivist’ perspective that believes truth to be a contested concept whose form and
character is moulded, varied, and biased by the form and character of the person doing the
truth-seeking.
So it is, and so it must be, with any attempt to build a framework of what the future might
look like when we finally get there. Although the universal rejection of a ‘no change’ option
has only just become apparent (as recently as 1899, Charles Duell, commissioner of the US
Patents Office, confidently claimed that ‘everything that can be invented already has been
invented’), there remains a wide range of alternative perspectives on the extent to which
future change is imaginable.
For many sectors of our global community, the future is an uncomfortable concept, and one in
which change will ideally be restricted as much a possible, for change is perceived as an
unpredictable threat that requires minimisation through careful management. For others, the
future is a treasure house of excitement and adventure that includes both predictable
innovation that emerges inevitably from current characteristics of society; and unpredictable
sea change that emerges from left field and abruptly overturns one or more pillars of the
dominant paradigmatic perspective—in the past, these changes have included the invention of
the wheel, the printing press, the telephone, and the computer.
Variations in attitudes to the appeal of the future owe their origin to a number of sources—to
national and regional character, to economic history and status, to education level, age and
gender, and most of all to level of imagination and willingness to listen. And, as a result,
another continuum emerges, anchored at one end by those who are comfortable with
familiarity, predictability, and tradition, and whose future imaginings are inevitably skewed
towards an ideal world of ‘what should be’; and at the other by those who are excited by the
Module 1 - Page 24unknown, by unpredictability, and by innovative visioning. For those latter
people, the primary concerns lie with how the world will look in the future, rather than how it
should look.
There are a couple of interesting consequences of this line of thought. Firstly, and most
obviously, we believe it is undeniably useful for each individual to be able to recognise his or
her own positioning on that attitudinal continuum; and secondly to recognise that this
positioning does not equate to being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in terms of the perceptual attitudes
held. Much of the limited historical data available to us suggests that neither the conservative-
cautious or the liberal-adventurous amongst us has a monopoly on the understanding of what
the future holds—in reality, both of these perspectives will in all probability turn out to be
considerably wide of the mark. But at least the liberal-adventurous amongst us will be able to
console themselves with the thought that they were rather less surprised by the prediction-
reality gap than were their conservative-cautious counterparts !
In this topic, we first of all introduce the concept of transdisciplinarity, the idea that the
elusive entity we call ‘truth’ can be more effectively approached through application of
multiple perspectives, personalities, and methodologies. As an example of what we mean by
this, we then outline an approach to futures studies that is informed by a natural sciences view
of reality, and therefore one that can often exhibit a natural tendency towards positivism; and
compare the outcomes of this approach with a social sciences view that typically reflects a
level of comfort with ambiguity that is more commonly found in an interpretivist approach.
Finally, in an attempt to reconcile these disparate views into an integrated perspective that
offers a functioning model of futures prediction, we overlay both the natural and social
sciences viewpoint with the broadly accepted phenomenon of globalisation of environment,
economics, and society.

p25: Learning task 1.7—Governments and futures

How do governments design our futures or manage our futures? On what basis do they do
this? In whose interests?
Over the coming weeks, review the news for articles/items in which governments are
designing our futures. Examine the news against the questions above.

The challenges of transdisciplinarity

We begin this brief discussion around transdisciplinarity by revisiting traditional research
methods study as a source of illumination. In that field, one significant contributor to the
assessed validity of research outcomes is the concept of triangulation, or the practice of
examining a phenomenon from multiple perspectives and using a broad range of data
collection and analysis methods.

If, for example, we were attempting to measure a business firm’s reputation and image, we
might:
• read the firm’s own publicity, and visit its website, to analyse the nature of claims made

Module 1 - Page 25Reading 1.5 by Meyer establishes the all but universal practice of setting academic
investigation within a clearly delineated ‘frame’, and questions why this need be the case.
Clearly the impact of perspective would inevitably affect the characteristics of camel chosen
by the commentator for investigation, evaluation, and eventual description. And this is what
has traditionally occurred during the practice of scientific investigation, both simplified and
constrained by what Morgan Meyer calls ‘framing’.

p26: A natural sciences view

In Reading 1.5, Meyer introduces the concept of trans-disciplinarity from a relatively
conventional standpoint of first challenging the dominant ethos of mono-disciplinarity. His
article questions the need for any given investigative study to be subject to the clearly defined
boundaries imposed by the parameters of a given study discipline, and consequently to be
labelled as an environmental study, an anthropological study etc. He makes an interesting
point when he observes that an academic journal dedicated to the broadening of perspectives
on scientific problems is, in reality, just as constrained as
any other framework when it comes to defining the rules within which such broadening must
be contained.
Meyer sees the adoption of agreed frameworks as both liberating, in the sense that workable
avenues of communication can be established; and constricting, in the sense of limiting the
means by which each avenue might subsequently be exploited. In the end, he identifies four
salient attributes of a framed investigation:
• the choice of frame is a deliberate and conscious decision • it establishes a ‘cut-off’
point between that which should legitimately be
included within the frame and that which should remain outside
• it assists us in reducing a complex concept to a scope and scale that our human intellect
can cope with
• conduct face-to-face interviews with senior management to establish their professed
operating principles
• implement a web-based ‘tick-box’ survey of the firm’s staff to identify the salient
reputation and image issues from a staffing perspective
• use a participant observation approach to mingle incognito with the firm’s customers
and eavesdrop on their casual comment.
In this simple example, we have used four different data collection methods, and consulted
four different data sources, to generate an assembly of material related to a single common
subject. Now, if the print and web-based material emphasises product quality and stakeholder
relationships; if the firm’s management claim to focus on both customers’ and staff’s
interests; if staff see the firm as a good place to work; and if customers are happy with the
products they purchase; then we have four reasonably persuasive pieces of ‘evidence’ that this
is indeed a firm with a positive reputation.

Somewhat crudely, ‘if it looks like a camel, sounds like a camel, and smells like a camel—
then, it probably is a camel !’, and so it is with the idea of transdisciplinarity. The camel
analogy is continued as we imagine what would be described, to the ubiquitous visitor from
outer space, if the concept of ‘camel’ was to be described by:

-a nomadic North African tribesman

-a touristic visitor to the Pyramids of Giza

-another camel.

Clearly the impact of perspective would inevitably affect the characteristics of camel chosen
by the commentator for investigation, evaluation, and eventual description. And this is what
has traditionally occurred during the practice of scientific investigation, both simplified and
constrained by what Morgan Meyer calls ‘framing’.

p27: A natural sciences view

In Reading 1.5, Meyer introduces the concept of trans-disciplinarity from a relatively
conventional standpoint of first challenging the dominant ethos of mono-disciplinarity. His
article questions the need for any given investigative study to be subject to the clearly defined
boundaries imposed by the parameters of a given study discipline, and consequently to be
labelled as an environmental study, an anthropological study etc. He makes an interesting
point when he observes that an academic journal dedicated to the broadening of perspectives
on scientific problems is, in reality, just as constrained as
any other framework when it comes to defining the rules within which such broadening must
be contained.
Meyer sees the adoption of agreed frameworks as both liberating, in the sense that workable
avenues of communication can be established; and constricting, in the sense of limiting the
means by which each avenue might subsequently be exploited. In the end, he identifies four
salient attributes of a framed investigation:

the choice of frame is a deliberate and conscious decision

•it establishes a ‘cut-off’ point between that which should legitimately be
included within the frame and that which should remain outside
•it assists us in reducing a complex concept to a scope and scale that our human intellect can
cope with.

•the process of reduction generates predictable difficulties in terms of investigative reliability

and validity.

Having said all of that, the reader is left with a sense that Meyer primarily advocates a
transdisciplinarity approach as a vehicle to minimise the need for framing, but that he still
sees the idealised target outcome as the isolation of a single and universal ‘truth’. This is
indicative of the traditional natural sciences approach referred to earlier, an approach which is
by no means universally embraced by social scientists.

A social sciences view

Reading 1.6 by Max-Neef might appear to represent quite a high risk inclusion from the
University’s perspective, focusing as it does on the inadequacies of a unidisciplinary or
‘single lens’ approach to tertiary education—for Max-Neef, what we learn as students is both
consciously and subconsciously filtered by the policies and practices of the Faculty, or
School, or Department we study in—and, however inadvertently, the implication is that
students are not only taught to think in the same way as their professors, they are taught to
think about the same things. At the same time, these professors are intellectually conditioned
to minimise interaction with colleagues from other discipline areas—hardly an ideal
prescription for the management of future change !
It’s interesting, at this point, to refer back to the Meyer reading, in which it is conceded that
academic professors have no monopoly on the generation of knowledge, and that the
inclusion of ‘lay’ views may actually be beneficial from the point of view of triangulated
perspective—quite an admission for an academic author, even although the assumed
superiority of academic thought seems to have remained implicit in his writing !
In fact, a key component of the view of the future held by many social scientists is that there
is no single truth waiting to be discovered—to simplify, if truth is not quite what we choose to
make it, then it can at least be said to exist in a multiplicity of forms. However, as Max-Neef
correctly observes, there is little advantage to be gained through application of a multi-
disciplinary approach, the ‘Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman’ method of gathering and
rationalising a range of separate and independent views on a given phenomenon (although
this is exactly what learning activity 1.3 asks you to do !)
Instead, Max-Neef argues that a much superior outcome emerges when each individual
develops their own English, Irish AND Scottish perspectives within a synthesised capacity to
reason, and therefore establishes their own personal triangulation of vantage points. Thus the
fundamental difference between multi-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity.
The key part of what Max-Neef has to say can be encapsulated in his Graph 3, in which the
traditional concerns of tertiary education are identified as disciplines that ‘describe the world
as it is’. If this is indeed the case, and if we are to consciously aspire to describing the world
as it might soon be, a more integrated and holistic approach is required. From here it is but a
short step to examining some of the author’s future-oriented questions:

•what are we capable of doing?

•what is it we want to do?

•what must we do?

This is a fairly complex and relatively dense reading, which nevertheless has much of value to
offer the dedicated reader—not least amongst which is the realisation that the existence of
multiple versions of truth demands the application of a high level of multi-modal thinking if
the most effective adaptation to dominant influences is to be effected. Only in this way can
we hope to challenge what Max-Neef describes as our current status of ‘knowing very much
but understanding very little’. So how do we do this?
The global perspective
So what happens when we try to reconcile the two powerful perspectives of positivism and
interpretivism, when we propose that the future will indeed be comprised of a series of
interlinked ‘truths’, and that each of these truths will exhibit significant variation when
viewed from multiple vantage points? One already apparent example of this reconciliation is
discussed below.
The ‘truth’ in question is the proposition that the philosophies, form, structure, and activities
of for-profit business have, for the past 20 years or so, been undergoing the most radical sea
change since the Industrial Revolution. In saying this, we are happy for the ‘truth’ of this
statement to be debated, for we are no more entitled than anyone else to claim that we have
unbridled access to that elusive entity. However, we do feel we are on fairly safe ground
when we suggest that ‘business is currently going through unprecedented change’. How do
we know this?
Business students at this and other universities will tell of the shift from manufacturing to
service industries; political science students will speak of the demise of collectivist systems of
governance and the emergence of new global power bases; sociologists will note the change
role of ‘women in work’, and the growing influence of workplace diversity; and electronics
engineers will comment on the rapid replacement of people by machines. Each of these
components of a trans-disciplinary approach will select an entirely different

p28: Learning task 1.8—Trans-disciplinarity vs Multi-disciplinary

At this stage in the course, we want to illustrate the power of alternative perspective, and to
demonstrate that even the most intuitively obvious of propositions for the future may be less
clearly defined than you might think. This is what we want you to do:
•Identify 10 potential respondents to a small scale research project that you will subsequently
implement. Your choice should include both genders, all age groups, and multiple ethnicities.
•Choose a reasonably finite and well known topic—e.g. the use of email, the game of cricket,
the conflict in Iraq, patterns of weather etc.
•Ask each of your respondents to tell you, in as few words as possible “what will be the main
developments in (e.g. the use of email) over the next ten years?”
This is very much a trans-disciplinary approach, the collection of observations on the future
from a range of sources, with minimal or no integration intended. You may be surprised by
the range of opinion reflected in the results !

The global perspective

So what happens when we try to reconcile the two powerful perspectives of positivism and
interpretivism, when we propose that the future will indeed be comprised of a series of
interlinked ‘truths’, and that each of these truths will exhibit significant variation when
viewed from multiple vantage points? One already apparent example of this reconciliation is
discussed below.
The ‘truth’ in question is the proposition that the philosophies, form, structure, and activities
of for-profit business have, for the past 20 years or so, been undergoing the most radical sea
change since the Industrial Revolution. In saying this, we are happy for the ‘truth’ of this
statement to be debated, for we are no more entitled than anyone else to claim that we have
unbridled access to that elusive entity. However, we do feel we are on fairly safe ground
when we suggest that ‘business is currently going through unprecedented change’. How do
we know this?
Business students at this and other universities will tell of the shift from manufacturing to
service industries; political science students will speak of the demise of collectivist systems of
governance and the emergence of new global power bases; sociologists will note the change
role of ‘women in work’, and the growing influence of workplace diversity; and electronics
engineers will comment on the rapid replacement of people by machines. Each of these
components of a trans-disciplinary approach will select an entirely different

aspect of for-profit business to comment on—and each will agree that the content of their
observations is dominated by the scope and scale of observable change.
So what about the process of reconciliation—how do we bring together all of these
observations into a coherent summary of what has happened, and therefore (in the absence of
any more creative imagining), what might reasonably be expected to continue happening? Let
us give three possible responses to that question (there are of course more than just these
three).
•The positive response: all of these changes, taken together, constitute ‘globalisation’. This is
a uniformly beneficial development that will contribute to international stability through more
equitable distribution of the benefits of growth.
•The negative response: all of these changes, taken together, constitute the biggest threat there
has ever been to the planet’s continued existence. Current industrial changes will exacerbate
international tension by further enriching the already wealthy at the expense of the already
poor, while simultaneously destroying the environment that both rich and poor rely upon.
•The pragmatic approach (to paraphrase Bill Clinton): we can have economic growth or
environmental purity. But we do have to choose!
Peter Newell’s reading 1.7 provides a thorough expansion of this discussion. Newell attempts
to bridge the divide between globalisation and environmental integrity through the use of both
positive suggestion—advocacy of triple bottom line evaluation and reporting—and by the
somewhat terrifying warning of ‘pollution havens’. Especially terrifying from an Australian
viewpoint, as that country’s vast tracts of underpopulated territory would seem to offer
significant possibilities for intending polluters.
In the end, Newell’s article is no more than one person’s interpretation of a possible future for
a single (though vitally important) element of what these futures hold. However, if students of
this course are able to construct similar models of interpretation and analysis, in relation to
topics that are salient
for them, we believe that the primary ambition of this course will have been satisfied.

p29: Summary
In this first module, we have set out to establish an appropriate foundation for the future study
of futures. In this respect, we believe that the main point for students to absorb is the linear
proposition that the future is eventually going to arrive for all of us; that this will happen
whether we plan for it or not; that many of our attempts to future plan will undoubtedly fail;
but, those who accept the challenges of futures planning will be much better paced than others
to cope with whatever version of the future turns out to be the ‘real’ one.
Having said that, here are some key points, offered in an attempt to simplify what is a
relatively complex concept:
•Continued and accelerating change in all aspects of our lives is almost certainly inevitable.
•Each individual may consciously select his or her own level of engagement with thinking
about (or not thinking about) the future.
Reading 1.7 by Newell offers a thorough discussion of the interface between globalisation and
environmentalism.
Module 1 - Page 29• Each individual will adopt his or her own personal framework of
observation when thinking about the future, emphasising those characteristics of tomorrow’s
world that are especially relevant to that individual.
•Much of what is anticipated to occur in the future may never actually eventuate; and much of
what actually eventuates will not have been widely predicted.
•The greater the level of accuracy in individual predictions, the better equipped that individual
will be for future success.

Learning task 1.9—Understanding the future

• Go to the portfolio of ‘significant events’ that was assembled in response to learning
task 1.1.
• Form groups of 3–4 students and agree within your group what you think will be the
five most critical of these events in terms of exerting influence over your own future lives.
• Each group verbally present its selected five influences to the others. Use a process of
debate to establish an agreed listing of five critical influences that everyone present can agree
on.
• For each of these five influences, brainstorm potential ‘wild cards’: difficult-to-imagine
happenings that would radically transform existing understanding of the principal parameters
of each selected influence.
• Assuming a worst case scenario, in which all of the imagined wild cards were to
eventuate in the medium term, discuss what each individual could potentially do to prepare
for the arrival of that future.