IFTF's Future Now

The X2 project

For the last 6 months or so, I've been working on a big new project at the Institute. I haven't written that much about it, as we've been... quiet. Now, though, we're starting to take the project public.

The project is called X2, and its aim is to forecast the future of science, technology and innovation. The name may sound like science fiction, but it's actually an historical allusion. In my previous life as an academic historian, I studied the X Club, a group of Victorian scientists who were very interested in the future of British science. The Club formed when its members were still young, ambitious outsiders, fighting to establish their reputations in a world in which social connections and privilege mattered more than scientific achievement; by the time they retired, its nine members were among the leaders of British science.

Not only did they do well for themselves; they changed how we think about science. The X Club helped establish the idea that science was an essential ingredient for modern industry, a resource for national security, and a tool to improve public health and well-being. Now, the idea that science is important in modern society seems so self-evident, it's hard to imagine a time when people didn't believe it; but that was exactly the world the X Club confronted in its early years. As much as any single group of people, they created our modern view of science.

Finally, the group was interested in just about everything, and was incredibly hard-working. They lectured on a wide variety of subjects, published popular works, did ground-breaking research, and advised government-- and like many of their Victorian brethren, still took month-long vacations to the Lake Country or Europe.

As of today, the main site for the project is public. There's a FAQ that explains what we're doing in greater detail, but you should just go wander about and see for yourself what's going on.

Technorati Tags: scienceX2, science

Future Now is moving!

Future Now is moving to a new location. We'll keep posting to this location for a while, but we're moving the archive, and new posts, to our new, unified IFTF site. The URL for the new site is http://www.iftf.org/futurenow; RSS feed is available here.

In the course of this transition, Future Now will turn from being a project involving a subset of IFTF researchers, into a more general site that will feature content from across the Institute. It'll give a fuller view of the Institute's work-- and a better view of the future.

Ten Year Forecast conference

The Institute's 2008 Ten Year Forecast conference is going on today at the Mission Bay conference center. The center is part of the new UCSF Mission Bay campus, which is a pretty extraordinary piece of city redevelopment. It's also a very fitting place for this year's conference, as we're talking about innovations in biology and ecology, sources of new economic value, and the development of "amplified humans"-- all things that are happening here.

Technorati Tags: conference, IFTF, Ten Year Forecast

Shifting platforms in the near future

The first of many notes on this, no doubt. The Institute recently updated its Web site, and as part of this effort we're going to be moving our blogging activities to a new site.

This version of Future Now will remain up for some time, but you should visit the new location (http://www.iftf.org/futurenow) or redirect your RSS readers to the new feed.

Miguel Nicolelis and the future of Brazilian science

Despite the fact that I'm quoted in it, Scientific American's recent story on Miguel Nicolelis' plans to build a network of institutions to improve Brazilian science is worth reading.

Convinced that science is a key capable of unlocking human potential well beyond the rigid hierarchies of academia—and outside the traditional scientific bastions of North America and Europe—his other big project has been nothing less than a quest to transform the way research is carried out in his native Brazil. In the process, he believes, science can also leverage economic and social transformation throughout the country. The heart of Nicolelis’s vision is a string of “science cities” built across Brazil’s poorest regions, each centered on a world-class research institute specializing in a different area of science or technology. A web of education and social programs would intimately involve surrounding communities with each institution while improving local infrastructure and quality of life. And the presence of these knowledge-based oases would spark a Silicon Valley–style clustering of commercial scientific enterprise around them, jump-starting regional development.

One of the most notable aspects of his vision is that it reaches down into primary education-- something that's very unusual for science city projects that tend to focus on attracting major multinationals or luring in world-class researchers.

In Nicolelis’s view, reaching children well before college age is crucial. He believes that science education strengthens critical thinking skills in general, and he plans to use improvements in the children’s regular school performance as a benchmark for the effectiveness of the supplementary classes at institute science schools. If some of the kids become interested in pursuing science and technology careers, they will find plenty of opportunities in the knowledge economy. “Ninety-nine percent of scientific work doesn’t require a Ph.D.,” he insists.

Technorati Tags: brain, brain circulation, brazil, pro-am

Roy Amara

Roy Amara, president emeritus of the Institute for the Future, died December 29th. Roy was a Stanford-trained engineer who worked at SRI before becoming president of the Institute in 1970, after it relocated to Northern California. The Institute turns 40 this spring, and Roy was its president for fully half of its life: he held the post until 1990.

Remarkably, not only have the programs that Roy helped start-- the Ten Year Forecast, for example-- survived to this day, but the research agenda he helped shape is still very much with us. In the early days of his tenure the Institute conducted studies of the impact of the Arpanet on scientific research, and the future of groupware. Today we're still exploring the future of science, and are using the collaborative tools that we once forecast. There aren't many futurists whose work has that kind of longevity.

Jacques Vallee, who was at the Institute in the early years of Roy's presidency, recalls

Roy was a real prince of tact and understanding, yet able to manage crises very effectively without an angry word or a threatening move. He built consensus through gentle suggestions and patience, and always gave the credit and limelight to others - a real lesson to today's interrupt-driven, media-hungry CEOs!

One of the little-known facts of Roy's career was his role at SRI where he managed Doug Englebart's attempts to get his early projects funded. Always in the background, Roy was single-handedly responsible for getting Doug's proposals into a shape where they could be seriously considered by AFOSR, which launched Doug's ARC project. The rest is history.

Even though I've written about the history of the computer mouse, I didn't know this about Roy; and even though Roy knew about my work on the mouse, he never mentioned his role in getting Engelbart funded. Even decades later, he remained modest about his contribution to one of the most famous inventions of the twentieth century.

Another lucky building

These folks are just up the street from the Institute.

Technorati Tags: Palo Alto, Silicon Valley

Get There Early: Outrage and Insurance

[This is an extract from Chapter 3 of Bob Johansen's new book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present. The previous extract, on responses to the "VUCA opportunity" in science and leisure, is here; on health and education, is here; a discussion of "the VUCA opportunity" is here; the introduction to the chapter is here. -Ed.]

The Outrage Industry. Out of all the companies with which I have worked, Target is the only one for which a community relations person has been present at every workshop I have done—across the company. Target’s relationships with its local communities are a visible part of its corporate strategy. Target stores are in local communities, and the corporation makes a noble attempt to be active local contributors. Five percent of Target’s profits are dedicated to the local communities they serve.

Just as it is difficult for large corporations to develop intimate relationships with individual customers, it is difficult for a large corporation to engage with many different local communities. Even within a single community where a single Target store is located, there are many different kinds of people and many different views on most issues. Target is very community minded, but the communities it serves are extremely diverse. It is difficult if not impossible to please all community members. Target’s community commitment gets played out in the real world of communities in which people do not always agree on what is appropriate.

Technorati Tags: IFTF, risk, Get There Early, VUCA, Bob Johansen, future

Get There Early: Positive Responses in Science and Leisure

[This is an extract from Chapter 3 of Bob Johansen's new book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present. The previous extract, on responses to the "VUCA opportunity" in health and education, is here; a discussion of "the VUCA opportunity" is here; the introduction to the chapter is here. -Ed.]

Science in a VUCA World. Science issues fuel confusion, but science can also help us understand the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity around us. The changes underway in science and technology are vivid and evident to anyone who is paying attention. From stem cells to biotech to global warming, it seems that there is a science and technology story in the newspapers every day, and most of the stories concern both hopes and fears.

IFTF did a study for the government of the United Kingdom that synthesized forecasts of science and technology, thinking out ten, twenty, and fifty years ahead. This was an independent outside look, to provide input to science policy makers in the United Kingdom. In this project, we did a series of expert panels and drew together forecasts from around the world. We created an online exchange among experts as a way of synthesizing the forecasts as the project unfolded.

Technorati Tags: Bob Johansen, future, Get There Early, IFTF, VUCA

Get There Early: Positive Responses in Health and Public Education

[This is an extract from Chapter 3 of Bob Johansen's new book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present. The previous extract, which starts the discussion "the VUCA opportunity" is here; the introduction to the chapter is here. -Ed.]

Health in a VUCA world. The threats to health are everywhere, from global pandemics to the products we use in our homes. Health has become a filter for purchase of a wide range of products and services, beyond just response to disease. Now, health criteria are important for food products, beauty products, cleaning products, and even products to ensure healthy housing, air, and water.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), based in Atlanta, is focusing its strategy on global health and safety—but health is what everyone is most concerned about. The CDC has also recognized that, even though it is a U.S. government agency, health is a global challenge. Pandemics are a concern because the world is interconnected in many ways, including the spread of infectious diseases. The dilemma for the CDC, and for us all as a global society, is how to be responsive to treating and preventing disease while creating more effective approaches to long-term health. The vision for the CDC is long-term health. The CDC is attempting to raise the health aspirations of Americans, encouraging us to focus on healthy living within the context of radical uncertainty.

Technorati Tags: Bob Johansen, future, Get There Early, risk, VUCA

Get There Early: The VUCA Opportunity

[This is an extract from Chapter 3 of Bob Johansen's new book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present. The previous section is available here; an overview of the book is here. -Ed.]

The VUCA world is sparking new ways of thinking and acting—ways to deal with the original dark meaning. The most successful leadership strategy is to flip the danger, like an aikido move in martial arts where you absorb the attack but redirect the energy of the attack in a positive direction. The martial arts teach a relaxed awareness that allows for appropriate and proportionate response, whether that response is an attack, a retreat, or a clever way to manage the dilemma without resort to violence. Aikido practitioners speak of blending with an attack, flowing with its direction and gently spinning it off in a safe direction. The Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle provides a way of engaging with the VUCA dangers in search of opportunities. Such a turnaround is exactly what leaders must do in response to the dangers of today’s world.

Consider microeconomics as practiced by Nobel Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh:

Technorati Tags: Bob Johansen, future, Get There Early, IFTF, risk, VUCA

Get There Early: Introducing the VUCA World

[This is an extract from Chapter 3 of Bob Johansen's new book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present. -Ed.]

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
—Abraham Lincoln, 1862 Annual Message to Congress

This chapter explores nasty challenges and intriguing opportunities of the VUCA world. The dangers are characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. But these same dangers create leadership opportunities that I describe in terms of vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.

Many people, including some leaders, are already beyond their own personal capability to cope. The pain can be intense. While nobody can predict the future, you can prepare. You can’t escape all pain, but you can prepare your mind to engage with painful dilemmas. With a prepared mind, the chances of success are much higher, and the pain is more manageable, at least partly because you are expecting it. As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

Technorati Tags: Bob Johansen, forecasting, future, Get There Early, IFTF, risk, VUCA

Get There Early

Bob Johansen, the former president of the Institute, has published a new book, Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present. It draws on his extensive experience as a forecaster and facilitator, and describes both Bob's own practice working with executive groups, and the Institute's research on the future of business, health, and technology.

Since Future Now readers are likely to be among the most interested in the subject, we're going to be publishing extracts from the book over the next couple weeks. To get things started, here's the official description of the book:

Nobody can predict the future, but you still have to make sense of it to be successful. Leaders are facing a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity--a world laced with dilemmas. "Get There Early" shows how to sense the future to provoke new ways of understanding the present. Institute for the Future's Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen uses 35 years of 10-year forecasting to unpack complex dilemmas and help leaders seed innovation and strategy. "Get There Early" helps leaders resolve the constant tension between judging too soon (the classic mistake of the problem solver) and deciding too late (the classic mistake of the academic).

Technorati Tags: Bob Johansen, future, Get There Early, IFTF, risk, VUCA

FutureCamp this weekend

As part of this weekend's BarCampBlock in downtown Palo Alto, the Institute is throwing open the doors to attendees who want to do things dealing with the future. The BarCamp wiki has a list of other BarCamp locations, as well as lots of useful information about what a BarCamp is, what to do, what to expect, etc..

See you there!

Technorati Tags: BarCamp, conference, future, IFTF, office, Palo Alto

Ten Year Forecast meeting

Today we're holding the Institute's annual Ten Year Forecast conference, at the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose. It actually started last night, with a set of games designed by Jane McGonigal to illustrate (or embody, or get people to play out) some of the big trends we're talking about today.

This is the 32nd Ten Year Forecast meeting-- so far as we can tell, one of the oldest continually-running futures conference today.

Much of what we're talking about in this year's forecast deals, in one way or another, with responses to climate change. Perhaps not surprising an overarching theme, but it's playing out in everything from our ethnographic work and surveys, to our forecasts on the impact of 3D printing and the organization of science.

These conferences are an enormous amount of work, but our clients and friends quite like them, so they're worth it.

Technorati Tags: climate, conference, environment, future, IFTF, Institute for the Future, san jose

On the cover of the Rolling Stone

Okay, not the cover, but we've got a nice paragraph in David Kushner's "Futurama." It's not online, but here's a bit of the piece:

Thirty-nine years ago, maverick researchers at the RAND Corporation broke off to found an independent, nonprofit group called the Institute for the Future. Today, the Silicon Valley-based think tank studies the impact of emerging technologies and chronicles its findings on the Future Now blog.... The stuff they're thinking about and linking to is wild-- a smog-eating building in Rome, retinal-cell replacement to cure blindness. Plus, you get insider analysis on key events, like the recent University of Michigan conference on how cities can survive a global warming crisis.

One small correction: Virtual China isn't a section of Future Now, but another member of the IFTF Blog Media Empire. Still....

Telepathic urbanism

Our own Anthony Townsend is too modest to mention it, but he gave an excellent talk at the recent conference in Ann Arbor. Joshua Kauffman, an exciting young futurist talent, blogs it:

Anthony Townsend of the Institute for the Future discussed the role of mobile devices in the future of the city. With mobiles, people can record, document, and annotate social space. Ideas, insights and emotions can be transmitted. Townsend calls this functional telepathy “telepathic urbanism.”

Telepathic Urbanism would help us experiment with new social ways of urban living that are based on real-time information and feedback. Thus we could get more out of the existing structures of cities and optimize our lives in them through a better representation of their energy, resource and material realities.

Technorati Tags: cities, mobility, wireless

Puzzles, mysteries, and thinking about the future

Malcolm Galdwell has a great article in the latest New Yorker on "Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information." It's about contrasting types of complex problems, and it holds a useful lesson for how to think about the future.

The national-security expert Gregory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are a puzzle. We can’t find him because we don’t have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source bin Laden will remain at large.

The problem of what would happen in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein was, by contrast, a mystery. It wasn’t a question that had a simple, factual answer. Mysteries require judgments and the assessment of uncertainty, and the hard part is not that we have too little information but that we have too much.

In fields as diverse as oncology and military intelligence, as the ability to gather information and volume of data have gone up, levels of certainty have gone down. What used to be treated as puzzles must now be treated as mysteries. There used to be one test for prostate cancer, now there are many. They provide earlier and earlier signs of cancer, but (so Gladwell argues) they are also more ambiguous.

How does this connect to the future?

Our default assumption about the future is that it's a puzzle. There is A Single Future, just like a single location where Osama bin Laden is hiding, and with enough information, we can solve it. But in reality, the future isn't a puzzle; it's a mystery. We can assemble vast amounts of information that offer clues about the future, but that information is going to be full of contradictions, mixed signals, and noise. Piling on even more facts won't make the future easier to divine; it'll make seeing the future harder.

Why is this so? Because there is no Single Future that futurists should be looking for. There are many possible futures, and the job of the futurist is to sort out which are more likely, and to help people see the contingency and opportunity in those futures. If fortunetellers traffic in knowledge of inevitabilities-- in knowing exactly what is going to happen and when-- the end-point of futurists' work should be a better knowledge of the contingency that's hard-wired into the future.

Technorati Tags: future, IFTF

Nice little mention in Slate

A new Paul Boutin article about Google Docs has a gratifying little linkback to Future Now:

Google's word processor starts saving the file to backup servers as soon as you start typing—you don't have to remember to save it yourself. Files are automatically stored online, where you have the option of sharing them with other users. (You can also save them to your desktop.) I've used Google Docs to edit a Wired article with a co-author three time zones away. Eagle-eyed futurists have spotted a more surprising use: Co-workers in adjacent seats can edit the same file at the same time instead of hunching over each other's screens.

Google Docs has quickly turned into a must-use tool for a number of us. It's very interesting: it's part of a general trend in which we're using online tools to enhance face-to-face collaboration, and to tighten up work processes-- more or less the opposite of how these tools were "supposed" to be used.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, IFTF, work

Delta Scan on Wonkette

Delta Scan made it into Wonkette.

Human Rights Legislation for Rat-Brained Robot Soldiers, NOW!

While god-crazy American politicians are taking two weeks off to get drunk and IM young boys, our atheistic friends in Britain are looking towards the Future — a future of rat-brained self-aware robotic service workers and soldiers who will likely organize and demand “human” rights by 2056.

Undoubtedly the best media mention involving the Institute's work since Future Now showed up in that YouTube video earlier this year.

Technorati Tags: Delta Scan, future, humor, IFTF, robotics

We were cyborgs then

Nicholas Carr, in an appropriate follow-up to his post about energy consumption by Second Life avatars, looks at the Sigma and Delta scans and notes, "One of the recurring themes is the blurring of the line between people and machines, between the human mind and the computer. "

Technorati Tags: cyborg, Delta Scan, future, science, technology, UK

More Delta Scan coverage

This time by Ian Sample in the Guardian Unlimited:

Drought, pandemic and waste mountains - a future that science may help us avoid

Piles of rubbish clutter the streets of the new urban sprawls. In overloaded hospitals, patients lie in corridors, victims of a pandemic. Water prices have rocketed, and temperatures have nosedived with a premature slowing of the Gulf stream.

Welcome to dystopian Britain, a thoroughly miserable snapshot of the country's woes come the middle of the 21st century. While the bleak scenario might seem unlikely at present, Sir David King, the government's chief science adviser, is urging policy-makers not to be complacent. A bleak future will only be avoided if they understand the threats and what new technologies might come to the rescue.

Technorati Tags: Delta Scan, future, science, technology, UK

First press on the Delta Scan

The Financial Times' Clive Cookson is first out of the gate:

Vision of life in the middle of the century

Chinese astronauts walk on the moon, the world has splintered into currency blocs after an international exchange rate shock, and even robots have the vote.

It sounds like the exaggerated vision - utopian or distopian according to taste - of a parlour futurologist. But these scenarios of what life might be like around the middle of the century have emerged from 270 rigorously researched papers commissioned by the government that together purport to be the world's most extensive look into the future.

The Horizon Scan covers a vast range of science and technology, politics, economics and society - from internet crime to robotics, banking to the computer-brain interface, stem cell research to "grey power" in an ageing population.

And it is intended to do far more than feed a human curiosity about what life may be like for our children or grandchildren. Sir David King, the government's chief scientist, argues horizon scanning will have a powerful influence on policy-making - and not only in Whitehall. "Although it was designed as a tool for government, I believe it will also have a broader use across the private sector," he adds. Horizon scanning has grown out of the 12-year-old Foresight programme in the government's Office of Science and Innovation, which produces in-depth studies of future developments in specific areas such as infectious disease diagnosis and defences against flooding.

Horizon scanning papers are individually quite brief but together they cover the entire public policy spectrum. The exercise comes in two parts. The Delta Scan, commissioned from the Institute for the Future in California, covers science and technology....

Sir David says: "The two scans look at what trends are developing, what new issues may arise, and what events may surprise us - and the possible implications for us individually and collectively. They are not 'predicting' the future, rather setting out a broad range of different possibilities and challenging assumptions."

Although the future is not predictable, "government can't just sit back and wait for it to happen", he says. "Government has to identify opportunities and risks at least five to 10 years ahead when making policy. It can then make decisions that might move us from an unfavourable to a favourable scenario."

While still in the development stage, the horizon scans have already started to influence policy-making. They have, for example, aided the Health and Safety Executive in planning for the future of workplace health and safety, and the Treasury in writing its report, "Opportunities and Challenges for the UK:analysis for the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Re-view", published last month.

Technorati Tags: Delt, future, IFTF, science, technology, UK

Delta Scan

A number of us at the Institute have spent the last 18 months working on a project for the British government on the future of science and technology-- a very broad scan of how and where science and technology might progress over the next fifty years. As an historian of science turned futurist, it was pretty much the ideal project for me; it was also one of those excellent projects that was able to draw on the combined skills of lots my colleagues, and a good part of the Institute's research network.

As part of the work, we built a database with a bunch of specific outlooks on particular areas, ranging from energy use, to scientific publishing, to the implications of pervasive computing for the practice of field science.

And as of midnight, the database is open to the general public. Visitors can read and comment on the outlooks, but it's not a wiki, so there's no facility for editing existing pieces or writing new ones.

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Delta Scan, future, science, technology, UK

The experience of using Google docs and the future of collaboration

Today one of my colleagues at the Institute and I finished up a draft of a piece on the future of biomimicry. We've been working on it for a while, and had divided up the piece into several sections. But when it came time to write the opening and conclusion, and do the editorial work necessary to make the pieces flow together, we decided to try something new: we put it up on Google docs (formerly Writely), and worked on it together.

The experience was a very interesting one, for a couple reasons.

First, the technology. Google docs has a basic word processor, and while it doesn't do footnotes, it has most of the essentials for styling and structuring documents (though most people mistake the former for the latter). It also has a pretty good revisions tracker, which is a cross between the "track changes" functionality in Word, and the view changes feature you see on many wikis.

I suspect that when people design (or start to play around with) such systems, they imagine the collaborators being separated by oceans and time zones: that the real benefits will come to coauthors in Berlin and Berkeley, or Paris and Perth. And for lots of groups, that's probably a plus. But what struck me, as my colleague and I were working on our article, was how valuable it was for the two of, even though we were right across from each other. We'd brainstorm a transition, or talk about how to restructure a paragraph; one of us would make the changes, and save the version; we'd hit refresh, look at it on our respective machines; and rework it until we had it right.

In a couple hours we had written as much as we'd each written in the previous month. Why? In part, writing together serves to tighten attention. I'm easily distracted, and can hit Google to look up some very specific fact, only to find myself ten minutes later looking at a Web site about animal pictures on the London Underground.

It also serves to eliminate some of the rationalizations that slow traditional multiauthored pieces. There are always turns of phrase or pieces of argument that really need to be worked out with your co-authors; when you're writing alone, it's easy to put those sections off until later, and tell yourself, "Well, I can't write the next paragraph until we work out that transition. I wonder if there are any new cat videos on YouTube?" When your coauthor is right beside you, and it's easy to make changes right in the document, the bar to completion gets lower.

It's also much easier to make changes directly onscreen, in a way that everyone can see, than to put edits on a printed page, which have to then be carried later (if you can remember exactly what they meant).

Of course, the technology could be a little better: having automatic line or paragraph numbering, for example, would make it infinitely easier for collaborators to stay on the same page (as it were). Instinct suggests that this isn't hard to implement, but if you assume that coauthors are going to be working asynchronously and at a distance, you don't need it.

But that doesn't detract from the big point: the system may facilitate collaboration at a distance, but it supercharges collaboration in person. More broadly, I suspect that this is where the really big gains in collaborative and social software will be made in the future: not in teams whose members are on opposite sides of a continent, but teams whose members are on opposite sides of a coffee table.

Update, 2 January 2007: Paul Boutin has an article on Slate that links to this post. I for one welcome our new Slate reader overlords!

Technorati Tags: collaboration, collective intelligence, social software, work

Best. Media. Mention. Ever.

Future Now made it onto YouTube: check out feast file 9.9.06.

There's something truly hypnotizing about the synthetic voice, the techno beat, the anxiety about information overload.

Okay, the video has got far fewer hits than the automatic cat feeder or Bus Uncle, but still.

Technorati Tags: AI, future

Paper, walls, and the sociology of collective knowledge

Prof. Armsworth's comment that the University of East Anglia environmental exercise was "a very physical experience" caught my eye. Sometimes clients or workshop participants will ask, an exercise to map the future that's done on a wall with giant Post-Its seems a little retro. Why don't we do this with computers?

In a way, it is. After all, what's more antiquated than paper? But there's more to such an exercise than just making a big list and voting on it. We find this old media valuable for a few reasons.

First of all, you can't underestimate the value of working on an entire wall, rather than just a screen. When you're dealing with upwards of a hundred ideas-- and a brainstorming session with a couple dozen people can easily generate a few hundred-- you can't fit them all on a laptop screen. You need a big wall when you're dealing with lots of ideas.

Not only does the big wall help individuals make sense of the "one great blooming, buzzing confusion" (to use William James' felicitous phrase) of brainstorming; it's also essential for groups. The irony of computer technology right now-- at least the kind that isn't fresh out of the lab and requires two grad students and a union foreman to get working properly-- is that while it makes communication with people in other time zones much easier, it just as easily stifles communication with people in the same room. A roomful of people all looking at screens don't interact with each other; they're a bunch of individuals working by themselves, not a group working together. (And yes, IM side conversations may erupt, but when you're working with a group, they're generally more of a problem than a solution.) The big wall, in contrast, provides a focal point, a common reference point, for groups.

It's also much, much easier for groups to work together on a big wall, than a bunch of little screens. You can watch other people cluster cards into groups, add yours, and move things around. Discussions about where cards should go emerge spontaneously. You can see what other people are doing, and they can see what you're doing. The wall becomes both a medium for work and a conversational space.

The simple fact that people are working as a group is a serious benefit for some clients. Often, we work with groups of executives, government officials, NGO managers, or others who don't spend much time together, but collectively have a significant amount of brain power and operational knowledge: to use the tired phrase, they're the future of the organization. Our events are set up to work with them to figure out what futures they face, and what they have to do to bring the preferable ones into being. At the end of a couple days, in other words, they're 1) a group rather than a collection of individuals, and 2) have a common vision of the future.

So moving around, seeing how other participants have voted or clustered cards, and interacting with other people aren't distractions. They're central to the process.

It is indeed a more obviously physical experience than most knowledge work, but it should be noted that all knowledge work, to some degree, has a physical component to it. Our normal habit is to assume that thinking is purely cerebral, and collaboration is essentially nothing more than an exchange of formal information. Neither is true.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, communication, IFTF, work

On vacation

Just for the record, we haven't disappeared-- permanently at least. I'm on vacation for another week, and will be back online from the 21st.

Swapthing

Recently the Institute hosted a talk by Jessica Hardwick, the co-founder of Swapthing. As she describes it, Swapthing is "eBay for barter, and a system for providing social networking around things." Pretty simple concept, really.

Two things struck me during the talk. First, it's another version of what I first noticed with del.icio.us and ThinkLink: a relatively small outfit that's able to grow thanks to the abundance of IT.

Second, Swapthing is spending infinitely more energy on the social networking and community stuff than on the economics. This might seem counterintuitive, but I suspect it's a smart gamble. One model they're not following is that of barter trading markets, where participants get credit for things they donate, then "spend" that credit on other things. (I also suspect that eBay may have lowered the barrier for auctions enough to challenge systems that rely on proxies for currency; I don't know how you'd test that hypothesis, thought.) There are some tax reasons for staying away from all this-- once you start to handle money, you become an entirely different kind entity as far as the IRS is concerned-- but mainly Swapthing assumes that participants can figure out the value of items on their own, but could really benefit from networking tools. More value can be created by concentrating on the social side, most notably by building the reputation system (which is obviously essential), and giving participants the opportunity to build swap circles and groups (e.g., new moms in Portland, the First Methodist Church of Springfield, Peninsula School families).

There might be a parallel here to a real estate developer who tries to create a vibrant new downtown area. They aren't trying to create new economies; they're trying to create a space that supports economic activity.

Jessica is also interviewed on the wonderfully transparently-titled A Hot Web 2.0 blog from Silicon Valley.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, IFTF, Institute for the Future, social software, Web 2.0

More on RFID

Last year the Institute wrote a series of memos on the present and future of RFID. They're now publicly available as PDFs on the Institute Web site.

Titles and links:

• Thinking About RFID
• Public Concerns and the Near Future of RFID
• Flashpoint and Controversies
• Smart Homes and Sociable Devices
• Implications and Recommendations

Technorati Tags: future, IFTF, RFID

Artifacts from the future

Business 2.0 has a piece on the Institute's artifacts from the future, which we've been doing for a couple years. I think the piece exaggerates the "people didn't read our stuff, so we started making stuff" angle, but otherwise it's pretty good. The truth is that artifacts reach some people who don't feel they have time to closely read long reports (so do the maps, experiences, and other non-textual things we use to communicate our ideas); but they're valuable for several other reasons.

First, their tangible, specific nature forces us to think hard about what we really believe. It's easy for futurists to say "on one hand this, on the other hand that;" creating things, in contrast, forces you really to put a stake in the ground.

Second, thinking about artifacts makes you think hard about the interrelationships of technological, social, economic, and cultural factors. Things are where disparate forces come together, and artifacts from the future can be designed to show how they'll connect, compete, and play out. It's a reverse of the process cultural studies scholars follow: they can take an object-- a Ming vase, a Victorian train station-- and treat it as "congealed culture," a distillation or microcosm of the economic and cultural forces of the age. At the Institute we start with the forces, then move to the object.

Third, the shift to artifacts reflects our own sense that design is going to be a critical strategic skill in the future.

Fourth, many of our clients actually make things. They already communicate with each other in a language of prototypes.

Finally, artifacts from the future are part of a larger trend in the Institute of drawing closer lines between our research/brainstorming methods, and the media we use to communicate our ideas. We've been doing maps for decades, but only in the last few years have they become a major tool for getting our ideas across in public; likewise, we're repackaging some of our ethnographic work into experiences at conferences. Artifacts don't just constitute another way to communicate our ideas; they serve the pedagogical purpose of helping readers see how to think about the future.

Technorati Tags: culture, design, future, IFTF

Blogging the Tech Horizons exchange

The Tech Horizons spring exchange is all over but for the blogging. Peder Burgaard writes about the conference in general; and Kevin Kelly's keynote; Christine Peterson gently disagrees with out nano forecast, and talks about synthetic biology + nano; Pesco's got a bit on the conference on Boing Boing; and Quinn Norton has a couple posts.

Technorati Tags: conference, IFTF

You know you're big time when you're a cartoon

You never know where the Institute is going to get quoted!

Technorati Tags: humor, IFTF

Peder Burgaard on IFTF

We Make Money Not Art has a great interview with Innovation Lab agitator Peder Burgaard, who's visiting IFTF for the next several months. It's a good outside-in view of the Institute.

Virtual China blog

My colleague Lyn Jeffery, and former Institute intern Jason Li have started a new blog, "Virtual China." The blog is "an exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China," and is part of a larger research project we're doing (and Lyn is leading) on the future of China.

The URL is http://www.virtual-china.org/.

Technorati Tags: Asia, China, future, IFTF

Jason Tester at NEXT

We make money not art's Regine has excellent notes of Jason Testers talk at NEXT2005, and pictures on flickr.

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, IFTF, NEXT2005

Jason Tester at Next2005

The things you learn when you surf the Web: my colleague Jason Tester will be doing one of the keynotes at Next2005, along with Aubrey De Grey and Norbert Streitz. Exalted company....

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, IFTF, itu

Blogpulse

An interesting tool that charts the number of mentions of a term in blog posts over time. You can compare up to three different terms:

[via Flickr]

As our marketing head said, "Go orange line!"

Technorati Tags: blogging, IFTF

It feels like an earthquake today

They're tearing down the building next door. Our building shakes every time the backhoe takes out another section.

You can see more pictures here.

Technorati Tags: IFTF

Michael Chorost on Cochlear Implants and Transhumanism

On August 31st, Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt : How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, spoke at the Institute. Below are my notes from the talk (which haven't been vetted by the author, so all caveats apply--- quotes are approximate, and you should assume that the overall shape of these notes reflects my attention and interpretation, not what Mike actually said or meant).

(from the IFTF flickr photoset)

Technorati Tags: communication, cyborg, digital/physical, IFTF, paloalto, Silicon Valley, work

Steve Cisler on Future Commons

Steve Cisler has a nice post about an event we had Monday at the Institute, a meeting of our Future Commons group. I found it a very stimulating evening, though any time you have Howard Rheingold in a room, things are going to be interesting.

I'll post some pictures from the event on my IFTF Flickr photoset.

Technorati Tags: future, IFTF

Nicolas Nova on location awareness and collaborative problem-solving

Nicolas Nova visited the Institute today, and gave a talk on location awareness in mobile gaming. (In an odd coincidence, Doug Engelbart was also at the Institute today.) These are my notes from Nicolas' talk. As with all talks, the speaker shouldn't be held responsible for my misinterpretations, errors, etc..

124 University Avenue, part of Nicolas' Flickr photostream

Nicolas is a grad student at EPFL, in the CRAFT Lab (center for research on training in technologies), which does work on CSCW and distance learning, particularly interactive and mobile technologies. Interested in socio-cognitive processes in SCSW and games; also works part-time as a consultant for video game companies.

Background. For his MA thesis, Nicolas worked on importance of location-awareness (of others) in collaborative problem-solving in VR.

Knowing the location of others does lots of good things: it improves task performance and coordination, supports division of labor, communication and "grounding" (shared understandings of a situation), and "mutual modeling" (inferences we make of collaborators' backgrounds, intentions, etc.).

Location awareness is also a factor in some forms of group work, esp. joint activities performed in different locations: for example, firefighters, soldiers, emergency workers, medical personnel, and many others need to know where their colleagues are. In these and other cases, the location of actors has meaning for practitioners.

Location awareness is also an ingredient in building mutuality of knowledge. What we infer from others' position (now) what they're doing, what they're looking; traces (past) lets us infer what they know or have experienced; direction (future) lets us infer destination, intention, and strategy.

Navigation (e.g., where's the nearest Starbucks) is single-user; what's more interesting is that place annotation (tagging places with information) and location tracking are multi-user.

The experiment. Wanted to study how people make use of location awareness information when collaborating for problem-solving and group coordination. Constructed an experiment midway between lab and ethnography: takes place in the real world, but with certain factors controlled: a mobile game called CatchBob! (a 3-player collaborative treasure hunt), which was played on the EPFL campus with tablet PCs. There were two versions of the UI, which showed a map of the playing field, and let players add annotations and send messages to each other. They were identical in every respect but one: one version showed the locations of other players on the screen, while the other did not.

The experiment yielded both quantitative information regarding performance and process measures (path, messages, workload, errors), and qualitative data (questionnaire and group debriefing).

Analysis. There weren't significant differences in overall performance between players who could see each other on-screen, and those who couldn't. But players with displays also made more mistakes when recalling their partners' movements, while players without displays relied more on messaging (mainly about positioning, and directions, but esp. about strategy). People who wrote more messages also recalled collaborators' paths better, and seem to have reshaped their strategy through map annotations.

Current conclusion. Automatically knowing where the others are does not facilitate task performance, and it does not facilitate the representation of the others' path in space. Players without the tool took better advantage of the annotation feature; they picked up facts relevant to the task, and discussed what they needed to do more effectively than those with the display. No differences in cognitive workload.

Some Big Ideas

Not giving the tool is better...

• To support collaboration processes; it fosters elaborated explanations, self-regulation, strategic explications.
• For coordination activities. Users with the automatic position of others assumed that it was relevant and did not discuss other issues.
• It's better to let users express what they think is relevant for the task.
• It's less intrusive, gives people control over how/whether to announce their presence, lets us get rid of privacy issues.

Location is not enough. Automatic location-awareness is just information, but self-declared positioning is both information and a communciation of an intention: you want others to know where you are, and the communication itself has meaning.

Location awareness must be matched to task needs. The treasure hunt itself was not a single task; it really was several tasks. Sometimes automatic location awareness got in the way; some times it was useful.

Technorati Tags: games, IFTF, mobility, ubicomp

Why I love work, 2

A side-conversation between two of our panelists: What would the impact of practical immortality (a la Kurzweil) be on the Nobel Prizes? If you can keep trying for a couple hundred years, does that make being a laureate less valuable? Or will there be bigger problems caused by people being able to stay in tenured professorships for centuries?

The kind of thing that makes you hate to call a meeting back to order....

Technorati Tags: IFTF, science, technology

Why I love work

I'm in an Institute workshop all day today, mapping the future of science and technology over the next 50 years. The participants include a Nobel laureate, pioneers in supercomputing and virtual reality, university deans or major research lab directors, journal editors, and assorted other luminaries.

This is the best part of working at the Institute. Being in rooms like this.

Technorati Tags: IFTF, science, technology

Flickr photo set of the office

Not that anyone would ever be curious about what IFTF's office actually looks like, but I've created a Flickr photo set of photos from the office, office events, etc.. We'll see if I can remember to post to it on a semi-regular basis.

Technorati Tags: IFTF, Institute for the Future, office

What is context awareness?

One of the most interesting insights at this morning's introductory session came out of the question, "In the future, what will we think of as context aware-computing?"

The consensus is that context aware-computing isn't something that will be driven by preexisting information about users and places: context isn't just, or primarily, derived by looking up a bunch of formal attributes in a database. Rather, context should be seen as a function of interaction between users/objects and environment, and a consequence of focus or attention.

This means a few things.

First, "context" isn't something that programmers or designers can either thoroughly describe or comprehensively predict; it's something that emerges in the moment.

Second, context can change very rapidly. Making sense of context cannot merely be a matter of computers getting faster; it requires helping people, who are already better-equipped than any computer to figure out context.

In many ways, this view of context-aware computing resonates with assumptions behind the new social software-- e.g. social bookmarks, Flickr, and the other members of the collection of technologies and services that Wade Roush is tracking in his continuous computing work. I think this new generation of social software-- that differentiates it from knowledge management-- is shaped in part by a recognition that knowledge isn't just algorithms and data that can be put into computers, but is a deeply social activity.

Consequently, they're expansive and inviting, not limited to previously-defined communities (like workgroups). They're folksonomic rather than formalistic. They try to do what computers do well (like aggregate vast quantities of data), but not in a way that squashes what people do well (like build collective or tacit knowledge).

What our experts are saying is that context-aware computing needs to balance technical properties or data, with stuff that humans do. Context awareness won't be something that happens within a microprocessor; it'll be a product of the interaction of technology, digital information, people, and tacit knowledge.

Technorati Tags: collective_intelligence, mobility,