Four Images -> Four
Systems
Dator's four images of the future can be reformulated as the four
different potential outcomes of any given system:
1) The system continues unrestrained
2) The system crashes
3) The system slows, necessitating
greater feedback and control.
4) The system gives way
to a new system
For the experimental campaign finance scenarios, "campaign
finance" was the system in question, and the macro environment was held
as more or less constant. There was no global mind change, no depression,
no greening of America. The variations in the 4 scenarios were
variations in the system of campaign finance. By holding the
macro as constant, and the issue as the variable the result seemed to
work well for a narrowly tailored issue like campaign finance reform.
For a broader issue like "selecting political leaders" then a
more conventional application of the 4 generic scenarios would work
better.
This seems to be a good solution to creating plausibly different
alternatives for short term scenarios or very specific issues. And truth
be told, many scenario writers seem to adjust the depth and scope of
their scenario depending on the scale of the issue they are grappling
with. But I haven't seen someone lay out a nice explicit methodology
that actually describes what they are actually doing.
The 4 systems approach seems
to work fairly well for very concrete problems, but whether it could
be scaled up to handle some of the more extreme future possibilities
was a question worth investigating. So what I did as an experiment was
take the 80 Wildcards in Petersen's Out of the Blue, and try
to develop a means of sorting and classifying them within the confines
of my "4 systems" approach. Ultimately, the point of doing all this
was to find a way in which wildcards could be tightly integrated with
a scenario creation process.
Wildcards are a great way
to generate out of the box thinking, but I haven't yet come across a
good way in which they are integrated into scenario work. Doing "4 scenarios
and Wildcard" seems to treat the Wildcard as a secondary event that
can be brushed aside in order to focus on the "realistic" scenarios.
Petersen seems to advocate using a purely Wildcard approach, which brings
to the forefront some of the critical what if's, but this approach
seem to miss the benefits that come from a more structured exploration
of alternative futures.
Definitions of the 4 Systems
So what I did was try to
sort Petersen's 80 Wildcards into my 4 futures systems categories. I
used the following loose definitions to achieve the 1st basic sorting:
 |
Continuation. Innovation in a System. |
|
Wildcards involving some sort of innovation,
advance, or an acceleration of a particular system. Incremental
progress and growth is the dominant idea of the official future,
which is why many innovations make sense in this category. |
|
Collapse. Interruption of a System. |
|
Wildcards involving a collapse, or interruption,
or destruction of a particular system. Nothing new is being added,
instead a critical system element is being interrupted or removed. |
|
Sustainable. Change against the Status Quo. |
|
Wildcards involving the system changing and
trying to seek a new equilibrium. New advances are not specifically
the central issue of these wildcards. Instead, these wildcards
involve a change in the relationships between system elements.
|
|
Transformation. Paradigm Busting Change. |
|
Wildcards involving paradigm shifting change
for a system. More than incremental advances, Transformational
wildcards involve entirely new understandings or a new set of
dynamics that can last for generations. |
At this point you might want
to skip
ahead to the tables to see which Wildcards actually went where.
Generic Wildcard Descriptions
With everything sorted, the
next step was to try to construct more generic descriptions of what
changes to the system the Wildcards were reflecting. As I see it, the
problem with the wildcards is that they are almost too specific - they
seem like one-off events that just happen....out of the blue But,
after a bit of reflection, it seems that many (if not all) of the Wildcards
can fit into more generic descriptions.
The generic descriptions help to categorize new Wildcards, and give a structured
way to approach Wildcard phenomena. While Petersen's 80 Wildcards are
not all-inclusive, they do provide very good test bed to generate the
basic generic statements.
For Continuation, most of the "advances" could be
shoehorned to fit under the statement "Advance in Technological System".
There are a few exceptions to the rule, which I still have
to ponder, but at this point it seems fairly plausible that Wildcards
involving incremental technological innovation can legitimately be placed
in this category.
For Collapse,
the generic categories seemed to come quite naturally. The
generic descriptive statements varied in geographic scope, as well as
system category. All collapse Wildcards seemed to fit very easily into
the generic statement:
"Collapse of a _______ ________
System"
| |
Global |
Social |
| |
Regional |
Technological |
| |
National |
Economic |
| |
Local |
Environment |
| |
|
Political |
For Sustainable, a
similar generic statement seems to apply. The same geographic sorting
could be applied (although the Sustainable Wildcards in Out of the Blue
pretty much seemed to apply on the National level) - and so can the
STEEP categories.
"Changing Balance of a _________ ________ System".
In the tables the geographic scope has been omitted to reduce
redundancy.
For Transformation, the locality seems not to be an
issue, and the STEEP categories don't seem to naturally apply. The
statement becomes:
" Transformation of ___________"
Human
Potential
The
Physical Paradigm
The
Human/Other Relationship
The
Environment
These categories seem inclusive, but there is certainly room for additions....
Integrating Scenarios and Wildcards
Resorting and categorizing
the Wildcards in this way seems to accomplish several things:
|
• |
The framework of the generic statements gives hints at possibilities
for new Wildcard scenarios. For example, more global or local
Sustainable Wildcards would seem to be helpful. Further subcategorizing
the fields of innovation in the Continuing scenario would also
help in identifying (and closing) gaps in wildcards. |
|
• |
The 4 systems categories allows an entire class of Wildcard scenarios
to be addressed though one exemplar, as well as keeping the examination
of superficially different (but fundamentally similar) Wildcards
from being redundant. |
|
• |
With the sorting, the Wildcards seem to fit into the basic system
dynamic theme for each scenario. Hopefully this makes the Wildcard
more of an extension of the basic mechanism of each Scenario Archetype,
rather than an event that comes out of nowhere with no rhyme or
reason. While there is no logical reason why a collapse
Wildcard is necessarily related to Collapse scenario events, it
does seem to work from a rhetorical standpoint. The similarity
sort of drives the point home. |
Figuring out how the Wildcard
integration would occur in a Scenario process would seem to be the next
step. One thing that comes to mind would be to take 4 scenarios, and
then select one relevant Wildcard for each scenario for further examination.
With the alternative future mapped out with a fair degree of detail
in the basic scenario, the Wildcard could be presented as an event
occurring within a given scenario.
The 4 basic scenarios would
have 4 wildcard appendices attached. These appendices would show how
the actors in each scenario could and would react to the occurrence
of a wildcard event. It would allow the scenario to get fleshed
out in greater detail, as well as allow for an examination of the fundamental
issues involved in dealing with the selected wildcards.
Wildcard Tables
Numbers Refer to Page Numbers in the 1997 edition of Out
of the Blue
1) Continuation
| 34 |
Health and Medical Breakthrough |
Advance in Technological System |
| 40 |
Birth Defects are Eliminated |
Advance in Technological System |
| 42 |
Life Expectancy Approaches 100+ |
Advance in Technological System |
| 52 |
Future Prediction Becomes Standard Business |
Advance in Economic System |
| 58 |
Fetal Sex Selection Becomes the Norm |
Advance in Technological System |
| 84 |
Computers/Robots Think Like Humans |
Advance in Technological System |
| 102 |
Rapid Climate Change |
Advance in Environmental System |
| 116 |
Technology Gets out of Hand |
Advance in Technological System |
| 130 |
Global Financial Revolution (E-Cash) |
Advance in Technological System |
| 134 |
Humans Directly Interface with Net |
Advance in Technological System |
| 136 |
Encryption Invalidated |
Advance in Technological System |
| 138 |
VR/Holography Move Info, Not People |
Advance in Technological System |
| 146 |
Room Temp Superconductivity Arrives |
Advance in Technological System |
| 148 |
Fuel Cells Replace Int. Combustion Engines |
Advance in Technological System |
| 150 |
VR Revolutionized Education |
Advance in Technological System |
| 154 |
Loss of Intellectual Property Rights |
Advance in Technological System |
| 160 |
US Government Redesigned |
Advance in Technological System |
| 162 |
E-Cash Enables Tax Revolt in US |
Advance in Technological System |
| 170 |
Information War Breaks Out |
Advance in Technological System |
| 180 |
End of the Nation State |
Advance in Political System |
2) Collapse
| 30 |
Worldwide Epidemic |
Collapse of a Global Social System |
| 62 |
US Economy Fails |
Collapse of a National Economic System |
| 66 |
Social Breakdown in the US |
Collapse of a National Social Systems |
| 70 |
Civil War in the US |
Collapse of a National Political System |
| 72 |
Major US Military Unit Mutinies |
Collapse of a National Social System |
| 88 |
Asteroid Hits Earth |
Collapse of a Global Environmental System |
| 90 |
Ice Cap Breaks Up |
Collapse of a Global Environmental System |
| 96 |
Extraordinary West Coast Natural Disaster |
Collapse of a Local Technology System |
| 98 |
Long Term Global Communication Disruption |
Collapse of a Global Technology System |
| 100 |
Global Food Shortage |
Collapse of a Global Technology System |
| 108 |
Major Information Systems Disruption |
Collapse of a National Technology System |
| 110 |
A New Chernobyl |
Collapse of a Regional Environmental System |
| 114 |
Collapse of the World's Fisheries |
Collapse of a Global Environmental System |
| 120 |
Break in the Alaskan Oil Pipeline |
Collapse of a Local Environmental System |
| 126 |
Stock Market Crash |
Collapse of a National Economic System |
| 144 |
Massive Disruption in Nat'l Electrical Supply |
Collapse of a National Technology System |
| 156 |
Africa Unravels |
Collapse of a Regional Social System |
| 158 |
Collapse of the US Dollar |
Collapse of a National Economic System |
| 164 |
Collapse of the UN |
Collapse of a Global Political System |
| 168 |
Israel Defeated in War |
Collapse of a National Political System |
| 172 |
Russian Civil War goes Nuclear |
Collapse of a National Political System |
| 182 |
Mexican Economy Fails and US Takes Over |
Collapse of a National Economic System |
3) Sustainable
| 36 |
Bacteria become immune to Antibiotics |
Changing Balance of an Environmental System |
| 38 |
Long Term Side Effects Discovered |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 56 |
Altruism Outbreak |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 94 |
Nuclear Terrorists Attack the US |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 68 |
Rise of an American "Strong Man" |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 74 |
Econ. and Envir. "Criminals" Prosecuted |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 76 |
Growth of Religious Environmentalism |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 78 |
New Age Attitudes Blossom |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 80 |
End of Intergenerational Solidarity |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 92 |
No Carbon Economy Worldwide |
Changing Balance of an Economic System |
| 104 |
Computer Manufacturer Blackmails Country |
Changing Balance of an Economic System |
| 106 |
Terrorism Goes Biological |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 112 |
Terrorism Swamps Government Defenses |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 118 |
Inner Cites Arm and Revolt |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 122 |
Illiterate, Dysfunctional New Generation |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 128 |
Hackers Blackmail the Federal Reserve |
Changing Balance of an Economic System |
| 132 |
2nd World Nation Demo's Nanotech Weapons |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 150 |
Cold Fusion Embraced by Developing Country |
Changing Balance of an Economic System |
| 166 |
Religious Right Political Party Gains Power |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 174 |
Mass Migrations |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
| 176 |
Western State Secedes from the US |
Changing Balance of a Political System |
| 184 |
Society Turns Away from the Military |
Changing Balance of a Social System |
4) Transformation
| 32 |
Human Mutation |
Transformation of Human Potential |
| 44 |
Arrival of ET's |
Transformation of Human/Other Relationship |
| 46 |
Return of the "Messiah" |
Transformation of Human/Other Relationship |
| 48 |
Life in Other Dimensions Discovered |
Transformation of the Physical Paradigm |
| 50 |
Human Genetic Engineering Arrives |
Transformation of Human Potential |
| 54 |
Time Travel Invented |
Transformation of Human/Other Relationship |
| 82 |
Self Aware Machine Intelligence Developed |
Transformation of Human/Other Relationship |
| 86 |
Earth's Axis Shifts |
Transformation of the Environment |
| 94 |
Gulf Stream Shifts Location Permanently |
Transformation of the Environment |
| 124 |
Nanotechnology Takes Off |
Transformation of the Physical Paradigm |
| 140 |
Faster Than Light Speed Travel |
Transformation of the Physical Paradigm |
| 142 |
Energy Revolution |
Transformation of the Physical Paradigm |
| 164 |
Collapse of the Sperm Count |
Transformation of Human Potential |
|
