Feb.8th — VISION: Scenario Development
Stewart Candy: Experiential Futurist (@futuryst)
Written with Jiyoung Ko
Today, the class had a guest speaker, Stuart Candy. Before he started his lecture, he began the class with an exercise called a Pollock game. He divided the space into four quadrants and had students move to an appropriate quadrant by asking following questions:
- How optimistic or pessimistic are you about the future (2050) / y-axis
- How much agency do you think you have about in changing the future / x-axis
The majority of the class found themselves in the ‘optimistic and high sense of agency’ quadrant. When asked the reason for placing themselves there, a number of responses were given:
- “I see business getting interested in sustainability. Since they have more resources to make changes, the increased involvement of business would have positive impacts.”
- “Throughout history, I witness great transitions after major turbulences in the society. I’m seeing the world getting pulled in polarizing directions right now, and I feel that it is time for a transition soon.”
- “I placed myself in this hopeful area because I don’t think I can’t bring myself to take action if I were to be in the pessimistic area — I will just give up. I need to believe that it is going to be better.”
- “It is like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
- “Individuals can play in shaping the future. Small changes can bring impact.”
‘Optimistic, but less sense of agency’ area:
- “I’m hopeful that the future will change to be a better place. However, I don’t feel like I have enough experience or power to make that change right now.”
‘Pessimistic, and less sense of agency’ area:
- “30 years is too short for a dramatic change.”
- “Does it need to reach the bottom or something dramatical need to happen in order to motivate people to act upon it?”
- “Is there a counter-force that cancels out our effort?”
- “If you think about the other part of the world, are they part of the ‘hopeful’ future?”
‘Pessimistic, but high sense of agency’ area:
- “I’m not sure if I can change the world, but I think I can change my own future and live-by-example to encourage the people around me.”
- “Is it an individual agency? or a group agency?”
Futures Thinking for Transition Design
- Trends/Images/events are content
- Theories of Change/Images/Methods are processes
- Actions and Dispositions are missing from this chart
“If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow
and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
your favours nor you hate.”- Shakespeare. Macbeth Act I Scene III
Why think about Futures?
- The future is going to happen regardless.
- If we don’t project into the future its hard to understand what you are doing right now.
- If you don’t think about the future, you are denied your agency.
“We should think about futures in order to make preferred ones more probable” Who is the we? who's preferences? what other preferences? Our preferred ones.
Think about things in a Nested Fashion
“Always design a think by considering it in its next larger contect- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an enviroment in a city plan” -Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950)
When creating something you should not just create it to where it sits systemically, but temporaly. How may it serve and fit into systems that you would like to see happen 50–100 years from now?
- Admin/Ops is the day to day.
- Planning/Strategy/Design has a larger scope of concern, there are more people involved, usually with a longer time horizon.
- Foresight is a linear extrapolation of the planning process, it informs the planning process.
Potential multiplies as time ticks by.
How can we think about those possibilities we want to take into account? The futher out we try to look the harder it is, and the more diversified the answers can be.
The goal of foresight work is to merge the probable and preferable (i.e. Act to make desired futures more likely).
to do this we first need to focus on the range of possibilities.
scenarios: a hypothetical history that hasnt happened yet..
monofuturism: the mistake assumption, because only one future will happen
we cannot talk about everything.. every future- its not practicle..
so scenarios sets can be seen as a carefully curated cross-section of possible scenarios
Futuring Scenarios:
- Mobilize insight that futures are always plural.
- Alternatives theories of change- intended to be compatible with what we think about the present and past- as prologue to these different outcomes.
- Diverse ‘sensemaking positions’ (Making sense of the past and the present as the past does not contain possibilities)
*Vantage points to regard the present.
*The past is up for grabs in only reinterpretation.
*The future is up for grabs. - Enables strategic conversation
- Ways of making organizations (or communities, etc.) more prepared, robust and resilient.
Which possibilities do we consider? How do we find them?
There are different tools we can use:
- 2x2 matrix/ Critical Uncertainties
*Instead of telling million stories about the futures you tell four.
*Used mostly in organizational deployment. - Generic images of the Future- What alternative stories about the future can be told:
- Grow- Progress and its side effects. (i.e. Minority Report)
- Collapse (i.e. Mad Max)
*Recommended Book- “The World Without Us” - Discipline- When indefinite growth is not possible and collapse is not prefereable. Usually totalitarian. (i.e. 1984, the hunger games, etc)
- Transform- Some sort of global mindshift (i.e. Tron, Singularity, Other kinds of spiritual argument- ie second coming. )
Futures are Linked to the Past.
“Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future” -Orwell
Futuring scenarios are interpretations of past forces. You have to regard the past to be dynamic to get anything useful from it. Futures consider the “Weight of the past, drivers of change in the present, and the pull of images in the future”
