<Title>:
/ The 4th International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA):12 & 13 May 2011
FTA and Grand Societal Challenges:
Shaping and Driving Structural and Systemic Transformations
Wild cards as future shakers and shapers
Authors: / Victor vanSponsors:
Type: / methodological paper, >
Geographic Coverage: / general application, focus on (supra)national level
Scope: / methodology to connect foresight to policy based on experience with national and blue sky projects
Applied Methods: / Horizon scanning – Workshops – Literature study
Evaluation:Impacts: / partly ideas could be tested during workshops on cognitive enhancement, energy and health)
closing the gap between foresight and decisionmaking
Organiser: / SESTI and FAR horizon projects
Duration: / <Start-End> / Budget: / <Euros> / Time Horizon: / <Year> / Date of Brief:
Keywords: / horizon scanning, wild cards, emerging issues, early warning, political discourse analysis
Purpose
<5 lines max.>
The brief contains some recommendations regarding horizon scanning based on an analysis of the conceptual thinking in recent horizon scanning projects as SESTI, i-Know, FAR horizon and the experience with former national horizon scanningprojects from the UK, Netherlands and Denmark. The recommendations are meant to bridge the gap between foresight activities and policymaking.
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<Title>: FTA Brief No. <N>
<Background & Context
The last 2 to 3 years the EC has funded a serie of blue sky projects on foresight. A part of these projects were devoted to the improvement of our methodological knowledge around scanning. These projects delivered not only evaluations of new methods to obtain and process scan data but also new conceptual thinking that may bridge the gap between scanning activities and policymaking. In this poster we give an overview of the conceptual thinking that leads to some recommendations concerning horizon scanning practice. An important aspects is the way in which results of scanning can compete with the stream of information and ideas that arrive in the decision makers brains and debates.
The unpredictable aspects of the future
Foresight and other forward looking activities like horizon scanning, scenario’s, future modeling and planning play an important role to anticipate on future developments. Where appropriate they are not only used to examine future options but also used to shape developments. Many times these forward looking activities fail however to anticipate on what is referred at as new emerging issues and wild cards because of their high unpredictability. Wild cards are events that suddenly occur and change the world in a quite drastic way, while new emerging issues tend to do this is in a more gradual way. Examples of wild cards are the 9-11 terrorist attack, the fall of the Berlin wall and to a lesser extent the Iceland volcano outburst , also black swans like the discovery of the United States by Columbus can be seen as the inevitable wild cards of the future. Examples of new emerging issues are the development of the internet, climate change and ageing. Wild cards as well as new emerging issues usually create new challenges for the future that direct the agenda setting for “Research, Development and Innovation”” as well as for socio- economical, environmental , security and safety policies.Because of the disruptive character of wild cards and emerging issues the EC set out several Blue sky projects to investigate their role in more detail and to search for ways to identify them in an early stage and to create resilient (more wild card proof and anticipatory) policies.
In this article the concept and role of (potential) new emerging issues and (potential) wild cards as well as that of early warning signals will be discussed on basis of the findings within the EC projects.
A distinction is made between “natural wild cards” and “deliberately human caused wild cards” as well as between “issues and wild cards that happened”’ and “issues and wild cards”, that may be imagined or foreseen with certain plausibility (referred to with the term potential wild cards and potential emerging issues ). Main conclusion is that the concept of these potential wild cards and issues can be used to analyze and assess attempts of different actors to influence the discourse and decision making about the future, using different aspects of communication. The concepts may also provide leads to quantitative identification of early warning signals for human caused wild cards and emerging issues .
Early warning signals
In many human activities early detection of change is important either to grasp opportunities or to react adequately to upcoming threats. Early warning signals are the first important indications of a change. Many times these signals are difficult to spot. Therefore they are usually referred at as “faint” or “weak” signals. These terms are closely connected if not confused with the concept of emerging issues. Hiltunen (2007) combines signal, issue and interpretation in the concept “future sign”, which in a more holistic way describes how signals relate to change. Citing from Igor Ansoff, Hiltunen (2007) provides a definition of weak signals as: “warnings (external or internal), events and developments that are still too incomplete to permit an accurate estimation of their impact and/or to determine their complete responses”. Early warning signals are meaningful as long as they are evaluated in the context of their emergence and their evolution as a part of a pattern along with other early warning signals or as part of a “potential” emerging issue. Early warning signals do not exist in isolation. For understanding the principles of weak signals it is important to distinguish the different types and and ways to obtain them. An important distinction is the distinction between Physical and social signals
Physical signals
Many disruptive events in the physical world announce themselves with subtle preceding events which may serve as weak or faint signals that may be used as early warning signals. An engine may produce a strange sound before it collapses. Diseases announce themselves with symptoms. Recognition and interpretation of these physical signals finds its basis in “(intuitive) experience with” or “historical analysis of disruptive events”. The historical analysis tries to identify which physical abnormalities preceded the past event and applies correlative knowledge and explanation to diagnose future events of the same type. A recent example of the search for early warning signals for earthquakes is given by Freund Friedeman who uses the concept of electrostatic charging of faultlines in the earth crust to obtain a set of signals that are indicators for growing risk of earthquakes (“Pre-earthquake signals: Underlying physical processes" in press , Friedemann Freund, 2011, Elsevier, Journal of Asian Earth Sciences Article in Press). Since physical early warning signals are usually recognized by “experience with” or “analysis of” past events of a certain type it is clear that most physical signals are related to “known” or events that are “ analogue” to known events.
Societal signals
Societal signals are usually quite different from the physical signals because of the fact that they are produced by humans. In many cases they are meant to be communicated, translated and interpreted even with the purpose to influence the future discourse. These signals may contain a rational factual basis coming from scientific communities, but they may also at the same time be signifying strong interests or emotions. These interests and emotional charges of signals are important aspects of their prospective significance. The societal signals may be seen as intended or not intended precursors of self- denying or self-fulfilling prophecies of (collective) behavior. The more unintended or even unconscious the social signals are the more they resemble physical signals
Wild Cards and potential wild cards
Wild cards are events with a surprising character , a low probability and a very high impact. These events tend to alter the fundamentals, and create new trajectories which can then create a new basis for additional challenges and opportunities that most stakeholders may not have previously considered or prepared for (Saritas and Smith 2010, p.6). Wild cards on one side refers to events that happened and on the other hand to phenomena that may happen in future and which we can imagine which we will refer to as potential wild cards. Potential wild cards may be introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to create resilience but they can also be used as instruments to influence the future discourse.
Wild Cards can have natural causes (earth quakes, volcanoes, floods) but they may also be caused by human action or failure (wars and revolutions, terrorist attacks like the 9-11 event, nuclear or other major impact accidents)
A special form of wild cards is the “black swan” (Taleb) which refers to (unknown) events that inevitable (may) come to us from the physical world but are unknown to us. An example from the past is the discovery of America by Columbus. Allthough unknown, black swans can be imaginable but may be also unimaginable. Imaginable black swans are for instance a sudden change of solar activity, pandemics caused by unknown diseases or even weirder thoughts on alien life or more dimensions. Imaginable black swans can be seen as potential that either “will” or “will never” happen
Trends and megatrends
A trend can be defined as a general direction of development over a period of time with a relative predictable character. Trends usually can be obtained through the extrapolation of historical data to the future by using statistical/mathematical models. Examples are demographical developments, the global growth of knowledge, global economic development. Trends can have long term and strong impact (megatrends) but also have shorter term character with lower impact. Trends may be part or the cause of an issue (see vi) in all sorts of ways.Trends may also refer to developments that are less quantitative but never the less visible like design trends or fashions trends that often coincide with business cycles. However things that may have looked like “mere fashion trends” in the beginning, e.g. “ecological living”, can develop into longer lasting trends..
Hypes
The term hype generally refers to over-enthusiasm, excessive publicity around a certain topic, excessive advertising or making exaggerated claims. The US analyst firm Gartner coined the term ‘hype cycle’ to describe the ‘peak of expectations’ in regard to (information) technologies. In this phase “a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures” . After this phase of exaggerated expectation comes the "trough of disillusionment" where people realize that their expectation cannot be met.
Emerging and potential emerging issues
The concept of “emerging issues” is used frequently in Horizon scanning and other future oriented activities and is not well defined in a conceptual way. It comes close to the concept of “future narratives” as described and used by van der Steen in his political discourse analysis.
Van der Steen sees “future narratives” as “stories about what the future, or possible futures, may or will (depending on the narrative) look like and that connect these possible futures to current issues for political debate (the discourse)”They form the counterpart of “present day” narratives that stress present-day events (Kuipers, 2006; Hay, 2001) that according to van der Steen “can already be seen in the world outside and that are linked by narrators to certain policy solutions
Although the narratives of van der Steen seem to refer to crisis that need institutional reform, emerging issues refers to opportunities, developments and problems that need political action. These actions may be not only institutional reform but also regulatory measures or priority setting measures as funding or the setting of a research agenda or initiation of innovation programs.
Recent horizon scans of the UK , Netherlands and Denmark show us many examples of smaller and larger potential emerging issues. They usually describe a “future narrative” or mini scenario’s that, according to the cited author or source, should be taken into account by policymakers, society and /or research. They are based on all sorts of hard an soft factual information (like trend and statistical analysis, but also recent scientific and technological breakthroughs in combination with expected impacts for society). This factual basis is used as evidence for the probability or plausibility of the story to happen. In addition to this factual basis many narratives also contain elements that appeal to strong values and interests to make a strong case for proposed policy and R&D actions on a certain policy level. Usually these actions should be adopted according to the narrator either to prevent the story to happen or to ensure that it happens depending on its supposed desirability. Not very rarely the storylines contain visions either on bright futures (utopia’s) or of nearing disasters (dystopia’s) that provide an emotional justification for the proposed actions. The “strength” of an issue therefore is defined by the mix of the evidence and its other aspects appealing to strong interests, values and not very rarely emotions.
Potential emerging issue descriptions as well as future narratives may be considered as communication” vehicles” that are meant to influence the present political debate (discourse) by the narrator(s). According to Van Lente and Rip (Van Lente and Rip, 1998): “They may contain well meant warnings or they may point to promising developments but at the same time incorporate attempts to lobby for specific or personal interests a prediction can promote further investment or interventions that may serve the interest of the presenter”. Ironically such investment or intervention may also be in line with a serious warning or promise for other people.
Self fulfilling and self denying signals
Last but not least it should be clear that emerging issues that are taken up in the discourse may very well create the self fulfilling and/or self denying of the prophecies that are incorporated in the “narrative” For human caused wild cards it is clear that the surprising aspect as well as the impact are quite different for the ones who caused the wild card to happen than for the ones for whom the wild card was unknown. This is especially the case with terrorist attacks but also for wild cards on the financial markets. In the history of Europe deliberate wild cards have been used to influence public opinion
Relation Issues and early warning signals in issue centred scanning
In most scanning activities there seems to be a focus on identification of issues that may become important but that are either on the brink of emerging or that may emerge in the coming decades and that need attention of society, policymakers or research on a certain policy level.
Usually these issues are formulated on the basis of “searches in different sources” and “expert interviews”, These searches and interviews lead to a selection of more or less full “descriptions” of potential emerging issues (future narratives) and also a body of additional signals that are considered to be indicative for the start or development of their emerging. In the context of issue centred scanning we considered each article/item on the internet that contains a more or less full description for a “new” potential emerging issue as a primary early warning signal, while the signals that are identified as indicative for its (further) emerging will be considered as secondary
An example of a primary signals would be an article from nuclear scientists from Military related laboratory in the US that describe the promises of Hybrid nuclear energy as an energy source that can bridge the nuclear fission ERA to the nuclear fusion ERA , indicating the technical feasibility of developing these hybrid reactors in 20 yrs and adding some strong arguments concerning the potential of hybrid nuclear plants to produce clean energy while degrading the nuclear fuel (even from nuclear warheads) to almost harmless degradable isotopes. By this resolving the existing problem of non degradable nuclear waste and contributing to the growing clean energy demand.
The article contains in essence the potential impact rich emerging issue (or strong narrative) of a strong revival of nuclear energy research and policy, by countervailing one of the strongest arguments against nuclear energy (safe disposal of non degradable waste) and even touching elements of partial nuclear disarmament, which has become a necessity for countries with arsenals that have been build up during the cold war and that now become obsolete and rusty. If this narrative is to be followed in the discourse the main counter narrative of nuclear will focus on the safety issue of nuclear plants and the vulnerability of the transport of nuclear fuelsTo assess the (further) emerging of the issue of the Hybrid nuclear power plant we need however additional data consisting of early warning signals that are indicating that the issues really emerges. These secondary signals may be references to the hybrid nuclear plant in political or think thank agenda’s , articles showing an increasing attention in the media, starting political debate on nuclear energy and accompanying protest actions.
Public or private investment decisions in research of the hybrid nuclear plant (or what is connected to its supposed advantage like a research program to investigate new nuclear energy concepts with the objective to improve degradation of nuclear waste and to use of nuclear warhead uranium) and so on.
(political)Discourse/Decision making