Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
To answer Ted's question first. They mainly choose us. Either we are
recommended by satisfied clients or our new clients hear us speak at
conferences and obviously like our approach. We always try to make our
presentations very visual and provocative.
Without really wanting to get into a discussion about alchemy in this
context, although I am happy to do so, but it might take us into
directions of magick, thelema, the philosopher's stone and a number of
subjects about which I have an interest, but absolutely no involvement,
I do think that on a superficial level the term has legs. I'd love to
be able to turn an ailing mature company into future gold, by
futureproofing it in such a way that it is immortal. Oh, I just
realized that is what we do!!

I do believe that futurists can shape the direction the future takes
to a greater extent. I dxo believe we help create the future (in our
little way). That is what the future potential business is
fundamentally about. We are concerned with creating future
opportunities that our clients would not otherwise think about and to
develop startegies that take them there. That is the simplistic view,
but there is a great deal of truth in it. If you get enough people to
believe in and follow your recommended course and agree that it is the
preferred future, then they will make it happen. I have seen it happen
numerous times. By the way, I believe in the recommendations we make
with a passion. A good test is to ask yourself at the appropriate
moment:"would you invest $100 million (or a suitable figure) in this
future." 
On the other hand as we see from certain global political situations,
that  governments' preferred futures can be difficult, if not
impossible to achieve, if ideology or arogance are the principal or
only drivers. The same can be said of companies, such as Levis who at a
certain point believe they are indestructable and do not believe in
the possibility of discontinuity.
Even if we cannot fully create a finite future, we can definitely help
shape its direction. But we need a trusting audience with the desire
to make it work.
  

    
Wayne. What do you think?
  

    
 <But we need a trusting audience with the desire
to make it work.>  Sounds like church.

Derek, re: 51, you have such a great sense of humor, while being
serious to the extreme. I love it.
  

    
Since you feel, then, that futurists can shape the direction the future
takes to some degree, do you feel a responsibility for getting certain
desirably outcomes?

Have you ever been in a situation where the future you'd like to see for a
client (in the normative sense) didn't match the future they felt more
attuned to?
  

    
Tagging to #54, have you ever intentionally 'moved' or 'nudged' future
landscapes as they have developed or do you just release it all once
you are done with the client, or is there a built in follow-up and
modification process involved?
  

    
Jamais. I do feel a strong responsibility when it comes to
recommending preferred futures that I believe are both in the best
interest of the client and society, within the limitations of that
specific project. This is particularly true when it comes to projects
that impact societal or behavioral change more directly and
universally, as opposed to creating a new product simply to grow
consumption and the company's future profits. The latter of course has
its merits. I have worked on a few projects where our projected future
and implementation plan, simply served as a means for the client to ask
a higher price for the company. 24 times earnings instead of the 16
times, the company expected without the benefits of a future vision and
value. I somehow felt cheated, but the clients were ecstatic.

Equally, we have an element within our scenario evaluation process
labled GF (gut feel). It was introduced, so that we could better
understand or get a feeling for how the client emotionally feels about
a certain scenario, beyond the rational. It is part of what I wrote
about in the Diamanda piece, "When body meets Soul." Clearly, there are
times, albeit rarely, when we feel a certain scenario would from our
point of view, create a greater level of change and impact, but where
the client (at least the personnel on the project) feel uncomfortable
with their ability to make that particular scenario a reality. It is
sometimes a timing issue, but if they feel in the guts that a
particular scenario is not right, our experience is that the likelihood
of it actually being implemented is significantly reduced. So we park
it and it will likely appear in our final recommendations (should we
feel that strongly about it) as a scenario they give future
consideration to a later stage. However, I think that the scenario
eventually gets lost as they focus comprehensively on the scenario(s)
that we ultimately agreed with the client was the best route to a
successful future.

It is strange that I really do believe we can shape the future, but
then I picked up Robert Wright's book Non Zero a few days ago (after
some 9 months since my first reading) and starting thinking about his
premise that cultural evolutionism is the "psychic unity of humankind"
and his assertion that it is a misconception that change is guided by
farsighted reason and that cultural evolution has evolved little
advanced planning. 

At The Futures Lab, we often discuss and are deeply aware that where a
scenario we have created involves a high degree of human behavioral
change that adoption will be slower and that the chance of the scenario
succeeding is severely reduced. That is why a "revolutionary future"
requires a high level of evolutionary implementation and continuing
elements of familiarity to make it work. That is why the transition
plan embraced within our "Rolling back the future" is critical. It is
probably the reason I believe that companies and institutions should
plan for change well in advance, so that they can understand and
leverage cultural change and all the other influences and influencers. 

Ted. As I mentioned earlier in the discussion, we try to maintain
strong long-term relationships with our clients and in some cases have
completed multiple assignments, which has allowed us to remain involved
with earlier projects. To my mind, we have not found a successful
method that will enable us to undertake reviews throughout the
implementation process, that is why in the "Rolling back the future" it
is important that a high degree of flexibility is embedded to enable
the client to make modifications as necessary. I have been giving
consideration on how to keep involved and be paid for doing so, but
have usually found that with large organizations (which make up the
bulk of our business), the scenario(s) subsequently moves through an
robust internal process and structure and that in fact, in most cases,
our clients are very skilled at that part and do a good job at
interpreting the scenario in ways that give it a better than even
chance of success.

The short answer is we tend to hand off the preferred future to the
client at the end of the six stage process and occasionally are either
involved or able to continue to influence the implementation. This is
an area that is on our "could do better list."
  

    
One interesting point of divergence between your process and scenario work
from other groups is the emphasis on a "preferred future" (aka "normative
future"). GBN (again, I use them because I'm most familiar with their
processes) explicitly avoids coming up with a normative future, instead
preferring to come up with a set of divergent futures against which an
organization can plan. I suppose the difference is philosophical: on the one
hand, the FL approach says that "you control the shape of your future" (I
paraphrase, of course); on the other, the GBN approach says that "you plan
your future in an environment you can't fully control."

It seems to me that the FL approach can lead to happier outcomes, but the
GBN approach is more useful when things don't go as hoped.

How does FL (and your clients) handle extended engagements when it becomes
clear that the preferred scenario is simply not possible to achieve?
  

    
I'm sorry that I haven't been able to participate in this discussion
until now - it's quite interesting and fun.  And I'm only part way
through your book but I'm enjoying that also.

I'd like to start off with a couple of points/questions revolving
around a couple of tension points.  Two conficts or tension points that
have come up already are the conflict between advocacy and good
science, on the one hand, and ethical conflicts with clients.

Futurism seems to attract both people who are trying primarily to
change the future of the world and those who are trying to understand
the present and extend that understanding into the future.  The field
seems big enough to handle both, although judging by some of the WFS
conferences I used to attend, they often don't speak to each other all
that much (probably the different languages they utilize).

However, there does seem to be a conflict -- when you have a strongly
held view of a preferred future, how do you overcome the natural  bias
toward seeing the "evidence" that supports the judgment that that
future is what the client should aim for?  For example, your method
seems to focus on "revolutionary" futures but how do you deal with the
situation where what is called for is simply some simple efficiencies
-- not as exciting as revolutions but often what the client really
needs?

To put it another way, there seems to often be a conflict between
wanting to change the world and wanting to understand the world (both
the present world and the future world).  I'd like to hear your
thoughts on that conflict and how you typically deal with it.

Secondly, I guess I have a hard time believing that none of your
clients had some group that felt they were, if not part of an axis of
evil, at least engaged in something that raised ethical concerns.  Some
are easy like turning down a consulting gig with Phillip Morris, but
there are lot's of grey areas too.  Oil companies are one example where
only looking at futures with which you agree might be harmful to your
client.  Avoiding that situation by not taking on the client is one
option, but I wonder about cases where it is not as obvious.  Shouldn't
the needs of a client take precedence over your vision of the future?
  

    
It's an interesting observation Jamais. To be honest with you, I've
never thought of the futures work that we do as being normative, though
by your definition (i.e. preferred futures), I suppose it is.

My exposure to, and experience with, a lot of normative futures work
is that the big picture is so *big*, that achieving that preferred
future is, while not being impossible, somewhat problematic. By this I
mean they require serious time and effort, the quantities of which the
typical corporate entity is unlikely to invest in.
 
Because the time horizons that we typically work within (5-10 years)
are relatively short and the scope of our projects somewhat narrow
(e.g. the future of Client X and not the future of energy), I have
adjudged what we do as applied futures. 

One of the main distinctions that I make as to our work is that we
plan for opportunity as opposed to planning for contingency. Put
differently, we take a "this is what we will do" approach rather than a
"this is what we could / might do" line. One is proactive, the other
reactive with the benefit of foresight.

To use futures-speak, in a way we endeavor to fuse 'managing the
future' with 'envisioning the future'. The sort of preferred futures
that we develop with our clients are very directional, and as a result,
able to be implemented.

Because they are preferred does not mean the scenarios are fixed. We
are the first to say that they should be kept dynamic and fluid, open
to change and interpretation. I think Derek alluded to this when he
spoke of the importance of the "Rolling Back the Future" phase of our
process.

In answering your question, we have been faced with scenarios that
appear to be too big of an idea, and in aggreeance with the client,
have parked these for reappraisal at another time. There have been
other occasions where the preferred scenario, whilst not necessarily
failing in its execution, has undelivered. These instances have
reflected a half-hearted, 'lets wait and see' approach on the part of
the client. 

Derek likes to talk about 'courage over comfort' which reflects the
proactive, 'make the future happen' mindset that we enter into with our
clients. We invest a good deal of ourselves into the scenarios and I
suppose that the expectation is that our clients do likewise. That
said, we don't plan to fail - but then we wouldn't be good futurists if
we didn't hold this as being one of the possible futures that we face.
  

    
Derek, as we are nearing the end of your 'official' public
conversation, I have a few questions for your consideration. Feel free
to ignore them if they seem inappropriate to the thread.

Regarding FutureFabbing, would you talk a bit about the possibilities
that opened once you 'merged' (ala Rudy Rucker)the internet with a
fabbing machine?

Also would you comment on Terrence McKenna and Sasha and Ann Shulgin's
influence on your perceptions of future frequencies and the world
culture at large?

And, finally, would you speak to 'plus4+++' (bliss) states as they
relate to the conscious awarenesses and integration of internal and
external perceived worlds achieved during Samadhi and how that
reinforces and guides your work.

I may not be able to get back to this by the time it ends. You guys
are marvelous. Keep up the good work and beams to you and yours. Excuse
me while I bump it up to a global and cosmic vision. Thank you, derek,
wayne and jamais for your refreshing candor and willingness to put
this in the public record. Blessings.

Hogwart's is calling.
  

    
I think Tom is definitely onto something in #58 -- there is a fundamental
difference between futurists who seek to shape the future and futurists who
seek to understand it. I don't think I'd characterize it as
proactive/reactive, however; there are plenty of examples of organizations
using an "understand the world" model to identify possible opportunities.
Rather, I'd characterize it as a distinction between atomistic and systemic:
the "shape the future" approach highlights the power a single actor (person
or organization) has to direct outcomes; the "understand the future"
approach highlights the ecosystem in which the actor lives. It seems to me
that a good futurist/scenario engagement will have a little of both -- what
the balance is, of course, will depend on the dispositions of both the
client and the practitioners.

Ted is right, though: we're reaching the last days of the official part of
the conversation. Taking his cue, it might be interesting to talk for a moment 
not as futurist consultants, but as futurist thinkers. Let's talk about the 
future.

What do you think will be the big forces at play over the next 10 years? Have 
you seen glimpses of technologies or movements or ideas which are seeds now, but 
will almost certainly be important a few years down the road? How do you expect 
people in the US to live (and work and play) in 2015?

I'm not asking for predictions -- that's not the game we're in -- but 
possibilities.
  

    
Yes Jamais, I like your atomistic and systemic description and affirm
the need for balance of the two - an entity that is able to identify
and influence the leverage points in a system has the potential to
bring about significant change. Of course we could digress, but...

As far as forces at play go, I'll get the ball rolling with what I
have called "Small Comfort" (it's a bad name but I'm working on that).
By this I mean, a comfort level with that which we cannot see. DNA has
become common parlance, in no small way (no pun intended) due to the
proliferation of CSI-type TV shows. It will be interesting to see how
other aspects of tiny-life are revealed to the masses.

Subsequent to this will be an appreciation for, and then
implementation of, the micro. In many ways I like Bruce Sterling's (in
"Tomorrow Now") illustration of how:  "Sterility is what people need
when they don't know what's happening on a microbial level... sterility
is a confession of ignorance." 

This will certainly change our definitions of what we mean by 'clean'.


Another anyone?
  

    
2015, at the age of 68, I am part of the growing working population
over the age of 60, which now represents nearly 20% of the workforce. I
am so happy, especially in the knowledge that my SS is linked to the
Chinese economy.  I feel healthier, fitter and more beautiful than
ever, just because I  have been following Ray Kurzweil's healthy living
program for 10 years (viz Fantastic Voyage). My life has been changed
forever by the advent of proactive computing and rapid advances in the
employment of adaptive, autonomous agents and second stage robots that
have made my daily life much easier, given that they are not only my
brilliant, low cost assistants, but unlike any human, I have yet to
meet, they interact and seem to understand me and anticipate my crazy
thought patterns, and cut through the chaos before it was even allowed
to build up. I have just married an agent that is obviously no longer
autonomous and so my virtual sex life is about to go down hill fast. My
home is not only fully converged, but having gone fully mobile 8 years
ago, I am not sure where it is, which is causing me great problems
with my smart card that has difficulty in keeping up with my
parameters, especially as a large part of my body has been replaced by
"machines". 
The 4 ft OLED screens in my bedroom (or is it the bathroom, office,
media room - I can never tell the difference) is a freeby from
Universal Displays that I received as a reward fot talking about them
so much at the beginning of the last decade. Not only does it interact
with my 4D reactor that just flooded the room with blood during the
showing of Kill Bill 10, but also makes me feel like I live in paradise
or heaven (a place where I was told earlier I will never be accepted),
and gives me sensory experiences beyond Plus 4, so that I no longer
have internal or external worlds, they are one and I am one, except the
override on the embedded sensory enhancers has just failed and chaos
prevails yet again. To continue.
  

    
Actually, you died in 2010 in the Great Ebola Outbreak!
  

    
Not if I play my "wiildcards" right!
  

    
So as not to hog the space (actually I already have), I'll get Wayne
to answer Ted's question on fabbing. I would like to respond however,
to his questions about the influence of McKenna and the Shulgins and
Plus 4 -bliss.

In Future Frequencies, I draw upon my in-person and virtual
conversations with Sasha and in particular his approach to
experimentation and its role in the future studies process.  I never
met Terence, although I was a long-time groupie. I first came across
him in the mid-70s through his book "The invisible landscape : mind,
hallucinogens, and the I Ching."  It was the first time I had really
taken much notice in the chemistry and mechanisms behind the influence
of hallucinogens on the phenomenology of consciousness. Up till then I
knew what it felt like, but I didn't really care why. I was fascinated
by his arguments on the space-time continuum. Later as I ploughed
through amongst others, "Food of the Gods" and "The Archaic Revival"
the space aspect became more meaningful to me in particular  his piece
about "the human imagination being the dimension beyond space and time,
or it preceding all dimensions' together with his thoughts on the
collapse of the distinction between inner and outer space. It made me
want to pursue the outer limits of my imagination, to open up my
consciousness and thinking universe. As Terence said: "The future of
the human race lies in the exploration and making  explicit of the
contents of the human imagination." It underpins our "Think the
Unthinkable" stance, which is a critical aspect of our approach. 

I came back to McKenna in the latter part of the 90's, before his
death, through the work of my good friend, filmmaker Ken Adams, whose
films "Alien Dreamtime" and Strange Attractor both featured Terence
McKenna (see the piece in the book, titled An excursion into the
Overmind.) Imagination, energy and fantasy are what makes our work
"tuned in" as Timothy Leary would say. He added "Tuned in means going
far, going far means returning to the harmony." To achieve his
"thousand-petalled lotus of light" (the Crown Chakra).

Sasha Shulgin has inspired me in a very different way. I had known of
his work for a while before "Pihkal" and "Tihkal" and we communicated
virtually and then first met at the first Psychoactivity Conference in
Amsterdam in 1998 (there have now been three) - which marked my first
introduction to ayahuasca. (check out the book of the same name, edited
by Ralph Metzner, if you haven't already). In addition to the
experimentation aspect and my general interest in psychedelic
biochemistry, Shulgin has had the most impact on my thinking, in terms
of exploration, experiences, connection and vision. He inspires the
somewhat softer, more intimate, natural, spiritual side of me, one that
too few people see. As an extrovert pleasure-seeker, I tend to
demonstrate the wilder side, but I need the balance to really to
harmonize my thinking, to transcend the chaos. (sounds like bullshit,
but it is how I feel about it - maybe not a pretty side, but I love
baying at the horizon naked, a feeling of being effortlessly at home in
my body and easily and fully present, which leaves a distinctive
afterglow.)

It is difficult to decide whether i ever experienced true bliss in the
Shulgin sense, which he calls omnipotent and timeless states. If it is
Samadhi - a direct union with ultimate reality, allowing the
dissolving of the ego and the achievement of the state of bliss or
divine transformation, I'm not there yet. As it states in Tihkal, if
somehow (I think drugs were mentioned) a plus four state was produced
in all humans, it would signal the ultimate evolution and perhaps the
end of the human experiment. Who needs singularity! Obviously one man's
bliss is another man's poison!
  

    
Well, it's about time (Jax). How about your serious thoughts, I would
be interested to read them.

It's 2015, I am 68, actively retired (we are still calling it work),
my golf handicap is now -4 and I am playing real tennis on the world
Court Tennis circuit and hobnobbing and clubbing at all the '19th
holes' around the beautiful, viridian-designed, sustainably energized
blue marble. I have several virtual DVD's on the Virgin Digital Network
and a comedy show beamed from the Satellite dish on my baseball cap as
I hike around the world. I am digitally connected, cashless,
ecstatically happy and no longer use or look at computer screens. My
voice is my command key. And my voice and various personalities are all
protected under a Creative Commons license. I am my own iconograph, my
logo is me in all my human totality and potentiality and I enjoy
interactive collaboration with all like-minded souls around the
universe. Life is good, my grandchildren are financially secure, my
nuclear family is functional and involved in globally progressive
endeavors, my extended family is the world and I am a happy camper.

I am the Director of Misanthropes Were Us and currently on the Boards
of IconoBusters and Myths R Us. Simultaneous Synchronicity is a way of
life and I am at 'plus 4' most of the time. Occassionally I do
something productive, but mostly I just enjoy being.
  

    
(jax), sorry about that, I think it should be all caps like the
airport.
  

    
I believe today is the last official day for this conversation,
although I am happy to see it continue. I'd like to know from those who
have read the book what they think and their thoughts on this
discussion. I have really enjoyed the questions and more are welcome.
When I began to write Future Frequencies, I found the task of
explaining about how I think quite demanding and complex. It is
sometimes difficult to articulate, but hopefully we have answered your
questions helpfully. Should you wish to pursue a further conversation
with me on any subject for which you think I may have the capacity,
please do not hesitate to contact me at dwoodgate@futures-lab.com.
Otherwise, let's make this day fun.
  

    
It's true that today is the last official day, but you always have the
option to continue as long as you'd like. Meanwhile we want to thank you
guys for a truly illuminating discussion of professional futurism!
  

    
Thanks Jon. I am happy for it to continue.
  

    
This has been ultimate fun and thought provoking at the most cosmic
levels. You guys are just simply the bomb. My son, the budding rock
star, would say this conversation has been "in the pocket". Beams and
all the best. I sure hope this continues on. I would still like to talk
a bit about Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future, a bit about
Kurtzweiler's Spiritual Machines, the WFS and all things synchronistic.


Specifically, Derek, you alluded to the merge affected from the
technological use of computers, software and the processes you have
developed at FutureLabs. What new things are you learning from that and
what possibilities are on the horizon as it relates to the ways you go
about FutureFabbing?
  

    
Also, before I launch into my fun-filled jam-packed weekend in NYC,
have you guys given any thoughts to how your processes might be used in
the emerging social interactive platforms for online communities now
being developed?
  

    
Derek, Wayne -- and everyone reading and asking questions -- thank you!

As for what I think 2015 might look like... I think I covered that best in a
character narrative I wrote for GBN last year. Here it is:

Name: Ken Sakai
Age: 22
Occupation and Location: Environmental design consultant, San Diego,
California

The ten-year-old Honda hybrid runs well enough, but Ken is beginning to
think he may need to finally break down and buy a new car, one of those
hydrogen ones (a "HindenCar," his mom said, before she bought one last year)
since everyone says it's the wave of the future and the future is now and
all those other clichés that creep up on you until you realize they're true
and anyway he saw a gas station that only sold hydrogen yesterday (hydrogen
is a gas, right? So he can keep calling them "gas stations," right?) and
even though he's only 22 he's amazed at how fast things change, sometimes.

He has his hiptop stuck on the dashboard with one of those sticky pads that
doesn't leave a residue so that he can see the messages that pop up and
scroll by and the random snaps of images and video his phone pulls from the
web as idle entertainment and just, you know, to let him keep an eye on
things, even though he's never really been into that whole "sousveillance"
thing (he wonders how long that term's been around, since "surveillance"
means "oversight," or "watch from above," and "sousveillance" means "watch
from below," so that whole everybody-watches-everybody's back thing wasn't a
big deal when he was a kid so it probably hasn't been around for too long).

Ken is late again for a meeting with the design team and he's more than a
little annoyed that they want to do these things in-person, even though he
could just as easily view the mockups over video and has to have his hiptop
to see their changes to his schematics anyway so why don't they just do it
over the web like civilized people, except they're all older and probably
like the whole "personal touch" thing that seems like more of an excuse to
waste time talking and eating bagels and don't they realize that he's a busy
busy guy with a ton of work to do for a dozen other clients and damnit was
that the exit?

He runs in, five minutes past ten, glad that his hiptop had already ID'd him
to the cameras at the gate so that they just waved him through and he didn't
have to stop to explain himself since he always hates talking to people
carrying guns and he suppresses a shudder, changing the subject in his head,
hoping that the meeting hasn't started yet but they always seem to run a bit
late, and he turns the corner to the glassed-in room and sees everyone
standing around the coffee and bagel cart and he relaxes, just a bit, and
says hi to the group.

They all sit down to start the meeting and Ken notices, immediately, who is
actually there and who is simply warming a seat, including the guy next to
him who seems to be taking careful notes of the conversation but is actually
playing some game, Darwin's Kingdom, looks like, he could never really get
into it because it wasn't violent enough but it's probably perfect for
meetings like this and Ken wonders if he'd start playing games in meetings
if he only worked at one place and always saw the same people every day,
even though Jina, across the table with the Apple HedZup wearable who seems
to really like his designs, is great to talk to and he could actually
imagine working in the same place as her for awhile.

It's Ken's turn to talk, to tell them about his own improvements to the
design, changing the material base to reduce monomer outgassing and also
reduce production costs, and he hopes the coffee kicks in soon because he
really needs to start thinking faster.