Order The Conference Volume Innovation and Creativity in a Complex World
By Cynthia G Wagner; Rick Docksai; Aaron M Cohen
Attendees at the World Future Society's 2009 annual conference in Chicago learned new ways to understand and manage complexity.
Those who fear that we will leave the future in worse shape for the next generation, take comfort: The kids are not just all right - they've got it right, and about quite a lot of things.
For the first time, the younger generation is an authority over older generations, said Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital. The Net generation (aka the echo boom, Generation Y, or millennials) are now "lapping" their parents on the "information track," he told the 850 attendees of the World Future Society's annual meeting, WorldFuture 2009: Innovation and Creativity in a Complex World, held in Chicago July 17- 19.
But if we want to help the Net generation succeed, Tapscott said, our institutions are doing everything wrong. "We do the opposite of what we should," he said, because "we fear what we don't understand." The negative view that society has of this generation now coming of age is not supported by the data.
For instance, the Net generation isn't reading newspapers or books at the rates that their parents and grandparents do, but that does not mean they are less informed. Tapscott quoted one young woman who said that, rather than reading a printed newspaper that only comes out once a day, she likes to "triangulate" the news by subscribing to 60 RSS feeds so that she can form her own opinions. Accused of only getting her news from the Comedy Central program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she replied, "The Daily Show is only funny if you know the news."
One of the things that institutions do wrong for the Net generation is to ban their tools, Tapscott warned. Social networking enables young people to learn in more collaborative ways and to become more engaged in tasks: They feel that working and learning are the same thing, and they get more out of it when it's social, entertaining, and fun. So Tapscott advised teachers to abandon the "drill and kill, sage on a stage" model of pedagogy, and managers to give workers license to self-organize, then give them the feedback that they need and want to get better.
David Pearce Snyder of the Snyder Family Enterprise focused on the role of education in preparing today's students for tomorrow's world. He argued that most of today's adults are ill-equipped to deal with complex decision making and that most of today's schools are failing to provide tomorrow's adults with "complexipacity" - the cognitive skills necessary for dealing with complexity, including systemic thinking, creativity, collaboration, problem solving, contextual learning, and cyber literacy.
Resistance to teaching beyond "core knowledge" is strong, Snyder noted, as it takes away from history, literature, and other subjects that represent (to the traditionalist's mind) a quality education. "But this silo thinking is what the researchers were saying is why adults can't deal with complex situations. So it's going to be a trick reinventing education," he said.
Resistance to new technologies also can be strong, often to the detriment of a business, said futurist consultant Michael Zey. Traveling salesmen, for instance, couldn't be convinced of the benefits of the first car phones. "They said the car was the only place they could get away from it all. The car phone was intrusive," he noted.
"Think in terms of the big picture - globally and holistically," Zey advised. Technology will continue to expand and population will continue to increase. The United States will have 400 million people by 2050, so technology has to serve that growing population.
Leading for Change
Certainly, hope is not lost for grownups, and futurists offered a wealth of ideas for honing "complexipacity" skills in fields ranging from law enforcement to health care.
In a global environment of weakened nation-states, citizens' overreliance on the government for help leaves them less capable of handling their own problems, said Bud Levin, commander of the Policy and Planning Bureau, Waynesboro (West Virginia) Police Department. For example, local police systems are rapidly overwhelmed when citizens call 911 for minor problems, so "whatever disaster may arise, [be it] terrorism or gangs, will overwhelm police," he warned.
Police departments must start "viewing policing as comprehensive community-building," Levin said, and help communities "focus on parenting and family building." Families have become broken because governments have taken over too many family functions, he said. Future leadership will come from the communities, so we need to build up their self-reliance.
"Remember, we're public servants, not in the business of running lives," he said.
Another challenge to institutions is to overcome resistance to foresight and creativity. As futures educator Peter Bishop of the University of Houston noted, government needs foresight to "increase good, decrease harm"; government leaders are accountable to citizens: If they fail, the public can vote them out of office.
The downside of this accountability is that it "makes government decision makers more cautious," Bishop said. "There are more-frequent public tests on their decisions, and they're not allowed to have significant failures." When failures are averted and crises avoided, the decision makers get very little credit for it, while people who fix the problems created by disasters often do get credit.
"Foresight is difficult; it is strongly resisted because there are risks when [decision makers] use it," Bishop noted. "There are disincentives."
Creativity-studies specialist Marci Segal, president of Creativityland Inc., offered leaders practical advice for breaking those kinds of disincentives for innovative thinking.
"There was a long-standing bias against creativity as 'nutso,' but in the Sixties it began to be looked at as a mental skill," Segal observed. Yet, obstacles to creative thinking remain, and for much the same reason that obstacles to foresight persist, as Bishop pointed out.
"Remember Pandora?" Segal prodded attendees. "'Out-of-the-box thinking' is a bad archetype for creativity." No wonder we become insecure when we are told we think out of the box.
She also pointed to Prometheus, punished for stealing fire, and to Icarus when he flew too close to the sun as mythic warnings against creativity. So how do we overcome the fear of creative thinking?
Segal recommended giving the "Icaruses" of the organization places for "soft landings" for their ideas. Defer judgment of any ideas brought up in a brainstorming session in order to keep ideas flowing, then play "Angel's Advocate" for a new idea by first listing three good things about it. After that, you can address any concerns and what can be done about them.
You Could Be Better Than You Are and So Could Your Kids
Reproductive technologies that enable us to produce perfect kids may be inevitable, and in fact may become the norm, said bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania. "Within 20 to 25 years, there will be billboards proclaiming that responsible mothers won't do it the old-fashioned way," he predicted. Such messages will reinforce the idea that "the responsible way to go is the controlled way" through the use of artificial wombs and genetic enhancements.
Caplan pointed out that arguments against technologies to create "perfect" babies - such as the risk of homogenization, the unfair advantages for the rich, and the treatment of children as objects - are social objections that not only won't stop the technologies from coming, but would still be objections in society even without the technologies. Unfairness is always unfair.
As the technologies advance, moreover, arguments in the abortion debate, such as the issue of viability, will disappear with the advent of artificial wombs. But Caplan warned that we should be careful about overturning abortion rights because throwing out the fundamental right to privacy could give government the perogative to mandate child creation, or even put pressure on parents to perfect their children or to have certain types of children.
Slow, cautious consideration of the consequences of these new technologies will thus be needed, but it won't stop the technologies from coming, Caplan concluded.
Whether we'll change young people in the future or not, it is clear that young people themselves will change the future. One way to do that is to make education more entrepreneurial, argued recent highschool graduate Max Marmer, an intern with the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.
"Why doesn't our education system nurture the innovative spirit and leadership traits necessary for changemaking in the twenty-first century? Because it is a legacy of the industrial era that was designed to stamp these traits out," Marmer said, arguing that success will require us to flip the education paradigm on its head.
"Instead of filling our heads with knowledge for 15 years, we should want to do something first, of tangible value to the real world, and then learn the skills necessary to do it," he said. "Learning skills on an as-needed basis fosters deeper understanding and greater motivation because it furthers a goal you care about. This also answers the ubiquitous question heard from students, 'Why am I learning this?'"
Walking his talk on the concept of life entrepreneurship, Marmer introduced his startup organization, Force For the Future, whose mission is to "get more young people on this entrepreneurial path and accelerate the learning curve and impact by providing them with foresight, skills, connections, and a support network of peers, mentors, and organizations." It is not enough to want to change the world, he argued; there must be learning environments that allow this to take place.
"Every young person can change the world, and our future depends on our collective ability to do so," said Marmer.
[Sidebar]
Fighting Poverty with Marketing
Antipoverty programs are taking more-personalized approaches, according to Philip Kotler, Northwestern University professor of international marketing. He discussed the trend of "social marketing," which promotes positive behaviors - eating better, smoking less, pursuing education, etc. - by selecting target groups and crafting messages specifically for them, instead of broadcasting generic messages to society at large.
"We don't think a mass-message, Coca Cola approach - 'Coca Cola is good, everybody should drink Coca Cola' - would work," he said.
As a case study, Kotler described how the Romanian government used social marketing for its "Among Us Women" campaign in 2002, in conjunction with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The campaign aimed to encourage contraceptive use among female factory workers. It noted that the target population suffered from a lack of education about contraception.
"They thought that birth-control pills caused facial hair and cancer, two things that obviously none of them wanted," Kotler noted.
The program hired health counselors to go to the factories and speak to assemblies of women about how they could safely use birth-control treatments to prevent too many births. Birth-control use increased substantially, as did the rates of babies born healthy.
The social-marketing strategy also succeeded in lowering resistance among Malawi's farmers to using chemical fertilizers and high-yield seeds. Starting in 2005, USAID and the Malawi government jointly brought farmers together in focus groups to tell them about the benefits of these agricultural enhancements and to dispel misinformation. Farmers listened and achieved record-breaking harvests in 2006 and 2007.
- Rick Docksai
Technology and the Economy
The current recession is not just an economic crisis - it's also a punctuation mark, argued Menno van Doorn of the Research Institute of Sogeti, Amsterdam. The industrial model has come to an end, thanks to the digital technology revolution, which is profoundly changing every institution.
Van Doorn proposed that information technology is not only a cause but also the solution to the global economic crisis, and urged businesses to change their organizational structures in order to stay relevant and be successful in the global economy. For example, harnessing the interactive, collaborative nature of the Internet will enable them to connect better with their customers.
Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, listed a few key public policy principles for driving prosperity in the digital age: looking to digital progress as the key driver of improved quality of life and productivity, actively encouraging the digital transformation of economic sectors, and supporting public-private partnerships to build digital platforms.
Atkinson warned that policy makers should "do no harm" to the digital engine of growth. For example, they should avoid regulatory restrictions, protect intellectual property, and reduce protections for incumbents against digital innovators.
- Aaron M. Cohen
The Future of China
The Internet has had a positive impact on China by creating a more open society and giving citizens a greater voice in their own country, said Ting Xu, senior project manager for the Global Project, Bertelsmann Foundation. Currently, there are 300 million Internet users in China, and as time passes, this number will grow exponentially.
On the other hand, she said, China's rapid development has created disruptions, such as greater income disparity. Very little exists in terms of health care or pensions for the rural workforce, for instance, and rural- to-urban migration is at an estimated 30 million per year.
Gender imbalance is another potential driver of social tensions: By 2030, approximately 30 million Chinese men will be unable to find wives.
Futurist consultant John Cashman of Social Technologies reported that the massive transitions occurring simultaneously across all of the different sectors (social, economic, political, technological, etc.) have created an unusual dichotomy: China is now both a developing country and a world power. As a world power, the country has joined the WTO and wants to be accepted by the rest of the world. Yet, China is still learning the rules of the game and, as a developing country, needs time to learn them.
Cashman forecast that the growing middle class, generally more educated and worldly than in previous generations, will be much more influential at the grassroots level, pressuring the government to change domestic and international policy. They will be more effective at promoting positive change in China.
- Aaron M. Cohen
Energy Wild Cards
Two "energy wild cards" - the commercialization of nuclear fusion energy and cars that run without fuel - could result in improved health, but also in economic and political upheaval, said Francis Stabler, principal of Future Tech LLC.
Deuterium, a form of hydrogen that is abundant in ocean water, is very conducive to fusion reactions, according to Stabler. If a breakthrough occurs in harnessing deuterium and using it to generate fusion energy, nuclear fusion might soon displace fossil fuels and nuclear fission. Fusion-plant construction would boom, as would refurbishment of existing nuclear-fission and fossil-fuelpowered plants into plants that generate fusion energy. Within 40 years, most of the world's power plants would be fusion-based.
"China is currently bringing online one coal plant every week. They could switch over to building fusion plants at that same rate because they need the additional power," said Stabler.
Gas stations could practically disappear if the second wild card occurs. Stabler envisions car engines powered by energy modules that generate either zero-point energy, which draws energy out of a vacuum, or low energy nuclear reactions, which merge neutrons with atoms at low speeds to produce radiation-free fusion energy. Unlike combustible fuel, which vehicle owners have to refill once every few days, these modules might only need "refilling" once every three to four years.
In the short term, the combination of nuclear fusion and fuel-free cars would lead to serious economic trouble for countries whose economies depend on exports of oil and natural gas - Bolivia, Canada, Russia, Venezuela, and most of the Middle East. The hardships might lead to political upheavals and more incidents of terrorism.
- Rick Docksai
Infotech's Impacts on Communication
Information technology's expansion could potentially impact our communication in very different ways: either making us more insulated or making us more integrated, according to Les Gottesman, chair of the Department of English and Communications at Golden Gate University.
On the one hand, information technology allows users to project their own ideas onscreen without anyone challenging them or offering different ideas. Computers, unlike people, do not argue.
"These compliant inputs do not interrogate the inquirer. The customer - i.e., user - is always right," Gottesman said. In extreme cases, users could become literally lost in their own thoughts.
"Atomized, insulated virtual worlds become insulated physical worlds in which the receptors allow us to insulate ourselves and ignore the needs of real people," he said.
On the other hand, if information technology facilitates conversations, then it will bring more users into contact with other points of view.
"However technology develops, whatever mediations it is modeled on, face-to-face conversation can be expanded greatly by information technology and increased on a global basis," he said. More conversation would lead to people who exercise more critical thinking and greater acceptance of other points of view.
"Critical thinking is a process of coming to an understanding. Not necessarily an agreement, but an understanding of where you agree, where you disagree, and why," Gottesman said. "Only in conversation, only in confrontation with another 's thought that could dwell with us, can we hope to go beyond the limits of our present horizons."
- Rick Docksai
Education for a New Age
Expectations for schools and teachers are only going to get higher, according to Gary Marx, president of the Center for Public Outreach. Schools have always taught math, reading, and writing, but curricula needs to broaden to include new subjects: interpersonal skills, information accessing, media literacy, self-discipline, responsibility, and use of computers and other technologies.
He also encouraged teachers to move toward more "active learning," such as group exercises, class discussions, and other exercises that allow the students to interact with the course material.
"Students need to know that they are part of the process. They are not just subjects," said Marx.
He gave the example of Project Citizen, a program in Senegalese schools in which students gather in groups, identify issues in their communities that need to be addressed, and develop action plans to resolve them. One group lived in a community where residents suffered from waterborne diseases. The students researched diseases and water systems, then met with the adults - their parents, the rural administrator, the imam at the mosque, and the head of a rice growers' association - and launched with them a campaign to educate people about the water. Together, the adults and students organized a massive demonstration that drew crowds from communities across the region.
"The older people were saying, 'This is the way it's always been, this is the way it is, this is the way it will always be.' The kids said, 'This is the way it's always been, this is the way it is, this is the way it could be in the future,'" Marx said. - Rick Docksai
Tweeting the Future
The World Future Society's Twitter page enabled conference attendees to report on their impressions of live events - and gave interested readers from around the world an insider's view of the two and a half days of activities.
Here are a few tweets (140-character postings) collected in the WorldFuture09 feed:
@RielM: In Chicago, at #wfs, yesterday taught a course on Jumpstarting the Future, today workshop on future of telepresence
@justinadams: Tapscott gave a great talk to open the conf RT @dtapscott: http://twitpic.com/apgnq - On stage for #WFS opening Keynote
@dtapscott: http://twitpic.com/ar6tc - Booksigning at World Future Society in Chicago
@jenjarratt: Driver of bus back to hotel last night was full of questions about #WFS & ... the future
@ann_feeney: Whether or not you can attend WFS this year, do follow @WorldFuture09 for good, fast notes. Does @WorldFuture09 sleep?
@moravec: ... my "A new paradigm of knowledge production in higher education" article from 2008: http://bit.ly/12UDfv
@WorldFuture09: recommend checking out @busynessgirl's blow-by-blow tweeting from today's sessions @worldfuture09! #wfs #wfs09
@fstop23: Listening to Ted Gordon at #wfs re Probing the Unknowable. Basically, forecasting tends to miss the really big developments
@robspohr: I'm at the #wfs conference in Chicago. They say that by 2020 the computer will have more power than the human brain!
@jdean3: ... great day at #wfs. boys had mixed reviews but look forward to tomorrows sessions. Hard part is limiting book buy to 10
@jenjarratt: #wfs "The future is affinity nations." - Ann Feeney
@jenjarratt: We are all global. How do you govern nationally in a global system? - Joan Foltz, #wfs
@ann_feeney: Teens at #wfs include some of the most thoughtful, creative minds. When looking for hope at sessions, look at audience, too
@busynessgirl: Death to bullet points, enlarge the images, don't write it if you're going to read it to us. Depth not breadth.... #wfs
@jdean3: Terrific final day of #wfs conf. Best session was GrrRank. [Editor's note: Speaker was David Pearce Snyder.] Alex & Nate loved it. Purchased 10 books, too!
@TweetJRmail: Blog post on #wfs09: Notes for July 18. http://tinyurl.com/ljr3cn
@GreenJAV: On the last day of the #wfs conference. Lunch keynote was the scariest talk I have heard, on bioviolence. [Editor's note: Speaker was Barry Kellman.]
@gillysalmon: World Futures conference was very mixed, and largely US not world
@Kjowcatalead: Working the #wfs Conf in Chicago. My favorite part is the global rep & interacting with people that are not like me.
@jenjarratt: Great time ... w/ futurist friends See ya next yr, I hope!
- Compiled by C. G. Wagner