5 Centuries of the Future - Eamonn Kelly

8/9/2019 5 Centuries of the Future - Eamonn Kelly

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Five Centuriesof the Future

Eamonn Kelly

The Scottish Parliament Futures EventDecember 6, 2004

The Futures Event, held in the Scottish Parliament on December 6, 2004, was hosted by and

at the invitation of presiding officer George Reid MSP, with the assistance of the International

Futures Forum. The all-day session, attended by 150 invited participants, was held to consider

what it might take to make Scotland a leader in anticipating the future. Most of the discussion

took place in smaller groups in a variety of settings in the Parliament building, with a final

plenary discussion in the chamber itself. Eamonn Kelly, CEO and president of Global BusinessNetwork, gave the opening address, a warp-speed tour of five centuries of the future.


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GBN Global Business Network Five Centuries of the Future 1

Five Centuries of the Future

It is truly a great pleasure to be here. I have seldom expressed that sentiment with greater sincerity

than I am doing this morning. The quality of the people in the room is extraordinary. So many of

you have been fellow travelers with me on my journey over the last 12 years in trying to thinkbetter about the future; indeed, many of you have been guides to me, and I am deeply indebted. Its

a wonderful community to see assembled in this place, which is tremendously symbolic in itself.

Finally, the purpose of the eventthe initiative that the International Futures Forum and others

have been working on for a long timefeels to me a moment just ripe with opportunity. So its a

real pleasure and privilege to be here, and I genuinely look forward to spending today with you all.

I was asked to offer some reflections based on my experience of thinking longer term about the

future, in particular regarding the big picturethe main thing youd like people to be thinking

about. Thats a big, broad territory. The other thing I was asked to do was to be brief. This is a day

of dialogue and interaction, not of speeches. So I have been asked to constrain my comments about

this fairly infinite topic to about 20 minutes, and I commit to doing so. I will try to take this hugepictureeverything in the worlddown to some brief observations by reflecting on the three

major ways in which Ive changed my mind, my perspective, over the last 12 years of thinking

about the future.

The first way I have changed my mind is that I started out, like quite a lot of people in this room,

with a strong focus on the future of the economy. A lot of my work was about the emergence of a

new, intangible, post-industrial, knowledge (take your pick of the jargon) economy. I was very

concentrated on trying to figure out what sort of global knowledge economy we are going to be

working in and how Scotland would compete in that economy.

As Ive spent longer and longer working with the theme of the future, Ive become increasinglypersuaded that there are many other key issues. To invert Bill Clintons electoral mantra from 1992:

Its not just the economy, stupid. There really are a lot of other looming issues that require our

attention and concentration.

The second way in which Ive changed my mind is that I started out by thinking about the longer

term trends and whats going on in the world in order to create a better future for Scotland. But

increasingly Ive concluded, with the issues that are in play at the moment in the world, that its

important for Scotland to engage with the global conversation, not just to create a better Scotland.

Because I truly believe that Scotland has a role in creating a better world. Its a major shift in my

thinking in terms of the aspiration for a group of this sort. The world is in flux at the moment and

its going to be recast and reshaped in the coming decade or two. I truly believe that Scotland andthe Scots can play a significant role in helping to recast and reshape the future that we are all going

to exist in globally.

Finally, I used to think that insights into the future came from understanding the dynamics of

technology, demography, culture, politics, and economics. That was the way in which we could

figure out what the future was going to look like. In other words, as some of the speakers have


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already observed, dont try to drive the car by looking in the rearview mirror but by taking a fresh

look through the windshield. Ive really changed my thinking about that fairly significantly in the

last few years, because I increasingly found myself contending with issues where I really didnt

understand enough history to figure out where the future lay. I came to understand the fairly

obvious point that the futures roots are in the pastand that if we dont understand history then weare not going to understand how we got here in the first place or where we might be going in the

future. So I really started to pay more attention to

thinking backward, not to see the future through the

lens of the past but to understand the roots of the past

that will inform and help shape the future.

Bringing those things together, I want to share with

you in the remaining time a kind of warp-speed tour

of five centuries of the future.

Im going to start with the seventeenth

century, andthe issue from that century that I think we will be

dealing with in the twenty-first. In 1648, in the Treaty

ofWestphalia, we essentially invented the notion of

the nation state. In the twenty-firstcentury I thinkthe

nation state is becoming an increasingly meaningless

conceptyet its the only real formof government

we have in the world. If we look at whats happening

in Iraq right now, forexample, we are absolutely dedicated to retaining that nation with elections

for the wholenation. Nobody is talking about whether we could do elections in cities. Nobody is

talkingabout whether Iraq should be split into regions. Nobody is talking about anything other than

the nation state. It is completely locked into our consciousness as the form of government.

Yet we live in a global economy, in a world confronting the looming issues of climate change,

terrorism, infectious disease. Which one of these challenging issues conforms to national

boundaries? None of them. National boundaries have become increasingly meaningless in a

globalized world, yet our sole means of thinking about government still resides at the level of

national governance. Well, I think that is going to change. I think we are going to see the

emergence of nongovernmental forms of governanceof an important distinction between

government and governance. The role of corporations has already increased considerably. We are

also going to see the role of civil society increase significantly. I think the future of global

governance will have nation states, but it will also have a lot of other actors and a lot of new

instruments.

Scotland can play a role in all kinds of ways in being part of those instruments and part of those

communities that will emerge in the future. And lets face it, Scotland has a pretty unique

perspective on being, but not really being, a nation. Our relationship with nationhood has been

complex, sophisticated, and subtle, and we have something to teach the rest of the world about that.

I came to understand the fairly

obvious point that the futures roots

are in the past and that if we dont

understand history then we are not

going to understand how we got

here in the first place or where we

might be going in the future. So I

really started to pay more attentionto thinking backward, not to see the

future through the lens of the past

but to understand the roots of the

past that will inform and help shape

the future.


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Lets move on to the eighteenth century. The theme I want to look at from this century is the

Enlightenment. I want to call out the rationality of reason, the power of science, materialism, the

dominion of man over natureall of which appeared in the eighteenth century Enlightenment and

together really created secular modernity. I think in our lifetime the dominance of secular

modernity is coming to an end. We are now seeing the reemergence of the sacred worldviewalongside the secular worldview. Most of us have always assumed that the progress of mankind

was such that as education increased and prosperity increased the religious and sacred world would

decline. Thats been true in Europe but not in the United States, and we are not sure where its

going to go in the rest of the world.

We have been making an assumption that now has to be challenged. We can see in the U.S., with

Christian fundamentalism, and in other parts of the world, including where there is Islamic

fundamentalism, that the sacred world is very much back in play. Not just at the fundamentalist end

of the spectrumits also emerging at the spiritual end; a rather more tolerant and inclusive

approach. Clearly more people are finding the materialism of the secular worldview insufficient to

deal with life.

So I want to argue that we are going to see in the coming decades a strong requirement for those of

us, and I include myself in this, which is firmly of the secular mindset, to have to figure out how we

accommodate the sacred mindset. It hasnt gone away as we thought it might. Its very much back

and going to be in play in the decades ahead. Scotland potentially has a big part to play in this

reintegration. Scotland really was home to the first Enlightenment, and maybe it can be so for the

second.

Let me move to the nineteenth century, where we saw the rise

of global power and the development of global rules,

culminating in the power and reach of the British Empire. We

also saw in the nineteenthcentury the next superpowerthe

United States of Americalimbering up and then continuing its

run through the late twentiethcentury. I would argue that in the

coming decades we are going to see the decline of the U.S. as

the defining superpower. We already have evidence of that.

Although the U.S .enjoys unparalleled and unchallenged

military power at the moment, I think that its hegemonic

economic and cultural influence in the world will continue to

fall into greater and greater decline in the decades ahead.

Instead I think we will see the emergence of new powers. Two of the most obvious are China and

India. Those are powers that will, in fact, have global reach and influence, and are not going to play

by the old rules of the old game. The rules are going to be changing, and particularly the rules

China will be establishing. China is already ahead, almost invisibly, creating relationships

everywhere. China is emerging as a leader with tremendous political influence across Asia. It is

developing extraordinary links right across Latin America: trade linkages, cultural linkages,

political linkages, and alliances around scientific collaborations of a sort that, frankly, the U.S. no

longer enjoys with its southern neighbors. It is also making a very strong foray into being the

Although the U.S.enjoys

unparalleled andunchallenged military power

at the moment, I think that

its hegemonic economic and

cultural influence in the world

will continue to fall into

greater and greater decline

in the decades ahead.


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partner of choice for Africa. China recently committed to train, at its own expense, another 10,000

Africans as technicians in Chinese solar power because it recognizes Africa as an enormous future

market and wants to have the relationships in place to exploit it.

And very importantly, along with Brazil and to a lesser extent India, China is trying to reset therules about intellectual property and proprietary technologies. We have spent some years trying to

translate the traditional notions of economics based on ownership, property rights, possession, and

transfer that were developed in the physical economy into the intangible world of ideas and

intellectual property. The emerging powers are not going to play that game. They are quite

explicitly making a decision not to go there. Its all going to be about open source, open

methodologies, open databases. Thats the future of science and technology when China is setting

the rules.

I think Scotland has a place here potentially as a bridge: a country that understands well; a country

that, lets face it, basically invented America; a country that has relationships looking East. I

believe Scotland has a very significant cultural competence that enables us to act as the bridge-makers to a different world.

Now lets move to the twentieth century. There were so many different things I could have drawn

on here for my five centuries of the future, but the one I have chosen is the paradoxes of

prosperity. I think there were three important paradoxes of prosperity that emerged in the

twentieth century. The first is that as we prosper we go through periods of increasing polarization

between the haves and the have-nots, the people doing well and the people not doing well.

The second paradox of prosperity is that as prosperity spreads globally it increases the readjustment

and restructuring process throughout regions, and the pain of that change is experienced unequally.

We experienced the unequal friction burns of change in Scotland in the 60s, 70s, and 80s when

Scotland was a victim of structural economic shifts.

The third paradox of prosperity and perhaps the most

challenging one is the man over nature mindset that were

deployed for economic growth for the last 200 years. We are

damaging the environment. I think we are now living in a world

and in an era in which climate change is real, starting to happen,

and becoming an important piece of our global civic

consciousness. We are seeing the evidence. A lot of the change

is manmade, and a lot of it is natural. Climate has always been

changing quite autonomouslythe planet has a mind of its own.

As the saying goes, nature bats last.

I think we will have to figure ways to deal with these paradoxes of prosperity. Scotland again has

had real experience in dealing with issues of polarization and transitional change and the friction

burns that result. Scotland also has something to offer in terms of environmental consciousness. So

I think here again there is a contributiona gift to the worldthat Scotland could be making.

The third paradox of

prosperity and perhaps the

most challenging one is the

man over nature mindset

that were deployed for

economic growth for the last

200 years


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Finally I come to the twenty-first century. Were just at the beginning of that, but I will presume

to identify at least one of the issues that is going to define this century: dealing with the downsides

of science. What do I mean by that? Well, at one extreme we can see weapons of mass destruction

and nuclear proliferation. If we think nuclear is bad, wait until we get to the next level of

bioweaponry.

The problem, however, lies in the easy access to such technology. You can buy DNA testing kits in

the U.S. for $70. Biotechnology is democratizing in exactly the same way as computing technology

did over the last 30 years. As we get closer to the point where that enables many people to do really

bad things, we are going to have to figure out what to do with science when it endangers and

threatens all of us.

At one end of the spectrum we can see science deliberately designed to do bad things to people.

Perhaps the more challenging end of the spectrum is a science that has been devised to do good

things to peoplehuman enhancement. I think the potential here is extraordinarily rich and

extraordinarily challenging. We are learning in the course of this century; in the next couple ofdecades even, what it really means to be human.

I want to illustrate this with reference to DARPAthe U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency. This is the high-technology, cutting-edge, science-and-technology-investment agency for

the U.S. military. It has made investments over many years that have allowed the U.S. to gain and

enjoy todays extraordinary superiority in military power. Essentially it was DARPA, not Al Gore,

that invented the Internet. Microprocessors, lasers, multi-fibersevery major technology that has

created the interconnected world we live in today, DARPA had some early hand in designing,

developing, or supporting.

About five or six years ago, DARPAs concentration and

focus started to extend beyond technology. All that previous

investment had been about creating tools to make soldiers

more powerful. More recently the focus has shifted to

changing the soldiers themselves to make them more

powerfulliterally changing their metabolisms. They are

working on vaccines against pain. They are working on drugs

that allow soldiers to go for seven days without sleep and

drugs that allow soldiers to go without food, living off their

own body fat. What we are seeing at DARPA is not an

incredibly futuristic attempt but a decade-long one to change what it is to be human. If we look at

whats happening in the world of sports right now, or what happens when people grow elderly and

want to hang on to youth, we see there is an infinite and reckless demand for things that will make

us better. I think we have enormous ethical issues to contend with in terms of where we put the

limits on those kinds of investments and those kinds of bets.

In the twenty-firstcentury, dealing with the dilemmas of science is going to be an important

question for the world generally. Here Scotland has some particular strengths. Scotland has a

tremendous education and science base. It is trusted and respected in the world. Ive used my

there is an infinite and

reckless demand for thingsthat will make us better. I

think we have enormous

ethical issues to contend with

in terms of where we put the

limits on those kinds of

investments and those kinds

of bets.


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Scottish accent shamelessly in my career; it seems to add hugely to my credibility. I have no idea

why this should be, but we are trustedand thats a very important thing to hang on to. We have

our own quite distinctive legal system, our own jurisprudence. In the same way that the Hague

owns human justice for the world, I think that all of these attributes can come together to make

Edinburgh or Glasgow theplace that accommodates the best thinking and the best civil globaldialogue about the new ethics of the new science, the constraints that we are willing to impose on

ourselves, and the risks we are willing or not willing to take.

So, for all of these reasons, I believe that there are some big issues now in play, some of them rich

with challenge, some of them ripe with opportunity. The world is truly in flux. We are at a hinge

moment in history. What happens in the next couple of decades will, I believe, probably define

what happens for the rest of this century and beyond. And I think Scotland has a real role to play

and a contribution to make.

I am reminded of the big thing I learned from GBN cofounder Napier Collyns, who is here today,

when I started looking at how to learn from and participate in networks. He observed, and I havesince learned over the years, that each participant in a network must not think What can I get from

this? but What can I bring to this? If everyone starts with this spirit of generosity, then everyone

benefits; the networks work and we all get the learning we are looking for. That works very well in

individual learning, and I believe it works at the regional and civic levels as well.

I do believe that the world is going to be a better place 50 years from now, and that will be because

we will learn the power of giving and the value of generosity. The question Id suggest here in this

group, a question to hang on to in the back of your minds, is not just how can Scotland do well in

the world, but what is Scotlands gift to the world in light of the issues we are contending with now

and in the decades to come?

Eamonn Kelly is the CEO and president of Global Business Network, and the former head of

strategy at Scottish enterprise, the pre-eminent economic development agency. He is co-

author of Whats Next: Exploring the New Terrain for Business, and author of a forthcoming

book, Powerful Times.

2005 Global Business Network and International Futures Forum

This publication is for the exclusive use of Global Business Network members. To request permission to reproduce,store in a retrieval system, or transmit this document in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

recorded, or otherwise, please contact Global Business Network

5 Centuries of the Future - Eamonn Kelly

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