From Futures to Foresight

SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006

PRESTInstitute of Innovation Research

Foresight: then and now

(From Futures to Foresight) Ian Miles

PREST/IoIR

University of Manchester



Overview

• The discovery of the future

• Technology futures and science policy

• Innovation research and futures studies

• Technology Foresight

• Fragmentation or Ferment?FS F IS



Imagining a Better World

Holbein From UTOPIA (1516) to the NEW ATLANTIS (1627)

protoFS protoFS protoIS



Transforming the World Through Scientific

Revolutions

• Assumed complementarity of technological progress and social betterment

• From More to more…. Satisfying needs and expanding desires

• Scientific elite as critical agents• Progress displaced through space rather than

time• (odd bits of forecasting, eg Petty on population

trends – linked to birth of statistics)



The Discovery of the Future

C19th Industrial Revolution – but also social and political upsurge. The future could, would be different

…Not in Utopia, subterranean Fields,Or some secreted Island, heaven knows where!But in the very world, which is the worldOf all of us,--the place where in the endWe find our happiness, or not at all!

William Wordsworth, 1805 “French Revolution, as it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement”



Fiction and the Future

•Lyman Tower Sargent, 1976, ‘Themes in Utopian Fiction in English before Wells’, Science Fiction Studies, 3 (3), pp275-82

•Darko Suvin, 1983, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of Knowledge and of Power. Boston: G.K. Hall

•I F Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation, Voices Prophesying War, etc….

protoFS



Fiction and the Future

•Mercier’s L’An 2440 published in France 1771 (UK 1772) – innovations and megaprojects help signify future

•Sargent, English-language Utopias: 8 in C16th, 60 in C17th and 18th, 300+ in C19th

•I F Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation, Voices Prophesying War, etc….

• future wars in fiction•Science fiction with educational and didactic missions (Verne, Wells)

protoFS



Utopians vs Utopia (or industrial utopia)

• Luddism and Pandemonium – technological change inescapable, but not always welcomed.

• Political economists asked big questions, took long views

• Change became assumed attribute of future (but Morris, Butler, technodystopias)

• Marx – no recipes for the cookshops of the future

• But scientific socialism: tended to identify technological change (growth in means of production will undermine obsolete relations of production)



Futures Studies – beyond Political Economy

According to Clarke, dozens of “futures” books in 1890s and early 1900s, starting with Richet, 1892, Dans Cent Ans

highlights include – • 1897, Gottleib, The War of the Future in its Technical,

Economic and Political Relations• Collections by Edmund Carpenter in USA (social) H G

Wells in UK (Anticipations of the reactions of mechanical and scientific

progress upon human life and thought) round turn of century. Wells in 1902 articulated call for systematic study of future in The Discovery of the Future

• Postwar: Kegan Paul Today and Tomorrow series (inc Haldane’s Daedalus 1924) both social and technological “genius forecasts”

FS

First World War – shattered many illusions of progress, delegitimised political elites



Wanted! Professors of Foresight

“It seems an odd thing to me that though we have thousands and thousands of professors and hundreds of thousands of students of history working upon the records of the past, there is not a single person anywhere who makes a whole-time job of estimating the future consequences of new inventions and new devices. There is not a single Professor of Foresight in the world.” H G Wells (1932)

FS



(Technological) Forecasting

• Technology multifaceted – decreasing scope for “genius” forecasts a la Haldane

• 1930s crisis – US National Resources Committee – Recent Social Trends – William Ogburn and colleagues – social indicators, social forecasting, implications of agricultural technology – subMarxian model of technological change -Gilfillan and technological forecasting. Basic extrapolative techniques.

• Military and aerospace forecasting: RAND, NASA, etc: methodological development – Delphi, systems analysis, scenarios.FS



The Visible College*• Socialists tended to identify technological progress

with social progress – current or deferred• In major crisis many scientists drawn to socialism• Haldane in 1920s: “"If we are to control our own and

one another's actions as we are learning to control nature, the scientific point of view must come out of the laboratory and be applied to the events of daily life. It is foolish to think that the outlook which has already revolutionized industry, agriculture, war and medicine will prove useless when applied to the family, the nation, or the human race."

• Scientific planning and science policy seen as close cousins -> (esp with WW2 applications of OR and statistics to decision making). Bernal inspiration

» * cf Gary Werskey’s book

protoIS



From Science Policy to Innovation Studies

• Bernal inspiration• de Solla Price in US, Science Policy

Research in UK….• Innovation studies emerge – politically

plural, but attractive to UK left (critique of capitalists if not of capitalism; alternative explanations for UK economic and technological problems – not organised labour, but disorganised management (cf PANTS).

• Critique of (some) innovation – from Bernal (50s) through new left (60s), feminists (70s), greens (80s)…IS



The Techno-optimistic Future

• US Commissions…• US framework of technological change (long-term

multifold trend), post-industrialism, “end of ideoloogy”, etc

• Kahn crystallised “futurology” with books like Thinking about the Unthinkable and the less military-focused Things to Come (1972) etc.

• Recrudescence of ideology, global tensions• Nuclear technology (and eugenics?) further

destabilised assumption of automatic complementarity of scientific/technological and social/moral progress.

FS



The Futures Movement• 1960s: futures studies took off very widely – centres,

associations, consultancies formed, large-scale projects launched. Think tanks and expert groups; indicators and models.

• European futures partly emulated US techno-optimistic models, but in large part focused more on political uncertainties and strategies – a “third way” – as earlier articulated by Jungk, Galtung, and in France Berger, de Jouvenel… and many more)

• Limited uptake in UK: scepticism – Peculiarities of the English??

• Fairly rare to find bottom-up, participatory approaches (some radicals, some corporate, and la prospective)FS



Limits to Futures• Futures debate –

(population) Malthusians vs techno-optimists, (development) Marxists, structuralists, conservative economists

• Club of Rome intervention 1970s (see Peter Moll From Scarcity to Sustainability 1991, Peter Lang)

• HUGE media impactFS



Thinking about Models• SPRU critique of Limits –

Thinking about the Future (UK) or Models of Doom (US). (not MWAC)

• Faulted data, analysis and methods on many points, but especially the lack of any notion of technological innovation as able to confront resource shortages (or tackle pollution).

• Raised many questions of ecology, equity, etc.

Resources

population

Food per capita Industrial

production per capita



Beyond Limits• SPRU researchers went on to review

futures methods (Art of Anticipation)• Review the world futures debate and

prepare a major intervention of their own (Freeman and Jahoda, World Futures: the Great Debate) – radically alternative scenarios – possibility of growth and more equity

• Generate a series of futures studies (eg. Worlds Apart), critiques of the field (Luxury of Despair), social and policy analyses of FS (Uses and Abuses of Forecasting)

• “something in the water at Sussex”FS IS



Innovation Systems Analysis• Technological revolutions (and long

waves) Technology / Technoeconomic Paradigms Sociotechnical Systems (Gershuny reappraisal of postindustrial society; IT futures studies…)

• Systemic sectoral varieties (Pavitt taxonomy, UK performance)

• “Systems of innovation” approaches – national systems and their weaknesses…. The Japanese model (Freeman formulations 87/88 but Lundvall in SPRU 83/84) …IS



Innovation Policy

• S&T policy: inadequacies of linear model

• Public sector constraints (fiscal crisis of state, rise of neoconservativism) IT revolution: strategic research

• Shortcomings of funding system• Search for new decision-making tools –

ACARD and other reports on selecting critical technologies, promising areas of science, etc.IS



Toward Foresight• 1984: Irvine and Martin’s first book

Foresight in Science (strong impression from Japanese experience… which had Nipponised US futures studies methods and applied them to Research Policy)

• Picking the Winners - Oops!• Other battles being fought…• Martin & Irvine 1989 Research

Foresight… more studies and then...

FS F IS



UK Foresight Programme – “First Cycle”

• Several 1990s efforts to determine critical technologies (involving SPRU, PREST and consultancies): this approach has been pursued in US and France, in particular.

• 1993 White Paper: improve connection between science base & wealth creation + quality of life. Foresight a major instrument.

• Specific goals: to inform priorities (planning) & promote “Foresight culture” of forward and longer term thinking “beyond the business plan” (futures, networking)

• Initiatives in several other countries mid 90sFS F IS



UK (Technology) Foresight 1

Ben Martin on Steering Committee: undertook review of other Programmes;

PREST undertook much methodological work (delphi, other surveys, panel training…)

Innovation studies communities engaged

FS F IS

• Accessing dispersed knowledge, sharing it through futures

• Informing R&D priorities

• Networking (wiring up innovation system)

Widely viewed

as major success




Focus on networking and creating knowledge communities

No overall priority-setting

Much work on thematic and more “social” issues

Problems of ownership in OST, DTI

FS F

…. IS Crisis rapidly set in: review and early termination




More modest,project-based work

No overall prioritisation

Primary aim is now informing policy, trans-departmentally: enhancing the role of science.

Little effort to rewire innovation system.

Most other countries following (diluted) F1 model, though some are more project-based

FS F

…. IS



UK (Technology) Foresight 1 – “Fully-Fledged Foresight”?

FS F IS

Networking

Informing and legitimising action, establishing

preparedness

Sharing visions. Exchanging knowledge, mutual understanding...

Identifying indicators & determining goals,

evaluation processes & mechanisms

PROSPECTIVESFutures reports,

scenarios, forecasts and visions

Futures methods, forecasting techniques, modelling & visionary

approaches, etc.

PLANNINGPriority lists,

Strategic action plans

Planning tools and techniques, OR and

systems approaches, etc.

PARTICIPATIONAccess to distributed knowledge,

establishing and reinforcing networksNetworking tools and techniques, groupwork and facilitation, survey

approaches, etc

Foresight



Participative Elements

enlarging the knowledge base

Democracy – engaging

Transition Management –

Technocracy –

stakeholders

opening dialogue

enlisting agents in visioning,

action



UKF has evolved

• From prioritisation + networking• Through strong networking focus• To policy-informing projects.• (Leaving gaps in participation and

prioritisation?)

• Design and implementation has become more remote from innovation studies constituencyFS F

…. IS



Foresight on Foresight• UK F 3 is well-received, current strategy will be

continued• Embedding Foresight in government departments will

be a patchy affair, especially as some revert to “futures studies”, “horizon scanning”, etc. (varying foci and probably very uneven results)

• Need for overall prioritisation will result in new initiatives (sooner or later)

• Space for TA and participative approaches…• …Tensions between expertise, advanced

methodology, and needs for networking and engagement. (especially with emergent technologies) – acute issue.

• Roles for innovation researchers to be proactive as well as responsive.

• Foresight reminds us to take the longer view: and don’t forget the wider ones!

FS & IS

More sweet

music?



End of Presentation

From Futures to Foresight

Technology

Transcript of From Futures to Foresight