framework foresight | Hinesight....for Foresight

by Andy Hines on June 17, 2020 Leave a Comment

The New Localism (ain’t so new)

I have little doubt that whatever After Capitalism system emerges will feature a greater emphasis on local matters. This theme comes through clearly in the works consulted during this research. I’m currently using BALLE’s local economy framework as the placeholder for a local concept. No offense to their fine work, but I’m not quite satisfied with it, and I’ve been casting about for another model. Thus I read Katz’s and Nowak’s “The New Localism.”

It’s a fine work with some fine ideas, but alas it does meet our criteria for being a new image of the future. Like so many works with “new” in the title, it is firmly situated within the current capitalist context. And what’s presented as new is mostly based on relatively old examples. It raises an interesting issue for us futurists. To get a mainstream publishing deal and audience, you have to present solid evidence and case studies – by definition that forces you into the past. If you try to write without that….good luck! Thus our “new” books rarely cover much that is new. [that’s not a knock on the authors — they are doing the smart thing!]

Nonetheless, there are some interesting lessons for us. A basic premise of the work is that as national governments, particularly the US, wrestle with populism and an overall lack of effectiveness, cities have been forced to step into the void and take on a more active role in problem-solving. This shift is also part of the larger social change of vertical approaches giving way to horizontal ones: from hierarchies to networks. Networks of public, private, and civic actors, and globally along transnational circuits of capital, trade, and innovation are taking an increasingly role in shaping the future. New Localism refers to these multi-sectoral networks that work together to solve problems.

Pittsburgh’s revival around robotics, Indianapolis’s reinvention around sports and biotech, and Copenhagen’s successful reclamation of public assets are used as in-depth case illustrations of this new localism. Plenty of other examples are introduced as well. The book is chock-full of solid suggestions and recommendations to help cities flourish, but they are clearly situated within – and not questioning of – the neoliberal capitalist baseline. It relies more on successful examples of the past and present, and does not address the changing future context in a meaningful way, which of course is of greatest interest to us.

That said, one is indeed left with a solid case for how power is shifting from the national to the local context, which is an important insight for understanding the future. My quest for a local framework for After Capitalism continues – please let me know if you’re aware of a work fitting that bill. – Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on April 29, 2020 2 Comments

Three Horizons of After Capitalism

Here’s how After Capitalism is using the handy Horizons Framework. It is intended primarily to show the evolution of the concepts over time, and to provide a very rough estimate of timing.

The X-axis is time. (NOTE: Three Horizons does not prescribe timeframes for each horizon.)

The timing depends on the topic. Some topics change quickly (mobile communications) and some slowly (forestry). For After Capitalism, I pegged the current Horizon 1 (H1) system of Neoliberal Capitalism as having perhaps another decade of preeminence – to 2030. Then, the Horizons transition concepts that I’m calling Collaborative Sharing Platforms, which are already in existence to some extent today, become more prevalent. I am suggesting a decade or two for this Horizon Two (H2) transition – from 2030 to 2040/2050. These rough estimates suggest the Horizon Three (H3) is at least 20 or 30 years always. It is important to keep in mind that these are rough ballpark estimates.

The Y-axis is strategic fit, or how well is the horizon fitting with the context. The framework shows how the systems of each horizon shift over time.

H1, Neoliberal Capitalism, has the highest degree of strategic fit in the present, but is in decline by 2030 and fades away by 2040/2050.
H2, the Collaborative Sharing Platforms, has some degree of fit in the present, becomes preeminent in 2030, but it declines in the 2040/2050 timeframe.
H3, the three Transformation Images, have a low degree of fit in the present, pick up steam in H2 and eventually one, or some combination of them, becomes the new system in the 2040-/20505 timeframe.

Again, the years are just estimates! – Andy Hines

by Tom Rau on October 7, 2019 Leave a Comment

ConsumerShift

Values are changing in a consistent direction over time. Understanding these changes will provide critical insight for understanding the future consumer landscape and designing products, services, and offerings that “fit.” The book “translates” the values changes into seven emerging need states, brought to life in the form of seven future personas, and provides a persona customization kits for those who want to tailor them to their specific needs. It will help you and

your team make sense of rapidly changing consumer behavior – where they are coming from, where they are going, and what they are looking for.

The pattern uncovered in the research, drawing upon nearly two dozen systems but drawing most heavily on the outstanding work of the World V

alues Survey and Spiral Dynamics, is that there are four types of values and there has been a consistent “developmenta

l” pattern in their adoption over time. The four types are:

Traditional: Focused on following the rules and fulfilling one’s predetermined role, with priorities such as respect for authority, religious faith, national pride, obedience, work ethic, large families with strong family ties, and strict definition of good and evil
Modern: Focused on achievement, growth and progress, with priorities such as high trust in science and technology (as the engines of progress), faith in the state (bureaucratization), rejection of out-groups, an appreciation of hard work and money, and determination to improve one’s social and economic status.
Postmodern: Focused on the search for meaning in one’s life, with priorities such as self-expression, including an emphasis on individual responsibility as well as choice, imagination, tolerance, life balance and satisfaction, environmentalism, wellness, and leisure.
Integral: Emerging as the leading edge of values change, with a more practical and functional approach to employing values that best fit the particular situation, enabling one to pursue personal growth with an understanding and sensitivity to larger systemic considerations.

ConsumerShift presents a New Dimensions of Consumer Life Model for making sense of how consumers are changing along two primary dimensions: inner dimension changes being driven by these predictable long-term shifts in values, and outer dimension changes in society, technology, the economy, etc. This New Dimensions model thus provides a framework for understanding how consumers are changing.

These inner and outer dimension changes are forecast to come together into seven clusters of consumer need states. These need states in turn are brought to life in the form of a representative future personas. Finally, a customization kit is provided for readers and their organizations–whether in business, government, non-profits, or education–to customize the personas to the specific needs of their organizations.

There are eleven reviews of the book posted on Amazon and it is on Global Foresight Books list of recommended business books.

Availability

Individual copies on Amazon: ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape

Bulk copies discounted: Please email Andy Hines, ahines@uh.edu

ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape [Paperback]

Only $9.99 on Amazon!

by Andy Hines on January 23, 2019 Leave a Comment

The Non-Tragedy of the Commons

Most of us have dutifully learned the Tragedy of the Commons, how unchecked individual interested overwhelms the group needs. The key word in that sentence is “unchecked.” In short, commoning approaches manage such systems to balance individual and group needs. Commoning is one of the newer concepts to me from the After Capitalism research. Massimo De Angelis’s Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism is an excellent addition to the “Sustainable Commons” visions. The book explains how a commoning approach might work as an alternative to capitalism. First a few definitions:

Commons are a community sharing resources and governing them and their own relations and (re) production
Commoning is the form of social labor managing common resources via participatory and non-hierarchical approaches.

Simple examples of commons are households, networks of supporting friends, managed workshops, community gardens, and peer-to-peer ( P2P ) networks for sharing music , codes , files, etc. The author provides several detailed examples of community commoning approaches in the book. His argument for commoning is that it is an alternative way to make decisions and act upon those decisions to shape the future of communities via a local and distributed approach that avoids “being locked into market competition and its anxieties, the blackmail of profit-driven companies, and state agencies.”

He is no shrinking violet: “I believe there is a social revolution in the making that, if recognized and able to attract more energies from people around the world, could give us a chance to embark on a process of transformation towards postcapitalist society.” He notes how the excesses of capitalism evolved: the process of enclosures, expropriations, looting, financial extraction and tax avoidance. In short predator capitalism has got us into such a mess that commoning becomes a viable alternative.

There are two ways that work gets done in commoning: communal and reciprocal labor.

Communal labor is the social labor that a community of commoners pulls together for particular common objectives following convocation .
Reciprocal labor is the form of social labor that is intertwined with perceptions of reciprocity , gift , or mutual aid ; it is the labor that subject A performs for subject B , B for C and C for A ( circular reciprocity ) or simply A for B ( where karmic feelgood is the reward ) .

A very difficult aspect of the move to commoning is the “current entanglement with capital and the state.” He admits that capitalism is crafty and reacts and adapts to challenges by developing new forms. Thus, he is pragmatic. It will be necessary to work within the capitalist framework as commoning develops: “the strategic horizon therefore is not to avoid making deals, but how to make a given deal.” At the same time, he doesn’t suggest that the commoning vision must be completely worked out before moving in that direction. I love this: “Systems are not implemented, their dominance emerges.”

It is no easy task. Scaling is a big challenge. He suggest a massive social movement would be necessary, and he notes the challenge is not just to overcome capitalism, “but also of overcoming the multifaceted real divisions that exist among commoners and commons movements.” — Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on November 28, 2018 2 Comments

Reasonable futures timeframes

What’s an appropriate timeframe for foresight work? It’s a question we futurists often get. It’s usually coming from a concern that a particular project’s timeframe may be too close to the present, or put differently, not sufficiently far enough into the future.

It’s become a lot easier to answer this since the field has been using the updated Three Horizons framework that I first came across in a piece by Andrew Curry and Tony Hodgson, ”Seeing in Multiple Horizons,” which later won an APF MSFW award.

The first horizon covers the existing way of doing things. My view is that futurists ought to be careful about playing in this space. My favorite story here is on “pizza trends.” I was a new internal futurist and asked to gather trend data on pizza consumption. I reasoned that if I answered this request, I’d become the data gathering guy for the exiting business, and I felt it would pigeonhole the foresight activity into the wrong timeframe. So I took the risk of saying “not my job.”

Rather, I reasoned then and advise now, the job of the futurist is to focus on Horizons 2 and 3, the zones of transition and new visions of the future. The vast majority of my work has been in Horizon 2, which probably reflects my focus on the corporate world earlier in my career. Here we focus on the potential disruptions to the existing system that ultimately may portend a new system, but provide the client with insight into what’s next, which is usually their key concern. Of course, I/we try to extend that view into Horizon 3 as practical.

In terms of how many years into the future, it depends on the topic or system. Some topics that are moving very vast or just on the cusp of a transition from H1 to H2, may appropriately suggest a very close-in timeframe, say 3-5 years. Other topics, which are very slow moving, may have a very long H1, where 3-5 years is still firmly in H1 and thus not appropriate.

In thinking back across my project work – mostly H2 work — I would say that H2 is most often 5-10 years (again, keeping in mind the differences according to topic). Clients usually want five, and I’ll do my best to persuade them to extend that to at least 10. But we do some H3 work. We did a project for NASA extending to Horizon 3 with a 2050 timeframe.

So the rule is to first work out the timing of the Three Horizons, and as long as you’re in Horizon Two, that seems like a good starting point for foresight work.

Thanks to Micheal Cooke fo inspiring this piece with a recent comment in Linked in. — Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on November 20, 2018 1 Comment

An Integral Futures lens on security

It seems that each time I teach Integral Futures as part of Alternative Perspectives class, at least one student really catches fire with it. A couple of years ago, it was Craig Perry, an intelligence analyst and retired Air Force colonel at the time. So when I was asked to contribute a chapter on the future of security, I thought of him. Our subsequent collaboration produced a chapter An Integral Futures lens on the future security issues that was part of “Security by Design” edited by Anthony Masys and published by Springer.

The figure shows how security can be viewed at a high level from an integral perspective. We summarized the argument as follows: Conventional analysis of security issues tends to take a disjointed approach through tightly focused tactical lenses. Increasingly, however, security issues are embedded in a wider and diverse range of factors that may escape conventional analysis. An integral futures perspective to exploring security issues is proposed that provides a wider lens by taking an integrated holistic approach that explores individual and collective aspects of emerging issues from both an interior (e.g., motivation, culture) and exterior (e.g., behavior, systems, and infrastructures) perspective. We believe the approach may provide a fresh approach to issue identification as well as more holistic explanatory framework.

It was particularly exciting for me to see a “new” (as far as I know) application area for the integral perspective. – Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on September 6, 2018 Leave a Comment

Clustering, Pattern Recognition, and Synthesizing

These are a few of my favorite things (humming Sound of Music). I have been doing all three a lot lately, and talking about them to others. We do these things a lot as futurists. But as I reflect on how I came to do them, or how I teach others about them, I find myself peering into a black box. This means we have an opportunity to open the box! I used to describe the scanning process as a black box, which set me (and others) to the task of bring some process light to it.

The Funnel graphic provides some context. Scanning hits are the most fundamental “raw ingredients” of futures. Since 300+ scanning hits are challenging to work with, we synthesize them into a smaller numbers of trends (and other inputs, but let’s save that conversation.) But how are those trends coming together (patterns) to drive the future? We think of drivers as clusters of trends, forming a pattern, and synthesize the story. And then we cluster drivers, look for patterns, and synthesize the stories as scenarios. Are you seeing a pattern here?

So the question I’m left with is “how can I/we improve our instruction on building/improving/mastering these three skills? I have a few vague thoughts, but let’s hear from the readers! — Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on July 18, 2018 2 Comments

After Capitalism Concepts

The After Capitalism research started by collecting interesting “new or next economy” concepts. They’ve been analyzed, clustered, and re-grouped a few times. To the right is the pretty close to done version, as it’s time to move on the next phase of the project: creating the futures using the archetype approach (more on that later). The main buckets of concepts:

Horizon 3 “Transformation” Visions. The transformation archetype involves changing the rules of the game and a new system emerging. The visions attempt to characterize a new economic system or era at the highest level — they seek to explain a new socio-economic order.
Horizon 2 “New Equilibrium” Transitions. The new equilibrium archetype involves a challenge to the existing system in which the response is to compromise but keep the essential structure intact. The transitions explain emerging variations of capitalism that are still part of existing capitalism with some new elements, and are bridges to the visions.

Some of the key updates since the last version:

Introduced three horizons framework and sorting of concepts into:
- H3 visions
- H2 transitions
- H1 signals (not shown here)
Added, pruned or combined concepts to attempt to keep each distinctive — at one point the list hit 57!
Added a subset of sustainability transition concepts – several concepts that appeared to be transformational visions were actually suggestions on how to make capitalism more sustainable, which fits better as a transition concept.

— Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on May 15, 2018 1 Comment

A healthy fear of superintelligence

Homo Deus explored the possibility of a new human species emerging. If that wasn’t enough to persuade you that we need to be thinking seriously about the future, then try Nick Bostrom’s SuperIntelligence. [Okay, I recognize that readers of this blog are already converted, so I offer this post as ammunition that you can use in your proselytizing].

Superintelligence fits with our “Tech-Led Abundance” family of visions of After Capitalism. Like each member of that family, it has an evil doppleganger that shows up in Collapse. In Superintelligence, Bostrom acknowledges the awesomely good potential for superintelligence, but focuses on the potential for it going bad, since, well, it poses an existential risk for humanity. Thus my suggestion of “healthy fear.”

Let’s review his basic AI framework, which is suggested as a developmental pathway:

1^st, task intelligence, in which AI outperforms people in a single task. We are currently here.
2^nd, general intelligence, in which AI is as intelligent as people in a wide range of tasks. This may be decades away….or closer.
3^rd, superintelligence, in which AI is orders of magnitude more intelligent than people across-the-board

Now, he carefully notes that the AI/machine-learning approach to super-intelligence is not the only way to superintelligence. He suggests another that he calls whole-brain emulation (we basically simulate and transcend the brain structure). Another possibility is a vastly more rapid biotech route, using stem cells and embryos. My take, however, is that the AI machine learning has the inside track.

Decades away, right? Probably, but he posits the interesting scenario that the takeoff from general to superintelligence could happen very fast, on the order of days or weeks. That would mean essentially no time to prepare a world in which humans are no longer the smartest species on the planet.

He lays out some cases in which this superintelligence could pose an existential risk to humanity. Not necessarily out of some malevolence per se, but in fulfillment of its purpose, humans could be more or less swept aside. He talks about how a first mover superintelligence could essential initiate what he calls a singleton ( a world order in which at the global level there is a single decision-making agency). He mentions a treacherous turn in which AI realizes at some points that humans are trying to limit it, and begins to conceal its behavior. And he talks about “perverse instantiation,” which basically includes the Strawberry Fields scenario that Musk has popularized.

All that said, Bostrom is quite careful to add in the appropriate caveats, alternatives, and hedges. It could turn out wonderfully good! It could take a really long time. It may never happen. He simply suggests it is plausible, therefore worthy of serious strategic attention. And now! He discusses approaches to managing it, such as capability control and motivation selection — actually goes into them in some depth.

In sum, we can’t afford to wait until it’s already here, and if the fast takeoff scenario is possible, we can’t even wait for AI to achieve human-level intelligence. I was already in his camp, and after reading the book, I am even moreso. It is worth your time to read the book and see where you net out. Our existence could hang in the balance! – Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on May 2, 2018 Leave a Comment

Where can we find the fringe? Scanning the fringe part 2

After our scan hit sharing session, which I shared about last week, we jumped into the formal program. Let’s focus on where each session suggested we might find the fringe.

Graduate Assistant Kimberly Daniels and I started the day with an overview of our basic scanning process to set the context. One fringe-worthy note there is that in our projects of Houston Foresight, we’ve been adopting a tagging convention locating our scanning hits on the three horizons framework.

So we can find the fringe in Horizon 3

Anne Boysen discussed the role of analytics in finding the fringe, where she identified steps for “Predictive Weak Signals Scanning.”

So we can find the fringe using buried in the data using algorithms

Eric Kingsbury explored finding the fringe in the counterculture, with his aptly titled presentation “Burners, Discordians, Rainbows: SIGNALS from the Counterculture.”

So we can find the fringe in people/groups/communities living outside the mainstream.

Natalie Pacheco and Maria Romero talked about finding the fringe on social media. They explored the “rabbit holes” of the Reddit discussion forums as well as Tumblr as part of the need to listen to new voices.

So we can find the fringe “deep” in social media discussion forums

We ended the day with APF Chair Jay Gary highlighting the immense contribution the futurist Graham Molitor made in developed emerging issues analysis. One could argue that the entire day was really about trying to bring more specificity to the work that Molitor started decades ago.

So we can find the fringe at the edge of the emerging issues curve, in art, fiction (esp. science, fiction, underground media, blogs, etc.

The presentations mentioned above, and others from the Scanning the Fringe meeting can be found on the Houston Foresight blog. – Andy Hines

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