Peer-Producing Alternative Futures

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* Article: Foresight in a network era: peer-producing alternative futures. By Jose Ramos, Tim Mansfield, and Gareth Priday. Journal of Futures Studies, September 2012, 17(1): 71-90.

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Part of the special edition of the Journal of Futures Studies on the Communication of Foresight.


Abstract

"The advent of the network form has ushered in new practices and possibilities for participation and collaboration based on emerging on-line technologies. It is no surprise that new approaches to futures / foresight research and engagement are being developed in the context of these technologies and emerging practices. In dwelling within this juxtaposition between participatory futures and the maturing network era, we ask what the implications are for foresight / futures studies, and how this can help us re-imagine Anticipatory Democracy in the 21st century. A developmental narrative for the emergence of the network form in futures studies provides context for our understanding of new pathways. Within this we identify key emerging issues with implications for Anticipatory Democracy: instantiation, replication, openness and control. Explicated, these emerging issues provide a rich picture of the challenges and possibilities for building Anticipatory Democracy in the network era."

Excerpt

Jose Ramos et al.:

Introduction and Methodology

"What is the future of public participation in the exploration and articulation of probable, possible, preferred and alternative futures? Can network-foresight strategies lead to real anticipatory democracy, policy development and social change? What are the dynamics and implications of the network form applied to anticipatory democracy? To answer these questions we begin by providing a theoretical framework for the emergence of the network form, which can inform a normative focus on building Anticipatory Democracy (AD). We then narrate the emergence of the network form within the futures studies field, drawing out some of the key lines of development that have particular relevance to Anticipatory Democracy. We then focus in on some of the key emerging network form dynamics at play in the futures studies field, offering some analysis. Finally we draw some insights from the analysis by exploring the latent potentials and pitfalls of online / participatory networked foresight approaches, and re-assess the prospects for anticipatory democracy in the 21st century.

This article discusses several contemporary efforts at conducting foresight projects in a networked, collaborative mode, a style of project which is currently attracting a lot of positive attention in the futures community. Is this simply a stylish fad driven by our enchantment with social media? We intend to argue rather that these projects prefigure a style of global, collaborative, post-statist policy development ideal for addressing wicked problems. Far from being a pointless fad, these efforts form the early stages of a kind of anticipatory, collective intelligence which can potentially motivate action from multiple stakeholders acting from multiple directions in coherent and powerful ways. We believe it is important to understand these early efforts, learn from their successes and failures and continue to innovate, as a community, new, even more effective approaches. This section briefly suggests why.

Rittel and Webber (1973) first named the class of “wicked problems”, problems which are each novel and unique, for which the problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution, for which the solution is not right or wrong and so on. Most of the pressing threats to global civilization fall into this class of problems: climate change, terror networks and global crime, extreme poverty, child slavery are commonly cited examples. Roberts (2000) surveys some common approaches to wicked problems: authoritarian, competitive and collaborative, and concludes that collaborative approaches are significantly more effective at addressing wicked problems.

Anticipatory Democracy was coined by Alvin Toffler as his prescription for Future Shock in his book by that name (Toffler 1970). Clem Bezold, working with Toffler, then edited a book of examples (1976) as a vision for a state of affairs in which citizenry were engaged in considering, imagining and influencing society.

Toffler defined Anticipatory Democracy as: "The simplest definition of anticipatory democracy ... is that it is a process for combining citizen participation with future consciousness" (Bezold, 1978 in Bezold, 2010).

Functioning on a state government scale, AD makes a strong case that social policy to address wicked problems in a democratic society is perhaps best developed using large-scale futures methods which consult with a broad base of citizens to discover a shared vision for a preferred future. The experience of large-scale projects like “Alternatives For Washington” (reviewed in Bezold (2006)) demonstrate the strengths of the approach at this scale. Bezold’s approach with AD is to inform the policy of the state institution by drawing on the knowledge, ideas and passions of the populace and the approach has been successfully used at the local and state level in the USA. Could a similar approach work for global wicked problems?

In a theoretical project ranging over more than a decade, David Ronfeldt (1996, 2005, 2007) has argued that all societies are composed of admixtures of four, and only four, pure organizational forms: kinship tribes (T), hierarchical institutions (I), competitive markets (M) and collaborative networks (N). These four forms have emerged in human collectives sequentially through time and, as human societies have become more complex and successive communications technologies have emerged, each form has risen to its strength. Each form solves its own core problems, brings its own form of coordination and governance and promotes certain values, ways of belonging and so on.

As each form arises, the society must accommodate this new kind of complexity and the contradictions between new and old forms. Each new form subverts the older order, disrupting prior forms, then brings additive effects which lead to a new order in which the older forms are limited but strengthened. T societies become T+I societies, which become T+I+M societies – prior forms are not lost, but they are restructured, recontextualised and placed in new relationships to the whole of society.

In Ronfeldt’s TIMN work, the rise of global communication networks of increasing sophistication has led to the gradual emergence and strengthening of the network form. This emergence is widely narrated, but the strength of Ronfeldt’s analysis is that it provides a way of seeing how the network form disrupts, but does not replace prior forms. TIMN allows us to focus on the strengths of the network form without becoming ideologically intoxicated by it. What are those strengths?

In relation to the argument we are making, Ronfeldt’s network form is global, it is horizontal – rather than hierarchical, it cuts across markets, institutions and tribes connecting individuals regardless how they affiliate with prior forms (we note that this disruptive capacity resonates well with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980) idea of the “rhizome”) and its form of coordination is collaborative. This is not a shatteringly original insight, but these are the characteristics we have foreshadowed above as necessary for solving global wicked problems. Ronfeldt (2006) notes, “... this form is suited to enabling people to address modern, complex policy issues that may require efforts from many directions at the same time...” (Ronfeldt, 2006, p22)

Anticipatory Democracy suggests the sustained transformational power that can be mustered by a motivated society – legislature, government apparatus and citizenry – engaged in a mutual vision of a desired, achievable future. We argue that the networked, participatory foresight which the projects in this paper exemplify are the initial stages of a global successor to AD, addressing wicked problems in a global, T+I+M+N society that encompasses the T+I+M societies that formed the original stage for AD. Far from being a stylish fad, these approaches and the Anticipatory Action Networks they prefigure offer a compelling, essential and hopeful way to address the most serious and threatening wicked problems our planet faces."




More Information

  • Open Foresight: A New Model for Public Futurism. By Venessa Miemis, John Smart, Alvis Brigis. Journal of Futures Studies, September 2012
  • Evolutionary Guidance Media: an integral framework for foresight communication. By Dana Klisanin. Journal of Futures Studies, September 2012
  • The Singularity is Boring: An Open, Collaborative 'Mock-up'. By Justin Pickard, Noah Raford, Wendy Schultz, Jake Dunagan, Scott Smith, and uncounted others. Journal of Futures Studies, September 2012
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