John Mahaffie

A problem I face when deciding what ideas about the future to share is that people tend to have heard of most cutting-edge things I might tell them. Why is that? It’s because the future is well known, or at least specific things about it are.

But sitting just behind the “famous” truths about the future is a lot of critical insight on what the changes that are so well known could actually mean. These insights are most often about a changed system or complex of systems.

Here’s a great example. Designer Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez has developed a rolling suitcase that follows its owner [Link]. The suitcase has a motor, and uses three Bluetooth receivers to triangulate on the owner’s smart phone. What a great idea. Some will find it fun, some mind-boggling.

But when we see a development like that, we don’t really know what it means. What does that add up to? Does it change our lives that much? Does it change anything more than the way you take your suitcase along? Or is it just a suitcase that follows you?

It’s the bigger system that smart things like this suitcase is a part of that matters, not a singular, however delightful, technological development. The work of foresight includes not just learning about a technology like that, but seeing how it fits with other emerging change, whether it represents a narrow example of a much greater possibility. One task is to say, what if there was more of that sort of thing? What would it mean? Another is to say, does this technology prove possibilities that could spread to other uses?

So put that smart suitcase in a wider context. It’s about technology that serves us: quietly, obediently, automatically, conveniently. It’s about adding smarts to ordinary things so that they serve us better. It’s about technologies that anticipate our needs, and respond to them flexibly. And its about harnessing automation outside of the factory–for daily, ordinary, human use.

This way of thinking has helped people move from the notion of a 3D printer — device that “prints” objects — to the idea of additive manufacturing, where complex objects can be produced flexibly, even custom, by laying up material, instead of carving it away or molding it. It led to further thoughts: if you can print a plastic object, why not food, or human tissues?

So when you see news like the story of Hop! the following suitcase, the thing to do is to think: what else could be like that? What is this helping us learn to do and learn to imagine. So we can thank Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez for a smart suitcase, but we can also thank him for stirring our imaginations and inspiring more ideas and innovation.

Image: Gizmag.com

Far too often, people propose solutions to problems large and small that are narrow and shortsighted. they take a binary view: cause and effect, A by itself leads to B.

They fail to think about how things are part of much bigger systems with complex interacting forces, players, and parts. This happens in businesses, in families, and at the regional, national, and global levels.

Sometimes this is simple narrow thinking or ignorance, but often today, at least in the US, it comes from partisan politics. How the public understands the issues or how opponents will characterize your decision later becomes more important than what's really true. And for similar reasons, politically, the short term usually beats the long term.

That is why shutting down the US Federal Government looks like a reasonable tactic to some people. They have not thought about how it would affect things beyond the political tussle underway right now. In fact, a US Federal Government shutdown would have a steep price tag–rather than reducing the budget deficit, it would increase it.

Some other examples. In the budget debates, it's easy to say that US aid to poor farmers in Asia and Africa is something we just can't afford right now. Their plight–however unfortunate–should not be our top priority, when our resources are limited, we should invest first at home.

Yet that aid is integral to critical things: the supply of affordable food in those countries and in the global marketplace, political and economic stability in multiple countries, the ability of people in those countries to afford US products and services, and so on. Investing in African poor farmers is investing in the US.

Arguments about issues like this are often touted as "common sense." Usually that means using a rationale that comes from a different context. For example, politicians like to say "I have to balance my checkbook each month, why shouldn't the Federal Government have to balance its budget?" But clearly, the US Federal Government and an individual's family finances are not the same thing.

Such arguments also tend to focus on the near term at the expense of the long term. Another example: arguing that we cannot stop burning coal for energy because too much of our electricity is generated from coal to stop using it. Doing so would weaken the economy now and in the next few years (never mind the critical need to move to alternative energy and the potential growth from transforming our energy systems).

The response to failures to think in systems has to be to regularly, and clearly offer a "Yes, but….." and to show people what else is affected, and what else is at stake. It will also make a difference to elaborate on the future outcomes of a decision by describing what is likely to result in the system and related systems that the decision will affect. A scenario or set of scenarios can be a powerful tool for doing that.

Image: Elsie esq. via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution license.

Foresight: Seeing the big in the small

Failure to think in systems