Question: How can foresight keep pace with a horizon ever receding?
By Eva Tomas Casado
Author’s note: In this article, I introduce my synthesis of AI-powered traditional foresight and relational living metaphors, a novel approach developed to transform foresight into Futures Work that keeps pushing the horizon.
COMPLEXITY IS NOT THE PROBLEM
Those who have knowledge don’t predict, those who predict don’t have knowledge. — Laozi
Philosophy, the love of wisdom, shares significant parallels with the field of foresight and futures. Contrary to many contemporary approaches, which value knowledge based on facts and data above everything else, the wisdom of philosophy embraces the not knowing as an integral part.
Foresight is acting in the same environment. We can anticipate. We can approach. But knowing with its attached certainty remains impossible.
The above quote by Laozi shows a deep understanding of the complex nature of the world around us. It embraces the fact, that we cannot know it all. We cannot know the yet to come, and therefore cannot predict it.
Complexity is a given, therefore non-predictability is a logical consequence.
We unlearned this truth. By learning and understanding more about the world we live in, looking at it through a scientific and technological lens over centuries, we reached a point where we thought, if we gain enough data, information - knowledge at the end, we will predict it all. To achieve this goal, we focused on mechanistic thinking, describing everything as if it were a mechanic machine, where one part adds its function linear to the whole. (After all, we transferred that to our organization, building departments as if they were gear wheels in machine, but that is another story.)
We unlearned to embrace the complex non-predictable nature of the world around us.
But the world found a way to remind us effectively.
As we made our advancements in almost every area of our lives, be it technology, that helped us connect, societal changes, that increased the players on the market, or economic changes, that enabled trade across formerly strict borders and beyond the real world, we started to increase the interconnection of formerly separates zones.
Probably unintended, we increased the complexity of the world around us.
Complex systems have one beautiful, yet also quite scary, property that typically increases with the degree of complexity: they show emergent behavior.
Emergence is defined as the property that the whole system shows a different behavior than the sum of its parts. But not only different. Unexpected. Unplannable. Unpredictable.
Since our world has always been complex, if to a different degree, emergent behavior and therefore disruptive changes or events, have been there at any time. Due to the fact, that the interconnectedness was lower, their occurrence did not impact as many as they do today. Furthermore, humanity had a perfect explanation for most of them: they were the acts of gods.
(Excurse: We call it emergence because we can’t explain it. Does that mean there is still room for gods, but let’s not dive into that.)
So here we are. We, as humanity, unlearned to deal with emergence and complexity, by building our social, economic, and cultural systems on the foundation of predictability. And the world around us became more complex, making this wanted and expected predictability practically impossible.
This gap is what we experience as the in-between-world reality full of uncertainties and discomfort.
NAVIGATING THE SPACE OF POSSIBILITIES
Discomfort is something humanity tries to avoid. Therefore, the original approaches of foresight, being classic scenario planning, developed as an answer to the increased complexity of conflicts after World War II, were aimed at creating comfort with multiple outcomes.
In the decades since a lot of nuances were added to this approach. Including pull factors, weak signals of change, integral theory, exploring underlying myths and metaphors, and more.
The underlying aim remained the same: we cannot predict it, let us at least minimize the discomfort.
These approaches are grounded in one common assumption: we know the present.
But our present surroundings are complex with the property of emergence. Therefore there is always a part of the present we cannot know. Meaning: we do not have data for it, we cannot grasp it with our logical minds.
Traditional foresight, anticipating multiple futures grounded in the knowable, reaches its limits.
Over the past decade, insights from anticipation theory have been integrated into the Futures Literacy Framework, endorsed by UNESCO. This approach includes techniques for anticipating emergent phenomena, tapping into our non-cognitive skills to enrich the futures process.
It encourages us to use the future to open our minds to new possibilities for taking action in the here and now. With its knowledge base coming from complexity and anticipation theory and crossing a manifold of disciplines is impressive and well-grounded in research this framework is a beacon of the contemporary futures approach.
But a beacon’s light only reaches so far. The space of possibility, just like the physical universe around us, is expanding. The horizon keeps receding, we are never standing still but continuously moving toward the yet-to-come.
And while traveling we encounter new islands, currents, and beasts.
FUTURES WORK: RELATING TO OUR FUTURES MEANS TO WORK WITH THEM
The past years full of major disruptions remind us of our complex surroundings and their unpredictability in an insistent way.
Besides helping foresight to gain new stardom, these events also attacked one fundamental underlying assumption of all Futures Work: that we are anticipatory by nature.
Anticipatory systems are described as taking possible future states into account when taking action in the present. They engage constantly with the futures ahead. They are relatively antifragile and resilient to changes in their surroundings due to their adaptability.
But they are not immune to shock.
If the shock or disruption is big enough, they fall back, at least for a time, into a reactive state. Reactive means taking action only on the information from the past and the present. Detached from the futures ahead.
The past years attacked our collective anticipatory state, and left us reactive, without relation to our possible future states.
This detachment led to an increase in dystopian visions, seeing developments as inevitable, not to be influenced by us in any way.
Accelerated advancements in the realm of artificial intelligence fed further into the narrative of the inevitable.
Therefore, the core purpose of any contemporary futures activities has to aim at building and reinforcing the antifragility, the resilience of our anticipatory abilities.
This cannot be reached by using the future, which indicates seeing the yet-to-come as a resource.
We have to re-establish our relationship with our futures, and we can only achieve that by working with the futures. Work as defined in physics is a form of energy created by using force along a distance. By engaging with Futures in a multiplicity of ways we can create this energy, that is needed for transformation of the freeze state we are currently in.
This multiplicity of Futures Work represents the dance between the known, the unknown, and the unknowable.
Traditional foresight powered up with AI, can help us gain trust in the knowable parts of our yet-to-come. It should not be forgotten, that despite all emergence, complex systems also show foreseeable behavior.
AI provides the robust analytical capabilities necessary for diving into vast amounts of data attached to complex systems and identifying patterns that are invisible to our eyes.
Even more important: AI can help us free up the time and space we need, to tap into the unknown and unknowable and re-establishing our connection to our futures.
In my quest to bridge human understanding and complex futures, I've found relational metaphors invaluable tools for making sense of abstract concepts. Metaphors can help us conceptualize and communicate the complex dynamics of our system, making the abstract tangible and actionable.
In my quest to bridge human understanding and complex futures, I've found relational metaphors to be invaluable tools for making abstract concepts tangible.
And regain, foster, and strengthen our anticipatory nature.
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND
To keep pace with the horizon ever receding, Futures Work must evolve beyond traditional often mechanistic, and utilitarian paradigms by embracing tools and philosophies suited to the complexity of the world around us.
Through my work, I've integrated advanced AI to explore the knowable parts of our futures, with intuitive relational approaches to explore the emerging and re-establish our connection to our futures, embodying my vision for a more dynamic, relational, and engaged futures practice.
Combining the effectiveness of algorithms with the power of heuristics, we foster our anticipatory nature and regain agency with the yet-to-come.
This is the new frontier of futures - a field characterized by dynamic adaptation and an ever-deepening engagement with the complexities of tomorrow and beyond.
I envision this new frontier of futures—a field I am trying to co-create, characterized by dynamic adaptation and an ever-deepening engagement with the complexities of tomorrow.
As we explore this space of possibilities our collective aim should not just be to remain comfortable and merely adapt to change, but to thrive in it, fostering a culture that is not only resilient and anticipatory but profoundly human.
Eva Tomas Casado is a futurist by nature, an engineer by training, and a philosopher by heart. Passionate about exploring the intersections of technology, strategy, and human insight, Eva develops cutting-edge approaches to futures work. Her innovative methods integrate AI and other technologies with relational metaphors, navigating the complexities of tomorrow with a thoughtful blend of science and philosophy. Discover more about Eva's work and her visionary insights on her blog at www.simple-thinking.at
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