Interview: Jim Dator

Living Make-Belief Bonus Content

I spent the last months analyzing the ideas in Jim Dator’s new book Living Make-Belief, along with related works. The introduction to this project can be found here. All entries are listed here.

I’m always nervous to ask someone for an interview. I’m not sure why, based on results so far — even when I get turned down or ignored, the hit to my ego is shockingly small. But I still worry about being an imposition.

After wrestling with Living Make-Belief for months, how could I refrain from interviewing Jim Dator on all the thoughts and questions swirling around? But it still took a couple of weeks to work up the courage to ask for time from possibly the world’s most respected living academic futurist. But the venerable Dr Dator, now in his 90s, was incredibly gracious about the invitation and with his time, and agreed to an interview over email. Here are his responses.

1. I’ve had the good fortune to take courses taught by John Sweeney and Wendy Schultz, students of yours at UH Manoa. They are both stretching the futures field, from postnormal times to “crazy” futures. What do you see as the legacy of the Manoa Futures program and its graduates?

   I am very proud of and thankful to the wonderful people you mention, and many more who have extended and deepened futures studies worldwide. They were not only participants in classes and projects in the Department of Political Science, Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, College of Architecture, Program in Public Administration, Pacific International Center for High Technology Research, Outreach College, and almost every academic college and department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, but also the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, and its Special Space Programs held around the world, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, Korea, Ontario Educational Communication Authority, New College (University of Toronto), Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Rikkyo Daigaku (Tokyo, Japan), and The World Futures Studies Federation.

   They have always been more my friends and colleagues than “students”. I have learned and still learn far more from them than they learned from me. It is clear that they are influencing and inspiring many others around the world—such as yourself—to take futures studies seriously in their work and lives. Futures studies is much more widely understood and practiced now than when we began in the 1960s. Concepts and terms invented for futures studies are common knowledge now.

   Yet, when all is said and done, it is difficult to argue that the world is a better place now than it was when we began, as we hoped and expected it would be. To the contrary, governments, businesses, education—indeed all major social institutions—are fundamentally less futures- and globally-oriented now than they were then. Indeed one thing I have learned from experience and continuing scholarship is that there is no “progress”. There is substantial evolution and change, some of it novel, some of it cyclical, so the future of futures studies may lie in futures yet to come, though I see no evidence of those futures yet, in the present—even of my “students”.¹

2. In ConsumerShift, Andy Hines argues that one of the most critical shifts occurring today is the growth of Postmodern values at the expense of Modern and Traditional values. Your theory of change is more focused on communication technology. Do you think that technology changes our values (“the medium is the message”, etc) and then our new values get built into our choices and software/orgware, or do you see it differently?

3. Also in ConsumerShift, Hines identifies consumer desire for authenticity as a key dives for coming decades. Jensen talks about “Stories”; more neutrally rising in importance, and in your conversation with Pines, you came to this idea of “ontologically inauthentic but phenomenologically authentic”, or faux authenticity. Do you think people can’t tell that the authenticity is fake, or they just want the performance of authenticity, or something else? Can a company bigger than Ben & Jerry’s really reflect an authentic human perspective? I think there’s something here about the de-extinction movement - not actually bringing back dire wolves, but making regular wolves look more like them, etc; soon we’ll have a weird version of Jurassic Park with scaled toothed chickens etc.

   That was accurate when Andy wrote ConsumerShift, but postmodernism, per se, (like globalism and other values of that era) is dead as a doornail now. Yearning for a return to “traditional” values and behavior has been increasing for the past decades and has many more decades to go before they lose favor too. But (to respond to your next question) these are not “authentic” traditional values and behavior. They are consciously (and unconsciously) constructed and manipulated to beguile and seduce consumers and citizens². They are all part of the cause and consequence of the overall shift of society more or less everywhere in the world from agricultural/industrial/or information societies to dream societies, better understood as a meme societies.

   It is certainly true that “we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”—tools meaning not just hardware but their software and orgware, and whether they are physical, biological, or social tools, as we explain in our book Mutative Media (Springer 2014) in some detail. Our values are strongly provoked (or dampened) by behavior that new tools enable (or thwart). [Note that the process works with time lags, generational gaps, revivals, and other features we discuss in the book. It is not linear]

   One feature of the future is that artificial and synthetic processes are replacing (have already largely replaced beyond recovery) all “natural” and original ones, so that even if “authentic” dire wolves can be created successfully, they will live within artificial and synthetic environments shaping their behavior.

4. For the past 15 years or so, Disney has been using their access to the Marvel and Star Wars IP to create what seems like the perfect expression of a Dream Society: an endless stream of content featuring familiar characters and places, reconfigured as movies, television, toys, games, and theme park attractions (you mention the latter in 7.4, as does Jensen in a few places). But the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars are experiencing significant audience fatigue, with decreasing viewership and the recent shuttering of Orlando’s immersive Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Hotel. What’s your take on how these very Dreamy propositions are failing to keep people excited?

   In part this is simply normal attention fatigue to anything new over time. In part it is because Disney is now too expensive for many people who might like to attend (when I was in grade school, I could go to a movie—double feature, cartoons, newsreels--for nine cents, saving the pennies for extra treats. This was very cheap, even at the time when a penny had value it doesn’t now). But I believe the fatigue is mainly because the entire environment around us is increasingly artificial and hyperstimulating—and comes to us in a wide variety of modes. Covid enhanced this, but even without being forced to stay home and do everything remotely by Covid, it is the overwhelming trend. The world is a big Disneyesque fantasy with a master (if nefarious) dreamweaver pretending to be “President”.

5. I’ve heard you talk online about how maybe “Meme Society” is a better descriptor for the current age than “Dream Society”, with endless remixing of memetic content in various combinations of images and text. However, there’s another candidate emerging with the rise of AI: vibes. Not only has it replaced “mood” and “feel” as a term for the general sensory-psychological meta-experience, but people can now “vibe code” where they tell an AI what software they want generally, see what comes out, and give feedback. Any thoughts on this?

   I do notice that the ole hippie term, vibes, is enjoying a comeback. Thanks for alerting me to that. Vibes are more sensory than mere “memes”. Everything old is new again, except me.

6. Netflix is (possibly explicitly) creating content meant to be a “second screen” experience, i.e. something they can barely watch while folding laundry or scrolling on their phone, where characters frequently narrate their experiences so nobody gets lost. What are the implications for the dumbing down or loss of attention for a Dream Society?

   Here also, I don’t know enough about this experience to comment confidentially on it. But in general, I caution your using terms like “dumbing down”, especially because “dumbing down” is precisely what all the processes that created the Dream Society has already done to folks, according to all the critics I encounter now. Also, remember that Plato’s condemnation of literacy was directly on this point. A new technology makes easy things that were previously hard (or vice versa), and pushes us on to experience other peaks and values we could not experience before.

7. In your analysis, America has had Hollywood for a century, but in the last 15 years has moved toward a Dream Society form of government (despite precursors); on the other hand, Korea has a full-blown Dream Society culture but (from what I can tell) a pretty traditional government. What are your thoughts about how different sectors of society are making this change differently in different countries?

   No, that is not quite right. And I am sorry I was not sufficiently clear about that. I start my book by referencing the Korean Wave for two reasons. One is that the emergence of KWave is what enabled me to see the emerging global shift from information to dream societies. The other, relatedly, is that Korea was the first example of a serious “developing nation” understanding that economic growth could be achieved by producing dreams instead of only raw materials, TV sets, or automobiles, becoming—out of nowhere—a world leader in the production of dreams. In spite of Hollywood, Disney, and everything else I mention in the book, no American leader understands what some governmental Koreans understood. Trump is a skilled dreamweaver, but his dreams are retrograde, cruel, and dangerous (highlighting the fact that a Dream Society is not all dancing, singing and glorious fantasy. It can be Trumpish instead. Perhaps another reason for using “meme” instead of “dream”).

   Korea’s form of government is woefully backward and out of step with the popular culture it produced. For a while, I could say that Korea was very well governed via the obsolete political system—economic policy, Covid era, cutting edge high tech—because it had such a well-educated, loyal, devoted civil service. But the recent attempt at a coup by the conservative government and overreaction by the liberals shows that Korea is as inept and hampered by old governing ideas and structures as is the US and all other countries.

8. Regarding your proposed governance structure: why is your proposal still focused around text, when in chapter 6 you bemoan that the US Constitution is conveyed via text rather than paintings? What would be your ideal form factor given today’s technology?

   That is a good question. My excuses for what I wrote are ridiculously lame.

   1. Although I have been advocating quantum-based governance design for years in classes and publications, I had never produced a specific example of what that should entail beyond a few hints. The text in the book is the most complete so far.

   2. Though I have intensely used the latest ever-evolving multimedia communication technologies over the years, I now am no longer personally up-to-date the with current and emerging technologies.

   3. The book, though anticipating the end of text dominance, is entirely in text, so why not keep the quantum design text-based too?

   4. I repeatedly state that no improvement of any kind to the existing Constitution is possible at this time. Mine is just an example to provoke others to give quantum a try when the time comes. It is not my proposal for something that should be adopted now.

   5. Constitutions must be designed by the people who will be governed by it, not by any single person. I have made numerous attempts to get former students and others to join me (or ignore me) in developing their own version of quantum governance, but in spite of many pledges of cooperation, absolutely zero products!

   6. If I were to try some other medium now, it would probably be anime: AI-aided, multisensory, dynamic anime (not only sight, sound, and motion, but also touch, heat, smell, vibration, etc). I personally don’t know how to do that now.

9. Your proposal in chapter 13 is for a global government, but you see this as wildly implausible at the moment. Do you think there’s a viable path to starting small and scaling up?

   Yes, that is probably the best way to begin experimenting, until when the time comes, but the goal should be interplanetary and interactive, and it may be advisable to start there with bits and pieces.

10. One thing I was hoping for from your book was advice on how individuals can thrive in a Dream Society. Other than giving up on trying to preserve old forms like a literate society, I didn’t see much. What do you see as the key things an individual can do? Start dancing on TikTok? Focus on curating personal taste and brand? Learn to create with AI as a partner? I’d love to hear what you would tell someone currently in high school.

    Yes, to your examples. But I thought hard about this before ending the book, really having no better suggestions, given the discourse and behavior of the present. Concerning his life-long, inspiring attempt to create nonkilling societies with nonkilling governance, Glenn Paige used to say that you have to start by believing that a nonkilling society is possible, and most people do not, coming up with all sorts of arguments for why killing is good, natural, inevitable, noble…. (even though, from the earliest times of human existence to now, very few people, including myself, have ever killed anyone or seriously tried to, or even wanted to). So also I start by encouraging folks to embrace their (and others’) dream society behaviors and nonbehaviors (including refusing to read long texts while playing electronic games or consuming TikTok) as having functional and dysfunctional features that should be understood; to clarify their values (understanding the impact that new technologies will have in changing them), and cooperatively imagine the best possible world they can, based on dream society features as they continue to evolve. (Did you read my book, Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds (Springer 2022)? That is focused on the personal/interpersonal level and includes a discussion of how to nurture continuously futures-oriented human becomings instead of rearing backward-looking human beings as we are doing still).

    Again, huge thanks to Jim Dator for being so generous with his time and thoughts. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well on any of my questions or his responses.

1. This seems obvious once pointed out, but is certainly depressing! I wonder what the levers or obstacles are to getting people and institutions more comfortable thinking about and building toward preferred futures.

2. This is an interesting point. Does it matter if people value certain things because they’ve done so for generations, or because they’re manipulated by powerful actors? If they value the same things, won’t they act the same way?