Scanning and Research
Futures Research, Week 2
The Map
During both sessions of class so far, I’ve had a strong feeling of disorientation, like I had previously thought I understood and had intuition for the basic contours of Futures, but now I’m being taught in a language I barely understand about concepts that everyone else seems to be fine with but seem totally alien to me. The disorientation isn’t just a metaphor - though it’s mostly an emotion that feels somewhere between despair and fear (knowing I have assignments to complete) it also feels a little like being seasick. It settles after some time (honestly, writing this newsletter is an important part of this settling process), and I’m left with the sense that the difference is the amount of structure.
Intro to Futures took the form of giving names and describing possibilities for various concepts in the field, some of which I was already familiar with in a primitive way, and some of which were new and exciting. Basically, an exercise in surveying a vast and exciting landscape and beginning to map the area. In contrast, Futures Research feels like being given a regimented, highly opinionated set of directions to follow to reach a specific point on the map, but only having a theoretical grasp of the bushcraft required. Setting up the tent and starting the fire seem impossible until I try, fail, panic, calm down, analyze the failure, and try again a few times.
The context for this week’s painful cycle of learning was the scanning process, also covered in Chapter 2 of Thinking About the Future.
The Assessment
Once we’ve framed the domain of interest as described last week, the next step is to generate an assessment of the current state of the domain. In the Houston Method, there are a predefined set of elements to include. First is a survey of the hot topics of today - the main controversies and headlines that anyone following the subject would be familiar with. Next come the stakeholders - key individuals or organizations that affect or are affected by developments in the domain1. Last, include a little bit of history for the domain. If we think about history broadly as a set of eras (a time period with a single recognizable set of dynamics) separated by discrete events that caused or signaled the shift from one era to the next, then we’re in the middle of an era right now2 - briefly identify and describe the event(s) that led to where things are currently. It might also be useful to include some key quantitative history in the form of time-series data.
Scanning, Fast and Slow
The next piece is the scan itself. TATF guideline 2.3 makes a distinction between scanning and “the scan”, meaning a lifelong practice of undirected scanning vs something more focused on a specific engagement. I still feel pretty good about the description of scanning I wrote during Intro, but notice that it’s pretty high-level and mostly focused on things like the frame of mind to take when evaluating a source and where to look for things. This week’s materials went deeper, but the biggest surprise was the sense of pace and energy associated with scanning.
My own practice, starting when I was doing amateur scanning for amateur futures and continuing through today, is frenetic and largely driven by FOMO - if I don’t check every source every day, I’m at risk of missing those faint signals of the future3. In contrast, the process described in Futures Research is much calmer and more deliberate. This advice from Richard Watson perfectly captures the vibe: slow, deliberate, ignoring the chatter, but open to things outside your normal sphere of interest. The process can be as straightforward as taking some term in your domain map, adding a future term like “disruption”, “in 2050”, etc, and get Googling.
Understanding Horizons
There were also some major surprises about what I was looking for. For whatever reason, this confusion seems tightly connected to confusion surrounding Curry and Hodgson’s three horizons. I think part of it is that people will instinctively appropriate a useful framework like this to mean any number of things, and not realize that they’re changing the definitions. Between all the sources and readings, there have been four different definitions of the three horizons.
From the domain description, these are defined strictly by time: H1 goes from today until about half a (domain-appropriate) generation forward, H2 goes from then until a full generation in the future, and H3 is everything beyond that.
In the original Curry and Hodgson paper, H1 represented current ideas and arrangements reaching the end of their useful life, H3 represents potential futures evident today as pockets of the future found in the present, and H2 represents the time where the conflict takes place to determine which vision will prevail.
In terms of Framework Foresight, items in H1 determine the baseline future, changes in H2 are used to build alternative futures, and the things identified belonging to H3 identify weak signals of possible futures that are probably a long way off.
Last, using Molitor’s model to determine where to look for change, items in H1 are mature enough to be the subject of noteworthy events or current legislation, H2 material will be the stuff of “what-if” stories in newspapers and what people will talk about at parties to try to sound smart, and H3 ideas will be weak signals in fringe publications or patent applications.
Ideally, these are all mutually compatible and serve to reinforce a single concept. Here’s an example, though, of why I struggle. Take this report from the Pew Research Center about the future of Christianity as people switch religions. It gives projections out through 2070, which is well into my H3 range of 2050+. On the other hand, the report is from a well-established institution trying to extrapolate a well-known trend from the last three decades out for the next 5, which seems a lot like H1. On the other other hand, if America goes from a nation with 64% self-identified Christians to something more like 40%, that is certain to cause big changes in somewhat unpredictable, H2-ish ways (for example, to chaplaincy programs and electoral politics).
Cutting the Knot
I spent days trying to understand this well enough to verbalize my confusion, and the key to the solution4 seems to be: 1) not taking the years from the domain framing so literally, and 2) focus the scan result on a specific change, and not on the article or story describing the change(s). Under this framework, the demographic change described above definitely belongs in H1, and sets the stage for somewhat predictable changes in H2 and some very weird possibilities in H3.
I’ve found this framing challenging and disorienting because it calls into question what I’ve scanned for in the past. It seems like most of what I find belongs firmly in the first horizon (or even further back, in the assessment of current state), because they are either stories about interesting events or ongoing trends in areas of interest. For example, did you know that men in Southeast Asia are being trafficked into perpetrating online scams? Totally true, seems like it could be be really important to the way we think about the online deterioration of truth, but not even an H1 situation because it doesn’t describe a change. Did you know that, post-COVID, people are more skeptical of vaccines for dogs? Also true and not directly about the future; however, speculation about future upticks in people killed by rabies probably fits in H2, because it requires a change in behavior (and, for most states, licensing laws).
Despite causing me so much headache, labeling a potential change with the right horizon is just one of several ways it should be tagged as part of intake. To pick the most important scans later, include ratings for potential impact, likelihood of occurring, novelty, and the credibility of the source (especially considering conflicts of interest). For categorization, tag it with an appropriate category in some sensemaking framework such as STEEP or Verge5.
Trying It Out
Here are my reflections after trying to employ this new, more focused kind of scanning to my class project about the future of religion in the US:
Even after being more selective, I’m still having a hard time feeling confident about whether I’m reporting on something new (good) or reporting the news (bad). I will try to get feedback on this6.
Religious practice and identification aren’t topics with lots of big “events” worth reporting, being more focused on changes in private behavior across wide swaths of the population.
I’m having a hard time finding stories outside of trend reporting from the Pew Research Center and events from Religion News Service. This monoculture is troubling, and I need to figure out where else I can look.
This might be specific named entities or categories, and includes antagonists - for example, Just Stop Oil is clearly a stakeholder for the domain of European petroleum.
The unique things about the current era are that it doesn’t yet have an ending event, and may not yet have a name.
After all, if they were easy to find, everyone would already have noticed it!
I credit my wife Nicole for patiently listening to me explain the confusion, drawing diagrams of what she thought I was saying, and then pitching solutions.
If you keep a library of big general trends organized by STEEP, Verge, or whatever you prefer, you can update it slowly and quickly pull appropriate items into futures projects as they come up.
The (nearly) daily signals coming from Bronwyn Williams out of South Africa are a good example of scanning that I’m taking as a reference. She takes an idea she finds, grounds it in context, and explains the possible future implications, all in 5 minutes or so.