Secretary of the Future ... $100 Trillion Toilet Paper ... and more

Vol. 2, No. 6 | April 13, 2016 | AAI Foresight

News for the Foresight Community

> Hot Topic: Secretary of the Future?
> Relaunches: World Future Society, Communities of the Future
> Blog Report: $100 Trillion Toilet Paper
> Mack Report: More Services, Fewer Jobs?

Hot Topic: Secretary of the Future?

Recently on American Public Media’s Marketplace, David Brancaccio and Katie Long picked up on the late Kurt Vonnegut’s what-if scenario of a cabinet-level futurist. Vonnegut had fretted, “I'll tell you ... one thing that no Cabinet has ever had is a Secretary of the Future, and there are no plans at all for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren.”

Image: Alle / Flickr

The idea, Brancaccio and Long infer, is “to help politicians think harder about how today’s actions might play out in 10, 20, 50 years.” This is a well-established activity in many corporations, such as Intel, where former futurist-in-residence Brian David Johnson’s role included presenting to the decision makers “a future that really wasn’t quite rosy because the company needed to be prepared for that.”

Taking issue with such a proposal is Reason magazine’s science columnist (with solid futurist credentials of his own), Ronald Bailey: “My quick answer,” he writes, “It's a really stupid idea. Human beings are terrible at foresight, and it would be especially terrible to try [to] marry our purblind premonitions to government power.”

Bailey provides an overview of the U.S. government’s predictive failures since the 1970s, suggesting that, unlike businesses, government forecasters bear no real consequences for getting things wrong: “But if a private company gets its forecasts wrong, the worst that happens is that it goes out of business and is replaced by competitors who made the right calls. Markets are superb at marshaling vast quantities of information, and they amply reward foresight and good guesses,” Bailey writes. “The problem with government planning is government power.”

Returning to the idea of a Secretary of the Future, however, let’s look at another possibility: that foresight in government would not be about power or prediction, but about ongoing cross-agency and cross-sector discussions of possible futures and their consequences. This was the basis for such foresight-oriented government entities as the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, and then-Senator Al Gore Jr.’s 1990 proposal for a White House-based office to study critical trends. (“The Critical Trends Assessment Act: Futurizing the United States Government,” The Futurist, March-April 1990.)

Former Gore adviser Leon Fuerth outlined such a scenario of ongoing futures discussions in a 2013 article for The Futurist. Fuerth and co-author Evan Faber described ways for government workers below the cabinet level and across agencies to confer and inform each other on emerging trends and their potential consequences—thus fulfilling the goal of  helping “politicians think harder about how today’s actions might play out in 10, 20, 50 years.”

Comment: Shortly after his inauguration, President George W. Bush spoke at a trade association dinner I attended. During the meet-and-greet, I was able to blurt out a challenge to the new president: “We’d like to see more foresight in government!” He responded, without irony: “So would I. It would be a miracle.” —CGW

Sources:  David Brancaccio and Katie Long, “What  If We Had a Secretary of the Future?” Marketplace, posted March 1, 2016. Ronald Bailey, “A U.S. Department of the Future Is a Really Bad Idea,” Reason, posted March 18, 2016.

Reference: Leon Fuerth and Evan Faber, “Anticipatory Governance: Winning the Future,” The Futurist, July-August 2013. PDF available on request.

Image: Alle/Flickr (Creative Commons).

Signals: foresight, futurists, government

Relaunches: World Future Society, Communities of the Future

Two venerable futures organizations have recently relaunched themselves, with new missions and new websites:

* World Future Society, http://www.wfs.org, founded in 1966 by Edward Cornish, invites futurists to “Be a part of our ambitious and exciting plans as we build a community of future-focused leaders who connect across the globe and explore areas of shared interest.” The Society's annual conference this year, themed “A Brighter Future IS Possible,” will serve as a 50th anniversary summit on the organization's future. (Signal courtesy of Jerome C. Glenn.)

* Communities of the Future, http://communitiesofthefuture.org/, founded in 1989 by Rick Smyre, unites futurists at the local level to share visions and resources to actively manage the multifaced changes affecting their communities. As Smyre steps away from being the central driver of COTF's activities, he invites friends and colleagues to participate in building COTF 2.0. (Signal courtesy of Peter Bishop.)

Blog Report: $100 Trillion Toilet Paper

In January 2009, Zimbabwe issued its largest-denomination bank note, a one-hundred-trillion-dollar bill. Soon after, it was not enough to buy a single square of bathroom tissue.

The hyperinflation Zimbabwe was experiencing is an example of a wild card—a low probability, high impact event or condition. Unfortunately, writes environmental futurist David N. Bengston, traditional planning typically focuses on continuous change rather than on potentially life-altering events. In the case of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, life savings were wiped out, real assets were hoarded, and foreign investment evaporated.

“On the plus side,” Bengston notes, “hyperinflation is good for people who are in debt because they can pay it off with worthless cash. But a complete breakdown of the economy is a steep price to pay for clearing your debt!”

Read: “The Strange Case of the Hundred Trillion Dollar Toilet Paper” by David N. Bengston, Foresight Signals Blog, posted April 1, 2016.

Signals: economics, inflation, wild cards, Zimbabwe

More Services, Fewer Jobs? AI and Automation's Impacts

By Timothy C. Mack

Research and development in artifical intelligence and automation may focus on solving human problems or on developing machine learning; both focuses have potential impacts on creating or eliminating jobs.

On issues of agency, the researchers ask what problems need to be solved and how can AI or robotics solve them. For example, in the delivery of health services, how do you reach remote locations where costs are too high for the lowest income populations? Perhaps digital response and assessment can save lives where human doctors are not available or practical. Similarly, in elementary school settings with insufficient availability of human teachers, could a responsive program serve to tutor struggling students in a personalized way? In these examples, the digital agency is shaped so that the AI function is specific-task oriented.

The other side of this coin is the focus on machine learning, such as by the Google DeepMind project. Its most recent deep learning approaches are self-structured—that is, they are not preprogrammed. The 2015 Deep Q project let a reinforcement-learning program teach itself how to play older Atari video games, with the result that it not only learned very quickly but it surpassed the game creators in developing unique strategies. In this setting, the agency was intentionally independent and somewhat unbounded (except for the focus on video games).  Accordingly, the focus is expansion of AI learning capability (general intelligence).

So the question becomes how these two paths will affect the course of work worldwide in the future. And the clear answer is the old saw, “It’s complicated.” This means that outcomes will be shaped by the dialogues between these viewpoints: targeted problem solving and general capacity building. The spread between these viewpoints is driven not so much by Luddite fears of job replacement by the grandchild of automation in some form of thinking versus acting, but instead by more elemental fears of species replacement with AI as the next and better generation (whether it be augmented humans or digital avatars). It is very likely that both concerns about unbounded AI independence and the drive for efficiency and effectiveness will produce a mix of outcomes as we move forward.

Not only will AI continue to replace humans in many areas, but we will also see digital agents of all sorts assisting humans in areas such as law, medicine, journalism, and so on to improve outcomes. Medical services to groups and regions not served before, reductions in traffic fatalities from assisted-driving software, and better legal representation in an always high-stress field are among many examples ahead.

How we'll manage the cultural and policy impacts is more a political and social question than a technical one, but the policy issues are making themselves felt through the AI R&D world as well. The result, as it plays out, will be fascinating.

Timothy C. Mack is managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc.

Signals: AI, artificial intelligence, automation, education, jobs, work

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1619 Main Street, #1172

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Managing Principal: Timothy C. Mack

tcmack333@gmail.com | 202-431-1652

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Consulting Editor: Cynthia G. Wagner

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Foresight Signals: Top Think Tanks ... Millennials' View of the Future ... and more

Vol. 2, No. 5 | March 8, 2016 | AAIHYPERLINK "http://www.aaiforesight.com/" HYPERLINK "http://www.aaiforesight.com/"Foresight

News for the Foresight Community

> Hot Topic: Top Think Tanks

> Findings: How Youth View the Future

> Analysis: Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce

> Revival: h+ Magazine

> In Memoriam: Richard Spady

Hot Topic: Top Think Tanks

The latest edition of the Global Go To Think Tank Index compiled by James G. McGann, senior lecturer in international studies and director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, outlines many of the pressures challenging the leading producers of policy analysis, including growing competition for attention (as well as for funding).

It is no surprise to consumers of such analysis who are already drowning in information overload that fewer long-form reports and white papers are being downloaded, let alone read or acted upon. Research reports in the form of PDF documents are disappearing just as their print counterparts have, McGann says, and even the World Bank confessed recently “that nearly one-third of their PDF reports had never been downloaded.”

Twitter, Instagram, TED talks, and Snapchat might not be the ideal methods to effect change, but social media outlets—today's and those of tomorrow—offer examples of ways to at least break into the news cycle. So McGann's annual index emphasizes innovation among the world's think tanks in areas such as use of the Internet and social media, as well as developing new paradigms for their research work.

One conclusion McGann draws about think tanks' future prospects might qualify as what journalists would call a “buried lead”: death by big data. He writes: “Big data, which involves the collection and analysis of massive amounts of information to pinpoint critical data points and trends, may render think tanks and their staffs superfluous. This new analytic capability enabled by supercomputers, maybe the think tank of the future.”

In Foresight Signals' report on the index last year, we observed the prominence of future-oriented think tanks in several categories, and the latest index similarly acknowledges futurists' work, including:

•          Brookings Institution retains the title of No. 1 think tank in the world. 
•          Information Technology & Innovation Foundation is the top U.S. science and technology think tank, second globally to Germany's Max Planck Institute. ITIF was also ranked the 49th top think tank in the United States in 2015, as it was in 2014.
•          Hudson Institute moves from 31st to 30th top think tank in the United States.
•        The Millennium Project again places sixth for best new idea or paradigm; it also makes the list (42nd) for best quality assurance and integrity policies and procedures.
•          Pew Research Center is praised for its innovative Fact Tank program, “written by experts who combine the rigorous research and quality storytelling.”
•          RAND Corporation drops from seventh to eighth top think tank in the world and from sixth to seventh in the United States. Though RAND fell in most of the categories in which it is listed, it remains a multidisciplinary powerhouse.
•         Resources for the Future remains the 34th top U.S. think tank and moves up one place, to 17th, for best new idea or paradigm.
•          Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars surpasses RAND as the top think tank in transdisciplinary research and is listed as one of the “think tanks to watch.” Wilson rises from No. 10 to No. 9 worldwide, retaining the No. 5 spot among U.S. think tanks. 
•          World Resources Institute retains its position from 2014 as the 15th top U.S. think tank, No. 1 in environmental policy, and No. 9 in transdisciplinary research.
•          Worldwatch Institute also retains its 2014 positions as No. 35 in the United States and No. 3 in environmental policy.

Source: 2015 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report by James G. McGann. Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania. Note: a “Cheat Sheet” listing the top five think tanks in each ranked category is also available.

Signals: institutions, public policy, think tanks

Findings: How Youth View the Future

As each bright new generation of Americans stands poised to change the world, they seem to go through a phase in young adulthood of pessimism about the nation’s future. Now it’s the millennials who report the lowest levels of confidence—as did the Gen Xers and baby boomers in their late teens and early 20s, reports Pew Research Center.

In Pew’s November 2015 survey of Americans’ attitudes toward the government, just 37 percent of millennials said they had “a lot of confidence” in the U.S. future, compared with 45 percent of Gen Xers, 49 percent of boomers, and 56 percent of the silent generation; 20 years ago, Gen Xers were the pessimists, and 40 years ago, the boomers went through this crisis of confidence.

“This finding highlights one of the challenges of generational analysis, namely determining when differences among age cohorts are attributable to life stage rather than to a unique characteristic of a generation,” writes Pew research assistant Samantha Smith.

Reference:  Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government, Pew Research Center, November 15, 2015.

Signals: attitudes, demographics, generations, government, optimism, pessimism

Analysis: Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce

When is a low unemployment rate bad news? When workers have given up for various reasons, including lacking skills to attain well-paying jobs, says workplace consultant Edward Gordon, principal of Imperial Consulting Corp.

In January, the U.S. unemployment rate was 4.9 percent, but, Gordon writes, “95 million Americans have given up looking for a job. Of these, 45 million are capable of being employed, including 6 million retirees who still want to work. Also there are 20 million people working part-time who are seeking full-time employment.”

As society and the economy have advanced technologically over the last decades, workers have not attained the high skills they need to stay employed satisfactorily, Gordon writes. And this talent gap is costly for employers with vacancies to fill. As Gordon quotes one CEO, “We're spending more money on finding good people than we ever have. What we used to do to find customers, we're now doing to find workers.”

Gordon advocates public-private partnerships that increase investment in local education and training, noting that the need for higher-level skills will only intensify in the future.

Source: “The Undereducated Workforce: Plenty of Jobs—Too Few Workers,” The Gordon Report, February 2016. Download PDF.

Signals: employment, skills, talent, training, workplace

Revival: h+ Magazine’s Future Day

Transhumanists and other fans of h+ (Humanity Plus) Magazine may have wondered at the brief suspension of publication at the end of 2015. The publishers announced on March 1 (Future Day) that h+ is in the process of reinvention as a weekly rather than daily digital journal. “Here in the early 21st century,” writes Peter Rothman, “the idea of what a magazine is or might be is a bit unclear. It seemed therefore to be time to reassess both the form and format of what we were doing and re-envision the future of h+ magazine or whatever it might become.” Details: “Future Day 2016: The Return of h+ Magazine,” Humanity+ Media, March 1, 2016.

Speaking of Future Day, a variety of events were held around the world on March 1 to celebrate, discuss, debate, and otherwise think ahead. Details: Future Day Events 2016.

In Memoriam: Richard Spady

Seattle futurist and business man Richard Spady, president of the Forum Foundation and founder of the Stuart C. Dodd Institute for Social Innovation, died January 10 at the age of 92.

Spady was “a social pioneer in civic communications and religious innovation,” said Jay Gary, president of the World Network of Religious Futurists, in which Spady was an active participant. “He will be remembered by his colleagues from WNRF as a committed lay leader of the United Methodist Church, the inventor of the Fast Forum(r) technique for civic education, and the patron of religious futures research undertaken by Dr. Richard Kirby, past chairman of the network.

Spady also was a longtime supporter of the World Future Society and its activities.

“Anyone who came into the orbit of Dick Spady never forgot his enthusiasm for symbolic dialogue and citizen skills,” said Gary. “WNRF is glad his work will continue by his family through the Forum Foundation and National Dialogue Network.”

Read: obituary Seattle Times, January 12, 2016.

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Feel free to share Foresight Signals with your networks and to submit any stories, tips, or “signals” of trends emerging on the horizon that we can share with other stakeholders and the foresight community.

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Managing Principal: Timothy C. Mack

tcmack333@gmail.com | 202-431-1652

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Designer: Lisa Mathias

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Foresight Signals: End of Coal? ... "Planetary Futurist" ... WFS Transition ... and more

Vol. 2, No. 4 | February 2, 2016 | AAIHYPERLINK "http://www.aaiforesight.com/" HYPERLINK "http://www.aaiforesight.com/"Foresight

News for the Foresight Community

> Hot Topic: The End of Coal?

> Futurists in the News: Alex Steffen

> Publications: Lifeboat Books

> In Transition: World Future Society

> In Memoriam: Maurice Strong

> Blog Report: Self-Driving Cars and Wild Nature

Hot Topic: The End of Coal?

About a dozen years ago, energy policy analyst Barbara Freese warned in her groundbreaking book, Coal: A Human History, that our use of coal would one day be condemned by future generations and that all of coal’s contributions to the industrial development we’ve come to enjoy and take for granted would be overshadowed by the predicted drastic climate changes.

While responses to Freese’s recommendation that “we move quickly and aggressively toward climate-friendly energy sources” have arguably been neither quick nor aggressive, signs of the end of our dependence on coal (and our vulnerability to its unhealthy impacts) are emerging.

Recent data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis show that China’s slowing economy and its move away from heavy industry toward services are dragging down demand for coal; both domestic coal production and imports have declined, and the government has announced it “will not approve any new coal mine projects for the next three years and will close down a thousand small mines,” reports Tim Buckley, IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Australasia. As a result, “China’s total country emissions are on track to peak potentially a decade earlier than their official target of no later than 2030.” Meanwhile, China is ramping up its investments in wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear production.

In the United States, where renewable and efficient energy investment is about half that of China ($56 billion in 2015 versus China’s $110 billion), coal is nevertheless on a downward trend, with “a 10 percent year-over-year decline in coal consumption in 2015 (and down already a staggering 29.7 percent so far in 2016) in addition to a three-year moratorium of new federal coal leases,” Buckley reports.

As one sign of the times, utilities in Oregon have agreed to phase out coal-fired plants by 2030 and to double the amount of renewable energy they generate by 2040. The measures are popular with Oregon voters—and have united some seemingly unlikely partners, Pacific Power spokesman Scott Bolton told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Some of these folks we’ve never worked with before, so it is actually exciting to find some common interests,” he said. “You don’t see PacifiCorp and Sierra Club on the same letterhead very often.”

References: Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese (Penguin, 2003).

“Data Bite: China Continues to Drive Global Markets Lower” by Tim Buckley, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, January 18, 2016.

“Oregon Utilities Agree to Phase Out Coal-Fired Power” by Cassandra Profita, OPB/EarthFix, January 6, 2016.

Image: Steve Buissinne / Pixabay (Creative Commons license)

Signals: alternative energy, China, climate change, coal, Oregon, utilities

Futurists in the News: Alex Steffen

“Planetary futurist” Alex Steffen, author of Worldchanging and Carbon Zero, was one of a handful of non-tech innovators in the San Francisco Bay area profiled on the blog The Bold Italic. (Also profiled for the piece were a chef, a distiller, and a singer.) The article describes Steffen’s work as “environmentalism to the core but goes beyond, requiring a complete rethinking of how humanity engages with the environment” and Steffen as the kind of innovator needed “to guide us through the hazy, tough road ahead.” Read: “Four Standout Bay Area Innovators Who Aren’t in Technology” by Ronny Kerr, The Bold Italic, January 15, 2016.

Publications: Lifeboat Books

The Lifeboat Foundation published three new books of fiction and nonfiction at the end of 2015. Visions of the Future, edited by J. Daniel Batt, features stories and essays on artificial intelligence, androids, life extension, and more, including contributions from Ray Kurzweil, David Brin, and Martin Rees. Prospects for Human Survival, by theoretical physicist Willard Wells, argues that technological advances may be accelerating faster than our ability to control them, suggesting that humanity should develop friendly superhuman AI as quickly as possible. The third edition of The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen—and What to Do by Daniel Berleant also was released. Details: Lifeboat Foundation Books.

In Transition: World Future Society

In a recent announcement to members, World Future Society board chair and Interim Executive Director Julie Friedman Steele said she would be conducting a listening tour over the next few weeks to share thoughts on the future direction of the Society. With the endorsement of founder Edward Cornish and his family, WFS will hold its 2016 annual meeting July 22-24 in Washington, D.C. The conference will take the form of a summit and celebration of the Society’s 50th anniversary. WFS headquarters are now at 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W., 10th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20009. Download FAQs and profiles of Steele and the current WFS board of directors (PDFs).

In Memoriam: Maurice Strong

Maurice F. Strong, secretary general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, died November 30 at the age of 86. Perhaps best known as the organizer of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, Strong was a longtime World Future Society board member and was on the Society’s Global Advisory Council through 2014. He shared his thoughts on “Reforming the United Nations” in the September-October 2001 issue of The Futurist.

“Maurice Strong was a unique voice at the World Future Society, with senior leadership experience in both the Canadian power industry and UN environmental programs, thus bridging the gap between public and private,” said former WFS President Timothy Mack, managing principal of AAI Foresight. “He also advised the UN on such delicate matters as the Korean Peninsula and China’s changing role in the world (living in Beijing for many years). He was consulted right up until his death as an expert on multilateralism and peaceful resolution of conflicts and enjoyed a high profile in the Rio and Rio+20 world environmental conferences. Strong was instrumental in promoting government funding and entry into international meetings for environmental NGOs for over 40 years.”

Blog Report: Self-Driving Cars and Wild Nature

As autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles gain powers and popularity, one potential impact has received scant attention. In his latest blog for AAI Foresight, environmental futurist David N. Bengston warns that proponents need to look beyond the first-order effects of these technologies.

“Natural systems near roads are degraded by an increased abundance of invasive species, reduced carbon sequestration, severed wildlife corridors, and spillover effects as people clear newly accessible forests and drain wetlands,” Bengston writes.

Read: “Self-Driving Cars and Wild Nature” by David N. Bengston, Foresight Signals Blog (January 2016).

Signals: automobiles, highways, nature, self-driving cars, sprawl, wilderness

__________

Send us your signals! News about your work and other tips are welcome, as is feedback on Foresight Signals. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting editor. 

Want more signals from AAI Foresight? Check out the blog! Log in to add comments.

Feel free to share Foresight Signals with your networks and to submit any stories, tips, or “signals” of trends emerging on the horizon that we can share with other stakeholders and the foresight community.

__________

© 2016 AAI Foresight

Foresight Signals is a publication of AAI Foresight

1619 Main Street, #1172

Freeland, WA 98249

http://www.aaiforesight.com/

Managing Principal: Timothy C. Mack

tcmack333@gmail.com | 202-431-1652

Webmaster and IT Consultant: Tom Warner

tomwarner13@gmail.com

Consulting Editor: Cynthia G. Wagner

CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com | Twitter: @CynWag1

Designer: Lisa Mathias

lisa@lisamathiasdesign.net

Self-Driving Cars and Wild Nature

By David N. Bengston

People have been thinking and dreaming about self-driving cars for a long time. Paleofuture.com’s article about the “Driverless Car of the Future” (Novak 2010) features a 1957 magazine ad depicting a family playing Scrabble in a bubble-topped car as it cruises down a six-lane freeway, the steering wheel pointedly unattended. The ad copy reads in part, “One day your car may speed along an electric super-highway, its speed and steering automatically controlled by electronic devices embedded in the road. Highways will be made safe—by electricity! No traffic jam … no collisions … no driver fatigue.”

Self-driving cars are, of course, no longer a futuristic idea. Virtually every car company is working on them, along with tech companies such as Google (now Alphabet) and Apple. More and more self-driving features are available in cars today. They’re coming, and sooner than many of us think. A recent Business Intelligence report (Greenough 2015) forecasts 10 million autonomous vehicles on the roads by 2020, some semiautonomous and some fully autonomous.

The first-order impacts of autonomous vehicles will be to transform transportation and mobility. Other travel-related industries will be among the first to feel the effects. For example, self-driving cars could reduce the need for short-haul domestic flights, hotels, and car rentals as travelers sleep en route and have their own cars at the destination (dezeen 2015).

But self-driving vehicles will also have many unintended higher-order impacts. In his book Future Ride, technology writer Peter Wayner identifies scores of ways in which every aspect of society will be affected (Wayner 2015). The lengthy subtitle of Wayner’s book points to a few of these impacts: “99 Ways the Self-Driving, Autonomous Car Will Change Everything from Buying Groceries to Teen Romance to Turning Ten to Having a Heart Attack ... to Simply Getting from Here to There.”

A likely higher-order consequence of self-driving cars that has received little attention is their impacts on natural areas. The effects could be profound. One possibility is that the comforts and efficiencies of self-driving cars may result in much longer commutes and more sprawling development. If you can eat your breakfast, watch the news, surf the Web, catch up on your reading, do some work, or take a nap on your commute, you may live farther out in undeveloped areas. Self-driving cars may reduce the need for roads in cities, but they could induce more road building and low-density development in remote areas.

Roads create serious environmental impacts (Haddad 2015). Natural systems near roads are degraded by an increased abundance of invasive species, reduced carbon sequestration, severed wildlife corridors, and spillover effects as people clear newly accessible forests and drain wetlands. The net effect is a loss of wild nature much greater than just the area of the road’s path, and a resulting loss of life-supporting ecosystem services.

The consequences of road-building and cars have been a concern among conservationists since the rapid spread of automobiles in the 1920s. Historian Paul Sutter (2002) details how this concern motivated leaders in conservation and wilderness preservation. The future of conservation could be threatened by a new era of fragmented landscapes and sprawl. Of the 50 largest U.S. cities, only about 6 percent even mention self-driving cars in their long-range transportation plans (Cutler 2015).

Foresight is needed to identify and prepare for the possible effects of self-driving cars and other major disruptive technologies. Foresight tools such as the futures wheel can help planners and policy makers anticipate unforeseen consequences of change and be more proactive, designing policies to discourage negative effects and encourage positives (Bengston 2015). Most analyses of the implications of change don’t go beyond the obvious direct consequences. But the higher order consequences are less obvious, often contain surprises, and may be the most significant.

The smart group process, graphic structure, and nonlinear thinking of the futures wheel make it a powerful tool for identifying and evaluating possible implications of change. Land-use and transportation policies informed by foresight are needed to effectively manage urban growth and protect open space in the decades ahead.

References

Bengston, D.N. “The futures wheel: A method for exploring the implications of social–ecological change.” Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal. Published online August 25, 2015. DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2015.1054980. 

Cutler, Kim-Mai. “How many American cities are preparing for the arrival of self-driving cars? Not many.” TechCrunch.com November 9, 2015. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/09/cities-self-driving-cars/?ncid=rss&sr_share=twitter#.8p4mjvz:XbDp

dezeen Magazine. “Driverless cars could spell the end for domestic flights, says Audi strategist.” November 25, 2015. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/25/self-driving-driverless-cars-disrupt-airline-hotel-industries-sleeping-interview-audi-senior-strategist-sven-schuwirth/

Greenough, John. “The self-driving car report: Forecasts, tech timelines, and the benefits and barriers that will impact adoption.” BI Intelligence. July 1, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/report-10-million-self-driving-cars-will-be-on-the-road-by-2020-2015-05

Haddad, Nick M. “Corridors for people, corridors for nature: How can the environmental impacts of roads be reduced?” Science 360(6265): 1166-1167. December 4, 2015. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad5072.

Novak, Matt.  “Driverless Car of the Future.” Paleofuture.com. December 9, 2010.  http://paleofuture.com/blog/2010/12/9/driverless-car-of-the-future-1957.html

Sutter, P.S. Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. University of Washington Press, 2002. p.343. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/SUTDRI.html

Wayner, Peter. Future Ride v2: 99 Ways the Self-Driving, Autonomous Car Will Change Everything from Buying Groceries to Teen Romance to Turning Ten to Having a Heart Attack ... to Simply Getting from Here to There. Self-published and copyrighted. Sold by Amazon Digital Services Inc., 2015. p.227. http://futureridebook.com/

About the Author

David N. Bengston, environmental futurist for the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Strategic Foresight and Rapid Response Group, is co-author (with Robert L. Olson) of the AAI Foresight Report “A World on Fire.” E-mail dbengston@fs.fed.us. Image: Automobile Italia/Flickr.