One of the recurring themes in futurist discourse in recent years has been around the possibility of Big Data causing the technological obsolescence of the professional futurist. In a recent post for the Association of Professional Futurists (the APF), our former intern Jason Swanson added a new and different twist to this fear [1]. The purpose of this post is to pose the "so what?" question.
Big Data is defined as the capacity given to us to process large banks of data - using modern computing power - to analyse that data to yield causal relationships that can be formed into models to accurately predict future human behaviour. As the computing power increases, so our models can become ever more complex, and our predictions ever more accurate. Jason speculates whether this may lead to a narrowing in the cone of plausibility, the result of which may be lesser demand for those who deal with a more uncertain and nuanced future - the futurists.
I am not sure that Jason has correctly identified that which is being narrowed. I would argue that what is being narrowed is the cone of uncertainty. It would be correct to say that because a range of outcomes is now less certain, they are seen as less plausible, but it is their lesser certainty that makes them less plausible, not a greater implausibility. This is not hair splitting because the consequence of this is that organisations will not prepare for the possibility of a future that they otherwise would have prepared for.
Perhaps a practical example might help to clarify the point. Let us consider the financial crash of 2007-09. It was largely unforeseen by many in the financial sector, but foreseen by some. The difference between the two was the readiness of a minority to consider the possibility of an implausible event actually happening. This demonstrates a more general misunderstanding of how probabilities work. If an event has a probability of, say, 1%, it is generally concluded that it is unlikely to happen. This is not to say that it will never happen because it will, once in a hundred times.
When the unlikely event of a financial crash did actually occur, what happened next was quite instructive. The financial and commercial certainty of a fixed business environment melted. What were taken as absolute relationships were found to be nothing of the sort. I wrote at the time about the example of the take-over by Lloyds Banking Group of HBoS, and this still provides a good example of how the fixed certainties of a business relationship ended up becoming very fluid [2]. We had moved outside of the cone of plausibility to and uncertain world of implausibility.
The financial and commercial community had mistakenly believed that because an event has a very low probability, it could not happen because it was too implausible. There is an area of futures practice that operates in this environment. The low probability, apparently implausible, landscape is the territory of the Wild Card [3].
Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2014
References:
[1] Jason's post can be found at: http://profuturists.org/blog/3160724
[2] The original piece can be found here: http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/pig-in-poke.html
[3] For more on Wild Cards, see: http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/wfr_june_2013_aguilar-millan.pdf
http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/in-praise-of-futurists.html
http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/more-on-futurists.html
Big Data is defined as the capacity given to us to process large banks of data - using modern computing power - to analyse that data to yield causal relationships that can be formed into models to accurately predict future human behaviour. As the computing power increases, so our models can become ever more complex, and our predictions ever more accurate. Jason speculates whether this may lead to a narrowing in the cone of plausibility, the result of which may be lesser demand for those who deal with a more uncertain and nuanced future - the futurists.
I am not sure that Jason has correctly identified that which is being narrowed. I would argue that what is being narrowed is the cone of uncertainty. It would be correct to say that because a range of outcomes is now less certain, they are seen as less plausible, but it is their lesser certainty that makes them less plausible, not a greater implausibility. This is not hair splitting because the consequence of this is that organisations will not prepare for the possibility of a future that they otherwise would have prepared for.
Perhaps a practical example might help to clarify the point. Let us consider the financial crash of 2007-09. It was largely unforeseen by many in the financial sector, but foreseen by some. The difference between the two was the readiness of a minority to consider the possibility of an implausible event actually happening. This demonstrates a more general misunderstanding of how probabilities work. If an event has a probability of, say, 1%, it is generally concluded that it is unlikely to happen. This is not to say that it will never happen because it will, once in a hundred times.
When the unlikely event of a financial crash did actually occur, what happened next was quite instructive. The financial and commercial certainty of a fixed business environment melted. What were taken as absolute relationships were found to be nothing of the sort. I wrote at the time about the example of the take-over by Lloyds Banking Group of HBoS, and this still provides a good example of how the fixed certainties of a business relationship ended up becoming very fluid [2]. We had moved outside of the cone of plausibility to and uncertain world of implausibility.
The financial and commercial community had mistakenly believed that because an event has a very low probability, it could not happen because it was too implausible. There is an area of futures practice that operates in this environment. The low probability, apparently implausible, landscape is the territory of the Wild Card [3].
Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2014
References:
[1] Jason's post can be found at: http://profuturists.org/blog/3160724
[2] The original piece can be found here: http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/pig-in-poke.html
[3] For more on Wild Cards, see: http://www.eufo.org/uploads/1/4/4/4/14444650/wfr_june_2013_aguilar-millan.pdf
http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/in-praise-of-futurists.html
http://eufo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/more-on-futurists.html
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