Sebastian Seidel and I have a chapter, “Foresight, Value Systems, and Planetarity” in Methods for Researching Global Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Guide, a new volume edited by Mustafa Özbilgin, Cihat Erbil, and Dimitria Groutsis, out October 14th.
We explore how scenario work can support research into global challenges, and reflect on the ethical use of foresight when dealing with issues affecting the whole planet.
I recently presented at the launch of the new OECD report on an ecosystems approach to curriculum change, drawing on recent foresight work at the University of Oslo and the University of Queensland exploring the future of education. You can read more on that work here, in a blog post from the OECD’s Josh Polchar: “How seaworthy is your curriculum reform?”
I also ran a workshop with Oxford colleague Halina Suwalowska for the Old Fire Station in Oxford. This is an arts centre in the heart of the city “which takes a risk and entertains”, with the motto, “Art is for everyone. Art has potential.”
The Old Fire Station’s tower is Oxford’s “Hidden Spire”, almost concealed by the collegiate skyline, and this has lent its name to an artmaking collective.
The Hidden Spire project brings together people from different walks of life; many have experience of homelessness, having initially come to the Old Fire Station through the homeless charity Crisis.
The Collective work together to make publicly shared artworks, always deciding collaboratively what they make through a process of co-creation.
Halina and I worked with the artists to look at the future of Oxford, beyond hopes, fears, and expectations – exploring the city of 2041 as a contribution to this year’s forthcoming public artwork.
What happens when strategic foresight meets ancient wetlands?
In a new episode of the podcast “Echoes from the Bog”, part of the RE:PEAT network, the University of Galway’s Dr. Kate Flood and I discuss our work on the future of Irish wetlands with hosts Holly Bartley and Felix Brockley-Hatch.
It’s a deep dive into the Peat Hub Ireland project—a major synthesis of two decades of peatland research that culminated in the Peatlands 2050 Scenarios.
I’m just back from the Paris Conference on AI and Digital Ethics, an excellent and lively event.
The best bits were the difficult ones – the little moments of tension and conflict which poked through the collegiality and cordiality and even the impeccable Parisian hospitality.
Read moreIn Limn magazine, Oxford’s Javier Lezaun writes of mesocosms: experimental devices which allow us to observe natural interactions in a bounded and partially enclosed environment.
Specifically, Lezaun writes about polyurethane bags, mounted on hexagonal frames, which float in Taliarte harbour, on the east coast of the German island of Kiel.
Filled with water from the North Atlantic, the four-metre-long bags are used to determine how plankton responds when alkaline materials are added to seawater. Each bag contains a different quantity of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate, so that different levels of alkalinity can be compared.
Scientists are doing this to explore the impact of methods which could increase the oceans’ alkalinity at scale, accelerating their uptake of CO₂.
“Can we imagine a climate future in a giant plastic bag?”, asks Lezaun.
Read moreAlongside my other duties, I’m pleased to take on a new role leading the project “Death, dying, and afterlife in the age of AI” at Oxford University – a collaboration between the Uehiro Oxford Institute and TORCH – The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.
Emerging capabilities in artificial intelligence create the possibility of new relationships between the living and the dead.
After physical decease, what digital entities might live on in our stead? What agency will they have? How will the underlying technologies be developed, deployed, and managed? How will identity be authenticated?
What will be the impact on how individuals, families, communities, and societies approach the end of life, its associated rituals, and the ways in which we remember those who are gone?
Our team will use scenario planning to explore these questions and more, envisaging different future contexts for the relationship between AI and the afterlife, encompassing all aspects of memorial culture, funerary practices, and posthumous existence in the digital world.
I was a guest on the latest Strategy Meets Reality podcast with consultant, strategic adviser, and ex-instructor of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Mike Jones.
Catch up on YouTube below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I made a guest appearance on the latest episode of “Not Another KM Podcast”, hosted by Brittany Persinger and Rachel Teague, to talk about scenario planning, foresight, and knowledge management.
You can find the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you get podcasts.
My latest piece of writing, “Wise Enough for an Uncertain World: Scenario Planning and Social Impact“, can be found at the Danish social impact nonprofit Impact Insider.
It’s an exploration of how we make a measurable difference to social issues in an unpredictable world, drawing on research with the University of Oslo, the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), the IMAJINE project, and Peat Hub Ireland.
If social impact means creating long-term change, then we face a difficult problem: we live in turbulent times, and the future in which our impact will unfold is deeply uncertain.
Scenario planning can help by developing multiple plausible and contrasting futures, relevant to current concerns but challenging to our assumptions. Building and using scenarios offers the opportunity to critically explore expectations, hopes, and fears about the world within which we hope to make an impact.
Scenarios can inform the design of impact metrics which embody deeper values by considering the question: What might future generations wish we had measured in hindsight?
As we consider what inhabitants of different future scenarios might value, we can then identify and design appropriate impact measures to implement today.
Read “Wise Enough for an Uncertain World” at Impact Insider.
At Oxford Answers, the blog of the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, Sophie Mitchell and I have a new post about the auDA scenarios built by Australia’s domain name registrar auDA.
“If global governance comprises not just formal institutions and regulations but the ‘mood music’ of the world, what part do we all have to play in shaping that mood today and taking responsibility for the future which transpires? Will leaders take collective action and contribute to digital civil society? Will digital platforms embrace a duty of care towards the most vulnerable users? Or will competitive opportunity be sought in the cracks, if tectonic shifts occur in the management of the global internet?”
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 