What the Future Holds: Insights from social science edited by Richard Cooper
and Richard Layard, MIT Press, $29.95/拢20.50, ISBN 0262032945
PROPHECY has not been one of humankind鈥檚 more common-or-garden skills. H.G.
Wells鈥攚ho was, unusually, a talented dabbler in it鈥攕ummed it up
nicely: 鈥淚t seems an odd thing to me that though we have thousands and thousands
of professors of history . . . there is not a single person anywhere who makes a
whole-time job of estimating the future consequences of new inventions and new
devices. There is not a single Professor of Foresight in the world.鈥�
Things have changed since Wells wrote: there are a few. But the ratio is much
the same. Hardly surprising: you can鈥檛 study the future, can you? It hasn鈥檛
happened yet.
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But as Wells realised, we shape tomorrow鈥檚 world. Genomics, nanotechnology
and global warming are all under scrutiny because they will affect how we and
our children live in the future. But Foresight as a discipline is seldom
represented in universities.
So What the Future Holds is a bit of a breakthrough. Editors,
Richard Cooper and Richard Layard argue that 鈥渋f social scientists thought
harder about the future, this would make them focus their research into the
present and the past more fruitfully, with more attention to the key predictors
of change鈥�.
The book is based on an Oxford conference in 1999, when eight social
scientists and two business futurists (note the contrast) peered into the
future. The crystal-ball gazers included not just Cooper, Layard, Stephen
Schneider, a biological sciences professor at Stanford, and Benjamin Friedman,
Professor of Political Economy at Harvard.
The book ranges over population, energy and climate change, work, monetary
policy and government. There鈥檚 a discussion of how we can deal with the future
by Peter Schwartz one of the business futurists, and a review of mainly American
future studies from the 1960s and 1970s.
Foreseeing the future is not easy, as the evaluation of past forecasts makes
clear. Joel Cohen argues that demographic forecasts, for example, have suffered
from 鈥渁n a priori disciplinary narrowness鈥濃�攁cademic-speak for
blinkers鈥攂ecause they ignored external influences and even innovations
such as contraception that may have had important demographic effects.
Cohen concludes that the inherent uncertainties mean that most population
forecasts should carry a health warning.
Similarly, Clark Abt points out the prevailing tunnel vision in energy
forecasting. In this field forecasts are made using mainly macroeconomic
modelling and related economic analyses. But where are the political, military,
economic and technological factors that determine what governments and
industries actually do? More blinkers.
The way academic disciplines are still demarcated along traditional lines
seems to be part of the problem. Interaction between these disciplines is vital
to the future, a fact futurists are well aware of, but this is often
ignored.
There are valuable lessons here. Schneider writes about the complexities
involved in modelling climate change, noting the array of plausible outcomes
endorsed by experts in the field. They may agree that global warming exists, but
not on its level or rate.
That鈥檚 probably why Peter Schwarz argues that scenarios are the most useful
tool in thinking about the future: 鈥淭he goal becomes making the most adaptive
decisions in a timely fashion rather than getting the future right.鈥�
If What the Future Holds does encourage more academic research and
public debate about the future, it will have done its job. If it leads to a
properly funded Chair that meets Wells鈥檚 criticism鈥攅ven better.