These slides were from a talk summarizing Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's (askpang) awesome paper "Futures 2.0: rethinking the discipline" for a Futures Studies class at the University of Houston.

1. Reality Check for “Alternative Perspectives” on
“Futures 2.0: rethinking
the discipline”
by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Josh Lindenger – November 1, 2012
@jlindenger | josh@thefuturesunderground.com

2. A re-envisioning of futures based on the shape
of things today…
dealing with 21st century problems
understanding cognitive biases
harnessing new tools for collaboration/
understanding/shaping
realizing that people (all of them) create
the future

3. But first…
Who is Alex Soojung-Kim Pang?
look up “askpang” on the interwebs
to find all of his stuff

4. 21st
Century
Challenges

5. Everybody is an influencer

6. wired to
think about
the future,
but poorly

7. Expertise in forecasting can also
be problematic

8. Despite all this,
we MUST think about the future
We just need to figure out
how to do it better…

9. Enter the tools…
For dealing with the complex future…
Social scanning | prediction markets
For evaluating methods and impact…
bias mitigation | ethnographic studies
For shaping the co-created future…
Choice architecture and nudges

10. Social scanning
would shift from a private activity to a public one
harnessing current scanning efforts
massaging them with algorithms
delivering aggregate, collective results to the
greater community

11. Prediction markets…
are a forecasting technique based on market economics
are kind of like a De/phi, but different
present some challenges for use by futurists

12. Futurists need tools that help
Mitigate the cognitive biases
that plague expertise
“better anticipate the future by more objectively
engaging with [our] own pasts”

13. A quick aside for context…
IARPA’s Aggregative Contigent
Estimation (ACE) challenge

14. Ethnographic studies
could help us understand how forecasts are used
The “not about being right, but useful” philosophy
is hard to stomach if you
don’t really know what useful means.

15. When well-designed
Choice architectures and nudges
present choices in ways that can
Help people make better decisions
and reach better futures

16. This paper is really one take on
The future of futures
and a pretty interesting one at that

17. The new tools could help us get at some
pretty important things for the field…
assessing the importance of accuracy
Countering cognitive biases
uniting the various strands of Futures
“take thinking about the future out into the world,
and make it more of an everyday activity”

18. The Challenge of Futures 2.0:
How do we help people
Create better futures
for themselves?

19. Reframe how we think of Futures
Not production of texts about the future…
social practices and performances
creating futures

20. What is our role then?
Futurists as
Choice architects
complexity | long-term perspective | creativity