Posts Tagged ‘future’
“The present is pregnant with the future”*…
The estimable Tim O’Reilly uses scenario planning to create an insightful look at AI, our futures, and the choices that will define them…
We all read it in the daily news. The New York Times reports that economists who once dismissed the AI job threat are now taking it seriously. In February, Jack Dorsey cut 40% of Block’s workforce, telling shareholders that “intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company.” Block’s stock rose 20%. Salesforce has shed thousands of customer support workers, saying AI was already doing half the work. And a Stanford study found that software developers aged 22 to 25 saw employment drop nearly 20% from its peak, while developers over 26 were doing fine.
But how are we to square this news with a Vanguard study that found that the 100 occupations most exposed to AI were actually outperforming the rest of the labor market in both job growth and wages, and a rigorous NBER study of 25,000 Danish workers that found zero measurable effect of AI on earnings or hours?
Other studies could contribute to either side of the argument. For example, PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer, analyzing close to a billion job ads across six continents, found that workers with AI skills earn a 56% wage premium, and that productivity growth has nearly quadrupled in the industries most exposed to AI.
This is exactly the kind of contradictory, uncertain landscape that scenario planning was designed for. Scenario planning doesn’t ask you to predict what the future will be. It asks you to imagine divergent possible futures and to develop a strategy that improves your odds of success across all of them. I’ve used it many times at O’Reilly and have written about it before with COVID and climate change as illustrative examples. The argument between those who say AI will cause mass unemployment and those who insist technology always creates more jobs than it destroys is a debate that will only be resolved by time. Both sides have evidence. Both are probably right at some level. And both framings are not terribly helpful for anyone trying to figure out what to do next…
[O’Reilly explains the scenario approach, then applies it to our future with AI (see the image above), astutely assessing the conflicting signals that we’ve experiencing; he explores the “robust strategy” for our uncertian future (strategic choices that make sense regardless of which future unfolds); then he concludes…
… I’ll return to the theme that I sounded in my book WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up To Us.
Every time a company uses AI to do what it was already doing with fewer people, it is making a choice for the lower half of the scenario grid. Every time a company uses AI to do something that wasn’t previously possible, to serve a customer who wasn’t previously served, to solve a problem that wasn’t previously solvable, it is making a choice for the upper half. These choices compound, for good or ill. An economy that uses AI primarily for efficiency will slowly hollow itself out.
Looking at the news from the future, both sets of signals are present. The question is which will dominate. AI will give us both the Augmentation Economy and the Displacement Crisis, in different measures in different places, depending on the choices we make.
Scenario planning teaches us that we don’t have to predict which future we’ll get. We do have to prepare for a very uncertain future. But the robust strategy, the one that works across every quadrant, is to focus on doing more, not just doing the same with less, and to find ways that human taste still matters in what is created. As long as there is unmet demand, as long as there are problems we haven’t solved and people we haven’t served, AI will augment human work rather than replacing it. It’s only when we stop looking for new things to do that the machines come for the jobs…
Eminently worth reading in full. Indeed, speaking as a long-time scenario planner, your correspondent can only wish that everyone who wields “scenarios” applies the approach as appropriately, adriotly, and acutely as Tim has: “Scenario Planning for AI and the ‘Jobless Future‘,” from @timoreilly.bsky.social.
* Voltaire
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As we take the long view, we might send formative birthday greetings to Mark Pinsker; he was born on this date in 1923. A mathematician, he made impoprtant contributions to the fields of information theory, probability theory, coding theory, ergodic theory, mathematical statistics, and communication networks. This work, which helped lay the foundation for AI-as-we-know-it, earned him the IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award in 1978, and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal in 1996, among other honors.
“The metaphors we use deliver us hope, or they foreclose possibility”*…
It feels only too clear that the global order that defined geopolitics, geoeconomics, and life in the world’s constituent parts is changing fundamentally. But what lies on the other side of this change? It’s a sucker’s bet to try to predict that outcome with any precision; there’s just too much fundamental uncertainty. As Antonio Gramsci said (of another era, though he might have been describing ours): “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Still, it’s important that we try. It’s only by wrestling with what’s going on to determine what’s possible, then what’s desirable, that we can shape a future in which we want to live.
The models and metaphors that we use are key to that wrestling. Our natural inclinations seem to tend in one of two directions. Either we tweak the models we have to try to accomodate the change that we see… which seems to work until (given that the change just keeps on coming) it doesn’t. Or we flip to the opposite– we imaging that everything simply falls apart. In geopolitical/geoeconomic terms, we assume that we get an incrementally-revised version of the world order that we’ve known; or we imagine dissolution (into what tends to be called a “multi-polar” world)… neither of which imagines materially different world orders that, as hard as they are to describe, are entirely plausible. Part of our problem in visualizing those new orders is our lack of models and metaphors for them…
The two pieces featured here posit frameworks and metaphors that, while they may or may not prove to be “accurate” in any comprehensive way, can help us open our thinking, and model the ways in which fresh metaphors can help us see problems anew and find new solutions.
First a piece from Trine Flockhart, from the Global (Dis)Order International Policy Programme of the British Academy and The Carnegoe Endowment for International Peace, part of a recent book)…
Is global order a thing of the past? Is the liberal international order fraying and what is
happening to previously stable alliances and cooperative relationships such as the
transatlantic relationship or the relationship between the United States and Canada? Not
such a long time ago, these questions would have been regarded as alarmist, but today the
prospect of large-scale order transformation is part and parcel of daily debates. This rupture
is probably as important as the transformation that followed the end of the Second World War,
and together with the simultaneous transformations in technology and science, the impact
on people and societies may well be on par with the Industrial Revolution. As Gramsci wrote
from his prison cell, we live ‘in times of monsters’ where ‘the old world is dying and the new one
struggles to be born’(Gramsci & Buttigieg 1992). In these circumstances, we see the political
consequences in populist parties as voters seek certainty in an uncertain and turbulent world,
whilst policymakers struggle to find their feet in the emerging world and seek to manage the
fallout from the ending of the old world.
To ensure that the policy decisions of today are relevant for the geopolitical reality of tomorrow,
policymakers must have a clear sense about the likely outcome of the ongoing transformation
– in other words what kind of global order will be in place and what kind of relationships can
be expected within it? These are big and complex questions that have no easy answers, yet
many scholars and policy practitioners seem to already have their answer – the world will be
multipolar (Ashford 2023; Bekkevold 2023; Borrell 2021). At least anecdotally, it seems there
is widespread agreement that the international system is transforming from a unipolar system
anchored in American hegemony, to a multipolar system reflecting the shift of power to a larger
number of states. However, although the idea that the international system will be multipolar
is persuasive, and although the use of analytical concepts such as polarity can be useful for
gaining an overview of complex matters, we must be aware that polarity as a concept rests on
a specific form of analysis that tends to emphasize states, sameness, power and interest, and
which is only partially sighted when it comes to values, identities, lesser powers and complexity.
I worry that the focus on multipolarity, means that policymakers are trying to understand the
current order transformation through conceptual lenses that are blurred and not very relevant.
This article presents a different position. It starts from the counterintuitive position that
it is logically implausible for the global ordering architecture to return to an international
system that was in place a century ago. Those suggesting that we are currently witnessing
a return to multipolarity emphasise shifts in the global distribution of power and the rising
number of powerful states, most notably China. These are certainly important changes, but
The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications
other important changes are overlooked, which suggest a fundamentally different global
ordering architecture is in the making. Continuing to portray the world as multipolar belies the
complexity, significance, and extent of many other important changes. This paper presents an
alternative interpretation of the ongoing global order transformation, demonstrating why it will
be neither bipolar nor multipolar but rather multi-order.
A multi-order world is a global ordering architecture consisting of several international orders.
Gramsci was right that order transformations take time, so the multi-order architecture is still
in development, but can be glimpsed through the existence of three independent international
orders already clearly visible within the global ordering architecture – the American-led liberal
international order (albeit that American leadership under Trump is currently in question),
the Russian-led Eurasian order, and the Chinese-led Belt and Road order.1 Other orders and
other forms of relationships of importance are also in the making suggesting a more complex
architecture than a multipolar one. The paper does not claim to present a full picture of the
emerging ordering architecture but seeks merely to demonstrate the importance of embracing
new thinking to contemplate the possibility of an entirely new form of international system
in which multiple international orders with very different dynamics and different behavioural
patterns make up the global ordering architecture. The perspective brings into light important
relationships and dynamics that are not readily apparent in the multipolar perspective –
especially that relationships within orders are just as important as relations between different
international orders, and it leaves room for considering other aspects than powershifts and for
acknowledging the importance of other actors than just a handful of “pole states”. I argue that
awareness of the subtle differences between the multi-order architecture and more traditional
polarity-based understandings is an essential first step towards timely strategic policymaking
fit for the multi-order world.
The paper proceeds in four moves. First, I outline three significant events over the past four
years which only partially fit the polarity-based narrative. Second, I outline the multi-order
perspective by focusing on order as a condition, a social domain, and as practices of ordering.
Thirdly, I show how changes in three characteristics of the global system indicate a multi-order
world rather than a multipolar one. Finally, I briefly consider some of the broader geopolitical
implications of a multi-order world and demonstrate the importance of ordering dynamics
within and between international orders. The picture that emerges challenges some of the
most foundational assumptions about international relations and global order including the
prospect of achieving convergence around common rules in multilateral governance to meet
shared challenges…– “The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications”
The second, by Jessica Burbank, takes a different– and in some ways, more provocative– tack…
… A new world order is here. States (countries) are no longer the highest form of power globally. Power has shifted to wealthy individuals who work in groups and operate across borders: syndicates of capital.
Syndicates of capital cannot be categorized as legal or illegal. They exist primarily in the extralegal sphere, where either no regulations apply to their behavior or, where laws do exist, there is no entity powerful enough to enforce them in a manner that asserts control over the syndicates’ behavior.
In many occasions, capital is both the power source for syndicates, and the shared goal. Wealthy individuals form syndicates if their strategic objectives align. Those objectives typically revolve around securing new capital flows and preserving existing ones. Syndicates’ power is vast but fragile. If all members of a syndicate were cut off from accessing capital and the resources they control, they would lose their power.
Author’s Note: Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but I am not speaking of secret societies, the illuminati, or a cabal. Syndicates of capital do not hide their power, nor do they operate in secret. Their multi-billion dollar deals and contracts are publicly disclosed. They are also not united in ethnic background, religious, or political beliefs.
It is not enough to say: ‘democracies are being replaced with oligarchies because wealthy individuals have too much power in society.’ That may be true, but is not the full picture. Oligarchies are states run by a small group of wealthy individuals. That may accurately describe the politics of one nation, but it does not suffice to describe how power is organized on a global scale.
‘Global oligarchy’ also falls short of describing how power is organized in our world, because there is not one small group of wealthy individuals, there are many, and they compete. Still, the identification of oligarchs is useful for global political analysis because many of the oligarchs within a state also operate globally as leaders or members ofsyndicates of capital.
The new world order emerged before it could be identified. Platitudes like: “our world has gone crazy,” served as an emotional crutch, and an implicit acknowledgement that we lack a sound analysis of contemporary global power. What has felt like an ineffable force, an inexplicable undercurrent of darkness, is the ambiance of global dominion by syndicates of capital.
Though abstract, examining how global power is organized is essential to understanding the world we live in. Developing a coherent framework for evaluating global affairs allows us to more effortlessly make sense of current events. You’ll be surprised how quickly things click and how easily your mind makes connections when you absorb the news with a conception of syndicates of capital…
Both are eminently worth reading in full: whether or not one buys all– or any– of either set of conclusions, the mental calisthenics are the point…
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As we muse on metaphors, we might recall that it was on this date in 1279 that Mongol forces led by Kublai Khan were victorious at the Battle of Yamen— ending the Song dynasty in China. Kublai has already conquered parts of northern and southern China, and had declared the Yuan dynasty (with himself as the emperor “Great Yuan”). With the fall of the Song, the Mongols ruled all of continental East Asia under Han-style Yuan rule, which was a division of the Mongol Empire.
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”*…
Your correspondent is headed onto the road again; so, with apologies, regular service will be suspended until on or about May 17…
… In the meantime, the remarkable Henry Farrell offers sage advice…
Last Thursday, Combinations (a publication of the RadicalxChange foundation), published a review essay that I wrote on Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. I’m not going to repeat here what I say there; it’s available for free, so if you want to read it, just click on the link! [and one should read it]. Instead, I want to make the implicit argument explicit.
One of the big problems of American politics – and of politics in plenty of places elsewhere – is that we lack usable and attractive futures. The result is the current battle between the defenders of the present, and an incoherent counter-alliance that brings the cultists of an imaginary past and the evangelists of an impossible future into common cause.
Because I am weird, I think that the most immediately useful aspect of Klein and Thompson’s book is not its specific argument about how to get to the future. It is that the book has the promise to reorient the presentists around the prospect of an attractive future, and the different paths you might take to get there. On the one hand, as Dan Davies says (riffing on post-punk philosophizing), if you don’t have a dream then how’re ya gonna have a dream come true? On the other, no single dream is capable of foretelling the One True Path To Abundance (or, for that matter, any other desirable goal) so you want to have useful arguments between people with different dreams, and different plausible paths…
[Farrell discusses the book and its reception– the myriad reactions it has occasioned– puts the debate into an intellectualy historical context, then pivots to his advice…]
… One terrifying prospect for the U.S. is that the Trump faction wins again in 2028. Another is that the Democrats regain power – but that like Keir Starmer’s government, they trap themselves in a vicious cycle where universal expectations of less generate factionalism and political stasis, which further deepen those universal expectations.
That is why I think that abundance is important as a goal. We need to aim towards some version of abundance to escape the trap we’re in. That too, is why I think that disagreement about how to reach that goal over the next couple of years is valuable in two ways.
First, no faction on the left or right has any monopoly on the wisdom about how to get there. It is only through argument – and experimentation in those bits of the federal system and local politics where experimentation is possible – that we can figure out what to do when we can do it. Second, if we can get to a place where the major argument is about how to get towards abundance, not just between center left and centrists, but across the political spectrum, we – for a very broad value of we – will be halfway towards winning the fight we need to win. Far more is politically possible when we are disagreeing over how to get to an attractive future, than when we are struggling to ensure that we are as close to the top of the pile as possible in a horrible one.
We need usable futures that can orient current politics in fruitful ways. Abundance – in the broadest sense of that term – is the closest thing to a common denominator across such futures that I know of…
Abundance not as an agenda but a goal: “We need usable futures,” from @himself.bsky.social.
For contrast, pair with: “Trump’s futurism: Elon’s rockets and fewer dolls for ‘baby girl’” (and Part 2) from @adamtooze.bsky.social.
* Franklin D. Roosevelt
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As we opt for optimism, we might send cautious birthday greetings to an example of what less-inclusive abundance can yield: John Warne “Bet-a-Million” Gates; he was born on this date in 1855. A Gilded Age industrialist and gambler, Gates was among the first salesmen of barbed wire. He parlayed his success into the manufacture of of the fencing; and success at that, into the manufacture fo steel. (He was instrumental in changing the steel industry’s production methods from the Bessemer process to the open hearth process.) He was the president of Republic Steel and later, of the Texas Company (an oil concern later known as Texaco) and of the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad.
Gates developed a taste– and a talent– for gambling at a young age. In his prime, he was known to host raucous, days-long poker games in his permanent suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. His nickname derived from a 1900 horserace in England on which he wagered $70,000 and was widely-reported to have won $1,000,000 (though it seems likely he won “only” $600,000).
“The future’s another country, man… And I still ain’t got a passport”*…
Hamilton Nolan on seeing things for what they are, not what they used to be…
Born into a chaotic world, all of us develop a frame of reference to make everything intelligible. Consciously or not, we all have a narrative about reality that we overlay on events, placing them into a context in our own minds, allowing us to understand why things happened and what is likely to happen next. In the same way that our brains automatically filter out much incoming stimulus in order to provide us with a breadth of sensation that we can handle, our belief systems allow us to turn life’s waterfall of events into a story that we can read, and participate in.
Once we have developed this frame, this mental machine that inhales life and exhales explanations, it is tempting to allow it to run unimpeded. We can anchor ourselves to it and stop wondering why things happen. Religion is the classic example of this, but it applies to all realms of thinking. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact that these frames we generate are only approximate—they are the best we can do at any given time given the facts at hand. If we are actually concerned with keeping them as close to truth as possible, we must constantly dust them off and rework them in light of the unfolding of reality. This is what learning is. It takes work. It is tempting to check out from it, after we have enough to get by. Once we have an explainer machine that seems to work, it is easy to stick with it. The passing of time, the ceaseless interaction of people and things and ideas that produce events in the world, will render our frames anachronistic. Still, it is human nature to kind of relax into them, at a certain point, like an elderly person who sticks with their 20 year-old computer because they know how it works, turning off the software updates, satisfied with what they have.
This is a luxury that people in certain fields cannot afford. Science? Can’t stop updating. Medicine? Of course you must stay current. Literature? Technology? Academia? You must always do the painful work of tearing apart and rebuilding your knowledge and beliefs because failing to do so means that will not be good at your job. Politics is the same. Effective political policies and strategies are direct responses to the true condition of the world. Delusion does not pay. If the world changes and our political leaders don’t, it is the political leaders and not the world that will be left behind. The people who suffer for this failure are not usually the leaders, but the citizens who find that the leaders seem to have gone blind.
Things have changed in America. There are deep undercurrents that have been exerting pressure from below—the relentless evolution of global capitalism, the growth of inequality, new forms of technology jumbling the world of information—and then there are things that have changed rapidly, closer to the surface. It was possible to use a certain frame of reference that worked pretty well in the American political system for the past 40 years or so. But now that frame is out of date. It is worse than useless. It is misleading. It is detrimental, because the answers it spits out, the explanations it gives, the strategies it recommends for specific situations, are all based upon old data and old wisdom that no longer works. The frame of reference that guides many of the people who, unfortunately, dominate the Democratic Party in Washington is like a flood map that was drawn up before climate change. They keep using these same old formulas that worked back then, ignoring the rising water as it creeps up to their necks.
Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Bush Jr. and Obama all to varying extents did awful things and all to varying extents are responsible for the progression of the state of our politics to this point, but they also all believed themselves to be constrained by a set of guidelines, norms, and political realities that no longer exist. Even their most immoral policies were shaped to maneuver through public opinion and economic demands and historic traditions and laws that have now, effectively, disappeared. The playbook that political veterans used to operate in that old world is a set of directions to a house party that is already over. If you show up there you will only find an empty house. The action is elsewhere now. Chuck Schumer continues to pull up in front of that empty house each morning, blinking vacantly, knocking on the door with a bottle of wine in his hand, wondering what is taking so long.
Here are a few notable ways in which many (not all) of our political and media and business and intellectual leaders have failed to update their priors for current times: The federal government is now controlled by a political party that is nakedly, not bashfully, racist, and hopes to eradicate the past century’s worth of racial progress; economic policy is being dictated, stupidly, by a small group of zealots who do not understand economics; the primary concern of the president now is vengeance, and he is going to use the tools at his disposal to enact vengeance upon his endless list of enemies in a way that could surpass McCarthyism; “civil liberties” mean nothing to those who control the federal government now, and will likely provide little protection from that vengeance in the real world; the law, and the power of the courts to enforce laws that constrict the behavior of the federal government, is very much in question, and it is distinctly possible that within the next year or two the law is exposed as toothless in the face of the president’s will, and therefore the law should not be relied on as the primary guard rail of our democracy now; voter suppression is about to reach extremes not seen in generations, and outright election theft based on shoddy racist claims of voter fraud is extremely likely in upcoming elections at all levels; the US government is going to lose its status as a reliable source of information—economic statistics, scientific data, and more—as official information is manipulated for partisan gain in unprecedented ways, a development that will be devastating for almost all fields of knowledge, and for the economy; the federal government is being run by people who want to eradicate the government’s functions, except to the extent that those functions can be used to crack down on foreign and domestic enemies; many people are going to be jailed and deported and potentially killed unjustly in the very near future, by the president and his loyalists; institutions that imagine themselves to be proud, ethical, important parts of the fabric of America are going to cower in fear and abdicate their responsibilities in ways that their own leaders would scoff at right now. We are not living in “The West Wing.” We are living in “Goodfellas.” It does not have a happy ending…
… Extreme things—things that sit completely outside of the mental framework that too many of our political leaders are still using to govern their decisions—are happening now. And they are going to happen more. And they are going to get more extreme. This does not mean that we are in a hopeless situation. It does, however, mean that we must adjust our interpretation of the world, or be left behind. We must see things not for what we wish they were, or for what they used to be, but for what they are. There is no way to see beyond the curve when you’re looking towards the past…
Facing the future: “Seeing Things For What They Are,” from @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social.
Cases in point: “Trump and the Rise of the Multiracial Right” and “Tariffs on goods may be a prelude to tariffs on money.”
* Zadie Smith, On Beauty
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As we reframe, we might recall that, while today s of course St. Patrick’s Day, in Suffolk County, Massachusetts (which includes the cities of Boston, Chelsea Revere, and the town of Winthrop), and also by the public schools in Somerville, Massachusetts, residents are celebrating Evacuation Day, commemorating the evacuation of British forces from the city of Boston following the siege of Boston, early in the American Revolutionary War. Schools and government offices are closed.
“The press is a blind old cat yelling on a treadmill”*…
Well, in any case, it’s been a trying time for journalism. What’s next? The estimable Nieman Lab polled 21 experts…
Each year, we ask some of the smartest people in journalism and media what they think is coming in the next 12 months. At the end of a trying 2024, here’s what they had to say…
They’re all eminently worth reviewing, but your correspondent would call out a few:
Nick Petrie: “The year newsrooms tackle their structural issues“
Many publishers remain anchored to hierarchies born in the print era, with editorial at the center and product and technology bolted on as afterthoughts…
Ben Smith: “Back to the Bundle“
If media companies can’t figure out how to be the bundlers, other layers of the ecosystem — telecoms, devices, social platforms — will…
Alice Marwick: “The mainstream media will lose its last grip on relevancy“
The gap between mainstream media readers, people who get most of their news through influencers or partisan social media, and people who barely think about news at all will create a fundamental schism in how Americans see the world… 2024 was the year “disinformation” outlasted its usefulness. Moving forward, we should not be concerned with isolated incorrect facts, but with the deeply-rooted stories that circulate at all levels of culture and shape our points of view. The challenge for 2025 is to confront these deeper epistemic divides that shape how Americans understand the world…
And on a more positive (albeit, more distant) note, Adam Thomas: “Impact investment enters the chat“
Somewhere in the future, beyond 2025, a flourishing landscape of adequately financed, equitable media enterprises will deliver impactful content, serve diverse communities, and achieve financial independence…
These and the other provocative pieces at “Predictions for Journalism, 2025,” from @niemanlab.org.
(Image above: source)
* Ben Hecht (from Erik Dorn, his first novel, written while he was a journalist covering the aftermath of World War I in Berlin for the Chicago Daily News)
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As we contemplate civil discourse, we might recall that it was on this date in 1768 that the first volume of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published by its Edinburgh-based founders, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell. It relatively quickly attained a reputation for excellence in its summarization of knowledge. It prospered in print until the digital revolution and the advent of, first Encarta (which decimated print encyclopedia sales), then Wikipedia (which has much broader and often deeper coverage than a print encyclopedia can, and which has continued to improve its reliability to a level approaching that of EB).
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