Techniques of Prediction

...THERE ARE Two WAYS to read this book: as an extensive compendium of speculations on alternative futures, and as evidence of the conceptual quicksand upon which such speculations are built...

...But the combination of these reasons probably makes it more likely that the policy-maker will argue less than he might about appropriate historical bases from which to choose planning options...

...But their list subsumes all the un likely as well as likely events and men that have brought us to our present ambiguous and pre carious state...

...Hence it tells us about what patterns of motives will drive planners and policy-makers to use such feeble but necessary projections...

...Or he can accept the scenario writer's interpretation of history because it is compatible with his own, or because he has nothing better to go on, being himself ignorant of historical "facts...

...BOOKS IN SEVERAL WAYS, then, the policy-maker is dependent on historical (including the present) interpretations...

...on surprising and "nightmarish" futures, international developments, various war produc ing situations, and on policy research...

...Still, the authors reveal an appalling if inadvertent arrogance, so that the result is indeed only half a handbook...

...The bind of course is, as with so many of our new technologies, that we must use this one (dangerous as it also is) simply in order to cope with what we have become...

...In order to look ahead to the year 2000 the authors look back at least to Greece, since understanding how we have gotten where we are is a prerequisite for understanding in what ways we might go on from here...

...sections on recent and future trends in science and technology, economic growth, and population growth...

...Curiously, there is almost nothing in the book about the ends and means of the great socializers: the family, education, and organizational structure...

...None of these reasons need have anything to do with a "correct" understanding of the past and present which is necessary for acting wisely with regard to the future...

...Or, to put it another way perhaps, because our systematic understanding of men and institutions (or even adequate data to understand them) is lacking and will continue to be lacking, between now and the year 2000...

...Kahn and Wiener explore these glum pre monitions of impotence, but they never come, really, to deal with focal sources of them in their—and other futurists'—methodology...

...Since plausibility is a great virtue in a scenario, one should, subject to other considera tions, try to achieve it...

...Given man's vastlyincreased power over his internal and externalenvironment, and, in particular, given the unprecedented opportunities for centralization ofsocial control that follow from the economic and technological changes that have occurredand that are likely to occur with ever increasingimpact, the effects of social policies—planned or haphazard are likely to increase drastically, and the consequences of mistakes are likely togrow correspondingly disastrous...

...It has sections on the "methodology" of speculating about the future, the nature of historical change, the 13 "basic longterm multifold trends...

...Their documentation about both past and present is far too skimpy...

...Both historians and observers of the present argue interminably over alternate explanations and over what constitutes validating data—but this indecisiveness does not come through in the book...

...Much of what the authors provide by way of historical justification for selecting plausible futures is based on 13 long-term trends ("most of which can be traced back to the twelfth or eleventh centuries...

...But what can he do with such forecasts...

...on the future as a "surprise-free" evolution of the present...

...Given these trends, anything from Auschwitz to Zobra becomes plausible...

...Or he may accept it, out of expedience—recognizing that the status of Kahn-class futurists, systems analysis, and computers endows this historical interpretation with a validity that in turn adds legitimacy to the proposed future be decides to anticipate and upon whose "reality" he bases his present actions...

...But the methodological rationale for scenarios requires exploration of unnumbered branchings within the scenario, in order to discover unanticipated developments of such significance that people will now undertake actions intended to increase the likelihood of avoiding or embracing these developments later...

...Thus Wiener and Kahn wade in not only as futurists but as encyclopedic interpreters of philosophies, circumstances, and events yesterday and today...

...This makes fascinating reading, but the reader doesn't know whether these selections from history are "correct" and, even if correct, whether their interpretations are right for the right reasons...

...But it is important not to limit oneself to the most plausible, conventional, or probable situations and behavior...

...History is likely to write scenarios that most observers would find implausible not only prospectively but sometimes, even, in retrospect...

...Wiener and Kahn have chosen their world view and, while they are properly cautious about the plausibility, likelihood, or completeness of the projections they offer, they show little diffidence over their interpretations of the past and present from which they extrapolate...

...Scenario writing is one such device for pursuing such analyses, a method particularly associated with Rand and the Hudson Institute...

...The writing is almost conversational and is sprinkled with modest and sensible disclaimers regarding the non-definitiveness of these exercises in delineating alternative futures...

...As usual, technology (in this case, social technology) is likely to outrun the wisdom and wits of those who must use it...

...As a compendium of many futurists' speculations this is a valuable handbook—actually half a handbook...

...To be adequate such methods would have to simulate the general and the particular in history itself...

...if a scenario is to seem plausible to analytic and/or policy-makers it must, of course, relate at the outset to some reasonable version of the present, and must correspond throughout to the way analysts and/or policy-makers are likely to believe decision-makers and others are likely to behave...

...The conceptual crisis, as Kahn and Wiener intimate, is as bad as our social crisis...

...Earlier they also assert that the most surprising thing one could anticipate about a "surprise free" future would be that it had no surprises in it...

...They expatiate on classical civilization, La Belle Epoque, Marx, Keynes, "humanism and the value of time," and why Columbian mechanics are skilled though illiterate...

...He can reject them, which increasingly will come to mean rejecting a lot of time, money, and scarce, skilled resources...

...Books such as theirs won't get us out of these crises but they do help make clear just how bad things are—and are going to be...

...To see the problem, one begins with an appreciation that...

...In this light their exercises in deriving futures reveal a serious problem not only for the reader but also for the policy-maker who is the primary target for books of this kind...

...We cannot do this because we cannot keep it all in mind...

...Rather than buried in context or coming on the very last page, these appreciations should have preceded the body of the text, for these are the proper lenses through which to inspect its tables, curves, and scenarios...

...What becomes likely depends on how exhaustive our analysis can be of possible interactions of these trends, as they are influenced by the fortuitous ness of individual humans and unique events...

...On the last page Kahn and Wiener say: If there is any single lesson that emerges fromthe above, it seems to be this: while it would certainly be desirable and might even be helpfulto have a better grasp of how social action maylead to unanticipated or unwanted results, it isnot likely to be sufficient...

...The present methodological impotence of the futurists—and as one of these I count myself just as impotent—has never been made so clear...

...Since, as the authors persuasively argue, futurist speculations will increasingly become necessary as a basis for choosing among policies, difficult problems regarding the limits of rational control overarch both the substance of the book and the mood of anticipation among planners and policy-makers which its pages reflect...