Designing the future(s) Net-together – Permaculture Oxford, September 02004 Jamie Saunders [email protected]

Designing the future(s)

Net-together – PermacultureOxford, September 02004

Jamie Saunders

[email protected]

http://www.futuresedge.info

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.futuresedge.info/

http://www.futuresedge.info/

Learning objectives

• to assist participants to explore the notions about time and futures in their design work

• to develop thinking about the intended and unintended consequences of design as well as dealing with the inherent uncertainty and unpredictability of futures

• to explore risk, contingency and continuity planning concepts in relation to applied permaculture

‘…making the invisible visible…’

The future may seem like “the last great wilderness”

…something to respect, be inspired by, learn from and contribute to…

Spending time in the ‘crow’s nest’…

…developing the skills of a ‘futures scout’…


Re-vision - Permaculture

“the conscious design of sustainable systems”

Founded on ‘Earthcare’

LANDSCAPE focused – Local place specific solutions

Design model – ‘ZONING’ through space

Zone 00 – Personal development

Zone 0 – Home / Building

Zone 1 – Domestic sufficiency {Garden}

Zone 2 – Small domestic stock and orchard

Zone 3 – Main crop, forage, stored food

Zone 4 – Gathering, forage, forestry, pasture

Zone 5 – Wilderness


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Design Process – methodology

O-BREDIMR – ‘a planning wheel’

Observation

Boundaries

Resources

Evaluation

Design

Install / implement

Maintain

Review & Learn


The Keyline Scale of (relative) Permanence – Ken Yeomans

• Climate • Land shape • Water • Roads • Trees • Buildings • Fencing • Soil

http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010126yeomansII/010126ch4.html


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OBSERVATION – CONSTANT VIGILANCE & ALERTNESS


The Present is Less than the FutureMental Experimentation & Temporal Exploration in Design Work

“How designers use mental experimentation and imagination by actively envisioning various futures, or `possible worlds' in the design process, and how they use these temporal explorations in conceiving of novel design concepts…how designers use temporality: by projecting a future goal; and by investing this goal or image with an emotional loading, i.e. by `emoting a vision of the future'.

C. Hellström & T. Hellström, 02004http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/ExpandTOC/ingenta;jsessionid=271626035ejb6.crescent?issue=pubinfobike://sage/tas/2003/00000012/00000002&index=6



60 acre city centre design – “the pink carpet”BCR/Alsops, 2003

‘Zone 6’ – ‘beyond the boundary’ … in space and time …

Permaculture - ‘Permanent culture’ – characteristics of ‘permanence’

A ‘perma-culture’? – ‘people and their harmonious co-evolution in nature’…

The future…uncertainty…future generations…consequences…our legacy …foresight…futures…future-proofing… ‘the infinite game’…

Declaration on the Responsibility of Present Generations towards Future Generations, UNESCO, 01997 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001108/110827eb.pdf

“Uncertainty is the home ground of the moral person”

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love, 02003


Landscape

Timescape‘Info-scape’

Mindscape

“Situational Awareness”

VISIBLE INVISIBLE


“…what you see depends upon what you thought before you looked“, M Tribus

Situational Awareness“…simply, it’s knowing what is going on around you.”“SA depends on the operator’s perception of the situation’s elements. …three possible types of situation:the real world situation; the perceived situation; and the desired, or expected, situation (Boy, 1987)…complexity is reduced to manageable proportions by adopting many-to-one mappings between the real system and a … mental representation of that system.”

http://www.searchtech.com/articles/hics98.htm


http://www.colorado.edu/geography/cartpro/cartography2/spring2001/dettloff/time/prism_map.html

Pace layers of civilisation – Stewart Brand, 01999


• ‘Timescape’– “a timescape perspective stresses the temporal features of living”,

‘to enable us to see the invisible’, Adam 01998

• ‘Dynamic time’ & ‘Deep time’ – to break with the ‘tyranny of the present’– Challenge the ‘culture of immediacy’ & acceleration

• Slow Movement / Take Back Your Time

– Pay attention to the ‘extended present’– Develop alternatives

• beyond ‘the Big Here’ and ‘the future-perfect’• TINA - “there is no alternative”, reclaim the future…

• Time virtuosity / ‘time mastery’ • ‘Temporal imagination’



Integration - System Integration - System ScalesScales

Figure 4-1. Insitutional hierarchy of rule sets. In contrast to ecological hierarchies, this one is structured along dimensions of the number of people involved in rule set and approximate turnover times (Gunderson et al. 1995b).Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.

Figure 3-11. Decision hierarchies in the boreal forest. Shown are relative positions in the hierarchy for decisions about food choice, home range, or migration that would be made by each of three species from three differenct body mass lump categories. For example, a deer mouse establishes a home range over tens of meters, a beaver over kilometers, and a moose over tens of kilometers.Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.

‘Temporal design’ on the edge… - from the present to the future… from the nano- to the cosmic

• ‘The Long Now’ – 10,000 years…

http://staff.aist.go.jp/y.soeta/time2.html


“Memories of the future” - Time paths and options“We need to build ourselves a series of ‘memories of the future’ – anticipation of events that might or might not happen”

“The only relevant questions about the future are those where we succeed from shifting the question from whether something will happen to what we would do if it did happen"

Arie de Geus via http://www.shell.com

“We increase our chances by widening the range of alternatives we consider.”Graham May, 01997

"The result of remaining on the edge is a wider range of strategic options and a better sense of which option to choose.“ Competing on the Edge, Shona Brown, 01998 HBS Press


http://www.shell.com/

• Vulnerability and Resilience

– towards more robust ‘designs’…• ‘Sites’ – beyond the fence• Projects – beyond the now• Organisations – beyond today• Neighbourhoods & settlements – ‘sustainable communities’• Households & lifestyles – through lifespans, across generations

• Permaculture meta-design, design and tactics – eg rolling permaculture


Resilience is key to enhancing adaptive capacity

4 critical factors during periods of change…• learning to live with change and uncertainty; • nurturing diversity for resilience; • combining different types of knowledge for learning; and • creating opportunity for self-organization towards social-

ecological sustainability.

Folke et al. (2002)


“Imagination is more important than knowledge” Albert Einstein

The future or futures?… Multiple futures

• Possible {art}• Probable {science}• Preferable {politics}

– Roy Amara, 01978

Creativity – ‘the ability to think and the inclination (and courage) to rebel’, Bakunin

Contested futures, Brown et al, 02000


“People use their ideas about the future to direct their actions in the present”

James Dator, 01998

“…at the moment fear and uncertainty are leading to some strange reactions. We have few institutional frameworks for serious thinking about what the future is bringing.”

The new enterprise culture, Geoff Mulgan & Perri 6, Demos 8/1996

“Hard imaginative thinking has not increased so as to keep pace with the expansion and complications of human societies and organizations.” This is “the darkest shadow upon the hopes of mankind.”

H. G. Wells cited by Thomas Homer-Dixon

Speculative fiction…‘Pattern dustdevils’ – Kim Stanley Robinson…Antarctica, Mars …


COMBAT FUTURES

“AFTER THE WORLD war there was a world government. It was officially known as the United Nations, unofficially as the US/UN , and colloquially as the Yanks. It kept the peace, from space, or so it claimed. What it actually did was prevent innumerable tiny Wars from becoming big wars. But in order to maintain its power , it needed the little wars, and they never stopped. We had war without end, to prevent war to the end. The US/UN kept the most advanced technology in its own hands, to keep it out of 'the wrong hands' - i.e., any hands that could be raised against the US/UN's dominion. It was not as dreadful as generations of American dissidents had feared. It wasn't, by a long way, as dreadful as generations of global idealists had hoped. That leaves a lot of leeway for bad government. The Restoration Settlement, the fragmented system of 'communities under the King', was Britain's contribution to the tale of infamy. In the interstices of the Kingdom all sorts of Free States flourished: regionalist, racialist, creationist, socialist; even - in the case of our own Norlonto - anarcho-capitalist.The Kingdom was a caricature of a minimal state, which bore about the same relationship to my utopia as once-actually-existing-socialism did to my father's. The people who did best of all under the arrangement were the marginals who squatted the countryside and called themselves New Settlers, and whom we city folk called new barbarians- 'the barb'.After twenty years of slow-burning war of all against all the Army of the New Republic proclaimed the Final Offensive for the fourth time.”

Page 198, The Stone Canal, Ken Macleod, 01996– describing the ‘world’ in his first ‘speculative’ fiction work, The Star Fraction


“We understand how beautiful the whole Earth once was. And we can make it that way again. On the far side of our hard time I can see a returned clarity, as fewer of us get along ever more cleverly, our technologies and our social systems all meshed with each other and with this sacred Earth, in the growing clarity of a dynamic and ever-evolving permaculture...We are the primitives of an unknown civilisation…we re-drew all our county lines to match the watershed boundaries, a long time ago”

Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica, 01997


Complexity - continuity, change and transitions

• Consequences – intended and unintended…• Foresight – anticipation • Uncertainty – unpredictability - ‘spread betting’

– Hazards, Risks, Surprises, Danger– Continuity management & contingency planning– Prevention & preparedness…response & recovery

• Facing a “disruptive challenge” – scenarios to inform the present…– Bounce back– Reasonable adjustment– Phase change– Aftershock– Dieback


Hazard Now Soon Later

Economic

Social

Ecological

Other


Traps in Futures Thinking--and How to Overcome ThemThe most-common traps in futures thinking :

• "This is it!" thinking• paradigm blindness• trend-faith• cultural contempt• overenthusiasm; and• disparagement of everything new. ...

…a kind of disturbance generator (‘cognitive dissonance creator’ - J) to keep you awake in front of the turbulent future(s)...

Mika Mannermaa http://www.wfs.org/volexecsum04.htm


http://www.wfs.org/volexecsum04.htm

Anticipating the external environment

• identifying and monitoring change

• Certainties

• Cycles

• Trends & events

• Emerging issues

• Wild cards & surprises

• considering and critiquing the impacts of change

• imagining alternative possible futures

• visioning preferred futures

• planning, team-building & implementing desired change– (contingency planning for undesired change – JMS)

Schultz, 01997



Short term

1-20yrs

Mid-term

20-1,000yrs

Long-term

1,000 to 10,000yrs

Certainties

Cycles

Trends & events

Emerging issues

Wild cards & Surprises


Short term

1-20yrs

Mid-term

20-1,000yrs

Long-term

1,000 to 10,000yrs

Social

Technological

Economic

Ecological

Political

Other…

Futures Wheel – ‘creating preferred futures’Using the "futures wheel" tool will help you explore the consequences of a trend, event, emerging issue, or decision. You will discover first-, second- and third-order impacts of a particular trend, event, or emerging you identified from your environmental scan through the use of a futures wheel. It will help you organize your thinking concerning the future and will increase your understanding of the results of your research including, but not limited to, an environmental scan.


Models of Change Change is the norm, but its pace may be ‘accelerating’Older models that help us understand change and its

dynamic impacts include:• linear change, evolution, cyclical change, and dialectical

change between thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Newer models of interest to futures researchers include:• step jump models (sudden shifts in a system without a prior breakdown)

• evolutionary spirals• series of S-shaped curves of breakdowns and

breakthroughs; and • chaos.Linda Groff http://www.wfs.org/volexecsum04.htm


http://www.wfs.org/volexecsum04.htm

A stylised panarchy - A panarchy is a cross-scale, nested set of adaptive cycles, indicating the dynamic nature of structures depicted in the previous plots.Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural SystemsL. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.


Revision…

Situational awareness

• Environmental and political context

• Vigilance & ‘early warning’– constant attention and alertness

• Adaptability and transition management skills

Environmental / horizon scanning

• Breadth and depth of ‘intelligence gathering’

• STEEP – Social, technological, economic, ecological, political

• GLIMPSE, EPISTLE

Foresight

• Appraisal of consequences – ‘whole-life cycle’ analysis

• Anticipation & contingency planning - preparation and preparedness

• Vision, alternative futures, options, strategy and tactics


…to understand the differences between:

• Best sustainable option (BSO)• Best sustainable option

– not exceeding excessive ‘cost’ (BSONEEC) or– within available resources (BSOWEAR)

• Least sustainable option (LSO)

…Reclaiming the future …

…practising “the art of the long view”…

…designing with futures


Intentionally blank

“A key role for futurists is therefore to inspire decision-makers with alternative futures and choices, demonstrating their technical feasibility, and warning of the consequences of inaction. But behind every corporate decision there is a battle for hearts and minds - and they have rules of their own.”

Closing the deal: how to make organizations act on futures research

Jerome C. Glenn; Theodore J. Gordon; James Dator,

Foresight - The journal of future studies, strategic thinking and policy, 2001

Vol. 3 No. 3 Page: 177 – 189, Emerald


http://fourps.wharton.upenn.edu/forecast/insidecover.pdf


Panarchy, Buzz HollingsDeveloping a strategic sense of how to proceed. Do not try to plan the details, but invent, experiment, and build. Although this may

sound easy, at such times existing centers of local power resist larger opportunity because of the threats they perceive in the unknown.

Consequently, it is essential to do the following:

• Encourage innovation through a rich variety of experiments and transformative approaches that probe possible directions. It is important to encourage experiments that have a low cost of failure to individuals, the environment, and careers, because many of these experiments will fail.

• Reduce inhibitions to change, which are common when systems get so locked up. • Protect and communicate the accumulated knowledge and experience needed for

change. • Promote discourse among all parties involved to try to understand where we are going

and how to achieve it. • Encourage new foundations for renewal that build and sustain the ability of people,

economies, and nature to deal with change, and ensure that these new foundations consolidate and expand our understanding of change.

• Allow sufficient time. This pulse is a global phenomenon, and it could potentially affect all levels of the hierarchy, all the way up the chain, from the individual/family to national and global systems.

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11/index.html



Myths of nature - the limitations of strongly held world views or myths.

"Nature flat" describes a system in which there are few or no forces affecting stability. It is a nature that is infinitely malleable and amenable to human control and domination if only the "right" values and the "right" timing are chosen.

“Nature balanced" describes a view of nature existing at or near an equilibrium condition. Hence if nature is disturbed, it will return to an equilibrium through (in systems terms) negative feedback.

"Nature anarchic" is a view of fundamental instability where persistence is only possible in a decentralized system where there are minimal demands on nature. It is a view where the precautionary principle of policy dominates, and social activity is focussed on maintenance of the status quo.

"Nature resilient“ is a view of multi-stable states, some of which become irreversible traps, others natural alternating states that are experienced as part of the internal dynamics. It is a view of multiple stable states in ecosystems, economies and societies and of policies and management approaches that are adaptive.

Figure 1-1. Depictions of four myths of nature: (A) Nature Flat, (B) Nature Balanced, (C) Nature Anarchic, and (D) Nature Resilient. Each myth has three representations or metaphors: as stability landscape (left), phase diagram (center), and time-course chart or trajectory of key system variables over time (right).

Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.


"Nature evolving" (not shown in the figure)

is a view much like nature resilient, except that it is also evolutionary and adaptive.

It is a view of abrupt and transforming change which exposes a need for understanding unpredictable dynamics in ecosystems with a corollary focus on institutional and political flexibility.


Figure 1-1. Depictions of four myths of nature: (A) Nature Flat, (B) Nature Balanced, (C) Nature Anarchic, and (D) Nature Resilient. Each myth has three representations or metaphors: as stability landscape (left), phase diagram (center), and time-course chart or trajectory of key system variables over time (right).



Panarchical connections.Three selected levels of a panarchy are illustrated, to emphasize the two connections that are critical in creating and sustaining adaptive capability. One is the "revolt" connections, which can cause a critical change in one cycle to cascade up to a vulnerable stage in a larger and slower one. The other is the "remember" connection, which facilitates renewal by drawing on the potential that has been accumulated and stored in a larger, slower cycle.

… For institutions, those three speeds might be operational rules, collective choice rules, and constitutional rules (Ostrom 1990; Chapter 5); for economies, individual preferences, markets, and social insitutions (Whitaker 1987); for developing nations, markets, infrastructure, and governance (Barro 197); for societies, allocation mechanisms, norms, and myths (Westley 1995, Chapter 4); for knowledge systems, local knowledge, managment practice, and worldview (Gadgil et al. 1993; Berkes 1999; Chapter 5).



Design principles (for robustness) derived from studies of long-enduring institutions for governing sustainable resources

1. Clearly Defined Boundaries • The boundaries of the resource system (e.g., irrigation system or fishery) and the individuals or households with rights to harvest

resource units are clearly defined. 2. Proportional Equivalence between Benefits and Costs • Rules specifying the amount of resource products that a user is allocated are related to local conditions and to rules requiring

labor, materials, and/or money inputs. 3. Collective-Choice Arrangements • Most individuals affected by harvesting and protection rules are included in the group who can modify these rules. 4. Monitoring• Monitors, who actively audit biophysical conditions and user behavior, are at least partially accountable to the users or are the

users themselves. 5. Graduated Sanctions • Users who violate rules-in-use are likely to receive graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the

offense) from other users, from officials accountable to these users, or from both. 6. Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms • Users and their officials have rapid access to low-cost, local arenas to resolve conflict among users or between users and

officials. 7. Minimal Recognition of Rights to Organize • The rights of users to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities, and users have long-

term tenure rights to the resource. • For resources that are parts of larger systems: 8. Nested Enterprises • Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers

of nested enterprises.

Source: Based on Ostrom (1990). http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art18/index.html


http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art18/index.html

• Dynamic time - http://www.creativeinquiry.org/fields-of-inquiry/Organizational%20Development/knowing-the-future

• Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia Gregory Benford

– http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380975378/104-0908540-2459910?v=glance

• Futurist Tools – Creating Preferred Futures –

• http://www.cpfonline.org/cpf/f_tools.html

• Local Government Association Futures Toolkit for Local Government, LGA, 02000

• http://www.lga.gov.uk/Briefing.asp?lsection=0&ccat=-1&id=SXCFC3-A7805B01

• A Futurist’s Toolbox, Cabinet Office, PIU, Strategic Futures Team, 02001

• http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/A%20Futurists%20Toolbox%20Methodologies%20in%20Futures%20Work.pdf

• Strategic Futures http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/main.shtml

• The Future and how to think about it - http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2000/strategic/future.shtml

• A practical guide to regional foresight, FOREN, 02001

• http://foren.jrc.es/


http://www.cpfonline.org/cpf/f_tools.html


http://www.lga.gov.uk/Briefing.asp?lsection=0&ccat=-1&id=SXCFC3-A7805B01



http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/A%20Futurists%20Toolbox%20Methodologies%20in%20Futures%20Work.pdf

http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/A%20Futurists%20Toolbox%20Methodologies%20in%20Futures%20Work.pdf

http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/main.shtml

http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2000/strategic/future.shtml

http://foren.jrc.es/



• The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand, 01997

• Contested futures, Nik Brown et al, 02000

• The Living Company, Arie de Geus, 01999

• The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer-Dixon, 02000

• The Seventh Enemy, Ronald Higgins, 01978

• Heaven in a chip {fuzzy future}, Bart Kosko, 02000

• The future is ours, Graham May, 01996

• Why things Bite Back, Edward Tenner, 01996

• Infinite futures - http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~wendy/if.html - Wendy Schultz,01997

• The art of the Long View, Peter Schwartz, 01999

• Futurist Tools – Creating Preferred Futures - http://www.cpfonline.org/cpf/f_tools.html

• LGA Futures Toolkit for Local Government, LGA, 02000

• A Futurist’s Toolbox, Cabinet Office, PIU, Strategic Futures Team, 02001

• A practical guide to regional foresight, FOREN, 02001

• ‘Your Future in Business – the Foresight Training Toolkit’, 02001

• Futuring: The Exploration of the Future, Edward Cornish, 02004

• Ecocide, Jared Diamond, 02005• Antarctica & Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson


http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~wendy/if.html

http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~wendy/if.html



Documents

Designing the future(s) Net-together – Permaculture Oxford, September 02004 Jamie Saunders [email protected]