CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

Source: The Advocate

The planet’s inhabitants are living in a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and while that may seem like an obvious statement in light of the economic meltdown, it’s been the basic frame of reference for Bob Johansen for years.

Johansen, former president and board member of the Institute for the Future, a think tank that has been forecasting societal and technological developments for decades, spoke to LSU students Wednesday.

Johansen, also a corporate consultant, was brought in from California by LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology to talk about leadership skills for the future and how emerging technologies will change daily life in what he calls a “VUCA” world.

“If you’re not confused,” he said, “you’re not paying attention.”

Johansen said the institute focuses on forecasting in 10-year increments, and its next one will be released in April.

It boasts a 70 percent success rate at forecasting what will happen, though Johansen noted that varies depending on one’s definition of “happen.”

Johansen told students to recognize a distinction between forecasting possibilities and predicting the future

“If someone tells you they can predict the future, you shouldn’t believe them,” he said.

He said the real measure of a good forecast isn’t so much whether it comes true in the future, but whether it provokes a productive discussion in the present.

One thing that is in a VUCA world, clarity is often rewarded. This can be helpful advice, but it is also a warning, since many solutions are embraced because they are clear, even though they are misguided or even wrong.

As an example of how the institute predicts the future, Johansen told the students that, starting with the safe assumption that in the future sensors, wireless connections and mobile devices will be everywhere, people might be able to walk the streets looking at objects through special glasses that give them real-time information on the things they come across.

In a video, a woman’s glasses tell her the accident history of an intersection she is approaching, what events are on tap at a local coffee house and the “real” cost of some green peppers at the grocery store after their carbon footprint and living-wage standards have been factored in.

Furthermore, people could subscribe to filters that provide only certain types of information, such as environmental or financial.

Johansen said this development — geocoded data implanted in everyday items — is easier to recognize in other countries in Asia and South America where cell phones and wireless networks do more than they do here.

A current example of this possible phenomenon can be seen in a project three years ago out of the University of California at Berkley, where cell phones were used to scan products on shelves and provide social and environmental information.

Johansen said that another major development is likely to be the rise of the global health economy, particularly a focus on wellness. He pointed out the U.S. has a sick-care industry, not a health-care industry. As it strains to treat aging boomers, its efforts will likely give way to a focus on how behavior influences health.

Another possibility is the rise of tuangous, which are consumer buying collectives emerging in Asia. He showed a slide of a group of smiling people in a tuangous who went to a BMW dealership and asked what kind of a deal they could get if all 30 bought BMW’s right there for cash.

“They were not happy to hear that,” he said of the dealership. “That was not the economic model they had in mind.”

Johansen said another phenomenon is regular people using the Web to offer micro loans to people in Third World nations, noting there is already a Web site, http://www.kiva.org, that does just that.

Some of Johansen’s other points included:

• Many parts of our culture are down on gamers, but Johansen said he loves them. Gamers, he said, can think on their feet and make sense of dilemmas. He said there is often too much violence in games, but that gamers are a good source for problem-solving and unlocking the wisdom of crowds.

He pointed out the institute is now using players to help generate solutions in massive online games that simulate global crises.

• These days, for anyone 25 years old or younger, six years is a generation. In other words, A 25-year-old probably won’t understand the world of a 19-year-old, and a 19-year-old won’t understand the world of a 13-year-old.
• One skill students will need is dilemma flipping. First, he said, one must recognize the difference between a problem, which can be solved, and a dilemma, which typically only presents undesirable options. Dilemma flipping involves ultimately generating a positive result from confronting a dilemma.
• Innovation is undermining the traditional concept of intellectual property, which has traditionally been a line in the sand that is never crossed. That is giving way to a more flexible system as companies discover that by releasing things like code to the masses they can tap into the resulting innovations that would never have occurred.