Jim Dator: A Noticer in Time

Futures Studies is generally misunderstood from two perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who believe it is, or pretends to be, a predictive science which, if properly applied, strives to foretell with reasonable accuracy what THE future WILL BE.

At the present time, futures studies is to modern academia and societal decision making what Science was to academia and societal decision making in the late Middle Ages. Because of this, I am no more likely to get most successful academicians, politicians, and business persons to take futures studies seriously (and thus to help them and their organizations to think and act more helpfully about the future), than Copernicus was in getting the powers that were in his time to recognize that the earth isn’t the center of the universe. Because futures studies is not like other established fields in academia, it is constantly being misunderstood and misused.

Perhaps because I live on an island which has more frequently been shaped by sudden, unexpected, and catastrophic events (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, truly massive landslides, and countless tsunamis) than by slow, predictable forces of change—and surely because, as a longtime professional futurist, I have come to understand quite well that social and environmental change is proceeding at a rate so rapid and unprecedented as to defy the ability of most people and institutions to comprehend it by conventional tools and paradigms—I have come to see that is better to believe that the future is approaching us, rather than that we are moving into the future.

Well, you have heard from the weather forecasters (also known as meteorologists) and now you are going to get something from a climatologist. The speakers before me—economists all—gave you their versions of what happened last year and what might happen next year concerning tourism in Hawaii. I was relieved to see that there was not only no agreement among the panelists about what might happen, but also no agreement on what had happened! That warmed my heart because I am going to share with you a much bigger picture—some thoughts about tourism in Hawaii from 1776 to 2076.

This essay explains and illustrates how the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies [www.futures.hawaii.edu] (and the “Manoa School” of futures studies more broadly [Christopher B. Jones, “The Manoa School of Futures Studies,” Futures Research Quarterly, Winter, 1992, pp. 19–25]) conceives of and uses “alternative futures” (sometimes called “scenarios”). Our use is not unique; it is similar to the way some other futures groups use scenarios. But it also contrasts significantly from most uses of scenarios, and especially from “scenario planning.” [Peter Bishop, et al., “The current state of scenario development,” Foresight, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2007, 5–25, and Timothy Chermack, et al., “A review of scenario planning literature,” Futures Research Quarterly, Summer 2001, pp. 7–31.] We notice considerable confusion within the futures field about the meaning of these terms, and hope that this essay will help make clear to others our use. We are not interested in “correcting” others’ usage, or in establishing a uniform terminology so much as helping people understand the sometimes very different meanings of the same terms.

I preface my thoughts with a poem by Wallace Stevens (1978), entitled Men Made Out of Words:

I grew up in a small town in Central Florida called “DeLand.” My grandfather was the town undertaker and also owned the town’s main furniture store. He inherited both from his father, whose father before him had been one of the founders of the town, having moved to Florida to recover his health which had been lost while he was a Union Army prisoner in the notorious Confederate prison called Andersonville.

“Time” and “The Future” would seem to be two of the most central concepts for futures studies, but in fact, “time” was barely discussed by the founders of futures studies, and has seldom been problematized subsequently. I have reviewed what I consider to be the founding texts of futures studies, in English (In chronological order: Wells 1913; Heilbroner 1960; Polak 1961; Toffler 1965, 1970; Bell 1966; Flechtheim 1966; de Jouvenel 1967; Kahn and Weiner 1967; McHale 1969). The only one to consider time seriously to some extent was John McHale in the opening chapter of his book, The Future of the Future, cited above, titled, “Time’s Arrow”. Indeed, McHale prefaced his book with this poem he wrote:

I want to begin my remarks today in a way very uncharacteristic of me: I want to look backwards before I look forwards.

We have been taught to value advancement, hard work, sacrifice, self-control, and unswerving loyalty to principle. These values, which were so necessary during the period of industrialization, are still those of our parents, teachers, and preachers today, and thus are the values into which we are socializing our youth. But many of the youths themselves do not accept these as the only valid orientations. They recognize that to please adults, and to “succeed” in the world as they have been taught to perceive it, they must believe, or pretend to believe, as their parents do. But among themselves it is often another matter. Value-conflict between parent and child is nothing new, of course. But the present situation is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different. We are said to be a youth-centered culture now, and if so, it is highly appropriate that we are, because youths possess the plastic personalities and role orientations which we all must learn to have in order to survive in the future. Instead of socializing our youths into the rigid and outmoded roles of the past, we should encourage them to maintain and develop their natural flexibility.

If all goes well today, I would like to help some of you heighten your ability to look at the present and future environment through more open eyes of love.

In this brief paper, I wish to indicate what I mean by “political futuristics” and to show how it fits into the scientific study of politics and relates to the investigation of utopia from modern viewpoints.

In his introduction to Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Richard Shaull says:

Unlike any other state in the union, studying the future has become a legitimate statewide activity in Hawaii. Largely since 1969, when Governor John burns authorized the creation of an advisor committee to convene a conference on Hawaii 2000, many citizens of the state have been engaged in a great variety of activities with the intent of encouraging and enabling them to gain control over their personal and collective futures.

I very much appreciate this extraordinary, indeed unique, and, I suspect, ground breaking, opportunity to address this joint session of the Legislature of the State of Hawaii. Not only has your invitation to me been a great source of personal satisfaction, but it further reinforces my frequently-voiced contention that the leaders and citizens of this State are eager and able to show to the world how better to live humanly in a multiplistic society. This State, through its leaders, is, I believe, bravely opening the doors to a new faith-affirming era, that faith being that you can and must rise above the petty jealousies and fears of his near and distant past, and daringly face the necessity of creating a profoundly new, more human, and freer world.

I first became aware of the World Futures Studies Federation while I was in my first years of teaching futures studies, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, usually simply called Virginia Tech) in 1966 or ‘67. Of course the WFSF had not been created then. But in order for me to develop a curriculum for a futures studies course, I had done a great deal of library research, ferreting out books and articles that seemed, somehow, to deal with the futures. I had compiled them into a rather large bibliography, arranged by various categories. I had also been persuaded, I think by David Greene of the British Archigram Group who happened to be at Virginia Tech the same time I was, to send my bibliography to the newly created Bulletin of the World Future Society that had recently been organized by Ed Cornish in Washington, DC. My bibliography was published as a supplement to the World Future Society Bulletin in April 1969.

Nonetheless, I am going to start at “the end,” with “talk about relationships of a political nature.” This is a call to de-colonize the future. You will see soon enough, I hope, that I fully agree that “personal” reform is as important as “political programs”. I just don’t believe that we can—or should—start at one “end” and neglect the other. That isn’t the way to do it partly, because the relationship is not linear. It is cyclical and symbiotic.

I was asked to give my “Perceptions of Europe from ‘Outside’”. I will do my best, but let me assure you that “Europe” is very, very hard to see, from the outside, certainly; but I am discovering that it seems equally as hard to see from the inside.

Humans have successfully survived, subdued, conquered, and flourished for thousands of years without worrying much about the future. When once the world was vast and humans few, and when once nature was mighty and humans puny, there was not much need (much less possibility) to worry about the future. Whatever was to come had already happened—“As it was in the beginning is now and ever more shall be, world without change, ah me.”

A familiar perspective on social change suggests that over the past several thousand years, human settlements have changed in size and complexity from hunting and gathering, to agricultural, to industrial, and most recently to information societies. Some theorists have recently suggested that the world may be moving into dream societies of icons and aesthetic experience. Evidence is presented here that indicates that South Korea may be leading the transition as it implements policies to base their economy on popular culture, perhaps eventually replacing “Gross National Product” as a measure of socioeconomic success with “Gross National Cool”.

Humans were once a tiny part of nature, no more consequential than any of the other flora and fauna of Earth and substantially less numerous or powerful than most. However, over the millennia, and especially over the last several hundred years, and most especially the last few decades, humans have become the dominant species on Earth (Turner 1990; Willis 1998; Smil 2002; Williams 2003). We have transformed what was once a “natural” environment of which we were only a small part, into a largely and increasingly “artificial” environment of our own creation.

In my talk today, I want to spend a little time at the beginning explaining my own personal odyssey concerning the future of energy, not to brag—indeed, you will soon see that I have been a complete failure—but to ask why anyone thinks we will respond to the apparent challenges now any better than we did in the 1970s when energy was, for a brief while, our obsession, and mine.

In the Spring 2012 Issue of Social Business Emeritus Professor Stan Shapiro revisited the pioneering work of the Canadian Conserver Society Project with which Dr Jim Dator had been involved. Ten years before, in 2002, Shapiro had also published a lengthy evaluation of this project in the Journal of Business Administration and Policy Analysis, in which he emphasized the renewed necessity of a Conserver Society for the twenty-first Century. He again stressed numerous ways businesses can make money in a Conserver Society. He compared the work of the Conserver Society with the recommendations of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development Report, “Sustainable Production and Consumption: A Business Perspective” (Geneva, Switzerland, April 1996), further reinforcing the point that businesses now should embrace and not run from the Conserver Society perspective.

Since the mid-1970s, it has been a hallmark of the “Manoa School of Futures Studies” to insist that it is not possible to “predict” “The Future”, but that instead “Alternative Futures” can and should be “forecasted”, and “Preferred Futures” envisioned, designed and invented, on a continuing basis (Dator 1979, 2009b).

Today I will talk about universities and quality. My title is intended to stress that neither is absolute or eternal. Each changes with changing times, needs, and possibilities. What is deemed poor quality at one place and time might be impossibly high quality at another. Quality has the characteristic that Marshall McLuhan alleged was a saying of the Balinese: “We have no art. We do everything as well as we can” (McLuhan and Fiore 1967).

The pages of history are full of the names of scientists who were persecuted, arrested, or killed for their scientific work that ran counter to current religious or ideological beliefs. Many still are. The American Association for the Advancement of Science maintains a contemporary Directory of Persecuted Scientists, Engineers, and Health Professionals.

This a preliminary report on a recent experience with an old idea—the use of modern electronic communication technologies to increase citizen participation in governmental decision making. A more critical and in-depth evaluation of the exercise will be undertaken later, but I hope this presentation will generate not only helpful and critical comments from readers, but also information about similar exercises elsewhere. Although I have been involved with the project from the beginning, the lion share of the credit must go to Professor Ted Becker of the Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii.

Lady Viqar-Un-Nisa Noon, Mr. Mazharul Haq Siddiqui, Mr. Ross Masood Husain and especially my beloved friend, Dr. Raja Ikram Azam, and all the members and supporters of the Pakistan Futuristic Institute are to be most heartily congratulated for convening this regional conference of the World Futures Studies Federation to consider one of the most important, and perplexing, questions facing the world today: the future of democracy in developing countries. In my brief remarks today, however, I would like to expand the scope of that inquiry to make problematic the future of democracy anywhere in the world. I frankly am very doubtful that democracy has a bright future anywhere, unless there are more meetings like this, where the participants are willing and able to look frankly into the future, with all its tsunamis and whirlwinds of change rather than only, or merely, projecting past battles and circumstances into the future. It is also necessary for us to try to see clearly the new, as well as the old, forces and trends which are working against, as well as for, the creation of viable democracies. And finally, we need to be willing and able to look beyond the forms and structures of so-called democratic governments of the past and present and the social systems within which they are situated, and see what new, and hopefully more truly, democratic forms and structures might be envisioned and invented to take the place of those which emerged in response to historical and political pressures of the past which may, or may not, be as important, or important at all, in the future.

(I appear in rabbit ears and dark glasses, beating a toy drum)

I am truly honored to have been invited to participate in this exciting and important Technology Renaissance Courts Conference 1996. I have had the opportunity of working with judiciaries, primarily in the United States, but also in Japan, Korea, and Micronesia, for 30 years, and while I have been a frequent visitor to some neighboring South and Southeast Asian countries, and have often changed planes in Singapore, this is the first time that I have had the opportunity to discuss issues of law, justice, technology and the future with a primarily Singapore audience.

In a recent issue of Futures, I concluded an essay on the futures of the courts and law with an ancient Chinese poem which I first heard read by the Chief Justice of the Courts of Singapore, Yong Pung How. The poem said that one of the signs of a well-governed polity is that “the courts of justice are overgrown with grass” (Dator 2000). I have also been known to argue passionately that, while some polities are closer to being democratic than others, no current system is democratic; that true democracy lies in the future, most likely as enabled by some forms of electronic direct democracy (Dator 1999).

Constitutional representative government, often mistakenly called “democracy”, was one of the greatest inventions of the eighteenth century. It rivals other eighteenth century inventions such as the sextant, the steam engine, the cotton gin, smallpox vaccination—and the guillotine—all of which changed the world in important ways. But all of them also have been superseded by vastly more powerful inventions, while constitutional representative government persists as a strange relic from the past, in more or less the same form, and certainly on the basis of the same mindset from which it originally emerged.

In order to forecast alternative futures of law, lawyers, courts, and judges it is necessary to understand their alternative pasts and presents, and to determine what aspects of the pasts and presents might continue to influence the futures, and what novelties might arise creating new conditions. This paper looks at the way judicial systems have been shaped by communication technologies in the pasts and might be shaped by current and emerging communication technologies in the futures. For most of our existence, homosapiens, sapiens lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers in small, face-to-face groups. We are biologically and in many ways psychologically evolved for that kind of life, and not for the world in which we now live. Agriculture and cities—civilization—is only a few thousand years old for anyone, and still new for many. Industrial and information societies are mere recent eye-blinks in human history. Alfred North Whitehead said that civilization is a race between education and disaster. It is also a race between biology and our built environment, and the cultures we have created within it. including the cultures of law.

From the very earliest times, humans have often given names to and found special meanings to natural objects such as trees, rocks, water, mountains, and to objects in the sky such the sun, moon and stars, or groups of stars. At the same time, we have created objects out of stone, wood, mud and metals, and given names and special meaning to them as well. Various religions have holy objects that are believed to have special powers and that need to be treated in special, reverential ways. Many humans develop a close interrelation with certain animals such as dogs, cats, and horses. We often love our dog more than our children, or our horse more than our wife. Even in modern times, many of us give our automobiles, motorbikes, or bicycles affectionate names. We talk to them, pat them, show them that we care and appreciate them.

It is great to be talking with people for whom the immediate past has been so good, and the immediate future looks so rosy. Sure, I know you have your doubts and uncertainties, but compared to almost everyone else, these have been good times for you that you hope and perhaps expect will continue.

I will speak on two themes today.

I first met Newt Gingrich when he was still teaching history at Georgia Western University. He and I were involved in the activities of the Committee for Anticipatory Democracy that Alvin Toffler created in the mid 1970s. Then for several years after he was first elected to Congress as a Republican from Georgia in 1978—and being a Republican in Georgia was unthinkable at the time—I would visit with Newt whenever I was in Washington, and it was mutually convenient.

Regardless of who won the presidential election—whether Clinton or Trump—American national government would be at a stalemate now. Indeed, I believe a good case can be made that if Clinton had won, things would be far worse than they are now. Yes, the US government is in utter chaos. Long-standing policies and institutions have been or soon will be gutted. People and nations that have been admiring friends and allies for 65 years have been insulted. The day after Trump’s inauguration, millions of women all over the world marched defiantly but peacefully in pink pussy hats of protest. All in all, the nation seems to be in the midst of a transformation at least unparalleled since the US Civil war in the 1860s.

I have known, admired, and loved Glenn Paige (and his wife Glenda) for more than 40 years. They have both been a huge inspiration for me in many ways. For many years, Glenn was a very active member of the World Futures Studies Federation, of which I am also a member, offering many talks and symposia primarily on leadership at our regional and world conferences. He also introduced discussions about the possibility of a nonkilling world at those conferences. While I had various concerns about his views on leadership, I have always had nothing but instant and continuing 100% support of his views on the possibility of a nonkilling world.