The values of work

I read The Death of a Salesman over the break because my son was doing it for his GCSE and was having some problems with it. I realised that – to my surprise – I’d not read it or seen it before, even though the Willy Loman character has become iconic; worse, I’d conflated it in my mind with Miller’s other epic family drama, All My Sons. Some of its insights about how work had changed resonate again, two generations on.

Best practice in strategic futures

Ten years ago, I co-authored a report which The Henley Centre produced for the British Government’s Cabinet Office, trying to identify what represented best practice in strategic futures. We started with a benchmarking project, then identified a further range of interviewees, whom we talked to at some length, before distilling it into a collection of principles about good practice. I re-read it earlier this year, and found that (perhaps because it was about principles rather than process) it had held up well. A summary of the principles can be found below the fold. The full report has just been republished by my employer, The Futures Company (free, but registration required).

The long view of technology

I’ve just finished working on a thought leadership paper, Technology 2020, for The Futures Company with my colleague Andy Stubbings, and we’ve published an extract in the company’s quarterly newsletter, FutureProof (free, but registration required). I’ve republished this as it appears in FutureProof below the fold. In a couple of lines, I draw on Carlota Perez’ view of technology change to argue that we need to understand the ICT revolution as a long wave – following the same pattern as previous dominant technologies – which is nearing the end of its period of dominance. And secondly, that looking at the previous technology waves, it is only now – close to the end of the wave – that we will start to see new business models which will stick.

Playing the development game

In the early 1970s, the architect Theo Crosby wrote a book called How to Play the Environment Game in which – in the days before the ‘environment’ was associated with biosphere or sustainability – he picked apart the ways in which planning and development had become a ‘game’ in which developers and planners managed the system for their mutual benefit and excluded the public.

His book has been in my mind because I’ve been watching, close-up, the machinations of Hammersmith and Fulham Council as it appears to collude with developers in rebuilding large chunks of the borough as highrise while trampling on the requirements for affordable housing laid out in the Borough’s core strategy (opens pdf), “that 40% of all additional dwellings built between 2011-21 should be affordable”.

And while, of itself, this is only the subject of local grief, there are some wider lessons.

Privatising public space (2)

Picnicking at More London (Blueprint)

In my earlier post a few days ago, I wrote about the background to the widespread privatisation of public space. In this second part I look at some of the activist and political responses.

The idea of public space is at the heart of the idea and the life of the city, as Paul Kingsnorth wrote, in his book Real England:

It is the essence of public freedom: a place to rally, to protest, to sit and contemplate, to smoke or talk or watch the stars. No matter what happens in the shops and cafes, the offices and houses, the existence of public space means there is always somewhere to go to express yourself or simply to escape. … From parks to pedestrian streets, squares to market places, public spaces are being bought up and closed down.

Privatising public space (1)

One of the issues that the Occupy movement has brought into sharp focus is that of city land and its ownership. On Wall Street, Zuccotti Park is owned privately but heavily constrained by covenants. Occupy LSX ended up camped on ground partly by St Paul’s Cathedral and partly by the City of London Corporation because Paternoster Square, where the London Stock Exchange is located, is private land.  In practice, urban land is increasingly owned or managed by private interests, even when it appears to be public space. This is a new enclosure movement.

Coming shortly: the APF’s virtual futures conference

I thought I should mention here that the Association of Professional Futurists (declaration: I am a Board member) is holding a virtual conference – the ‘V-gathering’ – at the end of October, following the sun, starting in Europe in the morning of 26th October and finishing in Australia 18 hours later on the 27th. That’s ‘virtual futures’ as in a futures conference held in virtual space, not a conference about virtual futures, although that issue might intrude.

It’s worth mentioning here because one of the benefits of being virtual is that it’s not expensive to put on (this is partly down to some valuable technical support from the University of Houston, which is providing access to its e-learning platform for the event), the cost of attending is low, and it is open to non-members.

I’ve added a link to the current programme below, but in summary, there are four themes and an impressive array of speakers. The themes are:

• Futures/Foresight Methods
• Insights from Art/Design/Architecture
• Crazy Futures
• Building a Futures Career

Some highlights from the programme for me: in the European session, Sohail Inayatullah is contributing (from Taipei, as it happens), on the topic of ‘Does Culture Eat Strategy for Breakfast’, the French futurist Emile Hooge is talking (in English) about the use of Lego in urban design, and Wendy Schultz, who’s been championing the Crazy Futures strand, is challenging the notion of the ‘plausible future’.  During the US session, Cindy Frewen is talking – in the Design strand – about ‘Mega Hacks’ and there are presentations from both Peter Bishop (on scenarios) and Andy Hines (on values). In the Australian window, Richard Slaughter is talking about Integral Futures (I expect this to be provocative) and Marcus Barber presents on the links between futures and spiral dynamics. A bit earlier, during the European session, I’m co-presenting on using postcards as visualisation tools.

Having been involved in a little of the planning, we’re not sure how this will work, but in a downturn it seemed to be a sensible and sustainable alternative to the big face-to-face conferences that futurists traditionally use. There may be someone out there who speeds their way through the full 18 hours, but for those who can’t manage that, there will be recordings of the talks and sessions that you miss. We’ve programmed some virtual water coller sessions, since apparently the software can support this, so we’re hoping that there will also be some promising virtual conversations as well.

Anyway, the conference fee is $25 for APF members and $45 for non-members; registration information can be found here.

Vgathering Agenda and Speakers

Plutonomy retail

A few years ago Citigroup (yes, it’s a bank) came up with the notion of ‘plutonomy‘ to describe the way the economy was going. It was a neologism, of course, but one that needed little or no explanation.

But even three years after the financial crash, we’re still seeing that ethos and that economy on our streets and in our public realm.

Sharper, not flatter

I don’t fly that often, and I certainly didn’t intend to fly on September 11th 2011. In fact I realised the significance of ‘flying home on Sunday’ only when I checked in for the outward flight on Thursday. As it happened, it was probably the safest day to fly in the past decade, but it still came with a certain frisson. My own view on ’9/11′ is that it will – with hindsight – be seen as a way marker both of the end of the long boom of the second half of the 20th century, and in the re-balancing of the world from west to east. But it wasn’t a neutral event; instead, it was one of those which gave history a push, in particular by accelerating America’s financial, military, and diplomatic overstretch. The article I’ve read recently which best captures this is by the Indian author and essayist Pankaj Mishra. There are some extracts from this, and a couple of other pertinent pieces, beneath the fold.

Inter-generational conflict and moral panic

I’m still working on a post which tries to explore some of the political science of the recent English riots, but in the meantime I’m struck by the wave of commentary on the riots which positions them as an inter-generational issue. I touched on this in my last post, but only briefly.

And perhaps it’s not surprising that it has taken a little longer to emerge. The older generation, who are generally more blind to this issue (what? us? inter-generational beneficiaries?) include the politicians and media commentators who have more privileged access to the media and were therefore able to construct their preferred narratives more quickly.