From: Craig Hubley Subject: review of Futurehype - cautionary tales Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1991 16:43:58 -0500 Organization: UTCS Public Access ============================================================================ Copyright (c) 1990 Craig Hubley - all rights reserved - limited permission is hereby granted to redistribute on sci.virtual-worlds, sci.nanotech, news. future and related archives under the condition that the complete article, including this notice, be reproduced in its entirety. All paper or other non-USENET publication is strictly forbidden without the prior written consent of the author. (sorry folks, but if I ever wanna publish this I gotta retain the "first serial rights" for paper publication since that's what most publishers want) I originally wrote this for Foresight Update, the FI's newsletter, but it was never published for reasons that I won't speculate on. Comments on this review are welcome, I would also appreciate hearing if anyone in the US has picked up this book yet, as it was first published here. ============================================================================ "Futurehype - The Tyranny of Prophecy", Max Dublin, Viking (hardcover), 1989 Penguin Books (paperback), 1990, $12.95, ISBN 0-14-011488-2 "Predicting the future has become so integral to the fabric of modern conciousness that few people feel compelled to question it, and fewer still feel the need to defend it." This may change, thanks to Max Dublin's study of prevalent (rather than ideal) methods and motivations of predicting the future. He argues that although predictions almost always turn out false, they act as a powerful influence on the present, and should be criticized from that perspective. The first half of Futurehype describes the power of prediction, common motivations for it, and the values it tends to reinforce. He concludes that the "modern secular prophet" or futurist typically only describes a petty mastery of self, extending it to others while avoiding complicating notions such as common humanity. He describes many tricks such as flattering current winners by predicting the continuation of the trend in which they are winning, preaching the "inevitable" or arguing for "progress". Of all his sources, I found most interesting a claim by Georgi Schakhnazarov (a former Soviet court futurist) that Western futurism is a self-serving attempt to obfuscate the "inevitable" Marxist-Leninist future. Much Cold War rhetoric and policy (of both sides) might be explained this way. The second half of concentrates on the influence of prediction on specific fields. The military, especially susceptible because of the ambiguity under which they operate, are examined mostly using examples from the classics and the just-concluded arms race. Although World War II provides many good examples of disastrous prediction and wsa the origin of many modern forms of prediction, Dublin seems to avoid it. Other sources (e.g. Gwynn Dyer's "War") have covered this terrain in some depth, however, so this is excusable. The section on education is largely a critique of computer-aided instruction, refuting modern gurus such as Papert. Dublin compares him to Plato and Marx with the subtle insinuation that putting his ideas into practice (as with the semi-fascist Republic or in modern Marxism) would be just as ill-advised. Dublin argues that health futurology is split into three schools. Each represents a faction in current medical policy debate, rather than any vision of the future. They can be seen to reflect the roles of the technological physician (extending the present), the self-reliant patient (petty mastery of self), and the administrator (extending mastery to others). He describes their competition as unproductive, citing such examples as the Victorian standoff between believers in germs (and isolating the infected) versus those in public hygiene (and clean cities) who expected that a public believing itself safe from germs would not co-operate in their vision. These sides remained at war until the role of hygiene in germ propagation was clear. In his final section, Eros and Planning, Dublin describes the conflict between cyclical and linear time. He argues that futurism proceeds from the latter, a belief that what goes around, does *not* come back around. He argues that cultivation is an inherently better approach than planning, which he criticizes in depth, concluding by re-interpreting Aesop's fable "The Ants and the Grasshopper": the self-satisfied ants had only forseen the obvious onset of winter and were shortsighted to let the grasshopper perish. Their mastery of the seasons, so petty in cyclical time, had been extended to her, and the value of her skills and gratitude ignored. FI members should be well aware of the blind spots most futurists have. But if you have ever read a convincing tract by ANY futurist, you may well find it under attack here. The book is a good antidote for Naisbitt, Toffler, The Futurist, and other populist hype, but also a good swift kick for anyone basing projections narrowly on technological "progress". Dublin's "techno- romantics" (Minsky, Brand, Feigenbaum, among others) come under heavy fire. Many FI members (and board members!) may agree to disagree with these views, but they are worth reading, and worthy reminders to avoid casual predictions. He reserves praise for those who discipline and criticize claims, pointing out their flaws: Ivan Illich, George Orwell, Rene Dubos, Hannah Arendt, Tadao Umesao, and Joseph Weizenbaum. All told, a good bogosity reducer, even though a few may have been reduced more than they deserve. The Foresight Institute and Drexler are not covered directly. One suspects that Dublin would reject the necessity of even the measured methods and cautious claims that Foresight proposes. But he seems not to have heard of them. Futurehype is written in a stimulating pre-hypertext style, quoting heavily and at length, including many footnotes and end-of-chapter references. Keeping the material close to its relevance allows the reader to follow links easily. All told, a detailed response from a humanist that makes good use of our common culture, and follows current debates (even in technology circles) in some depth. Dublin is right to hold up very high standards to those who claim to know anything of the future. He is also right to enter the debate unabashed as an educator, refer to the classics, and apply forms of argument common in the humanities. Hopefully his challenge will receive the answers it deserves. I hope it is the first volley in a long and enlightening debate. -------------------------------------- Craig Hubley is a consultant in software technology transfer, specializing in hypermedia (including "The Glenn Gould Profile", a cultural hypertext) and reusable software architecture. To: xanadu!peterson@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: Futurehype review Status: RO >Got the review, which looks interesting. Some off-the-cuff comments: > >1. The blurb about you at the end is fine, but I don't see how it will >molify those trashed in the the book. It's not there to make anybody happy, just to make clear that I come from a background likely to be sympathetic to Dublin's point of view, despite my technical profession. Since the Profile was accepted by several juries at technical conferences as an example of hypertext used as a general communications medium, it's worthwhile to mention it. People might be able to conclude that I accept humanities-style discourse as a full equal to scientific discourse. >2. I haven't read either Naisbitt book, but from reviews the second >one doesn't sound "populist." Is that the word you mean? I have read two Naisbitt books and both of them were rather populist in the sense that they attempt to convince the public that the future can be determined and taken advantage of, even in the political sense from which the word originates. I could have called it "pandering" although probably the correct word is "popular" or "popularizing". It was a last-minute change - my original phrase was somewhat less kind. There is nothing that he says that I don't think you could rediscover with demographics. That may make him "population-driven" :). As I understand it, he has used the same methodology throughout, which arises from his consulting practice. Naisbitt has gotten pretty darned UNpopular at gatherings of people whose job it is to invent new things - he seems to take the view that trends in the market are fundamental rather than being influenced by new technologies, tools, etc., and of course us technies don't like that much. >3. I am going to have to look at this book in a bookstore before >printing this review, to see how intemperate it gets while trashing >our Board members! (Of course, it could still be a useful and Dublin goes after Minsky over "downloading" - he seems to think he should know better. His arguments here are similar to Weizenbaum's, and so quite temperate. He tears a strip off Brand for "cheerleading" the future - something that Leary is more guilty of, and Brand claims not to do. In particular, he seems to think that when Brand lost his faith in better living through good design, he would have been better off leaving it lost rather than going to the Media Lab to construe everything he found as evidence for what Brand himself admits is a "faith" more than anything else. Although I have a lot of respect for what Brand has done, I have heard this same sentiment at technical gatherings, that Brand misconstrues a lot of things he hears and sees, and so I think Dublin may be speaking for a substantial contingent of people who grumble, but never speak up. Of course, Dublin is talking about the motivations, psychology, and ideology of futurists, so at times his arguments border on the personal. He seems to feel that such "character analysis" is a necessary part of evaluating anyone whose statements about the future carry a lot of weight in their own circles. I am not prepared to dispute that. Presidential and cabinet candidates, for instance, are also subjected to the same kind of scrutiny for the same kinds of reasons. Regardless of what you, I, or Foresight may think of this point of view, it seems to be shared by the large contingent of people who vote based on the perceived character of politicians. In that sense Dublin is coming from the cultural mainstream, and their arguments need to be answered in any case. >valuable book, even if it gets carried away on a few points.) Even trashing somebody with a solid reputation very thoroughly does not in itself imply that he got "carried away". It might well be justified, in which case it might diminish the reputation of someone who is abusing that reputation. This is an extremely important weapon against bogosity, and since this is only a review it is not a question of justifying Dublin's arguments but rather his point of view, which I think is legitimate. If you do not think MINE is, that's fine, and you're free to refuse any article, but not to tone it down because the book I discuss happens to criticize Foresight board members. I trust you don't have this in mind. The article has my name on it, and my point of view is that making Dublin's kind of criticisms on Dublin's kind of grounds is a legitimate activity, even if Dublin does not present disprovable arguments or describe in detail each predictor's other accomplishments. In short, he doesn't have to be balanced. One could argue back that Foresight stands for reasoned debate exclusive of personalities, but the reason it has to be there to stand for it is because there is already so much bogosity of the sort Dublin attacks. The fact that some of Foresight's board might be guilty of it should come as no surprise. You can be interested in better methodologies for predicting the future while still feeling obligated to speculate based on today's imperfect methods... If you face pressure or censure over such inclusions, I would be surprised. FU has already published a review of an Omni article (on "science courts") that asked scientists what they thought of social issues, and although it was careful to criticize Omni first and foremost, it certainly made the point that responsible scientists shouldn't use their scientific reputations to push their social views, no more or less correct because of their backgrounds than those of anyone else. I would suggest that Dublin has levied the same kind of criticism against those predicting the future, and that it is more than fair to apply harsh standards to those who do so. I think it is a highly positive sign that ANYONE who opens their mouths to talk about the future, prestigious and accomplished though they may be, are subject to such withering scrutiny. Dublin goes after some far better respected people, including Winston Churchill, to whom the world owes a great debt. Nonetheless, it is just such people whose offhand predictions can do the most damage. I would hope that being a Foresight Board member doesn't put one above such criticism! In Dublin's terms, that would be the perfect reason to join, to evade closer scrutiny by becoming an insider and early supporter of the only body explicitly set up to provide that closer scrutiny! I don't think Minsky or Brand would desire, or approve of, such an exemption for themselves, because I think they know better than that. Our job is just to be sure that we don't mislead anyone about the book's contents or point of view. And that we don't give it any extra attention, or extra scrutiny, just because Foresight Board members are involved. I thought this book was important because it is a humanist's refutation of many widely-accepted futurist and future scenarios. If someone else thinks the BOOK is poorly done or attacks the wrong issues, then they can take it up with me. If the problem is with the REVIEW, then let's talk about it. Regards, Craig Hubley "...get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert." Craig Hubley & Associates------------------------------------Henry Ford Sr. craig@gpu.utcs.Utoronto.CA UUNET!utai!utgpu!craig craig@utorgpu.BITNET craig@gpu.utcs.toronto.EDU {allegra,bnr-vpa,decvax}!utcsri!utgpu!craig 28 First Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4M 1W8 Canada Voice: (416) 466-4097 -- Craig Hubley -- Consultants in object-oriented technology & techniques, -- Craig Hubley & Associates -- user interface design & user productivity -- craig@gpu.utcs.Utoronto.CA UUNET!utai!utgpu!craig craig@utorgpu.BITNET craig@gpu.utcs.toronto.EDU {allegra,bnr-vpa,decvax}!utcsri!utgpu!craig 61 Tiverton Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4M 2N1 Canada (US TC) call 416-362-7632