2. Three ways to model futures
1. Normative: desired future built on
common ideals
2. Extrapolating: probable future built
on trends
3. Scenarios: possible futures built on
both ideals and trends
3.
4. • Understand megatrends (or major driving
forces) for your focal issue
• Distinguish between trends and
megatrends.
• Understand the critical uncertainties for
your issue
• Distinguish between gamechangers and
Black Swans
Driving Forces and Uncertainties
5. To simplify it…
Gamechangers Trends
Black Swans Megatrends
Driving
forces
Critical
uncertainties
Scale, complexity and power
6. Trends affecting museums by 2020
For example:
• Public resources as open commons
• Traditional education challenged by
open and informal learning
• Pressure for museums to have ever
more social impact
• More democratic participation
8. Megatrends affecting museums
• Unemployment in Europe
• Austerity measures: cuts to museums
BUT
• Growth in cultural tourism
• Rapid advances in technology (especially
‘hypernature’ – enhancing bioservices)
9. Gamechangers affecting museums
For example,
• 3D printing
• Alternative currency
• Wearable tech
• Crowds (positive
but also a shadow
side)
10.
11. Black Swans affecting museums
…and everyone
• Global warming: two orders of magnitude
greater in C21 than in last Ice Age; CO2 now at
400pmm
• Ecocide: biodiversity losses
• Resource insecurity
• Social awareness of injustice causing unrest
14. Europe2020
EU’s ‘Smart, Sustainable, Inclusive’ goals to
tackle the crisis by 2020:
• 75% employment
• 20% less GHG emissions, 20% more efficient
• 40% completing higher education
• Lift 20 million out of poverty
Can you use any of this to build your scenarios?
16. Tech visions 2020
‘Internet of Things in 2020’ is one of several.
IoT2020: megatrends for this focal issue:
• Data deluge: exacerbated by IoT
• Energy shortage: devices must harvest own
• Miniaturisation
• Autonomic resources: self managing &
healing
19. Museums2020
• Museum Association project
• Bold vision for future of UK museums
• Help museums think long term
• Doesn’t aim to predict future
• Questioning the sector & public on role &
impact of museums on individuals, society
& environment
25. Green Museums 2020?
• Using and promoting alternative
currencies, or gifting
• Constituted as community co-
operatives
• Modelling the ‘circular economy’
• Education to develop future skills
such as bioempathy
27. Unmuseums 2020?
• Unlimited by walls or traditions
• Focus on what people will pay for
• Partnerships generate profit for creative
industries?
• 3D printing: museums in your home?
• FabLab: tap museum knowledge of
materials and context?
• Neuroscience and immersive memory
narratives: as therapy?
29. A movement of disruptive museums?
• Global commons to conserve cultural and
natural diversity, built on heritage
• Reflect on things: Promote wellbeing beyond
consumption of things
• Act as hubs for sustainable communities:
showcase and commission ecosocial
innovation
• Contemporary art and creative tech as
catalysts for change
At last year’s MuseumNext I talked about what future skills museums would need to help develop. This time I want to focus in place on Europe and have a more precise date of 2020, and talk more about scenario planning as a vital part of developing foresight intelligence.
Scenarios are the only really useful tool, the more so in times of crisis. Scenarios are not predictions or forecasts but instead seek to explore the most extreme possibilities, to help you plan for the currently “unthinkable”.
First look at what’s movingThen at what might explode all thatThen scenarios: is either description of what you might want to build or what might happen if you don’t buildThen the paths is what you might do to move in a more controlled way to a desired scenarioScenarios2strategy.com
Read: National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2030Next slide will illustrate differences
Gamechangers aid progress. A BS can radically disrupt all megatrends.
This is a particularly ‘trendy’ event. Example of trend, speedgeeking for social change event at Santa Cruz Museum of Art & Historyhttp://www.santacruzmah.org/event/speedgeekin/Nina Simon leading the trend in participation and social change from the ground up, using power of crowds and technology
…culture seen as non-essential and asked to prove that it is by asking it to show that it generates weatlh quicklyAnd there are more…
You need to do scenario-thinking often, and it needs feeding with data and inspirationWhat resources are there to help with describing scenarios for museums in 2020? Exhibition at Design Museum called UnitedMicroKingdoms, artists Dunne & Raby have visualised four possible scenarios for future UK:DigitariansCommuno-nuclearistsBioliberalsAnarcho-evolutionistsGood as an example of how you can use creative visualisation to imagine future.
You need to use data from other futures projects. Three pieces of work envisioning 2020 across different sectors: Politics, museums, techMap shows unemployment – see density in south & east
Alongside this is advances in control of devices by brain signals (not just voice etc) – making miniature, wearable or distributed computing a really mind-blowing prospect. The critical uncertainties are to do with supply of energy and ethical issues about privacy etc.
Can do mapping work like this, but it helps if you arrive at a simple matrix
Biomuseo is all about showcasing the natural wealth of Panama. It’s called Bridge of Life – meaning that biodiverse life is the bridge from our past to our future. Section called Panama is the Museum, before you exit, - the idea that the country itself is the heritage, the place to cherish and protect. Opens this year, Frank Gehry
e.g. by growing food in an onsite forest farm, selling food, using waste for energy.
This is from the world’s first flashmob of Augmented Reality, here in Amsterdam two weeks ago. We could imagine, with more wearable tech, this as default way to explore heritage, with museum collections recontextualised in spaces etc.
If you want people to learn, have fun, generate new ideas, and revenue, the unmuseum will use any platform or tool to achieve that.
The Wendy. At MOMA PS1 a sculpture that cleans the air – the use of nano-particles
This is unthinkable for some – see the boy climbing all over a fragile artefact – but it did happen. (Sessions for the blind at Tyne & Wear Museum.) We need to spend much more time thinking the unthinkable – the devastating impacts of Black Swans and visualising future possibilities. Have only scratched the surface in 15 mins…the MuseumNext community has the right spirit.