NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES
RAYMOND L. JOHNSON
Published in Hopes and Visions for the 21st Century, edited by Timothy C. Mack.
World Future Society, 2007
ABSTRACT
In Florida's Megatrends (2002), Colburn and deHaven Smith offer a wide-ranging exploration of the demographic changes and their ramifications that are likely to reshape the state during the early 21st century. A network model was constructed to map the causal links among some 100 of their predictions, integrating them into single, cohesive theory about Florida's future. Structural analysis revealed that one prediction - the massive influx of retired baby boomers anticipated by 2010 - was most influential in determining how the network was organized. It belonged to most of the thematic clusters, and led to five significant consequences for Florida's politics and economy. The centrality of this prediction gauged its importance in the authors' thinking, but also made the cohesiveness of the network vulnerable to its disconfirmation. A rival prediction that postulates a shortfall in the number of boomers who choose a Florida retirement foresees a major trend reversal with end-results very different from what Megatrends envisioned.
INTRODUCTION
In imagining the future, we foresee certain events as more consequential than others. They are perceived to be rich in potential ramifications that are both far-reaching and wide-ranging. A prediction worth making seldom stands alone.
To be able to foresee how one eventuality might lead to another assumes a capability to locate a prediction in a network of possible futures.
This web of conjectures can be graphically modeled as a network in which predicted events are linked together in causal sequences. The pattern of connectivity offers a way to gauge the relative importance of any one prediction within the network. Those that are well connected are more likely to be productive of consequences (if events occur as expected) than predictions that are sparsely connected. It is this difference in the density of connections that gives structure to a network and typifies predictions that belong to the same domain of interest and concern. (Johnson, 2004)
One such domain is the future of Florida. In their book, Florida's Megatrends, published in 2002, David Colburn and Lance deHaven-Smith tried to foresee the impact of certain social, economic and demographic trends over the next two decades with the intent of assisting “Floridians and policy leaders as they seek solutions to problems that currently bedevil the state and promise to challenge its future”. (Colburn and deHaven Smith, 2002, page vi) As these trends follow their forecast trajectories, the authors predicted that the state and its people will be forced to cope with a fallout of serious issues. These, they believed, will dominate the public agenda over the next two decades and preoccupy state and local leaders as they set policy and order priorities.
In arguing for the relevance of these megatrends for public policy, the book laid out a number of plausible consequences which themselves often have consequences, creating scenario-like chains of “if…then” contingent predictions. These chains were a recurrent form of argumentation employed by the authors and the primary structural elements used to build a network representation of their arguments.
A single network, assembled from these many chains, modeled the causal logic of Colburn and deHaven-Smith, and integrated their various arguments into one system of ideas about the future. By displaying the totality of interconnected predictions, it was possible to identify those predictions that were most influential in organizing the overall structure of the network.
An analysis of the structure found a small number of well-connected predictions that gave cohesion to the network and coherence to the analysis of Megatrends. These were the pivotal predictions that, if confirmed by the course of events, are likely to be most consequential in influencing the history of early 21st century Florida. Pivotal predictions in imagining the future may become pivotal events for explaining the past.