***Frontiers of the Future***

# Madmen, Methods and Massive Change

By

#### Theodore J. Gordon

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

**only and do not represent the views of the US Government.**

***Frontiers of the Future***

# Madmen, Methods and Massive Change 

By

Theodore J. Gordon

The organizers of this session have asked me to address both methods and
substance in my talk this morning: methodologies we have used, scenarios
we have constructed, and key forces to which we should pay attention in
our futures analyses. This agenda leads to a kind of counterpoint, a
dialog, between method and substance.: madmen, methods, and massive
change.

Behind my remarks lies a three-year study that the Millennium Project
completed earlier this year, designed to identify science and technology
developments of importance in the next 25 years and how the evolution of
these developments- startling, discontinuous, capable of irreversibly
changing the human condition- and their risks, might be managed. Using
this study as the backbone of my talk, with the addition of a few
sidebars, will give me the chance to talk about methods within the
context of a real application, some important changes that seem to be in
store, and as you'll see before I'm done, madmen and their possible
influence on the future.

***I'll start with a side bar***. (sidebars appear in this text in a
different and smaller typeface) The Millennium Project under which this
study was conducted is a management experiment itself. Now in its eighth
operational year, it is under the umbrella of the American Council for
the United Nations University. The Project, first conceived by my old
organization, The Futures Group, was created through a three-year
feasibility study funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, UNDP
and UNESCO. The feasibility study crystallized the purpose of the
Project as improve global thinking about the future and making that
thinking available through a variety of media. Today, the Project
accomplishes these ends by identifying and studying key global
challenges.  The project *is not* a one-time study of the future, but
provides an on-going *capacity* as a geographically and institutionally
dispersed think tank.

A particular strength of the Project is the cooperation it receives from
organizations and individuals around the world. These cooperating groups
are called project "nodes"; they translate and administer questionnaires
and conduct policy-maker interviews in their regions. Current Millennium
Project nodes are located in Beijing; Buenos Aires, Cairo; Calgary;
Caracas, Helsinki, London; Madurai & New Delhi,; Maui,; Moscow ; Paris,
Prague, Rome, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Silicon Valley, Columbia, Berlin,
Kuwait, and Tokyo. Within their regions, these nodes translate the
Projects questionnaires, administer interviews, and interpret findings
in terms of local perspectives. Through their cooperation, over 1,500
futurists, scholars, decision-makers, and business planners from over 50
countries have contributed their views to the Millennium Project
research.

Now to the S&T study that forms the backbone of this paper. Two
principal methods were employed: a modified global Delphi using the
Millennium Project's nodes and scenarios. These techniques are steps
along a forecasting continuum that began with the Greeks or before and
have progressed to today's methods. In a very small nutshell,
forecasting has moved in overlapping waves from divine revelation, to
physical signs that were supposed to reveal the future, to fictional
utopias (now evolved to normative scenarios), to genius forecasting
where the future sprung from inspiration and intuition, to the synthesis
of expert opinion (using Delphi, for example, and in recent national
foresight studies), to games and systems approaches using mathematical
models beginning with Newton and progressing to non linear systems
simulation. A very significant recent fork in the road came with deeper
understanding of the behavior of non linear systems. Imagine a system
that could be described deterministically, that is whose next points
could be computed with an equation. Drive that system to near chaos and
despite its deterministic structure, future points appear random.
History is no indicator of the future and the pieces no longer sum to
the whole. In short, for systems in chaos, forecasting is virtually
impossible.

Most real systems can behave this way. With this realization, it is no
longer appropriate to think about forecasting a future, or even a
plurality of futures, but rather to contain our appetites to
understanding ranges, uncertainties, risks, options, opportunities and
threats. The next focus in this evolution of methods, I believe, is on
methods that allow consideration of very large numbers of alternatives
and permutations and from this and other advances in psychology and
knowledge of brain processes, improved decision making. As you'll see, I
consider this the frontier of futures research.

The central objective of the study of the future of S&T was to seek a
broad range of international perspectives on the emerging issues and
forces that are likely to influence future science and technology
programs and their management within the next 25 years. It was conducted
over three years, as follows:

-   In the first year we asked: What are the important questions about
    evolving science and technology that ought to be asked and answered?
    The technique employed was to convene several workshops of science
    attaches in Washington (as far as we know this is the first time
    such meetings took place) and subject the principal conclusions to
    scrutiny and extension in a two round Delphi type study using the
    Project's global resources.

-   In the second year we sought to identify implications of the first
    year\'s results for S&T management through worldwide policymaker
    interviews.

-   Finally, in the third year we created scenarios to make the policy
    consequences of science management techniques- from lesse faire to
    draconian control- explicit. Here the method was an innovative 2
    round questionnaire which allowed the global participants to
    participate in the construction of the scenarios.

Here are a few of the key questions and some answers of the panel from
the first year's work:

**What challenges can science pursue whose resolution would
significantly improve the human condition?**

• Commercial availability of a cheap, efficient, environmentally benign,
non‑nuclear fission and non‑fossil fuel means of generating base-load
electricity, competitive in price with today's fossil fuels.

• Simple, inexpensive, effective medicines and corresponding delivery
systems to treat widespread diseases and epidemics.

• Improving the efficiency of water use in agriculture by 75%.

• Climate change---understanding and solutions.

• Improvements in early detection and tracking systems of pandemics.

**What future applications of science or scientific research have the
greatest potential for danger to human survival?**

• Accidentally or intentionally released genetically modified organisms
that have serious adverse consequences for the biosphere.

• Use of biotechnology to build new kinds of biological weapons of mass
destruction.

• Nanotechnology to build stealthy new means of killing large numbers of
people.

• Loss of biodiversity resulting from aggressive, exclusionary marketing
strategies encouraging the use of genetically altered, patented
varieties.

• Intelligent nanotechnology evolving beyond human control.

**What are some seminal, key, or profound scientific developments that
might occur during the next 25 years?**

• Fusion or some other forms of cheap, abundant power with minimal
adverse environmental consequences.

• Discovery of the underlying principle, "the final theory" that links
quantum physics and relativity to explain the range of particles and
forces that make up the universe.

• Computers that achieve awareness and can evolve.

**What are the key emerging international issues in S&T over the next 25
years?**

• International scientific boards that define terms, standards, and
measurements for environmentally friendly technologies and their
production.

• Public ownership of intellectual property critical to serve the public
good.

**How can science improve management of the risks induced by scientific
research and its applications?**

> • Establish an ongoing forecasting and risk assessment system.
>
> • Require investigators to forecast plausible unintended consequences
> of their research and to address the means for minimizing these
> developments as a routine part of their research.
>
> • Establish UN agreements to avoid taking catastrophic risks in civil
> society and economic dcisionmaking, like building old design nuclear
> fission plants.

Some unusual expectations also came from the panel and in this
discussion of forces for change should be mentioned:

-   Improving collective intelligence and reducing anti-social behavior.

-   Psychological /sociobiological research on violent behavior

-   Developing a science and technology of governance.

-   Tailored psychotropes.

-   Increased private sector control of research and development.

-   Radically better understanding of quantum phenomena.

-   Human appendage regeneration.

-   The \"final theory\" linking quantum physics and relativity.

-   Human-computer symbiosis, brain boosters.

-   Microprobes that can be deployed in extreme environments.

-   Increased use of non-rocket means of low cost space propulsion.

-   Altering genomes to create new or revive old species.

***Another sidebar.*** Underlying the questions developed in the first
year and the panels' answers, is the assumption that science is
accelerating. And that the pace of acceleration itself is increasing.
Why should this be? I believe that there are several factors causing
this "take off.": new instrumentation, a remarkable synergy of
disciplines (particularly nanotechnology, biotechnology, information
technology, and cognitive science (NBIC), improved communications and
very general availability of information. This is a global phenomenon
and public awareness and attention to the possible effects of these
changes have grown as well. This public attention is focused less on the
"gee whiz" factors and increasingly on the unintended dangers of
science, misapplications of technology, and the need for solutions from
both science and technology to pressing global issues. As a result, many
governments, universities, corporations, and NGOs have increased their
attention to setting science and technology (S&T) policy and priorities
(some by using national foresight studies) and the processes by which
policies and priorities are determined. Thus far, these processes have
tended to be national or limited in scope and have not taken into
account priorities of others as much as seems warranted in an
interdependent world.

But imagine where we stand: On the occasion of the decoding of the human
genome, Craig Venter, the CEO of Celera (the commercial Human Genome
project), said, \"Today\...marks an historic point in the 100,000-year
record of humanity.\" Venter\'s counterpart at the government's Human
Genome Project, Francis Collins, said \"we have caught a glimpse of an
instruction book previously known only to God.\"

Ray Kurzweil, writing in Scientific American (July, 2001) sees the
progression of this meshing of computers and nanotechnology leading, by
2029 to a \$1,000 PC having the capacity of 1,000 human brains. A time
when 99% of all computing capacity will be non-human

Marvin Minsky of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT describes
the possibility of atomic scale assembly machines that can copy
themselves and produce a billion more machines in a year, each born with
the memory of the machines that went before. Talk about a population
explosion: the \"gray goo\" problem- small machines reproducing
themselves like the sorcerer\'s apprentice- but each \"born\" with all
of the accumulated knowledge to that point.

There are other synergies as well giving rise to this accelerating
change. Consider, for example, the junctures between:

-   Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, Computers, 3 D Visualization

-   Nanomedicine: Nanotech, Delivery Systems, Electronics

-   Biology- Nanochips

-   Brain Physiology- Artificial Intelligence

-   Materials- Electronics- Carbon Nanotubes

-   Genetics- Information science

-   Social Science- Computer data bases

-   Quantum physics, Cosmology:

Back to the study. The second year's interviews focused on future
management issues. There were two schools of thought about controlling
S&T risks.

> One school believed that regulations would simply drive research
> underground or to other countries. Regulators would have no chance to
> keep up with the accelerating pace of advances. The way to manage
> risks was to educate global opinion about S&T and to train scientists
> to be more ethical and to self-manage risks.
>
> The other school believed that the potential scale of intended and
> unintended impacts of S&T on the future of humanity requires that
> there be global systems to forecast and assess the risks from S&T and
> to design regulations and enforce agreements. Since the impacts can be
> worldwide, global systems are justified. Over the next 25 years the
> potential S&T dangers are clearly global; therefore the control must
> be global. Some threats to human security should be banned, while
> others should be controlled

A synthesis of these two orientations led us to form a sketch of an
International Science and Technology Organization devoted to S&T risk
management. It had these interdependent elements:

-   OTA revisited

-   Evolves from an information system

-   De facto regulator

-   Aspects of ISTO:

-   Form international guidelines with eminent experts

-   Provide access to information about risk and opportunity

-   Create a global S&T fund

-   Produce annual Davos-like S&T forums

-   Engage media and politicians to improve S&T discussion

-   Create international treaties as consensus evolves.

The third year's work was devoted to forming scenarios that depicted the
S&T management issues of the future. A scenario is not intended to be a
forecast, rather, it is a plausible description of what *might* occur,
or in the case of normative scenarios, what ought to occur. They focus
attention on causal processes and decision points. A set of internally
consistent scenarios that spans a domain of interesting possibilities is
useful for another reason: if policies can be found that work to
advantage in all of the "worlds" depicted by the individual scenarios,
these are good bets and their success may be independent of the
uncertainties of the future.. RAND is currently doing interesting work
in developing computer model augmented scenario models that produce a
panorama of alternatives, considering as many permutations as feasible,
and searching for optimum policies determined by explicit criteria, from
among the thousands of possible future histories.

The scenarios in our study were created using a novel process. The
method allowed the global panel to contribute to the creation of
scenarios so that their perceptions about the causal links and policy
issues could be reflected concisely in the final scenarios. In the first
round, the panelists were asked to nominate and judge the importance of
themes, that is, driving dimensions for the scenarios. The themes that
were selected for use were:

-   The Government Regulation Axis

####### The Speed of Science and Technology Axis

#######  The Public Concern Axis

-   *Whether of not the regulatory system "worked" or did not work.*

Considering only these four drivers with two possibilities each (in
reality there are many more possibilities) some 16 permutations are
possible. Four of these were selected as being most interesting for the
initial framework.

***Centralization Public Support Functioning***

***Of Regulation Of Science of Regulation S&T Speed***

  --------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- ------- ------
  Scenario              High   Low    Pro    Anti   Works   Fails   Accel   As now

  1\.    S&T Develops a        X      X             X               X       
  Mind of Its Own                                                           

  2\. The World Wakes   X             X             X               X       
  Up                                                                        

  3 Please Turn off the X                    X      X               X       
  Spigot.                                                                   

  4\. Backlash                 X             X              X       X       
  --------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- ------- ------

Given these four frameworks, the respondents were presented with
scenario sketches. We hoped to assure parallelism and consistency among
the scenarios by using extensive checklists of potential developments
from prior work. The respondents were asked to provide judgments about
what changes would make the given scenarios more plausible. They were
also asked to answer some specific questions, in the context of the
scenarios, that would be useful in building more elaborate descriptions.

The answers to these questions are interesting in themselves. The
numbers in the last two columns represent the percentage answering "yes"
or "no." Approximately 115 people responded.

  --------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ----
  Question                                                        Y    N

  1.2 Are dramatic increases in collective human-machine          70   30
  intelligence plausible within 25 years?                              

  1.4 Is it likely that organizations designed to regulate the    78   22
  course of S&T will generally fail to keep pace with accelerated      
  advances of S&T within 25 years?                                     

  2.2 Is it plausible that weapons of mass destruction will be    72   28
  available to single individuals within 25 years?                     

  2.3 Is it plausible that advances in cognitive science,         63   37
  information technology, and new educational systems and/or           
  changes in older ones will be able to significantly improve          
  tolerance for diversity within 25 years?                             

  2.4 Is it plausible that international S&T treaties and         67   33
  regulations will have provisions for enforcement police              
  enforcement or military intervention within 25 years?                

  3.2 Can S&T regulators and commissions be virtually free from   28   72
  corruption?                                                          

  3.3 Is it plausible that an anti-science movement will be as or 37   63
  more powerful than the environmental movement?                       

  3.4 Is it plausible that international systems (like the        75   25
  International Atomic Energy Agency - IAEA) will be established       
  to monitor and regulate biotechnology, nanotechnology, and           
  other areas of scientific research and development with              
  enforcement powers?                                                  

  4.2 When extreme unintended consequences are involved, can a    41   59
  cost-benefit trade-off be logically made?                            

  4.3 Within the next 25 years, might scientists in the future    29   71
  unite into a global labor organization?                              

  4.4 Can science disciplines effectively self-regulate?          42   58
  --------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ----

In the second round, the participants were given an expanded set of
scenarios, amended from the first round on the basis of the respondent's
comments and suggestions. The form was partially "fill in the blanks."
Participants were given the option of completing the questionnaires on
line, and as before, respondents were asked to comment on the
plausibility of the scenarios, how they might be improved. More than 100
pages of commentary were received.

The answers provided by the participants led to the formation of the
completed scenarios that appear in the CD ROM. Compressed versions of
the scenarios appear in the Appendix. Briefly, the scenarios were:

> **Scenario 1: S&T Develops a Mind of its Own:**
>
> The rate of scientific discoveries and advanced technological
> applications explodes. A global science/ social feedback system is at
> work: science makes people smarter- smarter people make better and
> faster science. Better and faster science open new doors to discovery-
> new doors lead to synergies and solving of old roadblocks. Removing
> the roadblocks creates new science that makes people smarter. S&T
> moves so fast government and international regulations are left in the
> dust. And so it goes.
>
> **Scenario 2 The World Wakes Up:**
>
> The murder of 25 million people in the mid-2010s by the
> self-proclaimed Agent of God who created the genetically modified
> Congo virus, finally woke up the world to the realization that an
> individual acting alone could create and use a weapon of mass
> destruction. This phenomenon became known as SIMAD- Singles Weapons of
> Mass Destruction (This is the madman in the title of this paper)
> Regulatory agencies and mechanisms were put into place to control the
> science and technology related dangers that became apparent. Education
> was a big part of the answer, but connecting the educational systems
> with the security systems is disturbing to some people. Nevertheless,
> individual acts of mass destruction thus far have been prevented.
> International and government regulations do manage the S&T enterprise
> to the public good
>
> **Scenario 3 Please Turn off the Spigot.**
>
> Science is attacked as pompous and self-aggrandizing, as encouraging
> excesses in consumption, raising false hopes, and worst unexpected
> consequences that can destroy us all. Particularly worrisome was
> accidentally or intentionally released genetically modified organisms
> and the potential for weapons of mass destruction. The poor were
> ignored. A science guru arose to galvanize the public. A global
> commission was established but failed because of corruption. But a new
> commission with built in safeguards seems to be working..
>
> **Scenario 4. Backlash\
> **
>
> Control is low and science moves fast, but negative consequences cause
> public alarm. The golden age of science is hyped by the media, but it
> all proves to be a chimera. Some of the most valued discoveries and
> new capabilities have a downside and surprises abound. Rogue nations
> take advantage of some of these shortcomings. The level of concern
> rises. Mobs protest. Regulation fails. Progress stalls. And corporate
> (or government) scientists frequently feel pressure from within their
> organization. Both corporate and government organizations cannot be
> counted on to self-regulate. What's next?

The completed scenarios included a number of novel concepts such as
those listed below.

-   Agent of God (AOG) (a SIMAD)

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-   An "Unplug-and-Relax" movement

-   Anti-corruption strategies

-   Attempts to increase intelligence of the general public

-   Connecting educational and security monitoring for early detection
    of intolerance

-   Corruption in a global science regulatory commission

-   Electronic psychotropes promising escape but trapping instead

-   Entertainment/education systems including "You Were There" and
    "Mental Orgasmatron"

-   Manhattan-type projects for energy, water, and diseases

-   Memes (influential contagious ideas) for tolerance and to stamp out
    stupidity

-   Nanotech hackers creating nanotech viruses

-   Policies for control of publication of potentially dangerous
    research findings

-   Principles of Inviolability of Science autonomy

-   Private funding of an international regulatory body with funds won
    from legal awards

-   Rise of neo- McCarthy-ism in science

-   Science \"ISO 9000 certificate\"

-   Scientist\'s Oath

-   SIMAD

-   Telemerase dispersal as a weapon

-   TV Two-Com for public participation in science debates

-   UN Security Council intervention in science

-   Uneasy relationship between SIMAD prevention and transnational
    organize crime.

-   Utilizing artificial intelligence programs to minimize corruption in
    organizations

-   Viewing science as triggering a meta disaster

**Conclusions**

A spectrum of five S&T management levels exist simultaneously at any
point in time and a mix of these techniques controls the course of
research. These levels are, for example:

-   **Global organizations** such as the International Atomic Energy

-   **National advisory commissions** that establish or advise on issues
    of acceptable and non acceptable research. Current example: The
    National Academy of Sciences (and its research arm, The National
    Research Council

-   **National agencies of government** such as the Office for Human
    Research Protection which exists with the Department of Health and
    Human

-   **The disciplines themselves**, through self regulation, control
    research directions; e.g. agreement among early researchers in the
    field of recombinant DNA at Asilomar California in 1975.

-   **The individual researcher** has more or less power to choose the
    course of his or her research. "More or less" because the freedom of
    choice is to a degree a function of the field, the setting or
    laboratory in which the scientist operates, his or her seniority and
    reputation, and his or her ability to raise research funding.

We formed the opinion that it will be necessary to establish an ongoing
forecasting and risk assessment system. This could be done at any level
at which S&T management occurs. Investigators should forecast plausible
unintended consequences of their research and address the means for
minimizing adverse developments as a routine part of their research.

Funding of S&T should include priority for research directed toward the
global basic needs of humanity.

One of the scenarios created in this study described the possible advent
of a single individual acting alone to create and deliver a weapon of
mass destruction. This threat was given the name SIMAD. Respondents
found this threat plausible and a major stimulant to the creation of
safeguards and regulations limiting certain research and access to it.

When multiple scenarios describe a broad range of future possibilities,
policies found to be common to each of the scenarios in the set are
"good bets" since they seem to be useful no matter which setting is
considered and are, in fact, insensitive to future developments.. A
review of the scenarios and the policies suggested by the respondents
gives rise to a number of "good bet" policies, some of which are
summarized below:

-   Consider SIMAD

-   For some desirable technologies it may not be possible to avoid
    significant risks; for these, mitigation strategies should be
    developed in parallel.

-   Engage high-profile organizations in risk analysis; e.g. Departments
    of Defense of most countries should perform preventative analysis
    concerned with "extreme tech\" misuse.

-   Increase visibility and public participation in setting priorities
    of publicly funded research and development.

-   Explore alternative forms for S&T management institutions which
    minimize the chances that they will impede innovation, reduce risks,
    operate without corruption and with wisdom.

-   Advanced S&T education is critical. Teach science ethics.

-   Fund impact analyses as NSF is doing with respect to nanotechnology.

***A final sidebar*** on the future of methodology. It seems to me that
there are a number of frontiers that will expand to define the field of
futures research in the future. Among these are:

-   **Questioning Reductionism**: Why should we believe that the parts
    of a system can be simulated more accurately than its parts?

-   **Social Epidemiology**: Given large scale social data bases,
    today's marketing practise of "data mining" will grown into a new
    kind of sociology in which "rules" of behavior will be deduced from
    data without the need for the formation of natural laws.

-   **Computaria**: On line societies which provide environments for
    social experimentation with low risk.

-   **Analysis of Systems Near Chaos**: Learning how to recognize and
    manage such systems will be important.

-   **Probing the Depths of the Unknown** Just what is the map of the
    unknown? Why are some developments omitted when we ask "what's
    likely to be new?"

-   **Decision-making in Uncertainty**: Decision making is very
    primitive. Today it means primarily cost benefit; tomorrow it may
    also involve psychology, particularly the psychology of risk taking,
    intuition (why is it that some people are intrinsically better
    decisionmakers, even when data are sparce?), neuropsychology, and
    brain physiology. It will be taught so that maybe, just maybe,
    politicians aspiring to high office and executives being considered
    for top jobs will be evaluated on the basis of their decision
    capability and certification: a PhD in decisions..

# So, considering once again the title of this paper: madmen, methods and shaping change: the plausible madman of the near future is a SIMAD, the methods are evolving and lead to improved decision making in uncertainty, and massive change, as always are forces- known, and unknowable- stemming from synergy, greed, corruption and the lust for power. In that mix lies our future.