Towards a multiplication of increasingly fragile states? This is what could mean the report on the state of infrastructures in the U.S. (and probably other so called rich countries?). It is a crucial weak signal that could trump all others: imagine weak, increasingly fragile “rich countries” on the backdrop of all the other tensions and threats…
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Assessing if we are about to see a paradigm shift is twice crucial. First, and foremost, as human beings living within societies, if such a change happens, then we need to be ready for the upheavals that precede and accompany such deep revolutions, as stakes, both ideological and material, are at work to try blocking change. We also need to understand what is happening to take the right decisions in our lives, hopefully with the right timing, to mitigate adverse impacts and favour positive ones.
Second, in terms of strategic foresight and warning analysis, the deepest layers of ideas organizing societies and their interactions are fundamental frameworks, within which any understanding must be located. If changes are in the making, then they will forcibly alter the future, while the present is most probably already being affected, giving rise to a feeling of unpredictability. Actually, it is not so much that there is a novel unpredictability settling in, but that the lenses through which the world is analysed and then acted upon are inadequate.
Paradigms are encompassing thought patterns and related sets of practices, which “for a time provide model problems and solutions” (Kuhn, viii). The contemporary use of the word comes from Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (.pdf version), and thus hard science. We use here its application to history (and social science). From a European (and Western) point of view, for example, we would thus have the Middle Age, Modernity, something new still unnamed. Through the process of modernization, Modernity has reached most of the globe with varying timing, success, depth of impact and finally versions, and is thus a paradigm that is relevant globally.
Modernity is defined by sociologist Anthony Giddens as
“associated with
(1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as an open transformation by human intervention;
(2) a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy;
(3) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy.
Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society – more technically, a complex of institutions – which unlike any preceding cultures lives in the future rather than the past” Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity 1998, p.94.
This is what a large part of the world has known for the last centuries, to the least for the main part of the twentieth century, and which may be about to disappear (Lavoix, 2005: 20).
Some examples of previous paradigm changes are, in Europe, the shift from pre-modern to modern time (the end of the Middle–age and the Renaissance), a similar shift taking place in the whole of Eurasia, as shown by Lieberman’s work, the Meiji Transformation in Japan, Iconoclasm in the May Fourth Era in China, to borrow Yü-sheng Lin’s title.
According to Kuhn, the paradigm switch itself is relatively sudden and unstructured. Before it happens, a crisis occurs, that is “brought about by the accumulation of anomalies under the previous paradigm.” (Curd and Cover, 218). In science this means debates. In historical life, this is most likely to mean struggles and conflicts, while problems cannot find solutions anymore.
In our tentative application of Kuhn’s theory to history, we may either have the old and the new paradigms cohabitating with struggles between the two (and their “proponents”), or the old inefficient paradigm trying to survive attacks by those who see and understand it is not adequate anymore. The crisis would continue until a new efficient paradigm emerges and the shift (the complete adoption of the new paradigm) takes place. Upheavals are most likely to continue for a while as related human institutions are created and work at stabilising the situation.
As pointed out by Ertman in the case of the search for new adequate models of socio-political organisations, ideological and material stakes in the old paradigm, and in all institutions and layers of beliefs that are derived from the paradigm, block the full emergence of the new paradigm or the search for new solutions. The dynamics that are most likely to be at work have been presented in the Chronicles of Everstate, in a fictionalized way to ease understanding: Ideological Stakes in an Outdated Worldview and Material Stakes in an Outdated Worldview.
A paradigmatic crisis is probably progressive, with peaks but also accumulation of tension. Consciousness of the needed change probably occurs only slowly. When sufficient awareness has dawned, which, for us, may be now, then the emergence of the new paradigm, the shift itself, may not be far away; yet efforts at understanding and adapting are more than ever necessary, while the struggle to maintain the old paradigm and its advantages continues unabated and is even likely to strengthen.
The multiple crises (the environmental cliff to use the words of Jeremy Grantham, the sovereign debt crisis, the financial crisis, the global economic crisis, global water insecurity, resources depletion or insufficiency, international tensions, etc.) through which we are currently living could actually be much more than “just” the juxtaposition of unrelated crises. They could signal that we are in the midst of a paradigm crisis.
We would thus be living close to a paradigm shift, which would see us leaving modernity. Such a transition would mean that our perceptions, world-views, understanding but also consequent sets of practices, change. They need to do so as they do not provide anymore for solutions, as shifts are demanded by the incapacity of the previous paradigm to help human societies making sense of the world and thus surviving. This does not imply that all previous beliefs and practices disappear, but that they may be perceived, used, interpreted otherwise, although some will also totally vanish.
Considering the huge potential impact a paradigm crisis and a shift would have, it is necessary to try monitoring if it is really happening and what is happening, to fully include the possibility of this paradigmatic change in our analyses and to be on the look out for elements of the new paradigm.
Using Giddens initial definition, we should be ready to see disappearing or considerably changing:
Before to close, I would like to quote Richard Tarnas, as he wrote a beautiful description of what a paradigm crisis and shift entailed, in the past:
“Yet it would be a deep misjudgment to perceive the emergence of the Renaissance as all light and splendor, for it arrived in the wake of a series of unmitigated disasters and thrived in the midst of continuous upheaval. Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, the black plague swept through Europe and destroyed a third of the continent’s population, fatally undermining the balance of economic and cultural elements that had sustained the high medieval civilization. Many believed that the wrath of God had come upon the world. The Hundred Years’ War between England and France was an interminable ruinous conflict, while Italy was ravaged by repeated invasions and internecine struggles. Pirates, bandits and mercenaries were ubiquitous. Religious strife grew to international proportions. Severe economic depression was nearly universal for decades. The universities were sclerotic. New diseases entered Europe through its ports and took their toll. Black magic and devil worship flourished, as did group flagellation, the dance of death in cemeteries the black mass, the Inquisition, tortures and burnings at the stake. Ecclesiastical conspiracies were routine, and included such events as a papally backed assassination in front of the Florentine cathedral altar at High Mass on Easter Sunday. Murder, rape, and pillage were often daily realities, famine and pestilence annual perils. The Turkish hordes threatened to overwhelm Europe at any moment. Apocalyptic expectations abounded. And the Church itself, the West’s fundamental cultural institution, seemed to many the very center of decadent corruption, its structure and purpose devoid of spiritual integrity. It was against this backdrop of massive cultural decay, violence, and death that the “rebirth” of the Renaissance took place.” The Passion of the Western Mind, (Pimlico, 1996 [1991]), p.225.
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Curd, Martin and Cover, J.A., “Commentary on Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution” in Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, ed. Curd and Cover, (New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).
Ertman, Thomas. Birth of the Leviathan : Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Giddens, Anthony and Christopher Pierson, Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity, (Stanford University Press, 1998).
Grantham, Jeremy, “Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary),” Nature 491, 303, 15 November 201, doi:10.1038/491303a.
Jackson, Mike, “Global Change of Paradigm,” Shaping Tomorrow, 20 June 2012.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Volume 2, Number 2, (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1970 [1962]).
Lavoix, Helene, Indicateurs et méthodologies de prévision des crises et conflits: Evaluation, (Paris : AFD, December 2005).
Lieberman, Victor, B. “Local Integration and Eurasian Analogies: Structuring Southeast Asian History, c.1350-c.1830;” Modern Asian Studies 27, 3 (1993), pp 475 -572
Lieberman, Victor, B., Strange Parallels, Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830 Vol.1 Integration on the Mainland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Lin Yü-Sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era, (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin press, 1979).
Tarnas, Richard, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, (London: Pimlico, 1996 [1991]).
Thomson, Chris, & Jackson,Mike New Purpose, May 2012, Shaping Tomorrow.
Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. Alarmed by the rising difficulties and widespread discontent, the governing authorities decide to do something when new elections start. Dependent upon programmes created to face efficiently past challenges, prisoners of entrenched political groupings, comforted in their vision by the BRICS’ success and renewed optimism, the major parties campaign to come back to the order ante. As a result, habits and the existing system, once the new national representatives are elected and the new government starts ruling, are even more entrenched, almost ossified.
(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab - a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading).
Yet, something unexpected, dismissed or rather minimised by observers, is also happening during the months leading to the election: the rise of small and sometimes polarised parties, accompanied by an increase in the political mobilisation outside currently eligible parties. In this, Everstate is just exemplifying what is happening all over the Western world.
For example, in May 2012, in Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia, the new Pirate Party again fares very well. In France, the results of the first round of the Presidential elections shows a strong rise of parties on the extreme left and right of the political spectrum. In Greece, thirty-two parties compete during the first May elections, and seven, including those positioned at the extreme, win seats in Parliament. Meanwhile, the Occupy and Democracia Real Ya! – also known as Indignados – movements, born out of Spain’s mobilisation a year before, show their continuing presence, with various protests staged on May Day, then between 12 and 15 May, with varying participation rates. Signs of polarisation can also be found here. #Anonymous, in general, backs those movements from and in the virtual world, besides other operations, and represent a political force and not a criminal activity as some would like to interpret it.
Indeed free association, free speech and free assembly, enhanced by the new technological means of communication and mobilization, added to the general dissatisfaction while security is still being sought, create new extra-parliamentary organisations and mobilizations because the programmes of the classical parties and existing parliamentary groupings do not answer anymore the needs of the citizens and of the nations. The fluidity of the situation, the diversity of the types of organisations and the various stages of polarisation are symptoms of systems trying to evolve and redesign themselves, of the need for radically new programmes, which are in the making, as the underlying socio-political model are outmoded and do not offer any easy efficient solution.
As far as Occupy Everstate is concerned, they have to face some very difficult issues. What gave them their strength and made them truly representative, notably in terms of concerns and identification of crucial issues for the overall security of the nation, their faith in a fully democratic process, also constitutes an impediment as it slows and even sometimes block their decision process. Their main means of action, peaceful protests and sit-ins, so far has not allowed seeing their demands satisfied. Their successes are however far from negligible as they are now part of the political landscape, and are thus heard, when one year ago they were systematically ignored, and as they have succeeded in raising awareness to the plight of the many. Yet, the old ideas and habits they fight are as pregnant, powerful and ruling as ever.
Some groups within the movement are getting tired of obtaining nothing, of seeing the status quo continuing, while they start meeting difficulties to mobilise people. They are following the American debate existing over the “diversity of tactics.” Should they move away from the essential original non-violence – including the respect of laws and of property – of the movements to the “diversity of tactics” which includes also “property damage and armed retaliation against the police” but NOT “extremist tactics such as planting bombs and armed insurrection? (Bramhall, March 2012). True to the democratic foundation of the movement, the general answer is to convene a General Assembly to vote. However, lengthy debates have now been going on for days and nothing is solved. Furthermore the example of the Pirate Party also tempts Occupy Everstate. Should they register formally? This would allow them, maybe, entering parliament and developing their programme, and more important, getting things done (for the leadership and organisation debate going on in Spain, see Tremlett, May 2012). Yet, would they not also loose part of their soul, of their raison d’être? The tension is growing within the movement, while some actions abiding to the “diversity of tactics” start, still very rare, but yet, they happen.
The result of the new elections seems to freeze the contractions that agitate Occupy Everstate. Could this new government, maybe, bring Everstate back to where it was before life became so hard, before unfairness became unbearable, before the only way forward seemed to go to the streets to be heard or even worse? Nobody wants to sleep in the street, to be poor, to be condemned to unemployment, and even less to fight and risk one’s life. This hope, this last hope, isn’t it worth giving it a chance?
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Stuart Jeanne Bramhall in “Debating Violence in the Occupy Movement,” Take The Square, 3 March 2012.
Giles Tremlett, “Spain’s indignado protesters face anniversary crackdown,” Guardian.co.uk, 11 May 2012.
Official logo of the Swedish Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) by Piratpartiet [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
The OccupyCal General Assembly approves of… something. November 15 2011 by Daniel Parks from Berkeley, United States (Fingers Up) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. This image was originally posted to Flickr by D.H. Parks at http://flickr.com/photos/8073513@N03/6349212141. It was reviewed on 21 November 2011 by the FlickreviewR robot and confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.
To exist, foresight products as well as warnings must be delivered to those who must act upon them, the customers, clients or users. Furthermore, they must be provided in a timely fashion. This criterion of timeliness is extremely important. It means that customers or users will have enough time to decide and then implement any necessary course of action as warranted by foresight.
Timely reflections (Image by Stanley Howe – CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Most often, the challenge of timeliness is thus understood as stemming from the need to conciliate on the one hand the dynamics which are specific to the issue, object of anticipation, and on the other the related decision and coordination of the response.
Let us take the example of Peak Oil, i.e. the date when “world oil production will reach a maximum – a peak – after which production will decline” (Hirsch, 2005, 11) which implies the end of a widespread availability of cheap (conventional crude) oil. The phenomenon is now well documented and relatively widely recognized, from scientists’ reports, associations, institutions and books (see, for example, the creation of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas in 2000 , Robert Hirsch report (2005), the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP), Thomas Homer Dixon, Michael Klare or Jeff Rubin), to web resources such as The Oil Drum or Energy Bulletin to finally the International Energy Agency (IEA – it recognised the peaking of Peak Oil in 2010, e.g. Staniford, 2010), despite still some resistance by a shrinking number of actors.
By azrainman http://flickr.com/photos/azrainman/991225765/ – CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Notwithstanding other impacts, Hirsch estimates that 20 years of a “mitigation crash program before peaking” would have allowed avoiding “a world liquid fuels shortfall” (Hirsch, 2005). Assuming that oil peaked in 2006, as evaluated by the IEA, if we had wanted to have an energy mix of replacement for the now gone cheap oil, then we should have decided implementing and then coordinating a response… back in 1986. Thus SF&W on this issue should have been delivered some time before 1986.
Obviously, this did not happen, even if one starts finding rare articles regarding Peak Oil earlier (e.g. the 1974 miscalculated warning for a global Peak Oil happening in 1995 by M. King Hubbert (Wikipedia ‘Predicting the timing of Peak Oil’) and much later Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” Scientific American, March 1998). Why?
Jack Davis, writing on strategic warning in the case of US national security, hints at the importance of another criterion linked to timeliness, credibility:
“Analysts must issue a strategic warning far enough in advance of the feared event for US officials to have an opportunity to take protective action, yet with the credibility to motivate them to do so. No mean feat. Waiting for evidence the enemy is at the gate usually fails the timeliness test; prediction of potential crises without hard evidence can fail the credibility test. When analysts are too cautious in estimative judgments on threats, they brook blame for failure to warn. When too aggressive in issuing warnings, they brook criticism for “crying wolf.”
For Davis, credibility is the provision of “hard evidence” to back up foresight. Of course, as we deal with the future, hard evidence will consist in understanding of processes and their dynamics (the model used, preferably an explicit model) added to facts indicating that events are more or less likely to unfold according to this understanding.
Credibility is, however, also something more than hard evidence. To obtain credibility, people must believe you. Hence, biases of the customers, clients or users must be overcome. Thus, whatever the validity of the hard evidence in the eyes of the analyst, it must also be seen as such by others. The various biases that can be an obstacle to this credibility have started being largely documented (e.g. Heuer). Actually, explaining the model used and providing indications, or describing plausible scenarios are ways to overcome some of the biases, notably out-dated cognitive models. Yet, relying only on this scientific logic is insufficient, as shown by Craig Anderson, Mark Lepper, and Lee Ross in their paper “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information.” Thus, other ways to minimize biases must be imagined and included, that will most probably involve time. The possibility to deliver the SF&W product will be accordingly delayed.
Credibility and more broadly overcoming biases are so important that I would go further than Davis and incorporate them within the very idea of timeliness. This would be much closer to the definition of timely, according to which something is “done or occurring at a favourable or useful time; opportune” (Google dictionary result for timely). Indeed there cannot be timely SF&W if those who must act cannot hear it.
If the SF&W product is delivered at the wrong time, then it will be neither heard nor considered, decisions will not be taken nor actions implemented.
More difficult, biases also affect the very capability of analysts to think the world and thus to even start analysing issues. We are there faced with cases of partial or full collective blindness, when timeliness cannot be achieved because SF&W analysis cannot even start in the specific sectors of society where this analysis is meant to be done.
This is most probably what happened for our example of Peak Oil. If a model existed, created by M. King Hubbert, the initial miscalculation led to some loss of credibility as those denying peak oil underlined and still emphasize, even though King Hubbert model was not wrong. Analysts in SF&W in the early 1980s were more preoccupied with the Cold War than concerned by anything else. Afterwards, the system that had won against the Communist world could not even be thought not being perfect. Such highly disturbing threats that could question the prevalent worldview could not be envisioned. Had they been, they would most probably have been discarded first by policy makers then by political leaders. Furthermore, a host of actors had interest in a permanence of the ideological setting, which would have made the possibility to see a very early foresight work on peak oil develop very remote indeed (I am emphasizing here unconscious reactions and “deafness,” not hidden maneuvers).
Thus, to summarize timeliness is best seen as the intersection of three dynamics:
To understand each dynamic is, in itself, a challenge. Even more difficult, each dynamic acts upon the others, making it impossible to truly hope to achieve timeliness if the impact of one dynamic on the others is ignored.
For example, if we continue with our initial case of Peak Oil, having been unable to even think the possibility of Peak oil in the early 1980s has dramatically changed the current possible dynamics of the response, while both the cognitive delay and the absence of previous decisions and actions have orientated the dynamics of the issue towards some paths, while others are definitely closed. Any SF&W delivered on this issue now is quite different from what would have been delivered 20 years ago, assuming it could have been heard.
To acknowledge the difficulty of finding the timely moment, and the impossibility to ever practice an ideal SF&W in an imagined world where everyone – at individual and collective level – would have perfect cognition is not to negate SF&W. Answering this challenge with a “what is the point to do it now as we did not do it when things were easy/easier” is childish. On the contrary, fully acknowledging hurdles is to have a more mature attitude regarding who we are as human beings, accepting our shortcomings but also trusting in our creativity and capacity to work to overcome the most difficult challenges. It is to open the door to the possibility to develop strategies and related tools to improve the timeliness of SF&W, thus making it more actionable and efficient:
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Anderson, Craig A., Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross, “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1980, Vol. 39, No.6, 1037-1049.
Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” Scientific American, March 1998.
Davis, Jack, “Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Strategic Warning,” The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis Occasional Papers: Volume 1, Number 1, accessed September 12, 2011.
Dixon, Thomas Homer, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of civilization, (Knopf, 2006).
Elias, Norbert, Time: An Essay, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)
Hirsch, Robert L., SAIC, Project Leader, Roger Bezdek, MISI, Robert Wendling, MISI Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management, For the U.S. DOE, February 2005.
International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2010.
Klare, Michael, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004; paperback, Owl Books, 2005).
Klare, Michael, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, 2008).
Rubin, Jeff, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, Random House, 2009.
Staniford, Stuart, “IEA acknowledges peak oil,” Published Nov 10 2010, Energy Bulletin.
As Cynthia Grabo underlines, a warning does not exist if it is not delivered. Similarly, a foresight product – or risk assessment or horizon scan – has to be delivered. Furthermore, if foresight and warning are to be actionable, then clients or customers – those to whom the product has been delivered – must pay heed to the foresight, or warning. What they decide to do with those is another story, but from the point of view of SF&W, they must receive them, know they have received them and as much as possible consider them.
by Philip Devere, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons
Strategic foresight and futures’ efforts, as well as related literature, with a few exceptions, have rarely focused explicitly on this specific part of the overall process. Yet, it is crucial. As a first step, it has much to learn from the warning part of the activity. Then, both strategic foresight and warning may also have much to learn from the mobile and social networking approach that is being constantly imagined and re-imagined.
In a nutshell, the – ideal – approach that strategic actionable foresight must learn from warning underlines that:
If those steps are followed then we have improved the likelihood to see our customers paying heed to foresight and warning products. Many challenges, however, are lurking behind those apparently simple steps, potentially hindering the best completion of each of them. First and foremost, the various biases, as summarized by Heuer, that alter the understanding of any human being, will be at work. They will affect not only customer but also analyst and officer in their relationship to customers, as astutely pointed out by Woocher.
Without entering into the specifics of each bias and each challenge, which is more than a blog post can do, I would like here to suggest that the social and mobile web could help us with this specific phase of the SF&W process. It could not only by give us new capabilities but also, and primarily, a new philosophy.
Usually, chains of command and hierarchical structures define who gets SF&W products. They have been established over time, exist and are necessary as such. Yet, as far as those traditional existing “customers” or “clients” are concerned, most usually policy-makers and decision-makers, could it be worthwhile to change our mind-set, not seeing them anymore as “customers,” but, instead, as is done by the mobile and social web, considering them as users? Customers are those to whom one sells products or services, if we pursue the analogy (with all the potential biases this imply, as for example studied by Nolan, MacEachin, and Tockman).
Meteorologist at work at the Storm Prediction Centre de Norman, Oklahoma Source: NOAA
Users refer to a different universe. It imply that we provide them with tools (concrete or immaterial), instruments that are first and foremost useful and of value to them; devices that are needed to construct, to act, that will be helpful in the accomplishment of their mission. The emphasis moves from something that can be useless, that can been thrown away or disregarded and that is separated from the person who must buy it, to a long-term relationship, to the consideration of the other and its needs first – or rather the needs of its mission. This would be somehow adopting the first core principle of Google’s philosophy.
If we adopt the user’s approach, then we can start our process of identification again, with a fresh mind:
Those questions are more difficult than it appears for polities as they also touch upon democracy on the one hand, and power on the other.
First, in a representative democracy, policy-makers are those who are elected, and decision to act (or not act) should remain in their hands. Thus, care will be taken when or if new users are outside the nexus of elected representatives to see the democratic process respected.
Second, SF&W is (or should be) an essential tool of power, of might (the German Macht – verb machen = do) in its meaning of doing something. Thus, identifying new users may potentially lead to power struggles and care should be taken in advance to mitigate such drawback.
Currently, once all the policy-makers and decision-makers are known, then the most advanced practitioners design specific format and delivery – seen as a unified process – for the product, according to clients. The form and the delivery must be adapted to customers and will achieve the aim to get their attention and raise their awareness.
By National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center (http://aviationweather.gov/products/swm/), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
If we move to users, then product becomes tool, the emphasis on delivery can switch to reception, and then one should also think about the use of the tool. An overall strategy, centered on the actionable use of SF&W can thus be imagined, designed and implemented. One will have to ask questions such as
Once we switch to the users’ approach, then the capabilities of the social and mobile web can be fully integrated and adapted to SF&W. We shall examine specific ideas in future posts.
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Grabo, Cynthia M., and Jan Goldman. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. [Washington, D.C.?]: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2002.
Heuer, Richards J. Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999.
Nolan, Janne E., and MacEachin, Douglas, with Kristine Tockman, Discourse, Dissent and Strategic Surprise Formulating U.S. Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2007.
Woocher, Lawrence, “The Effects of Cognitive Biases on Early Warning,” Presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention (2008).