from the keeping-track-of-our-biases dept.
Senior Associate PatGratton writes "On a sociological/ethical note… Around the time of the Fall Foresight Gathering, I was reading Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival and came up with some interesting applications of her ideas to people interested in transformational technologies….When I tried to apply Jacobs' categories to the attendees of the Foresight Gathering, I quickly reached two conclusions: 1) there are virtually no Guardians present within the Foresight membership, and 2) Jacobs missed a syndrome….I contend that the Foresight community is split between Idealists and Traders, and that this leads to a certain amount of unavoidable conflict….Because Guardians are underrepresented within Foresight, Foresight discussions are likely to strongly biased towards Commercial and Idealist views and solutions. More importantly, we're likely to fail to address or to take seriously concerns that would come naturally to a Guardian. This in turn implies that we're likely be underprepared when we take our ideas/solutions to the general public…" Read More for Pat's full post. Senior Associate PatGratton writes "Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs
On a sociological/ethical note… Around the time of the Fall Foresight Gathering, I was reading Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival and came up with some interesting applications of her ideas to people interested in transformational technologies.
If you're not familiar with "Systems of Survival", then you can find brief summaries here and here Briefly, Jacobs argues that there are two different, equally valid/successful systems (or rather 'syndromes') of ethics: Guardian Syndrome which is concerned with taking and/or protecting limited resources and Commercial Syndrome, which is concerned with creating and trading produced (and thus non-limited) goods. Military, police, civil servants and environmentalists are Guardians, while merchants, workers, etc. are Traders (Commercial Syndrome followers).
Implications for Foresight (and Like-minded People/Groups)
When I tried to apply Jacobs' categories to the attendees of the Foresight Gathering, I quickly reached two conclusions: 1) there are virtually no Guardians present within the Foresight membership, and 2) Jacobs missed a syndrome.
My name for the missing syndrome is "Idealist" because of its primary virtue of "Dedication to the Ideal". One of its notable virtues is "Shun Trading". For more information on the Idealist Syndrome, see here.
I contend that the Foresight community is split between Idealists and Traders, and that this leads to a certain amount of unavoidable conflict. For example, Traders (for the most part) want to see IP protected (though probably with some rationalization of laws in order to improve trade), while (Knowledge) Idealists want information to be freely available. Another example: Traders want to make some serious cash off the nanotechnology, while Idealists look forward to a post-scarcity economy. (Note: conflict can also exist between different types of idealists, e.g., between Privacy and Openness Idealists – however, this does not seem to be the dominant source of conflict in the Foresight community.)
Implications
- Because Guardians are underrepresented within Foresight, Foresight discussions are likely to strongly biased towards Commercial and Idealist views and solutions. More importantly, we're likely to fail to address or to take seriously concerns that would come naturally to a Guardian. This in turn implies that we're likely be underprepared when we take our ideas/solutions to the general public.
- The Foresight community itself will continue to experience internal conflicts over various issues.
Suggestions
- Recruit more Guardians into Foresight. Alternatively or additionally, make an extra effort to predict Guardian concerns and address them when developing solutions and positions.
- Recognize your own ethical syndrome and the syndromes of others. In discussions, there are some points that you're just not going to be able to convince your opponent of — not because he can't understand your argument, but because his fundamental values are different from yours. At which point, you either agree to disagree or compromise — or go to war if it's an important enough point."
