FUTURES RESEARCH

7294 MEG96 – A Certain Future

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A CERTAIN FUTURE

Interim Results from the 'Millennium Project'

David Mercer

Open University Business School

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ABSTRACT

Reporting the latest stage in a 5 year programme of research involving more than 1,000 large organisations, the paper describes the results obtained from research conducted on 17 groups containing managers from 140 organisations. Using a new research technique, it reports their expectations of the global future in 25 years time. These cover most aspects of society from technology through to politics. The results challenge received wisdom in a number of areas, but tests indicate that they are well founded and in agreement with the views of most futurologists.

Address for Correspondence:

D.S. Mercer

Senior Lecturer

Open University Business School

Walton Hall

Milton Keynes

MK7 6AA

Telephone:        (44) 1908 656878

Fax:                  (44) 1908 655898

E-mail:              d.s.mercer@open.ac.uk

A CERTAIN FUTURE: Interim Results from the 'Millennium Project'

Introduction

As we look around us, at the end of the second Millennium, it might seem as if the end of the world is at hand. All - in the popular media at least - seems doom - and gloom. Confusion - if not outright anarchy - rules. Indeed, we have mass genocide in Ruanda, seemingly intractable civil war in Bosnia, genuine anarchy in Somalia, mass unemployment around the world, and the under-classes setting up independent - drug-funded - rule in the inner cities of the United States.  The family is breaking up; and more than 300 organisations, in the United States alone, look forward to seeing Armageddon arrive in the near future - at the end of this Millennium.

Our leaders are just as confused as we are, and have no sensible answers to the problems we face. They increasingly retreat into comforting nostalgia about past values, whilst adopting corrupt practices to try - without success - to save their own skins.

Methodology

This quantitative research originated with the considered views of the representatives of more than a thousand organisations, who have worked with us over the past three years. Using a variety of means, described in a separate paper, we gathered the expectations - of what the future of mankind might be - from managers in these organisations; which included most of the world's largest multinationals, as well as governments and international bodies. These were not off the cuff comments made in informal interviews, but have been well considered decisions, the subject of intensive sessions lasting between three and thirty hours each.  The final qualitative research, specifically reported here, involved 17 groups representing more than 140 organisations.

The views we put forward - for the expectations about the future which are detailed in this paper - are therefore not our own, but are those of the many hundreds of individuals who each gave so much time and energy to the work; and for that we are enormously grateful to them. It is the authority of those hundreds of contributors - coming not least from the fact that the expectations they reported already form the basis of the future planning for those many large organisations - that underpinned our results. As such, the forces which are described in the material, and whose likely outcomes are mapped, are not just our speculations about the future, they are those which are already shaping that future. In most areas indeed, where there is an obvious convergence of these expectations, most of the individuals and groups involved clearly shared a common view of aspects of that future, so these results almost certainly spell out what will happen in that future. In particular, if these thousand or so key organisations are optimistic about the future - and in general they are - then the prospects for that future - for all of us - look good; and don't let any doomsayers tell you otherwise!

Overall Results

Thus, as the 'Millennium Project' research (jointly sponsored by the Open University, The Strategic Planning Society and Demos) reveals, the future - even in the relatively short term - should be viewed not with the pessimism we are seeing in the media - and, beneath the superficial gloss, in the speeches of our politicians - but with genuine optimism. We already have a genuine global peace - with the nuclear threat largely removed - for the first time in half a century; even Southern Africa - with the blight of apartheid removed - is peaceful; the Third World in Asia - including, most notably India and China - is rapidly advancing towards developed status; dictatorships everywhere are being undermined by the new international harmony, and by the 'truths' being transmitted via satellite television; people in almost all countries are earning more - in the West the IT Revolution is making most of us significantly richer - and living longer; and the individual rights of mankind - and especially of womankind - are being recognised and protected. Thus, even though it may never make the headlines in the more sensationalist press, for the majority of us life has never been better!

On the other hand, we live in truly revolutionary times. Arguably they are the most exciting - if the most confusing - that humanity has ever experienced. There may not be blood on the streets, but over the next few decades, life on Earth will experience more change than it has in several centuries past. For some, especially 'members of the establishment', these revolutionary changes will create anxiety; and the symptoms of such stress became very evident as the 'Crisis Decades', starting in the late 1970s, progressed. For the great majority, however, these changes will herald the coming of something approaching utopia. At present, though, that majority is - understandably - unnerved by the bewildering lack of leadership being shown by the politicians. One message of this work is, therefore, not just a forewarning of the society-shattering changes which are taking place but of the real hope they portend for most of humanity.

In the West - which will continue in the short-term to lead the development of society - the main changes will effect the very fabric of that society. Unfortunately, in our present age of uncertainty we are as yet aware of only parts of these changes; and do not see the complete picture. We interpret the parts as being the end of society as we know it, but they are in reality the start of something' much more positive - and much more important. Thus, work, leisure, and even the hallowed institution of the family, are not disintegrating but are all metamorphosing into radically new forms; and, above all, the individual is at long last gaining control of his or her own destiny. The new form of the community in which we are to be located may as yet be uncertain, but the pain society now feels, and which it find so distressing, is not a symptom of a terminal decline - as many suggest - but is the inevitable accompaniment of such revolutions.

The power of the mature individual will be experienced, at one extreme, in portfolios of lifestyles - allowing each to develop himself or herself to the full - and, at the other, in portfolios of issues - and of political positions on these - again reflecting the individual's views. It is no wonder that politicians, and their establishment partners in the mass media, face the future with trepidation. The contempt in which they are held is largely deserved, as they try to apply old tricks to these new challenges. On the other hand, the rest of humanity should welcome what the future offers with open arms.

On the wider, global, scene, the changes will be even more dramatic. The citizens of the Third World are, in ever growing numbers, joining those who are already enjoying the fruits of development. For the first time, the majority of humanity will see a future which promises an increasing quality of life. In a world which now values individuals equally, in terms of their buying power almost as much as of their votes, the shift in power to the masses will itself have dramatic consequences. At the other extreme, however, we will - as the most important collaborative venture of the new age - see the start of the long-delayed colonisation of space; to give impetus to a, literally, ever-expanding future. Nobody may have gone before into these as yet inhospitable domains, but millions will soon do so; and billions will eventually find their home there.

In previous times, such thoughts might have been dismissed as, literally, utopian. Perhaps the greatest change of all is, therefore, that this need no longer be the case. For the first time we can afford to realise even our wildest dreams. The potential resources at our command already exceed anything we might need to create that utopian future. We already have the food, energy and mineral resources which are needed for the immediate future, and those needed for the longer term await development in space if not on Earth. Above all, however, we have now created - even in most parts of the Third World - the ultimate resource needed; an educated population. Given a humankind which does choose to make the correct political decisions, the future is unlimited.

The outcome is that social forces, almost by themselves, will now shape that future. What people want, and - perhaps more important - what they expect, to happen will largely determine what will happen! The great advantage, in the context of this work, is that by capturing people's expectations of the future we can now predict that future - at least in terms of the most important changes to be expected. Where the considered expectations of more than a thousand representatives of the major organisations, which already run our world, have been gathered - as they have been for this research - we can indeed begin to have some confidence in such predictions, even in terms of some of the details.

Specific Results

Revolutionary Trends

There are, in fact, a number of different revolutions taking place - which are each due to reach their separate climaxes in the coming decades. Each of these might be argued to be as important as the previous revolutions which have unsettled humanity. Coming together, and being leveraged by the powerful psychological impact of the Millennium, it is not unreasonable that there will be an accompanying, dramatic series of changes in society.

The first of these revolutions is that which has been most widely described, as the IT Revolution though it might be more accurately titled the Communications Revolution - since it is the wider impacts brought about by the dramatically enhanced powers of individual communication which will ultimately have the greatest effect on society. This is part of a general revolution in technology, which means that we now have to hand, albeit not always yet in production, the technology necessary for humanity's development over the next half century. It is very difficult to conceive of any programme of development which might be held back because the technology was not available.

The second set of revolutions are to be seen in the field of sociology. Although they tend to parallel each other, they can be most meaningfully seen as three separate revolutions. The first of these carries the often quoted title of 'post-modernism'. It is fair to say that more has been misunderstood about this subject, usually by those lecturing about it, than has been established by its promoters. In general, the best approach seems to be to take the title literally, since 'modernism' is now quite well established as a phase in development; the form of society which emerged after the first Industrial Revolution - and which has provided the context for most people's lives until recently. In the historical context, Post-Modernism simply is the next stage of development beyond this. We prefer to deal with the phenomenon more simply, and to characterise it above all as the empowerment of the individual.

The second social revolution, which has been promised by some for a number of decades, is that of 'post-materialism'. This takes as its starting point the fact that many individuals have now reached satiation in terms of the goods they own; the usefulness of the third or fourth car must surely be a lot less than that of the first. The expected result is that the focus of their purchases will shift to the non-material; in terms of the hopes expressed by the proponents of this viewpoint, 'towards a more inwardly directed, not to say more spiritual, life'. Whether these hopes of a 'better' society will be realised is questionable, but what cannot be challenged is that society is certainly moving away from the acquisition of goods as the prime source of demand; as is reflected in the shift in patterns of employment to meet the rapidly increasing demand from the service sector.

The third social revolution relates to the patterns of work. It is sometimes referred to as 'Post-Fordism'. The symbol of the modernist period was the production line, where dehumanised workers were driven by, and almost became part of, the machine. Now, the move to the information society, and the parallel move to service work, means that the individual - using his or her intelligence flexibly - has become the prime generator of added value. Thus, the individual has become the most important investment, especially in terms of the education and training they have received. This has long been recognised by the Japanese corporations, and is now being emulated by the more advanced organisations in the West.

Resources

The key to these developments will be the fact that, for the first time, the resources are now available to achieve almost all that society might want. Those resources are, though, unevenly distributed and government intervention - on the international and supranational scale - will be needed to rectify this; since this is not the sort of problem with which any market, even a politically neutral one, can deal effectively. Subject to this redistribution, in general there is already enough food to feed everyone, enough mineral resources to supply industry and enough energy to power it - albeit not at the sort of artificially low prices which led to the wasteful excesses before the 1970s. In any case, in outer space there is all of this in abundance; not least almost free solar power.

Education

Above all, however, there is now sufficient educated manpower to take advantage of these physical resources. It is humanity itself, especially those members with special skills, which now is in the shortest supply. On the other hand, many countries - including some in the Third World as well as those in the Developed World - have invested heavily over recent decades; to educate their populations to the level needed to create the unlimited future this material describes. An important side-effect, in the West at least, is that the emancipation of women is now going beyond mere equality, to even establish a form of supremacy - so that the beginning of the Third Millennium might be considered to be the age of women. Not merely are the feminine societal values coming to the fore, but the new female stereotype - with its emphasis on education - much better fits them for the intellectual demands of the new century; where males, amongst the general population as opposed to the already educated, still tenaciously retain the stereotype which was previously required of those whose lives were based on hard physical labour.

 Communications And Information Technology Revolutions

Indeed, the IT Revolution is - at long last - becoming a major driver for change. It is not, though, the technology itself which matters most. Despite all the hype, the appearance of the PC on so many desks has not made a major impact. So far it has been typically used as a replacement for the typewriter and calculator; and has been most often acquired as a status symbol. No self-respecting expert being interviewed on television would deign to appear without his or her badge of office, the PC, discretely shown in the background! The major impact is only beginning now that these millions of PCs are being connected to each other. When they connect directly to our brains, as some scientists are predicting, the power of human beings - not just computers - will grow even more dramatically; creating a new stage of evolution - homo integrans!

This form of communication is genuinely revolutionary. It expands the horizons of the individual by an order of magnitude. Much has been made of the ability to 'talk' to people on the other side of the globe, but the real benefit will initially come from the ability to talk simultaneously, and efficiently, to tens of people in the same office as yourself. Even without the direct interface with our brains, it still represents a genuinely new form of communication; which will enable many more people to gain access to the discussions which have previously taken place between a few privileged individuals. Much of the language of this new medium remains to be developed, so its power has not yet been really tested; but the potential for widening both the 'senses' of the individual and their knowledge - especially that held personally by others rather than impersonally in libraries - can already be seen to have truly revolutionary potential.

The impact upon society as a whole will be no less great. In organisational terms, the most important new communications flows will be horizontal rather than vertical. This has already started to undermine the traditional role of management, but it will go farther - to demand management structures which are very close to those of the Japanese corporations. This will result in the consequent reinforcement of the 'Human Resource Strategy' movement which is already demanding that individuals working in an organisation be recognised as its most important investment. At the personal level, it will massively reinforce the ability of the individual to build his or her own tailored portfolio of lifestyles. This is where the expansion of horizons may be most adventurous - especially when the new super-highways allow the easy, and cheap, transmission of video material as well as text. The new groups, to which they can belong, may no longer be restricted to members gathered from the surrounding communities; they really will be able to contain members from around the world - without regard for distance. This is already how physicists researching high energy particles operate - they even run their experiments from thousands of miles away - but in future it may be just as easily how champion growers of leeks communicate with fellow aficionados!

Space Insurance

We have already talked about space in terms of the effectively unlimited resources waiting there, and that will no doubt provide the commercial incentive, or at least the excuse, for its exploitation. On the other hand, the psychological needs seem to be even more potent. A consistent aspect of the scenarios we have found in the investigations has been a persistent worry about 'disasters'. These typically see humanity wiped out by an uncontrollable event, now more typically a natural disaster - such as a comet hitting the Earth or a new, unstoppable disease - rather than a man made one - global warming or a nuclear war. The favourite insurance against these is now to spread humanity beyond The bounds of Earth; most memorably described by one writer of a scenario as 'God selects a second Ark - a Space Ark' The real statistics behind such risks may not justify the development of space, but the powerful - albeit irrational - fears of the public may still represent a power for colonisation of other worlds which cannot be countered.

Global Individualism

The emergence of the individual - described earlier - is rapidly becoming a world-wide phenomenon. Empowerment of that individual, especially of women, has become a touchstone of the development of a country's civilisation. Confusingly, it is often described in terms of empowerment of just the individuals in the elite; the friends of the establishment. These are to be freed of constrictions, to make almost indecent profits at the expense of others - rabid capitalism of this type has been the byword of many governments in recent decades. On the other hand, the same messages are - unnoticed by many of the politicians promoting them - just as avidly being absorbed by the many other individuals who would previously have been consigned to a mere role as part of the 'masses'. These new  voters are starting to demand the genuinely individual rights which have been, albeit rhetorically, already offered!

New Role Of The Community

The New Right would claim that this growing individualism has removed the need for public provision; the market should, and will, provide all - privatisation is the only solution. Margaret Thatcher memorably summarised this view when she claimed that there was 'no such thing as society'! The result is that, in the crisis decades at the end of the 20th century, much of the role of the community has been dismantled. Some would go so far as to say that the social infra-structure has been more gratuitously vandalised by disoriented governments themselves than by the under-classes which they have created, and which they so fear.

The paradox is that the new individual is in greater need of the community! Left alone, with only the market to mediate his or her aspirations, the result would be anarchy. Chaos would ensue as the billions of individuals demanded their own rights, regardless of those of others. This is, despite the free-market rhetoric of politicians, already recognised by the ever growing number of regulations which seek to constrain the activities of all parts of society. The definitive mark of our age is the degree to which it is governed, in the minutest details, by laws set by governments which - in defence of such constraints - proudly declaim, however, that the freedom of the individual is paramount. Our research shows that even the management establishment, which - in a free-market economy - should be leading future developments, looks above all to government regulation to determine its future. In this way, whilst declaiming the virtues of forward-looking entrepreneurs, it still sub-contracts its own future to the politicians who the rest of the population is coming to despise!

The reality is that a new relationship - a compact if not a contract - needs to be developed between the community and the individuals which it contains. Clearly chaos would result if the community chose to have no role. Equally, though, the model of previous generations - whereby the community arbitrarily imposed the views of majority groups on everyone - no longer meets the needs of the individuals involved. What the new relationship will be is not yet clear to see. It will need to be much more sophisticated than that in the past. It will no longer be sufficient to dogmatically provide just one solution to any problem. With the growing complexity of the needs of individuals, there will often need to be almost as many solutions as there are individuals involved. Before the information society this would have been impossible, but the new technology now offers the possibility of a viable outcome. Each individual can now, at least in theory - and soon in practice, have a unique relationship with the community to which he or she belongs.

Portfolio Lives

To a certain extent, however, it is no longer possible to describe just one community to which an individual belongs. In most Western countries the days when a geographic neighbourhood - and a related class or group membership - determined the community to which any individual belonged are long since gone. Indeed, neighbours are now one of the groups with which individuals see themselves as having little in common. Even the community of fellow workers is diminishing in importance, as the workplace loses its place as the focus of the individual's life. Instead, he or she now typically gives a shifting allegiance in turn to each of the multiple groups to which they belong. Depending upon the circumstances, they may indeed see their interests shared with very different, even seemingly contradictory, groups. At work their loyalty may still be to their fellow workers, but it might also be to the profession to which they belong - or to the project group with which they are currently associated. As a consumer they might pose as a figure of fashion, or see themselves as a protector of the green environment. In their free time they might be a member of a sports club, or a study group, or a local pressure group.

Indeed, the growing political importance of single issue pressure groups most graphically illustrates how complex the process may become. Individuals in future may see no conflict in supporting a left-wing environmental group while, at the same time, they are an active member of a right-wing local conservationist group. This may offend the main political parties, who have come to depend upon individuals committing their blanket support across all issues. It is, however, typical of the new portfolio approach being adopted by individuals; they now decide for themselves, on each separate issue, what is the correct decision; and refuse to sub-contract it to the establishment.

Consumer Votes

In part, this new portfolio approach will be provided by the market; as lifestyle marketing has already, in very crude form, attempted to do. The resulting many markets, and segments within them, will though place new demands upon management - with the rapid growth of computer driven database marketing, which aims to simulate a unique, personal relationship between a supplier and each customer, for example.

In the main, however, it will require an increased provision of public, community services. Many of the needs of the individual - not least the demand to live in a suitable environment - can only be met by the community. The market simply is not equipped to provide many of these services. The immediate need will be even greater, where these services are precisely those which were vandalised by governments during the crisis decades; though the availability of large numbers of unemployed, and unskilled, workers  - the category needed for such support - should aid the recovery.

Global  Power

Globalisation is bringing a common viewpoint, and much the same set of shared values and aspirations, to peoples around the world. Television now reaches almost all communities; even the slums of Bombay are being wired up for satellite reception. Only the most remote Third World farming communities are as yet beyond its grasp. In this way, television is by far the most potent educative medium for the whole world. This carries its own risks, where the products of Hollywood are all pervasive. Its unreal lifestyles set the standards for impossibly happy family life in the West as much as elsewhere. This poses a degree of responsibility which the commercially driven entertainers ignore. The result is that the dream of many around the world is to live in downtown Los Angeles; a dream which those who have actually visited the place would more readily characterise as a nightmare!

In addition, as mentioned earlier, redistribution of resources - around the world - should be one of the key features of the next century. Thus, the new redistribution of political power will encourage a fairer distribution of economic power; and will persuade even governments and corporations in the West to divert rather more of their ever-growing resources to the development of the Third World. This is for two reasons of considerable self-interest. Wealth increasingly depends upon market demand rather than supplier pressure, and - with more than 90% of the world's population - the Third World will become the main economic driver in the Third Millennium. At the same time, the political power - driven by the same inexorable numbers of population - will swing to the Third World. Everyone - even the most selfish politician in the West - now understands that it is better to have friends, rather than enemies, holding the reins of power. The same shifts of power will inevitably also lead to a change in the state of mind of the current superpowers - who no longer will be able to dominate global politics. As the pendulum starts to swing the other way, there is likely to be a scramble to put in place genuinely democratic supra-national institutions; ones which will protect the interests of minorities - as the Western powers will become - rather than continue to entrench the interests of the major players as does the United Nations! In any case, the power of the latter is gradually slipping away, as it follows the path of its predecessor - The League of Nations - into obscurity.

Global Society

Supporters of world government have long been held in as much contempt as UFO spotters - not least by politicians and the media. Yet, it should now be obvious that some form of global regulation is rapidly becoming essential. If the growing globalisation, encouraged by the world-wide networks of communications, were not enough, one has only to look at the way global financial markets - the first to take maximum advantage of the new communications - allow speculators to outwit national governments; and hijack macro-economic strategy.

The first steps are already clearly visible, in the form of the regional groupings; such as the EU and NAFTA. The former is especially important in terms of the power of the idea - of full political union - it encapsulates. The latter is important in terms of the moderation it might bring to the external policies of the US - which is seen to be the one state which will move in the opposite direction to the rest of the world; into increasing, internal, anarchy. There are other, hesitant, steps being taken elsewhere towards such supra-national groupings; especially in terms of the Pacific Rim countries. Thus, there is already on the drawing board a three way split of the world; described - in slightly different nationally based, terms - by Kenichi Ohmae as the Triad. This will undoubtedly shift as the members of the Third World make their own groupings or join those in the First World, but the principle of large economic - and almost inevitably political - groupings of nations is already established; with a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It should not be an unthinkable further step to reach the ultimate goal of a global society; though one which is not totalitarian, but which contains a great diversity of approaches amongst its members. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that world government is already present, in embryo form, as the European Union. The idea, behind what is now a political as well as economic union, is possibly one of the most important shaping the future of the world.

The Political Establishment

Accompanying this social revolution in the position of the individual has been a parallel political revolution; though this has yet to be fully recognised. Politicians in the West have long claimed that democracy, the people's vote, is the best - many would claim the only - satisfactory source of government power. It was ultimately this power of the individual, and not capitalism, which defeated the Marxist governments of Eastern Europe.

Yet, whilst claiming to be the guardians of democracy, Western governments themselves have signally failed to recognise the implications which emerge when the people come to demand that power is really distributed to the individual. The lessons of Eastern Europe, graphically conveyed on television, have since been well learned by the electorates in the West. They have been leveraged by the move there to genuine equality; not least by the remarkably effective feminist movements. Thus, above all, women have come to realise that they are individuals with real power not just dependent members of a family. Indeed, in many respects, the 21st century may come eventually to be seen as the century of women!

Individualism has - not least - been seen in the buying power of individuals; first - after being freed from subsistence existences - as the conspicuous consumption reflected in individual lifestyles, but more recently as responsible buying to protect the green environment. Potentially most important of all, though, it is now being seen in voter power; voting out of office, around the world, governments which have long considered that they had a monopoly on power.

At the same time, the spread of power has changed dramatically. For most of  the past century it has traditionally belonged to national governments, even where the nation was an artificial construct. Now it is being stretched in two opposing directions. The regions, often 'tribally' or ethnically  based, are demanding an increasing say in their own affairs - and below them even separate communities may want to decide their own future. In the other direction, as globalisation bites - and no part of the globe can any longer isolate itself from the rest, which is now a mere microsecond away on the electronic networks - governments are increasingly being forced into supra-national groupings. These are, for the first time, starting to garner their own powers, which overrule the national powers of their members.

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