SCENARIO Issue 4 2019
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The document discusses several scenarios and trends impacting society, including the shift in teenage behavior towards more conservative lifestyles, increasing challenges to privacy, and insights from Jared Diamond on global crises and population growth. It also explores various topics such as an epigenetic art project, the concept of an aerotropolis, and behavioral patterns like ancestry tourism and responses to socio-political events. Overall, it provides a comprehensive look at contemporary issues and future possibilities as explored by various contributors.
![19S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9
Especially considering the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in Japan, and the internal nuclear disaster in the
north of Soviet Ukraine, which many will note has been popularized
in mainstream culture as of late by the HBO TV series Chernobyl.
Such horror stories lead many to instinctively associate nuclear
reactors with visions of post-apocalyptic worlds before they can
even begin to think about the benefits of the energy. But Diamond
says those fears are not backed up with a credible set of statistics
concerning casualties.
“When it comes to nuclear energy, one can point out the poten-
tial catastrophes,” says Diamond. “The worst nuclear catastrophes
so far were the 130,000 killed in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki by nuclear bombs in 1945.
And the 32 people killed – and many more
indirectly – in the Chernobyl nuclear ac-
cident in 1986.”
Diamond then points to a multitude of
nations that, for many decades, have gene-
rated most of their electricity requirements
from nuclear reactors without a single
accident. The list includes France, South
Korea, Taiwan, and Finland. The possi-
bility of a nuclear reactor accident, there-
fore, needs to be weighed up against the
certainty of deaths caused annually by air
pollution with the burning of fossil fuels.
This then brings us to another issue that Diamond explores with
scrupulous analysis: how countries in the developing world are
increasing their living standards through the process of global capi-
talism. Almost immediately, this sets up the premise for two further
important questions: is every global citizen’s dream of achieving a
First World lifestyle possible? And if so, what kind of impact will
that have on our planet's environment?
Well, problems only start arising when billions of people increase
their consumption and production habits. But that, of course, is
what a rise in living standards fundamentally entails. Just consider
the numbers, Diamond suggests. The world's current population
stands at 7.5 billion. But only a billion live in the First World,
which consists of North America, Europe, and Japan. The ratio of
per capita consumption rates between the First and Third World
is presently at about 32:1. The math is a little complicated, Diamond
explains. But just consider this for a moment, he says: the United
States currently consumes 210 times more than Kenya does, and
Italy, which has a population of 60 million, currently consumes
twice as much as the entire African continent, which has a popula-
tion numbering over 1 billion.
Until recently, Third World countries posed almost no threat to
First World countries. Especially since the First World managed,
and stole, the Third World's resources during the colonial period:
a subject that Diamond's book explores in some detail. Nevertheless,
the new map of global capitalism – problems, prejudices, and la-
bour exploitation notwithstanding – has changed all of that in the
last two decades, as living standards across the world have grown
in tandem with a rising global middle class. Lest we forget, this new
middle class wants to eat meat regularly, fly on airplanes to go on
holiday, use more fuel to power motor vehicles, and use refrigerators.
When one adds up these luxurious consumption habits, the end
result is that our collective carbon footprint as a species rises not
just a little, but astronomically.
Indeed, Diamond argues that as Third
World countries catch up to First World
living standards, the coming decades are
going to present an unavoidable problem:
consumption rates across the globe, on
average, will increase to 11 times the rate
they presently operate at. That number
is the equivalent of 80 billion people con-
suming with the eyes, ears, tastes, and
smells of aspiring bourgeois comfort.
“It's a challenge to decouple the im-
provement of living standards with the
damage of the environment too,” Dia-
mond explains. “The improvement of living standards always in-
volves more food production, and this usually involves damage to
the environment. The question is: how can we produce more food
and make it less environmentally damaging?”
There are ways to be more environmentally conscious, Diamond
maintains. Especially when it comes to food production. He points
to the Netherlands, which after the United States is the second
biggest agricultural exporter in the world.
“In the Netherlands much of the food is grown indoors in multi-
stacked buildings,” says Diamond. “So the [carbon] footprint on
the ground is minimized with these modern forms of food pro-
duction.” Diamond also points to the issue of food waste, noting
that half of the food presently produced in the United States goes
in the bin.
“We also need to start asking: what can be done to reduce food
waste by 50 percent?” Diamond goes on: “There are some relatively
simple ways to do that, which will help to minimize our impact
on the environment.”
Diamond's tone as an author is conversational, laid back, cen-
trist, heavy on detail, measured, and well researched, and creates
a sharp lucid narrative that mixes geography, politics and history,
wherein realpolitik takes preference over moral finger-waving
“Diamond's tone is
conversational, laid back,
centrist, heavy on detail,
measured, and well researched.
It creates a sharp lucid
narrative that mixes geo-
graphy, politics and history”
THE BOOK UPHEAVAL
ThebookUpheaval:HowNationsCopewithCrisisandChangeisthelastbookinthetrilogythatJaredDiamondinitiatedwithhisinternationalbestsel-
lerGuns,GermsandSteel.Itprimarilyfocusesonwhatcanmakecivilisationsriseandwhatcancausethemtocollapse.Thetimeframeisthelast300
years, but Diamond also dedicates a fair share to future global challenges, including threats like climate change, inequality, and population growth.
R I S K S](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/cifs-2019-scenario-4-en-web2-191002073239/85/SCENARIO-Issue-4-2019-21-320.jpg)
![41S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9
“There’s this notion now that teenagers are conservative in their
approach to many things, and I’m not [just] talking about poli-
tics here,” says Richard Cope, senior analyst for market research-
ers Mintel. “It’s a generation that’s growing up living among an
aging population profile and this is making them averse to
many of the vices of previous generations. They’re also growing
up more sheltered from work and the experiences of previous
generations as well.”
And not just sheltered from it – they are positively reactionary
against it. Health, for example, is a major factor in their thinking.
Cope notes how, in his conversations with teenagers, it is com-
monplace for them to point out the un-
healthy habits of their elders. This is why
countries like Italy, Spain, and France,
where wine is part of the culture, are
seeing long-term declines in sales.
“Yes, you still hear stories of teenage
binge drinking but there’s a coherent pic-
ture of alcohol consumption going down
among younger generations,” says Cope.
“Even in the UK we’re seeing 20 per-
cent of 16 to 24-year-olds saying they
don’t drink at all – which is one reason
we’re seeing the closure of so many pubs.
We’re seeing the same with smoking –
the proportion of teenagers who smoke has undergone a long-
term decline. Drug-taking too – only [around] 20 percent of
15/16-year-olds take illicit drugs.”
The same goes for money – studies suggest that teens are more
inclined to saving rather than spending – and even for sex, this
trend of moderation seems rather prevalent. In 1991, 54 percent
of 14 to 18-year-olds in the US claimed to be sexually experienced.
In 2015 that was down to 41 percent. This decrease might be ex-
plained by teens being better educated about sex, or by their living
with their parents for longer and – should the decline reflect a
broader trend – even by an influx of Muslim youth migration into
Europe, bringing with it more proscriptive attitudes.
Or perhaps sex – as with other traditional teen activities – may
be off the agenda for sheer lack of opportunity. With social media
seemingly having, at least in part, displaced real life socialising,
today’s average teen hardly goes out, not even on the weekends.
Indeed, physical activity of other sorts is off the agenda as well.
Only 10 percent of 15-year-old girls and 20 percent of boys across
the EU get regular physical activity, according to the OECD –
such that WHO predicts that 20 percent of today’s Italian teens,
for example, will be obese adults by 2030.
“[These new teens are a group that’s] more solitary and seden-
tary than any group that’s gone before them,” says Cope. “Some
of the traditional freedoms [that teens have pursued] – getting
part-time jobs, getting driving licenses to give you that economic
and transport freedom – they’re diminishing too, even in Ameri-
ca, with all the romance of the open road. Instead freedom for
young people now comes at the digital level – you escape digi-
tally. But that comes at a cost to face-to-face contact. They don’t
go out enough to get drunk and have sex.”
There are reasons suggested for these behaviours, however. One
can seem a little creepy to generations that have not grown up
with social media. “Much as they don’t have to indulge in the
reckless kind of behaviours teens have traditionally got involved
with – because they get their dopamine highs from [the likes
and re-tweets and notifications of] social media – so social media
also means they live these self-documenting lives now,” explains
Sarah Johnson, co-founder of trend analysis company The Akin.
“Everything they do is tracked by social media and, in a way,
policed by it – that constant record means ‘naughty’ behaviour
is not only public, it might haunt them forever.”
Other reasons are more compelling,
perhaps especially to the older genera-
tions. For one, parents now spend much
more time actually parenting, which is
paying dividends in producing balanced
teens who, it seems, actually listen to
their parents. After all, the little-dis-
cussed life history theory argues that the
more secure a child’s home life, the
slower they will be to grow up – lead-
ing to a timidity and lack of readiness
for adulthood that employers now of-
ten complain about.
Secondly, today’s teens have seen the
consequences of the more traditional teenage lifestyle writ large
in previous generations, especially the self-absorbed millennials,
and do not much like what they see. “Sure, teenagers might on the
surface seem dull in a lot of ways, but then they’ve seen that pre-
vious models of behaviour are not so successful,” notes Johnson.
“Their parents were much more hedonistic [as teens and be-
yond]. They’ve seen the impact of that and don’t want it,” agrees
Chloe Coulson, associate director of the foresight team at inno-
vations consultancy Seymour Powell. “What we’re seeing with
teens now is a rebellion of sorts – it’s a rebellion against rebellion.”
“Then you need to consider other factors – the gig economy
and the intense political uncertainty they’ve grown up with,
which means it’s no wonder they aim for a sense of solidity and
security, especially when it’s not clear what their economic future
might be,” she adds. “I think that’s why they’re [relatively] so
entrepreneurial – it’s taking charge of their own destiny in some
way, which they have the tools to do. It’s all about looking for
some sense of control, about grasping for a sense of normalcy
and authenticity in a very insecure world.”
CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS
AND CONSERVATISM
On one hand, this state of affairs – not cutting loose, not getting
out, and, since statistically teenagers are also fighting less, not
rioting on the beaches – is doing teenagers no favours. Several
studies suggest that teenagers are among the most stressed
members of society, ills largely blamed on social media. Twice
the national average in the teen demographic is, they report,
stressed on a daily basis – troubled by internet addiction, cyber
bullying, the resulting sleep deprivation, isolation, and decline
“Yes, you still hear stories
of teenage binge drinking but
there’s a coherent picture
of alcohol consumption going
down among younger
generations”
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![42S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9
in mental stimulation, among other problems. They are not the
healthiest, despite the lack of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – all of
which may come of course, depending on whether teen atti-
tudes morph into life strategies.
But it is also, in some instances, leading to a strain of very real
conservatism among teens, and not just because conservatism
might seem to offer a rock to cling to in turbulent, perplexing
and challenging times. Rather, having grown up in a climate of
political correctness and both a largely left-leaning media and
academia, it would be little wonder if, cutting against this, con-
servatism became kind of cool.
Certainly, that was the conclusion of
a 2016 study of 14 and 15-year-olds by
British brand consultancy The Gild: 59
percent of these teens said they had con-
servative views in relation to topics like
same-sex marriage, transgender rights
and cannabis legislation – second in their
conservatism only to those born before
1945. In comparison, 85 percent of those
in the Millennial and Generation X age
groups described themselves as ‘quite’
or ‘very liberal’.
Conservatism is the counter-culture,
and perhaps all the more so given that
social media is the perfect, self-reinforcing meme factory for the
right (and, of course, the extreme right), but also because the
internet offers up so many viewpoints that it is hard to know
what to believe – adding to the demand for stability.
This plays out in politics too. According to a 2016 ‘Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin’ paper, 18-year-olds in the US
are more likely to identify as politically conservative than the
same age group a decade ago and even back in the more con-
servative 1980s. Some 23 percent of entering college students
identify as leaning far right.
There is a similar picture in parts of Europe – in Germany, 55
percent of 18 to 29-year-olds (so more millennials than pre-voting
age teens), do not believe that “the EU is on the right path”, ac-
cording to Körber-Stiftung. They appear – as proto-conservatives
– to largely back the status quo, more pro-Germany (in favour
of the nation taking more of a leadership role in the EU; less in
favour of the formation of a European Army) than pro-EU. Do
not expect them to lead the revolution.
Is this cause for disappointment? Surely teenage years are pre-
cisely when you rail against the machine, before, inevitably for
most, being sucked into it? Yet, from another perspective, teen-
agers now simply represent the first generation to express a
new dynamic, a fresh definition of what it is to be a teen – an
idea that has, on closer inspection, always been in flux thanks
to shifts in economics, technology and culture. For while they
may not be tearing up the town, they are certainly progressive
in other ways.
DESIRE FOR CHANGE
Arguably, today’s teens are, for example, more environmentally-
aware than any prior generation. They are more ethical-minded
– in terms of their shopping habits or their diets, with vegetar-
ianism and veganism on upward trajectories. Their social poli-
tics can seem by turns fascinating and perplexing to older gen-
erations, but for every very young conservative, there is one
whose open-mindedness – to gender fluidity, for instance –
is second nature. And they want positive change. One recent
Adolescenza Lab Association study found that 85 percent of
Italian 12 to 14-year-olds, for example, believe they can do
something useful for the environment with their own behav-
iour, and 39 percent are willing to use their spare time to do
something to this end.
“In a sense, what can teens now rebel
against when there’s no establishment?”
asks Coulson. “But this doesn’t mean
there aren’t things they’re very passion-
ate about. Yes, these things can seem a
little worthy and so boring, but they’re
concerned with real issues” – not only,
for example, gun control (after the
Parkland School shooting in Florida
early last year) or sexual harassment (the
Me Too movement), but, as Coulson
stresses, “issues that are fundamental to
the future of humanity”. As such, the
emphasis is put on the grand existential threats that human-
kind is facing.
“Teenagers are a strange mix today. They definitely are more
conservative in many ways – in terms of their attitude to tradi-
tional trajectories of success. They’re positive towards ideas of
marriage, owning a home, things they want to achieve that mil-
lennials appeared much less interested in,” says Johnson. “And
yet, with that comes the many ways in which they are clearly
progressive, such that I don’t think to call them boring is fair.”
This testifies to the multiplicity of the definition and the mix of
attitudes among teenage populations as being ever changing,
dependent upon the time and context in which they live.
Indeed, Johnson warns against the demographer’s fallacy –
the desire to lump many people into one category and expect
their attitudes to be coherent throughout. “Dig down and
what’s really interesting about teenagers now is just how splin-
tered they are,” she says. “Yes, you have one group that’s very
much about self-curation, their own brand, selfies and so
on. But then there’s this other [more cautious, more private,
less social media-minded] under-reported group that’s very
much about collaboration and community. They’re interested
in and really want to shape the future. And they’re the ones
moving forward.”
Teenagers might not be tearing things up and wreaking havoc
with reckless drinking and physical rioting anymore. How-
ever, instead of breaking down the existing structures, it seems
they are exploring the opportunities at hand in order to create
a viable future. As such, teenagers are not what they used to
be, but they are teenagers after all: negotiating their position
in the world. ¢
“But it is also, in some instances,
leading to a strain of very
real conservatism among teens,
and not just because
conservatism might seem to
offer a rock to cling to in
turbulent times”
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SCENARIO Issue 4 2019
- 1. 1S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 CONTENT: Interview: Jared Diamond | Behaviour | Lene Hald: Red Ball | An epigenitic tale The Square | Teenagers have stopped being teenagers | Will we have time to save the world? Wildcard: A future without privacy | News about science and technology | Fake news and the internet | Future medias | Futures past: Aerotropolis | Full circle: Minimalism | Sociotech: When the internet is judge, jury, and executioner | Ideas, visions, scenarios, and much more... 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 A N A LY S E S T R E N D S I D E A S F U T U R E S
- 2. 2S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9
- 3. Welcome
- 6. 4S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 38 TEENAGE MUTANTS Teenagers have stopped being teenagers, according to this article, which describes how much of the exploratory behavior that has traditionally characteri- sed teenage years – drinking, drugs, sex, rebelling against the establishment – is increasingly rejected by the young, who across the world embrace a more conservative lifestyle. “Yes, we still hear stories of wild binge-drinking, but the overall picture is that alcohol consumption is in decline.” Josh Sims looks at this phenomenon. 36 A FUTURE WITHOUT PRIVACY Privacy is sacred – but will it remain so in the future? Even now, we see our privacy challenged on many fronts, often without us being aware of it. Developments point to how increasing challenges to and constraints on privacy may be unavoidable parts of our daily lives in the coming years. Science editor Klaus Æ. Mogensen describes this scenario in a ‘Wildcard’ article, which concludes: “In the future, the surveillance may happen fully automatically, 24 hours a day, down to the smallest detail, and we may be powerless to do anything about it.” Heavy shit. 14 JARED DIAMOND The latest book from Pulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond – Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change – presents a litmus test for a nation state in political crisis and its subsequent survival. With an ambitious scope and vast scale, the book looks at world history over the last three centuries and predicts future threats against our planet and humanity. JP O’Malley has interviewed Diamond in his publisher's office in London. 38 14 36 CONTENT
- 7. 5S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 70 AEROTROPOLIS In this issue’s ‘Futures past’, Emilie Lindeburg spotlights the old idea of a metropolis built around an airport – more precisely, Nicholas DeSantis’s idea, from the 1930s, of Aerotropolis, a 200-floor airport skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, New York. This enormous building was supposed to take up 8 by 5 city blocks centrally in the city. In spite of many years’ preparatory work, the project was never realized, but the idea lives on in modified form in modern airport architecture across the world. 59 70 59 RED BALL We unfold Dr. Lene Hald’s epigenetic tale in words on page 59 onward. The tale is based on her photo art project Red Ball, from which we have brought excerpts for this issue’s photo series. Red Ball explores family relations and the relationship between heritage, environment, loss, genetics, and sorrow – and not least how we become what we are through the stories that come before us and the stories we tell ourselves. 6 CONTRIBUTORS 9 EDITORIAL 10 BEHAVIOUR 14 JARED DIAMOND ON THE WORLD’S BIGGEST CRISES AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM 24 FULL CIRCLE - MINIMALISM 26 THE CONTINUING BOND - AN EPIGENETIC TALE 34 THE X-RAY 36 WILDCARD: A WORLD WITHOUT PRIVACY 38 TEENAGE MUTANTS 44 ONLINE COMMUNITIES AND THE FRAGMENTATION OF THE MEDIASCAPE 46 TRUTH IN A NETWORKED FUTURE 50 COLUMN: BRAVE NEW WORLD 52 TECHTALK 53 NOT OF WOMAN BORN 54 BRIEF: UPDATES ON TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE 56 WILL WE HAVE TIME TO SAVE THE WORLD? 59 PHOTO SERIES: RED BALL 68 SOCIOTECH: WHEN THE INTERNET IS JUDGE, JURY,AND EXECUTIONER 69 EDITORS’ RECOMMENDATIONS 70 FUTURES PAST: DESANTIS’AEROTROPOLIS
- 8. 6S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 CONTRIBUTORS JOSH SIMS Josh Sims is a UK-based freelance writer contributing to the likes of The London Times, Wallpaper and Esquire, covering subjects as diverse as the future of computing, the culture of sleep deprivation, the death of the suit, and why you should buy Iranian art (and you really should). He’s the previous editor of the British trends forecasting journal Viewpoint and the author of several books on style and related matters. EMMA SLACK-JØRGENSEN Emma studies Economics and Philosophy at McGill University and seeks to bridge the gap between her studies through her writing. Born in Aarhus, Denmark, she takes inspiration from her time growing up in the United States and Bosnia, with interests in welfare economics and existential philosophy. More specifically, she likes to explore the moral and social teachings of existentialist philosophers. Emma also has experience in journalism and the hard-pressing issues in business and technology. For this issue, she wrote both the ‘Full Circle’ piece on minimalism and an article on how the X-ray was invented by chance. JP O’MALLEY JP O’Malley is a regular contributor to our magazine and has, over the years, built on his expertise in the genre of author interviews. He lives in London and has written the main article for this issue, building on a conversation with the esteemed writer and scientist Jared Diamond, who is best known for his book Guns, Germs and Steel, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Read on from page 14. EMMA SLACK-JØRGENSEN JOSH SIMS JP O'MALLEY
- 9. 7S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 SCENARIO is the magazine of ideas, visions, trends and scenarios. The content is developed at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies in collaboration with leading researchers, practitioners, writers and photographers. Regular contributors in this issue: JOHAN PETER PALUDAN, writer KEVIN JAE Kevin Jae is educated in both business and anthropology. He is a bibliophile, polyglot, and interdisciplinary thinker who is interested in foresight to apply his studies to real world problems, while encountering and interacting with interesting thinkers from all disciplines. For this issue, Kevin wrote the article Fake News and the Internet for our ‘Horizon’ section. Read it on page 44. LENE HALD Lene Hald is portrayed in the interview The Continuing Bond – An Epigenetic Tale, but we should not forget to mention that she has also contributed the self-portrait that graces the cover of this issue, in harmony with the autobiographical spirit that characterises her work. Lene has also contributed the photo series Red Ball, which forms the basis for the interview and supports it visually. We say thank you for the collaboration, the pictures, and the tale! KEVIN JAELENE HALD
- 10. S C E N A R I O Scenario is published six times a year by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. We provide separate editions in Danish and English. Amaliegade 5C, 1256 Copenhagen, telephone +45 3311 7176 editor@scenariomagazine.com www.scenariomagazine.com Editor-in-chief M O R T E N G R Ø N B O R G Editorial Manager C A S P E R S K O V G A A R D P E T E R S E N Art Director S A R A F R O S T I G Science & Technology Editor K L A U S Æ . M O G E N S E N Editorial staff A N N E D E N C K E R B Æ D K E L , columnist S O F I E T H O R S E N , writer and reviewer E M I L I E L I N D E B U R G , writer Secretary G I T T E C H R I S T O F F E R S E N Proofreading S O H I N I K U M A R Translation K L A U S Æ . M O G E N S E N Print House: Rosendahls Subscriptions: Gitte Christoffersen gic@iff.dk Cover photo: Lene Hald Photo, page 4: Okusho Hosima Photos, page 27 & 30: Lene Hald Illustrations, page 47-49: Ernst Neufert Photo Series, page 59: Lene Hald ISSN 1904-4658 UK All rights reserved. No unauthorised use, distribution or copying allowed, although we often say yes to sharing our work with other people – if they ask first.
- 11. EDITORIAL Jared Diamond almost says it: the climate crisis and migration pressures on the Western world constitute the most serious problems for humanity’s future. At least, these are the two challenges he focuses on in our interview, in which he also mentions that the world population is expected to rise to 11 billion by 2100. That is almost 4 billion more than today, and this growth will happen in just 80 years. What he doesn’t mention, but is rather important, is that most of this growth will take place on one continent, namely Africa, which is expected to be responsible for up to 80 percent of the growth. We have discussed this several times before in this magazine but let me just say that you don’t have to be a professor to figure out that this will pose massive challenges for the whole world. Africa has lots of potential, and we, with Western eyes, will have to get used to seeing the continent as much more than simply the home of some of the world’s poorest countries. Africa’s cultural power will especially grow in the future, simply because its population will grow so colossally, while the populations of Europe and the US will at best stagnate or decline a bit. The future belongs to Africa. Even so, another issue is at play: the African population is unlikely to put up with low economic growth and progress, and they will likely not want to stay on their own continent if poverty or climate challenges make lives too difficult or perhaps even unbearable. Why should they? People have always wandered. This will in turn potentially put pressure on the old rulers of world; countries where riches have accumulated over the centuries, where climate challenges in some places will be less severe, and where relative peace and idyll rule behind closed borders. This will be one of the future’s major geopolitical tensions. Perhaps not directly at first, but over the course of the century, shifts towards the West will happen, simply because large parts of the world will become less secure, and because new generations won’t have a birthright on the secure middle- class lives the rest of us take for granted today. Become wiser with Jared Diamond on page 14 onwards. Enjoy reading! Morten Grønborg
- 12. 10S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 P A T T E R N S BEHAVIOUR SPOTLIGHT ON SELECTED BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS WORLDWIDE Examples collected and selected by Jesper Knudsen BEE THIEVES California’s almond farmers have in recent years been subjected to a new type of seasonal crime: bee theft. Every season, farmers rent beehives (with bees) for millions of dollars so they can pollinate their almond trees. The price of almonds has gone up in recent years due to demand from Asia, and so has the cost of renting beehives, which can be up to USD 200 apiece. This price hike, and the fact that beehives often stand unguarded in nature and are always handled by masked persons, have made bees an easy and popular target of criminal bee-haviour. ANCESTRY TOURISM Who am I really? And where should I go on summer holiday? You can find the answers to both these questions at one and the same time with the concept of ancestry tourism. In recent years, several gene-testing companies have joined forces with travel agencies to provide package-deal trips that guide customers back to their roots. E.g. Airbnb has recently collaborated with gene-testing company 23andme on a new website that helps gene-tested customers find lodging in regions where their ancestors lived or walked. The travel guide Lonely Planet has named ancestry tourism as one of the ten most important travel trends of 2019, and it doesn’t think it will be a short-term fad. Ancestry tourism doesn’t just satisfy the customers’ need for self-actualisation, but also for unique travel experiences. Most of us also have ancestors spread all over the globe and hence have several ancestry trips to make. CHEAT MOBILES Bus robberies have become so common in Mexico City that many of the city’s bus passengers have begun to buy fake smartphones with which they can fool potential robbers. Bus robberies are a regular occurrence in Mexico’s capital, but where passengers in the past most often carried a little loose change, most now have technology worth hundreds of dollars in their pockets. The dummy phones are normally used as exhibits in shop windows and can be bought for about USD 25 at local markets. The dummies have glowing screens, built-in metal parts, and fake apps that make them look and feel like real smartphones. THE CIFS GLOBAL SCANNING NETWORK PRESENTS
- 13. 11S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 P A T T E R N S vectorworldmap.com PILLOW FIGHTING TOURNAMENT Every year, a growing number of Japanese people set neatness aside and throw themselves into competitive pillow fights. Game rules have been added to the classic sport, which makes the fight more like a mixture of chess and rugby. The pillow contest has evolved since the beginning of 2013, and today there is a national tournament with 64 players in the finals. Each team has five players, and children and adults play on equal terms. BREXIT DEPRESSION Brits have become mentally challenged after the majority of the population voted in favour of Brexit in 2016. Two economists determined this in an article earlier this year. The economists compared Brexit proponents’ and opponents’ mood before and after the referendum, and the conclusion is that while the proponents have become more satisfied with life than they were before the vote, both groups are suffering more from depression, sadness, and low self-worth as a result of Brexit. In 2015, Brexit proponents were generally less satisfied with their lives than the opponents were. CHILD SATIATION Spanish fathers feel less like having children, according to a new study concerning the effect of earmarked paternity leave introduced in Spain in 2007. Back then, 55 percent of all new fathers accepted the offer, and over the last twelve years, the number of fathers on leave has grown. However, the study also shows that Spanish families established after 2007 have fewer children than before and that men’s desire for more children has declined steadily over the years. In contrast, women’s desire for more children has increased.
- 14. 12S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 P A T T E R N S BEHAVIOUR SPOTLIGHT ON SELECTED BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS WORLDWIDE Edited by Anne Dencker Bædkel THE CIFS GLOBAL SCANNING NETWORK PRESENTS H&M IN AFRICA South African designer Palesa Mokubung’s label Mantsho is set to create 14 garments and 10 accessories in collaboration with H&M. With Mokubung being H&M’s first ever collaboration with an African designer, the pieces will be available in flagship stores across the globe – including countries like South Africa, the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, and Is- rael. H&M has had past difficulties in South Africa, where it has stores in 11 cities, with protests over racist branding, backlash over not using enough African manufac- turers and criticism for not having correct 'African' sizing. This decision, therefore, aims to counter some of the negative pub- licity that H&M has received from the continent. With many international brands looking to create locally relevant products, H&M’s decision underlines the importance of collaborating with locals. The move comes after other brands, such as IKEA, have introduced collaborative African product ranges. Although H&M’s move might want to show authenticity, it might be a case of too little too late. Elizebeth Croeser South Africa PERIOD POSITIVITY The Period Game is a board game that fo- cuses on menstruation. The game’s aim is not only to teach participants about the physiological aspects of monthly periods, but to turn the stigma surrounding men- struation into a positive and fun discourse. Using entertainment as a way to make wo- men, as well as men, more comfortable and knowledgeable about the topic, the Period Game aims to remove the stigma from cer- tain period-related wording. Part of the game’s premise is to say words related to menstruation, such as ‘tampon’ or ‘period’, out loud. The desired outcome is, thus, to make using such terms in our every-day language less uncomfortable. The first single sale of the game is set for October 2019 and retailers can expect the product to hit the shelves by February 2020. For some people, the aspects of menstruation pre- sented might lead to more exposure and, thus, uncover some of the negative con- notations menstruation has. However, for others, the board game could reveal certain insecurities, preventing them from enjoying the game. Maria Maj (Polish) Italy INTERNET FOR LONELY ANIMALS Computer scientist Dr. Ilyena Hirskyj- Douglas and interaction design professor Andrés Lucero from Finland are designing an internet for dogs. The project’s intention is to explore dog-computer interfaces in order to enhance the social interactivity of lonesome pets through virtual toys, objects and activities. Conventionally, the most well-known technological inventions under the headline 'internet of animals' referred either to the act of monitoring domesticated animals and wildlife creatures, or to the behavioral, emotional and physiological analysis of animals through data collec- tion. However, as there are many dogs left alone during the daytime, creating a digital platform enabling fluent dog-to-dog com- munication might have a positive impact on pets' mental health and social well-being. As a result, advancements within modern technologies along with the research into non-human interactions through compu- ters might soon allow a new social net- work to emerge. This network will exclu- sively serve as a platform for the reciprocal communication between animals. Kiia Maria Järvinen (Finnish) Copenhagen
- 15. 13S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 P A T T E R N S PRE-OWNED GOODS IN CHINA Buying pre-owned and second-hand pro- ducts in China was considered to be a taboo not too long ago. However, the tide has now turned and purchasing pre-owned items online is a rapidly growing segment of the e-commerce market. According to the Chi- na Center for Internet Economy Research (a Beijing-based research think tank), the size of the e-commerce market reached CNY 500 billion (USD 71.1 billion) in 2017, and this number is set to double by 2020. Yet, the active monthly users on ‘Re-Com- merce’ platforms, who resell their items, grew by 46.4% last year (2018), which is almost double the growth rate of users in the overall e-commerce sector. The trend is driven by a new consumer focus on su- stainability and the rise of Re-Commerce super apps such as Alibaba's Idle Fish – an online platform and mobile app that allows users to buy, rent, or even donate their un- wanted things in every conceivable pro- duct category. With built-in features to en- courage and reward sustainability, the Idle Fish platform is pushing China towards a more environmentally-friendly future. Ng Buck Seng Singapore DIGITAL LOCAL NEWS The transition to digital consumption of information reached a new milestone when a local newspaper’s digital subscribers ex- ceeded the number of its print subscribers. The Boston Globe is the first local news- paper in the U.S. to have more digital sub- scribers than print subscribers. This comes soon after the U.K. digital news publica- tion, The Guardian, turned a profit for the first time – confirming a shift from print media to mainstream adoption of digital news publications. In the recent past, du- ring a time when print newspapers lost readership and consolidated metropolitan markets reduced the number of local pub- lications, only the most dominant national and international newspapers were able to make the shift to digital successfully. Ex- amples include The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Times of London. The question of whet- her smaller local newspapers can make this shift remains. If newspapers can transition to primarily digital products successfully in the future, journalism at the local level has a chance of survival. Bes Balwin North Carolina, USA BULGARIA WANTS YOU! (BACK) More and more Bulgarians are deciding to emigrate, with 33,225 people leaving the country permanently in 2018. The Market Links Agency and the NGO Movement for National Cause are organizing a survey among Bulgarians living abroad. The sur- vey will be carried out by volunteers on the day of the European elections, in polling stations of as many EU countries as possible. The purpose of the survey is to find out whatwouldmakeBulgariansreturntoBul- garia and what obstacles they face in ma- king this decision. The NGO has been preparing a platform called "BULGARIA WANTS YOU", which aims to create a connection between businesses and Bulgari- ans around the world by providing oppor- tunities for work and living. The combina- tion of an aging population and high levels ofemigrationareleadingtosomechallenges for the country. The NGO is thus trying an alternative approach to help tackle the issue – researching what emigrants think. It is possible that the survey will give new in- sights into these matters, which the govern- ment can incorporate into its policies. Mihaela Mincheva Bulgaria Global Scanning Network (GSN) is a network of graduate and PhD students as well as professionally active young people from all over the world who provide expert perspectives on areas such as science, technology, politics, culture, design, innovation, management, finance, and marketing. GSN also contributes to CIFS with unique observations, valuable ideas, and sharp insights into industry-specific challenges. Their method is the comparison and evaluation of a broad range of signals, including emerging trends, technologies, products, concepts, services, and ideas.
- 17. 15S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 From his publisher’s office in London, US scientist and author Jared Diamond talks about what he sees as humanity’s greatest challenges. An interview about nuclear power, climate change, and a global population that will reach 11 billion by the end of this century. Professor Jared Diamond gained public world fame with his award winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this interview, he talks about the threats against humanity and our civilisation. P ulitzer Prize winning author Jared Diamond's recently published book, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change provides a litmus test for a nation state in political calamity and its subsequent survival. Vast in scale and ambitious in scope, Diamond’s book takes on global history over the last three centuries and dedicates significant time to predicting future threats to our planet. Especially the four most daunting ones are: nuclear war, climate change, global resource depletion, and rising global inequality. All four bring their own specific worries, anxieties, and agonies. But the 81-year-old Professor of Geography at UCLA doesn't waste much time when it comes to predicting a worst-case scenario related to a nuclear holocaust. “There is potential right now for exterminating the human race involving the use of nuclear weapons,” Diamond explains in a softly spoken, yet deadpan manner from his publisher’s office in Central London. That threat no longer just involves the usual suspects either, such as the United States, North Korea, Iran, and China. The globe-trotting intellec- tual then brings me on a tour of mid-twentieth century nuclear holding history, illuminating how the policy has gradually transformed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The most popular scenario when discussing atomic war is a surprise nuclear attack by one nation on another. This potential catastrophe was the one most feared throughout the Cold War. It led both the U.S. and the Soviet Union to develop weapon systems, enabling what Diamond labels “mutual assured destruction”. And, while the threat of nuclear war often loomed, and came close during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an attack was never carried out. Cold War politics may have seemed like a perpetual game of apocalyptic poker, where a winning hand allowed you to cash in your chips and receive the end of the world as the winning prize. But Diamond believes that somewhere in its eschatological all-or-nothing approach to political ideology lay a safety mechanism of sorts. This arose out of an unwritten gentleman's agreement: both super- R I S K S By JP O’Malley UPHEAVAL JARED DIAMOND ON THE WORLD’S BIGGEST CRISES AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM
- 20. 18S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 powers understood the unwritten rules with absolute clarity and certainty – a surprise attack would be an irrational move. Today, the world is a much more fragmented place than it was during the Cold War. Old certainties and distinct polarities, like East vs. West or communist vs. capitalist, no longer wedge the globe between clear cut ideological lines. “If nuclear weapons were just exchanged between, say, India and Pakistan – and they shot off their arsenal at each other – the result would not just be hundreds of millions of dead people in India and Pakistan,” Diamond explains. “The exposure of those nuclear weapons would put dust up into the atmosphere and produce what's called a nuclear Winter: it would first of all darken the atmosphere, we would then witness the world getting colder, followed by a drop in photosynthesis, the spread of disease, and the end result would be the risk of ending first world civilization, and at maximum, the end of the human race.” Even if our world is lucky enough to save itself from self-annihilation in the coming decades by avoiding a nuclear war, Diamond believes an end point may still come from a more obvious threat: climate change. “A great deal of this really depends on the issue of Donald Trump being elected in 2020,” says Diamond: “If he does get reelected, I would be pessimistic about the long-term future. But on the other hand, if he gets defeated, I would say that we have gone through a bad period, but that we were on our way to repair.” Given that figures such as Trump, leading the present global political climate, are refusing to engage in an open discussion con- cerning the dangers of climate change, Diamond says it's important that every global citizen understands its fundamental mechanisms. The starting point of this issue comes down to the increase of the world's population – reaching 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. As it rapidly increases, so will the average person's con- sumption and waste production. The most important waste being carbon dioxide (CO2 ), which is constantly being produced by the respiration of animals and being released into the atmosphere. But due to the pace of the Industrial Revolution, and the human popu- lation explosion that followed, natural CO2 release has been dwarfed by CO2 production. The CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which has a significant impact on the environment. The other primary effects of CO2 's release into the atmosphere are two-fold: it gets stored in the ocean as carbonic acid, killing coral reefs – a major bree- ding ground for the ocean's fish – and decreases plant growth across the planet. “Solving this is straight forward,” says Diamond. “We know perfectly well what to do to reduce climate change: it's caused due to burning fossils fuels, and therefore, if we want to reduce climate change, we need to do two things.” “Firstly, reduce our total energy consumption, and secondly, shift more of our energy consumption to renewables rather than to fossils fuels,” Diamond explains. “That sounds really simple. But it requires motivation and convincing people.” Diamond points to several geo-engi- neering approaches to tackling climate change – such as the injection of particles into the atmosphere or extracting CO2 from the atmosphere to cool the earth's surface. However, Diamond is keen to point out that there aren't any tested geo- engineering approaches that are known to work. Looking to renewable energies, there- fore, seems to be the most sensible and efficient way to stop burning fossil fuels, Diamond stresses. Especially since their sources – namely wind, tidal, hydroelec- tric and geothermal – appear to be almost inexhaustible. Diamond points to the fact that Denmark, for instance, already gets much of its electricity from windmills in the North Sea, and that Iceland's capital city, Reykjavik, gets its heating from geo- thermal energy. But renewable energies are not a utopian concept and bring their own set of problems too. Converting areas of sunny desert for solar panel energy in southern California, for instance, has proved harmful to an already endangered population of tor- toises. Windmills also tend to kill birds, while hydroelectric dams across rivers present obstacles to migrating fish. Unfortunately, there simply isn't a one-size-fits-all solution that both meets the demand for our energy consumption needs across the planet and saves the environment. Since a choice doesn't exist between a good and bad solution, Diamond says it's better to see this issue through the lens of a more realistic question: which of those bad alternatives is the least bad for the environment? This, of course, means considering all options available on the table. Including two words that most cannot say out loud without shuddering with post-apocalyptic terror: nuclear energy. Mainly, Diamond notes, for three reasons: fear of accidents, fear of diversion of nuclear reactor fuel to make nuclear bombs, and not knowing where to store spent fuels. “This means considering all options available on the table. Including two words that most cannot say out loud without shuddering with post-apocalyptic terror: nuclear energy” JARED DIAMOND Jared Diamond (1937) is a US geographer, historian, and author, best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), Collapse (2005), and The World Until Yesterday (2012). He was originally educated in physiology and is known for drawing on a wide range of research fields in his books, including anthropology, geography, and evolutionary biology. He is Professor of Geography at UCLA. R I S K S
- 21. 19S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 Especially considering the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and the internal nuclear disaster in the north of Soviet Ukraine, which many will note has been popularized in mainstream culture as of late by the HBO TV series Chernobyl. Such horror stories lead many to instinctively associate nuclear reactors with visions of post-apocalyptic worlds before they can even begin to think about the benefits of the energy. But Diamond says those fears are not backed up with a credible set of statistics concerning casualties. “When it comes to nuclear energy, one can point out the poten- tial catastrophes,” says Diamond. “The worst nuclear catastrophes so far were the 130,000 killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear bombs in 1945. And the 32 people killed – and many more indirectly – in the Chernobyl nuclear ac- cident in 1986.” Diamond then points to a multitude of nations that, for many decades, have gene- rated most of their electricity requirements from nuclear reactors without a single accident. The list includes France, South Korea, Taiwan, and Finland. The possi- bility of a nuclear reactor accident, there- fore, needs to be weighed up against the certainty of deaths caused annually by air pollution with the burning of fossil fuels. This then brings us to another issue that Diamond explores with scrupulous analysis: how countries in the developing world are increasing their living standards through the process of global capi- talism. Almost immediately, this sets up the premise for two further important questions: is every global citizen’s dream of achieving a First World lifestyle possible? And if so, what kind of impact will that have on our planet's environment? Well, problems only start arising when billions of people increase their consumption and production habits. But that, of course, is what a rise in living standards fundamentally entails. Just consider the numbers, Diamond suggests. The world's current population stands at 7.5 billion. But only a billion live in the First World, which consists of North America, Europe, and Japan. The ratio of per capita consumption rates between the First and Third World is presently at about 32:1. The math is a little complicated, Diamond explains. But just consider this for a moment, he says: the United States currently consumes 210 times more than Kenya does, and Italy, which has a population of 60 million, currently consumes twice as much as the entire African continent, which has a popula- tion numbering over 1 billion. Until recently, Third World countries posed almost no threat to First World countries. Especially since the First World managed, and stole, the Third World's resources during the colonial period: a subject that Diamond's book explores in some detail. Nevertheless, the new map of global capitalism – problems, prejudices, and la- bour exploitation notwithstanding – has changed all of that in the last two decades, as living standards across the world have grown in tandem with a rising global middle class. Lest we forget, this new middle class wants to eat meat regularly, fly on airplanes to go on holiday, use more fuel to power motor vehicles, and use refrigerators. When one adds up these luxurious consumption habits, the end result is that our collective carbon footprint as a species rises not just a little, but astronomically. Indeed, Diamond argues that as Third World countries catch up to First World living standards, the coming decades are going to present an unavoidable problem: consumption rates across the globe, on average, will increase to 11 times the rate they presently operate at. That number is the equivalent of 80 billion people con- suming with the eyes, ears, tastes, and smells of aspiring bourgeois comfort. “It's a challenge to decouple the im- provement of living standards with the damage of the environment too,” Dia- mond explains. “The improvement of living standards always in- volves more food production, and this usually involves damage to the environment. The question is: how can we produce more food and make it less environmentally damaging?” There are ways to be more environmentally conscious, Diamond maintains. Especially when it comes to food production. He points to the Netherlands, which after the United States is the second biggest agricultural exporter in the world. “In the Netherlands much of the food is grown indoors in multi- stacked buildings,” says Diamond. “So the [carbon] footprint on the ground is minimized with these modern forms of food pro- duction.” Diamond also points to the issue of food waste, noting that half of the food presently produced in the United States goes in the bin. “We also need to start asking: what can be done to reduce food waste by 50 percent?” Diamond goes on: “There are some relatively simple ways to do that, which will help to minimize our impact on the environment.” Diamond's tone as an author is conversational, laid back, cen- trist, heavy on detail, measured, and well researched, and creates a sharp lucid narrative that mixes geography, politics and history, wherein realpolitik takes preference over moral finger-waving “Diamond's tone is conversational, laid back, centrist, heavy on detail, measured, and well researched. It creates a sharp lucid narrative that mixes geo- graphy, politics and history” THE BOOK UPHEAVAL ThebookUpheaval:HowNationsCopewithCrisisandChangeisthelastbookinthetrilogythatJaredDiamondinitiatedwithhisinternationalbestsel- lerGuns,GermsandSteel.Itprimarilyfocusesonwhatcanmakecivilisationsriseandwhatcancausethemtocollapse.Thetimeframeisthelast300 years, but Diamond also dedicates a fair share to future global challenges, including threats like climate change, inequality, and population growth. R I S K S
- 25. 23S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 histrionics. But as an American citizen, there is no doubt that he is – certainly when speaking and writing about political affairs – biased towards his home nation: even if he is critical of it on occasion. His book points out, for instance, that the U.S. has been ruling the global world order since the Second World War – with power, industrial might, and military capability that no country or empire has, historically, come close to matching. But are cracks starting to appear in what many political scientists have labelled since 1945 as the American Century? Well, in Dia- mond's view, yes and no. In one chapter entitled ‘What Lies Ahead for the United States’, Diamond asks two pertinent questions: what about the long term threat of Ame- rican global hegemony being ruptured by China? And, will the 21st century gradual- ly become the Chinese or Asian Century? It seems like the perfect talking point to begin moving our conversation to the next topic. “There are some people who will say this century is going to be the Chinese century or the Asian century, I think no,” says Diamond with assured self-con- fidence. “This century is going to remain the American century and the western European century.” But China, as Diamond's book points out, has a population that is four times the size of United States’ population. Moreover, China's economic growth rate for years has consistently exceeded not just the United States, but the growth rates of many other countries too. After the U.S., China can also boast of having the highest number of standing soldiers; the world’s second largest military spending budget; and having outstripped the U.S. in some spheres of technology (such as alternative energy generation and high speed rail transport). Lastly, China’s dictatorial government can get legislation through without being held back by bureaucratic inconvenience, as democratic checks and balances tend to hold a government accountable. Despite these numerous advantages, Diamond maintains that the United States and western Europe possess an advantage that is immeasurable in graphs demonstrating economic growth rates, industrial output, or monetary value. It boils down to one word: democracy. “The United States and western Europe have democratic forms of government, whereas China has been an uninterrupted dictator- ship since it was unified in 221 BC,” says Diamond. “In a democracy you can debate things, in a dictatorship you cannot.” Diamond then points to a number of examples where China's dictatorial politics has caused chaos and always seemed to present a case of one step forward, two steps back. Examples include: the large-scale famine during 1958-62 that killed tens of millions of people, and the suspending of the education system, when teachers during the Mao era were sent out to work with peasants. And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, creating the world's worst air pollution as China eagerly entered into a new era of eco- nomic progress and global trade in 1978, when the Deng Xiaoping era began. Diamond points out that in a democracy, voters can simply unseat politicians who are not performing, once their term in office is up. Something he insists is invaluable when it comes to progress and prosperity. Diamond may have utter confidence in the U.S. remaining at the helm of a global world order, where it acts as both the world's policeman and its driving eco- nomic force. But internally, he admits, the nation is facing a huge crisis. Most of this stems from the deteriorating politi- cal compromise that began to surface in the 1990's during the Clinton years. To- day, under the leadership of President Trump, the United States is more disu- nited than it has been in decades. This has presented a political shift with two major changes: passing legislation in the U.S. Congress is proving to be extremely difficult, and both the Democratic and Republi- can Party are becoming less appealing to voters with interests in the centre ground. Millions of voters across the United States are consequently left feeling disillusioned and isolated in a political atmosphere where people insist on contempt for their favored party’s opposition. “I'm worried about the decline of political compromise in the U.S.,” says Diamond. “I’m also concerned about the increasing level of inequality within the U.S., the decline of socio-economic mobility, and the decline of government investment in the U.S. for public purposes.” Diamond believes this lack of political unity is feeding into broader sociological problems across the United States. Much of which he blames on technology, specifically social media, where Americans choose their sources of information according to their preexisting views. Indeed, increasing social isolation, with the rise of Moore's Law, has led to the decline of what Diamond defines as social capital: that is, connections among individuals, social networks, and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness aris- ing from face-to-face meet ups with people who share common interests. ¢ “There are some people who will say this century is going to be the Chinese century or the Asian century, I think no,” says Diamond with assured self- confidence” THE PULITZER PRIZE In 1997, Jared Diamond was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the book that today is considered his main work, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The Pulitzer Prize is a US journalism, literature, and music award that is awarded annually based on recommendations from a committee organised by Colombia University, New York. It was founded with means from Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1911. R I S K S
- 26. 24S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 F U L L C I R C L E Trends, cur- rents, and phenomena emerge and disappear. Sometimes they return in a new form and describe a circular movement in time and space. An example of this is minimalism. It is almost impossible to view trends in aesthetics as separate from our socio-economic climate. Economist George Taylor even came up with the Hemline Index, suggesting that the hemlines on women’s skirts rose with stock prices. Although a corre- lation between exposed thighs and the economy seems a little far-fetched, it is unsurprising that our relationship with money is inextricable from the items we buy. The recent surge of minimalism throughout the West thus makes sense, in a time of growing distrust in the US presidency and warnings of a 2020s economic recession. With such economic and political disenfranchisement comes an idealisation of an ordered and assured world – which is exactly what minimalism seeks to achieve. The growing popularity of Marie Kondo’s Netflix series, therefore, does not seem like a coincidence. Yet, the rise of less is not unique to the 21st century. Minimalism finds its roots in Adolf Loos’ “Ornament and Crime” of 1908, which characterized it as a sign of pure and lucid thinking. The first big wave of minimalism coincided with the economic downturn of the 1930s. The experimentation in fashion and design developed in the 1920s came to an abrupt halt and in its place emerged a modest and simple style. During this time of sudden disillusionment with the economy, designers sought to project a sense of optimism characterized by sleek shapes and simplicity. This style was in fact coined as modernism, a movement which simply borrowed its reductionist qualities from minimalism. Similarly, our world nowadays is also becoming increasingly segregated, with the last two decades sharing a rise in political and economic turmoil. With the 2008 Financial Crisis causing major job losses, trends seemed to change overnight. Retailers decided to supply less and focus on specific items that had previously done well. As a result, pieces that were flashy and stamped with logos seemed to decrease in popularity while pieces that were subtler in nature gained respect. The embellished low-rise jeans and pink Juicy Couture sweatpants we saw in the early 2000s disappeared and were replaced with sleek gender-neutral pieces in neutral tones. Although we are in an age where trends come and go quickly, minimalism seems to be growing steadily, with renewed interest in Scandina- vian design, minimalist blogs, and even Kim and Kanye West showing off their minimalist mansion on Vogue. The similarities between minimalist trends as a result of the econo- mic climate in both the 1930s and our current decade are apparent. Is this just a coincidence? Or do we really seek comfort from economic dis- illusionment by questioning whether the items we possess truly spark joy? Emma Slack-Jørgensen
- 28. 26S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 How can past events shape your personal future biologically and socially – and how can you, even in the present, become co-creator of the narrative of yourself? Interview with Dr. Lene Hald about epigenetics, the justification of the visual, and the autobiographical method. D amn, this has been hard – worse than psychotherapy. You must hurry writing it and send it to me before it solidifies. Right now, it could go a fucking lot of ways.” Photographer and scientist Lene Hald has answered furiously throughout our hour-and- a-half interview. We have met to speak about her current project Red Ball (see excerpts on pages 59 to 67), which explores family relations and the relationship between heritage, environment, loss, and grief – and not least how we become what we are through the stories that come before us and the stories we ourselves tell. Lene Hald has a PhD in photographic design anthropology. Her research practice is closely connected to photography, and since she also exhibits work as an art photographer, wherein she explores issues artistically, art and science blend together. Her method is the so- called diffractive method, which reflects her desire to understand the things she studies through other lenses than the aesthetic. This means that she includes fields that most pho- tographers don’t use in their practices. A BROTHER One of these is epigenetics, which basically believes that genes aren’t just passed on, leading to a certain trait in the individual human being – but should be viewed as buttons that need to be pushed before they take effect. Lene Hald’s interest in this field is tied to a specific event that happened before she was born, which she didn’t understand the significance of until she grew up: an event that tragically changed her family’s life and came to influence her life from the beginning – perhaps from even before she was born, which is the reason why the story is relevant to touch on and bring up now, so many years later. “My parents lost my almost seven-year-old big brother just ten months before I was G E N E T I C S THE CONTINUING BOND By Morten Grønborg AN EPIGENETIC TALE
- 30. 28S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 born. It is our family tragedy, and it has naturally been very painful for my parents, both when it happened and later. Therefore, I don’t like talking about it,” she explains. “At the same time, the bond with my brother is important. It is a basis for my existence and my story and something I need to under- stand and examine,” she says, with reference to her own art-pho- tography practice and research, which has both consciously and subconsciously circled about and explored how this unhappy event influenced her life. As Lene Hald herself points out in our conversation, there is a boundary between the private and the personal, where only the latter should be shared with others. The private is private, but the personal may contain a significance and truth that is relevant to others be- cause it is universally human. Only in this way can the particular tell of something universal. So, we walk the tightrope together and keep our balance. I ask further questions, and Lene holds backs when she deems it necessary – and we are aware at a meta-level that my direct questioning on a sensitive subject is in many ways contrary to her own practice, which approaches things more in- directly and poetically – as in the project Red Ball. Lene Hald stresses that it is important to her that her pictures are open to other people’s interpretations. Even without the spectator knowing her history. “The photo project is far less concrete than all the things we speak of now – it is abstract moods and emotions – and an attempt to recall the things we remember with our bodies, but not with our brains. I have throughout the project been very absorbed by the memory loss that takes place in our earliest childhood. This is re- sponsible for how we as adults can’t remember our first three years, which, according to developmental psychology, are our most form- ative,” she explains. EPIGENETICS Lene Hald’s interest in epigenetics derives from the fact that she was in her mother’s belly at a time when her mother experienced immense grief over having lost a child – while also experiencing ex- pectation and joy over the new child on the way. Lene has, through interviews and by reading scientific articles, examined how her own story may be understood through epigenetic studies. Epigenetics wasn’t something one thought about or knew any- thing of in the 1970s. Today, however, we know that our genes can be influenced – and, in Lene’s case, that her mother’s grief may have initiated biological changes in her at the embryonic stage. The hypothesis is, according to Ida Donkin, an epigenetic re- searcher whom Lene Hald has interviewed during the project, that a mother’s mental state during pregnancy may influence the embryo in the in utero environment it is part of – and leave che- mical markers in the not yet fully developed baby’s cells. These markers or changes stay on through childhood and adulthood, and they can be passed on through conception, and influence the development of the next generation: the grandchildren. What we experience and how we live our lives may hence have minor effects on subsequent generations. Ida Donkin explains that studies have been done on traumas “At the same time, the bond with my brother is important. It is a basis for my existence and my story and some- thing I need to understand and examine” G E N E T I C S
- 31. 29S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 and epigenetic heritage, e.g. in relation to the descendants of Jews who experienced World War II. Here, the studies show that even the grandchildren have increased risk of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. “These descendants had changed epigenetics and a different chem- ical structure in the genes that control schizophrenia. Similar studies have been done of women who got pregnant during 9/11 and who experienced trauma caused by e.g. the death of a spouse. Here, too, it has been possible to trace epigenetic changes as a plausible expla- nation for how a traumatic event in one generation may influence behavior and risk of sickness in the next,” Ida Donkin explains. Lene tells me that she asked about her own situation in her dia- logue with Ida Donkin – including if it was possible to measure the assumed epigenetic changes. However, Donkin made it clear it wasn’t possible. “We can only speculate. And in this context, it is important to re- member that every change that might come is likely to be insigni- ficant.” What Lene found almost more interesting is Donkin pointing out that it is also pure speculation whether a mother’s reaction to trauma during pregnancy leaves behind positive or negative consequences. “Maybe the subsequent generations turn out to be more robust as nature’s way of compensating for the mothers’ vulnerability? We don’t know. So, while this new research is very exciting and provides new insight into human evolution and how one generation may in- fluence the next, there remains a lot of uncertainty in the field,” Donkin elucidates. Lene makes it clear that she isn’t looking for solid answers as to how she has potentially been genetically influenced by her mother’s grief. “To me, it is a matter of understanding my existence through my photographic and scientific practice, which makes use of several lenses, both scientific and aesthetic. In some projects, the science shows more clearly – in others, the art. Yet in all projects I value both highly,” she says. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION Lene Hald’s practice includes, among other things, the autoethno- graphic method, which means that she uses herself in the ethno- graphic fieldwork. Autoethnography is a qualitative method where the scientist involves herself to illuminate her research, rather than trying to be a fly on the wall in the pursuit of objectivity. Since she also exhibits work as an art photographer, using art to explore issues, art and science blend together. Lene explains that self-narratives are a way to write yourself for- ward in a world where everything is in flux. “I am preoccupied by ideas of how we create ourselves through visual representation,” she says. It is something that she has also looked at in her research of everyday use of photography as self- narration, including young people’s use of selfies. This subject took up a lot of her PhD thesis. “This current project, however, circles more around understand- ing events that have influenced my life in a fundamental way, and in this, my method is related to both autoethnography and auto- biography, which is about describing culture, identity, and pheno- “Epigenetics wasn’t something one thought about or knew anything of in the 1970s. Today, however, we know that our genes can be influenced” G E N E T I C S
- 33. 31S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 mena from within and without,” she clarifies. The word “circles” is the right choice, for while words are literal, just as the journalistic interview technique is concrete, images contain a greater space for interpretation and the absence of direct speech. There is an opportunity for aesthetic sensibility that is beneficial in precisely such connections, where the matter you deal with must be treated with sensitivity. “Visual storytelling can, in a very special way, represent various layers of consciousness and build a bridge between the personal and the universal,” Lene explains. It isn’t I as interviewer who has come to know of Lene’s family history on my own, since she herself has laid it out. In her project, Lene has worked with sections of old family photos, manipulated self-portraits, and abstract photos. It is a self-narrative where she seeks to include the story of her brother without being explicit. “Transforming all this to photography has helped me to become more conscious of my part of the narrative. After all, I might not have come into this world if he hadn’t left it. It is a strange, but also meaningful, paradox,” she says during our conversation. The pictures circle around this duality. That the brother is gone forever, yet also in a way remains. That grief led to new happiness. That a void entered her parents’ lives, but also new meaning. THE CONTINUED BOND “In modern grief therapy and theory, we speak of continuing bonds with the people we lose,” Lene Hald explains. Continuing bonds is a way to understand grief, and is a concept that was created in 1996 when Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman, and Steven Nickman published their book Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. It challenged a different and quite dominant way of understanding grief as being linear, limited, and leading to acceptance, detachment, and a neww life – and something to conquer and let go of. Instead, the authors wrote that there have been indi- vidual, yet unspoken strategies for those struck by grief, e.g. that you keep speaking with the deceased or in another form maintain a bond. It could also be psychological proximity through rituals, re- collection, or another type of systematic processing. In their field- work, the authors also observed that connections to the deceased don’t necessarily remain fixed and static. Instead, they change and grow in the same way that relationships with the living evolve over time. “While my parents back then in the 1970s probably chose the first path to process their grief, I have worked with my brother’s death in another way. My parents are from another generation, when things weren’t psychologised over the way they are today. They had their own ways of handling the tragedy, among other things by let- ting me be born, while I myself later and with many years’ distance have needed to understand and create meaning from my brother’s death in my own way. There definitely is a bond I work with and look at through my photography. I am here because of him. His destiny has contributed to forming my identity and possibly also my epigenetic dispositions. I feel that we are connected in this way. It is fascinating how we constantly create our own narratives, but also how they – consciously or unconsciously – develop in dialogue with the stories that came before us,” Lene Hald concludes. ¢ “In modern grief therapy and theory, we speak of continuing bonds with the people we lose, Lene Hald explains” G E N E T I C S
- 37. 35S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 efore 1895, medical approaches to finding broken bones, tumours and bullets were far from sophisticated. A com- mon method of the 19th century was for a bonesetter, who was usually quite inexperienced, to diagnose broken bones based on pain and swelling. While more extreme methods, such as cutting open bodies for inspection, were used by doctors to understand our body’s inner workings. It is thus fair to say that patients were subject to many high-risk operations. Nowadays, finding broken bones and understanding human anatomy is much simpler, thanks to the unintentional findings of Wilhelm Röntgen. At the end of the 19th century, Wilhelm Röntgen, a respected German physicist at the University of Würzburg, was studying the Crookes Tube – a surprisingly under-studied, yet popular phenomenon. The tube was known to emit a somewhat frighte- ning yellow glow, leaving physicists around the world scratching their heads. Some scientists attempted to explain the mystery, hypothesizing that the light might be ectoplasm, a type of mat- ter that was thought to make up ghosts. Unfortunately, the yel- low glow did not turn out to be source material for the Ghost- busters franchise. One day in 1895, Röntgen was conducting experiments on the Crookes Tube in his lab. As he ran an electric current through the tube, he noticed from the corner of his eye that a board covered in phosphorus started to glow. Röntgen’s curiosity was peaked, and he subsequently covered the tube with a thick piece of black card- board. Yet the board continued to glow – something that was waved off as Cathode Rays by multiple scientists. However, Röntgen was an experienced physicist and understood that there was something special to these rays. He proceeded to hold a piece of lead in front of the tube, blocking the rays once again, but this time the outcome shocked Röntgen – his own flesh was glowing, exposing his bones in the yellow light. He had discovered a mysterious radiation, which he dubbed “X”, that could pass through human flesh. After this, he placed a photographic film between his hand and the screen and proceeded to take the world’s first X-Ray image. Just six weeks later, Röntgen published his discovery and sent an X-Ray of his wife’s hand to his colleagues. Although Röntgen’s paper was initially met with some scepticism, and even believed to be a hoax by world-renowned physicist Lord Kelvin, his discovery changed the world. Within a year, members of both the medical and public world made wide use of Röntgen’s discovery. From the first radiology department opening in Glas- gow Royal Infirmary, to X-Ray photography booths, to women wearing lead underwear out of paranoia, it was clear that the X-Ray had a considerable effect on people’s lives. Not only did Röntgen’s discovery make it easier to detect medical issues such as kidney stones and broken bones, it also made signi- ficant impacts on the technology we use today. X-Ray technology is now being used in airport security scanners, material analysis, and has even given birth to newer medical imaging techniques such as CT scanning. Despite later controversy regarding the safe- ty of X-Rays, there is no doubt that Röntgen’s scepticism of the “ectoplasmic” substance has benefitted us immensely. Thanks to Röntgen, we have been equipped with an ever-increa- sing understanding of how our bodies operate and how best to combat the diseases that threaten us. ¢ B IT’S NOT A BUG, IT’S A FEATURE! Often, inventions and groundbreaking scientific discoveries happen by accident. From mishaps and failed plans, something new and valuable may arise. In this part of the magazine we write about the innovations that were not planned, but which had a major impact. In this issue … I N N O V A T I O N THE X-RAY By Emma Slack-Jørgensen
- 38. 36S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 F U T U R E S S T U D I E S rivacy is sacred – but will it remain so in the future? Even now, we see our privacy challenged on many fronts, often without us being particularly aware of it. An increasing number of challenges to our privacy seem to be an unavoidable part of our everyday lives. Personal electronics are a large part of the problem. We think that our smartphones, computers, and more serve us, but that is only one side of the truth – for our electronics also keep us under surveillance and send information to various private and public actors. We could avoid some of this surveillance, but we often don’t because of laziness or carelessness. When you install an app on your smartphone, how carefully do you look at what permissions the app requires? Most of us just accept without a thought – since you can’t get the app if you refuse. We understand that we pay for a ‘free’ app with personal information, but we rarely con- sider if the cost is a fair trade-off for what we get. And infor- mation about permissions isn’t exactly the first thing you see when installing an app. You typically need to click “read more”, and then you need to scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click once more to get information on permissions. Some time ago, I looked for a free flashlight app. One I came across wanted, among other things, access to my phone’s identity and status. Well, alright. Next, information about my phone’s Wi-Fi connections and location through GPS and network data. Hmm, why? The app also wanted to see the content of USB-connected storage units – and the permission to edit and delete this content. Wait, what?? Not to mention permission to record images and video (which presumably would be sent to the producer by Wi-Fi). That is no small price for a flashlight app: information about where I am, within a few metres, 24/7; access to and control over not just my phone, but also USB units and my computer, if I connect to that with USB; and the oppor- tunity to discreetly take pictures and videos at all hours and send them to the producer. Are you scared yet? If not, maybe you ought to be. You can then choose to not install apps without first carefully examining and accepting the permissions required. However, this does not guarantee your privacy. Your telephone service provider always knows where you are and keeps a log of it, and it also stores your call history and your text messages for several months (which is in fact required by law in many countries). Your phone manufacturer also has access to all sorts of data, and Google probably knows more about your interests and behavior than even your best friends. If you go on the internet with any popular browser, all web- sites you visit will get access to the browser history of websites you have visited, and they can install cookies that provide access to a lot more information about your computer and hence, about you. You need a special security browser like Epic or Firefox Focus to avoid this, but then you are likely to find that many web- sites don’t function optimally for you, since quite legitimate cookies that e.g. store passwords and references for you are also blocked. Your computer has a built-in camera, and it isn’t difficult to hack it. This has been used to record videos in the bedrooms of young women, and these videos have in some cases been used for P WILDCARDS This section deals with wildcards – upheavals or events that affect people, business models and societal structures. Wildcards are by definition uncertain – but if they happen, they often have widespread consequences, and these consequences often come quickly and are difficult to control. In this issue: A WORLD WITHOUT PRIVACY By Klaus Æ. Mogensen
- 39. 37S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 F U T U R E S S T U D I E S blackmail: “Send me more sexy videos, or those I already have will go on the internet.” Even Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t feel safe, even though he can afford the very best security software you can buy, so he tapes the camera on his laptop over. How safe, then, are you? Nor can you trust that allegedly safe ways of sharing pictures are in fact secure. There are lots of easily accessible tools to access other people’s Instagram, iCloud, and Snapchat accounts, and celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence have had private nude pictures spread over the internet. Digital stalking is a growing problem. Ex-lovers and others with a special interest in you can follow your doings without you being aware of it, and it is apparently not particularly difficult to get access to even very personal information. An app that takes pictures and tells of one’s movements may be smuggled onto a victim’s phone through the internet, or if the phone is left un- guarded a moment, without the app’s icon being visible on the phone (the popular app SpyMyFone is one example). Every year, about 10 million US citizens are victims of identity theft, where others force access to e.g. the victim’s bank accounts and social media passwords. Sharing pornographic pictures and videos of select victims is also becoming increasingly common, and whether the pictures and videos are real or digital fakes, it can become a huge problem for the victim. Some have been forced to not just change their residence, but also their identity, to end the chicanery. Every time we pay by card or phone in a shop, it is registered where we are and what we buy, just as it is registered when we spend money on the internet. Banks have access to these data, and banks are not invulnerable to hacking and aren’t always careful enough with their customers’ data, as numerous scandals have shown. We are heading for a cash-free society, and this means that in the future, we can’t avoid attention by paying with cash. Today, when digital travel cards have become more com- mon, our moves are also registered by transport companies. Police and intelligence agencies can with no great effort get access to data about you and your movements in the physical, as well as the digital, world from surveillance cameras, phone companies, banks, and various companies that have access to your data. If you trust in your country’s intelligence agencies (and those of other countries), this may not necessarily be a concern, but it isn’t unknown that employees in intelligence agencies make use of their access to the grand surveillance machine to keep an eye on ex-lovers, potential lovers, and others they have taken a private interest in. It is common enough that there is a term for it: LOVEINT. The police in Chicago and other cities have purchased soft- ware that allows facial recognition in real time from surveillance cameras. This makes it possible to warn of potential terrorists in public spaces, but can also make it possible to follow the move- ments and behaviours of selected individuals and the people they meet, without using manpower to watch surveillance tapes. In principle, all the city’s denizens can be followed in this way. The future offers many new ways of keeping an eye on people. Even today, camera drones are a challenge for privacy, since they can fly low over gardens and close to windows. Larger drones use telephoto lenses to discreetly make detailed recordings from a high altitude. We can assume that cameras in the future will become smaller and lighter and hence, that drones will also be- come smaller. The stabilisation technology that ensures steady recording in e.g. GoPro cameras will undoubtedly also improve, so we will get camera drones the size of insects that can fly or crawl in open windows unobserved and spy on residents. In time, the drones may become as small as dust motes, and even today, experiments are being done with ‘smart dust’ (see fact box) that becomes spread over areas to measure various parameters. Future ‘smart dust’ may be able to make three-dimensional recordings in the area it is spread in, which can then be explored in detail through virtual reality googles, without the viewer having to be present at the scene. The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to bring a major technological revolution. A growing number of electronic de- vices are connected wirelessly to the internet through phone net- works, and the 5G network is supposed to make it possible to connect to the net with less energy. Small surveillance cameras, perhaps powered by solar cells, can be placed discreetly and send videos to the owner. Or a spy might hack your household elec- tronics through the internet. The Internet of Things has proven rather easy to hack, as e.g. seen in 2016 with the Mirai Botnet attack. Computers infected with the Mirai virus were set to search the web for vulnerable IoT devices such as digital cameras and DVR players, which were infected with malware used in the largest DDOS attack ever. In 2013, it turned out that the surveil- lance camera SecurView could be accessed by anybody who knew the camera’s IP address, and hackers used the weakness to livestream from almost 700 cameras in private homes. It was recently revealed that Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa records conversations and sends them to Amazon, allegedly to make it possible to improve the service. Even though Amazon might have the customer’s best interest in mind, the case shows that discreet, ubiquitous surveillance in our homes may be the norm rather than the exception. The opportunities for surveillance grow all the time, and it may be hard for ordinary citizens to protect themselves against this, especially because we are rarely aware of the surveillance. Big Brother has become invisible, and he is now being joined by mil- lions of ‘Little Brothers’; companies and individuals that, with various motives, keep selected individuals under surveillance. Even if an individual doesn’t personally possess the competences to keep another individual under surveillance, it is even today not difficult to find the manuals and tools to do it, and you can hire more or less suspect people to do the surveillance for you. The tools are becoming more numerous, more discreet, more comprehensive, and more difficult to protect yourself from. What we have here is thus a wildcard that is already well on the way to becoming reality: we no longer have any privacy, as some authorities, companies, or individuals want to challenge it. In the future, the surveillance may happen fully automatically, 24 hours a day, down to the smallest detail, and we may be power- less to do anything about it. But, hey, what’s the problem - if you have nothing to hide, you can’t mind being under surveillance. Can you? ¢
- 40. 38S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 hey met in a quiet coastal town – and that town was never quite the same again. Fifty-five years ago, Mods and Rockers clashed in what the British newspapers dubbed ‘Days of Terror’. Editorials fumed about the “mutated locusts wreaking untold havoc, fighting, drinking, roaring, rampaging teenagers”. Youth tribes were tearing things up. “It was like we were taking over the country,” noted one of these kids. “You want to hit back at all the old geezers who try to tell us what to do. We just want to show them we’re not going to take it.” How things have changed in half a century… TEENAGERS THEN AND NOW If the teenage stereotype has held true for much of this time – those character-building liminal years between childhood and early adulthood, characterised by rebellion, avant garde thinking, weird creativity, excesses, the counter-culture – something seems to have changed. Around the world – excepting inevitable local variations – teenagers (or Gen Z, or iGen, to give them the various demographic labels) are not being teenagers anymore. At least not in a way that corresponds to our stereotypical representation mentioned above. They are not, as the psychologist G. Stanley Hall described adolescence, indulging in “the time when an individual ‘recapitulates’ the savage stage of the race’s past”. Rather, as Shoko Yoneyama, an expert in teens at the University of Adelaide, has put it, they are “kind of boring”. Indeed, many of the exploratory behaviours that have traditionally characterised teenage years – drinking, drugs, sex, kicking against the establishment – are now being rejected by teenagers as they embrace a more conservative lifestyle. As times change, so do attitudes towards them. This article explores contemporary teenagers and their attitudes towards the world and how to be and act in it. Being a teenager is not what it used to be – change is in progress, but not all change is progressive. T G E N E R A T I O N S By Josh Sims TEENAGE MUTANTS
- 43. 41S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 “There’s this notion now that teenagers are conservative in their approach to many things, and I’m not [just] talking about poli- tics here,” says Richard Cope, senior analyst for market research- ers Mintel. “It’s a generation that’s growing up living among an aging population profile and this is making them averse to many of the vices of previous generations. They’re also growing up more sheltered from work and the experiences of previous generations as well.” And not just sheltered from it – they are positively reactionary against it. Health, for example, is a major factor in their thinking. Cope notes how, in his conversations with teenagers, it is com- monplace for them to point out the un- healthy habits of their elders. This is why countries like Italy, Spain, and France, where wine is part of the culture, are seeing long-term declines in sales. “Yes, you still hear stories of teenage binge drinking but there’s a coherent pic- ture of alcohol consumption going down among younger generations,” says Cope. “Even in the UK we’re seeing 20 per- cent of 16 to 24-year-olds saying they don’t drink at all – which is one reason we’re seeing the closure of so many pubs. We’re seeing the same with smoking – the proportion of teenagers who smoke has undergone a long- term decline. Drug-taking too – only [around] 20 percent of 15/16-year-olds take illicit drugs.” The same goes for money – studies suggest that teens are more inclined to saving rather than spending – and even for sex, this trend of moderation seems rather prevalent. In 1991, 54 percent of 14 to 18-year-olds in the US claimed to be sexually experienced. In 2015 that was down to 41 percent. This decrease might be ex- plained by teens being better educated about sex, or by their living with their parents for longer and – should the decline reflect a broader trend – even by an influx of Muslim youth migration into Europe, bringing with it more proscriptive attitudes. Or perhaps sex – as with other traditional teen activities – may be off the agenda for sheer lack of opportunity. With social media seemingly having, at least in part, displaced real life socialising, today’s average teen hardly goes out, not even on the weekends. Indeed, physical activity of other sorts is off the agenda as well. Only 10 percent of 15-year-old girls and 20 percent of boys across the EU get regular physical activity, according to the OECD – such that WHO predicts that 20 percent of today’s Italian teens, for example, will be obese adults by 2030. “[These new teens are a group that’s] more solitary and seden- tary than any group that’s gone before them,” says Cope. “Some of the traditional freedoms [that teens have pursued] – getting part-time jobs, getting driving licenses to give you that economic and transport freedom – they’re diminishing too, even in Ameri- ca, with all the romance of the open road. Instead freedom for young people now comes at the digital level – you escape digi- tally. But that comes at a cost to face-to-face contact. They don’t go out enough to get drunk and have sex.” There are reasons suggested for these behaviours, however. One can seem a little creepy to generations that have not grown up with social media. “Much as they don’t have to indulge in the reckless kind of behaviours teens have traditionally got involved with – because they get their dopamine highs from [the likes and re-tweets and notifications of] social media – so social media also means they live these self-documenting lives now,” explains Sarah Johnson, co-founder of trend analysis company The Akin. “Everything they do is tracked by social media and, in a way, policed by it – that constant record means ‘naughty’ behaviour is not only public, it might haunt them forever.” Other reasons are more compelling, perhaps especially to the older genera- tions. For one, parents now spend much more time actually parenting, which is paying dividends in producing balanced teens who, it seems, actually listen to their parents. After all, the little-dis- cussed life history theory argues that the more secure a child’s home life, the slower they will be to grow up – lead- ing to a timidity and lack of readiness for adulthood that employers now of- ten complain about. Secondly, today’s teens have seen the consequences of the more traditional teenage lifestyle writ large in previous generations, especially the self-absorbed millennials, and do not much like what they see. “Sure, teenagers might on the surface seem dull in a lot of ways, but then they’ve seen that pre- vious models of behaviour are not so successful,” notes Johnson. “Their parents were much more hedonistic [as teens and be- yond]. They’ve seen the impact of that and don’t want it,” agrees Chloe Coulson, associate director of the foresight team at inno- vations consultancy Seymour Powell. “What we’re seeing with teens now is a rebellion of sorts – it’s a rebellion against rebellion.” “Then you need to consider other factors – the gig economy and the intense political uncertainty they’ve grown up with, which means it’s no wonder they aim for a sense of solidity and security, especially when it’s not clear what their economic future might be,” she adds. “I think that’s why they’re [relatively] so entrepreneurial – it’s taking charge of their own destiny in some way, which they have the tools to do. It’s all about looking for some sense of control, about grasping for a sense of normalcy and authenticity in a very insecure world.” CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS AND CONSERVATISM On one hand, this state of affairs – not cutting loose, not getting out, and, since statistically teenagers are also fighting less, not rioting on the beaches – is doing teenagers no favours. Several studies suggest that teenagers are among the most stressed members of society, ills largely blamed on social media. Twice the national average in the teen demographic is, they report, stressed on a daily basis – troubled by internet addiction, cyber bullying, the resulting sleep deprivation, isolation, and decline “Yes, you still hear stories of teenage binge drinking but there’s a coherent picture of alcohol consumption going down among younger generations” G E N E R A T I O N S
- 44. 42S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 in mental stimulation, among other problems. They are not the healthiest, despite the lack of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – all of which may come of course, depending on whether teen atti- tudes morph into life strategies. But it is also, in some instances, leading to a strain of very real conservatism among teens, and not just because conservatism might seem to offer a rock to cling to in turbulent, perplexing and challenging times. Rather, having grown up in a climate of political correctness and both a largely left-leaning media and academia, it would be little wonder if, cutting against this, con- servatism became kind of cool. Certainly, that was the conclusion of a 2016 study of 14 and 15-year-olds by British brand consultancy The Gild: 59 percent of these teens said they had con- servative views in relation to topics like same-sex marriage, transgender rights and cannabis legislation – second in their conservatism only to those born before 1945. In comparison, 85 percent of those in the Millennial and Generation X age groups described themselves as ‘quite’ or ‘very liberal’. Conservatism is the counter-culture, and perhaps all the more so given that social media is the perfect, self-reinforcing meme factory for the right (and, of course, the extreme right), but also because the internet offers up so many viewpoints that it is hard to know what to believe – adding to the demand for stability. This plays out in politics too. According to a 2016 ‘Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin’ paper, 18-year-olds in the US are more likely to identify as politically conservative than the same age group a decade ago and even back in the more con- servative 1980s. Some 23 percent of entering college students identify as leaning far right. There is a similar picture in parts of Europe – in Germany, 55 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds (so more millennials than pre-voting age teens), do not believe that “the EU is on the right path”, ac- cording to Körber-Stiftung. They appear – as proto-conservatives – to largely back the status quo, more pro-Germany (in favour of the nation taking more of a leadership role in the EU; less in favour of the formation of a European Army) than pro-EU. Do not expect them to lead the revolution. Is this cause for disappointment? Surely teenage years are pre- cisely when you rail against the machine, before, inevitably for most, being sucked into it? Yet, from another perspective, teen- agers now simply represent the first generation to express a new dynamic, a fresh definition of what it is to be a teen – an idea that has, on closer inspection, always been in flux thanks to shifts in economics, technology and culture. For while they may not be tearing up the town, they are certainly progressive in other ways. DESIRE FOR CHANGE Arguably, today’s teens are, for example, more environmentally- aware than any prior generation. They are more ethical-minded – in terms of their shopping habits or their diets, with vegetar- ianism and veganism on upward trajectories. Their social poli- tics can seem by turns fascinating and perplexing to older gen- erations, but for every very young conservative, there is one whose open-mindedness – to gender fluidity, for instance – is second nature. And they want positive change. One recent Adolescenza Lab Association study found that 85 percent of Italian 12 to 14-year-olds, for example, believe they can do something useful for the environment with their own behav- iour, and 39 percent are willing to use their spare time to do something to this end. “In a sense, what can teens now rebel against when there’s no establishment?” asks Coulson. “But this doesn’t mean there aren’t things they’re very passion- ate about. Yes, these things can seem a little worthy and so boring, but they’re concerned with real issues” – not only, for example, gun control (after the Parkland School shooting in Florida early last year) or sexual harassment (the Me Too movement), but, as Coulson stresses, “issues that are fundamental to the future of humanity”. As such, the emphasis is put on the grand existential threats that human- kind is facing. “Teenagers are a strange mix today. They definitely are more conservative in many ways – in terms of their attitude to tradi- tional trajectories of success. They’re positive towards ideas of marriage, owning a home, things they want to achieve that mil- lennials appeared much less interested in,” says Johnson. “And yet, with that comes the many ways in which they are clearly progressive, such that I don’t think to call them boring is fair.” This testifies to the multiplicity of the definition and the mix of attitudes among teenage populations as being ever changing, dependent upon the time and context in which they live. Indeed, Johnson warns against the demographer’s fallacy – the desire to lump many people into one category and expect their attitudes to be coherent throughout. “Dig down and what’s really interesting about teenagers now is just how splin- tered they are,” she says. “Yes, you have one group that’s very much about self-curation, their own brand, selfies and so on. But then there’s this other [more cautious, more private, less social media-minded] under-reported group that’s very much about collaboration and community. They’re interested in and really want to shape the future. And they’re the ones moving forward.” Teenagers might not be tearing things up and wreaking havoc with reckless drinking and physical rioting anymore. How- ever, instead of breaking down the existing structures, it seems they are exploring the opportunities at hand in order to create a viable future. As such, teenagers are not what they used to be, but they are teenagers after all: negotiating their position in the world. ¢ “But it is also, in some instances, leading to a strain of very real conservatism among teens, and not just because conservatism might seem to offer a rock to cling to in turbulent times” G E N E R A T I O N S
- 46. 44S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 F U T U R E S S T U D I E S he Trump presidency is marked by the powerful dis- course of “fake news.” Fake news, firmly wedged in public discourse, puts into question the facts and narratives dis- seminated in mainstream media. While it may have been Trump who popularized this word, I will approach the emergence of fake news through an analysis of the changing mediascape in the internet age. I analyze two trends in particular; one, the flat- tening of the media landscape; and two, the formation of small, niche “tribes” in virtual space that develop a worldview with which to interpret events. Previously, a producer of media required large capital invest- ments; this included large expenditures in property, equipment, and skilled labor. The distribution of media was also restricted to a few players, with distribution channels established over time. Both factors limited the number of entrants in the media market, limiting the potential narratives in public discourse. Through the mystery of these mechanisms inaccessible to the masses – from the magic of the latest technologies to the specialized training for professional reporters – reality underwent a transmutation into material facts. Facts from the mainstream news media were be- stowed with the brand of authority; they existed on a privileged epistemological plane. The mainstream media, whose narrative was the only narrative, dictated the truth, and constructed the very fabric of reality for the masses. In the contemporary world, every consumer of the media is also a potential producer. Any- one with a decent camera, a microphone, and a viewpoint can upload and propagate their thoughts through YouTube; the previous barriers to entry have collapsed. In addition, the very medium of distribution has changed – from the lofty and in- accessible heights of a cable network, news from mainstream media has fallen and co-exists alongside the YouTube channel of an everyday man operating from his basement; there has been a formal flattening of distribution mediums to accompany thedemocratizationofmediaproduction.Newsfrommainstream media no longer exists in a privileged epistemological plane. It is exposed to and contends with various narratives from smaller media players, who are endowed with the same potential reach. The authority to speak the truth is no longer reserved for main- stream media brands – authority is now measured by subscribers and followers; and truth, in terms of the narratives in public dis- course, is a quantitative measurement, measured by views. The internet has allowed the groupings of people across pre- viously unbreachable spatial boundaries. The removal of these spatial boundaries has facilitated the formation of new commu- nities who are no longer separated by the tyranny of physical space; the virtual space gives them freedom to create new groups T HORIZON In this part of the magazine we explore important emerging issues in the realms of business, politics, technology, culture and people. The ideas presented here are inspired by the horizon scanning observations made by the CIFS Global Scanning Network (GSN). In this issue: By Kevin Jae ONLINE COMMUNITIES AND THE FRAGMENTATION OF THE MEDIASCAPE FAKE NEWS AND THE INTERNET:
- 47. 45S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 F U T U R E S S T U D I E S of voluntary association. These imaginary communities develop their own spaces of communication – the agoras of the digital world – through means like newsletters, online messaging boards, and media publications. Over time, communities develop a cer- tain ethos, a dialect with which they communicate, and eventu- ally become isolated and institutionalized like islands in virtual space, developing an interpretative lens with which they under- stand the world. Around a year prior, one such community announced its pres- ence to the general public in the form of a white van that ran over, injured, and killed tens of people in Toronto – the incel community. The perpetrator, Alek Minassian, wrote this post on his Facebook page just before the incident: “Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” How has this worldview developed? The incel community began as a support group for people with difficulties in dating, founded by a progressive, queer woman in the 1990s. In the 2000s, two sub-communities split off into two online forums; Incel- Support, a mixed-gender support community, and LoveShy, which nurtured a violent, misogynistic strain, and formed on- line alliances with alt-right communities. The latter community dominated, and developed the “blackpill” ideology, the interpre- tative lens of the incel community. In the incel worldview, there are two archetypes: the “Chad,” who are attractive males that all women want to sleep with, and the “Stacy,” who are beautiful women who will only sleep with a Chad. In the hierarchy of men, incels are at the bottom and are doomed to celibacy. Facts and narratives disseminated by mainstream media can be viewed as texts without any inherent interpretation. Coming to a singular, agreed-upon interpretation in the public sphere is a contested process, and interpretative communities view news narratives with a critical lens informed by their world and their social context. These communities are not silent: a simple search for “incel” on YouTube will result in mainstream media videos and various videos from incel YouTube channels. Through the internet, members of these communities are producers of media, contributing to the cacophony of public discourse with interpre- tations that can verge on the extreme to mainstream sensibilities. As the power of mainstream media and its interpretations dis- integrate, as the continent floods and is divided into smaller islands, it becomes increasingly difficult for a single narrative, a single interpretation, to crystallize and construct a singular fabric of reality to understand the world. ¢
- 48. 46S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 D I G I T A L t is difficult to imagine we will ever return to a world where most of our news, information and entertainment was cov- ered by a few big, trusted media institutions – and where individ- uals were mostly passive recipients of media. Yet, this was the way of things from the dawn of writing up until the spread of the in- ternet. During most of human history, media was produced and spread by a few institutions and broadcasters with ownership of media technology and access to communication channels. In the span of just a few decades, the global media landscape has changed drastically. Much of our consumption of media has moved online, and individuals have gone from being passive media con- sumers to active prosumers. Changes in the digital media land- scape are happening at breakneck speed, and a fast-growing share of our media consumption is happening on social platforms. In 2016, 45 percent of Americans aged 50 or older reported getting news from social media sites. One year later, the number had al- ready risen by 10 percent. The 2018 Reuters Digital News Report showed that 40 percent of respondents use Facebook for news, and 87 percent of respondents find their news online (including on social media). The media we consume on these platforms is deter- mined by our previous habits or our peers’ recommendations, and as a result, our identities, tastes and political beliefs are increas- ingly formed through online networks. In some ways, universally used social media such as Facebook have become monopoly plat- forms for social life. UNDERMINING OF THE GATEKEEPERS The rise of social platforms for sharing knowledge and information has empowered ordinary citizens and led to an explosive growth in amateur knowledge, and the diminishing role of experts as gate- keepers of knowledge. A 2017 Google report found that 67 per- cent of millennials use YouTube to find tutorials to help them learn new skills. The same study found that 91 percent of mobile users search for how-to content online when working on a project, and that ‘how-to’ searches on YouTube have been growing 70 percent year over year. On the flip side, this trend has also led to the undermining of the legitimate gatekeepers of truth: academics, scientists and others who speak from a position of authority and whose information and advice we used to trust almost unconditionally. According to I By Casper Skovgaard Petersen TRUTH IN A NETWORKED FUTURE
- 49. 47S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 D I G I T A L the Weill Cornell Department of Healthcare Policy and Research in the US, more than 75 percent of people trusted their doctor’s advice in 1966; in 2018, only 34 percent did. RAND Corporation describes the diminishing role of facts and analysis in public life in a 2018 report titled Truth Decay. The report cites the increasing relative volume and resulting influence of opinion and personal ex- perienceoverfactasoneoftheprimarydriversforthisdevelopment. While online discussion on social platforms is free and open in the- ory, it is heavily reliant on the non-transparent workings of the algo- rithms that curate our experience. As we have seen in the last few years, this has made public dialogue vulnerable to political and sci- entific misinformation, which can spread like wildfire among like- minded peers. An outcome of sharing and communication of infor- mation becoming frictionless – meaning that the filters or barriers that usually exist between sender and receiver disappear – is that fringe groups like anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, 5G scaremongers, political conspiracy theorists and troll bots have become staples of social media and the internet, and by extension, of public discourse. In this new environment, it is more difficult for individuals to navi- gate the maelstrom of information and misinformation. This in- formation overload leads many to pick and choose from the avail- able information and piece together their own individual truths. A recent report by Oxford University looked into the phenom- enon of ‘Computational Propaganda’, a term used to denote “the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purpose- fullydistributemisleadinginformationoversocialmedianetworks.” The research project tracked online misinformation on social me- dia and found that a lot of so-called “junk news and automated accounts” could be traced to programmers and businesses in Ger- many, Poland and the United States. Further, the study found that no less than 45 percent of Twitter activity in Russia is managed by highly automated accounts, and that a significant portion of the political conversation over Twitter in Poland is produced by a handful of right-wing and nationalist accounts. Ironically, the free and open structure of the internet has led to a centralisation of misinformation designed to shape and control public discourse. What will the shift from broadcasted to networked truth mean in the long term? In 2017, Pew and Elon University conducted a research project where they asked more than 1,000 media experts the following question: “In the next 10 years, will trusted methods
- 50. 48S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 emerge to block false narratives and allow the most accurate in- formation to prevail in the overall information ecosystem? Or will the quality and veracity of information online deteriorate due to the spread of unreliable, sometimes even dangerous, socially destabilizing ideas?” The results showed uncertainty about the future, as respondents were divided equally on the positive and negative sides of the ques- tion. 51 percent of the respondents believed that the information environment will not improve. 49 percent believed it will. The 51 percent with a negative outlook believed that efforts to correct the situation will be stifled by bad actors, who will continue to use so- cial media to appeal to the lowest common denominator: “selfish, tribal, gullible, and greedy information consumers who will be- lieve whatever they are told.” To these respondents, technology will cause more problems than it will solve, as it will allow users to be bombarded with even more misleading information. One expert even referred to our present time as a “nuclear winter of misinformation”. The 49 percent with a positive outlook believed that we will find solutions to our current problems with misin- formation, and they expressed a belief that technology, which can be used to spread misinformation, can also do much to combat it. Both the optimists and pessimists agreed that there is no quick fix to the challenges posed, and that technology alone cannot provide the solution to the situation it has helped create. What’s needed, they believe, is a renewed focus on objective, accurate information fostered in all levels of education, and greater support for quality journalism. Similarly, a 2018 report by the EU Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation recommended five steps to counter disinformation and fake news in the future: enhancing transparency of online news through better data sharing; promoting media and information literacy to help users navigate the digital media environment; developing tools to empower users and journalists to tackle disinformation; safe- guarding the diversity and sustainability of the European news media ecosystem; and promoting continued research on the im- pact of disinformation in Europe. FACT CHECK One thing is clear: in a future of networked truth, the need for trusted and balanced channels of information is greater than ever. D I G I T A L
- 51. 49S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 Some countries have already taken measures to achieve this. In Norway, the fact-checking site Faktisk.no has been established for the purpose of preventing the spread of fake news and mis- leading information. In other countries, the measures have been more extensive. In France, for example, a law was passed in 2018 which allows authorities to remove fake content and block sites that publish it. Singapore also recently instated harsh laws pun- ishing those who spread fake news, with lengthy prison sentences or hefty fines. Assuming the role of ‘fact-checker’ may help alleviate some of the problems caused by the rise of networked truth, but it is also a reactive position to take. Lies spread faster than facts – much fast- er, in fact. A recent investigation by Science magazine monitored about 126,000 rumours spread on Twitter between 2006 and 2017. They found that false news cascades reached between 1000 and 100,000 people whereas the truth rarely reached more than 1000. Fact-checking, while important and no doubt beneficial, is treating the symptoms, not engaging with the root cause. In the long term, proactive measures that focus on fostering information-, news-, and media literacy will likely have a more significant impact. HORISONTALISATION Looking closer at individual media users, a central question for the future is the extent to which the need for trusted and more transparent sources of information will outweigh the desire for more convenient products and services. The horizontalisation and hyper-personalisation of digital ecosystems, which happen when digital giants leverage their vast insights for individual con- sumer behaviours across platforms, mean that citizens must often trade off transparency for convenience. Unless a different model gains ground – for instance, one where citizens have complete control over the data they allow platforms to access, and the situ- ations in which they allow it – the question of whether fostering information literacy will have the desired effect, or if it will be overshadowed by the temptation of highly personalised offerings, remains open. This is an outtake from CIFS’ recent members’ report Future Media: Key Trends and Technologies. The article looks at the rise of networked truth, and some of the measures that can be taken to combat the ram- pant spread of misinformation online. ¢ D I G I T A L
- 52. 50S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 A thought experiment could be to imagine that we can travel in time – besides the collective journey forward we are all involved in while we are here. Then we could e.g. invite our great-grandparents up and show them our modern society. They would doubtless be very im- pressed by our technological advances and material wealth. They would probably wonder why we work so much, and they would espe- cially stare in disbelief at our way of life. One thing would be divorces. They did exist back in the day, even though they weren’t as common then. The evolution of genders and their many variations would, how- ever, make them flabbergasted. Just among my acquaintances, I could show them a gay couple with a kid. One of them is the biological father of the child, who was birthed by a surrogate mother from the US. The other dad is about to become biological father to another child birthed by the same US mother. Or take another example, also from among my acquaintances, a wo- man in her late 30s. Her womb is screaming, but she hasn’t found a man to be the father of the child she wants. She could solve that problem through anonymous artificial insemination, but fortunately, she has a good friend. He is gay but is happy to donate for her inse- mination. The woman is now pregnant and happy, and the donor’s mother is also happy, since she will now get the grandchild she had given up on. Win-win. These are just examples from my own sphere, so what might we find of other variations over the old dad-mom-kid theme? The development has been so powerful that my great-grandparents might wish to hurry back to their own time. This development is yet another example of how people want to be masters of their own destinies if they can get away with it. Fate used to decide whether you could have kids, and sometimes also with whom. You had to live with that. Some got too many, and others too few. Not being able to have children could be terrible, as could getting them at inappropriate times. Today, we can decide how many, when, and with whom. And you can decide that a pregnancy is unwanted. This is called abortion, and it has become legal in many places. Today, attempts are being made to roll this back in the United States, but the long-term trend is that people want to be in charge, so control over when you get children is only the beginning. Today, many people distance themselves from the idea that they could decide the gender of their coming child, but this is already hap- pening today in certain parts of the world, where selective abortion i s used to ensure male children, who are considered superior. In the future, the means will become more sophisticated than selective abor- tion. The irony may be that in the future, you may ensure getting a boy, but not what sort. Gay people, for example, are born all over the world but aren’t accepted everywhere. In light of developments in genetic research, only imagination sets the boundaries for how we might design our future babies. The epi- genetic options of turning genes on and off may in the future be con- sciously controlled. I imagine that in the future, once you have decided to have a child, you will go to the gene tailor to get your child’s meas- ures. Then they can get some hereditary traits. Perhaps traits you have fought to get, which should hence characterise future generations. It may seem a bit fanciful but remember that technologies that are developed always end up being used. For this reason, Aldous Huxley may not have been all wrong in his futuristic novel Brave New World. Here, people are birthed from artificial wombs. It is, after all, more ra- tional and egalitarian if women don’t have to spend nine increasingly difficult months to produce a human being. BRAVE NEW WORLD By Johan Peter Paludan, director emeritus and associated futurist at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies C O L U M N
- 53. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Edited by Klaus Æ. Mogensen
- 54. TECHTALK Everything the young do today that we didn’t do at their age is harmful. Almost by definition. When I was young, I had healthy interests like reading comics, watching films, reading science fiction books, and playing role-playing games. Totally harmless! Even so, a lot of adults thought differently. Comics had become the subject of hate as early as the 1950s, when psychiatrist Fredric Wertham connected them to youth crime in his book Seduction of the Innocent, and when I went to school, I was warned that Donald Duck was capitalist propaganda. Films made youths violent, role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons turned young people into Satanists, and science fiction was unscientific escapism. The horror! In light of this, it is rather astounding that I have ended up a mild-mannered, middle-aged atheist with an eye on social criticism and a degree in physics. It is not a new thing that new technology – especially media technology – is considered harmful to kids. We saw it when the radio was young and was accused of distracting the young from reading, leading to them doing badly in school. We can even go back to the 16th century, when the renowned Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner warned against the printing press, which created access to an unwieldy amount of information that confused and hurt the brain. After my youthful years, there have been out- cries against computer games, the internet, mobile phones, smartphones, streaming services, and social media, which naturally all turned young people’s brains into puff pastry, besides hurting their physical condition, since they would rather sit inside in front of their screens than be active out in the sun. What will it all come to! Now, thorough research shows that the worries are – once again – exaggerated. Oxford University has analysed data from 17,000 youths who filled out diaries of their screen use. The study found absolutely zero evidence of harmful effects of time spent on the internet, computer games, or TV use – even just before bedtime. Once again, we can shelve our worries about young people’s use of technology – until virtual reality becomes popular. For VR is, of course, extremely dangerous. Trust me. Klaus Æ. Mogensen
- 55. In 1978, Louise Brown was the first child to be born from an ovum fertilised in a test tube. It caused quite a lot of stir at the time, and some even feared that ‘test-tube babies’ would never become real people. Today, it is quite common, and few find it particularly unnatural. However, the method has led to the still-controversial phenomenon of surrogate mothers. Now, the next step in this development is coming. It will not just be possible to be ferti- lised outside your own mother and become born from another woman; it will soon be pos- sible to be born entirely without a mother. Scientists have long worked to develop an artificial womb that can carry a pregnancy to term if the mother is unable to do so. This has now become reality – or almost so. Scientists have succeeded in keeping lamb fetuses in an artificial womb, which is basically a plastic bag filled with nutrients, for four weeks of their late development. The fetuses developed largely as usual, though the risk of complications is still greater than in a typical pregnancy. Even so, the experiment gives hope that human beings could, within just ten years, be born from an ar- tificial womb. Children born much too early can thenbebroughttofulldevelopmentandbirthin theartificialwomb;acontinuationoftechniques that today keep premature children alive. The general development in the Western world is that the age of mothers is increasing, and with it, the risk of complications that may make it necessary to prematurely terminate a pregnancy. An artificial womb may make a big difference here, and it can also be used if the mother has addictions or gets a disease that threatens the pregnancy. An artificial womb is a far more controlled environment than a real womb. This development is not without ethical issues. When the first test-tube baby was born, many feared that it might turn women into birth machines for other people’s children, and this fear has to some extent turned out to be real, as per the surrogate mothers mention- ed above. A worry regarding artificial wombs isthatanti-abortionistsmayforcewomenwho don’t want their babies to deliver them to an artificial womb rather than getting an abor- tion – even if this entails the women carrying their unwanted babies far longer and being exposed to the physical and mental discom- fort associated with a provoked early birth. Further ahead looms yet another ethical is- sue: we can now handle the first part of preg- nancy outside of a mother through artificial insemination, and soon, we will also be able to handle the last stages of a pregnancy with- out a mother. If these two methods can be brought closer to each other, it may within a few de-cades be possible to entirely dispense with the mother: an ovum can be fertilised and immediately transferred to an artificial womb, which will bring the child all the way to birth. A woman who wants a child will then not need to endure the burden or pain of preg- nancy and can go on drinking, smoking, and live unhealthily right until the child is ‘decant- ed’ and she must breastfeed it – unless she chooses to use infant formula. If a man can get away so easily with becoming a father, why shouldn’t a woman get equally around be- coming a mother? ¢ NOT OF WOMAN BORN By Klaus Æ. Mogensen B R E A K T H R O U G H S
- 56. B R E A K T H R O U G H S BRIEF UPDATES ON TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE UBER AND LYFT CAUSE TRAFFIC JAMS The companies Uber and Lyft have had gre- at success letting private motorists perform taxi services with the help of an app, but the success has a flipside. The city of San Fran- cisco has experienced a 60 percent growth in congestion in six years, and an analysis shows that Uber and Lyft are responsible for half of this growth. For one thing, people have become more likely to use one of these taxi services rather than using public trans- portation, and for another, a great many private cars drive around, hoping to pick up passengers. Studies show that half of the traffic caused by private taxis are without passengers. This naturally has environmen- tal issues, and the number of people killed in traffic has also grown in step with Uber’s and Lyft’s success. The imminent arrival of robot taxies may reduce the second pro blem but could lead to even more congestion and pollution. Source: MIT Technology Review Link: bit.ly/2K6rcfn TO THE STARS! In April, University of California’s Experi- mental Cosmology Group tested a vehicle that could reach the nearest stars within a quarter century and send information back. It is a so-called wafercraft called StarChip; a paper-thin plate of electronics no larger than a palm, which in theory can accelerate to one-fifth of light speed with the help of Earth-based laser beams. At this speed, the vehicle could reach our nearest neighbou- ring stellar system, Alpha Centauri, which lies 40 trillion km from Earth, in a little over 20 years. The vehicle carries no fuel of its own and hence can’t brake upon arrival, so it will be a case of a fly-by over a few days; but this could still provide valuable infor- mation about the star system and the pos- sibility of life out there. StarChip was te- sted at an altitude of 32 km after being lifted by a balloon, and functioned as it should. The next step will be a space test. If all goes well, we will in a decade or two be able to launch not just one such vehicle, but hundreds of them, towards distant stars or somewhat closer celestial bodies in our own solar system. Source: Science Alert Link: bit.ly/2YOzSLn NIGHT-SKY ADVERTISEMENT Imagine taking an evening stroll and see- ing the stars come out. You spot a new, odd phenomenon high in the sky and blink a few extra times. Is that really the Pepsi logo up there in the night sky? This could well be- come reality in a few years. Pepsi is working with the Russian firm StartRocket to send an advertisement satellite in orbit 450 km up. Even though Pepsi says it will be a one- time-only thing, this may be the first step towards turning the sky into a billboard. The satellite will unfold a large Mylar sail, which will collect the evening or morning sunlight and reflect it toward the Earth’s surface with an added image. The satellite is of the CubeSat type, dice-shaped and just 10 cm across. Many can be launched at once, which makes the cost per satellite relatively low. With the generally declining cost of launching satellites, advertisement satel- lites could become a common sight in the sky in just a few years. Source: The Slate Link: bit.ly/2Qn9nK8
- 57. B R E A K T H R O U G H S INTERNET FROM SPACE On Thursday 23rd May, the private space company SpaceX launched a rocket with 60 satellites. They are meant to be the first of an initial 420 satellites in a network called StarLink, which will bring internet access from space to most of the world. SpaceX’s owner Elon Musk hopes to offer internet access through the network as early as next year. The plan is that the network will be expanded to almost 12,000 satellites by no later than 2027. SpaceX’s almost finished launch rocket Starship, which has a far greater capacity than the current Falcon Heavy, will make this possible. Source: Business Insider Link: bit.ly/30Io4w0 SPECIAL BRAIN NETWORKS Creative people – writers, artists, actors, directors, and more – are better than most at imagining something different and alien to them. This has been proved in an experi- ment where randomly selected people and award-winning creatives were told to ima- gine e.g. the world in 500 years or a world where the continents never drifted apart. Not surprisingly, the creative people did the best. Following this, some of the test sub- jects were tested again in fMRI scanners, and it turned out that only the creatives used the brain’s so-called dorsomedial de- fault network to solve the creative tasks. This network wasn’t active at all in the control group, but was active in the creati- ves even when they were at rest. The que- stion is whether having access to this net- work is an inborn trait among creatives or if it can be trained e.g. through drawing exercises or reading science fiction. Or per- haps (I ask) it is active in children who must learn to navigate a world where everything is alien, but then ero- des when routine adult lives take over. Source: Scientific American Link: bit.ly/2X9TlWc SUPERCONDUCTORS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE Researchers at the Argonne National Labo- ratory in the University of Chicago have succeeded in developing a superconductor that works at minus 23 degrees Celsius – 50 degrees warmer than the former record. Superconductors are electrical conductors that don’t lose any energy whatsoever when transporting a current, and they can hence be used in computer chips that don’t de- velop any heat. The Holy Grail of super- conductor science is to find a superconduc- tor that works at room temperature without needing cooling, and this development has brought us a giant step closer. One more step of the same size is in fact all it will take. The downside of this new supercon- ductor, however, is that it only works in ex- tremely high pressure, to be precise, more than a million and a half times the pres- sure at sea level. This may be a bit much for your ho- me computer. Source: UChicago News Link: bit.ly/2QkZRXG
- 58. B R E A K T H R O U G H S Thefuturedoesn’tlookbright,butratherwarm and wet, with far less biodiversity than today. At least, there is a lot of evidence that sug- gests this. We are heading for a slow but all-encompassing climate disaster, and there doesn’t seem to be a willingness to do any- thing about it, despite a growing climate focus among citizens, countless climate demonstra- tions,andmorepeoplerejectingflyingonvaca- tion. Things look to be going the wrong way. In late May, a team of climate scientists pub- lishednewandbettercalculationsofhowmuch sea levels will rise towards 2100. There now looks to be a significant risk that the sea could rise more than two meters within the next 80 years – more than twice the maximum the latest UN climate report estimates. During the following century, sea levels may rise an- other 5-6 meters, even though global tem- peratures don’t rise more than 5°C. This will not just mean that all the world’s coastal cities will be partly or wholly flooded; it also threat- ens vast coastal farmland areas with the as- sociated risk of mass starvation in a world that by all accounts could house more than 11 billion people by 2100. It has been esti- mated that global food production must in- crease by 60 percent towards 2050 to feed the world’s population, but climate change has already reduced the yield of wheat by 5.5 percent since 1980, compared to what it would have been without climate change, with similar losses for other crops. A week ago, it was announced that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is now higher than ever before, and rapidly rising. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas and is now meas- ured at more than 415 ppm (parts per mil- lion); a growth of 15 ppm in less than three years. In 1910, the atmospheric level of CO2 reached 300 ppm, and we need to go back more than 800,000 years to find a higher CO2 content than that. The last time atmos- pheric CO2 content was as high as today, trees grew at the South Pole, and sea levels were 20 meters higher. Also in May, the UN organisation IPBES publishedareportonbiodiversitywhich,based on an analysis of 15,000 research projects, found that a million animal and plant species are in danger of extinction and that the trend has worsened over the last fifty years. The rea- son is a grim cocktail of deforestation, unsus- tainable resource use, pollution, and climate change. Biodiversity isn’t just a value in itself; it is important for the survival of ecosystems and an important source of new medicines and other biotechnology. Protecting biodiver- sity is one of the UN’s 17 global Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, and recently, the UN announced that we are moving the wrong way for achieving four of these goals: reducing inequality, fighting global warming, decreasing waste volume, and protecting bio- diversity. There is very little to suggest that wewillevengetclosetothesegoalsby2030. Well then: are we at least moving the right way when it comes to sustainable energy like wind power and solar energy? Not really. Yes, the production of sustainable energy is growing, but the growth has stagnated at 60 percent of the level needed to meet the 2030 goals in the Paris Agreement. Despite growth in sustainable energy, the energy sec- tor’s CO2 emissions grew 1.7 percent in 2018 alone. With a growing world population, global energy needs look to be growing faster than the production of sustainable energy. Today’s low costs of fossil fuels don’t do much to help the situation. Emissions from airplanes are often men- tioned as a major contributor. It has been esti- mated that a single holiday trip by plane from Europe to Thailand and back is responsible for as much CO2 emission as seven years’ consumption of beef, and the amount of air travel is expected to double over the next twenty years. Air travel, however, is only re- sponsible for about two percent of global hu- man CO2 emissions, while road travel (espe- cially personal cars) accounts for six times that. The number of cars in the world is expected to double from about one billion in 2016 to two billion by 2040, with most of the growth in developing countries. Even though a growing share is expected to be electric cars, analyses by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies show that electric cars are unlikely to account for more than a quarter of the global car fleet in 2040 – and hence, the number of fume-producing cars will grow by half in the next twenty years. By Klaus Æ. Mogensen WILL WE HAVE TIME TO SAVE THE WORLD? New climate models and measures show that the consequences of climate change in this century may be far worse than hitherto assumed. Meanwhile, the global effort to fight climate change seems to have stagnated. Has the time come to panic?
- 59. B R E A K T H R O U G H S EvenifhumanCO2 emissionsweretomagically stop entirely tomorrow, it would not in itself be enough to prevent massive climate change. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is again half as much as it was before the beginning of the industrial age, and even without further emissions, CO2 levels will remain unnaturally high for decades to come, while the world grows ever warmer and more ice melts. Melt- ing ice in the polar regions and from glaciers will not only make sea levels rise, but will also reduce the amount of sunlight reflected into space, and this is a self-sustaining source of global warming that could prove very difficult to reverse. These sorts of dynamic effects are difficult to calculate and hence aren’t typically accounted for in climate models – but that doesn’t mean that they are negligible. For this reason, climate models generally underesti- mate the magnitude of changes, and every time new dynamic effects are added (as with the new model for sea level rise mentioned above), the expected effects are adjusted up- wards. This is unlikely to be the last time we see this happen. IS IT TIME TO PANIC? Things look dire. No doubt about that. We are already feeling the effects of climate change through more regular drought and rainstorms, more frequent and stronger hurricanes, more severe flooding disasters and lower yields of crops, and the way things look now, not a lot suggests that matters will improve over the coming centuries – quite the opposite. In light of this, it is very understandable that some will feel like crawling into a hole and ignoring what happens around them, while others shrug in defeat and carry on as usual – for what does it matter what I as an individual do, when the overall development is like a super- tanker heading at full steam for the abyss at the end of the world, with its captain shouting: “Full speed ahead – things are going alright!” Even so, it is too early to abandon hope. It may well be that the actions of one individual don’t amount to much, and even if we all boy- cott air travel and swap our old light bulbs for LED lamps, this is far from enough to halt the supertanker. Yet it still matters some, and if we also choose to support political measures and parties that are prepared to make a real effort against climate change, even if it costs something, it matters a little more. Some point to new technology as the so- lution to the problems, and it certainly is an important element – perhaps the most im- portant. But for some, the promise of future technological solutions becomes a pretext for not acting now, since we can do it much better in the future, without having to give up the lit- tle pleasures in our daily lives. Some even argue from a cost-benefit analysis that we should entirely dispense with costly solutions today because it will be far cheaper to solve the problems in a decade or two. Or three or five. In fifty years, when the world is plagued even harder by climate change, this argument is undoubtedly equally valid, so why do any- thing ever? In the future, technology will solve all our problems, and this will also be the case for our future’s future. Ifwereallybelievethatclimatechangeshould behandledwithtechnology,itisimportantthat we start right now. Technological advances are based on experiences, and if we don’t capture the costly experiences today, we will have no basis for creating better solutions tomorrow. There aren’t any good reasons to wait to invest in climate technology – sustainable energy, fusion power, carbon storage, energy-saving products and means of transport, recycling technology, and so on – and very good rea- sons not to wait. Ofcourse,weshouldallofus–citizens,com- panies, and politicians – improve our climate footprint as much as we can even now, even if it costs us a little money and a little conve- nience. However, this is not enough in itself. Saving our world demands large investments in new technology – the sooner, the better. We must be prepared for climate changes becoming worse before they become better – perhaps a lot worse. Even so, a major climate disaster is better than a devastating climate disaster. Perhaps we need to get used to the idea that a major climate disaster is the best outcome we can realistically hope for, despite climate protests, citizen initiatives, and political measures. It is no easy thing to turn a supertanker around. But the alternative is worse. ¢
- 61. Following pages: RED BALL What: AN EPIGENETIC TALE Photographer: LENE HALD
- 70. 68S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 On the internet, people judge each other quickly and harshly. The internet’s ‘neti- zens’ determine guilt, measure punishment, and execute sentences, such as being pub- licly pilloried – or, in modern wording, hit by a shitstorm. Shitstorms can lead to trials in real courtrooms. One of the best exam- ples of this is #metoo and Harvey Wein- stein’s upcoming trial. DOXXING AND SWATTING Internet-sentenced punishment may, how- ever, be far more dangerous than public hu- miliation. The hacker group Anonymous and its adherents on the 4Chan forum often resort to doxxing, which is essentially a sort of serious cyber-mobbing. Doxxing is the collection and publication of all sorts of personal information about a person, and the victim of doxxing is then overwhelmed by hundreds of phone calls, hate mails, and hacking attempts. Many innocent people are subjected to doxxing, but it is also used for publishing identities of neo- Nazis who, with raised right arms and swastikas, have participated in right-wing nationalist demonstrations and gatherings. Doxxing is mostly used when Anonymous or others think that ordinary courts aren’t doing enough. RENROU SOUSUO Another very serious internet punishment is swatting. In swatting, vigilantes send an address and a serious threat to the police, who show up in heavily armed numbers at an unsuspecting person’s home. In 2017, this resulted in the police shooting and killing an innocent man who they thought held two hostages in his house. The victim’s crime was being friends with a man who was involved in a bet in the game Call of Duty. Another example of misidentifi- cation was in 2013, when the Boston Marathon was the target of a shocking bomb attack. Immediately after the attack, a large group of people went hunting online for the perpetrators. On a Reddit forum, an innocent man, Sunil Tripathi, was named as one of the Boston bombers. Reddit has 70 million members, and within less than24hours,Tripathi’snamewasspreadeverywhere.The22-year- old man had been missing for a bit over a month, and the FBI was already helping the family look for him. The family was shaken when the accusations against their son were shown on national TV. It was later revealed that Sunil Tripathi had died by suicide before the bombings took place. The United States isn’t the only place where the internet determines guilt and measures and executes punishment. The Chinese ver- sion of an internet court is called renrou sou- suo, or in English: Human Flesh Search. The concept is based on an ancient Chinese form of execution where a human is flayed and dies very slowly. Renrou sousuo means that a large group turns against a person who is considered dangerous; a kind of crowdsourced punishment. Thegovernmentorothergroupsincyber- space may appoint the target for renrou sousuo, after which vigilantes publish information about where the person lives and works, who his or her family and friends are, etc. According to Chinese journalist Audrey Jiajia Li, renrou sousuo began in the late 2000s. One of the earliest targets of renrou sousuo was a woman who uploaded videos in which she tortured animals. A particularly gruesome video showed the woman, wearing high heels, stomping a little kitten to death. Renrou sousuo has also been used to showcase public officials’ corruption and incompe- tence. The internet courtrooms have given Chinese citizens a way to act against public employees and morally reprehensible acts. The latest development in Chinese internet courtrooms is ultra- nationalist internet users digging through a person’s online com- ments from years ago to look for statements that might be con- strued as anti-patriotic, and making these old statements public. This form of renrou sousuo is called ba pi, which means flay, reveal, or expose political opponents. In the West, famous people may be subjected to the same thing. The comedian Kevin Hart, for example, was forced to step down as host of the 2019 Oscars after several homophobic tweets from 2010 and 2011 surfaced. SOCIAL CONTROL IN THE FUTURE? With or without justification, the internet increasingly acts as judge, jury, and sometimes executioner. Even so, this doesn’t seem to limit people in what they dare say on the internet. Intolerant and radical rhetoric online has never been more prevalent than it is today. The internet’s judgement and punishment may seem, like so many other things related to internet behaviour, uncontrolled and immature. Perhaps, sometime in the future, the people's court will supplement the actual judicial system in exercising social control, but maybe a people’s court – online or not – will always be a little too extreme and too often hit the wrong target. ¢ Futurist and sociologist Anne Dencker Bædkel writes about how technology and humans interact and intersect. In this issue: When the internet is judge, jury, and executioner SOCIOTECH C O L U M N
- 71. 69S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 R E V I E W S On this page we present three short reviews of new releases and media recommended by the editorial group. By Sofie Thorsen EDITORS’ RECOMMENDATIONS BLOG: CONNECTED FUTURES Connected Futures is a blog by the US technology conglomerate Cisco, which is aimed at decision makers who have an in- terest in digital transformation. The blog collects original research, economic analy- ses, and business cases from the private and public sectors in reports and podcast episodes to further help you understand what digital technology means when handling innovation and organisational change in the future. Give it a read if you are curious about subjects such as digital transformation, risk management, the fu- ture of work, business innovation, the In- ternet of Things, or Big Data, and need a guide for thinking strategically about the- se subjects. With Cisco as the main source, the blog is mainly technology-oriented and mostly focuses on familiar trends like cloud technology, artificial intelligence, automa- tion, digital infrastructure, data analysis, and cyber-security. The blog delivers solid insights in these areas, however it has a blind spot for lesser emerging technolo- gies and the impact of non-technological trends in consumption, culture, politics, etc. on the company and management of the future. connectedfutures.cisco.com BOOK: CHANGE YOUR MIND What are the limits of human conscious- ness? This is the theme of How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics by Michael Pollan, which takes the reader on a trip to the front line of a budding psychedelic revolution, that has its origins in the 1940s when LSD was first disco- vered, but since the 1960s was banned in research. Pollan sheds light on a new ge- neration of researchers, doctors and an underground culture of psychedelic thera- pists, that are once again experimenting with how LSD, psilocybin (the active in- gredient found in magic mushrooms) and DMT can not just treat mental disorders, but can also expand the consciousness of healthy individuals and shed new light on the human psyche. Pollan combines hi- story, neuroscience, and medical science with memoirs of self-experimentation in a sort of participatory journalism. The book not only provides insights into the psyche- delic revolution, but also asks what the rediscovered fascination with psychedelic drugs could mean for the human consci- ousness and our understanding of mind and self. The book was republished in May 2019. bit.ly/2VtQpCt PODCAST: MAIN ENGINE CUT OFF If you are up for something that will lite- rally take you out of this world, then you should listen to Main Engine Cut Off, a podcast that updates you on current space missions, the latest discoveries in astrop- hysics, upcoming space projects, contro- versies in space politics, and astronomical strategies for exploring space and life out- side the planet Earth. The host of the pod- cast is Anthony Colangelo, who provides weekly half an hour to an hour updates. Colangelo discusses topics concerning what can actually be found in the big, black space and about human activities out the- re. In Episode 121, we are e.g. introduced to ‘Artemis’, NASA’s planned 2024 mis- sion to the moon. Colangelo is also often joined by experts and leading thinkers in space exploration, such as in Episode 119, where he interviews Dr John Charles, who worked as chief scientist at NASA for 33 years, finding solutions for the challenges that stand in the way of space missions to Mars. In another episode, the host is joined by Dr Mike Baine from Axiom Space for a discussion on Axiom’s plans to establish commercial space stations in low orbit around the world. mainenginecutoff.com/podcast
- 72. 70S C E N A R I O 0 4 : 2 0 1 9 B A C K G R O U N D magine travelling to a major city and, instead of arriving at the city’s perimeter, landing right at the centre, on top of a skyscraper. This was the idea commercial artist Nicholas DeSantis came up with in the 1930s, and it was concretised on his drawing board over the course of five years. In 1939, his work materialised as a proposal for Manhattan, New York: a 200-floor airport skyscraper. At the time, New York City experienced a veritable construction boom after the Great Depression. New skyscrapers went up and contributed to the city’s skyline, and air traffic also flourished, so the combination of skyscraper and airport finely reflected the zeitgeist. DeSantis dubbed his project Aerotropolis. DeSantis imagined that the airport was the heart that connected the city and its suburbs. Where today we have railways and high- ways that enable commuting to work, New Yorkers would instead fly in their private planes to the city centre, he imagined. This was economic optimism concerning both private planes and the middle class, and through this centralisation, New York City would become even more accessible, since the lengthy commute from the airport to the city centre would be fully eliminated. Once the commuters landed on top, the idea was that they could take the elevator down to a parking lot holding 250,000 cars – including taxis for the people who didn’t have a car of their own waiting in Aerotropolis. The huge building, which would stretch in width and length across 8 by 5 blocks in the centre of the city, wouldn’t just house air-travel technology. Only the top quarter of the building was dedicated to the planes, which left about 150 floors for other pur- poses. Some of the building could of course be used for offices, which would be convenient for people who had already taken their private planes to the skyscraper airport. Other floors could hold industrial plants, DeSantis thought, but the building should also be interesting for things other than work. Why not also use the space for theatres, restaurants, cafes, and a few football and baseball fields? NYC never got its Aerotropolis, but the idea of a central airport eventually turned out to be solid. In 1946, William Zeckendorf, owner of, among others, the Chrysler building, presented a similar project. Once again, it was about a dream airport in central NYC, though at a much smaller scale in height. And today, the Aerotropolitan flag is held high by the leader of the Centre for Air Commerce at the University of North Carolina, John D. Kasarda, who works in pro- moting and expanding the functions of airports of the future. Even though airports have seriously expanded their services to include restaurants, cafes, and shopping, today’s versions of Aero- tropolis can’t quite measure up to a 200-floor skyscraper. In retro- spect, we can also imagine that DeSantis’ airy idea would have suf- feredseriouslyundertheNIMBYphenomenon(NotInMyBackyard; ed.), just as it today isn’t considered attractive to live next to a high- way. However, fragments of DeSantis’ Aerotropolis are still going strong, especially around Asia and the Middle East. Here, though, the vision isn’t a huge building, but rather the idea that airports should be more than simply places of transit. DeSantis’ principles of economy and infrastructure are interesting to keep in mind when considering e.g. Airports of Thailand, which in 2014 launched the idea of an Airport City, which would include sports facilities and attractive shopping opportunities for both travellers and local people. Aerotropolis’ promotion of connectedness and the opportunities of airspace may also not have totally missed the mark when we consider smart cities and the use of drones. The difference is that they won’t be centred on transporting people, but rather goods. On a larger scale, this naturally requires that we manage to suitably address issues like privacy and, not least, safety in densely inhabited areas – but perhaps the glorious idea of Aerotropolis could in time find a place in other shapes than originally imagined. ¢ I DESANTIS’ AEROTROPOLIS By Emilie Lindeburg FUTURES PAST IMAGINE COMING UP with a brilliant invention and investing a fortune in production – only to discover that no one needs it after all. There is no shortage of examples of products and services developed for a future that never materialised, or which shifted in a direction that hardly anyone could have predicted. These pages are devoted to past forecasts of the future from the perspective of products and ideas that ended up as footnotes in history. This issue:
- 74. 0 5 : 2 0 1 6 a n a ly s e s t r e n d s i d e a s f u t u r e s CONTENT: Living and Dying in the Anthropocene | Lost in Big Data? | Interview with Judy Wajcman | Wildcard: Supercurrency | Marijuana Rush: The New Wild Frontier | No, The Cows Won’t Get Seasick | Planned Obsolescence | Sociotech: Hacktivism and Slacktivism | News on Science and Technology | No Panic. Resilience in the 21st Century | Photo Series: 5 Hours Later Podcasts | Books | Blogs | Futures Past: The Binishell | Trends, Ideas, Visions and much more 0 4 : 2 0 1 7 content: Wrestleworld | Sham Science on the Rise | Wildcard: A Closed Internet | Is Our Biological Clock About to Expire? | When Humans Become Machines | Bitcoin: Evaluating the Hype | VR & Lucid Dreaming | Photo Series: What Sort of Life is This | 4chan | YES/NO Futures Past: The Radiofax | Clever quote by Abraham Lincoln | News About Technology and Science | Blogs, Books, Podcasts | Tech | Trends | Ideas, visions, possible futures and more! a n a ly s e s t r e n d s i d e a s f u t u r e s 0 6 : 2 0 1 7 A N A LY S E S T R E N D S I D E A S F U T U R E S THE FUTURE IS HUMAN: Tribal Wars in Modern Democracy | In the Church of the Transhumanists | Prophets of Progress | Is eSports About to Take Over the World? | Space Belongs to the Robots | Wildcard: The Decline of Al Saud | The World is Heading for a Meltdown Photo Series: The Buffalo That Could Not Dream | Rule 34 | Futures Past: The Asbestos Cigarette | News About Science & Technology | Trends | Ideas, Visions and Possible Futures 0 5 : 2 0 1 5 a n a ly s e s t r e n d s i d e a s f u t u r e s CONTENT: Future Autowar | Global Behavioural Patterns | News about Technology and Science | Future of Transportation | Backup.exe | Wildcard: The Fall of Universitas | Russia’s Future: Scenarios for Peace and Conflict | Will Religion Disappear? | Photo Series: Per | Is the Future of the Internet Wireless? | Attack of the Big Data Positivists | We Built This City | Futures Past: The Life Digital | Blogs | Books | Scenarios | Tech | Trends, ideas, visions and more... SCENARIO subscription KNOWLEDGE PACKAGE, BUSINESS € 400 ,- – 1 year subscription (6 issues of SCENARIO), 2 copies of each magazine. – Login to the online SCENARIO archive. – Discount attending courses at the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. – The book Creative Man. PRIVATE SUBSCRIBER € 135,- – 1 year subscription (6 issues of SCENARIO) www.scenariomagazine.com