Finding A New Career In Another World

"1843" April/May 2017

I am often asked about the impact of automation on the jobs market. The fear that is expressed to me is that, with advances in robotics and AI, there will be a certain degree of displacement as people are replaced with machines. Historically, this has proven to be an unwarranted fear because new occupations and careers arise to absorb the labour displaced by new technologies. I am told that this time is different, and that we need novel solutions such as a Universal Basic Income, to solve this problem. I am fairly unconvinced by this line of thought, but, to date, I have very few examples to hand of the process I am describing.

It would appear that someone has given me a subscription to 1843 - the lifestyle magazine from The Economist stable. Normally, I don't pay much attention to the magazine, but one article in the current edition did catch my eye. Entitled "Escape To Another World"*, it tells a tale of young people today. Apparently, young people today are over-qualified, under-employed, under-valued, and underpaid. They tend to have minimal consumption aspirations, live with their parents, and haven't really started to build a life. From the perspective of an older generation, this might be true. However, it is also worth looking at this differently, from the perspective of the young people.

The rejection of the lifestyles of an older generation is nothing new. However, in order to do so successfully, the younger generation has to determine how it wants to live. What I find interesting is that work is now seen as the servant rather than the master, and this plays out in a number of ways. The way it plays out in terms of this article is to develop a new career stream - professional gaming.

The concept of gaming as a profession is at its formative stage. A number of enterprising young people have found ways of monetising their activity. For example, the companies that develop games pay gamers to showcase their games through a You Tube channel. As the article notes, the gaming public are more likely to buy a game if they have seen it successfully played beforehand. Many professional gamers use their channel to link through to marketplaces where various products can be bought, and earn a referral fee through an associates programme. Those who achieve a modicum of stardom have even monetised the sale of their own branded merchandise.

How can a depressed, demotivated, young person get by? They can make money through social media. This might not be a 'real' job in terms of their parents, but on their own terms, they are earning enough to get by. The article makes a fair point that there is a difference between earning pocket money and earning enough to fully participate in society. However, this career opportunity is at its early stages and some young people are earning enough money to buy houses and commence household formation. This is a trend that is only set to continue.

In some respects the article is absolutely correct. We ought to be concerned at the extent to which young people are attracted to the world of gaming if we want current work patterns and aspirations to continue. However, as that world is currently not working for the young people, and society is not providing the means for them to participate in that world, ought we to be surprised when the young people redefine their lifestyle to find one that does suit them? In my view we are seeing a new career in the making, in just the way that pilates instructors, image consultants, and Feng Shui advisers, came out of the last major bout of labour displacement in the 1990s. This is Schumpeter's creative destruction in action.

In future, when I am asked how people will earn a living when they are replaced with a machine, I will answer that they will play games all day and get paid for it!

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2017

* The article referred to can be found at: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/escape-to-another-world

Ultrasociety And Spiral Dynamics

"Spiral Dynamics"

by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan

"Ultrasociety"

by Peter Turchin

I am currently working my way through Peter Turchin's book "Ultrasociety" when I came upon the lower table. It reminded me of the narrative through the spiral in Don Beck and Christopher Cowan's book "Spiral Dynamics", and prompted me to find the source, which is the upper table.

The overlap between the two narratives, in my view, is quite interesting. Both describe the progress of societal development from the foraging band - mainly a family structure - through to a more holistic mega-state structure. These are important points in measuring our progress. We can move both up and down the Spiral, and we can both progress and regress along the polity types.

I like the inclusion of a time frame in Peter Turchin's model. This gives us an idea of the perspective of history to bring to this analysis. I would imagine that the next step will be to examine the path by which society and the economy moves from stage to stage, and to assess how each subsequent stage is reached. I would imagine that a combination of conflict and co-operation will be involved in this.

I just see this as an interesting point of cross-over.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2017

The Heretical Futurist

In order to work as a professional futurist, there are a number of orthodoxies about the profession that one must maintain. One such of those orthodoxies is that, when viewed from perspective of the present, there are any number of possible futures that could evolve. We operate in a world of multiple possible futures, all of which could happen. Some of these will be plausible futures, because we like to comb out the implausible future such as green men from Mars landing. A much smaller number of futures will be preferable, those things that we want to happen. In some cases, we may even have probable futures, those things which we think will happen if nothing significant changes. All of this orthodoxy fits nicely into the 'Futures Cone'.

This is how the world appears to a futurist, the producer of the futures work. It often looks quite different from the perspective of a client, a consumer of futures work. From the client perspective, even if they admit the possibility of multiple futures, only one single future is likely to be experienced and that is what they want to know about. The focus here is on the probable future - the thing most likely to happen. The response of many professional futurists to clients taking this position is to tell them they are wrong and to persuade them to commission a more nuanced study.

My own personal heresy is to ask what happens if the clients are right? What happens if the futurists are wrong to insist upon multiple possible futures, even if they are preferable and plausible? How can we reconcile the two positions?

It might be helpful to start with the reasons why professional futurists believe in a multiple future. The core argument is that the future consists of a very large number of complex moving parts. In many cases, there is considerable uncertainty over how those complex moving parts will behave in the future. This complexity and uncertainty are the reasons why foresight is not the same as forecasting. Professional futurists will hold that the future is inherently unknowable, and only the broadest of contours of the future can be seen from the present. As it stands, this argument is valid. It is, however, incomplete.

From the perspective of the client, to be told that the future is inherently uncertain and unknowable doesn't help to answer the question of how they ought to ready themselves for the future. At least some guidance needs to be given about the likelihood of future events. A project that concludes that the future may consist of one thing or another is unhelpful in determining what to do. On this point, it might be more fruitful to work with the grain of the wood than against it.

The one point that both futurists and their clients have in common is the idea of the probable future. It is often called the baseline scenario - what would happen if no parameters were to change. To a certain extent, this provides us with a nice starting point. Any view of the future constructed on these lines will depend upon a large number of quite important assumptions. Once the baseline scenario is in place, it is then possible to look at how the results might change if the various key assumptions are changed. This is a form of sensitivity analysis to test the robustness of the conclusions. Of course, professional futurists can quite easily say that this will define a range of alternative futures, which is the point at which we came in.

There is something to be said for single point futures. They focus on the question in hand, they provide a standard against which different versions of the future can be measured, and they fit into the popular perception of the future. They are simplistic, and they do hold themselves hostage to shifts in the underlying conditions that generated those futures. Having said that, we ought not to be too dismissive of the heresy they represent. If they are viewed as a means by which a more general public can engage with futures thinking, then a lot can be said for them.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2017