- Email: [email protected]
A rare conjunction of futures bodies
162
Science Fiction/Conferences
Wanderground is a haunting, provocative, and very beautiful portrait of a female civilisation. Its strength is drawn from equal measures of myth, rage, and hope but this interconnected series of tales rests on one premise: left to their own devices, women would create a very different, and in its own way superior, society to that elaborated largely by men. One need not agree with that premise to be gripped by the power of Gearhart’s vision, which is all the more effective for being presented not polemically but as inherent in the daily lives of the hill women of the title. The time is apparently the near future. Following a brutal, totalitarian backlash by men against the women’s liberation movement, including new witch trials and laws requiring women to be escorted by men in public, those women who can, flee to the countryside. In the ultimate ecological fantasy, mother nature finally calls a halt to man’s depredations upon the Earth and women. Instantly, outside all cities, machinery no longer works and men are impotent. In this setting, women develop a full panoply of psychic powers. As in a fable, they can talk with all nature’s creatures-animals, trees clouds-as well as engage in group telepathy,
teleportation, mind healing, and the like. These abilities are described in credible detail and in a matter-of-fact tone, though the results are a far remove from the psychic detectives and that much of traditional warriors science fiction has featured. There is no use for even appropriate technology here. The women have gone beyond any need for tools as extensions of the mind, when mind itself will suffice. As a novel, the book is required reading. And as a political vision, clearly intended to inspire present efforts to create desirable futures? I found myself continually drawn to the ceremonies and loving care depicted in the women’s society, and for that reason, frustrated at the explicit separatist belief on which it is founded. Unlike the novels of Le Guin, there is no McIntyre, and Piercy, room here for men as cocreators of a decentralist, humane future: man is the the raper. Yet, enemy, the invader, at the end, Gearhart does open an ambiguous possibility that men who respect the autonomy of women may be able to develop their own unique gifts. Nothing easy is promised, but that comes closer to the vision that many men and women, I believe, already hold.
CONFERENCES A rare conjunction
of futures bodies
Futures symposium ‘Futures research in government : project reports’, London, 9 November 1979 In contrast to their long-term preoccupations, futures researchers tend to have short-term occupations. Research teams often have brief lifetimes. Like shooting stars they streak across the
public consciousness to end their days in a burst of publicity before fading into obscurity. The Futures symposium therefore represented a rare conjunction of such bodies. The INTERFUTURES project is now finished, the study at the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) is winding down, and FAST is embarking on the programmes planned in 1979 for this year. Two
FUTURES
April 1990
Conferences
purely national governmental bodies provided an element of stability: the Systems Analysis Research Unit (at the Department of the Environment) headed by Peter Roberts, and the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), then headed by Sir Kenneth Berrill (it was later announced that Robin Ibbs, an ICI director, would take over the job in 1980). SARU’s
work
Peter Roberts discussed the interaction of forecasting with bureaucracy-and how playing it safe produced a stolid, rather than a solid, foundation for forecasting. SARU have developed a flexible energy-demand model that allows experimentation with different strategies, and which also has the ability to successfully generate the past-a necessary but not sufficient condition for a good model.1 The model predicts that the UK will scarcely increase its energy use up to the year 2000-provided that the GDP increases by around 50% and that fuel prices double in real terms. The unit’s global model SARUM had been adapted for use in the INTERFUTURES project and was being used in other countries, eg Australia, and by some large companies.2 The model includes a trade-bias matrix which provides a quantitative estimate of the deviation from perfect competition, ie the amount prices have to be adjusted to account for perceived trading patterns (eg there is a substantial trade bias between South Africa and Eastern Europe). Globally, in the period 1963-1971, there had been a mean annual drop of in trade biases; for the EEC go0/ in 1970-1974 the corresponding annual figure was around 5%. Thus, notwithstanding such well-publicised incidents as the ban on imports of British lamb into France, there had been significant trade liberalisation within the EEC. However, freer trade
FUTURES
April lB80
163
can bring mixed benefits. In the case an increase in Pacific of Australia, area trade would put severe pressure on the national environment-particularly from the mining and treatment of ores. The 1990s project Margaret Sharp explained the thinking that had produced the format of the NED0 study.3 They had rejected, because of budget (L300 000) and time constraints, the detailed quantitative approach (eg as done by Wilfred Beckerman for the UK in the 1960s),4 or the construction of scenarios, in favour of a literature review. The six areas chosen: technology, the EEC, the newly industrialising national resources, democountries, graphy, and attitude changes, reflect the focus in inputs, rather than on such as inflation, or the outcomes, level of unemployment. The EEC unit Ricardo Petrella, head of FAST (forecasting and assessment of science and technology) within DG-12 in Brussels, described the programme planning undertaken by the unit in 1979. Effectively the team had about 24 years left before their initial tenure ran out. One of FAST’s priority areas was the identification of R and D options for Europeand their shortlist oftechnologies requiring further study was very similar to that produced by INTERFUTURES. Interfutures Jacques
Lesourne, who had headed during its three-year lifetime,5 started with a quote from Daniel Bell: that governments had grown too big for small problems and too small for big problems. Among the social trends that INTERFUTURES had tried to assess were social oligopolisation value changes, (the formation of powerful interest
INTERFUTURES
164
Conferences
groups), and the growing strains on the welfare state and the market. David Norse outlined the six scenarios produced by the study and commented on the changing international environment-an increasingly multipolar world no longer dominated by the US economy.s The
think
tax&
The Central Policy Review Staff was set up by Edward Heath, then Conservative Prime Minister, to remedy in part the detachment of Cabinet from long-term strategy, and to improve the reviewing of policies. A small unit, with a maximum of 20 staff, it was unusual in that it had a high proportion of female staff and a low average age (about 35 years). Professor Ashworth, chief scientist at the CPRS, described the guidelines for handling research: l l l
never allow a study to go on for more than 2-3 months, never allow any member of staff to do one study alone, all members of staff should be involved in more than one study.
The job of the CPRS was to advise ministers collectively. About half their studies were initiated
internally, the rest by request of the Prime Minister. Some of their studies were published, too many in Ashworth’s view, but the main market for their work remained the small group of ministers. Professor Ashworth was critical of the trend in the USA which led to a decrease in the amount of contentious material committed to paper, and an increase in the number of secret decisions taken over the “At least in the UK histelephone. torians will know how decisions were taken”, he said. Notes and references
See Hunter Danskin, “SARU’s energydemand model”, Futures, December 1979, 11 (6), pages 491-509. P. C. Roberts, “SARUM 76-a global modelling project”, Futures, February 1977, 9 (l), pages 3-16. Margaret Sharp, “The NED0 1990s project”, Futures, October 1979, 11 (5), page 454. 4. C. J. F. Brown and T. D. Sheriff, “The British Economy in 1975 revisited”, Futures,
December 1978, 10 (6), pages 500-506. 5. See “Storm warning: six scenarios from Futures, October 1979, 11 (5), pages 44545 1. “Scenario analysis in 6. David Norse, INTERFUTURES", Futures, October 1979, 11 (5), pages 412-422. INTERFUTURES",
No easy energy answers United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) conference on longterm energy resources, Montreal, 26 November-7 December 1979 Few new facts and figures on energy resources were presented, although references to exploitable reserves of many fossil fuels were repeatedly bullish. (For example, the Chinese announced new figures for proved coal reserves of 600 thousand million tons compared
1977 world energy conference figure of 2 19 thousand million tons.) One therefore had to look to the public and private discussions of papers to see if there were any new and special points of emphasis. And the one point of emphasis, new or not, was the increasing uncertainty about most fossilfuel or nuclear-capacity forecastscaused by increasing environmental or social pressures. Thus, if coal is to help solve the interfuel substitution problem it must increasingly become an internationally
with their
FUTURES
April 1980
Science Fiction/Conferences
Wanderground is a haunting, provocative, and very beautiful portrait of a female civilisation. Its strength is drawn from equal measures of myth, rage, and hope but this interconnected series of tales rests on one premise: left to their own devices, women would create a very different, and in its own way superior, society to that elaborated largely by men. One need not agree with that premise to be gripped by the power of Gearhart’s vision, which is all the more effective for being presented not polemically but as inherent in the daily lives of the hill women of the title. The time is apparently the near future. Following a brutal, totalitarian backlash by men against the women’s liberation movement, including new witch trials and laws requiring women to be escorted by men in public, those women who can, flee to the countryside. In the ultimate ecological fantasy, mother nature finally calls a halt to man’s depredations upon the Earth and women. Instantly, outside all cities, machinery no longer works and men are impotent. In this setting, women develop a full panoply of psychic powers. As in a fable, they can talk with all nature’s creatures-animals, trees clouds-as well as engage in group telepathy,
teleportation, mind healing, and the like. These abilities are described in credible detail and in a matter-of-fact tone, though the results are a far remove from the psychic detectives and that much of traditional warriors science fiction has featured. There is no use for even appropriate technology here. The women have gone beyond any need for tools as extensions of the mind, when mind itself will suffice. As a novel, the book is required reading. And as a political vision, clearly intended to inspire present efforts to create desirable futures? I found myself continually drawn to the ceremonies and loving care depicted in the women’s society, and for that reason, frustrated at the explicit separatist belief on which it is founded. Unlike the novels of Le Guin, there is no McIntyre, and Piercy, room here for men as cocreators of a decentralist, humane future: man is the the raper. Yet, enemy, the invader, at the end, Gearhart does open an ambiguous possibility that men who respect the autonomy of women may be able to develop their own unique gifts. Nothing easy is promised, but that comes closer to the vision that many men and women, I believe, already hold.
CONFERENCES A rare conjunction
of futures bodies
Futures symposium ‘Futures research in government : project reports’, London, 9 November 1979 In contrast to their long-term preoccupations, futures researchers tend to have short-term occupations. Research teams often have brief lifetimes. Like shooting stars they streak across the
public consciousness to end their days in a burst of publicity before fading into obscurity. The Futures symposium therefore represented a rare conjunction of such bodies. The INTERFUTURES project is now finished, the study at the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) is winding down, and FAST is embarking on the programmes planned in 1979 for this year. Two
FUTURES
April 1990
Conferences
purely national governmental bodies provided an element of stability: the Systems Analysis Research Unit (at the Department of the Environment) headed by Peter Roberts, and the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), then headed by Sir Kenneth Berrill (it was later announced that Robin Ibbs, an ICI director, would take over the job in 1980). SARU’s
work
Peter Roberts discussed the interaction of forecasting with bureaucracy-and how playing it safe produced a stolid, rather than a solid, foundation for forecasting. SARU have developed a flexible energy-demand model that allows experimentation with different strategies, and which also has the ability to successfully generate the past-a necessary but not sufficient condition for a good model.1 The model predicts that the UK will scarcely increase its energy use up to the year 2000-provided that the GDP increases by around 50% and that fuel prices double in real terms. The unit’s global model SARUM had been adapted for use in the INTERFUTURES project and was being used in other countries, eg Australia, and by some large companies.2 The model includes a trade-bias matrix which provides a quantitative estimate of the deviation from perfect competition, ie the amount prices have to be adjusted to account for perceived trading patterns (eg there is a substantial trade bias between South Africa and Eastern Europe). Globally, in the period 1963-1971, there had been a mean annual drop of in trade biases; for the EEC go0/ in 1970-1974 the corresponding annual figure was around 5%. Thus, notwithstanding such well-publicised incidents as the ban on imports of British lamb into France, there had been significant trade liberalisation within the EEC. However, freer trade
FUTURES
April lB80
163
can bring mixed benefits. In the case an increase in Pacific of Australia, area trade would put severe pressure on the national environment-particularly from the mining and treatment of ores. The 1990s project Margaret Sharp explained the thinking that had produced the format of the NED0 study.3 They had rejected, because of budget (L300 000) and time constraints, the detailed quantitative approach (eg as done by Wilfred Beckerman for the UK in the 1960s),4 or the construction of scenarios, in favour of a literature review. The six areas chosen: technology, the EEC, the newly industrialising national resources, democountries, graphy, and attitude changes, reflect the focus in inputs, rather than on such as inflation, or the outcomes, level of unemployment. The EEC unit Ricardo Petrella, head of FAST (forecasting and assessment of science and technology) within DG-12 in Brussels, described the programme planning undertaken by the unit in 1979. Effectively the team had about 24 years left before their initial tenure ran out. One of FAST’s priority areas was the identification of R and D options for Europeand their shortlist oftechnologies requiring further study was very similar to that produced by INTERFUTURES. Interfutures Jacques
Lesourne, who had headed during its three-year lifetime,5 started with a quote from Daniel Bell: that governments had grown too big for small problems and too small for big problems. Among the social trends that INTERFUTURES had tried to assess were social oligopolisation value changes, (the formation of powerful interest
INTERFUTURES
164
Conferences
groups), and the growing strains on the welfare state and the market. David Norse outlined the six scenarios produced by the study and commented on the changing international environment-an increasingly multipolar world no longer dominated by the US economy.s The
think
tax&
The Central Policy Review Staff was set up by Edward Heath, then Conservative Prime Minister, to remedy in part the detachment of Cabinet from long-term strategy, and to improve the reviewing of policies. A small unit, with a maximum of 20 staff, it was unusual in that it had a high proportion of female staff and a low average age (about 35 years). Professor Ashworth, chief scientist at the CPRS, described the guidelines for handling research: l l l
never allow a study to go on for more than 2-3 months, never allow any member of staff to do one study alone, all members of staff should be involved in more than one study.
The job of the CPRS was to advise ministers collectively. About half their studies were initiated
internally, the rest by request of the Prime Minister. Some of their studies were published, too many in Ashworth’s view, but the main market for their work remained the small group of ministers. Professor Ashworth was critical of the trend in the USA which led to a decrease in the amount of contentious material committed to paper, and an increase in the number of secret decisions taken over the “At least in the UK histelephone. torians will know how decisions were taken”, he said. Notes and references
See Hunter Danskin, “SARU’s energydemand model”, Futures, December 1979, 11 (6), pages 491-509. P. C. Roberts, “SARUM 76-a global modelling project”, Futures, February 1977, 9 (l), pages 3-16. Margaret Sharp, “The NED0 1990s project”, Futures, October 1979, 11 (5), page 454. 4. C. J. F. Brown and T. D. Sheriff, “The British Economy in 1975 revisited”, Futures,
December 1978, 10 (6), pages 500-506. 5. See “Storm warning: six scenarios from Futures, October 1979, 11 (5), pages 44545 1. “Scenario analysis in 6. David Norse, INTERFUTURES", Futures, October 1979, 11 (5), pages 412-422. INTERFUTURES",
No easy energy answers United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) conference on longterm energy resources, Montreal, 26 November-7 December 1979 Few new facts and figures on energy resources were presented, although references to exploitable reserves of many fossil fuels were repeatedly bullish. (For example, the Chinese announced new figures for proved coal reserves of 600 thousand million tons compared
1977 world energy conference figure of 2 19 thousand million tons.) One therefore had to look to the public and private discussions of papers to see if there were any new and special points of emphasis. And the one point of emphasis, new or not, was the increasing uncertainty about most fossilfuel or nuclear-capacity forecastscaused by increasing environmental or social pressures. Thus, if coal is to help solve the interfuel substitution problem it must increasingly become an internationally
with their
FUTURES
April 1980