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Fifth world future studies conference
284
Cmfintlces
Fifth “Wxld Future
Studies Conference
Organised
Future
Studies
by
the
Federation,
Yugoslavia,
World in
28 March-2
Dubrovnik, April
1976
The twa main themes of the conference were advertised as c’World alternatives: systems versus needs” and ‘The future of education” ; the former seemed to concentrate on modelling, the latter lacked concentration, not to say cohesion, perhaps because quite a few of the anticipated speakers did not turn r.rp. The organizers had obviously hoped that, although a “world” conference might seem a little ambitious, the conference would at least include Third lorid participants. However, those attending the conference were mainly white, mak, and European (but with quite a large contingent from Eastern Europe). Yet the futures field covers such a wide spectrum that even such a seemingly restricted sample still showed great diversity. This was highlights on the first full day of the conference when the audience put their questions to the speakers on ‘Systems versus (Science Policy needs” : Sam Cole Research Unit, UK), Bruno Fritsch (Swiss Federal Institute Technology~~ and Aurelio Peccei (Club of Rome) = Aurelh Peccei said that bigger and more complex models were needed, that even long-term regional models required a background of world models, and the need for such solutions was even more urgent. In his opinion every problem had got worse ovu the fast: few years, except for public awareness. This gloomy view was echoed by Bruno Fritsch : (We will not get away without any price, we will have some disasters> we will have some calamitief.‘f Sam Cole was cautious about the application of the results derived from mathematical models. Comnrunication outside the researchers’ peer group is best achieved by images of the futures. He outlined the scenarios used as
of
examples in the STAFF project (social a.nd technological alternatives for the future), which were set in two dimensions (high growth-low growth; egalitarian-ine~lita~ia~~ . He charactesised the four resulting scenarios by their associated authors: Marx; Kahn; Heilbroner ; and Meadows/Illich. During question time the panel members were asked: “What do you intend to do, what action are you going to take?” All the at”&tver~ are broadly similar-we will continue with our work, doing the best we can. For Bruno Fritsch this meant he would continue his contacts with government and multinational corporations, where he would be most effective, working close to the decision points. He was explicit that some names in the world carried more weight with the heads of multinational corporations than others. This was met by an audible hiss from one part of the audience. By that afternom there were posters on the walls asking : “Do you want an alternative conference, more participation, are you just a consumer of conferences ?” A new working group (group IO) was added to the original nine, and it continued to make its presence felt throughaut the conference with meetings, posters, questionnaires and events. Systems
and assumptions
The second Panel to talk an systems was made up of Maurice Guernier (Glub of Rome), Satish Seth (who is convener for India’s special panel of tuturology), and Milos Macura (Economic Institute, Yugoslavia). Maurice Guernier gave deraik of&c application of the CM.2 of &me’s expertise in various parts of the world, and mentioned the third report to the Club of Rome (coordinated by Jan Tinbcrgen} on reviewing the international order which is to be published in October
FUTURES
&me 1978
Conjirerlces
1976. Dr Seth described the problems of setting up an academic infratructure for futures research in India, and then of having to convince entrants that there will be a career structure for them in the new discipline. This talk was one of the few to include a discussion of specific quantitative forecaststhat India will have a workforce of about 300 million in the year 2000. The answer, he suggested, was to look upon it not as a problem but as a growth in human resources. Milos Macura talked about the national development planning and the longer-term futures planning (up to 2020-2030) taking place in Yugoslavia-and the necessity of a framework that took account of the currency situation. This session produced a question on human rights in India and Yugoslavia which the two speakers fended as best they could. However, the bulk of the time was taken up with criticisms and questions about the Club of Rome activities, for instance that the publicity surrounding the Club of Rome models was asymmetrical-the models and the results were handled so as to gain maximum publicity, but the assumptions behind the models were not so easy to discover. When assumptions were these checked they were often more pessimistic than the accepted data. Sam Cole applied this criticism to the Mesarovic-Pestel model, and specifically to the high calorie requirement per capita and the low availability of land area built into the model.1 Dr Guernier replied that currently available data were used, mainly UN figures or those supplied by its agencies, and that the Club of Rome reports were improving all the time-why all this criticism of research that had been around for years ? The Club of Rome had done a valuable job in narrowing the range of uncertainty about the future and in alerting governments and the public.
FUTURES
June 1976
285
Education Pierre Bertaux (Facultt des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, France) underlined both how important education was becoming-according to one extrapolation more than half the population would be involved in learning or instruction by the year 2000-and how neglected it has been in some quartersKahn and Weiner mention it only twice in The Year 2000,2 MesarovicPestel don’t mention it at all. In France children now spent as much time watching television as they did listening to a teacher-and teaching needed to take account of this. Children had become allergic to teaching, yet the system compensated with more teaching. Warren Ziegler (Syracuse University, USA) discussed education in the future (forecast), education about the future (discussion), and education towards the future (preparation). Education thus becomes education for action not knowledge. But we should beware man’s infinite capacity for learning; there are some futures we should not wish to adapt to. Three other postures towards the future could be characterised as withdrawal, prevention, and invention. Danilo Dolci (Italy) gave an account of his work at the Centro Educative Partinico, told of the insights generated by the children themselves and the teachers’ quest to help them see and hear their environment better. It was a rare reference to an outside world of trees, sunshine, and butterflies in an otherwise crisis-conscious meeting. But how does this post-Rousseau vision apply to urban children, asked one questioner, if they could hear better and see better they would just withdraw. What about the Third World asked another questioner, addressing the whole panel, by the year 2000 India will have 120 million children aged between 6-14, millions of whom will be outside the conventional education system. How can all these new ideas
286
CollferencesjReports
help them when we cannot them ?
even reach
The reports On the last afternoon the working groups reported on ethics, social indicators, new approaches to futures studies, education, the political relevance of futures models, ways of translating methodology into understandable language, and group 10. The last were memorable for the fact that they eIected to report in pantomime forma humorous replay of typical conference presentations, reflected through a distorting mirror that at times had them hovering on the border between unintelligibility and academic erudition. But perhaps group 10 had already
made an impact on one working group earlier in the week. A complex flow chart of the national long-term planning process had sprouted a new box somewhere between the production of typescript copies and the diagram’s presentation on a blackboard. The new box was labelled “public debate”.
References 1. Mihajlo hlesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point (New York, Dutton, 1974). 2. Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener, The Year 2000 (New York, Macmillan, 1967).
REPORTS LETTER
FROM INDIA : Prelude to Vancouver
A SYMPOSIUMSon the human habitat of south Asia was held earlier this year in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab state. The conclusions contained some pointers for the UN conference on human settlements held in Vancouver, 31 May-11 June 1976. The rural habitat of the countries of south Asia, like the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Burma, and Indonesia, are very similar. There is widespread poverty and a lack of hygiene in the villages, with a paucity of basic services such as clean water supply and sanitation. The pollution caused by squalor is starkly revealed ; that caused by growtheg noise and air pollutionis also starting to make inroads. felt by the organiser It was Charanjit Chanana, a Delhi economist and member of Parliament, that an exchange of experiences and information on the well-identified problems of rural Iiving and the solutions suggested
by Asian experts would be vital inputs for Vancouver. Chandigarh was a logical choice for the venue. It is a well-planned city (despite the recent appearance of sIum settlements on the outskirts!) and Punjab has been in the forefront in modernising agriculture as the focal point of the ‘
FUTURES
June 1976
Cmfintlces
Fifth “Wxld Future
Studies Conference
Organised
Future
Studies
by
the
Federation,
Yugoslavia,
World in
28 March-2
Dubrovnik, April
1976
The twa main themes of the conference were advertised as c’World alternatives: systems versus needs” and ‘The future of education” ; the former seemed to concentrate on modelling, the latter lacked concentration, not to say cohesion, perhaps because quite a few of the anticipated speakers did not turn r.rp. The organizers had obviously hoped that, although a “world” conference might seem a little ambitious, the conference would at least include Third lorid participants. However, those attending the conference were mainly white, mak, and European (but with quite a large contingent from Eastern Europe). Yet the futures field covers such a wide spectrum that even such a seemingly restricted sample still showed great diversity. This was highlights on the first full day of the conference when the audience put their questions to the speakers on ‘Systems versus (Science Policy needs” : Sam Cole Research Unit, UK), Bruno Fritsch (Swiss Federal Institute Technology~~ and Aurelio Peccei (Club of Rome) = Aurelh Peccei said that bigger and more complex models were needed, that even long-term regional models required a background of world models, and the need for such solutions was even more urgent. In his opinion every problem had got worse ovu the fast: few years, except for public awareness. This gloomy view was echoed by Bruno Fritsch : (We will not get away without any price, we will have some disasters> we will have some calamitief.‘f Sam Cole was cautious about the application of the results derived from mathematical models. Comnrunication outside the researchers’ peer group is best achieved by images of the futures. He outlined the scenarios used as
of
examples in the STAFF project (social a.nd technological alternatives for the future), which were set in two dimensions (high growth-low growth; egalitarian-ine~lita~ia~~ . He charactesised the four resulting scenarios by their associated authors: Marx; Kahn; Heilbroner ; and Meadows/Illich. During question time the panel members were asked: “What do you intend to do, what action are you going to take?” All the at”&tver~ are broadly similar-we will continue with our work, doing the best we can. For Bruno Fritsch this meant he would continue his contacts with government and multinational corporations, where he would be most effective, working close to the decision points. He was explicit that some names in the world carried more weight with the heads of multinational corporations than others. This was met by an audible hiss from one part of the audience. By that afternom there were posters on the walls asking : “Do you want an alternative conference, more participation, are you just a consumer of conferences ?” A new working group (group IO) was added to the original nine, and it continued to make its presence felt throughaut the conference with meetings, posters, questionnaires and events. Systems
and assumptions
The second Panel to talk an systems was made up of Maurice Guernier (Glub of Rome), Satish Seth (who is convener for India’s special panel of tuturology), and Milos Macura (Economic Institute, Yugoslavia). Maurice Guernier gave deraik of&c application of the CM.2 of &me’s expertise in various parts of the world, and mentioned the third report to the Club of Rome (coordinated by Jan Tinbcrgen} on reviewing the international order which is to be published in October
FUTURES
&me 1978
Conjirerlces
1976. Dr Seth described the problems of setting up an academic infratructure for futures research in India, and then of having to convince entrants that there will be a career structure for them in the new discipline. This talk was one of the few to include a discussion of specific quantitative forecaststhat India will have a workforce of about 300 million in the year 2000. The answer, he suggested, was to look upon it not as a problem but as a growth in human resources. Milos Macura talked about the national development planning and the longer-term futures planning (up to 2020-2030) taking place in Yugoslavia-and the necessity of a framework that took account of the currency situation. This session produced a question on human rights in India and Yugoslavia which the two speakers fended as best they could. However, the bulk of the time was taken up with criticisms and questions about the Club of Rome activities, for instance that the publicity surrounding the Club of Rome models was asymmetrical-the models and the results were handled so as to gain maximum publicity, but the assumptions behind the models were not so easy to discover. When assumptions were these checked they were often more pessimistic than the accepted data. Sam Cole applied this criticism to the Mesarovic-Pestel model, and specifically to the high calorie requirement per capita and the low availability of land area built into the model.1 Dr Guernier replied that currently available data were used, mainly UN figures or those supplied by its agencies, and that the Club of Rome reports were improving all the time-why all this criticism of research that had been around for years ? The Club of Rome had done a valuable job in narrowing the range of uncertainty about the future and in alerting governments and the public.
FUTURES
June 1976
285
Education Pierre Bertaux (Facultt des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, France) underlined both how important education was becoming-according to one extrapolation more than half the population would be involved in learning or instruction by the year 2000-and how neglected it has been in some quartersKahn and Weiner mention it only twice in The Year 2000,2 MesarovicPestel don’t mention it at all. In France children now spent as much time watching television as they did listening to a teacher-and teaching needed to take account of this. Children had become allergic to teaching, yet the system compensated with more teaching. Warren Ziegler (Syracuse University, USA) discussed education in the future (forecast), education about the future (discussion), and education towards the future (preparation). Education thus becomes education for action not knowledge. But we should beware man’s infinite capacity for learning; there are some futures we should not wish to adapt to. Three other postures towards the future could be characterised as withdrawal, prevention, and invention. Danilo Dolci (Italy) gave an account of his work at the Centro Educative Partinico, told of the insights generated by the children themselves and the teachers’ quest to help them see and hear their environment better. It was a rare reference to an outside world of trees, sunshine, and butterflies in an otherwise crisis-conscious meeting. But how does this post-Rousseau vision apply to urban children, asked one questioner, if they could hear better and see better they would just withdraw. What about the Third World asked another questioner, addressing the whole panel, by the year 2000 India will have 120 million children aged between 6-14, millions of whom will be outside the conventional education system. How can all these new ideas
286
CollferencesjReports
help them when we cannot them ?
even reach
The reports On the last afternoon the working groups reported on ethics, social indicators, new approaches to futures studies, education, the political relevance of futures models, ways of translating methodology into understandable language, and group 10. The last were memorable for the fact that they eIected to report in pantomime forma humorous replay of typical conference presentations, reflected through a distorting mirror that at times had them hovering on the border between unintelligibility and academic erudition. But perhaps group 10 had already
made an impact on one working group earlier in the week. A complex flow chart of the national long-term planning process had sprouted a new box somewhere between the production of typescript copies and the diagram’s presentation on a blackboard. The new box was labelled “public debate”.
References 1. Mihajlo hlesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point (New York, Dutton, 1974). 2. Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener, The Year 2000 (New York, Macmillan, 1967).
REPORTS LETTER
FROM INDIA : Prelude to Vancouver
A SYMPOSIUMSon the human habitat of south Asia was held earlier this year in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab state. The conclusions contained some pointers for the UN conference on human settlements held in Vancouver, 31 May-11 June 1976. The rural habitat of the countries of south Asia, like the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Burma, and Indonesia, are very similar. There is widespread poverty and a lack of hygiene in the villages, with a paucity of basic services such as clean water supply and sanitation. The pollution caused by squalor is starkly revealed ; that caused by growtheg noise and air pollutionis also starting to make inroads. felt by the organiser It was Charanjit Chanana, a Delhi economist and member of Parliament, that an exchange of experiences and information on the well-identified problems of rural Iiving and the solutions suggested
by Asian experts would be vital inputs for Vancouver. Chandigarh was a logical choice for the venue. It is a well-planned city (despite the recent appearance of sIum settlements on the outskirts!) and Punjab has been in the forefront in modernising agriculture as the focal point of the ‘
FUTURES
June 1976