Super-empowering effort: finishing the Technology Trends page on the Wikistrat model

Sweet mother of God what an effort!  Worst case on the previous ones (Political, Security, Social-Demographics, Sustainability) were two days (working DEEP into the night), but this one took three days when all said and done. Naturally came in "heaviest" at 5700-words (norm is 5200).  

Why such a challenge?  I'm not a hard scientist nor technologist. My interests lie primarily with how technology can send the planet down this path or that.  So I had to spend a lot more time thinking about my "six packs" (major trends and major forecasts and the 2 risks = 2 opportunities + 2 dependencies).  No attempt to cover the vast universe of technology, just trying to pick out the quarterback, left offensive tackle, number one receiver, strong outside linebacker, cover cornerback and free safety (yes, I have a West Coast bias after all these years)--you know, the key players that determine the team's overall prospects, or the ones you hope are all All-Pro caliber (as Rodgers, Clifton, Jennings, Matthews, Woodson and Collins all are!).  

Then there was this weird challenge of capturing regional trends. How in God's name do you do that? Well, you read a lot of UN reports that track things like R&D spending as percent of GDP, world share in scientific papers, innovation rankings, levels of communications network penetration, patents, and so on.  And what you discover is that educational systems and business risk-tolerance mean all, but connectivity is fast relieving the extreme imbalance (Core is responsible for 95% of all technology/science/innovation, while one-third-of-humanity that is Gap is basically half-Israel and everybody else).  

Then there's the drill down on individual countries, like what's up with technology in Turkey today?  Turns out there's a UN report with a chapter on Turkey.  Here you notice things like Iran could be Turkey overnight if . . . the place wasn't run so badly.

I have to admit, despite the teeth-pulling nature of the effort, it was a lot of fun to investigate and write.  I now feel myself to be superempowered on technology trends, like I just woofed down a Powerbar and a venti Latte!  I know I didn't get every tiny detail/interpretation right, but that's the beauty of the collaborative, online wiki-based venue: corrections and adjustments and expansions will be forthcoming from all the best kind of appropriate thinkers.  

More broadly, the whole point of this exercise is to create an intellectual, collaborative space where people truly interested in thinking systematically about the future are forced/encouraged by the horizontal layout to do so, and not just jump - day-in and day-out - along that one-damn-thing-after-another stream-of-MSM-stories consciousness, where your biases tend to crowd out what should be your analysis because there's too much to wade through and you lack the larger framework for assembling all the pieces.  

Left to your own devices, you're John Nash frantically stringing yarn between stories stapled to your shed wall and babbling to yourself about how it all comes together.

Or you walk yourself out of that shed, log on to Wikistrat, and join the party.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to think systematically about the world and its future as one big interlocking puzzle.  I mean, I spend TIME!  I can't help it; it's just how my mind thinks - as in, my first thoughts in the morning and my last ones as I drift off to sleep.  I even dream this stuff - and enjoy doing so.

But even here on the blog, with all my central data-system managing efforts, I'm constantly reduced to searching my online brain - frantically - on a regular basis to try and remember what it was that I came across that triggered this inter-connecting thought.  Simply put, the diary doesn't do it.  

But Wikistrat's model strikes me as excitingly close to the ideal: it's like this ultimately scalable space of whiteboards where I can draw out, in infinitely connecting expressions, my host of global/regional/national/sub & transnational scenarios and keep them updated, the sum intellectual effect of which is that I'm constantly prompted to think not just systematically across time but systematically across domains - i.e., not just go long but go wide.  

And I'm finding that a very pleasant sensation, like I'm working out daily and my muscle mass is building.

Yes I know this exclamation is self-serving, but as someone who's into his creativity above all else, this is what lights my engine.

Comments

[Joe Dixon]

This is a great post. Congrats on finishing WikiStrats. It always feels good to finish a mammoth project like this. (The closest I think that I have at present is finishing my undergrad dissertation, it was satisfying to drop that thing on my desk a couple of times to hear the sound it made!)

I love the Internet for the connectivity it offers, but at the same time, getting, and keeping, a handle on it all is a job in itself.

Congrats again, and I am glad that you have another online outlet, because I was sad when you said you were going to stop blogging.

[Thomas P.M. Barnett]

Not finished Joe, just one more milestone. Many more to go through Nov, over Dec and into early Jan. Launching the model mid-late Jan, along with bulletin.