Futurist John Petersen reflects on his attendance at the World Economic Forum which was held in Davos, Switzerland in January 2001.
John L. Petersen
As the setting sun leads us across the North Atlantic toward the nation’s capital, the captain’s voice is in my ear, talking to the controllers on channel nine. We’re still at flight level 350. The sunset reflects off of the leading edge of the left wing and I’m thinking about . . . changing the world.
This is the last leg of an unusual trip. I’ve spent a week in a little Swiss ski town attending the World Economic Forum, that annual January gathering of the high and mighty. Bill Gates was there this time as were the prime minister of Japan, the presidents of who knows how many countries, and corporate chairmen, presidents, and CEO’s were, well, a dime a dozen. Not little companies either—big, multinationals dominated. Had lunch with the chairman of a major automobile manufacturer who was interested in how computer chips would grow in capability, dinner with the CEO of a global agribusiness company who was the point man for the global controversy swirling around genetic engineering of crops, and almost put together a meeting with a head of state.
In between, I discussed the problems of knowing what is true in an Internet age with the editor of probably the most influential international newspaper in the world, traded ideas with famous scientists about what intuition is, and contributed to a conversation about what community on the Web of the future might be with a famous technologist.
Not your average convention, you might say.
Why was a futurist who specializes in studying big long-range global possibilities invited to this august business and political conclave? Seems there’s a growing interest by the big-hitters of the planet (the humans, at least) in putting together a “global agenda”—some organized way of looking out at the future of the world and trying to figure out what is the best way to produce a future that works well for everyone, everywhere . . . even the poorest, lesser developed countries.
Surprised? Well, I was. I’ve heard about “Davos” for a long time and had this image of a bunch of fat cats getting together in a classy resort by themselves trying to, well, carve up the world – the environment and poor people be damned. If you were into conspiracies you could have added this outfit to the Trilateral Commission and those other secretive groups who are supposed to really run it all. Well, I didn’t get invited into any smoke-filled rooms where they were carving up things, but from the perspective of a plain old participant it really wasn’t that at all.
To begin with, I don’t remember seeing a significantly overweight person in six days. This was a pretty sleek crowd. But seriously, there was a serious concern that threaded its way through all of the sessions I attended about what the implications of all of the accelerating change going on in the world might mean for humanity. Somehow, concern about the lesser developed world, both directly from folks who raised questions, and indirectly threaded within the presentations of the speakers, was everywhere. It was addressed in one way or another from almost every direction and perspective that you can imagine: religion, technology, politics, science, and of course, economics.
Now don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of hustling going on. Only the most naÔve observer would think of Davos as a great meeting of the most enlightened people in the world. It is an economic forum, after all. The evenings, for example, were wall-to-wall parties. Seemed like every hotel had three or four going every evening. In fact, if you went to the official evening dinner program sessions (which were really quite provocative), you tended to miss out on some of the great cocktail the parties thrown by the big corporations. This was a target-rich environment if you were into networking and doing deals, a point not missed by many of the people in that little village this past last week.
But, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the legitimate issues that have been raised around the extraordinary implications of the globalization of the economy, organizations like the World Economic Forum are taking serious notice. I heard “Seattle” and the WTO mentioned as major influences driving these emerging interests on a number occasions. But these guys were not running scared. I think they were beginning to see the world in a new way – and I know professionally and from experience that mental images are the beginning of behavior change. “The Forum,” for example has stood up a Centre for a Global Agenda, headed up by the former president of Costa Rica that is dedicated to bringing together some of the best thinking available around the biggest issues confronting the planet’s future. And, I presume they’re going to try to engage their membership (the most powerful, influential, and wealthy organizations in the world) in an active initiative to implement that agenda.
If you’re wondering about the “rest of the world”, I can only tell you that non-governmental organizations and their unique effectiveness in delivering positive change to the developing world was not a foreign subject in the many discussions that I was a part of. People talked about partnerships.
Know what I think? I think I was witness to the beginning of some really big change – global change. I heard the CEOs of the largest oil companies in the world talking about their obligation to the environment and equity among humans, to say nothing about the admonitions from multiple heads of state on the same subjects. This kind of change has a very ragged leading edge and certainly not everyone is there yet, but I think something is happening. Davos for me was a leading indicator of big change.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that we humans need to rapidly evolve if we are going to be able to deal with the magnitude and character of the global problems that are with us, rapidly moving our way, and idling on the horizon. With the planet’s environmental and population trends, and the proliferation of extraordinary weapons comprising only the tip of a rapidly emerging iceberg of global “security” problems it is clear that the tools and experience that we brought with us are not equal to the magnitude of the problems. At Davos, for example, I read an article that promised that we would be cloning humans within the next year. Do you know what that means? I hope so, because I sure don’t – and I think about this stuff all the time. There are more and more of these kinds of potential future events that are global in scope, potentially very disruptive, and essentially “out of control”, that will not respond to the traditional and historical means of solution. We need a fundamental change in the way we do business – and everything else.
One could make the case that almost in Darwinian terms humanity must rapidly evolve in what our perspectives, values, and tools are. I like George Soros’ and others arguments that we must rapidly begin to balance cooperation with our historical focus on competition. To that I’d add the need to be able to see things in interconnected, systems terms. In one way or another, essentially everything is connected to everything else and the sooner we see the world in interdependent terms, the sooner the solutions to big problems will become obvious. And then there is the need to develop new tools that allow us all to view and understand these complicated issues in new, comprehensive ways. There are some new analytical information technology tools (some of which are now coming out of the intelligence community) that are beginning to make that possible. At my “think tank” we try to apply these approaches and tools to taking a long look at what might be in our collective future path.
At the end of the day, what we all really need is a new vision for the world and humanity – a common objective that anyone – whoever and wherever she or he is—could aim for and aspire to. A vision for humanity. A vision for the planet. Perhaps you could call it a “global agenda”.
So here in 13A as I look out of the window at the end of a four-hour sunset I’m wondering if this might be the beginning of something important. After all, all significant change begins with developing mental images of possible futures – normative scenarios they’re called in my business – which then inform and influence our behavior to help us reach our goals or visions.
I can tell by looking over the seat of the guy in the next row who has the navigation map running on his video screen that we’re now off the southern coast of Greenland. Not much on the radio here but position reports so I change to channel ten on the audio – the soul and blues channel. Curtis Mayfield is singing that you should “change your mind for the human race,” and that we could have a “new world born on a brand new day.” The futurist in me perks up. Sounds like a trend.
John L. Petersen is the founder and president of The Arlington Institute a Washington, DC-area “think tank” that specializes in thinking about global futures and developing pictures of what might happen for their clients: humanity, corporations, and government agencies.