Stories of the Future: Telling Scenarios

Scenarios Stories about futures• Event and response• Creativity

• Roles and times• Emergent practices

and patterns

Who am I?

• NITLE senior fellow• Social media

mainline• Future

studies

Today’s plan

1.Gamified Reality

2.The Long Great Recession

3.Past Peak Oil4.WorldBoard

Caveats are mandatory

• Each scenario can be intertwingled

• Narrative and/or complexity

• Not the only futures: climate change, boom time, new age of terror

I: Gamified Reality

Gaming extends throughout everyday life:

…literally…practically…conceptually

Very explicitly about behavior modification

Imperial gamification

Large simulations are normal

(political and

mundane)

II: The Long Great Recession

Federal funding continues

Turning Japan in the 1990s

Stagnation and decline

Decay sets in, grows

Chronic popular

discontent

Media battles

III: Past Peak Oil

“’By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,’ says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.”

Nightmare scenario

It gets worse:• No full

replacements• Population and

demand grow• Costs keep

growing

Oil is used for:• Transportation• Food fertilizer• Medicines• Plastics

Some checks

• New Saudi Arabias• Miracle science• Global recession• Climate change

disasters

Shift to any alternatives

Hoarding and panics

Security state intensifies

Walled gardens proliferate

Military adventures attract

Infrastructure breaks down

IV: WorldBoard

World of sensor nets

Back to 2010

Back to 2010

NITLEhttp://nitle.org

Technehttp://blogs.nitle.org/

NITLE prediction markets gamehttp://markets.nitle.org/

Bryan on Twitterhttp://twitter.com/BryanAlexander