A future to look forward to?

YOU WON’T NEED my personal insights to know we live in a fast-changing and very unstable and uncertain world. Nor that it makes planning for and investing in transport – along with pretty well everything else – quite a challenge.

So, I was rather impressed when the Editor and his colleagues told me a little earlier this year that they, and their friends at SYSTRA, were taking that challenge up and organising an event specifically looking at the possible scenarios for transport over the next 25 years. They even wanted to hear some of my own thoughts at the Future Transport 2050 conference, specifically those concerning how we should best approach considering ‘The future we cannot surely know’.

The session I spoke in contained three different perspectives in answer to that question, whilst the rest of the very interesting day last month explored some actual prognostications, including three possible scenarios from SYSTRA’s own futurists and the thoughts from Professor Marcus Enoch who has just written a book on this very subject entitled Roads Not Yet Travelled.

My take on how we might usefully approach an uncertain future, came in three parts, with all of my points, such as they were, illustrated by references to movies and other cultural, social or political prompts.

It’s fascinating to explore how future visions have changed over time

I led with my belief that we need to approach the uncertain future with an acceptance of uncertainty itself, as an unavoidable reality. This reflects my view that almost the worst thing we can do is to try and create or postulate or wish to have that certainty: to convince ourselves that it can be found in some kind of projection based on the way the past became the present, or can be mapped out by the best brains, cleverest thinkers, forecasters, seers or mystics. Or even scientists. I admit that the siren song of certainty (or misplaced belief in the minds of the so-called visionaries amongst us) is often both comforting and alluring; but it is likely to be misleading and to create a false sense of security. Sometimes, perhaps, a false sense of insecurity, such as when we’re told we’re in the grip of nameless dark forces beyond our control.

Film-makers have tended to mix robots and exciting technology in their visions of the future

Alongside the well-known idea that the only constant in life is change, I would place the notion that there’s nothing so certain as uncertainty. So, in presenting my case on this matter, I ask you to ponder for a moment on just how many historic predictions about the future that you know of, have actually come to pass. Transport-related or otherwise.

Here I knew I could have a little fun in my favourite stamping ground of popular culture, particularly the world of writers, film-makers and TV.

For example, in 1985, Michael Zemekis thought it entirely reasonable to set the future of Back to the Future in 2015. That future featured flying cars and hoverboards that could actually hover. In the same way, in 1984, the replicant-filled future that Ridley Scott envisaged in Bladerunner was one in which vast numbers of humans lived ‘off world’ and flying cars were also common. His future arrival date was 2019. It is a familiar trope. We could equally examine George Orwell’s 1949 vision of 1984, and although his concept of Big Brother did have a measure of prescience, he missed the fact that we’d soon willingly give away the details of our lives (to Meta and the like) and not need to have them extracted from us. There’s also Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 (based on his 1951 short story The Sentinel), as impressively interpreted in 1968 by Stanley Kubrick.

These film directors, and their authors/screenwriters, are, of course, neither genuine futurologists nor experts on future travel trends. Nevertheless, and bearing in mind that they could have set their movies at almost any future date, the fact that they all thought that 30 or 40 years was quite enough time for flying cars to become the norm, or the tyrannical state to takeover, or for humans to be colonising the galaxy is, I think, a warning to us to take lightly any predictions that, for example, fully autonomous vehicles will be a routine part of our everyday experience in anything like the foreseeable future.

As for what these creatives did not foresee, I’m especially fascinated that the idea of mobile devices like the ones that have become so commonplace today just didn’t grab the imagination of even minds like Clarke or Kubrick, or those behind Star Trek or other similar Sci Fi stories. You’ll look in vain in all the movies made prior to the actual arrival of smart phones, for anything looking like, or with the data and visual information transfer capability of, those things we all take for granted today. Back to the Future’s Marty McFly still had to use a phone booth (albeit with video capability) to make a call in 2015.

And the popular culture of Victorian and Edwardian times – though imaginative in many ways – had no concept of television, international passenger air travel networks, or thermonuclear weapons. One of my favourite lines from Blackadder is this from the third series, set during the late eighteenth century: “There’s a fellow called George Stephenson who’s invented a moving kettle and wants someone to help with the marketing”. Sums it up our problem with envisaging the future rather neatly, I think.

In fact, a logical conclusion is that the human mind conceives of ‘progress’ on a rolling, compound basis, where each hitherto unimagined technological ‘breakthrough’ opens the door to another. What we find more difficult is to re-conceive the whole journey destination into somewhere that’s almost unrecognisably different from where we are now. It’s possible that something like the internal combustion engine was envisaged by some, but no-one foresaw how the private motor vehicle would come to dominate our lifestyles, our society, and our individual and corporate destinies in the way it has.

Against this background, we have to somehow sift through all the predictions and imaginings, whether from vested interests, hubristic tech guys, or non-aligned but starry-eyed folk carried along by the prospect of an exciting future, for their likelihood, desirability and potential downsides. Things that should always be tested, rather than swallowed whole.

In this regard, let me refer you again to 1958’s Magic Highway USA, a Disney TV show that I urge you find on YouTube and watch. If you’re a transport nerd, I contend it’ll be one of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking 49 minutes you’ll spend this summer.

Towards the end, Walt himself enters the frame to introduce some crazy ideas about the future of motoring that members of the public sent in, and which his artists turned into simple cartoons. He then changes his tone of voice, sounding more serious and portentous, and tells us that “But there are highway experts, men of vision, who try to predict more seriously what the highway of the future will be like. So now, let’s take a realistic look at the road ahead and what tomorrow’s motorist can expect in the years to come.”

What follows is nine minutes of much more sophisticated cartoons, with Walt now describing a variety of far from ‘realistic’ predicted future highway-based innovations, most of which have been proved by the intervening 65+ years to be just as crazy as those suggested by ordinary punters.

Yes, it may well be true that “The shape of our cities will change as expanded highway transportation decentralises our population centres into vast urban areas”, but that hasn’t been a good thing for humanity or the planet – and arguably didn’t need to happen.

Some visionary movies (clockwise from top left) Things To Come; Bicentennial Man;
Metropolis; and Interstellar

It’s the very certainty with which Walt asserted that “Such visionary ideas, which today seem sheer fantasy, will be commonplace to future generations” that ought to put us on our guard. The more so when one of these ideas was that “There will be miles of tubular highways in the sky”. Irrespective of likelihood, why this might be a good or worthwhile thing is not explored.

In fairness to Walt, he didn’t say precisely when in the future these ‘experts, men of vision’ foresaw their predictions coming true. At any rate, we’re still waiting for most of them to be realised, and I hope the world has to keep on waiting, because a number of these visions are highly dystopian.

Talking about the reliability of ‘expert’ predictions, let’s go on to reflect on former cabinet miniser Michael Gove’s infamous and – by some – much derided 2016, Brexit-related statement that “I think the people of this country have had enough of ‘experts’ from organisations with acronyms saying that know what is best, and getting it consistently wrong”.

Most professionals I know express dismay or disgust with this statement. But, when they do so, they’re typically referring to the first part of it, not also to the words that follow ‘experts’. But the second part is critical to a proper understanding of what Gove was saying, which was essentially, “People are fed up with being told what to do by so-called experts whose pronouncements and predictions are so often found to be nonsense”. And often self-serving too.

This, in turn, brings to mind something that I recall Francis Wheen writing in his 2004 book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: “Guru is usually a word used by people too stupid to spell Charlatan”, he said. Indeed, as I recall it, the whole book was a distressingly long list of stories about how so-called experts had proved to be unreliable humbugs. One of those stories was about the Enron scandal which, was the sole focus of another book published in 2004. This was entitled, with irony, The Smartest Guys in the Room, and later made into a documentary movie.

“Guru is usually a word used by people too stupid to spell Charlatan”, said Francis Wheen in his book exploring stories about ‘experts’ who led to calamity – including the Enron scandal, as described in the book (right)

Beware any guys who say they’re the smartest. Treat any ‘expert’ predictions with appropriate scrutiny, and even scepticism. And, as Public Enemy warned us in 1988, Don’t Believe the Hype.

In facing the future, we need to deal with the fact of uncertainty, not wish it away. The Temptations may not have been strictly correct in describing the world as a Ball of Confusion, but it is certainly inherently complex, and we would do well to approach the future with our eyes wide open, not with the blinkers of unjustified hope strapped to the sides of our heads.

Movies in the Twenties like Metropolis and Things To Come tended to project ideas of the world in 30 or 40 years time. In the 50s, there were more concerns about near-term immediate impacts of technological, geopolitical and environmental disasters like that in The Day The Earth Caught Fire

By the same token, we must surely keep a very firm gaze on what amazing and wonderful concepts and creations are being developed to solve all our problems and fill our lives with delights, and perhaps ask some awkward questions about how things might really play out. To scan for the downsides, and perhaps most pertinently of all, study who the real winners and the losers will be, both for us individually, and the shape of society as a whole.

AI, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, social media, cheap flights, and ‘a connected society’ all have upsides, and it is those that are most heavily marketed, of course. But what are we blithely or unconsciously giving away for what we’re getting? And how do the short-term benefits for individuals compare with what these things mean for society in the long term?

With all the above in mind, and not least because it helps enormously in giving us solid ground to stand on amid the otherwise shifting sands of the future, my second answer to the question ‘How should we best approach an uncertain future?’ was that we should approach it with a ruthless focus on the outcomes we want, and the ones we don’t. And that really means focusing on how ‘we’, not the unknown or unknowable ‘they’, determine where we want to end up.

To do this we need real clarity about what it is we’re trying to achieve, and to avoid being distracted by what tools are or may become at our disposal; or by ‘the latest thing’; or indeed by the ‘experts’ who scorn our idealism or belittle our simplistic aspirations, and thus distract us from achieving our outcomes.

If we neglect to focus on any of these, the real danger is that our eyes shift away from the prize of the future we consider to be desirable and necessary. We might, for example, find ourselves encouraged to embrace ‘exciting’ new technology as the solutions to problems we didn’t know we had, and may indeed not have. The very exciting-ness of new technology doesn’t mean we need it, and if we aren’t rigorous in asking, ‘What, that is good or necessary, will this actually help us achieve?’, we could inadvertently allow the ends to be shaped by the means, when it should be the other way around.

In this regard, and in no small part triggered by Walt’s blithe assumption that his ‘highway experts’ would necessarily be men, not women, of vision, I referred in my talk at the Future 2050 event to the perceptive and significant 1970 report that was written by a woman (Evelyn Sharp, a senior Civil Servant ) for a woman (Barbara Castle, who was to the Minister of Transport ). Entitled ‘Transport Planning: the Men for the Job’, this report made what amounted to a plea for the full and effective integration of Transport and land use planning.

2001: A warning about the coming era of artificial intelligence

As Lady (later Baroness) Sharp wrote, “Land use and transport planning are inseparable; and… I feel sure that the people engaged in transport planning should be interchangeable with those engaged in land use planning; and… be members of a single society in which all can meet to discuss their common problems. I am well aware of the difficulties in this… but I believe that unless it is done planning will not be adequately served.”

Here was real insight, and an early recognition that how were doing things was not up to the task of achieving what we need. Sadly, 55 years later, other than a comparatively brief period of hope starting the late 90s when John Prescott held the ministerial reins of power in both of these planning dimensions, what evidently and unequivocally needed then and needs now to be done – joined-up land use and transport planning – still has not been.

Real integration, not just within transport, but between it and land use, is an absolute essential if a wide range and large number of stated policy outcomes are to be achieved. Might I still hope that the forthcoming (or at least promised) Integrated National Transport Strategy embodies this outward expression, and doesn’t just explore transport’s own navel? Well, as the Editor pointed out in the previous issue, so much of this government’s transport policy has already been written in support of a range of missions from which we have not been invited to demur, from the primacy of economic growth to the celebration of new technology in – apparently – making our lives better.

In that vein, I might additionally refer to the Editor’s comment regarding our Prime Minister’s excited adulation of the decision by Amazon to invest some £40billion in the warehouses and technologies for achieving the nirvana of providing us all with the capacity for buying and receiving a limitless bounty of on-line purchases dropped on our doorsteps within moments of placing the order for them.

This seems to me another example of the Government getting more deeply into a mess over what it thinks (or chooses to think) is the kind of future we all want; over the idea that economic growth (of a certain kind) is an untrammelled and unarguable wonder, and will largely be achieved by ‘visionary’ entrepreneurs and investors we should count ourselves fortunate to have bless our land.

In so much of the current rhetoric from government, there is, to me, an absence of shared endeavour; of us all being invited and enabled to participate, in some meaningful way, in shaping what lies ahead.

And so, the third part of my answer at the Future 2050 event was that we need to approach the future with a commitment to collaboration, not least in considering, and then defining, our preferred vision and outcomes.

This idea naturally follows from the importance of seeing land use and transport planning as a unified task. Because, if transport planning and provision is truly to be – as we assert that it is – the means of achieving greater good, not a good in itself, then there is surely an inescapable need to collaborate with others who have complimentary parts to play, and a real stake in achieving those greater goals.

It’s not just that to say “Here’s my transport scheme, I hope it may be of use to you” would plainly be ludicrous. It’s that it would be the height of arrogance to assume that the value of our transport initiatives and proposals will not be significantly increased by working closely with and/or engaging well with others who have professional or personal skin in the game, or perhaps a perspective based on different insights than ours.

So together, the three facets of my answer to the question “How might we usefully approach an uncertain future?” have added up to an attempt to enable us to navigate our way towards the unknown with sufficient confidence that we will not go horribly wrong, nor lose our sense of purpose, and to encourage us to be both fleet of foot and sharp of mind in our approach to what lies ahead.

This means, firstly, getting comfortable with the idea that there’s no simple, straight path to the future we wish for, and being wary of the blandishments of anyone saying, in effect, “Come this way. It’s simple and clear. Stick with me and you can’t go wrong”.

Secondly, it means having a clear, shared idea of the what the desirable future we’re hopefully heading for looks like. This will prove enormously helpful as we inevitably find it necessary to swerve first this way, then another, and then to have to clamber over a barrier that suddenly pops up, seemingly from out of nowhere.

And thirdly, it means seeking out fellow travellers to share the journey with. Each person has something of value to bring, and will help us to keep heading in broadly the right direction, together.

As you may recall, I mentioned in my last piece that the Clash’s Joe Strummer is credited with having said something he never actually did (in so many words): “The Future is Unwritten”. Rather than letting that worry you, and rather than hoping it were already written or that someone else would write the future for us, why not pitch in yourself and help write it?

Everything we do, all the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ and ‘whens’, must be determined according to an unwavering commitment to the ultimate goals we need to have set ourselves. The moment the delivery of outputs (like ‘growth’ or 1.5 million homes) obscures those overall outcomes (like, perhaps, a contented, healthy population living in a free, safe and fair society) is the point at which we lose what little control we can have over our future.