Navigating Chaos: Insights from Futurists with Bob Johansen & Jamais Cascio S10E6 (136)
🔥 In a world that rewards clarity but punishes certainty, are our education systems still teaching young people to seek fixed answers instead of flexible understanding?
🔥 If technology is a cultural artifact, not just a tool, how might we design learning experiences that question what our technologies do to us—not just what they can do for us?
🎙️ Episode Summary
In this episode of the Learning Future podcast, host Louka Parry engages with futurists Jamais Cascio and Bob Johansen to explore the complexities of navigating the current chaotic landscape, framed by the BANI model. They discuss their personal learning experiences, the implications of technology on human development, and the importance of mentorship across generations. The conversation emphasizes the need for clarity in uncertain times and the role of education in fostering resilience and adaptability in students.
👤 About Jamais Cascio
One of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, Jamais Cascio explores our environment, technology, and culture to build plausible future scenarios. As Distinguished Fellow at Institute for the Future, he created the BANI framework for understanding global chaos, now in use worldwide. He works, writes, and speaks around the world on issues facing the global future.
👤 About Bob Johansen
Bob Johansen is a distinguished fellow with the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley. For almost 50 years, Bob has helped organizations around the world prepare for and shape the future, including corporations such as P&G, Walmart, United Rentals, and Hill's Pet Science, as well as major universities and nonprofits. A social scientist by training, Bob holds a BS from the University of Illinois, which he attended on a basketball scholarship, and a PhD from Northwestern University. He also has a divinity school degree from Crozer Theological Seminary, with a focus on world religions.
📘 Takeaways
Jamais is learning about book publishing and AI language models.
Bob is exploring how to frame complex phenomena in language.
BANI describes a world that is brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible.
Navigating chaos requires adaptability and resilience.
Words have power; naming phenomena can help us understand them better.
In a chaotic world, educators and students can learn together.
The future is uncertain, and we must act despite that uncertainty.
Technology can both uplift and surveil; we must be cautious.
Reverse mentoring can bridge generational gaps in knowledge.
Clarity is essential, but certainty can be brittle.
🔗 Connect and Resources Mentioned
🔗 Stay Connected with Louka Parry
For the latest learning innovation follow Louka on LinkedIn
Share your thoughts by visiting www.thelearningfuture.com
Tune in to be inspired, challenged, and reminded why love truly is at the heart of learning.
[Transcript Automated]
Louka Parry (00:01)
Well, hello everybody and welcome back to the learning future podcast. I'm of course your host, Louka Parry. And it's my absolute delight to be sitting here virtually with two wonderful thinkers and two wonderful gentlemen, Jamais Cascio and Bob Johansson. ⁓ both of them have just phenomenal backgrounds. Jamais has, ⁓ been one of foreign policy's top 100 global thinkers. He explores our environment, technology and culture to build plausible future scenarios. He's a distinguished fellow at the Institute.
for the future and he created the BANI framework for understanding global chaos now in use worldwide. We're going to talk a lot about that. We also have Bob Johansen, who is a distinguished fellow also with the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley. For almost 50 years, Bob has helped organizations. Bob, you look fantastic. know, Bob has helped organizations around the world prepare for and shape the future, including major corporations and major universities. He's a social scientist by training. He holds a BS.
from the University of Illinois, which he attended on a basketball scholarship and a PhD from Northwestern University. He has a divinity school degree from Crozer Theological Seminary with a focus on world religions. Goodness gracious me. It's wonderful to have you both here for the Learning Future podcast. Welcome.
Jamais Cascio (01:15)
Thank you.
Bob Johansen (01:16)
Thank
you.
Louka Parry (01:16)
We could go in so many different directions and I hope to. I always begin with this question because this is a podcast about education and learning and that is what is something that you are learning at this point in time and this point in your lives? maybe we might start with you.
Jamais Cascio (01:31)
well, I'm learning a couple of things at the, at the most immediate level. I am learning about the nature of book sales and book publishing, because this is the first book that I've done with a, actual serious honest to goodness publisher. And so just learning how this all works and what is done now and what's not done now. That's been, it's been fascinating, a bit overwhelming at times. ⁓
Louka Parry (01:33)
⁓ the most immediate.
So just learn.
What is done now what's not done now that's been it's been fascinating a overwhelming at time I
love that
Jamais Cascio (01:59)
Somebody has speakers and I'm hearing
my voice being echoed. of each speakers instead of instead of headphones.
Louka Parry (02:04)
That's totally fine.
Can... Is that still an issue for you?
Jamais Cascio (02:09)
And
well, let's see how it sounds. I actually can still hear my voice a little bit. And it has just that quarter second delay. Bob, you're on headphones, right?
Louka Parry (02:16)
Okay, that's fine.
Bob Johansen (02:22)
No, no, I'm not in headphones.
Louka Parry (02:24)
We've both got the short mics.
Jamais Cascio (02:25)
you have speakers?
Louka Parry (02:26)
Let's just give this one second. me mark this clip to edit this bit for me.
Bob Johansen (02:28)
Yeah, I was hearing the echo
too, Shumay.
Jamais Cascio (02:30)
Yeah, Bob's hearing it, then everyone's hearing it.
Louka Parry (02:33)
Okay, no prob-
Is that any better?
Bob Johansen (02:39)
Yeah, that sounds much better.
Jamais Cascio (02:39)
Well, let's see how it sounds now.
Louka Parry (02:41)
Much better? Great. Well, thanks.
Jamais Cascio (02:41)
Yeah, I'm not hearing my own. OK, good, good. Because it was getting distracting and so do want to take it again from the top or?
Louka Parry (02:47)
I'm glad you 100
% 100 % sure. You got to thanks for interjecting. You can't you cannot deal with that kind of feedback across a conversation and actually think deeply. It's totally fine.
Bob Johansen (02:56)
It's an
altered state of consciousness.
Louka Parry (03:01)
Yeah, that's right. One that isn't being intentionally triggered either, Bob. Brilliant. So let's just, take a mark and let's just go back from that point.
Bob Johansen (03:04)
Ha
Louka Parry (03:10)
Let's start with the first question that I always ask on this podcast. And that is, what is something that you're learning at this point in time? Shemay, let's start with you.
Jamais Cascio (03:19)
Well, actually right now a couple of things, but the one I'm focusing on is the nature of book sales and book publishing. This is my first real book by a real publisher. And so it's been a learning experience to better understand how the sausage is made as it were. Just the nature of sales and publicity and...
Louka Parry (03:30)
Congrats.
Jamais Cascio (03:43)
And the whole process, it's actually really interesting and a little bit intimidating, but I'm glad to be in the middle of it. The other thing I'm paying attention to is just what we're learning more broadly about the nature of language model AI. I just saw an article today about one of the ways there is your system now set up that can determine with about 80 % accuracy whether a social media post
Louka Parry (03:47)
Mmm.
Jamais Cascio (04:10)
has been posted by a human or an AI because AIs are too nice. ⁓ AIs are not able to post the same kind of venom that humans are. And when they're tweaked and optimized to post with venom, they just sound unnatural. They sound, they're even more detectable as AIs. So, you know, on the one hand, a very practical personal on the other is just as big conceptual. What is it about humans that make us so evil? And that, why is that specific to humans?
Louka Parry (04:16)
Mm-hmm.
It's vitriol.
Wow, that's fantastic. We'll definitely come back to that, Jermay. Bob, what about you? What's something you're learning at the moment?
Bob Johansen (04:44)
So right now I'm puzzling and trying to learn about how to describe phenomenon that are going on right now. I've done two books this year, the one with Jamais and another one on augmented leadership. And I'm working on a new book on the future of faith. And they have the one thing in common, which is these are all phenomenon that are very hard to describe in words.
And I'm trying to learn about framing, frames theory, it's been called, or framing mental models. How do we use language to describe phenomenon that are not actually able to be described fully in language, like artificial intelligence, which unfortunately, that's an awful term. The worst term I've ever studied for an emerging technology is just a very bad frame.
Louka Parry (05:29)
guess.
Bob Johansen (05:35)
Faith is another term that very hard to frame and very hard to talk about. Maybe people at faith are better at that than the rest of us. I'm not sure because they often bring in God language, which to me makes it worse. So I keep struggling with how do we take phenomenon from the future and apply language, apply models in a way that doesn't distort what we're actually trying to learn about.
Louka Parry (05:49)
Hmm.
Bob, that is so fascinating. I've applied linguistics background as a languages teacher. And, know, I remember coming across cognitive linguistics and going like, oh my goodness, how language shapes thought and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and does it shape or determine and all this fabulous kind of space, especially as we try to, all three of us and many others try to grapple with what is the future becoming or what might it become? And so I'd love to take us into the main thesis of your
Bob Johansen (06:08)
⁓ yeah.
My goodness.
you
you
Louka Parry (06:31)
work together navigating the age of chaos? First of all, why is it an age of chaos? And second, how on earth might we navigate it? You know, those seems to be two pertinent questions at this point.
Jamais Cascio (06:33)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Johansen (06:43)
you
Jamais Cascio (06:43)
Well, to answer the second part of that is we navigate it because we have to. Because otherwise we are completely adrift. Buffeted by the maelstroms. Why do I think of it as an age of chaos? The term that there are number of terms that people have used to describe what the last decade or so has felt like. ⁓ Polycrisis. Omni-shambles is one of my favorites.
Louka Parry (07:04)
I haven't heard that, that's good.
Jamais Cascio (07:06)
Metapocalypse. So all of these things that imply the breadth of the chaos. And that's actually the important part for me is that this is such a broad phenomenon. Not just widespread, but covering so many different categories. It is a condition in which we find ourselves that has
does not have historical precedent precisely because each one of the elements of it, we've studied it depth, each one of the elements of this crisis has been simulated and scenario and gamed out and examined, but always in isolation. And we're experiencing a multiplicity of dramatic phenomena that combine and reinforce each other.
Louka Parry (07:46)
Hmm.
Jamais Cascio (07:54)
What do think, Bob?
Louka Parry (07:54)
Yeah, yeah.
Bob Johansen (07:56)
Well, I think it's a, it's a framing problem we have. And one of the things we've learned at Institute for the Future, we're the longest running futures think tank in the world now. So we've been doing this a very long time. And what we've learned is if you frame the future accurately, you're able to prepare for that future and you've got a better chance of having your preferred future actually happen. If you frame the future inaccurately, you're in a hole, a very
Louka Parry (08:25)
Hmm.
Bob Johansen (08:25)
deep
hole because you're not at all prepared. And the way this book got started is I've been using the term VUCA since 9-11. And actually the term goes back to the late 1980s, know, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Jermay introduced the term Bonnie in 2018. I was sitting at the front row of the talk that he did about it. And my first reaction was, whoa, why do you need Bonnie? We've got VUCA.
Louka Parry (08:46)
Ha ha, brilliant.
Bob Johansen (08:52)
But I've realized that VUCA is no longer VUCA enough.
Louka Parry (08:58)
Wow, that's really interesting.
Jamais Cascio (09:00)
Yeah, the line I used in my talk,
in that original talk, is we eat VUCA for breakfast. It's just so much a part of our everyday experience. We swim through it.
Bob Johansen (09:06)
Ha
Yeah, but that made me feel so vulnerable in the front row. I he's trying to eat me for breakfast.
Louka Parry (09:10)
I'd love, yeah. Well, at the front row, bet it did, Bob. Well, talk about
having to shift one's mental model, or perhaps go down and look at the kind of, I love this reflection on framing in particular, right? It's not so much this kind of, I think we're always solutioneering too much. We're like, I just find that problem fixed loop. And Peter Senge, the systems thinker at MIT, just wonderful work. It's actually, you don't want the problem.
Bob Johansen (09:30)
Mm-mm, yes.
Jamais Cascio (09:32)
Mm-hmm.
Louka Parry (09:36)
fixed loop, you need to go down into the observation, the systems and structures, and eventually the mental model, and then come back up if we're to do anything strategic. And of course, we see this in our work across education systems. These are very robust institutions that have stood the test of time. And that's a good thing in some ways. But also, as this kind of converging exponential space, and I like your comment about the, you know,
Often there's this term unprecedented that's thrown around. This is an unprecedented moment. And I think sometimes there is an arrogance that we have with perhaps our nowism, which is, you we only have our current experience. We don't know really what it was like, you know, when World War II first kicked off. I'm sure it felt pretty remarkable. But this kind of convergent aspect does seem to be really new.
Jamais Cascio (10:18)
Right.
And that's actually something that's been very interesting for me because when I first wrote about Bonnie in it publicly in 2020, got an immediate response from a global audience. And in the production of this book, I reached out to a bunch of different people that I've, that have written to me and asked them, you know, what is it about Bonnie that is useful to you? What, how do you use this? And while they all had.
While they all had a variety of answers, the one that stood out and was replicated across nearly all of them was that it gave name to a phenomenon that they were afraid to describe because they felt like they might be overreacting. By giving it this name, by, you know, the words have power. It's the magic of naming. It allowed them to see this as its own phenomenon.
and not something that they were simply, again, having an overreaction to. That it is something big and different.
Louka Parry (11:22)
Mmm, beautiful.
Bob Johansen (11:23)
Right. And what
we struggled in and how this book idea got going was Jermé and I began talking about a positive Bonnie. You how could we flip this to something positive? I had done that with VUCA in my earlier books and it had volatility yields to vision, uncertainty yields to understanding, complexity yields to clarity and ambiguity yields to agility. And I found that very useful. I teach executive groups. I teach at the Army War College.
Louka Parry (11:50)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Johansen (11:50)
It's been a useful way
Louka Parry (11:51)
Right.
Bob Johansen (11:51)
to flip that concept positive. And I began asking Jamea about that. And we began a dialogue back and forth about what would constitute a positive Bonnie. And then we thought about, well, how could we get on the ground examples? And we brought in Angela Williams, who's the CEO of United Way Worldwide. Angela's on the ground with these people that are experiencing the VUCA and Bonnie.
experiencing the Bonnie world already. And we thought this would be a great way to add lots more on the ground examples because Javain are both futurists. So we're more, we're more abstract. We, we kind of live our lives future back. Angela's on the ground.
Louka Parry (12:19)
Yeah.
Yeah, living kind of present forward. Tell us, take us into into bunny a bit because most people listening to this conversation will have heard VUCA before, you know, even in the education space, it's kind of been articulated, especially the last 10 years, say. And I really like your flip as well, Bob, towards, okay, well, what's required to navigate that. But take us into bunny, like define it for us as well, because for some people, in fact, would say most listeners, they would never have come across this, this kind of conceptual frame before.
Jamais Cascio (13:00)
BANI is an acronym that comprises brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible. And these four are all, in many ways, they are much more human focused than the language of VUCA. They're very descriptive of how one feels, how this world feels.
And with brittle, I'm talking about systems and structures that look strong, you know, act strong until they hit an inflection point and then they shatter. So they seem strong until they're not. Anxious is just that feeling of dread that we all seem to have and is particularly acute among younger people. You know, this feeling that there are no good options left. Non-linearity is a term from mathematics, but I've been
using it more broadly to talk about, among other things, climate and the disproportionality, with disproportionality of power, disproportionality of inputs to outputs, lag in time. There's a whole issues around climate hysteresis and that I go into in depth in the book that helps to really reinforce the idea that we can't just assume
a straightforward cause and effect system anymore. And then incomprehensible. I initially got a lot of pushback on that because it seemed to imply that there's stuff that human mind can never understand. And that's not really what I'm talking about. Not talking about what. I'm talking about why. Why are these things happening? Why are people pushing back against doing things around climate? Why are people pushing against vaccines?
Louka Parry (14:18)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Jamais Cascio (14:43)
Some
Louka Parry (14:43)
Mmm.
Jamais Cascio (14:44)
of the terms that I use to go along with it are unthinkable and absurd. And so this world really describes what it feels like to live in this present and what it will feel like for at least the next decade and probably at least two.
Louka Parry (15:01)
Mmm.
It sounds like a beautiful description. And I'm sure we just find different parts of their life or their world or the worldview that are resonant with that. guess my, I don't think it's too premature. What do we do therefore? Because the, know, in, in our work in human systems, like schools, for example, or higher education, that we really are trying to empower people to be creators of their own future rather than
victims of it, know, share. We talk a lot about agency, for example, in education systems, especially the progressive ones at this point, we still talk a lot about academic achievement, which I would say is a subset of the skills that we all need to thrive. But yeah, what do we, what do we do? What do we do now? They have this kind of, I would say quite visceral reaction to this moment, which sometimes can feel a bit, you know, paralyzing at the same, at the same time.
Bob Johansen (15:50)
Hmm, for sure. And what we've done in the book is to draw people in to the concept and basically to ground them to set their expectations. But then we've also created a new frame, which is the positive Bonnie frame. And this is one that Jamais and I worked back and forth on for months to come up with. But it boils down to in a brittle world, you've got to be bendable with resilient clarity.
Louka Parry (16:11)
Mm.
Uh-huh.
Bob Johansen (16:19)
resilient clarity, and you can't have certainty. You can't have certainty. In an anxious world, you've got to be attentive with kindness and active empathy. And I don't know if you've seen this book just came out last week ⁓ and is already the number one, yeah, the number one seller in America right now on Amazon called Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway. But it particularly talks about
Louka Parry (16:34)
I love Proff G. Yeah, Scott Galloway. Fantastic stuff.
Bob Johansen (16:46)
the difficulties of being a boy or a young man in the United States right now. But it applies, I think, more broadly. So it really requires a kind of attention and an active empathy, a kindness, a community sense. It's such an angry time. You know, it's such an angry time right now. Then with with a non.
Jamais Cascio (17:02)
Right.
Louka Parry (17:02)
that's so true. Yeah.
Jamais Cascio (17:05)
I bring up,
when we've talked about this, I bring up, my wife has a t-shirt that I love, and I always quote for this. It's a t-shirt that says, in a world where you can be anything, be kind. And it so beautifully encapsulates the point we're trying to make. But please, go on.
Louka Parry (17:18)
Yeah.
Bob Johansen (17:18)
nice.
Yeah,
yeah, and it'd be nice to put on the back of the shirt in a world like that, why be angry? know, there's just so, I mean, there's reasons to be upset, but to be angry, especially kind of angry at specific people or revenge, know, revenge is such a ⁓ big motivator and such a dangerous one. In a nonlinear world,
Louka Parry (17:24)
That's a point.
Jamais Cascio (17:29)
Yeah.
Bob Johansen (17:47)
You want to be neuro-flexible, basically teach your brain new tricks. And improv comes in here. Luckily, we've got all these wonderful methods of improv that come from comedy. We work with Second City, for example. They've got a corporate improv group now, theatrical improv, yes and kind of improv for conflict resolution. Improv is a kind of melody of hope, where you're
kind of reaching out yes and and embracing that future in a hopeful way. And finally, in an incomprehensible world, you want to be interconnected to as many different important points of view as possible. And you got to be really careful, really careful about labels and about categories. They're really dangerous in the Bonnie future. So.
And you know, kind of big takeaway, the underline is the Bonnie future is going to reward clarity, but punish, punish certainty, because certainty just won't be scalable. And certainty is brittle and brittle breaks.
Louka Parry (18:50)
gosh, there's some good stuff in that. can just, you know, it just, does feel like a bit of a collective breath out as you think about some of those, those aspects, a melody of hope. I just find that just absolutely wonderful. And I'm also a trained drama teacher. So for me, it's just, you're speaking my language, right? You know, you know, even the kind of how does one adapt? How does one meet the moment? How does one sense make and respond? Even quality of attention.
Bob Johansen (18:57)
you
nice. OK. That's great.
Louka Parry (19:17)
I really do. think it's a Simone Will quote, you know, the end at the end of our lives, they will have been what we paid attention to. And I think we just take a few step back and take a look at if we will audit our lives in terms of what we're paying attention to, how much of that is sacred and how much of that is profane. It's just this really interesting moment, you know, the kind of de sanctification of everything that the zombification of the human spirit is something that I'm quite concerned with.
Bob Johansen (19:24)
Yes.
Louka Parry (19:44)
And just for your information here in Australia, we're the first country to try to put a social media ban in place up to the age 16. Denmark is following suit. It's going to be imperfect, but there's an interesting moment.
Bob Johansen (19:55)
Yeah, I think it's really interesting. It's
really a question of whether that strategy will work though. That's a very heavy handed strategy. And I think the question is, how do we engage and motivate and essentially draw people in? You I grew up with social media. So I had an internet identity in 1972 when it was called the ARPANET. You know, I was one of the first humans.
Louka Parry (20:20)
Wow, that's amazing.
Bob Johansen (20:22)
to communicate through
the ARPANET. And I was so optimistic about it, about, gee, this is a great way to connect people. This is a gift economy before it was a market economy. And it was a friendly, humanistic community before it was an angry one. So how do we capture those good things about all this connectivity? And how do we try to discourage or kind of...
Louka Parry (20:29)
Mm.
Jamais Cascio (20:39)
Yeah.
Bob Johansen (20:51)
get around all of the negatives. I don't think prohibition is the way, but I don't know what the way is. That's the challenge.
Louka Parry (20:59)
I'd love, it's just while we're in this context, some of your reflections on the role of technology on human development. It is one of the biggest questions that we find in our work, the mobile phone. And I agree with you, Bob, that these technologies, they came in with remarkable potentials. And I think the market forces have somewhat driven them into attention extraction. I think, it's probably, it's debatable, but.
Bob Johansen (21:10)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Louka Parry (21:25)
If you look at the Centre for Humane Technology, think they have a strongly held view on this. Professor Jonathan Hyatt has been quite influential for us in Australia also with his anxious generation work, which again has its criticism as it should. But what do you think we should do? Even like a learning environment of the future, for the future, what might that look like? What are the principles that need to underpin it considering we've kind of detailed out this BANI positive response?
Bob Johansen (21:33)
Yes.
Jamais Cascio (21:35)
Hmm.
Bob Johansen (21:53)
Shabeh, you want to start?
Jamais Cascio (21:54)
As something I said to Bob before we started, ⁓ sometimes it's hard not to come up with a sarcastic response.
Louka Parry (22:00)
Well, you can also do that. That's fine. You know, the paradox of it all.
Jamais Cascio (22:02)
Heh.
The.
I do agree that that prohibition is a heavy-handed approach, but we're in a moment where so many of the tools that we have devised have, well, dual use is a term out of international politics, dual use technologies, things that have both civilian and military applications. But here we're talking about things that have both,
Well, both positive bunny and negative bunny applications. you know, social media is an excellent example of that. It's a technology or technological milieu that, uh, um, had, was seen from the outset. I I was, I wasn't quite on quite as early as Bob, but I was in the early eighties on the internet in the early eighties. And so I watched, watched the web grow up. And one of the things that we were so hopeful for.
Bob Johansen (22:51)
Mm-hmm.
Jamais Cascio (22:54)
was the way that it would give, the internet would give marginalized people a voice. And in many ways, the canonical example is a gay kid in a small town in Kansas suddenly having a community that he could communicate with. And that was great, and that happens. And that's a really important value of the internet and of social media. We kind of forgot that
The bad people that we've marginalized also get a voice. And we didn't really think through how do we deal with that. One of the things that when I give, I've given talks about just technology in general and the technology broadly conceived. Technology is a cultural artifact. It emerges from our culture and our societies. And we always have, when we think about a new technology, we need to think how will this
Bob Johansen (23:30)
Yes.
Jamais Cascio (23:48)
not just how this can be used to lift us up, but how could it be abused? How could it be used? How will people use this to make money? How can they use this to commit crimes? How can they use this to have sex? mean, it's what are the ways that these technology can be used in ways that the designers never intended? And that's not necessarily a moral question. It's really a, we have to think broadly.
If you think much more broadly about what our technologies can do. so one of the things that I've been pushing for in in conversations I've had around education is really comes down to trying to understand technological developments in a cultural context. You know, not just how do you use this, this new toy? How do you use this new device? But really what does this device mean? Where does it come from? What might it do to us?
Bob Johansen (24:30)
Yes.
Jamais Cascio (24:41)
How will this affect relationships? And that's a really good starting question. How will this affect relationships? And I think that's going to be a really difficult topic to cover, in part because, as you mentioned, market forces really push us away from thinking about these technologies as cultural devices, and much more into thinking about them as
Louka Parry (24:52)
Hmm.
Jamais Cascio (25:05)
Well, either money-making or money-consuming devices.
Bob Johansen (25:10)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think just to think about where we are right now and these challenges we're facing, it's very tempting, I think, to say, we need guardrails or we need prohibition up to a certain age. And I'm not unsympathetic to that. I think Jonathan Haidt's book and I think the new Scott Gallery book, both of whom are arguing for something similar, they're very thoughtful. So I think the conversation is well worth having.
Louka Parry (25:10)
Mmm. Pop.
Bob Johansen (25:37)
But the metaphor we use instead of guardrails, the metaphor we use is bounce ropes, like around a wrestling ring or a boxing ring. So ⁓ those bounce ropes have four stanchions, and the four stanchions are the things you're non-negotiable about. Those don't move. But in the middle, there's bounce ropes that allow for flexibility and experimentation. And with young people,
Louka Parry (25:45)
interesting. Yeah.
Bob Johansen (26:02)
they're going to grow up as digital natives or it's not just digital natives now it's cross reality natives or AI natives or where they're really going to grow up with this tech. And there are positives about that. There's dramatic positives. So for example, those kids that play the right games, that play the right games, they're going to be able to model the future better than any of us, better than any of us. Those kids that are,
prohibited from doing anything are going to be starting behind of the gamers. You know, do you really want that? Do you really want your smartest kids to bail instead of to learn the humanistic part? But you do it within the frame of bounce ropes, you know, where you you and this is this is difficult teaching because it's really hard. It's much easier to just outlaw stuff and create guardrails than it is to create bounce ropes because the teachers have to.
Louka Parry (26:36)
Hmm. Hmm.
Bob Johansen (27:00)
actively involved in the learning with the kids and they've got to learn the stuff first and there's a real sense in which we as elders and and I'm older than the two of you but your elders too compared to the kids who are growing up digital they've got competitive advantage over us unless we take it away from them you know so so how do you engage with this it it's not easy it's not easy
Louka Parry (27:21)
Yes, interesting.
Bob Johansen (27:26)
But there's no simple solution to this. And another thing Jamea and I learned in our work with our publisher, our publisher keeps telling us, write a one idea book. That's what's selling. The one idea books are what's selling. It's kind of what's the one idea, Rambani. We didn't want to do that because there isn't a one idea solution.
Louka Parry (27:26)
Mmm.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, I think there's something really interesting about, I don't know the, first of all, I love the bounce rope metaphor. That's just such a more powerful way of understanding, you know, I often reflect that as human beings, we're not spreadsheets, we're Venn diagrams, you know, and we're likely kind of adaptive Venn diagrams, saying that I say all the time, because there's something about that we try to somehow compartmentalize, categorize, label.
Bob Johansen (28:03)
Mm, yeah. Yeah, I like that.
Louka Parry (28:11)
And then become calcified if we're not careful into that understanding of what the human spirit is or the human capability, or even the knowledge set or know how. So I find that, yeah, I find that a really wonderful way of thinking about how we interact with these technologies. And of course, I like, know, Jermay, your reflection is technology really is a cultural artifact. You know, it's always coming out of a particular moment in time. It fires the technology. It's all technology.
But the question is, again, how are we deploying this? How is this, and I know this is too simplistic, but how is this in service of an individuation process that helps me serve the collective more powerfully, or how is it countering that? And in some ways, I think, I even have my own reflections on user-centered design, which is if we remove all the pain points from a human being's life, eventually, what does it mean to even be human?
Jamais Cascio (28:39)
Mm-hmm.
Bob Johansen (28:46)
Mm.
Jamais Cascio (28:48)
Right.
Louka Parry (29:02)
You know, I think in some ways it started in a really well intent, well, very well intended. And now I think what we see is that I definitely see like, you know, rising mental health challenges across our young people and you go, well, put them into nature. That probably is the best teacher. You know what mean? In some ways, you know, I have a question as well. haven't covered it. Jermay, you go first and then I'll respond. No, Yes.
Bob Johansen (29:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
Jamais Cascio (29:13)
One of the things that... ⁓
Bob Johansen (29:18)
you
Jamais Cascio (29:20)
One of the things that, sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say very quickly that one of the things that always
impressed me about Institute for the Future when I first started doing projects with them, what, 15, 20 years ago, is that a significant plurality of people who work at the Institute have an anthropology or sociology background. These are people who are not coming in, there are some people who come in with a technology focus.
Louka Parry (29:31)
Yes.
Interesting.
Jamais Cascio (29:47)
But by and large, a lot of the people at the Institute come in with a human and an understanding of human culture and society approach to thinking about the future. And that really impressed me. Not just because one of my undergrad degrees is anthropology, but yeah.
Louka Parry (29:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, that I...
Well,
Bob Johansen (30:04)
Yeah.
Louka Parry (30:05)
it feels good to be among friends, but also, there is something really powerful about that. The human dynamics being centered rather than the kind of productization of something being centered perhaps. And both of course have their own merits in terms of what you're trying to do. I want to talk to you both to just briefly talk explicitly about this moment in AI. Similarly, we have a range of things happening across the world with, you know, guard railed Bob. I'm using that word explicitly now. Guard railed chat bots.
Jamais Cascio (30:10)
Mm-hmm.
Louka Parry (30:31)
that I've been built by, you know, department of education and rolled out to teachers and students. And of course it's, it's run by an LLM underneath it, but you know, it prevents certain activities and has a few safe, you know, safety aspects to it. What do you think the, where do think we're going with this whole AI aspect? And I would just note, I love the augmented intelligence frame far more Bob, thank you for that. As opposed to the artificial intelligence piece, because I just think that doesn't summarize the use cases that we're seeing emerge.
Bob Johansen (30:54)
You're welcome.
Louka Parry (31:01)
So what's your reflection right now in terms of this moment? know, 2020, by the way, this would be out of date in one week, but that's okay. We'll have a
Bob Johansen (31:01)
Hmm.
Jamais Cascio (31:05)
You take the-
Bob Johansen (31:08)
you
Jamais Cascio (31:09)
You go first on this one, Bob.
Bob Johansen (31:11)
Okay, because Jame and I have had lots of dialogues about this and we have different views on it. But I think both are valid in a way. I've learned a lot from Jame about this. I've been experimenting with ChatGBT for a couple of years now. I write books and I give talks and I do custom forecasts and I realize it's specific to me, but I've nicknamed my version a customized version stretch because I'm using it.
Louka Parry (31:16)
Hmm, interesting.
Bob Johansen (31:37)
to stretch my thinking and that's all I'm using it for. I don't trust it. I never use it at the end of a project. I never check citations with it, for example. It's always at the front. But it's also always on. So my forecast is that 10 years from now we'll all be augmented. And we chose to dedicate the book I did on augmented learning, we chose to dedicate it to Doug Engelbart, the guy who coined the term.
Augmentation and he was arguing with the AI people at the time that augmented intelligence was a better frame Than artificial intelligence and I think he was right So I think now if you think future back as I do as a futurist We're all going to be augmented in some way ten years from now. It's just a question of how So I'm prototyping my way to that with stretch
Jamais Cascio (32:25)
Right.
Bob Johansen (32:29)
And I'm and I'm learning a lot. ⁓ I just saw the prototype last week from Apple of a lamp That is sitting by your side that I hope will replace stretch soon and it's like a lamp that moves in humanoid ways Kind of cocks its head if it's wondering and then it can turn around and project so it can be voice or text communication back and forth
but it doesn't pretend it to human. You'd never think of the lamp as a human. It's like digital plus a bit of humanoid, where I think a lot of the current conversation is human minus, which we've got a long way to go to simulate a human. And so much of today's LLM stuff is all about efficiency. And that's fine if you want to do it. I'm interested in effectiveness, know, doing the right things.
Louka Parry (32:59)
Yeah.
Yes.
yeah.
Bob Johansen (33:20)
So I think that's where it's going to go. It's going to be more conversational and less like a question and answer jukebox.
Louka Parry (33:30)
Yeah, brilliant. Fascinating. Jermay, what about your view? Where do you differ from that, if there is a difference?
Jamais Cascio (33:37)
Well, I don't trust LLMs, period. I don't even have one. I don't use them because I'm just so bothered by how they are constructed. The out-and-out theft of intellectual property that went into the construction of nearly all of them. The way they are designed to be obsequious.
And again, I don't want to talk about stretch if I haven't experienced stretch, and I know that's custom built for Bob. So I don't want this to sound like I'm talking about the work that he's doing. But just from my experience of them more broadly, and especially the academic articles I've read about in studies I've read, the obsequiousness is built in. These are our own personal worm tongues, if you've read your Lord of the Rings.
They are the ones who are whispering in our ears telling us what we want to hear. You know, they're designed to tell us what we want to hear, which is why we get so many problems of instructing the chat bot to do XYZ and it says, okay, I'll do so, or I won't do that. And then he turns around and does the opposite because it's trying to live up to what you want. Or what it thinks you want. And I am...
Louka Parry (34:25)
Great reference.
Jamais Cascio (34:50)
That really bugs me, and I really would hate to have a world of everyone augmented by their own whispering worm tongue. But at the same time, think Bob is absolutely correct that we will be living in a world that is increasingly augmented. It's really the question for me is how will that augmentation manifest? What will it do to communicate with us and observe us? Because one of the things that
is an unfortunate side effect of an augmented society based on the current broad categories of artificial intelligence technologies, it becomes an immediate surveillance society. If you have to have your microphone always on to listen for you to say something, it's always listening. If you have cameras built into your glasses to keep an eye on what's happening around you, they're always keeping an eye on you.
And we have learned, and this is something that is, I think, one of the hard-won lessons from the rise and fall of the web, is that one thing we've learned is that these will always be corporatized. Under our current economy and culture, these will be corporatized. such that the glasses that you wear that keep an eye on things and listen for everything, that's not just going to you.
That's being run through somebody's, somebody's digital system, somebody's bank of computers trying to extract marketing data, trying to extract political data. And that's something that, you can tell that I wrote more of the worrisome side of the book and Bob wrote more of the positive side of the book.
Louka Parry (36:23)
Hmm
It's a very good dynamic
Bob Johansen (36:32)
you
Louka Parry (36:33)
though. gets creative tension.
Jamais Cascio (36:35)
But I'm, I'm, really worry about how, how readily our technologies that we use to augment ourselves and help us as individuals and as families and communities get turned into marketing data.
Bob Johansen (36:50)
Yes. Yeah. And I'm really glad Jame has the point of view he has, and that there's the amount of work going on. I guess for me personally, I do want to be involved and I've been able to program stretch. So it isn't just telling me what I want to hear. It argues with me, but it argues with me very politely because I want it to be polite. Cause I prefer that kind of
Jamais Cascio (37:11)
You
Louka Parry (37:11)
ha
Yeah.
Bob Johansen (37:16)
know, soft on
Louka Parry (37:16)
Yeah.
Bob Johansen (37:17)
people, hard on ideas kind of interaction, but I want to be involved. So, I'm really glad there's people looking at the negative side of it, but I want to be involved because I think something's going to happen. We're going to be augmented whether we want to be or not. And I want to be involved. want to influence it.
Louka Parry (37:20)
Love that.
Jamais Cascio (37:34)
I just feel, similarly, I'm glad that there are people like Bob out there getting deeply involved in the evolution of this technology because it helps me remember that there are aspirational goals that can still be reached because of people like Bob. And so it's a mutual respect, mutual, about AI, but it's...
Bob Johansen (37:51)
You
Louka Parry (37:53)
Yes.
Bob Johansen (37:58)
Bye bye.
Jamais Cascio (37:59)
I think we came to a decent, decent compromise over the course of the book, both in terms of how we have Bob use his stretch and he makes a point in the acknowledgement to the end of emphasizing his use of it, or talking about how he uses it. And in the text of the, main text of the book, just talking about the tension and the duality of this kind of system, not just as a
Louka Parry (38:05)
Hmm
Yeah.
Yes.
Jamais Cascio (38:25)
technology, technological device, but as a participant in our community conversations.
Bob Johansen (38:33)
Yes. Yes, and I think this is also a good reflection of what good co-authors are, where you have different, you really have significantly different perspectives. And part of the co-authorship is not necessarily resolving, but at least coming to terms with those different perspectives.
Louka Parry (38:52)
There's ⁓ so much good stuff there, gentlemen. I love the creative tension, like kind of witnessing the two of you kind of go back and forth on this view, because it really does represent, you know, a both end. It's kind of a transcendent conversation. It's to include and transcend. Yes, it will be this and potentially this. I share the same concerns of, you know, surveillance capitalism that Naomi, as Naomi Klein would call it, right, or the tension economy, if we put a bit more softly.
Bob Johansen (38:58)
You
Jamais Cascio (39:14)
Mm-hmm.
Louka Parry (39:16)
but also, you know, the incredible upside that, you know, a human individual that has passion and drive can create something remarkable now. and, know, so understanding like what, what's made possible is just such a beautiful moment, I think for that. And not just what, what can we do quicker, the efficiency dividend, Bob, but how can we do the right things? And so this whole idea of the sycophant GPT models or chats that we have at the moment, think deeply problematic.
you know, because you get even your own echo chamber now, it's just an echo chamber of one versus, you know, someone challenging the way that you see the world and what that what that enables.
Jamais Cascio (39:54)
One of the points we make in the book is that efficiency is brittle. That the more you push for hyper efficient solutions, the more brittle the system becomes. Because when it works, it may work beautifully, but when it breaks, it shatters catastrophically. As we have seen, I think the computer crisis from 24, I'm suddenly blanking on the name of the...
Louka Parry (40:08)
entire thing yeah yes
Oh yeah, 18 % of the world's computers went down and all our flights were grounded. Yes, I recall. Yeah, single point of failure. Yeah.
Jamais Cascio (40:27)
Exactly. Because they
were trying to do an upgrade quickly and efficiently. And they didn't properly test it, didn't have a way to back out of it. And it was just utterly catastrophic. And it's one of those things that doesn't get talked about. It's not just that computers went down, it's where they went down. Not just for airlines, but for the National Health Service in the UK.
Louka Parry (40:41)
Such a good
Jamais Cascio (40:51)
And you think about if emergency responders and national health service systems went down, some people did not get their health care in time. People died because of this crisis. I want to really, that's one thing we try to emphasize is that there are human consequences to these kinds of efficiencies.
Louka Parry (41:01)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Jamais Cascio (41:16)
And there are human consequences to taking the steps to be resilient, to be attentive and empathetic, to be neuroflexible and improvisational, and to be interconnected and inclusive. There are positive human consequences too, and we should really be striving for those.
Louka Parry (41:27)
Mmm.
I love that. have two final questions for you both. The first is, is kind of from your lens, cause you're two fantastic futurists. I've learned so much just through this conversation. What would be a comment that you would gift educators or administrators working in schools, wherever they happen to be? You know, what's, what's a lens from what you've learned about this human aspect, Jame that you were just speaking to. That's my first question. My second question is going to be what's a singular take home message.
that you can gift us. So first, just a comment on schools. Bob, let's start with you. What's something you'd say about the kind of process of human development and growth at this moment of this BANI moment?
Bob Johansen (42:11)
Yeah,
so let me just say I really admire teachers and you all have more patience than I do. I was a college professor for a year and I just don't have the patience to do it and I really admire people who do. So all this is said with the greatest admiration. As a futurist, the suggestion I'd give to you is to ask what is it that your kids have
that you do not have? And essentially, what can you learn from your kids? Because I think the single most simple yet profound change that I recommend in big companies is cross-generational mentoring. If you can get people from different generations to work together, and hierarchies work against that, it tends to be as you rise in the ranks.
the ranks become homogeneous in terms of age. And I'd look for ways to bridge those gaps and essentially to do reverse mentoring. I really believe in reverse mentoring. I really believe in kids. So it's great that we're trying to keep kids out of trouble. But I'm also concerned with how do we learn from kids? Cause I'm convinced they know stuff we don't. And I'm really optimistic about them if they have hope.
Louka Parry (43:14)
Mmm.
Bob Johansen (43:28)
But if they don't have hope, then all those other things are looming.
Louka Parry (43:33)
Yeah, thank you, Bob.
Jamais Cascio (43:34)
I think my answer parallels Bob's in that in an age of chaos, in a chaotic world where technologies are changing so quickly, where politics is changing so quickly, where the environment is changing so quickly, there will be many situations where both the educators and the students will be learning simultaneously, learning at the same time about these new developments and lean into that.
Learn with the students. Not just, you know, not trying to get ahead of them, but actually use them as colleagues in this. And be open about, we're all learning this, this is a new thing. But also make clear where your mental framing, just step back all the way to the beginning of the conversation, where your framing comes from. Why do you think about what's happening in the ways that you do?
One of the, I mentioned in the book that as a, the term that I like best for futurism is anticipatory history. And it's, you the emphasis is on how, you know, the kinds of mental models we have around history can be, can be turned around and look forward and we can use them to look forward. And similarly in a world that's rapidly changing, being able to
Louka Parry (44:34)
Mmm, love that.
Jamais Cascio (44:51)
Use the models that you've built and explain them and help the students develop their own. That strikes me as being the perfect toolkit for a Nature of Chaos.
Louka Parry (45:03)
That's brilliant. All right, final question. A single sentence, something that you feel really kind of is resonant with something we should keep in mind as we step into this anticipatory history that we are shaping around us. What do you want to leave us with?
Bob Johansen (45:17)
So my takeaway,
yeah, my takeaway is develop your clarity, but moderate your certainty.
Jamais Cascio (45:27)
Mine is a simple one. The future is uncertain, and yet we must act.
Louka Parry (45:32)
So good. Gentlemen, it's been an absolute delight to speak with you today. Congratulations on the book, Navigating the Age of Chaos, a sense-making guide to a bany world that doesn't make sense. It's just such profound, such important work for all of us to help navigate what's around us and what we want to create. So thank you both for joining us on the Learning Future podcast.
Jamais Cascio (45:51)
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Bob Johansen (45:53)
Thank you, Louka.
