Openness is not a clear-cut concept, but the main message rings loud and clear: this is the way of the future.  Even the line between openness and transparency is blurry. Financial assistance for a politician’s campaign should be fully transparent, but Google Street View should not have open access to everywhere – private areas are not meant for public access. Throughout Europe, Google has come to understand that American standards of privacy differ from European ones. Furthermore, open source code itself is available for all, but not everyone should take a stab at developing it.

Private people should certainly have their privacy, but are organisations entitled to the same? Despite the cover-ups and secrecy, their actions will sooner or later be discussed within a public Facebook group or on a web petition site.

Somus – open science

Funded by the Academy of Finland, Somus is a project that develops interaction between people, public administration and the media, focusing especially on the web. One of the Somus principles is open science. All of the Somus activities, from preparation to research and decision-making, are as public as feasible, considering the available project resources. Indeed, with the current tools, openness requires extra effort.

For example, anyone can comment on the weekly meetings prior or during the meeting or read draft articles from the wiki or micro journal and help develop the articles. The starting point is to share all presentation materials and research materials (such as the cleaned data for network analysis). Somus even followed the transparency method when making its Academy application on the web.

The Somus activities have been considered both as something to be encouraged and also borderline suspicious. Research colleagues suspect that someone will steal their ideas, as they are available online. Being open requires practice, but it gets easier after a while.

Guidance on open data for public administration

On 25 May, a guidebook titled Public data – introduction to opening up information sources will be published. The guidebook, written by Antti Poikola, Petri Kola and Kari A. Hintikka, is published by the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications. The goal of the guidebook is to generate discussion on whether national data sources could be opened for public use by using a state budget, and whether these data sources could provide a competitive advantage, promote civic society and also make public administration run more efficiently.

March is full of interesting topics! Note that you can still read the blog anonymously; but you can promote transparency by signing your comments!

Original Finnish blog entry by Kari A. Hintikka.

After the economic depression of the 1990s, the middle class in Finland increased its financial wealth at an amazing speed. At the same time, Finland came to have a completely new social class consisting of the rich – including even millionaires. Observing the society and comparing the indicators of consumption to those 15 years before showed foremost the importance of material appearance. As almost everyone could afford several new purses, the others had to be made aware how much I paid for my purse.

The financial improvement becomes even more amazing when we consider the fact that the growth and consumerism took place without having to take major debts. Especially the older generations have made it without debt costs. Consequently, their bank accounts should be full of money. While the average Finnish household in 2004 had approximately 128,000 euro in net property, the 55–64 age group had 204,000 euro.

Based on the figures, it is apparent that these soon fully retired generations will become an important group for defining the Finnish culture and the way of living. The currently attractive youth culture will change to the culture of the elderly, where the elderly define the leisure and consumption in the society. In the future, the culture of consumption is dictated by the elderly. This group has time, money and political influence. They have the resources and the latitude to be vain.

The working class also wants leisure time, even though the quality of working life is increasing. Equality between the sexes, the possibility to influence your own position, leadership methods, awareness of the objectives of the work, environmental concerns and self-development in work have all improved since the mid-1990s. However, this improvement is not reflected in the happiness of employees. The barometer of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy clearly shows that even though the quality of work is improving, the employees consider the meaningfulness of work becoming lower. The workers have had enough of working and are now making major decisions. Sabbatical leaves are getting longer, paternal leaves are becoming more common and the working week is being shortened to four days. The content of the work is becoming more important. There are more and more skilled idle people in the society.

Being idle and the desire for meaningfulness step up the change in consumption. Jody Turner, a trend analyst from San Francisco, has described the visible change in product planning and design as ”the new design model.” The traditional logic of consumption of have-do-be is replaced with be-do-have. Before, we defined our relationship to a product by actually using it. Now, the thought pattern emphasises identity and action. Self-expression and leading an active life defines and drives our consumption habits more and more. The tools are defined by their use. If Turner’s prediction holds true, this will be the first setback for consumption in its history. Consumption – making different functions and parts of life commercially available – has walked a glorious path of victory from utility articles and handbags to the privacy of our homes: home theatres, home spas, home wine cellars and home pool halls. The material world and recognizable signs are not going anywhere; according to Turner, the change is that we give them their meaning, not the producers.

Consumption is changing. Instead of being the final repository, the consumer will become a part of building and improving the product. Citizens want to participate, can participate and have the time for participating more and more in the design of products and services. In the race for the demanding consumer, the player who treats the citizens as smart and able individuals will prevail. Consumption is increasingly more about the designer handing over his design to the consumer, and the consumer then finalizing the product. As such, the method is not new, it is just expanding an old method for the masses. Finns consider the do-it-yourself ethos familiar; we want to renovate our own houses and build our summer cottages ourselves. This year’s youth barometer strongly shows the same trend that Turner points out. The younger generation does not look at creative hobbies as a route to occupation, nor do they consider them as production or consumption. The focus is on self-expression, creating something new, and learning new skills.

The change Turner’s product design paradigm introduces is one of the changes that emphasise identity building through action. The paradigm successfully describes the future citizen that no longer builds his or her identity on purchased products and material, but rather on the relationship with the things he or she uses and owns. It is significant that this is an empirical finding of an existing design practice. The change is radical. The old design model says that ”You have to have money in order to make money, in order to do what you love, and in order to be the person you are supposed to be”. The new model provides a far more attractive statement: ”Be who you are right now; while doing so, redefine what having means to you”.

The effort of shifting from becoming consumers to active actors appears to be both desirable and inevitable. It is a part of the megatrend of authenticity that currently draws power from the pursuit towards a sustainable lifestyle and the redefinition of consumption and work caused by the economic downturn. It seems unlikely that this freedom arrives in time and with enough power to solve the huge forthcoming problems of consumption. Global resource problems, first and foremost the climate change, are here right now. Climate scientists give the consumption change  10 to 15 years to succeed. The change will not happen with mere goodwill. The change must be accelerated with visible cooperation of incentives, regulation, additional information and better products and services. Certainly, we must put a price tag on coal, but it is not the only thing that eliminates our dependency on resources for ensuring our prosperity.

Finland got lucky in the recession of the 1990s. During recovery, the fallen production domains were instantly replaced with the booming telecommunications industry, with exponentially growing exports that lifted the Finnish national economy out of the recession. This new financial support structure was the result of several bold decisions made during the 1970s and the 1980s. With these decisions, Finnish companies and the public sector together committed to long-term development of a new domain in electronics and information technology.

For the public sector the commitment meant, for example, loosening the regulations for the industry, building new infrastructure, investing in research & development and mobilising domestic expert networks to solve the bottlenecks of the emerging technologies. Finland also actively participated in the Nordic and European standardisation work (NMT and GSM) and promoted international cooperation in technology. The highest political governance in Finland provided strong political support for developing new technologies; for example, TEKES was founded in 1983 and Finland started to purposefully increase the University education and research in electronics and information technology.

Today, we are facing a new recession and the traditional industrial domains are disintegrating. This time, there is no emerging growth industry in sight. Since the 1990s, the Finnish trade and innovation policies have focused on boosting existing old industrial domains (including telecommunications) and developing the operational frameworks of the companies. Determined and extensive investments, as the ones made in the 1970s and 1980s, for creating new business domains have not been made. Strong decisive actions for renewing the financial structure have been considered too risky and have not been made.

This strategy appeared to work out just fine, up until recently. Now the situation has changed. The globalisation of economy has reached the next stage where the traditional business industries are more and more moving their operations outside Finland. This is a worrying trend, as the closed factories and offices will not be replaced with any major investments in new domains. There are growing cracks in the economical foundation of the Finnish welfare.

There are also additional reasons for re-thinking the policies regarding economy. Among the industrialised countries, there are several good examples of successful creation of new financial support structures through the cooperation of the private and public sectors. These examples include Chilean wines, Brazilian aeroplanes and the laptop computers from Taiwan. The success stories for these countries bear similarity to the rise of the Finnish telecommunications industry; a long-term cooperation between the companies and public administration was successfully created as the different parties left no stone unturned when searching for the best possible prerequisites for local production. In addition, the countries were not afraid to take initiative and to have faith in the future. We need something similar in Finland as well.

Design is not usually brought up as a theme for foresight. Design is dismissed as a superficial phenomenon related to fashion, without any relevance in societal foresight. At the same time, companies embracing the value of design utilise their knowledge of design and fashion in their foresight work. Design is seen as a tool for expressing changes that are not seen in traditional market research, at least not in quantitative studies. Therefore, the information acquired through designers’ insights has strategic significance.

Naturally, it is apparent that companies operating in the product manufacturing business have to take a stronger interest in design and fashion than, for example, public administration. Through their output, companies affect how consumers develop their preferences and how they make their choices. Increasingly shorter cycles in fashion challenge the companies to look out for weak signals instead of statistical data. In addition to gathering information, companies change the markets by actively shaping the future themselves.

Should the participants of the National Foresight Network monitor changes in consumption? Having some governmental department list consumer trends feels a cumbersome idea. This government control should not happen. Instead, they should receive overviews to the changes in citizen consumerism. I believe that many people involved in foresight follow these signals at least from the mainstream media, if not for a specific purpose, at least for their own curiosity. Could these weak signals have a stronger role in national foresight?

The role of weak signals is challenging because, by definition, they are weak. It is impossible to tell what will come out of them. Quite possibly, nothing will come out of them. Therefore, they are a weak foundation for such decision-making that avoids taking risks. Strong investments and policies cannot be based on intuition. Some of the weak signals that the designers acknowledge are so deeply in the domain of design that they do not have a societal dimension. In addition, anything that catches the designer’s eye could be presented as a weak signal.

Weak signals may be especially important when defining the new directions after the current economical crisis. It may be worthwhile to examine new topics that do not at first appear to be related to macro economy, management models or global power balance. The factors driving the change in everyday life could carry the seed for change in the entire system.

One of the hot topics in foresight is the countryside. What will be grown on farms in the future? How will it be grown? Will the countryside remain as a place of residence? Will there be businesses? Where will the energy come from? Challenged by globalisation, the European countryside is finding its place, with agriculture being only one factor in the puzzle. Those making the decisions in regional policy bring up topics such as innovation, competitiveness and utilising local resources. They want the countryside to remain inhabited.

However, it is increasingly difficult for Finns to live in the countryside. Previously, the rural regions have provided food, resources and workforce for growing population centres. Now, the primary production industry is facing a crisis in profitability and the farming industry is suffering from lack of workforce. Migration to the metropolitan area reduces the amount of tax-paying residents with purchasing power in the countryside, resulting in the decline of municipal and commercial services. The distances for conducting everyday business and running errands are getting longer. People feel lonely and isolated. Large cities attract people with their wealth of urban attractions. In the worst case scenario, the countryside is turning into a badly kept agricultural museum.

Such problems have been on the table for years. However, traditional models for solution do not seem to take effect – the countryside continues to decline. Finding a solution for the rural municipalities to provide the necessary services for the elderly is becoming a top priority. How to obtain workforce outside the growth centres? Or should a laissez-faire policy be adopted, and the countryside allowed to decline?

With topics such as the limits of natural resources and sustainable consumption in focus, the Finnish countryside will become important for the nation and the entire world in a new way. Finland has forests, cultivated fields, minerals and fresh water – as well as space and stillness, which are rare commodities on the global level. The sustainable use of natural resources is increasingly important. Perhaps the countryside will give rise to new type of entrepreneurship and new ways of life. Perhaps there will be regions of slow life, promoting their way of life to career professionals who have burned out in the global  business game. Perhaps local food producers will bloom together with ecological consciousness. Perhaps remote working will increase.

These questions, among others, are addressed by Sitra’s countryside programme that will be launched during 2010. The preparations for the programme were started during April, 2009. Still lacking an official name, the programme focuses on systematically solving the challenges of the countryside issue by improving business, residential issues and the use of natural resources as a whole. At the same time, the programme addresses the question of the overall role of the countryside in tomorrow’s society.

In the February meeting, the steering group collected approximately 50 different change signals and categorised them into groups. A list of ten items was refined:

• Responsible choices
• The work ethos of net generation
• Leadership challenges
• Backlash
• New forms of learning
• Local cycle (ecology)
• The revolution of interaction
• Sustainable innovations
• Network fatigue
• Weakening economy as a threat to health education

The list is ordered according to the number of votes cast for individual themes in the final voting. Two first items were outside the vote, as they already act as themes for National Foresight Network workshops this spring. So, the candidates for autumn themes are leadership challenges and counteraction, which refers to, for example, globalisation counterforces, climate radicalism and the relationship between the individual and community.

Some of the themes are starting points for other actions and projects. For example, observations on local cycle are channeled to Sitra’s Countryside as a competitive resource project starting in April.

You might criticize the list for not including totally new and unforeseen phenomena. True; it does not. However, the National Foresight Network is not a downright weak signal dispenser machine but a group that is trying to make current issues more tangible. Foresight is a practical field, where people often want to look for solutions and directions for social activities.

Naturally, it is also important to identify emerging trends early enough. The National Foresight Network will continue to develop both the ways of discussing the issues as well as collecting new signals. As both of these lines of work need more people resources than the steering group holds, more citizens will be involved.

The roots of futures research are in the 1960’s, when the interest for outlining the future rose because of current environmental issues, among other things. Back then, there was a general interest to question the military rearmament and rising materialism, which could lead to the destruction of the planet. A paradigmatic change was pursued, aiming to change the foundations of the society’s activities.

This kind of futures research may have appeared too heavy a science for business and governance. Futures research is interested in looking into the future for decades at a time, whereas many actors and organisations define their strategies for two years at a time.

Foresight as a term or as a method of working came up in the 1990’s. Foresight emphasizes practicality and data applicability, and thus overlaps with planning. The risk with foresight is going so close to its subject that the future is dropped out of the picture, and only a snapshot of the situation and some defining statements are developed. Foresight activities by different sectors could also be difficult to use in other than their own specific field.

The need for systemic change poses an interesting challenge for foresight. When you take a look at the entire society and talk about change, you cannot stick to planning based on industry domains or sectors. You must have a broader and deeper view. In fact, you need to take a step back and entertain the thought of tearing down the existing models of operation. In other words, you must reach the core of the things that tie us into our current solutions. Only then things can be changed without instantly colliding with practical obstacles caused by deeply rooted conventions in management or company processes.

This need has clearly been acknowledged. Some long term scenarios have been recently produced in Finland in the name of foresight. Foresight is clearly on display. It is being discussed a lot, and foresight is a desired part of all kinds of planning. It is important to remember foresight’s close relation to futures research, so that we do not look too close.

Food and the future of food production have been discussed in, for example, the food change scenarios of Sitra’s ERA project and the Mirhami project, coordinated by the Finland Futures Research Centre. Both projects take a look to the year 2030. ERA is more focused on the challenges brought up by the climate change, while Mirhami takes a closer look at the consumption structure of food.

Mirhami will publish its results on December 10th, 2008, and the final report, Future Images of Food Consumption, will be available from the Centre’s website after the event. The scenarios from Sitra’s EVA project will be available on this website before the end of the year, and will be announced separately.

Food ethicality and ecology will become a selection criterion alongside healthiness

The discussion about the future of food will not end on these reports. Food is a central area of human welfare. The food production and consumption models have lately been carefully studied. The focus is on the ecological, ethical and health related implications of food.

Up until today, the consumer is accustomed of checking the health notes on retail packages. Now they also have to start considering their own ethical and ecological responsibilities. Combining all this requires quite a bit of mental dexterity, as different arguments sometimes contradict each other. On top of all this, consumers are driven by the taste of food - the food they buy has to be good. How can all these views fit the same plate?

However, it is not just the consumer’s responsibility. Regardless of the admittedly significant choices a single consumer can make, only the industry’s product development investments and other development actions lead to better products. The industry has to answer to the changes in food consumption. The packaging notes still count; how else can the consumer know what he is buying?

It’s our choice

What is the food like in 2030, then? The ERA programme promises vegetables and fish. Or, plain old meat, just as we are used to. Or, artificial meat and sausages born in a laboratory. It completely depends on which one of these four scenarios you read. The future is open for us to choose.