Watson Lecture

"THE WORLD OF OUR GRANDCHILDREN: Visualizing Alternative Futures with the World Wide Web"

Accelerating technological change is the hallmark of the modern world, transforming life all over the globe almost unrecognizably in just a few generations. Imagine someone during the first half of the 20th Century trying to visualize the second half. Who could have foreseen that World War 2 would be followed by the widespread use of nuclear energy for peace and war, by the end of colonialism and the rise of self-determination, and by the global trauma of the Cold War? No one anticipated then the transforming cultural impact of transistor radios, broadcast television, and networked-computers leading to revolutionary changes in the workplace and in popular culture, in the status of women and non-caucasians, and in individual life styles and beliefs generally. Who could have imagined that the world population would treble, yet the global economy would grow so much faster as to begin threatening the long-term regenerative powers of Earth itself?

Likewise, for us in 1997, it is frustrating and confusing to try to visualize the faceless, uncertain and somehow threatening middle of the 21st Century, the world of our grandchildren. Widespread denial of major transformations in our future by scholars and the public alike is the common response , making our descendents ever more hostages to fate. Somehow we must find ways to collectively visualize the range of future possibilities if we are to work together effectively to avoid the worst and help realize the better.

A small Caltech group working with colleagues at RAND and at the World Resources Institute of Washington, D.C. has pioneered the "Hyperforum",a novel means for deliberative discourse about complex issues using the world wide web. Recently we demonstrated the principles of a Hyperforum using long-term global Sustainability as the topic. This novel web experiment will be illustrated and potential applications of the Hyperforum to a variety of consensus-building circumstances will be discussed.