Strategic foresight practitioner Stephen McGrail and I have a new article out in the Journal of Futures Studies on Australia’s potential internet futures:
Australia’s Federal Government announced the National Broadband Network (NBN) in 2009. NBN’s current roll-out is scheduled for completion in 2021, with market forecasts estimating optical fibre overtaking DSL broadband connections in about 2015. This paper provides a timely contribution to more critical and expansive analysis of potential Australian internet futures. First, ‘schools of thought’ and current technological frames (Web 2.0, ‘the cloud’) for the internet and its possible futures are outlined, which provide perspectives on the emergence of the NBN. We then outline five generic images of the future which, as predetermined images, enable quick ‘incasting’ of alternative futures for a technology topic or related object of research: promised future, social/speculative bubble(s), unfolding disruption/chaos, unintended consequences, and co-existence/‘cooption’. High-level application of the ‘schools’ and generic images to the NBN and Australia’s potential internet futures, suggests policymakers and strategists currently consider too few perspectives.
The paper also responds to but is different from the Smart Internet 2010 (2005) report I worked on at the former Smart Internet Technology CRC. It took McGrail and I several months to get the paper published so it also has some pre-Facebook IPO comments. It is part of a JFS special issue on Australia’s contributions to the Millennium Project (McGrail has another article in the special issue on Australia’s science foresight and governance). McGrail and I have used our article’s incasting methodology in teaching technology foresight and also as a framework for potential use in investment decisions about exchange-traded funds and sector rotation. I thank Anita Kelleher, Jose Ramos, and JFS editor Tracy for their help in first commissioning and then ‘shepherding’ the article to publication.