Digital Humanities: media ecology, the future

1. Digital Humanities - Bocconi 2016 - Luca De Biase
The future
“We shape our buildings;
thereafter they shape us”.
Winston Churchill

2. The future is changing

3. Shift happens
❖ Deep Knowledge Ventures hires Vital,
an algorithm, for the board
❖ Narrative sciences writes financial
articles for Forbes with no human
involvement
❖ Watson, IBM, is better than most
physicians in reading medical analysis
❖ A self-driving car, by Alphabet
Google, has not been responsible of
any accidents after 3 millions miles on
the road (there have been 17 small
accidents caused by cars that were
driven by humans)

4. Shift happens
❖ Digital technologies have taken
most of human information
recording
❖ The web has changed a lot of
industries (music, news,
tourism, banks, and counting)
❖ But a lot more is coming

5. Shift happens
❖ Big data
❖ Robotics
❖ Nanotechnology
❖ Biotechnology
❖ Neuro-science
❖ Particle physics
❖ Additive production
❖ Artificial intelligence
❖ Collective intelligence
❖ Sharing economy
❖ Climate change
❖ Space exploration
❖ Startups
❖ Bitcoin

6. A robot suitcase which
follows you is made by the
Israeli startup NUA Robotics.
It is full of sensors, computer
vision and robotics

7. Lily is a drone that follows you
whereever you go and takes pictures
or movies about everything you do

8. Teslasuit is a virtual reality
device for full immersion
experiences

9. Nice… (sort of)

10. –Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Oxford University
“According to our estimates, about 47 percent of
total US employment is at risk”.
THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT: HOW SUSCEPTIBLE ARE JOBS TO
.COMPUTERISATION?
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

11. Edward Snowden revealed
what the Us mass surveillance
program is doing to the net

12. ❖ Are you worried about the future as a citizen, or as a
worker?
❖ Are you interested in the future to improve your
projects?
❖ Are you looking for opportunities in the context of the
Big Shift?

13. How to look ahead?

15. Forecasting is difficult,
when change is deep

16. –The Economist
“Economics is the science that studies why
its predictions didn’t work”.

17. What will happen?
❖ What we know that we don't know?
❖ What we don't know that we don't know?

18. What will happen?
❖ Are we biased by what we want?
❖ Are we biased by what we hope?
❖ Are we biased by prejudice?

19. What will happen?
❖ Do we need an understanding about the future to
improve the quality of our projects?

20. We need an epistemology
❖ Asking the Question;
❖ Scanning the World;
❖ Mapping the Possibilities;
❖ and Asking the Next Question
Jamais Cascio, futuris, Futures Thinking: The Basics
http://www.fastcompany.com/1362037/futures-thinking-basics

21. We need an epistemology
❖ Asking the Question? Make it operative, if you can
❖ Scanning the World? Make it inter-disciplinary
❖ Mapping the Possibilities? There is more than one
future (The future is what I expect. The future is better
than I expect. The future is worse than I expect. The
future is weirder than I expect)
Jamais Cascio, futuris, Futures Thinking: The Basics
http://www.fastcompany.com/1362037/futures-thinking-basics

22. We need an epistemology
❖ The Dragon - what we know that we don’t know
❖ The Black Swan - what we know doesn’t fit the theory
❖ The Mule - what we don’t know that we don’t know
Jamais Cascio, futuris, Futures Thinking: The Basics
http://www.fastcompany.com/1362037/futures-thinking-basics

23. Or we need a strategy
❖ There is no possible prediction: what’s possible is to
define a strategy to make our system anti-fragile
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan, 2007
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Home Page: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com
Two quotes form Taleb’s new book: “Rationality is avoidance of systemic ruin.”
And “Rationality is indistinguishable from precaution.”

24. What can we really say about the
future?

25. –Everybody knows that
“The future is the consequence of what we do”.

26. How we decide?

27. How we decide?
❖ Daniel Kahneman, Thinking,
Fast and Slow, Penguin, 2013

28. How we decide?
❖ We usually go with the first
idea that comes to our mind
❖ Reasoning is rare
❖ The first idea, intuition, comes
for repeated messages, deep
rooted ideas, culture, prejudice
and other things
❖ Some intuitive decisions are
made in terms of the way we
look at the future

29. ❖ We decide by intuition
❖ What we decide builds the future
❖ Sometimes there is reasoning, most of the times not
❖ The ideas we have about the future shape in some ways
our decision making
❖ The ideas we have about the future shape the future

30. The first law of future studies

31. –Institute for the Future
“There are no facts in the future, only narratives”

32. Narratives

33. Narratives
❖ Financial
❖ Technological
❖ Ecological

34. Narratives
❖ This is where humanities and
techno-science collide and
generate what we are - for now
- calling: digital humanities
❖ Both science and arts are a sort
of research in unknown
territories
❖ They just use different tools.
And they should be talking
more between each other

35. Narratives
Financial values
The only judge is the market value,
which in turn is defined by future ability
to make profits. This means, for example,
that if humans cost too much, they will
be replaced by robots. This means that if
a startup has more financial backing it
will win on every competing idea.
Because the best is the financially
healthier. The rest is secondary.

36. Narratives
Techno-progress
What works wins. There are laws in
technological progress which allow us to
understand what will happen. The
Moore’s law commands on all of them.
And it describes the future in terms of
exponential explosion of the power of
computing. Which will extend to every
digitally powered machine. Exponential
growth is inevitable. Resistance is futile.

37. Narratives
Ecological stories
Everything is interconnected.
Phenomena coevolve. There is a plurality
of life forms and the more there are the
better for the health of the environment.
Pollution happens when consumption of
resources exceeds the generation of
resources. Every species growth arrives
to its limits. Every mutation looks for its
niche. Equilibrium is in diversity.

38. Narratives create a perspective
❖ People need to choose and a narrative creates an idea of
what a choice will bring
❖ Storytelling can be a sort of manipulation of the will of
people
❖ Freedom is consciousness about the narrative we think
we live in

39. –Carlo Goldoni
“I cannot write what is true,
because if I did nobody would believe me.
Thus, I write what is likely”.

40. Narratives need to be credible
❖ If people experience a life that is defined by a narrative,
they are brought to think that the narrative is the truth
❖ If a narrative is shared by the vast majority and is not
challenged, it tends to become self-fulfilling
❖ People live in an environment which is build by its
architects with a narrative in mind

41. Future thinking readings:
❖ Al Gore, The future, WH Allen, 2013
❖ James Canton, The extreme future, Dutton, 2006
❖ Joel Garreau, Radical evolution, Broadway Books, 2005

42. Future thinking readings:
❖ Age of networked matter. http://www.iftf.org/aonm/
❖ Future visions. http://news.microsoft.com/
futurevisions/
❖ Fantascienza come racconto del futuro http://
blog.debiase.com/2016/01/15/fantascienza-come-
racconto-del-futuro/

43. Future thinking readings:
❖ FUTURES THINKING: THE BASICS
❖ http://www.fastcompany.com/1362037/futures-thinking-basics
❖ FUTURES THINKING: ASKING THE QUESTION
❖ http://www.fastcompany.com/1413317/futures-thinking-asking-question
❖ FUTURES THINKING: SCANNING THE WORLD
❖ http://www.fastcompany.com/1470137/futures-thinking-scanning-world
❖ FUTURES THINKING: A BIBLIOGRAPHY
❖ http://www.fastcompany.com/1617780/futures-thinking-bibliography

44. Future thinking readings:
❖ Future timelinehttp://futuretimeline.net
❖ How to see into the future. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/
2/3950604a-33bc-11e4-
ba62-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3zPYJLR8D
❖ CHAMP
● Comparisons are important: use relevant comparisons as a starting point;
● Historical trends can help: look at history unless you have a strong reason to expect
change;
● Average opinions: experts disagree, so find out what they think and pick a midpoint;
● Mathematical models: when model-based predictions are available, you should take
them into account;
● Predictable biases exist and can be allowed for. Don’t let your hopes influence your
forecasts, for example; don’t stubbornly cling to old forecasts in the face of news.

45. If we think the future as narratives:
❖ We don’t know the future, we just build it, by acting
now and generating consequences
❖ We act now by thinking in a way that is understandable
in terms of narratives
❖ The future is not the future of technology: it is a mix of
scientific, technological and humanistic knowledge

46. –Tom Perrault, Harvard Business Review
“But there will be a limit to how far computers can
replace humans. What can’t be replaced in any
organization imaginable in the future is precisely
what seems overlooked today: liberal arts skills,
such as creativity, empathy, listening, and vision.
These skills, not digital or technological ones, will
hold the keys to a company’s future success.”.
Digital Companies Need More Liberal Arts Majors
https://hbr.org/2016/01/digital-companies-need-more-liberal-arts-majors

47. It’s what happens in the info-sphere

48. It’s what happens in the info-sphere
❖ The info-sphere is no abstract notion: it is build of
nature, cables, platforms, information, knowledge,
networks, social relations, algorithms…
❖ The info-sphere evolves by projects and failures, visions
and experiments, startups and mega-companies,
software and hardware, power and critics.
❖ Innovation is the name of the game. And it shows some
evolutionary patterns