Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge

Preparing for the Future with Scenario Technology

Limor Samimian-Darash

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781501762475
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In Uncertainty by Design Limor Samimian-Darash presents cases of the use of scenario technology in the fields of security and emergency preparedness, energy, and health by analyzing scenario narratives and practices at the National Emergency Management Authority in Israel, the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe, and the World Energy Council.

Humankind has long struggled with the uncertainty of the future, with how to foresee the future, imagine alternatives, or prepare for and guard against undesirable eventualities. Scenario—or scenario planning—emerged in recent decades to become a widespread means through which states, large corporations, and local organizations imagine and prepare for the future.

The scenario technology cases examined in Uncertainty by Design provide a useful lens through which to view contemporary efforts to engage in an overall journey of discovering the future, along with the modality of governing involved in these endeavors to face future uncertainties. Collectively, they enable us to understand in depth how scenarios express a new governing modality.

1

CHRONICITY

The Problematization of Scenario Thinking

In social scientific studies, scenarios have mostly been treated as a tool for imagining unknown futures (see, for example, Aradau and van Munster 2011; Krasmann 2015; Mathews and Barnes 2016) so that such futures might be practiced (through planning and preparations) in the present—a practice that should be distinguished from that of trying to know the future. An examination of the historical development of scenario thinking and planning, however, reveals that along with this new mode of veridiction wherein the future is enacted (Collier 2008) and which James Faubion (2019) has labeled “scenarism,” scenarios also incorporate new modes of jurisdiction and subjectivation and represent a new way of governing future uncertainty.

In this chapter, I trace the emergence of scenario planning and key shifts in how this technology has been used since its inception. I analyze two main approaches to the scenario technology—those of Herman Kahn and Pierre Wack—and contend that scenarios first emerged in the work of the former as a unique means for thinking about the future through the use of the imagination. Subsequently, in the work of the latter, changes in the ways in which scenarios are used have meant that the technology has gone beyond simply confronting an external unknown future (events) to also promote uncertainty as a mindset, a way of thinking, experiencing, and practicing.

In much of his work, Michel Foucault (1990a, 1990b; see also Rabinow and Rose 2003, xviii) sought to conduct a genealogical study of problematizations—that is, a historical investigation into how the present contingent state came about, “to show how that which is so easily taken as natural was composed into the natural-seeming thing that it is” (Koopman 2013, 129). In this chapter, I draw on Foucault’s conception of problematization to describe the history of scenario thinking and planning and to trace its emergence and evolution over time. As Foucault notes, problematization does not represent an already existing object or a newly generated object constructed by discourse. Rather, in reproblematizing, we reexamine “the ensemble of discursive and non-discursive practices that make something enter into the play of true and false and constitute it as an object of thought” (cited in Rabinow and Rose 2003, xviii). Thinking in terms of problematization in relation to this specific historical context, then, I ask how scenarios (contingently) emerged as a solution to the problem of future uncertainty.

In the light of this problematization, I show how the way in which the future was thought about had come to be seen as a problem, and how imagination and scenario thinking were promoted as a preferred solution to that problem. I suggest that scenarios emerged as a solution at a moment in time when a change was occurring in how the future was thought about and approached, and I describe how under Herman Kahn’s methodology of scenario thinking, concerns shifted from the problem of knowing the future to questions about the ways in which we think about it. Accepting the fact that one could not predict or accurately know uncertain futures, Kahn promoted the use of the imagination as a method for rendering unknown future events thinkable in the present. In Kahn’s work, scenarios would thus be used as a speculative framework, a machine to generate hitherto “unthinkable,” “unimaginable,” or unknown future events to make it possible to prepare for such events in the present.

Moving on from Kahn’s pioneering work, I then show how through the later work of scenario expert Pierre Wack, scenarios underwent a further shift in relation to uncertainty: from being a technology that accepts the uncertainty of the future as part of its reasoning to a technology that actually generates uncertainty in and through its practice. While Wack was certainly influenced by the work of Herman Kahn, in his own work scenarios went beyond accepting (an external future) uncertainty and working with it, to become a way of producing a new perception—a means of encouraging managers to use uncertainty as an approach to decision making within their organizations.¹ Put differently, in Wack’s approach, scenarios triggered a perception-changing process whose purpose was to make uncertainty a philosophical standpoint for seeing and acting in the world.

While various differences between the approaches of Herman Kahn and Pierre Wack have been highlighted previously (see, for example, Cooper 2010; Faubion 2019; O’Brien 2016; Tellmann 2009), in this chapter I show how these differences represent two different modalities of uncertainty within scenario thinking. In the first approach, scenarios emerge as a solution to the ontological problem posed by future uncertainty (working in the face of “existing” unknown futures)—a solution that endeavors to use imagination (rather than knowledge based on past information) as a form of reasoning about the future. This modality has been discussed by Faubion (2019), who describes the emergence of “scenarism” as a new mode of veridiction within a parabiopolitical form of governing. For Faubion, with its “scenaristic” rationale and “sophiology,” the parabiopolitical represents a departure from biopolitics in that it replaces the statistical problematics of the population with the scenaristic problematics of the case. Rather than seeing it just as a technique to be used in the context of emergency and preparedness, then, Faubion defined scenarism as a new mode of veridiction related to this new parabiopolitical form of governing.

In this work, I will refer to this first strand of scenario thinking (i.e., the logic described by Faubion) as Mode I scenarios. In the second approach, however, scenarios appear as a solution to an epistemological problem of certainty about the future, a way of challenging and changing fixed perceptions about the future, of re-mediating one’s perception of the world and accepting its uncertainty. In this second modality, scenarios become a way of entering into an uncertain sensibility and a particular mode of experience and practice related to and centered on the rationality of uncertainty—in other words, the scenario also becomes a way of thinking, experiencing, and practicing. I refer to this approach as Mode II scenarios.

Scenarios before Kahn

While the emergence of scenario planning is usually traced to the work of Herman Kahn during the Cold War, it is important to note that some central elements of the scenario technology had been in use within various fields and professional orientations prior to this time. Perhaps the most important of these usages, both for Herman Kahn’s work and in terms of the scenario’s historical importance more generally, involve the use of scenario-related activities in philosophical-literary works, military strategy, and theater.

Philosophical-literary works are related to scenarios in the sense that they provide concrete articulations of a future situation. Bradfield et al. (2005, 797) suggest that scenarios have been applied since early recorded history as “a tool for indirectly exploring the future of society and its institutions.” Specifically, the authors refer to the works of Plato, Thomas More, and George Orwell as examples where scenarios are used in “the form of treatises on utopias and dystopias.” While the topic is not discussed in any depth by the authors, they do suggest that such works explore possible futures in a very vivid and concrete manner.

Indeed, Plato’s Republic was not merely a fantastic story but an outline or a blueprint for an ideal future society envisioned by Plato in the context of a debate about the future of Greek society (Pappas 2004). On the more dystopian side, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was not simply a novel but also an anticipation of a possible future, as were other literary works in this genre by authors such as H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley (Claeys 2010). Utopian literary works by Sir Thomas More and his successors were attempts at political and theological critique through “not-impossible” visions (cited in Shklar 1965, 370) of developments that had not occurred in the past nor were likely to occur in the future.

Ideas from military strategic thinking—and particularly from the works of nineteenth-century Prussian military strategists Carl von Clausewitz and Helmuth von Moltke (often expressed in the form of war-game simulations)—were also key for the development of Herman Kahn’s scenario planning, as Bradfield et al. (2005) have noted. Indeed, Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War both resonates with and draws on certain ideas from Clausewitz’s On War (perhaps one of the most influential works for contemporary military strategic thinking).

Clausewitz’s work embodies the notion that in the course of war problems arise in an unpredictable fashion, making futile any attempts at exact prediction or calculation of a war’s outcomes (Beyerchen 1992). Clausewitz induces the general characteristics of war by analyzing specific historical events. For him, war is a complex phenomenon that involves considerable uncertainty as aspects of policy, politics, and society combine in multiple ways with various planning approaches and the reality of combat, as well as the psychology and decision making of individual soldiers (Paret 2007). In the more practice-oriented parts of On War, Clausewitz (1982) applies the principles he has discussed earlier in the work and uses various historical examples to consider hypothetical war scenarios.

Prussia’s military chief of staff Helmuth von Moltke incorporated similar ideas about the unpredictability and complexity of war in his writings on war planning (Holborn 1986). Such an approach was reflected in his emphasis on the need for flexible and rapidly adaptive strategies to face the uncertainties of war as well as in his delegation of tactical decision making to lower-ranking officers. But, perhaps most interestingly, it was also such an approach that drove Moltke to introduce the study of military history in military training schools (Rothenberg 1986).²

As the term scenario itself implies, this technique also draws on communication strategies that were originally developed for cinematic plot building. Although the literature on scenario planning often regards this as a mere anecdote, the Hollywood-inspired term scenario, according to John Ratcliffe (2000), was initially suggested by Leo Rosten to physicists at the American policy think tank RAND Corporation when they were searching for a concept to describe different hypothetical descriptions of satellites’ behavior. In his sociological study Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers, Rosten (1941, 313–314) distinguished the work of “movie writers,” or “scenario writers” from the traditional work of literary writers. Plot building or scenario building meant creating simple stories that allowed people to follow the plot of a production when imagery was missing. These plots were created as “mental bridges.” Later on, once sound was introduced to movies, Hollywood producers started bringing playwrights and authors into the movie industry. Their stories, however, were not suitable for the big screen: “The men new to Hollywood wrote plays, not screenplays” (Rosten 1941, 315). Action—the movement of the story—was what was most important, and it was plot builders or scenario builders who were responsible for this element in films.

In her book on Cold War nuclear civil defense, Stages of Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense, Tracy Davis (2007) uses performance theory to investigate the use of realism in emergency exercise planners’ future scenarios. According to Anne Ubersfeld, the stage space is “the point of conjunction of the symbolic and the imaginary, of the symbolism that everyone shares and the imaginary of each individual” (cited in Davis 2007, 71). As Davis explains, the stage space may or may not refer to a real or existing space that the audience recognizes. In either case, the audience always considers what is happening on stage as unreal or untrue. Nevertheless, the more the illusion on stage resembles a known reality, the less it is experienced as real because it produces more “alienation towards the spectacle,” while “the apparatus of theater” increasingly “comes into the spectator’s consciousness” (Davis 2007, 72). In theater, then, fiction and reality are combined to create a complex interaction between them in a way that affects the crowd.

To be sure, the elements discussed above are central for both the historical development and the contemporary use of scenarios. That said, in this book I discuss scenarios as a wholly formulated technique that is intellectually linked to the work of Herman Kahn and his successors.

Mode I Scenarios: From How to Know the Uncertain Future to How to Think about It

At the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War, science and technology were growing increasingly complex. Concurrently, ties between state bodies and scientists that had been facilitated during World War II were strengthened through their increasing cooperation. For both sides, the aim was to tackle changes in the shifting political environment (Bradfield et al. 2005). Accordingly, an unprecedented alliance developed between the military, the state, and science, with the United States substantially increasing its investment in scientific projects for military use in this period. This juncture of the security state and techno-scientific knowledge was soon institutionalized through new assemblages and contexts of cooperation.

In 1946, on the heels of World War II, the RAND Corporation was established, engaging primarily with the problem of future war (future conflicts and defense). RAND was created to provide scientific solutions to security problems faced by the US Air Force during the Cold War (Hounshell 1997), particularly the need to secure the future of the United States in the event of a possible nuclear war (Masco 2014). In accordance with this initial mandate, experts at RAND were mainly focused on tactical management and decision making in the security field as well as on providing technical solutions in research and development related to weapons technologies (Bradfield et al. 2005; Chermack et al. 2001). Nevertheless, soon enough, RAND experts also began working on broader strategic aspects of security policy and attempted to develop a science of warfare, with objective methods that might promise victory in a future war with the Soviet Union. A central component of these efforts was the development of a technology termed systems analysis (Hounshell 1997; Kahn and Mann 1957).

Systems analysis sought to use various calculative tools and techniques (e.g., elementary economics, linear and dynamic programming, system simulations) as well as social science research (e.g., studies of Soviet economics, warfare capabilities, and decision-making processes) to optimize the potential for victory in a future war. For example, as one of the first studies conducted with the new approach, a systems analysis of strategic bombing sought to calculate the most cost-effective way of causing damage to the enemy (Hounshell 1997). The purpose of developing and applying systems analysis was thus to create knowledge about future situations of war and the optimal forms of action in such uncertainty-ridden situations (Kahn and Mann 1957). However, despite systems analysis’s promise, RAND experts had to confront the problem of specification, which pertained to the specific circumstances under which future war might actually occur (Hounshell 1997). The questions thus became the following: What exactly should be optimized? Under what circumstances would it be necessary to carry out particular actions that required optimization? And if the future situation might change, how might we know what the optimal action would be, given that we do not know in which future we are going to act?

As a result, RAND experts were now required to decide which future situations were more probable than others. In response to this challenge, various techniques emerged that aimed to create realistic future situations in which actions would be required—namely, war-game simulations and exercises (Ghamari-Tabrizi 2005). One key approach that was developed as a way of addressing the new challenge was the Delphi technique, which was based on the assumption that bringing together a group of experts from a given field would reduce the margin of error in assessments on matters within their field of expertise. In the Delphi technique, experts were asked questions in a number of rounds and could revise their answers after reviewing the answers given by other experts (Bradfield et al. 2005; Ringland 1998; Tolon 2011). The developers of the technique believed that a quantitative synthesis of expert opinions regarding the probability of future events would provide a better prediction of the f...

Table of contents

• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Chronicity
• 2. Narrative Building
• 3. Exercising
• 4. Subjectivation
• 5. Simulations
• 6. Scenarios, Temporality, and Uncertainty
• 7. Conclusions and Critical Limitations
• Epilogue
• Notes
• References
• Index