When we think of policies in this way, we move policy discussion from province of technocrats to the everyday realm of democratic citizens. Of course, in an IF project we’re not talking about telling the sort of detailed stories you might find in a novel or even a short story. We’re talking about providing a basic storyline for the public actions that might be taken by our society in dealing with an area of public concern. That’s what we have in mind with calling these “conceptual” policies—we’re focusing on the basic storyline, not nuanced plot details. Such a storyline might tell essentially who would do what—and why—letting us know the motivations for the actions and the thinking or values behind them.

Setting out a basic storyline like this can help to make clear the orientation our society might take toward an area of concern. A story presents for our consideration a way of being, a way of orienting ourselves to possibilities. If we think of describing policy possibilities in this way, we might find it easier to leap into the task of imagining them. And once they’ve been generated, we might also find it easier to share them with others, if we approach them as essentially different stories our society might tell.

The dangers of influence.  The Columbia Mission Management Team had members in positions of greater authority who exerted influence over the deliberations of others. In the actual working of their group, a person in a position of authority would express a strong position and then ask for others to respond. This preliminary expression of authority essentially closed off the exploration of alternative possibilities. Technically speaking, Interactivity Foundation discussion panels don’t have members with authority over others. However, some participants, perhaps by sheer force of personality or by speaking from knowledge on a given topic, can accrue authority within the group. This isn’t bad in and of itself. However, discussion panels need to be wary about the tendency of such expressions of authority to shut down or close off the group’s explorations.  It’s important for outspoken panelists to be sensitive about their behavior and how it can preemptively close off the discussions—and how this can lead a group to think poorly.

The need to embrace diversity and dissent. The Columbia Mission Management Team failed in part because they stressed the need for consensus. The group essentially started with a set conclusion—that even if there was a problem (from a missing panel during the launch), there was nothing that could be done about it (a mistaken assumption). This meant the Mission Management Team shut down contrasting points of view, since the main task was just to establish and reinforce consensus for this position. This stymied the ability of others in the group to come up contrasting possibilities of what could be done before Columbia tried to land (it broke up on re-entry). Our discussion panels similarly need to embrace dissent and divergent perspectives in order to open up their group exploration of useful and contrasting policy possibilities—regardless of whether these possibilities are perceived as a matter of popular consensus.  Further, the panels need to be careful to keep an open mind rather than starting with a preconceived limitation about what is or isn’t possible.

Of course, the life-and-death consequences of the Columbia disaster is a stark contrast to the low risk endeavor of an Interactivity Foundation sanctuary discussion project. It’s a good reminder, however, of what it takes for the groups in our projects to think well.

The Interactivity Foundation (IF) asks a different question—‘What could we do?’—in its sanctuary projects and public discussions. This is a broader question. It is a question that invites reflection rather than action. And it does not presuppose a certain mindset in which we have identified a certain issue as a problem.

We do not look for or discuss problems per se in our discussions. We explore and discuss areas of concern. Many people think that our immigration policies, for example, are now a problem that this country has to deal with. This is because they presume a conceptual framework—consisting of certain concerns, values, beliefs, and interests—in which it emerges as a problem. But human migration is a broader area of public policy concern in which immigration could be seen in either way—as a problem or not a problem at all. There are, furthermore, many other relevant and important aspects of human migration—such as suburbanization or gentrification—that may merit discussion without yet being recognized as problems.

It is true that certain areas of concern may become problems sometime in the future. But that is part of IF’s mission, namely, to approach areas of concern with a broad view over the horizon and see what could be done about them.

There are times when more practical questions—or questions of ‘should’—take sway. This is when all or at least most of us agree on a certain conceptual framework. But even here, IF provides a wider range of policy possibilities for public discussion than are usually on the table. We encourage consideration and discussion of a broad range of contrasting policy possibilities before the sky starts falling. And we think that when the sky starts falling, it is better for the public to have an opportunity to consider and choose among a wide pool of public policy possibilities.

IF’s public policy reports aspire for the same universality, permanence, and applicability as great literature and philosophy have. The possibilities for public discussion in IF’s Privacy, Anticipating Human Genetic Technology, and Regulation reports are as applicable today as they were the day they were written—and they will be applicable in the future regardless of what political party is in power or what issues we regard as problems. This is because they aspire to answer the broader question ‘What could be done?’ about their areas of concern instead of ‘What should be done?’

Playing around with these different metaphors also can serve as a kind of imaginative warm-up for generative thinking. Often it’s hard for panelists to shift from thinking analytically in terms of exploring an area of policy concern to thinking generatively in terms of creating diverse policy responses to that area of concern. By engaging their imaginations in this way, panelists might find it easier to make connections and begin to construct policy possibilities that embody divergent visions of the policy area.

One way to get panelists moving in this direction is to have them generate a list of possible metaphors or analogies that express what an area of concern could represent or mean. In some cases this might work in regard to the whole topic or area of concern under discussion. For example, with the Genetics Technology project, panelists focused on generating metaphors for these technologies. With the project on the Future of the Family, the panelists generated different metaphors for “family” or what family might represent for society. With other topics, where the topic is more diffuse, it might work to focus on some key aspects of the policy area. For example, in the project on Civic Discourse (Helping America Talk), some of the metaphors focused on the phenomenon of discourse itself—exploring different visions of what the interchange of public discourse might mean. Other metaphors focused more on the content of that interchange, exploring, for example, different ways to think about what “information” or “knowledge” could mean (that is, the information that citizens might need to make informed democratic decisions).

One part of this exercise is for panelists to focus on generating a multiplicity of different metaphors. They can think of this as asking themselves, “What are different ways to convey what this topic represents?” or “What are different ways to picture the way this topic (or this reality) functions in our society?” It’s important for panelists not to get stuck on just one motif. Exploring different metaphors like this can help panelists avoid just thinking of one basic vision of the policy area (and what it represents) and then sketching out binary opposites in terms of policy approaches toward it.

Another part of this exercise is for panelists to explore how a given metaphor can lead to sketching out very different policy implications.  At first this may seem counter-intuitive. For example, with the Genetic Technology project, one of the most prominent metaphors was to think of these technologies as “playing God.” It seemed obvious, at first, to most panelists that the policy implication of this was to say that “playing God” is a bad thing to do—so the policy should be to prohibit or greatly restrict these technologies. Upon reflection, however, others pointed out that from another perspective people might feel called upon to be “god-like”—so “playing God” should be something we do. The policy implication of this would be to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into the development and use of these technologies. Similarly, in the Civic Discourse project, the metaphorics of “information as power” led to some policy notions of expanding participation in that power (universalize and expedite access to information, so the power is shared more equally in a democratic society)—and some policy notions that sought to consolidate or restrict that access to that power (restrict access to information to allow the government to govern more efficiently).  With every metaphor that comes up, panelists can almost always discover different ways to unfold the metaphor from the standpoint of different perspectives, perspectives they’ve likely uncovered in their earlier discussions.

To get panelists started, I’ve often found it helpful to bring up some metaphors from policy areas other than their own. This usually gets them moving. It gets them thinking about the big picture of what this area of concern (or some aspect of it) could mean. Once they get moving, the panelists can usually generate a lot of different metaphors, which in turn serve as a rich starting point for generating a diverse range of policy possibilities. If panelists try this out, they’ll likely find that playing around with these metaphors can give them a good start toward generating a number of contrasting policy approaches.

–Jeff Prudhomme

I’m not sure whether or how this might be possible. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a Bob Edward’s interview of legendary music producer Quincy Jones (from Edward’s XM show on 11-20-2008; the quotations below are my rough transcription). In the interview Jones talks about his creative collaboration in producing Michael Jackson’s mega-hit Thriller album, the best selling album of all time. Jones says that at the time that he had no idea of how good the album or any of the songs might be:

“Who knew what was coming with Thriller? You can’t guess that, you just have to do the best you can. Try to get your own goose bumps.”

Jones tells how they worked down from 800 possible songs to 12. Eventually it was set that there would be 9 songs on the album. But how would these decisions be made? Could the selection process be generative and not just subtractive? For Jones, it was clear that it would not be a matter market research. That would lead them astray:

“I think when you start chasing demographics and focus groups and all that kind of stuff, you get in a lot of trouble.”

Instead, once they got down to 9 songs, Jones played what he calls a little trick, asking:

“Out of these 9, which do you think are the weakest—the 4 weakest? Irregardless. And after you make that decision, you go back in to try to make 4 more that were stronger than anything else on the album. That’s always worked for me really well, because you turn the album upside-down, when you take out the 4 weakest and try to make them the 4 strongest. And, um, that’s always been a good luck charm for me. And we tried it and it worked.”

As a result Thriller ended up adding 4 songs that went on to become top singles in their own right, “P.Y.T.,” “Human Nature,” “Lady in My Life,” and “Beat It,” and, of course the album went on to become the top-seller of all time.

Could something like this little trick work during the facilitation of IF Sanctuary Projects? Could it be a good luck charm for panelists, helping them to be bold in the ways they make choices to exclude some possibilities and augment others? Could it be a spur to the discovery of new and more powerful policy ideas that might make their work even better? A lot will depend on the situation. And as Jones says, we won’t know in advance. We’ll just have to do the best we can and try to get our own goose bumps.

–Jeff Prudhomme

The Interactivity Foundation’s discussion process is intended to foster creativity in the generation of broad-thinking and contrasting policy possibilities for our society. This isn’t an easy thing to do. It’s often a struggle for panelists and facilitators alike to figure out how to move forward. The ideas, questions, and insights that come up don’t always seem to fit together. Nor do they always make perfect sense, even to the person who brings them up. They might be something a person is puzzling over in his or her mind. In such situations it’s easy to feel lost or nervous about how to proceed. What the White Stripes can help us remember is that this uncertainty, this tension, these obstacles, might be precisely the things that spur spontaneity and creativity in our discussions. It’s a sign that the discussion experience has its own life to it.

For facilitators, this means resisting the impulses to make things easy, the urge to minimize obstacles that panelists face as they’re grappling with complex questions. It means resisting the notion of having a preplanned setlist for how the discussion will flow. For panelists, this means recognizing the value of being puzzled. It can be a good sign when you can’t figure things out. When you feel stymied trying to figure out some aspect of our social life together, that’s a sign you’re working hard, you’re really engaging your creative thinking abilities. And if you’re working hard like that, it can mean that inspiration or breakthrough is near. In describing his creative process, Jack White says that sometimes it is just hard work, something you just have to do. The results aren’t always great. It’s not like every time, just by working at it that “the clouds are gonna part and the rays from heaven are gonna come down.” But, as he says, “inspiration and, you know, work ethic, they ride right next to each other.” As you struggle in the discussion process, remember, inspiration might be riding right there with you.

–Jeff Prudhomme

I recently came across these words from Albert Einstein in the context of an interview on the topic “Does Science Fiction Predict the Future of Journalism?”. The interviewee, Loren Ghiglione, a professor of journalism at Northwestern University, pointed out that writers of science fiction (or “speculative fiction”) have actually done a pretty good job of foreseeing future technological developments. In fact, in their imaginative projections of the future, on such things as the miniaturization of technology, they’ve often done better than scholarly futurists.

We often tend to think that the future will flow as a linear development of the past and present. If this were so, then best way to project future possibilities would be to study the current state of affairs. Ghiglione reminds us that the future does not simply emerge as an incremental and linear development from the present. As he says of Einstein’s words,

“I love that quote because I think it talks to this notion of the future is likely to be counterfactual and not built on what has just happened.”

This means that if we are thinking into the future and projecting future possibilities, this will not primarily be a matter of studying the way things are or have been. This activity can’t be restricted to a matter of knowledge. Rather, it is a matter of creative or imaginative thinking. To do this, to think into the future, we need to engage the power of our imagination. And when we do so, we need to keep in mind that the future may not flow on the same trajectory as the present.

The goal of an Interactivity Foundation Sanctuary Project isn’t exactly to offer predictions of the future. Nor are we concerned with making accurate projections of the future. But we are engaged in something similar—exploring and developing contrasting visions of future possibilities for a democratic society. To participate in this kind of exploration and development is to engage our creative powers to imagine and construct alternative possibilities for the future. And to do this well, it is good to keep in mind that many of the possibilities we explore may seem, at least at first blush, to be absurd.

In the course of a Sanctuary Project, we need to create space for ideas that seem to be on the wrong track, ideas that don’t seem to flow from the status quo, and even ideas that just seem far-fetched or downright crazy. As Einstein and Ghiglione remind us, the apparent absurdity of these ideas doesn’t necessarily mean they are useless for us to think about. For all we know, they may even end up being the way the future actually develops. As countless film and cartoon characters have told us, “that’s so crazy, it just might work!”

Of course, this invocation of our imaginative powers doesn’t mean that knowledge gets tossed out the window. In every Sanctuary Project, the participants will need some time to think about how these contrasting possibilities might unfold in the real world. There has to be some contact with reality—even if the reality of our human situation might change by the policy choices we might make, by taking divergent paths into the future. But the participants need to remember not to hem themselves in by restricting themselves to the linear development of current realities. We all need to remember that “if at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there’s no hope for it.”

–Jeff Prudhomme

Second, IF reports do not aim to solve any problems. Most policy reports are prepared in crisis situations to solve a specific and imminent problem. IF reports, on the other hand, give several different bird’s eye views of the conceptual landscape of an area of concern. They delineate the different concerns that people might have about them, the different conceptual policy possibilities for addressing them, their different possible implementations, and their different possible consequences. They are not stuffed with facts, numbers, and pictures intended to inform citizens about problems pertaining to our current policies. They are stuffed, instead, with different conceptual possibilities that are intended to provoke thoughtful discussion about an area of public policy concern. Each of these conceptual policy possibilities may raise their own special problems. But IF reports are not trying to solve their problems—they are simply trying to describe the different conceptual possibilities.

Third, IF reports are prepared by citizens for thoughtful public discussion among their fellow citizens. Most policy reports are prepared by policy experts for the purpose of advocating certain policy positions to policy makers. Our reports are prepared by two panels­¾one consisting of experts in the area of concern and the other of interested citizens¾for the purpose of engendering thoughtful public discussion of a wide range of contrasting conceptual policy possibilities for dealing with the area of concern. This discussion may include policy makers, but they are not our primary audience.

Fourth, IF reports describe fundamentally different conceptual policy possibilities. Consider, for example, IF’s report on Privacy & Privacy Rights. This report explores different policy possibilities that emanate from four different concepts of privacy: 1) privacy as liberty, or the right to be left alone; 2) privacy as autonomy, or the right to control one’s thoughts and actions; 3) privacy as property, or the right to own information about oneself; and 4) privacy as secrecy, or the right to keep information about oneself confidential. It recognizes that Americans think about privacy in each of these senses, and it does not treat any of them as the correct definition of privacy or more fundamental than the others.

Finally, IF reports aim at improving our public policy choices by stimulating discussion about these deep and fundamental conceptual differences. The United States is a very diverse country. People not only look differently from each other, they have different experiences, values, goals, beliefs, interests, and ways of thinking. Your next-door neighbors might feel very different about their privacy, property, food choices or regulation than you do. They may also have fundamentally different policy preferences. And the aim of our reports is to explore and develop these differences so we can understand them better and, ultimately, make policy choices that better fit our own values, goals, beliefs, and interests.

It was apparent from the outset that opinions on climate change represent a range of understandings of the science on the issue and of science itself. It also became apparent to me that this is one of those areas where belief and alignment with the polarized “sides” of the discussion often trumps helpful information and learning. Very little of the public discussion of the issue seems helpful to those trying to sort out policy possibilities and their possible consequences.

There are good reasons to work toward conceptual discussion of policy areas when the political passions of the day and the narrow focus on polar opposite solutions generate little more than circular debate. I believe it is important to understand the good faith arguments of the partisans of both sides (not the ditto-heads and talking point robots). I also believe it is important to create a “middle space” in which common ground may be explored and those who wish to work on solutions may do so in a reasoned way.

I recently facilitated my second public discussion of the policy possibilities developed by the web-based panel. The first discussion stuck pretty much to the possibilities as written, although participants did offer thoughts on what other possibilities might have been raised. The second public discussion was more consciously a developmental discussion where I let participants know I was looking to expand the possibilities with their assistance. A cooperating consulting group in Madison, Wisconsin recruited a panel of businesspeople and technical professionals who were interested in the topic.

The panel was well-suited for this task by temperament and experience. I was glad to find that while some participants leaned slightly one way or the other on climate change matters, the majority simply wanted to learn more. The discussions were respectful and thoughtful. The participants reviewed the prepared possibilities, critiqued them as helpful or not for discussion purposes, considered how those possibilities might be reframed or reorganized, and worked on two new possibilities that were geared toward presenting two contrasting policy approaches that question the need for action on climate change.

This probably will not win me any friends in Green circles, but let me report on a funny thing that happened on the way to these challenging perspectives. The sequence of discussion, with the participants making genuine efforts to understand why the original group developed the possibilities that it did, opened up discussion to the idea of having competing ideas on the table. It created rich space for discussion of “what is evidence”, “how is it weighed”, and “when is precautionary action called for”. It prompted discussion about which possibilities might lend themselves to modification or compromise. It also prompted discussion about various public reactions should one side or the other win a decisive political victory.

So aside from this recent discussion leading to expansion of the possibilities, it was helpful to me in showing how continued development of conceptual material can help prepare the public for the “give and take” that goes with most policy development. It seems to me this is one of the real arts of governance, especially on “hot button” issues.

This latter distinctive feature has a number of key consequences for how IF’s Reports are developed—for what we call the “IF Discussion Process.”  But the purpose of IF’s Reports also has big implications for the Reports’ contents and presentation.

In order to perform their role in public discussions, IF Reports need to contain contrasting or distinctive policy possibilities.  This feature has been nicely addressed by several of my colleagues in recent posts, but one thing I’d like to add to what they’ve already said is that contrast begins to be lost as the number of possibilities in a Report gets beyond a certain number.  (To date, none of IF’s Report has contained fewer than six possibilities; none has contained more than nine.)  After a while, adding possibilities not only tends to obscure the bigger issues, it can even lead to a kind of paralysis—precisely the opposite result from the clarifying impact IF is looking for from its public discussions.

Similarly, overly subtle possibilities, however satisfying intellectually or compelling from an academic point of view, are usually out of place in IF Reports, since they tend to bog participants down rather than launch them into discussion.

(Incidentally, these are not just personal surmises or observations based on IF’s own experience but rather dynamics that are well grounded in the field of cognitive psychology.  For an extended—but not too extended—discussion, see Chip and Dan Heath’s Switch [New York: Broadway Books, 2010], pp. 49-72.]

IF Reports seem to work best when they are like lightweight batons, not weighty scrolls that leave participants burdened, mystified, awed, confused—or simply bored.  Fewer and crisper possibilities make for the lightest batons.