Transforming the Future: 20/20 Foresight" An ALA Sunrise Seminar with Bob Treadway

I am still sorting through papers from ALA midwinter in Seattle. These notes are from the speech by Futurist Bob Treadway, who addressed the early morning attendees of ALA midwinter on Sunday. Bob Treadway is a forecaster and a a professional member of the World Future Society. He used a very common sense approach to looking to the future: Often we have to just ask what the future holds...and then look at the possibilities. Often there are finite choices of what is ahead: Elections, Legislation, Human behavior...all have fairly predictable consequences. If you look at what drives human behavior (he calls it human adoption drivers), you will notice 4 key factos: familiarity (have I seen it?), Gain (what will I get from it?) Ease (how easy is it to use?) and cost (is it reasonably priced?) He used IPOD (remember the walkman for familiarity, gain=days of music, not minutes, ease of use (it is) and cost (reasonable).

Treadway commented on two library-focused forecasts: Libraries will be influenced by privatized competition, and secondly, that "advice" is already a huge industry now and in the future (e.g. classic example of Amazon...customers who liked this, bought that...)

He looked 10-20 years out and predicted that the virtual environments will predominate and that there will be total digitization. He encouraged librarians to capitalize on what we do now--we are high on the knowledge hierarchy and referred to Russell Ackoff's "knowledge hierarchy" where the lowest level "ignorance". Knowledge then progresses upward to data-->information-->knowledge-->expertise--> and finally wisdom. He also stated that the "advice" business will be bigger than the largest industry now which is travel and tourism.

Libraries were encouraged to create for-profit divisions and “Advice on Call” services. Expand what we do well and with the values we hold, obtain funding to stay vital, grow services and provide accessibility. He questionsed "What will you miss if you don't compete for the opportunities to add value to people's lives?" Address these four tough questions now: funding for continued access for all; opportunities for profitable services, the best use of professional librarians, and how libraries will serve the next generations of users.

Referred us to a book called THE WISDOM OF CROWDS: WHY THE MANY ARE SMARTER THAN THE FEW AND HOW COLLECTIVE WISDOM SHAPES BUSINESS, ECONOMIES, SOCIETIES, AND NATIONS.

Ended with a great quote based on Buffet's 'Noah did not start building the Ark when it was raining.', in other words, "Predicting rain doesn't count, building arks does."