Forum romand des Futurs

A great pleasure to have attended the Forum in Geneva today, and to have met many old friends in the process. There is no way to summarise everything, so here just a few points of interest that stuck out for me:

On foresight: Yves Francois pointed out that we all have a natural bias to attribute a greater importance to things that are temporally or spatially closer to us – something that media companies have long known and played upon. But Ewa Lombard pointed out that humans do have some in built mental tendencies that can be cultivated to encourage them to think longer term. For instance, imagination is a feature of human thinking, as is the desire to see one’s own continued existence in the future, and the wish to leave a legacy for which one will be remembered. These leverage points can all be used to encourage people to use foresight when taking decisions.

On Disinformation: Diego Taboda pointed out that we need to make a clear distinction between attempts by states or organised groups to manipulate public opinion and simple expression of (what we may consider foolish or misinformed) opinions.  The former needs to be fought by all legal means, the latter is a fact of democratic life where many people will express different views. This said, it is not always so easy in practice to identify what is deliberate manipulation versus the divergent views of an individual.

In any case many thanks to Camille Toussaint for organising an enjoyable morning!