Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward EP 139: Crafting Story Worlds with Peter Von Stackelburg
We talk with Peter von Stackelberg about humility in consulting, why timeframes matter, and how narrative foresight turns data into action. We trace his path from journalism to futures, explore exploratory forecasts, and unpack story worlds, transmedia, and cycles.
• building trust through listening and humility
• why clear timeframes beat vague “someday” futures
• exploratory forecasts with indicators and course corrections
• using story to turn data into lived context
• transmedia and story universes for sustained engagement
• the layered timeline of trends, STEEP, and K-waves
• what tracked in war, religion, and social change
• a global platform for co-creating future stories
• where to access Peter’s research and timelines
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Coming up on today's show.
SPEAKER_04:I've seen far too many futurists and even more broadly coming into organizations, you know, consultants generally. Hey, I'm the expert, you got to listen to me. And um, I've seen it from the other side where I've been with clients and they'll after the consultants out of the room and say, Well, that's that's you know what? That's BS, that's not gonna work here, that you know, you get all of the typical resistance. And uh the consultant has basically lost the uh the client right from the start. I mean, you need to come across certainly as professional and knowing what you're doing, know what you're doing, but you can't come across as I know it all and you don't. Great deal of humility is actually required in that.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Think Forward Show. I'm your host, Steve Fisher. Today, we've got a really special guest. Futurist, educator, and storyteller, Peter von Stackelberg. If you've ever seen that epic layered timeline of cycles and trends floating around the foresight world, well, that's Peter's work. He's also one of the pioneers of narrative foresight and transmedia story worlds, showing how stories can move people to act where data alone falls flat. In this episode, we talk about his journey from investigative journalism to future studies at the University of Houston. We dive into his idea of exploratory forecasts and why time frames actually matter. We explore story worlds and even AI that can make the future more tangible and human. It's a fascinating conversation about cycles, storytelling, and the craft of helping people imagine what's next. But before we get going, I'd like to ask a small favor. For you to like and subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube, or to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. It really means a lot. Okay, let's get going. Peter, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_04:Hello. Good to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's great to have you here. I've been uh following your work for a long time. Big fan of the uh we'll we'll talk about the big, you know, the the project of cycles and that kind of epic piece of work that you've become known for. But for those who don't know you, uh why don't you share your journey, your background, and you know what you're what you're doing these days.
SPEAKER_04:It's been a uh rather interesting journey, particularly as I look back at it. Um journalist, worked in the uh organizational training and development field. I did business process reengineering. I uh got a master's degree in studies of the future at the University of Houston Clear Lake along the way. Worked for a while professionally, strictly as a uh futurist, particularly with a uh focus on uh technology forecasting and uh foresight. Then went back, got a master's degree in information design and technology. And that sort of got me back to what I've always been interested in, that's writing and storytelling and so on. With that, I uh developed a uh master's thesis that um, in terms of its length, I kind of shocked, I think it kind of shocked my uh advisor. In six months I wrote 300 pages of a master's thesis. Oh my. So I take that as inspiration uh that drove that. And um that was uh back in 2010 for the last 15 years. I've uh become increasingly uh intrigued and involved in uh storytelling, story structures, application of storytelling to a wide variety of things. My background in uh future studies is always embedded in what I'm doing. I've uh just retired from 20 years of teaching at the university level, undergraduate courses, some on uh tech forecasting, more recently media studies, technology, and the future of communication, the use of AI in storytelling and creative work, and so on. So um, although it seems like my career's been all over the place, and sometimes it does feel like that, there's a sort of a central core, and that's um communication. It's talking about things that I think are important. And I went into the futures program back in the early 90s uh with that interest in communication, and uh the uh future studies program just basically added that component to what I've been doing pretty much for my entire career.
SPEAKER_01:So that is quite a journey. You know, I I've done the uh the Houston Masters as well. Yours was Clear Lake um in the uh earlier days of the program. What motivated you to like seek out a program like that? You did you did you learn about did you know about futures and foresight? How early before that? Because obviously you would have to kind of search that out. How did you kind of come to know about this as a as a field, a space, a workspace, toolset? How did you come to discover that?
SPEAKER_04:Well, it um it's part of a love story, believe it or not. That's why we're here. Let's do it. I uh first um got interested in futures uh future studies when I was um in my uh undergraduate journalism program up in Toronto back in the early 70s, and we needed to do a society and media presentation, and there was this guy called Toffler that I read a book uh, you know, that he'd written. I thought, so this is kind of interesting. So I did a presentation on that, and I remember using uh, you know, at that time it was literally slides on a uh projector uh uh or overheads, and um I was playing the song in the year 2525, and um, you know, that was uh quite a while ago. And um, you know, basically I'd been hooked on the idea of uh, you know, the future and looking at it. Uh it wasn't until 1989, 1990, I'd met a gal in Houston. We started dating, and at one point she says, hey, there's this program you might be interested in. Uh and she'd taken a number of courses in it. I said, Oh, okay. So I went over to uh the university at Clear Lake and uh checked it out and said, Yeah, this this looks kind of interesting. And before you know it, I was uh pursuing a master's degree uh in future studies. And um I just kinda loved it. You know, it's a love story in more than one dimension.
SPEAKER_01:That's all that's great. Uh you know, for those who are listeners of this of the show. I married the I was gonna I was about to kind of lead into like what did you whatever happened with that? So you did. I did. So that was so your futurist picked a a uh preferred future in that way. It's just great. Yeah. You're living you're living your preferred future.
SPEAKER_04:Definitely. And when I talk about when I talk about future stuff, she actually understands it.
SPEAKER_01:That's good. I have the same, I'm I'm very blessed with my my wife is also my writing partner and business partner, life partner, the whole thing, and she is doing this kind of work as well as a behavioral scientist. So at least you know, we have great conversations, so it's good to have somebody that you can kind of talk the language with.
SPEAKER_04:Yep, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So and uh it's funny, those those who listen to the show uh know that uh Future Shock was a book I read when I was 13 in like 1985. So it had a profound impact on me and just realizing you could do this as a job, um, which I didn't I didn't pursue. I had obvious obviously other interests at the uh as a teenager. But you know, that in third wave and you know his work really kind of set the the kind of core philosophy for me as a futurist and kind of the foundational aspects of of my pro my work. Did you ever have him come in? Did you ever meet him and or work with him on any projects?
SPEAKER_04:No, never did. Never did?
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, he's someone I would love to have uh have over to dinner sometime. Well you've worked with I mean, y your client lists like a Fortune 500 Hall of Fame. I mean, you've worked with Shell, which is obviously, you know, storied for the scenarios work they did, but like Exxon, huh? You've worked with so many um groups. But you know, when you're sitting when you in your work with these with companies like this, organizations, massive organizations, you're the person saying, you know, everything you know about it's probably wrong. Um so how do you how do you address I like to talk about uncomfortable truths or you know, getting the wrong asking the wrong questions. How do you how do you get people to work through their mind, you know, work through a mindset to to work on these on possible futures and and do this kind of work together collaboratively?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I think I I had an advantage probably over a lot of other folks in that by the time I got into futures um studies um professionally, I'd had probably 25 years of experience as a uh investigative journalist and asking tough questions. Doing it in a way that often people didn't feel threatened, even though I was asking the tough questions. And I don't know that I can explain the technique in detail, but basically what I would do is I'd have a conversation. It wasn't an interview, it wasn't a um, you know, it certainly wasn't an interrogation. It was a conversation. I tended to, and I still do, tend to listen more than I talk. So when I'm doing an interview like this, it's kind of a flip situation. It's a little other strange.
SPEAKER_01:Um I think it's one of the superpowers of a futurist. Yeah, listening. Yeah, you have to kind of almost you almost have to kind of recede into the background and let other people, you know, especially the you know, if you're in a workshop or a collaborative space, is let them do their do what they do, you know, kind of bring those things out instead of trying to, you know, force the things in a certain direction. I think that's one of the most biggest and and being a journalist, that's one of your gifts, being able to do that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean the the the process, well not just the process, the entire function, I think, of being a futurist. Uh and uh, you know, others prefer the term foresight, others prefer who knows what. But basically getting people to look at their future or futures involves having them comfortable, not challenging them, certainly not challenging them right off the start. The ability to sit back and just listen and fade into the background, I think, is really important. And I learned that again as a journalist, where you become part of the landscape and it's amazing things people will say.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's true.
SPEAKER_04:Um the um work as a futurist, you also need to have the mindset that it's a process of discovery. Not just for you as the consultant to be internal or external, but it's a process of discovery for the people you're talking with. They need to discover things on their own. Point blank saying, hey, you need to do this is probably not going to penetrate the initial resistance. So you need to be able to gently lead them to discover things that are important as it relates to them and their future. That may be different mindsets, that may mean different tactics and strategies, that may mean any number of things. It may mean simply being aware of, you know, hey, here's a new technology. What's it gonna do? How's it gonna upset um the products or services that you provide?
SPEAKER_01:How are you Go ahead? Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. I sorry.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean, it's how you approach them in that process of discovery, I think, that's critical. I've seen far too many futurists um and even more broadly coming into organizations, you know, consultants generally. Hey, I'm the expert, you gotta listen to me. And um I've seen it from the other side where I've been with clients and they'll after the consultants out of the room and say, well, that's that's you know what? That's BS, that's not gonna work here, that you know, you get all of the typical resistance. And uh the consultant has basically lost the uh the client right from the start. I mean, you need to come across certainly as professional and knowing what you're doing, know what you're doing, but you can't come across as I know it all and you don't. A great deal of humility is actually required in that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's that is a trait that sometimes doesn't exist in the consulting space. I I can speak firsthand about that. And uh it's challenging because it's also the easier target to blame the consultant. You know and uh when you have, I would say, views that are, you know, there's a resistance to change. You know, you've mentioned, I listened to an inter one of the interviews you've done that, you know, like excellent, powerful forecasts and scenarios, they all then end up sitting on a shelf. I like to say put in a drawer, right? You know, despite having really great data, it's I would say that's our as a futurist, that's the eternal frustration, right? It's like, what is what do you think is the psychology behind why people are so resistant to acting on it when they probably know it's like accurate? Why do you think it's that, you know, and you probably what do you think?
SPEAKER_04:Generally, people are loath to change things for a variety of reasons, you know, and it's as simple and as complex as that. It could be if I change this now, something that's been working for years, change it for something, is it gonna work in the future? I'm afraid that things are going to change and I'm gonna lose my relevance. Or I simply don't like the direction this is going, and therefore I'm not gonna accept any of it. Um, you know, I'm you know, to give you an up-to-date example uh of the latter one in particular, but really it uh I think it comes down to fear, it comes down to feeling threatened, and that's the reaction of many writers to the um emergence of generative AI. If you get online in the uh writers' group groups, which I uh follow just to see what's going on, and occasionally I pipe up. I I mean I have opinions, so they need to be shared from time to time. But the fiercest resistance comes from those who, for whatever reason, are afraid of what the technology will do. And we see that come out in a variety of statements like uh AI-generated stories have no soul. Well, yeah, you know, totally agree. And, you know, my perspective is that's why you have a human writer involved in the loop. It's to put that soul in. Well, the quality is not the greatest. Um it's it's generic when you uh generate stuff using AI. Well, yeah, that's true too. Again, that's why you have a uh talented writer in the group or in the loop. So there are a multitude of excuses, and I've seen just stubborn resistance to trying to talk about any of it because there's this underlying fear, and I'm not sure, you know, from case to case what the exact cause is, but I think part of it's insecurity and somebody's own knowledge and abilities. Some of it's fear that uh, hey, this is going to take my work away from me. Some of it is I just don't understand this stuff. You know, some people are resistant to learning, you know, and I've seen that time and time again with students. There are some who love to learn and others who just don't want to learn because it takes effort, you know, it takes energy, it takes focus. Learning is not what they want to focus on. So you know, why is there resistance to change? Why why do you face that as a futurist? Uh any and all of those.
SPEAKER_01:Uh probably in a whole lot of people. Is this is this why you pivoted towards storytelling as a communication tool? Because we could want to talk about transmedia storytelling, but but that is as a journalist, you have a narrative always always when you report on something too. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:The um the reason I've pivoted to storytelling, and that doesn't mean I've abandoned looking at the future. It just means I'm using a different set of tools. And the reason for that is I've seen far too many futures consultants come in with all the data. And uh I've done did that myself in the early days. Hey, there's all this great data, we've got it nailed down, the trends are really solid, boom, boom, blah, blah, blah. And um, client will say, Oh, yeah, cool, okay. And then, as you say, put it in a drawer, put it on the shelf, and merrily go about their business. While I was going through the uh master's program in information design, I ran across um a concept called the uh data information knowledge wisdom spectrum, uh developed by a fellow by the name of Nathan Shedrov. And looks at the progression of data to information to knowledge to wisdom and the components that are involved in that. And it became pretty clear very early on as I was looking at that and looking at other aspects of storytelling is that the story was really the way of getting to people and getting them to really move from that data perspective to knowledge and wisdom. A key component of developing knowledge and wisdom is context. It's experience, shared individual, you know, whatever. It's a it's the sharing of in uh of experiences. A data dump doesn't share share experiences. Um, you know, and to give you a very precise example that I've used time and time again in my classes on writing, not on futures classes, but writing classes, is to say, okay, I'll throw a number out and I'll say nine or pardon me, three meters, and students will just look at me and I'll say, okay, that's a data point. Three meters and sea level rise. Okay, now you've got some context, but first off, they don't know American students, they don't know what three meters really is. So I'll say floor to ceiling, that's about three meters. That's how much the sea is going to rise. Okay, now they're starting to get it. They start to suddenly understand, you know, that three meters is just not some sort of foreign alien number to them, but it's actually got a particular context, it's got particular meaning, and they can see it. They can feel it. Then I'll ask, okay, how many of you are from uh, you know, a coastal area? And a lot of them put their hands up and I say, okay, imagine you're standing at the seashore right at the water's edge. And, you know, 50 years from now, the water's gonna be three meters above your feet. So you're gonna be under the water. What's that going to do to your neighborhood? What's that going to do where you grow up? What's that going to do for the lives that you've uh, you know, you've led and the lives moving forward and those of not just you, but your friends, your neighbors, all of that. And they start to, in a much more visceral way, start to understand what three meters means. It's not just a number, it's not just a data point. It's it's something that they can start to feel emotionally. It goes beyond the intellect. And that's one of the most powerful things about stories is if you're doing them right, you're evolving emotion. And humans learn through emotion. Strong emotions can uh drive learning. And I mean, that's been well demonstrated.
SPEAKER_01:Do you do you find that that, I mean, this is I would say this is your story worlds concept, correct? Like this is what you're getting into. Yeah. Because that's that it's that walk a mile in someone's shoes. It's the immersion into a world. It's one thing to build it or put things around it, or the you know, the objects or the settings, but to immerse the and you know, the empathy layers that that go into world building could be a term, but you know, just like you said, story worlds. Where do you take that for people that are new to futures? Do you find that is an entry point for people to get into the conversation?
SPEAKER_04:I actually hadn't really thought about it in that way, but yeah, I think uh certainly I would encourage anybody who's in the futures field right now, and particularly anybody who's just entering it, to become expert storytellers. I couldn't agree more. But to make all of that of real value, you need to be able to turn that into a story. And a story that connects with the people you're telling the story to. So you need to understand your audience. What are their concerns? What drives them? What are they worried about? All of those things. And you need to be able to come up with a story that genuinely moves them. Um, you know, it could be emotionally, it could move them to start thinking about things, it should be something that they take away and it keeps coming back to them. Having people think in futures terms is not a uh, hey, here's a workshop and away you go, and now you're gonna do it. Right. It becomes it's essential to embed that process of futures thinking into what people do on a day-to-day basis to the point where it's instinctive.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've also noticed in your story world or story world time type of is the kind of temporal framework that you use. I mean, you can look at horizons for you know, 5, 10, 20 or those, but yours is a bit different. It's almost like a time machine for ideas type of thing. Could you unpack the the kind of the temporal framework of it? Is it you know, you've kind of alluded to you've kind of explained parts of it, I think, but there's a kind of flexibility when you communicate things.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, the um one of the things that um had irritated and continues to irritate me when I'm talking with some futurists is um futurists don't make predictions. Speaking of language, brother.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, we don't predict the future. We we look at possible futures, right? That's the crux of it all.
SPEAKER_04:And I sort of want to go. I mean, okay, I understand conceptually, however, the people You must love the prediction posts at the beginning in January of every year.
SPEAKER_01:You must love that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that those drive me crazy.
unknown:I know.
SPEAKER_04:But um the other side, too, is futurists who say we don't predict anything. We just lay out the possibilities. And the reason that bothers me, and again, conceptually, I understand that. Practically, though, most folks they can't deal with that. They don't know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I always say, see if this resonates with you. Like I always say to people, the future, the one of the possible futures will become the present. Isn't it better to know which one it's going to be? So you're better prepared. Like, you know what I mean? So you can navigate it. I mean, that's the to me, that's the essence of like, you know, when I people ask what I do. I say I'm, you know, I'm a futurist. I, you know, I talk about being a designer, but I said with a futurist, I said, I and they're like, some people don't know what it is. I said, I do long-term strategic planning. Beyond the year or two, I help people understand the long-term strategy. And that usually kind of stems the conversation. They might want to know more, but I find that you know, futurist is a term some know, some don't know, and those that know, it's like 50 different flavors of it, right? So yeah, it's it's good when you say that.
SPEAKER_04:Aaron Powell The other thing that I I find in terms of futurists professionally often are hesitant to say, hey, we're looking at a three to five year time frame or roughly a 10-year time frame or longer than that. And my frustration comes from folks in the business apparently not understanding that the client needs something more than sometime in the future this is going to happen or this might happen. I mean, yeah, okay. I've got to make some decisions for my organization. It does actually make a difference if it's happening five years from now versus 50 years from now. Time frames do shape decisions. And without solid time frames, it's difficult to make uh informed decisions. So, yeah, can things change? Can things um not pan out in terms of, you know, hey, I said 20 years from now we're gonna see this, and well, maybe it's gonna be 25 instead, or maybe it's 15. A number of years ago, I came up with the concept of what I call the exploratory forecast. Typically, and these are the ones that like you you mentioned, the the beginning of the year, here's the future for 2026 at this point. Um it's gonna be this, this, this, and this. I'm going, okay. Seen this before. Um, we'll see. The way I prefer to do it is we've got an exploratory forecast. I'll put something out there. Hey, this I think is going to happen in the next five years based on these factors. But there's always a degree of uncertainty. And I use the analogy of an unguided rocket that you aim and fire, and then it just goes on its way, uh, versus a guided missile, which you fire, and then it corrects its track as it's tracking the target. An exploratory forecast basically is a guided process for determining whether or not the event that you thought was going to happen, that you forecast as happening at such and such a point is actually going to happen. So there are indicators along the way that you can start to track that say we're on track or we're not on track. And if you're off track, do you need to adjust something? If the exploratory forecast is completely invalid, then as a futurist, you say, okay, it's invalid. You know, we we thought it was right, but it's not. So let's see what we do now. As opposed to what I see a lot of you know forecasting experts, they'll do a one-shot, hey, I expect this. And then they're busily trying to defend their forecasts uh as being accurate 99 or 100% of the time. And oh, by the way, I yeah, I did kind of forget the ones that missed the target.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a forced function fit in that that really invalidates quickly the the quality of the perspective and then the credibility of the person doing it. And it yeah, it puts us in a puts people who do this kind of work in a in a in a challenging position, but it's a cautionary tale, too, right? And I think more people should understand what you're saying.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean, are you gonna be a hundred percent accurate in your forecasts if somebody claims that I'm going, okay, wait a minute. Let me actually see what you're doing. Are you making forecasts that are sort of duh, of course, um, you know, that um anybody can make? Are you hiding the uh results of forecasts that didn't pan out so you can say, hey, I got 100%? It's you know, that scorecard is, from my perspective, baloney.
SPEAKER_01:I've always said there's three there's three jobs you can be wrong 90% of the time. That's weatherman, venture capitalist, and futurist. And still keep your job. Yeah. But there's humility in that. You have to own up that you got that one wrong. And a lot of I think a lot of people have challenges with that. I think that's where it comes comes from. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:And I think the sort of consummate professional um in the futures field is one that really understands the various methodologies, deeply understands systems theory, systems thinking, chaos and complaints. Complexity theory. But also says quite fully, yeah, I kind of missed on that one. Now let's go back and see why I missed. Um, you know, what is there something I missed? You know, is my methodology flawed? You know, you start to tear apart the the methods that you've used, and then okay, the methodology seems to be solid. Is there something um, you know, a variable that I missed? Looking at this. Well, what was that variable? How important is it? Uh or you know, you got the variables right, but hey, the world's full of random events. The world is chaotic, things change. Therefore, you go with the guided missile approach as to the uh fire and forget rocket. And uh, you know, it's really as simple as that.
SPEAKER_01:You know, there's a few things in storytelling before I wanted to get to the timeline projects, but the transmedia as a term, it was like everywhere probably about 10 years ago as a like because people were looking at different channels. Uh you could call it, you know, there's omni channel marketing, but transmedia, it goes how would you define for those who maybe have never even heard the term before, and where the state of it is today, is it you know, because it doesn't seem to be mentioned anymore uh in a lot of places. It used to be, especially in advertising, marketing. How would you define transmedia in a current state because we have so many new kinds of tools and approaches?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, basically my definition of this comes straight out of my master's thesis 15 years ago, which is at about the point just before transmedia took off as a buzzword. Yeah. Is that transmedia narratives are one or more stories told across two or more media platforms. So I've got one story that's told in a comic book and a television series, or it's a novel and it's a film. And it's not just an adaptation adaptation of a book to a film. It's a different story in the book from in the film, but set in the same story world, maybe with the same characters, maybe with different characters, but the story world itself is the uh unifying component. We see transmedia stuff around us all the time.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:We just don't hear the term anymore because it's essentially become absorbed in the thinking that um particularly media companies are involved in. Anybody ever heard of Star Wars? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was just gonna say Star, you know, Star Wars The Marvel Universe.
SPEAKER_04:Anyone knows?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, MCU. Yep, exactly. Are those another one? Yeah, are they absolutely TV? Uh the one that always comes to my mind, I mean, obviously Star Wars is currently the earliest one, but I mean they were strictly movies, but then they had the extended universe, the books, all the different, you know, built world, you know, universe building more than just worlds. But I think of the Matrix movies. There's three of them. Obviously, the first one was huge, and then the second and third one came out close. There was a video game that had a there's a scene where I think it's in the second movie where um Jada Pink and Smith comes in, they're all meeting together. Those who've seen the movie, like all the kind of rebellion people, they're meeting in the Matrix in like this room, and they come in from something else. There's a whole video game that connects to why where they come from and what their mission, their kind of side quest, or kind of thing that and that's a whole game. But it tells part of the story, but it's in a video game format versus a movie, right? And then you've got um shorts or other types of animated uh shorts. Blade Runners done this with 2049, they had other things, you know. So yeah, it is it's interesting. You you're you're heading it like it's become so commonplace, you don't have to call it out as transmedia. Transmedia is the way of telling stories with media. It's just the way it is right now.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I mean, when I'm talking with folks, particularly in the film and television industry, and I'll talk about a story universe. They get it. I mean, they get it right now.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you're you're in the world, you're part of the world building institute, and you know, I know you've done some papers with Alex McDowell, who he was and worked on Minority Report, and you've you work around those. I mean, students and clients are, you know, and they're trying to do this, you know, are they do you kind of have them start from scratch? Like where where do they where do they start? Because it's one thing to kind of have something established or the incubation of something. How do they you know go from not like what's what's the first kind of steps? Like kind of a worksheet to kind of start the framing? Like how do how does somebody start with it?
SPEAKER_04:Well, the the start of the process is pretty standard future stuff. Get to know your client, what are the issues, all of that stuff. That doesn't change. What changes or should change is okay, instead of doing a four-box scenario, which lots of folks still do, let's do something a little bit different. Or we're gonna look at causal layered analysis. Okay, that's that's a good place to start. That's a methodology, though. That's not a way of building a story universe, but that's the starting point. And um, what you're looking at with building a story world from the future's uh futurist perspective is what are the key things that we need to know? You know, what's the world going to look like in the future? And you build that world holistically around that, and then you inject characters into it. You inject interactions, you know, social interactions, economic, political interactions into that and see how they play out in that particular universe that you've developed. What are the factors that are important? What does this story tell me from a character who is developing a startup and suddenly AI is on the scene? What's that means to them? How potentially can they react? What happens, you know, just you know, the events, what happens to them psychologically, emotionally? Because remember, you're also trying to touch the audience, your client, not just at the intellectual level, but at the emotional level so that it sticks. You know, are they are they able to identify in some way with the characters that you've got? Do they see their lives, their problems, their workplaces, that kind of stuff reflected in it? And quite frankly, that's hard to do from a professional perspective. I mean, I can say here, and here's what you do, but when you're doing it in practice, it's not just, hey, this, this on the checklist, this on the checklist, yep, I hit that, I hit that, I hit that, and we're done. You really need to be able to start to understand how you can reach the people that you're trying to work with. You may understand that there's a looming threat coming, but for various reasons they don't. Certainly you can scare the hell out of them, but um, and that's a very strong emotion, but that's not likely to get them to change. It's likely to actually push them off. So you get a character that says, hey, I've got this looming threat, it's a big one. How do I react? I tried this and it failed, I tried that and it failed. There's this obstacle, that obstacle, but here's how the character overcame them. And you're basically doing a journey from the present to the future while also doing a journey in which the character solves fundamental problems. And at the same time, probably has some internal changes of perspective.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and one of the projects I wanted to kind of shift into as a uh wrapping up the episode is that one of the things that I actually got introduced to you is the timeline of major trends and events. Like your, I will call it mega, mega layered timeline. That's almost the that's the kind of qualitative, quantitative data like foundation, you know, when you're doing these, you know, the and the the world building and the story worlds, they can give you kind of at least a you know, a starting point to go from. Where did that idea come from? And you know, it's obviously it's how has it played out? Like in the last 50s, it you know, what's what what's gone, or like you all got that on, and oh, but where did it kind of start where did the pro what project idea start?
SPEAKER_04:It started in a um quantitative futures class at Clear Lake in uh around 1992. Okay I was running a bunch of charts on an Excel spreadsheet or whatever the heck the spreadsheets were back then.
SPEAKER_01:I think I think we're safe with Excel at that way. Maybe BusyCalc, who knows?
SPEAKER_04:So I'm generating these charts, and um at one point I'm going, what the heck? I got this chart and I got that chart and I got another chart, and uh you know I can't make sense of them because they're all tacked on my wall separately.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Maybe I ought to put them on a common timeline. So let's let's use time as the uh horizontal axis. And we'll just stack the different um trends up and uh see what's what. And it started.
SPEAKER_01:For people have never seen it, which won't you have it? What do you have? Just so just a sampling. Just what do you have in there? I'm gonna leave a link to the paper in the show notes so people can look at it and see it. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_04:But what are the yeah, give me a second to grab my copy here?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And this is the one from 1998. Looking rather fake, by the way. Uh, but that's the the first published one. I actually started doing these in '93, '94. But um then I went, hey, this is this is kind of cool. So I got a hundred of them printed out. And they include basically the steep categories: political, economic, technological, social, environmental, macro bands. Environmental, for example, it's got CO2 levels, it's got sunspot activity, it's got world population growth, uh, you know, stuff like that. The focus on most of this is American, and that's just because the data sets were easily available. And I never have gone far beyond the American aspect of things. One, because I've moved on to other things, but two, maybe somebody else ought to do that who actually knows their reach in their country. I don't mind them using the approach at all. I don't want to, as a Canadian American, say, though, hey, I know all of this about you guys, when there may be something different in Europe and Asia, wherever. Um so we've got the uh technological events and the um economic events. One of the key things that um I've built in, and it's evolved over time, but the basics are still there, is the K-Wave.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Kondrive is Kondriev, right? Kondrave. Yeah. I can never pronounce his name correctly.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's a uh 100 to um 120-year economic cycle. And boy, did I catch some flack about even talking about cycles in future circles.
SPEAKER_01:That's you're in friendly territory. I'm a cycles theorist. You know, future doesn't repeat, but it definitely rhymes. I mean, you know. Absolutely. It's it's uh there's a there's a pattern to things. It's not it's not the only thing to use. There's other, obviously, but it should be considered as you know, we're humans, there's a certain nature to things. Although in Super Shifts, you know, we talk about you know the age of intelligence. I mean, this is a different we'll talk about AI in a minute, but that is a change from like, we're not the smartest people on the planet. What's the rate of change? What's the acceleration? What's the what's the level of creative destruction and our ability to adapt, right? There's a lot that's different. Is this a new cycle or is it a a continuation of another of the previous ones? Is it a different pace? Don't know. But it's I don't yeah. If you abjectly reject cycles, I think that's to people's detriment, you know, to not even under s you know. But I I get your I get what you're you're saying about the flack.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So I'm sure some people declared me a heretic in the futures field. And you know what? I don't care. I just don't care.
SPEAKER_01:So that's a way to we're supposed to the futures are supposed to be the rebels. And it's when the it's when the gatekeepers start deciding who's the rebels and who's not. Then we have a different problem to talk about, which is probably for another another conversation, another longer conversation. But you know, I mentioned what do you what did you get right? What did you think you you kind of got because it extrapolated out and you went pretty far out on some things. What do you think is tracking well, you know, current landscape of politics and and division and chaos, or you know, or is that what's what's what seems to be what seems to be on target or close?
SPEAKER_04:Well, rather than just simply saying what did I get right, I'd like to put this into the uh the record, if you will, and that is Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_04:This isn't about what's right or wrong in terms of forecast. This is a very complex long-term um exploratory forecast of what might happen. What is quite possible based on historical trends. The timeline itself goes back to um 1750, the first one, uh, all the way out to 2100. So just from a futures perspective, that's pretty ambitious. Yes. I mean, that's a long span of time, relatively short span of time in terms of human history, but from a futures perspective, my God, that's that's a long period of time. Um so, and data sets back, you know, that far are sparse, but that's they're not non-existent. There is data out there that can be used. That I've tried to hunt down as much as possible. What, you know, getting back to the question of what did I get right about, the way I'd like to look at it is okay, there are some things that seem to be on track that really need to have a closer examination. And that's the whole point of this chart is to say, hey, this might be happening. It's worth taking a look at it in more detail. You know, and I take a look at, for example, the uh social-political aspect of things, armed conflict. And keep in mind that um this was done in this one was published in 1998. I had tagged as increased probability of American involvement in a war starting in 2004, just based on the cycles. Anyone know what happened in 2001? No.
SPEAKER_01:We went by 2003, the is really the big I mean Afghanistan started, but the I in Iraq, you know, is 2003, right?
SPEAKER_04:So Well let's be um generous in terms of the um error in times, uh error uh in terms of the forecast. 2001 versus 2004. I missed it by three years. Does that invalidate the forecast? You could you could argue, and I'm not gonna argue it because the point is uh 2001, 2004 doesn't matter. What we really need to be looking at is what the heck is this increased probability of American war? Well, if you take a look at this chart, the ban goes out to 25, 26, 27, 28, 28. Is still increased probability of American involvement in a war. Is that forecast accurate? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_01:I mean we've been in what you you could consider almost for like forever wars, right? Or the friendly conflicts are good for business.
SPEAKER_04:Well, going on 25 years of war.
SPEAKER_01:Well, when you look at something like Strauss and Howe, right, generational cycle, and you've got a the we're in the the uh the winter, the fourth turning, which uh they've roughly said started around 2008 with the crisis, financial crisis. But yeah, they put it, they don't put it on the exact years, but yeah, it's a good 20, 25. So they're like around 2028 to 2030 that this would kind of things would kind of culminate, end, and set for a new trajectory for like, you know, in their in their vernacular, you know, the spring, right? The it you know, so yeah, I mean it tracks, absolutely.
SPEAKER_04:But you know, let me give you another one um that um I find pretty interesting. Uh in the uh social um uh set of bands, I've got uh human rights, slavery, feminism, and uh religion, morality, and philosophy tracks. And in the uh religion, morality, and philosophy track, I've got um 1980s to 2000s, moral majority uh has rapid growth in an evangelical organization. Fundamental power peaks in um 98, 99. Was that right or wrong? Uh we can debate. You know, and I'm I'm not again, I'm not tied to that exact time frame. But if you take a look at what's happening with church membership, for example, it's at historic lows based on the last data that I saw. Active member in membership in churches. A number of churches are going out of business, basically, because of declining memberships. Is that something that is um you know indica uh indicates we're seeing a shift in religious spiritual perspectives. And it looks like there's something happening. That ought to be a key for somebody to say, okay, here's what this forecast from 1998 was looking at. There are some indications that at least part of this might be happening. We ought to dig more deeply into this. And again, I could have done that if I didn't get off into what I'm doing now, but um, somebody else can also do it because I don't want to keep flogging this.
SPEAKER_01:I think there's gonna, yeah, I think there's an opportunity to bring that out. What I would love to do as we're gonna kind of wrap things up is where do you see and it's it's I think for us, like we talked about kind of tying it all together, you know, with a story world, what do you think would help what story world that you know would help humanity make better decisions? What's the thing that people should like if they wanted to work on a story, like what would they what should they do like right now? And that what do they need to have? We'll talk about the skills, but what what do you think if you could create one, what would you kind of set set the course for people to do to?
SPEAKER_04:My vision that I've had for a while is basically a storytelling platform that has a futures orientation where people have a framework for building stories. And you know, part of what I've spent a good 15 years with now is understanding how to build story frameworks, how to make it easier so the layperson can do it. So let's assume we've got a platform that makes it easy for people to tell stories. And they're quality stories in that other people are going to want to read them. I mean, you can write stories all day long, but if nobody's gonna read them, what's the point? So they need to be at a level of quality. This platform would bring together people in North America, South America, you know, Africa, and so on, and say, hey, in my story world, South Africa, Cape Town is facing chronic water shortages.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:You, as a resident of that area, what does that mean for a character that you create if you can't get water for weeks on end? Somebody living on the Gulf Coast of Texas. You've got what happens if you've got three super hurricanes coming in in one season? What's that do to your life? What does that do to your character's life?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Those are great.
SPEAKER_04:You know, and if you start to be able to pull those together, you get a whole collection of stories around what's this going to look like for our collective futures? So I know what it's going to look like if I live in Houston. I know what it's going to look like, at least based on these stories, what it looks like in Cape Town. What's that mean to us, all of us? When this is happening there, this is happening there. And um we're starting to be able to talk about that. I mean, climate change has been an issue that I first encountered as a reporter back in 1980. Um, it was identified then as an issue. Have we changed anything? We got lots of great words, but um it's hotter than ever where I'm sitting right now in Western New York.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, in the 70s, there was an issue, it was about global cooling. Then it was global warming. We also had the ozone later, which we actually dealt with in the 80s, which is amazing. But then things move to like shifts back and forth to climate change. So the climate is always changing. It's a question of what's the impact, and you're right in that way. It's kind of a thing for the listeners to kind of the debate about. But uh, yeah, what I was going is, you know, so for you know, people that want to dive into your work and I want to have you back on, we we can unpack so many more of these things. People where to find your work, your research, you know, learn more about the uh story worlds. Hey, what's the best place to find you?
SPEAKER_04:Well, if you Google my name, it's all over the web uh at the various places.
SPEAKER_01:You have a very specific name, yeah, that's true. That's true.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean, there are a few von Stacklebergs in the extended family, and there is one other Peter von Stackelberg that has like one or two entries online, but you're probably not gonna miss me if you look for um you know Peter von Stackleberg and storytelling or whatever. I also have published uh a bunch of stuff on ResearchGate that is it's a great platform for researchers, but it's also something pretty much anybody can get onto. And the idea of me putting stuff up there is I can actually, and I have uploaded PDFs of articles, of timelines, of stuff like that, so that people can actually get the the material in their hands printed out.
SPEAKER_01:I will put a couple of links in there in the show notes so you can check it out down below. But Peter, I just want to say thank you. You're just an amazing futurist.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to the Think Forward Podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at www.thinkforwardshow.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
