[Social Scanning: Improving Detection of Future Trends and Weak Signals Through Web 2.0]

making futures more perceptive and persuasive Future2 making futures more perceptive and persuasive Summary I propose to develop an online system to help technology forecasters, strategists, and futurists detect emerging trends, interesting anomalies or "weak signals" of disruptions. It will aggregate content generated by the futures community; filter the content to detect common and uncommon terms; then use longitudinal slices of this data to identify outstanding trends and outlier signals. Mapping future-related trends and spotting early signs of disruption is much more a craft than a science. Futurists scan the news, scientific literature, and other sources for new trends and discontinuities. If journalism is the first draft of history, scanning is the first draft of the future. Many futurists now share what they're reading on blogs, Delicious, or other online services, but still scanning remains ubiquitous but solitary: futurists have not been able to pool their scanning efforts, generate professional capital from scanning, or develop new insights by working collectively. I propose to do all three using an approach I call "social scanning." It draws on content futurists and other subject experts are already creating. It takes content that is private but not proprietary and make it shareable and valuable. It creates goods that are useful to the community as a whole and to individual practitioners. Finally, it serves as a foundation for collaborative research in a community of practice that is highly distributed. Social scanning need not be expensive. The content is already being created by futurists and technology-watchers. A basic working system that could identify trends and disruptions from that content can be created with a few months' development time. Previous online scanning systems I helped develop at the Institute for the Future cost about a million dollars a year; my group estimates we can develop a system, operate it, and improve it for less than half that.