A handful of foundational readings (Simon, Drucker, Hayek, Jacobs)

As we continue to practice integrating the information and insight we've been capturing into a foresight dialogue this week, I've uploaded four papers that provide more discussion ABOUT foresight.
These papers can be read over the coming weeks, although the sooner you read them the sooner you'll 'get' more of the meta conversations we're having.

You can find all four papers in PDF at:
http://foresight.stanford.edu/complex/

Simon (2002) Forecasting the future or shaping it?.pdf

This short piece is talk that Herb Simon gave a few years ago in conjunction with a number of eminent technology thinkers. If you don't know Herb, you will.
Herb is something of a god to academics across the disciplines. The primary reason? He won a Nobel Prize. He did so while publishing across fields. In publishing some fairly decent ideas across disciplines Herb impressed the heck out of the discipline-bound academics who considered themselves his peer. His breadth of papers did show a lack of substance in some cases; high level, rhetorical arguments as opposed to solid, grounded research building on what was already known in the field.
This paper fits both measures; darn good cross-disciplinary thinking that's masked in little more than platitudes.
Its value to us is two-fold. One is that is shows a techno-centric optimism, or at least a realism. The second is that it shows what's called the "deterministic stance". Determinism: def. Describes a system whose time evolution can be predicted exactly. We will encounter these biases in much of the work we read... and in what we ourselves create.

Drucker (1959) Long-Range Planning - Challenge to Management Science.pdf

Like Herb, if you don't already know the name Peter Drucker, you will. Drucker, who recently passed away, is an eminent thinker / writer in who almost singlehandedly built the field of Management. He did this as something of an 'outsider' during his entire career; i.e., he didn't hold an academic title at a university, nor was he an actual company leader.
This paper is valuable for a number of reasons. But I'll let you read it without my bias... other than to say, as often is the case, Peter is more right about more of the hard points than would be expected of even a enlightened writer / thinker.

Hayek (1964) The Theory of Complex Phenomena by F. A. Hayek, chapter 22 in "The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy" (1964) by Mario Bunge (ed.).pdf

Hayek is up there in the pantheon with Drucker and Simon. Make special note of sections III and IV - re-read until you appreciate the point he's making. Read section VII after reading the Simon piece.
Take a few minutes to find other resources and read up on the cyberneticists (make sure that whatever you read mentions Hayek and Wiener), tie what you've read back to this chapter reading, and then try to mix in what you've read in the other three pieces. Questions: What the heck were the cyberneticists getting at? Why did they die off? Is the future a math problem? When did people think computers would let us predict complex futures? How does Douglas Aircraft's Project Research and Develop tie together the cyberneticists and the work we're trying to do in foresight?

Jacobs (1961) The kind of problem a city is, from "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".pdf

This is the last chapter from the book that made Jane Jacobs a household name. We mentioned this book briefly two weeks ago during Jackie's presentation of urban "vs" architectural thinkers.
This chapter is interesting to us for a number of reasons. The fact that its the culminating chapter in a book about the changing nature of cities is actually the second most important point -- I'd recommend you read the entire book if you like her style.
Of primary importance is her attempt, at the end of a wonderful book, to help us classify "the kind of problem a city is." You'll see instantly the overlaps in language with Hayek -- while contemporaneous, I don't believe they were intellectual contemporaries. After reading this piece, begin weaving all four together and consider this the 'starting point' for the tools and methods we'll be using this year.