Understanding Systems of the Future

Ahti Salo, Aalto SCIahti.salo@aalto.fi30th Anniversary of the Systems Analysis Laboratoy

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. .. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Steve Jobs

“To the wisest and most careful men of our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone … asking each to forecast what will have been wrought a century from now.”

“The prophesies will seem strange, almost impossible … yet they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America.”

“Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world.”

“Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance … photographs will reproduce all of nature’s colors”

“Air-ships … will not successfully compete with surface land and water vessels for passanger or freight traffic”

“Every river or creek with any suitable fall will be equipped with water-motors, turning dynamos, making electricity”

“Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been exterminated”

DDT

In hindsight

Statements postulated as optimistic visions

Many were strikingly accurate (mobile phones)

Technological discontinuities largely missed (fission, transistors, DNA, …)

Errors in judging the economic viability of technologies (aviation)

Some aspirations offend our values (killing all insects)

Where Do We Stand Now?

Many systems are becoming ever more interconnected and volatile

Kimmo Soramäki, Financial Network Analysis

We are able to collect and analyze absolutely huge volumes of data

We still live in a world where economic and political disruptions occur

In this changing world, models provide the universal language for capturing the essence of dynamic systems

Models allow us to combíne data, expert judgements and value statements …

… and thus help us choose actions for achieving our objectives

In fact, models have become so pervasive that they may go unnoticed

But at the other end of the spectrum, they inform far-reaching decisions that impact the lives of our children and grandchildren

Tommi Ekholm, VTT

There are exciting opportunities for those who - possess advanced modelling skills - have an open questioning mind- wish to mark their contribution by making changes for

the better

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

– Malcolm X

Acknowledgements- http://en.wikimedia.org- http://commons.wikimedia.org- https://www.flickr.com/groups/freeuse/ - www.google.com (for images with permissions for non-commercial reproduction)

Thank you !