The Future of Civil Discourse – Four Scenarios Imagined

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Looking 10 years ahead, try and imagine a world without trust, but rife with monopolies. Walled gardens of tech giants solidify. The DOW and Nasdaq are up, civic engagement is low, surveillance is ubiquitous. In this world, do users trust publishing on the open Internet? What does this mean for news organizations? Will there be more country-based firewalls?

Now imagine a completely different world where antitrust laws telemarketing data have ensured many tech winners. Equal access to knowledge is attainable. Open Source tech flourishes. Risk-­taking is on the rise. Workforces become distributed across borders. Are civil liberties organizations as needed? Do people still value privacy? Is there enough coherence to solve big issues like climate change?

Over the last several years, political and cultural changes have caught many unaware and unprepared. As a bulwark against such unpreparedness, leaders from Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Archive gathered together to discuss the future of the ‘Open World.’ What role should each organization play in fostering healthy civil discourse? Are there areas for collaboration?

The four organizations joined on a yearlong journey through a process known as Scenario Planning. Led by Lawrence Wilkinson, Chairman of Heminge & Condell, the process asked participants to construct a set of very different, yet plausible stories about what the future might hold. With civil discourse as our North Star, we crafted strategies that responded both to opportunities and risks.

Questions which began as open ended and abstract led to future modalities that were distinct and concrete. Exploring a future possibility led to some clear ideas about what hurdles an open Internet may face. If, for instance, a country becomes less democratic, with weakened journalistic institutions, transparency will suffer. If economic hegemony shifts to a different part of the world, the cultural imperatives of social media giants will likely shift as well. In this spirit, the four orgs found areas for collaboration while also uncovering distinctive gaps in our ability to evolve in a changing world.