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Critical Uncertainties

In order to study the future we must develop methods to anticipate and map unexpected, divergent future possibilities. And so scenario planners have developed the concept of critical uncertainties: areas of change that are seen as having critical importance to the question at hand — in our case, the future of creative media — and, at the same, are highly uncertain: difficult to call.
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Delphi Survey of Critical Uncertainties

2020 Media Futures engaged Nordicity and Gabe Sawhney to organize a survey of opinion around issues of sensitivity in the Creative Cluster. The goal of the engagement was determined as identification of “critical uncertainties” in the evolution of cultural media industries over the next ten years. The format of the study was a two-round Delphi. Delphi is a type of survey method used to gather and analyze opinion, and identify or achieve points of consensus, among experts in fields that require a high degree of human judgment. Delphi has been defined as a “well-established foresight technique that involves repeated polling of knowledgeable individuals, feeding back… anonymised responses from earlier rounds of polling, with the idea that this will allow for better judgments to be made without undue influence from forceful or high-status advocates.... developed so as to circumvent ‘follow the leader’ tendencies of face-to-face exchanges, and other problems such as the reluctance to discard previously stated opinions” (Popper, Blackman and Forge, 2010).

Methodology

This 2020 Media Futures Delphi Survey serves to collect data from a broad array of local, regional and global respondents, to prioritize issues or drivers of change thought to be most important, and most uncertain, in their anticipated impact on Ontario’s cultural media and related industries. Questions were generated to elicit consensus (or lack thereof) among survey respondents. For each identified issue, one question was asked with respect to the likely or expected evolution of that issue (the uncertainty question); and another question to gauge how critical it was to the respondent’s organization and/or industry (the importance question).
  • Round One was open from November 4–9, 2010, accessible directly to a preregistered group of respondents and also via an open, public link, publicized through professional and social media.
  • Round Two, November 11–15, presented results of Round One where consensus was not reached and asked respondents to re-evaluate (and re-enter) responses.
The Delphi process revealed the following Critical Uncertainties (in rough descending order):
  • Bandwidth’s role in regional/global competitiveness (Bandwidth to Competition)
  • Bandwidth demand may exceed capacity (Bandwidth exceed capacity)
  • Talent preparation
  • Device and software interoperability
  • Level of public financing
  • Network neutrality
  • Attitudes towards privacy
Other areas of potential critical uncertainty identified through free text comments include:
  • Role and impact of location-based media
  • Role of “angel investment” in media
  • Willingness of consumers to pay for media (thus the ability to monetize digital media)
  • Role and importance of wearable technologies
  • Changing nature of the computer
  • Impact of shifting (i.e. aging) demographics
  • Territorial-based vs global marketplaces
  • Consolidation of distribution channels (e.g. iTunes, Amazon)
  • Impact of unequal distribution of technology across the world
  • Role and importance of nonprofessional (i.e. user-generated) content
  • Sustainability of Canadian content regulations and policy