Dealing with prognostic uncertainty

How do professional futurists contend with prognostic uncertainty? There is an impressive body of medical-sociological research on how medical staff deals with uncertainty. We have used these insights to study patterns and manners in foresight practice that might not be evident otherwise. The question "Do professional futurists use approaches to deal with uncertainty that resemble those of medical staff?" is addressed by ongoing ethnographic research in Dutch foresight practice. The observed manners are grouped into four analytic categories: the construction of solidity, numeric discourse, communication habits and experience as anchor. In this paper, the construction of solidity and experience as anchor are described in detail. It is further more suggested that "certainification" is a possible upshot of these manners in use

Social Engineering : A case study of information security and security consciousness in a large public sector organization

Social engineering handlar om metoder för att infiltrera organisationers datorsystemgenom att manipulera eller utnyttja användarna för att komma över information. Det är idag ett betydande säkerhetsproblem eftersom få organisationer utbildar sin personal i att hantera den här typen av angrepp. Med den här uppsatsen vill vi undersöka fenomenet. Intervjuer har utförts inom en stor organisation för att få inblick i hur stor medvetenheten om fenomenet är och vad som görs för att skydda sig emot det. Det finns tydliga tecken på att social engineering fortfarande är ett relativt okänt område som inte har spenderats tillräckligt med resurser på. Studien har gett en insikt om hur viktigt det är att medvetandegöra organisationers anställda om vad sociala manipulatörer kan åstadkomma. Vår förhoppning är att den här uppsatsen kommer att medverka till en ökad medvetenhet kring social engineering och de risker som det innebär

Practicing the Scenario-Axes Technique

Studying the future seems a mission impossible, since both the appearance of the future and its underlying dynamics are unknown and unknowable. Nevertheless, the future is being studied by professional futurists. So, professional futurists seem to have found ways to structure 'the unknown'. The question is, then, how do they do this? Over the years, professional futurists have developed several types of techniques and methods to structure thinking and discussing the future. The scenario-axes technique, which aims to align divergent perspectives on how the future may unfold, is one such structuring device. In the past 2 years, we did ethnographic research at the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research (RPB) and followed professional futurists constructing and applying scenario axes in their scenario projects. Our observations illustrate how the scenario axes are practised by professional futurists and show that the scenario axes do not function as a unifying structure fostering alignment of different perspectives in the way that scenario theorists and practitioners often suggest. Instead, not one, but three different applications and interpretations of functional meaning of the scenario axes co-existed: the scenario axes as a 'backbone', as a 'building scaffold' and as 'foundation'