In-between other activities I have been filling some of my work-hours lately by studying a report by the Norwegian research council (Foresight 2007 – biodrivstoff og bioenergi). As the title implies (…foresight) the report ambitiously tries to look into the future.  20 years down the road it depicts Norway as a bioenergy-powered green utopia. Long gone are the days when our wealthproduction was mainly generated by oil, and in this version of the year 2027 we have reduced Norwegian climate gas emissions with 40%.

As a genuine lover of good science fiction I find it interesting to see that hardcore natural scientist (yes, the writers are all engineers and the like…) embark on something as “soft” as a foresight study. In the finest moments of science fiction, however, the writers manage to tickle not only the gadget-loving techno-child in me, but also my sociologically oriented half. On visits to strange worlds you not only encounter strange beings and weird “stuff”, but novel modes of politics, religion and general societal organization. Dystopia and utopia is not really about the technology in a society, but about how the lives of the people (or even aliens…) are lived.

Well, I guess most (good) sci-fi is written by non-engineers, because in the version of 2027 I’m studying (and the years between now and then), all these guys and gals take into account is the “stuff”. We can make gadget A better, thereby increasing effect B. Material Z can be replaced by material X. Oh, and then there’s the cash issue – we just need lots and lots of it!

So what? Well for starters it makes a dull story. Secondly it overseimplifies reality to the point where there is really very little to learn from the report. For instance it makes the assumption that 9 years from now 50% of all researchers currently working with petroleum will switch to researching the conversion of biomass to power.  Optimistic? Clearly, and I don’t want to be a party pooper. But at least give us some sort of idea how this is suppose to happen! In a nation where the omnipresent shadow of StatoilHydro can be seen everywhere, this would require tremendously radical social, political and economic action.

But maybe StatoilHydro will switch themselves, you might ask? Well – just recently they sold most of their efforts in the field to a swedish actor. But the universities, then? Clearly they will realize their responsibility? At least tell me they won’t head full-on into new projects with ambitions of squeezing even more out of the oil-tube? Wrong (apparently more children will die in Africa if we don’t whip that oil out ASAP).

So basically what the report says is that if engineers are given a social universe without any constraints they can pretty much fix these problems that we have. In the real world, however, there is no such thing, the utterly annoying variable “people”  needs to be added to the equations (try building a few windmills on a coastal island and you’ll see what I mean – the technical stuff is quite simple). That means that other people than engineers needs to be involved in these processes. Not really all that radical, but I guess that was the point I tried to make with this post.

A primary school teacher was asking students what their parents did for a living. “Kevin, you be first. What does your mother do all day?”

Kevin stood up and proudly said, “She’s a doctor.”

“That’s wonderful. How about you, Amy?”

Amy shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, “My father is a mailman.”

“Thank you, Amy” said the teacher. “What does your parent do, Billy?”

Billy proudly stood up and announced,

“Nothing. He’s an economist.”

Listening to different people talk about the same phenomena can be interesting. Most of the time their descriptions of exactly the same thing tend to be very different. This, of course, is obvious in relation to mundane phenomena like a particular pop-tune playing on the radio or an abstract piece of art. While one person could describe the pop track as an enjoyable piece of music, the other could describe it as superficial nonsense without any substance. The same is true for the piece of art; one can see it as a subtle commentary on our time and society, the other as pure drivel that could just as easily have been produced by a 4-year old. As sociologists we tend to explain these differences by looking at forces beyond these individuals control, like say, their upbringing, culture, class-background, gender and so forth.

Differences in they way people talk about a seemingly unified field is, however, not only observable at the mundane individual level. Recently I have been talking to actors who in different ways deal with bio energy here in Norway. These people are policy makers, they are working in local government, they are researchers, and so on. All talk about bio energy, but if you were to eavesdrop without knowing the general topic this would be hard to detect. Here, however, I think it is difficult to use the standard sociologic models to explain what the hell is going on. Rather, we need to look at the motives of the different people.

There are particularly two ways of talking about the technology that strikes me. One focuses on the potential it sparks for small-scale business opportunities in the rural areas, the other focuses on the potential of launching a massive industrial adventure that will somehow free us from the tyranny of oil. So again – like the pop-track and the piece of abstract art – we see the world, and in this case the future of the world, in very different shadingThe difference, of course, is that we can quarrel over art and we can quarrel over music, but in the long run these debates really doesn’t hurt anyone – at least not physically or economically (except for those getting ripped off buying the latest Beyonce or Britney-single on iTunes…).

In this case, however, the quarrels and the different understanding of the world could eventually lead to serious conflicts over very tangible resources. So in the time ahead it really seems like the different people have a job to do in explaining to the rest of the region that their view of the future is the best view of the future, and that their understanding of bio energy is the best one. I’ll follow this development(and look into a lot of related topics) over the next years and keep you posted. Perhaps even a bit more concrete, eventually…