Some of the aspects of this scenario planning event that they held turned out to at least have factual implications as September 11th and the subsequent anthrax terrorist attacks occurred all sort of within that same time period. Particularly notable, this scenario was planned around an Al-Qaeda operation, which this was the scenario that they had gamed just slightly before the attacks, which is kind of disturbing if you think about it.

By the time they had finished creating this scenario, they realized that they couldn’t share all of the details because it was so sensitive. Meaning that not only is this sort of a realistic scenario, but they actually don’t want to be giving it out as a template for some foolish person to try out or some group to try out. The whole purpose of this kind of scenario gaming is to consider some of these scenarios within sort of the ethical and policy considerations that are not typically addressed, whether that’s within the halls in Washington DC or in the corporate boardroom, right?

Dirk, for the purposes of our show, what fascinates me about this is the use of this gaming technique, these design techniques to really consider policy and ethics around emerging technologies. What were your takeaways when you were sort of examining this event?

In the specific examples of the more modern things, I mean the thing that really hit me the most was the fact that sort of the framing of the article is sort of gloom and doomy, but it also said, “Well, look, now we’re faster at developing new vaccines than ever before.” It’s potentially just days to develop a vaccine for a pandemic like the one that they were talking about in that … I don’t think it technically is a war game, but I’ll call it a war game. That felt really good. You can see the progress on the preventative side, as well as the antagonistic side. That’s somewhat to be expected, but again it’s just sort of heartening that that’s what’s going on.

I did just have some familiar with war gaming and this kind of sort of large scale scenario planning exercise in the past. Structurally there wasn’t too much surprising. They’re most just some of the outcomes.

The second part was using fictional scenarios to evaluate, which is obviously why they held it in the first place and what the policy recommendation, what the purpose of generating those is. Thirdly, to put the technology into a human context so it’s not just sort of an ethereal engineered piece, but rather something that affects real human beings. Then finally, the ethical and social considerations, which unfortunately in this scenario that they were gaming, the social considerations were quite negative. I think at the conclusion of their game, they had millions of people were killed by the pandemic and the first vaccine had failed.

It was a disaster of monstrous proportions. The idea that all of these elements which are quite possible and which require discussion prior to them actually happening bring this to the forefront of public discussion is something that I think design can help draw out, right? We talk about emerging technologies all the time on the show. The implications of these technologies are very much inside baseball I think. Largely the first part of this design fiction, the communication part, like that is just not … It doesn’t really happen until that technology is embedded into people’s lives.

There’s not a one to one between the assumptions that this game makes about the world and how the world would really behave. I think that’s important to say. I say it and bring those up again really admiring what she did. I’m not capable of designing something like she did. It’s pretty cool. The other thing that I really found notable is the fact that the creation of these sort of things has changed so much since 2001. The anthrax terrorist attack, for lack of a better word, in 2001 was perpetrated by an American scientist. The amount of people who had access to anthrax who were able to manufacture anthrax in 2001 is a microscopic number.

I don’t know what that number is, but it was difficult, it was expensive, it was highly controlled. The risk with the technologies we’re developing today is that they are increasingly accessible to more and more people. You don’t need to be an expert with a PhD. You don’t need to have top secret credentials. Whatever the different bars were, more and more some random bro who researches it could home brew something that would be really catastrophic. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know where on the continuum we are. From old days almost impossible. Today is it dead simple or just simple? I’m not sure, but I know how the technology’s moving.

It gets simpler and cheaper and more accessible everyday. That’s happening in a world where we have school shooters and people who go off the deep end and do really dumb stuff. We talk about guns, assault guns and weapons, being dangerous and maybe they should be banned. I happen to think they should. However, the high end of death and destruction from those worst case is in the hundreds, which is awful. I’m not saying it’s not, but we’re talking about with different designer drugs, different designer viruses, we’re talking about things where it could be in the millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.

If it becomes too accessible and in the hands of too many people who are not qualified from the standpoint of mental health among other things to be creating that and doing things with it, it’s wicked dangerous. There’s a lot of questions and concerns about that. In the democratization of science and knowledge, there’s so much good of it. At some point, we’re going to make a grave error and the wrong person is going to be get their hands on things they shouldn’t and a lot of people are going to die. The question is what do we do after that and I’m not sure what we’ll do.

That seems like a good point to leave our discussion for today, but suffice to say we’ll continue to discuss the idea of design fiction and gaming as a way of sussing out the important details for evaluating emerging technologies. I think it’s a fascinating area of design and I find it really interesting that this Johns Hopkins center is using a technique like that for developing their policy recommendations. Listeners, remember that while you’re listening to the show, you can follow along with the things that we’re mentioning here in real time. Just head over to thedigitalife.com. That’s just one L in thedigitalife. Go to the page for this episode.

We’ve included links to pretty much everything mentioned by everyone. It’s a rich information resource to take advantage of while you’re listening or afterward if you’re trying to remember something that you liked. You can find The Digital Life on iTunes, Sound Cloud, Stitcher, Player FM and Google Play. If you’d like to follow us outside of the show, you can follow me on Twitter @JonFollett. That’s J-O-N-F-O-L-L-E-T-T. Of course, the whole show is brought to you by GoInvo, a studio designing the future of healthcare and emerging technologies, which you can check out at goinvo.com. That’s G-O-I-N-V-O.com. Dirk?