Scenario Planning, 2013. Observable Misery, 2022.

Obliviousness and congruence

Let’s start with the obvious: all scenario planning is fantasy. Dressed up, data-driven fantasy, but fantasy nonetheless. No crystal balls involved—just a lot of graphs, jargon, and people nodding solemnly in conference rooms. And what most digital scenarios consistently overlook is the actual state of the world. You know—finite planet, finite resources, that sort of inconvenient reality.

Likely effects

Economic development might slow down, unless you’re a transnational behemoth with a flair for tax evasion and a fondness for shareholder value. Employees are already being told to “make do with less”—which in practice means being set up to fail and then blamed for it. Burnout, frustration, and plunging performance are the inevitable side effects of pretending scarcity isn’t a thing.

Meanwhile, the response to dwindling resources has been to… use them up even faster. Think clear-cut rainforests and oceans emptied of fish, all in the name of ‘progress’. Opportunism blossoms like mould in a damp bedsit, while misallocated resources pile up with the elegance of a council bin strike.

Inflation hits the poorest hardest (quelle surprise), further deepening inequality. And it turns out that chronic or situational material insecurity makes people ill, grumpy, and morally judgy. Who knew Maslow had a point?

Measurables and observables

  • Yale helpfully reminded us that most of the fancy metals we need for gadgets are irreplaceable. Oops.
  • The British Geological Survey points out that we’re almost entirely dependent on metals like antimony, bismuth, and tungsten—none of which are easily recycled or substituted. Bonus: we mine them as by-products, so can’t really scale.
  • The internet’s electricity needs in 2017 were estimated somewhere between “terrifying” and “apocalyptic”. Roughly 300–500 GW just to keep memes circulating.

Surveillance society

Or: “It’s for your own safety,” said the eye in the sky.

Governments, bless them, stepped up to “protect” us from ourselves—and from each other. Cue the usual suspects: dissidents, criminals, corrupting influences, privacy. Intelligence agencies took to data-mining like ducks to water, especially when it came to flagging anyone who wasn’t enthusiastically waving the national flag.

Privacy regulation was trotted out with great fanfare, conveniently distracting from state surveillance. Then came the real twist: everyone started buying their surveillance toys from China. Because of course they did.

Likely effects

Corporate access to data gets squeezed. Cue tantrums. Consumerism takes a hit. Governments start finger-pointing at individual citizens for the mess. Meanwhile, ransomware and identity theft are having a renaissance.

“Think of the children” becomes a rallying cry, followed swiftly by more surveillance. Privacy-as-a-service becomes a booming industry. Phones become more locked down than a paranoid royal. People try to look perfect online and offline, and their mental health quietly disintegrates.

Emotions? Best buried. Depression, anxiety, and even cancer risk spike as people are told to be positive while they’re being digitally strip-searched. “It is what it is,” they say, while quietly dissociating.

Measurables and observables

  • Women, children, and activists are increasingly targeted by petty tyrants of various sizes.
  • Ransomware blooms via automated botnets. Agencies buy data from brokers and call it “security”.
  • GDPR swooped in like a knight in shining armour… but forgot to cover state surveillance. Member states do what they like, especially when spying on their own citizens.

Interventions by governments

AKA: the “we’ve got this, probably” chapter.

Corporations and NGOs suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of a regulatory stick. Everything became “critical infrastructure” overnight. Governments, spooked by their own digital fragility, labelled attacks as cyberwarfare—and responded accordingly.

Likely effects

Doing business online got pricier. Resources went into compliance box-ticking rather than actual risk management. Botnets were taken down, a few cybercriminals got nicked, and private sector hackers found the heat a bit much.

Measurables and observables

  • Equifax’s breach screamed “we don’t care about you”, prompting regulation. No James Bond villainy—just good old-fashioned neglect.
  • JP Morgan got hacked, and suddenly it was Russia! Except it wasn’t. The actual culprits included Americans and Israelis. One legged it to Russia just to make it interesting.
  • NATO created cyber defence divisions. Academics wrote earnest tomes on cyberwar. Treaties were proposed—and promptly ignored as governments doubled down on espionage.

Hacker groups rule

Welcome to the Digital Wild West.

Hacker collectives—some mercenaries, others state-sponsored, many just in it for the chaos—multiplied. Cartels with deep pockets responded in kind. Walled gardens with paywalls and data-harvesting “security features” became the norm. Pay up or log off.

Likely effects

Cyberattacks surged. So did costs. Espionage became aggressive sport. Cartels charged through the nose for “protection”. Everyone built their own little cyber-armies, and even the defenders started trading secrets.

Measurables and observables

  • Malware and APTs on the rise.
  • Cartels like the Cyber Threat Alliance now exist to share notes and resources—basically professionalised cybercrime-fighting co-ops.
  • Security went full military: “Critical Controls”, “Ethical Hacker” badges, NGO clients dubbed “target audiences”.
  • Offensive Security stuffed more tools into Kali Linux than most people know what to do with.

Self-Organising protection societies

If governments and cartels can’t protect you, build your own club.

The deviant scenario. Not in a saucy way—just one that doesn’t align with neo-liberal fantasies.

Individuals got tired of being tracked and hacked. Government and hacker groups labelled them dissidents, terrorists, or “concerned citizens” (the horror). Businesses, naturally, saw profiles as emotional leverage.

In the vacuum of trust, digital militias emerged. Federated, GNU-licensed platforms like Mastodon and Peertube sprouted up like mushrooms in compost.

Cartels built posh safe zones—walled gardens, velvet rope and all. Governments retaliated by sending in infiltrators (real or bot). Cue the cyber soap opera.

Likely effects

Corporate reputations tanked. Trust evaporated. People retreated into self-selected bubbles—real ones this time, not algorithmic echo chambers. Trade between them became cautious, transactional, or non-existent.

In low-income bubbles, online spending crashed—mostly due to, well, not having any money. The darknet became a growth industry. Anonymity became not just desirable, but essential. Tensions rose. Skirmishes ensued.

Measurables and observables

  • Federated tools like Mastodon and Peertube gained traction.
  • The digital divide grew sharper, despite desperate pushes from governments and corporates alike.
  • E-commerce dipped in poorer areas—though COVID made it spike temporarily. Even poverty gets its moment in the data.
  • Corporate and state walled gardens expanded. Surveillance capitalism remained very much alive.