ARTICLE IN PRESS

FUTURES
Futures 40 (2008) 473488
www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Alternative futures: AmI scenarios and Minority Report

David Wright
Trilateral Research & Consulting, 22 Argyll Court, 82-84 Lexham Gardens, London W8 5JB, UK
Available online 11 October 2007

Abstract

In the last few decades, scenarios have provided a way of analysing the implications of alternative futures, especially as
they might be impacted by new technologies. This has been no less true of ambient intelligence (AmI), which may be
embedded everywhere in the not so distant future. Most of the scenarios developed by AmI enthusiasts have been rather
sunny, showing how the new technologies promise to make our lives more efcient, enjoyable, productive, enriching.
A European project, called Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (SWAMI), deliberately developed dark
scenarios to highlight the threats to privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness posed by the new technologies. The
SWAMI consortium also developed a methodological structure for deconstructing and analysing the dark scenarios. This
paper takes that approach a step further by applying it to a cultural artefact, partly to test the validity, utility, applicability
of the SWAMI methodology to a scenario not constructed by the consortium and partly to show how some cultural
artefacts can be regarded as scenarios in their own right as well as warnings about future technologies. The cultural artefact
chosen here was the Steven Spielberg lm Minority Report, because it features so many AmI technologies and draws
attention to the issues that have been the focus of the SWAMI project.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Scenarios are a form of story-telling, but with a very specic purpose. Scenarios provide a way of analysing
the implications of alternative futures. Scenarios are also designed to stimulate discussion of the economic,
social, political and other drivers that underlie these alternatives. The results of such analysis and discussion
are used in preparing roadmaps (how do we get from here to the future we want) and setting strategic
research agendas (what must be developed).
Military organisations were among the rst to design and develop scenarios which were (and are) played out
in war games [1]. Today, industry, environmentalists and others also develop and use scenarios for planning
and strategic purposes. In the wake of the oil crisis of 19711972, the Shell Group used scenarios to help work
out its corporate response [2]. The International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) [3] has devoted
considerable effort to developing scenarios about the impacts of global warming on our planet. Even religious
groups are using scenarios for considering their future [4].
Scenario planners systematise the perceptions of alternative futures and help to develop a strategy for
dealing with an uncertain future [5]. Unlike other methods, e.g., Delphi surveys, that produce a single forecast,

Tel.: +44 207 244 7284.

E-mail address: david.wright@trilateralresearch.com

0016-3287/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.futures.2007.10.006
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474 D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488

scenarios have been developed to account for major drivers of the future. More recently, some scenario
planners have favoured a limitation on the number of scenarios by generating several orthogonal futures
based on a matrix containing four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a permutation of the future by
combining major drivers or factors indicated by the X and Y-axes. For example, in the ISTAG scenarios
referenced below, the two axes are efciency vs. sociability and individual vs. communal. They contrast
technology applications that serve to optimise efciency, whether in business or in society, against those that
emphasise human relationships, sociability or just having fun. They also underline the place of ambient
intelligence (AmI) in serving society and the community as well as individuals [6].
The major steps in creating such orthogonal scenarios (or futures) have been set out as follows:

 identify a focal issue and determine the time frame;

 identify key factors;
 search for the unknown driving forces behind the key factors;
 organise forces in scale of importance and uncertainty;
 pick important and uncertain forces and create a scenario matrix or a few scenarios by combining forces;
 evaluate the focal question in each scenario;
 identify indicators that tell in which direction the environment is heading [7,8].

As scenarios are used by many different groups, it is not surprising that there are different types of scenarios
(and different terminologies to describe each type). Among them are the following:
Trend scenarios (sometimes called reference, extrapolative or predictive scenarios) start from the present and
project forward on the basis of to-be-expected trends and events [forecasting]. They are intended to be realistic
rather than, for instance, normative or extreme.
Normative scenarios are developed to evaluate how a specic outcome can be reached. They are designed on
the basis of a set of desirable features or norms that the future world should possess. The exercise then
consists of tracing backwards [backcasting] a viable path from such an outcome to todaypointing the way to
reaching that desirable future. Normative scenarios often reect more radical discontinuities; they can be
combinations of technological possibilities and political ambitions or targets.
Explorative scenarios address the question: What could happen? The scenarios are thus explorations of what
might happen in the future [9]. They are based on identifying critical uncertainty factors and on different
expectations of technical and/or policy developments over the near- to medium-term.
Ducot and Lubben [10] have derived additional types of scenarios from these three major types as follows:

1.1. Trend extrapolation vs. contrasting

Trend scenarios attempt to follow what is thought to be most probable and surprise-free. They avoid
discontinuities. Contrasting scenarios display divergence, i.e., a number of scenarios are compared which are
quite different, but all possible.

1.2. Descriptive vs. normative

Descriptive scenarios simply posit a set of possible events or circumstances, without positive or negative
value judgements being made. Normative scenarios are either teleologicali.e., directed towards certain
desirable endsor they involve positive and negative value judgements concerning the events or circumstances
described.

1.3. Explorative vs. anticipatory

Explorative scenarios are synthetic, in that they proceed from a given set of circumstances and attempt to
draw conclusions about possible effectsi.e., they describe a future from a given present (forecasting,
predictive). Anticipatory scenarios are analytic, i.e., they proceed from a dened future set of circumstances
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D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488 475

(effect) and attempt to draw conclusions about the possible causes or processes that could lead to such a future
(backcasting, diagnostic).

2. Ambient intelligence

Scenarios started to appear in AmI projects and studies soon after the term AmI was brought into currency
by Emile Aarts of Philips in 1999.1 Probably the best-known AmI scenarios are those produced for the
European Information Society Technologies Advisory Group (ISTAG), which has described scenario
planning as a tool for inventing our future [11].
Before referring to the AmI scenarios, a few words about AmI are in order. AmI has been envisaged as an
Information Society where y people are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in
all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognising and responding to the presence of
different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way [11].
In the brave new world of AmI, according to its enthusiasts, everything will be embedded with intelligence.
The AmI world will be constructed with networking sensors and actuators, radio frequency identication
(RFID) tags, fourth generation mobile phones, wafer-thin displays, wearable computing and so on. In an AmI
world, heterogeneous devices will be able to communicate across different networks, which will be integrated
into a seamless architecture. Keyboards will give way to voice-activation and voice recognition. Our homes
will recognise us when we enter and will alert us when strangers are snooping around. Our cars will
automatically be interacting with other vehicles on the road and indeed with the roads themselves as well as
taking into account trafc and weather conditions to assure a safe journey from our intelligent homes to our
intelligent ofces (for those who nd it necessary to go to the ofce). Location devices, some of which may be
implanted into our bodies, will enable us to know where our children are whenever we want to get in touch
with them or they with us. Intelligent software will learn our preferences and greatly enhance the convenience
of shopping. We will be presented with choices in which we are genuinely interested, rather than a lot of
rubbish in which we are not.
AmI is expected to yield many benets for European citizens and for consumers, industry, commerce and
the provision of public services. It has attracted a lot of interest in Europe from the European Commission,
industry, universities, research institutes and other stakeholders. In the last 7 or 8 years, researchers in Europe
have initiated hundreds of AmI projects and studies.
Scenarios have featured in many of these AmI projects and other studies. Before mentioning a few of the
more notable ones, to understand the future they are inventing, we need to put scenarios in context.

3. Visions, scenarios, roadmaps, research agendas, platforms and projects

Scenario planning may be a tool to help us invent our future, but it is only one. In fact, scenarios can be seen
as part of a chain comprising visions, scenarios, roadmaps, research agenda, platforms and projects. This
chain has been nicely depicted in a diagram in the Embedded Systems Roadmap [12] (Fig. 1).

3.1. AmI visions

ISTAG produced a vision of the AmI future in a September 2003 report entitled Ambient Intelligence: from
vision to reality [13]. In its vision, it saw signicant opportunities for AmI in relation to:

 Modernising the European social model particularly in terms of: improving civil security; providing new
leisure, learning and work opportunities within the networked home; facilitating community building and
new social groupings; providing new forms of healthcare and social support; tackling environmental
threats; supporting the democratic process and the delivery of public services.
1
The term Ambient Intelligence was originally suggested by a consultant Eli Zelkha during a workshop held at Philips Research in
1998. The rst ofcial publication that mentions the term was by Appelo and myself and appeared in 1999 in a Dutch journal. The rst
international publication that uses the term appeared in the ACM proceedings called The Invisible Future edited by Peter Denning in 2001
and was written by Harwig, Schuurmans and myself. Emile Aarts in an e-mail to the author, 10 October 2006.
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Human needs Examples:

Maslov's
that may be
theory of
Visions satisfied by
motivation
technology
Book of Visions 2001
(Wireless World)

Desirable
functions
of technological Embedded Everywhere
solutions (Networked embedded systems)

Domain
Required Ambient Intelligence scenarios
Stories/ properties
Scenarios technologies and
Personal Well-being Assistant
constraints

EDAA System Design Technology Roadmap

International Technology Roadmap for
Embedded Semiconductors (ITRS)
Roadmaps Systems ITEA Roadmap on Software Intensive Systems
Roadmap MEDEA EDA Roadmap

Book of Visions 2001

(Wireless World)
Research agenda PROGRESS 2 Embedded Everywhere
Programs of projects
(Networked embedded systems)

Fig. 1. Positioning of the embedded systems roadmap.

 Improving Europes economy in terms of: supporting new business processes; increasing the opportunities
for tele-working in the networked home; enhancing mobility and improving all forms of transport;
supporting new approaches to sustainable development.

Other AmI visions have also painted a glowing picture of the future. In the US, the National
Research Council sponsored an inuential report called Embedded Everywhere [14]. Although it is
explicitly described as a research agenda, nevertheless, as its title suggests, it does contain a vision of the
future. With networking sensors embedded everywhere, it foresees the day when we will have an Internet of
things.2

2
The phrase Internet of things comes from an article with the same title by Chana R. Schoenberger in Forbes magazine, 18 March 2002.
The author quotes Kevin Ashton, an executive at Procter & Gamble who heads the Auto ID Center at MIT: We need an internet for
things, a standardized way for computers to understand the real world. www.forbes.com/global/2002/0318/092.html.
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3.2. Scenarios

See the section below on AmI scenarios.

3.3. Roadmaps

Roadmaps follow on from scenariosi.e., to realise a scenario, a roadmap sets out what steps must be
taken. Roadmaps have become a strategic planning tool in many industries and even in international
diplomacy, e.g., the (now defunct) US-brokered Middle East roadmap. Roadmaps provide an overview of
technology development by mapping out gaps, barriers and bottlenecks to be overcome in order to bring
about the future envisaged in one or more scenarios.
Roadmaps were developed during the 1980s as a strategic planning tool by (mainly American) corporations
and use of the tool was later extended for the purposes of entire industry sectors. In recent years, roadmapping
has also been applied to an increasingly broad range of areas such as trans-disciplinary high-tech common
goals or the provision of intelligence for science and technology policy-making [15].
There are several European AmI-relevant roadmaps. One of the rst was the PROGRESS Embedded
Systems Roadmap produced in 2002 by the Dutch embedded systems community at the behest of the
Technology Foundation STW, the Dutch funding agency for university research.3

3.4. Strategic research agendas

From roadmaps, research agendas can be developed which indicate what areas must be researched in order
to bring visions into reality. Quite a few European projects have developed research agendas important to
AmI. Among those are the following:

ARTEMIS, a European group with representatives from industry, governments, regulators and academia,
has produced a strategic research agenda [16].
The eMobility platform (see the section on platforms below) has also published a strategic research agenda.
The latest version, available on its website [17], is dated November 2005. Major sections of its research
agenda deal with ambient services, ambient connectivity, security and trust.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has published several important reports which have served as
research agendas for embedded systems and ubiquitous computing. Among them are the Embedded
Everywhere report [14], which is undoubtedly the best known, Who goes there? Authentication through the
lens of privacy [18], Trust in Cyberspace [19], and, more recently, a summary report from a workshop on
Radio Frequency Identification Technologies [20].

3.5. Platforms

There are many players in AmI development in Europe. To harness their efforts and ensure congruence,
some organisational arrangements must be put in place. That is essentially the function of a platform.
Technology platforms bring together a wide range of stakeholders, including key industrial players, small and
medium-sized enterprises, the nancial world, national and regional public authorities, the research
community, universities, non-governmental organisations and civil society to dene R&D priorities,
timeframes and action plans.
A strong commitment to openness and transparency is key to the success of a European technology
platform (ETP). Each platform must have clear rules of the game to ensure that it is founded on broadly
based agenda-setting and does not become dominated by narrow industry groupings or other stakeholder
lobbies, nor become a closed shop [21].
3
PROGRESS is the acronym for PROGram for Research in Embedded Systems and Software. The roadmap can be found at http://
www.stw.nl/Programmas/Progress/ESroadmap.htm.
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The Commission began promoting ETPs in 2003 and encouraged interested parties to come together and set
up platforms at European level. The Commission continues to emphasise the importance of platforms as
vehicles for publicprivate partnerships in stimulating competitive research while ensuring the complemen-
tarity of action at national, trans-national and European level.
The Commission has a website devoted to ETPs across many research areas [22] and of those, two relate to
AmI, namely those of ARTEMIS (embedded systems) and eMobility (mobile and wireless communications
technology).
ARTEMIS,4 launched in 2004, is a sort of publicprivate partnership which aims to mobilise and co-
ordinate private and public resources to meet business, technical and structural challenges in embedded
systems and to ensure that systems developed by different vendors can communicate and work with each other
via industry standards.
eMobility is a mobile and wireless communications technology platform, established by industry and
operators in 2004 [23]. Its objective is to reinforce Europes leadership in mobile and wireless communications
and services and to master the future development of this technology.

3.6. Projects

As noted above, hundreds of AmI projects and studies have been initiated in Europe. The rst lot of
projects inspired by the ISTAG vision of AmI were those in the Disappearing Computers component of the
ECs Fifth Framework Programme (19982002). The Sixth Framework Programme greatly increased the
funding and number of projects.
To have some idea of the scale of European AmI projects, it is useful to note that of the 100 or so projects
reviewed by the Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (SWAMI) consortium [24], the largest project
(WEARIT@WORK) in euro value has a budget of h24 million and the smallest (STORK) had a budget of
h200,000. The average value was h4.7 million. Nine had a budget of more than h10 million. Twelve had a
budget of less than h1 million.
These numbers indicate that hundreds of millions of euros are being spent on AmI, and hundreds of
European companies, universities and others are participating collaboratively in taking AmI from vision to
reality. Virtually all of the European AmI projects reviewed by SWAMI have been undertaken by consortia.
The number of partners varies from three to 36, with an average number of 11 partners per project. Consortia
typically comprise partners from different countries and different sectors, especially universities and industry.
The US, Japan and other countries also have been exploring pervasive computing and ubiquitous
networking (their comparable buzz words) in many projects, often through collaborative efforts between
government, industry, universities, research institutes and other stakeholders. Most projects are undertaken by
universities and industry, often with support from federal funding agencies such as the US Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, etc.
One of the best-known American projects was called Smart Dust [25], undertaken at the University of
California at Berkeley and supported by the DARPA. The project started in 1997, nished in 2001 and spawned
many spin-offs. The project developed tiny sensors, dubbed smart dust, or motes, with wireless connectivity
capable of organising themselves into exible networks. The aim was to develop a complete sensor network node,
including power supply, processor, sensor and communications, in a single cubic millimetre.
The Portolano project [26] at the University of Washington is tagged as An Expedition into Invisible
Computing. Invisible computing is a term coined by Donald Norman to describe the coming age of
ubiquitous task-specic computing devices.5 The devices are so highly optimised to particular tasks that they
blend into the world and require little technical knowledge on the part of their users. The Portolano project,
with funding from DARPA, is researching how to make computing devices ubiquitous, to make computer
electronics and computation an integral part of all manufactured goods.
4
ARTEMIS is the acronym for Advanced Research and Development on Embedded Intelligent Systems. www.cordis.lu/ist/artemis
5
In his 1998 book, The Invisible Computer, Norman says computer and technology companies are too focused on the technology,
whereas he wants these companies to think about human beings rst. In his vision, the computer and its software would fade into the
background, become invisible and be replaced with simple, task-centred devices.
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4. AmI scenarios

Undoubtedly the best-known AmI scenarios are those produced for the ISTAG, a group with about 30
members from industry and academia, which advises the European Commissions Information Society
Directorate General. In May 2000, ISTAG commissioned the creation of four scenarios to provide food for
thought about longer-term developments in Information and Communication Technologies, with the intent
of exploring the social and technical implications of AmI [6]. The ISTAG scenarios were actually developed by
the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), which is part of the European Commissions Joint
Research Centre, in collaboration with about 35 experts from across Europe. The aim was to describe what
living with AmI might be like for ordinary people in 2010.
The four ISTAG scenarios are entitled and summarised as follows:

1: MariaRoad Warrior: This scenario is about a young woman travelling to a far eastern country where she
is to make a sales pitch. Less than a decade ago, she had to carry a collection of different personal
computing devices (laptop PC, mobile phone, electronic organisers and sometimes beamers and printers).
Her computing system for this trip is reduced to one highly personalised communications device, her
PCom that she wears on her wrist.
2: Dimitrios and the digital me (D-Me): Dimitrios, a 32-year-old employee of a major food-multinational, is
taking a coffee at his ofces cafeteria. He is wearing, embedded in his clothes, a voice-activated digital
avatar of himself, known as a D-Me or Digital Me. A D-Me is a device that learns about Dimitrios from
his interactions with his environment, and acts on his behalf offering communication, processing and
decision-making functionality. Dimitrios D-Me converses with and provides helpful information to the
D-Me of an older person (whom Dimitrios does not know, but who suffers from a similar heart condition).
3: Carmen: traffic, sustainability and commerce: Carmen plans her day with the help of AmI, to nd a non-
smoker with whom she could drive downtown. Her e-fridge helps her in planning the meal for some guests
that evening. Her drivers car, equipped with a dynamic route guidance system, warns the driver of long
trafc jams up ahead due to an accident and calculates alternative routes. On the way to the ofce, her
wearable personal area network (PAN) alerts her to a promotion of her preferred Chardonnay wine. On her
way home, pollution levels have risen, and the city-wide engine control system automatically lowers the
maximum speeds for all motorised vehicles. AmI suggests she tele-work from home the next day as a big
demonstration is planned for downtown.
4: Annette and Solomon in the ambient for social learning: This scenario describes the meeting of an
environmental studies group. With the help of an ambient, members of the group, ranging from 10 to 75
years old, contribute to and learn from the meeting. During the day, individuals and sub-groups locate in
appropriate spaces in the ambient to pursue learning experiences at a pace that suits them. An expert,
several thousand miles away, joins the meeting via videoconference to answer some questions.

Among other things, the ISTAG scenarios suggested a set of critical socio-political factors considered
crucial for the development of AmI, including the issue of security and trust. The scenarios were regarded as a
rst step toward the creation of a research agenda.
Among other AmI projects that have developed scenarios are the following:

The Embedded Systems Roadmap 2002 has a scenario, entitled A day in the life of William in 2011: a letter
to an old friend [27].
The ITEA Technology Roadmap for Software-Intensive Systems has a scenario describing the Rousseau
family holiday trip where AmI helps with their sightseeing and solving health and work problems [28].
The Embedded Everywhere report has three scenarios showing how advanced networking sensors could be
used in the automotive, agricultural and defence sectors.
The Who Goes There? report has two very good scenarios to illustrate the ways in which identication and
authentication arise in everyday life and to highlight some of the important issues associated with new
systems. The rst scenario describes the life of Joseph K as he goes on a business trip. The second describes
Lauras visit to a hospital.
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5. SWAMI dark scenarios

While most AmI scenarios paint the promise of the new technologies in sunny colours, there is a dark side to
AmI as well. In a way, this dark side is inherent in the very nature of AmI, i.e., the fact that AmI technologies
will deliver personalised services to users means that somewhere a lot of personal information needs to be
stored about the user. That being the case, there are risks that the users personal information can be abused,
either accidentally or intentionally. These risks have been recognised by policy-makers and researchers, and we
are at the heart of the SWAMI project,6 funded by the European Commission under its Sixth Framework
Programme.
One of the tasks of the project was to create and analyse four dark scenarios that highlight the key socio-
economic, legal, technological and ethical risks to privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness posed by
new AmI technologies. These were called dark scenarios, a term coined to signify things that could go wrong in
an AmI world, because they present visions of the future that we do not want to become reality. The objective of
the scenarios was to expose threats and vulnerabilities as a way to inform policy-makers and planners.
The process followed in constructing the scenarios is depicted below (Fig. 2).
Essentially, as shown in gure, the partners made an extensive review of existing AmI-related projects
and studies, with particular reference to the scenarios, with a view to understanding their implications
in terms of the key issues. While most existing scenarios were describing the brave new world of AmI,
how great it will be living and working in an AmI-enabled future, the technological marvels have some
negative aspects.
Following a workshop with other AmI experts to discuss the most important threats and vulnerabilities
posed by AmI, the SWAMI partners had a brainstorming session until the partners agreed the rough outlines
of four contrasting scenarios. The partners then developed these outlines into scenario stories or scripts. To
ground the scenarios in realityto ensure that they were not too far-fetchedthe partners did a technology
check (are the technologies referenced in the scenarios probable?) and a reality check (are there press reports
of events similar to those mentioned in the scenarios?). Then all of the partners reviewed all of the scenarios in
order to eliminate doubtful points, unnecessary wordage, irrelevancies, etc., and to sharpen them to illustrate
the points to be emphasised. Once the scenarios were stable, the partners performed an analysis of them,
including a legal analysis. The scenarios and associated analyses were presented at a second SWAMI
workshop in order to benet from the comments of other experts.

Literature review Experts workshop Internal workshop Drafting scenarios

Technology check Scenario stories Reality check

Scenario analysis

Situations AmI technologies Applications Issues Drivers Legal

Fig. 2.

6
SWAMI is the acronym for Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence. The project began in February 2005. The SWAMI
consortium comprises ve partners: the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Germany), the Technical Research
Center of Finland (VTT Electronics), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS,
Spain) of the ECs Joint Research Centre, and Trilateral Research & Consulting (UK). See Wright, D., et al., Safeguards in a World of
Ambient Intelligence, Springer, Dordrecht, 2008 [forthcoming].
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D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488 481

The resulting four scenarios, elaborated in the second SWAMI report (The dark side of ambient intelligence),
are the following:

 Dark scenario 1: A typical family in different environmentspresents AmI vulnerabilities in the life of a
typical family moving through different environments. It introduces dark situations in the smart home, at
work and while taking a lunch break in a park.
 Dark scenario 2: Seniors on a journeyalso references a family but focuses more specically on senior
citizens on a bus tour. An exploited vulnerability in the trafc system causes an accident, raising many
different problems related to both travel and health AmI systems.
 Dark scenario 3: Corporate boardroom and court caseinvolves a data-aggregating company that becomes
the victim of a theft of personal AmI-generated data that fuel its core business. Given its dominant position
in the market, the company wants to cover this up but ends up in court 2 years later. The scenario also
highlights the disparities between countries with AmI networks and those without as well as the illusion of
security.
 Dark scenario 4: Risk societyFrom the studios of a morning news programme, this scenario portrays the
AmI world as a risk society. It presents an action group against personalised proling; the digital divide at a
global scale and related to environmental concerns, the possible vulnerabilities of AmI trafc systems and
crowd management.

6. Elements in the SWAMI scenario methodology

The SWAMI consortium devised a methodology, an analytical structure for both constructing and
deconstructing scenarios, not only the SWAMI scenarios, but many other technology-oriented scenarios. The
analytical structure comprises the following elements or activities.

6.1. Framing the scenario

This rst step summarises the scenario in question and explains its contextwho are the main actors in the
scenario, what happens to them or what do they do, how far into the future is the scenario set, where does it
take place and in what domain (home, ofce, on the move, shopping, etc.). It identies the type of scenario
(trend, normative, explorative) and key assumptions (e.g., intelligent technologies will be embedded
everywhere in rich countries, but not in poor countries).

6.2. Identifying the technologies and/or devices

Next, the most important AmI technologies and/or devices used and/or implied in the scenarios are
identied.

6.3. Identifying the applications

The analysis then considers the applications that emerge in each scenario and that are supported by the
technologies mentioned in the previous step.

6.4. The drivers

At this step, the analysis identies the key drivers that impel the scenario or, more particularly,
the development and use of the applications. Drivers are typically socio-economic, political or environ-
mental forces (e.g., the Data Mining Corporation in Dark scenario 3 seeks a global monopoly, economic
disparities are inaming poor countries, the world is becoming a hothouse) or personal motivations
(e.g., greed).
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6.5. Issues

Next, the major issues raised by the scenarios are identied and explicated. In the SWAMI scenarios, the
issues of concern, as mentioned above, are privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness (or its opposite,
the digital divide). A discussion of the issues considers the threats and vulnerabilities exposed by the scenario
as well as their impacts and legal implications.

6.6. Conclusions

The nal step is a reality check of the scenario itself (how likely is it? are the technologies plausible?) and a
consideration of what should be done to address the issues it raises. One might conclude, as the SWAMI
partners did, that a range of socio-economic, technological and legal safeguards are needed in order to
minimise the risks posed by the threats and vulnerabilities highlighted by the scenario.

7. Cultural artefacts as scenarios

While most safeguards are likely to be socio-economic, technological and/or legal in nature, cultural
artefacts, such as lms and novels, may also serve as safeguards against the threats and vulnerabilities posed
by advanced technologies, such as AmI. Science ction, in particular, often presents a dystopian view of the
future where technology is used to manipulate or control people, thus, in so doing, such artefacts raise our
awareness and serve as warnings against the abuse of technology. A New York Times lm critic put it this way:
It has long been axiomatic that speculative science-ction visions of the future must reect the anxieties of the
present: fears of technology gone awry, of repressive political authority and of the erosion of individuality and
human freedom. [29].
At the outset of this paper, it was stated that scenarios are a form of story-telling, but with a specic
purpose. The question to be considered here is whether it is possible and useful to apply a scenario analysis to
a cultural artefact. To address this question, this paper applies the SWAMI methodological structure for
scenario analysis to Stephen Spielbergs 2002 lm, Minority Report.
This is the rst instance where the SWAMI methodological structure for analysis is applied to and tested
against a scenario not of the SWAMI consortiums own construction. It is also the rst instance where that
structure is applied to a cultural artefact. In doing so, this paper suggests that some cultural artefacts are just
as worthy of consideration by policy-makers and other stakeholders as the purpose-built types of scenarios
referenced above. Minority Report is a good choice because it features so many AmI technologies and draws
attention to issues that have also been the focus of the SWAMI project. Further, in creating Minority Report,
Spielberg went through a process like that of other scenario planners. He convened a think tank of experts for
a 3-day brainstorming session to help envision a future half a century hence.7

8. Framing Minority Report

The lms story takes place in 2054 when three pre-cogs, bio-engineered young people, are able to foresee
murders. They are the principal resource of a pre-crime unit, the chief of which is John Anderton (played by
Tom Cruise), who arrest people for murders they have not yet committed. The pre-crime unit operates in
Washington, DC, and after a 6-year trial is about to go national. However, Anderton himself soon goes on
the run when the pre-cogs foresee his murdering someone whom Anderton does not even know. Essentially,
7
Among the participating experts were scenario planner Peter Schwartz, science advisor John Underkofer from M.I.T.s Media Lab,
Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X, Long Now Foundation president Stewart Brand, Cybergold founder Nat Goldhaber,
biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, virtual reality expert Jaron Lanier. The think tank approach and some of the participants are
mentioned on the Minority Report website (www.minorityreport.com) and in: Kennedy, Lisa, Spielberg in the Twilight Zone, Wired,
Issue 10.06 [June 2002]. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/spielberg.html. Taylor, Chris, Looking ahead in a dangerous world,
Time, 11 October 2004. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995373,00.html. For some of the other 23 participants in the
think tank, see also http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=193016.
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D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488 483

the plot turns on the issue of the ethical legitimacy of putting people into a kind of suspended animation in the
Department of Containment (so-called) for crimes that they have not actually committed yet.
Minority Report could be regarded as an explorative scenario, i.e., one that explores what might happen in
the future. Among its framing assumptions are that technology will continue to be developed and deployed in
advanced ways, but not everyone will benet from it. Also, our world will, of course, be different half a
century hence, but some things will remain more or less as they are now, a point illustrated by the fact that
business people are still dressing in suits and ties like those they wear today. Similarly, the drugs may change,
but drug addiction will not. The scenario is played out in the social domain.

9. Technologies and devices

Quite a few AmI technologies are featured in Minority Report, among which are the following:

 Retinal scanners: access to buildings and secure areas within buildings is principally by means of
optical/retinal scanners. Such scanners are also present on the subway (underground, metro).
 Electronic gloves: Anderton and others wear them for moving images and data around.
 Holospheres: are a kind of holographic video screen and computer rolled into one. Holographic displays
are fed by miniature DVD-like storage disks.
 Voice recognition/activation system for transport and home systemsIm home, says Anderton as he
enters his at, and lights and music promptly come on. His video display is also voice-activated.
 Optical tomography: used to scan the images of the pre-cogs, so that we see what they see.
 Talking billboards: target passers-by with personalised advertising.
 Thermal scanning: check the presence of people in the Sprawl, a DC slum area.
 Electronic spiders: the pre-crime unit, looking for Anderton, search a run-down block of ats, using robotic
spiders that scamper through the building performing eye scans of the inhabitants.

Other technologies are depicted in Minority Report, including hovercraft used by the pre-crime unit police
to pursue criminals, mag-lev (magnetic levitation) cars that zoom down the sides of buildings, halos for
immobilising the prospective criminals and so on. Dr. Iris Hineman used bio-engineering not only on the
pre-cogs but also on the carnivorous plants she grows in her retirement. Holographic fantasies are sold by
Rufus Riley who attempts to help Anderton download a minority report from the pre-cog Agatha. These are
all advanced technologies, but not necessarily AmI-related, thus, they are not considered further for the
purpose of this analysis.

10. Applications

The AmI-related technologies featured in Minority Report are employed for a variety of applications,
among which are the following.
Surveillance: People are monitored and tracked virtually everywhere they go, even in the poverty-stricken
Sprawl area of Washington, DC. Lamar Burgess (played by Max von Sydow), director of the pre-crime
experiment and Andertons boss, knows that Anderton procures illegal drugs (Clarity).
Personalised advertising: People are assaulted relentlessly by personalised advertising, not only in the shops
and malls, but outside as well.
Political propaganda: Electronic billboards are used to urge citizens to vote in favour of expanding the
Washington pre-crime experiment to a nation-wide crime-prevention service.
Crime prevention and detention: Quite a few of the technologies in the lm are used in crime prevention and
detention, from the optical tomography externalising the pre-cogs previsions on to overhead displays to the
system used by Anderton to manipulate and interpret the images collected from the pre-cogs.
Entertainment and news: On the metro, citizens read dynamic newspapers with moving images (like in the
Harry Potter lms) for breaking news. One headline reads Precrime hunts its own. Anderton uses a
holographic display in his home for retrieving holographic images of his ex-wife and son.
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484 D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488

11. Drivers

Drivers impel a scenario; they push the storyline or script along. Drivers typically include the motives of the
principal characters and/or economic, political or social forces. In Minority Report, drivers include the
following.
Social consensus: To reduce the epidemic homicide rate that prevailed in Washington before the pre-crime
unit was set up. Despite the massive surveillance and personalised advertising, public opinion still seems to
matterthe Attorney General exhorts citizens to vote in favour of taking the pre-crime initiative national.
Commercial incentive: the personalised advertising is used by companies to expand their business.
Personal ambition: Lamar Burgess, director of the pre-crime unit, together with Dr. Iris Hineman, initiated
and established the pre-crime capability. He wants to control it and make it a national service.
Escapism: Anderton escapes into holographic videos of his son before the latter was kidnapped and
apparently killed. He also escapes into Clarity (a drug). Ironically, many of the adverts that we see while
Anderton is on the run talk about getting away from it all.
Revenge: Anderton is driven to nd who kidnapped and killed his son.
Seeing: There are numerous references or touches to seeing or sight or insight in the lm. Pre-cog Agatha,
on the run with Anderton, asks him several times Can you see? Anderton is sold his Clarity by a blind man.
(In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, Anderton is reminded.) Our hero has his eyes removed in
order to spoof access control systems. What one sees with the physical eye may be misinterpreted by the
minds eye. Witwer and the pre-crime unit are tracking down Anderton because they saw, from a pre-cog
prevision, that Anderton will kill someone (whose name is Crow) and he will, as a result, be haloed and put
into containment, but it is a travesty of justice (blind justice) because Anderton did not murder Crow even
though it was his gun that led to his death. Crow kills himself in a scufe with Anderton.

12. Issues

The technologies and applications depicted in Minority Report raise various issues, among which the most
important are the following:

12.1. Loss of privacy

Several instances show how citizens privacy has been curtailed in 2054. First, there is the massive
surveillance. When the pre-crime unit is hunting Anderton, the robotic spiders are set loose in a block of ats
and everyone has to submit to their eye scans, no matter what they are doing (including sexual concourse in
the case of one couple). In some instances, this invasion of privacy would seem to be justied for social
purpose, ghting crime; in other instances, the loss of privacy is purely for commercial gain (the advertising).
In fact, there seems little privacy left in 2054.
Issue: is this the kind of society we want? Can we avoid it?
Maybe not. Spielberg himself has commented, Big Brother is watching us now and what little privacy we
have will completely evaporate in 20 or 30 years, because technology will be able to see through walls, through
rooftops, into the very privacy of our personal lives, into the sanctuary of our families.
Spielbergs screenwriter Scott Frank, who participated in the aforementioned think tanks 3-day
brainstorming session, said the gradual loss of privacy was a near unanimous prediction. The reason is not
so people can spy on you, explained Frank, but so they can sell to you. In the not too distant future, it is
plausible that by scanning your eyes, your whereabouts will be tracked. They will keep track of what you buy,
so they can keep on selling to you [30].

12.2. Security vs. civil liberties

The US Attorney General advocates making pre-crime a nation-wide initiative. Shown on wafer-thin
displays on walls of buildings, tunnels, etc., he says, That which will keep us safe will also keep us free.
To some, this will smack of casuistry, but in 2054, society seems to have accepted the declaration as true.
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D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488 485

The right to a fair trial seems to have disappeared. Prospective murderers are simply haloed and put into
containment.

12.3. Dont trust anyone

Dr. Hineman says this to Anderton and, unfortunately for humankind, it is probably good advice. Even the
advanced technology that led to the success of the pre-cogs in their prevision of crime seems to be contingent.
From Hineman, Anderton learns of minority reports. The pre-cogs collectively are never wrong, but
sometimes they do disagree in their interpretation of what they see. A disagreement leads to a minority
report from which the lm gets its title. Anderton hopes to use this glitch in the system to prove his innocence. In
the meantime, the lm shows that we cannot trust those who are supposed to be protecting us. Certainly, we
need not trust the exhortations of the Attorney General. Anderton nally learns that he should not have trusted
his boss, Lamar Burgess, who in fact betrays him. Danny Witwer, from the Department of Justice, breaks into
Andertons at and starts examining his holographic computer les. Lesson: do not trust the police either.

12.4. Spoofing technology

The retinal scanners can be spoofed. Anderton has his eyes removed and replacements installed, so he can
avoid capture. He carries his own eyes around in order to gain access to the pre-cogs. Despite Andertons
having become a security risk, the pre-crime unit has not changed its access control measures, so that
Anderton is able to gain such access, which in itself is a comment on how human fallibility can undermine even
the most advanced security.

12.5. Legal implications

Danny Witwer, the observer from Justice department, who takes Andertons place as chief of the pre-crime
unit, remarks to Anderton that We arrest people who have broken no law y. Its not the future if you stop it.
Isnt that a fundamental paradox? y Do you get any false positives? Somebody who intends to kill his boss or
his wife but never goes through with it?
Trusting in technology, Anderton argues that the pre-cogs are never wrong and thus does not accept
Witwers perception of paradox. But of the pre-crime system, employing the pre-cogs, Witwer is convinced
Theres a aw. Its human. It always is. Ironically, when Witwer supplants Anderton as the pre-crime chief,
he seems to become a believer in the pre-crime initiative, while Anderton, a believer until he goes on the run
for a murder he has not yet committed, then sees the aw in the declaration Im placing you under arrest for
the future murder of y
Perhaps Anderton now feels that, armed with the knowledge that the pre-cogs apparently believe he intends
to commit a murder, he can avoid committing it.
In this world, it seems, the ends justify the means. Thus, the spiders invade peoples privacy without any
search warrant. Witwer seems to have no compunction about breaking into Andertons at, and so on.
In this society of 2054, people (especially the law enforcement ofcials) have come to rely utterly on
technology, against which there seems to be no or limited appeal. Yet Anderton is wrongly haloed while his
boss Lamar Burgess has managed so far to escape prosecution by spoong a prevision of the drowning of
Anne Lively who, as it turns out, was the mother of the pre-cogs. Lesson: do not trust technology for legal
certainty.

13. Conclusions

Minority Report serves up a dystopian, sci- view of the future. Some of the technologies (cars going down
the sides of buildings) seem a bit over the top, but many of them seem entirely plausible and, indeed, some of
them already exist. As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, one can draw one obvious conclusion from this
lm, i.e., do not trust (rely upon) technology. If its human, its fallible, as Witwer rightly remarks.
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486 D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488

Even if pre-meditated homicide has dropped from epidemic proportions to zero in 6 years, the lm comes to
the happy conclusion that pre-crime technology is not fool-proof: Anderton is freed, Lamar Burgess is
exposed, the pre-crime unit is dispelled and the pre-cogs are released from their nutrient-rich pool to live in a
more congenial rustic backwater.
For those sensitive to dark scenarios, Minority Report presents an ineluctable but somewhat ambiguous
future where the progressive deployment of advanced technologies will further encroach upon our privacy and
civil liberties, but not undermine them totally. A vote will still be required.
While the social paradigm presented in Minority Report is not on a straight trendline from today,
nevertheless, it does raise the yellow ag. We must collectively proceed with caution if we or our children are
not to nd ourselves in the midst of such a society.
Minority Report serves as a safeguard against the abuses of technology in so far as it raises awareness about
the (insidious) power of new technology and the power of companies to bombard us with personalised,
relentless advertising wherever we go.
Taking the human factor into account is crucial in the construction of safeguards in a world of AmI. The
success of AmI will depend on how secure its use can be made, how privacy and other rights of individuals can
be protected and, ultimately, how individuals can come to trust the intelligent world which surrounds them
and through which they move. The European Commission has acknowledged and emphasised this
dependency between technology and trustworthiness on numerous occasions.
Although Minority Report has enjoyed praise from the lm critics as well as commercial success, it is by no
means unique as a cultural artefact warning about how future technologies are like a double-edged knife that
cuts both ways. In fact, Samantha Morton, who played Agatha, the pre-cog in Minority Report, reappeared as
Maria in another dystopian lm, Code 46, which came out in 2003, the year after Minority Report. The
director, Michael Winterbottom, suffused Code 46 with AmI technologies and employed similar photographic
techniques as Spielberg in Minority Reporti.e., the colours in the lm are washed out, antiseptic, bloodless,
which is perhaps a visually iconographic suggestion that future society is similarly washed out despite the
promise that technology will enrich our life experience. Maria, the awed heroine in Code 46, makes the voice-
over observation If we had enough information, we could predict the consequences of our actions, a line
appropriate to Minority Report too,8 but then she muses Would we want to know?
SWAMI partners believe that, sooner or later, we will live in a world of AmI. For AmI to be a success story,
in human terms, according to democratic principles, and not to be an Orwellian world, all stakeholders,
including the public, must be cognisant of the threats and vulnerabilities and work together to ensure adequate
safeguards exist. As Embedded Everywhere suggests, personal awareness is not sufcient as a safeguard against
the abuses made possible by technology. Public policy is needed too. Certainly, industry should become more
active in creating applications that are secure and privacy-enhancing since this is the major way to create
consumer trust and make AmI fruitful for all participants. Industry should not view privacy, security, identity,
trust and inclusiveness issues as regulatory barriers to be overcome. Rather, they should regard such measures
as necessary, justied and, in the end, crucial to ensuring that their fellow citizens will use AmI technologies
and services. In the meantime, all citizens need to be vigilant and to press for public policy safeguards to
ensure that, among alternative futures, we avoid one like that depicted in Minority Report.
As a conclusion to this paper, it has been demonstrated that the SWAMI scenario analytical structure can
be applied to scenarios not of the consortiums own construction, that it can be applied to at least some
cultural artifactssci- lms or novels are obviously more suitable for such analysis than, for example,
Westerns or romantic comedies9and that some cultural artefacts can be regarded as scenarios much like
those that are purpose-built by the military, industry, environmentalists and so on. From a societal point of
view, such cultural artefacts are even better than the purpose-built scenarios in the sense that they are more
widely disseminated and hence are better in terms of raising the awareness of citizens to the impacts of
8
In fact, as Agatha in Minority Report, Samantha Morton says something quite similar. She tells Anderton since he knows his future, he
can change it, i.e., he does not have to kill the person (called Crow) he is predicted to kill. In fact, Crow kills himself with Andertons hand
still on the gun.
9
Spielberg has commented, Every other genre has its limitations. With science ction, you can pull out all the stops y. The best science
ction stories have the most dire warnings about civilization and the future. Most of them are cautionary tales. Quoted in Lisa Kennedy,
Spielberg in the Twilight Zone, Wired, Issue 10.06 [June 2002]. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/spielberg.html.
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D. Wright / Futures 40 (2008) 473488 487

emerging technologies and the motives of those who seek to exploit them. Some of those technologies in
Minority Report may be more plausible than others, but it does not diminish the overall impact of one of the
key conclusions we can draw from the lm, i.e., that new technologies could threaten society unless safeguards
are built in, and one of the most important safeguards is public awareness. Another important message is not
to make our legal framework subservient to technology.
Minority Report is different from the purpose-built scenarios in the sense that it is unlikely that any
platforms (groupings of industry, regulators and other stakeholders) are dissecting the lm in order to
construct roadmaps and strategic research agendas. But perhaps they should be. In the section above on
cultural artefacts as scenarios, it was stated that the question to be considered here was whether it was possible
to apply the SWAMI scenario analytical structure to a cultural artefact (and this paper has demonstrated, so
the author believes, that it is possible), but also whether it is useful. Again, the answer must be yes; indeed, it
would be useful for platforms and policy-makers to consider such cultural artefacts as they develop and
deploy new technologies like those that will give us AmI, since such cultural artefacts, as the New York Times
lm critic put it, reect the anxieties of the present: fears of technology gone awry, of repressive political
authority and of the erosion of individuality and human freedom. Such fears do exist, thus, they and their
reections in cultural artefacts like Minority Report should be taken into account in developing public policy.

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges with gratitude the contributions of his partners in the SWAMI consortium and, in
particular, Michael Friedewald and Yves Punie. Although the SWAMI project was funded under the
European Commissions Sixth Framework Programme, the views expressed in this paper are those of the
author alone and are in no way intended to reect those of the European Commission.

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