Transdisciplinarity and the Future

Transdisciplinarity and the Future

CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE

by Nicholas C. Zingale, Julieta Matos-Castaño, Abigail Poeske and Anouk Geenen Faculty Innovation Fellows candidates Cleveland State University and the DesignLab at University of Twente

Living in society inevitably gives rise to controversy. Throughout history, we have witnessed how the way we deal with conflicts between different interests and values determines the course of events. Around the world, political conversations routinely reach an impasse around societal challenges, from climate change, poverty, housing, and COVID-19 to other public health crises exacerbating inequality and hampering quality of life improvements. Today, and perhaps more than ever before, the pace of technological advances is rapidly transforming society and giving rise to seemingly insurmountable challenges and unpredictable controversies that society seems unprepared to properly address. These new issues become difficult to untangle from present-day wicked problems. The inability to imagine innovative ways forward often impedes constructive civil discourse as residual tensions from previous and current issues spill over to new and potentially future challenges. A recent example of this is evident in the United States. On May 24, 2022, an American teenager entered a Texas elementary school and murdered 19 children and two teachers, just ten days after another American teenager killed ten Sunday morning shoppers at a New York grocery store. Despite such devastating attacks on innocent lives, the United States has been unable to reach a policy solution to address this complex problem at the intersection of Constitutional rights, mental health, racism, political funding, and educational reform. The political divisiveness finds itself within an array of other hotly contested issues such as welfare reform, climate change, healthcare, and infrastructure funding. This case highlights that new approaches are needed to explore innovative and constructive ways to address present and future controversies, designed to expand understanding while co-shaping present conditions and futures we want to live in.

When confronted with these controversial and complex “wicked” problems, which are tightly interconnected with one another, solutionist, unilateral, and monodisciplinary approaches are insufficient. A new way forward is to create space (a third space) from which new ideas and ways of understanding can emerge. Transdisciplinarity is a hopeful and emergent means to transcend traditional silos – whether those be organizational, political, disciplinary, or other. It requires creating a third space designed to generate new understandings and work toward solutions while accepting the evolutionary nature of society and the persistent challenges and opportunities this creates. Transdisciplinarity allows reframing problems and integrating knowledge and experience in ways that move beyond the Aristotelian binary A or non-A that have stymied academics, business leaders, and politicians. At the core of transdisciplinary collaboration is convening academic and non-academic actors such as government, industry, knowledge institutions and civil society (also known as quadruple helix) to address societal challenges. Transdisciplinarity consists of learning to think differently, being open and able to include multiple voices and perspectives. It helps to conceptualize problems in new ways and calls for developing and experimenting with innovative approaches that draw upon existing organizational and collaborative traditions.

The following projects, Society 5.0 and Responsible Futuring, complement the existing body of knowledge and practice on transdisciplinarity by providing mindsets, tools and techniques to transcend disciplines and tribal positions. Both projects look forward into the potential futures of society, including those where technology becomes integrated and embodied deeply in our lives, calling for critical yet constructive reflection on the societal impact this abundance of technology carries. Each project offers ways to sharpen our transdisciplinary skill sets, develop ‘futures ready’ mindsets, and practical ways to have productive, civil conversations around often controversial topics. These skills are critical, not only to start approaching the challenges of today but also to prepare for the difficult conversations on the horizon.

Stanford’s Faculty Innovation Fellowship sparked collaboration between Cleveland State University and the University of Twente as they began conversations around how to prepare future and present leaders for human-machine and technologically-embodied futures. In our discussions, we have created that third space that we advocate for by sharing insights and exchanging ideas related to our research projects around human-technology interactions, smart city futures, and controversies. We are pleased to present Society 5.0 and Responsible Futuring in the following sections, and we invite others to embrace transdisciplinary approaches and constructive controversing in their own curricula as tools to foster innovative collaboration around the wicked problems of today and of tomorrow. Society 5.0 (S5) is a transdisciplinary initiative and graduate curriculum developed at Cleveland State University. S5 catalyzes conversations to prepare current and future leaders for an existential era of society that is deeply infused with advanced technologies which shape and re-shape our understanding of reality and what it means to be human.

Responsible Futuring is a design approach developed at the DesignLab of the University of Twente. Responsible Futuring equips societal stakeholders with tools and techniques to co-shape desirable futures by embracing transdisciplinarity and stimulating ethical reflection and moral imagination. Together, these initiatives are playing around with innovative transdisciplinary approaches by sharing ideas, resources, and encouragement. It is our hope that the following pieces will inspire you to do the same.