While I have always been aware of the Long Now Foundation, for some reason it gradually dropped off my radar (would Alanis Morisette call this ironic?)

It turns out that they have podcasts of all their seminars, and they make for damn interesting listening. One of the most interesting ones is by Philip Tetlock where he discusses the results of his longitudinal study about how accurate experts are at predicting the future.

He categorises them into two camps : foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes have many tricks (i.e. experts that cover broad areas) while a hedgehog has but one trick (i.e. a deep subject matter expert).

Tetlock examines the accuracy of these two groups across a range of different criteria. It’s fascinating, and especially relevant for my work on the Technology Futures programme.

We’ve found that the mix of foxes and hedgehogs in any one large group can dramatically alter the buzz of an event.

As a sidenote Tetlock has been quite clever in selecting the two animals use as illustrations. The imagery behind the choice is strong, and you could conceivably label someone a hedgehog without incurring their wrath. After all, rolling into a spiky ball is quite clever. You could not really say the same if you labeled someone a slug, a flatworm or a hagfish (despite the fact that a hagfish has a couple of neat tricks too)…

Thanks Jan for the pointer.