V . D . A Primer for a New Cross - Impact Language —

A new methodology/language has been developed which serves to make available the workings of cross-impact analysis available to a much larger audience in that no technical sophistication is required to become expressive in the new language. Unlike the procedures developed by Gordon, et al our methods stress the structural dynamics of the system, the geometry of the linkages rather than refining arithmetic estimates of future probabilities. However, while qualitatively and subjectively oriented, our procedures can be easily expanded to any degree of precision, providing the data and mechanisms are sufficiently well known. The key feature of our approach is that it allows one to work with data of any level-from subjective estimates to highly precise physical measurements-and the computer has the character of logical projections of basic hypothesis rather than dogmatic imperatives which is the nature of much of present social, economic, technological, and ecological modelling. * DR. KANE is Professor of Mathematical Ecology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Note: A reasonably complete bibliography of cross-impact analysis is given in Turoff's article in the first issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 3 (1972) and will not be repeated here. Copyright © 1972 by American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted from. Technological Forecasting and social Change 4 (192) with permimion of American Elsevier. Cross-Impact Analysis: New Cross-Impact Language 365