Don't merely consider what you think is plausible - recognise that you may not have the whole story on emerging changes, and that what's emerging may shatter the bounds of what's currently 'plausible'. Get creative, test assumptions, test values and worldviews.
Future Outlook on Urban CompetitivenessWendy Schultz
The narrative of my 22 June 2010 presentation to the Global Innovation Forum in Seoul, sponsored by the Korea Economic Daily. Please refer to PDF of slidedeck, above.
Crazy Futures aka Rx for Leadership Scotomas (why plausibility is maladaptive)Wendy Schultz
Short slidedeck on overcoming mental boundaries and expanding conceptual horizons in considering what possible futures may emerge, as a means to avoiding decision blindspots and black elephants / black swans.
Quick tools for thinking about future impacts of change: 'for there is nothin...Wendy Schultz
The presentation slides - interspersed with my 'speaking notes' slides - from my keynote panel presentation at ICT 2013 in Vilnius on 7 November 2013. Other panellists described emerging changes; I was asked to help people think about the impacts and implications of those changes, and so offered quick versions of the Three Horizons, Futures Wheels and Manoa Scenario Building, Verge, and Causal Layered Analysis - in 15 minutes.
The Drift Deck (Analog Edition) is an algorithmic puzzle game used to navigate city streets. A deck of cards is used as instructions that guide you as you drift about the city. Each card contains an object or situation, followed by a simple action. For example, a situation might be — you see a fire hydrant, or you come across a pigeon lady. The action is meant to be performed when the object is seen, or when you come across the described situation. For example — take a photograph, or make the next right turn. The cards also contain writerly extras, quotes and inspired words meant to supplement your wandering about the city.
Processed in collaboration with Dawn Lozzi who did all of the graphic design and production.
More details here: http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/projects/drift-deck/
Design Fiction: A short slideshow on design, science, fact and fictionJulian Bleecker
http://cli.gs/DesignFictionEssay
An exploration of the entanglements amongst science fiction and science fact, in order to show how they are not distinct, but infinitely knotted together. Why do this? In order to wonder — what are effective ways of designing the future?
Design fiction is making things that tell stories. It's like science-fiction in that the stories bring into focus certain matters-of-concern, such as how life is lived, questioning how technology is used and its implications, its ability to speculate about the course of events; all of the unique abilities of science fiction to incite imagination-filling conversations about possible habitable, life-affirming future worlds.
A larger discussion of this slidshow overview is available here: http://cli.gs/DesignFictionEssay
Future Outlook on Urban CompetitivenessWendy Schultz
The narrative of my 22 June 2010 presentation to the Global Innovation Forum in Seoul, sponsored by the Korea Economic Daily. Please refer to PDF of slidedeck, above.
Crazy Futures aka Rx for Leadership Scotomas (why plausibility is maladaptive)Wendy Schultz
Short slidedeck on overcoming mental boundaries and expanding conceptual horizons in considering what possible futures may emerge, as a means to avoiding decision blindspots and black elephants / black swans.
Quick tools for thinking about future impacts of change: 'for there is nothin...Wendy Schultz
The presentation slides - interspersed with my 'speaking notes' slides - from my keynote panel presentation at ICT 2013 in Vilnius on 7 November 2013. Other panellists described emerging changes; I was asked to help people think about the impacts and implications of those changes, and so offered quick versions of the Three Horizons, Futures Wheels and Manoa Scenario Building, Verge, and Causal Layered Analysis - in 15 minutes.
The Drift Deck (Analog Edition) is an algorithmic puzzle game used to navigate city streets. A deck of cards is used as instructions that guide you as you drift about the city. Each card contains an object or situation, followed by a simple action. For example, a situation might be — you see a fire hydrant, or you come across a pigeon lady. The action is meant to be performed when the object is seen, or when you come across the described situation. For example — take a photograph, or make the next right turn. The cards also contain writerly extras, quotes and inspired words meant to supplement your wandering about the city.
Processed in collaboration with Dawn Lozzi who did all of the graphic design and production.
More details here: http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/projects/drift-deck/
Design Fiction: A short slideshow on design, science, fact and fictionJulian Bleecker
http://cli.gs/DesignFictionEssay
An exploration of the entanglements amongst science fiction and science fact, in order to show how they are not distinct, but infinitely knotted together. Why do this? In order to wonder — what are effective ways of designing the future?
Design fiction is making things that tell stories. It's like science-fiction in that the stories bring into focus certain matters-of-concern, such as how life is lived, questioning how technology is used and its implications, its ability to speculate about the course of events; all of the unique abilities of science fiction to incite imagination-filling conversations about possible habitable, life-affirming future worlds.
A larger discussion of this slidshow overview is available here: http://cli.gs/DesignFictionEssay
...A SIMPLE CHART WE USE TO BRAINSTORM THE USE OF HUMAN/COMPUTER INTERFACES WITH THE PERFORMING BODY. THIS INVOLVES THE CONFLUENCE OF THE 'NOOSPHERE' WITH THE HUMAN BODY IN ART AND TECHNOLOGY....A DOSE OF HISTORY AND NARRATOLOGY.
Shared Joy: a problem-to-vision interactive exercise.Wendy Schultz
An exercise I designed for a World Futures Studies Federation conference -- suitable even when participants are seated in plenary (actually designed with auditorium seating in mind) -- good warm-up, gets people talking and co-creating.
Talk given at the Open Data Institute in London on various visions of Data in science fiction. The text based slides contain the text of the talk from the script. Some pictures are clickable to online links.
A playful stroll thru heuristic fields of thought & feeling, focused upon opportunities for Foreign Language Learning Pedagogy to be transformed by New Media (Lev Manovich), NeuroCinematics, WeChat/WhatsApp, English Corners, right-brained learning/acquisition. Wikinomics and the practices of mass collaboration can be used by language learners for income generation--by doing audio editing of their target language to expandtheir level of i+1 (Krashen's concept of expanding one's level of comprehension of the target language input),by using repetition of audio segments (speeches/film dialogues/songs/etc.), silence, background music, slowing the speed of speech (but not the frequency). Such income-generating mass collaboration projects can benefit economically-challenged individuals/schools/NGOs/etc.
What lies over the horizon? Scenarios to the Future of Social Sciences in the...Shermon Cruz
The year was 2040 when the social sciences transformed into something really unrecognizable.
The social science catalogue now includes courses like coding and decoding, myth and magic, food futures, reality engineering, micropolitics, macrohistory and macrofutures, decolonization, re-creativity and re-invention, foresight studies, big history and galaxies, robotics and space sciences, spirituality and social transformations, etc. This was the tip of the iceberg. The climate of uncertainty and the explosive success of digital technology not to mention some game-changing events like the Occupy Wall Street, the discovery of the Higgs-boson like particle, the emergence of culture as driver of new economic growth among others continue to influence our ways of knowing and re-perceiving the social sciences.
Recently, many academics have speculated about the future of the social sciences. The shape of things to come will certainly come in a digitized content and more according to experts. This paper explored some scenarios on the futures of the social sciences. It tracked emerging developments and explored the possible, plausible, and preferred social science scenarios in 2040. It employed the futures triangle and archetypal scenario (business as usual, best case, worst case, outliers) methods developed by Sohail Inayatullah and Peter Schwartz respectively.The purpose of this paper is to anticipate events and leverage the changes shaping the future of the social sciences.
Presentation on my theory-driven scenario method from the Scenario 2015: Improving Scenario Methodology conference held at Warwick Business School, December 14-15, 2015.
The Third Era explores the forces shaping the futures of constitutional governance and suggests ways to begin reframing how we approach designing constitutional governance.
...A SIMPLE CHART WE USE TO BRAINSTORM THE USE OF HUMAN/COMPUTER INTERFACES WITH THE PERFORMING BODY. THIS INVOLVES THE CONFLUENCE OF THE 'NOOSPHERE' WITH THE HUMAN BODY IN ART AND TECHNOLOGY....A DOSE OF HISTORY AND NARRATOLOGY.
Shared Joy: a problem-to-vision interactive exercise.Wendy Schultz
An exercise I designed for a World Futures Studies Federation conference -- suitable even when participants are seated in plenary (actually designed with auditorium seating in mind) -- good warm-up, gets people talking and co-creating.
Talk given at the Open Data Institute in London on various visions of Data in science fiction. The text based slides contain the text of the talk from the script. Some pictures are clickable to online links.
A playful stroll thru heuristic fields of thought & feeling, focused upon opportunities for Foreign Language Learning Pedagogy to be transformed by New Media (Lev Manovich), NeuroCinematics, WeChat/WhatsApp, English Corners, right-brained learning/acquisition. Wikinomics and the practices of mass collaboration can be used by language learners for income generation--by doing audio editing of their target language to expandtheir level of i+1 (Krashen's concept of expanding one's level of comprehension of the target language input),by using repetition of audio segments (speeches/film dialogues/songs/etc.), silence, background music, slowing the speed of speech (but not the frequency). Such income-generating mass collaboration projects can benefit economically-challenged individuals/schools/NGOs/etc.
What lies over the horizon? Scenarios to the Future of Social Sciences in the...Shermon Cruz
The year was 2040 when the social sciences transformed into something really unrecognizable.
The social science catalogue now includes courses like coding and decoding, myth and magic, food futures, reality engineering, micropolitics, macrohistory and macrofutures, decolonization, re-creativity and re-invention, foresight studies, big history and galaxies, robotics and space sciences, spirituality and social transformations, etc. This was the tip of the iceberg. The climate of uncertainty and the explosive success of digital technology not to mention some game-changing events like the Occupy Wall Street, the discovery of the Higgs-boson like particle, the emergence of culture as driver of new economic growth among others continue to influence our ways of knowing and re-perceiving the social sciences.
Recently, many academics have speculated about the future of the social sciences. The shape of things to come will certainly come in a digitized content and more according to experts. This paper explored some scenarios on the futures of the social sciences. It tracked emerging developments and explored the possible, plausible, and preferred social science scenarios in 2040. It employed the futures triangle and archetypal scenario (business as usual, best case, worst case, outliers) methods developed by Sohail Inayatullah and Peter Schwartz respectively.The purpose of this paper is to anticipate events and leverage the changes shaping the future of the social sciences.
Presentation on my theory-driven scenario method from the Scenario 2015: Improving Scenario Methodology conference held at Warwick Business School, December 14-15, 2015.
The Third Era explores the forces shaping the futures of constitutional governance and suggests ways to begin reframing how we approach designing constitutional governance.
Cultural Contradictions of Scanning in an Evidence-based Policy EnvironmentWendy Schultz
An overview of the tensions that arise when attempting to embed a futures perspective, in the form of horizon scanning, in organisations with an evidence-based culture.
Crazy Futures I an exploration on the necessity of pushing your thinking pas...Wendy Schultz
Don't merely consider what you think is plausible - recognise that you may not have the whole story on emerging changes, and that what's emerging may shatter the bounds of what's currently 'plausible'. Get creative, test assumptions, test values and worldviews.
Crazy Futures: Why Plausibility is MaladaptiveWendy Schultz
Explores how images of the future are perceived and categorized, and how the discipline itself uses 'plausibility' as an evaluative criterion - and why that may be a mistake.
1. Why is the relationship between Geertz and Weber, assuming thatSantosConleyha
1. Why is the relationship between Geertz and Weber, assuming that they have one?What does “semiotic” mean? What could Geertz have in mind when he says that culture is “semiotic”? How does Geertz's notion of culture differ from that given above?
2. Who was John Ryle and why is he remembered? What is the point of Geertz’s long example, adapted from the work of Gilbert Ryle, where he discusses “twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, [and] rehearsals of parodies” (pp. 6-7)? How would Ryle's description of a wink differ from that of Geertz? How might these twitches, winks, and so on be analyzed if we understand the study of culture as an “experimental science”? How does our analysis change if we believe that the study of culture is “interpretive”?
3. Read the passage from Geertz’s field journal (pp. 7-9) again slowly, paying attention to detail. Describe what happens in in three or four sentences. What might Geertz mean at the end of the passage when he notes “how extraordinarily ‘thick’” even such an “elemental” ethnographic description must be? What are the implications of this “thickness” for the study of communication?
- __ ., ______ r-- _________ _
() I ,--h:: v'c.l fr re ( t 2:: . l q -r:-~
il,c ~~-( ,t +zcti(.>j td: C.i"-111,c/{_~)~ ---
} -· · - f[t; L_· " t"-l '-I . ' f'")lA... ') \ C . ,)
Chapter I /Thick
Description: Toward an
Interpretive Theory of
Culture·
I
In her book, Philosophy in a New Key, Susanne Langer remarks that
certain ideas burst. upon the intellectual landscape with a tremendous
force. They resolve so many fundamental problems at once that they
seem also to promise that they will resolve all fundamental problems,
clarify all obscure issues. Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame
of some new positive science, the conceptual center-point around which
a comprehensive system of analysis can be built. The sudden vogue of
such a grande idee, crowding out almost everything else for a while, is
due, she says, "to the fact that all sensitive and active minds turn at
once to exploiting it. We try it in every connection, for every purpose,
experiment with possible stretches of its strict meaning, with generaliza-
tions and derivatives."
After we have become familiar with the new idea, however, after it
has become part Qf our general stock of theoretical concepts, our expec-
4 THE INTERPRETATION OF CUL TURES
tations are bro_ught more into balance with its actual uses, and its exces-
sive popularity is ended. A few zealots persist in the old key-to-the-uni-
verse view of it; but less driven thinkers settle down after a while to the
problems the idea has really generated. They try to apply it and extend
it where it applies and where it is capable of extension; and they desist
where it does not apply, or cannot be extended. It becomes, if it was, in
truth, a seminal idea in the first place, a permanent and enduring part
of our intellectual armory. But it no longer has the grandiose, ...
1. Why is the relationship between Geertz and Weber, assuming thatBenitoSumpter862
1. Why is the relationship between Geertz and Weber, assuming that they have one?What does “semiotic” mean? What could Geertz have in mind when he says that culture is “semiotic”? How does Geertz's notion of culture differ from that given above?
2. Who was John Ryle and why is he remembered? What is the point of Geertz’s long example, adapted from the work of Gilbert Ryle, where he discusses “twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, [and] rehearsals of parodies” (pp. 6-7)? How would Ryle's description of a wink differ from that of Geertz? How might these twitches, winks, and so on be analyzed if we understand the study of culture as an “experimental science”? How does our analysis change if we believe that the study of culture is “interpretive”?
3. Read the passage from Geertz’s field journal (pp. 7-9) again slowly, paying attention to detail. Describe what happens in in three or four sentences. What might Geertz mean at the end of the passage when he notes “how extraordinarily ‘thick’” even such an “elemental” ethnographic description must be? What are the implications of this “thickness” for the study of communication?
- __ ., ______ r-- _________ _
() I ,--h:: v'c.l fr re ( t 2:: . l q -r:-~
il,c ~~-( ,t +zcti(.>j td: C.i"-111,c/{_~)~ ---
} -· · - f[t; L_· " t"-l '-I . ' f'")lA... ') \ C . ,)
Chapter I /Thick
Description: Toward an
Interpretive Theory of
Culture·
I
In her book, Philosophy in a New Key, Susanne Langer remarks that
certain ideas burst. upon the intellectual landscape with a tremendous
force. They resolve so many fundamental problems at once that they
seem also to promise that they will resolve all fundamental problems,
clarify all obscure issues. Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame
of some new positive science, the conceptual center-point around which
a comprehensive system of analysis can be built. The sudden vogue of
such a grande idee, crowding out almost everything else for a while, is
due, she says, "to the fact that all sensitive and active minds turn at
once to exploiting it. We try it in every connection, for every purpose,
experiment with possible stretches of its strict meaning, with generaliza-
tions and derivatives."
After we have become familiar with the new idea, however, after it
has become part Qf our general stock of theoretical concepts, our expec-
4 THE INTERPRETATION OF CUL TURES
tations are bro_ught more into balance with its actual uses, and its exces-
sive popularity is ended. A few zealots persist in the old key-to-the-uni-
verse view of it; but less driven thinkers settle down after a while to the
problems the idea has really generated. They try to apply it and extend
it where it applies and where it is capable of extension; and they desist
where it does not apply, or cannot be extended. It becomes, if it was, in
truth, a seminal idea in the first place, a permanent and enduring part
of our intellectual armory. But it no longer has the grandiose, ...
Table 1 from Step-by-step guide to critiquing research. Part 2 .... Sample Essay Paper - Critiquing Qualitative Research on Racism in UK .... Qualitative Research Critique Essay Example - Essay Writing Top.
Essays On Transcendentalism. . Transcendentalism Study GuideJulie Roest
Transcendentalism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 .... ≫ Transcendentalism in Literature Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com. Transcendentalism - GCSE English - Marked by Teachers.com.
Personal Legend Essay. Legend Essay 2 .docx - RUNNING HEADER: ESSAY ON LEGEND...Theresa Paige
"The Alchemist" Personal Legend - Free Essay Example | PapersOwl.com. Bella's orange juice - personal legend essay. About Me Paper Example Unique Step by Step Essay Examples | Essay .... Fiction writing - how to write a legend | Teaching Resources. Katie - Essays. Speech urban legends Essay Example | StudyHippo.com. Personal legend essay examples Garciamedia.com.. personal legend essay - Bella's orange juice. Personal Legend Essay – Telegraph.
Students Life Essay. Student essays: Essay about school lifeCrystal Adams
Essay On Student Life For Students. Student Life is Golden Life – Short Essay | Behavior Modification .... Persuasive Essay: Essays on student life. Write essay Student Life in English | Essay on student life in english .... My Life as a College Student - PHDessay.com. Student Life Essay for Students and Children | 500 Words Essay. MY SCHOOL LIFE ESSAY.docx. Essay on Student Life - Topessaywriter. Descriptive essay: My student life essay. School essay: Essay on students life. 13 Awards Winning Essays on My Life [ 2023 ]. Life of a student – Essay | Essay, Student, Student life. Essay on student life in english || Student life essay in english - YouTube. School life (400 Words) - PHDessay.com. 002 Essay School Life Example ~ Thatsnotus. 028 Student Life Essay Example ~ Thatsnotus. Essay on Student Life in English. Importance of Essay Writing Skills In College Student Life by donmorris .... 013 Example Of Narrative Essay About Life Writing Experience Sample How .... College essay: Essay on students life. Importance of discipline in student life essay - YouTube. Student Life Essay In English – Telegraph. Effect Of Social Media On Student Life Essay. 24 Greatest College Essay Examples – RedlineSP. Buying College Essays: Life of students essay.
127 Compare and Contrast Essay Topics | HandMadeWriting.com Blog. 101 Compare and Contrast Essay Ideas for Students. How to Write a Compare & Contrast Essay | Structure | Example | Topics. Strong Compare and Contrast Essay Examples. How to write a Compare and Contrast Essay? - The English Digest. How to Start a Compare and Contrast Essay?. 101 Compare and Contrast Essay Topics | Examples for Students. Essential Points of Compare and Contrast Essay. ⭐ Good compare contrast topics. 200+ Best Compare And Contrast Essay .... Writing a Compare/Contrast Essay:. Surprising Comparison Contrast Essay Examples ~ Thatsnotus.
Van Gogh Starry Night Descriptive Essay Example - PHDessay.com. A Starry Night (400 Words) - PHDessay.com. Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” Essay Example | StudyHippo.com. Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh Analysis - PHDessay.com. An Analytical Exploration of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night Free Essay .... Starry Night Critical Analysis | Vincent Van Gogh | Paintings. The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh Essay Example | Topics and Well .... FREE Vincent Van Goghs Starry Night Essay. Van gogh's 'starry night': analysis - Essay Example for 1387 Words. ⇉Essay – Starry Night Analysis Essay Example | GraduateWay. Starry Night Critical Analysis | PDF | Vincent Van Gogh | Paintings. Van gogh starry night essay. ART 1101 Starry Night Descriptive Essay - Introduction to Arts Color .... Van Gogh s Starry Night Essay - 424 Words. Starry night painting essay. What Is The Theme Of The Starry Night By Anne Sexton - Ryan Fritz's .... The Starry Night .docx - Form/Content Essay The Starry Night was one of ....
50 Best Reflective Essay Examples (+Topic Samples) ᐅ TemplateLab. Write A Reflective Essay About Your Experience / 002 Reflection Essay .... Reflective essay: Work experience reflective essay. Reflective Essay | Motivation | Self-Improvement. A Reflective Essay On Personal Experiences – Telegraph. 019 Personal Reflective Essay Examples English Example Of Photo Sqa .... reflective essay | Internship | Applied Psychology. Reflective Essay Writing Examples: Rubric, Topics, Outline. Reflective Essay Examples & Structure [Great Tips] | Pro Essay Help. How To Write A Reflective Essay About Yourself / 50 Best Reflective .... Writing a reflective personal essay. Good personal reflective essay. Reflective essay. Formidable Self Reflection Essay Sample ~ Thatsnotus. How To Write A Reflection Paper Essay – Coverletterpedia. The 25+ best Reflective essay examples ideas on Pinterest | How to .... 023 Self Reflection Essays Reflective Essay On Personal Experiences .... Calaméo - Reflective Essay Ideas: Some Significant Experience Events A Reflective Essay On Personal Experiences
Academic Essay Examples - 18+ in PDF | Examples. College Essay Examples - 9+ in PDF | Examples. How to Write a Good Essay | The Ultimate Guide - Student-Tutor .... essay examples: essay papers. Standard Essay Format | Proper Essay Format Proper Essay Format Cover .... Write Essay Free Online / How to Write a Remarkable Essay Infographic .... How To: Essay Types | Essay writing skills, Essay tips, Essay writing tips. 32 College Essay Format Templates & Examples - TemplateArchive. Essay Writing - 30+ Examples and Samples, How to Write, Word, PDF. College Essay Examples - 13+ in PDF | Examples. How to Write an Essay. College Sample Scholarship Essays | Master of Template Document. How to Write an Essay (with Pictures) - wikiHow. College Essay Format: Simple Steps to Be Followed. How to Write a Great Essay Quickly! | Essay writing, Writing skills .... Proper Essay Format : Navigation menu. (PDF) Essay Writing How To Write An Essay. Short Essay Writing Help: Topics Examples and Essay Sample. Writing essay papers - College Homework Help and Online Tutoring.. FREE 9+ College Essay Examples in PDF | Examples - How to write english .... 10 Tips to Write an Essay and Actually Enjoy It. How To Write An Essay - English Learn Site. how to write an article paper 2. How to write the perfect essay for english 102 cheap. Essay Writing Examples - 21+ Samples in PDF | DOC | Examples. Step-By-Step Guide to Essay Writing - ESL Buzz.
Use Your Words: Content Strategy to Influence BehaviorLiz Danzico
What if we were truly open to the language in our cities, our neighborhoods, our city blocks? What is our environment telling us to do?
In this workshop, we’ll let the language of the city guide us to explore how words, specifically the words of our immediate contexts, shape our behavior. By being open to the possibilities, we’ll explore how language influences both the micro and macro actions we take. We’ll go on expeditions in the morning—studying street signs to doorways to receipts—comparing patterns in the language maps we’ll construct. In the afternoon, we’ll look at what these patterns suggest for the products and services we design.
You’ll walk away having learned how words influence behavior, how products and services have used language for behavior change, and having tools for thinking about language and behavior change in the work you do.
Spend the day letting words use you, so you can go back to work to use them with renewed wisdom.
The Future of Humanity Nick Bostrom Future of Humanit.docxbarbaran11
The Future of Humanity
Nick Bostrom
Future of Humanity Institute
Faculty of Philosophy & James Martin 21st Century School
Oxford University
www.nickbostrom.com
[Complete draft circulated (2007)]
[Published in New Waves in Philosophy of Technology, eds. Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan
Selinger, & Soren Riis (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009)]
[Reprinted in the journal Geopolitics, History, and International Relations, forthcoming]
Abstract
The future of humanity is often viewed as a topic for idle speculation. Yet our beliefs and
assumptions on this subject matter shape decisions in both our personal lives and public
policy – decisions that have very real and sometimes unfortunate consequences. It is
therefore practically important to try to develop a realistic mode of futuristic thought about
big picture questions for humanity. This paper sketches an overview of some recent attempts
in this direction, and it offers a brief discussion of four families of scenarios for humanity’s
future: extinction, recurrent collapse, plateau, and posthumanity.
The future of humanity as an inescapable topic
In one sense, the future of humanity comprises everything that will ever happen to any
human being, including what you will have for breakfast next Thursday and all the scientific
discoveries that will be made next year. In that sense, it is hardly reasonable to think of the
future of humanity as a topic: it is too big and too diverse to be addressed as a whole in a
single essay, monograph, or even 100-volume book series. It is made into a topic by way of
abstraction. We abstract from details and short-term fluctuations and developments that
affect only some limited aspect of our lives. A discussion about the future of humanity is
about how the important fundamental features of the human condition may change or remain
constant in the long run.
What features of the human condition are fundamental and important? On this there
can be reasonable disagreement. Nonetheless, some features qualify by almost any standard.
For example, whether and when Earth-originating life will go extinct, whether it will
colonize the galaxy, whether human biology will be fundamentally transformed to make us
posthuman, whether machine intelligence will surpass biological intelligence, whether
1
http://www.nickbostrom.com/
population size will explode, and whether quality of life will radically improve or deteriorate:
these are all important fundamental questions about the future of humanity. Less
fundamental questions – for instance, about methodologies or specific technology projections
– are also relevant insofar as they inform our views about more fundamental parameters.
Traditionally, the future of humanity has been a topic for theology. All the major
religions have teachings about the ultimate destiny of humanity or the end of the world.1
Eschatological themes have also been explored by big-name philosopher.
Essay on Truth | Truth Essay for Students and Children in English - A .... Truth Telling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words. Essay 5. Truth and Historical Narrative | PDF | Argument | Truth. Telling The Truth, Taking Sides (Essays for N Ram). Sojourner Truth Essay - PHDessay.com. The Truth. TOEFL Writing Essay Examples Analysis - Telling the Truth. Wisdom Finds Truth | Essay and Answer Writing | CSE. Should We Always Tell the Truth Essay Example | StudyHippo.com. ESSAY What is Truth | Logic | Truth. Argumentative essay example short Truth or Consequences .... Narrative Essay: Truth essay. Inconvenient Truth Essay. AKCCL | The Unexpected Truth About Best Essay Help. Saying the truth essay. What does truth mean Essay? Free Essay Example. Truth and Truth-Telling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays .... Essay on truth is bitter but still it triumphs - persepolisthesis.web .... essay questions nothing but the truth block4. A Dream Come True Essay - CarleykruwWright.
WHO Foresight Approaches in Public Health.pdfWendy Schultz
Suggestions for expanding futures research and foresight capabilities in an organization, with an emphasis on broad participation by stakeholders; includes examples of multiple futures methods and linked processes.
Further exploration of the intersection of our models of time (eg, the futures cone) with chaos theory, complexity theory, images of the future and archetypes, and postnormal times theory.
"It's Chaos Turtles All the Way Down" - presentation for the Global Foresight...Wendy Schultz
An exploration of the tensions of goal-based, visions-based, and emergence-based futures work, an update on the futures cone, and some new turbulence methods mash-ups.
A brief history and description of visioning tools.Wendy Schultz
This starts with the little building a vision mosaic interactive exercise, and ends with the shared joys problem-to-vision exercise. What the slidedeck doesn't note is that we posted the vision detail cards from the first exercise, and clustered them thematically to let a more coherent structure for the vision emerge.
A fun think piece on possible futures for AI and its potential range of relationships with humanity - written in response to a request by editors at Critical Muslim to provide an AI-focussed version of their regular feature, "The List." Thanks to Zia Sardar.
Museum mash-up, or vectors of visioningWendy Schultz
Describes a participatory engagement during the Design Develop Transform event in Antwerp, that combined multiple interactive futures methods: Manoa scenario building, the Verge General Practice Framework for Futures, the Postcards exercise, and Lego Serious Play. Participants explored possible long-range futures for museums and art.
Melding machine learning and participatory foresightWendy Schultz
Describes a participatory process to help experts teach an algorithm to forecast possible futures for jobs and skills in the USA and the UK. Began with scanning data and asked participants to locate those emerging changes onto a map of a generic city and discuss the various impacts. This was followed by scoring how those changes would affect increase or decrease of certain jobs and skills in future labour markets; the scores were input into the algorithm to teach it. The process was iterative.
Tick TOCS Tick TOCS - channeling change through theory into scenariosWendy Schultz
Describes an original scenario-building method used to explore futures for education, based on combining scanning output with specific social change theories. The social change theories provided logical narrative arcs to evolve different futures from starting points in the present.
ORI BAM Warwick Scenarios 2018 Crowdsourcing Harman's FanWendy Schultz
Describing a distributed, asynchronous method for identifying multiple narrative paths to alternative futures, using the Futurescaper software platform as a way to generate Harman's Fan scenario explorations.
A provocation for the Association of Professional Futurists' Virtual Gathering, 15 September 2017 exploring what is populism in an age when extraordinary is ordinary.
An overview of key activities in a complete futures / foresight study, with a 'shopper's guide' to relevant tools and methods to suit each activity. Use it to compose an integrated futures research project, soup to nuts.
"Blowing the Cobwebs Off Your Mind" BootcampWendy Schultz
A futures research and foresight methods workshop by SAMI Consulting, Laurie Young, and Infinite Futures - focus on patterns of change over time, using past timelines, Three Horizons, and the Gartner Hype Cycle, and age cohort analysis; CLA; Verge; and Futures Wheels.
CLA is a post-structural futures method developed by Sohail Inayatullah. This slidedeck presents a brief intro with examples for use in facilitation and discussion.
Collecting stories about future uses of blockchain technologyWendy Schultz
This slidedeck briefly introduces blockchain technology and then requests readers to share a scenario - a story of a possible future - of possible uses for blockchain tech in the future. The stories can be shared on Sensemaker, and the slidedeck gives a step-by-step demo of how that would work. The deck then lists possible future users as prompts for your imaginative exploration of how blockchain technology might affect people in all walks of life and sectors.
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers new opportunities to radically reinvent the way we do business. This study explores how CEOs and top decision makers around the world are responding to the transformative potential of AI.
The case study discusses the potential of drone delivery and the challenges that need to be addressed before it becomes widespread.
Key takeaways:
Drone delivery is in its early stages: Amazon's trial in the UK demonstrates the potential for faster deliveries, but it's still limited by regulations and technology.
Regulations are a major hurdle: Safety concerns around drone collisions with airplanes and people have led to restrictions on flight height and location.
Other challenges exist: Who will use drone delivery the most? Is it cost-effective compared to traditional delivery trucks?
Discussion questions:
Managerial challenges: Integrating drones requires planning for new infrastructure, training staff, and navigating regulations. There are also marketing and recruitment considerations specific to this technology.
External forces vary by country: Regulations, consumer acceptance, and infrastructure all differ between countries.
Demographics matter: Younger generations might be more receptive to drone delivery, while older populations might have concerns.
Stakeholders for Amazon: Customers, regulators, aviation authorities, and competitors are all stakeholders. Regulators likely hold the greatest influence as they determine the feasibility of drone delivery.
Oprah Winfrey: A Leader in Media, Philanthropy, and Empowerment | CIO Women M...CIOWomenMagazine
This person is none other than Oprah Winfrey, a highly influential figure whose impact extends beyond television. This article will delve into the remarkable life and lasting legacy of Oprah. Her story serves as a reminder of the importance of perseverance, compassion, and firm determination.
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Senior Project and Engineering Leader Jim Smith.pdfJim Smith
I am a Project and Engineering Leader with extensive experience as a Business Operations Leader, Technical Project Manager, Engineering Manager and Operations Experience for Domestic and International companies such as Electrolux, Carrier, and Deutz. I have developed new products using Stage Gate development/MS Project/JIRA, for the pro-duction of Medical Equipment, Large Commercial Refrigeration Systems, Appliances, HVAC, and Diesel engines.
My experience includes:
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Successfully developed the $15-20M yearly corporate capital strategy for manufacturing, with the Executive Team and key stakeholders. Created project scope and specifications, business case, ROI, managed project plans with key personnel for nine consumer product manufacturing and distribution sites; to support the company’s strategic sales plan.
Over 15 years of experience managing and developing cost improvement projects with key Stakeholders, site Manufacturing Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Maintenance, and facility support personnel to optimize pro-duction operations, safety, EHS, and new product development. (BioLab, Deutz, Caire)
Experience working as a Technical Manager developing new products with chemical engineers and packaging engineers to enhance and reduce the cost of retail products. I have led the activities of multiple engineering groups with diverse backgrounds.
Great experience managing the product development of products which utilize complex electrical controls, high voltage power panels, product testing, and commissioning.
Created project scope, business case, ROI for multiple capital projects to support electrotechnical assembly and CPG goods. Identified project cost, risk, success criteria, and performed equipment qualifications. (Carrier, Electrolux, Biolab, Price, Hussmann)
Created detailed projects plans using MS Project, Gant charts in excel, and updated new product development in Jira for stakeholders and project team members including critical path.
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Crazy Futures I an exploration on the necessity of pushing your thinking past normal to explore potential futures
1. 1
Crazy Futures: Why Plausibility is Maladaptive
A thought essay for the Bucharest ‘Crazy Futures’ Workshop
27 June – 1 July 2011
Wendy Schultz | DRAFT: syntax may be bumpy/turbulent.
One person's craziness is another person's reality.
Tim Burton
We are gathered together to discuss crazy futures – and possibly crazy
futurists as well. This paper is my personal attempt to prepare my mind for
that discussion. It addresses the need for ‘crazy futures’ by highlighting the
relationship between futures thinking – specifically, the imaginative
production of images of the future – and our understanding of both
complexity and chaos. The explorations below consider:
1. The meanings of both components of the term –
a) First, ‘crazy’ as contrasted with ‘normal’ generally, and then
specifically with ‘plausibility’ as a term of art over-used in futures
and foresight practice, especially scenario planning; and
b) Next, ‘futures’, ie, images of non-existent, forward temporally
displaced situations / contexts and their generation, especially as
contributing to perceptions of ‘craziness’.
2. Basic notions of complexity and chaos, and what they imply for the
usefulness of crazy futures in contrast to plausible futures; and
3. Communicating usefully crazy futures.
Discussing crazy futurists is probably not worth investing time, given that the
greater percentage of any given population already perceives the term to
be redundant.
What is ‘crazy’?
* Crazy * music, dudes and dudettes! …he’s * crazy * about his dog / fishing /
iPad… You want to go bungee-jumping? Are you * crazy *?
The first known use of ‘crazy’ was in 1566, according to Merriam-Webster (I’ll
replace that with the history as documented by the OED as soon as I’m home
again and have OED online access). It originally meant “full of cracks or
flaws” – ie, like the glaze on a pot can be ‘crazed’ with cracks. The meaning
“of unsound mind, or behaving as so,” emerged later, in the early 1600s. The
jazz slang sense of crazy as ‘cool’ or ‘exciting’ sprang up in the late 1920s
(clearly what we mean when we call ourselves ‘crazy futurists’). Nowadays it
often means simply out of the ordinary, unusual – or impractical.
So we need to think about two aspects of the term: 1) being flawed,
unsound, or broken mentally; and 2) being unusual, and out of the ordinary.
In the last 400 years, both physiological and psychological research have
resulted in significant progress in our understanding the full range of illnesses
and syndromes that contribute to a broad range of mental perspectives and
2. 2
resulting behaviours that observers might label ‘crazy.’ Those illnesses cause
serious pain to both sufferers and their loved ones, and this discussion in no
way is meant to downplay that.
But judging behaviour as ‘crazy’ is subjectively relative. When I was a child, if
I were walking down the street and the person coming towards me was
talking to herself out loud, I would very likely cross the street to avoid her.
Now we are all surrounded by crowds of people ‘talking to themselves’ – and
no longer consider it ‘crazy’ because it is contextually appropriate in an era
of mobile phone earpieces. It is neither unusual behaviour, nor out of the
ordinary, given a specific technological setting. The same applies, of course,
to different cultural settings: flooding a bathroom by using the shower hose
outside of the stall is ‘crazy’ behaviour in the USA – but perfectly rational in
Japan, where the bathing room has a drain in the floor, and one is expected
to be clean * before * entering the bath.
So if we define ‘crazy’ by contrast with ‘normal’, then it is the unusual as
contrasted against the usual. ‘Crazy’ is subjectively relative to internal
expectations filtered and biased by milieu, culture, and technological setting,
among other things. That is precisely its utility to futures thinking. ‘Crazy’ –
and the sense of nervous apprehension it engenders in viewers – highlights
and problematises the assumptions and points of view that compose the
normal. If the various futures we face are composed of surprises, of novelty –
of the abnormal – then crazy is just what we need: it exposes our blind spots,
the dangerous limitations of our assumptions.
But a more specific new antonym to ‘crazy’ has emerged in futures practice
in the last few decades. Rather than opposing crazy with ‘normal,’ it equates
‘crazy’ with ‘impossible’, and opposes it with ‘plausible.’
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Inigo Montoya to Vizzini, in The Princess Bride
In the early 80’s Roy Amara gave us a classic conceptualization of the set of
all images of the future as roughly divisible into possible, probable, and
preferred. This was useful because it was robust:
• possible was the set of everything – every future possible to imagine,
whether or not they had already been imagined;
• probable was monitorable, if not measurable – researchers could observe
emerging issues growing in momentum, becoming trends, evolving into
greater probability; and
• preferable was articulable – researchers could engage stakeholders in
value discussions and judgements and essentially map the value territory.
In Venn diagram terms, the categories overlap, but are still useful as a
conceptual base for futures research methods.
Yet somehow over the intervening decades, the terms have morphed to
‘possible, plausible, probable, and preferable futures’. Sometimes the wide
and woolly set of ‘possible’ drops entirely from the field of view, and only
‘probable, plausible, and preferable’ futures remain. ‘Plausibility’ has
emerged as a primary operating assumption, even a criterion for excellence,
3. 3
within English-speaking scenario practice (especially within the community of
‘scenario planners’).
Here is a partial inventory of the evidence:
• FOR-LEARN: “To be effective, scenarios must be plausible, consistent and
offer insights into the future. Plausibility: A scenario must be plausible. This
means that it must fall within the limits of what might conceivably
happen.”
• From Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight,
“…plausible futures: reasonable outcomes, with a discernable pathway
from the present to the future. For example, discovering extraterrestrial life
within the next decade is possible, but not plausible.”
• From Godet, Creating Futures: “…scenarios are only credible and useful if
they meet the following five conditions that we believe instill rigor:
relevance, coherence, plausibility, importance and transparency.”
• From Lindgren and Bandhold, Scenario Planning: “Scenarios are vivid
descriptions of plausible futures.”
• From Ralston and Wilson, The Scenario Planning Handbook: “…scenarios
must meet the following criteria: they must be plausible – that is, they must
fall within the limits of what might reasonably be expected to happen.”
• From Sharpe and van der Heijden, eds., Scenarios for Success: “A
scenario is a self-consistent account of one plausible way in which
uncertain future events may play out with a bearing on the future of an
organization and its ability to fulfil its purpose.”
• From Delft University of Technology’s report for the European Community,
Roadmapping eGovernment RTD 2020: “Scenarios are internally
consistent, mutually different and plausible stories about a future.”
• From Oliver Freeman of the Neville Freeman Agency, “Scenario planning is
a metaphor-rich narrative designed to help you consider alternative,
plausible futures.” [NB: but apparently only two of them: “One consistent
feature though is the development of two scenarios.”!!!]
• From x, y, and z, “A Review of Scenario Planning Literature” in Futures
Research Quarterly, “Selecting a scenario space means examining the
various future states the drivers could produce. Illogical and non-plausible
situations should be rejected. Selecting alternative worlds to be detailed
involves limiting the number of future stories, since it would be impossible
to explore every option. The key is to select plausible futures that will
challenge current thinking.”
• From Paul J. H. Shoemaker, “When and How to Use Scenario Planning,”
Journal of Forecasting: “…the scenarios should bound the range of
plausible uncertainties and challenge managerial thinking.”
• From [too many people to list on one page], “A formal framework for
scenario development in support of environmental decision-making,” in
Environmental Modelling & Software, “Scenarios are possible future states
of the world that represent alternative plausible conditions under different
assumptions.”
Let me emphasise the first two of these quotes, because they clarify the
matter by offering a definition, and an example, of plausibility. FOR-LEARN
suggests that a plausible scenario “must fall within the limits of what might
conceivably happen.” The authors of Thinking About the Future suggest that
4. 4
plausible futures offer “…reasonable outcomes, with a discernable pathway
from the present to the future.” They further clarify with an example: “For
example, discovering extraterrestrial life within the next decade is possible,
but not plausible.” The difficulty with both of these lies in the subjective
capability and state of knowledge of the viewer: the more knowledgeable
the viewer on the topic of the scenario, or its component details, the more
events and futures they are capable of conceiving could happen. In the
example given of discovering extraterrestrial life, the scenario is possible, but
perhaps of low probability. But it is in fact plausible, because discernible
pathways exist not only to the evolution of extraterrestrial life, but also to our
discovery of it (given the various robotic surveys of other planets we have
launched recently).
Defining ‘plausibility’ is problematic. This limits its usefulness as a criterion for
excellence in futures thinking, even assuming that it is an appropriate criterion
for excellence. So let’s hit the dictionaries once again: what is the technical
definition of ‘plausible,’ and what is its etymology?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us that plausible means
“superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often
specious <a plausible pretext>; superficially pleasing or persuasive <a
swindler… , then a quack, then a smooth, plausible gentleman — R. W.
Emerson>; appearing worthy of belief <the argument was both
powerful and plausible>.”
Embedded within the structure of this word is the professional vulnerability
that all futures researchers face in practicing an intellectual discipline for
which there are no future facts, in a world of decision-makers hungry for an
evidence base: how to seem valuable when we are suspected of purveying
specious results and being quacks. The OED entry is even more telling, in
offering us the older, now obsolete uses of the word, all of which revolve
around pleasing the public and thereby winning approval.
Oxford English Dictionary: Acceptable, agreeable, pleasing, gratifying;
winning public approval, popular. Obs.; Expressing applause or
approbation; plausive, applausive. Obs. ; Deserving of applause or
approval; praiseworthy, laudable, commendable. Obs.; Of an
argument, an idea, a statement, etc.: seeming reasonable, probable,
or truthful; convincing, believable; (formerly) spec. having a false
appearance of reason or veracity; specious. Of a person: convincing
or persuasive, esp. with the intention to deceive.
The OED then clarifies current uses, suggesting that plausible ideas seem
reasonable or probable – while pointing out that it formerly implied such an
appearance of reason was false. Furthermore, when applied to a person, it
* still * implies an intention to deceive cloaked in false persuasion.
My apologies for dwelling on these historical facts of etymological evolution
at such length. But my observations of how consultants use the label
‘plausible scenarios’, or ‘plausible futures’, suggest that it is actually code for
“…don’t give the clients crazy futures, or they’ll reject them, reject us, and we
5. 5
won’t get paid and will never work in this town again.” How often in strategic
foresight projects do the end results offer truly transformational futures that
challenge participants to consider the possibilities of deep structural change?
Of worlds with entirely different economic or political systems? Of usefully
crazy futures?
What are ‘futures’ – and why and how do we think about them?
While scenario thinking per se originated in Herman Kahn’s policy strategy
concerns, the origin of futures thinking is rooted in the image of the future,
and Fred Polak’s concern for the vitality of human culture and civilizations.
We shouldn’t limit the ‘futures’ in ‘crazy futures’ to strategic scenarios alone.
Such purpose-designed images of the future compete for mental and
emotional space with a nearly endless supply of images of the future
generated across human activity. Imagining long-range futures is a talent
unique to our species – so what images do we create, how do we create
them, and what are they for?
Futures studies as an intellectual endeavour includes the inventory and
content analysis of existing images of the future. Humans express imagined
futures in all media, as all variety of cultural constructs, and in varying scales
of personal and civilizational usefulness. Images of the future in ads, in
counselling programs, and in daydreams target personal behaviour by
expressing self-fulfilling or self-defeating prophecies. In the same way,
community, organizational, and political futures attempt to inspire group
action through both cautionary tales (“doom and gloom”; nightmare
futures), and through aspirational tomorrows (visions). Images of the future
are embedded in all political discourses and ideologies, whether they warn of
imminent national collapse at the hands of the opposition (nightmare
futures), call for ‘Holding the course! Steady on!’ (present-trends-extended
6. 6
futures), or depict a happy era to come (Conservatives: A return to the
Golden Age! Liberals: An All-New Brighter Tomorrow!). At the largest scale,
Polak’s call for aspirational, transformative images of the future was meant to
catalyze civilization-level vitality.
But categorizing any specific image of the future as a nightmare or a vision is
entirely subjective. Furthermore, it is a subjective judgment that can generate
tragedies. Conflicts arise when people fear a nightmare future is the hidden
goal of others around them. And any extreme of difference is labelled
‘crazy,’ whether it is extremely good, extremely bad, or extremely different.
We could probably conceptualize a craziness scale for futures, anchored at
sanity/normality/plausibility on the one end, and ‘completely bug@%$@
crazy’ at the other extreme. It might be operationalized as the percentage
of any given population that perceives a specific image of the future as
offensively, scarily transgressive and transformative beyond all bounds of
reason and decency. If nobody feels the future is beyond all bounds, it’s
normal and plausible as normal can be. If 50% of the people feel it’s beyond
all bounds of reason and decency, and the other 50% do not, then it’s only
moderately crazy. And so on.
It is not just the image itself that is judged. ‘Crazy futures’ often earn that
label despite being prosaic and mundane in content, if they have
transgressed in process. The current decision-making environment for many
economic, political, and social issues is instrumentalist, evidence-based and
biased towards Western empiricism. Sadly, a field that engages in research
despite lacking an ability to observe its subject directly (until such time as
tachyon-powered time machines or traversable wormholes enable field
research in the futures) often lacks credibility as well. In a previous essay, I
summarised this ‘cultural contradiction’ between the criteria for excellence in
empirical, evidence-based research, and for excellence in futures research
(specifically horizon scanning), as follows:
Empirical/
Evidence-based Research
Futures Research,
especially emerging issues scanning & analysis
• Credible;
• Documented;
• Authoritative;
• Statistically
significant;
• Coherent: the data
agree;
• Consensus-based:
the experts agree;
• Any emerging issue unusual enough to be useful
will probably lack apparent credibility;
• it will be difficult to document, as only one or
two cases of the change may yet exist;
• it will emerge from marginalized populations,
and be noticed initially by fringe sources, hardly
the sort of authoritative sources that civil
servants feel confident in citing;
• as emerging issues are by definition only one or
two cases, they are also by definition statistically
insignificant;
• the data will vary widely, converging over time
only if the emerging issue matures into a trend;
• not only will consensus be lacking, but experts
will often violently attack reports of emerging
issues of change, as they represent challenges
to current paradigms and structures of expertise,
7. 7
• Theoretically
grounded; and
• Mono-disciplinary.
power, and entitlement;
• emerging issues of change often challenge
previous theoretical structures and necessitate
the construction of new theories;
• and the most interesting new change emerges
where disciplines converge and clash. As the
impacts ripple out across all the systems of
reality, emerging changes and their impacts
require a multi-disciplinary analytic perspective.
Bishop, Hines, and Collins have inventoried formal futures methods for
generating images of the future – both scenarios (extrapolations) and visions
(value-based preferred future articulations) – and described almost two
dozen rigorously structured processes. These range from logical and
quantitative methods using statistical trend extrapolation, computer-aided
cross-impact matrices, and systems dynamics modelling, through facilitated
group process dialogue, to meditative, ‘guided visualization’ techniques.
Evidence-based decision support cultures prefer their futures heavily salted
with data and quantitative extrapolation. They are likely to shy away from
guided visualization workshops. So decision-makers, observers – and
practitioners – also judge some means of generating futures as ‘crazy’.
Generally, the more intuitive methods are greeted with the most scepticism
and distrust.
Scenario planners and scenario builders are not alone in devising images of
the future. Artists, advertisers, novelists, screenwriters, animators, sculptors,
analysts, and leaders all generate stories, images, and artifacts expressing
different future outcomes and environments. So do prophets, astrologers,
tea-leaf readers, shamans, and particularly skilled remote viewers. By
extension, if rigorous but intuitive tools such as guided visualization earn
scepticism, artistic inspiration may as well – and astrologers, shamans, and
remote viewers earn outright derision.
Why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t we just discard images of the future
generated by ‘crazy’ methods such as astrological computations and
shamanic trances and remote viewing? To answer that we must return to the
conceptual foundations and core assumptions of futures studies as a field of
research, which include:
• There is not one single future, but multiple alternative futures;
• People’s beliefs about the future, and their images of the future, affect
their decisions and actions, which in turn create the futures as an
emergent property of aggregated interconnected actions;
• Because any given lived future at any given moment is an emergent
property of a complex system that frequently exhibits chaotic
behavior, it is not possible to ‘predict’ human futures.
Based on these assumptions, we can see that it is not important which future
is correct, or which future is best supported by empirically credible data, or
which future is most plausible. The most important future is the future the
greatest number of people believe the most: it is the future on which they are
basing their decisions and actions. And therefore it is absolutely irrelevant
how that future was generated, and how credible its empirical underpinnings
8. 8
are. If people read astrological forecasts or tea leaves or goat entrails, and
then act on those images of the future, then those images of the future are
important for us as futures researchers to consider. The craziest methods can
generate the most compelling futures, and crazy or not, those are the futures
with which we should be most concerned.
Why are crazy futures the most useful?
We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?
Niels Bohr
Touching on the base assumptions of
futures studies leads us directly to why
crazy futures are the most useful: we are
embedded in – and are ourselves –
complex systems flirting daily with chaos.
Chris Langton’s famous diagram, left,
illustrates this concisely. There are fixed
systems, existing in a state of maximum
thermodynamic equilibrium, meaning
maximum entropy – or death. There are
periodic systems, which are ordered but not adaptive [expand]. There are
chaotic systems, characterized by sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
and non-linear determinism.
Finally, there are complex systems that are self-organizing, self-directing, self-
repairing, and adaptive [check for complete list of characteristics]. Their self-
directing and adaptive characteristics result in evolutionary change over
time, producing in turn novel emergent properties. They generate surprises. If
sentient, they undoubtedly surprise themselves. Emergent properties are ‘out
of the ordinary’, if by ordinary we mean the previous patterns of ordered
system behaviour. So any complex adaptive system (and all human systems
– whether single individuals or collections as organizations, or communities, or
nation-states – are complex adaptive/evolving systems) will at one point or
another generate ‘crazy states’ (apologies to Dror).
It becomes even more likely that these systems will exhibit ‘crazy’, ie, ‘out of
the ordinary’ behaviour if they are stressed by larger energy or information
flows. One response to stress in a complex system is a phase change into
chaotic behaviour. This phase change also creates the potential for novel
and unusual behaviour outside the ordinary.
So in the end, a focus on ‘crazy futures’ may be the most adaptive strategy
we can encourage people to adopt, and a focus on ‘plausibility’ the most
maladaptive. Is your future crazy enough to help you / your organization /
your community evolve? Better that we rehearse the full range of surprises
that may await us across our futures, than be ill-prepared and unable to
adapt. Emergence and evolution are preferable to equilibrium.
9. 9
How can we best communicate craziness?
Before bowing out, there’s time for a brief thought on how we communicate
compelling craziness. Animators have recently identified an interesting
perceptual space they call ‘the uncanny valley.’ The uncanny valley
hypothesis suggests that when human ‘replicas’ – either animated or robotic
– look and act almost, but not perfectly, human, people response with
revulsion. Granted, James Cameron seems to have overcome the effect in
generating the Navi characters over the motion capture performance of his
actors. The relevance to useful crazy futures is that something similar exists
in conveying radically transgressive, transformative images of possible futures:
up until a point, increasing craziness increases how exciting, provocative, and
challenging they are. Beyond that point, increasing craziness pushes the
futures into the uncanny valley of the unthinkable, on the other side of which
is the transgression of perfect conceptual chaos. Whatever their degree of
craziness, useful futures are compelling – people respond to them, adopt
them, and use them to inform action.
So how do we decrease the uncanny valley of the unthinkable – how do we
avoid Cassandra syndrome? The endeavour of deploying crazy futures asks
us to balance on a knife edge of usability: too normal, and no mind-shift
results; too crazy, and brain-freeze occurs. Likewise, futures too divorced
from our own experience may feel very crazy, but not be very compelling;
too near to our own experience, and the futures will be too subjective to be
useful – compelling, but insufficiently out of the ordinary.
A possible antidote can be found in audience participation. Cutting edge
methods in scenario building include projects like Jane McGonigal’s
SuperStruct, and Evoke, and the growing body of work using the Institute for
10. 10
the Future’s “Foresight Engine”. These projects all rely on massively crowd-
sourced, participatory futures formation via on-line game environments. They
evolve from each individual’s own participation, which is very compelling –
but they evolve. The futures generated are emergent properties of the
participants’ interactions with each other, and the useful strangeness arises
from those interactions. In The Art of Immersion, Frank Rose offers a range of
case studies underlining how powerfully engaging the unfinished story can
be. This is the Web 2.0 corollary of McLuhan’s ‘media hot and cool’: the
most compelling media are the ‘cool’ media, conveying ideas in low
definition and inviting us to participate in completing the details. So
whatever crazy futures we imagine, we should imagine them with holes, with
interstitial spaces that invite other people to adapt them and adopt them: a
crazy future must be compelling to be useful.
Coda
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible
things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the queen. "When I was your
age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as
many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Lewis Carroll / Charles Dodgson, Alice in Wonderland
I want to believe.
Fox Mulder’s wall poster, The X-Files
In order to thrive in whatever futures we pass through, it helps to rehearse
what our values, assumptions, decisions and actions -- our very sense of self –
might be in those futures. Authentic rehearsal inevitably requires that at some
level we choose to believe not only what is plausible, and not just what is
probable or possible, but that we stretch our values, assumptions, and sense
of self to believe and rehearse for the impossible as well.
So call me crazy.
You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.
Jimi Hendrix