Unknown Fields Division - Mission. Sohail Inayatullah. Richard Slaughter. In 2009 the special issue of Futures on Integral Futures that was edited by Slaughter was voted one of the "most important futures works of 2008" by the Association of Professional Futurists.[1] Founded in 1999 at the Swinburne University of Technology, the Australian Foresight Institute was designed as a specialized research and post-graduate teaching unit.
A research program on Creating and Sustaining Social Foresight was funded and supported by the Pratt Foundation and produced a series of monographs.[3] The institute was disestablished in 2005, with the teaching program subsumed into Swinburne University of Technology's Faculty of Business and Enterprise, with the new name of The Strategic Foresight Program. Selected works[edit] Birds in Bermuda. References[edit] External links[edit] Are We Creating the Future by Predicting It? With all this talk of foresight strategy, we have reached a point where the lines between predicting and creating the future are starting to blur. It says on the Wikipedia article for strategic foresight that strategic foresight is a fairly recent attempt to differentiate “futurology” from “futures studies.”
It arises from the premise that: 1. The future is not predictable; 2. 3. So let’s see if this theory holds up, shall we? If William Gibson never wrote Neuromancer, how different would our digital world be today? It is often hard to say what the difference between predicting and creating the future is. I think all dystopian writers share the burden of witnessing how influential their ideas are. Are negative predictions dangerous because they stand the risk of becoming influential? If we went by the model of strategic foresight we might conclude that the Singularity would only happen because of our influence. Photo Credit: DeviantArt. Futures Studies by Sohail Inayatullah, Ivana Milojevic and global futurists. Prototyping the future | Forum for the Future.
‘Futures’ is a field that, since it was conceived in the 1960s, has existed to make the future better. Why have all those conversations about emerging change and how to prepare for it otherwise? Over Forum for the Future’s lifetime, however, there has been a noticeable convergence of futures practice with sustainability. These two fields are now more closely aligned than ever before. Increasingly, businesses are using futures techniques to build resilience in the face of external changes that may affect their chance of success. They may not directly associate this with sustainability – and yet that’s what it boils down to.
Sustainability is all about long-term trends and long-term value creation, and so, if you talk about the future, you are inevitably having conversations about sustainability. Forum for the Future has always been about seeing the long-term view. We have found this to be a very powerful process for building sustainability into business strategy. Flash Foresight and Predicting the Future - an Interview with futurist Daniel Burrus. Trevor HALDENBY - What does it mean to be a futurist ? John A. SWEENEY - Postnormal Concept. Verne WHEELWRIGHT - What is Futures Studies ? The Innovation Dashboard | Future Savvy: Quality in Foresight. When a quality view of emerging customer (or stakeholder) needs, requirements, and preferences has been achieved, what are the levers you pull? How do you go from a 30,000ft view of the future to something that practically exists?
Below (diag. thanks to Peter Stoyko) is a part of the dashboard that is applied in-workshop, along with a selection of classic innovation-design tools, strategy canvases, and business model consoles, to foster creative adaptation to future opportunities & threats.. I’m also a part of the Stanford Foresight & Innovation team, and where required am able to apply this foresight-to-innovation framework: Innovation-dashboard processes, when followed all the way, ends with a narrowing of proposed solutions-innovations, prototyping thereof where applicable, and/or a “business case” analysis. Zhan Li: science fiction, design futures and foresight communication | Action Foresight. I went to LA in June 2012, a lively trip where I did research on foresight communication, the sharing economy and gamification.
I was told, in this context, by friend and colleague Stuart Candy that I had to talk to Zhan Li. So I caught up with him at his home in leafy South Pasadena. He is a truly synthetic and integrative thinker, complex and sophisticated, and this is what I loved about talking with him. He pushed and challenged the boundaries of my understanding and comprehension. He is writing a PhD dissertation through the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he is exploring the cross roads of futures studies and communications, in particular trans-media story telling and narrative in foresight. The interview spans across science fiction, design futures, foresight communication, narrative frameworks, organizational narratives and many other areas! I hope you enjoy it. Audio Player. Building better tomorrows. A crash course in technology thinking Have you shot a dronie?
If not, you probably will soon. Dronies are like selfies filmed by remote-controlled drones, registering your face and surroundings from the sky. Dronies are the natural evolution of existing technological trends, and might teach us a broader lesson about what the future holds. Many of us are uncomfortable with the rapid pace of technological development, and some of the changes can really get under our skin.
We feel out of control, as if we can’t really do anything about what technology is doing to us. We feel powerless about affecting the future that is to come. But the future is malleable. The impression we might have from reading Wired or Engadget is how state-of-the-art technology is invariably exciting and moving at breakneck speed. Future shock If you’ve traveled beyond the borders of your home country, you’re probably familiar with culture shock – the disorientation caused by experiencing an unfamiliar way of life. Andrew Marshall: The quiet American.
Inscrutably influential HE RARELY speaks in public and almost never to the press. Most of his reports are secret. A historian once asked if even his brain was classified. But for over four decades Andrew Marshall’s judgments, emanating from a small office in the Pentagon, have guided American defence policy. Or so, at least, his supporters say.
Mr Marshall, now 93, headed the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), known as the Pentagon’s internal think-tank, from its creation in 1973 to his retirement on January 2nd. In a new book on Mr Marshall two of his acolytes, Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts, compare him to such foreign-policy luminaries as Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger. Most Americans have never heard of Mr Marshall, but his ideas have drawn attention far beyond America’s shores. Much of this admiration seems genuine, but money may also play a role. The less starry-eyed claim that Mr Marshall hedged his predictions and exaggerated threats. Sci-Fi Author Neal Stephenson Joins Mystery Startup Magic Leap as 'Chief Futurist' If nothing else, Magic Leap knows how to capture the imagination.
Silicon Valley is already abuzz over this stealthy augmented-reality startup, mainly due to some funding from Google and a brief glimpse of the company’s technology that shows a 3-D virtual elephant floating above someone’s hands. And now, the company has raised its cachet even higher by teaming up with big-name science fiction writer and game designer Neal Stephenson, author of such sci-fi classics as Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. Stephenson will hold the title of “Chief Futurist” at the mysterious Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company, which recently announced a $542 million round of funding led by Google. The sci-fi writer revealed his new title with a blog post, saying he’d been swayed to join Magic Leap after receiving a demonstration of the company’s technology.
As one of the company’s visionaries, Stephenson will work with the startup in a more theoretical, rather than technical, capacity. Lydia Nicholas | Tech, futures, anthropology. Transit City. This is my blog now. | It's on the internet. Lisa Ma. ByoLogyc. ZED.TO - A Story About The End of Our World. Justin Pickard. Tobias Revell. Noah Raford » 21st Century Strategy, Policy and Design. STRANGE TELEMETRY. Superflux. Changeist. Hellofosta | Nick Foster. Industrial Designer, Creative Director. Home » FutureEverything. There’s a job contemplating the future of Hershey’s Kisses—a great sign for America.
Every month or two, out of professional curiosity, I do a trawl of LinkedIn and a few other job sites to see who is hiring for positions in the field of foresight, futures research, innovation, and other fields related to my area of practice. In my usual rounds last week, I came upon a posting for a Senior Manager, Foresight Activation at that most venerable of American chocolatiers, Hershey. I did what I usually do when I come across such a job: I post it to my network on Twitter. I have a reason for doing this: as I mentioned last year, there are fewer positions for people who want to work in the fields of strategic foresight and futures research than the people who want them.
Typically, only global brands, larger government bodies and nonprofits have both the resources and mentality to look at what’s coming beyond the next few product cycles or public programs. Imagine my surprise, then, when Robinson Meyer of the Atlantic posted a short piece on the Hershey opening on Saturday. Back to the Futurist Interview. Alexander Phillips was kind enough to interview me for the very cool “Back to the Futurist” series over at URBNFUTR. The series highlights some interesting ideas on the future of cities and those who think about them. Many thanks to @MelissaSterry and the entire URBNFUTR team for the recommendation.
PS – Their bio is a bit outdated and I’ve corrected a few links to people I mention in the article. The following interview differs slightly in this respect, but is otherwise exactly the same. InterviewWhich futurists past and present inspire you and why? I am also proud of my PhD research on crowdsourced scenario platforms. Future:Types of futurists - Future. Social Types 1. [Preconventional futurist]. One who thinks about the future in relation to self (ego, personal vision), but without either concern for or broad understanding of the norms and conventions of society. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Methodological Types 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Futurist (definition): Common Types of Futures Thinking. Association of Professional Futurists - What Is A Futurist? A professional futurist is a person who studies the future in order to help people understand, anticipate, prepare for and gain advantage from coming changes. It is not the goal of a futurist to predict what will happen in the future.
The futurist uses foresight to describe what could happen in the future and, in some cases, what should happen in the future. Most people use some sort of foresight all the time - something as simple as listening to the weather forecast to prepare for the next day. A professional futurist uses formal methods to develop descriptions of possible futures.
The output of a futures study may include the driving forces, assumptions, evidence or indicators of the futures. A futurist is more likely to say how or why a future could appear rather than to say what the future will be. One of the founding principles of the field of futures studies is the idea of personal and organizational choice. What do futurists do? Framing Where do you begin? Scanning Visioning Planning.