Sleeping Through a Revolution — Aspen Ideas In my last letter, I told you there was a time in the late ’60s when the most critically acclaimed movies and music were also the best selling. The Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper album or Francis Coppola’s Godfather film were just two examples. I said that that is not happening anymore, and I wanted to explore with you why this change occurred. Because I spent the first 30 years of my life producing music, movies, and TV, this question matters to me, and I think it should matter to you. So I want to explore the idea that the last 20 years of technological progress — the digital revolution — have devalued the role of the creative artist in our society. I undertake this question with both optimism and humility. In the last few years I have run the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. We have become convinced that only machines and corporations make the future, but I don’t think that is true. Whew! But this does not account for the role of the Digital Bandits.
Apophenia Apophenia /æpɵˈfiːniə/ is the experience of perceiving patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad[1] by Peter Brugger,[2] who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general, such as with gambling and paranormal phenomena.[3] Meanings and forms[edit] In 2008, Michael Shermer coined the word "patternicity", defining it as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise".[6][7] In The Believing Brain (2011), Shermer says that we have "the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency", which Shermer calls "agenticity".[8] Statistics[edit] Pareidolia[edit] Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving the perception of images or sounds in random stimuli, for example, hearing a ringing phone while taking a shower. Gambling[edit] Examples[edit]
William Gibson on finding the future in the strangeness of now - Home | q Tuesday November 25, 2014 It's been 30 years since William Gibson changed the vocabulary of science fiction with his first book, Neuromancer. Now his latest novel, The Peripheral, puts a sci-fi lens on a new set of modern anxieties, including climate change, drones and casual mass surveillance. The Vancouver-based author joins guest host Tom Power to discuss the "unthinkable present", how cyberspace (a term he coined) has colonized the real world, and why he thinks his reputation for prescience is undeserved. WEB EXTRA | Read an excerpt of The Peripheral here Sci-fi master William Gibson envisions a world in which privacy no longer exists (Michael O'Shea/Canadian Press)
cognitive biases in futurist thinking Hedgehog and fox finger puppetsby Linda Brown (Etsy shop owner) “No serious futurist deals in predictions”. These are the famous words of Alvin Toffler in his seminal book Future Shock from 1971. The availability bias explains that people have the idea that whatever is recalled easily must be very common. The anchoring bias is also what makes it difficult not to be influenced too much by current affairs. The confirmation bias states that people tend to confirm their beliefs. We also observe here the confidence bias, which works on top of the confirmation bias. The narrative fallacy points at the basis human tendency of telling stories. Both Taleb and Garner build on the work of Philip Tetlock, who distinguished two types of predictors: the hedgehog and the fox. Futurists needs these introspective moments. Twitter: @FreijavanDuijne Futuring is my passion.
The 10 Best Sci-Fi Fantasy Novels of 2015 So Far | Flavorwire | Page 10 Generation ships, sentient forests, exploding moons — there has been no shortage of action, speculation, and mystery in the year’s best sci-fi and fantasy novels. These books are remarkable, too, for the way they brazenly combine tropes from many different genres. In several of these novels, for example, mythological, intellectual, and literary history combine in unfamiliar and enlightening ways. Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson Call it an ark, a generation ship — whatever.
10 Big Mistakes People Make in Thinking About the Future Photo Credit: Frank Peters Being a working futurist means that I think a lot about how people think about the future. It also means spending a lot of time with people who are also thinking about their own futures. Typically, this involves a dialogue between three distinct groups. First, there's usually a small handful of very foresighted people, who are aware of their own blind spots and biases, and who are eager and open about the prospect of soaring into a wild blue sky to gather a lot of exciting new information. Second, there's a larger group of people who don't usually think at 50,000 feet -- but are willing to go there if they're with people they trust. And then there's a third small group that's very resistant to the idea that anything could or should change. 1. But the gotcha is: research by academic futurists has found that this expected future really isn't the most likely outcome at all. It's good to know what your expected future is. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Andrew Curry on Futures Where did futures work emerge from? There's a really interesting history here. There are two main strands. The first one came out of the war, systems thinking, operations research, RAND, SRI, and that very technocratic American war effort. You have this strand which is relatively analytical associated with American history and then this strand which is about preferred futures associated with Europe. To what extent is futures work about doom and mitigating the bad and to what extent is it about idealism? Roy Amara says there's three types of futures: possible futures, probable futures, and preferred futures. Gramsci has that great quote about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the spirit and I think a lot of futures work is about that. What is that relationship between history, narratives, and futures? There's a saying that a good futurist needs to be a good historian as well. What you get from looking back is that sense of patterns or disruptive moments.
Errones, infectious biases that corrupt thinking | The more accurate guide to the future I know it isn’t always obvious in some of my blogs what they have to do with the future. This one is about error tendencies, but of course making an error now affects the future, so they are relevant and in any case, there is even a future for error tendencies. A lot of the things I will talk about are getting worse, so there is a significant futures trend here too. Much of the future is determined by happenings filtered through human nature so anything that affects human nature strongly should be an important consideration in futurology. Hormones are chemicals that tend to push the behavior of an organic process in a particular direction, including feelings and consequentially analysis. In much the same way, many other forces can influence our thinking or perception and hence analysis of external stimuli such as physical facts or statistics. Error-forcing agents There are many well-known examples of such error-forcing agents. Errones Consensus Authority Vested interest All very 1984
125 Top Women Futurists & the End of Business as Usual Last week, we published a blog post on the Top 20 Future of Work thinkers and the companies that most connect to them. It included this quote: “What we think will take ten years will likely take two or less,” says Frank Diana, Principal in Business Evolution at the $80B IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services, in a recent blog post. “Therefore, our view of the future in the context of strategy and planning has to change. Future thinking, simulation, and the use of foresight are critical to this change.” But that leads to another question; who will inform our thinking about the future? "Why Aren't There More Women Futurists?” Here at Little Bird, we believe that there’s fundamental business value in listening to and learning from the very best thinkers on any topic you’re considering. So we used our technology to build a list of 125 important women futurists online. How important is it that women futurists get their due in the public eye? Maree Conway’s not so sure.
The Nine Kinds of Bad Futurists (NOT an exhaustive list) — Idea Sushi “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever”. George Orwell I’m not that taken with futurists. It’s not that I dislike all of them, not at all. I admire some futurists greatly, and others I see as consummate professionals. So I decided to list the different kinds of bad futurist, as a somewhat handy field guide for the futurist-spotter. I’ve put the bad futurists into nine categories, but you should remember that there is a great deal of overlap between these categories. So, to the list, then. The Obfuscator/ObscurantistThe Shock-JockThe Mindless Optimist/PessimistThe Pseudo-AcademicThe TrendsterThe NeologizerThe Cookie-CutterThe ProselytizerThe Mystic Which one you find most annoying is completely up to you, but all of them are pretty bad. Our first type, the obfuscator, who might also be called the obscurantist, is not interested in telling you anything worthwhile about the future. And can you blame him?