by Marguerite Coetzee In Hindu mythology, it is believed that the Earth is balanced on the backs of elephants, which are themselves supported by a World Turtle. Below that turtle? Another turtle. It is turtles all the way down. In complexity and systems thinking, it could be argued that a proposition requires justification, and the justification itself needs to be supported. No idea exists in isolation, no truth in a vacuum, no experience untethered from others. It is turtles all the way down. By identifying layers of analysis, Causal Layered Analysis is a sense-making tool that explores the narratives used…
Author: Abril Chimal
by Christian Gruenwald Relief in large parts of the world’s politics was great when the news of Joe Biden’s election victory spread. After days of restraint, many heads of government could not go fast enough with the congratulations after the television stations announced Biden’s victory. The presidency of Donald Trump seems to be history for now. But Trumpism is still there. In this context, Trumpism is not so much an ideology as a style of understanding and conducting politics. It includes scorn for rule-based multilateralism and political correctness. The systematic shifting of limits of what can be said and limitations…
Sohail Inayatullah[1], Arun Jacob[2] and Reham Rizk[3] What are the futures of manufacturing in Egypt in the next five to ten years? Can Egypt use the COVID-19 crisis to quickly retool and create a revolution in manufacturing unlocking business? Or will the gap between the rich and poor, the prepared and unprepared, continue to widen? Indeed, how should Egypt position itself in terms of not just the pandemic (near-shoring, localization), but other disruptions such as changes in technology (robotics and automation, the Internet of everything, digitalized government, 3D printing); greening and sustainability (the shift to a circular economy, eco-friendly products);…
by Otto C. Frommelt The Coronavirus disease brought about a pandemic that has changed our lives and the way we conduct business beyond recognition. Right now, we are just at the beginning of a long journey into the future in a post-pandemic world. The objective of this article is to present an outlook of possible futures with regards to the impact on society, government and our business community. It includes practical and possible new business models focusing on a circular economy business environment. In the following, I will outline key drivers and sketch plausible scenarios. Post-pandemic scenarios Considering two key…
by Jose Ramos How do we make sense of the dramatic changes happening during the coronavirus pandemic? How do we get on an empowered footing rather than reaction and confusion? So many have simply been struck by “future shock”, i.e. the future has arrived but it has arrived in a daunting pathological guise. People are not prepared, indeed many are just dumbfounded as taken for granted aspects of life are thrown asunder. Many search for meaning amid the intellectual centrifuge which is social media today, lost in the bramble of conspiracy theories, xenophobic blame and a 24 hour news cycle.…
by Jost Wagner & Sohail Inayatullah What are the futures of the Asia-Pacific region? What might the region look like in a decade? How can futures thinking be used to transform the nature of strategy and policymaking? Over 150 futurists, policymakers, and academics met in Bangkok for the 5th Annual Asia-Pacific Futures Network Conference to explore these and other questions. Topics included the possibility of an Asian Confederation, emerging pandemics, the importance of horizon scanning for security forces, and the need to build risk assessment into scenarios and preferred futures. APFN in Bangkok For the second time, the 5th Asia…
by Yelena V. Muzykina Futures Studies and Foresight in Kazakhstan Futures studies and foresight seem quite established disciplines in the global academic world. Some scholars even trace their origins as far as the futuristic novels by Jules Verne, a French writer publishing in the 1860s and 1870s (Bell, 1996, p. 7). Nevertheless, for Kazakhstan, this is a completely unknown field. The first steps were made in February 2019 when the Qazaq Research Institute for Futures Studies (QRIFS) launched its activities. Making connections with different local organizations, QRIFS established fruitful cooperation with creative companies and educational institutions, public and private…
by Joe Ravetz The COVID-19 global pandemic has caused death and disruption around the world, and also exposes underlying tensions, traumas and conflicts. There are many hard lessons in disaster management, public health, economic recovery and so on. But in this Perspective I would like to look more deeply and widely. I begin some mappings of systemic transformations now in motion, both negative and positive – and then explore what kind of systemic pathways could help steer from one outcome to another. Drawing on the synergistic methods set out in Deeper-City, this agenda includes: – Exploring the potential of collective…
Escrito originalmente por Ivana Milojević e traduzido para o português por Jaqueline Weigel e Vinicius Silva / W Futurismo Este ensaio investiga padrões de pensamento prejudiciais sobre o futuro, denominados falácias de futuros. Baseia-se na análise da literatura existente e na observação pessoal. Eu defino falácias de futuros de três maneiras. Primeiro, como aqueles padrões de pensamento que estão em contradição direta com um futuro verdadeiramente desejado a longo prazo. Segundo, como pensamentos e comportamentos contrários as nossas melhores evidências, fatos e lógica existentes, relevantes para os futuros emergentes. Terceiro, como quadros cognitivos que garantem que as estratégias escolhidas falham. Este racional é real? “Adam: O que você acha interessante no personagem Spock? Sheldon: Eu acho que a…
by Ernest Sternberg I should have known I was becoming obsessed by driverless cars. The life of the urban planner may be glamorous, I had told myself, but the doubts and uncertainties were nothing to envy. Smart cars, smart parking, smart cities, smart pavement—everything smart, smart, smart, yet none of us smart enough to tell you what autonomous transportation would do on city streets. The corporate behemoths with their billion-dollar bets on cars of the future, they didn’t know either, I thought, as I approached my apartment building. It was the end of another exhausting day of transportation projections that…