By Peter van der Wel In my presentations, I often tell the audience about the very plausible possibility that in the future some of us (or even most of us) will become very much older, maybe even immortal. I tell them, for example, about the escape velocity theory. According to this theory, immortality will come within our reach when biotechnology develops faster than the aging process itself. This means that the people who lived are the first generation who are no longer sure that they will die. This train of thought always raises many questions among those present. For example,…
Author: admin
After the withdrawal of Trump administration from the Iran nuclear deal the tension has been rising in the Middle East and in particular the Persian Gulf and we are approaching the armed conflict stage. We can apply game theory to explore the possible equilibrium points between the US and Iran. We need to consider a range of current strategies on both sides, the payoffs of each player or opponent, and determine the strategic choices for them. In this framework we assume that there are two key players namely the USA and Iran. Available strategies for the USA are: Negotiation, Sanction,…
By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington Introduction and Background How are businesses, organizations, and communities preparing for a range of possible energy futures? What can be done to push the boundaries and reinvent the range of possibilities? This article describes the outcomes from the application of a new scenario methodology (Radical Scenario Development) to the topic of energy. Radical Scenario Development was designed for and facilitated by Fast Future at a workshop held at the Finland Futures Research Conference in Tampere, Finland in June 2018. The Radical Scenario Development method highlights social learning and creativity while the scenarios…
By Richard MacGeorge There’s a problem looming. Infrastructure: the road, water, telecom and electricity networks that serve our homes; the ports, airports and train services that handle goods and whisk us from one place to another are at risk of losing their jobs, or only being offered part-time work. That seems like a preposterous statement to make, so lets’ use the electricity sector to explore the idea. Through the eyes of investors Electricity utility companies have long been a good bet for investors. Pension funds and insurance companies especially like long term investments and steady returns. What could be better…
By Roman Quaedvlieg The Ides of March Has Daesh been defeated? That depends on the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is the US President on the cusp of his 2020 re-election campaign then the answer is a resounding yes. On the other hand, if the beholder is the recently re-emerged and mercurial founder of Islamic State – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – then the answer is disdainful scorn. The ides of March was indeed foreboding for the last stalwarts of the IS corps. Herded by Coalition forces into their final stronghold, a sliver of land on the northern…
Stuart Candy, Carnegie Mellon University USA Cher Potter, University of the Arts London, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK As Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon famously observed: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (Simon, 1996). Designers and futurists, it turns out, have a great deal in common. This mutual recognition is reaching critical mass as each comes to appreciate how their respective traditions have much to offer to making urgent change in the world, and even more so, together. It is increasingly acknowledged within the futures studies community that operating with a largely verbal and…
By Sohail Inayatullah Can Armenia leapfrog other nations instead of following the traditional development paradigm? Will Armenia be able to use financial and social capital from the Armenian diaspora to transform their economy? What is a wise direction forward for cities and the nation? These and other questions were explored over three days from March 25-27th, 2019 by senior advisors to the Armenian government, Mayors and Governors, and executives from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Working with ADB Country director, Shane Rosenthal, ADB’s Dr. Susann Roth, and futurist Professor Mei-Mei Song,[i] I facilitated four workshops for participants. The first was…
By Leopold P. Mureithi In what follows, we examine a few dilemmas facing people in the domain of technology, understood to be the tools, skills, methods and processes used to produce goods and services to satisfy human wants. The choices made at such forking points set future trajectories, for good or for worse.[1] Macrohistory Macrohistory has been defined as ”exploring the past on many different large scales up to and including the largest scales of all, those of cosmology.”[2] Capacitating “search of patterns, even laws of social change, macrohistory is thus nomothetic and diachronic [enabling] macrohistorians use the detailed data…
by Russell Clemens “Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous” (Dator, 1995). Is exploring the futures of elephants through a comparative metaphorical analysis of how elephants have been historically and civilizationally constructed ridiculous? Flying elephants emerged as a futures research concept during a guided meditation session conducted by Sohail Inayatullah at a three-day workshop following the 4th APFN conference in Bangkok. Seeing chained temple elephants in India and Sri Lanka, I was seeking a way to help the Asian elephant: individually and as a species at risk. In this narrative process, I first cast the human…
By Timothy Dolan Azerbaijan was among the first oil producing nations in the world with documented accounts of it trading in petroleum as early as the ninth century (Beketov, 2018). However, its post-oil future is near. Only about 15 years of production is now remaining from this original oil exporting state. Ironically one of its futures is becoming another Armenia, an agricultural nation and long-time adversary. It’s an odious fate for Azerbaijan whose oligarchs maintain legitimacy in part through the Armenian foil. However, the nation, overly identified with its 150 year-old oil-based economy, lacks coherent transition plans. To the extent…