By Dr. Sevinç Tunalı As a scholar in the field of education, my area of research has mainly focused on “Futures of Education”. This quest has taken me to various parts of the world from South Asia to East Africa to conduct projects on futures of education. A recent unique experience was in Bangladesh, where I had the opportunity to work on a trend analysis for education in Bangladesh. The research project, a 2018 Fellowship on the “Futures of Education” was awarded by the Centre for Genocide Studies (CGS), University of Dhaka, and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) to explore the futures of…
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By Leopold P. Mureithi Some Groundwork A few weeks ago, the International Labour Organization (ILO) published Work for a Brighter Future,[i] a report of the Global Commission on the Future of Work (GloCoFOW) which was set up in October 2017 to craft a centennial Festschrift of the ILO which “was created in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, to reflect the belief that universal and lasting peace can be accomplished only if it is based on social justice.”[ii] GloCoFOW’s approach to their work was doing research and participation in policy dialogues at national,…
By Sohail Inayatullah When tomorrow is just like today, boredom can result. We seek novelty. However, in this phase in human history, tomorrow will certainly not be like today. Indeed, we are in the midst of dramatic social and technological change. This includes: A demographic shift in Africa such that 40% of all children worldwide by 2050 live in Africa[i] and by 2100, 39% of all adults globally will live in Africa.[ii][iii] Under-population [iv]in many Western and East Asian nations,[v] creating labour shortages, and the possibility of steady-state economics. The rise of new technologies such as 3d printing, drones, artificial…
By Kyoko Ariyoshi Business and art seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they have one thing in common – they both create wealth. Business excels at producing economic wealth (outer wealth), while art facilitates the cultivation of “inner wealth”. Both outer wealth and inner wealth are essential to our wellbeing, at both individual and societal levels. Artistic business management is a new business design as well as management method that combines the strengths of business and art to turn challenges into opportunities for businesses, one of the vital systems in our society, for healthier and more…
By Leopold P. Mureithi Introduction Curiosity and wonder about what the future holds has occupied humans as far back as scholars can tell.[i] Over time, Homo sapiens have come to realize that the future is not just one, but several futures[ii]. Given the reality of quantum interactions, the choices of the future can be – for example — among the probable, the possible and the preferred. This prospective foresight, though, has occurred at various degrees of scope, depth and intensity across the entities engaged in such futuristic preoccupation. These entities can be of any size: micro, meso, macro and other…
by Sohail Inayatullah At the summer retreat of the Ananda Marga movement in Australia, a socio-spiritual group that advocates the adoption of Prout ideals, I had the chance to experiment with gaming and creating progressive policy futures by running the first Prout parliament game. The core question was what would the world look like if Prout – as theory and movement – was in power; if the core ideas of Prout[1] were adopted as the norm, as informing and framing global and local legislative priorities? [2] Prout itself is an acronym of the Progressive utilization theory, articulated by P.R.…
By Leopold P. Mureithi One thing that strikes a reader of this book is the use of the prefix “re” in the words “reinvented” and “reimagining”. Ordinarily, this would imply doing again, like in repeat; afresh; anew. But, on second thought, the “re” is used to emphasize refinement and the intensity with which such clarification is done.[1] Short of giving definitions of these titular terms, RohitTalwar and his co-authors Steve Wells, Alexandra Whittington, April Koury and Maria Romero clarify that their ‘goal is to encourage readers to challenge both “the official view” and [one’s] own perspectives on which changes will…
By Leah Zaidi Trends are all the rage. As we enter 2019, there are no shortages of predictions and speculation about what the future may hold. Trends can be useful, but they are also problematic. Despite their appeal, trends: Are a reflection of the past because all data is historical by nature Don’t account for wildcards and unpredictable events Become more difficult to predict the further out we look Encourage extrapolating the past into the future, rather creating new visions Support an economic/tech-driven mindset (e.g. what to invest in next) which isn’t always the right approach Are simple and linear,…
By Peter van der Wel Try to imagine a future world in which almost no one has to work anymore. Everything can be produced by robots. Even the robots themselves are made by other robots. In that world, green energy is abundant and available almost for free, thanks to the sun, the wind and perhaps nuclear fusion. With this abundant energy almost for free, all materials can be recycled continuously. Environmental pollution no longer exists. Too good to be true? Well, no; if the technical development of recent years continues to accelerate, our world could look like this in the…
By Leopold P. Mureithi When Sir Thomas More’s wrote his book – Utopia –in 1516, he described an imaginary land where life was perfect.[i]Other authors have depicted a dystopian imagery of society. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,[ii] written in 1931 describes a dictator’s pharmacological people control and manipulative tool named Soma. George Orwell’s book 1984[iii] (published in 1949) depicts a Big Brother “seeing” everyone anywhere all the time;no privacy these two are examples of scenarios depicting the use of technology to control and manipulate people. Another nightmarish scenario is where technology (machines) is portrayed as a dangerous competitor by Samuel…