By Leonardo Santiago and the Students from the speciality in Design of Tomorrow In April 2020, in the framework of the SARS CoV 2 crisis, students of the fifth generation of the futures studies postgraduate course at CENTRO, a higher education institution located in Mexico City, held a sounds of the future workshop. The representation of future scenarios by means of sounds is not new. Well-known is the case of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds (1938). This case was a creative exercise, even a provocation, the result of the adaptation of a novel, we are not speaking properly of…
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por Leonardo Santiago y los estudiantes de la especialidad en Diseño del mañana En abril de 2020, en el marco de la crisis del SARS CoV 2, los estudiantes de la quinta generación del curso de posgrado de estudios de futuros en CENTRO, participaron en un taller de sonidos del futuro impartido por el productor Leonardo Santiago. La representación de escenarios futuros mediante sonidos no es nueva. Bien conocido es el caso de la Guerra de los Mundos de Orson Welles (1938). Este fue un ejercicio creativo, incluso una provocación, el resultado de la adaptación de una novela antes que…
by Khadija El Alaoui, Sohail Inayatullah and Muamar Salameh Illustration: Manar Husainemail – manarhusain17@gmail.com No part of the world has been left untouched by the path of COVID-19. Nations and regions have responded differently. East Asia was quick to implement lockdowns, social distancing, hand washing and other recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). Tracing, the use of AI and apps have all been helpful. Australia and New Zealand have successfully suppressed the virus. They are keeping borders closed at this stage, though they are likely to adopt a traffic light model of opening (green, orange, and red zones of…
By Rafeeq Bosch Introduction This paper describes the deliberations of a group of nine Foresight practitioners in our consulting firm’s Strategy practice. In the wake of the transition to working from home, a number of us in different cities around North America decided to come together virtually to use the four layers of the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) method to examine the COVID-19 pandemic. The intent of the exercise was to identify some themes at each of the four layers of CLA and to surface some lessons about how to facilitate foresight work in virtual settings. After some initial comments…
By Sohail Inayatullah, Sunniya Durrani-Jamal, and Sonia Chand Sandhu In late 2019, the Asian Development Bank (2020)[i] facilitated a Futures foresight workshop (Kanagaraj 2019) to map out complimentary pathways to the development of Cambodia’s vision 2030 (to become an upper middle income country) and eventually Vision 2050 (to become a middle income country). [ii] As it was a one day workshop, we focused on a variant of the Six Pillars process (Inayatullah, 2015) using in particular Causal Layered Analysis, Scenarios, Visioning and Backcasting. The intent was to enhance futures literacy in the nation and articulate areas that the Asian Development…
By Dr Ivana Milojević “The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic is that …[a]t times such as these, our stress levels become higher and our difficult emotions seem to surface more readily. This not only leads to more conflicts, it leads to more unresolved conflicts.”[i] “As a rise in family violence due to the coronavirus crisis is set to strain an already critically overstretched social support system, some abusers are reportedly using COVID-19 as a psychological weapon.”[ii] “We could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months … the world is not only facing “a global health…
By William E. Halal The coronavirus is a stark reminder of the devastating damage that could be inflicted by cyberattacks, superbugs, freak weather and a variety of other threats. These wild cards are in addition to the existential challenge posed by climate change, gross inequality, financial meltdowns, autocratic governments, terrorism and other massive problems collectively called the Global MegaCrisis. For a prominent example, Peter de Menocal, director of the Center for Climate and Life, warned: “The tragedy and inconvenience we’ve seen from this pandemic pale in comparison to what’s in store from climate change.” (New York Times, April 24, 2020)…
By Sohail Inayatullah, Puruesh Chaudhary, Syed Sami Raza and Umar Sheraz SOHAIL INAYATULLAH – USED FUTURES AND ALTERNATIVE SCENARIOS It was late January when four Pakistanis studying in China tested positive to the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease known as COVID-19. Internally, the country reported its first two COVID-19 cases on February 26, 2020, both of which had returned from Iran. Pakistan, as of April 29, had reported 14,885 confirmed cases with 3,425 recoveries and 327 deaths.[i] While the pandemic continues to spread, Pakistan faces other critical issues as well. For example, from 8 July to 12 November,…
By Fritjof Capra and Hazel Henderson © the authors, 2020 Imagine, it is the year 2050 and we are looking back to the origin and evolution of the coronavirus pandemic over the last three decades. Extrapolating from recent events, we offer the following scenario for such a view from the future. As we move into the second half of our twenty-first century, we can finally make sense of the origin and impact of the coronavirus that struck the world in 2020 from an evolutionary systemic perspective. Today, in 2050, looking back on the past 40 turbulent years on our home…
By Kathleen Kesson We have entered the Anthropocene — a new era in geological history — a phase of planetary development in which human impacts on the Earth may cause or have caused irreversible damage. We are witness to “the great acceleration” in which geothermal, biological, ecological, and atmospheric changes threaten to bring about irreparable changes in the planetary ecosystem, and by extension, our social and economic systems. Every day brings news of wildfires, drought, floods, conflicts, hurricanes, locusts, extinctions, and the latest, a Coronavirus pandemic, which has managed to shut down many of the global systems we rely on…