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…
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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…
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…
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…