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…
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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…
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…