Ideas for a deeper sense of life

Global Citizenship in 2040: Six Scenarios

2011-11-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

After listening to a presentation that reviewed scientific discoveries and technological developments, participants in theworkshop titled Global Placeless Brains at the conference Reconciling Babel– Education for Cosmopolitanism were directed in a brief method based scenario planning exercise that was designed and run by the author who is a member of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) and co-author of the Farsi award winning book Scenario Planning.

pages 173-197

http://www.fondazioneintercultura.it/jb/webfiles/Ricomporre%20Babele.pdf

http://bit.ly/voNikN

The stupid way of contemporary information life

2011-10-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

I would like to share my dreams about what should disappear in my lifetime.

I envision a day in which the diversified and troublesome platforms that are necessary today to get access to different sources of information will disappear.I often live in constant multitasking. The story of a typical day of my life is something like this that happened today:

I connected my laptop output to my TV screen. I was checking my emails and Facebook updates on the TV monitor then opened a life documentary video on my laptop. After half an hour I switched from laptop working with the mouse to the TV input and checked the usual satellite channels by poking the buttons on my remote control. Meanwhile there were some new messages on my cell phone to which I replied quickly on the handset. Then decided to grab and read a print copy of a digital book which was in front of me because neither the laptop's monitor nor the TV screen showed the letters big enough considering that I was a couple of meters away from them lying on the couch. The most challenging scene of the scenario was when my landline phone started ringing!

But in my wishes for a better future world I see a technological platform that can combine effectively all of these separate tools in one place, on an integrated device. I am so tired of this stupid way of contemporary life, entrapped among so many separate devices with lots of wires and plugs. I hope that my descendants will bypass this miserable life styleand may access all sources of information, be it satellite channels, videos-audio files, cell phone messages, pages of book, social network updates, emails, etc at a blink of an eye and on just one platform.

Believe it or not I cannot bear it for the rest of my life. I have no problem at all with multitasking but am so sick of diversified information platforms.

Biography of Wendell Bell

2011-09-06T10:05:00.001-07:00

[NOTE: This is an autobiography written on May 10, 2007 upon my request and is published here with the author permission.]

Dr. Wendell Bell: American sociologist and futurist, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Yale University

Personal History and Education

Although Wendell Bell was born in Chicago, IL, he considers himself a Californian because at the age of four his family moved to Fresno, CA where he was raised. Except for two and a half years at a private Military Academy in the Los Angeles area, Bell was educated (k through 12) in the public schools of Fresno.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 7 December 1941 led him to graduate from Roosevelt High School a semester early, in January 1942. He joined the Naval Aviation Cadet (V-5) Program, was called to active duty in 1943, and became an Ensign and a Naval Aviator in October 1944, later serving in VPB-106 in the Philippine Islands.

After flying three-plus years on active duty in the U.S. Navy, he returned to Fresno and earned his living for a time as a commercial pilot, mostly as a flight instructor and charter pilot. He also served as a “weekend warrior” in a squadron in the Naval Reserve.

Additionally, he started college, although he continued flying at first. Soon he was devoting more and more of his time to his studies, graduating with a B.A. in Social Science (highest honors) from California State University, Fresno in 1948 (in less time than normal with some credits for his Navy education and by loading up on additional courses each semester and taking summer courses as well).

He had married Lora-Lee Edwards in 1947 and he and his new wife headed for the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949, where he pursued graduate work in Sociology, supported by the G.I. Bill and his work as a Teaching Assistant. He received his M.A. degree from UCLA in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1952.

Academic Career

Bell’s first full-time academic position, beginning in 1952, was as Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although he taught advanced statistics and urban sociology, among other courses, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, he devoted most of his time to being the founding Director of the new Stanford Survey Research Facility. The idea was to establish a survey research center at Stanford for the primary purpose of facilitating the social research of other faculty members by providing data collection and preliminary analysis for studies designed by them.

For the next two years, many of Stanford Sociology graduate students worked with Bell doing survey research. The research ranged from collecting data for a Professor in the Business School, to surveys of present and former Stanford graduate students funded by a Ford Foundation self-survey, to data collection from selected San Francisco neighborhoods to carry on Bell’s own research.

Bell moved to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL in the fall of 1954 as an Associate Professor. There he taught, among other courses, Introductory Sociology, Urban Sociology, and Social Research Methods. While there, he continued his own research on American cities and added an exploratory research trip to the Caribbean island of Jamaica during the summer of 1956.

In 1957, he returned to UCLA as a member of the faculty and was soon promoted to Full Professor. Although he continued his work in urban sociology at UCLA, he shifted his major research efforts to a series of studies of elites and nationalism in the new states of the Caribbean, first with a Social Science Research Council three-year half-time faculty fellowship and then with a research grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The latter helped fund the UCLA West Indies Study Program with Bell serving as the founding Director. The Program provided fellowships for advanced American graduate students to do dissertation research in the Caribbean new states as well as for West Indian graduate students to attend UCLA and work toward their Ph.D. degrees with the hope that they would make future contributions to the development of their new states.

In 1963, Bell accepted a Professorship at Yale University, but spent his first year on leave from Yale at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, CA.

Arriving on the scene at Yale in the fall of 1964, Bell was soon asked to serve as Chair of the Department of Sociology, which he began to do in July 1965. Working with other Yale sociologists, including the two other Full Professors in the Department at the time, Bell served as Chair for four years, greatly expanding the Department, adding, in addition to junior faculty members, seven new Full Professors (including one promotion from among nontenured Yale sociologists).

Yale was in transition during his tenure as Chair and into the early 1970s. There were widespread protests on campus against America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam; there was a struggle to open the then all-male Yale College to women undergraduates; there was controversy about affirmative action to add more students and faculty members from ethnic and racial minority groups; there was heated debate about establishing an African American Studies Program, a business school, an Institute for Social and Policy Studies, a women’s study program, and other interdisciplinary centers and institutes; and there was conflict about Yale remaining a national university rather than becoming a global, international institution.

Yale, founded in 1701, was being pushed and dragged into the modern world. It was a stormy, yet exhilarating, time of change and Bell played a role in many of the struggles—e.g., in bringing women undergraduates to Yale, in supporting affirmative action for minority faculty and students, in establishing social and policy studies, in supporting Yale’s becoming a global university (which today Yale is), in creating a Collegium on the Future (that Harold D. Lasswell and he originated, but which did not last), and, especially in starting an African American Studies Program (which is now a full-scale Department), which he and other Yale faculty members who had worked in the Caribbean or Africa helped to found.

Additionally, along with several of his colleagues, Bell proposed a Comparative Sociology Training Program and received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health beginning in 1969. It provided training fellowships for graduate students to carry out research in countries throughout the world. Bell directed the Program, continuing his own research in the Caribbean, while supporting other faculty and students working in other countries of the world—in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. One important purpose of the Program was to expand the scope of American sociology by the study of other cultures and societies—to contribute to the development of a transnational sociology.

During this time, Bell’s commitment to a sociology that incorporated worldwide societal variation was matched by his growing interest in the transformation of societies through time, especially with research into possibilities for the future (see below). As early as 1966-68, he received a Russell Sage Foundation grant jointly with a colleague, James A. Mau, for an investigation of “the sociology of the future,” which resulted in several future-oriented articles and an edited volume, The Sociology of the Future (Bell and Mau 1971).

Although he continued his work in comparative sociology, especially in the Caribbean, serving as President of the Caribbean Studies Association in 1979-80 and as a member of its Council as late as 1989, he increasingly worked in the futures field and attended conferences of futures studies organizations.

In 1985, he spent most of the year as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, the Australian National University, where he started writing what was to be his major work, the two-volume Foundations of Futures Studies (1997).

During his tenure at Yale, Bell taught many courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, including the Logic of Social Research, which he taught nearly every year aimed at first-year graduate students; Urban Sociology; Social Change and the Future; the Sociology of the Future; Race, Class, and Nation in the Caribbean (joint with African-American Studies); the Sociology of Nationalism; and the Sociology of Good and Evil.

In 1995, although Bell retired from a full-time faculty position (at age 70), he remained at Yale and continued writing about futures studies. For five years, 2000-05, he was appointed a Senior Research Scientist in Yale’s Center for Comparative Research, where he continued his work. Today (at the time of writing), he continues writing for futures journals (Slaughter 2007) as well as for sociologists (Bell 2008) and speaking at conferences (most recently in September 2006 at Cardiff University in Wales).

Sociological Research and Writing

Since 1953, when he published his first article in a professional journal, Bell has written, co-authored, or edited nine books and written more than 200 articles, chapters in books, or book reviews.

One recurring theme in Bell’s work is the recognition of human agency. Yes, society and culture shape the individual and Bell’s work often includes data that help explain this causal process in particular times and places, for example in shaping individual judgments about how much inequality is just or fair (Robinson and Bell 1978). Yet, perhaps more important, he is concerned with the other side of the coin as well, that is, how individuals by their actions shape societies and cultures, for example how individual attitudes toward equality in politically dependent colonies can lead to decisions and actions that create nationalist movements and produce political, social, and cultural change (Bell 1964, 1967; Bell and Oxaal 1964).

Bell began his social research by studying neighborhoods in Los Angeles and San Francisco, following the work of Eshref Shevky who was one of his professors at UCLA (Shevky and Williams 1949). This work showed that three major dimensions could summarize the many social variations of urban neighborhoods (socioeconomic status, familism, and ethnicity) and that neighborhoods could be usefully typed into different “social areas” according to them (Bell 1955). After Shevky and Bell published Social Area Analysis, many other researchers carried out the construction of social areas in a comparative framework in many cities, not only in the United States but also throughout the world.

Bell pursued this work by conducting surveys of residents in selected social areas in San Francisco showing how many of the generalizations of the time about the lonely, anomic, socially isolated city dweller were oversimplifications. In fact, only a few social areas typically contained such people (those of low socioeconomic status and, especially, of low familism). In other social areas, there was frequent participation with neighbors, relatives, co-workers, or other friends often supplemented by attendance of meetings and events of a variety of formal social organizations and a well-developed sense of community (Bell and Boat 1957; Bell and Force 1956a, 1956b).

Underlying this work was a theory of social choice, focused on how people, within the limits of their resources and opportunities, decided to seek certain life styles by the types of social areas in which they chose to live. Shevky and Bell viewed the cityscape less as a product of impersonal social forces (as some of the Chicago human ecologists did), and more as a product of individual and collective decision-making and action.

Bell tested the theory of social choice with a series of studies aimed at discovering why people choose to move to the suburbs. He focused on the factors that tended to push them from their prior residences, usually apartments within the city, and the factors that pulled them toward the suburbs, including the images they held of their future possible lives there.

Contrary to much sociological thinking at the time that described suburban living negatively as “split-level headaches,” “cracks in picture windows,” or “the eclipse of community,” Bell found mostly contented suburbanites who achieved in their move what they had hoped for, including a cleaner, quieter, safer, more family- and child-friendly neighborhood, a sense of community with considerable interaction and mutual support among neighbors, and bigger and better housing than they had had in the city (Bell 1956, 1968).

In a more general aspect of this work, Bell showed how hope and despair are contingent on a person’s access to the means for the achievement of life goals (Meier and Bell 1959). Severe poverty, political repression, and lack of education, for example, reduce people’s choices and desirable alternatives for the future. Clearly, individuals’ images of the future are involved in having hope, which is importantly a belief that the future will be better than—or at least as good as—the present, or in being despairing, which often means a belief that the future will be undesirable. Here the reciprocal dependence of society and the individual becomes transparent.

Bell’s interest in images of the future and their role in people’s actions dominated his studies of elites and nationalism in the new states of the Caribbean. In a series of studies that he and his colleagues carried out over a period of about 25 years, he investigated how the decisions of nationhood were made in former British colonies as they went through the processes of becoming politically independent—from Jamaica in the north through Barbados and some of the Leeward and Windward Islands to Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana in the south. Descendents of African slaves or East Indian indentured laborers numerically dominated the populations of these emergent states.

The new nationalist leaders in these territories set about defining and constructing their new state’s futures. They wrote constitutions for the new states-to-be. They chose national mottos, national flags, national heroes, national flowers, and national birds, among other symbols that would signify the character and meaning of the new states.

More important, they decided what geographical boundaries their new state would have (e.g., a West Indies Federation or each territory “going it alone”?); what kind of government they would have (e.g., a political democracy or not?); how much of a role the government should play in regulating the economy (e.g., how socialist should it be?); what kind of social structure the new state should have (e.g., how to put an end to racial inequality and create more equal opportunity for all the new citizens?); what national character of the people should be encouraged (e.g., should it be a new enlightened, egalitarian and inclusive character freed from the twin heritages of slavery and indentured labor on the one hand, and freed from colonialism as an authoritarian social and political system on the other?); what new national cultural traditions to foster (e.g., should the African or Indian origins of the majority of the people be celebrated and should a new national history be written that emphasized the long struggle for freedom against oppression? Should Sam Sharpe and Nanny of the Maroons be selected as new national heroes in Jamaica because they had led slave revolts in the past?); and what global alignments ought their new state make as it stepped onto the international stage (e.g., at the time of independence, should it align with the United States and the West or with Cuba and the Soviet Union?) (Bell 1964, 1967; Bell and Oxaal 1964).

Additionally, Bell and his colleagues did follow-up studies to evaluate the performance of the new national leaders after they came to power. They asked, how successful were the leaders in achieving their pre-independence goals and their earlier positive, idealistic images of their new state’s future? (Bell 1977, 1980). To find answers, they looked at changes in rhetoric, beliefs of the leaders, social legislation passed, and relevant economic and social indicators.

In a nutshell, to take one example from the effort in Jamaica to reduce unjust inequalities of race, ethnicity, class and nationality, Bell found that twelve years after independence the rhetoric of equality as fair had become even more dominant and widespread among Jamaican leaders than it was before independence.

Through a variety of social legislation, the leaders had achieved some success: legal and political rights had been guaranteed by the new constitution; legislation also was aimed at improving minimum wages, workmen’s compensation, pensions, medical services, literacy, and free primary education; and legislation eliminated many inequalities in the treatment of “illegitimate” children. Yet little was done effectively to relieve the poorest class of society.

Educational and income data showed some small improvement. Jamaicans received more schooling and there may have been more equality in achieving a floor of primary education than before. School enrollments were up, but frequency of attendance had not increased and many schools remained overcrowded. The most recalcitrant fact was that inequality of income showed only a small shift of real income from the highest to the lowest income groups. Income inequality remained great.

Even the beliefs of the leaders themselves showed that nearly two-thirds of them believed that Jamaica had not been successful or had failed in dealing with the problem of poverty and that the new parliamentary system had benefited the middle and upper classes more than it had benefited the unionized workers and lower classes. Yet more than two-thirds also believed that the poorest Jamaicans were absolutely better off than they had been before independence.

Bell concluded that the Jamaican leaders, for the most part, had sincerely pursued their images of social justice, equality, and economic development, had passed legislation designed to achieve their goals, and had had some success in achieving them. Where they could make change by legislation, they often did move toward their goals—for example, in reducing racial discrimination in public places or providing more primary education. But on economic issues they faced limitations, because, at least in the short run, they could not create new wealth, decree a prosperous economy, or wipe out poverty simply by passing laws. To do so they needed more material and managerial resources than they had (Stephens and Stephens 1986).

Finally, the work on the new states in the Caribbean would have remained logically incomplete without additional comparative work in both the old states and the colonies of other countries that did not choose to become politically independent. Thus, over the years, Bell sponsored research in the older states of Dominican Republic and Haiti as well as in the French territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique, which had retained their ties to France (Murch 1971). He also engaged in more extensive work comparing new and old states (Bell and Freeman 1974).

Becoming a Futurist

Throughout the period of his work in the Caribbean, Bell served as consultant to a variety of other projects and carried out additional research, such as his work on public leadership (Bell, Hill, and Wright 1961) and his comparative work on equality and social justice in England and the United States (Perkins and Bell 1980; Robinson and Bell 1978, 1980). But by the mid-1960s he had begun to explore the general principles of futures thinking and the role of images of the future in decision-making and social action. With the publication of The Sociology of the Future in 1971, he started devoting the bulk of his time to the new field of futures studies.

It was, of course, his research in the new states that sparked Bell’s interest in leadership, social justice, and the future. His field trip to Jamaica in 1956 placed him at the center of a coming future made problematic by the transition to independence. He saw the processes of constructing polity, society, and culture made transparent. Clearly, in the new states the future was open. What would the new national leaders make of their former British West Indian colonies when they became masters of their own fate? What ought they do to create a good future?

There was talk of little else during that first summer in Jamaica other than what was possible, what were the alternatives any of which might become Jamaica’s future? What was most likely to happen, given Jamaica’s past history and present resources? What was preferable? What was the best, most desirable future for Jamaica? How could it be achieved?

It was as if the mysteries of society and the engines of social change had suddenly been revealed. What was taken for granted in older states and clouded by custom, tradition, and myth as being unquestionable, sacrosanct, and timeless—even in the first new nation, the United States—were prominently and visibly tenuous and open for revision in the new states. Such things included constitutions, structures of governments, geographical boundaries, national heroes, and cultural histories. But, in fact, such things are just as problematic in the old states as in the new states. It is simply less obvious in the old states that this is so.

Everywhere people produce the future by their acts, even when they act to reproduce the past and present. Everywhere people determine what their future will be, whether they are aware of it or not. Everywhere the images of the future people hold may clash with conflicting images held by others and lead to conflict to control the future. Everywhere the past is finished and cannot be altered. And everywhere the future is open, offering possibilities of new and better lives as well as possibilities of disaster—contingent on the choices that humans make and the actions they take.

Of course, this is not to say that the future always turns out as people hope and plan. There may also be unintended, unanticipated, or unrecognized consequences of human action. Constant monitoring is necessary as is willingness to change one’s methods and policies when they are not working as planned.

Although all of this may seem obvious, it so impressed Bell during his research in the new Caribbean states that he has spent more than four decades trying to understand the role of futures thinking in social change, to discover how images of the future are born and shaped on the one hand and on the other hand to learn how images of the future interact with individual and collective beliefs, values, decision-making, and actions to shape the future of individuals, societies, and cultures. He keeps asking, what constitutes a “better world” of human well-being and freedom and how can we humans help to bring such a world into reality?

These are issues that Bell discusses in Foundations of Futures Studies. For example, Volume One, “History, Purposes, and Knowledge,” deals with possible and probable futures and how we can make grounded, reliable and valid assertions about them, and Volume Two, “Values, Objectivity, and the Good Society,” deals with preferable futures and how we can justify rationally and empirically the assertions about what constitutes the good society.

Bell’s Foundations of Futures Studies along with Richard A. Slaughter’s three volume, The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, and Slaughter’s New Thinking for a New Millennium, all published in the late 1990s, aim to provide a summary of past work of the field of futures studies and a guide for its future development. Each also contains images of a future sustainable human society based on human well-being and freedom.

Since the publication of his Foundations volumes, Bell has continued to work toward the development of futures studies and for increased futures thinking among social scientists, especially sociologists (Bell 2002a/b; Marien 2002). Also, he has continued his exploration of the good society of the future, focusing on universal values and the eternal struggle between good and evil (Bell 2000). For example, his work on evil, following Baumeister (1997), shows that nearly everyone is capable of evil acts and that ordinary people engaged in mundane tasks carry out much of the cruelty and violence in the world. Using the principles of futures thinking, critical realism, and social inclusiveness, Bell claims that people can learn to curb their demonization of others and the sometimes terrible escalation of harm to others that it produces and to adopt a code of behavior that emphasizes being responsible for themselves, doing no harm to others, and helping other people when they can.

Beyond the Academy

Like most futurists and many sociologists, Bell upon occasion has moved outside of the academy into the public sphere to consult or become involved with some of the social issues of the day. To give a few examples, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, co-chaired by former U.S. Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman (whose reports members of the Bush administration ignored despite Hart’s efforts to bring the results to their attention); for sixteen years he was on the Advisory Council of the Institute of Global Ethics, which openly examines ethical issues involved in both private and public life; he worked for Sandia National Laboratories on a study of the safe storage of nuclear waste at the Waste Isolation Plant in New Mexico; he evaluated research on culturally-appropriate dispute resolution procedures for the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies and the Hawaiian Judiciary; he analyzed data from an eight-city mothers’ opinion poll on high tech and high touch toys (for the purpose of increasing the attraction of non-violent toys) for an advertising agency and became the public spokesman to explain the results of the study to journalists for six months (the toy company created six baby animal toys, known as Puffalumps); he consulted for the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress on a variety of issues; he worked for the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice searching for more justice and fairness in dealing with America’s large prison population; and he served as the Governor’s appointee to the Commission on Connecticut’s Future that, among other things, looked into the futures thinking and planning of all the major departments of the government of the state of Connecticut.

In all the above efforts and others, Bell attempted to apply the principles of futures studies as well as of sociology.

Finally, Bell has had several avocations. After his service as a Navy pilot and then commercial civilian pilot, he continued to fly for some time for the sheer pleasure of flying.

His wife, Lora-Lee, and he took up horsemanship as well as studying barn management and horse care, starting in 1962. Lora-Lee devoted much of her time to the enterprise, at one point having 200 riding students. Both Lora-Lee and Wendell focused on the three-day event (dressage, cross-country, and stadium jumping) and had riding instruction and experiences not only in the United States, but also in the Caribbean, England, France, and elsewhere in Europe.

After more than twenty years in the horse business, Lora-Lee gave up her horses in 1985 and devoted herself to her other passion, art (especially batik and watercolor). She taught art classes for more than twenty-five years, mostly at Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT and encouraged Wendell to learn enough about art and the art world to fill at least a small part of what was a large gap in his knowledge.

Now in their early eighties, Lora-Lee and Wendell have become avid ballroom dancers. For more than three years, they have been taking dancing lessons and practicing whenever possible. They look forward to the time when they can devote themselves more fully to dancing… May hope and dreams of the future never end!

References
Baumeister, Roy F. 1997. Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence. New York: W.H.
Freeman and Company.
Bell, Wendell. 1955. "Economic, family, and ethnic status: an empirical test." American
Sociological Review 20 (February): 45-52.
_____. 1956. "Familism and suburbanization: one test of the social choice hypothesis."
Rural Sociology 21 (September-December): 276-283.
_____. 1964. Jamaican Leaders: Political Attitudes in a New Nation. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
_____. (ed.). 1967. The Democratic Revolution in the West Indies: Studies in
Nationalism, Leadership, and the Belief in Progress. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman.
_____. 1968. "The city, the suburb, and a theory of social choice." Pp. 132-168 in
Scott Greer et al. (eds.), The New Urbanization. New York: St. Martin's Press.
_____. 1977. "Inequality in independent Jamaica: a preliminary appraisal of elite
performance." Revista/Review Interamericana 7 (Summer): 294-308.
_____. 1980. "Equality and social justice: foundations of nationalism in the Caribbean,”
Caribbean Studies 20 (June): 5-36.
_____. 1997. Foundations of Futures Studies. Vol. 1 “History, Purposes, and
Knowledge (paperback 2003); Vol. 2 “Values, Objectivity, and the Good Society” (paperback 2004). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
_____. 2000. "New futures and the eternal struggle between good and evil." Journal of
Futures Studies 5 (2) (November): 1-20.
_____. 2002a. "A community of futurists and the state of the futures field." Futures 34
(3-4) (April/May): 235-47. [Available online at www.sciencedirect.com].
_____. 2002b. “Advancing futures studies: a reply to Michael Marien,” Futures 34 (5)
(June): 435-47. [Available online at www.sciencedirect.com].
. 2008. “Public sociology and the future: the possible, the probable, and the
preferable.” In Vincent Jeffries (ed.), Handbook of Public Sociology. Rowman and Littlefield, in process.
Bell, Wendell and Maryanne T Force. 1956a. "Urban neighborhood types and
participation in formal associations." American Sociological Review 21 (February): 25-34.
_____. 1956b. "Social structure and participation in different types of formal
associations." Social Forces 34 (May): 345-350.
Bell, Wendell and Marion D. Boat. 1957. "Urban neighborhoods and informal social
relations." American Journal of Sociology 62 (January): 391-398
Bell, Wendell, Richard J. Hill, and Charles R. Wright. 1961. Public Leadership. San
Francisco, CA: Chandler.
Bell, Wendell and Ivar Oxaal. 1964. Decisions of Nationhood: Political and Social
Development in the British Caribbean. Denver, CO: Social Science Foundation, University of Denver.
Bell, Wendell and James A. Mau (eds.). 1971. The Sociology of the Future: Theory,
Cases, and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Bell, Wendell and Walter E. Freeman (eds.). 1974. Ethnicity and Nation-Building:
Comparative, International and Historical Perspectives. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Bell, Wendell and Robert V. Robinson. 1980. "Cognitive maps of class and racial
inequalities in England and the United States." American Journal of Sociology 86 (September): 320-349.
Marien, Michael. 2002. “My differences with Wendell Bell,” Futures 34 (5) (June):
449-456. [Available online at www.sciencedirect.com].
Meier, Dorothy L. and Wendell Bell. 1959. "Anomia and differential access to the
achievement of life goals." American Sociological Review 24 (April): 189-202.
Murch, Arvin. 1971. Black Frenchmen: The Political Integration of the French Antilles.
Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co.
Perkins, H. Wesley and Wendell Bell. 1980. "Alienation and social justice in England
and the United States: the polity and economy." Pp. 71-101 in R. F. Tomasson (ed.), Comparative Social Research, Vol. 3, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Robinson, Robert V. and Wendell Bell. 1978. "Equality, success, and social justice in
England and the United States." American Sociological Review 43 (2): 125-43.
Shevky, Eshref and Wendell Bell. 1955. Social Area Analysis. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Shevky, Eshref and Marilyn Williams. The Social Areas of Los Angeles: Analysis and
Typology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Slaughter, Richard A. (ed.). 1996a. The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies. Hawthorn,
Victoria, Australia: DDM Media Group. [Also available in the Professional Edition on CD-ROM, Foresight International, Indooroopilly, Qld, Australia, 2005].
_____. 1996b. New Thinking for a New Millennium. London: Routledge.
Stephens, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens. 1986. Democratic Socialism in
Jamaica. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Biographical References
Bell, Wendell. 1969. “Teachers, Students, and Ideas: A Personal Account.” Pp.215-55
in Irving Louis Horowitz (ed.), Sociological Self-Images: A Collective Portrait. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Levelhead 753 [aka Wendell Bell]. 2005. “On becoming and being a futurist: an
interview with Wendell Bell,” Journal of Futures Studies 10 (2) (November): 113-24).
Slaughter, Richard A. 2007. “Looking towards the futures studies renaissance: a
conversation between Richard A. Slaughter and Wendell Bell,” Journal of Futures Studies, in press.
Stevenson, Tony. 2003. “Biography: Wendell Bell: critical realism in studying the
future,” Futures 35 (3) (April): 283-95. [Available online at www.sciencedirect.com].

Leading Futurists featured in the Iranian publication

2011-09-06T02:12:00.000-07:00

Using excerpts from the Persian Encyclopedia of Futures Studies (one of my works around four years ago) the biography and works of some of the WFSF members were recently featured in the Iranian Society of Futures Studies E-Monthly, a Farsi free of charge online publication. For detail see below.

Ziauddin Sardar
page 13/20

Sohail Inayatullah
page 17/20

Mahdi Elmandjra
page 11/20

Eleonora Masini
page 13/21

Wendell Bell
page 13/20

Verne Wheelwright
page 15/21

Joseph Voros
page 17/23

Richard Slaughter
page 29/40

Ethical aspects of the futurist profession

2011-09-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

The ethical aspects of the futurist profession, i.e. refusing to put cash before conscience, should be an essential consideration.

Back in 2009 when I sensed that Iran is striding toward dictatorship and is getting ready for mass arrests and jailing brilliant intellectuals on stupid charges and kicking out secular scholars from the universities I saw no choice but to leave a consulting career in futures studies. Ethically dubious clients, including such suppressive governments and their planners, consultants, and politicians, are some huge challenges for any person who migh consider embarking on a futurist profession.

I guessed correctly. Later on, even most of weblogs which presented alternative voices, including mine, were censored by the authorities.

Today it has emerged that a futurist firm in the US has made "some errors in judgment" and put cash before conscience, that is helping an ethically dubious client.

In exchange for consulting fees, Monitor Group, a futurist firm founded by Harvard professors, helped introduce Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi as thinkers and intellectuals. As you know now both of them are wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Slaughter’s prescription for the global wicked issues

2011-09-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

Suppose that you are watching a foreign language movie with subtitles in your mother tongue. You tend to trust the translator while making sense of the scenario. All of a sudden a professional independent interpreter comes and makes you aware that the series of pictures that are passing before your eyes actually tell a totally different story and the subtitles are indeed incorrect. And it seems that he is quite right when he presents his own account of the narrative. Slaughter has done the same in his new impressive work. He provides different subtitles and narrates a totally different story of our world while helping us make sense of its past, present, and future developments. As always, and of course as expected from him, he tends to censure “the modus operandi of industrialized cultures, the mad pursuit of endless material wealth, and the business-as-usual path.” He warns us that the marketing geniuses and the dominant media are shepherding us to a huge cliff. They try to convince us worshiping the holy cow of growth and “hyper development”, blindly following the ideals and life styles of the “ultra rich”, and pushing the limits of the bubble of human wants as far as they and we can. But the real price we will soon have to pay is our own existence on this planet to the extent that “if we remain unmoved we will indeed see the biggest civilizational crash ever experienced on this planet and the rapid onset of a dark age that could last for centuries—and perhaps forever.”

Inspired from the Integral Perspective, this superbly written, well structured book that will enjoy a broad general readership follows a problem statement and problem solution line of argument. It sheds light on a number of crucial world-shaping processes and wicked issues such as climate change, global warming, the onset of peak oil, and in general sustainability. By using the metaphor of “wake up call” the author attempts to “tone down language, apply understatement and generally try to present the evidence without causing undue alarm.” Throughout the book he raises awareness about the futures and contributes to further learning by highlighting the point that the humans’ individual and social sphere of thought and experience is limitless, unbounded, untapped, and thus yet not released. The central theme of this post-conventional work in futures studies is that the human agency ought to be encouraged, informed, and motivated by alternative worldviews and it should “go beyond what is already known”. Slaughter accompanies the reader in a journey of receiving new wisdom and insight through what is “constantly occurring between interior and exterior domains and between individual and collective ones.” He believes that such a journey can and should lead us “into richer modes of being and a deeper engagement with reality.” The fundamental solution to the global urgent problems, in his view, is to combine “intelligence and appropriate values to prefigure a very different outlook and a transformed future world.” In spite of the need for a global able leadership it is also noted that the potential contributions of the currently descending power, the US, and its rival ascending power, China, are both highly uncertain and doubtful.

Slaughter does not downplay or deny the “liberating nature of futures studies” and in particular “its central keystone methodology”, that is scenario building. Yet he emphasizes that “scenarios are only as good as the thinking that goes into them.” A strong and method-based argument is provided to highlight the crucial need for understanding and altering the “mindspace” of both the scanners and scenario builders. He refrains from using the usual key word in the scenario planning and futures literature, “mental model”, however, points out that “the software that operates within each person” is the key which is almost always ignored, overlooked, or neglected. Like many other Integral specialists he supports the notion that only through the creative destruction of implicit mental models rather than of explicit infrastructures we can find “the levers of change” and “negotiate to set and bring about social innovations”. The bottom line of his brilliant, comprehensive, elaborate, and methodic work is that “the social and human interiors play a host of active roles in mediating responses” to each and every one of “the most urgent items calling for our collective attention and response” because “for individuals, there is no behavior without the interior motivation that drives it; for collectives, there is no system without the interior culture that supports it.”

Both for professional futurists and advanced learners of the field “The Biggest Wake Up Call in History” is a must read piece of work because the author eloquently introduces and effectively uses an ordered, systemic conceptual framework which is based on four dimensional perspectives on the world, four levels of complexity, and six value levels.

The underlying four dimensional window consists of Upper Left (UL)—the unique interior world of each individual; Upper Right (UR)—the exterior world of human action and behavior; Lower Left (LL)—the interior worlds of cultures, languages, institutions, and Lower Right (LR)—the familiar exterior physical world we inhabit. Four levels of complexity through which reality is perceived are preconventional, conventional, post-conventional, and integral. And the six sets of values are color coded as Red—egocentric and exploitative; Amber—absolutist and authoritarian; Orange—multiplistic and strategic; Green—relativistic and consensual; Teal—systemic and integral; Turquoise—holistic and ecological.

Slaughter, himself a leading and authoritative futurist, proposes that the above mentioned Integral method has completed a forty-year process of futures studies development and application and may help the new generation and wave of emerging scholars and practitioners of this field to embark on the next phase of futures studies or foresight work.

This framework along with a number of other relevant categories and levels helps us see not only the dark side of hyper growth which is polished and window dressed in some extreme cases like Las Vegas and Dubai but also provides an overview of a number of proposed transition strategies and pilot projects and initiatives which presumably pave the way for the realization and spread of the opposite extreme memes in the future. Slaughter uses illuminating figures, one after another, to critically address and debunk the firm ground of the advocates of the status quo and in the meantime he brings “to our attention a constellation of paradigms, worldviews and values oriented toward sustainability.”

He also argues that high converging technologies and their promising spectacular innovations could be useful if and only if options for the fusion of them with “advanced values” will be seriously explored. Otherwise, “embedded in conventional taken-for-granted worldviews with inadequate values” they will be definitely misused, and thus aggravating the already aggravated situation. The author who is both hopeful and proud of the eye-opening potential of the Integral method is open to divergent thinking and radical new paradigms that may violate the oldest implicit assumptions in the current knowledge enterprise or as he puts it “the standard scientific worldview”. He cites and notes, for instance, what if the “assumptions of Vedic science that consciousness is universally primary and gives rise to matter” turn out to be correct. While dealing with the global predicament, Slaughter draws our attention to the point that the non-material aspects, that is individual and collective interior ones, are usually poorly reflected in science. Thus the reader is shown that the emergence of new ideas, the expansion of horizons, and the creation of new possibilities holds out real hope for innovation and change. And the best hopes lies in the Upper Left (UL) quadrant where the “unique interior world of each individual” is at work, where the “accelerated psychic development” can and should happen to build “the most constructive response to the global emergency”. Accelerated psychic development is all about human developmental stages, of the development of higher order moral, cognitive and other capabilities without which “the development and successful application of foresight” will be unreasonable, unattainable, and ultimately compromising.

The essential success factors of futurists, in his view, is that if and how they can design, structure, and finally communicate “a layered series of words and images” to their audiences. Otherwise, the chances of their messages being heard and acted upon will dramatically decrease. And the most effective suggestion to overcome such a hurdle is to aim at the “unique inner world of individuals”, the hidden landscape of human identity, purpose and motivation” because “it is here that global issues are framed and understood.”

Frustrated by the undue focus of researchers and practitioners on the lower right and upper right quadrants, that is the exterior, tangible, and easily measurable, this book is also a big call toward an even-handed touch on every and each domains in pursuit of a broader and more systematic picture because powerful new forces may be hidden and unnoticed in the upper left and lower left domains, the interior, intangible, and hard to measure by empirical science. The most intriguing what if scenario presented for the reader to ponder about is what if these left domains—rather than economic and technical development—start to become the focus of attention? Such a what if questioning would make a lot more sense if we may read in a second edition of this book the autobiography of Slaughter himself in an appendix. Because the most important context for making sense of Slaughter’s maverick aproach toward the civilizational challenges is the ups and downs of his personal life. The interior struggle of himself and his stages of development undoubtedly shaped the content of his book over the course of many years. Such an appendix will certainly help the readers gain some insights and understanding into his untold interior story of life and “particular perceptual filters, habits and preferences for perceiving and understanding external reality.”

Also click here to listen to an interview with Richard Slaugher on his book, The Biggest Wake Up Call In History.

In 02050, what are your cortisol and testosterone numbers?

2011-08-31T05:08:00.000-07:00

It seems that many talks about the increasing complexity of the world is unreasonable, misguiding and biased because the underrepresented brains of the new generations are born more evolved and thus perceive the world as to be banal anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd mundane, a world still perceived becoming increasingly complex in the eye of the less evolved brains of the previous generations who have the huge privilege of publishing and bloating their perception.

On consciousness dialogue Churchlands' work (both Patricia and Paul) are insightful, in particular, the book

"Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind"

Both of them adopt "Eliminative Materialism", explained below:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/

They emphasize that in the future, neurosciences should come to replace the common-sense framework we now use in 02011 for Consciousness. In the long run, most likely in 02050, our descendants ought to use the terminology of of the relevant sciences.

Future Limitless Brains (http://bit.ly/pCte7A) will only understand cortisol and testosterone numbers. In other words, the future bioassay technology applications (http://bit.ly/pjhGhR) will enable them to access some instant reports of full transparent bodies and feelings.

Futures Studies: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

2011-08-31T03:59:00.000-07:00

1-How did you enter the Futures Studies field in the first place?

Right after reading the book: New Thinking for a New Millennium (1996) Edited by Richard A Slaughter.

2-Could you summarize how Futures Studies has changed over the years since you first started?

1) it is becoming more interested in theory building. 2) has won some recognition in the academia as a legitimate discipline or field of higher education 3) Non-Western futurists are growing in terms of both quality and quantity.

3-How do you explain your services to potential clients of Futures Studies?

Creative thinking, enhanced hope for a better, whole system thinking, hedging against potential surprises.

4-What are the main models, tools and methods you use to offer high quality Futures Studies?

Scenario planning in general, assumption based planning in particular, and alternative Integral Models that aim at changing the worldviews and suggest alternative metaphors.

5-What is the most beneficial service (or product) that you offer?

Innovative solutions plus robust plans that may better stand the test of time.

6-What is the competitive benefit of your service (or product) compared with other Futures Studies service providers, in terms of using better models, tools and methods?

Better sense making of the big picture and the dynamics of complex systems.

7-What do you believe are the most important personal or professional skills for a Futurist to have?

Having "an unquenchable sense of humor and delight in the absurd (Dator's Second Law of the futures), Encyclopedic interdisciplinary knowledge base, Critical and Reflective thinking (see Lombardo's recent book), Multimodal Communication, Scientific Modelling, being a global person through having a good command of at least four languages and hitting the global network membership mark, that is when 40% of your fellows are non-country men and women, and for the new generation of futurists: Coding Literacy.

8-What are some of the major gaps/opportunities in Futures Studies that still remain to be addressed?

Enriched and more appealing Participatory Methods to mobilize communities locally and globally. Futures Studies from non-English speaking origins.

9-What career advice would you give to someone looking to break into the Futures Studies profession?

Do not fall into the trap of meeting the need of clients who insist to hear or read bulletproof statements about the future. Try to make a balance between social and technological innovations.They are complementary. Work in places which have already "institutionalized" futures studies.

Audio recording of my talk about Global Transitions in 2060

2011-06-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

Taiwan, Tamkang University, 5 November, 2010. Discussing, from an evolutionary point of view, the longer term futures of the world and Asia in 2060 and trying to shed some light on some major transitions in both genetics and memetics, and their implications for the deconstruction of future identities.

You may wish to listen>>> http://www.futurefoundation.org/audio/HUM_AsiaWorkshop2010/20101105-03-Presentation-Motlagh.mp3

The workshop “Global Transitions and Asia 2060: Climate, Economy, and Identity” was held under the joint sponsorship of Foundation For the Future, Tamkang University (Taipei), and Kyung Hee University (Seoul). The focus of the workshop was the 40-to 60-year future of Asia in the context of Asia’s emergence as the potential global center of power, influence, and control in the upcoming decades.

News Coverage: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/supplement/2010/11/05/278890/Tamkang-envisions.htm

For all audio recordings of “Global Transitions and Asia 2060” check this out:

http://www.futurefoundation.org/programs/hum_wrk7_audio.htm

The Vahid V. Motlagh Daily

2011-06-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

My top IT adviser recently convinced me to start using an interesting meta sharing application, and thus moving toward a higher level. This means that I will stop posting directly on my Vahid Think Tank subscribers list, Foresight Network friends list, Facebook page, Twitter page, and other email lists. Instead aggregate all my message sharing and daily environmental scanning throughout my diverse networks from just one single dashboard Tumblr, Inc.

If you are still interested to follow what I am sharing you are welcome to click on these links for more detail:

http://vahidmotlagh.tumblr.com/

http://feeds.feedburner.com/VahidScenario

http://paper.li/vahidscenario

Why is it worthwhile that you become futurist?

2011-05-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

In 2009, I agreed to a live phone interview on the BBC Persian TV. In that interview I had to do an elevator speech which Dr. Peter Bishop from the graduate program in Futures Studies at the University of Houston later described it as "an excellent, succinct presentation".

Now I would like to ask you do exactly the same. Suppose that you have only 3 minutes and have to answer this question posed by an anchorperson in TV while you are on air. Why you are a futurist and why is it worthwhile that people become futurists too? Please reflect on this question and write about it in only three minutes. Then send your answers to me and I will collect them and next will publish the overall document here. Try to use your mother tongue while answering and it is not necessary at all to reflect and answer in English only. Imagine that people will read this document in all living languages across the world. Besides, in the future there seem to be no language barrier so you can be ensured that people will understand your speech anyway.

Also to meet the readers' curiosity please send a short identification piece on yourself to put your elevator speech in the context. That is your Name and family Name, Gender, Age, Location, and Affiliation. So, to sum up, the transcript of your elevator speech will be around 200 words or less and have with it your identification information (Name, Gender, Age, Location, Affiliation). To avoid influencing the elevator speech of other contributors you can directly send your transcript to me and I will collect all of them in just one document.

Iran's Future Scenarios

2011-05-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

Recent political developments in Iran, in particular the disputed presidential election which resulted in keeping Mr. Ahmadinejad seated in the office for the second term and the subsequent street and cyber events that were encouraged and orchestrated by the opposition leaders, drew global attention. This essay provides from an insider vantage point some alternative futures about the political outcomes of the disputed election by adopting a novel approach and applying the essence of scenario planning method, that is explicitly and directly switching among diverse mental models. In this essay after contextualizing the election problem six different mental models are explicitly adopted and accordingly six scenarios are created and briefly illustrated.

READ MORE:
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/14-2/A05.pdf

Futures after the uprisings in the North Africa and Middle East

2011-05-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

Whether the trigger event was the self-immolation of Mohamed Abouzizi in Tunisia December 17, 2010 or the earlier wikileaks cables describing Tunisia as run by a mafia-esque elite or the rap music of Hamada Ben Amor – known as El Général, the Middle-East has irrevocably changed.

The Youth quake has led to Iranian futurist Vahid Motlagh to argue that the dam has burst. No amount of buttressing the old dam can stop the flow of water. With young people jobless, climate change impacting food prices, the global financial crisis hurting the possibility of jobs overseas (and remittances sent home), and crony capitalism ensuring wealth is not spread, except through State handouts, something had to give.

http://www.proutworld.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=57:neo-humanism&id=358:the-arab-spring-what-type-of-revolutions

http://www.ru.org/political-science/the-arab-spring-what-is-next.html

Future Limitless Brains

2011-05-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

Corriere Della Sera just published an article about the American movie Limitless which was released in March, 2011. This film is about the neuro futures, a world in which people start to use brain boosters and cognitive enhancers to enhance their performance. Massimo Reichlin, an expert on life ethics at the Faculty of Philosophy, University Vita Salute San Raffaele highlights the point that what you see in this film is NOT science fiction. But the price to pay and health risks to bear seem huge because such drugs, unlike tea or coffee which are mild versions of neuroenhancers, could have severe adverse effects on people and will irreversibly make them dependent and addicted. However, such a phenomenon is not brand new. Giovanni Umberto Corsini, an expert in neuropharmacology at the University of Pisa emphasizes that cocaine abuse among university students especially when they should deliver creative ideas or designs is already very common.

The US intelligence and defense communities (2008) are keenly interested to know what could be the use of brain related technologies to win the hearts and minds of potential adversaries. In the civil sector and on the cultural and intellectual levels the interest is significant too. At the conference Reconciling Babel – Education for Cosmopolitanism I explained to the participants in my workshop titled Global Placeless Brains that how a better and deeper molecular understanding about and control over the chemicals that are released in our brains would mean that in the future it maybe possible to control the release of, for example, oxytocin (a hormone which is related to trust building and fear reduction among mates), serotonin (a neurotransmitter which is related to depression) and dopamine (a neurotransmitter which is related to love and pleasure). Cook (2009) reports that numerous scientists are working now in the field of Nootropics, which is a growing field of R&D that aims to develop technological solutions and applications like drugs, supplements, and nutraceuticals to improve cognition, memory, intelligence, motivation, attention, and concentration. Molecular understanding of how our memories are built, restored, and consolidated in the brain indicates that we maybe become able to use protein synthesis inhibitors or beta blockers to effectively erase true bad memories, if not for healthy people, but for patients who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder .In addition, smart pills, brain boosters, cognitive enhancers could help us overcome some of the limits of human cognition. In such a world new higher level cultural chunks may emerge and the first natural born multilingual humans will triumph over the planet.

According to Lynch (2009) the Neuro Revolution is a fast approaching epoch, one that will radically transform how we all work, live and play. Neurotechnology—brain imaging and other new tools for both understanding and influencing our brains—is accelerating the pace of change almost everywhere, from politics to advertising and marketing, artistic expression, warfare, and even religious belief. The insights and revelations within the Neuro Revolution such as enhanced aesthetic experiences will foster wonder, debate, and in some cases consternation.

Also, Filho (2009) points out that a growing number of futurists have been following with great interest the findings in neurosciences and their widespread appropriation by other fields. This interest generated by the neurosciences among the general public has been stimulated by the declaration of the last decade of the past century as the “Decade of the Brain” made by the US Congress. Advancements in human body imaging, particularly the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), have permitted the localization of some cognitive functions in certain brain areas. The correlation of certain brain areas with human cognitive functions was already known or at least suspected based on clinical finding in humans with brain pathologies, but their confirmation via fMRI in normal humans has given new glamour to this knowledge. New scientific fields starting with the word “neuro” have flourished in the last decade, going from neurophilosophy to neuroeconomy and neurotheology giving the false impression that most of human questions could be answered by the simple introduction of the prefix “neuro”. But one should have in mind that brain´s most important role is its plastic ability to re-model neuronal circuitry connecting different brain areas and neuroscience is far from understanding all basic mechanisms controlling this plasticity. Futurists main interest is to demonstrate how new neuroimaging findings could help us comprehend basic neuronal mechanisms underlying human and probably some animal species ability to imagine future events and how different cognitive processes overlap to construct the humans we are and how socio-cultural background would plastically influence these cognitive maps. Voros (2009) mentions some studies which have looked at things relevant to the broad area of concern of futures studies through the perspective of brain activity imaging. In essence, these are explorations of the objective-empirical correlates of subjective-intentional capacities of consciousness, an exterior view of our interior experience. Also, Dunagan (2004, 2010) has been thinking and writing about a growing neurocentrism entering more and more domains from health to education to politics. Implications of this in both a descriptive and critical mode are significant. In his PhD dissertation he is dealing with “artifacts of the future” and the emergence of a governmentality based around networked/corporate neuropower following on from industrial era biopower. According to him "the age of the amygdala" is coming so that we should learn now to cope and govern in times of accelerating change.

References

Dunagan, J. F. (2004). Neuro-Futures: The Brain, Politics, and Power Journal of Futures Studies, 9 (2), 1-18

Dunagan, J. F. (2010). Politics for the Neurocentric Age Journal of Futures Studies, 15 (2), 51-70

Committee on Military and Intelligence Methodology for Emergent Neruophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Research in the Next Two Decades, National Research Council (2008)
Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies, The National Academies Press

Cook , S. (2009) Memory enhancement, memory erasure: is this the future of our past, In Brockman Max (Ed.), What's next? Dispatches on the Future of Science. Madison, AL: Vintage

Lynch, Z. (2009) The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World, St. Martin's Press

Filho, L. F. (2009) World Futures Studies Federation, Internal Discussions about the Neuroimaging and Futures Studies

Voros, J. (2009) World Futures Studies Federation, Internal Discussions about the Neuroimaging and Futures Studies.

The futures of terrorism in the post Bin Laden world

2011-05-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

Let's take a methodical perspective on the futures of security after Bin Laden.

The Cynefin framework which has five domains could help, in my view.

The Obama administration and the US will first gradually leave the Complex domain, sensing the emergent practice of security in the post Bin Laden world. Then the world will temporarily slide into the domain of Disorder. Since security and terrorism cannot be regarded a Simple domain one has to wonder whether there will be a transition toward the Chaos or Complicated domains. Of course, there will be some experts who will tend to use the Lessons Learned and thus remain in the Simple domain at least for a couple of years.

Assuming that the rate of science and technology will be exponential in the years to come (as well the number of highly sophisticated people) I would bet on the Chaos again and therefore some new novel practices in terrorism and security measures.

Al Qaeda exploited the religious utopia which is a promised mansion in the Heaven for each martyr to recruit young suicide bombers. But in the future people would need some novel practices and causes to plan and run terrorist acts and the security people will have to use novel counter terrorism systems too.

I for one tend to think that a plausible scenario will be that a growing number of marginalized, less privileged elite class (i.e. highly educated people who could not find a place in the wealth and power circles) will find enough cause and expertise to challenge a society which is not in their favor. After all the planet has limited resources and cannot meet the rapidly expanding circles of human wants. In this case, one has to wonder what could be the nature of a terrorist organization made up from unemployed and frustrated graduates of MIT, Harvard, etc.

Cultural diversity? It is our best chance to have a future

2011-04-30T03:59:00.000-07:00

“By birth, training or professional choice, we all belong somewhere, but we must not allow ourselves to become enslaved by this belonging. We must overcome identity obsessions opening our eyes to the great opportunities offered by the world.” It is thus that one wins the challenge posed by cosmopolitism, explains Roberto Ruffino, secretary general of the Intercultura Foundation, for years committed to international exchanges.

The Iranian expert Vahid V. Motlagh, a member of the World Futures Studies Federation, and founder of VahidThinkTank.com, observes, “When asked ‘Where do you come from?’ some youngsters nowadays have problems in answering since they no longer feel they belong to a specific country, culture or language etc,” says Vahid. “Nowadays there is a post-modern concept that is more interesting to explore, that of “multiple identities,” hence, one of people who have acquired a degree of cultural “fluidity.” One practical example is that of linguistic identity, explains Vahid.

Read more:
http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000021566

The evolution of female intentionality

2011-03-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

One of the critical aspects regarding the “evolution itself evolving” is the emergence of the female expressed and not simply silent intentionality.

In my recent article about the alternative futures of Asia in the year 2060 I highlighted the rise and contribution of female consciousness as a mega trend which will continue to reshape our world in the coming decades. Even a critical question that is raised today after the domino revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa is that if and how we will see a more female active participation in these backward societies.

To make better sense of the future enhanced female consciousness one need to take into account the explosive knowledge about the human brain and the intriguing differences between males and females which in turn may provide some new insights about the possible future courses of artificial evolution.

Scientific American, for instance, reports that among female mammals, specifically rats, stress tends to bust the learning curve while a mild level of stress could indeed boost the learning curve of male rats. This may explain, in part, why our world male dominant innovation system is much more productive during and after major conflicts and wars. Presuming a more peaceful and less stressful world one can expect more female-like learning in the future and thus more expressed female intentionality.

Jerome Glenn and his colleagues in their State of the Future reports continuously measure and monitor the exterior indicators such as the rising trend showing more women participation across the world in terms of their percentage share in governments and parliaments. I might add that one of the emerging powers in the BRIC countries, that is Brazil, is now led by a woman, Dilma Vana Rousseff , and her intentions which are hard to uncover and measure.

But there are some more meaningful aspects of a female intentionality which are too hard to measure and monitor, that is their mental models, the interior world, or according to Richard Slaughter’s favorite integral terminology, the upper left (individual) and lower left (collective) quadrants.

Another line of interest is the relationship between emotion processing and the human perception and cognition. It has been evident through the cognitive science findings that a specific brain area called the amygdala is essential to our perception, memory and learning. Greater activity in the amygdala implies increased “likelihood that event of affective importance reach awareness” (Adam K. Anderson and Elizabeth A. Phelps, 2001). They suggest that the amygdala can do some significant modulation of the attentional blink through influencing neuronal plasticity. This means that a robust and healthy amygdala, after identifying a single target stimulus, has less transient impairment in awareness for a subsequently presented second target.

Moreover, anatomical comparative studies of amygdala between men and women demonstrate that women have larger orbital frontal coritices than men, resulting in highly significant difference in the ratio of orbital gray to amygdale volume (Gur RC, Gunning-Dixon F, Bilker WB, Gur RE., 2002). This increased orbital volume relative to amygdale volume in women compared with men supports the hypothesis that women have greater tissue volume available for modulating amygdala input.

Apart from the neuroscience findings, genetics offer yet another interesting perspective. Contrary to the common beliefs about men being more perfect relative to men, genetically speaking men are imperfect because Y chromosome is (or at least seems to be) a shorter and damaged version of the X chromosome during the course of natural evolution. Russ Hodge in his 2010 book, Human Genetics, points out the fact that women have two copies of X helps their "immune system" to become "more robust" relative to men. On the Y chromosome of men, at this point of natural evolution, there are 16 genes of the same genes on the X chromosome, which do still hold and are present. On Kangaroo males only one gene has been left that is Y chromosome is becoming too short that one might wonder that if the next distant generation will have any at all! Grasshopper males have already lost the Y chromosome and they are recognized as males by having only one copy of the X chromosome. Among the geneticists and from a natural evolutionary point of view it is plausible that in distant future human males may lose the Y chromosome completely, a scenario that will have for sure some psychosomatic consequences for future males. X-inactivation is a relatively known phenomenon, a process by which one of the two copies of the X chromosome in female mammals in inactivated. But the implications of the Y chromosome disappearing is yet to be known.

On the other hand, scientists have found that natural selection is acting now to cause slow, gradual evolutionary change in specific traits with medical significance. The descendants of the women in the Framingham Heart Study, a project of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University that began in 1948, “are predicted to be on average slightly shorter and stouter, to have lower total cholesterol levels and systolic blood pressure, to have their first child earlier, and to reach menopause later than they would in the absence of evolution.” (Byars, Sean G. , Ewbank, Douglas, Govindaraju, Diddahally R., Stearns, Stephen C. , 2009). The authors also conclude that “age at first birth and age at menopause appear to be changing so as to lengthen the reproductive period. And fertility is the driving force behind evolution in modern populations.”

James Dewar (2011), a scenario planner from RAND and the author of Assumption –Based Planning said, in a personal correspondence to me, that “it's fun to create and read assumption-busting scenarios. The one that interests me at this point is a largely female world. Males are really rather redundant in reproduction. Physical strength is much less important than it used to be. Choosing the sex of children will obviously become quite easy in the foreseeable future. I can imagine a world in which men are increasingly in the minority of the population.”

Currently "SRY protein or gene" is used to determine for sure if an individual is male or female. This protein is normally located on the Y chromosome. However, there are rare disorders too, notably, shemales who have female bodies with male genitals, sometimes because the SRY protein jumps to the X chromosome. Of course, such humans are not “recognized” at all, at least when you see and have to fill out the usual forms in paper or electronic copies. There are only two options to check: male or female. No one can be sure that if the scenario of shemales becoming more recognized by others will be plausible or not in distant future, in particular when considering the fact that reproductive technologies may realizethe artificial evolution sooner than currently expected, mobilizing future people to play with multiple genders too. Until some decades ago sexuality was viewed as merely being hetro but now thanks to the scientific investigations, at least scholars do recognize asexual, hetrosexual, homosexual, and bisexual classes or categories. Maybe in the future the current dichotomy of female vs. male (which already ignores the genetic trichotomy) will be challenged fundamentally as humans start to play with genes more often.

Although it might seem that we know a great deal about genes, unfortunately it is not the case. Only a small percentage of the human genome (less than 2 percent) encodes proteins, and most mutations do not affect these encoding DNA or genes. The total human sequence consists of approximately 3.2 billion base pairs. Until very recently the non-encoding part of the genome was called junk DNA. But the new findings suggest that some of this junk are there for some special purposes. These parts which are called epigenes have a role in expressing genes which means they influence and set the observable characteristic or phenotype of the organism. The epigenetic puts a major constraint on the evolution. It controls how the environmental factors such as a particular life style or diet or predisposition to violence can shape or set the expression of genes. Keith Hudson (2011) highlights the point that “physiological changes due to epigenes have been proved to take about three or four generations to become widespread, and another three or four generations to subside if circumstances change back again.”

It is likely that female expressed intentionality which certainly qualifies as a “substantive cultural change” maybe modulated by epigenetic settings too, a scenario in the future in which we will encounter more assertive and non silent (or easily silenced) females.

Some of you may know, heard about, or have this experience that someone is silently gazing at you in a public place, for example, a restaurant, a bar, a metro wagon, etc. You turn around and see that you were quite right, someone was looking at you! Recently I watched a scientific documentary which reported experiments trying to unravel this mystery but at the end all the experiments were “inconclusive" about a good explanation of this weird common event.

Nonetheless, I have a personal story which is interestingly a love story and far beyond that someone is simply looking to me! During the previous months I had this too strange feeling or better to say deep and bizarre consciousness that someone is thinking about me. But I didn't know who and where. I guessed that it should be someone really close to me among friends, colleagues, and people I usually meet. One day, all of a sudden, and while browsing my Facebook page I wrote a flirting and witty comment on a shared video, exchanged my number, and guess what, found that one of the single female friends was indeed a silent and none-assertive lover for more than six months, even weeping passionately and quietly in her private sometimes! The moment I uncovered this love treasure I took her to a jungle near the city and among the woods, overlooking a beautiful serene lake, we kissed each other for the first time. I promised her that for every single tear she shed in silent in the past I will give her pleasure in the future! Soon afterward, we took the oath and received the marriage license. This is a great act of romantic consciousness and worthwhile to be reported in the Journal of Irreproducible Results!

Apparently, after this instance of "consciousness entanglement" our brain will not be the same any longer. Bianca P. Acevedo, Arthur Aron, Helen E. Fisher and Lucy L. Brown (2011) have shown that love causes even permanent changes in brain activity. "Individuals in long-term love showed significant activation in key reward centers of the brain, such as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), replicating results found for early-stage romantic love. The VTA lights up when people anticipate or receive rewards, or when they experience the euphoria of cocaine and other drugs. Interestingly, those reporting greater romantic love and closeness with their partner also showed stronger activation in the VTA."

My wife, Maryam Yousefianrizi, has a background in Physics and is now a graduate student of philosophy, and well conversant with the Western schools of thought, especially Existentialism. She is also an inspired futurist, mostly through my own Farsi works, and is trying to add even more feminist insights and hopefully more female expressed intentionally to the field.

Motlagh VV. (2010). Asia's Exotic Futures in the Far beyond the Present Journal of Futures Studies, 15 (2), 1-16

Anderson AK, & Phelps EA (2001). Lesions of the human amygdala impair enhanced perception of emotionally salient events. Nature, 411 (6835), 305-9 PMID: 11357132

Gur RC, Gunning-Dixon F, Bilker WB, & Gur RE (2002). Sex differences in temporo-limbic and frontal brain volumes of healthy adults. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 12 (9), 998-1003 PMID: 12183399

Kalmus, H., & Bajema, C. (1973). Natural Selection in Human Populations. The Measurement of Ongoing Evolution in Contemporary Societies. Population Studies, 27 (1) DOI: 10.2307/2173462

Acevedo BP, Aron A, Fisher HE, & Brown LL (2011). Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience PMID: 21208991

Education Scenarios

2011-03-09T02:46:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I was involved as a senior methodology expert in a national scenario planning initiative which aimed to explore the alternative futures of education. Even though the documents are only in Farsi I can recall the basic key important uncertainties that according to expert panels are to shape the scenarios of education in the wider world and in the region, that is the Middle East.

Among the global uncertainties on the one hand was the degree of global integration, globalization, regionalism, or nationalism. On the other hand, it was uncertain that in the future will we see more demand oriented educational programs or more supply oriented programs. In the former the market and the businesses would decide about the policies and of course the nature of education while in the latter the governments will define, sometimes regardless of the facts on the ground, the educational policies and the nature of the programs. Another uncertain factor was the growth of science and technology, whether it will be linear or exponential. Each of these eventualities will affect how the education of the future will be redefined and changed or preserved as it is now.

At the regional level the most important uncertain factor was security, that is more wars and conflicts or more peace and stability.

Finlay, at the national level, growing isolation or more integration and international cooperation was the ultimate driving force. However, the official wording was rather euphemistic, more interior looking or more exterior looking approaches were identified as a major uncertainty.

So you see five key uncertainties and numerous scenarios if you combine different extreme cases, some of them plausible and probable while others maybe only imaginable or possible.

Not including the regional uncertainties I myself bet on this combination and/or scenario: More Globalization, More Demand Oriented Policies and Programs, and Exponential Growth of S&T, for the future of education.

Global Transitions and Asia 2060: Executive Summary

2011-01-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Scholars from India, China, Korea, Malaysia, Iran, Oman, Bangladesh,Australia, Taiwan, and Pakistan convened for face-to-face discussions on the 50-year future of Asia. The purpose of the conference was to embed a long-term futures-thinking approach in current policy discussions on the future of Asia in academic, governmental, and business arenas. The objective was to explore the future of Asia given current conditions on the planet, expressed in three subthemes: 1) Asia at the carbon and energy crossroads, 2) Asia and new models of economy and governance –toward an Asian Union, and 3) Asian identity in transition and transformation.

http://www.futurefoundation.org/documents/PUB_ExecSum_Asia_eBook.pdf

Asia’s Exotic Futures in 2060

2010-12-31T06:35:00.000-08:00

This paper attempts to deconstruct and challenge the dominant discourses with regard to the longer term futures of Asia. First the mentality of reviving the shining past as well as paying attention to the GDP growth rate in the race of the East to take over the position of leaders from the West is reviewed. An association is made between a memorable metaphor and the scenario of reviving the shining past. Then some guidelines are introduced and applied to the far ahead futures of Asia including a) violating old implicit assumptions by applying what if mechanism, b) identifying and articulating distinct value systems, and c) detecting weak signals that may hint to the next mainstream. Four scenarios are built within the rationale of transformation scenario. The aim is to do exotic futures studies and to create alternative images. Such images not only may help shift the identity of future Asians but also influence today decisions and actions of both Asians and non Asians.

READ MORE:

http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/15-2/A01.pdf

Global and Placeless Brains: A Third Culture Perspective

2010-12-03T01:04:00.000-08:00

"They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." So God said, "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth." (Genesis 11:5-8).

"Reconciling Babel: Education for cosmopolitanism" is the title of an upcoming conference in Milan, Italy in April 2011.

READ MORE HERE
http://www.reconcilingbabel.org/eng_2/

I am one of the invited speakers and will talk about the contribution of science and technology to world citizenship and cosmopolitanism. If any of the readers of this weblog are available they can register and come over to meet up in Milan.

You can download the power point presentation (click here) and the abstract of my talk is as below:

Global and Placeless Brains: A Third Culture Perspective

Abstract

Galileo and Darwin busted two big historical myths: the centrality of our planet and our species. Scientific progress and technological advances may help us bust yet another strong myth in which the majority of contemporary people still strongly and wrongly believe. This myth encourages the centrality of certain nation-states, cultures, languages, and in short the cherished mental model. It seems that most, if not all, of the particular mental models we are used to them to make sense of the world around us seek not only survival but also dominance. Genetics has already provided the clear insight into the diversity in genes, the material root that all Homo Sapiens share with each other. Any two people of the globe (estimate population about 6.7 billion in July 2008 ) differ from each other only 0.1% which is five times less than the amount of variation among chimpanzees (population just 125,000). Nonetheless, there is some incomparable diversity in memes that are the equivalents of genes in building mental models of, sometimes radically different, human populations. The human brains that incorporate the sticky ideas and memes are indeed evolving not only naturally but also artificially and thus their futures are changing and probable as opposed to being fixed and certain. Also, combined with the brain natural and artificial evolutionary events, a sustained rising demographic trend showing the multilingual and placeless people living among us suggests that in the long term future the average humans may accommodate simultaneously numerous mental models, identities and “cultural chunks” as well, maybe up to the magical cognitive number of Seven Plus Minus Two. The present day exceptional people will be the future normal people. Thanks to the information revolution the harbinger of such developments can now be identified. The Internet age Noosphere which sometimes is termed as the global brain has proved remarkably helpful to overcome the challenges of moving in the temporal-spatial matrix plus to remove the usual memetic barriers such as effective communication. Technical infrastructures and interfaces are vastly available and ready to be used; however, the education and deliberate growth of future placeless brains that will enjoy some increased memetical degrees of freedom may require first passing the psychological denial of technology applications and next encouraging shifts in the current dominant values systems through utilizing the amoralization/moralization mechanism as the most prominent and effective tool.

Solastalgia

2010-10-24T23:28:00.000-07:00

In a 2004 essay, Glenn Albrecht, a philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University, coined a term, Solastalgia, to describe "the climate depression" which is now a not much recognized psychological condition.

Solastalgia, according the Albrecht definition, is a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root –algia (pain). It is “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault."

Daniel Smith gives some evidences of Solastalgia among the residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. A region where today more than 100 million tons of black coal are extracted from it each year. The coal industry millionaires and the ultra rich in Australia are directing a scene in which blasts occur several times a day, sending plumes of gray dust to settle thickly onto roofs, crops and the hides of livestock. Smith reports that local people, distraught over the spread of coal mining in the Upper Hunter, are beginning to feel hopeless and depressed as their rivers and streams are being polluted and thus they are forced off the land they really love to live in it.

Paul Mason have also reported instances of Solastalgia from elsewhere in the world. Take for example Pelourinho, a tourist attraction in Salvador da Bahia in Brazil where he "encountered pregnant women high on drugs, old drunken men wielding screwdrivers as weapons and seven year olds with pocket-knives and guns." Mason points out that Brazil was the first place in the world he saw that indifference is the opposite of love.

Countering hopelessness, depression and indifference by making a new English word to highlight the climate depression is a brilliant idea. But, as a Persian, I can recall lots of Persian poetry in which you see a firm association between the beauty of love and the beauty of the surrounding nature.

There are numerous instances of Persian couplets composed by Hafez, Nezami, Saadi, among many others, that in the first one you see an exquisite praise of your love and in the second one you read some natural features and context that shaped your memory of that love, either metaphorically or literally.

Therefore, each time you read most of such poems you not only miss the loved one or the lovely scene you had with him or her but also feel a great miss for the environment in which your story happened. In other words, human love and nature love make up a gestalt. You cannot separate them now and will remember both of them in the future.

A most well known example of such poetry is the works of Rudaki, the first great literary genius of the Modern Persian. See this couplet for just a glimpse of a too rich literature of Solastalgia and Soliphilia :

Farsi (Persian): Booye Jooye Moolian Ayad Hami

English: Here comes the scent of Moolian brook

Farsi (Persian): Yade Yare Mehraban Ayad Hami

English: Here comes memory of the good comrade

Global Transitions and Asia 2060

2010-10-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

A workshop entitled “Global Transitions and Asia 2060: Climate, Economy, and Identity” will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, in November 3–6 under the joint sponsorship of Foundation For the Future, Tamkang University (Taipei), and Kyung Hee University (Seoul). The focus of the workshop is the 40- to 60-year future of Asia in the context of Asia’s emergence as the potential global center of power, influence, and control in the upcoming decades. The invitation-only workshop will bring together prominent scientists and scholars in geopolitics, economics, and sustainability.

I am one of the invitees and will participate in the workshop to discuss, from an evolutionary point of view, the longer term futures of the world and Asia and will try to shed some light on some major transitions in both genetics and memetics, and their implications for the deconstruction of future identities.

Although I would love some free, creative, improvised, and spontaneous discussions about the future scenarios, my lines of interests and passion is well reflected in this power point presentation which could make the gist of my contribution to the workshop.

Arabic Paper about Futures Studies

2010-09-06T03:16:00.000-07:00

Recently I and a colleague in Iraq, Dr. Khudher Abbas Atwan, wrote an Arabic paper about the foundations, traditions, and benefits of futures studies.

Dr. Atwan is now at the faculty of political department in Al Nahrain University in Baghdad.

He is a bright analyst and is interested in futures studies and its education to the Iraqi top students.

The paper was just published in the Araa Magazine (http://www.araa.ae/).

http://araa.ae/data/contents/uploads/Microsoft_Word_-_Khader_Atwan_&_Waheed_Motlag_72_9794.pdf

The whole magazine September issue No. 72, is available here:

http://www.araa.ae/data/contents/uploads/ARRA_NO_72_(2)_5786.pdf

This is a monthly high quality magazine published by the Gulf Research Center in Dubai (http://www.grc.ae/) covering political, economic, social, defense and security issues in the GCC States, Iraq, Iran and Yemen.

You may wish to take a look and circulate it among your Arabic speaking friends and students.

The Art and Science of Triggering

2010-07-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

Building a theory for triggers is a pet project I am working on it in my free time. Although I have not developed it much further since January 2009 you can read an introduction to it in a previous post here on this blog which also includes a version of the theory's associated mind map.

Based on the above mentioned general purpose mind map I can suggest some solutions for encouraging a major change or action about the current pressing issues of global climate change, that is the need to mitigation and adaptation.

It seems that some insights obtained from the mind map may help us "trigger" some required changes in policies that affect sustainability, adaptation, climate change, etc.

In what follows I use the words in the mind map to generate three concise and clear statements which all of them suggest a way to trigger decisions and events that may lead to mitigation and adaptation.

The words in "..." format below are drawn from and can be seen in the mind map.

1) To "enable" desired change you have to exercise a style of "foresight" which is centered around the "trial and error" mechanism and have the aim of enriching "the art of persuasion". It is expected that such an art may help you influence your "immediate environment" which include your "ego", "family members", "friends", "co-workers", and "strangers".

This statement is quite clear. Mahatma Gandhi once used to put it this way: "Be the change you want to see in the world." Moreover, from a technological vantage point, some serious academic works are done today to develop the concept, technologies, and implications of persuasion. For instance, the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and the Institute for the Future are both keen to study and research on "how persuasive technologies and techniques might evolve over the next ten years." Also, Franchimon (2006) provides a good review of "captology", the area where computing technology and persuasion overlap.

2) In the "trial and error" mechanism you may pay attention to "applying unconventional resources" which include "using women" and "using children".

This statement may need some more explanations.

First I should mention my own personal experience which shows that there is an "exceptional ability among women to easily switch their thinking habits and focus from the past to the future after meeting someone who always do that".

Also, Gidley et al. (2009) highlight the point of "wide public involvement" in a type of adaptation referred to as "active co-evolution" or "adaptation as social learning". Their aim is eventually to trigger a sustained and continuous series of actions by and for the "climate-vulnerable communities". She and her colleagues adopt some "participatory futures methods" and specifically support the argument of Minu Hemmati that "if women are not fully involved in planning and decisiomaking ... the quality of adaptive measures will be limited and successful implementation will be doubtful".

So it is reasonable that if we want to trigger some big changes sometimes we ought to rely or count on women.

And finally the third statement is

3) In "hindsight" we usually understand that to trigger a change sometimes we need to construct alternative "memory" by a "change in perspective". This may occur through "altering the language" and "by asking losers".

Again this statement should be expanded a little more.

Sometimes prominent and impressive works in English literature such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson can trigger or launch a big change. This change (now in hindsight) is known as the "environmental grassroots movement" which also inspired a huge institutionalized movement, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency

But sometimes it might be helpful to switch languages to enable and trigger change if a huge amount of literature does not trigger desired change. For instance, apparently Karl Marx translated works into Russian and Chinese languages had more a hell of impact on a lot of non-German speaking people to the extent that it brought about a huge notorious change, the former East Block and the current Communist China.

Who knows maybe Latin America and Spanish language will be more capable of triggering a movement of adaptation and sustainability. After all Spanish, French, and Italian languages seem to be more passionate about action!

As per asking losers I might mention the fact that we currently live in a world which is full of success stories, featured case studies and best practices, stars and champions. Losers are generally ignored, marginalized and their knowledge is not well documented or shared. But we can expand our policy thinking framework and thus options by interviewing and asking losers. Maybe their story and perspective may trigger a good change in the adaptation and sustainability problems too.

Gidley, J., Fien, J., Smith, J., Thomsen, D., & Smith, T. (2009). Participatory futures methods: towards adaptability and resilience in climate-vulnerable communities Environmental Policy and Governance, 19 (6), 427-440 DOI: 10.1002/eet.524

Franchimon, F. (2006). Persuasive technology : Using computers to change what we think and do (Book review) Gerontechnology, 5 (1), 58-59 DOI: 10.4017/gt.2006.05.01.009.00

Our Future Transparent Bodies and Feelings

2010-06-09T03:46:00.000-07:00

Some life technology applications may have far reaching implications that most of us are not well aware of them.

Take the biofeedback and bioassay as examples.

You may know that currently it takes days if not weeks and will be expensive to go through a usual medical examination.

Such tests let you know about the body's blood, urine, and excrement chemistry. Quantification of blood sugar, uric acid, cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL, LDL, and etc is essential in these tests. And you may also add the level of different hormones. The laboratories usually report to you and the physician a dozen of micro variables in the body.

But the future bioassay systems will enormously change toward mush less cost and much less time required to carry out what now takes days and weeks.

If you imagine such a fictional world you can see that every person can not only check his or her own body's micro variables in real time but also, provided that access or log in is allowed, receive instant reports from the bodies of others.

The intriguing point is that in some philosophical approaches, inspired by the works of Wittgenstein, it is emphasized that a "real feeling" within us toward each other has to be demonstrated through bodily measurements, either on micro or macro scales or both.

For instance, on a macro scale, a man and woman when engaging in sex may not claim any feeling toward each other if the male has not an erect penis and the female has not a wet vagina! Otherwise, how could be a real feeling!

Moreover, with the great potential of the future state of the art biofeedback and bioassay technology applications the devices such as the current lie detectors will seem quite rudimentary.

Imagine that in the near future you can, in addition to macro variables, vividly see almost all micro bodily variables of persons you are dealing with them by simply poking a button, including of course the usual blood and urine chemistry. In such a world we have to live in a literally transparent society since we cannot even hide or cover our bodily demonstrated real feelings.

Mad "grey" futurists

2010-06-01T00:47:00.000-07:00

The questions surrounding futurists' values tend to date back to as
early as the era of Ibn Khaldun, the fourteenth century polymath and futurist.

Ali Hussein Muhsin Al-Wardi, an Iraqi social scientist, in his Arabic book titled: "the logic of Ibn Khaldun: in the light of his civilization and personality" explains that how Ibn Khaldun was unpopular among his fellow citizens in Al Maghrib and had to leave for Egypt to become a judge, a place no one knew his "bad" character well.

According to Al-Wardi, Ibn Khaldun was a brilliant and insightful theorist, analyst, and big thinker and at the same time was a frank opportunist and hypocrite, demonstrating some unscrupulous behavior from time to time, particularly while he was involved in the politics and followed the controversial idea of "the ends justifies the means" (in a sense becoming the spiritual father of Machiavelli).

Al-Wardi goes on to suggest that Ibn Khaldun built his "impressive" sociopolitical theory to justify his own behavior in which the abstract Aristotelian logic was refuted as far as it preached that evil and good traits in things, entities, and persons "cannot exist simultaneously."

Futurists in the modern era can be looked upon exactly as Ibn Khaldun was and is seen. They can be Democrat, Republican, Fundamentalist, Religious, Secular, Spiritual, Materialist, Liberal, Marxist, Communist, and etc (in addition to a host of some really defamatory labels such Don Juan that might be suggesting a big "evil" deep inside).

But we need to see them through another angle. That is, first accept that a person values should not distract us from his or her ideas, and second pay enough attention to see that how his or her ideas are relevant and fit the past, the current, and of course, the emerging realities in the future.

The point that I try to make is that futurists like any other group of professionals may have both the good and evil characteristics. Some of them may take side with this or that political party or ideology and accordingly become famous or infamous.

But there should be no firm association between the quality and effectiveness of their ideas and the values they tend to adhere to which may appear either acceptable or unacceptable based on our own preferences.

I see it also a significant possibility that in the long run the shape of the professional communities of futurists both in terms of their members and leaders will change so that the majority will be Placeless Futurists.

The issue of placelessness is very important.

I just finished writing a paper about the futures of Asia in 2060 for the Journal of Futures Studies' August issue.In the beginning of it I addressed exactly this topic. It was emphasized by Sohail Inayatullah in the Futures of Cultures Project, hosted by UNESCO in 1993 in Bangkok that having multiple identities leads to "the breakdown of the self" and "a variety of selves that are not integrated by any sense of culture" and thus will enforce "the most important trend of the future: the rise of cultures of schizophrenia, of madness."

I myself often experience the problem/opportunity of having multiple identities and do sometimes appear rather mad in the view of my relatives, colleagues, friends, and etc.

However, in the long run it will be really silly to ask someone, in particular the futurists, "where are you from?" and based on the answer obtained, you establish some really baseless and misguiding conclusions.

READ MORE

Inayatullah, Sohail (1993) Frames of reference, the breakdown of the self, and the search for reintegration: some perspectives on the futures of Asian Cultures in Masini, Eleonora Barbieri & Yogesh Atal, (Ed.) The futures of Asian Cultures, Bangkok: UNESCO Principal Regional Office for Asia and Pacific. Retrieved May 26, 2010 from
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0009/000966/096632eo.pdf

Global Foresight Brain, coming soon?

2010-05-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

Technology Review reports that Europe is embarking on a huge simulation effort which is called the "Living Earth Simulator" to capture the complexities of current and emerging events on a truly global scale.

It will mine techno-socio-economic-environmental data to create a model of the entire planet in real time. It will be gathering unprecedented amounts of information about the planet and its societies.

The astounding vision is the brainchild of Dirk Helbing at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. "Helding's desire for such real-time knowledge of the Earth stems from his leadership in the emerging field of techno-socio-economic studies, and perhaps reading a bit much of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and dreaming of psychohistory's predictive powers."

I feel that the major problem of modeling our world's current and emerging realities can be traced back to the problem of "Deep Uncertainty".

In 2003, I translated to Farsi language an English book published by RAND, titled "Shaping the Next One Hundred Years". In this book "a new generation of exploratory simulation models" is introduced that presumably may tackle the challenge of "Robust Decision Making" under conditions of "deep uncertainty"—that is, where

1) Analysts do not know, or the parties to a decision cannot agree on, the appropriate conceptual models that describe the relationships among the key driving forces that will shape the long-term future

2) The probability distributions used to represent uncertainty about key variables and parameters in the mathematical representations of these conceptual models, and/or

3) How to value the desirability of alternative outcomes.

(See http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR1626.pdf page xii)

The above mentioned book is a must read for anyone interested in futures studies simulation modeling efforts.

In addition there have been some projects and dissertations (the usual "selling" campaigns of futurists) which were done based on the RDM modeling. In one of them I saw a very important point:

"A model’s interpretability rises initially with complexity – as a model more realistically captures important factors, it becomes more useful and understandable. At a certain level of complexity,however, additional complexity can reduce a model’s interpretability and usefulness...The proper balance between accuracy and interpretability must be evaluated individually for each application. In general, the more broadly defined the policy questions and outputs of interest are, the further the balance point shifts towards a less complex and easily interpretable model."

(See http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/2006/RAND_RGSD196.pdf pages 129-130)

At the extreme a model that a child or even "an infant" may use is the most simple and interpretable of all. The other day I talked about some fascinating experiments on infant cognition here in this blog which suggest that we may as well "follow the same path an infant or child have to take: simple counting without much mathematical formalism and/or sophisticated computation" if we want to rationally expect and know what the chances are that something may occur in the future.

(See http://vahidmotlagh.blogspot.com/2010/04/simple-counting-innate-ability-of_30.html )

And as a person with some "engineering" background and formal education I find "simulations models" the best tool to play like a child with my assumptions.

Simple Counting: an innate ability of humans to know what the chances are

2010-04-30T00:16:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago Steven Strogatz, the chaos and complexity theorist, wrote a lucid article in the New York Times about the daunting task of teaching probability theory. In particular he dealt with the cerebrally demanding topic of formalizing and analyzing “conditional probability”. What he suggests is quite reasonable, "comporting with human intuition instead of confounding it."

Strogatz recommends skipping the mathematical formalism and avoid using Bayes’s theorem, much as his students usually do. The alternative method which is illustrated in the article by providing an example about a positive mammogram and breast cancer is based on the works of Gerd Gigerenzer, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

The underlying feature of this method is encouraging people “to think in terms of natural frequencies — simple counts of events — rather than the more abstract notions of percentages, odds, or probabilities.” Even though learning and teaching probability theory as it appears in higher education textbooks have to be sophisticated and mathematically formulated, the method of “simple counting” tend to be more in line with "the innate ability of humans."

In 2007, Ernő Téglás, Vittorio Girotto, Michel Gonzalez, and Luca L. Bonatti did some fascinating empirical studies on infant cognition in which they tried to shed light on how humans in early age perceive probability. Their subjects were a group of infants who saw four movies (two probable and two improbable) and the result was that the subjects "looked significantly longer when they witnessed the improbable outcome."

To rule out that the infants may had used some "heuristics unrelated to probability reasoning" they designed a complementary experiment and compared the reaction time of infants to impossible vs. possible outcomes. The results showed that infants looked longer at the impossible outcome "although it displayed an object from the more probable class, that is, the one less looked at in the first experiment."

The two experiments, combined, pointed out that there is an “innate ability” in humans to rationally expect and know what the chances are that something may occur in the future. And taking into account the works and methods of Gigerenzer and Strogatz it seems that the key to the practical and applied understanding, learning, and teaching of probability theory is to follow the same path an infant or child have to take: simple counting without much mathematical formalism and/or sophisticated computation.

Teglas, E., Girotto, V., Gonzalez, M., & Bonatti, L. (2007). Intuitions of probabilities shape expectations about the future at 12 months and beyond Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (48), 19156-19159 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0700271104

World Events and Our Mental Models

2010-04-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

It seems that almost all of us have been caught surprised to some extent by the event of Iceland Volcanic Ash, its huge unexpected impact on air transportation across Europe, and the subsequent chaos that has jolted our perception of the modern world complex systems.

Clearly most, if not all, of us want to avoid such surprises. But a recent poll that I myself designed indicates that people indeed feel too often surprised. More than 60% of the participants in that poll tend to think that they usually see or hear about some totally unexpected events in their immediate or distant environments in less than one year intervals.

Apparently if we are surprised almost daily or monthly it is because the events occurring and unfolding in the world reality do not match our deep trenched mental models. Thomas J. Chermak, the scenario planning expert, has reviewed and highlighted the significant role of scenarios and particularly the value added of “revealing, analyzing, sharing, and reconstructing the mental models.” He introduces different methods for extracting people’s mental models and addresses the impact of scenario planning on refining them and therefore people’s enhanced learning.

Studies by cognitive scientists have also demonstrated that how the mental models could be the root of difference of understanding between expert and novice when observing some complex systems. To better make sense of the dynamic nature of phenomena in our progressively interconnected world, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver and Merav Green Pfeffer have used (and of course have suggested others to use) a framework to extract mental models. The framework consists of Structural (elements of), Behavioral (mechanisms), and Functional aspect of a system and it is used as the basis to analyze and demonstrate that (in comparison) how and in what ways the expert and novice understanding of a complex system may differ.

In the case of recent chaos of airlines in Europe it seems that all "the elements or concepts" were well understood, both by expert and novice observers, before the Iceland volcanic eruption. That is we did know that:

1) There are some active volcanoes near the continent
2) There are some strong winds blowing over the continent
3) There are some flourishing air travel markets in the continent
4) There are some near-zero risk acceptability among decision makers across the continent

Nonetheless, in the hindsight, we have learned that in this special case even the experts were unable to make "some relationships" between these elements, concepts, or factors of the interconnected complex system to develop some plausible scenarios and accordingly prepare emergency or contingency plans. In other words, the dominant mental models of almost all of people, particularly those of leaders and experts in Europe, were such that "the behavior or mechanism" that is occurring right now was not “seen” or “sensed” before.

It is doubtless that we continue to get surprised in the future too often by some world events, depending on how our mental models do match the world out there and its unfolding reality. However, in the meantime, we can play with our mental models. That is, for more preparedness, it could make sense if we constantly reveal, analyze, share, and reconstruct our deep trenched mental models which we carry in our heads and obviously guide our perception and interpretation and hence develop some more intelligent plans and actions.

Chermack, T. J. (2003). The Role of Scenarios in Altering Mental Models and Building Organizational Knowledge FUTURES RESEARCH QUARTERLY, 19, 25-42

Hmelo-Silver, C. (2004). Comparing expert and novice understanding of a complex system from the perspective of structures, behaviors, and functions Cognitive Science, 28 (1), 127-138 DOI: 10.1016/S0364-0213(03)00065-X

Transparent, Accountable Corporatocracy

2010-04-17T22:53:00.001-07:00

Jim Dator, Jake Dunagan, and Stuart Candy (within the framework of the Manoa School’s Continued Growth scenario) have posited that "corporations in 2050 would be able to run for elected office as candidates."

It seems that a weak signal has been recently detected, which as a signpost, may herald such a scenario. Forum for the Future reports that a small start-up has declared it will be running for office. "After the Supreme Court declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to funding political campaigns, the self-described progressive firm took what it considers the next logical step: declaring for office."

In my view, the Supreme Court did not give the corporations much more clout in the politics. Instead, in the spirit of more transparency in the information age and the move towards more open government, they simply are trying to pave the way to uncover the hands behind the curtains. The driving force behind this specific trend is the global push for more transparency and accountability. In other words, the Court allowed bringing in light a situation that already exists in the darkness.

My primary source of information about corporatocracy is a book which a fellow futurist and member of the Foresight Network, John Renesch, sent me some time ago written by his friend, John Perkins, titled: "Confessions of an Economic Hitman."

In the "Index" section, on page 296, you see the entry for the term "corporatocracy" which directs you to a number of pages in which Perkins discusses the fact that corporatocracy already exists, even though in secret and rather absent from the news coverage of major media outlets.

Jamie Saunders, another fellow futurist of the Foresight Network, referred me to a working paper by Shann Turnbull of International Institute for Self-Governance which was published in 2003. The author highlights the current ability of corporations to "buy governments", points out the need for more accountability, calls for reforms to avoid corporations undermining democracy, and puts an emphasis on "widening the accountability of firms to people that they affect."

If such a thing as corporatocracy, being a fact, is working behind the scenes, all that we can expect in the future after the new decision by the Court is that it will become transparent and more accountable. Transparency is itself a major driving force in the years to come that will act upon the relationship between corporations and governments as well as other areas.

Turnbull, S. (2003). The Case for Introducing Stakeholder Corporations SSRN Electronic Journal, 6-11 DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.436400

Playing with genes and maybe life itself

2010-04-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

In 2008, Physicist Freeman Dyson gave a TED talk where he suggested that in the future there will be do-it-yourself biotechnology kits for the home geneticist, and that this is a necessary for the future acceptance of biotech by the general population.

“We should follow the model that has been so successful with the electronic industry.” Dyson said. “What really turned computers into a great success in the world as a whole was toys. As soon as computers became toys, when the kids could come home and play with them, then the industry took off. That has to happen with biotech.”

And now in 2010 researchers have already started playing with genes and watching what happens.

Ready to Copy Ideas for Personal Goals and Values

2010-03-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

This weblog has a counter that collects some useful information about the readers and also the key words that they google and bring them to my page.

I have seen a remarkable key words combination which is particularly popular among the readers, which is:

"Ideas + Personal Goals and Values + Life"

You can google this word combination (and similar and relevant combinations) to see that among the first results one of my weblog posts appears:

http://vahidmotlagh.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-personal-values-and-goals.html

In that post I explained how and why I updated my list of personal goals and values and afterward decided to switch my career. As a matter of fact I started to firmly reject any calls for cooperation in Iranian foresight projects that are usually offered by some research centers of the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran and its ethically dubious officials.

Nonetheless, based on the popularity of the key words combination mentioned above, my conclusion is that these days people across the globe are very much interested to search the web for any clues about "some ready to copy ideas for personal goals and values in life".

Hence it may be worthwhile if some futurists write articles or essays covering this issue in which they can provide some guidelines for people about how to find some ideas for their personal goals and values. Not to mention, of course, putting together "a list of ready to copy ideas for personal goals and values" could be particularly helpful. After all, thinking deep and hard about ones goals and values which definitely shapes one's vision and mission in life is cumbersome for some individuals so that they prefer to extract and imitate those of others.

Our Body or Our Language

2010-02-02T23:07:00.000-08:00

Today I just had the opportunity to read a paper on mental time travel and its association with the bodily movements.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/01/08/0956797609359333.full

As I am interested in developing some new foresight methods I need to know how foresight experts think that these findings can be related to some prior findings on Aymara language, in which both linguistic and gestural data give strong confirmation of an unusual culture-specific cognitive pattern: FUTURE IS BEHIND EGO and PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO.

http://shapingtomorrowmain.ning.com/forum/topics/933669:Topic:58842

Specifically do futurists feel that with regard to the body and language is there any trace of the egg and chicken problem? I mean which one is first shaped and shape the other, our body or our language?

Related:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html?hpw=&pagewanted=all
http://vahidmotlagh.blogspot.com/2008/05/future-is-behind-us.html

The Futures of Evolution and Our Problems

2010-01-19T00:09:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I was listening to the lectures of the futurists participating in a conference at the Boston University's Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The conference was about:

The Future of Human Nature: Promises and Challenges in Genomics and Computer Science

(in English)
http://www.bu.edu/pardee/files/documents/Conf03-Human-Nature.pdf

(in Farsi)
http://www.vahidthinktank.com/FHNPersian.pdf

Marvin Minsky started by talking about the fact that the root of our problems is that there are "too many big people" around and further he suggested that "one solution would be to reduce the size of people from six feet to six inches. That way you could get a trillion people on the planet with less pollution."

I laughed at the prospect of such an alternative future for the human population then. However, if we consider that the evolution has not stopped maybe we should also take into account the plausibility of such a vision or scenario for the next creatures that may descend and emerge from us.

Recently scientists have shown that a sound prediction about the future of evolution might be that people will evolve to become shorter and stouter.

READ MORE

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/23/0906199106.abstract

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2010/01/people_evolving_to_be_shorter.php

Artificial and Creative Text Producing

2010-01-06T23:04:00.000-08:00

A funny scenario for the future of book publishing would be the postmodern idea of software or robots producing novels.

Though it might appear bizarre today you could already see its weak signals in terms of robots and widgets becoming media reporters. See below:

http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/01/05/05readwriteweb-welcome-to-the-age-of-robot-reporters-81540.html

Suppose that you can build a genetic algorithm in some software that draws on the rich pool of human-produced texts and add a factor of mutation so that it can produce new texts.

Artificial creativity is going to be taken more seriously in the decades ahead.

READ MORE:
http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~rob/publications/aisb01/2001SaundersGeroAISB.html

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=581710.581724

Iran's Science and Technology Foresight

2010-01-02T02:08:00.000-08:00

Back in 2007, when I was still in the foresight business of Iran, a national project on science and technology foresight was started which is still in progress. Some of its deliverables, approved for public release, are to be published on January 13, 2010.

The details of the project follows.

The Foresight Project was commissioned by Ministry of Science, Research and Technology: 1) Deputy of Research (Vice Minister for Research Affairs, Dr. Kabganian) http://www.msrt.gov.ir/default.aspx, 2) National Research Institute for Science Policy (Dr. Alasti) http://www.nrisp.ac.ir/

In this S&T Foresight project eleven working groups were involved. One of them, called International Futures Group, did some genuine futures studies and helped to run a major national foresight exercise.

The group was comprised of AtiNegaar Think Tank (http://www.atinegaar.com/) consultants who were commissioned to use Scenario Planning methods to develop alternative futures for the global and national futures of Science, Research and Technology through facilitation of brain storming and engagement of three panels of experts on education, research and technology.

AtiNegaar Think Tank experts also benchmarked selected countries: Japan, US, UK, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Israel, Malaysia.

CONTENT of Foresight Report:
1- Methodology of Scenario Planning
2- Scoping
3- Driving Forces
4- Benchmarking of Selected Countries Best Practices (Japan, US, UK, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Israel, Malaysia)
5- Key Factors
6- Scenario Planning Detailed Methodology
7- World Scenarios
8- Iran Desirable Scenario
9- Opportunity Window
10- Robust Strategies
11- Objectives Analysis by Value-Focused Thinking

READ MORE (in Farsi)
Iranian Student's News Agency.
http://isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1460560&Lang=P

End-of-World Scenarios

2009-12-21T01:59:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched Mutheer Liljadal, a TV program about the end-of-world scenarios on the Arabic channel Abu Dhabi One and really enjoyed it.

The experts hosted by Ms. Fadila Souissi were:

Mr. Majdi Saad, Editor in Cief of Elm wa Alam (Science and World) magazine
Ms. Jenan Matar, Lecturer in Eschatology
Dr. Ahmad Al-Sayeh, Faith and Philosophy Lecturer, Al-Azhar University
Dr. Farouk El-Baz, Director of Space Research Centre, Boston University

In a nutshell the experts rejected both scientifically and religiously (from Islamic and Christian view points) the basis and truth of images and ideas presented in the movie 2012, the Mayan inspired soothsaying that the world will end in 2012.

I feel that from a scientific point of view a plausible scenario in which some huge oceanic waves will happen in the future (as shown in the movie 2012) is the fact that measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.82 centimeters per year.

Currently the Moon plays a key role in regulating the oceanic tides. Thus by gradually losing it we have to wonder how the oscillations between different ocean basins and the huge body of water will be regulated in the future. In fact after a long enough time people living on Earth may have to live in some chaotically flooded and deserted lands.

I am not sure if there is a scientific model which has established a threshold distance between Earth and Moon beyond which the globe will be inundated chaotically by oceanic tsunamis. However, it can be estimated that the distance will double in almost 1 billion years, which is less than the time remained until the Sun's death in about 5 billion years.

So regardless of all religious narratives and civilization's prophecies it seems that the scenario of chaotically and unregulated oceanic tsunamis will happen quite shortly in terms of astrological time periods.

Also I would like to suggest that people take a look at the bellow website which has collected some interesting and funny end-of-world scenarios:

http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm

Iran’s black comedy, again.

2009-06-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

Iran’s presidential election is heating up and within the next 48 hours the votes will be counted and announced. It seems that Iranians across the globe and of course on the streets of Iran, most of them dressed in green, are rallying behind the reformist presidential candidate, Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi. Most of these young men and women have been born and raised in some well to do families and generally fear that President Ahmadinejad who is supported mostly by working class and poor families will remain seated for another four years to be able to keep his iron fist on the civil society and personal freedoms.

During the past week there was an unprecedented face off and harsh language between Mr. Ahmadinjad and his major challenger, Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi. They were arguing on a live presidential debate and soon drifted to exchanging allegations. President Ahmadinejad started by a very rare virulent tone, challenging a coalition consisting of former Presidents. He openly, and for the first time in the public arena, talked about Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami and Mir Hossein Mousavi machination to stop him from seeking another term in office.

The debate was so harsh that analysts felt that it could stir unrest and even violent clashes between their supporters on the streets in the following days before the election date. However, hours after the live debate, Iran's Supreme Leader who has the final say on all state matters, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intervened and delivered a speech on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He perceptibly rejected the remarks by the reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who challenging the incumbent, claimed that the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad foreign policy has "humiliated" Iranians across the globe. He also warned against any provoking debate and potential unrest on the streets.

In another live debate between Mr. Mohsen Rezaee and President Ahmadinejad, it was expected that their arguing with each other will determine if Mr. Ahmadeinejad can claim victory on the day after the poll or have to wait for a runoff vote against the reformist hopeful, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mr. Rezaee is a former military commander and the only conservative who runs against the Iran's hard-line President.

In yet another strong signal which is indicating a deep fissure within the regime's top brass, President Ahmadinejad took his final time on air hours before the presidential election and insinuated that two powerful and allegedly corrupt clerics Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ali Akbar Nategh Nouri are comparable to two historical corrupt figures in Shia Islam, Talha ibn Ubayd-Allah and Zubair ibn al-Awam.

I myself have firmly decided to boycott the poll because I can barely see any reason to believe things will change a lot for me in either case. In a nutshell I might say that I see it very relevant a striking feature of some Bosnian-Serbian movies namely "Underground" by Emir Kusturica and "No Man's Land" by Danis Tanović, in both of which a satirical theme is emphasized with regard to revolutions and wars. I feel we in Iran are experiencing a rather similar satirical theme and are witnessing a black comedy again.

Keep lit your vision candle

2009-04-21T00:40:00.000-07:00

People like me who spent much of their time online have heard during the past few days a strange story which is told over and over across the globe. A provincial woman from Scotland, Susan Boyle, has made a huge YouTube sensation. The 47-year-old lady, who lacks our lavish standard of attractive appearance, stunned both the audience and the tough judges on a “Britain’s Got Talent” reality TV show. The clip of her marvelous and awe-inspiring performance has already drawn tens of millions visitors.

When appeared on the stage and introduced herself to the three judges, Susan Boyle was facing the greatest challenge ever, a gathering of the most unbelievable and cynical judgmental persons. Part of this was because her cheep dress, untidy hair, and thick eyebrows left no doubt that this bag with a “cheeky grin”, as described by judge Pierse Morgan, definitely will not make it and people would have fun ridiculing her.

But the moment she opened her mouth and began to perform a rendition of “I dreamed a dream” from “Les Miserables” almost everybody’s jaw dropped and the skeptical and smirking judge, Simon Cowell, had to shut up. People gave a standing ovation to this single unemployed church volunteer who although “never been kissed” was confident that someday she will become a professional singer and as famous as Elaine Paige.

Nobody would have guessed though that it would took her only two minutes to get shot from just “a face in the crowd” who lives in the middle of nowhere to the global superstardom. The unfashionable woman with her astonishing angle-like voice brought tears to the eyes of many visitors. Their hearts were touched deeply by this incredible performance which was beyond any expectations. The hot pretty judge, Amanda Holden, sighing in awe, was absolutely right that it was “a complete privilege” listening to her. Very soon news outlets, TV channels, and newspapers, not to mention company and advertising agents, rushed to tell her story and provide more details for her yet growing body of enthusiast instant fans.

After the sudden internet frenzy over Susan Boyle phenomenon people started to talk about her historical ebb and tide in life. They are still pondering over lessons which we might learn, the most repeated of which is that “you ought not to judge a book from its cover.”

A big lesson which is not receiving due attention however is the fact that she did not become a talent in a matter of days or minutes but was a big talent since ten years ago, alas she was not discovered earlier. After her first recording for a charity was unearthed, which is a version of “Cry me a River” and now a much sought after CD, people were inspired to know that Susan Boyle’s dream candle was lit in 1999. A decade later in 2009 it turned into spectacular lights.

“I’ve never been given the chance before, here’s hoping it’ll change,” said Miss. Boyle before stunning the world by her talent show. And we should repeat her blissful expectations and give ourselves “the biggest yes ever”. Yes, hope and vision will change things a lot, be it sooner or years later. It just depends on our persistence to keep lit the vision candle.

We warmly extend a big Kudos to our unlikely star and congratulate her that the dream finally came true. Thank you so much Susan Boyle also for reminding us that contrary to the song you sang “life cannot kill our dreams” if we do not let them get extinguished by passing winds. You established a big lesson that we should act upon. That is to seek constantly the right places and the right times for reigniting our vision candles, even if they die out every so often.

Female Futurists

2009-03-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

Over the past ten years or so I have been dating several single women and an amazing thing that usually happens is that among my male and female friends, who are not necessarily involved in the futures field, my female friends were exceptionally good at switching their temporal consciousness from a nostalgic sense of the history toward a building and shaping the future attitude and drawing plausible and preferable futures for themselves and the greater world, not too late after they started a relationship with me.

And interestingly among female friends my ex-girlfriends, with whom I could not end up in marriage, not only accepted a futures orientation but also they themselves became active futurists afterward, doing environmental scanning, thinking about alternative scenarios, possibilities, and adapting the terminology we usually use in our conversation. I mean they started to have a keen eye on and talking about trends, events, wild cards, etc. As a matter of fact they copied every and each skills and interests I had without even a conscious teaching effort by me so that there was no need to forcing them to accept becoming a futurist.

I do not know for sure what could be 1) the reasons behind the exceptional ability of women to easily switch their thinking habits and focus from the past to the future after meeting someone who always do that and 2) what mechanism is at work that facilitates a futures meme spread when you start to have an intimate relationship with them?

New Personal Values and Goals

2009-03-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

I feel that a crucial element in life shaping events has something to do with "synchronicity" that is best described by Joseph Jaworski.

My involvement with the futures was triggered and based on a combination of bad chance, good chance, curiosity, rigor, and persistence. A rather detail personal history of my journey has been told here:

http://www.vahidthinktank.com/Bio.htm

The ideas and books which shaped who I am today are collected in the right column of this page.

Since I was a 19 year old student in university and until recently my list of fundamental life and professional objectives which reflect my development, philosophy, and goals were as below:

Fundamental life objectives:

To maximize enjoyment

To shape the future of Iranian and other communities

To help others

To be intellectually fulfilled

Fundamental professional objectives:

To maximize enjoyment

To maximize learning

To maximize economic gain

To maximize worthwhile professional relationships

To minimize non-productive time spent on

Very much effective projects

Useful projects

Usual projects

But recently I did an overhaul on my values, philosophy and goals. As a matter of fact a couple of things have changed a lot since the last summer for me. I decided six months ago to abandon Futures Studies as a career and return to my civil engineering profession to make a living.

Up till now I have accomplished to translate and author a dozen of books and numerous Farsi articles on futures studies, most of them is widely read by Iranian and Farsi speaking people around the globe especially through the Iranian Futurist Foundation based in Stockholm:

http://www.ayandeh.com/page3VahidiMo.php

I feel that much is enough for the moment. Even though I no longer see myself as an editor or consultant on futures studies and do not (literally) use futures tools, I am an avid follower of every and each development in the field as a personal (not professional) interest.

Moreover, I think that a weird law pertaining to the futures professionals is that they will be approached by some ethically dubious clients at least once in a life time. After all such people have so much at stake to seek futures advice. In these challenging ethical situations my standard is to refer them to the open literature, nothing more. In fact, I do not care, either they can understand and use it or not. But in ethically clean situations I welcome any deep involvement, not matter how much effort and time needs to be consumed. My decision to abandon a consulting career in futures studies was related to these ethical challenges. Fortunately I had the alternative of becoming a civil engineer. Right now I effectively decline all clients who are associated with the government because I am almost certain that they are ethically dubious people, exploiting futures for their promotion, for their party agenda, for lobbying personal goals and interests, etc. Although I continue to reply emails seeking references I am determined not to get myself involved in any ethically dubious consulting projects.

Accordingly, and based on what happened during the past 10 years, I could update my list of fundamental life and professional objectives before I turn 30.

Now my philosophy, values, and goals are based on these statements:

Fundamental life objectives:

Continuous Promotion of Self-Consciousness

Enjoying the beauties of life

Contributing to people’s freedom of choice

Local and global surprise making

Fundamental professional objectives:

To maximize learning and smartness opportunities

To maximize credit and assets

To maximize flexibility and adaptability

To maximize quality and quantity of professional networks

To maximize enthusiasm, risk taking, and excitement

Autumn season national book award

2009-03-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

Scenario Planning book just won the autumn season national book award by the Ministry of Culture. The book has been briefly reviewed in the last issue of the WFSF Futures Bulletin.

Official story of the event by Iran Book News Agency is available below (look for #5: "applied science", the title has been translated from Farsi to English by the Iranian reporters as Scenario Writing or Programming based on Scenarios)

http://www.ibna.ir/vdcdx50s.yt0kk6me2y.html

The honor we received today belong to all the leading futurists, specially the shining beacon members of the WFSF, because of the rich and diverse knowledge foundations they laid decades ago.

We, the three authors, also obtained a cash prize, the value of which is equal to 1500 USD, and happily shared it among ourselves, after having a cheerful and delicious dinner.

I consider this award a milestone in the path toward promoting a higher level of futures consciousness among the Farsi speaking communities across the globe. This could be enough, in my view, to pave the way for other Farsi speaking authors, researchers, translators, practitioners, and activists to further the futures studies.

I also put together a Picasa Web Album of the event in case you might want to take a look.

http://picasaweb.google.com/vahidvmotlagh/ScenarioPlanningWonTheAutumnSeasonNationalBookAward

This is not the same, any longer!

2009-03-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

The question of change has always fascinated me. So much so that I constantly try to alter the tools and approaches available to me to get even deeper into understanding how change happens and how often we should expect it to happen. In this short essay I intend to first make some comparisons between change in physical and social systems and then draw some useful conclusions about facilitating desirable change.

Consider a physical system, a volume consisting of gas molecules. Imagine that you can take a photo of all of these molecules at a certain moment. Therefore you can register the location of every and each molecule moving in this volume of gas at that time. Next, instead of all molecules select a group of them or even one molecule. Try to keep a track of their movements and locations in the gas volume during a sufficiently long time interval. If you compare the results of the former observation with that of the latter you will see that they are almost identical. The point is that the average locations and the movement pattern of a representative group of molecules in the long run is well equivalent to the locations and the movement pattern of the whole molecules in the gas volume. Put it another way, one can say that, for a sufficiently long time, a molecule or a group of molecules’ pattern of movement is a good approximate of the whole volume of molecules’ movement. Technically speaking, in the long run, all of plausible configurations among the molecules are likely. Or, the probability that a certain configuration will never happen again is zero.

Now consider a social system, for example, the citizens of a society. Imagine that you can take a photo of all the citizens currently visiting the city malls. Suppose you have registered the amount of population present at each city mall so that you can determine which one is the most crowded and which one is the least at this moment. This is similar to the first observation that was mentioned in the gas volume above. Now, instead of all citizens, pick one person or a small group of persons, and keep track of their presence in the city malls during, say, a year. Do you think that the result of the instant photo of the citizens in the city malls is almost identical to the result of the average archived file of a small selected group of citizens? Specifically, could you say with confidence, based on what you have seen about a small group of citizen behavior, which city mall is the most crowded and popular? The answer is definitely no. In other words, all plausible configurations among the citizens who visit malls are not probable. Or, the probability that a certain configuration will never happen again is not zero. Thus, there are some configurations, arrangements, and micro states within an overall system of people that the probabilities of them recurring or even occurring and emerging is zero.

In physics, it is a well established notion that the entropy is increasing unless you want to reverse the arrow of time which means that the number of micro states associated with a certain macro state will increase as the time passes. Although it is likely that a broken egg become an intact egg again, the probability is infinitesimal. To see that happening you will have to wait longer than the age of the universe. When you try to estimate the entropy of a physical system you have to ask if its macro state is still the same while the micro states are taking all plausible configurations. For example, when you are stirring your cup of hot chocolate and milk with the spoon you do not care about the exact location of every and each chocolate and milk molecules as long as you can observe in the cup that it is still the same hot chocolate and milk. Because in a physical system the probability that a certain configuration will never happen again is zero one should expect that the overall and macro state remain the same until all numerous and probable configurations and microstates occur, emerge, and recur.

However, in systems consisting of people, regardless of how many are the members, I mean no matter a several person group or million persons group, because the probability that a certain configuration will never happen again is not zero one should expect that a significant number of micro states will never recur, or even emerge and occur. Thus, to remain the same system it should be altering the internal configurations among a limited number of micro states. Naturally we ought not to wait too long to see that a social system changes a lot so that we can say it is not the same any longer. That means we should expect that social systems be capable of total and radical changes within much shorter time intervals relative to what we see in physical systems.

An important question now is raised. What we should do for or in social systems so that they will not be the same any more, any longer? To answer this I will use two rather complementary approaches to obtain some helpful insights.

I learned the first approach from a futurist colleague, Roberto Poli, while presenting his talk on anticipation in the last summer in Sweden during WFSF conference. When addressing the difference between the dynamics of a system and the reproduction of a system, he presented the system thinking in sociology according to Pareto, Parsons, and Luhmann works. Social systems, as the time passes, reproduce their members, the individuals. Also the system is reproduced by reproducing the roles of individuals. Finally the system is reproduced by reproducing the sense (meanings or functions) of the roles. Sometimes the exact roles are not reproduced but essentially the same meanings are reproduced. For instance, in some so-called democracies the role of a monarch or king indeed disappears after a revolution but instead of him a lifelong president takes office. We can conclude that while the role (of king) has not been reproduced the meaning of the dead role has been reproduced. This reminds me of a nice quotation from French Futurist, Michel Godet, saying that “far too often the impression of novelty is acquired at the least cost by renaming an old concept.” Apparently, to enable change at the macro level in a society we should try to stop any kind of reproducing. Thus, we can expect to see that a social system changes substantially so that we say it is not the same any longer.

The second approach is based on and inspired form advances in cognitive science. Hmelo-Silver and Pfeffer propose and use a theory for examining individuals’ representation of a system from the perspective of structural (elements of a system), behavioral (mechanisms), and functional aspect while making sense of a complex system. The functional aspect covers the fundamental objectives and values that are germane to the system and are achievable by the structural elements through behavioral mechanisms.

Obviously, each and every person who is born and eventually dies in a social system is in fact an element-individual that is reproduced. The roles of individuals will not be clear unless you determine the mechanism of relationships and connections between the individuals. Thus, reproducing the roles of individuals implies that the mechanisms among the elements are still intact. If we establish a link between functional aspect and collective goals of people and the meaning of their roles in society then the two approaches seem to be even more complementary.

Now let us look again to the question of what we should do for or in social systems so that they will not be the same any more, any longer? The problem statement can also be rephrased to when is the most proper and easiest time to intervene so that the overall and macro state of a social system significantly change? And a related question is that what are the differences between internal and external triggers for change?

It is clear that if the individuals, the connections among individuals, and the values of individuals change altogether then the most ideal condition for a leap change will be prepared, from an old system to a new one. But this is not a realistic expectation. The fact is that simply reproducing the individuals and elements of a social system will automatically results in reproducing the roles, connections, and mechanisms on one level and reproducing the meanings of roles, values, and function on the other level. Hence, one can argue that the most ideal condition and the most proper time for enabling change in the macro state is to avoid, resist, or ban the reproduction of individuals and structural elements. Such an event can only happen by an external intention and force. But in a less ideal condition, the one which admits some maneuver space for internal intention and agency, individuals within a system can themselves resist against the reproduction of roles and mechanisms on the one hand and against the reproduction of the meanings of roles and values and function on the other hand.

As a matter of fact the natural and significant disappearance of some connections and roles by any reason, for example, because people become old as the time passes or some roles becoming obsolete because of non-social changes, will provide a suitable condition for facilitating change in the macro state of a society. The good news is that, as mentioned above, in social systems because the probability that a certain configuration will never happen again is not zero one should expect that a significant number of micro states of roles and mechanisms will never recur, or even emerge and occur.

So far I simply discussed the issue of change at a macro level regardless of whether it is temporarily and precarious. Nonetheless, sometimes we seek stable change and it is desirable to maintain the system in its new state. Without doubt, even if internal and/or external agency and force accomplish to transform roles, behaviors, connections, and mechanisms without changing the meanings of roles and major values and fundamental objectives, then it is always probable that the changed macro state will return to its previous macro state, sooner or later. In other words, although any circumstances that will allow us to reconfigure the roles, connections, and mechanisms are indeed golden opportunities to change the whole system but the stability and the impossibility to return to the previous macro state of the system is only guaranteed by stopping the reproduction of the meanings of roles and also be encouraging and enabling significant changes in the values and fundamental objectives of individuals making up the whole social system.

BBC Persian TV and Futures Studies

2009-02-18T08:55:00.000-08:00

Last night I agreed to a request by BBC Persian TV to give a live phone interview on futures studies in a program about "are you hopeful about your future?"

I was on air after the anchorwoman, Ms. Faren Taghizadeh, spent a little time introducing the "World Future Society" and its website and then my own website:

http://www.vahidthinktank.com

The diverse youth audience of the program for whom I was supposed to explain in one plain sentence what is this "futures studies" also were interested to know what is the impact of futures studies on our personal life. After giving a definition of scenarios and possible and preferable futures in a nutshell I went on to explain that the value and benefit of foresight is threefold. One the mere focus on times ahead of us will give us in itself "hope" in spite of all disappointing facts that may surround us today because through futures studies we find out that there will be a lot of alternative potentials on the horizon, which in turn help us become more patient. Second, the focus on futures will turn us into much more creative and innovative persons that means our brain will become full with diverse and interesting ideas. And finally foresight is supposed to help us decrease our regret over hasty and not well-thought choices and decisions we constantly and daily make.

Toward a Theory for Triggers

2009-01-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

One of the fundamental and intriguing questions, at least for me, is that what are, precisely or likely, the triggers or starting point behind a certain decision problem or an event. We sometimes wonder "why on earth I am considering this decision" or how the heck that incident was put to the death before its birth, or for instance, when, where, and how the global financial crisis began. Addressing the issue of triggers in problem statements or making sense of the underlying (and presumably real and correct) cause of a historical event is essential. Consider this, after good and deep thinking and making clear the problem frame, an adult realizes that the trigger for an apparently vital decision was indeed some whimsical suggestion by a child. If so, most of us will reconsider our problem definition and may conclude that we do not have any problem at all to solve or a vital decision for that matter to make. The point is that simply discovering the triggers behind either decisions or events will definitely contribute to a deeper understanding of what has happened and help us reconsider the problem definition and enhance our sense making of what is going to happen around us. If a worker understands that the mean boss is under the sway of his spouse then he would better not waste his time to come in terms with that bad boss and instead will be better advised to start communicating and negotiating directly with the spouse. Even we may marvel sometimes that behind a grand event in history, be it a war, a social movement, a revolution, a riot, or any other chaos, there is a set of simple triggers such as a fierce jealousy between two persons or an inferiority complex deep inside a sick mind, and definitely not what most people believe about it or read about it avidly at great length and detail in history books. This helps us to change our perspective so that we better estimate or anticipate similar events in the future.

I am trying now to synthesize and blend different (and perhaps complementary) theories to found a theory for triggers. A rough definition for triggers is that they are starting points behind decisions we feel compelled to make and events which we often wonder how the heck they happened. Without doubt, building such a theory is very complicated, however, I intend to develop it further and buttress it with analytical and critical arguments and empirical studies.

To arrange my ideas and show the core of this new theory I have used a mind mapping software which is called Free Mind. Free Mind helps first to get together a coherent and consistent body of ideas and second sheds light on new interesting ideas.

My own mind map has already highlighted the complex nature and interrelated elements in a theory for triggers. Regardless of how much intriguing it seems to be I think that if and how this theory is applicable is another matter. Anyway, I will consider using it for looking at past favorite decisions and events, and next building upon this knowledge will try to design triggers, starters, seeds, and whatever similar concept, to stir future personal and organizational decisions and of course stimulate future local and even global events.

Needless to say that suggesting related references in the literature and thoughtful comments are very welcome.

Edge and Scientism

2009-01-02T11:31:00.000-08:00

Edge.org just published a lengthy piece compiling answers of mostly scientists to the question of "What Will Change Everything?" The contributors' musings without doubt smack of scientism :

http://edge.org/q2009/q09_print.html

Although their thoughts appear to be provocative, especially on mind, brain, and consciousness, and sometimes truly insightful, I can picture scientists just like the advisers of an anecdotal king who were asked by his majesty to think about how to pass through a closed gate in the palace. All of them, presumably able analysts, started by conceptual and calculative approaches, while a provincial person who was there head-scratching watching them pushed the seemingly closed gate only to see that it was open already.

Scientific methods are fine and we should not take side against them, however, we can remind people who really want to delve into the human consciousness, brain, and mind that the gate may not be closed if approached by means other than the "scientific" ones. Who knows that maybe a brief tap the same way as happened in the palace of the anecdotal king could save them a lot of fMRI, mathematical formulations and genetic experimentation.

I believe that should there be a general disposition toward acquiring a deep understanding of our life on this planet we need to pave the way for a rapprochement among science, art, philosophy, etc on equal footing. If philosophy, art, and other sources of intellectual aspirations and contentions look up to science then we would lose that egalitarian vantage point and hence will not be able to realize the Third Culture as depicted by John and his colleagues and friends at Edge.org

I am interested to know what do you think about these ideas?

Challenging Our Mental Models

2008-11-26T01:26:00.001-08:00

When we talk about mental models, to recognize them and then perhaps challenge them, I tend to recall the underlying differences between people who use their Right v.s. Left Brain. In a very intriguing test to show how much we use either sides, people are surprised to see that a dancer girl can simultaneously turn both clockwise and anti-clockwise, depending on how you see her spinning and which side of brain do you use to see her turning

Although, as HeraldSun website points out, "most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise", we can try to lose focus and refocus to see that she is spinning clockwise too:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

The dancing girl is so funny. Try to fix your look at exactly her foot and the shadow, the moment the foot and its shadow get in touch on the ground and she jumps again, lose your attention for a second and refocus, I am sure that the anti-clockwise spinning does appear before your eyes! With good exercise you can even get the dancer girl to switch back and forth in a single revolution!

You may also ask a colleague, a friend, or even your children to know that they can see her turning in a different direction.

I haven't seen yet the reference on this test which is claimed that has been designed by researchers at (probably) Yale University to test left or right brain activity. A couple of people (not aware of the above trick) even mention that those who can see her dancing both ways must have a 160 or more IQ. Nonetheless, I was myself surprised when I could see her dancing both ways, you know my eyes and brain managed to fool me! It is a humble understanding indeed.

By analogy I argue that when you are working with individuals to help them recognize their mental models and possibly challenge them, you could be more successful if you first find the "foot on the ground and its shadow" and then help them to lose their focus to shift to an alternative mental model

Can you imagine the scenario the GM going bankrupt?

2008-11-26T01:20:00.001-08:00

When I first saw the headlines of the New York Times saying that "the heads of the Big Three automakers of Detroit pleaded emergency government aid to stave off potential collapse", I couldn't resist recalling the impressive lecture of Peter Schwartz on March 8, 2006, at the DoD Office of Force Transformation for the American intelligence community in which he warned about a return to stagflation and credit crisis in the US, and asked us to imagine "what will happen if GM goes bankrupt, can you imagine the scenario the General Motors going bankrupt, well they're right close, and if they go bankrupt, they'll take Ford down with them."

Watch the lecture here:

http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/rethinking06/video.cfm#schwartz

http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/rethinking06/SeminarArchive/videoFrm.cfm?folder=030806&id=Schwartz.mpg%20%20&track=B3E4003C-AB98-CEB9-45208D5C8378EFDE

In my view any such large scale business collapses carry along with themselves the emerging realities. Futurists should have keen eyes on these events because perhaps we will be able to play a major role in providing alternative architectures for the next state of affairs.

The following is a partial transcript of his lecture on economics, it is amazing, at least to me, to note that if you tend to think always through futures toolkit then you can perceptibly and successfully get a number of invaluable insights.

"Ok, let's move on, now we talk about money, economics, I am gonna move quickly through this one because a lot of this is already pretty clear. Today what we face is the possibility, and I say only possibility of a return to stagflation, you may remember the late 1980s high inflation and high unemployment, theoretically not possible but it happened....I think, Mr. Bernanke is probably likely to do exactly the same thing as Alan Greenspan, but part of the issue of the head of the Fed is the perception that he creates, what do people, what do markets believe about what you're gonna do, because all what they believe you'll do 18 months, two years, five years from now, and Mr. Greenspan has a long record to let people to trust what he would do, Mr. Bernanke, does not yet have that record, again, it's just an uncertainty, it doesn't mean he's gonna do the wrong thing, but the market doesn't know yet what he's gonna to do, so I think we run the risk today again, for the first time in about twenty five years, of a return to a more inflationary environment, and I think the risk is real, everybody talks about the real estate bust but I'm not too worry about that in all honesty, the thing I do worry about is what I call unsustainable industries, that is real critical industries that are not making money, cars and aeroplanes, and airlines too, I had the experience of recently flying on Northwest, a flight attendant said: "Thank you for flying Northwest, we know that you have chosen a bankrupt airline to fly on", you know, I think unfortunately that's the case, you know, what will happen if GM goes bankrupt, can you imagine the scenario the General Motors going bankrupt, well they're right close, and if they go bankrupt, they'll take Ford down with them, ok? imagine the two biggest companies in American history, literally GM and Ford, going down, because they can't make money selling cars, all right?, it's structural, it's structural, it's fundamental, and so we got a situation where a number of critical industries, and I would include steel by the way in this, can't figure out how to make money at home, can we survive that car industry, well as it happens today, there are almost as many of auto workers in the US as it was in 1982. Almost as many, the trouble is they don't work for GM and Ford, they work for Toyota, BMW, Nissan, Honda, I have a fine American car made in South Carolina, it's a BMW Z-4, and my wife drives an American-made BMW by an American auto maker, I mean, auto workers, but of course, where does the money go? Where's the innovation go? it all goes abroad, and I think that's the fundamental issue, it isn't who's actually making the cars, it's who's driving the industry, who's driving the airline industry, who's driving the steel industry, so we have a fundamental structural problem with our several key industries, that are gonna be leading to some yet major economic dislocation, the one you can see is running right in front of us is the auto industry, I mean, before the end of this year, it's not impossible that GM may go down."

Scenario Planning Farsi Book was published

2008-11-26T01:13:00.000-08:00

Scenario Planning, a Farsi reference book, was just published by the Institute for International Energy Studies, a think tank affiliated to the I.R. IRAN Petroleum Ministry.

In this newly published Farsi book, the authors: Aziz Alizadeh, Vahid Vahidi Motlagh, and Amir Nazemi first review the history, presumptions, and foundations of futures studies, most of which are based on Wendell Bell, Jim Dator, and Slaughter works. They then zero in on the identification of key dimensions of scenario planning as they have appeared chiefly in the pioneering works of Kahn, van der Heijden, Schwartz, Wack, Slocum, Fulton, Mason, Inayatullah, Fahey, Ringland, Shoemker, Ratcliffe, Dewar, Randall, Dammers, Huss, Horton, List, Steinmüller, van Notten, Godet, and Roubelat. There are a number of variables that ought to be considered before kicking off a new project, especially in order to provide strategic intelligence. Some of these variables belong to the general class of objectives, for example learning vs. planning, competitor focused vs. environment focused vs. organization focused. Others belong to the general class of approaches such as normative vs. explorative, qualitative vs. quantitative, intuition-based vs. data-based and so on. And finally, policy analysts have to deal with the context specific variables, for instance, organization cultures which can be classified into leader-driven, plan-driven, and evidence-driven organizations. The Farsi-speaking readers can obtain a rich knowledge base of these variables so that they become able and skillful to design and run scenario planning exercises. The authors also review a number of case studies such as GSG, Air Force 2025, NIC Global Trends, and Shell scenarios to provide examples of scenario planning projects. The book aims to help Farsi-speaking readers pick among the common approaches of scenario planning, for instance: GBN, ABP, CLA, and RDM according to their needs, objectives, resources, and context specific variables.

The book can be ordered through the below address:

Institute for International Energy Studies (IIES)
14 Sayeh St. Vali-e-asr Ave., Tehran, 196 774 3711, I.R. IRAN
Tel: (+98 21) 22029351-60, Fax: (+98 21 ) 22029386
email: public-relations@iies.ac.ir

Exit Assumptions

2008-07-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

There is a strong relationship between our cognitive ability to design good preplanned exit strategies and the ability to think ahead of time. We can easily demonstrate the importance of having good preplanned exit strategies in quite different contexts. But, the question is that how people can apply scenario planning to enhance their imagination and improve their preparedness?

Suppose that you are thinking about a decision opportunity which at first glance seems to be marvelous. The situation is defined as entering a new and very desirable space. For example, imagine you are given the key to a big mansion. You just can go in. Naturally you should not feel ambivalent at all. Not only you can gain a windfall but also it is not necessary to burden a huge amount of cost, at least when entering.

In spite of the attractiveness, it would be more judicious if you notice that you are taking a number of implicit judgments and assessments about some characteristics of the future world into your plan. Such judgments and assessments are your assumptions. In other words, since you are uncertain about a number of things about the future you simply assume them. Some of these assumptions are obvious, explicit and even documented, while others remain hidden and implicit, at least as long as you can notice their turning out to be false.

All of your assumptions regarding the plan to enter can be divided into those that are relevant to entry process, staying stage, and the exit process. However, most people, perhaps because of the initial attractiveness, usually spend a lot of effort to uncover just the entry and stay assumptions. Hence, exit assumptions are, for the most part, taken for granted and are not properly addressed. But, failure to address the exits assumptions will probably make troubles in the future. Once an implicit assumption about your exit process is violated, the time has run out already so that you cannot easily change the plan.

Therefore, provided that you can uncover the implicit assumptions about your exit, you may be able to focus your efforts on designing the necessary actions to avoid a troublesome situation in the future. The set of all actions based on this preparedness effort, if they are consistent with each other, determine the exit strategy.

Obviously, the most important implicit assumption when entering a new desirable space is:

You will not have to leave.

Needless to say that most joyful entering people consider such a judgment about the future as a fact, not an assumption. Nonetheless, such an impression is a kind of judgment and assessment about some uncertain characteristics of the future world, and as defined above, an assumption. Obviously, the very fact that you think that you will not have to leave will influence your entry and stay plan. Although, one can re-frame the above assumption as

You will not be willing to leave.

The former assumption is out of your control, while the latter is in your control, at least to a degree, and therefore we can focus simply on you are compelled to exit. Anyway, the moment that this assumption is violated, which most of the time it indeed occurs, you have to address a long list of associated assumptions. The most important implicit exit assumptions are listed below:

There will be at least one way to exit.
The timing of exit will be arbitrary.
There exist alternative spaces for entry and stay after exit.
Necessary supports will be provided to exit.
The consequences of exit concern just you not others.
No entity will hinder your exit.
The existing capability and energy will be sufficient to overcome staying inertia.
Exit process will not be too costly or inconvenient.
The entry way can simply become the exit way, if needed.

Debunking Life Facts by Cloning Scenarios

2008-06-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

In 2001, an impressive report published by RAND, “The Global Technology Revolution”, concluded that “life in 2015 will be revolutionized by the growing effect of multidisciplinary technology”. Not surprisingly, biotechnology took a significant credit because, as the authors Philip S. Anton, Richard Silberglitt, and James Schneider eloquently explain, it “will enable us to identify, understand, manipulate, improve, and control living organisms (including ourselves)”.

I feel that since we are too accustomed to past experiences of life and living organisms it is rather difficult to think out of the box when surmising the multiple plausible paths that biotechnology will eventually take. One of my preferred and suggested tools to overcome this weakness is to imagine and develop different worlds in which a set of salient sound facts, as we now perceive them, are challenged so that they got loose and debunked. In other words, this qualitative tool rests on talking about facts only to figure out how we can topple them.

A fact, in my definition, is any common not-yet-refuted belief, judgment, or evaluation about some characteristics of the present world among a group of individuals which delineates the boundaries and scope of prospective actions. Now, suppose that a policy analysis body is addressing the futures, or as many foresight practitioners would prefer to call, scenarios of biotechnology. To delineate the scope of the issue, suppose further that we specifically want to consider all the suggestions about policies, plans, and programs regarding the future of human cloning. My next step is to surface and list all relevant facts. Some of these facts are listed below:

1- A woman without a man cannot give birth to a baby.
2- There is absolutely no way to responsibly and ethically patent human body parts or tissues.
3- The risks associated with the germ-line genetic engineering are not acceptable in the local society.
4- A human clone will not be welcome to the local society once born.
5- Germ-line genetic engineering is as dangerous as somatic genetic engineering in terms of possible errors.

However, it is naturally expected that some beliefs, judgments, or evaluations are not perceived and shared as facts among all people. For instance, after the demonstrated feasibility of animal cloning, it is not consistent with the current body of knowledge that “a woman without a man cannot give birth to a baby”, although before the successful animal cloning this could have been a sound fact. Further, scientists have not yet established a robust measure to compare the possible errors and hence risks posed by germ-line and somatic genetic engineering. Again, this is not consistent with the current body of knowledge, and thus not a sound fact.

The rest items in the above list are generally considered to be sound facts. Needless to say that even thinking about patenting human body parts is in sharp contrast to many ethical codes, either religious or secular, across the globe. Moreover, according to many established religious beliefs, people should not meddle with God creation. Hence, any human clone will suffer sarcasm or even will be deported from the local society as an artifact of Satan. If the genome of new born baby has already been dramatically manipulated to provide different physical or mental characteristics such as height, color of hair, and intelligence, then he or she may become too different from his parents and fellows and therefore alienated, abandoned, and isolated.

Now that we have a good understanding of a number of apparently sound facts and the implications of any new policy or plan which potentially aims to change them, the next step is to articulate and set a value structure. Suppose that one of the suggested value structures has three major elements: Dignity, Health, and Conservatism. As you can see none of the sound facts are vexing for these particular values. Indeed, they do support the fulfillment of the said values. But let us consider also an alternative value structure which includes three different elements: Intelligence, Physical Strength, and Liberalism. This time the risk of isolation and carrying a label which reads "Made by Satan" is vexing toward intelligence, physical strength, and liberalism.

The final step is to imagine and develop a number of scenarios in order to debunk the vexing facts. Imagine these:

Human clones, after suffering a decade of isolation, are happily relocated to a new land or planet. They will no longer suffer isolation as long as they live together. In another scenario you could think that a number of religious bodies around the globe accept the medical benefits of gene therapy. Some of them even get themselves involved and ask scientists to eliminate their inherited diseases so that their children no longer suffer from their own genetic defects. Or perhaps an epidemic would break out in the world, eventually leading to the death of many non-uplifted people. But isolated uplifted clones, living in exile, come back to the local society. They become super stars and people ardently follow them, accepting to go through genetic engineering operations. In yet another plausible world, uplifted individuals almost always defeat their non-uplifted peers when applying to universities. They easily and rapidly finish their academic studies while non-uplifted students lag behind.

A couple of these scenarios are at the same level of desirability (by referring to the value structure) and plausibility (by referring to evidences and weak signals that support them). If you determine a scenario that is both plausible and desirable you can simply pick it up and then backcast it to the present. One can use the insights and implications of debunking facts by scenarios as the starting point to address and promote policies, plans, and programs regarding the future of human cloning. For example, ask how and why human cloning will hedge against an uncontrollable epidemic, a scenario that seems both plausible and desirable.

Anomalous Cognition: Myth or solid fact?

2008-06-01T04:31:00.000-07:00

I was born and bred into a largely tacit knowledge culture and a (native) language that is rich in symbolic contemplation. One of the instances of "deep immersion" that I got familiar with is indeed a highly controversial topic known as precognition or "anomalous cognition" in our modern world. I believe that most serious knowledge workers (including myself) who usually associate themselves with foresight or futures studies discipline would probably reject the reliability and validity of such methods and efforts.

However, some researches like James H. Lee and Oliver Markley have raised the topic again through the so-called "Virtual Time Travel".

In spite of my cultural and linguistic background which is in favor of almost all kind of time travel: virtual, religious, mystic, etc (you name it), I tend to remain a skeptic for the time being, waiting for stronger and even more reliable evidence .

Apparently there is some worthwhile lessons in Jim's work that would help me, and maybe others too, to create and develop some "unconventional" methods and/or techniques.

For example, as Jim pointed out," it is quite possible that the subconscious (or super-conscious) mind communicates more easily through symbols than through direct representation." He further notes, and I agree, that "much valuable insight can be lost or filtered out in the pursuit of factual, concrete imagery." An insight that is worthwhile enough for me. I feel that this really brings me in line with Jim that "the importance of symbolic data gathered ...should not be understated."

In addition, a number of people, like Peter Roche, responding to my rejection of anomalous cognition, observe that "when leaders declare a future, it seems as if there is a correlation between their declarative acts and the subsequent unfolding of events". He also points out that "if we can’t find some set of explanatory principles to account for the relationship between declarations of a future state and the subsequent realization of that future we are only left with after the fact explanations like luck, serendipity or happy accident."

But I believe that it is not at all necessary to refer to alternative "explanatory principles" (for example the so-called morphic field) while there is a good and rich knowledge about the Self-Altering Prophecies, at least among sociologists and psychologists.

As Richard L. Henshel addressed in his article the dilemma of social prediction, the cause and effect relationship between "declared futures" and "real futures" is far from unclear.

Henshel developed a "working typology of social predictions resistant to self-fulfilling prophecies":

1) Those requiring unlikely skills
Prediction incorporating unknown magnitudes of variables
Prediction employing higher mathematics
Prediction employing esoteric conceptualization

2) Those requiring unlikely collusion
Prediction about cross-cultural regularities
Prediction about competition or conflict

3) Those requiring unlikely communication
Prediction hostile to gate-keepers interests
Prediction about social isolates
Prediction about persons with limited comprehension

4) Those requring unlikely flaunting of interpretations
Prediction interpreted as unimportant
Prediction interpreted as unbelievable
Prediction interpreted as unalterable

I feel that this typology and framework can help us separate those remarks of experts that serve a climate of anxiety and possibly a self-altering prophecy from some dispassionate predictions that are either not self-altering or rather resistant to self-altering prophecies.

As a result we can convince ourselves that in social life predictions (or as you may prefer to name it declared futures) predictions themselves are a crucial part of the interacting social conditions that result in yet-to-become a real future.

LEE, J. (2008). Remote viewing as applied to futures studies Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 75 (1), 142-153 DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2006.09.001

Henshel, R. L. (1982). The Boundary of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and the Dilemma of Social Prediction The British Journal of Sociology, 511-528

Justified Inactivity

2008-05-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we cannot convince ourselves why is that certain entities, either individuals or groups, do not take part in doing something that is evidently common and prevalent on a local or global scale. In fact, the active entities are surprised by observing the few inactive entities. This kind of surprise generally occurs because the active community cannot justify the inactivity of the otherwise active entities.

Thinking about the factors or sufficient and necessary conditions to become active may help us to figure out a basis for justified inactivity and thus to decrease the surprise of active community. In the view of potential actors, three factors are considered, separately or together, to be the main reasons for any observed action: Capability, Attractiveness, and Necessity.

Of course, judgments about capability and attractiveness are, respectively, more objective and subjective. This means it is possible for active entities to run an evidence-based and impersonal analysis of incapability of others (i.e. to conclude that they have no access to resources) and thus inactivity is justified. On the other hand, active entities cannot conclusively understand if at all the action is attractive or not for inactive entities (unless they themselves confirm or deny it). This situation usually occurs whenever a certain action is globally common and prevalent, and hence, inaction would appear to be unjustified.

Although the condition of capability is generally more necessary than sufficient, it is worthwhile to note that the attractiveness and necessity conditions are both sufficient and necessary and to a degree substitutable. Therefore, even with having either of them, attractiveness or necessity, the other one is not required. Of course, the general expectation is that among the active community both attractiveness and necessity exist simultaneously. In addition, as mentioned above, attractiveness and necessity from the viewpoint of an observer, who is intending to justify the inactivity of others, is rather subjective and personal, and as a result, as long as the inactive entities do not confirm or deny the attractiveness or the necessity, the observer simply cannot conclusively make any judgment about the real justification.

In the above analysis there is an implicit assumption that the time horizons of active and inactive entities are comparable. However, in most cases this assumption is incorrect. As a matter of fact, the lack of justifications for inactivity in the eye of active entities emerges because the time horizons of them, especially regarding attractiveness and necessity, simply do not match. For example, while the active entities have set their eyes on the present, the inactive entities have fixed their eyes on the future. Or, on the contrary, while the inactive entities' judgment about attractiveness and necessity makes sense and is correct within a past frame, the active group perspective and judgment is based on the present or future.

Having said the above we can ponder more about the below questions:

1-Provided that the time horizons match and both entities enjoy the same level of capabilities, in which case the active entities will become more surprised?
a) They falsely imagine that the attractiveness must be the same for inactive entities.
b) They falsely imagine that the necessity must be the same for inactive entities.

2-Among available examples from personal and organizational life, which ones fully support the above three factors plus time horizon argument, and which ones serve as counterexamples, negating the argument?

3-Does the issue of unjustified inactivity remains exclusively in the realm of human beings? Or there are indeed cases among other animals which feature inactivity of a few and therefore surprise of the rest active entities.

4-Provided that the two groups have set their eyes on a joint time horizon, enjoy the same level of capability. and there exists a uniform subjectivity among entities (locally or globally) is it totally unexpected, and thus a surprise, to observe even one case of inactivity (locally or globally)?

The future is behind us!

2008-05-23T03:18:00.000-07:00

So far all documented languages appear to share a spatial metaphor that maps future events onto spatial locations in front of ego and past events onto locations behind ego. But in 2004 cognitive and linguistic scientists Rafael E. Núñez and Eve Sweetser reported that they have discovered a language, Aymara, spoken in Bolivia which appears to present a fascinating contrast to these well-known patterns, and indeed a challenge to the cross-cultural universals of metaphoric cognition. In this language FUTURE IS BEHIND EGO and PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO. Both linguistic and gestural data give strong confirmation of this unusual culture-specific cognitive pattern:

http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/NSaymaraproofs.pdf

Now the question is that whether we can or should reconsider some of the methods and techniques in futures studies developed so far or even our usual speaking and writing about the future? These human beings in Bolivia speaking Aymara and even Spanish probably won’t make any sense of our common and conventional metaphorical mapping when talking about the future. Or if they are able to understand it in our way they can as well understand it in the opposite way too.

Can this discovery lead to a couple of unconventional foresight methods? All of our thinking is bound to our language and as Thomas Kuhn once said, “You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.” The question is not that which one is correct or incorrect, behind or in front ego. But taking into account the existence of unconventional languages and metaphors can we conclude that there exist unconventional methods, tools, or techniques for thinking about the futures yet to be discovered and developed?

You know, the first time I came across this study of human cognition and learned about this peculiar language in which the future is behind ego, I recalled the works of David Kellogg Lewis on "modal realism" and the theory that there exist an infinite number of concrete and causally isolated parallel universes, of which ours is just one.

David argued in his article published in 1979:

Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow
Noûs, Vol. 13, No. 4, Special Issue on Counterfactuals and Laws (Nov., 1979), pp. 455-476.

that "in general the way things are later depends on the way things were earlier," However, he goes on to point out that "it is at best doubtful whether the past depends counterfactually on the present, whether the present depends on the future, and in general whether the way things are earlier depends on the way things will be later."

When I think about the Aymara mapping of the future onto locations behind ego I tend to raise my doubts as well about the past being fixed and the future being open.

Who knows, maybe David's theory appears to be as much contrary to common sense as the Aymara language. And maybe we can find some day strong evidence in favor of David's suggestion that "all possible worlds are equally concrete, and the world in which we find ourselves is no more real than any other possible world."

Significant Changes Since 40 Years Ago

2008-04-14T23:30:00.004-07:00

Recently a question was put forward for us, futurists, to ponder and answer:

What are the most significant changes that have occurred in the wider world since 40 years ago?

The intent was to refresh our sense of what we are doing right now and re-design what we ought to do tomorrow. In my view, there have been some remarkable changes in the wider world since 40 years ago, almost a decade before my birth. However, I am not sure how one can make possible connections between these changes and our collective identity, work or strategies.

1-A significant increase in the number of different ways and venues to begin enactment as described by Karl E. Weick for sense-making by individuals and organizations. Today, almost every person is able to say something, wait for a quick reply, and then adjust his or her original say to that reply.

2-A significant marginalization of intellectuals who simply do not understand or pay enough attention to science and technology issues, either in term of processes or products/applications.

3-A significant increase in the number of people who either establish or work for numerous small and medium size enterprises. People who even reject very good offers by the big corporate world and prefer not to sell their whole working life to the corporate world.

4-A significant trust to the think tanks as a bazaar for selling and buying novel and bright policies and a growing awareness of their existence, outlets, and outputs.

5-A significant emphasis on the importance of form along with the importance of content of information packages. Sometimes even a low quality idea in terms of content can sell itself fast and easily if presented through dazzling methods and/or ways, while a brilliant idea, which is being presented poorly, will remain unnoticed for quite a while.

6-A significant increase in the number of rational agents in the world who at least think twice before endorsing and following sentimentalism.

7-A significant increase in accountability and transparency both within for-profit and non-profit organizations and, therefore, a more salient and focused moralization of financial relevant efforts and transactions.

A Letter to Future Generations

2008-04-06T00:06:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago a rather weird game was started in the Persian Blogsphere. The idea was that people, most of them very young, asked each other to write a letter to future generations. Fortunately I was invited too by a friend of mine. In my Persian weblog I tried to write down a number of thoughts:

http://vahidvmotlagh.blogspot.com/2008_03_30_archive.html#389994593189502183

Sometimes it does not make any sense or a difference to get clear about your time horizon and your potential audience, however, I preferred to limit myself to the next one hundred years and, as much as possible, do not differentiate between my would-be readers in any terms.

Below is an English translation of my letter to future generations that I like to share with you all my fellow futurists. Needless to say that any comment is truly welcome!

A Letter to Future Generations

I do not know whether I am still confined to this present hardware within which I am imprisoned now by the time this piece of information has been assimilated, processed and summarized by your local or global intelligent network. But I am almost certain that I will be peering over your shoulders when you begin to read and analyze the content of my words. I will be witnessing, somehow, the moment of linking my consciousness to yours and therefore the synchronicity of my presence with yours.

As long as our existence preceded that of yours we made enormous changes in our immediate environment relative to what others whose existence preceded that of ours did earlier. Most of what we accomplished to change served our selfish desires and were totally in line with objectives such as maximum convenience and minimum hardship. Some of us, as far as we noticed, were concerned about other kinds of existence too; those things that we did not get used to bequeath them a human being title.

When you were not just around to witness yourselves, we could have managed to find a number of solutions, not excellent in terms of your measures though, for many of our life issues and problems. It would have been more reasonable to consult you before any choice and action, however, we had no way but to define and direct our deeds and behavior on the basis of a host of conjectures and hypotheses that were seemingly true in our times about some near and far histories within which we were not present as eyewitnesses. I wonder if you finally have found some ways to discover the nature of these deceased realities. Have you been successful in refuting the too many, and often contradictory, interpretations of our cosmic, earth-bound, and human identity? Do you have, before your eyes and in your hands, an illusion, narrative, and fantasy-free version of reality as much as it concerns our and your existence?

When you were not just around to witness yourselves, we could have managed to draw some lines on Earth's map to determine boundaries. Also, in our times we were used to some rudimentary, apparently foolish and static ways such as electing spoke-persons and representatives for a short term or in some parts of the world until their death, to set laws and better govern our affairs. As for the economy, we were accustomed to a pretty sophisticated establishment, which was based on the exchange and store of financial credits and the amount of our debts to each other. This establishment was, presumably, intended to properly show the value of our efforts and even ourselves. I wonder if you still respect those lines on the map we set, fought for, and even killed each others in vast numbers. Did you eventually figure out some more reasonable and fair ways to guarantee the dynamic and real-time involvement of all sorts of existence, no matter human or non-human, in the real world public decisions and choices? Have you laid the foundations of a system, except for the exchange and store of credits, to efficiently allocate the limited resources to your unlimited needs and wants? Or, on the contrary, there has been a major shift in the world itself and maybe your values system also, so that you already have unlimited resources with limited needs and wants?

When you were not just around to witness yourselves, we were extremely extravagant in our consumption of energy, material, and space. Speaking in all candor, we just could not simply learn and know the correct way of exploiting energy, material, and space to keep our life going on. On the other hand, we faced a strong and perpetual struggle with the time and its many constraints. I wonder if you could accomplish to tame energy, material, space and time as you wish or are still cursed to adapt yourselves to their intact and integral status?

When you were not just around to witness yourselves, there were a few of us who were able and willing to think deep and hard, the rest were simply followers. Those people who were not only intellectually dependent on others but also one might say they were not even independent consciously. Do you still live with an unbalanced minor percent of independent thinkers and too many blindfolded followers? Or have you indeed built a society in which you enjoy a homogenous and uniform mix of informed and independent individuals?

When you were not just around to witness yourselves, we could weather sufferings, hard days, and most agonies in the name of and for the most respected and sought-after word. That was love. Also, we used to begin many of our efforts and movements in the name and for the same word, love. I wonder if you have remained just like us, many steps behind what we describe and cherish as to be love in our literature, art, and poems. Do you taste a genuine love and live with it in a pure contact and everyday life or it is just in your dreams and far away from your hands?

Nature is Nature

2008-03-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

I think that the bio-Luddites usually fail to take into careful consideration that accepting to manipulate the nature ( e.g making new physical/chemical infrastructures) as long as it does not mean manipulating living parts of nature is a semantic paradox. In other words, nature is nature.

Thinking and talking about the frightening consequences of the synthetic DNA technology, for example, is nothing new in the historical context of human civilization. In fact, quite to the contrary, we have done a terrific job to come in terms with, and even forget, many similar doomsday prophecies about shifting from carriages to automobiles, from paper-based communication to paper-less communication, from hierarchical societies to networked societies, from arrows to machine guns, from torches to lamps and etc. The shift from natural to artificial life forms is likely to be in line with these rather old shifts which we finally could get used to them. True, that human beings are facing again a host of unknowns or God knows, but this should not simply be translated to sheer apprehensive thoughts.

To further my point I'd like to refer to an essay, "On Nature", written by J.S Mill published in 1874.

In his well-thought definition,

"Nature is the aggregate of the powers and properties of all things. Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them; including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening; the unused capabilities of causes being as much a part of the idea of Nature as those which take effect… [Nature] is a collective name for all facts, actual and possible; or (to speak more accurately) a name for the mode, partly known to us and partly unknown, in which all things take place."

But certain people tend to perceive nature as "things as they would be, apart from human intervention". If we mean by nature what is happening then we cannot do anything about it, we ourselves are, psychosomatically, part of this happening. But if we mean by nature what is happening without our intervention, then the best course of action for us would be absolute inaction! Hence, I am inclined to conclude that nature is nature.

I have no objection to be anxious about the future consequences of technosciece and even sound some alarms. But I do object to make a meaningless contrast between artificial and natural.

Again to quote Mill:

"Art is as much Nature as anything else; and everything which is artificial is natural - Art has no independent powers of its own: Art is but the employment of the powers of Nature for an end."

You know even the common cause of ethical choice and action is, too, very natural in itself.

By using the term bio-Luddite I simply intend to make strong my point that certain people just feel objections to any change brought about technological progress. They try to keep the status quo as much and as long as they can. No more connotation is intended.

If certain people prefer not to intervene just because it is not yet known the full aspects of genetic manipulations, one should ask in which part of our civilization on this planet we were 100% sure that we did know enough before action?

Accepting nature as it is happening might even be significantly immoral. Consider many people, children and adults, who are daily suffering from this cruel and unjust nature.

I am not prescribing sheer optimistic thought, nonetheless. In my view, the experience of facing biotechnology's novel products is not essentially different than the experience of facing, for example, machine gun manufacturing instead of arrow making. We have learned to adapt ourselves. Mill again:

"The duty of man is to cooperate with the beneficent powers, not by imitating, but by perpetually striving to amend, the course of nature - and bringing that part of it over which we can exercise control more nearly into conformity with a high standard of justice and goodness."

Evidently, in regard to DNA manipulations, the risk profile is salient. However, to understand our willingness to take risks we should adhere to the basic principle of any risk taking decision, that is:

"The more desirable the better consequences of a risk profile relative to the poorer consequences, the more willing you will be to take the risks necessary to get them." (see Smart Choices by Hammond et al)

In some people's mental model, I might guess, the poorer consequences are not appropriately pictured or weighted. To this one can add the second principle of any risk taking actions, that is:

"The more likely the outcomes with better consequences and the less likely the outcomes with poorer consequences, the more desirable the risk profile to you."

Perhaps you are right that the poorer consequences are more likely. But for me the better consequences compensate for even slim probability of reaching to the outcomes with better consequences.