Vol. 1, No. 16 | June
16, 2015 | AAI Foresight
News for the Foresight Community:
> Conference: Wicked Problems Tackled
> New Book: Communities of the Future
> Retrofutures: The WELL and @heaven
> In the News: Mercedes Futurist Eric Larsen
> Mack Report: Preparing Educators to Prepare Students
A Message from Your Editor
With this issue of Foresight
Signals, we are testing a slightly different approach for the stories we
bring you twice a month.
Since launching in November 2014, Foresight Signals has offered you a mix of subject matter in each
issue: research reports on general trends, news about members and activities of
the foresight community, summaries from the AAI Blog and Foresight Reports, and
dispatches from Tim Mack on his
activities for the AAI Foresight consultancy.
We plan to continue sending the newsletter out twice a month
(and it’s still free!), but we will
alternate the content so that the first-of-the-month issue will focus on more future-oriented
reports (trend signals), and the mid-month newsletter will focus on the
foresight community (that’s you!).
Your feedback is always welcome! Send your thoughts, “signals”
(story ideas), and news to me at CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com. —Cindy
Conference: Wicked Problems Tackled
Last week’s World Conference of Futures Research 2015
(June 11-12) tackled “wicked problems” in Turku, Finland. Among the futurists
participating on the program were Peter
Bishop (Teach the Future), Cornelia
Daheim (Future Impacts Consulting), Jerome
C. Glenn (The Millennium Project), Tom
Lombardo (Center for Future Consciousness), and Wendy L. Schultz (Infinite Futures).
Those of us unable to attend could catch a few highlights on
Twitter:
- Record broken at workshop I ran with Hazel Salminen at #futuresconference2015 today: 7 Mins until groups were enacting scenarios! Thank you! (@CorneliaDaheim)
- What a great session by Otso Kautto & co: The Ritual Museum, this connects to the future! Thank You 4 great adventures at #futuresconference2015 (@KPetajajarvi)
- Just got back from a mindblowing #CLA workshop with Sohail Inayatullah at #futuresconference2015 @assoPROSPECTIVE (@YvesPolCABON)
- “Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day. Teach a man how to fish and he will deplete the ocean” —Ugo Bardi, University of Firenze (quoted by Linda Hofman @FoodJuf)
Details: Presentations
and reports from the conference will be posted as soon as possible at the official conference page.
Catch up via Twitter at #futuresconference2015. Images via Twitter, @mdufva and @AFcrew
Signals: futures research,
methodology
New Book: Communities of the Future
Bringing the future from the abstract to the personal, Stephen and Joanne Aguilar-Millan have deployed their foresight expertise to
examine prospects for five communities in rural Suffolk County, England, in the
year 2030.
Communities of the
Future: Tales From Suffolk In 2030 ($13.49; published June 1, 2015) probes
the specific challenges that each of these communities faces and outlines
distinct scenarios—one positive and one negative—that hopefully may inspire families,
neighbors, and community leaders to chart a preferred course.
Stephen is director of research for the European Futures Observatory, and Joanne is a
science-fiction writer and children’s novelist.
Signals: alternative
scenarios, communities, rural life
Retrofutures: The WELL and @heaven
Social networking began on the Internet before there was a standard
name for either phenomenon. Today, online message boards and chat rooms still
exist in the age of Twitter and Facebook, thanks to a paradigm pioneered by
Silicon Valley’s WELL (“Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link”").
In 1994, Stanford futurist Tom Mandel changed everything when his “Local Bug Report” thread on
the WELL transformed from a general discussion on a current public-health issue
to a publicly shared personal journey through illness to his gradual death from
lung cancer. In a new book titled @heaven:
The Online Death of a Cybernetic Futurist, early WELL denizen Kim Hastreiter, editor in chief of online
magazine Paper, presents the
months-long transcript of Mandel’s bug reports.
Hastreiter recalls the last post of that thread in her interview
for Paper: “It said something like, ‘Tom passed away this morning. Nana was at
his side and music was playing. This topic is now frozen. And if you want to
get in touch with Tom you can reach him at Mandel@heaven.org.’”
Read “New Book
@heaven Explores the Internet’s
Earliest Social Network and the Incredible Story That Unfolded Within It,” Paper (May 25, 2015). Order @heaven at orbooks.com.
Signals: cybernetic culture, Internet
history, networks
In the News: Mercedes Futurist Eric Larsen
Like many carmakers, Mercedes is pursuing driverless
vehicles and has already tested driverless trucks on the Autobahn, reports Eric Larsen, head of research in
society and technology for Mercedes-Benz, in an interview for the New York Times technology blog Bits. But Americans won’t give up their
cars, he predicts.
In the U.S. market, family values are still very important
among Mercedes’ affluent customers, Larsen says. Millennials with the means and
desire to own big homes will need to drive farther for all the amenities they’ll
demand for their kids.
“The solution is … privately shared vehicles,” Larsen says. “We
have a business called Boost, where minivans drive children after school. They
are like school buses, but door to door, and parents can track them with a
phone app. They have a concierge as well as a driver, because the driver can’t
leave the bus and walk the kid right to the door. A 7-year-old needs that. In
this case, we’re selling a mobility service rather than a product.”
Read: “A
Futurist Looks at Where Cars Are Going” by Quentin Hardy, Bits (June 10, 2015).
Signals:
automobiles, families, suburbs, transportation
Mack Report: Preparing Educators to Prepare Students
In a special issue on the future of work in the Career Planning and Adult Development
Journal, AAI Foresight managing principal Timothy C. Mack offers an overview of five drivers change for which
future educators must prepare learners (tomorrow’s citizens, consumers, and
workforces):
- information technologies so ubiquitous that information becomes a wall of white noise;
- environmental change, including compromised quality and supply of resources such as water;
- lack of innovation toward workable solutions to complex problems;
- the rise of machine intelligence that could introduce greater complexity to human problem solving; and
- diminishing resources for solving problems, even when we can envision solutions that would work.
Of the various foresight tools available, the study of weak signals is one that Mack
particularly recommends for educators. Weak signals are essentially early clues
to new forces of change, often discovered outside of your principal field of
study, and may indicate either potential threats or opportunities. Finding them
involves expanding your network of sources for ideas, including listening to
naysayers.
Other futurists contributing to the issue, guest-edited by Helen Harkness (Career Design
Associates), include Andy Hines
(University of Houston, Graduate Program in Foresight), Gary Marx (Center for Public Outreach), Aubrey de Grey (SENS Foundation), and Edward Gordon (Imperial Consulting), and Deborah Westphal (Toffler Associates).
Reference: “Challenges
Facing Education, Training and Career Development in the Future,” Timothy C.
Mack, Career Planning and Adult
Development Journal (Summer 2015), Career Planning & Adult Development
Network, www.careernetwork.org,
published by Richard Knowdell.
Signals: education,
futures methodology, learning
Send us your signals!
News about your work and other tips are welcome, as is feedback on Foresight Signals. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting
editor.
Want more signals from AAI Foresight? Check out the blog! Log in to add comments.
Feel free to share Foresight Signals with your networks and
to submit any stories, tips, or “signals” of trends emerging on the horizon
that we can share with other stakeholders and the foresight community.
© 2015 AAI Foresight
Foresight Signals is a publication of AAI
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