Vol.
3, No. 3 | January 2017 | AAI
Foresight
Annual Reports from the Foresight Community
In
our last edition, ForesightSignals
reported
on the year’s highlights at our parent company, AAI Foresight Inc.,
and invited futurists and foresight professionals everywhere to
report on their activities as well. Here is an overview foresight
accomplishments in 2016 and a preview of 2017.
World Futures Studies Federation
Submitted
by Victor Vahidi Motti
Since
its inception nearly five decades ago, WFSF has published a magazine
that has undergone several changes of name and style. The latest
version of the WFSF magazine, Human
Futures,
debuted in December 2016 as an interactive online publication.
As
president and editor Jennifer
Gidley
explains, “In calling our magazine ‘HUMAN FUTURES’ we
distinguish the World Futures Studies Federation from futures
organisations with national or regional interests, and from those
that emphasise high-tech, commercial and/or corporate futures. The
title also counters an all-too-common media trivialisation of futures
studies.”
Contact
Victor Vahidi Motti, executive board member, World Futures Studies
Federation, www.wfsf.org
.
The Millennium Project
Submitted
by Jerome C. Glenn
The
Millennium Project celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2016 and
continued to grow. With new Nodes in Armenia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia,
the group now comprises 60 Nodes.
In
2016, the group produced three Global Work/Tech 2050 Scenarios;
conducted a NATO workshop and report on pre-detection and prevention
of future forms of lone-wolf terrorists; published in Persian/Farsi
the five-volume transition publication in Iran of Futures
Research Methodology 3.0;
translated the Executive Summary of the 2015-16State of the Future
into Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, and Urdu;
and, for the seventh year, produced tele-teaching futures concepts
and methods for Azerbaijan State Economic University.
In
2017, The Millennium Project plans national long-range strategy
workshops using the Global Work/Tech 2050 Scenarios; State of the
Future Indexes for Pakistan and Mexico; a national collective
intelligence system for Egypt; a Spanish translation of the Futures
Research Methodology;
online training for the use of the Global Futures Intelligence
System; and the Millennium Project annual meeting, to be held October
in Peru.
Houston Foresight
Submitted
by Andy Hines
The
Houston Foresight program continues to grow, reaching 44 active
students in the fall 2016 semester—its largest class since 1998.
The program launched two sponsored research projects in 2016
involving teams of faculty and students. Both involved horizon
scanning and scenario planning—one for the U.S. Forest Service [Ed.
note: see David Bengston’s report below] and the other for Dubai’s
Future Foresight Foundation.
Houston
Foresight’s annual spring gathering explored the future of
blockchain for higher education, and students from the program
presented at the World Future Society conference last summer in
Washington, D.C.
Houston
Foresight also began a co-publishing arrangement with MISC magazine in collaboration with Idea Couture. Finally, the week-long
certificate course passed a milestone of having graduated over 500
students since its inception in 2009.
Contact
Andy Hines, program coordinator, Houston Foresight,
ahines@central.uh.edu
or http://houstonfutures.org/
Teach the Future
Submitted
by Peter C. Bishop
Teachthe Future is about to complete its second year of operation. The first
accomplishment this year was to compile and release a Library
of more than 60 activities, lessons, units, and courses for teaching
the future.
Katie King, deputy director, conducted a number of student workshops on the
future this year in Pittsburgh, the Bay Area, and the Houston region.
She describes them on the Teach the Future blog.
Peter
Bishop traveled to Beijing in November to participate in the 4th Informal
Working Group for the OECD Education2030 project,
which is developing a list of competencies that will help students
be successful in the 21st century. The OECD staff accepted Dr.
Bishop’s recommendation that foresight be included in that list for
the first time.
Finally,
Teach the Future is planning to conduct a number of student workshops
and camps on the future in the Houston region next summer.
TechCast Global
Submitted
by William E. Halal
TechCast
Global is launching generation 8.0 of its acclaimed website with
exciting new features and more membership choices. Members can now
Ask Our Experts for advice on tough issues, and Strategic Tools help
them conduct strategic planning with TechCast’s forecasts.
Partners
Hassan
Syed
and Bill
Halal
are developing customized versions of TechCast for corporations,
regions (Southeast Asia with Singapore), and cities. As opposed to
the worldwide forecasts in TechCast Global, TechCast Local adapts the
forecasts and tools for local use by communities.
Future Impacts
Submitted
by Cornelia Daheim
Some
recent highlights from Future Impacts include projects for customers
such as Arval, Aktion Mensch, European Parliament, European
Commission Joint Research Centre, EnBW, Evonik, Hermes, and the
Microfinance CEO Forum.
Currently,
Future Impacts is pursuing the future of work, jobs, and skills; the
future of energy; the future of cities and regional development; and
inclusive futures. The organization has realized new approaches such
as agile scenario development, a serious game on disruption, and
experiencing the future in scenario enactments.
Among
Future Impacts publications in 2016 are a German publication on thefuture of work which was based on the Delphi-study by The Millennium Project, with
Ole
Wintermann
from Bertelsmann Foundation, now translated into Korean by the
Korean Labor Institute; a study on “Emerging Practices inForesight” with Sven
Hirsch, and developing
the first “Foresight Competency Model” for the Association of Professional Futurists, with Andy
Hines
of the University of Houston, Luke
van der Laan
of the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, and Jay
Gary
of Oral Roberts University.
Future
Impacts’ ongoing project on Megatrends for Policy-Making supports the team from the European Commission Joint Research
Centre in the Steering Committee. The report from the last workshop
may be found on the Policy Lab Blog.
Among
the events Future Impacts is planning for 2017 are:
Jan.
26: keynote on the Future of Work
in the Bavarian Parliament.
March
8: panel discussion on smart cities for Creative Business Week in Munich.
June
12-13: keynote and workshop on Work 2050 at the FFRC Futures Conference in Turku, Finland.
June
15-17: foresight gaming workshop at the Design - Develop - TransformConference in Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium.
Contact
Cornelia Daheim, founder and director, Future Impacts,
daheim@future-impacts.de
or www.future-impacts.de
Global Foresight Books
In his January 2017 publisher’s
note, Michael Marien reports that entries on the GlobalForesight Books website had been suspended since 2015 as he developed
The Security & Sustainability Guide: 1500 Organizations
Pursuing Essential Global Goals. View a PDF of the August 2016
interim draft here.
He writes that a new and expanded draft will be available this
spring.
“Books are important, but the
remarkable proliferation of largely international organizations
pursuing sustainability and sustainable development, as well as
security, is even more important,” Marien writes.
Contact Michael Marien,
www.globalforesightbooks.org/bio.html
Thomas
Lombardo, director, Center for Future Consciousness, Wisdom Page, and the online Journal Wisdom and the Future
At
the end of 2015, I published an article, “Science Fiction: TheEvolutionary Mythology of the Future,”
in a special issue of Journal
of Futures Studies
on science fiction and foresight, which I co-edited with Jose
Ramos.
In July, I significantly updated my list of Evolving All-Time BestScience Fiction Novels, including roughly 50 recently read books from the early years
(1870 to 1940) of science fiction.
During
the year, I published five issues of my online journal Wisdom and theFuture, which includes a series of short philosophy articles in the July
issue as educational links for my forthcoming book (see below) and online course
Future Consciousness as well as an in-depth book review of Rick
Smyre
and Neil
Richardsonʼs
new book, Preparingfor a Future the Doesnʼt Exist – Yet.
In
April, I was interviewed by TheAge of Reflection, an Iranian journal on social sciences, culture, and politics.
In
the summer, I secured a contract with Changemakers Books to publish FutureConsciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution
(see below). In advance publicity for the book, I published
“Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution: AnIntroduction”in the December issue of World
Future Review
and gave a presentation on the book at the November meeting of the
World Future Society’s Arizona Chapter. In conjunction with the bookʼs publication, an online course
aligning with the book will be accessible on both the Center for
Future Consciousness and Wisdom Page websites.
Coming
full circle, as the year drew to a close, the editor of Changemakers
Books agreed to also publish my book trilogy, Science
Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future.
A comprehensive history weaving together of intellectual and cultural
trends and futurist thought with the evolution of science fiction,
Volume
One: Prometheus to Star Maker
is nearing completion, with an anticipated publishing date within a
year.
Contact
Tom Lombardo, Center for Future Consciousness, tlombardo1@cox.net or www.centerforfutureconsciousness.com/index.html.
David N. Bengston, environmental futurist, USDA Forest Service
I
work in a small futures research unit at the USDA Forest Service,
Northern Research Station.
The Strategic Foresight Group was started a few years ago and is the
only futures research unit in Forest Service R&D.
A
critical part of my foresight journey in 2016 has been working with
several outstanding academic and consulting futurists on a number of
projects: Scenarios exploring the future of forests in North America
for the North American Forest Commission with Jonathan
Peck
and Bob
Olson
of the Institute for Alternative Futures; the futures of wood-basednanomaterials with Jim
Dator
and Aubrey
Yee
of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies at the University
of Hawaii; explorations of several emerging issues and trends in natural
resources using Joel
Barker’s
Implications Wheel® and exceptional training from Jim
Schreier;
and an ongoing project to create a horizon scanning system for theForest Service under the insightful guidance of Andy
Hines
of the Foresight Graduate Program at the University of Houston.
We
have several projects planned for the coming year that will continue
to bring foresight to natural resource policy and decision making.
Freija van Duijne, president, Dutch Future Society
I
have been doing two major projects in the last year. The first is for
the National Energy Dialogue about the transition to a low-carbon
economy. I have been doing a scenario-based conversation to get a
systemic perspective about the transition and to discuss different
governance perspectives.
Second,
I was in charge of a process to build a strategic knowledge and
innovation agenda on food and nature for the Ministry of Economic
Affairs. We designed a strategic dialogue process to identify
long-term research and innovation needs to address societal
challenges, focusing on the role of the government in research and
innovation.
I
have now left the Ministry to work as an independent strategic
foresight professional. This enables me to do much more of this kind
of work, while being in different organisations which keeps me fresh
and full of ideas.
Jose Cordeiro, visiting research fellow, IDE-JETRO, Tokyo
I
plan to focus most of my futures work in really futurist areas like
the Singularity, transhumanism, immortality, cryonics, space travel,
and exponsential technologies, and I invite anyone interested in
these areas to contact me.
I
am also organizing the first International Longevity and
Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid, to be held May 26-28. Visit
http://internationalcryonicssummit.com/
Sample New and Forthcoming Books
Spring Training for the Major Leagues of Government by
Frank
McDonough (2016),
published by Koehler Books. Brian, a new high-level government
appointee, receives guidance for new situations he encounters as a
senior government official. Chapters address forecasting, why
promising technologies may not advance at all, and tips for success
during a presidential transition.
The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream
(2016)
by Amy
Webb (founder,
the Future Today Institute), published by Public Affairs. Excerpt:
“By the end of 2015, the FAA was estimating that a million drones
would be sold and given as holiday presents that year—but neither
the FAA nor any other government agency had decided on regulations
for how ordinary Americans could use them. ... Drones were a fringe
technology barreling toward the mainstream, and a lack of planning
and foresight pitted dozens of organizations against each other.”
The Veil of Circumstance: Technology, Values, Dehumanization and theFuture of Economics and Politics (2016)
by Joergen
Oerstroem Moeller,
published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies), Excerpt: “Over the next fifteen years, new or accelerating trends
in debt, demography, urbanization, global savings, innovation,
productivity and energy will transform the global power structure,
with unprecedented speed, magnitude and impact.” [Ed. note: Moeller
also published a Foresight Report for AAI Foresight, “ForecastingAfter Brexit,”
and regularly contributes to the Huffington Post.]
Future Consciousness: The Path to Purposeful Evolution (2017)
by Thomas
Lombardo,
published by Changemakers Books, Excerpt: “How do we create a good future? This deceptively simple
question is the central challenge of human life. Moreover, as a key
thesis of this book, the question brings to center stage the most
distinctive and empowering capacity of the human mind: to imagine,
think about, and purposefully pursue desirable and preferable
futures.”
Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial EmotionalIntelligence (2017)
by Richard
Yonck,
published by Arcade Publishing, Excerpt: “Now we find ourselves entering an astonishing new era,
an era in which we are beginning to imbue our technologies with the
ability to read, interpret, replicate, and potentially even
experience emotions themselves. This is being made possible by a
relatively new branch of artificial intelligence known as affective
computing. A powerful and remarkable technology, affective computing
is destined to transform our lives and our world over the coming
decades.”
Note from AAI Foresight and Foresight Signals
The
above represents only a fraction of the ongoing work of foresight
professionals. Please
continue to send news of your activities to Foresight
Signals throughout
the year! Best wishes to all.
Tim
Mack, managing principal, and
Cindy
Wagner, consulting editor.
__________
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.
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.
__________
©
2016 AAI
Foresight
Foresight
Signals is a publication of AAI
Foresight
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