Foresight Education & Research Net - Recently Updated Pages

Volunteers

JohnMSmart — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:37:30 CST

2010 FERN Volunteers
The following foresight students, educators, researchers, employers, alums, and advocates are donating their time this year to help with FERN administration, fundraising, promotion and projects. Volunteers are the heart of any organization. We sincerely thank our volunteers for their passion, insight, energy, and devotion to the cause of foresight advancement.

Sean Daken,Grad Student, U. Houston, Futures Studies in Commerce; SF Bay Area, CA USA

Garry Golden, Grad,U. Houston Futures Studies; Adj. Faculty, Futures Studies in Commerce, U. Houston; Brooklyn, NY USA
Jeremy Mancuso, Grad, U. Houston Futures Studies; Content Dir., Shaping Tomorrow Foresight Network; Houston, TX USA

John M.Smart, Grad, U. Houston Futures Studies, Dir, Accel. Studies Fdn, Adj. Faculty, U. Adv. Tech; Mountain View, CA USA
Simeon Spearman, Grad, U. Houston Futures Studies; Formerly at Social Technologies Foresight Consulting; Atlanta, GA USA
Frank Spencer, Grad, Regent U. Strat. Foresight; Co-Founder, KedgeForward Foresight Consulting; Savannah, GA USA

More volunteer names to be added here in March.

Interested in being a FERN Volunteer?
Are you a team-oriented doer with a great attitude? Are you interested in working with a team of considerate and friendly futurists to supporting foresight education and research? Want an opportunity to take the baton and do something to advance global foresight culture for humanity? If you think you can commit 60-120+ hours this year (roughly 5-10 hours a month) over the next 12 months to work with other great folks in FERN management or on your favorite FERN project, please email johnsmart-at-accelerating-dot-org. We'd love to hear from you!

Directors

JohnMSmart — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:57:32 CST

2010 FERN Directors
The following early and mid-career foresight leaders are donating their time this year to help with FERN management, projects, and volunteer supervision. We thank them for their passion, insight, and efforts in advancing foresight education and research.

Kristin Alford, Grad, Swinburne U.; Faculty, U. Adelaide; Exec Dir, Bridge8 Foresight Consulting.
Jessica Charlesworth,
Jake Dunagan, Grad, U. Hawaii, PhD in Alt. Futures; Research Dir, Institute for the Future
Garry Golden, Grad, U. Houston; Adjunct Faculty, Futures Studies in Commerce, U. Houston.
Alireza Hejazi, Founder, Iranian Futurists Academy; Scholar, Malek-e Ashtar U.
Venessa Miemis, Student, New Media & Foresight, New School, NY; Blog, Emergent by Design.
Scott Reif, Grad, U. Houston, MS in Futures Studies; Freelance Writer & Futurist.
John M.Smart, Grad, U. Houston, Dir, Accel. Studies Fdn, Adjunct Faculty, U. Advancing Tech. (johnsmart-at-accelerating-dot-org)
Frank Spencer, Grad, Regent U.; Co-Founder, KedgeForward Foresight Consulting. KedgeForward (fwspencer4-at-gmail-dot-com)
Sofya Yampolsky, Grad, Singularity University GSP09; Student, New Media & Foresight, New School, NY; Blog, The New Futurists

Interested in being a FERN Director?
Are you a doer and leader? Do you have any academic or professional training in foresight? Do you have a passion for improving foresight education or research for academic, institutional, or corporate clients? Can you commit 24+ hours this year (roughly 2 hours a month) over the next 12 months to work with otherson your favorite FERN project, and perhaps supervise foresight student volunteers? If so, email johnsmart-at-accelerating-dot-org. We'd love to hear from you.

Futurepedia

JohnMSmart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:02:25 CST

Futurepedia will be a public wiki in many languages that covers a topic Wikipedia doesn't allow--thinking and writing about the future. We envision this as a major advance to global foresight culture, something all the world's citizens should have. We've reserved Futurepedia.org for this, and are just waiting for volunteers to help us find sponsors. Perhaps you?

At Futurepedia you will find structured speculations on possible, probable, and preferable (3P's) futures in science, technology, environmental, economic, political, and social (STEEPS) domains. As in Wikipedia we will use MediaWiki software, and all material will be shared in a Creative Commons share-alike or GNU Free Documentation License.

As in Scholarpedia, the first section of each page will be written by a relevant foresight scholar, beginning with links to good online pages (Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, etc.) on the history and present status of the topic, followed by a brief (typically 3-5 pages) scholarly article on the possible, probable, and preferable futures of the topic. This foresight article will be written in Schools of Thought (SoT) format, where each major SoT is described in a few summary paragraphs, and references some of the leading thinkers advancing the school, and supporting publications. These sections will be anonymously peer-reviewed for reliability and will be citable as peer-reviewed publications, and yet will also be continually revised and improved, as with any wiki page. Also as in Scholarpedia, every page will have a curator, typically the page author, who maintains the page for relevance, accuracy, readability, and reliability

As in Wikipedia, the remaining sections of every page will be publicly editable by anyone who creates a RealName account, to capture the collective foresight of our global community of foresight thinkers, professional and lay.

A well-developed Futurepedia should have at least the following sections, among others:

1. Education. Links to frameworks, courses, and resources for professionals in Foresight Education.
2. Research. Links to pre-print communities, methods, and tools used by professionals in Foresight Research.
3. Employment. Descriptions of Foresight Employers and Jobs available in major cities around the world.
4. Encyclopedia. Outlines of Possible, Probable, and Preferable Futures in a wide range of STEEPS topics.
5. Polling/Delphi/Prediction Market. Tools for capturing the collective wisdom of the Futurepedia-using crowd.

Education, Research, and Employment are being presently being addressed as FERN projects, and hosted on this FERN wiki. See links above.

The Encyclopedia portion will need both a substantial resources commitment ($500K+ in a Foundation Fund to provide $50K of annual supporting funds) and a team of passionate Volunteers (including you?) to launch this ambitious project. There are a number of small futures wikis that have been started in recent years. Partnering with one of these might be a great early strategy, if they have the same vision. Polling/Delphi/PM's might best be done later, partnering with a professional in the space, such as Intrade.com.

Are you interested in Volunteering to help us define Futurepedia better, and in helping us fundraise for a Futurepedia Foundation Fund? Email John Smart, we'd love to talk to you.

As soon as we have a few Futurepedia Volunteers listed below, we can take next steps on this exciting project together!

Online and Part-Time Doctorates in Foresight

JohnMSmart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:00:24 CST

Continuing to build this list and its subpages is a priority, but in order to do so it needs both a Director lead (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and a Volunteer lead (to serve as volunteer team leader). We'd love to work with you. Email a FERN director that you'd like to work with (seeFERN home page), and let's begin.

A. Full-Time Foresight Doctoral Programs
Five full-time (residency) doctoral programs in foresight are available globally, most in the English language. See Foresight and Futures Studies - Global Academic Programs for details. These need to be better described, promoted, connected and supported by FERN.

B. Online and Part-Time Doctorates in Foresight – English Language
A growing number of universities have reputable online or part-time doctoral programs, as well as known foresight faculty at the university. Such programs are ideal for a thesis in foresight practice, foresight education, or foresight theory that can be done by working professionals with a masters degree. Online and part-time programs are preferred perhaps ten to one over full-time (residency) doctorates for their convenience. These programs also need to be better described, promoted, connected and supported by FERN.

Online and part-time doctoral programs can be divided into three categories for our purposes. Category one is online and part-time doctoral programs at universities with known foresight faculty, publishing in primary foresight specialties in primary foresight journals. These are listed first below, alpha by school name. Known foresight faculty, which may or may not be the same in department that offers the degree, are also listed. Category two is programs that have known faculty publishing in secondary foresight specialties. These faculty are also listed when known. Category three lists programs at universities that may have foresight faculty (unknown), alpha by school name. For the US, only universities with regional accreditation or higher are listed. The faculty and publications at all of these schools need to be further investigated and described by FERN volunteers. Any takers?

Additional Annotations (When Known):

Name and type of degree (PhD, DBA, EdD, etc.).
Social rank of the university (five star is top 20%, one star is lowest 20%).
Course-intensive, research, and publication doctorate options.
Average and range of time to completion in years.
Average and range of tuition costs, and scholarship options.
Physical classroom meeting options or requirements,
Low-residency requirements, for online programs.

Category 1. Online and Part-Time Doctoral Programs with Known Faculty in Primary Foresight Specialties
This category includes only programs that have resident faculty who have published primary foresight articles, and have experience in primary foresight specialties. So far, we've discovered the following programs. Let us know if you find more!

Current Programs (see also associated Details Pages)
1. Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia)*** [See our Queensland U. of Tech Details Page]

Foresight Faculty: Sohail Inayatullah

2. Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA, USA)***

Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership ($54,000 in 2010)
EdD in Distance Education ($43,000 in 2010)
EdD in Higher Education Leadership
Foresight Faculty: Jay Gary, School of Global Leadership and Entrepreneurship
Ecumenical Christian university.

3. Swinburne University of Technology (Hawthorn, Australia)***

Research Doctorates in Business, Technology, Design, and Sciences($60,000 in 2010)
Foresight Faculty: Peter Hayward, Faculty of Business and Enterprise

4. University of Manchester (Manchester, UK)**** [See our U. Manchester Details Page]

DBA in Business Administration ($64,000 in 2010)
Foresight Faculty: Ian Miles, Luke Georghiou, Jennifer Harper, Mike Keenan, and Rafael Popper.
They do governmental and corporate tech foresight work. See their The Handbook of Technology Foresight, 2008.

5. University of Stellenbosch (Stellenbosch, South Africa)*** [See our U. Stellenbosch Details Page]

Foresight Faculty: Andre Roux

6. University of the Sunshine Coast (Sunshine Coast, Australia)** [See our U. of the Sunshine Coast Details Page]

Foresight Faculty: Sohail Inayatullah

Pending Programs (check with the university to find out their latest status):
1. Tamkang University (Taipei, Taiwan)*** [See our Tamkang U. Program Details Page]

PhD in Strategic Foresight / Futures Studies.

Category 2. Online and Part-Time Doctoral Programs With Known Faculty in Secondary Foresight Specialties
There are no known primary foresight professionals at these universities. where one may do secondary foresight work of various types.

1. Leeds Metropolitan University (Leeds, UK)*** [See our Leeds Metropolitan U. Details Page]

Graham May was a primary foresight faculty, running an MS in Foresight but he left in 2004 when the MS was discontinued.
Jeff Gold is an HR and leadership specialist. Verne Wheelwright and Pero Micic) have done research PhDs in foresight under him.

2. Pepperdine U. Ed.D. in Organizational Change (Los Angeles, CA, USA) ($135,000)

A foresight-oriented title for this doctorate, but no known primary foresight faculty (needs to be investigated).

3. University of Plymouth/Planetary Collegium (Plymouth, UK)

An art/new media oriented online university. Natascha Vita-More is doing her PhD there.

Category 3. Select Online and Part-Time Doctoral Programs that May Have Foresight Faculty (Unknown)
These programs are all accredited by one of the "Top Six" accrediting agencies, but have no known affiliation with foresight professionals in either primary or secondary categories. Particularly useful degree choices in which you could undertake a foresight oriented thesis would be Education (PhD or EdD in Education, etc.), for foresight educators and academic futurists, or Business (PhD or DBA in Bus. Admin.) for corporate and institutional futurists. Prices listed below are very approximate, with the year last assessed. Your employer may pay a portion of the tuition, and scholarship/fee reduction applications are sometimes available.

1. Anderson University ($22,000 in 2009)**

Ecumenical Christian university.
Most inexpensive of the third-tier schools.

2. Argosy University ($49,000 in 2009)**
3. Capella University ($64,000 to $82,000 in 2009)***
4. Fielding Graduate University ($85,200 to $127,800 in 2009)***
5. New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, NM)***

PhD in Education ($14,000 In-State, $39,000 Out-of-State)
Possible Foresight Specialties: Curric. & Instruction - Foresight Education; Ed. Tech - Foresight Distance Learning.
New class (cohort) admitted every even year (2010, 2012, etc.)
Low-residency requirement: Two weeks each Summer for the first three years.
Application Deadline: Jan 15, 2010, 2012, etc.

6. Northcentral University ($27,00 to $42,000 in 2010)**

Inexpensive third-tier school with many students.

7. Nova Southeastern University (Fort Lauderdale-Davie, Florida, USA)***

EdD in Education ($39,000 in 2009)
Possible Foresight Specialties: Instructional Tech and Distance Education

8. Union Institute and University (Cincinnati, OH and Sacramento, CA, USA)***

PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies ($70,000 in 2007)
Possible Foresight Specialties: Union lets you pick your own thesis committee, even with foresight faculty from outside the university.

9. University of Phoenix (Many locations in US and globally))**

Ed.D. in Education ($73,010 in 2009)
Possible Foresight Specialties: Educational Leadership, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Technology

10. Walden University (45 locations in US and global)***

PhD in Education ($60,000 to $80,000 in 2010)
Possible Foresight Specialties: Curriculum & Instruction - Foresight Ed; Self-Designed Option)
The Self-Designed Option could be tailored to specialize in Foresight Education.
Walden claims to have the largest number of online PhDs in Education.

To Add:

Boston University,

Indiana State University, PhD Technology Management

Walden University, PhD Applied Management and Decision Sciences

Texas Tech U, PhD Technical Communications and Rhetoric

University of the Rockies, PychD Executive Coaching, Organizational Leadership.

For Further Research:
Carnegie Fdn's List of 282 US PhD Programs, in three classes (Humanities & Social Sciences, STEM, & Professional)
DegreeInfo Distance Learning is the oldest and largest distance learning community on the Web. Post a question there and you'll get great advice.
Wikipedia's Global List of DBA Programs. Which of these are online and part-time is not clear.
DegreeInfo has a partial list of 45 UK universities that offer research doctorates.
A 2006 comparison of some programs: Doctoral Studies by the Internet.
A comparison of doctoral costs for the EdD for for some of these.
USN&WR ranks 12,000 full-time schools and 270 full-time doctoral programs, but not online programs.
For the UK's 114 full-time universities, see the League Tables for rankings.
Australian-Universities.com has a ranking of 22 Australian universities, some with online programs.
OEDB ranks 44 US online schools, but their US list is not complete, and has no international schools.
GuidetoOnlineSchools ranks 25 online schools, and gives some NCES stats.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) compiles aggregate stats about US online schools.
See NCES's Postsecondary Institutions & Price of Attendance in the US, 2008 for some aggregate data.

Key Questions to Ask in Evaluating These Programs
If you are considering an online or part-time doctorate to advance your career as a foresight professional, answering the following questions will be helpful. Questions are followed by a list of programs to consider, in three categories.

1. Where Do You and Will You Primarily Work?
Where will you primarily use your foresight doctorate? The three main areas are Practice (applied research doctorate), Education (educational doctorate), or Academics (basic research doctorate). The older you are, the more likely it is that you’ll get a terminal degree to start or supplement work in either foresight Practice for a client (most common) or foresight Education, teaching for a school, university or company (second most common). Academic foresight (least common) is also very important to advancing and grounding the field, but is usually done via residency-based doctorates, and is mainly a young person’s game. Nevertheless, even doctorates for academic purposes can be done online by mid-career or older working professionals, particularly if you'd be satisfied using it to do basic research (as well as teaching) at a lower-tier university. FERN seeks to help students and educators doing doctoral work and instruction all three of these areas.

2. Who are your Primary Clients and Community?
What clients and community will you serve most with your degree? For foresight Practice (applied research), typical clients can be grouped into four main communities, Science and Technology, Business, Policy, and Society. The last is a catch-all for a range of client types. Some clients span several or all of these communities. Foresight Education and Academics (basic research) are small enough that they can be treated as their own unique communities.

3. What Foresight-Oriented Thesis Do You Wish to Do?
Think first of your primary clients and community when you develop your thesis. It should serve their needs as powerfully as possible, while also building on your unique skills and interests. For a serious foresight thesis, you will also want a foresight practitioner, educator, or academic on your thesis committee, preferably as the chair, your primary advisor and sponsor. This person or persons will be your mentor(s), shepherding your unique intellectual contributions to foresight practice, education, or academics. Having foresight faculty in the same department that offers the degree is ideal. They can usually be your thesis chair. Failing that, or in addition, having foresight faculty from any department at the university should allow them to be on your thesis committee.

4. Do You Want a Course-Intensive, Research, or Publication Doctorate?
Course-Intensive online and part-time doctorates are by far the most common. You have to take a number of courses leading up to your thesis. The University of Phoenix is an example of this type. Some courses will be valuable, but others may be a waste of time, relative to your particular needs and interests. These doctorates typically take 3-4 years full-time and 6-8 half-time. Research doctorates are less common, and are primarily seen in Europe, Australia and South Africa. You do your own independent education, research, and thesis work, under faculty supervision. Required courses are generally self-paced, not instructional. They are faster to complete, typically taking 2-3 years full-time and 4-6 half-time, and often cost substantially less. Like the self-paced classes in college, which many start but few complete, research doctorates are best for self-motivated people who know just what they want. Publication doctorates are the least common. If you’ve already published extensive peer-reviewed work, typically six articles or more, and are an established expert in a field, you can bundle these articles up, do a bit more work, and get doctoral credit in just 1 year full-time or 2 years half-time. For those seeking to advance their careers in foresight practice, education, or non-tenure-track academic research, the Research and, where applicable, Publication doctorates are excellent alternatives to the Course-Intensive doctorate.

5. Do you Want a Practitioner-Oriented or Academic-Oriented Doctorate?
This distinction is less clear today than in the past, but it still has some value. Practitioner-oriented doctorates, DBAs and EdD's are available through business schools and education departments vs. PhDs, or academic-oriented doctorates. The PhD stresses research over application, and the DBA and EdD industry application over research. The PhD is generally more rigorous than the DBA or EdD, but not always, and not at all institutions. You can teach at the university with both, and the DBA or EdD usually have less of a research component (e.g., a DBA thesis is aproximately 50K words, a PhD thesis 100K words), but not always. The DBA and EdD are weak for tenure-track academics, but academic prestige may not matter for those getting their doctorate for practice or educational purposes. The US Dept of Ed. and the National Science Foundation recognize the DBA and EdD as "equivalent" to the PhD, so the distinction is more about process and social perception than it is about techical use. A DBA or EdD from a good university will still open doors for teaching and greatly increase your expertise. If your primary motivation is to add original thought to a particular area of academic study, the PhD would be preferred. If your primary motivation is to add original thought to an area of professional practice, a professional degree (DBA, EdD, etc.) might be preferred, and would be easier to complete as well. In practice, most people and clients will never know the difference, so it is a personal choice.

6. How Much Accreditation and University Reputation Do You Need?
For accreditation, regional accreditation (RA) is, counterintuitively, preferable to national accreditation (NA). The Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), a national accreditation body for online universities, accepts lots of low-rank universities, so credits from DETC schools don't always transfer to RA schools. As a result, we do not list DETC accredited schools. For reputation, if you are seeking an Academic doctorate, pay the most attention to social rankings. For an Education doctorate, any RA school will be sufficient. For a Practice doctorate, any accredited institution is sufficient, but higher rankings have more social significance. If pursuing a doctorate outside your own country, school ranking is less important. Nevertheless, we still recommend avoiding the lowest third or quarter of accredited online programs in any country, by ranking. Reward institutional performance! Comprehensive online university rankings have yet to emerge, so you'll have to do this ranking work yourself. In general, an online doctorate from a school that also has a high-ranked, full-time residency-based university is ideal, if you can find one. Boston University is perhaps the only US example at present. At the same time, several mostly-online and part-time degree universities, like Nova Southestern, Regent, Walden, and Union, are increasingly gaining reputations for excellence. Some, like the University of Phoenix, have mixed quality reputations, so buyer beware. The University of Phoenix enrolled about 225,000 students in 2008, about ten times the number of most of the others on this list, which typically range from 10-30K students

7. How Important is In-Person Student-Teacher and Student-Student Contact?
If regular in-person contact is particularly important and/or motivating to you, a part-time, course-based university, like the University of Phoenix, should be high on your list. Such programs offer weekly physical classroom meetings. Such meetings may be optional, but you are still often expected to attend virtually at a particular time, or at least participate in classroom discussions online. The other end of the spectrum is an entirely online, research based doctorate, where you travel once or twice to meet your thesis chair in person, and do the rest all on your own. A third alternative, and for many a happy medium, is programs with a "low-residency" requirement, where students are expected to visit the university two weeks or less each year over the first one to three years, with the rest of the program done online. We suggest that one week of residency a year should be an expected part of every online doctorate. Low-residency programs require a extra work from the university, and a bit of scheduling and extra expense on the part of the student, so they are still only a minority of online doctorates. Nevertheless they are a great way to add socialization, networking, and motivation to any online program, whether course-intensive or research based.

Benefits to an Online or Part-Time Foresight Doctorate - Brief Summary
Below is a short list of reasons why you might want to do an online foresight doctorate. The third reason under teaching, the ability to start a foresight masters program, is a particularly useful for growing the global foresight community.

Professional

More respect and better pay in the corporate world
Professional skills around a particular topic of interest

Teaching

Higher pay (vs. master's holders) as part-time or full-time instructors
Access to better universities (vs.master's holders) to teach foresight as part- or full-time faculty
Ability to start foresight master's programs at many second and third tier institutions

Research

Contribute to advancing and grounding the methodology of the foresight field
New research and writing skills around a particular topic of interest

Finding, networking, and supporting more Category 1 and 2 programs above is a high-value strategy for the continued development of the global foresight community.

Usefulness and Limits of the Online Doctorate for University Teaching
As mentioned before, an online degree even from an accredited university may not grant you teaching access to a top research university, unless that university already has a foresight department or center (and few do). You'll have to bring something else to the table, like particular industry or professional experience, for such jobs. By contrast, accredited online degrees work quite well for adjunct positions in second and third-tier universities, community colleges, private colleges, technical colleges, etc. It is true that you will be less competitive (meaning you'll have to bring other things to the table) if you are applying for full-time or associate professor positions with these degrees, but that can be overcome if you have other skills in marketing, management, curriculum development, etc.

Proposed Ideal Online Foresight Doctorate Structure
One example of what we think would be very helpful for our profession would be an online foresight doctoral program with the following characteristics. Let's see if we can get one created within this decade:

1. A Strategic Foresight track of their (Business, Strategy, Policy, Education, Sociology, Communications, or other Departments) PhD. This track can be done by working with adjunct/affiliate faculty and/or dissertation committee members that specifically have futures studies PhDs, publishing professional futurists, and pubishing future-oriented academics from a number of postsecondary specialties. The program would briefly list the FS dissertation domains (FS methods and subject areas) that would be well-supported in the FS track.

2. Additional admissions prerequisites to the Foresight track that would minimize the educational overhead for these programs and guarantee the quality of the graduates. Ideally a distance PhD in Foresight would be for mature, self-motivated individuals who are already somewhat established academic, business, or institutional futurists. Entrants might have any of the following:

a. A Masters from one of the recognized Foresight MS programs
b. Two or more years of foresight publications (sole author or as part of a team).
c. Two or more years of experience as a business or institutional foresight professional (with references to validate).

3. Lists an Alumni Council (volunteer based) that is available by email to help the incoming Foresight PhD students. I believe a number of global FS PhD alumni would be interested in participating, if asked. Ideally the program would also list the already completed foresight graduates, if any, and a brief outline of their dissertations.

4. Encourages program students to publish in and cite the existing primary foresight journals as part of the PhD requirements. There are at least nineteen of these journals (and many more related journals), but these core journals are still "silos waiting to be networked" according to Clem Bezold, who has been on the editorial committees of several of them. Ideally examples of primary and secondary foresight journals would be listed on the program web page, further promoting the field to the prospective student.

PhD versus DBA for Business School Programs - Some Advice

From Alf Oldman, via LinkedIn Answers: "I completed my DBA at Henley Management College in 1997 on a part-time basis, following three enormously intensive but rewarding years. I was mid-career, having completed my Masters twenty-five years earlier. It is critically important to seriously analyze personal motivation to undertake a doctorate.

Let me introduce some archetypes to help flush out the decision process: (A) Academic - the typical doctoral student is aged mid-twenties, who has chosen an academic career, often with little or zero experience outside academia; (B) Lecturer - typically mid-career, professionally qualified individual, who has chosen the Educational Sector - career progression likely to be blocked without Doctorate or academic publications etc.; and (C) Practitioner - typically mid-career, professionally qualified, with a strong record of managerial/professional achievement, looking to become a true specialist in his or her chosen area of expertise. I fall into category (C) and my DBA was an immensly rewarding experience, both academically and professionally. I would not recommend a DBA/PhD lightly - the drop-out rate is enormous. A key question is "how are you going to finance it?". In my case, I received sponsorship from a professional organization and my research was subsequently published as a book. Whether one takes the DBA or PhD, probably the most important decision is to get a tutor who is a leading expert in the literature - with a weak or average tutor, the most likely outcome is years in the wilderness or drop-out. Understanding your motivation is paramount - shallow, egocentric individuals who are tempted by the cache "Doctor" are unlikely to have the required focus and tenacity. Finally, let me address the DBA vs. Phd question. For archetype (A), "the Academic", I would strongly recommend a traditional PhD. For archetype (B), "the Lecturer", I would probably recommend a DBA. Finally, for archetype (C), I would strongly recommend a DBA."

Marketing Foresight Doctoral Programs
FERN should do our part to make sure the foresight community knows about these programs. Places to market the best of our Category I programs to are the over 2,000+ foresight master's students and alumni of the existing global programs. There is also the World Future Society, which has over 25,000 members. Our GlobalForesight.org has over 1,000 members, many of which who would be interested in this. Shaping Tomorrow's Foresight Network has over 1,400 members. The Association of Professional Futurists has over 400 members. The World Futures Studies Federation has roughly 300 members.

Foresight Employers and Jobs Wiki

JohnMSmart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:34:13 CST

Foresight students, educators, and researchers everywhere will all benefit from the development of a public wiki of current and potential foresight employers, mentors, internship prospects, and job prospects for foresight graduates around the world. We will also need a private Google Doc page where anonymous advice and comments may be shared and read anonymously with respect to hiring and the work environments at particular employers.

Everyone in the FERN community could add commentary to the employer and job description pages, sharing their knowledge about foresight employers and jobs.The wiki would be password protected, thus not on the openly indexed web, but the password would be freely available to any foresight student or advocate who requested it. As FERN is not presently a membership organization, there would be no cost to access this wiki.

Starting this wiki is a high priority, but in order to begin this project needs both two Director leads (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and two Volunteer leads (to serve as volunteer team leaders). Interested in starting this project for the FERN community? We'd love to work with you. Email a FERN director that you'd like to work with, and let's begin

Home

JohnMSmart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:24:00 CST

This wiki is part of the Foresight Education and Research Network (FERN), a work and discussion community for foresight students, faculty, alums, employers, and advocates working to improve and expand foresight education and research globally. Join our social network at the link above. We are affiliated with Shaping Tomorrow's Foresight Network (STFN). Both FERN and GlobalForesight.org are presently administered through the ASF nonprofit.

FERN Mission
Supporting students, faculty, alums, and advocates of foresight courses and Foresight MS and PhD programs, advancing careers of those in foresight education or research, and improving the quality, visibility, and use of foresight education and research globally.

There are five sections in this wiki. See navbar at left or click below:

Team (Want to join the FERN Team? Become a sponsor, advisor, director, or volunteer. Help us in admin, funding, promo, or projects.)

Sponsors (Are you a distinguished advocate of foresight education or research? Can you help us financially? Join us as a sponsor.)
Advisors (Are you a distinguished leader in foresight education or research? Available for brief consults? Join us as an advisor.)
Directors (Are you a doer with training in foresight? Willing to lead projects and supervise part time? Join us as a director.)
Volunteers (Volunteers are the heart of FERN. Are you a student or advocate of foresight ed. or research? Join us as a volunteer.)
Administration (Are you an organizer and communicator who is detail oriented? Help us out in administration.)
Fundraising (Interested in finding good people to financially support our mission and projects? Join the fundraising team.)
Promotion (Want to help in building the FERN brand, marketing, and cross-promotion with appropriate partners? Join us in promotion.)

Projects (current FERN project priorities - pick one and get involved! Also, propose new projects to the directors...)

1. FERN Online Community (help build and support online community for foresight students, faculty, alums, and advocates)
2. Global Foresight Directory (help find and describe the best foresight networks, orgs, and resources at GlobalForesight.org)
3. Future Salons and Meetups (help build and support free monthly foresight meetups. Now in 15 cities or colleges globally.)
4. Foresight Careers Unconference and Workshops (find the best foresight ed., strat., planning, policy, writing, & other careers)
5. Foresight Employers and Jobs Wiki (help us evaluate current and potential foresight employers & job prospects globally)
6. Foresight Publications Community (help create a pre-print feedback community to increase quality and diversity of foresight pubs)
7. Foresight People Database (help us find and describe foresight students, educators, researchers, and professionals globally)
8. Foresight in Curricula (help list and establish more foresight-enabled courses and standalone foresight courses globally)
9. Foresight Rankings (help us rate countries, institutions, U's, corps, consultancies, and websites for their overall foresight quality)
10. MS and Full-Time PhD Programs in Foresight (help support the eighteen primary graduate foresight programs existing today)
11. Online and Part-Time Doctorates in Foresight (help find the distance foresight doctorate options for working professionals)
12. Foresight Frameworks (help find foresight ed. and practice frameworks used in universities, institutions, and consultancies globally)

13. Futurepedia (Perhaps our most ambitious project. Just a proposal at present, but as our community grows, we can make it real)

Resources (teaching resources for introductory undergrad and graduate foresight courses -- educators, pleases add to these!)
Curricula (open access foresight course curricula avail. for use -- link to yours here, and at Peter Bishop's Foresight Education Project)
Career (career foresight resources for students of undergrad and grad foresight courses -- educators, please add links to yours here!)

What You Can Do - Next Steps

Join the FERN Social Network (200+ members), a group inside the free Shaping Tomorrow Foresight Network (2000+ members).
Look over the FERN Team and Project descriptions above. If you'd like to talk about working with us, email John Smart or Frank Spencer ASAP!
Read and post to FutureSalon.com, our blog community for 15 Future Salons around the world. Consider starting your own Salon. It's easy!
Join and post to GlobalForesight.org, our global foresight resources directory, and to this FERN wiki (see posting info below).
Sign up for Accelerating Times, ASF's e-news, for info on the Foresight Careers Unconference. Attend in person or virtually. Make new friends!

Thanks for joining the FERN community. We look forward to meeting you in the future!

Editing Permissions:
1. Anyone on the web can view this wiki. Send the link to your foresight-interested friends!
2. Anyone with a Wetpaint account can add comments at the bottom of any page (resource sharing, discussions, etc.).
3. Those who have been sent an invitation* can edit these pages (login and click "EasyEdit" at top of any page).

*Students, Faculty, Alumni and Advocates of Foresight Education and Research:
If you would like editing privileges, first join the FERN wiki at the top of this page, then post a very brief profile and picture (telling the community who you are), then email wiki moderator (johnsmart (at)accelerating{dot}org) and ask for posting privileges. We are always looking for more students, faculty, researchers, alumni and advocates to post here, to support foresight students and educators globally, and to share our collective insights on foresight education and research.

Future Salons and Meetups

JohnMSmart — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:05:45 CST

ASF sponsors a network of monthly-to-quarterly Future Salons and foresight meetups, currrently in fifteen cities around the world.

Future Salons are free educational, activist, and social events, created by volunteer Salon leaders (perhaps you?) to make our rapidly changing world more fascinating, manageable, profitable, and positive-sum for all of us. Future Salons strive to be bothdoing-action-projectoriented, andthinking-idea-prioritizing oriented. They seek to feature existing or emergingscientific, technological, entrepreneurial, or social change topics and projectsworthy of our help and attention. They also covercritical-thinking, management,and personal changetopics, and occasionally longer-termscientific and philosophical topics.

Visit FutureSalon.com, our community blog, to see posts from salon leaders and other futurists. Join the conversation!
Visit our Future Salon Facebook Page and become a fan, to get blog posts coming to your newsfeed.
See GlobalForesight.org's Foresight Social Networks - Global List page for a list of free and low-priced foresight networks and meetups.
Like to start a Salon in your city or at your college? It's easy and super rewarding. Read our Helpful Guidebook.
Advance your local foresight culture! Make great new friends!

FERN Online Community

JohnMSmart — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:58:20 CST

Currently the FERN Social Network (200+members), is a group inside the Shaping Tomorrow Foresight Network (2000+ members), the largest professional foresight social network on the web, on the Ning platform. As FERN grows we wish to maintain this valuable affiliation with STFN, build affiliations with other leading foresight communities (Association of Professional Futurists, Association of Strategic Planners, etc.), and to develop a FERN presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, the two leading general and business social networks.

We will also need our own community workspace as we grow. Foresight students, educators, researchers, alums, and avocates will all benefit from an online community that facilitates both social interaction and workgroup collaboration. Groupsite.com is one example of community platform that might become our FERN Online Community, as it has many free and low-cost features, including file storage, that are oriented to workgroup activities, unlike Ning, which is more limited to social networking. Everyone in the FERN community could use this platform for project planning, collaboration, and ongoing discussion forums. As FERN is not presently a membership organization, anyone could join the Online Community, but would have to fill out a basic profile and provide a photo, just as with our existing STFN community.

Starting a FERN Online Community is a high priority, but in order to begin this project needs both a Director lead (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and a Volunteer lead (to serve as volunteer team leader).

Interested in starting this project for the FERN community? We'd love to work with you. Email a FERN director that you'd like to work with, and let's begin.

Foresight Careers Unconference and Workshops

JohnMSmart — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:39:18 CST

Foresight Careers, the FERN Unconference, will be held as soon as we have eight student Volunteers to plan and run it.
Date still to be determined, Location San Francisco Bay Area (Stanford, San Jose, or SF), CA. Can you volunteer to help us plan it?

This project needs a minimum of four Directors (to help student Volunteers) and eight student Volunteers (Deputy Directors) to plan and run the event. Directors John Smart and Frank Spencer have volunteered, so we need another two Directors and eight student Volunteers to take this project on. Interested? Email John and let's make it happen!

Unconferences are facilitated, participant-driven events centered around a community-important theme. Ample open time is available for multiple parallel participant-created presentations (one-to-many) and seminars (many-to-many), as well as for small-group workshops where collaborative work gets done. Virtual attendance via streaming, and twitter feeds for in-person and web audience questions are also part of the event. Both in-person attendees, and to some degree virtual attendees have a chance to participate, not simply spectate, in ways best suited to our emerging collective intelligence culture.

Starting as soon as possible we plan to have an annual Foresight Careers Unconference, to be held at first on a rotating basis (and one day, parallel!) in all 130 of the global cities of the world, with early coverage of the megacities which have the greatest number of foresight employment opportunities.

Leading up to each Unconference student and other volunteers will extensively research potential foresight employers in each host city, and invite them to attend the local Unconference. Contacts identified will be added to FERN's public Foresight Employers and Jobs Wiki. Each in-person conference attendee will have the opportunity to request a limited number of informational interview and job interview appointments with attending foresight employers and mentors, and there will be plenty of open networking and job fair time as well.

Some of the following Foresight Careers Workshops will also happen at each Unconference, as we find student, faculty and other leaders for them. If you attend the Unconference (other than invited speakers or employers), you will be asked to attend at least one workshop as well:

Foresight Curricula Workshop. Edit and critique each other's current curricula and develop new curricula together.
Foresight Journalism Workshop. Edit and critique each other's pre-print publications or write new draft articles together.
Foresight Ratings and Metrics Workshop. Edit and expand FERN's country, institution, university, corporate, or consultancy rating systems.
Fundraising Workshop. Call potential donors, raise some money for FERN's Foundation or General Funds.
Future Salon Workshop. Plan upcoming speaker lineups for our 15 future salons, help find leaders to establish new future salons globally.
People Database Workshop. Find missing/high-priority foresight con1tacts and get them in our public database, or work on database structure.
Wiki Workshops. Collaboratively edit existing lists or pages or build new ones on GlobalForesight.org, Foresight Employers, or other FERN wikis.
Other Workshops. Can you lead or develop a non-commercial workshop doing something of value for the Foresight Careers community? Let us know.

Unconference Planning Volunteer Needs: We presently need student, faculty, alum, and other volunteers to:

Research foresight contacts at potential local employers and add them to our Foresight Employers and Jobs wiki,
Contact and work with foresight employers to describe and develop their internship programs and invite them to the Unconference
Market the event to undergrad and grad foresight students, alums, and attendees locally and globally, first to our 17 global foresight programs.
Develop and lead collaborative workshops at the event.
Take responsibility for conference siting, website design, speaker invitation, technical production, and other activities.

Thank you for volunteering! Volunteers know that no one else, not the existing foresight associations, graduate programs, or any other institution, is going to help us find the foresight jobs we need. It's up to us to do this, together. In a foresight-challenged global culture, let's make the Foresight Careers Unconference as useful as we can to the emerging professional foresight community.

Foresight Careers and the wiki covers the following 17 foresight employment sectors:

Education - K-8th
Education - High School (9th-12th)
Education - Undergraduate
Education - Graduate
For-Profit - Large Corporate (500+ employees)
For-Profit - Midsize (100 to 499 employees)
For-Profit - Small (10 to 99 employees)
For-Profit - Boutique (9 employees or less)
Non-Profit - Large Corporate (500+ employees)
Non-Profit - Midsize (100 to 499 employees)
Non-Profit - Small (10 to 99 employees)
Non-Profit - Boutique (9 employees or less)
Government - International and Transnational
Government - National (Executive, Leglislative, and Judicial)
Government - State
Government - Local
Government - Military

Foresight Careers and the wiki focuses on careers in the following 25 primary foresight specialties in the above sectors. We may also feature employers who use any of the secondary foresight specialties, but not comprehensively, as there are other groups and conferences for those communities.

Primary Foresight Specialties (25)	Secondary Foresight Specialties (32)
Alternative Futures Comparative Analysis and Competitive Intelligence Critical Foresight (Causal Layered Analysis, etc.) Development (Systemic) and Acceleration Studies Emerging Issues,Cross Impact and Pattern Analysis Emerging Technologies Analysis Ethnographic, Culture, and Subculture Foresight Forecasting and Modeling/Simulation (basic) Foresight Frameworks and Foundations Foresight Journalism and Metrics History and Analysis of Prediction Horizon Scanning and Weak Signals Images and Artifacts of the Future Personal Futures/ Foresight Development Prediction Markets and Foresight Networks Predictive Surveys/ Delphi Roadmapping (Long-Range Ind., Tech, Policy Maps) Scenario Development and Backcasting Strategic Foresight and Scenario Planning/Learning Strategy Games, Serious and War Games Systems Thinking Transhumanist/ Ethics of Emerging Tech Studies Trend Extrapolation and Learning Curves Visioning, Intuition, and Creative Thinking Wildcards (Pos & Neg Hi-Impact, Low-Prob. Events)	Actuarial Science and Risk Assessment Anthropology and Culture Studies Cognitive & Social Psychology (Personality Profiles, etc.) Collaboration, Facilitation, and Peace/Conflict Studies Critical and Evidence-Based Thinking Decision Theory, Uncertainty, and Real Options Analysis Demographics and Sociology Design, User Experience, and Art Economics (Cliometrics) Ethics and Values Studies Evolution, Complexity and Systems Studies Futures, Sci-Fi, Utopian, and Dystopian Lit Studies Forecasting and Modeling/Simulation (advanced) History (Alternative Histories) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Studies and Networks Innovation Journalism and Metrics Integral Studies and Thinking Investing and Finance (Long-Term) Leadership Studies and Organizational Development Library Science and Knowledge Management Marketing (Predictive), PR, and Consumer Behavior Philosophy (Normative Alternative Futures) Political Science and Policy Studies Probabilistic (Statistical) Prediction Religious Studies (Future Beliefs) Risk Management, Operations Research,Game Theory Security/Defense Studies and International Relations Science and Technology Studies and Technology Analysis Socially Responsible / Triple Bottom Line Management Strategic & L-R Planning, Decision Analysis and Support Sustainability and Development (Economic) Studies Urban Studies and Planning
Other Foresight Specialties (35, a partial list)
Architecture \| Astrobiology \| Biological Sciences \| Bioethics \| Biotechnology \| Business Administration \| Chemical Sciences \| Computer Modeling and Simulation \| Computer Science \| Cybernetics \| Economics and Econometrics \| Education \| Engineering \| Evolutionary Biology \| Gambling Studies \| Generational Studies \| Geography \| History \| History and Philosophy of Science and Technology \| Information Science \| Investing and Finance (Short-Term) \| Knowledge Management \| Library Science (general) \| Management \| Media and Communications \| Mathematics \| Philosophy \| Physical Sciences \| Psychology (general) \| Psychographics \| Statistics (general) \| Technology Policy \| Tourism \| Urban Studies

Of all the secondary foresight specialties listed above, we would like to prioritize developing uncomprehensive but still useful coverage of foresight work occurring in the following 13 secondary foresight specialties:

Forecasting and Modeling/Simulation (advanced)
Decision Theory, Uncertainty, and Real Options Analysis
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Studies
Innovation Journalism and Metrics
Leadership Studies and Organizational Development
Long-Range and Urban Planning
Marketing (Predictive), PR, and Consumer Behavior
Political Science and Policy Studies
Probabilistic (Statistical) Prediction
Science and Technology Studies and Technology Analysis
Socially Responsible / Triple Bottom Line Management
Strategic Planning, Decision Analysis and Support
Sustainability and Development (Economic) Studies

Foresight and Innovation: Close Cousins, But Separate Disciplines
Those that seek to describe, discover, protect, and prioritize possible, probable, and preferable futures do foresight work. Those that seek to increase our ability to create the future do innovation work. There are an increasing number of educational and research programs in innovation, particularly in technology innovation. While innovation and foresight are closely related, innovation has its own communities, and FERN seeks to connect our foresight students, educators, researchers, and alums to the best external innovation education, research, and careers communities that exist.

Books

JohnMSmart — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:18:39 CST

Please add any books to the bottom of this page, and feel free to give any other feedback or have conversations in the comments section at the bottom. Thank You!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Book categories on this page:
150 Great Foresight Books - On Reserve for Foresight Development (TCH110)
Top Foresight
Science, Evolution, and Development
Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech)
Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure
Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure
Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion
Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Responsibility, Org. Dev.
Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle
Multidisciplinary
Fiction
Unclassified

150 Great Foresight Books (GFB’s) - On Reserve for Foresight Development (TCH110)
Your basic Futurist's Library. Great works in Foresight Methods, Models, Compendia, and Topical Areas. Each is overviewed, handed around, and briefly discussed in class, ten per week. Used in Unit 1-4 Essays. All GFBs are on 4 Hour Reserve Checkout in the UAT Library. Most also have second (and sometimes third and fourth) copies available in the stacks for longer checkout. Click on links below for Amazon reviews. Several of these links also offer the ability to "Search Inside the Book" through your browser. This is a useful electronic research tool!

Week 1 – Intro to Futures Studies
The Pursuit of Destiny: A History of Prediction, Paul Halpern, 2000.
Great book on the success and failures of “prediction science.”
Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, Hines & Bishop, 2007
Great practical text on how organizations can prepare for the future. 36 contributors.
Advancing Futures: Futures Studies in Higher Education, James Dator, Ed., 2002.
History, courses, methods, concerns, and issues of teaching futures. 19 contributors.
A Brief History of Tomorrow: The Future Past and Present, Jonathan Margolis, 2001
Insightful and witty, “novel type” read on the wild and wooly field of futuring.
Contemporary Futurist Thought: Sci-Fi and Futures Studies, Thomas Lombardo, 2006
Good survey of the range and value of futures thinking by a futures studies professor.
Rescuing All Our Futures: The Future of Futures Studies, Ziauddin Sardar, Ed., 1999
18 futurists stress the need for non-Western cultures and concerns in futures.
Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future, Joseph J. Corn, 1984
Beautiful pics of U.S. future images, discussion of the benefits and limits of visioning.
TechTV’s Catalog of Tomorrow: Trends Shaping Your Future, Andrew Zolli, Ed., 2003
100 fun two-page essays on trends and tech, looking out 5-20 years. 44 contributors.
MacMillan Atlas of the Future: 21st Century and Beyond, Ian Pearson, Ed., 1998
Maps and graphics popularizing future trends and issues for humanity. 25 contributors.
The Gaia Atlas of Future Worlds: Challenge and Opportunity, Norman Myers, 1990
Pretty atlas of trends, issues in global sustainability. Old enough do prediction-checking.

Week 2 – Evolution, Development, and the Future of Science
Decoding the Universe: The New Science of Information, Charles Siefe, 2006
Information physics is relating brains to black holes, and predicting the multiverse.
Astrobiology: A Beginners Guide, Lewis Dartnell, 2007
Intro to the new science of astrobiology: how special planets create life, on Earth and elsewhere.
Biocosm: A New Scientific Theory of Evolution, James Gardner, 2003
Argues our universe has many of the features of a biological system, and had an "intelligent" start.
The Privileged Planet: Our Anthropic Place in the Cosmos, Gonzalez and Richards, 2004
Argues that Earth is in a "special" place in the cosmos. Observer bias? How would you test this?
Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo, Scott Carroll, 2006
Great intro to biological evo devo: how evolution and development interact in organisms.
Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, Simon Conway-Morris, 2003
Great intro to universal evo devo: how evolution leads to "convergent evolution" in Universe.
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, Matt Ridley, 1998
Shortoverview of how societies build cooperation and morality through collaboration.
The Next 50 Years: Science in the First Half of the 21st Century, John Brockman, Ed., 2002
25 essays on the future of the Cosmos, Math, Neurosci, Bio, Culture, Morality, and Prediction.
The End of Science: Facing the Limits of the [Human-Only] Scientific Age, John Horgan, 1997
Controversial, fascinating arguments that science is running into human limits. Will AI's do better?
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, 1997
A call to scientific and "evidence-based" thinking to help solve humanity's problems.

Week 3 – Accelerating Change and the Future of Technology, Part I
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, David Christian, 2004
Good overview of the "Big Picture" of accelerating change, from a universal perspective.
Society and Technological Change, 5th. Ed., Rudi Volti, 2005
Good STS textbook on the impact of technological change on society in many ways and over centuries.
The Change Function: Why Some Technol. Take Off & Others Crash, Pip Coburn, 2006
Why people don't try new things until the perceived benefits outweigh the pain of change.
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intell., Ray Kurzweil, 2000
Great insights on tech acceleration. Proposes that human-intell. computers will arrive by mid-century.
Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Adam Greenfield, 2006
Explains how computers are becoming miniaturized, interconnected, and embedded everywhere.
Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation, and Opportunity, Lynn Foster, Ed., 2005
Great introduction to the many opportunities and challenges of nanotech for humans and the world.
Hacking Matter: The Infinite Weirdness of Programmable Atoms, Wil McCarthy, 2004
A sometimes-crazy romp through the really powerful, really weird world of "Inner Space."
Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Human Enhancement, Joel Garreau, 2006
Outlines three key social paths for the future of GRIN (Genetics, Robotics, Info, Nano) technologies.
Intervention: The Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Biotech, Denise Caruso, 2006
Good exploration of the risks of biotech, and the social values that limit its adoption.
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, Bill McKibben, 2004
A strong call for preserving human values, identity, and culture in our rapid technological age.

Week 4 – Accelerating Change and Future of Technology, Part II
Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorg., Greg Stock, 1993
A very good book on human-machine symbiosis, written from a biological perspective.
Visions of Technology: A Century of Debate about Machines, Richard Rhodes, 2000
Vignettes on the social impact of 20th century tech change, by an emininent historian.
Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, David Nye, 2006
Key Q's about tech: Is it predictable? Does it control us? How does it change work? Culture?
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman, 1993
Great exposition of the ways technology weakens society, and ideas on how to fight back.
Technology and the Future, Albert Teich, 10th Ed, AAAS, 2005
Good range of mostly conservative views on tech futures and social responses.
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, Edward Castronova, 2006
Social and economic trends in VWs, games, and the coming Metaverse economy.
Deception: Pakistan, the US and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007
WMDs are a major problem. US policy short-sightedness has proliferated nuke tech globally.
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Catastrophes of the 21st Century, James Kunstler, 2006
Doomsaying that peak oil and climate change can't be fixed fast enough to prevent collapse.
The Bottomless Well: Why We Will Never Run out of Energy, Huber and Mills, 2006
Techno-optimist, utopian ideas that new tech and free markets solve all energy problems.
The Two Faces of Tomorrow, James Hogan, Yukinobu Hoshino, 2006
Fictional account of one of the great questions of 21C tech: How do we trust the coming AI?

Week 5 – Global Trends, Scenarios, and Models
Global Trends 2015: A Dialog About the Future, CIA, 2005
Excellent, concise, CIA-compiled database of important global trends and implications.
Modernization, Cultural Change, & Democracy: Values & Devel., Ronald Inglehart, 2005
Summary of 40 years of research showing how development creates a common set of values.
The Transparent Society: Technology, Privacy and Freedom, David Brin, 1999
Balanced treatment of the upsides and downsides of our accelerating global transparency.
Which World?: Scenarios for the 21st Century, Allen Hammond, 1998
Three institutions look out to 2050 and paint three different scenarios for the global future.
The Global Technology Revolution 2020: Executive Summary, RAND, 2006
Great overview of trends, challenges, and options in nano, bio and info technologies.
Shell Global Scenarios to 2025, Jeroen van der Veer, 2005
Energy, resources, economic, and political scenarios from Shell, a leading scenario developer.
Exploring and Shaping International Futures, Barry Hughes, 2006
Modeling system for International Futures. Good in general, but not sufficiently technology-aware.
The State of the World 2007, Worldwatch Institute, 2007
Annual report on the state of the world from environment to human rights. Sustainability focused.
The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the State of the World, Bjorn Lomborg, 2001
A critical look at claims that our global environment is falling apart. Evidence for optimism.
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright, 2001
Makes the case that non-zero sum (positive sum) interactions drive much of human activity.

Week 6 – Global Problems and Priorities
Mapping the Global Future: The National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project, NIC, 2005
Great brief illustrated summary of future global scenarios, from the National Intelligence Council.
From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: 1965-2000, Lee Kuan Yew, 2000
How "authoritarian capitalism" enabled rapid economic development. A model for others?
Environment: An Introductory Textbook, 5th Edition, Peter Raven, 2005
College textbook on our natural environment, a complex system we still don't understand well.
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing Conflict and Catastrophe in 21C, McNamara & Blight, 2001
Brilliant book on the global context enabling the9/11 attacks, and future US policy options.
Human Development Report 2006: Beyond Scarcity, UNDP, 2006
Goals and progress in global development per the United Nations Development Program.
How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, Bjorn Lomborg, 2006
Priorities for global development from Lomborg's "Copenhagen Consensus."
Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, Alex Steffen, 2006
Tools and strategies for achieving a "bright, green future." Sustainability and innovation.
Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, Robert Neuwirth, 2006
Issues and futures of the world's rapidly-growing slums, by a journalist who has lived in them.
The End of Poverty, Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Jeffrey Sachs, 2006
Proposes new levels of political, corporate, and individual participation in global development.
The White Man’s Burden: Why Western Aid Has Done So Little Good, Bill Easterly, 2007
Shows how we hurt the developing world in trying to aid them, and the difficulty of the problem.

Week 7 – Economics and the Future of Capitalism
Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, & Econ of Prosperity, William Baumol, 2007
Explains the four major types of capitalism. Only one, entrepreneurial capitalism, is ideal.
The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, Thomas Friedman, 1999
Great intro to accel. globalization and its new-world vs. old-world tensions. Written before 9/11.
One Nation, Underprivileged, Mark Robert Rank, 2005
Huge social costs of undereducating and underemploying American poor and immigrants.
China Shakes the World: The Challenge for America, James Kynge, 2006
Explores future impacts of Chinese economic, political, and social power on the world &the US.
Three Billion New Capitalists: Great Shift of Wealth & Power East, Clyde Prestowitz, 2006
Issues of integrating a growing, Networked Asia (China, India, SE Asia) into global economy.
Information Rules: A Guide to the Network Economy, Shapiro and Varian, 1998
Good overview of the economic, info, and social changes in the Network Society.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Hawken and Lovins, 2000
Eloquent call for a future of sustainable economics and green business: natural capitalism.
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and World Poverty, Muhammad Yunus, 2003
By the Nobel-winning founder of Grameen Bank, pioneers of microcredit for the poor.
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: End Poverty Thru Profits, C.K. Prahalad, 2006
Opportunities in Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) capitalism, from microcredit to microconsumption.
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan, 2005
Considers weaknesses of the modern corporate structure and possibilities for reform.

Week 8 – Politics and the Future of Security and Democracy
Lies My Teacher Told Me: What Your History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen, 2007
Brilliant critique of the "feel good myths" we learn in history class, and ideas for change.
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, Fareed Zakaria, 2007
Explores the limits and weaknesses of democracy and the many ways it can become illiberal.
The American Anomaly: U.S. in Comparative Perspective, Raymond Smith, 2007
Explains why, constitutionally, the U.S. is less democratic than other leading industrial nations.
America (The Book) Teacher’s Ed: A Guide to Democracy Inaction, Jon Stewart, 2006
Hilarious intro to American history and political democracy, warts and all. Comedy Central.
Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich, Kevin Phillips, 2003
Why the rich are not conservatives (low government) but plutocrats (use govt to their advantage).
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington, 1998
Analyzes the world as a set of eight cultures increasingly conflicting over religion and dogma.
Lucifer Principle: An Expedition into the Forces of History, Howard Bloom, 1997
Argues well that evil (lying, violence, etc.) plays an essential social and biological role.
A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, Ackerman and Duvall, 2001
Chronicles the rising power of nonviolent mass resistance to remove or reform governments.
The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century, Thomas Barnett, 2005
Combating disconnectedness (tech, econ, & cultural) as a key U.S. global security strategy.
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, Philip Tetlock, 2005
Great study of the repeating patterns, biases, and limits of political (and other) prediction.

Week 9 – Culture, Media and Education in a Network Society
The First Measured Century: Trends in America, 1900-2000, Theodore Caplow et. al., 2000
One hundred years of social and economic trends, with graphics and engaging commentary.
The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, Mitchell Stephens, 1998
Charts the rise of moving images and decline of the printed word, and some implications.
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam, 2001
Great stats on the 50-year deterioration of U.S. social life, with some ideas for solutions.
The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century, Robert McChesney, 2005
Great articles on massive media centralization and corporatization, and proposals for reform.
The Future of Ideas: The Nature of The Commons in a Connected World, Larry Lessig, 2002
How large corporations are stifling public innovation and privatizing our online information commons.
The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel, 1998
The politics of change, and conflicts over creativity, enterprise, and progress.
Cuture Jam: Reversing America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge, Calle Lasn, 2000.
The power and addictions of brands, conformity, and overconsumption in a global corporate age.
Declining By Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, Richard Hersh et. al., 2006
Documents the retreat from challenging and affordable higher ed as a 20th century "social contract."
Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, Cass Sunstein, 2006
How free and open online information, aggregation, and markets are accelerating global knowledge.
The Fourth Turning: Cycles of History and America’s Destiny, Strauss and Howe, 1997
Historical generational (cycle) theory that the US is "on the verge of crisis." We shall see.

Week 10 – Biz-Org Leadership, Innovation, Learning, and Predicting
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, Jim Collins, 2001
Careful research featuring 11 big companies that manage to greatly improve, year after year.
Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition, Everett Rogers, 2003
The classic text on innovation diffusion, how new ideas and tech spread into a culture, or don't.
The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clay Christensen, 2003
Why Big Co's slow down market (and their own) innovation, and how "disruptive innovation" works.
The Art of the Start: A Guide for Anyone Starting Anything, Guy Kawasaki, 2004
Great advice on planning, raising money, hiring, and other issues of starting any business project.
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few, James Surowiecki, 2005
How groups can beat their best individuals for cognition, coordination, and cooperation.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge, 2006
How to build continual learning, "the only sustainable competitive advantage," into any org.
The Difference: How Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, & Societies, Scott Page, 2007
Why cognitive and experience diversity on your team beats groups of like-minded experts.
Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, Kees van der Heijden, 2005
How to use the futures tool of scenario planning (possible futures) to improve business strategy.
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Peter Bernstein, 1998
Quant. probability has led to econometrics, insurance, forecasting, and better foresight.
Supercrunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted, Ian Ayres, 2007
The growth of detailed data sets lets analysts make previously impossible predictions.

Week 11 – Biz-Org Planning, Consensus-Building, Benefiting, and Metrics
Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present, Bob Johansen, 2007
Practical ways for orgs to develop a "future sense" and improve their plans and strategy.
Out of Control: Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, Kevin Kelly, 1995
How our connected and complex world can be understood as a biological, evolving system.
Inevitable Surprises: A Survival Guide for the 21st Century, Peter Schwartz, 2004
A leading futurist uses scenario planning to explore both the expected and unpredictable future.
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott, 2006
The economic and social benefits of global online collaboration for people and companies.
Hard Facts, Half-Truths, & Total Nonsense: Evidence-Based Mgmt, Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006
How to analyze business management practices using surveys, science, and evidence.
Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change, Bob Seidensticker, 2006
Argues well against the idea that technology change is particularly fast or important today.
Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myth of Rapid Tech Change, Steven Schnaars, 1989
Collection of bad forecasts by think tanks, researchers, and politicians, w/ recommendations.
Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology, James Chiles, 2002
50 famous catastrophes, and ways that they could have been prevented with better systems.
Future Search: Finding Common Ground in Orgs & Communities, Marvin Weisbord, 2000
A future search conference helps organizational stakeholders work to chart a better future.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough, 2002
Using industrial design to greatly improve sustainability and "eco-effectiveness" in our world.

Week 12 – Personal and Career Creativity and Visioning
Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Intelligence, Andy Clark, 2004
Why you are already a "cyborg" and will get even more intimately connected to all your tech.
The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, John Maxwell, 2007
Qualities and habits that make you the kind of person whose ideas others want to follow.
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, Guy Claxton, 2000
Cog science says logic and reason aren't enough. We need slow, intuitive, nonlinear thinking too.
Authentic Happiness: Positive Psychology and Your Potential, Martin Seligman, 2002
From the founder of science of positive psychology (how to thrive, love, and be happy).
Finding Flow: Psych. of Engagement with Everyday Life, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, 1998
Proven tips on creating flow: a psychological state of ease, focus, happiness, and productivity.
Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudosci. and Superstitions, Michael Shermer, 2002
Covers our modern superstitions. Shows the value of skepticism and evidence-based thinking.
When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a UFO Group, Diane Tumminia, 2005
Great expose of how wishful thinking causes us to deny reality. We all do this to some extent.
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, Naomi Klein, 2002
Brands increasingly dominate public life, narrow our choices and our thinking. Tips on resisting.
50 Facts That Should Change the World, Jessica Williams, 2004
Some fascinating stats, many addressable by technology. Which ones will we deal with?
Fifty-Two Simple Ways to Make a Difference, Paul Simon, 2004
Small things are really the big things, in the end. Some powerful ways to be a better person.

Week 13 – Personal and Career Learning and Predicting
Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, K. Anders Ericsson, 2006
"Natural" talent is highly overrated. Experts are nearly always made, not born. Anyone can be one.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey, 2004
Each habit can take years to master, but becoming an expert in these is a key to personal power.
Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Who We Are, Frans De Waal, 2006
Human nature is a blend of chimpanzee and bonobo, of competition and cooperation. Stay blended.
Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, Daniel Goleman, 2007
How the choice, care, and feeding of our relationships determines our intelligence.
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo, 2007
How situations, environments, can change our ethics. Why our environment matters.
The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out as They Do, Judith Rich Harris, 1998
Shows the huge effect of our peer groups on our success in life. Choose your friends wisely!
Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers, Neufeld and Mate, 2006
Peer attachment in 1st world cultures squelches individuality, creativity, intelligence. How to fix that.
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Helps the Future, Neil Postman, 2000
Bringing Enlightenment values (intellection, history, logic, rhetoric) back into the 21st century.
The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career, Nicholas Lore, 1998
Through goalsetting, list making, and other techniques, find your ideal career and make it happen.
Do What You Are: Discover Your Career thru Personality Type, Paul &Barbara Tieger, 2001
Using personality profiling to find industries, careers, and occupations that match your strengths.

Week 14 – Personal and Career Planning and Negotiating
Everything's an Argument - With Readings, Andrea Lunsford et. al., 2006
An excellent and visual introduction to argument and rhetoric, foundational skills for all of us.
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, Richard Neustadt, 1986
How to best use historical knowledge to improve decision making. A classic.
How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Reason in Life, Thomas Gilovich, 1993
The limits of logic and psychology in understanding our complex, evolutionarily contingent world.
Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions, John Hammond, 2002
Systematic approaches to making better-considered choices. Lots of great case examples.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz, 2005
Explains how overanalysis and abundance can rob us of flexibility and satisfaction.
How Full is Your Bucket: Positive Strategies for Work and Life, Rath and Clifton, 2007
Explores the foundation of social intelligence: creating positive social interactions.
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, 1991
Very readable text on achieving win-win negotiations in workplace and home.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, Douglas Stone, 2000
When we put off the most important conversations, everyone suffers. How to fix that.
What You Can Change & What You Can’t: A Guide to Self Improvmt, Martin Seligman, 2007
Common psychological disorders and how to self-treat them. Practical personal psychology.
Never Eat Alone: Success, One Relationship at a Time, Keith Ferrazzi, 2005
The importance of defining who you are, trusting others, and networking for a clear objective.

Week 15 – Personal and Career Benefiting and Measuring
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Robert Maurer, 2004
How to face fears that block change, by making small, measurable steps in the right direction.
The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Inner Strength, Karen Reivich, 2003
A key empowering habit of mind. How to keep perspective, not overreact, and bounce back.
The Survivor Personality: How to Get Better at Handling Adversity, Al Siebert, 1996
Some crumble under pressure and others get stronger. How to get better at the latter option.
The Power of Full Engagement: A Personal Energy Management System, Tony Schwartz, 2004
Skill at energy management complements time, space, money, knowledge, and process mgmt.
Fooled by Randomness: The Role of Chance in Life and Markets, Nassim Taleb, 2005
Humans are pattern recognizers. We often see pattern where none exists. How to minimize that.
The Seven Stages of Money Maturity, George Kinder, 2000
Stages of psych development in relation to money. Which are you presently "in"? Brilliant book.
The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing, Benjamin Graham, 2003
The classic in value investing. A book for true investors, foresighted people with long-term plans.
Socially Responsible Investing: Making a Difference & Making Money, Amy Domini, 2000
How to put your money where your values are. Investing as a way to improve the world.
Journal to the Self: Twenty-Two Paths to Personal Growth, Kathleen Adams, 1990
Well-regarded book on personal journaling as a tool for self-understanding and personal mastery.
CrazyBusy: Strategies For Handling Your Fast-Paced Life, Edward Hallowell, 2006
How to manage culturally induced ADD, 24/7 accessibility, and modern expectations.

Other Nonfiction Great Foresight Books (GFBs) and Book Sites
In Top, STEEPCOP, Multidisciplinary, and Fiction Categories
Place them in alpha order under each category, please.

Top Foresight Books and Book Sites
50 Facts That Should Change the World, Jessica Williams, 2004
Perhaps 35 of these 50 stats are offensive or angering to varying degrees. The stats and their associated commentary make you motivated to change them. The other third (things like plastic surgery rates) are offensive or not depending in your values and political persuasion. Many of these problems will very likely be greatly improved in coming decades. Thanks to Disinformation.com for this cool book!
A Brief History of the Future, Oona Strathern, 2007
A fast-reading, excellent overview of the history of foresight and prediction in human civilization, from the Oracles at Delphi 800 BCE to the modern foresight professional. As both a journalist and a successful female professional futurist working in a European futures agency, Oona has created a very well written book and brings a much-needed female and European perspective to the history and prospects of the foresight profession.
CIA World Factbook 2008, Central Intelligence Agency, 2007
Great source of country information. Also available online for free.
Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski, 1990
Science today is largely silent on human values, a subject it remains a long way from understanding. Religion, tradition, and ideology powerfully fill this void today, speaking to issues of great value and importance to each of us. Yet science is a profoundly humanizing enterprise, and has been central to the elevation of human culture. Bronowski helps us understand both left-brained logic and right-brained creativity, both subjective introspection and objective science as complementary habits of truth.
State of the Future 2006, State of the Future / "Millennium" Project (an Annual)
An annual book that analyzes and evaluates possible global prospects for humanity. It would likely be useful students wishing to find more sources for an essay or paper as well as for students who wish to learn more about future global scenarios, sciences and environmental scenarios. - Ryan J
The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria, 2008
Great portrayal of "the rise of the rest." The most powerful global political and economic trends are not that America is slipping into ruin, but that it's finally many parts of the less developed world's turn to make the great strides we made earlier. The US is saddled with a 'do-nothing' political system, controlled by corporate interests that have been more economically powerful than governments since the 1950's, while the best of the rest of the world, China in particular, India to a lesser degree, and a number of other developing nations are seeing double digit economic growth, and will likely continue to for the next few decades, as they become innovators in the global economy. There is much we could do to improve our own state, but much that will continue to get better in spite of us as well. It's time to recognize the great power shift taking place, and recognize that for the most part, this is creating a stronger and far less American global economic network, though corporate globalization still is significantly less socially responsible and accountable than it must be in coming generations.

Science, Evolution, and Development Books and Book Sites
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, 1988
This popular science book explains a wide range of topics in cosmology and modern physics. Although it is mainly a book about the "present", it also discusses the future of the field of physics and how it might affect humanity as a whole.
Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos, Roger Lewin, 2000
Global Brain: Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, Howard Bloom, 2001
Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed, Jim Al-Khalili, 2004
Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer, 2005
How the theory of mind has slowly progressed from immaterial, residing in the heart, to material, residing in the embodied nervous system. A fantastic story, ranging from Aristotle to the present day. It centers around the work of 17th century anatomist and early scientist Thomas Willis.
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings and Hidden Dimensions, Brian Greene, 2000
The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, 1991
What if all the separate images we see virtually every moment of our waking lives were actually part of the same whole? What if every mind was connected and inseparable from every other mind? And what if the universe were a projection of our consciousness? Psychological synchronicities and previously inexplicable phenomena would be easier to understand, the findings of quantum physicists and mystics would begin to merge, and the world would be a less forbidding and lonely place. Michael Talbot argues for the idea that what we see in our limited three-dimensional view is actually a hologram created by interactions occurring in a broader set of dimensions (in the multiverse). Talbot bases much of his thesis on David Bohm's life work in quantum physics, but draws also on the work of psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and neuroscientist Karl Pribram (who believes that the human mind is a holographic construct of the brain). This fascinating book bridges the worlds of science and metaphysics and offers plausible hypotheses some of which may, in time, become accepted as fact.
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, David Salsburg, 2002
Great intro to the way statistics and probability math and models have led to great leaps in the search for scientific truth over the last hundred years. These mathematical methods are nothing less than humanities first great successful effort at building a "prediction science." Discovering and verifying probability distributions in complex systems is an excellent way to discover hidden order in the universe. The actuarial industry is just one of many that have been able to use these tools, approximate as they are, to very effectively manage the future in our partially chaotic world.
The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century, Jerome Kagan, 2008
Updates C.P. Snow's famous 1959 lecture on the "Two Cultures" of the 20th century, the sciences vs. arts and humanities, and the great divide between them. Since then social complexity has grown and a true third culture, the social sciences, has emerged. This culture is comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, psychology, anthropology and yes, futures studies (foresight). Kagan summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior. The world gets more complex every decade, doesn't it? Fascinating.

Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech) Books and Book Sites
Human Genetic Engineering: A Guide for Progressives, Pete Shanks, 2005
A nice intro to the many limits of biotech, and the social values that limit its adoption as well.
Love+Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, David Levy, 2008.
Reports on the very long history and possible future of human-robot relationships. Fascinating. As robots get smarter and smarter, will more people have more relationships with them? Old people and kids already have robot pets today. Will human-to-human relationships suffer or get better as a result? Will people eventually be allowed to marry their robots, when they get sentient enough? What else might happen that we need to think about?
Massive Change and the Institute without Boundaries, Bruce Mau, 2004
Somewhat utopian but inspiring and very nicely illustrated manifesto on how better design can fundamentally improve our world.
Persistent Forecasting of Disruptive Technologies, US National Academies, 2009
Important new work on the forecasting of emergent technologies. From the Preface: "Technological innovations are key causal agents of surprise and disruption. These innovations, and the disruption they produce, have the potential to affect people and societies and therefore government policy, especially policy related to national security. To aid in the development of forecasting methodologies and strategies, the Committee on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies of the National Research Council (NRC) was funded by the Director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) Defense Warning Office (DWO) to provide an analysis of disruptive technologies."
Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind, Hans Moravec, 1998
For more on the long history and possible future of human-robot relationships, read the fascinating Love+Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, David Levy, 2008.
The Future of Technology, Tom Standage, Ed., 2005
Insightful but circumscribed survey of the 10-year future of consumer, info, nano, and biotech, from an insightful editor at The Economist.
The Spike: Impact of Rapidly Advancing Technologies, Damien Broderick, 2002
Visions of Technology: A Century of Debate about Machines, Richard Rhodes, 2000
What Will Be: How Information Will Change Our Lives, Michael Dertouzos, 1997
Why Things Bite Back: Unintended Consequences of Tech, Edward Tenner, 1997
How technology trades big life-threatening problems with slower-acting, more complex ones.
The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, Marcia Angell, 2004
Brilliant expose of the largest 'nanotechnology' companies on the planet today, the pharmaceutical companies. Want to know how big they really are? In 2002, the total profits of the ten drug companies on the U.S. Fortune 500, $36 billion, was more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses on the list, combined ($34 billion). Read this book to understand how technology, in well defined applications (in this case, for human consumption for medical purposes) can be entirely captured, controlled, and stifled by big business. Fortunately the governments of some countries, particularly in Europe, are too strong to be captured by the drug companies. Unfortunately that hasn't been true here since the 1970's. The irony is that the biggest of these companies are based in Europe. But in 2002 they made half ($200B) of their their total world revenues off the U.S. consumer, who is bombarded daily by drug-pushing ads in all the media, unlike in most European countries, where marketing regulations are far more protective of the unwashed consumer, and where the citizenry are much more skeptical of drugmakers claims.

Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Books and Book Sites
An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming, Al Gore, 2006
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, Bjorn Lomborg, 2007
Global Warming: A Very Short Introduction, Mark Maslin, 2004
Quick and very brief intro to the complexities of global warming forecasts, and the political positions involved.
Limits To Growth, Meadows, Meadows and Randers, 1979
Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update, Meadows and Randers, 2004
Silent Spring (Special Edition), Rachel Carson, 1974/2002
The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe, Colin Mason, 2003
The Bottomless Well: Why We Will Never Run out of Energy, Huber and Mills, 2006
The Long Emergency: Surviving the Catastrophes of the 21st Century, James Kunstler, 2006

Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure Books and Book Sites
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Niall Ferguson, 2008
Brilliant analysis that "follows the money" behind so many of the major events of Western civilization. Helps you understand the US's present debt-slavery to China, the Wall Street meltdown of 2008, and our loss of national manufacturing and technical productivity capacity. All these things are consequences of the rise of an unregulated corporate class that captured US government in the mid 20th century and created vast wealth for those at the top (for time) but far less for the country as a whole (and greater rich poor divide, unlike other developed nations). Until we use government to reprioritize the country to technical capacity increase rather than GDP increase, and rationalize the rich-poor divide, we can expect more of the same. Fortunately New Asia and Old Europe aren't following our sad script. (John Smart)
Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, Peter Barnes, 2006
Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen, 2000
Globalization and its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz, 2003
Miniatlas of Global Development, World Bank, 2004
Very small handbook of goals and progress in global development per the World Bank.
Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, Thomas K. McCraw, 2007
Schumpeter is perhaps our greatest economist to date in the area of innovation studies. He understands deeply why a healthy economy needs what he calls "creative destruction," or the ability of the large companies to regularly fail, be downsized, merge, or otherwise lose their primacy, and for the most innovative small and midsize companies to move up the ranks. This process seems messy but only economies that are healthy enough to allow a good degree of creative destruction will thrive in the long run. Many are not, as big business has both the economic means and a big economic incentive (it makes more money for the executives and the shareholders, in the short term) to eliminate competition, and slow down innovation, and change the rules in their favor, wherever possible.
The City in 2050: Creating Blueprints for Change, Urban Land Institute, 2008
ULI is the world's leading land development organization. A rare and fascinating, very long-range look at the changes facing metropolitan areas, illustrated with interesting facts and forward-looking charts on topics such as the impact of capital markets, climate change, sustainability, transportation and infrastructure needs, demographic trends, housing, retail, and technology.
The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, Yergin and Stanislaw, 1999
Epic account of the 20th century battle between governmental control and the free marketplace.
The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity, Peter Schwartz, 2001
A leading futurist gives his rationale for why it's reasonable to expect unrivaled economic expansion all over the planet over the next 20 years. This scenario seems reasonable for New Asia, but is quite optimistic for the US given trends in recent decades.
The Future of Money, Benjamin Cohen, 2006
Chronicles the steadily decreasing number of global currencies. Like languages, weaker national currencies have been progressively disappearing, either tying their monetary supplies to stronger currencies (dollar, euro, yen, etc.) as globalization advances, or "dollarizing" them (pegging their currency to one of these global currencies in fixed ratios). Cohen proposes this currency contraction trend may soon reverse, but I think he's wrong. He notes that the internet economy will enable many new corporate e-currencies, and that nations and ethnic groups will seek to maintain and expand their currencies for emotional and independence reasons. James Dorn of the Cato Institute has made a similar prediction in The Future of Money in the Information Age, 1997. If such predictions came true they would be an example of internet-aided global pluralism. I would like to believe them, except that when you want to make a new currency (if you are a corporation) or just keep your own (if you are a small country) you are competing against the global banking infrastructure and central banks of all the leading governments. It seems more likely that the 21st century money system has acquired a developmental path dependency. Effective money must be both a reliable store of value and a trusted medium of exchange. Any competing new form of money, though it can be easily created as a store of value by corporations (such as Linden Dollars in Second Life, Ithaca Hours in NY, or any corporate scrip) needs to develop widespread trust, and be able to police counterfeiters, before it becomes a broad medium of exchange. Will the world's leading banks and countries mismanage our existing currencies to such an extent that we no longer view them as the most reliable stores of value and mediums of exchange? Will they sit by as other competing online currencies emerge? Unlikely. It is true that countries from the US to Russia to China implicitly tax (take value from) their citizens every year through their national money supplies, by growing them at rates like 11% (US), 19% (China) and even 50% (Russia) a year in recent years, and always at a rate that exceeds the annual GDP growth of the country in question (in the examples above, US 3%, China 10%, Russia 6%). But how onerous to the citizens is this "money supply tax" in a world of accelerating productivity, automation, sci-tech development, and persistent deflation in the cost of all information-related global goods? Libertarians eloquently point out the undemocratic nature of this state of affairs, yet most of us allow this implicit tax as long as the global financial system doesn't melt down too badly, and our standard of living goes up more years than it goes down. Today we have more choices for what currencies and investments we keep our deposits in than ever before, but only a few keep our assets in the most fiscally responsible national currencies or inflation-proof commodities at any point in time. In a future where citizens are significantly more educated (first by their electronic networks and eventually, by their artificially intelligent digital assistants), and as banking, credit and microcredit become increasingly democratized, I believe we will see both more banking and currency choice, which will become important regulatory forces in a digitally democratic future. But if rapid economic growth continues, the continued centralization of currencies seems very likely, and democratic control over our global monetary and financial systems will remain underdeveloped for decades to come.- JS
The Future of Work: The New Order of Business, Tom Malone, 2004
Explores how networks are flattening, distributing, and virtualizing business, and implications.
The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and Economics, Eric Beinhocker, 2006
Masterful look at the economics ofchange and innovation, in the tradition of Joseph Schumpeter.
The World Economy: Historical Statistics, DCS, Angus Maddison, 2003
Thousand-year estimates on global economic growth, around the world. Amazing topsight on the accelerating engine of change, since 1850, that is capitalism. Angus Maddison isa rare expert in this topic.

Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure Books and Book Sites
Deception: Pakistan, the US, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007
Dynamics of Nonviolent Action, Gene Sharp, 1985
Great book on nonviolent resistance campaigns. "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mohandas Ghandi. Sharp's book and US State Dept aid were used by Optor in their successful student-led voter rebellion against Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosovec.
Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense, David Kay Johnston, 2007
Excellent investigative journalism by a talented investigative reporter on the way the wealthiest leaders of industry use federal, state, and local governments to shift major costs and risks to the taxpayer. Documents the ways that competition is not a level playing field in the modern US democracy. How do we fix this problem? By caring about it, counting it, making it transparent, and then generating a consensus for action. It may take a generation or two before the average US citizen knows enough and cares enough about these issues to vote for a freer, fairer, and more competitive nation. If we had to continue to depend on human beings in our decaying educational institutions to educate the voters of tomorrow, the future of our democracy might be grim. But if our internet keeps getting smarter at an accelerating rate, there will come a time, probably within this next generation, where every one of us will have artificial intelligence advising us on our vote, and on how to spend our money, in ways that best reflect our values (the "Valucosm"). In that kind of superempowered world, democracy seems likely to swing back to serving the citizens more than it does today.
Human Security Brief 2006, Human Security Report Project, 2007
Independent tracking of interstate and intrastate conflict and organized violence against civilians. Documents the steadily decreasing incidence rates of global violence in the last decade, anomalous and well-publicized outliers like the global Salafi jihad and the second Iraq War notwithstanding. Develops the concept of "human security" (security of individuals) as a complementary goal to national security (security of the state).
Making a Killing: The Business of War, Center for Public Integrity (CPI), 2002
Two year, $600K 11 part investigation by the CPI's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) into the business of war, arms trade, defense contracting, and other forms of monetized conflict. The ICIJ found that "a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this war commerce – a growth industry whose bottom line never takes into account the lives it destroys."
Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel, 2005
"An astonishing anthology of highbrow meditations on culture and politics by world-class writers and intellectuals such as Richard Powers, Peter Sloterdijk and Richard Rorty, complete with lavish art." MTP looks at politics as operating "in the realm of things." Many kinds of assemblies "gather a public around things -- scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches," and politics also involves disputes around natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. Authors examine the "technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public."
No Place for Amateurs: How Political Consultants are Reshaping American Democracy, Dennis Johnson, 2007
Details the massive growth in special interest lobbies in US politics in the last two generations. A ratio of 150 lobbyists to one politician, cushy jobs for politicians in these firms and on big business boards afterward and other examples of institutionalized corruption that are legal in our current environment pretty much ensures plutocratic politics. Essential reading.
Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now, Mark Satin, 2004
The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War, Robert Kaplan, 2001
Great book on how democracy comes slowly in the developing world, and how the best thing in many emerging nations may be to support "enlightened dictators" as long as they are engaged in economic liberalization and are publicly committed to slow but obvious political liberalization. Kaplan also notes that unless we deal now with the problems of the developing world, we will see new forms of global resistance, possibly worse than Al Qaeda.
The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, 2006
The Great Big Book of Tomorrow: A Treasury of Cartoons, Tom Tomorrow, 2003
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Benjamin Friedman, 2005
Analysis of the value of economic growth to creating a healthy democracy. Individuals and societies are more trusting, more inclusive, more open to change when they see their and their children's futures as both progressing and secure. During economic stagnation and downturns, democratic institutions suffer. Average full-time incomes for Americans have fallen 15% in real terms since 1975, and Friedman sees this as one key reason our democracy and communities have weakened over this period.
The One-Hour Activist: Fifteen Ways to Fight for Your Issues, Christopher Kush, 2004
Quick grassroots actions that persuade lawmakers to listen. There's no good reason to be passive in the networked society. Find others, make change.
What If’s? Of American History, Robert Crowley, 2004

Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion Books and Book Sites
A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber, 2007
"A series of original views on many topics of current controversy, including gender wars, multiculturalism, modern liberation movements, and the conflict between various approaches to spirituality." Includes a valuable systems theory of human philosophy of thought (the Four Quadrants/Integral theory).
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, John de Graaf, 2005
Great book on the cultural excesses of American society: consumption overload, debt, waste, anxiety, self-indulgence, and apathy for the non-self.
America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future, Educational Testing Service, 2007
A forecast that in the US, several long term forces 1) declining and uncompetitive math and reading skills, 2) increasing need for literacy and higher education to compete in the information economy, 3) major demographic shifts (legal and illegal immigration), and 4) a widening rich-poor divide are all converging to create a "perfect storm" of greatly declining US educational effectiveness, greatly lower workforce competitiveness, and increasing class inequity in coming years. The report says that unless we change course America will have a highly stratified society in the next generation: a well-educated, well paid top tier, a small and shrinking middle class, and a large uncompetitive and marginally literate underclass.
Copyrights and Copywrongs: Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, Siva Vaidhyanathan, 2003
The history and evolution of copyright, how it came to be corporate controlled, and strategies and solutions for improving its public service.
Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch, 1979/1991
Classic futurist work that addressed then-new and now-major trends in the failure of the family as an institution, state paternalism and the erosion of individual authority, the culture of celebrity, conformity, consumerism, self-indulgence, and apathy. Lasch's thesis is that narcissism and consumerism are a reaction to the fear of being nothing in a world of increasing complexity [and we might add, velocity of change]. Fortunately, though they may be the easiest reaction, other options are available. What are Nasch's solutions? A return to self-reliance, the family, cultivated friendships, nature, the community, and the work ethic.
Feed: A Modern Dystopia, MT Anderson, 2004
Kids as consumer robots talking Orwellian newspeak due to 24/7 corporate internet feeds. Chilling dystopian fiction that seems all too likelyfor some increasingly manipulated and disenfranchised segment of our future society, even as we recognize these feeds will be delivered not via some improbable "neurojack" but rather by our ubiquitous wearable and embedded computing devices.
Innovation and its Discontents: How our Broken Patent System Endangers Innovation, and What to Do About It, Adam Jaffee, 2004
Eloquent look at the problems of the current patent system, particularly the changes in U.S. patent law that began in 1984, in favor of large corporations, and what can be done to improve patent quality and accountability to the public, which grants them in the first place.
Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes, Mark Penn, 2007
An insightful look, in the tradition of Megatrends and The Tipping Point, at the many social stratification trends occurring in our modern freedom- and individuality-oriented culture, and the social shifts and business opportunities they represent.
Scanning the Future: 20 Important Thinkers on the World of Tomorrow, Yorick Blumenfeld, 1999
Interviews with eminent scientists, engineers, statesmen and others. Thoughts on how to build a better future for ourselves and the planet.
The Assault on Reason: The Challenge to American Democracy, Al Gore, 2007
How media monopolies and government opportunism have weakened democracy, and a number of ideas for change.
The Meme Machine: Imitation and Social Intelligence, Susan Blackmore, 2000
Agood start at exploring the idea that self-replicating ideas, which jump from brain to brain in our highly imitative human culture, are another level of evolutionary development on top of self-replicating genes, which jump from cell to cell to create life and its biological imperatives. Memes (good ideas that are worthy of imitation) have a "life of their own" in culture. Memeplexes like "the self" are really just one special collection of such ideas. Fascinating way to rethink who you are.
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, 2002
Treats ideas like epidemics. Discusses social roles (connectors, mavens, salesmen) and the dynamics of behavior change.
Virtual Charter Schools and Home Schooling, Carol Klein, 2006
Explores the virtual charter school, which allows the socialization of home schooled peers who are all educated under the same "charter," whatever that may be. Is a virtual class of 30 empathetic high-achievers adequate socialization? If so, will virtual charter micro-schools be increasingly realistic options for educating self-reliant and innovative youth inside a larger culture of narcissism and apathy?

Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Resp., Org. Dev. Books and Book Sites
Conquering Uncertainty: Understanding Corporate Cycles, Theodore Modis, 1998
Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, Rajendra S. Sisodia, 2007
Read this book for more on the vanguard of corporate social responsibility. People want to work for corporations that follow triple bottom line accounting, maximizing not only financial benefits, but environmental and social benefits as well. Europe is leading the way in environmental benefits accounting,and the US is following. Europe is also leading the way in the transparency of financial accounting, while US financial accounting standards serve more to obfucscate and allow corporations to hide their actual financial status. No one is yet leading the way in social benefits accounting, as the world is not yet quantified enough, our digital and reputation systems aren't yet intelligent enough. But they will be. Meanwhile, companies like those Sisodia describes are showing that socially responsible corporations that declare and strive for higher values, and define their stakeholders in the broadest possible terms, are gaining mindshare and heartshare, and are leading the transformation of of the organization.
Seeing What's Next: Using Innovation to Predict Industry Change, Clay Christensen, 2004
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, Patrick M. Lencioni, 2002
The Logic of Failure: Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, Dietrich Dorner, 1997
How our mental habits can set us up for error, and how to guard against it in management.

Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle Books and Book Sites
Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, Juliet B. Schor, 2005
Outlines the incredibly sophisticated and relentless marketing manipulation of kids, and the resulting passivity, commercialism, and alienation from authentic values and passions that emerges. Amazing stats like the average 10 year old has memorized about 400 brands (but still knows virtually none of the countries or cultures of the world), that R-rated movies are marketed to 9-year-olds, that the target readership of Seventeen magazine is now preteens. Ideas for ways parents (primarily), educators and govt (very secondarily), and advertisers (least likely) can lessen these problems.
Goals!, Brian Tracy, 2004
Twenty one proven strategies for clarifying your beliefs, values, Major Life Purpose, goals, and plans, and for taking action on them every day. Excellent personal futures book for anyone who needs help improving their goalsetting routines.
Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, Susan Jeffers, 2006
Excellent practical techniques for overcoming fear, indecision, anger, and self-image problems to get to personal action and growth. Very often faulty thinking is at the root of our fear. We need to learn to "do first those most important things that scare us" and watch ourselves as we confront them. Courage can be learned, and this book is a great introduction to how to do that.
Happier: Learn the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, Tal Ben-Shahar, 2007
Workbook for one of the most popular courses (positive psychology) at Harvard U. Dr. Ben-Shahar discusses the blend of reason and emotion, short and long-term orientation, here-and-now vs. big picture, path and destination thinking, that leads to happier, more meaningful, more productive lives.
How We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: 7 Lang. for Transform., Kegan & Lahey, 2002
You have as much control over the way you speak to others as you do over your attitude. Use it!
Insurance for Dummies, Jack Hungelmann, 2001
A good overview of how to manage risk by purchasing insurance, a key futures planning tool. The kind of people who purchase insurance and do investing have strong personal foresight. When we overcome our fears and get good with these topics, we become foresighted as well. The key with insurance is to understand, and learn how to minimize your real level of risk, and to purchase only the amount of insurance you really need. As your personal assets grow, you can self-insure more. Whether car, home, health, life, liability, event, or other insurance, this book is a good place to start.
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Mind, V.S. Ramachandran, 1999
By looking at people with damaged brains, a neuroscientist looks at the way past experience, emotion, and our unconscious and conscious mind construct meaning about the world. Fascinating insights for gaining self-awareness and improving your mental "influence" over your own behaviors.
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer, Saul Alinsky, 1989
Classic text on how to live with an activist's mindset. Change is always painful to people. Sometimes you need to be an irritant to others to get the social change that is needed. Alinsky gives lots of examples from history of effective "radicals."
Simple Living Guide, Janet Luhrs, 1997
Tips on thriving with less clutter, consumption, and expense in all facets of your life, by the editor of the Simple Living Journal.
Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life, Nathaniel Branden, 1997.
A great book about how to accept responsibility for one's actions and manage one's own self-esteem, improving your self-awareness and ability to create and discover the kind of relationships, job, and life that you want. You don't have to agree with Branden's political beliefs to get value from this book. Branden is a libertarian (someone who's political philosophy is minimal government, and who would not advocate social assistance programs). Libertarians make up only a tiny fraction of political parties in all governments around the world. They are going against the dominant trend of increasing social assistance in the developed world. But while the state may provide increasing safety nets, the self-reliant individual has every right not to take advantage of them, but to make their own future.
The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, John Maxwell, 2007
Key traits like character, courage, focus, generosity, listening, passion, that inspire leadership.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, Don Miguel Ruiz, 2001
Be impeccable with your words. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best. Ruiz illuminates these four simple habits, and the tremendous personal empowerment that flows from them, if you do the hard work of internalizing them and living by them. This brief book gets New-Agey, preachy, and hyperbolic in its ancillary claims, but discerning readers can look beyond this to glean the essential wisdom within.
The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Judith Rich Harris, 1999
Excellent evidence and argument by the self-taught author of a college textbook on child development why parental upbringing has such a small effect on child development. Increasingly we find it is the nature of the peer group that is the primary influencer. Implications of this are not only the obvious, to get one's child into a "better school," but profound: if a child is raised around a special subset of high-standards peers (home-schooled, extracurricular, or otherwise) who have learned how to analyze both the best and the worst today's youth culture, they will take these insights to heart. Even when they rebel as young adults they will judge this rebellion by the standards of their peers, who can have levels of self-reliance and self-actualization unseen in the larger society. The more networked society becomes, the easier it is to find these islands of peer-group excellence and to influence the larger culture by the example of one's own life and the upbringing of one's children, which is perhaps the most powerful and certainly the most personal way of changing the world, in the end.
The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, Andrew Tobias, 2005
Good basic investment advice, including a great deal be-conscious-of-your-expenses and heres-how-to-spend-less common sense.
The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need, Juliet B. Schor, 1999
Portrait of the "getting and spending" culture that pushes so many of us into debt and unsatisfying consumption, and a profile of "downshifters" who find a way out. Nice thesis on the way television watching is causally correlated with overspending, particularly among youth, who are being the most aggressively manipulated these days.
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Barry Schwartz, 2005
Data and insights on the massive increase in choice and the corresponding cognitive load on today's consumers, and the lack of adequate external filters and internal inhibitions to keep us from getting stressed and unhappy in the midst of all that plenty.
The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Bounce Back from Setbacks, Al Siebert, 2005
Great followup book by the author of The Survivor Personality. Explains how to recognize and admire resiliency traits in others and how to build them in yourself.
The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance, K. Anders Ericsson, 1996
Ericsson's original work on the ease of acquiring expertise via disciplined practice, in spite of one's inherited talent or upbringing. His Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2006, is his followup work, and one of our great futures books.
Waking Up in Time: Inner Peace in Times of Accelerating Change, Peter Russell, 2007
Tips for finding peace, doing good, and living well in our modern ever-accelerating world.
Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life, Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2005
Great advice and habits for being mindful, stress-minimized, and conscious in a world that tries to take away your self-awareness at every turn.
Why Good Things Happen to Good People, Stephen Post, 2007
Research on the mental and physical health benefits of doing good and helping others. Affirms the adage: "Want to be happy? Make others happy."
Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes: Behavioral Econ., Belsky & Gilovich, 2000
Why do otherwise rational people act so foolishly in relation to money? Insights from the emerging science of behavioral economics.

Multidisciplinary Foresight Books and Book Sites

Realistic Future Fiction (RFF) Books and Book Sites
[Realistic future fiction has major parts which feel like they actually could happen in the future, under the right circumstances. Almost all fantasy stories and most science fiction stories really don't count as realistic--there are exceptions however, and if you think that some particular aspect of a fantasy or SF book feels realistic, include it here and explain why. Realistic future fiction is a subgenre of general or science fiction that feels realistic (it could actually happen) most of the way through, to most readers. Well-written and highly realistic realistic future fiction is rare, as you can imagine.]

Realistic Singularity Fiction (RSF).
By far the most obvious monumental sci-tech advance looming ahead of us is the arrival of greater than human intelligence, likely within this 21st century. Judith Berman, in "Science Fiction Without the Future," 2001, noted that writing about the coming AI is so difficult (emotionally and intellectually) that most sci-fi writers, and their readers in collusion, have simply abandoned reading or thinking about realistic science fiction, turning to comfortable fantasy instead (e.g., Star Trek and other such impossible but comforting 'space operas'). Nevertheless, there are a handful of efforts that attempt to realistically describe the likely coming emergence of AI, and the implications of an AI world on human beings, in at least a partially plausibile way. We call such fiction RSF. Here are a few favorites:

The Two Faces of Tomorrow, James Hogan, Yukinobu Hoshino, 2006
Note that this is the (most recommended) graphic novel version. For the book, which has even more interesting detail, but is getting outdated and has a poorer ending, see The Two Faces of Tomorrow, James P. Hogan, 1980. TFT is a fictional account of one of the great questions of 21C tech: How do we trust the coming AI? Hogan's answer is that the world's leading governments decide to put the first near-sentient AI on space station, with a troop of Marines guarding it (and provoking it to see if it will be 'bad') and installing a secret safeguard nuke that can be used to blow the whole thing to hell in case things somehow go south. Someone needs to make a film out of this. I hope it's optioned. I consider it one of the best sci fi stories that has yet to be made into a film. Unfortunately, I think that by the time we have robots advanced enough to build these kinds of space stations, AI will arrive on earth long before we could afford to build them. So the timing of some of these advances are off, but it's a great story nonetheless.

Society of the Mind, Eric L. Harry, 1997
A long (672 pages) but quick-reading 'cyberthriller' about a company whose robots rapidly get smarter and smarter, until the singularity is reached. Lots of fun and predictable human plot, but the rapidly improving tech is reasonably well presented as well. Major points off for the "reclusive billionaire genius" pathway to real AI, a very unlikely scenario in a world where today's AI is incrementally and very globally constructed, in a very 'soft takeoff' fashion. But a very engaging, populist read. Don't want to read? Get the unabridged audiobook for your next long drive.

Jame5: A Tale of Good and Evil, Stefan Pernar, 2008
If you are willing to believe a 'hard takeoff' AI could occur, in this case, sudden emergence of greater than human intelligence via 'full scale molecular simulation' of a human, with 'all or nothing' results, Jame5 is slick, fun, and engaging tale of how that might occur. I think that advanced embodied AI will have to take a highly global and incremental path, involving ubiquitous robots and avatars (digital twins and digital secretaries) who are bred, like dogs and cats, for domestic trustability, even though the robots and avatars brains are in truth evolved black boxes, just like our dogs and cats brains are today. That pathway is at least paid lip service in The Two Faces of Tomorrow and Society of the Mind, so if that's your persuasion you might enjoy those more, and Jame5 would have to take a hit for lack of realism in this respect. But with that caveat, Jame5 is a fun, fast read, with interesting, provocative thoughts on philosophy of mind and complexity.

Other Realistic Future Fiction
(Student-Submitted, Alpha Order by Title).

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932.
This dystopian novel describes a hedonistic world where family, culture,and art are destroyed. Even though people are basically happy and healthy, everyone has lost their identity and individual control over their fate. It's a good thought-provoking book because many of the things in the book (or at least parallels) already exist in today's reality. It's somewhat frightening because it suggests that eventually we might be genetically engineered to live certain lives and to do certain jobs, made to be artificially and superficially happy by what we are assigned to do.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a great book by Philip K. Dick that, I believe, is very possible in the fututre. Most people know this book by the movie that was made of it, directed by Ridley Scott, Blade Runner. I believe that there will be a time, when robots will be possible, and then they will also have to be kept in check. This link is to the Amazon site where the book is.

Dust, Charles R. Pellegrino, 1999
This book pulls information from the past (cataclysmic events - dinosaurs extinction, the Ice Age) to make an inference to what could happen in the future. The author is saying that it's high time another even like those happens based on the pattern of the past. It's geared more towards an environmentalist futurist in that one animal's extinction completely threw off the balance of the entire world and launched it into chaos. Very freaky book that could possibly happen. - Katie Lindner

Ender's Game is an amazing story about a young boy who is chosen to be trained to fight for Earth. An alien race call buggers is threatening the existence of man, and Ender is chosen to go to a battle school in space. This book is fairly realistic and has some cool technologies. The story is amazing, and has the biggest surprise in any book I have ever read. - Brandon Jacobs

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
This dystopian novel is set in a time when critical thought is suppresed and firemen burn books and the houses that contain them as opposed to actually stopping fires. It tells the story of one fireman who one day decides to get into some of the books that he is supposed to burn, trying to fill an empty void in his meaningless life. Even today, the book effectively analyzes the growing trend of escapism in our society and the effects of the mindless, mass media entertainment that we increasingly get exposed to every day. Out of the several classical dystopias of its time, it is likely the most relevant today, especially because it deals with a future caused by society itself, not the government.

Foundation, Isaac Asimov, first published as a book in 1951.
If I didn't tell you this book was almost 60 years old, you might never guess. Asimov is eerily prescient in many passages. This novel (and the series that it evolved into) is based on the idea that a man has come up with a way to predict the future on a galactic scale; the model doesn't work for small groups, but only billions or trillions of people. If you enjoy science fiction in even the slightest bit, you will enjoy this book. - Bill Nega

Net Force Series,Tom Clancy and Steve R. Pieczenik, 1999
This series involves policing a new type of crime, cyber-crimes. The crimes themselves are not too futuristic, but the way the net is accessed is pretty inovative. It involves sitting in a chair and plugging in (Matrix-esque) but it can be customized however you choose, So looking for a particular piece of information could be done on the net as if you were a pirate with a treasure map. It is a very interesting series and can give a glimpse at the future of the internet and crimes associated with it. - Eric Kaplan

The Animatrix
Another great source on how robots will evolve. One of the short movies in it deals with robots, how they were made, and then when they got out of hand.

The Dragonriders of Pern series -
This series of books, started in 1968, has many realistic ideas to it but it's not until later in the series that it truly comes closer to becoming science fiction than fantasy. **Spoiler warning** After getting past the dragons and the feudal style towns in the series, the reader will come to learn that the people on Pern are descendants from a colony from Earth. The ships in this future do not have FTL (faster than light) travel so any colonies sent out a great distance are generally a one way trip. The one way nature means that ships are designed to be broken down into colony structures. Other realistic ideas in this series include genetic modification, loss of memory of home planet (after generations and generations of struggling to survive on a harsh planet), and loss of technology due to natural causes.**End Spoiler**

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, 1998
A thoughtful dystopia built on one big assumption: an outbreak of human sterility, and two big and at least plausible consequences: a global fundamentalist backlash, and a nuclear war. Children of Men, 2006 is very similar.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 1979
An excellent science fiction tale that predicts many currently existing technologies, even though they are the invention of other societies in the book, and takes a satirical look at our own psychology. Strangely it even predicts a few social trends long before they crop up in society and truly gives a new meaning to the term trilogy.

The Left Behind Series, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, 1996-2004
I haven't actually read this series, but I know it deals with a post-armageddon world, from a biblical standpoint, and those humans that were left behind in it. It could prove to be a very interesting read, even if you're not religious. - Katie Lindner

The Roads Must Roll, Robert A. Heinlein., First published in 1940 in Astounding Science Fiction (collections of short stories).
This short story is a remarkably perceptive tale about how transportation becomes increasingly important to how society functions, and although we have not yet gotten to the type of transportation used in the story it is a very intersting idea and quite possible to sometime in the future be how we get around. It's a incredibly interesting and exciting story as well as proposing interesting possibilites for the future.

The Stand, Stephen King, 1978
This book carries out a story of a virus that kills most of mankind. An extreme military research problems goes wrong and widespread death follows and this book projects a possible scenario if this were to happen.

The Two Faces of Tomorrow (Graphic Novel), James P. Hogan, 2006
Set in a near future where humans have to face the consequences of living on the same planet with large computers that are beginning to "think" and control their own world (including robots that repair them). Will the first truly self-aware computer be friend or foe? To find out, the U.S. puts the world's most advanced computer on a space station (with a nuclear destruct safeguard) to see if it remains "friendly" and is willing to follow orders even after it "wakes up." A great story that hasn't yet been made into a blockbuster sci-fi movie. I could see a prequel and a sequel to it. Hopefully soon!

Unclassified Books and Book Sites
Put below any books and book sites you recommend but can't easily classify above. Someone will classify them for you if necessary.

The Garden in the Machine --Claus Emmeche
I didn't see a section for non-fiction so I'm posting this here. This book explores the premise of artificial life, or alife. It can be a bit overcomplicated at times but it is a great read if you're interested in alife. - Brant Hestrup

On Intelligence -- Jeff Hawkins
Written by the inventor of the Palm Pilot "On Intelligence" explores artificial intelligence and what it will take for us to better implement it. It is written much better for the average reader than "The Garden in the Machine" and is an interesting read for anyone who is interested in how the brain works and artificial intelligence. - Brant Hestrup

The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe
This was an interesting book to research about because unlike a lot of future books we are shown, this book is one of those "doom" volumes. It tells a tale of the end of times and 100 things we can do to change and prevent a new "dark age". It might have the impact it wants, or it might flop like so many others. Time will tell if he is right or not. -Alan Cacciamani

I Am A Strange Loop - Douglas Hofstadter

Very interesting book, grapplingempiricallywith the nature of consciousness. From Wikipedia:I Am a Strange Loopis a 2007 book byDouglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of astrange looporiginally developed in his 1979 bookGödel, Escher, Bach. Hofstadter had previously expressed disappointment with howGödel, Escher, Bachwas received. In the preface to the twentieth-anniversary edition, Hofstadter laments that his book has been misperceived as a hodge-podge of neat things with no central theme. He states: "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"[1]He sought to remedy this problem inI Am a Strange Loop, by focusing on and expounding upon the central message ofGödel, Escher, Bach. He seeks to demonstrate how the properties ofself-referentialsystems, demonstrated most famously inGödel's Incompleteness Theorem, can be used to describe the unique properties ofminds.[2][3]- Max Marmer

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Great book that turns conventional wisdom on its head. Brilliantly discusses randomness, complexity,unpredictabilityandubiquitoushuman fallacies. From Wikipedia:Nassim Nicholas Talebrefers to the book variously as an essay or a narrative with one single idea:"our blindness with respect to randomness, particularly large deviations".[2]It isTaleb'squestioning of why this occurs and his explanations of it that drive the book forward.The book's layout follows "a simple logic"[3]moving from literary subjects in the beginning to scientific and mathematical subjects in the later portions. Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2 delve intoPsychology.Talebaddresses science and business in the latter half of Part 2 and Part 3. Part 4 contains advice on how to approach the world in the face of uncertainty and still enjoy life.Talebhimself, acknowledges a contradiction in the book. He uses an exact metaphor,Black Swan Ideat o argue against the "unknown, the abstract, and imprecise uncertain--white ravens, pink elephants, or evaporating denizens of a remote planet orbiting Tau Ceti. - Max Marmer

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Articles & Databases

JohnMSmart — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:53:46 CST

Great Foresight Articles and Databases
In Top, STEEPCOP, Multidisciplinary, and Fiction Categories
Place your foresight education resources in alpha order under each category, please.

Article and Database categories on this page:
Top Foresight Articles and Databases
Science, Evolution, and Development
Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech)
Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure
Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure
Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion
Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Responsibility, Org. Dev.
Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle
Multidisciplinary
Fiction
Unclassified

Top Foresight Articles and Databases

Essential Principles of Career Development. In: Economics: A World of Opportunity, Larry Smith.
1. Have passion for your work.
5. See your future self ahead as far as you can (up to 50 years!).
Please go read the rest...

http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/index.html
The homepage of the peer-reviewed Journal of Future Studies. The site has many articles that are free to view and most articles would likely help any student looking for scholarly sources for an essay. The article topics vary from future global economics and politics to predictions about countries and regions.

Science, Evolution, and Development Articles and Databases

Extreme Scale Computing (and Predictive Science and Modeling), Blog of Irving Wladawky-Berger, 15 Feb 2010.
Excellent article on the design challenges and imminent arrival of exascale computing in the next half-decade. Our supercomputers are moving to millions of parallel processing activities, a parallelism that begins to approach the human brain, in fact. Wladawsky-Berger argues that all this new parallelism, connected to the cloud, may put us at the tipping point of the emergence of far more effective predictive science and modeling. When we gain the ability to run parallel applications of the same problem with many different combinations of parameters, we test ensembles of solutions, comprising whole landscapes, and can find globally optimal solutions better than ever before. Will we see new clarity of prediction and foresight, including new understanding of processes of universal evolution and development, emerge from this new computational capacity? Answering that question seems like one of the most important challenges we have before us. Fortunately, there are DoD and administration funds to keep the push to exascale computing moving forward, at least in the U.S.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
This was an article that my math teacher suggested would be interesting. It actually was, and its only one page long. The headling was "I am Creating Artificial Life" In the article it talks about a guy who has stripped down a becteria cell into near nothing-ness, then used it as a case to create a "synthetic chromosome." It also talks about how this discorvery could very well be the one that can lead to the eventual gene manipulation of humans, somewhat. Additionally how this discovery could lead to the creation of a bacteria that could consume carbon dioxide gas, thus reducing, or eliminating the threat of global warming, and even propane, and other fuel emitting bacteria that would only need sugar to produce such goods. This is definitely something you should read, and like I said, its not that long of an article. (stephen271)

Democritus -- Scientific Wizard Of The 5th Century BC
Speculations in Science and Technology, 21(1), 37-44, 1998. This essay considers how Democritus, in the 5th century BC, without much help from mathematics or technology, could discover that the world was built up from atoms, that the Sun was a common star, that the Milky Way was made up of unresolved stars, that mass and energy are conserved, etc. The answer: scientific reasoning. It is concluded that the empirical/conceptual approach can be a highly effective complement to the theoretical/mathematical approach in science. What if Democritus’ ideas and methods had caught on immediately, instead of being virtually ignored for 2,000 years? [Rarity and value of a culture of scientific inquiry]. - Robert Oldershaw

Bilbliography on Genetic Programming
http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Ai/genetic.programming.html
This is a database of a few thousand genetic programming papers. Genetic programming is an evolutionary programming technique which has been under some scrutiny due to the resources it had required to function, however, the advances in computational technology has allowed for genetic programming to produce novel results. This belongs to the futures section because one of the beautiful things about the artificial life methodology is that it can produce results which we had not previously recognized or perceived as real. Therefore, evolutionary programming has the potential to produce some of our future technologies by adding to the "menu that our brain defines as real." -Chris Schoerning

Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech) Articles and Databases

The Long Nose of Innovation. Bill Buxton, BusinessWeek, 2010.

The bulk of innovation is low-amplitude and takes place over a long period.
Therefore, companies should focus on refining existing technologies as much as on creating new ones.

"Think of the mouse. First built in around 1965 by Bill English and Doug Engelbart, by 1968 it was copied (with the originators' cooperation) for use in a music and animation system at the National Research Council of Canada. Around 1973, Xerox PARC adopted a version as the graphical input device for the Alto computer. In 1980, 3 Rivers Systems of Pittsburgh released their PERQ-1 workstation, which I believe to be the first commercially available computer that used a mouse. A year later came the Xerox Star 8010 workstation, and in January, 1984, the first Macintosh—the latter being the computer that brought the mouse to the attention of the general public. However it was not until 1995, with the release of Windows 95, that the mouse became ubiquitous.

On the surface it might appear that the benefits of the mouse were obvious—and therefore it's surprising it took 30 years to go from first demonstration to mainstream. But this 30-year gestation period turns out to be more typical than surprising. In 2003 my office mate at Microsoft (MSFT<http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=MSFT>), Butler Lampson, presented a report to the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council in Washington which traced the history of a number of key technologies driving the telecommunications and information technology sectors. The report analyzed each technology (time-sharing, client/server computing, LANs, relational databases, VLSI design, etc.) from first inception to the point where it turned into a billion dollar industry. What was consistent among virtually all the results was how long each took to move from inception to ubiquity. Twenty years of jumping around from university labs to corporate labs to products was typical. And 30 years, as with the mouse and RISC processors, was not at all unusual (and remember, this is the "fast-paced world of computers," where it is "almost impossible" to keep up).

Any technology that is going to have significant impact over the next 10 years is already at least 10 years old. That doesn't imply that the 10-year-old technologies we might draw from are mature or that we understand their implications; rather, just the basic concept is known, or knowable to those who care to look."

Is Technology Ruining Children?, J. Cornwell, Apr 2008.
Excellent article reporting neuroscientist Susan Greenfield's perspective that today's virtual technologies are taking away youth's abilities to think abstractly, to imagine, and to develop personal initiative, curiosity, and moral awareness. See also Ronald T. Floyd's article, Are We Losing the Ability to Think Abstractly? in Journal of Advancing Technology, Summer 2008. A call to awareness of the many ways our culture is being degraded by "first generation" uses of the incredibly compelling virtual environments in which we are all increasingly embedded.

Robots Vs Pirates Apparently, piracy (real piracy, not the BitTorrented variety) is all the rage off the coast of Somalia. The pirates that hijack ships and hold them and their equipment for ransom, sometimes killing crewmembers in the process. It isn't pretty. But the US Navy and Coast Guard have a trick up their sleeves: robotic boats. The 30 foot boat names Protector is fullyautonomous and comes with a huge mounted machine gun, go Navy - MustanshioMcHatman

Philips creates windows that make their own shade - An ordinary window to dull for you? Well with Philips new Daylight Concept "Active Glass," It allows you to interact with the window simply by waving your hand. Whether your creating plant life to block out the sun, or change the "tint" color. it is something that shows the potential for very interesting window shopping - MustashioMcHatman

Scientists Develop Artery Scurrying Micro Robot - The boffins at Chonnam National University have created a microscopic robot to be used in medical procedures to clear blocked arteries, the sugars in the patient's blood provide an alternative energy source. -MustashioMcHatman

Windbelt - Third World Power Generator. After being inspired by watching Washington's Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertlie) collasp due to high winds. ShawnFrayne believes that he has found a cheaper, more effiecient solution for wind power generators.-MustashioMcHatman

Solar Impulse - From Swiss Inventors, This Solar powered plane hopes to fly around the world, even at 40 mph, in 4 weeks. With a wing span of a Airbus. Its biggest challenge is storing energy to use at night. -MustanshioMcHatman

SILVIA - SILVIA is a complete system for the development and deployment of intelligent applications to almost any computing platform or operating system, with a technological core that allows humans to interact with computers in completely natural and intuitive ways. "You can actually carry on a conversation with Silvia...it is truly amazing. The responses from Silivia are intelligent and contextual, not just one or two words, but complete sentences. Could be used for call centers, smart phones, voice search, or many other voice related applications...the demo is mind blowing. You would have to see it to believe it...Cognitive Code is way beyond anything I have seen before. Amazing."

The Hard Science of Making Video Games, Ward et. al., Popular Science, Sept 2007
Discusses the "top ten" tech hurdles to making the next generation of highly realistic, immersive games, and how they'll soon be overcome.

Champion Robot Car Declared In the 1880s, the carriage lost its horse. Now, thanks to a car named Boss, the automobile could be about to lose its driver. The grounds of the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, CA, served as a mock city that the robots had to navigate. The course consisted of 60 miles of roads and parking lots and took about six hours to complete. The whole time, the robotic cars needed to obey traffic laws and avoid both cars driven by professional stunt drivers and the other robots on the course. - MustanshioMcHatman

Law of Accelerating Returns
Ray Kurzweil's Essay on technology as an exponential trend. This seminal essay paved the way for much of Kurzweil's Best Selling book, The Singularity is Near.

Limits to Biology (Performance Limitations on Natural and Engineered Biological Systems)
John Smart's essay describing the difficulties of biology-based radical life-extension.

True Chameleon Paint
Nissan hopes to create a paint that changes colors by adding a small electrical charge to its paramagnetic iron oxide paint polymer. - MustanshioMcHatman

World's Smallest Radio - Made of carbon nanotubes a few atoms across, it is almost 1,000 times smaller than current radio technology,"it is conceivable in the future that all components could be nanoscale, thus allowing a truly nanoscale wireless communications system." Professor Peter Burke -MustashioMcHatman

Bootstrapping our way to an ageless future
An excerpt from Aubrey De Grey's book "Ending Aging", published on kurzweilai.net. He discusses some of the technical challenges facing radical life extension as well as the
the monetary issues surrounding support for longevity research.

Robots showing emotion soon?
Powered by servos and microcontrollers, this will allow robotic faces to morph and change more then a normal human. While robots are still a ways away from being like us with A.I. or dynamic ability to move, they would be able to look and express emotion soon enough.-MustashioMcHatman

Unlitimited Power with in our grasp?
The Tokyo Institute of Technology claims that they have found a way to harness unlimited power from a practically-unlimited resource, Magnesium -MustashioMcHatman

http://www.jaronlanier.com/general.html
This page is about Jaron Lanier, one of my favorite furturists. It gives some insights into why he is considered one of the top futurist in the world. He coined the term virtual Reality and He founded one of the first companies that sold VR gear to the public. - Levar H

http://technabob.com/blog/2007/08/27/holographic-display-shows-360-degree-digital-images/
This is also another interesting technological advance worthy of being "futuristic" (man I love that word). In this article it presents something that was show off at the SIGGRAPH 2007 and it being a full 360 degree hologram I would definetly say this is something of great interest (its so cool and they also have a video!) - Disgaeafreak

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS). http://ntrs.nasa.gov
NTRS is a large database of information that you can freely search through although some of the reports might require further searching on your own or purchasing them. You can find reports on the space station, developmental research, antimatter, and much more. - Chris Schoerning

http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/web/resources/articles/community/ClickZ%20Network%20THE%20ONLINE%20MARKETPLACE,%20A%20Look%20Ahead,%20by%20Michael%20Fischler.htm The future that the internet may adapt us too. In this article the guy goes into explaining how the internet and computer may be used to run your entire house one day. I think this is cool because this is probally where the future is headed and it may or may not be right on the money but it is probally close. - Michael Stringfellow

http://www.nickbostrom.com/revolutions.pdf
A article/paper on technology by Nick Bostrom. It goes into detail with the topic and is quite a long read. - W. Alex Plageman AKA warpped655

Cellphones become so advance they replace your dog - In a Finnish school sponsored by Nokia, the children work up a project with the upcoming N800 cellphone and create a little pet out of it. -MustashioMcHatman

http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai.html
A article on the ethics of future AI. It is a very interesting read on the effect of having AI with near-human like abilities. - W. Alex Plageman AKA warpped655

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0696.html
Interesting article by science fiction author Vernor Vinge that explores the possibility of if the Technological Singularity (where we become or create beings that surpass current human intelligence) were to not happen. It's important to keep an open mind when dealing with the future; while something can be very probable, the probable frequently does not happen. [Trenton Kennedy aka Trentish]

http://www.openthefuture.com/2007/09/singularity_summit_talk_openne.html Presentation/Article by Jamais Cascio.
Talks about how the singularity is an important issue that will affect everyone and how we need an open and transparent process and discussion. Brings up some interesting issues such as: how ethical is it to change the world without consulting it first? [Trenton Kennedy aka Trentish]

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5666232
This is a car that can drive itself! its good and futuristic because who doesn't dream of a car that you dont have to do drive? - Kino

http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/news/gizmos/story.html?id=b193e671-dbf6-4c1b-90c7-8f1aa34a86b2&k=58820
This isabout robot's effects on older people. It is interesting because it shows how the passing of time affects different age groups differently. - Kino

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/08/22/irobot_revamps_vacuums_plans_more_home_robots/
Article about home robot vaccums. I like this because its another one of those "small steps into the future." - Kino

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/815/815041p1.html
The forge is halo 3’s new map editor. This is just the future of gaming by far.

http://www.psu.com/Square-Enixs-White-Engine-is-cross-platform--a0001252-p0.php
The beautiful white engine is coming to 360. A big competitor is coming to the American market for engine buying.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=30&articleID=00007A46-F8C5-1FD3-B58083414B7F0000-
Cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman argues that future machines will need emotions to be truly dependable.

This article gives a look at cars in the near future. http://www.motortrend.com/future/

This article has some intersting info on the future of robots and the oportunities they open up.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/17931/?a=f

Genetically Engineered Super Mice!
Yesterday, a bunch of scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA announced that they had successfully engineered a group of 500 genetically enhanced super mice that are super healthy, extremely aggressive, hyper active, higher in metabolism, have much longer lifespan compared to normal wild mice, can run pretty much non stop for 6 hours and can eat twice more than normal wild mice but only have half the weight. They say that human engineer is by far out of the question. Even with all the great powers the mice have, they obtained a few other abilities like altered behaviors and mental illnesses. - MustanshioMcHatman

ATHLETE
NASA's "All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer," was designed for lunar cargo hauling. Its 8 limbs allow it to not only travel on diverse terrains, but can also "walk" is soft sands. Attachments like drills and claws can be added to wheel base for extra work, and cameras are every where for the best view possible at every angle. - MustanshioMcHatman

Here's a look at some robots being developped by the military. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/danger,-will-robinson/armys-autonomous-fighting-bots-bound-to-roll-all-over-you-256682.php

High-speed USB will also be here soon. http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/hs_usb_pdg_r1_0.pdf

Computerized antiaircraft gun suffers error, opens fire, kills 9, wounds 14 South African soldiers. - Pajamas

Cheap new portable motion capture tech
An amazingly cheap and accurate way to do motion capture with less obtrusive sensors. Portable, could be a new componenet of gaming or digital avatars. - Tom Andrys

Sensecam
A great step foreward in capturing information that goes through us, a small digital camera worn around the neck that takes pictures throughout the day then compiles them into a short video may help alzheimers patients. A perfect example of a real need driving a technology that will have much larger impact later on. - Tom Andrys

Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Articles and Databases

We're only living in a 0.7 Civilisation, of course we can't Harness the Galaxy for power
Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City University of New York, has released an article stating that one day we maybe able to use the vary Galaxy we live in to harness power for ourselves. Stating that there is "3 Types of Civilizations." "Global pollution is a mortal threat for a Type 0 civilization, but not a Type I civilization, which has lived for several millennia as a global force and necessarily achieved ecological balance with its home planet. A type II civ would harness the energy of a star such as our sun, perhaps by building a huge sphere around it. A type III would harness the power of entire galaxies, controlling the life and death of stars at will." Very interesting read - MustanshioMcHatman

Career Education for a Global Economy, Sandra Kerka, ERIC Digest, 1993
A good basic article on education for a globalizing world. Needs an update.

Ships bring water to parched Barcelona - Tom Andrys

Inflatable Solar Arrays Cost 25X Cheaper then standard Panels
nflatatable solar? Cool Earth Solar has created a new technology that uses traditional photovoltaics and a new inflatable concentrator. We've seen plenty of mirror concentrators before, but this one is unique because it uses inflatable mirrors that are 400 times cheaper than polished aluminum mirrors. Though it has its draw backs, they hope to make it cheaper then non-renewable sources within three years! -MustanshioMcHatman

http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html - A good article on less positive possibilities by Nick Bostrom. It it goes in depth on a topic of possible catastrophes and natural disasters. - W. Alex Plageman AKA warpped655

http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html - An article on Astronomical Waste by Nick Bostrom. It is a topic that isn't commonly talked about, so its good to get something on it. - W. Alex Plageman AKA warpped655

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/24/pond_scum_breakthrough/
Genetic engineers have made a leap in developing a strain of algae with the potential to supply fuel for a future hydrogen economy

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm
Salt water as fuel, this could change things on the energy front.

The Death of Environmentalism
Persuasive essay describing the failures of the environmental community the last 30 years
and their inability to deal with the global warming crisis effectively.

Spinning into control
A Science News Weekly article on using flywheels to store enegy, including on locomotives. -Pajamas

Superfast Lasers used to kill viruses
Researchers are using this ultrashort-pulse laser to destroy the protein shell of viruses. They say the laser frequency will not harm human cells. If their research works, this could be applied to cure uncurable diseases like HIV and Cancers. - MustanshioMcHatman

Wind dam
A new concept of wind power that involves using natural land forms to channel wind into more intense areas for harvest. - Tom Andrys

Gapminder/Trendalyzer
A web-based application to visually compare global trends. Link to TED Talk on it- Tom Andrys

Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure Articles and Databases

The End (of Wall Street's Boom), Michael Lewis, Portfolio.com, Dec 2008 ****
Nine pages, required reading. For more background, see also this short piece by financial journalist Tim Penn.
Fantastic expose of the 1985-2008 Wall Street insanity period, beginning with taking the investment banks public, starting with Solomon Brothers, and shifting all that risk to stockholders, and ending with the subprime mortgage and CDO Ponzi scheme and the 2008 collapse of the housing bubble, major public investment banks, and the market. Also tells the story of how great financial forecasters, like Steve Eisman and his gang of short sellers at FrontPoint partners, can clearly see the end of a major era of governmental and economic mismanagement, in this case the long looming US financial meltdown, can accurately predict and make money off it, yet won't be taken seriously except by the insiders. A little honesty goes a long way at the right time however, as we see in those analysts who foresaw the Great Depression (Ludwig von Mises, Jesse Livermore) and whose blunt statements actually contributed to the US stock market crashes of 1929 (Roger Babson) and 1987 (Meredith Whitney). If we actually made it easier for all of us to be short sellers, instead of scapegoating these individuals, as has been the recent misguided trend, we'd have an economic system where true foresight would be rewarded for all players. Let's hope that happens eventually, in our leading markets. Lewis's article is a perfect example of how public companies, while they are necessary and important, are by their very structure the most short-sighted and growth-at-all-costs oriented. Fortunately there are solutions available, and the best economies use them. Private business, not public, makes most (at least 70%) of our economy run, and generates the most jobs. The most foresighted governments dethrone Wall Street by democratizing the individual investor's ability to give loans to directly to private businesses, both individually and via pooled investments. I'm speaking now of the bond market, which is much larger than the equity market, and which keeps all equity markets honest. Good government policy can structure incentives such that most of the average citizen's investments are in bonds, mostly with private and small to mid-sized firms, where most of the innovation will always reside in any economy, and good tax policy should penalize those investors who have most of their asset in speculative and short sighted equities. We also need new classes of public and private equity markets that are structured to favor long term, less liquid investment horizons. Finally and most importantly, we need governance that measures, grows, and rewards technical productivity (TP), which is far more important as an indicator of economic strength than GDP growth. While most people (social responsibility investors excepted) will always be out for the greatest financial return, governments can always be out for the greatest technical capacity return (science, tech, engineering, automation) from their investments. Countries like Singapore and Japan and China already do this surprisingly well. As govt is the largest segment of the financial system, it can have the greatest effect on moving the economy to a post-GDP-centric world. Let's measure TP everywhere, difficult though it be, and invest our public resources for TP growth. Unlike money, which is jut a proxy for value, an abstract and fiat measure, TP is the most real physical value we can build, as a species, within an economic-social-political system. It is our greatest survival variable and asset, and the countries that realize this, and stay true to it, will be the scientific, economic, and moral leaders of the future. - John Smart

Pay for things using your fingerprint!
Within the walls of Ten Chicago Shell Stations, they are testing a new method of paying for things, by simply place your finger on the biometric scanner, the money is deducted straight from your account. Just like a credit card but with out the fear of losing it or Identity Theft. Unless someone takes off your finger. Imagine calling Visa for that one - MustanshioMcHatman

Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure Articles and Databases

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/21/delaware.shooting/index.html
This CNN article is about the shooting at Delaware State University. What is futuristic about it? Everyone this day is not a boy; people need to invest into putting money in their campus security.

Pistol cams- N.Y. police to begin testing pistols with attached cameras that begin rolling as soon as they're taken out of the holster.

New British Helmet Renders Plane Invisible, Frightens Kids
This Helmet Mounted Display System provides the pilot with cues for flying, navigating and fighting the aircraft. It will even superimpose infra-red imagery onto the visor which allows the pilot to ‘look through’ the cockpit floor at night and see the world below. -MustanshioMcHatman

Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion Articles and Databases

Global Media, Law, and Ethics Course (MSTD400), Bill Kovariks, Radford University, 2003-5
Great source of trends and issues on media, law, and ethics.

Earthquake Sets Japan Back to 2147, The Onion, 23 July 2007
Hilarious piece about how a recent earthquake set Japan back technologically about 300 years. To 2147. Classic Onion!

Hong Kong to elect its own leader and legislators by 2020 BBC Dec 29 2007
Will megacities begin to move towards independence from the countries they're in? - Tom Andrys

Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Resp., Org. Dev. Articles and Databases
http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/web/resources/articles/lifeinthefuture/FORTUNE_com%203_6_2000%20The%20Capitalist%20Century%20Office%20Fantasies%20of%20the%20Future.htm This is what the top businesses of today think the future of buisness offices will be like. I personally don't think it is right on the money but I think it brings some valuable information to the argument. - Michael Stringfellow

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/17/coca-cola-readying-self-chilling-soft-drinks/
Coca Cola is developing a new soda that will make itself cold upon opening it. As we can see from this example, it is important to keep in mind that scientific breakthrough is frequently pursued for financial gain, not just discovery. - Trenton Kennedy aka Trentish]

No longer working in a cubicle..but a sphericle?
Designer Marcus Curran created this new workspace, the Eclipse partition system. The central idea behind this contraption is versatility. Its retractable hood allows for various levels of privacy and access to accommodate to the changing work flow of one's daily job. The hood also changes colors and graphics among having many other little things amenities to make you feel more comfortable in your workspace. - MustanshioMcHatman

Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle Articles and Databases

http://architecture.mit.edu/house_n/web/resources/articles/Boston%20Globe%20Online%20-%20Business%20-%20Growing%20earth's%20'electronic%20skin'.htm
This article goes into what the future may proceed with in or future homes and lifes. It is a cool article because it shows just how far the technology of today may be taken in the future and what it's limitations may or may not be. - Michael Stringfellow

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19344/?a=f Article by Kate Greene which talks about Adobe Systems who is developing software that would allow mainstream computer users to create high quality graphics and animations. It’s interesting to think about what the average person will be capable of creating in the future. [Trenton Kennedy aka Trentish]

Audio Spotlight- a new approach to marketing; narrow beams of sound are directed at people similarly to the LRAD Long Range Acoustic Device to convey inescapable advertising audio. -Tom Andrys

Multidisciplinary Articles and Databases

Realistic Fiction Articles and Databases
[Realistic fiction has major parts which feel like they actually could happen in the future, under the right circumstances. Most fantasy and a lot of science fiction really doesn't count as realistic--there are exceptions however, and if you think that some particular aspect of a fantasy or SF quotation feels realistic, include it here and explain why. Future fiction is a subgenre of general or science fiction that feels realistic most of the way through, to many readers. Good future fiction is quite hard to write, as you can imagine.]
List Fiction Articles and Databases Below in Alpha Order by Title

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Unclassified Articles and Databases
Put below any articles or databases you recommend but can't easily classify above. We will classify them later.

Disgaeafreak:This article that I found is about how the airforce is actually funding/ trying to develop anitmatter weapons. I my personal opinion that's just about as futuristic as it can get. The link is http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL

All material on this page is open source, creative commons licensed by FERN. Feel free to use any portion of this with appropriate attribution to "Foresight Education and Research Network" or "FERNweb.org."

Questions and Ideas

JohnMSmart — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:50:41 CST

Great Foresight Questions
In Top, STEEPCOP,and Multidisciplinary Categories
Place your foresight resources in alpha order under each category, please.

What burning questions do you have to ask about foresight, in any of the following categories? List them below. Those who think they have answers are also free to list them here. Consider doing an essay on your question, and possible answers to your question.

Question categories on this page:
Top Foresight
Science, Evolution, and Development
Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech)
Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure
Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure
Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion
Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Responsibility, Org. Dev.
Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle
Multidisciplinary
Unclassified

Top Foresight Questions

Science, Evolution, and Development Questions

Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech) Questions

Q: How Can We Make Much Safer Cars, and Cut Auto Deaths by 2/3 in the US and Globally?
Idea: The SafeCar
Why can't we buy cars today whose metal frames are built like this stealth fighter (picture left), with sharply angled sides that will push any vehicle that hits them either over or under them? On the edges, such cars could have rounded bumpers, using the same material found in mooring buoys (see picture below) which are lightweight and have long been used to keep very, very heavy floating ships from rubbing into docks. These buoy-bumpers would help the cars bounce off each other at slow speeds, and would save pedestrians and bicyclists in collisions at high speeds. With electromagnetic shocks and external sensors, safecars might even instantly raise or lower on their shocks before they hit the other car, ensuring that head-on collisions rarely occur, but rather "glancing off" the other car. SafeCars like these would prevent the paralyzing of their occupants when bad, intoxicated, uninsured or unlucky drivers smash into them at high speeds. You could wear easy-on-and-off seven point harnesses inside your SafeCar, like drivers of Formula One cars use today. You can sleep safely in a horizontal position in a moving car if you are in a seven point harness, because your hips are belted in by big nylon safetly belts. If you sleep reclining in the passenger seat in a three point harness, like people do in all our unsafe cars today, you can slide right through it when the car crashes.

How many deaths are caused annually by driving todays deathtraps? Driving is the most dangerous thing the average person does every day. Every year 42,000 Americans die on the highways, and roughly one million (one in 300 of us) are injured during auto accidents. 17,000 (close to half) of these deaths are alcohol related (see US Crash and Casualty Stats, DriveandStayAlive.com). The US Department of Transportation estimates the typical driver will have a near automobile accident one to two times per month and will be in a collision of some type every six years. These stats are even worse in the developing world, where roads are poorer and drivers less experienced. 1.3 million people die from auto accidents annually on our planet, and over one million have died every year for many years! If that isn't a sick statistic, I don't know what is.

If we lived on an alternate Earth, one with governments and automakers that cared more about human lives, everyone would have access to affordable Safe Cars, and people who chose not to drive them would pay a steep annual fee to cover all deaths caused in society by driving them.

Cars that drive themselves will be a big step forward in auto safety, but realistically, robocars are probably still 40 years away. Meanwhile, isn't it about time Americans had a super safe and affordable automobile available to them? Safe Cars could have been built back in the 1950's. Think about that. That means that a large percentage of the auto related tragedies we've seen around the world since, tens of millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of maimed people, could have been prevented if we'd had more politicians and designers who knew what was technically and economically possible and who, knowing the possible and desirable future, simply would not give up until affordable SafeCars were available as an option for everyone, and until the true costs of operating unsafe cars (almost all cars today) were priced into them. I'm not saying that all these deaths would have been prevented. There would still be people driving unsafe cars, out of personal freedom and "choice." But for all these years, those who wanted a safe car have never had a similar choice. Society gives us only unsafe options, and for many jobs we need cars to survive. Richard Rhodes calls this structural violence, when your society causes violence to you by its legal, technological, and economic structures, when other less violent structures are also possible, but not available. So what's stopping the SafeCar? What country will make it first, and how do we make them make it? How much would it cost to make a demo car to show how it works? -- John Smart

Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Questions

Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure Questions

Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure Questions

Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion Questions

Q: How Do We Make America's Overpriced, Underperforming College Education System More Innovative?
Idea: U.S. Business Academy for Entrepreneurs (Robert Kiyosaki).
A federally-supported academy, just like the military academies, that selects students who have a mission to create sustainable businesses which grow the number and quality of well-paying jobs in the U.S. After a competitive entrance process, involving references and interviews for past extracurricular behavior, students would get near-full-ride scholarships. They would also get to compete for a small pool of seed incubator funding on graduation. In return for their tuition scholarship accepted students would make a commitment to high technology, innovation, market share growth, corporate responsibility, and other policies similar to the ones we see in Germany, which has maintained its manufacturing base and global competitiveness, while America has let the corporations dismantle ours. The Entrepeneur's Academy would graduate more entrepreneurs into our society, a critical thing the U.S. needs. Immigrating more high-talent people every year is another way to get more entrepreneurs, and more hard working employeees. For more see We Need Two School Systems, Robert Kyosaki, USA Today 9 Feb 2010.

Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Resp., Org. Dev. Questions

Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle Questions

Multidisciplinary Questions

Unclassified Questions
Put below any questions you have or recommend but can't easily classify above. We will classify them later.

All material on this page is open source, creative commons licensed by FERN. Feel free to use any portion of this with appropriate attribution to "Foresight Education and Research Network" or "FERNweb.org."

Resources

JohnMSmart — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:34:10 CST

FERN Members:
Post your best undergrad and grad ed. resources for introductory foresight courses on the pages below.
Post your best career foresight resources for students and graduates in the Career section of this wiki.
Post your best general foresight resources (networks, people, orgs, resources) at GlobalForesight.org.

Resource pages for introductory foresight courses are:

Books
Periodicals
Articles and Databases
Websites and e-News
Statistics
Quotations
Questions and Ideas
Images
Videos
Games
Audios
Organizations
Conferences
Degree Programs
Other Resources
Glossary

Foresight categories on each of these pages are Top, STEEPCOP, Multidisciplinary, and Unclassified:

Top Foresight
Science, Evolution, and Development
Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech)
Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure
Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure
Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion
Society (Med): Org: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Responsibility, Org. Dev.
Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle
Multidisciplinary Foresight
Unclassified Foresight

If you are a foresight student, educator, alumnus, or advocate of futures education, feel free to add your comments at the bottom of any of these pages telling us how to improve these resources. Or request editing privileges (see home page) to add to these pages directly. Help give every student the opportunity to think and act like an innovator and sustainer, like a creator, discoverer, and manager of the future!

All material on this page is open source, creative commons licensed by FERN. Feel free to use any portion of this with appropriate attribution to "Foresight Education and Research Network" or "FERNweb.org."

Videos

JohnMSmart — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:09:40 CST

Great Foresight Videos (DVD and online) and Video Sites
In Top, STEEPCOP, Multidisciplinary, and Fiction Categories
Place your foresight education resources in alpha order under each category, please.

Video categories on this page:
Great Foresight Videos - On Reserve for Foresight Development (TCH110)
Top Foresight
Science, Evolution, and Development
Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech)
Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
Economics, Capitalism, Finance, Globalization, and Innovation Infrastructure
Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, and Sustainability Infrastructure
Society (Big):Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education, Religion
Society (Med):Org:Mgmt,Org. Innov. & Entrep, Org. Sustainability & Social Responsibility, Org. Dev.
Society (Small):Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle
Multidisciplinary
Fiction
Unclassified

Great Foresight Videos (GFV’s) - On Reserve for Foresight Development (TCH110)
Top recommended videos for this course. We will watch up to 15 of these during Futures Movie Nights in TCH110, roughly one per week.
You need to watch any seven of these during the course, and engage in in-class discussion of them afterward.

Week 1 - Futures Studies
The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED, 2007
Future Living 2025, Discovery Channel, 2007
Pandora's Box (Six Episodes), Adam Curtis, 1992
Week 2 - Science
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, Episode 4: Where Are the Aliens?, NOVA, 2004
Evolution (8 Episode Series): Episode 2 - Great Transformations, PBS, 2001
Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, NOVA, 2007
Week 3 - Tech, Part I
Beyond Human, Episode 2: Living Machines, Thomas Lucas, PBS, 2001
2057: The Body, The City, The World (3 Episodes), Discovery Channel
Future Cars: Episode 1 - Extreme Cars (4 Episodes), Discovery Channel, 2007
Future Weapons: Smart Weapons, (Season 1, Episode 4), Discovery Channel, 2006
Tokyo's Sky City and Transatlantic Tunnel, Extreme Engrg (S1, Ep 1), Discovery Channel, 2006
Week 4 - Tech, Part II
Computers - Modern Marvels, History Channel, 2005
Pirates of Silicon Valley, Martyn Burke, 1999
Amazing story of the birth of the personal computer, the first great chapter in the democratization of computing. The Internet/Web 1.0 was the second. Is Web 2.0 the third?
Startup.com, Chris Hegedus, 2001
Tech startups can be abysmal in new industries, where foresight is lacking. These Web 1.0 guys burn through 60 million in 18 months, leaving nada to show for it. Incredibly instructive.
Revolution OS, J.T.S. Moore, 2002
Video Game Invasion: The History of a Global Obsession, David Comtois, 2004
Week 5 - Global, Part I
World in the Balance: The Population Paradox and China Revs Up, NOVA, 2004 (2 Episodes)
Planet in Peril: A CNN Worldwide Investigation (2 Episodes), CNN, 2007
Energy Crossroads, Chris Fauchere, 2007
Solar Energy: Saved by the Sun, NOVA, 2007
The 11th Hour, Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners, 2008
Sensational but well-argued call for a pervasive mindset change for our species to live sustainably in coming generations. See also their 11th Hour Action Network for a solutions community.
Week 6 - Global, Part II
Commanding Heights, Episode 1: The Battle of Ideas, Daniel Yergin, 2003
Commanding Heights, Episode 3: The New Rules of the Game, Daniel Yergin, 2003
Utopia, Paragon, 2005
The worst mass crimes of the 20th century were created by "top-down" utopian futurists with grand visions and power, and no sufficiently organized opposition, or pluralistic checks and balances. Lenin, Hitler, Mao are all chillingly portrayed as utopians in this compelling film.
People's Century (Award-winning 26 episode series on the 20th Century) Great Leap: 1943-1976, PBS, 1999
Incredible story of the heartbreaking, dysfunctional impact of Mao Tse Tung, one of the most powerful utopian futurists of the 20th century, up to and during the Cultural Revolution in China.
Confronting the Truth,
The growth of truth commissions. They address the pain of the past, restore human rights and due process, create institutional memory, and ensure social horrors will not be repeated.
Uganda Rising, Pete McCormack, 2006
Great story about Ugandan politics and the youth-soldiers in the Lords Resistance Army. Social engineering (amnesty & reconciliation) can address complex issues of civil violence.
City of God (dramatization) and News from a Personal War (doc), 2002
Incredible dramatization of the violence, drugs, and lack of opportunity in Rio's favelas. Makes all the Tarantino movies look tame and stupid by comparison. Only education, social services, political leadership, and population reduction can deal with these issues, and it will take generations. Meanwhile there beauty, love, and community spirit thrive amid the deprivation. News From a Personal War is particularly hard hitting and raw.
Week 7 - Economics
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Robert Greenwald, 2005
Learn about the largest, wealthiest company in the world. Clearly unfair US government subsidies, substandard wages and health care, exploitation of Chinese workers, aggressively antiunion policies allowing substandard working conditions to persist. Strong social democracies like Germany hold Wal-Mart to a significantly higher set of social standards. When will we?
The Corporation (2 Disc Special Edition), Mark Achbar, 2004
Overly histrionic and sloppy, yet still a reasonably useful exploration of the excesses of the corporate entity in the 20th century, which have become less extreme in individual instance, yet more pervasive as corporate wealth has grown to exceed national wealth the world over. Briefly considers the unrealized possibilities for corporate charter revocation and reform.
Sicko (Special Edition), Michael Moore, 2007
One of Moore's more balanced works, while still biased infotainment. Special features on the DVD include this 8 minute piece on Norway's health care and penal system. Moore highlights Norwegian outliers in the prison bit, without telling you, as is typical of his propagandism. Nevertheless, the lesson sinks in: these countries, with oil and without, are well ahead of us in development of their social democracies, for a host of reasons Moore ignores. When will citizens here have the power to restructure the laws so we have a health care system that is required to put universal care ahead of profits? We shall see.
Week 8 - Politics + Security
Why We Fight, Eugene Jarecki, 2006
No End In Sight, Charles Ferguson, 2007
Our Brand is Crisis, Rachel Boynton, 2005
The Fog of War, Errol Morris, 2003
Well-Founded Fear: Gaining Political Asylum in America, Shari Robertson, 2001
Week 9 - Media, Education, Culture
Orwell Rolls in His Grave, Robert Kane Pappas, 2004
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Robert Greenwald, 2004
News War (4 Episode Series: Episode 3 - What's Happening to the News, Lowell Bergman, Frontline, 2007
News War (4 Episode Series: Episode 4 - Stories from a Small Planet, Lowell Bergman, Frontline, 2007
Declining By Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, John Merrow, PBS, 2005
2 Million Minutes: A Documentary Calculating the Educational Divide, Chad Heeter, 2007
Revealing, hard-hitting documentary financed by multimillionaire venture capitalist Bob Compton. It demonstrates just how far behind the United States education in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) has fallen, and just how comfortable we are with this situation. The modern global marketplace is highly competitive, and the leading innovations and companies of the future are going to come from countries that have strong STEM education and an innnovative culture. Will we recognize how vulnerable we are, and reform our educational system and start immigrating the best and the brightest again, or will we continue to slide into social narcissism and global irrelevancy? Fortunately each of us has the choice, for ourselves at least, even as US culture and educational systems have increasingly failed us in this regard in the last 50 years. Can we turn them around? What pressures can be brought to bear on the current hugely inertial system in order to do so? What individual freedoms do students really need?
Waiting for Superman, Davis Guggenheim, 2009 (Participant Media)
"For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians’ promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children. Guggenheim follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth. He undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems. The film embraces the belief that good teachers make good schools, and questions the role of unions in maintaining the status quo. It also offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have reshaped local cultures by refusing to leave their students behind."
Week 10 - Biz-Org, Part I
Who Killed the Electric Car?, Chris Paine, 2006
We Built this City - Paris, Discovery Channel, 2005
Week 11 - Biz-Org, Part II
Merchants of Cool, Barak Goodman, Frontline, PBS, 2005
The Persuaders, Rachel Dretzin, Frontline, PBS, 2005
Architecture to Zucchini: People, Co’s, and Orgs Pioneering Sustainability, 2006
Week 12 - Personal-Career, Part I
A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink, 2006
The Up Series, Michael Apted (Three 20 min pieces, 7 up, 21 up, and 42 up)
Mr. Personality (Intvw w/ Forensic Psychologist Michael Stone) on The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 2005
Week 13 - Personal-Career, Part II
Maxed Out, James Scurlock, 2005
Secret History of the Credit Card, Frontline, David Rummel, 2004
Week 14 - Personal-Career, Part III
Bringing Down a Dictator, Steve York, 2002
A Force More Powerful: Episode 2, Steve York, 2000 (2 episodes)
Street Fight, Marshall Curry, 2005
Modern politics and racial stereotyping in the 2002 Newark, NJ Mayoral campaign. The corruption and dishonesty are incredible, the electorate is hoodwinked, yet there is still hope.
Week 15 - Personal-Career, Part IV
Legacy, Tod Lending, 2006
The Bridge, Eric Steel, 2006
The Business of Being Born, Abby Epstein, 2007
Shows the way Americans, as the world's most convenience-oriented culture, have allowed the business of medicine to turn childbirth into a profit center, and an experts-only affair. The low number of parents who use midwives (8% in US vs. 70% in Europe) illustrates our patriarchal, numbed-out approach. Is it any wonder that our parenting is also increasingly hands off as well? Fortunately we can rise above the limitations of our disempowering culture and make childbirth, parenting, funeral arrangements, insurance, and other big life choices something that we control, ourselves.

Top Foresight Videos and Video Sites

General

Did You Know / Shift Happens 2.0, Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod, 2007
Excellent set of thought-provoking futures statistics on our accelerating world.
Did You Know / Shift Happens 3.0, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman, 2008
More great shift statistics. Updated for a Sony BMG executive meeting June 2008.
The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Verson), Michael Wesch (4:33)
Nice into to Web 2.0 architecture, and its long term promise to improve our collective intelligence.

A Vision of Students Today,Michael Wesch (4:44)

Another great Michael Wesch video about students in the 21st century.

Hyperland [1990], Douglas Noel Adams (49:21)
Get to know your virtual guide, a futurist's view of interactive media's future. Highly predictive.
Douglas Adams is a greatest futurist who rarely gets recognized as such, since he is so funny. [Roivas]

Comedy

Here Comes Another Bubble, Matt Hempey and the Richter Scales (2:45)
Satirizing Web 2.0 stock inflation. Hilarious. 1999 here we go again!
ApplePresents... the iRack!, MAD TV, Season 12 Episode 15, 2007 (4:17)
Hilarious analogy between G. Bush and Iraq and S. Jobs and Apple's suite of iProducts. Great hook ending too.

Science, Evolution, and Development Videos and Video Sites

A Thousand Years of Darkness, Carl Sagan (9:45)
Thoughtful excerpt from Sagan's Cosmos series, describing the great scientific advances of the Western world, and specifically the Egyptian city of Alexandria from the 3rd Century BC to 3rd Century AD, and how the knowledge of that era was stalled for 1,000 years, as human society turned away from critical thinking and toward blind faith and nationalism. Could this happen again? How do we make sure that a scientific attitude' is cultivated in our societies, and that science's benefits are made available to all, not just the privileged?

Intro to Genetic Engineering
This is a good video containing a monologue from a futurist reviewing the idea behind genetic engineering and the possible good and bad that could come from it. These good and bad things range from giving human genes to pigs so their organs can be better used for transplants to humans to possibly creating a super disease with our tinkering.

Powers of Ten: The Films of Charles and Ray Eames (Volume 1), 1968.
The first and still one of the best film versions of an incredible "dimensional tour" of the structures of our universe, starting with a human and going down to the quarks and up to the level of the whole universe.

Future By Design - Trailer - Movie
"Future By Design presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture." It is presented by a man who is called a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci. It shows great insight to what the future may be like.
[Kristopher Velez]

Technology (Engineering, Infotech, Sociotech, Cognotech, Biomedtech) Videos and Video Sites

"The Mother of All Demos" - Doug Englebart Previews the Personal Computer at the Fall Joint Computer Conference, Dec. 1968
In 1962 the Xerox Alto, the world's first personal computer, was built by Butler Lampson, with with a design inspired by Doug Englebart at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). In 1963, Doug and Bill English built the first prototype for the computer mouse. The Alto was extremely expensive, and was unfortunately never commercialized (built for sale to companies and the public). But the Alto had many of the key features of modern computers, including WYSIWYG editing and the mouse. Unfortunately, Xerox management did not realize how this revolutionary GUI (graphical user interface) could be combined with the new field of personal computing to fundamentally change how document production (its main business) occurs. This failure of critical foresight is surprisingly common in large organizations, where complacency emerges and bureacracy can be significant.

The Alto was being used in Xerox PARC, Xerox's research division. People were very excited about its potential, but the general public had no idea what was going on. So in 1968, Doug Englebart gave a demo of the first computer mouse the public had ever seen, as well as introducing interactive text, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, hypertext and a collaborative real-time editor. You can see the demo in this Google video. About 1,000 people were in the audience. This demo showed the world nothing less than the future of personal computing, more than ten years before the first commercial personal computer was manufactured, the Commodore PET in 1977, In 1969, ARPANET, the world's first electronic computer network, was established between nodes at Leonard Kleinrock's lab at UCLA and Douglas Engelbart's lab at SRI.

It took fifteen years, 1962 to 1977, to go to from the Alto to the Commodore PET. It took twenty years, from 1969 to 1989, for the ARPANET to turn into the Internet, and for it to become open to commercial interests. Email was the first application allowed, a service called MCI Mail. With these two advances, of course, the world was forever changed. Why do you think that futurists say it often takes twenty years for an idea to go from first use to broad application? Is this interval getting shorter today? If Englebart had done his demo in 1965 instead of 1968, do you think the world would have had personal computers even earlier? How important is it to do a good demo, as soon as you can? What is something you'd like to demo?

Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City, PBS, Aired 8 Feb 2010 (90 mins)
Excellent documentary on the need for the next generation of infrastructure in the U.S. Shows the burnt-out shell that is Detroit, MI, formal manufacturing capital for the auto. Nowhere is the consequences of the loss of the American manufacturing base more painfully obvious. Can we revitalize US manufacturing? What would we need to do, besides immigrating many more hard working citizens every year? Would we need higher taxes? How has Germany kept its manufacturing while having far higher taxes as well? Describes Spain's high-speed rail system between cities, which has more riders than planes and buses combined. Europe is now far ahead of the US in transportation infrastructure quality. The US stopped spending on transportation infrastructure in the 1980's. But the solutions didn't stop. High speed rail and hybrid buses and shuttles are clearly the next generation of efficient mass transit. Can the US get more high speed rail? We'll probably do it slowly. Can we get more hybrid and electric shuttles and buses? That would be excellent, but it may take some time. Would building super efficient shuttle buses, which can go door to door, be a better first step toward better infrastructure in many communities than light rail, or high speed rail?

QRIO spends time with Children
Javier Movellan at the University of California San Diego, US, took one of Sony's Qrio's and let it interact with toddlers. The children treated it like they would any other kid. Not only that, but when it laid down (function called upon when its batteries are low) the toddlers would put a blanket over it and wish it a good night. We as adults may not accept robots, but this shows that children truly are blind to anything we learn as we get older. -MustanshioMcHatman

Connections (10 Episodes), James Burke, 1978/2001.
This award-winning series is subtitled "An alternative view of change." It represents the views of James Burke, a leading technology historian, who helps us understand the serendipitous and highly interconnected and interdisciplinary nature of scientific and technological discovery. Episode 3 Distant Voices is particularly future-relevant. It begins with a suitcase nuclear bomb and ends with the Arecibo radio wave antenna/transmitter: the first represents the disruptive threat of technology and the second its ability to bring us all together. We live in the middle space between these two gargantuan opposing forces. How we use them shapes our future, perhaps more than anything else we do. - John Smart
Ancient Discoveries: Computers, The History Channel, 2004
(Not Available For Sale Yet at the History Channel. Does Anyone Have? We Need A DVD Copy of This For Our Library!)
"The classical world of the 3rd Century BC produced three of the most important computing machines in history - Ctesibius’ clock, Vitruvius’ odometer and the spectacular Antikythera mechanism, an model of the cosmos in a wooden box." Could the computer age have started 2,000 years before its time? Quite possibly so, with a better culture of foresight, and just a little bit more luck. - J Smart
Ancient Discoveries: Heron of Alexandria, The History Channel, 2004
(Not Available For Sale Yet at the History Channel. Does Anyone Have? We Need A DVD Copy of This For Our Library!)
About Heron (aka Hero) of Alexandria, Egypt, 20-70AD, and his many amazing inventions, including a primitive rotary steam engine. Could the Roman Empire have had the steam engine 1,500 years before its time? Quite possibly so,with a better culture of foresight, and just a little bit more luck. - J Smart

Webb Alert. This is a video blog made by one of the hosts of X-Play on G4. It is a daily roundup of all the big news in the tech world that provides links to all the storys covered in each episode so the viewer can do a follow up. Each episode is only about five minutes long so it doesn't take up too much time and provides some insight into each story. - Bernard Clary

Jeff Han (Interface Free Computer Screen)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLhMVNdplJc

First 10 Minutes of Minority Report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqPWUnaBNSA

Cars of the Future http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tQtgbH4X5k

Future Soldiers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu0UiaI0u8w

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/128967/water_as_fuel/ This guy first off started making what i believe to be a welder that runs off water. Now he is working on a Hummer for the military that runs off water and gas. If this technology works some problems with our fossil fuels might end, but then perhaps new ones may come up with our supply of water?
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/170583/car_of_the_future/ This has to be the coolest video i have seen. No pedals to stop or accelerate, no mirrors, its just amazing.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/523332/ultra_mobile_pc_takes_on_navigation_and_communication_in_the_fut/ This is another video about future technologies, it shows how intergrated they will become in our lives. I like this video too because it shows how we dream about the future and all it takes its a dream to make it happen.

Armsted Snow-Car Concept Car, 1926 (11:05)
A really amazing video of a combination of a Ford tractor and a Chevrolet auto body. Armsted Snow Motors Co. thought these were going to take off in Winter in the US, on all the farms and back roads where there was no good snow plowing. Why do you think the Snow Car never emerged as predicted? What stopped it? Could this car still be a good solution today in some kinds of applications? Explain.

Jatech Rotary Drop Car Doors, 2009 (3:03)
What do you think of this car door? It has many advantages, but are there also hidden problems? Do you think we'll see more doors like this in coming years? Explain.

Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Videos and Video Sites

We Built this City - Paris, Discovery Channel, 2005
Great overview of the many urban planning challenges and solutions needed to keep Paris functioning, from 50 BC to the present. Excellent history lesson too, all in one hour. Paris has one of the most interesting histories of any city in the world.

The Future of Food - This is a YouTube video that is a bit dated but shows the progression of our genetic modification on the food we eat. There's also insight here on the issues that could arise if we don't work out the political issues behind modifying genes. As the video makes a point in saying, modified food has advantages but we don't want to have the seeds to the majority of our food owned by a few private corporations.

William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle - Interesting Youtube Video about intelligent "cradle-to-cradle" city design and environmental awareness. China is beginning to use his models.

Salt water as fuel! - Youtube Video on the discovery of salt water as a fuel. When exposed to a radio wave salt water explodes, this could be the end of oil and global warming.

Compressed air as fuel! - Youtube Video on running cars on compressed air.

Windbelt- An alternative to wind microturbinesin developing nations (or anywhere there's a breeze) -Pajamas

Economics, Finance, Globalization, and Capitalism Videos and Video Sites

The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis, BBC Two, 2002.
Explores an insightful but overly dramatized connection between Edward Bernays, founder of modern public relations, and the economics of our mass consumption society. Brilliant in parts and good background to understanding modern consumerism, but we need something a bit more even handed to complement it. - John Smart

Money as Debt - An insightful documentary (with a conspiracy theory twist) that explains where money comes from. It relates to future studies because the monetary system it describes (which we're in) is one that requires perpetual debt and exponentially increasing growth. A great exampleis at 24:24. However it states that the perpetual growth needed is impossible because it would require exponentially exploiting resources, definatly not a stable practice. However if resource use per dollar of GDP goes down over time, the system may be stable for a long time.

I want to learn perfect english!
A youtube clip of a crowd in China practicing english. When the crowd begins chanting "I want to learn perfect english!" I don't know whether to be proud or terrified of them. A few other subtle phrases clue the watcher in to what values the Chinese are trying to instill in their people ("I don't want to let my countri down!") - Tom Andrys

Politics, Security, Democracy, Rights, Health Care, & Sustain. Infras. Videos and Video Sites

Reds, Warren Beatty, 1981.
A fictional but very well-done introduction to the Cultural Revolution in China

Society (Big): Culture: Society, Ethics, Media, Art, Design, Education and Religion Videos and Video Sites

Justice w/ Michael Sandel, Harvard University & WGBH 2009 (Twelve 60 min episodes)
Harvard's first online course. Put online Jan 2010. See for example, Week 12. Debating Sex Marriage. Great background for understanding our evolving marriage standard. Can you marry an infertile woman? Can people marry on their deathbed? Can two same sex couples marry? Polygamy? Can you marry yourself? Can you marry a sufficiently sentient machine? This last question wasn't asked, but you can be sure it will be asked in the future. For more on the long history and possible future of human-robot relationships, read the fascinating Love+Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, David Levy, 2008.

Gamer, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2009. 95 minutes.
A fascinating future-culture piece, by the frenetic and imaginative directors of the Crank series, set in a near-singularity world, where super-high-fidelity simulation games have become a major cultural obsession. The main suspension of disbelief involves nanotech entering a hard-takeoff scenario via human effort (super unlikely), and doing this while AI stays really weak (also super unlikely). Nevertheless, this create lots of possibilities and instabilities, as such a takeoff doesn't have to be friendly, hence this script. Here's the setup: One company, led by the tech genius Ken Castle (MIchael C. Hall), develops the nanotech (presumably they have a patent on it, giving them a 17 year monopoly. In reality, the military would have it as well however, so that should also have been shown briefly). Castle uses his nanotech skillz to develop a direct brain-to-brain interface between humans via "nanites" which enter their central nervous system. In secret experiments, he also uses nanites to entirely replace the brains of three people: two test subjects Kable (Gerard Butler) and another person, and himself. This makes all three of their brains effectively immortal, though their AI powers are still primitive (why so, we don't know). Castle, being still mostly a scheming human with a new immortal and smarter brain, makes Kable kill the other test subject, by shooting him in the head. Once he realizes he can have this kind of control, he launches two virtual reality games, Society and Slayer, to market the technology, and to secretly spread his world control ambitions globally.

Presumably there have been some court cases in this future which settle people's rights to play both of these games, as each involves altering your own neural tissue with a few nanites (a medical procedure) so you can have this direct brain-to-brain communication. It is presumably totally reversible, which would make it particularly likely to be approved. Unfortunately, they don't tell us any of these details. If they had included them the cultural issue raised (should you have the right to alter your body with such an invasive medical procedure?) would have been very interesting. So let me ask you, should you have that right? If you are denied that right when others are doing it, either secretly or openly in other cultures, are you less free?

A few million people play Society, which is just a beautiful people being naughty game (seen also in Surrogates), and only a few thousand play the brutal Slayer, which involves the death of a significant number of the players in each match. Again, even Slayer would have been just this side of believable if we'd seen a minute or two on the court cases establishing your right to subject yourself to near-certain death in the future if you aren't insane or a minor and want to, and if most of the players had been free citizens, not prisoners. Then, once free citizens had been playing Slayer for a few years, a few bad-ass prisoners, funded by Castle, could have sue for their right to be gladiators as well, which then could have--just concievably--led to the scenario in the game, where Castle is paying billions to the U.S. prison system for the right to have a few voluntary prisoners playing the game alongside citizen gladiators. Again, all this assumes a society where the freedom to kill yourself has emerged, and where boredom with today's mock wrestling and ultimate fighting tripe has pushed a subculture to these extremes, and in the process created a highly marketable franchise. This movie thus draws from Rollerball, which has a similar premise, as well as Running Man, Blade Runner, Enter the Dragon, and a whole lot of other films. Gamer has some additional plot problems, the biggest one being that the humanz hackers could never have done the things they were doing, if they were up against a weakly artificially intelligent Castle and all his henchmen. But if the hackers had, say, recovered from the morgue the corpse of the test subject that Kable killed, and plugged his partly damaged nanobrain into their hacker computers, the story would have been one weak AI against another, and much more believable. Kable himself is the third weak AI of course, but he has been kept cut off from the rest of the world's computer networks, unlike Castle, and so is the mouse in a cat-and-mouse game. Other than this, and the loose ends at the end (what happens to Castle's brain? What happens next?), the plot is tight, right up to the final minute, which is a clear homage to Blade Runner. It apparently went over the heads of most critics (Rotten Tomatoes gave it a cluelessly-low 27%)) but this is a seriously futuristic film (we will see much more of this kind of virtual fantasy in the future) with a superior script, once you assume the super unlikely human-initiated hard takeoff of nanotech, and the indefensibly weak AI. What is most amazing is that Neveldine and Taylor pulled all this off with only $12.5 milllion. It feels like a $50 million dollar film. I give it a 7 out of 10. [John Smart]

Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo.
Famous experiment describing how cultural roles, hierarchy, and peer pressure can produce great behavior change, and sometimes evil.
How could good Germans have conducted the atrocities they did under Nazi Governance? What is the moral responsibility of culture itself for evil? How do we minimize culture's influence and maximize individual responsibility? How do we keep people from being sheeple?

Futurama, Volumes 1-4, Matt Groening, 1999
Probably the best futures comedy series in the world, and one of the best animated cartoon series of all time. Many folks consider the five episodes of Futurama (more coming now that it is being revived) even smarter and funnier than The Simpsons.

WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception, Danny Schecter, 2004
Media deconstructionist Schecter gives his analysis on the "selling" of the Iraq war to the American and global populace by a highly centralized, highly managed corporate media, whose interests have become so fully in line with government policy that we have lost our independent and investigative journalistic ethic in these venues. Television news has been fully captured by show business, and no obvious countervailing trend is in sight, at present. - John Smart

http://www.break.com/index/halo-takes-over-the-world.html
This Video is true, I have seen it.

Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk, PBS, 2005
Great coverage of the way higher educational standards have been weakening in the US. Predictable consequence of affluence?

We Didn't Start the Fire, Billy Joel, Mr. Allsop's History Class, 2007, 4:44
Awesome video version of Billy Joel's famous song about the transience and craziness of life. Full of pop culture references from the 50's and 60's and a bit of the 70's. Live every day like it is your last, because individual death is inevitable but individual life is a daily gift!

Life on Life, Sterling Wright, 2007, 13:00
Great short video on the chaotic, fanciful, inspiring and exasperating world that is Second Life. An award-winning machinima short about one woman's one year travel through this fascinating, evolving community.

Society - Humor
Study Finds Growing Gap Between America's Rich and Super-Rich, Onion News Network, 2:42
Panelists discuss a new study showing the gap between the wealthy and the absurdly wealthy is widening, and how we can help the merely rich catch up. Classic humor from The Onion! Lots of other good videos at this site.

The Professor Brothers
Should get you all thinking deeply about our past, present and future. The human mind fully condensed into a one ounce pill. Start talking about the future, do it.

Society (Med): Organizational: Mgmt, Org. Innov. & Entrep., Org. Sustain. & Social Responsibility, Org. Development Videos and Video Sites

Society (Small): Personal: Family, Relationships, Careers, and Lifestyle Videos and Video Sites

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRCFWdZicOM. This is what they think the future of kitchens will be like I don't know about you guys but this would be awsome. Just push a button and your food appears and then the stove is cleaned off without you ever touching it. That would be so cool. A touch screen for every thing in the kitchen. That is a cool future. - Michael Stringfellow

Multidisciplinary Videos and Video Sites

Realistic Future Fiction (RFF) Videos and Video Sites
[Realistic future fiction has major parts which feel like they actually could happen in the future, under the right circumstances. Almost all fantasy stories and most science fiction stories really don't count as realistic--there are exceptions however, and if you think that some particular aspect of a fantasy or SF book feels realistic, include it here and explain why. Realistic future fiction is a subgenre of general or science fiction that feels realistic (it could actually happen) most of the way through, even to critical readers. Realistic future fiction is rare, as you can imagine.]

Realistic Singularity Fiction (RSF).
By far the most obvious monumental sci-tech advance looming ahead of us is the arrival of greater than human intelligence, likely within this 21st century. Judith Berman, in "Science Fiction Without the Future," 2001, noted that writing about the coming AI is so difficult (emotionally and intellectually) that most sci-fi writers, and their readers in collusion, have simply abandoned reading or thinking about realistic science fiction, turning to comfortable fantasy instead (e.g., Star Trek and other such impossible but comforting 'space operas'). Nevertheless, there are a handful of efforts that attempt to realistically describe the likely coming emergence of AI, and the implications of an AI world on human beings, in at least a partially plausibile way. We call such fiction RSF.
Here are a few RSF favorites:

Bicentennial Man
iRobot

Other Realistic Future Fiction
(Student-Submitted, Alpha Order by Title).

Appleseed. Trailer:http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6158546CNez6Jx?searchId=7171439527040274323&rank=1
This anime presents a future world where a great war has tarnished most of the land. Common topic, I know. Its a good movie, in that world, the story takes place in a super futuristic city, that is supposed to be a "UTOPIA" The most realistic thing about this is that the government consists of "elders" who are under the main government figure GAIA, a computer program. Also the human existence with "bioroids" who are in essence advanced humans, not robots. It is worth watching, it, as do many animes, questions our abilities as humans to rule ourselves, and presents a cool environment, and many differing perspectives.(stephen271)

Battlestar Galactica
"The world ended with no warning, and all that was left … was hope." This isn't a video, but a series on the sci-fi channel. It deals with the surviving humans living in space, fighting against the Cylons (robots that they had created that soon grew to have a mind of their own - When Cylons are killed they merely resurrect in their ship in some form of pod) and in constant search of "the mythical, lost "13th colony" — Earth." -Katie Lindner-

Children of Men - Children of Men is worth taking a look at for a more rough, realistic view of our future. It feels completely real if you give in to one idea. This idea being that mankind would suddenly lose all fertility. Once you get past this idea and the religious overtones, Children of Men portrays this possible future with startling realism down to the acts of terrorism and political upheaval mankind would break down into if it was known the species had less than a century left before extinction.

Forbidden Planet (Ultimate Collector's Edition), 1956
One of the most inflential science fiction movies ever made. A loose adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, about a culture wiped out by accelerating technological change. Will that happen to us? Inspired Star Trek and a whole host of successor science fiction movies.

Firefly/Serenity – Its a show and movie based off of the human race leaving planet earth and colonizing other planets. It has a lot of interesting ideas about space frontiers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)

Equilibrium – Is a movie pretty much based off of the book Fahrenheit 451. It's not huge into technology but more into future censorship and idea of how to control emotions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(2002_film)

Fifth Element- If you haven't seen this then you need to. It's about a cosmic evil coming to destroy earth and the only person that can stop it is the prefect human. It has some cool ideas about future cites and process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element

Gattaca, 1998
Good dystopia about a world where genetic enhancement has led us back to a world of sharp class division (like the disappearing caste system in India), those who have the enhancements and those who don't. Access to the good jobs are only available to the enhanced. The five minute section on choosing one's genetic features for one's children feels very realistic. It already exists today and is called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), but is still very expensive and somewhat controversial.

Ghost In The Shell - This is a really sweet anime/manga/video game series to check out because of the amount of things in it that are realistic. From the idea of AI eventually developing human attributes on its own to the practice of taking and downloading one's mind into a completely fabricated body, there are many things in this anime that could prove to be truly futuristic. The series even includes a version of the internet that is accessed in a multitude of ways, including through the mind.

Gundam Wing - trowgundam
Gundam Wing is perhaps my favorite TV Show of all time. The real reason for this is because I can really seeing something just like this or close to the basics of Gundam Wings plot. Basically, the human race starts to build colonies in space and these colonies feel like breaking free of the Earth so they rebel. At the same time an organization known as OZ takes over Earth's government and ruthlessly squashes the rebellion. With how history has folded out so far, this is a very plausible scenario in my eyes.

HarryPotter
Harry Potter what more can i say its a bunch of kids with power and what make it more weird they are all british. So yeah kids that have a magic wond that can grant any wish they want as long as they learn the spell and everything they can use thier magic powers for good and evil. Why would give kids powers that are going to use it for evil makes no sense. Regardless i wish i had powers.-Darnell gILL

Handmaid's Tale, 1990
Dystopian story, very similar to Children of Men, that assumes rapid loss of human fertility, nuclear war, and a global fundamentalist backlash and political decay.

Ideocracy, 2006
The first 20 minutes of this film have a realistic future feel, as they chronicle the lack of childraising that happens in the wealthier and more educated in any society, and the consequences of letting your society get dumbed down as you get affluent and lazy. Looks like the future of America to some degree, unfortunately.

Leonardo DaVinci and His Fightin' Genius Time-Commandos: The Tick [Episode 17]
This particular episode of The Tick features a new villain The Mother of Invention, who in spite of the name, is most likely male. His nefarious plot is to use his time machine to erase the most innovative people in history so he could invent these things himself. His main gripe is that all the easy stuff has already been created and is particularly jealous of the man who invented the wheel. Not the best episode of The Tick, but still fairly awesome.

Matrix (The Series)
The matrix is so cool to watch but yeah way to well i dont know the weird for it yet. Just stuff like in the movies three people walking into a club and able to get to the top floor and kill like hundred people in a battle. Smith able to clone himself, a huge flying ship that can sent out a EMP but that will destroy alot of robots that can fly.-DARNELL GILL

Outlaw Star - trowgundam
Outlaw Star is my second favorite anime, see my first entry. I believe Outlaw Star is another likely route that the human race can take. Basically the history is that the human race expanded from Earth and colonized many planets and met many new races. They entered an age of exploration much like what happened in the era when Columbus' expeditions took place. Just like back then their were pirates. The entire show is about an outlaw, an explorer, who has to fight pirates at every turn and contend with the nosy nature of the Space Forces, the government.

Serial Experiment Lain-
A great anime series about.... well I've asked six other people and they've come up with a different answer each time. The series is heavily focused on technology integrated into our lives, of course like most anime it is looked at through a mirror of schizophrenia.

Stealth- It is a movie about a new program in the U.S. Navy involving artificial intelligence and aircraft. The movie gives a look into a possible future of having an aircraft operate without human control.

Star Trek The Next Generation- (Someone had to mention it)
If you're into techno-babble as well as some pretty interesting futuristic ideas (teleportation, holograms, replicators) then this is a good series to watch. Although it is set far far into the future some of the stuff does have a decent chance of actually existing in the future and I would imagine the writers of this series did have quite a few futurists working with them coming up with new ideas.

Toyko Drift
Best movie to me one of them but way to much future in this movie. The cell they had though where you can watch a video from one spot and show someone else phone the same thing you are watching at that exact time and second. Thats bad ass but man what else can these thing do. Also the engines if you look closley their were made in japan which was like ultra made to do this high performance turning and super nos. THat movie had so much stuff build and Japan had it and kept it so again they stay above in technology-Darnell Gill

The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951
One of the most intelligent sci-fi movies of the 1950s. Aliens come to Earth and give earthlings an ultimatum. Helps one realize how warlike and primitive the human species still is. Features Gort the robot and the phrase: "Klaatu barada nicto," later immortalized in the Evil Dead series.

The Final Cut - This movie is about the recording of memories by brain implants. When a person dies, all his memories are taken to someone who edits thier history and presents a sort of highlight reel at thier funeral for thier family members to watch. The recording of memories was mentioned in class a few times, so I thought this movie pertinent to add.

The Thirteen Floor --
Explores the idea of artificial life and the complications that arise from it. Basic premise is that a program is made where there are artificial inhabitants that are fully self aware. The users are able to virtually inject themselves into the program and get a first hand view. [Brant Hestrup]

Unclassified Videos and Video Sites
Put below any videos and video sites you recommend but can't easily classify above. We'll classify them later.

All material on this page, with the exception of the videos themselves, is open source, creative commons licensed by FERN. Feel free to use any portion of this with appropriate attribution to "Foresight Education and Research Network" or "FERNweb.org."

Teaching Template

JohnMSmart — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:11:31 CST

Below is a brief Teaching Template to orient new instructors to the essentials of the course.

TCH110 (Foresight Development) Teaching Template – Fall 2007 Version

This core course teaches foresight (how people create, discover, and manage the future) and personal foresight activities. It strives to give students context and methods for being “innovators of the future.”

TCH110 instructor prerequisites:
1. Already proficient in and willing to learn more about accelerating science, technology, and business trends.
2. Interested in teaching literature on the future of science, tech, environment, economics, politics, and society.
3. Motivated to help students become more foresighted and proactive in their professional and personal lives.

Key course components at present are: A. Required Texts, B. Lecture Slides, C. Videos, D. Supplemental Books, E. Essays, F. Online Discussions, G. Course Wiki, H. Student Presentations, I. Midterms, J. Personal Futures Portfolio.

A. Required Texts
a.Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, Hines & Bishop, 2007 ($20).(Weeks 1-7)
This book introduces students to professional foresight methods and ideas.
b. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen, 2001 (Weeks 8-14)
This book teaches a well-regarded system for building personal foresight (life organizing and planning).
c. StrengthsFinder 2.0, Tom Rath, 2007
This book and its online test predicts five prominent personality strengths for each student (out of 32 identified by Gallup profilers), and gives advice on using those strengths most effectively in social and collaborative situations.

B. Lecture Slides
Lectures follow the format below. From 20 to 60 slides are presented each week. Slides can be presented in dual-monitor mode, where the instructor can read private slide presentation notes off their laptop synchronized with each slide presented to the students.
Unit I. The Big Picture (Weeks 1-4)
Week 1 – Intro to Futures Studies
Week 2 – Evolution, Development, and the Future of Science
Week 3 – Accelerating Change and the Future of Technology, Part I
Week 4 – Accelerating Change and the Future of Technology, Part II
Unit II. Global and Societal Foresight (Weeks 5-9)
Week 5 – Global Trends, Scenarios, and Models
Week 6 – Global Problems and Priorities
Week 7 – Economics and the Future of Capitalism
Week 8 – Politics and the Future of Security and Democracy
Week 9 – Culture, Media and Education in a Network Society
Unit III. Business and Organizational Foresight (Weeks 10-11)
Week 10 – Biz-Org Leadership, Innovation, Learning, and Predicting
Week 11 – Biz-Org Planning, Consensus-Building, Benefiting, and Metrics
Unit IV. Personal and Career Foresight (Weeks 12-15)
Week 12 – Personal and Career Creativity and Visioning
Week 13 – Personal and Career Learning and Predicting
Week 14 – Personal and Career Planning and Negotiating
Week 15 – Personal and Career Benefiting and Measuring

C. Videos/Futures Movie Night
Roughly one video per week (up to 15 weeks) is shown on the TCH110 Futures Movie Night, and discussed for 30 minutes in class afterward. These videos are also available for student checkout in the UAT library, and some are also viewable online. Any videos shown should also be watched by the instructor either before or during class.

D. Supplemental Books
Ten books per week are introduced, briefly discussed, and handed around the classroom for student inspection. These 150 Great Futures Books (15 weeks) are in the TCH110 reference library, and most are also available for checkout from the UAT regular library. Some can also be browsed online through Amazon’s “Search Inside This Book” feature. Instructors don’t need to read these books but should be familiar with why each may be particularly useful to the student (instructors may also have their own substitutions to make here).

E. Essays
Students write an essay (teachback) for each of the four course units (50 points per essay). These essays must be related to and quote from one of the Great Futures Books for the unit. Students can A) check these books out from the instructor, or B) from the UAT library, or C) purchase them online (most recommended option, as this course is light on required books), or D) as a last resort, use “Search Inside this Book” to find relevant quotation sources for these essays. An Educational Assistant (EA) may be available to help with grading these essays.

F. Online Discussions
Eight Online Discussions (10 points per discussion) are assigned in the course shell, one roughly every two weeks. They involve online articles, videos, websites, games, responses to in-class films, etc. Five options are offered for each discussion and the students pick two items (4 points each, for 8 points) to complete. Students are also asked to post a colleague response to a fellow students post, containing both a compliment and a constructive critique (1 point each, for 2 points).

G. Course Wiki Contributions
Four times during the course (25 points each) students visit the public TCH110 Course Wiki to add futures articles, statistics, images, personal career forecasts, and other items to the wiki as public documents, available for future students of the course. Instructors need administrator access to the wiki, and they need to learn how to use it to check up on student contributions. At the end of every semester instructors need to take a few hours to cull through the student’s wiki contributions, editingor eliminating any that are less relevant or well crafted, in the instructor’s judgment.

H. Student Presentations
At the end of each of the four course units students form small teams (7 or less per team) and do 3 minute in-class presentations (no points given) on Great Futures Questions relative to the Unit. Students vote a “winning” team at the end of these presentations, and optional very low cost prizes are awarded to the winning team. Instructors may need to subsidize those prizes on their own or ask for reimbursement, if they are going to do them.

I. Midterms
Two midterms (150 points each) are administered at the end of Week 6 and Week 11, to test the first six and the next five weeks of lecture, required text readings, and course video content. Midterms are open book for the student, are administered online, multiple choice (A-E) and are automatically graded. Instructors should give an evening review session (two and a half hours) on the Friday prior to each midterm. Student attendance at review sessions is optional but recommended.

J. Personal Futures Portfolio.
During the last seven weeks of the course students use the Personal Futures Wiki Template to create and work on their own 14 page personal futures wiki, including Getting Things Done pages, visioning and goal development, personality profile tests, career planning and mentoring, considering possible career paths, company and internship research, learning about financial planning, money management, consequences of poor financial foresight, even writing their obituary!A selection of these personal foresight projects is assembled into a written document and submitted as a Take-Home Final that is graded on completeness, not content (200 points).

Course grading is based on 1,000 points. All grading items and weights can be found in the course shell (and can be adjusted by instructors as desired). See the e-College Course Shell and the online Course Wiki for more on any of these topics.

Questions? Please contact the course developer, John Smart (johnsmart@accelerating.org, 310 831-4191 ofc) any time for help with teaching this course.

All material on this wiki is open source, creative commons licensed. Feel free to use any portion of this with appropriate attribution to "University of Advancing Technology, Foresight Development curriculum."

Foresight Frameworks

JohnMSmart — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:37:37 CST

Continuing to build this list of global foresight frameworks is a priority, but in order to do so it needs both a Director lead (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and a Volunteer lead (to serve as volunteer team leader). We'd love to work with you. Email a FERN director that you'd like to work with (seeFERN home page), and let's begin.

Foresight Frameworks

The key elements of any educational domain, including strategic foresight/futures studies can be grouped into

1. Frameworks (or "Learning Paradigms", the philosophical models used to understand and teach a domain),
2. Theory/concepts.
3. Methods/practice, and
4. Knowledge/history and current data.

The last three of these, theory, methods, and knowledge, can be grouped together into disciplines or specialties. Our terminology becomes community-validated when we can find our way to shared frameworks, which doesn't happen easily, particularly in newly formed, complex, and politically-sensitive domains like foresight.

Section I below features Foresight Education Frameworks (learning objectives) for methods and theory which are taught in various organizational, undergraduate, graduate, MS and PhD educational programs in foresight/futures studies around the world today. Each can be considered competing yet complementary ways to educate foresight students.

Section II below gives examples of the more numerous Foresight Practice Frameworks(skills and procedures), a collection of formal ways people and organizations practice foresight on a particular topic.

Pick the framework that works best for you, whether in education or practice.
It's best to hold each one lightly in your studies and in your work, as each has its strengths and limitations.

Frameworks are listed in alpha order by generic name, or by name of implementing institution.

Section I. Foresight Education Frameworks(Learning Objectives)

Acceleration Studies Foundation Framework
Below are ASF's prescription for primary, secondary, and domain-specific foresight specialties(methods and theories) that should be covered in a comprehensive foresight/futures program.While a foresight practitioner or educator may be proficient in only a few of these, we propose an MS or PhD foresight program should provide basic proficiency in all the primary specialties (the core curriculum of the field), and at least overview the secondary specialties. Electives and thesis topics should be possible in primary, secondary, and select other specialties.

Primary Foresight Specialties (25)	Secondary Foresight Specialties (32)
Alternative Futures Comparative Analysis and Competitive Intelligence Critical Foresight (Causal Layered Analysis, etc.) Development (Systemic) and Acceleration Studies Emerging Issues,Cross Impact and Pattern Analysis Emerging Technologies Analysis Ethnographic, Culture, and Subculture Foresight Forecasting and Modeling/Simulation (basic) Foresight Frameworks and Foundations Foresight Journalism and Metrics History and Analysis of Prediction Horizon Scanning and Weak Signals Images and Artifacts of the Future Personal Futures/ Foresight Development Prediction Markets and Foresight Networks Predictive Surveys/ Delphi Roadmapping (Long-Range Ind., Tech, Policy Maps) Scenario Developmentand Backcasting Strategic Foresight and Scenario Planning/Learning Strategy Games, Serious and War Games Systems Thinking Transhumanist/ Ethics of Emerging Tech Studies Trend Extrapolation and Learning Curves Visioning, Intuition, and Creative Thinking Wildcards (Pos & Neg Hi-Impact, Low-Prob. Events)	Actuarial Science and Risk Assessment Anthropology and Culture Studies Cognitive & Social Psychology (Personality Profiles, etc.) Collaboration, Facilitation, and Peace/Conflict Studies Critical and Evidence-Based Thinking Decision Theory, Uncertainty, and Real Options Analysis Demographics and Sociology Design, User Experience, and Art Economics (Cliometrics) Ethics and Values Studies Evolution, Complexity and Systems Studies Forecasting and Modeling/Simulation (Advanced) Futures, Sci-Fi, Utopian, and Dystopian Lit Studies History (Alternative Histories) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Studies and Networks Innovation Journalism and Metrics Integral Studies and Thinking Investing and Finance (Long-Term) Leadership Studies and Organizational Development Library Science and Knowledge Management Marketing (Predictive), PR, and Consumer Behavior Philosophy (Normative Alternative Futures) Political Science and Policy Studies Probabilistic (Statistical) Prediction Religious Studies (Future Beliefs) Risk Management, Operations Research,Game Theory Security/Defense Studies and International Relations Science and Technology Studies and Technology Analysis Socially Responsible / Triple Bottom Line Management Strategic & L-R Planning, Decision Analysis and Support Sustainability and Development (Economic) Studies Urban Studies and Planning
Other Foresight Specialties (35, a partial list)
Architecture \| Astrobiology \| Biological Sciences \| Bioethics \| Biotechnology \| Business Administration \| Chemical Sciences \| Computer Modeling and Simulation \| Computer Science \| Cybernetics \| Economics and Econometrics \| Education \| Engineering \| Evolutionary Biology \| Gambling Studies \| Generational Studies \| Geography \| History \| History and Philosophy of Science and Technology \| Information Science \| Investing and Finance (Short-Term) \| Knowledge Management \| Library Science (general) \| Management \| Media and Communications \| Mathematics \| Philosophy \| Physical Sciences \| Psychology (general) \| Psychographics \| Statistics (general) \| Technology Policy \| Tourism \| Urban Studies

Acceleration Studies Foundation - 3P's/Evo Devo Foresight Framework (for the Specialties Above)
These three foresight specialties (primary, secondary, and other) can also be classified as three fundamental foresight perspectives, using Roy Amara's 3P's foresight framework.

This perspective-driven framework groups specialties into whether they explore Possible futures (what could happen), Preferable futures (what we want) and Probable futures (what seems most likely, in spite of our personal preferences) futures. The 3P's framework can alternatively be called an Evo Devo foresight framework, as it divides foresight into "Evolutionary" (possible), "Developmental" (probable), and "Evo Devo" (preferable) futures. ASF classifies acceleration studies (systems of change that go measurably faster every year, such as IT productivity, information growth, nanotech performance in various domains) as a subset of development studies (probable, directional environmental change). Below are some additional terms that can be loosely associated with Amara's three basic foresight perspectives:

Possible Futures (evolution, innovation, experimentation, creativity, art, belief)
Preferable Futures (evo devo, management, values, laws, agendas, consensus, practice)
Probable Futures (development (of the predictable), sustainability (of projected system needs), discovery (of system rules), science)

Yellow

are primary foresight specialties, where the foresight community has historically had major responsibility for methodological development.

Yellow*

are also primary foresight specialties, and potentially underdeveloped areas for new method and theory development in foresight.

Brown

are secondary foresight specialties, where non-foresight ed. programs exist, but where there is method or theory overlap for foresight ed. and practice.

Primary and Secondary Foresight Specialties (Listed by 3P's Category)

Possible Foresight Specialties	Preferable Foresight Specialties	Probable Foresight Specialties
Alternative Futures	Anthropology and Culture Studies	Actuarial Science and Risk Assessment
Comparative Analysis and Competitive Intelligence*	Collaboration, Facilitation & Peace/Conflict Studies	Cognitive and Social Psychology (Personality Profiles, etc.)
Design, User Experience, and Art	Critical Foresight (Causal Layered Analysis, etc.)	Critical and Evidence-Based Thinking
Emerging Issues, Cross Impact, & Pattern Analysis	Decision Theory, Uncertainty, and Real Options Analysis	Demographics and Sociology
Emerging Technologies Analysis*	Ethics and Values Studies	Development (Systemic) & Acceleration Studies
Evolution, Complexity, and Systems Stds	Ethnographic, Culture, and Subculture Foresight	Forecasting and Modeling/Sims (basic)
Futures, Sci-Fi, Utopian & Dystopian Lit Studies	Foresight Frameworks and Foundations*	Forecasting and Modeling/Sims (advanced)
History (Alternative Histories)	Integral Studies and Thinking	Foresight Journalism and Metrics
Horizon Scanning and Weak Signals*	Leadership Studies and Org. Development	History and Analysis of Prediction
Images and Artifacts of the Future*	Personal Futures/ Foresight Development*	Investing and Finance (Long-Term)
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Studies and Networks	Philosophy (Normative Alternative Futures)	Prediction Markets and Foresight Networks*
Innovation Journalism and Metrics	Political Science and Policy Studies	Predictive Surveys / Delphi
Library Science and Knowledge Management	Marketing (Predictive), PR, and Consumer Behavior	Probabilistic (Statistical) Prediction
Philosophy (Normative Alternative Futures)	Roadmapping (Long-Range Ind., Tech, Policy Maps)	Risk Management, Operations Research, Game Theory
Religious Studies (Future Beliefs)	Security/Defense Studies and International Relations	Science & Tech Studies and Tech Analysis
Scenario Development and Backcasting	Socially Responsible / Triple Bottom Line Mgmt	Sustainability and Devel. (Economic) Studies
Strategy Games, Serious and War Games*	Strategic & L-R Planning, Decision Analysis and Support	Systems Thinking
Visioning, Intuition, and Creative Thinking	Strategic Foresight and Scenario Planning/Learning	Trend Extrapolation and Learning Curves
Wildcards (Pos and Neg Hi-Impact, Low-Prob Events)	Transhumanist/ Ethics of Emerging Tech Studies
	Urban Studies and Planning

ASF's specialties framework is roughly balanced across Amara's three fundamental foresight perspectives, with a slight emphasis on preferred (also called normative) futures.

Acceleration Studies Foundation- Integral Foresight Skills Framework (for the Specialties Above)

ASF's primary and secondary foresight specialties can also be categorized into four fundamental foresight skills(creating/innovating, discovering/predicting, planning/negotiating, or benefiting from/measuring progress toward the future). Depending on context, each particular specialty (e.g., Roadmapping, Systems Thinking) may be viewed as being employed in service to one, two, three, or all four of these fundamental foresight skills. The philosopher Ken Wilber (A Brief History of Everything) proposes the following Integral/Four Quadrant Framework as a way to categorize fundamental complementary processes of human cognition and change.

Using this integral framework, we can propose four fundamental foresight skills, represented as follows.

Creating/Innovating
"Seeing and making the future things, images, and ideals I want" Benefiting/Measuring
"Objectifying and measuring my progress toward a better future."
Planning/Negotiating
"Getting consensus and forming strategies for the future we want." Predicting/Discovering
"Predicting and discovering how the system is moving toward the future."

Creating/Innovating "Seeing and making the future things, images, and ideals I want"	Benefiting/Measuring "Objectifying and measuring my progress toward a better future."
Planning/Negotiating "Getting consensus and forming strategies for the future we want."	Predicting/Discovering "Predicting and discovering how the system is moving toward the future."

ASF's four integral foresight skills were constructed by starting with the Wilber framework and extrapolating these to the foresight domain. One implication is that learning to use all four of these foresight skills will make you a well-balanced futurist. Neglect to learn any one of these you may have an incomplete and underdeveloped foresight model and skillset. All four seem necessary if one is to be a "whole" or "integral" futurist, with broad social and process effectiveness.

For example, many self-proclaimed futurists lack an adequate knowledge of science and systems, and may even state, both confidently and ignorantly, that "the future cannot be predicted." That is hogwash, a blanket statement that ignores many classes of predictive dynamics. Aside from physics, chemistry, and biology, we know that even many aspects of our sociocultural future are statistically predictable (eg., accelerating technological change, transparency, democratization, civil rights advance, etc.). Science and history reveal extensive pattern and predictability in the human domain, as long as we approach predictability from a statistical or probabilistic framework. As forecasting and actuarial work have long shown, many well-established and/or well-understood trends and cycles allow deep insights into complex aspects of society. Among other less-than-integral foresight professionals are some who love to create/imagine and even plan, but whonever engage in social or quantitative attempts to measure the benefit(or the lack thereof) of their creations and plans.

Merging these two frameworks, we can classify the four integral foresight skills from an Evo Devo Foresight perspective by regrouping them into Evolutionary, Developmental, and Evo Devo categories. Creating/Innovating may thus be tentatively defined as most essentially an evolutionary process, discovering/predicting as most essentially a developmental process, and planning/negotiating and benefiting/measuring are both evo devo (adaptation, intersection) processes.

Consider how creating/innovating the future (an innovative, intrinsically unpredictable process) is fundamentally different from discovering universal constraints, such as scientific laws, suspected laws, and regularities that in turn let you reliably predict certain special subsets of future dynamics, but only in a probabilistic sense. By contrast, Planning/Negotiating for and Quantitatively Benefiting from/Measuring Progress toward toward the future are particularly adaptive and practical skills, seeming to involve both creating/innovating and discovering/predicting, in relation to human problems, goals and values.

The integral and evo devo perspectives can be used to explain social process, and may even be valuable for understanding social hierarchy. For example, the cartoon at right proposes a model for ways that humans have used these four foresight skills to build increasingly adaptive forms of social community. Beginning with autocracy (ignoring earlier more egalitarian forms of community) human civilizations have moved historically through mercantilism and at least two different manifestations of capitalism, and most are now trending strongly into different degrees of democratic socialism, a form of capitalism with great technical productivity, extensive social safety nets and broad human rights and entitlements in all cultures. Beyond this we can foresee some form of planetized intelligence, coming via further-developing technological systems. An evo devo foresight framework would propose that we must climb this hierarchy in both an evolutionary (unpredictable) and developmental (predictable) manner.

In this cartoon democratic socialism, the current highest destination reachable on the hierarchy, while locally an unpredictable evolutionary choice by each culture today, is also globally an apparent developmental trajectory, one which we are measurably and quantitatively approaching more closely every year, in all cultures, on average,as a species. For more on such perspectives see The Civilizing Progress, Norbert Elias, 1977, Non-Zero, by Robert Wright, 2000, and Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy, 2005, by Ron Inglehart. The nature, directionality, and quality of the evolutionary path each society, organization, and individual takes toward any developmental destination is largely a free choice. From ASF's evo devo foresight perspective, both the discovery of statistically predictable universal developmental constraints, and the creativity of choosing our own intrinsically unpredictable and creative evolutionary paths toward developmental destinations are each moral responsibilities and foresight challenges.

Corvinus University of Budapest - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

CNAM / Lab for Investigations in Prospective Strategy and Organizational Research (LIPSOR) - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

European Joint (U Malta, U Potsdam, Teeside U, Turku Sch. of Econ) - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

Fo Guang University / Graduate Institute of Futures Studies -Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

Monterrey Institute of Technology / Center for Planning and Foresight -Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

Regent University - Foresight Education Framework
The Master of Arts in Strategic Foresight (MSF) at Regent University, an interdenominational Christian university, is under its School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship. The MSF empowers mid-career leaders, average age 40 years old, to help their organizations adapt to changing industries and global environments. Offered online, the program prepares graduates to serve as professional futurists, strategy consultants, research analysts, creativity trainers, entrepreneurs or managers of innovation. Dr. Jay Gary is the program director, teaching there since 2003. The MSF is one of five degrees at the School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship, many which carry their own foresight emphasis.

There are five primary learning objectives for Regent MSF students:
1. Develop leadership skills that help organizations navigate the challenges of chaos, complexity and globalization.
2. Demonstrate an openness to change, growth and development of your life, spanning moral, emotional, spiritual, intellectual and ego growth, across the post-conventional spectrum of adult development.
3. Develop the foresight knowledge and skills to help strategic leadership teams in decision making, planning and forecasting, as well as communication, facilitation, group process, and teamwork.
4. Develop a specialization as a professional futurist built on prior work experience that brings value to an industry or service sector.
5. Integrate one's faith into one's learning through research, writing and speaking.

There are eleven primary learning outcomes for Regent MSF students, achieved through service to your own or client organizations:
1. Employ key concepts and paradigms of organizational leadership and futures studies as mid-career professionals.
2. Document new and emerging trends relevant to your organization, and explore the nature of these driving forces, in terms of system dynamics, social change or alternative images of the future.
3. Create an environmental scanning system, enabling an organization's strategic leaders to track patterns of change across trends, events and issues.
4. Create system thinking models that map problems which organizations face in their internal and external environments.
5. Create a baseline forecast of trends for an organization which contains alternative futures, uncertainties, and wildcards relating to their competitive advantage.
6. Lead a departmental team to develop a strategic plan, which includes mission, vision, and goals, appropriately matched to the near-term competitive, customer and industry environment.
7. Lead a scenario learning process for a leadership team that tests team strategy against a range of possible futures.
8. Forecast the economic, workforce and community development needs of a city, one or two decades out and match these with emerging technologies and social innovations.
9. Evaluate the impact of a policy intervention in the context of national or regional change amidst 21st century driving forces.
10. Present one's ideas, concepts, and best practices in appropriate media such as, but not limited to popular press articles, lectures, and conferences.
11. Create and maintain a comprehensive portfolio of your work as a foresight professional for career advancement.

Regent also offers a Doctor of Strategic Leadership with a third year foresight track for those who want to build and lead transformative organizations. Regent’s doctoral approach to strategic foresight is built on a unique framework of 1) leadership theory, 2) organizational sciences and 3) strategic management practices. Scholarship is balanced by additional work in: 4) personal development, 5) critical theory, and 6) post-conventional Christian spirituality.

Each year approximately 100 students at Regent take a variety of foresight courses, ranging from the MBA to the PhD. Twenty three students are presently enrolled in the MSF. [As of: 5/25/2008]

Swinburne University of Technology - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

Tamkang University / Graduate Institute of Futures Studies - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

Turku School of Economics /Finland Futures Research Centre - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

U of Hawaii - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

U of Houston - Foresight Education Framework
Below are the twenty-three primary learning objectives (classified as skills, knowledge, and products) for the MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston, in the College of Technology, under Dr. Peter Bishop who has taught FS at U. Houston since 1982. Started in 1975, U. Houston's program is the oldest in the world and has graduated hundreds of students. Houston's program is focused primarily on the training of foresight professionals for the business environment, but has attracted some nonprofit, institutional, government, military and academic futurists.

Generic Skills (6)	Skills of a person with a graduate degree
Research	Drawing knowledge and meaning from information
- Finding	Locating and retrieving accurate and relevant information
- Reading, Understanding, Citing	Understanding what I read and showing proper credit to someone else's ideas
- Analyzing	Articulating the parts that make up the whole
- Synthesizing	Combining two or more ideas into a third idea
- Interpreting, Drawing Conclusions, Making Inferences	Making interesting inferences with reasonable support
Thinking	Manipulating ideas
- Critical Thinking	Understanding the support for an inference and judging its adequacy
- Systems Thinking	Seeing the connections between things (structure) and explaining conditions (behavior) using those connections
- Creative Thinking	Developing novel, relevant ideas
Decision Making	Making recommendations and decisions for action
- Values Clarification	Understanding one's own and others' values
- Decision Analysis	Making decisions based on explicit criteria
Communication	Sharing ideas so that they are understood and accepted
-Speaking, Writing, and Visualizing	In oral, written, and graphical practice forms
Calculation	Manipulating numbers correctly to support inferences
Group Process	Facilitating, working with and leading others in effective group work

Futures Skills (4)	Skills of a person doing professional futures work
Current Assessment	Awareness and understanding of the current and future conditions of a topic
- Research (Historical, Current and Future Conditions)	Articulating what is known about a topic (past, present, expected or potential future) that is relevant to its future
- Scanning, Assessing Developments	Monitoring ongoing developments and adjusting what is known in light of recent developments
Foresight	Identifying differences between the present and the future
- Systems Models	Using the interconnectivity of forces and actors (structure) to explain conditions (behavior)
- Judgmental Tools	Using individuals' images, values and aspirations
- Time Series Analysis	Using quantitatitive data to analyze patterns and trends
- Qualitative Scenarios	Using imagistic projection to consider alternative futures
Planning	Organizing resources to create a preferred future for an enterprise
- Mission, Vision and Values	Service-oriented purpose of an enterprise, its ideals, and its principles
- Strategic Plans	Specific goals, measures, and strategies (means to achieve the goals) that are commitments of an enterprise
- Operational Plans	Detailed, short-term enterprise plans for allocating time, money, and other resources
Development	Increasing capacity of an enterprise to fulfill its mission, move toward its vision, & achieve its goals.
-Change Management	Supporting transformational change in an enterprise, group, or leader
- Project Management	Monitoring and coordinating short-term initiatives in an enterprise

Knowledge (4)	Facts about various topics relative to futures
Futures Studies as a Field	Knowledge about the futures field
- Origin, History	Knowledge about its origin and history
- Knowledge Base, Foundations	Knowledge about its theories and methods
- Stakeholders	Knowledge about the individuals, organizations, and projects that make up the field
- Trends, Issues, New Directions	Knowledge about current trends, issues, and new directions in the field
Emerging Global Context	Knowledge about current and emerging world conditions
Domain Specialty 1	Knowledge about an elective area of specialization
Domain Specialty 2	Knowledge about another elective area of specialization

Products (9)	Visible demonstration of skills for a professional futures portfolio
Framework Document	Systematic background research and a forecast in a specific domain
Scanning Journal	The most important new trends, events, and issues for a specific domain
Analytical Paper	Analyzing and explaining some aspect of change and the future
Ideas and Images Report	Interviews and questionnaires to elicit and report people's ideas and images of the future
Systems Model	Connections (structure) and explaining conditions (behavior) for a specific issue. Can be optionally presented in the form of a computer simulation
Scenario Set	Alternative future scenarios along with their implication for a specific domain
Vision	Envisioning and describing a preferred future for some group and domain
Strategic Plan	A planning document to fulfill a mission, move toward a vision, and/or achieve specific goals
Implementation Plan	A planning document to create the changes necessary to successfully execute a strategic plan

University of Stellenbosch - Foresight Education Framework
To be acquired.

WFS Futures Education Section-Foresight Education Framework (Introductory College Course)
The Educational Standards Working Group (ESWG) of the WFS FES seeks to create "a fundamental framework for all Futuring courses offered by institutions of higher education." Below is a provisional framework for an introductory college course in futures studies. They prefer the term 'futuring,' as opposed to foresight, after the book by the same name, Futuring: The Exploration of the Future, 2005 by Ed Cornish, founder of the World Future Society.

Historic Perspective of Futuring
Early Fiction Writers and their Work
Methods
Forecasting

Trends
Scanning
Scenarios
Games
'Webbing'

Backcasting
Systems
Current Events
Historic Projections and Outcomes
Personal use of Futuring
Cause-Effect and Correlation
Futuring Resources

This seems a good introductory framework for the freshman/sophomore level. The ESWG is surveying futures professionals for their feedback and alternative suggestions.

Additional Foresight Education Frameworks
Please list additional education frameworks here, or link to them in comments at the bottom of this page. Thank you!

Section II. Foresight Practice Frameworks(skills and procedures)

Acceleration Studies Foundation - Roadmapping Framework
This twenty-one category research framework was used for a year long research project, ASF's Metaverse Roadmap survey of the future of the 3D web. It is an adaptation of Peter Bishop's (U Houston) Forecasting Framework model.

I. INDUSTRY CONDITIONS
1. History
2. Current Conditions
3. Constants
4. Assumptions
II. FORESIGHT
5. Vision Statements
6. Plans and Studies
7. Cycles
8. Trends and Extrapolations
9. Predictions
10. Positive Scenarios
11. Negative Scenarios
12. Wildcard Scenarios
13. Headlines
III. ISSUES + QUESTIONS
14. Issues and Choices
15. Ideas and Proposals
16. Key Uncertainties
IV. PROBLEMS + INDICATORS
17. Precompetitive Challenges
18. Competitive Challenges
19. Progress Indicators
V. APPENDIX
20. Glossary
21. References

Association of Professional Futurists - Foresight Practice Frameworks
(Add here)

Marshall McLuhan - Tetrad System for Technology Analysis
McLuhan analyzed technology's impact on society using four questions:

What does any artifact enlarge or enhance?
What does it erode or obsolesce?
What does it retrieve that had been earlier obsolesced?
What does it reverse or flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential?

He considered these a holistic, integral system for understanding past, present, and future impacts. For more see this web outline, with past, present, and future analysis examples, or any of his books.

STEEP, STEEPS, STEEPS3, and ST7EEPS3 Foresight Practice Frameworks

STEEP is a generic foresight framework developed for environmental scanning purposes, as a minimal taxonomy of categories in which to place environmental "scan hits" collected in futures research. It has been used by the foresight community at least since the 1960's (see Handbook of Futures Research, Jib Fowles and Robert B. Fowles (eds.), 1978). It stands for:

Society

Technology

Environment

Economics

Politics

STEEPS is an improved generic foresight framework, used by more technologically-minded futurists. It stands for:

Science

Technology

Environment

Economics

Politics

Society

In STEEPS, Science is importantly separated out and placed first, as basic science research is the most fundamental driver and enabler of Technology, which in turn, for better and worse, is the most fundamental driver and shaper of EEPS (issues of the global environment and human society). Furthermore, Science is clearly a different animal from Technology (applied knowledge). Finally, certain domains of the sciences (information and computer sciences, neuroscience, nanotechnology) are among the most powerful and accelerative (fastest changing) areas of human inquiry.

STEEPCOP is a yet more comprehensive foresight practice framework, used in ASF's introductory foresight development courses for environmental scanning and knowledge base development. It stands for:

Science

Technology

Environment

Economics (and Finance and Capitalism - National and Global)

Politics

Social Big -Cutural (and Rights, Ethics/Behavior, Media, Education, Religion, etc.)
Social Medium -Organizational (Entrepreneurship, Innovation, IP, Management, Org. Dev., etc.)
Social Small -Personal (Relationships, Family, Leadership, Personal Development, Personal Health, Career, etc.)

The eight-category STEEPCOP scanning framework splits the otherwise large social domain into cultural, organizational, and individual levels of knowledge collection and analysis. Note also that Economics (and Finance and Capitalism) are national or international level systems and knowledge domains, which can be usefully differentiated from Social Medium - Organizational level systems and issues (Entrepreneurship, Management, Organizational Development, etc.).

The non-alliterative SSENBMNAEEPCOP is an even more detailed foresight practice framework, appropriate for use as scanning and discussion categories in programs that focus on the power of accelerating technologies to solve challenging global problems. This framework has been used in the program at Singularity University, a non-degree granting executive and graduate studies program offered at NASA Ames in Mountain View, CA USA. It stands for:

Science, Complexity, Evolution, and Development

Technology 1 -Space, Engineering, and Physical Sciences

Technology 2 -Energy, Resources, and Agriculture

Technology 3 -Nanotechnology and Chemistry

Technology 4 -Biotech, Bioinformatics and Public Health

Technology 5 -Medicine, Neuroscience & Human Enhancement

Technology 6 -Networks and Computing Systems

Technology 7 -Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Environment, Ecosystem Services, Population, & Sustainability

Economics, Finance, and Global Capitalism

Politics, Policy, Security,Law, Democracy, & Intnat’l Relations

Social Big – Cultural (and Rights, Ethics/Behav., Media, Education, Religion, etc.)

Social Med - Organizational (Entrepreneurship, Innovation, IP, Mgmt, Org Dev, etc.)

Social Small - Personal (Relationships, Family, Leadership, Personal Development, Personal Health, Careers, etc.)

In this fourteen-category framework, any science with potential near-future technological application is grouped with its appropriate technology track. Thus the first category, Science, Complexity, Evolution, and Development, is reserved for scientific, complexity, evolution and development theory and knowledge of a more general, broadly applicable, or abstract nature. Similar multicategory frameworks exist, each customized by program focus and level of detail.

Technology Futures Inc. "Five Views" Foresight Practice Framework

Analytical, survey, and alternative futures theory and methods. Nice detail.

U of Houston - Management Foresight Practice Framework:

Peter Bishop of U. Houston proposes that good organizational management involves at least the following six competency stages:

Foresight > Forecasting > Planning > R&D > Operations > Evaluation

In most companies, planning (initial and periodic business plans, strategic plans, operational plans), and R&Dare the typical ways managers think about and orient their operations toward the future. But as this framework shows, there are two entire stages (practices or departments) that should exist ahead of planning (foresight and forecasting) in any significant organization, and one after operations (evaluation, which cycles back to improve all the prior stages) which must be mastered by the effective management team.

In addition to good planning, R&D, and operations, managers need to build a forecasting competency to feed valuable quantitative and qualitative projections to the planning group, and a foresight competency which does environmental scanning, scenarios, expert surveys, and other futures work to improve qualitative and quantitative forecasts and achieve more robust and practical plans. Finally, all of these competencies need to be continually evaluated and improved in the competitive environment.

U of Houston - Foresight Forecasting Framework
(Add Bishop's Forecasting Framework here)

Additional Foresight Practice Frameworks
Please list additional practice frameworks here.

Foresight People Database

JohnMSmart — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:32:56 CST

Our community and the world needs a free and relatively comprehensive global public database of foresight students, educators, researchers, and professionals with experience and interest in all the primary foresight specialties.

For our starter list of a few hundred individuals, see our wiki-based Foresight Students and Alumni - Global List, and Foresight Educators, Researchers, and Professionals - Global List on GlobalForesight.org.

This wiki needs to be converted to a free and open public database that can be updated and searched by anyone on the web. Everyone in the above foresight communities needs to be emailed about the database, so that they can easily add or edit their own entries. Some potential uses:

Finding out relevant details (foresight specialties, publications, projects) for anyone in our community.
Finding free and low-cost foresight speakers and experts (speaker and expert database) for any function.
Finding thesis advisors.
Finding potential employers.
Finding potential employees.
Finding potential mentors.

Starting this project is a high priority, but in order to begin it needs both a Director lead (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and a Volunteer lead (to serve as volunteer team leader).

Interested in starting this project for the community? Email a director you'd like to work with (see the FERN home page) and let's begin.

Foresight Publications Community

JohnMSmart — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:32:10 CST

There are two publications initiatives that have been considered so far by the FERN community.

1. Foresight Pre-Print Publications Platform and Discussion Forum
Pre-prints are draft versions of articles for journals and magazines, chapter drafts, and book drafts, not yet ready for print, that are circulated within a helpful pre-print commentary community. The pre-prints range from crude outlines to nearly finished versions. Folks in the community are motivated to comment because they want to help their colleagues, and because they know they will receive the same valuable feedback for any journal, magazine, or book preprints that they bring to the community. Discussion forums are also involved, where people can do research collaborations, and where journal and magazine editors can post potential writing jobs.

FERN should consider establishing an open Foresight Pre-Print Community (drupal might be a good platform for this) for sharing, working on, and discussing our article pre-prints, analogous to biology's OpenWetware, chemistry's UsefulChem and other open science initiatives. Such a platform would really improve the quality of the final articles that result, and get a lot more writing done in the right journals. For a current list of 19 primary and additional secondary foresight journals and magazines in English that have been identified to date, please see Global Forsight.org > Periodicals > Top Foresight Journals.

The professional foresight community and graduating students from the 15 primary MS and PhD foresight programs can be encouraged to publish regularly in primary and secondary foresight journals, and to use our Pre-Print Community. FERN should make web page that explains how valuable both journal and magazine publication is for recognition and development of the global foresight community.

This initiative would need a student champion or two to move foreward.

2. Open access publishing
Open access publishing has become the norm in physics, mathematics, biology, and other fields. The global foresight community would also benefit greatly from a more open dissemination of research and by being able to collaborate more effectively on pre-print peer review and commentary prior to publication. We would like to increase the publication and open-access archiving of foresight articles globally. Strategies to achieve this include:

Getting foresight added as a category on existing open access publishing platforms (ArXiv,PLoS, etc.). Today, it seems that only science and medicine are publishing this way so far and it is not clear that foresight would be an appropriate fit for these sites (investigate this). A platform that includes social studies and technology studies today would be ideal.
A foresight open access pre-print community (see above) could be hosted at and linked from one or more existing foresight organization websites, such as FERN, the APF, or WFS.

An ideal foresight publishing norm would include content packaged for multiple audiences and formats, to allow the widest possible dissemination of ideas. Content could be published simultaneously in the form of the traditional journal paper, a magazine article, a blog post, a webcast with slides (examples: SlideShare), an audio podcast, and a brief foresight video for YouTube, Science TV and other video sites.

Status
Stephen Aguilar-Millan and Melanie Swan made a proposal to the Association of Professional Futurists Board in Feb 2008, asking if they would join an open access foresight publishing initiative as a founding member and help in creating an open pre-print database and critique platform for APF members and other interested parties. APF declined at the time, and we haven't made any subsequent proposals since. It's time to get this initiative going again.

Possible Next Steps

Do this as a FERN initiative, with a platform for preprint upload and commentary. Host it at pubs.fernweb.org. Would need a student champion.
Talk to the folks at Futurum, the private foresight publications index, and see if they would be interested in an open access initiative with FERN.
Approach other foresight organizations to explore how/if open access publishing would be useful to them. WFS, IAF, Institute for the Future, etc.
Talk to people who have experience in implementing open access publishing initiatives
Research how/whether open access publishing is spreading beyond science and medicine to other fields, including foresight
Determine if existing foresight journals might have interest or initiative underway towards open access publishing
Identify what already published content (what, how much) would be appropriate to include immediately in an open access foresight publishing database.

Current Director
Melanie Swan, Chair

Advisor Interest
FERN advisor Clem Bezold of the Institute for Alternative Futures has already offered to help us in promoting this practice in coming years. I'm sure there are champions at APF, WFS, WFSF, SocTech, IFTF, and others would help in this as well. We just need to find them and pitch them. Any takers?

Starting this project is a high priority, but in order to begin it needs both a Director lead (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and a Volunteer lead (to serve as volunteer team leader). Melanie Swan needs to be contacted to see if she is still interested in being a Director on this project, and a student Volunteer passionate about developing this community is also needed.

Interested in starting this project for the FERN community? We'd love to work with you. Email a FERN director that you'd like to work with, and let's begin

Global Foresight Directory

JohnMSmart — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:22:44 CST

Foresight students, educators, and researchers would all benefit from a well-developed directory of foresight social networks, meetups, graduate programs, organizations, and resources available online, in a publicly-editable wiki format.

This wiki has been started and is hosted at GlobalForesight.org, but it needs a student champion to take it to the next level. We have also set up two Global Foresight discussion groups, GF LinkedIn (1,000+ members) and GF Facebook (1,200+ members) for business and general foresight discussions, and to promote use and further development of the GlobalForesight.org directory. We also need LinkedIn and Facebook moderators of those groups, to keep them growing. The LinkedIn business foresight group is particularly active.

Interested in working on this important project for the FERN community? This project needs both a Director lead (to work with and supervise Volunteers) and Volunteer lead (to serve as volunteer team leader). We'd love to work with you. Email a FERN director that you'd like to work with (see FERN home page), and let's begin.

Foresight in Curricula

JohnMSmart — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:23:01 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.