Why study the future?

• to make predictions
• to advocate for positions
• to clarify alternatives
• how do we know if a prediction is good?

• begin by plotting trends on a time series graph
• can we expect the trends to continue?
• how do we explain them?  how do variables effect each other?
• can we predict turning points
• are they linear, exponential or cyclical or do they follow some other pattern
• systems analysis, analyze how a number of variables influence each other simultaneously
• consider the effects of different assumptions

• plausible stories about the future
• a way to examine alternative futures
• backcasting is a method of examining the route to a desirable future

• a technique for creative thinking, similar to brainstorming or synectics
• key points are:  no criticism, freewheeling encouraged, quantity over quality

• based on expert knowledge by scientists and engineers
• scientists have a fairly good track record
• need to take time to focus on future possibilities without distraction of daily activities

• a brilliant anticipation of the personal computer and internet
• more of a vision than a technological forecast
• based on a model of how people think and would like to work
• dealing with information overload, problem of finding the right information
• of particular interest is his critique of hierarchal indexing and call for networked or heterarchal indexing
• wrong in terms of technology, did not anticipate electronic, digital technology, relied on microfilm
• but his model of the "memex" machine has a great resemblance to the modern personal computer - he anticipates hyperlinks and bookmarks

• one of a series of futurist books which have captured the popular imagination
• familiar sequence from agricultural to industrial to "post-industrial" or Information Society
• changing nature of work
• mistaken government policies?
• decline in social indicators was world wide, at least in the developed world
• cannot be explained by poverty or inequality
• seems to be a cultural change, Fukuyama does not look at generational analysis as an explantion
• decline of family due to birth control, abortion?
• stress on individualism, freedom
• key point:  humans have the ability to recover and create new order
• new technology makes for less need for hierarchy, need to build heterarchal social order
• is a common culture critical?
• Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft,  ???schaft

• Club of Rome, Limits to Growth
• Kahn, Technological Optimists
• Toffler - Future Shock, Third Wave.   Technological
• Ray Kurzweil, Age of Spiritual Machines
• Drucker, Age of Social Transformation - Information Age, Meritocracy

• Strauss and Howe is Useful Synthesis
• Four Generational, eighty year cycle.  Others have two alternating generational types
• idealists - generation which comes of age during a period of spiritual awakening and develops a new creedal passion.
• reactives - cynical generation which challenges  the ideals of their parents and develops into pragmatic, risk- taking adults.
• civics - an outer-driven, morally complacent generation which institutionalizes many of the ideals of the previous generations.
• adaptives -  A hypocritical generation which coasts along on the accomplishments of the civics, laying the groundwork for a new idealist era.
• note that idealists and civics have much in common, as do reactives and adaptives, collapsing 4 to 2
• there are key events which trigger a transformation every twenty years or so, even though biological generations are continuous
• this model seems to fit American History pretty well.
• if this model projects into the future, the next generation, people born after 1982, should be "civic" (hero archetype).  It should be a time of building, institutionalization of ideas

• A software development project initiated by Benjamin Goertzel
• The Intelligenesis Corporation funded by Venture Capital (see Christian Science Monitor story.)
• Building artificial intelligence software modeled on the structure of the human brain
• Essentially, it involves a large number of "nodes" (bundles of software and data) which interact with and modify each other
• We will be reading a good bit about this over the semester