Year two notable delegates
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July 27-29, The Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel
WorldFuture 2012, the annual conference of the World Future Society, is your chance to meet hundreds of futurists from around the world, get up close and personal with amazing inventions and prototypes at our Futurists: BetaLaunch invention expo, and hear directly from thinkers at the forefront of foresight.
Check out the just released preliminary program to see what we mean. [PDF]
Join hundreds of future-building men and women at the World Future Society’s 2012 conference, to be held in Toronto, July 27-29, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel.
2020 Media Futures: Practicing What We Preach
A Better Way to Assess Trends Literature
Accelerating the Paradigm Shift from Lecture-Centered to Technology-Enabled Active Learning Instructional Methods
Asian Economies over the Next Decade
Can Innovation Save the Planet?
Chemical Brain Preservation: How to Live “Forever”
Climate Engineering Technologies: Current and Future Issues
Clouds, Crowds, and Complexipacity: How We Are Reinventing Science and Education for an Increasingly Complex World
Cobia or Barramundi? And Other Choices on Tomorrow’s Menus
Communities of the Future
Crowdsourced Weak Signal Collection in Corporate Foresight
Cultural Shifts Among Global Youths: Part III
Cyberbullying and Privacy Issues in Social Media
Designing Business for the Sustainable Future
Digital Bootstrapping: Future Technologies for Today’s Digital Outcasts
Escaping the Matrix: Designed Scenario Strategies
Exploring the Future Arts: Graphic, Sonic, Kinetic
Foresight Methods for Strategic Intelligence
Futurist Media for Improved Crisis Scenario Education
Global Futures Collective Intelligence System
Global MegaCrisis: How Bad Will It Get? What Strategies?
Hackerspace Movement: Hacking the Future
Healthspital 4.0: Re-Visioning the American Community Health-Care Experience
How to Turn Teenagers into Environmental Futurists!
Innovative Entrepreneurs Execute Big Ideas
Lessons from Three Decades of Futures Research
Networked Government: The 21st Century Agency
Our Role in Shaping the Future
Poverty of the Imagination: Using the Future to Avoid a World War
Primary Care 2025
Reimagining the Future of Global Health, Wellness, and Health-Care Delivery
Reinventing Life: A Guide to Our Evolutionary Future
Scenario Analysis in Public Health
Scouting the Future with the Implications Wheel
Singularity University: Team Projects to Positively Change the World
Speed Futuring
Systemic Solution to Achieving Green Economic Growth and Sustainable Development
Technology and Ideology: Its Effects and the Future
The Art and Science of Thinking about the Future
The Best of Houston
The Dream-Do Nexus
The Evolution of Integral Futures
The Future of Crime Prediction
The Future of Global Drug Safety
The Future of Shopping: An Immersive Experience
The Hackerspace Movement: Hacking the Future
Tomorrow Is Promised to No One: The Inevitability of Change
Town Hall Meeting: the Future of Governance
Transcultural Roundtable 2012
Unleashing Fundamental Change: Transforming Economic Development for an Economy That Does Not Exist
Waking Up the Algorithm
When Ivory Towers Fall: The Emerging Education Marketplace
Working Abroad as a Career of the Future? Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean Expatriates in China
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In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
“fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus Has Risen
1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.
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From DSC:
I couldn’t help but reflect again on the state of our hearts here in the United States when I read Greg Smith’s Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs”. It’s a depressing accounting of the rampant greed on Wall Street, with a disregard for deeper qualities and a true attention to meeting a customer’s/client’s needs and goals. It speaks to employees not giving a damn about clients, but only looking to make as much money as possible. (It’s fine to make a living, but how about sincerely trying to make a contribution to society at the same time?)
Some excerpts from Smith’s article:
And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
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What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
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I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
From DSC:
I don’t know this man and I’m sure Goldman Sachs will try to discredit him; and yes, he was part of that culture and made a serious living off of it for years.
However, my focus is not on Greg Smith but upon the type of culture he spoke of; such a culture is not only bad for relationships — and ultimately for souls — but regardless of what you believe in terms of faith-based items, it’s simply bad business and it doesn’t benefit our society. In fact, it destroys it and it’s a significant contributing factor to the anger that continues to mount in the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon that is sweeping the nation.
Some relevant graphics come to my mind:
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Addendum on 3/21/12:
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10 staggering facts behind Apple’s Foxconn Factory — from Mashable.com by Samantha Murphy
From DSC:
I’m half-way through reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and this report doesn’t surprise me in the least. According to what I’m getting from the book, Steve Jobs was a task-master who drove people incredibly hard. He was also an individual who didn’t value relationships and people — unless they served his purposes. So this report is not surprising. I just hope Tim Cook can be more honest and forthcoming about things involving their supply chain — as well as all other areas involving the way Apple does business — than Jobs ever was.
As disclosure, I own an iPhone, an iPad and our family has purchased 3 Macs. I just wish all businesses could make better attempts at serving Main Street while they are striving to serve Wall Street.
Stopping the ‘brain drain’ of the U.S. economy — from NPR
Excerpts:
“The problem is that when you’ve got 20 to 30 percent of some of the top talent in this country going into a sector that is not necessarily contributing to economic and social productivity,” he says. “That’s a problem for the country at large and it’s something that we should all be concerned about.”
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Economist Paul Kedrosky with the Kauffman Foundation says elite schools sending a bigger share of their graduates into finance and consulting is not new; they’ve been doing it for at least two decades. Kedrosky tells NPR’s Raz that what’s different now is that those students have essentially used their talents to grow the financial sector in ways that are unhealthy for the overall economy.
From DSC:
Some relevant scripture comes to my mind — which I, myself, also have to reckon with (these are hard teachings, especially in this day in age…but on second thought, in any age for us humans)
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; He is faithful in all He does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of His unfailing love.”
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From DSC:
One last, relevant reflection here…
I’ve been wondering about the place of the heart when it comes to capitalism. I was listening to Gary Hamel earlier today — Gary is author of the new book, What Matters Now (thanks to Daniel Pink’s Office Hours) and one of the items Gary mentioned was the need for a moral renaissance in business today. The comments were that:
Addendum on 3/1/12 pointing to the relationship and relevancy of our hearts as they relate to capitalism:
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”
Apple’s greatness, and its shame — from Harvard Business Review by Andrew Winston
Excerpts:
Is there such a thing as too much profit? A disciple of Milton Friedman would say “never.” The idea that companies should only maximize shareholder value has had a stranglehold on the business world for decades. It’s time to rethink this assumption.
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Our system of competition yields amazing results — incredible technological innovation provided in massive quantities very quickly. But these marvels often rely on very real human costs. The whole system has some deep flaws that we must fix.
Apple prides itself on changing the game. So just imagine a world where the company applied its staggering innovation and design skills to create the iSupplyChain or iWorkingConditions. Everyone, including this fan of Apple products, would be a lot iHappier.
From DSC:
Readers of this blog already know that I’m a big fan of Apple’s products and Apple’s ability to reinvent itself, think big, and change the world.
But when Steve Jobs quickly answered Barack Obama (when the President asked what would it take for Americans to produce the iPhones, etc.) that “those jobs aren’t coming back“, his answer caused me to reflect on several questions:
10 findings that will shape students today for the workforce tomorrow — from GettingSmart.com by Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti
Excerpt:
“Tomorrow’s Evolving Workplace” is from the upcoming book Society 3.0: How Technology Is Reshaping Education, Work, and Society, by Dr. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti (Lang, January 2012).
In the worst economy since the Great Depression, Californians are struggling to earn a living, get an education, and raise a family. How will we adapt to learn, work, and connect in the future? A new book with findings from Apollo Research Institute describes how businesses and workers will compete for jobs and opportunities in a global, technology-driven marketplace.
Below are just some of the findings…
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From DSC:
I originally saw this at Gerd Leonhard’s MediaFuturist.com where he entitles a blog posting:
Some of my notes on this video — Friedman’s main talk finishes around 35:45 w/ a Q&A beginning at 36:00
(From DSC: I’ve added my own thoughts in red)
The bar has risen in non-routine work as we’ve moved from connected to hyper-connected world.
We are in the middle of an IT revolution/transformation — cloud, mobile, social, other — where Information Technology changes and globalization are creating global supply changes. Tom’s key point is that the United States needs to be involved in these changes or we’ll get left in the dust.
In their Help Wanted chapter, the following skills are wanted:
Average is over. Now that we are hyper-connected, “average” is over. If average is over — you must bring your “extra”.
From DSC:
If “average” is over, are we developing and raising up a generation of students who are learning how to bring their “extra”? Does standardized testing help us or hurt us in this regard?
3 key attitudes you need if you want to “lean into this world”:
United States may be in relative decline — as we experience the “rise of the rest”; but what the US has to worry about it absolute decline
American exceptionalism — hogwash; no one owes us anything; have to earn our way; formula for success was a great private public partnership going back to Alexander Hamilton and built upon by Lincoln, Eisenhower, other (person asking question used the word ecosystem). 5 main pillars of this formulate for success/ecosystem:
We’ve moved away from these 5 puillars of success and we’ve treated our nation like it’s a football that can be dropped w/ no resulting issues; the reality is we’re more like an egg; in another analogy, we can cut and hit arteries quickly…doing actual damage.
We misread environment — at end of cold war we put our feet up, thinking victory was won; the U.S. chased Al Queda instead of China, Brazil, other
Q&A
Final thoughts:
From DSC:
Each of us must be able to continually do pulse checks on a variety of forces that may be affecting our domains/places of work. We must be able to develop future scenarios and our responses to those scenarios. The ability to do that will become even more important as we move forward at ever-increasing speeds.
We can’t be looking 5-10 feet ahead when we’re driving at 180 miles per hour in this new, hyper-connected world!
A reflection on “Making Holes in Our Heart” from The Technium:
Excerpt — that is also quoted in that piece:
There is a hole in my heart dug deep by advertising and envy and a desire to see a thing that is new and different and beautiful. A place within me that is empty, and that I want to fill it up. The hole makes me think electronics can help. And of course, they can.
They make the world easier and more enjoyable. They boost productivity and provide entertainment and information and sometimes even status. At least for a while. At least until they are obsolete. At least until they are garbage.
Electronics are our talismans that ward off the spiritual vacuum of modernity; gilt in Gorilla Glass and cadmium. And in them we find entertainment in lieu of happiness, and exchanges in lieu of actual connections.
From DSC:
Readers of this blog know that I lean towards a pro-technology stance! 🙂 However, I also realize there are limits to what technology brings to the table. Though the author goes onto comment about his being ok w/ holes in our heart, I think he misses the greatest void in the human heart that only the LORD can fill — not technology and/or other things that humankind may create. I’m not saying that I’ve always known what that feels like to have the LORD fill that hole in my heart, but I continue my journey in my relationship with Him, pressing on…sometimes feeling His presence…hearing Him speak to me at different times and in different ways…all the while hoping that I will know that feeling intimately and consistently. But ultimately, all of this technology — when compared to knowing Christ – IS garbage.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Philippians 3:8 (NIV):
8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
