The End of Cyberspace

links for 2010-01-29

• The world in 2020 - The IET
  "At the recent European Futurists Conference in Lucerne, Switzerland, E&T asked some leading futurologists for their prognosis for year 2020. Here’s what they had to say." Clive van Heerden argued that "our interaction with machines will inevitably need to become more ‘natural’ through the dramatic increase in the use of indirect channels of communication;" Ian Pearson, "lightweight sunglasses will use tiny lasers to write computer-generated imagery straight onto our retinas superimposing them on what we see in the real world;" Rohit Talwar sees the growth of "personal ecosystems;" Elina Hiltunen, "the emergence and connectivity of data everywhere and for every purpose;" Jose Luis Cordeiro, something close to AI.
  (tags: future 2020 forecasting)
• Heikot signaalit- Weak signals
  "This is a blog about weak signals by which I mean strange things that exist today and that can tell about big trends in the future. By using weak signals we can try to anticipate and create the future. The writer of this blog, Elina Hiltunen, is a futurist and doing her doctoral thesis about weak signals."
  (tags: weaksignals future methodology)
• Mendonca et al, "Venturing into the Wilderness: Preparing for Wild Cards in the Civil Aircraft and Asset-Management Industries," Long Range Planning 42:1 (2009)
  "We consider ways in which radically uncertain and disruptive events may be introduced into corporate decisionmaking structures. As a foresight concept, “wild cards” refer to trend-breaking/trend-creating events that are very hard or even impossible to anticipate, but that should nonetheless be expected in complex and fast-evolving environments. The discussion is grounded in the experience obtained in two strategic foresight projects carried out in two industries — civil aviation and investment banking. The unique strength of these cases is that they constitute concrete and rare examples of disclosed business foresight studies that, from the start, included an explicit wild card element. Most interestingly, both of these cases are analytically linked to the September 11 event, a severe instance of a wild card."
  (tags: future methodology wildcards)
• Botterhuis et al, "Monitoring the future. Building an early warning system for the Dutch Ministry of Justice," Futures (2010)
  To determine the sustainability of the policy, an Early Warning System (EWS) has been developed for the Dutch Ministry of Justice. An EWS is used to monitor various developments and to place them within the perspective of future scenarios. Without actually predicting the future, this makes it possible to determine which scenario is the most relevant at any given moment, allowing the department to adapt its policies. Regular modifications to the EWS make it possible to monitor in the direction of which scenario society appears to be moving. This creates a path to the future with which the sustainability of (new) policies can be tested periodically.
  (tags: future weaksignals methodology)
• Ilmola and Kuusi, "Filters of weak signals hinder foresight: Monitoring weak signals efficiently in corporate decision-making," Futures 38:8 (2006).
  "Already two decades ago strategy literature started a discussion on weak signals (H.I. Ansoff, Implanting Strategic Management, Prentice-Hall International, Englewood-Cliffs, NJ, 1984). Currently the weak signals approach is experiencing a renaissance in strategic planning but now either in the context of strategic flexibility or peripheral vision. In this paper we aim, firstly, to present theories describing filters that a weak signal has to pass in the strategy-creation process. Secondly, we present a construction for information filters in the strategy process and prove that the nature of objectives and the method used in environment scanning have a major impact on the outcome. Thirdly, we introduce an application that opens filters for weak signals in the strategy process and thus provides the organization with an opportunity for pro-active decision-making."
  (tags: weaksignals future methodology)
• Mendonça, Pina e Cunha, Kaivo-oja, Ruff, "Wild cards, weak signals and organisational improvisation," Futures 36:2 (2004).
  "This paper addresses the need for reliable action guidelines which can be used by organisations in turbulent environments. Building on current conceptual and empirical research, we suggest an analytical approach to the management of surprising and potentially damaging events. In order to do so we propose the wild card management system. Wild cards refer to sudden and unique incidents that can constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend. As the first of the two components of such a wild card system, we advocate a weak signal methodology to take into account those wild cards that can be anticipated by scanning the decision environment. The second component, the nurture of improvisation capabilities, is designed to deal with unanticipated ongoing crises. This paper can be seen as part of a broader agenda on how to manage in conditions of continuous but unpredictable change."
  (tags: future methodology weaksignals forecasting)
• Elina Hiltunen, "The future sign and its three dimensions," Futures 40:3 (April 2008).
  "Weak signals are current oddities, strange issues that are thought to be in key position in anticipating future changes in organizational environments. Scanning for them and using them in scenario work is thought to be successful for looking to the future. However, defining weak signals is problematic, and various authors term the concept differently. The debate about the characteristics of weak signals has been active especially in Finland. The article aims to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of weak signals. For this purpose, a semiotic approach, Peirce's triadic model of sign in particular, is used. The article introduces a new starting point for defining weak signals (signs) by using the novel concept future sign, which consists of three dimensions: the signal, the issue and the interpretation."
  (tags: weaksignals future methodology future2)
• ScienceDirect - Futures : Futures signals sense-making framework (FSSF): A start-up tool to analyse and categorise weak signals, wild cards, drivers, trends and other types of information
  "This article introduces future signals sense-making framework (FSSF), an alternative philosophy towards weak signals, emerging issues, drivers, and trends, that is in contrast to the traditional single signal or path extrapolation approach. The philosophy of FSSF is based on the principles of environmental scanning and pattern management, which state that if there is a grand transformation process on the way or if there is a new emerging pattern or phenomenon, such a process will certainly be reflected in many different ways. Therefore, in this philosophy, futures knowledge is believed to be fragmented between various simultaneous and overlapping sources. Here, a researcher's task is to carry out a sufficient environmental scanning process and to cluster and sense how to create the emerging future through a pattern management process where FSSF plays a role as the first start-up tool."
  (tags: future weaksignals future2 methodology)
• Pondering the Future Makes Us Lean Forward, Literally - Yahoo! News
  "Just thinking about the past or future could literally move you. This mental time travel was revealed in a new study in which participants swayed backward when thinking of the past and forward with future thoughts.... [These] results suggest our perceptions of time are tightly coupled with space. "This is the first demonstration that when we think about time we physically move though space, whether that's engaged though areas of the brain or manifested throughout the whole body is an open question," said Lynden Miles of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Miles and Aberdeen colleagues Louise Nind and Neil Macrae fitted 20 participants with a motion sensor while they imagined future or past events. After just 15 seconds, participants who were recalling the past had swayed backward an average of about 0.7 inches (1.5 to 2 mm), while the future thinkers leaned forward about 0.1 inches (3 mm)."
  (tags: future psychology ergonomics embodied_learning)
• Weak Signals, Wild Cards
  "Weak Signals, Wild Cards is a commissioning project and exhibition by the participants of de Appel Curatorial Programme 08/09. Set in Amsterdam Noord, it invites ten artists and a number of speakers from other fields to react to the given plans for the area and conjure a set of alternative futures. The artists have created works for and from their envisioned future contexts, while the speakers will foretell their imagined futures of Amsterdam Noord, from the perspectives of their expertise. The title of this project uses two terms from futurology...."
  (tags: art future weaksignals)
• Messages from the future | Forum For The Future
  What do new types of plastic, a recession-proof solar boom in California and resurgent UK regional accents have in common? Or high-street butchers, energy rationing and the emergence of a ‘recession generation’? They could all be ‘weak signals’ from the future – signs of what may be to come. If you’re into sustainable development and planning for the future, then weak signals are important.
  (tags: weaksignals sustainability future methodology)
• Weak signals: how to track a changing horizon | Forum For The Future
  "Welcome to the study of ‘weak signals’ where both the bizarre and the seemingly mundane are tracked to give a glimpse as to what changes might lie unseen around the corner. The author William Gibson famously said: “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”. In its simplest form, the study of weak signals is the search for those elements of the future that are indeed already with us – but have yet to be recognised as such, let alone adopted by mainstream society. Weak signals can range from small changes in behaviour and technology, to signs that a significant shift in a system might be imminent. Often it can just involve a hunch that something different is underway, rather than a clear indication of predictable change. An individual signal might make little sense at the time; it might require a number of other similar signals, or a creative leap to realise just what it could be pointing to."
  (tags: weaksignals future methodology)
• Forum For The Future: Weak Signals Blog
  "…are ideas, trends, technologies or behaviour changes that are as yet unrecognised by mainstream society. They might have a big impact or they might disappear. We monitor them to help our partners challenge their assumptions about the future, navigate risk and seize new opportunities."
  (tags: future methodology weaksignals)

links for 2010-01-28

• The Next Big Quake? | Foreign Policy
  It's not just the San Andreas we have to worry about: Foreign Policy highlights the New Madrid fault in the US South, as well as faults in Turkey, Pacific, Nepal, and Japan, as being particularly worrisome.
  (tags: disasters future)

links for 2010-01-27

• Our Brains Weren’t Built for Facebook - Sara Libby - Ill Communication - True/Slant
  A "British anthropologist says he’s determined that cognitively, we can only handle 150 real friends at a time. Even when it comes to Facebook and other social networks, Robin Dunbar says, we only truly maintain communication with the magic 150. “Dunbar’s number,” according to the Times of London, originated in the 1990s when Dunbar’s research indicated that “the size of our neocortex — the part of the brain used for conscious thought and language — limits us to managing social circles of around 150 friends, no matter how sociable we are.”"
  (tags: socialsoftware psychology sociology sociability facebook community)
• Live from TEDxSoMa: Damon Horowitz, Aardvark | TEDxSoMa
  While technologies can take us further than ever before, it is always humanity that creates meaning. Words have meaning because we speak them, not because they exist. Even the most advanced AI algorithms today come down to pattern matching. They don’t know why we react differently to a story about earthquakes in Haiti than we do to a story about vacations in Haiti.

  Consider web search: you have some question in your head, and what you have to do is turn that question into keywords, find a browser, search through results, and extract information. It’s as though we’ve forgotten that a question is an invitation to a human experience. The amount of information in peoples’ heads dwarfs the amount of information in computers. So they started Aardvark — you send it a question, and Aardvark’s job is to find a person who can answer that question. They use AI not to replace people but to help connect people.

  
  
  (tags: socialsoftware knowledge web2.0)
  
  

links for 2010-01-22

• China hits back at US over internet censorship | World news | guardian.co.uk
  US calls for greater internet freedom could damage bilateral ties, China warned today as it hit back at Hillary Clinton's critical speech. The US secretary of state yesterday portrayed tackling censorship as a new priority for American foreign policy and called on Beijing to conduct a full and open investigation of Google's claims of a China-originated cyber attack targeting the emails of human rights activists. "The US has criticised China's policies to administer the internet and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom," said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, in a statement published on the ministry's website. "This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations."
  (tags: censorship china google internet)

links for 2010-01-20

• 2020 vision: that sinking feeling | The Australian
  "THERE'S a long list of things we took for granted in 2000 that no longer exist: Saddam Hussein, Lehman Brothers, the World Trade Centre, the lira, franc and deutschmark. Each of these vanishing acts played a crucial role in shaping the world we live in. With this in mind, researchers at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute have compiled a list of significant aspects of our world that may vanish in the decade ahead." The list includes Pax Americana, diplomats, the concept of the international community, Tuvalu, secrets, seafood, Pakistan, the globally dominant dollar, truth, and capital punishment.
  (tags: future)
• As William Shatner once said...
  On likely deaths of notable world leaders in the coming decade-- something futurists don't generally think about, even though we all know that well-placed individuals can have a significant effect on events (hollah, Massachusetts!). "To paraphrase the satirical newspaper, The Onion, it’s safe to predict that, in the next decade, the world death rate will hold steady at 100%. But although we’re all going to die, in geo-political terms, some deaths matter more than others. So without going into ghoulish speculation about which political leaders might fall to war, terrorism or assassination, here are a few notable people who continue to influence world affairs, but who are statistically unlikely to see out the decade."
  (tags: future)
• Communities in the Cloud (Intelligent Community Forum)
  "The title, “Future Knowledge Ecosystems,” is a real snooze but the report actually has a lot to say to communities everywhere.... Here’s why the report matters. It captures a worry that is universal. Manufacturing hubs from Eindhoven in Holland to Northeast Ohio, USA fret about losing their competitive edge to nimble, low-cost manufacturers in Asia. Small cities and towns from Bristol, Virginia USA to Ballarat, Australia fear that they will dry up and blow away as youth leave for greater opportunity elsewhere. Even financial capitals from New York City to Hong Kong worry as more transactions move online, empowering smaller financial centers at their expense."
  (tags: innovation place-space geography globalization)

links for 2010-01-19

• Google China insiders may have helped with attack | InSecurity Complex - CNET News
  "Google is looking into whether employees in its China office were involved in the attacks on its network that led to theft of intellectual property, according to CNET sources. Sources familiar with the investigation told CNET last week that Google was looking into whether insiders at the company were involved in the attacks, but additional details were not known at the time. Insiders could have played a part in what is believed to have been a multi-prong attack on the company, according to the sources."
  (tags: china internet security google)
• Beijing's Foreign Internet Purge | Foreign Policy
  Google's move was not a brave stand against China's lack of Internet freedom. Instead, it was simply the last and inevitable straw. Google, like Yahoo before it, has been systematically forced out of the market by a Chinese government determined to purge all foreign competition from its Internet industry, which is expected to bring in $8 billion in advertising revenue in the next three years, according to Internet research firm eMarketer.com. That number is likely to grow quickly as China's Internet saturation is only about 25 percent, compared with more than 75 percent on average in OECD countries such as the United States. In a country well-known for copying and mass-producing the ideas and products of other countries, from automobiles to movies, a new economic tool has been invented: an insidious, uniquely 21st-century form of protectionism."
  (tags: china google business censorship internet digital_culture globalization)
• Louis Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas. - By Gideon Lewis-Kraus - Slate Magazine
  "Professors, the people most visibly responsible for the creation of new ideas, have, over the last century, become all too consummate professionals, initiates in a system committed to its own protection and perpetuation. Professors worry that any general-education requirements, any attempt to make a college education seem relevant in a specific way, will be too "presentist" or "instrumentalist." They have been taught to think of their own work, which is accountable only to the internal standards of their profession, as something pure, something unrelated to the messy business of the world. But this belief itself was only ever dreamed up as a solution to different problems, and once we understand it as a matter of historical contingency, we shall presumably be better able to deal with its consequences."
  (tags: education academia books)
• Futurists predict fewer butchers, more space pilots – and spare legs for top football stars | Science | The Guardian
  "Forget the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker: in 20 years some of the most popular jobs could include vertical farmer, space pilot and body part maker, according to a government commissioned report. Shape of Jobs to Come predicts advances in science and technology, coupled with the expected onset of climate change, could make for career paths that are virtually unrecognisable today.... [A] network of "futurists and future thinkers" [was asked] to consider likely science and technology developments before suggesting specific jobs. The result was a list of 110 roles, whittled down to 20 for the study."
  (tags: future technology environment work education careers)
• Jan Chipchase, "Shared Phone Use" (Future Perfect)
  "Much of the growth in the telecommunications industry is coming from emerging markets - places like India and Africa and for many new consumers their first mobile phone experience is a shared one. This essay uses the term sharing in the sense of primary usage orientated around borrowing and lending rather than 'let me show you the photos I took at last night's party'. Mobile phone sharing is not just limited to personal use - from the streets of Cairo to Kampala kiosks are springing up with little more than a mobile phone and a sign advertising call rates. What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use? And based on how and why people share in what ways can devices and services be redesigned to optimise the shared user experiences? Indeed, should they be re-designed?"
  (tags: mobile research social community communication culture africa design)

links for 2010-01-17

• Knowledge Problem
  (tags: expertise psychology forecasting)

links for 2010-01-15

• Why James Grant Thinks the Economic Recovery Might Be More Robust Than Widely Expected -- New York Magazine
  Grant's "ample intelligence has often left him out of sync with the animal spirits that rule Wall Street. Over a quarter-century in which the economy mostly boomed, Grant stayed mostly gloomy. His view has been that the economy is a Frankenstein creation of cheap credit that drove up prices and instilled a false sense of prosperous stability.

  At critical moments, such as the great collapse of the eighties boom, this analysis proved brave and useful.... But it also led to him advising caution and restraint as some of the most vigorous bull markets in history commenced. Indeed, the nineties was not kind to pessimists. “In this business,” he says, “everything is cyclical, including one’s evident IQ. One goes from genius to moron all too quickly."

  
  
  (tags: forecasting finance)
  
  

links for 2010-01-13

• Google Exit Threatens Chinese Internet, Analysts Say - NYTimes.com
  "If Google leaves China, the country will suddenly become even more dependent on its main homegrown search engine, Baidu.com. And while that is likely to benefit the Chinese company in the near term, analysts say it could bode poorly for the long-term development of the Internet in China."
  (tags: china google censorship internet search)
• Google’s Threat Ricocheted Around World, but Skipped Over China - NYTimes.com
  "Google’s declaration that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country ricocheted around the world Wednesday. But in China itself, the news was heavily censored.... Google linked its decision to sophisticated cyberattacks on its computer systems that it suspected originated in China and that were aimed, at least in part, at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.... Outside the company’s gleaming offices in Beijing, a trickle of young people laid floral bouquets and notes at the multicolored sign bearing the Google logo. As daylight faded, two 18-year-old law students approached with a bottle of rice liquor and lit two candles. One of the students said that she wanted to make a public gesture of support for Google, which steadily has lost market share to Baidu, a Chinese-run company that has close ties with the government."
  (tags: china google privacy surveillance)
• The Global Knowledge Inititative - Building Global Knowledge Partnerships Between People and Institutions of Higher Education and Research
  (tags: science science2.0 globalization cooperation)

links for 2010-01-12

• Edward A. Parson: Publications
  Parson is a professor at U. of Michigan. "His interests include environmental policy, particularly its international dimensions; the political economy of regulation; the role of science and technology in public issues; and the analysis of negotiations, collective decisions, and conflicts. His recent research has included projects on scientific and technical assessment in international policy-making; the policy implications of carbon-cycle management; the design of international market-based policy instruments; and development of policy exercises, simulation-gaming, and related novel methods for assessment and policy analysis."
  (tags: environment policy law)