The End of Cyberspace

links for 2010-07-14

• Scopus - Technological Forecasting and Social Change: How to improve scenario analysis as a strategic management tool?
  Scenarios are claimed to support strategic decision makers. They are especially effective in dealing with uncertainties. This paper addresses some drawbacks of the conventional scenario method, which is especially directed at handling these uncertainties, and indicates possible avenues for methodological adaptations.
  (tags: scenarios forecasting methodology)
• Normality of the future: Trend diagnosis for strategic foresight
  Foresight processes and activities are confronted with the task of making sense of the present, in particular by interpreting weak signals of change in the organizational environment. Although trends are considered to be important drivers of environmental discontinuities which may lead to strategic surprises, there is no operationalization from a strategic point of view. In this paper we are going to conceptualize trends as (socio-cultural) innovations. This leads to important implications. If the nature of innovation is taken seriously, then strategic trend diagnosis has to deal with two different aspects, invention and diffusion.
  (tags: future strategy foresight)

links for 2010-07-13

• Jari Ojala and Turo Uskali, "Any Weak Signals? The New York Times and the Stock Market Crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2000." [pdf]
  In this paper we will study “weak signals” by concentrating on the journalistic texts of The New York Times before the stock market crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2000. The paper argues that, even if information and communication technology advanced dramatically from the 1920s to 2000, the flaws of business journalism in writing about stock markets have remained almost the same: their reporting is too enthusiastic (or positive) and uncritical, and therefore incapable of effectively detecting the weak signals of impending collapses on the Stock Exchange. Thus we might conclude that neither the increase in the speed of spreading the information nor the accessibility to such information necessarily leads to greater efficiency in using it. The New York Times itself stated repeatedly that the policy of the newspaper has always aimed at “not making financial crises worse”. Thus the pages of the newspaper contain more positive than negative articles on stock exchanges.
  (tags: weaksignals scanning media finance foresight)
• Daphne R. Raban, U. of Haifa
  Research interests: The subjective value of information; Economics of information goods; Information markets (fee-based, free, social, public goods, prediction, aggregation); Information business models; Voluntary payments for information; Motivations for information sharing; Information overload.
  (tags: research predictionmarkets)
• Weak Signals Blog | Forum For The Future
  …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: foresight blog weaksignals)
• About SESTI
  Scanning for Emerging Science & Technology Issues aims to develop a mechanism for the early identification of newly emerging issues of importance to the European research infrastructure. By collecting weak signals and developing anticipatory intelligence, SESTI will provide the means for proactively addressing these challenges at European and national level.

  The project builds on and adds value to existing national structures and competences in foresight and horizon scanning to create synergies and exploit complementarities. SESTI aims to provide a transnational “foundation” to horizon scanning to enable efficient use of anticipatory intelligence in both EU and national policy.

  
  
  (tags: eu europe scanning science technology foresight)
  
  
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  European Foresight Platform
  
  
  The 2-day kick-off conference of the European Foresight Platform has been held on June 14 and 15, 2010 at the Vienna French Cultural Institute in Austria. With over 80 attendees and about 20 presenters the event has been a huge success by bringing together international professional foresight communities, representatives from the European Commission and policy as well as the EFP consortium and the interested general public.

  A variety of different foresight and forward-looking projects and institutions have been presented at the conference. It has been a tour through all different perspectives of future-related activities which included quantitative forecasting and modeling, scenario development, technology forecasts and roadmaps, societal and cultural oriented future studies, participatory elements in foresight, weak signal and wild card research, foresight databases and ideas about new methods like using gaming and social networks for foresight and forward looking activities.

  
  
  (tags: foresight eu future methodology)
  
  
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  Popper's Foresight & Horizon Scanning Blog
  
  
  
  (tags: weaksignals scanning future)
  
  
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  Quote: H.G. Wells on ‘Professors of Foresight’ » Stories of the future - science fiction, foresight and the future
  
  
  "It seems an odd thing to me that though we have thousands and thousands of professors and hundreds of thousands of students of history working upon the records of the past, there is not a single person anywhere who makes a whole-time job of estimating the future consequences of new inventions and new devices. There is not a single Professor of Foresight in the world. But why shouldn’t there be? All these new things, these new inventions and new powers, come crowding along; every one is fraught with consequences, and yet it is only after something has hit us hard that we set about dealing with it."
  
  
  (tags: future history history_of_science)
  
  
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  TrendWiki
  
  
  Presentation by Data Rangers, a Finnish software company, about TrendWiki.
  
  
  (tags: socialsoftware web2.0 scanning future)
  
  
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  Weak signals: how to track a changing horizon | Forum For The Future
  
  
  Weak signals can range from small changes in behaviour and technology, to signs that a significant shift in a system might be imminent [see box ‘Weak signals, strong undercurrents’ below]. 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. It can be infuriatingly abstract. But you have to make a note just in case…
  
  
  (tags: weaksignals future methodology)
  
  
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  iKnow WI-WE Bank: Description
  
  
  iKNOW has developed conceptual and methodological frameworks to identify, classify, cluster and analyse wild cards and weak signals and assess their implications for, and potential impacts on, Europe and the world. To do so, the iKNOW project has developed well-defined scanning strategies, such as the inward-looking top-down (ILTD), which is carried out by the iKNOW Consortium and involves the scanning of over 2,000 EU-funded research projects; and the outward-looking bottom-up (OLBU), which required the creation of the iKNOW Community (including policy-makers, decision-makers, researchers and foresight practitioners) to scan a wide range of knowledge sources (e.g. journal articles, blogs, news, etc.).

  As a result, iKNOW puts forward a novel ‘horizon scanning 2.0’ approach which, on the one hand, promotes participatory and bottom-up scanning supported by web 2.0 technologies, and, on the other hand, improves information collection, filtering, communication and exploitation.

  
  
  (tags: scanning web2.0 future weaksignals)
  
  

links for 2010-07-12

• iKnow WI-WE Bank
  Inside the WI-WE Bank, so far we have mapped 282 Wild Cards, 175 Weak Signals (total of 457 WI-WE) and 64 active members. You will be able to view Wild Cards (WI) and Weak Signals (WE), create your own Wild Cards and/or Weak Signals, answer to Wild Cards and Weak Signals Deplhi. You can also contribute to other member's Wi-We as they can contribute to yours.
  (tags: weaksignals socialsoftware web2.0 foresight innovation science technology collaboration)
• Weak signals in the governance of emerging technologies: the case of nanotechnology (Presentation October 2010: Tentative Governance in Emerging Science and Technology) | Petra Schaper-Rinkel
  "[N]anotechnology policy is not determined by government nor by industry or science, it evolves in a contingent – but nevertheless structured – process of governance where multiple actors interact in a dynamic setting. Within this processes, signals indicating the possibility of future change – “weak signals” – attracted increasing attention. Regarding weak signals in a positivistic tradition as given entities that indicate future change, one could say that the former weak signals were (‘correctly’) identified by scientists, industry, policy-makers and so NST became an emerging issue in science and innovation policy. Regarding weak signals in a post-positivistic way (and emphasizing that governance studies need to analyze how fields of emerging technologies are constructed through discourse), weak signals can be understood as “boundary objects” that link different social worlds, such as science, politics, industry, NGOs and media."
  (tags: weaksignals postmodernism science sciencex2 policy)

links for 2010-07-11

• The Iraq Tragedy, Ctd - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
  The unintended consequences were catastrophic and yet the doctrine of neoconservatism survives like a zombie in Washington.
  (tags: politics unintended_consequences)

links for 2010-07-06

• Emergency preparedness exercises remain an imperfect science (11/22/06) -- GovExec.com
  Pam is one of scores of simulations, drills and exercises that take place every year at all levels of government and in the private sector with the intention of testing and preparing everyone from first responders to senior-level decision-makers for crises. Critics say real-life events often show the practices don't adequately prepare these critical players.... Hopmeier and others say many preparedness exercises are not nearly as valuable as advertised, or as they could be. Simply holding them is not sufficient; the exercises must be evaluated to ensure they are testing the system enough to expose vulnerabilities and problems that must then be repaired.

  "Exercises are not all created equal," says Michael Wermuth, director of homeland security programs at the nonprofit RAND Corp. "There are a lot of different kinds of exercises, a lot of different methodologies used to conduct exercises."

  
  
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  Designing and conducting tabletop exercises to assess public health preparedness for manmade and naturally occurring biological threats
  
  
  Since 2001, state and local health departments in the United States (US) have accelerated efforts to prepare for high-impact public health emergencies. One component of these activities has been the development and conduct of exercise programs to assess capabilities, train staff and build relationships. This paper summarizes lessons learned from tabletop exercises about public health emergency preparedness and about the process of developing, conducting, and evaluating them.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop public_health planning)
  
  
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  Impact of Tabletop Exercises on Participants' Knowledge of and Confidence in Legal Authorities for Infectious Disease Emergencies -- Savoia et al. 3 (2): 104 -- Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness
  
  
  Legal preparedness is a critical component of comprehensive public health preparedness for public health emergencies. The scope of this study was to assess the usefulness of combining didactic sessions with a tabletop exercise as educational tools in legal preparedness, to assess the impact of the exercise on the participants’ level of confidence about the legal preparedness of a public health system, and to identify legal issue areas in need of further improvement.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop)
  
  
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  Disaster Planning: eMedicine Emergency Medicine
  
  
  All phases of the disaster response must be addressed in a disaster plan. Functional job descriptions and responsibilities of all agencies and organizations involved should be delineated clearly. More importantly, these plans should be exercised and rehearsed. The ideal exercise includes participation by all parties involved. Since these exercises, by their very nature, disrupt normal operations and are costly in personnel and material utilization, disaster agencies frequently conduct a proxy exercise on the "tabletop." This is a simulation of an emergency situation for training and testing plans and procedures that does not involve movement of response resources. Tabletop exercises are good training tools because they allow people in leadership positions to work through major problems without the cost of running vehicles, using staff and volunteer time, or using supplies. They can quickly highlight areas of weakness where additional support may be needed.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop disasters planning)
  
  
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  Strategic tabletop negotiations [sub req]
  
  
  Strategic negotiations in digital tabletop displays have not been well understood. There is little reported in the literature on how users strategize when group priorities and individual priorities conflict and need to be balanced for a successful collaboration. We conducted an observational study on three digital tabletop systems and a real-world setup to investigate similarities and differences in real-world and digital tabletop strategic collaborations. Our results show that in the real world, strategic negotiation involves three phases: identifying the right timing, using epistemic actions to consider a task plan and evaluating the value of the negotiation. We repeated the real-world experiments with different digital tabletops and found several differences in the way users initiate and perform strategic negotiations.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop interface)
  
  
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  The use of classroom training and simulation in the training of medical responders for airport disaster -- Idrose et al. 24 (1): 7 -- Emergency Medicine Journal
  
  
  There is a dire need to have complementary form of disaster training which is cost effective, relatively easy to conduct, comprehensive, effective and acceptable. This will complement field drills training. A classroom-based training and simulation module was built by combining multiple tools: Powerpoint lectures, simulations utilising the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) schematic module into ‘floortop’ model and video show of previous disaster drill.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop airport planning disasters)
  
  
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  Using tabletop exercises to learn about crisis management: empirical evidence [sub req]
  
  
  Tabletop exercises are often used for learning purposes in the area of crisis management, yet their potential for this is far from clear. The study examines the learning outcomes achieved by a group of persons taking part in tabletop exercises in which they assess the crisis management capabilities of the organisation to which they belong and suggest possible improvements. Interviews with the participants provide evidence of positive learning effects. Although the effects are in line with generally accepted normative principles of crisis management, the degree of understanding that the participants gain about it appears to vary considerably. The underlying reasons for this are discussed.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop disasters planning)
  
  
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  Preparing Military Installations for Pandemic Influenza Through Tabletop Exercises
  
  
  Effective Department of Defense (DoD) response to pandemic influenza requires robust and well-exercised plans at the installation level. This article describes proceedings and key findings from a half-day “train-the-trainer” pandemic influenza tabletop exercise for Tri-Service installation public health emergency officers (PHEOs) at the August 2008 Force Health Protection conference. Exercise participants were expected to facilitate the execution of a pandemic influenza exercise at their respective installations within 6 months of attendance. On a 6-month follow-up survey (N = 50), 68% indicated their installations had since created a new pandemic influenza plan or revised an existing one, whereas 44% indicated that their installation had since conducted a pandemic influenza exercise.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop planning education)
  
  
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  "Use of Tabletop Exercise in Industrial Training Disaster," Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine 51(9) September 2009
  
  
  Training exercises are now frequently used in health disaster and emergency medicine to train first responders,1 including the use of tabletop exercises.2–4 Nevertheless, these kinds of drills are not well described in occupational and industrial safety and health literature. They represent an interesting alternative to simulated disaster plans, which require considerable human and technical resources disrupt a company's daily business. Our purpose was to develop a special tabletop exercise training program for health and safety professionals such as occupational physicians and hygienists.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop disasters planning)
  
  
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  On Linkages: Using Exercises to Identify Systems-Level Preparedness Challenges [sub req]
  
  
  HSPH-CPHP supplies the content expertise relevant to simulating a public health emergency; develops the exercise scenario, Master Scenario Events List (MSEL), and supporting documentation; creates the evaluation plan and instruments; and provides trained personnel to facilitate exercise play and evaluate collective performance.
  Since 2005, we have conducted 21 exercises and have direct access to 14 after-action reports (AARs) produced. For this study, we conducted a content analysis of the AARs written following 14 exercises conducted as part of the HSPH-CPHP exercise program, to identify recurrent themes related to the systems challenges faced by the responders during the simulated emergencies. This article describes the most common challenges identified during our exercises, and illustrates how exercises can act as an innovative way for academic partners to collaborate with public health practitioners to improve preparedness.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop planning scenarios medicine disasters)
  
  
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  Steward and Wan, "The Role of Simulation and Modeling in Disaster Management," Journal of Medical Systems (2007) [sub req]
  
  
  The threat of pandemic disaster has motivated many collaborative exercises for the purpose of preparation and evaluation. The nature of these exercises depends upon the status of pre-existing expectations for system behavior and the aims of the exercise stakeholders. The contents of this article argue that these exercises may be developed using the same approach as simulation modeling to advantage. Four levels of maturity are outlined as a guide to understanding reasonable expectations for such activity.
  
  
  (tags: tabletop disasters planning)
  
  

links for 2010-07-05

• Washington, D.C., To Get Massive 'Cyber Shock' in Mock Cyber-Attack
  "Familiar faces from the federal government will be tested Tuesday, Feb. 16, to see how well Washington, D.C., would handle a cyber-crisis. Pass or fail, their performance will be seen by spectators -- and then broadcast on CNN for the world to see. The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), a nonprofit that develops multiparty solutions in public policy, will host Cyber Shockwave, a simulated cyber-attack on the United States, during an exercise at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C."
  (tags: simulation tabletop disasters cyberspace)
• IS-139 Exercise Design
  Emergency exercises are worth the effort. Exercises identify areas that are proficient and those that need improvement. Lessons learned from exercises can be used to revise operational plans and provide a basis for training to improve proficiency in executing those plans. This course is designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of exercise design and to prepare you to design and conduct a small functional exercise for your organization. It addresses: The value of conducting exercises. The components of a comprehensive exercise program. The exercise development process ¾ development tasks, organization of the design team, exercise documentation, and the steps in designing an exercise.
  (tags: tabletop scenarios planning disasters)
• Stuart Buck has a startling explanation for Acting White.  - By Richard Thompson Ford - Slate Magazine
  But suppose integration doesn't change the culture of underperformance? What if integration inadvertently created that culture in the first place? This is the startling hypothesis of Stuart Buck's Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation. Buck argues that the culture of academic underachievement among black students was unknown before the late 1960s. It was desegregation that destroyed thriving black schools where black faculty were role models and nurtured excellence among black students. In the most compelling chapter of Acting White, Buck describes that process and the anguished reactions of the black students, teachers, and communities that had come to depend on the rich educational and social resource in their midst.
  (tags: unintended_consequences education research)
• Award#0922783 - Regret regulation and everyday decisions across the adult lifespan
  Thus, understanding how and why we experience regret and how regret influences choices and behaviors are important research questions. Previous research on regret has, however, to a large extent relied on younger participants and to date little is known about how and if the experience and anticipation of regret changes over the adult life-span.... This project uses both experimental and field studies to address how regret and the behavioral consequences of regret change with aging.
  (tags: decision-making nsf DRMS aging)
• nsf.gov - Funding - Decision, Risk and Management Sciences - US National Science Foundation (NSF)
  The Decision, Risk and Management Sciences program supports scientific research directed at increasing the understanding and effectiveness of decision making by individuals, groups, organizations, and society. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, doctoral dissertation research, and workshops are funded in the areas of judgment and decision making; decision analysis and decision aids; risk analysis, perception, and communication; societal and public policy decision making; management science and organizational design.
  (tags: grants nsf risk behavioral_economics economics management decision-making)
• Award#0922754 - Improving Scenario Discovery
  Scenario Discovery is a valuable approach to participatory, computer-assisted scenario development. It is useful for many hard, deeply uncertain policy problems such as climate change and energy planning. This project aims to advance scenario discovery methodology by applying novel algorithms that can provide significant new capabilities and then evaluating how decision makers respond to the results. It, thus, will simultaneously improve both the technical capacity of the modeling and the ability for decision makers to work effectively with the models.
  (tags: grants nsf decision-making scenarios DRMS)
• Award#0925008 - Reasoning processes underlying decision makers' use of expert forecasts
  Decision makers in fields as diverse as business, industry, law enforcement, and military/political intelligence rely on expert forecasts to help make important decisions. The purpose of these forecasts is to communicate information about a target situation in a format that is useful for decision makers. Unfortunately, many expert forecasts are probabilistic in nature and rife with analytic uncertainty.... Surprisingly, there has been relatively little research focused on how best to communicate these forecasts to decision makers. One issue of particular concern is how experts should represent analytic uncertainty and how uncertainty information is understood in the context of supporting narrative information.... This research implements nine experiments that examine the best ways of presenting analytic uncertainty, to assess the reasoning strategies used by decision makers, and to understand how individual differences in numeracy and cognitive style affect the use of expert forecasts.
  (tags: grants nsf decision-making DRMS)

links for 2010-07-04

• Grindr: a new sexual revolution? | Media | The Observer
  He points out that Grindr is a response to online dating, which causes as many problems as it solves. "With missed connections and back and forth, and: 'Oh actually, this week I'm in New York, and you're in LA…' Online dating is frustrating! It is a lot of work!" Grindr, on the other hand, is immediate. There is no messing about, no toing and froing, no building up your hopes via weeks of emails only to discover on your first physical date that you just don't fancy whoever in the flesh. You see someone's picture on Grindr, you meet immediately, you establish whether or not you're attracted to each other: "Grindr reintroduces the aspect of chemistry. And – it's real. It is not a Second Life. It is not a virtual world. It's a tool. It enables real life, it doesn't replace it."
  (tags: society technology mobile sex internet iphone endofcyberspace gay)

links for 2010-07-01

• Home | Management Innovation eXchange
  "[W]hile "modern" management is one of humankind's most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.... Current management practices emphasize control, discipline and efficiency above all else — and that's a problem. To thrive in the 21st century, organizations must be adaptable, innovative, inspiring and socially accountable. That will require a genuine revolution in management principles and practices."
  (tags: management innovation opensource collaboration leadership business web2.0)
• Can you have too many great Guggenheim galleries? | Art and design | The Guardian
  "Hasn't the Guggenheim heard that the world has changed? At a time of waning American empire and feeble global capitalism, the New York museum is flying a solitary flag of expansion. Its franchises around the world, from Berlin to – coming soon – Abu Dhabi, have earned it an image as the Starbucks of museums. Now yet another is to be created, in a nature reserve in northern Spain, and you may well ask: has the Guggenheim stretched its collections and curatorial imagination too thin?... A Guggenheim in every country would mean the triumph of this museum's intelligent view of modern art, and I would not be burying any flags."
  (tags: art museum)
• British Regulator Fines Drunken Oil Trader - NYTimes.com
  Alcohol-induced behavior has produced many unintended consequences, but pushing up the global price of oil and losing $10 million must rank among the most novel.
  (tags: unintended_consequences)
• RIP, MBA | The Big Money
  the economic crisis has exposed long-standing flaws not just in the modern approach to business education but in the very idea of business education.
  (tags: edu business education)

links for 2010-06-30

• BBC News - Tech Know: Life hacking with 3D printing and DIY DNA kits
  Hacking and making is no longer just about hardware and software, increasingly it is about wetware - that's biology to the uninitiated. Those starting to hack biology want to do for it what the web and easy to use tools such as the Arduino programmable controller have done for hardware hacking. That is make it easy to understand and fun to play around with.
  (tags: technology diy synthetic_biology biology 3dprinting)
• Tate debate: open your mind to public spaces | Culture | guardian.co.uk
  We need our spaces to be like ourselves: different, distinctive, displaying a range of moods from subdued to very loud. Great open spaces require open minds to design and look after them, to allow culture to flourish, and to support creativity and fun
  (tags: cities london architecture design)
• Handbook of Imagination and Mental Simulation
  Over the past thirty years, and particularly within the last ten years, researchers in the areas of social psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience have been examining fascinating questions regarding the nature of imagination and mental simulation – the imagination and generation of alternative realities. Some of these researchers have focused on the specific processes that occur in the brain when an individual is mentally simulating an action or forming a mental image, whereas others have focused on the consequences of mental simulation processes for affect, cognition, motivation, and behavior.

  This Handbook provides a novel and stimulating integration of work on imagination and mental simulation from a variety of perspectives.... [and] enlightens psychologists to the notion that a wide-range of mental simulation phenomena may actually share a commonality of underlying processes.

  
  
  (tags: behavior cognition psychology simulation)
  
  

links for 2010-06-29

• Can some out-of-work car-racing engineers save the planet? - By Jason Fagone - Slate Magazine
  Fascinating article on auto racing and innovation. "Edison2 was founded by a 48-year-old German real estate developer named Oliver Kuttner. Ever since he was a kid, Kuttner dreamed of running his own car company, and when the major automakers slashed their racing budgets to save costs during the recession, laying off thousands of engineers and mechanics, he saw an opportunity. He hired half a dozen of the most talented castaways, including Ron Mathis, a Brit who had designed champion F1 cars for Audi, and Bobby Mouzayck, a journeyman mechanic on Corvette, Viper, and Audi race cars."
  (tags: innovation automobile design)
• http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/execed/strategy/scenarios/Pages/default.aspx
  "The Oxford Scenarios Programme will provide you with a tools and frameworks to declutter, identify and extract relevant information from your surrounding environment, and help you develop an ‘early warning system’ for your organisation."
  (tags: strategy scenarios academia)