Group items tagged

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- The Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) has announced the results of its Pro-Poor Scenarios Competition, a global contest that invited policymakers, futurists, academics and active citizens around the world to develop scenarios that apply foresight methods to expand social and economic opportunities for poor and marginalized populations.

"Marianne Maeckelbergh: "In this brief article I would like to summarise some alternative approaches to 'knowing' that I have encountered through activism and anthropological fieldwork within the alterglobalization movement. Specifically I will address four assumptions about knowledge found within the alterglobalization movement that diverge considerably from 'standard' assumptions. First, the idea that knowledge is collectively constructed. Second, that knowledge is context specific, partial and provisional. Third, that a distinction must be made between knowing something and knowing better. Finally, I describe the idea that ignorance is useful. First, however, it is necessary to briefly describe the context within which these alternatives are emerging and the type of knowledge that they resist."

The Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) has announced the results of its Pro-Poor Scenarios Competition, a global contest that invited policy‐makers, futurists, academics and active citizens around the world to develop scenarios that apply foresight methods to expand social and economic opportunities for poor and marginalized populations.

"The IPS Prism Project uses the scenario planning method to help participants look beneath events to identify the deep driving forces that will shape the future and how these driving forces will interact with each other to create of alternative, plausible stories about the future, or "scenarios". "

" Four Futures of Food serves up a quartet of scenarios plotting out alternative descriptions of how America, as well as the wider world, could be eating in the year 02021. Each is based on a different trajectory that change could describe - Growth, Constraint, Collapse, or Transformation."

"Australia's Federal Government announced the National Broadband Network (NBN) in 2009. NBN's current roll-out is scheduled for completion in 2021, with market forecasts estimating optical fibre overtaking DSL broadband connections in about 2015. This paper provides a timely contribution to more critical and expansive analysis of potential Australian internet futures. First, 'schools of thought' and current technological frames (Web 2.0, 'the cloud') for the internet and its possible futures are outlined, which provide perspectives on the emergence of the NBN. We then outline five generic images of the future which, as predetermined images, enable quick 'incasting' of alternative futures for a technology topic or related object of research: promised future, social/speculative bubble(s), unfolding disruption/chaos, unintended consequences, and co-existence/'cooption'. High-level application of the 'schools' and generic images to the NBN and Australia's potential internet futures, suggests policymakers and strategists currently consider too few perspectives."

Will Asia lead the world in green technologies and in the political-economic transition to sustainability? Can Asia bury past conflicts and create stronger regional institutions including perhaps, step by step, an Asian Union? In what ways could Asia's traditional cultures - Islamic, Tantric, Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist and Vedic - be resources in inventing an alternative more hybrid cultures?

International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale, long-term, integrated global modeling system. It represents demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political, and environmental subsystems for 183 countries interacting in the global system. The central purpose of IFs is to facilitate exploration of global futures through alternative scenarios. The model is integrated with a large database containing values for its many foundational data series since 1960. Through this web site IFs is freely available to users both on-line and in downloadable form.

interesting critique of social networking - and good articulation of alternative approach.

"The phenomenon of consumer co-creation is often framed in terms of whether either economic market forces or socio-cultural non-market forces ultimately dominate. We propose an alternate model of consumer co-creation in terms of co-evolution between markets and non-markets. Our model is based on a recent ethnographic study of a massively multiplayer online game through its development, release and ultimate failure, and is cast in terms of two explanatory models: multiple games and social network markets. We conclude that consumer co-creation is indeed complex, but in ways that relate to both emergent market expectations and the evolution of markets, not to the transcendence of markets. "

"In his classic novel "Invisible Cities," Italo Calvino envisioned a building, in a city called Fedora, containing a series of small globes. The visitor peering into each would see a small city, a model of a different Fedora. "These are the forms the city could have taken," wrote Calvino, "if for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today." In the real world, one can stand on a street in Manhattan and look into one's iPhone, where the app "Museum of the Phantom City: Other Futures" reveals the New York that might have been: from the fantastic (Buckminster Fuller's projected Midtown-covering dome) to the nearly realized (Diller and Scofidio's Eyebeam Museum)."

"Prof Castells suggests we may be about to see the emergence of a new kind of capitalism, with businesses growing out of the counter-cultures of the last 20 years. Here are some extracts from their conversation. "