Group items tagged

" Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, will lead a meeting in Oxford today of international business, government and other leaders to address the gridlock in international and national attempts to deal with key global problems. The meeting launches the Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations. The Commission seeks to address the growing short-term preoccupations of modern politics and identify ways to overcome today's impasse in key economic, climate, trade, security and other negotiations."

"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."

Then the entered are combined with the statistics and the user gets a statistical outlook on his future. He learns about the average life expectancy of his generation, the consequences of his smoking habits and the potential of a cancer-diagnosis. Also he learns how big the probability is of getting married and at what age. 

OzClim provides a simple step-by-step option to help you generate and explore climate scenarios. There are also six scenarios in the examples section for rainfall and temperature for 2030.

Future generator from London underground -

The Open Technology Initiative formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations and facilitates the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks. OTI promotes affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks through partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups and is committed to maximizing the potentials of innovative open technologies by studying their social and economic impacts - particularly for poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies. OTI provides in-depth, objective research, analysis, and findings for policy decision-makers and the general public. More Info

Absent significant changes on the spending and/or revenue sides of the federal budget, long term deficits will encumber a growing share of federal resources and test the capacity of current and future generations to afford both today's and tomorrow's commitments. Continuing on this unsustainable path will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy, our standard of living and ultimately our national security. Incremental approaches to budgeting will need to give way to more fundamental and periodic reexaminations of the base of government, ultimately covering discretionary and mandatory programs as well as the revenue side of the budget. Having identified the major fiscal challenge facing the nation, and given our role in supporting the Congress, we believe that GAO also has an obligation to provide policymakers with support in identifying issues and options that could help to address these fiscal pressures. In this report, we draw on our past and pending work-about 90 percent of which is either requested by the Congress or required by law-- to provide policy makers with examples of the kinds of hard choices stemming from these challenges in the form of questions for elected officials and other policy makers to consider.

The Global Mail is a philanthropically funded, not-for-profit news and features website. Our mission is to deliver original, fearless, independent journalism. We will strive to inform, provoke, expose - and entertain. Our audience is our only agenda. We have no advertisers to answer to, nor shareholders who seek to profit. And our generous philanthropic benefactor has no interest in what journalism we produce. What The Global Mail produces will be the evidence of that.

Forget doing the paper run - or mowing lawns - kids as young as 12 are making a motza from apps and showing the older generation how it's done.

"A generation of far-reaching social change lies ahead for Australia. There will be a serious struggle to adapt to climate change as water security becomes a critical issue for many coastal cities and for agriculture. "

looks like a pretty cool futures project, good to have this as background knowledge. "Societies are developing and investing in technological and scientific innovations that have ever longer-term consequences for human and non-human life. Current future-producing practices include biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, and nuclear technologies. Such developments unleash futures that we cannot predict, and set in motion processes that will affect untold generations to come. "

This is a very cool trailer that depicts many of the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It is highly significant because the Communication of Foresight s one of the pre-eminent challenges we face today as societies. The dangers of climate change have been well developed by generations of climate scientists. But what about engaging various publics in the issue, garnering interest and energy for change through instigating new debates. How many other areas are like climate change - genetics, human consciousness, the list goes on. This trailer is a good example of aestheticizing the future in ways that CAN garner interest.

"As Surowiecki explained, certain conditions must be met for crowd wisdom to emerge. Members of the crowd ought to have a variety of opinions, and to arrive at those opinions independently. Take those away, and crowd intelligence fails, as evidenced in some market bubbles. Computer modeling of crowd behavior also hints at dynamics underlying crowd breakdowns, with he balance between information flow and diverse opinions becoming skewed." I thought this might have implications both for Delphi methods in general and for our crowd work specifically.

The Gov 2.0 movement continues to gain momentum around the world with a number of inspiring people, projects & ideas rising to prominence over the last year or so. Sometimes the most important innovations emerge from the periphery where creative citizens take a "do it first, ask for permission later" approach that can generate a wealth of benefits for the entire global community. So here's my pick of the world's best Gov 2.0 initiatives. What are your favourites?

" What are young adults thinking about money and value? How can we create new systems of wealth generation and abundance? What does the future hold for banks and other financial institutions in the wake of massive peer to peer exchange?"

Developed with the IFF foresight engine "What is Breakthroughs to Cures?Breakthroughs to Cures is an online idea-generating game designed to garner new ideas for how we can change the medical research system to develop treatments and cures for patients faster. Imagine a future scenario (watch the video below) that takes place in 2020. A widespread contamination has triggered a neurological disease that is expected to infect as many as 100 million people in the U.S. Government leaders have convened a panel to investigate ways to accelerate the pace of research and find treatments or cures for this disease before it strikes. Over a 24-hour period, players will be sharing ideas and collaborating to build better ideas to help this panel uncover the best ways to change the current system of medical research and drug development."

Title: Scenarios 2040Location: The Bell Tower on 34thLink out: Click hereDescription: More vivid and dynamic than forecasting or visioning, scenarios are stories based on rigorous research, analysis and community interviews that help us understand how the powerful driving forces that affect our world - and the choices we make right now - could affect our region's future decades from now. In 2009, the Center for Houston's Future embarked upon Scenarios 2040, the largest public-interest, business-led, regional scenario project in the country. The resulting scenarios will describe different future worlds we might face in the year 2040, and will be used to generate wide public discussion that will help individuals, organizations, business, and government identify their own options and responses to different future worlds. These scenarios will help us learn how to protect and nurture what we value, and achieve what we want to achieve - a healthy balance between competitiveness and sustainability. Start Time: 18:00Date: 2011-10-04

When I first heard of Bhutan's goal of maximizing its people's happiness, I wondered if it really meant anything in practice, or was just another political slogan. Last month, when I was in the capital, Thimphu, to speak at a conference on "Economic Development and Happiness," organized by Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley and co-hosted by Jeffrey Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, I learned that it is much more than a slogan.

There are two people, and only two, whose ideas must be taught to every MBA in the world: Michael Porter and Henry Mintzberg.  This was true more than 25 years ago, when I did my MBA at USC. These are two academics who have had real impact for a long time.  Part of their success, beyond having big relevant ideas, is due to their clear and concise writing skills (There is certainly a lesson in there for many of us business school academics). Both have been very influential in the study of strategy, an area of considerable interest to many Forbes readers.  You can contrast their two views as Porter's taking a more deliberate strategy approach while Mintzberg's emphasize emergent strategy.   Both are still taught, in fact, I taught Porter's 3 Generic Strategies and his 5 Forces Model not two weeks ago in an undergraduate strategy course at McGill. Which is most useful today?