"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". "

"...the message from Star Simpson, who stopped by the Institute yesterday to talk about TacoCopter, her in-joke turned viral juggernaut. The idea behind TacoCopter is relatively simple, but irresistibly futuristic: order tacos from your smartphone, and your friendly neighborhood unmanned drone will deliver them to your exact GPS coordinates within minutes. Star created tacocopter.com in 2011 as a joke to a friend, then promptly moved on to other projects. It wasn't until March of 2012 that the popular blog Hacker News discovered her site, at which point every 21st century media outlet jumped onto the story of the business that would change restaurants forever. It didn't seem to matter whether TacoCopter was real or not - it was an idea whose time had come."

"NEW YORK - Experts warned of a "planetary emergency" due to the unforeseen global consequences of Arctic ice melt, including methane gas released from permafrost regions currently under ice."

"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. "

"The year is 2020 and the unthinkable has happened: The United States, Russia and several of their neighbors have announced a union called Polario, based on their proximity to the North Pole. Economic, security and shared threats have forced the hands of the two leaders of this new union and former Cold War rivals. Their alliance in a union appears to be the only way to solve their problems."

"Score one for highbrow tastes: If you've ever downloaded a popular movie, TV show or music album from a site like Pirate Bay, there's a strong chance your IP address is sitting on a database somewhere. But anyone who's used torrent sites to obtain some obscure French art-house from the 1970s is likely flying under the radar."

" 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."

"The EFMN is a NETWORK of policy professionals, foresight experts and practitioners as well as analysts of Science, Technology and Innovation related issues. The EFMN develops foresight related CONTENT, analyzed in an annual WORKSHOP and disseminated via a WEBSITE and MAILING LIST. Membership of the network is free."

1 - "Disciples of the Cloud": Businesses control all intellectual property and determine where and when work takes place. 2 - "Electronic Cottages": Businesses control all intellectual property, but workers are able to determine where, when and how they work. 3 - "Replicants": Businesses depend on specialist consultants, their expertise and intellectual property. Work is much less predictable and reliable, but workers are free to choose where, when and how much they work. 4 - "Mutual Worlds": Businesses operate as cooperatives of independent contractors. Intellectual property is controlled by workers, who focus on small local ventures, often connected to networks of similar ventures elsewhere to give scale."

Great analysis of the "spinternet".... "TED Fellow and journalist Evgeny Morozov punctures what he calls "iPod liberalism" -- the assumption that tech innovation always promotes freedom, democracy -- with chilling examples of ways the Internet helps oppressive regimes stifle dissent."

"It is much easier to engage with the World System Model through experience and interaction. The IFF World Game provides a way in which the players can engage with the complexity of the global problematique in a fun, non-threatening, interactive and highly creative way. The players may be groups in a business context, community groups, students or individuals seeking to broaden their capacities."

"It all started with Steven Ing's counseling practice. He was working with all sorts of people who were dissatisfied with their lives in one way or another. A man and wife who couldn't talk to each other about their problems, a woman who felt depressed but didn't know why, an older man who seemed to hate the world. And then there were the people who had committed sex crimes who were court ordered to go through therapy with Ing. As Ing went on with his practice, it became apparent to him that his "regular" clients and his "sex-offender" clients all had similar problems that stemmed from the same place. The problems all came back to their individual sexualities and inability to cope with them. Ing then went further and realized that these problems were societal, no one seemed to be able to have an open and honest conversation about sex. But it was not just because in his own backyard that struggled with this aspect of their lives, it was people and cultures all over the world as well. So Ing decided to start a community called "sexual futurist." He wasn't trying to solve everyone's problems or tell them what to think, he just wanted to encourage people to start having intelligent and logical conversations about sex to ultimately lead to change for the better. If we are able to have these intelligent conversations about sex using reason and logic, perhaps one day we'll start being more comfortable with the topic and therefore able to respect sex as an important aspect of our lives. Perhaps we will be able to encourage the United Nations to help people all over the world by enacting our "Sexual Bill of Rights.""

"* Report: A Synthetic Overview of the Collaborative Economy. By Michel Bauwens, Nicolas Mendoza and Franco Iacomella, et al. Orange Labs and P2P Foundation, 2012. "

"Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology - and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous."

The professor of archaeology at the University of Alabama is a space archaeologist who uses satellite imagery to map and locate previously unknown archaeological sites in the Middle East, Europe, and across the Mediterranean.  

"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."

"The image below this post comes from the latest IMF working paper (May 2012) looking at the "The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology" (opens pdf) which attempts to take both the models of oil availability - that proposed by geologists and that by technologists and work out what the likely price implications are going to be to 2020. An internal working paper that "does not presume that there is a constraint on how much oil can be taken out of the ground. It prefers to believe that extraction rates will depend on the price that will be able to be charged for the final product", it makes the wonderfully understated point that "the future may not be easy". I continue to be amazed at the number of people I meet, sitting in leadership positions, who are unaware of this issue. I have heard from colleagues of engagements in the past couple of years with groups of senior decision-makers who have refused to discuss the issue as they believe it to be a fringe problem."

Because of the hectic pace of China's economic and social development, Chinese energy demand will continue to grow rapidly in next 40 years. Beijing appears determined to pursue a low-carbon development strategy, and wind energy is going to be one of the main resources for achieving China's low carbon goals.

"Are you making money renting your apartment on Airbnb? You're a Micro-Entrepreneur. As more and more services let people monetize their own assets and knowledge, it's creating a new sector of the economy."