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AARHUS, Denmark, Jun 15, 2011 (IPS) - Images of the immense, dark stain of oil covering the waters of the Gulf of Mexico made their way across the globe last year as one of the largest oil spills in history unfolded. Other images - of the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch', a gigantic pile of litter floating in the North Pacific Ocean; of countless felled trees in the Amazon; of tar sands in Canada - have gained much fewer headlines, but are likely to remain as monuments to the price tag of wanton human appetites.

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.

**Let's intentcast to bootstrap Creative Economy 3.0** What is intentcasting? I came across this concept on Seb Paquet's blog, Emergent Cities. He describes it as follows Interest brings groups together, but intent is what brings teams together to actually get things done. Intentcasting is deceptively simple to describe. It consists in broadcasting your intent to make something happen. That something could be anything: "I want to have a party at my house!" "We want to raise $1,000 for Japan!" "I want this piece of software to exist!" "We want this work of art to exist!" In order for intent to catch on, it has to meet a few conditions: It must describe a promise - a future state of affairs that could conceivably happen, explained in a way that people understand. It must open participation in one or more well-defined ways. It must be expressed in a way that enables it to travel and spread over the communications infrastructure. There must be other people or groups out there who resonate with the intent and can get excited enough to connect.

Do you want to write the book...

" Interview on futures studies, foresight and strategy transformation. Case studies of futures thinking, scenario planning and visioning. Analysis of what works. "

everybody saw this video, but it's still relevant.

This is directly relevant to what we want to do...

" Enipedia is an active exploration into the applications of wikis and the semantic web for energy and industry issues. Through this we seek to create a collaborative environment for discussion, while also providing the tools that allow for data from different sources to be connected, queried, and visualized from different perspectives. "

"There's more to tomorrow than robots, flying cars, and a faster internet. 22C+ is all about Deep Futures, futures that matter. Welcome to futures fantastic, unexpected, profound, but most of all deeply meaningful... "

Nice summary from Jamais on open foresight

ditto

"This illustrates the lesson that access to information doesn't necessarily encourage proactive action."

an interesting argument that latin america is on an ascendant trajectory

"Imagining tomorrow's America today, FUTURESTATES is a series of independent mini-features - short narrative films created by established filmmakers and emerging talents transforming today's complex social issues into visions about what life in America will be like in decades to come."

This is a USA based project that seeks to crowd source predictions about the future. It is being run by the Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). IARPA "invests in high-risk/high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries." Jose's little analysis - because it is limited to a US audience it will probably have good technological inputs, but its cultural and political input will be largely worthless. I don't see any cultural studies and political scientist types making a contribution (could be very wrong of course) and commentary will most likely come from a combination of mis-informed moderates and Fox news fruitcakes. For ICT and the CRC project it is an example of crowdsourcing for competitive intelligence.

Malcolm Turbull on Wikileaks, "There will be a medium term impact on the candour with which people talk to American officials. Frankly if I were an American citizen I would be less outraged with Assange than I would be with a Government that can allow such a gigantic breach of security. The United States will need to demonstrate that it has changed its ways, and it is not that hard. Most large organisations will not permit downloading of material to an external medium without express authorisation as those of you who work for large firms should already know. And it goes without saying that if a young Private can copy so much classified material off his own volition, how vulnerable are US systems to more sophisticated operatives who have the backing and expertise provided by foreign intelligence agencies. We will remain forever, I imagine, rightly angry at the recklessness of receiving and publishing so much confidential material. So far it seems less harm has been done than might have been the case, but the risks are extraordinary and if only one life was lost, if only one sensitive operation was compromised then the heavy responsibility for that must lie with Assange. I would like to hope that in the future such revelations will be more discriminating, but it is hard to be confident. The lesson for Governments, apart from improving their security, is to assume that everything said or written will, sooner or later, see the light of day. That may not be a good thing, and it certainly doesn't make life easier, but it is, I fear, a reality. The Governments with most to fear from such disclosure are those whose public statements are at odds with their private opinions - and as I noted earlier so far it appears, to its credit, that the US State Department's private cables have been consistent with their public policy."

MIT's Technology Review has just gotten news of a mysterious new project that claims it will "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'" Space exploration company Planetary Resources will be unveiled in a conference call on Tuesday, April 24th. Besides the audacious announcement, which promises to "overlay two critical sectors - space exploration and natural resources - to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," what makes this unique is its high-profile support group. The venture is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others.

About 20 kilometers northwest of Amarillo, Texas, beneath a geological structure called the Bush Dome, lies the world's largest repository of a substance that, sooner or later, will become more precious than gold: helium.

"After having lived in Taipei for ten years, Troy Parfitt sets out on an epic journey to test the theory that China is ascending toward a position of global hegemony. The result is whirlwind tour of the Chinese world, one that enlightens, astonishes, and entertains. Parfitt shows us he is the perfect China tour guide: the steward of an intimate knowledge of the nation's history, culture, and psyche - yet not serving any interest other than an investigative one. Here is a unique and powerful book, one that will change the way people think about China and its "great rise.""

Found this whilst trying to set-up pipes for crowd sourcing / morphology blog......

are you trying to make me feel at home?