Futures Research and Other Stuff

• Abstracts from the Third International WWW Conference, Darmstadt,'95: Ideas on how to use the Web.
• Technology Review - Be alert to geography's changing context!
• Uploading the Mind into an Artificial Brain - Geographic Implications?
• Futures Studies
• Mysteries of the Web - (Nanotech and other stuff!)
• Spatial sound
• Some useful sites by a US elementary school teacher
• Guidance system for the blind
• WebComics index - for a change of pace
• Living Systems: Common system laws governing the development of various complex objects
• The Nine Planets: A Multimedia Tour of the Solar System
• Technological or Media Determinism
• Great Thinkers and Visionaries
• Teaching and Learning on the Web - Has geographic applications
• World of Nanotechnology
• Welcome to Pteragenesis (Futures Research)
• Environment, Space, Future, SETI
• Utopian/Dystopian Studies
• Sociology and Space Development
• Futurescape
• Ideas, Insights, Strategies and Pedagogical Issues in Piloting Futures Studies as an Innovative Multimedia Interactive Network Learning Process on World Wide Web
• Interskills - A University of Future Skills
• Signalling Theory and Animal Communication
• Rendezvous with the New Millenium
• "21st, The VXM Network"
• How to Build Scenarios
• Kevin Kelly's Out of Control - an online book
• National Space Society: Position Paper on Space and Molecular Nanotechnology
• Transhuman Technologies - The High Frontier
• Best Ideas: A compendium of social innovations
• Bad Subjects 17: Geographies - an issue of an online periodical (browse the others)
• World Transformation
• Empirical, Civilizational and Critical Approaches to Sustaining And Transforming the World for Future Generations
• Welcome to Campus Café
• World War II - '54 Years Ago'
• Science Links
• The Chaos Network On-Line, v2.0!
• Foresighting Around the World
• Facing the Future Conference
• BENCHMARKS: A Timely Critique of our Social and Economic Systems - an online book
• Global Trends
• Direct Mental Interactions with Living Systems
• 1997 State of the Future
• Whole Systems
• International Forum for Genetic Engineering
• Nanotechnology And The Next 50 Years
• Institute for Alternative Futures
• Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold: Table of Contents - online book
• Greater Boston Chapter of the World Future Society
• The Futures Observatory
• Futures-Related Links And World-Wide Resources
• Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Scientific Revolutions
• Technology, Social Evolution, And The Future Of Human Service
• A Systems Perspective On The Interrelations Between Natural, Human-Made And Cultural Capital
• Has Space a Future?
• Space Social Science
• The Best Science Sites on the World Wide Web
• Other Centers for Systems Science
• Complex Adaptive Systems, Evolutionism, and Ecology within Anthropology
• WWW Virtual Library
• Resources for Futures Research
• Futures Web Sites
• Classic Futures Research Texts: Jim Dator's Bibliography
• Strategic Futures International - Links to the Future
• MkzdK Cosmos Alive! Toward a Theory of Emergence
• The Complexity Threshold
• Complexity and the Participatory Worldview
• Futures Institute
• Predicting the Social Future
• UIA - Encyclopedia of World Problems & Human Potential
• Frontier Organizations on the Web
• Introduction To Future Studies
• Technology and Social Change
• Technology ---- Will it Replace Us?
• Global Ideas Bank
• Human Resources and Information Technology: a Primer
• Global Vision
• What Futurists Think
• A House Of Horizons And Perspectives
• Creating the Future: What is Scenario Planning?
• Global Futures Eliminates Conflict And Creates Opportunity
• The Thinking Page
• Earth Systems Project for Global Models
• The World Futures Studies Federation
• Other Futures Pages
• Resources for Futures Research
• Scanning Sources
• Futures (Journal)
• The McLuhan Probes
• Rate of Human Diseases, Problems and Conditions
• Digitas. The Future Is Now. Emerging Technologies
• A Brief Look At McLuhan's Theories
• Links to Futures
• Strategic Futures
• Higher Education Service Futures
• PopCult - Marshall McLuhan
• Links For Understanding McLuhan
• What is Chaos? An Interactive Online Course for Everyone
• Plausible Futures
• Families, Communities and Futures
• Future Workshops
• Self-Organization, Autopoiesis, and Enterprises
• On Sociocybernetics
• Foresight
• The Use of Models in Scenarios
• The Social Technology Page
• Imagine a Future World that is Better for Everyone
• HyperForum on Sustainability: Scenarios (Global)
• International Futures Simulation
• CIOS/McLuhan Site - an especially innovative site presenting Marshall McLuhan's ideas
• Links to Other McLuhan Sites
• Global Ideas Bank
• The Third Culture - by Kevin Kelly
• The Third Culture
• Futures Research Methodologies: Linking Today's Decisions With Tomorrow's Possibilities
• Which World: Scenarios for the 21st Century, by Allen Hammond
• Tomorrow's Global Community
• Futures Research Methods
• The Future and Its Enemies
• Scenarios Main Page
• A Heuristic Method for Scenario Projections
• Futures Observatory
• Kuhn in a Nutshell
• Virtual World of Intelligence: -- Plus 30 Additional Intelligence Sites
• Human Space Flight (HSF) - International Space Station
• Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History
• The Marshall McLuhan Center on Global Communications
• Directory of Canadian Futurists
• Visions of Privacy: Past, Present and Future
• Welcome to How Stuff Works
• Future Society
• History and the World Wide Web
• R. Lee, "Imagining the Future: Constructing Social Knowledge After 'Complexity Studies'"
• Futures Links
• Global Futures Studies & Research By The Millennium Project
• The Foresight Project: Building Tomorrow's Success
• The Megatrends
• Complexity and Human Civilization
• NECSI - New England Complex Systems Institute
• Tod Maffin's Future File - Tod Maffin is "one of Canada's most influential futurists" according to The Globe and Mail.
  Tod hosts a national technology column on CBC Radio, a technology series on CBC Television's Canada Now, and is a producer for several radio programs including the country's guide to modern culture, Definitely Not the Opera. He has been a host of several national CBC Radio programs including Real Life Chronicles and todradio.com. In January 1999, Tod launched MindfulEye.com, an artificial intelligence firm which developed the patented Lexant technology to perform syntactic analysis on public opinion comments posted on the Internet and aired in the media, thus providing a "mood monitor" of stocks.
• 21st Century Online Magazine
• R. Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics
• Future Studies - Highly Recommended Books Page
• The Social Superorganism and its Global Brain
• Crossroads to the Future: A Look into the Third Millenium
• Techgnosis, Infomysticism, And The War Against Entropy - Along with the technological expansion of the Information Age, the 20th century has also seen an expansion in our understanding of the nature of information. Through theoreticians such as Claude Shannon, humanity has begun to understand the fundamental relationship that appears to exist between language, information, energy, and entropy.
• Next - Trends for the Future
• Running Backward Into The Future - Marshall McLuhan made the point that the structure of any medium became the content of subsequent media. Thus the gift storytelling gave to writing was the content of the stories. The fact that the cadenced, nuanced, recursive and patterned structure of told stories was lost to the written text was only noticed much later. Julian Jaynes made the same point with regard to the metaphors used by a culture to articulate the nature of human consciousness; the "landscape" of mind reflecting the topography and technology of each era.
• Buckminster Fuller Virtual Institute
• Nonzero: The Logic Of Human Destiny - an online book. Can the trends rightly noted by Bergson and Teilhard ‹ basic tendencies in biological evolution and in the technological and social evolution of the human species ‹ be explained in scientific, physical terms? I think so; that is largely what this book is about.
• Scenario for the next century - If we accept the general premise that a global change is occurring in our civilisation, namely a secular shift from an industrial society to a cognitive society, we can reasonably assume that mechanics, physics and chemistry, key disciplines of the industrial world, may well be displaced from the central position they occupy by the cognitive and life sciences.
• Mind, Matter and Reality - In which Georges Dupenois suggests it is not mind that creates matter, but consciousness that creates all. Space and time could not exist without it!
• Innovation Through Collaboration - World Future Society's new Web site feature: the Social Innovation Forum, which posts proposals from a variety of futurists and offers visitors the chance to give their comments.
• Speak the Future - Yet the shifting landscape of the future, like the increasingly competitive craft of futurism, demands more than a keen sense of historical cycles. In fact, an ear for idiom - and a knack for coining phrases - has become the currency of modern-day imagineering, whether you chase the hidden agendas of popular culture in the patois of street punks or trace the floor plan of the next civilization in the technobabble of Sand Hill Road. Looking backward, the true legacy of Naisbitt's Megatrends or Toffler's Third Wave may turn out to be not the worldviews but the words.
• What will education be like?
• The knowledge age: a 'fad' or a fundamental change?
• Nanotechnology without Genies -- A Critique - This article is a critique of Eric Drexler's views on nanotechnology. I argue that many of the hopes and fears concerning nanotechnology are illusions. In particular, the existence of nanotechnology implies nothing about a nano-utopia in which robots will supply all our needs for free.
• Futures Study Centre's Links
• Finnish Society for Futures Studies
• Society And Economy: The Role of Futures Studies - Futures Studies has a recent history although the human being has always thought about the future in one way or another. Temples, pyramids, wall paintings demonstrate that in many different cultural groups that thinking about the future and keeping the memory of the past, is in all people and in all cultures. Greeks and Romans indeed thought and wrote about the future and change. Aeraclitous said that "Nothing is more enduring than change". Cicero spoke of divination as the "attitude of the spirit". Plato initiated the great tradition of utopia, that has reached us through the centuries. In his wake, many thinkers, philosophers, poets and visionary people have given us the possibility to dream and hope. Ovidious said something that is very important for those living today and in the future: "To what avail is the wind if we have no direction?" The wind, the rapidity of change is with us but do we know in what direction to steer our spaceship earth?
• Futures Main Page - There is an enormous amount of material relating to "future" issues or concerns. Some information is located in other places; this page collects material to get you focused and started looking on your own. Here are a few hints I have accumulated over the years that are useful in studying the future.
• Schools of the future still lost in the past
• Why Schools Should be Scanning the Future and Using Futures Tools
• Futures Studies with the International Management Centres - Some useful background information on Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues, Civilizational Visions.
• Methods for Studying the Future
• Limiting urban futures - All planning can be considered as an attempt to restrict possible futures. Usually this is not stated explicitly. However, "futures scenarios" are explicit rejections of other possible futures. As the year 2000 approaches, many cities, regions and nations are preparing such scenarios. They have become fashionable again, as they were in the 1960s. Often a small number of alternative scenarios is presented. They indicate the range of futures considered acceptable. In urban futures scenarios, the range of acceptable future cities is made visible. "Acceptable", that is, to the people who prepared the scenarios. That is usually the city or regional government: sometimes, a private organisation funded by local elites. The Amsterdam study TVA is used here as an example of how such future studies limit urban futures.
• 60 Key Works - A Beginner's Guide To The Futures Literature
• Macro Futures - Through its delineation of the patterns of history, macrohistory gives a structure to the fanciful visions of futurists. Macrohistory gives us the weight of history balancing the pull of the image of the future. Yet like futures studies, it seeks to transform past, present and future not merely reflect upon social space and time. It thus seeks to inform the theory and methods of section 1 of this Reader and the civilizational visions of section 3 of this reader. Macrohistory, with its grand sweep of space and time, augments the study of the future. By being multicivilizational, it gives insight and critique to how civilizations imagine their futures. After reading this article, go back and read the emerging issues of section 2. Do you still consider them issues worthy of being called paradigm shifts or are they merely minor perturbations in the long term trends of history?
• Creating Preferred Futures - Do your students ever wonder what the future will be like? Do they feel powerless to change it? Would you like them to learn how to create their preferred future? If so, Creating Preferred Futures is for you. The future your students will inhabit will be radically different from the past. They need to learn to recognize patterns of change, identify trends, draw implications, and create alternative futures scenarios so they will be equipped to anticipate and plan for future challenges. This online course is designed to teach students to think like a futurist by providing them with hands-on experiences with futures research tools, and by providing them with the opportunity to interact with professional futurists.
• Back To The Future? - The concept includes everything from an American tradition which grew out of planning in the military-industrial complex, via a strongly humanistic French tradition in which doubt plays an important part, to a Scandinavian/Dutch tradition aiming to increase popular participation in public planning. According to the French tradition, futures studies are on the borderline between arts and science. The Scandinavian/ Dutch tradition emphasizes a range of activities on the borderline between research and politics. To be involved in these activities, it is not necessary to like terms such as "futures studies" or "futures research". A great deal of interesting and relevant futures studies have been done by people who never thought of themselves as "belonging" to the field.
• Futures Research - Futures Research is concerned with the forces of change that will shape our individual and common futures. It represents no scientific domain in the first place - on the contrary Futures Research stresses the need to involve everybody in the process of building their common future. Since anything that has happened in the past up to the present may be relevant for the future this task demands a holistic and interdisciplinary approach. In addition, it involves creative imagination of what the future might be all about, because after all it is our decisions taken in the present that will bring about the future in the way it will actually unfold.
• The Millenium Project - Feasibility - The Millennium Project is designed to provide a global capacity for early warning on long-range issues. The purpose of the Project is to assist in organizing futures research, to update continuously and improve global thinking about the future, and to make that thinking available through a variety of media for consideration in public policy making, advanced training, and public education. It accomplishes these ends by connecting individuals and institutions around the world to collaborate on research to address important global issues. The project is not intended to produce a one-time study of the future, but to provide an on-going capacity for identification, assessment, and analysis of issues with global impact; it is, essentially, a geographically and institutionally dispersed think tank.
• Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers: The Original Affluent Society - Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times.
• The Triple Revolution - This statement is written in the recognition that mankind is at a historic conjuncture which demands a fundamental reexamination of existing values and institutions. At this time three separate and mutually reinforcing revolutions are taking place: The Cybernation Revolution: A new era of production has begun. Its principles of organization are as different from those of the industrial era as those of the industrial era were different from the agricultural. The cybernation revolution has been brought about by the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine. This results in a system of almost unlimited productive capacity which requires progressively less human labor. Cybernation is already reorganizing the economic and social system to meet its own needs.
  The Weaponry Revolution: New forms of weaponry have been developed which cannot win wars but which can obliterate civilization. We are recognizing only now that the great weapons have eliminated war as a method for resolving international conflicts. The ever-present threat of total destruction is tempered by the knowledge of the final futility of war. The need of a "warless world" is generally recognized, though achieving it will be a long and frustrating process.
  The Human Rights Revolution: A universal demand for full human rights is now clearly evident. It continues to be demonstrated in the civil rights movement within the United States. But this is only the local manifestation of a worldwide movement toward the establishment of social and political regimes in which every individual will feel valued and none will feel rejected on account of his race.
  We are particularly concerned in this statement with the first of these revolutionary phenomena. This is not because we underestimate the significance of the other two. on the contrary, we affirm that it is the simultaneous occurrence and interaction of all three developments which make evident the necessity for radical alterations in attitude and policy. The adoption of just policies for coping with cybernation and for extending rights to all Americans is indispensable to the creation of an atmosphere in the U.S. in which the supreme issue, peace, can be reasonably debated and resolved.
• The Turning Point Project - The Turning Point Project is a new non-profit organization, formed in 1999 specifically to design and produce a series of educational advertisements concerning the major issues of the new millennium. The ads will appear in The New York Times and, funds permitting, other newspapers through spring of 2000. The issues discussed are those that will be crucial in determining the quality of life on Earth in the near and distant future. Despite this, they have not been given the in-depth coverage in the major media that they deserve.
• Time, Complexity and the Global - This talk presumes that a new kind of social science 'paradigm', that of globalisation, is currently being developed and reproduced. I shall examine some connections between this emergent globalisation paradigm and another paradigm, that of complexity. The latter is also emerging as a contending new paradigm for the social sciences, having already been established in physics, cosmology, chemistry, biology, ecology, management, economics and so on. Through the prism of time/time-space I shall counter-pose these two emergent paradigms for the social sciences, of globalisation and complexity (I use paradigm here loosely).
  I begin by outlining the radical ways in which complexity transforms the scientific understanding of time and provides notions that may be highly pertinent to the social sciences which has little noticed such sciences. Time will be shown to be irreducible, irreversible, asymmetrical and multiple.
  Second, I consider how some components of complexity have entered social science through the globalisation paradigm. This paradigm in effect authorises certain complexity-innovations, especially those of non-linear interdependencies between peoples, places, organisations and technological systems across the world.
  Third, however, I try to show that much work done on globalisation is insufficiently 'complex' in its analyses. Instead I develop the concept of 'global hybrids', networks and fluids roaming the globe in strikingly diverse temporal frames.
  In conclusion, I consider how we should conceive of the emergent and apparently self-organising level of the global. Is the concept of 'global complexity' the best metaphor to capture the non-linear, unpredictable and interacting global hybrids that roam the globe?
• The Dream Society - The Vision - This cannot go on. The sun is setting on the information society - even before we have fully adjusted to its demands as individuals and as companies. We stand facing the fifth type of society: the dream society! We have lived as hunters, as farmers, we have worked in factories and now we live in the information society whose icon is the computer. But it will not last. As with all great revolutions, the rule is: do not underestimate ongoing events; climb onto the barricades yourself and create the future. And we are indeed talking about a revolution - written not in blood, not in violence, but in thoughts and in logic.
• Factasia netlinks on the Future - Numerous links to websites concerned with the future.
• Choosing Our Future - an online book - In a mere 50 years life for millions of people will be very different from what it is today as a result of population growth, increased energy use, climate change, and other potentially devastating environmental trends. Despite growing recognition of the need for more sustainable global systems to avert these risks and ensure a bountiful future, little is said about what "sustainability" really means, or what a desirable future might look like. This fascinating collection of candid essays and informal interviews offers some real-life answers. In this book, individuals from over 30 countries describe their visions for a sustainable future and what they hope the world will be like for their grandchildren. While each vision reflects individual particularities, common themes emerge. The editors find ground for hope that a sustainable global society can indeed be created around pluralistic value systems.
• Books and Thesis - A Philosophy of Symbiosis - An online book - The world is changing rapidly. Some think of the end of the Cold War, the defeat of socialism and the triumph of capitalism, as the biggest change going on. But it is my belief that the change we are witnessing is not simply change in the political sphere but a broad wave of change sweeping simultaneously through every field of human activity - economy, government, society, science, philosophy, art and culture. And it is a change not in volume but in essence, a structural change rather than a changing rate of growth or decrease.
  The world is moving toward a new order for the twenty-first century. In this book I discuss this paradigm shift to the evolving new world order from several perspectives: 1) the shift from Eurocentricism to the symbiosis of diverse cultures, from Logoscentrism and dualism toward pluralism, toward a symbiosis of plurality of values; 2) from anthropocentrism to ecology, the symbiosis of diverse species; 3) a shift from industrial society to information society; 4) a shift from universalism to an age of the symbiosis of diverse elements; 5) a shift from the age of the machine to the age of the life principle.
  The ambition of this book is to suggest that symbiosis is the keyword for predicting and interpreting, from these various perspectives, the new world order that will appear in the twenty-first century.
• Machine-Psychology - Please note that this is not an offering for sale. It is a comment draft. Critical comments on MACHINE PSYCHOLOGY are welcomed. These critical comments may include comments on the content of this book or its suitability for a proposed credit course on MACHINE PSYCHOLOGY at the introductory level for first year behavioral/social science students. Also under consideration at this time is the development of a slate of about 10 courses towards a B.A. in "Machine Psychology" (major or minor). This could be launched from any college or university on the planet. It is further proposed that the courses be taught "by robots; on robotics". In other words, each will be transcribed to an "expert system teaching program" which can then be automatically administered over the internet.
• Sphere - communicating technology worldwide - The rapid development in silicon and biotechnology could soon bring the human race to a critical point in its evolution where it can break free of its Darwinian biological roots. The potential impact is profound. The key thesis of this article is that the remaining lifetime of both Darwinian evolution and Homo Sapiens are both short and limited. Homo Sapiens' descendants will soon be able to seize control of their own evolution. To explain why this is so we will first examine how Darwinian evolution may be near its end for Homo Sapiens; then explore whether there are any fundamental biological limits which will block progress via genetic engineering; and finally examine how technology, and silicon in particular, can help us transcend these barriers.
• The Future of English - There are reasons why we ought to take stock and reassess the place of English in the world. The future of the English language may not be straightforward: celebratory statistics should be treated with caution. This book examines some facts, trends and ideas which may be uncomfortable to many native speakers. For example, the economic dominance of OECD countries - which has helped circulate English in the new market economies of the world ‹ is being eroded as Asian economies grow and become the source, rather than the recipient, of cultural and economic flows. Population statistics suggest that the populations of the rich countries are aging and that in the coming decades young adults with disposable income will be found in Asia and Latin America rather than in the US and Europe. Educational trends in many countries suggest that languages other than English are already providing significant competition in school curricula.
• Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts - Over the past 15 months, the National Intelligence Council (NIC), in close collaboration with US Government specialists and a wide range of experts outside the government, has worked to identify major drivers and trends that will shape the world of 2015.
  The key drivers identified are:

  (l) Demographics. (2) Natural resources and environment. (3) Science and technology. (4) The global economy and globalization. (5) National and international governance. (6) Future conflict. (7) The role of the United States.

  In examining these drivers, several points should be kept in mind:
  • No single driver or trend will dominate the global future in 2015.
  • Each driver will have varying impacts in different regions and countries.
  • The drivers are not necessarily mutually reinforcing; in some cases, they will work at cross-purposes.
  Taken together, these drivers and trends intersect to create an integrated picture of the world of 2015, about which we can make projections with varying degrees of confidence and identify some troubling uncertainties of strategic importance to the United States.

  The Methodology

  Global Trends 2015 provides a flexible framework to discuss and debate the future. The methodology is useful for our purposes, although admittedly inexact for the social scientist. Our purpose is to rise above short-term, tactical considerations and provide a longer-term, strategic perspective. Judgments about demographic and natural resource trends are based primarily on informed extrapolation of existing trends. In contrast, many judgments about science and technology, economic growth, globalization, governance, and the nature of conflict represent a distillation of views of experts inside and outside the United States Government. The former are projections about natural phenomena, about which we can have fairly high confidence; the latter are more speculative because they are contingent upon the decisions that societies and governments will make.
  The drivers we emphasize will have staying power. Some of the trends will persist; others will be less enduring and may change course over the time frame we consider. The major contribution of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), assisted by experts from the Intelligence Community, has been to harness US Government and specialists to identify drivers, to determine which ones matter most, to highlight key uncertainties, and to integrate analysis of these trends into a national security context. The result identifies issues for more rigorous analysis and quantification.

• Electronic Libraries Of The Future - Over the last two decades a number of important factors have influenced the need for and development of electronic books. Some of the more important of these factors include: (1) the advent of desk-top publishing; (2) the growing acceptance of 'paperless' publishing; (3) the ease with which electronic information can be created, updated, copied, shared, distributed and searched; (4) the more widespread availability of both local-area and global computer-based communication networks; and, (5) the incipient onset of the electronic 'information explosion'.
• Society And Economy: The Role of Futures Studies - Futures Studies has a recent history although the human being has always thought about the future in one way or another. Temples, pyramids, wall paintings demonstrate that in many different cultural groups that thinking about the future and keeping the memory of the past, is in all people and in all cultures. Greeks and Romans indeed thought and wrote about the future and change. Aeraclitous said that "Nothing is more enduring than change". Cicero spoke of divination as the "attitude of the spirit". Plato initiated the great tradition of utopia, that has reached us through the centuries. In his wake, many thinkers, philosophers, poets and visionary people have given us the possibility to dream and hope. Ovidious said something that is very important for those living today and in the future: "To what avail is the wind if we have no direction?" The wind, the rapidity of change is with us but do we know in what direction to steer our spaceship earth?
• Human-Machine Systems in Space - The incredibly complex history of human-machine integration in space exploration raises some crucial issues in the historiography of technoscience and culture. Scientific discoveries and engineering innovations were only part of the open, and the implicit, negotiations about space exploration policy in the United States between 1945 and 1995. Understanding the other factors involves a careful examination of two key cases.
• The Concept Of Emergence - The vitalism/reductionism debate in the life sciences shows that the idea of emergence as something principally unexplainable will often be falsified by the development of science. Nevertheless, the concept of emergence keeps reappearing in various sciences, and cannot easily be dispensed with in an evolutionary world-view. We argue that what is needed is an ontological non-reductionist theory of levels of reality which includes a concept of emergence, and which can support an evolutionary account of the origin of levels. Classical explication of emergence as "the creation of new properties" is discussed critically, and specific distinctions between various kinds of emergence is introduced for the purpose of developing an ontology of levels, framed in a materialistic and evolutionary perspective. A concept of the relation between levels as being inclusive is suggested, permitting the "local" existence of different ontologies. We identify, as a working hypothesis, four primary levels and explicate their nonhomomorphic interlevel relations. Explainability of emergence in relation to determinism and predictability is considered. Recent research in self-organizing non-linear dynamical systems represents a revival of the scientific study of emergence, and we argue that these recent developments can be seen as a step toward a final "devitalisation" of emergence.
• Timelines - AlternaTime - Browse the Past and some Futures... a collection of Timelines on the Web.
• Web Links of the Huntington City/Township Public Library - a large collection of miscellaneous links.
• Technology and the World of 2020 - The pace of technological change is as strong as in the greatest technological periods in history. It is radically changing the ways we work, live and interact. Yet it brings with it many contradictions. Technology is bringing people closer together at the same time as it creates means to be physically farther apart or isolated in the next room. It is facilitating a burst of creativity and individuality while providing enticements to follow the herd like never before. It offers glimpses of unseen worlds, yet separates some from reality. It teaches and informs, but the lessons and content are not always in the best interests of individuals or society. And of course technology always could be used for peace or war. Fundamentals of human nature remain even as people and societies mature.
• McLuhan Global Research Network - We envision this site as a HUB for an international McLuhan research network. This space now features forums, FAQs on McLuhan's ideas, a collector's corner, bibliography, projects listing, list of McLuhan-related email lists and web links, and a calendar for sharing information on global events and activities connected to McLuhan's work and life. We will add more features as time and resources permit. Future plans include our e-journal, inspired by McLuhan and the Toronto School of Communications, (working title) Dew-line2, and more.
• Futures Study Resources and Web Links
• Vision of the Future: Home Page - How computer technology may improve the quality of life.
• Northwest Cloning Links - On January 13, 2000, Oregon scientists at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Beaverton announced they have cloned a monkey -- the first non-human primate to be cloned . They hope to produce genetically identical lab animals. It's the latest in a series of developments that could lead to more widespread use of cloning. The Oregon Regional Primate Research Center has current information (although not VERY current). As Time reported; it's A Biotech Century.
• Project on Trends - The Trends Project is a collaboration between the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Policy Research Secretariat. It brought together over 45 academics organized into research teams that examined different trends shaping the future in Canada.
• Hector Parr's Essays: Collapse of the Universe and the Reversal of Time - Cosmologists today do not agree on whether the universe will expand forever, or will eventually recollapse. And among those who subscribe to the latter view, there is disagreement over the nature of the collapse. Some believe it will be a mirror image of the big bang, so that any intelligent creatures living during the second half of the universe's life will sense time moving in the reverse direction, and view us as living in their future. This paper presents no solutions, but attempts to analyse the possibilities rationally.
• The Universe On Trial - The Universe On Trial takes us on an exciting adventure of rediscovery. It courageously breaks away from the conventional notion of the universe. In the same way that information demolished the idea of a flat earth, the evidence now available shatters our deep-rooted conception of the universe. There cannot be such a thing as the universe. The universe myth, the oldest myth of all, has blinded us since prehistoric times. Of course, the universe idea is so ingrained in us that it may seem impossible that there could not be a universe. However after reading this book you will completely understand this new viewpoint. You do not need a Ph.D., B.Sc., or prior knowledge of cosmology, philosophy, or science history to comprehend everything in this book. There are no formulas, no diagrams, no mathematics, no hard to follow, convoluted chains of reasoning - just easy reading.
• An Atlas of The Universe - This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe.
• The Quantum Universe: An Information Systems Perspective - The purpose of this paper is to present a model of the nature of reality and our perception of the universe, applying a few principles of quantum physics. This model represents a new view of reality, utilizing principles of quantum mechanics to explain the construct of existence, as humans perceive it. It is intended to provide a mental platform from which new insights about time, space, and human perception can be obtained. Finally, the author utilizes this model to speculate about various subjects, including the nature of "reality", the passage of time, and an opportunity to detect the presence of advanced life forms in our universe.
• Futurological Links - Extensive list to futures-related sites.
• Revelations of the Future Kind - In this page I include not only futurist and technology-specific sites, but also sites with ANY subject matter I consider possibly significant to the future in some way -- such as star maps, and evolving theories of cosmic collisions and/or cyclic terran catastrophes, etc., as well as some selected science fiction and science fiction review links which could provide ideas and/or perspectives helpful to anyone working to affect or predict the future in some way.
• Hierarchical Cooperation in Architecture, and the Mathematical Necessity for Ornament - The case is made that architectural design needs to be organized hierarchically. A method and formula for doing so is derived based on biology and computer science. Fractal simplicity, in which there is self-similar scaling, replaces the outdated notion of rectangular simplicity. Architectural units on different scales are able to cooperate in an intrinsic manner to achieve an emergent property, which is not present in the individual components. The theory of hierarchical systems explains how to relate different scales to each other. In buildings, the correlation between architectural scales determines whether a structure is perceived as coherent or incoherent, independently of its actual design. This paper gives a scientific proof of why ornament is essential to the overall cooperation of architectural forms, thus revising one of the basic tenets of modernist design.
• The Ingenuity Gap - The Theory - In The Ingenuity Gap, I don't provide much detail on the theory that underpins my thinking about ingenuity and its role in modern societies. There are a number of difficult technical issues that I mention only in passing in the book. In the following pages, I have begun to address some of these issues, and I would be delighted to receive feedback on my ideas in the Forum section of this website.
• New Scientist - Meet the people shaping the future of science - Ask most people and they'll tell you they take the future very seriously. Ask a politician and they'll bore you into the ground with a 50-point action plan. Hopeless, says Richard Slaughter, who's just become president of the World Futures Studies Federation. He's a professor of futures studies based at the Australian Foresight Institute within Swinburne University of Technology, and he reckons the way we think about the future is all wrong. What we should do is study it systematically if we are to stand the faintest chance of avoiding the disasters that are rushing to meet us. For him, understanding the future may also be the best way to change the present.
• The Resonating Interval: Exploring the Tetrad - This project is an exploration of Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers' concept of the tetrad as a theoretical model for assessing, analysing and predicting the social effects of technology on society. The tetrad is the theoretical focus of McLuhan and Powers' book The Global Village. This book explains the concept of the tetrad in relation to past technologies and to the future.
• The Global Technology Revolution - A global technology revolution is leading to social, economic, political, and personal change throughout the world. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the past, this technology revolution has the potential to transform human quality of life and lifespan, transform work and industry, reshuffle wealth, shift power among nations and within nations, and increase tension and conflict. This book discusses the broad trends in this revolution, including genomics, cloning, biomedical engineering, smart materials, agile manufacturing, nanofabricated computation devices, and integrated microsystems.
  The revolution's effects on human health may be the most startling as breakthroughs improve both the quality and length of human life. Biotechnology will also enable us to identify, understand, manipulate, improve, and control living organisms (including ourselves). Information technology is already revolutionizing our lives, especially in the developed world, and is a major enabler of other trends. Materials technology will produce products, components, and systems that are smaller, smarter, multi-functional, environmentally compatible, more survivable, and customizable. In addition, smart materials, agile manufacturing, and nanotechnology will change the way we produce devices and improve their capabilities.
  The technology revolution will not be uniform in its effect across the globe but will play out differently depending on its acceptance, investment, and a variety of issues such as bioethics, privacy, economic disparity, cultural invasion, and social reactions. There will be no turning back, however, since some societies will avail themselves of the revolution, and globalization will change the environment in which each society lives.
• Estimates, Forecasts, and Scenarios - Introduction to these methods of futures research.
• Edge - The problem lies in how we imagine our future hedonic states. We are the only animals that can peer deeply into our futures - the only animal that can travel mentally through time, preview a variety of futures, and choose the one that will bring us the greatest pleasure and/or the least pain. This is a remarkable adaptation - which, incidentally, is directly tied to the evolution of the frontal lobe - because it means that we can learn from mistakes before we make them. We don't have to actually have gallbladder surgery or lounge around on a Caribbean beach to know that one of these is better than another. We may do this better than any other animal, but our research suggests that we don't do it perfectly. Our ability to simulate the future and to forecast our hedonic reactions to it is seriously flawed, and that people are rarely as happy or unhappy as they expect to be.
• Frank Ogden - Dr. Tomorrow - Frank Ogden, better known as Dr. Tomorrow is a pilot (airplanes, helicopters, gliders, balloons) , Explorers Club member, syndicated columnist, author and lecturer.
  From his floating electronic office in Vancouver's Coal Harbour, Frank gathers information on the world's social, business and technological trends. He has a vast library of a billion video frames, several hundred databases and various magazines at his disposal.
• Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project - Mapping the Global Future is the third unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next decade and a half to influence world events. Mindful that there are many possible "futures," our report offers a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities, as a way of opening our minds to developments we might otherwise miss.
  Linear analysis will get you a much-changed caterpillar, but it won't get you a butterfly. For that you need a leap of imagination. We hope this project, and the dialogue it stimulates, will help us make that leap - not to predict the world of 2020, which is clearly beyond our capacity - but to better prepare for the kinds of challenges that may lie ahead.
• Plausible Futures Newsletter - News and Analysis for Future Studies & Scenario Planning
• Society for Utopian Studies - Founded in 1975, The Society for Utopian Studies is an international, interdisciplinary association devoted to the study of utopianism in all its forms, with a particular emphasis on literary and experimental utopias. Scholars representing a wide variety of disciplines are active in the association, and approach utopian studies from such diverse backgrounds as American Studies, Architecture, the Arts, Classics, Cultural Studies, Economics, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Gender Studies, History, Languages and Literatures, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology and Urban Planning.
• The Association of Professional Futurists - The Association of Professional Futurists is a thriving community of professional futurists committed to leadership and excellence in the futures field. Our members provide a unique perspective to anticipate and influence the future. We provide network and community building opportunities for best practice sharing and professional growth. We are setting the standard of excellence for professional futurists.
• The Centre for Future Studies - An independent think tank specialising in advising organisations on how to understand and plan for possible and probable futures. Based in Stelling Minnis, Canterbury, the Centre is part of an international network of futurists and strategic planners.
• Futurework - Trends and Challenges for Work in the 21st Century - Perhaps the best place to gain a glimpse of the future of work is in the newspaper. Not the front pageÑbut the want ads. A few decades ago, employers were in search of typists, switchboard operators, mimeograph repair technicians, keypunchers and elevator operators. Newspapers even had separate job listings for men and women. TodayÕs want ads are seeking Webmasters. LAN operators. Desktop publishers. And many job seekers no longer turn to the want ad pages but to the Web pages. They find their jobs on the Internet. Just a few decades ago, business magazines celebrated the latest office technologyÑcutting edge equipment such as electric typewriters and dictaphones. Today, it is more like digital phones and personal digital assistants. We are living in a world few could have imagined 50 years ago. What will the workforce and workplace look like half a century from now? We can begin to tackle that question by examining where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. That is what futurework: trends and challenges for work in the 21st century seeks to do. It is designed to inform readersÑpolicymakers, scholars, employers, workers, trade unionists, and advocatesÑto provoke questions and to stimulate dialogue. Futurework also recognizes that even though we are celebrating the last Labor Day of the twentieth century, the twenty-first century workplace is already here. We are living in a new economyÑpowered by technology, fueled by information, and driven by knowledge. And we are entering the new century with opportunity on our side. The American economy is the strongest in a generationÑperhaps in history. Unemployment is at a 30-year low. We have created more than 19 million jobs since President Clinton and Vice President Gore entered office. The sea of budget red ink has been turned to black. Wages are up, productivity is rising, and inflation is in check.
• Revelations of the Future Kind - In this page I include not only futurist and technology-specific sites, but also sites with ANY subject matter I consider possibly significant to the future in some way-- such as star maps, and evolving theories of cosmic collisions and/or cyclic terran catastrophes, etc., as well as some selected science fiction and science fiction review links which could provide ideas and/or perspectives helpful to anyone working to affect or predict the future in some way.
• Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things - This book surveys the "new biology" - human systems and machines that work like living things - which is now transforming pretty much every field of human activity. So throughout the book there's no shortage of next wave technologies like emotional computers and ships that swim like fish; or of innovative efforts to model large-scale human systems on ecological dynamics - as in farms that grow like prairies, or schemes linking global money flows to the energy flows in nature.
  But more than that, because the new biology is transforming so many different fields at once, I think the world is entering a major sea change - one poised to have as great an impact now as the machine age did on the feudal world that it replaced. This is where the insights from emergence and complexity come in. Seen through them, what looks like a third great phase of human cultural evolution appears to be taking shape.

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