LEARNING TOMORROW |
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Vol. 1, No. 1 |
World Future Society | |||
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| Timothy C. Mack, editor
Emerging Ideas in Futures Education Science Fiction and the Future
COPYRIGHT © 2006 |
Emerging Ideas in Futures Education The World Futures Society’s ability to bring together scientists and researchers from different disciplines is vital to the practice of international and local education. This network can produce valuable ideas, opinions and recommendations that are critical to continuing education, workforce development and distance learning. These individual and collective ideas may offer guidance in constructing and restructuring bridges to futures education. For example, as computer power becomes more portable and the Internet grows both logarithmically and geographically, education and training should expand throughout society. As time becomes the worlds most precious commodity, the best method to capture and analyze information from this group dynamic is qualitative, because of the interdisciplinary nature of futures education. In this setting, the challenge is to uncover and interpret meaning from this qualitative data. As I have followed the education-related discussions within WFS, the following list of issues has emerged:
Science Fiction and the Future "Accelerating into the Future" In this newsletter column, I will be exploring the significance of science fiction in thinking about the future – how science fiction expands, enriches, and energizes "future consciousness." At the outset, let me provide a definition of science fiction. Although not all science fiction deals with the future, its primary focus has been on the myriad possibilities of the future. In this regard, science fiction can be defined as a literary and narrative approach to the future, involving plots, story lines and action sequences, specific settings, dramatic resolutions, and varied and unique characters, human and otherwise. It is imaginative, concrete, and often highly detailed scenario-building about the future set in the form of stories. Science fiction is clearly the most visible and influential contemporary form of futurist thinking in the modern world. Why is science fiction so popular? One main reason for the popularity of science fiction is that it resonates with all the fundamental dimensions of the human mind and human experience. It speaks to the total person about the future – to both the heart and the mind. Because science fiction presents the possibilities of the future in the form of stories, it engages the reader emotionally and creates a vicarious personal experience of the future. Also, if the science and technological extrapolation in the story is well informed and thoughtful the reader is engaged intellectually as well. Throughout human history, the most influential form of futurist thinking has been myth. Myths are stories, filled with emotion, drama, and moral lessons. Frequently, myths are epochal tales, connecting memorable and archetypal characters with cosmic themes. Myths provide a medium through which individuals can connect with the big questions and issues of existence. But the myths of old are based on archaic thinking and outmoded conceptions of reality. They are oblivious to modern science and philosophy and the issues and challenges of modern life. Perhaps new myths based on contemporary knowledge and thinking are needed. I would propose that science fiction provides such new
stories and new myths. Science fiction offers tales of the future possessing all the
essential qualities of myth but informed by science and contemporary thought. Science
fiction connects the cosmic and the personal, frequently communicates some moral message
about life, and presents the future as a drama that unfolds as a consequence of the
actions of its characters, events in the world (or the universe), and new technological or
scientific developments. Science fiction is the mythology of the future. What is so impressive and mind-boggling about Accelerando is that Stross attempts to describe in narrative form what will happen to humanity and to our world as we approach and then pass through the technological singularity – that is, Stross attempts to imagine the incomprehensible. Following the exploits and adventures of three generations of the Macx family and set in the context of massive and accelerative social and technological changes in the coming century, Stross chronicles in Accelerando an amazing and rich variety of possible advances in computer intelligence, virtual reality, communication networking, nanotechnology, robotics, space travel, and bio-tech integration; the novel overflows with technological inventions and a whole new language to describe this reality. Yet further, Stross speculates on how these fast and furious and interconnected technological transformations will impact human life and human identity. Members of the Macx family evolve psychologically and physically throughout the story. As one example, once computer hardware reaches the complexity and memory storage capacities of the human brain, humans, including the Macx family, can download their conscious minds into computers. and, in essence, branch off into multiple streams of consciousness. One conscious mind and identity continues to live in a biological body while a second version (or even more versions) of the same person lives within computer hardware and whatever virtual reality the person wishes to create in that technological system. Conscious minds within computers can also materialize in different nano-technological incarnations. Throughout Accelerando, in innumerable ways, the nature of human identity and human experience is altered as new technological developments emerge. The human conscious mind becomes a complex integrated plurality of voices, images, and streams of data surrounded and engulfed by the input of multiple software agents. Though many of these technological possibilities have been discussed in futurist writings, notably in Kurzweil, in Accelerando, the reader is presented with a concrete and personalized vision of how such innovations would impact individual humans and their lives. Parenthood, childhood, and marriage are dramatically altered in the context of multiple versions and timelines of individual selves. |
US Community College Futures Community colleges in the United States have the capacity to stand at the cutting edge of education. Their ability to connect with those who need its services most; their flexibility and imagination concerning curriculum relevance and cultural inclusiveness and the affordability and effectiveness of digital teaching tools all contribute to this trend. The intent of the authors is to map possible directions that community colleges might consider for continued growth and opportunity. Our use of the word CAPACITY to outline this mapping process suggests ways to make those potential futures realized ones.C = Community, Cooperation and Competition and knowledge products to the surrounding geographic ‘service area’ is what the "community" in community college has always been about. More recently, the service of a larger global community has become possible through digital technology for long distance learning. Community colleges can prosper by offering learning opportunities and products on a global level and thereby enhance their revenue streams while continuing to service local needs. One example is the "Learning Pod Impact Team" approach, where learners in Delhi and Beijing interact in both delayed and real-time learning sessions with residents in the American state of Maryland to solve environmental problems relevant to all stakeholders. Shared resource use through cooperation reduces costs to the users while it stimulates idea generation and creativity in areas such as patent development. Global competition is one challenge facing educational institutions, as continuous improvement models of government and industry demand higher efficiency, productivity and quality. In the United States, foreign enrollments in postsecondary schools at lowest levels since 1971, especially among Indian, Chinese and Japanese students, as India and China build competing technical education resources. And there is growth in competition for students in the United States, especially within electronic classrooms. There has been a 50% increase in on-line course attendees in last two years, with the private sector University of Phoenix now at 200K students and in 37 states, offering automated admissions and graduation procedures and projecting 500K students by 2010. A = Adventure. P = Products Learners as "Active Learning Innovators" go beyond being passive information receptors. This unlocks the active potential that each learner brings to an environment and enhances the growth potential inherent in each learner. And many forces are driving this need for activity: the expansion of adult education into what were formerly the years of rest, inactivity and decline; the dramatic growth of literacy for all ages through continuing immigration; the need for innovative healthcare training in the face of whole new disease categories; the dramatic need for vocational training as whole categories of employment disappear are all driving the need for proactive programs by community colleges everywhere. C = Creativity I = Innovation The Harvard Business Review recently noted that within business leadership interviewed, 45% were able to follow rules effectively, while another 45% could understand goals and reach them consistently but only 10% could create or design new rules and goals for their companies. We are entering a century where the rules and the strategic goals are changing constantly, as the organizational environment changes....we need more creative thinkers! For example, enhanced mental flexibility, decision speed, imagination, enhanced perception and the ability to test and validate complex assumptions and rescale structural modeling will be critical factors in trainings these new and innovative leaders. T = Transparency. A recent survey of associations found 51% had flat or declining membership with declines in volunteers, donations and leadership candidates, and only 15% had strong growth...with the biggest growth areas for new association serving women, minorities and youth. Clearly, the marketplace is rewarding creative efforts on behalf of diversity. Enhancing civic responsibility thus enhances a creative, vibrant and mutually supportive marketplace. Y = Youthful Exuberance. Conclusion
While humanity is changing, the network of computer intelligences across the globe is quickly growing in power and mental capacities, increasingly manifesting an independence and mind of its own, and becoming more enigmatic and mysterious in its purposes. Steadily this super-human artificial intelligence gains control of the earth and extends its technological tentacles outward into the solar system where it begins to transform the inner planets and their physical material into a nano-technologically supported massive solar brain. In the wake of this expanding wave of artificial intelligence, humans, no longer able to comprehend or control what they have created, migrate outward through the solar system and beyond, attempting to escape from the reach and influence of what they label their "Vile Offspring." Yet, humans take with them many of the creations of this advancing technology. Within Accelerando, Stross systematically and imaginatively extrapolates outward in time from present technological trends through a series of progressive changes and developments. Each chapter describes events within successive decades. Predictions build upon predictions and a future technological and social history unfolds, step by step, in a manner that is highly realistic and convincing. Although set in the form of a story about the Macx family, Accelerando reads like a general future history of the technological and social-psychological evolution of humanity. In addition, the ambience of a strange and frenzied future reality is created; the language describing this is electrical and accelerated; inventive, visionary, and rich in hi-tech jargon, it propels the narrative at a breathtaking velocity. Of particular note, Stross examines in detail and imaginative depth how advancing technology will alter the human self, the nature of consciousness, and human relationships; love, friendships, and the meaning of human life are all transformed. By the beginning of the twenty-second century, all that once was has been transcended. As Gardner Dozois, the science fiction writer and editor states, "The Accelerando stories represent one of the most dazzling feats of sustained imagination in science fiction history, and radically up the Imagination Ante for every other writer who wants to sit down at the Future History table and credibly deal themselves into the game." |
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