News & Previews from the World Future Society May 2007 (Vol. 8, No. 5)

In This Issue: • Second Thoughts on Wikis • Citizen Media • Deep-Sea Observatory Under Construction • Click of the Month: Invent Now • News from the Futurist Community

SECOND THOUGHTS ON WIKIS Don't expect Wikis to send encyclopedias to history's scrapheap just yet. The grassroots knowledge base known as Wikipedia has come under fire for abuse by "citizen editors" uploading false or misleading information. One student posing as a religious studies professor was discovered to have made more than 20,000 alterations to Wikipedia entries on controversial topics. Some universities are beginning to ban Wikipedia citations in students' research papers. "The academic community needs authoritative content, and this is where the Wiki world falls down," argues Rolf Janke, vice president of the academic publisher SAGE. Traditional encyclopedias, on the other hand, are peer-reviewed and carefully organized. Still, Wikipedia and the traditional encyclopedia have much to teach each other. Wiki became popular for its ease of use and up-to-the-moment information. Wiki's creators are improving the reliability of their model by adding peer reviewers for its new Citizendium spinoff, while SAGE is launching online access to its peer-reviewed scholarship with SAGE e-Reference. Both initiatives should be a boon to scholarship in the future. SOURCES: SAGE Reference, http://www.sagepub.co.uk/reference.nav Citizendium, http://www.citizendium.org CITIZEN MEDIA Digital technologies in the hands of growing numbers of individuals could be put to use covering stories that do not normally get much attention. The University of Maryland's J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism is honoring 10 community news projects with New Voices grants, offering more diversity in news coverage. Among the projects awarded: Vermont Climate Witness will create interactive maps to track how residents see climate change affecting the state's economy. DETAILS: http://www.tamarackmedia.org/vtclimatewitness/ Northwest Community Radio Network Collaborative Newscast will air weekly hour-long newscasts culled from public-affairs programming produced in isolated communities in the Pacific Northwest. DETAILS: http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/ Saint Paul City Newsdesk will create a network of citizen journalists to cover neighborhoods and municipal news. DETAILS: http://www.spnn.org/ Building Blocks will launch a news and information site informing New York City residents about major real estate development projects affecting their neighborhoods. DETAILS: http://www.prattcenter.net/ According to New Voices adviser Peter Levine, such participatory journalism could contribute to active civic involvement in the United States. "Dissatisfied with formal institutions, citizens are working together on community problems, building new associations--and creating their own news media," he says. SOURCE: University of Maryland J-Lab, http://www.j-lab.org/nv2007_release.shtml HOPES AND VISIONS AT FUTURIST CONFERENCE WHY WE LOVE author Helen Fisher and REDESIGNING HUMANS author Gregory Stock are among the estimated 140 speakers expected to address the World Future Society's annual conference, "WorldFuture 2007: Fostering Hope and Vision for the 21st Century," this coming July 29-31 at the Hilton Minneapolis hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Other keynote presentations will be made by Ronald Bailey, science writer for REASON; economist and public-health adviser Tor Dahl; and conference chair Joel Barker, co-author of FIVE REGIONS OF THE FUTURE. REGISTER by April 30 and save $100 off the on-site registration fee: https://www.wfs.org/2007regform.htm LEARN MORE: http://www.wfs.org/2007main.htm RESERVE your room at Hilton Minneapolis (already more than 55% full): http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/groups/personalized/mspmhhh_wfs/index.jhtm DEEP-SEA OBSERVATORY UNDER CONSTRUCTION Oceanographers around the world will soon be able to share a new deep-sea observatory, thanks to a 32-mile-long cable installed along the floor of Monterey Bay off the coast of California. The cable will provide the power for an array of scientific instruments, video cameras, robots, and other research equipment for the observatory, dubbed MARS (The Monterey Accelerated Research System). The cable will also carry data back from the instruments to scientists and engineers around the world, making the ocean available to researchers 24 hours a day. Most oceanographic instruments currently need batteries for power and hard disks or memory chips for data, which means they need to be brought back to the surface frequently. But the continuous, uninterrupted supply of power means the MARS observatory instruments could remain on the sea floor for months or even years, according to the National Science Foundation, which is funding the project. SOURCE: National Science Foundation, http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=108593 CLICK OF THE MONTH: INVENT NOW http://www.inventnow.org What inventor has kept a mouse living for 73 years? (See ANSWER at end of item.) If you believe that "anything is possible," even if it hasn't happened yet, then Invent Now wants to hear from you. The site, a celebration of "the innate human impulse that drives social and economic progress," is sponsored by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a way to promote innovation to a new generation of young inventors. The site features interactive games and allows children to explore their inventiveness through their interests in sports, space, entertainment, and more. Programs featured at Invent Now include invention camps, clubs, and competitions, as well as message boards and an Invention Hall of Fame where you can view profiles of such legends as (ANSWER) Walt Disney. NEWS FROM THE FUTURIST COMMUNITY • GLOBAL INTERACTIVE MAP OF TRENDS: FringeHog has launched an innovative project to create a global interactive map of trends and emerging issues impacting the future. FringeHog Tags the World is a social media project to create a comprehensive interactive database of photographs and images that illustrate emerging ideas about the future. Now through June 15, WFS members are invited to participate in the project by submitting digital photographs that represent a nascent trend or emerging issue. Using social bookmarking technology, the theme and location of each photograph will be geo-tagged and displayed on a Web-based global map. The resulting map will be a "visual database" representing the collective wisdom of the WFS community that will be released and discussed at a session, "Virtual Worlds, Real Opportunities," during the WFS annual conference in July 2007. DETAILS: http://www.fringehog.com/tagstheworld. • TRANSHUMANITY SAVING HUMANITY: INNER SPACE TO OUTER SPACE. The World Transhumanist Association's Transvision 2007 conference will be held in Chicago July 23-26, focusing on longevity, nanomedicine, global warming, sustainable housing, space colonization, future humans, and future civilizations, among many other exciting topics. Participants include inventor and author Ray Kurzweil, STAR TREK's William Shatner, longevity scientist Aubrey de Grey, and many more. DETAILS: http://www.transvision2007.com • FUTURES STUDIES PROGRAM REVIVED: Professor Peter C. Bishop reports that the Graduate Professional and Services Council (GPSC), the faculty group that approves new programs at the University of Houston, has recommended that the program in Futures Studies be forwarded to the administration for approval. Students might even be admitted to the new program in Fall 2007, Bishop believes. "The program has changed somewhat from the Clear Lake version to meet the requirements of the faculty committee," he says. "We will publish the complete program when we get final approval to offer the degree." DETAILS: Peter C. Bishop, mailto:pbishop@Central.UH.edu FUTURIST UPDATE: News & Previews from the World Future Society is an e-mail newsletter published monthly as a supplement to THE FUTURIST magazine. Copyright © 2007, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA. Telephone 1-301-656-8274; e-mail mailto:info@wfs.org; Web site http://www.wfs.org. Editor: Cindy Wagner Assistant Editor: Patrick Tucker Network Administrator: Jeff Cornish Vice President, Membership/Conference Operations:  Susan Echard To subscribe, enter your e-mail at http://www.wfs.org To unsubscribe or change your e-mail address, send an e-mail to mailto:jcornish@wfs.org  with "unsubscribe" or "change address" in the subject line. Submit feedback: http://www.wfs.org/fbmay07.htm The WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY is a nonprofit, nonpartisan scientific and educational association with a global membership. Regular membership in the Society, including a subscription to THE FUTURIST, is $49 per year, or $20 for full-time students under age 25. Professional and Institutional membership programs are also offered; contact Society headquarters for details: http://www.wfs.org.