Futuring
Manoa Futures Symposium & Gaming Futures
On Friday, November 30th, 2012, the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies (http://www.futures.hawaii.edu & @HRCFS) hosted the Manoa Futures Symposium. As one of, if not, the first gatherings for graduate students pursuing studies in Futures, the conference brought together young scholars from Australia, Finland, Germany, Canada, Bahrain, and across the U.S. representing Regent University, University of Sunshine Coast, the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), JAMK University of Applied Sciences, the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Houston, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Shock-testing the Black Swan Theory
By Michael Lee
Adopting a satirical tone, self-confessed sceptic Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestseller The Black Swan ridicules the idea of predicting the future. Instead, he argues that the world is dominated by the impact of rare, unforeseen, random, highly improbable and yet influential events. These Black Swans, he says, happen abruptly, coming from outside the range of our vision.
Was Nate Silver the Most Accurate 2012 Election Pundit?
Obama may have won the presidency on election night, but pundit Nate Silver won the internet by correctly predicting presidential race outcomes in every state plus the District of Columbia — a perfect 51/51 score.
Making the Post Office Invisible
In July 2011, as a cost cutting measure, the U.S. Postal Service put together a list of 3,700 post offices that it wanted to close. Like most organizations that have faced a full frontal assault by online automation and technology, the USPS has been working its way through a very uncomfortable transition. They have no clear picture of what the service will look like 10 years from now.
The Real Worth of a Professional Futurist
We cannot set aside our values, feelings, ideas, and interests, even for an instant, but a question that may receive some attention in efforts to put a value on foresight profession is how to calculate the real worth of a futurist. What is worthy of acknowledgement and praise for a professional futurist?
What Is A Futurist? Interview Nine of Them in Nine Minutes
What is a futurist? Every self-described futurist you ask will likely give you a different answer. A more interesting question is what do these people say about the future? Brian Bethune from Maclean's magazine recently put that query to a grab bag of inventors, technologists, geneticists, business consultants, and writers he encountered at WorldFuture 2012, the Society's recently concluded conference in Toronto, Canada.
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