Profuturist News

APF member Verne Wheelwright collected up a list of blogs by futurists and for futurists.  It includes hundreds of sources for professional futurists.

BBC News online asked their readers to tell them what they thought the world would look like in 2112.  Here is the top 20.

Here is a nice infographic with quick tips for getting more out of your google searches.

From The National Academies Press Website:

The National Academies - National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council - are committed to distributing their reports to as wide an audience as possible.
Effective June 2nd, PDFs of reports that are currently for sale on the National Academies Press (NAP) Website and PDFs associated with future reports will be offered free of charge to all Web visitors.

NAP produces more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health, capturing the best-informed views on important issues.

While researching his next book in values changes, APF co-founder Andy Hines mined the APF listserv for texts spanning the turbulent 1960s to 1980s era that identified major future transformations. Colleagues responded with a rich set of notable writings from all STEEP categories (social, technological, environmental, economic, and political), recapped in a blog post "Looking Back on the Coming Values Transformation." According to Andy, "In retrospect, a lot of what was forecast has happened, just that it's been so gradual as not to be noticed."

You will likely recognize The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) by Thomas Kuhn, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), and Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave (1980). Others are standards in futures studies such as APF member Oliver Markley's and Willis Harman's 1982  Changing Images of Man (pdf), Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth (1972), and Nicolis and Prigogines's Self-Organization in Non-Equlibrium Systems (1977).

Still others may be new to you, for instance, Robert Theobald's The Challenge of Abundance (1962) or Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture (1968). In particular, since it influenced my mallable teenage mind, I was delighted to see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) by Robert Pirsig recognized as signaling the coming convergence of east and west philosophies. It remains a valued text within arm's length even now.

Capturing the best of the listserv's contributions and once again showing why he's among the most prolific futures authors, Andy offers useful insights to these classic texts, a wealth of "Aha's," and a worthy start on a futures library. His blog supplies a consistent stream of thoughtful foresight.

The full text can be found on Hinesight.com. Image.

In the fight between nature and development, Bolivia aims to grant nature equal rights to humans by enacting a "Law of Mother Earth." As an antidote to mining, mega-projects, air and water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, the law contains eleven new rights including the right to life and existence; the right to continue vital cycles; the right to balance; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.  If enacted, a new ombudsman for the "ministry of mother earth" would be appointed.

". . . the idea of protecting the rights of nature has also been bandied around in the U.S. As early as the 1970's, one law professor introduced the idea that nature could be legally treated as a person, just as a ship or a company is. Building on this idea, Bolivia may begin to associate values beyond spiritual to these core rights of nature. Just as when a person who has an intrinsic set of rights has been injured, they are expected to receive a settlement for any loss or damages, nature (and its beneficiaries among the Bolivian people) could be reimbursed for any ecological damage in the future. The concept of ecosystem services could be used to provide an important economic framework to help Bolivians preserve, manage, and sustainably use nature's benefits, and establish the financial value of these rights of nature."

Story and image supplied via The Dirt.

The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University took an informal survey of participants at a conference on machine intelligence in January 2011 on the future of human-level machine intelligence.

The results of the survey were published recently.

Amoung the questions asked was: by what year do you expect the chance of development of human-level machine intelligence to be 10%? 50%? OR 90%?

The median for 50% chance of human-level intelligence was 2050.
For a 90% chance of human-level machines is 2150.



They also asked how positive or negative the consequences of machine intelligence at human-level or beyond.  Surprisingly more of the professionals chose "bad" or "extremely bad" than chose "good".




Although this is not a scientific survey, it shows the sentiment of researchers working in the field of artificial intelligence.  The respondents were from fileds of philosophy, computer science and engineering, and AI and robotics.

The World Economic Forum has released a report  Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus .

The report is the result of 3 years of discussions and debate over the consequences of the world's growing water shortages.

We are all very excited about getting started on our brand new website.  Although it may look kind of empty still, it won't be for long.

For now, enjoy that new-website smell but check back soon for news and opinions about professional futurists and foresight.