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Prof. Knight is angry – but does this help to recover and transform? (source: thisislondon.co.uk)
G20 summit under immense pressure
Radical measures must be decided at the G20 summit or it could become the “fateful moment” when the global recession lurches into an outright slump, Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said today. (guardian.co.uk, 2009-03-30)
The crisis and the consequences for business and politics are still in the focus of mass media and the blogosphere. When I check the stats of future facts blog I find a lot of phrases containing “financial crisis” still on the top of the most used search terms. Surprisingly most of the visitors checked in here on the post of Oct. 2008 Global financial crisis may end 2009 – which is not really a typical post in a blog concerned with long-term trends. The news seemed significant at that time because
- it had been expressed by an insider, Michel Camdessus, the former chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and
- it was extraordinarily optmistic.
Let us contrast this sunny quote of last year with doomsday news like this of March 25th 2009: “Russia Expects New Financial System Crisis Outburst”. Russia’s Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin said:
“We were standing on the brink of the financial collapse, but we prevented it, and I must here thank the Central Bank and the State Duma for giving us an opportunity to take decisions quickly,” (my emphasis, www.marketoracle.co.uk)
The coincidence of some news urges me to come back to the issue of the spreading crisis. In these days we read Read the rest of this entry »
superstructgame.net: superthreats 2019
Some weeks ago the wellknown “Institute for the Future” (IFTF) started an experiment with the crowdsourcing of future scenarios and solution finding. I was too busy with projects and customers to analyze all these ideas, let alone to write a review. Simple question: Does it work? I do not know. It depends on the initial purpose. In terms of quantity it was a success. User generated future in numbers:
- # 7,061 players
- # 536 superstructures (i.e. concepts to save the world)
- # year 2053 = new survival horizon; thanks to the creative ideas of the players the survival horizon of mankind is now set to 2053 (I will send you the formula, if I found it)
Obviously this is a serious game. But is it more than a game? Can anyone, politicians, CEOs, plain citizens seriously base future decisions on cumulated non-experts opinion? This is an
my.barackobama.com knows the tools of the social, viral, swarming web
It was not an easy task for Barack Obama’s team to find the right “historical place” for his appearance in Berlin. I am a foresight consultant (in Berlin) with a focus on technology, esp. ICT – but as a futurist I have to keep my scope broad up to 360 degrees – causal hyperconnectedness of things, you know …
Today I ponder about the interference of technology and politics. There has been written a lot about how the internet esp. the social media of web 2.0 changed the way of doing politics. But often the analytical categories don’t match the dynamic reality of the web.
I want to introduce the “swarm” as a serious category for a better understanding of things happening when some millions of connected users are losely coupled, interact and follow tags, interests, people, events, brands and … politicians.
SIGNAL: A political blogger is conceiving a new phenomena in the context of online campaigning
The democrats.org blogger “JMesserly” wrote on Mar 27th, 2008:
Notice is being taken of the connection between new phenomena: Swarm politics, Blog swarms, Fear in the ranks of traditional party and PAC professionals towards armies of volunteers that are indifferent and even hostile towards their efforts at command and control.
Folks may find this article interesting in the context of the newly dominant role of internet communications which is enabling a revolution in the way politics and collective activities like Wikipedia or Kiva can and are working today. [...] We must consider how the dynamics of swarm theory can be leveraged on the internet and in the marketplace to rapidly and decisively attack social problems. [my emphasis]
I found this post when I was googling in preparation of a presentation about swarm Read the rest of this entry »
Picture 1: Global Solar Market 2005-2020, McKinsey Quarterly, The economics of solar power, June 2008; picture 2: DESERTEC Concept, TREC
SIGNAL: NEW SOLAR POWER REPORT
The economics of solar power, June 2008 (McKinsey Quarterly)
“By 2020, hundreds of billions of dollars of investment capital will probably boost global solar-generating capacity 20 to 40 times higher than its current level.”
