Future Studies

Short talk for the Northumbria Summer Speakers series 2015 at the Mining Institute in Newcastle. A skeptical look at the usefulness of the concepts of cognitive estrangement and the utopian glimpse in science fiction studies, with a focus on near future sf, especially some by Tim Maughan.

Existing publications consider the science and technology afforded the human-machine, and all of the inner workings for making the cyborg creation a reality. The idea of a universal forum that discovers, explores, and prepares the way for eventual large-scale cyborg sociocultural integration, which just a few years ago would have been incredulous, is now upon us as evidenced in the proximity at which science and technology are rapidly arriving at machine sentience.

Even with potential sentience a few years down the road, and prospects of sentience leading to interactive communication between cyborgs and humans at any conceivable level perhaps years away from that, it is time for a worthy publication committed to the goal of addressing critical, foundational aspects of the study of cyborgs, including their creation, governance, rights, expectations for participation in digital society, and other imperative aspects of their impending existence alongside their human inhabitants in this world.

What can leaders do when they try to take on the task of leading transformation? Riel Miller proposes innovative Experimentalist Leadership (EL) as one effective response. This model rests on two skills – improving ‘capacity to use the future’; and being able to design ‘collective intelligence knowledge creation processes’ – and an experimentalist mind set.



He draws practical examples from the Global Education Leaders’ Partnership (GELP), a program which has set out to transform education, effectively and sustainably, at local, national and global levels. The author comments on evaluation of the program, whose members envisage education systems that equip every learner with the skills, expertise and knowledge to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

This book investigates, from a variety of perspectives and different locations in the world, the changing, socially based perceptions of uncertain futures. The futures we are contemplating generally arise from awareness of the complex, potentially disruptive impact of climate change and ecological instability on human societies.
‘Ecologies’,  ‘ontologies’ and ‘mythologies’ become the key terms for this exploration, because environmental change is connected in manifold, non-linear ways to the conditions of human (and other) livelihood and existence in all their variety. We see changes in present and imagined future environments as posing existential problems that may lead people to question much of the taken for granted nature of social organizations and their embodied ways of engaging with the world.
A paradox of cultural, social and ethical life in all societies is that it is directed towards a future that can never be observed, and never be directly acted upon, and yet is always interacting with us. As a result, actions depend both on imagination and a political sense of ontology, or being in the world and of the nature of that world.

Climate change and ecological instability have the potential to disrupt human societies and their futures. Cultural, social and ethical life in all societies is directed towards a future that can never be observed, and never be directly acted upon, and yet is always interacting with us. Thinking and acting towards the future involves efforts of imagination that are linked to our sense of being in the world and the ecological pressures we experience. The three key ideas of this book – ecologies, ontologies and mythologies – help us understand the ways people in many different societies attempt to predict and shape their futures. Each chapter places a different emphasis on the linked domains of environmental change, embodied experience, myth and fantasy, politics, technology and intellectual reflection, in relation to imagined futures. The diverse geographic scope of the chapters includes rural Nepal, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Sweden, coastal Scotland, North America, and remote, rural and urban Australia.

Ecologies, ontologies and mythologies of possible futures. Linda H. Connor and Jonathan Paul Marshall

Part 1 Intellectual and speculative engagements with ecological change
1. Towards an anthropology of the future: visions of a future world in the era of climate change. Hans A Baer
2. The first draft of the future: journalism in the ‘Age of the Anthropocene’. Tom Morton
3. Ecological complexity and the ethics of disorder. Jonathan Paul Marshall

Part 2 The politics of engagement
4. Futures of governance: ecological challenges and policy myths in tuna Fisheries. Kate Barclay
5. The work of waste-making: biopolitical labour and the myth of the global city. David Boarder Giles
6. From Sociological Imagination to ‘ecological imagination’: Another Future is Possible. Ariel Salleh, James Goodman and S. A. Hamed Hosseini

Part 3 Environmental change in specific places and cultures
7. Indigenous ontologies and developmentalism: analysis of the National Consultations for the Kiribati Adaptation Program. Felicity Prance
8. When climate change is not the concern: realities and futures of environmental change in village Nepal. Sascha Fuller
9. Ontologies and ecologies of hardship: past and future governance in the Central Australian arid zone. Sarah Holcombe
10. From good meat to endangered species: indigenising nature in Australia’s Western Desert and in Germany’s Ruhr District. Ute Eickelkamp

Part 4 Body and psyche
11. Climate change imaginings and Depth Psychology: reconciling present and future worlds. Sally Gillespie
12. What wrecks reveal. Penny McCall Howard
13. Emergent ontologies: natural scepticism, weather certitudes and moral futures. Linda H Connor

Part 5 Technological mythology
14. Official optimism in the face of an uncertain future: Swedish reactions to climate change threats. Mark Graham
15. Geo-engineering, imagining and the problem cycle: a cultural complex in action. Jonathan Paul Marshall
16. The creation to come: pre-empting the evolution of the bioeconomy. Jeremy Walker

Many existing technical feasibility and modelling studies in the energy field are criticised for their limited treatment of societal actors and socio-political dynamics, poor representation of the co-evolving nature of society and technology, and hence an inability to analyse socio-technical change. At the same time, prominent conceptual frameworks of socio-technical transitions that address these elements are often found to be difficult to operationalize in quantitative energy analyses that meet policy development requirements. However a new energy modelling paradigm has started to emerge for integrating both quantitative modelling and conceptual socio-technical transitions. This paper provides a taxonomy for this new model category: ‘socio-technical energy transition’ (STET) models. A review of existing STET models and their applications to the energy supply, buildings and transport sectors is provided. Following this review, the paper reflects on the extent to which these existing quantitative models captured the variety of factors covered in socio-technical transitions theory, highlights the challenges associated with their theoretical and behavioural validation, and proposes future development priorities for STET models.

Lars von Trier is obsessed by sin, death, punishment, and all his films always come to that kind of an end: someone is punished for the evil doing of humanity, or of some people around the main character. We could understand that stance if it came from some sectarian fundamentalist, for example of the Christian Born Again in Jesus Christ, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons or some other affiliation of the Christian faith, not to speak of other religions. That makes some collaborations surprising like the one with Stephen King because Stephen King is strongly optimistic about the future of the world because he believes human beings can face and probably control any nasty negative and morbid situation. In the Dark Tower what is important is not that the last page is the same as the first but that all along the members of the team of adventurous volunteers led by a gunslinger have always been able to step over any difficulty and painful task.

It was rather anticlimactic when it finally happened, but the front door simply failed to open.

There was no “going out of business” sale, no press conferences, no people gathered around to claim what was theirs. Instead, this once bustling institution that built the tallest building in Cleveland, Ohio, full of glass and fancy furniture, had breathed its last breath.

Make no mistake, the rich colorful legacy of the banking industry will fill countless future studies as people analyze and scrutinize past business dealings over the decades ahead, but the days of being able to walk into an actual bank building and make deposits and withdrawals just came to an end.

Far noisier endings had come a few years earlier in 2037 when Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo closed their doors. But this last bastion of teller windows and hand written deposit slips, and the handful of aging customers who still frequented it, had been hemorrhaging cash for some time, and with this silent ending the banking era had officially come to a close.

When it comes to money, it’s all about trust. Once consumer confidence and trust begins to erode, it becomes a mammoth task to regain it.

Like many businesses of the past, the money world focused on people with money, leaving countess millions either unbanked or under-banked. But in a highly connected world, where every consumer has networks, influence and value, eyeballs count.

For some, banking leaders were the notorious puppet masters who manipulated the stock market, created new legislation, and made self-serving decisions that favored the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. To others, they were merely hardnosed business people making the most of their position to keep investor returns high.

As an industry that had been artificially propped up with innumerable laws and a banker-friendly political system funded by banker-friendly rich people, the final days were delayed far past the time when the first foot entered the coffin. But all industries will eventually end, and this is the story of this one.

Is this a realistic scenario? If so, what are the key factors we should be paying attention to today? The answers will probably surprise you.

This article reflects on the concept of “global citizenship” from a transdisciplinary methodology and a biomimetic approach. A sustainable human image appears with this epistemological symbiosis, that constitutes the DNA of a genuine tool of civilizational transformation. On the one hand, the transdisciplinary methodology is opened to the multi-referential conception of the three pillars proposed by Basarab Nicolescu (2008): levels of reality, logic of the included middle, and complexity. On the other hand, the concept of biomimicry approached by Janine M. Benyus (2012) identifies nine operating principles of life in order to mimic nature in the reformulation of new sustainable human production systems with the biosphere. The aim of this study is to identify international agreements on environmental and sustainable development, to elaborate some contribution in the post-2015 eco-political-educational strategic framework led by the United Nations with the Sustainable Development Goals. With the purpose of strengthening ties between education and sustainability through symbiotic bridges between nature and culture, the work identifies the vital axises that constitute the interdependence of ecosystems to make a biomimetic application in the social, political, and educational structures of human systems. Then, this paper is an innovational research that seeks to integrate the eco-ethics as a practice in the “Global Citizenship Education” proposed for UNESCO for next decade 2015-2025. 

This publication is part of the "Future Making" research group of Aarhus University, Denmark. The Future Making research group is a network of researchers who bring together people from industry and academia to explore how we are building possible futures through our everyday activities of talking, researching, curating, writing, and teaching.
In particular the paper contributes to the "Creating Artifacts for Future Archaeologists" project. The project is designed to find and foster innovative methods for preserving digitally-mediated lived experience of 21st Century events. Using interventionist and action research research design, it addresses an urgent concern about regaining control of our future cultural histories.

In this introduction to the thematic collection on the “Future of Transport in Europe”, we argue that European transport regimes are at a turning point and despite the sector inertia, we can detect cultural, societal, and technical shifts.
In this article, we assume that these shifts are central in defining possible future trends, far beyond their current fragile relevance. Such an analysis steps further into the technological realm, and targets social, industrial and political issues, which could affect the future of transport up until 2050, with a special focus on the post-ownership economy. Thus, we frame both technological innovations and societal shifts, aiming to discuss the future of transport as a socio-technical construction, far beyond the commercial and economic debate.
In the conclusion, we report briefly on how two conflicting elements are now relevant for the future of transport, namely inertia and innovation: both can play a significant role in opening up different transport regimes in the future, or tying us to a repletion of old patterns.
This article is based on the results of an EU-funded research network (www.race2050.org), which we coordinated.

Transport landscapes are under change, both in its everyday practice and in their theoretical conceptions. The resurgence of “old” transport modes (like bikes and tramways), the rise of sharing economies (car-pooling, car-sharing), and the crisis of the car culture are just the more evident signs of a deep shift in European transport practices. Increasing social polarization and shrinking public spending have reduced budgets for transport infrastructure, which is more and more pressured. Finally, mobility is no longer envisioned as a privilege or an opportunity, but as a problematic and compulsory activity.

The social sciences are also stepping in the debate, while transport planners and experts are more aware of the soft side of travelling and the weakness of the “predict and provide” model. The future of transport and mobility is therefore rather open, even more so in a quickly changing word, in which Europe could lose its industrial primacy in the sector.

We therefore hosted papers on the above-mentioned topics that take into consideration their future dimensions, such as:


• Definitions, analyses and long-term consequences of societal and cultural shifts
• The role of technology
• Energy and environment issues
• The role of industry in this new emerging landscape
• The crisis of infrastructural financing
• The trend of travelling as a burden and its effect on the transport and the mobility fields
• The social and political effects of uneven mobility
• The state of the art for the future of transport
• The missing points in the research agenda
• Methodological issues.