A Taoist master was asked about the validity of the I-ching as a means for divination. He said, 100% accurate. Then he was asked, well is there ever any chance that the divination will be misinterpreted? Also 100%.
[via Stanford Siver]
[To the tune of Passion Sources, "Sabahiya," from the album "Passion: Sources".]
Via Michael Anissimov, Pictures for Sad Children's cartoon about the Singularity.
It's not bad, but there's still a hole in my life from the Alien Loves Predator hiatus. Thanks God for the pleasing consistency of Wondermark!
[To the tune of Von Südenfed, "Dear Dead Friends," from the album "Tromatic ReflexxionsTromatic Reflexxions".]
I'm interviewed by Cyrus Farivar on NPR's Marketplace today. We talk about how "Predicting the Future is Tricky for Business." Vint Cerf and Esther Dyson are also interviewed.
Incredibly, I don't sound like a total idiot.
In the last couple days I've seen several friends from Europe, who were over here for eTech and came north. First, I had lunch with the Innovation Lab's Mads Thimmer; that evening, I got together with Peter Hesseldahl, an author and futurist at Danfoss Universe. In professional years, both are old friends: I first met Mads in 2004 when I spoke at Next 2004, and I met Peter even earlier, when he was at Lego and doing a project with the Institute.
The next day, I gave a talk at an innovation journalism program that brings international journalists (mainly Scandinavian, from what I can tell) to the Bay Area for a few weeks. The program's basic premise is that reporting about technology and innovation plays a role in the development of regional innovation networks-- an interesting claim, and one that dovetails with my observations about the co-evolution of technology reporting and technology marketing in Silicon Valley (something I noticed when I was working on the history of the Macintosh).
Finally, Friday I had an early dinner with Nicolas Nova, a really interesting computer science researcher who's based in Switzerland. He's one of the co-founders of the LIFT conference series, a technology-related event that alternates between Europe and Asia; more recently, he and Julian Bleeker have just started something called the Near Future Laboratory, which is doing some pretty interesting stuff.
I'm fascinated with the European futures scene, and I think it's not just because my contact with it has been wonderfully privileged (they know how to treat their guests). In some ways, the futures world there seems more vibrant than the American-- though it may just be interesting because it's different. The EU seems to be pretty interested in futures work, and there are a number of corporate-sponsored innovation labs there.
They also seem to me to be better at developing multi-institutional networks: American futurists are very good at networking with people other than futurists, but we tend not to work together very much. Partly this reflects the fact that in the U.S. we're all-- or always have the potential to be-- competitors; in Europe, in contrast, the situation is a little different. As one person put it, futures groups in Germany, Spain, England, Finland, and Denmark can work together because the futures market is still pretty national. They can share ideas with less concern that they'll end up enabling their competition.
This ability to cooperate is important because the futures world is both small and pretty atomized, and any efforts to link researchers and institutions together in any meaningful way, and to begin to generate some coordinated (or at least collectively-informed) action is likely to yield some significant benefits.
I'm also starting to think seriously that the whole field of futures as we know it is ripe for a revolution, and that the intellectual tools and institutional models developed by the founding generation of futurists-- a generation that is now retiring or dying off-- will not be useful for much longer. They're certainly not going to be useful for the rest of my professional life.
The challenge is to figure out how to do futures work for a world that's rather different than the world of the 1960s and 1970s; and it seems to me that the Europeans have a better shot than we do of making the next great methodological leap.
Technorati Tags: future
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
[To the tune of Pablo Casals, "Adagio and Allegro in A-flat major, op. 70," from the album "Concert at the White House [Limited Edition] [Japan]".]
For the last year I've been working, first during my day job and more recently in off hours, on an encyclopedia project, the Encyclopedia of the 21st Century.
It's approximately the craziest thing I've ever signed my name to: four volumes, several million words, every one of which will violate a rule of reference publishing so fundamental it's not written down anywhere, but is burned in the heart of every editor.
Encyclopedias are about things that exist, things that have happened, or things that have been believed. In general, encyclopedias aren't about things that haven't yet happened. But this one is.
In a way, while it's been a great project to think about, and it's served as terrific cover for writing to interesting people, it's also seemed a bit abstract. But now, commissioning letter have started going out. It's an exciting moment in a project: it's turning real, but we haven't yet had the big wave of rejections that's normal in this kind of commissioning, nor am I faced with the hard work of actually reading manuscripts and that kind of thing. I should enjoy it while I can.
[To the tune of Eddie Palmieri, "Verdict On Judge Street," from the album "Sueño".]
Technorati Tags: e21, encyclopedia
Bruce Reed on 2008 presidential candidates:
If Republicans and Democrats maintain their current January pace (12 entries in 22 days), each party will have more than 100 presidential candidates by the Iowa caucuses.
[To the tune of Pat Metheny Group, "San Lorenzo," from the album "Travels (Disc 2)".]
Technorati Tags: politics
I'm in the office today, though no one else is. I think I missed a memo. Still, I got a lot done....
Actually, it is a cool picture.
[To the tune of Elton John, "Funeral for A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding," from the album "Here and There".]
Delta Scan made it into Wonkette!
Human Rights Legislation for Rat-Brained Robot Soldiers, NOW!
While god-crazy American politicians are taking two weeks off to get drunk and IM young boys, our atheistic friends in Britain are looking towards the Future — a future of rat-brained self-aware robotic service workers and soldiers who will likely organize and demand “human” rights by 2056.
Undoubtedly the best media mention involving the Institute's work since Future Now showed up in that YouTube video earlier this year.
Technorati Tags: IFTF, future, Delta Scan, robotics, humor
I'm a research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Silicon Valley. I'm also an Associate Fellow at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, and a Senior Research Scholar in the Science Technology and Society program at Stanford University.
At the Institute, I work on the future of science and technology. In my free time I'm working on a book on the end of cyberspace. More details are available in my c.v. (PDF). My first book, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions, was published by Stanford University Press in 2002.
I also keep up-to-date profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook.
The banner is from a picture taken by Anthony Townsend, while we were walking along Raday Utca in Budapest, Hungary, October 2007.
Click to leave me a voice message using Grand Central.
Contact me via Skype.
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