Summing up the Summit Club of Amsterdam 28 January 2005 Closing Plenary.
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Transcript of Summing up the Summit Club of Amsterdam 28 January 2005 Closing Plenary.
Rangefinding our vision.
• An open source approach begins with each of us articulating and clarifying our own visions.
• Let’s borrow a vision test format from opticians:– Focus your vision (preferred future)
by comparing contrasting possible futures, and choosing among them:
Tough choices.
• Rangefinding our vision means making tough choices among alternative possibilities, guided by our values.
• What trade-offs are we willing to accept in choosing one path over another?
• What compromises?• How do we share differentially
distributed benefits and drawbacks?
Themes:
• Emerging win-win situations: cooperation, collaboration, e.g. liberalisation of trade
• Human approach: creating value, enhancing human creativity via new processes like open source, TRIZ, living laboratories
• Blurring of boundaries: in technology, in communities, in social and political roles
• Interconnection and integration -- must look closely at the nature of the connections
Missing:
• Global issues… was this just the summit of our future? Not just Europe, not just the rich… a positive future should address development across borders
• Differential impacts, access, control -- need for transparency of social, political, economic processes
• Recognition of the inevitable: e.g., energy crisis must be made personal for everyone in order to address lack of will to act
Missing:
• Long-term perspective in governance and private sector, not to mention true leadership
• A questioning of all our basic assumptions about society: capitalism, governance, even our definition of what is human in a coming post-human age
Take-aways:
• It’s NOT idealism, it’s NECESSITY that must drive us now.
• It’s the future -- and not the gadgets.
• It’s the IDEA that you can create the future that empowers you.
• Need to create our strategic infrastructure…and it’s not fibre optic cables, but values and ethics.
Take-aways:
• Let go! Decentralise! Multidisciplinarity! Transdisciplinarity! Diversity! Contradictions provoke good ideas, and good ideas are all around us!
• Question assumptions…all of them…do we need capitalism? Are our current nations obsolete? Are we still human if we’re augmented with nanotech?
• Vision, then do. Contradict, then create.
Dissemination:
• How do we excite people with these ideas, perspectives, conversations?
• What’s a high impact and effective way to convey our concerns, creativity, conversation?
• New media strategies for foresight.• E.g., Job Romijn’s visual record<<<<
Informing our ideas:
• Briefings:– Club of Amsterdam seminars– Club of Amsterdam website and
newsletter– Shaping Tomorrow: foresight portal
• http://www.shapingtomorrow.com/
• Journals:– Foresight, Futures, Future Survey,
Futures Research Quarterly
Finding fellow travellers:
• World Futures Studies Federation, http://www.wfsf.org/
• World Future Society, http://www.wfs.org/
• Association of Professional Futurists, http://www.profuturists.org/
Carrying on the conversation:
• Futures Insurrection, Association of Professional Futurists, Miami, 31 March - 2 April 2005
• Foresight Management in Corporations and Public Organisations, Finland Futures Research Centre, Helsinki, 16-17 June 2005
• Future Tools for Growth, European Futurists Conference, Lucerne, 10-12 July 2005
Carrying on the conversation:
• World Future 2005: Foresight, Innovation, and Strategy, World Future Society, Chicago, 29-31 July 2005
• 2005 WFSF World Conference: Generation -- Intergenerational Collaboration to Generate Preferred Futures, World Futures Studies Federation, Budapest, 21-24 August and Budapest Futures Course, 25-26 August 2005
• And of course…..