Andrew McAfee has been a leading academic voice for
This is a great summary of
Archive for the ‘Futurism’ Category
McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0
Monday, October 1st, 2007A Visual Trip Through the 21st Century
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007George Dvorsky has this interesting post about a ~ 7 minute video posted to You Tube called “A Visual Trip Through the 21st Century”. It’s an interesting, optimistic and quick view. And I now know about Les Claypool (they he does the soundtrack, which I actually liked but seemed to annoy my family as they watched TV). The video is based on Peter Pesti.’s Detailed Roadmap of the 21st Century. A neat little production for people or groups interested in thinking about the future, for example teams that are interested in visioning or scenario development.
Reading Science Fiction to Learn More About Diversity
Sunday, February 25th, 2007One of the most interesting things about reading science fiction is the continued validity that it often tells us more about our current world than future worlds. It is easy to project current norms, styles and mindsets into the future. Cyberpunk has been a relief in pushing this aside, as has the increase in transhumanist sci-fi (I’m still waiting to listen to the CD version of Richard Clarke’s Breakpoint to see if transhumanism has hit mainstream fiction). I just finished reading John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice, an alternative history sci-fi book focusing on WWII. It is the first in a trilogy (the other titles can be found here and here).
I’m not big at all on alternative history and there seems to be a fair amount of it addressing WWII. I was drawn to Birmingham’s book by a brief review of the third book in the trilogy in the current issue of Wired magazine. The initial driver in the story is the sudden transformation of a US led allied fleet from the year 2021 back to 1942. Right into the middle of the 1942 US fleet at Midway. You can see the novel for the science behind the transformation (it’s really about multiple universes). The real story line is taking a multinational force from 2021 and dropping it into a very homogeneous 1942 American society.
It is very interesting to read about the relationships. A modern Navy and Marine Corps from 2021 with females and several non-white officers and leaders are not necessarily well accepted by 1942 society (roughly 50% of the 2021 forces are non-white and/or female). Violence occurs, as does a lot of intolerant interactions. It made me think both about the past and the future. It is good to see just how much has changed. It also interesting to think about the future and how much more our society will change. Current demographic trends indicate a very different racial and age make up in America. Our future world will be different.
So what are we doing to prepare our communities and clientele to prepare for this? Most of our Extension systems currently do not reflect this trend. Nor do significant chunks of our current clientele. What about future clientele? What about our youth programs that need to be prepared to work in the future? This just adds to Extensions ongoing struggle of expanding into new clientele bases without disenfranchising important existing bases.
It’s not a quick read, but it is relevant to gaining a better understanding of where we’ve been and where we are going. And to realize social change is possible. We already know what much of the US and the world will look like. We just need to start with changing ourselves. If you’re over 30 you can start by watching bits and pieces of MTV.
Extension 2.0?
Sunday, February 18th, 2007Continued light blogging from me as I’ve worked on several projects simultaneously. Several of these are related to Web 2.0, distributed/virtual work systems and Extension futures research. One recurring item that I continue to see related to Web 2.0 is the new (fill in the blank) ___2.0 of everything. Education 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are current examples. All feature interesting arguments about how Web 2.0 activities are leading to structural changes in organizations and how we work. Hopefully I will post more on all of these soon. I’m hoping to use the upcoming ESP 2007 call for papers as a deadline to put together a proposal and potential JOE article on Extension 2.0. This would include the opportunities (I think they are great) and some of the hype. Any feedback is appreciated or comments are appreciated!
For now, here is a link to an interesting Harvard Business School case study on the debate about having an Enterprise 2.0 post on Wikipedia.
The Good and Bad of the Boomer Generation
Sunday, August 27th, 2006One of the big demographic trends facing the US is the aging of the baby boomers. Arts & Letters Daily has a link to a BBC post that tries to raise some of the cons of the baby boom generation. Don’t just read the article. Read the comments that follow. They are just as interesting and even more illuminating as the article. The comments show some of the intergenerational stresses we have started to experience. Some of the comments also do an excellent job of framing the debate in a bigger picture. One of how families and generations are fluid and always changing.
Extension professionals will continue to face generational issues over the next decade and beyond. Understanding the broader contexts of the issues will help to frame the issues.
An Extension Conference Road Show
Saturday, May 6th, 2006I’m spending the next nine days splitting my time between conferences in Florida and hope to do a little blogging about each. First is the National Extension Technology Conference in Gainsville. This is an annual event and not a specific organization. I’m simply a participant at the conference (I’m subbing for a collegue at an eXtension meeting), but I’m really excited. I think Extension is on the cusp of either adopting and developing cutting edge technologies to help us reach clientele and organize ourselves or falling behind and becoming irrelevant. NETC has both technical and application tracks – the first more for techies, the other more for those interested in applying the technology as a tool.
The second meeting is the annual conference of the Association of International Agriculture and Extension Educators in Clearwater. I’m only hanging around for one day, but I’m giving a carousel presentation co-authored with Daney Jackson on Future Trends in Extension (see the link here for the title information). This conference draws an interesting cross section of Educators from around the world.
Two good meetings for Extension professionals to attend. See the respective websites for information about future meetings for each conference.
More on the Singularity
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006Future Salon carries word of a free Singularity conference at Stanford on May 13. I think this is further proof that a once peripheral concept has gained mainstream attention. This is longer term future stuff, but maybe not as far out as one would imagine. The concept is extremely tough for most folks to get their arms around. Basically, humans and their tools reach a stage where higher than human intelligence is created. See the definitions or descriptions here and here. I talked earlier about the Singularity concept coming mainstream here.
The key for Extension professionals grounded in more day to day realities is to recognize that concepts like this exist, and that people are taking them seriously. Even more intriguing are the developments that singularity proponents site as indications of the singularity occurring. These include advances in nanotechnology and the general exponential increase in our knowledge base. How do we handle and manage more and more sources of information? By moving to more “pull” versus “push” methods of tracking and collecting data and information. A good starting point is with a desktop aggregator. I’ll share more on this later.
Scenario Wiki
Sunday, February 19th, 2006Another futures related wiki. From Futurismic comes this link to a Futurewire post on futures wikis. One of the wikis was covered earlier here at this post. The one that was not is this one based on scenarios. Looks pretty good. I’m guessing that we will start to see more Extension related wikis. At least I hope so.
Another Future Wiki
Friday, February 10th, 2006Back in September I blogged about FutureWire’s Wiki. Today I wanted to go back and look it over again. Instead of just searching my blog, I did what I’ve been doing for the past several years: Type a phrase into google and get what I need. This time I found another futures related wiki. The Future wiki at Wikicities. Some more interesting information on future studies and related topics. I would expect more and more wiki’s on related topics over the next year.
Attack of the Millennials! See the Story Whenever, Wherever You Want on Your iPod
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006Yestereday’s NY Times had a great article about the technology use of millennials (those born between 1980 – 2000). It reinforces the findings of the recent Pew Internet studies (see here for example) about video cell phones, messaging and other technologies to stay in touch. After plunking down some hard cash to get my son a 60gb iPod, I can attest to their use of hand held technologies to communicate and view information. Just watch the recent spurge in cell phone commercials to get a feel for where this is at (Verizon’s vcast commercials for example).
Extension is currently behind the curve in getting almost any of these technologies in place. Iowa State is the only state that I can find with a video podcast. The two that I’ve watched are interviews, but I really liked the 1.17.06 "From earth to the moon, to mars, and beyond." This is an hour video podcast, so expect a long download even with broadband. Use this link (iTunes needed) to find the podcast. If you are interested in space and education, be sure to check it out.
Are the millennials all technology, all of the time? Nope. A t-shirt worth buying is mentioned two-thirds of the way throught the Times article. Its byline: "Ctrl, alt, delete," referring to the need to unconnect from time to time.
The catch is that technology is changing fast, but not as fast as the most recent "hot" websites and blogs. How does Extension reach out and succeed in these areas? One way is start involving millennials in our projects, committees, etc. and let them pull us along. Another is to keep pushing interactive technologies that support social networks – the whole web 2.0 concept.
A last thought. In the final section of the google is discussed as both a verb and a noun. How does this generation (and I would argue most others now too)? Google. It’s not about going to an Extension site and then searching. It’s about the easiest route. And right now that is Google.
Found via the Institute for the Future’s Future Now blog.