I’ve created a page for a calendar of relevant conferences and events. Futures, emerging technology, long-term thinking, etc. There are several conferences from 2008 that don’t yet have dates for 2009 so things are a bit blank but hopefully it will fill up.
If you know of any events that should be there, drop me a line and I’ll pop them in there.
If only I could afford to go to any of them!
Kevin Kelly has written about the ‘Pro-Actionary Principle’, the idea that, simply, new technologies should be used to find out if they cause harm. This contradicts the more common ‘Precautionary Principle’ that suggests “a technology must be shown to do no harm before it is embraced”.
He has five “Pro-Actions” that expand on this but the most interesting part of the post for me is when he talks about the unintended consequences of new technologies, a topic I always find fascinating because it makes attempts to forecast future effects so difficult.
Second order effects often require a certain density, a semi-ubiquity, to reveal themselves. The main concern of the first automobiles was for the occupants — that the gas engines didn’t blow up, or that the brakes don’t fail. But the real threat of autos was to society en masse — the accumulated exposure to their minute pollutants and ability to kill others at high speeds, not to mention the disruptions of suburbs, and long commutes — all second order effects.
Second order effects — the ones that usually overtake society — are rarely captured by forecasts, lab experiments, or white papers. Science fiction guru Arthur C. Clarke made the observation that in the age of horses many ordinary people eagerly imagined a horseless carriage. The automobile was an obvious anticipation since it was an extension of the first order dynamics of a carriage — a vehicle that goes forward by itself. An automobile would do everything a horse-pulled carriage did but without the horse. But Clarke went on to notice how difficult it was to imagine the second-order consequences of a horseless carriage, such as drive-in movies theaters, paralyzing traffic jams and road rage.
Apologies for the recent silence; I was ill and then woefully distracted. Let’s catch up.
The Replicator blog has a post summarising some things that can be done with 3D printers at the moment. Not very in-depth but a good overview for people like me who don’t know much about the current state of things.
The listing features art, action figures, jewellery, hearing aids, prototypes, home decor, models, components/manufacturing, medicine and crime scene reconstruction.
(Via Russell Davies.)
Another conference, also in the US: Bioneers has some interesting-sounding things although as this WorldChanging post says, “it was every bit as hippy as people say it is.”
That WorldChanging post by Jeremy Faludi has an account of a day-long session on biomimicry and how it could be used to help solve climate change, which is a fascinating read.
The Pop!Tech 2008 conference is underway and it sounds great. Summaries of many presentations are on their blog and you can also watch video. A shame (for me) that it’s in America but fantastic that anyone can watch it all for free.
UPDATE: It looks like all the video I linked to is from past conferences, with the most recent that shows up in iTunes being from 2007, published in June 2008. You can however watch the event live today and tomorrow (24/25th October) between 9am and 6.30pm in an unspecified timezone…
Pop!Tech have just joined the throng of prediction markets by launching their own. It’s in association with Inkling which provides prediction market tools that other companies, like Pop!Tech, can brand as their own.
Kevin Kelly recently compared the predictions on a single issue across several markets. He concluded that those which don’t use real money (such as Pop!Tech’s) are as accurate as those that use cash. I wondered then whether this would hold up across a wider range of predictions, and according to Wikipedia it does:
A common belief among economists and the financial community in general is that prediction markets based on play money cannot possibly generate credible predictions. However, the data collected so far disagrees. Analyzed data from the Hollywood Stock Exchange and the Foresight Exchange concluded that market prices predicted actual outcomes and/or outcome frequencies in the real world. Comparing an entire season’s worth of NFL predictions from NewsFutures’ play-money exchange to those of Tradesports, an equivalent real-money exchange based in Ireland, both exchanges performed equally well. In this case, using real money did not lead to better predictions.
Wikipedia cites two studies, Prediction Markets: Does Money Matter from 2004 and The Real Power of Artificial Markets from 2001 (both PDFs).
Another interesting fact is that the Iowa Electronic Market, which uses real money, has apparently “correctly predicted the outcome of every presidential election since 1988, and its predictions have been consistently more accurate than the polls.”
Interpreting the IEM’s graphs and their most recent press release I think the market is currently saying there’s around an 85 percent probability that Obama will win the popular vote and that he will receive around 54 percent of the two-party popular vote.
I’d glanced at James May’s Big Ideas in the TV schedules but hadn’t realised it was quite so futury. It looks like the series has finished now but if you’re in the UK the three hour-long episodes are still on iPlayer for the next six days:
I haven’t watched them yet and those descriptions are fashioned from the BBC blurbs. If you’re not in the UK, I’m sure the internet can provide…
On Newsnight on Friday Mark Urban had a segment looking ahead to what the aftermath of the current financial crisis could mean for international relations. With everything so volatile it’s a perilous time to make predictions but that also makes it more exciting to do so. It feels like anything could happen. Here’s a summary of what he said:
For the UK, big cuts in defence and foreign aid budgets. A withdrawal from Iraq next summer, with no further increases in Afghanistan.
Wider retrenchment of NATO and US.
Western influence declines.
More adventurism. Russia, China, the Middle East — Iranians or non-state actors — feel emboldened because the West is too broke or doesn’t care any more. For example, the Iranians might push ahead with their nuclear programme because they think the US can no longer do anything about it.
China builds on successes in Africa and Middle East. Gulf States with petro-dollars, and other nations with trade surpluses, will begin to renegotiate the terms of world trade.
Is America set to ruin itself, as France did after the French Revolution?
There must be other similar speculations around at the moment. Post a comment if you know of any.
There’s a new website from my alma mater, the University of Houston, which looks at the future of the USA in 2028, particularly in relation to the forthcoming presidential elections.
There are a number of issue areas — budget, climate, energy, global, health, infrastructure and immigration — and each has some background information, a variety of forecasts for 2028, Obama’s and McCain’s positions, and links to further resources.
I know very little about this but there’s a one day mini futures conference (also on Upcoming) in central London in November. There are four talks:
I can’t say the prospect of any of them fill me with unadulterated joy but it might be interesting and I may go along anyway just to see what’s happening. Assuming I get round to printing out the application form, writing a cheque, and going to the post box.
Recent Comments