Author Archive: Sohail Inayatullah

Will You Marry Robots and Other Disruptions Changing the Futures of Asia (2019)

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First published as Futures Platform Blog (January 18, 2019).

Written by Professor Sohail Inayatullah, UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, Professor at USIM. Tamkang University, Melbourne Business School, The University of the Sunshine Coast.

This piece is both methodological – how to do futures – and also content-based: what might the future look like?A few years back I was asked by a futures team from the Office of the Prime Minister of a North American nation to provide a report on the futures of Asia; specifically focused on social emerging issues. This report eventually became a book titled, Asia 2038: Ten Disruptions That Will Change Everything.While we touched on scenarios for the futures of Asia, we saw this as an opportunity not just to explore alternatives but to help shape the future, to be active participants even while we did our best to objectively present the emerging issues we identified.I thus began the report with my own narrative, my experience in growing up in Asia. Most salient was a story from high school when I was playing a basketball match in Singapore. After the game, we were offered a range of narcotics – which we refused – and during the match members from the gym stands routinely took younger students to the toilet where they would flush their heads. This would be unimaginable in Singapore and much of Asia today. Using this narrative to create a sense of how the last forty years had changed, we then focused on the next twenty.

From Ancient History to Transformed Future: Can Armenia Leapfrog (2019)

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First published here as JFS Blog (9 May 2019). https://jfsdigital.org/category/blog/

 
Can Armenia leapfrog other nations instead of following the traditional development paradigm? Will Armenia be able to use financial and social capital from the Armenian diaspora to transform their economy? What is a wise direction forward for cities and the nation?

These and other questions were explored over three days from March 25-27th, 2019 by senior advisors to the Armenian government, Mayors and Governors, and executives from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Working with ADB Country director, Shane Rosenthal, ADB’s Dr. Susann Roth, and futurist Professor Mei-Mei Song,[i] I facilitated four workshops for participants. The first was for senior advisors to the government (to the deputy Prime Minister, for example), the second was for nearly all the nation’s Mayors and Governors, the third was for the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST), and the fourth was for the local ADB office. These workshops used the six pillars approach to futures thinking, and applied methods such as the futures triangle, emerging issues analysis, the futures wheel, scenario planning, causal layered analysis, visioning and backcasting to create alternative and preferred futures. [ii]

My stand-out learning experience was that, when we focused on the impossible vision, participants tended to shy away, believing reality is too difficult to bend. However, the majority of participants had just created or played a significant role in the recent “Velvet Revolution” and were convinced that transformation was not only possible but inevitable.

When I showed them one my of my favorite slides of Nelson Mandela, one table quickly chimed in and said, “that is us.”

Buoyed by their recent success, they did not wish for either no-change or marginal-change scenarios. They insisted on adaptive change and indeed many wished for radical change. This created an easy playing field for our role as change facilitators.

Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

However, I was certainly surprised, especially after I had landed at the airport and saw the Ural Airlines plane,  I felt I had gone back in to the Soviet era.

But everything at the airport was swift, smooth and service providers were incredibly friendly. The stay at the hotel continued in this vein – everything was doable. When I asked for a special meal, the chef quickly emerged saying, not a problem.

While Kim Kardashian and Cher have been their most famous exports, I could see that tourism had a real possibility.

http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/262730/

Each day we began the workshops with a discussion of history and the used future. For participants, this was represented by the traditional educational system with its steep hierarchy and lecture style. The lecture was considered far more important than the outcomes of learning. City design too followed the traditional pattern of center-periphery, with roads being the main measure of success. Even though Yerevan is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with a history of 2800 years, the recent revolution made it to segue from the used future to the desired vision.

Sohail Inayatullah

Yerevan celebrates 2800 years of history. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

The Future City

Thus, while mindful of their past, participants had the greatest clarity about the nature of the future city.

The Mayors imagined:

  • A clean and green city.
  • A smart city using the full range of new fourth industrial revolution technologies.
  • A city that was friendly to the disabled.
  • A city that was connected to the regions.
  • Citizens that had world-life balance.

This desired future could be possible through the use of real-time data analytics. They hoped that Artificial Intelligence applications could provide an early warning system effectively predicting congestion, pollution, and crime.  This early warning system could help decision-makers decisively act for the benefit of the population. As one participant said, “our city must be green, comfortable, with infrastructure accessible for everyone, for drivers and pedestrians, for pets, and those with disability.” This was not just a clean, green, smart and connected city, but an inclusive city.

The Geo-Political Context

To create these new cities and a new nation, participants understood that geopolitics must favor them.  They did not wish a repeat of earlier conflicts. They desired a layered strategy that:

  1. Measured as a success the number of peace treaties plus developed infrastructure which would enable regional connectivity.
  2. Had a system of open borders, with peace based on mutual safety.
  3. Embraced a worldview where the neighbors all shared an ideology of peace first. This meant moving from isolation to strong interconnection created through friendly markets.
  4. As a transformative narrative, imagined geopolitics moving from an island to an interconnected oasis.

Professor Song facilitating the causal layered analysis exercise on geopolitics. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

Participants tended to draw from nature when they articulated their narratives. The energy group, for example, saw the present as a dying tree in a desert with the ideal to become a self-sufficient forest. To do this meant exploring a range of energy security options from safe nuclear, to renewable energy sources with the renewable portion of energy increasing over time, and using AI to ensure energy efficiency as well as house-to-house energy sharing (dynamic peer-to-peer energy sharing platforms). [i]

Amalya Hovsepyan, a Coordinating Adviser at the Ministry of Justice, presenting the new energy future. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah


Stages And Scenarios Of Energy Development

One group saw this energy independence and urban development transition in four stages.

Dr. Susann Roth facilitating the scenario exercise. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

The first stage was the continuation of the present. Traffic jams, pollution, congestion, and slow economic growth all leading to unhappy citizens. Addressing these changes through short term marginal strategies such as 10% of the cars in the nation electric, 10% of the buildings green, some industrial growth, and some streets modernized would lead to marginal well-being.

However, the participants agreed that more than 10% progress was needed. Adaptive change was required, and  would be the next step. In this preferred future, 50% of the cars would be electric, 30% of buildings  would be green (indeed, trees would be seen as infrastructure),[i] and two to three developed economic sectors (tourism, food, and perhaps artificial intelligence). This was described as the “City on the Move.”

The Asian Development Bank Workshop Report. Image by  Keisuke Taketani<keisuke.taketani@gmail.com>

Where they wished to end up by 2030 was in a radical future, what they called, following the earlier nature-oriented theme: “Welcome to Paradise.”

Ararat Valley. Courtesy of Anushik Avetyan

In this future, or final stage of the energy and economic and social development transition, 100% of all cars in Armenia are electrical, all housing stock and public buildings are green (retrofitted), all streets modernized, and the economy developed in the areas  of eco-tourism, agriculture, information technology, and data analytics.

Hrachya Sargsyan, the Deputy Mayor of Yerevan, presenting the scenarios. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

Getting There

But how might Armenia get there? One group of mayors and governors were clear that the required innovations not only had to be commercially viable, they had to create wealth. For example, the progression would be first smart phone apps to measure energy use, then the use of AI to reduce congestion, and ultimately the creation of roads that could harvest energy.[i] Further steps would be similar to the new Ali Baba project in Malaysia where they are creating a city brain,[ii] to ensure that real time traffic information reduces congestion.

All participants agreed that Armenia needed to:

  1. Ensure zero tolerance for corruption – this would create a culture of trust, an enviable investment climate, and a virtuous cycle of prosperity.
  2. Investment needed to be green and sustainable. For them, this meant reducing energy costs, increasing well-being, the health, of citizens, and creating innovation that could lead to more innovation.
  3. Investments needed to use new AI supported technologies. While these disruptions would certainly lead to some unemployment in the short run, in the medium-to-long run, new industries and jobs would be created. These would be clean, green, and smart.
  4. The center of Armenia, Yerevan, needed to develop in conjunction with its regions, and development in Armenia, especially development that leapfrogged, would not be possible without open borders and peace with neighbors.

The Asian Development Bank Workshop Report. Image by  Keisuke Taketani<keisuke.taketani@gmail.com>

Is Leap Frogging Possible?

This robot was designed by Expper Technologies. Photo by Anahit Nersisyan

But is leapfrogging possible? The CEO of the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST), Armen Orujyan,  reminded participants at the workshop that Armenia was known as the “silicon valley” of the former Soviet Union.

In his view, intellectual capital had not disappeared; it just needed to be nurtured, encouraged, and invested in. Indeed, the purpose of FAST is to incubate not just start-ups, but to create an eco-system of innovation as the springboard for a possible leapfrog.

This ecosystem, however, was not just about the external world, but also about creating a climate and culture of inner peace, of life and work balance. FAST headquarters, along with the predictable robot, had a room for inner reflection, a place to pause, to slow down to speed up.

Zen Meditation Room at the FAST Centre. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

Time, as one participant imagined, had to be redesigned so that a new future could be possible. In the futures triangle below, a method that explores the visual pull of the future, the pushes of the present, and the weight of the past, he imagined a far more holistic understanding of a day. In this vision, there is time for family, time for sports, time for work, time for innovation, and time for tea. This he considers possible as there is a social desire for work/life balance and a healthy lifestyle. This is weighted down by the demands of the economy and the need to earn.

Drawn by Vardan Karapetyan, Senior Project Officer from the Asian Development Bank Resident Mission. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

During the workshops, the Armenians focused not just on technology to transform, but also especially on the inner change that is required to transform mindsets.

Futures interventions are more possible when leadership is committed to them. As an example of leadership supporting innovation, the country’s President Armen Sarkissian recently commented at a presentation at FAST.[i]

Armenia is the gateway to the future. We promote making investments in our country: the country that is young, ambitious, the people of which are talented, which has a young government, and a country which feels itself in the 21st century, is young and mature. Being young first of all means how young you feel yourself by soul, whether you are ready for new discoveries, to learn, to ask questions and find answers. Whether you are ready for research, evolution acceleration.                                                             

Back to the Asian Development Bank

ADB Building, Yerevan, Armenia. Photo by Sohail Inayatullah

This links to the newly emerging role of the ADB in Armenia. Certainly, capital for green infrastructure projects will be needed, but ADB – as expressed by Shane Rosenthal –  in Armenia needed to move from a traditional development bank focused on financing and contract disbursements to an intelligent bank, helping Armenia leapfrog ahead. The knowledge required includes intelligent support to create visions of the future; risk management through developing scenarios of possible futures; and discerning the leverage points that allow for the greatest and smartest impact. ADB thus becomes not just a finance facilitator in this future, but a knowledge change-agent.  ADB thus uses its understanding of the knowledge ecosystem (historical project and network experience, data, and technical know-how) to create change.

I left Armenia inspired by their confidence, their sense that the future was bright and that they could create this future. A few of the elders certainly were far from convinced, they had seen history move not in jumps, but in pendulum swings, and were concerned that the optimism in the streets may not continue. Their concerns may be justified, however, what was significant is that the used future had been identified, alternative futures had been explored, a vision developed, and steps forward agreed to. A leapfrog may be possible.

Sohail Inayatullah is the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM). He can be reached at sinayatullah@gmail.com

References

[1] With support from ADB project officers, Gohar Mousaelyan and Liana Arakelyan. Thanks to Russell Clemens for editorial assistance.

[2] See Sohail Inayatullah, What Works – case studies in the practice of foresight. Tamsui, Tamkang University, 2015.

[3] https://www.fastcompany.com/90241777/this-startup-lets-villagers-create-mini-power-grids-for-their-neighbors. Accessed 28 April 2019

[4] https://www.fastcompany.com/40474204/cities-should-think-about-trees-as-public-health-infrastructure. Accessed 27 April 2019.

[5] https://iecetech.org/Technology-Focus/2018-02/Harvesting-energy-from-roads. Accessed 28 April 2019.

[6] https://www.zdnet.com/article/alibaba-rolls-out-first-overseas-smart-city-ai-platform-in-malaysia/. Accessed 28 April 2019.

[7] https://mirrorspectator.com/2018/11/01/focusing-on-armenias-future-at-global-innovation-forum-by-fast/. Accessed 27 April 2019.

Change and Stillness: Visioning the Futures of Malaysia and ISKL (2019)

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First published here

ISKL IN THE 70S

I went to ISKL at Jalan Maxwell from 1973-1975,  then graduated and moved to Honolulu in August 1975.  I had two wonderful years there. The teachers were supportive, creative, and truly loved their jobs. Two teachers stood out for me. First, was Rodney Kling. What I remember most was his ability to make English literature fun. I still remember during one session when a few of us really enjoyed his treatment of Shakespeare, he commented: “there appears to be different levels of levity” in this room.  Bill Wright was equally memorable. Not for laughter, but for discipline. He was the basketball coach. He really stressed that taking care of the body was important as taking care of the mind. I still remember saying to me: “practice, practice, practice.” And if you missed basketball practice? He suggested to not show up again.

The school created a community, where teachers, students, staff all liked each other, most appreciating that we were guests of Malaysian culture.

TO HAWAII

From there I went to the University of Hawaii, where I did a BA in Liberal Studies. They allowed me to design my own major. I linked political science, philosophy, and religion and created a major called, “Spirituality and Social Change.”

I then did a Masters in Political Science, focused on Alternative Futures. I was fortunate to gain an internship at the Hawaii Judiciary, where I worked for ten years as their strategy analyst/futurist. In 1987, I returned to the University of Hawaii and I did my PhD, focusing on the Indian philosopher, P.R. Sarkar. The PhD focused on Indian epistemology and macrohistory, the grand patterns of time from different civilizational perspectives.

I began taking classes in Futures Studies in 1976, when, while discussing strands of philosophy and technological change, my dorm roommate Bob Homer, said, ” You have to take a course from Professor Dator.”   I did. It was life-changing. I took every class he had to offer and did my Masters and PhD with him. His focus was on how we create technology and then technologies creates “we”. We also did research papers on topics such as climate change, robotics, and global governance. At the Hawaii Judiciary, along with traditional quantitative forecasting, we pursued disruptions such as the rise of robots, mediation as an alternative to litigation, and the rise of the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement. We did this both to create futures literacy in the courts and other branches of government and to enhance the ability to anticipate the future and influence the trajectory of emergent futures.

The Hawaii Judiciary had gained interest in the future from the Hawaii 2000 project. This was intended to create anticipatory governance, to not be a slave to trends, but to create desired futures.

While university study extended my fascination with change, I had actually heard about futures thinking earlier, at ISKL. In the 11th grade,  Dr. Frank Shephard introduced us to the thought of Alvin Toffler, inspiring us to think about novelty and change. Indeed, as a student at ISKL, I remember reading in the Malay Mail about a conference on Malaysia 2000, which explored how Malaysia could become a developed nation. Luminaries such as Herman Kahn and James Dator presented, said the article. It would be twenty years later that Malaysia began the ambitious task of imagining itself in 2020, as a developed nation. Having a vision is critical in that it organizes strategy, allows one to focus on the use of resources and ensures expenditures are linked to direction.  Other nations, Singapore, Cambodia, and many others, have followed the Malaysian example, and are better for it.

FUTURES STUDIES

Futures Studies, as we define it today, is the study of preferred, possible, and probable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. It is both quantitative, qualitative, critical, and transformative. We study what may happen, what is likely to happen, what we wish to happen, and how our mindsets and the stories we tell each other are complicit in how we see and shape the world.

By necessity, it is trans-disciplinarian. A good futurist must first be critically reflective, aware of how he or she languages the world, uses discourse to understand what is and can be. A good futurist needs to be both an expert in one area and be a generalist, being able to understand many domains of knowledge. But the most important skill of a futurist is the help to listen to the views of others and help them create the futures they wish to see.

Anticipation is essentially about emancipation.

While in the 1980s and 90s, Futures thinking was a hard sell, and only a few countries such as Malaysia were imagining where they wished to go, now it is commonplace. I work with nations around the world and help them focus on their national vision and strategy. We attempt to ensure that they are not drowned by the waves of change, that they learn to surf, and eventually become wavemakers. They frame the terms of engagement of desired futures.

Recently through the sponsorship of the Asian Development Bank, I have worked with leaders in Armenia, Kazakhstan, the People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, the Philippines on their national strategies – what should they focus on, and how can they advance futures literacy. Among the common themes has been:

  1. The need for gender partnership in every facet of society. The Cambodian executives suggested they need to change the story from the woman as the garment maker to the woman as the Prime Minister.
  2. Deep flexibility in education. The Government of Norway leaders suggested that the current metaphor of education as the factory needs to become more like a jazz orchestra, wherein every student is valued, they learn to hear and create music together, they respond to knowledge and they create new knowledge.
  3. Climate change and adaptation –  that the challenge to climate change must be met globally, as a civilizational project. This could create institutions of foresight throughout the region and the world. While there are short term political interests still focused on the previous era, it is clear, we are entering the era of renewables, As Sheikh Yamani said decades ago, it is not due to the lack of oil that the oil age will end and it was not due to lack of stones that the stone age ended, as Sohail Hasnie of the ADB recently stated. In the long term, we need to create the Uber of energy, peer to peer platforms where citizens can share – buy and sell – from each other.
  4. The need to bring AI into everything we do. In Bangladesh, they suggested, we should move the data not the patient. Hospitals are great, but we need every citizen to be engaged in preventive medicine.
  5. The need for an evolutionary jump in governance. The debate now and in the foreseeable future is not about types of political systems, but the need for transparency in every system. As well as the need to shift from nation-states as defining to individuals, regions, and true global governance. Our problems are post-national (finance flows, climate, refugees, taxation, crime) and our solutions must be regional and global.
  6. The end of work as we know it. We need to move from teaching and training for jobs that do not exist to teaching and training for the emerging jobs. Many of these jobs have been created, many will be created in the decades to come. Skill sets that focus on the peer-to-peer revolution, spiritual intelligence, caring for the aged, 3D printing, big and deep Data will become far more important. The core skill will be the ability to adapt to changing conditions.
  7. The inner revolution. While this was confined to counter-culture decades ago, today is part of optimization strategy and part of finding deep purpose and bliss. Meditation remains one of the most important technologies to help young and old create the stillness in life when everything changes.

ASIA 2040

In my latest book, with the Futurist Lu Na, we imagined a new Asia by 2040. Our chapters headlines demonstrate this change, we see occurring:

  • A Bird Cannot Fly On One Wing Alone: The Rise of Asian Women
  • Will You Be Able To Marry Your Robot or Same-Sex Partner? The New Extended Asian Family
  • The End of the God King and the Big Man: Workplace Flexibility
  • Education Factory in Tatters: New Models of Learning and Teaching
  • Gross National Cool: The Wandering Societies of Asia
  • Drown or Swim Together? Social Consequence of Climate Change
  • Living the Asian Dream: The Great Migration to Asia
  • Open Skies and Shared Umbrellas: Towards an Asian Confederation
  • Asian Dynamic Balance: Leading in the Transition to a Spiritual Post-Capitalist Society
  • The Great Leap Frog Forward: An Asia That Can Say Yes to Herself

These chapter headlines are there to help readers become comfortable with dramatic change. While my generation will not marry their robots, by 2050, well…

Of course, other futures are also possible. There could be “a fortress Asia” by then too, or far worse, “a warring Asia”, and, of course, current climate change trends suggest “an Asia underwater”. We are hopeful that as governments, individuals, businesses and non-governmental organizations gain futures literacy, they will work together to create a transformed Asia.

ISKL 2050

And what will happen to ISKL in the long run? What might the futures of education look like? First, we should expect a far greater use of AI in teaching. The repetitive tasks will be done at home via new technologies. Holograms will be the norm. I assume a robot of sorts will be on the Board. Will there still be a need for physical places to meet? While e-games will be the norm, physical places will be necessary to enhance sports learning, emotional intelligence, community connectivity, and spiritual intelligence. But while more technology is likely, there are many uncertainties.

ISKL may be far more distributed, part of a broader global education brand. “International” will likely change as well, especially if by 2050 an Asian confederation has taken shape. Will schools still call themselves international? Will there be a need to?

A second key challenge will likely emerge from the large digital companies of today – Google and Facebook, for example. What if by 2050, they become education providers? Traditional schools and universities will likely then disappear as we move toward global education?

And if these new providers interconnect, will we have finally created the “Global Brain” as imagined by HG Well over eighty years ago.

While many imagine education beyond this planet, I doubt that ISKL will have students and teachers on Mars or the Moon though certainly space science will be a foundational subject.

In my preferred future, teaching and learning will have an extraordinary convergence of nature (breathing, living, growing), technology (breathing, living, growing), and humans (breathing, living, growing) in a distributed environment all focused on using knowledge to solve the planetary problems we face today and in the future.

I am grateful for having spent two wonderful years at ISKl. They shaped my thinking and activities for decades.

[i] I am grateful to Lynette Macdonald for curating this short piece. He questions led to its development. Inayatullah is the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, held at USIM, Malaysia. His recent book is Asia 2038, available from www.metafuture.org.

Transformation 2050 (Book info, 2018)

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Transformation 2050: The Alternative Futures of Malaysian Universities

By Sohail Inayatullah and Fazidah Ithnin (with contributing chapters by Azhari-Karim, Ellisha Nasruddin, Reevany Bustami, Ivana Milojević)

USIM Press, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Bandar Baru Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, 2018

This book presents some of the best thinking, globally and nationally, on the futures of higher education in Malaysia. The collated articles in this volume are produced by experts and practitioners of futures thinking based on current scenarios and their imagination of preferred futures. The current pushes of the future call for institutions of higher education in Malaysia to respond in ways that enhance the system and effectuate the nation's aspiration of becoming a fully developed nation in 2020 and a global economic and social leader by 2050.

Transformation 2050: The Alternative Futures of Malaysian Universities sums up the critical relevance of designing the desired future using the six pillars approach - encouraging university leaders to envision best-case scenarios involving university leadership, teaching, and learning, students and academics.

The following salient points are made by the authors of this book:

First, Malaysian higher education is in the process of massive changes primarily due to globalization, digitalization, the development of a knowledge economy, and demographic transitions.

Second, as much as feasibly possible to create a far more flexible system -  more choices for students and academics. This system can be called the “healthy buffet” or the “education mall” or when it comes to talent, the analogy of the Swiss army knife. In any case, the factory model or the “force-feed” scenario has reached its limits. New systems of assessment and cooperation need to be invented.

Third, the ethical cannot be lost sight of; indeed, it is crucial to the future. Whether the cooperative of professors, the murabbi or the university based on social justice, scholars are clear that the ways forward must enshrine ethics in the future. Opaque institutions biased by politics and bureaucratic inference tinged with favouritism have no place in the future.

Fourth,  all these possible changes must proceed with cooperative leadership and decision-making. Leadership must hold the vision of the future, but full participation and inclusion in the process and implementation is required.

The book is introduced by Dzulkifli Abdul Razak on the transformation potential of scenario planning. This is followed with the following chapters:

  • Transforming public institutions by Azhari-Karim
  • Foresight at Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka by Fazidah Ithnin and colleagues
  • Transformative foresight: University Sains Malaysia leads the way by Ellisha Nasruddin, Reevany Bustami and Sohail Inayatullah
  • Augmented reality, the Murabbi, and the democratization of Higher Education by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević
  • Leadership and governance in Higher Education 2025 by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević
  • A Meta-analysis of higher education scenarios by Fazidah Ithnin and colleagues

Concluding comments on the urgency of change and the role of leadership are provided by Ahmed Yusoff Hassan.

Length: 149 pages

Purchase: PDF (via Metafuture.org) or Paperback (via external publisher)

New Book: Prout in Power (2017)

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Prout in Power: Policy Solutions that Reframe Our Futures

By Sohail Inayatullah

Proutist Bloc India Publications, New Delhi, 2017

 

Created in the late 1950s by the Indian philosopher, mystic, and social activist P.R. Sarkar, Prout or the Progressive Utilization Theory is not only a theory of social change and transformed leadership, but an alternative political-economy; an emergent alternative to capitalism, a vision and comprehensive model of a new future for humanity and the planet. Sarkar’s intent was and is (his organizations continue his work) to create a global spiritual cooperative revolution, a new renaissance. His goal is to infuse individuals with a spiritual presence, the necessary first step in changing the way that we know and order our world.

Divided into six sections – Prout and policy-making; geopolitics; education, social issues, political-economy; and the conclusion – this book moves from theoretical comparisons of Prout and other macro perspectives on the nature of reality to policy and policy-making.

The chapters investigate particular issues facing a nation or institution and articulate alternative futures. Most of the chapters conclude with a discussion of Prout policy implications; some chapters have Prout policy implications built into them. The implications serve as guidelines for the reader. They are not there to close the policy debate but to shift the policy perspective toward Prout. Hopefully in the near future these will become not theoretical implications but real political choices that Prout citizen groups and leaders will make. We imagine that alternative future and begin with the opening up of the realities of today. The way will certainly be very difficult and full of struggles, as Sarkar often reminded us. Humans can always quit, choosing the easier downhill path that moves away from our bliss. For this reason, it is crucial to imagine and feel that the future has already arrived – it is not distant; we are living it today. As Sarkar said: “Even a half hour before your success, you will not know it.”

Length: 260 pages

Purchase: PDF

CLA 2.0 in Farsi (2017)

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با سلام و احترام
 
 
 
مبانی نظری و مورد کاوی های مختلف و متنوع 
 
 
اثر برجسته پرفسور سهیل عنایت الله و ایوانا میلیویچ
 
 
تحلیل لایه ای علت ها. نسخه 2.0
 
 
روش پرکاربرد و معروف آینده پژوهی انتگرال
 
 
 تحلیل لایه ای علت ها یکی از روش های آینده پژوهی است که سهیل عنایت الله آن را ابداع کرده و توسعه داده است. هدف از پیاده سازی تحلیل لایه ای علت ها ساخت شکنی  پدیده های اجتماعی و رسیدن به درکی عمیق از لایه های زیرین مسائل و مشکلات است. پس از آشکار شدن لایه های مختلف پدیده ها و قرار گرفتن متن در بافت نوبت به تدوین و ارائه سناریو های بدیل آینده می رسد.

در تحلیل لایه ای علت ها حالت های مختلف دانستن اعم از علمی- تجربی، تفسیری – تاویلی، و فلسفی – انتقادی یکپارچه می شوند. ارزش و سودمندی این روش در  پیش بینی بهتر و دقیق تر آینده نیست بلکه با ایجاد فضاهای گذار زمینه لازم را برای خلق آینده های بدیل  فراهم می کند. همچنین کاربرد این روش هنگام سیاست گذاری عمومی و درازمدت نهایتا منجر به تهیه بینش های جامع تر، ژرف تر و اثربخش تر می شود.

تحلیل لایه ای علت ها از چهار سطح تشکیل می شود که عبارتند از : لیتانی ، علت های اجتماعی- سیستمی ، جهان بینی و گفتمان مسلط ، و نهایتا اسطوره -استعاره.

 ۱- سطح اول لیتانی نام دارد که در فرهنگ مسیحی به معنی مراسم دعا و مناجات دسته جمعی است. لیتانی سطحی ترین لایه بوده و معرف دیدگاه رسمی و پذیرفته شده از واقعیت است.

۲- سطح دوم سطح علت های اجتماعی و معرف دیدگاه سیستمیک است. در این سطح داده های سطح لیتانی توضیح داده شده و مورد سوال قرار می گیرند.

۳- سطح سوم نمایانگر جهان بینی و گفتمان است. در این سطح فرض های استدلالی ، که بر بستر جهان بینی ها و ایدئولوژی ها قرار داشته و ناخودآگاه هستند واکاویده می شوند.

۴- سطح چهارم نشانگر اسطوره ها و استعاره هاست. این سطح در واقع معرف ابعاد انگیزشی ناخودآگاه موضوع است.

 
 
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دانلود رایگان پیشگفتار کتاب و خلاصه فصل ها

http://www.metafuture.org/cla papers/CLAIntroductionFarsi.pdf

:Applied Introduction to the Art and Science of Futures Studies by Victor Vahidi Motti
گروه گوگل قطب نمای آینده و مخزن بزرگ آن بهترین و بی نظیرترین پایگاه اطلاعات آماده و موجود به زبان فارسی و متمرکز بر آینده پژوهی شامل مطالب متنوع در حوزه های سیاسی، اقتصادی، فنآوری، محیطی، اجتماعی، فرهنگی و غیره در فضای ایران، منطقه و جهان است. برای کسب اطلاعات بیشتر به سایت مرجع چهره جهانی آینده پژوهی، وحید وحیدی مطلق، مراجعه فرمائید.
 

BRICS Youth: Agents of Change (2016)

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The BRICS economies are rising global powers whose young population and sheer size give them huge potential.

In 2015, a special edition of Policy in Focus, a United Nations Development Programme report, urged BRICS countries to focus on generating employment opportunities for youth as a means of meeting development projections.

While young people in these countries may face an uncertain future, China’s example shows that the youth bulge can be a positive agent for change, UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies Professor Sohail Inayatullah told The BRICS Post in an exclusive interview after attending last week’s Futures Summit at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth South Africa.

This follows the BRICS Youth Summit in early July in India, where the theme of the summit was Youth as Bridge for Intra-BRICS Exchanges.

“Either youth find purpose and become entrepreneurs or they stay unemployed and create havoc – [these] are the extremes of a continuum of potential outcomes,” Inayatullah says.

BRICS countries are encouraged to act inclusively on health, education and employment, in order to maximize this demographic dividend’s potential to inject new dynamism into their economies.

“In futures studies we explore alternatives and build in agency and uncertainty to our scenarios and visions, so we have developed four scenarios to help youth cope with an uncertain future,” he said.

Inayatullah says that three drivers of these scenarios are a move from a focus gross domestic product to a triple bottom line that includes the environment, prosperity and inclusion.

There will also be a focus on job sharing since employment opportunities may not be as available to the same extent as robots will increasingly take over functions performed by humans. This will see more flexible work times – instead of a few working seven days a week and many working far less, or remaining unemployed.

The third driver is to create platform cooperatives – in other words, creating more with shared power.

Scenario one

The first scenario is one where the youth bulge results in a demographic dividend as it did in China after 1980. New technologies, which are youth friendly, and new social structures are created by the peer-to-peer sharing economy (economic democracy, cyber cooperatives) leading to youth contributing in ensuring a more equitable, peaceful and prosperous world.

The youth bulge leads to technological innovation as we see currently in places like southern California – the youth create the new “apps” for genomic, robot, big data and peer to peer transformed worlds.

Youth mentor the elderly and the elderly mentor youth. Educational institutions from the university to the primary school create pathways for this mentoring to occur, Inayatullah says.

The other scenarios

In the second scenario, youth are not only unemployed but they feel disempowered as well. Their expectations of a better world are not met, so they take to arms or social media to voice their discontent as we saw in South Africa in the #Feesmustfall campaign. So the youth become increasingly disruptive.

In the third scenario, youth unable to gain their perceived fair share of political power create their own artificial worlds, retreating to this altered reality. Within this world, they create their own forms of currency – bitcoin today, for example – and forms of identity – avatars, for example.

In a way, this is similar to the reality of many developing nations where some youth live in traditional agrarian societies, others live in growing middle class urban environment and others in westernized enclaves in capital and commercial cities with direct links to youth from all over the world.

In the fragmented future, the inter-generational links become broken with extended families in developing nations disappearing and coming together, if at all, only for economic reasons.

Inayatullah explains that digital natives are not in conflict with the elderly – they live in different worlds. The main assumption behind this future is that the new technologies allow the creation of alternative worlds. Groups can be in similar physical spaces but different techno-mental spaces – strangers in the virtual night.

In the fourth long-term 2050 prediction, a shift in the nature of the world economy makes issues of youth and ageing far less important as we move to a post-capitalist society.

Whether this occurs because of new sharing technologies or by developments in 3D printing and other low cost manufacturing revolutions or through Big Data and the full transparent information society is not certain.

But what is clear is that in this future, the youth bulge becomes far less of an incendiary issue as jobs are far less tied to wealth.

In a post-capitalist society where technology allows for survival for all, fighting over scarce resources becomes a non-issue. Finding meaning, engaging in politics, creating new sources of wealth and exploration become far more important. With jobs and identity and jobs and survival de-linked, the real issue will become which societies can create harmony and identity.

“Teaching will be focused on preparing futures not just for the new jobs, but in a world where many traditional jobs will disappear. The focus will be on teaching flexibility as some students will have portfolio careers – what they can do, not positions held – and multiple careers (changing careers every few years),” Inayatullah says.

Some will stay focused in one area, but many will wander innovating to create new types of work. Technology will create new categories of jobs, some unimaginable through today’s lenses,” he said.

“If developments in robotics continue at their current pace and universal basic income becomes the planetary norm, we would enter a post-scarcity world, where current ways of acting and being would be disadvantageous. Believing that tomorrow will be like today is a precursor to obsolescence,” he concluded.

Helmo Preuss for The BRICS Post in Pretoria

Published on August 23, 2013

http://thebricspost.com/brics-youth-agents-of-change/#.WD5fmrl3CUl