• Eltham contends that many of the artists he has worked with in TINA and SOOB are "micro-entrepreneurs" who are able to multi-task, work on many different projects at once, collaborate with a range of stakeholders, promote their skills, and handle business functions such as budgeting and marketing. We debated how SOOB and TINA alumnus might translate to corporate business.
• We discussed Eltham's research into bushfire science and hurricane monitoring, and how it might be applied to counterinsurgency and counterterrorism dynamics. Eltham pointed me to a Michael Lewis article in The New Yorker on hurricanes and risk. We talked about the lack of long-term data for hurricane forecasting and the risk profiles of possible hurricanes in Queensland.
• Eltham told me an anecdote about the US Navy's risk management system for its nuclear submarines: any employee at any time can "red flag" a problem or issue that goes directly to a US Navy team for review and actioning. "Killing the messenger" or obsessing about the bureaucratic politics of communication flows is not an option when you're responsible for a nuclear submarine fleet, Eltham observed.
• I discovered we had both read Niall Ferguson's work on counterfactuals, empire, virtual history, and his LA Times columns. We were also fans of the Israeli strategic thinker Martin van Creveld.
• We debated the approaches, merits and differences of Australian security and strategic thinkers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to Paul Monk. You can read Eltham's critique of ASPI here. Eltham and I agreed that the ideological focus of left-wing politicians often meant that there wasn't a strong analytical culture of defence and strategic studies. Two of Eltham's New Mathilda articles on Australian defence: Angus's Vision and Brendan's Toys and The Toughest Kids on The Block.
• We traded analysts that we kept an eye on, from Fred Kaplan and Stratfor's George Friedman to hilarious "contrarians" such as The War Nerd who dared to say publicly and without apologies what many realist analysts had privately thought.
• Eltham has a science and statistics background so we discussed his research training: how he approaches a research question, the frameworks he uses to assess data and evidence, and the various statistical tools. This hypothesis-driven approach is very different to the belief-driven approach in cultural and media studies. This was a really useful overview, as I'd been reading statistics guides for the Six Sigma methodology.
• Eltham and his partner Sarah-Jane are working on video projects as the Ministry of Truth TV.
The Terminus Hotel conversation was one of the best I've had in 2007.
]]>Blade Runner: The Final Cut trailer
]]> I first heard of Scott's film and Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? in a 1983 Dick obituary for the Australian science magazine Omega, similar to the US magazine Omni from the same period. The faded VHS copy of Blade Runner at the local video-store never lived up to the hype. I didn't experience the full visual impact of Scott's film until I was an undergraduate in La Trobe University's cinema studies program in the mid-1990s which screened a laserdisc version of the original cut and the 1992 director's cut. References to Blade Runner, Dick and his VALIS experience would pop up in editorial conversations for 21C Magazine and Disinformation throughout the mid-to-late 1990s.As Scott acknowledges, Blade Runner transplanted Hong Kong's seedy underworld into New York's urban sprawl. In doing so, Scott foresaw the contemporary anxieties about megacities and shadow globalisation. Blade Runner's tech-noir imagery would also influence theorists from Erik Davis and Mark Dery to Mark Davis' City of Quartz (Verso Books, New York, 1991) and its school of radical urban theory.
Kaplan's article talks about the post-production battles around Blade Runner's original release and the legal negotiations for the film's 25th anniversary. Scott disputes several of the anecdotes in Paul Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner (Harper, New York, 1996) and similar books. Scott's Blade Runner: The Final Cut also follows another Digital Hollywood trend: an archival-like obsession with DVD extras such as different production versions, commentaries and documentaries.
]]>[it] makes scenario creation simple by allowing sit- uations and events to be described as combinations of tags, which are short text labels. Then, situa- tions and events are joined together in networks that illustrate the possibility of events transforming one scenario into another. Scenarios can be quickly as- sembled from existing tag sets, from scenarios the user has previously created, from scenarios that other users have shared, and by tags provided by the sys- tem on installation.My interest in this in part stems from my desire to see many many people engaged in the process of futures exploration. Early on in my discovery of Futures Studies in 2000 I was inspired by Robert Jungk's 'Future Workshops', which aimed to popularise the visioning of preferred futures in Europe for citizen empowerment in the face of creeping technocracy. Later I worked to link action research with futures studies, as I felt we / I needed to create a bridge between the visions of futures and action / innovation in the present. John Cassel's concept certainly carries many of the principles on action research, such as stating one's assumptions explicitly, the heuristic evaluation review of facts / concerns, and providing an open and participatory space where such work can unfold. Yet like the branching system it wants to create, such projects also branch into different possible futures, so I will list some of my fears and preferences: - It would be a shame to see such a platform dominated by the affluent, which is almost inevitable when we think about who has IT infrastructure and bandwidth / speed. How does one create such a system so that it can reflect that experiences of the majority world, and their perspective? - It would be a shame if the scenario connect approach or culture were wedded to a positivist epistemology that dismissed the moral / ethical and normative dimensions. We are still haunted by David Hume. Can this system accommodate the need to develop preferable and ethical futures, not just descriptions of what we think will / can happen? - It would be interesting to see whether it is possible to develop layered futures based on Inayatullah and Slaughter's categories (eg litany / pop, social analysis / problem oriented and worldview / epistemology), incorporating both empirical, systems based and epistemically reflexive approaches, or on Chris Stewart's framework for Integral scenario development. Is this asking too much for an open online approach? - Can such a platform also facilitate the development of policy, projects and innovations, eg action-influence in the present? To satisfy me, it must be more than just speculation and mental exercises, we need to link these approaches with wise social change that addresses the importance of developing socially just and ecologically sustainable futures. The project throws up some interesting questions and challenges. The project is in the development stage, and John Cassel is currently creating the technical foundations and building a collaborative team. But he should be commended for taking a bold leap into a new frontier for scenario development. Anyone interested should contact: john [dot] benjamin [dot] cassel [at] gmail [dot] com View the project concept overview at: http://scen-connect.sourceforge.net/]]>
Amongst Sharp's observations are reflections on Fondation Sciences Citoyennes which organised the conference, and his meeting with La Fabrique du Futur founder Eric Seulliet.
This is familiar territory to Strategic Foresight practitioners: Richard Slaughter has articulated the vision of Social Foresight on the basis of institutions and movements that builds social and civilisational capabilities, notably in his book Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight (RoutledgeFalmer, New York, 2003).
Eric Seulliet's connection of foresight and innovation has parallels with the European tradition of the World Futures Studies Federation, and many other practitioners from designer Bruce Mau to Jose M. Ramos' work on anticipatory innovation.
Sharp's report suggests the transdisciplinary frontiers of foresight + design are morphing as Slaughter and others suggested from a conceptual capability via methodologies such as Eric von Hippel's innovation toolkits into a social capacity.
]]>- John Fowles, The Aristos (1964).I first heard of bohemian muse Edie Sedgwick in 1996 whilst writing a 21C Magazine profile on maverick physicist Jack Sarfatti. George Hickenlooper’s Factory Girl (official site, IMDB page & Wikipedia entry) has received flak for its portrayal of Edie, Andy Warhol’s Factory, musician Bob Dylan and the “swinging ‘60s”. Despite this, Factory Girl has several themes of interest to Strategic Foresight practitioners. Spoilers warning!]]> Factory Girl's narrative arc is essentially a lifecycle of Edie’s awakening, challenge and conflict in attempts at maturation, decline, death and apotheosis. The film’s scenes move through a series of Edie’s decisions and reactions, framed retrospectively via a Santa Barbara clinic session: to leave Radcliffe’s art school and move to New York; to meet Pop maestro Andy Warhol and appear in The Factory’s underground productions; have a romantic affair with the Dylanesque ‘Musician’; get manipulated by Warhol and replaced by Nico; fall into drug addiction; and escape to San Francisco. Factory Girl ends with an epigraph about Edie’s death which suggests a failed attempt at remanifestation. Sarfatti and others wonder what Edie could have been. Factory Girl is thus an example of Johan Galtung’s “biography as microhistory” in Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah’s Macrohistory and Macrohistorians (Westport CN, Praeger Publishers, 1998), p. 231: the personal ‘I’ versus the deluge of sociocultural, civilisational, cosmological and macrohistorical forces. Other ways to conceptualise this are popular understandings of the chaos and complexity sciences, E.J. Gold’s Life In The Labyrinth meme, and process models such as George Gurdjieff’s Law of Seven octave that are aware of hazard and randomness. For the film’s viewers and perhaps for Edie, these impersonal forces are crystallised in Warhol whose Factory salon is situated on the dissipative edge between exploitative power and transgressive emancipation. Factory Girl might be historically inaccurate and biographically unfair to Warhol here but it intuits the attraction-fascination-magnetism-repulsion dynamic that surrounds “genius”. Initially, Warhol offers Edie a way to transcend her profane existence, to awaken and step into these broader forces as a change agent, to gain the “personal freedom” that novelist John Fowles discusses in The Aristos (1964). Edie’s dramatic impact on fashionistas and journalists also mirrors an inner crystallisation of essence: the “force of character” (James Hillman) as a bulwark against the paparazzi. Factory Girl’s final third angered many Warhol fans by capturing the flipside: what happens when the dream is over, and when differences trigger a “faultline” or “schism”. The trigger for this is ‘The Musician’ who Warhol perceives as competition, and who Edie senses as an alternative muse for her self-growth and individuation. Feeling betrayed, Warhol removes his attention and discards Edie for a new chanteuse, Nico. Edie first tries to regain Warhol’s trust through self-degradation at the hand of The Factory’s manipulative film crew, then has a reaction formation to Warhol’s charisma and “identity theft” of her dreams, and finally spirals into drug-fuelled oblivion at the Chelsea Hotel when the parade has passed her by. This narrative arc evokes Anthony Storr's study of charisma and prophetic gurus, Feet Of Clay (1997). Warhol's "exchange" with Edie is ultimately revealed in the film as an exploitative form of vampyrism, Warhol's defence against Fowles' nemo. Edie is given at least two opportunities by different co-journeyers to escape Warhol, her dark family past and her fate. The co-journeyers act as alarm clocks and mirrors to warn and reflect back to Edie her trajectory. The first is a Radcliffe college friend, whose photograph frames Edie's innocence versus her self-dissolution, and who introduces her to the second: 'The Musician'. In several important scenes Edie and 'The Musician' debate their personal values, authenticity, the role of political awareness and social protest, and their respective priorities. For me, the pivotal scene in Factory Girl involves a confrontation in which 'The Musician' attempts a Gurdjieffian Shock channelled through Allan Watts' detachment: he throws a treasured motorcycle off a pier in an attempt to show Edie that she must wake up now. But this isn't enough to overcome her fashionista ego-inflation and infatuation with Warhol nor her "consensus trance" (Charles T. Tart, Milton Erikson). The feedback loop takes time to occur, and by the film's end Edie recounts in the Santa Barbara clinic room how she is scarred, yet more grounded, and even hopeful about the future.]]>
Russian scientists in the Khibinsky Mountains in the Arctic Circle have made an important scientific discovery. They've found a new mineral which absorbs radiation. It does not yet have an official name and is known only as number 27-4. It can absorb radioactivity from liquid nuclear waste.]]> "It can extract radioactive substances from any water-based solution and so has a very important practical significance," said Yakov Pakhomovsky, the head of the Kolsky Research Institute. After coming into contact with the mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe. Had this mineral been available to physicists after the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island disasters, the consequences might have been very different, as both accidents resulted in contamination from radioactive water. However, it is not as simple as it sounds. Scientists say they need tonnes of it and so far they have only discovered a few grammes. But they are confident that they can chemically reproduce it on a much larger scale. "We need to learn its properties and so that chemists can reproduce it on an unlimited scale," said Grigory Ivanyuk, from the Kolsky Research Institute. Every year ten new minerals are discovered in the Arctic Circle, and one third of all worldwide mineral discoveries are on the Kolsky Peninsula. The latest find may prove to be extremely significant for the nuclear industry. ]]>
13. Fiscal humbuggery and other cunning plans Michael Pascoe writes: "One of the more spectacular bits of fiscal humbuggery we have ever seen in this country" is Laura Tingle’s AFR description of the Howard/Costello money jar approach to having a large surplus and eating it too. In the same tabloid, former NSW Auditor-General Tony Harris bells the most cunning part of the plan: The government can safely promise to establish numerous money jars for popular causes and dedicate their future income because ministers know they can cut the normal budgetary allocations to the same causes if circumstances warrant it. Those in the university sector who rapturously welcomed the higher education fund must have believed its income would always be additional to normal budgetary allocations. But ministers made no such promise. But the man with the Magic Pudding surplus can pull more strategic political tricks than that out of his growing variety of "future funds". Firstly, it makes possible an election platform that promises many billions of dollars of necessary investment initiatives without incurring immediate Reserve Bank wrath. Secondly, anyone remember what happens to NGOs that criticise the Federal Gvernment? Right. So hands up all the university vice-chancellors who’d happily see their institution’s name attached to criticism of government policy just when they’re begging for one of Costello’s research infrastructure grants. Ditto health professionals seeking a slice of the "Health and Medical Investment Fund", ditto lobby groups and governments wanting some of the mooted “economic and social infrastructure” fund. Thirdly, it’s a nice way of camouflaging the central problem in funding Australia’s inadequate education, health and infrastructure. As Macquarie Bank’s Rory Robertson has definitively explained, Canberra’s share of the national pudding is running at three-decade highs while what it passes on to the states is running at three-decade lows – GST pea-and-thimble tricks notwithstanding. That’s partly why Canberra has so much money and state services range from average to absolutely appalling. Fourthly, the money jars mean the Magic Pudding spawns Magic Pork Barrels – a never-ending source of Commonwealth largesse to be trumpeted by smiling federal ministers being photographed with grateful recipients. Fifthly, it’s one more step towards the One True Way for the Great Centraliser. The Coalition has been happy to use funding power to enforce its IR ideology on universities and state construction contracts, so one presumes the multiplying funds will be capable of achieving the same ends among those applying for grants. And finally, it partially satisfies Costello’s stated initial reason for setting up the Future Fund, as reported in the up-coming Howard biography – it’s a way of keeping the hands of Kevin Rudd and John Howard off the money. It could be worse, but it could also be better.]]>