New Thinking for Positive Futures
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In addition to taking in the incredible natural beauty of Hawaii, we had the pleasure of meeting with a number of prominent futurists who call Honolulu home. Foremost among them was Dr. Jim Dator, a professor of political science at UHawaii and the Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies. Dr. Dator (at right in photo) has a place of special significance to Michael because his article on tsunamis of change was the first thing that he read when our friend and colleague, Michele Bowman, helped him formally train to lead teams in the development of scenarios.  Jim’s range of activities as a
futurist literally knows no
earthly
bounds since he is co-director of the International
Space University’s
department that is the leading source of thinking on the design of
governance systems for space colonies. Dator and his associates, such as Stuart Candy (center in photo) of the Aiglatson Institute and Seong Won, a visiting scholar from South Korea, are very hard at work inventing new methods for discovering and discussing the future. Recently, Jim and his colleagues completed a set of fascinating future immersion experiences involving approximately 300 leaders from across the spectrum of Hawaiian society. Using “deductive forecasting,” Jim’s empirical research indicates that each of us hold variants of one of four mindsets or “documents” regarding the future...  Continuation
of growth: Progress, development, and continued economic growth
are alternate expressions of the “official” image of the future of the
United States. Collapse: Continued economic growth is inherently destructive as viewed from multiple perspectives. Disciplined society: While aspects of progress and development have been good overall, continuing on the current path is neither sustainable nor preferable and that organizing society around a set of overarching values is an immediate requirement. Transformational society: Individuals in this group foresee an end to current forms and the emergence of new (rather than a return to traditional) beliefs, behaviors, organizational models, and life forms either through spirituality or technology. Using a wide variety of props and data, participants in the exercise were “incasted” into Hawaiian futures built up from these general propositions for humanity’s possibilities, e.g., about 150 people spent time living in a future where a military dictatorship appointed a titular monarch after the withdrawal of the US from the islands. (Hawaii was a kingdom until 1893.) Art of the Future was pleased to make new friends and to have the opportunity to discuss Structural Dynamics with a team who are making such an important contribution to futures studies. We also met with Richard Lum, CEO and Alison Machida, COO, of Vision Foresight Strategy, while in Honolulu. The firm is a player in Hawaii’s active futurist community, and Richard and Michele Bowman are co-inventors of a distinctive future scanning technology called VERGE, which looks at emerging phenomena and trends in how people “define, relate, create, consume and connect.”  Richard, like Jim Dator, is also a
political scientist, but his focus
on governance systems is presently a little bit more down to earth with
a particular interest in what it will take for an informed citizenry to
recognize the value and legitimacy of representation in our current
form of politics as contrasted with the assumption of direct
participation in decision-making, which many citizens find themselves
frustrated not to possess. Obviously, this is a very important
question, and some authorities, such as James Dale Davidson and Lord
William Rees-Mogg believe that we are entering an era where social
service systems will have to compete for the loyalty and investment of
increasingly powerful “sovereign
individuals” on the basis of a
cafeteria-style business model. From Hawaii, we traveled on to the annual meeting of the Association for Strategic Planning in Los Angeles. A description of this stimulating professional event can be found on ASP’s website.  In addition to our networking and information exchange at the conference, we visited the Getty Center, an enormous, and sometimes controversial, complex dedicated to the artistic interests of J. Paul Getty, the deceased oil billionaire. Richard Meier’s architecture was our highlight of that experience. Given our commitment to the creation of life sustaining environments, we were impressed by the attention paid to the design details which both consciously and unconsciously put the visitor in a receptive and pleasurable frame of mind. For example, we were very impressed by the way in which the sky itself was used as an element of the artistic experience, constantly appearing as a picture in different “frames” that provoke a kind of quiet awe and gentility. Parties in fractious conflicts should meet in pacfic surroundings such as these. |
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Aloha... |
