http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk A scrapbook of progress, ideas, emerging findings, and developments from the Beyond Current Horizons programme Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:10:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We're still editing the draft scenarios, which is stimulating and tricky, like all the best tasks. We'll be talking about them here very soon: in the meantime, here's a tiny injection of the sort of thing we won't be talking about (at least, not right now): Today for lunch we had ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2009/03/19/245/ While we're putting together the scenarios from the last meeting of the BCH Advisory Group, here's a more involved future world: JG Ballard's Drowned World on BBC7 (UK only, available till Sunday). Published in 1962, it's worth attention as a source for another mythic strand to draw on in response ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2009/03/02/243/ Well. That was pretty exhilarating. We've just had the privilege of spending three days in the Cotswolds with our Expert Advisory Group, laying out the structure of the three worlds that form the basis of our BCH scenarios. We'll share more detail about these scenarios in a later post: this ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2009/02/27/239/ In Kevin Kelly's piece The Missing Near Future I was struck by this passage: As an audience we can believe an alien present. It’s like today, only more so. Maybe an alternative version of today. We can also easily be persuaded to believe in a far future. We feel sure that ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/11/21/165/ Rain, spreading east: hearing James Naughtie say these words as I started my day might be why I'm thinking about the end of the world. But I'm realising, as I send more time thinking about the future, that a more likely reason is that I'm very bad at thinking of ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/08/01/69/ A fascinating part of futures work is looking, not at the developments and new advances that may take place, but at the things that remain constant and the current activities, trends and objects that may end. The speed of change is often talked about - especially by those making arguments ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/25/28/ Friday afternoon! Time for a video: H. G. Wells and Alexander Korda's 1936 film Things To Come, based on Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come. It starts in 1940 as a world war starts to unfold, a prediction Wells got wrong by a year: other prescient elements include the ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/18/25/ The Institute for the Future and Jane McGonigal are launching the "world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game" in September - Superstruct!. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SEPTEMBER 22, 2019 Humans have 23 years to go Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens. PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/17/19/ It seems this may become a regular focus of some of my posts - the different ways to think about the future and some of the difficulties different approaches bring. I stumbled across an article that recalls an approach used by Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno to "loosen up our expectations ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/17/16/ "...in the year 2025, things have calmed down a lot. There are still some people living the cities, but on the whole they aren't nice places to be. The only way to make a reasonable living there now is by prostitution, drug-dealing, or protection rackets. Those who aren't involved in ... http://blog.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/2008/07/16/12/