augmenting human intellect By “augmenting human intellect” we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble. And by “complex situations” we include the professional problems of diplomats, executives, social scientists, life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers--whether the problem situation exists for twenty minutes or twenty years.

Gmail - [PR] Costs of War, Post-Conflict Lessons, Resolutions, Tenet Resignation, Troops, Castrothe fact that these "friendly" regimes were growing richer and richer meant that the traditional non-military levers of U.S. influence--economic aid and private sector development--that proved so potent in helping Western Europe rebuild after World War II were meaningless. What were left were military-to-military interactions, which again because of oil revenues, came down heavily on weapons purchases and contracts for maintenance, repair parts, and training support.

Gmail - [PR] Costs of War, Post-Conflict Lessons, Resolutions, Tenet Resignation, Troops, CastroMost Americans are somewhat aware of the body count for the United States and its allies, now amounting to 952 dead and 5,134 wounded. Yet, most are not aware that the number of Iraqis killed is more than 10 times the number of Americans who have lost their lives. Most don't know or haven't thought about how many children could have obtained health insurance or how many elementary school teachers could have been hired with the $151 billion spent on the war so far. Most don't know the enormous financial burden shouldered by the majority of U.S. military families. Most don't know that the billions spent on the war have expanded an already huge budget deficit that will greatly burden the next generation. Most are barely aware of the legion of other costs--economic, human, environmental and more--born by millions of people in Iraq and around the world.

Global Trends in or AffectingOrganizational Structures in the 21st Century: "Technological change breeds technological change. This is because technological change is a function of knowledge, and knowledge is increasing rapidly. This is a function many things, including: larger population (more minds working on problems) ,better tools for research (fast computers, ability to look up other people's work) , more knowledge (it takes knowledge to make more knowledge) "

Foreign Affairs - A Global Power Shift in the Making - James F. Hoge, Jr.: "At the international level, Asia's rising powers must be given more representation in key institutions, starting with the UN Security Council. This important body should reflect the emerging configuration of global power, not just the victors of World War II. The same can be said of other key international bodies. A recent Brookings Institution study observed, 'There is a fundamental asymmetry between today's global reality and the existing mechanisms of global governance, with the G-7/8 -- an exclusive club of industrialized countries that primarily represents Western culture -- the prime expression of this anachronism.'"

Foreign Affairs - A Global Power Shift in the Making - James F. Hoge, Jr.: "Major shifts of power between states, not to mention regions, occur infrequently and are rarely peaceful. In the early twentieth century, the imperial order and the aspiring states of Germany and Japan failed to adjust to each other. The conflict that resulted devastated large parts of the globe. Today, the transformation of the international system will be even bigger and will require the assimilation of markedly different political and cultural traditions. This time, the populous states of Asia are the aspirants seeking to play a greater role. Like Japan and Germany back then, these rising powers are nationalistic, seek redress of past grievances, and want to claim their place in the sun. Asia's growing economic power is translating into greater political and military power, thus increasing the potential damage of conflicts. "

Foreign Policy for a New RealityIntelligence sharing, law enforcement, and military cooperation are essential to counter-proliferation and counterterrorism operations. International treaties and conventions must be strengthened to bring rule of law to the global stage. nMust work together on the big global problems that threaten us all nTHERE WILL BE NO SUCCESS WITHOUT COLLABORATION

Foreign Policy for a New Reality
Varied, Unpredictable, Asymmetrical (transnational) Environments:
• Natural catastrophe; potential for rapid, destabilizing changes in climate;
•“Asymmetry” derived from the plummeting price of manufacturing weapons and carrying out attacks against targets nresistant strains of highly infectious diseases; nhacking and information warfare; nbioterror and radiological weapons, delivery systems

Foreign Policy for a New RealityThe wars of the future will not be fought so much over national borders or natural resources, as over access to information, protection of nationals, and access to energy and technologies.

Foreign Policy for a New RealityMultilational corporations already form 53% of the world’s largest economies.

The Arlington Institute: "John Petersen?s 'Foreign Policy for a New Reality' presentation at the American Imperium Conference, Swarthmore College, 19 April 2004 (152 KB PPT Document) (Right Click and Save As to Download PPT Document)"

It would make no sense to solve our domestic energy problem by causing a number of equally significant, enduring crises in other parts of the world All of these initiatives must be implemented while keeping in mind the larger objective of maintaining geopolitical stability. It would make no sense to solve our domestic energy problem by causing a number of equally significant, enduring crises in other parts of the world . . .

The inevitable shift in primary energy How might the U.S. hurry the inevitable shift in primary energy supply, which has happened many times before in history, to a more stable, clean alternative to oil?

The inevitable shift in primary energy How might the U.S. hurry the inevitable shift in primary energy supply, which has happened many times before in history, to a more stable, clean alternative to oil?

FT.com / Industries / BP Browne: "Indeed, the absence of natural resources constituted an advantage. Japan, West Germany, Singapore all profited when they were forced to develop industrial or intellectual capital."

Sony prepares to make the Qrio smarter than us - Engadget - www.engadget.com: "According to the Nikkei newspaper, Sony?s next project for its little Qrio robot is to up its brainpower to near-supercomputer levels. Given its size, it doesn?t come as much of a surprise to find that they?re not going to try and shoehorn something into its head. Instead, the plan is to link it via a high-speed wireless connection to a grid of 250 computers that?ll do the thinking. "

TheStar.com - They make mistakes ? they're only inhuman: "A Web site called Engadget (http://www.engadget.com) has a section devoted to the increasing presence of robots in human activities, with recent new stories about robot servers at a Chicago-area McDonald's restaurant, and advances in technology making robots walk more like humans than ever before. "

GW Forecast: "Social Barriers To Technological Change"..What Roger Bacon’s work accomplished was to open for debate the concept that focusing wealth, power, and knowledge on developing technology was acceptable behavior for the elite of the age.

GW Forecast: "Social Barriers To Technological Change"..Through unmeasured observations Aristotle reasoned that the speed at which objects fell was directly proportional to their weight. In other words, a ten-pound object would fall ten times as fast as a one pound object. There is no record of anyone disputing that finding until 1586 when a Dutch mathematician, Simon Stevin, dropped two stones of markedly different weights from a second story window. He found that they hit the ground at essentially the same instant.

Social Barriers To Technological ChangeFor 2,000 years social mores formed an almost impenetrable barrier to technological development. When that barrier came down near the end of the Middle Ages, the path was opened for massive changes in energy sources, for initiation of the Industrial Revolution and for life as we know it today. ...The Greek philosophers, for all of their delving into how the world was made up and how things worked, had a strong aversion to the development of technology. They called it banausikon, meaning, “fit for mechanics.” It was considered a filthy business beneath the dignity of any intelligent, thinking person. Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) held that industries that earned wages degraded the mind and were unworthy of the free man. He would not stoop so low as to attempt to verify by measured observation his reasoning concerning physics or dynamics. As a result, some bad science went unchallenged for almost 2,000 years.

GW ForecastThe challenges we will face in this and subsequent decades will be global, and only a global consensus will allow for progress on problems of population, environmental sustainability, space development, and
human bioengineering.

GW ForecastThe third decade of the 21st Century will see expansion into new frontiers. These frontiers will be in space, biology, and global ethics. The genetic revolution will have moved beyond curing diseases of the mind and body and will have turned to the last taboo of modern society, the improvement of the human genetic code.

GW ForecastOptimism and pessimism are normal obstacles to forecasting, but they can be ameliorated through methodological rigor. Accidents, serendipity, and wild cards must also be dealt with to provide sound forecasts, and time horizons clearly play a crucial role. Forecasts of the next five to ten years are often so predictable that they fall into the realm of market research,
while those more than thirty or forty years away are mostly speculation. This leaves a ten to twenty-year window in which to make useful forecasts. It is this timeframe that the GWU Forecast addresses.

GW Forecastindustry recognizes that the acceptance of new technologies is driven by consumer awareness, needs, lifestyles, values, and a host of other market factors.

GW ForecastYet such changes encourage a spiral of cross-pollination that promises to increase the pace of innovation so greatly that modern societies may soon be transformed.4

GW ForecastRevolutionary innovation is occurring in all scientific and technological fields. This wave of unprecedented change is driven primarily by advances in information technology (IT), but is much larger in scope that the Information Revolution – it is a Technology Revolution.

Welcome to Future Survey: "'China is likely to overtake and India to equal the US economy in size by mid-century. And, as the world's economic center of gravity shifts to Asia, US preeminence will inevitably diminish.'
�Jeffrey D. Sachs of the Columbia University Earth Institute, 'Welcome to the Asian Century' (FS 26:1/021)"

Welcome to Future Survey: "World population, now 6.3 billion, will grow to an estimated 8.9 billion by 2050. Nearly all of the 2.6 billion increase will be in developing countries. This new projection for 2050 is lower by 400 million than the one made in 2000, due to an increase in AIDS-related deaths (278 million by 2050). "

Welcome to Future Survey: "An effective method to prevent civil conflicts in Africa would be a system of international guarantees that offers incentives for better outcomes. Treaty agreements between African governments and international groups should guarantee the regime against coup, invasion, or rebellion, in return for minimal human rights, independent courts, and democracy. "

Welcome to Future Survey: "Along with the International Criminal Court, a UN Constabulary is needed--a permanent force with assertive police powers to enforce international criminal law and deter potential criminals. Saul Mendlovitz, 'An Essential Institution for the 21st Century' (FS 26:1/002)"

Welcome to Future Survey: "'The shift in the burden of paying for college from the government to students, a trend over the past 20 years, has eroded equal opportunity for low-income students.'"

World Future Society 2004 Conference:The dragon is far ahead. China’s GDP is $5,000 per capita, compared with India’s $2,600. Only 10% of Chinese live below the poverty line; in India, the number is 25%. There are obvious reasons for China’s lead. In development, China has solved many problems that India did not: 86% of the Chinese people can read and write, China’s one-child policy keeps its population stable, and Communism stripped away nearly all of China’s social inequality.
India, however, has a tradition of democracy some 2,000 years old, and has opened itself to the world. Most important of all, India’s educated classes speak English; in a world increasingly dominated by English-speaking industries such as services, computers, and telecommunications, this is an overwhelming advantage. The dragon and the tiger each have continuing problems. Yet, India today is meeting its challenges more successfully. If we look 25 years ahead, the tiger will come out ahead.

OECD Observer: Development challenge: "One of the oft-overlooked facts about the OECD is that its member countries handle over 90% of global bilateral development aid. The lion�s share of foreign direct investment also comes from the OECD area.
Add to this the fact that OECD members� trade, agriculture, intellectual property and environment policies, to name but a few, have huge impacts on people all over the world. Add as well the fact that, for over 40 years, aid ministers and heads of aid agencies have gathered under the auspices of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the principal body through which the OECD deals with development assistance, and a picture of the organisation as an important player in global development begins to emerge."

OECD Observer: Why change is so difficult: Some reflections on the political economy of reform:One supposes that crisis conditions may also, in the end, prove a sufficient condition for reform, at least in mature democracies where one imagines that good sense will prevail in the end. But it is clear that the timing of reform depends on political leadership – in the first instance leadership to make clear that there is a crisis.

OECD Observer: Why change is so difficult: Some reflections on the political economy of reform: "economic reform is policy change directed at improving the static or dynamic efficiency of resource allocation in the economy. "

OECD Observer: Why change is so difficult: Some reflections on the political economy of reform I argue that significant reform requires a confluence of two factors that do not often come together: a broad-based popular sentiment that “things have to change”, and a leadership that is able to translate this broad dissatisfaction into a concrete programme that crystallises the issues and points to their solution. Most of the time, democratic politics turns out to be quite conservative. Mandates for real change are rarely extended to governments.

Gmail - Worldwatch: Antibacterials & Watching What We EatTotal length of nine larger oil pipelines now operating or under construction in politically volatile areas where recent unrest could make them prime rebel or terrorist targets* 14,872 km

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source: "After all, perhaps for the first time since the British burned the White House in 1813, Americans had foreign policy happening to themselves, rather than it being something that their rulers inflicted on others. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source: "One simple basis of the 'Bush boom' is that China is recycling its US$100 billion-plus trade surplus with the United States back into dollars, and especially into Treasury bonds. Almost half of US Treasury bonds are now owned by Asian countries. "

A habit of thoughtWhat you could say is that we’re trying to encourage a habit of thought. Now habits of thought do actually have outcomes. We don’t particularly predict those: we’re not trying to predict. We’re simply trying to extend the idea of the length of the future that we think about.

Decreasing horizon We were also aware as we looked around that most of the ambitions and objectives of people in corporations and in government, even in education had become closer and closer in terms of time so corporations were living in fear of their quarterly results and politicians were living in fear of the next opinion poll. There seemed to be an ever - decreasing horizon into the future and very little encouragement from people in any direction to lay long term plans. No politician wants to start on a plan that doesn’t yield results pretty quickly at least within his or her term of office. The worst thing of all is if it yields results in the opposition’s term of office and of course the media don’t help this by always focusing on things that seem like blue sky projects and criticising them as being stupidly idealistic and pointless.

Place des Nations unies Plus le poids d’un État est actuellement ou potentiellement faible, plus cet État tend à considérer l’ONU comme la clef de voûte de l’ordre mondial. Ainsi, pour la France, les références à l’ONU se sont-elles multipliées à mesure que sa puissance relative diminuait. En tant qu’unique superpuissance – et de loin –, l’idéologie néo-conservatrice aidant, l’Amérique d’aujourd’hui ne reconnaît aucun rôle central à l’Organisation. Elle refuse purement et simplement le postulat – non conforme à la réalité historique de l’après-Seconde Guerre mondiale – d’après lequel la légalité d’une intervention extérieure dépendrait d’un vote au Conseil de sécurité.

People's Daily Online -- Is it foolish for Japan to compete with China?: "Some Japanese politicians and scholars believe that 2015 will be the year when qualitative change will take place in China-US relations. By then China's military strength would be on a par with that of the United States. There would be three possible situations in China-US relationship: confrontation, alliance or cold war. Japan believes that the first two possibilities are very unlikely. The most possible situation in Sino-US ties would be one of interdependence under a cold war state. Japan must now consider how to handle relationship with China under a Sino-US cold war state. "

People's Daily Online -- Is it foolish for Japan to compete with China?: "In relevance to other nations in the world, none of them is like Japan that has a long and close historical and cultural origin with China. China's culture has a far-reaching influence on Japanese culture and national character. Chinese today even go to Japan to look for the long disappeared customs typical of the Han (206 BC-220) and Tang (618-907) dynasties. However, is there any other nation like Japan that had so deeply hurt the Chinese people? As a matter of fact, the injury inflicted on the Chinese people by Japanese invasion of China was far greater than that by any other foreign invasion in Chinese history. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Faced with opposition to its attempt to assert leadership in Europe, the Franco-German combine remains bound into N.A.T.O. and is left with its economic and diplomatic cards. By taking advantage of the internal conflict within the European Union ('Old Europe and New Europe'), the United States has helped to block the emergence of a full-fledged regional power center. It is not able to do the same elsewhere. China and Russia will lead the move toward multi-polarism and other powers around the world will follow them whenever it is in their interest to do so."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Multi-polarism is a containment policy against the United States -- the one-time hyper-power that has revealed its vulnerability and the limits of its military control. The most likely configurations of world politics in the coming decade are weak to moderate multi-polarism and weak multilateralism. There is some small chance that the United States will regain acquiescence in its status as the 'world's only superpower' and, with it, a comparative advantage for the realization of its policies and the satisfaction of the interests actuating them. The more highly probable scenario is a slow drift toward multi-polarism."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The Iraq adventure has demonstrated that unilateralism alienates allies and collaborators, resulting in the loss of American credibility and clout. Multilateralism remains the path that leads to the maximization of American power in the world.
The question is whether the Iraq adventure marks a watershed in world politics, in which the currents that once ran toward multilateralism in the decade following the fall of the Soviet Union have now shifted in the direction of multi-polarism."

Shell Admits Fuelling Corruption - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "Oil giant Shell has admitted it inadvertently fed conflict, poverty and corruption through its oil activities in Nigeria. But a Shell spokesman said the group did not agree with independent experts that the unrest may force it to leave. "

The Globe and Mail: "Mid-century United States was structured around a 'Fordist' model of capitalism (named for Henry Ford). Fordism valued state administration and stability -- 'big government, big labour, big business' "..Over the last generation, however, a leaner and meaner -- but more productive and efficient -- form of capitalism has emerged to propel the U.S. economy to new heights. This "millennial capitalism," as Mead calls it, is characterized by deregulation, labour flexibility, free trade and rapid technological progress. Moreover, its domestic success has contributed to an "American revival" which, adherents believe, "heralds nothing less than the dawn of a second American century in world affairs."

petroleumworld: "For example, the International Energy Agency last year estimated that an average of $200 billion, or its equivalent in inflated dollars, would need to be invested each year to develop and supply the oil and gas that the world will need out to 2030. The investments required for power generation are even larger. 200 billion dollars annually is a lot of money, and the industry will need to compete with a host of alternatives available to investors for those funds."

petroleumworld: "We periodically hear calls for U.S. energy independence, as if this were a real option. The fact is that the United States is a part of the world energy market, and we must participate and compete in that market. And we need to recognize the rest of the world will also be petroleum importers -- China, Japan, India, nearly all of Southeast Asia, all of Europe except Norway, and much of Latin America.
These countries are competing with us for access to the world's supply pool. The U.S. has no guaranteed or preferential supply rights. "

petroleumworld: "First and foremost, the rest of the world and the U.S. will increasingly need energy from the Middle East. This is not a matter of ideology or politics -- it is simply inevitable. A widely respected oil industry periodical estimates that about 50 percent of proved worldwide oil and gas reserves reside in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia alone having about one-fifth of the world's oil reserves. We need to accept the reality of this rather than undertake expensive and risky steps trying to avoid it. "

G77-Ministerial Declaration: "We attach high priority to the reform of the United Nations and we reiterate our willingness to actively participate in the negotiations for the strengthening of the Organization, in order that it efficiently responds to the current and future challenges including the requirements, concerns and interests of developing countries which constitute the vast majority of itsmembership. We reaffirm that such negotiations should be aimed at strengthening multilateralism, endowingthe Organization with a substantive capacity to fully and effectively meet the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter, and to consolidate its democratic character and its transparency in the discussion, and implementation of decisions of Member States. "

People's Daily Online -- Severe energy shortage warned-China: "Severe energy shortage warned. Accelerating development of power-intensive machinery, auto, steel and manufacturing sectors, the growing pace of urbanization and low energy efficien cy are blamed for China's extensive shortage of energy, which may worsen before 2020. An industrial report of the State Information Center with the National Bureau of Statistics forecasts China will face a more severe power shortage this year than it did in 2003. A total of 24 provincial areas imposed power brownouts in the past few months. In an exclusive interview with Xinhua earlier this week, Xu Dingming, a leading official with the Energy Bureau of the State Development and Reform Commission, said China's output of primary energy was equal to 1.603 billion tons of standard coal last year, up 11 percent over the previous year. But demand outpaced supply as shortages of coal, power and oil were reported in many areas of China, whose economy grew by 9.1 percent last year, and over 7 percent in the two years before 2003. "

WTO | NEWS 2004 - Report detects shifts in services and agricultural trade patterns - Press 378: "International trade patterns have changed in two significant areas over the past two decades (1985-2003) with growth in services trade no longer clearly outstripping growth in goods, while agricultural trade has shifted away from commodities towards processed products, according to a WTO report released today, 11 June 2004."

People's Daily Online -- US still the largest arms dealer: "World military spending surged during 2003, reaching US$956 billion, nearly half of it by the United States as it paid for missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror.
The money has been effective in waging war, but threats of terror and weapons of mass destruction still exist, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Military spending rose by 11 percent, which the group called a 'remarkable increase.' The amount was up 18 percent from 2001.
The US$956 billion spent on defense costs worldwide corresponded to 2.7 percent of the world's gross domestic product, according to the annual report. "

The Study of Complex Systems: In everyday conversation, we call a system 'complex' if it has many components that interact in an interesting way. More formally, we consider a phenomenon in the social, life, physical or decision sciences a complex system if it has a significant number of the following characteristics: "
-Agent-based: The basic building blocks are the characteristics and activities of the individual agents in the environment under study.
-Heterogeneous: These agents differ in important characteristics.
-Dynamic: These characteristics that change over time, as the agents adapt to their environment, learn from their experiences, or experience natural selection in the regeneration process. The dynamics that describe how the system changes over time are usually nonlinear, sometimes even chaotic. The system is rarely in any long run equilibrium.
-Feedback: These changes are often the result of feedback that the agents receive as a result of their activities.
-Organization: Agents are organized into groups or hierarchies. These organizations are often rather structured, and these structures influence how the underlying system evolves over time.
-Emergence: The overlying concerns in these models are the macro-level behaviors that emerge from the assumptions about the actions and interactions of the individual agents.

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies - Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit: "the sinfulness and rootlessness of urban life; the corruption of the human spirit in a materialistic, market-driven society; the loss of organic community; the glory of heroic self-sacrifice in overcoming the timidity of bourgeois life. Western liberalism is a threat -- to religious fundamentalists, priest-kings, and radical collectivists alike -- because it deflates the pretensions of their own brand of heroic utopianism. Ultimately, the picture that emerges is not of a clash of civilizations but of deeply rooted tensions that ebb and flow within and across civilizations, religions, and cultures. "

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - Allies at War: America, Europe, and the Split Over Iraq - Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro: "'when taken too far, assertive leadership can quickly turn into arrogant unilateralism, to the point where resentful others become less likely to follow the lead of the United States.' 'Even a country as powerful as the United States,' they explain, 'needs a certain level of legitimacy and consent.' And indeed, it is clear that U.S. rashness and roughness in its handling of Iraq has weakened its legitimacy and, as a result, badly damaged its interests. "

The Emergence of Complexity: "The emergence of complexity has a price. The price for extension and expansion in one dimension is often limitation and localization in another dimension.Creation, concentration and accumulation is possible because something else is subject to destruction, dissipation or dispersion, and the emergence of completely new species is usually accompanied by the mass extinctionof older species. Complexity and its emergence are inextricably linked to catastrophes and extinctions. "

Instructor's Paradigm Shifts: ". Since world is very mixed in terms of population distribution, economic power, values, and resources, it is not simple to come up with structures that give most parties a say. This is especially a problem when those that have been leadership roles in the past must modify their roles to address the different needs of the future. A current example is the United Nations and how how powerful nations work together with other powerful nations or nations with no power."

Instructor's Paradigm Shifts: "World Order - For the last 50+ years, the Cold War set the stage for which nations were the most powerful leaders. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the world order began to change and by 2000 the United States was recognized widely as the only super power (having only one world super power was a new thing and just what that meant in a practical sense was unclear). In 2001 the terrorist attack on the United States again changed popular opinion of the appropriate US role, even though the military has long prepared for a shift to terrorism/regional conflict and away from the old two major super powers. How a single super power operates and is seen by other countries affects everything, and began to change in 2003. It is clear that a single superpower cannot operate unilaterally; the question is how world order will change and evolve now that this is understood. "

Instructor's Paradigm Shifts: "Value systems are the driving forces of many choices and are basic to making change, but are not often recognized as being important when anticipating the future. Often you do not know what a person's values are and therefore do not under how they might react to change. Values from other cultures are also important change factors - as the relative mix of immigrants into the United States and other countries changes, other cultures are exposed to new perspectives and the dominant culture is exposed to the cultures of the immigrants - everyone needs to interact with other people's values. This process then changes your own values (by all groups involved) and you may or may not know your values are being shifted or even recognize they are changing."

Instructor's Paradigm Shifts: "Values and Lifestyles - Change affects the way we view things and how we interact with others. Our long-held values often shift to incorporate new directions (but they may not). This difference in values causes conflicts between holders of the old values, those that hold the new ones, or those that just have different values. As change takes place due to science and technology, or peace and war, or migration/economic conditions, the way we live and interact with others also changes. Conflict occurs when the some people hold on to the old values too long and cannot fit within the emerging societal 'norms' or when they embrace the new values too soon and before they are truly understood to be a legitimate change. "

Quotations Relevant to Future:
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
- Chinese Proverb
A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually
- Abba Eban
The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.
- Alvin Toffler
Telling the future by looking at the past assumes conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror.
- Herb Brody
There is nothing permanent except change
- Heraclitus (c. 540- c. 470 BCE)
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking
- George Patton

People's Daily Online -- Confucius reenters mainstream culture: "Despite the temporary setback, the spread of Confucian thought has revived fast in many parts of China. To policy makers and entrepreneurs alike, many instructions of Confucius are still applicable today. Government officials see certain Confucius instructions as guidelines for their work and important componentsof Chinese traditional culture the youngsters should inherit. "

Sony Global - QRIO: "In thirty years I think it will be bigger than the personal computer industry. We need to do more research, however, into movement but also into intelligence. So far we've called it 'artificial intelligence', but I'd like to see a new research field branch off from that called 'intelligent dynamics'. This would merge research into both intellectual and physical knowledge. We also need to do more research that scientifically analyzes how information is processed in the brain."

Sony Global - QRIO: "Would that technology be useful for products other than robots? I think that certainly all kinds of products, from automobiles to household appliances, will become intelligent in the near future. I think intelligent dynamics will be the basis for that."

Sony Global - QRIO: "It will be largely a story of the personal robot industry, but that story really has only just begun. Perhaps it will be the first new industry of the 21st century? "

KurzweilAI.net: "The Department of Defense is convinced that a fast-track modernization program is critical to national security. Key trends will be automation of land, air and underwater vehicles, and communication networks that connect all the players in a battle theater. Projects in the works include a missile that flies at mach 7, destroying targets with kinetic energy alone, and space-launched darts that strike like meteors."

The New York Times > Magazine > Encounter: Proceed With Caution: "Of course, genetic engineering isn't ''Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,'' which Joy urged upon his daughter. But his focus on consequences stays constant. Nanotechnology and biotech are supposed to save lives and brighten the future; Joy isn't sure we can bank on that. We should instead question the bedrock assumption that good science equals beneficial science. Good science, he says, is the discovery of truth -- for example, an experiment that yields an accurate result and that is repeatable. But science may not be good for us anymore if it yields a bad outcome. ''The Greeks knew better,'' Joy says. ''Oedipus was destroyed by truth. He looked like he had a happy life until he learned one too many things. That's the cautionary tale.'' "

The New York Times > Magazine > Encounter: Proceed With Caution: "Joy often uses the free market as an example of a system where any outcome, good or bad, is possible. At the moment, he argues, the same potential for good and bad outcomes exists in various kinds of private-sector research. The problem, though, is that a single bad biotech outcome may quickly become epidemic, unstoppable and irreversible. ''Markets can take us places we don't want to go,'' he says, ''and science, unchallenged and uninhibited, will take us places we don't want to go.'' "

The New York Times > Magazine > Encounter: Proceed With Caution: "He's not exactly optimistic, predicting that public awareness will most likely come only after an actual accident at a company or a university. Until then, he says, speed -- the mad rush for patents and market share and money -- will trump caution. Regulatory agencies are structured to catch shady C.F.O.'s, not reckless private-sector technologists. And markets are ill equipped to play traffic cop. ''Markets are extremely good at go,'' Joy says. ''They're not very good at stop. And I think we need a little bit of stop right now. Or else we're not going to like the outcome.'' "

The New York Times > Magazine > Encounter: Proceed With Caution: "The other Bill Joy, however, would very much like to prevent the inevitable from happening. Four years ago in an article he wrote for Wired magazine, Joy declared that the headlong race in biotechnology and nanotechnology might prove catastrophic. In the time since, he has continued to explore and advance this concern. Joy says he thinks the probability of a ''civilization-changing event'' is most likely in the double digits, perhaps as high as 50 percent. He doesn't merely ascribe these odds to terrorism; he suggests a pandemic disease might arise from a sudden accident or as a consequence of cutting-edge research. For disquieting evidence, he points out that a couple of years ago scientists assembled polio in a lab. That in late 2002 J. Craig Venter, the founder of Celera Genomics, announced plans to create organisms from scratch. That only a few months ago scientists were tinkering with deadly strains of bird flu in less-than-top-security labs. That the genomic sequence for the plague is now on the Web for anyone to see or make use of. "

political rather than development endsIn some instances, aid is again being treated as a tool to achieve political rather than development ends. In the run up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, aid was used as an incentive to support [the coalition’s] military action.

Logic of the Cold WarOthers, however, saw the irreducible logic of the Cold War blight their nascent futures. Proxy wars were funded and fought; corrupt and repressive regimes were installed and backed purely on the basis of whether the people involved were ‘ours’ or ‘theirs’. Particularly in Africa, the legacy of that period is with us still.

Self-interest Aid has always, to some extent, been given with at least one eye on the self-interest of the giver – be it to secure influence, trade or strategic resources.

Donors’ own interestsAid is viewed increasingly as a means of promoting and safeguarding the donors’ own interests, particularly their security, rather than addressing the real needs of poor people. Aid, in other words, is being co-opted to serve in the global ‘War on Terror’.

Item Details: "'The politics of poverty: Aid in the new Cold War' examines how the policies of donor countries are starting to follow those from the dark days of the Cold War. Aid, says the report, is once again being viewed as a means of promoting the donors' own interests, particularly their security, rather than addressing the real needs of poor people. The report sets out the mistakes of the past and shows how they are starting to be repeated. Drawing on evidence from recent discussions in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it demonstrates how some forms of military training and intelligence gathering are now being considered as suitable areas to be funded from aid budgets."

System Condition Three What is System Condition Three and Why?
In order for a society to be sustainable, nature's functions and diversity are not systematically impoverished by physical displacement, overharvesting, or other forms of ecosystem manipulation. The third system condition addresses the physical destruction and manipulation of the biosphere, and, consequently, the services nature provides to society. While violations of system condition one and two also impact ecosystem services, system condition three focuses our attention on how we (from the individual to the societal scale) directly interact with the biosphere. This includes activities such as paving over productive bioregions, overharvesting natural resources such as forests and fisheries, and development leading to urban sprawl. It also includes protecting natural habitats, smart growth and supporting sustainable fishing, agriculture and timber harvesting practices.

TwoSubstances produced by society must not systematically increase in the biosphere. This means that in order for a society to be sustainable, the production and accumulation of human-made substances must not happen faster than they can be reintegrated back into natural cycles, assuming they can be assimilated by nature at all. The focus here is on reducing our dependence on synthetic materials by using safe, biodegradable alternatives which can be reintegrated into natural cycles, as well as decreasing the amount of waste generated by society in general. Why? First, as with system condition one, the earth has a limited capacity to assimilate waste and the sheer volume of material and naturally occurring compounds produced by humans today is building up at a rate that far exceeds the earth’s capacity. Second, nature has no experience with the synthetic compounds humans are introducing and often has no way of breaking them down in order for them to be reintegrated into nature. As a result, it is often impossible to predict the consequences or locate the cause and effect linkages between generating synthetic materials and negative public and environmental health impacts. Even in the rare cases where it is possible to identify the problem source, the damage done is often irreversible or may take long periods of time to rectify.

system condition one What is system condition one (and why)?
Substances from the Earth’s crust must not systematically increase in the biosphere. This means that in order for a society to be sustainable, the balance of flows between the ecosphere (living organisims and the physical systems with which they interact) and the lithosphere (the earth's crust) must be such that concentrations of substances from the lithosphere do not systematically increase in the whole ecosphere, or in parts of it. Why not? Over billions of years fossil fuels, heavy metals and minerals were sequestered into the earth’s crust (the lithosphere) and nature has adapted to specific amounts of these materials. Mining and burning fossil fuels release a wide range of persistent substances into the ecosphere that build up and spread. Current living systems are not equipped to handle magnified amounts of lead, mercury, radioactive materials, and other hazardous compounds. Consequently, when humans support a systematic increase in the concentration of matter that is introduced into the biosphere from the lithosphere we risk destroying the functions and biodiversity of the ecosphere.

The Natural Step : About : FAQ: "In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust;
concentrations of substances produced by society;
degradation by physical means;
and, in that society,
human needs are met worldwide. "

Outlook 2004: "the biggest wild card remains a major terror attack on the U.S., one using biological, chemical, or dirty nuclear weapons. This would deal a gigantic blow to the global economy. Not likely to happen, but possible."

Outlook 2004: "Now Toyota, through its Lexus division, will win the race to market. Using their powerful �hybrid synergy drive� enables them to produce a V-6 gasoline hybrid engine assisted by four electric motors and synchronized hybrid operation that meets two critical performance tests. The V-6 will outperform an internal combustion V-8, with quicker acceleration and more power. At the same time, fuel economy will match a compact car, and pollution will be dramatically reduced. And a bonus is that noise pollution will diminish, as the car�s electric motors run silently."

Your Questions: "The Futures Wheel is a useful tool for anticipating the possible consequences of a development or a trend. Years ago I was student in a program called “social management of technology” and we were especially interested in what are called “second order” consequences of any particular technological development. The Futures Wheel helps you to see multiple levels of consequences. It works like this. You place in the center of a circle the development you wish to analyze. For example, it could be a technical development like introducing inexpensive wireless phones to a developing region... The first analysis step is to ask, “what will be primary consequences of this development?” A ring of circles is drawn around the center circle, with lines connecting to the center circle. This first outer ring captures three to five of the most important immediate consequences. For example, a primary consequence of inexpensive wireless phones would be to increase contact with other regions... It is the next analysis step that is the key utility of the Futures Wheel. Rather than ending the analysis with these primary consequences, each of the primary consequences is looked at in turn. A second ring or circles is drawn around the first ring. You ask, for the first primary consequence, what is a consequence of that? And so on. Lines are drawn connecting these “second-order consequences” to the relevant primary consequence. For example, a second-order consequence of increased contact with other regions would be increased economic exchange…buying and selling things. Another second-order consequence would be increased exchange of ideas. ... One can further rounds of analysis, looking for third-order and then fourth-order consequences, depending on how far you want to go. Thus, the Futures Wheel can help you to see possible futures, and to imagine alternate scenarios and strategies for the future.

An Immense Charge - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Intervention is the starting point for a complex political process whose eventual end point cannot be predicted. Political conflicts do not come to an end just because outside forces have interposed themselves between combatants. About the most that can be hoped for is that an intervention will channel tensions into the political arena, preventing more violent expressions of communal discord. "

An Immense Charge - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Intervention opens the political space to new, often unexpected, actors. Outside intervention, by displacing the old political order, allows new forces to emerge. Some will be old opponents of the former rulers, others will represent entirely new movements. While some of these new actors may be benign, others represent graver threats. "

An Empire of Denial - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The US government knows that if you control the diminishing resource on which every other nation depends, you will, as that resource dries up, come to exercise precisely the kind of indirect rule that Ferguson documents elsewhere. "

Security Council Reform: How and When? - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "There is today a widespread consensus that the UN Security Council urgently needs to be reformed. Two factors are specifically being mentioned as undermining the Council�s legitimacy: first, its biased composition, second the veto-wielding power of its five permanent members (P-5). "

Renewable Energy: Special Report on the International Conference for Renewable Energies (Renewables 2004): "China pledged to increase its use of small hydro, wind, solar, and biomass power generation to 60,000 megawatts (the equivalent of 60 giant power plants), providing 10 percent of its generating capacity by 2010. With this announcement and the related new policies now in the works, China may be on the verge of becoming the world�s next leader in renewable energy.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced plans to increase Germany�s use of renewable energy to 20 percent of its energy supply by 2020. Germany also committed to provide 500 million Euros worth of low-interest loans over the next five years for renewable energy projects in developing countries.
The World Bank committed to increase its renewable energy lending by at least 20 percent annually over the next five years. "

Renewable Energy: Special Report on the International Conference for Renewable Energies (Renewables 2004): "The need for clean, renewable energy sources has never been greater. Throughout the world, energy use is rising rapidly in industrial and developing countries alike. And roughly 2 billion people still lack access to electricity and other modern energy services. This ever-growing demand, along with turmoil in the Middle East, rising gas prices, concern about climate change, and as pollution-induced health problems all send a clear message: today?Ds global energy system, which depends heavily on fossil fuels, is unsustainable in economic, social, and ecological terms. "

Global Trends in or AffectingOrganizational Structures in the 21st Century: "Well, for one thing, organizations are strongly affected by the available technology. The fact that transportation, communication and information technologies have changed so much in just the last 50 years has completely transformed how business is done. Two hundred and fifty years ago it took months to get a message from New York to Japan. Today, you can talk to people on the phone, in real time, anywhere on the planet (and a little beyond!). You can get an object, such as a product, into someone's hands in any major city on the planet in about 20 hours. So now it is reasonable to not only have global customers, but to have offices around the world, and to have organizational functions, like manufacturing or design, spread out across the world. "

Global Trends in or AffectingOrganizational Structures in the 21st Century: "Technological change breeds technological change. This is because technological change is a function of knowledge, and knowledge is increasing rapidly. This is a function many things, including:
larger population (more minds working on problems)
better tools for research (fast computers, ability to look up other people's work)
more knowledge (it takes knowledge to make more knowledge)
The rate of change is itself changing (getting faster) because most innovations are produced not as a result of new knowledge, but of recombinations of old knowledge. And the number of possible combinations increases exponentially with the number of bits being combined."...Of course, most combinations of knowledge chunks are useless -- combining the technology in a hair dryer with the technology for door hinges probably gets you nothing. But if just 1 in one billion combinations produced something useful, the rate of new product innovation would be absolutely staggering. So it's not surprising that when we look at the number of innovations in human societies over the last 250 thousand years, we find very little change for 99% of the that time. By most estimates, there has been as much technological change in the last 250 years as there has been in the preceding 250 thousand years.

Asociaci?n de Historia Actual. Article: "After the terrorist attacks of S-11-2001 the US engaged in the policies of new imperialism and in the construction of a new kind of world(-)empire. US global policies can be divided in detached, economist, cooperative, rule-based Wilsonian Idealism and Theodore Rooseveltian Imperialism, based on aggressive nationalism, militarism, unilateralism and global governance based on direct rule, physical presence and coercion. "

BBC NEWS | Business | Africa's 'tragic' economic record: "In a damning assessment of the continent's economy, the report says income per head has fallen by 11% in sub-Saharan Africa since 1974. "

State of the World Trends and Facts: Watching What We Eat: "By 2020, people in developing countries will consume more than 39 kilograms per person?twice as much as they did in the 1980s. People in industrial countries, however, will still consume the most meat?100 kilograms a year by 2020, the equivalent of a side of beef, 50 chickens, and 1 pig. Yet it is questionable whether the system that delivers all this meat to them can persist as its deficiencies mount and as alternatives such as vegetarianism and pasture-raised meat flourish."

State of the World Trends and Facts: Watching What We Eat: "Global meat production has increased more than fivefold since 1950, and factory farming is the fastest growing method of animal production worldwide. Industrial systems are responsible for 74 percent of the world?s total poultry products, 50 percent of pork production, 43 percent of the beef, and 68 percent of the eggs. Industrial countries dominate production, but developing nations are rapidly expanding and intensifying their production systems. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, Asia has the fastest-developing livestock sector, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean."

State of the World Trends and Facts: Watching What We Eat: "These consumer actions are aimed at grabbing control of how food is produced and steering the global food system away from its current trajectory. The choices in the average supermarket are, of course, endless. But some of the most profound changes ?eaters? can make include rethinking their relationship with meat, selecting food produced without agrochemicals, and buying locally grown food. "

State of the World Trends and Facts: Watching What We Eat: "The ?conventional? way to raise food relies on monocultural fields and a cocktail of chemicals, from antibiotics and pesticides to fertilizers and food preservatives. But perhaps the most overt example of consumption gone awry in the food supply is the expanding waistlines and the crippling rise in obesity that is becoming epidemic not only in the richest nations but in the urban centers of poor countries as well. "

State of the World Trends and Facts: Watching What We Eat: "The rise in international food trade and the proliferation of heavily processed and packaged foods has distanced most people from what they eat, both geographically and psychologically. But because humanity devotes such a large share of the planet?s surface to food production?25 percent, more than the world?s forested area?it is impossible to separate the way farmers raise food from the health of rivers, wetlands, forests, and our living environment. According to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, our food choices rival transportation as the human activity with the greatest impact on the environment. "

New Scientist: "A terrorist attack using a dirty bomb is 'a nightmare waiting to happen', says Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the UK's atomic weapons plant in Aldermaston in Berkshire. 'I'm amazed that it hasn't happened already.'"

New Scientist: "A terrorist attack using a dirty bomb is 'a nightmare waiting to happen', says Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the UK's atomic weapons plant in Aldermaston in Berkshire. 'I'm amazed that it hasn't happened already.'"

New Scientist: "The risk of somebody somewhere triggering a radioactive 'dirty bomb' is growing, evidence gathered by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency suggests.
The IAEA's records, which it has released to New Scientist, show a dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials, defined as radioactive "

New Scientist: "The risk of somebody somewhere triggering a radioactive 'dirty bomb' is growing, evidence gathered by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency suggests.
The IAEA's records, which it has released to New Scientist, show a dramatic rise in the level of smuggling of radiological materials, defined as radioactive "

Headlines for Tuesday, June 1, 2004: "On macro policy, the key lesson to be learnt from China's success in reducing poverty is that rapid economic growth does the trick. China's output has grown eight-fold in the last quarter century and per capita real income has risen by an annual average of 7 percent over the period. This has been achieved through vastly enhanced trade and step-by-step internal liberalization. Another key enabler has been massive investment in infrastructure. Fiscal stringency and opening up the financial sector internally and externally have taken second place. But China's rapid growth has increased regional inequality and it is doubtful if the Chinese leaders would have been able to persist in their approach without the political control they concentrated in their hands. So the Chinese way is not entirely replicable in democratic India."

People's Daily Online -- Nobel laureate warns of risks of RMB appreciation: "China should be determined in saying 'no' to the appreciation of the Chinese currency Renminbi (RMB), said Nobel Prize laureate Robert Mundell in Beijing Sunday. ...As for the "Asian Dollar", the "father of the euro" said it is difficult to tell the possibility and timetable of a unitary Asiancurrency, which has high requirements for regional economic integration, while for the euro zone, such objective is likely to be achieved in the next 10 to 15 years. The RMB will become a successor of the US dollar and euro, he predicted, which means China should not make the yuan a supranational currency in Asia.

Plate tectonics and people [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]: "As global population increases and more countries become industrialized, the world demand for mineral and energy resources will continue to grow. Because people have been using natural resources for millennia, most of the easily located mineral, fossil-fuel, and geothermal resources have already been tapped. By necessity, the world's focus has turned to the more remote and inaccessible regions of the world, such as the ocean floor, the polar continents, and the resources that lie deeper in the Earth's crust. Finding and developing such resources without damage to the environment will present a formidable challenge in the coming decades. "

Historical perspective [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]: "According to the continental drift theory, the supercontinent Pangaea began to break up about 225-200 million years ago, eventually fragmenting into the continents as we know them today. "

PlanetVolcanic eruptions and earthquakes are awe-inspiring displays of the powerful forces of nature and can be extraordinarily destructive. Some societies have been devastated by them. About 60 of the Earth’s 550 historically- active volcanoes are in eruption each year, but far more volcanism takes place unobserved on the ocean floor. Steady earth movements often culminate
in rock fractures that produce earthquakes. In 1992 alone, 85 earthquakes worldwide exceeded magnitude 6.5 on the Richter scale, and many of them caused extensive damage.

Some unanswered questions [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]: "Eventually the Earth, too, will lose so much heat that its interior will stop convecting. Earthquake and volcanic activity will then cease. No new mountains will form, and the geologic cycle of mountain building, erosion, sedimentation, and soil formation will be disrupted and also will cease. Exactly how a cooled-down Earth will change surface conditions -- and whether our planet will still be habitable -- nobody knows. Fortunately, these changes will not happen for many billions of years! "

Some unanswered questions [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]: "The Earth may be unique in our solar system because it appears to be the only planet that is still volcanically and tectonically active; our planet therefore remains very much alive, while the others apparently have long ceased activity. Volcanic activity requires a source of internal heat, and it is the escape of this heat that fuels plate tectonics. While volcanism played a major role in the early history of Mars, the Moon, and probably Mercury, their small sizes relative to Earth resulted in the loss of internal heat at a much faster rate. They have been inactive globes for the last billion years or so.
Venus may still be active, though the evidence is questionable."

Some unanswered questions [This Dynamic Earth, USGS]: "The tectonic plates do not randomly drift or wander about the Earth's surface; they are driven by definite yet unseen forces. Although scientists can neither precisely describe nor fully understand the forces, most believe that the relatively shallow forces driving the lithospheric plates are coupled with forces originating much deeper in the Earth."

talking points for transformation: ". What are some of the driving forces of the major changes underway
Science and Technology (e.g., genetic engineering, information technology, materials)
Population changes and demographic shifts (worldwide)
Political, social, and economic considerations "