Predicting the future of Christianity

Center for American Progress reports on its 'Progressive Book Club' event in New York City last week, where  Harvard's Hollis Research Professor of Divinity Harvey Cox and Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne discussed Cox’s new book The Future of Faith.

'In his book Cox argues that Christianity is entering a third phase called the “Age of the Spirit,” in which a growing number of adherents to the faith abandon institutional, dogmatic churches and instead join religious communities less focused on creeds.'

In other words, the progressive institutionalization of Christianity between 4th and 20th centuries is going to be reversed as followers return to the allegedly original, more fundamental essence of their faith - that is, a simple “followership” of Jesus.

As I understand it, the Church is deeply, deeply split between West vs. Rest of World over many aspects of its future direction and aspiration. The developing world church across much of South America and Africa - where the real numbers of the Christian faithful are - has more socially conservative and more institutionally-tolerant aspirations for the future.  I would be surprised if "Age of the Spirit" adequately covers the global future in this area.

Scenario Planning in the Kingdom of Jordan

PRNewswire today reports that Plexus Consulting Group (Washington DC) has completed a scenario project in Jordan.

'International economist Dr. Sarah Bryant and Plexus president Steven Worth worked in tandem to first develop the three-part scenarios and then to facilitate introductory planning sessions with the public and private sector leaders representing the most important sectors of that nation's economy: education; trade and investment; manufacturing; banking and finance; tourism; the news media and non-governmental organizations; as well as Jordan's all-important water and energy sectors.

'"We hope this practice of developing plans based on various scenarios takes root and becomes part of the regular planning discipline of every entity within Jordan," said Plexus president Steven Worth.'

Amen to that. And beyond Jordan too.

The day the dollar crashed

Short 'news' video dramatizing a US dollar crash scenario (Dutch, English subtitles):

IFTF scenarios for the future of research parks and incubators

An IFTF-based scenarios of  future of research parks is available for free download on Scribd (requires signup.)

The model of self-contained research parks and incubators that dominated the last 50 years is being challenged by shifts in the global economy, science and technology, and models of innovation.

IFTF describes 14 trends that will set the context for technology-based economic development, as basis for 20-year scenarios.

• 'In the first scenario, an incremental evolution of the research parks model takes place in a world of rapid, but steady and predictable change.
• 'In the second scenario, entirely new networks of R&D space emerge in a “research cloud” that challenges current models to adapt, sometimes dramatically.
• 'The third scenario, the research park models is in rapid decline as R&D becomes highly virtualized and parks’ legacy cost structure makes them obsolete for young firms.

'Over the horizon radar' to learn about the future

In this promo video, Peter Diamandis, CEO of the new 'Singularity University (Nasa Ames, Silicon Valley) describes what executives get on their 3-day or 9-day immersion. Essentially it's technology mind-blow: Computing & Networking; AI Robotics; Nanotechnology; Human Machine Interface; Biotechnology and Bio-informatics; and Energy & Environmental Systems.

It feels a lot like the MIT Media Lab's research and education agenda, but boiled down from graduate student years to senior executive days.

Technology is only a part of what drives and blocks the future, and sometimes only a very small part, but for a crash course on in new technologies and how they will transform and disrupt the world, this looks like a fascinating program.

Tapping into Motorola's collective intelligence

As many companies grapple with how to add prediction markets into their learning/anticipating structures, Rami Levy of Motorola presented a very useful overview of Motorola's harnessing of the wisdom of its crowds, at the Chicago Collective Intelligence Summit. PDF download: source http://www.pmcluster.com/

Corporate foresight for banking and for business in general

In a competitive market dominated and shaped by changing environments and trends, knowing what the future holds would be handy, if we could have that knowledge. We can't of course, but there are things we can do. In this Bernet & Partner video shown on Private Banking Innovation, Axel Liebetrau, a consultant affiliated with the German ‘Zukunftsinstitut,’ offers a quick but solid overview of the why's, wherefores, and limits of foresight work in companies. He makes a particular pitch for 'creativity' in the banking industry, implying a solid view of the future should be the basis of innovation across product, service, workforce or technology-adoption models.

AI, machine intelligence, human intelligence, singularity... machines rule the world? I don't think so.

Jamais Cascio makes interesting conceptual points about human vs machine intelligence in this video 'The Singularity in 5 Slides.' Short story is: we build machines, the machines get smarter (AI) and they take over.

The Singularity, in Five Slides from Jamais Cascio on Vimeo.

But, how is this different from the basic Hollywood teenage machines-rule-the-world science fiction? The paradigm rules.

I say the smart money in anticipating the future is to see which human forces in the world will marshal and harness AI, and to what ends - rather than thinking it will just "take over" That is, who (which organizations or groups) will control AI, who will be made more powerful by it, and how will that change balances of power? This assumes people will always rule the world -- an explicit assumption that I'm standing up for.

Soros looks to the future of the international economic system

George Soros concluded his 5-in-a-week lecture series at the Central European University in Budapest by looking at the future. He says a new international economic system needs to be created and suggests what shape it should take. Click to play (on the FT site.)

Israeli Presidential Conference: Facing Tomorrow

Video is up from the annual Israeli Presidential Conference: 'Facing Tomorrow' which took place in Jerusalem October 20-22. The conference is a sort of a mini-Davos focused on the Middle East, but with a remit well beyond strictly geopolitical matters. See the Facing Tomorrow site. (Unfortunately this site is very poorly set up, badly labeled and very slow.)

The conference is attended by the world's top government, business, and technology leaders, and this year Ray Kurzweil, of 'singularity' fame, gave a keynote.

This info from the kurzweilAI.net site: 'Speaking at the conference's opening plenary Session Kurzweil explored ways of using nanotechnology and other exponentially growing 'information'technologies" to transform the energy and environmental crisis into opportunities for Israel and for the world. In two additional panel discussions, Kurzweil presented his ideas on the future of artificial intelligence and reverse engineering the brain. See thumbnail 5, "Morning Plenary Session," and thumbnail 9 "A Conversation."

Nokia's vision of the future

Corporate releases about the future are always part prediction, part setting out stall to competitors. At the recent The Way We Live Next conference in Finland, Nokia showed its vision for the device future - integrating intelligent services that learn about you and interact with advanced networking/cloud computing. The users profile will be integrated across multiple devices, and switch between them as necessary.