HRCFS has a "Bright Idea"

/Step into futures/

The Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies is proud to announce that it has been awarded one of ten "Bright Ideas" grants to pursue an innovative experiment to encourage future-oriented community discussion. The successful proposal is for downloadable future audio tours, a concept developed by Jake Dunagan and Stuart Candy, graduate students at the University of Hawaii's "Manoa School" of futures in the Department of Political Science.

The "bright idea" in this case is to record guided audio tours of Honolulu's historic Chinatown, intended for playback on portable mp3 players. However, instead of the conventional emphasis on the past and present of landmarks and events in the area, these stories will highlight alternative possible futures. Participants will be able to guide themselves in an immersive experience that takes "the future" out of the abstract, and encourages foresight and responsibility toward future generations in Chinatown, Hawaii, and beyond. The hope is that, with the increasingly widespread use of portable audio devices, this creative use of the medium to provoke deeper thinking about future possibilities will spread to other communities, with tours being produced and translated into multiple languages, and other people being encouraged to generate their own "guerilla tours" of alternative futures.

Recipients of the "Bright Ideas" award, in the amount of $4000, were selected from a field of over 130 applications. The Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies is also involved in coordinating the futures-oriented community event "Hawaii 2050" for the State Legislature on August 26 this year.

Campus of the Future Conference

An interesting conference is taking place over the next few days in Honolulu with members of the HRCFS participating in various capacities. Ironically advertised as an "historic event" the Campus of the Future conference brings together three large organizations involved in the business of education.

Among the HRCFS's involvement, Jim Dator will be moderating a session called the Futures Panel on Sunday July 9th. Also, UH futures students will be playing students-of-the-future in interactive sessions in the Expo area on Sunday and Monday dubbed "Learning Spaces of the Future" (in the "Union Square" area if you happen to be attending).

I went to an orientation for the 'Learning Spaces of the Future' exhibit today. Issues of sustainability and reducing carbon footprints will be discussed in the overall scheme, but the focus of this exhibit seems to be on new technological tools for teaching/learning (available now!) rather than any alternative futures in pedagogy or educational necessities. However, with the involvement of Apple and other classroom industrial designers, the new toys are certainly fun to use.

I am particularly interested in the exhibition of gaming and simulations for learning, especially the use of the "Second Life" metaverse as a learning space. This is something that Manoa students have been increasingly exploring and something we'd like to pursue more actively. This means you Jerry Paffendorf!

I'll update after the conference.

Vincent K. Pollard on Futures

from Manoa Ph.D. and HRCFS associate Vincent Pollard:

Contentious Politics & Large-scale Social Change:
How Much Will Futurists Contribute to Improving Society by 2041?


Vincent K. Pollard
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/

A familiar axiom of the Manoa School of futurists is that, at first glance, any useful idea about the future is likely to seem ridiculous.

The converse, however, is not necessarily true. That is, just because something fails to pass the laugh test does not mean it should be embraced and championed. After all, derisive reactions are at least partly based on one's values. And not everyone shares the same values.

With the latter qualification, a persistent but risible idea is the utterly silly notion that anyone can or should design a preferred future on a basis other than the implicit or explicit use and threat of deadly violence, that is, of killing people.

Many futurists and others who advocate preferred futures are displeased by the direction in which the world is headed is headed, as well as society in specific countries. But how much difference will futurists actually make?

That question is related to a second one: How far are futurists willing to proceed in examining, questioning and rejecting presuppositions that inject added vitality into the very social and political systems which are causing us problems?

Most futurists recognize the need to study politics -- power at the micro and macro levels of society. However, as Korean War veteran (artillery communications officer) and peace studies scholar Glenn Paige warns, basic beliefs of political science are flawed.

That claim is argued, articulated and documented in Nonkilling Global Political Science (Philadelphia: XLibris, 2002). For Paige, the foundational classics of political science -- and the convictions held by most political scientists -- covertly, tacitly or openly -- embrace the axiom that official governments deserve to monopolize legal violence.

So, is everyday governmental killing acceptable forever? "Legal violence" simply means the thread and the use of violence and killing by police, courts, jails, judges, prisons, armies, executions, and in declared and undeclared wars. In a nutshell, political scientists generally *believe* that there is no less violent basis on which society can be organized.

With these challenges in mind, how might one likely history of the future be written 35 years from now? How will preferred futures be written today so that there will likely be less deadly violence then?

In 2041 A.D., younger survivors of the 2006 UH futures studies graduate student cohort will be in their mid-to-late-fifties. Indeed, some will even more senior yet! How will the preferred futures that they wrote in 2006 and 2007 look in 2041?

By 2041, futurists unable or unwilling to break from violence-accepting assumptions will have hampered their own efforts with unnecessary political baggage. It retarded the envisioning and realization of radically improved future societies.

Glenn Paige is not a futurist. His Nonkilling Global Political Science does not clearly articulate a preferred future. Nonetheless, Paige poses an important challenge to futurists. And while I disagree with the way in which Dr. Paige frames parts of his argument and while I do not accept some of his inferences. many of his examples are leading indicators of emerging trends. Are the people already engaged in this discussion already overtaking most futurists?

Futurists should read and grapple with the first 2 chapters of Nonkilling Global Political Science. Free copies are available at http://www.globalnonviolence.org/nonkilling.htm

If my first-year undergraduates have been doing this since 2002, you can, too. These students have collectively wrestled with emerging issues targeted in Paige's book. They discuss, debate and write a paper with their preferred future which includes a plan to reduce violence of some type somewhere. By the way, this is much more practical and testable than vaguely operationalized notions of "violence versus nonviolence."

The most recent version of my study guide for these chapters is online at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/gpkcc1.html

Also, in 2002, a team of 5 undergraduate students of were selected by their classmates to challenge and debate Dr. Paige for 50 minutes prior to a general Q&A session. In the following year, a similar group of students questioned Paige online. The students' questions and Paige's answers are preserved online at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/gpkcc.html

Finally, a literary indicator of an emerging trend underlines Paige's challenge: Nonkilling Global Political Science has been translated into more than 25 major and minor global languages within the past four years.