Summing up the Summit

Club of Amsterdam28 January 2005Closing Plenary

Rangefinding our vision.

• An open source approach begins with each of us articulating and clarifying our own visions.

• Let’s borrow a vision test format from opticians:– Focus your vision (preferred future)

by comparing contrasting possible futures, and choosing among them:

Is this better?

A rural future?

Or this?

An urban future?

Is this better?

A future transformed by technology?

Or this?

A future transformed by mental and spiritual attainments?

A large-scale, nuclear energy future?

Is this better?

Or this?

A small-scale, solar-powered future?

Is this better?

A future of increasing digital pervasiveness and invasiveness?

Or this?

A future of biological manipulation and transformation?

Tough choices.

• Rangefinding our vision means making tough choices among alternative possibilities, guided by our values.

• What trade-offs are we willing to accept in choosing one path over another?

• What compromises?• How do we share differentially

distributed benefits and drawbacks?

Themes:

• Emerging win-win situations: cooperation, collaboration, e.g. liberalisation of trade

• Human approach: creating value, enhancing human creativity via new processes like open source, TRIZ, living laboratories

• Blurring of boundaries: in technology, in communities, in social and political roles

• Interconnection and integration -- must look closely at the nature of the connections

Missing:

• Global issues… was this just the summit of our future? Not just Europe, not just the rich… a positive future should address development across borders

• Differential impacts, access, control -- need for transparency of social, political, economic processes

• Recognition of the inevitable: e.g., energy crisis must be made personal for everyone in order to address lack of will to act

Missing:

• Long-term perspective in governance and private sector, not to mention true leadership

• A questioning of all our basic assumptions about society: capitalism, governance, even our definition of what is human in a coming post-human age

Take-aways:

• It’s NOT idealism, it’s NECESSITY that must drive us now.

• It’s the future -- and not the gadgets.

• It’s the IDEA that you can create the future that empowers you.

• Need to create our strategic infrastructure…and it’s not fibre optic cables, but values and ethics.

Take-aways:

• Let go! Decentralise! Multidisciplinarity! Transdisciplinarity! Diversity! Contradictions provoke good ideas, and good ideas are all around us!

• Question assumptions…all of them…do we need capitalism? Are our current nations obsolete? Are we still human if we’re augmented with nanotech?

• Vision, then do. Contradict, then create.

Dissemination:

• How do we excite people with these ideas, perspectives, conversations?

• What’s a high impact and effective way to convey our concerns, creativity, conversation?

• New media strategies for foresight.• E.g., Job Romijn’s visual record<<<<

Informing our ideas:

• Briefings:– Club of Amsterdam seminars– Club of Amsterdam website and

newsletter– Shaping Tomorrow: foresight portal

• http://www.shapingtomorrow.com/

• Journals:– Foresight, Futures, Future Survey,

Futures Research Quarterly

Finding fellow travellers:

• World Futures Studies Federation, http://www.wfsf.org/

• World Future Society, http://www.wfs.org/

• Association of Professional Futurists, http://www.profuturists.org/

Carrying on the conversation:

• Futures Insurrection, Association of Professional Futurists, Miami, 31 March - 2 April 2005

• Foresight Management in Corporations and Public Organisations, Finland Futures Research Centre, Helsinki, 16-17 June 2005

• Future Tools for Growth, European Futurists Conference, Lucerne, 10-12 July 2005

Carrying on the conversation:

• World Future 2005: Foresight, Innovation, and Strategy, World Future Society, Chicago, 29-31 July 2005

• 2005 WFSF World Conference: Generation -- Intergenerational Collaboration to Generate Preferred Futures, World Futures Studies Federation, Budapest, 21-24 August and Budapest Futures Course, 25-26 August 2005

• And of course…..

Carrying on the conversation:

… the 2006 Summit for the Future,Amsterdam.

We look forward to seeing you againin the future!Thank you!