Speculative Research

Speculative Research
Author: Alex Wilkie
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2017-02-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134890702

Is another future possible? So called ‘late modernity’ is marked by the escalating rise in and proliferation of uncertainties and unforeseen events brought about by the interplay between and patterning of social–natural, techno–scientific and political-economic developments. The future has indeed become problematic. The question of how heterogeneous actors engage futures, what intellectual and practical strategies they put into play and what the implications of such strategies are, have become key concerns of recent social and cultural research addressing a diverse range of fields of practice and experience. Exploring questions of speculation, possibilities and futures in contemporary societies, Speculative Research responds to the pressing need to not only critically account for the role of calculative logics and rationalities in managing societal futures, but to develop alternative approaches and sensibilities that take futures seriously as possibilities and that demand new habits and practices of attention, invention, and experimentation.

Computing Possible Futures

Computing Possible Futures
Author: William B. Rouse
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-09-12
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0192585444

Mathematical modelling and simulation is an increasingly powerful area of mathematics and computer science, which in recent years has been fuelled by the unprecedented access to larger than ever stores of data. These techniques have an increasing number of applications in the professional and political spheres, and people try to predict the results of certain courses of action as accurately as possible. Computing Possible Futures explores the use of models on everyday phenomena such as waiting in lines and driving a car, before expanding the model's complexity to look at how large-scale computational models can help imagine big scale " scenarios like the effect self-driving cars on the US economy. The successes and failures of complex real world problems are examined, and it is shown how few, if any, failures are due to model errors or computational difficulties. It is also shown how real life decision makers have addressed important problems and used their model-based understanding of possible futures to inform these decisions. Written in an entertaining and accessible way, Computing Possible Futures will help those concerned about the futurity of their decisions to understand what fundamentally needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and how to do it.

Some Possible Solutions

Some Possible Solutions
Author: Helen Phillips
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2016-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1627793798

A collection of short stories that "offers an idiosyncratic series of 'what-ifs' about our fragile human condition ... What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you? Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world"--

All Possible Futures

All Possible Futures
Author: Jon Sueda
Publisher:
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2014-01
Genre: Graphic arts
ISBN: 9781907414350

Curated by Jon Sueda and featuring 37 projects by Bay Area and international artists, All Possible Futures is the first of three SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency exhibitions in 2014. The group exhibition explores the potential of graphic design and celebrates a questioning of boundaries regarding concepts, processes, technologies, and form. Contemporary speculative pieces take the form of both physical objects and restaged installations.

Manifesting Possible Futures

Manifesting Possible Futures
Author: John C. Woodcock
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-01-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1475967659

If the present alienation of mind from nature, i.e., the Cartesian reality principle, is to be overcome, there surely must be a climate of extreme depression amounting in many quarters to despair One way or another there is an opportunity here for a good writer who should fill out in terms of concrete events and experiences the issues If a society is really faced with startling changes and fairly imminent ones (and there is a good deal of evidence that ours is) it cannot be amiss for a few people here and there to be peering ahead, however inadequately, by way of preparation for them. Owen Barfield: The Coming Trauma of Materialism

Four Futures

Four Futures
Author: Peter Frase
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1781688141

An exploration of the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism and extermininsm might actually entail. Could the current rise of the real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender's Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there's no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of "likes," wouldn't rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies are already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.

Education and Technology

Education and Technology
Author: David W. Kritt
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0739113712

There are numerous publications about education and technology. What is missing is a balanced appraisal of the values and cognitive skills technology promotes and those it devalues. This is important for education because the way we teach influences how children think, and it is of more general importance for the evolution of society. If we wait until these issue are definitively resolved and have noticeable societal effects, it will inevitably be too late. Hence the need for informed debate now.

Suisun Marsh

Suisun Marsh
Author: Peter B. Moyle
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2014-03-26
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0520276086

One of California's most remarkable wetlands, Suisun Marsh is the largest tidal marsh on the West Coast and a major feature of the San Francisco Estuary. This productive and unique habitat supports endemic species, is a nursery for native fishes, and is a vital link for migratory waterfowl. The 6,000-year-old marsh has been affected by human activity, and humans will continue to have significant impacts on the marsh as the sea level rises and cultural values shift in the century ahead. This study includes in-depth information about the ecological and human history of Suisun Marsh, its abiotic and biotic characteristics, agents of ecological change, and alternative futures facing this ecosystem.

Possible Futures of European Education

Possible Futures of European Education
Author: Stefan Jensen
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2013-12-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9401762287

In "Plan Europe 2000," launched by the European Cultural Foundation, the first project is devoted to education. This project sets out to isolate the principal features, and to sketch the "image" of the educational system in the year 2000. It is not a matter of "forecasting," for that would imply that the modes of educating people in the next thirty years are predeter mined and subject to the operation of factors that must be respected like the laws of an inevitable evolution. We should be trying to unveil what is to come. Nor is the enterprise a project based on the options considered to be most desirable, which would imply that man has an entirely free will and is capable of dominating anything that might oppose that will. We should then be trying to "dictate" what we want to exist in the year 2000. It would be the act of a demiurge. The project is in fact a long-term prospective effort, which must take into consideration· - major constraints and unyielding tendencies, scarcely susceptible of significant change; - data and factors that can be more or less freely manipulated but not ignored or eradicated; - priorities dictated by the limitations of time and means; - the authors' freedom of action, subject to the above limitations, and in any event to the following one: they must not conflict with European aspirations, even the latent ones; they must not outrage mental atti tudes that can only be modified by persuasion

Speculative Everything

Speculative Everything
Author: Anthony Dunne
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2013-12-06
Genre: Design
ISBN: 0262019841

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.