In previous posts, we’ve introduced the ESPELETIA dimensions (Ethics, Society, Politics, Environment, Legislation, Economy, Technology, International and Arts) and the ‘key drivers’ (AI, IoT, Big Data, Robotics, Communications and the ‘X Factor’). We now build this into a complete futurology tool for projecting into the future, and provide a complete set of documentation for research and/or classroom exercises.
Over the decades, we’ve seen PEST extended to PESTLE to STEEPLED, but have we now got all the angles covered for practical 21st century futurism? Perhaps not.
We’ve used the STEEPLED model before several times on this site, with some success. It’s undoubtedly a useful tool. But it’s not perfect: it’s time to recognise its limitations and introduce something new.
Continue readingFully Automated Luxury … Dancing? (A futuristic conspiracy theory in the making)
Vic Grout, Professor of Computing Futures, Wrexham Glyndŵr University
Download the PDF version: Fully Automated Luxury Dancing – Download Version 1
[Note/Disclaimer: Some of the discussion in this piece is shockingly brief. A limit of 10,000 words was planned and (just) adhered to.]
We’ve encountered Michael Moorcock’s masterpiece, Dancers at the End of Time, before on these pages: both as an example of sci-fi doing what it does best (providing a blank canvas for a bigger discussion) and the problems futurologists have with not seeing key disruptive technology (the Internet, in Moorcock’s case). But, for this post, an entirely different question to ponder: who exactly ARE ‘The Dancers’?
Because answering that puzzle (there aren’t that many clues to go on in the novel itself and obviously it is only a story) takes us to considering problems in (apparently) entirely different fields: environment, politics, economics, etc. (which is the important point really, of course) and may lead us to a view of the future quite at odds with current thinking right across the political spectrum. Specifically, what’s usually wrong with long-term ‘futuristic’ political and economic prophesising? Particularly the very well-intentioned left-wing stuff. What’s the one thing that everything from Karl Marx’s Das Capital to Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism appear to take for granted? (Spoiler alert: in simple terms it’s the belief that just because a political/economic system’s crap, it will naturally yield to something better – but we’ll come to that.)
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Albert Allen Bartlett
These are depressing times so this month’s contribution (a bit short for time, to be honest), though topically linked to the ongoing pandemic, deserves attention from different angles in its own right.
We’re going to have a quick look at exponential growth.
Turing's Radiator 