Future frontiers
New futures concepts are discovered by exploring future frontiers—looking ahead to discern the leading edge of human cultural and technological development. This longer-term view informs nearer-term futures work, and is a contribution to wider cultural criticism. Here are links to some pieces I wrote starting in the early 1990s – and standing the test of time so far.
Cultural values in transition
Over the last few decades cultural values have been shifting and this process has now reached a ‘crossover point’ where the new values are about to become dominant. The new cultural outlook can be expected to create a strong social and political constituency for a rethink of the psychological, social, ecological and economic aims and assumptions underlying our current system.
Ecosystemic infrastructure
Our industrial economy is on the threshold of a transition from a linear to an ecosystemic flow of materials, with the adoption of an ‘industrial ecology’ perspective. Just as the biosphere evolved from its early non-cyclic origins—when oxygen first began to accumulate in the atmosphere—so the technological infrastructure of industry needs to transition away from being a one way ‘take, make, waste’ system if we are to enjoy sustainable abundance in the future.
Restoring human identity
Reductionism has been a powerful strategy for generating knowledge, but it is not helpful as a means of understanding the deep nature of human beings. Taking things apart to understand their components does not work the other way round to help us understand or bring order to complex wholes. Our human future will depend on restoring our sense of the qualities of wholeness, and bringing ourselves back to a full appreciation of what it is to be human.
World future step-change
The era and culture of modernity is being swept away and a new culture is taking its place. A transformed worldview is taking shape and the ability to make sense of it is the key to navigating what comes next. This exploratory website—still a work in progress—assembles the elements of the emerging worldview. It offers a scenario based on shifts of perspective occurring today, interpreted as precursors of an emerging new civilization in the decades ahead.