Our Vision
Our
General
Vision:
A more informed, foresighted, optimistic, and empowered world community.
More specifically,
we'd like to do our small part to promote the emergence of a wiser
and more antifragile noosphere
(human-machine civilization), both in societal (scientific-technological-economic-environmental-political-social)
and psychological (emotional-moral-spiritual) dimensions. For one
of the better-known early visions along those lines, see Teilhard
de Chardin, The
Human Phenomenon, 1955. Teilhard was a Jesuit priest, but his
vision was universal. The idea that our universe appears strongly biased—and self-organized—to evolve
and develop ever more ethical and adaptive minds, at an accelerating
pace, is a working hypothesis that we share, and a major clue to the future of normative science.
Our
Research Vision: Progress in Acceleration and Evo Devo
Studies (AEDS)
As
good data and theory should inform human action, our research vision
is to be a catalyst in the development of academic programs in Acceleration
and Evolutionary Development Studies (AEDS) in coming years.
Advances
in evolutionary developmental ("evo devo") biology, cosmology,
astrobiology, complexity studies, and the philosophy of science
and technology are providing glimpses of a new paradigm for the
understanding of universal change, one that involves the operation
of both evolutionary and developmental processes at multiple systems
levels. Stochastic processes (randomness within constraints) which
create biological complexity exhibit both evolutionary unpredictability
and developmental predictability. By applying the meta-Darwinian
insights of evo devo biology, where evolution is broadly restricted
by previous developmental path dependency and physical law, we are
learning to recognize predictable developmental trajectory and constraint
in both pre- and post-biological systems, concurrent with the chaos
and contingency of evolutionary adaptation which has historically
been more evident in the life and natural sciences.
As
we envision it, students and practitioners of AEDS should seek to
better identify, analyze, and falsifiably forecast predictable developmental
trends in accelerating scientific and technological change
that presently appear to be occurring on our planet. Due to the
special physics of the universe we inhabit, such trends appear particularly
evident in such domains as the growth of computing capacity, communications
capacity, storage capacity, database sophistication, hardware and
software performance, informetrics, sensor discrimination and ubiquity,
simulation capacity, energy efficiency, miniaturiation, dematerialization,
virtualization, and other areas. A data-backed understanding of
the developmental components of these scientific and technological
trends may also improve our models of development in economic, political,
and social domains, including GDP growth, political and economic
liberalization, globalization, transparency, violence minimization,
energy consumption saturation, sustainability, and other areas.
At the same time, a better understanding of evolutionary process
at all scales will help us understand the limits of development
and the fundamental unpredictability and generativity of evolution.
Through
promoting the academic and professional development of AEDS, we
also aim to catalyze the emergence of a better and more theoretically grounded futures
studies. This would allow for better forecasting for predictable
social and technological development, for better scenario planning
for unpredictable social and technological evolution, and for better
ways of discriminating between predictable developmental and unpredictable
evolutionary processes.
The
promise of a grounded field of foresight has existed for more than
100 years, beginning with H.G. Wells call for "professors
of foresight," and a "science of prediction" in his
speech, The Discovery of the Future, 1902. (Here
is a PDF
of Well's complete works). Only recently, as we have come to
understand the irreversible physical nature and and predictability
of a range of accelerating computational and communications capacities
has this promise appeared within reach.
In
the process of formulating and advancing a curriculum and practice
in AEDS, ASF will work to network a range of presently isolated
groups, including:
acceleration
researchers
actuaries
and statisticians
competitive
and business intelligence analysts
complexity
researchers
computer
scientists and technologists
demographers,
sociologists and anthropologists
economists
and econometricians
engineers
and systems analysts
evolutionary
development researchers
forecasters
futures
studies practitioners
futurists
information
theorists and communication scientists
innovation
and entrepreneurship researchers
military
and intelligence analysts
operations
researchers
physicists
political
scientists and globalization researchers
science
and technology historians
strategic
planners
systems
theorists
technology
assessment and policy analysts
technology
roadmappers
Much
work remains to be done. Today, most futures studies practitioners
do not attempt to forecast probable developments, or to test those
forecasts against reality. Few forecasters employ futures methodologies,
including scenario planning. Computer scientists, who see accelerating
computational trends, are not well integrated with the forecasting
community. Operations researchers, who are working toward a general
theory of efficiency as a "science of better," do not
yet see efficiency in developmental terms. In the biological and
complexity sciences, few evolutionary theorists and developmental
theorists talk to each other, and fewer still are familiar with
the emerging paradigm of evolutionary development.
As
Mike Korns observes, recent scientific research increasingly
demonstrates the value of modeling the universe and its subsystems
in terms of information theory. Today's leading cosmologists find
value in thinking of the laws of physics as analogous to computer
programs and the universe as something like a computer, engaging
in simultaneous processes of evolution and development.
Within
this fascinating emerging paradigm, one that provides
context to accelerating technological change as a universally-aided
process, ASF's most personal service mission might be: "How
can we profit, spiritually, financially, and emotionally, by
anticipating and guiding accelerating changes within our environment,
and by modeling ourselves in more universal terms?" ASF's
core proposition is that somewhere within the many positive sum
answers to this question, lie the solutions to our basic human
needs.
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