FUTURETRONIUM® AND THE ADMINISTRATION AND APPLICATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: AS FLUID POINTS OF INFLECTIONS ASCERTAIN THAT THE MORROW IS A THING OF THE PAST, THERE IS NOW AND HERE AVAILABLE THE UNABRIDGED AND AUTHORITATIVE ELICITATION AND ELUCIDATION ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE FROM AND FOR THE INCESSANTLY ARRHYTHMIC, ABRUPT, ANTAGONISTIC AND ANARCHISTIC FUTURE, AS WELL AS THE CONTENTIOUS INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUCH FUTURE AND THE PRESENT: A RADICAL YET RIGOROUS STRONG-SENSE AND CRITICO-CREATIVE FUTURES THINKING APPROACH TO QUINTESSENTIAL UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES, SUBTLETIES, INTRINCACIES, AND SUBLIMITIES, AS WELL AS THE OPPORTUNITIES TO BE EXPLOITED IN DRIVING FORCES INSTILLING AND INFLICTING PERPETUAL CHANGE INTO TWENTIETH-ONE CENTURY.
By (c) Copyright 2010 by Andres Agostini ― All Rights Reserved ―
(This Proprietary Encyclopedia may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes if it is copied in its entirety, including this notice.)
Forget what you know and believe in what you see. It’s time for you to conceive, develop and institute your own Futures – exploiting the upsides and downsides of the surreptitiously covert ― unless you will make yourself enslaved by circumstances beyond your control. Kindly please make your choices wisely and by you of yourself!
Go to any “snail paced” newspapers in a developing country and this you’ll find within the headlines: Fiction immensely superseded – through many orders of magnitudes – by incontrovertible and yet the most dramatic realities. People kind of see a part of the waves but are unaware that most pervasive currents underneath are the dynamos of these swirling changed changes.
Please always remember the following.
“Everything is related to everything else.” And to make matters worse, they will deploy and enforce universal and devastating imprudence, imprudence, imprudence and more imprudence. That imprudence so readily activated by the “baseness” practitioner. When invoking “Everything is related to everything else,” it is succinctly to say (that is) by way of example:
“Everything is interrelated to everything else.”
"Everything is connected to everything else.”
"Everything is interconnected to everything else.”
"Everything is intricate to everything else.”
"Everything is involved in everything else.”
"Everything is inter-associated to everything else.”
"Everything is interlocked to everything else.”
"Everything is inter-coupled to everything else.”
"Everything is inter-joined to everything else.”
"Everything is conjoint to everything else.”
"Everything is inter-tied to everything else.”
"Everything is interdependent to everything else.”
"Everything is correlated to everything else.”
"Everything is intertwined with everything else.”
"Everything is intermeshed with everything else.”
"Everything is implicated in everything else.”
"Everything is entangled with everything else.”
"Everything is entwined with everything else.”
"Everything is tangled with everything else.”
"Everything is knotted with everything else.”
"Everything is interwoven into everything else.”
"Everything is engaged with everything else.”
CONTENTS
1.- Objective
2.- Introduction
3.- The Challenge
4.- Epic Omission(s)?
5.- The Peer-To-Peer Message Among Ignoramuses?
6.- Dakota Tribal Wisdom and Organizations
7.- The Information Technology Revolution and the Absence of Cohesive Language
8.- Are You Fighting The Demon Of Decay?
9.- Bonaparte’s Geological Prophecies on Hurricane Katrina’ and
10.- Introductory Quotations By Enlightened Minds.
11.- The Future And The Technological Singularity As Per Ray Kurzweil, Ph.D.
12.- What is Happening Now? How Many “Nows” Are There?
13.- Body of the Present textbook.
14.- Relevant Commentaries to Clarify Hideous Misunderstandings (Under Systematic Commission) by Magnificent People
15.- Wrapping Up
16.- Caveat
17.- The Hope
18.- Turning Hope into Actions
19.- How To Cope With Century Twentieth One!
20.- Appendix, “Reflecting on the Education We Immediately Need”
21.- Appendix of Suggested Quotations
22.- Appendix of Definition of Applied Omniscience
23.- The Most Thoughtful Statement By Any American President To Date!
24.- NASA Lewis Research Center, The Ohio Aerospace Institute, The Vision-21 Symposium And San Diego State University Professor Vernor Vinge (March 1993)
25.- Demystifying the “real deal” in profession, science, technology, leadership, management, strategy, and business, as well as offering the clearest blueprint! By © Copyright 2010 Andres Agostini – All Rights Reserved –
26.- QUESTION: What do Ralph Waldo Emerson, James D. Watson, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Arthur C. Clarke, Bernard D'espagnat, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Malcolm S. Knowles, Bertrand Russell, Francis Bacon, Henry Kissinger, Otto Herman Khan, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, and the Panchatantra have in common? So they can offer us a positive and constructive reflection to navigate with an even-keeled vessel through unchartered waters in the third millennium? – A Critico-Creative Thinking Prescription To Illustrate Success In 16 Steps!
27.- QUESTION: Are We Adrift In A
28.- The Top Trends for 2010 by San Francisco Futurist Dr. James Canton, Ph.D.
29.- Glossary
30.- What I’ve Given You!
31.- Annotated Bibliography
32.- Additional Bibliography (Recommended)
33.- About The Author.
OBJECTIVE
In this book I have tried to give you a very practical overview of massive change besieging our institutions, professions and civilizations globally, as well as our personas, and how it can be taken of. Regardless of how thorough I have been, this written work is never a substitute for your own personal and professional research, discernment, pondering and conclusions.
I will focus on rigor with vigor since superficiality has been taken to unprecedented prominence for our collective disgrace. By means of an example, in
Since I will be using metaphors, I wish to establish a clear definition of this lexicon. Metaphors are defined as: “…A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison…” I will use metaphors frequently in this textbook though, in the final analysis, the entirety of this material will be subjected to great rigors. Speaking of the immense variations of change requires addressing that subject through many angles.
Recalling that this material is about the impact and the points of inflections fostered by many modes of change and to the utter end of spoken-of change, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid make the following claim: “Technological and social systems shape each other … technologies ― such as gunpowder, the printing press, the railroad, the telegraph and the Internet ― can shape society in profound ways. But on the other hand, social systems ― in the form of governments, the courts and informal organizations, social movements, professional networks, local communities, market institutions and so forth ― shape, moderate and redirect the raw power of technologies.” [56]
As your work through the following pages and if the reader is under a pervasive search of his and her sovereign own (a miracle with its own merits), remember that you are on a journey that will take time, commitment, study, research, discipline and perennial self-reflection and self-pondering. Then you’ll need to execute smartly and in a sustaining smartness and cleverness through the most acid tests of times. Timely is, subsequently, to remember Einstein’s words, “There is nothing more practical than theory.” If it is going to take time and without desiring to discouraging you, I must unambiguously state that there is no room here, now, there or then for easy “magic solutions.” It is to large a task for me to encourage or discourage anyone. Nonetheless, getting to work through applied omniscience will render grounded hopes. The more the smart working, the more the grounded hopes.
Lacking to meet or factually meeting raw realities, as well as elucidating the findings, is a personal journey to the innermost core of each one. You can do something or you can do nothing. This is how democracy operates.
To keep my conscientious awareness heightened and hygienic and to never raised the wrong expectation, my own Intellectual Manifesto is viewable at http://bit.ly/aBayq4
Allow me now to add another interesting perspective as you will be finding habitually through this textbook. In his book “The New Ruthless Economy: World and Power in the Digital Age,” (publisher in March 2005), Simon Head (high-ranking member of the Rothermere American Institute of Oxford) indicates: “Since 1995, the year in which the new economy based on information technology began to boom, the revenues have not been proportional to productivity and, during the last five years, the gap between income and productivity has been dramatic. Between 1995 and 2006 the productivity growth per employee superseded employees’ actual wages in 340%. Between 2001 and 2006, the first six years of George H. Bush’s presidency, this gap further deepened in an alarming 779%.” [58]
Perpetual novelty – a function of dramatic changed change under a multitude of fluxes – appears entirely, increasingly unleashed from precedent when analyzed from the longest and amplest historic perspective (pursued by an exact-science practitioner), thus creatively disrupting (dragging the FUTURE into this as-of-now PRESENT) through a chain of past-time successions.
The links, between historic successions and other preterit sequences, not only are “broken” and against fuzzy-logic discernment and counter-intuitivism (that of my beloved, yet-in-its-infancy Quantum Mechanics), but also beginning to get unrelated to the essence, the substance, the depth and scope and tempo, as well as to the veritable and relevant facts.
Fuzzy-logic discernment and counter-intuitivism must take into consideration many pathways among many others, including those by Buddhism. For instance, Kalu Rinpoche establishes: “We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When we understand this, we see that we are nothing. And being nothing, we are everything. That is all.” [68]
More Buddhist wisdom to gain some perspective about Fuzzy-logic discernment and counter-intuitivism:” If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” [71]
CITIZENS MUST COME TOGETHER ON THIS CAUSE UNEQUIVOCALLY AND WITH THE GREATEST SENSE OF URGENCY, DILIGENT URGENCY OF SACRED-SCRIPTURES PROPORTIONS. Must become mind-prepared and ever-ready as per my firmest conviction in case they agree upon countering some downside consequences from massive change and upping further some upside facets of said massive change. Can an entire civilization possess “free will in group”? Really?
One of the most important French-Canadian, to this end, make an awesome quotation. Pierre Trudeau (1919 – 2000): “The twentieth century really belongs to those who will build it. The future can be promised to no one.” [70]
THIS IS, PERHAPS, THE REAL DEAL. It’s time (as it seems to me after deeply researching the subject for almost 30 years), through sprits de corps talented teams of “rivals,” to institute the systemic, systematic, holistic stewardship of UPSIDE AND DOWNSIDE RISKS à la Gestalt with the omniscience vista. Albert Einstein hence indicates: “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.” [61]
THE MORE THE SO-CALLED CRISES HAPPEN, THE MORE THE EMPIRICAL-AND-OTHERWISE PROGRESSIONS OF APPLIED “STATES OF THE ART” WILL REGISTER WITHOUT A FAIL, BOTH IN THE FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND, AS WELL AS UBIQUITOUSLY. “UBIQUITOUSLY” NOW EQUATES TO THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE, LITERALLY.
What might the human race get in exchange while implementing all-encompassing MANAGEMENT (all chapters thoroughly) via a compound, all-solutions toolkit, routed with the envisioning and instituting of the optimal totality-of-knowledge? How? By operating the mind and the brains-driven business “battlefield” (just a stratum among zillion strata) with THE COMBINED, INDUSTRIOUS ASSISTANCE OF OMNISCIENCE, PANSOPHY, POLYMATH, ALL-KNOWINGNESS. To access to more insight on the terminology used in this paragraph, go to the Omniscience section for a thorough explanation.
We can still exercise many civil rights before some transbiologicals and robots take over as long as the “caveat” here described does not take precedence in the first place. Will you stay as an innocent and naïve “by stander” for how long?
What is the good news, if attention is indeed paid to world-class, “cross-pollinated and cross-referenced research” literature driven by scientific inquiry, research, and invention? The current civilization can increase UPSIDE RISKS (benefits) and simultaneously mitigate and terminate and modulate DOWNSIDE RISKS (disruptions), some existential and others not. Incidentally, one situation that does compound heavily (into terra incognita) is that of risks.
CLEARLY, EVERYONE ON EARTH MUST WORK UNDER THE ROGUE RULING OF THE ULTIMATE. Upside and downside risks are promoted by acts and deed of humans and acts of Nature. Many times the human lack of countering the risks by the acts of Nature becomes even more critical. Risks – upside and downside ones – are the result of a continuum by “changed changes” points of inflection marshaled through a multitude of fluxes and flows.
Diversity, by the way, when properly integrated and aligned (alignment of human and materiel resources), begets breakthrough innovation. QUESTION: WHICH PATH / ROUTE WILL THE PROFESSIONAL / BY-OWN-DESIRE IGNORANT, LAZY, MISTAKEN, IGNOMINIOUS, INDOLENT, CORRUPT ONES TAKE? REMEMBER, “ONE CANNOT GET TO A NEW PLACE WITH AN OLD MAP.” Just might need a GPS and SAT-phone with an Internet hot-swappable connector. The supine ignoramuses are savants in picking to avoid and downplay every form of reality.
They will be calling names the “reality facer.” The finest disqualification would be the calling him and her negativists and pessimistics. They will be calling names the “reality facer.” The finest disqualification would be the calling him and her negativists and pessimistic. I saw an interview by a survivor of the Holocaust. She clearly stated that being immensely pessimistic saved the lives of those sentenced to death while the optimistic ones were burned in man-made Hell without a fail.
Problem: Way too many supine ignoramuses, numbering into a tough majority. Facing Third Millennium, What / Where is your dynamic, real-time upgradeable roadmap? Really? I just wonder!” Kindly please ― to great fanfare ― receive a warm welcome to attending the DEATH OF UN-RESUSCITATABLE SCI-FI GENRE and the ever-incarnation and ensuing re-transconfiguration of ubiquitous SCI-FACTS. SUBSEQUENTLY, IT HAS NEVER BEEN MORE CRUCIAL TO BETTER YOUR INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL BEYOND BOUNDARYLESS DREAMS.
In speaking of your personal capital, I am exactly as that one held and treasured in your brain while the entirety of other magnificent sub-systems (such as heart, lungs, kidneys, liver) operate exactly as the life-supportive apparatuses.
Anyway, “THE EMPIRES OF THE FUTURE ARE THE EMPIRES OR «MONARCHICAL STRATA» OF THE MIND” (Churchill). HOW HAVE THE READER EXERCISED RADIANT AND PERVASIVE MIND EXPANSION LATELY, LATELY TOWARD FOREVER AND EVER? The Human Race has always longed for progress, ultimately upping its living standards for centuries, while ignoring the concomitant daring sequels, responsibilities and liabilities.
Incidentally, this is not the taken-for-granted “Society Of Knowledge” for free (that is exactly to say that it is not gratuitous at all). It is very expensive, since one must mortgage their intellectual capital endlessly and to the utmost and for good, every second for Life.
I did not give birth to hominoids very much to my fortune and relief, nor consider myself the supreme intelligence in the universe (let’s just abide by facts and figures and preter-naturalist thinking, as an amicable unasked suggestion); Primates (including pre-humans and current humans) were occupying the land and wandering around, intrigue buy copious wonders. A mind plus A body plus An opposable finger (thumb) plus a rock can equate to a great deal of fine and terrible weaponized artifacts.
In beyond stupidity and after over four billion of evolution, we humans cannot live without exercising our mind in the appalling linear world as we face a world of maximum non-linearity and multi-bumping by a multitude of discontinuous forces, forces that ever and ever gown more addicted to discontinuity.
Those, today, gain easily critical mass when the 7-billion souls wish to breathe and make a living and enjoy some world-class life standards, literally “de luxe.” The adage, “one thing at the time” will NOW be replaced by “A PLENTIFUL, FOREVER ONGOING CLUSTER / BUNCH OF DRAMATIC THINGS IN REAL TIME AND ALL OF THE REAL-TIME TIME.”
We have been called to revolt and act upon many integrated techniques and methods and practices compatible with a technocratic revolution by the humane that cannot rid his / her mind preparedness. But to get the maximum output, the musical must be choreographed and, above all, acted based on “sprits de corps” unanimity. In the mean time we are having tons of fun by showing off our collective un-preparedness until an “ex-solar typhoon,” sort of speak, hits next onto an ensuing point of inflection.
Only you make your own: conclusions, ideas, plans, findings, professional/organizational ethos and points of view. If your ethos, zeitgeist and weltanschauungs need or not radical upgrading, these will only be solved or not by you. They also need never known-of clarity.
The ultimate objective is for the reader to access insights to ask and work (for and by himself and herself) through each one’s own conclusions, thus coping better with the challenges of the Third Millennium.
INTRODUCTION
Is the future a function of the present or is the present a function of the future? What do present and future mean in practicality regarding business, profession, education, politics (including most universal realpolitik geopolitics), society (understanding the granularity of details ingrained in matter-of-fact demographics), markets, as well as in regards to emerging science and technology?
In this sense, George Orwell (1903 -1950) indicated: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” [69] And likewise David Hume (1711 – 1776) stated: “The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.” [69]
When we speak about time compartmentalization (such as Future, Present and Past) are we honoring the instituted approach by Dr. Albert Einstein? Since time is never dislocated from “mass” and “energy,” Are we, in pronouncing these profound dynamic concepts, allocating correlative “volumes” of a) Mass and b) Energy for the times compartmentalized and termed: Future, Present and Past? We aren’t, Are we? Why are we “mad” when we get strategically surprised beyond devastation and mayhem by crystallized “disruption potentials” turned into palpable nightmares if we are failing to do our solely own homework we dislike but we need to survive so dearly? Living and having lots of fun by superfluous modus vivendi will secure the modus operandi through Apocalypses. We always have the chance to counter several hazards but we must come together as a global society. Don't worry about the Universe; it'll go in its business-as-usual mode untouchably and invariably.
Alvin Toffler offers some insight: “The FUTURE always comes too fast and in the wrong order [expected by the great majority of mindful or absent/minded ‘incumbents’].” Brackets are mine. [17] The problem is that many incumbents feel so un-incumbent though at a later onerous price.
In a continuous dialogue about massive change, Toffler adds:
Alvin Toffler (1928 - ): “…’Future Shock’ … the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time … The dizzying disorientation brought on by premature arrival of the future….” [17]
Why is this FUTURE different to others? Why is change so pervasive, massive, and ubiquitous and frenzy? Why is this ever-changing rate of change entailing different differentness and newness and what are the respective consequences and sequels unavoidably affecting our lives?
What are the imperatives we must superlative micro- and macro-manage to cope to sustainably and sufficiently prevail?
How can we gain a vantage position and benefit from such futures and changes? How can we “upside” strategic perils along the times to come while simultaneously “downside” eventual opportunities, thus combining both “outputted” advents into a maximum optimum adaptation?
Why will this FUTURE unveil the ill and flawed considerations in greatly hidden, misunderstood and largely “socially engineered” fallacies, assumptions, conventions and beliefs? All of this ― actually going at a rate of staggering universal velocity to the least extent (both geographically and demographically), while DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military) greatly to my innermost gusto and own entertainment ― is stubbornly driven to “loving” defying (defiance) and disrupting (disruption) in “empirical,” yet “rampant” labs to “counter” and prove “wrong” so-called “immutable” classic laws of physics every day, literally.
DARPA, the entity that spinned off an agency termed “NASA” and created magnificent Internet, exhibits a most lucid maxim: “If you’re not failing frequently, you are not succeeding enough.”
If thirty years ago DARPA, Los Alamos National Laboratories, NASA, National Foundation of Science et al. had been commissioned with the invention of massive and abundant “green energy,” we could all now protect much better our environment (and possibly had reduced the formation of the climate global crisis), as well as enjoying plentiful sources of reliable energy.
How could this have been achieved then? By appointing an initiative within the tradition of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program and the Genome project.
As civilizations we have the right to make extreme blunders as well as to be held liable (knowingly or not) for the inherent consequences and sequels. Isn’t there the national security of every country threatened now?
Can we seriously and professionally (that is, without deceiving) speak of “success appropriating” WITHOUT STRONGLY REVIEWING FAILURES AND, ABOVE ALL, ADDRESSING THE NANO-GRANULARITY OF YOUR RIVALS COMPREHENSIVELY AND IN ADVANCE? Indeed? Why don’t we learn lessons of wisdom by third parties? Is it because we are too busy in trying to figure out self-esteems “issues”?
What are the new high-tech deities in the “warped passages” block? Is this the FUTURE we have chosen not to start creatively imagining to the fullest in the PRESENT early on? The FUTURE is that unimpeachable real thing, Isn't it?
Many people have huge difficulty understanding time progression and the strategic surprises that said progression fosters sometimes beyond creative imagination. Human rights, as well, might easily undergo retrogression with the incessant progression of time anyway, believe it or not!
It is attributed to Jeff Immelt, GE’s current CEO, the following: “…post 9/11 is a different world…” [42] This tragic milestone alone will play through times in forceful manners up to actual time horizons.
Reversing or smartly modulating the consequences will take a gargantuan effort by every constituent in Earth’s civilization, whether hungry or fulfilled, whether thirsty or satisfied, whether sophisticatedly educated or illiterate, whether old or young.
I really hope that those not believing such a claim to make a thorough understanding quickly. This material is bound to helping in that direction and thereby offering unique and unprecedented insights.
Subsequently, in today’s world, timidity and fear are serious competitive liabilities. Coming times, upcoming times, forthcoming times, future times will prove themselves ruthless in the continuum known as PRESENT without a fail. What are we competing for? We are competing for the prevailing of our lives with dignity, Aren’t we?
In illustrating the PRESENT and the FUTURE (and the fluid interrelationship between the two), What rolls are they respectively impersonating to gain us further insight? This is a strong-sense and critico-creative discernment to understanding the ever-challenging nature and anatomy of change in every facet of Human Life!
In order to appreciate time progression and its beyond geometrical non-linear quality, Can we establish accurate parallelisms with metaphoric and not so metaphoric (yet most accurate) terms to better enlighten our minds with lacking optimum rigor?
Why do we humans, marshaling through such a massive technological progression, readily wish to subject our existence to retrogression by choosing not to recognize grave and yet subtle forces that redefine it all?
In the final analysis, the FUTURE is not for the fainthearted. Stated simply, be it known that the scale, scope and magnitude of the FUTURES are impossible to overstate.
The PRESENT is so playful and naïve just gaming in arenas whose sole proprietor is the omni-mode ruling monarchical FUTURE.
As the PRESENT carries on just acting serially (not coping with all simultaneously but just gradually and in immersed ill randomness), the FUTURE ascertains every impending deed simultaneously.
In instituting best analyzes and countering the DOWNSIDES and leveraging the UPSIDES, the optimum analyzes are those industriously pondered: 1) pre facto (before the facts), 2) a priori (a form of before the facts), and 3) pre-mortem (much before mortem or before post-mortem).
Back in 1985, as I was starting to manage large operational petroleum risks ― along with the risks embodied by some forty thousand employees with one hundred six thousand direct “eligible dependents” ― (refinery, installations, wells, maritime fleets) ― including the immense risks of oil refinery number one and oil refinery number three as per worldwide standards, I started asking myself how I could foresee some of that potential disruption (clearly, early on and for future cases).
At that moment, and for some strange reason, someone started speaking to me about Alvin Toffler’s and his game-changing book “Future Shock,” first published in the 1970s. [25]
From there on ― having read the book carefully, I became engaged about the rate of change, seeing change engendering opportunities and chaos at the same time and forever. I then realized that the timing, tempo and rhythm of the progression of the rate of change were always operating against humans’ intuitivism and insight.
The driving force was the understanding of how small and complex things in life can be so profoundly modified by just instituting “out-of-this-world” common sense (not defunct “Thomas Paine” common sense any more).
Some forms of change are amazing and must be understood at any rate as per my view. For instance, when things feel less chaotic, it doesn’t mean that there is less chaos. It does mean that there is more chaos and order in fluid stasis.
What it means is that many forms of chaos are greatly intertwined and, thus, generating a) mutually-reinforcing energies (productively and disruptively), b) function and purpose, and c) and self-preservation for said chaotic system, as their collective selective pressures get aligned by their own combined valuable orders (usually multiplied by many orders of magnitude).
When my father gave me his private library, I found a book that he never mentioned to me and which he read in 1957, way before my coming into existence, titled “El Desenlace Del Drama Mundial” (in Spanish, “The Final Outcome of World Drama”) published by Publicaciones Interamericanas and Pacific Press Press Publishing Association, and authored by Argentinean Dr. Fernando Chaij in 1956.
It is a textbook with the rigor and strategic end and theme of a book in the tradition of George Orwell, though it was not in any way speculative but rigorously based on fact, statistics, reflection, concern and a rectification calling, never driven by the science-fiction genre. In fact, it is documented and supported with robust facts and statistics.
So many years later I came to a great understanding (since I believe in the forces of genotype and phenotype, as well as in the perpetually fluid interaction between both). My maternal grandmother was really a busy lady, not only in making her home and being entrepreneurial, but my mother ― not fully aware of the subtle scope of my profession ― one day told me, “your grandmother was a futurologist. She worked on understanding how and when things were supposed to unfold.”
And my father would constantly tell me, besides amplifying my brain through education and mind shaping my personalities, “try to foresee every problem so that you can fix each one in advance.” Exactly as a Dr. Aubrey de Grey Ph.D., a leading-edge scientist at the University of Cambridge in England, states it, “We'll be solving problems before they arrive.” [59] Quite a future-ready declaration, Is it not?
Prof. Hamel, along those lines by de Grey, states: “From Nostradamus to Alvin Toffler, individuals and organizations have long been obsessed with trying to see the future. The goal is to somehow get advanced warning of ‘what will be’…” [64]
I was raised in a home in which it was much more important to solve problems – through fundamental and permanent approaches – before their crystallizing. Before these findings, I wanted to know why and how each toy and even 383-inch (eight-cylinder) Chrysler Fury engine operate, as well as investigating the possibility of making those artifact “perform” better.
Fortunately, I am not a prognosticator but I am steadily practicing zillion “FUTURES” in advance effortlessly. For over some fifteen years these workings by my mind stop being “second nature” and became first nature indeed.
For a client or for a serious subject matter of mine, I will be eliciting the driving forces that will impact positively and negatively, as well the action plans to exploit every UPSIDE out of every DOWNSIDE. In the mean time, there is an Arab adage to share with you: “That who foretells the truth lies even if he is telling the truth.”
By extreme systematic and systemic cognition, I see trends, their intertwining, their superposing, their interrelationship, and their possibilities. I also see advantages and disadvantages and the fruitfulness of tackling them when it is called for. Even more than I’d like it to be that way, I must admit I am a pervasive “patternist,” patternist (patternists pater familias among other patternists) from patterns that become identified, acknowledged and understood patterns early on, that is: before their underneath currents (driving forces) make it evident to the world.
These extreme systematically and systemically cognitions, as expressly exercising both hemispheres of your brain, might land me or you to pre-cog capabilities. In my case and that of my maternal grandmother, it has noting to do with clairvoyance. It has only and fully to do with the application of the scientific method and working out the brain.
The scientific and technological progression, driven by the convergence of many visionary industries and the marketability of the stemming technologies globally, has brought an unprecedented level of scientific knowledge at a growing rate beyond geometrically exponential progression. In the mean time, and not so paradoxically, too many valuable minds are engaged in rogue retrogression as well. Are minds in retrogression desperately seeking self devastation? Progression and retrogression impact and inflict changes.
From the Institute for the Future, Paul Saffo and Roy Amara make a point regarding change: “I think about it as ‘orders of impact.’ First order, second order, etc. When an earthquake happens you have a whole series of waves that follow. The first order of the auto was the horseless carriage. The second order was the traffic jam. The third-order impact was the move toward the suburbs. This led in turn to the creation of huge metropolitan areas.” [64]
Medical advancements and breakthroughs not only hold the promise of prolonging life while holding it with great health and stamina, but it is entertaining the idea of human lives prevailing for up to one thousand years while some, like Dr. Ray Kurzweil Ph.D. and Dr. Terry Grossman M.D. [26], [27], speak habitually of conquering immortality.
Many serious researchers (including
Addressing Kurzweil, Grossman and de Grey, a clever and prominent physician makes his point. Dr. Joseph Knoll, M.D., effected an extraordinary reflection: "We shall never forget that humans obviously cannot change natural laws, but by discovering their mechanisms of action they learn to make use of this knowledge. By conquering gravitation man stepped across his naturally given limit and ultimately landed on the moon.” [59]
There is a valuable thought about the future and its arrival, attributed to Gary Hamel, “The problem with the future is that is different [since is profound, its scientific properties are being dramatically changed in real time and all of the time]. If you are unable to think differently, the Future will always arrive as a surprise.” Brackets are mine. [28]
In addition and as it is believed to be proclaimed by Samuel Goldwyn, “Only a fool would make predictions, especially about the future.” [64] If we are serious about change and all of its derivations and sequels, we must talk future studies copiously.
Before solving any complex problems, one must comprehend the most of them. A cross-functional, multidimensional, pluri-contextual scrutinizing and multi-strata of its ever-fluid and applicable womb-to-tomb vista will be beyond vital. In the execution, one must operate through many contexts and brainy filters and aided by a cohesive compilation of a great diversity of perspectives “funneled” into a monolithic unison.
Speaking of novel and comprehensive foresight and far-sight and the modes to raise the ante in that science, art and practice I will include a remarkable quotation by Strategos Institute Chairman and London Business School Professor. Prof. Gary Hamel, Ph.D.: “Each revolution in art was based on a reconception of reality. It wasn’t the canvas, the pigments, or the brushes that changed, but how the artist perceived the world. In the same sense, it’s not the tools that distinguish industry revolutionaries from humdrum incumbents – not the information technology they harness, not the process they use, not their facilities. Instead, is their ability to escape the stranglehold of the familiar.” [64]
As I paraphrase Dr. Stephen Hawking and to pursue the former, my express perpetual bottom-line (that of the undersigned) for Life is the ensuing: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the Universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
In aligning the idea of understanding the nature of change and the impacts stemming from said change, former GE’s CEO Jack Welch indicated: “Seeing the world the way it is, not the way we hope it will be or wish it to be.” Then, Jeff Immelt succeeded Jack Welch and became new GE’s CEO in
To further enlighten the present material, Tichy stated: “Jeff Immelt realizes that the world changes every day and that his job is to keep GE competitive in that changing world. But his ability to take the company where it needs to go is greatly facilitated by the fact that he has a clear understanding of where he is starting.” [42]
Agreeing greatly with Dr. Hawkins’s, Welch also mentioned, “To get to the guts of why things happen.” [42] Welch indeed believes is exercising pattern analyzes (as patternist), Does he not?
There is a mandate in the PRESENT over the FUTURE by the forces of the FORTHCOMING TIMES. The solid idea about it requires crafting a new vision, with its appended (loose/tight and amorphous but concrete) strategy, and aligning people to it.
Transformation involves not just tearing away from the PAST, but immediately moving into a new better future besieged by great perils that must be transformed into lucrative yet sustainable UPSIDES.
In speaking to your intellect, as your intellect and mine dialogue fluently this via, I will appeal to very legitimate narrative resources to offer you an accurate insight and perspective of how the scientific properties of change are changing and how changed changes are beginning to change it all beyond the wildest dreams and nightmares.
In due time, you will realize that this is a well-meant calling in which vigorous rigor is sine qua non to the undersigned. I immensely enjoy advanced democracy, rule of law (rigor juris), true justice, peace and harmony. Nonetheless, to milk hope out of daring situations, I must face raw realities to start de-risking some really unnecessary disruption potentials. My most unambiguous end is to seek peace through harmonic means only. Believe me, I am not naive just become hopeful when I become phenomenally industrious to paraphrase some prominent Germans.
Why will I use the above referred “legitimate narrative resources”? Because I feel there is massive universal and dysfunctional illiteracy concerning the rate of change. There has always been like that except but one feature. Now, the incumbents of supine ignorance are over-empowered by pervasive, yet inexpensive tools of creation and devastation.
Even as headlines in “hard-copy” newspapers supersede the most creative fantasies embedded in science fiction, many incumbents just don’t get it. Others are really upset because they cannot understand why the PRESENT does not resemble the nearest PAST.
Others are paralyzed in and by the analyzes. And others manifest an anarchistic tendency towards society.
Through centuries, the greatest luminaries have greatly reflected and recommended not to fight against extraordinary forces, but to use them smartly. This time around, with the Kingdom of the “Society of Knowledge” ruling as the prominent Tudor family, one must become a cross-pollinated savant to navigate the waters shed by said forces.
The PRESENT seems to be having a great deal of enjoyment by pontificating words and deeds solely engaged in exponential mediocrity, thus exploiting the worst of humankind as if it were the most desired quality. This featured quality by the PRESENT is pervasively horrendous and existentially damaging.
On the contrary, the FUTURE is capable, and in fact it implements so, of doing well to the point we would astound ourselves. The actual quotation by Thomas Edison indicates: “If we all did the things we are capable of doing well we would literally astound ourselves.” [44]
As this material will portray, and very much to the advantage of the subject matter here dealt with, I carry and will carry on all my professional lines of practice with absolute agreement with Otto Herman Khan. He actually stated: “I'm against fashionable thinking ... I'm against ignorance ... I am against the whole cliché of the moment ... I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking…” [43].
Salvador Dali to second the motion by Khan offers us a thought: “Get real; dream the impossible.” However, if you dream the impossible, you must get prepared to work rigorously and smartly for a serious term of time.
THE CHALLENGE
(by Paul Valéry, 1932)
“ All the notions we thought solid, all the values of civilized life, all that made for stability in international relations, all that made for regularity in the economy … in a word, all that tended happily to limit the uncertainty of the morrow, all that gave nations and individuals some confidence in the morrow … all this seems badly compromised. I have consulted all augurs I could find, of every species, and I have heard only vague words, contradictory prophecies, curiously feeble assurances. Never has humanity combined so much power with so much disorder, so much anxiety with so many playthings, so much knowledge with so much uncertainty…” [56]
EPIC OMISSION(S)?
QUESTION: IGNORING COLOSSAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICALITY? LIVING IN THE SOCIETY OF KNOWLEDGE UTTERLY STATES THAT YOUR MIND WILL CATCH STATE-OF-THE-ART KNOWLEDGE BY OSMOSIS?
In aligning brains and leadership in the third millennium towards seizing actionable knowledge creation and utilization, Tichy points out some interesting reflections too often ignored by many private, public, NGO, supranational, and even academia incumbents:
"The leadership job of the twenty-first century is to enhance brainpower of an organization by having leaders at all levels engaged in Virtuous Teaching Cycles. The case has been made that we now live in a knowledge era where the value of intellectual capital has supplemental physical assets. In this world, leaders must make everyone smarter while simultaneously aligning the energy and commitment of the people in their organizations … Thomas Stewart, a Fortune Editor and a leading thinker in the field, outlined the foundations for them knowledge economy with powerful simplicity in his most recent book, The Wealth of Knowledge: ‘The knowledge economy stands on three pillars. The first: Knowledge has become what we buy, sell, and do. It is the most important factor of production. The second pillar is a mate, a corollary to the first: Knowledge assets – that is, intellectual capital – have become more important to companies than financial and physical assets. The third pillar is this: To prosper in this new economy and exploit these newly vital assets, we need new vocabularies, new management techniques, new technologies, and new strategies. On three pillars rest all the new economy’s laws and its profits’…”
Tichy supplements:
"Stewart’s ranking reflects a massive movement underway to actually measure intellectual capital … The concept is correct and we put Stewart’s work right at the front … to reinforce the importance for companies to continue defining, measuring and improving ways of generating new intellectual capital … Teaching Organizations are the needed response to today’s emphasis on knowledge creation. Today, intellectual assets trump physical assets in nearly every industry.”
Tichy asserts:
“Despite the boom and bust of the recent dot-bomb era, there is no question that we are in the early stages of an era in which technology and biotechnology will have inescapable consequences for how businesses are run and organized. The practices, systems, policies and mind-sets that prevailed in the old industrial economy will not do the job. The foregone conclusion of the late 1990s that the old industrial behemoths would be agile start-ups is equally wrong for the times.”
And he also indicates:
"Rather, we now know that the winners of the future will adapt and innovate to exploit emerging technological and social changes. They will be big, fast, and smart. The winners will create value by having a workforce that is more aligned, energized and smarter than their competitors. They will leverage size and act with speed across internal and external organizational boundaries.” [42]
THE PEER-TO-PEER MESSAGE AMONG IGNORAMUSES?
Ignoramuses of supine ignorance speaking to other ignoramuses of supine ignorance:
“We’ll infect you with the same orthodoxies we’ve infected everyone else in your industry.” [64]
DAKOTA TRIBAL WISDOM AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES
“Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you’re on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it’s cheaper to feed a dead chapter. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you’ve tried all these things, you’re still going to have to dismount.” [64]
THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION AND THE ABSENCE OF COHESIVE LANGUAGE
For a long time some cultures have immensely insisted that word economization is vital and proper communication etiquette. In the process, too many laggards use this FALSE argument to insist that you are to speak and write briefly, even if in economizing “words” you are also economizing most vital facts to be ignored.
The Information Technology, The Society of Knowledge and the Global Village are not so to be simplistic and briefer. Even before the advent of the Internet, many top corporate leaders would tell their lieutenants not to send to them memos longer than one page. Then, the corporate royal could not explain to the shareholders why a major operation, say, in
This is a major blunder by gigantic chunks of the civilization. The Japanese and the German, to cite two examples, will always appreciate every detail. To them what is key is not the length of the document, but to be incontrovertible thorough whether in one or five hundred pages. What matters is relevance regardless of length.
Serious think tanks incumbents must go through colossal volumes of research. And, believe or not, that makes a vital difference.
Pay great attention to a letter that I will now quote by Napoleon to one of his general. Incidentally, as in the Industrial Military Complex, DARPA, and NASA if you can put any “light” or profound idea or comment is useless if it’s not documented in writing. And in operational guidelines, directives and standards anything said verbally (not in writing) has no effect at all.
Napoleon wrote to his General the ensuing:
“Your letter tells me nothing. You will however have to be able to interrogate in order to know the names of the regiments and the commanding general and a hundred things, all very important – the morale of the troops, the way in which they are fed, the strength of the different units, and what is known from conservations with the colonels and officers of the corps. … I expected several pages and I get only two lines. Redeem all that by writing me in great detail.”
ARE YOU FIGHTING AGAINST THE “DEMON OF DECAY”?
“In the age of revolution, the future is not an echo of the past. While every executive understands this intellectually, it is quite another thing to stand in front of your organization, and investors, and boldly confront the demon of decay. But investors and employees are smart enough to know that sooner or later every company has to a strategy ‘un-install’...” [64]
“The future is not a privilege but a perpetual conquest.” Attributed to Robert Kennedy.
BONAPARTE’S PROPHECIES ON HURRICANE KATRINA’ AND
Many people have bitterness recalling of Napoleon. Many countries in
What I like the most about this man was his insatiable search for self-learning, and self-learning about: 1) English, 2) Mathematics, 3) Science, 4) Management, 5) Systems Approach, 6) Organization stewarding, and 7) Undisputable wisdom. He didn’t just like these subject matters; he applied them lavishly and thus conquered
By coalescing his entire beloved subject matters – both in their theoretical, empirical, and practical modes –, he indisputably birthed an array of composite stratagems. If you are as thoughtful as I think you are, the idea is to in-source your brain with empirical recommendations to formulate winning composite stratagems in your diverse entrepreneurial activities.
On geology Napoleon generally reflects:
“It is very important … to have good maps of all the country between the
TEXTBOOK’S INTRODUCTORY QUOTATIONS BY ENLIGHTENED MINDS
There is a great deal of publishing about change and coping with it and its consequences. I have the firmest belief that there is a huge lack of understanding how change can change its own nature. Bacon, ensuing, makes a legendary quotation about it.
Sir Francis Bacon: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.” [2]
There are many that believe to have a vested interest in fossilized pasts. To those Hamel has a word of wisdom.
Prof. Gary Hamel, Ph.D.: “Denial is tragic. Delay is deadly.” [64]
The profound insight, from a prominent British leader, is always illuminating:
W. E. Gladstone – British Prime Minister – (1809 – 1898): “You cannot fight against the future.” [17]
In seriously rigorous thinking, there is an important maxim to bear in mind at all times. It establishes: “whatever is now working is already obsolete.” In the case of already-forewarned scientists, this implies to evolve or to radicalize the evolution of any tangibles or intangibles.
There is a very important scientific truism to bear in mind at any cost. It ensues, “everything is connected to everything else.”
Some of the problems we have might be explicated here. Ensuing:
Mrs. Manley (1663 – 1724) – English novelist and playwright –: “No time like the present.” [2] The only problem Mrs. Manley is your beloved “present” is beyond impermanent.
The future, the West,
Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi (1828 – 1910): “I am convinced that the history of so-called scientific work in our famous centuries of European civilization will, in a couple of hundred years, represent an inexhaustible source of laughter and sorrow for future generations. The learned men of the small western part of our European continent lived for several centuries under the illusion that the eternal blessed life was the West’s future. They were interested in the problem of when and where this blessed life would come. But they never thought of how they were going to make their life better.” [69]
A perspective that might prove helpful somewhat now:
Horace Mann (1796 – 1859) ― American educationist ―: “Lost, yesterday, somewhere between
When evolution gets radicalized in applied science, a so-called breakthrough takes place. Hence, Einstein makes the case now:
Albert Einstein: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity … We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” [4]
The quotation about Physics, History, Education, Mathematics and the Future.
“The future of Thought, and therefore of History, lies in the hands of the physicists, and … the future historian must seek his education in the world of mathematical physics. A new generation must be brought up to think by new methods, and if our historical departments in the Universities cannot enter this next phase, the physical departments will have to assume this task alone.” [69]
In understanding at least the complexities embedded in the Universe, there is an Englishman with a great perspective. His quote ensues:
G.K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936), Essayist, Novelist, and Poet: “The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden, its wildness lies in wait.” [57]
In making the case against the so-called power of simplicity and countering the existence of complexity, chiefly in an age bathed of enormous complexities, there are two prominent minds to quote. In one instance, Dr. Albert Einstein points out: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” [60] In supporting this motion further, Dr. Aubrey de Grey establishes: “To solve a very complicated problem, you generally need a fairly complicated solution.” [59]
In the mean time, zillions will insist many times over that tackling complexities are needless, especially when doing easy “stuff” is ubiquitously fun and available. Then, Dr. Bertrand Russell will be forewarning them of his famous sentence: “I know of more people who'd rather die than think.”
Most people think that this is the “knowledge society” or the “knowledge economy” because they can do so-called “networking” (whether fruitful or not) over the web via a technological platform termed the Internet. Look at the following take by Noel M. Tichy:
“We have made the case throughout this book, and most people agree, that in the new ‘knowledge economy’ the key to winning is maximizing human capital. Ideas and knowledge have replaced physical goods as the most valued commodities in the global marketplace. Consequently, brains, energy and talent – human capital – are the primary source of value creation. But while many people and organizations grasp the concept, few have figured out how to really utilize the talents and knowledge of everyone in the company, especially the younger members of the company.” [42]
From Mysticism to Science, the Future and An Interesting Quotation.
Rosario M. Levins: “Mythical thought is not pre-scientific; rather it anticipates the future state of being a science in that its past movement and its present direction are always in the same sense.” [69]
Charles Franklin Kettering (August 29, 1876 – November 24 or November 25, 1958) was an American inventor and the holder of 140 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research for General Motors for 27 years from 1920 to 1947. He had a solid quotation about the future: “The future is where I expect to spend the rest of my life.”
The quotation on analytics, science and future. Ensuing:
Charles Babbage (1792 – 1871): “The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery … As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessary guide the future course of science.” [69]
One of
Richard Buckminster Fuller reminds us of the following: “Either war is obsolete, or men are.” [5]
Speaking seriously as I do in the entirety of this textbook, some scientific research preliminary yet unconfirmed outcomes and findings seem to suggest that the future rules the present. The German philosopher Nietzsche has his own lucid position.
The quotation about the study, the past and the future.
Stuart A. Copans: “Study the past if you would divine the future.” [69]
The quotation abut foretelling: Unknown: “Declare the past, diagnose the present, [and] foretell the future.” [69]
By unknown author: “The future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science.” [69]
By unknown author this quotation is about the atom, uncertainty, science and the future. Following: “…bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes.” [69]
The Prometheus Bound quotation.
Aeschylus (453 BC):
“Prometheus: My mother …
foretold me, that not brute strength
Not violence, but cunning must give victory
To the rulers of the future.” [69]
By unknown author: “It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.” [69]
Elliot on the present and the past.
T. S. Elliot (1888 – 1965):
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.” [70]
The past, the future and the interlude that connects both.
Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953): “The only living life is in the past and future … the present is an interlude … strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness we are living.” [70]
A. J. P. Taylor (1906 – 1990): “
God, the Nineteenth and twenty century, as well as the Future.
Max Frisch (1911 – 1991):
“In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.” [70]
Who does the future belong to?
Pierre Trudeau (1919 – 2000): “The twentieth century really belongs to those who will build it. The future can be promised to no one.” [70]
Foreseeing the Future out of the Fossilized Past?
Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797): “You can never plan the future by the past.” [70]
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: “It’s our future that lays down the law of our today.” [6] It’s advantageous to understand what a prominent 120-year-old corporation such as GE is now considering. This quote is attributed to GE’s current CEO, Jeff Immelt: “I have to lead for tomorrow’s world.”
Question: How is the future manufactured? Reply by Prof. Gary Hamel, Ph.D.: “The future is the creation of millions of independent economic actors.” [64]
In speaking of change and social systems’ reactions, it is wise to listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “There are always two parties – the party of the past and the party of the future, the establishment and the movement.” [64] As per the Oxford Dictionary, The Establishment refers to: “…social group exercising authority or influence, and generally seeking to resist change.” [65]
We cannot solve problems planted in the past. But we can solve problems to come (in the future). Ergo, former
Theodore Roosevelt: “All the resources we need are in the mind.” [7]
A take regarding time progression and retrogression, Sir James Jeans establishes:
Sir James Jeans – English Astronomer, physicist, and mathematician – (1877 – 1946) : “Taking a very gloomy view of the future of the human race, let us suppose that it can only expect to survive for two thousand million years longer, a period about equal to the past age of the earth. The, regarded as a being destined to live for three score-years and then humanity, although it has been born in a house seventy years old, is itself three days old.” [17]
It is indispensable to create whatever future you conceive by and for yourself. Is there a better tool than your most cultivated and prepared mind thinking in unthinkables? Please quit now that foolish intuitivism à la (the pre-Cro-Magnon)
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “Man hopes; Genius creates.” [8]
In order to work for the matters that make us hope, we must bluntly face the matters that besiege our own existence, the ones elicited by us and the ones elicited by the people that we don’t even like. Dr. Knowles, a connoted American and greatly regarded into adult education, has a lucid position that can serve us as a starting point. Following:
Dr. Malcolm Knowles Ph.D. addresses ignoramuses of supine ignorance: “The greatest danger for the survival of the present civilization is neither atomic war, nor environmental pollution, nor the exploitation of natural resources, and nor present crises. The underlying cause to all of the above is the acceleration of man’s obsolescence … The only hope seems to be an electroshock program to re-instill to the present adults the competencies required to function adequately under a mode of perpetual change. This is a profound need ― the immeasurable challenge ― that is presented by the modern society to adult education.”
The Disraeli’s wise take:
Benjamin Disraeli – British Prime Minister – (1804 – 1881): “Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.” [17]
Former Federal Supreme Court Justice Sandra O’Connor gave a brief interview in 2009. She is mobilized into telling people that children and youngster must be taught both a) Civics and b) History.
Clearly, having seen so much mistaken people led to grave imprisonment sentences, O’Connor indicates that many of the people did not understand the basics about 1) living civilly in society, 2) respecting the mandates of the “Law Of The Land,” and 3) understanding where society and, in her case, the U.S. comes from (through systematic study of history) to comprehend where are we likely to go or not.
On education and to this end, Dr. Skinner made an important point.
Dr. Burrhus Frederic Skinner Ph.D., ˝Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” [9]
Fromm makes a point that supplements, to some extent, Knowles’ and Skinner’s point of view:
Erich Fromm – American philosopher and physiologist – (1900 – 1980): “In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.” [17]
What is the inner-workings of time as per Orwell? Ensuing:
George Orwell (1903 – 1950): “Who controls the future; who controls the present controls the past … If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” [17]
Question: Is this is a mistake universally made by the great majority? Meaning:
Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797): “You can never plan the future by the past.” [17]
Horace (65 – 8 BC): “While we’re talking, envious time is fleeing: seize the day, but no trust in the future … The year and the hour which rob us of the fair day warn us not to hope for things to last for ever.” [17]
How can we state the bond between the future and past:
Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953): “The only living life is in the past and future … the present is an interlude … strange interlude in which we call on past and future to bear witness we are living.” [17]
Elliot further adds creativity to understanding time:
T.S. Elliot – Thomas Stearns Elliot – (1888 – 1965):
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.” [17]
We see a host of manufacturers of all types of products, including automakers and their cars. In great many cases and as people have been concerning about being so-called “global winners” in their respective industries, they were adding to their products more and more features. Features equate with “increased complexities.”
That is, they were adding great complexity while defying that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Evidently, you can add every thinkable and unthinkable “complexity” to your products, as long as you greatly upgrade the scrutinizing vista of the entirety of the systems and the dynamic interactions among i) hardware (amplest meaning), ii) software (amplest meaning), and iii) humans themselves (both the ones represented by the manufacturers as well as those being end users).
Since you cannot use the same knowledge repository in making the features-adding-to-your-products effort, you’d better pay attention to Einstein’s wise words.
Albert Einstein: “A problem can never be solved at the same level of knowledge that was created.” [10]
In the seventeenth century Milton made a point that in my opinion is valid today. In arguing to free technology, capable of great good but also of great evil, John Milton (1644) expressed majestic confidence in our ability to prevail: “Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof we are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.” [52] This has been the point of view of an Englishman about England.
Nicholas von Hoffman ― an American's view on England elicitated to other Americans and author of the book “A Devil’s Dictionary of Business” (2005), ISBN 1-56025-712-1 ― indicated: “England ... the land whence American business sprang, a fact that may come as news to Americans, who believed that everything good and worthwhile has its origins in the United States. The foundations of English business practices go back to late-medieval
Was Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson: “I prefer the stories of the future than history.” [11]
Speaking of not changing the current state of affairs, Dr. Kissinger, especially addressed for people how to approach this maxim: “first, foremost and never do not harm,” (mostly taken from the Latin sentence: “Primum non nocere”) by stating:
Dr. Henry Kissinger addresses: “An ignored issue is an invitation to a problem.” [12]
Former U.K. Prime Minister Churchill is undisputedly considered by many one of the greatest political intellects. He had a great position on the future, stating:
Sir Winston Churchill: “The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” [13]
There are many fallacies and ill-conceived assumptions and outdated conventions that even smart people hold dearly without subjecting said fallacies and assumptions to great testing to attempt to disprove them to gain further insight and mental acuity of what holds true and what doesn’t.
Antonio Machado: “The eye is not an eye because you see it. The eye is an eye because it sees you.” [14]
After the insight by Machado, there is additional thoughtfulness along these lines:
The Panchatantra (body of Eastern philosophical knowledge): “Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes.” [15]
Seeing through the eyes of applied science (and actionable omniscience) is, in my view, the optimum mode and here lies further food for thought:
Bernard d'Espagnat: “Even if the Universe is a little myopic is true that, more than others, MEN OF SCIENCE ARE ITS EYES.” [16]
Drucker was blamed often of self-praising himself about his capability of foretelling the future. This is his take on it:
Peter Drucker: “Things that have already happened but whose consequences have not been realized [because they were not imagined, considered, scrutinized or envisioned by disciplined foresight and far-sight extending and expanding both sides of the human brain] … Don’t confuse movement with progress.” [17] Brackets are mine.
In an interview with Charlie Rose in 2009, Dr. Watson explained the vast significance of science:
In a 2009 interview to Charlie Rose Show, Nobel laureate Dr. James D. Watson, Ph.D.: “Science gives society a great sense of decisive freedom.” [18]
There has never been a greater importance to the most sophisticated education, especially to science, math, and engineering (and most of the times, the three of them simultaneously). The ensuing quotation accordingly goes:
Arthur C. Clarke: “We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 ― and half of the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?” [19]
Regardless of how difficult, every responsible adult must assume the difficulties of the present realities. Then, s/he can establish a plan of action to work through those realities to overcome those realities. Khan offers important insight now.
Otto Herman Khan: “Clearly, the first task is to gain acceptance of a more reasonable view of the future, one that opens possibilities rather than forecloses them.” [20]
Time and action are invaluable resources. Verify the ensuing quotation:
General Francisco de Miranda: “Time is the context by means of which action is delivered.” [21]
Unthinkable thinking will increasingly prove itself the most sensible decision.
Oscar Wilde: “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
To be capitalistic in general requires having a good “relationship” with machines and even increasingly sophisticated automation. By every account, Mrs. Katharine Hepburn is a great democratic and civilized person and never a prominent activist of anything else but the center, made a wonderful claim. As follows:
Mrs. Katharine Hepburn: “Nature … is what we are put in this world to rise above.” [52]
Daring circumstances are for the tough-minded, resilient, resolved, as well as for those who combine boldness with prudence.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: “There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent, hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”
How do freedom, security, safety, reliability, reason coalesce and intertwine?
Sir Karl Popper: “We must plan for freedom, and not only for security [and safety and reliability], if for no other reason than that only [extremely educated] freedom can make security secure [and safety safe and reliability reliable].” Brackets are mine. [51]
Before challenging situations, don’t rule it out or oversimplify it without first trying to research those situations and begin asking both silly and exuberant questions lavishly.
In second-guessing responsibly the future, not to foretell but to make mental options for omni-mode preparedness to avoid being strategically surprised, I recommend the following:
Alan Turing (1950): “We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
Many were complaining about the uniqueness of the ideas and reflections by some people with profound analytic abilities. Those complains were aired to a colonel who listened up and kept silence. UNTIL THE U.S. AIR FORCE COLONEL ANSWERED BACK AND WHO REPEATED IT FREQUENTLY: “It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool that open your mouth and remove any doubt.”
Additional and important quotations, directly related to the subject matter here addressed, are located at “Appendix of Suggested Quotations.”
All quotations not otherwise cited are from the interviews conducted by the author or personal communications sent to the author.
THE FUTURE AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY AS PER RAY KURZWEIL, PH.D.
From
Inventor Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading futurists, with a 20 year track record of accurate predictions. Called the "restless genius" by The Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." Inventor of the first CCD flat bed scanner and many other firsts, Kurzweil is an inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world’s largest for innovation), and 19 honorary doctorates and awards from three U.S. presidents.
In the message contained in that e-mail indicates:
“In The Singularity Is Near and Chairman of the Singularity University (supported by NASA and Google and operated on NASA Ames Research Campus) predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers.”
“According to Bill Gates, ‘Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future,’... "Kurzweil envisions a future in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable humanity to transcend its biological limitations ― transforming our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine."
“Kurzweil, through his extensives works (including in his the feature-length documentary film), examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben.”
WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW? HOW MANY “NOWS” ARE THERE? ARE THOSE “NOWS” STILL RELEVANT?
Swift and swirling change, peril, complexity, and newness do not function alone. They are deeply inter-meshed, interactive, and transforming, as well as transformational. Using the genetic and biological parlance, you’d better believe that this a multi-fold epoch, evermore unfolding, in which mutations and transmutations are taking place across the board.
You can open up new doors for yourself, see new options, minimize significant mistakes, and maximize potential understandings. In order for you to act decisively successful, you’d better have a lucid comprehension of said understanding for Life. A lucid comprehension will come to you by the greatest ― tough and subtle ― omni-mode and thorough the most insidious application of the scientific method, especially through exact sciences aiming solely to the state-of-the-art generation.
Because of the forces exerted by the FUTURE upon the PRESENT, this Era streams rising ambiguity, ambivalence, dichotomy, uncertainty, complexity, conflict, bewilderedness and yet unprecedented possibilities.
It’s greatly convenient recalling the luminescent thought by the prominent German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: “It’s our future that lays down the law of our today.”
It’s advantageous to understand what a prominent 120-year-old corporation such as GE is considering since September 2001. This quote is attributed to GE’s current CEO, Jeff Immelt: “I have to lead for tomorrow’s world.” What about you? Will you lead for yesterday's world?
It is for leaders to fall into the trap of thinking that planning ahead and building for the FUTURE is an incredible luxury of inaccuracy. IT IS NOT. IT IS AN ABSOLUTE AND MOST INDISPENSABLE NECESSITY FOR LIFE.
But anyone who underestimates the revolutionary character of today’s changes is living a too-uncontrolled an illusion.
Zen Buddhists will offer you unprecedented lectures on reality being the greatest mental “fabrication” by the hominid's mind. The world, that of physical “existence” and manufactured by the mind, is being transformed dramatically and irrevocably, second by second all of the time.
Juxtapositions of many knowledge dominions will bring about the greatest scientific convergence ever in the years ahead. Some people like James Canton suggest these forces becoming and rendering “weird science” in every sphere in our lives. [22]
With each passing day, change quickens everyday at a faster-and-faster, nonlinear, discontinuous and counter-intuitive rate. In the mean time, Evelyn Lindner reminds us of the following: “Pessimism is a luxury of good times … In difficult times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling, self-inflicted death sentence.”
Tichy made a relevant contribution to understanding the nature of swirling changes. I quote some of his excerpts:
"Speed and constant motion are the hallmark characteristics of life in the twenty-first century. The driving / enabling force behind them is the technology that allows almost instant access to information, and with each advance in technology the concept of ‘fast’ is only going to get faster.”
And Tichy added:
"This access comes not only in the form of the ability to move data around the world in nanosecond (one billionth,10–9, of a second), but also in the ability to sift through and manipulate it. Patterns and trends that were impossible to see in the days when information [based on throughput-ed numerical and narrative data] was housed in mainframe computers that required IT professionals to access, are now readily visible to anyone with a PC and a hookup who cares to apply a few screens.”
Subsequently, he continues:
"Moreover, as technology shrinks the cycle between an action, a reaction and a re-reaction, it becomes possible for people who might otherwise never be in direct contact to engage in a nearly constant flow of dialogue. The result is not only that technicians in Bangalore, India, and Waukesha, Wisconsin, can seamlessly work on the same project, passing it off as the day ends in one hemisphere and begins in the other, but also that a newly hired consultant at EDS can have a meaningful dialogue via videos and e-mails with CEO Dick Brown about what he sees in his territory.”
And Tichy observes:
"Meanwhile, markets for goods and services and the capital markets change directions with astounding speed. Consumer trends [because of the multitude of driving forces that propels said forces] are in a state of constant flux as a flood of new products [and services] appears every day to supplant older ones that often have been around only a few months themselves.”
And he carries on:
"Market expansions morph into contractions seemingly overnight. It isn’t that the cycles are getting closer together. The economic expansion of the 1990s was one of the longest in
And Tichy asserts:
"What has happened so far is just a preview. We have only scratched the surface in using the capabilities of the current technology, not to mention the new technologies and capabilities that are coming on stream every day.”
Tichy points out as well:
"The earliest uses of most new technologies are at making old processes work better. Once computers came out of the science labs, their first mainstream uses were for such things as automating accounting and inventory controls. These applications were valuable in that they got the bills out faster and let a company make better purchasing and scheduling decisions. But once you consider the activities required for entry and retrieval, some weren’t much more effective in terms of cost or time consumption than doing things the old way.”
In understanding scales and accurate senses of proportions and depth, Tichy asserted in 2004:
"The GDP of the developed world – the
As Tichy concluded making his case. Brackets are mine. [42]
TEXTBOOK (BODY OF,)
To further set the stage for this material, the textbook “Einstein in the Boardroom” by Suzanne S. Harrison and Patrick H. Sullivan Sr. may offer some lucid ideas on the “current” state of affairs when they claim:
"Humans have been adding to their total knowledge steadily over the centuries, and the amount of knowledge we create is multiplying at an incredible rate. Beginning with the amount of knowledge in the known world at the time of Christ, studies have estimated that the first doubling of that knowledge took place about 1700 A.D. The second doubling occurred around the year 1900. It is estimated today that the world's knowledge base will double again by 2010 and again after that by 2013.” [37]
There are many serious publications, from 2003 to this date, speaking of the entirety of scientific knowledge doubling every five (5) years and sooner. How, then, can one undertake such a gargantuan challenge, through the “Society of Knowledge,” unless it is through the stewardship of the scientific method?
The American Heritage Dictionary’s Introduction (fourth edition, 2000) by Joseph P. Pickett, Executive Director, literally indicates [54]:
"This Fourth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary combines the best of traditional making with key innovations that afford new ways of looking at our language… This edition has nearly 10,000 new words and senses that reflect the rapid pace of change in the English language today. Technological innovations in computing and communications along with advances in the sciences have been especially rich sources of development in the lexicon (for example, bit map, domain name, and raster in computing; dark matter, photonics, and yoctosecond in science). Medicine and medical research continue to produce an astonishing array of new terms for chemicals and substances (endostatin, leptin, transfatty acid), for disorders and infectious agents (Asperger’s syndrome, erectile dysfunction, hantavirus), for treatment (cocktail, molecular knife, xenotransplant), and for a variety of creations and discoveries (designer gene, enteric nervous system, microsleep)…. In addition, continuing social change in postindustrial society has given rise to expressions that describe new business practices (buyback, microcredit, reverse mortgage), a changing workplace (face time, job-share, mommy track), and evolving political positions and governmental policies (family leave, term limit, workfare). New sports terms have arisen (clap skate, five hole, skyboard), as have words for new educational practices (charter school, distance learning, homeschool). The names of foods from other cultures continue to be adopted (baba gannouj, garam masala, quesadilla). A host of new cultural developments has produced a host of new compound cords (assisted living, poetry slam, shock jock). And English speakers continue to be an exuberance force in creative coinage (bloviate, newbie, wannabe)…. To ensure accuracy in the coverage of our rapidly changing vocabulary, we have worked closely with distinguished consultants in a wide variety of specialized fields, including anthropology, astronomy, genetics, immunology, philosophy, and physics, to name but a few. We have also gone to great lengths to make our biological and geographic entries as timely as possible. Many new biographical entries have been added, especially in the areas of sports, music, filmmaking, and literature. To the geographic entries we have added new country names, such as
The PRESENT resolutely insists on trashing itself with an overload of “obsoledge” (obsolete knowledge) [23]. But the erudite, shrewd, pre-cog FUTURE ― knowing the decisively better best ― stays safe and certain that « what worked best won’t anymore » for the PRESENT besieged by mundane miseries, those miseries propelled by the unkindest humankind without a fail.
THE FUTURE IS ALSO AND ABOVE ALL BESIEGED, BUT BESIEGED OF AND BY BREAKTHROUGHS IN PERPETUITY AND PERPETUALLY IN FLUIDITY RADIANTLY AND IRRADIANTLY.
If you must insist, you can study the melancholic PAST as a distorted prologue primer to the PRESENT. Nevertheless, not even the loftiest accumulation of all the suboptimal PASTS added to the PRESENT are nothing but an infinitesimal, ineffectual, inconsequential, immaterial, and impious script to the FUTURE. PAST and PRESENT are a bunch of empty, hallow iotas.
Said script, I’m not apologetic to state, since I did not birth this Universe, won’t get you to your own FUTURE’s UPSIDES, but might make you institute an emergency landing upon your own existential disruption unless you pay great attention and act upon it urgently and smartly. Got to get beyond cross-pollinated sophistication. Cannot make it by yourself? Can you please just ask for unconventional professional assistance?
In the ultimate scrutiny, you must conceive, design, develop, implement, sustain, update, adapt, re-adapt, and re-invent you and your own FUTURES, FUTURE by FUTURE for Life, a Life that will equate to immortality. Taken from the Latin term a posteriori, I will never act aposterioristically. Taken from the Latin term a priori, I will invariably proceed aprioristically.
Unless, in exercising your most conscientious freewill, you wish to be enslaved by an arrogant robot that is: omniscient, as well as self-upgrading, self-enhancing, self-replicating, self-fixing, self-energized, self-renewing, self-reinventing, self-aware, self-ruling, self-transporting, self-commuting (by ground, air, water, outer space, tele-transportation, etc.), and in possession of many other “selfs” that grant it huge autonomy.
Those believing that tele-transportation, more popularly known as teleporting, is Sci-Fi might wish to research on the breakthroughs by Los Alamos National Laboratories. Some years ago, as per LANL itself, they made it possible at the “discrete level.”
The PRESENT does not resemble the PAST, nor will the FUTURE ever resemble the PRESENT; up until now the PRESENT has been anecdotal, folkloric, and still impregnated with greater forces and yet more subtle ones than an ever-increasing synergy (i.e., mother of all synergies) of all our known and unknown PASTS combined (over four billion years), while the FUTURE will over-geometrically trans-mutate into infinitely swifter, arrhythmic, inconceivably, amorphously perennially-accelerating (through diversely modulated or not speeds ― speeds that stem from some new order of rampant speeding and acceleration of said speeding ―), orderly-chaotized and yet more driven into vividly-immersed and palpable realities than our current yet obsolete PRESENT.
Why second-guess the FUTURE when you can read, in advance, said FUTURE's hints NOW and exploit them grandiosely, to your advantage?
Annihilate the DOWNSIDES to hijack the UPSIDES, metaphorically and not so metaphorically speaking about leading, managing, and undertaking organizations with a profit end or otherwise. Please remember a golden rule: Regardless of your qualitative and quantitative growth in, say, leadership and success capturing as well as management, every growth will be hallow and harmful if it is not first a growth of ethics and morality.
The FUTURE at all times wishes to readily equip the present with novel information. Why? Because the FUTURE considers the PRESENT a failed stated in the realm of time, and does not desire to get implicated with the downsides of a sub-optimal, bitter fellow who declines every helpful knowledge on “emotional intelligence” and “political intelligence”.
Anyway, and by any rational measure, we are in a multi-eon-streaming epoch in which mind-toughness and mind resilience, within kindness and civility, are going to be far more important than the smile of the bus driver spoken of by Daniel Goldman. [29]
As the FUTURE gives the PRESENT a bad score and becomes judgmental on it, the PRESENT flagrantly denies and rejects the current existence of the FUTURE. The signs echo by the FUTURE into the PRESENT are ubiquitously here in encoded ways.
As the FUTURE paraphrases Shakespeare’s sentence (fears take away the good with which we could win) and executes it in the practice, the PRESENT feels a great animosity against such a maxim and habit.
The forthcoming FUTURE ― already scattered among us ― has a lot to offer to the PRESENT, namely an invaluable out-of-this-world-and-time source of narrative and numerical data (unexplored repository knowledge waiting to being seized and administered by the PRESENT and its inhabitants). Can you think of anyone more visionary than the king in his class, the FUTURE itself?
The PRESENT, unfortunately, is somehow anecdotal (suboptimal) while the FUTURE ruthlessly and relentlessly abides by ever-emerging scientific truths. These truths contain vast gold mines for creation, recreation, and super-creation, as well as for devastation.
The cultivated brains must root out the endless dangers to capture the benefits, so humankind prevails on Earth and much more beyond it if the Universe (and the embedded Nature of the latter), too, ― and its own hyper-dynamics ― warrants such a sovereign license.
For the first time in history, we can work backward from our imagination rather than forward from our past. [28] In the midst of chaos, there is a learning lesson to assimilate. Sometimes the table is served for OVER-LEARNING if the prepared mind is paying huge attention to the nano-granularity of details.
To me uncharted territory is the most splendorous “terra incognita” territory, chiefly because of its sheer number of unknown knowns and unknown knowns. As well as immense crises, there territories and incognitos offered an unprecedented learning opportunity that I will never waste, my most thoughtful friends.
The term singularity entered the popular science culture with the 1993 presentation at NASA-sponsored conference of a seminal paper by
Professor Vinge indicated it in 1993: “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended …Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? These questions are investigated. Some possible answers [and some further dangers] are presented…” Brackets are mine.
I just wonder if the FUTURE is continually stalking on the PRESENT! Perhaps, it is so. One thing can be ascertained, because of the PRESENT’s non-erudite nature, the FUTURE (the over-ruling) is always filibustering the PRESENT (the enslaved).
These days meaning: these seconds ― the totality of all is in the making perpetually. That to be “in the making” mode ― at this time ― is relentlessly thought of and thought through way in advance. This is a technique to CURRENTLY get your brains over-in-sourced by zillion practiced futuristic scenarios (happily and readily adopted quite early on).
The FUTURE WILL HIT the PRESENT AND ITS RESPECTIVE GROUND RUNNING. All of that as it has been seen up to the present time.
This is a hyper-accelerated Eons-streaming Age and ever-increasingly by an above and beyond an over-exponential “many orders of magnitude” factor.
Said “over-exponential factor,” even when multiplied by many orders of magnitudes as in effect it is, the non-linear geometrical and discontinuous growth rate of it is by most people immeasurably underestimated and misunderstood. Besides its intuition is only flagrant counter-intuition.
To me the PAST is more like
We are repeatedly longing for the good sides of the futures impiously forgetting that those futures come along with great responsibilities and challenges.
Progress is the future outcome of a multitude of cascades of “current moments” flowing divergently. The divergence unites seamlessly but not under the ever-suboptimal comprehension of the “naked” human eye.
The PRESENT is introvert adhocracy as the FUTURE is technocracy in perpetuum. The PRESENT is an illiterate adhocratic one while the FUTURE is the technocratic, “omni mode” savant. The PAST is hollow and inconsequential fossils unverifiable by any “carbon testing.”
To give entrepreneurs a POV quickly, most business plans are (have been for too long) grotesquely ill-conceived indeed in the mean time, as they are written-up and reckoned with the eyes fixed in prehistory. IF IT IS NOT AN ACTUAL SUB-SET OF A MUCH GREATER AND THOROUGH ADVANCED RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, THE FIRM WILL MEET GARGANTUAN CHALLENGES.
Otherwise, there will be great opportunities! One end of the greatest Risk Management Effort (extraneous to insurance, co-insurance, re-insurance, bonds, and those artifices “marketed” by beautifully institutionalized “social engineering,” termed by these God-sent incumbents: “marketing techniques”) is to entertaining the fiscally sound outcomes of a business, literally any business, challenge, or task.
This FUTURE, that throws around its weight through every facet of the PRESENT overbearingly and mercilessly, might be 99.99% INEVITABLE.
Inevitability, in this instance, equates to meaning that it will be a rogue dictator, over-ruling capriciously and solely acting upon its way and capricious taste.
The unavoidable consequences of this FUTURE can be mitigated or at least somehow modulated. Evidently, this FUTURE’s UPSIDES can be, perhaps, seized and even amplified. To meet both requisites, there is one HUGE prerequisite before proceeding any further. The popular wisdom so populated of “one thing at a time” is forbidden by the rulings of the incumbent FUTURES here referred to.
This is not a calling for the “snail-paced” multi-tasking either. You do your DOWNSIDES and UPSIDES simultaneously for Life. Otherwise, one can never proclaim knowing how systems operate (not just computational software, but SYSTEMS per se IN UPPER CASE).
That is, that the TOTALITY of HUMANKIND has to converge AT UNISON ― “on the doubles” ― on the most essentials Herculean tasks to do in order to attempt the sustainability of the corresponding civilization as it is now known / perceived. What a big problem to solve that one posed by so-called perception!
In all seriousness, one must decode, de-encrypt the enigmas of the informative and dis-informative yet hallucinated perception. There are way too many kinetic hallucinations and vivid fabrications and pseudo-actual artifices even in the most lucidly sighted perceptions as fluidly recorded, in real time, even in the most prepared of the minds. How can one, in an all-out practiced, de-hallucinate such atrocious perceptions?
Don’t trust perceptions since they’re all flawed and ergo they lie. Dr. Henry Mintzberg indicates that “humans are flawed,” How, could you, subsequently, obtain de-flawed perceptions from flawed hominoids? In order to de-flaw perceptions and executions, you must go great distances to begin with, thus as you are still entrenched in so-called “Success 101, the in-between lines 1, line 1, word 1,” out of a socially engineered preface.
Do you feel confused by said hallucinations? Verify this quotation by Henry Miller: “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.”
Atrocious hallucinations embedded in perceptions can be “reality check” by, for example, following these success tenets in your professional/business theater (frame of reference) of operations: 1.- Picture mentally radiantly. 2.- Draw outside the canvas. 3.- Color outside the vectors. 4.- Sketch sinuously. 5.- Far-sight beyond the mind’s intangible exoskeleton. 6.- Abduct indiscernible falsifiable convictions. 7.- Reverse-engineering a gene and a bacterium or, better yet, the lucrative genome. 8.- Guillotine the over-weighted status quo. 9.- Learn how to add up ―in your own brainy mind ― colors, dimensions, aromas, encryptions, enigmas, phenomena, geometrical and amorphous in-motion shapes, enigmas, phenomena, methods, techniques, codes, written lines, symbols, contexts, locus, venues, semantic terms, magnitudes, longitudes, processes, tweets, “knowledge-laden” hunches, so forth. 10.- Project your wisdom wealth onto communities of timeless-connected wikis. 11.- Cryogenize the infamous illiterate by own choice and reincarnate ASAP (multiverse teleporting out of a warped / wormed passage) Da Vinci, Bacon, Newton, Goethe, Bonaparte, Edison, Franklyn, Einstein and Feynman. 12.- Organize relationships into voluntary associations that are mutually beneficial and accountable for contributing productively to the surrounding community. 13.- Practice the central rule of good strategy, which is to know and remain true to your core business and invest for leadership and R&D+Innovation. 14.- Kaisen, SixSigma, Lean, LeanSigma, “Reliability Engineer” (the latter as solely conceived and developed by Procter & Gamble and Los Alamos National Laboratories) it all unthinkably and thoroughly by recombinant, a là Einstein Gedaken-motorized judgment. 15.- Provide a roadmap / blueprint for drastically compressing (“crashing”) the time’s “reticules” it will take you to get on the top of your tenure, nonetheless of your organizational level. 16.- With the required knowledge and relationships imbedded in organizations, create support for, and carry out transformation initiatives. 17.- Offer a tested pathway for addressing the linked challenges of personal transition and organizational transformation that confront leaders in the first few months in a new tenure. 18.- Foster momentum by creating virtuous cycles that build credibility and by avoiding getting caught in vicious cycles that harm credibility. 19.- Institute coalitions that translate into swifter organizational adjustments to the inevitable streams of change in personnel and environment. 20.- Mobilize and align the overriding energy of many others in your organization, knowing that the “wisdom of crowds” is upfront and outright rubbish. 21.- Step outside the boundaries of the framework system when seeking a problem solution. 22.- Within zillion tiny bets, raise the ante and capture the documented learning through frenzy execution. 23.- “Moonshine” and “Skunkswork” all, holding in your mind the motion-picture image that, regardless of the relevance of “inputs” and “outputs,” entails the highest relevance is within the sophistication within the THROUGHPUT. (See definition of “throughput” at [53]).
The function of the “motion picture” image is to early on show before the mind a film of incessantly altering futures. The purpose of the vision is never to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future.
Come to think of it thoroughly, throughput is embodied by the Latin term “modus operandi.” Through ages, the concept of mission-critical “throughput” has regularly been represented by said Latin term. Clearly, as eons elapse, in the West we do need a great translation into English.
Through implementation of your organizational, corporate, institutional, entrepreneurial modus operandi, you can shape up your modus vivendi.
Possibly, this FUTURE will not have ― as per the flawed hopes treasured by all-walks-of-life eyewitnesses ― a “natural tendency.” Stated plainly, because it is being envisioned and worked-out preter-naturally, this FUTURE may appear ― before our naked eyes ― with extreme tendencies and directives that evoke the most extravagant and transhuman mandates.
Can anyone undergo an epiphany in reversal? Long time ago, speaking of my professional experience while testing and experimenting, I have reduced probabilities of having “breakthrough” epiphanies to zero, literally. I had envisioned many “Eureka times” long time ago and yet in advance. I do have an immense way to go very much to my blessed apostlehood.
Those greatly appreciated Alemmanic, Germanic Bavarians speak abundantly about “susceptibility to perfectibility.” In my professional quest, which is my own intellectual challenge of mine with me and before my persona, that precept is vastly insufficient.
One must consider that I toy and play with not only Edisonian Research but also with own self-induced: a) Serendipities, b) Pseudo-serendipities, c) Randomized serendipities, d) Pseudo-randomized serendipities, and e) Pseudo-randomized serendipities.
For cases a), b), c), and d) I also play a great deal with channeling the “throughput” with 1) directness, 2) indirectness, and 3) a combination of immediately previous 1) and 2). All of the above, in further progression of my testing and experimenting, as well as my fact-finding and fact-disproving research, I subject to a gradation (“gray scale shading”) of i) loose, ii) control, and a combination of immediately previous i) and ii).
The terms “extravagant” and “transhuman,” in this case, apply for even the ultimately leading-edge practitioner of the scientific realm, either within that eminent establishment, or those with an unauthenticated citizenship from the avant-garde renegade-verse. It might be a genuine deal, it might not?
Said dictator will not impersonate anyone. He will be THE maximum MONARCH OF TECHNOCRACY by his own right, Remember? Yes, yes, yes ― I know, Technocracy, the gentleman that just espoused a lady with an appalling temperament that loses composure oft, even before the state’s visits by the Holly Pope and her Royal Highness the Queen of England.
Her fist name is “Global.” Her surname is “Crises.” That’s the reason why this “power couple” has made Sir Francis Bacon a best-selling icon, “FOR TIME IS THE GREATEST INNOVATOR.” Gotten it?
This Monarch will expel every laggard and every one that, notwithstanding his / her most advanced education, worships and disseminates ignorance. This expel will include the transfer of the selected one to a recondite “curved” corner of the Universe or the Multiverse. In speaking about the Multiverse, we must use the following quotation. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892 – 1964): “I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
The PRESENT carries on superfluously. But the FUTURE is over-impregnated and super-immersed with detailed meaning and significance and with projected transgressive-ly and a là “omni mode” manners, as well as with its manifesting tangibly and yet palpably intangibly pervasive ubiquity.
Perpetual innovation is a rogue truth to this PRESENT. The breadth, depth, scope, subtlety, intricacy, and rate of acceleration of this FUTURE’s perpetual innovation will be endless, endless so that is beyond the wildest dreams or nightmares ever conceived by the ultimately noted or most criticized sci-fi writer.
To attribute to this FUTURE’s perpetual innovation a quality of far-fetched will be as well an extreme over-simplification and an existential blunder and the greatest and most public personal acknowledgment of own worshiped supine ignorance.
The PRESENT is 1% a function of the PAST and, above all, a function of the FUTURE. The PRESENT is a function of the PAST only in part.
Remember: The FUTURE is eternally pre-clashing and/or clashing the PRESENT, thus continuously shaping and re-shaping the PRESENT to a great extent. The FUTURE is, so to speak, 30% a function of the PRESENT and 70% a function of the FUTURE itself. Percentages are arbitrarily suggested in order to illustrate.
The PRESENT is bathed by the ill-presumed permanency and by the quality of being impermanent. The PRESENT is never a snapshot or fixed (static). It is the linkage, superposition, and/or contentious intertwining of many films (multi-fluid dynamics / kinetics).
Its dynamism grants itself, the PRESENT, huge ambitions to becoming the FUTURE while trying to capture the “here and now” mirage, a mirage (a misdemeanor) that does not care losing the sense of ridicule in worldwide football / soccer game through worldwide broadcasting “live.”
There are too many “heres” and a myriad of “nows” without the utter and indispensable acknowledgement that the perennial, trembling gap between the PRESENT and FUTURE generates many creative tensions, regardless if harvested or not.
The PRESENT is at least unceasingly infinite, unless its interrelationship with the FUTURE stops. The FUTURE is never endless unless a great anomaly takes place.
Concerning the PRESENT and specially the FUTURE, the great majority of people failed considering the possibility of anything going wrong, no matter how remote the location or complexity of the implementation environment.
The PRESENT and the FUTURE engender tsunamis of CHANGES, principally those changes never thought through. When you altered your work because of competition and/or difficult times, you are CHANGING your professional occupation (organizational strategy).
The PRESENT has orderly been used to being a land at the dawn of history, that history architected by a bunch of biographies and auto-biographies by the winners and the prevailing ones without considering the side of the losing ones or that of those without partisan positions.
The PRESENT’s duties are appended to the FUTURE. The PRESENT’s rights are appended to the PAST.
When you reflect and modify you innermost (and that one revolting and commuting within the innermost by using its own proprietary translational and rotational moves), you are CHANGING your essence to some extent. CHANGING your essence to being ADAPTABLE to ever-shifting realities will be your utmost sensible deed.
When CHANGE is perpetually altering all types of CHANGES, the scientific properties of known and unknown changes get modified, sometimes profoundly and sometimes to an indescribable unknown. This extreme modification is what I have been referring to ‘CHANGED CHANGES.’
CHANGED CHANGES make the overwhelming case for “beyond unprecedented” reinvention of humans, lifestyles, organizations, businesses, governments, nongovernmental organizations, societies, and worldwide society. In the process, the extreme makeover is in nothing superficial or similar.
And the call is an abrupt wake-up alarm to all sorts of leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, business owners, government administrators, consultants, advisers, strategists, professors, teachers, students, researchers, and any breathing or cryogenized human being.
Welcome to a new “normal” and a new “abnormal.” In all verisimilitude, there are many new “normals” and “abnormal” being the latter, incidentally, as well within normalness.
At the time being, it does not matter anymore where you come from and how this impact your ‘current’ PRESENT. Instead, what is presently relevant for you to envision are the floating, fluxing, cross-railed FUTURES as they climb the treacherous building-block ladder, the ladder of accumulation of opportunities, challenges, and perplexing, but exuberant trade-offs. Neither exuberance nor trade-offs are for the uncultivated.
These trades-offs poise the least thinkable of the unthinkable results, challenging our body (physiology), mind (psychology), and soul (spirit). If you think “exuberant” is a fancy or undesirable term, kindly please wait until you come to meet your FUTURE in person.
To apply, say, for practical leadership credentials will be a nearly, though not impossible, insurmountable enterprise for Life. Leadership to what a) Benchmark, b) Metric, c) Objective, d) Goal, e) Function, f) Purpose?
How insurmountable? As nearly insurmountable as attempting to hike the Everest cloth-less, equipment-less, ill-prepared, flawed-minded without a crew and the indispensable Sherpa, as you walk and climb toward the mountain’s peak with your back focused on the peak and while your eyes are grabbed by the starting-point locus. You have the right to successfully seek the anti-canonical milestone, Haven't you?
You can continually walk into the FUTURE backwards to revive the fossilized vestiges of blurred/made-up/artificial “artifices”-driven memories that eat your soul out. A healthy medical prescriptions will dictate: “The patient must always focus on the FUTURE. In the process, and in order to keep its existence, he/she must always REMEMBER THE FUTURE IN ADVANCE.”
You know what the PAST is? Reply: The eternal flow of increasing creative-tension and controversial discrepancies between the FUTURE and the PRESENT, encapsulated in a stream of segments from the “preterit tense” kingdom, a kingdom that is neither awaken nor significant anymore.
Historians and actuaries, in a hurry, will be shouting that they stop being “retrospective” to becoming “prospective” (and creatively so) given the eternally-happening inflicting points of inflections requiring exuberant solving.
Paraphrasing Ray Kurzweil [1], as order from FUTURE exponentially increases, designated time exponentially and incessantly speeds up by ever-increasing orders of magnitude.
The PRESENT is just a fluid venue progressively bumped and shocked by the interactions between the unfortunately fossilized PAST and the FUTURE through the intermediation of the so-called PRESENT.
Clearly, the genetics of the human beings will have a notable impact on the psychology and physiology of the humans until the FUTURE’s say, wanted or not, like it or not. Such a say has a designated “due time.”
By all enforced effects, the FUTURE is by any means a representative of three facets. There is the facet of opportunities that we can call UPSIDE RISKS.
Another facet is that of the likelihood of potential disruption. The former impersonates the DOWNSIDE RISK.
Thirdly, there’s the facet of blended UPSIDE RISKS with DOWNSIDE RISKS. To really get the OPPORTUNITIES the DOWNSIDE RISKS must be terminated or, at least, mitigated and modulated. Those DOWNSIDE RISKS must be brought under optimum control as per the technical parlance I employ.
Such eternal creative-tension discrepancies / disputes ― as imposed by the rogue and nearly ageless interrelationship between the FUTURE and the PRESENT ― as the FUTURE wages an all-out “preemptive war” to get the PAST under retirement.
These eternal creative-tension discrepancies make three major displacements. Firstly, it displaces the PAST to a corner (or quadrant) where vestiges are fossilized but not looked after.
It must be mentioned that interrelationship between the FUTURE and the PRESENT is intense and will become increasingly more intense, beyond the boldest and lucid imagination without a fail.
Mother Nature is a great and loving and noble matriarch. The Universe is the oldest and wisest Patriarch, perhaps the elder son of the greatest intelligence of all.
The Multiverse (many universes happening and reckoning at the same time, possessing many dimensions) is not only the maximum, all-enabling Patriarch, but also a pervasive Patrician holding the greatest intelligence, wealth, perhaps the elder son of applied omniscience, nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and A.I. (artificial intelligence). [41] To see pplied omniscience defined by the author, see the respective appendix here included.
Successful and tough, subtle, refined, granular reverse-engineering captures breakthrough innovations for the PRESENT’ and from the FUTURE’s dominion. Reverse-engineering all regardless of its origins, terrestrial or extraterrestrial. Come to think of it and conclude that both a) all and b) everything is primordially and ultimately extraterrestrial.
In the last analysis, everything is terrestrial and exo-terrestrial. This is important to bear in mind. Terrestrial or extraterrestrial, what a fruitless argument as that of the gender of the angels, is ultimately guided by the Multiverse (period).
The Earth (so too: Earthlings, always greatly non-terrestrials, and/or Buckminster Fuller’s Earthians) is a function of the Universe. [47].
The Universe is a function of the Multiverse. Perhaps, the Multiverse is a function of most known and chiefly unknown forms of utmost conscientious awareness and supremely lucid intelligence.
Every human is partly earthling and partly extraterrestrial. Why? Because pre bio-genesis and bio-genesis was (at least and as it seems) massively instilled from the outer space (a sub-verse of the Multiverse).
If extraterrestrial beings existed, they would be, in fact, siblings to current humans. How come? Because there are other genesis different from bio-genesis on Earth, whether within our knowledge or not. A genesis does not only take place only on Earth, but in the whole Universe if it is or not under known and unknown modes/assumptions.
To capture benefits and to extreme-make-over, say, leadership and to scientifically steward disruption potential into exploited upsides (to make success seizing crystallize), you need to understand the PRESENT, the FUTURE, and its frenzy interrelationship. In making this effort optimum ― and among other prerequisites ― we must find out and address two topics.
One topic has to do with how we reached this PRESENT out of a scattered PAST’s technological accomplishment as we constructed an expanded knowledge repository just by practicing future scenarios through radiant foresight, far-sight, hindsight, insight, and innermost-sight.
The most reasoned foresight and far-sight, sine qua non to recalling the FUTURE, is only a function of innermost-sight.
Another topic is that insidious habit of the FUTURE in seducing the as-of-now PRESENTS while the citizens of such PRESENTS make us agent so many looking-forward changes that set afire the interrelationship between this PRESENT and this FUTURE.
Now we know how we got to “here,” “here” is the hyper-dynamism of flows, in-flows, counter-flows, avant-garde flows, crossed-pollinated flows, point-inflecting flows. “As-of-now” exactly refers to the PRESENT-FUTURE’s own tête-à-tête. [38]
"Here,” while planted in the PAST, was a bit statistical but never really so.
The so-called “here” is undergoing a total immersion of numberless processes, throughputs, transactions, deeds, etc. “Here” has incessantly been mobilized. “Now” is motorized at a rate that is beyond awe-inspiring.
We just got the “now” about right to this point. To turn savvier on this FUTURE, one must be a genius in his executions (sic), yoctosecond by yoctosecond, which is one septillionth (10-24) of a second. [48]
Then, s/he has to make the greatest effort of all, that is, to think unthinkably in relation to present forces and pertaining to futuristic trends ― both subtle and dramatic ones as well as those driving and marshaling and enforcing just brute-force dramatic ones ― by means of the practical implementation of scenario planning.
All of the previous without ignoring the flagrant and less-are-sometimes-more interactions instrumented by said forces.
Thereinafter, your unthinkable thinking about FUTURES must become more refined, enhanced, exuberant, streamlined, diverse, expanded, disciplined, and extended. In doing so, it never suffices to come up with a three-scenario forecast (not even with the prehistoric “compounded forecast”).
Subsequently, forecasts must carry with you as many plausible or implausible scenarios (ad infinitum indeed) as resources required never lacking the maximum rigor. Also, no optimum forecast is great enough if it is not accompanied with an arsenal of plans of contingency. Each scenario crafted must have its respective, unambiguous plans of contingency without a fail.
All of this is true for humans from the PAST and the PRESENT. Towards a more advanced time ― and by means of reverse-engineering with the omniscience perspective ― the humans will increasingly be of different constituents and design, as well as different concerning purpose, function, and a combination of purpose and function simultaneously.
We will become more “intimate” with our eternally ignored relationship with atomic and sub-atomic particles (not to get me involved in “dark matter” and “divine” or “God’s matter”).
The PRESENT is changelessly unnecessarily delayed or even lost and inattentive because its limits are impermanent and available capabilities are finite.
The PRESENT never contemplates fast-forward-ly, but in reversal in so adding to its even greater inherent disadvantage. The FUTURE operates beyond the offensive acceleration of “light speed”-plus and nearly without or with zero limits or constraints or borders.
The FUTURE is the Napoleonic Emperor that does everything only under its own terms, exploiting every advantage and disadvantage to its lucrative well-being and omni-ruling.
The FUTURE is accustomed to spying on the PRESENT. How come? The FUTURE is the PRESENT’s debriefing one. The FUTURE is, in many cases a virtuoso, though it, at times, voyeurs the PRESENT. What a horrendous vice!
Such deed will NEVER be tolerated. How do you REHAB the FUTURE? Group therapy? Grouping it with whom, the “crowd of wisdom” folks? Rehabilitating it by which handy means?
The PRESENT is sleepwalking while the FUTURE is “child like” wondered by daydreaming promenades. In the mean time, the post-modern modernity is in a rush getting more and more modern by unprecedented “shock and awe” unearthed standards.
This criss-cross PRESENT will be reconstituted by the continually crinkum-crankum FUTURE inevitably. [30], [31]. There is going on a terzetto in which the happenings are more or less like this: the PAST (R.I.P), the PRESENT (thé dansant), and the FUTURE (tertium quid). [32], [33], [34]. Clearly, the PAST is getting a fully impeachable CPR by so-called “historians.”
Earned in his own intellectual right, Thomas Jefferson most cogently stated: “I prefer the dreams of the FUTURE than history.”
Who would dare not to appreciate that nanotechnology, biotechnology, bionics, and artificial intelligence making deep and steep inroads? Incidentally, the definition of the omniscience perspective can be revised at <<>> as well.
The PRESENT is a forgetful sardine while the FUTURE is a giant cuttlefish in conspiracy with an octopus and a twenty-four eyes jelly-fish.
Ying and Yang have combined forces of subtle and dramatic origin. These days the PRESENT is a bit like a pseudo-harmonized Ying-Yang relationship. The FUTURE is only about Yang deeds.
The PRESENT is besieged by a bunch of dilettantes and poseurs. [39]. The FUTURE is ― so to speak ― à la Sir Francis Drake.
The PRESENT is more like Huckleberry Finn while the FUTURE is perhaps the archetype of Genghis Khan and his efficacious Mongols.
The stream of as-of-now PRESENTS will become ― to some extent ― one of the forthcoming FUTURES. At some point ahead, a PRESENT will be ultimately integrated into a single FUTURE seamlessly.
Such a FUTURE, though, will reach a point in which being bio-based or bio-related or not in vivo at all will be splendidly awaken and active.
Regardless of transhumanity, overhumanity, superhumanity, nonhumanity and “above and beyond” humanity, the hard-core essential is and will be not being human but becoming and acting humanely.
The PRESENTS are from appalling and contentious interrelationship between Venus and Mars. The FUTURES are only from stringent Mars. Go and ask about it Dr. John Gray. [40]
The FUTURES are supervening upon the PRESENTS in combination with the ruthless forces possess by the own FUTURES.
The PRESENT concerns the animal and vegetable kingdoms. These kingdoms are subject not to three but four emperors, namely: liquid, solid, gas, plasma.
The FUTURE is only about beyond post-humanity and its staggering brute-force and dramatically-subtle INTELLIGENCE.
The PRESENT pertains to pretending discovering science. The FUTURE is absolute science dominance and nearly if not thoroughly infinite power until the Universe’s last say.
On their own earned rights, the PRESENT and the FUTURE are dogs and darlings, respectively.
The FUTURE has, in many incessant and efficaciously ways, reminded the present about the instrumentality of
When you take the glorious Dakota’s tribal wisdom, you’ll be advised: Whenever you discover you’re on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
The undisputable scientific maxim goes, “everything now working is obsolete” (unfortunately, including the human being and the human mind pivoted upon the spine cord) and as a consequence is subject to actual perfectibility for Life.
As you will never reach perfection (even if over-practice makes over-perfection), one (and everything) must be increasingly be upgraded forever. Can you now relate better to Dakota wisdom above?
The PRESENT is always misled and misleading, treasuring a great promise of deceit. The FUTURE is eloquently transparent and clear, crippling ― in advance ― violators of ethics, morality, principles, integrity, and dignity.
The PRESENT has its eyes glued to the inside-outs. The FUTURE is immensely into staring at its outside-ins.
The PRESENT is a powerless hostage not interested in any vindication at all.
The PRESENT is sick and ailing because of: a) its once-true believes, b) its once-true assumptions, c) its once-true conventions, d) its once-true cosmosvision (weltanschauung), e) its once-true systems of belief, f) its once-true truisms g) its once-true “common sense,” h) its once-true “good luck,” so forth. “The future is going to get invented, with you or without you. But if you want to build the new, you must first dismantle your existing belief system and burn for scrap anything that is not endlessly and universally true.” [64]
From the human point of view, these changed changes will be a throwing away of all the previous maxims in a rather violent and abrupt way.
The PRESENT is pseudo-architected and mobilized in tearing down achievement. The FUTURE is forever re-architecting itself while massively out-fostering breakthrough achievements.
Subsequently, the FUTURE will incessantly remain redefining the totality and the entirety of (i) all and (ii) everything (known, unknown, improbable, impossible, thinkable, unthinkable, concerning, and desirable within and outside the laws of physics, quantum mechanics, and other science of “exactness”). I now warmly welcome you, ladies and gentlemen, to “Futuretronium.” [36]
Some serious scientists are making the case of conquering humans’ immortality or, at least, some thousand years of healthy living in the upcoming years.
In making their case, they insist that we are all made of an eternal molecule known as DNA. You’d better believe on the doubles!
They insist that the DNA molecule has been with us through billions of years. Ray Kurzweil proclaims that “by the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate” [1]. Get ready then! Let this brief paragraph to be introductory to the one ensuing.
Futuretronium will ultimately and inexorably transform into Computronium [35], [36], a technocratic, adhocratic, stratocratic, plutocratic empire thoroughly immersed in the overbearingly qualities: techie, nerdish, brainy, geekish, whose subject matter is the designated output of: a) humans, b) enhanced humans, c) pseudo-humans, d) post-humans, e) super-humans (over-men), f) bionicals, g) superhumanly intelligent beings, h) robots, i) hybrids, j) trans-humans, k) post-biologicals, and l) a combination of all of the priors.
While the PRESENT vastly underestimates the influence of the present-day Internet, the FUTURE will capture every known and unknown force to crown itself into ruthless Computronium.
This Royal is not silly dignitary as one will see him out-compute the entirety of the Universe (and Multiverse, the Universe’s first-and-foremost father).
In the near FUTURE’s (in the zillion flows between Futuretronium, the adolescent, and Computronium, the adult), your dreams, fantasies, and nightmares will all be literally out-dreamed and/or out-daydreamed and/or out-smarted and/or out-shinned and/or out-foretold by a factor of zillion orders of magnitude.
The FUTURE is bathed, as the PRESENT has already been carefully hinted, with artifacts that as a whole are pervasively awakened. These FUTURES are beyond boundary-less-ness.
The FUTURE is for eternity unfolding before most people’s absent-minded eyes, independently if those eyes are appended or not to so-called “prepared minds.” The myopia is within the mind not in the corneas.
The PRESENT is mostly about hardware (palpably tangibles). The FUTURE is greatly about software (palpably and not intangibles with consequences and sequels both in the physical and vivid virtual worlds).
The hardware era, ever-changing and adapting, is giving way to the software era. Will next generation man-made software use the Universe as a maximum multi-supercomputers hardware?
This colossal eons-streaming Era, regardless of time locus, is constantly under ruthless ruling by the FUTURE.
If you're not remembering the FUTURE is only because you are ignoring every lesson by the PAST and PRESENT, both a PAST and a PRESENT, in my view, designated by the express mandates and designs of the FUTURE.
Vest your interest in the FUTURE since planting your hopes in preterit times will succeed into failure without a fail.
The PRESENT makes a great number of mistakes once, twice, thrice and beyond that without learning a single lesson from even the most recent and gravest mistakes.
The FUTURE is into extracting the critical lessons learned.
Whether or not you’re seeking a rival and if the FUTURE is not conscientiously conceived, designed, develop and created, the FUTURES will become your most formidable adversaries.
In unnoticeable yet transformational movement is what the FUTURE’s status quo has become, a status quo that is pervasively fluid and impermanent in perpetuity. On the contrary, the PRESENT’s status quo is erratic, timid, disorganized, idiotized and consequently banal.
While the FUTURE is extremely concentrated and focused on every matter in which it has a vested interest, the PRESENT is over-fragmented ― greatly Balkanized –, thus lacking attention and excessive in dilution of results.
In dealing with our systems of beliefs, strongly held assumptions, conventions and cosmosvision (weltanschauung), the FUTURE, into walking habitually great lengths, ascertain that the PRESENT is a thing of the past and the past is a thing further back to the primordial big bang.
QUESTION: WHY DON’T WE MAKE OF THE FUTURE A THING OF THE PAST?
The FUTURE is not in hot pursuit of the PRESENT. The PRESENT represents one fluid expression by the ever-more autocratic unstoppable rulings by demanded the FUTURE.
Yet we have now a great likelihood to make the most intelligent decision to lowering the downsides and upping and upgrading the upsides.
The FUTURE is accustomed and indifferent to the PRESENT’s most self-valued quality, its quality of distraction.
The PRESENT is a laggard. The FUTURE is an out-doer beyond the influence spheres of execution. Here execution only equates to execution of and through relevance, not taking it said execution to the “extra mile” but to the “extra league.” A league is about three miles.
The FUTURE is a composite vector in reversal to the PRESENT.
The PRESENT is, at all times, taking a forty-wink siesta as it dreams of stealing credits and glories from his countrymen. The FUTURE ― under its own ways, modes and rulings ― is relentless rendering time progressively inexistent.
The FUTURE is, in every occasion, making the PRESENT déclassé and hence démodé. [45], [46].
The FUTURE spies on the PRESENT comprehensively. The PRESENT’s counter-spying attempts on and towards the FUTURE are less than primitive and more than entirely ludicrous.
When the FUTURE wishes to blend in with the PRESENT, said PRESENT shocks.
With the progression and retrogression of “time,” the postmodern modernity is becoming more and more “modern” by unprecedented “shock and awe” standards.
The PRESENT is sleepwalking while the FUTURE is daydreaming like a child wondering.
The PRESENT is the perfect personification of an accommodationist while the FUTURE is the most robust believer (thoroughly faithful and without rudimentary, slowing-down psychological complexes) on his deeds and own existential existence.
To get underneath the FUTURE's skin is the only path to understanding the ever-revolutionizing nature of changed changes.
If you wish to engender lucrative change, you need to bring about contradictions and paradoxes to make friends with unfamiliarity. Subsequently, John Naisbitt puts it: “You just have to hang out with the paradoxes, hang out with the contradictions until you understand them. When there is a perceived contradiction, I like to look for something that helps to resolve the contradiction. A lot of people have an either/or mentality. We get the Internet and everyone says, ‘Well newspapers are going to go away.’ It’s not either/or. There will be a change in the mix, that’s all.” In the same order of ideas, Hamel indicates: “Look for disconfirming evidence, for things that don’t fit, for things that don’t ajar.” [64]
Many, many times Dr. Stephen Hawking has indicated that studying the outer space is not indispensable but not study it is “foolish.” Hence, it is impossible for one not to study about cosmology without being greatly immersed in future studies. If you can understand the current flux of massive impacts by changed change, you need to give you authorization to understand this complex theme. [67]
In consequence, practice the tradition of actionable mindful mentality ― in every theater of operations ― without the dragging hold-backs by so-called traditions.
Learn a difficult lesson easily and immediately by Thomas Jefferson: “I prefer the stories of the future than history.˝
In matters of actual challenging one’s own intellect, any “too much” effort to this end is evermore “too little.”
We must, wherefore, strive exponentially and creatively forever to capture now the best (optimum) from the ever-forthcoming FUTURES. Striving without the maxim effort in taking possession of applied omniscience coupled with universal morality and ethics will render absolutely worthless.
The PRESENT is concave whereas the FUTURE is convex, vexingly convex as a Big Bang’s catch-as-catch-can.
The PRESENT is the frenzy of irrelevance and the FUTURE is the everlastingly-increasing climax of the critical mass that catapults civilization into unkwon unknowns.
The PRESENT seems to be into “moribund” mode as the FUTURE is redefining its always-unfolding birth.
The PRESENT tergiversates itself. The FUTURE, out of a domiciled located in the PRESENT, is hugely tergiversated by large majorities. The FUTURE is within a subterfuge and must be lucidly unveiled if you want to make your life prosper.
The PRESENT is not diametrically opposed to the FUTURE. The FUTURE is just diametrically different.
What are you going to in the PRESENT before the “fierce urgency of now” FUTURE and its ignored (whether existentially lucrative or not) waking-up calls?
I don’t know about the PRESENT and its quality being laissez-faire. The FUTURE does its intellectually hard working rendering emotions useless. This bohemian PRESENT yet an unsalvageable one self-propelled into crass stupidity till FUTURE’s last calling.
The PRESENT systematically fails to crack the FUTURE’s codes. It seems that the PRESENT is irremediably stubborn by genetic design, genetic design of 4 billion years old.
When the PRESENT reads individual autobiographies by the PAST aloud, a clear picture of the case for change emerges and a still-fuzzy vision of the FUTURE started to show through.
The PRESENT is concentrated on following up on the PAST’s attempts to decipher the FUTURE. In the process, the PRESENT secures its preparations to meet the FUTURE worthless.
The FUTURE – while being savvy and rigorous into exercising its own far-sight and foresight – operates heretofore.
Are we located in the PRESENT really thinking about shaping the FUTURE or rather is the FUTURE shaping us beyond our limited comprehension?
Under the “least worst” scenario, the PRESENT is being shockingly reminded that the world continues to flow at warp speed.
But giving the youngest and newest PRESENTS a central role in plotting Computronium’a forthcoming course not only keeps Futuretronium supplied with ideas at the cutting-edge but also creates a context in which letting go of the PAST and reaching out for a new FUTURE is the only unimpeachable norm.
The PRESENT is a rattlesnake while the FUTURE is a python, a python of the enormity sucking power posed by so-called “Black Hole.”
The FUTURE never becomes tainted by yesterday beliefs, assumptions and conventions when further thinking about advancing the morrow.
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is important. But now it’s more important the most pervasive amplification of the human mind via biological media only so that we can conceive and develop our own FUTURES and those incumbent to the people we care for!
In deciphering (de-encrypting) the FUTURE now and making the PRESENT a “thing of the PAST,” one must learn an easy lesson:
Post-mortem analyzes are indispensable. Yet pre-mortem analyzes (especially the qualitatively driven ones) are beyond grandiose. In order to institute the latter you must inquisitively learn to discern, think, heed, ponder, scale and become furiously and industriously mobilized without losing composure and harmony.
RELEVANT COMMENTARIES TO CLARIFY HIDEOUS MISUNDERTANDINGS (UNDER SYSTEMATIC COMMISSION) BY MAGNIFICENT PEOPLE
# 1.- No success, BUT NOW the accumulation of documented, assimilated and run-able, as well as motorized lessons learned by you and out of your own and especially those acquired by others' wisdom. That is, everyone does his / her own relevant and irrelevant things, as well as everyone does his / her own consequences and responsibilities stemming from said relevant and irrelevant things. Sequels and consequences are mostly static, but sub-sequences that are beyond kinetic, both in the downSIDES and UPsides.
# 2.- No strategies, BUT NOW composite stratagems. Stratagems do not ever make the case, nor the merits, for you to violate timeless morality, principles and ethics. It’s driven by limitlessly practical knowledge to prevent and solve problems. Any growth in every field of knowledge and serious discipline, as any growth in skills and insights and perspectives, is futile and dangerous if it is not engendered and coupled by a MORALITY GROWTH.
# 3.- No faith in luck, BUT NOW ample instituting of applied omniscience. “Lucky strikes” are matters of persistently rigorous – and highly respected – rocket scientists, literally. Practitioners with the utmost perseverance, guided by supreme empirical knowledge, are granted Victory. Remember the DARPA’s adage: “If you’re not failing frequently, you’re not succeeding enough.” It's opportune to mention that the hardest it's to "succeed," say, in "markets" of maximum uncertainties, as two things will happen. First, the general entrepreneurial climate will be more and more defying (as per new “normals” and new “abnormals”). Second, your colleagues will make ever-largest efforts to compete "against" you for the same, say, professional service contracts you're seeking. In matter-of-fact talking, your colleague becomes your rival, never your enemy. More “space” for thriving is there in place when you self-educate yourself seriously.
Under the maximum analysis and in actuality, your worst “sworn out” enemy is the one living by mediocrity and ignorance. Those mobilizing mediocrity and ignorance will eternally recur to violations of ethics, morality and principle. They’re insidious contrarians to the Rule of Law and Rigor Juris, as they wish for the human race to be declared in Rigor Mortis.
# 4.- No “common sense” of antiquity, BUT NOW profound and thorough, judicious and conscientious judgment and updated, expedient and experienced discernment, adaptable, re-adaptable and upgradeable in real time forever. Let’s get real; the only way to operate is (i) cross-functional, (ii) multidimensional and (iii) pluri-contextual – (i), (ii) and (iii) subjected to a plethora of mind’s filters – and to state it mildly, briefly and overly simplistic. Therefore: (i), (ii) and (iii) above are executed at the same time (i.e., simultaneously). Ignoramuses of supine ignorance will insist on shortcutting august bodies of knowledge without knowing the operational consequences, sequels, and sub-sequences. They don't understand and will never understand the pontificated maxim, “everything is related to everything else.” And to make matters worse, they will deploy and enforce universal and devastating imprudence, imprudence, imprudence and more imprudence. That imprudence so readily activated by the “baseness” practitioner. When invoking “Everything is related to everything else,” it is succinctly to say (that is) by way of example:
“Everything is interrelated to everything else.”
"Everything is connected to everything else.”
"Everything is interconnected to everything else.”
"Everything is intricate to everything else.”
"Everything is involved in everything else.”
"Everything is inter-associated to everything else.”
"Everything is interlocked to everything else.”
"Everything is inter-coupled to everything else.”
"Everything is inter-joined to everything else.”
"Everything is conjoint to everything else.”
"Everything is inter-tied to everything else.”
"Everything is interdependent to everything else.”
"Everything is correlated to everything else.”
"Everything is intertwined with everything else.”
"Everything is intermeshed with everything else.”
"Everything is implicated in everything else.”
"Everything is entangled with everything else.”
"Everything is entwined with everything else.”
"Everything is tangled with everything else.”
"Everything is knotted with everything else.”
"Everything is interwoven into everything else.”
"Everything is engaged with everything else.”
"Everything co-depends on everything else.”
Sufficient tsunamis of imprudence to indivertibly declare a war to a superpower under unprecedented un-preparedness, further imperiling the viability of this planet. The experts in conflict avoidance and conflict negotiation of the
The Oxford Dictionary defines “prudent”: “(Of person or conduct) careful to avoid undesired consequences; circumspect; discreet.” Regardless, and unfortunately, the rampage of systematic violation of prudence will be carried on by both genders without a fail.
A U.S. Air Force Colonel who used to repeat it frequently...“it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool that open your mouth and remove any doubt.”
There are many things I like about General David Petraeus (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus). One is that he is extremely prudent, civil and courteous. I like he knows well how and when and for how long to exercise his utmost toughness. Don't get me wrong, he will assail Attila and the Huns if his Commander and Chief (C. in C.) warrants it. And to an optimum degree. But this General is the type of statesman that is always dealing with the news corps in correction and kindness to cite a brief example. He would even take the Q. A. sessions from any media stunt and immediately elicit: 1) “This I can inform this media about,” and 2) Because of legal and/or strategic reasons, “This I cannot inform this media about.” He goes out on official commissioning meeting a plethora of diverse people, respecting and honoring even those ones who might be in an antagonistic position with that represented by him, General Petraeus. He's got the superb analytics capabilities, the know-how, an immense ability to go from abstract thinking through specific milestones conquering.
I don't hear him “yelling” but speaking “evenly” and nicely and yet unambiguously. His emotional stability is unbeatable. He's a gentleman and treats everyone as a lady or gentleman. You see, he does not like at all any casualties (in no side). He knows better than anyone else the irreparable cost of blood wasted. He saves his ammo and his best tools are his gestures and crystal-clear thoughts and communication. He is not into demolition but into magnificently building.
Now check the lawyers holding public office at Diplomatic Corps anywhere in the world, making immutable threats from A to Z without measuring the consequences and from a distant place (a bit too hygienic) using said “blood” as “wildcard” arguments to sustain the tenure and perks of their public office holding. Diplomatic corps should be embedded in some military patrols in
Most prominent
I am certain that Dr. Kissinger can confirm my POV on Mr. Fisher. Do other diplomatic corps around the world have a bookshelf with Fisher’s findings? Before every bee that we wish to make dance like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, Do we “tease” it with vinegar or sugar? If we can fix a little misunderstanding with a hard-copy postcard, Why use – metaphorically speaking – a “shot gun” a priori?
# 5.- No perfection, BUT NOW over-practicing towards [capturing in the facts] over-perfection (like NASA's Mars Rovers vastly demonstrated, these are facts and not "figures of speech"). Since you're imperfect but extremely responsible and conscientious and valuable and unique, you manage facts as the maximum perfectionist. When you're a perfect practitioner, there needn't be any perfectionist. Now, it comes to you “first nature.”
# 6.- No breakthroughs, BUT NOW conquering supernatural inventions and discoveries unendingly.
# 7.- No pseudo-serendipities seizing, BUT NOW pseudo-randomized – as well as entirely randomized – serendipities capturing and yet pseudo-randomized serendipities indirectly conducted ones into millenniumm-3's Holly Grail Conquests. Conquests are to avoid and solve unknown and known problems, not to seek glories or powers, but to create valuable opportunities sustainably. It doesn’t matter because, when you come to think of it, you can NEVER fall outside of exercising most-indispensable impossible-thinking discernment (that is, if you insist on honorably living in a domicile called Millennium 3). Kindly please forget about the serendipity era by Dr. Fleming. As we reverse engineer any technological device on the face of Earth, by the same token pseudo-serendipities are pseudo-programmed and pseudo-controlled serendipities and otherwise are to be thoroughly besieged by breakthroughs of inventions and discoveries without the anti-Victorian sentiment of the epiphany. Those into mind expansion don’t need epiphany experience in this plane at least.
The
# 8.- No uninformed and/or savvy hunches, BUT NOW systematically all-knowingness bliss instituted by an all-out, over-focused and amplified brain, in which every hemisphere of the brain is exceedingly conjugated [in congruity] beyond the whole and/or the sum of the parts. You still have plenty of time before omni-bots take over, believe it or not! Would you love to ask Sir Martin Rees about it (might verify it here by the non fainthearted at http://amzn.to/boqqYf)?
Speaking of “omni-bots,” there is an interesting quotation to further respective understanding by Max Frisch (1911 – 1991): “In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead. In the nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.” [70]
In my 1980 mechanical engineering technology workshop class, we had an experimental “desktop” robot designing to perfection and making sophisticated parts to over-perfection already (American technology). That took place in
Dr. Carol Bilsborough, Ph.D., a friend on mine, got her doctoral degree in the late sixties. In the year 2000, she told me that all over American universities professors and technologies were speaking of having the actual capabilities in place to manufacture everything with half of the then current headcount (manpower). Everyone wishes progress, Doesn’t he / she? These material desires will take us to the Technological Singularity (if the caveat allows it), the same technological singularity taught by NASA’ and Google’s
# 9.- No wizardry, BUT NOW solemn execution and conscientious activation of every neuro-cell and gene and gene clusters through and until over-outcomes completion and completion sustained through times. There is no moment now or ever for ideological or cultural inquisitions or disquisitions as if the ever-Byzantine one attempting to decipher the genders of the Angels and Archangels. For instance, let's be specifically helpful: Can we turn de novo mutations and transmutations into highly desirable and fruitful anti-polymorphisms?
# 10.- No mundane universe, BUT NOW a sacrosanct multiverse, a multiverse with zillion dimensions whose calculations per yoctosecond are unstoppable. Until when? Until Computronium’s last say! In the mean time, scientific knowledge doubling will keep carrying on until what I call the “caveat.” See that “caveat” at http://Future-Elicitation-Book.blogspot.com
In “Leading The Revolution” (2000) textbook, Prof. Gary Hamel (http://www.london.edu/facultyandresearch/faculty/search.do?uid=ghamel ) makes an important point. Hamel is the chairman to Strategos Institute (http://www.strategos.com/) and Professor to
# 11.- No “loud and clear” communication will ever suffice, BUT NOW kind, constructive and unambiguous over-communication with the applied omniscience perspective. Humans are transferring unprecedented levels of complexity, as well as the universe is beyond pronouncing, to everything they do (regardless of your noticing or not of zillion layers of sublimities, subtleties, intricacies and so on). Hence, and unless you have unprecedented dominion in practice of every facet of science of complexities in your framework, please forget mentioning the appalling word “simplicity” and turn it back to honorable Thomas Paine, so that it’s coupled and buried with that reckless lexicon “common sense.”
Making the case against appalling “simplicity,” AT&T CEO in 1995 said: “The complexity of trying to manage these different businesses began to overwhelm the advantages of integration. The world has changed. Markets have changed.” [64]
# 12.- No marketing "mumbled chats" by sales reps into snake-oil selling and “charming,” BUT NOW turning your daydreams in turbo-charged drivers of indeed relevant driving forces lucidly, clearly and efficaciously. Remember to forget the waves and heed the underneath currents. Being superficial is a magnificent, yet a petty enchantment by and for the ill, flawed and evil while dis-servicing the humankind further. “Charming” is the ing-form of the plural noun “CHARMERS.”
# 13.- No sales, BUT NOW legitimately profiting from the lucrative redefinition of frictionless capitalism only at the service of the People and for the People and by the People. There is “the People and for the People and by the People” only if these incumbents self-ignite themselves into energetic democracy through pervasively brainy intelligence. If “the People and for the People and by the People” does not take ownership of their rights and duties, somebody else will and ruthlessly. "Self-ignite themselves into energetic democratic" equates to possessing own self-drive for achievement with the Hellenistic perspective.
# 14.- No politics as usual, BUT NOW unusual scientific mind-set with millenary tact and civility extraneous to manipulation, deceit and lie-telling, yet beyond unimpeachable orthodoxy towards relevance and growth.
# 15.- No quick whispered talk, BUT NOW slow and wise. No slow deed BUT NOW light-speed executions with deepest knowledge of your operational achievements. Too many ones wish to ignore, bastardize and satirized theory to “succeed,” as per their flawed POVs, in a blind and effortless “practice” to furthering searching of their own existential undermining (sometimes own devastation). To the ones exercising their own civil rights, there are words of immense precaution. Timely is to remember Einstein’s thoughts, “There is nothing more practical than theory.” Folks, listening to Einstein, get beyond acrimonious and bitter and get unproductive. That is, to achieve or not to achieve what? What is and what is not the strategic end in said folks' pursuit?
# 16.- To this end:
# 17.- This world is immersed in too many global crises. Many sub-optimum strategies are being tried as countermeasures (rampantly failing for over twelve years to our joint disgrace) with outdated and erroneous discernment processes. Priorities, guidelines, protocols, benchmarks, metrics, criteria, profiling, diagnostics are way beyond flawed and incomplete. To shed light Dr. Einstein subsequently indicates: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Dr. Bertrand Russell, along those lines addressing this fashionable “phenomena,” also sentenced: “I know of more people who'd rather die than think.”
# 18.- Around the world, beginning with all kinds of public servants in advanced nations, are freely speaking of two terms. One is “systemic risk” and the other is “volatility.” Ninety-eight percent, being merciful, of said constituents have no idea at all what they’re talking about and sometimes legislating and regulating and reforming frames of reference upon the weakest grounds and most labile merits.
# 19.- No priorities, BUT NOW an structured existential sense of urgency with an august body of new theories and through rampant and refined operational weaponry of organizational management. Again, it’s about extremely practical theories. Some folks are paying great attention but the largest majorities are set to allow their life circumstances to be ruled by limbos. Dr. Henry Kissinger uncontrovertibly indicated, “an ignored issue is an invitation to problems.”
You might like or dislike Dr. Kissinger. But in my view he is the most eminent geopolitical academician and practitioner alive in the world today.
# 20.- No material magnates, BUT NOW spiritual and intellectual tycoons.
# 21.- No more leadership, BUT NOW lavishly solving it all by learning, teaching and question-making within unconditional relevance to both their communities and the world at large.
# 22.- No excellence quest, BUT NOW the re-conceptualization of management's Holly Grail for Life. Unfortunately, the words “excellent” and “excellence” have been worn out impiously. Ergo, we must go back to the scientific method practice and parlance (say, “optimum,” “sub-optimum,” “ineffectual”).
# 23.- No Napoleon Hill, BUT NOW Napoleon Bonaparte and the Industrial Military Complex (including DARPA, NASA, et al.). To the socialistic digerati I call upon his / her attention that the web and the Internet were solely manufactured by DARPA.
# 24.- No “success” accomplishers turned into “masterminds” – so-called –, BUT NOW a roulette “spinner” in a dogged search against ubiquitous Mediocrity Dom and on behalf of crippling the securing of failure in the light of daring maximum uncertainties. There are majorities feeling that they’re prevailing by imposing on themselves the success of failure. They even boast about it. Relax that your Magna Charta allows for you to pontificate on consummating silliness as your own for-Life apostle-hood, as long as you don't damage the innocent by-standers.
If Napoleon Hill is the maximum “mastermind,” What are the lexicons for the ensuing: Moses, Socrates, Archimedes,
# 25.- No more “street smart,” BUT NOW Silicon Valley' and space-walkers' cleverness, guiding the driving forces in the world, universe and multiverse. You must go to Mars to better understand Earth. As JFK putted it, “We will go to the Moon because it's difficult...”
# 26.- No emotional intelligence, nor political correctness, BUT NOW ethics, morality and principle-center crystallized and galvanized into deeds. Ask Francis Bacon, “baseness” and uncouthness are for consummated losers and flawed doers or un-institutionalized psychopaths that eminent Sir Martin Rees affectionately calls “weirdoes.” He is the English Crown’s top scientist and prominent
# 27.- No IPOs, BUT NOW the starting and blurring flux of betting wildest dreams and nightmares between Vegas and M.I.T., between NASA Ames Research Center and Monte Carlo, between Byzantium and Oxbridge, between the libraries of Alexandria and that of the U.S. Congress.
# 28.- No Sci nor Fi, BUT NOW actionable OmniSci.
# 29.- No more chemistry, BUT NOW most advanced materials science applications.
# 30.- No more quantum mechanics, BUT NOW most advanced nanotechnology applications.
# 31.- No more biotechnology, BUT NOW most advanced biotechnology-and-genomics applications.
# 32.- No more mathematics, BUT NOW most advanced Artificial Intelligence computing applications.
# 33.- No more green energy, BUT NOW getting a perpetual pro bono ride from gravity and/or “dark matter and dark energy” forces sequestered and modulated onto any commuting and/or mobilizing and/or awaken device, regardless of size and scale.
# 34.- No more insurance, BUT NOW bazaar tokens to gamble your compromised mortgage or business plan against a vivid, uncontrolled hallucination, while your inputted funds are enjoyed à la Dolce Vita by the few reputable, insurers and re-insurers – so-called. What do they insure? Indeed!
# 35.- No more banking, BUT NOW the start-up cost to wasting you 401K as per your own sovereign desires.
# 36.- No more stock options, BUT NOW robust investments in graveyards and coffins, transportable into outer space. Does one need a stock trader to “honestly” broker matters of afterworld and afterlife really? You won’t go cryogenized, Will you? A broker to do what? Isn't there the web and Internet, the grandiosest disintermediator indeed, in the first place? In addressing some matters of educational reforms, former British Premier Tony Blair insisted aloud and vehemently on three words: “EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION.”
# 37.- No more beyond petroleum, BUT NOW the supine ignorance of stewarding Beyond Perils without most advanced risk management both in private, public, NGO and supranational office. The American Negro Foundation, by the way, has a magnificent institutional message: “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
# 38.- No more foolishness of Keeping It Simple – Stupid, BUT NOW Keep It Scientific – Savant. Scan around for the right K.I.S.S. Ascertain tisn’t the failing French mode.
# 39.- Challenge yourself, BUT NOW is about over-challenging yourself perennially to over-accomplish eternally and outsmarting legitimate and lawful “rivals.” Honor them and do as Mr. Lincoln, eliminating your enemy by transforming him into your friend. Friend does not equate with an onerous psychiatrist.
# 40.- There are not processes – so-called –, BUT NOW carefully crafted, knowledge-laden transactions whose channels and pathways are being systemically, systematically and holistically considered, strategized, managed, and corrected to indisputably optimum quality results. Optimum quality is a matter of practical and palpable tangibles though there is a huge prerequisite (that must come in early on before), which is represented by the intangibles embedded in the august body of knowledge that secures said practical and palpable tangibles. It is not here connoted “transaction” as a matter of a financial deed but, rather, as an important engineered action of onerous intangibles with the applied omniscience perspective. In matters of great silliness, there are multitudes concerned about the usage of semantics. In matters of great relevance to Earth, there are NEVER multitudes concerned about the optimum usage of semantics.
# 41.- Incidentally and regarding the level of quality, times changes: a) the specifications, b) the expectations, c) the standards, d) the best practices (seriously), and so on. Those “best practices” are under the huge requirement of qualitative overhauling while multitudes insist on worshipping quantitative analyzes to further amplify their own blunders into large calamities. No, no, no. Analytics is about 90% qualitative states and 10% quantitative states (sic). These “states” are impermanent and under forces of flux beyond 3D lateral thinking. Get onboard some tiny bit of vertical thinking as well, among many other amenities. Sir Winston Churchill has many approaches to mind amplification, one of them given to him by a prominent New Yorker.
# 42.- It is not a matter about “thinking out of the box,” BUT NOW it's concerning thinking about this multiverse (multiverse equates to computronium). If the present is a function of the future, Is the multiverse a function of the future too? Or is the future a function of the multiverse? I will be addressing these questions at a later time as some reflections and scientific research becomes available to me.
# 43.- No omniscience, BUT NOW it’s about utilizing optimum applied omniscience to systematically and progressively understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying any targeted component, sub-system and system under and beyond the Sun. Got to go gestalt and Einstenian gedanke. Stay at rest when you notice physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists in a hurry telling you that the human being is not a single system but a “multi-systemic system.” All things considered ultimately, and given the ruling of and by the patrician and patriarch multiverse, any system – when held against taxonomical comparisons before the multiverse – is always a sub-system. We got on the luminescent boat boarded by several patriarchs, including Aristotle and Plato as an infinitesimal fraction of the down payment. The wrong expression is “multi-systemic system” while the undeniably correct one is “multi-subsystemic system.”
# 44.- Not Anymore:
“Seek and You Shall Find
Ask and You Shall Receive
Knock and the door
Shall be opened.”
BUT NOW:
“Over-Seek and You Shall Over-Find
Over-Ask and You Shall Over-Receive
Over-Knock and the door
Shall be overly opened.”
# 45.- No “B. S.” term, BUT NOW the universal application – before problem avoidance and problem solution and opportunity creation – of the “D. S.” acronym, that is really: Doctor in Science (D.Sc.). No silly needs here. Doctor is a millenary term that means "teacher." Is there a Doctor in Fine Arts? Don’t we need a Doctor in Fine Arts? Don't ever seek the best teacher you want outside YOURSELF.
A PROMINENT MESSAGE ON LEADERSHIP FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
St. Ignatius Loyola (1491 – 1556) – founder of the Jesuits – :
“Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest;
To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To toil and not to seek for rest;
To labour and not to ask for any reward
Save that of knowing that we do Thy will.”
# 46.- NB: As the American sage stated it – seriously speaking –, “every little bit helps.”
In the mean time, the undersigned suggest his own self the ensuing:
"Follow and institute your own omniscience-driven bliss without innuendos. Thus, demolish this trivial present as your executions are focused (a là Zen) on conceiving, developing and implementing new futures in the as-of-now present and beyond!”
Source: http://andres-agostini-white-papers.blogspot.com/
WRAPPING UP
The German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, reiterates that if we change the present we can change the future, and if we change the future ― as well as the way we proactively and qualitatively envision and practice it through futuristic scenario methods ― we will be changing the present in fact and taking increasing control over the negative circumstances that impact us so dramatically.
In actuality, we must change both the PRESENT and the FUTURE simultaneously. The PRESENT’s vested interest into the FUTURE is too huge not to note it immediately. Nietzsche, thereby, stated exactly: "It’s our future that lays down the law of our today."
It now becomes opportune Freeman Dyson’ sentence: “God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”
The FUTURE will, nonetheless, unveil the most ambitious and extravagant hopes crystallized into bewildering, new full immersion realities.
Thinking “Big Picture” will never suffice since this image is fixed. Instead: It is about carrying on perennially fluidly radiant thinking irradiantly through quite a few big/small motion pictures.
Even with the most beneficial UPSIDES from the FUTURES, not to mention their inherent yet controllable ― to some extent ― DOWNSIDES, it will be a huge existential error not to identify the diverse facets embedded in that timeless yet incessantly and incessantly arrhythmically, abruptly transmutating locus known as “FUTURES”.
The PRESENT is more like Antonio Machado’s sentence (“The one that has for all time returned and has never gone anywhere.”) while the FUTURE is S-H-A-Z-A-M (“The wisdom of Salomon, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury.”)
Clearly, in order for you to identify something significant and rendering a solution, you must acknowledge every complexity, every intricacy, every dynamics and every challenge without getting paralyzed through the analyzes, especially the most crucial analyzes to a great degree from the qualitative stand.
Thereinafter, keeping you reflecting via your own biological “search engine” seeking to test, validate, and falsify evidence in the ground and on the fly, there has now come unquestionably urgent time for boldest and shrewd execution.
While the PRESENT operates stubbornly and with eyes grabbed by remnants of fossilized vestiges, the FUTURE is fully within and along the lines of the claim made by James Madison, USA’s 4th President (1751 ― 1836): “Knowledge must forever correct ignorance.”
The PRESENT feels flooded by some unknown yet forceful competitors. The FUTURE, have no time to futilely discuss the angels’ genders, has overcome any unthinkable breakthrough.
Paying to the FUTURE PRESENTly allows you to hijack maximum strategic value. That value comes in the form of forthcoming discovering unveiled by the Royals of reverse engineering, those Royals reverse engineer anything at from the Solar System or from any exo-planets independently where the Multiverse treasures them.
Speaking of the evidence, Sir Karl Popper makes extraordinary sense when he asserted: “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.” [51]
If you don't conceive and develop ― jointly with your manageable and controllable UPSIDES and DOWNSIDES ― your own FUTURES, Who is it going to do it for you? Really?
I must suggest reviewing the attached Appendix on Education for further meditation.
CAVEAT
Capturing the benefits of all possibilities stemming from the future, as well as turning threats, perils and hazards ― several of them existential ones –, will largely depend on THE TOTALITY OF HUMANKIND taking unprecedented and immediate countermeasures in tackling numerous and extremely dramatic global crises with sustained success.
I am referring not to “fashionable” success appropriation ever-lacking the womb-to-tomb scrutinizing vista and marshaled consideration pertaining to: a) Factors considered our sworn existential rivals, and b) Other agents competing against our efforts to “stay alive Earthly and with dignity” ― that is, if the Universe and the Multiverse warrant their sovereign permission ― as we effect our efforts to countering said global crises (please remember ― for your pondering, reflections and meditation ― the over-empowered “global crisis of corruption,” greatly downplayed even after ignoring its immemorial existence). Without an absolute observance of the indicated in this paragraph, any “preaching” of “success capturing” will secure universal failure.
We must establish universal acceptance of the greatest axiom of all times pertaining to the subject matter to be dealt with now.
Said axiom establishes: “An ounce of prevention is worth millions of dollars of cure.” In the West we are unquestionably super-succeeding at over-working at the “cure” while maximizing the ignoring of the “prevention.”
I hope that Earth and “earthians” (paraphrasing notable and most lucid Richard Buckminster Fuller) does not learn in hindsight ― but in earliest and sophisticated foresight and far-sight ― the savviest lesson from non-insurance and “applied omniscience” driven Risk Management that I, in my case and as per my own proprietary method, call “Transformative And Integrative Risk Management.” ( http://bit.ly/Transformative_and_Integrative_Risk_Management )
Dr. Stephen Hawking has reiteratively suggested the world’s civilization to move out of Earth by spreading in outer space with little success. View Dr. Hawking interviewed by Mr. Charlie Rose at http://bit.ly/9wPlQ7
In learning more about this aspect, it is recommended the visiting Queen Elizabeth’s top-notch scientist (“Astronomer Royal”), Sir Martin Rees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Martin_Rees), published a textbook titled “Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning by Martin J. Rees” (ISBN-10: 0465068634), available at http://amzn.to/cxl6Hi
Additional research on the subject matter, addressing the gravest existential UPSIDES may be founded authored by George Orwell, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Bertrand Russell and even Albert Einstein, among many others.
In no way am I neither a herald of devastations nor an optimist in the tradition of Dr. Pangloss. [49].
I do research (under absolute consistency and congruency with all of my public claims), with ever-increasing rigor, depth and scope, an important number of driving forces affecting our lives.
I am not outside realism but I will never avoid but face reality in its entirety regardless of how daring it becomes.
Thus one can assert with certitude that I am cautiously hopeful, especially as I observe the challenge and conceive solutions.
I abide by the unknown adage, “the harder I work, the lucky I get” [eventually and hopefully]. Simon Bolivar proclaimed, “God grants victory to the perseverant.”
It is opportune to make a distinction. So-called trends are the manifestation of driving forces. Trends are a function of driving forces and not the other way around.
There are some “prominent” scientists that believe that the term “trend” is synonymous with “driving force.” Again, another critical existential blunder that blurs our vision.
Even by Dr. Bertrand Russell’s proclaim (“I know more people who prefer to die than to think.”) [3], we must anyway create preconditions and conditions readily and steadfastly for everyone to get more immersed into the constructive and yet breakthrough thinking side of the equation than in the self-destructing one.
The behavior and the patterns of such behavior by the reading offered by time’s pendulum and the metronome, as well as other “measurers,” are beyond worst chaos.
Facing daring FUTURES, we must become (FIRST) patternists and, as per my Oxford Dictionary’s standards and own utter mention, we must each be (and SECOND) the “monster of omniscience.” [50] All of the former ad verbum.
THE HOPE
(By William Faulkner, Nobel Prize
acceptance speech,
"I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which has been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” [52]
TURNING HOPE INTO ACTIONS
On the future of global citizenship and seeking to make earth viable and sustainable, Tichy makes the ensuing considerations:
"I want to end this chapter with some personal reflections on global corporate citizenship and what I see for the future. The challenges for all of us, especially those in senior leadership roles in business, have gone exponentially. The events of 9/11 and the ongoing war on terrorism have created a new world playing field. It is one that, I believe, makes it a business imperative to lead in new ways. A way must be found to turn the uncertainty and chaos of the world – the multiple ethnic wars, the global terrorism – into a sustainable, just, and growing global economy.”
He continues:
"As if the challenge of building Teaching Organizations within institutions the size of General Electric, 3M, Home Depot, or Yum! Brands weren’t enough, the leaders within institutions now need to reach out and engage the larger communities within which these institutions operate in Virtuous Teaching Cycles.”
In addition, Tichy furthers his comments:
"The long-term well-being of the world requires a global war on poverty, one aimed at creating new opportunities for more and more of the planet’s more than 6 billion inhabitants. At the most fundamental level, this means making food, health care and education available for an ever expanding proportion of the world’s population. If we don’t do this, we risk that the vicious cycle of poverty will result in misery, ethnic strife and terrorism. As Peter Drucker points out, this century is the one that will – or should – finally bring enlightenment and opportunity to the majority of humankind.”
He points out too:
"I endorse Drucker’s belief that a business leader’s obligation is not just to direct stakeholders in his or her organization – i.e., investors, employees, customers, suppliers, the immediate community – but also to the wider community at large. After all, this is enlightened self-interest.”
Tichy continues:
"On a cosmic scale, the global environment, the global economy, and the physical and financial well-being of people affect a company’s performance – people need disposable incomes to buy the things that most companies are selling. If they don’t have that, and if they are rioting in the streets or becoming terrorists because they feel disfranchised, this is very bad for business. Likewise, if we kick of the planet, business is not going to do well, either.”
And he adds:
"But this is a ridiculously broad argument, and further, it isn’t realistic to think that any company is going to save the world. Nonetheless, companies need to be corporate citizens. They must not only ‘do no harm,’ they must actively do their part toward improving and maintaining the health of the global community.”
Tichy carries on with the ensuing:
"It is our obligation of leaders to have a TPOV [that is, “Teachable Point of View”] on how to engage their corporation as entities and to encourage the people who work in them to be good citizens. The specific steps that a leader or a company takes may seem small or like totems, but no matter how limited the impact, they do make a contribution. And small initial steps can lead people to significant lifelong commitments.”
And, in closing these comments by Tichy, he finally indicates:
"Virtuous Teaching Cycles are a great vehicle for citizenship activities. They allow people from very disparate worlds to engage with one another in teaching and learning – which is how things are going to get better.”
[42] Brackets are mine.
HOW TO COPE WITH CENTURY TWENTIETH ONE!
Learn a challenging lesson quickly:
To be a conscientiously human being into deep, subtle, and proactive awareness, you need to entertain some form of profound spirituality understanding that the greatest wealth is that of the spirit and the enlightened mind (those splendid intangibles).
Once you do your own most conscientious awareness for Life, you can increasingly do your morality and ethics for said Life.
Once you do your morality and ethics, you can do your actionable knowledge.
In order to capture ever-updatable and perpetually amplifiable as well as actionable knowledge, you and only you must challenge yourself intellectually as if you were competing with your strongest opponent.
If you really wish to immerse your mind into the perspective of the applied all-knowingness, you most make the greatest effort ― in a sustained mode ― towards actionable and applicable omniscience (http://bit.ly/ceJOns), chiefly with the perspective attached by the most sophisticated exact sciences.
Once you do your intellect, knowledge, and science, you can lucidly conceive your lucrative futures for the so-called and lamentable “heres and nows.”
When your futures are done, conceived, visualized, and developed way in advance, foresight, and far-sight by you, you can then do your upside and downside risks.
When risks and competing rivals are done solely by you optimally, you can do your benefits.
Your risks and competing rivals get much better done when you consider lavish provisions for contingency planning under the rigor and vigor of mentioned omniscience.
Now you know ― complete the entirety of this process throughput systematically, systemically, holistically, and without ignoring a single step mentioned above ― how to proceed in seizing success in personal, professional, organizational, and societal life.
Can you now commence your own development, by and for yourself, of self-improvement and/or self-betterment?
REFLECTING ON THE EDUCATION WE IMMEDIATELY NEED
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ON EDUCATION (1769 ― 1821):
“Education, strictly speaking, has several objectives: one needs to learn how to speak and write correctly, which is generally called grammar and belles letters. Each lyceum has provided for this object, and there is no well-educated man who has not learned his rhetoric .... After the need to speak and write correctly comes the ability to count and measure. The lyceums have provided this with classes in MATHEMATICS embracing arithmetical and MECHANICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THEIR DIFFERENT BRANCHES .... The elements of several other fields come next: chronology, geography, and the rudiments of history are also a part of the education of the lyceum …. A young man who leaves the lyceum at sixteen years of age thence knows not only the mechanics of his language and the classical authors, the divisions of discourse, the different figures of eloquence, the means of employing them either to calm or arouse passions, in short, everything that one learns in a course on belles letters. He also would know the principal epochs of history, the basic geographical divisions, and how to compute and measure. He has some general idea of the most striking natural phenomena and the principles of equilibrium and movement both with regard to solids and fluids .... Whether he desires to follow the career of the barrister, that of the sword, or ENGLISH, or letters; if he is destined to enter into the body of scholars, to be a geographer, engineer, or land surveyor ― in all these cases he has received a general education necessary to become equipped to receive the remainder of instruction that his circumstances require, and it is at this moment, when he must make his choice of a profession, that the special studies present themselves .... If he wishes to devote himself to the military art, engineering, or artillery, he enters a special
SIR IAN HAMILTON IN 1921 ON NAPOLEON:
"It is only progressively that one can form a great army. Certainly no other commander (leader) in his day devoted as much thought and attention to organization as Napoleon, who went into painstaking detail to assure that his forces (team and resources) were disciplined, prepared, and ready to take the field (the marketplace and its competitors). The army marches, works, and has its being by organization and discipline.”
WERNHER VON BRAUN ON EDUCATION, 1912 –1977, (Father of the American Space Program):
“The average citizen today, of course, has far more scientific information at his disposal than did those greatest of intellects of earlier times. Yet paradoxically, I think that THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A GREATER NEED FOR INCREASED UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATION OF SCIENCE. It has been said that, although the choice of direction for our civilization will be determined through democratic process, it is there that the problem begins. TO MAKE RATIONAL CHOICES, THE AVERAGE CITIZEN MUST UNDERSTAND THE NATURE AND ROLE OF SCIENCE AT A TIME WHEN ITS BREADTH AND COMPLEXITY ARE INCREASING ALMOST EXPONENTIALLY .... Conversely, the scientist, at a time when he can barely keep up to date in his specialty, must not isolate himself in his parochial interest. Instead, he should see his profession as a part of the larger world, to evaluate himself and his work in relation to all forces, especially the humanities, which shape and advance society. THE NEED, THEN, IS FOR AN EDUCATIONAL PROCESS RESULTING IN MORE SCIENTIFIC LITERACY FOR THE LAYMAN, AND MORE LITERACY IN THE HUMANITIES FOR THE SCIENTISTS .... Man in this scientific age is free only to the extent that he has a grasp on himself and his surroundings. FREEDOM ― THE ABILITY TO SPEAK, THINK, ACT, AND VOTE INTELLIGENTLY ― is based largely on our ability TO MAKE CHOICES growing out of our understanding of the issues involved. With each advance of science, there is an invitation to more understanding. This is the essence of the burden borne by all peoples since the dawn of humanity. There must be widespread understanding of the role of science in modern society, both as to its limits and our dependence on its basic function as a tool for our survival. This is the imperative for scientific literacy .... How do we encourage scientific literacy? I THINK THE PROBLEM IS HOW TO INSTILL IN STUDENTS A PERMANENT DESIRE TO LEARN. All youth is endowed with curiosity from the very beginning. What can education process do, not only to keep this natural curiosity alive, but to make it a permanent part of the individual drive? … Students should be encouraged, beyond learning facts, to be intrigued by objects and events in their environment, as well as to become aware of and responsive in a positive manner to beauty and orderliness in their environment. THEY SHOULD BE TAUGHT TO WILLINGLY SUBJECT THEIR DATA AND IDEAS TO CRITICISM OF THEIR PEERS WHILE ACQUIRING A CRITICAL, QUESTIONING ATTITUDE TOWARD INFERENCES, HYPOTHESES AND THEORIES. Early in education, they should be led to recognize the limitations of scientific modes of inquiry and the need for additional, quite different approaches to the quest for reality … ULTIMATELY, THEY SHOULD BE INSTILLED WITH AN APPRECIATION FOR THE INTERRELATEDNESS OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY .... This is essentially the scientific method. By learning the scientific method, students will understand its role in society and at the same time to think for themselves. LEARNING TO THINK FOR ONESELF, IN TURN, IMPARTS A DEEP SENSE OF FREEDOM. ONCE TESTED, AN APPETITE FOR IT IS FORMED WHICH MAY WELL ENDURE THROUGHOUT LIFE .... But if our young people are going to gain the appetite, our schools, our colleges, our universities, must bear an ever greater responsibility. ALL TOO MANY TIMES IN THE PAST, EDUCATION ― PARTICULARLY IN THE SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES ― HAS PLACED EXTREMELY HEAVY EMPHASIS ON TRANSMITTING THE ESTABLISHED KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAST. THERE HAS BEEN A TENDENCY FOR TEACHERS TO ASSIGN, AND TO ENCOURAGE ROTE LEARNING, INSTEAD OF TAKING THE ADMITTEDLY MORE DIFFICULT PATH OF ENCOURAGING STUDENTS TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES .... THE MAINSPRING OF SCIENCE IS CURIOSITY. SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL, THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MEN AND WOMEN WHO FELT A BURNING DESIRE TO KNOW WHAT WAS UNDER THE ROCK, BEYOND THE HILLS, ACROSS THE OCEANS. THIS RESTLESS BREED NOW WANT TO KNOW WHAT MAKES AN ATOM WORK, THROUGH WHAT PROCESS LIFE REPRODUCES ITSELF, OR WHAT IS THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE MOON.”
QUESTION: ARE THE ROMANIC CULTURES IN SOUR OPPOSITION WITH NAPOLEON BONAPARTE’ AND WERNHER VON BRAUN’S SUCCESS PRESCRIPTIONS?
Yes, the Romanic cultures ― to an appalling and unfortunate degree (and with the notorious exception of Leonardo Da Vinci) ― have this overwhelming counter feeling against Napoleon Bonaparte’ and Wernher von Braun’s Success Prescriptions. When the subject matter is addressed, the respective incumbents take it as a violation to their traditions and not as an opportunity to grow beyond any past historic consideration.
DR. MALCOLM S. KNOWLES, PH.D. AND AMERICAN AUTHOR OF “THE ADULT LEARNER: THE DEFINITIVE CLASSIC IN ADULT EDUCATION AND HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT” WROTE ON EDUCATION:
"The greatest danger for the survival of the present civilization is neither atomic war, nor environmental pollution, nor the exploitation of natural resources, and nor present crises. The underlying cause to all of the above is the acceleration of man’s obsolescence … The only hope seems to be an electroshock program to re-instill to the current adults the competencies required to function adequately under a mode of perpetual change. This is a profound need ― the immeasurable challenge ― that is presented by the modern society to adult education.”
APPENDIX OF SUGGESTED QUOTATIONS
-- Attributed to Winston Churchill: “Courage is the capacity to go from failure to failure with increased enthusiasm!”
-- Attributed to Andre Gide (1869 ― 1951): “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
-- Upton Sinclair (attributed to): “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
-- Brian Tracy (attributed to): “No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”
-- Sir Winston Churchill (attributed to): “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.”
-- Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
-- Albert Einstein: “I hold that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest motive in fostering scientific research.”
-- Mother Teresa (attributed to): “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
-- Attributed to Henry Ford (1863 ― 1947): “Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.”
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes (attributed to): “A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
-- Louis V Gerstner, Jr., Former CEO, IBM (attributed to): “No credit can be given for predicting rain ― only for building arks.”
-- Donald Rumsfeld: “As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
-- Author Unknown(attributed to): “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
-- Albert Einstein: “The significant challenges we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
-- William Gibson: “The FUTURE is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.”
-- Henry Miller: “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.”
-- Albert Einstein: “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
-- Christian Bovee: “When all else is lost, the future still remains.” [71]
-- Ruth Benedict: “Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.” [71]
-- Thomas Fuller: “He that fears the future may enjoy the present.” [71]
--
-- James Petersen: “If you afraid for your future, you don’t have a present.” [71]
-- Francesco Guicciardini: “To relinquish a present good through apprehension of a future evil is in most instances unwise … from a fear which may afterwards turn out groundless, you lost the good that lay within your grasp.” [71]
-- Thomas E. Dewey: “We need not be afraid of the future, for the future will be in our hands.” [71]
-- E. H. Harriman: “It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear.” [71]
-- Marcus Annaes Seneca: “The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.” [71]
-- Henry
-- John Locke: “Fear is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of a future evil likely to befall us.” [71]
-- William Sloane Coffin: “I’m deglitched that the future is unsure. That’s the way it should be.” [71]
-- Alfred North Whitehead: “It is the business of the future to be dangerous.” [71]
-- Robert M. Pirsig: “To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.” [71]
-- Samuel Johnson: “Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.” [71]
-- B. C. Forbes: “Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.” [71]
¨D Gerald Jampolsky: “No way exists in the present to accurately determine the future effect of the least of our actions.” [71]
-- Corrie ten Boom: “Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.” [71]
-- Hugh White: “When you make a mistake, don’t look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.” [71]
-- “The part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy …. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one – the knowledge and the dream.” [72]
-- William
-- Alan Kay (1940 - ): “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” [72]
--
-- Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” [73]
¨-- Alvin Toffler: “In the world of the future, the new illiterate will be the person who has not learned to learn.” [73]
-- Albert Einstein: “Teachers are messengers from the past and an escort to the future.” [73]
-- Alison Lurie (1926 - ): “As one went to
-- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890 – 1969): “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” [75]
-- Tacitus: “Light-minded men are improvident of the future.” [76]
-- Franklyn
-- Paul Boese: “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” [77]
-- Jon Bon Jovi: “Map out your future, but do it in pencil.” [77]
-- George Bernard Shaw: “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” [77]
-- Chales Caleb Colton: “Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not to come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.” [77]
All quotations not otherwise cited are from the interviews conducted by the author or personal communications sent to the author.
APPENDIX OF DEFINITION OF APPLIED OMNISCIENCE
Applied Omniscience Defined By This Author:
“Ttal knowledge; knowing everything … One having total knowledge … Pansophy: ‘universal knowledge or wisdom … system or work embracing all knowledge … polymath: A person of great or varied, updated learning … knowing … all-knowingness … Possessing knowledge, information, or understanding … showing clever awareness and resourcefulness; shrewd … suggestive of secret or private knowledge … conscious … having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight … possessed of universal or complete knowledge … the omniscient narrator … a person of great and varied learning … one who has rejected authority and dogma in favor of rational inquiry and speculation under the most rigorous application of the scientific method … learning; erudition; teachers of great knowledge; one who takes advice or information from others … familiarity or awareness or understanding gained through experience, expertise and study … the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, learned or in the process to be unveiled through systematic and systemic knowledge creation … specific information about something … narrative and numerical data gathered and assimilated by in-depth and in-the-field research of patterns stemmed by subtle, overt and covert driving forces … the congruent and cohesive mastery of many areas of actionable learning reflected in a scholar’s work … a collection of facts and data (A man’s judgment cannot be better than the information and technocratic merits on which he has based it on) … that who constructs, coalesce expert systems … deep extensive and practicing learning … the instructed one that learns from instructing others to get further instructed … the methods, discipline, techniques and attainments via academia, personal, professional, organizational, actual solving of complex problems and in-the-battlefield experience … extensive knowledge … infinite knowledge … convergence of all wisdoms brought into one ultimate over-wisdom with the systems approach and the applied omniscience perspective … the state or quality … of having infinite knowledge; knowing all things … universal knowledge or wisdom … a person of focus and yet great diversified learning … including in one view … everything within and beyond sight, insight, far-sight, intuitivism, counter- intuitivism … having infinite discerned insightfulness … a person of encyclopedic learning … omni scientia knowledge … having learned a great degree in several unconnected fields of study and engineering … educated, knowledgeable; wise, sapient … that possessing great wisdom and sound judgment … that who has been and remains schooled by the university of ‘hard knocks’ and the ‘college of life’ … one that presume and effects that all things have not been done sufficiently optimally … a self-dealing person with his mindful and well-stomached transformation towards possessing and utilizing all-knowingness … healthy stubbornness with the lucrative nano-granularity of detail as it is pondered and marshaled through a magnitude of practical subject matters … Profound knowledge, deep knowledge, total command or mastery; specialism, specialized or special knowledge; expertise, proficiency; wide or vast or extensive knowledge, generality, general knowledge (forever updated), interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary knowledge; implementable encyclopedic knowledge … knowing and ever-learning of all happenings in the life, research, findings and developments of a people, country, nation, commonwealth, institution, etc. … all scientific accounts of a s system of natural phenomena … eternal learning of the increasingly ‘most daring’ yet fact-driven literature … hidden knowledge, recondite knowledge … development of character and mental powers through systematic self-instruction and pervasive intellectual activities to amplify and refine and sophisticate one’s own talents, skills, dexterities and practices … including body (bodies) of knowledge of hermetic and secretive societies and associations (regardless of an Alemanic Germanic Bavarian genesis) … hermeneutics, that is: the science of interpretation and explanation, especially the branch of theology that deals with the general principles of Biblical interpretation … helpful gnosis and productive omni-gnosis … expansionist scientific modes of inquiry and the need for additional yet quite different approaches – together with the ever-emergence and always more extended and expanded monolithic convergence of many knowledge specialties (inside and outside the realms of today’s ‘scientific truth’ sciences), to the always-increasing quest for reality (including virtual reality), also including the search for actionable answers to questions like the origin of the Universe / Multiverse and its fortunately stunning derivatives (ruling in an stunning array of tangible and intangible sub-cosmos and sub-multiverses) as per most prominent physicists, astrophysicists and astronomers’ findings, among those of others … descriptive knowledge … domain-specific knowledge … expert knowledge … factual knowledge … implicit knowledge … un-prevalent knowledge … explicit knowledge … express knowledge … utter knowledge … prescriptive knowledge … procedure knowledge … jurisprudence knowledge … knowledge base … knowledge engineering….”
THE MOST THOUGHTFUL STATEMENT BY ANY AMERICAN PRESIDENT TO DATE!
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.” By John F. Kennedy, Address at
Beginning of literal citation:
Vernor Vinge
Department of Mathematical Sciences
(c) 1993 by Vernor Vinge
(This article may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes if it is copied in its entirety, including this notice.)
The original version of this article was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute,
Abstract
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? These questions are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are presented.
What is The Singularity?
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):
* There may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly thereafter.)
* Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
* Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
* Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.
The first three possibilities depend in large part on improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles Platt [20] has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)
What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities ― on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work ― the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.
From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever) will likely happen in the next century. (In [5], Greg Bear paints a picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.)
I think it's fair to call this event a singularity ("the Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown. In the 1950s there were very few who saw it: Stan Ulam [28] paraphrased John von Neumann as saying:
One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.
Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman intellect. (For me, the superhumanity is the essence of the Singularity. Without that we would get a glut of technical riches, never properly absorbed (see [25]).)
In the 1960s there was recognition of some of the implications of superhuman intelligence. I. J. Good wrote [11]:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. ... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make.
Good has captured the essence of the runaway, but does not pursue its most disturbing consequences. Any intelligent machine of the sort he describes would not be humankind's "tool" ― any more than humans are the tools of rabbits or robins or chimpanzees.
Through the '60s and '70s and '80s, recognition of the cataclysm spread [29] [1] [31] [5]. Perhaps it was the science-fiction writers who felt the first concrete impact. After all, the "hard" science-fiction writers are the ones who try to write specific stories about all that technology may do for us. More and more, these writers felt an opaque wall across the future. Once, they could put such fantasies millions of years in the future [24]. Now they saw that their most diligent extrapolations resulted in the unknowable ... soon. Once, galactic empires might have seemed a Post-Human domain. Now, sadly, even interplanetary ones are.
What about the '90s and the '00s and the '10s, as we slide toward the edge? How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view? For a while yet, the general critics of machine sapience will have good press. After all, till we have hardware as powerful as a human brain it is probably foolish to think we'll be able to create human equivalent (or greater) intelligence. (There is the far-fetched possibility that we could make a human equivalent out of less powerful hardware, if we were willing to give up speed, if we were willing to settle for an artificial being who was literally slow [30]. But it's much more likely that devising the software will be a tricky process, involving lots of false starts and experimentation. If so, then the arrival of self-aware machines will not happen till after the development of hardware that is substantially more powerful than humans' natural equipment.)
But as time passes, we should see more symptoms. The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors. (I have heard thoughtful comic book writers worry about how to have spectacular effects when everything visible can be produced by the technologically commonplace.) We will see automation replacing higher and higher level jobs. We have tools right now (symbolic math programs, cad/cam) that release us from most low-level drudgery. Or put another way: The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of _true_ technological unemployment finally come true.
Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace. When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months. (Of course, this could just be me losing my imagination as I get old, but I see the effect in others too.) Like the shock in a compressible flow, the Singularity moves closer as we accelerate through the critical speed.
And what of the arrival of the Singularity itself? What can be said of its actual appearance? Since it involves an intellectual runaway, it will probably occur faster than any technical revolution seen so far. The precipitating event will likely be unexpected ― perhaps even to the researchers involved. ("But all our previous models were catatonic! We were just tweaking some parameters....") If networking is widespread enough (into ubiquitous embedded systems), it may seem as if our artifacts as a whole had suddenly wakened.
And what happens a month or two (or a day or two) after that? I have only analogies to point to: The rise of humankind. We will be in the Post-Human era. And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove ... instead of twenty.
Can the Singularity be Avoided?
Well, maybe it won't happen at all: Sometimes I try to imagine the symptoms that we should expect to see if the Singularity is not to develop. There are the widely respected arguments of Penrose [19] and Searle [22] against the practicality of machine sapience. In August of 1992, Thinking Machines Corporation held a workshop to investigate the question "How We Will Build a Machine that Thinks" [27]. As you might guess from the workshop's title, the participants were not especially supportive of the arguments against machine intelligence. In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds. However, there was much debate about the raw hardware power that is present in organic brains. A minority felt that the largest 1992 computers were within three orders of magnitude of the power of the human brain. The majority of the participants agreed with Moravec's estimate [17] that we are ten to forty years away from hardware parity. And yet there was another minority who pointed to [7] [21], and conjectured that the computational competence of single neurons may be far higher than generally believed. If so, our present computer hardware might be as much as _ten_ orders of magnitude short of the equipment we carry around in our heads. If this is true (or for that matter, if the Penrose or Searle critique is valid), we might never see a Singularity. Instead, in the early '00s we would find our hardware performance curves beginning to level off ― this because of our inability to automate the design work needed to support further hardware improvements. We'd end up with some _very_ powerful hardware, but without the ability to push it further. Commercial digital signal processing might be awesome, giving an analog appearance even to digital operations, but nothing would ever "wake up" and there would never be the intellectual runaway which is the essence of the Singularity. It would likely be seen as a golden age ... and it would also be an end of progress. This is very like the future predicted by Gunther Stent. In fact, on page 137 of [25], Stent explicitly cites the development of transhuman intelligence as a sufficient condition to break his projections.
But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the "threat" and be in deadly fear of it, progress toward the goal would continue. In fiction, there have been stories of laws passed forbidding the construction of "a machine in the likeness of the human mind" [13]. In fact, the competitive advantage ― economic, military, even artistic ― of every advance in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will get them first.
Eric Drexler [8] has provided spectacular insights about how far technical improvement may go. He agrees that superhuman intelligences will be available in the near future ― and that such entities pose a threat to the human status quo. But Drexler argues that we can confine such transhuman devices so that their results can be examined and used safely. This is
Another approach to confinement is to build _rules_ into the mind of the created superhuman entity (for example, Asimov's Laws [3]). I think that any rules strict enough to be effective would also produce a device whose ability was clearly inferior to the unfettered versions (and so human competition would favor the development of the those more dangerous models). Still, the Asimov dream is a wonderful one: Imagine a willing slave, who has 1000 times your capabilities in every way. Imagine a creature who could satisfy your every safe wish (whatever that means) and still have 99.9% of its time free for other activities. There would be a new universe we never really understood, but filled with benevolent gods (though one of _my_ wishes might be to become one of them).
If the Singularity can not be prevented or confined, just how bad could the Post-Human era be? Well ... pretty bad. The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility. (Or as Eric Drexler put it of nanotechnology: Given all that such technology can do, perhaps governments would simply decide that they no longer need citizens!). Yet physical extinction may not be the scariest possibility. Again, analogies: Think of the different ways we relate to animals. Some of the crude physical abuses are implausible, yet.... In a Post-Human world there would still be plenty of niches where human equivalent automation would be desirable: embedded systems in autonomous devices, self-aware daemons in the lower functioning of larger sentients. (A strongly superhuman intelligence would likely be a Society of Mind [16] with some very competent components.) Some of these human equivalents might be used for nothing more than digital signal processing. They would be more like whales than humans. Others might be very human-like, yet with a one-sidedness, a _dedication_ that would put them in a mental hospital in our era. Though none of these creatures might be flesh-and-blood humans, they might be the closest things in the new enviroment to what we call human now. (I. J. Good had something to say about this, though at this late date the advice may be moot: Good [12] proposed a "Meta-Golden Rule", which might be paraphrased as "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors." It's a wonderful, paradoxical idea (and most of my friends don't believe it) since the game-theoretic payoff is so hard to articulate. Yet if we were able to follow it, in some sense that might say something about the plausibility of such kindness in this universe.)
I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology. And yet ... we are the initiators. Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things. We have the freedom to establish initial conditions, make things happen in ways that are less inimical than others. Of course (as with starting avalanches), it may not be clear what the right guiding nudge really is:
Other Paths to the Singularity: Intelligence Amplification_
When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project. But as I noted at the beginning of this paper, there are other paths to superhumanity. Computer networks and human-computer interfaces seem more mundane than AI, and yet they could lead to the Singularity. I call this contrasting approach Intelligence Amplification (IA). IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is. But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence. Even now, the team of a PhD human and good computer workstation (even an off-net workstation!) could probably max any written intelligence test in existence.
And it's very likely that IA is a much easier road to the achievement of superhumanity than pure AI. In humans, the hardest development problems have already been solved. Building up from within ourselves ought to be easier than figuring out first what we really are and then building machines that are all of that. And there is at least conjectural precedent for this approach. Cairns-Smith [6] has speculated that biological life may have begun as an adjunct to still more primitive life based on crystalline growth. Lynn Margulis (in [15] and elsewhere) has made strong arguments that mutualism is a great driving force in evolution.
Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded. What goes on with AI will often have applications in IA, and vice versa. I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence. With that insight, we may see projects that are not as directly applicable as conventional interface and network design work, but which serve to advance us toward the Singularity along the IA path.
Here are some possible projects that take on special significance, given the IA point of view:
* Human/computer team automation: Take problems that are normally considered for purely machine solution (like hill-climbing problems), and design programs and interfaces that take a advantage of humans' intuition and available computer hardware. Considering all the bizarreness of higher dimensional hill-climbing problems (and the neat algorithms that have been devised for their solution), there could be some very interesting displays and control tools provided to the human team member.
* Develop human/computer symbiosis in art: Combine the graphic generation capability of modern machines and the esthetic sensibility of humans. Of course, there has been an enormous amount of research in designing computer aids for artists, as labor saving tools. I'm suggesting that we explicitly aim for a greater merging of competence, that we explicitly recognize the cooperative approach that is possible. Karl Sims [23] has done wonderful work in this direction.
* Allow human/computer teams at chess tournaments. We already have programs that can play better than almost all humans. But how much work has been done on how this power could be used by a human, to get something even better? If such teams were allowed in at least some chess tournaments, it could have the positive effect on IA research that allowing computers in tournaments had for the corresponding niche in AI.
* Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer. (This is an aspect of IA that fits so well with known economic advantages that lots of effort is already being spent on it.)
* Develop more symmetrical decision support systems. A popular research/product area in recent years has been decision support systems. This is a form of IA, but may be too focussed on systems that are oracular. As much as the program giving the user information, there must be the idea of the user giving the program guidance.
* Use local area nets to make human teams that really work (ie, are more effective than their component members). This is generally the area of "groupware", already a very popular commercial pursuit. The change in viewpoint here would be to regard the group activity as a combination organism. In one sense, this suggestion might be regarded as the goal of inventing a "Rules of Order" for such combination operations. For instance, group focus might be more easily maintained than in classical meetings. Expertise of individual human members could be isolated from ego issues such that the contribution of different members is focussed on the team project. And of course shared data bases could be used much more conveniently than in conventional committee operations. (Note that this suggestion is aimed at team operations rather than political meetings. In a political setting, the automation described above would simply enforce the power of the persons making the rules!)
* Exploit the worldwide Internet as a combination human/machine tool. Of all the items on the list, progress in this is proceeding the fastest and may run us into the Singularity before anything else. The power and influence of even the present-day Internet is vastly underestimated. For instance, I think our contemporary computer systems would break under the weight of their own complexity if it weren't for the edge that the USENET "group mind" gives the system administration and support people! The very anarchy of the worldwide net development is evidence of its potential. As connectivity and bandwidth and archive size and computer speed all increase, we are seeing something like Lynn Margulis' [15] vision of the biosphere as data processor recapitulated, but at a million times greater speed and with millions of humanly intelligent agents (ourselves).
The above examples illustrate research that can be done within the context of contemporary computer science departments. There are other paradigms. For example, much of the work in Artificial Intelligence and neural nets would benefit from a closer connection with biological life. Instead of simply trying to model and understand biological life with computers, research could be directed toward the creation of composite systems that rely on biological life for guidance or for the providing features we don't understand well enough yet to implement in hardware. A long-time dream of science-fiction has been direct brain to computer interfaces [2] [29]. In fact, there is concrete work that can be done (and is being done) in this area:
* Limb prosthetics is a topic of direct commercial applicability. Nerve to silicon transducers can be made [14]. This is an exciting, near-term step toward direct communication.
* Direct links into brains seem feasible, if the bit rate is low: given human learning flexibility, the actual brain neuron targets might not have to be precisely selected. Even 100 bits per second would be of great use to stroke victims who would otherwise be confined to menu-driven interfaces.
* Plugging in to the optic trunk has the potential for bandwidths of 1 Mbit/second or so. But for this, we need to know the fine-scale architecture of vision, and we need to place an enormous web of electrodes with exquisite precision. If we want our high bandwidth connection to be _in addition_ to what paths are already present in the brain, the problem becomes vastly more intractable. Just sticking a grid of high-bandwidth receivers into a brain certainly won't do it. But suppose that the high-bandwidth grid were present while the brain structure was actually setting up, as the embryo develops. That suggests:
* Animal embryo experiments. I wouldn't expect any IA success in the first years of such research, but giving developing brains access to complex simulated neural structures might be very interesting to the people who study how the embryonic brain develops. In the long run, such experiments might produce animals with additional sense paths and interesting intellectual abilities.
Originally, I had hoped that this discussion of IA would yield some clearly safer approaches to the Singularity. (After all, IA allows our participation in a kind of transcendance.) Alas, looking back over these IA proposals, about all I am sure of is that they should be considered, that they may give us more options. But as for safety ... well, some of the suggestions are a little scarey on their face. One of my informal reviewers pointed out that IA for individual humans creates a rather sinister elite. We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light. Much of that deadliness may not be necessary in today's world, one where losers take on the winners' tricks and are coopted into the winners' enterprises. A creature that was built _de novo_ might possibly be a much more benign entity than one with a kernel based on fang and talon. And even the egalitarian view of an Internet that wakes up along with all mankind can be viewed as a nightmare [26].
The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being. I think a closer look at the notion of strong superhumanity can show why that is.
Strong Superhumanity and the Best We Can Ask for
Suppose we could tailor the Singularity. Suppose we could attain our most extravagant hopes. What then would we ask for: That humans themselves would become their own successors, that whatever injustice occurs would be tempered by our knowledge of our roots. For those who remained unaltered, the goal would be benign treatment (perhaps even giving the stay-behinds the appearance of being masters of godlike slaves). It could be a golden age that also involved progress (overleaping Stent's barrier). Immortality (or at least a lifetime as long as we can make the universe survive [10] [4]) would be achievable.
But in this brightest and kindest world, the philosophical problems themselves become intimidating. A mind that stays at the same capacity cannot live forever; after a few thousand years it would look more like a repeating tape loop than a person. (The most chilling picture I have seen of this is in [18].) To live indefinitely long, the mind itself must grow ... and when it becomes great enough, and looks back ... what fellow-feeling can it have with the soul that it was originally? Certainly the later being would be everything the original was, but so much vastly more. And so even for the individual, the Cairns-Smith or Lynn Margulis notion of new life growing incrementally out of the old must still be valid.
This "problem" about immortality comes up in much more direct ways. The notion of ego and self-awareness has been the bedrock of the hardheaded rationalism of the last few centuries. Yet now the notion of self-awareness is under attack from the Artificial Intelligence people ("self-awareness and other delusions"). Intelligence Amplification undercuts our concept of ego from another direction. The post-Singularity world will involve extremely high-bandwidth networking. A central feature of strongly superhuman entities will likely be their ability to communicate at variable bandwidths, including ones far higher than speech or written messages. What happens when pieces of ego can be copied and merged, when the size of a selfawareness can grow or shrink to fit the nature of the problems under consideration? These are essential features of strong superhumanity and the Singularity. Thinking about them, one begins to feel how essentially strange and different the Post-Human era will be ― _no matter how cleverly and benignly it is brought to be_.
From one angle, the vision fits many of our happiest dreams: a time unending, where we can truly know one another and understand the deepest mysteries. From another angle, it's a lot like the worst- case scenario I imagined earlier in this paper.
Which is the valid viewpoint? In fact, I think the new era is simply too different to fit into the classical frame of good and evil. That frame is based on the idea of isolated, immutable minds connected by tenuous, low-bandwith links. But the post-Singularity world _does_ fit with the larger tradition of change and cooperation that started long ago (perhaps even before the rise of biological life). I think there _are_ notions of ethics that would apply in such an era. Research into IA and high-bandwidth communications should improve this understanding. I see just the glimmerings of this now [32]. There is Good's Meta-Golden Rule; perhaps there are rules for distinguishing self from others on the basis of bandwidth of connection. And while mind and self will be vastly more labile than in the past, much of what we value (knowledge, memory, thought) need never be lost. I think Freeman Dyson has it right when he says [9]: "God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension."
[I wish to thank John Carroll of
Annotated Sources [and an occasional plea for bibliographical help]
[1] Alfve'n, Hannes, writing as Olof Johanneson, _The End of Man?_, Award Books, 1969 earlier published as "The Tale of the Big Computer", Coward-McCann, translated from a book copyright 1966 Albert Bonniers Forlag AB with English translation copyright 1966 by Victor Gollanz, Ltd.
[2] Anderson, Poul, "Kings Who Die", _If_, March 1962, p8-36. Reprinted in _Seven Conquests_, Poul Anderson, MacMillan Co., 1969.
[3] Asimov, Isaac, "Runaround", _Astounding Science Fiction_, March 1942, p94. Reprinted in _Robot Visions_, Isaac Asimov, ROC, 1990. Asimov describes the development of his robotics stories in this book.
[4] Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler, _The Anthropic Cosmological Principle_,
[5] Bear, Greg, "Blood Music", _Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact_, June, 1983. Expanded into the novel _Blood Music_, Morrow, 1985.
[6] Cairns-Smith, A. G., _Seven Clues to the Origin of Life_,
[7] Conrad, Michael _et al._, "Towards an Artificial Brain", _BioSystems_, vol 23, pp175-218, 1989.
[8] Drexler, K. Eric, _Engines of Creation_, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986.
[9] Dyson, Freeman, _Infinite in All Directions_, Harper && Row, 1988.
[10] Dyson, Freeman, "Physics and Biology in an Open Universe", _Review of Modern Physics_, vol 51, pp447-460, 1979.
[11] Good, I. J., "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine", in _Advances in Computers_, vol 6, Franz L. Alt and Morris Rubinoff, eds, pp31-88, 1965, Academic Press.
[12] Good,
[14] Kovacs, G. T. A. _et al._, "Regeneration Microelectrode Array for Peripheral Nerve Recording and Stimulation", _IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering_, v 39, n 9, pp 893-902.
[15] Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan, _Microcosmos, Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors_,
[16] Minsky, Marvin, _Society of Mind_, Simon and Schuster, 1985.
[17] Moravec, Hans, _Mind Children_,
[18] Niven, Larry, "The Ethics of Madness", _If_, April 1967, pp82-108. Reprinted in _Neutron Star_, Larry Niven, Ballantine Books, 1968.
[19] Penrose, Roger, _The Emperor's New Mind_,
[20] Platt, Charles, Private Communication.
[21] Rasmussen, S. _et al._, "Computational Connectionism within Neurons: a Model of Cytoskeletal Automata Subserving Neural Networks", in _Emergent Computation_, Stephanie Forrest, ed., pp428-449, MIT Press, 1991.
[22] Searle, John R., "Minds, Brains, and Programs", in _The Behavioral and Brain Sciences_, vol 3,
[23] Sims, Karl, "Interactive Evolution of Dynamical Systems", Thinking Machines Corporation, Technical Report Series (published in _Toward a Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life_, Paris, MIT Press, December 1991.
[24] Stapledon, Olaf, _The Starmaker_,
[25] Stent, Gunther S., _The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress_, The Natural History Press, 1969.
[26] Swanwick Michael, _Vacuum Flowers_, serialized in _Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine_, December(?) 1986 - February 1987. Republished by Ace Books, 1988.
[27] Thearling, Kurt, "How We Will Build a Machine that Thinks", a workshop at Thinking Machines Corporation, August 24-26, 1992. Personal Communication.
[28] Ulam, S., Tribute to John von Neumann, _Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society_, vol 64, nr 3, part 2, May 1958, pp1-49.
[29] Vinge, Vernor, "Bookworm, Run!", _Analog_, March 1966, pp8-40. Reprinted in _True Names and Other Dangers_, Vernor Vinge, Baen Books, 1987.
[30] Vinge, Vernor, "True Names", _Binary Star Number 5_, Dell, 1981. Reprinted in _True Names and Other Dangers_, Vernor Vinge, Baen Books, 1987.
[31] Vinge, Vernor, First Word, _Omni_, January 1983, p10.
[32] Vinge, Vernor, To Appear [ :-) ].
End of literal citation.
DEMYSTIFYING THE “REAL DEAL” IN PROFESSION, TECHNOLOGY, LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, STRATEGY, AND BUSINESS, AS WELL AS OFFERING THE CLEAREST BLUEPRINT! BY © COPYRIGHT 2010 ANDRES AGOSTINI – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED –
Briefly stated, you meet and prevail through realities by instituting the following road map.
First! Once you understand that the most important thing to nurture is the rotational-and-translational motion revolting within and beyond the innermost core of / by you, you can do your ethics and morality. Now you have conquered bridge 1. Conquering the foundational pillar also implies that ever facet of your personal and professional life will be carried on with dogged solemnity.
Second! Once you do your ethics and morality, you can do your actionable knowledge for Life. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 2 for Life.
Third! Once your actionable knowledge is done by you, you can do your corporate planning and respective marshaled strategy. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 3 for Life.
Fourth! Once your corporate planning and respective marshaled strategy is done by you, you can do your systems hazard management. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 4 for Life.
Fifth! Once your systems hazard management is done by you, you can do your systems quality assurance management. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 5 for Life.
Sixth! Once your cross-functional systems quality assurance management is done by you, you can do your systems reliability engineering. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 6 for Life.
Seventh! Once your systems reliability engineering is done by you, you can do your systems risk management. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 7 for Life.
Eighth! Once your systems risk management – with the applied omniscience perspective – is done by you, you can do your contingency planning lavishly (with thousands layers of redundancy in place) for Life. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 8 for Life.
Ninth! When your contingency planning is done by you, you can do your benefits (upsides and downsides). Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 9 for Life.
Tenth! When benefits are done by you and you become hyper-engage into pervasively transformational self-renewal and self-challenging (in excelsis) of your own intellect, you can do your sustainability perpetually. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 10 for Life.
Eleventh! Now you can conceive and design your own profession and tenure while concentrating in capturing womb-to-tomb (so-called) “success” and its gargantuan sustainability effort. Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 11 for Life.
Twelfth! Neither “the secret,” nor the “hidden secret,” nor the “discrete secret” magnificent marketing stunts will warrant the oxygen that your mind, body, and souls require (sic). Now you have conquered and will be conquering bridge 12 for Life.
QUESTION: What do Ralph Waldo Emerson, James D. Watson, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Arthur C. Clarke, Bernard D'espagnat, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Malcolm s. Knowles, Bertrand Russell, Francis Bacon, Henry Kissinger, Otto Herman Khan, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, and the Panchatantra have in common? So they can offer us a positive and constructive reflection to navigate with an even-keeled vessel through unchartered waters in the third millennium? – A Critico-Creative Thinking Prescription To Illustrate Success In 16 Steps!
By © Copyright 2010 Andres Agostini – All Rights Reserved –
OBJECTIVE
Emerson indicates that educators do not educate but offer the means of education. I am not trying to educate anyone but myself through these lines. However, most of my wisest colleagues and thoughtful friends are seeking relevant contents. Relevant contents that prove interesting in entertaining their legitimately hungriest minds as they mean well in every purpose. All citations here are accurate to the best of my knowledge. Not even for educational purposes have them been simplified or modified in any way since it is neither my duty nor nature as of now. Subsequently, quotations have been kept intact as they have become available to me.
1.- First off, we must establish universal acceptance of the greatest axiom of all times pertaining to the subject matter to be dealt with now. Said axiom establishes: “An ounce of prevention is worth millions of dollars of cure.” In the West we are over-working at the “cure” while under-working at the “prevention.”
2.- Having spoken of prevention, let’s now chat about preventive medicine by using the greatest wisdom of Sir Francis Bacon: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
3.- Okay, Bacon has spoken loud and clear. People who listens to him benefits greatly. Those who don’t are in shock, bewilderment, and even in times of struggle. We have the choice to ignore his extreme wisdom or we can accept and practice it thoroughly in every facet of our lives. The undersigned firmly suggests either one or the other, since “gray scales” type of choices will not work for us at all. The term “extreme” sometimes can be optimal. See, for instance, NASA’s effort in sending an unmanned Rover to Mars. Wasn’t that over-perfection after traveling – by means of highly sophisticated telemetry – some 120 million miles into outer space? Is that say what “excellence”? Or is upfront and outright over-perfection?
4.- If we take Bacon’s wisdom literally, we are exploiting the UPSIDE of our life’s risks. If we don’t take Bacon’s wisdom literally, we are exploiting the DOWNSIDE of our life’s risks.
5.- Supporting the Bacon motion there is that of Dr. Bertrand Russell. This finest Britton, supporting further Bacon’s motion (under 2, 3, and 4), indicated: “I know more people who prefer to die than to think.” Intellectual laziness is a topic heavily studied and addressed by advanced scientists. The idea is simply getting people in deep, systematic thinking forever.
6.- As I really wish to offer you every possibility of hope and optimism, rigor calls upon me to exhaust the downsides so that said downsides eventually become UPSIDES. Albert Einstein and Buckminster Fuller will be making their great ensuing contributions. Einstein: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity … We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”
7.- Supporting Einstein motion, Buckminster Fuller reminds us of the following: “Either war is obsolete, or men are.” Very respectful opinions that of Russell, Einstein, and Buckminster Fuller. But the German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, reiterates that if we change the present we can change the future, and if we change the future – as well as the way we proactively and qualitatively envision and practice it through futuristic scenario methods – we will be changing the present in fact and taking increasing control over the negative circumstances that impact us. Nietzsche stated exactly: "It’s our future that lays down the law of our today." Can a prominent
8.- Theodore Roosevelt, a lifelong and topflight statesman concerned about making the best out of his mind and that of his constituents, established: "All the resources we need are in the mind." Dr. Carl Sagan, notwithstanding acknowledging the wisdom by Nietzsche and Roosevelt, really wishes making a point of his own next.
9.- So Sagan made his motion public, which basically indicates that if we embrace serious knowledge progressively, we will build great hope for the world. Without euphemisms, in this case “world” is an analogous term to “the people” and “by/for the people” worldwide. He said: “The greatest danger for the survival of the present civilization is neither atomic war, nor environmental pollution, nor the exploitation of natural resources, and nor present crises. The underlying cause to all of the above is the acceleration of man’s obsolescence … The only hope seems to be an electroshock program to re-instill to the current adults the competencies required to function adequately under a mode of perpetual change. This is a profound need – the immensurable challenge – that is presented by the modern society to adult educator.” Emerson understands Sagan but he really wishes to make a more hopeful and viable point.
10.- Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “Man hopes; Genius creates.” As you make your knowledge more driven by you and as per the goal, objectives, and results expected from you and by yourself, the smarter you will become without a fail. The more intelligent you become, the much better at solving problems – regardless of how simple or complex they are – you’ll become. Becoming truly intelligent is a bit of a struggle but it also fully winnable, educational, and enjoyable. And in my opinion no one can contradict Emerson on such an important theme. In some strange form, though with a positive outcome, Dr. Knowles wishes to confirm the exactness of the Emerson motion by using his words in a different way now. In matters of education, I habitually suggest researching the life of Dr. Burrhus Frederic Skinner, ˝Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” If we ignore education, we end up ignoring our own survival. Dr. Henry Kissinger addresses it here: "An ignored issue is an invitation to a problem."
11.- Dr. Malcolm S. Knowles, Ph.D. stated: “The greatest danger for the survival of the present civilization is neither atomic war, nor environmental pollution, nor the exploitation of natural resources, and nor present crises. The underlying cause to all of the above is the acceleration of man’s obsolescence … The only hope seems to be an electroshock program to re-instill to the current adults the competencies required to function adequately under a mode of perpetual change. This is a profound need – the immensurable challenge – that is presented by the modern society to adult educator.” A compatriot of Dr. Knowles, and former president of the
12.- Thomas Jefferson let us know: “I prefer the stories of the future than history.” You see, an indeed conscientious futurist always thinks through doing all his risks FIRST to then accede to doing all his futures and the benefits stemming from said futures SECOND. I believe
13.- Then a great Britton and American came along to support Thomas Jefferson motion to the fullest. His name is Winston Spencer Churchill. Yes, he was Prime Minister of the
14.- Antonio Machado established: “An eye is not an eye because you see it; an eye is an eye because it sees you.” Going even further than Machado regarding what grants a person the maximum possible own visibility of the world (cosmosvision, i.e., weltanschauung), the Panchatantra (body of Eastern philosophical knowledge) offers us a maxim: “Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes.” Then Bernard d'Espagnat finds a middle-ground for the motions by Machado and the Panchatantra by saying: "Even if the Universe is a little myopic is true that, more than others, MEN OF SCIENCE ARE ITS EYES."
15.- The father of American management – and that of management spread out over the world – wishes to make an optimistic point and a word of caution that is “fine tuned-up” with all of the current work. I am referring to Peter Drucker, “Things that have already happened but whose consequences have not been realized [because they were not imagined, considered, or envisioned by disciplined foresight and far-sight] … Don’t confuse movement with progress.” Furthering the Drucker position, a great American Nobel laureate – one of the scientists discovering the DNA structure – is bound to amalgamating this motion. I mean James D. Watson, Ph.D.
16.- Watson tells in Charlie Rose show, originally aired in 2009, a very relevant and constructive thought for our greater enlightenment with hope: "Science gives society a great sense of decisive freedom." Watson motion gets amplified by the luminescent assertion by Arthur C. Clarke: “We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 – and half of the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?” In supporting all motions – without being contradictory – Otto Herman Khan, German-American whose contributions are beyond the sine qua non quality these days, takes to a final pondering by indicating: “Clearly, the first task is to gain acceptance of a more reasonable view of the future, one that opens possibilities rather than forecloses them.”
CONCLUSION
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli staged in the world of knowledge a wonderful reflection. To this end his contributions are world-class and numerous. Once known that he was elected for public office, a journalist asked him: “What will you first government action be?” Disraeli readily responded: “I will send my best friend to
Disraeli’s intellect was immense. And he also was a “future-ready” type of a prominent large-scale CEO. In his mentioning of
General Francisco de Miranda – an outsider with a Londoner’s heart, mind, and a British wife in the nineteenth century fighting against the Spanish army in the Americas – stated a phrase that greatly bolsters the brief and yet lucid dialogue held by Disraeli above. Miranda said: “Time is the context by means of which action is delivered.”
QUESTION: Are We Adrift In A
I hear and read a great deal about “managing effectively,” “leading the most pervasive applied leadership,” “capturing the greatest success (in a sustained mode) in profession, business, life, and society.”
That heard and read is greatly helpful and interesting. But I am most critical with my critico-creative discernment processes in search for maximum truth (and or maximum truth updating and upgrading) and to refine my character and personality.
Paraphrasing the magnanimous rocket scientist, I have always forewarned my colleagues, customers, and friends that I will require myself the maximum and, therefore, I habitually assert: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
On
“To be a conscientiously human being into deep, subtle, and proactive awareness, you need to entertain some form of profound spirituality understanding that the greatest wealth is that of the spirit and the enlightened mind (those splendid intangibles). Once you do your own most conscientious awareness for Life, you can increasingly do your morality and ethics for said Life. Once you do your morality and ethics, you can do your actionable knowledge. In order to capture ever-updatable and perpetually amplifiable as well as actionable knowledge, you and only you must challenge yourself intellectually as if you were competing with your strongest opponent. If you really wish to immerse your mind into the perspective of the applied all-knowingness, you most make the greatest effort – in a sustained mode – towards actionable and applicable omniscience (http://bit.ly/Omniscience_Defined_by_Andres_Agostini), chiefly with the perspective attached by the most sophisticated exact sciences. Once you do your intellect, knowledge, and science, you can lucidly conceive your lucrative futures for the so-called and lamentable ‘heres and nows.’ When your futures are done, conceived, visualized, and developed way in advance, foresight, and far-sight by you, you can then do your upside and downside risks. When risks are done solely by you optimally, you can do your benefits. Your risks get much better done when you consider lavish provisions for contingency planning under the rigor and vigor of mentioned omniscience. Now you know – complete the entirety of this process throughput systematically, systemically, holistically, and without ignoring a single step mentioned above – how to proceed in capturing success in personal, professional, organizational, and societal life. Can you now commence your own development, by and for yourself, of self-improvement and/or self-betterment?”
© Copyright 2010 Andres Agostini – All Rights Reserved – At
THE TOP TRENDS FOR 2010 BY SAN FRANCISCO FUTURIST DR. JAMES CANTON, PH.D.
Beginning of literal citation:
From The Global Futures Forecast (a think tank in
1. Future Positive―This trend perhaps more so then any other captures the sentiment of most people worldwide. This is the trend towards wanting the near future to be again a hopeful one, a future we can look forward to. We want a positive renewal of life. Even business and government: it is time to again look to the future envision opportunity, value and a sense that thinks are improving.
2. The Existential Consumer―The consumer's worldview, their sense of meaning, confidence and sense of self has been trampled on as jobs and the economic crises have strained normalized relationships between governments, business and individuals.
3. Business as Unusual―Bold business is coming back. Aggressive moves, mergers and acquisitions, new ideas, fresh innovations will emerge this year. There is a re-thinking going on in business. What will emerge this year will not be "business as usual".
4. Design for a Better World―This trend has been building for some time now and as the global economic recovery gets into full swing this year, some jobs come back, cash flows, business start to grow there will emerge a desire to make the world better. Giving back to others, social responsibility will emerge as a key trend this year.
5. Energy X―There is not enough energy in any form to sustain global growth by 2030. We need a massive global energy plan to meet the needs of the future or the lights may go out. The Energy X trend says that a radical new energy breakthrough may emerge this year to change the energy equation in new ways. Plentiful and cheap: it could be fusion, nanotech, biomass, moon methane mining, solar satellite arrays―some radical Energy X is coming.
6.
7. Personalized Medicine―Want to know how to live forever? How about just another healthy 50 years? Personalized medicine will start ,as the tools to understand individual's disease and health profiles will begin to emerge. 8. The 8. Neuro-Society―This year something quite fantastic will emerge. New research in how the brain works, neuroscience will have an impact on society in comprehensive ways. This could be used for good to improve learning and for massively controlling minds. Not good.
Brain centers for determining intention, desire, belief, language, depression, language even if or when a person is telling the truth or not may be possible.
9. Hungry Planet―Can we feed 8 billion by 2045? Many food experts are worried and they should be. The carrying capacity of the planet required to feed another two billion people will demand a planetary level of cooperation never seen in the history of the world. Food security and increasing quality of life for eight billion will require global planning and logistics that has not yet begun.
10. Products That Think―From products with embedded computer chips, to GPS everywhere, to smart phones and autos that know where you are and where your going to be―networks of thinking products are coming. Every product will have its own Internet address. Over ten billion chips inside of every type of product will create a hidden culture of thinking products this year.
11. Social Capitalism Emerges― A new paradigm is emerging that will try to remake capitalism into a populist or social welfare tool rather then a personal and social wealth tool. It will fail. Unbridled taxation and government regulation under the guise of social good will kill the incentives like competition, new innovations and free enterprise we need to foster authentic economic growth.
12. Workforce Talent War―Organizations rely on many things to grow but one factor remains of the highest value, talent. With increased complexity, competition and demands for performance facing business the search for talent will be keen this year. There are simply not enough talented individuals available to meet the growing demands of global organizations, coming from both the private and public sectors. Get ready for the talent wars.
13. Jobs and the Innovation Economy―Jobs especially in the
14. Rogues Among Us― -The rise of sophisticated rogues―criminal and terrorist organizations that prey on society will expand in 2010. From pirates in
15. Green Tech―Its time to transcend the issue about how much of climate change is made by humans or caused by nature. We need to focus on the real end game, which is fixing what we can now and preparing for the future. This year we must focus on new thinking: green tech such as geo-engineering the planet using science to protect the planet, seed the climate, pollution controls, new alternative energy, making carbon capture work, carbon reductions and aggressively take charge of the climate crisis.
16. Internet Everywhere―Advanced technologies like super computers, the mobility and artificial intelligence are making the Internet smarter and fundamental to life, work and culture. From online education, health care, voting, energy monitoring, media and entertainment to banking―the Internet will be everywhere this year.
17. Tomorrow's Markets―Business faces an opportunity with such velocity that it could accelerate never-before-seen levels of commerce and prosperity: the emerging middle class in the developing world. There are over 22 megacities will likely grow to 20 million per megacity before 2030.
18. Robots R Us―The next revolution in autonomous robots is coming fast. From drones that fly, to robo soldiers, to industrial workers to house cleaners―the robots are coming.
19.Singularity Watch―How will we feed 8 billion? How will we manage the next 200 mega-cities Can we speed up the invention of alternative energy? How can we inspire and educate the next generation? The Singularity, the use of advanced science and technology to cope with planetary social challenges that humanity must address in the future is coming.
20. Reinventing Education―This year education should get a make-over. Too much of education is based on yesterday not tomorrow. Education needs to be blown up and changed to keep in step with tomorrow's jobs, challenges and opportunities. More science, technology and global business savvy. We need to Reinvent Education to make it more relevant, modern and future-ready.
End of literal citation.
More information at:
The Global Futures Forecast: The Top Trends for 2010
Dr. James Canton, CEO Institute for Global Futures
www.FutureGuru.com
http://www.globalfuturist.com/
GLOSSARY
B
1. An act of overcoming or penetrating an obstacle or restriction.
2. A military offensive that penetrates an enemy's lines of defense.
3. A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology.
Bibliography on Breakthrough:http://www.thefreedictionary.com/breakthrough
F
Fuzzy logic is a form of multi-valued logic derived from fuzzy set theory to deal with reasoning that is approximate rather than precise. In contrast with "crisp logic", where binary sets have binary logic, fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges between 0 and 1 and is not constrained to the two truth values of classic propositional logic.[1] Furthermore, when linguistic variables are used, these degrees may be managed by specific functions.
Fuzzy logic emerged as a consequence of the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by Lotfi Zadeh.[2][3] Though fuzzy logic has been applied to many fields, from control theory to artificial intelligence, it still remains controversial among most statisticians, who prefer Bayesian logic, and some control engineers, who prefer traditional two-valued logic.
Fuzzy logic and probabilistic logic are mathematically similar – both have truth values ranging between 0 and 1 – but conceptually distinct, due to different interpretations―see interpretations of probability theory. Fuzzy logic corresponds to "degrees of truth", while probabilistic logic corresponds to "probability, likelihood"; as these differ, fuzzy logic and probabilistic logic yield different models of the same real-world situations.
Both degrees of truth and probabilities range between 0 and 1 and hence may seem similar at first. For example, let a 100 ml glass contain 30 ml of water. Then we may consider two concepts: Empty and Full. The meaning of each of them can be represented by a certain fuzzy set. Then one might define the glass as being 0.7 empty and 0.3 full. Note that the concept of emptiness would be subjective and thus would depend on the observer or designer. Another designer might equally well design a set membership function where the glass would be considered full for all values down to 50 ml. It is essential to realize that fuzzy logic uses truth degrees as a mathematical model of the vagueness phenomenon while probability is a mathematical model of randomness. A probabilistic setting would first define a scalar variable for the fullness of the glass, and second, conditional distributions describing the probability that someone would call the glass full given a specific fullness level. This model, however, has no sense without accepting occurrence of some event, e.g. that after a few minutes, the glass will be half empty. Note that the conditioning can be achieved by having a specific observer that randomly selects the level for the glass, a distribution over deterministic observers, or both. Consequently, probability has nothing in common with fuzziness, these are simply different concepts which superficially seem similar because of using the same unit interval of real numbers [0,1]. Still, since theorems such as De Morgan's have dual applicability and properties of random variables are analogous to properties of binary logic states, one can see where the confusion might arise.
Bibliography on Fuzzy Logic
* Von Altrock, Constantin (1995). Fuzzy logic and NeuroFuzzy applications explained.
* Biacino, L.; Gerla, G. (2002). "Fuzzy logic, continuity and effectiveness". Archive for Mathematical Logic 41 (7): 643–667. doi:10.1007/s001530100128. ISSN 0933-5846.
* Cox, Earl (1994). The fuzzy systems handbook: a practitioner's guide to building, using, maintaining fuzzy systems.
* Gerla, Giangiacomo (2006). "Effectiveness and Multivalued Logics". Journal of Symbolic Logic 71 (1): 137–162. doi:10.2178/jsl/1140641166. ISSN 0022-4812.
* Hájek, Petr (1998). Metamathematics of fuzzy logic.
* Hájek, Petr (1995). "Fuzzy logic and arithmetical hierarchy". Fuzzy Sets and Systems 3 (8): 359–363. doi:10.1016/0165-0114(94)00299-M. ISSN 0165-0114.
S
State of the Art
The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time. It also applies to the level of development (as of a device, procedure, process, technique, or science) reached at any particular time usually as a result of modern methods.
The earliest usage of the term "state of the art" documented by the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to 1910 from an engineering manual by Henry Harrison Suplee (1856-post 1943), an engineering graduate (U. Of
The highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time: "Forty or fifty years ago the state of the art in radio was represented by crackling noises coming from a console of . . . Aztec-temple shape" (New Yorker).
The level of knowledge and development achieved in a technique, science, etc., esp at present
adj (prenominal) state-of-the-art ....the most recent and therefore considered the best; up-to-the-minute a state-of-the-art amplifier
Source to State of the Art: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/State+of+the+Art
Stratum, Strata, Stratums
n. pl. stra·ta (-t) or stra·tums
1. A horizontal layer of material, especially one of several parallel layers arranged one on top of another.
2. Geology A bed or layer of sedimentary rock having approximately the same composition throughout.
3. Any of the regions of the atmosphere, such as the troposphere, that occur as layers.
4. Biology A layer of tissue: the epithelial stratum.
5. A level of society composed of people with similar social, cultural, or economic status.
6. One of a number of layers, levels, or divisions in an organized system: a complex poem with many strata of meaning.
Stratum source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/stratum
Q
Quantum mechanics (QM) or quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics that provides a mathematical description of much of the wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter that depart from classical mechanics at the atomic and subatomic scales. In advanced topics of QM, some of these behaviors are macroscopic and emerge at very low or very high energies or temperatures. The name derives from the observation that some physical quantities―such as the angular momentum of, or more generally the action of, for example, an electron bound into an atom or molecule―can be changed only by discrete amounts, or quanta as multiples of the Planck constant, rather than being capable of varying continuously or by any arbitrary amount. An electron bound in an atomic orbital has quantized values of angular momentum while an unbound electron does not exhibit quantized energy levels but the latter is associated with a short quantum mechanical wavelength. In the context of QM, the wave–particle duality of energy and matter and the uncertainty principle provide a unified view of the behavior of photons, electrons and other atomic-scale objects.
The mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics are abstract and the implications are often non-intuitive. The centerpiece of the mathematical system is the wavefunction. The wavefunction is a mathematical function that can provide information about the probability amplitude of position and momentum of a particle. Mathematical manipulations of the wavefunction usually involve the bra-ket notation, which requires an understanding of complex numbers and linear functionals. The wavefunction emphasizes the object as a quantum harmonic oscillator and the mathematics is akin to that of acoustics, resonance. Many of the results of QM do not have models that are easily visualized in terms of classical mechanics; for instance, the ground state in quantum mechanical model is a non-zero energy state that is the lowest permitted energy state of a system, rather than a more traditional system that is thought of as simply being at rest with zero kinetic energy.
Historically, the earliest versions of QM were formulated in the first decade of the of the 20th century at around the same time as the atomic theory and the corpuscular theory of light as updated by Einstein first came to be widely accepted as scientific fact; these latter theories can be viewed as "quantum theories" of matter and electromagnetic radiation. QM underwent a significant re-formulation in the mid-1920's away from old quantum theory with the acceptance of the
Bibliography on Quantun Mechanics
The following titles, all by working physicists, attempt to communicate quantum theory to lay people, using a minimum of technical apparatus.
*
* Richard Feynman, 1985. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter,
* Ghirardi, GianCarlo, 2004. Sneaking a Look at God's Cards, Gerald Malsbary, trans.
* N. David Mermin, 1990, "Spooky actions at a distance: mysteries of the QT" in his Boojums all the way through.
* Victor Stenger, 2000. Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes.
More technical:
* Bryce DeWitt, R. Neill Graham, eds., 1973. The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,
* Dirac, P. A. M. (1930). The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. ISBN 0198520115. The beginning chapters make up a very clear and comprehensible introduction.
* Hugh Everett, 1957, "
* Feynman, Richard P.; Leighton, Robert B.; Sands, Matthew (1965). The Feynman Lectures on Physics. 1-3. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0738200085.
* Griffiths, David J. (2004). Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-111892-7. OCLC 40251748. A standard undergraduate text.
* Max Jammer, 1966. The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics. McGraw Hill.
*
* Gunther Ludwig, 1968. Wave Mechanics.
* George Mackey (2004). The mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics.
* Albert Messiah, 1966. Quantum Mechanics (Vol. I), English translation from French by G. M. Temmer.
* Omnès, Roland (1999). Understanding Quantum Mechanics.
* Scerri, Eric R., 2006. The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance.
* Transnational
* von Neumann, John (1955). Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.
* Hermann Weyl, 1950. The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics,
* D. Greenberger, K. Hentschel, F. Weinert, eds., 2009. Compendium of quantum physics, Concepts, experiments, history and philosophy,
* Halpern, Joseph Y. (2003). Reasoning about uncertainty.
* Höppner, Frank; Klawonn, F.; Kruse, R.; Runkler, T. (1999). Fuzzy cluster analysis: methods for classification, data analysis and image recognition.
* Ibrahim, Ahmad M. (1997). Introduction to Applied Fuzzy Electronics.
* Klir, George J.; Folger, Tina A. (1988). Fuzzy sets, uncertainty, and information.
* Klir, George J.; St Clair, Ute H.; Yuan, Bo (1997). Fuzzy set theory: foundations and applications.
* Klir, George J.; Yuan, Bo (1995). Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic: theory and applications.
* Kosko, Bart (1993). Fuzzy thinking: the new science of fuzzy logic.
* Kosko, Bart (July 1993). "Fuzzy Logic". Scientific American 269 (1): 76–81.
* Montagna, F. (2001). "Three complexity problems in quantified fuzzy logic". Studia Logica 68 (1): 143–152. doi:10.1023/A:1011958407631. ISSN 0039-3215.
* Mundici, Daniele; Cignoli, Roberto; D'Ottaviano, Itala M. L. (1999). Algebraic foundations of many-valued reasoning. Dodrecht: Kluwer Academic. ISBN 0-7923-6009-5.
* Novák, Vilém (1989). Fuzzy Sets and Their Applications.
* Novák, Vilém (2005). "On fuzzy type theory". Fuzzy Sets and Systems 149: 235–273. doi:10.1016/j.fss.2004.03.027.
* Novák, Vilém; Perfilieva, Irina; Močkoř, Jiří (1999). Mathematical principles of fuzzy logic. Dodrecht: Kluwer Academic. ISBN 0-7923-8595-0.
* Passino, Kevin M.; Yurkovich, Stephen (1998). Fuzzy control.
* Pu, Pao Ming; Liu, Ying Ming (1980). "Fuzzy topology. I. Neighborhood structure of a fuzzy point and Moore-Smith convergence". Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 76 (2): 571–599. doi:10.1016/0022-247X(80)90048-7. ISSN 0022-247X
*
* Scarpellini, Bruno (1962). "Die Nichaxiomatisierbarkeit des unendlichwertigen Prädikatenkalküls von Łukasiewicz". Journal of Symbolic Logic (Association for Symbolic Logic) 27 (2): 159–170. doi:10.2307/2964111. ISSN 0022-4812. http://jstor.org/stable/2964111.
* Steeb, Willi-Hans (2008). The Nonlinear Workbook: Chaos, Fractals, Cellular Automata, Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms, Gene Expression Programming, Support Vector Machine, Wavelets, Hidden Markov Models, Fuzzy Logic with C++, Java and SymbolicC++ Programs: 4edition. World Scientific. ISBN 981-281-852-9.
* Wiedermann, J. (2004). "Characterizing the super-Turing computing power and efficiency of classical fuzzy Turing machines". Theor. Comput. Sci. 317: 61–69. doi:10.1016/j.tcs.2003.12.004.
* Yager, Ronald R.; Filev, Dimitar P. (1994). Essentials of fuzzy modeling and control.
* Van Pelt, Miles (2008). Fuzzy Logic Applied to Daily Life.
* Wilkinson, R.H. (1963). "A method of generating functions of several variables using analog diode logic". IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers 12: 112–129. doi:10.1109/PGEC.1963.263419.
* Zadeh,
* Zadeh,
* Zemankova-Leech, M. (1983). Fuzzy Relational Data Bases. Ph. D. Dissertation.
* Zimmermann, H. (2001). Fuzzy set theory and its applications.
Zillion
An indeterminately huge number.
Source to zillion: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zillion
WHAT I’VE GIVEN YOU!
I’ve given you some ways of thinking and perceiving this ever-impermanent world of ours.
Yet the most important task now, depending on your objectives, goals and desires, is for you to make or to fail making your own research and to make your own conclusions as you come up with said conclusions for and by yourself alone.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Ray Kurzweil’s quotations at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[2] Sir Francis Bacon (
[3] Dr. Bertrand Russell (
[4] Dr. Albert Einstein (
[5] Dr. Buckminster Fuller (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ISBN: 0-19-866185-1) and at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[6] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ISBN: 0-19-866185-1) and at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[7] Theodore Roosevelt at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[8] Ralph Waldo Emerson at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[9] Dr. Malcolm Knowles at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[10] Dr. Albert Einstein at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[11] Thomas Jefferson at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[12] Dr. Henry Kissinger at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[13] Sir Winston Churchill at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[14] Antonio Machado from
[15] The Panchatantra (body of Eastern philosophical knowledge) from Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ISBN: 0-19-866185-1.
[16] Bernard d'Espagnat from Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ISBN: 0-19-866185-1.
[17] Peter Drucker from
[18] Dr. James D. Watson, Ph.D., as he was interviewed by Charlie Rose most recently in year 2009.
[19] Arthur C. Clarke at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[20] Otto Herman Khan at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[21] General Francisco de Miranda from Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ISBN: 0-19-866185-1.
[22] James Canton, Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century by James Canton (http://amzn.to/bYrN8q )
[23] Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives by Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler (ISBN-10: 038552207X)
[24] Ella Wheeler Wilcox at ‹brainyquotes.com›
[25] Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (ISBN-10: 0553277375)
[26] Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman ( ISBN-10: 0140282025 )
[27] Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever by Ray Kurzweil Ph.D. and Terry Grossman M.D. (ISBN-10: 1605299561)
[28] “Leading the Revolution” by Gary Hamel (ISBN-10: 1591391466)
[29] Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman ( ISBN-10: 055309503X )
[30] Criss-cross at Oxford Dictionary ISBN 0-19-861122-6
[31] Crinkum-crankum at Oxford Dictionary ISBN 0-19-861122-6
[32] Terzetto at
[33] Thé dansant at Oxford Dictionary ISBN 0-19-861122-6
[34] Tertium quid at Oxford Dictionary ISBN 0-19-861122-6
[35] Computronium at http://bit.ly/bvf2AE
[36] Futuretronium at http://omni-futures-elicitation-encyclopedia.blogspot.com/
[37] “Einstein in the Boardroom” by Suzanne S. Harrison and Patrick H. Sullivan Sr. (ISBN-10: 0-471-70332-X
[38] Tête-à-tête at Oxford Dictionary ISBN 0-19-861122-6
[39] Dilettantes and poseurs at Oxford Dictionary ISBN 0-19-861122-6
[40] Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improving Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress by John Gray.
[41] Multiverse at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
[42] “The Cycle of Leadership” by Noel M. Tichy (ISBN: 0-06-662056-2)
[43] Herman Kahn’s quotations at http://bit.ly/bgxeP0
[44] Innovate Like
[45] Déclassé at
[46] Démodé at
[47] Richard Buckminster Fuller at http://bit.ly/amahEh
[48] Yoctosecond, definition of, at http://bit.ly/c5ZMZS
[49] Dr. Pangloss at http://bit.ly/b5LkXL
[50] “Monster of omniscience” at page V, first paragraph, Concise Oxford Dictionary (ISBN 0-19-861122-6)
[51] Quotations by Karl Popper at http://bit.ly/d9GdeX
[52] Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau (ISBN0-385-50965-0).
[53] Definition of “throughput.” Throughput: Output or production, as of a computer program, over a period of time. The quantity or amount of raw material processed within a given time, esp. the work done by an electronic computer in a given period of time. An amount of work, etc. done in a particular period of time. Volume of data or material handled: the amount of something such as data or raw material that is processed over a given period.
[54] The American Heritage Dictionary’s (fourth edition, 2000)– ISBN 0-395-82517-2
[55] By John F. Kennedy, Address at
[56] “The Art of The Long View” ― ISBN 0-385-26731-2
[57] “The New Religion of Risk Management” by Peter L. Bernstein, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1996.
[58] As quoted in title ISBN 978-980-293-503-1
[59] As cited by David Jay's 2006 textbook, “Mavericks of Medicine” (ISBN: 1-890572-19-5)
[60] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein_5.html
[61] Eisnteien on being smart at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_einstein_4.html
[62] ISBN 1-56025-712-1 “A Devil’s Dictionary of Business” (2005) by Nicholas von Hoffman
[63] Original source: http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html
[64] Textbook: Leading The Revolution (ISBN 1-57851-189-5), year 2000, by Gary Hamel
[65]
[66] Textbook known as “A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations” by Alan L. Mackay (ISBN-10: 075031066) in 1991.
[67] Dr. Stephen Hawking was interviewed by CNN's Becky Anderson in year 2009.
[68] http://www.dharma.org/ims/joseph_goldstein_interview1.html
[69] A Dictionary of scientific quotations By Alan Lindsay Mackay ― ISBN-10: 0750301066
[70] The
[71] The Book of Positive Quotations, 2nd Edition (2007) – ISBN-10: 1577491696
[72] The Yale book of quotations by Fred R. Shapiro (2006) – ISBN-10: 0300107986
[73] Well said, well spoken: 736 quotable quotes for educators by Robert D. Ramsey (1999) – ISBN-10: 0060194111
[74] Compelling conversations: questions and quotations on timeless topics by Erin Hermann Roth (2007) – ISBN-10: 141965828X
[75] Wit and Wisdom of the American Presidents: A Book of Quotations by Joslyn T. Pine (2000) ― ISN-10: 0486414272
[76] The Routledge dictionary of Latin quotations bt Jon R. Stone (2004) – ISBN-10: 0415969085
[77] Quote Unquote by M.P. Singh (2004) – ISBN: 1557099405
ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY RECOMMENDED
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil (http://amzn.to/co6tRs
)
Lessons from the Future: Making Sense of a Blurred World from the World's Leading Futurist by Stanley M. Davis (http://amzn.to/colOCU )
It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business by Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis ( http://amzn.to/dCMqzv )
Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy by Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer ( http://amzn.to/98fuay )
Future Wealth by Stanley M. Davis and Christopher Meyer ( http://amzn.to/9V9Rk9 )
The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos by James N. Gardner and Ray Kurzweil ( http://amzn.to/dv22bO )
Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, and Scott D. Anthony ( http://amzn.to/bLyEIo )
Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning by Martin J. Rees ( http://amzn.to/cRz6KE )
Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century by James Canton (http://amzn.to/bYrN8q )
The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years by James Canton (http://amzn.to/9RqNVm )
Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish ( http://amzn.to/9sWhV1 )
PS: All quotations not otherwise cited are from the interviews conducted by the author or personal communications sent to the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr. Andres Agostini is ― first and foremost ― a Global Independent Professional Consulting Services Contractor and a Member of the Advisory Board of ACC Group Worldwide (
Through his professional life and beyond upper education, he became engaged in being trained and indoctrinated by the most prominent minds and global organizations, out of the U.S. and the U.K., into: a) Management, b) Risk Management, c) Group Employee Benefits, d) Insurance, e) Reinsurance and many other subject matter dealing with transformation of: 1) Organizations, 2) Management, 3) Leadership, 4) Business, 5) Scenario Method (beyond the three-scenario mode), 6) Systems Methodologies, 7) Systems Safety, 8) Systems Security, 9) Systems Reliability, and 10) Professional Futurology.
Beyond implementation of methodologies such as Total Quality Assurance, Kaisen (including the Toyota Production System «TPS»), Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, LeanSigma, Reliability Engineering (as it is jointly understood by Procter and Gable and Los Alamos National Laboratories) and other Multidimensional approaches, he is the founder and sole proprietor of the methodology “TRANSFORMATIVE AND INTEGRATIVE RISK MANAGEMENT,” based on Systems Methodology and with the applied omniscience perspective, designed by Andres Agostini in 2005. (http://bit.ly/Transformative_and_Integrative_Risk_Management )
Mr. Agostini is passionate about (a) the FUTURE, (b) Applied Omniscience Activist,( c) Not “insurance-based” Transformative and Integrative Risk Management, (d)Mind Expansionist Practitioner. I enjoy teaching a great deal!
AN IDEA WORTH SPREADING AS PER MR. AGOSTINI! We can all attempt the best to tackle so many global crises. Those concern me. However, there is one global crisis that TAKES PRECEDENT AND TUTELAGE FROM ANY OTHER CRISIS.
I’M REFERRING TO THE EXTREMELY GRAVE AND UNIVERSAL, EXISTENTIAL RISK CONCERNING SYSTEMATIC VIOLATIONS AGAINST MORALITY, PRINCIPLES, VALUES, AND ETHICS. I’ve given this life-to-death humankind challenge profound womb-to-tomb reflections for a number of years.
In the mean time, disruption potential and its corresponding vulnerabilities are staggeringly compounding into an immeasurable defiance to Earth in its totality. Ethics AND serious rule of law AND true justice AND zero calamities equal some viable chances as we grasp the convergence of technologies with the applied omniscience perspective.
In fact, with a “tsunami” of new knowledge (and subsequently an epic flood of obsoledge) and novel skills we might have a change of prosperity. We must all remember that all “PROBLEMS” are because of ignorance, especially that ignorance deployed by those supposed to have empowered minds that in actuality worship their preferred path: own supine ignorance in extremis!
TALK TO ME ABOUT! We must embrace (i) science and technology, (ii) unconventional thinking in excelsis, (iii) morality and ethics, (iv) civics, justice, and rigorous law ruling, as well as compassion, humanity and really enforced harmony and peace.
"PEOPLE DON'T KNOW THAT I'M GOOD AT” AS THIS QUESTION WAS ORIGINALLY REFERRED TO ME AT TED.COM! People don’t know that I’m extremely good at ― with the applied omniscience perspective and systems methodology ― seeing and conceiving and developing existential problems/fixes way in advance and decisively, and solving extremely complex difficulties that require maximum precision.
MY TED STORY! I’ve had and still have the pleasure to be hired by customers and operate with partners before the most daring and pressing situations. Fortunately, educated in the
I have a unique way of seeing problems and their solving. Luckily and very much to my advantage, I have worked in many tenures and for a whole array of disparate industries.
Subsequently, I feel quite comfortable in dealing with a gamut of business issues, including some undertaken by some supranational organizations as the World Bank and special agencies like or related to or aspiring to instituting best practices by NASA.
I am always ready to take on an even more stringent challenge every time. I never advise to make crises wait when there is so much learning to capture in solving said crises.
I don’t only do a great deal of researching, experimenting/testing. But I, too, do huge studying and studying present “evidence falsifying” (a là Sir Karl Popper) to walk several steps forward towards the optimum omniscience repository applicable by me and via others.
I can go from huge structuralism to highly amorphous and a combination of those two without losing consistency, congruency, sense of direction, ambient/environment awareness and efficacy.
He has addressed major advisory services to top executives from Fortune-1000 corporations. Some of its clients include, World Bank, GE, GMAC,
MY MOST SUCCINCT BIO
http://bit.ly/dsSMix
INTELLECTUAL MANIFESTO OF ANDRES AGOSTINI 3.0
http://bit.ly/a485i9
1.-MY EXTENDED PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
http://bit.ly/9ZCMky
2.- MY PERSONALITY TYPE at
http://bit.ly/cWEuSN
3.- WORKS, RESOURCES, TESTIMONIALS, AND REFERENCES at
http://bit.ly/bwx4oW
4.- IMPORTANT CONTACTS AND WORK PERFORMED at
http://bit.ly/cvJhzL
5.-IMPORTANT RESOURCES at
http://bit.ly/cZFE7t
http://bit.ly/a5Nuv7
http://bit.ly/cQL4ND
http://bit.ly/d2RGC1
http://scr.bi/a7CYPL
http://scr.bi/bIaMAL
http://bit.ly/Scribd_on_Agostini
6- RECENT BOOK
http://bit.ly/aa-Book
7.- WHITE PAPERS BY ANDRES AGOSTINI
http://bit.ly/ceoiVD
8.- LEADERSHIP FORUM WITH
http://bit.ly/dzdctR
7.- ORGANIZATIONS I HAVE EXTENSIVELY WORKED WITH at
http://bit.ly/aW9eEx
8.-A NASA SCIENTIST ASSESSES AND HIRES ANDRES
http://bit.ly/dwZ9je
9.- SOME CONTACTS AND MY REPUTATION OVER THE WEB AT
http://bit.ly/cHgeRy update
10.- "TRANSFORMATIVE AND INTEGRATIVE RISK MANAGEMENT" (MY OWN METHOD) AT
http://bit.ly/Transformative_and_Integrative_Risk_Management
11.- APPLIED OMNISCIENCE DEFINED BY ANDRES AGOSTINI AT
http://bit.ly/9exDn1
12.- MY LINES OF PRACTICES
http://bit.ly/bBJgeu
13.- ORGANIZATIONS I HAVE WORKED EXTENSIVELY WITH
http://bit.ly/9AqJYA
14.-WHITE PAPERS BY ANDRES AGOSTINI
http://bit.ly/WhitePaper-Jul10-2010
http://bit.ly/WhitePaper-Jul12-2010
http://bit.ly/WhitePaper-Jul13-2010
http://bit.ly/ceoiVD
15 - IS ANDRES AN ACADEMICIAN GIVEN THE GOOGLE SCHOLAR PUBLICATION AT?
http://bit.ly/cTKAhx
16.- AT XING at
http://bit.ly/a6NRbO
17- DOWNLOAD MY “…FUTURE…ELICITING…BOOK…” at
http://bit.ly/cmPqnT
18.- SEARCH ENGINES ABOUT ANDRES AGOSTINI
BY GOOGLE
http://bit.ly/9V6juP
BY BING
http://bit.ly/aOb5WW
BY YAHOO
http://bit.ly/a0PNbg
BY ALTAVISTA
http://bit.ly/arlj8m
19.- VIDEOS BY ANDRES AGOSTINI
Youtube videos
http://bit.ly/c0tnPK
Yahoo videos
http://bit.ly/9rd8Z5
Google Videos
http://bit.ly/dCGnXH
Bing Videos
http://bit.ly/d5dboj
Copyright (c) 2010 Andres Agostini (Andy) - All Rights Reserved.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/AndresAgostini
http://bit.ly/A-Agostini
P.S.: Take extraordinary measures to avoid rampant imprudent ones.
By © Copyright 2010 Andres Agostini – All Rights Reserved –
Founder, Developer and Sole Proprietor of the:
“Transformative and Integrative Risk Management”
Methodology.
At http://bit.ly/Transformative_and_Integrative_Risk_Management
www.linkedin.com/in/AndresAgostini
www.twitter.com/sciczar
(This Proprietary Encyclopedia may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes if it is copied in its entirety, including this notice.)
