User:Srose

I am going to use my personal page here to collect and discuss Futures_studies related items, and refine and contextualize them until they are possibly good enough to commit to actual wiki pages.

About Me
My name is Sam Rose.

My Open ID

Socialsynergyweb.com is the enterprise that I have created to help people deal with the complexities of knowledge, understanding, change, human systems, evolution, foresight, cooperation and collaboration, and technology.

I have always been interested in effective knowledge synthesis, and I am interested in exploring and developing the concepts of open knowledge, open design, and open business.

I also love music, and writing, graphic arts, and inventing/tinkering/personal fabrication, (although I never seem to have the time lately :)

Here's a growing list of blogs, wikis, social software experiments and developings, and ongoing reearch projects that I am involved in:


 * Social Synergy Weblog
 * Social Synergy Bliki
 * CoummunityWiki
 * Meatball Wiki
 * WebAssistant Company
 * Enterprise4u
 * One of my web portfolios
 * Cooperation Commons Weblog
 * Smartmobs Weblog
 * The Humergence Weblog

P2P Futures Open Futures
Current collection of resources del.icio.us/srose/openfutures

'' 'futures studies...is a field of intellectual and political activity concerning all sectors of the psychological, social, economic, political and cultural life, aiming at discovering and mastering the extensions of the complex chains of causalties, by means of conceptualisations, systematic reflections, experimentations, anticipations and creative thinking. Futures studies therefore constitute a natural basis for subnational, national and international, and both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary activities tending to become a new forum for the basis of political decision making'. 1''

Futures studies combines many different processes and schools of thought into different applications used to analyze and think about the future. Some of these applications and tools include:

(see Wikipedia:Futures_techniques)
 * Environmental Scanning
 * Scenarios and Scenario Planning
 * Future History (timelines)

Because of the effectiveness of Wiki TheoryBuilding, people have begun to use wiki software as an open and commons-based platform to explore the future in a collaborative way. Using wiki to explore futures takes advantage of the "wisdom of crowds" in thinking about the future and employing futures tools. It also potentially takes advantage of Reed's law, by lowering the barrier to entry and creating a larger potential pool of minds to draw from.

Future Wiki is one example that employs collaborative environmental scanning, scenarios, and timelines in analyzing the future.

Jamais Cascio has written about the concept of "open source scenario planning", and there are already wikis, like Future Wiki and Scenario Thinking Wiki, that are employing these ideas. Scenario Thinking Wiki, for instance, employs the concept of building scenarios around "driving forces". (a current overview of the driving forces is here).

Collaborative environmental scanning in wikis is taking place at Future Wiki. It is also being applied to the subject of open source software at Open reSource wiki. It is also being applied to the subject of emerging areas of scientific endeavor at Protoscience wiki.

Future History (and "Backcasting") techniques are explored at 2010 virtual wiki.

Notes:

1. Masini, E. & Samset, K. Recommendations of the WFSF General Assembly. WFSF Newsletter June 1975, p.15

Personal Fabrication
Edge.org interview with Niel Gershenfeld

''We've already had a digital revolution; we don't need to keep having it. The next big thing in computers will be literally outside the box, as we bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world. With the benefit of hindsight, there's a tremendous historical parallel between the transition from mainframes to PCs and now from machine tools to personal fabrication. By personal fabrication I mean not just making mechanical structures, but fully functioning systems including sensing, logic, actuation, and displays.''

Open Design, Mass Customization, Democratizing Innovation, User-Centered Innovation
Wikipedia:Open Design

I am currently reading a book called Democratizing Innovation (downlaod for free at that URL)

Mass Customization: Mass Customization Blog posting/Journal of Mass Customization

See also     Open Design WebDB list for environmental scanning

Jeff Jarvis: "Give us control and we will use it. Don’t and you will lose us."

The Open Source Green Vehicle Project

CrowdSourcing

Open Knowledge
http://del.icio.us/srose/openknowledge

Open Knowledge webDB list for environmental scanning

Tech Businesses Recognize the Power of a Knowledge Commons

Open Business
Open Business WebDB list for environmental scanning

http://openbusiness.cc

The Collaborative MicroEnterprise
The Emerging MicroEnterprise Paradigm WebDesk

Squidoo: The Collaborative MicroEnterprise Paradigm

New technologies give people access to tools and knowledge that was previously only available to a select few. These new technologies give people universal and direct access to markets. They allow people to create and maintain collaborative knowledge bases that can be used for small and large scale collabortion and cooperation.

These knowledge bases cover all aspects of human thinking, and open up new opportunities for people to use them to make a living, while simultaneously growing the knowledge commons.