Sony has produced four scenarios for Futurescapes 2025.
These scenarios are a result of an open and collaborative process involving people across Sony and Forum for the Future, as well as leading futurologists and experts from a range of fields. They aren't predictions of the future, but are intended as thought starters designed to stimulate reflection, debate and innovation. To find out more and download a full pdf with more information about each of these scenarios, head to http://www.sony.co.uk/....
Hyper Innovation
This low-carbon world has been created by a rapid and ceaseless process of technological innovation. Lifestyles and business practices have been minimally affected, but against the background of diminishing resources there is growing concern about the long-term sustainability of this "innovation treadmill" approach.
Centralised Survival
In 'Centralised Survival, the world has been stunned into a belated response by a series of severe climate shocks. Governments have taken tough measures to combat climate change, pushing technology to its limits to impose sustainability on the population and provide some relief from restrictions on personal freedom.
Shared Ownership
In this scenario - Shared Ownership - global governments have foreseen climate instability and instigated a strict programme of carbon limitation measures to defuse its consequences. The results are high carbon costs - and an entirely new perception of ownership. There is both a personal and a business innovation aspect to this future. Creative development of new business and service models is vital and governments have encouraged this by setting a carbon floor price -- but this is not a planned economy.
Prosperity Redefined
The fourth and final scenario is entitled 'Prosperity Redefined'. After an extended recession, new priorities of "wellbeing" and "quality of life" are bubbling up across the world as more sustainable forms of living become established. Society's new values are built on this sustainability, and on stronger community ties. Technology facilitates collaboration at both local and global levels.
Hat tip to Bruce Sterling
http://www.wired.com/...
More videos on Sony's visions of 2025 (and responses to them) at http://www.youtube.com/...
Other visions of the future:
Al Gore's new multimedia book
http://vimeo.com/...
a near-present reality
and the corporate vision of a future that's basically already here:
Microsoft's Productivity Future Vision
http://youtu.be/...
Ericsson's Social Network of Things
http://youtu.be/...
IBM's 5 Future Technologie for the Next 5 Years
http://www.physorg.com/...
Reaction to IBM's 5 in 5 years
http://www.wwtid.com/...
These are all corporate futures, slickly produced. Interesting but not essential.
Here's something that is not corporate but certainly essential:
Near-term Climate Protection and Clean Air Benefits: Actions for Controlling Short-Lived Climate Forcers - A UNEP Synthesis Report
http://www.unep.org/...
The idea is that reducing black carbon and tropospheric (low altitude) ozone by providing more efficient cookstoves for the people now using three stone fires and reducing methane emissions, a precursor to tropospheric ozone, will help slow the effects of climate change globally. These measures also have direct local benefits, especially in developing countries, for climate mitigation, human health, agriculture, and the economy.
You can make a start on the black carbon issue today by supporting the work of Maasai Solar Stoves (http://www.maasaistovessolar.org/) which has designed an efficient cookstove with local women who are now building and installing them in their villages and towns in Tanzania. You can donate here: http://www.maasaistovessolar.org/...
7.
On all kinds of baby purpose, you invented whoever
you think you are. Out of ingredients you couldn't
choose, by a process you can't control.
from "Entire Sermon by the Red Monk" by Lew Welch
Using the past as material
we invent in the present the future
we become.
What's the future Discovery Channel is inventing with "Doomsday Bunkers" (http://dsc.discovery.com/...) and NatGeo Channel with "Doomsday Preppers" (http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/...)?