So many ideas, so little time and space to talk about them all. One theme that emerged from this week's reading assignment was over-population and the increased number of elderly that we will be facing in the future.
It seems that all "supertrends" and "superforces" give insight to important issues, but this one in particular seems to permeate Cornish's text. It concerns me because we often wish for ideal situations, like having a cure for cancer and AIDS, having enough food, water, and shelter so homelessness is eliminated. But the actual ramifications of this utopia are frightening. If people are so sustainable through a lack of disease, and genetic manipulation, where are we going to put everyone!?
This is an issue that should lead us to question our morals... which is the topic of conversation in Brockman's reading assignment. Where does our sense of morality come from? Is it learned, or are we born with a certain capacity for morals that is dependent on our genetic makeup?
The second reading in Brockman suggests that maybe one day computers will be finding the answers to these questions and we will just have to sit back and watch. This is contrary to what we discussed in class last week, where the speaker said that one thing in the future that will NOT change is the importance of the human mind to advance technology.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Group discussion 1: Scenario technique, and Are we alone?
This is the first blog post related to week 2 class readings which include scenario planning by Ed Cornish, personal scenario planning by Wired and also Martin Ree's essay: Cosmological Challanges: Are we alone and where? Our team will discuss these readings through this blog and provide comments.
We'll kick things off with Scenario planning. Edward Cornish provides some good tips on using Scenario planning like "backcasting" meaning to think back to the goal and determine what needs to be done to achieve it. I like the backcasting example he used of putting a man on the moon by President Kennedy which forced NASA to determine what needed to be done to achieve that goal. Do you think that goal would have been achieved with out truly thinking through all the future factors that would impact it? Using the same example, we could assume that NASA also thought about different scenario outcomes of the Apollo mission such as surprise free, optimistic, pessimistic, disaster, and transformational which was mentioned in the reading. In this instance, I believe putting a man on the moon qualifies for "transformational" because the thought of putting a man on the moon in a short time span in the 60's was something nobody could see happening. I wonder when we're going to Mars or Venus?
Wired magazine does a nice job providing a template for users to do personal scenario planning.
This might not be a bad exercise to do this for your careers since graduation is less than 1.5 months away. Yikes! Hopefully your chosen career paths will be thriving into the future :)
Moving on...let's discuss Martin Ree's essay "Are we along and where?" The thought that humans are the only living creatures in this vast planet seems absurd, right? There has to be living beings elsewhere other than earth? Well, if that were true wouldn't we have seen or discovered them by now? Sorry for being a skeptic, but I think we are alone. Sure you might find a green plant or two on Mars, but it's just a plant, not intelligent life form. I don't think in the next 50 years we'll encounter other intelligent lifeforms because after thousands of years we still haven't seen solid proof despite all of these advancements in technology.
What do you think?
We'll kick things off with Scenario planning. Edward Cornish provides some good tips on using Scenario planning like "backcasting" meaning to think back to the goal and determine what needs to be done to achieve it. I like the backcasting example he used of putting a man on the moon by President Kennedy which forced NASA to determine what needed to be done to achieve that goal. Do you think that goal would have been achieved with out truly thinking through all the future factors that would impact it? Using the same example, we could assume that NASA also thought about different scenario outcomes of the Apollo mission such as surprise free, optimistic, pessimistic, disaster, and transformational which was mentioned in the reading. In this instance, I believe putting a man on the moon qualifies for "transformational" because the thought of putting a man on the moon in a short time span in the 60's was something nobody could see happening. I wonder when we're going to Mars or Venus?
Wired magazine does a nice job providing a template for users to do personal scenario planning.
This might not be a bad exercise to do this for your careers since graduation is less than 1.5 months away. Yikes! Hopefully your chosen career paths will be thriving into the future :)
Moving on...let's discuss Martin Ree's essay "Are we along and where?" The thought that humans are the only living creatures in this vast planet seems absurd, right? There has to be living beings elsewhere other than earth? Well, if that were true wouldn't we have seen or discovered them by now? Sorry for being a skeptic, but I think we are alone. Sure you might find a green plant or two on Mars, but it's just a plant, not intelligent life form. I don't think in the next 50 years we'll encounter other intelligent lifeforms because after thousands of years we still haven't seen solid proof despite all of these advancements in technology.
What do you think?
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