Category Archives: Futurism

Shooting Stars

If you havent noticed, the Super Bowl LI is trending on social media the Patriots won in overtime and Lady Gaga impressed during halftime. But the pop superstar wasnt the only one that lit up the night Intel literally did so with 300 drones thatmoved behind Lady Gaga as she sangon the stadiums roof.

The Intel Shooting Star drone is the companys first drone created for entertainment light shows, says Anil Nanduri, VP for Intels New Technology Group. Weve also worked with the FAA to receive a Part 107 Waiver to fly these drones as a fleet with one pilot at night in the U.S.

These Shooting Star dronesare actually quite simple. They use a desktop software suite of programs, allowing them to follow a pre-programmed route. The software also keeps the drones form colliding with one another, as they dont have hardware to detect collisions, nor do they communicate directly with each other.

Each of Intels drones can be assembled in less than 15 minutes.There are no screws and everything snaps together. They have a large, multicolored LED light on the bottom, are encased in a styrofoam housing, and weigh about the same as a volleyball. Currently, Intel uses these drones to conduct fantastic, well-coordinated light shows in the night sky. Intel says these are near-limitless in its scale they re able to control more than 10,000 drones at a time.

In the future, Intel hopes that this fleet drone technology will find other applications beyond that of entertainment. As Josh Walden, senior VP and GM at the New Technology Group said: The potential for these light show drones is endless, and we hope this experience inspires other creatives, artists and innovators to really think about how they can incorporate drone technology in new ways that have yet to even be thought of.

These drones, combined with Intels other proprietary technologies, could even be used in search and rescue operations, or for industrial inspection. Intels leaders are positioning the company to provide the compute, sensor, communications, and cloud integration for the growing drone ecosystem, the company notes.

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Lady Gaga's Backup Dancers Were Actually 300 Drones from Intel - Futurism

The Rise of Renewables

The US renewable energy industry is currently thriving. A survey released by The Solar Foundation shows that the solar industry has nearly tripled employment since they started tracking its growth back in 2010.

According to the study, 260,000 people are now employed by the solar industry. The majority of positions are currently in installation, with workers earning an average of $25.96 per hour. The biggest market so far, is residential, which encompasses 41 percent of available jobs; with the commercial and utility-scale markets trailing behind.

The Solar Foundation reports:

Solar employs slightly more workers than natural gas, over twice as many as coal, over three times that of wind energy, and almost five times the number employed in nuclear energy. Only oil/petroleum has more employment (by 38%) than solar.

To date, California has the biggest solar capacity in the US, accounting for 34 percent of installations in 2016. But as the study notes, states such as New Jersey, New York, Texas, South Carolina, and Utah have also seen a significant rise in solar installations.

Right now, solar energy accounts for only 1.3 percent of the US electricity, but it is poised for unprecedented growth. Case in point, last year, solar only accounted for just one in every 50 jobs in the country. Today, it has already overtaken traditional jobs offered in the coal energy industry.

Since solar is still a burgeoning industry, the physical installation element still keeps costs up. But, as technology advances and the labor-intensive nature of the solar industry lessens,costs will only continue to drop and the renewable resource will be a more prominent source of energy.

Once solar becomes a dominant energy source, its possible that the industry might not deliver the volume of manual job opportunities it initially did. However, as with all industries, advancements in technology will create a need for alternate types of jobs. This transition to renewable resources will not only create new types of jobsbut make current workplace efforts less costly because of lowering solar energy costs. As the future becomes the present and the nature of solar energy work changes, one thing remains

As the future becomes the present and the nature of solar energy work changes, one thing remains constant. The more fossil fuel sources that can be replaced by renewable energy, the better off we all will be. From the financial burden of fossil fuel to the impending realities of climate change, renewable energy like solar will only become a more necessary resource.

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The Solar Industry Now Employs Twice As Many People As Coal - Futurism

Uber Elevate

Ubers ride sharing concept didnt just revolutionize the transportation industry it carved a totally new business model. Its no surprise then, that the company is consistently investing in technology that will once again prove to be game changing.

Last October, Uber announcedplans to develop vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft to provide a cost-effective and efficient ride sharing service that can shuttle passengers around cities. Now, former NASA engineer Mark Moore will be joining the team to bring these flying, on-demand vehicles into reality.

Moore, who originally lent his engineering expertise for Ubers white paper on the VTOL craft, will now serve as the companys Director of Engineering for their new concept, dubbed Uber Elevate.

I cant think of another company in a stronger position to be the leader for this new ecosystem and make the urban electric VTOL market real, the 30-year NASA veteran shared with Bloomberg.

While Moore is intent on taking Ubers vision to new heights (literally), hes pragmatic enough to recognize the technological and logistical challenges of this project.

On the technical side, the company has to contend with improving vehicle efficiency and limited battery life, while making sure to address potential issues, like noise pollution. On the logistical front, the company has to lobby regulators to reduce air-traffic restrictions, and certify aircrafts for use. But, given Ubers 55-million-strong market, its in a prime position to demonstrate the potential of this technology, and maybe even pave the way for other innovators who are working to bring vehicles to the skies.

AeroMobil has been working on a prototype that combines the characteristics of a traditional car with a small airplane. Airbus Project Vahana is working on a similar, helicopter-style autonomous vehicle that can ferry passengers in the air. And Jetpack Aviation, a company primarily focused on developing jetpacks, is dipping their toes in the flying car industry.

Uber, along with all these companies, will inevitably create a new frontier in transportation defined by convenience, sustainability, and innovation.

Originally posted here:
Uber Taps NASA Expert to Make Flying Cars a Reality - Futurism

In the future, everyones going to have a robot assistant. Thats the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. Theyre calling it Moneypennythe secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bonds womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why cant people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, heres a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. Thats a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Both the World Future Society and the Association of Professional Futurists are headed by women right now. And both of those women talked to me about their desire to bring more women to the field. Cindy Frewen, the head of the Association of Professional Futurists, estimates that about a third of their members are women. Amy Zalman, the CEO of the World Future Society, says that 23 percent of her groups members identify as female. But most lists of top futurists perhaps include one female name. Often, that woman is no longer working in the field.

Somehow, Ive become a person who reports on futurists. I produce and host a podcast about what might happen in the future called Meanwhile in the Future. I write a column about people living cutting-edge lives for BBC Future. And one thing Ive noticed is how overwhelmingly male and white they are.

It turns out that what makes someone a futurist, and what makes something futurism, isnt well defined. When you ask those who are part of official futurist societies, like the APF and the WFS, they often struggle to answer. There are some possible credentialsnamely: a degree in foresight, an emerging specialty that often intersects with studies of technology and business. But the discipline isnt well establishedtheres no foresight degree at Yale, or Harvard. And there are plenty of people who practice futurology who dont have one.

Zalman defines a futurist as a person who embraces a certain way of thinking. Being a futurist these days means that you take seriously a worldview and a set of activities and the recognition that foresight, with a capital F, isnt just thinking about what are the top 10 things this year, what are the trends unfolding.

Frewen says that futurism wont ever be like architecture or medicine, in that its never going to be a licensed field. But there are still things that many futurists agree people in their field shouldnt do. We think of things now as more systems-based and more uncertain, you dont know what the future is, and thats a basic concept, so we try to avoid the people who think they can always know this is going to get better.

Some people think of science fiction authors as futurists, while others dont. Some members of the APF include singularity researchers, others dont want to. Some people lump transhumanists into a broader category of futurists. Others dont. Here are some of the people popularly known as futurists: Aubrey de Gray, the chief researcher at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Research Foundation; Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX; Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google; Ray Kurzweil, the director of engineering at Google. They dont necessarily belong to a particular societythey might not even self-identify as futurists!but they are driving the conversation about the futurevery often on stages, in public, backed by profitable corporations or well-heeled investors.

Which means the media ends up turning to Brin and Musk and de Gray and Kurzweil to explain what is going to happen, why it matters, and ultimately whether its all going to be okay. The thing is: The futures that get imagined depend largely on the person or people doing the imagining.

* * *

Why are there so few women? Much of it comes down to the same reasons there are so few women in science and technology, fields with direct links to futurism (which has a better ring to it than strategic foresight, the term some futurists prefer).

Zalman says futurism has actually fought to present itself in a certain way. When the field was founded in the 1960s, it came with a reputation that still lingers a bit today, she says. Like magicians, crystal ball gazers, sort of flakey, thats the reputation that followed the WFS for awhile. Because the field itself had to struggle to be taken seriously, that put more pressure on folks to demonstrate that they were scientific. And it was coded masculine. While futurism includes not simply the future of gadgets, the field found itself pushing away some of the perceived softer elements of foresight: social change, family structures, cultural impactsin favor of mathematical modeling and technology.

Madeline Ashby, a futurist with a degree in strategic foresight who has worked for organizations like Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, and Nesta, says that another big part of the gender imbalance has to do with optimism. If you ask me, the one reason why futurism as a discipline is so white and male, is because white males have the ability to offer the most optimistic vision, she says. They can get up on stage and tell us that the world will be okay, that technology will fix all our problems, that well live forever. Mark Stevenson wrote a book called An Optimists Tour of the Future. TED speakers always seem to end their talk, no matter how dire, on an upward-facing note.

Ashby says that any time she speaks in front of a crowd, and offers a grim view of the future, someone (almost always a man) invariably asks why she cant be more positive. Why is this so depressing, why is this so dystopian, they ask. Because when you talk about the future you dont get rape threats, thats why, she says. For a long time the future has belonged to people who have not had to struggle, and I think that will still be true. But as more and more systems collapse, currency, energy, the ability to get water, the ability to work, the future will increasingly belong to those who know how to hustle, and those people are not the people who are producing those purely optimistic futures.

I dont know if I kind of pick up on the optimism as I pick up on the utter absurdity, said Sarah Kember, a professor of technology at the University of London whos applied feminist theory to futurism for years. And thats great for me in some ways, its been a traditional feminist strategy to expose absurdity. Its a key critique. She points out that as someone whose job it is to take a step back and analyze things like futurism from an outside view, a lot of the mainstream futurism starts to look pretty silly. Youve got smart bras and vibrating pants and talking kitchen worktops and augmented-reality bedroom mirrors that read the tags on your clothing and tell you what not to wear, and theres no reflection on any of this at all, she says.

Both Frewen of the APF and Zalman of the WFS told me that they were concerned about the gender imbalance in their field, and that they are hoping to help change it. But they also both reminded me that, compared to a lot of fields, futurism is a tiny speciality. And its homogeneous in other ways, too. The majority of the WFS members are white, and most of them are 55 to 65 years old. It is not okay for the WFS, although we care about them, to have only men from North America between the ages of 55 and 65, Zalman says. We need all those other voices because they represent an experience.

* * *

Any time someone points out a gender or racial imbalance in a field (or, most often, the combination of the two) a certain set of people ask: Who cares? The future belongs to all of usor, ultimately, none of uswhy does it matter if the vast majority of futurists are white men? It matters for the same reasons diversity drives market growth: because when only one type of person is engaged in asking key questions about a specialtyenvisioning the future or otherwisethey miss a entire frameworks for identifying and solving problems. The relative absence of women at Apple is why the Apple Health kit didnt have period tracking until a few months ago, and why a revolutionary artificial heart can be deemed a success even when it doesnt fit 80 percent of women.

Which brings us back to Moneypenny, and all the other virtual assistants of the future. There are all sorts of firms and companies working to build robotic servants. Chrome butlers, chefs, and housekeepers. But the fantasy of having an indentured servant is a peculiar one to some. That whole idea of creating robots that are in service to us has always bothered me, says Nnedi Okorafor, a science fiction author. Ive always sided with the robots. That whole idea of creating these creatures that are human-like and then have them be in servitude to us, that is not my fantasy and I find it highly problematic that it would be anyones.

Or take longevity, for example. The idea that people could, or even should, push to lengthen lifespans as far as possible is popular. The life-extension movement, with Aubrey de Gray as one (very bearded) spokesman, has raised millions of dollars to investigate how to extend the lifespan of humans. But this is arguably only an ideal future if youre in as a comfortable position as his. Living forever only works if youre a rich vampire from an Anne Rice novel, which is to say that you have compound interest, jokes Ashby. It really only works if you have significant real-estate investments and fast money and slow money. (Time travel, as the comedian Louis C.K. has pointed out, is another thing that is a distinctly white male preoccupationgoing back in time, for marginalized groups, means giving up more of their rights.)

Beyond the particular futures that get funded and developed, theres also a broader issue with the ways in which people think about what forces actually shape the future. We get some really ready-made easy ways of thinking about the future by thinking that the future is shapeable by tech development, said Kember, the professor of technology at University of London.

In the 1980s, two futurists (a man and a woman) wrote a book that invited key members of the futurist community to write essays on what they saw coming. The book was called What Futurists Believe, and it included profiles of 17 futurists, including Arthur C. Clarke and Peter Schwartz. All seventeen people profiled were men. And in some ways, they were very close to predicting the future. They seemed to grasp the importance of the cell phone and the trajectory of the personal computer. But they completely missed a huge set of other things. What they never got right was the social side, they never saw flattened organizations, social media, the uprisings in the Middle East, ISIS using Twitter, says Frewen.

Terry Grim, a professor in the Studies of the Future program at the University of Houston, recalls a video she saw from the 1960s depicting the office of the future. It had everything pretty much right, they had envisioned the computer and fax machine and forward-looking technology products. But there was something missing: There were no women in the office, she said.

Okorafor says that shes gotten so used to not seeing anybody like herself in visions of the future that its not really surprising to her when it happens. I feel like more of a tourist when I experience these imaginings, this isnt even a place where I would exist in the first place, she says. In the type of setting, the environment, and the way everything is set up just doesnt feel like it would be my future at all, and this is something that I experience regularly when I read or watch imagined futures, and this is part of what made me start writing my own.

This is also perhaps why futurists often dont talk about some of the issues and problems that many people face every dayharassment, child care, work-life balance, water rights, immigration, police brutality. When you lose out on womens voices you lose out on the issues that they have to deal with, Ashby says. She was recently at a futures event where people presented on a global trends report, and there was nothing in the slides on the future of law enforcement. The questions that many people face about their futures are lost in the futures being imagined.

* * *

In the 1970s, Alvin Tofflers book Future Shock argued that there are three types of futurism the world needed: a science of futurism that could talk about the probability of things happening, an art of futurism that could explore what is possible, and a politics of futurism that could investigate what is preferable. Futurism has done well to develop the first side, building devices and technologies and frameworks through which to see technical advances. But Zalman says that its fallen down a bit on the other two. Arts and humanities are given short shrift.

In some ways, the art and politics of futurism are the harder pieces of the pie. Technology is often predictable. Humans, less so. The solution to make things better is a really messy policy solution that has to be negotiated, its not pulling the sword from the stone or implanting the alien saucers with your stupid Mac virus or killing the shark, its getting people in a room with free coffee and doughnuts and getting them to talk, said Ashby.

In order to understand what those who have never really felt welcome in the field of futurism think, I called someone who writes and talks about the future, but who doesnt call themselves a futurist: Monica Byrne. Byrne is a science-fiction author and opinion writer who often tackles questions of how we see the future, and what kinds of futures we deem preferable. But when she thinks about futurism as a field, she doesnt see herself. I think the term futurist is itself is something I see white men claiming for themselves, and isnt something that would occur to me to call myself even though I functionally am one, she says.

Okorafor says that she too has never really called herself a futurist, even though much of what she does is use her writing to explore whats possible. When you sent me your email and you mentioned futurism I think thats really the first time I started thinking about that label for myself. And it fits. It feels comfortable.

When Byrne thinks about the term futurists, she thinks about a power struggle. What I see is a bid for control over what the future will look like. And it is a future that is, that to me doesnt look much different from Asimov science fiction covers. Which is not a future Im interested in.

The futurism that involves glass houses and 400-year-old men doesnt interest her. When I think about the kind of future I want to build, its very soft and human, its very erotic, and I feel like so much of what I identify as futurism is very glossy, chrome painted science fiction covers, theyre sterile. She laughs. Who cares about your jetpack? How does technology enable us to keep loving each other?

Continued here:
Futurism Needs More Women - The Atlantic

Futures studies (also called futurology) is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science. In general, it can be considered as a branch of the social sciences and parallel to the field of history. History studies the past, futures studies considers the future. Futures studies (colloquially called "futures" by many of the field's practitioners) seeks to understand what is likely to continue and what could plausibly change. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to determine the likelihood of future events and trends.[1] Unlike the physical sciences where a narrower, more specified system is studied, futures studies concerns a much bigger and more complex world system. The methodology and knowledge are much less proven as compared to natural science or even social science like sociology, economics, and political science.

Futures studies is an interdisciplinary field, studying yesterday's and today's changes, and aggregating and analyzing both lay and professional strategies and opinions with respect to tomorrow. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in an attempt to develop foresight and to map possible futures. Around the world the field is variously referred to as futures studies, strategic foresight, futuristics, futures thinking, futuring, and futurology. Futures studies and strategic foresight are the academic field's most commonly used terms in the English-speaking world.

Foresight was the original term and was first used in this sense by H.G. Wells in 1932.[2] "Futurology" is a term common in encyclopedias, though it is used almost exclusively by nonpractitioners today, at least in the English-speaking world. "Futurology" is defined as the "study of the future."[3] The term was coined by German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim in the mid-1940s, who proposed it as a new branch of knowledge that would include a new science of probability. This term may have fallen from favor in recent decades because modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and the limitations of prediction and probability, versus the creation of possible and preferable futures.[citation needed]

Three factors usually distinguish futures studies from the research conducted by other disciplines (although all of these disciplines overlap, to differing degrees). First, futures studies often examines not only possible but also probable, preferable, and "wild card" futures. Second, futures studies typically attempts to gain a holistic or systemic view based on insights from a range of different disciplines. Third, futures studies challenges and unpacks the assumptions behind dominant and contending views of the future. The future thus is not empty but fraught with hidden assumptions. For example, many people expect the collapse of the Earth's ecosystem in the near future, while others believe the current ecosystem will survive indefinitely. A foresight approach would seek to analyze and highlight the assumptions underpinning such views.

Futures studies does not generally focus on short term predictions such as interest rates over the next business cycle, or of managers or investors with short-term time horizons. Most strategic planning, which develops operational plans for preferred futures with time horizons of one to three years, is also not considered futures. Plans and strategies with longer time horizons that specifically attempt to anticipate possible future events are definitely part of the field.

The futures field also excludes those who make future predictions through professed supernatural means. At the same time, it does seek to understand the models such groups use and the interpretations they give to these models.

Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah[4] argue in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians that the search for grand patterns of social change goes all the way back to Ssu-Ma Chien (145-90BC) and his theory of the cycles of virtue, although the work of Ibn Khaldun (13321406) such as The Muqaddimah[5] would be an example that is perhaps more intelligible to modern sociology. Some intellectual foundations of futures studies appeared in the mid-19th century; according to Wendell Bell, Comte's discussion of the metapatterns of social change presages futures studies as a scholarly dialogue.[6]

The first works that attempt to make systematic predictions for the future were written in the 18th century. Memoirs of the Twentieth Century written by Samuel Madden in 1733, takes the form of a series of diplomatic letters written in 1997 and 1998 from British representatives in the foreign cities of Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Moscow.[7] However, the technology of the 20th century is identical to that of Madden's own era - the focus is instead on the political and religious state of the world in the future. Madden went on to write The Reign of George VI, 1900 to 1925, where (in the context of the boom in canal construction at the time) he envisioned a large network of waterways that would radically transform patterns of living - "Villages grew into towns and towns became cities".[8]

The genre of science fiction became established towards the end of the 19th century, with notable writers, including Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, setting their stories in an imagined future world.

According to W. Warren Wagar, the founder of future studies was H. G. Wells. His Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought: An Experiment in Prophecy, was first serially published in The Fortnightly Review in 1901.[9] Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, the existence of a European Union, and a world order maintained by "English-speaking peoples" based on the urban core between Chicago and New York[10]) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").[11][12]

Moving from narrow technological predictions, Wells envisioned the eventual collapse of the capitalist world system after a series of destructive total wars. From this havoc would ultimately emerge a world of peace and plenty, controlled by competent technocrats.[9]

The work was a bestseller, and Wells was invited to deliver a lecture at the Royal Institution in 1902, entitled The Discovery of the Future. The lecture was well-received and was soon republished in book form. He advocated for the establishment of a new academic study of the future that would be grounded in scientific methodology rather than just speculation. He argued that a scientifically ordered vision of the future "will be just as certain, just as strictly science, and perhaps just as detailed as the picture that has been built up within the last hundred years to make the geological past." Although conscious of the difficulty in arriving at entirely accurate predictions, he thought that it would still be possible to arrive at a "working knowledge of things in the future".[9]

In his fictional works, Wells predicted the invention and use of the atomic bomb in The World Set Free (1914).[13] In The Shape of Things to Come (1933) the impending World War and cities destroyed by aerial bombardment was depicted.[14] However, he didn't stop advocating for the establishment of a futures science. In a 1933 BBC broadcast he called for the establishment of "Departments and Professors of Foresight", foreshadowing the development of modern academic futures studies by approximately 40 years.[2]

Futures studies emerged as an academic discipline in the mid-1960s. First-generation futurists included Herman Kahn, an American Cold War strategist who wrote On Thermonuclear War (1960), Thinking about the unthinkable (1962) and The Year 2000: a framework for speculation on the next thirty-three years (1967); Bertrand de Jouvenel, a French economist who founded Futuribles International in 1960; and Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-British scientist who wrote Inventing the Future (1963) and The Mature Society. A View of the Future (1972).[6]

Future studies had a parallel origin with the birth of systems science in academia, and with the idea of national economic and political planning, most notably in France and the Soviet Union.[6][15] In the 1950s, France was continuing to reconstruct their war-torn country. In the process, French scholars, philosophers, writers, and artists searched for what could constitute a more positive future for humanity. The Soviet Union similarly participated in postwar rebuilding, but did so in the context of an established national economic planning process, which also required a long-term, systemic statement of social goals. Future studies was therefore primarily engaged in national planning, and the construction of national symbols.

By contrast, in the United States, futures studies as a discipline emerged from the successful application of the tools and perspectives of systems analysis, especially with regard to quartermastering the war-effort. These differing origins account for an initial schism between futures studies in America and futures studies in Europe: U.S. practitioners focused on applied projects, quantitative tools and systems analysis, whereas Europeans preferred to investigate the long-range future of humanity and the Earth, what might constitute that future, what symbols and semantics might express it, and who might articulate these.[16][17]

By the 1960s, academics, philosophers, writers and artists across the globe had begun to explore enough future scenarios so as to fashion a common dialogue. Inventors such as Buckminster Fuller also began highlighting the effect technology might have on global trends as time progressed. This discussion on the intersection of population growth, resource availability and use, economic growth, quality of life, and environmental sustainability referred to as the "global problematique" came to wide public attention with the publication of Limits to Growth, a study sponsored by the Club of Rome.[18]

International dialogue became institutionalized in the form of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), founded in 1967, with the noted sociologist, Johan Galtung, serving as its first president. In the United States, the publisher Edward Cornish, concerned with these issues, started the World Future Society, an organization focused more on interested laypeople.

1975 saw the founding of the first graduate program in futures studies in the United States, the M.S. program in Futures Studies at the University of HoustonClear Lake,.[19] Oliver Markley of SRI (now SRI International) was hired in 1978 to move the program into a more applied and professional direction. The program moved to the University of Houston in 2007 and renamed the degree to Foresight.[20] In 1976, the M.A. Program in Public Policy in Alternative Futures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa was established.[21] The Hawaii program locates futures studies within a pedagogical space defined by neo-Marxism, critical political economic theory, and literary criticism. In the years following the foundation of these two programs, single courses in Futures Studies at all levels of education have proliferated, but complete programs occur only rarely. In 2012, the Finland Futures Research Centre started a master's degree Programme in Futures Studies at Turku School of Economics, a business school which is part of the University of Turku in Turku, Finland.[22]

As a transdisciplinary field, futures studies attracts generalists. This transdisciplinary nature can also cause problems, owing to it sometimes falling between the cracks of disciplinary boundaries; it also has caused some difficulty in achieving recognition within the traditional curricula of the sciences and the humanities. In contrast to "Futures Studies" at the undergraduate level, some graduate programs in strategic leadership or management offer masters or doctorate programs in "strategic foresight" for mid-career professionals, some even online. Nevertheless, comparatively few new PhDs graduate in Futures Studies each year.

The field currently faces the great challenge of creating a coherent conceptual framework, codified into a well-documented curriculum (or curricula) featuring widely accepted and consistent concepts and theoretical paradigms linked to quantitative and qualitative methods, exemplars of those research methods, and guidelines for their ethical and appropriate application within society. As an indication that previously disparate intellectual dialogues have in fact started converging into a recognizable discipline,[23] at least six solidly-researched and well-accepted first attempts to synthesize a coherent framework for the field have appeared: Eleonora Masini's Why Futures Studies,[24]James Dator's Advancing Futures Studies,[25]Ziauddin Sardar's Rescuing all of our Futures,[26]Sohail Inayatullah's Questioning the future,[27]Richard A. Slaughter's The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies,[28] a collection of essays by senior practitioners, and Wendell Bell's two-volume work, The Foundations of Futures Studies.[29]

Some aspects of the future, such as celestial mechanics, are highly predictable, and may even be described by relatively simple mathematical models. At present however, science has yielded only a special minority of such "easy to predict" physical processes. Theories such as chaos theory, nonlinear science and standard evolutionary theory have allowed us to understand many complex systems as contingent (sensitively dependent on complex environmental conditions) and stochastic (random within constraints), making the vast majority of future events unpredictable, in any specific case.

Not surprisingly, the tension between predictability and unpredictability is a source of controversy and conflict among futures studies scholars and practitioners. Some argue that the future is essentially unpredictable, and that "the best way to predict the future is to create it." Others believe, as Flechtheim, that advances in science, probability, modeling and statistics will allow us to continue to improve our understanding of probable futures, while this area presently remains less well developed than methods for exploring possible and preferable futures.

As an example, consider the process of electing the president of the United States. At one level we observe that any U.S. citizen over 35 may run for president, so this process may appear too unconstrained for useful prediction. Yet further investigation demonstrates that only certain public individuals (current and former presidents and vice presidents, senators, state governors, popular military commanders, mayors of very large cities, etc.) receive the appropriate "social credentials" that are historical prerequisites for election. Thus with a minimum of effort at formulating the problem for statistical prediction, a much reduced pool of candidates can be described, improving our probabilistic foresight. Applying further statistical intelligence to this problem, we can observe that in certain election prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets, reliable forecasts have been generated over long spans of time and conditions, with results superior to individual experts or polls. Such markets, which may be operated publicly or as an internal market, are just one of several promising frontiers in predictive futures research.

Such improvements in the predictability of individual events do not though, from a complexity theory viewpoint, address the unpredictability inherent in dealing with entire systems, which emerge from the interaction between multiple individual events.

Futures practitioners use a wide range of models and methods (theory and practice), many of which come from other academic disciplines, including economics, sociology, geography, history, engineering, mathematics, psychology, technology, tourism, physics, biology, astronomy, and aspects of theology (specifically, the range of future beliefs).

One of the fundamental assumptions in futures studies is that the future is plural not singular, that is, that it consists of alternative futures of varying likelihood but that it is impossible in principle to say with certainty which one will occur. The primary effort in futures studies, therefore, is to identify and describe alternative futures. This effort includes collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the possibility, probability, and desirability of change. The plurality of the term "futures" in futures studies denotes the rich variety of alternative futures, including the subset of preferable futures (normative futures), that can be studied.

Practitioners of the discipline previously concentrated on extrapolating present technological, economic or social trends, or on attempting to predict future trends, but more recently they have started to examine social systems and uncertainties and to build scenarios, question the worldviews behind such scenarios via the causal layered analysis method (and others), create preferred visions of the future, and use backcasting to derive alternative implementation strategies. Apart from extrapolation and scenarios, many dozens of methods and techniques are used in futures research (see below).

Futures studies also includes normative or preferred futures, but a major contribution involves connecting both extrapolated (exploratory) and normative research to help individuals and organisations to build better social futures amid a (presumed) landscape of shifting social changes. Practitioners use varying proportions of inspiration and research. Futures studies only rarely uses the scientific method in the sense of controlled, repeatable and falsifiable experiments with highly standardized methodologies, given that environmental conditions for repeating a predictive scheme are usually quite hard to control. However, many futurists are informed by scientific techniques. Some historians project patterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to anticipate what will happen in the future. Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West" argued,[full citation needed] for instance, that western society, like imperial Rome, had reached a stage of cultural maturity that would inexorably lead to decline, in measurable ways.

Futures studies is often summarized as being concerned with "three Ps and a W", or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are low probability but high impact events (positive or negative), should they occur. Many futurists, however, do not use the wild card approach. Rather, they use a methodology called Emerging Issues Analysis. It searches for the seeds of change, issues that are likely to move from unknown to the known, from low impact to high impact.

Estimates of probability are involved with two of the four central concerns of foresight professionals (discerning and classifying both probable and wildcard events), while considering the range of possible futures, recognizing the plurality of existing alternative futures, characterizing and attempting to resolve normative disagreements on the future, and envisioning and creating preferred futures are other major areas of scholarship. Most estimates of probability in futures studies are normative and qualitative, though significant progress on statistical and quantitative methods (technology and information growth curves, cliometrics, predictive psychology, prediction markets, crowdvoting forecasts,[30][bettersourceneeded] etc.) has been made in recent decades.

While forecasting i.e., attempts to predict future states from current trends is a common methodology, professional scenarios often rely on "backcasting": asking what changes in the present would be required to arrive at envisioned alternative future states. For example, the Policy Reform and Eco-Communalism scenarios developed by the Global Scenario Group rely on the backcasting method. Practitioners of futures studies classify themselves as futurists (or foresight practitioners).

Futurists use a diverse range of forecasting methods including:

Futurists use scenarios alternative possible futures as an important tool. To some extent, people can determine what they consider probable or desirable using qualitative and quantitative methods. By looking at a variety of possibilities one comes closer to shaping the future, rather than merely predicting it. Shaping alternative futures starts by establishing a number of scenarios. Setting up scenarios takes place as a process with many stages. One of those stages involves the study of trends. A trend persists long-term and long-range; it affects many societal groups, grows slowly and appears to have a profound basis. In contrast, a fad operates in the short term, shows the vagaries of fashion, affects particular societal groups, and spreads quickly but superficially.

Sample predicted futures range from predicted ecological catastrophes, through a utopian future where the poorest human being lives in what present-day observers would regard as wealth and comfort, through the transformation of humanity into a posthuman life-form, to the destruction of all life on Earth in, say, a nanotechnological disaster.

Futurists have a decidedly mixed reputation and a patchy track record at successful prediction. For reasons of convenience, they often extrapolate present technical and societal trends and assume they will develop at the same rate into the future; but technical progress and social upheavals, in reality, take place in fits and starts and in different areas at different rates.

Many 1950s futurists predicted commonplace space tourism by the year 2000, but ignored the possibilities of ubiquitous, cheap computers. On the other hand, many forecasts have portrayed the future with some degree of accuracy. Current futurists often present multiple scenarios that help their audience envision what "may" occur instead of merely "predicting the future". They claim that understanding potential scenarios helps individuals and organizations prepare with flexibility.

Many corporations use futurists as part of their risk management strategy, for horizon scanning and emerging issues analysis, and to identify wild cards low probability, potentially high-impact risks.[31] Every successful and unsuccessful business engages in futuring to some degree for example in research and development, innovation and market research, anticipating competitor behavior and so on.[32][33]

In futures research "weak signals" may be understood as advanced, noisy and socially situated indicators of change in trends and systems that constitute raw informational material for enabling anticipatory action. There is some confusion about the definition of weak signal by various researchers and consultants. Sometimes it is referred as future oriented information, sometimes more like emerging issues. The confusion has been partly clarified with the concept 'the future sign', by separating signal, issue and interpretation of the future sign.[34]

"Wild cards" refer to low-probability and high-impact events, such as existential risks. This concept may be embedded in standard foresight projects and introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to increase the ability of social groups adapt to surprises arising in turbulent business environments. Such sudden and unique incidents might constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend or system. Wild cards may or may not be announced by weak signals, which are incomplete and fragmented data from which relevant foresight information might be inferred. Sometimes, mistakenly, wild cards and weak signals are considered as synonyms, which they are not.[35]

A long-running tradition in various cultures, and especially in the media, involves various spokespersons making predictions for the upcoming year at the beginning of the year. These predictions sometimes base themselves on current trends in culture (music, movies, fashion, politics); sometimes they make hopeful guesses as to what major events might take place over the course of the next year.

Some of these predictions come true as the year unfolds, though many fail. When predicted events fail to take place, the authors of the predictions often state that misinterpretation of the "signs" and portents may explain the failure of the prediction.

Marketers have increasingly started to embrace futures studies, in an effort to benefit from an increasingly competitive marketplace with fast production cycles, using such techniques as trendspotting as popularized by Faith Popcorn.[dubious discuss]

Trends come in different sizes. A mega-trend extends over many generations, and in cases of climate, mega-trends can cover periods prior to human existence. They describe complex interactions between many factors. The increase in population from the palaeolithic period to the present provides an example.

Possible new trends grow from innovations, projects, beliefs or actions that have the potential to grow and eventually go mainstream in the future.

Very often, trends relate to one another the same way as a tree-trunk relates to branches and twigs. For example, a well-documented movement toward equality between men and women might represent a branch trend. The trend toward reducing differences in the salaries of men and women in the Western world could form a twig on that branch.

When a potential trend gets enough confirmation in the various media, surveys or questionnaires to show that it has an increasingly accepted value, behavior or technology, it becomes accepted as a bona fide trend. Trends can also gain confirmation by the existence of other trends perceived as springing from the same branch. Some commentators claim that when 15% to 25% of a given population integrates an innovation, project, belief or action into their daily life then a trend becomes mainstream.

Because new advances in technology have the potential to reshape our society, one of the jobs of a futurist is to follow these developments and consider their implications. However, the latest innovations take time to make an impact. Every new technology goes through its own life cycle of maturity, adoption, and social application that must be taken into consideration before a probable vision of the future can be created.

Gartner created their Hype Cycle to illustrate the phases a technology moves through as it grows from research and development to mainstream adoption. The unrealistic expectations and subsequent disillusionment that virtual reality experienced in the 1990s and early 2000s is an example of the middle phases encountered before a technology can begin to be integrated into society.[36]

Education in the field of futures studies has taken place for some time. Beginning in the United States of America in the 1960s, it has since developed in many different countries. Futures education can encourage the use of concepts, tools and processes that allow students to think long-term, consequentially, and imaginatively. It generally helps students to:

Thorough documentation of the history of futures education exists, for example in the work of Richard A. Slaughter (2004),[37] David Hicks, Ivana Milojevi[38] to name a few.

While futures studies remains a relatively new academic tradition, numerous tertiary institutions around the world teach it. These vary from small programs, or universities with just one or two classes, to programs that incorporate futures studies into other degrees, (for example in planning, business, environmental studies, economics, development studies, science and technology studies). Various formal Masters-level programs exist on six continents. Finally, doctoral dissertations around the world have incorporated futures studies. A recent survey documented approximately 50 cases of futures studies at the tertiary level.[39]

The largest Futures Studies program in the world is at Tamkang University, Taiwan.[citation needed] Futures Studies is a required course at the undergraduate level, with between three and five thousand students taking classes on an annual basis. Housed in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies is an MA Program. Only ten students are accepted annually in the program. Associated with the program is the Journal of Futures Studies.[40]

The longest running Future Studies program in North America was established in 1975 at the University of HoustonClear Lake.[41] It moved to the University of Houston in 2007 and renamed the degree to Foresight. The program was established on the belief that if history is studied and taught in an academic setting, then so should the future. Its mission is to prepare professional futurists. The curriculum incorporates a blend of the essential theory, a framework and methods for doing the work, and a focus on application for clients in business, government, nonprofits, and society in general.[42]

As of 2003, over 40 tertiary education establishments around the world were delivering one or more courses in futures studies. The World Futures Studies Federation[43] has a comprehensive survey of global futures programs and courses. The Acceleration Studies Foundation maintains an annotated list of primary and secondary graduate futures studies programs.[44]

Organizations such as Teach The Future also aim to promote future studies in the secondary school curriculum in order to develop structured approaches to thinking about the future in public school students. The rationale is that a sophisticated approach to thinking about, anticipating, and planning for the future is a core skill requirement that every student should have, similar to literacy and math skills.

Several authors have become recognized as futurists. They research trends, particularly in technology, and write their observations, conclusions, and predictions. In earlier eras, many futurists were at academic institutions. John McHale, author of The Future of the Future, published a 'Futures Directory', and directed a think tank called The Centre For Integrative Studies at a university. Futurists have started consulting groups or earn money as speakers, with examples including Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt and Patrick Dixon. Frank Feather is a business speaker that presents himself as a pragmatic futurist. Some futurists have commonalities with science fiction, and some science-fiction writers, such as Arthur C. Clarke, are known as futurists.[citation needed] In the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin distinguished futurists from novelists, writing of the study as the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurists. In her words, "a novelist's business is lying".

A survey of 108 futurists found that they share a variety of assumptions, including in their description of the present as a critical moment in an historical transformation, in their recognition and belief in complexity, and in their being motivated by change and having a desire for an active role bringing change (versus simply being involved in forecasting).[45]

Several corporations and government agencies utilize foresight products to both better understand potential risks and prepare for potential opportunities. Several government agencies publish material for internal stakeholders as well as make that material available to broader public. Examples of this include the US Congressional Budget Office long term budget projections,[46] the National Intelligence Center,[47] and the United Kingdom Government Office for Science.[48] Much of this material is used by policy makers to inform policy decisions and government agencies to develop long term plan. Several corporations, particularly those with long product development lifecycles, utilize foresight and future studies products and practitioners in the development of their business strategies. The Shell Corporation is one such entity.[49] Foresight professionals and their tools are increasingly being utilized in both the private and public areas to help leaders deal with an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

Fashion is one area of trend forecasting. The industry typically works 18 months ahead of the current selling season.[citation needed] Large retailers look at the obvious impact of everything from the weather forecast to runway fashion for consumer tastes. Consumer behavior and statistics are also important for a long-range forecast.

Artists and conceptual designers, by contrast, may feel that consumer trends are a barrier to creativity. Many of these startists start micro trends but do not follow trends themselves.[citation needed]

Design is another area of trend forecasting. Foresight and futures thinking are rapidly being adopted by the design industry to insure more sustainable, robust and humanistic products. Design, much like future studies is an interdisciplinary field that considers global trends, challenges and opportunities to foster innovation. Designers are thus adopting futures methodologies including scenarios, trend forecasting, and futures research.

Holistic thinking that incorporates strategic, innovative and anticipatory solutions gives designers the tools necessary to navigate complex problems and develop novel future enhancing and visionary solutions.

The Association for Professional Futurists has also held meetings discussing the ways in which Design Thinking and Futures Thinking intersect.

The future of energy is a complex topic. There are likely not enough new sources of oil in the Earth to make up for escalating demands from China, India, Africa, and other rapidly developing economies, and to replace declining fields, if future energy consumption patterns of these economies mimic the historical patterns of the developed world. Yet as global population saturates and we move further into the Information Age, energy intensity (use of energy per GDP) has been saturating (slowing in rate of growth) or declining in many countries.[50] There are also over a trillion and a half barrels of proven oil reserves in the world,[51] in the hands of owners who want to make sure as much of that oil is sold as possible before we move to alternative sources. They have a strong incentive to keep the price of oil low enough (e.g., below $100 a barrel) to discourage too-rapid emergence of viable alternatives. While many alternative sources of energy exist, their rate of development and their levels of governmental and corporate R&D funding remain slow and low. Some futurists see a gap looming between the effective end of the Age of Oil and the expected emergence of new energy sources.[52] Others see no such gap ahead, and expect we'll leave the Age of Oil to one led by solar, fusion, natural gas, and other sources with lots of oil still remaining in the ground. Social values changes, climate change, accelerating computerization and machine productivity, and other factors may increasingly drive us to more sustainable energy sources with significantly fewer environmental and public health costs than oil and coal.[53][54]

Imperial cycles represent an "expanding pulsation" of "mathematically describable" macro-historic trend.[55] The List of Largest Empires contains imperial record progression in terms of territory or percentage of world population under single imperial rule.

Chinese philosopher K'ang Yu-wei and French demographer Georges Vacher de Lapouge in the late 19th century were the first to stress that the trend cannot proceed indefinitely on the definite surface of the globe. The trend is bound to culminate in a world empire. K'ang Yu-wei estimated that the matter will be decided in the contest between Washington and Berlin; Vacher de Lapouge foresaw this contest between the United States and Russia and estimated the chance of the United States higher.[56] Both published their futures studies before H. G. Wells introduced the science of future in his Anticipations (1901).

Four later anthropologistsHornell Hart, Raoul Naroll, Louis Morano, and Robert Carneiroresearched the expanding imperial cycles. They reached the same conclusion that a world empire is not only pre-determined but close at hand and attempted to estimate the time of its appearance.[57]

Historian Max Ostrovsky, specializing on macro-historic trends and their projection into future, analyzed the inner mechanism at work in the process and applied the results to the conditions of the global system. The work confirmed the inexorable trend towards a world empire. He found that the development of the world order in history and its projection into future follows a hyperbolic trajectory. The research was published in 2007 titled: Y = Arctg X: The Hyperbola of the World Order.[58]

As Foresight has expanded to include a broader range of social concerns all levels and types of education have been addressed, including formal and informal education. Many countries are beginning to implement Foresight in their Education policy. A few programs are listed below:

Wendell Bell and Ed Cornish acknowledge science fiction as a catalyst to future studies, conjuring up visions of tomorrow.[61] Science fictions potential to provide an imaginative social vision is its contribution to futures studies and public perspective. Productive sci-fi presents plausible, normative scenarios.[61] Jim Dator attributes the foundational concepts of images of the future to Wendell Bell, for clarifying Fred Polaks concept in Images of the Future, as it applies to futures studies.[62][63] Similar to futures studies scenarios thinking, empirically supported visions of the future are a window into what the future could be. Pamela Sargent states, Science fiction reflects attitudes typical of this century. She gives a brief history of impactful sci-fi publications, like The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov and Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein.[64] Alternate perspectives validate sci-fi as part of the fuzzy images of the future.[63] However, the challenge is the lack of consistent futures research based literature frameworks.[64] Ian Miles reviews The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, identifying ways Science Fiction and Futures Studies cross-fertilize, as well as the ways in which they differ distinctly. Science Fiction cannot be simply considered fictionalized Futures Studies. It may have aims other than prediction, and be no more concerned with shaping the future than any other genre of literature. [65] It is not to be understood as an explicit pillar of futures studies, due to its inconsistency of integrated futures research. Additionally, Dennis Livingston, a literature and Futures journal critic says, The depiction of truly alternative societies has not been one of science fictions strong points, especially preferred, normative envisages.[66]

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Futures studies - Wikipedia

No architecture has existed since 1700. A moronic mixture of the most various stylistic elements used to mask the skeletons of modern houses is called modern architecture. The new beauty of cement and iron are profaned by the superimposition of motley decorative incrustations that cannot be justified either by constructive necessity or by our (modern) taste, and whose origins are in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic flowering of stupidity and impotence that took the name of neoclassicism.

These architectonic prostitutions are welcomed in Italy, and rapacious alien ineptitude is passed off as talented invention and as extremely up-to-date architecture. Young Italian architects (those who borrow originality from clandestine and compulsive devouring of art journals) flaunt their talents in the new quarters of our towns, where a hilarious salad of little ogival columns, seventeenth-century foliation, Gothic pointed arches, Egyptian pilasters, rococo scrolls, fifteenth-century cherubs, swollen caryatids, take the place of style in all seriousness, and presumptuously put on monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic appearance and reappearance of forms, the multiplying of machinery, the daily increasing needs imposed by the speed of communications, by the concentration of population, by hygiene, and by a hundred other phenomena of modern life, never cause these self-styled renovators of architecture a moment's perplexity or hesitation. They persevere obstinately with the rules of Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino plus gleanings from any published scrap of information on German architecture that happens to be at hand. Using these, they continue to stamp the image of imbecility on our cities, our cities which should be the immediate and faithful projection of ourselves.

And so this expressive and synthetic art has become in their hands a vacuous stylistic exercise, a jumble of ill-mixed formulae to disguise a run-of-the-mill traditionalist box of bricks and stone as a modern building. As if we who are accumulators and generators of movement, with all our added mechanical limbs, with all the noise and speed of our life, could live in streets built for the needs of men four, five or six centuries ago.

This is the supreme imbecility of modern architecture, perpetuated by the venal complicity of the academies, the internment camps of the intelligentsia, where the young are forced into the onanistic recopying of classical models instead of throwing their minds open in the search for new frontiers and in the solution of the new and pressing problem: the Futurist house and city. The house and the city that are ours both spiritually and materially, in which our tumult can rage without seeming a grotesque anachronism.

The problem posed in Futurist architecture is not one of linear rearrangement. It is not a question of finding new moldings and frames for windows and doors, of replacing columns, pilasters and corbels with caryatids, flies and frogs. Neither has it anything to do with leaving a faade in bare brick, or plastering it, or facing it with stone or in determining formal differences between the new building and the old one. It is a question of tending the healthy growth of the Futurist house, of constructing it with all the resources of technology and science, satisfying magisterially all the demands of our habits and our spirit, trampling down all that is grotesque and antithetical (tradition, style, aesthetics, proportion), determining new forms, new lines, a new harmony of profiles and volumes, an architecture whose reason for existence can be found solely in the unique conditions of modern life, and in its correspondence with the aesthetic values of our sensibilities. This architecture cannot be subjected to any law of historical continuity. It must be new, just as our state of mind is new.

The art of construction has been able to evolve with time, and to pass from one style to another, while maintaining unaltered the general characteristics of architecture, because in the course of history changes of fashion are frequent and are determined by the alternations of religious conviction and political disposition. But profound changes in the state of the environment are extremely rare, changes that unhinge and renew, such as the discovery of natural laws, the perfecting of mechanical means, the rational and scientific use of material. In modern life the process of stylistic development in architecture has been brought to a halt. Architecture now makes a break with tradition. It must perforce make a fresh start.

Calculations based on the resistance of materials, on the use of reinforced concrete and steel, exclude "architecture" in the classical and traditional sense. Modern constructional materials and scientific concepts are absolutely incompatible with the disciplines of historical styles, and are the principal cause of the grotesque appearance of "fashionable" buildings in which attempts are made to employ the lightness, the superb grace of the steel beam, the delicacy of reinforced concrete, in order to obtain the heavy curve of the arch and the bulkiness of marble.

The utter antithesis between the modern world and the old is determined by all those things that formerly did not exist. Our lives have been enriched by elements the possibility of whose existence the ancients did not even suspect. Men have identified material contingencies, and revealed spiritual attitudes, whose repercussions are felt in a thousand ways. Principal among these is the formation of a new ideal of beauty that is still obscure and embryonic, but whose fascination is already felt even by the masses. We have lost our predilection for the monumental, the heavy, the static, and we have enriched our sensibility with a taste for the light, the practical, the ephemeral and the swift. We no longer feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals, the palaces and the podiums. We are the men of the great hotels, the railway stations, the immense streets, colossal ports, covered markets, luminous arcades, straight roads and beneficial demolitions.

We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every detail; and the Futurist house must be like a gigantic machine. The lifts must no longer be hidden away like tapeworms in the niches of stairwells; the stairwells themselves, rendered useless, must be abolished, and the lifts must scale the lengths of the faades like serpents of steel and glass. The house of concrete, glass and steel, stripped of paintings and sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty of its lines and relief, extraordinarily "ugly" in its mechanical simplicity, higher and wider according to need rather than the specifications of municipal laws. It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no longer lie like a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many stories down into the earth, embracing the metropolitan traffic, and will be linked up for necessary interconnections by metal gangways and swift-moving pavements.

The decorative must be abolished. The problem of Futurist architecture must be resolved, not by continuing to pilfer from Chinese, Persian or Japanese photographs or fooling around with the rules of Vitruvius, but through flashes of genius and through scientific and technical expertise. Everything must be revolutionized. Roofs and underground spaces must be used; the importance of the faade must be diminished; issues of taste must be transplanted from the field of fussy moldings, finicky capitals and flimsy doorways to the broader concerns of bold groupings and masses, and large-scale disposition of planes. Let us make an end of monumental, funereal and commemorative architecture. Let us overturn monuments, pavements, arcades and flights of steps; let us sink the streets and squares; let us raise the level of the city.

I COMBAT AND DESPISE:

AND PROCLAIM:

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