systems theory

systems theory. A theory that seeks to explain the behavior of systems, which are aggregates of interacting units. One important aspect of a system is the existence of feedback; that is, when one part of a system is acted upon, the results of that action, propagated through other parts, cause the original one to be affected, as when a drop in a stock's price frightens investors, thereby causing a further decrease in its value.

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Scanning the Future of Law Enforcement: A Trend Analysis By Eric Meade

Coming, The Biggest Boom Ever By McKinley Conway

How to Feed Eight Billion People By Lester R. Brown

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Blogs

The First Step Toward Your Future

Personal Futures is simply a system for applying futures (or futurist’s) methods to individual lives. These methods have been used (quite successfully) by corporations and governments around the world for decades. It’s just a matter of scale. And simplicity.

When I started my research, scaling down was THE challenge. Not so much for the futures methods, they scale easily. The problem was the research. The basic information about each individual’s life. Where does an individual (you) start? What are the driving forces? What are plausible and probable events in your future?
In building a systematic approach to personal futures, I arrived at three major steps:

Thinking non-technologically about tech futures

So, Steve Jobs presented several new Apple products on September 1 and, seemingly, everyone blogged about it in realtime. If you’re excited about “Ping,” so much the better. My concerns are with those of us in academics who are interested in the future of social technologies. Maybe we weren’t typing up vaguely obsequious blog entries about Jobs’s presentation, but we were still watching. Why?

Michigan Regulates Psychics. Want to Predict if Futurists are Next?

I don't think futurists could ever be compared to psychics, but anytime a government starts regulating people who base their livelihoods on the future, it's worth taking a look. Exhibit A, the government of Warren, Michigan just passed a law that requires fortune tellers to register, get fingerprinted and submit to a background check to run their businesses.

Deconstructing the Future-Heavy Rhetoric in Obama's Iraq Speech

Speeches by government leaders offer some of the most vivid applications of the future “frame” (see this excellent definition of frames for more info). Punctuated with references to history and destiny, they appeal to both the head and heart.

Future City

What will be the future of the city? I like to think it will be vaguely utopian—like Jane Jacobs re-written by David Harvey, but in my less optimistic moments I can’t help but think of fantastic, dystopian spaces like Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”. But this betrays my own preconceptions--the instinctive way I discount culture (even though I'm a cultural anthropologist).

Six K-12 Education Predictions for the USA

What's in the future for elementary and secondary schools in the United States? American classrooms need extensive reform because they lag far behind Europe and East Asian nations in international testing surveys, such as the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), conducted every three years by OECD (Organization of Economic and Co-operative Development).

Google, You Have a Woof on Line One.

Google has just launched its much-anticipated Google Voice service and the song of cellphones floats upon the air. Suckers that we are, my wife and I are already signed up. The nifty features are these: You get one number that attaches to all of your other numbers. When someone calls that number, it rings on your home phone, your cell, and any other device you choose to connect.

ptucker's blog
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