The Future Of Thinking

Download or read book The Future of Thinking written by Cathy N. Davidson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of “institution” as a “mobilizing network”—emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change—and explore the implications for higher education. The Future of Thinking reports on innovative, virtual institutions. It also uses the idea of a virtual institution both as part of its subject matter and as part of its process: the first draft of the book was hosted on a Web site for collaborative feedback and writing. The authors use this experiment in participatory writing as a test case for virtual institutions, learning institutions, and a new form of collaborative authorship. The finished version is still posted and open for comment. This book is the full-length report of the project, which was summarized in an earlier MacArthur volume, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.

Download or read book The Psychology of Thinking about the Future written by Gabriele Oettingen and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do people spend so much time thinking about the future, imagining scenarios that may never occur, and making (often unrealistic) predictions ? This volume brings together leading researchers from multiple psychological subdisciplines to explore the central role of future-thinking in human behavior across the lifespan. It presents cutting-edge work on the mechanisms involved in visualizing, predicting, and planning for the future. Implications are explored for such important domains as well-being and mental health, academic and job performance, ethical decision making, and financial behavior. Throughout, chapters highlight effective self-regulation strategies that help people pursue and realize their short- and long-term goals. ÿ

Download or read book Thinking the Future written by Clem Sunter and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you know how to think about the future? All our decisions are about the future, whether it’s tomorrow, next year or the next decade, yet our choices are often undermined by desires, expectations and common mental mistakes – making assumptions, worrying about things we can’t control, missing signals because we’re distracted by the noise. But if you can learn how to think, you can learn how to look ahead. Isaac Newton said: ‘If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ In Thinking the Future, Clem Sunter and Mitch Ilbury teach us the futurist’s art of decision-making by reimagining seminal concepts from some of history’s greatest thinkers. They encourage foxy, flexible mindsets and reject the popular but misleading self-help tenet that you can decide your fate through the relentless pursuit of a single goal. An uncertain world demands a more dynamic approach. The point is not to forecast one outcome but to plot multiple scenarios of what could happen. Using scenario-planning techniques, we can all harness the power to work towards the future we want, avoid the ones we don’t, and prepare ourselves for the possible risks and opportunities no matter what transpires.

Download or read book Thinking about the Future written by Hines Andy and published by . This book was released on 2015-10-10 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking about the Future distills the expertise of three dozen senior foresight professionals into a set of essential guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight. Presented in a highly scannable yet personable style, each guideline includes an explanation and rationale, key steps, a case example, and resources for further study.

Download or read book Deep Time Reckoning written by Vincent Ialenti and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.

Download or read book Thinking about the Future written by George P. Shultz and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2019-05-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a rich and varied career, George P. Shultz has aided presidents, confronted national and international crises, and argued passionately that the United States has a vital stake in promoting democratic values and institutions. In speeches, articles, congressional testimony, and conversations with world leaders, he has helped shape policy and public opinion on topics ranging from technology and terrorism to drugs and climate change. The result is a body of work that has influenced the decisions of nations and leaders, as well as the lives of ordinary people. In Thinking About the Future, Shultz has collected and revisited key writings, applying his past thinking to America's most pressing contemporary problems. Each chapter includes new commentary from the author, providing context, color, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of how decisions are made in the halls of power. In the more than half a century since Shultz entered public life, the world has changed dramatically. But he remains guided by the belief that "you can learn about the future—or at least relate to it—by studying the past and identifying principles that have continuing application to our lives and our world."

Download or read book Full-Spectrum Thinking written by Bob Johansen and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading futurist Bob Johansen shows how a new way of thinking, enhanced by new technologies, will help leaders break free of limiting labels and see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world. The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we're restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. Categories lead us toward certainty but away from clarity, and categorical thinking moves us away from understanding the bigger picture. Sticking with this old way of thinking and seeing isn't just foolish, it's dangerous. Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to seek patterns and clarity outside, across, beyond, or maybe even without any boxes or categories while resisting false certainty and simplistic binary choices. It reveals our commonalities that are hidden in plain view. Bob Johansen lays out the core concepts of full-spectrum thinking and reveals the role that digital media—including gameful engagement, big-data analytics, visualization, blockchain, and machine learning—will play in facilitating and enhancing it. He offers examples of broader spectrums and new applications in a wide range of areas that will become possible first, then mandatory. This visionary book provides powerful ways to make sense of new opportunities and see the world as it really is.