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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Governing the Future 

House of Commons - Public Administration Committee- Second Report - Governing the Future

(for government response, see end of this note)

Terms of Reference

Summary

1 Introduction

2 The machinery of future thinking

3 Strategy and futures work at the centre

4 Future thinking in the departments

5 Thinking the unthinkable?

Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix 1: Departmental Capability Reviews: further information

Appendix 2: Prime Minister's Strategy Unit publications

Appendix 3: Governing the Future: Issues and Questions Paper

Formal Minutes

Witnesses



WRITTEN EVIDENCE

Memorandum by Sir Michael Bichard

Memorandum by Dr William Plowden

Memorandum by The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Memorandum by Sir David King FRS, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and Head of the Office of Science and Innovation

Supplementary memorandum from Sir David King FRS, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and Head of the Office of Science and Innovation

Memorandum by Dr Ruth Levitt and William Solesbury

Memorandum by David Yaffey and Mike Zeidler of the Association of Sustainability Practitioners

Memorandum by Audrey MacDougall, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh

Memorandum by Annette Boaz and William Solesbury, Senior Visiting Research Fellows, Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice, Kings College, University of London

Further memorandum by Annette Boaz, Senior Research Fellow and William Solesbury, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice, King's College London

Memorandum by OFWAT

Memorandum by Accenture

Memorandum by CABE

Memorandum by the International Futures Forum

Memorandum by the Office of Science and Technology at the Department of Trade and Industry

Memorandum by the National School of Government

Supplementary memorandum from Sir David King FRS, Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and Head of the Office of Science and Innovation



GOVERNMENT RESPONSE AT:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/~/media/assets/www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/pasc_response%20pdf.ashx

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Next Big Future 

http://nextbigfuture.com/
has lots of interesting stories on mainly techie futures issues!

Rich blog on futures 

a thousand tomorrows
Futures, design, and related

Discussion of weak signals 

a thousand tomorrows » Blog Archive » interview: Elina Hiltunen - weak signals & future signs
"I have based my model of the future sign - which describes
change more holistically than only focusing on signals of it - on his
concept of a three dimensional sign (see Futures, 2007). Applying Peirce’s model of a sign to the future sign it has three dimensions: signal, issue and interpretation. In the future sign signals stand for the concrete form of a sign, the observation of the issue. The issue is the thing in itself and the interpretation is the sense made out of the issue’s possibilities for the future.

"I have visualized the future sign as a cube where signal, issue and
interpretation stand for various dimensions. The distance of the single
sign from the origin of the future sign cube tells the strength of the
sign.


"An example of that was a major story in the Helsingin Sanomat
(Finland’s main newspaper) about Hennes & Mauritz, the famous
fashion retailer, which started to sell old clothes (with the price of
new ones) under the “vintage” label. Only 1% of their shops were doing
that. So from the point of view of the future sign the amount of signal
(visibility of the signal) was huge (which makes it tempting to name
this a weak signal). But the reality (the issue: only 1% of H&M
shops did that) was small. To me the meaning of this for the future was
unclear: will this be a bigger trend? I don’t know. So assessing this
sign using the three dimensional future sign cube shows that the future
sign is actually rather weak - because two dimensions of it were weak.
The key point of future sign thinking is that sometimes there is great
media attention regarding some issue, while the issue itself never
becomes anything big. So be careful about hypes!"





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