Saturday, January 8, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Futuretronium Book 100.0 (The Revolution II)! By Andres Agostini at http://linkd.in/9wp7bP & http://bit.ly/hbCcL5 & http://bit.ly/foZGYz & http://bit.ly/dAmsCS & http://bit.ly/dgNeS3
Futuretronium Book 100.0 (The Revolution II)! By Andres Agostini, free of any obligations, at http://tiny.cc/piiem
Sunday, October 10, 2010
FUTURETRONIUM®
by Andres Agostini
Version 1.0
(This Proprietary Book may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes if it is copied in its entirety, including this notice. Please recall that “it is copied in its entirety, including this notice.”)
#1 FUTURETRONIUM®, AND THE ADMINISTRATION AND APPLICATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITHOUT INNUENDOS AND IN CRESCENDO AS FLUID POINTS OF INFLECTIONS ASCERTAIN THAT THE MORROW IS A THING OF THE PAST.
#2 FUTURETRONIUM®, SUBSEQUENTLY, THERE IS NOW AND HERE AVAILABLE THE UNABRIDGED, AUTHORITATIVE ELICITATION AND ELUCIDATION OF ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE FROM AND FOR THE INCESSANTLY ARRHYTHMIC, ABRUPT, ANTAGONISTIC, MORDANT, CAUSTIC, AND ANARCHISTIC FUTURE, AS WELL AS THE CONTENTIOUS INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUCH FUTURE AND THE PRESENT.
#3 FUTURETRONIUM®, A RADICAL YET RIGOROUS STRONG-SENSE AND CRITICO-CREATIVE «FUTURES THINKING» APPROACH TO QUINTESSENTIAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE COMPLEXITIES, SUBTLETIES, INTRICACIES, AND SUBLIMITIES, AS WELL AS THE OPPORTUNITIES TO BE EXPLOITED OUT OF THE DRIVING FORCES INSTILLING AND INFLICTING PERPETUAL CHANGE INTO TWENTIETH-ONE CENTURY .
By (c) Copyright 2010 by Andres Agostini — All Rights Reserved ―
What doesn’t get understood in this age becomes a major liability. To this end Henry Kissinger’s quotation is timely. Ensuing: “An ignored issue is an invitation to a problem.” [12]
Forget what you know and just believe in what you see and sense. It’s time for you to conceive, develop and institute your own Futures — exploiting the upsides and downsides of the surreptitiously covert ones — unless you will make yourself enslaved by circumstances beyond your control, regardless of your “powers.” Kindly please, if you’d like, make your choices wisely and by you and for yourself!
Who creates the future and who doesn’t?
Michael Anissimov: “One of the biggest flaws in the common conception of the future is that the future is something that happens to us, not something we create.” [142]
Interacting with the future?
Rainer Maria Rilke: “The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.” [142]
I can offer this perspective as of now (the wonderful continuum) and under my human and humane perspective. I do like a great deal science and technology, but only to the truest service of the global civilization. Given the ubiquitous dynamics tsunami, these days I find the term “continuum” beyond ineffectual.
Nonetheless, if you want to “reality check” these reflections, you will be able, soonest, to have every detailed explanation by, say, an omniscient robot hovering “midair” if you indefinitely postpone your homework and fail to do your own independent research, done for and by you (as of now).
Horses, dogs and robotic dominance of all?
Samuel Butler (1863 letter): “Who will be man’s successor? To which the answer is: We are ourselves creating our own successors. Man will become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man; the conclusion being that machines are, or are becoming, animate.” [142]
Go to any “snail paced” newspapers (online or old-fashioned “offline”) in a developing country and this you’ll find within the daily headlines: Fiction immensely superseded — through many orders of magnitudes (that is, by hyper-geometrical exponential rates) — by incontrovertible and yet the most dramatic realities.
People kind of see a part of the waves, but are famously infamously unaware that most pervasive currents underneath are the true dynamos of these swirling changed changes.
What is the current rate of change? What is the as-of-now rate of technological and scientific knowledge doubling?
Mark Miller, computer scientist: “You know, things are going to be really different … No, no, I mean really different.” [142]
What is it meant by “Future”? When speaking about “FUTURE” as the undersigned is speaking about change, there is included positive change and negative change (as well as the grave tradeoffs between [a] positive change and [b] negative change). However, the emphasis is to underpin the upside changes and to cripple the downside changes.
Why everything changes, beginning with change itself?
Nicola Tesla, 1896, Inventor of Alternative Current: “I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success.” [142]
There is here a point of view about change (as change is partly explored here):
Adam Gordon: “We have seen eye-popping developments across society, technology, institutions, and products and services in the last generation; this will surely continue into the future …. if we decide today to launch a product, buy a house, study for a degree, build a new light rail system, or take any similar decision of significance, the environment of tomorrow will be a key factor in the success or failure of that decision….Our decisions are only as good as the view of the future they rest on [profound understanding of all of the driving forces shaping and re-shaping the environment]. All opportunities and successes and profits are realized in the future. All threats, failures, and losses are in the future …. Either way, the earlier and clearer we see future circumstances, the better we will be able to benefit by changing our current recipes for success to keep up with the changes in the world. The better managers’ view of the future, the better their decisions will turn out to be ….” [102]
Why this changed change is unprecedented and different? San Francisco futurist James Canton offers insight.
“CIO Insight: In The Extreme Future, you say the 21st century is going to be lightning-fast, complex and driven by disruptive changes. But aren't we already in this extreme future? [RESPONDING THE QUESTION,] JAMES CANTON: WE ARE TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. BUT THE POINT OF MY BOOK IS THAT THINGS ARE GOING TO GET EVEN MORE DISRUPTIVE, COMPLEX AND COMPETITIVE; THINGS ARE NOT GOING TO EASE OFF, THEY'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO ACCELERATE.” [138]
What are the organic properties of change and its impact?
David Schlesinger, global managing director at Reuters, indicates: “Change is hard. Change is hardest on those caught by surprise. Change is hardest on those who have difficulty changing too. But change is natural; change is not new; change is important.” [139]
The universe and the morrow?
Isaac Asimov: “Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.” [141]
Is anyone exaggerating about the dynamics of change?
Ian Pearson: “By mid-century, computers will be linked directly into our nervous systems via nanotechnology, which is so small it could connect every neuron in our brains. By about 2040, there will be a backup of our brains in a computer somewhere, so that when you die it won’t be a major career problem.” [140]
Brainy discoveries and the IT revolution?
J. G. Taylor, B. Horowitz, K. J. Friston: “Now, for the first time, we are observing the brain at work in a global manner with such clarity that we should be able to discover the overall programs behind its magnificent powers.” [142]
What is the personal cosmology in the orbit of a person seeking foresight?
Antonio Machado: “Man, incurable futurist, is the only traditionalist animal.” [130]
Don’t win their “hearts,” just win their minds kindly and respectfully?
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “If you really want to make an operational difference in your professional theater of operations, go and get a full immersion in the fringe. Right in their, under that tense and pressing dynamics, you’ll have the vantage flux of the mirage.” [129]
I just wonder: Is it about Scientific Method or is it about Scientific Method Under The Tutelage of Applied Omniscience and With The Application of The Systems Methodology Approach? I designed, to this effect, the illustration viewable at http://bit.ly/d6d84w
The more scientific and technological knowledge doubling, the most indispensable becomes the grasping the applied omniscience notion in every execution for Life.
Before we proceed any further, please always remember the following.
“Everything is related to everything else.” [109]. When invoking “Everything is related to everything else,” it is succinctly to say (that is) by way of matter-of-fact example:
“Everything is interrelated to everything else.”
“Everything is connected to everything else.”
“Everything is interconnected to everything else.”
“Everything is intricate to everything else.”
“Everything is involved in everything else.”
“Everything is inter-associated to everything else.”
“Everything is interlocked to everything else.”
“Everything is inter-coupled to everything else.”
“Everything is inter-joined to everything else.”
“Everything is conjoint to everything else.”
“Everything is inter-tied to everything else.”
“Everything is interdependent to everything else.”
“Everything is correlated to everything else.”
“Everything is intertwined with everything else.”
“Everything is inter-meshed with everything else.”
“Everything is implicated in everything else.”
“Everything is entangled with everything else.”
“Everything is entwined with everything else.”
“Everything is tangled with everything else.”
“Everything is knotted with everything else.”
“Everything is interwoven into everything else.”
“Everything is engaged with everything else.”
“Everything is parenthetical to everything else.”
“Everything is related to everything else” does not make any sense at all for people who have chosen not to get educated and self-educated on indispensable basic science for Eternity.
Einstein has an appropriate thought to share: “... [the human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty...” [108]
CONTENTS
CONTENT BY THEME AND PAGE
CHAPTER 1 ─ NOTICE TO READERS ─ 10 ─ 14 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 1 ─ THE IMPERATIVE NOTE ─ 14 ─ 24 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 1 ─ OBJECTIVE ─ 24 ─ 64 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 1 ─ PROLOGUE ─ 64 ─ 99 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ THE CHALLENGE ─ 98 ─ 109 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ AN ACTUAL DIALOGUE OF DARWIN, KANT, NEWTON, GOETHE ─ 99 ─ 112 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ AN EPIC OMISSION(S)? ─ 113 ─ 115 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ THE PEER-TO-PEER MESSAGE AMONG IGNORAMUSES ─ 116 ─ 117 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ COMPLEXITY AND THE DEATH OF SIMPLICITY ─ 117 ─ 118 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ TO BE OR NOT TO BE IN EXECUTION? ─ 118 — 119 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION AND THE ABSENCE OF COHESIVE LANGUAGE? ─ 119 ─ 121 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ BONAPARTE’S PROPHECIES ON HURRICANE KATRINA’ AND GULF OF MEXICO’S ─ 132 ─ 134 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 2 ─ STRATEGOS INSTITUTE’S FOUNDER AND LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL’S PROFESSOR ON THE FUTURE ─ 125 ─ 128 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 3 ─ ROCKET SCIENCE ABOUT ACTUAL DISCIPLINED SUCCESS CAPTURING? ─ 128 ─ 131 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 3 ─ INTRODUCTORY QUOTATIONS – AND WITH COMMENTARIES – BY ENLIGHTENED MINDS! ─131 ─ 163 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 3 ─ THE FUTURE AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY AS PER RAY KURZWEIL, PH.D. ─ 165 ─ 167 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 3 ─ WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW? HOW MANY “NOWS” ARE THERE? ARE THOSE “NOWS” STILL RELEVANT? ─ 163 ─ 173 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 3 ─ METHOD FIRST, TECHNOLOGY SECOND! ─ 173 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 4 ─ DEEPENING OUR MULTIDIMENSIONAL APPROACH IN AND TO THIS BOOK! ─ 174 ─ 222 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 5 ─ RELEVANT COMMENTARIES TO CLARIFY HIDEOUS MISUNDERSTANDINGS (UNDER SYSTEMATIC COMMISSION) BY MAGNIFICENT PEOPLE ─ 222 ─ 251 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 5 ─ “ON PREDICTIONS” ─ 251 ─ 252 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ DEMYSTIFYING THE “REAL DEAL” IN PROFESSION, TECHNOLOGY, LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, STRATEGY, AND BUSINESS, AS WELL AS ─ OFFERING THE CLEAREST BLUEPRINT! ─ 251 ─ 255 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ QUESTION: WHAT DO RALPH WALDO EMERSON, JAMES D. WATSON, THOMAS JEFFERSON, THEODORE ROOSEVELT, WINSTON CHURCHILL, ARTHUR C. CLARKE, BERNARD D'ESPAGNAT, ALBERT EINSTEIN, CARL SAGAN, MALCOLM S. KNOWLES, BERTRAND RUSSELL, FRANCIS BACON, HENRY KISSINGER, OTTO HERMAN KHAN, BURRHUS FREDERIC SKINNER, AND ─ 255 ─ 264 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ CONCLUSION ─ 264 ─ 265 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ QUESTION: ARE WE ADRIFT IN A SEA OF CONFUSION? CAN THE UNDERSIGNED OFFER A REASONABLE PATHWAY? ─ 265 ─ 268 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ THE TOP TRENDS FOR 2010 BY SAN FRANCISCO FUTURIST DR. JAMES CANTON, PH.D. ─ 268 ─ 274 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ THE MESSAGE ─ 274 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 6 ─ ANSWERED QUESTIONS? ─ 274 ─ 275 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 7 ─ EPILOGUE ─ 275 ─ 280 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 7 ─ CAVEAT ─ 280 ─ 284 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 7 ─ “THE HOPE” ─ 284 ─ 285 PAG. (S)
CHAPTER 7 ─ HOW TO COPE WITH CENTURY TWENTIETH ONE! ─ 289 ─ 290
CHAPTER 7 ─ WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF THINKING THAT JOINTLY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY MUST BE EXERCISED TO FIRST GUESS THE FUTURE RIGHT IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM? ─ 291 ─ 304
CHAPTER 8 ─ REFLECTING ON THE EDUCATION WE IMMEDIATELY NEED ─ 305 ─ 316
CHAPTER 8 ─ APPENDIX OF DEFINITION OF APPLIED OMNISCIENCE ─ 316 ─ 322
CHAPTER 8 ─ THE MOST THOUGHTFUL STATEMENT BY ANY AMERICAN PRESIDENT TO DATE! ─ 322 ─ 323
CHAPTER 8 ─ NASA LEWIS RESEARCH CENTER, THE OHIO AEROSPACE INSTITUTE, THE VISION-21 SYMPOSIUM AND SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY ─ 323 ─ 345
CHAPTER 8 ─ “THE FUTURIST” MAGAZINE'S TOP-10 FORECASTS FOR 2010 AND BEYOND PLUS MORE THAN 250 FORECASTS ─ 345 ─ 451
CHAPTER 8 ─ GLOSSARY ─ 451 ─ 459
CHAPTER 9 ─ WHAT I’VE GIVEN YOU! ─ 459 ─ 460
CHAPTER 9 ─ ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ─ 460 ─ 473
CONTACT
CHAPTER 9 ─ ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SUGGESTED READING ─ 473 ─ 475
CHAPTER 9 ─ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ─ 475 ─ 488
CHAPTER 1
NOTICE TO READERS!
Some readers might find helpful to have “handy” an Oxford Dictionary, American Heritage Dictionary and even the Encyclopedia Britannica. There are explained entries such as: crinkum-crankum, criss-cross, terzetto, thé dansant, tertium quid, among others.
Can anyone remember the King’s sentence: “A person’s world is commensurate to the size his (her) own vocabulary.” By any measure, your technical and philosophical vocabulary most be multiplied by a thousand as you keep progressing it exponentially.
Since there has been a great deal of futile debate about the change, its rate and scale, the undersigned has approached the subject matter through narrative illustrations at times. I am indeed serious about understanding the dynamics and implications of change in this first decade of Twentieth-One Century and onward.
You'll certainly find everything in the Oxford Dictionary as I believe that you should successfully search for the same in the American Heritage Dictionary.
This book has mostly to do with all forms of change and the impact stemming from said impact. Topics related to science, technology, methodology, leadership, and management are all addressed.
Given the abrupt rise of change, this is also a management book about how to mitigate, modulate and terminate hazards and risks, thus capturing the “upsides” of every professional or organizational endeavor.
This book is multifaceted and generate insights and ideas so that the readers themselves can operate them from a mental framework and as per the perceptions of "real" and “virtual” realities. This is a book of many facets with many and ample nuances in each facet.
This book has many facets, from the beginning to the end bearing in mind that "everything is interrelated with everything else," since 2010 now ─ in subtle and dramatic ways ─ there are many more tangible things, as well as immeasurable ones, which are serious and smoothly interwoven with many other things in most fluid modes.
This multi-faceted approach scrutinizes a method from a systemic, systematic, holistic and comprehensive way ─ from the micro level through the maximum macro level.
This approach ascertains that this material will never be superficial. Both in the micro and macro levels, many dramatic and subtle interrelationships increasingly take place across the board.
One of this book's most important purpose is to communicate that what we call "change” also will continue to change and change without any previous precedence. It is also a book of management, leadership, risk management, technology, science and new ideas to meet the demands and challenges of a new century marked by his break with the past.
A change that gives leaps and bounds every week, while barely in the decade of the nineties, some of these changes were seen in five or ten year-term periods. It generates insights and ideas so that the readers themselves can operate from a mental framework as per their perceiving registering of the realities of "real" and virtual.
If, indeed, this is a book about change and for many driving forces that shape and reshape our lives. It is not, in any case, a material of prediction, divination, future-telling or gleaning through crystal balls.
While offering some "trends" and "predictions" ─ so called ─ by third parties, the central interest is the nowadays required critical, creative, thinking, with depth and breadth, with rigor and even with flexibility, as change (and their projected trends and predictions) is updated in real time.
And staying mindful where highly specialized knowledge is the consistent convergence of multiple specialties and sub-specialties practiced in a discipline that I call, define and implement as “applied omniscience.”
The aesthetics of this material you should leave under the watch of the tailor, shoemaker and saddler, according to your convenience. Believe it or not, the complexity that plays this material is already quite high. Any additional and un-recommended simplification runs only at the reader's expense insofar as to own added distortions. Some expenses equate to a life-to-death liability.
When I talk about serious complexities to be dealt with in practice and not via mental vacuous and futile abstractions, we must appeal to a multitude of tools, beginning with those of "Sciences of Complexity” (http://bit.ly/c14KAw).
This is not about a marketing,’ sales' gimmick. Neither about a little “white” lie or "public relations"-stunt generation situation. I am not seeking neither likability nor dis-likability. I am not seeking approving or dis-proving. I am seeking ultimate truths to instill to my own persona.
The author does not seek anything other than make notes for himself. This material is not in search of approval or acceptance, or popularity, or visibility, but the result of something the author has to do for someone other than himself.
Some "marketers" use the Web to give wide dissemination of these ideas, not for the sake of the good intentions of the subject addressed by me and me and my own me. For them this book is a "wild-card" to honor his sometimes ─ and in some cases ─ impious, over-leveraged "profession."
I've offered myself as I usually do is always a golden guarantee. The first golden warranty is to apply the maximum rigor, using all my practical and empirical experience and theoretical. Independently of the challenging topics, the second golden guarantee myself allows me to offer a high degree of accuracy, covering every nuance possible.
There are five trends in management and business today. One is to keep talking about the "leader" and "leadership." Many authors and readers believe that the word "manager" is a pejorative term that equates to "stale bureaucrat." The other fashion is the "master minds" and the search and implementation of the "science of success."
You will not find the latter among readers "Industrial Engineers," who understand plans, road-maps, blueprints, etc. So as to execute (do) as planned and what was learned during the planning time. It is stupid to think that "leadership" is separable from the "management."
Another trend, in addition, is to insist that the "leader" and "manager" must have "soft skills" and "emotional intelligence” attributes as most important. There are many more important attributes starting with the creativity and analytical capacity. All they need is systematic: universal prudence and tact with integrity.
Had Bonaparte told them to stop fighting the stupidity against science and mathematics, What would have them become? Leader so badly was Bonaparte who put the whole of Europe and Russia under his feet through energetic knowledge.
Not paradoxically, Bonaparte much stresses the importance of three disciplines: (a) English, (b) Science, and (b) Mathematics.
Another trend, more than one thousand years, is to repeat a million times ─ especially via the Web ─ a ton of lies assisted with bits of relative truths. And all this creates a celestial robe of the sacred to followers to pack and find some kind of movement for the sake of who is at the apex of the pyramids.
On the authors I like are the fundamentals that explain the opposite aspects or the ignored ones by me. I like complex writers because the authors encourage me to exercise mind expansion, as I try to understand their positions. Clearly, everyone is free to read either simpletons or Nobel Laureates.
There are many, many people who consider themselves the "Alpha and Omega" of a professional practice. And they say they do not like formal education and universities. They do not like having to read new books (except the authors SURVEY confirm their system of values and beliefs). Less they like studying academic textbooks.
Not knowing either "A" (Alpha), or the "B" (Beta), these individuals insist they want to conquer, forever, the "Z" (Omega). They want big profits quickly without even understanding who is Mr. Peter Drucker or, say, Frederick Winslow Taylor. You can solve some personal problems with "How-To" books. But for larger issues of profession, there are oceans of expensive literature that takes years to assimilate.
Who supports you likes to know thoroughly the problems (in my case, those of my clients and mine) and then understanding the magnitude and the scale and begin to work earnestly in the solution of such problems, regardless of how simple or complicated of the solution.
We are all important. Everyone is valuable. Each one is unique. Everyone has attributes, skills, dexterities and talents. All deserve, if they so wish, to realize the maximum of their minds for the good of themselves and of humanity.
I wrote this book to please myself. I'm not looking to please or displease anybody except my own person.
What can we get in return?
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “There are great hazards by Nature. There are also great hazards that are man-made. The majority of these ones impacts Nature itself. Through science, technology and management (all chapters), the practitioner can transform downsides and upsides in greater benefits, regardless if hazards are presented by Nature or humans. A seemingly 'good safe execution' can become easily compound into a greater perilous situation. A lack of 'optimum safe execution' can become easily compound into a greater perilous situation. A seemingly 'sub-optimum safe execution' can become easily compound into a greater perilous situation. These hazards can be sustainably transformed into benefits through the perennial application of the maximum within the optimum of thoroughly comprehensive risk management.” [129]
When does a RISK ─ as well as uncontrolled form of downside change ─ stop being a risk?
When one of these conditions takes place:
(a) When it is managed optimally, or
(b) When it unleashes a LOSS or POTENTIAL DISRUPTION crystallized
The term “applied omniscience” is here defined as it used by the undersigned. It’s useful to recall and bear in mind that “omniscience” is widely used in all sorts of publications (as well as in their operational settings) and endeavors by scholars, academics, scientists and Nobel Laureates. As a person of learning most sophisticated literature is instrumental to this author.
The definition of the omniscience perspective can be revised at <<>> as well. You can also read it within the present material.
By the way, many people erroneously think of computers whenever they hear the word “system.”
To the readers I have a word of caution. The present material addresses increasing complexities without complex, not seeking to be offensive to any mind, but engaged in a dogged search to shedding and hijacking understanding and marsh-able grasp of ever-daring problems.
To attain the succinctly stated before, I will not shortcut the language. I will use the language that I considered appropriate not to make “extremely accommodating” to some other audiences, since this is a technical material and not a necessary “sitcom” for some other time. Though I great appreciate Churchillian humor.
Since to a great extent the majority of my activities are related to life-to-death risk management, I am used to be thorough and use most unambiguous language not because “one” might die, but even three-thousand people can die because of an act of negligence.
Professional futurology with the utmost rigor allows you see “disruption potential” scenarios in advance both to learn, plan, prepare, and execute.
The growth of our society’s benefits and risks are beyond hyper-geometrical, and — that is to say — exponentially non-linear and could care less about disrupting any fossilized bond with the preterit “PAST.” Subsequently, not in second nature but in quintessential first nature, I don’t know how to discern, industry and pondering without incredible nuance (“incredible” as per other prominent colleagues).
Can one make technological growth for good?
Gordon E. Moore: “No exponential is forever … but we can delay ‘forever’…” [142]
Give one an “else’s” hint to peripheral thinking!
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “De-realize of thus de-focus from that taken-for-granted realities of folly, literally!” [129]
However, if you bear with this work (not with the undersigned), you’ll see the sequential logic. Clearly, there is an affluent interplay of sequential logics with most diverse tempos, timings, life cycles. All of the prior requires of the most rigorous, with tons of vigor, of systemic, systematic, holistic, gestalt, womb-to-tomb thinking. This is so if we wish to make a diagnostic with the right prescription for solving in parallel a plethora of complicated problems.
Unreal impregnability in your operative context?
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “Mostly in-source your mind with long-unknown virtualities.” [129]
I forewarn the reader that there is here a large magnitude of diverse issues addressed. If the reader is really engaged, she and he shall find the linkage among these many matters of interest. I am sorry to say that, seeking well, there are no disconnects. “Everything is related to everything else.”
If the reader finds terminology inconvenient, the undersigned suggests for her or him to decide whether to go forward with reading or not.
I hope I have given both you and myself some way of thinking and perceiving how thought is brought into action and execution.
Unless otherwise utterly indicated, translations are performed by the undersigned.
CHAPTER 1
THE IMPERATIVE NOTA BENE
Through this work, terms widely used such as “knowledge,” “science,” and “learning” — among others directly or indirectly inferring and/or connoting knowledge acquisition — are solely considered only in regards to practical application and ample execution.
Every reflecting or pondering, in my case, must be conducive to smarter actions. Smarter executions require much more wisdom. And wisdom is nothing else than organized knowledge.
Ergo, lack of knowledge and ignorance will bring about the opposite to smart executions, but in fact emphasize disharmony, imprudence and peace disruption. IN NO WAY THIS A BATTLEFIELD CONTEXT!
To keep focus in order I will be reminding me and you that the breadth and scale of the present work is, to say the least, multidisciplinary and cross-functional, seeking the fluid image of the interactive, intrepid whole with lucidity.
I will be reminding you that “everything is related to everything else,” including in the present material you’re now reading. In order to understand well a scientist, a technologist, a leader, a manager, an entrepreneur in the Twentieth-One Century , you will always need to understand the connections that are apparent and above all those that are systemically ignored.
In our case and because of the level of technological and scientific progression — and also due to some challenges brought about by Nature —, there is a difficult exercise to be learned immediately and easily: We cannot keep on using the “linear” intuitiveness of those in love with folly.
Ipso facto, we must only use in conjunction: Non-linear intuitiveness and non-linear counter-intuitiveness. If this is not followed through to the last consequences and ultimate exhale, in vain everything would have been thrown in a futility sack while letting open a multitude of Pandora boxes.
You cannot be, by example, the “leader” of a high-tech company in genomic or artificial intelligence and “get by” successfully just by having tons of people’s skills. YES, YOU WILL NEED THOSE BUT YOU WILL ALSO NEED THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTALS IN PLACE FIRST. FIRST THINGS, FIRST!
Like it or not, the world is ruthlessly governed by applied mathematics and will become even more so as time elapses without a fail.
The clever problem-solving pathway?
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky: “Our sole responsibility is to produce something smarter than we are; any problems beyond that are not ours to solve .. [T]here are not hard problems, only problems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence. Move the bit upwards [in level of intelligence], and some problems will suddenly move from ‘impossible’ to ‘obvious.’ Move a substantial degree upwards, and all of them will become obvious.” [142]
And even if your business enterprise is “low tech,” sooner or later you will be influenced — beyond belief — under the competition of a high-tech rival. It doesn’t matter what you do for business, profession or organizations (including NGO and supranational entities), you must have a depth understanding of the driving forces that are shaping and re-shaping it all perpetually.
Therefore, and “everything is related to everything else,” through this work the reader will need to connect the dotted links (as well as interface a plethora of contexts) between one paragraph and another, between one section and another, between one notion and another. If you ultimately do, you’ll have an immense vantage position of knowledge, awareness, and understanding.
It doesn’t matter at all the order or the priority of the concurrent advent of factors (such as systemic risks, global climate crisis, global economic and financial crisis, new demographics, new challenges, new opportunities, great hurdles yet large opportunities to be conquered), the beginning of the Third Millennium (as of the first decade of said Millennium) is a NEW PLACE AND HENCE YOU CANNOT GET TO A NEW PLACE WITH AN OLD MAP. The “place” — here alluded metaphorically — is changing dramatically and with subtlety in “real time” in a 24/7/365 framework.
Given the fact that an old map is an ugly device to glitch your success, What sort of wisdom we must embrace? Let’s see. Solomon: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” [130]
In speaking of sense of direction, Frank Kafka argues: “There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost.” [126]
For example, with the aim to illustrate and facilitate general understanding, we can say that bad technological change and good technological change are now stressing commonalities. In line with this premise, yet again the same “GOOD” technological change — in order to give an example — could “help” you transfer new hazards and risks into the work environment and markets (as well as industries), very much to your own detrimental.
Again, it does no matter AT ALL if your company or enterprise is acutely low-tech or not, since your “surroundings” are only into HIGH-TECH, literally (sic).
Imagine you're an architect and you use pencils to draw some preliminary sketches. And someone says that such an accomplished architect is creative, innovative, and proactive in seeking innovative solutions.
Can we get a hindsight in reversal please, now?
Walter Adolf Gropius (1883 – 1969): “Let’s wish, let’s imagine, let’s build together the new construction of the future.” [130]
But this architect has never understood the great complexity that exists underlying the major manufacturing processes of, say, a single pencil, noting that the “pencil” in question is the tool that helps you realize your ideas in more specific and tangible way.
It is clear now that the architect has (by his own cognizant desire of his own self) graciously and effectively accessed to an entrenched “blind spot” in the operation of his mind and said mind’s stemming processes to achieve the crystallization of the targeted discerned innovation.
In other words, everything is always connected to everything else in a level, as indicated and termed by scientists and technologists, "discreet." In the mean times, authors and consultants tell their folks: “Connect everything with everything else [even further so and in more obvious modes ad infinitum].” [109]
Additionally, now — in this age of huge demands and challenges — you have to have two, three or four professional specialized expertise.
You can even be a great sub-specialist. But you don’t get it yet (seemingly) that the accomplishments are along the lines of: “Expert generalists.”
In addition, these times of great and fluid changes require that the problems and challenges are looked through most rigorous holistic thinking, seeing and operating AHEAD the executions of the broader perspective within all cross-functional insight-fullness.
It doesn’t matter if you have a kiosk selling newspapers, magazines, industry newsletters and even self-help books. Yes, yes, yes, you can insist that the core activity of your business is ridiculously simple and easy, yet lucrative (that is, sustainably lucrative).
By stating the above notwithstanding, you are wrongly assuming that everything that surrounds your business (fiscal, tax environment, competition environment, emerging technology environment, legal and regulatory environment) is fixed, very simple and will never change not even one iota.
Accordingly, the artisan has to learn from classical physicists. The musician must learn from neuroscientists. The biologist will have to learn quantum mechanics. The expert in information technologies will also have to learn from psychologists.
The seller will have to learn finance and manufacturing processes. The rocket scientist must learn of social systems (including entomology). The sociologist will have to learn of applied mathematics and the “trade” of "optical physics."
Success via being well-informed and even-though information is not knowledge?
Peter L. Bernstein: “The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.” [127]
The undersigned and the present material’s author argue in motivation as per the food for thought by Bernstein: “Good point, Mr. Bernstein, I agree and like to offer my view. There is the information that only each one has. Then there is the information that one of us with someone else can jointly have and generate. Subsequently, the smarter, the wiser and more seasoned the incumbency — with laser-beam eyes grabbing futures based on most ample historic perspective and comprehensive, revisionist, applied notions, the much better. Then what you mention on 'The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay' may not come to us inexpensively, but once the drastic and dramatic Artificial Intelligence 'sets in' it will happen several things: (a) the information will become always irrelevant and obsolete by zillion orders of magnitude, (b) even if existed, said information would be useless, and (c ) the information in question will become under the ultimately roguish control of something along the lines of a robo-Sapiens.” [129]
The university professor will have to learn from the kindergarten students. The medical doctor will have to learn from the nurses and paramedics. The nurse will have to learn something from the engineers.
The leader will have to learn from bad managers and the good managers alike. There is no sweeter honey than learning from someone else’s professional mistakes, so that YOU LEARN!
The journalist will have to learn from the chemists. The artist has to learn exact sciences. The scientist would have to learn fine art.
And by the way, the reading of any material is an intellectual exercise and a mindful choice of and by your own self. Everything in it is a rigorous intellectual exercise if you want to keep your own seriousness on to yourself.
If you are reading and studying this material, it is because you are searching for ideas, solutions or perspectives from other people.
Here there are no sub-themes or topics unrelated or not unambiguously related to the entirety of the WHOLE.
Anyone reading this material, if he / she felt that there are discomforting gaps between each other sub-themes, is failing to link the subtleties of certain items. If you feel that some points are unrelated, it is only up to you to establish the appropriate links and ultimate conclusion.
Remember that it is only you to whom belongs the “ownership” of drawing lessons and conclusions from this material. This material, in any case, is not intended to be nice or simplistic, as it addresses the many serious complications that surround all aspects of our lives to a considerable degree.
This material utterly aims to raise awareness and not pleasing any soul. Certainly, this book does not seek to argue, especially so when going to the true roots of some problems that we face. We face complex problems to SOLVE THEM and to carry on with the UPSIDES of our personal lives.
The undersigned, to a simple (or compound) literary term or unknown in our Shakespearean lingua franca, uses a dictionary or encyclopedia. Tell me, Do you know of a serious and disciplined reader who does not require dictionaries in the face of Earth?
I reiterate, therefore, and since everything is interconnected with everything else, that the undersigned is not interested in giving a tiny peek at a "corner" of the problem, but a broad and detailed one (that, by the way, flows), assessing and describing all the infinite nuances involved.
In any case, the world today (termed by some as the global "Knowledge Society") requires, at all times, the most careful and thoughtful reading and researching on a huge scale, as its fluidity and speed are increasingly more volatile and less predictable.
Just to understand where each of us is located (work-wise, professionally, organizationally, in industry and to and before society), we have to do — in my opinion — a huge and sustained effort to try to identify and exploit the enormous driving forces that shape our lives.
The undersigned also wants to make it abundantly clear that there is NOT a quest to spread "bad news" or to consummate himself as a fatalist’s portrait.
The undersigned is not, as a result, either an "optimistic" or "pessimistic," but rather a rational realistic that becomes a little hopeful when he begins to understand and work against the challenges and in favor of the slits filtering and shedding illustrated light to create new opportunities in the midst of mayhem.
On television when someone does not like a show he switches to another channel. On the Web when somebody does not like a Web page, she changes to another. If you feel that your human nature is uncomfortable with the reading of this material, you can always just get another reading material please.
The undersigned offers reliability, professionalism, a technical quality and analytical rigor. I have written this material to better understand my own: thoughts, discoveries, and takes. And thus the objective is to be useful, fruitful, productive and profitable to and within my clients, partners and my own person.
The classic Greeks believed that all problems of mankind are due to ignorance and can only be corrected with education for life. The undersigned fully and incontrovertibly agrees and supports the motion of the ancient Greeks.
Just to be on the “safe side,” my own Intellectual Manifesto is viewable at http://bit.ly/aBayq4
These extreme dynamics are presented here with knowledge, awareness and expecting to bring about understanding of such multitude of counter-intuitiveness contexts.
I have added an illustration at this permalink: http://bit.ly/Understanding_Dynamics
CHAPTER 1
OBJECTIVE
In this book I have tried to give you a practical overview of massive change besieging our institutions, professions, lives and civilizations globally, as well as our personas, and how it can be taken advantage of. Regardless of how thorough I have been, this written work is never a substitute for your own personal and professional research, discernment, pondering and conclusions.
In the process, and remembering that “everything is related to everything else,” [109] the undersigned will address subject matters that seem in deep disconnect. There are jillion assumptions, notions, beliefs, ─ as well as “truisms” (so-called) and grave misconceptions and fallacies ─ that are working extraordinarily in precluding a better understanding of the world we now live in.
I will focus on rigor with vigor since superficiality has been taken to unprecedented prominence for our collective disgrace. By means of an example, in China people say: “Don't look at the waves; just look at the currents underneath.” [129] I haven't found a more sensible wisdom to address the matters here under discussion.
In speaking of Chinese spiritual leaders in times of antiquity, a sage told his disciples, “Attempt not to live in difficult times; those are the interesting ones indeed.” [129]
Our generations, and that preceding ones to ours, have chosen to live in difficult times, Have they not? Either you face realities or find the “means” to avoid it and seize the good consequences out of the downsides.
In China of antiquity there used to be some wise words — as per the spiritual leaders — along these lines: “The first fifty years are to learn. The next fifty years are to labor.” [129]
In July 2010 a top corporate petroleum expert — speaking of imprudence as it was instilled in the Gulf of Mexico and as it is addressed here — said to news media that his chairman was not a “perfect English-speaking person!” What did he mean? Did he mean that London is not sufficiently related to the Globe Theater?
Did he mean to say that his boss was not Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, or Dickens? In fearing consummated liabilities are bared on one’s shoulders, Does one begin to arbitrarily tinker the sacrosanct science of semantics? And “what if” the undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “To tinker a splendorous apparatus only that is required is to be a Homo Sapiens Sapiens, regardless of gender.”
Incidentally, there are lots of lost talks, indoctrination, and teaching “leadership” so-called by all of the wrong and right people making insidious, spectacular mistakes.
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “Declare the past, recover yesterday, analyze the present, enjoy today, and conceive and reinvent tomorrow.” [129]
There is not a single robust teamwork if there isn’t plentiful of cohesive bonding — regarding the sense of purpose and aiming highest to conquering goals, objectives and outcomes — if there is no optimum and executable states and flowing, yet integrated states of esprit de corps.
How are updsides and downsides traded-off? See the illustration at http://slidesha.re/bqm8Ja
Before teaming up into great alignment of purpose, spirit of unity and sense of urgency though, get an extraordinary yet actionable teaming arrangement getting every neuron-cell and every neuron and every synaptic connection to board the vessel impersonated by your own mind and as per your own brain monolithically. In other words, if you can’t get you mental act together, your execution act will be a mess and even mayhem.
What about how we construe our thinking? Let’s see Ambrose Bierce’s take on it: “[Brain is,] an apparatus with which we think that we think.” [130]
I will be referring about leadership frequently since there has never been a more opaque time to have abundant lack of leadership. Secondly, people believe that have the leadership traits are only about the “software” (using Jack Welch’s parlance) and not to be fully immersed into actionable, practical science.
The two most important pillars to leadership in my view are (a) Moral and ethical values, and (b) Possession of a vast body of applied science. For instance, I am not interested about speaking of leadership if oriented by “themes” such as “Emotional Intelligence,” “Political Correctness,” and, say, “Ontological Coaching.” Check out the truest futurist ensuing!
R. Buckminster Fuller: “If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.” [111]
When one has been a manager for global corporations with intensive consumptions of knowledge-based capital, anyone will realize that is folly to speak about said leadership lacking the two pillars I mentioned above.
We will here be needing perennial “extreme make-overs” in the modes we exercise the mind to capture maximum optimums.
Since I will be using metaphors, I wish to establish a clear definition of this lexicon. Metaphors are defined by the American Heritage dictionary as: “…A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison…”
I will use metaphors often in this textbook though, in the final analysis, the entirety of this material will be subjected to great rigor. Speaking of the immense variations of change requires addressing that subject through many angles.
As I quote the exact words (at least that I expect) of a multitude of authors, thinkers, and intellectuals and other people of learning (also trying to offer professional information on the third-person given individual), I quote — in first person — my own words and hence state my own opinions, reflections, ideas, and pondering. Otherwise, the say of each one would only be attributable at all to a specific person.
All quotations not otherwise cited are from the interviews conducted by the author or personal communications, as they were sent to the author.
I am not sure, but I believe it was Archimedes the first notorious brain to use graphics. I use eloquent and reflective quotations extensively as if they were pictorials, graphics, illustrations of some other sort, so that I make the maximum appeal into pervasive meditation on the part of the present reader.
I’m trying to get you to discern tangentially in the mean time as you do your discernment and pondering the way you like.
Recalling that this material is about the impact and the points of inflections fostered by many modes of change and to the utter end of spoken-of change, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid make the following claim: “Technological and social systems shape each other … technologies — such as gunpowder, the printing press, the railroad, the telegraph and the Internet — can shape society in profound ways. But on the other hand, social systems — in the form of governments, the courts and informal organizations, social movements, professional networks, local communities, market institutions and so forth — shape, moderate and redirect the raw power of technologies.” [56]
For this rate of change, What else are you going to need?
George Horace Lorimer (attributed to): “You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
As your work through the following pages and if the reader is under a pervasive search of his and her sovereign own (a miracle with its own merits and by itself), remember that you are on a journey that will take time, commitment, study, research, discipline and perennial self-reflection, and self-pondering. Then you’ll need to execute smartly and in a sustaining smartness and cleverness through the most acid tests of times.
Mind, Evolution and Universe?
As Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson put it: “Mind, through the long course of biological evolution, has established itself a moving force in our little corner of the universe. Here on this small planet, mind has infiltrated matter and has taken control. It appears to me the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature.” [86]
Evolution and change?
Carl Sagan: “Two billion years ago, our ancestors were microbes; a half-billion years ago, fish; a hundred million years ago, something like mice; ten million years ago, arboreal apes; and a million years ago, proto-humans puzzling the taming of fire. Our evolutionary lineage is marked by mastery of change. IN OUR TIME, THE PACE IS QUICKENING.” [142]
Machines and humans playing the mice-cats hunting game?
Rodney Brooks: “Our machines will become much more like us, and we will become much more like our machines.” [142]
Was the Universe's birth a matter of “fancy” luck? Indeed! Top-notch American scientists (of eminence) have lavishly proven that “luck” — so-called — does not exist. I am not afraid to be on that boat only!
Henry Poncaire: “For him [Camile Flammarion] time would have changed sign [from positive to negative]. History would be turned about, Waterloo would precede Austerlitz … All would seem to him to come out of a sort of chaos in unstable equilibrium. All nature would appear to him delivered over to chance.” [127]
Opportune is, subsequently, to remember Einstein’s words, “There is nothing more practical than theory.” [111]
If it is going to take time and without desiring to discouraging you, I must unambiguously state that there is no room here, now, there or then for easy “magic solutions.” It is too vast a task for me to encourage or discourage anyone. Nonetheless, getting to work through applied omniscience <<>> will render grounded hopes. The more the smart working, the more the grounded hopes.
Which “magic solutions” are those indeed? People seeking immediate and easy solutions without (a) the depth of knowledge and (b) resources are set out to a major self-frustration and disappointment. And they will get these major self-frustrations and self-disappointments without a fail and in an ever-increasing rate of growth until they understand the following: “You cannot get to a new place with an old map.” [28] To conceive a new map is no minutia effort. In fact, it’s an immense and immensely sustained effort.
Lacking to meet or factually meeting raw realities, as well as elucidating the findings, is a personal journey to the innermost core of each one. You can do something or you can do nothing. This is how democracy operates. Each one has its bearings. Take the pick.
To keep my conscientious awareness heightened and never to raise the wrong expectation, my own Intellectual Manifesto is viewable at http://bit.ly/aBayq4
Allow me now to add another interesting perspective as you will be finding habitually through this textbook. In his book “The New Ruthless Economy: World and Power in the Digital Age,” (publisher in March 2005), Simon Head (high-ranking member of the Rothermere American Institute of Oxford) indicates:
“Since 1995, the year in which the new economy based on information technology began to boom, the revenues have not been proportional to productivity and, during the last five years, the gap between income and productivity has been dramatic. Between 1995 and 2006 the productivity growth per employee superseded employees’ actual wages in 340%. Between 2001 and 2006, the first six years of George H. Bush’s presidency, this gap further deepened in an alarming 779%.” [58]
Perpetual novelty — a function of dramatic changed change under a multitude of fluxes of convergence — appears entirely, increasingly unleashed from precedent when analyzed from the longest and amplest historic perspective (pursued by an exact-science practitioner), thus creatively disrupting (dragging the FUTURE into this as-of-now PRESENT) through a chain of past-time successions.
The links between historic successions and other preterit sequences and sub-sequences not only are “broken” and most lucid forced against fuzzy-logic discernment and counter-intuitiveness (that of my beloved, yet-in-its-infancy quantum mechanics), but also beginning to get unrelated to the essence, the substance, the depth and scope and tempo, as well as to the veritable and relevant facts.
What precludes you from being lucid as per Twentieth-One Century ?
Arthur Scopenhaur: “Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.” [142]
Fuzzy-logic discernment and counter-intuitiveness must take into consideration many pathways among many others, including those by Buddhism.
For instance, Kalu Rinpoche establishes: “We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When we understand this, we see that we are nothing. And being nothing, we are everything. That is all.” [68]
What is dynamical and what is permanent indeed?
Heraclitus — Greek Philosopher (c.540 — c. 480 BC): “No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same men.” [105]
More Buddhist wisdom to gain some perspective about Fuzzy-logic discernment and counter-intuitiveness: “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.” [71]
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “I like those predictions (whose driving forces I have elicited) that run counter to 'conventional wisdom' — so-called —, but which ultimately turned out to be true in practice.” [129]
And a westerner’s view on wisdom. Theodore Roosevelt: “Nine-tenths of our wisdom consists in being wise timely.” [119]
Reality, Mind and Buddhism by a Westerner’s View!
A citation on Gary Hamel’s Leading The Revolution book: “Alan Kay tells a wonderful little story about how he came to recognize this deep truth: On the third day of a conference at a Buddhist center, I asked people why they put their palms together several times a day. The Buddhists believe that the world is an illusion, but we have to go along with the illusion for efficiency reasons. When they put their hands together it is a semicolon, an acknowledgment that whatever they may think is going on right now is largely a fabrication of their own mind.” [88]
Spreading out into the near-by downtown’s suburbs, chiefly the ones at thousand miles of the skirts to “central city”!
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “Tantalize your tangential pre-cognition and cognition into ever-metamorphosing your attentive and contemplative trans-meditation Zen.” [129]
World and vision?
“When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision That which doesn’t exist doesn’t exist in relation to that which exists. This is true vision. By means of such vision nothing is seen and nothing is not seen …. The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises when they meet. When your mind doesn’t stir inside, the world doesn’t arise outside. When the world and mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.” By Bodhidharma, Indian Zen Buddhist monk who brought Zen from India to China (circa 520 A.D.) [89]
Courage and success by the prominent British premier.
Winston Churchill: “Courage is the capacity to go from failure to failure with increased enthusiasm!” [111] If we really wish to make a substantial difference, we’re going to need this personal cosmological trait lavishly I am not afraid to assert.
Succeeding in reversal?
Piet Hein: “The road to wisdom? Well, it’s plain and simple to express. Err and err and err again but less and less and less.” [89]
A distant past and also a distant future, right here?
Edward Fredkin (born 1934): “A third implication of the concept is that because the vast preponderance of the lifetime of the universe lies in the distant future rather than in the past, the historical achievements of life and mind are meager foreshadowings of the starring role that intelligent life is likely to play in shaping the future of the cosmos. Indeed, this new way of looking at the intimate linkage of life, mind, and the cosmos suggests a novel way of thinking about the ultimate destiny of our destiny of our universe.” [86]
How does a psychologist conceive the past-present-future interrelationship?
Dr. Philip Zimbardo, PhD: “Consider any decision you had to make recently: Do I keep working or go out to play; take one more drink before driving home; take a chance and cheat on my taxes or an exam; practice safe sex or just do it; resistor give into temptation? As you contemplate what you will do, you are influenced by a number of factors. For some people, the world is limited to all the forces they perceive in their immediately present situation, their biological urges, their social setting and that which others are doing or urging them to do, and the sensuous appeal of the stimulus itself. Those folks who usually limit their decision-making be referring only to the current circumstances are Present-oriented. Other people making a decision in the same setting downplay the present and search their memories for similar past situations; they recall what they did in the past and how these decisions turned out. These folks are Past-oriented. Finally, a third type of person makes up her or his mind entirely based on imagined future consequences — the costs and benefits — of an action. If anticipated costs outweigh anticipated benefits or gains, they won’t go forward. They only go forward when they expect gains to predominance… The ideal time profile is a balance of being high on the past-positive, moderately high on the present-hedonistic and future, and low on the past-negative and present-fatalistic times perspectives …. In other words, conscientious people regularly think about future consequences before making a decision … I believe present transcendence and future hopefulness are essential components of a successful therapeutic intervention …. Our goal is to help you reclaim yesterday, enjoy today, and master tomorrow. To do so, we’ll give you new ways of seeing and working with your past, present, and future …” [105]
DNA, complexity and digital information system?
Edward Fredkin (bio at http://bit.ly/bMVDlb) described his theory in an interview with science writer Robert Wright: “What I’m saying is that at the most basic level of complexity an information process runs what we think of as physics. At the much higher level of complexity life, DNA — you know, the biochemical functions — are controlled by a digital information system. Then, at another level, our thought processes are basically information processing.” [86]
Universe with a purpose?
Robert Wright (bio at http://bit.ly/azFvZG), in response to Fredkin, puts it: “Fredkin believes that the universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem. It sounds like a good news/bad joke: the good news is that our lives have purpose; the bad news is that their purpose is to help some remote hacker pi to nine jillion decimal places.” [86]
The artificial man?
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (bio at http://bit.ly/5vaI4) offered an uncanny preview of the science of artificial intelligence in his masterpiece Leviathan [description viewable at http://bit.ly/16Qymw] published in 1651: “Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governs the World) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in the principal part within; why we not say that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?” [86]
David Jay Brown asked a medic “What is your perspective on the concept of God and how spirituality played a role in your view of medicine?” Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D. responded: “…if everything is God, Goddess, Spirit — whether you want to call it — it’s all one. It’s all connected, and that means that all that’s going on is God looking at God’s self. So it’s all simply different perspectives, and that’s a fascinating thing. That means nobody is cut off from God, whether they are atheists or whatever. You don’t have to believe in God for Spirit to love you and be present, so it means that nobody is right and nobody is wrong. It’s all simply different perspectives, which is very freeing, because you don’t have to battle anybody. You just have to do your own thing …. This also allows us to recognize our own connection to spirit, which is very healing, because it allows that energy to flow into us, and allows us to stay whole and connected. So that’s a very powerful thing. I mean, my whole life is about Spirit and about God, or Goddess. To think of God as only a man sounds like an insult to God. It’s pretty limiting because God is everything. It also means that nothing and no one is better or worse than anybody else. And there’s this critical thing that happens, because that’s the touchstone through much of my life — to recognize I am equal of all beings, and no one is lesser than me. That means there’s nobody that I meet that’s better than I am, or that I’m better than them. We’re all different perspectives of God. We’re all equal, and we’re all divine, everybody.” [107]
Who exercises the self’s innermost core is that one into the “group thinking” dudes? Indeed?
Jewish scholar and Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, than what am I? And if not now, when?” [129]
Taking care of oneself to make the difference?
Descartes: “I think therefore I am.” [142]
Which one is the “one,” really?
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “I’m not one, but just my own one-and-only one, which is within the ‘I’ of the present one. Not being the solely one or otherwise, it is prudent to assert that every ’ONE’ is beyond crucial, is she or he not? In my case and at any rate, I am not a consultancy adviser, but an omniscience-driven think-tank consultant and manger.” [129]
You become, say, in what? But are you become already?
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “If I’m not ‘I,’ Who am I? Am I the breathing ‘I’? Am I the walking ‘I’? Am I what gets eaten by ‘I’? Am I what gets thought by ‘I’? Am I what gets written by ‘I’? Am I what gets studied by ‘I’? Am I what gets researched by ‘I’? Am I what gets the stalemate air that is precluded by and into the ‘I’? Am I what gets seen by ‘I’? Am I what gets thought by ‘I’? Am I what gets gleaned by ‘I’? My ‘I’ is at immense rest since it knows its own ‘I’ in excelsis!” [129]
Space, evolution and universe?
Cosmologist Frank Tipler (bio at http://bit.ly/cmsdLs) has bluntly stated: “Almost all of space and time lies in the future. By focusing attention only on the past and present, science has ignored almost all of reality, it is about time science decided to study the future evolution of the universe.” [86]
History and approaching a singularity?
Information theorist John von Nuemann (bio at http://bit.ly/2zfuto) in the 1950s: “The ever accelerating progress of technology … gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we known them, could not continue.” [86]
Locating the Singularity’s domicile?
Michael Anissimov: “When the first transhuman intelligence is created and launches itself into recursive self-improvement, a fundamental discontinuity is likely to occur, the likes of which I can’t even begin to predict.” [142]
What should we find out — with maximum rigor — in history?
William Churchill: “The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.” [104]
The geometrically non-linear human progress!
Ray Kurzweil (bio at http://bit.ly/MIMkN), in understanding the future of evolution, indicates: “Von Neumann makes two important observations here: acceleration and singularity. The first idea is that human progress is exponential … rather than linear …. The second is that exponential growth is seductive, starting out slowly and virtually unnoticeably, but beyond the knee of the curve it turns explosive and profoundly transformative. The intelligence that will emerge [post-Singularity] will continue to represent the human civilization. In other words, future machines will be human, even if they are not biological. This will be the next step in evolution, the next high-level paradigm shift …. Most of the intelligence of our civilization will ultimately be nonbiological. By the end of this century, it will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than [un-enhanced] human intelligence.” [86]
Cambrian explosion and the future?
James N. Gardner: “It should never be clear that the future will differ radically from the past; it will be at least different as the radically new world of biological complexity and diversity ushered in the Cambrian Explosion was from the preceding era …. The central point is that collateral advances in sciences seemingly far removed from cosmology can help dissipate the intellectual limitations imposed by common sense and naive human intuition. And, in an uncanny reprise of the Lyell/Darwin intellectual synergy, it is a realization of the vastness of time and history that gives rise to the crucial insight. Only in this instance, the vastness of which I speak is the vastness of future time and future history.” [86]
Which common sense is that? Does it have the gold seal by Eisntein?
Marvin Minsky: “Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas ─ of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks.” [142]
Past, future and baby universes?
University of Chicago cosmologist Sean Carroll: “The [observed] arrow of time in our universe is puzzling because the fundamental laws of physics themselves are symmetric and don’t seem to discriminate between the past and future …. In our patch of the cosmos, time just so happens to be moving forward because of its initial low entropy, but there are others where this is not the case. The far past and the far future are filled with these other baby universes, and they would each think that the other had its arrow of time backwards. Time’s arrow isn’t a basic aspect of the universe as a whole, just a hallmark of the little bit we see.” [86]
The Largest Book! Which one is it? Is it the largest book or one of the sub-largest books?
Galileo: “Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the Universe — which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written.” [86]
Many problems of this “humankind” — so-called — are the unprecedented amount of existential risks that bestows upon itself unknowingly?
Columbia University President (circa 1820), on “Acting Like a Human”:
“That this toil of pure intelligence …
can possibly be performed by an unconscious machine
is a proposition which is received with incredulity.” [104]
Counter-intuitiveness at its best!
Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist: “The opposite of a false statement is a correct statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” [89]
Counter-seeing to discover?
Andre Gide (1869 - 1951): “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” [111]
The influence to bias understanding?
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” [111]
Who is your teacher that is not outside of your own self?
Brian Tracy: “No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.” [111]
Relatives and absolutes?
Sir Winston Churchill: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.” [111]
It's impossible to run enterprises without the grounds and basis to apply in action!
Einstein: “Our theories determine what we measure.” [116]
Improbabilities working on behalf of the learned?
Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” [111]
Science and spirituality?
Albert Einstein: “I hold that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest motive in fostering scientific research.” [111]
You’re your own leader?
Mother Teresa: “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” [111]
From happiness to useful service?
Henry Ford (1863 - 1947): “Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.” [111]
Is that a reasonable optimistic person?
Dr. Kathleen Jennison Goonan, M.D.: “Yesterday’s options are gone.” [91] Fortunately or unfortunately, graciously or disgracefully, this is now (24/7/365) the name of the game.
Dimensional minds?
Oliver Wendell Holmes: “A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” [111]
Credit and predictions?
Louis V Gerstner, Jr. Former CEO, IBM [143]: “No credit can be given for predicting rain — only for building arks.” [111]
Knowing Not Knowing?
Donald Rumsfeld: “As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” [111]
Building a bridge?
Author Unknown: “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door [you create pre-conditions by you].” [111]
Upping the mind?
Albert Einstein: “The significant challenges we face cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness we were at when we created them.” [111]
How do you distribute modernity?
William Gibson: “The FUTURE is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.” [111]
Orders misunderstood?
Henry Miller: “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.” [111]
Progress and crime?
Albert Einstein: “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” [111]
What stays in place?
Christian Bovee: “When all else is lost, the future still remains.” [71]
Faith place in what time frame?
Ruth Benedict: “Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.” [71]
Fearing what?
Thomas Fuller: “He that fears the future may enjoy the present.” [71]
Calling the Future what?
Tennessee Williams: “The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.” [71]
Having or not having?
James Petersen: “If you afraid for your future, you don’t have a present.” [71]
Which evil is the least worst?
Francesco Guicciardini: “To relinquish a present good through apprehension of a future evil is in most instances unwise … from a fear which may afterward turn out groundless, you lost the good that lay within your grasp.” [71]
Handy futures?
Thomas E. Dewey: “We need not be afraid of the future, for the future will be in our hands.” [71]
Fearing change?
E. H. Harriman: “It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear.” [71]
Anxious and miserable?
Marcus Annaes Seneca: “The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.” [71]
A heart and a fear?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Go forth to meet the shadowy Future without fear and with a manly heart.” [71]
Is the mind wrongly operated?
John Locke: “Fear is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of a future evil likely to befall us.” [71]
Uncertainties over certainty?
William Sloane Coffin: “I’m deglitched that the future is unsure. That’s the way it should be.” [71]
What is the objective?
Clinical leader Dr. Kathleen Jennison Goonan, M.D.: “The goal here [in the beginning of the third millennium] is to understand the enablers [the driving forces out of which some futurists comfortably depict ‘trends’ — so-called —] for change [potential upsides] as well as the barriers [imminent downsides].” [91]
On what it means and what it does not mean the term “driving forces,” you might want to view the ensuing presentation, “Trends Vs. Driving Forces, A Clarity-Driven Pathway Before A Universal Management and Scientific Blunder!”
Here it is also addressed the UNIVERSAL BLUNDER by scientists and managers using the terms “trends” and “driving forces” as equal ones. Read it online at http://bit.ly/Trends-Vs-Driving-Forces
Is the future meant to be bold?
Alfred North Whitehead: “It is the business of the future to be dangerous.” [71]
What purpose to set out for?
Robert M. Pirsig: “To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.” [71]
The advantageous mind?
Samuel Johnson: “Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.” [71]
The mind-hand connection?
B. C. Forbes: “Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.” [71]
Who determines what? Is he / she the ignoramus (also known as simpleton)? There are ignoramuses and simpletons — by virtue of emphatic own desires — in both genders.
Determining the future?
Gerald Jampolsky: “No way exists in the present to accurately determine the future effect of the least of our actions.” [71]
Are you recalling the future?
Corrie ten Boom: “Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.” [71]
Aching lessons to learn?
Hugh White: “When you make a mistake, don’t look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.” [71]
Every facet of known life is changing so much that it is believed that Mr. Bill Gates is concerned about “cloud computing” while — in parallel (concurrently) — some people speak to tap into a pent-up market based on the “post-Microsoft world.” Those are they sayings. [101]
Imaginary Present and a Fabricated Future?
“The part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy …. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one — the knowledge and the dream.” [72]
A fightable time?
William E. Gladstone (1809 — 1898): “You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.” [72]
What are you inventing?
Alan Kay (1940 - ): “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” [72]
Change to change what or not to be changed into which?
Milan Kundera (1929 - ): “The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.” [72]
Dreaming progress and modernity?
Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” [73]
De-learning for Life?
Alvin Toffler: “In the world of the future, the new illiterate will be the person who has not learned to learn.” [73]
Guiding to which place?
Albert Einstein: “Teachers are messengers from the past and an escort to the future.” [73]
Geography allocated by times?
Alison Lurie (1926 - ): “As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to see the future.” [74]
History and the train?
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890 — 1969): “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” [75]
Imprudence?
Tacitus: “Light-minded men are improvident of the future.” [76]
Youth and future?
Franklyn Delano Roosevelt: “We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” [77]
Forgiveness and future?
Paul Boese: “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” [77]
Pencil your map?
Jon Bon Jovi: “Map out your future, but do it in pencil.” [77]
Is everyone for quantitative analysis?
Dr. Vernon Grose, D.Sc.: “The desirable use for numbers is long. Yet very few on that list are feasible. ANYTHING INVOLVING HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS SUFFICIENTLY COMPLEX THAT A DISCRETE NUMBER CANNOT BE TIED TO IT.” [99]
Future and responsibility?
George Bernard Shaw: “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” [77]
Future and humankind?
Richard P. Feynman: “We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.” [121]
Herman Kahn: “Projecting a persuasive image of a desirable and practical future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly.” [122]
Time and definitions?
Charles Caleb Colton: “Time is the most indefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not to come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.” [77]
CITIZENS MUST COME TOGETHER ON THIS CAUSE UNEQUIVOCALLY AND WITH THE GREATEST SENSE OF URGENCY, DILIGENT URGENCY OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.
Must become mind-prepared and ever-ready as per my firmest conviction in case they agree upon countering some downside consequences from massive change and upping further some upside facets of said massive change. Can an entire civilization possess “free will in group”? Really?
One of the most important French-Canadian premiers, to this end, makes an awesome quotation. Pierre Trudeau (1919 — 2000): “The twentieth century really belongs to those who will build it. The future can be promised to no one.” [70]
THIS IS, PERHAPS, THE REAL DEAL. It’s time (as it seems to me after deeply researching the subject for almost 30 years), through sprits de corps-based talented teams of “rivals,” to institute the systemic, systematic, before-the facts manner, holistic stewardship (thus exercising a global management perspective) of UPSIDE AND DOWNSIDE RISKS via epidemiological thinking à la Gestalt with the omniscience vista <<>>.
Albert Einstein hence indicates: “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.” [61]
THE MORE THE SO-CALLED CRISES HAPPEN, THE MORE THE EMPIRICAL-AND-OTHERWISE PROGRESSIONS OF APPLIED “STATES OF THE ART” WILL REGISTER WITHOUT A FAIL, BOTH IN THE FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND, AS WELL AS UBIQUITOUSLY. “UBIQUITOUSLY” NOW EQUATES TO THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE, LITERALLY.
The word “Ubiquitous” here might mean any dynamic contexts between the foreground and the background (alluded above). There will be tension exercised thereby. The question is, Will that be “creative tension” at all?
What might the human race get in exchange while implementing all-encompassing MANAGEMENT (all chapters thoroughly) via a compound, all-solutions toolkit, routed with the envisioning and instituting of the optimal totality-of-knowledge? How?
By operating the mind and the brains-driven business “battlefield” (just a stratum among zillion strata) with THE COMBINED, INDUSTRIOUS ASSISTANCE OF OMNISCIENCE, PANSOPHY, POLYMATH, ALL-KNOWINGNESS, AND PANTOLOGY.
To access to more insight on the terminology used in this paragraph, go to the Omniscience section for a thorough description. Omniscience at <<>>.
If we discipline ourselves, What can we get in return?
The undersigned and the present material’s author indicated: “There are great hazards by Nature. There are also great hazards that are man-made. The majority of these ones impacts Nature itself. Through science, technology and management (all chapters), the practitioner can transform downsides and upsides in greater benefits, regardless if hazards are presented by Nature and humans. A seemingly 'good safe execution' can become easily compound into a greater perilous situation. A lack of 'optimum safe execution' can become easily compound into a greater perilous situation. A seemingly 'sub-optimum safe execution' can become easily compound into a greater perilous situation. These hazards can be sustainably transformed into benefits through the perennial application of the maximum within the optimum of thoroughly comprehensive risk management.” [129]
We can still exercise many civil rights before some transbiologicals and robots take over as long as the “caveat” here described does not take precedence in the first place. Will you stay as an innocent and naive a “by stander” for how long in order to further empowering the own state of increasing powerless quality and condition (that of you)?
What are we?
William Shakespeare: “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” [142]
Machines harnessing the monopoly of pervasive intelligence?
Irving John Good: “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” [142]
For those seeking that — regardless of complexity — linking points between machines and humans, an English mathematician has a word of reflection.
Alan Turing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Turing ): “A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.” [100]
What is the good news, if attention is indeed paid to world-class, “cross-pollinated and cross-referenced research” literature driven by scientific inquiry, research, and invention, as well as by an obstinate search of ultimate truth?
The current civilization can increase UPSIDE RISKS (benefits) and simultaneously mitigate and terminate and modulate DOWNSIDE RISKS (disruptions), some existential and others not. Incidentally, one situation that does compound heavily (into terra incognita) is that of risks.
CLEARLY, EVERYONE ON EARTH MUST WORK UNDER THE ROGUE RULING OF THE ULTIMATE. Upside and downside risks are promoted by deeds of humans and acts of Nature. Many times the human lack of countering the risks by the acts of Nature becomes even more critical.
Risks — upside and downside ones — are the result of a continuum by “changed changes” points of inflection marshaled through a multitude of fluxes and flows. By the way, there is a plethora of Risk Management’s “countermeasures” with an ugly existential problem.
Those “countermeasures” are designed through linear minds in a world plagued of hyper-exponential geometrical discontinuities. It’s worth noting that since there are degrees of risk, there are degrees of safety.”
Diversity, by the way, when properly integrated and aligned (alignment of human and materiel resources), begets breakthrough innovation.
QUESTION: WHICH PATH / ROUTE WILL THE PROFESSIONAL, BY-OWN-DESIRE IGNORANT, LAZY, MISTAKEN, IGNOMINIOUS, INDOLENT, AND CORRUPTED ONES TAKE? REMEMBER, “ONE CANNOT GET TO A NEW PLACE WITH AN OLD MAP.”
Just might need a GPS and SAT-phone with an Internet hot-swappable connector. The supine ignoramuses (also known as simpletons) are savants in picking to avoid and downplay every form of reality.
They will be calling names the “reality facer.” The finest disqualification would be the calling him and her negativists and pessimistics. The finest disqualification would be the calling him and her negativists and pessimistic.
I saw an interview by a survivor of the Holocaust. She clearly stated that being immensely pessimistic saved the lives of those sentenced to death while the optimistic ones were burned in man-made Hell without a fail.
In speaking of your personal capital, I am exactly referring to the one held and treasured in your brain while the entirety of other outstanding sub-systems (such as heart, lungs, kidneys, liver) operate exactly as the life-supportive apparatuses.
Anyway, “THE EMPIRES OF THE FUTURE ARE THE EMPIRES OR «MONARCHICAL STRATA» OF THE MIND” (Churchill). [111]
HOW HAVE THE READER EXERCISED RADIANT AND PERVASIVE MIND EXPANSION LATELY, LATELY TOWARDS FOREVER AND EVER?
The Human Race has always longed for progress, ultimately upping its living standards for centuries, while ignoring the concomitant daring sequels, responsibilities and liabilities. You engage in mind expansion seriously and sustainably to extend and expand your wise and clever executions.
Incidentally, this is not the taken-for-granted “Society Of Knowledge” for free (that is exactly to say that it is not gratuitous at all). It is especially expensive, since one must mortgage their intellectual capital endlessly and to the utmost and for good, every second and for Life.
Luckily, I did not give birth to hominids very much to my fortune and relief, nor consider myself the supreme intelligence in the universe (let’s just abide by facts and figures and preter-naturalist thinking, as an amicable unasked suggestion); Primates (including pre-humans and current humans) were occupying the land and wandering around, intrigued by copious wonders.
A mind plus A body plus an oppositional finger (thumb) plus a rock can equate to a great deal of fine and terrible weaponized artifacts.
In beyond stupidity and after over four billion of evolution, we humans cannot live without exercising our mind in the appalling linear world as we face a world of maximum non-linearity and multi-bumping by a multitude of discontinuous forces, forces that ever and ever grow more addicted to discontinuity.
Those, today, gain critical mass easily when the 7-billion souls wish to breathe and make a living and enjoy some world-class life standards, literally “de luxe.” The adage, “one thing at the time” will NOW be replaced by “A PLENTIFUL, FOREVER ONGOING CLUSTER / BUNCH OF DRAMATIC THINGS IN REAL TIME AND ALL OF THE REAL-TIME TIME.”
We have been called to revolt and act upon many integrated techniques and methods and practices compatible with a technocratic revolution by the humane that cannot rid his / her indispensable mind preparedness. But to get the maximum output, the musical must be choreographed and, above all, acted based on sprits de corps’ unanimity.
In the mean time we are having tons of fun by showing off our collective un-preparedness until an “extrasolar typhoon,” sort of speak, hits next onto an ensuing point of inflection in cosmos.
Only you make your own: conclusions, ideas, plans, findings, professional/organizational ethos and points of view. If your ethos, zeitgeist perception and Weltanschauungs need or not radical upgrading, these will only be solved or not by you (being in itself in a problem or blessing before you and of your sole concern), as well as by the accompanying circumstances (pre-conditions and conditions) that knowingly or unknowingly you bestow upon yourself.
The ultimate objective is for the reader (if he / she is by his / her own will in fact reading) to access insights to ask and work (for and by himself and herself) through each one’s own conclusions, thus coping better with the challenges of the Third Millennium. Trust no one, though you just might attempt to trust you?
CHAPTER 1
PROLOGUE
Is the future a function of the present or is the present a function of the future? What do present and future mean in practicality regarding business, profession, education, politics (including most universal realpolitik geopolitics), society (understanding the granularity of details ingrained in matter-of-fact demographics), industry, markets, as well as in regards to emerging science and technology?
In this sense, George Orwell (1903 - 1950) indicated: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” [69] And David Hume (1711 — 1776) likewise stated: “The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.” [69]
When we speak about time compartmentalization (such as Future, Present and Past) are we honoring the instituted approach by Dr. Albert Einstein? Since time is never dislocated from “mass” and “energy,” Are we, in pronouncing these profound dynamic concepts, allocating correlative “volumes” of (a) Mass and (b) Energy for the times compartmentalized and termed: Future, Present and Past? We aren’t, Are we?
Why are we “frustrated” when we get strategically surprised beyond devastation and mayhem by crystallized “disruption potentials” turned into palpable nightmares if we are failing to do our solely own homework we dislike but we need to survive so dearly?
Living and having lots of fun by superfluous modus vivendi will secure the modus operandi through Apocalypses. We always have the chance to counter several hazards but we must come together as a global society. Don't worry about the Universe; it'll go in its business-as-usual mode untouchably and invariably.
Alvin Toffler offers some insight: “The FUTURE always comes too fast and in the wrong order [expected by the great majority of mindful or absent/minded ‘incumbents’].” [17] The problem is that many incumbents feel so un-incumbent though at a later onerous price.
In a continuous dialogue about massive change, Toffler adds:
Alvin Toffler (1928 - ): “…’Future Shock’ … the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time … The dizzying disorientation brought on by premature arrival of the future….” [17]
Why is this FUTURE different to others? Why is change so pervasive, massive, ubiquitous and frenzy? Why is this ever-changing rate of change entailing difference and newness and what are the respective consequences and sequels unavoidably affecting our lives?
What are the imperatives we must superlative micro- and macro-manage to cope to sustainably and sufficiently prevail as a HUMAN RACE?
How can we gain a vantage position and benefit from such futures and changes? How can we “upside” strategic perils along the times to come while simultaneously “downside” eventual opportunities, thus combining both “outputted” advents into a maximum optimum adaptation?
Why will this FUTURE unveil the ill and flawed considerations in greatly hidden, misunderstood and largely “socially engineered” fallacies, assumptions, conventions, beliefs and misconceptions?
All of this actually going at a rate of staggering universal velocity to the least extent (both geographically and demographically), while DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military) greatly to my innermost gusto and own entertainment is stubbornly driven to “loving” defying (defiance) and disrupting (disruption) in “empirical,” yet “rampant” labs to “counter” and prove “wrong” so-called “immutable” classic laws of physics every day, literally.
DARPA, the entity that spinned off an agency termed “NASA” and created glorious Internet, exhibits a most lucid maxim: “If you’re not failing frequently, you are not succeeding enough.”
If thirty years ago DARPA, Los Alamos National Laboratories, NASA, National Foundation of Science et al. had been commissioned with the invention of massive and abundant “green energy,” we could all now protect much better our environment (and possibly had reduced the formation of the climate global crisis), as well as enjoying plentiful sources of reliable energy.
How could this have been achieved then? By appointing an initiative within the tradition of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program and the Genome project.
As civilizations we have the right to make extreme blunders as well as to be held liable (knowingly or not) for the inherent consequences and sequels. Isn’t there the national security of every country threatened now?
Can we seriously and professionally (that is, without deceiving) speak of “success appropriating” WITHOUT STRONGLY REVIEWING FAILURES AND, ABOVE ALL, ADDRESSING THE NANO-GRANULARITY OF YOUR RIVALS COMPREHENSIVELY AND IN ADVANCE? Indeed?
Why don’t we learn lessons of wisdom by third parties? Is it because we are too busy in trying to figure out self-esteems “issues” which are efficacious in clouding our minds?
What are the new high-tech deities in the “warped passages” block? Is this the FUTURE we have chosen not to start creatively imagining to the fullest in the PRESENT early on? The FUTURE is that unimpeachable real thing, Isn't it?
Many people have huge difficulty understanding time progression and the strategic surprises that said progression fosters sometimes beyond creative imagination. Human rights, as well, might easily undergo retrogression with the incessant progression of time anyway, believe it or not!
It is attributed to Jeff Immelt, GE’s current CEO, the following: “…post 9/11 is a different world…” [42] This tragic milestone alone will play through times in forceful manners up to actual time horizons.
Reversing or smartly modulating the consequences will take a gargantuan effort by every constituent in Earth’s civilization, whether hungry or fulfilled, whether thirsty or satisfied, whether sophisticated, educated or illiterate, whether old or young.
I really hope that those not believing such a claim to make a thorough understanding quickly. This material is bound to helping in that direction and ipso facto offering unique and unprecedented insights.
Subsequently, in today’s world, timidity and fear are serious competitive liabilities. Coming times, upcoming times, forthcoming times, future times will prove themselves ruthless in the continuum known as PRESENT without a fail. What are we competing for? We are competing for the prevailing of our lives with dignity, Aren’t we?
In illustrating the PRESENT and the FUTURE (and the fluid interrelationship between the two), What rolls are they respectively impersonating to gain us further insight? This is a strong-sense and critico-creative discernment to understanding the ever-challenging nature and anatomy of change in every facet of Human Life!
In order to appreciate time progression and its beyond geometrical non-linear quality, Can we establish accurate parallelisms with metaphoric and not so metaphoric (yet most accurate) terms to better enlighten our minds with lacking optimum rigor?
Why do we humans, marshaling through such a massive technological progression, readily wish to subject our existence to retrogression by choosing not to recognize grave and yet subtle forces that redefine it all?
In the final analysis, the FUTURE is not for the fainthearted. Stated simply, be it known that the scale, scope and magnitude of the FUTURES are impossible to overstate.
The PRESENT is so playful and naive just gaming in arenas whose sole proprietor is the omni-mode ruling monarchical FUTURE.
As the PRESENT carries on just acting serially (not coping with all simultaneously but just gradually and in immersed ill randomness), the FUTURE ascertains every impending deed simultaneously.
In instituting best analyzes and countering the DOWNSIDES and leveraging the UPSIDES, the optimum analyzes are those industriously pondered by: (1) pre facto (before the facts), (2) a priori (a form of before the facts), (3) pre-mortem (much before mortem or before post-mortem), and (4) a posteriori.
Back in 1985, as I was starting to manage large operational petroleum risks — along with the risks embodied by some forty thousand employees with one hundred six thousand direct “eligible dependents” — (refinery, installations, wells, maritime fleets) — including the immense risks of oil refinery number one and oil refinery number three as per worldwide standards, I started asking myself how I could foresee some of that potential disruption (clearly, early on and for future cases) to avoid it or mitigate it somewhat.
During operational meetings — seeking to seize an all-encompassing overview for grave risks — there was going on a lengthy and detailed discussion of novel ways to manage and to manage risks. The north was (a) to think “out of the box,” and (b) to discern and execute multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary efforts.
This profound dialogue was increasingly energized and re-energized (even in extramural meetings) while previous managers of Shell, Exxon, Standard Oil, Conoco-Phillips, Statoil, Totalfina, really believed in preclude insurance and reinsurance programs from being a pressing “black box.”
Since then and in my case, I have expanded and extended that exercise in what I believe is a considerable degree, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
Back in those days (and in my case, incessantly until know), we were managing extremely complex and large risks of industrial operations, logistics, information technology, “loss control,” industrial safety, quality assurance, “directors and officers,” “errors and omissions,” as well as the health and protection of a numerous head counts running — in my direct charge — up to 50,000 employees with the concomitant eligible dependents to add up to a final total of about 210,000 people.
Those industrial operations included fleets of a multitude of road vehicles, oil tanker vessels, and aircrafts (including ports, take-off / landing runways, etc. for the respective alluded vehicles).
During those years and on, one thing was certain for these companies whose Shell, Exxon and Standard Oil operations were merged into an integrated group with the second largest ranking in the world.
Tired of the lack of creativity of insurance and reinsurance providers for the multinational corporations — dealing with these global organizations as if they were “petty” personal risks —, top management systematically encouraged for everyone (including external consultants) to really think “out of the box,” while learning lessons from own industries, but also from “outsider” and/or outlying industries.
In actuality, this encouragement was unnecessary because our joint minds were “boiling” in seeking, researching, testing, and experimenting with new ideas.
The quality and reliability engineering movement was studied in great depth as well.
Many seminars, workshops and presentations were taking place among us, both internally and extramurally. Each one was under his / her own search for a number of years. So I can only speak about my own experience numbering into the two decades, which I boldly diversified greatly in tackling the same objective (controlling risks in advance).
This present work is, perhaps, a testament to some of that efforts that included training activities with companies like Sedgwick, AON, Marsh & McLennan, Jenner Fenton Slade, Jardine, Minet (St. Paul Group of Companies), Swiss-Re, MAPFRE, Lloyd’s of London (chief head-office).
Lessons learned by the Industrial Military Complex and especially NASA were, to a great extent, also incorporated congruently and cohesively.
The training with coupled with the interviewing of many “line” and “functional” manager across many industries and regions. Also with designated survey and polls while researching, studying, testing, experimenting all the time through those two decades.
Bringing under control complicated risks for customers such as the Word Bank, Ernst & Young Consulting, Toyota, Mitsubishi Motors, TNT Express, among other important organizations was acutely helpful in understanding a diversity of challenges and benefits presented by the risks to be managed and brought under control.
When I first became involved with large industrial, corporate and personnel risks, I soon realized that all tools available to me were sub-optimal in my view. My large clients were asking me to become further creative, innovative and to come up with new approaches under life-to-death criticalities. All of this started a major pondering process with reflections and cross-referenced researching multinationally.
From the classic insurance’s world, I found in every nation people speaking about “Risk Management” though, in the ultimate analysis, they only meant “Insurance and/or Reinsurance Management.” From the markets in North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan and that of Lloyd’s of London I captured “lessons to be learned.”
From the people who used to be or not in insurance, but really wanted to be in the vanguard of “Risk Management” without having as backbone the “financial cornerstone” I also captured “lessons to be learned.”
The greatest lessons I learned from my own management big and diverse corporate assets and liabilities thinking beyond ruined “out of the box” and getting increasingly further away from the insurance and reinsurance industries.
I did and still are engaged into pervasive research, experimenting, testing, surveying and polling. I did also research other thought schools as that of TQM by Deeming, Juran, TPS / Kaisen, SixSigma, Lean, LeanSigma, Reliability Reengineering (as jointly conceived by The Los Alamos National Laboratories and Procter And Gamble, P&G).
At that moment, and for some strange reason, someone got the maximum of my attention when he started speaking to me about Alvin Toffler’s and his game-changing book “Future Shock,” first published in the 1970s. [25]
From there on — having read the book carefully, I became engaged about the rate and omni-mode impact of change, seeing change engendering opportunities and chaos at the same time and forever. I then realized that the timing, tempo and rhythm of the progression of the change rate were always operating against humans’ intuitiveness and insight.
The driving force was the understanding of how small and complex things in life can be so profoundly modified by just instituting “out-of-this-world” common sense (not defunct common sense as per “Thomas Paine” any more).
Some forms of change are amazing and must be understood at any rate as per my view. For instance, when things feel less chaotic, it doesn’t mean that there is less chaos. It does mean that there is more chaos and order in fluid stasis. Clearly, organizations, firms, business, products, services, processes and markets have “life cycle.”
Yes, there are furthermore cyclical and seasonal changes. But there are also changes that are counter-cyclical and counter-seasonal amidst many other more fundamental forms of change. Cyclical and seasonal changes as well as counter-cyclical and counter-seasonal have each one a reaction (if you will a fluid consequence).
What it means is that many forms of chaos are greatly intertwined and, thus, generating (a) mutually-reinforcing energies (productively and disruptively), (b) function and purpose, and (c) and self-preservation for said chaotic yet ordered system, as their collective selective pressures get aligned by their own combined valuable orders (usually multiplied by many orders of magnitude).
When my father gave me his private library, I found a book that he never mentioned to me and which he read in 1957, way before my coming into existence, titled “El Desenlace Del Drama Mundial” (in Spanish, “The Final Outcome of World’s Drama”) published by Publicaciones Interamericanas and Pacific Press Press Publishing Association, and authored by Argentinean Dr. Fernando Chaij in 1956.
It is a textbook with the rigor and strategic end and theme of a book in the tradition of George Orwell, though it was not in any way speculative but rigorously based only on fact, statistics, reflection, concern and a rectification calling, never driven by the science-fiction genre. In fact, it is documented and supported with robust facts and statistics.
So many years later I came to a great understanding (since I believe in the forces of genotype and phenotype, as well as in the perpetually fluid interaction between both). My maternal grandmother was really a busy lady, not only in making her home and being entrepreneurial, but my mother — not fully aware of the subtle scope of my profession — one day told me, “Your grandmother was a futurologist. She worked on understanding how and when things were supposed to unfold.”
She was studying several languages on her own and reading international newspapers with great discipline. By professional futurology is here meant to capture prospective images of eventual futures by exercising the scenario method via the scientific approach through applied omniscience and systems methodology. When I operate my scenario method process, I don’t limit said process to only three scenarios, but to a nearly infinite number.
And my father would constantly tell me, besides amplifying my brain through education and mind shaping my personalities, “try to foresee every problem so that you can fix each one in advance.” Exactly as Dr. Aubrey de Grey PhD, a leading-edge scientist at the University of Cambridge in England, states it, “We'll be solving problems before they arrive.” [59] Quite a future-ready declaration, Is it not?
Among other concurrent methodologies, one can see the future early on via Churchillian prescription!
Winston Churchill: “The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.” [142]
Reinforcing this position had been Confucius for centuries: “If a man gives not thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.” [103]
In addition and to make “matters worse,” operating in advance has, in my case, an additional dimension. Using the notion by Einstein and in dealing with problem early on (pre facto), I will go and scan through the entirety of the haystack until I make certain that I get every needle IN ADVANCE.
“Einstein was once asked what the difference was between him and the average person. He said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in a haystack, the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on other hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all the possible needles.” [134]
Why should we manage problems way in advance before and thoroughly they get out control?
Dwight D. Eisenhower: “All plans fall at first contact with the enemy [competing situations, including and beginning those of and by change].” [123]
Through most advanced scenario method and systems approach you practice zillion futures in advance to seize some relevant and detailed idea of the dynamics and the driving forces besieging you and your organization, enterprise, initiative with downsides and upsides. Can Dr. Grose offer an underpinning wisdom to this notion?
Dr. Vernon Grose, DSc: “It would be hard to find anyone who believes that losses occur without any cause. Yet many managers, acting as though an accident is a random stroke of fate, have to be reminded to seek and remove causes prior to a loss. Less obvious to the layman is the idea that nearly all accidental losses have a multiple causes: virtually no accident has a single cause …. Identifying causes, especially those that are subtle or unseen, requires tenacity, imagination, and a systematic method. However, since almost every accident or loss has a known precedent, you never have to start your search for causes empty-handed.” [99]
And Dr. Grose further indicates: “A primer on the development, application, and requirement of ‘systems thinking’ to obtain an ordered, global management perspective — a critical need if historical risk management is to be translated [in advance] from reaction into prevention of risk [many call risks “problems”] …. The systems approach is godlike — at least in perspective. It aims to look at any situation with OMNISCIENCE — TOTALITY OF KNOWLEDGE …. Of course, it never succeeds because of human limitations. But the goal remains. And such goal is essential if risk is to be managed effectively. Every possible risk must be considered before systematic management of risk can occur. If this seems grandiose, it isn’t meant to be. In failing to take such a lofty and all-encompassing view, managers are vulnerable to being blind-sided by an overlooked risk while believing that they have everything under control.” [99]
Adding insights in line with the theme treated and emergency preparedness and business continuity before and after extreme hazards, there are valuable reflections by Dr. Collins.
Dr. Robert A. Collins, PhD: “Disasters are a natural and predictable part of the human condition. This includes both natural disasters and human-made disasters. In spite of this, whenever a disaster strikes, most people are unprepared. The inevitable result is the loss of life and property. It does not have to be this way. … SINCE DISASTERS ARE AN INEVITABLE PART OF LIFE, THE WISEST COURSE OF ACTION IS TO UNDERSTAND THEM, PREPARE FOR THEM, AND CAPITALIZE ON THE OPPORTUNITIES THAT THEY PRESENT. The first and most important step in disaster planning is, obviously, to have a plan. Without a specific plan, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to implement the other steps in disaster preparation. Most organizations deal with disasters by first hoping that they don’t happen. Then when they do happen, they respond to them and try to recover from them. MOST ORGANIZATIONS DO NOT TRY TO MITIGATE THEM IN ADVANCE. THIS IS AN IRRATIONAL AND EXPENSIVE STRATEGY. … It is impossible to plan for things that you cannot imagine. Therefore, the first step in forging the resilient organization is to conduct ‘scenario planning’ .... It is necessary for the organization to be honest with itself when completing the scenario planning step in disaster preparation. THE TASK HERE IS NOT TO IMAGINE THE WORST DISASTER THAT THE ORGANIZATION THINKS THAT IT CAN HANDLE. THE TASK IS TO IMAGINE THE WORST DISASTER THAT COULD POSSIBLE STRIKE THE COMPANY, GIVEN ITS GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION AND INDIVIDUAL CIRCUMSTANCES. Lee Clarke, a disaster planning expert and professor at Rutgers University argues, ‘IT’S NOT CRAZY TO THINK ABOUT THE WORST CASES [IN ADVANCE]’….” [124]
Can we take advantage of risk and benefit management with immense forethought and never in expensive hindsight?
“Journalist Geoffrey Colvin (2005) argues: 'The events that do the worst damage are the one no even conceived of … The idea that a passenger jet might crash into the World Trade Center had been thought of; it was a fairly obvious possibility, especially since a plane once crashed into the Empire State Building. What no one imagined was the combination of large planes with nearly full fuel tanks plus the impact of the crashes jarring fireproofing from the girders, and how this could bring the towers down. In retrospect, it obviously could have been imagined. I’ just wasn’t'…” [124]
If we based our decision-making on intuitiveness and hunches, we will never get it right. We can just admit we are inundated with complexity, identify it, establish countermeasures against it and strategy to finally get our benefits in a sustained and rational way.
How are these speedy and somewhat dramatic times shaping and re-shaping us?
“Journalist Amy Bernstein (2006) point out: ‘Few issues have morphed as dramatically in the last five year as corporate resilience. That phrase once refereed to managing risks that were fairly predictable and relatively easy to insure against: fires, strikes, and economic recessions for example. But all that has changed. A string of catastrophes — beginning with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and continuing through the bombing of the Madrid railway and the Asian Tsunami in 2004, the blast on the London Underground in July 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September, and the earthquake that devastated Pakistan in October 2005 — has rearranged our concept of disaster preparedness. It’s no longer enough for companies to devise a business continuity plan and file it away somewhere. THEY NOW HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BOUNCE BACK FROM THE UNTHINKABLE.’…” [124]
What are the relevant considerations that we insist on ignoring beyond any irresponsibility?
“Yossi Sheffi, Professor of Systems Engineering at MIT, conducted a three year study of resilient organizations from Toyota to UPS to the US Navy, and drew a simple conclusion: A COMPANY’S ABILITY TO RETURN TO BUSINESS DEPENDS MORE ON THE DECISIONS IT MAKES BEFORE A SHOCK HITS THAN THOSE IT MAKES DURING OR AFTER THE EVENT… According to Sheffi, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 forced him and his colleagues to see a more comprehensive view of risk. He states: ‘Before that, I thought about it mostly in financial terms — buying insurance against various business risks, buying commodity futures such as oil to hedge against price fluctuations, the use of financial derivatives, etc. In the wake of the attacks, I starred looking at all kinds of disruptions, and it became clear that there’s a lot more to consider than contingency planning or financial hedging. THERE ARE LOW-PROBABILITY/HIGH IMPACT EVENTS like terrorist attacks that may cause unplanned exists from important markets or even the demise of the unprepared business’ …. During MIT’s three year study on resilient companies and interviews with dozens of companies, found that a culture of resilience was a common element. He argues: ‘The essence of resilience is the containment of disruption and recovery from it. Culture contributes to resilience by endowing employees with a set of principles regarding the proper response when the unexpected does occur, and when the formal organization’s policy does not cover the situation at hand or is too slow to react, it suggests the course of action to take’ ….” [124]
In speaking of contingency planning, it's worth noting the ensuing.
Murphy's law states: “If anything can go wrong, it ultimately will.” [96] Nonetheless, I insist that in many instances this “law” is universally used not to get “preparedness” in advance and in place. So planning and preparation becomes lax. Subsequently, the loss disruption ─ once crystallized ─ is congruently blamed on Murphy's law. This is rampant mediocrity.
What it used to work and does not work at all now? Why every manager must learn and plan ahead — through unthinkable discernment for Life — in a global world contextualized among many superposed and conflicting driving forces that grow more and more complex by the second?
To this end Grose indicates: “After-the-fact no longer works …. Bring it back if you have any trouble with it, and I’ll fix it somehow,’ was the standard comment when you used to pick up a bicycle, automobile, food mixer, or lawn mower from the repair shop. And the repairman meant what he said. He was confident that if he had overlooked anything or made a mistake of any kind, he would get a second shot at fixing…. The ‘second shot’ is a luxury that no longer exists in many businesses. You get only one chance — after that, you’ll be talking only with attorneys, insurance agents, or bankers …. Life used to be simple. You knew your customers on a first-name basis. Your product or service was a relatively simple one — understood by both you and your customer. Your name and reputation were sufficient to cover any error or oversight …. But the world has become complex, too complex to allow such comfortable relationships. Consumer expectations are matching the complexities. Instantaneous news coverage of accidents and losses virtually precludes the private, out-of-sight settlement of risk effects that had previously allowed the after-the-fact resolution of risk to succeed. The breadth in that old idea is rapidly being squeezed out — like the inevitable tightening of a boa constrictor around its victim….The price for public exposure of loss is high. Managers have begun to realize that risk must be examined formally and resolved beforehand rather than being settled after-the-fact. And they learn from others. It was the 1982 sinking of the offshore drilling rig Ocean Ranger that spurred EXXON top management to order a systematic evaluation of their offshore drilling risks … Even though EXXON does not own such rigs, it recognized that even conducting operations aboard them created risks that demanded before-the-fact identification, evaluation, and control.” [99]
Prof. Hamel, along those lines by de Grey and Grose, states: “From Nostradamus to Alvin Toffler, individuals and organizations have long been obsessed with trying to see the future. The goal is to somehow get advanced warning of ‘what will be’…” [64]
Furthering the motions by Hamel, de Grey, my loved father and my own self (that is, seeking to further the quest and findings about diverse perspectives on knowledge), Dr. Hauerwas has some invaluable words of wisdom about “Universal Knowledges.” Ensuing:
Stanley Hauerwas, B.D. M.A. M.Phil and Ph.D.: “…in support of the liberal notion that the knowledges that constitute the university have no ‘use’ fail to ask what [John Henry] Newman mean by ‘universal knowledge.’ By ‘universal’ Newman did not mean that the knowledges that constitute liberal learning cannot be justified by their utility, but rather that all knowledge was interconnected because the ‘universe in its length and breadth is so intimately knit together.’ To be educated is not to be well read or to know a great deal about this or that subject. Rather, it is the only true enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, or understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual dependence…” [95]
And Hauerwas continues:
“… Thus is that form of Universal Knowledges sets up in the individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the mind never views any part of the extended subject-matter of Knowledge without recollecting that it is but a part, or without the associations which spring from this recollection. It makes every thing in some sort lead to every thing else; it would communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, everywhere pervading and penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite meaning …. Philosophy, not theology, Newman believes to be the discipline that is distinct from all the sciences, that is, ‘in some sense’ philosophy is ‘a science of sciences.’ …” [95] I must communicate that this wisdom is “hyperbolically” optimum.
Notwithstanding, said “Universal Knowledges,” an indeed appreciated and practicable notion is a sub-system (or only as a function of) what I have here defined as “applied omniscience.” There is no incongruousness, but an absolute synergistic supplementary. My applied omniscience definition at « http://bit.ly/c8zAeb » I strongly believe in one KNOWLEDGE stemming from applied omniscience.
Doesn’t “pantology” bring together, into cohesive unification and integration, every sort of universals knowledge? Given that premise, What are the unambiguous merits, basis and grounds to speak of “universal knowledges” (that is, in plural) in so contravening the dictum by the Oxford Dictionary? The undersigned will ascertain that the term “pantology” ( http://bit.ly/bmRF1C ) is here and now included in own definition of applied omniscience.
I was raised in a home in which it was much more important to solve problems — through fundamental and permanent approaches — before their crystallizing. Before these findings, I wanted to know why and how each toy and even 383-inch (eight-cylinder) Chrysler Fury engine operate, as well as investigating the possibility of making those artifact “perform” better, safer, and faster.
Fortunately, I am not a prognosticator, but I am steadily practicing zillion “FUTURES” in advance effortlessly. For over some fifteen years these workings by my mind stop being “second nature” and became first nature indeed.
For a client or for a serious subject matter of mine, I will be eliciting the driving forces that will impact positively and negatively, as well as the action plans to exploit every UPSIDE out of every DOWNSIDE.
In the mean time, there is an Arab adage to share with you: “That who foretells the truth lies even if he is telling the truth.” Sir Karl Popper, to that end, argues: “We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets …. Because of strictly logical reasons, it is impossible for us to predict the future course of history.”
Consequences of attempting to predict the future?
John Smart: “…’The future can’t be predicted,’ is a common refrain … But … when [this perspective] is wrong, it is profoundly wrong.” [142]
And, along those same lines, Jean Cocteau (1989 – 1963) points out: “The future doesn’t belong to anyone. There are no harbingers; there are only but debtors.” [130] [130] [111]
Further insight along these lines:
By Gary Hamel, PhD: “The future belongs not to those who possess a crystal ball, but those willing to challenge the biases and prejudices of the ‘establishment.’ The future belongs more to the unorthodox than it does to the prognosticators, more to the movement than to the starry-eyed.” [87] Ergo, there is ZERO prophesying beforehand.
By extreme systematic, systemic, “before-the facts” cognition (thus exercising a global management perspective), I see trends, their intertwining, their superposing, their interrelationship, their dynamics, and their possibilities. I also see advantages and disadvantages and the fruitfulness of tackling them when it is called for.
Even more than I’d like it to be that way, I must admit I am a pervasive “patternist,” patternist (paterfamilias’ patternists among other patternists) from patterns that become patterns identified, acknowledged, analyzed and understood early on, that is: before their underneath currents (driving forces) make it evident to the world.
As I apply, patternists emphasize the deepest understanding of patterns — as they are embedded and entrenched in driving forces — over the long-term times, without excluding short-term ranges.
In the process I might regard myself a rigorist. I need to have an in-depth understanding of the driving forces to institute truly robust Risk Management (as I understand this grave, complex and indispensable discipline).
These extreme systematically and systemically cognitions, as expressly exercising both hemispheres of your brain (thus exercising a global management perspective), might land me or you to pre-cog capabilities if you’re willing — that is — to deploy own efforts in sustained ways.
In my case and that of my maternal grandmother, it has nothing to do with clairvoyance. It has only and fully to do with the application of the scientific method and working out the brain.
The scientific and technological progression, driven by the convergence of many visionary industries and the marketability of the stemming technologies globally, has brought an unprecedented level of scientific knowledge at a growing rate beyond geometrically exponential progression.
In the mean time, and not so paradoxically, too many valuable minds are engaged in rogue retrogression (that is, progression’s antipodes) as well. Are minds in retrogression desperately seeking self devastation? Progression and retrogression impact and inflict changes.
From the Institute for the Future, Paul Saffo and Roy Amara make a point regarding change: “I think about it as ‘orders of impact.’ First order, second order, etc. When an earthquake happens you have a whole series of waves that follow. The first order of the auto was the horseless carriage. The second order was the traffic jam. The third-order impact was the move toward the suburbs. This led in turn to the creation of huge metropolitan areas.” [64]
Medical advancements and breakthroughs not only hold the promise of prolonging life while holding it with great health and stamina, but it is entertaining the idea of human lives prevailing for up to one thousand years while some, like Dr. Ray Kurzweil Ph.D. and Dr. Terry Grossman M.D. [26], [27], speak habitually of conquering immortality.
To this end John Lienhard comments: “We live in a technology-dense world …. We are terrifyingly naked without knowing elementary things about [technologies] work.” [104]
Many serious researchers (including Cambridge University's Dr. Aubrey de Grey, PhD) speak about as living as you pay and use the one-thousand year milestone not to make people afraid about immortality becoming a major reality in the near future.
The aim is immortality per se and not the thousand years in actuality. In the final decision, anyone will make his or her “freewill” choice.
Addressing Kurzweil, Grossman and de Grey, a clever and prominent physician makes his point. Dr. Joseph Knoll, M.D. who effected an extraordinary reflection: “We shall never forget that humans obviously cannot change natural laws, but by discovering their mechanisms of action they learn to make use of this knowledge. By conquering gravitation man stepped across his naturally given limit and ultimately landed on the moon.” [59]
Someone in a History Channel program hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku indicated, along these lines in speaking of nanotechnology and biotechnology and life extension, “…that illnesses and defects won’t be a part of the human life…” [111]
There is a valuable thought about the future and its arrival, attributed to Gary Hamel, “The problem with the future is that is different [since is profound, its scientific properties are being dramatically changed in real time and all of the time]. If you are unable to think differently, the Future will always arrive as a surprise.” [28]
In addition and as it is believed to be proclaimed by Samuel Goldwyn, “Only a fool would make predictions, especially about the future.” [64] If we are serious about change and all of its derivations and sequels, we must talk future studies copiously.
To optimize predictability and accuracy or even under the mildest scenario and sternest and clever effort to amplify and diversify scenarios envisioned to get an early preparation (in advance) about the dynamics of processes, challenges, opportunities, risks, and deviations. We must walk this intricate talk the soonest.
Before solving any complex problems, one must comprehend the most of them. A cross-functional, multidimensional, pluri-contextual scrutinizing and multi-strata of its ever-fluid and applicable womb-to-tomb, epidemiological vista will be beyond vital.
In the execution, one must operate through many contexts and brainy filters and aided by a cohesive compilation of a great diversity of perspectives “funneled” into a monolithic unison. This “monolithic unison” is set under increasing dynamics. If you observed it fixed, it’s because it’s moving faster that your senses can register.
Speaking of novel and comprehensive foresight and far-sight and the modes to raise the ante in that science, art, practice, and above all self-discipline.
I will include a remarkable quotation by Strategos Institute Founder and London Business School Professor. Prof. Gary Hamel, PhD: “Each revolution in art was based on a re-conception of reality. It wasn’t the canvas, the pigments, or the brushes that changed, but how the artist perceived the world. In the same sense, it’s not the tools that distinguish industry revolutionaries from humdrum incumbents — not the information technology they harness, not the process they use, not their facilities. Instead, is their ability to escape the stranglehold of the familiar.” [64]
As I paraphrase Dr. Stephen Hawking and to pursue the former, my express perpetual bottom-line (that of the undersigned) for Life is the ensuing: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the Universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” In my case, my interest is not just intellectual, but fully concrete and practical towards solving problems, terminating risks and seizing benefits.
This work is not meant as an intellectual text so much as pragmatic and practical management look at change, with a very strong emphasis on execution. It’s not about a pure intellectual understanding, or just an ivory tower understanding, but, rather, the focus is on smart execution.
I strongly support JFK’s ensuing take as well.
President John F. Kennedy’s speech on September 12, 1962 at Race University: “If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space …. Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” [80]
In aligning the idea of understanding the nature of change and the impacts stemming from said change, former GE’s CEO Jack Welch indicated: “Seeing the world the way it is, not the way we hope it will be or wish it to be.” Then, Jeff Immelt succeeded Jack Welch and became new GE’s CEO in September 07, 2010. [42]
To further enlighten the present material, Tichy stated: “Jeff Immelt realizes that the world changes every day and that his job is to keep GE competitive in that changing world. But his ability to take the company where it needs to go is greatly facilitated by the fact that he has a clear understanding of where he is starting.” [42]
Agreeing greatly with Dr. Hawkins’s, Welch also mentioned, “To get to the guts of why things happen.” [42] Welch indeed believes in exercising pattern analyzes (as patternist), Does he not?
There is a mandate in the PRESENT over the FUTURE by the forces of the FORTHCOMING TIMES. The solid idea about it requires crafting a new vision, with its appended (loose/tight and amorphous but abstract yet concrete) strategy, and aligning people to it.
Transformation involves not just tearing away from the PAST, but immediately moving into a new better future besieged by great perils that must be transformed or not into lucrative yet sustainable UPSIDES.
In speaking to your intellect, as your intellect and mine dialogue fluently this via, I will appeal to legitimate narrative resources to offer you an accurate insight and perspective of how the scientific properties of change are changing and how changed changes are beginning to change it all beyond the wildest dreams and nightmares. I will use metaphors and other analogies with rigor.
In due time, you will realize that this is a well-meant and responsible calling in which vigorous rigor is sine qua non to the undersigned. I immensely enjoy advanced democracy, rule of law (rigor juris), true justice, peace and harmony. I really like science and technology but to the best service of creation and never of devastation.
Nonetheless, to “milk” hope out of daring situations, I must face raw realities to start de-risking some really unnecessary disruption potentials. My most unambiguous end is to seek peace through harmonic means only. Believe me, I am not naive just become hopeful when I become phenomenally industrious to paraphrase some prominent Germans.
Why will I use the above referred “legitimate narrative resources”? Because I feel there is massive universal and dysfunctional illiteracy concerning the nuances in the rates of change. There has always been like that except but one feature. Now, the incumbents of supine ignorance are over-empowered by pervasive, yet inexpensive tools of creation and devastation.
Even as headlines in “hard-copy” newspapers supersede the most creative fantasies embedded in science fiction, many incumbents just don’t get it. Others are really upset because they cannot understand why the PRESENT does not resemble the nearest PAST.
Others are paralyzed in and by the analyzes. And others manifest an anarchistic tendency against society.
Through centuries, the greatest luminaries have greatly reflected and recommended not to fight against extraordinary forces, but to use them smartly. This time around, with the Kingdom of the “Society of Knowledge” ruling as the prominent Tudor family, one must become a cross-pollinated savant to navigate the waters shed by said forces.
The PRESENT seems to be having a great deal of enjoyment by pontificating words and deeds solely engaged in exponential mediocrity, thus exploiting the worst of humankind as if it were the most desired quality. This featured quality by the PRESENT is pervasively horrendous and existentially damaging.
On the contrary, the FUTURE is capable, and in fact it implements so, of doing well to the point we would astound ourselves. The actual quotation by Thomas Edison indicates: “If we all did the things we are capable of doing well we would literally astound ourselves.” [44]
As this material will portray, and much to the advantage of the subject matter here dealt with, I carry and will carry on all my professional lines of practice with absolute agreement with Otto Herman Khan. He veritably stated: “I'm against fashionable thinking ... I'm against ignorance ... I am against the whole cliche of the moment ... I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking…” [43].
The undersigned subscribes every declaration by Otto Herman Khan and supplement those with an additional one. “I am against inexpensive thinking.” [111]
Technically correct thinking, for example, has no waiting allowance for the entire scientific establishment to disconfirm or to confirm evidence embedded in said “technically correct thinking” notion.
Salvador Dali in seconding the motion by Khan offers us a thought: “Get real; dream the impossible.” However, if you dream the impossible, you must get prepared to work rigorously and smartly for a serious term of time.
CHAPTER 2
THE CHALLENGE
In case, you just yet don't have it unambiguously clear, this is Valéry's take in the beginning of the last century.
(by Paul Valéry, 1932)
“All the notions we thought solid, all the values of civilized life, all that made for stability in international relations, all that made for regularity in the economy … in a word, all that tended happily to limit the uncertainty of the morrow, all that gave nations and individuals some confidence in the morrow … all this seems badly compromised. I have consulted all augurs I could find, of every species, and I have heard only vague words, contradictory prophecies, curiously feeble assurances. Never has humanity combined so much power with so much disorder, so much anxiety with so many playthings, so much knowledge with so much uncertainty…” [56]
There is great American scientist offers cautious optimism!
Dr. Robert H. Goddard, PhD: “It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.” [117] Biography of Dr. Goddard at http://bit.ly/bRzGqm
CHAPTER 2
AN ACTUAL DIALOGUE OF DARWIN, NEWTON, KANT, GOETHE, BACON, DA VINCI, GALILEO, TESLA, BUCMINSTER FULLER, CHURCHILL AND OTHERS WITH ANDRES AGOSTINI? [131]
Andres: “Charles, How does your mind envision in general? And what about you, Isaac?”
Charles Darwin: “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.” [131]
Isaac Newton: “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” [131]
Andres: “How do you visualize or do you not visualize, Immanuel? Can you offer us a suggestion?”
Immanuel Kant: “Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”[131]
Andres: “How does your vision and thought relate, Charles? And what about in your case Immanuel?”
Charles Darwin: “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” [131]
Immanuel Kant: “All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” [131]
Andres: “Johann, in addition to the views of Kant, Darwin and Newton, How — in your view — one should see? Can you give us some hints?”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: “Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words. In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it. The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.” [131]
Andres: “Johann, How does your mind envision?”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: “All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” [131]
Andres: “Francis, What is your take about the operation of one's mind and / or perhaps a personal trait?”
Francis Bacon: “Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.” [131]
Andres: “How do people exercise thinking, Francis?”
Francis Bacon: “People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.” [131]
Andres: “What truth holds intact regardless, Charles?”
Charles Darwin: “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.” [131]
Andres: “What is your POV concerning science, Imamnuel?”
Immanuel Kant: “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” [131]
Andres: “What is your POV concerning science, Johann?”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion. The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.” [131]
Andres: “What is your POV concerning science, Isaac?”
Isaac Newton: “To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.” [131]
Andres: “What is your POV concerning science, Charles?”
Charles Darwin: “A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, — a mere heart of stone. False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.” [131]
Andres: “What topic is for one to really learn about it, Johann?”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “No one has ever learned fully to know themselves. Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.” [131]
Andres: “In learning, What is important for one to bear in mind, Charles?”
Charles Darwin: “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” [131]
Andres: In seeing, “How does one make a decision, Leonardo?”
Leonardo da Vinci: “There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?” [131]
Andres: “Leonardo, I have heard an appalling notion from some management mogul. This person indicates that if an individual does not get ‘mad,’ she and he won't solve a significant problem? What fosters knowledge and what precludes it?”
Leonardo da Vinci: “Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.” [131]
Andres: “Francis, I have heard an appalling notion from some management mogul. This person indicates that if an individual does not get “mad,” she and he won't solve a significant problem? What fosters knowledge and what precludes it?”
Francis Bacon: “Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.” [131]
Andres: “Knowledge to be bestowed upon ourselves and others to achieve what, Francis?”
Francis Bacon: “For also knowledge itself is power.” [131]
Andres: “What is philosophy good for in your view, Francis?”
Francis Bacon: “A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.”
Andres: “How valuable to you is prudence, Francis?”
Francis Bacon: “A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.” [131]
Andres: “Where does opportunities com from, Francis?”
Francis Bacon: “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” [131]
Andres: “Where do you get knowledge from, Leonardo?”
Leonardo da Vinci: “All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.” [131]
Andres: “Why is so important to conceive the right future, Herman?”
Herman Kahn: “Projecting a persuasive image of a desirable and practical future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly.” [131]
Andres: “What is changing the most in your view and what are the “downside” implications of said changes, Herman?”
Herman Kahn: “A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive — especially now, when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages.” [131]
Andres: “What have you done with your thinking capacity, Herman?”
Herman Kahn: “For some years I have spent my time on exactly these questions — both in thinking about ways to prevent war, and in thinking about how to fight, survive, and terminate a war, should it occur.” [131]
Andres: “What relevance do you give — as a specific value type of thing — you give to morality and ethics, Herman?”
Herman Kahn: “Human and moral factors must always be considered. They must never be missing from policies and from public discussion.” [131]
Andres: “Why must we advance science? Can you be a bit specific, Galileo? ”
Galileo Galilei: “By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.” [131]
Andres: “What is mathematics to you, Albert?”
Albert Einstein: “Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” [131]
Andres: “What is imagination good for, Albert?”
Albert Einstein: “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. Imagination will take you everywhere.” [131]
Andres: “What is education?”
Albert Einstein: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” [131]
Andres: “How does one should live life wisely in your opinion, Albert?”
Albert Einstein: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” [131]
Andres: “What are your thoughts lately?”
Albert Einstein: “I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.” [131]
Andres: “What are the connections among every discipline of knowledge?”
Albert Einstein: “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” [131]
Andres: “What is science good for, Albert?”
Albert Einstein: “It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.” [131]
Andres: “Is it learning important, Ben?”
Benjamin Franklin: “A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.” [131]
Andres: “What is the problem with self-made ignoramuses?”
Benjamin Franklin: “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” [131]
Andres: “Who has taught you the most, Ben?”
Benjamin Franklin: “Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.” [131]
Andres: “How do you forge an educated mind?”
Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” [131]
Andres: “What is the opposite of Reason?”
Benjamin Franklin: “The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.” [131]
Andres: “Where will you trust your most treasured funds?”
Benjamin Franklin: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Andres: “How does one succeed?”
Benjamin Franklin: “Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.” [131]
Andres: “In the West wisdom seems to be a fashion while in the Far East this is a matter of great attention, is it not?”
Benjamin Franklin: “Wise men don't need advice. FOOLS WON'T TAKE IT.” [131]
Andres: “What is the methodical sequence to success?”
Thomas A. Edison: “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” [131]
Andres: “How do you get to prevailing in seizing success?”
Thomas A. Edison: “I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.” [131]
Andres: “How important is winning?”
Thomas A. Edison: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” [131]
Andres: “What is your take about complexity?”
Thomas A. Edison: “I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us — everything that exists — proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.” [131]
Andres: “Do you trust serendipities or do you prefer pseudo-serendipities?”
Thomas A. Edison: “I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.” [131]
Andres: “How do you gauge success?”
Thomas A. Edison: “Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.” [131]
Andres: “What is that long-ignored flank?”
Thomas A. Edison: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” [131]
Andres: “Richard, How do you like the world's technological advances?”
R. Buckminster Fuller: “Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” [131]
Andres: “How do you capture success in your daily practice?”
R. Buckminster Fuller: “Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't.” [131]
Andres: “What is your view on conventional [‘out-of-the-box’ — so-called — ] discernment?”
R. Buckminster Fuller: “People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.” [131]
Andres: “Richard, do you believe in becoming strategically surprised?”
R. Buckminster Fuller: “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.” [131]
Andres: “Give me a hint! How involved are you with futures study?”
R. Buckminster Fuller: “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” [131]
Andres: “In your own words, What is your own significance towards education?”
R. Buckminster Fuller: “You can never learn less, you can only learn more.” [131]
Andres: “Nikola, Are you future-ready?”
Nikola Tesla: “Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.” [131]
Andres: “What is the thinking-process failing these days?”
Nikola Tesla: “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” [131]
Andres: “Having lived through so much history, Has life been a struggle for you?”
Winston Churchill: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” [131]
Andres: “How does a manager prevail?”
Winston Churchill: “Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.” [131]
Andres: “What is your take on the quality-assurance movement?”
Winston Churchill: “Great and good are seldom the same man.” [131]
Andres: “What is your mind-expansion pathway?”
Winston Churchill: “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.” [131]
Andres: “Can there be anti-leadership? Offer an instance?”
Winston Churchill: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” [131]
Andres: “How supportive of the 'PRESENT' are you?”
Winston Churchill: “If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” [131]
Forewarning: The answers by the dialogue parties with the undersigned are fully accurate and supported by the facts. Verify, to trust, at www.brainyquote.com
CHAPTER 2
EPIC OMISSION(S)?
QUESTION: ARE WE PURPORTEDLY IGNORING COLOSSAL KNOWLEDGE CRITICALITY? LIVING IN THE SOCIETY OF KNOWLEDGE UTTERLY STATES THAT YOUR MIND WILL CATCH STATE-OF-THE-ART KNOWLEDGE BY OSMOSIS?
In aligning brains and leadership in the third millennium towards seizing actionable knowledge creation and utilization, Tichy points out some interesting reflections too often ignored by many private, public, NGO, supranational, and even academia incumbents:
“The leadership job of the twenty-first century is to enhance brainpower of an organization by having leaders at all levels engaged in Virtuous Teaching Cycles. The case has been made that we now live in a knowledge era where the value of intellectual capital has supplemental physical assets. In this world, leaders must make everyone smarter while simultaneously aligning the energy and commitment of the people in their organizations … Thomas Stewart, a Fortune Editor and a leading thinker in the field, outlined the foundations for them knowledge economy with powerful simplicity in his most recent book, The Wealth of Knowledge: ‘The knowledge economy stands on three pillars. The first: Knowledge has become what we buy, sell, and do. It is the most important factor of production. The second pillar is a mate, a corollary to the first: Knowledge assets — that is, intellectual capital — have become more important to companies than financial and physical assets. The third pillar is this: To prosper in this new economy and exploit these newly vital assets, we need new vocabularies, new management techniques, new technologies, and new strategies. On three pillars rest all the new economy’s laws and its profits’…”
Tichy supplements:
“Stewart’s ranking reflects a massive movement underway to actually measure intellectual capital … The concept is correct and we put Stewart’s work right at the front … to reinforce the importance for companies to continue defining, measuring and improving ways of generating new intellectual capital … Teaching Organizations are the needed response to today’s emphasis on knowledge creation. Today, intellectual assets trump physical assets in nearly every industry.”
Tichy asserts:
“Despite the boom and bust of the recent dot-bomb era, there is no question that we are in the early stages of an era in which technology and biotechnology will have inescapable consequences for how businesses are run and organized. The practices, systems, policies and mind-sets that prevailed in the old industrial economy will not do the job. The foregone conclusion of the late 1990s that the old industrial behemoths would be agile start-ups is equally wrong for the times.”
And he also indicates:
“Rather, we now know that the winners of the future will adapt and innovate to exploit emerging technological and social changes. They will be big, fast, and smart. The winners will create value by having a workforce that is more aligned, energized and smarter than their competitors. They will leverage size and act with speed across internal and external organizational boundaries.” [42]
CHAPTER 2
THE PEER-TO-PEER MESSAGE AMONG IGNORAMUSES (ALSO KNOWN AS SIMPLETONS)?
Ignoramuses of supine ignorance speaking to and with other ignoramuses of supine ignorance:
“We’ll infect you with the same orthodoxies we’ve infected everyone else in your industry.” [64]
CHAPTER 2
DAKOTA TRIBAL WISDOM AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES
“Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you’re on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it’s cheaper to feed a dead chapter. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you’ve tried all these things, you’re still going to have to dismount.” [64]
CHAPTER 2
COMPLEXITY AND THE DEATH OF SIMPLICITY
Dr. Vernon Grose, DSc: “…Government policies are influential in the macroscopic risks that threaten our lives. As a society has been transferred from simple agrarianism to a complex technologically-driven living standard, competing special interests force the government to make compromises that inevitably create risks — even the risk of war.” [99]
And Grose also argues:
Dr. Vernon Grose, DSc: “The law is recognizing the trend toward complexity of life and the inability of the average person to recognize and overcome risks associated with it … Whereas our forefathers could knowingly inspect the horseshoes a blacksmith nailed on their horses’ hoofs, the average person today cannot knowledgeably inspect a microwave oven or a car’s automatic transmission.” [99]
While people insist on “simplicity” without knowing the involved sequels, see how complexity embedded in nature operates in truth!
Dr. Vernon Grose, DSc: “A primary theme in Alvin Toffler’s best selling book Future SOC is that society’s rate of change is increasing. Everything around us ─ including ourselves ─ is rapidly changing. Nothing is stable, permanent, constant, or fixed. Neither is risk. It is an indigenous element in the volatility of life. If anything, risk expands at a greater rate than the societal rate of change ─ due to its roots in uncertainty and ignorance of consequences, which multiply during mercurial instability.” [99]
CHAPTER 2
TO BE OR NOT TO BE IN EXECUTION?
Many scientific researchers are concluding that the act of setting the brain to reflect, make a thought, conceive an idea and so on are not matters of being abstract or only into theory. They insist that any action, deed or execution is preceded by the action of “firing” the genes that operate upon the neuro-cells, including the neurons. From these synaptic firings the self is set in motion beyond your most Dantesque imagination.
For long many ignoramuses (also known as simpletons) have insisted that they don’t think but operate, implement, institute, operate, execute, so on and so forth. It’s impossible to operate the mind (FIRST) to “COJOINTLY” operate in the physical and/or virtual worlds (SECOND) with the absolute authorization, tutelage and mandate of the brain.
Every organ and every limb exist to operate of the “life-supporting” sub-system of the greatest monarch, the brain literally. I believe that a quotation from the Far East will stage matters in greater perspectives:
Ancient Chinese Proverb: “It is not our feet that move us along — it is our minds.” [79] Will the West constituency ever get it the profoundness of the silly yet most accurate saying?
CHAPTER 2
THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION AND THE ABSENCE OF COHESIVE LANGUAGE?
For a long time some cultures have immensely insisted that word economization is vital and proper communication etiquette. In the process, too many laggards use this FALSE argument to insist that you are to speak and write briefly, even if in economizing “words” you are also economizing most vital facts to be ignored.
And this has to be accomplished for Life without becoming bureaucratic and stalemate-laden at all. On the contrary, laying the facts and figures upfront yet more comprehensively and carefully, one can proceed faster before perils and benefits to sustain profitability whatever the swirling challenges.
The Information Technology, The Society of Knowledge and the Global Village are not so to be simplistic and briefer. Even before the advent of the Internet, many top corporate leaders would tell their lieutenants not to send to them memos longer than one page. Then, the corporate royal could not explain to the shareholders why a major operation, say, in Asia went so deep into red numbers.
This is a major blunder by gigantic chunks of the civilization. The Japanese and the German, to cite two examples, will always appreciate every detail. To them what is key is not the length of the document, but to be incontrovertible thorough whether in one or five hundred pages. What matters is relevance regardless of length.
Serious think tanks incumbents must go through colossal volumes of research. And, believe or not, that makes a vital difference.
Pay great attention to a letter that I will now quote by Napoleon to one of his general. Incidentally, as in the Industrial Military Complex, DARPA, and NASA if you can put any “light” or profound idea or comment is useless if it’s not documented in writing. And in operational guidelines, directives and standards anything said verbally (not in writing) has no effect at all.
Napoleon wrote to his general the ensuing:
“Your letter tells me nothing. You will however have to be able to interrogate in order to know the names of the regiments and the commanding general and a hundred things, all very important — the morale of the troops, the way in which they are fed, the strength of the different units, and what is known from conservations with the colonels and officers of the corps. … I expected several pages and I get only two lines. Redeem all that by writing me in great detail.”
CHAPTER 2
ARE YOU FIGHTING AGAINST THE “DEMON OF DECAY”?
“In the age of revolution, the future is not an echo of the past. While every executive understands this intellectually, it is quite another thing to stand in front of your organization, and investors, and boldly confront the demon of decay. But investors and employees are smart enough to know that sooner or later every company has to a strategy ‘un-install’...” [64]
Attributed to Robert Kennedy. “The future is not a privilege but a perpetual conquest.”
CHAPTER 2
BONAPARTE’S PROPHECIES ON HURRICANE KATRINA’ AND GULF OF MEXICO’S SINCE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Many people have bitterness recalling of Napoleon. Many countries in Europe and especially the United States have established military doctrine on Bonaparte’s teaching. The institutionalization of this teaching is beyond official.
What I like the most about this man was his insatiable search for self-learning, and self-learning about: (1) English, (2) Mathematics, (3) Science, (4) Management, (5) Systems Approach, (6) Organization stewarding, and (7) Indisputable wisdom.
He didn’t just like these subject matters; he applied them lavishly and thus conquered Europe and even Russia through these disciplines in times in which every portion of land in that continent was waging war among neighbors. Too many kings and queens until the Emperor rose upon all of them.
By coalescing his entire beloved subject matters — both in their theoretical, empirical, and practical modes —, he indisputably birthed an array of composite stratagems. If you are as thoughtful as I think you are, the idea is to in-source your brain with empirical recommendations to formulate winning composite stratagems in your diverse entrepreneurial activities.
On geology Napoleon generally reflects:
“It is very important … to have good maps of all the country between the Adige, the Po, and the Adda … which will probably be the theater of new wars on the same scale as the large map of Italy. It is necessary to have all reconnaissances made at the Topographical Bureau of War in order that we could, if necessary, send the generals all suitable instructions. Then, from the commencement of war, they would know the defensive campaign field-works that will have to be prepared in the various positions in case of unfortunate developments …. I believe that the topographical engineers work, but I am not sure that they work according to good fundamental principles. We have them produce registers of the survey of lands and not military maps, which means that in twenty years, and I don’t know how many engineers and how much money, to map only a portion of the departments of Rhine and Moselle and Mont-Tonnerre, which are truly important. To make twenty years to finish maps and plans is to work too much posterity …. How many circumstances could occur over the next twenty years that we would regret? If one of them had been on the scale of a Cassini map we could already have had all of the Rhine frontier. How many circumstances could occur over the next twenty years where we will regret them? …” [113]
And Bonaparte adds:
“…What events can occur, even for this accumulation of paper, before we can reap any advantage from all this work? I don’t know why war is waged with this type of map … The fact is, I have not had, on my visit to the Rhine, any map where I could gain knowledge of the country. We have to draw maps of Mont-Blanc … and the Piedmont the same progress that we followed for the departments of the Rhine, nothing will be finished in our lifetime …. Engineers are too much masters of what they wish to do. I have not asked for anything other than the completion of the Cassini map. Rest assured that the operations are not directed on projects that are too vast. Experience proves that the greatest defect in general administration is to want to do too much: that results in not having what is needed … Order them especially to mark clearly the nature of the different roads, in order to distinguish those which are practicable or impracticable for artillery. If all the debouches of the Black Mountains are accurately located, this map will be one of the most essential that we could have for.” [113]
CHAPTER 2
STRATEGOS INSTITUTE’S FOUNDER AND LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL’S PROFESSOR ON THE FUTURE AND THE DERIVED ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY FRAMEWORK
By Gary Hamel, PhD: “We believe that the goal is not to predict the future, but to imagine a future made possible by changes in technology, life style, work style, regulation, global geopolitics, and the like. And there are as many viable futures as there as imaginative firms that can understand deeply the dynamics at work right now which hold opportunities to become the author of the new. For the future is not what will happen; the future is what is happening. The present and the future don’t abut each other, neatly divided between the five-year plan and the great unknown beyond. Rather they are intertwined. Every company is in the process of becoming — of becoming an anachronism irrelevant to the future, or of becoming the harbinger of the future. The long-term is not something that happens someday; it is what every company is building or forfeiting …. Only those who can imagine and preemptively create the future will be around to enjoy it … Creating a compelling view of tomorrow’s opportunities and moving preemptively to secure the future are tasks for neither dilettantes nor the merely intellectual curious … Other companies, the laggards, were more interested in protecting the past than in creating the future … We believe, and will argue strongly, that a company must not only get to the future first, it must get there for less …. And re-engineering charge is simply the penalty that a company must pay for not having anticipated the future …. If senior executives don’t have reasonably detailed answers to the ‘future’ set of questions, and if the answers they do have are not substantially different from the ‘today’ answers, there is little chance their companies will remain market leaders …. For much of the 1980s, IBM had been driving toward the future while looking out the rear-view mirror …. Too often, profound thinking about the future and how to shape it occurs only when present success has been substantially eroded …. Creating the future is more challenging than playing catch up, in that you have to create your own road map …. The goal is not simply to benchmark a competitor’s products and processes and imitate its methods, but to develop an independent point of view about tomorrow’s opportunities and how to exploit them. Pathbreaking is a lot more rewarding than benchmarking. One doesn’t get to the future first by letting someone else blaze the trail …. Passengers will get to the future, but their fate will not be in their own hands. Theirs profits from the future will be modest at best. Those who drive industry revolution — companies that have a clear, permeated view of where they want tom take their industry and are capable of orchestrating resources inside and outside the company to get there first — will be handsomely rewarded… The future is not an extrapolation of the past. New industrial structures will supersede old industrial structures …. Opportunities that at first blush seem evolutionary will prove to be revolutionary …. A commitment substantial enough to beget the perseverance required to create the future must be based on something more than a hunch …. But to create the future, a company must first be able to forget some of its past … ‘The future was predictable, but hardly anyone predicted it’ …” [87]
CHAPTER 3
ROCKET SCIENCE ABOUT ACTUAL DISCIPLINED SUCCESS CAPTURING?
Dr. Vernon Grose, D.Sc.: “DISCIPLINES OF THOUGHT…. As might be expected, the first set of disciplines involves thinking. The systems approach employs orderly inductive logic. That simply means to think or reason by going from particular facts to general conclusions. This type of thought is also the backbone of the scientific method. The inverse — deductive thought, which reasons from general principles to specific conclusions — is also used at times. But it is of less importance …. A second mental discipline seeks totality of understanding. The objective of this discipline is omniscience, or unlimited knowledge of a system, its use environments, and its risks. This idealistic goal is never reached, of course, even though is vigorously pursued. Two quite different kinds of understanding are combined …. Theoretically understanding is related to comprehending how all the elements in a system (for example, physical plant, products produced, personnel employed, management policies, and accounting methods) are intended to interact with one another. In contrast, practical understanding is knowing how these factors actually work together in a real world …. The third discipline of thought — continued challenge in depth — emphasizes the fact that professional managers can never relax in the comfort of all their analyzes. Constant vigilance and sustained questioning — ‘What if such and such happens?’ — is essential …. The three disciplines of thought collectively identify the problems that must be solved in the system. They also produce a qualitative picture of the system … DISCIPLINE OF TECHNIQUE …. The problems that have been identified by disciplines of thought are next resolved by a second set of disciplines — those of technique …. Specific mathematical tools used in risk management are not expounded here. However, Boolean algebra and set theory — as well as probabilistic logic, statistical mechanics, and other calculative modeling methods — are widely employed to solve complex problems in a system …. Complexity of most systems also forces the use of system analysis methods to solve difficult problems. Several types (for example, Fault Tree Analysis or Hazard Mode and Effect Analysis) that are used extensively in risk-related issues …. Automatic processing capability by computers makes a considerable technical contribution to solving system problems. For example, many functions formerly performed by people can be much more rapidly and efficiently done by computers …. These three problem-solving techniques, taken together, also produce quantitative assurance that the system is adequate for its intended objectives …. DISCIPLINES OF PROCEDURE … One of the greatest differences between the systems approach to problem solving and other choices lies in this third set of disciplines. In fact, it is the easiest way to tell whether a problem has been attacked systematically or not …. stimulated the establishment of procedural disciplines. Paperwork and records are anathemas to everyone who has to create them. Yet, because of complexity, it is necessary to have a documented trail, for several reasons. First, in complicated situations, objective review by someone other than the person who perform a function is generally required. Second, …, you need it not only for failure analysis but for success analysis as well! Otherwise, you have to always start over at ‘square one.’ …. There are two major disciplines of procedures. The first — system engineering procedural requirements …. Results of work completed — such as Functional Flow Block Diagrams, resource allocation sheets, and trade-off studies — are documented and retained for future reference …. Complete, unambiguous technical writing is another ideal never reached. But to the degree that the documented information is both complete and free from misunderstanding, the decision-making workload is reduced. This is true both at the time of decision and at later times of reconsideration…..” [99]
Incidentally, people erroneously think of computers whenever they hear the word “system.”
Graphics corresponding to these three disciplines are viewable at http://bit.ly/dxmXQ6
CHAPTER 3
INTRODUCTORY QUOTATIONS – AND WITH COMMENTARIES – BY ENLIGHTENED MINDS!
There is a great deal of publishing about change and coping with it and its consequences. I have the firmest belief that there is a huge lack of understanding how change can change its own nature. Bacon, ensuing, makes a legendary quotation about it.
Sir Francis Bacon: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.” [2]
Understanding the future?
“,,,, past or future, was a succession of violent breaks or waves, with no base at all.” [135]
How to prevail?
James Thomson (1700 - 1749) ─ a Scottish poet and playwright ─ argues: “Great trials seem to be a necessary preparation for great duties.” [137]
Spiritual author and leadership?
John C. Maxwell (born 1947) ─ an evangelical Christian author, speaker, and pastor who has written more than 50 books ─ “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
What do humans wish to do with their life and universe?
Simon Conway Morris, PhD: “Barring a daring technology in the future, human civilization will be hard-pressed to destroy or deflect incoming bolides [meteoric fireballs] and so avoid impact-driven catastrophes .... enmeshed in medieval cruelty, unwilling to face the boundlessly happy future; a future that, strange to say, is always just around the corner .... Western culture's penchant for regarding science and technology as the guarantors of indefinite progress toward some hazy but glorious future paradise ....” [118]
In 1990 Brad Leithauser, New Yorker made a lucid comment pertaining to the rate of change at that time: “…it reminds us that, in our accelerating, headlong era, the future presses so close upon us that those who ignore it inhabit not the present but the past.” [106]
Three and Half Millenniums of Risk Management practice?
“Moses wrote nearly 3,500 years ago: ‘Every new house must have a guard rail around the edge of the flat rooftop to prevent anyone from falling off and bringing guilt to both the house and its owner.” [99]
How really empowered and dis-empowered are we?
Stewart Brand (1968): “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” [104]
Thirty years without education reforms in the West and the prevalent sequel going unpaid until when?
Carl Sagan: “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows about science and technology.” [104]
Where does the computation care the most?
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “Irrigate your radiant thinking irradiantly back and forth to computronium and multiverse until you start seizing actionable and applicable knowledge from those theaters of operations in which you execute.” 4:05 a.m. USA’s EST — Monday, June 21, 2010 — [84], [85], [92]
There are many that believe to have a vested interest in fossilized pasts. To those Hamel has a word of wisdom.
Prof. Gary Hamel, PhD: “Denial is tragic. Delay is deadly.” [64]
Zero emotional intelligence, zero political correction, and only genuineness’?
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “Incessantly follow constructive your omniscience-driven bliss a Cappella without innuendos for Life.” [92]
What can knowledge do for progress and modernity?
Edward Teller: “The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.” [83]
Are you emotionally stable before the future?
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” [96]
What computes what and through which? I just wonder!
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “It seems to me that Dark Matter is the Universe’s computational hardware while the Dark Energy is the Universe’s computational software.” [111]
Concurrent paradoxes are useful to applied science?
Edward Teller: “Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.” [93]
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “The Universe embeds and/or sources computing and calculating capabilities into your prepared-mind bio computer. Whether you take advantage or not, that’s another ball game.” [92]
Is there future cleverness? Can we ask Bill Gates?
Patrick Dixon: “Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you — be futurewise.” [96]
Will the immutable life-cycle will be altered with nano-technology and bio-technology?
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “Until the voyage through rigor mortis is completed, there had better be rigor juris only.” [92]
Have we captured the necessary knowledge, awareness and understanding of the Twentieth-One Century ?
GBN’s CEO Eamonn Nelly: “We have globalized the economy and culture, but we have not yet globalized our sense of ourselves.” [89]
From neuron activation to execution activation?
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “Think long enough to over-accomplish forever.” [92]
What is the expectation?
Dr. Bernie Siegel, MD: “Hope is a memory of the future.” [59]
What is the successful “stupid” in Twentieth-One Century ?
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “In order to have a successful ‘the economy first, stupid,’ you must FIRST succeed thoroughly on ‘the applied omniscience, stupid’ notion.” — 11:07 p.m. USA’s EST — Saturday, July 18 2010 — [92]
Do we respect solemnly time and its passage?
William Shakespeare (Macbeth): “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” [96]
What can we do about time passage?
W. E. Gladstone — British Prime Minister — (1809 — 1898): “You cannot fight against the future.” [17]
Future and the genius?
Ernest Dimnet: “Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.” [96]
Future-liable if you don’t pay attention?
John Galsworthy: “If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.” [96]
Echoing the PRESENT in hindsight now?
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “The PRESENT is just the manifestation or expression of an echo in reversal by the FUTURE and/or one of its alter egos: the Universe, the Multiverse, Computronium, or Futuretronium.”
Taking ownership of times to come?
Malcolm X: “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” [96]
Either or what?
Anthony J. D'Angelo: “Run to meet the future or it's going to run you down.” [96]
How do we sign up by phenomenal lots of tons of smart work?
Leonard I. Sweet: “The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.” [96]
Is too much history studying dangerous?
Michael Cibenko: “One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us.” [96]
Where is the quadrant domicile of true success?
Denny Crum: “Most of our future lies ahead.” [96]
Perpetual learning for Life?
John Wayne: “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.” [96]
In Shock, Awe and Bewilderment for not Understanding?
Alvin Toffler: “Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.” [96]
Do people have an innate “love affair” with speed?
Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” [96]
Andrew Hiles argues about the “future” (2007): “In many senses the future will be more of the same. There will still be cross-cultural issues to deal with, different political systems, currency problems, different calendar systems, different values, completely different social structures, etc., both within Asia and between Asia and the other trading blocs. Fires will still occur, petty crime will still go on, economics will boom and dust, corruption will stay, illegal economic activities will continue, workplace problems will no go away ─ and so on. The basic ‘stuff’ of business and BCP [Business Continuity Planning] will continue to provide the challenges that all organizations and businesses face. BUT THERE WILL BE NEW OR ESCALATED CHALLENGES THAT HAVE TO BE FACED.” [135]
Recalling not to fail into what?
George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [99]
The larger historic perspective is good for which purpose?
Unknown author: “Those who stare at the past have their backs turned to the future.” [96]
Grave implications of contrarians to fostering change?
Max Planck: “An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.” [96]
Who gets the practical and useful merit?
Thomas Edison: “I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing.” [96]
Learning from the past in reversal?
Dillon Wardian: “Those who know their past are tempted to repeat it but on the winning side.” [96]
Buying your membership to the future?
Mehmet Ildan: “Future is an unknown country which requires tough visas for anyone to enter. Not all of us will get the chance to visit it.” [96]
The undersigned and the present material’s author: “Correlate everything else with the ignored and unthinkable ‘else’ of everything else forever.” [92]
In seriously rigorous thinking, there is an important maxim to bear in mind at all times. It establishes: “whatever is now working is already obsolete.” In the case of already-forewarned scientists, this implies to evolve or to radicalize the evolution of any tangibles or intangibles.
How does one discipline the mind?
Honoré de Balzac: “The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the past; and to man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him what has been, and you seldom fail to show him what will be.” [82]
Part 1 of Futuretronium at http://Futuretronium.blogspot.com
Part 2 of Futuretronium at http://Futuretronium-part-2.blogspot.com/
Part 3 of Futuretronium at http://Futuretronium-part-3.blogspot.com/
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