Futures thinking

Those of us who recognize that we’ve been here before are the ones who have to call attention to where we are heading.

Digital feedback loops are helping us see that our media, technology, culture, economy, and natural world all have at least as much of a cyclical character as a linear one.

It’s not a matter of banishing linearity and progress

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“People with certain diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration slowly lose their eyesight as photoreceptors at the center of the eye degenerate,” said Udo Römer, an engineer whose expertise is in photovoltaics, commonly known as solar panel tech. “It has long been thought that biomedical implants in the retina could... See more

I need a greater facility with multispecies languages. I am engaging in a conversation across cultural divides with other multitudes, whose languages and modes of perception we have only just begun to explore.

Note also that this view is consistent with and indeed emerges from the multi-component model of hippocampal contributions to episodic future simulation put forth by Addis and Schacter (2012), which links the hippocampus with distinct components of future simulations, including both retrieval of episodic details and recombining those details.

The distinctive feature of imagination, therefore, rests on its capacity of creating new mental images by combining and modifying stored perceptual information in novel ways and by inserting this information in a subjective view of the world: hence it is related to his self-awareness. In other words, imagination is not simply the organization,... See more

The concept of regeneration is inherently layered, complex and evolving. It can have spiritual, ecological and even medical connotations. Regardless of context however, regeneration evokes hopeful themes of renewal, revival, rebirth and restoration. Regeneration involves more than doing no harm, it is an active, positive and continuous process.

There is indirect evidence to support this idea. For instance, individuals tend to act in a way that is consistent with or constrained by how they have imagined themselves in those situations (Johnson and Sherman, 1990), implying that some record of that simulation influences later behavior. There is typically a high correspondence of stated... See more

Thus, it remains an open question as to whether the hippocampus is necessary for future simulation.