Euro-visions Technologies of vision in Until the End of the World

Until the End of the World can be seen as a ‘global' film in terms of its production process, theme, narrative structure and universal appeal. The article challenges this universality by demonstrating that the film mobilises distinctive and definitive European perspectives in its attempt to speculate about our global future. The article initially examines the film's imagining of technological development in the near future. The film is particularly preoccupied with the future of ‘technologies of vision', the techno-scientific and artistic ways through which we represent ourselves and the world around us. In Until the End of the World, these ‘technologies of vision' are contrasted to more traditional processes of story-telling. The position that narrative occupies in the film is analysed with particular emphasis on the position and the function ascribed to the narrator. The article locates both the discursive origins of ‘technologies of vision' and the film's critique of them, not in opposing universes, but within the same historical process, sharing a common ‘destiny' and coming from the same (European) view of the world.     

Images of the future: a historical perspective

In an attempt to create a futures philosophy, this paper analyzes and critiques Fredrich Polak’s Image of the future, a philosophy of history that contends that the image of the future of a society or culture defines a particular era and is the key to understanding of the rise and fall of civilizations. Polak’s view is compared with J.B. Bury’s ideas expressed in The idea of progress. The paper also illustrates how Max Weber’s The protestant ethic and the Spirit of capitalism contributes to an understanding of the progressive image of the future which, along with utopian images of the future, composes the dialectic of futures images. It shows how progressive and utopian images of the future have been expressed in dialectical world history and how they are still relevant today to serve as an insight for prognosis. Finally, it examines and answers Polak’s charge that existentialism is the cause for the destruction of the modern image of the future.     

Bug planet: Frontier myth in Starship Troopers

This paper examines Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film Starship Troopers against Robert A. Heinlein's eponymous 1959 novel, arguing that both productions reinscribe the ideologies of America's mythic frontier history in their fictional futures. The paper shows that despite the conspicuous postmodernisation of narrative in Verhoeven's adaptation, components of the frontier mythology codified in Heinlein's novel— expansionism, Social Darwinism and a violent relationship with the indigenous Other—remain at the film's thematic centre.     

Wicked cities: Cyberculture and the reimagining of identity in the ‘non-Western'' metropolis

Hong Kong consumers of popular culture have recently been obsessed with cyberpunk culture. One film exploiting the techniques and passions of cyberculture is Wicked City or Yaoshou dushi (1992) directed by Peter Mak (Mak Tai Kit) and produced by Tsui Hark. It is discussed here as exceptional in its re-deployment of the cultural imaginaries of Hollywood movies, Japanese comics, and Hong Kong's own ideology. Issues of colonialism, the alienatory power of the nation-state, hybridity, androgyny, time and history and, for Hong Kong, the rare critique of the capitalism, are all addressed in this film and in our discussion of the text and its context.     

Automobile Usage in a Future Information Society

The Information society provides a challenge for the future of the automobile. This article, based on a two-year Swedish study as part of the MIT Future of the Automobile Programme, used four scenarios against which to predict the future of the car in Sweden. It concludes that, overall, information technologies will not substitute for travel, only for the information carried on paper; rather, future moves towards increasingly dispersed living will keep car usage high.     

Alternative futures: AmI scenarios and Minority Report

In the last few decades, scenarios have provided a way of analysing the implications of alternative futures, especially as they might be impacted by new technologies. This has been no less true of ambient intelligence (AmI), which may be embedded everywhere in the not so distant future. Most of the scenarios developed by AmI enthusiasts have been rather ‘sunny’, showing how the new technologies promise to make our lives more efficient, enjoyable, productive, enriching. A European project, called Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (SWAMI), deliberately developed ‘dark scenarios’ to highlight the threats to privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness posed by the new technologies. The SWAMI consortium also developed a methodological structure for deconstructing and analysing the dark scenarios. This paper takes that approach a step further by applying it to a cultural artefact, partly to test the validity, utility, applicability of the SWAMI methodology to a scenario not constructed by the consortium and partly to show how some cultural artefacts can be regarded as scenarios in their own right as well as warnings about future technologies. The cultural artefact chosen here was the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report, because it features so many AmI technologies and draws attention to the issues that have been the focus of the SWAMI project.     

Eleonora Masini on the empowerment of women

Eleonora Barbieri Masini's lifetime contributions as visionary sociologist and pioneering futurist are well known. Less well known, perhaps, are her roles as vital catalyst in organizing comparative research on the role and status of women and as activist leader in efforts to end the exploitation and subordination of women and to create a future world of equality, freedom, and social justice. In this article, examples of Masini's work on—and for—the empowerment of women are given.     

Science and fiction: the good and the bad

When Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the Moon, they said science had at last caught up with fiction. The event had long been foretold in the Promethean genre of science fiction. Indeed, NASA had paid tribute to the prophetic powers of this literature when it gave the name of Columbia to the space module of the Apollo 11 mission in memory of the Columbiad of Jules Verne's space story. As I.F. Clarke shows in this survey, science and fiction have always had the future in common. From the earliest days of the first industrial revolution the innumerable possibilities of a technological society have found their appropriate images in the many future worlds of science fiction. Thirty years before they started work on the Manhattan Project, H.G. Wells invented the term atomic bomb and described the first atomic war in The World Set Free.     

汽车保险精算定价模型研究综述

汽车保险定价模型在非寿险精算领域内占有重要地位,本文对车险定价模型一百多年来的研究进展作了综述性的回顾。首先,本文介绍了车险定价模型的先验估费方法;其次着重介绍了时齐的后验估费方法,以及时变的先验后验相结合的精算模型;最后提出了车险定价模型的未来发展方向。     

Here come the men in black Technology and anxiety in the postmodern age

This review of the film Men in Black argues that what used to be alarming in the science fiction genre has now become its main source of humour. As a reactionary response to the dystopic X-Files, MiB is an elaborate parody which seeks to recuperate ideological ground lost by the X-Files' examination of gender and technology in contemporary culture. Anxiety about the roles of technology, gender and the state are replaced by humour about the notion of anxiety itself. Anxious we may be at the close of the millenium, but MiB tells us to just laugh it all away.     

Limited imagination: Depictions of computers in science fiction film

Are speculations about the future ever truly inventive, or are they overly limited by today's reality? Many scholars suggest the latter, and have so for millennia. If this is true, speculations about the future in science fiction film should be closely constrained by today's reality, and truly novel and accurate visions of the future in science fiction must be rare. This paper presents a comparison of how computer technologies have been depicted in popular science fiction films with actual computer technologies that existed when the films were made. The investigation included charting the occurrence of 11 trends in real-world computer technologies and types of computer interaction (e.g., mainframe computers, textual and vector graphic-based interfaces, keyboard and mice) in 10 popular science fiction films spanning four decades (e.g., 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and Minority Report). The investigation revealed that depictions of computers in science fiction films mirror, for the most part, real world trends in computer technology development. The article concludes with a brief discussion of some implications of this finding.     

Is that a future we want?: An ecofeminist exploration of images of the future in contemporary film

Contemporary film images of the future are usually made within the hegemonic world of the Hollywood¹ film industry. This paper will argue that these films, with their global reach, are contributing to the dominant single view of the future. A view that limits the future to a Western high-tech, white, heterosexual, patriarchal, militaristic, dark blandness where a small number of the rich and powerful men are in control; it is a view that misses out on the lushness of human and biological diversity and the joyful messiness of plurality and truly democratic systems of shared power. Using Causal Layered Analysis as a methodological framework, and ecofeminism to ask questions, this paper explores images of the future in a small number of contemporary films, with specific attention to images of the ecological future in depictions of landscape, food, and animals as well as women's roles in society as an indicator of social justice and equality.Ecofeminism provides a theoretical base from which to identify areas of domination of women, human Others, non-human Others, and the Earth. Ecofeminism combined with Futures Studies provides direction on alternative ways to envision futures—futures that celebrate and protect local human and biological diversity as well as a recognition of common values based on requirements for peace, shelter, food, water, basic material well-being, and cultural expression.     

Future uncertain: Arts council England''s vision for the future of the contemporary visual arts

This paper considers the construction and presentation of the Arts Council of England's (ACE) vision, Turning Point for contemporary visual arts. It constitutes a case study of the processes entailed in planning the future of the visual arts. By examining the commissioning of the visual arts review, and the various contexts within which it was set — namely, those of the visual arts, ACE, and Department of Culture, Media and Sport, (DCMS) it asks in what sense this strategy specifically caters for the future. The article closes with some observations about the case made for the visual arts and the business of formulating strategy within DCMS's non-departmental public bodies.     

Evolution in the rationales of foresight in Europe

The traditional mechanistic approach to Strategic Thinking influenced the rationales and consequently the early experiences of Technology Forecasting in Europe. On the other hand, the more recent dynamic non-linear approaches to Strategic Thinking and a gradual regionalization of the innovation policy have favoured the replacement of Forecasting with Foresight and, more recently, with Regional Foresight, where the complexity of phenomena is taken into greater account. In fact, during the last few decades, a transition has occurred from a mainly hierarchic capitalism to a flexible one. At micro-economic level, this has caused a gradual transition from hierarchical organisational models with tangible assets to network organisational models, which are knowledge-based and face complex and unsettled scenarios.

This paper tries to demonstrate that the concepts of Forecasting and Foresight cannot be considered outside of this context and of changes that have occurred in Strategic Thinking, where the needs for more global and interdisciplinary views of problems are striving to integrate Strategic management and Entrepreneurship into the new concept of Strategic Entrepreneurship.

In order to demonstrate this evolution in the rationales of foresight and in its applications, this work analyses and compares some among the more significant experiences of transition towards Regional Foresight in Europe.     

Scientific eventuality or science fiction: The future of people with different abilities

Consider this, we are living in a future [in-part] imagined over 30 years ago- in science fiction film and books. We may envision that 30 years from now we could live in a future with technology developed from the concepts we see in science fiction today. In this paper, the concepts of disability are challenged in the future based on the technologies imagined in the science fiction genre of the present and past. Focused on the sub-genre, Cyberpunk, current mainstream, as well as new emerging technologies inspired by science fiction are reviewed. Future disability is reimagined dependent on continued support and acceptance of the emerging technology. If our past is any indication, our future may lie in the conceptual and slightly implausible figments of our science fiction-based imaginations. However, the cultural shift will significantly impact our laws, regulations, and policies, as well as introduce new societal concerns.     

Futurescaping Infinite Bandwidth, Zero Latency

In the 1990s Castells analysed ‘the rise of the network society’ but this remains an ever-changing phenomenon. It throws up new concepts and issues. For example, no one foresaw what Mark Zuckerberg would create in terms of on-line social networks with the FaceBook project. Predicting the functionality and utility of the Internet is a mug's game and yet it can be extremely profitable for those who ‘guess right’ and are able to influence the future applications and organisational forms of the network society.Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband is promoted strongly by policy makers as underpinning future economic growth. NGA can be thought of as a potential future placeholder, the content and structure of which, while remaining tantalizing, is occupying many contemporary minds. In this paper we describe a process (Imagine/Triple Task Method) and an event structure IBZL (or Infinite Bandwidth Zero Latency), which explores potentially novel applications of NGA and provide some ideas as to the key components of the future inter-networked landscape.In this paper we present the context of the IBZL initiative, review the ‘Imagine’ process as an effective method for ‘futurescaping’ and present some initial outcomes of the project.     

The curse of globalised culture: the fall of Indian cinema foretold

Indian popular cinema, at the present juncture, is caught in a fix marked by two opposite trends—the overall decline in quality of the modern film resulting in rejection by audiences (as seen in endless commercial failures) and the nostalgic reverence among people about the classic films of earlier years, which had entertained and mesmerised them in a discourse that was beautiful, exciting and emotionally satisfying. This paper argues that the current decline in quality is part and outcome of the wider globalisation processes, consequently delinking cinema from the earlier creative roots. In this context, it makes some projections about the future of this cinema (and television) and suggests a set of future options to resurrect it from its present decline and to help the medium reinvent its past glory and social relevance.     

The luxury of despair: A reply to Robert Heilbroner''s : Human prospect

Professor Freeman diagnoses Heilbroner's Human Prospect as a neo-Malthusian interpretation of world trends. He focuses on the possibility of hope for mankind and the responsibility of intelligentsia in this debate. First he challenges Heilbroner's projections of population growth, particularly in the Third World, which he finds unjustified both factually and logically; second, he argues with the presentation of socio-economic and environmental global futures. From this stance he questions the political prospects, viewed by Heilbroner as a future of conflict and totalitarian regimes.     

汇率不确定性与企业跨境并购

本文立足外部不确定性视角,提出汇率不确定性对企业重要涉外经济行为(跨境并购)影响的实物期权与风险对冲效应。本文以2000～2019年A股上市公司宣告的跨境并购为研究对象,分析发现人民币兑美元名义汇率不确定性显著降低了企业跨境并购的可能性,实物期权效应占主导;人民币名义有效汇率不确定性与企业跨境并购决策正相关,风险对冲效应占主导。横截面检验发现,人民币兑美元名义汇率不确定性对跨境并购的抑制作用在汇率交易风险和折算风险更高以及存在融资约束的企业中更为明显;有效汇率反映一国贸易条件,行业竞争激烈与汇率经济风险更高的企业,在人民币名义有效汇率不确定性加剧时更有可能进行跨境并购。最后,汇率不确定下的企业跨境并购取得了较好的财务绩效(汇率风险约束使企业并购行为更审慎高效),降低了有效汇率风险敞口。本文区分了双边汇率与有效汇率的差异,拓展了汇率波动的经济后果与跨境并购影响因素的研究范畴,为“双循环”下我国推进高质量对外开放与汇率市场化改革、有效引导国际资本流动以及企业在不确定环境下提升并购效率,提供了理论依据。     

The future of art in postcultural democracy

Has the future of art fallen irredeemably into the grip of the ‘creative industries’ directed by a consortium of public and private cultural entrepreneurs? Is democracy the natural guardian of artistic independence? Or has the cultural policy agenda of neoliberal democracy solidified into a managerial instrumentalization of art geared to the functions of the market and the state? European Cultural Policies: 2015 provides a model introductory text for a discussion of these vital issues in near future forecast. The authors of the report are independent curators operating from dissident research groups whose aim is to challenge the dominant neoliberal model of cultural enterprise and offer viable alternatives to it. This paper examines the report's diagnosis of a symptomatic cultural predicament and its proposals for future recuperation.