Cities of the imagination: Science fiction, urban space, and community engagement in urban planning

Stories, dreams, histories and myths, Michel de Certeau argues, connect people to particular places and makes place concrete and inhabitable. These narratives generate an imaginary, poetic geography that haunts the abstract city of street maps and development plans, and makes it socially meaningful. This paper is concerned with one particular kind of story-telling - science fiction - and its relationship with the city, urban planning, and questions of community engagement. The paper argues that the ‘cities of the imagination’ generated by science fiction and other forms of narrative provide a powerful means of understanding, communicating and enriching the connections to place in urban communities. Moreover, science fiction is often characterised by its ability to explore the future of cities. This gives the genre a fascinating and potentially useful resonance with urban planning as a discourse and set of practices; and, in particular, strategies for engaging communities in the design process and, thus, designing for future social sustainability. These ideas will be tested through a reading of near-future urban spatiality in the cyberpunk stories of William Gibson. The theorisation of the relationship between urban space and narrative in the work of de Certeau and other theorists will be used to help frame this discussion.     

论刑法拟制的本质、正当性及应有类型

刑法拟制的本质是对法律效果的拟制,是对A类型的事实适用A罪的构成要件进行评价,但适用B罪的罪名和法定刑定罪量刑——既不是对事实要素的假定而将A类型的事实认定为B类型的事实,也不是为B罪创设一种新的犯罪构成。除了窝藏赃物型抢劫罪等少数条款具有拟制的正当性之外,其他拟制条款均不具有正当性,应当尽快废除。根据条文规定的明确程度以及可解释为注意规定的余地大小,可以将刑法学界通常所认为的刑法拟制划分为明文规定的拟制、比较明显的拟制、形似的拟制、解释的拟制四种类型,由于大多数“拟制”条款都存在违背罪刑法定、实质正义和责任主义等问题,因而应当将形似的拟制和解释的拟制解释为注意规定,以尽量缩小刑法拟制的条款范围。     

The historical process—a new perspective

This article examines history as a systematic process, suggesting that there are clear underlying dynamics, and that we are moving rapidly from a world in which they were scarcely recognized, towards conditions where they will dominate our lives. It argues that this important transition will evolve naturally from established trends and should restore lost confidence and vitality. The article also considers an anomaly between the compounding dynamics of the historical process and the apparently constant dynamics of long-wave phenomena.     

Robots,men and sex tourism

In 2050, Amsterdam's red light district will all be about android prostitutes who are clean of sexual transmitted infections (STIs), not smuggled in from Eastern Europe and forced into slavery, the city council will have direct control over android sex workers controlling prices, hours of operations and sexual services. This paper presents a futuristic scenario about sex tourism, discusses the drivers of change and the implications for the future. The paper pushes plausibility to the limit as boundaries of science fiction and fact become blurred in the ever increasing world of technology, consumption and humanity, a paradigm known as liminality.     

Finally: A withering away of cities?

Forecasters and science fiction writers have long predicted the demise of the city. It is argued that, with the cost of telecommunication likely to fall to near zero, one of the main reasons for agglomeration in cities will disappear and that the result will be a withering away of cities. This essay considers the likelihood of revolutionary change in the urban landscape and the implications for research by urban scholars.     

Near Future School: World building beyond a neoliberal present with participatory design fictions

This article reports on one part of an on-going project, the Near Future School, which aims to translate and explore the potential of participatory design fiction practices for use with young people and those that work with them to explore near future scenarios of education that open up alternative and plural futures in the context of processes of foreclosure in a neoliberalising society. The focus here is to explore the practical and ethical issues of developing a speculative form of governance, using the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza, as an act of imaginative world building through participatory design fictions. The research raises a series of questions and issues relating to understanding how design fiction’s multiple inheritances, from fiction and design or art and design, need to be better understood and enacted within participatory design fiction processes.     

董事会独立性、股权制衡与财务信息质量

财务信息作为信息披露的主体,其质量高低直接关系到资本市场的有效运作,引入独立董事制度,彰显董事会的独立性以提高公司的透明度是监管机构改善公司治理结构的重要举措,但在我国一股独大,股权缺乏制衡的制度背景下,独立董事制度的实际运作效果不仅实务界缺乏统一的认识,而且学术界也没有提供可以判断的经验证据。本文利用中国资本市场的数据检验了股权缺乏制衡是否影响财务信息的质量,董事会的独立性是否有助于解决股权制衡的问题,提高公司的透明度。研究结果证实,股权缺乏制衡对财务信息质量有负面影响,董事会独立性在股权缺乏制衡的环境中能发挥监督制约作用,提高财务信息的有用性。     

Towards market differentiation in the accounting profession: The case of Australia and New Zealand

The literature on the evolution of the accounting profession has frequently explained that the changes in the structure of the profession over the last century or more have often been used to achieve closure of the profession. The profession is once again in a state of flux. The Australian accounting profession has undergone major changes and is contemplating more transformation. The sole accounting body in New Zealand has made a major shift from monopoly over accounting practice to free competition for all. Examining the recent developments in Australia and New Zealand, the paper shows that the objectives behind the current changes in the two countries are identical. They are primarily no longer seeking closure and are moving towards achieving market differentiation. The paper then demonstrates that this strategy shift can be seen as an outcome of the new market orientated socio-economic environment of these countries. The outcome of the change is a profession that is trying to be consumer focused with a corporatist structure, within the shade of professional identity.     

Monetary and Fiscal Policy Switching

A growing body of evidence finds that policy reaction functions vary substantially over different periods in the United States. This paper explores how moving to an environment in which monetary and fiscal regimes evolve according to a Markov process can change the impacts of policy shocks. In one regime monetary policy follows the Taylor principle and taxes rise strongly with debt; in another regime the Taylor principle fails to hold and taxes are exogenous. An example shows that a unique bounded non-Ricardian equilibrium exists in this environment. A computational model illustrates that because agents' decision rules embed the probability that policies will change in the future, monetary and tax shocks always produce wealth effects. When it is possible that fiscal policy will be unresponsive to debt at times, active monetary policy (like a Taylor rule) in one regime is not sufficient to insulate the economy against tax shocks in that regime and it can have the unintended consequence of amplifying and propagating the aggregate demand effects of tax shocks. The paper also considers the implications of policy switching for two empirical issues.     

The Role and Current Status of IFRS in the Completion of National Accounting Rules – Evidence from Norway

Abstract

Although not a EU member, Norway is required to implement the EU Accounting Directive through its obligations under the EEA agreement. An expert group has prepared a draft law that will be decided upon by the legislator, most likely during 2017. The draft law has a strong orientation towards IFRS, which is evidenced in particular by the choice of IFRS for SMEs as the basis for Norwegian accounting standards.     

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.     

Predictability,trading rule profitability and learning in currency markets

This paper studies currency predictability over time. We assess predictability by testing for the presence of exploitable patterns in currency returns. To do so, we first generate consistent and parsimonious reduced-form estimates of currency expected returns and variances and then use these estimates to form dynamic trading strategies that maximize the multi-period Sharpe ratio. Our results show that currency predictability is time-varying and, for a number of currencies, has increased substantially in recent times, casting doubt on the widespread view that currency pricing may be on a path of convergence towards efficiency. We find, however, that currency markets learn in an efficient manner and a close relation between our strategies and indices that track popular technical trading rules, namely moving average cross-over rules and the carry trade, suggesting that the technical rules represent heuristics by which professional market participants exploit currency mispricing.     

Futures dreaming outside and on the margins of the western world

In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focused on the good society as created by technological progress, while non-western science fiction and futures thinking has focused on the fantastic, on the spiritual, on the realization of eupsychia—the perfect self.However, most theorists assert that the non-west has no science fiction, ignoring Asian and Chinese science fiction history, and western science fiction continues to ‘other’ the non-west as well as those on the margins of the west (African–American woman, for example).Nonetheless, while most western science fiction remains trapped in binary opposites—alien/non-alien; masculine/feminine; insider/outsider—writers from the west’s margins are creating texts that contradict tradition and modernity, seeking new ways to transcend difference. Given that the imagination of the future creates the reality of tomorrow, creating new science fictions is not just an issue of textual critique but of opening up possibilities for all our futures.

Science fiction has always been nearly all white, just as until recently, it’s been nearly all male

(Butler as quoted in [1]).

Science fiction has long treated people who might or might not exist—extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, however, many of the same science fiction writers who started us thinking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life did nothing to make us think about here-at home variation—women, blacks, Indians, Asians, Hispanics, etc [1].

Is all science fiction western? Is there non-western science fiction? If so, what is its nature? Does it follow the form and content of western science fiction, or is it rendered different by its own local civilizational historical processes and considerations? Has western science fiction moulded the development of the science fiction of the ‘other’, including feminist science fiction, in such a way that anything coming from outside the west is a mere imitation of the real thing? Perhaps non-western science fiction is a contradiction in terms. Or is there authentic non-western fiction which offers alternative visions of the future, of the ‘other’?     

Social and temporal geographies of the near future: Music, fiction and youth culture

Cyberpunk has been widely acknowledged as a form of popular fiction, which has done much to establish the potential of information technology in the popular imagination. Commonly these extrapolations are predicated on the shared diegesis of a dark future, that is a setting of urban decay and oppressive corporate capital. British publishing has taken longer to develop this style of critical dystopian writing. The differences between the two groups of fiction can be understood as different responses to cultural change, which has taken place during the 1980s especially in the ways and means of imagining further social change and agency.     

Slow track, fast track, and the “Galactic Club”

Discoveries in the physical and biological sciences suggest that intelligence is widely distributed throughout the universe. Before long, either we will decide that these discoveries have pointed us towards a false conclusion, or we will obtain undeniable evidence of extraterrestrial life. After finding one extraterrestrial society, we are likely to discover others and, in this manner, become a part of the “Galactic Club”. Following the “slow track”, an initial encounter will lead to accelerated search efforts that will put us in touch, one by one, with additional societies. Following the “fast track”, our initial contact will be with an affiliate of the Galactic Club, and this society will give us instant access to other members. The physical constraints imposed by interstellar distances, coupled with our understanding of large social systems, suggest that the Galactic Club will be large, stable, slow-paced, and exert only loose control over its members. The two tracks have different implications for managing initial contact, protecting our security, knowledge transfer, handling culture change, and preserving our identity.     

2010年中国宏观经济形势分析与展望

2009年中国政府实施了一揽子经济刺激政策,宏观经济从恢复性增长进入稳态增长。2010年,中国经济增长预期普遍提高,国内外经济环境将得到明显改善。本文综合运用ARIMA模型和动态因子模型,预测2010年中国经济增长率区间为9.6%～10%。2010年,中国经济面临较好的发展机遇,但也同样存在着诸多结构性、发展性和体制性的矛盾。因此,应该把推进结构调整,转变发展方式,保持国民经济又好又快发展作为经济工作的主线,并把稳增长、调结构、促就业、惠民生作为宏观调控思路。     

Letter from the oasis: Helping engineering students to become sustainability professionals

Sustainability scientists call for education that produces ‘sustainability professionals’, who understand the need for sustainability and can work towards it. However, students often have very different ideas, usually based on an expectation of continued unlimited economic growth. This paper, based on research with large, diverse, first year engineering cohorts, argues that a reflective process and on-line support can contribute to a learning oasis—a supportive environment that encourages students to leave their cultural and intellectual comfort zones. In these circumstances, most students will engage with the personal and professional challenges of what it means to be Globo sapiens, a wise global citizen and global sustainability professional for an increasingly complex century.¹     

1948 and not nineteen eighty-four

This article marks the return of I.F. Clarke to the pages of Futures. Those readers who have followed Futures since our first number in September 1968 will recall his long-running series on the development of futuristic fiction and the coming of modern forecasting techniques. He likes to be known as the oldest inhabitant of Futures so far. Professor Clarke was once described, with some accuracy, as ‘Mr Future’ by a Glasgow newspaper. The style recognized the work he has done in the investigation of the many ways in which our ideas about the future have evolved and have found expression in science fiction, imaginary wars, ideal states, Orwellian nightmares and in the proliferation of futurological studies that have swept the world since Ossip K. Flechtheim coined the term futurologist in 1943. This specially commissioned article on Orwell's true place in futures studies serves as an hors d'oeuvre to a new series in Futures by Professor Clarke: “An almanac of anticipations” will begin in the next issue.     

The earnings game. Everyone plays, nobody wins.

Quarterly earnings numbers dominate the decisions of executives, analysts, investors, and auditors. Yet for all the attention paid to these numbers, they're not much use in predicting a company's future performance and cash flows. Even economists are unanimous in their view that these numbers say next to nothing about a company's prospects beyond the next quarter. Nonetheless, meetings analysts' expectations that earnings will rise in a smooth, steady, unbroken line has become, at many corporations, a game whose imperatives override even the imperative to deliver the highest possible return to shareholders. The fetishistic attention paid to this almost meaningless indicator might be cause for amusement, except for one thing: the earnings game does real harm. It distorts corporate decision making. It reduces securities analysis and investing to a guessing contest. It compromises the integrity of corporate audits. Ultimately, it undermines the capital markets. As market participants increasingly come to view the quarterly number as a sort of collective fiction, offered and received in a spirit of mutual cynicism, they lose faith in the numbers affected by quarterly earnings--including stock prices themselves. And no market can survive long if its participants see no connection between prices and the intrinsic value of the goods on offer. In this article, HBR senior editor Harris Collingwood takes an in-depth look at these effects, examining the intricacies of the earnings game and why companies believe they have no choice but to play it. Until more corporate executives change their practices, he explains, the earning game will never lack for players.     

Science and society, 1915–1945: the best and the worst

So far this series has looked at the sporadic and amateur development of writing about the future. Before 1914 the examination of coming things was for the most part an interest for writers of fiction, journalists, some politicians and some professionals. The devastating effects of technology during World War I made the study of the future too important to be left to amateurs; it began to be a matter of serious concern for experts and for governments. This article examines these developments during the inter-war years, and it suggests that one of the most decisive factors in changing societies has been the power of Oldthink.