WHO''s health futures consultation

The World Health Organization's 1993 consultation on health futures examined the field from perspectives of the macro-environment, health status, health resources, emerging health technology, alternative care systems, and tools for health futures research. The consultation produced numerous suggestions about how WHO could promote and support health futures work. Among the ideas now being implemented are new efforts in global surveillance of infectious diseases, the publication of health futures articles, the establishment of an electronic health futures bulletin board, and preparation of a handbook for health futures studies.     

Information for health futures research : Guide to published and on-line resources

Most published material relevant to health futures research is not clearly labelled as such, so health futurists can be frustrated in their quests for information until they learn some searching techniques. Many books, reports and articles do exist, however, about epidemiological patterns, technological trends and transitions in health-care systems, about behavioural, environmental and social factors affecting health, about the goals and strategies of pharmaceutical companies, health-care providers and other actors, and about many other futures-related aspects of health. Information seekers are likely to be successful as long as they give adequate attention to what kinds of information should be sought, employ well thought-out search terminology, and make use of a variety of information technologies. Essential local information resources for health futurists are the computerized catalogue, reference and secondary literature, and CD-ROM indexes of a research library. On-line best bets include the National Library of Medicine OPAC, WHOLIS, DDBS at IDRC, and Uncover at CARL. Other health-related Internet resources can be identified through the subject trees at Rice University and BUBL, Netlink at Washington and Lee University, and WWW subject trees such as the WWW Virtual Library.     

The future of health futures

Health futures represents the application of various futures tools to the arenas of health and health care. This special issue of Futures reflects the significant growth of health futures. Health and health-care systems can be far better by the early 21st century, or they could be worse. Health futures enables individuals, organizations and communities to understand better the threats and opportunities facing their health, both of which are profound. The International Health Futures Network is an indicator of the growth of this subfield of futures. The future of health futures will be shaped by the ability of futures techniques and those who use them to provide value to organizations and individuals. Better networking among health futurists, expert systems, and the ability to measure and communicate quality will be essential.     

人民币国际化的主要条件与现实基础

文章概括了理论和实践研究中货币国际化的重要条件,并具体分析了人民币国际化各条件的现实基础。文章指出,我国人民币国际化进程与其条件基本相适应,人民币国际化仍处于起步阶段,应重点研究人民币国际化进程与条件如何协同推进,并在动态演进中始终保持彼此的基本适应,巩固和拓展人民币国际化的条件和基础。     

The future of health futures : Another perspective

A good ‘market’ for health futures and easy access to relevant information are among the reasons that health futures is currently centred in the wealthy nations. Interest in health futures is growing in the less developed countries, however, in part because of efforts by WHO and its regional office. Many benefits can be expected if the field becomes more international, including an influx of fresh ideas about health futures study designs and about innovative approaches to health care. A shift to a more global orientation is also imperative simply because health futures deals with the well-being of human beings, and most human beings live in the less developed countries of the world.     

Applied futures research in France : Some critical views

Professor Cazes critically examines the futures studies conducted in France as part of the VIth Plan (1971–1975). He identifies three classes of research—vertical, horizontal and synthetic— and analyses the strengths and weaknesses of each as they relate to policy planning.     

What future for health futures in Latin America and the Caribbean?

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office of the World Health Organization, is a United Nations agency specializing in providing technical cooperation in health to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. A futures approach has much to offer in this endeavour, and PAHO is making health futures tools available to its Member States through a variety of activities. The purpose of promoting futures thinking and the application of futures tools is to improve health-policy planning and public health action within the framework of the ‘Health for All’ vision and PAHO's current Strategic and Programmatic Orientations.     

Alternative futures for communities

Scenario building is an essential element for working on, and creating, alternative futures. This paper, based on the work at the Institute of Alternative Futures, discusses the use of scenarios in the context of community development and explores three basic types of scenarios—‘the official future', ‘hard times' and paradigm shift or visionary scenarios. With examples from Washington and elsewhere, the paper tries to show how communities can reinvent themselves and meet the challenges of the future with the aid of scenarios.     

车联网发展暗示未来产业格局方向

车联网是物联网技术在交通系统中的应用。从广义角度上说,包括车与车、车与路、车与人之间建立网络、实现交互,满足娱乐、安全、效率的需求。 从通用Onstar的成功到黑莓QNX 占据广阔的车载系统份额。家电公司TCL推出了康钛Cartel产品,中国移动开始和德国电信联手掘金,第八代帕萨特带领大众进入车联网新时代,显卡厂商NVIDIA退出手机市场,专供车联网。     

Forecasting Japanese health futures with the BFT : A demand-side approach

In response to the problems associated with supply-side health-care planning, the Institute of Health Systems Development has created a demand-side approach which has been named BFT (Bioforecasting Technology). The system involves integration of data regarding the population, the natural and social environment, and the health/medical/social services with projections on factors that will influence the future population's demand for different kinds of health services. BFT forecasts have proved highly accurate. The system has been used throughout Japan and internationally, and much wider applications beyond standard hospital and health planning are possible.     

Design futures in action: Documenting experiential futures for participatory audiences

The futures field demonstrates a willing openness in embracing methodologies, approaches, and influences from a diversity of disciplines and perspectives. This plurality of practice is evidenced in a growing body of work that increasingly embodies futures thinking in the design of everyday material and networked experiences. The intersection of design and futures produces artifacts, applications and interactions created to provoke dialog in an accessible manner. As part of the Futures special issue on the Emerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Future event, this article describes the documentation and public representation of the creative outcomes from nine Emerge design futures workshops. These workshops provided a rich opportunity to study how designers and futurists collaboratively engage, implement and communicate alternative futures. The goal of the documentation effort described is to capture the experience of creating experiential futures and extend the capacity for developing social foresight through a participatory exhibit and online social platform.     

From change to progress: critical spirituality and the futures of futures studies

This paper argues that for futures studies (FS) to have a future that is relevant to current shifts in meaning and consciousness, then it must incorporate into its methods and practices a sense of mystery founded on a critically spiritual sensibility. Critical spirituality redefines rationality and empiricism by including within their framework both the somatic and the meditative as valid and necessary components of any research activity. In the short term this means a shift away from the current Western obsession with change and a stepping back to allow for critical distance in order to understand that it is in the appreciation of progress — a fundamental shift in consciousness to include the spiritual dimensions of human experience — that discourse will emerge to take FS to the heart of civilisational renewal. In allowing for mystery, silence and the meditative empiricism required to access these categories, critical spirituality lessens the gap between thought and action and thus enables truly transformative academic practice to emerge.The idea of progress has been central to the unfolding of the modernist project over the previous century. Yet as the century drew to a close it became increasingly hard to keep faith with the idea in the face of growing disillusionment and the obvious failure of modernism to deliver what people most wanted: happiness born of personal fulfillment. A growing range of voices in the critical futures field have been questioning the assumption that change in material terms equates with progress.These voices fall into four main areas.

• Post modernist and post structuralist thinkers;

• Feminists empowering postmodern discourse with value laden analyses of power;

• Post colonial thinkers with a debt to neo-Marxist and critical theorists;

• Neo-humanist thinkers with an investment in all three of the above, who work from a critically spiritual perspective.

In this paper I am going to argue that a Neo-humanist vision of the futures of Futures Studies is one which will fully engage the human potential by activating a critically spiritual methodology. This is important as many of the tools of futures work are actually intended for use in anticipating and managing change (uncritically) but have little relevance when considering the nature of progress. Those methods and techniques which engage with the less analytic more visionary process of futures are much more relevant to progress because they actively involve the individuals in the act of ‘futures building’ as opposed to ‘futures scanning’.‘Progress’ here is used to mean fundamental change in the consciousness of both the individual and collective mind. It is essentially spiritual and has no clear temporal or spacial restrictions being timeless, or as Joanna Macy would have it, anchored in “deep time” [1]. Change, on the other hand, is very much associated with technical and material movement, having no connection with the inner fabric of the human psyche. There is no appreciation of spirit here, though great attention is paid to gross national product and the latest technical innovation to hit the market.Futures Studies has the potential to be responsive to future human dilemmas. But to be so it will need to make the effort to embrace tools and concepts that lie beyond the narrow pall of academic rationality as it is currently constituted. A greater space is already emerging within the field that not only tolerates but promotes imaginative and creative processes that break down the intellectual prudery of those who are attached to their own discipline and have little capacity to envision beyond narrow and self imposed confines. Thus we find music and song, poetry and story, art and theatre effective vehicles for work on deeper forms of consciousness. Visioning and imaging workshops such as those run by Joanna Macy, Elise Boulding, John Seed and Warren Ziegler (to name but a few) are growing in power and sophistication. Meditation and other reflective practices — the spiritual quest — seeking to plumb the depth of the human soul become relevant when seen within a broadened definition of rationality and research.Clearly futurists need to be able to assess and describe likely changes in the short, medium and long term but their central goal should be to facilitate areas of human endeavor which can benefit from a closer linkage between action, the consciousness that informs and directs the action and the spirit that underwrites the consciousness. Equally clear is the fact that not all futures trends are as relevant to this deeper layer of operation within Futures Studies.     

Food futures to sustain Chinese cities

China's rapid urbanization makes its cities vulnerable to prolonged drought in the interior. Food needs of the cities will sometimes exceed China's carryover stocks. Moreover, its cities are likely to become so large that even the global reserves, as presently accumulated, are inadequate. A survey of the technological possibilities considers food supplies for a world population leveling somewhere between 10–15 billions, with China making up 9–18% of the total. Today's bioscience promises a number of nutritional substitutes two or three generations hence. Once the world overcomes population growth, successors to the strategies proposed in this article should make it possible to sustain Chinese cities at an increasingly high quality of life.     

New challenges for futures studies

Challenges coming from futures studies to other disciplines because of the rapidity and inter-relatedness of changes for which no discipline on its own can face the different correlated and global challenges, will be examined mainly in relation to social sciences. social sciences on the other hand reflect the need to overcome fragmentation within each discipline and between the various social sciences, in an effort at least of interdisciplinarity to face the growing uncertainty in decision making at every level: local, national and international. Social sciences are also slowly realising that a future oriented perspective is needed to empower analysis and actually reflect society in its continuous dynamicity. Citizens need the possibility to live within the rapidity of changes in the Information Society through the availability of futures studies in different forms as well as social analysis that is dynamic and interdisciplinary. The special link between society and ecological issues in a future oriented perspective will be the specific area to express the relevancy of the correlation between futures studies and social sciences.     

An agenda for futures research

Is there an identity crisis in futures research ? The author reviews the character of the discipline in the light of its ten years of development and maintains that futures research is empirical, “pre-scientific” and in the category of operations research. The scope for a scientific approach is therefore in forming a coherent methodological body of principles. The author identifies specific tasks in 21 areas, related to data collection, model construction, experimentation, systems analysis, exploratory and normative applications, which seem to him to be particularly in need of such attention.