Foresight - Seven paradoxes

International Journal of Technology Management

Volumn 21, Issue 7-8, 2001, Pages 781-791

  Loveridge, Denis ^a,b,c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b CRIC   (United Kingdom)

^c UK Foresight Program   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Technology foresight

Indexed keywords

INFORMATION SCIENCE; PUBLIC POLICY;

HUMAN ACTIVITY;

TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING;

EID: 0035015382     PISSN: 02675730     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/ijtm.2001.002950     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. Calvin, W.H. (1997) How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then & Now, Phoenix Science Master Series, Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
2. Some people would prefer the terms knowledge or intelligence, but no matter as the semantic difference is marginal.
3. Loveridge, D. (1977) 'Values and futures', in H. Linstone and W.H.C. Simmonds (Eds.), Futures Research: New directions, Addison-Wesley.
4. Whitehead, A.N. (1964) Adventures of Ideas, Cambridge University Press.
5. A discussion of criticality comes later in this paper.
6. (1979) From 'Politicians and the future', Futures, August, pp.338-341.
7. Jones, R.V. (1978) Circa 1942 as recorded in Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-45, Hamilton, London.
8. Vannevar Bush in a single paper foresaw the Xerox photocopying machine, the Polaroid camera, the advent of high level computer programming languages (typified by FORTRAN) and Memex, a writing, reading, filing and communication system contained in a desk that included a screen and a keyboard. ('As we may think', (1945) Atlantic Monthly, July, pp.101-108).
9. See (1912) Rethink. Radical Proposals to Save a Disintegrating World, Pelican.
10. Mitchell's VALS typology is described by Donna DuBeth in the September 19, 1984 issue of Insight, a Bell Communications Research publication. Achievers fall at the top of the Outer-directed group who, in general, conduct their lives in response to real or imagined signals from others. Consumption, activities and attitudes tend to be guided by what the Outer-directed person thinks others will think. The Societally Conscious person falls at the top of the Inner-directed group and lead their lives primarily on the basis of their inner values rather than those of others; inner growth is then immensely important to them. The Integrated personis at the top of the hierarchy and combines the traits of the Outer- and Inner-directed person in a way that makes the sum greater than the parts, hence the term Integrated.
11. Maslow, A. (1954) Motivation and Personality, Harper& Row, NY.
12. The 'Lone Ranger' is an individual (or small group) who believes that norms, values and lifestyles data have a major influence on their organizations activities and successful continuity. The notion is described in [13].
13. Spengler, M. & Rosener, L. (1979) in Business Uses of Values and Lifestyles, SRI International, Values and Lifestyles Program, Report No. 6.
14. The Social Technological Economic Politics Values set was first developed by Peter Schwartz in 1974; Philip Holroyd and the author added the Ecologie dimension in 1975.
15. Bimber, B. and Popper. S. (1994) 'What is a critical technology', RAND DRU-605-CTI, February.
16. Bimber, B. and Popper, S. were only concerned with the notion of 'critical technology' - their ideas have been extended legitimately or otherwise here.
17. There are processes that promote this and have been in use for decades, but it is far from certain that they resemble the ESTO network operated by the EC's Joint Research Centre at Seville.
18. Some notions in this respect were presented to the ASTPP group (a research network funded by DGXII of the CEC under the TSER Program) at Rovaniemi and are contained in [19].
19. Loveridge, D. (1996) 'Technology foresight and models of the future', PREST Ideas in Progress, Number 4, September.
20. See for example the UK versus the German or Japanese Delphi reports.