Beyond Computation

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 396-428
Author(s):  
R. John Williams
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Power ◽  
New Age ◽  
Scenario Planning ◽  
Rand Corporation ◽  
Management Technique ◽  
Corporate Management ◽  
Institutional Evolution ◽  
The Future ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explores the institutional evolution of ‘scenario planning’ from the inception of the management technique in the mid-1960s. It examines the effect of scenario planning on changing visions of the future from a singular entity to a matrix of multiple possibilities. Emerging as a countermodel to the predictive power of the computer, scenario planning incorporated a number of new age and countercultural spiritualities that seemed to support the pluralized futurity it advocated. The chapter pays attention to the metaphysical assumptions of the technique, charting its origins in the RAND Corporation during the 1960s to its expansion into corporate management in Shell Oil during the 1970s and 1980s.

scholarly journals Book Review: Navigating the Future with Scenario Planning: A Guidebook for Librarians

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
Larry Cooperman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Scenario Planning ◽  
Contingency Planning ◽  
Rand Corporation ◽  
World War ◽  
Potential Problems ◽  
The Future

No librarian likes to think about any potential problems that may arise in their library in the future. But how does one effectively prepare for potential future emergencies? Scenario planning, with a technique originated by Herman Kahn and the RAND Corporation after World War II, can be adapted by librarians to do contingency planning.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Systems Thinking ◽  
Critical Systems ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Future Visions

The book proposes that the Cold War period saw a key debate about the future as singular or plural. Forms of Cold War science depicted the future as a closed sphere defined by delimited probabilities, but were challenged by alternative notions of the future as a potentially open realm with limits set only by human creativity. The Cold War was a struggle for temporality between the two different future visions of the two blocs, each armed with its set of predictive technologies, but these were rivaled, from the 1960s on, by future visions emerging from decolonization and the emergence of a set of alternative world futures. Futures research has reflected and enacted this debate. In so doing, it offers a window to the post-war history of the social sciences and of contemporary political ideologies of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marxism and revisionist Marxism, critical-systems thinking, ecologism, and postcolonialism.

UNDERSTANDING THE FEVZI ÇAKMAK NEIGHBORHOOD: THROUGH ITS PAST, PRESENT AND PLANNED TOMORROW

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 365-384
Author(s):  
Filiz SÖNMEZ ◽  
Hatice DOĞAN ◽  
Okan KARAKAŞ
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Grocery Store ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Organizational Relationships ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The 1960S

Mahalle is a place name derived from the Arabic roots halel and hulul, meaning “to land, to settle down” (Turkish Dictionary, 1998). In addition to the residential structures within a neighborhood, it has a mosque, primary school, fountain, baths, a grocery store, bakery, parks, etc. It is the smallest settlement in a city. On the other hand, socially a neighborhood refers to a community that is placed somewhere and has organizational relationships. The neighborhood phenomenon is one of the most important legacies that continue from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic. During the Republican period, many new neighborhoods have also been established, often formed by adhering to a plan. In this study, the formation of Fevzi Çakmak neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods designed according to the Kayseri ARU-Oelsner (1945) zoning plan, and the change that the neighborhood has undergone from the past to the present will be examined. According to the data obtained, the aim of the Kayseri ARU-Oelsner zoning plan is to contribute to the Urban Transformation Project of Fevzi Çakmak neighborhood, which will be planned by the local government in the future. Literature and field studies, document analysis and oral history studies will be used as methods in the study. In this context, maps belonging to the neighborhood, zoning plans, Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality and Kocasinan Municipality archive records and old photographs will be provided. The Fevzi Çakmak neighborhood, which was built in the 1960s, has a grid plan type and is one of the modern neighborhoods that have contributed to the development of the city in an east direction. A city analysis will be carried out in historical continuity from the establishment of Fevzi Çakmak neighborhood to the present day. It is believed that detecting interventions in significant areas of change/transformation of the neighborhood will make significant contributions to the future urban transformation project. Accordingly, it is proposed that the analysis to be conducted in the neighborhood be evaluated within a theoretical framework which is known in Urban Planning as “we-zoning and Hoyt classification”. Accordingly, the areas identified in the neighborhood in the present study will be evaluated within the scope of “protection”, “correction” (improvement) and “renewal” strategies. It is expected that this work, carried out in the Kayseri Fevzi Çakmak neighborhood, will contribute to urban planning and transformation projects and architectural discussions throughout the country.

scholarly journals The fate of African mask in the works of French-speaking writers in West and Central Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-209
Author(s):  
Nina D. Lyakhovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Francophone Literature ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Ancestor Cult ◽  
The Future ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
West And Central Africa ◽  
African Writers ◽  
The 1960S

The article examines the attitude of contemporary African writers to the traditional zoomorphic and anthropomorphic masks. In the 1960s–70s, for the supporters of the theory of negritude, the sacred mask embodied the spirit of ancestors and an inextricable connection with tradition. In a transitional era (the 1990s – the early 21st century), the process of desacralisation of the mask has been observed and such works appear in which the idea of the death of tradition is carried out. The article consistently examines the history of the emergence and strengthening of interest in the image of the African mask as the most striking symbol of African traditions on the part of cultural, art and scientific workers and the reflection of this symbol in the works of representatives of Francophone literature in West and Central Africa in different periods of time. The article concludes about the transformation of the views of the studied writers on the future of African traditions from an enthusiastic and romantic (as, for example, in the lyrics of Léopold Sédar Senghor or Samuel-Martin Eno Belinga) attitude to the images of the African past and tradition – masks, ancestor cult – to despair and bitterness from the awareness of the desacralisation of traditional objects and images and the profanation of tradition under the pressure of the realities of the present day (drama by Koffi Kwahulé). The attitude of African writers to the image of the mask, which is directly related to the themes of preserving traditions and the search of their identity by African literary heroes, is gradually changing, demonstrating the pessimistic view of Francophone African writers on the future of African traditions.

Kuntanshi yamikalile (The Future): speculative nonconformity in the works of Zambian visual artists

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Andrew Mukuka Mulenga
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
African Art ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Contemporary African Art ◽  
Freeze Time

In recent years, select African visual artists practising on the continent as well as in its diaspora have increasingly been attracted to themes that explore, portray or grapple with Africa’s future. Along with this increasing popularity of the ‘future’ or indeed ‘African futuristic’ themes by visual artists, such themes have also attracted academic consideration among various scholars, resulting primarily in topics described as ‘African Futurism’ or Afrofuturism. These are topics that may be used to disrupt what some scholars – across disciplines and in various contexts – have highlighted as the persistent presumptive notions that portray Africa as a hinterland (Hassan 1999; Sefa Dei, Hall and Goldin Rosenberg 2000; Simbao 2007; Soyinka-Airewele and Edozie 2010; Moyo 2013; Keita, L. 2014; Green 2014; Serpell 2016). This study makes an effort to critique certain aspects of ‘African Art History’ with regard to the representation of Africa, and raises the following question: How can an analysis of artistic portrayals of ‘the future’ portrayed in the works of select contemporary Zambian artists be used to critique the positioning of Africa as ‘backward’, an occurrence at the intersection of a dualistic framing of tradition versus modern. Furthermore, how can this be used to break down this dichotomy in order to challenge lingering perceptions of African belatedness? The study analyses ways in which this belatedness is challenged by the juxtaposition of traditional, contemporary and futuristic elements by discussing a series of topics and debates associated to African cultures and technology that may be deemed disconnected from the contemporary lived experiences of Africans based on the continent. The study acknowledges that there is no singular ‘African Art History’ that one can talk of and there have been various shifts in how it has been perceived. I argue that while currently the African art history that is written in the West does not simplistically position Africa as backward as it may have done in the past, there appear to be moments of a hangover of this perception (Lamp 1999:4). What started out as a largely Western scholarly discourse of African art history occurred in about the 1950s and the journal African Arts started in the 1960s. Even before contemporary African art became a big thing in the 1990s for the largely US- and Europe-based discourses there were many discussions in the US about how the ‘old’ art history tended to freeze time and that this was not appropriate (Drewal 1991 et al). In order to advance the discourse on contemporary African visual arts I present critical analyses of the select works of Zambian artists to develop interpretations of the broader uses of the aforementioned themes. The evidence that supports the core argument of this research is embedded in the images discussed throughout this dissertation. The artists featured in the study span several decades including artists who were active from the 1960s to the 1980s, such as Henry Tayali and Akwila Simpasa, as well as artists who have been practising since the 1980s, such as Chishimba Chansa and William Miko and those that are more current and have been producing work from the early 1990s and 2000s, such as Zenzele Chulu, Milumbe Haimbe, Stary Mwaba, Isaac Kalambata and Roy Jethro Phiri.

The Future: RAND, Brand and Dangerous to Know

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Beck
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Rand Corporation ◽  
Global Business ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Futures Research ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Whole Earth Catalog

The interdisciplinary field of futures research is now at the heart of policy-making and business strategy, but the serious study of the future has its roots in Cold War strategy, led by Hermann Kahn at the RAND Corporation and the Hudson Institute. The migration of futures research into business was accompanied by a burgeoning countercultural futurism, most vividly embodied in Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. The founding of the Global Business Network in 1987 brought together many of the key players from business futurism and the avant-garde wing of futures studies, forging a high-powered consultancy that went on to provide services for multi-national corporations and government agencies. As pressing contemporary issues such as global security and climate change prompt futures researchers to develop scenarios intended to deal with potentially extinction-level catastrophes, can an interrogation of the recent history of the future contribute to the release of a critical engagement with the future that is not beholden to the lockdown of its Cold War legacy?

Ecology and Environmental Awareness in 1960s–1970s Terraforming Stories

Terraforming ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 98-136
Author(s):  
Chris Pak
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Awareness ◽  
Ecological Impact ◽  
New Age ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
To Receive

Terraforming and its destructive ecological impact began to receive greater attention in the light of environmentalism in the 1960s-1970s. This chapter draws attention to the links between the utopian imagination, the pastoral, and the notion of the communard, a concept that was re-voiced in “New Age” environmentalist discourse. The first section compares and contrasts several significant proto-Gaian works while the second explores terraforming narratives that re-work the 1950s tradition. Citing Val Plumwood’s analysis of dualistic operations in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, the conflict between colonising forces and indigenous populations is considered. This section argues that the popular ecological image of connection and the theme of love is a symbolic attempt to bridge the hyperseparation between dualised concepts; between coloniser and colonised, nature and culture.

Godard’s suburban years

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Térésa Faucon
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Surprising Effect ◽  
The Future ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Rupture Characteristic

Far from a simple backdrop, the lived environment was for Jean-Luc Godard capable of eliciting specific modes of cinematographic thought; choice of locations could impact the shape and feel of a film more than its screenplay. Prevalent in his works of the 1960s are suburban landscapes and locales, from the villas, cafés and roadways frequented by the characters of Bande à part (1964) to the high-rises of La Courneuve shown in the essay in phenomenology 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967). Without positing an equivalence between suburban heterogeneity and Godard’s jarring late-modern aesthetic, the author argues for the generative, transgressive capacity of a capitalist space in the throes of transformation and shot through with fragments of history. Shooting near Joinville-le-Pont and Vincennes in Bande à part, Godard pays homage to those pioneers who came before him, like Mack Sennett or Louis Feuillade. In other contexts, like the science-fiction sendup Alphaville (1965), he finds signs of the future in the present, showing Lemmy Caution moving through sleek, well-lit neighbourhoods of high-rises. The spatio-temporal rupture characteristic of Godard’s approach to suburban space resurfaces to surprising effect in Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012).

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