Taking apart the roads ahead: user power versus the futurology of IT

How often have futurologists ever succeeded in making accurate global predictions? Bell’s utopian vision of a leisure-laden ‘Post-Industrial’ society now seems hopelessly naive; Fukuyama’s ‘End of history’ thesis was arguably just a fleeting Reaganite delusion about the stabilization of post Cold War politics. Notwithstanding the failure of such widely hailed prophesies, and despite the lack of any well-attested laws about the historical development of information technologies, a brazenly upbeat futurology pervades many debates on new IT. This is most obviously the case in Bill Gates’ recently updated The Road Ahead. To challenge Gates’ prognostications about the future of information technologies, I will argue for the importance of users (vis-à-vis producers) in the social shaping and ‘consumption’ of IT, especially the power of many (if not necessarily all) such users to resist falling into futures that others prescribe for them. I contend that the non-passivity of IT users undermines the cogency of any claims about the inevitability of technological change, and helps to explain why so many past ‘futures’ of IT have never fully materialized

Why Altered Carbon is not about the future – and nor is any other science fiction

Science fiction has a more important job to do – it allows us to see ourselves in a new light

Питання філософського методу в аналізі майбутнього та проблема викладання екологічної футурології

Аналізується потреба введення поняття та предмета "екологічна футурологія". Розглядається взаємозв'язок та взаємовплив філософії та екології, філософії та футурології, спектр головних концепцій з наведеної тематики.The aim of this article is to thoroughly analyze the necessity to introduce the notion and subject of Ecological Futurology. The author considers interrelation and interaction of philosophy and futurology. A range of major concepts in this domain is considered. In This article the author continues to examine futurology and ecology

Науковий підхід до управління розвитком

У статті обґрунтовується необхідність наукового підходу до прогнозування і управління довгостроковим соціально-економічним розвитком (футурології). Розглядаються засади футурології та інституційні форми такого управління.This article discusses the scientific approach towards forecasting and managing long-term social-economic development (futurology). It explains the fundamentals of futurology and institutional forms of such management

Generative sound art as poeitic poetry for an information society

This paper considers computer music in relation to broader society and asks what algorithmic composition can learn from the metaphysical shift which is happening in the so-called information societies. This is explored by taking the mapping problem inherent in the use of extra- musical models in generative composition and presenting a simple generative schema which prioritises sound, ex- ploiting the generative potential of digital audio. It is sug- gested that the exploration of such models has more than aesthetic relevance and that the interdisciplinary nature of digital sound art represents a microcosm of an emerging reality, thereby constituting a poietic playground for com- ing to terms with the implications and challenges of the information age

Futurology and Heuristics (with Posthumanities in the Background). Selected Aspects

Prognozowanie zjawisk społecznych bywa pod wieloma względami utrudnione. Wynika to stąd, że w naturze tych zjawisk tkwi silne i wielostronne powiązanie z innymi zjawiskami społecznymi; ale nie tylko - także fizycznymi czy biologicznymi. Treścią publikacji jest przedstawienie wybranych problemów, z jakimi borykają się aktualnie - zwłaszcza w naukach społecznych (w tym także w naukach politycznych) - futurolodzy. Choć artykuł przedstawia różne metody badawcze, ich klasyfikacje itd.. to skoncentrowano się przede wszystkim na metodach heurystycznych: ich genezie, zasadach, sposobie wykorzystania.Forecasting social phenomena can, in many ways, be difficult. The reason is that it is the nature of these phenomena to be closely and multilaterally linked with physical, biological, and other social phenomena. The main aim of this article is to present selected problems related to futurology. Although various research methods are presented in this text, the main focus was put to heuristic methods (their development, rules, ways of application ect.)