Theory and practice in the field of foresight

Purpose – The paper aims to explore the gap between theory and practice in foresight and to give some suggestions on how to reduce it. Design/methodology/approach – Analysis of practical foresight activities and suggestions are based on a literature review, the author's own research and practice in the field of foresight and futures studies, and her participation in the work of a European project (COST A22). Findings – Two different types of practical foresight activities have developed. One of them, the practice of foresight of critical futures studies (FCFS) is an application of a theory of futures studies. The other, termed here as praxis foresight (PF), has no theoretical basis and responds directly to practical needs. At present a gap can be perceived between theory and practice. PF distinguishes itself from the practice and theory of FCFS and narrows the construction space of futures. Neither FCFS nor PF deals with content issues of the outer world. Reducing the gap depends on renewal of joint discourses and research about experience of different practical foresight activities and manageability of complex dynamics in foresight. Production and feedback of self-reflective and reflective foresight knowledge could improve theory and practice. Originality/value – Contemporary practical foresight activities are analysed and suggestions to reduce the gap are developed in the context of the linkage between theory and practice. This paper is thought provoking for futurists, foresight managers and university researchers

The Evolution of Beliefs over Signed Social Networks

We study the evolution of opinions (or beliefs) over a social network modeled as a signed graph. The sign attached to an edge in this graph characterizes whether the corresponding individuals or end nodes are friends (positive links) or enemies (negative links). Pairs of nodes are randomly selected to interact over time, and when two nodes interact, each of them updates its opinion based on the opinion of the other node and the sign of the corresponding link. This model generalizes DeGroot model to account for negative links: when two enemies interact, their opinions go in opposite directions. We provide conditions for convergence and divergence in expectation, in mean-square, and in almost sure sense, and exhibit phase transition phenomena for these notions of convergence depending on the parameters of the opinion update model and on the structure of the underlying graph. We establish a {\it no-survivor} theorem, stating that the difference in opinions of any two nodes diverges whenever opinions in the network diverge as a whole. We also prove a {\it live-or-die} lemma, indicating that almost surely, the opinions either converge to an agreement or diverge. Finally, we extend our analysis to cases where opinions have hard lower and upper limits. In these cases, we study when and how opinions may become asymptotically clustered to the belief boundaries, and highlight the crucial influence of (strong or weak) structural balance of the underlying network on this clustering phenomenon

Voice and speech functions (B310-B340)

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth (ICF-CY) domain ‘voice and speech functions’ (b3) includes production and quality of voice (b310), articulation functions (b320), fluency and rhythm of speech (b330) and alternative vocalizations (b340, such as making musical sounds and crying, which are not reviewed here)