Hope Barometer, Collaborative Networks, Privacy and …

The Future Now Show December 2014 

about the Hope Barometer, 
Collaborative Networks, 
Privacy and …

featuring
Andreas M. Walker, weiterdenken.ch, Co-President, swissfuture, Switzerland
Nick Price, Creative Business Consultant and Futurist, UK
Hardy F. Schloer, Owner, Schloer Consulting Group, Malaysia
Lise Voldeng, CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Ultra-Agent Industries Inc., Canada / USA
Paul Holister, Editor, Summary Text

about the Hope Barometer and ..

How are we doing? If you ask that question of a politician or journalist you will likely get an answer quoting the gross domestic product (GDP), an impersonal metric that someone once derided as a measure of how much we are stealing from the future to sell in the present. So what should we usefully measure? Bhutan introduced “Gross National Happiness” 40 years ago. The Swiss have been indexing fears and worries for 30 years, but they now also have a barometer of hope. How do these measures differ in terms of focus (personal, national, global) and depth, in the sense of being reactive to current events (disasters, terrorist attacks) or founded on fundamental human desires? How do they differ across cultures? A rich topic in which investigation and discussion have only just begun.

about Collaborative Networks and …

The topic of this show is collaborative networks, which are generally associated with leveraging the internet to work in groups where the members are geographically separated. But the mere existence of social networks like Facebook enables spontaneous collaboration regardless of geographical separation and some activist groups are already using this to great effect. But what are the broader implications of such collaboration? National cultures show strong differences in sentiment, in perception of threats and priorities, and we know that people instinctively behave differently in groups than individually. Will globally connected groups emerge that overshadow national groups or will group sentiments give way to individual sentiments? Will we become more varied or more homogenous, more easily manipulated or more independent in mind and heart, more harmonious or more discordant?

about Privacy and …

Despite outrage about intrusions of the NSA into our privacy, hordes of us are letting companies like Google ever deeper into our private lives because of the targeted services this enables. Social and work-related discussions increasingly take place in public forums. Do we need to abandon our privacy and accept that our chats, our musings, our lives in general, are open to public view?
Would such an evolution lead to a culture of transparency with greater openness? Greater tolerance? Or more mindless mobs? Is it actually a step back, to the days of the village or tribe when everyone knew what everyone else was doing, an environment for which humans evolved and are arguably better adapted to than the more recent civilisation with its anonymity and demigods?

The Future Now Show
December 2014
Credits

Moderator
Lise Voldeng, CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Ultra-Agent Industries Inc., Canada / USA

Thought Leaders
Andreas M. Walker, weiterdenken.ch, Co-President, swissfuture, Switzerland
Nick Price, Creative Business Consultant and Futurist, UK
Hardy F. Schloer, Owner, Schloer Consulting Group, Malaysia

Intro voices
Ferananda Ibarra, VillageLab, Mexico
Mathijs van Zutphen, Ad Valorum, the Netherlands
Jack Gallagher, Artistic Director & Choreographer, Bodies Anonymous

and
Mario de Vries, Media Specialist, Design
Paul Holister, Editor, Summary Text