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How the Foundation Benefits You Practical Reasons to Join Our Community Current Projects
Planned Projects How could you help us with this work? Please email us if you would like to discuss a tax-deductible contribution (to either our endowment or operating fund), services, publicity, or other support you might be able to volunteer.
Consulting ASF principals and affiliates are available for consulting on strategic projects. When the client permits we can submit problems and projects for analysis by our "think tank" network of 3,100 systems thinkers, strategists, technologists, and futurists. Paid projects may also be contracted with individual consultants, independent of the nonprofit. Our areas of current and desired research expertise include competitive and environmental scans and brief formal studies in:
We are always seeking to meet other professionals who share our priority to help others understand and utilize accelerating developments now occuring in special domains of our current sociotechnological environment. We enjoy putting our heads together to 1) discover the real levers of change, the technological developments that are running faster, more autonomously, and with greater momentum than all other features of the modern world, and 2) to use these insights to create better solutions today for a range of human problems. Let us know if you'd like to join our research and consulting network. Brief Client List: References available on request. Navigating the Future Accelerating information and communication technologies are the most dynamic systems in modern society. Faced with the prospect of further profound acceleration in their capacity, many strategists today either deny this possibility, or ignore the historical record entirely. We believe that the evidence is strongly against the first response, and the second response is unwise. A third path must be taken. Archimedes said: "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the world." It is clear that the lever we have been given for this phase of human existence is accelerating technological change, and the types of world-moving we wish to do are in our hands. Let us choose wisely. Human beings are today participating in the development of increasingly intelligent, interdependent, resilient, self-directing, and resource efficient global social-technological systems. The more clearly we see and understand this subtle and profound process, the better we can create and choose paths that safely and substantially improve the human condition. Marcel Proust said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." Since the birth of civilization, humanity has been learning to build special types of technological systems that are able to progressively do more for us, in a more networked and resilient fashion, using less resources (matter, energy, space, time, human and economic capital) to deliver any fixed amount of complexity, productivity, or capability. We are faced daily with many possible evolutionary choices in which to invest our precious time, energy, and resources. The more carefully we look, the more easily we can see not only evolutionary possibility, but also optimal developmental pathways that will clearly "do more, better, with less." ASF, through community dialog and research, seeks to help us better manage evolutionary uncertainty while identifying those most-desirable developmental choices, consistent with naturally accelerating local and universal processes, so that we can benefit from this foresight today. ASF's primary goal is to promote better observation, measurement, understanding and guidance of the accelerating intelligence, interdependence, resiliency, autonomy, and efficiencies that are constantly occurring in our increasingly technological world. With better social foresight, we may distinguish those kinds of accelerations that are continually advancing (e.g., computation, technological efficiency, economic productivity) from those that are more periodic in nature (e.g., market valuations, political and social cycles, the rise and fall of specific technologies and business models). We seek to better differentiate the sociotechnological choices we prefer (productivity, connectivity, diversity, competition, increased choice, compassion, security) from those we would avoid (destabilization, discrimination, cultural homogenization, nonsustainability). We seek to help individuals and organizations to better monitor external acceleration (environmental scanning, competitive intelligence) and build internal resilience/robustness to generalized accelerating change in a variety of domains. We wish to help our community discover, in a range of contexts, the appropriate balance between centralization and decentralization, control vs. choice, make vs. buy, insourcing vs. outsourcing, and other perennial management issues. Our foundation connects you with insightful professionals, diverse skill sets, and concise and relevant resources to help you understand and manage our accelerating world. We seek to substantially improve our big picture scientific understanding, general technological foresight, business acumen, and social wisdom, as we learn to see existing technologies, markets, politicolegal frameworks and cultural phenomena "with new eyes." Ideally, we will use these insights to guide increasingly powerful personal, institutional, and global change for the rest of our careers. Welcome. Feedback? Contact us at mail{at}accelerating.org. |
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