FastForward Radio

By | March 30, 2008
4 Comments

Sunday night Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon visited live with futurist Wayne Radinsky. Wayne became a futurist in 1997 when he was working as a software developer and asked the question, “Why does Moore’s Law happen?”

Wayne Radinsky.JPG

Wayne was part of the Bay Area Future Salon in Silicon Valley for five years before moving to Colorado and starting the Boulder Future Salon. He is also a director of the Global Futures Network.

We talked about how groups such as GFN and futures salons can help us to shape both our understanding of and expectations for the future.

Click “Continue Reading” for listening options and the show notes:

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Zimbabwe would appear to be a good (that is, tragic) example of a country in collapse per Peters’ or Orlov’s criteria.

    To cite just one statistic, in the past two decades life expectancy has dropped from about 63 years to about 37.

  • Stephen Gordon

    One of the reasons I’m a big believer in Peter’s analysis is that it seems to predict failure so well.

    It should be noted that – as judged by Peters’ criteria – no country is perfect. No, not even the most successful industrialized nations are perfect.

    These are seven sliding scales. If a country does poorly enough on several scales, or terrible on just one – that country might be headed for collapse.

  • Harvey

    “National success is eccentric”; is the part that caught my eye in Peter’s article. I’d like to hear some Speculist action about that! You see, I think the best form of nation hasn’t been invented, but suspect it includes some greatest hits of previous attempts. I invented one called the “The Maslow and Liberty Then Some Capitalism” nation. For that, people attack me with memes at parties.

  • Karl Hallowell

    I still disagree with Peters’ criteria 4, “The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.” Looking at US businesses, a lot of family businesses are quite successful. They often maintain a focus and long term planning not present in many of the publically traded companies.

    As I see it, the real problem comes when the clan is also responsible for such things as law enforcement or other common public goods/services.