The book chapter from which I took the posting on the Futures Cone last February has now been published online by Springer International. It is available to those who have SpringerLink subscriptions (many universities do, so try logging-into your University library and looking for the SpringerLink database) via the doi: link given below. I’ll be checking whether the possibility of self-archiving exists, which means I would be able to deposit a pre-publication (note: not the final) version of the chapter at Swinburne ResearchBank for wider availability.
The full reference is:
Voros, J 2017, ‘Big History and anticipation: Using Big History as a framework for global foresight’, in R Poli (ed.) Handbook of Anticipation: Theoretical and Applied Aspects of the Use of Future in Decision Making, Springer International, Cham, Switzerland, chap. 95, pp. 1-40. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_95-1
I also have had published online recently a journal article in Technological Forecasting & Social Change, which combined three of my favourite topic areas:
- scenario-based futures thinking;
- morphological methods;
- astrobiology & the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
The reference to that is:
Voros, J 2017, ‘On a morphology of contact scenario space’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 126 (Jan), pp. 126-137. Special Section: ‘General Morphological Analysis: Modelling, Forecasting and Innovation’, T Ritchey & T Arciszewski (eds). doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.007 arXiv:1706.08966.
This is also available, as you can see, as a pre-print at arXiv. I am especially happy with this article as it represents the sequel to an idea from a paper published 10 years ago about examining parameters that might usefully describe scenarios of ‘contact’. I hope it is not another 10 years before the next paper in this sequence… 😉
I am also awaiting the final formal publication of another book chapter, in the final volume of the Big History Anthology, which has been in production for six years now and has gone through a couple of different publishers before one kept their word to actually publish it.
The reference is (there is chapter/page info because the book is being printed now and and is due to be formally published in mid September):
Voros, J 2017, ‘Big Futures: Macrohistorical perspectives on the future of humankind’, in B Rodrigue, L Grinin & A Korotayev (eds), The way that Big History works: Cosmos, life, society and our future, From Big Bang to galactic civilizations: A Big History anthology, vol. III, Primus Books, Delhi, chap. 22, pp. 403-436. ISBN: 978-93-86552-24-2
I am particularly chuffed with this chapter as it is the last chapter in the last volume of the 3-volume Anthology series. As such, I get to, as it were, have the last word on Big History 😉 I am also exploring the possibility of self-archiving so that it might become available through an online repository at some point soon.
So, in all, a busy few months since the previous post, all while teaching out the last running of Foresight Knowledge and Methods 1, along with the second-last running of Powering 21st Century Innovation (the 2015 running of which gave rise to the name of this blog), as well as convening two other units on Purposeful Leadership (taught by my wonderful colleagues Nita Cherry, and Peter Hayward aka “Captain Foresight”). This semester, it is the second-last running of 21st Century Challenges, and another iteration of my undergrad Big History unit, which has finally hit some healthy numbers. It seems that, despite the fact that the MSF is being shut down, there might still be a future for me at Swinburne, teaching Big History, not Futures Studies. The irony… 😉
A complete listing of my publications is now being curated at ORCID – the Open Researcher and Contributor ID initiative. The URL is https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8697-0080.
See you next time there is a breath that can be drawn .. 😉
The Voroscope 