How ASF Benefits You

Projects

1. Keynotes, Talks, Seminars, Workshops, and Consulting. See our Services page for these. Services are run by ASF President John Smart, and ASF's consulting arm, Acceleration Associates.

2. Salons. We run the Future Salon Network, a community of monthly gatherings in Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC, and in the online digital world Second Life. Future Salons explore ways to better understand, manage and profit from accelerating changes in science, technology, business, policy, and society. These are educational, social, and resource events for local communities. Let us know if you'd like to start a salon in your area.

3. Knowledge Base. ASF websites, Accelerating.org, EvoDevoUniverse.com, our Global Foresight Wiki, and our online Foresight Guide, provide links to online communities and leaders in technology and societal foresight, assessment, and policy.

4. Personal Foresight. We run monthly and annual Fusion retreats that promote individual foresight, goal-setting and life process actualization in small group environments.

5. Undergraduate Courses. We have developed a course in Foresight Development, taught at the University of Advancing Technology, an innovative private university in Tempe, AZ educating the IT-enabled generation. This course helps UAT students to think about global, career, and personal futures, and take actionable steps to improve their day-to-day foresight and planning.

6. Conference. We produce Accelerating Change, ASF's occasional conference exploring accelerating technological change from a multidisciplinary perspective.

7. Newsletter. We publish Accelerating Times, free e-news about accelerating positive changes, choices and challenges in technology development.

Navigating the Future

Accelerating information and communication technologies are the most dynamic complexity construction systems in the known universe. 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.

Planned Projects

A list of projects in various stages of planning follows.

A. Outreach Future Salon Director Expanding our Future Salons (National and Global) Accelerating Change Online Community Books on Accelerating Change Conferences (National and Global) Seminars (Topic- and Client-Specific) Networking Foresight Professionals B. Education High School Futures Thinking Kits Undergrad Courses in Foresight Development Graduate Courses in Acceleration and Development Studies

C. Research Acceleration Studies (understanding self-catalyzing change) Development Studies (understanding irreversible, directional change) Strategic Foresight (methods for exploring possible, probable, and preferable change) Technology Roadmapping and Forecasting Consulting to Fortune 1000's and Institutions Public Whitepapers D. Advocacy More Advisor Recruitment Policy Papers Speakers Bureau Personal Goalsetting "Fusion" Retreat

Would you like to 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. Feedback? Contact us at johnsmart{at}gmail.com.

Outreach | Education | Research | Advocacy