24th WFSF World Conference Presented by PMU
The Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd Center for Futuristic Studies, in cooperation with the World Future Studies Federation (WFSF), concluded its participation in the International Conference on Future Studies on 26-29 October 2021 in the German capital, Berlin. This conference is considered the largest at the global level in future studies. The University President Dr. Issa bin Hassan Al-Ansari participated as a keynote speaker in this conference with a working paper on: The current status of higher education and current and future challenges, along with a number of university faculty members with scientific papers related to future studies in education and technology. The University’s Center for Futuristic Studies participated in an introductory corner, in which it provided an overview of the center and its various activities and achievements in a short period of time. International speakers and distinguished scientific researchers also participated in the conference, including Dr. Eric Overland, President of the World Future Studies Federation, Professor Heck Brown, Chief of Staff of the German Chancellor's Office, Dr. Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, and Dr. Riel Miller, Head of the Department of Future Studies at UNESCO, and other researchers and futurists from different countries. The Prince Muhammad Bin Fahd Center for Futuristic Studies is recently considered one of the most important research centers in the Arab region in the field of future studies with a branch of the federation in the headquarters of the university to be a representative of the World Federation in the Middle East and North Africa. Along with, an agreement with UNESCO and the establishment of the UNESCO Chair in Future Studies at the university and many other international partnership agreements.
The 2022 PMFCFS Lectures Series consisted of 6 lectures by Dr. Derek Woodgate on futures-focused topics that are relevant across disciplines and colleges, namely:
It is generally considered that a sustainable and well-functioning smart city is a tight orchestration of people, processes, policies, and technologies working together across the entire smart city ecosystem and it is. Dr. Woodgate discussed all these factors, from high tech solutions for connectedness and communications to civil defense, infrastructure development and operational planning to interactive situation awareness and everything in between. The future is not based upon an evolution of today, but the best a city could be in your imagination.
As an introduction to Sustainability Week, 2022 at Prince Mohammed bin Fahd University hosted by the College of Science and Human Studies, on March 21st, 2022. The content of Dr. Woodgate’s lecture revolved around the recontextualization and interconnectivity of the United Nations SDGs using Dr. Hopwood’s approach and Dr. Woodgate’s own work towards a more equitable and ecologically centered society. Dr. Woodgate created an overarching worldview named Radical Transparency that emphasizes the importance of transparency through five interrelated lenses, which are: “Humanistic Economic Models”, “Techno-economic Paradigms”, “Towards Net Zero”, narrowing the “Attitude-behavior Gap,” and “Top-down meets Bottom up”. All of which are traceable and measurable towards sustainable futures to significantly advance sustainable futures.
Dr. Woodgate’s lecture dealt with how the Industry 4.0 paradigm, specifically smart manufacturing in the context of postnormal times will shape the interrelationship between humans, augmented humans, machines and the operational environment, through the lens of the emerging field of human-machine resources (HMR).
The lecture considered the development of smart manufacturing through the lens of HMR from a fully integrated human-machine centric society rather than one where the human remains central to all future development through the possibility of the Human Singularity.
Future Studies is a complex process, that involves dozens of methods and techniques. It a field that fuses science with magic, systems thinking with imagination, connects disconnects and requires the ability to work with unstructured knowledge in unknown worlds. It requires a deep understanding of societal and cultural change, emerging technologies. economic models, recontextualized environments and critical policy and ethical matters. It means projecting your present Self into your future Self, to think the unthinkable and to create, strategize and plan the implementation of multiple plausible futures.
Increasing learner (and faculty) creativity is critical to finding employment in the emerging workscape where creatives now represent some 50% of the workforce in developed economies.
This talk focused on a new learning system, called the Living Learning System, aimed at generating higher levels of creative engagement and development through a focus on increased immersion and creativity-inducing approaches The system has been tested and compared over the past four years across several courses and countries.
The lecture argued that by integrating the critical elements of the Living Learning System, such as emerging multisensory technology enhanced learning coupled with optimized transformative and experiential learning approaches, framed within the field of foresight, with its futures focus and decentralized thinking approaches, students increase their ability to be creative. The findings are supported by quantitative, and qualitative research, together with several evaluation techniques, learner analytics and metrics.
The lecture discussed how emerging and future technologies are contributing to the challenges, continuities and discontinuities we can expect in our shifting economic and market paradigms. Techno-economic paradigms are considered a collectively shared logic at the convergence of technological and market potential, acceptance, costs and functional coherence. They describe what is technically possible vs. economic and social relevance and their ability and power to influence other industries in that context Dr. Woodgate built a structure of causal mechanisms that I consider represent the key platforms that drive such shifting paradigms. It deals with the efficient allocation of human and machine collab assets, humanized economics, the remixed society and the recodifying of thinking approaches.