Lifeboat Foundation

To think about the existential prospects that lie ahead for Humanity 2.0, or Homo futura, imagine yourself in 1900 faced with two investment opportunities for the future of personal human transport: on the one hand, a specially bred – that is, genetically modified – horse; on the other, a mass-produced automobile. Which prospect would you pursue?

The horse has been long a reliable mode of transport, whose strengths and weaknesses are well known. A faster horse may require greater skill to handle and more feed that produces more manure. But your society is already equipped to deal with those consequences. In contrast, the automobile is a new technology, albeit one that has already shown that it can equal and even surpass the horse in terms of speed and durability under a variety of conditions. However, the automobile brings its own distinctive cost-benefit calculus, as its future improvement would very likely involve both greater enclosure of the traveller and greater pollution of the environment. In the long term, the traveller’s relationship to nature would probably need to change quite drastically for the automobile to become dominant.

It is too bad that the state of genetic knowledge was not sufficiently advanced in 1900 to turn this into a real choice. Instead the horse easily appeared a less attractive long-term bet, as it was generally presumed that the upper limits of the creature’s performance had been already reached. In that case, the indefinite continuation of horse-drawn personal transport could only be defended by those who had a principled objection to mechanical transport, a position perhaps grounded in a nostalgic view of humanity’s oneness with nature. But even these people could not deny the proven effectiveness of ships and trains as machines of mass conveyance. In short, the horse was doomed. The market for personal transport underwent what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’. Henry Ford effectively made it worthwhile for consumers to reorganize their value priorities in a way that quickly resulted in the automobile, rather than the horse, setting the standard of personal transport.

The twenty-first century may offer us a choice rather like that of our hypothetical 1900 decision between horse and car. But now the choice would be between two different ways of continuing the human condition – alternative vehicles, as it were, to convey our existence. One involves genetically modifying ourselves and the other involves transcending the bodies of our birth altogether. These two options represent the two rather opposing directions in which contemporary transhumanism is heading.

Continue reading “The fork on the road for Homo Futura” »

The Future of Management Wargaming, Now! By Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…The Future of Management Wargaming , Now…!” that discusses some management theories and practices. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

In addition to being aware and adaptable and resilient before the driving forces reshaping the current present and the as-of-now future, there are some extra management suggestions that I concurrently practice:

a) “…human knowledge is doubling every ten years [as per the 1998 standards]…”

b) "...computer power is doubling every eighteen months. the internet is doubling every year. the number of dna sequences we can analyze is doubling every two years…”

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The Future of Skunkworks Management, Now! By Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…The Future of Skunkworks Management, Now!…” that discusses some management theories and practices and strategies. To view the entire piece, just click the link at the end of this post:

Peter Drucker asserted, “…In a few hundred years, when the story of our [current] time is written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event those historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce [not so-called ‘social media’]. IT is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time ─ literally ─ substantial and growing numbers of people have choices. for the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it…”
Please see the full presentation at http://goo.gl/FnJOlg

Applied Omniscience in Transformative and Integrative Risk Management! By Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the presentation, “…Applied Omniscience in Transformative and Integrative Risk Management!…” that discusses some management theories and practices. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

Please see the graphic at http://lnkd.in/dUstZEk

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…NASA’s Managerial and Leadership Methodology, Now Unveiled!..!” by Mr. Andres Agostini, that discusses some management theories and practices. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of this illustrated article and presentation:

In addition to being aware and adaptable and resilient before the driving forces reshaping the current present and the as-of-now future, there are some extra management suggestions that I concurrently practice:

1. Given the vast amount of insidious risks, futures, challenges, principles, processes, contents, practices, tools, techniques, benefits and opportunities, there needs to be a full-bodied practical and applicable methodology (methodologies are utilized and implemented to solve complex problems and to facilitate the decision-making and anticipatory process).

The manager must always address issues with a Panoramic View and must also exercise the envisioning of both the Whole and the Granularity of Details, along with the embedded (corresponding) interrelationships and dynamics (that is, [i] interrelationships and dynamics of the subtle, [ii] interrelationships and dynamics of the overt and [iii] interrelationships and dynamics of the covert).

Continue reading “NASA's Managerial and Leadership Methodology” »

This is an excerpt from, “Futuretronium Book” by Mr. Andres Agostini, that discusses some management theories and practices with the future-ready perspective. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

“…#1 Futuretronium ® and the administration and application of the scientific method without innuendos and in crescendo as fluid points of inflections ascertain that the morrow is a thing of the past…”

”…#2 Futuretronium ®, subsequently, there is now and here available the unabridged, authoritative eclictation and elucidation of actionable knowledge from and for the incessantly arrhythmic, abrupt, antagonistic, mordant, caustic, and anarchistic future, as well as the contentious interrelationship between such future and the present…”

“…#3 Futuretronium ®, a radical yet rigorous strong-sense and critico-creative «Futures Thinking», systems approach to quintessential understanding of the complexities, subtleties, and intricacies, as well as the opportunities to be exploited out of the driving forces instilling and inflicting perpetual change into twenty-first century…”

Read the full book at http://lnkd.in/ZxV3Sz to further explore these topics and experience future-ready management practices and theories.