Pavel Nováček, Thomas Schauer (Eds.)
Thirty years ago American futurologist Roy Amara defined future oriented studies in the following way: "The future is not possible to predict exactly because the future is not predetermined (is not inevitable). And because future is not predetermined we can influence it by our individual choices."
The publication discusses different aspects of our common future - from global challenges, issues of sustainability, development of the Western Hemisphere (with special focus on Haiti), to "thinking the unthinkable" in Herman Kahn's words. What can we, people involved in NGOs, think tanks and academic institutions, do for a better future by 2015 and beyond?
Pavel Nováček: Learning from the Futures - 2015 and Beyond
Learning from the Futures
Peter Bishop: Scenario Development, Epistemology and Methods
Erzsébet Nováky, Helga Veigl: Messages from the Futures: The Hungarian Experience
Miroslav Polzer: Building the Ethical Basis for Global Climate Change Action: An Issue for Science, Religion and/or Negotiation?
Michael Platzer: Communicating the Ethical Implications of Worst Case Climate Change Scenarios through Religious Bodies
Sustainable Future or Business as Usual?
Thomas Schauer: Sustainable Future - the Role of Information Technology
Juraj Mesík: 2010-2030: From Sustainable Development to Sustainable Retreat
Andrew Oerke: The Four Invisible Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Poetic Thought (Long-Term Issues Behind the "Global Problematique")
One World - One Future?
Jerome C. Glenn: Global Challenges We Face in the 21st Century
Mikuláš Huba: Rio Process: Pre-History - History - Present - Future
Václav Žák: Post-communist Transformation - Lessons Learned from the Czech Example
Views from the Americas
Anitra Thorhaug: The Future of the Western Hemisphere
Pierre C. Armand: Haiti at a Crossroad and Elements of Sustainable Recovery
Andrew Oerke: The Future of Microi nance: From Sustainability to a Generative Paradigm, the GCEEF Microfinance Agenda
Thinking the Unthinkable: on the Verge of Reality and Fiction
José L. Cordeiro: From Biological to Technological Evolution
Jaroslav Kalous: Why we are not Sustainable
Romi S. Mukherjee: Towards an Ethics of the Exception: the Foresight of the Unthinkable
Open Space
Ladislav Hohos: Post-Crisis Scenario of Globalization
Piotr Jutkiewicz, Norbert Kolos: Foresight in Small and Medium Enterprises: Polish Perspective
Ivan Klinec: Future Economics: Creative Design of Unified Economic Theory
Index