Singapore – The Hub of Great Futures Work
I’m heading to Singapore for a few days to facilitate a scenario planning workshop on behalf of the Asia Business Forum. There is something intimately exciting for a futurist to be going to arguably the most future focused of all countries and to spend just a brief time immersed there.
There’s no doubt that great futures work is occuring around the world and I’m of the view that few places could claim to match Singapore’s ability to set and enact a country-wide Vision. Just ten years or so ago, the Singapore Government determined that Singapore would be the leading player in broadband connectivity and telecommunications. It drew a line in the sand and then set forth to achieve its desired future, and succeeded.
Whilst many other countries were and still are, playing ‘catch-up’ to ensuring a high level of broadband connectivity across all sections of society, Singapore began to focus on its next big issue – Water. With minimal land mass available to it, an increasing population and companies reliant on water supply, Singapore was quite clear that it needed to find ways to capture the abundance of water it receives in the form of rainfall each year. The sustainable water Future that Singapore wants to achieve still has some way to go, and I’ve no doubt the country will succeed.
For a futurist that is passionate about the process of organisations having a clear understanding of their emerging issues, distinct awareness of the capabilities required to address those issues, and the collective desire and will to do what is required to reach the goal, Singapore is an amazing place because it is a results driven example of what can be done. Perhaps some of the Scandinavian countries might be in the same league and by and large, most other countries have a lot to learn from Singapore’s approach to creating a better future.
The MP3 file below captures part two of our chat looking at the Future of Sex. Picking up on the theme of new technology that popped up towards the end of our first discussion in week one, here we move onto haptics and holographics and the extension of that technology from beyond the bedroom and…
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Read More >I join Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Darwin radio where we continue our discussion about the future of sex. We consider three main areas in this session – smart phone applications; remote relationships and the combination of haptics and holographics as one the emerging means by which we’ll maintain physical contact. You can download the…
Read More >In this chat with Vicki Kerrigan on radio ABC Darwin we discuss the future of sex. This is the first of potentially three conversations where we look at the increasing reach of technology way beyond current online match making sites, the social pressures driving the use of technology as well as the use of technology…
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Read More >Vicki Kerrigan and I finished off our discussion about the Future of Clothing on ABC Darwin yesterday. We discussed invisibility style cloaks, singlets that monitor your heart rate and stress levels, runners that capture electricity to power your wearable electronics and a few philosophical questions regarding our ability to deal with stress. The file…
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