Jim Dator

• University of Hawaii System

Having established in Chap. 9 that the Constitution of the US is pitifully obsolete, purposely undemocratic, and wholly unfit for a dream society, I turn in this chapter to a sampling of suggestions that have been made for amending or replacing the document. The results are pretty discouraging. Until very recently, the attitude of citizens and cons...

This paper briefly compares Zia Sardar and Jim Dator in terms of their perspectives on normality, postnormality, and identity. Sardar struggles to root his identity as a British Pakistani Muslim. Dator eschews all assigned identities as a human being, striving to live as a human becoming who yearns to become posthuman.

This essay explains and illustrates how the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies [www.futures.hawaii.edu] (and the “Manoa School” of futures studies more broadly [Christopher B. Jones, “The Manoa School of Futures Studies,” Futures Research Quarterly, Winter, 1992, pp. 19–25]) conceives of and uses “alternative futures” (sometimes called “sce...

In a recent issue of Futures, I concluded an essay on the futures of the courts and law with an ancient Chinese poem which I first heard read by the Chief Justice of the Courts of Singapore, Yong Pung How. The poem said that one of the signs of a well-governed polity is that “the courts of justice are overgrown with grass” (Dator 2000). I have also...

Today I will talk about universities and quality. My title is intended to stress that neither is absolute or eternal. Each changes with changing times, needs, and possibilities. What is deemed poor quality at one place and time might be impossibly high quality at another. Quality has the characteristic that Marshall McLuhan alleged was a saying of...

At the present time, futures studies is to modern academia and societal decision making what Science was to academia and societal decision making in the late Middle Ages. Because of this, I am no more likely to get most successful academicians, politicians, and business persons to take futures studies seriously (and thus to help them and their orga...

Humans were once a tiny part of nature, no more consequential than any of the other flora and fauna of Earth and substantially less numerous or powerful than most. However, over the millennia, and especially over the last several hundred years, and most especially the last few decades, humans have become the dominant species on Earth (Turner 1990;...

Lady Viqar-Un-Nisa Noon, Mr. Mazharul Haq Siddiqui, Mr. Ross Masood Husain and especially my beloved friend, Dr. Raja Ikram Azam, and all the members and supporters of the Pakistan Futuristic Institute are to be most heartily congratulated for convening this regional conference of the World Futures Studies Federation to consider one of the most imp...

Since the mid-1970s, it has been a hallmark of the “Manoa School of Futures Studies” to insist that it is not possible to “predict” “The Future”, but that instead “Alternative Futures” can and should be “forecasted”, and “Preferred Futures” envisioned, designed and invented, on a continuing basis (Dator 1979, 2009b).

“Time” and “The Future” would seem to be two of the most central concepts for futures studies, but in fact, “time” was barely discussed by the founders of futures studies, and has seldom been problematized subsequently. I have reviewed what I consider to be the founding texts of futures studies, in English (In chronological order: Wells 1913; Heilb...

A familiar perspective on social change suggests that over the past several thousand years, human settlements have changed in size and complexity from hunting and gathering, to agricultural, to industrial, and most recently to information societies. Some theorists have recently suggested that the world may be moving into dream societies of icons an...

The Future: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017) by Jennifer M. Gidley BOOK REVIEW in “WORLD FUTURES REVIEW” “In [the first] three chapters, [Gidley’s] summary of the long history of ideas about time, the future, preferred futures, utopias and dystopias, progress and chaos, to planning, she skillfully weaves many resources into a fluid, coher...

Forestry and forest products research has entered into a robust research agenda focused on creating nano-sized particles and nanoproducts from wood. As wood-based materials can be sustainably produced, the potential of these renewable products could be limitless and include high-end compostable electronics, paint-on solar panels, and lightweight ma...

Purpose Futurist Jim Dator provides a personal insight of how he “sees” the past, present, and futures of Hawaiian tourism. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Ian Yeoman interviews one of the world's most prominent and respected futurists, Professor Jim Dator, from the Futures Research Center of the University of Haw...

Purpose – This paper aims to offer real and explicit reasons for viewing the futures of humanity and Earth as positive, fulfilling and meaningful, if humans view it as such and act to make it so. The paper incorporates the results of several recent research projects and activities that were based on the assumptions of an earlier paper titled, “The...

At a round table discussion that took place in Bucharest during a mutual learning workshop, on 9th–11th of June 2010, around 15 futurists were asked to look at this picture of a little African girl. It appears on the cover of UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2010, which has the specific title: ‘Reaching the Marginalized’. The fut...

Wendell Bell made major contributions to futures studies, and to my own understanding of the field, by helping establish the knowledge base of the field; developing the foundational concept “images of the future”; focusing on the ethical dimensions of futures studies; insisting there is a futures field that should be nurtured; and proposing an inte...

Extending International Space Station (ISS) operations will expand the scope for deciding its fate at its end of life. In this paper we examine the choices likely to be available at that distant unknown day when it is decided, for whatever reasons, to bring crew-directed engineering and science operations to a close. Of course a premature accidenta...

This essay explains and illustrates how the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies of the Political Science Department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa conceives of and uses "alternative futures". The design and conduct of a "futures visioning process," of which experiencing "four generic alternative futures" (continuation, collapse, discip...

I took the opportunity of an invitation to address the Fifth General Assembly of The International Parliamentarians' Association for Information Technology (IPAIT), held in the Finnish Parliament, Helsinki, January 16, 2007, to ask the parliamentarians gathered from around the world to reflect on current forms of parliamentary democracy as once-bri...

Purpose – The purpose of this LOEX‐of‐the‐West keynote is to discuss ways to think about the future and the future of libraries. Design/methodology/approach – Bringing in poems and meaningful paragraphs from other authors to illustrate his message, the author adopts the structure of a musical symphony to organize his presentation. Findings – Whil...

These brief alternative futures of Hawaii were developed for use during the "Hawaii 2050" sustainability process in 2006, serving as the basis for the four immersive experiential scenarios staged at the public kickoff event in August that year: https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html

Purpose To review what “quality” meant to universities historically and might mean in the future. Design/methodology/approach Written as a keynote talk for The Australian Universities Quality Forum 2004, this paper problematizes “universities” and “quality” by reviewing the way changing communication modalities have changed the meaning of the two...

This essay gives an account of my voyage through space and time with the World Futures Studies Federation, and other futures groups, from 1966 to August 1993, although I remain a member of and active in the WFSF. The essay is written mainly from memory with only occasional reference to notes and records and so it may be wrong in some details. My jo...

While Chenoweth and Feitelson have done a service to the futures community by comparing the Global 2000 Report with The Resourceful Earth–two important books of the late 1970s/early 1980s—their comparison is flawed in three dimensions: (1) they treat the books as though they were intended to be accurate predictions of the future. Their intention, i...

How can visions be used to guide the use of emerging instructional technologies? What we think we know and value depends in large measure on the models and media we use to apprehend the world. Over the course of human history we have moved from entirely oral models and media to those based on hand writing and for the last several hundred years, on...

Although the mortgage sector of the banking industry in the USA has seen good times in the recent past, the futures are uncertain. This article considers the nature of futures studies and applies futures analysis to the mortgage sector. The history of banking, and the USA, has been a struggle between three competing public philosophies: liberalism,...

A familiar perspective on social change suggests that over the past several thousand years, human settlements have changed in size and complexity from hunting and gathering, to agricultural,to industrial, and most recently to information societies. Some theorists have recently suggested that the world may be moving into dream societies of icons and...

Conceived as a short symphony in four brief movements, this paper begins with a statement of optimistic confidence that, over the 21st century, humanity will move off Earth and begin the speciation of human (and transformed) intelligences throughout the solar system and beyond. This is countered by a second movement that fears that the weaponizatio...

At its best, futures research can change priorities and attitudes within organizations, and bring fresh meaning to the present. But its recommendations are not always politically convenient, and a much-heralded report can be just as discreetly shelved. A key role for futurists is therefore to inspire decision-makers with alternative futures and cho...

This paper is part of an effort to draw attention to the prospect of establishing a safe store of important information on the Moon. Such an archive could serve to hasten recovery after a global disaster on Earth, and also it could grow into an important resource for lunar settlers. In the process of deciding what to emplace on the Moon, humans wou...

What will be the social role of courts over the future? This essay explores this question by examining the “five dimensions” of judiciary—the judiciary as a branch of government, subsystem of the legal system, as a forum for resolving dispute, as public agency, and an institution of a changing society. It considers the duty of courts to safeguard t...

Since futures studies has been a worldwide serious academic and consulting activity for more than 30 years, why have people never heard of it—or at least why do they know so little about it? The author briefly outlines his own teaching and consulting experiences in futures studies since 1967 and then introduces each of the 25 authors whose essays f...

Publicly funded institutions of higher education came into existence at a certain time in history. Has that time come and gone? Are brick and mortar universities being replaced—or at least marginalized—by virtual universities? If so, what is gained, and what is lost, and which side should you be on?

American state judiciaries seem to have embraced futures studies more fully than any other governmental or private institution anywhere. Why might this be? Evidence comes primarily from the discussion on three panels during a recent General Assembly of the World Future Society by eight persons active in various aspects of judicial foresight.

The following essay, by the Past President of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), was presented as the Opening Keynote Address to the WFSF World Conference ‘Coherence and Chaos in our Uncommon Futures’, Turku, Finland, 23 August 1993.

This essay looks at the nature of the new Europe and outlines a number of future trends, focusing on Europe's role in world politics as seen from an American perspective.

This article considers recent ‘end of history’ and ‘end of nature’ hypotheses in the context of new scientific and socioeconomic paradigms, and seeks a broader understanding of the nature of information society. Through a review of recent work on future socioeconomic and scientific and technological developments, the conservationist view is rejecte...

The notion of culture requires redefinition. A number of tensions/transforming factors—global v local; Third World v Western cultures; media literacy v print literacy; and post Homo sapiens cultures based on robots, cyborgs and chimeras—are driving new mind- and life-forms and cultures. What we do about the evolutions and transformations is still b...

Publicly funded institutions of higher education came into existence at a certain time in history. Has that time come and gone? Are brick and mortar universities being replaced—or at least marginalized—by virtual universities? If so, what is gained, and what is lost, and which side should you be on?