Triggered by the crisis-discourse on designing a systemic overhaul of our financial and economic world,  our futurist colleague Jamais Cascio, over at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, recently wrote an interesting blogpost on resilience economics. Undoubtedly inspired by biological/ecological systems, he imagines a world which is driven by our search for resilience. It counters the current logic of systems deemed “too big to fail” and features decentralized diversity, flexibility, collaboration, openness and tranparency (the many-eyes effect) etc. as core values. Even horizon-scanning, the consideration of possible alternative futures ahead is standard practice.

“The focus is on something entirely new: decentralized diversity as a way of managing the unexpected. [...] This comes at a cost to efficiency, but efficiency only works when there are no bumps in the road. Redundancy works out better in times of chaos and uncertainty — backups and alternatives and slack in the system able to counter momentary failures.”

The draft scenario is set in a post 2020 world.

Related posts:

1. climate change response scenarios
2. kashklash or the future of value
3. the power of 8

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 06:51 and is filed under explore, foresight, future, scenarios, society, visions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.