Futures Friends

On Friday 4th September, Monica Mulhotra and I attended the Futures Friends x London session. It was an inspiring morning spent with like-minded Futurists; all 9 key speakers brought insightful early signals and trends to the stage.

It also made me reflect on emergence I’m encountering, and so I’d like to share mine here.

Emergence 1

Critical Systems HeuristicsCritical Systems HeuristicsCritical System Heuristics (CSH) provides a framework of questions about a program including what is (and what ought to be) its purpose and its source of legitimacy and who are (and who ought to be) its intended beneficiaries. CSH, as…Read the full definition, Complex Adaptive Systems and complexityComplexityA situation is complex when many interacting parts, people and perspectives mean that cause and effect cannot be fully predicted in advance.Read the full definition more widely becoming more central in politics, organisations and education. With environmental collapse, systemic inequality and disruptive technological advancement becoming ever more present, there’s an emergence of CSH and CAS are slowly but steadily making their way into public policy through the OECD’s ’Systemic Thinking for Policy Making', and the CynefinCynefinCynefin (pronounced roughly 'kuh-NEV-in') is a sense-making framework developed by Dave Snowden. It describes different kinds of situation, from clear and complicated to complex and chaotic, and suggests a different way of acting in each.Read the full definition framework bringing awareness to types of systems, system behaviours and modes of interventions in organisations.

Emergence 2

Analogue crafts as a rejection of rapid technological roll-out such as generative AI, autonomous AI and LLMs. Making with our hands and feeding our minds by growing and fermenting our own foods, mending our clothes and personal items, woodworking, sketching and painting, playing an instrument and the list goes on...

Emergence 3

Women are taking up, and owning more space across multiple professional sports disciplines. The English WSL is garnering more media coverage, while audience numbers are increasing and investments are on the up. Another example, also in the realm of football, is Arsenal WFC and Arsenal FC’s ‘One Club’ mentality - a philosophy bringing together players, staff and fans under a single cultural identity, and AWFC playing all of their 11 home matches in the WSL at the Emirates stadium.