unimagined futures

Searching for YOUR most valuable ROADS AHEAD
In a world relentlessly moving toward new and different futureS
This site provides the elements
for creating a "life time" work approach

Society :: events :: stuff happening

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Donation: Click the button below to make a donation through PayPal. Just a few dollars helps with the books, software, web site hosting, and the time devoted to enhancing the work approach blue print available on this site. See the text site map for a view of the site's unique scope and resources. Also see links to external resources on my delicious page

This page links to article lists—below. The purpose of these lists is to provide a resource for attention directing.

It might prove useful—see connections below—to maintain a short list of topic areas that you want to track. The article lists below could be helpful in unearthing new candidates.

Additionally these lists may be used as seeds for developing report or thesis topics.

Some of the titles may lead to interesting conversation topics (see How To Have A Beautiful Mind)

When you find a topic of interest, a Google search will very likely locate the article. Try placing the article title in quotation marks within the Google search box. Next to each Google result you're probably see a "similar" link that may find related pages. Mind mapping the key ideas in a group of related articles may prove helpful.

These lists are derived my DEVONthink Pro article database. This database has over twenty thousand (and growing) articles (in text format). These are not just routine articles, but those that shed some light (direct attention) to some kind of strategic example. Taken together they create a picture of our unfolding world. Each could be superimposed on the economy. Each could be explored to discover the implications. The future that has already happened.

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Article Lists:

2012

January through March 2012

2011

January through March 2011

April through June 2011

July through September 2011

October through December 2011 (new)

2010

January through June 2010

July through December 2010

2004 through 2009

Earlier

Only Connect …

From Peter Drucker's Post-Capitalist Society

The productivity of knowledge requires increasing the yield from what is known—whether by the individual or by the group.

There is an old American story of the farmer who turns down a proposal for a more productive farming method by saying, "I already know how to farm twice as well as I do."

Most of us (perhaps all of us) know many times more than we put to use. The main reason is that we do not mobilize the multiple knowledges we possess. We do not use knowledges as part of one toolbox. Instead of asking: "What do I know, what have I learned, that might apply to this task?" we tend to classify tasks in terms of specialized knowledge areas.

Again and again in working with executives I find that a given challenge in organizational structure, for instance, or in technology yields to knowledge the executives already possess: They may have acquired it, for instance, in an economics course at the university. "Of course, I know that," is the standard response, "but it's economics, not management." This is a purely arbitrary distinction—necessary perhaps to learn and to teach a "subject," but irrelevant as a definition of what knowledge is and what it can do. The way we traditionally arrange our businesses, government agencies, and universities further encourages the tendency to believe that the purpose of the tools is to adorn the toolbox rather than to do work.

In learning and teaching, we do have to focus on the tool. In usage, we have to focus on the end result, on the task, on the work. "Only connect" was the constant admonition of a great English novelist, E. M. Forster. It has always been the hallmark of the artist, but equally of the great scientist—of a Darwin, a Bohr, an Einstein. At their level, the capacity to connect may be inborn and part of that mystery we call "genius." But to a large extent, the ability to connect and thus to raise the yield of existing knowledge (whether for an individual, for a team, or for the entire organization) is learnable. Eventually, it should become teachable. It requires a methodology for problem definition—even more urgently perhaps than it requires the currently fashionable methodology for "problem solving." It requires systematic analysis of the kind of knowledge and information a given problem requires, and a methodology for organizing the stages in which a given problem can be tackled—the methodology which underlies what we now call "systems research." It requires what might be called "Organizing Ignorance" (The title of a book I began to write forty years ago but never finished.)—and there is always so much more ignorance around than there is knowledge.

Specialization into knowledges has given us enormous performance potential in each area. But because knowledges are so specialized, we need also a methodology, a discipline, a process to turn this potential into performance. Otherwise, most of the available knowledge will not become productive; it will remain mere information.

Not to see the forest for the trees is a serious failing. But it is an equally serious failing not to see the trees for the forest. One can only plant and cut down individual trees. Yet the forest is the "ecology," the environment without which individual trees would never grow. To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

The productivity of knowledge is going to be the determining factor in the competitive position of a company, an industry, an entire country. No country, industry, or company has any "natural" advantage or disadvantage. The only advantage it can possess is the ability to exploit universally available knowledge. The only thing that increasingly will matter in national as in international economics is management's performance in making knowledge productive.

Connection links

You may find it useful is to mentally superimpose an important article on a terrain map; the changing social and economic picture; and the structure of the economy or its equivalent in the social and public sectors. Articles can also be used with an intel map that connects the previous areas of thought with changes and time spans. Below are the "icons" for each of the tools mentioned earlier in this paragraph.

terrain map changing social and economic picture economic structure

intel map time spans

Brainscape enhancement and topic assessment

Key Links for Site Exploration

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Radar: attention :: enhancement :: organization

At the present time this is a prototype site. I add, remove, and redesign content based on my own unfolding comprehension of the time-life navigation ^© (TLN) landscape . This means that you might want to periodically revisit relevant pages.

Site design goals (beta—September 2010): My minimum goal is to provide enough "sign-posts" that serious site users don't find themselves in major negative situations because they didn't get the TLN memo. My desired goal is to provide "sign-posts" to a meaningful life—both for individuals and society. One supreme sign-post is to set your sights on achievements that really matter, that will make a difference in the world. The second half of your life is the major opportunity for full effectiveness and fulfillment.

Many of the books that were available when I first started working on what I now call "time-life navigation" have gone out of print or are hard to find. You can still use the content of the book outline pages to identify topics of interest and to search Amazon Books for topics or phrases.

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