Fundación Javier Barros Sierra, AC. Boletín FJBS, No. 3, Octubre 2009.

• Lo que publica durante una semana el periódico New York Times contiene más información de la que una persona viviendo en el Siglo 18 vería durante … ¡toda su vida!
• Las Generaciones Y y Z* consideran al Internet como una tecnología ya obsoleta. Por esa razón, en 2009 el Colegio de Boston dejó de distribuir direcciones de correo electrónico entre sus alumnos de nuevo ingreso.

Vivimos en tiempos acelerados. La velocidad es el signo de los tiempos (por ello conjeturar razonadamente sobre los futuros se vuelve cada vez más imprescindible). Los cambios suceden cada vez más de prisa. Ello es particularmente notorio en el mundo de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones.
Si quieres leer datos para pensar el futuro te presentamos a continuación algunos que nos parece resulta obligado tener en cuenta:

• El 25% de los chinos (o de los indios) con el mayor coeficiente intelectual (IQ) de sus poblaciones es un grupo más numeroso que la población total conjunta de México y Brasil.
• China se convertirá pronto en el país con mayor número de hablantes de inglés.
• Actualmente existen alrededor de 540 mil palabras en inglés; ello es cerca de 5 veces más que en la época de Shakespeare.
• En el mundo se publican más de 3,000 libros… ¡diariamente!
• Es probable que alrededor del 97% del total de los conocimientos actuales haya sido generado entre 1978 y hoy.
• Quienes se graduaron de bachillerato en 2009 seguramente habrán estado expuestos en tan sólo un año a más información que aquella a la que estuvieron expuestos sus abuelos durante toda su vida.
• Lo que publica durante una semana el periódico New York Times contiene más información de la que una persona viviendo en el Siglo 18 vería durante … ¡toda su vida!
• Se estima que en 2008 se generaron 4 exabytes (4 x 1018 bytes) por año de información única nueva. Ello es más de lo generado en los … ¡5,000 años previos!
• La cantidad de nueva información técnica se duplica cada dos años.
• La tercera generación de fibras ópticas puede transmitir 14 billones de bits por segundo. Ello equivale a 2,660 discos compactos (CD) y 210 millones de conversaciones telefónicas por segundo. Esta cifra se triplica cada seis meses y se estima que así seguirá haciéndolo durante por lo menos los próximos 20 años.
• Hay pronósticos de que en el año 2013 se construirá una supercomputadora que excederá la capacidad de cómputo del cerebro humano. En el año 2023 una computadora de mil dólares podría hacer lo mismo. Y para el año 2049 podría desarrollarse una computadora de mil dólares capaz de superar la capacidad de cómputo de … ¡toda la raza humana!
• Para llegar a 50 millones de usuarios, a la radio le tomó 38 años, a la televisión 13 años, a Internet 4 años, a los iPod 3 años, y a Facebook 2 años. Las descargas de aplicaciones de iPod llegarán a 1,000 millones en 9 meses. En 2008 cada 5 minutos se descargaban ilegalmente desde la Web…¡694 mil canciones!
• El Departamento del Trabajo de Estados Unidos estima que los estudiantes de hoy habrán tenido entre 10 y 14 empleos diferentes al llegar a los 18 años. Uno de cada cuatro trabajadores de Estados Unidos ha trabajado en su actual empleo menos de un año. Más de la mitad de ellos llevan menos de 5 años trabajando para su empresa actual.
• Estados Unidos ocupa apenas el lugar 19 a nivel mundial en penetración de Internet de banda ancha; Japón ocupa el lugar 22.
• La empresa de videojuegos Nintendo invirtió en 2002 más de 140 millones de dólares en investigación y desarrollo. Ello representa más de la mitad del presupuesto total conjunto de 2008 de los 25 Centros Públicos de Investigación que dependen del Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt) de México.

"The future is there". De scene*s - Flickr.

• En Estados Unidos el 96% de los integrantes de la “Generación Y”** forman parte de alguna red social electrónica.
• Las Generaciones Y y Z* consideran al Internet como una tecnología ya obsoleta. Por esa razón, en 2009 el Colegio de Boston dejó de distribuir direcciones de correo electrónico entre sus alumnos de nuevo ingreso.
• En 1984 había mil conexiones de Internet; en 1992 un millón; en 2008 1,000 millones.
• El costo promedio de conexión a Internet en los países latinoamericanos es 145 veces mayor que en Hong Kong, el país con los costos más bajos, 58 veces mayor que en Estados Unidos y 41 veces mayor que en Dinamarca, Taiwán, Canadá, Suiza y Alemania
• El estudiante promedio de educación superior de Estados Unidos ha pasado más de 10 mil horas jugando videojuegos, más de 10 mil horas hablando por el celular, y unas 20 mil horas viendo televisión.
• Los niños y adolescentes estadounidenses pasan hoy 2.75 horas usando computadoras en el hogar; el 70% de los niños de entre 4 y 6 años ya han usado una computadora; y el 68% de los niños menores de 2 años emplean en promedio un medio con pantalla poco más de 2 horas diariamente.
• Los medios sociales de comunicación superan ya a la pornografía como la actividad más importante de la Web.
• El primer mensaje de texto comercial a un celular fue enviado en diciembre de 1992. En 2008 el número de mensajes de texto enviados y recibidos diariamente era ya mayor que el de la población mundial.
• Una de cada ocho parejas casadas en Estados Unidos durante el año pasado se conoció a través de los medios sociales de comunicación.
• Si los usuarios de Facebook constituyesen un país, éste sería el cuarto más poblado del mundo (después de China, la India y Estados unidos).
• QZone, de China, es todavía mayor que Facebook, con más de 300 millones de usuarios.
• El segmento de mayor crecimiento en Facebook es el de las mujeres de entre 55 y 65 años.
• En Facebook se comparten más de 1.5 millones de piezas de contenido (vínculos Web, noticias, blogs, notas, fotos, etc.) diariamente.
• Ashton Kutcher (actor estadounidense) y Ellen DeGeneres (comediante y actriz estadounidense) tienen más seguidores en Twitter que la población conjunta de Irlanda, Noruega y Panamá.
• El 80% del uso de Twitter es a través de dispositivos móviles.
• Facebook, Twitter, orkut, bebo, fliks, digg, MySpace, YouTube son hoy palabras indispensables para los participantes en las redes de medios de comunicación social.
• Todos los meses se hacen más de 31,000 millones de consultas a través de Google (contra las “apenas” 2,700 millones en 2006).
• YouTube es el segundo buscador más grande del mundo. Contiene más de 100 millones de videos.
• Hay más de 200 millones de usuarios registrados en MySpace (a fines de 2006 había “sólo” 106 millones). La página promedio de MySpace es visitada 30 veces por día.
• El 80% de las empresas de Estados Unidos usan el portal LinkedIn como herramienta principal para encontrar empleados.
• Uno de cada seis estudiantes de educación superior de Estados Unidos está matriculado en un programa en línea. En América Latina sólo el 2,7% de las instituciones existentes cuentan con programas virtuales y sólo el 1.3% del total de los alumnos participa en ellos.
• El 25% de los estadounidenses dijeron haber visto un video corto en el último mes…¡en su teléfono celular!
• Un 35% de las ventas de libros de Amazon son para los Kindle.
• Wikipedia (Wiki, término hawaiano que significa “rápido”) tiene más de 13 millones de artículos; sólo el 22% de ellos en inglés.
• Si usted recibiese un dólar cada vez que un artículo nuevo es subido a Wikipedia, usted ganaría 156.23 dólares por hora.
• Hay más de 200 millones de “blogs”. El 54% de los “bloggers” suben contenidos o “tweet” diariamente.
• El 25% de los resultados de búsquedas para las 20 mayores marcas del mundo son vínculos con contenidos generados por usuarios de ellas.
• El 34% de los “bloggers” sube opiniones sobre productos o marcas.
• El 78% de los consumidores confía en las recomendaciones de sus pares; sólo el 14% confía en anuncios comerciales.
• Sólo el 18% de las campañas de publicidad por televisión tradicionales genera un retorno a la inversión positivo.
• El 70% de los estadounidenses de entre 18 y 34 años han visto programas de televisión en la Web; sólo 33% han visto un programa en DVR/TiVo (TiVo=Pionero en grabaciones de video digital).
• En el mundo existen más de 1,500 millones de usuarios de teléfonos celulares.
• 24 de los 25 periódicos más grandes están viviendo declinaciones nunca antes vistas en su circulación.

La mayor parte de estos datos fueron tomados (y adaptados) de dos videos disponibles en YouTube:
Social Media Revolution [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8] y Did you Know? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K04o2ic4g-A] (y sus versiones actualizadas). Ambos son muy recomendables.

Nota del curador: La información de communicatheo.com es de uso libre y se puede editar manteniendo la cadena  de las fuentes de origen.

*La de los occidentales nacidos entre principios de los 1990 y la actualidad

**También conocida como Generación Milenio, o Generación Siguiente, se refiere a los nacidos entre mediados de la década de los 1970 y principios de los 1990

Antonio Alonso Presidente del Consejo Directivo de la Fundación Javier Barros Sierra AC nos envío estos abstract y links , publicados en  Boletín FJBS,  No. 2, Septiembre 2009, del Journal of Futures Studies. Epistemology, Methods, Applied and Alternative Futures (Tamkang University). Vol. 13, No 4, Mayo 2009.

El blog communicatheo.com agradece la posibilidad de entregar perspectivas y estudios prospectivos de alta calidad a quienes trabajan, enseñan o estudian en el campo de la comunicología y otras áreas afines de las ciencias sociales, o bien a quienes son actores del mundo de las comunicaciones.

En su número más reciente (Vol. 3, No. 4, Mayo 2009) la revista Journal of Futures Studies (publicada por la Universidad de Tamkang, Taiwán; disponible en línea en: http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/ ) incluye los siguientes artículos:

Fundacion Barros Sierra

(1) “Práctica reflexiva y practicantes (Reflective Practice and Practitioners)”, Rowena Morrow y Peter Bishop. Es una introducción a este número de la revista, patrocinado, escrito y editado por miembros de la Asociación de Futuristas Profesionales (Association of Professional Futurists), por invitación de Sohail Inayatullah, editor of the Journal of Futures Studies. Describe el contenido de la revista.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/I01.pdf

(2) “Re-enmarcando el futuro (Reframing the Future)”, Jennifer Jarratt y John B Mahaffie.
¿Cómo pueden los futuristas enmarcar sus resultados para llegar de mejor manera a sus clientes? No es fácil que las nuevas ideas penetren en la mente de las persona sin reemplazar o cambiar las ideas que ya tienen. Ello significa que los futuristas enfrentan un reto al tratar de hacer llegar nuevas ideas a las personas. El reto es entender las narrativas, los sesgos, las esperanzas y los miedos, y construir nuevas narrativas y marcos de referencia que puedan permanecer. George Lakoff, en “La mente política”, explica el proceso de cambio de marco referencial y su centralidad. Echando mano de sus puntos de vista y nuestro trabajo con clientes, damos una mirada fresca a lo que significan el enmarcado y cambio de marco referencial para el trabajo que los futuristas realizan para las empresas, los gobiernos y las organizaciones sin fines de lucro.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE01.pdf

(3) “Huellas del futuro: Líneas de tiempo y previsions exploratorias en investigación de futuros (Footprints of the Future: Timelines and Exploratory Forecasts in Futures Research)”, Peter von Stackelberg.
La presentación de datos orientados al tiempo puede proporcionar puntos de vista significativos tanto del pasado como del futuro. El uso de líneas de tiempo que integran series temporales de datos dispersos y otra información orientada al tiempo en una presentación visual unificada puede revelar patrones, causas, probabilidades y posibilidades a través de sistemas sociales, tecnológicos, económicos y políticos complejos. Ciclos, olas, curvas logísticas y otros patrones arquetípicos, cuando se despliegan sobre datos históricos, pueden proporcionar una comprensión más profunda de la dinámica de cambio. Las líneas de tiempo y estos pstrones arquetípicos de cambio pueden emplearse también en el campo de los estudios de los futuros como components clave en un proceso de “hipótesis-de-previsión (previsiones exploratorias) para identificar potenciales patrones de cambio de largo plazo y hacer previsiones de largo plazo (25 o más años).
Palabras clave: líneas de tiempo, cronologías, previsions exploratorias, estudios de los futuros, ciclos, curvas logísticas, cambio, previsiones de largo plazo, series de tiempo, datos históricos, datos orientados al tiempo, pasado, futuro, discontinuidad.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE02.pdf

(4) “Caminos menos viajados: Diferentes métodos, diferentes futuros (Roads Less Traveled: Different Methods, Different Futures)”, Andrew Curry y Wendy Schultz.
Describe los resultados de un proyecto exploratorio surgido de la pregunta, ¿los diferentes métodos de construcción de escenarios generan productos distintivamente diferentes? Usando la base de datos de un proyecto de escenarios recién terminado, los autores y participantes voluntarios reprocesaron los impulsores de los escenarios crudos y filtrados y los datos de las entrevistas a través de cuatro métodos para la construcción de escenarios: el enfoque de la matriz de 2 x 2; el análisis causal por capas; el enfoque Manoa; y el enfoque de arquetipos de escenarios. Retuvimos la pregunta central del proyecto original (“¿Cuáles son futuros posibles para la sociedad civil?”) como nuestro foco. Esta exploración comparativa confirmó que diferentes métodos de generación de escenarios producen no sólo diferentes narrativas y puntos de vista, sino experiencias cualitativamente diferentes en los participantes.
Palabras clave: Escenarios, construcción de escenarios, planeación de escenarios, métodos de futuros, previsión.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE03.pdf

(5) “¿Debieran emplearse probabilidades con escenarios? (Should Probabilities Be Used with Scenarios?)”, Stephen M Millett.
Se ha argumentado desde hace tiempo que todos los escenarios deberían representar futuros posibles, y no probables, y que no debe asignárseles probabilidad alguna de ocurrencia. Uno de los argumentos es que el equipo y administradores de los escenarios deben considerar todos los escenarios como igualmente probables y prepararse para cada uno de ellos. Adicionalmente, el propósito estratégico de los escenarios es pensar en futuros alternativos y escaparse de previsiones financieras y otros tipos de tendencias de series temporales. Por otra parte, hay un contra argumento que señala que las probabilidades pueden y deben emplearse en los escenarios. Estas probabilidades son, sin embargo, bayesianas, en tanto que incluyen supuestos, imaginación y opiniones expertas y van más allá de proyecciones tendenciales. Este artículo revisa ambos argumentos y hace recomendaciones sobre cuando es apropiado asignar probabilidades a los escenarios y cuando no.
Palabras clave: Escenarios, análisis de escenarios, probabilidades, futuros, previsión, planeación estratégica.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE04.pdf

(6) “Modelo de Madurez de Previsión (MMP): Logrando mejores practices en el campo de la previsión (Foresight Maturity Model (FMM):Achieving Best Practices in the Foresight Field)”, Tery Grim.
Este artículo ofrece un enfoque para atacar la ausencia de un sistema de medición para la disciplina de futuros/previsión. El sistema de medición, basado en un modelo exitoso para otras disciplinas complejas, proporciona un enfoque de desarrollo para prácticas de previsión. El Modelo de Madurez de Previsión (MMP) define las mejores prácticas para el campo de previsión y mide la competencia de dichas práctica. Su intención es apoyar a los practicantes y a los consumidores de servicios de previsión.
Palabras clave: Previsión, medición, prácticas, taxonomía, mejora.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE05.pdf

(7) “Futuros ambicionados (Aspirational Futures)”, Clem Bezold.
Los trabajos de futuros deben ayudar a entender major y crear el futuro. Esto requiere técnicas apropiadas para entender cambios en el macro ambiente, el ambiente operativo y la organización o comunidad a la mano. El Instituto para Futuros Alternativos (Institute for Alternative Futures) ha desarrollado “futuros ambicionados” como un conjunto de técnicas para permitir esto. Aunque comparte similitudes con otros enfoques de los trabajos de futuros, enfatiza el desarrollo de escenarios que incluyen escenarios probables, retadores y visionarios.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE06.pdf

(8) “Futuros para todos (Futures for Everyone)”, Verne Wheelwright.
Esta investigación buscó determinar si los métodos de futuros son o no escalables y aplicables a vidas individuales. ¿Podrían los mismos métodos de futuros que son empleados de manera efectiva por gobiernos, instituciones y negocios alrededor del mundo aplicarse con éxito a individuos? Este artículo describe el desarrollo de un proceso de futuros para individuos. Este sistema reduce sustancialmente la complejidad y guía a los individuos a través de los pasos de investigación personal, desarrollo de escenarios y planeación estratégica individual. Experiencia post-doctoral sugiere algunos enfoques efectivos de aprendizaje.
Palabras clave: Futuros personales, escenarios personales, planeación estratégica personal, micro-futuros.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE07.pdf

(9) “Aprendiendo de la política de los futuros (Learning from the Politics of Futures)”, Steve Gould.
La intención central de este ensayo se basa en la tesis de maestría del autor, titulada “Creando futuros comunitarios alternativos: Una tragedia de futuros comunitarios”. La tesis exploró la pregunta ¿Pueden los gobiernos locales empoderar a sus comunidades con la oportunidad y capacidad de crear futuros alternativos? Los gobiernos locales en su papel de administradores de asuntos y planeación para el futuro han adoptado más recientemente los conceptos de vinculación comunitaria y desarrollo sustentable. Este ensayo presenta los resultados del proyecto de visiones comunitarias “Maroochy 2025” y resalta una tragedia de pérdida de oportunidad para galvanizar el momentum comunitario y la capacidad para crear futuros alternativos. Sin embargo, los aprendizajes de Maroochy 2025 ponen de relieve el caso de prácticas de democracia anticipativa y liderazgo participativo. Si el nuevo propósito de los gobiernos locales es apoyar la creación de comunidades sustentables, entonces necesitarán vincularse con sus comunidades de maneras más significativas y redefinir los modelos de implantación dentro de las limitaciones de la democracia representativa.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/AE08.pdf

(10) “Futurewatch”, Jennifer Coote.
Un servicio de información sobre perspectivas internacionales actuales sobre nuestros futuros, preparado por Jennifer Coote, especialista en escandido de futuros.
http://www.jfs.tku.edu.tw/13-4/R01.pdf

Imagenes para la conexión al texto (thumbnails) extraídas de Flickr: por Dead Air y Andrew Coulter Enright

Communicatheo.com tiene el agrado de poner a disposición de nuestros lectores la 2ª Parte de Prolegómenos, que cubre dos capítulos: la cultura en la tradición marxista  y la concepción simbólica de la cultura. El titulo de este libro: Prolegómenos, del profesor e investigador de la UNAM, México, Doctor Gilberto Giménez, es por definición un tratado que precede a una obra y recoge los fundamentos generales sobre un tema. En este caso la cultura. Recomendamos su lectura a estudiantes de pre y pos grado, y profesionales de distintos ámbitos de las ciencias sociales, particularmente a quienes trabajan e investigan en la perspectiva de la comunicología y las comunicaciones sociales. Además contiene un rico referente bibliográfico. Por nuestra parte no hicimos edición, salvo pequeñas correcciones de nuestro borrador con el objeto de no alterar el rico lenguaje y “semantismo” del profesor Giménez, sólo lo dividimos en tres partes para facilitar la lectura e interés de nuestros lectores del blog..

Extracto de:

PROLEGÓMENOS

III. LA CULTURA EN LA TRADICIÓN MARXISTA

Dr. Gilberto Giménez Montiel*

1. Una perspectiva política en la consideración de la cultura

La tradición marxista no ha desarrollado en forma explícita y sistemática una teoría propia de la cultura, ni se ha preocupado por elaborar dispositivos metodológicos para su análisis. Desde este punto de vista puede afirmarse que el concepto de cultura es ajeno al marxismo. De hecho el interés por incorporar este concepto al paradigma materialista histórico es muy reciente(1)  y ha dado lugar a contribuciones que, aun siendo muy importantes, están lejos de haber alcanzado el grado de refinamiento y de operacionalidad logrado por el discurso etno-antropológico sobre la cultura.

Sin embargo, los clásicos del marxismo se refirieron con frecuencia a los problemas de la civilización y de la cultura entendidas en el sentido del iluminismo europeo del siglo XVIII, y algunos de ellos, como Lenín y Gramsci, nos legaron un buen lote de reflexiones específicas que, pese a su carácter ocasional y fragmentario, no han cesado de alimentar la reflexión contemporánea sobre la cultura.

De modo general, la tradición marxista tiende a homologar la cultura a la ideología, terminando por alojarla dentro de la tópica infraestructura -superestructura. Por eso suele hablarse, dentro de esta tradición, de “instancia ideológico-cultural”. Además, el tratamiento de este problema aparece subordinado siempre a preocupaciones estratégicas o pedagógicas de índole política. Esto significa, entre otras cosas, que los marxistas abordan el análisis de las producciones culturales sólo o principalmente en función de su contribución a la dinámica de la lucha de clases y, por lo tanto, desde una perspectiva políticamente valorativa. Estas peculiaridades ponen de manifiesto toda la distancia que media entre el punto de vista marxista y el punto de vista etno-antropológico en esta materia.

(1) Los althusserianos comenzaron a ocuparse de este concepto sólo a partir de 1968  (Roger Establet) y las contribuciones de Gramsci a este respecto fueron ignoradas por las corrientes marxistas tradicionales  durante mucho tiempo. En México, el  marxismo ha inspirado también contribuciones dignas de mención, como las del arqueólogo Luis F. Bate, Cultura, clases y cuestión nacional, Juan Pablos Editor, México, 1984; y las de José Luis Najenson, Cultura Nacional y cultura subalterna, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Toluca, México, 1979.

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*Gilberto Giménez Montiel es Doctor en Sociología por la Universidad de la Sorbona, París III, 1976; Licenciado en Ciencias Sociales por el Instituto de Scienze Sociali (Universidad Gregoriana, Roma, 1956); Licenciado en Filosofía, Universidad de Comillas (España), 1950; Investigador Titular C en el Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la UNAM. Gilberto se destaca como miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI), también integrante de la Asociación Mexicana de Semiótica y la International Communication Association (ICA).

——

Si usted quiere leer todo el documento clique sobre la imagen. >>

Edición en papel digital EDW -Prolegómenos, 2a. parte.

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Communicatheo recomienda:

Prolegómenos, 1a. parte

¿Qué es y qué no es proxpectiva estratégica?

Gestión para una nueva actitud sobre el futuro

De la redacción de la compañía tomamos una frase de la presentación de los resultados del tercer trimestre fiscal: “Estamos haciendo nuestros productos más innovadores que nunca y nuestros clientes están respondiendo”, dijo Steve Jobs. El tema a discurrir es si la crisis afecta a todo el mercado o hay quienes a nivel país, corporativo o pequeñas empresas estén leyendo bien los cambios sistémicos y tienen una evolución casi darwiniana de adaptación sin ir a los brazos del Estado. Pronto tendremos nuevos resultados de Apple y podremos ver si las cifras del tercer trimestre muestran consistencia. Creo que por los éxitos de los nuevos lanzamientos los resultados harán sonreír nuevamente a los accionistas, equipos humanos de Apple y a Steve Jobs. Para nosotros muestra a una empresa que en un eje acíclico entrega soluciones de comunicación de alta calidad e innovación y que quizás marca hitos para el management de una nueva era.

El 21 de Julio de 2009 en medio de la crisis financiera se dieron los resultados financieros y de resultados logrados por este ejemplo de la innovación durante el tercer trimestre fiscal terminado el 27 de Junio de 2009. La noticia de Apple, Cupertino, California, aun cuando tiene un mes y fracción, es de gran interés si hay un seguimiento de resultados, y más si queremos tener una perspectiva y contexto de las noticias de innovaciones de software y hardware a las que la industria de comunicaciones nos tiene acostumbrados .

La información señala que en el trimestre que cubren los resultados Apple vendió 2,6 millones de ordenadores Macintosh ® , que representa un cuatro por ciento de aumento respecto al mismo trimestre del año pasado. Vendió 10,2 millones iPods, lo que representa un siete por ciento de disminución en comparación al mismo trimestre 2008. Sin embargo, esta baja debe asociarse en el análisis con la venta del ya famoso iPhone que alcanzó las 5,2 millones de unidades de venta, lo que representa un 626 por ciento de crecimiento sobre el trimestre del año pasado.
Este récord del mix de venta incluyendo los otros provocó cifras históricas en los resultados de Apple: ingresos de 8,34 mil millones dólares y un beneficio neto trimestral de $ 1.23 mil millones, o $ 1,35 por acción diluida. Si estos resultados se comparan con los ingresos de 7,46 mil millones dólares y el beneficio neto de 1,07 mil millones dólares, o 1,19 dólares por acción diluida de similar trimestre del 2008,  muestran una empresa  con variación positiva en sus indicadores en el peor año económico de los últimos cincuenta años. Más aun si el margen bruto avanzó a 36,3 por ciento frente al 34,8 por ciento en el trimestre del año pasado. Y aun cuando no se puede predecir el futuro, en 2009 se aprecia una empresa que está construyendo el futuro respondiendo a la fidelidad de sus usuarios y con la manzana de la sabiduría.

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Extracted from different sources and current news by Inti Acevedo on LaInformación.com

Electronic Books:  a simple marketing game or a cultural pattern change

Increasingly and very often one might find involved in a discussion on the subsistence of the publishing industry or in other words of the book, and might listen to older generations talk about the smell and unique sensation of the texture of the different varieties of paper. One might also be able to listen how the youngsters demonstrate the aliveness of the book when one sees the current successes such the sequence of Harry Potter. Personally, the book will eventually take the natural transition toward its death with respect to the established standards and become a luxury item. Perhaps, it might make a comparison with the black and white photography. My own hypothesis is that the transition will take considerable time but it will become true because of economic issues, space, and environmental sustainability. The changing processes are not as fast as we will expect but without a doubt, it is gaining momentum in that world zone in which consumption is more than 50% of the GDP. There are many examples for the different communication generations such as (1): editors, designers, journalists, publishers, filmmakers, and television directors who have lived, suffered and adapted to the violent changes in their technologies.

The front of the Kindle 1 (Left) and Kindle 2 (Right)

It is easier to see the change when viewed prospectively, and thus, systemic. Going from the photo composition and photo mechanics to the electronic adds without the use of goops, markers, stylus, cover paper, cardboard, lettering which disappeared along with many other products and operators only two decades ago; or the black and white tubes television to the OLEDscreens which undergo constant and frequent wave of changes in the systems and capturing equipments, archiving, editing, signaling and reception; or an increasing similar process, maybe exponential, in which the printing on paper has lived even though there are still many small printing shops in many places printed in linotype. Why talk about the personal computer and its information management capabilities or the telephone?

The changing processes are not as fast as we will expect but without a doubt, it is gaining momentum in that world zone in which consumption is more than 50% of the GDP.

Perhaps the difference with the book, as we know it, is that it looks more visible and with more weight. Independently from the production process, the book is not a product of the modern era but it goes back almost to the origins of humanity. If we look the brief outline done by Professor Fernando Lillo with Isidoro, Etymology VI, the book itself has also changed since the papyrus: cart arum primum Aegyptus ministravit…, the pergamin: pergameni reges cum indigernt, membrana primi excogitaverunt …, wax tablets: cerae codex multorum librorum est; perhaps we can add other intervals. Thus, I dare to point out the massive book of the modern era with its processes and implicit reasons and on this point, the definition offered by Wikipedia on Codex is of great interest: it is denominated codex (from Latin wood block, book) a document formatted similarly as the modern books with separate pages, joined together through stitching and bound as a notebook. However, technically any modern book is a codex; this term is utilized only for handwritten books, manufactured during the period from the end of the Classic antiquity until the beginning of the middle Ages. In other words, the book as it is survives and changes its substrate: the electronic book comes because of the modern world.

In other words, the book as it is survives and changes its substrate: the electronic book comes because of the modern world.

The issue here is that it almost contains genetic grassroots of the Codex and the modern book with the human history behind are strong and longstanding, and thus, we will find more emotional resistance and interest groups that any use of a logic and evaluations for the possible change. Nonetheless, we can expect that this transition process might end quickly if the massive electronic book will come sooner through alternative channels and let the structural economies, socio-economic actions, and adequate politics to bring the best literature to the entire public.

“This is the year of the electronic book in Spain. At the end of this year, this type of products will be one of the most sought in the stores as a Christmas gift or the Three Kings. The manufacturers and distributors know it and they will have various brands ready for the holidays. The Corte Ingles, one of the mega stores, started distributing its own model, the Inves-Book 600.” Extracted from Xataka.com

According to data from the Worldwide Media Association, it is worth to highlight that the true change of the book folio and substrate runs parallel to the printed media, a 190 US billion dollars industry and over two million workers. These figures have the specific weight to decelerate the inclusion of the digital media; and this, without doubt, is part of a game system. Nonetheless, the book publishing industry is getting weaker with a longer and fragile value chain in the market even when it shows an advantage of being lighter to move around the change curves and adaptation.

According to data from the Worldwide Media Association, it is worth to note that the true change of the book folio and substrate runs parallel to the printed media, a 190 US billion dollars industry and over two million workers.

The information gathered shows that the electronic book increases its positioning and market share every day and it is more palatable to potential new competitors entering the media industry to participate in a market in which until now there have been only two strong competitors: Amazon and Sony.

In this competition game and cultural inclusion, the current Sony’s counter attack with new versions for Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition with prices ranging $200 – $300, and a cost of 17% less for the best titles makes them strongly competitive to face even the most successful leader: Amazon Kindle. To date August 2009, I can expect within the short term, the hegemony that Amazon has in the e-book market will be turbulent, increase actors’ activity and the development of distribution channels for electronic books.

This hypothesis can be tested with many setbacks globally only with the passage of time and it will show a rapid growing role only within the innovation segments and early acceptors of the society. It will be extremely slow in sectors with a mix of major aging groups and economically underprivileged. The new information elites will mark the future inequality gap unless the emergent economies prospectively foster the effective and transparent digital inclusion to the public.

But whatever is the case study, it can be positively estimated that the digital inclusion curve and the one for the electronic books, thus, will be a concave line that is proper for all the life cycles and it will be comparatively slow regarding the rapid technological obsolescence which is causing a hole or gap of increasing inequality. This trial is easy to do because they already know the internet usage data in different countries and with different degrees of development. However, if we see Europe, after 20 years of Internet and 20 years of computer launching, the curve actually does not cover the 33% and 25% of the population respectively. According to a study of the European Union (UE) gathered by the BBC, one of three European has never used the Internet and one of four has never touched a PC. The report, which analyzes the digital landscape for the last five years, also notes that more than half of the European citizens (56%) have become daily users of the network (2004 they were only a third). Furthermore, 70% of the youth, under 24 years of age access it daily, and of them, one of every three would not pay for anything on the Net. Accordingly, this is the age group more reluctant to pay for downloading or use online content such as music or video. Viviane Reding, Commissioner for the Information Society has indicated to the BBC “these youngsters use the Internet intensely and are very demanding consumers,” and continues saying that: “to unleash the economic potential of these digital natives, we get the access to the content to be a comfortable and fair game.” By contrast, the less active on the Net are above 65 years and the unemployed, the study said.

(…) it can be positively estimated that the digital inclusion curve and the one for the electronic books, thus, will be a concave line that is proper for all the life cycles and it will be comparatively slow regarding the rapid technological obsolescence that is causing a hole or gap of increasing inequality.

Many doomsayers reject the penetration of the electronic books but they add and continue with the sales. Our perspective is that they will continue a seemingly pattern similar to all the communication innovation processes from the time of the papyrus until today; the first one slower and the last one faster but the behavior is that they will first settle in those sectors already innovated and will delay its popularization in terms of costs, public policies and titles purchasing power; but without doubt it will be another element of depth, differentiation and gap expansion in education, information, learning and entertainment among the different zones of the globe and in each point among the different socio-economic groups of a territory.

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Volunteer translation by Maria Tenorio

Maria Tenorio has a bachelor degree in Business Management and an MBA in Banking and Finance. She specializes in bi-directional English-Spanish translations. Particularly, the translation of commercial publications, legal work and the similar with utmost accuracy and fidelity and have translated voluminous documents (legal and financial) from Spanish into English. She also translates legal documents for Immigration purposes for friends and help other immigrants within the community with language barriers at schools, hospitals and the like. If you want to contact her for work, please write to joboard@communicatheo.com

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Tradução oficial

Communicatheo.com is honored to provide our users with the essay, Prolegomenon, in three units, by professor and researcher of UNAM, Mexico, Doctor Gilberto Giménez. Prolegomenon: is by definition a discourse that precedes an essay and discerns the fundamental principles of a topic. In this case, culture. We recommend this reading to both undergraduate and postgraduate students from diverse areas of the social sciences, particularly to those who work and research within the framework of communicology. The reading also contains excellent bibliographic references that support the discourse. For our part, we did not make any revisions, corrections, or changes to the language of Professor Giménez; we only divided it into three parts to facilitate the reading and interest of our users. In the first unit, which we have called, Prolegomenon First Part, there are two chapters. One: Culture in the Literary-Philosophical Tradition and Common Social Discourse, and two: Culture in the Anthropological Tradition.

Excerpt:

PROLEGOMENON

I. CULTURE IN THE LITERARY-PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION AND COMMON SOCIAL DISCOURSE

Dr. Gilberto Giménez Montiel*

1. A persistent obstacle: the polyvalence of the term.

The scholar who sets out to explore the cultural territory of the social sciences immediately runs into a serious obstacle: the great variety of meanings that threatens to discourage any intentions of systematic comprehension and rigorous conceptualization right from the start.

There have been whole books written on this semantic polyvalence and definitional dispute, which have incessantly shaped the formation history of this concept, even after its incorporation into the lexicon of philosophy and the social sciences. (1)

An additional difficulty derives from the fact that, as much in the field of philosophy as in the social sciences, the concept of culture belongs to a family of totalizing concepts that are all closely interrelated through their common purpose, which is the comprehension of the symbolic processes of society, and for that reason they completely or partially cover: ideology, mentality, social representations, social imaginary, doxa, hegemony, etc. From here originates an obstacle to the delineation of boundaries and the standardization of meanings, which has also aroused interest.  (2)

An initial way to drastically reduce the amount of semantic uncertainty over the term that occupies us would be to retain only the concepts built by sociology and anthropology, systematically rejecting the wide range of meanings given by the literary-philosophical tradition and the common social discourse.

Even in the fields of sociology and anthropology, however, which supposedly work with concepts constructed in accordance with precise theoretical paradigms, culture has been and continues to be an object of assorted definitions, given the diversity of the theoretical and methodological interests in play. (3)

The current situation imposes a double task upon us: on the one hand, a new critical revision of the theoretical statute of culture in the primary currents or traditions of anthropology and sociology; and on the other hand, the proposal of a concept of culture that responds to the epistemological demands of semantic coherency and homogeneity, and at the same time is sufficiently linked to scientific practice in order to achieve a relative consensus among social scientists. This double task will be the specific subject of this introductory chapter.

(1)  See, among others, A.. L. Kroeber, Culture. A critical review of concepts and definitions, Vintage Books, Random House, New York, 1965; Philipe Beneton, Histoire de mots: culture et civilisation, Presses de la Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques, París, 1975; Various authors, Europäische Schlüsserwörter, t. III, Kultur und Zivilisation, Max Hueber, Munich, 1967; R. Williams, Culture and Society: 1780-1950, Columbia University Press, New York, 1958. You can find an up to date version of this conceptual revision in Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (eds.), Culture and Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990; and above all in William H. Sewell, Jr., “The Concept(s) of culture”, in Victoria E. Bonnel and Lynn Hunt (eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn, University of California Press, Berkeley – Los Angeles –London, 1999, pp. 35 -61

(2)  See Robert Fossaert, La societé, volume 6, Les structures idéologiques, Seuil, París, 1983, pp. 495-500; Eunice R. Durham, “Cultura e ideología”, in Dados, Revista de Ciencias Sociais, vol. 27, number 1, 1984; Michel Vovelle, Idéologies et mentalités, Maspero, París, 1982.; Jean Starobinski, Le mot Civilization, in Various authors, Le temps de la réflexion, Gallimard, París, 1983, pp. 13-51.

(3) Pietro Rossi, Il concetto di cultura, Einaudi Editore, Turín, 1970; Hans Peter Thurn, Soziologie der Kultur, Verlag W. Kohlhamer, Stuttgart, 1976.

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*Gilberto Giménez Montiel is a Doctor of Sociology from the Sorbonne University, Paris III, 1976, holds a degree in Social Sciences at the Institute of Scienze Sociali (Gregorian University, Rome, 1956), holds a BA in Philosophy, University of Comillas (Spain) , 1950; C Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Research from the UNAM. Gilberto stands as a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), also a member of the Mexican Association of Semiotics and the International Communication Association (ICA).

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If you want to read the entire document, click on the image. >>

Digital Paper Edition EDW -Prolegomenon, First Part (in Spanish).

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Communicatheo recommends to complement your reading:

What Is and What Isn’t Prospective Strategy?

Developing a New Outlook on the Future

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Volunteer translation by Ashley R. Gonzalez

Ashley R. Gonzalez currently attends the Ohio State University in the United States and will graduate with two majors in Spanish and World Literature next summer, 2010. She has academic experience in Mexico and the United States. Furthermore, because of her Mexican heritage, she has been exposed to the Spanish language from an early age. If you want to contact her for work, please write to joboard@communicatheo.com

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Tim O'Reilly

Originally published in the July-August 2008, V.42, No. 4, on The 21st-Century Writer section from The Futurist digital magazine. Shared with the permission of the World Future Society (www.wfs.org).

Permission by Jeff Cornish.

As the publisher of an extremely popular series of computer manuals, Tim O’Reilly has been dubbed the “guru of the participation age” by Steven Levy in a 2005  Wired  profile and a “graying hippie” with a “hostility toward traditional media” by author Andrew Keen. O’Reilly will forever be known as the guy who coined Web 2.0. At his recent Tools of Change Conference in New York, we asked O’Reilly about the future of the Book, of writing, of publishing, and the Internet.

The Futurist: What is future of publishing?

What the Internet has done is bring us new methods of curation.

O’Reilly: The future of publishing is a reinvention to discover what it has always been. A lot of people think of publishing as printing books on paper, paper between covers, those objects in bookstores.  I always thought that publishing was about, first of all, understanding what matters, figuring out how to gather information and then gathering readers who that information matters to. There’s a kind of curation process. What the Internet has done is bring us new methods of curation. A lot of publishers are fighting those models. Instead of saying, ‘This is new stuff that helps us do what we do better. That’s why I love Adrian Holovaty, maker of a python toolkit called Django*. Because he talks about computer programming as journalism. How can you augment what journalists do with computer programming? How can you augment what publishers do with these new tools? That’s really one of the key things we’re trying to get at in this conference. It’s not about putting words on paper, it’s about reading the slush pile. Look at Digg, they basically found out how to harness the community to do that.  Google learned how to harness the community to do that. That’s what page rank is. They figured out how to automate things that publishers used to do manually. You used to hire a bunch of college students to read all of these unsolicited manuscripts, find the one that was the great one that you would bring to the world. Well now, we have these new, better ways to find these things. How do you gather a community around it? How do you tell a story? If you look at O’Reilly, we realized that we’re in the meme business. We’re in the community business. And that’s why we don’t just publish.  We organize conferences, we do early-stage venture investing, we do online publishing, we publish magazines, we have events with thousands of people. Our biggest event is Maker Fair with 45,000 people. We identified a community and an emerging trend and gave it a name. Everyone was like, ‘look at what’s really happening, we want to be part of that.’ That’s a publishing process, even though the product is a reinvention of the county fair.  It’s just as much a publishing product for us, coming from our core-competency as publishers, as the book or the magazine.

The Futurist: In many ways you’ve reinvented publishing for the twenty-first century…

O’Reilly: We’re not done yet. There’s a lot to learn.

The Futurist: Do you think these older players can continue to be relevant in this technology driven, participatory environment? In many ways, editors are the last gatekeepers, and much of what you’re about is getting over the gatekeeper…

O’Reilly: I’m not sure of that. I mean, a really great example is a session here from a company called Logos Bible Software. Who would think of these guys as doing really cool stuff? They basically publish electronic editions of really obscure religious texts. Or scholarly texts that are used by people in religion. Would you like your Liddel and Scott Greek Lexicon online?** Guess how they do it? They basically have community pricing software where they have people vote on whether or not they would have people buy the book. They buy it in advance.  They basically expose, in Web 2.0 fashion, ‘this is the price curve we’ve got. We’ve got people willing to pay this much, we have this many people, they show how many people are willing to pay at this price point.’ And they show the line they have to get over to publish the book, sometimes they don’t get there. Usually the community feedback tells them what’s the best price for the book, and that aggregates the demand, and they eventually get enough to put it off. They’re actually harnessing community to set prices and to tell them which products to publish. That’s cutting edge. It’s in an area of publishing that’s traditionally been incredibly obscure. I think there’s a lot of innovation in publishing. Yeah, some of the giants are going to be slow to catch up, but they’ve come a long way.

Usually the community feedback tells them what’s the best price for the book, and that aggregates the demand(…)They’re actually harnessing community  (…)

When we first started trying to talk to publishers about trying to go digital in the late eighties, first started really pushing the idea of digital publishing, I was actually first working with SGML, which eventually lead to XML, which lead to our involvement and eventually to the commercialization of the Internet, They weren’t even thinking about trying to keep any electronic copies at all.  You look at these announcement today, they seem too little, too late, where Harper Collins has this digital repository, and Random House has its digital repository, but it’s allowing them to start innovating, and start engaging and to start and be part of the technology process. I’m very hopeful.  I think the amount of energy and innovation at this conference is as great as at any other O’Reilly conference. That’s the beauty of conference, because you start to tell a story, you bring people together, it’s sort of the ultimate in helping to uncover what’s good that’s happening in a community. I think there’s a lot of exciting stuff here.

(…) When we first started trying to talk to publishers about trying to go digital in the late eighties, first started really pushing the idea of digital publishing (…) they weren’t even thinking about trying to keep any electronic copies at all. (…) You look at these announcement today, they seem too little, too late (…)

The Futurist: You must feel very vindicated that these things you were advocating in the eighties, that mainstream publishers weren’t able to wrap their heads around at the time, now this place is crawling with publishers, and they’re seeing the future you laid out 20 years ago.

O’Reilly: I, along with a lot of other people. And of course, the future always takes unexpected twists and turns and so it never comes out the way we expect. I certainly don’t think of myself as a futurist, or someone who predicts futures. I see myself as someone who calls plays at a game. I see the play unfolding and I call it. When I said, hey, there’s this possibility for the commercialization of the Internet, back in 1992, I was calling the game. Sometime you have a small role in helping that happen. I actually got dispensation from the National Science Foundation to put the first commercial site on the World Wide Web and that unleashed the avalanche. [note: this is an actual quote but the claim seems dubious] Our bestselling authors were creating software that no one was writing about in the computer industry. We create this thing we call the open source summit. Because we came up with a new name, we were helping to create the future, but that was really just calling the play as it was unfolding.  Same with Web 2.0, you see pattern, you give it a name. People say, ‘oh, that’s us.’ Right now, we’re seeing this, what we call in Make magazine, we’re calling it open source hardware.

I see myself as someone who calls plays at a game. I see the play unfolding and I call it. When I said, hey, there’s this possibility for the commercialization of the Internet, back in 1992, I was calling the game.

These are things that start with hackers, eventually we start to see a story and try to tell it in a way that’s bigger than us, bigger than our products, that allows people to come together around the possibilities of the future. You know, the future isn’t something that just happens by itself. We make it collectively in our choices, desires, passions. They come together. Sometimes, it takes effort, you can cause some new idea to crystallize out of a solution and people rally around that idea.

The Futurist: You seem to sit on both sides of the aisle on that. I know you have a degree from Harvard and you won a NEA grant to translate Greek fables. But at the same time, you’re at the forefront of a technology that some people say is driving us toward a post-literate age.

O’Reilly: I don’t see this at all as a post-literate age. The people I know who are involved in technology are often profoundly literate.  Most read a lot of books.  Even if they don’t, they engage with ideas and content from the past. Anyone with a real appreciation of history knows about ideas, knows that the cannon of today has been forgotten for centuries at various times. I mean, Plato, we think of Plato as this shining light of Greek civilization. Well, he was lost pretty much for three or four hundred years and rediscovered in the first or second century A.D., and then he and Aristotle were brought into the fabric of the Catholic church and became part of what we today call the Classics, but it didn’t have to be that way, with many other classical authors. People go in and out of fashion. But creative re-use has a way of bringing things back. I could be wrong about this, but I would guess that Sappho is way more popular today than she was in the 18th century…

The Futurist: Helps to become an adjective…

I remember a conversation I had at our open source convention with Freeman Dyson, the physicist, he said something wonderful.  Someone asked him, ‘What do you think about the fact that we were losing something or other,. he said, ‘We have to forget. Otherwise, there would be no room for new things.’

O’Reilly: Right, she was rediscovered and became part of our culture again. That whole remixing of the past is fundamental to humans. We’ll always do it. We’ll go back and find things and reuse them and sometimes twist them. Look at the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, what a tragic novel this is, right? They totally bastardized it. Maybe they missed the point. Notre Dame de Paris is not about the hunchback so much as it is about the church, and the idea of sculpture as a way of communicating stories, because in the pre-literate era, they told the stories through these churches that were basically covered with stone stories. Victor Hugo was lamenting the loss of that stone literacy, where people would look up at the church and know what it was about, and yes, something was lost. But we gained a lot.

They only thing we have to bemoan are the people that tried to keep things the way they were and who tried to stop people from expressing themselves or sharing their joy.

I remember a conversation I had at our open source convention with Freeman Dyson, the physicist, he said something wonderful.  Someone asked him, ‘What do you think about the fact that we were losing something or other,. he said, ‘We have to forget. Otherwise, there would be no room for new things.’ That’s an important thing to take…be accepting of the losses and the gains. Celebrate the culture that we’re making, don’t hang on to the one we used to have. People are good. They’re creative. They will make a world that’s fascinating if we let them. They only thing we have to bemoan are the people that tried to keep things the way they were and who tried to stop people from expressing themselves or sharing their joy.

The Futurist: Do you think that that’s the model that traditional publishing is still stuck in, with the dripping out chapters one at a time, not allowing too much material on the Net too quickly, Do you still think they’re in this trepidation mode or do you think they’re moving beyond it now?

O’Reilly: I don’t think publishers are any more stuck in the past than any other business that has an existing business model that’s being threatened. Creative destruction is the nature of an economy and every incumbent, whether it’s IBM facing interpersonal computers or Microsoft facing the Web, or in some future years, Google facing whatever comes next.

Creative destruction is the nature of an economy and every incumbent (…)

The Futurist: What’s next?

O’Reilly: We really are moving beyond the era of the PC into the era of ambient computing, where we’re interacting with the global network through devices that are sprinkled throughout the world, smart objects, and I think the next big thing is really not to do with the Web at all. I think the next big thing has not to do with the Web at all. I think it’s beyond the Web.

I think the next big thing is really not to do (…) has not to do with the Web at all. I think it’s beyond the Web.

The Futurist: What do you think of New York?

O’Reilly: I love New York, I have a friend on the upper West side, who I’ve been visiting for 32 years. It’s sort of home away from home.

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Communicatheo recommends these videos:

Tim O’Reilly on What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 Expo NY: Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.), Enterprise Radar

A portrait of Tim O’Reilly

Idioma Original

Tradução Oficial

Photographic composition: Vortex Into The Future. **

In our research blog we want to discuss, study in depth, and provoke a prospective vision of the future without closing the door on the creative and methodological diversity existing in this world. At this point we want to thank the contribution of Doctor and advisor Jordi Serra del Pino, director of Periscopi de prospectiva i estratàgia and Fellow and Executive Board Member of the Ibero-American chapter of the World Futures Studies Federation. We include an excerpt of the initial pages of his article: What Is and What Isn’t Prospective Strategy?, which we consider of considerable interest to social communication. If you want to read more than the excerpt, click on the link to the bibliography of selected works where the documents that are not available to download directly can be retrieved through Communicatheo in form EDWzeen, with the authorization of every author. Print only what is strictly necessary and keep the sources.

Excerpt from:

¿What Is and What Isn’t Prospective Strategy?

The process of decision-making in governments, businesses, and universities

Jordi Serra del Pino*

Prospicio: (latin), to look into the distance, contemplate.
Prospective studies: discipline that studies the future in order to understand it and be able to influence it.
Gaston Berger

Jordi Serra, Prospectivist

Jodi Serra, Prospectivists

To dedicate oneself to prospective means taking on an additional difficulty to that of other professions or academic disciplines: no one knows what it is about, but the whole world imagines that it is something very different from what it actually is.

I witnessed this axiom with my own eyes the day I decided to put on my mailbox:
Jordi Serra del Pino
Prospectivist

That was the moment in which I ceased to be that “nice young man” and became someone rather suspicious. At first it was not too obvious, but I started to note that some conversations abruptly stopped when I arrived, I heard whispers behind my back and even a few chuckles. Finally, one day a neighbor decided to pluck up the courage and confront me directly:

-Hey, all this about prospective… what is it?

Because I did not know the extent of her interest, I gave her an abbreviated definition and decided that depending on her reaction, I would either expand on the subject or leave it at that. But what I was not prepared for was the expression of disappointment that began to extend across my neighbor’s face. I was assessing whether or not I should really begin a more detailed explanation to demonstrate the merits of prospective when she replied:

-Ah, so you don’t read tarot cards?

I was greatly taken aback. I had just discovered that there was something worse than someone thinking your job was not serious enough, and it was that your job was not exotic enough!

It seemed appropriate to start with this anecdote because I believe that it is tremendously illustrative of the incomprehensibility that surrounds prospective. This is not merely because the average human ignores what it is, but because a lot of people imagine it as something completely different.

For this reason, I always emphasize the importance of knowing just as much what it is as what it is not

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*Jordi Serra del Pino is one of the Spanish prospectivists of a more extensive tradition. He was born in Barcelona in 1965; he obtained his Law degree through the University of Barcelona in 1989 and a master’s degree in Political Science through the University of Hawaii (Alternative Future Options) in 1993. Jordi Serra has been able to collaborate with some of the most esteemed experts in prospective, including: Eleonora Masini, James A. Dator, Magda Mchale, Robert Jungk, Igor Bestuzhev-Lada, Josep Pereña, and Hidetoshi Kato.

**From http://www.flickr.com/photos/saufnase/524540326/ -accessed July 31, 2009

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If you want to read the entire document click on the image. >>

EDW: digital paper edition; editorial support by Communicatheo - ¿What Is and What Isn’t Prospective Strategy?

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Volunteer translation by Ashley R. Gonzalez

Ashley R. Gonzalez currently attends the Ohio State University in the United States and will graduate with two majors in Spanish and World Literature next summer, 2010. She has academic experience in Mexico and the United States. Furthermore, because of her Mexican heritage, she has been exposed to the Spanish language from an early age. If you want to contact her for work, please write to joboard@communicatheo.com

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Tradução Oficial

Idioma original

In our research blog for communications we want to discuss, study in depth, and provoke a prospective vision of the future without closing the door on the creative and methodological diversity existing in this world. At this point we want to thank the contribution of Doctor Guillermina Baena Paz, of UNAM and WFSF. We include an excerpt of the Prospective document: Developing a New Outlook on the Future, which we consider of considerable interest to social communication. If you want to read more than the excerpt, click on the link to the bibliography of selected works of Communicatheo, which are included with the authorization of every author. Print only what is strictly necessary and keep the sources. We include one of Dr. Baena’s expressions: “Jouvenel.” In her bid to Prospective she said it was defined as freedom and power. The freedom to decide the future and the power to build it.

Excerpt from:

Prospective: Developing a New Outlook on the Future

Dr. Guillermina Baena Paz*

Dr. Guillermina Baena Paz*

In a society like the one we live in, characterized by being dynamic, multicasual, systemic, complex, and chaordic (from chaos to order or vice versa), we require new tools to better understand, process, plan, apply, and evaluate labor proceedings. The major challenge for the future is to prepare oneself to solve problems, before these even become problems. Before, technology was driven by society; now technology has engaged society in an expensive sport where it must sprint ahead on an unknown path and without enough light to see what lies ahead. This complexity threatens all fields of life and knowledge. It becomes more difficult to solve the situations that present themselves, and the multidisciplinary optics increasingly fails to explain reality.

What is reality?

We are projecting too quickly the film of our existence. Time is no longer enough and life is established more in the virtual world than the physical one, in particular when life in the physical world is horrible, degrading, difficult to confront, there is poverty, there are problems with health, employment, food, housing, and services such as water. There are those who prefer virtual reality, where one can create an avatar, where one can live in second life, my Space, or Hi5, the life that one has always wanted. Where reality today more than ever becomes perception, images, everyone has their own reality, whoever wants to see it, so much so that there are multiple realities: that of the residents of a town, of the government, of the judge, of the local authorities. One has to choose, then is reality not real?, if reality is perception, therefore it is not reality. That is how complex our world is now. —–

*Doctorate in Latin-American Studies, General Secretary of the Ibero-American chapter of the  World Futures Studies Federation. She coordinates the Seminar of Prospective Studies at UNAM, México.

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Prospective: Developing a New Outlook on the Future (Spanish). With the Communicatheo editorial support.

Communicatheo recomienda:

What Is and What Isn’t Prospective Strategy?

Probable or possible

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Volunteer translation by Ashley R. Gonzalez

Ashley R. Gonzalez currently attends the Ohio State University in the United States and will graduate with two majors in Spanish and World Literature next summer, 2010. She has academic experience in Mexico and the United States. Furthermore, because of her Mexican heritage, she has been exposed to the Spanish language from an early age. If you want to contact her for work, please write to joboard@communicatheo.com

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Idioma Original

We seek that Communicatheo can be seen as a continuous will to contribute to the field of communications, especially in communicology. Perhaps, from our point of view, this is the most ancient and concrete social science, and this point of discussion must be opened. Since it is an intention too wide, by now, we only want to study communicology in the area of what is strategic. We hope that this website will become gradually a meeting and exchanging site of professors, researchers and selective actors of this discipline that participate in the global market and in politics, with different points of view and quite dispersion. We only want that, little by little, the contribution of different visions and information can be incorporated and consequently, they extend in profundity and variety the knowledge of the topic and it applications.

Mt Konocti from the air, by Erin Montague

Obviously, we meet everyday different corporative executives and other people that work in the field of communication. We can hear and observe with some kind of astonishment their daily labour life and their structural limitations. This is the background that made us create this column with a general vision on the topic, rather than begin with a debatable definition of communications, which we leave pending.

How to give a starting point? Perhaps, firstly, we must be situated in the main idea of communicology and its perspective in relation to other social sciences which are mixed up in daily life. Oin my opinion, a good starting point could be the Beginning that the anthropologist and philosopher Néstor García Canclini writes in his book Culturas Híbridas¹, answering his own question: how can we talk about the modern city, that sometimes it’s no longer modern neither a city? To talk about the topic, on his opinion, in the book, “social sciences contribute with their different levels of observation. The anthropologist arrives at the city on foot, the sociologist by car and using the central highway, the communicologist by plane. Each one builds a different vision, which it’s not acquired entering the city but going out of it…” and he adds the concept which establishes that between the messages that must be handled in the modern world in order to tag it as a cultured one and to tag the universe as popular, a third system of massive messages is born. This system is assisted by new specialists: communicologists and semiologists.

“The anthropologist arrives at the city on foot, the sociologist by car and using the central highway, the communicologist by plane.”

The proposal of professor García-Canclini gives ubiquity to communicology in contemporary social sciences. It also makes easier to define his perspective and his areas of application. However, we disagree with the idea that our field has born from the cultural industries that sprouted strongly during the twenty century.

Recommended reading:

1. Culturas híbridas. Editorial Paidos, para Argentina y Uruguay. Néstor García Canclini.
2. Prolegomenon, 1st. part
3. Interview with Tim O’Reilly
   

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Volunteer translation by Montse Parera Yepes

Montse Parera Yepes studied Translation and Interpretation at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona. She has experience as a translator in Barcelona as well as editorial proofreading. If you want to contact her for work, please write to joboard@communicatheo.com

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