FreedomLab’s Penny-For-Your-Thoughts program is asking opinion leaders around the world to share some unfinished thoughts with us. In this first installment Pakistani-born political scientist and futurist Sohail Inayatullah shares some possible futures for a world that is being transformed by the global financial crisis: “As you engage in mapping the future, your own subjectivity, your own inner stories keep on changing the map. If you can understand what is the core inner story, then you can link that to an objective alternative future. That’s why I think this transformation is a sign of the end of the industrial era. And each of us needs to help in creating the transition.” Watch Sohail’s PFYT and share your thoughts on it…

Spain and Morocco recently re-started a project to build a tunnel from EU to Northern-Africa. The first train should travel from 2025. This reminded me of the Atlantropa project which could easily have been the biggest project of our time. Conceived by the German Herman Sörgel in the 1920’s, the project was to build a gigantic hydroelectric dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, cutting off the water supply from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and lowering water level by some 200 meters. It would fuel Europe with a massive power supply and connect Europe and Africa with several landlines. Also Africa was to be rearranged by flooding whole countries (Congo), creating fruitful soil in the area. This newly emerged self-sustaining continent, which Sörgel named “Atlantropa“, was to be the counterweight to America and Asia. Sörgel worked out in detail his plans from 1927 until his death 25 years later.

Currently, I’m reading Alvin Toffler’s book called Future Shock (1970). It’s a book about change and how people deal with change. Toffler: “In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizen’s of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.” The book urges the adults of that time to think about technological progress in order to prevent the next generation for ‘future shock’. I am a member of that generation as I grew up in the seventies. Which begs the question: have I been future shocked or am I still in future shock? How about you: did the future arrive too soon for you?

A short summary from a recent interview with Neuro-Scientist Susan Greenfield:

At the present time this self, the ‘Someone’ scenario, is being challenged by two very different forces. On the one hand, an increasingly pervasive information technology coupled with an ever more invasive biotechnology, is leading to a culture of passivity and hedonism that obliterates the individual altogether: the ‘Nobody’ scenario. On the other hand, as never before, fundamentalism is suppressing the uniqueness of the individual, and imposing a collective narrative: the ‘Anyone’ scenario. If the only two possibilities are indeed loss of private identity to technology, or its suppression to a collective public an obvious and urgent question, is: what other alternative might there be for the human race?

James Pinkerton, a political analyst who has worked on the staff off Reagan and Bush senior, argues that if China will go into war, it will not fight in a way we are familiar with. He compares Chinese warfare to the game of weiqi — known in the West by its Japanese name, go — which was invented 5000 years ago. In the West we play chess. Chess is a game which is about two sides running towards each other in a last man standing battle in which the four center squares are vital to win. Go is completely different, it is a game in which players one by one position their gamepieces on a big field in a multi-front war. It is only at the end of the game that it gets clear who has conquered the most of the field. Go requires the utmost in patience and a sense of long-term positioning. Pinkerton argues this outlook spills over into China’s geopolitics. So how is China going to beat the US using their Go skills?

Yesterday, our newly installed government wrapped up a 100 day ‘talk-to-the-real-people-tour’. Is this the beginning of something new or just a slick PR-stunt? I don’t know, but it reminded me of the following: Ever secretly listened in on conversations between to CEO’s during one of many overhyped conferences? “I don’t understand… my employees never have bottom-up ideas”. Duh… it is upto the ‘top’ to facilitate the engagement with bottom-up ideas and movements. So, to counter the hype for everything that is bottom-up, I want to share some interesting remarks by Nicholas Carr, writer of the provocative book “IT Doesn’t Matter” , he ads some interesting thoughts to Christensen’s ‘Disruptive technologies’ theory. He describes: “Top-Down Disruption”. Apparently companies are not just Self-organising mechanisms, but do need some guidance from the top, it is time to take responsibilities and be a leader… whether  CEO or market-leader. Being big, smart & slow is no longer an excuse.