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Welcome to Sentient World Simulation. Similar to the popular strategy games like Sims City and Roller Coaster Tycoon, the US Department of Defense is currently constructing a truly global simulation. In this virtual world, the simulation is creating a copy everybody in an alternate simulated reality to see how long we can go without food or water, or how we will respond to disruptive events (weather, crime, cultural, etc.). Yes, this massive project is a parallel to planet earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child.
Sentient World Simulation also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, even down to street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and crowds will respond to various stressors (both good and bad). The hope is to see how the whole gestalt operates – which means the behavior of the whole as unpredicted by the individual behavior of the parts which make up the system. Kind of technical – but very, very interesting
The age of ubiquitous computing is here: a computing without computers, where information processing has diffused into everyday life, and virtually disappeared from view. What does this mean to those of us who will be encountering it? How will it transform our lives? And how will we learn to make wise decisions about something so hard to see?
Join noted writer and critical futurist Adam Greenfield as he explores this new technology and its implications for society, for business, for the way we design spaces and cities - even for the way we relate to each other.
Strategic Trends: Introduction
Strategic Trends is an independent view of the future produced by the Development,
Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), a Directorate General within the UK’s Ministry of
Defence (MOD). It is a source document for the development of UK Defence Policy.
This edition of Strategic Trends is benchmarked at December 2006. It is a live
document and will be updated regularly on our website as new thinking emerges and
trends develop.
Articles will be added to the website periodically to cover specific topics in greater detail.
Although extensive efforts have been made to verify facts contained in Strategic Trends,
readers are cheerfully invited to inform the DCDC of any inconsistencies or inaccuracies.
Conditions of Release
The findings contained in this edition of Strategic Trends do not represent an official
position of Her Majesty’s Government or the UK MOD. The information is, however,
Crown Copyright.
Departmental Direction
Strategic Trends is part of the UK MOD Strategic Context Process, from which the
Department derives guidance about strategic challenges and opportunities, which is used
to shape the UK’s future Defence requirements. MOD direction on the DCDC Strategic
Trends programme stresses the requirement for a comprehensive, independent
approach:
DCDC’s Strategic Trends Programme should aim to provide a detailed analysis of the
future strategic context for Defence out to 30 years. This will be an essential input into
policy development and major outputs include:
• A historically and theme-based analysis of the future strategic context;
• Analysis of the key risks and shocks, including an assessment of their
probability, frequency and magnitude;
• Identification of the generic Defence and Security implications of this analysis.
Building on previous editions of Strategic Trends, the analysis should adopt a
comprehensive approach to the key drivers and deduce the salient themes out to 30
years. The analysis should also present a ‘stock-take’ of those developments likely to be important at the 15 year point.
In compiling the analysis, the Strategic Trends programme should make use of a broad
and diverse evidence base. Much of the value of the Strategic Trends programme
derives from its independence from MOD decision-making and the aim should be to
draw together thought and opinion from as wide a constituency as possible.
thjere are quite a few things that even people can't find out