Business Network Theme Week:The Future is Not What it Used to Be

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The event will be held September 14-17 at the Santa Fe Institute.

The week will start with veteran futurists reviewing the controversial track record of past attempts to predict the future, from the surprisingly accurate to the spectacularly wrong, and discuss lessons learned about how we might be able to do better than previous generations. A fundamental question is what is predictable and what is not, and how to distinguish the one from the other. SFI researchers will explore whether there might be a rigorous, principled way to develop a data-driven, predictive science of the future. The week will conclude with discussions about the fundamental limits we have to face and how we might be able to get a handle on the uncertainties.

Organized by Béla Nagy, SFI Postdoctoral Fellow and J. Doyne Farmer, SFI Professor.

• In addition to the Theme Week, on September 18 SFI will host a Strategy Game activity (attendance is optional) facilitated by Luciano Oviedo, Systems Analyst from BNet member Intel Corporation. The goal is to evaluate and develop optimal collaboration strategies between the BNet membership and SFI.

• Concurrent with the Theme Week, in honor of Murray Gell-Mann's birthday, SFI will host a reception and the Stanislaw Ulam lectures on September 15, 16 and 17 with speakers Chris Llewellyn Smith, Mark Pagel, and Daniel Schrag (invited).