Today in class we were given post cards from the future, and we were told to read these post cards and try to interpret what the setting was like at that given point in time in hawaii. There were four differnet scenarios, which were all possible outcomes of the quality of life and standard of living in hawaii. The post card interpretations were ordered from least amount of change legislation, to most amount of legislation required to maintain the sustainibility of the islands. The moral of the story is that we need to discuss these emerging issues so that we can come together on a general consensous and prepare for the future and shape the future of tomorrow today.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
Minute Paper 2/7
I found the group assignment today eye opening. I think part of the reason for the activity was to show how important tourism is to Hawaii. Without toursim, I do not think Hawaii would survive. That being said, I do not think the future of Hawaii as an independent nation is likely because it would be too hard to get rid of tourism and ration the amount of visitors we allow. As for the complete opposite of this future, Mauihattan, is possible because we are continuing to grow and build our community to fit the population and help the tourism expand for our economy. My conclusion is the future is scary and unpredictable.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
POST CARD BLOG
First id like to touch base on the emerging issues we discussed in class. Two that really stuck out to me were the Robot Servents and the Educational Bill. Also, I would like to mention that the post card exercise had some sort of reality to them. Out of each post card only one can hold the true future of Hawaii and if no changes are made then I feel as if the post card where Hawaii was polluted and tourism controlled than thats our future as an island. Another major concern is Global Warming which as time passes it only gets worse. As of rite now our grandchildren will suffer from Global Warming and the high raise of water levels, that in itself is scary to imagine. I would hope that some sort of action would be done about this issue because it is so close near to our future.
02.07.08
I thought the exercise that we did today involving the postcards was an
excellent way to illustrate the concept of Future'S'. All of the
different scenarios are real possibilties for the Hawaiian Islands, and
it was interesting to hear everyone's different takes on the issues at
hand. While i found most of the futures quite disturbing and
unsettling, i must say that my favorite was the one where Hawai'i
regained its sovereignty, although it did seem a little radical. I
would like to also say that aside from feeling a little scared by the
realness of the scenarios, i left the class feeling quite empowered. As
fundamental as today's exercise was, it gave me quite a bit of insight
into what kind of place I would like the future to be. While i've
always had some vague idea, today i gained a more concrete
understanding of where my vision falls into the four categories, and my
personal vision for the future is now clearer. I'm looking forward to
the next class, and i'll see you all on tuesday :o)
Minute Paper 2/7
The futures exercise was an eye opening experience today. My group had the hurricane scenario and i was thinking that that could actually happen since there have been some major hurricanes in the world in the recent years and that Hawaii hasn't had a hurricane in awhile. I also felt a little weird when the first group presented their scenario about "Mauihattan" since i am from Maui and i don't want anything like major hotels and casinos to be there.
Andrew's Minute Paper 2/7
I think perhaps the thing that stood out to me most today in class was how vast the differences of opinions among the people were. For example, when the topic of mandated disease testing came up as an emerging issue, the class became quickly divided by their views pro or con. It seems that such situations as this demonstrate one of the points that several of the readings for class have made, even if people seem to agree on what the issue is, so vastly different are the ideas of how it is to be approached that it simply can't be mandated by one group with one point of view.
I also wanted to say that I rather liked the postcard activity, because I found the reading that brought up the 'four futures' idea was a little vague on defining what precisely certain of the categories were.
Re: 1 Minute paper 2/7/2008
The image i got from today's class was an image of change, future change that escalated from advanced retroactive tourism to guerilla warfare. Pro. Candy seemed to order the groups as they would chronologically happen. Some where actually concieveable, but other to me were totally off the wall. The card that I thought had the most realism to it was the one that had the underwater casino. Because our earth is in a Global warming sphere that will indefinitely cause waters to rise, and polar ice caps to melt. Only if our generation pulls together and starts to question this endless tornado of non- pro- environmental actions will it see that we can suceed. let me know if that is enoungh PRofessor Candy
its just that simple?
after todays class, i was thinking about the four futures discussed. of course hawaii was used as the example because that is where we are living now, but i began to think about a lot of places in the rest of the world and how one or all of those models fit with how i see things now. we looked at the possible futures in terms of tourism, but what about in terms of local community... people will be living differently from the way they do now by a lot. i guess that is an obvious statement... the four options were such a simple way of looking at it. when "futures" was first presented, i felt super overwhelmed with the limitless possibilities. the possibilities are still endless but its nice to have a few frames to see options through. i am excited to be living in this time when everything changes so quickly. we will get to see so much in our lifetimes. as for societies skyrocketing, collapsing, becoming exclusive and different, or transforming into something way out of left field... we get to watch it happen probably to our own society. yikes.
Minute Paper 2/7
In today’s class we continued introducing our different emerging issues. I found everyone’s examples to be quite interesting, but the one issue that really caught my attention was about homeless children being admitted to public schools without any type of medical records. I found this to be particularly intriguing because it brings up the question of which is more important, the safety of the group or the protection of the individual. Personally I think public schools should be catering to the safety of tax paying citizens children and teachers before the feelings of those that education is being extended to in charity, but that’s only my opinion, and especially in this particularly case, I can see how others would have very contrasting views. Along with the emerging issue presentations we also look at four potential futures for the Hawaiian Islands which each represented one of Jim Dator’s four generic alternative futures. So far we have looked at three of these alternative futures using examples like the story of Easter Island to look at collapse, population increase to look at growth, and technological changes to look at transformation, but as far as I can tell we have not looked at an actual example of control which I personally think could be quite interesting.
Mark Alexander
Minute Paper 2/7/08
The activity that we had participated in today came across some interesting ideas about the future. The four scenerios of a future Hawaii seemed a bit extreme, yet very possible if some big changes were to happen to our state. To be honest, I didn't like any of the four futures that we had discussed. All of them seemed either very depressing or just not the paradise we live in today. Even the postcard about Mauihattan just didn't fit the fun in paradise feel, the idea about the underwater casino didn't fit the relaxing Hawaii atmosphere either. The other extreme scenerio about Hawaii being severely devastated by a hurricane also seemed like it was impossible to imagine. The idea that our own government would pull away and not give us any aide seemed very absurd, but then again that extreme scenerio also could be part of the Hawaiian nation gaining their own control which would explain the US government's decision on withdrawing help. This activity actually made me not want to think about the future of Hawaii as the future will probably hold drastic changes and won't be like the paradise we live in today.
Minute Paper (2/7/08)
The four alternative futures were the reality and assumption of how Hawaii would be like in the future. From this point of view, I guess it's giving us the option to look at the world differently and be more watchful of what the future might bring for us. All the issues that the world faces now, for example, global warming, health condition, economic and even fighting for freedom are the foundation of how the future will look like. We should be more caution and prepare for the future by setting stricter guidelines to standard habits of promoting a better and healthy community. In this way people would be more concern about the issues and they would eliminate a bad habit that causes the issues mentioned above and enforce new habits that benefit the community as a whole. My group's postcard is Blue Hawaii; it is a typical day in Hawaii. It seems to me that there is nothing unique in Hawaii anymore. Not much changes at all. Business ventures will not flourish and less tourist attraction in this future. Overall, I had fun and every time we had discussion in class it's very nice to listen about it and try to make conclusion out of it.
posted by ruta...
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One Minute Paper 2/7
The postcards that we talked about today were really crazy. It was
weird to think of what could happen to places of paradise in the
future. I think that hawaii could very possibly turn out to be like
anyone of those postcards in the future. The postcard that my group got
was called Mauihattan. On the front of the postcard it had a picture of
a underwater hotel and casino. With the way technology is progressing,
i think that there is deffinetely a possibility for this to happen in
the future. If this does end up happening i think that it will kill off
all of the coral reefs and sealife that there is today
02/07/08
the activity today in class was pretty fun. the whole emerging trends for future talk continued on from last class and once again there was whole lot of new ideas, concept and technology. The group activity we did today was some what extraordinary. The whole idea of picking a random scenario and trying to find out what happend and all that was really interesting. O and I think there is too much stuff to read haha. lucky we didn't talk about the reading material today.
2/7
four futures. Four different ideas of what hawai'i could become. Many
were very unsettling, but all seemed to have a possibility of becoming
true. All of them are scary in their own way, and shows that if the
tourism industry in general continues as it is, terrible things could
happen to the place we call paradise. In one way or another it will not
be the same. From becoming completely destroyed by nature or man, we
need to get together and try to help hawai'i. Help in whatever way is
necessary to make all inhabitants happy and make hawai'i a place for
living as well as visiting. Allow people to share what we experience
everyday with out hawai'i having to suffer. thanks .
one minute paper 2/6
In todays class we talked about the different possiblities of how hawaii was going to be shown. There were four different postcards and for each postcard there was a group that went up and described their postcard to the class. My postcard was a virtual reality world, and i was not sure of what to make of it. It did not make much sense to me because i would not like to live in the a virtual world. In conclusion, my reaction to todays class was that it was cool to hear about different senairios about what hawaii would be like.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Minute Paper 2/5
I agree with the fact that there is a limit to growth, but what can we do about it? It is going to be really hard to control the population growth. Some people like having a lot of children and I do not think it is fair to tell them they need to stop. I also think it is good to just think about the future because it can't hurt. Sometimes though, it can be really scary thinking about how the future is going to be and the consequences are going to be because of our choices now.
Minute Paper 2/5
In class, we talked about the limits of growth and we also talked about the readings that we had to read prior to today's class. When we talked about the limits of growth and seeing that small video on how the world population looks, it made me feel like we're pretty much fucked. I thought this cause we only have a limited number of resources in this world and we will sooner or later use them all up. We're gonna have to start killing off people, or finding other ways to increase our resources, if its on this planet or another one. The reading about horses in the past, sounds like how we will be later on in the future.
minute p 02/05/08
today in class, we talked about 2 authoritative document called 'our common future' and i can't remember the name of the other one. The homework we brought to class was to predict what emerging trends will become the main stream stuff in the future. It was interesting to listen to other classmates' ideas and what they thought was new and revolutionary. When we were talking about the documents, we were talking about how we are still not prepared for what's coming to us in the future. in the video we watched today, the story of Easter Island was so amazing. and how that professor compared the fallen Easter Island society with our world now. I thought it was such a good comparison in a way how they had such a advanced polynesian technology and culture and all of sudden they are wiped out. not because of outter invasion but collapsed slowly within.
I thought it should be a warning for all of us.
minute paper 2/5/08
The Chinese government introduced the policy in 1979 to alleviate the overpopulation, social and environmental problems of China. The policy is controversial both within and outside China because of the human rights issues it raises; because of the manner in which the policy has been implemented; and because of concerns about negative economic and social consequences.
The one-child policy promotes couples having one child in rural and urban areas. The limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, but the actual implementation varies from location to location. In most rural areas, families are allowed to have two children if the first child is female or disabled. Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children will result in large fines: families violating the policy are required to pay monetary penalties and might be denied bonuses at their workplace. Children born in overseas countries are not counted under the policy if they do not obtain Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad can have a second child.
These two above captions were found on wikipedia
China's so-called "one-child" policy was officially adopted as law.
The new law is known as the Law on Population and Family Planning, 2002. The previous policy gained its name from the one-child per couple norm that China’s government has encouraged since 1979, although both the old policy and the new law contain limited exceptions to the "one-child" rule. The shift marks an important change in China's approach to population control, as it brings the greater legal force of legislation into an arena that has been fraught with abuse and inconsistently applied features.
I found the above caption above at reproductiverights.org.
I think it's an interesting topic, because here in The U.S. a law like that might sound "ridiculous" given the constitution, human rights etc. However, I feel that this is a very serious issue, and I believe there should be some kind of child limit law. Maybe not as strict, maybe a 2 child maximum. I know it sounds ridiculous but it is obviously one of the driving forces of global warming, there is obviously world hunger issues and we have to take the initial steps and passes legislation which will shape our future. Although ultimately I know that if our population does continue to grow exponentially there will be a natural correction such as natural disasters or outbreaks such as the flu, hunger and drought. We have to undertand that there is a limit to that graph we saw in class today and we have to face it either today (by implementing child limit laws) or wait until we actually hit the limit and let it naturally correct itself.
Minute paper 6 (2/5/08)
Today in class we talked about the readings our common future and the futures studies. It's interesting how one author views the futures very differently from each other. The perspective view from the Our Common Future reading is more obnoxious of all having said that it focused on the growth of population by expanding environmental resource. The limits to growth is a very open minded and it gives people the options to choose from how the futures will be like for them. Sometimes I feel that it is impossible for anybody to predict the future but looking at what this futurist brought about their studies by using graph, charts and timeline to demonstrate the changes from population growth to exponential growth is very realistic. The future is good to be forecast and just have some predictions and a picture of how the future would look like and how everything would be like in the future. Problems and issues should not stop from predicting the future. Of course, the issues will either increase or decrease but the future remains unknown and be forecast and to create a guiding image.
posted by ruta
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After class today I thought a lot about the word hope. One of the
things I thought about was how hope is sometimes the only motivation
left when a situation seems so hopeless. I think and feel as though
there is a large majority of people that have used hope in a poor way.
Those who hope that their government or leaders with solve the problem
and take care of them and the hope that some god will float down from
the place it has been hiding and right all the wrongs that humanity has
caused.To me, this seems like a way of passing their responsability
elsewhere.
I would see a good form of hope as being, a hope in humanity. Right now
I feel as though there isn't much hope for the future. Our population
growth is growing beyond the capacity of life sustaining resources. If
this happens it one possibility is a world war fighting over water,
food, and other life sustaining resources.
The real hope lies in the fact that we aren't their yet. There is still
a chance that things can be done to soften the blowback of
consequences. I believe their is a strong hope in informing as many of
the people on this planet as we can, without scaring the shit out of
them. The real hope lies in the capability of humanity to alter their
environment. If people who are aware of the future problems we are
facing do what they can to let those around them know, then a shift
will occur, and the future won't look so bleak. The problem is getting
habitual human beings to give up comforts, and rituals in order to make
a better future that they won't even be alive for.
Minute Paper 2/5
Today we discussed the limits to growth and how at some point everything that continuously grows (in this case population growth) will either (1) be brought under control by devising solutions to bring this growth down to a sustainable rate so that it evens it’s self out or (2) if our increasing population is not able to come to an equilibrium with the resources that are fueling the growth it could result in a potentially violent fallout. We looked at both potential outcomes through the article “Horse Power to Horsepower” which illustrated how we can come to solutions to avoid disasters caused by population growth and Jared Diamond’s lecture on the collapse of society on Easter Island through the depletion of resources which lead to civil war and cannibalism causing complete devastation of their society. As much as I would love for us to find a way to correct the path to destruction that we seem to be following I can’t help being a bit pessimistic because we seem to be caught in a vicious circle where even when we are able to solve a problem that solution generally leads to another problem such as in the case of our switching from horses to cars.
Mark Alexander
Minute Paper for February 5, 2008
Okay so honestly I only came to class with like half an hour left so I couldn't exactly dive into the conversation with everyone else. However, i do have comments on the three readings. First of all, I don't know if it was just me being dense, but i thought the whole horse thing was just a metaphor for the pollution humans have committed themselves to. of course once I heard the discussion in class I realized it was all just a coincidence. It was written in such a clever fashion and I hope everyone can see the relation it as today, but instead of horses it would be cars and instead of polluting the street they're causing our ozone to deplete, with possibilities of bringing an extinction to the human race. And then, the portion in "Our Common Future" about our resources not being enough to sustain the rapidly increasing population reminds me of like ancient civilizations where if they didn't have enough to sustain the whole civilization they'd migrate or rebuild new cities for people that couldn't fit. Of course, if we did that we'd have to move to an entirely new planet actually, because we've pretty much used and abused this one. In reference to the Meadows' piece, we should totally have our own Club of Rome integrated into our government, who like meet with the president every month. Maybe it would really hit people then. I mean Al Gore's doing a pretty god job and him going on Oprah really helped. I think honestly, I know for a fact, that if you get environmentalists and scientists on Oprah more often word would seriously get out. I mean thats the women of America, even some men that you've captivated right there. Seriously, a few times she's put up most wanted ads or whatever on her shows and the next day the guy would be caught. Oprah is a doorway to the people of America.
one minute paper 1/5
In todays class we talked about the population growth in this world. We
saw a video showing the estimated population growth from the beggining
of time to the year 2020. The last 30 years the numbers were stagering.
One student today said that she believes that the world has a way of
controling the population by way of tornado or other natural disasters.
I agree with that comment because i believe that eventually if the
world becomes to populated and there are not enough resources to
provide for the people, the world will have a way of controling it by
some sort of natural disaster.
BLOG 02-5
Perhaps one of the most urgent issues facing the United States is that of population. The population of the U.S. (and much of the world) has increased significantly in the last half century. Population grows exponentially, which means that the population will continue to skyrocket in the future if there is no intervention. This creates many problems for our government in the attempts to care for the growing number of people. Problem areas will include health care, social security, and poverty. Social security has been predicted to fail before our generation even retires. This means that the government must develop a new program for senior citizens or else millions of people will fall into poverty. In addition, a new health care system must be adopted in order to accommodate the population increases as well.
02.05.08
I just finished reading the excerpt from "Our Common
Future," and I am in utter disbelief. Not because
these issues have never been brought to my attention,
because they have, but because these issues were
brought to the attention of the world over twenty
years and virutally nothing has been to affectively
the change the self-destructing path that mankind is
walking down. Until recently, actually until this
class, i was under the impression that many of the
global issues we are covering were brought to the
attention of the general public within the last
decade, but most of them are twice that old. As an
occupant of this planet i find it extremely
frustrating that the great leaders of our world have
not done more to thwart the devasting and catastrophic
impact that we as a species are inflicting upon the
earth. While i whole-heartedly believe that individual
initiatives and personal lifestyle changes can
collectively have a large and beneficial impact on our
current situation, i place a large amount of the
responsibility on policy makers and government
officials. If the change is to be as drastic and
effective as necessary, i believe it would be most
efficient and most successful if the change were to
come from within the system itself. I understand that
the change would not be easy and the solution is not
obvious, but how will we make any progress if we don't
even try? While the task ahead of us is absolutely
daunting, it cannot be overlooked. I really am scared
for the future generations, and i agree with the
readings: that some serious changes need to be made.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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minute paper feb5
The limit of growth, that was todays question. how far can we grow
until it stops and we destroy ourselves. I think that we can change.
and that we can correct ourselves. Some of the problem are people are
not informed about this, we need more impact as al gore's an
inconviente truth did. All issues we have had in history, started out
as no big deal, until it was made public, or emerged. However there is
always the fact that maybe this time we have pushed everything to far,
and we wont be able to correct, or inform everyone fast enough to help
. But i think we can and our growth will be slowed once people allow it
to and realize when enough is enough. thanks
Re: 1 Minute paper 2/5/2008
The environmental trends that threaten to alter our planet where dealt with today in class. Global warming is upon us whether we decide to acknowledge it or not. The population is over 6 billion and growing. I found that environmental trends,global trends, and global perspectives shape our world today.along with industrialization will we ever be able to overcome our need to feed or will we ever find a global equilibrium? those are the question we face now in the present time what will you do in the future and how will you shape yours?
one minute paper 2/5
In todays class a few students talked about their emerging issues that they found and it was cool to see what everyone brought in. After that we watched a video on this instructor telling the story of the eastern islanders and how their society eventually would collapse because lack of resources for the growing population. Then we looked at this cartoon of the earths populatioin from 1 ad to 2020 and we saw the poplution sky rocket from about the 1990's to 2020. This brought up the discussion about the issue of our growing population and the abliltiy for us as a nation to care for all of our citizens.
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