John Smart

John Smart: Foresight is Your Hidden Superpower

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John Smart has taught and written for over 20 years on topics like foresight and futurism as well as the drivers, opportunities, and problems of exponential processes throughout human history. John is President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, co-Founder of the Evo-Devo research community, and CEO of Foresight University. Most recently, Smart is the author of Introduction to Foresight, which in my view is a “one-of-a-kind all-in-one instruction manual, methodological encyclopedia, and daily work bible for both amateur and professional futurists or foresighters.”

During our 2-hour conversation with John Smart, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as the biggest tech changes since our 1st interview; machine vs human sentience; China’s totalitarianism and our new geostrategic global realignment; Citizen’s Diplomacy, propaganda, and the Russo-Ukrainian War; foresight, futurism and grappling with uncertainty; John’s Introduction to Foresight; Alvin Toffler’s 3P model aka the Evo-Devo Classic Foresight Pyramid; why the future is both predicted and created despite our anti-prediction and freedom bias; Moore’s Law and Accelerating Change; densification and dematerialization; definition and timeline to general AI; evolutionary vs developmental dynamics; autopoiesis and practopoiesis; existential threats and why we must delay nuclear power; whether we live in a child-proof universe; the Transcension Hypothesis.

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with John Smart is:

We must learn to see how physics, chemistry, biology, human culture, and technology are each catalysts for new evolutionary freedoms and new developmental constraints, at the same time. We must also guard against both overly free and overly determined models of the future. It is easy to get out of this evo-devo balance, and oversimplify reality. Exponential Progress: Thriving in an Era of Accelerating Change, PDF page 29

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is John Smart?

John Smart is a student of strategic and adaptive foresight, global futures, exponential processes, and complex systems. He is President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation nonprofit (est. 2003), co-Founder of the Evo-Devo Universe complex systems research community (est. 2008), and CEO of Foresight University, a foresight learning, and development company (est. 2016). For twenty years, John has taught and written on foresight development and the drivers, opportunities, and problems of exponential processes throughout human history. John has a B.S. in business administration from UC Berkeley, an M.S. in futures studies from the University of Houston, and an M.S.-equivalency in physiology and medicine from UCSD School of Medicine. He has an honorary Ph.D. in Technology Education from the University of Advancing Technology (2008) an Outstanding Faculty Award from the California Law Enforcement Command College (2011), and he lectures on personal and team foresight practice, leadership, and technological change at the Naval Postgraduate School (since 2012). He blogs at Medium.com, and his speakers’ website is JohnMSmart.com. John lives in Ann Arbor, MI with his wife and two young children.

John Smart: Accelerating Change Isn’t Slowing Down

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Yesterday I interviewed John Smart on Singularity 1 on 1.

Among many other things, John is an advisor in Futures Studies and Forecasting for Singularity University where I met him last summer. He is also one of those rare people who are (literary) Smart since birth and totally justify the name. So it was no surprise that I learned a lot during our one-hour-long conversation and I hope you can learn from him too.

During our discussion with John, we cover a wide variety of topics such as the Foresight Education and Research Network (FERN); planning and creating your personal and professional future; the story of how John got interested in futurism and technology; his Acceleration Studies Foundation as well as the meaning of accelerating change; his totally fascinating idea of STEM compression; the Barrow scale vs the Kardashev scale; cosmology, black holes and different interpretations thereof; Moore’s Law and the limits of Physics.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is John Smart?

John M. Smart is a technology foresight educator and a scholar in global processes of evolution, development, and accelerating change. He is president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (Mountain View, CA), and professor and program champion for the Emerging Technologies masters program at the University of Advancing Technology (Tempe, AZ), which teaches foresight in exponentially advancing technologies, and seeks innovative technology solutions to humanity’s grand challenges. He is also an advisor in futures studies and forecasting at Singularity University (Mountain View, CA). John has a B.S. in business administration from UC Berkeley, an M.S.-equivalency in physiology and medicine from U.C. San Diego School of Medicine, and an M.S. in futures studies from the University of Houston. His blog is EverSmarterWorld.com.