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#acceleration

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"When the world slows down, winners speed up" - Futurist Jim Carroll

Here’s the truth: downturns don’t slow the future. They compress it.

They intensify it. They accelerate it.

When the world slows down, winners speed up. Downturns don’t delay the future—they accelerate it.

With that being the case, speed isn’t reckless. In a recession, it’s your superpower. That's because, during a downturn, it’s not just the ideas that matter, it’s how fast you move on them.

In times of uncertainty, there’s an instinct to slow down. Pause. Delay decisions. Wait for clarity.

But history—and recent experience—shows that’s exactly the wrong move. When the environment slows, the smartest companies speed up.
We just witnessed that reality on a global scale in the last few years as the pandemic took hold. If you think back to those first few months, the fact is we compressed ten years of change into just six months. Retailers became digital-first overnight. Healthcare embraced telemedicine in an instant. Manufacturers pivoted supply chains on a dime.

So what happened that allowed for this? Major trends accelerated as organizations learned something new about speed! Agility and flexibility became critical because business models shifted faster. Customers changed quickly as people became more adaptable to new interaction methods! Overall, corporate cultures that were once used to working slowly had to embrace speed - with the result that the attitude ‘it can’t be done!’ disappeared, decision-making paralysis disappeared, the slow structure was put under a microscope, old barriers to new ideas disappeared, and "get it done" became the rallying cry!

#Speed #Acceleration #Resilience #Agility #Opportunity #Future #Decisiveness #Momentum #Crisis #Velocity

Original post: jimcarroll.com/2025/05/decodin

"When the world slows down, winners speed up" - Futurist Jim Carroll

Here’s the truth: downturns don’t slow the future. They compress it.

They intensify it. They accelerate it.

When the world slows down, winners speed up. Downturns don’t delay the future—they accelerate it.

With that being the case, speed isn’t reckless. In a recession, it’s your superpower. That's because, during a downturn, it’s not just the ideas that matter, it’s how fast you move on them.

In times of uncertainty, there’s an instinct to slow down. Pause. Delay decisions. Wait for clarity.

But history—and recent experience—shows that’s exactly the wrong move. When the environment slows, the smartest companies speed up.
We just witnessed that reality on a global scale in the last few years as the pandemic took hold. If you think back to those first few months, the fact is we compressed ten years of change into just six months. Retailers became digital-first overnight. Healthcare embraced telemedicine in an instant. Manufacturers pivoted supply chains on a dime.

So what happened that allowed for this? Major trends accelerated as organizations learned something new about speed! Agility and flexibility became critical because business models shifted faster. Customers changed quickly as people became more adaptable to new interaction methods! Overall, corporate cultures that were once used to working slowly had to embrace speed - with the result that the attitude ‘it can’t be done!’ disappeared, decision-making paralysis disappeared, the slow structure was put under a microscope, old barriers to new ideas disappeared, and "get it done" became the rallying cry!

It was a fascinating time since it showed what true organizational agility looks like. Necessity didn’t just breed invention—it demanded acceleration. The rallying cry wasn’t “What if?” It was: “What’s next—and how fast can we make it real?”

That wasn't an isolated circumstance though, because history shows that speed wins in uncertainty. Research from multiple downturns tells the same story: Resilient companies move faster. They make bolder decisions. They simplify governance. They respond rapidly to cost shifts and market shocks. They act while others analyze. They reorganize for velocity and enable frontline decision-making. They accelerate when others stall.

Ask yourself:

- are we simplifying decision-making to increase speed?

- are we empowering teams to act in real-time?

- are we using volatility to break down bureaucratic barriers?

- are we rewarding speed of learning over perfection of planning?

Because one thing is certain: the winners of tomorrow are already moving faster today.

#Speed #Acceleration #Resilience #Agility #Opportunity #Future #Decisiveness #Momentum #Crisis #Velocity

Original post: jimcarroll.com/2025/05/decodin

"Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account."

from the back cover of their upcoming #book

"The future won’t wait for your zip code to catch up! " - Futurist Jim Carroll

Yesterday I noted that the future won't slow down to wait for you to make a decision.

It also has little respect for those who try to avoid the reality that they are in a global economy.

When you step back and look around the world, something becomes crystal clear: The future is not unfolding in one place. It’s emerging everywhere—in labs in Ireland, factories in Vietnam, logistics hubs in the UAE, AI startups in Seoul, and solar grids in Morocco.

But while this global acceleration is happening, too many leaders and organizations are still thinking small. They’re stuck in a local mindset—tethered to domestic market opportunities, legacy business models, obsolete products or services, or outdated assumptions about where real progress comes from.

Here’s the reality: you can’t lead in tomorrow’s economy by thinking inside yesterday’s borders. I've said it before - the future doesn’t care about your region, your history, or your comfort zone. It flows to where the momentum lives. And that momentum is increasingly global.

- AI isn't just a Silicon Valley story—it's being industrialized in China, scaled in Europe, and accelerated in the United Arab Emirates

- the energy transition isn’t a North American trend —it’s becoming the default infrastructure in Scandinavia and the Middle East

- electric vehicles aren't some radical idea with a narrow future - it's becoming the dominant platform in China, Finland, and elsewhere
- advanced manufacturing isn't stuck in Detroit—it's transforming supply chains in Vietnam, Poland, and Mexico.

Meanwhile, companies that remain locally fixated are finding themselves cut off from opportunity—missing emerging markets, lagging on innovation, and getting blindsided by competitors they never saw coming. The world used to watch what happened in one or two countries to know where things were going. Now? You have to watch everywhere - because innovation doesn’t care about geography.

This reality is accelerating in the current economic and political volatility that defies 2025 - such that while one region tries to restore past glories, the rest of the world has decided to continue moving forward. Watch the latter - not the former - to figure out where tomorrow is now unfolding. 

Here’s what that means for your strategy:

- innovation is borderless.
- local thinking limits opportunity.
- a global mindset = competitive advantage.
- the future flows to momentum, not geography.

So ask yourself: Are you making decisions based on where the world once was? Or are you aligning with where it’s already going?

Because the future isn’t local anymore.

It’s global.

And it’s moving fast.

**#Global** **#Innovation** **#Future** **#Geography** **#Momentum** **#Opportunity** **#Mindset** **#Competition** **#Acceleration**

Original post: jimcarroll.com/2025/04/decodin

The Joy of Academic Writing in the Age of AI

I once imagined an academic career involved a lofty devotion to knowledge at a distance from the world. This is what Bourdieu (2000: 1) described as “the free time, freedom from the urgencies of the world, that allows a free and liberated relation to those urgencies and to the world”. Or as the philosopher Richard Rorty once put it to a friend asking him about whether he was happy in this new role, “Universities permit one to read books and report what one thinks about them, and get paid for it” (Gross 2003).

Even if this was true of a tenured professor at an Ivy League university in 1980s America, it certainly isn’t true now for the vast majority of academics. It took me a while to come to terms with that fact, but what was constant in this process was the enjoyment of writing. It was precisely because of that enjoyment, the impulse ‘to read books and report what I thought about them’, that the reality of academic work felt so disappointing to me. It’s something I’ve long since made my peace with, but the fact it was a compromise I came to has left the enjoyment of writing at the heart of my professional self-conception: the space that can be found for it and the obstacles which stand in its way.

Unfortunately those obstacles are numerous. There are the new things which academics are expected to do, such as make research relevant to wider society and the mechanisms, such as social media, through which we are expected to do it. There is the growth in the work to be done as student numbers increase and our interactions with them increasingly take place through multiple channels. There are the spiralling expectations of what constitutes being productive, driven in part by a job market which is brutally competitive in some systems.

I take as background the widespread sense that there is a deep somatic crisis in higher education, which has structural roots (Burrows 2012). As Vostal (2016) demonstrates, it would be too simple to say the problem is one of speeding up, to which the solution would be to slow down. The evidence suggests that our relationship to speed is more ambivalent than this. I certainly recognize the enjoyment which can be realized through rushing under the right circumstances, such as the intense focus which can come with an imminent deadline or the intellectual sociability generated through an intensive workshop.

There is also a politics to speed too often overlooked by advocates of ideas like the ‘slow professor’ (Berg 2022). In my experience, the choice for a professor to slow down often relies on post docs who are willing to pick up the slack for them. But there is nonetheless a sense of rushing, of never having quite enough time for all the things we are expected to do, common within the contemporary academy (Carrigan 2016).

Obviously this is an experience which is far from confined to academics and the university, reflecting a broader sense of being harried in contemporary societies (Rosa 2014). It is easy for the time and space in which we might enjoy writing to find itself squeezed on all sides by the urgent items we are struggling to clear from our to-do list. It is easy to conclude from this experience that writing necessarily has to be a slow process, in which an excess of time and space provide the conditions in which creative writing is possible.

This is fundamentally mistaken, with the sense that writing requires an abundance of time actually being a potent obstacle to a regular and rewarding writing routine. But it is conversely difficult to immerse yourself in writing if you feel harried, assailed on all sides by unmet expectations and impending deadlines. There is a risk this leads to a sense of enjoying writing being a luxury, as opposed to a practical requirement of the job which must be dispensed with as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If you frame writing in these terms then the instrumental use of AI becomes an inevitability. Why wouldn’t you rely on these systems to do your writing for you if that writing is an unwelcome obligation which weighs heavily on your working life? This gets to the heart of my concern. There is a pessimistic and self-defeating mood which too often accompanies academic writing. This is a problem in its own terms because it makes what should be a source of joy for academics into a gruelling chore. But with the advent of a technology which can do this writing for us, this mood goes from being individually self-defeating to potentially catastrophic for the knowledge system.

As Sword (2023: loc 220) points out, “writing signals hard work and puritanical virtue, while pleasure drips with hedonistic vice”. The tendency for academics to relate to writing as a serious matter, serving a lofty purpose beyond the trivial matters of feeling, rather than something which pleasure can be taken in makes it difficult to have these conversations. I share Sword’s (2023: loc 226) project “to recuperate pleasure as a legitimate, indeed crucial, writing-related emotion”. Indeed, such a recuperation is imperative, individually and collectively, because of the impact which AI is already starting to exercise over why and how we write.

If you’re taking joy in an activity, why would you outsource it? I struggle to see a difference in this sense between relying on machine writing and seeking an assistant who can work on your behalf. There might be contingent challenges which mean you need support at a particular point in time, as well as a need to prioritize certain tasks over others. In this sense I wouldn’t suggest the impulse to outsource a task necessarily means you don’t take joy in it, but if you persistently seek external support for a type of task or a project composed of multiple tasks, this suggests the potential for exploring your motivation.

There are parts of my administrative work which I’ve found myself tempted to rely on machine writing for. I’ve come to realize this is a red flag which indicates there’s a part of my portfolio of work I’m struggling with in some way or coming to be alienated from. The impulse to outsource it to a machine, to just get it done immediately rather than expanding any more energy on it, will become a mainstream one within higher education over the coming years. The ubiquity of this software, particularly as it comes to be embedded in the existing collaboration platforms which universities provide for their staff, means it will be ‘in here’ rather than ‘out there’.

Meeting this temptation reflexively requires that we understand our work, the tasks that compose it, and how we tend to experience them. Do we persistently avoid or procrastinate from particular activities? What do we choose to do instead when we’re being avoidant? These questions help us identify which aspects of our academic writing might be at risk of being outsourced to AI, not because the technology offers genuine improvements, but because we’ve lost touch with the joy those activities might provide.

Replied in thread

"Un smartphone est un concentré d’industries : minière, pétrolière, chimique, auxquelles s’ajoute l’industrie du data mining, de l’extraction de données. Comme je l’indique dans mon livre, selon les données de Fairphone, il faut des composants issus de plus de mille usines différentes pour permettre produire un seul « smartphone »."

Nous sommes "prisonniers d’un spectacle dans lequel les progrès de la technologie se sont en quelque sorte substitués à l’histoire."

Celia Izoard : contretemps.eu/entretien-celia

CONTRETEMPS · Extraire des métaux pour sauver la planète ? Entretien avec Celia Izoard - CONTRETEMPS

Nature–society relations in disaster governance frameworks

"This paper studies how the relations between nature and society are constructed in disaster governance frameworks. Dominant disaster governance frameworks present nature and society as separate realms, and the organisation of society is increasingly seen as the key cause of hazards and disasters. Disaster impacts are similarly framed around adverse societal consequences, while other-than-human nature is merely the background across which disasters unfold, as property lost, or a means of disaster governance. Although the centrality of human impacts is troubled when biodiversity or a disaster flagship species is threatened, neither situation challenges the nature–society dualism embedded in dominant disaster governance frameworks. The attention and resources of disaster governance target the societal side of nature–society dualism. This study finds, though, that in peripheries characterised by remoteness from centres of power, a sparse human population, and large spaces of other-than-human nature, the vulnerabilities facing humans and other-than-human nature risk being ungoverned."
>>
Meriläinen, E. (2025). Nature–society relations in disaster governance frameworks. Disasters, 49(2), e12678. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/fu
#disasters #NaturalDisasters #governance #property #tourism #NSW #remoteness #FossilFuels #ClimateBreakdown #acceleration #climate #Bushfires #floods #cyclone #FirstResponders #trauma #nature #biodiversity #forests #NSWLogging #roads #koalas #deforestation #OtherThanHumanNature #NatureSocietyDualism #peripheries #vulnerability

Continued thread

"Humanity has endured for 1 million years for one simple reason: it is bound by limits. It is effectively regulated, and it is this regulation that lies at the heart of its genius.
[…]
"Capital very quickly relied on the sciences, and this was not simply the result of cultural impregnation.

"Classical science separates and analyses. All capital relies on this powerful process and adds to it control through quantification. A principle of devitalisation at the heart of modern technique.

"This thanatocratic principle of capital, without which it is nothing, takes place in three stages: privatisation of the means, industrialisation of devitalisation, and being as a commodity."

Thread in French: piaille.fr/@Ciriaco/1130836702 by @Ciriaco

PiailleCiriaco (@Ciriaco@piaille.fr)Ce qu'Hegel, pré-systémicien, a vu, c'est que la forme historique est intelligible. Pour dire les choses au rabais, l'histoire, c'est ce qui est à l'image de la loi normale pour les événements aléatoires : un ordre émerge. Si l'humanité perdure pendant 1 million d'années, c'est pour une raison simple : elle est tenue par des limites. Elle est efficacement régulée, et c'est cette régulation qui est au fond de son génie. Ce n'est pas un hasard en effet si la prise de contrôle anthropologique (et thanatocratique, j'y reviendrai) par le capital via le dépassement des limites coïncide, très précisément à l'échelle, avec l'effondrement des sociétés.

"What makes you unique is what will make you successful!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

From one book project to two others!

I'm working away on Escaping Mediocrity, but the other book that is waiting in the wings is "Being Unique."

I've been away from the project for some time, but came to realize that, like the lost Basement Tapes, I've got a lost Chapter 11 of the book that I wrote and misplaced! Since I'm not sure where we stand with the project at this point - I've been away from it for so long - I'm not sure if
I worked it into the most recent 'final' manuscript or not!

Reading it, it's a pretty good summary wrap-up for the book, and so I'll share it here!

----

The world is moving at a blistering pace. The future isn't just coming - it's accelerating. And in this high-velocity reality, being different isn't just an option - it's your strategic weapon for getting there first.

That much should be clear from reading this book.

The Uniqueness Imperative

With that being the case, here’s the key point you should take away: the safe path to tomorrow is now the riskiest route.

That’s because while others race to conform, real opportunities emerge for those who dare to stand apart.

This isn't just about being different - it's about being ahead.

Consider these realities:

Innovation happens at the edges, where unique thinking flourishes

Breakthroughs come from those who see patterns others miss

The future belongs to those who refuse to fit into today's boxes

Think about how the world works now:

While everyone chases the same opportunities, the unique find new ones

When others seek consensus, the different ones create breakthroughs

As many follow established paths, the distinctive forge new ones

The Strategic Power of Being Different

That’s what you need to keep in mind as you carve out your unique place in the world.

The future marketplace has no room for the ordinary. Every commodity skill is being automated. Every standard approach is being disrupted.

Every conventional wisdom is being challenged.

You need to think about your uniqueness as your strategic superpower: and here’s where your uniqueness becomes strategic:

When you think differently, you see opportunities first

When you act differently, you get to those opportunities faster

When you innovate differently, you create opportunities others miss

And you need to do this at the speed demanded by today’s world.

----

Jim’s book, Being Unique — And Why It Will Get to Your Future Faster, will be released sometime during the spring of 2025!

#Uniqueness #Innovation #Strategy #Acceleration #Differentiation #Leadership #Future #Success #Disruption #Opportunity

Original post: jimcarroll.com/2025/02/daily-i

Intentional road crashes
In Australia, fatal road crashes are climbing again.

"Suicide or accident? The hidden complexities of intentional road crashes in Australia
International research suggests driver suicides may account for up to 8–9% of all fatal road crashes. But studies indicate up to half of these cases may go unreported."

"Between 2001 and 2017, the rate of suicide involving a road vehicle collision in Australia nearly doubled from 0.125 per 100,000 people to 0.25 per 100,000. "

"Unlike most other suicide methods, road vehicle collisions pose a significant risk to others.Intentional crashes can involve unsuspecting drivers, passengers and pedestrians, turning a personal act of self-harm into a broader public safety issue."
>>
theconversation.com/suicide-or
#cars #drivers #crashes #males #violence #accident #pedestrians #harm #risks #mentalhealth #rage #roads #mobilitydesign #speed #FossilFuel #acceleration

The ConversationSuicide or accident? The hidden complexities of intentional road crashes in AustraliaDriver suicides account for about 9% of all fatal road crashes but many go unreported. Why are they so difficult to identify and what patterns exist?

Daily Inspiration: "Follow the science" - Futurist Jim Carroll

If anything will keep me rooted in reality and on the side of optimism in 2025 it will be by continuing to follow the science.

This is in a society in which it seems an incredible number of people continue to reject the reality of both the fact of science itself and the acceleration that is occurring, which is, by and large, improving their lives. Odd.

Consider these observations from a recent keynote. The cost of sequencing the human genome has gone from about $100 million in 2011 to $200 or less today. The cost of 3D printing from about $50 per cm2 in 2010 to less than fifty cents today. Battery storage technology has gone from $1,100 per kWh to less than $100 today.

While it's difficult to state the absolute accuracy of numbers such as this because things are moving so fast, the fact is that similar trends abound.

(lots and lots of stats in the post)

I could go on, but you get the point.

We live in the era of the acceleration of science, a relentless pace, constantly accelerating even faster. The impact is far-reaching impacts in every single human endeavor. It leads us to fantastic discoveries such as lab-grown human blood for transfusions and surgeries; automated medical and pharmaceutical research laborites; self-healing concrete that is safer and longer lasting 3d printed human organs for transplants; synthetic bacteria used for new materials science; the medical discovery that involves major discoveries every 48 hours; and other fascinating new developments.

Science is at the heart of every single discovery, every significant invention, every massive disruption, and every profound transformation.

We'll spend much of 2025 with a ridiculous theatrical experience unfolding that involves grandiose showmanship by those eager to take out their anger and frustration on the very scientists who are leading to a better future.

How do we get through it all? In my case, I'll continue to track the trends that will define our future by following the reality of science.

It's where I discover my optimism, reinforce my hope, and continue to discover my exhilaration with tomorrow.

#Science #Innovation #Technology #AI #Progress #Future #Discovery #Research #Acceleration #Evolution

Original post: jimcarroll.com/2024/11/daily-i

The impacts of climate disruption

The Lismore floods, the Spanish floods and Hurricane Katrina show in a climate breakdown
you're on your own..

People "are fundamentally rescuing themselves...I think that's something that we see again and again, unfortunately, in the absence of effective government response....Professor Mossop says the Black Summer Fires in 2019 to 2020 also saw people being "rescued by their neighbours and not by emergency services".
Australia is expected to experience worsening disasters as climate change accelerates.
>>
abc.net.au/news/2024-11-18/how

“Out of all the focus group respondents, 62% said their governments or policy makers had made no assessment of the impact of climate change on emergency services, 9% said they didn’t know, 55% said nothing had been done to prepare for the impact of climate change, and 10% didn’t know.">>
scimex.org/newsfeed/australasi
#ClimateBreakdown #FossilFuels #acceleration #climate #floods #bushfires #trauma #disasters #governance #EmergencyServices #state #SocialVulnerability #society #citizens #abandonment #volunteers #BlackSummer #ClimateJustice #GovernmentAbsence

ABC News · What Australia can learn from Spain's recent deadly floodsBy Jesmine Cheong
Continued thread

"Technique is no longer some uncertain and incomplete intermediary between humanity and the natural milieu. The latter is totally dominated and utilized (in Western society). Technique now constitutes a fabric of its own, replacing nature."

– Jacques Ellul in “Recherche pour une Ethique dans une société technicienne,” Morale et Enseignement, 1983, page 7