Jamais Cascio
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Jamais Cascio is a
San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...
–based author and
futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...
.


Early life and education

Cascio graduated from
Mira Costa High School Mira Costa High School (MCHS, "Costa") is a four-year public high school located in Manhattan Beach, California that first opened 1950. It is the only high school in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District. The school's athletic teams are k ...
, Manhattan Beach, California in 1983. In 1988 he graduated from the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
, Santa Cruz, majoring in
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
and history. He subsequently studied Political Science at University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1993.


Career

Cascio was Technology Manager at Global Business Network and Director of Impacts Analysis for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. In 1998, he served as technical advisor for the TV movie "Martian Law." In 2009, Cascio was listed as one of Foreign Policy Magazine's top 100 Global Thinkers.
Michio Kaku Michio Kaku (; ; born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, Science communication, science communicator, futurologist, and writer of popular-science. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and ...
has called him "a leading futurist with a long career of thoughtfully contemplating the outlines of tomorrow.". He has written articles for various publications on a variety of subjects, including the future of human evolution, education in the information age, and emergent technologies. Cascio was made a Distinguished Fellow at the
Institute for the Future The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a Palo Alto, California, US–based not-for-profit think tank. It was established, in 1968, as a spin-off from the RAND Corporation to help organizations plan for the long-term future, a subject known as ...
Jamais Cascio: IFTF Distinguished Fellow
Retrieved September 12, 2015
in 2010, and continues to work with the organization. As of 2016 he was also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies,Jamais Cascio Bio Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Ieet.org. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
and a member of the Ensia Advisory Council. Cascio was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his life's work by the
University of Advancing Technology University of Advancing Technology (UAT) is a Private university, private For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit university in Tempe, Arizona. Founded in 1983, UAT offers Associate degree, Associate, Bachelor's degree, Bach ...
in May 2017.


Projects


Transhuman Space

In the period 2003-4, Cascio published two volumes of background material for use in
Steve Jackson Games Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and (until 2019) the gaming magazine ''Pyramid''. History Founded in 1980, six years after the cr ...
' role playing game '' Transhuman Space'', which is set in 2100. Cascio's first volume, ''Broken Dreams'', provides a political backdrop that concentrates on the less fortunate, and how they might respond to their circumstances. The second volume, ''Toxic Memes'', concentrates on the battle for public opinion, and the issues that might arise from a hypothetical new science of memetics: the analysis, engineering, and manipulation of ideas.


Worldchanging

In 2003, Cascio co-founded the online website
Worldchanging Worldchanging was a nonprofit online publisher that operated from 2003 to 2010. Its strapline was ''A bright green future''. It published newsletters and books about sustainability, bright green environmentalism, futurism and social innovatio ...
with
Alex Steffen Alex Steffen (born 1968 in Oakland, California) is an American futurist and advocate of 'bright green environmentalism' who writes and speaks about sustainability and the future of the planet. He emphasizes the importance of imagining persuasive ...
. He contributed articles from 2003 until his departure in 2006. His range of topics covered energy, climate change, global development, open source, biotechnology, and nanotechnologies.


Cheeseburger carbon footprint

In 2006, when the concept of a
carbon footprint A carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) is a calculated value or index that makes it possible to compare the total amount of greenhouse gases that an activity, product, company or country Greenhouse gas emissions, adds to the atmospher ...
was only just becoming an environmental talking point, Cascio decided to provide an illustrative example using a popular everyday item: the cheeseburger. Taking into account ''all'' factors that went into the manufacture and delivery of one cheeseburger, Cascio calculated that the equivalent of of CO2 was generated. Interpreting the result another way, Cascio estimated the annual emissions from cheeseburger production and distribution in the United States was comparable to that of all
SUVs A sport utility vehicle (SUV) is a car classification that combines elements of road-going passenger cars with features from off-road vehicles, such as raised ground clearance and four-wheel drive. There is no commonly agreed-upon definitio ...
being driven on American roads at the time. The report raised a lot of interest, and featured in a segment of the
National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...
documentary ''Six Degrees Could Change the World''.


Superstruct

In 2008 Cascio collaborated with Jane McGonigal as scenario designer and administrator for ''Superstruct''; a large scale forecasting game at the Institute for the Future that invited players to use social media to describe how they would respond to five hypothetical but plausible threats to Humanity in the year 2019. The presentation followed the structure of the ten-year forecasting reports used by the Institute of The Future. 5000 players participated over a six-week period, starting in October 2008.


Geoengineering

Cascio has been a contributor to discussions about the ethics and practicality of geoengineering since 2005. In 2009, he self-published a collection of his essays under the title ''Hacking the Earth''. These essays stress that geoengineering strategies do not address the underlying causes of global warming, and that the consequences need to be weighed carefully. Nevertheless, Cascio argues that geoengineering will likely be considered seriously as a way of keeping increases in global temperature to a minimum as global warming worsens. In 2010, he delivered a talk at the U.S.
National Academies of Sciences National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...
entitled "Hacking the Earth (without voiding the warranty)." In 2008–09, Cascio collaborated with the
Australian Broadcasting Commission The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is a ...
as a writer and consultant to produce ''Bluebird AR'', an interactive multimedia drama that encouraged viewers to participate, and think about issues in geoengineering. The show was broadcast from April–June 2010.


Is Google making us stupid?

'' Is Google Making Us Stupid?'' was a 2008 article by Nicholas Carr, which was later expanded on in '' The Shallows''. Carr suggested that the ready access to knowledge provided by internet search engines was affecting people's cognition skills; encouraging them to 'skim' information at the expense of critical thinking and focused research. Based on his personal experiences, Carr even wondered if the brain was being permanently affected. Responding in the same publication a year later, Cascio argued that human cognition has always evolved to meet environmental challenges, and that those posed by the internet are no different: the 'skimming' referred to by Carr was a form of attention deficit caused by the immaturity of filter algorithms. Cascio further argued that the problem will diminish as human needs exert evolutionary pressure of their own to cause the algorithms to improve. The two articles have been used to promote topical debate in several places.
Pew Research The Pew Research Center (also simply known as Pew) is a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world. It als ...
used them to form a tension-pair question survey that was distributed to noted academics. Most responded in detail; 76% agreeing with the proposition "Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid". When discussing the topic in ''The Googlisation of Everything'', Siva Vaidhyanathan tended to side with Carr. However, he thought both arguments relied too much on determinism: Carr in thinking that an over-reliance on internet tools will inevitably cause the brain to atrophy, and Cascio in thinking that getting smarter is the necessary outcome of the evolutionary pressures he describes.
John Naughton John Naughton (born 18 July 1946) is an Irish academic, journalist and author. He is a senior research fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University, director of the Press Fellowship Prog ...
noted, in ''From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg'', that many agreed Carr had hit on an important subject, but that his conclusions were not widely supported. Cascio has since modified his stance, conceding that, while the internet remains good at illuminating knowledge, it is even better at manipulating emotion. ''"If Carr wrote his Atlantic essay now 020with the title ‘Is Facebook Making Us Stupid?’ it would be difficult to argue in favor of ‘No.’"''.


BANI

In April, 2020, Cascio published the article "Facing the Age of Chaos" on
Medium (website) Medium is an American online publishing platform for written content such as articles and blogs, developed by Evan Williams and launched in August 2012. It is owned by A Medium Corporation. The platform is an example of social journalism, hav ...
. In it, he proposed the "BANI" framework (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) as a follow-on or replacement for the " VUCA" concept. BANI is meant to describe present-day and near-future conditions, focusing on perceived global chaos. BANI was soon in wide use by analysts and consultants, particularly in the
Global South Global North and Global South are terms that denote a method of grouping countries based on their defining characteristics with regard to socioeconomics and politics. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Global South broadly com ...
. Cascio has delivered multiple talks on BANI to audiences in
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
,
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
, and elsewhere.


Books

* ''Broken Dreams (Transhuman Space)'' (Steve Jackson Games, 2003). * ''Toxic Memes (Transhuman Space)'' (Steve Jackson Games, 2004). * ''Worldchanging: a User's Guide to the 21st Century'' (2006) (contributing author). * ''Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering'' (self-published, 2009)."20 Essential Books About the Next Step in Human Evolution"
. Annalee Newitz 11/12/2012


Awards

* 2009 – Foreign Policy Magazine No. 72 among their "Top 100 Global Thinkers" for 2009. * 2017 – Honorary Doctorate from the
University of Advancing Technology University of Advancing Technology (UAT) is a Private university, private For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit university in Tempe, Arizona. Founded in 1983, UAT offers Associate degree, Associate, Bachelor's degree, Bach ...
.


References


External links

* Cascio's website
Open The Future
*

Retrieved September 12, 2015
Ensia Advisory Council
Retrieved September 13, 2015.
Google Scholar report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cascio, Jamais American futurologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American transhumanists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Mira Costa High School alumni