title: SAML 2.0

text: The service provider performs a security check on behalf of the target resource. If a valid security context at the service provider already exists, skip steps 2–7.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The service provider may use any kind of mechanism to discover the identity provider that will be used, e.g., ask the user, use a preconfigured IdP, etc.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The service provider generates an appropriate SAMLRequest (and RelayState, if any), then redirects the browser to the IdP SSO Service using a standard HTTP 302 redirect.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The codice_50 token is an opaque reference to state information maintained at the service provider. The value of the codice_22 parameter is a deflated, base64-encoded and URL-encoded value of an codice_17 element:


title: SAML 2.0

text: where the values of the codice_22 and codice_50 parameters are the same as those provided in the redirect. The SSO Service at the identity provider processes the codice_17 element (by URL-decoding, base64-decoding and inflating the request, in that order) and performs a security check. If the user does not have a valid security context, the identity provider identifies the user with any mechanism (details omitted).


title: SAML 2.0

text: The value of the codice_50 parameter has been preserved from step 3. The value of the codice_23 parameter is the base64 encoding of the following codice_15 element:


title: SAML 2.0

text: The assertion consumer service processes the response, creates a security context at the service provider and redirects the user agent to the target resource.


title: SAML 2.0

text: This is a relatively simple deployment of the SAML 2.0 Web Browser SSO Profile (SAMLProf) where both the service provider (SP) and the identity provider (IdP) use the HTTP POST binding.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The codice_50 token is an opaque reference to state information maintained at the service provider. The value of the codice_22 parameter is the base64 encoding of the following codice_17 element:


title: SAML 2.0

text: where the values of the codice_22 and codice_50 parameters are taken from the XHTML form at step 2. The SSO service processes the codice_17 element (by URL-decoding, base64-decoding and inflating the request, in that order) and performs a security check. If the user does not have a valid security context, the identity provider identifies the user (details omitted).


title: SAML 2.0

text: This is a complex deployment of the SAML 2.0 Web Browser SSO Profile (SAMLProf) where both the service provider (SP) and the identity provider (IdP) use the HTTP Artifact binding. Both artifacts are delivered to their respective endpoints via HTTP GET.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The service provider performs a security check on behalf of the target resource. If a valid security context at the service provider already exists, skip steps 2–11.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The service provider redirects the user agent to the single sign-on (SSO) service at the identity provider. A codice_50 parameter and a codice_74 parameter are appended to the redirect URL.


title: SAML 2.0

text: where codice_75 is an opaque reference to state information maintained at the service provider and codice_76 is a SAML artifact, both issued at step 2.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The SSO service dereferences the artifact by sending a codice_19 element bound to a SAML SOAP message to the artifact resolution service at the service provider:


title: SAML 2.0

text: The artifact resolution service at the service provider returns a codice_37 element (containing an codice_17 element) bound to a SAML SOAP message to the SSO service at the identity provider:


title: SAML 2.0

text: The SSO service processes the codice_17 element and performs a security check. If the user does not have a valid security context, the identity provider identifies the user (details omitted).


title: SAML 2.0

text: The SSO service at the identity provider redirects the user agent to the assertion consumer service at the service provider. The previous codice_50 parameter and a new codice_74 parameter are appended to the redirect URL.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The assertion consumer service dereferences the artifact by sending a codice_19 element bound to a SAML SOAP message to the artifact resolution service at the identity provider:


title: SAML 2.0

text: The artifact resolution service at the identity provider returns a codice_37 element (containing an codice_15 element) bound to a SAML SOAP message to the assertion consumer service at the service provider:


title: SAML 2.0

text: As a hypothetical example of a "Common Domain", let's suppose Example UK (example.co.uk) and Example Deutschland (example.de) belong to the virtual organization Example Global Alliance (example.com). In this example, the domain example.com is the common domain. Both Example UK and Example Deutschland have a presence in this domain (uk.example.com and de.example.com, resp.).


title: SAML 2.0

text: The "Common Domain Cookie" is a secure browser cookie scoped to the common domain. For each browser user, this cookie stores a history list of recently visited IdPs. The name and value of the cookie are specified in the IdP Discovery Profile (SAMLProf).


title: SAML 2.0

text: After a successful act of authentication, the IdP requests the "Common Domain Cookie Writing Service". This service appends the IdP's unique identifier to the common domain cookie. The SP, when it receives an unauthenticated request for a protected resource, requests the "Common Domain Cookie Reading Service" to discover the browser user's most recently used IdP.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The "Assertion Query/Request Profile" is a general profile that accommodates numerous types of so-called "queries" using the following SAML 2.0 elements:


title: SAML 2.0

text: The "Attribute Query" is perhaps the most important type of SAML query. Often a requester, acting on behalf of the principal, queries an identity provider for attributes. Below we give an example of a query issued by a principal directly:


title: SAML 2.0

text: Note that the codice_26 is the codice_97 in this case. This is sometimes called an "attribute self-query". An identity provider might return the following assertion, wrapped in a codice_15 element (not shown):


title: SAML 2.0

text: In contrast to the BearerAssertion shown earlier, this assertion has a longer lifetime corresponding to the lifetime of the X.509 certificate that the principal used to authenticate to the identity provider. Moreover, since the assertion is signed, the user can push this assertion to a relying party, and as long as the user can prove possession of the corresponding private key (hence the name "holder-of-key"), the relying party can be assured that the assertion is authentic.


title: SAML 2.0

text: Quite literally, metadata is what makes SAML work (or work well). Some important uses of metadata include:


title: SAML 2.0

text: Metadata ensures a secure transaction between an identity provider and a service provider. Before metadata, trust information was encoded into the implementation in a proprietary manner. Now the sharing of trust information is facilitated by standard metadata. SAML 2.0 provides a well-defined, interoperable metadata format that entities can leverage to bootstrap the trust process.


title: SAML 2.0

text: By definition, an identity provider manages an SSO service that supports the SAML Web Browser SSO profile specified in SAMLProf. See, for example, the identity provider described in the codice_107 element shown in the next section.


title: SAML 2.0

text: The previous metadata element describes the SSO service at the identity provider. Note the following details about this element:


title: SAML 2.0

text: As noted at the beginning of this section, the values of the codice_112 attributes are used by a service provider to route SAML messages, which minimizes the possibility of a rogue identity provider orchestrating a man-in-the-middle attack.


title: SAML 2.0

text: By definition, a service provider manages an assertion consumer service that supports the SAML Web Browser SSO profile specified in SAMLProf. See, for example, the service provider described in the codice_133 element shown in the next section.


title: SAML 2.0

text: As noted at the beginning of this section, the values of the codice_112 attributes are used by an identity provider to route SAML messages, which minimizes the possibility of a rogue service provider orchestrating a man-in-the-middle attack.


title: SAML 2.0

text: In the previous examples, each codice_101 element is shown to be digitally signed. In practice, however, multiple codice_101 elements are grouped together under an codice_159 element with a single digital signature over the entire aggregate:


title: SAML 2.0

text: Typically metadata aggregates are published by trusted third parties called "federations" who vouch for the integrity of all the metadata in the aggregate. Note that metadata aggregates can be very large, composed of hundreds or even thousands of entities per aggregate.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: Kristine Leahy (born October 16, 1986) is an American television host and former sports reporter. She is most known as a former host on NBC's "American Ninja Warrior". She is the former co-host and newswoman of Fox Sports 1's simulcast of "The Herd with Colin Cowherd" and was also a former anchor and reporter for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: In 2018, Leahy began hosting "Fair Game with Kristine Leahy" on Fox Sports 1. The show was cancelled in December 2019.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: Leahy was born in Chicago, where she became interested in sports. She graduated from Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, Illinois in 2005. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Boston University.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: After college, Leahy got a job at the sports radio station WEEI in Boston. After a two-year stint at WEEI, she transitioned to a position as an official reporter of the Boston Celtics and Celtics.com. She turned that into a job at FOX Boston, where she covered all Boston area sports teams.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: Leahy moved to Los Angeles in 2012 and covered a variety of different sports, most notably as a sideline reporter for Turner Sports' March Madness coverage. She worked for a variety of CBS affiliated sports outlets, including the local CBS Los Angeles news. Leahy then became the sideline reporter for "American Ninja Warrior" on NBC. In September 2015, she took a job to join former ESPN Radio host Colin Cowherd on his new show after his exodus to FOX. Cowherd cited a lack of female voices in sports talk radio as a reason for Leahy's addition to the show, as well as Leahy's history of developing useful sources as a sports journalist.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: On May 17, 2017, Leahy, who in the past criticize LaVar Ball on his parenting skills and claim "his kids are afraid of him". Received a backlash from LaVar Ball on "The Herd with Colin Cowherd". Ball never faced in Leahy's direction for the whole interview, apparently trying to talk only with Colin Cowherd on the other side of the studio. Ball argued with Leahy about whether or not Big Baller Brand should market to both men and women and when she asked him how many shoes he had already sold, he said, "Stay in your lane." During the segment, Leahy expressed that she believed Ball was disrespecting women, and he responded by calling her a "hater" for her previous criticism of his parenting. He also commented, "She scares me. I don't look over there because I'm scared of her. I'm thinking assault right now. Leave me alone." Later that day on "The Herd", Leahy issued a response about her argument with Ball, saying, "So he was upset at me for what I said there, and that's completely fine. But you can't come at me and disrespect me and not look me in the eye and threaten me. That's just not OK." Ball, however, denied threatening her.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: On May 19, 2017, Radio host Charlemagne the God, responded to the incident by claiming Leahy is using the same energy that got Emmett Till killed.


title: Kristine Leahy

text: On November 20, 2017, Leahy criticized CNN for inviting Ball on the air to discuss his feud with US President Donald Trump.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: Francisco Fernandes da Conceição (born 14 December 2002) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward for Eredivisie club Ajax and the Portugal under-21 national team.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: Francisco Conceição joined Sporting's academy at the age of eight, spending six seasons at the club. He spent a season at Porto's feeder club Padroense before joining Porto's youth setup in 2018.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: In August 2020, Conceição signed his first professional contract with the club, and made his professional debut in a 1–0 loss against Varzim during the 2020–21 Liga Portugal 2 season. He made his debut in the Portuguese top tier in a 2–2 draw against Boavista, on 13 February 2021; four days later, he became the second youngest Porto player to feature in a UEFA Champions League match, coming on in the last minutes of a 2–1 win against Juventus in the round of 16 of the 2020–21 season.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: In 2021–22, Conceição played 33 total games as Porto won a league and cup double; only four were starts, including one in the league. He contributed three goals, beginning with a penalty to conclude a 5–1 home win over Feirense in the fourth round of the Taça de Portugal; his first league goal on 8 January won the game 3–2 at Estoril two minutes after coming on for Fábio Cardoso.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: On 21 July 2022, Conceição signed with Eredivisie club Ajax, on a five-year contract. Nine days later, he was an unused substitute as they lost the 2022 Johan Cruyff Shield 5–3 to PSV Eindhoven. He made his debut for the reserves on 8 August, equalising in a 1–1 Eerste Divisie draw at home to SC Telstar; his first-team debut came on 3 September in a 4–0 home win over SC Cambuur, replacing double goalscorer Steven Bergwijn after 61 minutes. On 1 November 2022, he scored his first goal for the club against Rangers F.C., in a 1-3 victory in the UEFA Champions League.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: Conceição's early promise and his small stature (1.70 m), led to comparisons to Lionel Messi in the Portuguese press, with him sometimes being nicknamed "Messi do Olival" (Olival's Messi) by fans and in media outlets.


title: Francisco Conceição

text: Born in Coimbra, Conceição is the fourth son of former Portugal international footballer and current manager Sérgio Conceição; his older brothers Sérgio and Rodrigo are also professional footballers.


title: Futures studies

text: Futures studies, futures research, futurism or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will live and work in the future. Predictive techniques, such as forecasting, can be applied, but contemporary futures studies scholars emphasize the importance of systematically exploring alternatives. In general, it can be considered as a branch of the social sciences and an extension to the field of history. Futures studies (colloquially called "futures" by many of the field's practitioners) seeks to understand what is likely to continue and what could plausibly change. Part of the discipline thus seeks a systematic and pattern-based understanding of past and present, and to explore the possibility of future events and trends.


title: Futures studies

text: Unlike the physical sciences where a narrower, more specified system is studied, futurology concerns a much bigger and more complex world system. The methodology and knowledge are much less proven than in natural science and social sciences like sociology and economics. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science, and it is sometimes described as pseudoscience; nevertheless, the Association of Professional Futurists was formed in 2002, developing a Foresight Competency Model in 2017, and it is now possible to academically study it, for example at the FU Berlin in their master's course. In order to encourage inclusive and cross-disciplinary discussions about the futures Studies, UNESCO declared December 2nd as World Futures Day.


title: Futures studies

text: Futurology is an interdisciplinary field that aggregates and analyzes trends, with both lay and professional methods, to compose possible futures. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in an attempt to develop foresight. Around the world the field is variously referred to as futures studies, futures research, strategic foresight, futuristics, futures thinking, futuring, and futurology. Futures studies and strategic foresight are the academic field's most commonly used terms in the English-speaking world.


title: Futures studies

text: Foresight was the original term and was first used in this sense by H.G. Wells in 1932. "Futurology" is a term common in encyclopedias, though it is used almost exclusively by nonpractitioners today, at least in the English-speaking world. "Futurology" is defined as the "study of the future". The term was coined by German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim in the mid-1940s, who proposed it as a new branch of knowledge that would include a new science of probability. This term has fallen from favor in recent decades because modern practitioners stress the importance of alternative, plausible, preferable and plural futures, rather than one monolithic future, and the limitations of prediction and probability, versus the creation of possible and preferable futures.


title: Futures studies

text: Three factors usually distinguish futures studies from the research conducted by other disciplines (although all of these disciplines overlap, to differing degrees). First, futures studies often examines trends to compose possible, probable, and preferable futures along with the role "wild cards" can play on future scenarios. Second, futures studies typically attempts to gain a holistic or systemic view based on insights from a range of different disciplines, generally focusing on the STEEP categories of Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political. Third, futures studies challenges and unpacks the assumptions behind dominant and contending views of the future. The future thus is not empty but fraught with hidden assumptions. For example, many people expect the collapse of the Earth's ecosystem in the near future, while others believe the current ecosystem will survive indefinitely. A foresight approach would seek to analyze and highlight the assumptions underpinning such views.


title: Futures studies

text: As a field, futures studies expands on the research component, by emphasizing the communication of a strategy and the actionable steps needed to implement the plan or plans leading to the preferable future. It is in this regard, that futures studies evolves from an academic exercise to a more traditional business-like practice, looking to better prepare organizations for the future.


title: Futures studies

text: Futures studies does not generally focus on short term predictions such as interest rates over the next business cycle, or of managers or investors with short-term time horizons. Most strategic planning, which develops goals and objectives with time horizons of one to three years, is also not considered futures. Plans and strategies with longer time horizons that specifically attempt to anticipate possible future events are definitely part of the field. Learning about medium and long-term developments may at times be observed from their early signs. As a rule, futures studies is generally concerned with changes of transformative impact, rather than those of an incremental or narrow scope.


title: Futures studies

text: The futures field also excludes those who make future predictions through professed supernatural means.


title: Futures studies

text: To complete a futures study, a domain is selected for examination. The domain is the main idea of the project, or what the outcome of the project seeks to determine. Domains can have a strategic or exploratory focus and must narrow down the scope of the research. It examines what will, and more importantly, will not be discussed in the research.


title: Futures studies

text: Futures practitioners study trends focusing on STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environments and Political) baselines. Baseline exploration examine current STEEP environments to determine normal trends, called baselines. Next, practitioners use scenarios to explore different futures outcomes. Scenarios examine how the future can be different.


title: Futures studies

text: 1. Collapse Scenarios seek to answer: What happens if the STEEP baselines fall into ruin and no longer exist? How will that impact STEEP categories?


title: Futures studies

text: 2. Transformation Scenarios: explore futures with the baseline of society transiting to a "new" state. How are the STEEP categories effected if society has a whole new structure?


title: Futures studies

text: 3. New Equilibrium: examines an entire change to the structure of the domain. What happens if the baseline changes to a "new" baseline within the same structure of society?


title: Futures studies

text: Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah argue in "Macrohistory and Macrohistorians" that the search for grand patterns of social change goes all the way back to Sima Qian (145–90 BC) and his theory of the cycles of virtue, although the work of Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) such as "The Muqaddimah" would be an example that is perhaps more intelligible to modern sociology. Early western examples include Sir Thomas More's "Utopia", published in 1516, and based upon Plato's "Republic", in which a future society has overcome poverty and misery to create a perfect model for living. This work was so powerful that utopias, originally meaning "nowhere", have come to represent positive and fulfilling futures in which everyone's needs are met.


title: Futures studies

text: Some intellectual foundations of futures studies appeared in the mid-19th century. Auguste Comte, considered the father of scientific philosophy, was heavily influenced by the work of utopian socialist Henri Saint-Simon, and his discussion of the metapatterns of social change presages futures studies as a scholarly dialogue.


title: Futures studies

text: The first works that attempt to make systematic predictions for the future were written in the 18th century. "Memoirs of the Twentieth Century" written by Samuel Madden in 1733, takes the form of a series of diplomatic letters written in 1997 and 1998 from British representatives in the foreign cities of Constantinople, Rome, Paris, and Moscow. However, the technology of the 20th century is identical to that of Madden's own era—the focus is instead on the political and religious state of the world in the future. Madden went on to write "The Reign of George VI, 1900 to 1925", where (in the context of the boom in canal construction at the time) he envisioned a large network of waterways that would radically transform patterns of living: "Villages grew into towns and towns became cities". An actual George VI would ascend to the throne in 1936.


title: Futures studies

text: In 1845, "Scientific American", the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., began publishing articles about scientific and technological research, with a focus upon the future implications of such research. It would be followed in 1872 by the magazine "Popular Science", which was aimed at a more general readership.


title: Futures studies

text: The genre of science fiction became established towards the end of the 19th century, with notable writers, including Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, setting their stories in an imagined future world.


title: Futures studies

text: According to W. Warren Wagar, the founder of future studies was H. G. Wells. His "Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought: An Experiment in Prophecy", was first serially published in "The Fortnightly Review" in 1901. Anticipating what the world would be like in 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, the existence of a European Union, and a world order maintained by "English-speaking peoples" based on the urban core between Chicago and New York) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").


title: Futures studies

text: Moving from narrow technological predictions, Wells envisioned the eventual collapse of the capitalist world system after a series of destructive total wars. From this havoc would ultimately emerge a world of peace and plenty, controlled by competent technocrats.


title: Futures studies

text: The work was a bestseller, and Wells was invited to deliver a lecture at the Royal Institution in 1902, entitled "The Discovery of the Future". The lecture was well-received and was soon republished in book form. He advocated for the establishment of a new academic study of the future that would be grounded in scientific methodology rather than just speculation. He argued that a scientifically ordered vision of the future "will be just as certain, just as strictly science, and perhaps just as detailed as the picture that has been built up within the last hundred years to make the geological past." Although conscious of the difficulty in arriving at entirely accurate predictions, he thought that it would still be possible to arrive at a "working knowledge of things in the future".


title: Futures studies

text: In his fictional works, Wells predicted the invention and use of the atomic bomb in "The World Set Free" (1914). In "The Shape of Things to Come" (1933) the impending World War and cities destroyed by aerial bombardment was depicted. However, he did not stop advocating for the establishment of a futures science. In a 1933 BBC broadcast he called for the establishment of "Departments and Professors of Foresight", foreshadowing the development of modern academic futures studies by approximately 40 years.


title: Futures studies

text: At the beginning of the 20th century future works were often shaped by political forces and turmoil. The WWI era led to adoption of futures thinking in institutions throughout Europe. The Russian Revolution led to the 1921 establishment of the Soviet Union's Gosplan, or State Planning Committee, which was active until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gosplan was responsible for economic planning and created plans in five year increments to govern the economy. One of the first Soviet dissidents, Yevgeny Zamyatin, published the first dystopian novel, "We", in 1921. The science fiction and political satire featured a future police state and was the first work censored by the Soviet censorship board, leading to Zamyatin's political exile.


title: Futures studies

text: In the United States, President Hoover created the Research Committee on Social Trends, which produced a report in 1933. The head of the committee, William F. Ogburn, analyzed the past to chart trends and project those trends into the future, with a focus on technology. Similar technique was used during The Great Depression, with the addition of alternative futures and a set of likely outcomes that resulted in the creation of Social Security and the Tennessee Valley development project.


title: Futures studies

text: The WWII era emphasized the growing need for foresight. The Nazis used strategic plans to unify and mobilize their society with a focus on creating a fascist utopia. This planning and the subsequent war forced global leaders to create their own strategic plans in response. The post-war era saw the creation of numerous nation states with complex political alliances and was further complicated by the introduction of nuclear power.


title: Futures studies

text: Project RAND was created in 1946 as joint project between the United States Army Air Forces and the Douglas Aircraft Company, and later incorporated as the non-profit RAND corporation. Their objective was the future of weapons, and long-range planning to meet future threats. Their work has formed the basis of US strategy and policy in regard to nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and the space race.


title: Futures studies

text: Futures studies truly emerged as an academic discipline in the mid-1960s. First-generation futurists included Herman Kahn, an American Cold War strategist for the RAND Corporation who wrote "On Thermonuclear War" (1960), "Thinking about the unthinkable" (1962) and "The Year 2000: a framework for speculation on the next thirty-three years" (1967); Bertrand de Jouvenel, a French economist who founded Futuribles International in 1960; and Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-British scientist who wrote "Inventing the Future" (1963) and "The Mature Society. A View of the Future" (1972).


title: Futures studies

text: Future studies had a parallel origin with the birth of systems science in academia, and with the idea of national economic and political planning, most notably in France and the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, the people of France were continuing to reconstruct their war-torn country. In the process, French scholars, philosophers, writers, and artists searched for what could constitute a more positive future for humanity. The Soviet Union similarly participated in postwar rebuilding, but did so in the context of an established national economic planning process, which also required a long-term, systemic statement of social goals. Future studies was therefore primarily engaged in national planning, and the construction of national symbols.


title: Futures studies

text: By contrast, in the United States, futures studies as a discipline emerged from the successful application of the tools and perspectives of systems analysis, especially with regard to quartermastering the war effort. The Society for General Systems Research, founded in 1955, sought to understand cybernetics and the practical application of systems sciences, greatly influencing the U.S. foresight community. These differing origins account for an initial schism between futures studies in America and "futurology" in Europe: U.S. practitioners focused on applied projects, quantitative tools and systems analysis, whereas Europeans preferred to investigate the long-range future of humanity and the Earth, what might constitute that future, what symbols and semantics might express it, and who might articulate these.


title: Futures studies

text: By the 1960s, academics, philosophers, writers and artists across the globe had begun to explore enough future scenarios so as to fashion a common dialogue. Several of the most notable writers to emerge during this era include: sociologist Fred L. Polak, whose work "Images of the Future" (1961) discusses the importance of images to society's creation of the future; Marshall McLuhan, whose "The Gutenberg Galaxy" (1962) and "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" (1964) put forth his theories on how technologies change our cognitive understanding; and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (1962) which was hugely influential not only to future studies but also the creation of the environmental movement.


title: Futures studies

text: Inventors such as Buckminster Fuller also began highlighting the effect technology might have on global trends as time progressed.


title: Futures studies

text: By the 1970s there was an obvious shift in the use and development of futures studies; its focus was no longer exclusive to governments and militaries. Instead, it embraced a wide array of technologies, social issues, and concerns. This discussion on the intersection of population growth, resource availability and use, economic growth, quality of life, and environmental sustainability—referred to as the "global problematique"—came to wide public attention with the publication of "Limits to Growth" by Donella Meadows, a study sponsored by the Club of Rome which detailed the results of a computer simulation of the future based on economic and population growth. Public investment in the future was further enhanced by the publication of Alvin & Heidi Toffler's bestseller "Future Shock" (1970), and its exploration of how great amounts of change can overwhelm people and create a social paralysis due to "information overload".


title: Futures studies

text: International dialogue became institutionalized in the form of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF), founded in 1967, with the noted sociologist, Johan Galtung, serving as its first president. In the United States, the publisher Edward Cornish, concerned with these issues, started the World Future Society, an organization focused more on interested laypeople. The Association of Professional Futurists was founded in 2002 and spans 40 countries with more than 400 members. Their mission is to promote professional excellence by "demonstrating the value of strategic foresight and futures studies."


title: Futures studies

text: The first doctoral program on the Study of the Future, was founded in 1969 at the University Of Massachusetts by Christopher Dede and Billy Rojas. The next graduate program (Master's degree) was also founded by Christopher Dede in 1975 at the University of Houston–Clear Lake. Oliver Markley of SRI (now SRI International) was hired in 1978 to move the program into a more applied and professional direction. The program moved to the University of Houston in 2007 and renamed the degree to Foresight. The program has remained focused on preparing professional futurists and providing high-quality foresight training for individuals and organizations in business, government, education, and non-profits. In 1976, the M.A. Program in Public Policy in Alternative Futures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa was established. The Hawaii program locates futures studies within a pedagogical space defined by neo-Marxism, critical political economic theory, and literary criticism. In the years following the foundation of these two programs, single courses in Futures Studies at all levels of education have proliferated, but complete programs occur only rarely.


title: Futures studies

text: In 2010, the Free University of Berlin initiated a master's degree Programme in Futures Studies, which is the first one in Germany. In 2012, the Finland Futures Research Centre started a master's degree Programme in Futures Studies at Turku School of Economics, a business school which is part of the University of Turku in Turku, Finland.


title: Futures studies

text: Foresight and futures work cover any domain a company considers important; therefore, a futurist must be able to cross domains and industries in their work. There is continued discussion by people in the profession on how to advance it, with some preferring to keep the field open to anyone interested in the future and others arguing to make the credentialing more rigorous. There are approximately 23 graduate and PhD programs in foresight globally, and many other certification courses.


title: Futures studies

text: The field currently faces the challenge of creating a coherent conceptual framework, codified into a well-documented curriculum (or curricula) featuring widely accepted and consistent concepts and theoretical paradigms linked to quantitative and qualitative methods, exemplars of those research methods, and guidelines for their ethical and appropriate application within society. As an indication that previously disparate intellectual dialogues have in fact started converging into a recognizable discipline, at least seven solidly-researched and well-accepted attempts to synthesize a coherent framework for the field have appeared: 's "Why Futures Studies?", James Dator's "Advancing Futures Studies", Ziauddin Sardar's "Rescuing all of our Futures", Sohail Inayatullah's "Questioning the future", Richard A. Slaughter's "The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies", a collection of essays by senior practitioners, Wendell Bell's two-volume work, "The Foundations of Futures Studies," and Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's "Thinking about the Future."


title: Futures studies

text: While understanding the difference between the concepts of probability and predictability are very important to understanding the future, the field of futures studies is generally more focused on long-term futures in which the concept of plausibility becomes the greater concern. The usefulness of probability and predictability to the field lies more in analyzing the quantifiable trends and drivers which influence future change, than in predicting future events.


title: Futures studies

text: Some aspects of the future, such as celestial mechanics, are highly predictable, and may even be described by relatively simple mathematical models. At present however, science has yielded only a special minority of such "easy to predict" physical processes. Theories such as chaos theory, nonlinear science and standard evolutionary theory have allowed us to understand many complex systems as contingent (sensitively dependent on complex environmental conditions) and stochastic (random within constraints), making the vast majority of future events unpredictable, "in any specific case".


title: Futures studies

text: Not surprisingly, the tension between predictability and unpredictability is a source of controversy and conflict among futures studies scholars and practitioners. Some argue that the future is essentially unpredictable, and that "the best way to predict the future is to create it." Others believe, as Flechtheim, that advances in science, probability, modeling and statistics will allow us to continue to improve our understanding of probable futures, as this area presently remains less well developed than methods for exploring possible and preferable futures.


title: Futures studies

text: As an example, consider the process of electing the president of the United States. At one level we observe that any U.S. citizen over 35 may run for president, so this process may appear too unconstrained for useful prediction. Yet further investigation demonstrates that only certain public individuals (current and former presidents and vice presidents, senators, state governors, popular military commanders, mayors of very large cities, celebrities, etc.) receive the appropriate "social credentials" that are historical prerequisites for election. Thus, with a minimum of effort at formulating the problem for statistical prediction, a much-reduced pool of candidates can be described, improving our probabilistic foresight. Applying further statistical intelligence to this problem, we can observe that in certain election prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets, reliable forecasts have been generated over long spans of time and conditions, with results superior to individual experts or polls. Such markets, which may be operated publicly or as an internal market, are just one of several promising frontiers in predictive futures research.


title: Futures studies

text: Such improvements in the predictability of individual events do not though, from a complexity theory viewpoint, address the unpredictability inherent in dealing with entire systems, which emerge from the interaction between multiple individual events.


title: Futures studies

text: Futurology is sometimes described by scientists as pseudoscience. Science exists in the realm of the certain and builds knowledge through attempting to falsify predictions. Futures studies, however, exists in the realm of the uncertain but also builds knowledge through attempting to falsify predictions and exposing uncertainty. So in a sense, both science and futures studies share the same goal. The difference is that futures studies attempts to understand, mitigate, and utilize uncertainty.


title: Futures studies

text: In terms of methodology, futures practitioners employ a wide range of approaches, models and methods, in both theory and practice, many of which are derived from or informed by other academic or professional disciplines [https://books.google.com/books?id=ILJ_pfMgLqsC&pg=PA242&lpg=PA242&dq=futurists+borrow+from+other+disciplines&source=bl&ots=ycoWOEgcIS&sig=J-Nv6SzqAv-DLsGc7608ZuPyV5I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi31u3GgMHSAhXpj1QKHUxBCOAQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=futurists%20borrow%2 <nowiki>[1]</nowiki>], including social sciences such as economics, psychology, sociology, religious studies, cultural studies, history, geography, and political science; physical and life sciences such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology; mathematics, including statistics, game theory and econometrics; applied disciplines such as engineering, computer sciences, and business management (particularly strategy).


title: Futures studies

text: The largest internationally peer-reviewed collection of futures research methods (1,300 pages) is Futures Research Methodology 3.0. Each of the 37 methods or groups of methods contains: an executive overview of each method's history, description of the method, primary and alternative usages, strengths and weaknesses, uses in combination with other methods, and speculation about future evolution of the method. Some also contain appendixes with applications, links to software, and sources for further information.


title: Futures studies

text: Given its unique objectives and material, the practice of futures studies only rarely features employment of the scientific method in the sense of controlled, repeatable and verifiable experiments with highly standardized methodologies. However, many futurists are informed by scientific techniques or work primarily within scientific domains. Borrowing from history, the futurist might project patterns observed in past civilizations upon present-day society to model what might happen in the future, or borrowing from technology, the futurist may model possible social and cultural responses to an emerging technology based on established principles of the diffusion of innovation. In short, the futures practitioner enjoys the synergies of an interdisciplinary laboratory.


title: Futures studies

text: As the plural term "futures" suggests, one of the fundamental assumptions in futures studies is that the future is plural not singular.[http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/DatorFuturesStudies.pdf <nowiki>[2]</nowiki>] That is, the future consists not of one inevitable future that is to be "predicted", but rather of multiple alternative futures of varying likelihood which may be derived and described, and about which it is impossible to say with certainty which one will occur. The primary effort in futures studies, then, is to identify and describe alternative futures in order to better understand the driving forces of the present or the structural dynamics of a particular subject or subjects. The exercise of identifying alternative futures includes collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the possibility, probability, and desirability of change. The plural term "futures" in futures studies denotes both the rich variety of alternative futures, including the subset of preferable futures (normative futures), that can be studied, as well as the tenet that the future is many.


title: Futures studies

text: At present, the general futures studies model has been summarized as being concerned with "three Ps and a W", or possible, probable, and preferable futures, plus wildcards, which are unexpected, seemingly low probability but high impact events (positive or negative). Many futurists do not use the wild card approach. Rather, they use a methodology called emerging issues analysis. It searches for the drivers of change, issues that are likely to move from unknown to the known, from low impact to high impact.


title: Futures studies

text: In terms of technique, futures practitioners originally concentrated on extrapolating present technological, economic or social trends, or on attempting to predict future trends. Over time, the discipline has come to put more and more focus on the examination of social systems and uncertainties, to the end of articulating scenarios. The practice of scenario development facilitates the examination of worldviews and assumptions through the causal layered analysis method (and others), the creation of preferred visions of the future, and the use of exercises such as backcasting to connect the present with alternative futures. Apart from extrapolation and scenarios, many dozens of methods and techniques are used in futures research (see below).


title: Futures studies

text: Therefore, the general practice of futures studies also sometimes includes the articulation of normative or preferred futures, and a major thread of practice involves connecting both extrapolated (exploratory) and normative research to assist individuals and organizations to model preferred futures amid shifting social changes. For instance, despite many wicked, global challenges in today's world from climate change to extreme poverty, the aspect of preferability or "what should happen" can at times be overlooked. Practitioners use varying proportions of collaboration, creativity and research to derive and define alternative futures, and to the degree that a "preferred" future might be sought, especially in an organizational context, techniques may also be deployed to develop plans or strategies for directed future shaping or implementation of a preferred future.


title: Futures studies

text: While some futurists are not concerned with assigning probability to future scenarios, other futurists find probabilities useful in certain situations, such as when probabilities stimulate thinking about scenarios within organizations [https://web.archive.org/web/20170306211924/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2870/f9cef0b618c480312802fbb78e49bd69fa83.pdf <nowiki>[3]</nowiki>]. When dealing with the three Ps and a W model, estimates of probability are involved with two of the four central concerns (discerning and classifying both probable and wildcard events), while considering the range of possible futures, recognizing the plurality of existing alternative futures, characterizing and attempting to resolve normative disagreements on the future, and envisioning and creating preferred futures are other major areas of scholarship. Most estimates of probability in futures studies are normative and qualitative, though significant progress on statistical and quantitative methods (technology and information growth curves, cliometrics, predictive psychology, prediction markets, crowd-voting forecasts, etc.) has been made in recent decades.


title: Futures studies

text: Futures techniques or methodologies may be viewed as "frameworks for making sense of data generated by structured processes to think about the future". There is no single set of methods that are appropriate for all futures research. Different futures researchers intentionally or unintentionally promote use of favored techniques over a more structured approach. Selection of methods for use on futures research projects has so far been dominated by the intuition and insight of practitioners; but can better identify a balanced selection of techniques via acknowledgement of foresight as a process together with familiarity with the fundamental attributes of most commonly used methods.


title: Futures studies

text: Scenarios are a central technique in Futures Studies and are often confused with other techniques. The flowchart to the right provides a process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the intuitive logics tradition.


title: Futures studies

text: Futurists use scenarios—alternative possible futures—as an important tool. To some extent, people can determine what they consider probable or desirable using qualitative and quantitative methods. By looking at a variety of possibilities one comes closer to shaping the future, rather than merely predicting it. Shaping alternative futures starts by establishing a number of scenarios. Setting up scenarios takes place as a process with many stages, and can take place in an evidence-based manner. Scenarios can also study unlikely and improbable developments that would otherwise be ignored. However, for credibility, they should not be entirely utopian or dystopian. One of those stages involves the study of emerging issues, such as megatrends, trends and weak signals. Megatrends illustrate major, long-term phenomena that change slowly, are often interlinked and cannot be transformed in an instant. Trends express an increase or a decrease in a phenomenon, and there are many ways to spot trends. Some argue that a trend persists long-term and long-range; affects many societal groups; grows slowly; and appears to have a profound basis. A fad operates in the short term, shows the vagaries of fashion, affects particular societal groups, and spreads quickly but superficially.


title: Futures studies

text: Futurists have a decidedly mixed reputation and a patchy track record at successful prediction. Many 1950s futurists predicted commonplace space tourism by 2000, but ignored the possibilities of ubiquitous, cheap computers. On the other hand, many forecasts have portrayed the future with some degree of accuracy. Sample predicted futures range from predicted ecological catastrophes, through a utopian future where the poorest human being lives in what present-day observers would regard as wealth and comfort, through the transformation of humanity into a posthuman life-form, to the destruction of all life on Earth in, say, a nanotechnological disaster. For reasons of convenience, futurists have often extrapolated present technical and societal trends and assumed they will develop at the same rate into the future; but technical progress and social upheavals, in reality, take place in fits and starts and in different areas at different rates.


title: Futures studies

text: Therefore, to some degree, the field has aimed to move away from prediction. Current futurists often present multiple scenarios that help their audience envision what "may" occur instead of merely "predicting the future". They claim that understanding potential scenarios helps individuals and organizations prepare with flexibility.


title: Futures studies

text: Many corporations use futurists as part of their risk management strategy, for horizon scanning and emerging issues analysis, and to identify wild cards—low probability, potentially high-impact risks. Understanding a range of possibilities can enhance the recognition of opportunities and threats. Every successful and unsuccessful business engages in futuring to some degree—for example in research and development, innovation and market research, anticipating competitor behavior and so on. Role-playing is another way that possible futures can be collectively explored, as in the research larp Civilisation's Waiting Room.


title: Futures studies

text: In futures research "weak signals" may be understood as advanced, noisy and socially situated indicators of change in trends and systems that constitute raw informational material for enabling anticipatory action. There is some confusion about the definition of weak signal by various researchers and consultants. Sometimes it is referred as future oriented information, sometimes more like emerging issues. The confusion has been partly clarified with the concept 'the future sign', by separating signal, issue and interpretation of the future sign.


title: Futures studies

text: A weak signal can be an early indicator of coming change, and an example might also help clarify the confusion. On May 27, 2012, hundreds of people gathered for a "Take the Flour Back" demonstration at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK, to oppose a publicly funded trial of genetically modified wheat. This was a weak signal for a broader shift in consumer sentiment against genetically modified foods. When Whole Foods mandated the labeling of GMOs in 2013, this non-GMO idea had already become a trend and was about to be a topic of mainstream awareness.


title: Futures studies

text: "Wild cards" refer to low-probability and high-impact events "that happen quickly" and "have huge sweeping consequences", and materialize too quickly for social systems to effectively respond. Elina Hultunen notes that wild cards are not new, though they have become more prevalent. One reason for this may be the increasingly fast pace of change. Oliver Markley proposed four types of wild cards:


title: Futures studies

text: He posits that it is important to track the emergence of "Type II Wild Cards" that have a high probability of occurring, but low credibility that it will happen. This focus is especially important to note because it is often difficult to persuade people to accept something they do not believe is happening, until they see the wild card. An example is climate change. This hypothesis has gone from Type I (high impact and high credibility, but low probability where science was accepted and thought unlikely to happen) to Type II (high probability, high impact, but low credibility as policy makers and lobbyists push back against the science), to Type III (high probability, high impact, high credibility)—at least for most people, There are still some who probably will not accept the science until the Greenland ice sheet has completely melted and sea-level has risen the seven meters estimated rise.


title: Futures studies

text: This concept may be embedded in standard foresight projects and introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to increase the ability of social groups adapt to surprises arising in turbulent business environments. Such sudden and unique incidents might constitute turning points in the evolution of a certain trend or system. Wild cards may or may not be announced by weak signals, which are incomplete and fragmented data from which relevant foresight information might be inferred. Sometimes, mistakenly, wild cards and weak signals are considered as synonyms, which they are not. One of the most often cited examples of a wild card event in recent history is 9/11. Nothing had happened in the past that could point to such a possibility and yet it had a huge impact on everyday life in the United States, from simple tasks like how to travel via airplane to deeper cultural values. Wild card events might also be natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, which can force the relocation of huge populations and wipe out entire crops or completely disrupt the supply chain of many businesses. Although wild card events cannot be predicted, after they occur it is often easy to reflect back and convincingly explain why they happened.


title: Futures studies

text: A long-running tradition in various cultures, and especially in the media, involves various spokespersons making predictions for the upcoming year at the beginning of the year. These predictions are thought-provokers, which sometimes base themselves on current trends in culture (music, movies, fashion, politics); sometimes they make hopeful guesses as to what major events might take place over the course of the next year. Evidently, some of these predictions may come true as the year unfolds, though many fail. When predicted events fail to take place, the authors of the predictions may state that misinterpretation of the "signs" and portents may explain the failure of the prediction.


title: Futures studies

text: Marketers have increasingly started to embrace futures studies, in an effort to benefit from an increasingly competitive marketplace with fast production cycles, using such techniques as trendspotting as popularized by Faith Popcorn.


title: Futures studies

text: Trends come in different sizes. A megatrend extends over many generations, and in cases of climate, megatrends can cover periods prior to human existence. They describe complex interactions between many factors. The increase in population from the palaeolithic period to the present provides an example. Megatrends are likely to produce greater change than any previous one, because technology is causing trends to unfold at an accelerating pace. The concept was popularized by the 1982 book Megatrends by futurist John Naisbitt.


title: Futures studies

text: Possible new trends grow from innovations, projects, beliefs or actions and activism that have the potential to grow and eventually go mainstream in the future.


title: Futures studies

text: Very often, trends relate to one another the same way as a tree-trunk relates to branches and twigs. For example, a well-documented movement toward equality between men and women might represent a branch trend. The trend toward reducing differences in the salaries of men and women in the Western world could form a twig on that branch.


title: Futures studies

text: Understanding the technology adoption cycle helps futurists monitor trend development. Trends start as weak signals by small mentions in fringe media outlets, discussion conversations or blog posts, often by innovators. As these ideas, projects, beliefs or technologies gain acceptance, they move into the phase of early adopters.


title: Futures studies

text: In the beginning of a trend's development, it is difficult to tell if it will become a significant trend that creates changes or merely a trendy fad that fades into forgotten history. Trends will emerge as initially unconnected dots but eventually coalesce into persistent change.


title: Futures studies

text: Some trends emerge when enough confirmation occurs in the various media, surveys or questionnaires to show that it has an increasingly accepted value, behavior or technology, it becomes accepted as a bona fide trend. Trends can also gain confirmation by the existence of other trends perceived as springing from the same branch. Some commentators claim that when 15% to 25% of a given population integrates an innovation, project, belief or action into their daily life then a trend becomes mainstream.


title: Futures studies

text: Gartner created their Hype Cycle to illustrate the phases a technology moves through as it grows from research and development to mainstream adoption. The unrealistic expectations and subsequent disillusionment that virtual reality experienced in the 1990s and early 2000s is an example of the middle phases encountered before a technology can begin to be integrated into society.


title: Futures studies

text: Education in the field of futures studies has taken place for some time. Beginning in the United States in the 1960s, it has since developed in many different countries. Futures education encourages the use of concepts, tools and processes that allow students to think long-term, consequentially, and imaginatively. It generally helps students to:


title: Futures studies

text: Thorough documentation of the history of futures education exists, for example in the work of Richard A. Slaughter (2004), David Hicks, Ivana Milojević to name a few.


title: Futures studies

text: While futures studies remains a relatively new academic tradition, numerous tertiary institutions around the world teach it. These vary from small programs, or universities with just one or two classes, to programs that offer certificates and incorporate futures studies into other degrees, (for example in planning, business, environmental studies, economics, development studies, science and technology studies). Various formal Masters-level programs exist on six continents. Finally, doctoral dissertations around the world have incorporated futures studies (see e.g. Rohrbeck, 2010; von der Gracht, 2008; Hines, 2012). A recent survey documented approximately 50 cases of futures studies at the tertiary level.


title: Futures studies

text: A Futures Studies program is offered at Tamkang University, Taiwan. Futures Studies is a required course at the undergraduate level, with between three and five thousand students taking classes on an annual basis. Housed in the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies is an MA Program. Only ten students are accepted annually in the program. Associated with the program is the "Journal of Futures Studies".


title: Futures studies

text: The longest running Future Studies program in North America was established in 1975 at the University of Houston–Clear Lake. It moved to the University of Houston in 2007 and renamed the degree to Foresight. The program was established on the belief that if history is studied and taught in an academic setting, then so should the future. Its mission is to prepare professional futurists. The curriculum incorporates a blend of the essential theory, a framework and methods for doing the work, and a focus on application for clients in business, government, nonprofits, and society in general.


title: Futures studies

text: As of 2003, over 40 tertiary education establishments around the world were delivering one or more courses in futures studies. The World Futures Studies Federation has a comprehensive survey of global futures programs and courses. The Acceleration Studies Foundation maintains an annotated list of primary and secondary graduate futures studies programs.


title: Futures studies

text: The University of Stellenbosch Business School in South Africa offers a PGDip in Future Studies as well as a MPhil in Future Studies degree.


title: Futures studies

text: Several corporations and government agencies utilize foresight products to both better understand potential risks and prepare for potential opportunities as an anticipatory approach. Several government agencies publish material for internal stakeholders as well as make that material available to broader public. Examples of this include the US Congressional Budget Office long term budget projections, the National Intelligence Center, and the United Kingdom Government Office for Science. Much of this material is used by policy makers to inform policy decisions and government agencies to develop long-term plan. Several corporations, particularly those with long product development lifecycles, utilize foresight and future studies products and practitioners in the development of their business strategies. The Shell Corporation is one such entity. Foresight professionals and their tools are increasingly being used in both the private and public areas to help leaders deal with an increasingly complex and interconnected world.


title: Futures studies

text: Imperial cycles represent an "expanding pulsation" of "mathematically describable" macro-historic trend.


title: Futures studies

text: Chinese philosopher K'ang Yu-wei and French demographer Georges Vacher de Lapouge stressed in the late 19th century that the trend cannot proceed indefinitely on the finite surface of the globe. The trend is bound to culminate in a world empire. K'ang Yu-wei predicted that the matter will be decided in a contest between Washington and Berlin; Vacher de Lapouge foresaw this contest as being between the United States and Russia and wagered the odds were in the United States' favour. Both published their futures studies before H. G. Wells introduced the science of future in his "Anticipations" (1901).


title: Futures studies

text: Four later anthropologists—Hornell Hart, Raoul Naroll, Louis Morano, and Robert Carneiro—researched the expanding imperial cycles. They reached the same conclusion that a world empire is not only pre-determined but close at hand and attempted to estimate the time of its appearance.


title: Futures studies

text: As foresight has expanded to include a broader range of social concerns all levels and types of education have been addressed, including formal and informal education. Many countries are beginning to implement Foresight in their Education policy. A few programs are listed below:


title: Futures studies

text: By the early 2000s, educators began to independently institute futures studies (sometimes referred to as futures thinking) lessons in K-12 classroom environments. To meet the need, non-profit futures organizations designed curriculum plans to supply educators with materials on the topic. Many of the curriculum plans were developed to meet common core standards. Futures studies education methods for youth typically include age-appropriate collaborative activities, games, systems thinking and scenario building exercises.


title: Futures studies

text: There are several organizations devoted to furthering the advancement of Foresight and Future Studies worldwide. Teach the Future emphasizes foresight educational practices appropriate for K-12 schools. Warmer Sun Education is a global online learning community for K-12 students and their parents to learn about exponential progress, emerging technologies and their applications and exploring possible pathways to solve humanity's grand challenges. The University of Houston has a Master's (MS) level graduate program through the College of Technology as well as a certificate program for those interested in advanced studies. The Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii Manoa has the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies which offers a Master's (MA) in addition to a Doctorate (Ph.D.).


title: Futures studies

text: Wendell Bell and Ed Cornish acknowledge science fiction as a catalyst to future studies, conjuring up visions of tomorrow. Science fiction's potential to provide an "imaginative social vision" is its contribution to futures studies and public perspective. Productive sci-fi presents plausible, normative scenarios. Jim Dator attributes the foundational concepts of "images of the future" to Wendell Bell, for clarifying Fred Polak's concept in Images of the Future, as it applies to futures studies. Similar to futures studies' scenarios thinking, empirically supported visions of the future are a window into what the future could be. However, unlike in futures studies, most science fiction works present a single alternative, unless the narrative deals with multiple timelines or alternative realities, such as in the works of Phillip K. Dick, and a multitude of small and big screen works. Pamela Sargent states, "Science fiction reflects attitudes typical of this century." She gives a brief history of impactful sci-fi publications, like The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, and "Starship Troopers" by Robert A. Heinlein. Alternate perspectives validate sci-fi as part of the fuzzy "images of the future".


title: Futures studies

text: Brian David Johnson is a futurist and author who uses science fiction to help build the future. He has been a futurist at Intel, and is now the resident futurist at Arizona State University. "His work is called 'future casting'—using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to create a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing." Brian David Johnson has developed a practical guide to utilizing science fiction as a tool for futures studies. Science Fiction Prototyping combines the past with the present, including interviews with notable science fiction authors to provide the tools needed to "design the future with science fiction."


title: Futures studies

text: 3. The consequences, for better, or worse, or both, of the science or technology on the people and your world


title: Futures studies

text: "A full Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) is 6–12 pages long, with a popular structure being; an introduction, background work, the fictional story (the bulk of the SFP), a short summary and a summary (reflection). Most often science fiction prototypes extrapolate current science forward and, therefore, include a set of references at the end."


title: Futures studies

text: Ian Miles reviews "The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", identifying ways Science Fiction and Futures Studies "cross-fertilize, as well as the ways in which they differ distinctly." Science Fiction cannot be simply considered fictionalized Futures Studies. It may have aims other than foresight or "prediction, and be no more concerned with shaping the future than any other genre of literature." It is not to be understood as an explicit pillar of futures studies, due to its inconsistency of integrated futures research. Additionally, Dennis Livingston, a literature and Futures journal critic says, "The depiction of truly alternative societies has not been one of science fiction's strong points, especially" preferred, normative envisages. The strengths of the genre as a form of futurist thinking are discussed by Tom Lombardo, who argues that select science fiction "combines a highly detailed and concrete level of realism with theoretical speculation on the future", "addresses all the main dimensions of the future and synthesizes all these dimensions into integrative visions of the future", and "reflects contemporary and futurist thinking", therefore it "can be viewed as the mythology of the future."


title: Futures studies

text: It is notable that although there are no hard limits on horizons in future studies and foresight efforts, typical future horizons explored are within the realm of the practical and do not span more than a few decades. Nevertheless, there are hard science fiction works that can be applicable as visioning exercises that span longer periods of time when the topic is of a significant time scale, such as is in the case of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, which deals with the terraforming of Mars and extends two centuries forward through the early 23rd century. In fact, there is some overlap between science fiction writers and professional futurists such as in the case of David Brin. Arguably, the work of science fiction authors has seeded many ideas that have later been developed (be it technological or social in nature)—from early works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to the later Arthur C. Clarke and William Gibson. Beyond literary works, futures studies and futurists have influenced film and TV works. The 2002 movie adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's short stort, "Minority Report", had a group of consultants to build a realistic vision of the future, including futurist Peter Schwartz. TV shows such as HBO's "Westworld" and Channel 4/Netflix's "Black Mirror" follow many of the rules of futures studies to build the world, the scenery and storytelling in a way futurists would in experiential scenarios and works.


title: Futures studies

text: Several governments have formalized strategic foresight agencies to encourage long range strategic societal planning, with most notable are the governments of Singapore, Finland, and the United Arab Emirates. Other governments with strategic foresight agencies include Canada's Policy Horizons Canada and the Malaysia's Malaysian Foresight Institute.


title: Futures studies

text: The Singapore government's Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF) is part of the Strategy Group within the Prime Minister's Office. Their mission is to position the Singapore government to navigate emerging strategic challenges and harness potential opportunities. Singapore's early formal efforts in strategic foresight began in 1991 with the establishment of the Risk Detection and Scenario Planning Office in the Ministry of Defence. In addition to the CSF, the Singapore government has established the Strategic Futures Network, which brings together deputy secretary-level officers and foresight units across the government to discuss emerging trends that may have implications for Singapore.


title: Futures studies

text: Since the 1990s, Finland has integrated strategic foresight within the parliament and Prime Minister's Office. The government is required to present a "Report of the Future" each parliamentary term for review by the parliamentary Committee for the Future. Led by the Prime Minister's Office, the Government Foresight Group coordinates the government's foresight efforts. Futures research is supported by the Finnish Society for Futures Studies (established in 1980), the Finland Futures Research Centre (established in 1992), and the Finland Futures Academy (established in 1998) in coordination with foresight units in various government agencies.


title: Futures studies

text: In the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, announced in September 2016 that all government ministries were to appoint Directors of Future Planning. Sheikh Mohammed described the UAE Strategy for the Future as an "integrated strategy to forecast our nation's future, aiming to anticipate challenges and seize opportunities". The Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and Future (MOCAF) is mandated with crafting the UAE Strategy for the Future and is responsible for the portfolio of the future of UAE.


title: Futures studies

text: In 2018, the United States General Accountability Office (GAO) created the Center for Strategic Foresight to enhance its ability to "serve as the agency's principal hub for identifying, monitoring, and analyzing emerging issues facing policymakers." The Center is composed of non-resident Fellows who are considered leading experts in foresight, planning and future thinking. In September 2019 they hosted a conference on space policy and "deep fake" synthetic media to manipulate online and real-world interactions.


title: Futures studies

text: Foresight is a framework or lens which could be used in risk analysis and management in a medium- to long-term time range. A typical formal foresight project would identify key drivers and uncertainties relevant to the scope of analysis. It would also analyze how the drivers and uncertainties could interact to create the most probable scenarios of interest and what risks they might contain. An additional step would be identifying actions to avoid or minimize these risks.


title: Futures studies

text: One classic example of such work was how foresight work at the Royal Dutch Shell international oil company led to envision the turbulent oil prices of the 1970s as a possibility and better embed this into company planning. Yet the practice at Shell focuses on stretching the company's thinking rather than in making predictions. Its planning is meant to link and embed scenarios in "organizational processes such as strategy making, innovation, risk management, public affairs, and leadership development."


title: Futures studies

text: Foresight studies can also consider the possibility of "wild card" events—or events that many consider would be impossible to envision—although often such events can be imagined as remote possibilities as part of foresight work. One of many possible areas of focus for a foresight lens could also be identifying conditions for potential scenarios of high-level risks to society.


title: Futures studies

text: These risks may arise from the development and adoption of emerging technologies and/or social change. Special interest lies on hypothetical future events that have the potential to damage human well-being on a global scale—global catastrophic risks. Such events may cripple or destroy modern civilization or, in the case of existential risks, even cause human extinction. Potential global catastrophic risks include but are not limited to climate change, hostile artificial intelligence, nanotechnology weapons, nuclear warfare, total war, and pandemics. The aim of a professional futurist would be to identify conditions that could lead to these events in order to create "pragmatically feasible roads to alternative futures."


title: Futures studies

text: Futurists are practitioners of the foresight profession, which seeks to provide organizations and individuals with images of the future to help them prepare for contingencies and to maximize opportunities. A foresight project begins with a question that ponders the future of any given subject area, including technology, medicine, government and business. Futurists engage in environmental scanning to search for drivers of change and emerging trends that may have an effect on the focus topic. The scanning process includes reviewing social media platforms, researching already prepared reports, engaging in Delphi studies, reading articles and any other sources of relevant information and preparing and analyzing data extrapolations. Then, through one of a number of highly structured methods futurists organize this information and use it to create multiple future scenarios for the topic, also known as a domain. The value of preparing many different versions of the future rather than a singular prediction is that they provide a client with the ability to prepare long-range plans that will weather and optimize a variety of contexts.


title: Futures studies

text: The Association for Professional Futurists recognizes the Most Significant Futures Works for the purpose of identifying and rewarding the work of foresight professionals and others whose work illuminates aspects of the future.


title: George of the Jungle

text: George of the Jungle is an American animated television series produced and created by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who also created "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show". The character George was inspired by the story of Tarzan and a cartoon characterization of George Eiferman (Mr. America, Mr. Universe, IFBB Hall of Famer) drawn by a cook on his mine sweeper in the Navy during World War II. It ran for 17 episodes on Saturday mornings from September 9 to December 30, 1967, on the American television network ABC.


title: George of the Jungle

text: Each episode featured three segments in the form of three unrelated cartoons: "George of the Jungle", "Tom Slick", and "Super Chicken". Each of the cartoons ended with a strike on the tympani (kettle drum), which changed to an ascending tone, following a pun.


title: George of the Jungle

text: Unlike previous Ward series, the animation production was done in Hollywood using veteran animators Phil Duncan, Rod Scribner, and Rudy Zamora, among others. Each segment's theme song was written by the team of Stan Worth and Sheldon Allman, though the cartoons themselves had little or no music scoring, as with "Rocky and Bullwinkle". Ward mainstays Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees, and Daws Butler provided most of the character voices over all three segments.


title: George of the Jungle

text: The cartoons are technically more advanced than the rather crude animation in Ward's earlier series, which originated from Gamma Productions, a Mexican studio sponsored by Ward. He was so pleased with "George of the Jungle" that he allowed production to go over budget, which resulted in considerable financial loss, ultimately limiting the series to 17 episodes.


title: George of the Jungle

text: The title segment, "George of the Jungle", is a parody of the Tarzan stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs. George (voiced by Bill Scott) is a dim-witted but big-hearted "ape man" who is always called upon by District Commissioner Alistair (voiced by Paul Frees) to save inhabitants of the jungle territory of Mbwebwe Province in Africa from various threats.


title: George of the Jungle

text: In the opening title, George is depicted swinging on vines, repeatedly slamming face-first into trees or other obstacles even as theme-song singers warn him to "watch out for that tree!" Another running gag is that George keeps forgetting that he lives in a treehouse, falling from it to the ground every time he leaves home.


title: George of the Jungle

text: George's "beloved mate" is Ursula (voiced by June Foray), a Jane-like character (The character was referred to as Jane in the first episode and original pilot) far brighter than George, whom George refers to as "Fella" (the phrase in the title song ""[W]hile Fella and Ursula stay in step..."" is meant to show that they are the same person). George's closest friend is an ape named Ape (voiced by Paul Frees impersonating Ronald Colman) who, like Ursula, is far more intelligent than George. George has a pet elephant named Shep, who behaves like a lap dog, or, as George refers to him, a "great big peanut-lovin' poochie," and who George thinks is a dog. Also of note is the Tooky Tooky (or Tookie Tookie) bird, famous for his call: "Ah ah ee ee tooky tooky!"


title: George of the Jungle

text: George's two most frequent foes are a pair of stereotypical hunters named "Tiger" Titheridge (voiced by Daws Butler) and "Weevil" Plumtree (voiced by Paul Frees). Tiger, the taller of the two, wears a pith helmet and khakis, has a pencil moustache, and speaks in a poncy Oxford accent, while Weevil talks like a pirate and wears a white t-shirt and shorts with a bush hat. Another one of George's recurring enemies is a mad scientist named Dr. Chicago (voiced by Daws Butler).


title: George of the Jungle

text: George, though hopelessly unintelligent, possesses substantial strength and jungle instincts that allow him to track down enemies. When trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation, he carries a miniature phrase book with numerous animal calls to summon help—although he usually gives the wrong call.


title: George of the Jungle

text: "Tom Slick" features the title character (voiced by Bill Scott), a racecar driver who competes in races with his trusty vehicle, the Thunderbolt Greaseslapper. He is accompanied by his girlfriend Marigold (voiced by June Foray), and his elderly mechanic Gertie Growler (also voiced by Bill Scott). Tom's chief antagonists are Baron Otto Matic (voiced by Paul Frees) and his lackey Clutcher (voiced by Daws Butler impersonating Frank Fontaine as "Crazy Guggenheim"), whom the Baron often hits across the head with a monkey wrench when he messes up Otto's plots.


title: George of the Jungle

text: "Super Chicken" features the title character (voiced by Bill Scott in a Boston Brahmin accent), a superhero (who, in "real life", is wealthy Henry Cabot Henhouse III) with a lion sidekick named Fred (voiced by Paul Frees impersonating Ed Wynn). Super Chicken usually begins their adventures with the battle cry, "To the Super Coop, Fred!", to which Fred replies, "Roger Willcox!" When Fred comments on his latest injury, Super Chicken responds with a variation on the theme, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred!" Following his own mistakes, Super Chicken remarks, "I'm glad no one was here to see that!"


title: George of the Jungle

text: Each of the following episodes consists of a George of the Jungle cartoon, a "Super Chicken" cartoon, and a Tom Slick cartoon.


title: George of the Jungle

text: On February 12, 2008, Classic Media released a complete collection of the 1967 series which included, as a bonus feature, the original pilot cartoons for both "George of the Jungle" and "Super Chicken".


title: George of the Jungle

text: In 2002, "TV Guide" ranked "George of the Jungle" #30 on its "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time" list.


title: George of the Jungle

text: In 1997, the segment was adapted into a live-action film, titled "George of the Jungle". Brendan Fraser played the title role, with Leslie Mann as Ursula, John Cleese as the voice of Ape and Thomas Haden Church as the villain, Lyle Van De Groot. A direct-to-video sequel, "George of the Jungle 2", starring Christopher Showerman as George and Julie Benz as Ursula, was released in 2003.


title: George of the Jungle

text: Classic Media developed a new "George of the Jungle" Flash animation series 40 years later in 2007. It now utilizes a co-production. The new version of the series is co-produced with Studio B Productions and Teletoon Canada (with other studios also involved), and currently airs on Teletoon in Canada and on Cartoon Network in the United States (starting with a Christmas-themed episode December 21, 2007). The series was scheduled to air on Nicktoons in the United Kingdom and Disney Channel Asia in Southeast Asia. The series officially premiered on Cartoon Network on January 18. Both seasons are available digitally on iTunes.


title: George of the Jungle

text: The series initially ran 26 episodes, with two "George" stories per episode for a total of 52 stories. In 2016, 26 additional episodes were made, also with two "George" stories per episode.


title: George of the Jungle

text: "Weird Al" Yankovic did a cover version of the "George of the Jungle" theme on his 1985 album "Dare to Be Stupid", the only straight cover Yankovic ever released on an album, and which later appeared on the soundtrack of the 1997 live-action film. Another cover of the theme by The Presidents of the United States of America also appeared on the soundtrack and was the title theme for the film.


title: George of the Jungle

text: The Rhino Records 1989 release "Rerun Rock: Superstars Sing Television Themes" included a cover version performed in the style of "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin and sung by Scott Shaw.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: My Way () is a 2011 South Korean war film produced, co-written and directed by Kang Je-gyu. It stars Jang Dong-gun, alongside Japanese actor Joe Odagiri and Chinese actress Fan Bingbing.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: This film is based on the story of a Korean named Yang Kyoungjong who was allegedly captured by the Americans on D-Day. Yang Kyoungjong was conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army, the Red Army, and the Wehrmacht.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: The year is 1928 in Gyeong-seong (present-day Seoul), Korea. Young Kim Jun-shik (Shin Sang-yeob), his father (Chun Ho-jin) and sister Eun-soo (Lee Yeon-hee) work on the farm of the Hasegawa family (Shiro Sano, Kumi Nakamura) in Japanese-occupied Korea. Both Jun-shik and young Tatsuo Hasegawa (Sung Yu-bin) are interested in running. When they are teenagers (Do Ji-han, Yukichi Kobayashi), they have become fierce competitors. Tatsuo's grandfather (Isao Natsuyagi) is killed in a bomb attack by a Korean freedom fighter, and a Korean runner, Sohn Kee-chung (Yoon Hee-won), then wins a marathon race against Japanese competitors, which further inflames Korean-Japanese tensions.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: In May 1938, Jun-shik (Jang Dong-gun) is working as a rickshaw runner. Koreans have been banned from taking part in sports events, and Tatsuo (Joe Odagiri), now a fierce Japanese nationalist, has sworn that a Korean will never again win a race. He has been accepted by a medical college in Berlin, but Tatsuo decides to stay in Korea to run in the All Japan Trials for the marathon. Sohn secretly backs Jun-shik, who wins the race, but Tatsuo is awarded the medal when Jun-shik is disqualified for allegedly cheating. A riot by Korean spectators ensues, and as punishment, those who started the riot are forcibly drafted into the Japanese Army, including Jun-shik and his friend Lee Jong-dae (Kim In-kwon), who has a crush on Eun-soo.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: In July 1939, they find themselves, along with 100 other Koreans, in the battle at Nomonhan, on the border with Mongolia, where a Chinese sniper, Shirai (Fan Bingbing), avenging the deaths of her family at the hands of the Japanese, is captured and tortured. Tatsuo, now a colonel, arrives and takes command and forces the existing commander, who is far fairer to the Koreans, Takakura (高倉; Shingo Tsurumi), to commit seppuku. After refusing to join a suicide squad, organized by Tatsuo, to fight the Soviets, Jun-shik is imprisoned with Shirai but escapes with her, Jong-dae, and two other friends to the River Khalkhin. Jun-shik, seeing the tanks on the horizon, attempt to return to base to warn the Japanese forces. During his return, he is attacked by a Soviet I-16 Ishak, and is saved by Shirai, who dies after shooting down the plane. Jun-shik returns to the base and manages to warn the Japanese forces that a large-scale Soviet tank attack is coming, but Tatsuo refuses to order a retreat. During the one-sided battle, a tank shell explodes near Tatsuo and Jun-shik, which knocks them unconscious.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: In February 1940, Jun-shik and Tatsuo end up in Kungursk prisoner-of-war camp north of Perm, in the Soviet Union, in which both Koreans and Japanese are incarcerated together. Under the name of Anton, Jong-dae has become a work-unit leader, helps his Korean friends, and abuses the Japanese, but it becomes clear that his ultimate allegiance now lies with the Soviets. Jun-shik humiliates Tatsuo in a sanctioned fight to the death, but Jun-shik suddenly refuses to kill Tatsuo, and both get punished together. Later, a work accident incites a riot, which nearly leads to the execution of Tatsuo and Jun-shik by firing squad, but news comes that Germany has declared war on the Soviet Union. The Soviets immediately conscript the prisoners-of-war and shoot those who refuse or are too slow to don the Red Army uniform. Jong-dae volunteers Jun-shik and Tatsuo, still tied to the stakes, into the Red Army, which saves their lives. They all fight in a bloody battle against the German army at Dedovsk in December 1941. Jong-dae dies leading the prisoners to battle, but Tatsuo and Jun-shik manage to survive. Jun-shik convinces Tatsuo to don German military apparel taken from bodies and trek over the mountains into German territory. As they travel, it becomes clear that Tatsuo has been injured. They come upon an abandoned town in which Jun-shik goes out to find medicine to give to Tatsuo. During his search, Jun-shik is found by German soldiers. Unable to understand him, they capture him. Meanwhile, the dying Tatsuo is found by soldiers searching the house he was placed in.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: Three years later, Tatsuo is part of the German Army. He finds himself on the beaches of Normandy, France, just prior to the D-Day invasion by the Allies. As the army fortifies the beaches, Tatsuo sees a man running on the beach. He catches up to him and sees that it is Jun-shik. It is apparent that they have not seen each other since their capture by the Germans. They decide to run away from Normandy to catch a ship in Cherbourg which rumored to safely sail out of the theater, and ultimately to return home to Korea. As they attempt to leave, the Normandy Landings begin. Jun-shik and Tatsuo are locked into a machine-gun pillbox by a German officer. The two force open the door and emerge to a scene of chaos, with American soldiers overrunning the beach. They run inland, but Jun-shik is wounded by a bomb fragment in the chest and bleeds profusely. Noticing American paratroopers approaching, the dying Jun-shik forcibly replaces Tatsuo's identification tags with his own and tells Tatsuo, "He is now Jun-shik." Otherwise, since Tatsuo is Japanese and considered a sworn enemy of the Americans, he could be killed on the spot.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: Soon afterwards, Jun-Shik dies and Tatsuo cries aloud as the Americans close in. Tatsuo is later seen sprinting towards the finish in the 1948 Olympic games as "Jun-Shik Kim." The film ends with a flashback of their first encounter back in Gyeong-seong. He monologues that when he encountered Jun-Shik as a child, he was secretly happy to have found someone who could be his running mate.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: This is the first film Kang Je-gyu directed after taking a 7-year hiatus. Kang first received the original screenplay by writer Kim Byung-in (also known as Justin Kim) the working title "D-Day" in 2007 and then after watching a Korean documentary on the subject decided to turn the script into a film in 2008. The production lasted eight months from October 2010 to June 2011, with locations in Latvia and Korea (Hapcheon, Cheongoksan National Park in Gangwon Province, Saemangeum Seawall).


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: Despite being one of the most expensive Korean films ever made with a budget of (), the film flopped at the box office. It encountered stronger than expected competition from "", released on 15 December, and it also received a lukewarm response from viewers. From its release 21 December to the end of the year, "My Way" sold 1.58 million tickets – only a small fraction of what it would have needed in order to break even.


title: My Way (2011 film)

text: The film was nominated in the category of "Best International Film" for the 39th Saturn Awards but lost against "Headhunters".


title: Yoke

text: A yoke is a wooden beam sometimes used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, used in different cultures, and for different types of oxen. A pair of oxen may be called a "yoke of oxen", and yoke is also a verb, as in "to "yoke" a pair of oxen". Other animals that may be yoked include horses, mules, donkeys, and water buffalo.


title: Yoke

text: The word "yoke" is believed to derive from Proto-Indo-European *yugóm (yoke), from root *"yewg"- (join, unite), and is thus cognate with "yoga". This root has descendants in almost all known Indo-European languages including German "Joch", Latin "iugum", Ancient Greek ζυγόν ("zygon"), Persian یوغ ("yuğ"), Sanskrit युग ("yugá"), Hittite 𒄿𒌑𒃷 (iúkan), Old Church Slavonic иго ("igo"), Lithuanian "jungas", Old Irish "cuing", and Armenian լուծ ("luts"), all meaning "yoke".


title: Yoke

text: A "bow yoke" is a shaped wooden crosspiece bound to the necks of a pair of oxen (or occasionally to horses). It is held on the animals' necks by an oxbow, from which it gets its name. The oxbow is usually U-shaped and also transmits force from the animals' shoulders. A swivel between the animals, beneath the centre of the yoke, attaches to the pole of a vehicle or to chains (traces) used to drag a load.


title: Yoke

text: A "head yoke" fits onto the head of the oxen. It usually fits behind the horns, and has carved-out sections into which the horns fit; it may be a single beam attached to both oxen, or each ox may have a separate short beam. The yoke is then strapped to the horns of the oxen with yoke straps. Some types fit instead onto the front of the head, again strapped to the horns, and ox pads are then used for cushioning the forehead of the ox (see picture). A tug pole is held to the bottom of the yoke using yoke irons and chains. The tug pole can either be a short pole with a chain attached for hauling, or a long pole with a hook on the end that has no chain at all. Sometimes the pole is attached to a wagon and the oxen are simply backed over this pole, the pole is then raised between them and a backing bolt is dropped into the chains on the yoke irons in order to haul the wagon.


title: Yoke

text: A "withers yoke" is a yoke that fits just in front of the withers, or the shoulder blades, of the oxen. The yoke is held in position by straps, either alone or with a pair of wooden staves on either side of the ox's withers; the pull is however from the yoke itself, not from the staves. Withers yokes particularly suit zebu cattle, which have high humps on their withers.


title: Yoke

text: Although all three yoke types are effective, each has its advantages and disadvantages. As noted above, withers yokes suit zebu cattle, and head yokes can of course only be used for animals with suitable horns. Head yokes need to be re-shaped frequently to fit the animals' horns as they grow; unlike other types, a single-beam head yoke fixes the heads of the oxen apart, helping them to stand quietly without fighting. A single-beam head yoke may offer better braking ability on downhill grades and appears to be preferred in rugged mountainous areas such as Switzerland, Spain and parts of Italy. Bow yokes need to be the correct size for the animal, and new ones are often made as an animal grows, but they need no adjustment in use. Whichever type is used, various lengths of yoke may be required for different agricultural implements or to adjust to different crop-row spacings.


title: Yoke

text: A yoke may be used with a single animal. Oxen are normally worked in pairs, but water buffalo in Asian countries are commonly used singly, with the aid of a bow-shaped withers yoke. Use of single bow or withers yokes on oxen is documented from North America, China, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Switzerland, and several designs of single head or forehead yoke are recorded in Germany.


title: Yoke

text: The yoke has connotations of subservience and toiling; in some ancient cultures it was traditional to force a vanquished enemy to pass beneath a symbolic yoke of spears or swords. The yoke may be a metaphor for something oppressive or burdensome, such as feudalism, imperialism, corvée, tribute, or conscription, as in the expressions the "Norman Yoke" (in England), the "Tatar Yoke" (in Russia), or the "Turkish Yoke" (in the Balkans).


title: Yoke

text: The metaphor can also refer to the state of being linked or chained together by contract or marriage, similar to a pair of oxen. This sense is also the source of the word yoga, as linking with the divine.


title: Yoke

text: In the 20th century, the yoke and arrows became a political symbol of the Falange political movement in Spain.


title: Mitchell Robinson

text: Mitchell Robinson III (born April 1, 1998) is an American professional basketball player for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was selected with the 36th overall pick in the 2018 NBA draft. Before beginning his professional career, he gained national coverage for withdrawing from his commitment to attend Western Kentucky University to instead dedicate the entire 2017–18 season for training on his own, being the first player to make such a decision.


title: Mitchell Robinson

text: Mitchell Robinson attended Pine Forest High School in Pensacola, Florida for the first two years of his high school career, briefly transferring to Landry-Walker College and Career Preparatory High School in New Orleans as a sophomore, for whom he never played. He did appear for Pine Forest as a freshman and sophomore, but didn't make much of an impact, as he was still relatively new to basketball, only starting playing in eighth grade, during a growth spurt that took him from to . He first appeared in the summer league before his junior year for Chalmette High School.