September: Widening the Scope

In September, the One World, One Dream. Whose? blog will begin its final stage as a Futures Research experiment, an experiment geared at viewing the Beijing Olympics of 2008 in regards to China's past, present, and possible futures. In June we examined the long history of the nation now known as the People's Republic of China. In July, an examination of the current trends effecting the social-political-economic-and technological aspects of Chinese society. August, Was reserved for the Olympic games, the culmination of nearly a decades worth of planning, construction, and building of "the dream," and what we saw in that final version.

Now it is time to look at possible directions for the evolution of that dream and to broaden the scope of our imaginations and critical eye. We will begin to contextualize the Images of the Future as documented during the Beijing Games -- contextualize them in terms of the futures possible.

This contextualization will be centered upon an Alternative Futures exercise that uses the four foundational futures as a basis for the creation of scenarios. These fictitious scenes will present possible future worlds, from a variety of perspectives, representative of and built around the ideas of a Continued Growth Scenario, Decline/Decay Scenario, Disciplined Society, and Transformational Society. These will by no means be comprehensive or all-inclusive worlds, rather brief glimpses into possibilities.

By extrapolating some of the signifiers that were discussed in August's examination of Images, we will create and explore some of the futures that the Beijing Games have given us a glimpse of.
But first, we take one last look at the Olympiad, and its legacy...