FiRe 2017: The Rebels Win

By Charly Kuecks

Mark Anderson, the founder of the Strategic News Service (SNS), reflected on a successful fifteenth year of the Future in Review conference in a session titled “Your Turn: The Next Five Years.”

He compared the participants’ impromptu discussions in the hallways to the Rebel Alliance camps gathered around campfires in the “Star Wars” film franchise.

Anderson discussed a mechanism of how to put technologically rebellious ideas into practice through the following framework, which he termed a “mantra:”

1. In the post-information age, all economic sectors are driven by tech.
2. All data is Big Data.
3. Artificial intelligence is the key to all Big Data analysis.
4. Pattern recognition is the key to this analysis.
5. Flow and interaction are the drivers of patterns.
6. Patterns of flow and interaction are the key to knowledge.
7. Pattern computing is the future of design.

Anderson invited the audience to check out the SNS-supported books, the most recent of which is “The Universal Powers of Flow and Interaction,” available for purchase online. The session ended with a call by student intern Hannah Littell to join FiReFilms, the documentary film arm of FiRe.

In closing, Anderson made an optimistic reference to both FiRe’s participants and the “Star Wars” heroes.

“I think the Rebels win,” he said.