UTOPIA (1)

(image, from the planet of the apes | film| here)

BBC radio 4, in our time, on

utopia 
modernist utopias 
thomas more

defying reasonable (1)

(suspicious practices: on the other side of future 'planning'/speculation)

Radio is the best! 

Here's a few short programs by BBC radio 4 about:

*precognition

*astrology

Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations (it's not really about the movie, but the narration)

*visions

Following: explanation on Dream Precognition study methodology from the koestler parapsychology unit (investigation center) in the University of Edinburgh, more here

Dream Precognition

Precognitive dreams are amongst the most commonly reported paranormal experiences. Precognitive dream studies are usually conducted in a sleep laboratory, and involve a participant trying to dream about a randomly chosen image or film clip that they will see in the morning (the target).

Method:  A precognitive dream study usually involves a small number of people who claim to be able to dream about the future.  In the first part of the study, the participant is connected to EEG equipment, and awoken whenever they enter REM state (associated with dreaming).  Each time they are asked to describe their dream.  In the morning they are shown the target. In the second part of the study an experimenter reads each of the participants’ dream reports, is shown several images or films (including the actual target) and asked to select the one that most closely matches the dream reports.  If they choose the correct target it counts as a hit, otherwise it counts as a miss. At the end of the study, the hit-rate is compared with the chance expectation.

Results: The first precognitive dream studies were carried out in the early 1970s at the Maimonides laboratory in New York, and obtained positive results.  These studies have been the subject of a great deal of debate.  Dr Caroline Watt recently attempted to replicate this landmark research, and found no evidence for dream precognition (Watt, Wiseman & Vuillaume, in press).  Her work into this topic has also explored the psychological factors behind reports of dream precognition (see Beliefs and experiences). Dr Watt’s full report of her Perrott-Warrick Senior Researcher programme of work on precognitive dream experiences is available here.

here's something i've started reading (small text about the prediction within film, the same goes for sci-fi, for instance..)

 a word about contingency (1)

I like to see contingency as possible outcome for the future. 
Ideally, I would focus on a somewhat folkloric idea of fortune telling and stuff like that (home made forecasts, general predictions, visions, prophecies of the future, etc). But I guess contingency falls back on something more..(I regret to say:) reasonable.. in terms of...the...errrrr....sciences of....prediction!! In the end, it sounds more like a concrete plan: it speculates on concrete basis about the near future with the concrete materials/tools of the present, keeping in mind that, 'uncertainty' is a quality inherent to the 'future', and like that contingency stands also for the 'possible'. The 'possible' can, of course be understood or measured accordingly to one believes or even faith, but personally i'm more interested in what is symptomatic today that is most likely to be concrete tomorrow..