The Futures Agency

Tag Results

The Human-Environment Dialog in Award-winning Children’s Picture Books - Williams et al via Wiley Online Library

A recent study by J. Allen Williams and colleagues found that the depiction of the ‘built environment’ — cities, homes, buildings — has increased in Caldecott award winning books since the ’60s, when ‘natural’ settings were about half of all images. Today, the depictions of the built environment occur twice as frequently as the natural:

via Wiley

If we ask what today’s children are learning about the environment from contemporary picture books, perhaps the most important answer is that for the most part they are reading stories set in built environments. They are exposed to relatively few images of the natural environment and even fewer images of humans interacting with nature. They also are seeing less human interaction with animals than in the past. Scenes of interaction with wild animals have never been common, but have become even less so in recent years. Perhaps because interaction with domestic animals is relatively rare in the more recent books, when it is shown, it is more likely to play an important role in a story.

We cannot say that increasing isolation from the natural world influenced the content changes we have found in children’s picture books, but the increase in built environments and the decline in natural environments and wild animals are certainly consistent with it.

As we become increasingly urbanized, this will increase. Children’s dreams lie atop the arc of the future.

Posted by
Stowe Boyd

Five By Five -13 Feb

1. Scientific publishing: The price of information via The Economist —There is a growing revolution in the scientific community, a rejection of the status quo involving scientific journals. Many prominent academics are advocating a more open, less commercial model of publishing, where companies like Elsevier don’t get to make hundreds of millions based on labor and writing provided by academics.

#academia #academicpublishing #newmedia

2. Report Card for America’s Infrastructure via The American Society Of Civil Engineers — ASCE gave the US an overall D in infrastructure in 2009, and estimates that $2.2 trillion needs to be invested over the following five years, which has obviously not been done. ASCE estimated that less that $1 trillion would be spent. We can expect a serious degradation of infrastructure — roads, aviation, dams, bridges, energy, water systems, schools, parks, rail and transit — and at least a few spectacular disasters before we even start to pay attention.

#infrastructure

3. Data Philanthropy: Public & Private Center Data Sharing for Global Resilience - Robert KirkPatrick via Global Pulse — KirkPatrick fashions the term data philanthropy — ‘the private sector shares data to support more timely and targeted policy action’ — and suggests that the architecture of releasing and reusing big data in the public center is still unformed, but has great promise. Issues of privacy, sharing, and tools are obvious, but the need for world resilience is even more clear.

#bigdata #dataphilanthropy #robertkirkpatrick #globalpulse

4. How Rapidly Cities Are Growing - Arjan de Raaf via Infographic List — Interesting infographic that show the number of people per hour migrating to the world’s largest cities. Delhi is adding 49 people per hour.

#migration #cities #urbanization #infographic

5. U.S. Space Science Confronts New Economic Reality - Adam Mann via Wired.com — Despite claims of American exceptionalism and innovation, funding for space science is dwindling and various agencies are having to make draconian choices on astronomy, exploration, and other space research. NASA may be backing out of two international space missions to Mars, for example, and meanwhile the costs of the planned James Webb Space Telescope have grown from $1B to $8.7B.

The segmented mirrors of the planned James Webb Space Telescope

#space #nasa #telescopes

…

Posted by
Stowe Boyd