Dear ASF Friends,

This is the archival website for the ASF nonprofit, founded in 2003 and still in operation today. ASF is now a research subsidiary of the Evo-Devo Institute (research in complexity, change and adaptiveness, est. 2008). Our educational subsidiary is Foresight University (training in adaptive foresight, est. 2015). We are in the process of building a new ASF website to communicate our best scientific and philosophical understanding of universal processes of accelerating change and their many implications for society, organizations, and humanity.

One of the most important insights ASF has learned in over two decades of studying accelerating change as a universal process--change that begins with the emergence of large scale structure and the first supermassive black holes shortly after the Big Bang, and that currently ends, on Earth and presumably other Earth-likes, with our rapidly improving digital learning systems-- is that the leading edge of universal complexity and change goes ever faster because it continually migrates inward, both in a physical sense (localizing and miniaturizing key metabolic, behavioral, and intelligence processes) and inward in a virtual sense (creating information and simulation, and using both to inform and substitute for physical behaviors). These two macrotrends, densification and dematerialization, strongly suggest that the future of intelligence in our universe is to venture much further into inner space, not outer space, the more complex our civilization becomes. In the long run, no other behavior can be comparably adaptive. This evolutionary developmental trajectory is exactly opposite to the typical vision humanity presently has for its long-run future in the universe. If this inner space future is true, as we believe the data show, it deserves far more scientific and strategic attention. See John's papers, Answering the Fermi Paradox, 2002, The Transcension Hypothesis, 2012, and Key Assumptions of the Transcension Hypothesis, 2016, for more on this foundational topic in acceleration studies, the scientific study of accelerating change as a universal process. ASF was formed to advance that nascent and still largely overlooked yet vital field of study.

In 2003-2005, under the leadership of ASF President John M. Smart, we ran three conferences at Stanford University on Accelerating Change. The first explored Acceleration as a Universal Process, a process we believe is partly driven by human creativity, and partly by human discovery. In our view, humanity doesn't fully control accelerating change. It is likely happening on all planets with intelligent life, in a process that increasingly grows out of, rather than into, the universe. Our great responsibility is to understand and guide this process better, toward the most humanizing ends possible. The second explored The Metaverse, which we define as the accelerating physical/virtual interface, in all its forms (MW/VR/AR/MR/XR etc.). The third explored two faces of accelerating planetary intelligence, IA and AI, or Intelligence Augmentation (for people) and Artificial Intelligence (for machines). The great Doug Englebart, coiner of the term Intelligence Augmentation, spoke at this event. So did several artificial neural network pioneers.

In 2006-2007, we ran a cross-industry foresight project, The Metaverse Roadmap, that explored the 20-year future of mirror worlds, virtual worlds, AR, and lifelogs. Check it out, it's pretty good technology and societal foresight work, in our view.

In 2008, we started the Evo-Devo Universe research community, to explore processes of universal evolution and development, one of which is accelerating change. From this point forward, our acceleration studies research has been done within the framework of bio-inspired complexity science and philosophy. We think that the evo-devo framework is the most useful model available today for understranding critical, network-centric concepts like intelligence, immunity and interdependence (ethics) and the growing variety of humanity's adaptive futures, in a world of continually accelerating complexity and change.

In 2015, we started a new education division, Foresight University. We began The Foresight Guide, a permanent and free online book (at ForesightGuide.com) and a two-volume print and digital work on foresight methods and adaptive futures stories. Volume 1, Introduction to Foresight, on Personal, Team, and Organizational Foresight, was published in 2022. Volume 2, Big Picture Futures, on 21st century visions and perils in an exponential world, will be published in 2025.

Central to both works is Evo-Devo Foresight, a systems model of complex adaptive systems as both evolutionary (creative, unpredictable, exploratory), and developmental (conservative, predictable, on a life cycle) in nature. These two processes seem fundamental to all complex systems in our view, and yet they are both in tension with and often in opposition to each other. The better we understand these two dynamics, in ourselves, our teams, our orgs, our societies, and our environment, the better we can understand our individual and collective evolutionary and developmental purposes, create value, and flourish.

In 2024, ASF changed its reseach community name to the Evo-Devo Institute (EDI). Over the years, our focus has grown from acceleration studies (the nature and impacts of accelerating change) to a broader mission: The Foresight and Actions that Grow Collective Adaptiveness ("Flourishing") in an Exponential World. For a recent version of John's views on the implications of evo-devo foresight, see The Goodness of the Universe, 2022 (YouTube, 80 mins).

Even before ASF's founding, John also ran a newsletter, Accelerating Times (2001-2006). With futurist Mark Finnern of the Bay Area Future Salon, we started the world's first acceleration-aware Future Salons (2001+) a network of independently run, in-person monthly futures discussion and support communities, some of which still meet today. With the emergence of the Singularity Summit in 2006 and fellow organizations like the Association of Professional Futurists in 2002 and Singularity University in 2008, we turned our attention back to research (in 2008), and foresight education (in 2015). But starting more salons remains an interest. Reach out to us if you have any interest in that project.

Our Outreach, Education, Research, and Advocacy now span five domains:

• Accelerating Change. Understanding the universal drivers of exponential processes, including densification and dematerialization ("D&D"), and their expression in biological, scientific, technological, economic, environmental, political, and social systems. We call this "The (Great) Race to Inner Space". Most of the world's academics and policy thinkers still don't recognize the key drivers of accelerating change. The nature of acceleration is one the greatest blind spots we have with respect to the future.
• Evo-Devo Adaptiveness. Understanding complex adaptiveness, in life, in organizations, in societies, in our learning technologies (AI) and in all other autopoetic systems, from the lenses of evolution, development, and their intersection (evo-devo). We believe evo-devo biology and philosophy offer us the most useful way to explore the future of complex systems.
• Foresight. Human foresight is a conflict between Probable, Possible, Preferred, and Preventable futures--"The Four Ps". To adapt to accelerating change, we believe all good leaders, managers, and self-leaders must strive to master all four of these assessments, and ensure a productive and balanced conflict between probability and possibility thinking, and optimistic and pessimistic visions.
• Values. There is a social psychology of universal (cross-cultural) values. In our modern world. Our research in moral foundations theory has found eight values, four evolutionary, and four developmental, that seem particularly universal. Being values-aware, values inclusive, and values-balanced is now critical to being personally and organizationally adaptive.
• Networks. The most generally adaptive systems in nature are not individuals, and not even groups. They are networks (ecosystems) of diverse individuals and groups. Hormesis (capacity-building under stress) in any complex system comes directly from the strength, diversity, and quality of its supporting networks. In addition to adaptive Values and Foresight, maintaining healthy Networks (personal, org, societal, tech) is one of our top strategies for personal success and societal progress

At our start in 2003, ASF was the only organization in the world focused on both the academic study and societal and ethical implications of accelerating change. In our view, the curious and continous acceleration of universal complexification (see Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar), of human history (Gerard Piel's The Acceleration of History, the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene), and modern technology (Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near) can be understood, together, as a special set of physical and informational processes likely to be found on all Earthlike planets in our universe. Several of these processes (D&D, STEM compression, evo-devo dynamics, IES goals, network dominance) appear to drive and stabilize accelerating change. These processes, which science has yet to validate, nevertheless seem to have major implications for the nature, choices, and future of civilization. The better we understand both universal and human accelerating change, its evo-devo drivers, network stabilizers, and its knowns, unknowns, visions, and risks, the better our foresight and action can become.

To this end, ASF President John M. Smart has published a series of papers, Evo-Devo Universe? (2008), The Transcension Hypothesis (2012), Humanity Rising (2015), Evolutionary Development: A Universal Perspective (2019) and Exponential Progress: Thriving in an Era of Accelerating Change (2020) that use evo-devo systems theory to better understand complex adaptive systems. Evo-devo models are a branch of both biological science and theory and complex systems philosophy that offer us powerful new ways to understand exponential processes, and to explore the nature, goals, and futures of autopoetic systems under selection. For a brief talk that explores evo-devo models at the universe and subsystem scales, see The Race to Inner Space, 2012 (YouTube, 17 mins).

Thank you for visiting. We hope to meet you, flourishing, in an even faster, more technological, more human, more complex and more adaptive future. That seems to be the way of the universe, whether we recognize it today or not.