Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is an historian and futurist of science. He is the founder of Future2, a Silicon Valley-based consulting company specializing in technology forecasting and scenarios, and a partner at Palo Alto Strategy Studios. He is also a visiting scholar in history and philosophy of science at Stanford University.

Alex has worked with a variety of global enterprises, including Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Procter & Gamble, Campbells, the Research Triangle Foundation, the U.S. Navy, and government agencies in the United States, Singapore, Finland, and the United Kingdom. He has conducted research and facilitated expert and executive workshops in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Before becoming a futurist, Alex was a Research Director at the Institute for the Future, and managing editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Alex holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania, and postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions (Stanford University Press, 2002), and numerous articles in scholarly and popular publications.

 

 

Alex conducts research in the future of science and technology, and emerging methods in futures and forecasting. His technology forecasts have been used by companies to understand the business and social implications of RFID, MEMS and nanotechnology, human augmentation, pervasive computing, desktop manufacturing, geolocation, and other emerging technologies.

Alex has worked on two major projects mapping the future of science:
Delta Scan, sponsored by the U.K.'s Horizon Scanning Centre, and X2, sponsored by the U.S. government. These projects charted emerging global innovation networks, analyzed the new sociology of scientific practice, and identified new fields that will drive science in the coming decades.

Alex's current methodological research focuses on the future of futures. He has conducted ethnographic work to understand how futurists use "paper spaces" to support collaborative thinking about futures and strategy, and how digital technologies-- ranging from large-scale projectors and wall-sized OLED screens, to hand-held devices like the iPad-- can reproduce the affordances and collaborative utility of physical media. In other essays, he is following the work of Raymond Williams and George Lakoff to map futurists', clients', and popular understandings of unintended consequences, complex problems, and the standards by which futurists'
work is (and can be) evaluated. Finally, he is exploring how futurists can use behavioral economics and social software to make futures more perceptive and persuasive. He blogs about this work at http://www.future2.org.

Alex is completing a book on the rise and fall of the concept of cyberspace. You can read about it at http://www.endofcyberspace.com

"Paper Spaces: Visualizing the Future." World Future Review (February/March 2010), 3-10.
Global Scenarios: Their Current State and Future. Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, GPPAG Working Paper, 2010.
"Futures 2.0: Rethinking the Discipline." Foresight: The Journal of Futures Studies, Strategic Thinking and Policy 12:1 (Spring 2010), 5-20.
"Four Secrets of Science and Business Innovation." eJournal USA, special issue on "Roots of Innovation" (November 2009), 19-22.
"Mighty Mouse." diid: disengo industriale | industrial design 39 (2009), i-xvi.
With Anthony Townsend and Rick Weddle. Future Knowledge Ecosystems:
The Next 20 Years of Technology-Led Economic Development. Raleigh, NC:
Research Triangle Park Foundation, 2009.
"The Industrialization of Vision in Victorian Science." Bildwelten des Wissens 5:2 (2008), 20-28.
With Mike Love. Knowledge Tools of the Future. IFTF Technology Horizons, 2008.
"Hands, Minds, and the End of Cyberspace." In Kristof Nyiri, ed, Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence (Vienna:
Passagen Verlag, 2008), 55-62.