Joe Murphy Librarian Futurist

Speculative Futures SF is hosting this event about The Future of Work and Reinventing the performance review on March 14. The workshop will be led by local design futurists Shar Shahfari and Frank Gallivan, founders of Plural Futures Lab. 

2018 to 2019. My phone cases reflect stability over discontinuity. Resilience over new. Story over technology.

Vision Weekend is a gathering of the most visionary, creative, and compassionate technologists, thought leaders, scientists, and investors - coming together to shape the advance of technology in the right direction, and steer toward positive futures. It’s happening, Dec 1-2 in San Francisco.

I read Julius Caesar’s The Civil War to round out my strategy learning. Written yes from the victor’s point of view but when Caesar was still a lion. This Monterey beach at Asilomar was the perfect setting to finish Caesar’s account of the civil war he waged against Pompey. My takeaways - the value of history in strategy. “Stiffening them to face the future” “Grave events in war being often determined by the slightest of accidents” “There is a power which mighty though it be in other spheres is mightiest of all in war. Working most momentous changes by incidents most trivial. We mean then the power of fortune.”

My answer as a professional futurist to the question of “What is the best way to foresee things?”

Spenceman running from Joe Murphy Librarian Futurist on Vimeo.

Here I outline the values guiding my work as a futurist. These ethics are as informed as my background as a librarian as they are by the responsibility I feel to use what I’ve learned through an MBA and as a professional futurist. 

“Joe Murphy - Library as Future“ Joe Murphy Librarian presenting at the State Library of New South Wales in 2014 about impactful trends for libraries and futurist management strategy issues. 

I Am a Social Librarian - Joe Murphy Librarian and New Zealand Libraries 2014 

I now divide my life as before and after I read Plutarch’s Lives. Foresight requires hindsight and the judgement of history. 

If you are not afraid yet, you will be. One of the most powerful takeaways from this shocking book for me was Gary Cohn (Trump’s Director of the National Economic Council) reflection that “the president had never been in a business where he had to do long-term strategic thinking”. A lack of learned and refined foresight is dangerous in a leader. Did I hear that a library was not carrying this book and how was that resolved?

Through curiosity and strategy, Joe Murphy is a futurist, informed by experience as a librarian and expert researcher. This unique combination makes Joe an passionate strategist.

I volunteered at the Primer 18 conference to get outside of my strategic foresight wheelhouse and I learned about speculative futures and speculative design from inspiring designers, strategists, and futurists. What a great community and event.

I am a member of and I volunteer for Brand’s Long Now foundation because as a futurist, I prioritize the wider picture the “big here” and I consider my responsibility for longer timeframes of the “long now.”  

When ethical leadership runs up against a complex situation. How far can a core value take us when reality offers discontinuity? 

“Futurists as Your Organization’s Steady Cam?” “Description of the (foresight) Field,” “SuperForecasting for Futurists in the Media project.” Pieces written by Joe Murphy for the Houston Foresight blog as a student of Strategic Foresight.