Humanity’s Final Exam -- Home

Site News

This is the first edition of Final Exam as a web site; I’ll be fleshing it out over time. For those of you who remember the original document and wonder what happened to it, you can find it here.

Introduction to the site

Welcome, visitor! If this is your first visit, I’ll try to give you a good feel for what I’m up to with the site. If you’ve been here before, check for updates in the box at the right.

The site began as a personal response to my growing awareness of a set of global crises looming in the near future. I set out to understand the nature of the crises, how they might play out, what resources we (all humanity) may have to enable us to successfully navigate through the crisis times, and what actions at various levels (individual, group, society, national, NGO, global) could be taken to improve our chances for that outcome. (For more on what I have in mind by “crises” and “actions”, see Context.)

Since beginning the effort, I’ve found that many other people have the same sense of impending crisis, and a variety of efforts have begun in reaction to it. I’ve encountered many web sites, books, organizations, etc. devoted to various specific crises and possible responses. (You’ll find links to many of them in References and elsewhere on the site.)

What I haven’t yet found elsewhere, and what I hope to create, is a resource that can serve to give a synoptic understanding (in the sense of “pertaining to or affording an overall view”) of what’s going on, what’s being learned, and what’s being done. I envision an online, evolving “hyperdocument”, allowing for updates, new categories, new links, etc., and also a “place” for online collaboration within and (especially) across disciplines. Ideally, it will be created and evolved by a community of people; like an open source software project, there’ll likely be an active core of stewards and primary contributors, and a larger body of less active volunteers.

What you’ll find here

The main sections of the site are listed in the menubar above. Here’s a brief description of them:

About: Descriptions of the site tailored for various interests — a good place for first-time visitors to start.
Context: A fuller description of the history and background of this effort, and my thinking behind the organization of the site.
Vision: More on what I intend the site to accomplish.
Understanding: A section focused on understanding the existing situation, including the nature of the various crises and the human and technological resources that may help us to navigate them successfully.
Action: In many ways, this and the preceding section are strongly complementary. Action without understanding is at least inefficient, and may be more dangerous than inaction. Understanding without action is futile.
Projects: This section describes a set of projects that I’d like to see the “Final Exam community” undertake. Some of them fit best under Understanding, some under Action, and some have elements of both.
References: An organized and annotated bibliography of sites and other resources that I’ve found useful. This is a subset of a database of links that I’ve been collecting over the years.

What about the title “Humanity’s Final Exam”?

The title of this site comes from an interview with Buckminster Fuller transcribed at http://www.bfi.org/onlyintg.htm, specifically the following:

I have to say, I think that we are in some kind of final examination as to whether human beings now, with this capability to acquire information and to communicate, whether we’re really qualified to take on the responsibility we’re designed to be entrusted with. And this is not a matter of an examination of the types of governments, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with economic systems. It has to do with the individual. Does the individual have the courage to really go along with the truth?

Site authored and maintained by Don Dwiggins.
(Note: email address subject to change. Check back here if you get a bounceback.)