Introduction

The X2 Project is an experiment in open forecasting. Inspired by open innovation models from software and content development, open forecasting gives users the tools to identify trends in the future of science and technology. (Read more about X2 here.)

Open forecasting is based on the conviction that the future is no longer shaped by companies or governments or elites, but by people— people linked together in social movements and social networks, sharing information and creating new knowledge.

You're going to make the future. By learning how to forecast it, you'll make a better future.

What's on the site

The site has several types of content: SIGNALS, HYPOTHESES and FORECASTS.

SIGNALS are short pages that describe a significant change. Signals are early indicators of emerging issues. They hint at future disruptions. HYPOTHESES discuss one potential impact that a signal could have; a signal can have several hypotheses associated with it.

A group of signals may constitute the first wave of something that could rapidly grow in frequency and amplitude. Those waves or patterns are discussed in FORECASTS, which are written by X2 project researchers.

How to get started

The X2 Project has several layers. You can choose to contribute to many of them.

Right off the bat, you can rate the importance of signals and forecasts.

If you use the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, you can add the tag "sciencex2" to bookmarks of Web pages that you think deserve our attention. We'll find it.

If you want to interact more with the site, or use any of its features, you'll need to create an account. Creating an account is free, and easy.

Once you have an account, you can write hypotheses that describe the impact signals might have on science in the future. You can rate the important and likelihood of signals and hypotheses. You can also add your own signals.

Whenever you write a hypothesis or signal, or rate a piece of content, you earn points for your contributions to the project. If you're really good— if you're an active participants whose work is highly-rated by users and cited often— you may be invited to work more closely on the X2 project. These days, talent is everywhere. If you have an eye for the future, X2 will prove it.

Finding your way

You can navigate the site through a couple means.

The Explore page gives you an overview of what's happened recently on the site: what new content has been added, what subjects are popular, and the like. Your dashboard helps you keep track of your own content, and alerts you to new activity in your groups.

There are lists of signals, hypotheses, and forecasts, and a tag cloud. There are also discussion groups organized around different areas of science, and different regions; many of these are open to all interested members.

Of course, you can also search the site using the search box on the upper left-hand side of the page.

What else you can do

That'll be up to you. We want the information in X2 to be useful to other researchers. That means we're willing to work with developers who want to use new tools to analyze our information, find patterns in it, or extract meaning from it.