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Sam
Ghandchi
Biography
IRI Lobby in America
Modernism and Meaning of Life
Open Letter to President Bush on Civil Rights Movement in Iran
Mahdaviat - IRI’s Hope or Despair
Women, Men, Commitment, Love and Future
Homosexuality and Islam
Why I Condemn NIAC Lawsuit against Hassan Daioleslam?
Are IRI Lobbyists a Real Force in USA?
What is Secularism?
Marxist Thought and Monism
Meaning of Life
Call for Global Uncensorable Internet
Monarchy Means Discrimination Based on Ancestry
Third Open Letter to Mr. Reza Pahlavi
Democracy and Iran Collection: 3 Crucial Articles on Democracy
Postmodernism
Shaping Islamism
Interview:
Futurism, Artificial Intelligence and End of Death (Video)
Interview:
How to use Internet Proxies and IRI Filter Breakers (Video)
Kurzweil,
Harry Potter and Futurist Party
How to Neutralize
IRI Filtering - Part 3: Bypassing IRI Internet Wall
About Futurism
and the "Third Wave" Terminology
National Mutual
Fund of Albus - Second Edition
Intelligent
Tools: The Cornerstone of a New Civilization
Is Nanotechnology
Real?
Wealth and Justice
in Future Iran
Students - Tale
of Two Regimes
Social Justice
and the Computer Revolution
A Theory
of Uniqueness Value
Alternative
Income - Social Justice in Post-Industrial Society
A Futurist
Vision
How to Neutralize
IRI Filtering - Parts 1 and 2
Dissolve Monarchy
and MKO to End IRI
My Second Open Letter
to Prince Reza Pahlavi
An Open Letter to
Prince Reza Pahlavi
Myth of Democratic
Monarchy for Iran
Singularity and
Us
Modern Futurism
Iran - Futurist
Republic
Futurist
Party Platform
Constitutionalism
(Mashrootiat) a Wrong Model for Future
Sufism and
Fatalism
Islam and
Globalization
Why Islamism Kills?
A
Biographical Note
Sam Ghandchi (Engineer)
Iranscope@hotmail.com
I am the publisher and editor of the Washington_based Iranscope
futurist portal and news site and a futurist author. I am originally
from Iran (b.1951) and finished Alborz High School of Tehran in
May 1969. I went to university in the U.S. in Fall of 1969 and returned
to Iran after graduation. During my student years, I was a member
of Confederation of Iranian Students in the U.S. After going back
to Iran in 1974, I was interrogated and harassed by Shah's secret
police, Savak. I was sympathetic to the left and I was also critical
of the leftist programs, even in the years before 1979. As a free
thinker and theoretician, I always had a focus on science and future,
and I was opposed to the Soviet Union and Hezbe Toodeh, from the
start of my political activity in 1970.
After the 1979
revolution, as a co-founder and member of the editorial board of
Nedaye Azadi, co-published this daily afternoon paper in Tehran,
till the paper and all other free papers of the time, were shut
down by the Islamic Republic in 1981. Nedaye Azadi was a democratic
paper similar to Peyghame Emrooz, Ayandegan and other similar papers
of those three years of semi-democracy in Iran of 1979-1982. The
back issues of Nedaye Azadi may still be available in the archives
of Library of Congress.
The 1979 Revolution
of Iran and programs of different forces during that revolution,
showed me that the old ways of development do not work anymore.
Thus even in an undeveloped country like Iran, one needs to look
for new solutions to the old and new problems. And, I started to
look beyond the old economic and social plans of both the left and
the right. This is when I started calling myself a futurist in my
articles, in 1981 and beyond, without even knowing there was such
an outlook called "futurism".
Later in 1983,
I returned to the U.S., and through the same search, I found Daniel
Bell, Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, Peter Drucker, Raymond Kurzweil,
Buckminster Fuller, and the World Future Society (WFS). Daniel Bell
has had a lasting impact on my thought. I can say I agree with 99%
of his writings.
In Fall of 1985,
I published an article called "Intelligent Tools: The Cornerstone
of a New Civilization" in AI Magazine, the scientific journal
of American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), where
I expressed my own understanding of future and futurism. I received
a letter from Daniel Bell, which helped me better understand the
issues related to new technologies, inference and intelligence.
I always have learned a lot from Daniel Bell.
In 1986, I wrote
a paper entitled "Progressiveness in the Present Epoch",
first as a small booklet, and later as a series of articles, I published
from 1986-87 in Iran Times weekly journal of Washington DC, where
I expressed my understanding of what being progressive means in
our times, and this paper included my article "Modern Futurism,"
which was very well received in later years. Also in my paper on
progressiveness, I first proposed my main thesis about the Iranian
Revolution and wrote about the relationship of state economy and
dictatorship in socialism which I have been discussing since 1981,
and years later on January 2002, I touched on these topics in my
interview with the site of Ayandehnegar, and finally in my book
"Futurist Iran," I discussed in details on my thesis about
the Iranian Revolution. I also wrote about a viable economic theory
for knowledge economy and discussed Social Justice and Computer
Revolution in 1987 and later on expanded on it and especially in
my paper entitled "Alternative Income" expounded on my
view in the discourse of social justice. I also wrote a book about
the history of Kurdistan and Federalism and from 1982 to 1984 published
papers on Pluralism and a detailed critique of Marxism and Monism.
* * *
From 1985 to
1989, I opened the first futuristic book store, called Nova Bookstore,
in Sunnyvale of California in the United States. Of course the World
Future Society book store existed before Nova but that was a mail
order catalog. When I opened Nova Bookstore, Jeff Cornish, son of
Edward Cornish the founder of World Future Society who handled distribution
of The Futurist and other WFS publications at the time, told me
that this project can be financially very difficult and I said that
I understand but am very much interested in doing it and I continued
it for four years. My goal was to clear my own ideas and to find
people of the same interest. Once that was achieved, I closed the
store, because as a business, it barely made a living for me. Professionally
I work in the field of computer internetworking, bridges, routers,
etc and in my resume I have written that before Nova Bookstore,
from 1982 to 1985, I was busy co-founding Dehkhoda Library and Iranian
Cultural Foundation in Berkeley of California and as noted, before
that co-published Nedaye Azadi in Tehran.
The founding
and managing Nova Bookstore in those four years of mid 80's helped
me to deepen my understanding of futurism, and impacted my environment,
and I was able to get to know different futurists of the world.
Futurists from different parts of the world when coming to the San
Francisco area would stop by my bookstore. Even the late Willis
Harman was one of the panelists at the Nova Lecture Series that
I had in those years at Nova bookstore and also from the first day
that WFS had placed an announcement about the opening of Nova Bookstore,
one of the founders of IFTF came to Nova Bookstore and would visit
often in subsequent years.
In 1990, after
closing Nova, I wrote my paper A Futurist Vision which was also
signed by Jack Li who was a co-founder of Beyond War organization
based in Palo Alto and cooperated with me at Nova Bookstore, Newsletter
and Lectures. And in those years, I also worked on a few new works
in the area of rationalism which included papers on Aristotle, Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibniz, and Russell that I expanded on in later years
in my discussion of secularism.
* * *
Three years
after closing Nova Bookstore, in 1992, I started cooperating with
Mr. Hossein Mola who lived in Sweden to start the Ayandehnegar (meaning
futurist in Persian) magazine. Before this time, Mr. Mola and his
associates had created a radio program in Sweden by the name of
Radio Azadi. The magazine was first going to be in print and I sent
the texts of my articles "Intelligent Tools" and "Philosophy
of Science in 20th Century," the latter being only a handwritten
lecture I had given at Berkeley in those years. I suggested to use
a computer and later to publish the magazine on the Internet, and
was hoping some of my friends in Sweden and Switzerland who were
technical experts, to help Mr. Mola which did not happen, and Mr.
Mola himself found his way thru the technical maze and that year
got his computer.
In August 1993,
I told Mr. Mola about the lecture Break Down of Time, Space, and
Society which Daniel Bell had presented for Sweden's post office,
and had been published by Sweden's Institute of Future Studies,
and Mr. Mola found it and sent it to me and later he himself arranged
for its translation and publication in Persian. I should note that
the aforementioned paper of Daniel Bell has not been published anywhere
else and Daniel Bell himself had suggested it to me in 1993, when
he noted in a letter that he had not written about futurism for
a long time and at that time, this was his last work on the topic,
and said to find it in the Swedish journal Framtider which I asked
Mr. Mola to find in Sweden that he did.
From 1993 to
1996, Mr. Mola set up the computer for the magazine that we wanted
to publish and finally in March of 1996 he sent me his first email
and two years later the first issue of "Ayandehnegar Magazine"
was published on the Internet by Mr. Mola in January of 1998 we
announced the founding of Iranian Futurist Foundation and the efforts
for it continued till the end of 1999, but after that date Mr. Mola
continued the Ayandehnegar magazine, although from time to time
published some of my articles were also published in it.
In fact, after
the year 2000, on one hand many futurist sites were created inside
and outside Iran where the differences of their political views
were not hidden from the astute readers, and on the other hand the
interest in futurist literature grew in various political and cultural
publications and as far as my literary work was concerned as I have
explained below I cooperated with various publications, published
the archive of my works in my personal website, and created the
futurist Iranscope portal.
* * *
I was active
on the Internet in the early 1990's and posted my first article
about Iran on soc.culture.iranian Usenet newsgroup in October 1993.
The next year on the same public Usenet newsgroup, I published a
series of theoretical discussions with Dr. Hossein Baghezadeh, and
in March 1994 we founded the Iranian Human Rights Working Group
(IHRWG) which was an Internet_based human rights group, an activity
that started with my article about stoning of women and during the
years, Dr. Bagherzadeh, the Chair of the group, and other associates,
contributed a lot to the cause of human rights in Iran. I also helped
to set up the group's first Internet site and archive with a colleague
and also supported IHRWG by continuing the discussions of human
rights on the Usenet especially when Dr. Bagherzadeh was threatened
by Khamene'i at the time of closure of Neshat newspaper in Iran.
And finally most of the members of IHRWG continued their activities
in Manshoor81, which exists to this day.
After being
active on the Internet, I saw the need for a futurist portal and
Internet_based news distribution system related to the future and
first posted the related information on Usenet and email lists and
finally in August 1999, founded the Iranscope portal. In my article
"Why I Created Iranscope?," I have explained in details
about my reasons for starting the Iranscope portal. During those
years, besides writing articles on the Usenet, I also published
a mailing list called "doostAn" (meaning friends), which
later developed into two yahoo lists called "Iranscope"
and "future" and those two lists finally evolved to "IranscopeNews"
list which is still active and it is now also accessible by RSS.
Recently an
article was published about the formation of the activity of Iranians
on the Internet and in that article, there was a mention of my work
in the early 1990's, the title of the article is "A Brief Excursion
of the History of Iranians on the Internet". The author was
present on the Usenet with me and also before the Internet, during
the years of 1985-1989, he had dropped by my Nova Bookstore in Sunnyvale.
During the last 20 and some years, I have published in various publications.
All my works can be found at my home page.
In 2001, I finished
my proposal for the Platform of a Futurist Party. I started this
work in 1986 and wrote the first manuscript in 2000 and for years
discussed about the need for such a political party in various articles.
Today when I
look at my latest writing on futurism entitled Singularity and Us,
I see what a long way it has been and all this with thanks to all
those who accompanied me all these years and were friends and colleagues.
Today it is a pleasure to see that so many people with various ways
of thought see the importance of futuristic thinking and this thought
is more and more welcome particularly among the Iranians.
Please read
my online book entitled "FUTURIST IRAN: Futurism vs Terrorism"
where I have explained in details my views of the world today and
my thanks to World Future Society for publishing a "book review"
of my work which is now included in the introduction of the book.
You can read
my books in IPC Library
IPC
English Library
IPC
Persian Library
Hoping for
a Federal, Democratic, and Secular Futurist Republic in Iran,
Sam Ghandchi,
Editor/Publisher
Iranscope@hotmail.com
Iranscope
Ghandchi Homepage
Iranian Futurist
Party
Original
Version
December
8, 2005
Republished:
November 8, 2006
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