About me:
Profile in Persian
https://s.p9.hostingprod.com/@www.ghandchi.com/ssl/05-My_Profile.htm
Profile in English
https://s.p9.hostingprod.com/@www.ghandchi.com/ssl/05-My_ProfileEng.htm
A Biographical Note
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 Iran Times, soc.culture.iranian, Jebhe political forum, Mehdis,
AyandehNegar site, Iranscope, Brwska, Gozareshgaran, and
other 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.
Hoping for a Federal, Democratic,
and Secular
Futurist Republic in Iran,
Sam Ghandchi, Editor/Publisher
IRANSCOPE
http://www.iranscope.com
December 8, 2005
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