THE FUTURIST, January - February 2012

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

www.wfs.org

The Best Predictions of 2011 “Thought” helmets deployed on tomorrow’s battlefields …

The extinction of tablets and PCs … A coming chocolate shortage … The media have inundated us with their predictions for the economy, technology, global relations, population, and more. Here are some of the best. Page 28 ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

Eight Grand Challenges for Human Advancement, page 16 Genetic Engineering as Conscious Evolution, page 23 What Innovators and Futurists Can Teach Each Other, page 40 PLUS: World Trends & Forecasts

Mobilizing Africa • Futurizing Education • Predicting Behavior

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January-February 2012

About the World Future Society Why study the future?

What is the World ­Future Society?

The world changes so quickly that it‘s hard to keep up. New inventions and innovations alter the way we live. People‘s values, attitudes, and beliefs are changing. And the pace of change keeps accelerating, making it difficult to prepare for ­tomorrow.

By studying the future, people can better anticipate what lies ahead. More importantly, they can actively decide how they will live in the future by making choices today and realizing the consequences of their decisions.

The future doesn‘t just happen: People create it through their action—or inaction—­today.

The World Future Society is an association of people interested in how social and technological developments are shaping the future. The Society was founded in 1966 by a group of private citizens, and is chartered as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization.

What can we know about the future?

No one knows exactly what will happen in the future. But by considering what might happen, people can more rationally decide on the sort of future that would be most desirable and then work to achieve it.

Opportunity as well as danger lies ahead, so people need to make farsighted decisions. The process of change is inevitable; it‘s up to everyone to make sure that change is constructive.

How do I join the Society?

Visit www.wfs.org or contact: World Future Society Membership Department 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450 Bethesda, Maryland 20814, USA Telephone: 301-656-8274

What does the Society do?

The Society strives to serve as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future. Ideas about the future include forecasts, recommendations, scenarios, alternatives, and more. These ideas help people to anticipate what may happen in the next five, 10, or more years ahead. When people can ­visualize a better future, then they can begin to ­create it.

What does membership offer?

■ THE FUTURIST, a magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future. Every member receives a subscription to this exciting bimonthly magazine. Experts in various fields share their insights and forecasts in articles directed at a general audience.

■ Special rates for all ­annual conferences. These conferences provide members with the opportunity for face-to-face meetings with distinguished scholars, leaders, and experts from around the world.

■ Access to your local chapter. Over 100 cities in the United States and abroad have chapters for grassroots support of ­futures studies. They provide a way for members to get involved in their local communities through workshops, discussion groups, and speakers.

Free e-mail newsletter!

Visit www.wfs.org.

January-February 2012 Volume 46, No. 1

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

DEPARTMENTS

ARTICLES

2

Tomorrow in Brief

4

Future Scope

16 Eight Grand Challenges for Human Advancement

By Thomas Frey

6

World Trends & Forecasts: Information Society, Education, Brain/Mind, WordBuzz

14 Institutional Members 46 Consultants and Services 57 2011 Subject/Author Index to THE FUTURIST 62 Future Active: U.S. Government Accountability Office, SAMCot

BOOKS 49 Tools for Foresight, With a French Twist A book review by Rick Docksai

“Prospective” as developed by French futurists is a huge toolbox to help organizations build better futures, according to Michel Godet and Philippe Durance, authors of Strategic Foresight for Corporate and Regional Development.

The author’s keynote presentation at the WorldFuture 2011 conference in Vancouver introduced a series of Eight Grand Challenges—incentivized competitions designed to push humanity to another level.

Plus: One Response to the Eight Grand Challenges

By Richard Yonck

23 Crossing the Species Boundary: Genetic Engineering as Conscious Evolution

By Jeffrey Scott Coker Genetic engineering is actually as natural as any process on Earth, and mastering it would enable us to do what microbes do trillions of times every day, but purposefully and with better results.

about the future

28 The Best Predictions of 2011

Drawing from a variety of sources throughout the past year, the editors of THE FUTURIST take a look at some of the best predictions for the world’s future.

40 Innovating the Future: From Ideas to Adoption

By Peter J. Denning

Futurists and innovators can teach each other lessons to help their ideas succeed.

64 Future View: Welcome to the Future Cloud: Five Bets for 2025

By Marcel Bullinga What will life be like when we are free of paper, petroleum, and waste?

The author’s five public bets offer scenarios for this more nonmaterial future.

50 The World’s Destiny Is Modernity A book review by Rick Docksai

A new era of global affluence and equity is on its way, according to Max Singer of the Hudson Institute, author of History of the Future: The Shape of the World to Come Is Visible Today.

51 Books in Brief

100 Plus But Will the Planet Notice? How Smart Economics Can Save the World Community Leadership 4.0 The Precarious Human Role in a Mechanistic Universe The Great Disruption

Bet on bots. Page 64 Engineering futures. Page 23

© 2012 World Future Society. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. THE FUTURIST is a registered trademark of the World Future Society. Printed in the U.S.A. THE FUTURIST (ISSN 0016-3317) is published bimonthly by the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. Included with membership in the World Future Society (dues: $79 per year for individuals; $20 for full-time students under age 25). Subscriptions for libraries and other institutions are $89 annually. Periodicals postage paid at Bethesda, Maryland, and additional mailing offices. • POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE FUTURIST, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. • OWNERSHIP: THE FUTURIST is owned exclusively by the World Future Society, a nonpartisan educational and scientific organization incorporated in the District of Columbia and recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit taxexempt organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. • CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Write or call Membership Department at the Society. 1-800-989-8274.

Tomorrow

in brief ANDREW HANCOCK / PURDUE UNIVERSITY PHOTO

Faster, safer skyscraper construction is promoted by Purdue University engineers Michael Kreger (left) and Mark Bowman.

Building Stronger Skyscrapers, Faster Future skyscrapers could be built faster and made safer using a new construction process championed by Purdue University civil engineering professors Mark Bowman and Michael Kreger.

The technique involves building around a core wall, or vertical spine, which also enhances structural resistance to earthquakes and high winds.

Traditional core walls are made from reinforced concrete and are produced one floor at

a time. The new technique sandwiches concrete between steel plates; the hollow structure is strong enough to allow the surrounding construction to proceed on several floors at once.

On a 40- to 50-story building, the core wall system could save three to four months of construction time—and, hence, offer significant dollar savings, according to Bowman.

Source: Purdue University, www.purdue.edu.

UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH

Glass cleaner? Materials chemistry lecturer Nichola Coleman (left) and University of Greenwich chemistry student Cameron Abercrombie ­display a filter created from recycled glass bottles.

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THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

Robotic Aides for Children with Autism

UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

Personal-assistant robots may help children across the autism spectrum to cope better in ­social situations.

Acting as a social mediator, KASPAR (Kinesics and Synchronization in Personal Assistant Robotics) robots have flexible arms that can KASPAR, a friendly robot, may offer theraproduce realistic gestures, peutic assistance for children with autism. and can play drumming and computer games using Wii will make eye contact or mimic game remote controls. Their actions while playing with the faces can show expression via KASPAR robots—behaviors robotic skin with sensors and that represent major breakblinking eyes. throughs for the children.

Field tests by University of Hertfordshire researchers Source: University of Hertfordshire, www.herts.ac.uk. show that children with autism

Remote-Controlled Telescopes for Citizen Astronomers A worldwide network of Internet-connected robotic telescopes will help citizen astronomers do research and contribute their data and discoveries to the rest of the world.

Dubbed Gloria (GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array), the project is managed by the Computer Faculty of the Polytechnic University of Madrid

and uses the Montegancedo Observatory’s remote-controlled telescope, camera, and dome.

The project will offer citizen astronomers access to the organization’s public databases to facilitate analysis and scenario building.

Glass as Waste Cleaner

iGrammar: Mobile Language Lessons

Source: Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, www.fi.upm.es.

Discarded glass bottles may one day help clean up contaminated rivers.

University of Greenwich chemist Nichola Coleman has developed a method of pulverizing colored glass and mixing it with lime and caustic soda to create tobermorite, a mineral that can absorb toxic heavy metals in water.

The technique also creates a demand for brown and green glass bottles, which are typically less desirable to recyclers.

“The novelty of the research is that the glass can be recycled into something useful,” says Coleman. “Nobody has previously thought to use waste glass in this way.”

Proper English will no longer be a secret between he and I. Thanks to a new iPhone app developed at University College London, we’ll all know it’s a secret between him and me, and it won’t be a secret.

The iGE (interactive Grammar of English) application allows students and other users to download lessons and exercises to learn at their own pace.

Instructors can change examples used in the apps to keep lessons more current or customized to the user’s ­locality.

The developers see a potential global market worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year and are working on similar apps for punctuation and spelling instruction.

Source: University of Greenwich, www.gre.ac.uk.

Source: University College London, www.ucl.ac.uk.

About

this

Issue

A Publication of the World Future Society

Editorial Staff Edward Cornish Founding Editor

Cynthia G. Wagner Editor

Patrick Tucker Deputy Editor

Aaron M. Cohen, Rick Docksai Assistant Editors

Lane Jennings Research Director

Lisa Mathias Art Director

Contributing Editors Clement Bezold, Government Tsvi Bisk, Strategic Thinking Irving H. Buchen, Training Peter Eder, Marketing and Communications Joyce Gioia-Herman, Workforce/Workplace Barbara Marx Hubbard, Images of Man Joseph P. Martino, Technological Forecasting Jay S. Mendell, Innovation Joseph N. Pelton, Telecommunications Arthur B. Shostak, Utopian Thought David P. Snyder, Lifestyles Gene Stephens, Criminal Justice Timothy Willard, Biofutures

Contact Us Letters to the Editor: letters@wfs.org Subscription/Address Change: info@wfs.org Advertising: jcornish@wfs.org Submissions/Queries: cwagner@wfs.org Permission/Reprints: jcornish@wfs.org

The Best Predictions of the Year: A Review Previously in THE FUTURIST, the November-December issue’s annual Outlook report showcased some of the most thought-­ provoking forecasts published in this magazine during 2011. In this issue, we look at some of the best predictions made by others throughout the year.

For this project—led by deputy editor Patrick Tucker—the editors sought ideas from a broad variety of sources, from pundits in international think tanks and research institutions to fearless forecasters in pop culture and the blogosphere.

What makes a prediction a “good” one? First, it has to bear some resemblance to a recognizable possible future. Next, it has to be important. As much as we enjoy “predicting” the outcome of this season’s Celebrity Apprentice, it’s of little consequence to the general prospects for human and planetary well-being.

One thing that these “good” predictions do not require is a pleasant, feel-good outcome. Even a “negative” forecast is a good one if it’s useful in raising awareness of problems that we can work together to solve or consequences that we can avert. See “The Best Predictions of 2011” on page 28.

Also in this issue, futures scholar and computer scientist Peter J. Denning shows how innovators and futurists may work better together to solve problems and gain higher adoption rates for their innovations. See “Innovating the Future: From Ideas to Adoption,” page 40.

And, speaking of moving from idea to adoption, don’t forget to register for WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver. The theme of this year’s conference, to be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 27-29, carries on the ideas initiated at the Vancouver conference aimed at “moving from vision to action.” See a preview of this outstanding event on pages 54–56, or visit us online at www.wfs.org/content/worldfuture-2012.

—Cynthia G. Wagner, Editor cwagner@wfs.org

Back Issues/Bulk Copies: jcornish@wfs.org Press/Media Inquiries: ptucker@wfs.org Partnerships/Affiliations: tmack@wfs.org Conference Inquiries: swarner@wfs.org Anything Else: info@wfs.org THE FUTURIST World Future Society 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450 Bethesda, Maryland 20814, USA Hours: 9 a.m.–5 p.m. eastern time, weekdays except U.S. holidays Telephone: 301-656-8274 or 800-989-8274 Fax: 301-951-0394 www.wfs.org/futurist

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

3

Future Scope Aging | Humanity

Cancer Survivors Will Survive Longer The population of U.S. cancer survivors aged 65 and older will increase by 42% between 2010 and 2020. The rise is due not only to increasing longevity overall, but also to improved treatments and survival rates among all patients once cancer is diagnosed.

Cancer is largely a disease of old age, as more than half of all new diagnoses occur in individuals who are 65 or older, according to a report released by the U.S. National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

While the aging U.S. population is healthier than ever, an increase in elderly cancer survivors will challenge healthcare systems that are simultaneously seeing declines in ­oncologists and geriatric specialists, the report warns.

months per decade since the mid-1700s, due largely to changes in nutrition and environmental factors. Meanwhile, the gap between sexual and social maturity is expanding, as these youngsters are not yet socially considered adults.

The researchers discovered this trend among boys by tracking the age at which the probability of dying spikes due to peak hormone production (the so-called “accident hump”). As boys mature physically, they tend to take more risks.

While the “high-risk” phase of adolescence may be increasing, this may not result in a more dangerous environment for boys, since parents tend to supervise children more closely when they’re younger, says the Institute director, demographer Josh Goldstein.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, www.demogr.mpg.de.

Source: National Cancer Institute, www.cancer.gov.

Criminal Justice | Governance Food | Earth

Targeted Policing

Farming for the Future Growing populations will put ever-increasing demands on the croplands that provide food, fuel, fiber, soil protection, wildlife habitats, and other vital services.

The National Wildlife Federation’s new report on “Future Friendly Farming” describes agricultural techniques that could potentially benefit the planet as well as farmers’ bottom lines. For instance: • The use of cover crops will reduce erosion and nutrient loss.

• Organic farming will eliminate chemical use and increase soil fertility.

• Anaerobic digesters protect water quality and provide renewable electric and thermal energy.

• Returning land to native ecosystems increases biodiversity.

Source: “Future Friendly Farming: Seven Agricultural Practices to Sustain People and the Environment,” National Wildlife Federation, www.nwf.org.

Sexuality | Humanity

Boys Will Be Boys—Earlier Boys are reaching physical and sexual maturity earlier than ever, report researchers at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. A similar trend has already been identified among girls.

The age of male sexual maturity has decreased by 2.5 4

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

Budgets cuts are forcing some public services to become more resourceful. A recent review of targeted policing programs in Britain—which focus on crime “hot spots”—has shown reductions in crime not only in the hot spots, but also in nearby areas.

Contrary to fears that such targeted efforts would simply move criminal activity “around the corner,” the findings by University College London researcher Kate Bowers suggest that criminals are less likely to commit crimes if they cannot do so in familiar territory.

Source: University College London, www.ucl.ac.uk.

Energy | Sci/Tech

The “Internet of Things” as Energy Saver Creating networks between everything that uses energy could yield significant efficiencies by monitoring and controlling the grid, according to industry and university researchers at Vienna University of Technology.

Intelligent software systems could alter heating and air conditioning systems in an office, for instance, by monitoring devices in use to determine how many workers are staying late and which offices they’re using.

The same strategy could be scaled up to make whole cities and transport systems more energy efficient, the researchers believe.

Source: Vienna University of Technology, www.tuwien.ac.at.

Officers

Staff

President: Timothy C. Mack

Director of Communications: Patrick Tucker

Treasurer: Jay McIntosh

Business and Advertising Manager: Jeff Cornish

Secretary: Kenneth W. Harris

Meeting Administrator: Sarah Warner

Directors Bob Chernow (vice chairman) CEO, The Tellier Foundation

Raj Bawa

Michael Michaelis

president, Bawa Biotechnology Consulting,

president, Partners In Enterprise

and adjunct associate professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Edward Cornish founder and former president, World Future Society

Esther Franklin executive vice president and director of cultural identities, Starcom MediaVest Group

John Gottsman president, The Clarity Group

Kenneth W. Harris chairman, The Consilience Group LLC

Kenneth W. Hunter (chairman) senior fellow, Maryland China Initiative, University of Maryland

Timothy C. Mack president, World Future Society

Jay McIntosh

Arnold Brown

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

Adolfo Castilla

visiting senior research fellow, ISEAS, Singapore

economist, communications professor, Madrid

John Naisbitt

Marvin J. Cetron

trend analyst and author

president, Forecasting International Ltd.

Burt Nanus

Hugues de Jouvenel

author and professor emeritus of management,

executive director, Association

University of Southern California

Internationale Futuribles

Joseph N. Pelton

Yehezkel Dror

founder and vice chairman,

professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

William E. Halal

John L. Petersen

professor of management science and

president, The Arlington Institute

director of Emerging Technologies Project,

program director, Strategic Foresight Program,

president, Ming Pai Consulting BV

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Jared Weiner

Barbara Marx Hubbard

vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

president, The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

Global Advisory Council

Sohail Inayatullah

European Futures Observatory

Raja Ikram Azam honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

Sandra L. Postel director, Global Water Policy Proj­ect

Peter Hayward

Mylena Pierremont

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

George Washington University

president, Consumer Foresight LLC

Julio Millán president, Banco de Tecnologias, and

professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Francis Rabuck director, Technology Research, Bentley Systems Inc.

Robert Salmon former vice president, L’Oreal Corporation, Paris

Maurice F. Strong secretary general, U.N. Conference on Environment and Development

Eleonora Barbieri Masini professor emerita, Faculty of Social Sciences, Gregorian University, Rome

Graham May

Alvin Toffler author

Heidi Toffler

principal lecturer in futures research,

author

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K.

The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific association dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the trends shaping our future.

Founded in 1966, the Society serves as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future; it takes no stand on what the future will or should be like. The Society’s publications, conferences, and other activities are open to all individuals and institutions around the world.

For more information on membership programs, contact Society headquarters Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. Telephone: 1-301-656-8274, Toll free: 1-800-989-8274, Fax: 1-301-951-0394 Web site: www.wfs.org • E-mail: info@wfs.org

World Trends & Forecasts Information Society Education Brain/Mind WordBuzz

Information Society | Governance

Connectivity and Accountability in Africa Mobile phones aren’t just for talking: They are tools for political reform.

By Matthias Mordi

“With their comparatively greater share of Internet access, middle-class populations in many African countries are in a strong position to watch their governments and governmental expenditures.”

—Mathias Mordi, Accender Africa

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THE FUTURIST

Internet access has exploded across ­ frica in the past decade. Web-accessible A mobile phones, Internet cafés, and Internet-connected laptops all see steady and solid increases in numbers of users year by year. We at Accender Africa welcome this growth: In it, we see the continent’s best hope for reforming its political systems and elevating its people’s standards of ­living.

How might Internet access improve living standards? The key is governance. To help reduce poverty in Africa—that’s the ultimate goal. And the best route to achieve it is by improving governance.

Our idea is to use new media to promote transparency, which we hope will encourage good governance. The technologies will serve as resources for building better government policies.

Our organization is today working extensively in Nigeria, where the number of citizens with Internet access has grown 300-fold—from 80,000 in 2000 to 24 million in 2008. Mobile-phone usage’s growth is even more impressive: Today there are more than 63 million mobile-phone subscribers across Nigeria.

Text messaging is one of the most common uses of mobile phones in Nigeria.

Services are not like those you’ll find in the United States, where the cost of text messaging based on the existing revenue

January-February 2012

models of the cell phone makes access difficult for low-income people. In ­Nigeria and across Africa, access by lowincome people is easier, thanks to more economical financing models and the form of use.

While U.S. mobile phones may provide more services, they are more expensive and thus less accessible. In Nigeria and many other African countries, the BlackBerry has a feature called the BBM messaging service, which is free.

Computer-based Web access for the average African remains costly, but you are seeing increasing use of cybercafés. It’s one of the most common ways for low-income people to access e-mail and text messaging.

With their comparatively greater share of Internet access, middle-class populations in many African countries are in a strong position to watch their governments and governmental expenditures. They will be the ones who would be most likely to lead changes in these societies.

By using the Web, they can harness the power of social media to work for transparency, accountability, and better governance—to access records on public spendi n g p ro j e c t s o n i n f r a s t ru c t u re a n d development, to find out how public money is being spent in their communities, to hold their government accountable, and to advocate for better governance and more responsible spending. Better government infrastructure and development proj-

ects will ultimately lead to substantial reductions in abject poverty.

Mobile phones can play a critical role in this objective, too. Text messaging will further link advocates for transparency with a larger network to spread crucial information.

ers across every sector. It’s worked nicely.

There is something to learn from that.

Matthias Mordi is executive director of Accender Africa, www.accenderafrica.org. This article is based on an interview conducted by FUTURIST assistant editor Rick Docksai.

Model for Access in the United States The United States could learn from ­ frica. I think the United States faces chalA lenges that are not quite present in African economies, where we are seeing exponential growth. The first challenge is that of being the first mover. The United States already had the existing technology and infrastructure. It’s like the man who already has train tracks versus the man trying to build new train tracks. The first man is constrained by the tracks he already has.

In America, many communities have the old infrastructure, such as copper cables, as opposed to optic fiber. These communities would need optic fiber or an equivalent infrastructure, but there is a high cost of switching them over.

Having first-mover status is different from being someone who is starting fresh.

In Nigeria, Ghana, and other parts of ­Africa, communications systems are starting from scratch. In Africa, most people never had a landline phone in their lives.

The second challenge for the United States is how the government works. ­Europe was able to move faster than the United States because it had a uniform standard. Where African countries have rules, regulation pushes expansion to areas lacking service.

By contrast, the United States lacks one common standard, so providers are running in different directions. The private sector doesn’t invest in areas that are not profitable, and the laissez-faire government does not encourage them to make investments.

The United States could learn also from the Asian countries, such as South Korea.

The public sector co-invests with the private sector in a way that the resources of society are going heavily into building infrastructure. This commitment has encouraged the telecoms to provide access to us-

Education | Futuring

Taking Stock in Teaching Forecasting Bringing business case studies to life helps students explore technology’s impacts.

By Byron C. Anderson Foresight, a common ingredient in many success stories, may be a skill set that eludes today’s informationinundated young adults. This story describes a simple effort to incorporate foresight thought processes into a college classroom using an exercise in forecasting—in this case, the class was a general education course titled Exploring Technology.

General education courses often comprise students from a diverse set of majors and typically examine an array of topics. The study of impacts, trends, and forecasting is a reoccurring theme that can be applied to many subject areas. Exploring Technology examined the role of technology across society, political and economic systems, our environment, and the human condition. The course covered the concept of impacts, followed by technology-transfer processes and attributes of trends, then concluded with forecasting. This exercise sought to complement an objective that strives to have students apply forecasting techniques.

Working in small groups, students selected an industry of inter-

Byron C. Anderson

“The factors informing a forecast, whether it is a stock purchase or the decision to sign up for a mobile phone plan, can be diverse and unique to each ­individual.”

—Byron C. Anderson,

University of ­Wisconsin–Stout

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

7

World Trends & Forecasts Further Reading: A Syllabus for Teaching Forecasting “The Art of Foresight,” THE FUTURIST, May-June 2004 (updated versions available from www.wfs.org).

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking (Little, Brown and Company, 2005).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the H i g h l y I m p ro b a b l e ( R a n d o m House, 2007).

John H. Vanston, “Better Forecasts, Better Plans, Better Results,” in Research-Technology Management, January-February

2003. The article contains a detailed description of Technology Futures Inc.’s signature Five Views of the Future forecasting framework. Available on TFI’s Web site, www.tfi.com/white-­ papers-articles.html.

John H. Vanston and Lawrence K. Vanston, “Testing the Tea Leaves: Evaluating the Validity of Forecasts,” in Research-Technology Management, SeptemberOctober 2004. An updated white paper version is also available on TFI’s Web site.

est (e.g., apparel, finance, software, transportation) and identified a leading publicly traded company from the industry for further study. They were directed to assemble facts about the industry, including the cost of doing business, challenges for competitors seeking to enter the industry, the likelihood of the industry being replaced, and other contexts for understanding the industry as a whole.

After gaining this overarching understanding, students investigated their selected leading company with an eye for indicators of growth, competition, or contraction. They were exposed to tools and resources used by various investors in screening and evaluating publicly traded companies.

The framing for the exercise was linked to two ideas. First, forecasting is a real, authentic, and potentially powerful practice that is available to every adult, every business day, in the form of investing—the buying, selling, and use of other stock-­ leveraging tools. Second, forecasting can be systematic, including the use of tools and processes.

Using the Five Views of the Future framework developed by John H. Vanston, chairman of Technology Futures Inc., students acquire useful conceptual views of the future and discover sample methods for presenting both quantitative and quali-

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THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

tative information. Other resources offered

by Technology Futures Inc. equip the students for making connections between the types of stock and company data encountered and a conceptual forecasting view.

Vanston’s Five Views of the Future framework provides a lens for students to consider variables on the future direction of an industry, demand for a product line, and potential influences on revenue stream. Each view includes a philosophical perspective, along with tools or sample methods that users might need to interpret available data. The views range from heavily quantitative to more qualitative forecasting approaches. Students were asked to exhibit methods samples that align with two of the five views: • Extrapolators presume that past patterns indicate future direction. They use straight-forward logic that draws largely on existing data, which informs a quantitatively driven forecast.

• Pattern Analysts draw upon historic trends and cycles to examine analogous situations under the presumption that history repeats itself. Understanding driving forces becomes important.

• Goal Analysts believe that key leaders and innovators will seize opportunities to identify or create a “human-need” vacuum, thereby creating a trend. They also acknowledge the multifaceted impact potential of “black swan” or unpredictable wild-card events.

• Counter Punchers thrive under chaos.

Their actions and impacts are unplanned and unknown, and their best planning is moment-by-moment monitoring with an agile response strategy.

• Intuitors rely on “thin-slicing” to decipher a host of complex and often unrelated dynamics. In his 2005 book on the topic, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes how humans are capable of making quick decisions with very little data. An intuitor may be uniquely gifted toward thin-slicing.

To further anchor the concepts to authentic, tangible outcomes, the students selected a company in competition with the lead company they chose to study. The leader and competitor are from within the same industry and sector, thus allowing the students to make comparisons that are

based on business realities common among both candidates, at least within the scope of the exercise.

Each team receives the following assignment: Recommend how an investment in a Roth-IRA of $5,000 should be distributed across the two companies. This IRA lens is added to underscore a longer view; by contrast, focusing on relative price movement would be less likely to promote an emphasis on forecasting, though indeed the use of technical indicators are a tool of the trading industry.

The students must present two exhibits of sample methods, which include two different “views of the future,” an example of company or industry data that reflects each view, and a rationale for the level of importance implied in the exhibit as it relates to informing their forecast. This strategy keeps the students engaged.

The exercise is not intended for analyst training or economic modeling, but rather to nurture a welcoming context for students to understand that forecasting is a combination of both science and intuition.

If futuring were only based on science, statisticians would be wealthy and market movements would be little more than mathematical equations. However, the factors informing a forecast, whether it is a stock purchase or the decision to sign up for a mobile-phone plan, can be diverse and unique to each individual.

The outcomes noted in the students’ presentations suggest strengths and weaknesses in the endeavor. Many reported that

using Vanston’s Five Views of the Future framework caused them to question prior assumptions, helped them examine a situation from a new perspective, and provided an organized approach for categorizing and valuing information. Sample methods exhibited most often included multi-month price trends and historic financials.

While those data have value, it was interesting to see some presenters using more subtle, indirect indicators, such as leadership vulnerabilities, spokesperson faux pas, consumer tendencies, environmental dynamics, and shifts in technology.

Clearly, some students recognized that past patterns only in part inform a forecast, and that sound foresight should consider outlier variables and indirect influences. As with most forecasts, the opportunity to affirm accuracy or future truths will have to wait.

In the coming iterations of this exercise, I will emphasize the linkages between Vanston’s Five Views framework and the sample methods that students offer as exhibits.

The attraction of using stocks over other avenues for learning about forecasting is that it enables customization, accommodating the individual interests and academic studies of diverse students. Additionally, information about publicly traded companies is quite freely available, widespread with an array of opinions, and rich with messages that suggest each investor do his or her own study.

In short, this exercise offers a dynamic library of opportunities to foster forecasting

“If futuring were only based on science, statisticians would be wealthy.”

—Byron C. Anderson

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World Trends & Forecasts in a systematic approach, and in a setting that invites the student to think about the future—their future.

Byron C. Anderson is an associate professor of information and communication technologies at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, Menomonie, Wisconsin. He also serves a program director for an online degree program, the BS-ICT. E-mail andersonby@uwstout.edu.

Brain/Mind | Sci/Tech

Visualizing Human Intention Neuroscientists may predict what you will do before you do it.

Scientists have verified that it’s possible to predict a person’s actions (specifically, a range of hand movements) before those actions take place. The reUNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO / JASON GALLIVAN searchers from the University of Western Ontario sought to reveal how planning activity in the areas of the brain that are associated with reaching and grasping (the superior parietal cortex, middle intraparietal sulcus, and dorsal premotor cortex) indicated future movement.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which reveals blood flow within the brain, the researchers discovered that the brain’s grasping areas do indeed take more blood flow not only when acting, but also when considering whether or not to pick up an object.

Interestingly, the blood-flow pattern changes depending on whether the subject intends to grasp the object by the The areas of the top or bottom and whether she intends to brain that activate turn it. when planning “It now seems clear that fMRI pattern movement include analysis in humans can provide a new tool the left precentral for capturing neural representations only gyrus and the left inpreviously detected with invasive electraparietal sulcus.

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January-February 2012

trode recordings in monkeys,” the researchers write.

“Neuroimaging allows us to look at how action planning unfolds within human brain areas without having to insert electrodes directly into the human brain. This is obviously far less intrusive,” says psychology professor Jody Culham, one of the study’s authors.

The finding follows previous studies on the relationship between planning and action in the brain. In a 2009 paper published in the journal Psychological Science, Washington University researcher Nicole Speer and her colleagues used fMRI to examine hemoglobin flow when people read fiction and discovered that the “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative.” Specifically, when people read about a character grasping and holding an object, the area of the reader’s brain associated with those actions draws more blood. The brain regions that are activated “closely mirror those involved when people perform or imagine or observe similar real-world activities.”

These and similar breakthroughs could one day aid in the creation of better prosthetic devices that respond to and return signals to the brain more like actual limbs.

—Patrick Tucker Source: “Decoding Action Intentions from Preparatory Brain Activity in Human Parieto-Frontal Networks” by Jason P. Gallivan et al. The Journal of Neuroscience (June 29, 2011).

WordBuzz | Futuring

More -topias In the September-October 2011 issue, we introduced you to protopia as a vision of an actionable better world. The suffix –topia (derived from Thomas More’s Utopia) may not be a word in itself, but it is frequently used to create new terms designating an ideal future for some specific area of ­interest.

Examples include technotopia (a world

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World Trends & Forecasts made better through accelerating technological progress) and Edutopia (a world improved through enhanced education), which is also the name of an organization founded by Star Wars creator George ­Lucas.

The –topia appendage may be used informally in a somewhat mocking tone, but the human impulse to fix things to benefit one particular constituency is widespread: Foodtopia, Ecotopia, Agritopia, Kidtopia, Youtopia, Mytopia, and even Futuretopia, all of which have domain names already spoken for.

Read, study, and discuss the original Utopia at www.online-literature.com/more/utopia/.

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Institutional Members A Complete List of the World Future Society’s Member Organizations

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Arcos Cielos Research Center, Elliott Maynard, Sedona, Arizona

Agnew Peckham, Lucy Brun, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Baha’i World Centre Library, Haifa, Israel

Audio-Tech Business Book Summaries, Fred A. Rogers, Willowbrook, Illinois

BAT Foundation for Future Studies, Ulrich Reinhardt, Hamburg, Germany Center for Strategic Management & Studies (CGEE), Lucia Melo, Brasilia, Brazil Compassion International, Rob Flanegin, Colorado Springs, Colorado Finland Futures Research Center, Juha Kaskinen, Turku, Finland Finnish Society for Futures Studies, Helsinki, Finland Finpro, Niko Herlin, Helsinki, Finland Futures Foundation, Charles A. Brass, Fairfield, Victoria, Australia Institut Royal des Etudes Strategique, RabatChellah, Morocco Institute for Alternative Futures, Clement Bezold, Alexandria, Virginia

Bentley Systems, Francis Rabuck, Exton, Pennsylvania CHRISTUS Health, Anne P. Messbarger-Eguia, San Antonio, Texas Pacific Foods of Oregon, Charles Eggert, Tualatin, Oregon Prospektiker (Prospective and Strategy), DonostiaSan Sebastian, Spain TO Production, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Educational Institutions Anne Arundel Community College, Steven T. Henick, Arnold, Maryland Delft University of Technology, Patrick van der Duin, Delft, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands

Institute for Futures Research, Bellville, South Africa

Duke NUS Graduate Medical School, Sandy Cook, Singapore

Korea Rural Economic Institute, Jinseok Seong, Seoul, South Korea

Eastern Senior High School, D. Donato, Voorhees, New Jersey

Korean Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity, Sook-kyung Cho, Seoul, South Korea

EBS Business School SMI, Heiko A. von der Gracht, Wiesbaden, Germany

The Millennium Project, Jerome C. Glenn, Washington, D.C. New Zealand Futures Trust, Wellington, New Zealand 14

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January-February 2012

Elon University School of Law, Leary Davis, Greensboro, North Carolina Emergency Services College, Kuopio, Finland Fachhoshschule Salzburg, Elmar Schuell, Salzburg, Austria

Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania Moraine Valley Community College, Margaret Lehner, Palos Hills, Illinois National Defense University, Washington, D.C. Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas

NATO HQ SACT, Norfolk, Virginia Prime Ministers Office, Tan Chee Seng, Singapore Proteus USA, Carlisle, Pennsylvania Queensland Department of Transport & Main Roads, Maxine Hatten, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Singapore Housing & Development Board, Er Lau Joo Ming, Singapore

Troy Univsity, Jack Hawkins, Troy, Alabama

Toronto Reference Library, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

U.S. Air Force, Maxwell AFB, Alabama

West Linn Wilsonville Schools, Roger Woehl, West Linn, Oregon York University Libraries, North York, Ontario, Canada

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U.S. Army ARDEC, Kurt McNeely, Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Paolo Pascetta, Washington, D.C. U.S. Secret Service, Christine Sivigny, Washington, D.C.

Citizenship & Immigration Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Conseil General du Departement de L’Isere, Grenoble, France Departamento de Prospectiva e Planeamento, Maria Proenca, Lisboa, Portugal Egyptian Cabinet, Nermin Saber, Cairo, Egypt Infocomm Development Authority, Jane Sanmugum, Singapore Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, Hengsi Wilson Lin, Singapore National Security Coordination Centre, Patrick Nathan, Singapore

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Eight Grand Challenges The author’s keynote presentation at last year’s WorldFuture 2011 conference in Vancouver introduced a series of Eight Grand Challenges—incentivized competitions designed to push humanity to another level.

By Thomas Frey

W

hen there are so many immediate problems to deal with, the notion of tackling “grand challenges” that could advance humanity may seem impractical to most people. How can we possibly justify advancing humanity when the money might be far better spent solving today’s massive problems?

My response to this legitimate question is that, if we only focus on solving today’s problems, we become trapped in the past. Every solution leads to another set of problems. Much like the whack-a-mole game at video arcades, as one prob-

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lem gets pounded down, another pokes its ugly head out.

The only real way out is to advance civilization. By advancing civilization we change the nature of the problems we’re dealing with, and that is exactly what the Eight Grand Challenges have been designed to do.

Before I describe these grand challenges, let me pose this thought question: In a nonreligious context, who is the world’s most famous person?

At WorldFuture 2011, the answers I got included Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Gandhi, and even Michael Jackson and Oprah Winfrey. These are all good

January-February 2012

answers. But my assumption is that the world’s most famous person has not been born yet. Using that assumption, the logical next question is, “What is the accomplishment that will make that person so incredibly famous?”

Put another way, what are the big things that still need to be accomplished?

Answering this question is exactly what led the DaVinci Institute to develop the Eight Grand Challenges in the first place, as well as our work on the Museum of Future Inventions project a few years ago. While still a work in progress, the Museum serves as the long-term guiding

for Human Advancement © JONAS STAUB / ISTOCKPHOTO

vision of what we hope to accomplish in the years ahead.

Eight Grand Challenges for Advancing Humanity The DaVinci Institute’s Eight Grand Challenges have been framed around incredibly difficult feats and at stake will be a combination of national pride, personal legacies, and laying claim to unprecedented achievements in science and industry.

Grand Challenge #1: Race to the Core First team to build a probe that makes it all the way to the center of the earth with a communication system capable of sending real-time sensory data to the surface.

In 1970, a Soviet team on the Kola Peninsula near the coast of Finland started drilling a hole straight down, about 8 to 10 inches across. After 24 years of drilling, they ran into temperatures that were 350°F and

higher. It started getting all gooey, and they couldn’t go any farther. So they capped it. After 24 years, they had only gotten 7.6 miles straight down. This is the deepest hole ever dug.

To put that in perspective, the center of the earth is 3,950 miles straight down. Everything we know about the center of the earth we’ve gained from indirect evidence. We know much more about the surface of Mars than we do about the center of the earth, and our ignorance is literally killing us. In 2010, more than 226,000 people died from earthquakes because we didn’t know enough to get them out of harm’s way.

This challenge is designed to enlighten us about what’s down there.

The challenge is for the first team to build a probe that makes it all the way to the center of the earth. It must include a communications system capable of sending real-time sensory data to the surface.

This is a very difficult problem to solve, because there will be extreme temperatures that can range from freezing to molten lava. The probe

will need to pass through air gaps, molten rock, solid ice, or hard substances that we don’t even know exist right now.

If somebody actually accomplishes this, we will need to explore how to use this information to create a safer place for us to live, as well as find other benefits for mankind (and prevent misuse of this technology and the information it generates).

Grand Challenge #2: Viewing the Past Create a technology capable of replaying—in actual-size holographic form—an unrecorded event that happened no less than 20 years earlier.

When it comes to time travel, Holly­wood makes it seem simple by just sending people across time. But there are two obvious first steps (if time travel is actually possible): One is communicating across time, and the other is viewing things across time. If we can’t do those two things,

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then why would we try to send people across time?

If we can view things across time, we can either view things in the future or we can view things in the past, though viewing the past would be easier. The challenge is thus to create a technology capable of replaying an unrecorded event in the past, at least 20 years ago, by setting up sensors around a room and actually replaying an event that happened—life-sized, in full holographic form.

If it’s possible to do something like that, how can a technology like this be used to improve things? Historical accuracy, human genealogy, biblical research, and criminal justice could improve—the O. J. Simpson trial might have been a whole lot shorter. There are lots of other issues that we could perhaps resolve if we had this type of technology, but you also have to ask what the unintended consequences would be and, most importantly, who gets to control it. We all make mistakes.

Grand Challenge #3: Elemental Deconstruction, or Disassembling Matter First team to reduce a solid block of granite (2-foot cube) to particles no larger than molecules in less than 10 seconds, using less than 500 watts of power without causing an explosion or physical damage to objects more than 10 feet away.

Taking something apart right now is a lot of work. We melt stuff, we crush stuff, we grind stuff up; we use heat, explosions, or chemicals.

So far, nothing has done a good job of disassembling matter, that actually breaks the bonds at the molecular level. We don’t have that technology yet.

If someone could meet this grand challenge, what kind of changes would that create in the world? The ability to deconstruct matter will undoubtedly alter the way things like mining, oil exploration, waste management, and a great many other things are done.

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Grand Challenge #4: The Gravity Challenge Demonstrate gravitational control over an object weighing no less than 2,000 pounds by doubling the force of gravity to 4,000 pounds, reducing the force of gravity by 50% to 1,000 pounds, and creating negative gravity by lifting the object 1,000 feet and returning it back to the original position with no explosions and in less than 10 minutes.

What do we know about gravity?

Not much, though we can certainly describe it. Some very smart people have wrestled with the gravity problem but have gotten us pretty much nowhere. The challenge is thus to demonstrate gravitational control over an object weighing no less than 2,000 pounds.

We designed this challenge based on these three different vantage points: • The idea of super-gravity. Can we double the force of gravity, so this 2,000-pound object suddenly weighs 4,000 pounds?

• Partial gravity. Can we reduce the force of gravity by 50%, so that 2,000-pound object suddenly weighs 1,000 pounds?

• Negative gravity. Can we lift that 2,000-pound object a thousand feet in the air and bring it back down to earth again?

Each of these gravity-control challenges must be accomplished using a small amount of energy, with no explosions, in less than 10 minutes, and without killing anybody.

Our ability to control gravity, even that tiny amount, would change virtually every aspect of life as we know it, from construction to transportation to disaster mitigation and prevention.

Grand Challenge #5: The Ultimate Small Storage Particle Create an electron-based data storage system no larger than 10 millimeters cubed that can be manufactured for less than $1 per 100 terabytes and is capable of uploading, storing, and retrieving a volume of information equal to the U.S. Li-

January-February 2012

brary of Congress in less than 10 minutes using less than 1 watt per TB/month.

With Moore’s law, everything is getting smaller, and someday we’re going to reach the ultimate small storage particle. Once we do that, then we can start setting standards.

And when we set standards, people 200 years in the future will actually be able to read what we’ve created in the past without having to convert it into a different format.

Over the past few years I’ve had conversations with several experts in the nanotech industry. I like to ask them the question, “What, in your mind, is the smallest practical size for information storage?” Since our understanding of neutrinos and quarks is rather limited, they guessed it would probably be the electron, one of the larger subatomic particles. Using that assumption, I framed the question around, “How many iterations of Moore’s law do we have to go through to get to a storage particle the size of the electron?”

Using this approach, I asked Mark Dubin, a professor at the University of Colorado, to do the math. He concluded that, if Moore’s law continues down the same path, we will reach the size of the electron in 2133.

That’s 122 years in the future.

There are lots of degrees of tininess that we’re not aware of. To be sure, we are a long way from reaching this goal, but once we do, we will need to start setting information standards. It will be easier for people in the future once we have a consistent form of information.

Grand Challenge #6: Travel at the Speed of Light Create a scientific probe capable of traveling at the speed of light for a distance no less than the Earth to Saturn, with information sensors to capture stresses, impacts, and details along the way.

Humans have long pursued faster travel. Magellan’s crew circumnavigated the globe in a grueling exercise continued on page 20

A Brief History of Prize Incentives: Why We Need to Compete In the middle 1800s, one of the most popular sports in the United States was billiards. Restaurants and saloons were quick to pick up on the game’s popularity, using it to attract new customers. Soon after, the concept of a billiard parlor took hold, with many communities feeling left out if they didn’t have one.

One of the driving forces behind the sport was Michael Phelan, an Irish immigrant, who wrote one of the first American books on the game and was influential in setting rules and standards of behavior for the game. He founded the Phelan and Collender company, which developed new table and cushion designs and heavily promoted the sport. Later, in 1884, his company merged with the J. M. Brunswick & Balke Company.

However, billiards was a sport that created a huge demand for ivory, the only known substance at the time for manufacturing billiard balls. By 1860, the demand for ivory had grown so intense that industry experts estimated more than 100,000 elephants a year were being slaughtered to fill all the orders. To make matters worse, because of the imperfections in the ivory, they were only able to extract around eight billiard balls per elephant. A truly sad commentary on American consumerism.

Michael Phelan recognized the problem and in 1863 offered up the $10,000 Phelan and Collender prize for the best ivory substitute for making billiard balls. Six years later, in 1869, John Wesley Hyatt came forward with his invention of Celluloid, the world’s first practical synthetic plastic.

Although he was never paid the prize money, he went on to found the Albany Billiard Ball Company, and the prize inspired a major milestone in the early days of the plastics industry.

Throughout history there are many examples of incentive prizes that produced amazing ­results.

• In 1714, the British Parliament offered a cash prize of £20,000 for reducing shipwrecks by creating a precise method for determining a ship’s longitude. The prize of £14,315 was won by John Harrison for a specialized precision clock: a chronometer. This story was captured by the NOVA team in their documentary for PBS, Lost at Sea: The Search for Longitude.

• In 1919, Raymond Orteig, a New York hotel­ ier, announced a $25,000 prize for the first person to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. In

1927, Charles Lindbergh won that prize, opening the door to transoceanic air travel.

• In 1980, a $100,000 prize was created by computer science professor Edward Fredkin for the first computer to beat a reigning world chess champion. The prize was awarded to IBM’s inventors of the Deep Blue machine in 1997. Deep Blue beat world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game rematch in May 1997 (Kasparov had won their first match a year earlier). The Deep Blue inventors were Feng-hsiung Hsu, Murray Campbell, and Arthur Joseph Hoane.

• Launched in 1996, the Ansari X Prize was a space competition in which the X Prize Foundation offered a $10 million prize for the first nongovernmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. The prize was won on October 4, 2004— the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch—by the Tier One project designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, using the experimental space plane called SpaceShipOne. These are but a few of the many prize competitions used to shift public attention.

The Hamilton Project, an effort spearheaded by the Brookings Institution, endorses the use of prizes to stimulate technological innovation. It states that technology prizes are “an old idea whose time has come again.” The project went on to state, “Prizes can also generate public excitement and enthusiasm for science and technology, and encourage more young people to pursue careers in science, engineering, or technologybased entrepreneurship.”

The most famous prizes in the world today are the Nobel Prizes. However, those are backwardlooking prizes intended to reward some of the world’s best and brightest for past accomplishments.

Incentive prizes are different. They serve a vastly different purpose: to incentivize people for future accomplishments.

Our need to compete is something that has been instilled in us at an early age. We compete with people physically in athletic competitions, and intellectually in academic competitions. But when it comes to science and math, the fundamental building blocks needed to advance civilization; we have very few finish lines.

—Thomas Frey

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continued from page 18 that took three years. In 1764, John Byron made it around the world in two years. He cut an entire year off the trip around the world. He made history. In 1924, the U.S. Army Air Service (the forerunner to the Air Force) made it in 175 days; in 1929, Hugo Eckener traveled around the world in a Graf Zeppelin in 21 days; then Wiley Post completed it a couple of years later in a little over eight and a half days, and then he broke his own record two years later, in seven and a half days. The Lady Luck II did it in 94 hours in 1949. In 1961, the world changed when cosmo­naut Yuri Gagarin flew his historic journey around the Earth in a record time of an hour and fortyeight minutes.

Finally, in 1969, Apollo 10 set the current world human speed record

with its slingshot move around the Earth to get to the Moon—almost 25,000 miles an hour. For more than 42 years, we haven’t done anything to improve this record.

So, where do we go from here?

This challenge has been formulated around a scientific probe capable of traveling at the speed of light, traveling a distance of no less than the Earth to Saturn, with information sensors on board to capture stresses, impacts, and details along the way.

How will this change the world?

In what ways will speed-of-light travel change our view of virtually everything? Every time we increase the upper limit of transportation speed, it forces us to rethink our relationship to the universe and change our thinking about colonizing other planets.

As we learn more about the world around us, speed-of-light travel may

not be the ultimate challenge. On September 21, 2011, scientists at CERN’s OPERA detector in Gran Sasso, Italy, announced a yet to be replicated “anomaly”—the intriguing possibility that they detected neutrinos exceeding the speed of light.

Grand Challenge #7: Swarm-Bots Create a swarm of 10,000 synchronized micro drones no larger than 10 millimeters across (height, width, and depth) capable of lifting a 250-pound person to a height of 100 feet and gently returning him/her to the ground.

The idea of swarm-bots was captured in Michael Crighton’s book Prey. Swarm-bots, as they exist today, are fairly large and clunky. They

Book Review: Why Businesses Must Own Their Futures A business that wants to survive and thrive must do more than simply plan for the future, says Thomas Frey, the DaVinci Institute’s executive director and senior futurist. He advises ­future-wary businesses everywhere to take personal ownership stakes in creating the future.

Trends do not simply appear out of nowhere, he writes in Communicating with the Future: Trends are made. The future will belong to leaders who create compelling visions that attract others to such a degree that they overcome change-resistance within the dominant human socioeconomic systems.

Frey encourages business leaders to publish their own visions for the future. They must do so, however, in light of the changing communications medium, characterized by the declining roles of television and print media and by increased interactivity and micro-specialization of markets.

They must also be mindful of the coming disappearance of the hiring and firing system that we have known for the last century. In the future, most work will be project-based, not permanent and full time, and the bulk of professionals will be free agents who move from office to office as needed. A particularly enterprising few will

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January-February 2012

strap on recording gear and earn a steady living as “terabyters,” paid by companies to gather information about their day-to-day living environments [see Frey’s article “The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living” in the January-February 2011 issue Communicating with the Future: How Reof THE FUTURIST].

No matter what their Engineering Intentions niche or line of work, the Will Alter the Master professionals who adapt to Code of Our Future by the project-based work par- Thomas Frey. DaVinci adigm will be an influential Institute. 2011. 115 pages. class—the “futurati.” Com- Paperback. $19.99. panies will revere them as not merely temporary workers, but as specialists who are integral to any business’s success.

Communicating with the Future is a punchy, tothe-point primer on how market pressures today are shaping a radically new business climate.

Frey provides a cogent picture of what that yetto-be-seen model may look like; forward-thinking entrepreneurs in any industry would do well to check it out.

—Rick Docksai

don’t yet communicate well with others. Sometime in the future, they’ll be microscopic, infinitely more efficient, and will maneuver with great precision. Imagine walking out of your shower in the morning, and a swarm of microbots comes in and dries you off. This swarm will then reassemble to become your clothing, in a style of your choosing, and serve as your suit of armor, your health and medical monitor, and personal command center. In essence, it becomes a fully functional exoskeleton.

Is this a good idea? How will swarm-bots like this change the world? How will this kind of technology change human abilities and capabilities? We also need to consider what some of the unintended consequences of doing this may be.

Grand Challenge #8: The 10-Second Interface Create a direct-to-the-mind interface that will allow 25 average people to answer a series of questions within 10 seconds with no harmful side effects to the user.

Once we master this challenge, all of the others will become infinitely more likely to happen. Just 20 years ago, a body of information such as the Library of Congress was the kind of place you would go if somebody asked you a bunch of tough questions. In that “information universe,” you might take 10 hours per question to get an answer, working your way through card catalogs and references, bouncing from one book to another.

Today, using a computer and search engine, that 10-hour experience has been reduced to 10 minutes.

The next iteration is what I call the 10-second interface, where somebody can ask you the same questions and you can just instantly think your way through it. The interface between our brains and the information world is becoming seamless and invisible. That’s the direction we’re headed. So can we push it farther and faster, and make it happen sooner?

Clearly it will affect the education system. For instance, when we have instant access to information, we no longer have to teach the “who,” the “what,” the “when,” the “where”; we only have to teach the “why” and the “how.” And we will need to explore how this kind of evolution in literacy will affect businesses and how they distribute information.

Rules for the Grand Challenges Here is an overview of how the Challenges will operate: • Teams. Unique to these competitions, only countries will be allowed to enter teams, and each country will be limited to no more than two teams. All teams will be required to maintain accurate records of their personnel, research data, and stages of progress.

• The Prize. Similar to the Olympics, members of the winning team will each receive a gold medal. However, the true value will come from the accomplishment. Each has the potential to unlock vast new industries.

More importantly, the team that wins will have carved out their own legacy with a permanent place in the next generation of history books.

• Entrance Fee. The cost of managing competitions of this nature will be significant. For this reason, the entrance fee for each team has been set at $1 million per team. The money will be used to fund an endowment to insure the long-term viability of each competition.

As the competitions ramp up, an entirely new organization will be created. The resulting organization will require a highly skilled management team and staff members who possess extraordinary technical expertise. The management team will need to be in place for many years, perhaps even decades.

The entrance fee represents a tiny fraction of a percent of the amount each team will need to budget for their efforts. Team budgets for each competition will likely be in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars.

• Governing Bodies. Each competition will also require its own governing body. Since each will be a venture into the unknown, pushing

the limits of science and technology, there will need to be an international governing body responsible for oversight and dealing with unforeseeable circumstances.

The exact makeup and responsibilities of the governing bodies will be determined over the coming months, but minimally they will include one representative per team from the countries they represent.

Grand Challenges and Future Dreams Some competitions may not be completed in our lifetime, and each will be constructed around a framework that will allow it to evolve with our understanding of science.

They are designed to stretch human thinking and push the envelope. More than just a series of competitions, we view them as possible turning points in world history. Our hope is that they will stir the imagination of people around the world and incite a global conversation.

People make decisions today based on their interpretation of what the future holds. That’s why we say the future creates the present. This is just the opposite of what most people think—that what we’re doing today is going to create the future. In reality, the image that people have in their heads today of what the future holds will determine their actions.

So if we change people’s visions of the future, we change the way they make decisions, today. ❑ About the Author Thomas Frey is executive director of the DaVinci Institute and author most recently of Communicating with the Future: How Re-­ engineering Intentions Will Alter the Master Code of Our Future (DaVinci Institute Press, 2011). He may be contacted at the DaVinci Institute, 511 E. South Boulder Road, Louisville, Colorado 80027. E-mail dr2tom@davinciinstitute.com; Web site www.davinciinstitute .com or www.ImpactLab.com.

This article draws from his closing plenary presentation at WorldFuture 2011 in Vancouver, an audio of which may be ordered from Intelliquest Media, www.intelliquestmedia .com (search Organizations: World Future Society or Events: WorldFuture 2011).

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One Response to the Eight Grand Challenges

By Richard Yonck Do Thomas Frey’s challenges defy the laws of physics? Are they too challenging to be accomplished within any one contender’s lifetime? One observer suggests that these criticisms do not detract from the Grand Challenges’ principal goal: to advance humanity.

The closing plenary session for WorldFuture 2011, held in July in Vancouver, was given by Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute. In his presentation, Frey offered up Eight Grand Challenges for humanity. It was a thought-provoking presentation, though not without its critics.

To recap, Frey stated that much of our time and resources are taken up dealing with the existing problems of the day. We are continually responding to the problems and conditions we’ve created in the past and, by doing so, we trap ourselves there. So why not establish a group of competitive challenges for the purpose of advancing humanity in the future?

Because of the scale of the challenges and the financial and physical resources needed, the competition would be limited to countries. The prize would be national prestige along with the creation of entirely new industries and markets. While the possible applications of the resulting technologies was considered very open-ended, the challenges themselves had set parameters. [The particulars of the Eight Challenges are described in Frey’s article.]

Some attendees took issue with several of the challenges, noting that they violated established laws of physics. Now, I’m only an armchairphysicist (that is, I’m as much a physicist as most football fans are professional quarterbacks), but I’m of the opinion that we need to be open to these ideas. At first glance, some of the challenges do appear to violate relativity and the First Law of Thermodynamics, but I think they’re actually open-ended enough to have some potential work-arounds.

For instance, disassembling matter would essentially involve breaking the covalent bonding between atoms.

Though the limitation of 500 watts seems impossibly low, could a kind 22

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of cascade effect be initiated that would do the work without violating the law of conservation of energy?

Special relativity tells us that a massless particle can travel at light speed, but anything having mass cannot. (However, as I write, even this basic assumption is being called into question.) As an initial thought experiment: Would it ever be possible to isolate a chargeless particle, such as a neutron, in such a way that its mass wouldn’t be affected by acceleration?

Using current technology, no, but I’m not sure this will always be the case.

Certain experiments with quantum entanglement—Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance”—suggest that information may be able to travel backward in time. This is far from proven, but offers potential worth exploring.

Many cosmologists believe that dark energy and repulsive gravity may drive the expansion of the universe. Could advances in our understanding of these forces one day give us the means of controlling gravity?

The impossible is always impossible until it’s not. This doesn’t mean we can expect to violate primary laws of physics, but we need to be open to the possibility of what can be achieved.

For me, the bigger issue is one of motivation. Some of these challenges could take a century or more to be realized. National prestige and the dream of potential markets and industries are all very good, but is this sufficient to sustain participants for the long haul?

Could they weather the political and ideological swings that will occur during even a fraction of this timeframe?

Two of the largest, long-term, technically advanced projects ever undertaken were the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program. Both of these marshaled enormous physical and intellectual resources over many years.

However, they weren’t launched to

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create new markets, but as a response to a perceived existential threat. For me, therein may lie the answer.

The world faces any number of known and unknown existential threats in the coming century and beyond. British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees has put the probability of human extinction sometime during the twenty-first century at 50%. The risks are considerable.

Some we can influence; others we have absolutely no control over. Bioterrorism. Nanotechnology run amok. Nuclear war. Extreme climate change. Asteroid collisions. Radiation from a nearby supernova. Any one of these could destroy millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization.

The possible uses for technologies arising from the Eight Grand Challenges are vast. But within them I see the necessary ingredients for finally expanding humanity beyond this one small planet. Moving into space, both within and beyond this solar system, is our best chance of continuation as a species.

As physicist and cosmologist ­S tephen Hawking observed, “The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet.”

So my interpretation of the Eight Great Challenges is this: We need to treat humanity the same way we treat any other irreplaceable, highly valued, absolutely critical system.

Let’s make a backup. ❑ About the Author Richard Yonck is a foresight analyst for Intelligent Future LLC and is the founder of FutureNovo.com, a site about emerging technologies. His previous article for THE FUTURIST, “Treading in the Sea of Data,” appeared in the July-August 2011 issue. E‑mail ryonck@intelligent-future.com.

Crossing the Species Boundary Genetic Engineering as Conscious Evolution

By Jeffrey Scott Coker © DOMINIC SATA / ISTOCKPHOTO

Genetic engineering is actually as natural as any process on Earth, and mastering it would enable us to do what microbes do trillions of times every day, but purposefully and with better results.

Gene mutation is far more common and more natural than some people may think.

Although we tend to think of ourselves as genetically stable entities, the truth is that every one of us mutates multiple times every day. Every time one of our cells duplicates itself, a couple of hundred DNA mutations occur. Since the human body has more than 10 trillion cells, that adds up to trillions of mutations, per person, over the course of a human life.

Viruses and bacteria routinely shuttle DNA between organisms in nature, so much of our DNA is nonhuman in origin.

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Some activist groups have launched media campaigns and led mass protests against it.

They express shock and outrage and denounce it as a “contaminant” and a “dangerous technology.” A few groups of more militant demonstrators have gone so far as to vandalize research labs and sabotage experimental field trials.

Scientists attempt to view the issues surrounding genetic engineering more objectively. They foresee the technologies greatly benefiting humanity and the environment—as long as we proceed with caution.

The Ecological Society of America has stated:

“It is pretty difficult to argue that we should give random chance trillions of opportunities to change our DNA, but we shouldn’t trust ourselves to do it even once.” ruses and bacteria have been shuttling DNA between organisms of every sort. Most commonly, they deposit their own DNA (which they are also passing readily among themselves). For example, one finding of the Human Genome Project was that humans have a substantial amount of bacterial DNA that was passed into humans through lateral gene transfer. Lateral gene transfer is a pretty common occurrence in nature, leading to rapid spread of disease resistance genes among microorganisms and other evolutionary events.

Once you realize that DNA is not fixed, and is in fact constantly changing, the notion of genetic engineering seems quite innocent.

Changing DNA within an organism and transferring DNA from one species to another is not unprecedented, or even unusual. Microbes in nature are carrying it out every second.

The only thing truly new about genetic engineering is that it transfers control from microorganisms to humans, from randomness to consciousness. It is pretty difficult to argue that we should give random chance trillions of opportunities to change our DNA, but we shouldn’t trust ourselves to do it even once.

Humans have many faults, but we are not dumber or less trustworthy than random chance.

Backlashes against Genetic Engineering The subject of genetic engineering often sparks an emotional reaction in many people. There is widespread support in some countries for banning genetic engineering, or at least imposing severe restrictions on it.

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Genetically engineered organisms have the potential to play a positive role in sustainable agriculture, aquaculture, bioremediation, and environmental management, both in developed and developing countries.

However, deliberate or inadvertent releases of genetically engineered organisms into the environment could have negative ecological impacts under some circumstances.

The American Society of Plant ­ iologists firmly supports “responB sible development and science-based oversight” of genetic engineering, and states further that, “with continued responsible regulation and oversight, genetic engineering will bring many significant health and environmental benefits to the world.”

The National Academies of Science (NAS), which advises the U.S. government under congressional charter, reviewed the body of existing literature on crop production throughout the United States. In its 2010 report, NAS concluded that genetic engineering might not enhance agriculture everywhere, but it does significantly improve agriculture in many places and sectors.

The simplistic debate about whether or not genetic engineering is “right” or “wrong” is very unfortunate because it has distracted the public from the truly important

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questions about the future: How can we use genetic engineering to improve the world? How should the regulatory process be designed to maintain safety while still allowing the timely release of life-saving therapies, improved crops, etc.? How can we utilize the benefits of genetic engineering without allowing a small number of corporations to dominate global agriculture? How can we use genetic engineering for humanitarian purposes? How can we use genetic engineering to cure cancer and other diseases? To what extent should genetic engineering be used for human enhancement?

Researchers in practically every major university and research institute are now thinking about these questions and using genetic engineering to help solve all sorts of global problems. It is no exaggeration to say that a revolution of innovation is taking place.

The Next Generation of Genetically Engineered Crops In the United States and elsewhere, more than 90% of soybeans, cotton, corn, and certain other crops are already genetically engineered, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most common genetic modifications involve increased defenses to insects and weeds. For example, “Roundup Ready” crops are immune to the herbicide glyphosate, allowing farmers to spray herbicide and kill weeds without harming the crop itself.

(These crops are not without controversy, raising fears of corporate ­m onopolization, indiscriminate spraying of toxic chemicals, etc.) Another example is “Bt” technology, which involves plants producing a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that is toxic to most insects. Although these universal traits will persist, the next generation of genetically engineered crops will include traits for local adaptation, as well.

Many of the best applications for genetically engineered crops are local in nature—targeted solutions for specific problems. In Hawaii, for example, genetically engineered papaya trees have rescued the entire

papaya industry. A ringspot virus was destroying all of Hawaii’s papayas in the 1980s and 1990s. Researchers from Cornell University engineered a resistant tree that was then bred with other varieties. Now, more than 80% of Hawaiian papaya trees are immune to ringspot.

Similarly, on farms throughout China, farmers gave been growing a cotton plant that is engineered to be resistant to the destructive pest cotton bollworm. Analysis has shown that these resistant cotton plants will even control the bollworm on nearby non-engineered plants.

Rice is a staple crop throughout the world, especially in poor areas.

Researchers at University of California–Riverside and the International Rice Research Institute have created varieties of rice that can withstand being submerged under water for almost two weeks, which can save crops during years of flooding. At the University of California–Davis, rice has been engineered to have greater salt tolerance. Others are working on more nutritious rice that will be more resistant to drought, cold, iron toxicity, and other stresses.

These new traits could have enormous humanitarian benefits.

Colorado State University researchers have created plants that can change color when certain pollutants or explosives are nearby. This could allow the plants to serve as a warning system during a terrorist attack or industrial accident, or when landmines are left behind after wars.

Partial solutions to the world’s energy needs are being addressed by genetic engineering, as well. At many universities, organisms are being engineered with improved characteristics for producing biofuels (e.g., tolerance to glucose and ethanol). Plants, bacteria, yeast, algae, and other organisms have been engineered for this purpose.

In Australia, field trials have been promising for insect-resistant cotton, drought-tolerant and salt-tolerant wheat, and boron-tolerant and fiberenriched barley. They have also created bananas that are fungus-resistant and fortified with Vitamin A and iron.

In South Africa, researchers have engineered corn that is resistant to

the maize streak virus. The virus, which is endemic to Africa, can destroy a farmer’s entire crop in a bad year. Since corn accounts for more than 50% of calories consumed in some African regions, the new corn could help Africa to become more stable and self-sufficient.

We could go on and on with examples of genetic engineering being used to solve specific problems and improve particular crops. Basically, if you can imagine it, then several research labs are working on it. Genetic engineering will allow crops of the future to be better tasting, more nutritious, more tolerant of environmental stresses, and less allergenic.

Foods will also last longer before spoiling, allowing food to be distributed more easily. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there will be much more food grown per acre, meaning that we will need less land to grow crops. This creates the opportunity for millions of acres to remain wilderness instead of being leveled into farmland.

A common criticism of engineered crops is that they allow a small number of large corporations to control an agricultural system. If every farmer is using the same genetically modified crops—particularly if they’re from one manufacturer— then there will be less agricultural diversity, more corporate control, and little economic benefit for the farmers themselves.

In many situations, that has been partly true, but this is a problem that has to do with patenting and the regulatory system, not genetic engineering itself. As long as the regulatory environment is so biased against engineered crops, large companies will continue to dominate because most smaller players can’t afford to get products approved. As with golden rice, many of the best uses of genetic engineering, especially those with benefits for poor and developing nations, are having trouble moving from the laboratory to the field.

To be fair, genetic engineering is not a panacea for agriculture and food supply. Agriculture is taking a serious toll on the planet. Global population is growing, soils are being degraded, and water supplies are being depleted. Perhaps most

important, climate is changing, making traditional agricultural methods obsolete in many regions. Although genetic engineering can help remedy all of these problems, it cannot be a complete solution by itself. We will also need to embrace sustainable practices that build soils, reduce unnecessary herbicides and pesticides, increase biodiversity, reduce water usage, and distribute food more efficiently.

If we are wise, we will stop pitting d i ff e re n t a g r i c u l t u r a l s y s t e m s against one another. For example, both modern scientific farming and traditional indigenous agricultural systems have their place in the world. In a world with rapidly changing environments and cultures, we will need the tools and techniques of every agricultural system at our disposal to help individual regions cope with their own unique circumstances. Yesterday’s techniques will not work when tomorrow’s climate is so different.

Likewise, using a small handful of corporate methods all over the planet is unlikely to benefit such a wide diversity of peoples and environments.

In my opinion, a sustainable and equitable future looks like this: Crops and livestock are genetically engineered with specific regions and peoples in mind, so that the local cultures are empowered and crop biodiversity is maintained. It is a world where ordinary people control their technology instead of the technology controlling them. This is the best future we can hope to attain.

Genetic Engineering for Human Health Genetic engineering holds great potential importance for human health care, as well. It can be used on other organisms to produce drugs, and it can also be used directly on humans to reverse harmful mutations.

The first drug produced by genetic engineering was insulin, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1982. Before then, people with insulin-dependent diabetes had to inject themselves with insulin from cows or pigs. Although

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effective, cow and pig insulin increased the chances of allergic reactions. The company Genentech genetically engineered the bacterium E. coli so that it would produce a human version of insulin. Since this first success, genetic engineering has yielded therapies for multiple sclerosis, strokes, dwarfism, cancer, and a wide range of other diseases. By moving medicine away from using chemicals and parts derived from other animals and cadavers, genetically engineered products have resulted in higher success rates and fewer allergic reactions.

Genetic engineering is also invaluable as a method of disease prevention. Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes genital warts and is the main cause of cervical cancer, which kills hundreds of thousands of women each year. The pharmaceutical company Merck produces a widely used vaccine for HPV, which was among the first products to actually prevent a form of cancer. It is little known by the public that the vaccine is produced using genetically engineered yeast (and that is, in fact, the only way it could ever have been produced).

All around the world, companies are developing new genetically engineered drugs to fight cancer. Some will prevent forms of cancer outright, while others will help keep cancerous growth in check. For example, injecting tumor suppressor genes can slow some tumors.

Genetic engineering can also be used to fix genetic diseases, birth defects, and a broad range of other harmful mutations that occur “naturally” within human DNA. Most people don’t like the sound of “engineering” humans. We don’t think of ourselves as mechanical products, and we would much rather be “cured” than “engineered” or “fixed.” With this in mind, many medical practitioners have adopted the gentler-sounding phrase “gene therapy,” which includes a broad array of methods for using genetics to treat disease. Call it whatever you like, genetically based approaches are saving lives and restoring health.

For example, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and 26

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University College London have corrected a gene defect in the eyes of people born with severe blindness and partly restored their sight. Only one injection of a liquid was needed to produce the dramatic results.

In another case, researchers at the National Institutes of Health genetically engineered the lymphocytes of cancer patients so that their cells would recognize and destroy cancerous cells. Several patients with rapidly advancing and deadly forms of cancer were cancer-free a few months later. Yet another example is the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Many research groups are giving HIV-­ infected patients new genes to help fight HIV by removing blood or bone marrow, introducing new genes to immune cells, and then reinfusing the cells back into patients.

There are several thousand genetic diseases that are caused by DNA mutations and a variety of infectious diseases that use mutations of their own to outsmart our drugs. With genetic engineering, it may be possible to negate the vast majority of these genetic diseases and to develop much more effective, adaptable cures to the most mutation-prone pathogens. Thus, genetic engineering may become more and more important as a health-care tool.

Extreme Forms of Genetic Engineering It would be great fun to hop into a time machine and go back to witness the very first time that someone extracted and drank milk from a cow or goat. It must have seemed unthinkably disgusting to people at the time. Was it a caveman dare? Or a tribe who was desperately hungry?

Or an early experimentalist?

Whatever the case, it goes to show that what seems extreme and unnatural to one generation or culture can be totally ordinary to the next. We eat and drink other organisms, even some that were once considered poisonous—tomatoes, for example.

Likewise, ancient human cultures would have been shocked to hear that we now replace our organs with those from other animals, or graft plant species together to make them grow just as we like.

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What are the more “extreme” genetic engineering projects of today that may seem ordinary tomorrow?

Although genetically engineered animals are not yet a major part of agriculture, they are coming in a big way. They will be much more efficient—growing faster, requiring less food, and producing less waste.

Eventually, they will also produce leaner, lower-fat meat.

If we choose, we could also grow meat in an industry setting that isn’t really from an “animal,” per se. The same cells that divide and grow to produce “meat” in an animal can be coaxed into growing synthetic meat in a laboratory. Some would argue that current meat production has become so miserable and unethical for animals that synthetic meat would be an ethical improvement. Public opinion will ultimately decide.

In the realm of human health, genetic engineering will go far beyond treating acute health problems. We will see human enhancements of all sorts. Among the first could be people engineered to be slimmer and more muscular, both of which have already been accomplished in mice and monkeys. Eyesight could be greatly improved, perhaps even allowing us to see wavelengths of light that are currently “invisible” to us—maybe to the point where we might lessen our need for lighting and electricity use. Intelligence is more complicated and more impacted by one’s environment, but it, too, could be genetically enhanced.

Undoubtedly, many people will protest vehemently at the notion of human enhancement, and some places will probably ban it. At the same time, though, the competitive pressures to use it will be enormous.

Will the landscape of global power shift due to who embraces genetic technology and who doesn’t? It is possible that we are in for a sort of genetic arms race or, if you view it more positively, a global revolution in genetic innovation. No matter what you call it, it would be an evolutionary sprint.

Genetic engineering will also very likely alter future athletic events.

Unlike the use of performance-­ enhancing drugs, which a medical exam can detect, it will be nearly im-

possible to prove that an athlete ­u nderwent some types of genetic ­enhancement. In fact, some professional sports may be forced to allow every competitor access to essentially the same gene-altering technology. That way, at least they will have a level playing field. It is possible that we have already seen the last Olympic Games that are 100% free of genetically engineered athletic performance.

Some argue that genetic enhancement could ruin sports, and in some cases they may be right. On the other hand, was it ever really “fair” that a few people are lucky enough to be able to hit a baseball 450 feet, run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, or jump from the free-throw line and dunk a basketball? Sports are already more dominated by genetics than we’d like to admit. The real decision is whether we prefer sports to be driven by genetic chance or genetic design.

Other Uses of Genetic Engineering The advanced-research divisions of militaries around the world are applying genetic engineering to attempt to develop deadlier weapons and morecapable soldiers. If they succeed, future war zones might feature such phenomena as troops with super­ human metabolism, attack bees that follow orders, genetic programming with remote controls, rapid-healing stem cells, or living machinery.

Other, more benevolent uses of genetic engineering are also feasible.

One of the more thought-provoking ideas for genetic engineering is the “open-source organism” concept. Today, open-source projects use the good will of the community to collectively design something: One designer makes a change, then another improves it, then another, and so forth. When an open-source project becomes popular, it is hard to beat since everyone together knows more than a small group. Wikipedia is a widely popular example.

Now imagine if the global community designed organisms collectively, just like it now collectively maintains Wikipedia. One group would contribute genetic informa-

tion for superior sugar metabolism, then another would add DNA repair mechanisms, and so forth.

Some researchers, such as the BIOFAB group (BIOFAB International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology), are developing free standard DNA parts that could be used to create designer microbes. Eventually, it might be easy enough for novices to participate. You could choose the traits that you want instead of having to understand exactly how the genetics works—much as we buy a television or computer because of what they do, even though we can’t build one ourselves.

The open-source concept is revolutionary not only for the novel organisms it might produce, but also for the evolutionary process that it creates. Evolution would have expanded from a process of natural selection to include artificial selection, then independent design, and finally community design. Evolution could actually become a democratic process.

Finally, we might imagine more large-scale genetic shuffling between higher organisms. Mythologies and religions are full of fantastical creatures: centaurs (part human, part horse), chimeras (mix of lion, goat, and snake), sphinxes (mix of woman, lion, and bird), angels (humanlike creatures with wings), etc.

Modern “superheroes” also embody imagined human–animal hybrids: Spiderman, Batman, Wolverine, and so forth. Many of these are ridiculous from the standpoint of what is possible. But some of their characteristics are absolutely achievable. It is our ethics, and not our science, that would keep some of these things from happening.

“Will the landscape of global power shift due to who embraces genetic technology and who doesn’t?

It is possible that we are in for a sort of genetic arms race.”

Conscious Evolution: Leaving Our Primitive Times Behind Once upon a time, our ancient ancestors scratched lives from nature.

When food presented itself, they ate.

When it did not, they starved. In the real world, “leaving nature alone”

really means subjecting ourselves and our families to merciless and random suffering. Eventually, humans took more control of animals and plants through agriculture, and then civilization took off. Today, we can hardly imagine how harsh the pre-agricultural existence must have been.

Fast forward to the future. Our descendants may look back at us in the same way that we look back at our ancestors. They will briefly consider what it was like for genetics to be random and uncontrolled, but they won’t really understand. They will see us as poor wretches who struggled to do the best that we could under harsh circumstances. Just imagine one of your descendants strolling through a museum, looking at artifacts of the “pre-genetic engineering era,” and wondering aloud, “What would it have been like to live during such a primitive time?” Just as today, some may not even believe that they evolved from us. “We couldn’t have come from those monkeys,” they may say. ❑ About the Author Jeffrey Scott Coker is an associate professor of biology and the director of general studies at Elon University in North Carolina. He is the author of the upcoming book Reinventing Life: A Guide to Our Evolutionary Future and will be presenting at WorldFuture 2012. E-mail jcoker@elon.edu.

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The Best Predict Drawing from a variety of sources throughout the past year, the editors of THE FUTURIST take a look at some of the best predictions for the world’s future.

What makes a prediction a good one? Like any announcement that must compete for attention in the public sphere, the predictions that gather the most notice are the strangest or the boldest, or that paint a picture of a future state that challenges expectations.

Today, we still largely cling to this somewhat misguided notion of prediction as a remarkable statement. But the nature of prediction is changing as rapidly as our world. The scope of the predictable universe is expanding, thanks to new tools for acquiring and measuring data. The number of people with a platform to share a prediction—a statement about what will happen to the world—has grown and will continue to grow as rapidly as the Internet.

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With that it mind, we present to you our list of the best predictions we read in 2011. They are surprising, often conflicting, and rise from a diverse pool. We evaluated each one in terms of what made it a good prediction, what could get in the way of its coming to pass, and what it all means.

While we tried to nail the experts down to specific dates, many made interesting forecasts that could not be tied down to a specific point “In the Future.”

A full version of this report, with links to the sources of each prediction, is available to World Future Society members on our Web site. This collection provides, we believe, a fascinating portrait of our present as we attempt to communicate with our ever-shifting future.

—Patrick Tucker, deputy editor, THE FUTURIST

ions of 2011 Technology

2015: People will have a direct say in 25% of the display ads they see when they go to the computers and use services like Google.

Web advertising is going to get more user-specific, eerily so, in the next three years.

Source: Neal Mohan, vice president of display advertising at Innovation Days Internet Week, June 1.

2015: The majority (61%) of Internet traffic will be via video.

Annual global traffic will reach the zettabyte threshold—that’s the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs. Source: Cisco blogger Thomas Barnett in June.

2020: Robotic aerial drones will be the must-have weapon for air forces across the globe.

A global rush to build drone arsenals is on and may push global spending on drones to $94 billion— double its current level. More than 50 countries have bought drone tech-

nology recently. Many may be attempting to catch up to the United States, whose Air Force now extensively uses drone aircraft for both reconnaissance and combat missions.

China has been particularly diligent: Chinese analysts say that every major manufacturer for the Chinese military now has a center dedicated solely to drone development.

Source: Teal Group, an aerospace research firm, in a 2011 market study, reported by William Wan and Peter Finn, The Washington Post, July 4.

2020: Alcohol-detection devices that prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver fails a breathalyzer test could become a standard option for every U.S. automobile.

These features would then become mandatory sometime after 2020, the prediction continues. Alcohol-detection devices—aka, “ignition interlocks”—already exist, and courts sometimes sentence persons convicted of drunk driving to install them in their cars. These machines are flawed, however: They some-

times mistake mouthwash or caffeine in someone’s breath for booze.

A bill proposed by U.S. senators Tom Udall (Democrat–New Mexico) a n d B o b C o r k e r ( R e p u b l i c a n –­ Tennessee) would direct $60 million for five-year development of new, compact, user-friendly, more-effective devices suitable for automobile drivers everywhere.

BUT... If these devices are only a standard feature, then will enough drivers actually buy them for it to make a tangible dent in drunk-­ driving accidents?

Source: Jayne O’Donnell, writing for USA Today on March 27. She cites a congressional proposal to develop p ro t o t y p e d e v i c e s , a M o t h e r s Against Drunk Driving (MADD) spokesperson who wants to see the devices installed in every car, and an American Beverage Institute spokesperson who says that she fears this MADD aspiration will actually come to pass.

2020: There will be more than a thousand embedded processors in your home.

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The key to making the technology feasible is ensuring that you can drive your devices (and that they can communicate with each other) on any network.

Source: Rich LeGrand, president of robotics technology company Charmed Labs, speaking at SXSW Interactive in March (“Congratulations, Your Robot Just Accepted Your Friend Request”).

2020: The International Space Station will be abandoned.

Sometime around then, human conductors will deorbit the ISS and dump it into the ocean. A replacement space station might be built thereafter.

SO... Should the space station sink into the ocean, the onus will be on the world’s governments to not let human space aspirations sink into the ocean along with it.

Source: Vitaly Davydov, deputy head of the Russian Space Agency, quoted in the Russian publication RIA Novosti, July 27.

2020: Fifty billion machine-to-­ machine (M2M) devices will be communicating with each other wirelessly.

M2M connectivity of devices such as high-definition cameras, e-readers, remote sensors, and appliances could save billions of dollars in health care and other industries.

They may be a boon for individuals with disabilities and other chronic conditions.

BUT … Bad news for meter readers and anyone concerned about their machines tattling on them.

Source: Sprint, news release, January 14.

2020: Soldiers will communicate with telepathic helmets.

No longer relying on radio transmissions, microphones, or hand signals, they will relay their thoughts to each other through “thought helmets.”

Source: Gerwin Schalk, an Albany Medical College biomedical scientist, who is working with the U.S. Army to develop the first functional thought helmets, quoted in the April issue of Discover magazine.

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2020: A spaceship will be built that is capable of carrying human crews to other planets.

To build this ship, which the NASA team working on it has dubbed Nautilus-x, engineers would take the International Space Station and outfit it with artificial-gravity mechanisms, modules for supply storage, and hangars for landing vehicles. The whole project could be completed for a mere $4 billion.

Great because... Nautilus-x represents several innovative ideas: recycling old space modules for new, more-challenging missions, harnessing the resources of many partner nations, and cutting spacecraft construction costs by building and testing them in space. These ideas have staying power and will probably be guiding principles in many future space missions, whether Nautilus-x is constructed or not.

Source: NASA’s Technology Applications Assessment Team, January.

2022: Home entertainment centers could be playing movies and television shows as 3-D holographs, no television screen involved.

Still-life holographic images are with us today in visual displays across the globe. They function via lasers that project off a tiny film screen on which the laser ’s light shines in some spots and cancels out in others to produce a complete ­image.

Researchers at the University of Arizona have been working on a projector that displays moving holographic images. Their prototype uses a screen that can create one image, automatically erase it, and then create another, thus generating an ongoing image sequence like the slides that make a cartoon. Their current model is too slow—only two frames per second—but could eventually become a working model with more fine-tuning. High-def TV is about to get much, much higher-def. Who wouldn’t want to experience 3-D entertainment without the clunky 3-D glasses? Or view movie scenes in all their fully dimensional glory in their living room, free of the confines of a TV screen?

BUT … Researchers need to come up with lasers that are more refined

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and film that is many times more sensitive in order for commercially usable products to emerge from this technology.

Source: Pierre-Alexandre Blanche, University of Arizona physicist.

2022: Tablet PCs, netbooks, and laptops will be extinct.

Such devices will likely be replaced by some new, yet-to-be-conceived device. SO … Don’t fret about getting the latest consumer gadget. The platform will be passé before you download the first app.

Source: Rama Shukla, vice president of Intel’s architecture group in July.

2025: Offices will be ubiquitouscomputing environments.

Ubiquitous computing is where almost anything in your environment (door knob, coffee pot, window) offers access to computing and connectivity. This concept, which has been kicking around since at least the 1980s (and begins appearing in science fiction much earlier), seems to be moving increasingly closer to becoming a reality.

It’s the natural next step in the technological evolution that has taken us from home computers to laptops to smart phones and tablets.

Source: 360KID CEO Scott Traylor in a video interview with game designer Jesse Schell. The short video is part of Schell’s YouTube series called “The Crystal Ball Society,” which is described as “a place where people make concrete predictions about the future.”

2030: Hotels will offer customers a selection of dreams as well as the opportunity to study and learn while they sleep.

Source: Futurist Ian Pearson, in a report for budget hotel chain Travelodge entitled “The Future of Sleep,” June.

2035: Synthetic biology—the creation of life from nonliving chemicals designed on a computer— c o u l d p ro d u c e t h o u s a n d s of synthetic genomes and life-forms not yet imagined.

Source: Jerome C. Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, extrapo-

lating from the work of the J. Craig Venter Institute, in Moving from Vision to Action, edited by Cynthia G. Wagner (World Future Society, June 2011).

2040: Automation and robots will take over one-third of service-­ sector jobs.

Automation will be facilitated by voice-interface systems, allowing customers to simply speak their orders to the robotlike machinery doing much of the work.

Source: James H. Irvine and Sandra Schwarzbach of the Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, California, in Moving from Vision to Action (WFS, June 2011).

In the Future …

The computerization of everything will signal the end of computers as we know them.

We’ll access the Web through our contact lenses not laptops, going online in the blink of an eye—literally.

Miniaturization of all things electronic will allow more technology to be embedded on the convenient contact lens.

Source: Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, May 27.

Appliances will no longer need power cords.

Laboratory-engineered “metamaterials” could be used to build outlets that would transmit energy to a device remotely, in the form of radio waves. BUT... Large-scale metamaterial applications need to be built and proved workable in real life.

Source: Yaroslavl Urzhomov and David Smith, Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, May 25.

JESS KIMBALL

We’ll be paid roya l t i e s fo r our personal data.

In the future, people won’t care that sites like Facebook sell their perJess Kimball. sonal data, because Facebook will pay them for the data they share.

In May, Facebook was sued by two individuals in a California court for

violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s Computer Crime Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act. What happened? A group of advertisers accessed the users’ personal information from Facebook. The lawsuit came on top of numerous public assurances by company founder Mark Zuckerberg that “We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.”

Oops. The idea of paying people for their data would mean fewer lawsuits.

BUT ... For this to work, the company would have to make its privacy settings easier to use and become much more transparent.

People should be able to sell their information to third-party advertisers if they want to; Facebook is in a great position to serve as a broker for that sort of exchange. If you understood your private data was worth money, you would probably keep better track of it.

Source: Jess Kimball, former speech writer for Faith Popcorn, on Twitter, May 13, 2011.

Energy AARON M. COHEN

2 0 1 6 : N a n o -­ engineered ­s o l a r p a n e l s will free the world from fossil fuels.

A t p re s e n t , solar meets less than 1% of U.S. Ray Kurzweil. energy needs, despite its obvious merits over fossil fuels, nuclear power, and especially coal.

One reason for this lack of progress is that, no matter how it’s designed, no more than 70% of the sunlight that strikes a solar panel can be converted into energy. Also, assuming that the U.S. coal lobby still has money in five years, we’ll still be using plenty of black rocks.

BUT ... You don’t need a nano-­ engineered solar panel to ask your local utility how much of their energy comes from solar.

Source: Ray Kurzweil, speaking to Lauren Feeney of the online environmental magazine Grist, in February.

2016: Solar power will be cheaper than both fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Source: Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric, speaking to Bloomberg Business News, May 28.

2020: Photovoltaic manufacturing capacity could reach 200 gigawatts (GW) globally.

Source: A workshop of 72 internationally recognized experts, organized by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); results summarized in “Foundations for Innovation: Photovoltaic Technologies for the 21st Century,” released in April 2011.

2020: Fifteen percent of Europe’s electricity could come from arrays of solar panels in the North African deserts.

Source: Gerhard Knies, chairman of the board of trustees, Desertec Foundation, covered in the New York Times, on June 20.

2030: Fossil-fuel price shocks will intensify as nuclear energy frightens more governments into pursuing earth-friendlier options.

Between now and 2030, Japan, Germany, China, and other nations will increasingly turn away from nuclear energy. Japan’s fossil-fuel imports alone could rise to 238,000 barrels of oil a day and 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day. Given the size of their economies, if China, Germany, and Japan all substantially increase their fossil-fuel consumption, the whole world will feel the pinch. Further price hikes, related slowdowns in economic activity globally, and—of course—more smog and greenhouse gas emissions are all likely to follow.

BUT ... Solar and wind technologies are certainly improving, to the point that the German government promises to replace all its nuclear power with wind and solar power by 2030. But that is 20 years from now, and in the meantime, these alternative systems are nowhere near ready to take up the lion’s share of national energy production.

Source: Michael Klare, professor

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of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.

2050: Renewables will provide 80% of our energy.

Source: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation,” released in May. In the Future …

The Middle East could be the host of a new scientific revolution that fosters huge breakthroughs in renewable energy.

Just as science in Europe was reborn in the seventeenth century following a series of political revolu-

impoverished people could suddenly generate jobs and revenue streams; and R&D industries that are now based mostly in North America and Europe would soon have powerful new potential partners—and potential competitors. Worldwide innovation and economic growth might accelerate, emigration might slow, and terrorist movements would be further marginalized.

BUT … It depends on whether true democracy does take root in the affected countries, and that is far from assured. And it will probably take earnest commitments from players in the Middle East and outside it to make this vision happen.

Source: Dan Hind, a British sci-

Worst Prediction of the Year: May 21, 2011: The Rapture Will Begin.

AP

S

o what happened? Billions of p e o p l e w o ke u p o n M a y 2 2 , surprised to still exist. Preacher Harold Camping had made this prediction many times on his nationally syndicated radio show, ever since his last “end of the world” prediction failed to come true in 1994. Camping thus joins a long line of misinformed prognosticators—from the Harold Camping.

Jehovah’s Witnesses to former U.S. presidential candidate Pat Robertson— to issue public pronouncements about the end of the world and then miss.

Predictions such as these are inherently bad because they suggest that the future is predetermined and unchangeable. No matter how gloomy any of our forecasts may seem, there is still time to make the future better, today.

tions, the upheavals now sweeping the Middle East could free the region up for an intellectual liberation and the emergence of a democracydriven science research base dedicated to people’s needs, contrasting with Western science industries that work primarily at the behest of their corporate and national-security sponsors.

The global implications would be massive: A bastion of fossil fuels becomes the source of solar energy to power the world; a region beset with tens of millions of unemployed and 32

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ence author and publicist. Commentary, May 17, on Al Jazeera.

Humanity 2025: The United States will be 20 million college graduates short of demand.

Despite persistent talk of an “education bubble,” a report from Georgetown University finds that the United States has not been graduating enough college students to meet workforce demand, and this

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has persisted for more than 30 years now.

BUT … Skeptics may simply consider the source and scoff at a university report concluding that “More Kids Should Attend University.” The United States does need a more educated workforce, but there may exist multiple paths to reach that goal.

Source: The Georgetown University Center on Education in the June 27 report “The Undereducated American.”

2030: The global Muslim population is projected to grow from 1.6 billion to 2.2 billion (an approximately 35% increase).

The Pew Forum reports that “globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades. … If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4% of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4% of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.” The growth can be attributed to increased life-expectancy rates and better living conditions in many Muslim-majority countries.

Source: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in a report entitled “The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030,” released January 27.

2040: The number-one factor affecting quality of life for South Koreans will be health; employment will drop from first to eighth place.

To foresee how satisfied citizens may be in the future, and to plan how to invest resources to improve quality of life, policy makers must be able to forecast what sectors (e.g., state of the environment, opportunities for leisure, income gaps) will be of greater importance to people in the future. A survey of specialists concluded that, whereas employment was the most important element underlying life satisfaction for Koreans in 2010, that factor will drop in rank to just eighth place by 2040, as concerns over an aging population’s health moves up from second to first place among happiness-seekers’ priorities.

Sociologists are warning us that

what will make us happy in the future aren’t necessarily the same things that make us happy now (at least according to quality-of-life researchers). As having a family decreases in importance in the next 30 years, access to the Internet will increase, suggesting that the impulse for human contact will take on a more mobile character.

BUT … This particular study focused on South Korea, so it is difficult to make broad generalizations.

However, the researchers’ point that happy cultures begin with happy citizens is well worth noting.

Quantification of quality of life (i.e., happiness or life satisfaction) is of growing interest to policy makers and all who study macro trends underlying what we loosely call “progress.” This is a departure from traditional economic theory that looks only at GDP, income, employment, and marriage rates. (For example, those quantifying divorce rates might consider whether the impacts are perceived as positive or negative by the parties involved.)

Source: Choi Hangsub, associate professor of sociology, University of Kookmin, Seoul, South Korea, in Moving from Vision to Action (WFS, 2011).

2050: In the world’s wealthiest countries, spending on long-term care could double or even triple.

Increased longevity is considered good news for individuals but bad news for the institutions that need to pay for their care. The proportion of the frailest elderly in OECD countries (age 80 and older) will grow sharply to 1 in 10 by 2050, up from 1 in 25 in 2010.

To meet the care gap, these wealthier societies will become more open to importing care workers as well as innovative technologies such as caregiving robots.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in a May 2011 report, “Help Wanted? Providing and paying for long-term care.”

2100: The proportion of world population over age 65 will grow to 22.3%, up from 7.6% in 2010.

Source: The United Nations, May 13.

In the Future …

Schools won’t have days off for inclement weather anymore.

Instead of being given free snow days, homebound students and teachers will conduct lessons online, with in-person lessons to resume once the snow/hail/etc. subsides.

In teaching, as in any other human activity, it is always good to have a backup plan. Distance learning, which is clearly spreading, could provide schools with a very convenient bad-weather backup—as long as students’ Internet access spreads as quickly.

Source: Chinese Web media company Sina, May 15, 2011.

Cities and Transportation 2015: Dubai’s airport will be the busiest in the world, serving more than 75 million passengers annually.

Source: Dubai Airports, in May. 2030: Traffic congestion will increase by more than 30% in 18 U.S. cities. The biggest increase (54%) will be in Raleigh, North Carolina.

If no further improvements are made to transportation capacity and infrastructure, cities already plagued with traffic problems will see things get worse. In a business-as-usual scenario, the researchers project that U.S. traffic woes will cost a total of 1,900 premature deaths and $17 billion in social costs.

Smaller cities like Raleigh, which anticipate population growth as retirement meccas, will likely experience more premature deaths due to increased pollution and traffic accidents.

Models for studying the range of trends and impacts—from urban growth to regional migration to the replacement of gas guzzlers with clean hybrids—are becoming increasingly sophisticated, thus giving policy planners in public health and transportation a great chance to invest the necessary resources for improving the quality of transportation.

Bottom line, how you get from here to there makes up a big part of your daily planning. You can also make it a bigger part of your life planning, such as simply deciding to live within walking distance of your office (or even working from home).

It could save not just a lot of time, but also your life.

Source: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) at the School of Public Health, cited by The American Road & Transportation Builders Association in May. 2050: Biofuel-powered hypersonic jets will shuttle passengers from London to Tokyo (and vice-versa) in less than two and a half hours.

High-speed international air travel that doesn’t generate air pollution would constitute a major achievement. The ZEHST (Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation) would travel more than 3,000 mph, powered by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen derived from seaweed, and emitting water vapor instead of carbon dioxide. At cruising altitudes just above the atmosphere of the Earth, it’s almost like space travel.

BUT ... The aircraft will only be able to handle 100 passengers at most, and seats will cost between $10,000 and $30,000.

Source: Airbus parent company EADS at the Paris Air Show in June.

In the Future …

Space will become too littered for safe travel.

If we don’t clear out the buildup of space junk now orbiting Earth, within a few decades, spacecraft won’t be able to leave Earth’s airspace. There will be too much floating debris crashing into them and wrecking their circuitry.

With almost every mission that launches into space, some amount of scrap or garbage escapes and winds up drifting permanently in orbit around Earth. Some space shuttles and space satellites have already suffered structural damage due to collisions with this space junk. Sometimes, the damage is severe enough to thwart the whole mission.

Such accidents are about to become very common, according to a recent report by the National

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Research Council’s Committee for the Assessment of NASA’s Orbital Debris Programs. The report states that the debris already up there continually collides with each other and shatters into ever more floating pieces. The space surrounding Earth will become increasingly inhospitable to space missions until we finally remove some of the junk.

Source: National Research Council, reported by Ian O’Neill, Discovery News, September 2.

Commerce 2015: The majority of “innovative” organizations will galvanize the innovation process via gaming.

“Gamification”—applying game mechanics, such as scoreboards and rules of play, to non-game systems— is a well-known trend under way in IT, Web development, and many other types of businesses and organizations. Their management teams

are all looking to increase customer feedback, employee engagement, and idea generation. They achieve all three by creating platforms that make the work of discussion and correspondence feel more like a game.

For example, Great Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions created a social collaboration platform for its 120,000 personnel. Called Idea Street, it features points, leader boards, and a “buzz index.” In its

Bulls and Bears Bare Hooves and Claws 2013: We’re saved!

Thanks to a rebound in housing construction, unemployment will fall below 7% by 2013, earlier than the Federal Reserve is projecting, predicts Warren Buffet.

It’s a bold, direct, and optimistic statement about the resiliency of the U.S. economy from the world’s most successful investor. More importantly, it might actually be correct. U.S. Commerce Department data released the week of August 26 showed that 165,000 new houses were on the market in the month of July. That’s the lowest inventory of new homes on the market since the government began keeping track 47 Warren Buffett. years ago. Home prices were on the rise during the summer, according to the Case Schiller home price index.

BUT … Buffett lost $6 billion in 2011 on bad calls. The oracle is looking foggy.

Source: Warren Buffet on the Charlie Rose Show, following his op-ed in The New York Times in ­August.

2013: We’re doomed!

The present-day economic troubles now growing across the world will culminate in a new Great Depression by 2013, predicts Nouriel Roubini, who notes the simultaneous slowdowns of economic growth in the United States, United

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Kingdom, and the euro zone with alarm. He fears that they are the makings of a new, even worse financial crisis that will sweep the globe no later than 2013.

Roubini urges national leaders everywhere to quickly institute massive new stimulus initiatives to avert it. (In a subsequent interview with the French paper Le Figaro, BROTHERSOFT he forecast the breakup of the euro zone by 2016.)

A new stimulus is definitely not going to happen in the United States.

Few European governments seem disposed to it, either. In all, there is no good reason to think that Roubini’s prescription will be taken. That’s dire news for economies e v e r y w h e r e , i f “ D r.

Doom”—as Roubini is sometimes called for having foretold in 2006 of the 2008 U.S. housing crash—is correct on his diagnosis of another impending global recession.

BUT … Roubini hasn’t always been right. As Bloomberg reporter Scott Hamilton notes, “When the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell to a 12-year low on March 9, 2009, [Roubini] said it probably would drop to 600 or lower by the end of that year.

Instead, the U.S. equity benchmark gained 65 percent for the rest of 2009.” Let’s all hope that he’s wrong about this new Great Depression, too.

Source: Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economic LLC, talking to Bloomberg in September.

first 48 months, approximately 4,500 users had registered and had generated 1,400 ideas, of which 63 had gone forward to implementation.

The World Bank developed a similar application, called Evoke, which crowdsources ideas from players across the globe to solve social challenges.

Source: Gartner Inc., in April.

2015: Digital currency will be accepted virtually everywhere in the United States.

Source: PayPal President Scott Thompson, in June.

2015: Iraq’s per capita GDP will double, thanks to oil revenues.

Source: Majid Al-Suri, a Central Bank of Iraq economist, in March.

2016: Worldwide, government debt will increase 40%, reaching $48.1 trillion.

Financial stability of every major economy on earth will be in jeopardy. Advanced economies are the ones running up the negative balances; emerging market economies account for 17% of global debt now and will account for 14% in 2016.

Source: Eswar Prasad and Menjie Ding, writing in the Financial Times in June.

2020: Student loan debt will spark worse economic turmoil in the United States than the credit-card debt crisis or the housing bubbles.

Young people ages 16–24 suffer higher unemployment rates than any other U.S. demographic group, even though most have racked up gargantuan amounts of loan debt to earn their degrees. Organized student protests, and eventually civil unrest, will unfold unless the government takes action.

Defaulted debts in the U.S. economy already contributed to one major global economic catastrophe in 2007-2008, one from which the world has yet to fully recover. Can any country on earth afford another, in this case tied to student loans rather than housing loans?

The situation is ominous for education itself, also: If people come to associate college degrees with underemployment and lifelong per-

sonal debt, then large numbers of young people may decide to forgo college. America’s knowledge base will wither, and its standard of living—and by extension, that of the rest of the world—will sink further.

The worldwide pain intensifies even more if warnings of youth riots and violence come to pass.

BUT ... Concerted political reforms and a robust economic recovery might pave the way toward a brighter alternative future. So, too, might more U.S. students turning to more fiscally sane education alternatives—like enrolling in Canadian colleges, eh?

The United States is a world leader in coming up with overly expensive, credit-busting approaches to the good life. But this cannot go on forever.

Source: Sarah Jaffe, contributor to Alternet.org.

2020: There will be a major cocoa shortage.

At issue are the standards and certification for sustainability in cocoa production. Without sustainable practices, along with innovative agricultural technologies, “the industry as a whole can expect a shortfall of more than one million tonnes of cocoa in just nine years.”

Source: Mars, the global confectionary giant, in June.

2020: India will become the world’s third-largest auto market.

BUT ... According to a J.D. Power report, “Much of India’s future growth in the automotive sector will depend on successfully creating the infrastructure to support its economy.” The report also points to a deficit in terms of skilled engineers and large-scale automotive parts production.

Source: J.D. Power and Associates, in the report “India Automotive 2020: The Next Giant from Asia,” June.

2021: Baby boomers easing into retirement will continue to dump U.S. stocks in favor of less risky assets, causing a 13% decline in the U.S. stock market relative to 2010 levels.

The Federal Reserve is not un-

aware that stock prices “have been closely related to demographic trends in the past half century,” particularly in regard to “population dependency ratios”—that is, how many active workers and investors there are in relation to retirees on fixed incomes.

This outlook from the Fed is an unusually honest appraisal of how changing demographics influence equity valuations. In broaching it, the authors of this prediction are trying to look out for retail investors (which is probably more than their brokers are doing). Also, the authors use the same metric to predict a robust bull market for stocks between 2025 and 2030. Good news for the grandkids!

BUT … Even the authors of this letter from the Fed acknowledge that their metric is just one among many.

Technological breakthroughs creating new enterprises, a loosening of immigration policy, and other events could render the prediction moot.

Bottom line, beware of stockbrokers bearing “buy” opportunities.

Source: The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, August 22.

2025: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia will be responsible for more than half of all global economic growth.

Source: The World Bank, in the report “Global Development Horizons 2011—Multipolarity: The New Global Economy,” May. 2025: The world will no longer rely on a single reserve currency.

The World Bank states, “A multic u r re n c y re g i m e w o u l d m o re broadly distribute lender-of-last-­ resort responsibility and make it easier to boost liquidity during times of market distress without as much disruption as is often the case now.”

BUT ... Since oil is denominated in dollars, a change to a basket of currencies denomination system would send the price of oil much higher.

Source: The World Bank, May 17.

2030: China will have nearly four times as many middle-class consumers as the United States, and India will have nearly three times as many.

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Source: Oppenheimer Funds, in a tweet, May 10.

2030: Prices for staple grains—i.e., food—will increase by 120%–180%.

Environmental, political, and economic forces are all driving up food prices, including climate change and pressure from the biofuels lobbies.

Meanwhile, demand for food will increase by 70% as the global population reaches a projected 9 billion by 2050.

Source: Growing a Sustainable Future by Robert Bailey for Oxfam, May. In the Future …

By the 2020s, the Americas will supersede the Middle East as the world’s go-to source for petroleum.

Geopolitics will shift considerably, as OPEC will no longer have so much clout. North and South America combined hold far more underground oil reserves than the Middle East and North Africa.

The Middle East was favored last century because the Americas’ oil exists primarily in less accessible forms and environs—offshore deposits, shale rock, oil sands, and heavy oil formations. More recently, though, innovations in drilling and mining have made accessing these oil sources much easier. Consequently, oil industries in the Americas have grown quickly in short order.

The United States could become a prominent oil exporter and, in addition, share its oil-accessing technologies with European countries that want to tap their own domestic supplies instead of being at the mercy of oil-rich Russia.

It’s good news for economic growth and job creation in the Americas. It’s not so good news, however, for environmental sustainability. A burgeoning oil industry in the United States would likely slow societal momentum toward weaning off fossil fuels and eradicating carbon emissions. Not to mention it could put a slough of hitherto-untouched wilderness areas in harm’s way.

Source: Mark Perry, University of Michigan economist, in August.

The European debt crisis could 36

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lead to war in 10 to 20 years.

BUT … The prediction reflects the historic German fear of hyperinflation, which some German policy makers believe will ensue if euros are printed to cover the bad debts in Greece (and elsewhere). Hyperinflation in Germany following World War I resulted in unprecedented social unrest and, eventually, fascism.

But deflation, rather than inflation, remains the larger threat to the global economy.

Bottom line, it isn’t the 1930s. The euro zone members should focus on the crisis at hand.

Source: Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, speaking before the European parliament in Strasbourg in September.

Earth 2020: Eighty percent of energyrelated CO 2 emissions projected fo r 2 0 2 0 h ave a l re a d y b e e n “locked in” in 2011.

These emissions will originate from power plants either already in use or in the process of being constructed.

Source: The International Energy Agency in May. 2022: The Sun may be cooler for at least the next 10 years, or maybe longer.

Recent measurements indicate an unexpected drop in solar activity, which will manifest itself as few or no sunspots, and reduced radiation reaching Earth.

So far in Earth’s history, periods of reduced solar activity have almost always instigated prolonged cooling of the climate. Some even brought on ice ages. This cooling could be a good thing if it is steep enough to offset some global warming.

Of course, if it is too strong, then it could introduce a whole new set of problems. At the very least, it will require space satellites and telecommunications systems to reconfigure many of their settings, since they are impacted by solar output.

Source: National Solar Observatory and Air Force Research Laboratory in June.

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2050: It will be possible to feed everyone in the world—all 9.1 billion of us.

A French report, “Agrimonde1,” asserts that there are viable ways to end world hunger. Among the good news reported: Africa’s agricultural productivity doubled between 1961 and 2003.

BUT ... Agricultural productivity either doubled or tripled in other continents as well. Thus, agricultural productivity in Africa is still the lowest in the world. Many looming questions remain as to how best to address food shortages in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

The report examines two possible scenarios. The first emphasizes economic growth over environmental concerns and necessitates an 80% increase in agricultural production.

The second takes global ecology into account, and requires only a 30% increase in agricultural production while necessitating a cutback in overall food consumption in developed countries. Subsequent reports will look more closely at other issues, such as changing standards of living, climate change, and land usage.

Source: Two French organizations, the National Institute for Agricultural Research and the Centre for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development, in the joint report “Agrimonde1,” covered by Barbara Casassus for Nature News in January.

2050: Ocean-dwelling plant and animal species will disappear on a scale equal to the five great global extinctions of the past 600 million years.

The deadly triad of pollution, overfishing, and climate change are impacting the world’s oceans to greater extents than even the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios had predicted.

BUT ... The world community can avert this massive loss of life through concerted international action to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions, rescue endangered oceanic ecosystems, and protect the oceans’ health on a global scale.

Source: International Programme on the State of the Ocean (a threeday workshop, convened by the In-

ternational Union for the Conservation of Nature, bringing together 27 researchers from 18 nations; proceedings released in June).

2070: The Arctic summers will be mostly ice-free.

Arctic ice will make a brief resurgence this decade, only to later melt away for good. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)’s computer climate models forecast that, even if temperatures keep rising, Arctic summer sea ice will stop its shrinkage and might even expand over the next 10 years. After that, however, warming will gain the upper hand.

Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research, covered by Tim Wall for Discovery News in August.

2080: More than half of species protected in European sanctuaries could perish.

Source: Miguel B. Araújo et al., a team of European biodiversity and ecology researchers in a paper published in May. 2100: The Maldives Islands may disappear into the Indian Ocean.

BUT … President Mohamed Nasheed hopes to prevent this from happening, stating: “The Maldives will continue to plan for adaptation with the modest income that we have and we will work with reliable partners that have already provided us help, such as Denmark. If we are given further international assistance, then all well and good, but we are not holding our breath.”

Source: President Mohamed Nasheed, in an interview with May Hoff for Utne magazine.

2100: Carbon emissions from Canada’s large-scale drilling of its tar sands will tip Earth’s atmosphere past the threshold of irreparable climate damage.

Alberta’s soil holds reservoirs of bitumen, a hardened form of petroleum. With the prices of Middle East oil soaring, Canada and the United States have been rushing to build drills, pipelines, and other infrastructure to capture this oil alternative.

All this activity bodes ill for global climate. NASA climatologist James

Hansen warns that an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 350 parts per million would alter the climate enough to significantly harm life across the planet. At present, we are at 390 parts per million. Canada has enough bitumen that, were it all burned in one day, it would raise the atmospheric concentration to 600 parts per million. Clearly, the burning will take place gradually, but that only means that it will push humanity’s carbon footprint upward over the long term.

By pursuing economic growth instead of environmental well-being, Canada and the United States may ultimately forfeit both.

Source: James Hansen, NASA climatologist, talking with environmental journalist Bill McKibben for The New Republic in June.

2100: Tornadoes, heat waves, dry spells, and other extreme weather events will be “the new normal.”

We should expect to see plenty more of them month by month through 2100, due to human activity that is inducing global climate change.

Extreme weather patterns of all kinds have been occurring more and more frequently since 1980, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Source: Gary McManus, associate state climatologist for Oklahoma government, quoted by Julie Cart and Hailey Branson-Potts in The Los Angeles Times in August.

Government By 2015: Algeria will be the next country to undergo an “Arab Spring” revolution.

The conditions that bred uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya exist in full in Algeria: a surging youth demographic, a dearth of jobs, and a political system that allows its citizens little voice and no chance of holding officials accountable in any serious way. Plus, Algerians have already been staging massive demonstrations against their government’s oppressive ways since late 2010. If any Arab country seems ripe for an upheaval, Algeria would be it.

Algeria means a lot of things to a lot of people. First, it is the largest country in both the Arab world and Africa, so the fall of its government might mean unusually large outpourings of refugees to neighboring African countries and to Europe.

Second, the country holds some of the biggest reserves of oil and natural gas in the Middle East, so Western powers are bound to intervene.

Future wars, like that in Libya, are sure to follow, and given Algeria’s centuries-old tradition of localized self-rule among clans that spat with each other frequently, could become very destructive. Third, Algeria is home to several militant Islamist movements, including a large branch of al-Qaeda, which makes any Algerian power vacuum all the more dangerous.

BUT … Many outcomes could follow, some better than others. If prodemocracy revolutionaries prevail, and they receive adequate support from donor countries after the revolution, then a stable and viable new Algeria could emerge.

Northern Africa won’t be quieting down anytime soon. Concerned nations across the Mediterranean had best stay attentive.

Source: Bruce Riedel, senior fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, writing in The National Interest in August.

2020: The rich and powerful will be forced to share authority with formerly disempowered individuals and groups.

Thanks to the Internet and social media, a new equilibrium will arise between the traditional holders of power and unexpected influencers arising from the grassroots.

Source: Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org, in a guest editorial on Wired.com appearing in June.

2025: The world will be truly multilateral.

Source: Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University professor of politics and international affairs (and former director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State), in an article for Foreign Policy appearing in August.

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In the Future …

Military conflict in East Asia and the Western Pacific will be centered in the South China Sea throughout the next few decades.

Source: Robert D. Kaplan, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, member of the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board, writing in Foreign Policy magazine in August.

Health 2015: New HIV infections among children could be eliminated or reduced by 90%.

Source: UNAIDS, launching a plan called “Countdown to Zero” at the 2011 United Nations High Level Meeting on AIDS in June to do just that. The plan was developed in conjunction with the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

2018: A computer–brain interface will make it possible for a person in a medically vegetative state to fully communicate with the outside world.

Traumatic brain injury reduces some patients to persistent vegetative states, affecting about 250,000 to 300,000 persons in the United States alone. Activity goes on in isolated pockets of their brains, but normal functioning cannot emerge from it

since the neural pathways that would connect them are severed.

Currently, patients with moderate damage—i.e., impaired but not totally catatonic—can get some motion back with electronic implants that pick up lone neural signals and translate them into physical actions: controlling a computer cursor, moving a wheelchair, etc. These electronic aids will not work on patients who are severely damaged, however.

Researchers hope that, within five years, improved implants will restore function in even these latter “lost” cases.

Source: Adrian Owen, Medical Research Council of Cambridge, England, talking to Kat McGowan for Discovery magazine.

2022: LSD and Ecstasy could be available as legitimate prescriptions.

A growing number of scientists attest that these hallucinogenic drugs, when administered in proper doses, are very effective and—believe it or not—safe treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and chronic pain. Their study findings suggest that drug laws should make exceptions for their medicinal use.

Source: Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, on the site Alternet.org in June.

© SKIP ODONNELL / ISTOCKPHOTO

• Textbooks replaced by tablets in South Korean schools

• Thought helmets (telepathic communication) in use on the battlefield.

2030: Amputees will use “neuroprosthetics” that move their limbs with their minds.

These devices will link to the body’s neurons to send and receive signals from the brain so as to move, feel, and operate just like real limbs.

Machines that interface with the human nervous system are already here: Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), an electrode therapy that uses electric impulses to reorder a patient’s neural circuits, has been successfully treating epilepsy and severe depression since the 1970s.

Medical-device manufacturer MicroTransponder has been testing use of VNS to treat many other neurological disorders, such as tinnitus and phantom limb pain. Whole limbs that interface with neurons could emerge from labs in another two decades.

BUT … Currently, no electronic system can interact seamlessly with nerves, so it’s unknown how we might make a neuroprosthetic that has all the mobility of a natural limb.

In any case, such limbs are bound to be expensive.

Source: Will Rosellini, CEO and president of MicroTransponder, interview on Discovery magazine’s blog, August 16.

2030: Almost half of British men, 40% of British women, and as many as 63% of children 4–5 years

• B razil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia are now responsible for half of all global economic growth.

• Tablets and netbooks go extinct, replaced by devices not yet conceived.

© ROB EYERS / ISTOCKPHOTO

2020

2025

2030

2015 • New HIV infections among children eliminated.

• Euro zone break-up.

• Dubai’s airport is the busiest in the world. © SERGIY PALAMARCHUK / ISTOCKPHOTO © JAN KALICIAK / ISTOCKPHOTO

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• 5 0 billion machine-to-machine ­devices communicating with each other wirelessly.

• The International Space Station is dumped.

• P hotovoltaic manufacturing capacity reaches 200 gigawatts globally.

• H alf the world’s countries escape poverty.

• S pacecraft capable of interplanetary human exploration rise.

• N euro-linked prosthetic arms and legs function as well as real limbs.

MOTORLAB / UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURG

old will be obese.

BUT ... Taxing cheap processed “junk” food and regulating the ways that manufacturers market such products—especially to children— could help slow, stop, or even reverse this trend.

Sources: U.K. National Heart Forum chair Klim McPherson et al. and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, respectively, both in August.

2100: Overuse of antibiotics will result in worldwide rates of disease mortality that are close to those of the early, pre-Penicillin twentieth century.

Antibiotics will lose their potency due to overuse, leading to new waves of evolved, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, predicts Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Agricultural sectors pump their livestock with antibiotics, not to cure diseases, but to make the animals grow faster. And humans use antibiotics for many infections that do not really warrant them. All the overuse spurs an aftereffect that doctors have been registering for the last four decades: more and more strains of resistant bacteria. Meanwhile, the rollout of new FDA-approved antibiotics has been slowing steadily year after year.

BUT ... A lot can happen in the next few decades—and it must. Doc-

In the Future …

Marijuana will not only be legalized, but it will also be recognized by the medical community as a “wonder drug.”

Proponents of legalization argue that this would be an important step forward in ending the disastrous war on drugs.

Source: Lester Greenspoon, MD, speaking to the 2011 NORML Conference, May 31.

The cost to achieve indefinite lifeextension technology (the socalled “Methuselarity”) will only be in the trillions of dollars.

Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey believes that developing indefinite life-extension technology could cost less than expected, due to projected advances in artificial general intelligence (AGI) that “will cut the cost of those later stages as well

• Human–robot inter­action common in most workplaces.

2035

PATRICK TUCKER

• Prices for staple grains—i.e., food—have increased 120% to 180% over 2011 levels.

• The global Muslim population reaches 2.2 billion, a 35% increase from 2011.

• China has four times as many middle-class consumers as does the U.S.

tors need to curtail their prescriptions of antibiotics, and farmers need to stop giving antibiotics to healthy animals. And pharmaceutical companies need to ramp up their R&D into new drugs.

This is one health problem that will take many steps to solve. None of those steps will be easy, but our survival depends on us taking them.

Source: Margaret Mellon, Union of Concerned Scientists, on the site Remapping Debate in June.

• Ongoing global extinction event in oceanic plant and animal life larger than any in the past 600 million years.

AARON M. COHEN

as of the early stages.”

Artificial-int e l l i g e n c e re searcher Ben Goertzel argues that the trillions-of-dollars price tag is acAubrey de Grey. tually not prohibitively expensive, but in fact “quite affordable by society, given the massive amount we [the United States] spend on healthcare.”

BUT ... The cost to develop artificial general intelligence isn’t exactly cheap, either. Also, de Grey isn’t entirely convinced that it’s possible to achieve AGI or to make it “safe” anytime soon.

Indefinite life extension remains a highly speculative area. Goertzel forecasts along two possible lines: that developed without AGI (the longer path) and that developed and enhanced by AGI (the shorter path).

De Grey and Goertzel project that the “Methuselarity” could take anywhere from 20 to 50 years.

Source: Aubrey de Grey, in an interview with Ben Goertzel for H+ in June. ❑ About the Authors This report was compiled by the editors of THE FUTURIST magazine, including Aaron M. Cohen, Rick Docksai, Patrick Tucker, and Cynthia G. Wagner.

• R enewables provide 80% of our energy by 2050.

• S pending on long-term care in the world’s wealthiest countries has doubled from 2011.

• B iofuel-powered hypersonic jets will shuttle passengers from London to Tokyo (and viceversa) in less than two and a half hours.

2040

LATER

• H alf of species protected in European sanctuaries perish by 2080.

• The proportion of world population over age 65 has grown to 22.3% by 2100, up from 7.6% in 2010.

© JENNIFER BORTON / ISTOCKPHOTO © NIKADA / ISTOCKPHOTO

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Innovating the Future: From Ideas to Adoption

By Peter J. Denning Futurists and innovators can teach each other lessons to help their ideas succeed.

© ANDREY BURMAKIN / ISTOCKPHOTO

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I

nnovators and futurists ought to have a symbiotic relationship. Often, they do not.

The futurist aims to help us understand how trends and events will shape the future, so that we can chart our business and policy courses to bring us to a future that most appeals to us. The innovator, on the other hand, aims to realize a possible future by getting ideas (i.e., possibilities for the future) adopted as practice in our communities.

Many would-be innovators ask in frustration, Why do my own good ideas often go by the wayside and other people’s bad ideas get adopted? Why do I invest enormous time and resources to systematically generate new ideas, only to see much of my effort go to waste?

Leaders in all fields fret and fume over these questions. They want to improve their innovation success rates.

Increasing success and reducing wasted effort on the path to innovation are very important goals. Many people believe innovation is the key to economic development, technological progress, competitiveness, and business survival. Policies that enhance a nation’s ability to be innovative are constantly in public discussion and are hot topics among politicians and business leaders. Futurists collaborating with innovators can contribute to these goals.

I have been investigating these questions for many years and have learned many things that I wish I knew when I was younger. Based on these investigations, my colleague, Robert Dunham, and I wrote a book, The Innovator’s Way (MIT Press, 2010, innovators-way.com). I will share here some excerpts from the book as a guide for innovators—and futur-

ists—who are trying to get their ideas adopted.

The Work of Futurists Most futurists see their mission as investigating how social, economic, and technological developments will shape the future. Futurists help others understand and respond to the coming changes. They also help apply anticipatory thinking to issues facing education, business, and government. They do this by a variety of methods, of which these three are the most common:

1. Revelation of current realities.

Sometimes the prevailing commonsense interpretation of what is happening and how it will shape the future is not well grounded. It is a belief, but is not supported by data and observation. Futurists examine the data and propose new, wellgrounded interpretations. They then examine how policy and action might change to align with the reality.

Peter Drucker was a master at this.

His book The New Realities (HarperBusiness, 1989) is loaded with examples. My favorite was his chapter “When the Russian Empire Is Gone,” in which he analyzed economic data, conversations of politicians and the media, and moods of Russian citizens to conclude that the Soviet Union would soon fall. The collapse occurred within a year of when the book was published, much sooner than he expected.

2. Extrapolation of trends. When a trend can be detected in some measure of performance, futurists can calculate future values of that measure and draw conclusions about the consequences. In 1965, Gordon Moore noticed a trend in computer

chips: Every year, the transistor count doubled for about the same price (“Cramming More Components into Integrated Circuits,” in Electronics Magazine 38, April 1965).

Many people started using Moore’s law to gauge whether the computing power available in a few years would support their new technology offerings. Though not a law of nature, it became a guiding principle that has sustained the computer chip industry for nearly 50 years.

In The Age of Spiritual Machines (Viking, 1999), Ray Kurzweil claimed that the same trend was evident in four previous generations of information technologies and would be present in technologies that supersede silicon. Based on that, he extrapolated 50 years into the future to predict a “singularity” around 2030, when he believes artificial brains will become intelligent.

In A Vision for 2012 (Fulcrum, 2008), John L. Petersen noticed deep trends in economic data that would lead to crushing public debt, unsustainable government programs, rising food prices, rising fuel prices, and social unrest. Many of his predictions have borne out.

On the other side, in The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business, 2000), John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid warn against overconfidence in trend extrapolation because social systems often resist and re­ direct changes in technology. They exposed a series of major predictions that never happened and led to the dot-com bust in 2002.

3. Scenarios. A scenario is a story that lays out in some detail what the future might look like under certain assumptions about trends and other factors. Futurists usually offer several scenarios under different as-

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41

sumptions. The method is useful to help people see how they might react to different futures, and then try to influence policies and trends so that the most attractive futures come to be. Futurists do not offer scenarios as predictions. They often evaluate the probabilities of the various futures they lay out.

Let’s take a look at the work of innovators for overlaps. Before we do that, we need to have a good definition of innovation.

In Search of the Meaning of Innovation Innovation is one of the most studied subjects of all time, but there is considerable disagreement about what innovation is. The most common notions are that innovation is a mysterious talent, a disposition of some people’s DNA, a process that can be controlled by savvy managers, or a flash of genius. Less common notions about innovation involve adoption, diffusion, and new behaviors. Thus, the recommendations of different authors about how to achieve innovation lead in conflicting directions.

There is agreement that success of an innovation means adoption.

However, successes are few and precious. Business surveys reveal that only about 4% of innovation initiatives meet their financial objectives.

Patent office statistics show that only about 0.2% of patents make a return on the inventor ’s investment. The National Research Council reported in 1986 that the U.S. government’s track record of promoting innovation through university research is not as good as is commonly believed: Fewer than 25% of innovations can be connected to published research ideas.

It appears that we collectively share a misunderstanding of innovation and therefore experience great difficulty in achieving it. No wonder our methods are ineffective.

The low success rate of innovation initiatives is often explained as an in-

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evitable consequence of the uncertainty of the marketplace. We are oft e n a s k e d t o re j o i c e t h a t t h e prevailing 4% success rate is so high.

If low success is certain, a company’s best strategy is to “take many shots on goal.” However, this strategy is available to only a few companies that can afford to let 96% of their research and development go to waste. For the rest of us, achieving innovation looks like a crapshoot.

In The Innovator’s Way, Bob Dunham and I concluded that the notions based on idea generation led to the fewest successes, whereas the notions based on adoption led to the most successes. Since we were interested in success and in the innovator skills that generate it, we used the second notion as our definition: Innovation is adoption of new practice in a community. There are three key words in this definition: 1. Community. The set of people who change. The community can be small, such as a family; medium, such as a business’s customers; or large, such as a nation or the world.

2. Practice. Habits, routines, and processes that people embody. Embody means that people engage with the practice skillfully and without conscious thought. The ability to perform is not the same is applying a mental concept.

3. Adoption. The members of the community make a commitment to learn and embody a new practice.

They will make such a commitment only if they see sufficient value in the new practice and are willing to sacrifice the previous practice to get it.

Notice that this definition covers many types of innovation. The Internet is a set of technologies that support new practices, including browsing, searching, online shopping, social networking, blogging, and text­ ing. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) inspired new practices backed by laws to take drunk drivers off the roads. Sustainable architects have introduced new construction practices that produce buildings

January-February 2012

with no carbon footprint. Heads of families have adopted small business practices to help them balance income and expense and pay off debt. The key to success is adoption of practices, not the invention of ideas.

Unfortunately, the notion that innovation comes from clever ideas is enshrined in popular mythology. It is certainly true that ideas are necessary for innovation, but, as we will discuss, ideas are never sufficient.

Company or public policies aimed at stimulating creativity, producing more ideas, or encouraging inventors do a disservice by getting everyone to focus too much on ideas at the expense of adoption. We call this imbalance the invention myth—the belief that invention of new ideas is the driver of innovation. The invention myth has led many people down the path to failure in their innovation initiatives.

Then what is a balanced and holistic view of innovation? The Eight Ways framework is our answer.

The Work of Innovators The eight ways are practices that innovators use to produce the eight essential outcomes for innovation.

Their names are listed on the wheel of the figure on page 43. Taken together, these practices define what it means to be a skillful innovator.

The wheel diagram suggests that the practices are not performed sequentially in numerical order. Instead, the innovator moves constantly among them, refining the results of earlier actions after seeing their consequences. It is better to think of the practices being done in parallel. That is why they must be learned as skills. The innovator must be able to do them well without thinking about them.

The “Structure of the Innovative Practices” table gives more detail.

The first two practices are the main work of invention, and the next three are the main work of adoption.

Although these five tend to be done

sequentially, they are not strictly sequential. Each of the final three practices creates an environment for effective conduct of all the other practices. The environment is important: The innovator has to execute the innovation commitments, proactively promote the innovation, and be sensitive to how other people listen and react.

The specification of each practice has two parts. The anatomy describes the structure of the practice when it goes well and produces its outcome.

The characteristic breakdowns are the most common obstacles that arise in trying to complete the practice. The innovator moves toward the desired outcome and copes with breakdowns as they arise. The breakdowns are not mere annoyances.

Coping with them is a normal part of the process.

The Eight Ways of Innovation 1 Sensing

2 Envisioning

6 Executing

7 Leading

8 Embodying

5 Sustaining

3 Offering

4 Adopting

Example: The World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee is widely known for creating the World Wide Web, considered one of the great innovations of the twentieth century. His parents were both part of the Ferranti Atlas Project at the University of Manchester in England in the 1950s. After earning a graduate degree in physics in 1976 from Queen’s College, Oxford, he worked as a software engineer at Plessey Systems, a telecommunications company, and then at D. G. Nash Ltd., were he wrote text-processing software for intelligent printers and a multitasking operating system. He was fascinated by a question, first raised by his father, of whether computers could be used to link information rather than simply compute numbers. In 1980, he went to CERN, the European high energy physics research laboratory, with this question on his mind.

Berners-Lee saw a huge dis­ harmony between the actual direction of the Internet and the information-sharing visions of its pioneers in the 1960s. He felt a burning desire to do something about it. Given his

Structure of the Innovation Practices The main work of invention

The main work of adoption

The environment for the other practices

1

Sensing

Locate and articulate a new possibility, often in disharmonies or incongruous events.

2

Envisioning

Tell a compelling story about the world when the possibility is realized.

3

Offering

Offer to produce the outcome; gain a commitment to consider it.

4

Adopting

Gain commitment to try it for the first time, and overcome resistance to the change.

5

Sustaining

Gain commitment to stick with the new practice over time, integrating it into the environment.

6

Executing

Create environment for effectively managing all commitments to completion.

7

Leading

Proactively mobilize people to generate the outcomes of the other practices.

8

Embodying

Instill the new practice into the practices of the community.

dream about information sharing through linking, the esoteric world of hypertext was an obvious place to look for a key to an informationsharing ­Internet.

In his spare time, he worked on a program called Enquire that could link information on any computer with any other. He began to envision CERN not as a network of separate

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computers, but as a single information space consolidated across many computers. In 1989, he wrote “Information Management: A Proposal” to create a hypertext system at CERN linking all its computers and documents into a single web from which information could be quickly retrieved from anywhere in CERN. At first his proposal was ignored, but with help from prominent computer engineer Robert Cailliau, he got the attention of CERN’s leadership. In 1990, they gave him the go-ahead to make a prototype, which he built on a NeXT computer.

The prototype included HTML, a new markup language for documents containing hyperlinks; HTTP, a new protocol for downloading an object designated by a hyperlink; URL, an Internet-compatible scheme for global names; and a graphical user interface. He drew on wellknown ideas and practices, including Gopher (University of Minnesota’s file-fetching system), FRESS and ZOG (hypertext document management systems), SGML (the digital publishing markup language), TCP/ IP and FTP (standard Internet protocols), operating systems (the global identifier concept of capability systems, which had been on the Plessey computers), and Usenet news and discussion groups.

He put up the first Web page at CERN in November 1990. He released and tested browser prototypes at CERN in 1991. He gave his first external demonstration at the Hypertext 1991 research conference, a natural audience for this idea. It was an immediate success and inspired others to build Web sites. The first non-CERN Web site went up at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) in December 1991. Web sites began to proliferate; there were 200 in 1993. With the universal free browser, Mosaic, released by Marc Andreesen at the University of Illinois in 1993, the World Wide Web took off exponentially. During the 1990s, many new industries formed including e-commerce (selling by on-

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line stores via Web interface), publishing, digital libraries, eBay, Google, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and the Internet business boom (and bust).

Berners-Lee had no master plan, business plan, or any other formal document outlining a strategy for the Web. Instead, he insisted that all programmers working on Web software adhere to a small set of simple core principles: openness to everyone, no single controlling authority, universal identifiers, a markup language HTML, and a protocol HTTP. He steadfastly maintained that these principles were the essence of the World Wide Web; all else would be a distraction. He analyzed all new proposals to make sure they were true to these principles.

Building political support for the Web while advancing the Web technology became his central passion.

Cailliau helped him build support within CERN. In 1994, he worried that commercial companies might get into a competition over who owned the Web, in violation of his core principle of openness. Michael Dertouzos at MIT helped establish the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, modeled after the successful MIT X Windows consortium. This consortium eventually attracted over 400 companies, who collaborated on development of Web standards and tools; it became an engine of innovation for the Web. The W3C was an open-software, consensus-based organization that issued nonbinding recommendations, which become de facto standards once consortium members adopted them.

Berners-Lee himself refused to set up a private company so that he could benefit financially from his technology. It belongs to the world, he said.

Here is a summary of how Berners-­ Lee engaged the eight innovation practices.

• Sensing: In the 1980s, he saw a disharmony between the actual direction of the Internet (e-mail and file transfer) and its promise (seman-

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tic web of all human knowledge).

This bothered him. It moved him to do something about it.

• Envisioning: He envisioned a system of hypertext-linked documents; any one could link to any other. Mouse-clicking a link would cause the system to retrieve the target document. The system architecture would consist of HTTP, HTML, URLs, and a browser. Common tasks such as scheduling meetings, looking up citations, and getting mail and news would be easy in this system.

• Offering: In 1989, he offered to build such a system at CERN. At first his offer was spurned, but with advice from colleagues he reformulated his offer around CERN document retrieval needs and got permission to build a prototype on a NeXT machine. He demonstrated the prototype at the 1991 Hypertext research conference, got strong positive responses, and solicited implementations of Web servers.

• Adopting: He visited many sites and attended many conferences to tell people about his system, always soliciting new servers, software, and browsers. Mark Andreesen, a student at University of Illinois, in 1993 made Mosaic, the first universal, easy-install graphical browser. After that, users adopted the Web like wildfire.

• Sustaining. In 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium, hosted by MIT and CERN, to preserve the Web in the public domain by creating open software and standards for the Web. Over 400 organizations eventually joined W3C; it became an engine of innovation for the Web. • Executing: He put together programming teams and solicited others to do the same, so that good Web software was developed and made available for anyone to use. He set clear principles for design and implementation of all Web software.

• Leading: At every opportunity, he recruited ever-larger numbers of followers and Web supporters. He

articulated a small set of guiding principles for Web development and stuck with them. He refused to let the Web “go private” or to become wealthy from his own invention. He said the cause was too important and too big for his personal considerations to influence.

• Embodying: He embodied his set of core principles for the Web and practiced them everywhere he went.

Through well-designed software and later through tutorials in the W3C, he helped Web users embody the new practices of linking, clicking, and browsing.

Extension to Teams, Networks, And Organizations The Eight Ways of Innovation have been presented as personal skills. They are the skills of serial innovators, who are good at all eight.

But what happens if you are strong at several but not all? For example, you could be a good inventor and storyteller, but you dislike anything having to do with offering or adopting. The obvious thing to do is team up with others who are good at the practices you are not good at.

With good coordination, the team as a whole can do all eight practices and be positioned for success at its innovations.

The same is true at a larger scale for organizations. A well-designed organization can, through good internal coordination, take individuals skilled in some of the practices and produce teams good at all of them.

Those organizations can become very successful at innovation.

Networks can also be very good at innovation, if they have people who are good at each of the practices and use the network as a means to find each other and coordinate. Open source software communities, such as the W3C, illustrate this.

In all cases, the eight practices are embodied in the innovative individual, team, organization, or network.

The eight practices must always be present in order for individuals or

collectives to be successful at innovation.

Collaborations with Futurists The work of futurists and innovators most closely aligns in the Sensing and Envisioning practices. Futurists are good at turning up new possibilities and formulating stories about what the world would be like if the possibility were made real. Innovators can use their help.

The standard futurist scenario is not necessarily a compelling vision story. A visioning story is not the same as a vision, which is a committed declaration about a future. A visioning story is a compelling narrative that connects a vision to the concerns of the people and provokes their care and commitment. A good vision story inspires your audience to: • Believe that there is a better future, well worth sacrificing what they now do to gain it.

• See that a blind spot has kept them from seeing this future sooner.

• Trust in your ability and commitment to make it happen.

• Ask for more conversation about this future.

Futurists collaborating with innovators can convert scenarios into vision stories.

There are two other places in the innovation process where futurists can help innovators. One is in the Offering practice. Even if listeners are attracted by an innovator ’s vision of an attractive future, they are often reluctant to sign on because the innovator has not shown them a credible, risk-managing path from the present to the future. Many futurists have well-honed skills at finding paths from the present to the desired future.

Futurists can also help innovators in the Adopting and Sustaining practices. In both cases, innovators are quite likely to encounter resistance from some subset of the community that feels threatened by the change.

Resistance is a major impediment to

adoption. Many futurists are skilled at examining communities as social systems and noticing where support for and resistance to change are most likely to come from.

Achieving Adoption Innovation is the adoption of new practice in a community. It is not a mysterious talent, a product of good DNA, a management process, or a flash of genius. It is the outcome of an innovator—individual or team— skillfully performing the eight practices. The eight practices share four main features: 1. They are fundamentally conversations. Innovators perform them by

engaging in the right conversations.

2. They are universal. Every innovator, and every innovative organization, engages in all of them in some way.

3. They are essential. If any practice fails to produce its outcome, the entire process of innovation fails.

4. They are embodied. They manifest in bodily habits and performance patterns that require no thought or reflection to perform.

These practices are consistent with the notion that the future is malleable.

We are innovators when we shape it and influence how it evolves. The eight practices tell us how to go about doing that successfully. We as futurists can collaborate with innovators to help them improve success, especially in the Sensing, Envisioning, Offering, Adopting, and Sustaining practices. ❑

About the Author Peter J. Denning is Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and director of the Cebrowski Institute for information innovation at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is editor of ACM Ubiquity, an online magazine about the future, and is a past president of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). E-mail pjd@nps.edu.

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S P E C I A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

S E C T I O N

CONSULTANTS AND SERVICES

A

listing of consulting futurists. For infor­mation about being listed in the directory, published in every issue of THE FUTURIST and available on the Web at www.wfs.org, call Jeff Cornish toll free at 1-800-989-8274 or 301-656-8274, or fax 301-951-0394.

Karl Albrecht International

Christensen Associates, Inc.

San Diego, CA U.S.A. Phone: 858-576-1500 E-mail: futures@KarlAlbrecht.com Web: KarlAlbrecht.com Contact: Dr. Karl Albrecht Conference Keynote: “Possibilities: Getting the Future You Deserve — Survival Secrets of the World’s Oldest Companies.”

8168 Manitoba St., No. 2, Playa Del Ray, CA 90293-8291 Phone: 310-578-0405 Fax: 310-578-0455 E-mail: chris@camcinc.com Web: www.camcinc.com Contact: Chris Christensen, CMC Avoid devastating surprises! Exploit ANY future! Stimulating and entertaining keynotes, workshops, assessments, and consulting.

Alternative Futures Associates 100 N. Pitt St., Suite 307, Alexandria, VA 22314-3134 Phone: 703-684-5880 Fax: 703-684-0640 E-mail: futurist@altfutures.com Web: www.altfutures-afa.com Contact: Clement Bezold, Jonathan Peck, Eric Meade Vision and scenario development, strategic planning, trend analysis, workshop design and facilitation, presentations, keynotes, consulting.

Atlas Safety & Security Design, Inc. 770 Palm Bay Ln., Suite 4-I, Miami, FL 33138 Phone: 305-756-5027 Fax: 305-754-1658 E-mail: ratlas@ix.netcom.com Web: www.cpted-security.com Contact: Dr. Randall Atlas, AIA, CPP Pioneers in crime prevention through environmental design. Design of jails, prevention of premises liability lawsuits.

Aviv Consulting 15363 NE 201st St. Woodinville, WA 98072 Phone: 425-415-6155 Fax: 425-415-0664 E-mail: avivconsulting@gmail.com Web: www.avivconsulting.com Contact: Aviv Shahar Helping leaders and teams develop their vision and design the future. Innovation, strategy, coaching, consulting, retreats.

Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking 46 B/4 Jerusalem St., Kfar Saba, Israel 44369 Phone: 972-54-558-7940 Fax: 972-9-766965 Web: www.futurist-thinking.co.il E-mail: bisk@futurist-thinking.co.il Contact: Tsvi Bisk Strategic futurism: “Getting from Here to There” (Keynote speaker) Jewish, Mid-East and Mediterranean Futures (consulting).

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THE FUTURIST

Joseph F. Coates, Consulting Futurist, Inc. 5420 Connecticut Ave. NW, #619 Washington, DC 20015-2832 Phone 202-363-7440 Fax 202-363-4139 Email: joe@josephcoates.com Web: www.josephcoates.com The future is my business: futures research, consultation, trend analysis, scenario development, visioning, scientific, technological and social forecasting, training, briefings, workshops, presentations and keynotes. Coates has been one of the most frequently cited authors in Future Survey and one of the most popular speakers at the World Future Society annual meetings. He is the author or co-author of six books, most recently A Bill of Rights for 21st Century America, and of 2025: Scenarios of US and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology. He has had assignments from half of the Fortune 100 firms, and has had published 290 articles on the future since 1990. He is also responsible for 200 proprietary reports to business, government and association clients. Coates will enlighten you on the future of any subject. Prepare for an unforgettable encounter.

Common Sense Medicine 812 W. 8th St., Suite 2A, Plainview, TX 79072 Phone: 806-291-0700 Fax: 806-293-8229 E-mail: drjonzdo@yahoo.com Web: www.commonsensemedicine.org Contact: Lon Jones DO, Jerry Bozeman M.Ed., LPC Adaptations today are the future. The authors of The Boids and the Bees tell how to guide adaptations in our living systems: healthcare, education, economy, even us.

January-February 2012

Creating the Future, Inc. with Edward D. Barlow, Jr. 2907 Division St., Suite 109, St. Joseph, MI 49085 Phone: 269-982-1830 Fax: 269-982-1541 E-mail: info@creatingthefuture.com Web: www.creatingthefuture.com Contact: Ed Barlow (staff: Sandy, Tammy, and Tresea) Relating influences of a changing world to industries, organizations, professions, communities.

Presentations, strategic planning facilitation.

de Bono For Business 248 W. Loraine St., #103, Glendale, CA 91202 Phone: 818-507-6055 E-mail: info@LyndaCurtin.com Web: www.deBonoForBusiness.com Contact: Lynda Curtin, the Opportunity Thinker Lift your thinking. Learn breakthrough futurist tools—lateral thinking, six thinking hats. Workshops. Keynotes. Facilitation.

FutureManagement Group AG Wallufer Strasse 3a, Eltville, Germany D-65343 Phone: 49-6123-7 55 53 Fax: 49-6123-7 55 54 Web: www.FutureManagementGroup.com E-mail: Office@FutureManagementGroup.com Contacts: Pero Micic, Claudia Schramm Use the “Eltville Model” of FutureManagement to see more of the future than your competitors!

Future Problem Solving Program International, Inc. 2015 Grant Pl., Melbourne, FL 32901 Phone: 321-768-0078 Fax: 321-768-0097 E-mail: mail@fpspi.org Web: www.fpspi.org Contact: Marianne Solomon, Executive ­Director FPSPI is an established educational program that provides a 6-step problem solving process to assist students as they think about the future.

The Futures Corporation 1109 Main St., Ste. 299A, Boise, ID 83702 Phone: 208-345-5995 Fax: 208-345-6083 E-mail: JLuthy@futurescorp.com Web: www.futurescorp.com Contact: Dr. John Luthy Strategic thinking/planning; evolving leadership;

organization redesign/development; trend analysis; scenario planning; business growth ­strategies.

The Futures Lab 2130 Goodrich Ave., Austin, TX 78704 Phone: 512-468-4505 E-mail: dwoodgate@futures-lab.com Web: www.futures-lab.com Contact: Derek Woodgate International futures-based consultancy specializing in consumer, business futures. Leaders in the future potential business.

Futurist Speaker Thomas Frey DaVinci Institute, 511 E South Boulder Road, Louisville, CO 80027 Phone: 303-666-4133 E-mail: deb@davinciinstitute.com Web: www.futuristspeaker.com Contact: Debra Frey Thomas Frey is Google’s top-rated futurist speaker and IBM’s most award-winning engineer. Author of Communicating with the Future—the book that changes everything.

Speaking topics: future of business, work, education, transportation, government, and more.

The Greenway Group 25 Technology Pkwy. South, Suite 101, Norcross, GA 30092 Phone: 678-879-0929 Fax: 678-879-0930 E-mail: jcramer@di.net Web: www.greenway.us Contact: James Cramer, chairman Strategic change, trends, forecasts, research.

Architecture and design technology. Journals: Design Intelligence. Publications: The Almanac of Architecture & Design, How Firms Succeed, Design + Enterprise, Leadership by Design, Communication by Design, Value Redesigned.

H.G. Hudson and Associates 34 Warren Dr., Newport News, VA 23608 Phone: 757-874-5414 E-mail: HUDSON2059@msn.com Contact: Henry G. Hudson, president and CEO Management consulting help in advanced administrative services, operations, systems, methods, procedures, policies, strategy, and management.

Innovation Focus Inc.

scenarios, studies, lectures, seminars, consulting. Public and private sectors.

111 E. Chestnut St., Lancaster PA 17602-2703 Phone: 717-394-2500 Web: www.innovationfocus.com Contacts: Christopher W. Miller, Ph.D.; Anne Orban, M.Ed. Innovation Focus is an internationally recognized consulting firm that brings innovation to all stages of product life cycle management and provides proven processes for deep customer understanding and meaningful innovation. Clients include: Kraft Foods, Kimberly Clark, WD-40, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Leading Futurists LLC 4420 49th St., NW, Washington, DC 20016 Phone: 202-271-0444 E-mail: jbmahaffie@starpower.net Web: www.leadingfuturists.biz Contacts: John B. Mahaffie, Jennifer Jarratt Futures consulting, workshops, scenarios, research, keynote talks to help organizations ­discover new opportunities and challenges.

Members, Association of Professional Futurists.

Institute for Alternative Futures 100 N. Pitt St., Suite 307, Alexandria, VA 22314-3134 Phone: 703-684-5880 Fax: 703-684-0640 E-mail: futurist@altfutures.com Web: www.altfutures.com Contacts: Clement Bezold, Jonathan Peck, William Rowley, MD Uses research reports, workshops, scenarios, and visioning to help organizations understand future possibilities and create their “preferred future.”

Institute for Global Futures

MG Rush Performance Learning 1301 W. 22nd St., Suite 603, Oak Brook, IL 60523

Phone: 630-954-5880 Fax: 630-954-5889 E-mail: futurist@mgrush.com Contacts: Terrence Metz, 630-954-5882; Kevin Booth, 630-954-5884 Facilitation of, and facilitator training for: scenario planning, strategy development, group decision-making, workshop design, ideation, option development and analysis, and training of facilitative leadership.

Minkin Affiliates

2084 Union St., San Francisco, CA 94123 Phone: 415-563-0720 Fax: 415-563-0219 E-mail: info@globalfuturist.com Web: www.GlobalFuturist.com Contact: Dr. James Canton Futures based keynotes, consulting and research for any vertical industry by leading futurist James Canton.

135 Riviera Dr., #305, Los Gatos, CA 95032 Phone: 408-402-3020 E-mail: barryminkin@earthlink.net Web: minkinaffiliates.com Contact: Barry Minkin Keynote speaker, bestselling author, global manage­ment consultant, three decades linking emerging trends to consumer and market strategy.

Institute for Participatory Management and Planning

Next Consulting

P.O. Box 1937, Monterey, CA 93942-1937 Phone: 831-373-4292 Fax: 831-373-0760 E-mail: ipmp@aol.com Web: www.ipmp-bleiker.com Contacts: Annemarie Bleiker, Hans Bleiker, Jennifer Bleiker We offer a Leadership Boot-Camp for guiding complex problem-solving and decision-making efforts.

104 Timber Ridge Rd., State College, PA 16801 Phone: 814-237-2575 Fax: 814-863-4257 E-mail: g7g@psu.edu Web: nextconsulting.us Contact: Geoffrey Godbey, Ph.D. Repositioning leisure/tourism organizations for the near future. Speeches, ideation, imagineering. Client list on request.

KAIROS Future AB

Jim Pinto Associates

P.O. Box 804, S-10136 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: (46 8) 545 225 00 Fax: (46 8) 545 225 01 E-mail: info@kairosfuture.se Web: www.kairosfuture.se Contacts: Mats Lindgren, Anna Kiefer Values, work, technology, marketing. Methods:

P.O. Box 131673, Carlsbad, CA 92013 Phone: 858-353-5467 E-mail: jim@jimpinto.com Web: www.JimPinto.com Contact: Jim Pinto Speaker and consultant: technology futures, industrial automation, global business trends, ­Internet business relationships.

More consultants and services, next page THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

47

Consultants

and

Services

Pinyon Partners LLC 140 Little Falls St., Suite 210, Falls Church, VA 22046 Phone: 703-651-0359 E-mail: pshoemaker@pinyonpartners.com Web: www.pinyonpartners.com Contacts: Peter B.G. Shoemaker; Dan ­Garretson, Ph.D. Quantitative and qualitative. Art and Science.

However you want to characterize it, our distinctive combination of the hard-nosed and the deeply intuitive is perfectly suited for those navigating over the horizon. Expansive explorations of what’s next; engaging engagements with change; consultations, workshops, research, and talks aimed at creating future-oriented clarity, purpose, insight, and confidence. Member, Association of Professional Futurists.

Qi Systems 35 Seacoast Terr., Apt. 6P, Brooklyn, NY 11235 Phone: 718-769-9655 E-mail: QiSys@msn.com Web: www.qisystems.org Contact: Ronn Parker, Ph.D. Spectrum Counseling: conflict resolution, conscious evolution, martial arts, meditation methods, mindbody strategies, transformational learning.

David Pearce Snyder, Consulting Futurist The Snyder Family Enterprise, 8628 Garfield St., Bethesda, MD 20817-6704 Phone: 301-530-5807 Fax: 301-530-1028 E-mail: david@the-futurist.com Web: www.the-futurist.com Contact: Sue Snyder High-impact motivating presentations.

Strategic assessments, socio-technologic forecasts/scenarios. Keynote addresses, strategic briefings, workshops, surveys.

Strategic Futures® Strategic Futures Consulting Group, Inc. 113 South Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314

Phone: 703-836-8383 Fax: 703-836-9192 E-mail: info@strategicfutures.com Web: www.strategicfutures.com Contact: Ron Gunn or Jennifer Thompson Strategic planning, succession planning including mentoring, executive coaching, organizational change facilitation, and matrix management assistance.

SynOvation Solutions 455 Hazelwood Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 Phone: 415-298-3008 E-mail: info@synovationsolutions.com Web: www.synovationsolutions.com Contacts: Bruce L. Tow, David A. Gilliam Future-is-now resources to help you achieve key and mission-critical breakthroughs or creatively evolve your business to meet future challenges.

Synthesys Strategic Consulting Ltd. Belsize Park, London NW3 UK Phone: 44-207-449-2903 Fax: 44-870-136-5560 E-mail: www.hardintibbs.com Web: www.synthstrat.com Contact: Hardin Tibbs, CEO Synthesys specializes in using futures research to develop innovative strategies. Based in London UK, with international experience in both the public and private sectors, across many different industries. Projects include horizon scanning, strategic sense-­making, scenarios, vision building, assumption testing, and strategy formulation, either as expert input or by co-production directly with leadership teams.

THE FUTURIST

van der Werff Global, Ltd. 4958 Crystal Circle, Hoover, AL 35226 Phone: 888-448-3779 Fax: 888-432-9263 E-mail: terry@globalfuture.com Web: www.globalfuture.com Contact: Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC Confidential advisor to corporate leaders worldwide on global trends, executive leadership, and strategic change.

Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc. 200 E. 33rd St., Suite 9I, New York, NY 10016 Phone: 212-889-7007 Fax: 212-679-0628 E-mail: info@weineredrichbrown.com Web: www.weineredrichbrown.com Contact: Arnold Brown, Edie Weiner For over two decades, the pioneers in detecting emerging trends and linking them to a ­ ction.

Xland sprl The TechCast Project Department of Information Systems & Technology Management, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052 Phone: 202-994-5975 E-mail: Halal@gwu.edu Web: www.techcast.org Contact: William E. Halal, professor, George Washington University; president, Techcast LLC

Connect!

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TechCast is an online research project that pools the knowledge of 100 experts worldwide to forecast breakthroughs in all fields of science and technology. Results are updated in real time and distributed to corporations, governments, and other subscribers to aid in their strategic planning. The project has been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Futurist, and various journals. The National Academies consider TechCast among the best systems available, and Google ranks it No. 2 or 3 out of 45 million hits. TechCast also gives presentations, conducts customized studies, and performs most types of consulting related to technology and strategic change.

January-February 2012

111 Av Grandchamp, Brussels, Belgium 1150 Phone: 32-475-827-190 Fax: 32-2-762-46-08 Web: www.xland.be E-mail: xland@skynet.be Contact: D. Michel Judkiewicz Trend analysis, scenarios, forecasting opportunities/threats based on strong and weak signals for resilient strategies.

Link to futurist consultants and services online at www.wfs.org/consultants

Book Reviews Tools for Foresight, With a French Twist

By Rick Docksai

“Prospective” as developed by French futurists is a huge toolbox to help organizations build better futures.

As the epicenter of the United Nations’ global welfare initiatives, UNESCO must oversee a dizzying array of programs. To make sense of the huge workload, it uses a French foresight tradition called “strategic prospective.” Most English-speaking readers might not have heard of prospective, but in Strategic Foresight for Corporate and Regional Development, Michel Godet and Philippe Durance —both economists and futurists at the Paris-based research institution Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers—thoroughly introduce this method and the ways in which organizations inside and outside of France use it to integrate long-range strategy into all their day-to-day management processes.

Prospective’s roots trace back to the 1950s, when France was caught up in waves of rapidly accelerating social and cultural changes, coupled with deep apprehension about the future. Economic growth was momentous and technology was advancing; however, the prospects of nuclear war loomed large, and the carnage of World War II was still fresh in people’s memories. In this milieu, French thinker Gaston Berger outlined prospective as a method for discerning social change and the factors that drive it in order to craft optimal public policy. Together with colleagues, he undertook the first prospective studies in 1959 and 1960.

In the decades since, according to the authors, prospective has been adopted by public and private organizations throughout the world. It’s

Afterward, they rank eleproven to be particularly ments in terms of their effective for business importance to the sysstrategy and regional tem’s evolution. Strucplanning. The name has tural analysis is a potent changed at times—in generator of thought and some circles, it’s called discussion, but it can be “strategic prospective”— time consuming. Morebut the practice itself has over, its analyses are often remained almost entirely highly subjective and can the same. be tainted by participant Prospective’s core ideas biases. are similar to those of • M o r p h o l o g i c a l m o s t o f t h e f u t u r i n g Strategic Foresight analysis especially comes schools of thought with for Corporate and in handy in technological which English-speaking Regional Developreaders might already be ment by Michel ­Godet forecasting. It breaks the acquainted. It illuminates and Philippe ­Durance. system down into its comthe impacts that present DUNOD. 2011. Includes ponents, pro­jects several actions will have over the the original French text possible states for each (171 pages) and its component, and then long term, extrapolates the English translation mixes and matches comfutures that may result, (171 pages). Paperponent states to produce and helps participants de- back. Download from termine how to bring http://laprospective.fr. cohesive scenarios. While it is useful for exploring about the futures that they elements within the larger hope will result.

Where prospective differs is in the system, thereby helping to illumiunique tools that it brings to the en- nate the whole field of possibilities deavor. Scenarios, one of the favorite and to reduce uncertainties, it can be tools in most futurists’ toolkits, do challenging: Users need to take care go into use in strategic prospective ex- not to be overwhelmed by the sheer ercises, but they are not required. number of possible combinations, Practitioners use them along with nor to skew their scenarios by failing to incorporate enough combinations. other tools. For example: • Régnier’s Abacus is a polling • The Tree of Competencies maps the organization and all factors rele- method. A ballot lists yes-or-no vant to it in a treelike diagram: The questions, with an array of colored staff and personnel’s skills, talents, boxes following each question. For and knowledge are the tree’s roots; each question, respondents mark off the organization’s productive capac- a box to signify if they agree or disity is the trunk; and the product lines agree and, either way, how strongly. and markets are the branches. This Respondents are free to change their visual depiction clearly presents the answers at any time. Godet and organization’s strengths, and once ­Durance praise this method as a fast you know your organization’s and fairly simple way to track the strengths, you’ll have a better sense range of opinions of a large group of of how to direct strategy. But not people and compare them with other every organization can be accurately groups. What it cannot do, unforturepresented in a tree shape, the au- nately, is help to reconcile diverging thors caution. Also, the method is opinions. not good at depicting uncertainties.

There are actually so many tools • Structural analysis identifies within strategic prospective that most and distributes across a matrix all organizations that use it will not the individual elements that make have time to deploy all of them. up the larger environment in which Savvy practitioners who know the the organization works. Participants tools well will pick and choose study the matrix to discern which el- which ones will help their clients the ements relate to or influence others. most in the given situation.

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Book Reviews

“However useful these tools might be, they are not ends in themselves, and should be applied according to the needs of the organization, the problems confronted, the constraints of time, and the means available,” the authors write.

After they describe each tool in detail, Godet and Durance share case studies of real-life organizations that used combinations of them with great success. Among them are the French Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces, which used strategic prospective in the 1980s to accurately predict some weapons systems breakthroughs that would occur by 2010. Also, French insurer Axa carried out a prospective study in 1994 and, using it as a guide, undertook a successful companywide restructuring in 1996-2000. And France’s National Aviation Administration relies on prospective when it is deciding the best locations for new airport space.

The volume closes with a dialogue between the two authors in an appendix: Godet poses questions to Durance about why he took interest initially in prospective, what he has achieved in the field, and how he expects the discipline to continue to develop in the future. Durance points out a number of areas where prospective might benefit from further research, such as how to better link history with prospective, as well as links between prospective and ­psychoanalysis.

Michel Godet and Philippe ­Durance blend enthusiasm and expertise as they illuminate what strategic prospective is, where it has come from, and what it can do. They don’t try to hide what it cannot do, however. Readers will learn where users can go wrong if they are not careful when they are using prospective, and in addition where the methodology has some room for improvement and growth.

The authors do a commendable job of not selling the method, but explaining it so as to ensure that more organizations will not only use prospective, but use it right. For futureminded researchers and organization leaders, Strategic Foresight for Corpo50

THE FUTURIST

rate and Regional Development is an informative and authoritative guide to a rich French futurist tradition.

About the Reviewer Rick Docksai is assistant editor for THE FUTURIST and World Future Review.

E‑mail rdocksai@wfs.org.

The World’s Destiny Is Modernity

By Rick Docksai

A new era of global affluence and equity is on its way, according to Max Singer of the Hudson Institute.

Freedom and progress are contagious, and societies that have them in abundance are role models to those that do not. In History of the Future, Hudson Institute co-founder and senior fellow Max Singer forecasts that modern civilization—as Japan, the United States, and other industrialized countries know it— will take root in every country around the world.

“Modernity is not a choice. It is coming whether we like it or not, whether the price is too high or not,” he writes.

Singer sees a new era ahead: high life expectancies, universal education, comfortable living conditions, gender equality, information-based economies, small families, and people living in personal freedom and safety from severe weather, diseases and pestilence, and other harsh elements of nature.

The industrialized democracies are already in that era. By the time that it has completely emerged—which should occur within three centuries, Singer predicts—every other country will be, as well.

“It is difficult to imagine that any country would choose to remain tra-

January-February 2012

ditional and poor for generations while watching other similar societies become free, urban, and wealthy,” he writes.

There will be some additional improvements upon today’s industrialized world. First, glaring income disparities will not exist. Living conditions will be similar country to country, and the richest people in any country will be no more than three to four times as wealthy as the poorest.

Also, democracy will be the universal form of government. An authoritarian country cannot maintain a prosperous, information-based, modern economy indefinitely. The entrepreneurs and inventors who create that economy exercise great degrees of freedom in their personal lives and inevitably demand it in their political lives.

Nor does China disprove this rule, according to Singer: China is not a modern country. Life expectancy and education levels are too low, and agriculture still constitutes 40% of its economy. China will need to fundamentally reshape its political system if it wants to keep its economic growth going.

“China is likely to become modern and democratic before it is wealthy enough to equal U.S. military power,” he writes.

And war will disappear, Singer avers. The global community might still experience crime and terrorism, but people will recognize war as counterproductive and will set it aside to pursue peaceful wealth creation.

“International conflict, and aggressive instincts, will be expressed by other means than the threat or use of military force, just as in domestic life aggression and conflict are expressed largely non-violently,” he writes.

The Middle East has lagged behind the rest of the world in productivity, living standards, and human rights, Singer notes, due to the sway of religious fundamentalism. The masses of Muslim people will tire of systemic poverty, however, and increasingly aspire to the developed world’s comparative wealth. They will reconcile

their Muslim faith and dernity and peace? Or identity with modernity. that the oncoming catas“Some Muslims will trophe of climate change continue to regard the will happily be resolved modern world as corrupt without drastic worldand Godless, but experiwide action? ence suggests that for the Singer is also looking majority of Muslims this much further into the attitude will not withfuture than most comstand the appeal of modmentators would: 300 ern freedoms and ecoyears. Most futurists nomic opportunities,” consider looking even 50 Singer writes. years ahead to be venHistory of the Future: The author bases his The Shape of the turing into speculation. hope for modernity’s tri- World to Come Is But in troubled times umph in globalization. Visible Today by Max like ours, powerful hope With commerce and com- Singer. Lexington. and deep vision can be munication becoming 2011. 178 pages. welcoming things. History ever-more international, Paperback. $24.95. of the Future will be an inhe argues, it is easier for spiring read to anyone developing countries to cultivate new who wonders how the world might industries. Also, it is easier for coun- move beyond present difficulties. tries to find modernized role models: Faster information sharing offers better views of modernized countries and the higher qualities of life that ooks in rief those countries’ peoples enjoy.

“Globalization makes it harder for islands of inefficiency to survive,” he Edited by Rick Docksai writes. “As globalization advances, the menu of opportunities for people The Pros and Cons of everywhere expands.”

Singer is no less stolidly optimistic Ultra-Long Life Spans on the issue of climate change. Humanity has the know-how and the 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of adaptability to prevent excessive Longevity Will Change Everything, from warming without unduly compro- Careers and Relationships to Family and mising progress toward modernity. Faith by Sonia Arrison. Basic. 2011. 235 pages. Paperback. $25.99.

He does not believe that science has unequivocally proven human activHow would life be different if life ity to be the primary cause of today’s warming trends, and he goes so far expectancy topped 150 years? We as to caution against overreacting to could find out within our lifetimes, according to Sonia Arrison, a Pacific the warming threat.

“The main question is, how many Research Institute senior fellow, in 100 resources will be wasted by unwise Plus. She charts scores of medical adresponses to the potential danger?” vances that could add decades, maybe even centuries, to the human life span he writes.

On geopolitics, economics, the en- and make childbirth possible for vironment, and most other topics, women in their 60s and 70s. These Singer is more hopeful than many “life extension” treatments include: • Regeneration procedures to rereaders themselves might be. Some might even consider him too hope- grow lost body parts.

• Organ-printing techniques that ful. Can we really hope that in another three centuries Afghanistan, manufacture new organs from Somalia, Haiti, and North Korea will scratch.

• The rejuvenation compound all be basking in the sunlight of mo-

B

B

that will make a person look and feel 30 to 40 years younger.

I t i s a d re a m people have shared throughout human history, she notes, and realizing it would relieve the suffering of tens of millions of aging adults, plus ease the strains that growing populations of senior citizens might place on public services. But it could complicate life, too. How will siblings who are 40 years apart in age relate to each other as they grow up? How will younger workers move up in their career fields when those above them never retire? How much more frequently will generational misunderstandings and values clashes erupt within workplaces? And might a population with extended life spans over-consume the earth’s resources at accelerated rates?

Arrison offers few conclusive answers to these and other questions, but she does express overall confidence that human ingenuity can resolve all of the steepest challenges.

She is certainly more optimistic than many commentators who have spoken on the subject, even though she remains realistic about life extension’s potential to make life both better and worse. Audiences of all kinds will find 100 Plus to be a thoughtful and stimulating discussion.

The Race to Energy Sustainability But Will the Planet Notice? How Smart Economics Can Save the World by Gernot Wagner. Hill and Wang. 2011. 244 pages. $27.

Many European nations rank far ahead of the United States in renewable energy, pollution control, and energy conservation, according to Environmental Defense Fund economist Gernot Wagner. He attributes this

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

51

Books

in

Brief

lead to one factor: market incentives. European governments instituted policies that made clean ­energy dev e l o p m e n t m o re c o s t -­ effective to use than statusquo fossil-fuel energy.

In But Will the Planet Notice?, Wagner calls on officials in every country to emulate Europe and work with its markets to enact “smart” regulations that guide market forces in the direction of clean energy and resource conservation.

Wagner spells out many examples of such regulations, such as cap-and-

trade systems and taxes on gasoline and airline flights.

The key is to reward innovation while making unsustainable practices more costly. Governments that carry out such programs effectively will not only cut pollution and greenhousegas emissions, but they will also, more fundamentally, create market environments where companies compete to be more sustainable, energy industries race to offer the most-­productive renewableenergy systems, and countries vie with each other to be the leading ex-

Call for Papers World Future Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight (WFR) is the World Future Society’s publication for Professional and Institutional members. WFR seeks to encourage and facilitate communication among futures researchers and practitioners in all related fields and from all geographic, social, political, and economic s­ ectors.

It is our intent that this journal shall provide a forum for all who are professionally involved with the theory, methodology, practice, and use of futures research.

The editors of World Future Review are especially seeking the following types of material: 1. Methodological and conceptual analysis of both a quantitative and qualitative nature.

2. Papers based on research, modeling, and strategic planning (the substantive outcomes of futures research).

3. Papers outlining the challenges of government, corporate, and nonprofit planners and other practicing/professional futurists.

4. Articles about futures research practitioners (individual, institutional, or at a national level) and their contributions to the art/ discipline.

E-mail submissions or queries to WFR Executive Editor Timothy C. Mack, tmack@wfs.org. For more detailed manuscript preparation and writer’s guidelines, please visit www.wfs.org/content/ world-future-review-editorial-guidelines.

52

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

porters of clean, renewable electricity.

Officials will have to decide carefully what standards to set and how quickly to push industries to meet them. Moreover, they will have to set a careful balance between development and environmental conservation, the author advises. Time is of the essence: We have, at most, 10 years to cut carbon-dioxide emissions to sustainable levels before disastrous climate change sets in.

Wagner ’s But Will the Planet Notice? sets an ambitious conservation agenda for the public and business sectors to team up to achieve. The potential payoff of success is clearly vast. Earnest professionals in both government and industry will find stimulating ideas to consider and maybe carry out.

New Leaders for New ­Communities Community Leadership 4.0: Impacting a World Gone Wiki by Carolyn Corbin.

Center for the 21st Century. 2011. 243 pages. Paperback. $15.99.

As society changes, so must leadership practices, says Carolyn Corbin, president of the think tank Center for the 21st Century, in Community Leadership 4.0. She describes the skills that a twenty-first-century leader must have to navigate globalization and nonstop technological change.

According to Corbin, cities and towns in the nineteenth century existed in a Community 2.0 phase, in which community life was static and travel was limited. With the rise of railroads, automobiles, and airplanes, Community 3.0 set in: People took to visiting other places frequently.

On the horizon is yet another paradigm shift: Community 4.0, in which technology erases geographic distance altogether and raises social and intellectual capital to all-time highs. People can live where they choose and telecommute for employ-

ers near or far, while quality of life surpasses that of any prior era. No community on earth has yet reached Community 4.0, but almost any can if it adopts a global mind-set that embraces diversity, risk, inclusiveness, and innovation.

For communities that have long operated within the comfort zones of established authority and the status quo, such a mind-set represents a transformation. Community leaders must help usher it in by exercising Community 4.0 Leadership. Corbin describes this leadership style as the ability to anticipate tomorrow, to think problems through, to thrive amid chaos, to understand people, and to promote collaboration. She then presents a process that any leader can use to determine if his or her own leadership style is sufficiently 4.0 and how to improve it if it is not.

Corbin wrote Community Leadership 4.0 with aspiring leaders of all kinds in mind. Whether they are heading up businesses, nonprofit groups, cities, regions, or countries, they will likely find much helpful coaching on how they and those whom they lead can stay ahead of the curve.

War on Climate Change The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding.

Bloomsbury. 2011. 292 pages. $25.

In World War II, the United States and its Allies rallied their citizens to labor, sacrifice, and produce like never before to defeat fascism. Ecologist Paul Gilding expresses hope in The Great Disruption

that, as the depth of the climate crisis hits, the world will in like fashion launch into wartime-like mobilization to avert ecological and socioeconomic catastrophe.

Resource depletion and altered climate patterns will universally wreck economies, threaten public health, and spark violent social tensions, Gilding argues. The world community will face system stresses severe enough to end civilization as we know it.

And the world will respond in force. People will unite to transform economic life, erase carbon pollution, and tackle consumerism, poverty, and conflict. As previous generations did during World War II, they will accept new taxes and rationing of electricity and gasoline. They will also participate in some never-­ before-seen changes: shutdowns of fossil-fuel industries and their replacements with renewable-energy alternatives.

There is no sense passively waiting for all of this to happen, however, Gilding warns: We can spare future civilization much pain by taking the initiative now. He calls for a groundswell of action to cut carbondioxide emissions in half by 2023, move to net-zero emissions worldwide by 2038, and rebuild a new economy over the decades that follow while deploying geoengineering to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

He foresees that these efforts could limit warming to a manageable 1°C by 2100.

The home front in World War II is a real memory to many of today’s senior citizens. In The Great Disruption, Gilding takes a unique approach to the climate-change dilemma, one that applies this older generation’s historical perspective, and in so doing makes an eloquent call to global action toward su st a i n a b i l i t y t h a t readers of any age can appreciate.

A Future Beyond Belief The Precarious Human Role in a Mechanistic Universe by John F. Brinster.

Xlibris. 2011. 511 pages. Paperback. $23.99.

Religion’s influence upon society has waned in the p a s t c e n t u r y, and it will continue to wane in the years to come, forecasts John F. Brinster, retired Princeton physicist and psychologist. In The Precarious Human Role in a Mechanistic Universe, he looks forward to secularism gaining progressively more ground over the next few generations.

More and more people will practice spirituality, but fewer and fewer will practice religion. Human thought itself is evolving as people base life decisions less on faith and more on imagination, critical thought, and reason.

This could especially be so if, as many commentators anticipate, artificial brain enhancements boost brain power worldwide and accentuate analytical logic in human thinking—i.e., human brains will be aided by computers and thus think more like computers.

Established religious traditions will labor to block secularism’s growth at every turn, Brinster says.

Secularists will need to build strong, organized civic movements and education reform initiatives if they want to succeed. If they do, the consequences for the world will be vast, the author believes: We would see the blossoming of science and education, the universal affirmation of women’s rights, and the emergence of a peaceful global society freed from ancient sectarian feuds.

Brinster dives into some highly sensitive and controversial topics, but treats them with deep thoughtfulness and respect. While some readers may strongly disagree with some of his premises, almost any honest reader will be impressed. ❑

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

53

WorldFuture 2012

Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver.

The annual conference of the World Future Society, to be held in Toronto, July 27-29, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel.

Preconference Courses: July 26-27, 2012 • Professional Members’ Forum: July 30, 2012

C.G. WAGNER

Futurists combine the creativity for imagining a better future with the entrepreneurial drive to build it. While the future may be the ultimate “do-it-yourself” p ­ roject, you don’t have to create it alone!

Join a thousand future-building men and women at the World Future Society’s 2012 conference, to be held in Toronto, July 27-29, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel.

Why Attend WorldFuture 2012?

Mary Jane Naquin (left) and Heather Schlegel.

• Interdisciplinary thinking: WorldFuture conferences are the only global gathering of futurists from across all disciplines. Conference attendees include world-renowned researchers, up and coming thought leaders, foresight consultants, government and security experts, and innovative trend-setters/problem-solvers in ecology, commerce, health, and technology.

• World-class learning opportunities: Sessions will include a mix of formats, r­anging from rapid-delivery expert seminars to “deeper dive” workshops, where you can take a more examined look at how futuring can shape real-world outcomes.

• Connectivity: Wi-fi and Internet access will break down the “classroom” walls and the barriers between “teachers” and “learners.”

AARON M. COHEN

Futurists:BetaLaunch—back after an amazing inaugural year!

“It was great to see what the current ‘future’ has in store!”

WorldFuture 2011 marked the premier launch event for futurist entrepreneurs: Futurists:BetaLaunch!

Futurists:BetaLaunch demonstration.

From more than 60 cutting-edge technologies and social innovations evaluated by our panel of judges, 15 finalists were given the unique opportunity to launch their innovations in front of the WorldFuture’s global audience in Vancouver.

Futurists:BetaLaunch will be even bigger in 2012! We’ll be offering the innovators more opportunities to introduce themselves and their ideas to all a ­ ttendees.

If you have an idea you want to launch, make sure to apply at ­wfsbetalaunch.com. ­During the conference, the chosen inventors will have a chance to meet and mingle with attendees—and potential investors—to discuss the innovations, provide feedback, evaluate, and learn.

Don’t miss Futurists:BetaLaunch, exclusively at WorldFuture 2012!

Who You’ll Meet at WorldFuture 2012 Keynote Luncheon Speaker: 2011

World Future Society lifetime achievement honoree Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., will speak on “Imagination and the ‘Swellness’ Movement,” providing a unique perspective on what the impacts will be on our futures.

Among the other outstanding speakers already confirmed are: Peter Bishop, associate professor of Strategic Foresight and coordinator of the graduate Futures Studies program at the University of Houston will showcase The Best of

AARON M. COHEN

Houston Futures.

Lisa Donchak, a

business strategist with Google Apps and research analyst for Weiner, Edrich, Brown, will moderate the new Speed Futuring event, an energetic, participant-driven networking opportunity.

Emily Empel, trend spotter, marketing disciple, and futurist, will team with Heather ­Schlegel, futurist, technologist, cacophonist, and member of the Swift Innovation team, to explore The Future of Shopping: An Immersive

Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner AARON M. COHEN

Experience.

Andy Hines, lecturer

and executive-in-residence at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Futures ­Studies, and principal of his new firm Hinesight, will speak on the ConsumerShift: Changing Values Reshape the Consumer Landscape.

Patrick Tucker

an educator and Certified Speaking Professional, offers insights on How to Turn Teenagers into Futurists!

Jay Ogilvy, a visiting lecturer and former dean of Presidio Graduate School and the co-founder of Global Business Network, will offer Lessons from Three Decades of Futures Deane Hutton,

Research.

Be sure to check www.wfs.org frequently for additional speakers and events!

WorldFuture 2012

Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver.

The annual conference of the World Future Society, to be held in Toronto, July 27-29, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel.

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Covering all issues from January-February 2011 through November-December 2011 (Volume 45)

2011 Subject/Author Index to

THE FUTURIST

Feature Articles, Book Reviews, and World Trends & Forecasts SUBJECT INDEX BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS Augmented, Anonymous, Accountable: The Emerging Digital Lifestyle, Erica Orange, July-August 2011.

The Case against Cash, David Warwick, JulyAugust 2011.

Future, Fantasy, and Positive Volition, ­Matthew Colborn, January-February 2011.

Imagineering Realism and Fantasy [box], Gary Dehrer, March-April 2011.

Imagineers in Search of the Future, Gary ­Dehrer, March-April 2011.

Investigating the Future: Lessons from the “Scene of the Crime,” Charles Brass, November-December 2011.

Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise, Julian Cribb, May-June 2011.

Marvin J. Cetron on Terrorism and Other Dangers [Futurists and Their Ideas], ­Edward Cornish, September-October 2011.

COMMUNICATIONS

Now Is the Time for the Future [box], Gary Dehrer, March-April 2011.

Our Naked Data, William H. Saito, July-August 2011.

Treading in the Sea of Data, Richard Yonck, July-August 2011.

EDUCATION Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age, John M. Eger, JanuaryFebruary 2011.

Thomas Bayes and Bruno de Finetti on Forming Well-Considered Expectations of the Future [box], Stephen M. Millett, SeptemberOctober 2011.

Visionary Forecasting with Graham T. T. ­Molitor [Futurists and Their Ideas], Edward Cornish, July-August 2011.

GENERAL TRENDS AND FORECASTS

The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning, Maria H. Andersen, January-February 2011.

Defining and Anticipating the Global MegaCrisis [box], William E. Halal and Michael Marien, May-June 2011.

ENVIRONMENT AND RESOURCES

Global MegaCrisis: Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives, William E. Halal and Michael Marien, May-June 2011.

A Convenient Truth about Clean Energy, Carl E. Schoder, January-February 2011.

Dust Bowl Redux [box], Lester R. Brown, JulyAugust 2011.

Eroding Futures: Why Healthy Soil Matters to Civilization, Lester R. Brown, July-August 2011.

Exploring New Energy Alternatives, David J. LePoire, September-October 2011.

Solar Power from the Moon, Patrick Tucker, May-June 2011.

Why We Need the Moon for Solar Power on Earth, David R. Criswell, May-June 2011.

FUTURISM AND FORESIGHT The Disneyland Story: For Further Reading [box], Gary Dehrer, March-April 2011.

Five Principles of Futuring as Applied History, Stephen M. Millett, September-October 2011.

Outlook 2012, FUTURIST staff, NovemberDecember 2011.

Recently Published Books: Other Perspectives on the Global MegaCrisis [box], ­William E. Halal and Michael Marien, MayJune 2011.

GOVERNANCE Building a Better Future for Haiti, Raymond Joseph, Paul Joseph, and Emmanuel Henry [roundtable discussion with Timothy Mack and Cynthia G. Wagner], May-June 2011.

Health Insurance in America After the Reform, Jay Herson and David Pearce Snyder, March-April 2011.

Should the Reform Be Reformed? [box], ­David Pearce Snyder, March-April 2011.

HEALTH AND MEDICINE Bike to the Future, Kenneth W. Harris, MarchApril 2011.

Could Medical Tourism Aid Health-Care Delivery? Prema Nakra, March-April 2011.

From Hospital to Healthspital: A Better Paradigm for Health Care, Frank W. Maletz, March-April 2011.

The Future of Medicine: Are Custom-Printed Organs on the Horizon? Vladimir Mironov, January-February 2011.

In Vivo Bioprinting: A Scenario [box], ­Vladimir Mironov, January-February 2011.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY The Accelerating Techno-Human Future, Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz, September-October 2011.

The Coming Robot Evolution Race, Steven M. Shaker, September-October 2011.

Extropy Defined [box], Kevin Kelly, MarchApril 2011.

Finding Eden on the Moon, Joseph N. Pelton, May-June 2011.

Thank You Very Much, Mr. Roboto, Patrick Tucker, September-October 2011.

The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the World Ahead, James H. Irvine and Sandra Schwarzbach, May-June 2011.

Understanding Technological Evolution and Diversity, Kevin Kelly, March-April 2011.

SOCIETY AND VALUES Avatars and Virtual Immortality, William Sims Bainbridge, March-April 2011.

The Reality of Virtual Feelings [box], Arnold Brown, March-April 2011.

Reconnecting to Nature in the Age of Technology, Richard Louv, November-December 2011.

Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society, Arnold Brown, March-April 2011.

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

57

WORK AND CAREERS 70 Jobs for 2030 [special report], JanuaryFebruary 2011: • Careers for a More Personal Corporation, Jim Ware.

• Careers Inspired by Nanotech Trends, Anne Gordon.

• A Clash of Ideas and Ideals on the Jobs Front, Patrick Tucker.

• The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living, Thomas Frey.

• Digital Identity Planner: A Scenario, ­Timothy Ferriss.

• Emerging Careers and How to Create Them, Cynthia G. Wagner.

• Fixing Our Machines and Ourselves, Charles Grantham.

• Personal Care Coordinator, Alexandra Levit.

• Unmanned Cargo Vehicle Operator: A Scenario, Karen W. Currie.

WORLD AFFAIRS The Earthquake Generation [box], Patrick Tucker, November-December 2011.

Lost and Found in Japan, Patrick Tucker, November-December 2011.

My First Meltdown: Lessons from Fukushima, Patrick Tucker, July-August 2011.

Technology’s Role in Revolution: Internet Freedom and Political Oppression, Evgeny Morozov, July-August 2011.

Updating the Global Scorecard: The 2011 State of the Future, Jerome C. Glenn, November-December 2011.

• Future World Shapers, Alireza Hejazi.

• Managing Our Feelings, Joyce Gioia.

• More Jobs for Tomorrow [box], Thomas Frey.

• Online Community Organizer, Seth Godin.

Statement required by the Act of August 21, 1970, Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code, showing the ownership, management, and circulation of THE FUTURIST. Office of publication: 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-3032 (Montgomery County).

Publisher: World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont ­Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814.

WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY Brain Mapping, Intelligence Augmentation, and Virtual Reality [box], Aaron M. Cohen, November-December 2011.

The Living City Challenge: Buildings That Make a Positive Impact [box], Aaron M. Cohen, November-December 2011.

The Search for Global Solutions: Moving from Vision to Action, Cynthia G. Wagner, November-December 2011.

Founding Editor: Edward Cornish, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814.

Editor: Cynthia G. Wagner, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814.

Owner: World Future Society (a nonprofit corporation with no stockholders).

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Average No. Actual No.

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(Sep.-Oct. 2011) A. Total No. Copies Printed 14,393 14,140 B. Paid Circulation 1. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors & Counter Sales 731 630 2. Mailed Outside-County Subscription 10,354 10,425 3. Mailed In-County Subscription 0 0 4. Other classes mailed through USPS 515 252 C. Total Paid Circulation 11,601 11,307 D. Free Distribution 1. Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies 74 72 2. Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies 0 0 3. Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS 102 100 4. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail 0 0 E. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution 176 172 F. Total Distribution 11,776 11,479 G. Copies Not Distributed 2,617 2,661 H. Total 14,393 14,140 I. Percent Paid 98.5% 98.5% I certify that the statements made above by me are correct and complete. — Jefferson Cornish, Business Manager.

58

THE FUTURIST

WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS [Written by editors Aaron M. Cohen, Rick Docksai, Patrick Tucker, and Cynthia G. ­Wagner, except where noted.]

COMMERCE Envisioning a Global Economic Dashboard, May-June 2011.

Fast Fashion: Tale of Two Markets, September-October 2011.

Four Scenarios for Co-Working, July-August 2011.

Smart Banknotes, Ignacio Mas, JanuaryFebruary 2011.

Virtual Games Bring Currency to Real Life, November-December 2011.

EARTH

FUTURING Predicting Our Own Happiness, May-June 2011.

Saving Bangladesh, January-February 2011.

GOVERNANCE The “American Dream” Moves Downtown, Roger Kemp, March-April 2011.

Connecting People to Their Governments, November-December 2011.

Hackers of the World Unite, March-April 2011.

Reversing the Mexican “Brain Drain,” ­Concepción Olavarrieta, May-June 2011.

HUMANITY Alarms Ring as Wedding Bells Do Not, March-April 2011.

Finding Connection and Meaning in Africa, Tom Murphy, September-October 2011.

The Gamification of Education, SeptemberOctober 2011.

The High Cost of Bad Habits, March-April 2011.

SCI/TECH Biomimicry to Fight Blindness, SeptemberOctober 2011.

A Chemical Mission to Mars, July-August 2011.

Computers Making the Quantum Leap, MayJune 2011.

Fighting AIDS through Genome Editing, November-December 2011.

Holographic Videoconferencing, May-June 2011.

Life Among the Stars? Interview with Paul Davies [World Trends & Forecasts, box], July-August 2011.

Gaming for Better Decision Making, JulyAugust 2011.

Robots as Athletes, January-February 2011.

The Smell of Future Video, NovemberDecember 2011.

The Sounds of Wellness, September-October 2011.

The Troubling Future of Internet Search, Eli Pariser, September-October 2011.

Demographic Impacts on Climate Change, March-April 2011.

Dimming the Sun, May-June 2011.

Forward to the Steam Age? January-February 2011.

Purification at the Nano Scale, July-August 2011.

Unwasted Energy, November-December 2011.

January-February 2012

BOOKS REVIEWED The Abundant Community, John McKnight and Peter Block [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

Acceleration, Ronald Havelock [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

Aftershock, Robert B. Reich [reviewed by ­Patrick Tucker], March-April 2011.

The Mesh, Lisa Gansky [Books in Brief], MayJune 2011.

AUTHORS

Alone Together, Sherry Turkle [reviewed by Edward Cornish], July-August 2011.

My Brain Made Me Do It, Eliezer Sternberg [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

The Atlas of New Librarianship, R. David Lankes [Books in Brief], September-October 2011.

Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov [reviewed by Rick Docksai], July-August 2011.

Allenby, Braden R., and Daniel Sarewitz, The A c c e l e r a t i n g Te c h n o - H u m a n F u t u re , September-October 2011.

Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, Peter H. Gleick [Books in Brief], January-February 2011.

Climate Capitalism, L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future, Matthew Kahn [Books in Brief], January-February 2011.

Collective Visioning, Linda Stout [Books in Brief], September-October 2011.

Crashes, Crises, and Calamities: How We Can Use Science to Read the Early-Warning Signs, Len Fisher [Books in Brief], JulyAugust 2011.

Earth: The Operators’ Manual, Richard B. Alley [Books in Brief], July-August 2011.

Exorbitant Privilege, Barry Eichengreen [Books in Brief], July-August 2011.

The Fate of Greenland, Philip Conkling, Richard Alley, Wallace Broecker, and George Denton [Books in Brief], September-October 2011.

Fault Lines, Raghuram G. Rajan [Books in Brief], July-August 2011.

Flash Foresight, Daniel Burrus with John David Mann [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

Globish, Robert McCrum [reviewed by Edward Cornish], September-October 2011.

The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and ­L eonard Mlodinow [reviewed by Edward ­Cornish], March-April 2011.

Green Deen, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

How Asia Can Shape the World, Joergen ­O erstroem Moeller [Books in Brief], JulyAugust 2011.

How to Catch a Robot Rat: When Biology Inspires Innovation, Agnès Guillot and ­Jean-Arcady Meyer [Books in Brief], JanuaryFebruary 2011.

How to Cool the Planet, Jeff Goodell [Books in Brief], July-August 2011.

It’s Your Future … Make It a Good One! Verne Wheelwright [reviewed by Rick Docksai], May-June 2011.

Jobs that Matter, Heather Krasna [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

The Last Lingua Franca, Nicholas Ostler [reviewed by Edward Cornish], SeptemberOctober 2011.

Life Without Oil, Steve Hallett and John Wright [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

The Master Switch, Tim Wu [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

The New Digital Shoreline, Roger McHaney [Books in Brief], September-October 2011.

The Next Decade, George Friedman [Books in Brief], September-October 2011.

Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy, Daniel Altman [Books in Brief], JanuaryFebruary 2011.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Mary Roach [Books in Brief], January-February 2011.

Pinched, Don Peck [reviewed by Patrick Tucker], November-December 2011.

Rethinking Risk: How Companies Sabotage Themselves and What They Must Do Differently, Joseph Kolatar [Books in Brief], January-February 2011.

Scenario Planning in Organizations, Thomas J. Chermack [reviewed by Rick Docksai], September-October 2011.

State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet, Worldwatch Institute [reviewed by Rick Docksai], May-June 2011.

The Techno-Human Condition, Brady Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz [reviewed by Rick ­Docksai], July-August 2011.

Thriving in the Crosscurrent, James Kenney [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

2030, Rutger van Santen, Djan Khoe, and Bram Vermeer [reviewed by Rick Docksai], MarchApril 2011.

The 2020 Workplace, Jeanne C. Meister and ­Karie Willyerd [Books in Brief], March-April 2011.

The Very Next New Thing, Gini Graham Scott [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

Virtually You, Elias Aboujaoude [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

Walk Out Walk On, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze [Books in Brief], July-August 2011.

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Laurence C. Smith [reviewed by Rick Docksai], JanuaryFebruary 2011.

World on the Edge, Lester R. Brown [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

Young World Rising, Rob Salkowitz [Books in Brief], May-June 2011.

Andersen, Maria H., The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning, January-February 2011.

Bainbridge, William Sims, Avatars and Virtual Immortality, March-April 2011.

Brass, Charles, Investigating the Future: Lessons from the “Scene of the Crime,” NovemberDecember 2011.

Brown, Arnold, Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society, MarchApril 2011; The Reality of Virtual Feelings [box], March-April 2011.

Brown, Lester R., Eroding Futures: Why Healthy Soil Matters to Civilization, July-August 2011; Dust Bowl Redux [box], July-August 2011.

Cohen, Aaron M., Brain Mapping, Intelligence Augmentation, and Virtual Reality [box], November-December 2011; The Living City Challenge: Buildings That Make a Positive Impact [box], November-December 2011.

Colborn, Matthew, Future, Fantasy, and Positive Volition, January-February 2011.

Cornish, Edward, Marvin J. Cetron on Terrorism and Other Dangers [Futurists and Their Ideas], September-October 2011; The Uncertain Future of the English Language [reviews of Globish by Robert McCrum and The Last Lingua Franca by Nicholas Ostler], September-October 2011; Visionary Forecasting with Graham T. T. Molitor [Futurists and Their Ideas], July-August 2011; Connectivity and Its Discontents [review of Alone Together

by Sherry Turkle], July-August 2011; Daniel Bell and the Post-Industrial Society [Futurists and Their Ideas], May-June 2011; What Hath Hawking Wrought? [review of The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow], March-April 2011.

Cribb, Julian, Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise, May-June 2011.

Criswell, David R., Why We Need the Moon for Solar Power on Earth, May-June 2011.

Currie, Karen W., Unmanned Cargo Vehicle Operator: A Scenario [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Davies, Paul, Life Among the Stars? [interview

by Rick Docksai, World Trends & Forecasts], July-August 2011.

Dehrer, Gary, Imagineers in Search of the Future, March-April 2011; Now Is the Time for the Future [box], March-April 2011; Imagineering Realism and Fantasy [box], March-April 2011; The Disneyland Story: For Further Reading [box], March-April 2011.

Docksai, Rick, Turbulence-Proofing Your Scenarios [review of Scenario Planning in Organizations by Thomas J. Chermack], September-October 2011; You Say You Want a Twitter Revolution [review of The Net Delu-

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sion by Evgeny Morozov], July-August 2011; Life Among the Stars? Interview with Paul Davies [World Trends & Forecasts], July-August 2011; Cautions About Techno-Faith [review of The Techno-Human Condition by Brady ­Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz], July-August 2011; Changing Agriculture from the Ground Up [review of State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet, Worldwatch Institute], May-June 2011; Introduction to Personal Futuring [review of It’s Your Future …

Make It a Good One! by Verne Wheelwright], May-June 2011; Tools for Problem Solving [review of 2030 by Rutger van Santen, Djan Khoe, and Bram Vermeer], March-April 2011; Human Civilization Migrates Northward [review of The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, ­Laurence C. Smith], January-February 2011.

Hejazi, Alireza, Future World Shapers [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Eger, John M., Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age, JanuaryFebruary 2011.

Joseph, Raymond, Paul Joseph, and Emmanuel Henry, Building a Better Future for Haiti [roundtable discussion with Timothy Mack and Cynthia G. Wagner], May-June 2011.

Ferriss, Timothy, Digital Identity Planner: A Scenario [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Frey, Thomas, The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011; More Jobs for Tomorrow [box], January-February 2011.

FUTURIST staff, Outlook 2012, NovemberDecember 2011.

Gioia, Joyce, Managing Our Feelings [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Glenn, Jerome C., Updating the Global Scorecard: The 2011 State of the Future, NovemberDecember 2011.

Godin, Seth, Online Community Organizer [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], JanuaryFebruary 2011.

Gordon, Anne, Careers Inspired by Nanotech Trends [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Grantham, Charles, Fixing Our Machines and Ourselves [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Halal, William E., and Michael Marien, Global MegaCrisis: Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives, May-June 2011; Recently Published Books: Other Perspectives on the Global MegaCrisis [box], May-June 2011; Defining and Anticipating the Global MegaCrisis [box], May-June 2011.

Harris, Kenneth W., Bike to the Future, MarchApril 2011.

Search THE FUTURIST Archives WFS Members may log in at wfs.org to access current FUTURIST articles, as well as search and download digital articles through the ProQuest Archiver.

Henry, Emmanuel, Raymond Joseph, and Paul Joseph, Building a Better Future for Haiti [roundtable discussion with Timothy Mack and Cynthia G. Wagner], May-June 2011.

Herson, Jay, and David Pearce Snyder, Health Insurance in America After the Reform, MarchApril 2011.

Irvine, James H., and Sandra Schwarzbach, The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the World Ahead, May-June 2011.

Joseph, Paul, Raymond Joseph, and Emmanuel Henry, Building a Better Future for Haiti [roundtable discussion with Timothy Mack and Cynthia G. Wagner], May-June 2011.

Kelly, Kevin, Understanding Technological Evolution and Diversity, March-April 2011; Extropy Defined [box], March-April 2011.

Kemp, Roger, The “American Dream” Moves Downtown [World Trends & Forecasts], March-April 2011.

LePoire, David J., Exploring New Energy Alternatives, September-October 2011.

Levit, Alexandra, Personal Care Coordinator [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], JanuaryFebruary 2011.

Louv, Richard, Reconnecting to Nature in the Age of Technology, November-December 2011.

Mack, Timothy, and Cynthia G. Wagner, Building a Better Future for Haiti [interview with Raymond Joseph, Paul Joseph, and Emmanuel Henry], May-June 2011.

Maletz, Frank W., From Hospital to Healthspital: A Better Paradigm for Health Care, MarchApril 2011.

Marien, Michael, and William E. Halal, Global MegaCrisis: Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives, May-June 2011; Recently Published Books: Other Perspectives on the Global MegaCrisis [box], May-June 2011; Defining and Anticipating the Global MegaCrisis [box], May-June 2011.

Mas, Ignacio, Smart Banknotes [World Trends & Forecasts], January-February 2011.

Millett, Stephen M., Five Principles of Futuring as Applied History, September-October 2011; Thomas Bayes and Bruno de Finetti on Forming Well-Considered Expectations of the Future [box], September-October 2011.

Mironov, Vladimir, The Future of Medicine: Are Custom-Printed Organs on the Horizon?

January-February 2011; In Vivo Bioprinting: A Scenario [box], January-February 2011.

Morozov, Evgeny, Technology’s Role in Revolution: Internet Freedom and Political Oppression, July-August 2011.

Murphy, Tom, Finding Connection and Meaning

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in Africa [World Trends & Forecasts], September-October 2011.

Nakra, Prema, Could Medical Tourism Aid Health-Care Delivery? March-April 2011.

Olavarrieta, Concepción, Reversing the Mexican “Brain Drain” [World Trends & Forecasts], May-June 2011.

Orange, Erica, Augmented, Anonymous, Accountable: The Emerging Digital Lifestyle, JulyAugust 2011.

Pariser, Eli, The Troubling Future of Internet Search [World Trends & Forecasts], September-October 2011.

Pelton, Joseph N., Finding Eden on the Moon, May-June 2011.

Saito, William H., Our Naked Data, JulyAugust 2011.

Sarewitz, Daniel, and Braden R. Allenby, The A c c e l e r a t i n g Te c h n o - H u m a n F u t u re , September-October 2011.

Schoder, Carl E., A Convenient Truth about Clean Energy, January-February 2011.

Schwarzbach, Sandra, and James H. Irvine, The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the World Ahead, May-June 2011.

Shaker, Steven M., The Coming Robot Evolution Race, September-October 2011.

Snyder, David Pearce, Should the Reform Be Reformed? [box], March-April 2011.

Snyder, David Pearce, and Jay Herson, Health Insurance in America After the Reform, MarchApril 2011.

Tucker, Patrick, Lost and Found in Japan, November-December 2011; The Earthquake Generation [box], November-December 2011; How the Recession Has Changed the Middle Class [review of Pinched by Don Peck], November-December 2011; Thank You Very Much, Mr. Roboto, September-October 2011; My First Meltdown: Lessons from Fukushima, July-August 2011; Solar Power from the Moon, May-June 2011; Surviving the Great Recession’s Aftershocks [review of Aftershock by Robert B. Reich], March-April 2011; A Clash of Ideas and Ideals on the Jobs Front [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Wagner, Cynthia G., The Search for Global Solutions: Moving from Vision to Action, November-December 2011; Emerging Careers and How to Create Them [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Wagner, Cynthia G., and Timothy Mack, Building a Better Future for Haiti [interview with Raymond Joseph, Paul Joseph, and Emmanuel Henry], May-June 2011.

Ware, Jim, Careers for a More Personal Corporation [70 Jobs for 2030, special report], January-February 2011.

Warwick, David, The Case against Cash, JulyAugust 2011.

Yonck, Richard, Treading in the Sea of Data, July-August 2011.

World Future Society Programs The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization chartered in the District of Columbia, U.S.A., and is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization. The Society has about 25,000 members and subscribers in 80 nations.

PUBLICATIONS

• The Futurist: A magazine published bimonthly, covering trends, forecasts, and ideas about the future.

• Futurist Update: An e-mail newsletter available monthly to all ­members, covering a range of future-oriented news and useful links.

• World Future Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight: A journal for futures practitioners and scholars, with articles on forecasting techniques and applications, profiles of futurists and organizations, and abstracts of current futures-relevant literature.

ACTIVITIES AND RESOURCES

• Conferences: The Society holds at least one major conference per year, to which all Society members are invited. Most conferences cover a wide range of topics related to the future. Most conferences are in the United States, but the Society has also held meetings in Canada and Austria.

• Groups: Futurist groups are active in a number of U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta, and in more than two dozen countries.

• Books: New books of special interest to members may be purchased through the Society’s partnership with Amazon.com.

MEMBERSHIP PROGRAMS

• Regular Membership: Includes THE FUTURIST magazine; discounts on conferences and books published by the Society; and such other benefits as may be approved for members. Discounted memberships are also available for full-time students under age 25.

• Professional Membership: Programs and publications are available to meet the special needs of practitioners, researchers, scholars, and others who are professionally involved in forecasting, planning, or other futureoriented activities, including education and policy making. Professional members receive all the benefits of regular membership, plus a subscription to the journal World Future Review, as well as invitations to Professional Members’ Forums, and other benefits.

• Institutional Membership: The World Future Society’s Institutional Membership program offers special services for business firms, educational institutions, government agencies, associations, and other groups. Members receive all of the benefits of Professional Membership, plus copies of all books, monographs, conference proceedings, special reports, and other publications produced by the Society during the year of the membership; special discounts on bulk purchases of Society publications; assistance in locating sources of information, consultants, and speakers for conferences and meetings, getting information tailored specifically to the organization’s needs; and inclusion in the Society’s list of institutional members published on the Society’s Web site and annually in THE FUTURIST. For more information and an application, contact Membership Secretary, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814 www.wfs.org.

THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

61

Future Active News for the Futurist Community GAO

Planet Engineering: A Technology Assessment Geoengineering—the concept of planetaryscale engineering projects that can counter the manmade effects of climate change—is typically viewed as a last-resort option. Like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster, such deliberate actions could potentially stave off ecological cataclysm at the last minute, reverse the effects of global warming, or provide a window of time for a more sustainable Samples of geoengineering strategies. long-term solution to be developed.

However, their side effects could ing: Technical Status, Future Direcproduce unintended negative conse- tions, and Potential Responses.” The quences of their own. Proposed tech- report examines what stages of denologies generally focus either on re- velopment various climate-engineermoving carbon dioxide from the ing technologies have reached and atmosphere or offsetting solar radia- whether any of them can become vition. At this point, however, they are able in the next 20 years. It also conlargely speculative. siders the potential repercussions of To study these issues, the U.S. unleashing them.

Government Accountability Office The GAO asked 45 experts from (GAO) has released a technology as- different fields to present their sessment report, “Climate Engineer- views, projecting ahead to 2030.

AARON M. COHEN

At the World Future Society’s 2011 conference, GAO chief scientist Timothy Persons outlines the U.S. government’s technology assessment of geoengineering projects.

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Most of the experts surveyed were in favor of researching potential methods to engineer the Earth and its climate, believing that greater preparation in advance could lead to avoidance of negative outcomes later.

The process began with the development of four scenarios by “a group of six experts in climate engineering and related fields who met with me,” says GAO chief scientist Timothy M. Persons. He adds, “Clem Bezold of the Institute for Alternative Futures facilitated the scenario-building meeting.” Individuals from a wide range of disciplines were then asked for their opinions on climate engineering, taking into account the possible scenarios.

Potential technologies were rated on a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 representing a proven technology ready for deployment. All except for one were assigned Level 1 or 2. The direct air capture of carbon dioxide via chemicals was assigned Level 3, indicating that it has reached the beginning of the active research and development stage.

However, the report states, “direct air capture is believed to be decades away from large-scale commercialization.” It further points out that

large-scale implementation of all proposed carbon dioxide removal technologies would need to overcome a variety of challenges in order to become viable, and that even the research stage poses risks. The same caveat also applied to solar radiation management technologies.

The bottom line, according to the assessment, is that “climate engineering technologies are not now an option for addressing global climate change, given our assessment of their maturity, potential effectiveness, cost factors, and potential consequences.” Nevertheless, the majority of those surveyed believed that further research, including risk assessment and management, is imperative.

Experts also advocated for international research and collaboration between nations, in order to prevent a situation where “a single nation might unilaterally deploy a technology with transboundary effects.” In other words, the potential for international conflict also needs to be addressed.

The report concludes with a call

for more “foresight activities to help anticipate emerging research developments, key trends, and their implications for climate engineering research—notably, the new or emerging opportunities and risks that such changes might bring.”

While it makes it clear that climateengineering technologies have a long way to go before they become viable options, it emphasizes the need for a “coordinated strategy for climate engineering research.”

The full report is available to the public on GAO’s Web site, along with several earlier publications on the topic. Among the futurists who contributed to the report are Jamais Cascio, a research fellow at the Institute for the Future and author of Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering (2009), and World Future Society board chairman Kenneth Hunter.

Source: “Climate Engineering: Technical ­Status, Future Directions, and Potential Responses,” published by U.S. Government ­Accountability Office, www.gao.gov.

Sustainable Arctic Development A new Arctic research institute based in Norway will focus on commercial development projects that are achieved through sustainable technological approaches.

The Centre for Research-based Innovation on Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology (SAMCoT) aims to balance economic and environmental values in the development of this critical region. Energy resources, particularly in the Barents Sea, will be developed using the same principles that have enabled successful exploitation of oil in the North Sea, according to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which is hosting the new Institute.

SAMCoT will receive support from the Norwegian Research Council as well as partners such as Aker Solutions, Shell, Statoil, and Kongsberg Maritime.

Source: Norwegian University of Science and ❑ Technology, www.ntu.edu/samcot.

magazine

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Recent editions of Futurist Update have covered a wide range of fascinating stories and breakthrough research, including: • How the tone of news stories helps predict social behaviors.

• New construction techniques will make safer skyscrapers.

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Futurist Update keeps you up to date with World Future Society publications (What’s Hot @WFS) and linked to the latest thinking from leading futurist bloggers. Join now and stay linked to the future!

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THE FUTURIST

January-February 2012

63

Future View

By Marcel Bullinga

ALIZ-E PROJECT

Welcome to the Future Cloud: Five Bets for 2025 What will life be like when we are free of paper, petroleum, and waste? The author’s five public bets offer scenarios for this more nonmaterial future.

In the summer of 2025, you live in the Cloud—a world with no paper and no oil. The Game Generation has turned learning and working into a game, and every office or school into a gaming zone. They have created new Circles of Trust, since the old institutions failed to deliver pensions, energy, and life insurance. Social robots have conquered the streets, doing the dirty jobs. All of this has reduced traffic jams and caused an economic boom. No more crises!

The Cloud is the new face of the twenty-first century.

It is the global brain, the next wave of innovation. It is the world of our children—fun, fast, fascinating. The Cloud is the hyperrealistic mix of real life and virtual life, like Alice in Wonderland but very much real.

The Cloud tackles most of the current crises. Upcoming raw materials shortage? We create super materials out of local mud. Energy crisis? We collect local earth heat, tap the energy we create ourselves by walking around, and harvest every spot of Sun. Financial crisis?

We create new local currencies.

Do It Yourself is the motto of the Cloud. You produce your own energy and print products at home. You manage your finances and you keep your secrets in your own personal dashboard. You check everything on the spot with your wizard mobile. You are in control!

Here are a few of my best bets for life in the Cloud: Bet 1: The Last Newspaper and Book Will Have Been Printed in 2020.

Paper has disappeared completely in the 3-D mobile media cloud. “Slow Screens” encourage monotasking and focus and have replaced all current paper media, as well as digital information carriers like DVDs and CDs. We will rent information, © YUNUS ARAKON / ISTOCKPHOTO not own it. Newspapers and magazines are available on screen only. Libraries and bookshops have turned bookless.

They are either bankrupt or will have eventually turned into community Goodbye, traditional media: Future c e n t e r s a n d c o n g re s s readers will rely on screens for news halls. and other text content (i.e., books).

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Bet 2: Social Robots Solve the Labor Shortage in Western Europe and Japan.

Competition among countries and companies is increasing. Graying societies like Japan and western Europe face labor shortage. In the future, social robots, 3-D product printers, and smart software will have taken over the dirty and boring tasks. Robots are our new colleagues. Directing robots is much easier than directing people.

Bet 3: Seniors, Children, and People with Disabilities Are the Winners of the Digital Revolution.

Social robots such as this friendly doctor will overcome labor shortages in a variety of fields.

Whereas nowadays vulnerable groups have problems leading an independent life, the future is different. The Eyewriter will enable handicapped people to communicate. Every factory, house, and office will become a games room. Your body is the key to the Cloud. There is less difference between what is real and unreal.

Bet 4: An Inexpensive, Green, and Intelligent Car Is for Sale in 2025.

Prices of oil and raw materials go up and down like crazy these days, causing mass anxiety. In the future, new materials will have been created from scratch out of local materials like sand and water. This ends our dependency on oil for fuel and plastic. Local energy sources reduce the battle for scarce resources and the potential for war. The disappearance of paper greatly reduces the need for mobility and transport.

Bet 5: Your Mobile Phone Is the Remote Control of Your Life.

Your mobile phone is quickly becoming the modern Swiss Army knife, but even better! It is your own personal bodyguard. It has an embedded traffic light that can warn you if the cucumber you’re about to eat has E. coli and let you know if your doctor is on a surgery blacklist. This prevents sickness and averts many deaths and millions of dollars of economic damage.

So what are the consequences of the Cloud for ordinary people like you and me? What are the seeds of the future?

These are my bets; I invite you to rate them online. Vote for the future now at: www.futurecheck.com/allbets. ❑ About the Author Marcel Bullinga is a futurist and keynote speaker. He is the author most recently of Welcome to the Future Cloud: The World in 2025 in 100 Predictions, www.futurecheck.com/book. Follow him on Twitter @futurecheck.

Back Issues of The Futurist November-December 2011 (Volume 45, No. 6)

Lost and Found in Japan • Updating the Global Scorecard • Reconnecting to Nature in the Age of Technology • Investigating the Future • The Search for Global Solutions • Outlook 2012

September-October 2011 (Volume 45, No. 5)

The Coming Robot Evolution Race • Thank You Very Much, Mr. Roboto • The Accelerating Techno-Human Future • Exploring New Energy Alternatives • Five Principles of Futuring as Applied History

July-August 2011 (Volume 45, No. 4)

My First Meltdown: Lessons from Fukushima • Technology’s Role in Revolution: Internet Freedom and Political Oppression • Eroding Futures: Why Healthy Soil Matters to Civilization • Treading in the Sea of Data • Augmented, Anonymous, Accountable: The Emerging Digital Lifestyle • Our Naked Data • The Case Against Cash

May-June 2011

(Volume 45, No. 3)

The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the World Ahead • Global MegaCrisis: Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives • Solar Power from the Moon • Why We Need the Moon for Solar Power on Earth • Finding Eden on the Moon • Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise • Building a Better Future for Haiti

March-April 2011 (Volume 45, No. 2)

From Hospital to “Healthspital”: A Better Paradigm for Health Care • Health Insurance in America After the Reform • Could Medical Tourism Aid Health-Care Delivery? • Bike to the Future • Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society • Imagineers in Search of the Future • Understanding Technological Evolution and Diversity

Back Issues

THE FUTURIST has been published continuously since 1967. Back issues are available (print or PDF) for $5.95 each (plus $4.90 postage and handling for total order of print editions). Most issues for the past 10 years can be supplied.

Call 1-800-989-8274 (weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) or use secure online ordering at www.wfs.org/backissues.

January-February 2011 (Volume 45, No. 1)

The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning • Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age • The Future of Medicine: Are Custom-Printed Organs on the Horizon? • A Convenient Truth about Clean Energy • Special Report: 70 Jobs for 2030 • Future, Fantasy, and Positive Volition

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