THE FUTURIST, July - August 2012

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

OUR TOWN 2020 Daily living in the networked world of the future. Special section beginning on page 20 The Abundance Builders, page 14 Revolutionary Health—Local Solutions for Global Health Problems, page 42 Change Masters—Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., page 60 Sneak Preview—Futurists: BetaLaunch 2012, page 64 PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Shakeups in the “C Suite” Harvesting Waste Heat from Vehicles Sensing Brain Injuries Biofuels Miss the Mark—So Far Connecting Communities with Waterways

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July-August 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.

July-August 2012 Volume 46, No. 4

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

about the future

ARTICLES 14 The Abundance Builders

By Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Medical Revolutionaries.

Page 42

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

4

Future Scope

6

World Trends & Forecasts: Management, Energy, Resources, Conservation, Medicine

48 Consultants and Services 61 Futurists and Their Ideas— Change Masters: Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

BOOKS 52 A Future-Driven Life Adventure A book review by Rick Docksai

From troubled youth to pioneering futures scholar, acclaimed futurist Wendell Bell takes readers through his life’s highs and lows in his candid new memoir, Memories of the Future.

53 Books in Brief

Evolving Green Illusions Managing the Future Power, Inc. The Real Population Bomb Robot Ethics

Progress occurs when inventive people solve problems and create opportunities. Here are just a few of the breakthroughs that offer the brightest prospects for a future that leaves austerity and deprivation behind.

20 The Secret Life of Data In the Year 2020

By Brian David Johnson

A futurist for Intel shows how geotags, sensor outputs, and big data are changing the future. He argues that we need a better understanding of our relationship with the data we produce in order to build the future we want.

24 The Individual in a Networked World: Two Scenarios

By Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman Collaborative agent bots? A walled world under constant surveillance?

Two information technology experts parse the future of human–network interaction.

29 From Smart House to Networked Home

By Chris Carbone and Kristin Nauth

Two foresight specialists describe how tomorrow’s integrated, networked, and aware home systems may change your family life.

33 Building and Connecting Communities for the Future

By Center for Communities of the Future

38 Integrated and Innovative: The Future of Regions

By John M. Eger

Challenges facing city and regional governments today may spur a movement toward improving the creative resources of tomorrow’s citizens. Investing in the arts may help communities capitalize on shifting paradigms.

42 Revolutionary Health: Local Solutions for Global Health Problems

By Rick Docksai

Better health care doesn’t have to be costlier, as a number of innovative health practitioners are showing.

In India, Venezuela, and elsewhere, the strategic use of technology, community involvement, and resource reallocations are enabling health-care providers to treat more patients more effectively, all while spending less money.

64 Visions: Preview of Future Inventions

By Kenneth J. Moore

Futurists: BetaLaunch, the World Future Society’s second annual innovation competition, will allow WorldFuture 2012 attendees to preview a few of the life-changing and society-altering artifacts of the future.

Ready to launch?

Page 64

The economic-development profession can be a positive force for change in communities as we transition from a materialistic economy to a transformational society.

COVER ILLUSTRATION: © RYCCIO / ISTOCKPHOTO

© 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

Bullets That Change Direction on the Fly

Licorice Root May Combat Diabetes

When fired from a rifle, most bullets spiral through the air like a football, thus making it impossible to adjust their trajectory. Now, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a bullet that can be fired without the spin, allowing it to change directions in mid-flight.

The bullets include an optical sensor in the nose that guides the projectiles to their laser-targeted destination.

Tiny fins enable the bullet to fly without spinning, like a dart, and actuators allow the fins to alter the bullet’s trajectory to hit its target.

Potential markets for the “self-guided bullets” include the military, law enforcement,

Already highly regarded as a medicinal plant, licorice root may soon add anti-diabetic effects to its repertoire of healing powers.

Licorice root contains amorfrutins, which reduce blood sugar, are anti-inflammatory, and are well tolerated by users, according to researchers at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. In addition, the substances help prevent fatty liver, a common disease caused by excessively fat-rich diets.

While adding licorice to one’s diet may be a sweet temptation, researchers cau-

and recreational shooters, ­according to Sandia.

Source: Sandia National Laboratories, www.sandia.gov.

RANDY MONTOYA / SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

Sandia’s guided bullet is designed to avoid spinning like a football; sensors allow it to change direction in mid-flight.

SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

© JÖRG BEUGE / ISTOCKPHOTO

Among licorice root’s healing powers may be the ability to reduce blood sugar. tion that this is not a cure for diabetes; rather, the amor­ frutins must be extracted and produced in appropriate concentrations in order to be ­beneficial.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, www.mpg.de.

Blocking Bodyhackers Medical devices like insulindelivery systems operate ­wirelessly and are easily ­accessible to devices, but they are also vulnerable to hackers either eavesdropping or interfering with functionality. So ­researchers at Purdue and Princeton universities have built a monitor that could protect such devices.

Dubbed MedMon, the medical monitor can be worn as a

necklace or integrated with a cell phone. Like a firewall, it monitors all communications with the implants and looks for anomalies that represent potentially malicious activity. The firewall raises an alarm and jams the suspicious communications.

Source: Purdue University Center for Implantable Devices, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, http://engineering.purdue.edu/CID.

WordBuzz: Upcycling

Following a laser beam, guided bullet’s battery and electronics prove durable in a test launch.

No Relief from Urban Noise Vehicles of the future will make cities noisy no matter how they are powered. Lauded for their silence while idling, electric cars may not offer much noise-reduction value while in use, according to researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO).

A “Virtual Cityscape” project using 3-D urban mapping reveals that both gas-driven and electric motor vehicles produce rolling noises starting at speeds of 30 kilometers per

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hour (18.6 miles per hour), and get louder at higher speeds.

“We have yet to see any significant difference in the noise level in electric vehicles or gasdriven cars,” says IAO department head Roland Blach.

To reduce noise in cities, the researchers recommend that planners analyze the logistical flows of both pedestrian and vehicular traffic and alter urban designs accordingly.

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, www.fraunhofer.de.

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Upcycling is recycling’s more creative, enterprising, and upscale cousin—a phenomenon that represents a confluence of entrepreneurship, environmentalism, and the DIY or “maker” trend.

Per Wikipedia, the term has been around since the early 1990s to describe the process of recycling used stuff into better stuff. (Downcycling, by contrast, also recycles used or wasted materials, but the resulting products do not have high commercial value.)

The concept gained popularity with the 2011 publication of craft master Danny Seo’s howto book Upcycling: Create Beautiful Things with the Stuff You Already Have (Running Press). But the potential for en-

BACKTOTHEROOTS.COM

Upcycling entrepreneurs ­Alejandro Velez (left) and Nikhil Arora formed the company Back to the Roots to sell kits for people to grow mushrooms in recycled coffee grounds. trepreneurial opportunities in upcycling are limited only by imagination, as Good magazine notes in a recent story about urban farmers growing gourmet mushrooms out of used coffee grounds.

About

this

Issue

A Publication of the World Future Society

Editorial Staff Edward Cornish Founding Editor

Cynthia G. Wagner Editor

Patrick Tucker Deputy Editor

Rick Docksai Assistant Editor

Kenneth J. Moore Contributing Writer

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 Thomas Frey, Innovation Joyce Gioia-Herman, Workforce/Workplace Barbara Marx Hubbard, Images of Man Joseph P. Martino, Technological Forecasting Matt Novak, Historical Futures Joseph N. Pelton, Telecommunications Arthur B. Shostak, Utopian Thought David P. Snyder, Lifestyles Gene Stephens, Criminal Justice Timothy Willard, Biofutures Richard Yonck, Computing and AI

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 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

Connected: A Future That’s Better Than We Think?

It may seem a bit technotopian to praise the gifts that will soon be coming to us from the world’s leading innovators, but Peter H. Diamandis (chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation) and his co-author, journalist Steven Kotler, make an excellent case. In “The Abundance Builders” (page 14), they profile just a few of the researchers making significant breakthroughs in biotechnology, networks and sensors, digital manufacturing, “infinite” computing, medicine, and nanomaterials.

Looking more specifically at the impacts of accelerated computer processing (such as the advent of “big data”), Intel futurist Brian David Johnson explains the importance of getting our algorithms and systems to “think” and behave more like human beings. (See “The Secret Life of Data in the Year 2020,” page 20.)

Also in this issue, media analysts Lee Rainie and Barry ­Wellman offer two scenarios of how this world of big data and universal connectivity may play out. Will it make our connections and collaborations fluid and seamless, or will competing interests make such connectivity difficult, intrusive, and treacherous? (See “The Individual in a Networked World: Two Scenarios,” page 24.)

Speaking of connectivity and collaboration, this issue also showcases the work of three dynamic futures organizations: • The futures consultancy Innovaro, as represented by Chris Carbone and Kristin Nauth (“From Smart House to Networked Home,” page 29).

• The Center for Communities of the Future (COTF), led by Rick Smyre and a team of professional economic developers (“Building and Connecting Communities for the Future,” page 33).

• And Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., the futures consulting firm established by Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner that solidified the role of trend analysis in business foresight (see the Futurists and Their Ideas column by FUTURIST founding editor Edward ­Cornish, page 61).

You will have the opportunity to connect with many of these outstanding futurist thinkers in July at WorldFuture 2012: Dream.

Design. Develop. Deliver. See page 56 for details. And if you can’t make it, connect with us here! Comment on these articles online at www.wfs.org/futurist or send Feedback to letters@wfs.org.

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

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July-August 2012

3

Future Scope Trend scanners notebook research. The project’s goal is to use the massive amount of data generated by Internet searches to help better understand society’s complexity.

Recycling | Earth

Progress against E-Waste Recycling of consumer electronics products increased by 53% from 2010 to 2011, netting 460 million pounds of discarded gadgets, reports the Consumer Electronics Association. The number of electronics drop-off sites across the United States also increased, from 5,000 to 7,500.

The average U.S. household owns about 25 different consumer electronics devices, but a pervasive desire for the next new thing results in a rapid turnover of products—and a potential landfill nightmare.

The association’s eCycling Leadership Initiative has set a goal of recycling 1 billion pounds of electronics by 2016—the equivalent of an NFL football stadium full of material. The goal is to increase collection options and improve consumer awareness of the availability of ­eCycling collection sites.

Source: Consumer Electronics Association, www.ce.org.

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS ASSOCIATION

Source: University College London, www.ucl.ac.uk. The study, “Quantifying the Advantage of Looking Forward” by Tobias Preis, Helen ­Susannah Moat, H. Eugene Stanley, and Steven R. Bishop, was published in Scientific Reports and based on Google Trends data at www.google.com/trends.

Health Care | Commerce

Cancer Patients Choose “Hopeful Gambles” Cancer patients are more likely to prefer high-risk treatments that may prolong survival versus safer treatments, according to University of Southern California researcher Darius Lakdawalla.

Given a choice between a “safe” treatment that is highly likely to keep the patient alive for 18 months (but no longer) and a treatment that has a 50-50 chance of adding either three years or none, 77% of the cancer patients studied chose to “swing for the fences.”

Insurers and policy makers should take note, ­Lakdawalla advises. “Consumers tend to dislike risk,” he says, “but patients facing a fatal disease with relatively short remaining life expectancy may have less to lose. … Value [of treatment options] should be defined from the viewpoint of the patient.”

Source: University of Southern California, www.usc.edu.

Recycling of electronic products increased by 53% in one year in the United States.

Education | Humanity Indicators | Futuring

Are Rich Countries More Future Oriented?

Levels of public interest in the future may be related to differences in national wealth, suggest researchers at University College London. Analyzing Google search queries, they found that Internet users in countries with higher per capita GDP are more likely to search for information about the future than about the past.

The team devised a “future orientation index” based on search queries made by Internet users in 45 countries in 2010, comparing the frequency of searches about the coming year (2011) versus the previous year (2009).

They then examined the user countries’ GDPs, finding a strong relationship between inquiries about the future and higher GDP. Whether a people’s interest in the future is a “luxury” of being relatively well-to-do or a factor contributing to national well-being cannot be concluded from the 4

THE FUTURIST

July-August 2012

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More Americans with Degrees Educational attainment has reached a new milestone in the United States, as more than 30% of adults age 25 and older had earned at least a bachelor’s degree as of March 2011, reports the Census Bureau.

Socioeconomic disparities persist, but one segment of the population showed particularly promising improvement: The number of Hispanics with at least a bachelor’s degree increased by 80% in the first decade of the century, climbing to 3.8 million (14.1% of Hispanic adults) by 2011.

“For many people, education is a sure path to a prosperous life,” says Census Bureau director Robert Groves. “The more education people have, the more likely they are to have a job and earn more money, particularly for individuals who hold a bachelor’s degree.”

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov.

❑

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 Management Energy Resources Conservation Medicine

Management | Commerce

Shakeups in the “C Suite”: Hail to the New Chiefs How technology is altering corporate jobs and creating new community relationships.

By Geoffrey Colon

“Technological innovation has empowered corporate community managers … to become true brand ­gurus.”

—Geoffrey Colon,

vice president, Social@Ogilvy

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When Facebook announced its new timeline for brands format, one of my friends in advertising commented, “Wow, if you think about it, in one fell swoop, Facebook has basically elevated the Community Manager role as the most important job function at any agency, large or small.”

I thought about it for a second and realized that what my friend was saying was correct.

Technological innovation has empowered corporate community managers—who were once the servants of creative directors, strategists, and planners— to become true brand gurus.

The masters of Facebook realized that the power in a brand page had always been driven by the community manager. No longer simply a Web page to maintain, an organization’s Facebook presence creates a narrative, an advertisement that is also a relatable story.

Businesses 35 years ago barely had marketing departments. Most relied on sales departments to do that job. The title of chief marketing officer (CMO) is relatively new; it became necessary when companies needed a “voice of the consumer” working internally. So now as social communities grow and flourish, the July-August 2012

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role of community manager will become commonplace.

New job title creation happens every few years as technological shifts force changes in work functions. Here are a few more additions to the “C Suite” that we might anticipate as technological and economic trends shape the corporate future.

• Earned Media Officer, or EMO, will be one new role. We’ve been hearing a lot in recent years about the “Paid, Owned, Earned” model of marketing. (Examples: magazine ads are “paid,” Web sites are “owned,” and word-of-mouth buzz is “earned.”) Many companies want to move away from the “paid” silo and strictly operate in the “owned” and “earned” areas.

Buying a TV commercial based on impressions (how many viewers might be watching—but also might be ignoring) makes little sense when a company can get customer engagement for half the price in an earned environment. Example: having a home-made video contest for the company’s Facebook fans and featuring the winner on its official Web site.

This is why Procter & Gamble cut several thousand traditional marketing jobs recently. Its attitude is, why pay for something that we can get free? However, it is still an illusion that earned media is a free channel. Once companies realize that earned media is the dominant business model moving forward, the EMO will be in

charge of exploiting this fact and pushing earned media impressions and engagement.

• Chief Content Officer, or CCO, will emerge as marketing moves from the creation of 60-second television spots to the development of rich content for various social channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr. The CCO will work hand-in-hand with community managers to see that they are getting the right type of content for the brand they oversee for all the channels in which they need to publish. I see many former film producers, magazine publishers, and photographers fitting nicely into this role, as long as they have a handle on the emerging media landscape.

• Open-Source Manager, or OSM, would collaborate and share best practices with outside companies. In the future, the title and role of CEO will have much less credibility as Wall Street is drained of its power. As a result, an executive who works both internally and externally with opensource talent to find the best solutions will become a key player. Future companies will all be open sourced and focused on building a better standard of living. As a result, a CEO whose primary focus is to earn capital and return investment to shareholders won’t be necessary.

• Chief Linguist may be a new role that doesn’t replace anyone but is necessary to interpret how people speak within the world of social networks. We’re used to interpreting shorthand expressions like LOL, BRB, IDK, and BTW (laughing out loud; be right back; I don’t know; by the way). As future generations only learn to type within a 140-character limit, new slang will emerge, and it will be up to the linguist to configure the best way to communicate with the company’s audience.

• Chief Data Scientist will replace the chief marketing officer or the chief digital officer. Neither CMOs nor CDOs have enough analytical skill to understand what to do with the emergence of big data. As a result, mathematicians who can crunch data to make sense of human behavior will replace C-suite titles that have less grasp of math or simply build digital strategies. In the future, it will be more important to interpret behavior that will be measured via

analytics. It won’t be enough to simply plot a digital course of action. One must execute the action, code it, create it, and interpret its impacts.

Even if we see these job titles emerge, how long will they last in the shifting workplace? As we move away from military­-style hierarchies toward flattened, cooperative systems, the collaborative, open source, work-from-anywhere landscape could put even these titles out of commission. Only the future can tell.

Geoffrey Colon is vice president of Social@Ogilvy (http://social.ogilvy.com) and editor of the Futurist Lab on Tumblr (http://futuristlab.tumblr.com).

Energy | Sci /Tech

Harvesting Vehicles’ Waste Heat An innovative car-exhaust mechanism could raise cars’ energy efficiency by 20%.

Most of gasoline’s stored energy never actually powers a single car, according to General Motors (GM) researchers. Half to three-fourths of gas energy is lost as waste heat spilling out of the cars’ tailpipes. But GM and competitors BMW and Ford are all separately working on ways to capture that heat energy before it leaves the tailpipe and convert it back into mechanical energy that the cars can use.

“You’ve got a lot of this waste heat. Let’s try to turn it into a mechanical heat and put it to work,” says Jeffrey Brown, vice president of Dynalloy Inc. Dynalloy is helping GM design a thermal recovery system that would be installed near a car’s exhaust system and use the escaping heat to generate enough electricity to fully power the car’s radio or airconditioning. The system consists of a thin belt of nickel-titanium alloy that loops around three pulleys to form a triangle.

One corner of the triangle lies close to the thermal exhaust system, where it is very

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World Trends & Forecasts RICK DOCKSAI / WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY

Alan L. Browne, GM engineer, presents a model waste-heat recovery system at the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, in February 2012. The Department of Energy awarded GM $8 million to develop the system into a workable mechanism.

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hot; another corner is farther away, where it is cooler.

The belt automatically expands and contracts in response to changes in temperature: Heat makes it tighten up, while cold causes it to loosen. So as the different areas of the belt are exposed alternately to blasts of hot and cool air, the belt moves along and turns the three pulleys, which in turn move a shaft that drives a generator. The more heat that strikes the belt, the more electricity the generator creates.

“It uses low-grade waste heat that can’t be used in a conventional motor,” says Alan L. Browne, a GM Technical Fellow and one of the project’s leading team members. “We’re just harvesting this stuff that is otherwise being dumped into the environment.”

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded GM an $8 million contract for waste-heat recovery R&D this year. Ford and BMW are working separately with partner firm BSST.

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“This is one of many [waste-heat recovery concepts] that are being explored, but it’s also the newest boy on the block. And right now, we are now producing some outputs that are looking very competitive,” says Browne.

So far, a 10-gram strand yields 2 watts, enough to power a small nightlight. That would amount to harvesting 4% or 5% more energy. Since the typical combustion engine’s energy yield is now just 25%, that would constitute a 20% overall energy-­ efficiency increase.

“It’s not tremendous, but the impact is huge, because it’s all for free, because it’s heat that’s currently lost,” Browne notes, adding that further refinements could bring up the energy yield even more.

Diesel trucks are also prime candidates for waste-heat recovery systems, according to Browne. He also foresees the systems going into use in farm vehicles such as tractors.

“In farm areas or other rural areas where fuel is hard to bring out there, you could potentially make a pump out of it,” he says. “It’s hard to bring power to anyplace out in the bush.”

Browne sees even bigger opportunities in public mass transit. Subway trains get much more use than cars, after all, with the miles of rail line that they pass back and forth every day. Every mile of rail could go to generating heat that could be turned into mechanical energy.

Cars are driven sporadically—perhaps an hour or two a day—but it would be better to have the heat engine continuously; trains would get more output. “Your cost factor for the waste-heat recovery system goes down if it’s on a train,” says Browne.

“You’d be getting much more life cycle energy out of them than out of a car.”

Other mechanical structures besides vehicles might eventually deploy waste-heat recovery mechanisms, too, according to Jan Aase, director of GM’s Vehicle Development Research Lab. He speculates that oil pipelines or fuel stations, for instance, could use them to collect some of their machines’ waste heat.

“That’s more of an aspirational concept,” says Aase, who estimates that any application of the technology will be at least an-

other five to 10 years in the making. The energy output will have to significantly increase, and the production costs lowered, before GM and other companies will want to use it. They are working toward a nearterm goal of 200 milliwatts per gram of material.

“We’re hopeful but cautious at this point.

The economics has to work, and the packaging has to work,” says Aase. —Rick Docksai Sources: Interviews with Jeffrey Brown, Dynalloy Inc., www.dynalloy.com; Jan Aase, Vehicle Development Research Laboratory, GM, www.gm.com; Alan L. Browne, Technical Fellow, GM R&D, www.gm.com/ design-technology.

Resources | Earth

Biofuels Miss the Mark—So Far Meeting U.S. goals for biofuels will require new land-use and incentive policies.

To securely meet its future energy needs, the United States passed in 2007 the Energy Independence & Security Act (EISA), setting benchmarks for sustainable, renewable energy production through biofuels development. But biofuels benchmarks are

What’s Hot @WFS.org On the Futurist Blog, our writers offer uniquely forward-looking perspectives on current events.

The Theory of Opposites (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love Amendment One)

By Eric Garland, posted May 10, 2012 The Internet is lit up with hand-wringing about a referendum in North Carolina regarding the passage of a referendum aimed at making gay marriage illegal in the state forever more. On Facebook, Twitter, and in the comments sections, of all the usual Internet hangouts, well-thinking people are lamenting this step toward a new Dark Ages, a further deepening of injustice, a coarsening of society. … [read more]

The 22nd Century at First Light: Envisioning Life in the Year 2100

By Cynthia G. Wagner, posted May 8, 2012 When imagining the changes we may see by the turn of the next century, we might no longer find it very useful to look back to changes occurring in the same amount of time in the past. Eighty-eight years ago, in 1924, movies were silent, and the Great Depression was an inconceivable wild card. But change is accelerating exponentially, as The Singularity Is Near author Ray Kurzweil has argued, and the next 88 years could see the equivalent of the last 10,000 years worth of change. … [read more]

100% Honest, Transparency, Disclosure —is this the future that we want?

By Hank Pellissier, posted May 6, 2012

More Eyes in the Sky

By Rick Docksai, posted May 8, 2012 While a solo unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is starting to become a common sight over war zones and, to a lesser extent, over civilian communities, researchers in Germany are taking on the next great challenge: UAVs that fly in pack formations. … [read more]

Imagine: you arrive at the party; you recognize no one, but immediately your internal antennae-and-computer begins to swap mind-files. Within seconds, the new acquaintances are scanned; you “know” everyone you see; you know who wants to sleep with you, work with you, laugh and/or be friends with you; you know everyone’s curiosities, intentions, memories.

Everyone’s brain is “naked.” Fully informed, you enter and mingle. … [read more]

www.wfs.org

“Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again”

By Dale Carrico, posted May 5, 2012 In a recent futurological piece, “science and technology writer” Dick Pelletier declares: “Although many today might find the idea of romance with a machine repulsive, experts predict that as the technology advances and robots become more human-like, we will view our silicon creations in a much friendlier light.” … [read more]

The Second American Century

By Tsvi Bisk, posted May 4, 2012 Despite fashionable twaddle about American decline, America’s cultural influence has never been as dominant as it is now. Indeed, the twenty-first century promises to be the American Century to an even greater extent than the twentieth.

The American attitude to life—The American Idea—is now reflected in the universal aspirations of all humanity. Throughout history foreign observers have perceived and portrayed the dignity and majesty of the American Idea in ways that have impacted the thinking of the rest of the human race and triggered their desire to emulate the good life. … [read more] Read these essays and more, and add your own comments to the conversation: www.wfs.org/blog

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THE FUTURIST

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World Trends & Forecasts a. Landcover classification

b. Satellite-derived net primary productivity (MODIS NPP)

NPP (gC m-2 yr-1) 0

200

400

600

William Smith and colleagues assigned land-use classifications (top) and measured plant productivity for the continental United States (bottom) using satellite imaging (MODIS) to determine land’s potential (NPP) for biofuels production.

Reprinted with permission from Environmental Science & Technology, 2012, 46 (6), pp 3536–3544.

Copyright 2012 American Chemical Society.

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800

1000 >1200

flying past unmet, and bioenergy’s development is being delayed by sticker shock.

Meeting those targets and securing the energy supply in the United States will require rethinking of the current energy ­market.

“America’s addiction to foreign oil has had a significant impact on our economy and our national security,” says Bob Dinneen, president and chief executive officer of the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol fuel trade group. “The only effective strategy for improving U.S. energy security has been the Renewable Fuels Standard” of 2005, which was updated by EISA. Since the RFS was enacted, Dinneen says, the long-term trend of increasing dependence

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on oil imports has reversed in the United States.

Ethanol fuel has made headway in establishing better energy security for the nation, but it still must be blended with conventional oil fuels. So other homegrown fuel options are needed to help secure the energy future.

EISA has set a goal for U.S. biofuels production at 36 billion gallons by 2022, twothirds of which should be non-cornstarch-derived biofuels made primarily from cellulosic materials such as harvest re s i d u e . B u t , f i v e years after the policy was put into place, there are no commercially viable biorefineries to convert cellulosic feedstock into fuel, which will make it challenging to meet EISA’s 2012 production benchmark of 500 million gallons.

The production goal of 250 million gallons in 2011 similarly slipped by unmet.

A recent article in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology looked at the goals set by EISA to determine the amount of harvestable land that would realistically be needed to meet those biofuels production goals.

“Most previous studies have overestimated the bioenergy potential of the U.S. by using only a handful of field-measured yield values to calculate average yield potential, which is then applied over large regions,” says William Smith of the University of Montana, the article’s lead author.

The EISA benchmarks are based on as-

sumptions of maximum yield potential over all land considered to be available for bioenergy production.

Smith and his colleagues analyzed satellite data that integrates climate and vegetation dynamics to quantify terrestrial biomass growth capacity—land’s ability to grow plants—of the contiguous United States. They took a best-case-scenario approach, conservatively accounting for unavailable land such as protected land and wetland to maximize their estimate of land available for biofuels production.

Even with that best-case-scenario approach, the researchers determined that potential yields are much lower than the estimates used by EISA. To meet the policy’s bioenergy goals, extensive redistribution of currently managed land or massive expansion of farmland would be needed: 80% of current agricultural land would have to be directed toward biofuels, or 60% of current rangeland would have to be converted for biofuel agriculture. That conversion would incur significant fossil-fuel ­i nputs, reduced productivity and greenhouse-gas-sequestering abilities of the land, and additional strain on already stressed waterways and aquifers used for irrigation.

Even if land were converted for use in biofuels production to meet EISA targets, “large-scale cellulosic ethanol production remains unavailable due to the difficulties associated with converting cellulose to a usable form,” Smith says. “This removes a very large pool of biomass from consideration—for example, crop and forestry residues—and places the entire EISA biofuel target on starch ethanol, which is mainly derived from corn grains in the United States.”

To succeed, the cellulosic biofuels industry needs incentives to cover the gap between what biorefineries can afford and what biomass suppliers can accept, suggests the 2011 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report “Renewable Fuel Standard: Potential Economic and Environmental Effects of U.S. Biofuel Policy.” Until a barrel of oil reaches almost $200, the cellulosic market won’t be economically feasible

without subsidies or other government support, the report says. And without that economic incentive to build a market, the technological advances needed will be slow in coming.

“The major barrier to biofuels is that the uncertainty is too high for most investors,” says Purdue University agricultural economist Wallace E. Tyner, co-chair of the committee that wrote the NAS report. The government can play a role in mitigating that economic uncertainty through certain incentives, but “biofuels alone will not provide energy security,” he says. “We can be independent of OPEC oil if we want, but we will have to pay the price. Renewables, at least in the medium term, will be more expensive than crude oil.”

—Kenneth J. Moore Sources: Bob Dinneen, Renewable Fuels Association, www.ethanolrfa.org.

William Smith, University of Montana, www.umt.edu.

The paper “Bioenergy Potential of the United States Constrained by Satellite Observations of Existing Productivity” was published in Environmental Science & Technology, 46, 2012.

Wallace E. Tyner, Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics, www.ag.purdue.edu.

“The major barrier to biofuels is that the uncertainty is too high for most investors.”

—Wallace E. Tyner,

Purdue University

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World Trends & Forecasts Conservation | Government

Waterways to Connect Communities A program to develop rivers and lakes will ­promote local stewardship and tourism.

The Chattahoochee near Atlanta is the first river designated as a National Water Trail by the U.S. Department of Interior.

The system of waterways will encourage local stewardship, economic development, and recreation.

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A new National Water Trails System aims to increase community access to water-based outdoor recreation. At the same time, the restoration of local waterways will promote tourism and economic development through encouraging an ethic of stewardship, according to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Like what the naNATIONAL PARK SERVICE PHOTO tional trail systems have done for hikers, bikers, and other outdoor enthusiasts, national water trails would provide more recreational opportunities for water lovers such as kayakers, rafters, and anglers.

“Rivers, lakes, and other waterways are the lifeblood of our communities, connecting us to our environment, our culture, our economy, and our way of life,” Salazar said in announcing the first national water trail, Georgia’s Chattahoochee River. The river provides most of Atlanta’s drinking water, and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area provides more than 65% of the Atlanta metro area’s public greenspace.

Designating waterways as part of the National Water Trail could be hindered by the costs associated with developing recreational facilities, notes Dan Foster, the National Park Service superintendent in charge of the Niobrara National Scenic River in Nebraska. He told the Lincoln ­Journal Star that a national water trail designation could benefit the local economy but also tax it “if people are not ready to take care of visitations.”

Land ownership issues in the areas des-

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ignated as part of the water trail also concern Foster. The required public access points will mean negotiating contracts of at least 10 years with landowners. He points out that landowners themselves could simply create their own access to the river and charge fees to the public.

The National Water Trails System joins other initiatives of the National Trails System act of 1968, which includes the National Recreation Trails, National Scenic Trails, and National Historic Trails.

Waterways that are designated will be provided signage, technical assistance, and resources required to develop the trails, according to the Interior Department, and the Army Corps for Civil Works will team with local partners in development ­projects.

—Cynthia G. Wagner Sources: U.S. Department of the Interior, www.doi.gov.

National Trails System, www.nps.gov/nts/.

“Scenic N ­ iobrara River Could Be Candidate for ­National Water Trails System” by Algis J. Laukaitis, Lincoln Journal Star (April 7, 2012).

Medicine | Sci /Tech

Sensing Brain Injuries Smarter helmets could lead to rapid detection of concussions.

The year is 2015; the new quarterback for the Clairmont High School Gladiators is about to attempt a 20-yard pass. He arches his arm, but before he can throw he’s sacked by a 300-pound defensive lineman from the opposing Washington Tigers.

There’s a hush in the stands as the QB lies immobile on the 30-yard line. It was a hard hit. Finally, he rises to his feet, and the crowd erupts in applause. He prepares for the next snap, but he stops as the coach and a team of paramedics rush the field.

Unbeknownst to the quarterback, a sensor in his helmet has detected an abnormality in his brain-wave activity, indicating a concussion. He is led from the field.

The Gladiators lose the game, but the

young quarterback is spared a far worse injury and is able to play again later (much against his mother’s wishes).

Hashem Ashrafiuon, an engineering professor at Villanova University, is working on a sensor headset system to make the above scenario a reality. The system he’s developing—with colleagues from Brain Computer Interface Inc. and Wisconsin University—uses a single electrode to measure electromagnetic brain waves, or EEG. The data is transmitted via Bluetooth.

Ashrafiuon hopes this system will soon replace the conventional impact tests that high-school sports programs use to determine head injury. In these tests, players are asked a series of memory questions before they’re allowed to play sports. This establishes a baseline. When a player receives a brutal hit, he or she is asked a similar set of memory questions. A change in responses can indicate concussion.

“Not very scientific, in my opinion,” Ashrafiuon says of the test.

Getting actual brain-wave readings im-

mediately after impact is essential to detecting brain damage because concussion symptoms can vanish quickly. “The sooner we can get an EEG recording, the better our estimate of [the impact’s] severity should be,” he tells THE FUTURIST. Ashrafiuon expresses optimism that the headset will be used to diagnose concussion soon. The system has already been used for early diagnosis of Alzheimer ’s disease.

“Brain EEG is simply a signal,” he says.

“It has frequency content or wavelength just like radio waves. Alzheimer’s disease patients generally start losing ‘power’ in some of the higher frequency bands and have instead more ‘power ’ in lower frequency bands.”

Other potential uses for the headset monitor include early detection of posttraumatic stress disorder and autism.

—Patrick Tucker Source: Hashem Ashrafiuon, Villanova University, www.villanova.edu.

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“A fascinating discussion of optogenetics research...

Michael Chorost is not only a clear and concise science writer, but also a visionary.” —The New York Times “By combining cutting-edge neuroscience, keen insight into the social potential of networks, and touchingly candid personal anecdotes, Chorost has written one of the most memorable

and thought-provoking books of the year.”

—Steve Silberman, contributing editor, Wired Magazine

Pick up or download your copy today. www.simonandschuster.com

www.wfs.org

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THE FUTURIST

July-August 2012

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The Abundance Builders

By Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Progress occurs when inventive people solve problems and create opportunities. Here are just a few of the breakthroughs that offer the brightest prospects for a future that leaves austerity and deprivation behind.

Š YEWKEO / ISTOCKPHOTO

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T

he potential for abundance— that is, pervasive opportunities for prosperity, as opposed to lives of luxury for all—depends on our ability to exploit breakthroughs in key exponentially growing fields. This article will explore a few of the leaders who have devoted their lives to creating this new world of abundance.

Biotechnology: The Code Breakers In 1990, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health jointly launched the Human Genome Project, a 15-year program whose goal was to sequence the 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome. Some thought the project impossible. Others felt it would take a half century to complete. Everyone agreed it would be expensive. A budget of $10 billion was set aside, but many felt it wasn’t enough. They might still be feeling

oil or any other kind of fuel. Interested in pure octane? Aviation gasoline? Diesel? No problem. Give your designer the proper DNA instructions and let biology do the rest.

To further this dream, Venter has also spent the past five years sailing his research yacht, Sorcerer II, around the globe, scooping up algae along the way. The algae is then run through a DNA sequencing machine.

Using this technique, Venter has built a library of more than 40 million different genes, which he can now call upon for designing his future biofuels.

Venter wants to use similar methods to design human vaccines within 24 hours rather than the two to three months currently required.

He’s thinking about engineering food crops with a 50-fold production improvement over today’s agriculture. Low-cost fuels, high-performing vaccines, and ultra-yield agriculture are just three of the reasons that the exponential growth of biotech-

this way, too, except that, in 2000, J. Craig Venter decided to get into the race.

It wasn’t even much of a race.

Building on work that had come before, Venter and his company, Celera, delivered a fully sequenced human genome in less than one year for just under $100 million.

As an encore, in May 2010, Venter announced his next success: the creation of a synthetic life-form. He described it as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.” In less than 10 years, Venter both unlocked the human genome and created the world’s first synthetic life-form—genius with repeat success.

Venter’s actual goal is the creation of a very specific kind of synthetic life: the kind that can manufacture ultra-low-cost fuels. Rather than drilling into the earth to extract oil, Venter is working on novel algae, whose molecular machinery can take carbon dioxide and water and create

PHOTOS: J. CRAIG VENTER INSTITUTE

Dr. J. Craig Venter at the microscope onboard Sorcerer II Expedition.

The Sorcerer II at anchor in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia.

www.wfs.org

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erty becomes a thing of the past.

When your house is running out of toilet paper or cleaning products or espresso beans, it can automatically reorder supplies.

VENI MARKOVSKI If prosperity is really saved time, then the Internet of things is a big pot of gold.

As powerful as it will be, the impact that the Internet of things will have on our personal lives is

nology is critical to creating a world of abundance. Let’s turn to the next category on our list.

Networks and Sensors: The Connectors

During his graduate student years, Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist for Google, worked in the networking group that connected the first two nodes of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet). Next, he became a program Vint Cerf manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), funding various groups to develop Internet protocol technology. During the late 1980s, when the Internet began its transition to a commercial opportunity, Cerf moved to the long-distance telephone com- dwarfed by its business potential. pany MCI, where he engineered the Soon, companies will be able to perfirst commercial e‑mail service. He fectly match product demand to raw then joined ICANN (Internet Corpo- materials orders, streamlining supration for Assigned Names and ply chains and minimizing waste to Numbers), the key U.S. governance an extraordinary degree. Efficiency organization for the Web, and served goes through the roof. With critical as chairman for more than a decade. appliances activated only when For all these reasons, Cerf is consid- needed (lights that flick on as someered one of the “fathers of the Inter- one approaches a building), the energy-saving potential alone would net.”

These days, Cerf is excited about be world changing. And world savthe future of his creation—that is, the ing. A few years ago, Cisco teamed future of networks and sensors. A up with NASA to put sensors all network is any interconnection of over the planet to provide real-time signals and information, of which information about climate change.

“The Internet of things,” says Cerf, the Internet is the most significant example. A sensor is a device that “holds the promise for reinventing detects information—temperature, almost every industry. How we vibration, radiation, and such—that, manufacture, how we control our when hooked up to a network, can environment, and how we distribalso transmit this information. Taken ute, use, and recycle resources. together, the future of networks and When the world around us becomes sensors is sometimes called the “In- plugged in and effectively selfternet of things,” often imagined as a aware, it will drive efficiencies like self-configuring, wireless network of never before. It’s a big step toward a sensors interconnecting, well, all world of abundance.” things.

Now imagine its future: trillions of Digital Manufacturing and Infinite devices—thermometers, cars, light Computing: The Makers switches, whatever—all connected The 3-D printing that Carl Bass is through a gargantuan network of sensors, each with its own IP ad- pursuing at his company Autodesk dresses, each accessible through the (which makes software for 3-D printInternet. Suddenly, Google can help ers) is the first step toward Star Trek’s you find your car keys. Stolen prop- replicators. Today’s machines aren’t

“The Internet of things holds promise for reinventing almost every industry.”— Vint Cerf

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powered by dilithium crystals, but they can precisely manufacture extremely intricate three-dimensional objects far cheaper and faster than ever before. This technology is the newest form of digital manufacturing (or digital fabrication), a field that has been around for decades.

Traditional digital manufacturers utilize computer-controlled routers, lasers, and other cutting tools to precisely shape a new piece of metal, wood, or plastic by a subtractive process—slicing and dicing until the desired form is all that’s left. Today’s 3-D printers do the opposite. They utilize a form of additive manuf a c t u r i n g , w h e re a t h re e dimensional object is created by laying down successive layers of material.

While early machines were simple and slow, today’s versions are quick, nimble, and able to print an exceptionally wide range of materials—plastic, glass, steel, even titanium. Industrial designers use 3-D printers to make everything from lampshades and eyeglasses to custom-fitted prosthetic limbs. Hobbyists are producing functioning robots and flying autonomous aircraft. Biotechnology firms are experimenting with the 3-D printing of organs, while inventor and University of Southern CalBehrokh Khoshnevis ifornia engineering professor Behrokh Khosh­ nevis has developed a large-scale 3-D printer that extrudes concrete for building ultra-low-cost, multiroom housing in the developing world. The technology is also poised to leave our world. Made In Space, a Singularity University spinout, has demonstrated a 3-D printer that works in zero gravity, so astronauts aboard the space station can print spare parts whenever the need arises.

“What gets me most excited,” says Bass, “is the idea that every person

will soon have access to one of these 3-D printers, just like we have inkjet printers today. And once that happens, it will change everything. See something on Amazon you like?

Instead of placing an order and waiting 24 hours for your FedEx package, just hit MICHAEL SEXTON / AUTODESK print and get it in ­minutes.”

A 3-D printer would allow anyone anywhere to create physical items from digital blueprints.

Right now, the emphasis is on novel geometric Carl Bass shapes, but soon we’ll be altering the physical properties of the material themselves.

“Forget the traditional limitations posed by conventional manufacturing, in which each part is made of a single material,” explains Cornell University robotics engineer Hod Lipson in an article for New Scientist.

“We are making materials within materials, and embedding and weaving multiple materials into complex patterns. We can print hard and soft materials in patterns that create bizarre and new structural behaviors.”

This technology holds the potential of dropping manufacturing costs and making the design-to-prototype process much faster (a phenomenon called rapid prototyping). The process will be vastly amplified when coupled to what Carl Bass calls “infinite computing.”

He explains: “For most of my life, computing has been treated as a scarce resource. We continue to think about it that way, though it’s no longer necessary. My home computer, including electricity, costs less than two-tenths of a penny per CPU per hour. Computing is not only cheap, but it’s getting cheaper; we can easily extrapolate this trend to where we come to think of computing as virtually free. In fact, today, it’s the least expensive resource we can throw at a problem. Another dramatic improvement is the scalability now accessible through the cloud.

Regardless of the size of the prob-

lem, I can deploy hundreds, even thousands, of computers to help solve it. While not quite as cheap as computing at home, renting a CPU core hour at Amazon costs less than a nickel.”

Perhaps most impressive is the ability of infinite computing to find optimal solutions to complex and abstract questions that were previously unanswerable or too expensive to even consider. Questions such as how to design a nuclear plant able to withstand a Richter 10 earthquake or how to monitor global disease patterns and detect pandemics in their critical early stages, while still not easy, are answerable.

Ultimately, though, the most exciting development will be when infinite computing is coupled with 3-D printing. This revolutionary combination thoroughly democratizes design and manufacturing. Suddenly, an invention developed in China can be perfected in India, then printed and utilized in Brazil on the same day—giving the developing world a poverty-fighting mechanism unlike anything it has ever seen.

Medicine: The Healers

low-cost, easy-to-use, point-of-care diagnostics designed specifically for the 60% of the developing world that lives beyond the reach of urban hospitals and medical infrastructures.

This is what Lab-on-a-Chip technology can deliver.”

NANOBIOSYM Because LOC technology will likely be part of a wireless device, the data it collects for diagnostic purposes can be uploaded to a cloud and analyzed for deeper patterns.

Anita Goel “For the first time,” says Anita Goel, a professor at MIT whose company Nanobiosym is working hard to commercialize LOC technology, “we’ll have the ability to provide real-time, worldwide disease information that can be uploaded to the cloud and used for detecting and combating the early phase of pandemics.”

Combining AI, cloud computing, and LOC technology will offer the greatest benefit. Now your cellphone-sized device can not only analyze blood or sputum, but it can also have a conversation with you about your symptoms, offering a far more robust diagnosis than was ever before possible and potentially making up for our coming shortage of doctors and nurses. Since patients will be able to use this technology in their own homes, it will also free up time and space in overcrowded emergency rooms. Epidemiologists will have access to incredibly rich data sets, allowing them to make incredibly robust predictions. But the real benefit is that the © 2000 ROBERT A. LISAK medicine will be transformed from reactive and generic to predictive and personalized.

In 2008, the World Health Organization announced that a lack of trained physicians in Africa will threaten the continent’s future by 2015. In 2010, the U.S. Association of American Medical Colleges reported that America’s aging baby-boomer population will create a massive shortage of 62,900 doctors by 2015, which will rise to 91,500 by 2020.

The scarcity of nurses could be even worse. And these are just a few of the reasons why our dream of health-care abundance cannot come from traditional wellness professionals.

How do we fill this gap?

For starters, we are counting on Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) technologies. Harvard professor George M. Whitesides, a leader in this emerging field, explains why: “We now have drugs to treat many diseases, from AIDS and malaria to George M. tuberculosis. What we desWhitesides perately need is accurate, www.wfs.org

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Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology: The Transformers Most historians date nanotec h n o l ogy—the manipula-

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KE DREXLER

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leverage of incentive prizes—we know how to go from A to B much faster than ever before.

Unlike earlier eras, we don’t have to wait for corporations to get interested in solutions, or governments to get around to our problems. We can take matters into our own hands. Today’s technophilanthropist crowd seems determined to provide the necessary seed capital (and often much more than that) and today’s DIY innovators have proven themselves more than capable of getting the job done. Meanwhile, the onequarter of humanity that has forever been on the sidelines—the rising billion—has finally gotten into the game.

Most importantly, the game itself is no longer zero-sum. For the first time ever, we don’t need to figure out how to divide our pie into more slices, because we now know how to bake more pies. Everyone can win.

Because of the exponential growth rate of technology, this progress will continue at a rate unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before. What all this means is that—if the hole we’re in isn’t even a hole, the gap between poor and rich is not much of a gap, and the current rate of technological progress is moving more than fast enough to meet the challenges we now face—then the three most common criticisms against abundance should trouble us no more. ❑

GABRIELA MARKS

MATTHEW RUTHERFORD

credible returns. Nano-comtion of matter at the posites are now considerably atomic scale—to stronger than steel and can p h y s i c i s t R i c h a rd be created for a fraction of Feynman’s 1959 the cost. Single-walled carspeech “There’s bon nanotubes exhibit very Plenty of Room at the high electron mobility and Bottom.” But it was are being used to boost K. Eric Drexler’s 1986 power conversion efficiency book, Engines of CreEric Drexler in solar cells. And Buckmination, that really put sterfullerenes (C60), or buckythe idea on the map.

The basic notion is simple: Build balls, are soccer-ball-shaped molecules containing 60 carbon atoms, things one atom at a time.

What sort of things? Well, for with potential uses ranging from sustarters, assemblers—little nanoma- perconductor materials to drug-dechines that build other nanoma- livery systems.

All told, as a recent National Scichines (or self-replicate). Since these replicators are also programmable, ence Foundation report on the subafter one has built a billion copies of ject pointed out, “nanotechnology itself, you can direct those billion to has the potential to enhance human build whatever you want. Even bet- performance, to bring sustainable ter, because building takes place on development for materials, water, an atomic scale, these nanobots (as energy, and food, to protect against they are called) can start with what- unknown bacteria and viruses, and ever materials are on hand—soil, even to diminish the reasons for water, air, etc.—pull them apart breaking the peace [by creating uniatom by atom, and use those atoms versal abundance].” to construct, well, just about anything you desire.

Building Abundance for All At first glance this seems a bit like Two decades ago, most well-off science fiction, but almost every­ thing we’re asking nanobots to do citizens owned a camera, a video has already been mastered by the camera, a CD player, a stereo, a simplest life-forms. Duplicate itself a video-game console, a cell phone, a billion times? No problem; the bacte- watch, an alarm clock, a set of encyria in your gut will do that in just 10 clopedias, a world atlas, a Thomas hours. Extract carbon and oxygen Guide, and a whole bunch of other out of the air and turn it into a assets that would easily add up to sugar? The scum on top of any pond more than $10,000. All of these come has been at it for a billion years. And standard on today’s smartphones, or if Ray Kurzweil’s exponential charts are available for purchase at the app are even close to accurate, then it store for less than a cup of coffee. In won’t be long now before our tech- this, our exponentially enabled world, that’s how quickly $10,000 nology surpasses this biology.

Of course, a number of experts feel worth of expenses can vanish. More that, once nanotechnology reaches importantly, these things vanish this point, we may lose our ability to without too much outside intervenproperly control it. Drexler himself tion. No one set out to zero the costs described a “gray goo” scenario, of two dozen products. They set out wherein self-replicating nanobots get to make better cell phones, and the free and consume everything in their path of the adjacent possible did the path. This is not a trivial concern. rest.

But this time around we can Nanotechnology is one of a number of exponentially growing fields (also squeeze a bit of randomness out of biotechnology, AI, and robotics) with the equation. We don’t have to wait the potential to pose grave dangers. for history to help our cause; we can It would be a significant oversight to help it ourselves. We have our hard targets for abundance, we know pass these dangers by unmentioned.

While concerns about nanobots which technologies need further deand gray goo are decades away, velopment, and—if we can improve nano­science is already giving us in- our appetite for risk and utilize the

Diamandis

Kotler

About the Authors Peter H. Diamandis is chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, co-founder and chairman of Singularity University, and co-founder of the International Space University. Web site www.diamandis.com or www.xprize.org.

Steven Kotler is a best-selling author and journalist whose work has appeared in Wired, Discover, Popular Science, National Geographic, and other publications.

This article was excerpted from their new book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, with permission of the publisher, Free Press.

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The Secret Life of Data in the Year 2020

By Brian David Johnson A futurist for Intel shows how geotags, sensor outputs, and big data are changing the future.

He argues that we need a better understanding of our relationship with the data we produce in order to build the future we want. © MARCELLO BORTOLINO / ISTOCKPHOTO

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y job as Intel’s futurist is to look 10 to 15 years out and model how people will act and interact with devices in the future. I explore a vision for all computational devices. Basically if it has a chip in it, it’s within my view. The driving force behind this work is incredibly pragmatic. The process of designing, developing, manufacturing, and deploying our platforms takes around 10 years. It’s of vital business importance today for Intel to understand the landscape a decade from now. That’s why in 2010 we started work on 2020.

When you look to 2020 and beyond, you can’t escape big data. Big data—extremely large sets of data related to consumer behavior, social network posts, geotagging, sensor outputs, and more—is a big problem. Intel is at the forefront of the big data revolution and all the challenges therein. Our processors are how data gets from one place to another. If anyone should have insight into how to make data do things we want it to do, make it work for the future, it should be Intel.

That’s where I come in. I model what it will feel like to be a human 10 years from now. I build models that explore what it will feel like to experience big data as an average person. An integral part of this work is collaborating with Genevieve Bell.

She’s an Intel fellow, a cultural anthropologist by training, and one of the best minds working in this area.

Together, we’ve been exploring 2020 through the lens of what we call ”the Secret Life of Data.”

For most people in 2020, it will feel like data has a life of its own. With the massive amount of sensors we have littering our lives and landscapes, we’ll have information spewing from everywhere. Our cars, our buildings, and even our bodies will expel an exhaust of data, information, and 1s and 0s at an incredible volume.

Why will most people think that their data has a life of its own? Well, because it’s true. We will have algorithms talking to algorithms, machines talking to machines, machines talking to algorithms, sensors and cameras gathering data, and computational power crunching through

did an experiment recently that will show you exactly what I mean when I say that algorithms need to understand people.

To test out this approach, Rita developed a prototype and pro grammed a personal tracking system. She allowed her smartphone to track and record all of her movements throughout her day. She wanted to test how the software understood who she was and what she did with her day.

After allowing her device and the software to track her every movement for a month, she checked out the report. The initial findings of the sensors and algorithms had learned some very specific information about her. The system told her that she “lived” in three primary places.

The first location was spot on. It showed that she lived in her own home. It even showed the location on a map. Okay, that was right.

Second, it reported that she lived on the Jones Farm Campus of Intel.

Okay, that was correct, as well. Rita spends most of her time at work when she’s not at home. But the third data point really enraged Rita.

The third data point showed that Rita lived at the intersection of Glencoe and Wren roads. This really made her mad. I didn’t completely understand. I asked why. She showed me on the map.

“There’s nothing at Glencoe and Wren,” she said. It’s a stop sign in the middle of nowhere. All it had to do is look at any mapping program and it would show nothing there.

that data, then handing it off to more algorithms and machines. It will be a rich and secret life separate from us and for me incredibly fascinating.

But as we begin to build the Secret Life of Data, we must always remember that data is meaningless all by itself. The 1s and 0s are useless and meaningless on their own. Data is only useful and indeed powerful when it comes into contact with people.

This brings up some interesting questions and fascinating problems to be solved from an engineering standpoint. When we are architecting these algorithms, when we are designing these systems, how do we make sure they have an understanding of what it means to be human?

The people writing these algorithms must have an understanding of what people will do with that data. How will it fit into their lives? How will it affect their daily routine? How will it make their lives better?

The Mysterious Resident of Glencoe and Wren Roads At Intel, solving the problem of how data will interact with other data in the future is not an esoteric pursuit. When I talk about making people’s lives better and having a deep understanding of how data will make their lives better, I’m not speaking in the abstract. I work with the people who are writing those algorithms and the people building the systems. Take Rita, for instance, who just had a baby last year. Rita

GOOGLE MAPS

The intersection of Glencoe and Wren outside of Portland, Oregon.

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“Just because I stopped in this place twice a day on my way to work doesn’t mean I live there.”

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Data doesn’t spring full formed from nowhere. Data is created, generated, and recorded. And the unifying principle behind all of this data is that it was all created by humans.

We create the data, so essentially our data is an extension of ourselves, an

How could I live there if there is no building there? It’s ridiculous. We need to program these things to understand what it really means to be human. Just because I stopped in this place twice a day on my way to and from work doesn’t mean I live there. It’s so simple to fix. We just have to understand how people really live and not base it on just data points. People are the most important data points.”

That really is my challenge: How do we come up with the requirements and problems to build into the 2020 platform?

The Secret Life of Data research and development work I’ve been doing with Genevieve Bell tells us that one approach is to start looking at data as if it were a person.

or robots or simulacra—the name doesn’t matter; what is meant is artificial constructs masquerading as humans.… Now, to me, that theme seems obsolete. The constructs do not mimic humans; they are, in many deep ways, actually human already.”

Thirty-six years later, another science-fiction legend, William Gibson, gave a speech at the Vancouver Institute called “Googling the Cyborg.” Gibson is best known for popularizing the cyberpunk movement in books like Neuromancer (Ace, 1984) and Pattern Recognition (Putnam, 2003). In his speech, Gibson contemplated what it means to be a cyborg. He had a good time poking fun at popular culture’s images of the man–machine hybrid with its carnal jacks, and he challenged his audience to think of the cyborg in a different way.

Gibson said he believes that the human and machine union has already happened, and it is called the Internet. He sees the Internet as “the largest man-made object on the planet” and says that the “real-deal cyborg will be deeper and more ­subtle and exist increasingly at the particle level.”

Gibson’s coupling of our humanity and the humanity of our data gives us another image of our constructs. We produce data and we write algorithms, and when we do this at the increasing scale (which will be coming in the next decade), we will need to begin to imagine who we are and who our data and our algorithms might be in a very different light.

“We need new ways of conceptualizing and thinking about data. ... Ultimately we are designing this data and the algorithms that process it to be human.” extension of our humanity.

Ultimately in these systems, our data will need to start interacting with other data and devices. There will be so much data and so many devices that our data will need to take on a life of its own just to be efficient and not drive us crazy. But how do these systems understand and examine who we and our data are in the complex reality of big data that is basically too big for us to understand? This is where science fiction, androids, and Philip K. Dick and William Gibson come in.

The Algorithm: More Human Than a Human?

In the era of big data, how do we make sense of all this massive amount of information? We need new ways of conceptualizing and thinking about data that is not the traditional binary view that we have taken for the last 50 years.

If we begin to think of data as having a life of its own, and we are programming systems to enable them to have this life, then ultimately we are designing this data and the algorithms that process it to be human.

One approach is to think about data as having responsibilities.

When I say responsibilities, I’m not just talking about the responsibility to keep the data safe and secure, but also a responsibility to deliver the data in the right context—to tell the story right. It’s akin to making sure that a person understands your family history, the subtle nuances of your father and grandmother and great-grandmother. It is the responsibility of history, and it cannot be taken lightly.

The research and development that Bell and I have been doing explores what is the only way to make sense of all this complex information—by viewing data, massive data sets, and the algorithms that really utilize big data as being human.

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Science Fiction and the Literary Origins of Android Data In 1969, Philip K. Dick wrote the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The book is a meditation on what it means to be human and how the lines between that humanity and machines can become hazy—if not completely impossible to determine.

The book eventually was developed into the science-fiction movie masterpiece Blade Runner by director Ridley Scott.

Just a few years after writing Androids, Dick further developed his ideas about humanity and the constructs that we build. He gave a speech called “The Android and the Human” at the University of British Columbia in February 1972, where he explored his new way of thinking: “I have, in some of my stories and novels, written about androids •

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The Android Is Your Data Using these science-fiction visions, we can begin to develop a way to conceptualize the data. From the view of this narrative, our data—the data we created—becomes a kind of simulacrum of ourselves. Like Philip K. Dick’s androids and William Gibson’s cyborgs, data becomes a way to embody who we are, but at the same time it remains external. It allows us to examine who we are and also what we want to do with these

systems. As we begin to architect these systems, often the reality is too hard to handle: It’s too complex for us to make any meaningful design decisions. We need these representations, these androids, to be our proxies.

By thinking about data, large data sets, and the algorithms that make use of this information as human— or, in Dick’s language, androids—we are giving these complex systems a kind of narrative and characteristics that help programmers, system architects, and even regular folks to understand data’s “bigness.”

To understand what we want from the algorithms, these systems become less complex because we can understand them not only as an extension of ourselves but also a collection of human entities. If we understand them as human, then we know how to talk to them. We know how to ask for things. We know what to expect. We can hold them responsible, and we can even have an understanding for how far we can trust them.

But this humanness doesn’t really look like the humanness of Dick or even Gibson. This humanness is not trying to trick us into thinking that it is human like us, and it doesn’t exist on the particle level. Today, our understanding of humanity and intelligence is being challenged. Every year we get new products with increasing intelligence. These range from the amazing to the downright funny, but the reality of these systems looks more like a Furby toy having a conversation with the iPhone’s Siri service than two superhuman androids having a chat.

This concept of humanity is more about our relationships to other people, other pieces of data, and the complex web of relationships that make up our very culture. Humanity shouldn’t really be defined by Alan Turing’s test (designed to fool a person into thinking an AI was a human over teletype) or even Dick’s VoightKampff empathy test. How we define humanity is by our relationship to others—the connections we have to other people and their data.

And one day, humanity may be defined by how our personal data interacts with and is connected to

other people’s data. We have to come to grips with the idea that this interconnected humanness that moves from data to data, algorithm to algorithm, might happen without us knowing anything about it. It very well could happen in the Secret Life of Data.

like Amazon, we expect that the product we purchased is on its way, that our account has already been debited, and that a record of the transaction has already been stored in a database to provide us with more recommendations at a later date. We only truly notice how much we interact with data when something goes wrong, when the metal subway turnstile doesn’t spin.

But this current state of affairs can’t last. Data is becoming too big.

We need to start paying attention to the data we create and what we want it to do for us.

What I find incredibly exciting about this vision for the future is that it is real. Big data is coming, and in many instances it’s already here. So it’s not a matter of if this will happen; it’s not even a question of when. For me, the real question is how. How do we want this to happen? What do we want it to do for us? How will it make the lives of every person on the planet better?

In 2010, Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner said, “Science and technology have progressed to the point where what we build is only constrained by the limits of our own imaginations.” Imagining what the secret life of data could be is the real challenge; once we’ve done that, then all we have to do is go and build it.

That’s just engineering. The difficult part is changing the story we tell ourselves about the future we’re going to live in. If we can do that, then we can change the future. ❑

Do Algorithms Dream of Electric Sheep?

I think that there is something lovely about the idea that our data could have a life of its own. For too

“If we understand [algorithms] as human, then we know how to talk to them.” long, computers, computational power, and even software have been thought of as cold mathematical pursuits. In reality, the digital world is simply an extension of our world.

Data and computational power are, at their core, human. With Genevieve Bell, these new models have given us a way to architect a future that is both more efficient and more human. And I think that’s awesome.

To answer the question “Do algorithms dream of electric sheep?” becomes complicated. First we can say “Yes,” because we programmed them to do so. Next we could say “No,” because the complex neurological structures of the human dream state will not be modeled in algorithms or software anytime soon. But finally, we might need to say “Maybe,” and we will just have to wait and ask them.

These questions of how we interact with data, and how data interacts with itself, may seem removed from our daily experience right now.

That’s only because we’ve already come to expect our relationship with information to be a seamless exchange of signals that brings us closer to what we want. When we swipe a fare card to enter a subway, we expect the metal turnstile to turn for us. When we check in on Facebook, we expect our status update to change instantly. When we enter our credit-card numbers into a Web site www.wfs.org

About the Author Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel Corporation, where he is developing an actionable vision for computing in 2020. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science-fiction short stories and novels (Science Fiction Prototyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment Computing and the Devices We Love, Fake Plastic Love, and Nebulous Mechanisms: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories).

You can meet Johnson at WorldFuture 2012, the annual conference of the World Future Society taking place in Toronto this July.

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The Individual in a Networked

By Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman

© CSA IMAGES / ISTOCKPHOTO

Collaborative agent bots? A walled world under constant surveillance?

Two information technology experts parse the future of human–network interaction.

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World: Two Scenarios O

ne of the most useful and formal futurism exercises in recent years was the work in 2006–2007 of the Metaverse Roadmap project. It was driven by John Smart, Jamais Cascio, and Jerry Paffendorf, and originally conceived of as a brief for the future of the World Wide Web as it became three-dimensional.

Once the leaders of the effort began to hear from several dozen thinkers, their own views branched in other directions. They had started their inquiries with the notion of a “Metaverse” that was first conceived by the influential science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1982 classic, Snow Crash. To Stephenson, the Metaverse was an immersive, virtual space with 3-D technologies.

Yet, the Metaverse Roadmap thinkers went beyond seeing the Metaverse as a virtual domain. They saw it as the “convergence of (1) virtually enhanced physical reality and (2) physically persistent virtual space. It is a fusion of both, while allowing users to experience it as either.” In other words, it is the connection of the physical and virtual worlds. Although we do not foresee people living mostly in virtual space, the technological directions suggested by the Metaverse Roadmap provide guides for how networked individualism may proceed.

This is a future that has already come to pass in many respects. There is already a mad rush in Silicon Valley to create products to embed social interplay in most kinds of information and media encounters, and it will likely accelerate going forward.

Moreover, in coming years a wider

evolve. We offer two different scenarios that seem credible.

Metaverse will emerge as relatively ordinary objects—as well as computers and phones—will become ubiquitously networked with each other, and networked individuals will be able to augment their information through direct contact with databases and objects that have become smarter and more communicative.

Increased computing power may make people’s involvements in virtual worlds more immersive and compelling, although experiences to date suggest that people are more apt to use computer networks that integrate with real life rather than becoming totally immersed in virtual worlds—with virtual game players the exception.

Ubiquitous computing, sometimes called “the Internet of things” (or “everyware”), describes human– computer interaction that goes beyond personal computing to an environment of objects processing information and networking with each other and humans. Objects would share information: appliances, utility grids, clothing and jewelry, cars, books, household and workplace furnishings, as well as buildings and landscapes. They would learn additional information and preferred methods of use by gathering data about people who are in their environment. For example, cars could tell each other not to be in the same lane at the same time, and bicycles could tell car doors not to open suddenly when the bikes pass by.

With all these trends rolling along into the future, there is still reason to be uncertain about how the environment of networked individuals will www.wfs.org

Scenario 1: Collaborative Agents In Augmented Reality Waking up in a networked future, his digital agent’s soft voice slowly grows into Harry Sanchez’s hearing range. It’s been monitoring his sleep rhythms and cross-referencing them with data from his ongoing brain scans to see when it’s most appropriate to wake him. After stretching and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Harry suddenly and happily recalls yesterday’s purchase.

He found a collaborative coupon on the Web the other day for a deal on a new pair of augmented reality (AR) contact lenses and the haptic feedback implant that everyone’s been raving about. The implantation was a simple and quick outpatient procedure that reminded him more of getting his ears pierced than of surgery. It was performed remotely by a doctor whose robot mimicked his every move. It was not as though Harry could really tell, however, since his AR glasses had “skinned” (covered) the robot with the doctor’s virtual image. In this way, the doctor efficiently treats dozens of patients a day, projecting in from his home.

Now that he is awake, Harry eagerly slips in his new AR contact lenses for the first time. They instantly network with his microcomputer, smartphone, and the Internet.

His personalized augmented overlay appears in his field of vision: the time and date, the weather and air quality, a few applications he left •

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open from the previous night minimized into his peripheral vision, a faintly blinking icon notifying him of some messages he missed overnight, an icon notifying him of information updates on news stories aggregated for him by his agent, and an InterFace lifelog update showing what his friends did last night that is cross-referenced with the media they consumed and the tagged conversations they had. He sees a call for participating in a political smart mob in the virtual world, but he tells his agent to disregard it.

His agent also warns him about his health.

Harry hasn’t been sleeping well, as his late-night virtual meetings with colleagues in China have taken a toll on his system. Yet, he’s happy to not have to fly there ever since they’ve been able to collaborate long-distance by using the Cavecat productivity system with active walls and tables holding spreadsheets, texts, drawings, and videos.

As Harry settles in at the kitchen table, the surface notices that he’s put down his morning cup of coffee.

Finally, the news displays as manipulable augmented reality overlays of Harry’s social network, with pictures of each network member blinking when she or he posts messages, videos, or lifelog entries.

The new haptic implant gives him a sensory understanding of the news: He can feel the continuing battle in Kabul, experiencing its sounds and vibrations as if he were at the scene. And it now feels as if the computer icons of his various applications have weight and texture. Having not found any urgent messages, Harry’s agent organizes his correspondence by topic and relevance.

Noticing a conversation he had that he does not want many network members to see, Harry has his agent make the information private across his entire InterFace network. His agent also sends out a quick update to his entire network, letting them know his plans for the day.

Harry is distracted by a knocking sound. His agent informs him that his best friend, Neal, is projecting in for their regular weekend virtual breakfast.

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way for them to check in on one another and spend some time together.

Harry hasn’t shaved, and so he puts on his shiny-face skin before he opens the virtual door. He uses his new haptic chip to get the sensation of shaking his friend’s hand. It’s a little strange at first, since there’s nothing actually present to shake, but his nervous system responds as though he had reached out and touched someone.

Harry and Neal chat about how everyone who was at the pub’s avatar party last night has shared recordings of the evening with friends. Their agents have already automatically tagged these recordings with relevant information about people and location. Avatar parties have become popular these days. Everyone dresses like their favorite game character; some even come looking like one another. It can be a lot of fun role playing like this, and the collected and tagged ­videos are highly amusing as people’s voices, looks, and even smells can be altered in the virtual world.

After visualizing and flipping through these tags for mentions of his name, Harry updates the conversation file with some witty things he thought of after the fact, and his agent forwards the updates to the relevant people. He also tells his agent to delete information about last night’s embarrassing ice-cube escapade at the avatar party, and to ask his friends to delete their versions.

Harry’s agent softly chimes in just as he’s saying goodbye to Neal, reminding him that he has to meet his sister Merril today. The agents settle on a place downtown. Harry projects himself into the restaurant’s virtual space.

The restaurant keeps a good online presence, with a nice menu, list of ingredients, health report, and real-time webcam view. It’s local and the tables there get automatically ­reserved.

As Harry gets ready for the day, his agent presents him with a few clothing options. He decides to wear the new trousers suggested by his girlfriend, but calls up another app to make sure his sister would also approve. Harry’s girlfriend had tagged the info to the trousers while doing some virtual window shopping and had a pair in his size set aside after asking his belt how big it was.

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Not wanting to be late, Harry has his agent arrange a car for him through a collaborative consumption app that recognizes his high trust score. He rarely uses a car, as his fridge automatically schedules grocery deliveries. Slipping his microcomputer into his pocket, Harry goes to the car, has his agent set the restaurant’s coordinates, and leans back to check his messages as the car pulls out.

Scenario 2: A Walled and Surveilled World As Will Li rouses himself from sleep, he walks over to “his” computer to see what he’s missed overnight. Truthfully, the computer isn’t really his: He owns rights to its usage but isn’t allowed to change its hardware or software, or else he’d void his warranty or break the law.

His computer is really only an access point, as all his data is in the cloud, yet another thing that’s owned— with all the data in it—by a big corporation. Before Will can reach for the cloud, the system completes its mandatory scan of his computer for viruses and copyright infringement.

The price of media access has also spawned its own subculture of media pirates. They usually meet in person, sharing miniature portable terabyte flash drives packed with music, TV shows, movies, e-books, and more. The pirates often get their “warez” from people who collected old computers from trash heaps, recycling centers, and garage sales.

They’ve even developed a code language to arrange meet-ups, but Will hardly keeps up with the ever-evolving lingo.

Leaning over his morning coffee, Will dreams of how nice it would be to have a personal agent, but he’s heard most are double agents that also report back to the authorities and sell information to corporations.

And he doesn’t like the way FaceWall is collecting all the information on him whenever he uses it. He also can’t afford to hire the technician it would require to help him set up the devices and access all the fragmented networks of media sites, search engines, and social applications online. Each has a tricky “right

to information” form to sign. So he’s reduced his online presence to a minimum, trying to limit himself to good old-fashioned e-mails and avoid social media.

However, Will needs to use FaceWall today to find something. He’s forced to wait thirty seconds to let the mandatory ad play. It has his picture in it. CoffeeCo must have bought a recent photo that tagged him on a friend’s wall. Will notices that his system slows down as the massive data file from the advertisement clogs up his bandwidth, but since the corporations pay more to guarantee themselves fast access, he endures the wait.

It’s almost ironic to see a return to the days of loading screens since the amount of available bandwidth has only increased, but all that bandwidth is auctioned at sky-high prices or owned by a few companies. Finally finding the photo, Will learns he cannot delete it because CoffeeCo now owns it. Perhaps he should make sure no one ever uploads anything about him again, though that would be difficult. Most people seem to put up with these situations because they want to keep going online. Will assumes that from now on he’ll get peppered with ads geared to the tastes that FaceWall has observed online—both for him and for all those other 40-year-olds who became unemployed when countries set up their own walled-off Internets, claiming that morality and national security demanded it.

Giving the situation further thought, Will starts to browse his friends’ profiles, and finds that his sister Lorelei is earning extra money by selling her personal information to FaceWall, including links to his profile. Maybe that’s how CoffeeCo found his photo. He’ll ask her when they meet today to never do it again.

You can never be quite sure of who’s informing on you, only in this case it’s not only the state but data-aggregating organizations.

Will remembers from history class how, in the 1960s, FBI Director J. ­Edgar Hoover had used his dossiers on the Kennedys to keep power. Now, FaceWall has even more comprehensive dossiers on everyone. Doing what he knows he

shouldn’t, Will reaches for a doughnut. Maybe he can sneak one without his insurance company’s sensors registering it. At least Will made the right decision by paying extra for their privacy clause. Otherwise, his health data might have just been sold off to the highest bidder at an info auction. But, since he’s not able to see the information himself, he can’t be sure.

Will and his best friend, Spider, prefer to meet in person: There is less chance for any number of things happening. They remember how Spider was once duped by someone passing himself off as an online insurance representative to steal private information. The latest scam is reverse-identity theft. The thieves pose as old friends, using detailed avatars whose digital image and voice have been reconstructed from public profiles. Too bad the government killed the trusted identities program. Will shuts off the computer monitor, grabs his phone and his travel pass, and goes out past the security scanner.

After a wait, Lorelei pulls up, giggling about the whole-body security scan at the gate. “Hope they got a better picture this time.” She’s also worried that maybe the guards had found the incriminating photo of her online. She’s already lost one job because of it, even though it was taken without her permission and out of context. They head off for their meal, but arrive just in time to see the last open table become occupied.

to think that the second scenario could not happen.

What we call the Triple Revolution—in social networks, in the Internet, and in mobile connectedness—will change but never end in the ongoing turn to a networked operating system. The foreseeable future holds the prospect that individuals will be able to act more independently with greater power to shape their lives, if they choose to do so and if the circumstances will enable them to do so.

Yet, the foreseeable future also contains the burden of knowing that people will have to work harder on their own to get their needs met.

Tightly knit, permanent groups will continue to be stable cores for some, and social networks will play greater roles in all human activities. The work of networked individuals is never quite done—and the satisfactions of netweaving are always available. ❑

Rainie

The Possible Futures of Networked Individuals Although present technologies are still far from realizing either scenario in its entirety, each represents a potential evolution from current trajectories. The first scenario assumes a move toward more networked individualism based on continued technological progress and trust in computer and human networks—including the withering of boundaries.

The second scenario assumes more boundaries, more costs, more corporate concentration, and more surveillance. At present, the Western world is trending in the direction of the first scenario, but we would be naïve www.wfs.org

Wellman

About the Authors Lee Rainie is the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan “fact tank” that studies the social impact of the Internet. Prior to that he was the managing editor for U.S. News & World Report. He is delivering the opening plenary keynote at WorldFuture 2012, the annual conference of the World Future Society, in ­Toronto, Canada, July 27-29.

Barry Wellman directs the University of ­Toronto’s NetLab, is a member of the Cities Centre and the Knowledge Media Design Institute, and is a cross-appointed member of the Faculty of Information. Wellman is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, chairemeritus of both the Community and Information Technologies section and the Community and Urban Sociology section of the American Sociological Association, and a fellow of IBM Toronto’s Centre for Advanced Studies.

Excerpted from Networked: The New ­Social Operating System by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, published in May 2012 by The MIT Press. © 2012 Massachusetts ­Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.

Christian Beermann and Tsahi Hayat ­co-authored the chapter.

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World Future Society Professional Membership Tools and Techniques… Leading-Edge Ideas… Highly Productive Collaborations…

AARON M. COHEN

The World Future Society’s Professional Membership is a focused program for individuals involved in futures research, forecasting, corporate or institutional planning, issues management, technology assessment, policy analysis, urban and regional planning, competition research, and related areas. Professional Members include educators, government and business leaders, researchers, think-tank members, corporate planners, and analysts, plus others involved in the study of the future and its impact on their organizations.

World Future Review

In addition to all of the vital benefits of regular membership, Professional Members receive a subscription to the exclusive World Future Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight. This publication offers full-length refereed a ­ rticles, interviews of leading futures practitioners, insightful reviews of important new ­publications, and abstracts of the most critical new foresight-relevant ­literature.

Professional Members’ Forums

Professional Members also have the opportunity to meet once a year to focus more intensively on crucial topics in our field. The Professional Members’ Forums feature some of the top thinkers in futures studies, who convene to share insights in a small-group setting that allows for dynamic interaction. Recent forums have been held in Washington, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Boston, and Vancouver. Upcoming forums are also ­scheduled in Toronto and Chicago.

Join now, and receive:

• A subscription to World Future Review, the Society’s professional journal. An international editorial board referees all articles for this unique publication, which covers a wide range of futures-relevant subjects.

• Invitations to the annual Professional Members’ Forums. (Join now to qualify for the 2012 Forum in Toronto.)

• All benefits of regular membership in the World Future Society, including a subscription to THE FUTURIST, the Society’s bimonthly magazine on the future; discounts on books and other products; the Society’s yearly “Outlook” report of selected forecasts from THE FUTURIST; and a subscription to Futurist Update, a monthly e-mail newsletter.

Professional Membership is $295 per year. A special rate of $195 per year is available for individuals belonging to educational or nonprofit organizations.

Join online at www.wfs.org/professional or call 1-800-989-8274 weekdays (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time).

e m o H d e k r o w t e N o From Smart House t

By Chris Carbone and Kristin Nauth

Two foresight specialists describe how tomorrow’s integrated, networked, and aware home systems may change your family life.

In the last decade, a range of digital technologies and services have hit the market and moved quickly from niche use to the mainstream. Consider that just seven years after being founded, Facebook is used by more than 50% of the online population in the United States and India, and much higher percentages in global markets from Chile to South Africa to Indonesia. And flat-panel TVs, e-readers, smartphones, and even augmented-reality apps—all largely missing from the consumer landscape just a few years ago—continue to be eagerly adopted even in the face of economic uncertainty.

As we look toward the next decade, it’s clear that we are in for even more dramatic changes in the roles that technology will play in daily life. But what technologies are poised to move from niche toward the mainstream in the next 10 years?

And how will these technologies change everyday activities?

To bring this into sharper focus, Innovaro Inc.’s futures consulting group identified 10 key themes that

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it feels will help define the tech experience in the coming decade.

These 10 “technology trajectories” will give people a powerful new “toolkit”—new devices, services, and capabilities—that will forever alter the way that we go about every­day activities, from dating and shopping to learning and working.

This glimpse of Innovaro’s 10 Technology Trajectories presents several forecasts for how these new capabilities could reshape family and home life in the next decade. And although these themes were identified with the United States and other advanced economies in mind, the Technology Trajectories have global potential to reshape life in emerging economies as they’re adopted and explored there as well.

We’ll get advice and recommendations and solve problems by tapping into the social graph, and this cognitive outsourcing will be applied to both business issues and personal and lifestyle questions (e.g., “Which diet will work best for me?”).

4. Contextual Reality. People will navigate through their daily activities thanks to multiple layers of realtime and location-specific information. This contextual overlay for everyday life will give us a new way to see our surroundings and provide new forms of decision support. We will move from a world where information and connections are hidden to one where real-time, contextual information generates ambient awareness.

5. Cutting the Cable. Personal devices will be largely untethered from wired power and data connections.

Access to the Internet will be ubiquitous, and the tech infrastructure— from electronics to sensors to cars— will be powered by a more diverse set of technologies, including microgeneration, wireless power transmission, and advanced power storage.

We will move beyond plugging in, and even beyond the “plug and play” model, to a world where data, power, and inter-networking are ubiquitous.

6. Information Fusion. It will become possible for people to generate useful insights about their own habits and behaviors by fusing personal data (e.g., social media profiles, tweets, location data, purchasing histories, health sensor data). But these insights will only be as good as a user’s ability to understand and act on them. Personal data will become comprehensible through visualization and other services.

10 Technology Trajectories 1. Adaptive Environments. Advances in materials will make the h o m e a n d w o r k e n v i ro n m e n t “smart.” Everyday objects, surfaces, and coatings will gain the ability to adapt to changing conditions or people’s needs—e.g., becoming selfcleaning, self-insulating, or protective. The built environment will no longer be simply structural and passive; it will become adaptive, functional, and smart.

2. Cloud Intelligence. The cloud will evolve from being a static repository of data into an active resource that people rely on throughout their daily lives. With new capabilities for accessing online expert systems and applications, we’ll tap into information, analysis, and contextual advice in more integrated ways. Virtual agents will migrate from being an automated form of phone-based customer service to a personalized form of support and assistance that provides information and—more importantly—performs useful tasks. For example, such agents might design a weekly menu based on a family’s health profile, fitness goals, and eating preferences, and automatically order ingredients.

3. Collaboration Economy. The power of collective intelligence will enable us to accomplish cognitive tasks not easily handled by virtual agents and machines in the cloud.

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7. Interface Anywhere, Any Way.

Intuitive interfaces will become the dominant form of interaction with personal electronics and computing devices. We’ll be freed from the rigidity of conventional input devices (e.g., keyboard, mouse, screen, remotes) and able to interact with the digital world anywhere—and any way—using a combination of gesture, touch, verbal commands, and targeted use of traditional interfaces.

8. Manufacturing 3.0. Manufacturing will be reconceived—from a far•

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flung, global activity to more of a human-scale and re-localized endeavor. As consumers continue to call for both personalization and attention to environmental pressures, demand will grow for a more local manufacturing infrastructure where product schematics in certain categories are digitized and distributed to commercial fabbing services (or inhome 3-D printers) for final fabrication.

9. Personal Analytics. Data analytics will increasingly become a consumer tool as much as a business tool. This will open up analytics to a wide variety of personal and lifestyle applications. We’ll collect, store, interpret, and apply the vast amounts of data being created by and about ourselves during our every­day activities.

10. Socially Networked Stuff.

Many of our possessions will interact with each other and with the broader digital infrastructure. This will create a world of socially networked stuff, where things can actively sense, communicate, and share data. Rather than owning a fragmented set of possessions and devices, passively sitting next to each other, we’ll manage a dynamic ecosystem of belongings that interact and work in concert for our benefit.

Societal Drivers Influence Technological Advancements So, how will the new capabilities described in the 10 Technology Trajectories change home and family life? What will our homes look and feel like? How will they support our activities and lifestyles?

Technology is not the only driver at play here, and the Technology Trajectories are not emerging in a vacuum. There are numerous social, generational, and values drivers at play as well. Of the many drivers that our team at Innovaro considered while generating these forecasts, we especially noted the impact of digital natives on adoption of technology in the home, shifting demographics, and economic considerations.

• The maturing of the digital natives. Digital natives—people who have grown up never knowing a world without the Internet, smart-

phones, Facebook, etc.—have far different attitudes toward technology than do older generations. There are now two distinct generations of digital natives in the United States: millennials (born 1979–1998) and Gen Z (born 1999 and after). The technology behaviors of these groups will affect adoption of technologies that impact family and home life in coming years, as more millennials become parents and as members of Gen Z hit their tween (10–12) and teen years.

• Shifting demography. Delayed marriage and parenthood is shrinking family size. At the same time, the strong connection between millennials and their baby-boomer parents has led to a rise in multigenerational households in the United States, a trend that has been further intensified by the Great Recession. The changes in the form and function of the home will happen within the larger context of these continued demographic shifts.

• Digital DIY. Digital natives grew up in a world where building, modifying, and hacking consumer technology is taken for granted (think MAKE magazine and sites like Instructables and even YouTube). The participatory and DIY proclivities of younger generations could drive a move to more customizable home technology and help weave advanced technologies deeply into home life.

• New family dynamics. Social media and mobile devices are altering family relationships. Studies have found high ratios of Americans saying Internet use has reduced time spent with family members. Conversely, technologies can increase family connectedness over distance—e.g., by enabling nearly continuous parental oversight via Facebook or weekly Skype conversations with far-flung relatives.

• Constrained family finances. It’s likely that families’ heightened focus on value will persist for years to come.

Some people will invest only in home technologies that either directly save money or offer exceptionally compelling new functionality or experience, such as immersive entertainment systems. A two-tier market could emerge in which well-off families adopt

match the season or holiday—or show a movie or ballgame during dinner. A wave of the hand might turn any part of a kitchen counter into an induction cook top. Counters could also be self-sterilizing, using ultraviolet light, and have built-in touch-screen controls. And advances in short-range wireless electricity transmission may eliminate plugs and cords entirely for our electronic devices.

smart-home technology while lesswell-off households stick to twentiethcentury-style home systems.

In the decade ahead, a confluence of these sorts of social factors with the Technology Trajectories will begin to change the very nature and function of homes, give family members new roles, and further alter family dynamics.

Homes Will Become Aware and Adaptive

Digital Natives Will Drive Home-Tech Adoption

Homes and home systems could become far more aware, adaptive, and responsive to their residents.

New interfaces, for instance, will make home technology more ubiquitous, as flexible displays finally reach commercialization. Nearly any home surface could become a touchscreen, providing fingertip control of home electronics, as well as access to “cloud intelligence.” Interfaces will also be more intuitive, with voice control, eye-tracking, and even emotion analysis that monitors facial expressions to help determine what the user wants.

For example, a house or apartment might monitor you walking through the door at the end of the day and look for clues on how to best serve your needs. It might remotely sense body temperature or interpret body language; compare these with past arrivals, known schedule for the day, etc.; and “know” if you were likely returning from a workout at the gym or a 15-hour workday.

With this information, the system might adjust lights, music, and temperature in the house or display different information based on cues that it picked up from you. It might automatically pull up exercise tracking stats and healthy recipes after a workout, or carry-out food options when it senses that you might have just worked overtime. While this future may sound far-off, vending kiosks in Japan are already using sensors to detect age, gender, and emotional state in order to offer shoppers a more targeted selection of products.

New materials and power technologies may also change the way homes look and feel. LED wall coatings will change colors or designs to www.wfs.org

More millennials are buying homes and starting families, and Gen Z is moving into its tween and teen years. These groups will spur adoption of next-generation home technology. It’s well known that teens rely on their constant connectedness to friends via texting and social media to process their feelings: As MIT researcher Sherry Turkle noted in her book Alone Together, “They need to be connected in order to feel like themselves.”

This intense need for a connected lifestyle will shape the kinds of home products that kids—and their parents—buy, and younger family members will become the de facto DIY mavens for their households: staying current on new technologies, knowing how to customize them, and guiding family purchases. Digital natives of 2020 could be the family experts at customizing household technology—just as in the 2000s they were the social networking experts, with parents often asking their kids to help them set up Facebook pages.

Digital natives may also drive greater personalization of the home.

They have grown up with the ability to personalize the look of their Wii character, cobble together personal media feeds, and express themselves visually on sites like Pinterest. Based on the control they’ve grown accustomed to in the digital world, they may expect to customize and modify their families’ home systems to a greater degree than previous generations. This could be especially true of entertainment systems, but could also apply to adaptive walls or other smart infrastructures in the home.

Much of the demand for virtual •

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come into vogue. Rather than dedicated media rooms or home offices, spaces may be more flexible and adaptive; residents may be able to work or play in any room that suits their preferences.

• Homes could become even more central to daily life. Homes will be more personalized, responsive, and attuned to residents’ preferences. As this becomes the case, people may find that the experiences that they have in their homes will be superior to what they can have in public spaces for certain activities.

For example, productivity levels working at home in a space personalized for one’s physical, mood/ emotional, and practical needs will likely exceed what can be achieved with a rented desk at the local telecommuting space. Homes could become the preferred location for core activities such as work, education, and entertainment. People could become more dependent on their homes and home systems.

• Creating new divisions. With so much more control available over home devices and systems, issues of who controls what will go far beyond tugs-of-war over the remote.

Being granted access to or control over certain home systems—such as refrigerator-mediated food ordering or immersive multimedia systems— could become a new rite of passage for younger family members, just as getting your own set of house keys has been in the past.

• Family impacts could have pros and cons. With all of these new capabilities at hand, home life could be more engaging, convenient, and fun.

On the flip side, learning curves could be steep, especially for generations who are not digital natives. To sidestep this problem, some families may simply outsource management of these next-generation home systems—creating a new business opportunity. Others, feeling stressed out by tech complexity and the prospect of another monthly bill, may choose to opt out.

• A new digital divide? Cost will be an issue, and not all families will be able to afford emerging home technologies. Whereas the digital divide used to be about access to PCs and broadband Internet, in the

products—i.e., digital possessions that exist locally on their devices or in the cloud—will be from digital natives as well. It will be increasingly possible to render the artifacts of our digital lives in the real world, and millennials could be big adopters of 3-D printing. People may print household and hobby items they design or modify themselves. Imagine, for example, a crafter taking a 3-D scan of a sea shell, modifying the shape and texture using design software, and then 3-D printing her digital creation as a piece of art or jewelry. Already, a prototype 3-D printer called Origo is being developed for the tween market. Children who grow up with toys like Origo will be proficient in the technology—and as young adults in 2020, they may expect to be able to fabricate things at home to personalize and customize their home environment.

Technological Advances Will Change Society and the Home The Technology Trajectories outlined above will alter the home and its physical artifacts, as well as the families that adopt them. These family and home environment alterations may have repercussions well beyond the household into daily life and society at large.

• Living in “glass houses.” Levels of transparency in the home will rise. Home systems and processes that have been opaque to homeowners, such as energy consumption or the off-gassing of paint, will become transparent. For people who are interested in the “quantified self” movement, smart homes will make it easier to measure and track one’s own behavior. For example, your home could help record and analyze your activities to uncover insights about your behavior over time—e.g., that you tend to argue with your spouse more on days that you don’t exercise, or that you sleep poorly when you eat dinner after 8 p.m.

• House layouts will change.

Houses will change to accommodate the new technologies and the behaviors they enable. As the need for wired power and data access falls away—and new interfaces emerge— more-flexible home designs may 32

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future it could be about access to adaptive and aware living spaces.

A final outcome of these changes is that the market for advanced home technology will grow much larger, more complex, and more competitive than today. Rather than having a few key technology nodes in the home (e.g., PC, tablet, Internet-enabled TV, and smartphones), all key home systems might well become networked devices—from water and electric meters to electrochromic windows.

This will open up myriad opportunities for new home products and the potential for exciting collaborations across previously unrelated industries—from consumer electronics and computing to home furnishing, décor, and home improvement. As the Technology Trajectories are realized, tomorrow’s families could be far more connected with each other and with their communities than ever before. And when you call home, your home will answer. ❑

Carbone

Nauth

About the Authors Chris Carbone is a director with Innovaro’s foresight group, where he oversees the Global Lifestyles and Technology Foresight projects and contributes to the firm’s custom futures research projects.

E‑mail chris.carbone@innovaro.com.

Kristin Nauth is a founding partner of Foresight Alliance and has 15 years of experience as a foresight professional, including six with Innovaro. Follow her on Twitter, @knauth2015.

This article draws from Innovaro’s Global Lifestyles Research Series; visit www.innovaro.com for details. Innovaro, The Innovation Solutions Company, provides the intelligence, software, and consulting services that companies need to innovate and grow. Innovaro’s foresight group operates two subscription-based futures research services: Global Lifestyles and Technology Foresight. It also conducts custom trend and futures research projects for a wide range of corporate and government clients.

Building and Connecting Communities for the Future The economic development profession can be a positive force for change in communities as we transition from a materialistic economy to a transformational society.

BY CENTER FOR COMMUNITIES OF THE FUTURE © BRANDON LAUFENBERG / ISTOCKPHOTO

T

he global economy has changed fundamentally in recent decades, and the ways that we have traditionally approached economic development no longer work.

We are in a transition from an Industrial Society to a new, more organic society and economy. Fundamental principles of thinking and organization are not just reforming, but transforming. Reformation i s a b o u t i m p ro v i n g i d e a s a n d methods that have existed for m a n y y e a r s . Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n a l c h a n g e re d e f i n e s i n s t i t u t i o n a l

structures and challenges their undergirding ­principles.

The weak signals of the next iteration of an economic system are beginning to emerge. Economic developers—individuals and organizations who are generally responsible for promoting and sustaining their communities’ prosperity (good jobs, good homes, good schools, good infrastructure)—must be able to juggle multiple and rapidly changing priorities, accommodating both shortterm and long-term perspectives.

They’re responsible for attracting and expanding business, developing www.wfs.org

a workforce capable of continuous innovation, and facilitating collaborations, among other interrelated challenges and opportunities.

The goal of economic development in this new environment is to help new knowledge emerge. The connection of new knowledge to new resources in the creation of transformational projects will seed what we call a Creative Molecular Economy. It is molecular in the sense of working with the smallest units of organization; it is organic in the sense of mimicking biological systems and processes.

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“The economic vitality and sustainability of any economic-­ development jurisdiction … will be based on the agility and effectiveness of decision-making processes.”

How Economies Have Changed

Finally, this transition phase is reaching its maturity and will quickly shift within the next 10 to 15 years to an emerging Creative Molecular Economy. Biological prin­ ciples—such as interdependence, systems thinking, and designing parallel processes—will form the framework for how this new economy will be organized and operate.

Preparing for success in this new economy will require leaders who are open to new ideas and who understand the challenges of transforming their approach to the future.

Economic development must become comprehensive community transformation in order to address the following questions: • How do you connect ideas, people, processes, and methods?

• How do you develop a culture in support of continuous innovation?

• How do you build new capacities for a new type of economic development involving as many citizens as possible with distributive intelligence?

As we emerge from the recent recession, it is clear that we must endow our communities with greater economic resiliency. We must prepare them for a different kind of economy that will require the ability to adapt to constantly changing conditions. And this resiliency cannot be achieved through just reforming the current practice of economic development. In other words, we can’t just tinker at the margins.

Adding to the complexity of community development over the next 20 years are three different types of economies that are now in churn and mixed together: The first is the very last stages of the old Industrial Age economy based on hierarchies, economies of scale, mechanization, and predictability.

The second is a transitional economic phase called the Knowledge Economy, which was recognized a decade or so ago and is based on knowledge creation and diffusion.

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• How do you create an environment for individualized, autonomous education and learning?

• How do you use mobile technologies to shift paradigms of governance?

And the list goes on.

Addressing these challenges is no small task for economic developers in collaboration with other community leaders. It will not be easy. There is no template, model, or standard operating procedure to guide the journey.

Since the profession first developed in the late nineteenth century, economic developers have primarily been focused on two functions: (1) attracting and expanding business and industry, and (2) more recently, business creation.

The Industrial Society brought with it the term jobs, so attracting jobs into the local community, region, state, or specific geographic boundary became the key focus of the economic developer. And thus it has been until more recently.

The profession rocked along for years until the weak signals of change in jobs provided per business relocation began to occur in the 1980s. Over the last 20 years, the number of jobs created per recruited business has declined.

Impacting this is the projection that, by 2015, only 4%–8% of all the jobs in the United States will be in manufacturing. Both the number of start-ups established per year and the number of jobs provided per start-up have fallen over the past 20 years, according to a 2011 Kauffman

Foundation study, “Starting Smaller; Staying Smaller: America’s Slow Leak in Job Creation.”

The confluence of these and other trends and weak signals reflects a continuous shift to a more digital, entrepreneurial economy driven by collaborative networks. This Creative Molecular Economy will be defined by the following: • New ways to access capital for start-ups.

• What we call a Future Forward Workforce, which is able to adapt to any of the three types of economies—Industrial, Knowledge, and Creative Molecular.

• An ability to identify weak signals about what the future holds.

• A broadband infrastructure capable of uploading and downloading massive amounts of data and streaming video.

• A new approach to learning that supports transformational thinking and action.

• The formation of interlocking networks to build momentum for new ideas, whether related to economics, education, or governance.

• Crowd-sourced innovation.

Reinventing Economic Development

The economic-development pro-

ability will give way to finding comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing us to identify newly emerging patterns from apparent chaos.

Economic development will increasingly be about building parallel processes where different people and organizations work in deep collaboration to help each other succeed—not just in individual communities, but across the globe as well.

True transformation will not occur unless many projects, programs, processes, and people are involved in a totally new system of dynamic, adaptive planning and execution.

This emerging context of a new society and economy offers—perhaps requires—economic developers who realize that only a system with processes of community transformation will provide a healthy economy, and that their local communities, by themselves, may not yet have the types of leaders who are able to build “capacities for ­transformation.”

It also requires economic developers who are truly visionaries. This means individuals who can move from a commercial culture centered on economic materialism to a transformational culture that fosters a healthy economy and society based on continuous innovation, openness, and collaborative interlocking networks.

So economic developers will now

fession now has an opportunity to transform itself to meet the changing requirements of a Creative Molecular Economy.

The last 30 years in business and industry has focused on increasing productivity, lowering costs, and pushing for more consumption to drive economic growth. In that environment, economic developers could focus on competing with other places to attract, retain, and expand business within their specific geographic areas. This is done primarily through offering incentives to lower costs, providing necessary infrastructure, finding access to financing, and expanding worker training.

It was a natural fit for the special expertise needed in an economic system where specialization was the norm.

We are now moving into an age of dynamic connections and disconnections: The economic vitality and sustainability of any economic-­ development jurisdiction—be it a local area, region, or state—will be based on the agility and effectiveness of decision-making processes affecting the workforce, capital availability, and the educational system.

Hierarchies will give way to interlocking networks; standardized processes will give way to multiple methods; and the need for predict-

“Only a system with processes of community transformation will provide a healthy economy.”

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weak signals (becoming futurists).

• Innovating constantly and cultivating their imagination, intuition, and insight.

Communities can promote this Future Forward Workforce by promoting collaboration: Self-interest and community interest are one, because self-adaptive systems need to have individuals working together.

The culture must promote continuous innovation—and foresight skills in recognizing and adapting to change.

need to expand their focus beyond creating jobs to building better places in which to live, work, play, and run a business. And it means developing their citizens into a Future Forward Workforce—i.e., agile workers who can take advantage of opportunities anywhere in the world without abandoning their communities, and who can move in and out of the three types of economies at will.

From Place Marketing to Community Building

This Future Forward Workforce will be critical to sustainable economic health in future communities.

Within the next 20 years, the largest corporation in the world may employ no more than 1,500 people, whose roles will be to facilitate networks of free agents and start-ups.

By 2040, up to half of the workforce may be working from their homes for employers who may be on the other side of the world.

But these workers will still be shopping, playing, and raising their families in communities that depend on their individual vitality and viability.

Economic development will thus be as much about developing citizens, workers, and institutional structures that are able to adapt to constant change as it has been about the physical or cultural amenities that lure new factories or corporate headquarters away from other places. Instead, the goal will be to ensure that individuals develop the capacities they need to be involved with and adapt to a constantly changing economy based on creativity, deep collaboration, and connectivity.

Individuals in the Future Forward Workforce will become responsible for their own economic capacities, including: • Committing to lifelong learning that is based on transformational ideas. This includes developing a personalized curriculum, asking appropriate questions, and connecting disparate ideas.

• Developing the ability to spot

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Transformational Learning A Future Forward Workforce needs to be able to adapt to constant change, so developing that capacity will require moving education systems beyond traditional educational theory and practices to transformational thinking and action. Community colleges will become even more important in creating a culture of continuous innovation in local communities.

Key ideas of Transformational Learning are: • Identifying future trends and understanding their impact.

• Understanding the importance of being able to challenge traditional assumptions.

• Developing the skills of “and/ both,” connective thinking to ensure the capacity for continuous innovation.

• Being open to new ideas and qualitative ways of thinking.

• Creating an environment for individualized, reciprocal learning.

• Knowing how to ask appropriate questions.

• Knowing how to see patterns and connections in apparently disparate ideas and factors.

• Knowing how to build transformative learning webs and networks capable of collaboration and innovation.

• Understanding how systems interconnect and how they create the need for individuals to help each other succeed.

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• Developing the ability to listen differently to find value in what others are saying and knowing how to connect any idea to other knowledge in effective ways.

• Emphasizing how multiple learning styles can be utilized for continuous innovation.

• Creating a new system of evaluation that goes beyond standardized testing.

Mobile Networked Governance for the Creative Molecular Economy Many local leaders are unfamiliar with trends and weak signals. As a result, they are not able to develop effective strategies for dealing with emerging issues.

Now, with the advent of smartphones, GPS systems, cloud computing, and more, citizens can instantly access and share knowledge and opinions with each other and with their governments—a phenomenon that will reshape how our society operates.

This eventually will lead to a new concept, “mobile networked govern­ ance.” Community leaders will develop knowledge-connection processes that harness the vast resources of disparate community members.

We’ll soon see a shift from radical individualism to many new levels of deep collaboration. Ultimately, this mobile networked governance will be transformational, creating a new decision-making structure that engages as many people in the community as are interested.

Master Capacity Builders Change is scary for many people, and something to be avoided if possible. As a result, leadership by economic developers is an absolute ­necessity to help communities understand the need to build capacities for a Creative Molecular Economy using the concepts and methods of comprehensive community transformation.

Communities of the Future: Case Studies Growing beyond the context of our current economic development system, three levels of interlocking networks will emerge: regional, state/provincial, and national.

Within each are community-level collaborations. These areas can work both individually and in collaboration with others to promote systemic community transformation. As important, they can create interlocking networks of interested economic developers who are willing to become Master Capacity Builders, or Transformational Leaders.

Master Capacity Builders complement traditional leadership. Traditional leaders focus on concrete outcomes in the short run. Master Capacity Builders learn how to build capacities for transformation in people, groups, and communities, enabling them to adapt to constant change over the longer run.

Traditional leaders focus on projects, linear processes, and quantitative measurement. Master Capacity Builders focus on helping people learn how to shift their thinking, consider issues within a futures context, and build parallel processes so that true transformational change can emerge.

Looking Ahead Economic developers who are a part of developing a culture of continuous innovation must be simultaneously involved in multiple concepts of economic development (including traditional business and industry attraction) as they learn this new approach to preparing local communities for a different kind of future.

There is no magic wand that will move us from old-school transactional economic development to the new world of never-ending transformation. Linking the two is a necessary transitional process. Economic developers have a critical opportu-

nity and responsibility to make this happen.

The role of an economic developer is, itself, in transformation. No longer merely a recruiter of business and industry, a twenty-first-century economic developer will need to become a futurist as well as a facilitator of connections of ideas, people, and processes in comprehensive community transformation. As Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis argued in It’s Alive (Crown Business, 2003):

The Center for Communities of the Future has worked with a wide variety of community leaders to meet their specific economic-development needs. Several examples of this work are highlighted exclusively on the World Future Society Web site: • “Future-Focused Community: Fayette County, Georgia,” by Virginia Gibbs. The president and CEO of the Fayette Chamber of Commerce describes the process of developing Master Capacity Builders and selforganizing efforts. Among the projects that emerged were a Future Fayette 2030 art and science contest and an ongoing series of Community Conversations.

• “Building Capacities for Community Transformation: Iowa,” by LaDene Bowen. The Institute for Decision Making at the University of Northern Iowa helps prepare rural community leaders in the community transformation process.

Among its initiatives is a Global Rural Network to promote rural development and the new skills required for success.

• “Creative Molecular Economy Innovation Model: McAllen, Texas,” by Steve Ahlenius. The president of the McAllen, Texas, Chamber of Commerce describes its unique Inventors and Entrepreneur Network and Innovation Grant Program, key in its approach to create wealth and economic opportunity based on innovation.

• “Open-Source Ideation for Economic Development: Rhode Island,” by Scott A. Gibbs and Marcel A. Valois. The Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island is using online crowdsourcing to make its innovation process more inclusive. The initiative, branded as RIdeation, is described by the foundation’s president and vice president.

• “A Future Forward College: Wake Tech, Raleigh, North Carolina,” by Steve Scott, Carol Cutler-White, and Benita Budd. A Future Forward Workforce starts with a Future Forward College, and Wake Tech in Raleigh is leading the way. The goal is to build communities with workforces who are adept in connective thinking, networking, and foresight integration—using trends and weak signals to create a context of futures thinking for all actions.

Read more at www.wfs.org/futurist/ july-august-2012-vol-46-no-4

Connectivity in the environment has accelerated change and increased the volatility in the business environment.

Business must respond with more rapid and varied adaptation, and will experience fewer periods of stability in which efficiency is the dominant source of economic health. ❑ About Center for Communities of the Future Founded by futurist Rick Smyre and based in North Carolina, the Center for Communities of the Future is a global network of individuals and community organizations collaborating to develop new tools for governance, economic development, education and learning, and leadership to improve citizens’ ability to cope with a rapidly changing world. For more information, visit www.communitiesofthefuture.org.

Contributors to this article include: LaDene Bowen, associate director, Institute for Decision Making, Northern Iowa University, Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Ronnie Bryant, president, Charlotte Regional Partnership, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Jim Damicis, senior vice president, Camoin Associates, Scarborough, Maine.

Scott Gibbs, president, Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island, Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Norma Owen, president, Avadon LLC, The Colony, Texas.

Rick Smyre, president, Center for Communities of the Future, Gastonia, North Carolina.

Mark Waterhouse, president, Garnet Consulting, Woodbury, Connecticut.

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Integrated and Innovative

The Future of Regions

Challenges facing city and regional governments today may spur a movement toward improving the creative resources of tomorrow’s citizens.

Investing in the arts may help communities capitalize on shifting paradigms.

BY JOHN M. EGER

© NURANVECTORGIRL / ISTOCKPHOTO

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C

reating a city of the future, for the future, is about organizing one’s community to reinvent itself for a knowledge-based economy and society. Citizens must be prepared to take ownership of their community, and the next generation of leaders and workers must be prepared to meet global challenges.

It will not be easy.

Now more than ever, business and industry are dependent upon an economic system that rewards innovation. Thus, at the heart of this effort to build more-creative communities is the recognition of the vital role that art and culture play in enhancing economic development.

A creative and innovative community is one that exploits the vital links among art, culture, and commerce. It consciously invests the human and financial resources necessary to prepare its citizens to meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving, postindustrial knowledge economy and society.

Almost 20 years ago, the city of San Diego put together a committee to launch a “city of the future” initiative. The committee members really didn’t know what a city of the future looked like, but they knew that fiber optics and having lots of bandwidth in the ground were key ingredients.

So fiber optics and bandwidth were the foundation of the effort.

Today, with greater understanding of the challenges of the new global economy and knowledge of what it takes to succeed in the workplace of the future, we know it is not bandwidth in the ground that matters most. In fact, it is not technology at all, but the bandwidth in people’s heads that is important.

We also know now that, to have a creative community, cities and regions must have creative people. To have creative people, a city needs to nurture its youth and create a system of education that engenders the new thinking skills that business is now demanding. And it must provide the vibrant culture that is essential for attracting and retaining that innovative workforce.

• Metropolitan regions are the new centers of commerce. Cities and counties within regions must work together to compete in the global economy. Governmental planning and development, as well as the provision of vital public services, must be regional.

In San Diego, arts and cultural organizations are credited with making it a “vibrant city,” according to a recently released city report. The 68 arts and culture organizations that received $5.8 million in funding stimulated the economy with more than $170 million in expenditures in 2011.

The Rise of Regions

Regional Goals and Government Roles

Most people live in one jurisdiction, work in another, and play or dine in a third. They have no idea that the cost to them is enormous because of the duplication and waste, or that consolidating these activities in one place can save money. But more is at stake to communities than simply dollars or turf.

Most of the issues that communities now deal with are not just local: Reducing crime, energy consumption, water use, waste, and toxic emissions, while also making it easier for people to get around, are not the concerns of individual cities but of the whole region. Indeed, communities in metropolitan regions should be aggregating demand for such services and striking agreements with one another, and then negotiating with one of several providers to better serve the citizens of the entire region.

Technologies such as geographic

Government has a vital role in building creative communities: It can promote affordable, accessible broadband, and it can enact land-use policies to develop creative economic clusters that include art districts, public art, museums, and other cultural institutions. Government can also embrace green initiatives, encouraging private-sector investments in enterprises that exemplify and foster the concept of sustainability.

Every region must make its community highly livable to attract, nurture, and retain the best and brightest. But a truly regional innovation community understands that: • Globalization has changed life and work as we know it. Technology—particularly the Internet and the pervasive spread and influence of new media—has led to the emergence of a world where every nation is inextricably tied to every other, and where manufacturing and service-sector jobs are being outsourced or off-shored.

• Economies based on creativity and innovation also promote freedom, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship.

• Education must be reinvented to ensure that workforces are capable of succeeding in this new economy.

• Efficient, affordable, effective broadband infrastructures available to citizens, businesses, governments, schools, and the entire nonprofit sector are essential for economic survival and success.

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information systems allow regions to strategically manage data and to consolidate and streamline all departmental operations, bringing new ways for people to do business and get more services online. In the future, citizens may never have to physically wait in line again.

By pushing the limits of electronic services, the government lays the foundation for a more robust private sector. “Green” initiatives, too, can set the stage for more sustainable community-wide services.

The new global knowledge economy, not to mention the current fiscal crisis, demands that governments rethink how to organize themselves to be most competitive. At a minimum, it means cities within a region (including the counties) ought to be jointly pursuing opportunities to operate services together. Fragmented governments struggle to provide even the most basic services.

Larger cities are experiencing the same problems, but the real loss is not simply municipal deficits; it is the loss of the metropolitan region to brand itself and create a forward-thinking economic development strategy.

Integrated regional economies will foster quality locales—vibrant downtowns,

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“A creative and innovative community can nurture, attract, and retain the talent we need to succeed in the new economy.”

attractive town centers, and historic, older suburbs—that nurture creative human capital and robust financial capital and that contribute to sustainable, resource-efficient growth.

Not merging municipalities or certain basic services puts the prowess of a region at risk.

Developing Creative Regions

Involvement by the entire community—and region—will be needed to make meaningful and lasting changes. Engagement and collaboration of all citizens and institutions is critical. Public art, art integration, graffiti parks, art districts, museums, regional collaboration, civic engagement, and robust information infrastructures—all are important to the region of the future.

Today, understanding the challenges of the new global economy is critical. It demands that we renew and reinvent the places where we live, learn, and work. There is no alternative short of letting our communities atrophy and die.

A creative and innovative community can nurture, attract, and retain the talent we need to succeed in the new economy. Therefore, parents, politicians, policy makers, and businesses need to better understand the powerful role of the arts in nurturing creativity overall.

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Does all creativity come from the arts? Of course not, but clearly we can improve the chances of nurturing creativity by investing in artsbased training. This is why STE(A)M​ —adding arts to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—is so important. It is also why cities and regions must nurture creativity in young people by reinventing a system of education that values and promotes innovation and critical thinking.

“Arts learning experiences play a vital role in developing students’ capacities for critical thinking, creativity, imagination, and innovation,” observes Sandra Ruppert, president of Art Education Partnership. “These capacities are increasingly recognized as core skills and competencies all students need as part of a high-quality and complete 21st-­ century education.” ❑

About the Author John M. Eger holds the Van Deerlin Chair in Communications and Public Policy and is director of the Creative Economy Initiative at San Diego State University.

His last article for THE FUTURIST, “Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age,” was published in the January-February 2011 issue. E-mail jeger@mail.sdsu.edu.

Futuring

The Exploration of the Future

By Edward Cornish, editor of THE FUTURIST and founder of the World Future Society.

WFS. 2004. 313 pages. Paperback. $19.95 ($17.95 for Society members).

Available on Kindle! Go to www.wfs.org/futuring for link.

A “masterpiece” and “modern classic” in futures-studies literature, Edward Cornish’s Futuring is now required reading at major universities around the world, from Texas A&M to Tamkang University in Taiwan, and translated for Korean, Mongolian, and ­Arabic editions. Cornish’s enlightened, insightful writing has inspired seasoned professionals with a fresh take on futurism’s vital tools and concepts.

This comprehensive guide to thinking about the future covers methodologies, key futures concepts, the rise of the “futurist revolution,” and six supertrends—and where they may lead us.

Get the Most Out of Futuring!

Building the Future: A Workbook to Accompany Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish

by Jill Loukides and Lawrie Gardner. WFS. 2006. 94 pages. Paperback. $17.50 ($15.95 for Society members).

Futurist educators Loukides and Gardner of Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland have developed this thought-inspiring workbook to guide students through the key lessons of Edward Cornish’s text, Futuring.

For each of the text’s 16 chapters—which cover supertrends, the nature of change, futuring methods, uses of scenarios, the origins and rise of futurism, and much more—the workbook: • Queries students on their prior knowledge and learning objectives, • Provides an outline, summary, and key terms, and • Prompts learners to evaluate their new knowledge about the future through critical thinking questions, activities, and self-study questions.

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copies of Futuring.

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Revolutionary Health

Local Solutions for Global Health Problems

Better health care doesn’t have to be costlier, as a number of innovative health practitioners are showing. In India, Venezuela, and elsewhere, the strategic use of technology, community involvement, and resource reallocations are enabling health-care providers to treat more patients more effectively, all while spending less money.

By Rick Docksai make eye surgery affordable for even the poorest Indians. Toward that end, he opened an eye clinic that year, which he dubbed Aravind.

One monumental trait set this clinic apart from any other eye clinic in India or, for that matter, the world: It did not require patients to pay.

Since then, Venkataswamy has expanded his one clinic into five and built a 3,200-person cadre of clinicians and nurses to run them. Like the first Aravind clinic, they make their services available to all who need them, regardless of income.

Each clinic has separate wings— some wings for the middle-class patients who can pay in full, and others

Health-care cost hikes and soaring demands for services loom worldwide. Countries everywhere grapple with how to provide more care with fewer resources. Glimpses of hope are around us, however. At the community level, innovative health practitioners are finding ways to extend treatment to unprecedented new numbers of patients. Even better, they are doing so without raising their costs of care.

Pay-What-You-Can Medicine In India In 1976, Indian surgeon Govindappa Venkataswamy resolved to 42

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for the lower-income and destitute patients who cannot. The same doctors work in both. Patients may pay what they are able to, or not pay at all, if necessary. Roughly one-third pay nothing at all. Because about half of the patients pay in full, however, Aravind has money to set aside to provide free services for those who cannot.

To this network of clinics, Aravind later added a manufacturing facility.

It is internationally certified and distributes transplant lenses to millions of patients in 120 countries. The lens price is about $10, a tiny fraction of the $150 that a typical lens would cost.

Despite charging so little for its products and services, Aravind exhibits remarkable fiscal solvency.

Not one Aravind hospital receives even a rupee of private charity, public aid, or foreign funding. In 20092010, according to Forbes magazine, Aravind accumulated $29 million in revenues and ran a surplus of $13 million.

Its clinics thrive by constantly identifying the most-efficient means to perform every last task. A surgeon’s salary is delinked from patient load—pay is based on results, not on procedures. Also, management routinely reviews every doctor’s clinical protocols and any tests or medications that he or she has prescribed, in order to make sure that no doctor is ordering more tests or treatments than necessary. As a corollary, Aravind’s physicians accept lower earnings than most practitioners in their fields. They receive fixed salaries with no bonuses for seeing extra patients or performing extra tests. On the other hand, they also carry far fewer debts: 90% of them complete their training at Aravind itself, not at medical schools.

That is not to say that Aravind doctors are less capable than their formally trained counterparts. Their patients on average fare even better, post-treatment, than patients who obtain similar services in Britain’s hospital system, according to the charity-rating service Givewell.

Some of this success may be attributable to positive peer pressure. The Aravind clinics compile weekly spreadsheets detailing each practitioner’s patient case, actions taken, and outcome. All personnel review each other ’s data to learn lessons wherever possible, identify and solve any problems, and spur each other to do better.

The Aravind clinics also do not permit cost cutting to be a pretext for denying services or curbing time spent with patients. An Aravind surgeon conducts an average of 2,000 cataract surgeries a year, far above the typical Indian surgeon’s average of 400 and the typical U.S. surgeon’s average of 200. “Assembly-line” processes help to expedite patient intake by cutting the lag time between operations: Whereas a typical surgeon

NARAYANA HOSPITALS

Surgeons prepare to work with factorylike precision at a Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in India.

not yet an accepted course of action in the U.S. system. They are now in India, thanks to Aravind pointing the way.

in India takes 15 minutes to shift from concluding an operation on one patient to commencing an operation on another, most Aravind surgeons move from the first patient to the next in just one to three minutes.

Venkatesh Rangaraj, one of Aravind’s higher-volume surgeons, completes 100 cataract operations a day, averaging 3.5 minutes per case.

“Health care delivery in much of the world is fundamentally driven by the notion of limitation—an underlying assumption that there is simply not enough to go around for everybody’s needs. That its model defied this notion (even in the years when its own resources were scarce) is perhaps Aravind’s most potent and paradoxical quality,” write Pavithra K. Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy in their book, Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion (BerrettKoehler, 2011).

Health professionals throughout India have taken note. Over the last decade, hundreds of Indian hospitals have personally consulted with Aravind and made efforts to emulate the Aravind mission. It is a far more admirable model, for sure, than U.S. hospitals, where patients on Medicaid and Medicare are being turned away because the doctors will not accept the programs’ low reimbursement rates. Discounted services are www.wfs.org

A Larger-Scale Hospital Model One Aravind-like model is now bringing low-cost cardiac treatment to India’s poor. The first Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital, founded in Bangalore, India, in 2001 by Devi Shetty, ramped up patient intake to levels unheard of in most of the industrialized world. Whereas the average U.S. hospital has 160 beds, this hospital has 1,000. In 2008, its team of 42 surgeons completed 3,174 cardiac bypass surgeries, more than twice the 1,367 that the prestigious U.S. hospital Cleveland Clinic did that same year. And whereas the Children’s Hospital in Boston operated on 1,026 children patients in 2008, the surgeons at Narayana ­Hrudayalaya operated on 2,777.

Like those at Aravind, the Narayana Hrudatalaya physicians work more hours than any of their counterparts in the United States. Shetty’s surgeons perform two to three procedures daily, six days a week, and work 60 to 70 hours a week, compared with a typical U.S. surgeon’s workload of one or two procedures a day, five days a week, and 60 hours a week.

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Narayana Hrudayalaya’s services within reach of struggling low-­ income Indian families.

Since $2,000 is still a large sum for most low-income families, Shetty helped the Indian state Karnataka organize a farmers’ insurance plan several years ago. The plan, one that now enrolls a third of his patients, costs each enrollee $3 a year and reimburses the hospital $1,200 for every cardiac surgery. The breakeven cost per operation is $1,500, but the hospital makes up the $300 difference by charging slightly more to the patients not enrolled in the plan: 40% of the nonenrolled patients in the general ward pay $2,400 each; an additional 30% of wealthier patients who choose private or semi-private rooms pay as much as $5,000.

Shetty has since expanded Narayana Hrudayalaya into a network of 12 hospitals located throughout India, and he has plans for five more upcoming, including one for the Cayman Islands. This latter location will likely attract high numbers of U.S. patients, stated a November 2009 Wall Street Journal feature that approvingly called Shetty “the Henry Ford of heart surgery.” The article lauded his record-breaking productivity, which it said “offers insights for countries worldwide that are struggling with soaring medical costs, including the U.S. as it debates major health-care overhaul.” The article noted that the Cayman Islands site is a one-hour plane ride from Miami, Florida, and its procedures would be half the price or less of the same services at U.S. hospitals.

Shetty’s hospitals are reaching out to volumes of patients beyond India, or even the Cayman Islands, by way of another huge cost-saving medical trend: telemedicine. Narayana ­Hrudayalaya sets yet another medical record as the world’s largest telemedicine provider, courtesy of its array of 800 satellite centers, distributed throughout Malaysia, Pakistan, and 24 other countries. Shetty’s telemedicine outreach began with videoconference facilities through which he would interface with residents of remote towns and villages in rural India. Mobile teams could travel to patients who needed work done in person and then relay the re-

Some skeptics might expect ­ hetty’s surgeons to suffer exhausS tion from these huge case loads, and for their work quality to consequently drop. Yet this is not the case.

The mortality rate for the first 30 days following coronary artery bypass surgery at Narayana ­H rudayalaya was 1.4%, compared with 1.9% in the United States, according to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Jack Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology, who visited the facility in 2009, argues that the Indian hospital’s rate is all the more impressive, since its patient population has generally far less basic care than an American population and typically arrive at the hospital with their cardiac conditions at more severe and acute stages.

Lewin stated further that the high volumes at which the hospital sees patients are actually a great way to improve quality of care. Any given surgeon there operates on far more patients, so he or she naturally acquires more skill and expertise. Also, as Lewin noted, the high patient traffic leads to each of the hospital’s doctors focusing on one or two specific types of cardiac surgeries and becoming masters at those particular treatments. By contrast, according to Lewin, an average U.S. or Indian hospital does not see enough patients per day for any one surgeon to focus exclusively on any one or two types of heart procedures. Narayana Hrudayalaya now performs more heart surgeries than any hospital on Earth.

Shetty’s bulk-production method also substantially cuts costs. Building-maintenance expenses are lower, after all, given that more patients and personnel consolidate under one roof. Also, they require less equipment: Each machine that Shetty buys goes into use 15 to 20 times a day, versus the three or four times a day that is the norm in most U.S. hospitals.

The cost savings go directly to the patients. A cardiac bypass operation costs around $2,000 at Shetty’s facility, for instance, compared with $5,000 at an average private Indian hospital and between $20,000 and $40,000 at a U.S. hospital. This puts 44

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sults—both electrocardiograms (electric monitoring of heart activity) and angiograms (imaging of blood vessels and organs) could be transmitted over fiber-optic and satellite links.

“In a country where a bus ticket to the nearest hospital can cost a month’s wages, tele-consultations provide a low-cost solution for Indians who do not have access to medical specialists,” writes the Economist magazine’s Economist Intelligence Unit, adding that satellite link-ups have been enabling Narayana ­Hrudayalaya to serve many patients in sub-Saharan Africa since February 2009.

The hospital has conducted more than 30,000 tele-consultations so far.

Yet Shetty has more progress to make: He intends to take on mobile telemedicine in years to come.

Community-Centered Medicine in Latin America As journalist Steve Brouwer observes in Revolutionary Doctors (Monthly Review Press, 2011), quality medical care had been far too costly for working-class and lowerincome Venezuelans in the twentieth century, and overly concentrated in major urban centers.

In 1998, President-elect Hugo Chávez set out to close the accessibility gap. In 2003, with extensive financial and personnel support from Cuba, he unfurled Misión Barrio Adentro (“Mission Within the Neighborhood”), a long-term plan to construct clinics, pharmacies, and other types of medical centers in communities across Venezuela for citizens to receive free health services from doctors living in their own neighborhoods. Visitors at any one could receive checkups, a variety of basic treatments, and advice on healthy living. Another array of diagnostic centers, also distributed throughout at-need communities, would offer surgeries, 24-hour diagnostics, and intensive care, all free of charge.

To open clinics, Cuban envoys visited the Venezuelan neighborhoods and conferred with the community groups on places to house the doctors and to operate dispensaries. All arrangements took place in open-fo-

rum meetings, with townspeople actively involved. Community people would continue to be active participants in the clinics’ administration and operations. They would also be a large segment of its workforce. As clinics opened up, residents took up training to be “health supporters” who would assist the doctors and nurses with their daily workloads.

themselves available 24 hours a day and routinely made house calls, efforts unheard of among traditional health workers. Anecdotes even tell of high-crime communities where police presence was generally lacking, but clinics were able to work in safety, thanks to community groups volunteering to protect them.

Further clinic–community interac-

In each community, a health committee—a popularly elected board that coordinates on community health matters—would advise and assist the clinic each step of the way.

Thus the clinics operated with strong support from local leaders. Clinics also enjoyed staunch support from the residents themselves, and understandably so: The doctors made

© AGENCIA VENEZOLANA DE NOTICIAS (AVN)

J. LARA / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS / ZUMA PRESS / NEWSCOM

Above: Cuban doctor Elizabeth ­Rodriguez Sanchez examines a patient at home in Barrio La Vega in Caracas, part of the Venezuelan government’s program to make health care more accessible.

© AVN

Radiosurgery treatment at government-run hospital in Venezuela.

© AVN

Maternity care at Hospital El Algodonal, Venezuela.

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Medical Recycling as Health “REMEDY” Syringes, bandages, sutures, stretchers—hospitals throw out these and more en masse, even though many of them are still very usable, according to ­William Rosenblatt, a Yale Medical Group anesthesiologist.

That’s why he started REMEDY (Recovering Medical Equipment for the Developing World), a nonprofit organization that collects medical garbage from hospitals, sanitizes and refurbishes it, and sends it to under-­ resourced health centers in the developing world.

It might surprise the average observer just how much of what hospitals throw out is salvageable, but between REMEDY’s launch in 1991 and 2011, ­Rosenblatt recycled about 30 tons of “waste” that had been thrown out mostly due to FDA requirements, expirations of the manufacturer warranties, or legal con-

jobs at its clinics. Economic setbacks before and during the 2008 global financial crisis likewise cut hard into the Barrio Adentro bottom line. Approximately half of the clinics initially built were shut down, and many more laid off staff and cut back hours of operation.

But the mission continued. In 2004-2005, the program conducted more than 150 million consultations—four times as many as did Venezuela’s conventional outpatient services. And in 2008, Venezuela achieved universal vaccination for the first time, affirmed Mirta Rosas, director of the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), during a visit to Caracas. Today, nearly 900 clinics are still running and are continuing an expansion of health-care availability that is nothing less than historic: Nearly 100% of the Venezuelan public now has access to health care.

In 2006, PAHO reported the significant improvement Venezuela made in 2004-2005 on diagnosing hypertension, ischemic heart disease, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, and bronchial asthma—all thanks to Barrio Adentro, as Venezuela’s conventional health systems showed no improvement on diagnosing these five conditions during this time period.

More importantly, the report found much progress on provision of postdiagnosis monitoring and follow-up for these five conditions.

UNICEF, meanwhile, reports progress on a range of key health indica-

tion would take place during the “health parties”—community social events, including sports and cultural events, that promote health. All parties take place with heavy participation from groups within the communities, such as youth groups, groups of grandparents, and addiction-­ recovery support groups.

“Because the existence of Barrio Adentro relies on community organization, it is undeniable that the program has created a new space for political participation and activism that has forcefully extended throughout Venezuela. … The lives of many have taken paths that will be hard to reverse,” wrote Arachu Castro, assistant professor of social medicine at Harvard University, in a paper for ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America.

The emphasis on preventive care also makes Barrio Adentro significant. The clinics act as a first line of care that tackles multiple health risk factors before they morph into acute conditions that require costly hospitalizations.

Barrio Adentro has borne its share of setbacks. Staff shortages set in, due in part to the established doctors’ associations shunning it. For political reasons—some traditional doctors viewed Barrio Adentro as a rival, and many were suspicious of communist Cuba’s involvement in the project—numerous doctors’ associations went so far as to forbid their members from applying for 46

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cerns. He has also inspired more than 600 similar medical-­recycling initiatives in other communities across the United States.

The materials salvaged have decreased a bit in recent years, but that is due to surgeons actually using less equipment. They now scrutinize their “surgical kits”—the tools that they use at the operating table— to make sure that they only request what they really need for the job. This is, of course, good news to ­Rosenblatt. It means his ideas are catching on.

“With a growing focus on environmental responsibility and cutting health-care costs, REMEDY is finding itself at the right place at the right time,” says Kathy Katella of the Yale Medical Group.

—Rick Docksai

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tors. Between 2000 and 2009, Venezuela’s infant mortality rate fell from 27 per 1,000 births to 15 (beating Brazil and Colombia). The mortality rate among children under age 5 fell from 32 to 17 per 1,000 (trumping Brazil, Colombia, and Peru), and the adult mortality rate fell from 148 to 146 (edging out both Brazil and ­Colombia).

Nor is the program prohibitively expensive. Venezuela’s health expenditures now stand at 9% of the government budget, which is low for Latin America. Even Henrique Capriles Radonski, Chávez’s conservative rival in the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election, has stated that he will keep the mission in place because it “belongs to the people.”

Cost-Savvier Consumers in North America Consumers in the United States can lower their medical bills if they bargain for it, according to John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis. In a February 2012 Health Care Blog article, he describes the online service Medibid, on which visitors who need specific medical procedures can search for hospitals that offer them and then contact the hospitals to request price bids and estimates. The hospitals retrieve the individuals’ medical records and have them fill out medical questionnaires. Any one visitor can receive as many bids

as he or she pleases and then select one.

Medibid’s users can cut their health-care costs in half through such bidding processes, according to Goodman. The site arranged for more than 50 knee replacements in 2011. Each replacement averaged around $12,000; that is a third of what a private insurance company would normally pay and half of what Medicare would pay. Medibid also led to 66 colonoscopies in 2011, running at an average of $500 to $800 each—about half of what a patient would ordinarily pay. Other Medibid transactions in 2011 included 45 knee and shoulder arthroscopic surgeries, averaging $4,000 to $5,000, and 33 hernia repairs at an average of $3,500 each.

One does not have to log onto Medibid to strike a better deal, however. Goodman notes that virtually any patient who is willing to travel to another city or state can locate a hospital that is willing to perform a procedure at a discount rate. There are even companies that connect patients with bargain procedures in medical facilities outside their immediate geographic areas. For example, North American Surgery, whose clientele include many Canadians looking for surgical procedures in U.S. facilities, negotiates the price of knee replacements down to $16,000– $19,000.

“The implications of all this are staggering. The United States is supposed to have the most expensive medical care found anywhere. Yet many U.S. hospitals are able to offer traveling patients package prices that are competitive with the prices charged by top-rated medical tourist facilities in such places as India, Thailand and Singapore,” Goodman writes.

Prospects for Resuscitating Health Care around the World These success stories show local health teams learning to do more while using less. They run against the grain of health-care policy making at the national levels in their respective countries. Throughout the democratic world, national lawmakers’ general track records on health

For Further Information • Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care by Steve Brouwer. Monthly Review Press. 2011. 256 pages.

• Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion by Pavithra K. Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy. Berrett-­ Koehler. 2011. 336 pages.

• “Aravind Eye Care System,” GiveWell, March 2012, www.givewell .org.

• Health of Nations, www.healthofnations.com.

• Pacific-American Health Organization, www.paho.org.

• UNICEF, www.unicef.org.

• “The Future of Healthcare in Europe,” Economist Intelligence Unit, 2011.

• The Health Care Blog, www.thehealthcareblog.com.

• “Barrio Adentro: A Look at the Origins of a Social Mission” by ­Arachu Castro, ReVista (Fall 2008), David Rockefeller Center for LatinAmerican Studies, www.drclas.harvard.edu.

care entail doing the same (or less) while using more and more. The result is an upward trajectory of costs that experts across the globe warn is unsustainable.

Debate abounds over how Europe’s democracies will keep their health initiatives funded. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development projects that, whereas the European Union’s member nations spent 8% of GDP on health in 2000, they will spend 14% in 2030, with further percent increases in the decades that follow.

Aging populations, combined with the rising costs of new medical technologies and medical R&D, keep pushing the price of care upwards.

Germany’s health system alone ran a $6 billion deficit in 2011. Great Britain’s National Health Service is so strained to rein in its budget deficits, according to the Guardian, that British hospitals have been laying off personnel and reducing the numbers of surgeries, much to the grief of ­patients.

The U.S. health-care system is in even worse shape. It spends more than any nation on health and has a ballooning health budget crisis to show for it: Health spending eats up 16% of U.S. GDP and grows an estimated 3% a year. Not that the United States gets excellent health results in return—the country lags most of the industrialized world in life expecwww.wfs.org

tancy, infant and child mortality, and incidence of cancer and heart disease, as the World Health Organization and other international research bodies have duly recorded.

The correlation of a country’s health expenditures to health outcomes is actually pretty weak. Many countries that spend comparatively paltry sums on health care turn out to have some of the healthiest populations on the planet, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Compare Russia, which has aboveaverage numbers of doctors and hospital beds, with Chile, where doctors and hospital beds are both scarce.

Chileans are, on average, immensely healthier in every key respect.

It’s often said that throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it.

That holds profoundly true in the health-care arena. As Aravind, Medibid, and other innovative models amply show, better health does not hinge upon societies pouring everlarger sums of capital into health care, but rather, upon societies making best use of the health-care resources that they already have. ❑ About the Author Rick Docksai is assistant editor of THE FUTURIST and World Future Review. E‑mail rdocksai@wfs.org.

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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

and design the future. Innovation, strategy, coaching, consulting, retreats.

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.”

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).

Alsek Research Economic Futures 7650 S. McClintoch Dr., #103-233 Tempe, AZ 85284 Phone: 480-225-2507 E-mail: jfoltz@alsekresearch.com Web: www.alsekresearch.com Contact: Joan Foltz Keynotes, workshops, and anticipatory analysis of global markets, investing, and business structures. Author of Market Whipped: And Not By Choice.

Christensen Associates, Inc.

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.

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

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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.

Creating the Future, Inc. with Edward D. Barlow, Jr.

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.

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.

Joseph F. Coates, Consulting Futurist, Inc.

de Bono For Business

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.

Atlas Safety & Security Design, Inc.

Common Sense Medicine

www.wfs.org

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:

Institute for Participatory Management and Planning

Design Intelligence. Publications: The Almanac of Architecture & Design, How Firms Succeed, Design + Enterprise, Leadership by Design, Communication by Design, Value Redesigned.

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.

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.

KAIROS Future AB 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: scenarios, studies, lectures, seminars, consulting. Public and private sectors.

Innovation Focus Inc. 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.”

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.

Institute for Global Futures 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.

Minkin Affiliates 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.

More consultants and services, next page www.wfs.org

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Consultants

and

Services

Next Consulting

David Pearce Snyder, Consulting Futurist

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.

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.

Jim Pinto Associates 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Link to futurist consultants and services online at www.wfs.org/consultants

July-August 2012

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 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.

van der Werff Global, Ltd. SynOvation Solutions

Qi Systems

Connect!

The TechCast Project

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www.wfs.org

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 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.

In Memoriam Howard F. Didsbury Jr. (1924–2012) L o n g t i m e Wo r l d Future Society volunteer and consultant Howard F. Didsbury Jr. died of pneumonia, following a long illness, on March 17, 2012. He was 87.

A native of Detroit, Didsbury earned his bachelor ’s degree in philosophy and gov- Howard F. Didsbury Jr. ernment from Yale University, a master’s degree in history from Harvard University, and a PhD in history and philosophy from American University in Washington, D.C. In the 1950s, Didsbury served as education officer at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, D.C., and then taught at the Longfellow School for Boys in Washington, D.C. He completed his educational career as a professor of history emeritus at Kean College of New Jersey.

Howard Didsbury is probably best known among longtime World Future Society members as one of the instructors of the Society’s popular preconference course “An Introduction to the Study of the Future.” He also served as editor of many of the conference volumes, using his enormously energetic networking skills to collect essays from leading futurists around the world.

Didsbury was devoted to the connection between history and the future that ran through education and learning. Among his many outstanding efforts as the Society’s Director of Special Projects was the comprehensive Prep 21 anthology of futures studies curricula.

He was preceded in death by his partner of more than 50 years, James J. Crider, who had also served the World Future Society as its accountant.

“Howard will be greatly missed in the foresight community,” says Society President Timothy C. Mack. “His long-term service to the Society and other organizations such as the Club of Rome was exemplary and tireless.

The enthusiasm he demonstrated in inspiring young people to understand their own potential both in the classroom and at a wide range of public events was a ­labor of love.”

Mika Mannermaa (1957–2012) A leading international advocate for futures studies, Mika Mannermaa died in January at the age of 54. He was an economist and, through his Futures Studies ­Mannermaa Ltd. consultancy, an advisor to corporations

and government institutions, including the Parliament of Finland.

Mannermaa was an active member in many futures groups, including the Council of the Finnish Society for Futures Studies, the World Futures Studies Federation, and the World Future Society. He co-founded the Futures Professionals International network of futures consulting companies that was established during the World Future Society’s 2002 conMika Mannermaa ference in Philadelphia.

Mannermaa was also a member of the editorial board of World Future Review and a contributor to its predecessor journal, Futures Research Quarterly.

A retrospective of Mika Mannermaa’s work is available on The Millennium Project’s Collaboratory Dome, http://cyber.mpnodes.info/archives/617, and an upcoming edition of Prospective Foresight Network’s ­Futura magazine will be dedicated to his work.

Rushworth M. Kidder (1944–2012)

INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL ETHICS

Author, futurist, and social critic Rushworth M. ­K idder died on March 5 in Naples, Florida, at the age of 67.

A former columnist for the C h r i s t i a n S c i e n c e M o n i t o r, ­K idder founded the Institute for Global Ethics as a forum to promote ethical thinking and the development of core values, including responsibility, honesty, respect, compassion, Rushworth M. Kidder and fairness.

Kidder delivered a keynote address at the World Future Society’s 1991 conference in Minneapolis, arguing that developing a globally accepted set of values was critical to the survival of civilization. He warned that technological advances and values shifts were outpacing our ability to sort out their implications, and that we could not afford to postpone tracking these changes. He cited the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl, which was blamed on electrical engineers “playing around” with a reactor, as a cautionary tale of ethical failure.

“Any meaningful social and political and economic change is preceded by a change in values,” he said. “If we want to devote our energies to looking into the changes that are most going to dictate the future, we must look at the questions of ethics in the twenty-first century. … The dangers are simply too great—and the ethical barometer is simply too low.” ❑ www.wfs.org

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Book Review tions,” he writes. “Although most images of the future may fall like the dead leaves of autumn, some fall like seeds on fertile ground and grow into the tall trees of the future.”

Bell’s beginning was not auspicious.

Wendell Bell Alcohol abuse afflicted his family, and his memories of childhood are checkered Fresno State College, with scenes of spousal where he also met his abuse, police interven- Memories of the Future by wife, Lora-Lee Edtions, and the spring Wendell Bell. Transaction wards. A doctorate in Publishers. 2012. 271 pages. afternoon when his sociology at UCLA $44.95. mother and grandfollowed. Bell then mother took him with proceeded to teach them across the country to start a classes at UCLA, Stanford, and new life without his binge-drinking Northwestern universities and to father and grandfather. work as a visiting fellow at AustraBut there were positives among lian National University in Canberra. the negatives. Books and ideas inHe also lived in Jamaica during its spired him, and so did the kind step- early-1960s transition to indepenfather, Sharkey, who sat and listened dence from Great Britain. His experito the young Wendell rattle off at ences there were a springboard for length about Buddhism, individual- his launch of the UCLA West Indies ism, and the other concepts that he Study Program, which he served as was discovering through reading. director while extensively researchThe first few years after high school ing Jamaica and training students offered less in the way of inspiration. from the United States and the CaHaving enlisted in the Navy but ribbean islands to do the same. His waiting to be called up for active studies were respected enough that duty, he took up stints clearing ware- CIA agents periodically consulted house floors for United Grocers. It him on his findings. was drab work that wore down those Yale was another professional high who made their living by it, and point for Wendell Bell. He was the Bell’s brief sojourn in it stiffened his chair of sociology, and in this posiresolve to attain a better life. tion, he introduced futures-studies The Navy did call him up, and he courses. He also launched an African became a pilot assigned to patrols in American Studies Program and the Philippine Sea. Squadron com- helped transform the all-male and mand would have him fly planes culturally White-Anglo-Saxon-Protinto typhoons to observe their trajec- estant institution into an internationtories and intensity, so to alert ships ally minded one with women and and bases in their paths. Bell attri- minority students and faculty. butes his later futurist work, in part, Bell also fondly remembers the to these missions.

1980 “First Global Conference on the “I had witnessed the importance Future,” which the World Future of foresight and early warning—in Society co-hosted in Toronto with this case, to prevent damage and loss the Canadian Association for Futures of life by knowing some small aspect Studies. He devotes several pages to of the probable future,” he writes. this conference, at which he delivHe returned ashore to attend ered two presentations, and writes of

A Future-Driven Life Adventure

By Rick Docksai

From troubled youth to pioneering futures scholar, acclaimed futurist Wendell Bell takes readers through his life’s highs and lows in this candid new memoir.

What do growing up in an alcoholism-plagued household, laboring for minimum wage in a warehouse, and flying an airplane through tropical storms have to do with the future? A lot, according to Wendell Bell, a Yale University sociologist and futurist whose life story incorporates many such tales. What some people would see as rough patches, he sees as lessons in planning ahead, and as opportunities to envision and create better outcomes.

“I achieved many of my hopes and failed to achieve some others, and I avoided many of my fears (such as becoming a severely injured or dead navy pilot; a life-long warehouseman, agricultural worker, or insurance salesman; or a drunkard or a university president),” he writes.

Bell is renowned for establishing futures studies at Yale and for writing a collection of books and articles on humanity’s long-term outlook, including the two-volume Foundations of Futures Studies. In this autobiography, Bell recounts the life journey that brought him into academia and foresight. He relates the adversities that challenged him, the people and places that inspired him, and the special significance that “images of the future”—notions of what might come to pass, and what one might do about it—hold for him and, truly, for all of us.

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the luminaries who attended and of the zeitgeist of intellectual enthusiasm that permeated the event.

“People excitedly talked to one another, agreeing, disagreeing, or taking off together in flights of imagination,” he writes. “Some, as I had done some years earlier, came out and said it, ‘I am a futurist!’”

Bell details all of these career highlights, and most readers will find them impressive. His narrations of braving danger and hardships in the Navy and of surviving an oftenrocky childhood likewise command admiration.

However, other details of Bell’s memoir put him in a less-flattering light. Readers may be surprised, for instance, by Bell’s admissions of alcohol abuse, which he only in later years curbed to moderate consumption.

“I remember being amused by some of the supercilious, antiestablishment, countercultural things people, including me, said or did under its [alcohol’s] influence,” he writes. “Later in life, I realized how unhealthy drinking to excess was and what asinine behavior it could cause.”

Bell speaks unreservedly about many episodes that other memoir writers might leave out for vanity’s sake: among them, rowdy afterhours get-togethers with warehouse workers, which included visits to a brothel, and casual romantic flings in young adulthood, one of which produced an out-of-wedlock child with whom he lost contact.

Readers get the full story of Bell’s life. He presents his strengths of character alongside his shortcomings; his triumphs are backlit by his setbacks.

Most people appreciate a great life story that brims with meaning and purpose. Such is the life of Wendell Bell as he relates it, unsparingly and, at times, even unflatteringly, in Memories of the Future.

About the Reviewer Rick Docksai is an assistant editor of THE FUTURIST and of World Future Review.

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version of an anti-cancer chemical that is found within a certain plant.

Humanity faces many challenges to its own evolutionary future: population growth, limited food and water supplies, and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and viruses, as well as crop-killing pests and weeds that withstand pesticides.

The more we know of evolution, the more adept we will be to counter the challenges.

Fairbanks discusses immensely complex areas of science in remarkably approachable, reader-friendly prose. All readers who value science and human welfare will likely enjoy this primer on evolution and future research thereof.

Edited by Rick Docksai Knowledge of Evolution Is Power Evolving: The Human Effect and Why It Matters by Daniel J. Fairbanks.

Prometheus. 2012. 328 pages. Paperback. $19.

Evolution did not just take place in humanity’s past, according to Utah Valley University geneticist Daniel Fairbanks. He argues that it is occurring and shaping human life now, and that it will continue to do so.

Fairbanks summarizes the existing knowledge of human evolution and the evidence for it, including discoveries about the human genome. We obtain a wealth of information about our evolutionary past from our DNA, he says, and he expects medicine to consult DNA all the more in the future. The costs of DNA testing are dropping precipitously, and they may become nearly universal, thus allowing for early detection and treatment or prevention of a wide range of disorders.

Fairbanks also describes how evolution continues. Species all around us mutate all the time, especially at the microbial level. We still evolve, too. New chromosome arrangements frequently appear in humans.

Fairbanks strongly hopes that our knowledge of evolutionary processes will continue to expand.

Knowledge of evolution has already led to many beneficial innovations.

For example, observation of microbes’ evolution aided the creation of vaccines for swine flu and other new diseases. Also, by studying the evolution of plant species, one research group created a synthetic www.wfs.org

Alternatives to Alternative ­Energy Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism by Ozzie Zehner.

University of Nebraska. 2012. 449 pages.

Paperback. $29.95.

Pursuing new alternative-energy technologies is fine and good, but society will not resolve its energy troubles unless it changes the underlying problem of ene rg y a n d re source overuse, argues University of California–Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner.

He suspects that heavy investment into solar energy, wind energy, and other renewable systems may actually set us back, since it leaves us with less capital and lower motivation to pursue other energy strategies that work better.

Zehner examines all the bestknown alternative-energy sources— solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, hydro power, geothermal, and clean coal—and explains why each one is •

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demonstrably incapable of displacing fossil fuels. He notes further that many of them emit greenhouse gases of their own, drain exorbitant amounts of natural resources, and drive up society’s overall demand for more energy.

If our goal is to cut back on fossilfuel use, then we cannot rely on renewable energy to achieve it, he concludes. His advice: Get rid of public subsidies for renewable energy, and focus on reducing energy use. Installing more energy-efficient lighting and construction, for example, or building “walkable” communities in which people live close enough to retail and services that they do not need to drive to them, would all benefit human society and the Earth more than new arrays of photovoltaic solar panels or wind farms. So w o u l d c o n t ro l l i n g p o p u l a t i o n growth and mass consumerism, he adds, two major drivers of increased energy demand.

Green Illusions is a somewhat iconoclastic look at the global energy crisis. Renewable-energy advocates and critics both will find much to debate and discuss.

[Editor ’s note: Ozzie Zehner ’s article “Nuclear Power’s Unsettled Future” was published in the MarchApril 2012 issue of THE FUTURIST.]

ward to more companies hiring more specialists in trend tracking, analysis, and strategic foresight to help them avoid repeats of the 20072008 recession. Demand will be especially great for predictive analytics—i.e., large-scale data mining, modeling and simulation, pattern recognition, and game theory—and in qualitative trend analyses and alternative futures, which convey stories about the possible and likely futures.

Companies will not necessarily hire more futurist consultants, however. Rather, they will expect their staff to possess the skills of foresight and visioning. Managers will increasingly need to be their own futurists, adept at forming sound expectations, anticipating new developments, and managing the future. They will need to be “visionary leaders,” who identify and actively create their own futures.

Role models of visionary leadership already exist, according to Millett: Bill Gates is a visionary leader, as were the two brothers-in-law who launched Procter & Gamble. Millett outlines the characteristics that set visionary leaders apart and that aspiring managers should emulate if they, too, want to take command of their and their organizations’ futures. He also describes activities and exercises that they can use to engage all organizational members in the vision and change processes.

Millett describes many of the future changes that may greatly impact both organizational leaders and futurists. Each camp will find much to discuss, ponder, and possibly act upon in Managing the Future.

The Leaders Who Make The Future Managing the Future: A Guide to Forecasting and Strategic Planning in the 21st Century by Stephen M. Millett.

Triarchy Press. 2011. 281 pages.

Paperback. $35.

The market for futurists is strong and will grow stronger, according to Futuring Associates LLC founder Stephen Millett.

He looks for54

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Whose Economy Is It, ­Anyway?

Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government—and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead by David Rothkopf. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2012.

414 pages. $30.

Public-sector versus private-sector •

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interests—it’s a power struggle that has been waged through history, only to enter a whole new stage in recent years, according to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholar David Rothkopf.

The earliest nation-states gave rise to commercial markets and then strove over centuries to nurture them while restraining entrepreneurial greed.

Over the centuries since, Rothkopf notes, governments erred by going either too far or not far enough in their oversight of markets. By the same token, societies suffered when government and business leaders became too close and protected each other instead of the public good.

The stakes have been rising since the 1970s, Rothkopf argues. The power of private interests has grown while that of governments has shrunk to smaller than ever before.

Corporations effectively shape lawmaking through lobbyists or evade national laws altogether by going multinational.

Meanwhile, major corporations hold bigger financial reserves than most countries’ GDPs. In fact, government-issued currencies now hold only marginal value: The combined value of all of the world’s currencies is only a small fraction of the cumulative value of the world’s securities and derivatives, market instruments that are scarcely regulated or even understood.

As the private sectors have gained clout, income inequalities have widened worldwide. Rothkopf expects that the disparities will grow, and that more social tensions and business–government squabbles will likely follow.

Businesses and governments must both evolve, he concludes. We will need new attitudes and ideas, evergreater collaboration among nations, stronger mechanisms of global gov-

ernance, and better business–government partnerships. The private and public sectors need each other, and a healthy society needs both.

Rothkopf extensively portrays where the world’s political and economic systems have come from and where they are going. Readers with an interest in the dynamics of public and private sector interactions will find Power, Inc. a worthy read.

Defusing the Megacity “Bomb” The Real Population Bomb: Megacities, Global Security & The Map of the Future

by P. H. Liotta and James F. Miskel.

Potomac. 2012. 248 pages. $29.95.

The most urban growth this century will take place in countries that are least prepared for it, warn defense experts P. H. Liotta and James F. Miskel. The authors foresee serious implications for the whole globe.

By 2025, the world will have 27 megacities with populations exceeding 10 million. A great number will lie within northern Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, China, and Indochina—a zone where urban poverty and squalor already run rampant. As these megacities continue expanding, they will inflict severe environmental pollution and become havens for terrorism and organized crime. Those dangerous elements will eventually spread outwards, potentially destabilizing entire states and regions.

The authors note that, in 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, in which he predicted that mass starvation would befall cities later in the twentieth century as a consequence of overpopulation. Although the century ended without Ehrlich’s predictions

these machines might be more inclined to go to war.

On the civilian side, who is liable when a self-driving vehicle causes a traffic accident, or when a self-propelled lawnmower drives over someone’s foot? The manufacturer might claim no fault, in either case: It was the robot’s “mistake.”

Will “intelligent” robots know right from wrong? We will need to program morality into them and educate them on everyday nuances.

There is also the matter of robot companions. Consumers could buy personal ro bots to be their caregivers, pets, servants, and even sexual partners.

How will we feel when people befriend these machines, or even fall in love with them? Also, what rights would personal robots possess?

The authors encourage us to think over these questions while robotic intelligence is still in development.

We can make sure that intelligent robots do more help and less harm if we form social mores, professional codes, and regulations in advance.

Robot Ethics combines technology, philosophy, and sociology into one deep and varied discussion. Enthusiasts of any of these fields, and anyone else who is just curious about where artificial intelligence is heading, will find much to like. ❑

coming to pass, Liotta and Miskel expect that the twenty-first century might see him vindicated as cities drain their resource bases. The problem is not world population growth per se, but nonstop migration into megacities. This urbanization is the “real population bomb.”

The authors call on world leaders, nonprofit activists, and businesses to dispense more aid—under strict oversight—to the developing world’s megacities, and to assist their development of law enforcement and civil institutions. All aid mechanisms should undergo reforms to make them more targeted and more responsive to conditions on the ground, and, when necessary, the UN or other development organizations might temporarily take over a megacity’s administration to oversee critical fixes.

The Real Population Bomb is a persuasive and powerfully written call to action. Urban planners, antipoverty specialists, and anyone concerned about the state of the world will find it informative and instructive.

Doing Right By Robots Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics edited by Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George Bekey. MIT Press. 2012. 386 pages. $45.

The rise of intelligent robots is inevitable, but we must not rush it, caution this volume’s 27 authors, whose areas of expertise range from philosophy and global affairs to cybernetics and computer programming. The authors call for serious societal discussion into how to ensure that thinking robots will not harm us and that, likewise, we will not misuse them.

For instance, militaries around the world are developing armed vehicles that will kill human targets without human instruction. Many military leaders worry that such robots will have a hard time distinguishing combatants from innocent civilians. Also, a country that has www.wfs.org

News and Comments Welcome Send feedback on any article or story to letters@wfs.org.

News stories pertaining to trends, forecasts, or futurism may be submitted to the editor at cwagner@wfs.org.

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WorldFuture 2012 Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver.

Friday evening, July 27, 2012, through Sunday, July 29, 2012 Preconference courses on Thursday and Friday, July 26 and 27, plus a workshop-based Education Summit on Friday, July 27.

Professional Members Forum on Monday, July 30 Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Highlights and Events

WorldFuture 2012 organizers are developing special events and activities for conference-goers to enjoy in ­Toronto. Here are just a few highlights.

Welcoming Reception

Join your futuring friends and meet new colleagues at the welcoming reception on Friday evening after the opening plenary. While you are enjoying the refreshments and stimulating conversation with friends, WFS staff, and speakers, share what you learned at the master’s courses and discuss what exciting sessions you’ll be attending over the next two days.

Tech Petting Zoo at Futurists: BetaLaunch

Join dreamers, designers, and developers on their way to delivering innovations that will shape the future at the Futurists: BetaLaunch invention expo. In its second year, the competitive showcase will feature 11 unique programs and technologies that will change how we live— from the way we interact with our electronic devices to remote diagnoses of illnesses. WorldFuture attendees will be able to engage with the inventive visionaries as they demonstrate their future-impacting innovations. (See page 64 for a sneak preview of F:BL exhibitors.)

Opening Plenary Future of the Internet

Lee Rainie

In this keynote presentation based on his latest book, Networked: The New Social Operating System (co-­authored with Barry Wellman), Dr. Lee Rainie will discuss the findings of the most recent expert surveys on the future of teens’ brains, the future of

universities, the future of money, the impact of Big Data, the battle between apps and the Web, the spread of gamefication, and the impact of smart systems on consumers. One of the world’s foremost experts on the changing face of the Internet, Rainie is the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan “fact tank” that studies the social impact of the Internet. Since December 1999, the Washington, D.C., research center has examined how people’s Internet use affects their families, communities, health care, education, civic and political life, and workplaces. He is the former managing editor of the newsmagazine U.S. News & World Report and the co-author of four books about the future of the Internet that are based on Pew surveys.

Waking Up the Algorithm For too long, computers, computational power, and even software have been thought of as cold mathematical pursuits, when in reality, the digital world is just an extension of human existence. With increasing generation of data through human activity and interaction, more complex processing and technologies are needed—but they must also be accesBrian David Johnson sible. Building data processes for the future requires a more human design to interpret and deliver information in the right context, relatable to and understood by users. Brian David Johnson will discuss how Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is crafting algorithms and processes that will better understand what it means to be human in 2025. Johnson is author of Screen Future and the director of Future Casting and Experience Research for Intel.

AARON M. COHEN

Closing Plenary

Preconference Master Courses

Blindsided

In his book Blindsided!, Jim Harris looks at how companies and whole industries are caught off guard. He loves to talk about how an 18-year-old kid blindsided a $40 billion industry: With Napster, Sean Fanning changed music distribution forever.

And why did Apple, not any of the record labels, re­invent the music industry in an age of digital distribution? Being blindsided can afJim Harris fect all industries. This closing plenary will offer insights into how blindsiding can occur, how to identify the early warning signs—and how to blindside your competition.

Jim Harris is a principal at Strategic Advantage. He previously held positions as partner at Cleantech Group and affiliate at Covey Leadership ­Centre.

Education Summit

(Separate Registration) Flash Forward: The Future of Education invites educators and futurists to collaborate and imagine the future of education. Re­imagining an education system once established to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution will require the best minds collaborating to shape education for our global, hyperconnected society. Participants of Flash Forward will workshop together—in large groups and small breakouts—to identify the immediate next steps to shape the future of education. A circle of experts for the open forum will include Karen Grose, Jim ­Strachan, and Jim Morrison.

Karen Grose

Jim Strachan

AARON M. COHEN

Jim Morrison

(Separate Registration) WFS preconference master courses are a quick, affordable way to develop or expand futuring skills from leaders in the field. The courses are held on Thursday and Friday before the conference opens, and enrollment is limited to keep learning focused and personalized.

Each course gives both emerging futurists and established practitioners deeper insight into a variety of topics.

For complete course descriptions and faculty information, please visit www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2012/ special-events/master-courses.

Thursday courses C-1 Introduction to Futures Studies, with Peter C. Bishop C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp, with Jay Gary and Richard Slaughter C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future, with Clem Bezold C-5 The Human Dynamics of Creation to Effect Change, with Megan Mitchell and Marci Segal C-6 Identifying and Exploring Security’s Futures and What Can Be Done to Prepare, with David Harries

Friday courses C-7 An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting: A Case Study Approach, with Riel Miller and Andy Hines C-8 Futurist Writers’ Workshop, with Cynthia G. ­Wagner and Patrick Tucker.

C-10 Weak Signals and Minitrends: Foundations for Truly Innovative Organizations, with John Vanston and Rick Smyre

Highlighted Sessions Scouting the Future with the Implications Wheel

Saturday Afternoon In this experiential workshop, participants will explore a current issue of global significance using the latest version of Joel Barker’s Implications Wheel. Participants, working with the online software in teams, will clarify an issue, generate “first order” implications, and then scout possible implications, both positive and negative, using the software’s contributing and scoring feaJoel A. Barker tures. Participants will evaluate their work, identifying key issues and looking for opportunities to increase the likelihood of positives and address the risks of negatives. The session offers a methodology for identifying barriers to address undesirable consequences, bridges to increase the likelihood of desirable consequences, and strategies for resolving information needs.

Reimagining the Future of Global Health, Wellness, and Health-Care Delivery

Sunday Afternoon Global crises in health-care delivery, management, and financing have spotlighted what in many ways are broken systems. Rather than engineering incremental changes to largely outmoded processes and institutions, we must imagine entirely new possibilities to build a more positive future. Innovation in medical technology, evolution of design, growth of medical tourism, improved understanding of aging and demography, advancements in brain imaging and sensory science, and greater consideration of spiritual factors have led many to reconsider what the new products, services, and systems of the twenty-first century could and should be. A panel of the world’s most influential experts in health, medicine, and wellness will lead this multidisciplinary discussion.

Post-Conference Event: Professional Members ­Forum

Day-Long Session for Professional Members Only!

(Separate Registration)

Embracing Complexity: The Futures Community at a Turning Point The Professional Members Forum will address the future of futuring through engaging discussions and workshops. The futures community needs to reformat its pur-

pose—the challenge is not that we must find new ways to “know” the future; rather, we need to find ways to live and act with not knowing the future Jay Ogilvy Riel Miller and focus on the key concepts and practices to embrace complexity in everyday decision making. A discussion about this future challenge with Jay Ogilvy and Riel Miller will be followed by a moderated panel discussion. Forum attendees will work in small groups to “drill down” to practical and effective ways to bring the ideas from the conference weekend into their own practice. A workshop session will give participants the opportunity to define the future of the futures community by identifying an image and vision for futurists and developing actionable steps to advance the futures community in the near future.

For the full conference program and to register, visit www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2012.

Tweeting the Future

Engage our speakers on Twitter before, during, and after WorldFuture 2012 by following this list: http://twitter.com/WorldFutureSoc/worldfuture2012speakers During the conference, live tweet your insights using the official conference hashtag #wf12. And follow @WorldFutureSoc and THE FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker @Theyear2030 for year-round Twitter updates about the future.

Your Stay In Toronto

Situated on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, ­Toronto is one of Canada’s southernmost cities. As a result, Toronto has a moderate climate and a beautiful natural setting, and is only hours by train, car, bus, or airplane from many major cities in the United States. Toronto, the entertainment capital of Canada, offers lavish Broadway-style musicals, traveling road shows, and classical concerts year round.

Toronto boasts several top-tier universities and is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. The Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel is located in the heart of Toronto’s ­vibrant theater, business, and entertainment district and ­directly connected to the Eaton Centre shopping complex.

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.

Yes! I want to meet, exchange ideas with, and learn from my futurist ­colleagues. Please reserve my place at the World Future Society’s WorldFuture 2012. I understand registration ­includes admission to all ­sessions, the welcome reception, entrance to exhibits, and a list of preregistrants. And if for any reason I am unable to attend, I may cancel and receive a full refund until June 29, 2012.

Register by June 29, 2012

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Save $50 Registration.................................................................................................................................................................................................... $800............................... $850.......................

Member’s Rate............................................................................................................................................................................................ $745............................... $795.......................

Senior Citizen 65 or older / Citizen of a developing nation........................................................................................................... $690............................... $740.......................

Young Futurist under the age of 30......................................................................................................................................................... $125............................... $150.......................

(Please attach appropriate documentation.)

2-day Luncheon Package (with speakers) — $119............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Single Luncheons — $65 Select one: Saturday (with Geordie Rose) Sunday (with Edie Weiner)................................................................................................

PRECONFERENCE MASTER COURSES AND EDUCATION SUMMIT Thursday, July 26, 2012, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

C-1 Introduction to Futures Studies, Peter Bishop — $199 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp, Jay Gary — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future, Clem Bezold — $199 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C-5 The Human Dynamics of Creation to Effect Change, Megan Mitchell and Marci Segal — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C-6 Identifying and Exploring Security’s Futures and What Can Be Done to Prepare, David Harries — $199 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Friday, July 27, 2012, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

C-7 An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting: A Case Study Approach, Andy Hines and Riel Miller — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C-8 Futurist Writers’ Workshop, Cynthia Wagner and Patrick Tucker — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C-10 Weak Signals and Minitrends: Foundations for Truly Innovative Organizations, John Vanston and Rick Smyre — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

E-1 Education Summit — $149. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ❑ Professional Members Forum, Monday, July 30, 2012 — $115 professional members.....................................................................................................................................

Professional Membership — $295 ($195 nonprofit /academic rate) ❑ Renewal ❑ New (Join now to qualify for the Forum.)....................................................

World Future Society membership — $79 ($20 for full-time students under the age of 25) ❑ Renewal ❑ New (Join now and take advantage of the members’ rate.).......................................................................................................................................................

Tax-deductible Contribution to Scholarship Fund (Your $125 contribution will make it possible for a student to attend, but every dollar will help.)............................

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Hotel reservation forms will be sent with the acknowledgment of registration, or you can call the hotel directly at 1-416-361-1000 or 1-800-325-3535. Mention that you’re attending the WFS meeting to receive your special rate of $185 CAD (single or double) per night.

REFUND POLICY: If your plans to attend the conference change, you may receive a full refund until June 29, 2012. A $100 administrative fee will be charged for cancellations after June 29, 2012. No refunds will be given after July 13, 2012. Refund requests must be in writing by email, mail, or fax. Substitutions may be made at any time.

Photo/Video Consent: This conference might be photographed, filmed, or audio or video recorded by management for future broadcast, publication, or promotion, including pictures of speakers and attendees or individuals in the audience. Your attendance at this event shall be deemed as your consent to have your image or likeness appear in any publication, broadcast, display, or other transmission or reproduction of this event in whole or in part.

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MAIL TO: World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. • FAX TO: 1-301-951-0394 • CALL TOLL-FREE: 1-800-989-8274 (If outside the toll-free calling area, call 1-301-656-8274.) • E-MAIL: info@wfs.org • WEB SITE: www.wfs.org

A Special Message from the President of the World Future Society

Because the Future Matters…

Dear Reader,

The World Future Society Needs You ... because the more complex that the future becomes, the more minds we need at work: • scanning the horizon, • scouting the opportunities and risks ahead, • envisioning inspiring possibilities, • deliberating and debating alternative scenarios, and • leading the teams that will build better futures not just for ourselves, but also for the generations to come.

For nearly half a century, members of the World Future Society have supported the publications, resources, research, and networking opportunities that have helped develop the field of futures studies.

Over the years, we have expanded the foresight capabilities of leaders in government, business, academia, and civil society; enabled people from all walks of life to come to terms with rapidly accelerating change and create better futures for their families and businesses; and promoted the more specialized work performed by professional futurists.

As we look to our own future, the Society is now faced with the challenge of expanding its mission to more people via new media ventures and education initiatives. Our goals include: • Building a better Web community for members, with easier access to futures materials and connections to colleagues around the world.

• Creating a dynamic network of futurist groups at the local level, enabling communities, villages, schools, and organizations to collectively envision and build sustainable futures.

• Developing a meta-curriculum of futures studies that enables foresight to be incorporated into all classroom studies and learning activities.

• Cultivating young futurists by providing resources, networking opportunities, and other support through the Global Youth Foresight program.

• Improving the training and education of both professional futurists and those who need to incorporate futuring methodologies in their own professional activities or personal pursuits.

But our goals cannot be met without your support, and membership dues alone cannot sustain the future we hope to achieve.

8 Ways You Can Help the World Future Society

1. Make a generous, tax-deductible donation to the Society. Donors are gratefully acknowledged in THE FUTURIST each year, and those who donate student scholarships for the conference are also acknowledged in the conference program. Donate online at www.wfs.org/support 2. Volunteer your expertise in fund-raising, grant-writing, sponsorship sales, and partnership program development. Contact me, Tim Mack, at tmack@wfs.org or 301-656-8274.

3. Renew your membership—NOW! Not a member? Join now, for just $79 a year. Learn more here: www.wfs.org/renew 4. Consider giving gift memberships to all your friends, family, neighbors, clients, colleagues, mentors, and mentees. The first gift is $79, and the rest are just $65 each: www.wfs.org/gifts 5. Consider giving gift student memberships, just $20 a year each for fulltime students under age 25.

6. Become an Institutional Member, enabling your organization to receive all publications produced by the Society and special assistance in finding resources and making connections tailored to meet your needs. Learn more at www.wfs.org/benefits 7. Become a Professional Member, entitling you to a subscription to World Future Review and complimentary registration for the annual Professional Members’ Forum, in addition to all the other benefits of Society membership.

Learn more at www.wfs.org/professional 8. Register for WorldFuture 2012, to be held July 27-29 in Toronto, ON, Canada. There is no better place to express your own ideas and pick up new ones.

And there are many other ways that you can help spread the word about the World Future Society and its mission, resources, and activities: • Sign up to receive Futurist Update, the World Future Society’s free monthly e-mail newsletter, and share it with your own network of co-workers, friends, family, or clients: www.wfs.org/content/futurist-update • Follow the Society on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social-­ networking venues.

• Join a local group of futurists to participate in book discussions, lectures, field trips, and other activities. Learn more about futurist groups, in both the real and virtual worlds, at www.wfs.org/chapters By taking action now, you will help the Society to sustain the services we have, develop new and useful services and products, promote educational efforts, and support the work of practicing futurists.

With a general public educated to the benefits of futures studies, the field can only grow stronger—more people and organizations will recognize the critical need for foresight, because the future matters.

Thank you for your support—now and in the future!

Take care,

Tim Mack President tmack@wfs.org

Futurists

and

Their Ideas

By Edward Cornish

Change Masters: Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc. Pioneering business futurists explain how they have developed the art and science of trend analysis.

Under the leadership of Arnold Brown and Edie Weiner, the futurist consulting firm of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., has been a pioneer in identifying and analyzing the changes that affect business and other aspects of human life. This article explains how they developed trend analysis as a business tool.

Back in the 1960s, insurance companies in North America became alarmed at the turmoil and violence then shaking the world. Young people were rioting. War raged in Vietnam and elsewhere. Several nations threatened each other with atomic bombs. And in the midst of the uncertainty, assassins killed U.S. President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The insurance companies recognized that they faced colossal liabilities to their policy holders. (The liability for a single death typically runs into many thousands of dollars.) The companies also feared that the U.S. government might institute a nationwide insurance program financed by taxpayers. If that were to happen, it could wipe out the traditional insurance business overnight.

Faced with this uncertainty, the Institute of Life Insurance in New York City assigned Arnold Brown, a recent graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, to collect and disseminate information about what was happening in the world that might affect the insurance business.

Brown knew little about life insurance, but he quickly set out to discover what was happening in the world that might affect the insurers.

“I knew that large insurance companies already had a lot of information about social change, thanks to the extensive public-opinion research they did,” says Brown. “So it seemed to me that the problem was not a lack of information. It was

not knowing how to use the information that was available.”

At about this time, Brown came across a book on “environmental scanning” by Harvard Business School professor Frank Aguilar. Intrigued, Brown went to see Aguilar and explored with him how his concept could be implemented. He put together an advisory committee of insurance executives and social scientists to help create what would become the insurance industry’s Trend Analysis Program.

“I started with some specific ideas,” says Brown. “The work should be objective, avoiding bias; it should be linked to action—not just an academic exercise—and it should involve the people in the life insurance business at all levels, because I knew that the only way to get people to act on information about change is to have them de-

velop the information themselves!”

The committee then decided to monitor publications in a systematic manner and prepare abstracts of relevant items. The abstracts would then be analyzed by a group that would identify specific implications for the life insurance business and report the findings to a more senior group, which would develop recommendations for action.

A Major Innovation When Brown and his colleagues launched the Trend Analysis Program in 1969, it was the first systematic environmental scanning effort in American business, and it was an immediate success!

The following year, Edie Weiner, who had just graduated from the City College of New York, came to

Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., principals: Arnold Brown, chairman. Arnold is a

Erica Orange, vice president. Erica’s spe-

former board chairman for the World Future Society and now serves on its Global Advisory Council. His most recent article for THE FUTURIST, “Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society,” was published in the March-April 2011 issue.

cialties are social, technological, economic, and political trends.

She has written frequently for THE FUTURIST, most recently in the July-August 2011 issue, “Augmented, Anonymous, Accountable: The Emerging Digital Lifestyle.”

Jared Weiner, vice president. Jared, now

Edie Weiner, president. Edie is a special-

serving on the World Future Society’s board of directors, focuses on emerging trends in the global marketplace. He and Erica, along with others, have developed a series of popular sessions on Global Youth Culture for the Society’s annual conferences.

ist in marketing, product development, and strategic planning, and has been a popular speaker at many World Future Society conferences. In 2011, she received the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Futurists

and

Their Ideas

Trend Analysis in Action

By Edie Weiner Here are a few examples of the trend analysis work that Weiner, Edrich, Brown has produced for our clients: • In the mid-1970s, seeing how life cycles were changing and how this could affect the life insurance business, we convinced a major insurer to introduce Variable Life Insurance. They did, and within two years, it was accounting for more than 50% of the company’s new revenues from premiums.

• In the early 1980s, a popular book on trends counseled that the North and East U.S. were waning, and all the growth prospects were in the South. We saw a dozen indicators why that was not entirely true, and when one major insurance company we were working with was following the path of the other insurers, violating their investment guidelines and placing too much emphasis on the South, we urged them to pull back. Two years later, when there were problems with overdevelopment in the

tions such as the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review,” Brown recalls. “People from many companies wanted our information and came to visit us.”

In 1977, the Institute of Life Insurance decided to move to Washington, D.C. Says Brown: “Edie, Hal Edrich, and I did not want to go, so we decided to start a consulting firm to help organizations do scanning, using the Trend Analysis Program, which had, by then, become widely accepted.”

Since then, Weiner and Brown have also collaborated on several insightful and popular business trend books: Super­managing: How to Harness Change for Personal and Organization Success (McGraw-Hill, 1984), Office Biology or Why Tuesday Is Your Most Productive Day and Other Relevant Facts for Survival in the Workplace

work for the Institute in its research department under Hal Edrich.

“Edie joined the team I had put together,” Brown recalls, “and it was immediately apparent that she was exceptionally talented and had an amazing gift for futurism. I moved her up to the analysis group very quickly.

A couple of years later, when I became a senior executive and could not devote the necessary time to the Trend Analysis Program, it was turned over to Edie, who was then only 23.”

Early on, the Trend Analysis Program began to get attention beyond the insurance business. Brown and Ian Wilson, a futurist at General Electric’s New York headquarters, formed a small group of business futurists who met periodically to discuss methods and problems.

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South, the insurer we counseled had the smallest mortgage default portfolio of all of their peers, making a difference of many millions of dollars in their investment returns.

• In the late 1980s, seeing emerging energy trends, we counseled a global automation company to get into the field of hybrid and fuelcell technology. As a result of our urging, they sent a delegation to an energy conference featuring the new technology. Within two years, they formed a separate division focusing on this alternative energy, appointed a president, and were successfully advancing the field.

• Also in the late 1980s, we identified Islamic finance as a significant emerging factor on the world economic scene. We convinced a major global insurer to get into ­I slamic finance, which is conducted quite differently and with which many Western companies were unfamiliar. It became a highly successful business for them.

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Among our accomplishments in the past decade: • As a result of our discussions about advances in neuroscience and brain imaging, a major food company client used the new research to improve product packaging.

• As a result of our Fast Forward innovation session, a major payment systems company started to successfully penetrate the student market.

• As a result of the thinking technologies featured in our latest book, FutureThink, the kick-off module in the innovation center of a Fortune 50 company was reshaped to focus on our concepts, leading to several successful innovations in the company, some of which are now household names.

Edie Weiner is president of Weiner, ­Edrich, Brown, Inc., 200 East 33rd Street, Suite 9-I, New York, New York 10016.

Web site www.WeinerEdrichBrown.com.

(Master Media, 1994), Insider’s Guide to the Future (Bottom Line, 1997), and FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change (Pearson-Prentice Hall, 2006).

Today, bolstered by the talents of Jared Weiner (Edie’s son and a World Future Society board member) and Erica Orange as vice presidents, the Weiner, Edrich, Brown consultancy serves businesses of all types. All four principals have become enormously popular as speakers at World Future Society conferences and will be presenting at WorldFuture 2012 in ­Toronto this July. ❑ About the Author Edward Cornish is the founding editor of THE FUTURIST and futurist-in-residence for the World Future Society. E-mail ­ecornish@wfs.org.

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.

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Visions

By Kenneth J. Moore

Preview of Future Inventions— Futurists: BetaLaunch 2012 The World Future Society’s second annual innovation competition will allow WorldFuture 2012 attendees to preview a few of the life-changing and societyaltering artifacts of the future.

babies each year are born with a common but serious jaundice condition, requiring extended hospital stays in an isolette tank for the child or mobility-constraining home treatments.

The BiliSuit is a form-fitting garment that delivers life-saving treatment through an LED and fiber-optic delivery system. The suit is reusable and its battery can be recharged with solar energy, so it can be used in remote locations with limited access to electricity—such as rural areas in Asia.

• Sensory Acumen. “Smell-o-vision” is not a new concept, but Sensory Acumen’s olfactory feedback device takes a new smell-generating tact in its delivery for gaming, entertainment, and psychotherapy.

Scent triggers emotional responses and memories, so the device has been used in treating people with certain brain disorders, traumas, and phobias in an immersive virtual reality environment. The device allows for customized scent profiles—for example, to help war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder or for specific video games.

• BiDi Screen. The next step beyond touch-screen devices is here: the gesture-sensing BiDi Screen (for bi­ directional; pronounced BYE-dye). The apparatus features an in-screen optical input device for mobile liquid-crystal displays, allowing even a mobile device’s screen to sense fingers hovering over it as well as providing a touch interface. The BiDi Screen gives users a new relationship with mobile information, bringing the rich gestural interaction we’ve come to expect from multitouch mobile devices into the 3-D space.

• ZED.TO by The Mission Business. The Mission Business has developed an immersive, cross-platform entertainment strategy that combines foresight and education with transmedia events, fiction, and theatrical panache to thrill audiences. The first event, ZED.TO, will

The future is open to infinite possibilities for innovative thinkers. Those who have been selected to showcase their work at the World Future Society’s annual conference, WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop.

Deliver, have put their creative efforts into solving a wide range of problems, from accelerating the gene-­ sequencing process to comforting sick children during life-saving treatments.

The technologies and social innovations featured below are winners of the second Futurists: BetaLaunch (F:BL) invention expo, a “petting zoo” where WorldFuture attendees can interact with artifacts from the future and engage with the exhibitors.

• Senstore. Senstore is taking advantage of exponential developments in sensors, wireless connectivity, and artificial intelligence to provide access to health care from anywhere. Senstore is developing a home diagnostic device—a medical tricorder—with intuitive AI interactions and continuous monitoring of biometric data.

• The Cyberhero League by Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D. Most children want to help other people, animals, and the environment—but they don’t know where or how to begin. The Cyberhero League is a social platform that will enable children to act digitally to help others around the world.

SCREEN CAPTURE FROM MIT MEDIA LAB VIDEO A child earns points through games and other activities, and uses those points for charitable gifts that supply emergency relief supplies (food, water, and medicine), support wildlife conservation, and protect the environment. As Cyber­h eroes, kids will have the power to change the world while learning about environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

• The BiliSuit by i3 BioDesigns. The birth of a new child i s a j o y o u s o c c a - BiliSuit offers comfort sion—but millions of for infants with jaundice. BiDi Screen brings gesture-sensing interface to 3-D life.

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play out in real life and online over the course of months to explore critical uncertainties in technology and social values.

• Filabot by Rocknail Specialties. A tool designed to make home 3-D printing cheaper and more environmentally friendly, Filabot is a desktop extruding system that grinds various plastics to make spools of filament for 3-D printers. Filabot can process milk jugs, soda bottles, and other types of plastics—as well as bad prints, turning what would be waste into usable filament for future prints.

• ComposeTheFuture. This free, integrated social network focuses on futurist members’ interests in future predictions, goal setting, scenario planning, and impact analysis. The network will enable futurists around the world to collaborate on issues and work toward achieving goals.

• Strategic Foresight & Innovation program at OCAD University. This program trains students to address complex, socially important issues through designing for creative social futures. The program instills the spirit of technological foresight and long-­horizon innovation into new foresight thinkers through a combination of innovation practice, systems thinking, design leadership, and social research.

• Ion Proton Sequencer by Life Technologies. The Ion Proton Sequencer, featured in the May-June 2012 issue of THE FUTURIST as a Consumer Electronics Show pick, offers affordable whole-human-genome sequencing in just hours instead of days or weeks. The Ion Proton Sequencer sequences DNA on a small semiconductor chip rather than using standard large, expensive optical-based instrumentation.

• B-TEMIA. To get people on their feet, B-TEMIA has developed a wearable dermoskeleton that restores, maintains, or enhances mobility. With military and med-

ical applications, the dermoskeleton increases a person’s biomechanical capabilities and assists movement without impeding natural walking patterns.

For more information about WorldFuture 2012 and links to all of the Futurists: ­BetaLaunch exhibitors, visit www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2012. ❑ About the Author Kenneth J. Moore is a contributing writer for THE FUTURIST and communications assistant for the World Future Society.

ROCKNAIL SPECIALTIES

Filabot turns plastics into materials for 3-D printers.

SCREEN CAPTURES FROM LIFE TECHNOLOGIES VIDEO

Ion Proton Sequencer accelerates whole-human-genome decoding (and lowers the costs).

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Now Available!

Moving from Vision to Action Practical analysis of our multifaceted global problems and pragmatic strategies for addressing them highlight this volume of essays prepared for WorldFuture 2011. Topics explored range from the “New Enlightenment” to tactics for leveraging collective intelligence.

Moving from Vision to Action, edited by FUTURIST magazine editor Cynthia G. Wagner, was distributed free to all 2011 conference attendees and to Institutional Members Contributors Stephen Aguilar-Millan Michael Blinick Irving H. Buchen Choi Hangsub José Luis Cordeiro Inga-Lena Darkow Don C. Davis Wim J. de Ridder Gary Dehrer Tony Diggle David A. Gilliam Jerome C. Glenn Tobias Gnatzy Theodore J. Gordon Sirkka Heinonen Alireza Hejazi Anvar Idiatullin James H. Irvine Sofi Kurki David J. LePoire Thomas Lombardo Joseph N. Pelton John Renesch Sandra Schwarzbach Bruce L. Tow Heiko von der Gracht Verne Wheelwright Richard Yonck

of the Society. Now, the volume is available to the public, with a discount for World Future Society members.

Part 1: Perspectives and Prospects brings today’s major trend drivers into historical perspective and offers ways to think about the human future in the context of accelerating change—some of which we cannot control, but much of which we can.

Part 2: Futures and Futuring focuses on improving the basic equipment at our disposal not just for forecasting the future, but also for building a human ecosystem in which our visions may be realized.

Part 3: Education, Information, Tools, and Resources addresses four key sectors in which our ingenuity for envisioning solutions (and acting upon them) could hold the greatest opportunities for improving the world’s future: technology, information, education, and energy.

Part 4: New Directions and Leadership concludes with techniques both for generating better visions of the future and for becoming better leaders—perhaps the most critical tool of all for moving from vision to action.

Moving from Vision to Action edited by Cynthia G. Wagner.

WFS. 2011. 433 pages. Paperback.

ISBN 13: 978-0-930242-68-8. $29.95 ($24.95 for Society members).

Order from www.wfs.org/wfsbooks or call Society headquarters, 301-656-8274