THE FUTURIST, March - April 2013

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

www.wfs.org

March-April 2013

5 Economies That Work, page 32 The End of Mediocre Colleges, page 40 Asimov’s Embarrassing Robot, page 18 Innovation as a Resource, page 24 PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Forecasting Violent Behavior China’s Closed Circuits Investing in Agricultural Innovation … and more

The future of intelligence, artificial and otherwise.

By Ray Kurzweil page 14

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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

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Learn more at www.wfs.org/professional 8. Register for WorldFuture 2013, to be held July 19-21 in Chicago, ­Illinois. 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.

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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

March-April 2013 Volume 47, No. 2

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

about the future

ARTICLES 14 How to Make a Mind

By Ray Kurzweil

Can nonbiological brains have real minds of their own? In this article, drawn from his latest book, futurist/ inventor Ray Kurzweil describes the future of intelligence—artificial and otherwise.

Ideas as resource.

Page 24

18 Asimov’s Embarrassing Robot: A Futurist ­Fable

By Irving H. Buchen As machines begin to learn and even to pursue higher knowledge, we may need to take another look at Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics.

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

4

Feedback

6

World Trends & Forecasts: Mental Health, Information Society, Public Investment, Risk Assessment, Marine Life

24 How Innovation Could Save the Planet

By Ramez Naam

61 Future Active

54 Four Scenarios for 2030 A book review by Robert Moran

In Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, the National Intelligence Council offers an overview of major trends affecting the world, reduced to four basic scenarios. However, the report’s authors overlook several key tensions.

As the world changes, we may need to modify our methods of forecasting to better make sense of change. Yet, we must not discard the still-relevant wisdom of the past. The president of the World Future Society lays out some “rules of the road” for forecasting that draw a middle path between inclusiveness and adaptation on one hand, and discretion and convention on the other.

64 As Tweeted: In 30 Years, Everyone Will Be Beautiful

From personal futures to transhumanism to the glocalization of beauty and well-being: Futurists let their minds wander.

Ideas may be our greatest natural resource, says a computer scientist and futurist. He argues that the world’s most critical challenges—including population growth, peak oil, climate change, and limits to growth—could be met by encouraging innovation.

51 Consultants and Services

BOOKS

46 Foresight as Dialogue

By Timothy C. Mack

32 Five Economies That Work: Global Success Stories

By Rick Docksai

Reining in taxes and spending may be the wrong prescription for what’s ailing the world’s economies.

40 Educating the Future: The End of Mediocrity

By Rob Bencini

Also reviewed:

The Digital Rights Movement The Real Story of Risk 25 Things You Need to Know About the Future

Students facing uncertain future opportunities (but very certain debt loads) may increasingly turn away from private colleges and universities that offer little more than a diploma.

Instead, they’ll seek more-affordable alternatives for higher education, both real and virtual.

Our future selves. Page 64

COVER ILLUSTRATION: TODD HARRISON / HELLEN SERGEYEVA / ISTOCKPHOTO

© 2013 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 DARPA

Challenge from DARPA: Robot emergency responders must learn to maneuver in hazardous environments.

Robots to the Rescue To save lives in disasters where conditions are too dangerous for humans, robots may soon be able to step up. But even stepping into an emergency vehicle is a challenge for today’s humanoid robots.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has called on teams of researchers from academia and industry to try to build robots that can drive, move adaptively in complex environments, and handle

the types of equipment necessary to rescue people in disasters involving radiation or biocontamination.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge aims to advance the state of the art in robotic perception, dexterity, strength, decision making, and supervised autonomy, meaning that the ­robots could be controlled by nonexperts.

Source: DARPA Robotics Challenge, www.theroboticschallenge .org.

Gauntlet Keyboard: One-Handed Interface “Touch typing” will soon take on a whole new meaning. An electronic glove developed by engineering students at the

University of Alabama, Huntsville, could replace traditional keyboard interfaces for a variety of devices. And you can use just one hand.

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, HUNTSVILLE To use the Gauntlet Keyboard, you would point your thumb at specific points on your opposing fingers to “type” a letter or keyboard function. Signals are sent to the printed circuit on the back of the glove, which relays the signals via Bluetooth to cell phones, computers, video games, or other devices.

The developers believe that the ability to use just one hand for the interface will make the Gauntlet KeyGauntlet Keyboard, enabling oneboard ideal for a variety of handed interfacing with devices, is applications, from musical to demonstrated by its principal innomedical to military. vator, computer engineering stuSource: University of Alabama, dent Jiake Liu. Huntsville, www.uah.edu.

Climate Modelers Look to the Clouds Among the more than two dozen major climate models used to forecast future warming, those that focus on the role of moisture and clouds are proving to be the most accurate, according to analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Satellite monitoring has improved scientists’ ability to glean less-cloudy data about clouds, enabling them to observe moisture in the atmosphere, measure water vapor, and track the global distribution of relative humidity. According to the study, this data projects lower relative humidity in dry zones and—with the anticipated increases in heat-­ trapping emissions—a higher temperature rise with all its impacts, including sea level rise, heat waves, and droughts.

“There is a striking relationship between how well climate models simulate relative humidity in key areas and how much warming they show in response to increasing carbon dioxide,” says NCAR scientist and study co-author John ­Fasullo. “Given how fundamental these processes are to clouds and the overall global climate, our findings indicate that warming is likely to be on the high side of current ­projections.”

Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research, www.ucar.edu.

Steady Growth for Security Services Private security consultants and alarm-monitoring services are among the sectors expected to see steady growth in the United States, according to Freedonia Inc., a market-­ research firm.

As the economy continues to recover, pushing investment in construction, demand will increase rapidly for consultants, systems integration and management, and new electronic security systems.

Another trend driving this growth is the aging popula-

tion, as individuals seek independence and peace of mind with personal emergency-­ response services.

Total revenues for private security services in the United States are expected to grow by 5.4% between 2011 and 2016, up from just 2.2% between 2006 and 2011.

Source: “Private Security Services” (October 2012; $5,100), The Freedonia Group Inc., 767 Beta Drive, Cleveland, Ohio 441432326. Web site www.freedoniagroup.com.

WordBuzz: Solutionism Everyone wants to solve problems, right? Then what’s wrong with “solutionism”—the desire to provide solutions?

The problem with problem solving is that today’s problems have become incredibly complex. Ill-conceived solutions often create future problems, in both the short and the long term.

Solutionists, critics charge, fail to fully analyze problems before offering a new device or

policy or social system to solve them. The reliance on new technologies, especially, is troublesome to some, calling to mind the “technotopianism” of the last century.

Policy analyst Evgeny ­Morozov examines the trend toward solutionism and its impacts in his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism (Public Affairs, March 2013).

2 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

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 Associate Editor

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, Workforce/Workplace Jay Herson, Futurist Community 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

Building Better Minds— And What to Do with Them As artificial intelligence technology advances, the event horizon known as the Technological Singularity draws near. Does that mean we must begin preparing for the inevitable domination of our robotic overlords?

Not exactly. While such science-fiction scenarios inspire us to imagine a variety of outcomes of our endeavors, there is much that the artificial—or, more accurately, nonbiological—intelligence needs to know. And so do we. As visionary inventor Ray Kurzweil argues in this issue, we need to build synthetic minds that enhance our own capabilities, and he explains just how we can do that. (See “How to Make a Mind,” page 14.)

Science fiction indeed has entertained us with both visions and cautionary tales of such technological advances. In “Asimov’s Embarrassing Robot: A Futurist Fable” (page 18), scholar Irving H. Buchen outlines the odyssey of “Andrew,” the android hero in Isaac Asimov’s seminal tale, “The Bicentennial Man.” As his ability to learn and to create made him more like his human creators, Andrew’s “fatal” flaw was his immortality. What Asimov failed to foresee in this story was the symbiosis of man and machine that Kurzweil envisions.

Another aspect of technological innovation considered in this issue is its role in tackling some of the critical problems of our time, including resource depletion and climate change. Computer scientist Ramez Naam argues that our innovations and new ideas can help us expand our existing resources, reduce waste, and build wealth. (See “How Innovation Could Save the Planet,” page 24.)

And how do we advance our own innovativeness? One place to start would be to do away with mediocre education, which may happen on its own, suggests economic futurist Rob Bencini. He argues that the soaring cost of higher education, which puts people into debt rather than jobs, is just one of the trends working against colleges that are not delivering the futures they once promised. (See “Educating the Future: The End of Mediocrity,” page 40.)

As the sluggish recovery from the most-recent global recession has illustrated, governments, too, are failing to deliver futures they once promised. However, several economic success stories in unexpected places, like Uruguay and Israel, offer hope for the rest of us. Associate editor Rick Docksai explains how, in “Five Economies That Work: Global Success Stories,” page 32.

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

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 3 © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Feedback Here is a roundup of online reactions to the NovemberDecember 2012 issue of THE FUTURIST. Re: “Outlook 2013” and the Top 10 Forecasts (blog by Patrick Tucker) Andrea Sommer ( @ a n d r e a s o m m e r,

via Twitter): Fantastic p i e c e f ro m @ T h e year2030 on top 10 forecasts for 2013 and beyond! http://www. wfs.org/blogs/ptucker/futuristmagazine-releases-its-top-10-forecasts-for-2013-and-beyond … nyk (@inyk): What a great list | Futurist Magazine unveils its predictions for 2013 and beyond

Adam Russell (@adamjohnrussell): Meanwhile, built environment

ulcerates....

Patrick Carrothers (@PatCarrothers): Sign me up for a handheld

breathalyzer. Imagine the uses: dating, hypochondria, driving.

MetaFilter (@MeFi_blue): WILD MASS GUESSING

Daniel Sabio (@Sabio_Designs):

YES! This is an inspiring look at the world after 2012

Nathan N. Miller (@nathanNmiller): Yep all pretty normal future

here. #asyouwere

Join the conversation!

• Send feedback to letters@ wfs.org • Comment on articles and blogs at wfs.org • Follow THE FUTURIST ( @ T h e y e a r 2 0 3 0 ) o r Wo r l d Future Society (@WorldFutureSoc) on Twitter • Join the World Future Society group on LinkedIn • “Like” the World Future Society on Facebook

Meurs HRM (@meurshrm_ nl): We bedoelen

met geen banen de situatie zoals beschreven in dit blog.… Wat is hier je rol?

[Bing Translator (DutchEnglish): We mean with no jobs the situation as described in this blog.... What is your role here?]

Responses to coverage at the io9 blog, “Futurist Magazine Unveils Its Predictions for 2013 and Beyond” by George Dvorsky, http:// io9.com/5959803:

Femme Malheureuse (@Femme_Mal): Minor-

ity Report, here we come...

Ashley Heaton (@ ashleyeheaton): Yeah,

I’ve seen Minority Report too....

James T Kelly (@realjtk): Empty predic-

tions or is this the future?

Jeremiah Stanghini (@JStanghini): #SoCool Kaye Bohémier (@kayebohemier):

These had better not go the same direction as my flying car.

Steve Karaoke (@Steve_Karaoke):

Nightclubs to become recharge stations....

Holly Sparkman (@hollysparkman): My next job: Adventure Capi-

talist!

Connor Huchton (@ConnorHuchton): The other day, I made a joke

about wanting to be an ‘adventure’ capitalist. Turns out that’s actually becoming a thing.

Jeff Kramer (@jeffk) : Intelligent cloud agents.... I like the sound of that Matt Boggie (@MattBoggie): New

sub to “Futurist” forthcoming Re: “In Search of the ‘Better Angels’ of Our Future” by Kenneth B. Taylor Zen Benefiel (via WFS.org): A series that peered into the depths of how we create, manage, and transcend challenges in personal and professional realms, with a spiritual flavor, has relevance today in respect to this article. The show was titled One World and was recorded in 199092.

Included in the mix were Drs. George Land and Beth Jarman, well known for their work in the world of corporate change. Indeed, we are riding t he wav e s o n the ocean of emotion that the conundrums of the future provide. Still, I believe we have the capacity to create collaborative actions and develop a path toward harmony among people and planet.

The beginning of this show can be viewed on YouTube at http://youtu. be/NZl28ZV_5qo

Re: “Amish Boom” (Tomorrow in Brief) Hamilton (via WFS.org): While the Amish are producing more babies, they are not setting a trend for the mainstream population to join them.

Their isolationist, judgmental, and exclusionary beliefs prevent them from embracing new converts.

The real trend for the general population will be a redefining of smalltown living. The small towns that have died will be rejuvenated. Theories of sustainable living and community organization will drive and motivate this return. ❑

4 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Officers

Staff

President: Timothy C. Mack

Director of Communications: Patrick Tucker

Treasurer: Kenneth W. Hunter

Business and Advertising Manager: Jeff Cornish

Secretary: Kenneth W. Harris

Meeting Administrator: Sarah Warner

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

Edward Cornish founder and former president, World Future Society

Nancy Donovan senior analyst, U.S. GAO

Joyce Gioia president and CEO, The Herman 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

Clement Bezold

Michael Michaelis

chairman and senior futurist,

president, Partners In Enterprise

Institute for Alternative Futures

Julio Millán

Arnold Brown

president, Banco de Tecnologias, and

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

Adolfo Castilla

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

economist, communications professor, Madrid

visiting senior research fellow, ISEAS, Singapore

Marvin J. Cetron

John Naisbitt

president, Forecasting International Ltd.

trend analyst and author

Hugues de Jouvenel

Burt Nanus

executive director, Association

author and professor emeritus of management,

Internationale Futuribles

University of Southern California

Yehezkel Dror

Joseph N. Pelton

professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

founder and vice chairman,

Esther Franklin

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

executive vice president and director of cultural

John L. Petersen

identities, Starcom MediaVest Group

president, The Arlington Institute

William E. Halal

Sandra L. Postel

professor of management science and

director, Global Water Policy Proj­ect

Mylena Pierremont

director of Emerging Technologies Project,

president, Ming Pai Consulting BV

George Washington University

Carol D. Rieg

Peter Hayward

corporate foundation officer, Bentley Systems Inc.

program director, Strategic Foresight Program,

Les Wallace

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

president, Signature Resources Inc.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Jared Weiner

president, The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

Sohail Inayatullah

Global Advisory Council Stephen Aguilar-Millan European Futures Observatory

Raja Ikram Azam honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

Raj Bawa president, Bawa Biotechnology Consulting, and adjunct associate professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Francis Rabuck director, Technology Research, Bentley Systems Inc.

Paul Saffo managing director of foresight, Discern Analytics

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

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

Zhouying Jin president, Beijing Academy of Soft Technology

Eleonora Barbieri Masini professor emerita, Faculty of Social Sciences,

Alvin Toffler author

Heidi Toffler

Gregorian University, Rome

author

Graham May principal lecturer in futures research, 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 Mental Health • Information Society • Public Investment • Risk Assessment • Marine Life

Mental Health | Humanity

Forecasting Violent Behavior In Psychiatric Emergencies A simpler evaluation tool offers faster, more accurate predictions of violent behavior.

Most people suffering from mental-health disorders are not violent, but when a patient is admitted to a mental hospital, the psychiatrists on hand need to determine quickly if he or she likely will become violent, according to Alan Teo, a University of California–San Francisco psychiatrist.

He’s got good news: A study that he led found that, by using a certain clinical assessment tool called the HCR20-C scale, even inexperienced mentalhealth professionals can determine with a high degree of accuracy whether a patient is violence-prone.

The HCR-20-C is an abbreviated form of the HCR-20 scale (“Historical, CliniAlan Teo cal, Risk Management–20” scale), an assessment tool devised in Canada. The HCR-20 evaluates a patient for the presence and severity of 20 different indicators. Teo explains that this tool rarely gets used in clinical settings in the United States due to its length and the amount of time that is required to use it.

For the study, Teo and his team cut the 20 criteria down to five indicators: • Lack of insight.

• Negative attitudes.

• Active symptoms of major mental illness.

• Impulsivity.

• Unresponsiveness to treatment.

The team dubbed this version the HCR-20-C, since they envisioned it being more practical for clinical ­settings.

“A social worker seeing someone who’s just been brought in by police, or a psychiatrist on call seeing someone at 2 a.m.—as I myself did more than once in

my first few years of practice—[they just] don’t have time to do a 20-point assessment on every new patient coming into the emergency room,” Teo says.

For the study, Teo brought together a population of mental-health patients, half of them with known histories of violence and the other half exhibiting no prior violence. Then he assigned a gathering of psychiatric clinicians to use the HCR-20-C to determine which patients were the violent ones. The clinicians had varying levels of experience: Some were residents, meaning that they were in their first few years of clinical practice, while others had 15 or more years of clinical ­experience.

Without using the HCR-20-C, the senior clinicians could determine fairly accurately which patients would be violent, while the less-experienced residents could not. The determinations by the residents turned out to be no more reliable “than the flip of a coin,” in Teo’s words. But their accuracy nearly tied that of the senior clinicians when they deployed the HCR-20-C. “It’s not every day that we find a short, five-item tool that can make up for this large gap of many years of clinical experience,” says Teo. “I think this is a game changer.”

Teo sees great implications in the tool’s ability to bring less-experienced clinicians further up to speed.

Psychiatry, like many other areas of medicine, faces looming demands for care and too few certified physicians available to provide it, he explains. So many health services are now attempting some “task shifting”—i.e., bringing in more people with less training to do some of the work that traditional psychiatrists would have done. For instance, a mental hospital might have social workers stand in for a traditional psychiatrist in certain capacities.

6 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

The HCR-20-C might be very helpful in this situation by enabling mental-health professionals who have less formal training and experience to make effective assessments about new patients’ likelihood of violence.

While it wouldn’t be a substitute for some prior education and training, it could make it possible for more new mental-health professionals to enter into practice and take on substantial work responsibilities more quickly.

“Social workers could be trained in using a tool like this to provide mental health for their patients, so you could use this as a training curriculum that would be less expensive than training psychiatrists to be mentalhealth providers,” Teo says.

—Rick Docksai Source: Alan Teo [interview], University of California–San Francisco, www.ucsf.edu.

Homeland Security and Public Safety Market, China and U.S. China U.S.

$Billions 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

2020

Source: Homeland Security Research

Information Society | Commerce

China’s Closed Circuits Foreign firms are helping China become the world’s largest market for security cameras.

China, the world’s most populated nation, will soon become the world’s most surveilled, besting the United States as the largest market for security cameras in 2014, according to a report from Homeland Security Research Corporation (HSRC).

China’s homeland-security and public-safety funding grew from $100 billion in 2011 to $111 billion in 2012, and will reach $159 billion by 2015. HSRC forecasts that this funding will reach $257 billion by 2020, in accordance with China’s recently published Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).

The boom in surveillance expenditures partly reflects how quickly the country is growing as a commercial hub. Today, two out of three new airports built worldwide are in China, and many of these surveillance systems will be placed in these areas. The country’s public transportation system, the world’s largest, is poised to undergo a multibillion-dollar security upgrade, which will include not only cameras but also sensors to detect chemical and biological threats.

But many of the cameras will be used in public places like movie theaters and concert venues as part of China’s “Safe Cities” program, which seeks to put camera systems in more than 600 cities across the nation.

For instance, in the Guangdong Province, a manufac-

turing center near Hong Kong, the government is constructing a million-camera surveillance system at an estimated cost of more than $6 billion. These cameras might be useful in monitoring, or possibly preempting, protests or dissident action.

“The last three decades of dramatic economic growth in China have bred social tensions, ethnic frictions, and domestic terror, leading the central government to invest whatever it takes to defend the economic-socialpolitical fabric of the country,” said HSRC spokesman Dan Inbar.

In 2012, about 40% of China’s $111 billion publicsafety investment went to various forms of what China calls “nonmilitary” domestic surveillance, which American firms are allowed to sell to China. Among active foreign players in the Chinese security market are IBM China, FLIR, GE Security Asia, Honeywell Security Group, Tyco Fire & Security, Panasonic, Samsung Electronics, Siemens, Bosch Security, Sony, Sikorsky, Honey­well, and EADS. The United States currently maintains an embargo to prevent the sale of “military” or “defense” equipment to China, but homeland and public-safety products aren’t considered defense products by the U.S. State Department. HSRC and the U.S. Department of Defense argue that the way China defines “defense” excludes activity that’s military in origin. —Patrick Tucker Sources: Dan Inbar [personal interview], Homeland Security Research, homelandsecurityresearch.com “In Beijing, ‘Smart City’ plan brings more surveillance” by Tom Hancock, Smart Planet (CBS Interactive), www.Smartplanet.com.

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World Trends & Forecasts A. FLEURET / USAID

Public Investment | Governance

Putting More Stock in Agricultural R&D As some countries boost funding for agricultural innovation, others struggle to catch up.

Climate change and rising business expenses challenge the world’s farmers, but private and public investors have been making historically large increases in funding for agricultural research and development to help them adapt. A report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) indicates that spending on agricultural R&D grew by 22% from 2000 to 2008—from $26.1 billion to $31.7 billion—reversing an era of slow growth Farmers in Kano, Nigeria, celebrate a harvest of high-yielding (and incomethat had lasted throughout the 1980s and boosting) cowpeas.

1990s.

“When the governments make budget ties prices that farmers can consult via mobile phones. decisions, agricultural R&D has for the last two decFloyd Hammer, president of the U.S. humanitarian ades been a lower priority. Now, countries are more nonprofit Outreach, has witnessed these and other fully realizing the role of farmers and of increasing acbreakthroughs while frequenting Tanzania on Outreach cess to agricultural technologies in promoting developinitiatives since 2003. He praises Jakaya Kikwete, Tanment. That’s changing at the government level and at zania’s president since 2005, for being more active than the donor level,” says Neinke Bentema, a report co-auhis predecessor in supporting agricultural innovation. thor and the head of the IFPRI’s Agricultural Science & “There is a renewed interest in agricultural developTechnology Indicators (ASTI) initiative. ment in Tanzania and an increase in support for new Bentema credits the rising prices of food commoditechnology since he’s become president,” Hammer ties and concerns over “food insecurity” in much of the says. “There is a lot of work going on in the agriculdeveloping world with motivating governments to tural community to improve the country.” boost agricultural R&D funding. Rising awareness of Outreach recently purchased an 8,000-acre farm in the disruptive effects of climate change—e.g., more Tanzania’s Tonga region and is now coordinating with droughts, expanding pest infestations, and intensified the Ministry of Artificial Insemination to breed better storm patterns—also plays a role. cattle that can produce higher-quality beef. The MinisNearly half the increased investment took place in try is interested in creating a similar initiative for goats.

China and India, according to the report. Spending also “The farmer in Africa has just had continual breeding rose substantially in Argentina, Brazil, Iran, Nigeria, of the same herds. There has been no genetic improveand Russia. ment,” Hammer says. “There is a recognition that the Parts of sub-Saharan Africa saw robust growth in agherds need to be improved.” ricultural R&D, as well. Between 2001 and 2008, there Overall, Africa’s agricultural progress has been unwas a $110 million increase in Nigeria, and increases of even, however. Funding levels stagnated throughout $25 million to $56 million each in Ghana, Sudan, Tanzamost African countries and even declined in a few, acnia, and Uganda. cording to the IFPRI report. Even those few that inTanzania’s R&D support includes joint programs becreased funding levels will probably not be able to sustween its universities and the U.S. Agency for Internatain them in the long run, as the funding relied tional Development to develop genetically tailored partially on contributions from international donors, strains of rice seed and to improve rice-production which will not remain consistent year-by-year. techniques. Also, government public-information pro“In a lot of the smaller countries [of sub-Saharan Afgrams are publishing online information on commodi-

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governments will have to make much larger increases in their commitments in years to come, or else many projects could collapse once the donor funds cease.

“Often what happens is that donor agencies come along [with] some funding, and it goes to funding streams,” says Matthews.

“You end up with a lot of projects that fail once the donor agency leaves.”

Agricultural sectors across the globe remain heavily dependent on government support, according to Bentema. While private-sector entrepreneurs may invest in certain farming initiatives that are expected to yield returns in the short term, the government is still the most dependable go-to source for support for upcoming innovations that may take many years to develop and ­refine.

“The government is providing public research that has a much broader mandate, and which might not have a profit-making Tanzanian farmer Lugonda Magaiwa works with a new variety of droughtaspect in it,” Bentema says. resistant chickpea introduced in 2006.

But the private sector has a vital role, as well, Matthews argues: Compared with governments and NGOs, businesses have rica], there have been a lot of low investment levels. more technical and marketing know-how to teach They have a difficult time in maintaining their own sysfarmers, and more knowledge about the market’s detems and research technologies, and in giving farmers mands and what farmers need to do to meet them. access to technologies,” says Bentema.

Public–private partnerships are becoming an increasAgricultural R&D matters not only in Africa, but also ingly popular strategy of choice in the developing around the world. Farmers who improve their methods world, she adds; government agencies in the affected could lower their own costs of production, boost their countries are looking for ways that governments and output, and thus relieve food shortages. businesses can together help farmers.

And there is much room for improvement, according Praxis Strategy Group, for example, is operating a to Richelle Matthews, an associate with the Praxis hundred-acre farm on which a few farmers at a time Strategy Group, whose initiatives include working with live and work for a year or two—i.e., a few successive farmers in Ghana. Many farmers in Africa’s under­ crop rotations—and get a hands-on education on best developed parts unknowingly undermine their own practices that they can take back to their communities productivity by using the wrong pesticides or fertilizto teach others. In addition, Praxis directs educational ers, for example, or by relying on outdated methods of shows about farming on GTV, Ghana’s public televiplanting and growing. Developing better farming pracsion station. tices and teaching them to farmers would help, she ex“We look at the messaging domain. What’s the mesplains. saging domain of the government? You need the gov“There are all types of information deficits and caernment to get best practices and safety information to pacity deficits, so that farmers either don’t have the farmers and consumers. And then you can look to the types of relevant information to make decisions or they private sector for marketing and technical information don’t have skills with which to increase efficiencies,” on specific types of crops,” Matthews says.

Matthews says.

—Rick Docksai Matthews is concerned, however, that even the AfriSources: Neinke Bentema, International Food Policy Research Instican countries that have increased their funding might tute, www.ifpri.org. not be able to sustain them in the long term. In most of Richelle Matthews, Praxis Strategy Group, www.praxissg.com. the countries, substantial sums of the funding for R&D Floyd Hammer, Outreach, www.outreachprogram.org. comes from outside investors and donors, she says. The

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World Trends & Forecasts Risk Assessment | Futuring

Predicting Obesity at Birth Nongenetic factors may matter more than genetics in ­determining risk of obesity.

A simple, free, online calculator may be able to predict a newborn’s risk of becoming obese. The survey is designed to draw data from a IMAGES: PHOTODISC variety of common risk factors that previously had not been combined, according to researchers in Finland who developed the new tool.

Birth weight, the parents’ body mass indexes, the number of people living in the household, the mother’s professional status, and whether she smoked during pregnancy are among the factors used for the ­calculator.

The use of both genetic and nongenetic variables allowed the researchers to assess which factors would be more-useful predictors of future obesity.

Using data obtained from a 1986 study of 4,000 children born in Finland, the researchers looked first at genetic variations and then at nongenetic factors. They found that the test they developed based on genetic variations failed to produce accurate predictions of outcomes, while the test based on nongenetic information proved more useful. Further tests on data from Italy and the United States confirmed the superiority of nongenetic factors in assessing obesity risk.

By learning as early as possible which factors more consistently contribute to obesity, researchers hope that preventive measures can be designed and deployed, such as parent education, nutritional guides, and psychological services for families of high-obesity-risk youth.

“Once a young child becomes obese, it’s difficult for them to lose weight, so prevention is the best strategy, and it has to begin as early as possible,” says study leader Philippe Froguel of the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. “Unfortunately, public prevention campaigns have been rather ineffective at

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preventing obesity in school-age children. Teaching parents about the dangers of over-feeding and bad nutritional habits at a young age would be much more effective.”

The study, published in the November 28, 2012, online edition of PLOS ONE, reports that the 20% of children who were predicted to have the highest risk at birth make up 80% of obese children. The researchers further note that childhood obesity is a leading cause of early type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and circulatory ­disease.

Source: Imperial College London, www.ic.ac.uk. The obesity risk calculator is available online at http://files-good.ibl.fr/childhood-obesity/.

Marine Life | Earth

Climate Disruption and Plankton Destruction Researchers urge action to save phytoplankton and the sea life they feed.

The tiny marine plants that are vital sources of food and oxygen in the world’s oceans may grow scarcer as global warming progresses this century. Their disappearance might in turn lead to depleted fish populations and even more global warming. Phytoplankton populations will be reduced by as much as 40% in the world’s equatorial waters by the end of the twenty-first century, though they may grow somewhat more numerous near the poles, forecasts a Michigan State University study published in the online journal Science ­Express.

“We’ve shown that changing temperature itself can directly influence the ability of phytoplankton to grow,” says study co-author Colin Kremer, a Michigan State doctoral candidate in biology. “If it becomes too hot or too cold for a species, it becomes harder for that species to grow at the rate that it would when the water is just right for it.”

Phytoplankton, like their larger plant counterparts, produce energy by photosynthesis, so they ingest large quantities of carbon dioxide and replace it with oxygen.

This means that any change in their populations could induce changes in concentrations of carbon dioxide, and consequently could worsen global warming, ­Kremer explains.

“We think about not cutting down trees, because we’ll reduce the consumption of carbon dioxide and

production of oxygen, but these plankton are so numerous that they are responsible for a lot of the consumption of carbon dioxide on the planet. If they were to be reduced, it’s difficult to say just what the consequences of marine food webs would be,” Kremer says.

Warmer temperatures would harm phytoplankton by inducing a “stratification” effect on ocean water, according to Mridul Thomas, also a study co-author and Michigan State doctoral candidate in biology. Phytoplankton thrive on the nutrients that originate in the ocean’s rocky bottom floor and are carried to the surface by way of intermixing ocean currents.

As the climate warms, however, the ocean water mixes less. This is because water closer to the surface will be warmer than water closer to the ocean’s floor.

Since warm water is less dense than cold water, the warmer water will sit atop the colder water and take in lower quantities of floor-borne nutrients. Thus, many plankton species, which live closer to the surface, will go hungry.

“It becomes more difficult for the winds to mix up the water nutrients hanging down at the bottom. They don’t come to the surface quite as much. It requires a lot more energy to churn it up,” says Thomas.

But more significantly, plankton just do not function as well in higher temperatures. Thomas explains that, if their habitat warms by just a few degrees, their health suffers and their rates of reproduction decline.

“A small increase in temperature above the ideal can be really, really bad,” Thomas says.

The cooler ocean regions near the North and South poles are already home to some plankton species, Thomas notes, since their waters mix enough to distribute sufficient nutrients from the bottom to the surface.

He anticipates more plankton migrating to the polar regions as climate warming makes these waters more temperate.

It is also possible that plankton living in the warming equatorial waters would adapt to hotter temperatures and fewer nutrients.

“We know for a fact that many smaller organisms can evolve when conditions change,” says Thomas.

He is concerned, however, that they might not evolve quickly enough to avoid mass extinctions. Thomas cautions that the changing ocean climate presents a vast number of uncertain factors that could as easily result in an ecological disaster as in ecological equilibrium.

“We don’t exactly know how it’s going to play out, but many of the scenarios we look at that seem plau­ sible are not good,” says Thomas.

A few entrepreneurs have proposed plans for infusing ocean water with extra nutrients so that more plankton can grow. Kremer cites the case of a Canadian businessman who encouraged dumping iron into the

PACIFIC RING OF FIRE 2004 EXPEDITION / NOAA OFFICE OF OCEAN EXPLORATION / DR. BOB EMBLEY

Myriad of small fish feed on a pinnacle of plankton. The health of all marine life depends on intermixing of ocean currents.

oceans off Canada’s coasts to foster more plankton growth. This idea foundered not only because of its questionable legality, but also because it risked bringing too many plankton to the surface. Since plankton store all the carbon dioxide that they ingest, they would release it back into the atmosphere if they die while swimming atop the ocean’s surface.

Humans have attempted throughout history to deploy mechanical fixes to environmental problems, according to MIT environmental engineer Roman Stocker, who did not co-author the study but has participated in other studies on plankton’s role in the ocean’s ecosystems. Most of these fixes have turned out poorly, he observes.

“This is like a game of chess: It’s not difficult to predict the next move, but it becomes increasingly difficult to predict even a few moves ahead,” Stocker says.

“Now imagine a game of chess in which the number of interacting agents is not 32, like in a game of chess, but in the billions for each gallon of seawater.”

The best course of action, Stocker argues, is to focus on averting global warming, which will minimize harms to both humans and sea life.

“Prevention of further effects is the only sure remedy to this situation,” Stocker concludes.

—Rick Docksai Sources: Colin Kremer and Mridul Thomas [interviews], Michigan State University, www.msu.edu. Their research results are described in the November 2, 2012, issue of the journal Science (AAAS).

Roman Stocker [interview], Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ❑ www.mit.edu.

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How to Make a Mind

BY RAY KURZWEIL

ANDREW OSTROVSKY / ISTOCKPHOTO

Can nonbiological brains have real minds of their own? In this article, drawn from his latest book, futurist/inventor Ray Kurzweil describes the future of intelligence— artificial and otherwise.

T

he mammalian brain has a distinct aptitude not found in any other class of animal. We are capable of ­h ierarchical thinking, of understanding a structure composed of diverse elements arranged in a pattern, representing that arrangement with a symbol, and then using that symbol as an element in a yet more elaborate configuration.

This capability takes place in a brain structure called the neocortex, which in humans has achieved a threshold of sophistication and capacity such that we are able to call these patterns ideas. We are capable of building ideas that are ever more complex. We call this vast array of recursively linked ideas knowledge. Only Homo sapiens have a knowledge base that itself evolves, grows exponentially, and is passed down from one generation to another.

From How to Create a Mind by Ray ­Kurzweil. Copyright © 2012, Ray Kurzweil. ­Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

14 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

We are now in a position to speed up the learning process by a factor of thousands or millions once again by migrating from biological to nonbiological intelligence. Once a digital neocortex learns a skill, it can transfer that know-how in minutes or even seconds. Ultimately we will create an artificial neocortex that has the full range and flexibility of its human counterpart.

Consider the benefits. Electronic circuits are millions of times faster than our biological circuits. At first we will have to devote all of this speed increase to compensating for the relative lack of parallelism in our computers. Parallelism is what gives our brains the ability to do so many different types of operations—walking, talking, reasoning—all at once, and perform these tasks so seamlessly that we live our lives blissfully unaware that they are occurring at all. The digital neocortex will be much faster than the biological variety and will only continue to increase in speed.

When we augment our own neocortex with a synthetic version, we won’t have to worry about how much additional neocortex can physically fit into our bodies and brains, as most of it will be in the cloud, like most of the computing we use today.

We have about 300 million pattern recognizers in our biological neocortex. That’s as much as could be squeezed into our skulls even with the evolutionary innovation of a large forehead and with the neocortex taking about 80% of the available space. As soon as we start thinking in the cloud, there will be no natural limits—we will be able to use billions or trillions of pattern recognizers, basically whatever we need, and whatever the law of accelerating returns can provide at each point in time.

In order for a digital neocortex to learn a new skill, it will still require many iterations of education, just as a biological neocortex does. Once a single digital neocortex somewhere and at some time learns something, however, it can share that knowledge with every other digital neocortex without delay. We can each have our own private neocortex extenders in the cloud, just as we have our

driver of impending dangers is already being installed in cars. One such technology is based in part on the successful model of visual processing in the brain created by MIT’s Tomaso Poggio. Called MobilEye, it was developed by Amnon Shashua, a former postdoctoral student of Poggio’s. It is capable of alerting the driver to such dangers as an impending collision or a child running in front of the car and has recently been installed in cars by such manufacturers as Volvo and BMW. I will focus now on language technologies for several reasons: Not surprisingly, the hierarchical nature of language closely mirrors the hierarchical nature of our thinking. Spoken language was our first technology, with written language as the second.

My own work in artificial intelligence has been heavily focused on language. Finally, mastering language is a powerfully leveraged capability. Watson, the IBM computer that beat two former Jeopardy! champions in 2011, has already read hundreds of millions of pages on the Web and mastered the knowledge contained in these documents. Ultimately, machines will be able to master all of the knowledge on the Web—which is essentially all of the knowledge of our human–machine civilization.

One does not need to be an AI expert to be moved by the performance of Watson on Jeopardy! Although I have a reasonable understanding of the methodology used in a number of its key subsystems, that does not diminish my emotional reaction to watching it—him?—perform. Even a perfect understanding of how all of its component systems work would not help you to predict how Watson would actually react to a given situation. It contains hundreds of interacting subsystems, and each of these is considering millions of competing hypotheses at the same time, so predicting the outcome is impossible.

Doing a thorough analysis—after the fact—of Watson’s deliberations for a single three-second query would take a human centuries.

One limitation of the Jeopardy! game is that the answers are generally brief: It does not, for example, pose questions of the sort that ask

own private stores of personal data today.

Last but not least, we will be able to back up the digital portion of our intelligence. It is frightening to contemplate that none of the information contained in our neocortex is backed up today. There is, of course, one way in which we do back up some of the information in our brains: by writing it down. The ability to transfer at least some of our thinking to a medium that can outlast our biological bodies was a huge step forward, but a great deal of data in our brains continues to remain vulnerable.

The Next Chapter in Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence is all around us. The simple act of connecting with someone via a text message, e-mail, or cell-phone call uses intelligent algorithms to route the information. Almost every product we touch is originally designed in a collaboration between human and artificial intelligence and then built in automated factories. If all the AI systems decided to go on strike tomorrow, our civilization would be crippled: We couldn’t get money from our bank, and indeed, our money would disappear; communication, transportation, and manufacturing would all grind to a halt. Fortunately, our intelligent machines are not yet intelligent enough to organize such a conspiracy.

What is new in AI today is the viscerally impressive nature of publicly available examples. For example, consider Google’s self-driving cars, which as of this writing have gone over 200,000 miles in cities and towns. This technology will lead to significantly fewer crashes and increased capacity of roads, alleviate the requirement of humans to perform the chore of driving, and bring many other benefits.

Driverless cars are actually already legal to operate on public roads in Nevada with some restrictions, although widespread usage by the public throughout the world is not expected until late in this decade.

Te c h n o l o g y t h a t i n t e l l i g e n t l y watches the road and warns the www.wfs.org

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contestants to name the five primary themes of A Tale of Two Cities. To the extent that it can find documents that do discuss the themes of this novel, a suitably modified version of Watson should be able to respond to this. Coming up with such themes on its own from just reading the book, and not essentially copying the thoughts (even without the words) of other thinkers, is another matter. Doing so would constitute a higher-level task than Watson is capable of today.

It is noteworthy that, although Watson’s language skills are actually somewhat below that of an educated human, it was able to defeat the best two Jeopardy! players in the world. It could accomplish this because it is able to combine its language ability and knowledge understanding with the perfect recall and highly accurate memories that machines possess.

That is why we have already largely assigned our personal, social, and historical memories to them.

Wolfram|Alpha is one important system that demonstrates the strength of computing applied to organized knowledge. Wolfram|Alpha is an answer engine (as opposed to a search engine) developed by British mathematician and scientist Stephen Wolfram and his colleagues at ­Wolfram Research. For example, if you ask Wolfram|Alpha, “How many primes are there under a million?” it will respond with “78,498.”

It did not look up the answer, it computed it, and following the answer it provides the equations it used. If you attempted to get that answer using a conventional search engine, it would direct you to links where you could find the algorithms required.

You would then have to plug those formulas into a system such as Mathematica, also developed by Wolfram, but this would obviously require a lot more work (and understanding) than simply asking Alpha.

Indeed, Alpha consists of 15 million lines of Mathematica code. What Alpha is doing is literally computing the answer from approximately 10 trillion bytes of data that has been carefully curated by the Wolfram Research staff. You can ask a wide range of factual questions, such as, “What country has the highest GDP 16

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“We could give our new brain a more ambitious goal, such as contributing to a better world. A goal along these lines, of course, raises a lot of questions: Better for whom? Better in what way?”

per person?” (Answer: Monaco, with $212,000 per person in U.S. dollars), or “How old is Stephen Wolfram?” (he was born in 1959; the answer is 52 years, 9 months, 2 days on the day I am writing this). Alpha is used as part of Apple’s Siri; if you ask Siri a factual question, it is handed off to Alpha to handle. Alpha also handles some of the searches posed to Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Wolfram reported in a recent blog post that Alpha is now providing successful responses 90% of the time.

He also reports an exponential decrease in the failure rate, with a halflife of around 18 months. It is an ­impressive system, and uses handcrafted methods and hand-checked data. It is a testament to why we created computers in the first place. As we discover and compile scientific and mathematical methods, computers are far better than unaided human intelligence in implementing them. Most of the known scientific methods have been encoded in Al•

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pha, along with continually updated data on topics ranging from economics to physics.

In a private conversation I had with him, Wolfram estimated that self-organizing methods such as those used in Watson typically achieve about an 80% accuracy when they are working well. Alpha, he pointed out, is achieving about a 90% accuracy. Of course, there is self-selection in both of these accuracy numbers, in that users (such as myself) have learned what kinds of questions Alpha is good at, and a similar factor applies to the self-­ organizing methods. Some 80% appears to be a reasonable estimate of how accurate Watson is on Jeopardy! queries, but this was sufficient to defeat the best humans.

It is my view that self-organizing methods such as I articulate as the pattern-recognition theory of mind, or PRTM, are needed to understand the elaborate and often ambiguous hierarchies we encounter in realworld phenomena, including human language. Ideally, a robustly intelligent system would combine hierarchical intelligence based on the PRTM (which I contend is how the human brain works) with precise codification of scientific knowledge and data. That essentially describes a human with a computer.

We will enhance both poles of intelligence in the years ahead. With regard to our biological intelligence, although our neocortex has significant plasticity, its basic architecture is limited by its physical constraints. Putting additional neocortex into our foreheads was an important evolutionary innovation, but we cannot now easily expand the size of our frontal lobes by a factor of a thousand, or even by 10%. That is, we cannot do so biologically, but that is exactly what we will do technologically.

Our digital brain will also accommodate substantial redundancy of each pattern, especially ones that occur frequently. This allows for robust recognition of common patterns and is also one of the key methods to achieving invariant recognition of different forms of a pattern. We will, however, need rules for how much redundancy to permit, as we don’t want to use up excessive amounts of

memory on very common low-level patterns.

Educating Our Nonbiological Brain A very important consideration is the education of a brain, whether a biological or a software one. A hierarchical pattern-recognition system (digital or biological) will only learn about two—preferably one—hierarchical levels at a time. To bootstrap the system, I would start with previously trained hierarchical networks that have already learned their lessons in recognizing human speech, printed characters, and natural-­ language structures.

Such a system would be capable of reading natural-language documents but would only be able to master approximately one conceptual level at a time. Previously learned levels would provide a relatively stable basis to learn the next level. The system can read the same documents over and over, gaining new conceptual levels with each subsequent reading, similar to the way people reread and achieve a deeper understanding of texts. Billions of pages of material are available on the Web. Wikipedia itself has about 4 million articles in the English version.

I would also provide a criticalthinking module, which would perform a continual background scan of all of the existing patterns, reviewing their compatibility with the other patterns (ideas) in this software neocortex. We have no such facility in our biological brains, which is why people can hold completely inconsistent thoughts with equanimity. Upon identifying an inconsistent idea, the digital module would begin a search for a resolution, including its own cortical structures as well as all of the vast literature available to it. A resolution might mean determining that one of the inconsistent ideas is simply incorrect (if contraindicated by a preponderance of conflicting data). More constructively, it would find an idea at a higher conceptual level that resolves the apparent contradiction by providing a perspective that explains each idea. The system would add this resolution as a new pattern and link to the ideas that initially triggered the search for the resolution. This critical thinking module would run as a con-

tinual background task. It would be very beneficial if human brains did the same thing.

I would also provide a module that identifies open questions in every discipline. As another continual background task, it would search for solutions to them in other disparate areas of knowledge. The knowledge in the neocortex consists of deeply nested patterns of patterns and is therefore entirely metaphorical. We can use one pattern to provide a solution or insight in an apparently disconnected field.

As an example, molecules in a gas move randomly with no apparent sense of direction. Despite this, virtually every molecule in a gas in a beaker, given sufficient time, will leave the beaker. This provides a perspective on an important question concerning the evolution of intelligence. Like molecules in a gas, evolutionary changes also move every which way with no apparent direction. Yet, we nonetheless see a movement toward greater complexity and greater intelligence, indeed to evolution’s supreme achievement of evolving a neocortex capable of hierarchical thinking. So we are able to gain an insight into how an apparently purposeless and directionless process can achieve an apparently purposeful result in one field (biological evolution) by looking at another field (thermodynamics).

We should provide a means of stepping through multiple lists simultaneously to provide the equivalent of structured thought. A list might be the statement of the constraints that a solution to a problem must satisfy.

Each step can generate a recursive search through the existing hierarchy of ideas or a search through available literature. The human brain appears to be only able to handle four simultaneous lists at a time (without the aid of tools such as computers), but there is no reason for an artificial neocortex to have such a limitation.

We will also want to enhance our artificial brains with the kind of intelligence that computers have always excelled in, which is the ability to master vast databases accurately and implement known algorithms quickly and efficiently Wolfram|Alpha uniquely combines a great many www.wfs.org

known scientific methods and applies them to carefully collected data. This type of system is also going to continue to improve, given Stephen ­Wolfram’s observation of an exponential decline in error rates.

Finally, our new brain needs a purpose. A purpose is expressed as a series of goals. In the case of our biol o g i c a l b r a i n s , o u r g o a l s a re established by the pleasure and fear centers that we have inherited from the old brain. These primitive drives were initially set by biological evolution to foster the survival of species, but the neocortex has enabled us to sublimate them. Watson’s goal was to respond to Jeopardy! queries. Another simply stated goal could be to pass the Turing test. To do so, a digital brain would need a human narrative of its own fictional story so that it can pretend to be a biological human. It would also have to dumb itself down considerably, for any system that displayed the knowledge of Watson, for instance, would be quickly unmasked as nonbiological.

More interestingly, we could give our new brain a more ambitious goal, such as contributing to a better world. A goal along these lines, of course, raises a lot of questions: Better for whom? Better in what way?

For biological humans? For all conscious beings? If that is the case, who or what is conscious?

As nonbiological brains become as capable as biological ones of effecting changes in the world—indeed, ultimately far more capable than unenhanced biological ones—we will need to consider their moral education. A good place to start would be with one old idea from our religious traditions: the golden rule. ❑ About the Author Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, writer, and futurist. Among his honors are the MITLemelson Prize, the National Medal of Technology, and, in 2002, induction into the U.S Patent Office’s National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.

This article was excerpted from his most recent book, How to Create a Mind ­(Viking, 2012).

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Asimov’s Embarrassing Robot: A Futurist ­Fable

By Irving H. Buchen As machines begin to learn and even to pursue higher knowledge, we may need to take another look at Isaac Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics.

The prospect of the technological Singularity and of the projected symbiotic human relationships with machines has been hailed rightly as an evolutionary crossover, chosen rather than imposed by nature, and as more future-altering than the artificial intelligence that brought us to that threshold.

But the Singularity will be gradual, unnoticeable, and comfortable— a welcome slippery slope, a series of everyday increments. No warnings will be sounded. No date will ever presumptuously and officially proclaim its arrival or apex. Even the Luddites will not suspect it is happening at all or early enough to stage a confrontation. But what is missing from our forecasts is the in-between phases; in short, we lack a simulation of the day-to-day process of getting there and of the unexpected twists and turns on the way.

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have the unique power of immediacy. Rendered with such detailed and daily familiarity, science fiction persuades us that it is a totally believable version of our future lives.

Although frequently freighted with philosophical and even theological issues, science fiction bears a verisimilitude that prevents it from ever being ponderous and threatening the drama of the two-way connections between humans and their clever machines.

Happily, science writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) has taken us on an evolving journey to the Singularity. He has provided us with a rehearsal of what is to come, designed to acclimate us to a hybrid future and to a redefinition of the human mind in transition. In the process, he also unexpectedly has told the story from the point of view of the robot— given the machine an attractive face, voice, and history minimally equal

to and sometimes superior to his human counterparts. The net result is that we are less resistant of the prospect of a fusion of the two. Although Asimov crafted a Hollywood ending, the form it took provided as much substance to ponder as the narrative itself.

Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Bicentennial Man,” published in 1976, was made into a popular film by the same name and released in 1999 to capture the millennium fever. The story follows an android named Andrew, purchased to be a servant in an upper-middle-class household. Andrew arrives at the Martin household like a mummy in an enormous, sarcophagus-like box and obediently recites on command Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics (first penned in a short story called “Runaround” in 1942).

The story covers three generations of the Martin family, whom Andrew

serves faithfully with evolving intelligence. It concludes with Andrew’s gradually acquiring progressively human characteristics, falling in love with and marrying the granddaughter of his original owner, and finally embracing mortality so that he can die like everyone else.

The film version was reviewed positively and praised as one of the few warm, humorous, and kindly versions of sci-fi, although at times a little too moist. The humanizing of Andrew generally was perceived as an affirmation of the human condition. Indeed, a number of religious reviewers recommended it for family viewing.

To be sure, Bicentennial Man is a message film, almost a sermon celebrating obedience and the acceptance of human limitations, including the finality of death. Andrew plays out a number of human temptations, including immortality, ulti-

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Andrew the android (portrayed by Robin Williams) confronts his family of owners in Bicentennial Man, Christopher Columbus’s 1999 film version of Isaac Asimov’s story.

Miss, the youngest daughter.

She is miserable and angry, and berates Andrew. Saddened, he goes to his basement room, studies the anatomy of animals in various books, and fashions a horse made of wood. Little Miss is enchanted and squeals that it is even better than the original (which it TOUCHSTONE PICTURES / ALBUM / NEWSCOM is). Andrew is delighted and returns to his basement workBut things change rapidly after shop, where he begins experimentthat. Andrew unexpectedly develops ing with other designs, ultimately rapidly, thanks mostly to the pater- producing a number of fashionable nal conversations with Sir (as An- clock sculptures. drew calls his master/owner, Gerald Martin). In fact, what emerges is a Artistic Fabricator pattern of development that consists This is a quantum leap for Anof five principal stages or branch points: Andrew as learning machine, drew. For the first time, he indepenartistic fabricator, freeman/robot, bi- dently seeks out and acquires speonic mate, and mechanical immortal. cific knowledge. He is focused and purposeful in his inquiries. But more important is what he does with this The Learning Machine knowledge. He exceeds his original Andrew asks questions, or, more programming by creating something accurately, is encouraged to ask that never existed before. He fashquestions. Gerald Martin finds An- ions wood sculptures in a series of drew’s responses intriguing and of- one-of-a-kind artistic shapes that ten even amusing. An extensive Pla- house mechanical or battery-opertonic dialogue flows regularly ated electric clocks. He gives the first between them. Andrew learns one to Sir, who is amazed and exquickly, and in the process sets his claims, “This is unique. And so are master back on his heels by asking you Andrew!”

Ma’am, his master’s wife, suggests the kind of innocent and ethical questions used by satirists to critique that Andrew secure an agent to distribute his clock sculptures. Little contemporary society.

Sufficient space has been left in Miss, who is now older, further recAndrew’s program to become a sen- ommends that Andrew have his own tient machine displaying the rich bank account. As it turns out, he beand almost unlimited growth of arti- comes independently wealthy.

It is a fascinating stage, because it ficial intelligence. At this point in the story and at this stage of Andrew’s both continues and adds new dirapid development, there is no spe- mensions. On the one hand, Andrew cial application of this newly ac- extends his knowledge base through quired intelligence. To be sure, he is reading and analysis. He also begins no longer only a servant; he also has to extract from his reading concepbecome a companion, often chal- tual and artistic models. On the lenging and endlessly curious. But other hand, he uniquely fashions art he is still an android. Then a pivotal that never existed before and in the process sets himself and his work incident happens.

Andrew accidentally drops and apart as unique. But most important, shatters the glass horse of Little Andrew achieves independence of

mately persuading us all to accept and affirm our mortal lot. But that is the human message extracted from the story. There is also a robotic subplot, which is powerful and even subversive but which is constantly deflected back into a more acceptable, nonthreatening moral fable. It is that story that needs to be coaxed out and examined.

Perhaps the best way to begin is with Asimov’s by-now classic Three Laws of Robotics, which launches and sets the stage for the entire story: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders conflict with the First Law; finally, a robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second law.

Clearly, Asimov’s legalistic contract is designed to offer reassurance to humans, not robots. Control is vested in human masters. Androids clearly are subservient to the laws dedicated to protect their human owners. In fact, one early incident dramatizes how one-sided the arrangement is. The older daughter, who finds Andrew bothersome, orders him to open the window and to jump out. Fortunately, it is only one story—a short fall. Andrew returns a little dazed and with his language chip somewhat scattered. The humor of the incident perhaps obscures the degree to which the android is an expendable plaything.

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PHIL BRAY / TOUCHSTONE PICTURES / ALBUM / NEWSCOM

thought and work. No longer is he solely tied to linguistic exchanges.

He can travel anywhere intellectually and artistically through his reading, thinking, and creating. He even fixes an old Victrola and listens in rapture to opera.

It is curious that Asimov, in a sense, used his own craft as a model for Andrew’s development. The capacity to create or respond to art has fascinated science-fictionists. To prove that the aesthetic response is not acquired but innate in man, Mary Shelley, in Frankenstein, has the creature stop in his tracks one moonlit night on the moors and almost swoon with delight at the beauty of the sky. Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite form of survival is the artful dodger.

And all of Arthur C. Clarke’s computer beings are adept at design.

Thus, art functions, as it always has for humans, as the ultimate test of creativity and independence of thought and imagination—except, of course, Andrew is an android. Nevertheless, art also serves as the threshold for Andrew’s next stage of development: freedom.

The Freeman/Robot Andrew pursues his reading further, especially in history. He discovers that, although history is a sorry record of the pursuit of power and dominance, what emerges as the strongest desire of the oppressed is freedom. He then realizes that he is owned and that in effect he is a slave. He nervously goes to see his master, and tells him of his reading.

He concludes by asking for his free-

pires further it will have to be symbiotically through his creations.

Indeed, once again art is the midwife, only this time not just in the creation of a work of art but in a quantum leap for humankind.

Ironically, it is human beings who turn out to be more programmed than Andrew. We cannot imagine intelligence superior and different not just in degree but in kind from our own—a brain that combines both hardware and software in one, with an artistic capacity that can produce designs never imagined and that could even extend life. The occasional critiques of society are nothing compared to the critique of human imagination and the ultimate failure to accept the prospect of creatures greater than we are, extending and enhancing us in ways that exceed our capacity.

In short, humans cannot accept an inferior position. Faced by the prospect of disobedience or independence, we behave like Greek gods furious with Prometheus and determined to punish him. Unlike A ­ ndrew, we are not imaginative or desperate enough to select an alternative evolutionary path. We cannot surrender mastery. If we have to choose between ruling and serving, even though the path is noble and stirring, we will choose to remain in charge of our limitations.

It is this archetypal fear and choice that contributes much to technophobia and probably is the main reason there is little integration of technology into the curriculum. Teachers fear that machines will replace them.

And we have lied to them and given them the same kind of false assurance as Asimov’s Three Laws have.

But teaching machines can, have, and will replace the teacher as the source of direct instruction.

Andrew ultimately surprises everyone by making three decisions: to remain as servant, to build his own house to live in, and to search everywhere for an android companion like him.

dom. Sir is hurt; he takes Andrew’s request as a personal affront and brushes him off, saying he will think about it and make a decision in a few days.

Why the shock? In many ways, Gerald Martin has in fact brought Andrew to this stage. But perhaps that is just the point. Sir recognizes that granting freedom means he is no longer the master. In turn, Andrew is no longer a servant but has become his equal. That Andrew, in a condition of freedom, still decides to stay with the Martin family and serve them only means that now the role is chosen, not imposed or programmed. Andrew, in short, seeks to acquire free will. Sir reluctantly agrees to grant Andrew his freedom.

And sadly, Sir begins to contemplate the almost inevitable lamentation: “What have I created?”

Indeed, what? A unique, thinking, learning, and creating machine—a pretty impressive achievement. So why should Sir be so sad? Because Andrew no longer needs him for growth. He has become self-sufficient, autonomous, and independent. But perhaps the deepest concern is that Andrew—who up to now has followed a human model and path—may now pursue another direction. We thus come upon the pivotal point of this moral fable.

“Two roads diverged in the woods / And I took the one less traveled by.” The drama has become one of choice. The fear is that Andrew will choose a path that diverges from that of all humans. Just as the Three Laws of Robotics were self-serving and human-centered, so here the question is whether Andrew will move off into science fiction, becoming something in excess of the human, a mechanical God, a superior Einstein, a greater Leonardo da Vinci.

That such prospects are seen as lamentable or fearful is essentially a reflection of human, earth-bound egotism. It is stirred by the fear that future history will record the acquisition of power by machines that leads to the dominance of the human race by its own creations. Nowhere in Asimov’s drama is there any recognition that man basically has gone as far as he can go from an evolutionary point of view, or that if he aswww.wfs.org

Bionic Mate Andrew secures the addresses of all the androids made with the same specs that he has. He journeys all •

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the story—to keep Andrew in his place and not disturb the universe.

Indeed, the story can be reconceived from Andrew’s point of view as a ­violation of the three traditional historical human taboos: Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (in other words, thou shalt not be as smart as your creator); thou shalt not be male and female, hermaphroditic, and reproduce your own kind by yourself; and thou shalt not live forever.

pying the laboratory of bionic futures, mechanical as well as intellectual, Andrew stands on the threshold of violating not only the Three Laws of Robotics, but also the three laws of human limitations. But lest this overreaching emerge as a strong threat, it is softened and curved back to earth. A sad, weepy sentimentality ends the story and its potential subversion, and allows viewers and readers to leave undisturbed and reassured.

C l e a r l y, i t i s Asimov’s intent to write not only good fiction, but also equally good theol“Thou shalt not ogy. Neither is alexpose the ultimate lowed to rise to the level of the ­heroic or limits of your tragic. Overreaching masters.” is cut short, and the road less traveled The supreme masters of the uni- by ultimately reads like the one evverse establish the pecking order. Di- eryone takes. In the process, howvine beings set the standards and ever, the various branch points for conditions for dominance. The gods Andrew dramatize the choices not limit humans, and the humans in made and illustrate the need for an turn limit others, including an- additional law for robots: Thou shalt droids. But in this case, the hidden not expose the ultimate limits of laws of the universe and history are your masters and, above all, their exposed. There is always a top over omissions and uncreated prospects a bottom, a master over a slave. And of excessive mastery. so, what humans cannot do, AnAsimov’s story thus is ultimately drew—although he can—is per- one of human intellectual and artissuaded or programmed not to do. tic dishonesty and imperialism. But No human creation can be allowed the powerful parable gets through: to exceed its creators, just as man— Robots may not only surpass us; Faust and others notwithstanding— they may also be embarrassingly cannot exceed God. Andrew is po- more human. Above all, technology tentially an embarrassment. He is as is the constant and insistent agent of smart or smarter than humans. He a sly future that offers servants and can even achieve superintelligence playmates that later may become our in his lab, because he would be free masters. to create on a higher level than his An intermediate position absent human fabricators can. He could re- from the story is future symbiosis: produce one of his own kind as a the human–machine creature ca­ mate and companion, an Andria. pable of traveling an evolutionary And, of course, he is immortal. road previously closed to us—not In short, he already is poised to just less traveled, but untraveled aldemonstrate his total difference and together. ❑ even uniqueness from his human creators by having survived the three taboos. But that won’t do. He About the Author Irving H. Buchen is a business professor at must not exceed. He must choose Capella University and dean of managemortality. ment studies at St. Clements Private Swiss The threat of Andrew is real be- University. He is also the author of eight cause Andrew is involved in perfect- books, including Partnership HR (Davising the body of man and potentially Black, 2008), and nearly 200 articles. enabling him to live forever. Occu- E‑mail ibuchen@msn.com.

over the world to try to find a mate.

He is down to the last one and discovers a lively girl robot. He follows her home and meets her master, who happens to be the son of the original manufacturer of androids and who has set up a shop to experiment with androids. Andrew quickly and sadly discovers that the android’s liveliness is the result of a personality chip and that she, unlike him, is nothing special.

Once again, Andrew comes to a branch point. Which way will he choose? He can choose to perfect himself, become even more intelligent and artistic, create other androids—a mate, in fact—endow them with higher states of knowledge and conceptual power, and finally live forever. Or, as it turns out, he can keep and improve the model—an android who remains a giving servant and helps to sustain the superiority of humans.

And so he embarks on building an elaborate and brilliant series of bionic designs of android–human interchangeable organs and parts. To be sure, Andrew is the first recipient, because his goal clearly now is to become totally and recognizably human. In fact, he acquires a human face, begins to wear clothes, and later acquires sexual organs so that he can enjoy physical love with the granddaughter of his original ­master.

So desperate is Andrew’s desire to become totally human, to marry, and to erase all signs of his android state that he appears before the world court to plead his case for being designated as a human. The court rejects him, arguing that his immortality precludes human status. Saddened, Andrew contemplates his future ­decision.

Mechanical Immortal Andrew chooses to join his beloved on the death bed. As they are about to expire, the notice comes from the world court that he has been accepted as a human. But it is perhaps this last triumph that dramatizes the extent to which the dice are loaded against Andrew.

In effect, he never had real choices, given his author’s determination— and that of all the other humans in 22

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As Blogged What’s Hot @WFS.org On the Futurist Blog, our writers offer uniquely forward-looking perspectives on current events. Here is just a sample:

Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, X Prizes—7 Billion Minds Put to Work

By Len Rosen, posted on January 14, 2013 There has never been a better time in history for us to become collectively engaged in addressing the challenges humanity faces including climate change, energy, food production, social, religious, national and political unrest, space and more…. [read more]

Sex and Ideas

By Cynthia G. Wagner, posted on January 13, 2013 I’ve been brooding on something for a while, hesitant to write about it. But it’s a quiet Sunday afternoon, so here goes.

Recently our magazine (more specifically, one of its most popular bloggers) was criticized for an anti-female bias. What sparked the criticism was the blogger’s post listing the year’s most “shocking” quotations about the future. What shocked some readers was the fact that all the individuals quoted were male. The inference from this omission was that the blogger—and hence the World Future Society—was telling women to shut up…. [read more]

Why the Future Will Almost Certainly Be Better than the Present

By David Yerle, posted on January 11, 2013 Five hundred years ago there was no telephone. No telegraph, for that matter.

There was only a postal system that took weeks to deliver a letter. Communication was only possible in any fluent manner between people living in the same neighborhood. And neighborhoods were smaller, too. There were no cars allowing us to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. So the world was a bunch of disjointed groups of individuals who

evolved pretty much oblivious to what happened around them.… [read more]

Where is the Future?

By Michael Lee, posted on January 11, 2013 Like the road you can see ahead of you as you drive on a journey, I suggest the future is embedded in emerging, continuous space-time. Although you’re not there yet, you can see the road in front of you.

In the rear-view mirror stretches the landscape of the past, the world you have been through and still remember.… [read more]

Transparency 2013: Good and bad news about banking, guns, freedom and all that

By David Brin, posted on January 11, 2013 “Bank secrecy is essentially eroding before our eyes,” says a recent NPR article. “I think the combination of the fear factor that has kicked in for not only Americans with money offshore, countries that don’t want to be on the wrong side of this issue and the legislative weight of FATCA means that within three to five years it will be exceptionally difficult for any American to hide money in any financial institution.” … [read more]

Private Space Follies

By Dale Carrico, posted on January 10, 2013 Part One: “No Survivors” Time, Wired, CBS, online media outlets large and small have all devoted ferocious sudden simultaneous attention to an outfit calling itself Mars One which means to establish a human settlement on Mars in the year 2023. What has attracted all this attention is a recent call from the organization for astronaut applications. Since it would appear that anyone on planet Earth can apply for a chance to go to Mars if they meet the basic requirements, it is perhaps no great surprise that people the whole world over took notice.… [read more]

Temporality and the U-City

By Samuel Gerald Collins, posted on January 9, 2013 Along the walls of Seonreung Subway Station in Seoul, Tesco HomePlus (a popular shopping chain with corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom) has put up photographs of 500 commonly ordered products in a style similar to their display on the shelves of a physical HomePlus. Subway passengers can scan accompanying QR codes with their smart phones; the products will be delivered to their homes that evening.… [read more]

I See “The Last Myth” in Your Future

By David H. Rosen, posted on January 9, 2013 “The Last Myth” has earned its place alongside Philip Zimbardo’s “The Time Paradox” and I.F. Clarke’s “The Pattern of Expectation” as one of the best books on humanity’s concept of “the future.”… [read more]

Looking Beyond 2013 to 2030

By Damien Tomkins, posted on January 9, 2013 The recently published “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds” report from the National Security Council makes for interesting reading, full of interesting tidbits of information—global GDP is $70 trillion— along with skyline projections out to 2030.

Acknowledging the fact that the U.S.’s post-World War II global governance paradigm is under strain from a mixture of globalization, domestic political inertia in developed economies resulting in a deficit of global leadership, and emerging powers that seek greater input on the global stage, the report is well worth the time to read.

The fundamental question raised is what exactly does this mean for the United States in 2030, when it is possible, though not a forlorn conclusion, that China’s economy will be number one.… [read more] Read these essays and more, and add your own comments to the conversation: www.wfs.org/blog

© 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

How

INNOVATION Could Save the

PLANET

HILMI_M / ISTOCKPHOTO

By Ramez Naam

Ideas may be our greatest natural resource, says a computer scientist and futurist.

He argues that the world’s most critical challenges—including population growth, peak oil, climate change, and limits to growth—could be met by encouraging innovation.

The Best of Times: Unprecedented Prosperity There are many ways in which we are living in the most wonderful age ever. We can imagine we are heading toward a sort of science-fiction utopia, where we are incredibly rich and incredibly prosperous, and the planet is healthy. But there are other reasons to fear that we’re headed ­toward a dystopia of sorts.

On the positive side, life expectancy has been rising for the last 150 years, and faster since the early part of the twentieth century in the developing world than it has in the rich world. Along with that has come a massive reduction in poverty. The most fundamental empowerer of humans—education—has also soared,

not just in the rich world, but throughout the world.

Another great empowerer of humanity is connectivity: Access to information and access to communication both have soared. The number of mobile phones on the planet was effectively zero in the early 1990s, and now it’s in excess of 4 billion.

More than three-quarters of humanity, in the span of one generation, have gotten access to connectivity that, as my friend Peter Diamandis likes to say, is greater than any president before 1995 had. A reasonably well-off person in India or in Nigeria has better access to information than Ronald Reagan did during most of his career.

With increased connectivity has come an increase in democracy. As

people have gotten richer, more educated, more able to access information, and more able to communicate, they have demanded more control over the places where they live. The fraction of nations that are functional democracies is at an all-time high in this world—more than double what it was in the 1970s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Economically, the world is a more equal place than it has been in decades. In the West, and especially in the United States, we hear a lot about growing inequality, but on a global scale, the opposite is true. As billions are rising out of poverty around the world, the global middle classes are catching up with the global rich.

In many ways, this is the age of

24 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

The Worst of Times: The Greatest Risks At its peak, the ancient Mayan city of Tikal was a metropolis, a city of 200,000 people inside of a civilization of about 20 million people.

Now, if you walk around any Mayan city, you see mounds of dirt. That’s because these structures were all abandoned by about the mid-900s AD. We know now what happened: The Mayan civilization grew too large. It overpopulated. To feed themselves, they had to convert forest into farmland. They chopped down all of the forest. That, in turn, led to soil erosion. It also worsened drought, because trees, among other things, trap moisture and create a precipitation cycle.

When that happened, and was met by some normal (not human-caused) climate change, the Mayans found they didn’t have enough food. They exhausted their primary energy supply, which is food. That in turn led to more violence in their society and ultimately to a complete collapse.

The greatest energy source for human civilization today is fossil fuels.

Among those, none is more important than oil. In 1956, M. King Hubbert looked at production in individual oil fields and predicted that the United States would see the peak of its oil production in 1970 or so, and then drop. His prediction largely came true: Oil production went up but did peak in the 1970s, then plummeted.

Oil production has recently gone up in the United States a little bit, but it’s still just barely more than half of what it was in its peak in the 1970s.

Hubbert also predicted that the global oil market would peak in about 2000, and for a long time he looked very foolish. But it now has basically plateaued. Since 2004, oil production has increased by about 4%, whereas in the 1950s it rose by about 4% every three months.

We haven’t hit a peak; oil produc-

tion around the world is still rising a little bit. It’s certainly not declining, but we do appear to be near a plateau; supply is definitely rising more slowly than demand. Though there’s plenty of oil in the ground, the oil that remains is in smaller fields, further from shore, under lower pressure, and harder to pump out.

Water is another resource that is incredibly precious to us. The predominant way in which we use water is through the food that we eat: 70% of the freshwater that humanity uses goes into agriculture.

The Ogallala Aquifer, the giant body of freshwater under the surface of the Earth in the Great Plains of the United States, is fossil water left from the melting and the retreat of glaciers in the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000–14,000 years ago. Its refill time is somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years from normal rainfall. Since 1960, we’ve drained between a third and a half of the water in this body, depending on what estimate you look at. In some areas, the water table is dropping about three feet per year.

If this was a surface lake in the United States or Canada, and people saw that happening, they’d stop it.

But because it’s out of sight, it’s just considered a resource that we can tap. And indeed, in the north Texas area, wells are starting to fail already, and farms are being abandoned in some cases, because they can’t get to the water that they once did.

Perhaps the largest risk of all is climate change. We’ve increased the temperature of the planet by about 2°F in the last 130 years, and that rate is accelerating. This is primarily because of the carbon dioxide we’ve put into the atmosphere, along with methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 levels, now at over 390 parts per million, are the highest they’ve been in about 15 million years. Ice cores go back at least a million years, and we know that they’re the highest they’ve been in that time. Historically, when CO2 levels are high, temperature is also high. But also, historically, in the lifetime of our species, we’ve actually never existed as human beings while CO2 levels have been this high.

Stagnating Oil Production Rapid growth 1950–1970

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Plateau 2004–2012

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the greatest human prosperity, freedom, and potential that has ever been on the face of this planet. But in other ways, we are facing some of the largest risks ever.

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For example, glaciers such as the Bear and Pedersen in Alaska have disappeared just since 1920. As these glaciers melt, they produce water that goes into the seas and helps to raise sea levels. Over the next century, the seas are expected to rise about 3 to 6 feet. Most of that actually will not be melting glaciers; it’s thermal expansion: As the ocean gets warmer, it gets a little bit bigger.

But 3 to 6 feet over a century doesn’t sound like that big a deal to us, so we think of that as a distant problem. The reality is that there’s a more severe problem with climate change: its impact on the weather and on agriculture.

In 2003, Europe went through its worst heat wave since 1540. Ukraine lost 75% of its wheat crop. In 2009, China had a once-in-a-century level drought; in 2010 they had another once-in-a-century level drought.

That’s twice. Wells that had given water continuously since the fifteenth century ran dry. When those rains returned, when the water that was soaked up by the atmosphere came back down, it came down on Pakistan, and half of Pakistan was under water in the floods of 2010. An area larger than Germany was under water.

Warmer air carries more water.

Every degree Celsius that you increase the temperature value of air, it carries 7% more water. But it doesn’t carry that water uniformly. It can suck water away from one place and then deliver it in a deluge in another place. So both the droughts are up and flooding is up simultaneously, as precipitation becomes more lumpy and more concentrated.

In Russia’s 2010 heat wave, 55,000 people died, 11,000 of them in Moscow alone. In 2011, the United States had the driest 10-month period ever in the American South, and Texas saw its worst wildfires ever. And 2012 was the worst drought in the United States since the Dust Bowl— the corn crop shrank by 20%.

So that’s the big risk the world faces: that radical weather will change how we grow food, which is still our most important energy source—even more important than fossil fuels.

A number of people in the envi26

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ronmentalist movement are saying that we have to just stop growing.

For instance, in his book Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute says that the Earth is full. Get used to it, and get ready for a world where you live with less wealth, and where your children live with less wealth, than any before.

I don’t think this idea of stopping growth is realistic, because there are a top billion people who live pretty well and there are another 6 billion who don’t and are hungry for it. We see demand rising for everything— water, food, energy—and that demand is rising not in the United States or Europe or Canada or Australia. It’s rising in the developing world. This is the area that will create all of the increased demand for physical resources.

Even if we could, by some chance, say That’s enough, sorry, we’re not going to let you use these resources, which is doubtful, it wouldn’t be just, because the West got rich by using those natural resources. So we need to find a different way.

Ideas as a Resource Expander, Resource Preserver, and Waste Reducer The best-selling environmental book of all time, Limits to Growth, was based on computer modeling. It was a simple model with only about eight variables of what would happen in the world. It showed that economic growth, more wealth, would inevitably lead to more pollution and more consumption of finite resources, which would in turn take us beyond the limits and lead ultimately to collapse.

While it’s been widely reported recently that its predictions are coming true, that’s actually not the case. If you look at the vast majority of the numbers that the researchers predict in this model, they’re not coming true.

Why did they get these things wrong? The most important thing that the forecasters did was under­ estimate the power of new ideas to expand resources, or to expand wealth while using fewer resources.

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Ideas have done tremendous things for us. Let’s start with food.

In The Population Bomb (1968), Paul Ehrlich predicted that food supply could not support the population, just as Malthus did. But what’s happened is that we’ve doubled population since 1960, and we’ve nearly ­t ripled the food supply in total.

We’ve increased by 30%–40% the food supply per person since the 1960s.

Let’s look at this on a very long time scale. How many people can you feed with an acre of land? Before the advent of agriculture, an acre of land could feed less than a thousandth of a person. Today it’s about three people, on average, who can be fed by one acre of land. Pre-agriculture, it took 3,000 acres for one person to stay alive through hunting and gathering. With agriculture, that footprint has shrunk from 3,000 acres to one-third of one acre. That’s not because there’s any more sunlight, which is ultimately what food is; it’s because we’ve changed the productivity of the resource by innovation in farming—and then thousands of innovations on top of that to increase it even more.

In fact, the reason we have the forests that we have on the planet is because we were able to handle a ­d oubling of the population since 1960 without increasing farmland by more than about 10%. If we had to have doubled our farmland, we would have chopped down all the remaining forests on the planet.

Ideas can reduce resource use. I can give you many other examples.

In the United States, the amount of energy used on farms per calorie grown has actually dropped by about half since the 1970s. That’s in part because we now only use about a tenth of the energy to create synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which is an important input.

The amount of food that you can grow per drop of water has roughly doubled since the 1980s. In wheat, it’s actually more than tripled since 1960. The amount of water that we use in the United States per person has dropped by about a third since the 1970s, after rising for decades. As agriculture has gotten more efficient, we’re using less water per person.

sources, and can transform waste into value. In that context, what are the limits to growth?

Is there a population limit? Yes, there certainly is, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to hit that. Projections right now are that, by the ­middle of this century, world population will peak between 9 billion and 10 billion, and then start to decline.

In fact, we’ll be talking much more about the graying of civilization, and perhaps underpopulation—too-low birthrates on a current trend.

What about physical resources?

Are there limits to physical resource use on this planet? Absolutely. It really is a finite planet. But where are those limits?

To illustrate, let’s start with energy.

This is the most important resource that we use, in many ways. But when we consider all the fossil fuels that humanity uses today—all the oil, coal, natural gas, and so on—it pales in comparison to a much larger resource, all around us, which is the amount of energy coming in from our Sun every day.

The amount of energy from sunlight that strikes the top of the atmosphere is about 10,000 times as much as the energy that we use from fossil fuels on a daily basis. Ten seconds of sunlight hitting the Earth is as much energy as humanity uses in an entire day; one hour of sunlight hitting the Earth provides as much energy to the planet as a whole as humanity uses from all sources combined in one year.

This is an incredibly abundant resource. It manifests in many ways. It heats the atmosphere differentially, creating winds that we can capture for wind power. It evaporates water, which leads to precipitation elsewhere, which turns into things like rivers and waterfalls, which we can capture as hydropower.

But by far the largest fraction of it—more than half—is photons hitting the surface of the Earth. Those are so abundant that, with one-third of 1% of the Earth’s land area, using current technology of about 14%-­e fficient solar cells, we could capture enough electricity to power all of current human needs.

The problem is not the abundance of the energy; the problem is cost.

10,000x Increase in Food Per Acre 10 1 0.1 0.01 0.001 0.0001 10000 BC

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Agricultural innovations have drastically increased the number of people fed by the same amount of land, and have done so continually through human history.

Data compiled from Marcus J. Hamilton, Bruce T. Milne, Robert S. Walker, and James H. Brown; B. H. Slicher Van Bath; and Food and Agriculture Organization.

KEITH WELLER / USDA-AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE

So, again, ideas can reduce resource use.

Ideas can also find substitutes for scarce resources. We’re at risk of running out of many things, right? Well, let’s think about some things that have happened in the past.

The sperm whale was almost hunted into extinction. Sperm whales were, in the mid-1800s, the best source of illumination. Sperm whale oil—spermaceti—was the premier source of lighting. It burned without smoke, giving a clear, steady light, and the demand for it led to huge hunting of the sperm whales.

In a period of about 30 years, we killed off about a third of the sperm whales on the planet.

That led to a phenomenon of “peak sperm-whale oil”: The number of sperm whales that the fleet could bring in dropped over time as the sperm whales became more scarce and more afraid of human hunters. Demand rose as supply dropped, and the prices skyrocketed.

So it looked a little bit like the situation with oil now.

That was solved not by the discovery of more sperm whales, nor by giving up on this thing of lighting.

Rather, Abraham Gesner, a Canadian, discovered this thing called kerosene. He found that, if he took coal, heated it up, captured the fumes, and distilled them, he could create this fluid that burned very clear. And he could create it in quantities thousands of times greater than

the sperm whales ever could have given up.

We have no information suggesting that Gesner was an environmentalist or that he cared about sperm whales at all. He was motivated by scientific curiosity and by the huge business opportunity of going after this lighting market. What he did was dramatically lower the cost of lighting while saving the sperm whales from extinction.

One more thing that ideas can do is transform waste into value. In places like Germany and Japan, people are mining landfills. Japan estimates that its landfills alone contain 10-year supplies of gold and rare-earth minerals for the world market. Alcoa estimates that the world’s landfills contain a 15-year supply of aluminum. So there’s tremendous value.

When we throw things away, they’re not destroyed. If we “consume” things like aluminum, we’re not really consuming it, we’re re­ arranging it. We’re changing where it’s located. And in some cases, the concentration of these resources in our landfills is actually higher than it was in our mines. What it takes is energy and technology to get that resource back out and put it back into circulation.

Ideas for Stretching the Limits So ideas can reduce resource use, can find substitutes for scarce rewww.wfs.org

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Plummeting Cost of Solar Energy $16.00 $8.00 $4.00 $2.00 $1.00 $0.50 1980

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U.S AIR FORCE PHOTO BY SENIOR AIRMAN NADINE Y. BARCLAY

than capturing energy. But there’s reason to believe that we can tackle the storage problem, as well.

For example, consider lithium ion batteries—the batteries that are in your laptop, your cell phone, and so on. The demand to have longer-lasting devices drove tremendous innovations in these batteries in the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s. Between 1991 and 2005, the cost of storage in lithium ion batteries dropped by about a factor of nine, and the density of storage—how much energy you can store in an ounce of battery—increased by a

Our technology is primitive. Our technology for building solar cells is similar to our technology for manufacturing computer chips. They’re built on silicon wafers in clean rooms at high temperatures, and so they’re very, very expensive.

But innovation has been dropping that cost tremendously. Over the last 30 years, we’ve gone from a watt of solar power costing $20 to about $1.

That’s a factor of 20. We roughly drop the cost of solar by one-half every decade, more or less. That means that, in the sunniest parts of the world today, solar is now basi-

“Physical limits do exist, but they are extremely distant. We cannot grow exponentially in our physical resource use forever, but that point is still at least centuries in the future.” little over double in that time. If we do that again, we would be at the point where grid-scale storage is affordable and we can store that energy overnight. Our electric vehicles have ranges similar to the range you can get in a gasoline-powered ­vehicle.

This is a tall order. This represents perhaps tens of billions of dollars in R&D, but it is something that is possible and for which there is precedent.

Another approach being taken is

cally at parity in cost, without subsidies, with coal and natural gas. Over the next 12–15 years, that will spread to most of the planet. That’s incred­ ibly good news for us.

Of course, we don’t just use energy while the Sun is shining. We use energy at night to power our cities; we use energy in things like vehicles that have to move and that have high energy densities. Both of these need storage, and today’s storage is actually a bigger challenge 28

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turning energy into fuel. When you use a fuel such as gasoline, it’s not really an energy source. It’s an energy carrier, an energy storage system, if you will. You can store a lot of energy in a very small amount.

Today, two pioneers in genome sequencing—Craig Venter and George Church—both have founded companies to create next-generation biofuels. What they’re both leveraging is that gene-sequencing cost is the fastest quantitative area of progress on the planet.

What they’re trying to do is engineer microorganisms that consume CO2, sunlight, and sugar and actually excrete fuel as a byproduct. If we could do this, maybe just 1% of the Earth’s surface—or a thirtieth of what we use for agriculture—could provide all the liquid fuels that we need. We would conveniently grow algae on saltwater and waste water, so biofuel production wouldn’t compete for freshwater. And the possible yields are vast if we can get there.

If we can crack energy, we can crack everything else: • Water. Water is life. We live in a water world, but only about a tenth of a percent of the water in the world is freshwater that’s accessible to us in some way. Ninety-seven percent of the world’s water is in the oceans and is salty. It used to be that desalination meant boiling water and then catching the steam and letting it condense.

Between the times of the ancient Greeks and 1960, desalination technology didn’t really change. But then, it did. People started to create membranes modeled on what cells do, which is allow some things through but not others. They used plastics to force water through and get only the fresh and not the salty.

As a result, the amount of energy it takes to desalinate a liter of water has dropped by about a factor of nine in that time. Now, in the world’s largest desalination plants, the price of desalinated water is about a tenth of a cent per gallon.

The technology has gotten to the point where it is starting to become a realistic option as an alternative to using up scarce freshwater resources.

• Food. Can we grow enough food? Between now and 2050, we

REVIEW

A Better World Is Just a Series of Innovations Away The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet by Ramez Naam. University Press of New England.

2013. 368 pages. $29.95 (cloth), $28.99 (e-book).

W

ithin the past century, we have successfully eradicated diseases, multiplied our harvests of food crops, expanded access to electricity to billions of people in impoverished areas of the globe, and elevated the standards of living of the entire globe. And we have accomplished all of this simply by the power of innovation, according to acclaimed transhumanist Ramez Naam, a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

In this century, innovation could likewise be our means to continue improving our lives while also curbing runaway resource consumption, looming climate change, and ecological harms, he believes.

Naam presents the scope of the

near-future environmental and resource challenge, and he identifies one of its most powerful drivers: surging consumption of limited resources throughout the developing world, where tens of millions of hitherto-indigent people are attaining the substantial diets and middleclass lifestyles of industrialized nations. Some conservationists urge the world to halt further economic growth and increases in resource use, he notes, but he strongly disagrees: Those developing-world peoples have every right to achieve better standards of living.

He is optimistic that technology development will enable us to produce more energy, food, and consumer amenities with progressively lower inputs of resources. In fact, it

already is, he argues, pointing out a multitude of ongoing improvements in renewable energy generation, crop growth, and efficiencies in manufacturing. He urges the global community to boost its societal investments into technology R&D. A more sustainable future awaits us if we do.

The Infinite Resource is heavily focused on technology development but describes it in conversational language that most readers will find readily approachable. Ramez Naam’s book is thus a readerfriendly volume for all audiences interested in our species’ potential for a maximally better future quality of life.

have to increase food yield by about 70%. Is that possible? I think it is. In industrialized nations, food yields are already twice what they are in the world as a whole. That’s because we have irrigation, tractors, better pesticides, and so on. Given such energy and wealth, we already know that we can grow enough food to feed the planet.

Another option that’s probably cheaper would be to leverage some things that nature’s already produced. What most people don’t know is that the yield of corn per acre and in calories is about 70% higher than the yield of wheat. Corn is a C 4 photosynthesis crop: It uses a different way of turning sunlight and CO2 into sugars that evolved only 30 million years ago. Now, scientists around the world are working on taking these C 4 genes from crops like corn and transplanting them into wheat and rice, which could right away increase the yield of those staple grains by more than 50%.

Physical limits do exist, but they are extremely distant. We cannot

grow exponentially in our physical resource use forever, but that point is still at least centuries in the future.

It’s something we have to address eventually, but it’s not a problem that’s pressing right now.

• Wealth. One thing that people don’t appreciate very much is that wealth has been decoupling from physical resource use on this planet.

Energy use per capita is going up, CO2 emissions per capita have been going up a little bit, but they are both widely outstripped by the amount of wealth that we’re creating. That’s because we can be more efficient in everything—using less energy per unit of food grown, and so on.

This again might sound extremely counterintuitive, but let me give you one concrete example of how that happens. Compare the ENIAC— which in the 1940s was the first digital computer ever created—to an iPhone. An iPhone is billions of times smaller, uses billions of times less energy, and has billions of times more computing power than

ENIAC. If you tried to create an iPhone using ENIAC technology, it would be a cube a mile on the side, and it would use more electricity than the state of California. And it wouldn’t have access to the Internet, because you’d have to invent that, as well.

This is what I mean when I say ideas are the ultimate resource. The difference between an ENIAC and an iPhone is that the iPhone is embodied knowledge that allows you to do more with less resources. That phenomenon is not limited to high tech. It’s everywhere around us.

So ideas are the ultimate resource.

They’re the only resource that accumulates over time. Our store of knowledge is actually larger than in the past, as opposed to all physical resources.

www.wfs.org

—Rick Docksai

Challenges Ahead for Innovation Today we are seeing a race between our rate of consumption and our rate of innovation, and there are •

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and the waste they were producing was an externality. To that business or factory, there was no cost to pumping waste into this river. But to the people who depended upon the river, there was a high cost overall.

That’s what I mean by a market externality and a market failure, because this was an important resource to all of us. But no one owned it, no one bought or sold it, and so it was treated badly in a way that things with a price are not.

That ultimately culminated when, in June 1969, a railway car passing on a bridge threw a spark; the spark hit a slick of oil a mile long on the river, and the river burst into flames.

The story made the cover of Time magazine. In many ways, the environmental movement was born of this event as much as it was of ­Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. In the following three years, the United States created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed the Clean Water and Clean Air acts.

Almost every environmental problem on the planet is an issue of the commons, whether it’s chopping down forests that no one owns, draining lakes that no one owns, using up fish in the ocean that no one owns, or polluting the atmosphere because no one owns it, or heating up the planet. They’re all issues of

multiple challenges. One challenge is the Darwinian process, survival of the fittest. In areas like green tech, there will be hundreds and even thousands of companies founded, and 99% of them will go under. That is how innovation happens.

The other problem is scale. Just as an example, one of the world’s largest solar arrays is at Nellis Air Force Base in California, and we would need about 10 million of these in order to meet the world’s electricity needs. We have the land, we have the solar energy coming in, but there’s a lot of industrial production that has to happen before we get to that point.

Innovation is incredibly powerful, but the pace of innovation compared to the pace of consumption is very important. One thing we can do to increase the pace of innovation is to address the biggest challenge, which is market failure.

In 1967, you could stick your hand into the Cuyahoga River, in Ohio, and come up covered in muck and oil. At that time, the river was lined with businesses and factories, and for them the river was a free resource. It was cheaper to pump their waste into the river than it was to pay for disposal at some other sort of facility. The river was a commons that anybody could use or abuse,

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the commons. They’re all issues where there is no cost to an individual entity to deplete something and no cost to overconsume something, but there is a greater cost that’s externalized and pushed on everybody else who shares this.

Now let’s come back again to what Limits to Growth said, which was that economic growth always led to more pollution and more consumption, put us beyond limits, and ends with collapse. So if that’s the case, all those things we just talked about should be getting worse. But as the condition of the Cuyahoga River today illustrates, that is not the case.

GDP in the United States is three times what it was when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire, so shouldn’t it be more polluted? It’s not. Instead, it’s the cleanest it’s been in decades. That’s not because we stopped growth. It’s because we made intelligent choices about managing that commons.

Another example: In the 1970s, we discovered that the ozone layer was thinning to such an extent that it literally could drive the extinction of all land species on Earth. But it’s actually getting better. It’s turned a corner, it’s improving ahead of schedule, and it’s on track to being the healthiest it’s been in a century.

That’s because we’ve reduced the emissions of CFCs, which destroy ozone; we’ve dropped the amount of them that we emit into the atmosphere basically to zero. And yet industry has not ground to a halt because of this, either. Economic growth has not faltered.

And one last example: Acid rain— which is primarily produced by sulfur dioxide emitted by coal-burning power plants—is mostly gone as an issue. Emissions of sulfur dioxide are down by about a factor of two.

That’s in part because we created a strategy called cap and trade: It capped the amount of SO2 that you could emit, then allowed you to swap and buy emission credits from others to find the optimal way to do that.

The cost, interestingly enough, has always been lower than projected. In each of these cases, industry has said, This will end things. Ronald ­Reagan’s chief of staff said the econ-

omy would grind to a halt, and the EPA would come in with lower cost estimates. But the EPA has always been wrong: The EPA cost estimate has always been too high.

Analysis of all of these efforts in the past shows that reducing emissions is always cheaper than you expect, but cleaning up the mess afterwards is always more expensive than you’d guess.

Today, the biggest commons issue is that of climate change, with the CO2 and other greenhouse gases that

sues are divisive, but we know that beliefs and attitudes on issues like this spread word of mouth. They spread person to person, from person you trust to person you trust. So talk about it. Many of us have friends or colleagues or family on the other side of these issues, but talk about it. You’re better able to persuade them than anyone else is.

Second is to participate. By that I mean politically. Local governments, state and province governments, and national governments are responsive when they hear from their constituents about these issues. It changes their attitudes. Because so few constituents actually make a call to the office of their legislator, or write a letter, a few can make a very large impact.

Third is to innovate. These problems aren’t solved yet. We don’t have the technologies for these problems today. The trend lines look very good, but the next 10 years of those trend lines demand lots of bright people, lots of bright ideas, and lots of R&D. So if you’re thinking about a career change, or if you know any young people trying to figure out what their career is now, these are careers that (A) will be very important to us in the future and (B) will probably be quite lucrative for them.

Last is to keep hope, because we have faced problems like this before and we have conquered them every time. The future isn’t written in stone—it could go good or bad—but I’m very optimistic. I know we have the ability to do it, and I think we will. Ultimately, ideas are our most important natural resource. ❑

for its government in income tax, let’s say. If you want to tax pollution, the way to do this without impacting the economy is to increase your pollution tax in the same manner that you decrease the income tax. The government then is capturing the same amount of money from the economy as a whole, so there’s no economic slowdown as a result of this.

This has a positive effect on the environment because it tips the scales of price. Now, if you’re shopping for

“This all relates to energy, which drives a huge fraction of the economy. Manufacturing depends on it. Transport depends on it. So wouldn’t it be a huge problem if we were to actually put a price on these carbon emissions?” we’re pumping into the atmosphere.

A logical thing to do would be to put a price on these. If you pollute, if you’re pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and it’s warming the planet, so you’re causing harm to other people in a very diffuse way. Therefore, you should be paying in proportion to that harm you’re doing to offset it.

But if we do that, won’t that have a massive impact on the economy?

This all relates to energy, which drives a huge fraction of the economy. Manufacturing depends on it.

Tr a n s p o r t d e p e n d s o n i t . S o wouldn’t it be a huge problem if we were to actually put a price on these carbon emissions?

Well, there has been innovative thinking about that, as well. One thing that economists have always told us is that, if you’re going to tax, tax the bad, not the good. Whatever it is that you tax, you will get less of it. So tax the bad, not the good.

The model that would be the ideal for putting a price on pollution is what we call a revenue-neutral model. Revenue-neutral carbon tax, revenue-neutral cap and trade. Let’s model it as a tax: Today, a country makes a certain amount of revenue

energy, and you’re looking at solar versus coal or natural gas, the carbon price has increased the price of coal and natural gas to you, but not the cost of solar. It shifts customer behavior from one to the other while having no net impact on the economy, and probably a net benefit on the economy in the long run as more investment in green energy drives the price down.

Toward a Wealthier, Cleaner Future The number-one thing I want you to take away is that pollution and overconsumption are not inevitable outcomes of growth. While tripling the wealth of North America, for instance, we’ve gone from an ozone layer that was rapidly deteriorating to one that is bouncing back.

The fundamental issue is not one of limits to growth; it’s one of the policy we choose, and it’s one of how we structure our economy to value all the things we depend upon and not just those things that are owned privately.

What can we do, each of us? Four things: First is to communicate. These iswww.wfs.org

DAN DOWNEY

About the Author Ramez Naam is a computer scientist and author. He is a former Microsoft executive and current fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Follow him on Twitter: @ramez.

This article draws from his new book, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (University Press of New England, 2013), and from his presentation at WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver. Naam will also be a keynote speaker at WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon in Chicago.

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Five Economies That Work: Global Success Stories

By Rick Docksai

“Austerity” and “limiting government spending” are popular words in the post-recession United States and western Europe. Lawmakers in these parts of the world have been slashing expenditures in hopes that this will rein in public debts and encourage the private sectors to start creating jobs again.

Sadly, the hoped-for results have not materialized. Debts remain high while job creation stays sluggish. But meanwhile, in other parts of the world, a number of countries’ economies are springing to life and posting even higher employment than they had before the global meltdown. Even more notably, these countries—which include Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Israel, and Russia, among others—are achieving these results by doing the exact opposite of their wealthier counterparts: In-

stead of spending less, their governments are spending more.

“It is vital to demonstrate that an alternative, job-centered approach … exists. It is also imperative to nurture this alternative approach with concrete examples of policies that work,” states World of Work 2012, the latest edition of the International Labour Organization’s annual review of labor and employment trends around the globe.

Many of these successful countries are, surprisingly perhaps, in the developing world. The report notes that an astonishing 60% of developing countries have higher employment now than they did in 2007.

Even more key, three-quarters of the world’s developing countries posted declines in their national poverty rates since 2007. Some advanced economies are making great prog-

Reining in taxes and spending may be the wrong prescription for what’s ailing the world’s economies. A few success stories—Israel, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Russia—illustrate how increased taxing and spending are adding bounties of new jobs and cutting poverty.

The key is doing so wisely.

ress, as well, although not nearly as many: The report indicates higher employment in 20% of the world’s advanced economies, Israel being one of these fortunate few.

These findings correspond with that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose country-level data on unemployment for these five countries are as follows: Country Brazil Chile Israel Russia Uruguay

2007 9.3% 7.0 9.2 7.2 9.2

2010 6.7% 8.2 8.3 7.5 6.7

2012 6.0% 6.6 7.0 6.0 6.7

Meanwhile, the United States, longstanding bulwark of the global economy, is just scraping by, according to the same source. Its unemployment rate, at around 7.7%, is

32 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

more than one and a half times higher than the 4.6% at which it stood in 2007.

Why They Are Winning What sets these successful economies apart from the many others whose economies remain in the doldrums? Is it lower taxes, fewer regulations, and fiscally conservative government expenditures—i.e., the standard policy prescriptions that many of today’s orthodox economists advise? Actually, no: While the five countries outlined above do exhibit legal structures that are friendly to businesses and business development, if you place them all next to the United States, you will find that each one’s government collects and spends significantly higher levels of taxes from its citizens every year. From the CIA World Factbook: Country Taxes as a Percentage of GDP Brazil 39.9% Chile 22.7 Israel 27.8 Russia 21.2 Uruguay 29.7 United States 15.5

These higher tax revenues do not squelch economic growth and job creation in these countries at all; rather, they boost them. This is because the governments wisely return those incoming tax revenues to the people in the forms of public works projects; health-care services; education, job training, and school-tuition assistance; and social-welfare services, such as unemployment assistance and meal vouchers.

Public works projects create jobs directly, since every project needs workers. Education and health care are sound investments, since citizens who pursue more education become more employable and, even better, more productive. They acquire greater skills that can help their businesses increase profits. Or, if they are so inclined, they could start new businesses of their own. Meanwhile, adequate health care will ensure that workers do not compromise their productivity by suffering from untreated illnesses or needlessly worrying about their long-term health.

public services. And these public services increase output and economic activity as they reduce market failures,” Zeira says.

We will now look more closely at each of the five countries and the specific public programs that it has put in place. We will see, along the way, how each country ends up building more wealth by investing public proceeds up front.

Welfare programs also contribute to economic productivity. They put spending money directly into the hands of needy individuals so that those individuals can buy from their local businesses and help those businesses to prosper.

In addition, such support structures actually make it easier to be entrepreneurial. An innovator with an idea may be more inclined to take the leap and convert it into a real-life business venture if he or she will not have to risk food, shelter, and overall livelihood in the process, notes ­Joseph Zeira, an economics professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

“A generous welfare system reduces the usual risks that arise from the labor force and helps workers to take risks, move from one job to the other, and helps firms to adopt new technologies faster and more often,” Zeira says.

In sum, the governments channel tax revenues in directions that increase consumer demand for business products, which then supports the launching of businesses that will employ people to make the products that meet those demands. In this way, more taxes, spent properly, build more wealth for their societies in the end.

“The money collected from higher taxes goes to increased supply of

The Wealth Builders • Brazil. Many industrialized countries extended unemployment benefits to out-of-work citizens in the 2008 recession’s immediate aftermath, only to remove the extensions as the economic slump wore on. Brazil opted decisively against this path.

Instead, the Brazilian government took action to actively put more spending money into the pockets of needy citizens. First, it raised its minimum wage. Coupled with this, it expanded bolsa familia, a large income-transfer program that gives low-income households monthly sums of money to buy basic necessities.

Although the bolsa familia program had already been in operation well before the crisis, the government w i d e n e d i t a n d i n c re a s e d t h e amounts of money going out to reWILLIE HEINZ / INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

Neighborhood improvement project helps enhance the quality of life for low-income ­Brazilians.

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RAUL SPINASSE / AGENCIA ESTADO / ZUMAPRESS / NEWSCOM

WILLIE HEINZ / INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

President Dilma Rousseff visits Irecê, Bahia state, in northeastern Brazil.

cipients. Consequently, its recipients spent more money in Brazil’s marketplaces, a net positive for businesses large and small.

“This had ripple effects. Households were able to maintain an income level to buy goods and consume. And this had positive growth and spillover effects,” observes ­S teven Tobin, an International Labour Organization economist and co-author of the World of Work 2012 report.

• Chile. Since the 1990s, Chile has been sponsoring innovation and employment in the private sector through a number of public programs carried out by several government agencies. For instance, the National Productivity and Technological Development Fund (FONTEC), administered by the Chilean National Development Agency (CORFO), provides partial financing for private firms to undertake innovation projects. From FONTEC’s founding in 1991 until 2005, more than 2,500 private-sector innovation projects have taken wing with FONTEC funds. Studies empirically showed that participating firms saw more innovation processes through to completion, boosted their sales, and created 6.4% more jobs than they did before participating. They also raised their wages by an average of 4.6%.

In 2005, FONTEC was merged with another funding program to create InnovaChile, a new initiative that carries out the same partial funding service, albeit on a larger scale. The fund pays for 45% of the costs of firms’ new innovation pro34

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Microbiology laboratory in Coquimbo, Chile, is one of the small and medium enterprises pursuing technology innovations with support from CORFO.

BANCO DE CHILE

grams, while the firms themselves pay the remaining 55% on their own. Since its inception, according to CORFO materials, InnovaChile has supported 3,100 innovation projects, thereby benefiting 9,500 companies. It has also established 24 new permanent R&D centers throughout Chile and Entrepreneurs from across Chile meet with representahas disbursed seed capitives of Chile’s government and public-bank agencies tal to successfully create during ArribaMipyme 2011. Organized by CORFO (Promore than 400 new start- duction Development Corporation), a Chilean government up companies. agency whose mission is to cultivate business developPrivate–public alli- ment within the country, the annual ArribaMipyme proances are a large and gram matches promising small- and medium-sized busivery successful arm of nesses with government-funded loans and other services the Chilean economy. that will help the businesses to grow. It’s one example of Since 2001, Chile has the proactive investments that Chile’s public sector makes supported 14 genomics- to create new business growth and, by extension, new jobs, throughout Chile. related programs, worth a total of $66 million, for advancements in fruit and wine cultivation, salmon and nues (5% a year, one of the highest trout farming, and forestry. It has rates in the world) into R&D in telealso organized 17 technological con- communications, information techsortiums, worth $132 million alto- nology, life sciences, and other science gether, for companies carrying out fields. The funds are administered R&D in cancer treatments, animal through government agencies like health, aquaculture, potato farming, the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Laand many other areas of innovation.

• Israel. The Israeli government bor, which both provides venture strategically invests ample tax reve- capital to early-stage technologies •

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and helps established industries to continually refine and improve their products.

Since the 1950s, Israel has also been consistently offering subsidies to businesses that are on the periphery, according to Zeira, under a law of “promotion of investment in capital.” This law mandates that the Ministry of Industry select new projects on the periphery and foster them by paying part of their initial investment and lowering their developers’ corporate taxes. One might compare this program to the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program, which subsidizes start-up ideas in renewable energy.

Unfortunately, this periphery subsidization has not turned out to be very effective, according to Zeira.

Many peripheral ideas do not pan out, after all. Consequently, these subsidies have led to comparably little new development and very few new job opportunities; in the last five years, Zeira adds, the government has been cutting back on them.

Much better results come from another category of subsidies: defense funding. The army recruits promising high-school graduates to serve in its technology and intelligence units.

They will serve for a few years, acquiring considerable new technical

increases in pensions, education, and health care. Deficits followed, naturally. Russia closed 2009 with a 5.9% deficit, its first deficit of any kind in

skills along the way, and then leave to work in the civilian high-tech sector. As Zeira attests, these recruits are of great service both to the military and to businesses.

“The army gains from this policy, as it gets the best minds to such service, but in this way it implicitly subsidizes the high-tech sector,” Zeira says.

Education, in general, also commands a high priority among Israeli lawmakers. The state lavishes funds on school systems from preschool through the university level. The happy result of this well-executed largesse of education and job creation is the presence of highly educated workforces and firmly entrenched tech industries, which help to account for an unemployment rate now at 6.5%, down from 7.1% in early 2012.

Complementing this is a track ­record of wise banking policies. The government lowered interest rates to 0.5% in the wake of the economic crisis to spur investment—i.e., privatesector spending—and keep exports competitive, and then modestly raised them as conditions improved.

• Russia. When the recession hit, Russia confronted it full-force with a massive stimulus equal to 6.1% of the GDP. This included substantial

“When the recession hit, Russia confronted it full-force with a massive stimulus equal to 6.1% of the GDP.” 10 years, according to Sergei Aleksashenko, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Center.

As incoming tax revenues continued to lag, the government tapped into its Oil Stabilization Fund, a cash reserve of extra profits from oil revenues that officials had been setting aside since the Fund’s establishment in 2004. The government split the Fund into two: an offshore $52.9 billion Reserve Fund, to be invested in foreign government bonds, and an $89.6 billion National Welfare Fund, to guarantee citizens’ pensions.

Over the next two years, Russian officials withdrew cash from both funds and spent it domestically: 40 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) went to housing construction in 2010, for instance, and rescue loans went to several prominent state banks, including a 500 billlion ruble ($19.11 billion) transfer to Sberbank and 175 billion rubles ($5.9 billion) to Vneshekonombank.

More reserve-fund withdrawals went toward plugging up the lingering federal budget deficits. Further deficit-narrowing was achieved in 2011 by raising cumulative payroll taxes to 34%, up from 26%, Aleksashenko reports.

As of late 2012, the worst of the recession has receded, and Russian

M. CROZET / © INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION

Job seekers scroll through job-vacancy announcements at the Verkhnie Polia career center in Moscow. Russia is one of a number of emerging countries that have been achieving steady job growth over the last few years through savvy government investment in economic growth, coupled with prudent fiscal policy.

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economists now report the highest rates of hiring in 10 years; a 2012 IMF report approvingly notes growing private consumption and rising wages. Russia’s situation was a little easier to begin with, one should bear in mind, since huge public industries—namely, the military industries, along with state-owned utilities like natural-gas giant Gazprom and oil producer Rosneft—were already keeping tens of millions of workers gainfully employed.

• Uruguay. Historians call Uruguay Latin America’s “first welfare state.” It was a pioneer in the early twentieth century on enacting public-health programs, public pensions, and other forms of social assistance.

The country still sets high standards for poverty relief to this day. The lowest-income 10% of households

get a combination of cash transfers for health, education, and other living needs equal to 54% of their income, with the health services benefits alone nearing 23% of their earnings, according to the World Bank.

Also, around 100,000 low-income Uruguayans get both food supplies and periodic health screenings through the country’s National Food Program.

This degree of social outreach is ambitious by global standards, but it has clearly not impeded economic growth. An IMF staff report in January 2011 noted that “Uruguay’s economy is booming,” that “unemployment is at record lows,” and that some sectors were even experiencing “labor shortages.” Uruguay’s high taxes, equal to 29.1% of GDP, enable sturdy governmental support of certain lucrative export sectors. The science and technology R&D and agriculture sectors, in particular, benefit from strong links between the entrepreneurs and the researchers.

More revenues arrive in the government coffers from de facto taxesthat-aren’t-called-taxes—i.e., service rates that citizens pay the government’s utility companies for electricity, communications, water, and fuel.

The public utilities raised their rates 6% in 2011 due to rising costs of electricity and water cutting into their profit margins.

INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

In Uruguay, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, visits a school benefiting from a program to ensure a computer for every child.

Smart Spending None of this is to say, however, that a nation’s government should spend with total abandon. Each of the economic success stories named above differs from the United States in yet another key respect: Each has done a better job of keeping debt in check. Note the figures below, courtesy of the IMF.

INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

Country Brazil Chile Israel Russia Uruguay United States

Uruguay’s National Strategy for Children and Adolescents Support Program aims to improve social equity and living conditions for youth and their families.

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Net Public Debt as a Percentage of GDP, 2012 34.4% 0 (fiscal surplus of 6.9%) 67.0 11.0 33.2 83.8

The United States’ five counterparts in the table above do better at •

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restraining their public debts, in part, through sheer fiscal discipline: They refrain from enacting programs for which funding is not available; they eliminate costly inefficiencies within government operations and services; and they maintain sufficiently stringent oversight of public and private banking, financing, and credit.

Frugality is only a piece of the equation, however. These countries also rely on their aforementioned higher taxes. Because they collect higher tax receipts, they have more money on hand to keep their public budgets more relatively balanced and to set aside money in reserve for the unexpected but inevitable economic crunch times.

“A government can increase its public expenditures, if it wants to supply more and better public services, but such expenditures should be financed by higher taxes,” says economics professor Zeira. “Such services will not be sustainable if there is no clear and solid will by the public to pay for them. And such payment means taxation.”

The Budget Balancers • Brazil. Public debt was a growing concern in Brazil at the start of this millennium, when its federal government and all of its state governments were running in the red. A sea change took place, however, with the enactment in 2000 of the Fiscal Responsibility Law, which stipulated that every government agency and department at every level—national, regional, provincial, and local—was to operate within set budgetary constraints. The executive-branch Ministry of Finances would set financial targets and compel the Congress and the state governments to abide by them.

It also set ceilings on agency personnel spending, which includes all payrolls and pensions, at 50% of federal government spending and at 60% of state and local spending.

Public officials whose agencies exceeded the limits and failed to return to compliance within eight-month periods would be subject to criminal prosecution and possible prison terms.

The law stated further that Brazil’s public debt could not exceed 120% of revenue at the state or local level, and that if it did, it would have to be brought back under limit within 12 months. Net borrowing could not exceed the volume of capital spending, and loans between the national, state, and municipal governments were outlawed. The law allowed two exceptions to the debt-ceiling law, however: national emergency and national recession. In the event of recession, the government would have two years to bring any over-the-limit spending back under limit.

The law’s measures led Brazil’s federal government to several consecutive fiscal-year surpluses, which brought public debt from a high of 55% of GDP in 2002 to 36% of GDP by 2008. Among the states, aggregate expenditure–revenue balances are now fully in the black, with a total surplus equal to 4% of GDP. While observers such as Brookings Institution scholar Carlos Pereira have expressed concerns that some agencies might resort to “creative accounting” to elude the law’s budgetary stipulations, most agree that the law has proven itself to be an effective check on public spending overall.

Like most other countries, Brazil enacted robust stimulus initiatives in 2009 and 2010 in response to the recession, which required running some short-term deficits. But the government resumed its debt-cutting mode in early 2011, when it announced that it would slash 50 billion reals ($30 billion) from spending for the coming year to offset pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates.

Even more noteworthy is where the government made cuts. In addition to removing all the stimulus measures, it also froze all government hiring, forced all ministries to trim spending, and reduced funding to the state development bank. As a few examples, the government banned its personnel from buying or renting new properties and from buying new cars. Miriam Belchior, planning minister, told reporters at the time that finding ways to do more with fewer resources would be the government’s “new mantra.”

Yet, the government did not cut any

bitually for the past few decades. In 2001, then-President George W. Bush’s decision to give away the government’s surpluses as tax breaks was definitively not saving during a time of plenty.

• Israel. A severe bank crisis in the 1990s led Israeli officials to ramp up oversight of the country’s banking sector and of public spending in general, according to Tsvi Bisk, futurist and director of the Israeli consultancy firm Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking. Today, the Israeli government requires every ministry to run its spending increase by the treasury and for every law that the Knesset (Israel’s legislative body) passes to identify how its provisions will be paid for, Bisk explains.

“You can’t provide a service that’s not going to be paid for. They [the ministries] just can’t play games with the money they’re getting,” he says.

This financial prudence holds sway for individual citizens, as well.

Bisk says that a prospective apartment or home buyer is typically required to make a down payment equal to 25% or more of the cost of the property in order to purchase it.

Maintaining a solid national fiscal balance overall remains a challenge for Israel, due to heavy defense and security expenses. It’s no secret that a number of external and internal threats demand the country’s constant attention. Nonetheless, Israel keeps debt in check better than most: Its savings rate is 18% of the GDP, while its net debt is a moderate 67% of GDP. • Russia. Oil and gas profits made Russia very wealthy, very quickly. Although it defaulted on its international debts in 1998, economists such as UPI business correspondent Sam Vaknin were calling Russia a “creditor nation” by 2002.

Indeed, the government was running a budget surplus that year equal to $3.44 billion. Surging energy profits had much to do with this. But so did spartan fiscal spending. Since its 1998 fiasco, the Russian government had been keeping domestic expenditures to a bare minimum.

By 2004, with the public treasury now awash in fossil-fuel cash, the government could have easily

social programs or infrastructure investments, and it approved yet another increase to the minimum wage.

Thus, Brazil’s government cut its own spending, but not spending on people and society. The government cuts spending by making its own overhead cost less, while continuing to direct funds toward the public uses that enrich citizens and create jobs. This is the picture of wise public investment that is precisely what the World of Work 2012 report calls for.

• Chile. Chilean law requires the government to balance the “structural budget” year by year. The structural budget is the calculation of what the government’s expenditures and deficits would be if the economy were operating at its full potential output, as opposed to the actual budget, which records the actual dollar expenditures, revenues, and deficits of the given period.

In practice, this means that the government saves funds during boom times, when the economy is growing; then it kicks into higher spending—deficit spending, if need be—during recessions. Chile’s government keeps a designated set of sovereign wealth funds, which is separate from the Central Bank.

These act like emergency savings accounts, in that the government allocates extra revenues into them during boom times.

Chile’s leaders need to muster political will and, at times, courage to maintain this budgetary discipline, but they tend to enjoy vindication l a t e r. I n 2 0 0 8 , t h e n - P re s i d e n t ­Michelle Bachelet saw her approval ratings sink to 39% due to her refusal to increase expenditures when the country was reaping a budgetary windfall from copper, one of its key exports, as it captured historically high prices on the world market.

Bachelet had determined to stash the windfall profits away for emergency use. It was fortunate that she did, because the global recession hit Chile hard later that year. Because she had those extra funds set in reserve, she was able to fund large stimulus packages that helped the Chilean economy reenergize.

Note that this is the opposite of what the United States has done hawww.wfs.org

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DYSHLYUK / DREAMSTIME.COM

China Radio International reported last July, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov announced that his Financial Ministry and the Defense Ministry are negotiating on cutting state weapons program funding by 200 billion rubles ($6.25 billion).

With the defense budget totaling 880 billion rubles ($28 billion) in 2012, that is a reduction of more than 20%.

Meanwhile, the Oil Reserve Fund appears to be on the rebound. As the IMF reported, Russian officials have been depositing new oil-revenue windfalls back into the account since 2011.

• Uruguay. Moody’s raised Uruguay’s credit rating to “positive” in January 2012, a milestone for a country that had nearly defaulted on international debt obligations a mere decade earlier. The Uruguayan government embarked on an aggressive reform path following the 2002 crisis, and it achieved solid results.

Moody’s clearly thinks so, as one report specifically cites Uruguay’s “continued commitment by the government to fiscal discipline, a condition that has led to moderate deficits and declining debt metrics” as the reason for the credit upgrade.

Uruguay did enact some austerity measures and substantial cuts in social services in 2002 as a short-term remedy for the looming fiscal crisis.

Like Brazil, however, it kept top-­ priority social programs off the fiscal chopping block.

Uruguay was able to do this thanks to a Public Services and Social Sectors Special Structural Adjustment Loan (SSAL II), which it procured from the World Bank in 2003. This kept social services adequately funded from outside while the Uruguayan government set to work trimming its own finances through a series of reforms that included upgrading the cost-effectiveness of education and health care.

To the education system, the government added new information systems and an internal auditing unit, both to streamline processes and to reduce irregularities and ­inefficiencies.

The health-care system’s chief funding agency, Fondo Nacional de Recursos (FNR), went from a deficit of 16% in 2000 to a 7% surplus in

Oil production at Russia’s Tatneft Oil ­Company.

boosted domestic programs. Instead, it opted to put some of the new wealth aside in savings by christening a new Oil Stablization Fund that year, into which it would deposit any extra funds accrued by oil’s sale price rising higher than average. The rules were that the first 500 billion rubles ($18 billion) in the Fund would be untouchable. Any additional sums in its holding could go toward paying off debts.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin faced mounting pressures from politicians and interest groups throughout 2005 to dip into the Fund for local development projects, but he resisted. The Fund continued to grow and to serve its purposes. By January 2005, Russia had paid off all of the debts that it still owed to the IMF. And by 2008, the Fund had topped 4.8 trillion rubles ($157 billion), or 12.2% of Russia’s GDP. The 2008 recession cost Russia, and much of the Fund was emptied subsequently to revive private-sector commerce. Kudrin warned in 2009 that the Fund would be “exhausted” by the end of the following year, and that Russia would have to sharply curtail spending for the government to stay solvent.

The government listened. Spending on defense dropped by 25 billion rubles ($833 million) in 2012. As 38

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2003. Contributing to the turnaround: The government revised hospital budget allocation so that it would be based on a per capita criterion, it outsourced ancillary hospital services, and it cut subsidies that private insurers would receive from the public system.

In 2005, Uruguay was due for the second and third disbursements of the World Bank loan. But Uruguay turned them down. By then, its budget situation had fully stabilized, and the country was ready to stand on its own once again.

Lessons on Economy Building “It is high time for a move toward a growth- and jobs-oriented strategy.

This would help coordinate policies and avert further contraction caused by fiscal austerity,” states World of Work 2012. The report encourages countries to undertake the following program steps: • Strengthen the labor market conditions so that wages grow in line with productivity; this would include consistent increases in the minimum wage.

• Restore credit conditions and build a positive business environment for small enterprises; there may be a case for more heavily taxing firms that do not reinvest their profits, and for lowering taxes on firms that actively invest their profits and create jobs.

• Promote employment while meeting fiscal goals. In developing countries, this should center on public investment to reduce poverty and income inequality and to stimulate domestic demand. In advanced economies, this should center on supporting job seekers’ searches for new jobs.

The United States offers some lessons in what not to do, in this regard: Its public investments have always been disproportionately small, by global standards, and that did not change much in the wake of the recession. But it, too, can claim some stimulus-relevant successes. The auto industry was a target of nationalizations and bailouts in 2008. In the four years since, it has seen steady, sizeable, and uninterrupted increases in employment—one of the

only job sectors in the U.S. economy to do so.

Perhaps similar spending on other U.S. economic sectors could lead to more founts of job creation all around. In a 2012 paper, Economic Policy Institute scholar Joshua ­Bivens argues that the U.S. economic recovery would be stronger but for the dearth of public, business, and consumer spending. Specifically, Bivens encourages increasing public investments in education, health care, and renewable energy. Spending in each category would generate major returns in the longer term in human capital, productivity, and overall economic prosperity, he argues.

“Ramping up public investments (particularly if they are deficit-­ financed) would push the U.S. economy closer to its potential—and the multiplier effect of these investments would be particularly large,” says Bivens.

His colleague Lawrence Mishal notes that the U.S. private sector is actually creating jobs at almost the rate that it did during the recoveries from the recessions of the early 1990s and early 2000s. What is holding overall recovery back is cutbacks in state and federal budgets, which means not only less government employment, but also fewer opportunities for private firms to earn profits by contracting with government agencies. If the state and local governments had been carrying on as they had in the earlier recoveries, according to Mishal, the United States would have 2.3 million additional jobs and an unemployment rate somewhere between 6.7% and 7.5% instead of the 7.7% at which it stands at the time of this article’s writing.

In fact, the United States has a commendable history of publicworks projects that create jobs, as Bisk points out. He cites the Erie Canal, the Transcontinental Railroad, Land Grant Colleges, the Eisenhower-era road system, and the Internet as a few examples among many.

“I think it is clear that massive public investments in infrastructure, education, and research, along with a nimble entrepreneurial class, have been the key to economic develop-

ment since the Industrial Revolution,” says Bisk.

The ILO’s Tobin is unequivocal in his assessment: Austerity has failed.

It has failed not only in the United States, but also in Europe, where it has failed to improve growth and has failed to stimulate job creation.

Unemployment still rises in Spain, and much of the continent is bracing now for another recession. Ironically, it has even failed to stabilize public finances. European governments’ debts continue to climb.

“The premise behind austerity isn’t wrong—that you want to rein in government expenses. That premise is right,” Tobin says. “But they cut the wrong things. They cut economic growth and social measures, and this hurt public finances, because people aren’t working and paying taxes. And ironically, the call now is for more austerity, but it’s like, wait a second, this didn’t work the first time!”

How a country goes about austerity also matters. Slow, gradual reductions in public expenditures will cause less harm than swift and aggressive reductions.

“We would also argue, in some cases, that the cuts were too dramatic over too short a period of time. They might have been more sustainable if carried out more incrementally over two years or more,” Tobin says.

setting clear goals and focusing fiscal expectations on them, they earn their ways to financial stability.

They also validate the findings of a 2005 Harvard report cautioning that, while government shouldn’t interfere too much in an economy, it should also not interfere too little.

“Economic success is more often than not the result of collaborative, private–public strategies,” states the Harvard report, “Industrial Policy for the Twenty-First Century” by Dani Rodrik. “Scratch the surface of non-traditional export success ­stories, and more often than not you will find industrial policies, public R&D, sectoral supports, export subsidies, or preferential tariff arrangements lurking beneath the surface.”

The government can and should take a proactive role in cultivating the growth of economic activities and sectors that will produce abundances of new jobs in the future.

Many of these sectors can thrive only with some initial government support to get them going or to coordinate their emergence with other economic activities that can facilitate them. For example, new hotels will make more profits if the government oversees construction of new airports in their vicinity. This “collaborative innovation” is a recipe for growth across the board.

Of course, this proactive investment costs money—i.e., taxes. The countries that this article assesses pay for their economic successes by levying tax rates that might seem high to observers in the United States. Such a public-investment strategy means that these countries’ governments have funds available to encourage new industries during times of economic growth, and to cushion the national economies when the recessions and lean times come. ❑

Moving toward Stability On the other hand, the five countries that we have explored in this report—Brazil, Chile, Israel, Russia, and Uruguay—are, whether they ­r ealize it or not, exemplary case studies in the ILO’s plan of action.

They illustrate the benefits that a country’s people can enjoy if its government carries it through to completion. Rather than muddle through austerity, they have been taking proactive steps to boost domestic demand, public investment, and labor protections.

In so doing, they underscored the value of two words: work and save.

These countries beat unemployment by spending to create work opportunities, while at the same time managing to save money from unnecessary consumer spending binges. By www.wfs.org

About the Author Rick Docksai is associate editor of THE FUTURIST and World Future Review.

His previous article for THE FUTURIST, “Revolutionary Health: Local Solutions for Global Health Problems,” appeared in the July-August 2012 issue.

E‑mail rdocksai@wfs.org.

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Educating the Future: The End of Mediocrity

By Rob Bencini Students facing uncertain future opportunities (but very certain debt loads) may increasingly turn away from private colleges and universities that offer little more than a diploma. Instead, they’ll seek more-affordable alternatives for higher education, both real and virtual.

40 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

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n May 18, 2012, the president of Chester College in Chester, New Hampshire, announced that the small, arts-oriented college was going to close for good at the end of the semester. Last-ditch fundraising efforts and finger-pointing at the school’s administration were natural parts of the school’s final days as the reality of poor finances and low enrollment finally took its toll.

Nearby colleges of similar educational types graciously (but eagerly) welcomed Chester’s student transfers, generously offering the same tuition, board, and fees as the closing ­college.

I do not intend to cast aspersions toward the academic quality of Chester. It would take more than some second-guessing to properly assess all the factors that led to the closing. However, in most cases (and it appears to be the case with ­C h e s t e r C o l l e g e ) , t h e b i g g e s t obstacle to overcome is financial. Being cash-poor and deep in debt is harder to cure than creating an academic revival.

The lack of both short-term and long-term financial sustainability has become pervasive in the ranks of small colleges. Mediocrity that is related to poor finances is very difficult to overcome. In many other situations, the mediocrity is truly academic, and that aspect puts those schools at a competitive disadvantage in the current environment. Either or both types of mediocrity threaten the existence of hundreds of private colleges across the United States. But since the onset of the economic slowdown five years ago, the weak signals that were emerging have become full-blown trends that will soon have huge ramifications for higher education throughout the country.

Mobilizing Growth through Education America found its growth hormone after the Second World War in the incredible educational success of the GI Bill. Young men (mostly) who, prior to the war, would have had little interest in or ability to go to college now were given the opportunity. Colleges swelled with millions

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college degree—is the ticket to ­prosperity.

However, the recent extension of this development has a new component that may threaten the business model of the for-profit online university, as well. MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and other highly regarded universities are offering standard courses online for free, but without the course credit. Now, more than 40 top-flight U.S. colleges and universities are participating in one of at least five different free (or nearly free) online non-course-credit educational systems: Khan Academy, Udacity, edX (MITX), Coursera, and TED ED, collectively known as massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The onset of the MOOCs shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, it is escalating at an astounding pace, and most colleges and universities don’t seem to know what to do about it. So far, only the most secure institutions—both in their academic standing and financially—are participating. The development of the free MOOCs democratizes knowledge to such an extent that it is only eclipsed by the advent of free public education more than a century ago.

The third trend is the rapidly escalating cost of a college education. By now you’ve surely seen the hyper­ inflation related to the costs of a college education, particularly for private institutions. The price increases for this brand of education far overshot the paltry growth in incomes of most American families. Still, very few families seemed to flinch at the cost (for the bright future that education promised was worth the price), and private college and university enrollment kept climbing.

The fourth trend is a continuation of the third: massive student debt, which in the United States now exceeds all auto loans and credit-card debt, with twice the level of delinquency. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a report in March 2012 stating that 30% of the 37 million Americans who have student debt are behind at least 30 days on their payments and that 70% of the debtors are 30 years old or older; 17% are older than 50. According to a September 2012 article in the New York Times: “The amount of de-

of new students—and college ­graduates.

Throughout the heyday of the industrial growth from the end of World War II until about the year 2000, young people were admonished to earn the highest possible diploma commensurate with their standing in life. And somehow it all seemed to work. Companies could rely on the abilities of sharp highschool grads to fulfill most industrial functions. Those who needed technical training to perform a task went to the local technical institute or community college. Those who wanted to climb the ladder of success went to night school. As the United States was in an ascending mode of perceived eternal growth, there seemed to be plenty of room for any college graduate to enter the workforce—the type of degree of little consequence—and do no worse than become a management trainee or sales trainee as the economy boomed. The world made sense. All was well.

The notion that a college degree affords its possessor a great future, “the good life,” thus became institutionalized. Potential workers have been told for generations: “You must get a college degree to succeed.” So that is what they have done. The college degree was the universally accepted clear path to success.

Then, around 2000, several trends came together to give us the situation we have today.

The first trend is generalized and somewhat anecdotal. A common refrain among many employers is that they are frustrated with the college graduates they hire not having the exact pool of knowledge to contribute immediately. The quality of the applicants just doesn’t seem to measure up to their existing personnel— or at least not up to the companies’ expectations. The “quality” of the education must not be as good, they argue; the colleges are out of touch with the marketplace.

The second trend that has emerged is the proliferation of online college education. Phoenix University, DeVry, Capella University, and others have taken advantage of the convenience of online learning and, again, the institutionalized thinking that a college degree—any www.wfs.org

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Jobs. Apple even allowed application developers as young as 13 years old into its prestigious Worldwide

faulted loans—$76 billion—is greater than the yearly tuition bill of all students at public two- and four-year colleges and universities, according to a survey of state education ­officials.”

Connection with the Workplace: Degree or Knowledge?

All it took to unravel the great education growth machine was the economic slowdown. The four trends have now hit a fifth: Even with this expensive, debt-creating education, many graduates simply can’t find a job in the careers for which they have prepared. And the ranks of young, well-educated restaurant workers and janitors jumped between 2000 and 2010, 81% and 87% respectively, according to Census Bureau figures.

On the demand side, meeting the skills needs of the workplace will still be a central issue, whether it’s companies with full-time jobs to fill, those providing contract work, or entrepreneurial efforts.

But changes in the workplace, where companies no longer really want employees (as evidenced by position cuts at many of America’s largest companies in the name of “increased profitability”), have been more abrupt than those in the higher educational system. The workplace cuts—both those caused by a depressed economy and those undertaken as restructuring efficiency— have happened faster than any educational workplace preparation or retraining could ever do. And that is a large part of the problem.

So if colleges and universities aren’t providing the right skills, how are potential employers (who are averse to hiring in the first place) solving their true hiring needs? In fact, there very well may be another way to finding qualified contributors to such businesses. Some employers are already doing it. And it’s not what colleges and universities want to hear.

Some early-adopter employers are looking more closely at uncredentialed savants—that is, knowledgeable, creative, and driven workers without diplomas, who may turn out to be the next Bill Gates or Steve 42

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“The students knew they were not getting Stanford course credit; they were taking the course to gain knowledge.”

Developer Conference. Clearly, a college degree is no longer an absolute necessity to make intellectual contributions to the economy.

The sources of education, learning, and training utilized by this new breed of applicant will likely be a combination of many traditional experiences: formal postsecondary education, internships, summer jobs, and life experiences (e.g., armed services, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps).

But increasingly, the MOOC will be the route they will take. When Stanford University computer scientist Sebastian Thrun (who led the development of the DARPA challengewinning Stanley robotic vehicle) offered his first free online course in artificial intelligence, 160,000 people around the world signed up. The students knew they were not getting Stanford course credit; they were taking the course to gain the knowledge. And it was free.

Employers now face the challenge of assessing an applicant’s knowledge of a subject coming from MOOCs. But this is no different from the challenge of assessing a college graduate’s ability to contribute immediately. Some companies are al•

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ready testing applicants for knowledge beyond educational prowess, and this is a huge development. This is the first signal that it will be knowledge—not necessarily a degree—that companies will be pursuing. Successful connection between course completion and assessment of course content application to the workplace will go through some growing pains in this process.

Mozilla Badges and smarterer are two current assessing systems: Mozilla is the more standard gauge, and smarterer, more personalized to the company.

Late adopters (government and higher education, in particular) will still insist on the degree credential.

(Government is the last to respond to any significant trend, and higher education is in the business of granting degrees!) The same is likely to hold true in older mainline, hierarchical companies, and even more so in those businesses located in lessconnected areas of the United States, because they tend to be later in becoming aware of most new trends of all types. This disparity in time frame of adoption will cause major confusion in the education and business marketplaces.

The private sector’s acceptance of online, nondegree education will happen unevenly, starting with the high technology, social media, and communication services industries.

The trend will then find some acceptance in the next 10 years in manufacturing and sales-dominated organizations, and, in another 10–20 years, in government and education.

A number of crucial questions will naturally arise: How will professional organizations, such as the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, and so on, respond to this trend? And how will consumers of professional services respond? Despite evidence of competence (and even excellence), at what point would you accept and pay for legal advice from a legal “layman”? Or accept and pay for architectural plans from a “draftsman”? And what new words must we come up with to designate all of these work roles (compared with the existing meaning) during the transition period? What would be the pro-

cess for their work becoming “insured,” “bonded,” or even “legal”?

Impacts of Increased Educational Choices As the knowledge base, rather than the academic degree, becomes the preferred credential among employers, and as the idea of taking on exorbitant student debt becomes more inhibiting in a deflating wage market, high-school graduates will be creating a slightly different priority list for their next step. Many will still follow the more traditional path by seeking some sort of degree, but those who are worried about potential debt load will increasingly apply to the cheaper, state-supported institutions first, rather than private ­colleges.

Imagine the dilemma faced by a recent high-school graduate. She has been indoctrinated with a base understanding that becoming more educated will likely provide opportunities for her to have a better life. No one is disputing that. Like most students, she will likely not qualify academically for admission to the elite schools in America. But with her 3.5 GPA, two passing scores on AP exams, and 1120 on the (old) SAT— plus a healthy number of extracurricular activities—she is a viable candidate for more than 70% of college admission slots in America.

This new grad’s family finances have eroded in the past four years; her college fund has been raided to make ends meet. She has been accepted to a state-supported university two hours away, as well as to the nice, small, but expensive local college that is the pride of the community. There is a community college near her home with course offerings that interest her and would allow for transferability.

She hangs out with some friends who have had some success writing apps—they regard themselves as cool hackers who are on to something really great. They can pick up on the Internet whatever knowledge they don’t nurture organically among themselves. Most are serious about taking online courses to engage with outside thinking. The group has invited her to join their merry band.

connected, and unique ones—not the mediocre. It is thus likely that more and more 18-year-olds will experiment with the benefits of starting their higher education process in the community college system.

This shift toward state-supported universities and community colleges will have several downstream effects. The state-supported colleges and universities will have a much higher number of applicants. At some point, the stress of growth limits the numbers of enrollees that each campus can accommodate, and even strains the capacity of online and virtual courses within a mainstream curriculum. With a higher number of applicants (many of whom represent those deciding not to pursue a college education at a private school), public colleges and universities will undoubtedly raise admission standards such as GPA and SAT scores.

This will simply make the schools harder to get into than in the past. In addition, schools such as North Carolina State University have announced that they are slowing the

They even have a friend who will give her a job waiting ­tables to make ends meet, as they are doing.

What does she do?

A decision made now versus 20 years ago, 10 years ago, or even five years ago may be different—as will a decision five, 10, or 20 years from now. Whatever generation of thinking is dominant when she does make her decision may direct her path.

Since it is the college education that is creating the debt, perhaps it is worth looking at the breadth of college education options. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance’s 2012 Top 100 “Best Values in Public Colleges” includes colleges and universities from more than 35 states. Every state represented has at least one public university that admits more than 50% of all applicants, meaning that a reasonably good student could qualify for the less-expensive in-state tuition available for at least one college in his or her home state.

So the final choice among these affordable, in-state colleges may increasingly be for the more prestigious, well-

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Academic badges such as these developed for Purdue University are awarded for student attainment of specific skills.

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That’s why private colleges and universities are at risk in the current economy: high prices in a deflating wage market that offers little guarantee of a job after graduation, combined with a new work paradigm that is beginning to demand demonstrated knowledge rather than a degree from any college or university.

The institutions most at risk are not the elite private schools: the MITs, the Ivies, Stanfords, Vanderbilts, Dukes, and Davidsons. Nor the schools with unique curricula, geographic identity, heavy endowments, or sustained religious organization backing. The institutions at risk are the private colleges with no discernible academic advantage over public schools—and perhaps little over community colleges—at two to four times the cost (and present cost likely means future debt).

Though the cheaper alternatives discussed still do not guarantee subsequent workplace benefits, current trends portend a devastating effect on small, mediocre private colleges.

They will certainly be tested moving forward.

Most likely, we will hear the death knell ring for scores if not hundreds of marginal colleges throughout the United States. Some will be absorbed into state university systems or community colleges; some will merge with larger, healthier schools. Others will transition to become part of online universities as a first step before closing the campus in its existing state.

The closure of perhaps hundreds of college campuses will have a wide range of impacts, starting with the unemployment of tens of thousands of college instructors, administrators, and support personnel. Many will retire, but the majority will still need to produce income. Their re­ insertion into the job market will provide a further glut of college and university personnel, providing more downward pressure on wages.

growth of undergraduate enrollment to focus more on postgraduate offerings. The old C-average, 800-SAT applicant may no longer find room at the less expensive state-supported institutions. And if the four-year institutions aren’t available, the next best solution is increasingly becoming the community college.

State legislatures are also easing students’ entry into higher education by allowing credits earned at community colleges to count toward degrees at state-supported four-year institutions. Though easing transferable credits may cheapen the value of the degree from a four-year school (which needs to be monitored diligently), the move to starting higher education at the community college level lowers students’ cost and debt risks and provides more educational flexibility.

From the perspective of institutions, the trend is already bringing challenges. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2012 that California, the largest community college system in the United States, is having huge student capacity problems.

Part of the issue is funding, where the state has cut nearly a third of its financial support for the community college system in the last five years.

An equally troublesome issue is the heavy demand for student enrollment and course offerings among the 2.4 million students in the system. Students trying to go full time are finding that they can only get into one or two courses per semester.

According to the Times: “Without enough money, course offerings have dropped almost a quarter since 2008. In a survey, 78 of the system’s 112 colleges reported that more than 472,300 students are on waiting lists for classes this fall semester—an average of about 7,150 a campus.”

The heavy demand for community college courses is the result of several factors coming together: a retraining opportunity for many who have lost their jobs, a lack of job opportunities in the first place (making any education the next best option), low cost in absolute terms, very low cost in comparative terms with public universities, and dramatically lower cost compared with private colleges.

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Abandoned Campuses?

Yet, the bigger question is what to do with an empty college campus—a hundred acres of classrooms and administration buildings and dormitories, perhaps a gymnasium, cafeteria, and auditorium, most built to •

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standards of efficiency set in 1950s.

The schools that will be closing will probably not be in areas of high growth, and they will probably be redundant of other higher education opportunities in the area. They will likely reemerge as some sort of public school or community college campus, or, as said before, merged into another entity. Shuttering these assets will not be an attractive option, since in most cases it would have quite a chilling effect on the ­community.

So what happens with other schools like Chester College? What happens when parents no longer agree to pay $30,000 to $60,000 per year for the uncertain outcome at a school carrying little prestige and even marginal academic standing?

Or when students no longer take out loans of such magnitude that repayment may horribly impact their economic future?

The bottom line is that businesses now are not getting what they expect in terms of skills and talents that can immediately contribute to their success. Higher education is starting to get blamed for being out of touch with the marketplace. And the education consumer is wary of creating huge debt for an education that may not apply to the job marketplace.

So a new educational paradigm— free, high-quality online education offered by MOOCs—has emerged that may better serve the business community. It threatens to undermine a huge part of the education sector.

This washout will be painful.

Higher education will go through a metamorphosis in the next 20 years that leaves the landscape looking much different from today’s. The first casualty will be the most expensive and least effective private colleges. But the ultimate casualty will be mediocrity. ❑ About the Author Rob Bencini, MBA, is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) and economic futurist from North Carolina.

He provides trend impact analysis for businesses and local governments. Web site www.robbencini.com; e-mail rbencini@ earthlink.net.

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Foresight as Dialogue

By Timothy C. Mack As the world changes, we may need to modify our methods of forecasting to better make sense of change. Yet, we must not discard the still-relevant wisdom of the past. The president of the World Future Society lays out some “rules of the road” for forecasting that draw a middle path between inclusiveness and adaptation on one hand, and discretion and convention on the other.

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Foresight and futures discussions—whether they take the form of a written article, a conference presentation, or an in-person consultation—always include a “speaker for the future” and the listener, his or her dialogue partner. Dialogue on futures and foresight is hence an essential search for communication and understanding between parties and viewpoints. The ideal foresight process involves asking and answering questions, as well as exchanging expertise in a working relationship.

The article explores the range of foresight tools and techniques needed to effectively address our changing world. I will offer a few “operational rules of the road” for foresight practice, based on my experience and observation.

Rule of the Road: Revisiting assumptions about research and analysis is always useful, even if only to reconfirm validity. But in a dynamic environment, little remains static. Old rules may become out of date.

The ability to capture, process, and report data is expanding dynamically, but these are largely quantitative capabilities. Discovering the meaning and gaining insight from data trends continue to challenge us.

We need to cross the bridge between quantitative and qualitative analysis (aka, creativity) in order to integrate multiple insights and come to a holistic and useful set of conclusions.

One of the most intriguing and yet

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elusive subjects of inquiry in this arena is what are called weak signals, and we will be pursuing that quarry with enthusiasm.

First, let us consider basic methodology. To start, we take a look at the functional aspects of the extremely large data sets that have become so commonplace in global modeling.

The size of these sets is driven by the exponential growth of the Internet, global communications, and surveillance technology. There have been huge increases in incoming data at all times and from all places. Our ability to crunch massive amounts of the data is also rapidly expanding.

But are we paying attention to the expansion of risk, as well? Are there standards that can help us avoid driving our model off the road at excessively high speed?

Some of the models built to interpret this data flood are highly opaque, and a major concern is how many operators of large data models are actually struggling with these rather opaque analytical tools or are inattentive to the risks. One of the most useful risk-reduction tactics is a more complete understanding of the fundamentals of model construction and management. I have relied below on the excellent work of Adam Gordon.

We should always understand the shape of the data relationships involved—the basic underlying data relations (usually mathematical), such as direct or inverse, at work in the data set. Connected with this is data interaction—the relations between multiple factors that affect outcomes, such as reinforcing loops (positive or negative feedback), balancing loops (change-dampers, such as thermostats), and causal loops (mixes of the two). One way to think about tipping points, for example, involves their activation of feedback loops, such as in climate-change dynamics. These points of activation are referred to as thresholds or discontinuities within data relationships where the rules can change (e.g., producing a catastrophe scenario).

Data potholes can also include stale data, such as in social and economic data (which always has a short shelf life). But ongoing and

common in financial sectors).

• Preconceptions: framing ambiguous or complex issues in a skewed fashion (selective perceptions/distortion of information sources).

A shortage of valid strategies for adapting to unforeseen situations can arise from failure to regularly update situation assessments and data analysis after the initial conditions and dynamics have been determined. This can lead to preconceived solutions to problems instead of the construction of smarter assessment tools that solve and re-solve research challenges in real time.

Another foresight shortfall arises from poor assessment design, as indicated by a pragmatic bias favoring manageable strategies versus an analytical design of sufficient breadth.

This breadth can require the crossimpact weaving of a substantial range of factors, sectors, and actors in order to fully capture the system as it has been defined. However, depth matters, as well—analysis should not be a mile wide and an inch deep. Transparency of model design and operation is also vital, especially as the scale of focus expands upward.

Baroque modeling has become far too popular, though it often neglects to match technical virtuosity with real-world relevance. The elegance of analytical tools can become more valued than their accuracy and utility. A famous example is automated predictive stock trading models, popular in the financial sector before the resulting disaster of the last decade. But it is also appropriate to acknowledge exemplary modeling work, such as that done by Donella Meadows.

continuous data updates can be expensive, and using smaller data snapshots is a common compromise.

Then there is data lag—a delay in response between a cause and effect that can range from minutes to years (e.g., birth defects triggered by a genetic disease or toxic exposure from decades before), thus complicating the accuracy of any causal analysis.

Finally, there is the challenge of data translation, where cross analysis between domains (e.g., between social and economic data) is complicated by disconnects across language, concepts, or assumptions.

Moving to model-management techniques, we find more of an emphasis on the setting and application of analytical tools. This is because many of the more subtle and unexpected elements of error in foresight involve psychological and cultural factors. These factors affect reliability in both quantitative and qualitative sources and include: • The cost of detailed primary research (which can lead to shortcuts).

• Homogenization of distinct multiple data sources (for similar cost reasons).

• Lack of clear confidence intervals (how clean the data is).

• Mistaking correlation for causation (a common error).

• Confusing desirability and familiarity with probability (even more common).

• Forecaster ’s or technophile’s bias, which involves a preference for change when there is none, and for pattern over randomness (a professional risk).

• Political research sponsorship (influencing public opinion, attention, or awareness).

• Over-immersion in the local Zeitgeist—social values or perceptions can shift over time (while researcher attitudes may not).

• Distortion of data by media (disproportionate psychological attraction of surprising or disturbing stat i s t i c s ) t h ro u g h s e l e c t i o n a n d repetition (e.g., repetitive data misrepresentation).

• Organizational biases (groupthink, polarization, demand for consensus) and cultural values (e.g., premium on high risk, especially www.wfs.org

Rule of the Road: Attempting to “keep it simple” only works in relatively simple settings with manageable variables. A better goal, most of the time, is to strive to understand and monitor your data to the best of your ability.

And the ultimate goal is to prioritize, if not to winnow, the critical factors.

Of course, the above rule does not reduce the challenge of expanding the synthesis needed across the fore•

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wrongdoing should also become increasingly discoverable by the government. The overall costs of law enforcement fall.

• Fading boundaries. Interactivity rises among citizens, businesses, and government, leading to, for example, the growth of citizen government and community-driven business. But these blurred roles also create confusion over who is accountable for missteps.

• Enhanced intelligence. New sensor networks and the rise in global levels of socioeconomic and environmental data may generate new citizen-centric services, but may also create new markets in sensitive data that will need to be managed and regulated. And open and permeable e-systems enable citizen groups to more easily make demands on city government.

Worldwide 4G (100+ mbps) bandwidth, expected to be the global standard by 2020; crowdsourced data repositories, such as epidemiology monitoring and mobile disaster monitoring; geotagged media in a public-safety context; and mobile payment systems for crowdsourced services are all part of new social and economic pattern building that decision makers must recognize and prepare for. A rising number of gray and black market structures “off the grid” are emerging around these trends, often supported by phonebased ordinary-language and gesture-interface software that require no special technical training to operate and thus quickly proliferate.

What is interesting here is the growth of dialogic pathways, driven in large part by the expansion of communications capabilities. At first glance, dialogue would seem to support the view of futurist as facilitator, rather than as an outside expert providing an objective view and value-free or agenda-free expertise.

The assumption here is that dialogue can enhance citizen abilities to prepare for challenges and seize opportunities. But this “listening to the people” has its own liabilities, based on the all-too-common tendency to “hop on bandwagons.” For instance, if a new management perspective is useful when applied in moderation, it will be even more useful when ap-

sight field—that is, productively connecting social sciences, technology, economics, business strategy, and other relevant sectors together in a meaningful dialogue. This supports the early engagement of those responsible for implementing foresight analyses. It has been said that a primary benefit of the scenariob u i l d i n g p ro c e ss is educating responsible managers about system dynamics through dialogue with a broader range of system players.

The world grows increasingly interconnected. Writing in the September 2011 issue of Scientific American, Carlo Ratti and Anthony Townshend liken the result to “a shifting flock of birds or school of fish, in which individuals respond to subtle social and technological cues from their neighbors about which way to move forward.”

In a recent dialogue that I had about e-government, officials from China’s Jiangsu province expressed enthusiasm over their ability to respond to citizens. They found themselves in a world where the populace can now tackle problems such as energy use, traffic congestion, health care, and education more effectively than centralized dictates. Such capabilities are actually a depiction of the present in locales like Singapore, where the LIVE Singapore! public monitoring system allows 24/7 citizen feedback and criticism across a wide range of public services.

“Smart Cities” like Singapore offer a bellwether for the changes occurring worldwide in urban areas and public systems. As noted in a recent special issue of Scientific American, “The economic model of a city, for example, depends on models of traffic patterns, agricultural yields, demographics, climate and epidemiology, to name a few.” Accordingly, cities like London, Singapore, and Stockholm are using smart tech to address challenges involving traffic congestion, mass transit, water use grids, crime map networks, etc. This urban interaction of cultural and technological forces can be summarized as follows: • Increasing transparency. Government corruption and covert action becomes more difficult to hide, while individual and corporate 48

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plied with a fire hose.

Rule of the Road: Inclusiveness— with moderation—in analytical and dialogic strategies is usually the most productive approach.

In a January 2012 article in Fast Company, editor Robert Safian suggests that any sort of foresight in the present “chaotic” environment is a waste: “If you look too far out in the future, you waste your time.… No credible long-term picture emerges.​ … There is no pattern.” The basic message here is that total ambiguity is now the watchword and that past experience provides no guidance to the future, where the only constant will be change.

This approach is built upon the 11-year-old “Agile Manifesto,” which requires that analysts and model builders always choose: • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

• Working software over comprehensive documentation.

• Responding to change over following a plan.

This has a familiar ring to anyone who tried to follow the soaring and often overflowing rhetoric of the dot-com bubble of the 1990s before the whole thing crashed in flames.

When you hear strong assertions that all that preceded today is nonsense, and that all truth lies at an extreme end of the scale, you can bet that a fall is coming, as the pendulum will swing back again. Instead of the all-too-easy path of clearing all the dead wood (and also the potential rivals for resources) away before you, a more promising (albeit challenging) approach is to use your experience and judgment to pragmatically choose those tools, maps, and plans that continue to offer value, while rejecting fixations on interaction, change, and technology alone.

A more reliable alternative, which produces lasting results, is to give proven and durable tools and techniques an even playing field with novelty. It is not that there are no maps; it’s just that maps need to be redrawn much more often than was previously believed.

Your best strategy is always to quickly but clearly understand new

systems in context, but a focus on constant motion and instant obsolescence alone does not offer any magical window on the future. True ­dialogue involves bilateral communication, as opposed to the unilateral rhetoric of the revolutionary, zealot, or faddist. New economic trends driven by technology changes do not by any means require that we reject useful and still-valuable lessons already learned.

The Fast Company article describes a pattern that we have seen too often in the past: the Quick and Dirty analysis. Examples include Enron and its all-too-innovative financial instruments, stock-trading programs that quickly escaped the control of their operators, and the contempt for the values of predecessors, which rejects anything but the quick deal and the quick departure. To quote the Fast Company article: “Our institutions are out of date; the long career is dead; any quest for solid rules is pointless, since we will be constantly rethinking them.” As with any clear, simple, but highly one-sided vision of the world, that is at least half wrong.

The purpose of citing the list of analytical misassumptions earlier in this article was the hope that, once named, they might be somehow avoided. And avoiding these missteps might increase the likelihood that ongoing foresight efforts could help their participants, consumers, and audiences to expand their horizons rather than narrow them.

The ultimate goal here is to more effectively cope with the unexpected by using rapid response mechanisms and to broaden alternatives by challenging present assumptions. We are aided in these goals by the use of increasingly creative but empirically grounded problem-solving techniques. To step beyond the assertion above that all modeling is based on assumptions that are no longer true, it is essential to avoid Black Box modeling (where correlation often trumps causation and What analysis trumps Why analysis).

At the other end of that scale is the scenario process, whose greatest strength is driving leaders and decision makers to challenge their present assumptions and ask questions

difficult to quantitatively predict.

The need for non-quantitative measurement tools has led to growth in the use of probabilistic tools such as Bayesian analysis and “fuzzy” logic—i.e., conditional measures that assess the level of uncertainty in the light of evidence—thus allowing a hybrid of apparent randomness and degrees of truth. These judgmental approaches can involve questions such as Why, How, and Who; a better understanding of these elements can contribute significantly to answering the question of Where?—i.e., in what directions does the future appear to be trending?

This higher level of complexity suggests that both qualitative and quantitative approaches will need to be synthesized and melded in new ways to reach necessary levels of understanding. It has become a cliché to say that twenty-first-century education will have to move far beyond the three Rs to essential skills such as: • Decision speed.

• Mental flexibility.

• Imagination.

• Ability to understand interactive dynamics.

• Ability to test and validate complex assumptions and models.

Each of these elements builds on the one before it, so that validating assumptions and models is the most complex skill in the group. But there are also skills that could be more accurately termed experiential, or learned in the trenches. These include technology management skills, stakeholder management, crafting decision maker buy-in, assessing res o u rc e s c a p a c i t y, c o s t – b e n e f i t analysis, and many more. A good foresight analyst should understand both the capabilities and the limitations of management and logistics systems.

that they had not previously thought to ask. Scenarios offer an iterative process designed to pull new information into the decision-making process. The ideal is developing a working mind-set for change: quick response, flexible analysis, and innovative questioning, rather than striving to get projections exactly right.

It is challenging, but we must distinguish between predetermined elements and critical uncertainties. As has been said, if foresight seems easy, you are probably doing it wrong! In contrast, simple straightline projections, no matter how complex, do not involve an understanding of the underlying process, but arise through observation of past behavior only. This gives us just historical analysis or comparison, but no Why! As forecaster Paul Saffo has often noted, drawing models with too narrow a range of uncertainty increases the likelihood of avoidable, unpleasant surprises and of missing important opportunities. He also said that good forecasting is an iterative process, and good forecast consumers are both participants in the process and ongoing critics. Furthermore, breadth of view compensates for the unexpected. Horizon scanning must balance systematized analysis with an allowance for unexpected evolution and growth.

Rule of the Road: The challenge for the future is to identify problems and opportunities sufficiently far in advance to mobilize technology and policy solutions effectively. We have to understand change dynamics and why change occurs, as well as what potential changes we should pay the most attention to.

We need to include “soft” or qualitative data from social/economic systems. This includes political behavior, market dynamics, and cultural currents (involving judgmental or intuitive analysis—pattern recognition), along with quantitative analyses. I believe this is unavoidable, since we are dealing with systems that were shaped, influenced, and managed by human beings— which is a major reason they are so www.wfs.org

Tapping the Power of Weak Signals The search for weak signals has been driven by past surprising events and by especially galling foresight missteps—e.g., “How could we have missed that?” and “Why can’t there be techniques to avoid such embarrassing errors?” When informed •

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ter the 9/11 attacks, such as Intellipedia .org.

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.

Another viable approach is developing special-interest groups in areas of concern, thus extending your own organization’s senses and increasing your periphery. These groups have been termed communities of practice and can provide both breadth and depth, if participation is rewarded by the added value of authentic peer sharing. What you are looking for is robust results where similar factors appear in different communities using a range of ­methods.

One danger with this expanded networking approach, however, is too much success—overwhelming volumes of response, or infoglut.

One effective response is to initiate attention strategies designed to avoid outpacing absorption abilities—that is, the decline of attention levels and the ability to effectively prioritize information as it is received. Use of multiple perspectives (e.g., values, market, and attitude analysis) and multiple techniques (with triangulation) can also be productive. But the real challenge is effective translation among distinct sets of terminology and concepts.

Basic scenario-building techniques can also be utilized to provide crossimpact assessment. Overlaps among multiple scenarios can seem inefficient, but they verify the presence of weak signals: When significant redundancy among critical factors occurs, this provides a form of quality control.

As discussed earlier, it’s critical to avoid functional blinders, such as assumptions or bias, by using a range of scanning tools in combination, such as using new technology assessment together with venture capital analysis.

The source of data can also be a complicating factor. The pioneering futurists at Royal Dutch Shell focused on the conflict of ideas rather than the conflict between the people who were advocating those ideas. It

hindsight yields small changes that heralded big changes, the hope of being able to catch the leading edge of early warning from that time forward becomes compelling. Often, a premature judgment had been made earlier in the process that this or that element would have a marginal effect on specific threats or opportunities; thus, it was ignored.

The allure of weak signals is thus driven by tactical and strategic missteps that are a variable of any systemic analysis. We strive to determine which elements to emphasize and which to ignore, and to do so earlier in the analytical process than previously.

Recognizing and utilizing weak signals is not easy. Neither is interpreting them and incorporating the results into a useful decision-making system. The whole process takes time, focus, and resources. A recent issue of Sloan Management Review makes this blunt assessment: “Fewer than 20% of global companies have sufficient capacity to spot, interpret and act on weak signals of forthcoming threats and opportunities….

Companies should try to avoid delusional promises of manageable risk.”

Analytical bias can arise not only from data skews and design flaws, but also from cultural and psychological sources.

While incorporating weak signals into your own strategic thinking and operational patterns is a practical challenge, you will be more successful if you view weak signals as just another type of raw trend material— i.e., incomplete and fragmented data that may suggest trends but that need to be supplemented and verified. The challenge is in how to scan for and capture these fragmentary and scattered indicators. I suggest combining a set of dialogic techniques—a dialogue not necessarily between forecaster and listener, but among groups of analysts.

One promising technique for spotting problems early is sharing the raw information across a range of knowledgeable colleagues. This is known in some circles as a “distributed intelligence,” and a good example is the set of information-­ sharing structures that arose across the U.S. intelligence communities af50

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is always a good practice to avoid being distracted by the internal dynamics/politics of organizational initiatives, thus concentrating on the systemic consequences of change.

In assessing technology adoption—how quickly a new technology will enter a market or culture—we can certainly calculate some factors quantitatively, such as the cost of production and its impact on the resulting price point. But other measurements are more qualitative, such as ease of use and popular appeal.

Such factors are more easily measured with “soft” tools, such as surveys or customer focus groups.

This is an instance of combining intuition, experience, and objective measurement (quantitative and qualitative) to interpret weak signals, and this might include drivers of trends distinct from rationality (fear, avarice, ideological fervor, etc.). The climate-change debate is one example of such a volatile ­dynamic.

Ultimately, the utility of any scanning and assessment system is measured by how much it helps decision making. For foresight to be useful to you, it must be appropriately tailored to your own situation, include the full range of relevant factors, and allow adjustments to ongoing change.

The goal is to allow participants to understand consequences, integrate varied information into a coherent whole, learn from the process, refine techniques, train new foresight analysts, and move forward.

Dialogue should include more understanding and experience than is sometimes evidenced in the foresight marketplace. I have attempted to highlight some of my areas of concern and suggest some strategies, but the topic is a challenging one; I have only scratched the surface. I leave it to readers to take these observations and apply them to their own experiences. ❑ DAN DOWNEY

About the Author Timothy C. Mack is president of the World Future Society and executive editor of World Future Review.

E‑mail tmack@wfs.org.

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 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.”

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.

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

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

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

Common Sense Medicine

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

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.

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).

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

Christensen Associates, Inc. 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 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.

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.

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!

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

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Consultants

and

Services

Future Problem Solving Program International, Inc.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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:

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Institute for Participatory Management and Planning 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.

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.

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.

MG Rush Performance Learning 1301 W. 22nd St., Suite 603, Oak Brook, IL 60523

Phone: 630-954-5880 Fax: 630-954-5889 E-mail: futurist@mgrush.com Contacts: Terrence Metz, 630-954-5882; Kevin Booth, 630-954-5884 Facilitation of, and facilitator training for: scenario planning, strategy development, group decision-making, workshop design, ideation, option development and analysis, and training of facilitative leadership.

Minkin Affiliates 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.

Next Consulting 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.

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.

Pinyon Partners LLC 140 Little Falls St., Suite 210, Falls Church, VA 22046 Phone: 703-651-0359 E-mail: pshoemaker@pinyonpartners.com Web: www.pinyonpartners.com Contacts: Peter B.G. Shoemaker; Dan ­Garretson, Ph.D. Quantitative and qualitative. Art and Science.

However you want to characterize it, our distinctive combination of the hard-nosed and the deeply intuitive is perfectly suited for those navigating over the horizon. Expansive explorations of what’s next; engaging engagements with change; consultations, workshops, research, and talks aimed at creating future-oriented clarity, purpose, insight, and confidence. Member, Association of Professional Futurists.

Qi Systems 35 Seacoast Terr., Apt. 6P, Brooklyn, NY 11235 Phone: 718-769-9655 E-mail: QiSys@msn.com Web: www.qisystems.org Contact: Ronn Parker, Ph.D. Spectrum Counseling: conflict resolution, conscious evolution, martial arts, meditation methods, mindbody strategies, transformational learning.

David Pearce Snyder, Consulting Futurist The Snyder Family Enterprise, 8628 Garfield St., Bethesda, MD 20817-6704 Phone: 301-530-5807 Fax: 301-530-1028 E-mail: david@the-futurist.com Web: www.the-futurist.com

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.

Contact: Sue Snyder High-impact motivating presentations.

Strategic assessments, socio-technologic forecasts/scenarios. Keynote addresses, strategic briefings, workshops, surveys.

Strategic Futures® Strategic Futures Consulting Group, Inc. 113 South Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone: 703-836-8383 Fax: 703-836-9192 E-mail: info@strategicfutures.com Web: www.strategicfutures.com Contact: Ron Gunn or Jennifer Thompson Strategic planning, succession planning including mentoring, executive coaching, organizational change facilitation, and matrix management assistance.

Town and Gown Relations

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.

Kemp Consulting, LLC P. O. Box 342, Meriden, CT 06450-0342 Phone: 203-686-0281 E-mail: rlkbsr@snet.net Web (consulting): www.rogerlkemp.com Web (background): www.rogerkemp.org Contact: Roger Kemp, MPA, MBA, PhD, ­President Dr. Kemp has been author and editor of over a dozen books dealing with issues relating to cities (towns) and colleges (gowns). He gives keynote speeches, strategic briefings, and does futures research and consulting on emerging trends dealing with the dynamic and evolving field of town-gown relations.

Synthesys Strategic Consulting Ltd.

van der Werff Global, Ltd.

SynOvation Solutions

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.

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.

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.

The TechCast Project Department of Information Systems & Technology Management, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052 Phone: 202-994-5975 E-mail: Halal@gwu.edu Web: www.techcast.org Contact: William E. Halal, professor, George Washington University; president, Techcast LLC 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

www.wfs.org

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.

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Book Reviews Four Scenarios for 2030

By Robert Moran

The National Intelligence Council offers an overview of major trends affecting the world, reduced to four basic scenarios. However, the report’s authors overlook several key tensions.

How will individual empowerment, diffusion of power, aging populations, mass urbanization, food and water scarcity, and accelerating change shape the world of 2030?

The National Intelligence Council’s new report, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, explores these megatrends and shapes them into four very different scenarios for the world 17 years from today.

This succinct report is an analysis of core trends and potential game changers, including: • Economic power will shift eastwards and southwards.

• The global middle class will continue its rise.

• America’s demographic window of opportunity is closing.

• Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) could make the United States virtually energy independent.

• The threat of pandemic looms.

• 3-D printing and robotics will revolutionize manufacturing.

Most World Future Society members and practicing futurists have been studying and speaking on these trends for years, but breathless media coverage of this report suggests that these trends are still entering the intellectual bloodstream. And, if the delusional political discourse surrounding America’s recent elections is any indication, America’s political

class may find this report jarring. Re- and South; (3) scarcity and abundance; ality intrudes. and (4) technology and jobs.

Policy makers and corporate lead• Organizational tensions. Its “Non-State” scenario ers should closely clearly demonstrates study the four scethe NIC’s challenge narios outlined in with the unit of analysis the NIC’s report. in this study. Is the unit Each scenario creof analysis the tradiates valuable “memtional nation–state, inories of the future” vented in Europe and that help leaders as responsible for so much they grapple with progress and pain in the the long-term implinineteenth and twentications of today’s eth centuries? Is the decisions. unit of analysis the 1. The “Stalled Englobal hub cities housgines” scenario is a ing most of what Richworst-case scenario ard Florida calls the in which the Pacific Global Trends 2030: “creative class” and Rim is engulfed in Alternative Worlds, National nationalistic brink- Intelligence Council. 2012. 140 responsible for most innovation and a large manship and con- pages. Paperback $9.99; amount of the world’s flict, global growth Kindle $1.99. View online at economic output? Is the slows, the EU disin- www.dni.gov/nic/globaltrends. unit of measure human tegrates, the United States turns inward, and globaliza- networks like NGOs, movements, and multinationals? Or is the unit of tion unravels.

2. In the best-case “Fusion” sce- measure, as suggested by Russian nario, an interconnected East and contributors to this study, “civilizaWest work together to address the tions”? Which one of these will be globe’s major challenges, innovation the driving force in the twenty-first century and the correct unit of blossoms, and most players prosper.

3. In the “Gini out of the Bottle” analysis for this study today?

The answer appears less than scenario, gaping extremes define the global stage and within countries, as clear. The authors of the NIC report the best positioned reap all the bene- clearly struggled with this issue. The easiest, most intellectually comfortfits of the new world order.

4. And finally, there is the “Non- able unit of analysis is the nation– State” scenario, in which cities, state, but I am skeptical. We now NGOs, global elites, terror groups, have a global elite living in an interand multinationals drive global connected, global network of hub cities for which the nation–state is an change and chaos.

These four scenarios should provide anachronism. And, with technology decision makers plenty of food for empowering the individual, the thought. Although not hewing to the ­b attle for the twenty-first century classic double uncertainty matrix as could just be the battle of the self-ordeveloped by the Global Business ganizing swarm against the comNetwork, these four scenarios are sure mand and control pyramid—the to be studied by practicing futurists cover story for a piece I recently wrote for the MENSA Bulletin. Think and students of strategic foresight.

Yet, below the surface of the report Wikipedia, Wikileaks, Anonymous, lay significant tensions and large, and Christian house churches in open questions with very different China. So, which is it? Which one of outcomes dependent on their resolu- these is the primary right unit of tion. Four critical tensions emerge that analysis, the engine of change? This deserve much wider discussion: (1) or- is the first tension.

• East and West, North and South ganizational; (2) East and West, North

54 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

tensions. Assuming present trends continue, economic power will continue to shift eastward and southward. The NIC report features several graphs plotting the relative decline of U.S. and European economic power as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and the Next Eleven (South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, the Philippines, and Nigeria) catch up and urbanize. But how will the West and the United States adjust to this tectonic change? How will our global institutions, built at the end of World War II by the victorious Americans, adapt to this new, multipolar world?

The NIC’s report generally looks at this issue with an American orientation to the world. Will America return to its traditional, domestic, and North American focus, or will it retain a global focus, acting as a kind of first among equals?

• Scarcity and abundance tensions. A significant focus of the NIC’s report is on future scarcity of water, food, and energy. Extrapolating future needs in these areas with significant technological progress presents a dark, dystopian future.

But, if anything, technological progress appears to be accelerating. Will technological progress in genetically modified seeds, water filtration and conservation, hydraulic fracturing, and solar energy meet or exceed these needs? I am a technological optimist and believe they will. Malthus was proved wrong. Our species is impressively inventive and adaptive.

We have a habit of innovating ourselves out of the box we find ourselves in. And yet only a fool would downplay the extreme needs of the future, especially water.

• Technology and jobs tensions.

So-called “technological unemployment” as anticipated in books like Race Against the Machine (by Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Digital Frontier Press, 2011) is only hinted at in the NIC’s report. The facts are that (1) algorithms will automate away many process-heavy white-collar jobs (potentially including many medical

professionals involved in diagnosis) and (2) robotics will automate away most manufacturing jobs.

The creative class, highly skilled technology workers, and the intellectually agile will still thrive in this world, but what are the prospects for the others? If technological progress and change are accelerating, technological unemployment may knock many workers off the treadmill at the exact time that they should be picking up the pace. Could technological unemployment and the accelerating rate of change slow the rise of the global middle class and lead to a highly polarized global society based on intellect and creativity? Or will the creative destruction from software and robots be followed quickly by wholly new industries?

The key question is if and how the displaced can retrain in an accelerating environment requiring higher levels of cognition and creativity.

New categories of employment will be created, but will the displaced have the skills to step in? My sense is that technological unemployment will set off a revolution in learning, skill training and certification, and cognition enhancement—not an arms race, but a brains race.

How these four tensions will resolve themselves is difficult to say, but the answers will certainly define 2030.

It’s a debated question, but the digital rights movement—a burg e o n i n g worldwide critical mass of hackers, digital activists, and creative professionals who seek broader rights for media consumers—is trying its best to make sure that the answer favors the consumer public, according to Hector Postigo, Temple University mass media and communications professor.

In The Digital Rights Movement, he profiles the issues and actors behind the movement and the huge ramifications that it may hold for media consumers everywhere.

Privacy, free speech, technological innovation, first sale—digital-rights activists are involved in these and many other issues relevant to media users, Postigo explains. Globally, they resist what they deem to be overly exclusive media-copyright protections on software programs, e‑books, digitally generated art and music, and other creative digital content. They strive for new participatory rights that grant consumers not only more access to the products, but also the freedom to become active co-creators of them.

Postigo details the movement’s historical development, seminal technological applications such as iTunes hacking programs and BitTorrents, and the landmark legal cases that won international attention and popular support for the cause. He also describes numerous groups and individuals involved in advancing digital rights, such as the consumerrights nonprofit Electronic Freedom Foundation; Web entrepreneur ­Dmitri Sklyarov, who was arrested by the U.S. government for patenting and selling a program that circumvented access-protection measures on e‑books; and “hacker” Eric Corley, operator of the Web site The Hacker Quarterly.

About the Reviewer Robert Moran is a partner in the Brunswick Group and leads the firm’s insights practice in the Americas. He frequently writes on trends in commerce, communications, and market research.

A Digital Ownership Tug-of-War The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright by Hector Postigo. MIT Press.

2012. 244 pages. $32.

How much control can a corporation claim over a digitally generated product for which it has the license? www.wfs.org

•

THE FUTURIST

March-April 2013

55

Book Reviews

Digital ownership is a subject with room for many points of view.

Postigo comes across as highly sympathetic to the digital-rights activists and hackers’ point of view. His account, however, is thoroughly factual and detailed, and is worthy reading for students and experts of software law and technology alike.

—Rick Docksai

we can be terrified of very unlikely dangers, such as shark attacks, but be so obtuse regarding the all-toolikely menaces of heart disease, climate change, and impending worldwide financial meltdowns.

Croston illustrates the evolutionary basis for many recognizable idiosyncrasies of human reason: He shows where superstitions and conspiracy theories come from, why we tend to polarize into ideological groups, and why sexual attraction and desire for love often sabotage our common sense. He also describes why we are ill-adapted to take actions that will not reward us until decades later and why we have difficulty with “slow-motion” threats that take a long time to materialize.

Croston has this good news, however: We can adapt to the new paradigm. Once we understand how we think about danger, we can consciously improve upon it so that we make better decisions that maximize our personal safety in the long run.

In fact, we have modified our thinking constantly throughout our species’ existence, he notes. From the time of our earliest hominid ancestors, the climate and environment periodically changed in drastic ways. As it did, humans adapted to navigate the new conditions.

The Real Story of Risk is a fascinating look into the workings of the human mind. Futurists, in particular, will find it an engaging and instructive look at the way that we perceive the future, while other readers will find it to be a great explanation for how we think and why.

—Rick Docksai

Knowing What to Really Fear The Real Story of Risk: Adventures in a Hazardous World by Glenn Croston.

Prometheus. 2012. 294 pages. $19.

Our biology has hard-wired us to anticipate visible, immediate threats, such as a hungry saber-toothed tiger, but it has not at all prepared us for the wholly different types of hazards that we face in the twenty-first century, says biologist Glenn Croston. He examines the basic human perception of risk and explains why

FUTURIST UPDATE News and Previews from World Future Society

the

The World Future Society’s free monthly e-mail newsletter keeps you up on the trends and ideas that are shaping our collective future—and connected with the futurist community.

Building a Better Future, One Molecule, Gene, or Quantum Bit at a Time

Futurist Update offers sneak previews of FUTURIST magazine content, plus highlights of upcoming conference activities and speakers and the latest thinking from leading futurist bloggers.

25 Things You Need to Know About the Future by Christopher Barnatt. Constable & Robinson. 2012. 398 pages. Paperback. $14.50.

FREE! Sign up online: www.wfs.org/content/futurist-update

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March-April 2013

Running low on key natural resources won’t necessarily consign us •

www.wfs.org

to deprivation and hardship, argues Christopher Barnatt, Nottingham University professor of computing and futures studies. He describes an array of up-and-coming innovations in nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and other fields that could enable us to synthesize new resources in their place, boost our health, and undo the environmental damage that our old technologies caused. Among the innovations covered are: • Vertical farming—cultivating crops along the sides of city buildings; it would enable cities to grow their own food and clean their own wastewater, all without generating the harmful runoff pollution like conventional farming.

• Atmosphere-filtration systems that cleanse our atmosphere of greenhouse gases.

• Swarms of nanobots that swim through our bloodstreams to kill pathogens before we get sick.

• A variety of alternative-energy innovations that would make photovoltaic solar cells, electric cars, and wind farms immensely more practical, affordable, and powerful.

Barnatt describes one technology concept after another and the benefits that each one would bring. He also explains the technical challenges to each technology’s development and the future innovations that might resolve them.

But these technological wonders pose hazards as well as helps, and Barnatt takes note: One example is that of large businesses potentially gaining ownership of greater proportions of genes, genomes, and organic matter. He also cautions that technological enhancements will not be enough to make a better future; society and social norms will have to change for the better, as well.

In all, 25 Things You Need to Know About the Future is an exciting, yet realistic and believable, vision of future life on Earth. Readers of all types will enjoy vivid descriptions of possibly soon-to-debut technological gamechangers. And futurists will doubtless enjoy debating which ones actually might reach fruition. —Rick Docksai ❑

WorldFuture

2013

The annual conference of the World Future Society July 19-21, 2013, at the Hilton Chicago hotel, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Exploring the Next Horizon

PLUS:

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Crowd gathers around Futurists: BetaLaunch participant Trevor Haldenby of ByoLogyc, the 2012 “best in show.”

The future is where learning is its most adventurous: We want to know not only what may be over the next horizon, but also how to build better road maps for getting where we want to go.

Join your fellow horizon explorers and future builders from around the world for two and a half days of energizing d ­ ialogue!

July 18-19—Master Courses and Education Summit July 22—Professional Members Forum

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Participation is encouraged during all sessions.

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Friday Evening Special Events Nicholas Negroponte, Opening Plenary Speaker

Don’t miss your chance to meet MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas ­Negroponte, author of the bestselling book Being Digital and a seminal voice in education ­reform. His One Laptop Per Child program has distributed more than 2.5 million computers to children around the globe. At WorldFuture 2013, he will discuss his current project, his most ambitious ever.

Attendees check out a program during the opening reception.

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Welcoming Reception and Futurists: BetaLaunch 2013

The third annual innovation expo will be held in conjunction with the Welcoming Reception on Friday evening to get the conference off to an inspiring start. The F:BL team will be seeking a variety of creative innovators and problem solvers in all sectors. For details on submitting an idea to this exhibition (and for a chance to earn the title of “best in show” from confer-

Creativity expert Marci Segal leads a workshop.

DAN DOWNEY FOR WFS

DAN DOWNEY FOR WFS

The welcoming reception is a perfect opportunity to ­exchange ideas, form new partnerships, and strategize the conference experience.

ence attendees), visit the conference home page at www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2013/special-events/ betalaunch-2013

Geordie Rose, creator of the D-Wave One computing system, leads audience on a journey to the future of quantum computing.

Saturday Evening Special Event Poster Sessions and Author Reception

Saturday night, all the intellectual action will be in the poster room! In order to create a broad and inclusive program, the conference planners are soliciting poster presentations. And to facilitate interaction, the event will ­include an author meet-and-greet, with cash bar.

22nd Century Lectures Special to the 2013 conference will be a dozen onehour lecture/discussions devoted specifically to insights and ideas about how trends in each of the six foresight sectors may take shape in the twenty-second century.

Commerce:

• Heather Schlegel, A Possibility Tour • Stephen Aguilar-Millan, A Monetary System for the 22nd Century Governance:

• Eric Meade, The Wisdom Web: Global Governance in 2100 • Joergen Oerstroem Moeller, Postindustrial Governance: National Identities or International Integration Humanity:

• Marci Segal and Megan Mitchell, Learning and ­Creativity in 2100 • Marta M. Keane, Healthy Aging in the 22nd ­Century: Envisioning Life in the Year 2100

Earth:

• Brenda Cooper, Stepping Backwards into Eden • Tsvi Bisk, No Limits to Growth Sci/Tech:

• John M. Smart, Accelerating Progress: How to Thrive in an Ever Faster, Smarter, Smaller, Richer, Freer, Stabler World Futuring:

• Glen Hiemstra, Futuring in 2100 Plus fascinating sessions by FUTURIST deputy editor Patrick Tucker and by Fabienne Goux-Baudiment, founder of Progective Consulting and past president of the World Futures Studies Federation.

More Confirmed Speakers • Ramez Naam (computer scientist, author of The Infinite Resource), Saturday keynote luncheon presentation (bonus event: additional fee applies).

• Erica Orange (VP, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.), Speed Futuring • Mitch Altman (inventor, activist), The Hackerspace Movement • Ben Goertzel (chief scientist, Aidyia Holdings), Faster Than You Think: Progress Toward Artificial General Intelligence And more! Check the conference Web site for updates.

C.G. WAGNER

bility within Your Organization (C-10), with Maree Conway and Elizabeth Rudd Details on these extra-fee workshops are available at www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2013/ special-events/master-courses Check the conference page at WFS.org for the latest news or to register online.

Sponsorship Opportunities!

The people who will be attending WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon are some of the most progressive, motivated, and influential thinkers and leaders you’ll find at any meeting. Showcase your Ramez Naam offers an enlightening view of the role of innovation in solving the products, services, innovations, and ideas world’s most critical problems. Naam will deliver a keynote luncheon speech at through a variety of creative, high-visibility WorldFuture 2013. channels. Contact Jeff Cornish, business manager, at World Future Society headquarters, 1-800-989-8274 or 301-656Preconference Master Courses 8274, or go online to www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2013In addition to the broad array of subjects you expect sponsorship-opportunities. to find at World Future Society conferences, WorldFuture 2013 will offer deeper learning experiences in 10 dayBe a Mentor! long Master Courses: The Susan Echard Memorial Scholarship program supports student futurists who might not otherwise be able Thursday, July 18—9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: to afford conference fees to attend an empowering and • Futuring: An Introduction to Futures Studies (C-1), life-changing event. Please support this program with your with Peter C. Bishop donations. You may add your donation on the registration • Foresight Educators Boot Camp (C-2), with Jay form or go online to www.wfs.org/support.

Gary • Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future (C-3), with Clem Bezold • Introduction to Strategic Futurist Thinking (C-4), with Tsvi Bisk • An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting (C-5), with Andy Hines and Riel Miller Friday, July 19—9 a.m. to 5 p.m.:

• Succeeding in a New Normal World (C-6), with David Pearce Snyder, John Vanston, and Carrie Vanston • Fierce Foresight: Creating Tomorrow out of the Changes of Today (C-7), with Michael Petty • Balancing Logic and Imagination to Foresee the Future (C-8), with Marci Segal, Megan Mitchell, and Tom McMillan • Introduction to 3-D Design, Printing, and Rapid Prototyping for Futurists (C-9), with Paul D. Tinari • Horizon Scanning: What’s Ahead? Building Capa-

Welcome “Home” to the Hilton Chicago The official conference hotel, the Hilton Chicago, offers you convenient access to all the events—and to your fellow participants—at WorldFuture 2013. When you register at the Hilton Chicago, mention that you’re attending WorldFuture 2013 and you’ll receive the hotel’s special discounted rate of $189 per night. Call 1-877-865-5320, or use the hotel registration link at the WorldFuture 2013 home page.

Public Event Disclaimer Attendees should be advised that WorldFuture 2013 sessions, speakers, and participants may be photographed, filmed, or recorded by management for future noncommercial broadcast, publication, or promotion.

Your attendance at this event shall be deemed as your consent to have your voice, image, or likeness reproduced in any publication, broadcast, display, or other transmission or reproduction of this event in whole or in part.

WorldFuture

2013

Exploring the Next Horizon

July 19–21, 2013 • Hilton Chicago • Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. 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 2013. I understand registration ­includes admission to all ­sessions, the welcome reception, entrance to exhibits, and a list of pre-registrants. And if for any reason I am unable to attend, I may cancel and receive a full refund until June 21, 2013.

Register by Feb. 28, 2013

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

Single Luncheons — $65

Select one:

❑ Saturday (speaker to be announced)

❑ Sunday (Ramez Naam)....................................................

PRECONFERENCE MASTER COURSES AND EDUCATION SUMMIT Thursday, July 18 — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ❑ C-1 Futuring: An Introduction to Futures Studies, with Peter C. Bishop — $249............................................................................................................................ ❑ C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp, with Jay Gary — $249.......................................................................................................................................................... ❑ C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future, with Clem Bezold — $249............................................................... ❑ C-4 Introduction to Strategic Futurist Thinking, with Tsvi Bisk — $249............................................................................................................................................. ❑ C-5 An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting, with Andy Hines and Riel Miller — $249.......................................................................................................

Friday, July 19 — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ❑ C-6 Succeeding in a New Normal World, with David Pearce Snyder, John Vanston, and Carrie Vanston — $249......................................................... ❑ C-7 Fierce Foresight: Creating Tomorrow out of the Changes of Today, with Michael Petty — $249.................................................................................... ❑ C-8 Balancing Logic and Imagination to Foresee the Future, with Marci Segal, Megan Mitchell, and Tom McMillan — $249.................................... ❑ C-9 Introduction to 3-D Design, Printing, and Rapid Prototyping for Futurists, with Paul D. Tinari — $249.............................................................................. ❑ C-10 Horizon Scanning: What’s Ahead? Building Capability within Your Organization, with Maree Conway and Elizabeth Rudd — $249........... ❑ E-1 Education Summit — $175................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ❑ Professional Members Forum (Monday, July 22) — $115 (for Professional Members).............................................................................................................

Professional Membership — $295 ($195 nonprofit /academic rate)

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Hotel reservation forms will be sent with the acknowledgment of registration, or you can call the hotel directly at 1-877-865-5320. Mention that you’re attending the WFS meeting to receive your special rate of $189 USD (single or double) per night.

REFUND POLICY: If your plans to attend the conference change, you may receive a full refund until June 21, 2013. A $100 administrative fee will be charged for cancellations after June 21, 2013. No refunds will be given after July 5, 2013.

Refund requests must be in writing by email, mail, or fax. Substitutions may be made at any time and are free until June 21, 2013. Substitutions are $100 after June 21, 2013.

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: 1-800989-8274 (If outside the toll-free calling area, call 1-301-656-8274.) • E-MAIL: info@wfs.org • WEB SITE: www.wfs.org

Future Active News for the Futurist Community Turkish Futurists Association: Networking, Dreaming, Digitalizing

of Dekatlon Buzz, who described the future use of online platforms and their integration with products. Examples like Path-FuelBand and Twoddler-Twitter integration will increase and accelerate. They also highlighted the future of socialized and digitalized products. For example, sport T-shirts will track our performance and share our muscle ratio via social media platforms. Social media will be placed at the heart of our lifestyle through digitalization of nondigital products.

Efe and Ensari also examined the future of online identity. In job interviews, our social scores (like Klout scores) will be a reference for human resource managers. Our tweets will never disappear and will appear even a year later as an argument to support any subject. This is what they call “social media reincarnation.” Because of this, they warned, you should make sure that your profile—tweets, Facebook profile, LinkedIn profile, comments, blogs, and pictures—reflects you and gives a unified message about you.

Our second keynote speaker, Kina

Demirel, CRM manager of Money

Club Card at Migros, Turkey, mentioned that the future of social media strategy will be more integrated with

By Fatma Çalişkan the marketing and production strategy at companies. For example, soThe Eighth Futurist Shuffle confercial media will be used to increase ence was held at Microsoft Turkey customer loyalty and retention. Acon November 5, 2012, with almost cording to customer behaviors on 150 attendees. It enhanced our vision Facebook, customized special diswith the theme of “My vision for counts will be offered. Your Face2013 and beyond.” The bimonthly book likes will automatically load conference is hosted by the Turkish money into your customer loyalty Futurists Association. cards of super/hyperma r k e t s .

To reach a wider audience, the “Money, Money, Money” has turned conference was also live on the Interinto “Network, Network, Network,” net and received hashtagged quesshe said. tions from Twitter and other social Demirel talked about her career media platforms. As many as 5,000 mottos: people were reached by the live 1. Dream your future. Dreams broadcast. shed light on designing your future.

The conference started with wel2. Increase your network. Meeting coming remarks from Murat Şahin, with the right person at the right president of the Turkish Futurists time paves the way for reaching Association. He pointed out the seriyour dream. Be aware of whom you ous transformational change of the shake hands with. Networking will world since the Renaissance and be important more than at anytime, World War II, and he said that futurbetween people and companies. ism is an important science disci3. Don’t be afraid to make mispline enabling us to understand the takes. change and to design the Another speaker of TURKISH FUTURISTS ASSOCIATION future.

Futurist Shuffle, Selçuk Uzun, summarized the Şahin explained that the future of social media. “We Turkish Futurists Associaare physically here, howtion has been presenting ever our tweets represent activities to form a posius in the digital world.” tive future perception The short futuristic film ensince 2005, and that futurtitled Sight that he shared ism is known by an imwith us [YouTube: http:// portant part of people in youtu.be/oPMggzUlcDc], Turkey. As a result of exploring enhanced reality these activities, futurism and apps for dating, was has been accepted as an fantastic and became a diselective course at Middle cussion issue during the East Technical University, whole conference. which is a long-estab- Participants at the Eighth Futurist Shuffle conference (from left to Our last keynote lished and one of top uni- right): Alper Alsan (Siemens Turkey; board member, Turkish Futurspeaker was futurist versities in Turkey. He ists Association); Emrah Kaya (Youtholding; board member, Turkish A ­ lphan Manas, one of the mentioned that they will Futurists Association); Fatma Çalişkan (Avea; board member, Turkfounders of the Turkish go on with futurist activi- ish Futurists Association), Alphan Manas (Brightwell Holdings; Futurists Association. Acties with an increasing honorary chairman, Turkish Futurists Association), Ufuk Tarhan (M-Gen Future Planning Center; president, Advisory Council, Turkish cording to him, we will momentum to create a Futurists Association), Ömer Kuyucu (Vodafone Turkey; board see more 3-D printing, better future. member, Turkish Futurists Association); Murat Şahin (Orijinal Comnew living spaces, new ofThe first keynote speak- panies; president, Turkish Futurists Association); Vadi Efe (Dekatlon fices, and Aerotropolis exers of Futurist Shuffle Buzz); Samet Ensari (Dekatlon Buzz); Kina Demirel Beskinazi amples in the future. He were Vadi Efe and Samet (Migros), Necip Özyücel (Microsoft), Selçuk Uzun (Microsoft), Ensari, founder and CEO Doruktan Türker (Independant). also forecasted that the www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 61 © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Future Active

the individual instructor minimized.

The physical classroom will be replaced by mobile technologies delivering individualized content for use in group and network learning.

The Future Forward curriculum will be based on skills for the twentyfirst-century workforce, including creativity, connective thinking, innovation networks, and identification of weak signals. Starting with a group of community and small four-year colleges, both Smyre and Scott expect that the Future Forward concept will grow to a national network.

one who invests in testosterone will succeed, because longer lives will need more testosterone in the future.

Meanwhile, women will not want to give birth, and sperm banks and carrier mothers will increase.

Manas emphasized that social learning networks will be important in the future of education. More shared or mutual living places will appear in the future. Among his other forecasts: • The word “office” will be deleted from our dictionaries and minds: No office in the future.

• We will print anything—clothes, meats, and even parts of our bodies.

• The creation and simulation of smell will be an important future issue. People remember 65% of smells for one year but only 50% of visuals for three months.

• We will give money to be able to not watch advertisements in the future.

Details: Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina, www.waketech.edu.

Center for Communities of the Future, www. communitiesofthefuture.org.

Jay Herson is a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and serves on the Steering Committee of the Washington, D.C., Area Chapter of the World Future Society.

Fatma Çalişkan is a board member of the Turkish Futurists Association, www.futurizm.org.

Fayetteville 2030: Urban Agriculture

Future Forward College

The city of Fayetteville, Arkansas, is expected to double its population over the next 20 years. Like many cities its size, Fayetteville has been growing by sprawl, which places strain on the land available to grow food for the local population.

Local food production is more nutritious, observes Jeffrey Huber, assistant director for the University of Arkansas Community Design Center. Food on the average American

By Jay Herson A group of American colleges is transforming education by shifting the focus from teaching traditional, already-existing knowledge to providing the skills needed to learn new concepts. The program is Future Forward College and is coordinated by Rick Smyre, president of the Center for Communities of the Future, and Steve Scott, president of Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina.

To accomplish the goal of developing a system of adaptive learning, community colleges must shift from top-down, teacher-centered instructional hierarchies, with standard answers and predictability, instructional models comfortable with webs and networks, multiple choices, and uncertainty and ambiguity. The new paradigm will emphasize learning in teams and networks rather than individual learning, with the role of 62

THE FUTURIST

March-April 2013

table travels 1,500 miles from its origin. By then, it has lost 80% of its nutritional value.

Wo r k i n g o n a $ 1 5 , 0 0 0 s e e d money grant from the American Institute of Architects, Huber and an interdisciplinary team will work with the city government and local NGOs to create a “Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario Plan.”

This plan will generate incentives for urban development incorporating an efficient means of growing, storing, preserving, distributing, and selling food locally. This will result in a model for urban agrarianism where the emphasis of design is around food production and how people live.

A visitor to Fayetteville in 2030 might stroll through Wilson Park and pass an orchard with apple trees or a mini farm with lettuce, green beans, and strawberries growing beside a walking trail. The plan will also include low-impact irrigation and water cycling, animal husbandry, and processing facilities. Private citizens’ gardens, neighborhood cooperatives, and both small and large farms and orchards will be integrated into the system.

The Fayetteville demonstration project is part of the Decade of Design awards sponsored by the AIA in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

—Jay Herson Source: University of Arkansas, http://newswire.uark.edu.

❑

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

Students and staff of the University of Arkansas take a tour of a Fayetteville-area garden.

•

www.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.

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THE FUTURIST

March-April 2013

63

As Tweeted In 30 Years, Everyone Will Be Beautiful

What’s the key to aging beautifully? Saving up for retirement or saving up for enhancements?

From personal futures to transhumanism to the glocalization of beauty and wellbeing: Futurists let their minds wander.

Wired.com recently posted an article encouraging readers to visualize themselves aging over the next 30 years. We picture ourselves in a more vulnerable stage of life, weak and sick—and flabby and wrinkled. The idea is to take our own future seriously enough to start putting more money away for our retirement. But, as often happens among futurists, the conversation on Twitter took a slightly different turn: @lenfontes (Lenny Fontes): RT @WiredFeed: Know What You’ll Look Like in 30 Years—Maybe Then You’ll Max Out Your 401(k): http://flip.it/Z3Cut @localrat @localrat (Emily Empel): In 30 yrs I’ll be ugly. @WorldFutureSoc (World Future Society): In 30 years everyone will be gorgeous. Don’t be victimized by flawed trend extrapolation, reasoning, and values! @localrat: Thanks for the ray of hope! I’ll have to reread @aubreydegrey and @ramez in further anticipation of this future. @lenfontes: At least you have 30 years of beauty ...

I’m ugly now! @localrat: False. But yes, I will treasure each day and start saving for many enhancement technologies. #transhumanism #hplus @pkg9991 (Puneet Garg): It’s always nice to see people [who] know about #transhumanism. @lenfontes: Not sure I want to be part machine ... unless those parts are truly lifestyle enhancements #transhumanism @localrat: You’re not on board with augmentations to combat AIDS or malaria created by the cosmetic industry? #Future @lenfontes: Cosmetic improvements to prevent AIDS? I’d love to read more about it. @localrat: I hate to be the one to tell you this—you can’t read about the future bc it doesn’t exist ;) @lenfontes: Well I guess I can withdraw my investment in Maybelline, and move it to Pfizer? @WorldFutureSoc: Wired’s piece does make a good point about being in touch with our future selves, personalizing reality. Be proactive! @localrat: Also lucky to live in a developed nation with likely access to future enhancement tech. Not the case worldwide.

SERGEI CHUMAKOV, JULIA SAVCHENKO / ISTOCKPHOTO

@lenfontes: Are concerns about good looks classified as another #firstworldproblem? @WorldFutureSoc: Not if you ask fashion/cosmetic industry. @localrat: Makeup and Manolos to mend global inequity? Intrigued. @lenfontes: Fashion is fickle, and fluctuates by culture. I don’t foresee the globalization of beauty in third worlds. @WorldFutureSoc: But there would be localization in that trend. @localrat: Asian beauty industry. Hair removal/skin whitening treatments—huge growth in 2012 but not sustainable in future. @WorldFutureSoc: Beauty has psychic and economic advantages that we pursue. Add it to the Global Happiness Index? How beautiful are we? @lenfontes: I agree, but the definition of beauty should not be driven by marketers on Madison Ave. Beauty is defined within. @localrat: This morning I’ve learned not to engage in a Twitter convo pre-commute. #hopingfortrafficandredlights Read the Wired.com article that inspired this conversation: “Know What You’ll Look Like in 30 Years — Maybe Then You’ll Max Out Your 401(k)”

by Marcus Wohlsen (@marcuswohlsen), posted December 5, 2012, www.wired.com/business/2012/12/retirement-magic-mirror/ Follow the World Future Society on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ WorldFutureSoc and THE FUTURIST’s deputy editor, Patrick Tucker, at ❑ http://twitter.com/TheYear2030.

64 THE FUTURIST March-April 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

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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.

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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.

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