THE FUTURIST, March - April 2014

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

www.wfs.org

March-April 2014

Drones vs.

Poachers Toward a World without Waste, page 16 The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises, page 22 How Businesses Can Learn from Failure, page 30 WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Designing the Domestic Robot Does Smoking Drive Us to Drink?

Microalgae to Feed and Fuel the World Why We Love the Apocalypse ‌ and more!

$5.95

Conservationists have a new weapon in their battle to save endangered species. Page 35

A Special Message from the President of the World Future Society

Because the Future Matters…

Dear Reader,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 Ways You Can Help the World Future Society

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

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

6. Become an Institutional Member, enabling your organization to receive all publications produced by the Society and special assistance in finding resources and making connections tailored to meet your needs. Learn more at www.wfs.org/benefits 7. Become a Professional Member, entitling you to a subscription to World Future Review and exclusive invitations to the annual Professional Members Forum, in addition to all the other benefits of Society membership. Learn more at www.wfs.org/professional 8. Register for WorldFuture 2014, to be held July 11-13 in Orlando, ­F lorida. There is no better place to express your own ideas and pick up new ones.

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

• Join and help build a network or local chapter of futurists to share ideas and practices. Learn more about futurist groups, in both the real and virtual worlds, at www.wfs.org/chapters By taking action now, you will help the Society to sustain the services we have, develop new and useful services and products, promote educational efforts, and support the work of practicing futurists.

With a general public educated to the benefits of futures studies, the field can only grow stronger—more people and organizations will recognize the critical need for foresight, because the future matters.

Thank you for your support—now and in the future!

Take care,

Tim Mack President tmack@wfs.org

March-April 2014 Volume 48, No. 2

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

about the future

ARTICLES 16 A World without Waste?

By Rick Docksai

If current trends continue, we’ll be dealing with three times as much waste by the end of this century as we are now, warns the World Bank.

One solution is to treat waste as a resource.

Rubble trouble. Page 16

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

4

Future Scope

6

World Trends & Forecasts:

• WordBuzz: Interoperability, by Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira and João José Pinto Ferreira • Design for robot living, by Daniel Faggella • Does smoking increase drinking?

• Microalgae as food and fuel • Apocalypse in sci-fi • The neuroscience of intention • Scientific diplomacy

49 Consultants and Services

22 The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises

By Karl Albrecht

Here are eight of the “grand promises” of the digital information technology revolution, with reality checks and revised visions of what lies ahead.

30 Blundering to Success?

Learning from Failure

By Irving H. Buchen

Organizational missteps may be signs of coming catastrophes that we have time to avert.

32 Visions: When Do I Get My RoboCop? Power before Superpowers

By Patrick Tucker

A new remake of the sci-fi classic RoboCop imagines a future where humanity and machinery merge, to

awesome result. Is it a realistic vision?

Somewhat, neuroscientist Charles Higgins tells us.

35 Robotic Technology to Preserve Wildlife: A Scenario

By Princess Aliyah Pandolfi A new flying robotics challenge takes aim at the armed groups that are hunting the black rhino and other animals out of existence.

40 More Talk, Fewer Languages: Communicating in a Connected World

By John F. Copper Will the “language of the future” be Chinese or English or both? An international studies researcher looks at how modernization and globalization challenge linguistic diversity.

45 Learning without Schools: A Contrarian Future

By Patrick Tucker

Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab and One Laptop per Child, shared his views on the future of learning at the World Future Society’s annual conference.

52 Futurists and Their Ideas: Lester R. Brown and Ted Turner

By Hazel Henderson 54 Reviews

• The Naked Future, Tucker • The Demographic Cliff, Dent Jr. • The Future Can’t Wait, Gale and Jackson, eds.

• The Human Race to the Future, Berleant • Ride the Wave, Rogers and Lalich • Sharing Is Good, Buczynski • Wiki Management, Collins

64 As Tweeted: Do Millennials Read?

New speak. Page 40

COVER ILLUSTRATION: WFS PHOTO ILLUSTRATION / ANDRUSHKO GALYANA, ROBERT HOETINK / BIGSTOCK

© 2014 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 JUSTIN CATANOSO

Miles Silman, professor of biology at Wake Forest University, stands in the cloud forest.

Milky Way Supernova Sighting Predicted Heads up, sky watchers: If the weather’s clear, you may be able to see a supernova in your own home galaxy sometime in the next 50 years, predicts Ohio State University astronomer Christopher Kochanek and team.

The Milky Way supernova is most likely to be visible via infrared telescopes, though there is a small chance (less than 20%) that people will be able to view it in the night sky with a naked eye. Those living in the Southern Hemisphere will have

the best chance of witnessing the spectacular event.

“We see all these stars go supernova in other galaxies, and we don’t fully understand how it happens,” Kochanek says. The ability to see one “locally” will offer astronomers an opportunity to learn more about the physics of such phenomena, including the actions of neutrinos emitted in the stellar collapse.

Source: Ohio State University, www.osu.edu.

Drones in the Clouds Unmanned aerial vehicles may soon collect data in inaccessible places, such as the clouds over mountains and canopies of rain forests. The goal is to improve our understanding of the health and future of critical ecosystems.

Researchers at Wake Forest University are developing small, insect-like drones to explore the Peruvian cloud forest, an area about the size of the continental United States and believed to be one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. It is also the

hardest for humans to reach, as it covers the slopes of the ­Andes at the edge of the Amazon basin. The lack of infrastructure makes data collecting difficult even on the ground.

The drones also promise to offer a higher resolution view than satellites can deliver, enabling the scientists to improve their models on the forest canopies’ ability to fix carbon and release oxygen and water.

Source: Wake Forest University, www.wfu.edu.

Dandelion Rubber It’s a weed and a renewable resource! Rubber extracted from the juice of dandelions may keep future tires rolling.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME are testing new varieties of dandelions to optimize them for biomass and for use in rubber.

Preliminary tests suggest that the dandelions can com-

pete with traditional rubber plants used to make tires. As a source of raw material, the dandelion rubber has the advantage of being cultivated on land not typically suited to agricultural crops and in places closer to manufacture, thus reducing transportation costs.

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, www.fraunhofer.de. © FRAUNHOFER IME

Dandelions under cultivation: from weed to rubber.

Touch-Sensitive Prosthetics It’s one thing to regain the use of one’s hands, but the goal of restoring the sense of touch in prosthetics has been, so far, untouchable. Now, researchers at the University of Chicago are developing a touch-sensitive artificial hand that could convey sensory information back to the user’s brain.

In work supported by DARPA, assistant professor Sliman Bensmaia and colleagues are studying how the brain processes sensory information so that they can “try to reproduce these patterns of neural activity through stimulation of the brain.”

Ultimately, the work could yield robotic prosthetics with significantly improved functionality.

“The algorithms to decipher motor signals have come quite a long way, where you can now control arms with seven degrees of freedom,” Bensmaia says.

“It’s very sophisticated. But I think there’s a strong argument to be made that they will not be clinically viable until the sensory feedback is incorporated.”

Sources: The University of Chicago Medicine, www.uchospitals.edu.

Bensmaia Lab, bensmaialab .uchicago.edu.

Harvesting Ambient Energy Aside from being startling and annoying, that shock of electricity you get when you touch a doorknob on a dry day is also a potential source of energy. Engineers at Georgia Tech are now hoping to harvest the small amounts of energy produced by what’s known as the triboelectric effect.

The effect occurs when two different materials rub against each other. The Georgia Tech researchers, led by Zhong Lin Wang, are developing power generators that could capture this otherwise wasted energy and use it to power small ­devices such as sensors or smartphones.

Source: Georgia Institute of Technology, www.gatech.edu.

ROB FELT / GEORGIA TECH

Putting his foot down? Georgia Tech professor Zhong Lin Wang poses with triboelectric generator, illuminating an ­array of 1,000 LED lights with the power of a stomp.

2 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 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

Keturah Hetrick Editorial Assistant

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

Learning from Our Mistakes Things don’t always work out as we hope or plan. Take the Information Revolution, for example. When the Internet was rolled out, that Information Superhighway was supposed to open a global ­supermarket where everyone could sell more stuff to everyone else.

We would all become more knowledgeable, thanks to free, open Web-based encyclopedias and resources, and we could all become famous authors without hassling with picky editors and publishers.

As management consultant Karl Albrecht observes, the Information Revolution broke more than a few of these grand promises. There is a lot more competition for our marketable products, be they e-books or apps or ideas. What this means is that we need to be more reasonable about our expectations and wiser about our choices—there are still more opportunities than ever for even the “knowledge have-nots” to keep up with the “haves.” (See “The ­Information Revolution’s Broken Promises,” page 22.)

Making mistakes about such things as what perils or promises await us with the Information Revolution is part of what makes business so risky at times. Blunders big and small offer learning opportunities, however, points out business professor Irving H. Buchen. In “Blundering to Success? Learning from Failure,” he outlines five ways that managers can make mistakes and what lessons they should learn from them. (See page 30.)

I’ll confess to a little apprehension about the promise that Amazon recently presented to the public for aerial delivery drones in our not-too-distant future. My immediate concern was how they’d get past the concierge in a downtown high-rise residence.

Then I thought about the possibility of drone hijackers diverting my deliveries. Are drones good or evil?

As technologies, drones are ethically neutral. One potential benefit they offer is to help thwart crimes in difficult-to-patrol places like wildlife refuges. In “Robotic Technology to Preserve Wildlife: A Scenario,” Princess Aliyah Pandolfi describes a challenge for building drones to thwart game poachers in Africa (page 35).

And I’m also a bit worried about being overexposed in the data-rich future. FUTURIST deputy editor Patrick Tucker’s new book The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? both frightens and reassures me. Whether we are aware of it or not, and whether we intend to do so or not, we’re leaking information about ourselves almost every moment of our lives. Technologies that help our friends find us when we’re meeting for dinner are also telling advertisers, health authorities, cops, and criminals where we are.

However, if knowledge is power—or at least empowerment— then the more we know about our own data leaks, the more we can either plug them up or leverage them to our own future advantage. See the review by FUTURIST contributing editor ­Richard Yonck (page 54).

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

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 3 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Future Scope Trend scanners notebook Medicine | Sci/Tech

Marriage | Humanity

Why Treating HIV/AIDS Is Still Hard

Follow Your Instincts Down the Aisle

AIDS may be even harder to cure than we thought.

The virus that causes the autoimmune disease in humans keeps a larger-than-expected reservoir of hidden proviruses that rise to action when attacked with antiretroviral therapy. They then replicate themselves and resume infecting other cells.

Researchers have long known about the hidden pro­ viruses, but believed most of them to be defective. New research from Johns Hopkins University, led by Robert Siliciano, shows that more of these latent proviruses could be reactivated when the “shock and kill” approach is applied. Siliciano believes the discovery lends support for alternative approaches to curing AIDS, such as the development of a vaccine that would stimulate the immune system to kill the entire virus.

“Our study results certainly show that finding a cure for HIV disease is going to be much harder than we had thought and hoped for,” he says.

Prospective brides and grooms are probably better at predicting their future happiness than they realize.

Their automatic responses (gut reactions) to their future mates turn out to be fairly reliable indicators of the relationship’s success or failure.

In a study by psychologists James McNulty (Florida State University) and Michael Olson (University of Tennessee–Knoxville), newlyweds were given a test to uncover an underlying positive or negative feeling about their partners, based on seeing flashed pictures of their beloved followed by terms that they had to quickly rate as positive or negative. This gut-reaction test predicted changes in marital satisfaction four years later, while their early verbalized feelings about their spouses were not predictive.

“Our research shows that, although the motivation to see the relationship in a positive light may distort a spouse’s conscious evaluations of their relationship, their automatic evaluations of the relationship appear to be relatively impervious to such motivations,” says Olson.

Co-author McNulty concurs: “I think the findings suggest that people may want to attend a little bit to their gut.”

Source: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, www.hopkinsmedicine.org. The research was published in Cell online October 24, 2013.

Population Growth | Earth

Demographics, Consumption, and Climate Change Models for future climate-change scenarios need to dig beneath population-growth projections to understand their potential impact on the environment.

While it’s true that more people consuming more resources will have more impact, it’s where that population growth is happening that matters, says Judith Stephenson of University College London’s Institute for Women’s Health.

Stephenson and colleagues posit that it is numbers of consumers rather than people per se who need to be factored into the scenarios. Demographers project that most of the population growth we’ll see by mid-century will occur in poorer countries that consume less than their wealthier counterparts. However, growth in consumption is exceeding growth in population in developing and developed countries alike.

The study concludes that promoting sustainable lifestyles and reducing consumption in wealthier countries will help lower carbon emissions, with health benefits extending to poorer countries.

Sources: University College London, www.ucl.ac.uk. “Population, development, and climate change: links and effects on human health” by Judith Stephenson et al., The Lancet (November 15, 2013).

Sources: University of Tennessee–Knoxville, www.utk.edu, and Florida State University, www.fsu.edu. The research was published in the November 29, 2013, issue of Science.

Space | Sci/Tech

Detection Is First Line of Asteroid Defense An asteroid hit is a low-probability event, but one whose high impacts compel us to think about how to deal with it. Where should we invest our resources—in detection, deflection, or resurrection? Purdue University scientist H. Jay Melosh advises detection.

Although astronomers have identified a great many near-Earth objects that present a threat, there are blindspots, says Melosh. He recommends investing in telescopes that can spot asteroids on the Earth’s sunward side, as well as programs that can detect the smaller objects that are less devastating but more likely to hit the Earth.

“If we could have detected the [2013] Chelyabinsk asteroid and had tools in place to quickly assess the impact scenario, an evacuation of the area would have prevented many injuries,” says Melosh. “Much like we do for hurricanes, the best option is often to get people out of harm’s way and prepare for the impact.”

Source: Purdue University, www.purdue.edu.

4 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 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: Carol D. Rieg

Business and Advertising Manager: Jeff Cornish

Secretary: Les Wallace

Conference Director: Sarah Warner Conference Coordinator: Tom 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. Government Accountability Office

Joyce Gioia president and CEO, The Herman Group

John Gottsman president, The Clarity Group

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

Timothy C. Mack president, World Future Society

Eric Meade senior futurist and vice president, Institute for Alternative Futures

Robert P. Moran partner, The Brunswick Group

Raj Bawa

Julio Millán

president/patent agent, Bawa Biotech LLC, and

president, Banco de Tecnologias, and

adjunct professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

Clement Bezold

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

chairman and senior futurist,

visiting senior research fellow, ISEAS, Singapore

Institute for Alternative Futures

Ramez Naam

Arnold Brown

computer scientist and author

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

John Naisbitt

Adolfo Castilla

trend analyst and author

economist, communications professor, Madrid

Burt Nanus

Marvin J. Cetron

author and professor emeritus of management,

president, Forecasting International Ltd.

University of Southern California

Hugues de Jouvenel

Joseph N. Pelton

executive director, Association

founder and vice chairman,

Internationale Futuribles

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

Yehezkel Dror

Timothy M. Persons

professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

chief scientist, U.S. Government Accountability Office

Esther Franklin

John L. Petersen

executive vice president and director of cultural

president, The Arlington Institute

identities, Starcom MediaVest Group

Sandra L. Postel

William E. Halal

director, Global Water Policy Proj­ect

professor of management science and

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.

Global Advisory Council Stephen Aguilar-Millan

Sohail Inayatullah professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Zhouying Jin president, Beijing Academy of Soft Technology

European Futures Observatory

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

Marcio de Miranda Santos executive director, Center for Strategic Studies and Management in Science, Brasilia, Brazil

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

Eleonora Barbieri Masini

Raja Ikram Azam

professor emerita, Faculty of Social Sciences,

honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

Gregorian University, Rome

Graham May

Alvin Toffler author

Heidi Toffler

principal lecturer in futures research,

author

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K.

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

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

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

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

World Trends & Forecasts WordBuzz • Robotics • Health • Resources • Science Fiction • Neuroscience • Cooperation

WordBuzz | Commerce

Interoperability: Working Together To Enhance Innovation What increased interoperability within and between teams means for management and business. © VLADGRIN / BIGSTOCK

By Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira and João José Pinto Ferreira Interoperability is increasingly seen as critical for business success, but what is it? Simply put, it is the ability to work together.

Interoperable organizations are those that can easily exchange information and subsequently make use of that information. Interoperability allows organizations to work without barriers and without extra effort with other systems or organizations.

Individuals have already become highly inter­ operable, thanks to tools such as the social networks Facebook and Instagram, which both have hundreds of millions of users. These networks add value insofar as they promote communication and the exchange of information, making our lives feel more fulfilled. Without such tools, how would we keep in touch in a world where less time exists to socialize? Of course, connecting online shouldn’t be a substitute for face-to-face, but it does help us feel connected to something bigger than ourselves and to see other things happening around us more clearly.

In the business context, technologies that facilitate ­interoperability drive innovation. If businesses don’t innovate, they are doomed, even in the short term. ­Interoperability between enterprises is thus important, as it enhances collaboration and innovation.

Enterprise interoperability can be defined as a collaboration competence, occurring between business partners, and through which value is created.

The oftentimes very close business relationships that result are supported by information technology, which acts as more than an enabler or a simple conduit, providing an efficient means whereby rela-

tionships can evolve to a higher level.

Interoperability can focus on different aspects of these relationships, which organizations must leverage to the fullest in order to produce the innovation they need to survive: • Communication—exchanging information.

• Coordination—aligning activities.

• Cooperation—sharing.

• Collaboration—creating synergy.

• Channeling—involving the Internet.

One should not only look to the Internet (channel ­interoperability) as a solution to organizational problems. We increasingly need to know how to share (cooperation interoperability) among individuals, teams, and organizations, as this fosters knowledge creation.

We need to be aligned so as not to repeat activities that have already been performed, and not to forget to do other activities that cannot be left undone (coordination interoperability).

Collaborating in teams means that more can be ac-

6 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

complished. Teams are collections of individual talents, which need to be celebrated, but individual stars should not be seen as being more important than the team’s overall talent to produce innovation. The IDEO Design Thinking approach, building on teamwork and on the principle that “enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius,” stresses the relevance of teamwork. Communicating effectively is a form of interoperability. Information needs to be exchanged and circulated if it is to be of value.

Companies are increasingly leveraging more inter­ operability types at their disposal, and this will lead to more forms of innovation.

Innovation comes in several forms, such as products and services, processes, organizational structure, and marketing. Companies need to introduce as many forms of innovation as possible: New products and services increase sales, process innovations decrease costs, organizational innovations increase morale and motivation, and marketing innovations increase visibility.

Interoperability may perhaps come more naturally to smaller entrepreneurial firms, which need to be innovative and to have alliances and partnerships in order to survive and gain market presence. Small entrepreneurial companies communicate based on trust, with an open attitude to the environment. However, larger firms like Apple and Samsung are also innovating, suggesting that they, too, are capable of being inter­ operable—even if mainly on an internal basis to avoid sharing knowledge and company secrets outside the firm.

In the decades ahead, accelerating technological innovation will lead to paradigm shifts in the economy, causing certain jobs to disappear. Continuous learning will be necessary to keep people competitive and employable. So individuals, much like companies, will also be leveraging as many interoperability types at their disposal as possible, in both their personal and professional networks, to stay ahead.

Never before will being connected mean so much. In a world where we are increasingly seen as personal brands of our capabilities and unique competencies, teamwork and the honest and earnest exchange of knowledge will be paramount to the success of the multiple teams in which we move. The world is increasingly mobile, and that actually means that the world is increasingly interoperable.

Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira and João José Pinto Ferreira are affiliated with INESC TEC (coordinated by INESC Porto) and on the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 378, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal. Additionally, Oliveira is a member of the Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.

Robotics | Sci/Tech

Why Design Matters For Domestic Robots Cultural differences around the world should be factored into the design of commercial robots.

By Daniel Faggella Robots created to help the elderly is hardly a novel concept, but Dutch scientist Tijn van der Zant believes that the global adoption of home robotics may be more novel and nuanced than we expect.

Van der Zant knows robots. He received his PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Groningen in 2009, followed by a postdoc at the Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute in Lyon, France. In 2006, he helped found RoboCup@Home, a competition for home robotic teams. Today, he also serves as CEO of VIA FACEBOOK

Robot designer Tijn van der Zant in his lab.

www.wfs.org

•

THE FUTURIST

March-April 2014

7

World Trends & Forecasts Assistobot, which designs robots to help the elderly in medical settings.

His experiences in just the last eight years have made him more and more optimistic about the developments in robotics. Vastly superior sensors, collaboration and open-source sharing among top universities, along with increased interest from every corner of the globe, have helped take robotics to an entirely new level.

Van der Zant told me: “We went from robots that couldn’t play soccer (the traditional competitive activity of RoboCup robots) … and were unlikely to be used at home … to robots that can open the fridge, get a beer, open the beer for you, and bring it to you.”

Two specific predictions make van der Zant’s vision of the future of home robotics different from that of most other roboticists and researchers I’ve spoken with.

First, he believes that the vision of one “robotic maid” is a relatively unlikely scenario for the initial applications of home robotics. Rather, in 30 years, it will be likely “for each person to have multiple personal robots, each with specific tasks,” he says.

Though van der Zant’s doctoral work involved artificial general intelligence, he believes that useful home robots will begin with specific, individual tasks. An iRobot Roomba can handle vacuuming floors, for instance. More-advanced home robotics will still be relatively limited in their domain expertise and capacities, at least initially.

Second, van der Zant believes that home robots (potentially even more so than commercial robots) will need to be modified and adjusted based on the culture in which they function. He told me: “A robot that might work just fine in a Dutch home may not be a fit for an Italian or Asian home, and vice-versa.... This will mean variance not only in terms of behavior, but also in appearance.”

In half jest, he uses an example of a sewer-cleaning robot: “The Italians, for example, have a very designcentered culture, so if they have a robot whose purpose is to clean the sewers, it may still be a priority for them to have a robot that looks good.”

In addition, van der Zant predicts marked cultural differences in the purpose of robotics. “In Japan, people are interested in a kind of robotic ‘buddy,’ while in eastern Europe there is no desire for this. We desire robots to do the things which we consider dirty or dangerous,” he observes.

Van der Zant conceives his predictions from an informed perspective, having seen robotics teams from Brazil, London, Iran, the Philippines, and more. If we consider the spectrum of architecture, customs, languages, and cuisines around the world, it shouldn’t be surprising to suspect that robots should differ, too.

Anyone who’s been in the tiny cars that navigate the

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cobblestone streets of London or Prague can attest to the necessity of variation based on use. In addition, anyone who’s used a toilet in a modern Japanese hotel can see just how different the same technology can manifest itself from culture to culture.

Just how will all of these changes manifest themselves in the home robotics of the future? That’s what van der Zant hopes to discover through RoboCup@ Home and his own robotics startup, Assistobot. ­Regardless of who leads the way, he believes that sensitivity to culture will be a necessary element for the widespread adoption of any in-home robot.

Daniel Faggella received a master’s degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on skill development.

He heads the emerging tech business blog www.techemergence.com.

For more information, see RoboCup@Home, www.robocupathome .org, and Assistobot, www.assistobot.com.

Health | Humanity

Does Smoking Drive Us to Drink?

Nicotine, combined with stress hormones, affects brain chemistry in a way that may increase alcohol use.

Smoking has been associated with a risk for alcohol abuse, but, until recently, nobody quite understood why.

Research from Baylor College of Medicine, published in the journal Neuron, sought a connection between nicotine exposure and the brain’s subsequent chemical response to alcohol. What the scientists found was that smoking makes your brain want to drink more.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a chemical that transmits information from one neuron to another.

Neuro­transmitters serve a wide range of purposes. The neurotransmitter melanin helps to regulate our circadian rhythms; oxytocin promotes bonding between mothers and infants. Dopamine plays myriad roles, from influencing attention span to altering mood to aiding us in voluntary muscle control. It also factors into addiction.

When a person is exposed to certain mind-altering substances, such as alcohol or cocaine, dopamine levels increase. As the drug’s effects wear off, dopamine levels return to normal. Over time, the brain becomes accustomed to frequent floods of dopamine as a result of drug or alcohol use, creating a chemical “need” for that particular substance.

© BISLI / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

In the experiment, rats were first injected with either nicotine or saline. Three hours later, they were intra­ venously administered alcohol until their brain alcohol concentrations reached roughly the same levels as a human’s might. Nicotine’s half-life—the time it takes for nicotine levels to fall to half their original concentration—is about 45 minutes in rats. Researchers chose to wait three hours after nicotine injection to minimize the nicotine’s pharmacological effects.

The rats that had been injected with saline (the control group) experienced an increase in dopamine compared with their original, pre-saline and pre-alcohol levels. Those that had been injected with nicotine did not show higher dopamine levels.

Later, the rats were again injected with either nicotine or saline. After three hours, they were given access to alcohol mixed with a saccharine solution. The rats that had been exposed to nicotine drank substantially more than those injected with saline.

They had to drink more to reach a dopamine high, because nicotine decreases the release of alcohol-­ induced dopamine, even many hours after original nicotine exposure.

The researchers also concluded that the nicotine–­ ethanol interactions they observed required the presence of stress hormones like glucocorticoids, which move energy into the bloodstream from storage sites within the body when the organism perceives stress.

When these stress hormones are blocked, suppressing the organism’s natural fight-or-flight response, dopamine levels and alcohol consumption are not altered by nicotine.

Decreased dopamine leads to greater impulsivity and a greater risk for drug and alcohol abuse. Therefore, the research suggests, public health advocates’ efforts to prevent smoking could yield the added benefit of reducing the risk for abuse of alcohol and other © MARTIN MCCARTHY / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM drugs.

A dopamine molecule.

“Young people typically experiment with nicotine from tobacco in their teens, and that exposure possibly contributes to a greater vulnerability to alcohol abuse later in life.

Therefore, greater vigilance is called for to prevent the initial exposure to nicotine and to follow those at risk,” says John Dani, a professor of neuro­science at Baylor College of Medicine and the corresponding author of the study. “In addition, our work suggests that stress hormones are candidate targets for prevention or treatment therapies.”

—Keturah Hetrick Source: “Nicotine Decreases Ethanol-Induced Dopamine Signaling and Increases Self-Administration via Stress Hormones” by William M. Doyon et al., Neuron (Volume 79, Issue 3, 530-540, 18 July 2013), www.cell.com/neuron.

Resources | Earth

Microalgae to Feed And Fuel the World Food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic producers are tapping a new green resource.

The world’s fisheries have been ramping up their cultivation of fish for the world’s food markets, but they’ve run into a hard ceiling: finite supplies of raw materials for making fish feed. If they are going to raise more fish, then they will need to find a way to feed them.

Researchers at numerous institutions throughout ­Europe, Israel, and elsewhere are working toward a so-

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World Trends & Forecasts NORDIC MICROALGAE

UNI RESEARCH

Microalgae grow in waters all over the world. Pictured here is Striatella unipunctata, which could be used to make oil byproducts that can serve many human purposes, with low environmental impacts.

lution using microalgae—single-celled microbes that populate freshwater throughout the globe. When there are large enough numbers of microalgae in a given body of water, we see them as large, shapeless green masses on the water’s surface. They are photosynthetic, like the multicelled plants that we see around us every day, but they grow up to 50 times faster: One gram’s worth can grow to several tons in 10 days.

Uni Research, a Norwegian research firm, sees a possibility of harnessing this rapid-growth capability and using it to scale up fish-feed production. The company is now participating in MIRACLES, a research project involving 25 other partner firms from across Europe, including the food, dietary supplements, and pharmaceuticals industries. By growing microalgae cultures under a range of climate conditions, both indoor and outdoor, and seeing which ones respond best, the researchers aim to assess the best ways to produce microalgae and use them to develop new products.

The project’s foremost aim is to modify microalgae to produce omega-3, a prime ingredient in fish food. If they can scale up enough fatty-acid-producing micro­ algae, they may have the means to churn out bigger quantities of fish feed than was ever possible.

Microalgae-derived byproducts could nourish people, too. Omega-3 supplements are now immensely popular for their purported positive effects on choles-

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Cultures of microalgae thrive inside a facility run by the Norwegian firm Uni Research. The company is cultivating the micro­ algae for its oil byproducts, which have potential use as a clean, renewable biofuel, food additive, and ingredient for an array of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

terol levels, mood, joint health, and other health needs.

But the supplements’ manufacturers get the oil from fish, and there are only so many fish to go around.

That’s why researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, are developing algae-based omega-3like products that could substitute for fish-derived omega-3.

Nutritional supplements are one potential use for this microalgae-derived omega-3, but they are not the only one. It could be a useful substitute ingredient in many cosmetics, baby formulas, and pharmaceuticals, as well.

“Our products should be cleaner. They will be obtained from a green source, a plant source. We believe that we will develop a better, cleaner source of fatty acids for human health,” says Inna Khozin-Goldberg, a Ben-Gurion agriculture and biotechnology professor.

Of course, being very tiny, microalgae produce only

very small amounts of these oil byproducts. Even large cultures of them are only going to provide us humans limited quantities of oil extract at any given time. If they are going to go into extensive industrial use, then we will need to find ways to either boost their productivity or grow more microalgae in less time.

Other European ventures are working on the productivity challenge. One of them, an Austrian company called ecoduna, recently devised the PHOBIOR, a “photobioreactor” to mass-produce microalgae for industrial purposes.

Ecoduna is now working with energy firm Energiepark Bruck to bring its PHOBIOR up to scale. The system utilizes a patented “rotating hanging gardens” design that tracks the movements of the sun and adjusts its structures accordingly, so that more light—but never too much light—will reach the microbes at any given moment.

“With the diluted light and the continuous process in our ‘hanging gardens’ photobioreactor technology, we have invented the perfect environment for microalgae to grow,” says Dave Bernard, ecoduna sales manager.

The system also prevents any carbon dioxide from escaping the system; it all gets ingested by the microbes. The company looks forward to rolling out hundreds of new PHOBIORs, once the prototype is fully optimized, and using the microalgae-produced oil not only for omega-3 supplements, but also for biofuel, medicines, and bioplastics.

Meanwhile, San Francisco–based Solazyme has found techniques for making the same amount of ­microalgae produce more oil. These microbes build up oil volumes equal to 80% of their body mass, compared with 8%–10% found in the average microalgae microbe.

The company’s specimens are productive enough that, in 2011, a U.S. passenger jetliner completed a flight entirely on Solazyme’s microalgae-derived biofuel.

The company has also figured out how to customize the kind of oil that its microalgae produce. Whether the oil is to serve as biofuel for aircraft or cars, or as ingredients in food products, skin-care treatments, or vitamin supplements, the microalgae can be engineered so that their oil byproducts are optimized for the specific application.

“For the first time in history, we have unlocked the ability to completely design and tailor oils,” says Walter Rakitsky, Solazyme’s senior director of business and strategy. “These oils could replace or enhance the properties of oils derived from the world’s three dominant sources: petroleum, plants, and animals.” —Rick Docksai Sources: Camilla Aadland, Uni Research, uni.no; Martin Mohr, ­ecoduna, www.ecoduna.com/de/home; Inna Khozin-Goldberg, Ben-Gurion University, in.bgu.ac.il/en/Pages/default.aspx.

Science Fiction | Futuring

Why Apocalypse Is Popular Viruses and zombies and doom, oh my! Sci-fi both scares and inspires.

Visions of the end of everything have been a part of every culture since at least the Old Testament, but apocalyptic fiction gained a large following in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in Great Britain.

One reason for the boom in worrisome stories at that time is that they reflected a worried society, according to Martin Hermann, an English literary scholar at the University of Freiburg. Accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs are behind much of this worry, Hermann observes. For example, “The Star” by H. G. Wells envisions environmental havoc in a scenario likely inspired by discoveries in astronomy and ­Darwin’s theories on human evolution.

Other historical events factor into these bursts of apocalyptic imaginings, including the two World Wars and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, as they stir people to consider ever new ways that the world may end, ­Hermann notes. The Cold War prompted stories about the effects of atomic weapons, while fears of environmental catastrophes dominated science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s.

So far, the twenty-first-century version of these endis-nigh scenarios is dominated by the impacts of climate change, along with a global pandemic. Throw in a few zombies for dramatic effect (28 Weeks Later), and you’ve got a blockbuster.

FOX ATOMIC / DNA FILMS / UK FILM COUNCIL / FIGMENT FILMS / SOCIEDAD / SUSAN ALLNUT / ALBUM / NEWSCOM

Scene from 28 Weeks Later (2007), a zombie-laden film directed

by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

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World Trends & Forecasts One lesson that these stories often leave us with is that human beings have much to do with both the ­onset of these catastrophes and preventing them.

—Cynthia G. Wagner Source: University of Freiburg, www.uni-freiburg.de.

Neuroscience | Sci/Tech

Friend or Foe? How Brains Can Betray Intentions A “mind-reading” device could help distinguish real threats from fleeting thoughts.

Insider attacks on U.S. and other foreign troops supporting the Afghan military have risen in recent years.

Deaths among NATO troops altogether rose from 16 in 2010 to 61 in 2012.

Because it’s difficult to predict which Afghan soldiers might act on anti-American sentiments, attacks can be hard to prevent. The founders of a small, U.S.-based neurotechnology company called Veritas Scientific hope to change that. They’re marketing a system called HandShake that uses the brain’s electromagnetic signals to detect deception and, thus, insider threats.

HandShake utilizes two types of technology: electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for tests measuring a subject’s guilty knowledge, deception, and affiliations. The goal is to determine the likelihood of an Afghan soldier turning on a U.S. soldier he’s supposed to be cooperating with.

“We chose the toughest test in dealing with members of the Afghan army killing American soldiers,” company founder Eric Elbot tells THE FUTURIST. Because so many Afghans already harbor anti-American views but don’t act on them, identifying animosity alone isn’t a good way to gauge an Afghan’s threat to U.S. troops, he says.

“It doesn’t help if we identify 90% of Afghan soldiers as being potentially harmful to us, because we can’t do anything about that. But if we can identify that, out of 20 soldiers, there’s one whose EEG brain waves and … brain-blood oxygenation [are] an indicator that he’ll act on that, that’s valuable knowledge that will save lives,” Elbot says.

How Your Brain Betrays You FNIRS works by measuring the brain’s oxygen levels, as different parts of the brain require different amounts of oxygen depending on current stimuli. Elbot offers an example of how this happens: If you have positive feelings for someone, your brain requires a certain bloodoxygen level when you think about him or her. But as your feelings toward the person become more negative, your brain-oxygen levels further increase.

“If you’re intent on doing that person harm, it’s going to require a lot of oxygen,” Elbot explains.

But data generated by the fNIRS readings provide only a small piece of the puzzle.

HandShake’s second major component works by detecting a set of brain waves known as event-related potentials, or ERPs. Rather than relying on bulky fMRI machines, which would render HandShake far less portable and much harder to use in the field, Veritas Scientific decided to use an EEG helmet, a much smaller but well-established method of measuring brain waves.

The technology works by flashing visual stimuli and recording the brain’s immediate reaction, before a perPHOTOS: VERITAS SCIENTIFIC

HandShake uses EEG, among other technologies, to measure brain waves.

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EEG helmet measures brain activity.

son can consciously respond. Because it collects information in a fraction of a second, the measurements are effectively countermeasure resistant (that is, it works too quickly for a person to trick the machine).

Elbot explains that certain visual stimuli are more useful than others. Showing an Afghan soldier a photo of an improvised explosive device (IED) wouldn’t be a reliable indicator of intent, because many soldiers have seen them before.

“But if I flash you a picture of a diagram that shows you how to build an IED, that would be a pretty strong indicator that you might be a foe,” Elbot explains. “You wouldn’t be studying how to make an IED if you were a friend.”

The EEG helmet also flashes images that are seemingly irrelevant to threat detection.

“Some of it is to relax the mind. The full nature of the interaction is about a balance between what the brain will or will not react to and then finding a pattern,” says Elbot. Although HandShake uses visual stimuli, Elbot says, the technology could also be applied to sound or even smell cues.

HandShake isn’t without a human component: A series of interviews, conducted by actual people, complements those fNIRS and EEG readings, allowing the test to be tailored to the individual’s specific culture and circumstances.

The interview results are weighted and, along with the millions of data points generated by the fNIRS and EEG tests, fed into the company’s “Friend or Foe” algorithm.

The algorithm then calculates the chance that the soldier in question is likely to act on anti-American sentiments.

“So far,” says Elbot, “the results are highly accurate.”

The Veritas Web site claims that the individual tests on which HandShake is based have been shown to yield an 80%–95% accuracy rate. (The site also claims that it could have identified the Boston Marathon bomber as a potential threat.) When the algorithm combines the three tests, the accuracy improves significantly. Veritas Scientific is still in the process of tweaking the algorithm to generate the most-accurate results.

The technology behind HandShake isn’t limited to detecting threats to the U.S. military. One potential use is in a health-care setting. It’s difficult for health-care providers to determine whether someone is likely to act on suicidal ideations. Because the majority of people who have suicidal thoughts do not act on them, it’s also impractical to preemptively treat everyone who harbors suicidal thoughts.

“HandShake,” Elbot predicts, “could become a powerful medical device.”

—Keturah Hetrick Source: Eric Elbot (interview), Veritas Scientific, www.veritasscientific.com.

Cooperation | Governance

North Korea, U.S. Find Common Ground in Science Partnerships to pursue knowledge could advance both ­scientific and diplomatic relations.

Science knows no national borders. In the U.S.–Soviet Cold War, scientists from the two superpowers collaborated and not only made discoveries together, but also laid groundwork for better relations between their governments. Today, a consortium of U.S. scientists is striving for a similar success story with scientists in North Korea.

The U.S.–DPRK Scientific Engagement Consortium, formed in 2007 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Pacific Century Institute, Syracuse University, and CRDF Global, organizes recurring meetings between its researchers and the faculties of scientific institutions in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The researchers describe their work as “non-official diplomacy” that could bear fruit on the scientific front and possibly on the international-relations front, as well.

“Scientific diplomacy can help build bridges. You get two groups of scientists together, irrespective of what country they’re from, and they’ll be happy to work together and see what problems they can help each other solve,” says Linda Staheli, senior staff associate for ­c ongressional and government relations at CRDF Global.

Staheli and other consortium members have repeatedly visited the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and held work sessions with faculty and students of the State Academy of Sciences. Many North Korean researchers take great interest in working with their U.S. colleagues on ecology research, in particular, and have submitted proposals for joint projects on forestry, river basin management, fishery restoration, and crop production.

North Korea has been suffering from widespread famines and malnutrition, Staheli notes. The country’s scientists may be able to help, however, by developing better ways to manage natural resources, thereby improving the stability of food stocks. Many U.S. scientists, meanwhile, would value North Korean researchers’ help in exploring the biodiversity-rich ecosystems on the North Korea–South Korea border.

“The North Korean scientists are not to be underestimated,” she says. “Their capacity to innovate is high.

They have limited resources, but they really have more

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World Trends & Forecasts CRDF GLOBAL

than most people think and they The consortium is doing its have more to offer than most best to build bridges. In the last people think.” few years, it has met frequently North Korea’s scientists of all with the U.S. State Department, disciplines have a fairly receptive key staff from the House and audience in the political leaderSenate Foreign Affairs Commitship. According to Staheli, North tees, and North Korea’s UN misKorean leader Kim Jong Un and sion to present the engagement lower-level leaders express sinefforts and their ­results. cere interest in their researchers’ Syracuse University has been perspectives on development. leading the way on North Korean “[North Korea’s] leadership Consortium members from CRDF Global and engagement since 2001, when has made scientific technology a Syracuse University discuss English language trainCarriere and other faculty initistrong priority, and they under- ing initiative with DPRK State Academy of Sciences. ated a research exchange with stand that scientific engagement Kim Chaek University in Pyongglobally can help their economy yang. Syracuse scholars began and help them with certain issues that they want to admaking recurring visits to Kim Chaek; launched a prodress. They do want to be self-sufficient,” she says. gram in 2005 to teach Kim Chaek’s scholars English so There is also much respect among North Korean offithat they could participate in international conferences; cials and scientists for U.S. scientific output, according and, in 2006, installed a first-ever digital library on the to Fred Carriere, a consortium member and Syracuse campus.

University senior fellow, who served as a liaison to The American researchers came back in March 2012 North Korea’s UN Mission when he was executive vice to start planning a “virtual science library” for all president of the Korea Society. He has found that colresearch institutions throughout North Korea. This lilaboration with U.S. researchers would give North brary system would give North Korea’s scientists Inter­Korean scientists’ work more credibility in their leaders’ net connectivity and, with it, the ability to publish eyes. articles abroad, find relevant research, ask questions “They tell us that they want to work with American from researchers overseas, and locate sources of funding. scientists because they see value in obtaining new “The goal of the virtual science library is helping ideas,” Carriere says. “They recognize that America is North Korean folks understand what is out there that one of the leaders in the world of science. Their ability can help them,” says Charles Dunlap, CRDF Global’s to propose solutions will be enhanced by the fact that associate director of capacity building. their recommendations come from this foreign interacCRDF Global has built virtual science libraries in tion with our scientists.” many developing countries. Creating one in North North Korea has between 200 and 300 science and Korea presents a unique set of challenges, and whether technology institutions. However, they operate in exit will roll out at all remains tentative. Dunlap cautions treme isolation from the rest of the global scientific that there is no formal launch date yet. But some initial community, because the state prohibits Internet corresteps have been achieved, such as obtaining grant spondence with the outside world. Even the consorfunding. Also, CRDF Global has co-hosted some traintium cannot reach them by e-mail and must instead reing sessions for North Korean scientists on how to use lay communiqués through the North Korean UN the future system. mission.

Overall, there is room for improvement in North The United States erects barriers, too, according to ­Korean–U.S. scientific diplomacy. However, Carriere Carriere. U.S. laws prohibit U.S. scientists from sending remains hopeful. and receiving documents to and from their North Ko“We have built relationships and we are maintaining rean colleagues—any correspondence must be vetted those relationships,” says Carriere. “We’ve got the enand preapproved by government committees. gine started and just have to wait for a little more gasoAlso, bringing North Korean researchers to the line before we can move further down the road.”

United States for shared research requires visas that

—Rick Docksai take many months to obtain, and streams of paperwork Sources: Linda Staheli and Charlie Dunlap, CRDF Global, authorizing item-by-item what they will discuss and www.crdfglobal.org. why. The process becomes even more arduous, and Fred Carriere, Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship sometimes impossible, when a new North Korea–U.S. ❑ and Public Affairs, www.maxwell.syr.edu. diplomatic standoff arises.

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A World without Waste?

By Rick Docksai If current trends continue, we’ll be dealing with three times as much waste by the end of this century as we are now, warns the World Bank. One solution is to treat waste as a resource—a solution that could also cut global pollution, stave off looming resource crises, and lower manufacturing costs, among other benefits.

UPSTUDIO / BIGSTOCK

W

aste is, well, wasteful.

Communities and industrial facilities all across the globe let ton after ton of scrap metal, chemical sludge, glass, plastic, and other raw materials slip from their grasp every day. The disposal costs money and time, and inevitably results in some spillover into nearby ecosystems, thereby jeopardizing the health of wildlife and people. Moreover, it discards volumes of still-good materials that we could find new use for if we just looked.

Fortunately, numerous communities and industries are finding ways to cut down on trash outflows and to repurpose their rubbish as new recycled products. These “zero waste” efforts, as their initiatives are called, offer the hope of a waste-free future, where not only landfills, but also the

unsustainable consumption habits that they embody, have become things of the past.

The Military Gets Out of the Landfill Business A military force’s survival depends on making the best use of the resources at its disposal. That includes garbage. So goes the thinking behind the U.S. Army’s Net Zero Waste 2020 initiative, by which eight Army installations are pursuing fullfledged programs to downsize their garbage output to zero—or at least close to it. The eight are upping their recycling, utilizing recycled building materials, and gathering up and redistributing as many used household items as possible.

Fort Hood, Texas, is one of the eight. As of 2013, the Net Zero Waste

2020 project’s second year, the inflow of garbage into the Fort Hood landfill has dropped by 20%.

“Our goal is to get out of the landfill business,” says Steve Burrow, Fort Hood’s chief of environmental programs. “We’re a guinea pig, along with a few other installations, to see what we can do to get there.”

The installation aims to increase recycling by 5% a year for every fiscal year. In 2012, the goal was 50% of waste diverted from landfills; while the installation didn’t meet that target, it came awfully close: 48%.

“We keep trying to set the bar higher, and if we don’t get there we just try harder,” says program manager Jennifer Rawlings.

Some of the recycling-enhancement measures were surprisingly simple. One change consisted of replacing Fort Hood residents’ original

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RACHEL PARKS, III CORPS AND FORT HOOD PUBLIC AFFAIRS

many products that your typical neighborhood facility won’t, such as plastic shopping bags and Styrofoam.

R e c y c l a b l e s f ro m Fort Hood’s residences go to another recycling facility in Austin. This one is another rare find among today’s recycling facilities: It is “single-stream,” meaning that human operators don’t have to feed it plastics, glass, paper, and such categories of waste separately from each other; it can receive them all at once. Fort Hood’s residents thus don’t have to spend any time sorting their recyclables into separate bins anymore. The work of recycling consequently becomes imFort Hood Garrison Commander Col. Mark Freitag signs the mensely easier, which Net Zero Waste workgroup mission statement at the conclumeans that people will sion of the Net Zero Waste workgroup kick-off on December do more of it.

8, 2011. Fort Hood is one of eight U.S. Army installations The households are participating in the program.

Fort Hood’s numberone generator of waste, according to Burrow, so any increase in recycling on 18-gallon recycling bins with 96-gal- the household front adds up in an lon ones. Having larger bins around especially big way. The facility has prompted residents to put more re- also begun letting residents opt out cyclables into them. Not long after of receiving paper junk mail, cutting the new bins’ debut, recycling up- down on bulk paper waste.

Among the enlisted personnel, take had doubled.

“We found out that, the larger the Fort Hood has assigned a few solcontainers for recycling, the better diers in every unit to serve as “recycling coordinators,” who make sure the participation,” says Burrow.

Recycling is certainly nothing new. that their fellow troops keep up with Communities throughout the devel- the recycling protocols.

Finding new uses for old houseoped world have had recycling facilities in their midst for more than 40 hold items is another component of years. But most of these sites are the program. The Fort Hood comchronically underutilized, and some munity has been organizing numerhave been shutting down, as local ous furniture donations, for instance, governments look for ways to trim to transfer old hardwood items from those who no longer want them to expenses.

Fort Hood makes use of some new those who do. Also, the garrison’s technologies, which helps. Its on-site director of Family and Morale, Welrecycling center, which processes re- fare and Recreation held an auction cyclables from administrative offices that sold off a warehouse-worth of and work stations, now accepts gym equipment, office hardware, www.wfs.org

and other merchandise that hitherto might have simply gone to the dumpster.

Even more used items are available at the Hood Classification Unit, an on-site facility where residents and personnel can drop off batteries, cleaners, pesticides, and other chemical products. If something still has any good use left to it, the facility will keep it on hand. And families who need it can come, fill out some paperwork, and help themselves to it.

“A lot of it is just reducing the costs we’re spending on new items,” says Rawlings. “We’re able to find furniture that’s been sitting in warehouses and get them to soldiers that need furniture.”

Burrow and Rawlings don’t promise that they and their team will completely eliminate garbage at Fort Hood by 2020—that would be a huge stretch with today’s technology, they caution. But an 80%–90% reduction in garbage outflow by that date is possible. The installation will strive to get as close to 100% as it can over the remaining six years and will take note of every practice or policy change that helps bring it closer.

Come 2020, Fort Hood and the other seven installations involved in Net Zero Waste 2020 will reconvene and compare notes. Then it will be time for the next phase: disseminating what they learned throughout the whole army. By 2050, it is hoped, every army installation will be as waste-minimal as Fort Hood, if not more.

“The goal is, by 2020, to have a sum total of best practices we can share with all army installations and that they can put into practice so that they all get there by 2050,” says Rawlings.

Civilian communities are learning from the army experience, too. As Fort Hood and the other Net Zero Waste 2020 installations make progress on their waste-reduction goals, they share their best practices with nearby communities in workshops and forums. Thus, the Fort Hood–­ adjacent towns of Copper ’s Cove and Temple recently instituted ­single-stream recycling in some of their neighborhoods. While the dynamics of policy making are clearly different in civilian settings, the right prac•

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Automobile manufacturing is anfate that can be used as fertilizer or as an ingredient in plaster. Danish other growth area for waste-repurbiotech company Novozymes hands posing methods. Van Wassenhove over some of its organic waste to points out that many car parts could Kalundborg Kommune, which turns be made from recycled plastics. Doing so would more than benefit the it into an agricultural fertilizer.

ZeroWIN’s partners have been re- environment, he adds; it could benesearching more potential waste-­ fit the companies’ bottom lines, as reuse collaborations and discussing well. Recycled plastics are lighter how to put them into action. If the than many conventional materials, program succeeds to the degree that so the finished cars would be less its organizers hope for, all of Europe costly and better on fuel—improvewill see the difference: a possible ments that are sure to go over well 30% reduction in greenhouse-gas with the customer base.

“There is an element of low-hangemissions, a 75% reduction in the use of freshwater, and 70% increase ing fruit,” he says. “If you look at your processes and you take an in recycling and reuse of waste.

The iameco D4R laptop is one ­a ngle like quality improvement or early achievement of the MICROPRO ­ZeroWIN collaboration. Manufactured in Dublin, Ireland,

by MicroPro, it is a personal laptop computer on par in speed and performance with j u s t a b o u t a n y s t a n d a rd model you’ll find in an electronics outlet near you. The only difference: It’s wood, made with 89% recycled materials, and thus contributes 61% less greenhouse-gas pollution during its manufacture. Note the wooden paneling that encases MicroPro’s The largest source of waste iameco laptop computer. Recycled materials, includin ­E urope nowadays is the ing wood, compose 85% or more of each laptop. construction sector. Building roads, bridges, homes, and GLOBAL WASTE RESEARCH INSTITUTE any other structure typically leaves hefty piles of waste cement, scrap wood or metal, and other such materials.

Much of this residual material could be repurposed if the companies invested in it, Van Wassenhove notes. Even more gains would come about if they up their deployment of recycled fibers in insulation, recycle glass to use as an ingredient for cement or concrete, and restore waste wood or steel into new wood or steel fixtures.

Of course, not everything Piles of rubble from building construction and demofrom the scrap pile is salvage- lition sites await processing at a California recycling able, but if dem­olition crews facility. It is feasible to regenerate that waste asphalt, concrete, and other debris into usable buildare careful not to smash a con- ing materials, but far too few construction industries demned structure’s compo- are doing enough of it, according to European nents too thoroughly, a sur- researchers who attribute the largest share of their prising amount of them can continent’s landfill waste to the construction indusfind new life in new build- try. Initiatives such as ZeroWIN hope to cut construction’s waste output down to size. ings.

tices and tools can enable some positive outcomes.

Repurposing Waste in Europe Europe imports more materials than almost any continent on Earth.

It throws more away than most other continents, too: On average, 60% of Europe’s municipal waste ends up in landfills or incinerators.

But a few countries on the continent definitely beat the average. There’s Norway, for example, which recycles 68% of its garbage. What if every European nation recycled like Norway?

The organizers of ZeroWIN are doing their part to help make that happen. This initiative, whose name is an acronym for “Towards Zero Waste in Industrial Networks,” has spent the past five years channeling funds from the European Commission to host research-and-development ventures among 31 business and academic institutions from across Europe and Asia. Together, these partner groups have been looking for new ways to minimize or eliminate consumer and industrial waste.

Community recycling, as most of us know it, is just one of ZeroWIN’s tools. They’re also looking into business-to-business recycling streams, whereby one company invites another to share a work site with it, and waste byproducts from one company’s industrial operations get collected and reused as a raw material by the other company.

“Sometimes, you have byproducts that come out of the process that are usually dumped but could be used to make other products. They have the possibility, on their sites, of bringing in other firms that use their byproducts to produce their own products,” says Luk Van Wassenhove, professor of operations management at INSEAD, a Paris-based business school that is one of ­ZeroWIN’s participating institutions.

“So it’s no longer waste. It’s being used.”

This industrial waste swap is actually more common than many might think. For example, in Denmark, smoke from DONG Energy’s smokestacks can be retrieved and converted into gypsum, a mineral sul18

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environmental footprint, you usually come up with ideas that will improve the indicator but at the same time will be opportunities to reduce cost. So there is no conflict for a while.”

INSEAD and the other ZeroWIN partners have completed five years of R&D, and are now in a dissemination phase. Most are holding conferences and seminars to share what they have found with the larger business communities. They, like the Net Zero Waste 2020 group, look forward to setting in motion a much bigger change in waste management far and wide.

Waste Not, Spend Not Businesses are often all for more sustainability but fear that it will cost more. That’s not necessarily the case in waste management. Sometimes, it’s just the opposite: By eliminating or repurposing waste byproducts, they also eliminate the need to spend money on cleaning them up and disposing of them. Less waste thus translates to more savings.

That’s why the UK’s metal-manufacturing sector could save an estimated £4 billion a year if it applied resource efficiency measures more fully, according to the European Commission.

Cost savings are just as achievable for industries on the other side of the Atlantic, as well. Many U.S. oil companies began undertaking wasteminimization measures in the 1990s, recalls Yarrow Nelson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). As the new measures went into effect, it wasn’t just the waste accumulations that started to decline—the companies’ overhead costs shrank along with them.

“There was an industry push for ‘pollution prevention,’ a new paradigm for dealing with industrial pollution by changing the way we do business to not produce the pollution in the first place. This was a huge jump from the ’70s and ’80s when we practiced ‘end-of-the-pipe’ treatment,” says Nelson.

Zero waste marks the next step in the chain of progress. Now that oil industries have achieved less resid-

biofuel. Dairy farms hose down their barns regularly to flush out the manure and grime. This tide of wastewater needs to go somewhere—­ ideally not nearby streams, since the manure’s nitrogen and phosphorus will trigger unhealthy algae blooms if it seeps into the waterways. Instead, the Integrated Dairy Waste method channels the wastewater into a collecting pool, where an “intentional” algae bloom emerges.

The algae are photosynthetic and survive by extracting carbon dioxide from the air. Their metabolic processes also use the nitrogen and phosphorus that are in this waste­ water. They digest these compounds and produce lipids that the farmers can draw out and use as biodiesel for their farm machinery.

So, waste product for waste product, the farms and the algae facilitate each other, a natural equivalent of the companies exchanging waste under the aegis of ZeroWIN. As an added perk, that water can be reused again and again, either for more algae cultivation or—following further filtering—for watering crops.

I f t h i s w a s t e w a t e r- re c y c l i n g method does scale up, it could be a very effective control on farm runoff pollution—the farm’s algae digest the waste before it has a chance to dirty up a nearby stream. It would also be an optimal fuel source for farmers who live in remote areas off the main grid, Nelson notes. They could produce much of their needed energy on-site, a much more affordable proposition than importing biofuel in bulk from afar.

These are just a few of the zerowaste applications that Nelson sees under development at GWRI and other institutions. Many more are in the works. Some could even be making their way into suburban homes.

He cites a company called efuels, which is now marketing a refrigerator-sized biofuel generator. Put anything with sugar into it, and it will produce ethanol that you can use to power a car. The product is selling outside most buyers’ price ranges, at around $15,000. Nonetheless, remember that the personal computer, mobile phone, and many commonplace consumer technologies all started off at prices most consumers

ual waste, they will need a new round of innovations to advance toward no waste at all.

“They found most of the lowhanging fruit. Most of the gross inefficiencies were found. And now we’re fine-tuning it,” says Nelson.

“And looking to the future, that’s where the concept of zero waste comes in. That’s where you’re taking it and tightening it up to a whole new level.”

Cal Poly’s Global Waste Research Institute (GWRI) is now working with Chevron on a new waste-reduction method to gather the oily sludge residue that accumulates in oil refineries and reenter it into the fuel cycle to burn off and produce additional electricity. There is much to like about this experimental process: It stands to deliver slightly more electricity out of the same amount of oil while cutting down on the pollution hazard that this sludge otherwise poses to a refinery’s workforce and surrounding communities.

“It’s to Chevron’s benefit to not have this difficult type of waste that they don’t know what to do with it or where to send it,” says Nelson, “and to avoid future liability. If people deposit their materials in a hazardous waste landfill, it could come back to bite them 20 years later if people discover that it’s leaking or polluting groundwater or something like that.”

Improper disposal of waste sludge by some refineries has resulted in serious land and water pollution in quite a few parts of the world, Nelson points out. On top of that, transporting the sludge to the disposal sites can expose some waste to the air and contribute to smog.

“The primary benefit of recycling and reusing sludge is less contamination of land and water near refineries around the world, and less expense of handling all of this hazardous waste,” says Nelson.

“You’re not trucking the stuff all over.”

Oil isn’t the only industry with which GWRI is partnering. The institute’s Integrated Dairy Waste Management project, for example, is testing a new method for cattle farms to collect their wastewater into pools in which they might grow algae for www.wfs.org

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could not afford. Perhaps this one, too, will only need time.

quickly as they did at the dawn of the twentieth century.

That growth trajectory shows no signs of slowing. By 2015, Williams told his audience, we will be using twice the resource capacity of the planet. If trends keep up to 2100, then our resource use will exceed the planet’s capacity by fourfold as the twenty-second century begins.

We don’t have to wait until 2100 to see the repercussions in mass markets, however. As Williams noted, the prices of dozens of raw metals and materials have gone up sharply in the last decade, and have done so after more than a century of steady decline.

The whole European Union is on alert. In September 2012, an EU workshop titled “Defining Critical Raw Materials in the EU: Information Gaps and Available Solutions” identified 14 raw materials that are critically important but at high risk of sudden shortages or supply shocks. These include tungsten, graphite, gallium, magnesium, cobalt, and other strategic industrial materials.

While the supply shocks haven’t materialized just yet, alarming price increases have. For instance, global antimony prices surged from $6,050 a ton in December 2009 to as high as $12,830 a ton in April 2012. It’s not too hard to see why, as these critical raw materials go into some products that are in very high demand: cars, mobile phones, solar panels, and computers, among others.

As these products roll out of warehouse inventories and into homes and offices in growing volumes, they will also head eventually to landfills in growing numbers. That presents us with a crucial opportunity to pull those usable materials up out of the landfills and return them to the factories for reuse. No need to mine more earth, to draw out new quantities of magnesium, tungsten, etc., when the metal of choice that we need is waiting for us, ripe for the taking, at our nearest municipal dump.

Williams calls this salvaging process “urban mining” and likens it to the never-ending life cycles of nature itself. The natural world’s food chains sustain themselves through the generation and regeneration of their resource bases—i.e., soil, air,

Solving the “Peak Resource” Issue Waste-reduction initiatives clearly make for a healthier future, but they can cost more money in the present.

That poses an unfortunate dilemma for the advanced nations’ business sectors, many of which are still mired in shaky economies and have to worry about boosting revenue in the near term. Van Wassenhove, for one, doubts the private sector’s commitment to waste reduction over the longer term. Few companies have an interest in spending more money than necessary, even for a cause like waste reduction.

“Companies aren’t interested in investments that will pay off later,” he says. “Companies are interested in now, and investments that give them short payback periods. That’s the problem with improving environmental impact.”

The value of waste reduction could rise in years to come, however, as raw materials grow scarcer. Regions such as Europe that import large volumes of aluminum, lithium, and other industry-grade metals and chemical compounds will find it more fiscally prudent to look into new ways to reuse the quantities that they already have—i.e., those that are sitting in their piles of junk.

“Some materials are becoming very scarce,” says Van Wassenhove.

“You have to get return streams instead of virgin materials. So you have to get better at recycling and extracting the materials and reuse them instead of trying to find virgin materials. For some of these materials, the mining is more expensive than recycling and reusing.”

Granted, the prospects of “peak metal” or “peak limestone” don’t get as much air time as “peak oil,” but they are real possibilities all the same. The human race now consumes ores and minerals 27 times faster, and construction materials 34 times faster, than it did in 1900, observed ZeroWIN researcher Ian Williams of the University of Southampton at an April 2013 lecture. All resources in general are being used up at an average of eight times as 20

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water, and plant matter. We can do the same.

“We need to mimic nature’s cycles.

Nutrients develop plants, which we eat, and then we die, we decompose, we form nutrients, which form plants, and so on,” according to Williams. “We need to have the same cycle for our waste materials. We need to make sure that instead of digging materials out of the earth constantly, with all of the subsequent health and environmental impacts, and of course the moral and ethical issues, we need to mimic that cycle.”

The range of products that urban mining can repurpose is vast, he went on to say. Construction materials, computer hardware, and automobiles are just a few of them. The cost implications are considerable, by the way. Each one of these products holds a volume of metal or rock that chains of laborers and distributors had to extract from the earth and ship to a manufacturing site. To forgo that mining and simply repurpose landfill waste is to save a bundle in business expenses. More importantly, it averts huge upheaval to the ecosystems that lie in the miners’ way.

The Way Forward The world has a long way to go on recycling and reuse. Globally, our species discards about 1.3 billion tons of new landfill waste every year. This sum is projected to nearly double to 2.2 billion tons a year by 2025.

It clearly doesn’t have to be this way. Innovative communities, government agencies, and businesses in Europe, North America, and elsewhere are showing that it’s possible to draw from our garbage piles, not add to them. It takes some effort and some investment, but the rewards in cost efficiency and, more importantly, our health and the planet’s health, will repay us many times over. ❑ About the Author Rick Docksai is the associate editor of THE FUTURIST and World Future Review.

E‑mail rdocksai@wfs.org.

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The Information Revolution’s

BRO KEN PROMIS ES

BY KARL ALBRECHT

When revolutionary euphoria sets in, we may be tempted to set aside our critical judgments and enroll ourselves in the dream. Only later, after experience, might we get a more sober perspective on what we were promised and what we got. Here are eight of the “grand promises” of the digital information technology revolution, with reality checks and revised visions of what lies ahead. © SERGEY NIVENS / BIGSTOCK

B

ig revolutions usually start with big hopes, big dreams, big visions, and big promises. Of all the biggest revolutions in our history—from agriculture and industrialization to the automobile and television—the Internet and all things digital have raised heart rates and hormone levels more than perhaps any other.

The “third wave,” as futurist Alvin Toffler christened it, became a tidal wave with the arrival of the microchip and digital information technology. Those made possible the Internet and ubiquitous information—knowledge at a distance. Then, between 1990 and 1995, the commercial

tidal wave of digital products and experiences rose exponentially. Today, about twenty years into the revolution, perhaps we need to waken from our infatuated trance with the electronic experience and see what the revolution has done for, with, and to us.

The rapid spread and acceptance of digital products, services, and experiences is nearly unparalleled in history, with the possible exception of television. Our lives now revolve comfortably around instant communication, with fingertip access to worlds of information, online shopping, and management of our personal affairs.

In half a generation, the vast majority of the world’s af-

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fluent people have become digital citizens.

Looking back, however, it seems that some of the grandest fantasies promoted by the early self-nominated philosophers of the digital age have not really caught fire, or have misfired, or even backfired. We didn’t get some of what we were promised, and some of what we got we hadn’t expected. Let’s review eight of those grand promises and what really happened, and suggest new predictions for the future.

1:

GRAND PROMISE The Internet Will Create a “New Economy” In the red-hot Nineties, that phrase became the defining mantra of the Internet priesthood. A wider, flatter, democratized marketplace would mean that every entrepreneur with a dream and a computer might strike it rich. Old-economy companies would go the way of the dinosaur. It was “e-business or out of business.”

Sober Reality: More fortunes have been lost on the Internet than made.

Probably 70% or more of the Internet content has been built out by unpaid volunteer labor. The vast online marketplace is now controlled by just a handful of large monopoly firms: Google, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, YouTube, LinkedIn, Skype, and a few others.

Add a dozen or so secondary players, some rising and some declining, and you have about 80% of the online information structure concentrated in the hands of a few megafirms. That’s a far greater degree of monopolization than has ever existed in “real space.” With mergers and acquisitions, plus occasional extinctions, the “new economy” of the Internet is looking increasingly like the “old economy,” only more so.

It also became painfully evident to many business operators that the Internet was not the magical profit creator they hoped it would be. In fact, it turned out to be a profit grinder.

Price transparency, dynamic pricing, and hypercompetition, driven by price-comparison Web sites, put tremendous pressure on retail prices across the board. If the people run-

ning airline companies, for example, held any hope of escaping from their decades-long price wars, those hopes are being dashed by a multitude of fare-shopping sites.

Updated Prediction: Entrepreneurs with ideas and energy will still get their turns at bat, but the days of “garage to global” are mostly over.

Small businesses will increasingly benefit from cheap and accessible cloud-based software services.

The Internet business will become a boundaryless battlefield, as the surviving giants increasingly try to invade one another’s turf, offering the same products, and steadily commoditizing the online experience.

tivizing it. Further, more and more psychologists and pediatricians are warning about the “Facebook syndrome,” in which young people are becoming so addictively attached to the unreal experience of online life that they fail to develop the skills of social intelligence, and even show signs of depression. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that no child under the age of three have any significant exposure to screen-based information devices of any kind.

Online gaming may be having the same effect. And the massive pre­ occupation with the unreal lives and narcissistic behaviors of celebrity entertainers, on platforms like Twitter, can also distort major portions of a young person’s reality structure.

And, of course, factional antagonism is almost a defining characteristic of online political activity.

Futurist John Naisbitt posited the “global-tribal paradox”: the more global we become in our awareness, the more tribal we tend to become in our behavior.

Updated Prediction: Social media, together with the vast and evergrowing supply of cheap and accessible information, will become the “new TV.” The traditional notion of a television set as an umbilical to the world of packaged news and entertainment will give way to the notion of a distributed media experience: it’s everywhere, not just coming out of a box in your living room.

The so-called electronic culture, or media culture, is no longer just a component of the culture of the affluent nations; it is the culture. It’s a nonstop, 24/7, saturated entertainment environment. And we surely don’t understand it, even though many people claim to.

Many people may begin to experience digital fatigue, turning more and more toward local subcultures of intimate personal contact. Some will be willing to pay to go to special places where they can’t be connected.

2:

GRAND PROMISE The Internet Will Create a World Community The digital philosophers told us that the Internet will bring people together, reduce ethnic and tribal strife, and foster understanding and cooperation among all peoples.

Sober Reality: Not so much. The Internet has allowed even more walls to be built around smaller niche communities of “us versus them.” Social media platforms seem to work well for family reunions, political fund-raising, worshipping celebrities, sparking uprisings, and the like, but they don’t seem to be very useful in orchestrating systematic change.

The term community has taken on a new and somewhat bizarre connotation in the digital age: It’s any collection of people who can contact one another electronically. The digital information technology environment has given us relationships that are much more numerous and at the same time more shallow, socially and emotionally.

As Tocqueville reminded us, micro­communities have been forming and dissolving for centuries, pursuing a vast array of specialized interests. Online platforms are making it easier for them to find one another, but the notion that we’re all becoming one big happy electronic family remains questionable.

Some experts argue that embracing these technologies is atomizing human experience rather than collecwww.wfs.org

3:

GRAND PROMISE The Digital Age Will Make Us All Get Smarter We’ll be forced to learn to think in whole new ways, and we’ll have to •

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© SHMELJOV / BIGSTOCK

“Digital technologies will amplify the ‘smart gap,’ but probably won’t make many people smarter.”

learn to process information faster and more skillfully. The new, highpaying IT jobs will demand more of us, and we’ll rise to the challenge.

The mantra was “A high school diploma will no longer be enough to get a job in the new digital workplace.”

Sober Reality: Exactly the opposite happened. The technology wizards went to work building software and redesigning work processes that would reduce the cognitive demands placed on workers.

Virtually all corporate IT investments have one purpose: getting more and better results with less input of skilled labor and materials. By automating those parts of jobs and business processes that required human information processing—observing, remembering facts and figures, calculating, estimating, making decisions, planning—they’re systematically dumbing down as many jobs as possible.

As a result, more low-paying jobs are becoming available to lowskilled or marginally employable workers. There are also fewer wellpaying mid-skill jobs and more overqualified people competing for lower-skill jobs, so there is a general downward pressure on wages.

Ironically, many of the higher-paying professional jobs in the corporate IT industry are being eliminated or deskilled by advances in enterprise software. IT budgets peaked and declined. With the dumbing of jobs and 24

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the dumbing of media products, digital information technology didn’t make us all smarter. In fact, it made it unnecessary for us to get smarter.

Updated Prediction: Digital technologies will amplify the “smart gap,” but probably won’t make many people smarter. The gulf will likely grow between the “knows”— intellectually active people who are self-educating—and the “knownots”—mentally passive people who continue to prefer an experience of escape, entertainment, and amusement. Public education systems will probably do little to change those divisions.

The “knows” will capitalize on digital products and experiences to achieve their life goals. Those of modest means can take advantage of cheap and accessible do-it-yourself educational resources, overcoming to some extent the barriers of economic privilege.

4:

GRAND PROMISE The Digital Generation Will Save Us Digital information technologies were expected to produce a new generation of “tech-savvy” kids, smarter than their parents, who would run the world better and smarter than the generation that spawned them.

Sober Reality: Today’s kids aren’t really tech-savvy; they’re just button-savvy.

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Very few of them know or care what’s going on inside their smartphones, laptops, video games, or tablet computers. Cell phones and a host of other digital products became wildly popular only after engineers figured out how to design them so that even a monkey could u s e o n e . T h e k i d s a re n ’ t a n y smarter—they’re just fascinated consumers, hyperattentive to an experience they love. Most adults could learn everything a “tech-savvy” teen knows about media products in a few hours.

There’s little evidence that today’s high-school grads are becoming smarter, better informed, or more socially aware than any previous generation, regardless of the unctuous and admiring attention given to them by some social observers. A 2006 Roper Poll for National Geographic found that 63% of young American adults (age 18–24) could not find Iraq on a map, and half said it was unimportant to know how to find other countries on a map. In comparison, 60% said having computer skills was vital to success in today’s world.

American universities continue to fill as much as half of their quotas in science and engineering majors with foreign students. Millions of kids spend billions of hours playing “massive online games,” with many becoming masterful players. Yet, almost no evidence has been presented to support the claim that this addictive experience makes them smarter than non-gamers or more competent in any otherwise useful way.

Updated Prediction: The bell curve of individual achievement will continue to depend on individuals, on their formative environments, and, to a much smaller extent, on digital information technologies, which will amplify rather than diminish the differences between kids.

Giving laptops to poor kids won’t change the culture that creates builtin advantages for some kids over others.

Public schools, particularly in America, will probably continue their dogged pursuit of mediocrity, leaving most kids to find an education in their own ways. Globally,

those in the “have” nations will certainly benefit more from technologies than those in the “have-not” nations, where it is much less available, and where social and economic circumstances amplify the digital ­divide.

As to whether today’s young digital natives will grow up to be better (or worse) leaders than their parents, we have little evidence to go on.

5:

GRAND PROMISE Digital Technologies Will Narrow the Wealth Gap The hope was that access to the digital world would give everyone a shot at the good life. Free and abundant information, including education, would raise the poor out of their imprisoning circumstances and create more jobs, better educated workers, and a fairer distribution of wealth. A “digital middle class” would thrive as never before. More than ever before, a good education would be one’s ticket to the party.

Sober Reality: Paradoxically, digital technologies appear to have done more to widen the wealth gap than any other phenomenon—social, political, or economic. This is perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the

advocacy groups, labor groups, and social reformist groups, may cause civil disorder, and may even go to the point of organized violence to promote the reforms they seek.

Corporate accountability and social responsibility will become political watchwords, and legislators will be caught in powerful crosswinds, pitting the interests of their corporate benefactors against the interests of their most vocal constituents.

digital society. Maybe we should have seen it coming, but most of us didn’t.

The massive corporate investment in ERM (enterprise resource management) systems has driven up productivity and profits at record rates.

As corporations make more money with cheaper labor, the profits are flowing increasingly into the pockets of the executives who run the firms and the shareholders whose interests they serve. Real wages have stagnated for nearly two decades—starting with the 1995 Internet “big bang”—while company profits, executive salaries, and investor returns skyrocketed. Bloomberg Media reports that the ratio of Fortune 500 CEO salaries to worker salaries shot up from 20 to 1 in 1950 to about 200 to 1 currently.

Updated Prediction: The wealth gap will almost certainly continue to widen for some time, until its consequences become acute, including stagnant wages, loss of middle-class jobs, and scarce jobs for young educated people. At that stage, populist movements will put intense pressure on governments at all levels to adopt economic policies and tax mechanisms that rearrange the playing field.

Activist groups, including ethnic

6:

GRAND PROMISE The Internet Will Spread Democracy A new age would dawn, in which oppressed peoples have a powerful voice, and dictators can no longer rule by fear.

Sober Reality: “Swarm advocacy”—the use of social media to get citizens out into the streets—has helped to bring dictators down in some cases, but has proven mostly useless in setting up democratic alternatives.

The overcaffeinated rhetoric of the Arab Spring, for example, pushed the wishful proposition that democracy would naturally arise in such toxic environments as Egypt, Libya, and Syria once the cruel dictators were kicked out. A brief review of history would have reminded us that violent turnovers in developing countries usually involve one band of thugs replacing another. Mobs can only destroy things; they cannot assemble something new.

Most Americans and their governments have long cherished the quixotic ideal of “xerox democracy,” a naïve belief that the unique American democratic system and thinking process could be copied to any troubled society, if only the people there would just wake up and see its obvious value. A long series of failed ­n ation-building campaigns—most recently Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—have apparently taught us nothing.

A much more alarming impact of the pervasive use of digital technologies is the relentless destruction of one of the key pillars of democracy.

In less than a decade, Americans completely and willingly surrendered one of the most cherished of

© PRESSURE UA / ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

“Today’s kids aren’t really techsavvy; they’re just button-savvy.

Very few of them know or care what’s going on inside their smartphones, laptops, video games, or tablet computers.”

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bering proposition that a company like Facebook, for example, has used “free” online experiences to herd together a target population of a billion people, each one identified and catalogued in detail. These “useful idiots” can be commercially exploited in countless ways, all the while being kept happy by the fun of participating in an addictive social media experience. What is the real cost of “free?” Lately, George ­O rwell’s dystopian 1984 scenario seems less far-fetched than it always has.

Updated Prediction: Social media will probably be more instrumental in populist uprisings, particularly in less-stable developing countries. It will increasingly highlight human rights abuses and may lead to the downfall of a number of oppressive governments. It will do little, however, to construct democratic replacements for the fallen regimes; that will continue to depend on the rise of leaders with rare capacities.

Some regimes may opt to democratize slightly, to pacify resistance; others may apply brutal countermeasures.

Chinese leaders will probably continue to resist democratization of the Internet, but at an ever-increasing cost to the fabric of Chinese society.

all constitutional rights—the right to privacy. They enthusiastically handed over their personal data and their personal lives to ever-present corporations like Google and Facebook, and—inadvertently—to government agencies like NSA, CIA, FBI, and many local police agencies.

We find ourselves in a surreal world of pervasive—even invasive— surveillance and persuasion, where corporations and government agencies know more about us and our activities than we do. Our cell phones can now track us and report our locations everywhere we go. Our credit-card purchases provide a mosaic of meaning about who we are, what we believe, and what we want.

Our online activity profiles us as never before. Corporations justify this unlimited surveillance in the name of our own commercial convenience, so they can offer us more of what we want. Government agencies justify it in the name of proactive law enforcement and the conduct of the perpetual war on terror.

The irony of this massive surrender of privacy is that we’ve voluntarily and enthusiastically provided commercial corporations with the kinds of data they’d have had to spend billions of dollars collecting—all for free. Consider the so-

© SERGEY NIVENS / BIGSTOCK

“We find ourselves in a surreal world of pervasive—even invasive—surveillance and persuasion, where corporations and government agencies know more about us and our activities than we do.”

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They will be increasingly forced toward a middle-road policy, hoping that rising prosperity will siphon off some of the populist anger that seeks expression in the online subculture.

The personal privacy issue, particularly in America, is probably already a dead horse. Although government and corporate spying into the personal lives of citizens has sparked outrage and legislative attempts to push back, it’s difficult to imagine a significant retreat from the “all-seeing eye.” Surveillance—as newly defined—is just too lucrative a business, both for the big Internet companies and for governments at many levels.

7:

GRAND PROMISE The Internet Will Make Us Better Informed The promise was that the Internet will create a better-informed public, with access to vastly improved sources of news. Alternative sources and channels for delivering news would bypass the traditional gatekeepers at the TV networks and large newspapers. Superior information products, offered by a host of online outlets, would force them to lift their game, and the general public would learn more and think more.

Sober Reality: The “news” that we have increased access to has become dumber than ever, for some very good commercial reasons.

The news business—including print, broadcast, cable, Web portals, and blogs—has become a live-or-die fight for viewer attention. A vast number of enterprises now use stories as “clickbait” to draw people to paid advertising (e.g., “Surprising Things Your Pet Is Thinking,” “Five Things Successful People Do in the Evening,” or “Should a Teacher Have Gotten Fired Over This Facebook Picture?”). The only variable that counts now is “eyeballs”—how many people view the ad message before, while, or after viewing the story.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has become the shibboleth of the webosphere.

Virtually all providers of electronic news and entertainment have been driven to the most degenerate prac-

© 3DDOCK / BIGSTOCK

would now push the gatekeepers aside, democratize publishing, and allow everyone to have their say.

Writers would be able to sell their creations directly to the public; publishers would be unnecessary.

Sober Reality: Yes, everyone gets to be a publisher. Print-on-demand (POD) book manufacturing made it possible to print books one copy at a time. No longer would the economics of printing require large set-up costs and print runs of several thousand copies. Then followed the e‑book in various incarnations, and books could be published to handheld readers at almost no cost.

This is bringing hordes of wannabe authors into the publishing market, with no particular means of assuring the quality of the writing.

Within a few years, the tide of homemade literary sludge has risen so high that any individual’s book gets drowned.

Big-name authors are mostly un­ affected, except for seeing an additional format for the publication of their works. Ironically, however, most would-be authors are in almost the same place where they started: unable to reach a reading public.

Now, instead of failing to get past agents and acquisition editors, it’s the sheer volume of competing material that’s keeping audiences from finding them.

Bloggers—perhaps the biggest category of self-publishers—are becoming the new Hyde Park orators.

Some of them are brilliant, some lame, some eccentric, and some crazy. Even the vox populi is largely unfiltered by editors: “Comment trolls”—people who hang out at news sites and attack news writers and one another—are the new tomato throwers of the culture.

Updated Prediction: Managing the “infosludge” will be one of the major challenges facing tomorrow’s digital citizen. Educated and enlightened people will seek new ways to reduce the tide of information coming at them, not increase it.

Smart browsers and filters may allow sophisticated screening of the content offered by news sites, blogs, and commercial sources; the user will define the level of quality he or she seeks, and the filters will screen

“Yes, everyone gets to be a publisher. …

Now, instead of failing to get past agents and acquisition editors, it’s the sheer volume of competing material that’s keeping audiences from finding them.”

tices for attention-grabbing: violence, conflict, vulgarity, voyeurism, and gratuitous use of sexuality. Entertainers are forced to make their personal lives ever more bizarre and provocative as they fight for precious seconds of media time or mentions on social media platforms such as Twitter.

Probably the one defining feature of news now is the loss of subtlety, and with it the sense of innocence and wonder.

The major news sites now continuously tally page views for every article, on a moment-to-moment basis. Software algorithms dynamically render news pages with stories selected based on numbers of clicks and viewing times, not on interest, topicality, or journalistic value. Even Wikipedia, once touted as the most democratic of all information sources, is widely suspected of special­- interest contamination, although it’s still very useful.

Updated Prediction: A new psychographic divide may emerge in the wealthy economies, with a certain segment of the population consciously rejecting the pop-culture values of narcissism, hedonism, and immediacy. This self-identified cohort will favor “subtle-culture” values such as respect for scientific thinking; ecological consciousness; humanitarian policies; appreciation

for education, literacy, art, literature, and the humanities; social and political civility; and civilized discourse about the ideas that matter.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow identified a coping skill that he named “resistance to enculturation.”

This is the ability to see past the images, icons, and artifacts of the prevailing culture and to make independent choices about values, issues, and preferred futures.

As with other aspects of the modern culture, individual differences— family environment, early education, and exposure to more sophisticated value systems—will determine which individuals opt to stay with the media-acculturated herd and which become part of a new counterculture. In the decades to come, the term radical might describe someone who defies the majority culture and opts for a view of life that is both new and old.

8:

GRAND PROMISE Everyone Gets to Be a Publisher Before e-books, blogs, and on-­ demand printing of books, aspiring writers had little choice but to humble themselves before the editors of commercial publishing firms, hoping to get their knowledge products out into the marketplace. The Internet www.wfs.org

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out articles and reader comments that don’t meet the discursive standards set by the user.

Proactive users will use software tools to compile their own news reports and information summaries, rather than wading through compilations of stories selected only for their arousal value. News sources and writers will be user-scored and rated for the honesty, credibility, balance, political neutrality, and journalistic quality they present.

Those developments will mean that aspiring publishers and selfpublishing authors will have to improve the focus, relevance, and readability of their material. They will probably see more demand for smaller, more neatly packaged books, with fewer War and Peace– scale megabooks. They will also have to channel their products more skillfully, and be content to reach smaller audiences with more focused material.

More people will be reading more stuff. Printed books will survive, and probably continue to sell fairly well.

However, publishers—both large and small—will increasingly have to build multimedia combinations, extending print formats with online material, downloadable extras, and interactive or streaming media.

digital information technology. I believe we can value and appreciate the many benefits it has brought, and will bring, while also understanding its side effects, unanticipated consequences, and potentially destructive impacts. Neither zealots nor Luddites can give us a balanced perspective. That will take thoughtful analysis and informed conversations about its many implications.

Business gurus used to advise us to learn skills and methods such as time management to make ourselves more productive. It’s likely that the most important emergent skill for this new age will be attention management. What shall we pay attention to, and what shall we tune out? How do we reclaim the time and attention that’s being wasted by floods of e‑mail, news pollution, and entertainment overload?

The human impact of digital information technologies—both costs and benefits—is likely to become one of the dominant themes in social and political discourse over the next decade. By the time we fully realize what the pervasive use of these technologies has done to us, it will be too late to change their course. Either we’ll be living with a default future, one that simply arrives one day at a time, or we’ll have confronted the major issues and questions head-on and shaped the technological future we want.

There’s an interesting analogy lurking within this discussion. A hundred or more years ago, manufacturing corporations of all kinds freely disposed of their refuse and toxic waste into rivers and landfills, believing either consciously or unconsciously in the infinite capacity of the environment to absorb it.

Now we’re coming to the painful realization that the costs of those externalities must be shifted back to the corporations themselves. This has been a politically unpalatable necessity, but we are now on the way to the kind of grand correction that will be necessary to preserve a sustainable economy.

Similarly, the digital revolution has come upon us so rapidly that few of us could foresee the impacts of unbridled corporate exuberance.

Now we’re beginning to realize that

So What—and What’s Next?

Toffler gave us the term future shock, referring to the sense of anxiety that people are feeling with the pace of change, the increasing impermanence of their environments, and the loss of familiar social and psychological landmarks. Now, we would update his terminology to digital shock.

Those whom I’d characterize as digital zealots, who can’t or won’t recognize a dark side to the revolution, will probably view this discussion as unfairly critical, pessimistic, or ungrateful. Those who are concerned about long-term effects, such as the impact of social media on child development and maturity, might feel that their concerns are validated.

The larger purpose for this discussion, however, is to advocate an open-minded and balanced view of 28

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the “digital industry” is creating its own figurative “pollution.” Government oversight in the United States, as well as in many other developed economies, has been relatively permissive. Parallel to the “green” issues and ideologies, we will have to grapple with the concept of a sustainable information environment.

Maybe we should christen it the “blue” issue, for want of some favored color metaphor.

Four crucial questions will confront the digital citizens of the developed countries for a long time to come. They are: 1. What rights and privileges do we grant to corporations to do business in this strange new world of information?

2. What rights and privileges do we grant to governments and public agencies to monitor the lives and activities of ordinary citizens?

3. How can we facilitate the healthy development of normal social and emotional intelligence in young people, in the presence of nonstop pandering by commercial purveyors of addictive media experiences?

4. How can we reverse the un­ precedented shift of wealth from working-class people to mega-corporations and their owners, and restore the rising middle class standard of living?

Perhaps the biggest question, the one that arches over all the rest, is: How can we construct and manage a national and international discourse that can lead to answers? ❑

About the Author Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, business futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on professional achievement, organizational performance, and business strategy. He is listed among the top 100 thought leaders on leadership in America.

The Mensa Society honored him with its lifetime award for contributions to the understanding of human intelligence. Among his books are Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success (Wiley, 2005), and Practical Intelligence: the Art and Science of Common Sense (Wiley, 2007). Web site www.KarlAlbrecht.com.

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Blundering to Success?

Learning from Organizational

Failure

By Irving H. Buchen

missteps may be signs of coming catastrophes that we have time to avert.

A

special indictment of business has become an annual ritual: Just before or just after the first day of a new year, an annual list of major business blunders appears. For the guilty or fearful, it is immediately seized upon and rapidly perused.

For all the rest, it is a fascinating and leisurely review of whose ox

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is gored, with a dose of relief that There but for the sake of our savior (fill in the blank) go we.

Such relief may be premature.

Those untouched this year may become the object of ignominious failure the next, should their myopia prevent similar blunders. Lead us not into denial: With annual warnings of recurrent and redundant business blunders, why are we so •

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blind? The customary answers are: “We are not like those companies.”

“We have safeguards against such lapses.” “We have a strong code of ethics.” “We have never had our reputation sullied.” Indeed, the responses turn out to be as recurrent and redundant as the list of blunders, except that one is inclined to add hubris.

The issue seems to be a variation of the familiar warning that ignorance of the lessons of history leads to repeating the mistakes of the past.

But we are not ignorant—the lists are an annual reminder. We are not blind—the pattern of recurrence is unmistakable.

Clearly, there may be more devious and deeper forces at work. Perhaps it even may be our fundamental assumptions that lead us to perpetual blunder, such as the assumptions that business leaders and structures are capable of thinking ahead and are self-aware and selfcorrecting.

Approaching business learning through failure rather than success may provide a different route to understanding. Here are five basic principles about business blunders that yield insight for our futures:

1. The Law of Crash Is Slip We falsely assume that collapse happens suddenly or that no warning signs of gradual demise are detectable, when in fact slips often precede crashes. We are not exonerated from missing signs of slippage simply because a bridge collapses so quickly, seemingly without any advance warnings. The blunder here is to ignore comparisons or avoid analysis of events that seem remote.

Lesson: Learn to view slips, or minor blunders, as weak signals of future problems, which may be prevented if caught and managed early.

2. Fear of Prediction Pragmatic leaders might view the goals of prediction and perfection the aspirations of gods and overreachers—as the stuff of hubris and multiple deception. Such a view stems partly from not being comfortable or adept with seeing the big pic-

ture in the small, or reading the future in the present. Behind this resistance or discomfort is the paralyzing fear of prediction, of exchanging rational analysis for prophecy.

But prediction is precisely what we have to accept and perfect if we believe that the law of crash indeed is slip. If we delve into root causes, we will be in a position to predict failure or breakdown. We fear taking the role of the prophet, regarded suspiciously as the boy who cried wolf too soon and too often.

Lesson: Understand what “prediction” really is in the context of business practice: It is not prophecy, but a practical application of our understanding and experience of real events, projected to probable outcomes.

3. Mistaking Size for Scale Blunders come in different sizes and scales; they are not always big or obvious, like the questionable decisions to market Edsel or a new version of Coca Cola. On the other hand, a ship may founder but not sink even though it has taken a big and perhaps fatal hit. The smallest misstep may scale to become a fatal blow, while a big mistake (New Coke) may be more embarrassing than disabling.

Lesson: Remember, as the saying goes, “for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.”

4. Rejecting Comparison We are big and they are small, the thinking goes. Or they are apples and we are oranges. In this no-comparison mind-set, the opportunity for common diagnosis and correction is lost.

Size differentiation thus may offer false comfort and account for a large number of failures not being perceived, let alone anticipated.

Not learning from other organizations’ blunders, no matter their incomparable size or mission, means that we distance ourselves; we retain the illusion that our difference prevents failure from happening to us.

Lesson: See commonalities, not differences. Apples and oranges are both fruit, equally subject to bruising and rot, and organizations of differ-

ent sizes may suffer bruises in similar ways.

5. Failure to Unlearn After perusing the annual list of other people’s blunders, it is natural to focus on our own successes and solid judgments, not our failures and bungling decisions. To be sure, we acknowledge risk and even the partial unraveling of strategic plans, but never to the point of committing, admitting, or foreseeing blunders. We regard such colossal mistakes as exceptions to the rule.

And yet, with the long history of unexpected failures, surely it makes sense to accept failure as the underbelly of success, a norm of all businesses.

As a new operational paradigm, professionals would routinely perceive success and failure together, as two sides of the same coin, as ego and id. In part, that would also require some degree of academic unlearning, because such failures are not regular features of graduate study. Perhaps a reconfigured version of the MBA should be offered— a Master of Blunder Studies. Even with that degree in hand, blunders would still occur, but hopefully they would be at least novel and unique, rather than recurrent and redundant blunders that result from failure to learn (or unlearn) from mistakes.

Lesson: View business as success and failure. Failure constantly shadows success, haunts every quarterly report, sits like a gnome on the periphery of the stock market. Success does not wish to contemplate failure; such fearful prospects are often forbidden subjects of conversations, let alone agendas—“Let us not be negative.”

The bottom line is that failure— our own and that of others—offers us what success never can: the opportunity for correction. ❑

About the Author Irving H. Buchen is a business professor at Capella University and dean of management studies at St. ­Clements University Group. His last article for THE FUTURIST was “Asimov’s Embarrassing Robot: A Futurist Fable,” March-April 2013.

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 31 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Visions

By Patrick Tucker

When Do I Get My RoboCop? Power before Superpowers fix what’s broken?

A new remake of the sci-fi classic RoboCop imagines a future where humanity and machinery merge, to awesome result. Is it a realistic vision? Somewhat, neuroscientist Charles Higgins tells us.

Charles Higgins: One of the things

I’ve been told is that, in the movie, they preserve not just the brain of the person, but also the spinal cord.

If I had been an advisor on the movie, I would have told them to do that, because pretty much all of your detailed motor function is stored in your spinal cord. The detailed movements of your fingers, the detailed movements of the muscles in your leg and your torso that are required to walk, that’s all spinal cord activity. Your central brain doesn’t know about it.

In terms of the brain-controlled prosthetics, we are still fairly primitive. I watched a show in 1977 called The Six Million Dollar Man. We’re not nearly at that level yet, where we can replace an arm and connect it up in some way to have a fully functional arm, or an arm that is even better than before.

We’ve got monkeys able to move robotic arms around, and grasp cups, and feed themselves. [Ed. note: In 2008, a University of Pittsburgh team led by Andrew Schwartz taught a monkey to feed itself using a robot arm that the monkey controlled via implant.]

In principle, that works. The problem is that, when you put them in a human, those electrodes don’t last more than a year or two at most.

Who wants to have brain surgery every two years?

But when we are there, we will want to preserve the spinal cord.

That’s what they do in this movie.

You’ll want to connect to the spinal cord, because it has all the fine movement details. If you want to create an artificial body, you need the spinal cord to know how to activate all the motors, or simulated muscles—whatever they’re using to replace muscles in the body. That was a really smart thing to do, which I suspect they did for visual effect, not because of any scientific advice.

THE FUTURIST : Based on how

José Padilha’s new movie RoboCop—an update of the 1987 classic directed by Paul Verhoeven—is set in a fictional Detroit in the year 2028.

It is the tale of Alex Murphy, a beat cop who suffers a terrible injury and is transformed into a superhuman, angst-ridden, crime-fighting cyborg.

The integration of biology and machinery, sometimes referred to as ­c ybernetics, has been rapidly advancing, particularly in the last decade. Some mechanical and electrical systems are used to compensate for biological functions or deficiencies, like the loss of a limb.

Sophisticated prosthetic limbs allow people to grasp by activating areas of their motor cortex, enabling them to wrap the fingers of a robotic arm around an object.

RoboCop takes those advances to a new thematic level and asks if it is possible to augment an otherwise healthy system by surgically changing the body to incorporate mechanics and computers. It’s the basis of a lot of very popular science fiction, but it’s never actually been done.

We asked Charles Higgins, an associate professor of computational neuroscience and bio-inspired engineering, for his view on the future of man–machine melding.

THE FUTURIST: What do we have to understand about human biology before we’re able to improve on an otherwise perfect, or at least perfectly adequate, human system through machinery, rather than just 32

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quickly you’ve seen this field advance from when you became interested in it to today, do you think that the year 2028 (when this movie is set) is a realistic time frame for some of the advancements depicted?

Higgins: For some of them, but not a full realization of the movie. By 2028, we will have prostheses in people who are, say, double amputees. We’ll be able to allow them to walk for years at a time, maybe five, seven years at a time—probably not for the rest of their lives.

They will not have superior skills to humans. They will be better off than they were in a wheelchair, but I don’t think, by 2028, they will be jumping over 30 foot walls or punching out humans with superhuman strength. continued on page 34

© 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

SONY PICTURES

Screenshots for José Padilha’s ­RoboCop, which hits theaters in the United States in February 2014.

Visions

continued from page 32 There’s a fundamental technological limitation here, too, when you get to a scenario like the one portrayed in RoboCop; that’s power-­ supply technology. Have you seen Raytheon’s exoskeleton? It’s like a skeleton that a person puts on that allows him or her to effectively have much greater strength than he or she had before. What’s not obvious from those videos is the big power cables that are running out the back.

If you wanted to make a prosthetic that would generate, say, the power to jump over a 30-foot wall, the problem is that we don’t currently have the power supply technology that would be light enough, and would carry enough energy, to allow that to happen. How exactly would something like RoboCop be powered? That’s the really serious problem. So even if you can handle the brain interface, there’s got be a power source in there someplace to provide all that energy for all the motors and stuff.

THE FUTURIST: We don’t typically think of the problem of an exoskeleton as being one related to a power source. But wasn’t Iron Man powered by a personal fusion reactor?

Wasn’t that what made the entire suit possible, the sudden abundance of power?

Higgins: There are such things as very small nuclear reactors. What nuclear reactors are good at is producing power over long periods of time. But on a small scale, they are not good at producing a lot of power. You can make a small-scale nuclear reactor—I believe that they have them that are a size that you hold in your hand—but it’s more like a 9-volt battery that lasts for 1,000 years, not something that powers you to jump over a 30-foot wall.

That takes a huge amount of power.

The nuclear power plant that could do that would be a building.

The Iron Man suit was powered

by Tony Stark’s Arc reactor—some sort of a reactor that generates a tremendous amount of energy, appar34

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Neuroscientist Charles Higgins.

ently from nowhere. That would be necessary for the RoboCop device, as well. You’d need to have a lot of energy density in that battery, and yet it would have to be very small and very light.

THE FUTURIST: What you’re saying is that, in order for some of this stuff to happen, it’s not even a matter of a bunch of people with PhDs in neuroscience, PhDs in mechanical engineering, and PhDs in biophysical engineering, doing more lab experiments and reaching new breakthroughs within their chosen field.

We need some sort of crazy miracle power source before we get our awesome, super-powerful robotic exoskeletons.

Higgins: In Avatar, they have these devices where a human stands inside. As the human moves, the exoskeleton moves, and the human, effectively, becomes a big huge robot.

Aside from the power source, we could do that now. Raytheon’s exoskeleton is an example of that. If we only had a power source that could power the thing, then we could be building massive robot soldiers that could be driven around by little real soldiers inside them.

So where’s the power source going to come from? It will come from research by electrical engineers, mechanical engineers. It could come from chemists. It could even come •

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out of biology. A fly can take one grain of sugar and fly around all day.

That’s a 24-hour power source. Biology is much better at converting what it can find in the wild into a tremendous amount of energy—better than anything that humans build.

It would transform everything if we had a very tiny power source, like an Arc reactor. Our military would radically alter. Infantry would become robots like you saw in Avatar.

THE FUTURIST: So one of the key hurdles in achieving a RoboCop-like breakthrough is finding an extremely dense, portable power source. Yet, as consumers, that’s not what we ask for in the devices.

Higgins: I think that it’s important to remember that funding doesn’t usually come from what the consumers want. It comes from government agencies, for the most part.

And the military is a big part of that.

So the power supply to power RoboCop, make him real, [will come] before we have the neuroscience to understand how to actually make the real RoboCop work as well as it appears to in the movie. The military is very, very interested in getting that sort of rapid-burst energy that might jump you over a wall, or that might punch your way through a wall, or something like that.

There’s actually something that humans can do—that biological creatures can do—that’s really interesting. We can deliver these bursts of energy. So with a punch, or a jump, just for a moment, you deliver a tremendous amount of energy. We’re approaching devices that can do that. ❑ About the Interviewee Charles Higgins is an associate professor of computational neuroscience and bio-­ inspired engineering at the University of Arizona, where he directs the Higgins Laboratory, thehigginslab.com.

This interview was conducted by Patrick Tucker, deputy editor of THE FUTURIST and author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). It has been edited for space and clarity.

Robotic Technology to Preserve Wildlife: A Scenario A new flying robotics challenge takes aim at the armed groups that are hunting the black rhino and other animals out of existence.

By Princess Aliyah Pandolfi

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY WFS / JUSTIN LETO / ROBERT HOETINK, BIGSTOCK / AURORA FLIGHT SCIENCES

Members of the South African Army survey the landscape of Kruger National Park, a 7,580-square-mile stretch of land and a hotbed of illegal poaching.

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 35 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

A

s dusk descends on the Kruger National Park in South Africa, a family of black rhinos move quietly away from the water hole toward a resting place in the bush.

They are among the last of their kind, the species having been hunted to near extinction, and this evening they are not alone. A group of men have entered Kruger from neighboring ­Mozambique. They come from a poor village, but they are carrying expensive weapons. Two men carry AK-47 assault rifles to shoot park rangers, one carries a high-caliber ­rifle to shoot rhinos, and one carries an ax to cut off the horn of the dying ­animal.

Traffickers in the criminal network paid a good price for the equipment and information, but it will be well worth the effort if they are able to kill a rhino. The horn is one of the

most valuable materials on Earth, worth more than six times the value of gold on the streets of Vietnam and China, where it is believed to have great medicinal power. Criminal networks profit on that superstition, while environmentalists race to educate potential consumers about the fallacy of rhino horn medicine.

The horns are made from a material called keratin, which is about the same as human fingernails. In fact, simply eating your own nails would provide more keratin than a typical dose of rhino horn. Perhaps in a few generations, the demand for rhino horn will decrease, but unless the poaching ends, the rhinos will be gone in just a few years.

Stopping the poachers has been a losing proposition. In Kruger National Park, which is 7,580 square miles (a little smaller than the state

of New Jersey), poachers have been relatively free to operate, despite the constant presence of rangers on foot and in ground vehicles. Poachers are supported by a modern and wellfunded intelligence network that includes human sources, signals intercepts, and aerial surveillance.

There were more than a thousand rhinos poached throughout South Africa between January and December 2013—a dramatic rise over the past few years. Kruger National Park, the first reserve in South Africa, is the main battleground for the world’s rhino, where more than 600 were lost in 2013. Experts blame the dramatic increase in affluent populations in Asia, where rhino horn has become a fashionable commodity, selling for as much as $100,000 per kilogram. With the demand increasing, organized crime syndicates have GRETA WILLIAMS

Black rhino on the plains of Kruger National Park.

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moved into the business of wildlife exploitation, estimated at $19 billion in black­-market trade in 2012.

The Poachers Approach The men travel on foot several miles into the park to a secluded area, where they will spend the day in hiding. With so few rhinos remaining, it can take several nights to cover the distance on the ground, and travel during daylight would be too risky. Poaching rhinos in South Africa is a serious crime, and a confrontation with rangers likely would turn into a dangerous gun battle.

They are there to kill defenseless animals for profit, not engage in risky battles. They will take their time, approaching rhinos at night and hiding during the day, then escaping back into Mozambique under the cover of darkness.

The following evening, the men proceed in earnest from their hidden camp. They received a coded text message via cell phone that rhinos had been spotted just a few miles from their location. Posing as tourists, spotters for the criminal network had provided timely and accu-

ing in Kruger. Students, hobbyists, and academics around the world formed teams to participate in the Challenge, not just for the $65,000 prize money, but because they wanted to contribute to saving the rhino.

Kruger ’s rangers had experimented with aircraft developed for other purposes, but affordable aircraft lacked the sensing, processing, and communications essential to the mission. In a battlefield, people are assumed to be combatants. Small aircraft can be deployed ahead of ground forces, alerting them to the presence of enemy soldiers. But in a park the size of Kruger, detecting poachers and planning engagements are complicated procedures.

Building on technologies developed for the smartphone industry, the Challenge teams integrated sensors, computers, and graphical processors into compact avionics. Drawing on revolutions in additive manufacturing, they compressed the time from concept to flight for prototype aircraft from years to days, and they decreased the cost for developing new small aircraft from millions to just a few thousand dollars.

rate intelligence. Travel on foot at night in Kruger can be slow, but the men are confident that they will have their kill. With better intelligence, weapons, and funding, the poachers have little fear of the ­rangers.

Fighting Technology with Technology Poachers and rangers are not the only people in Kruger. Tourists flood the area hoping to get a glimpse of rhinos and elephants before they are gone. Permits are issued by the rangers along with RFID tags that enable the rangers to keep track of where visitors are in the park at all times.

Rangers also carry RFID tags so their locations are accessible back at park headquarters, as well. Leveraging advanced technologies provides hope for protecting the park’s resident species.

Enter aerial drones. In 2013, Kashmir Robotics sponsored a Wildlife C o n s e r v a t i o n U AV C h a l l e n g e ­(wcUAVc). The Challenge created a new class of aircraft with multimode sensing and on-board decision making optimized for countering poach-

JUSTIN LETO

Princess Aliyah Pandolfi (center) with members of the South African Army on a fact-finding mission to Kruger National Park.

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AURORA FLIGHT SCIENCES

Dropping down to just tens of feet above the ground, the aircraft quietly approaches the poachers. Close in, the aircraft turns on a bright strobe light, temporarily blinding the poachers. Believing they are under attack, the Rangers test the use of drones to more effectively engage poachers poachers respond in South Africa, including the Aurora Flight Sciences’s skate drone. with bursts of gunfire. But by the time they fire, the aircraft is Deploying the Drones gone, now rising back to cruise altiBack in the ranger headquarters, tude. The aircraft processes the an alert is received from one of the sound profile of the recorded gunnew UAVs that are providing sur- shots and sends an alert describing veillance over the remaining rhinos. the types of weapons and precise loHumans have been observed via cation. thermal imaging sensors within five On the ground, the poachers remiles of the rhino family. The aircraft group. They are temporarily blinded received responses from the RFID and disoriented, and they anticipate tags on the rhinos, but no response ground fire from rangers. Instead of was detected from the humans. proceeding toward the rhinos, they The aircraft came down in alti- begin retreating as best they can totude, passing quietly, low and slow ward the border, now unsure of over the subjects, probing with mag- what may lie ahead. netic sensors able to detect the presSeveral more low-altitude passes ence of weapons. On-board comput- of the aircraft with bursts of light ers processed the infrared imagery keep the poachers from making their and registered the locations and escape. The aircraft has herded them bearings of the humans. The aircraft into an open area. Rangers arrive climbed back to cruise altitude and and quickly apprehend the now exsent an encrypted alert via the park’s hausted poachers, who are nearly new IP Canopy that, although sparse out of ammunition. at ground level, is continuous at ­aircraft-cruise altitudes.

Fact-Finding Mission An elite group of helicopter-borne From November 16th to the 21st, I rangers is called into action, but it will be at least an hour before they led a fact-finding mission into Krucan engage the poachers. There is ger National Park to test some of now less than two miles between the these ideas for fighting poaching poachers and the rhinos. The aircraft with drone technologies. We were is tasked with enforcing a buffer un- able to take members of the wcUAVc leadership team deep into the battletil the rangers can arrive.

Still unaware that they have been field during the full moon phase, detected, the poachers continue when the battle is most intense. moving toward a mother rhino and Hosted by Major General (Ret.) her baby. They are confident that ­J ohan Jooste, Commander Special within the next 30 minutes they will Projects SANParks, the team rehave a kill. Above them, a Kashmir ceived a morning briefing on the batRobotics aircraft prepares to inter- tle plan; then we provided a short vene. It plans an approach taking demonstration of Skate, a small UAV into account the locations of poach- developed by Aurora Flight Sciences ers and rhinos to ensure it drives in Manassas, Virginia, reconfigured to help rangers more effectively enthem apart and not together.

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gage poachers. Within minutes, the Aurora team began training park rangers how to launch, operate, and recover Skate. Impressed with the simplicity of operation and quality of data, General Jooste requested that we bring Skate into the battle.

For several days and nights, the team traveled into remote regions of the park and introduced UAVs for the first time into the battle. From a remote army camp on a hill near the border of Mozambique, Skate dove into a ravine, providing the first imagery ever of this high-risk area.

From a sector camp deep in the park, Skate swooped low to provide imagery under a bridge where poachers pass during the night. The mission provided new insight into the battleground and how UAVs might be integrated into the operational plans.

The Challenge Ahead The wcUAVc is by no means the first attempt at using drones to stop illegal poaching. In 2012, Google donated $5 million to the World Wildlife Federation to purchase surveillance aircraft for tracking poachers in Africa. The principal difference is that the wcUAVc encourages innovators and inventors around the world to create new types of aircraft with the latest sensors and computing technologies optimized for the mission. With more than a hundred teams from over 20 countries in six continents, the ­w cUAVc is the world’s largest and most diverse aircraft research ­project!

The future detailed in this scenario still needs to be created. Locally, nationally, and internationally, the wcUAVc is open to students, hobbyists, innovators, and entrepreneurs to create the best technology solutions to save endangered species from e­ xtinction. ❑ About the Author Princess Aliyah Pandolfi of Kashmir is the founder of wcUAVc and CEO of Al-Kareem Foundation (AKF). She created Kashmir-Robotics, a division of AKF, to provide the people of Africa with the means to protect rhinos and other endangered species from poaching. Learn more at www.wcuavc.com.

Drones for Humanity

By Henry Evans When one man lost his ability to move he discovered the power of drones.

TEDX, YURI HOROWITZ

Henry Evans (on monitor) speaks to TEDx Mid-Atlantic in October 2013 via teleconference from his home in Palo Alto. Next to him is Brown University computer science researcher Chad Jenkins. Following his presentation, Evans remotely steered a small drone around the TEDx Mid-Atlantic auditorium, much to the delight of the attendees.

I became a mute quadriplegic at the ripe old age of 40. It took me several years, but with the help of an incredibly supportive family, I finally decided life was still worth living.

I became fascinated with using technology to help the severely disabled; I had tracking devices sold commercially by the company Madentec convert my tiny head movements into cursor movements and enable my use of a regular computer.

I can surf the Web, exchange e-mail with people, and routinely destroy my friend Steve Cousins in online word games. This technology allows me to remain engaged, mentally active, and feel like I am a part of the world.

For about two years, Robots for Humanity developed ways for me to use the PR2 assistive robot as my body surrogate. I shaved myself for the first time in 10 years. I handed out Halloween candy. I opened my refrigerator on my own. I began doing tasks around the house. I saw new and previously unthinkable possibilities to live and contribute, both for myself and others in my circumstance.

All of us have disabilities in one form or another. For example, if either you or I want to go 60 miles an hour, we both will need an assistive device called a car. Your disability doesn’t make you any less of a person, and neither does mine.

In 2012, Kaijen Hsiao of Willow Garage connected with me Chad Jenkins. Chad showed me how easy it is to purchase and fly aerial drones. It was then I realized that I could also use an aerial drone to expand the worlds of bedridden people through flight, giving a sense of movement and control that is incredible. Using a mouse cursor that I control with my head, these Web interfaces allow me to see video from the robot and send control commands by pressing buttons in a Web browser.

With a little practice, I became good enough with this interface to drive around my home on my own. I could look around our garden and see the grapes we are growing. I inspected the solar panels on our roof.

One of my challenges as a pilot was to land the drone on our basketball hoop. I went even further by seeing www.wfs.org

if I could use a head-mounted display, the Oculus Rift, as modified by Fighting Walrus, to have an immersive experience controlling the drone.

With Chad’s group at Brown, I regularly fly drones around his lab several times a week from my home 3,000 miles away. All work and no fun makes for a dull quadriplegic, so we also find time to play friendly games of robot soccer. I never thought I would be able to casually move around a campus like Brown on my own. I just wish I could afford the ­tuition. ❑

About the Author Henry Evans is a pioneer in adaptive technology to help disabled people. Robots for Humanity is a joint collaboration between robotics maker Willow Garage and Georgia Tech.

Chad Jenkins, an associate professor of computer science at Brown University, contributed to this article.

This article was adapted with permission from Evans’s TEDxMidAtlantic talk, which took place in Washington, D.C., in October 2013.

Learn more at www.ted.com.

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More Talk, Fewer Languages:

Communicating in a Connected World

By John F. Copper Will the “language of the future” be Chinese or English or both?

An international studies researcher looks at how modernization and globalization challenge linguistic diversity.

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40 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

T

h e re a re around 7,000 languages in the world. Some experts say the number is larger; others, lower. All languages are being challenged by modernization and globalization such that t h e i r f u t u re s a re very different from their pasts—and very different from o n e a n o t h e r. To make sense of this looking forward, the world’s languages may be put into one of three categories.

One category is the disappearing languages. According to National Geographic magazine, one language disappears every 14 days. Most experts anticipate that half of the languages in existence today will be gone by the end of the century.

Earthday projects 90%.

This process has been going on for some time. Of the more than 500

Those who record their endangered spoken languages are saving some from extinction. Writing dictionaries and grammar books also preserves them. This, however, depends on someone taking an interest and having the time and money to do it.

languages spoken in North America before the Europeans arrived, more than half are now extinct. More than 300 languages in India have d i s a p p e a re d in the last 60 years. In 2003, the U.K. newspaper The Independent reported that 90% of the languages on the planet have fewer than 100,000 speakers, and more than 350 languages have fewer than 50 speakers.

British ecologist ­William Sutherland has shown that languages are becoming extinct faster than animal species.

The languages that are currently disappearing are mainly languages that are not written, are spoken by only a small number (usually declining) of people, or their demise is not being noticed. They are being affected more immediately than other languages by the rapid changes going on in the world. www.wfs.org

Practically Speaking A second category of languages are those that are declining in use in business and science. These languages are also waning rapidly in importance overall, and there is little or no chance that they will ever become an international or universal language.

Included in this group are the languages spoken in countries with small populations. Some are modern and well-to-do countries, such as Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, and most other European countries. In these countries, educated citizens and especially those employed in commerce or science and technology cannot rely on their own languages to pursue their professions.

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They must gain fluency in a more important language. Speakers of these languages also find there are few books, movies, and other cultural enjoyments in their languages.

This category also includes some larger countries, and even countries where the language has been recognized as one of the official languages by the United Nations, such as French. French is not used widely anymore in business or science. Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Japanese, and German all fit

into this group, as well, though their fading utility and importance is not so apparent.

Some of these languages even boast a growing number of speakers or retain a special importance in some ways. Arabic, for example, is important to those in the oil business, and its speakers are sought by various national intelligence agencies. Spanish and Portuguese are essential to do business in Latin America.

Some of the languages in category two will fade from usage much

faster than others. But all lack the potential to grow to become what some call a commanding language.

The Languages of Tomorrow The third category of languages includes those growing in use in business and in science and technology.

There are only two: Chinese and ­English. For this reason, Chinese and English may be called essential or ­vital languages. They will be the critical or universal languages of the future.

I Speak, You Speak, We All Speak, Internet Which are the most common languages online, and why should you care?

One unfortunate—but hardly surprising—effect of the global spread of information technology is that humanity is communicating far more, but seemingly with much less linguistic diversity than we were just a few decades ago.

While the human race speaks more than 7,776 different languages, only 5% of those languages exist online, according to a paper by mathematician and linguist András Kornai, published in the online journal PLOS ONE in October 2013.

What are the practical implications of this poverty of tongue?

Well, if you’re an English speaker looking to pick up a second language and are trying to determine which one to give your time, attention, and mental energy, you might skip immediately to those languages that are the most popular on the Internet. Here, you’re left with two choices, Chinese and Russian.

At the end of 2013, more than 590.6 million Internet users were Chinese, according to the China Internet Network Information Cen-

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ter. Chinese as a language group represented 24% of Internet users in 2011. English speakers across various countries comprised 565 million online users at the time.

Russian boasted just 59 million, according to numbers from the Internet marketing firm World Internet Stats.

Conclusion: If the reason you’re learning a language is to boost the sheer number of people you can communicate with, English and Chinese are your best bet. Consider, however, that population size may not be the best metric.

More than 55% of the Web sites around the globe are in English, but the second-most-popular language (6.1%) is Russian, according to the technology survey firm W3 Techs, which published its most recent survey in December 2013.

What that means is that, if you’re looking to put more of what you are creating on more actual Web portals that people visit, try the lingua franca of Tolstoy.

Yet a third way to look at the problem is to consider the trend line: Which languages are gaining more users faster? Chinese and Russian are in close competition here, as Chinese grew at 1,478.7% between 2000 and 2011, compared with just 301% growth for English, according to World Internet Stats.

As galloping a pace of growth as

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that is for Chinese, Russian grew 1,825.8% in the same period.

Perhaps a more important question than which is the most practical language to learn is, Why contribute to a winnowing of the globe’s linguistic repertoire when you can fight it? Start by questioning some the assumptions underlying the likes of the World Stats report, according to Ethan ­Z uckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media and the author most recently of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection.

“I’m interested in the rise of monolingual, non-English speaking Internet users; i.e., people in China who speak only Chinese and use an Internet that’s more or less completely separate from the Internet I know,” he told me. “They use different tools, like Weibo and WeChat, and talk about topics that are rarely discussed in the English language Internet. These users are on the rise, as the Internet expands in China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, and now Myanmar [Burma]. I expect to see more evidence that we’re encountering multiple Internets, each with [its] own culture and personality, surprisingly isolated from one another due to linguistic barriers and the absence of bridges.”

Zuckerman says that he does not

Chinese is far and away the largest language on the planet in numbers of native speakers (three to four times the numbers of native speakers of English, Spanish, or Arabic). It is the world’s second-most important second language (after English), and that role is rapidly expanding with more and more people studying it. According to the Chinese government, there were 40 million foreigners studying Chinese in 2010, and that number is fast increasing.

China boasts the second-largest

foresee a monolinguistic Internet, or even an Internet where content is only posted in five or six tongues spoken by large swaths of people. “Languages like Vietnamese or Burmese are large enough that they will build their own linguistically locked Internets,” he says.

Zuckerman does, however, fret that our interconnected age is driving more and more languages out of existence.

“It seems [that] if you speak a ‘small’ language like Malagasy and speak a popular language like French as a second language, you’re going to encounter much more French content online than content in your native language,” he says. “This may give you an incentive to create more content in French and to interact in French, further marginalizing your native tongue. Therefore, we face two challenges: helping small languages survive online, and building bridges between content in different large languages.”

It seems a challenge worth rising to meet.

—Patrick Tucker Sources: The Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org/.

W3 Techs, w3techs.com/.

Internet World Stats www.internetworld stats.com/stats7.htm.

the world—the closest we have come (or will come in the near future) to a universal tongue.

Will one of them prevail in the future? Each has certain advantages.

Chinese is spoken by more people; with growing equality in the world, numbers matter. China is growing faster than the United States economically and in other ways. China is the dominant country in the area of the world that is seeing the fastest growth and change.

Chinese is the language of mathematics. Recent studies, such as one published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the nature of the Chinese language (the way of counting, the characters, and more) nourish better math skills for native speakers. Brain imaging even shows changes in the brain of users of Chinese that relate to an ability to do mathematics. Further proof: Educators rate the countries that speak Chinese or use Chinese characters having the most talented students in math and science in the world.

English is simpler, more expressive, and more precise—making it a better language in some ways for science, as well as law and commerce. It is also the language of politics and democracy. Finally, it has a head start.

The dominance of these two languages will likely prevail for some time. In fact, it may be that Chinese/ English bilingualism is the wave of the future, even the distant future.

This may be considered a good thing in many ways. Using two languages, especially very different ones, enhances one’s ability to think broadly and objectively and affords a variety of other advantages. It may bring East and West together.

Chinese/English bilingualism may also serve as the bridge to one international language someday. If so, that will probably be some years away, and which language it will be is difficult to say. ❑

economy in the world and is projected to be the largest in a decade or so. China is already the world’s number-one manufacturer and the largest exporter. With its more than $2 trillion in foreign exchange, China has become a major purveyor of foreign aid and foreign investments, the biggest to many developing countries, in recent years.

China is also the second-largest nation in military spending and is predicted to be number one in a little more than a decade, as its military budget grows fast and America’s contracts.

China has recently surpassed the United States to become the world’s top registrant of patents and publisher of scientific articles. Its universities are fast improving and are becoming global. It is likely that China will gain the lead in the space race and other important areas of scientific achievement in the near future.

English is currently the most important—in some places, the only— language of business and science. It is by far the most important second language in the world. It is in widespread use in India, the world’s second-most-populous country, and in some other countries that lack a working national language or see their own language as limited in use.

The most important country where English is spoken, the United States, is the world’s leader in economic output, military power, culture, and more. Most people in the world, including those with talent and money, regard the United States as the most desired place to reside.

English has a much larger vocabulary than most other languages. It is the language of computers, and is an easier language to learn (especially to write) than Chinese. It has grown in importance with mass communications, travel, etc.

In the near future, there will be two languages of business and science and thus two contending universal languages. Chinese and English speakers together, including their usage as a second language, already number 3 billion to 4 billion.

In combination, they constitute a world language. Anyone who knows both Chinese and English can communicate with half of the people in www.wfs.org

About the Author John F. Copper is the Stanley J. Buckman Professor (emeritus) of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Along with interviews with leading futures practitioners, WFR publishes important new foresight literature addressing topics informed by technology assessment, policy analysis, operations research, issues management, competition research and much more.

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Learning without Schools: a contrarian future

By Patrick Tucker Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab and One Laptop per Child, shared his views on the future of learning at the World Future Society’s annual conference.

EVAN SZABLOWSKI; INSET: SANDRA ARCH FOR WFS

I

magine you are in a van traveling north from the city of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, along a dirt road that hugs an enormous crater lake. The landscape is desolate and the road is terrible. Unquestionably, you are in one of the most impoverished and remote places on Earth. After three hours in a car (stopping repeatedly to accommodate the donkeys and various livestock that have gotten in your way), you arrive at a village called Wenchi. There are no sidewalks or streets here. In fact, there is no electricity—only huts with dirt floors.

A child in torn, dust-covered clothing and no shoes approaches

Above: A child in the Ethiopian village of Wenchi shows his fellow villagers his computer skills. In February of 2013 Nicholas ­Negroponte led an effort to put tablet computers in the hands of every child in this and one other Ethiopian village. At WorldFuture 2013 he described the results of that ­experiment.

Inset: One Laptop per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte speaks to WorldFuture 2013.

you. He holds an object up for you to see. It’s a shiny tablet PC, not terribly dissimilar to the Apple iPad— the sort of thing you might see in the hands of a privileged child in the United States. The young boy proceeds to show you how many apps on the machine he can use and how to recharge the solar battery. He can sing a song about the ABCs. He even demonstrates how he has adjusted—

hacked, you might even say—the user settings to allow him to take a picture. You kneel down beside him, look into the tablet’s camera lens, and smile.

The above scene, though imagined, is very similar to the account of some students who participated in a research effort led by One Laptop per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte. It was an experiment that he

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 45 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

fact, their primary function is to learn about the children who are using them, to pay closer attention to the kids of Wenchi than any educator has, ever. The tablets have subscriber identity module (SIM) cards that record how the children are interacting with the software and with the machine itself.

What did the data reveal? As ­Negroponte told the crowd, “Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android.”

Someone in the One Laptop per Child organization had disabled the camera. One of the children realized how to reenable the camera setting, and soon, many were taking pictures of themselves.

“I went to the village in March of 2013 and came back rather amazed.

Now, were they reading? Were they reading, with comprehension, paragraphs of English? No, not yet, but they were doing what Maryanne [Wolf] calls the precursors of reading—with sight words, with phonetics, and being able to phonetically pronounce things. And that’s without a teacher and without a school,” said Negroponte. “The question was, can children learn to read on their own? While we didn’t prove it, it’s almost certainly yes.”

Not long after these experiments began, the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that incentivizes innovation through big-purse contests, announced a new $10 million competition chaired by Negroponte, called the Global Literacy X Prize, the goal of which is “to transform established beliefs about the timeline, nature, quality, and scalability of literacy solutions to serve the needs of over 60 million children who are not receiving primary education.”

Negroponte has no animus against formal education. But he’s willing, perhaps more than most people, to explore a possible future where learning is decoupled from teachers, classrooms, and everything we associate with schools.

“Nobody—including me, even in my most contrarian moments—is going to argue against education,” he said. “What I’m going to suggest

discussed in great length at WorldFuture 2013, the annual conference of the World Future Society, in Chicago last July.

In February of 2012, Negroponte and his team shipped two boxes of tablet computers (Motorola Xooms) to the villages of Wenchi and Wolonchete , located outside of the Ethiopian capital. These villages were selected on the basis of various criteria, the most important of which was that there is almost no written language anywhere to be found.

“There were no adults who were literate. There were no labels on bottles. There were no street signs. We found some words in the labels of clothing—a few letters printed on some clothing that had been found or bought. There were, perhaps, a few instances of words, but there was no literacy,” Negroponte told the crowd.

The tablets had been modified so that they could recharge in the sun, and they were loaded with 500 apps, including educational games, children’s movies with subtitles, and books.

The objective of the experiment was simple: to determine if these kids could learn to read English outside of a formal school setting. It’s a question of vital importance in the developing world, where 59 million children have never been to first grade, according to the most recently available statistics from Unesco. The figures are subject to constant change as new data becomes available. Negroponte believes the actual number of primary school aged children not in school to be closer to 100 million.

These are “kids who do not go to school because there is no school,” he said. “That’s to be distinguished from truancy in the inner city or other reasons—your parents don’t let you go to school because they want you to work in the fields or, worst of all, they don’t let you go to school because you’re a little girl, or whatever. There are just so many reasons. But the one reason that I focused on is, there isn’t school, even if you want to go.”

The children of Wenchi and Wolonchete match this description.

The computers don’t just teach. In 46

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is that education has become an institution—an institutional problem— and learning is what we’re really concerned about.”

Nicholas Negroponte has spent a remarkable career fashioning a reputation as an idea iconoclast. The MIT Media Lab that he founded in 1980 is considered one of the most forwardlooking higher learning environments in the world, despite having a very nonacademic feel with little emphasis on formal classes. What began as part of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning has become the premier setting for ambitious thinkers to tinker with technological solutions to the world’s biggest problems.

Many of the resulting projects, like the MIT Smart Cities program, have received international recognition and acclaim. As a brilliant technologist, Negroponte recognized the transformative power of the Internet long before many of today’s most fashionable futurists. His 1995 best seller, Being Digital (Vintage), is perhaps the most prescient book about the Internet to come out of the 1990s.

Negroponte’s decades as an intellectual leader in the fields of design, technology, business, and education manifests in a unique view of how technology shapes the future. At WorldFuture 2013, after describing his experiment to attendees, he took a series of questions from the audience on topics that ranged from self-driving cars, to the future of privacy, to education, to the entire digital universe.

The following is THE FUTURIST’s adaptation of that exchange.

Futurists Take a Deeper Dive Question: Thank you for the talk.

I’m wondering what you feel about some of the problems with privacy that have been emerging in discussions in recent days, with the big data revelations and the way that big data can be utilized to construct profiles of us, etc. What can we, as futurists, do about the situation?

Nicholas Negroponte: Well, in full disclosure, my older brother [John Negroponte] was the director of National Intelligence, the first one, under George W. Bush. So you’d think I’d know a lot about it, but I don’t. I was shocked, actually.

I understood the metadata part, and I knew people were collecting the metadata. I knew how meaningful the metadata could be. But what I hadn’t understood—which has put me in as much shock as a lot of people—is the concept of recording everything but not looking at it, then getting a subpoena to look at what you’ve recorded. That just changed my frame of reference.

I think it’s bad. On the other hand, let’s take medical privacy as an example. If I get hit by a car and an ambulance picks me up bleeding on the street, I don’t want any medical privacy at that moment. I want them to have absolutely everything. Yet, in the abstract, I do want medical privacy.

So much depends on your point of view and particular point in time.

The fact that we’re doing this in some national interest troubles me more than almost anything in that equation. People collecting data surreptitiously—I don’t condone it at all.

Question: I was at this workshop today about 3-D printing. There’s all this talk about how there won’t be any manufacturing, and all that.

I’ve seen how computers and electronics spark something in kids when they had never had the opportunity before. They can find enjoyment by programming, which is also great.

But I wondered, this happens in places where a computer is a novelty, where tablets are a novelty. What happened in places when this is not the case? Devices are getting cheaper.

When devices in these places become common, how do we inspire the next generation of these kids?

Negroponte: What you’re talking about is a much harder problem, it turns out. In One Laptop per Child, we tended to be in countries where people really were welcoming. And in some cases, like Ethiopia and Peru, they were almost desperate to see the education system change and the kids take a more active role. In a country like the United States, and, perhaps, most of Venezuela, you have a much more difficult problem, partly because you’re fighting a little bit against an institution that is pretty entrenched in many different ways. What I’d like to contribute is some understanding of the ability for kids to learn.

In the United States, it used to be that 20% of the kids who finished eighth grade couldn’t read. If 80% of

Everything is going to be automated.

It just makes me wonder, what are people going to do for a living?

Negroponte: Whatever the future of jobs may be, the future is unequivocally not in manufacturing.

The best way to manufacture something is to pour chemicals into a box and have iPhones come out the other end, with no people in between.

It makes my stomach turn when I hear people in Congress say that there are 100,000 people in Shenzhen, China, making iPhones, and those jobs should be in the United States.

Give me a break. There’s no person who would want one of those jobs.

Within those 100,000 jobs there might be 1,000 that are related to design.

But the rest are pretty bad jobs.

The big number of jobs comes in the development of the software.

The design is … the really good jobs.

So, I think that’s the transition— from atoms to bits, is going to be the job transition. For example, the world’s largest hotel chain is AirBnB .com. The world’s largest fleet of limos is Uber. These are software.

Question: I come from Venezuela.

Rhodes scholar Evan Szablowski visited the Ethiopian village of Wenchi in July of 2013 and took these photos of children interacting with tablet computers donated by ­Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child foundation.

EVAN SZABLOWSKI

“The question was, can children learn to read on their own? While we didn’t prove it, it’s almost certainly yes.”

—Nicholas Negroponte

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the kids in that village in Ethiopia can read after three or four years, then that tells us something about reading. It tells us that the reasons kids aren’t learning to read in New York have nothing to do with the ability to learn how to read.

So that’s where I focused, on the bell jar, if you will. When I look at education in this country [the United States], I have to look at 15,000 school districts, and I don’t know how to deal with 15,000 school districts. So, it’s a hard problem.

Question: It’s exciting to see what online education can do for the children that don’t have access to schools. What are your views on what online education—i.e., MOOCs [massively open online courses]— might do, not only for those who don’t have access to schools, but also in those parts of the world that do?

What’s the endgame of the for-profit or not-for-profit companies that are rushing into that MOOC space?

What do you see happening the next five or 10 years?

Negroponte: I assume everybody’s familiar with the term MOOCs. Actually, it was started at MIT under a different name. Any faculty member who volunteered put classes online

and made them available. That’s now almost 10 years ago. It was called OpenCourseWare. It’s free, widely used. Now there’s also edX, Udacity, and Coursera.

But in middle school and high school, [free online education] didn’t unfold as well as it should have. There’s something called Khan Academy that is focused on middle school and high school. Sal Khan is a celebrity. But Khan Academy has done three things wrong.

First of all, he’s decided to write all the courseware. That doesn’t make sense today, in the world of Wikipedias and collaboration. It doesn’t make sense that one group writes all the software. The second error is that they have confused simplicity and minimal graphics with low production values. So it’s really badly produced stuff.

The third error, which is, perhaps, the most dramatic, is that Khan deeply believes that you can read a book on communism and then give a talk on it. There are people who have spent their lives studying communism. There are programs on Chile after the Allende government in Khan Academy that are trivial. So, I like the MOOCs and I like the flipping of the classroom. The kids get the lectures, if you will, at home, and Members of the World Future Society question Nicholas ­Negroponte during WorldFuture 2013. go to class to have the discussion.

Great. But the exeSANDRA ARCH FOR WFS cution of Khan Academy is bad.

The two MOOCs in California that do it for universities are profit-making, which offends me. But edX (which is Harvard), MIT, and a few others are free. I applaud that. So that’s the landscape. In general, you just pull back and you subtract my comments for a second—it’s pretty good change.

People in the remotest parts of the world are getting 48

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access to this stuff, which is absolutely ­terrific.

Now let me compare MOOCs and TED Talks. Arguably, TED Talks are episodic. They aren’t threaded together in a curriculum. I met somebody in South Africa recently, who said, “My wife is jealous of TED Talks because I’m always looking at TED Talks.” People are captured by them. I find that rather inspirational.

But the MOOCs bring instructionism to remote places. And if you have an extremely good computer science teacher, and you have high production values, and you have free access, that’s going to affect hundreds of millions of people eventually. It’s going to really be very, very big.

Question: I wonder if you could share your thoughts on the potential for leveraging the lessons learned in One Laptop per Child—for one 3-D printer per village, for example.

Negroponte: There is a program for that, actually—it comes out of the Media Lab—where they put 3-D printers in villages. It’s called the Fab Lab, and they have a few hundred around the world. There will be a lot of things you can do to put in a village. You can almost fill in the rest of the sentence, One ___ per village, one ___ per child.

Probably the biggest thing that will happen over the next five years is universal connectivity. That just brings with it an awful lot. Now, because of the cell phone, connectivity has extended its reach, but it’s very data-unfriendly and quite costly, particularly in the developing world. Connectivity now is like tobacco and alcohol: If you are rich enough to pay for telecommunications, you pay through the nose. As that changes, narrow-band will eventually get broader and broader.

It’s going to change quickly. Then you’ll have one this per village, one this per child. ❑ About the Author Patrick Tucker is deputy editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society.

He is the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014).

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 e-mail jcornish@wfs.org.

Karl Albrecht International

Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking

Common Sense Medicine

San Diego, CA U.S.A. Phone: 858-836-1500 E-mail: futures@KarlAlbrecht.com Web: KarlAlbrecht.com Contact: Dr. Karl Albrecht Planning a conference? Include a “Futures Update” keynote by renowned futurist Dr. Karl Albrecht.

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

Alsek Research Economic Futures

Christensen Associates, Inc.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presentations, strategic planning facilitation.

CREO Strategic Solutions 7710 Woodmont Ave., #211, Bethesda, MD 20814 Phone: 301-656-1034 Contact: Kevin Fickenscher, MD Email: drkevin@creostrategicsolutions.com Healthcare is undergoing dramatic change that extends far beyond the financing of healthcare.

Understanding and embracing the future is critical. Keynotes, workshops, leadership training, strategic advisory services and consulting.

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

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

More consultants and services, next page www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 49 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Consultants

and

Services

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

The Futures 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

Institute for Participatory Management and Planning

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

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

March-April 2014

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.

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.

1109 Main St., Ste. 299A, Boise, ID 83702 Phone: 208-345-5995 Fax: 208-345-6083 E-mail: JLuthy@futurescorp.com Web: www.futurescorp.com Contact: Dr. John Luthy Strategic thinking/planning; evolving leadership; organization redesign/development; trend analysis; scenario planning; business growth ­strategies.

THE FUTURIST

KAIROS Future AB

34 Warren Dr., Newport News, VA 23608 Phone: 757-874-5414 E-mail: HUDSON2059@msn.com Contact: Henry G. Hudson, president and CEO Management consulting help in advanced administrative services, operations, systems, methods, procedures, policies, strategy, and management.

Innovation Focus Inc.

The Futures Corporation

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H.G. Hudson and Associates

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.

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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 Technology Futurist 2805 Ocean St. #2, Carlsbad, CA 92008 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 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

Town and Gown Relations

Strategic planning, succession planning including mentoring, executive coaching, organizational change facilitation, and matrix management assistance.

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.

21st Century Learning LLC

SynOvation Solutions

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.

10 Jamaicaway, Suite #18, Boston, MA 02130 Telephone: 978-204-2770 Email: charlesfadel@gmail.com Web: www.21stcenturyskillsbook.com Contact: Charles Fadel, founder and best-selling author: 21st Century Skills; visiting scholar, Harvard GSE and MIT ESG. Education’s futures, as impacted by Technology, and along the dimensions of Knowledge, Skills, Character, and Metacognition. Keynotes and seminars on global education; education technology; neuroscience of learning; creativity & innovation; artificial intelligence & augmented intelligence.

The TechCast Project

van der Werff Global, Ltd.

Department of Information Systems & Technology Management, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052 Phone: 202-994-5975 E-mail: Halal@gwu.edu Web: www.techcast.org Contact: William E. Halal, professor, George Washington University; president, Techcast LLC TechCast is an online research project that pools the knowledge of 100 experts worldwide to forecast breakthroughs in all fields of science and technology. Results are updated in real time and distributed to corporations, governments, and other subscribers to aid in their strategic planning. The project has been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Futurist, and various journals. The National Academies consider TechCast among the best systems available, and Google ranks it No. 2 or 3 out of 45 million hits. TechCast also gives presentations, conducts customized studies, and performs most types of consulting related to technology and strategic change.

www.wfs.org

4958 Crystal Circle, Hoover, AL 35226 Phone: 888-448-3779 Fax: 888-432-9263 E-mail: terry@globalfuture.com Web: www.globalfuture.com Contact: Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC Confidential advisor to corporate leaders worldwide on global trends, executive leadership, and strategic change.

Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc. 200 E. 33rd St., Suite 9I, New York, NY 10016 Phone: 212-889-7007 Fax: 212-679-0628 E-mail: info@weineredrichbrown.com Web: www.weineredrichbrown.com Contact: Arnold Brown, Edie Weiner For over two decades, the pioneers in detecting emerging trends and linking them to a ­ ction.

Xland sprl 111 Av Grandchamp, Brussels, Belgium 1150 Phone: 32-475-827-190 Fax: 32-2-762-46-08 Web: www.xland.be E-mail: xland@skynet.be Contact: D. Michel Judkiewicz Trend analysis, scenarios, forecasting opportunities/threats based on strong and weak signals for resilient strategies.

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Futurists

and

Their Ideas

By Hazel Henderson

Profiles in Planet Saving: Lester R. Brown and Ted Turner Two environmental advocates have new books out detailing their life’s work: a memoir by agricultural policy expert Lester R. Brown and a biography of CNN founderturned-philanthropist Ted Turner.

Independent futurist Hazel Henderson (an environmental advocate herself) offers a personal perspective.

Conventional politics and governance, even in so-called advanced democracies, are failing to manage human affairs. In our twenty-first century of global problems that cannot be addressed by any single nation, civic leaders arise from business, finance, academia, cities, media, and the grassroots. Two such leaders are Lester R. Brown, public intellectual extraordinaire, and Ted Turner, media mogul and social ­innovator.

For full disclosure, I know and admire both Brown and Turner and share their lifelong concern for the future of our human species and the viability of our planetary life-support system. Both learned to transcend the artificial conceptual and institutional boundaries that prevent progress in developing coherent policies and governance needed for human development on our crowded, polluted planet. Both see the future of human society as I do: no longer powered by digging fossil fuels and uranium out of the Earth, but instead looking up and harvesting the free daily shower of photons from the sun. Plants learned to do this millions of years ago, developing the technology of photosynthesis— which provides the daily food humans consume. The global shift be-

yond fossil fuels toward this next Solar Age is well under way, as Ethical Markets tracks in our Green Transition Scoreboard® with $5.2 trillion privately invested in green companies since 2007.

Lester Brown learned these truths growing up on a farm in New Jersey and became an agricultural expert in many countries. Ted Turner learned of these realities of human survival as the founder of CNN, seeing through his global TV network and reporters all the challenges that humanity faces—from overcoming ignorance, disease, and conflict to evolving new energy and economic systems in harmony with nature and the success of life forms for the past 3.8 billion years.

In his memoir, Breaking New Ground, Brown recounts how he sidestepped Washington bureaucracies and traditions to launch the Worldwatch Institute in 1975. He built it into a respected think tank heeded by politicians, business leaders, academics, and citizens worldwide.

Brown recruited me and a small group led by former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman to serve on the Worldwatch board, on which I continued until 2002.

I saw how Brown’s intellectual power and modest, low-key man-

agement style drove Worldwatch to its rapid success. He shifted debates in Washington and other capitals beyond petty power politics to address urgent global issues of widening poverty gaps, growing desertification, pollution, and the underlying unsustainability of our economic and financial models. I remember the debate in Worldwatch’s boardroom in 1983 about Brown’s idea of producing an annual State of the World report, which Rockefeller Foundation executive Bill Dietel had promised to help underwrite. I applauded this bold initiative, and the first State of the World report in 1984, largely written by Brown, appeared and became a global best-seller, launching a 51-book production line, published in 42 languages.

Ted Turner read the first State of the World report and declared it the most important book he had ever read. He proceeded to carry boxes of them to deliver to his CNN reporters—and eventually sent the report out annually to every head of state, political, business, and NGO leader around the world. Turner and Brown became lifelong friends.

During these early years (1975 to 1980), I witnessed the unfolding debate worldwide on the state of our planet’s life-supporting biosphere, as

52 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

EARTH POLICY INSTITUTE

LAST STAND TRAILER VIA YOUTUBE

Ted Turner, media entrepreneur and chairman of the Turner Foundation.

Lester R. Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute.

an advisor to the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Engineering. This led to my own lifelong focus on the failure of economics and its financial models in my book The Politics of the Solar Age (1981, 1988) of which I still treasure Lester Brown’s comment: ­“ Hazel Henderson is the original thinker of our generation. She breaks new ground and plants the seeds.

The rest of us follow to do the cultivating and harvesting.”

Ted Turner’s life has been driven by these concerns, as Todd Wilkinson documents in Last Stand. This book follows Turner ’s fascinating life from his success in building CNN to his concern with peacebuilding in his Goodwill Games in Moscow and friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev. Wilkinson recounts Turner ’s support of the United Nations and the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992, headed by Canadian Maurice Strong, which I also

Both of these books are enthralling; they illuminate our times and widen our perception of our own options in our lives. It has been my own personal privilege to know Lester Brown and Ted Turner, and I continue to be inspired by their exemplary lives. ❑

attended as a journalist. He also describes Turner’s growing interest in land conservation, and his gradual acquisition of tracts in the United States and Latin America, by which he became the largest private landowner in the world. Wilkinson also describes how Turner ’s interest in the UN culminated in his largestever private donation of $1 billion, setting up the UN Foundation still run today by his friend, former Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado.

Last Stand and Breaking New Ground document two outstanding global citizens, a new breed of human that our century sorely needs. Ted Turner and Lester Brown are role models for millions in their bold grasp of our human history and future options for further evolution. Their relevance will continue to grow as we face the breakdown of traditional politics, governance, economics, and finance—as well as the ecological destruction that is disrupting human security in many countries worldwide. www.wfs.org

About the Author Hazel Henderson is an independent futurist, evolutionary economist, and worldwide syndicated columnist.

Among her books are Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006), and Building a Win-Win World (Berrett-Koehler, 1997). She is also the founder and president of Ethical Markets Media (United States and Brazil), as well as co-executive producer of its TV series. Web site www.ethicalmarkets.com.

For more information, see: Breaking New Ground: A Personal History by Lester R. Brown (Norton, 2013) and Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet

by Todd Wilkinson (Lyons Press, 2013).

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Reviews How Data Reveals Us—and Our Futures

By Richard Yonck

When the Internet of Things yields bigger and bigger data sets, the Telemetric Age will be upon us. Everyone will be able to predict everything about each other.

Understanding that prospect now will help us guard against future abuses.

By any definition, big data is a very big concept. Vast data sets generated by nearly every aspect of modern life are mined by giant corporations and institutions seeking to unearth the secrets hidden within.

For individuals, it’s an idea that is at once mysterious, frightening, and disempowering. But what if these same tools—these same superpowers— could be harnessed by everyone, and be available to all? Not only would this level the playing field and make the powerful more accountable, but it could also usher in an era of enormous innovation.

This is the picture deftly laid before for us in The Naked Future by futurist and science writer Patrick Tucker. It’s a picture of the world in which personal Future apps connect to the Cloud, eventually accessing all the data and supercomputing power that was once exclusively wielded by huge companies.

As long-time deputy editor for THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society, Tucker is well suited to the task of describing these possibilities.

It’s an extremely well-researched book, engaging in its admiration of technology, while recognizing and

respecting our humanity. not only more accurate, But the naked future he but also more granular. describes is far more That is to say, they bethan just big data for all. come increasingly appliReally, that’s only the becable at the personal ginning. level. You want to know One important aspect what your customer base about big data is that, the will be buying next seamore information you son? That’s nothing. can draw on and incorHow about knowing porate, the better your where a specific individmodels become and the ual will be a year and a more accurately you can half from now? Within forecast the actions and The Naked Future: several hundred feet, behaviors of systems, in- What Happens in a and down to the hour?

World That Anticipates cluding people. This proWith more than 80% acYour Every Move? by cess is statistical by na- Patrick Tucker. Current. curacy? ture and applies very 2014. 288 pages. $27.95.

This isn’t somewhere well to large populain an imagined future. tions. It’s essentially As Tucker tells us, this what actuaries and insurance com- has already been done by a pair of panies have done for decades, but as researchers at Microsoft using existThe Naked Future shows us, we’re ing GPS data in 2011. Most of us rapidly becoming a world where this don’t want to accept it, but we’re all can be disturbingly invasive on a far more habitual in our movements personal level. For instance, in 2012, than we care to admit. It’s human when the retail chain Target used nature, because true randomness customer data to predict which buy- would literally make us crazy. These ers were expecting babies, no one habits are far more obvious to the reanticipated their sending coupons lentless number-crunching of a sufor baby supplies to an unwed teen. percomputer than they will ever be Sadly for that family, the teen’s in- to our unaided minds. It’s a frightencensed father had the news broken ing development, but also a very exto him in a most impersonal way. citing one. Little by little, we’re acThis isn’t simply a story about big quiring the ability to accurately data, however. As The Naked Future predict the future. explains, all this information has to For corporations, marketers, and come from somewhere, and a lot of policy makers, this ever increasing that “somewhere” will be telemetry. accuracy of predictive models— Sensors spread throughout our envi- what’s sometimes called anticipatory ronment, gathering information analysis—only serves to increase about everything and ultimately their appetites for more information. ­everyone.

The more data they have, the more This is an important aspect of the accurate their models; the more acInternet of Things, and it’s becoming curate the models prove to be, the so pervasive that Tucker has coined more data they’ll continue to want. a phrase to define this new era: the It’s an ascending spiral with no telemetric age. It’s an apt term and ­zenith in sight. one that expresses just how crucial But, as the author William Gibson this change will be to our modern so pithily observed, “The future is world. While the data gathered by already here—it’s just not evenly these sensors may initially be anony- distributed yet.” The technologies of mized, nevertheless it will give the wealthy and elite eventually behighly specific clues to all kinds of come available to us all. As a result, personal behavior. all of this amazing predictive ability We are moving in a direction in will soon be at everyone’s fingertips. which our forecasts are becoming Literally so, given the ubiquity of

54 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

mobile technology. Personal digital assistants in our phones, and eventually even smaller devices, will come to know us better than we know ourselves. They may even know us so well, they’ll tell us when we’re about to fall in love.

The predictive nature of big data, combined with the telemetric age, will give all of us abilities—superpowers, really—that we could once only dream of. Everything from our relationships with our institutions to our relationships with our family will change.

The Naked Future explores many other ways in which our world will be altered: crime prevention using predictive analytics that forecast not only the where and when of future crimes, but also the who … apps that help you avoid a mugging or reduce your likelihood of getting sick … personalized teaching methods that maximize a student’s learning potential. The world that Tucker describes will be a very different one, indeed.

It’s easy to look at all of these developments as highly negative invasions of our privacy and personal sovereignty. As with so many innovations, however, they have the potential to be incredibly beneficial to us, as well. The key to protecting ourselves will be in how we utilize our newly gained powers. Coming to understand the technology and striving to ensure that it works legitimately and to our benefit—while keeping an eye to its potentials for abuse—will be our best recourse. As Tucker observes, “We will not win by shaking our fist in the air at technology.”

The Naked Future is an important exploration of a future in the making and should be read by business leaders, entrepreneurs, policy makers, futurists, students—really, anyone who needs to know what tomorrow holds. At least, that is, until someone develops a Future app for that.

About the Reviewer Richard Yonck is a foresight analyst for Intelligent Future LLC in Seattle and is the Computing/AI contributing editor for THE

reforms to housing markets, higher education, and commercial business practices—all of which will lead to more social equality, economic stability, and individual household prosperity in the long run.

The author lays out what the trends mean for individual consumers and businesses. For consumers, he gives some suggestions on what real-estate sectors to shop in and which ones to avoid, and some strategies for savvy property buying and selling. Also, he forecasts the end of retirement as we know it.

For businesses, he offers advice on how to streamline operations, pursue bargains in new loans and equipment, market to potential customers, and maximize cash flow even when the market is slow going.

Dent delves into some deeply complex global economic and political developments, but he explains them to readers in an outstandingly conversational and approachable tone. For investors, entrepreneurs, policy analysts, and anyone else who needs to know where the world’s markets are heading, The Demographic Cliff makes for very engaging and enlightening reading.

—Rick Docksai

FUTURIST. His article “Connecting with Our Connected World” was the NovemberDecember 2013 FUTURIST cover story.

Navigating the Next Collapse The Demographic Cliff: How to Survive and Prosper During the Great Deflation of 2014-2019 by Harry S. Dent Jr. Portfolio/ Penguin. 2014. 349 pages. $27.95.

If you think the 2008 economic crisis was bad, just wait for the even steeper shock that is going to overtake economies across the globe between now and 2020, warns best-selling financial author and consultant Harry S. Dent Jr. In The Demographic Cliff, he identifies critical fault lines in the combination of steadily accumulating public debt and aging populations that beset every industrialized country and will eventually show up even in emerging countries, too. An economic “winter” may be upon us, and he warns every country to prepare.

Dent identifies structural vulnerabilities in the U.S., European, and Japanese markets. He sees even more serious trouble in store for China, whose state-dominated economy has an overinflated housing bubble that is heading for a pop.

South Korea and Singapore, on the other hand, are among the world’s economic bright spots. India will also fare well after 2020, Dent predicts, and will probably be the go-to market for many businesses as China’s economy tumbles.

Dent does not expect public deficit spending and stimulus plans to save the day for any of the vulnerable countries. To the contrary, he argues, periods of “austerity” are necessary.

The countries that undergo this belttightening will suffer economic contraction in the short term, but the pains will spur necessary debt drawdowns, financial restructurings, and www.wfs.org

Changes and Challenges in Global Governance The Future Can’t Wait: Over-the-Horizon Views on Development edited by Steven Gale and Sarah Jackson. USAID. 2013. 116 pages. Free download on USAID.gov.

As the world changes, government agencies that oversee development aid must change with it. This is the consensus of the contributors to the Symposium on Future Development Challenges, a one-day forum hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The contributors, who were drawn from •

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Reviews

across the globe will contend with intensifying environmental turbulence from climate change.

The Future Can’t Wait is a long-range view of public policy, written by policy makers and geared toward policy makers. Public agency leaders or workers who seek guidance on what challenges the future may pose to their programs and policies will find many useful insights.

—RD

USAID, the Department of State, the National Defense University, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, apply futures analysis to chart upcoming challenges and opportunities in the international development field. They call for substantial changes to how agencies such as USAID run their programs. In The Future Can’t Wait, USAID lays out their assessments and findings.

Huge demographic shifts are taking place, they note, such as surging youth populations in the developing world. This youth bloc represents not only a critical mass of potential social activists and entrepreneurs, but also a source of social tension.

Many countries’ youth populations are growing too quickly for schools, health-care systems, and the labor market to accommodate them.

Meanwhile, the whole world is also seeing a marked democratization of information and science— new innovations can more easily come about from anyone, anywhere in the world. Many historical recipients of development aid are now becoming prominent donors themselves—Brazil, China, and India now distribute assistance to emerging countries and can be helpful partners to USAID in future years. And as Latin America and the Caribbean grow economically, their entrepreneurs will invest increasing sums of capital in the United States.

The authors expect democracy to keep gaining ground in northern Africa. However, Europe and other established democratic areas will see increased strife as declining tax bases force hard decisions over pensions and social welfare programs.

The likely result will be European governments scaling back on international development and peacekeeping assistance to shore up domestic spending. And areas all 56

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March-April 2014

Innovating into a Whole New Species The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen—and What to Do by Daniel Berleant. Lifeboat Foundation. 2013.

364 pages. $13.79.

People living a hundred thousand years from now will still be human and will still look like us, but they will have evolved from us in some significant ways, according to Daniel Berleant, an information-science professor at the University of Arkansas and an advisory board member of the foresight nonprofit Lifeboat Foundation. He explores the far-­future implications of genetic change, along with social and technological change, and proffers advice to the world community on how to best begin managing the change processes in the here and now.

His accounts of far-future life will strike readers as entertaining, yet Berleant derives each from presentday breakthroughs that offer promising precedents. Artificial intelligence research could lead to computers that read our minds, for instance.

Schools everywhere could be replaced by electronic “ear-top guard•

www.wfs.org

ian angels” that teach their wearers any and every classroom lesson that a human teacher might.

Berleant also foresees work becoming increasingly optional, as nanotechnology and automated manufacturing processes render all of life’s necessities practically free; most work will take place outside the confines of physical offices.

Meanwhile, genetic engineering will yield such marvels as oceangoing seaweed clusters that pull huge volumes of greenhouse gases out of the air, and land-based plants that are engineered to extract gold, silver, and other precious metals from the soil and sprout teacups, silverware, and car-engine parts instead of fruit.

Daily life on a Mars colony, Berleant imagines, may be nowhere nearly as glamorous as science-­ fiction might have you think, but an initial colony could grow into a thriving, planetwide population very quickly. He envisions far-future colonization of Mercury, Venus, the asteroids, and even Pluto. He depicts each technological possibility and takes stock of both the positives and the potential downsides, and then offers recommendations and cautionary notes for it accordingly.

The Human Race to the Future is an intensely imaginative look at the far limits—or lack thereof—of human innovation. It will be enjoyable and thought-provoking reading for practically any audience.

—RD

The Next Big Thing—or Things —in Innovation Ride the Wave: How 12 Technologies Will Change the World and Make You Rich, second edition, by Fred Rogers and Richard Lalich. Crucial Trends Press. 2013.

305 pages. $23.95.

The world will change more in the next 20 years than it’s changed in the

last 2,000 years, and the reason why is digital technology, assert Trends magazine publisher Fred Rogers and executive editor Richard Lalich. They tell readers to look forward to a “society-wide creative destruction” brought on by smart machines and accelerations in our capacity to manipulate data, atoms, molecules, and our own DNA. The wave is already around us, in fact, and the authors chart its rising tide in the already-momentous growth of innovation in medical care, sustainable energy, and global communications, plus some industries that never even existed until fairly recently: nanomedicine, quantum computing, and commercial space flight, among others. Many net positives for life on Earth are likely to result from these changes, such as: • Steady reductions in the costs of travel to and from space—we may even see actual “space elevators” that lift people and payloads into space, no rocket boosters needed.

• Intelligent robots will take up full-time jobs in a swath of industries, ranging from health care and domestic caregiving to construction, security, and search-and-rescue.

• Personalized medicine will enable doctors to dramatically cut medical care costs while boosting patients’ health. They could, for instance, customize each medication to its patient and mitigate or eliminate side effects.

• Genetic engineering of crops will boost food security around the world while making a deep dent in our global carbon footprint.

• Bioengineering may cure a wide variety of diseases and protect us against bioterrorism while also resolving global shortages of transplant organs.

Rogers and Lalich write with excitement about each of these developments and many more. But they also write with context. They explain where each industry or sector stands

as Car2Go, to clothing trades, such as ClothingSwap.com. There are sites for finding apartments or vacation homes, such as AirBnB and Roomorama, and for finding temporary work, office space, and commercial vendors and suppliers, such as Gigwalk and MaestroMarket.com.

Even more listings enable sharing of storage space, books, and home ­appliances.

She adds tips for readers on how to participate in the sharing economy and how to avoid some of the potential pitfalls. For example, she discusses how to share your living space without suffering vandalism or thefts, or share your car and get it back in one piece.

Sharing Is Good is not only a fascinating presentation of sharing-based services, but it’s also a practical guide to successfully participating in them. This is a book that readers of all walks of life will find enjoyable and inspiring—and might even help them save time and money by becoming savvy sharers.

—RD

now, and what particular research pathways now under way will lead to the sought-after breakthrough. Their account is enthusiastic and visionary, yet thoroughly scientific and factual.

Entrepreneurs looking for the most promising new areas in which to invest, researchers curious about how technology might change their fields, and consumers everywhere who want to know what the next few decades have in store will find Ride the Wave to be highly worthwhile reading.

—RD

Pooling Our Finite Resources Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources through Collaborative Consumption by Beth Buczynski. New Society. 2013. 181 pages.

Paperback. $17.95.

Population growth and shrinking resource bases put a strain on lifestyles everywhere, but we can adapt, according to freelance writer Beth Buczynski. She places hope in an age-old practice: sharing.

In Sharing Is Good, Buczynski profiles the rise of a profusion of services for consumers to exchange cars, furniture, living space, and many other amenities. These services, she argues, embody a new global “sharing economy” that offers the world community a means to save money, time, and resources while continuing to enjoy comfortable lifestyles. The key is making the most of the material goods that we already have.

Humans have shared goods from the time that they lived in caves.

Thanks to emerging technologies and social networks, it is now possible for us to share more, and on a wider scale than ever before.

Buczynski profiles dozens of sharing opportunities available all over the globe. The list ranges from opportunities for transportation, such www.wfs.org

Leadership in a Changing World Wiki Management: A Revolutionary New Model for a Rapidly Changing and Collaborative World by Rod Collins.

AMACOM. 2014. 221 pages. $25.

Business leaders in this century can’t rely on last century’s management methods—i.e., organizational hierarchy, administrative silos, and leadership from above—argues management consultant Rod Collins.

He notes the disproportionately robust success that a few forwardthinking corporations have been enjoying in recent years by bucking old-fashioned command-and-control management and instituting a new •

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Reviews

ployees to participate in making decisions and formulating strategies.

The most successful companies this century will be those who can innovate most quickly, Collins explains, and innovation requires freedom and flexibility. The companies that adopt wiki management maintain order and accountability within their organizations, but they give their workforces enough space and prerogative to exchange ideas, express concerns, and give their higher-ups the actionable intelligence necessary to not be blindsided by changes in

paradigm based on collaboration, teamwork, and learning. He calls this new management style “wiki management” and finds it to be companies’ best hope for keeping up with the pace of societal and technological change.

Amazon, Google, Whole Foods, Linux, and Zappos are among the companies that exemplify wiki management. Collins spotlights each, showing the exact ways that these companies put this new management style to work. The methods vary, but each one involves limiting the managers’ leadership authority, more effectively integrating diverse points of view, prioritizing customer satisfaction over managers’ whims and wishes, and empowering all em-

the greater marketplace.

They are the polar opposite of, for instance, the music industry, which never saw Napster coming and tried to stop the file-sharing technology by force instead of looking for ways to work with it.

Wiki Management is an insightful take on how the business world is changing and on what companies will need to do to stay afloat in it. Entrepreneurs at all leadership levels will find many points to ponder and concrete actions to put into practice.

—RD ❑

Network with WFS Join the futurist community online via your favorite social-networking platform! www.twitter.com/WorldFutureSoc The World Future Society’s official Twitter page, managed by FUTURIST editor Cindy Wagner www.twitter.com/WFSFuturist_Mag THE FUTURIST magazine’s official Twitter page, managed by deputy editor Patrick Tucker If you Like the future, you’ll Like the World Future Society page and The Futurist magazine page, featuring stories and news from members and friends.

World Future Society members are invited to connect with others on the Society’s official LinkedIn group.

Browse the forecasts playlist, conference highlights, and more on our Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/worldfuturesociety Make wfs.org your futures “home”! Come for the ideas, stay for the inspiration with thousands of fellow future builders. Read the FUTURIST Magazine Blog, your daily link to tomorrow’s world, and sign up for Futurist Update, the free monthly e-newsletter from the World Future Society at wfs.org/content/futurist-update

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www.wfs.org

WORLDFUTURE 2014:

What If

The Annual Conference of the World Future Society • July 11-13, 2014 Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek • Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. Plus: Professional Members Forum, Monday, July 14, 2014

Both an honest question and a prompt to explore, “What if” invites us to unlock the doors of what we thought were unknowable futures.

The World Future Society anticipates an especially adventurous experience in Orlando, Florida, for our next annual meeting. Join a thousand other men and women from around the world and from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions, all engaged in a fundamental drive to question, imagine, invent, and build our futures.

Here are a few highlights of the conference program now being planned.

Opening Plenary Session, Friday, July 11, 2014 Paul Saffo: What If We Took the Future Seriously When the World Future Society was founded in 1966, the great challenge was to make “the future” a respectable focus of study. Today, despite progress in professional foresight, society at large seems to take the long-term future even less seriously than in 1966. The future has become mere entertainment, and it is time for futurists to rise to a new challenge: to make the long-term future matter.

Paul Saffo is managing director of foresight at Discern Analytics. He is a former director Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future and now serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation. He is also a consulting associate professor at Stanford University, visiting scholar at Stanford Media-X, and a ­faculty member and futures track chair of the Singularity University, among many other affiliations.

Sci-Fi Symposium, Saturday, July 12, 2014 In conjunction with WorldFuture 2014, the Society will host a day-long symposium to consider the relationship between science fiction and futuring. Authors, fans, and others in the sci-fi community will come ­together to explore these two parallel paths to tomorrow’s world.

The symposium will include speakers, panel discussions, networking, and meet-the-author opportunities, along with an evening cash-bar ­reception (included with the Poster Session and Affiliate Group Networking events).

Among the authors participating are Brenda Cooper (The Creative Fire; The Silver Ship and the Sea), Ramez Naam (Nexus; Crux), Brad Aiken (Mind Fields), Charlie Stross (the Laundry Files series; Accelerando), Ben Bova (the Orion series; former editor of Analog magazine), and Madeline Ashby (vN).

Brenda Cooper

Ramez Naam

JONATHAN WILSON

Sample Speakers and Sessions

The WorldFuture 2014: What If conference program is a work in progress, but here are just a few of the confirmed speakers and sessions you won’t want to miss: ◆◆ Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets Media, on “Mapping the Transition to the Solar Age” Karen Moloney Joe Tankersley ◆◆ Joe Tankersley of Walt Disney Imagineering, on “Progress City 2.0” ◆◆ Karen Moloney of Moloney Minds Ltd., on “The Future of Sex” Hazel Henderson ◆◆ Scott Hauger and William Wieninger of Asia Pacific Center, on “Technologies and Government Policy Ostriches” ◆◆ Elina Hiltunen (What’s Next Consulting) and Kari Hiltunen (Nokia), on “The Technolife of Romeo and Juliet” ◆◆ Arnulfo Validivia of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad, on “The Pacific Alliance in the Global Future” Stay tuned! Speakers and sessions are still being added to an outstanding lineup of events, including F ­ uturists: BetaLaunch 2014, Speed Futuring, Affiliate Group Networking, Poster Arnulfo Validivia ­Sessions, Exhibits, and more! The preliminary program will be on its way soon.

Preconference Master Courses These intensive courses and workshops offer the best opportunity to hone your futuring skills, both for professional futures work and personal competence. Each full-day course is just $249.

Thursday, July 10, 2014 ◆◆ Futuring: Introduction to Futures Studies (C-1) ★★ Peter C. Bishop, president of Strategic Foresight and Development ◆◆ Foresight Educators Boot Camp (C-2) ★★ Jay Gary, associate professor, School of Business and Leadership, and program director of the Master of Arts in Strategic Foresight at Regent University.

Peter C. Bishop

Jay Gary

◆◆ Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and ­Create the Future (C-3) ★★ Clement Bezold, chairman, senior futurist, and founder of the ­Institute for Alternative Futures ◆◆ Fierce Foresight: Creating Tomorrow Out of the Changing of Today (C-4) ★★ Michael Petty, managing partner and senior strategist at North Star Partners ◆◆ MiniTrends and Macro-Change: Turbo-Charging Your Future (C-5) ★★ David Pearce Snyder, Snyder Family Enterprise ★★ John Vanston, chairman, Technology Futures Inc. ★★ Carrie Vanston, vice president, Technology Futures Inc.

Tom Lombardo

◆◆ Science Fiction: The Mythology of the Future (C-6) ★★ Tom Lombardo, director of the Center for Future Consciousness

Michael Petty

Clement Bezold

David Pearce Snyder Carrie Vanston

Friday, July 11, 2014 ◆◆ Wicked Opportunities: A Foresight and Innovation Workshop (C-7) ★★ Frank Spencer, founder of Kedge ★★ Yvette Montero Salvatico, partner at Kedge ◆◆ How to Stratify Your Scenario (C-8) ★★ Madeline Ashby, science-fiction novelist and strategic foresight consultant

Frank Spencer

Yvette Montero Salvatico

Madeline Ashby

◆◆ Understanding 3-D Printing and Supporting Technologies for ­Futurists 2.0 (C-9) ★★ Paul Tinari, founder of the Bee3D.ca Web site ◆◆ Creating a “What If” Imaginarium (C-10) ★★ Marci Segal, president of creativityland inc. ★★ Megan Mitchell, innovation catalyst, creativity muse, and leadership consultant at Megan Mitchell Consulting ★★ Tom McMillian, president of Techtao®

Megan Mitchell

◆◆ Futurist Writers Workshop: Futurism and Science-Fiction Synergy ­(C-11) ★★ Cynthia G. Wagner, editor of THE FUTURIST magazine ★★ Patrick Tucker, deputy editor of THE FUTURIST and author of The ­Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? ★★ Brenda Cooper, technology professional, futurist, and science-fiction writer

Sponsorship Opportunities

Cynthia G. Wagner

Tom McMillian

Patrick Tucker

The people who will be attending WorldFuture 2014: What If are some of the most progressive, motivated, and influential thinkers and leaders you’ll find at any meeting. Showcase your products, services, innovations, and ideas through a variety of creative, high-visibility channels.

Contact Jeff Cornish, business manager, at World Future Society headquarters: e-mail jcornish@wfs.org or call 1-800-989-8274 or 301-656-8274.

Be a Mentor!

The Susan Echard Student Scholarship Program supports student futurists who might not otherwise be able to afford conference fees to attend this empowering and life-changing event. Please support this program with your donations. You may add your donation on the registration form or online at www.wfs.org/support.

Welcome “Home” to the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek The official conference hotel, The Hilton Bonnet Creek, is a full-service resort and spa within a 482-acre nature preserve. Amenities include a championship golf club and premiere spa, plus convenient access to ­Disney World and other Orlando attractions.

WorldFuture 2014 attendees registering at the official hotel receive the $149 room rate, wireless Internet access, discounts on local transportation and attractions—and the hotel’s resort fee will be waived!

To reserve your room, go to www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2014-what-if and click on Register > Hotel Reservations.

Public Event Disclaimer Attendees should be advised that WorldFuture 2014 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 2014: What If The Annual Conference of the World Future Society July 11-13, 2014 • Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek • Orlando, Florida, 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 2014. 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 13, 2014.

Register by February 28, 2014

Register by April 30, 2014

Register by June 20, 2014

Save $200

Save $150

Save $100

Registration

$700

$750

$800

$900

Member’s Rate

$595

$645

$695

$795

Senior Citizen 65 or older / Citizen of a developing nation

$540

$590

$640

$740

Full-time student under the age of 25

$150

$150

$150

$175

Amount Due

On site

(Please attach appropriate documentation.)

2-day Luncheon Package (with speakers) — $124.......................................................................................................................................................

Single Luncheons — $69 Select one:

❑ Saturday

❑ Sunday....................................................................................................................

❑ Professional Members Forum (Monday, July 14) — $115 (for Professional Members).......................................................................................

Professional Membership — $295 ($195 nonprofit /academic rate)

❑ Renewal

❑ New (Join now to qualify for the Forum.).................

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

Tax-deductible Contribution to Scholarship Fund (Your $150 contribution will make it possible for a student to attend, but every dollar will help.)...............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Preconference Master Courses Thursday, July 10, 2014, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. ❑ C-1 Futuring: Introduction to Futures Studies (Peter C. Bishop)—$249............................................................................................................... ❑ C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp (Jay Gary)—$249.......................................................................................................................................... ❑ C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and C ­ reate the Future (Clement Bezold)—$249............................................... ❑ C-4 Fierce Foresight: Creating Tomorrow Out of the Changing of Today (Michael Petty)—$249....................................................................... ❑ C-5 MiniTrends and Macro-Change: Turbo-Charging Your Future (David Pearce Snyder, John Vanston, and Carrie Vanston)—$249........... ❑ C-6 Science Fiction: The Mythology of the Future (Tom Lombardo)—$249.........................................................................................................

Friday, July 11, 2014, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. ❑ C-7 Wicked Opportunities: A Foresight and Innovation Workshop (Frank Spencer and Yvette Montero Salvatico)—$249............................. ❑ C-8 How to Stratify Your Scenario (Madeline Ashby)—$249................................................................................................................................. ❑ C-9 Understanding 3-D Printing and Supporting Technologies for ­Futurists 2.0 (Paul Tinari)—$249............................................................... ❑ C-10 Creating a “What If” Imaginarium (Marci Segal, Megan Mitchell, and Tom McMillian)—$249................................................................. ❑ C-11 Futurist Writers Workshop: Futurism and Science-Fiction Synergy (Cynthia G. Wagner, Patrick Tucker, and Brenda Cooper)—$249.......

Total

Name

Method of Payment

Organization

❑ Check or money order enclosed. (Payable to World Future Society.)

Address

❑ Please charge my: ❑ MasterCard ❑ VISA ❑ Discover ❑ American Ex.

City

State or Province

Country

ZIP or Postal Code

Phone (day)

E-mail

Your contact information will be published in the final program.

Account number Expiration Date 7330

A member may register additional persons (friend, colleague, spouse, etc.) at the member rate. Please include the sponsoring member’s name and identification number here.

Name Identification Number

Security Code Signature

Hotel reservation forms will be sent with the acknowledgment of registration, or you can call the hotel directly at 1-888-353-2013. Mention that you’re attending the WFS meeting to receive your special rate of $149 USD (single or double) per night, or use the reservation code ZWOF. REFUND POLICY: If your plans to attend the conference change, you may receive a full refund until June 13, 2014. A $100 administrative fee will be charged for cancellations after June 13, 2014. No refunds will be given after June 27, 2014. Refund requests must be in writing by email, mail, or fax. Substitutions may be made at any time and are free until June 13, 2014. Substitutions are $100 after June 13, 2014.

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

World Future Society Programs The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization chartered in the District of Columbia, U.S.A., and is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization. The Society has about 25,000 members and subscribers in 80 nations.

PUBLICATIONS

• The Futurist: A magazine published bimonthly, covering trends, forecasts, and ideas about the future.

• Futurist Update: An e-mail newsletter available monthly to all ­members, covering a range of future-oriented news and useful links.

• World Future Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight: A journal for futures practitioners and scholars, with articles on forecasting techniques and applications, profiles of futurists and organizations, and abstracts of current futures-relevant literature.

ACTIVITIES AND RESOURCES

• Conferences: The Society holds at least one major conference per year, to which all Society members are invited. Most conferences cover a wide range of topics related to the future. Most conferences are in the United States, but the Society has also held meetings in Canada and Austria.

• Groups: Futurist groups are active in a number of U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta, and in more than two dozen countries.

• Books: New books of special interest to members may be purchased through the Society’s partnership with Amazon.com.

MEMBERSHIP PROGRAMS

• Regular Membership: Includes THE FUTURIST magazine; discounts on conferences and books published by the Society; and such other benefits as may be approved for members. Discounted memberships are also available for full-time students under age 25.

• Professional Membership: Programs and publications are available to meet the special needs of practitioners, researchers, scholars, and others who are professionally involved in forecasting, planning, or other futureoriented activities, including education and policy making. Professional members receive all the benefits of regular membership, plus a subscription to the journal World Future Review, as well as invitations to Professional Members Forums, and other benefits.

• Institutional Membership: The World Future Society’s Institutional Membership program offers special services for business firms, educational institutions, government agencies, associations, and other groups. Members receive all of the benefits of Professional Membership, plus copies of all books, monographs, conference proceedings, special reports, and other publications produced by the Society during the year of the membership; special discounts on bulk purchases of Society publications; assistance in locating sources of information, consultants, and speakers for conferences and meetings, getting information tailored specifically to the organization’s needs; and inclusion in the Society’s list of institutional members published on the Society’s Web site and annually in THE FUTURIST. For more information and an application, contact Membership Secretary, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814 www.wfs.org.

www.wfs.org

•

THE FUTURIST

March-April 2014

63

As Tweeted © WAVEBREAK MEDIA LTD. / BIGSTOCK

Do Millennials Read?

The media need to do more than create good content to keep readers reading.

Like advertisers, journalists hope their products are valued by their audiences, who are, after all, consumers.

We provide the content that readers consume. In a massively multimedia world, however, there is more competition for that which is becoming an increasingly scarce resource: time.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject recently exchanged on the World Future Society’s Twitter feed.

Christopher Mims (@mims): Imagine how smart you’d be if you had time to read Tech Review, American Scientist, Businessweek, Wired and The Atlantic every month.

World Future Society (@WorldFutureSoc): If nobody has time to read, then the problem isn’t great content.

How do we help readers with time management?

Vanessa Ching (@vanessaching): good question. @mims: kill your tv @WorldFutureSoc: that’d do it! lol @vanessaching: and min. social media..? Actually I believe in having access to all but yes need good time management. :) @WorldFutureSoc: If time is a resource, then content marketing strategies could help readers manage their time as an investment @WorldFutureSoc: The act of reading has also changed. Generational? Younger media consumers tend to be omniattentive.

Tyrone Steels II (@rhythm2x): Omniattentive? Seems to be a losing proposition when focus is needed. @vanessaching: I enjoy ebooks but prefer an actual book at the end of the day. Need to get away from screens. @mims: What do you think of a Kindle? Feels like a reasonable (if imperfect) compromise for me. @vanessaching: so far reading on an iPad... @WorldFutureSoc: Platforms for reading, yes. Content needs to follow the consumer. But the consumer still must be coaxed to consume @vanessaching: how to coax consumers to consume content?- a toughie. Flagged many good newsletters but have not read them. @vanessaching: on coax—my thoughts: create exceptional content. Consistently. Your brand will follow, become a must-read. @WorldFutureSoc: Agree! (And we try) Cutting

through clutter remains a challenge for content providers, which is what started the convo Scott Reitz (@nycreitz): Millennials Read Campaign?

“If nobody has time to read, great content is not the issue.” @WorldFutureSoc: Love it. What might go into a “Millennials Read” campaign? @nycreitz: Aren’t we seeing more Millennials take logout time? What do they read in those lil margins? @WorldFutureSoc: If reading is an important investment of your time for improving your knowledge, awareness, what have you done to optimize that time? @vanessaching: yes, challenge in grabbing mindshare. ❑ Tough, but rewarding. :) #contentcreation #value

Dramatis Tweepae Christopher Mims (@mims): Technology and science reporter for @qz. Tips: christopher@qz.com. Baltimore, Seattle, New York, slipr.com.

Vanessa Ching (@vanessaching): VP, Partnerships at a UKbroadcast tech co. Into what makes #broadcast tick behind the scenes. / Personal acct / Aikido. @filmcamp, @UsableInsight, Tech= @mediatechvy. Singapore mediatechvy.wordpress.com.

Tyrone Steels II (@rhythm2x): A Cloud strategist and techie with extra tabasco sauce and a side of biscuits. | Imagine what I can do if I could do all I can... - Sun Tzu. Florence, South Carolina USA. Scott Reitz (@nycreitz) Community. Team. World. Future. Faith.

Culture. Change. Africa.

FUTURIST editor Cynthia G. Wagner tweets for the World Future Society, @WorldFutureSoc.

64 THE FUTURIST March-April 2014 • www.wfs.org © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Calling All Students!

Susan Echard Student Scholarships for 2014 In order to encourage more secondary school and college students to take an active role in shaping the future for themselves, their community, and the world, the World Future Society offers scholarships and grants to cover WorldFuture 2014 conference registration fees, lodging, and expenses for students from around the globe.

Thanks to the generosity of members and friends of the World Future Society, discounted conference registration assistance at the student registration rate ($150) is available to full-time students under age 25; you must be prepared to provide appropriate documentation.

However, if you are in need of additional financial assistance, you may apply online for a scholarship. Applications are due by March 31, 2014.

Funding will be awarded on a case-by-case basis after all requests have been received, but it may include: complimentary or reduced conference registration, funds to cover lodging or meals, or reimbursement for transportation.

When your application has been approved, you will automatically be registered for the conference. If you choose not to attend, you must notify the conference coordinator immediately so that the scholarship may be awarded to another applicant.

Apply online at: www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2014-scholarship-application To donate to the Susan Echard Student Scholarship Fund, please visit www.wfs.org/support or send a check (payable to World Future Society) to: Susan Echard Student Scholarship Program World Future Society 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450 Bethesda, Maryland 20814, USA

About the World Future Society Why explore the future?

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 t­ omorrow.

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.

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.

What is the World F­ uture Society?

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 does the Society do?

The Society convenes and connects. Through meetings and publications, it serves as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future, including forecasts, recommendations, scenarios, alternatives, and more. These ideas help people to anticipate what may happen in the next five, 10, or more years ahead. When people can ­visualize a better future, then they can begin to ­create it.

What does membership offer?

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

• Special rates for all ­annual PHOTOS: KAZ OKADA FOR WFS conferences. These conferences provide members with the opportunity for face-toface meetings with distinguished scholars, leaders, and experts from around the world.

• Access to your local chapter. Cities and regions around the world have chapters for grassroots support of ­futures studies.

They provide a way for members to get involved in their local communities through workshops, discussion groups, and speakers.

A number of special interest groups also offer virtual and local How do I join networking.

Society?

Free e-mail newsletter!

Visit www.wfs.org.

the

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