THE FUTURIST, May - June 2012 by World Future Society

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

www.wfs.org

May-June 2012

The Food Engineers How one foodie learned to stop worrying and love “Frankenfood.” Page 24

Reversing Human Aging, page 18

Sex Industry Futures: Trends and Impacts, pages 36 and 42

Two Futurists Pick the CES “Best in Show,” page 32 PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Chemical Weapons Against Alcoholism Nanobots Fight Cancer Will a “Rateocracy” Make Corporations Behave?

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About the World Future Society Why study the future?

What is the World Future Society?

The world changes so quickly that it‘s hard to keep up. New inventions and innovations alter the way we live. People‘s values, attitudes, and beliefs are changing. And the pace of change keeps accelerating, making it difficult to prepare for tomorrow. By studying the future, people can better anticipate what lies ahead. More importantly, they can actively decide how they will live in the future by making choices today and realizing the consequences of their decisions. The future doesn‘t just happen: People create it through their action—or inaction—today.

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

What can we know about the future? No one knows exactly what will happen in the future. But by considering what might happen, people can more rationally decide on the sort of future that would be most desirable and then work to achieve it. Opportunity as well as danger lies ahead, so people need to make farsighted decisions. The process of change is inevitable; it‘s up to everyone to make sure that change is constructive.

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

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

What does membership offer? ■ THE FUTURIST, a magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future. Every member receives a subscription to this exciting bimonthly magazine. Experts in various fields share their insights and forecasts in articles directed at a general audience. ■ Special rates for all annual conferences. These conferences provide members with the opportunity for face-to-face meetings with distinguished scholars, leaders, and experts from around the world. ■ Access to your local chapter. Over 100 cities in the United States and abroad have chapters for grassroots support of futures studies. They provide a way for members to get involved in their local communities through workshops, discussion groups, and speakers.

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May-June 2012 Volume 46, No. 3

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

about the future

ARTICLES 18 A Thousand Years Young By Aubrey de Grey

An “anti-aging activist” identifies the medical and biochemical advances that could eventually eliminate all the wear and tear that our bodies and minds suffer as we grow old. Those who undergo continuous repair treatments could live for millennia, remain healthy throughout, and never fear dying of old age.

La Prospective. Page 46

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

Future Scope

World Trends & Forecasts: Health, Corporations, Agriculture, Medicine

51 Consultants and Services 61 Feedback 64 As Tweeted: 3-D Printing, Lunar Manufacturing, and LEGO Dreams

24 Engineering the Future of Food By Josh Schonwald

Tomorrow’s genetically modified food and farmed fish will be more sustainable and far healthier than much of what we eat today—if we can overcome our fears and embrace it. Here’s how one foodie learned to stop worrying and love “Frankenfood.”

29 Unlimiting Energy’s Growth By Tsvi Bisk

As costs decline and sophistication increases, smart materials could help unlock limits to growth.

32 Visions: Futurists Review the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show By Patrick Tucker and Thomas Frey

BOOKS

may soon make a big difference in our lives.

36 The Future of the Commercial Sex Industry By Emily Empel As new technologies impact the products and services of the sex industry, other businesses will find new opportunities in the world’s oldest professions.

42 Anticipating an “Anything Goes” World of Online Porn By Roger Howard

Increased exposure to more-intensive pornographic imagery and content online will make future generations less sensitive to its effects.

46 To Predict or to Build the Future? Reflections on the Field and Differences between Foresight and La Prospective By Michel Godet A pioneer from the French school of la prospective discusses the development of futures-studies methodologies and the imperative of making methods accessible to all.

Two different takes on the gadgets that

54 India’s Innovation Potential A book review by Rick Docksai

India itself will strive to keep pace with its quickly modernizing economy. In India Inside, economists Nirmalya Kumar and Phanish Puranam foresee India becoming a new global innovation center.

Books in Brief

The Better Angels of Our Nature Forces of Nature The Future of God in the Global Village Space Solar Power

CES Best in show? Page 32

COVER: WFS ILLUSTRATION / RANDY PLETT / GEORGE PETERS / ISTOCKPHOTO

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

Tomorrow

in brief

Clean Water, New Industry The world’s 2 billion people without access to clean, safe water may have a simple solution soon at hand: a ceramic filtration device made using local clay and sawdust. The PureMadi filters (madi is the Tshivenda South African word for water) are coated with silver nanoparticles that can filter out 99.9% of waterborne pathogens, including E. coli. The filters were developed by the University of Virginia in partnership with University of Venda in Thohoyandou, South Africa, and the nonprofit FilterPure Inc. The project’s first goal is to establish a dozen factories in South Africa to produce 100,000 filters a year, with profits returned to local communities. Source: University of Virginia, www.virginia.edu.

Tapping the Power Of Rap

Robotic “Pack Mule” Offers Military Support

The acoustic waves from rap music may help power miniature medical sensors implanted in the body. A device developed by researchers at Purdue University’s Birck Nanotechnology Center harnesses the frequency of music to cause a cantilever to vibrate and generate electricity. Rap’s strong bass component is particularly useful because of its low frequency; also, the frequency changes continually, allowing the sensor to switch between storing electrical charge and transmitting data. The rap-powered sensor could aid the treatment of individuals with aneurisms or incontinence due to paralysis.

The modern warrior may need 100 pounds or more of gear—a load that can cause fatigue and impair performance. To lighten the load, DARPA is developing a packmule-like robot that would be integrated with a squad of Marines or Army soldiers. The Legged Squad Support System (LS3) will be able to carry 400 pounds on a 20-mile hike without refueling. Sensing technology will enable the LS3 to hear, see, and respond to commands. And it will be nimble enough to follow the squad through rugged terrain and will serve as a mobile auxiliary power source.

Source: Purdue University, www.purdue.edu.

Source: DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), www.darpa.mil.

DARPA

DARPA’s LS3 pack robot aims to be as responsive and reliable as an Army mule, reducing troop fatigue.

BJØRN ERIK SANDBAKK / SVALBORDFLORA.NET

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

WordBuzz: Coveillance

PureMadi: Ceramic pot coated with silver nanoparticles is a simply made filter and highly effective disinfectant for waterborne pathogens. DAN ADDISON / UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

University of Virginia civil and environmental engineer James Smith and infectiousdiseases physician Rebecca Dillingham display the PureMadi ceramic water filter.

THE FUTURIST

Anyone who’s stepped out in the city has a good idea of how much officially sanctioned surveillance we’re exposed to daily. Increasingly, individuals are also surveilling themselves (aka lifelogging, terabyting, sousveilling) by using cameras and other devices to record all the data of their lives. Coveillance is a term made popular in a 2003 paper for Surveillance & Society by sociologist Barry Wellman and coauthors to describe the phenomenon of networked individuals observing and recording each other’s lives. The idea is that we are transparent and accountable to one another. Would we behave better knowing someone nearby may post our foibles on YouTube and then tweet it to the world? Coveillance could also reduce the need for government surveillance and offer us more protection as we move between communities, the authors suggest. Barry Wellman is co-author, with Lee Rainie, of the new book Networked: The New Social Operating System (MIT Press, May 2012).

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The dwarf birch has a long life span and disperses its seeds into the wind, thus assuring genetic diversity even in a warmer climate. INGER GREVE ALSOS / SVALBARDFLORA.NET

Arctic Plants at Risk Genetic variations within species will determine which plants fare well in warming Arctic habitats and which may struggle. Species that are able to disperse their seeds via birds or the wind are less Growing only on mountain tops, the likely to lose their genetic glacier crowfoot may face tough times diversity when their habiin a warmer climate. tats are altered by climate change, according to a study by the University species are identified for proCentre in Svalbard, Norway. tections, since loss of habitat Trees and taller shrubs will may not necessarily threaten a likely fare better than species particular species, the rethat have little opportunity for searchers conclude. gene flow between populations. Source: The University Centre in Svalbard, www.unis.no. The study may affect how

About

this

Issue

A Publication of the World Future Society

Editorial Staff Edward Cornish Founding Editor

Cynthia G. Wagner Editor

Patrick Tucker Deputy Editor

Rick Docksai Assistant Editor

Lane Jennings Research Director

Lisa Mathias Art Director

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

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

Living Longer, Healthier Lives What if we treated the human body as well as car lovers tend their treasured old Volkswagen Beetles? It would mean continuous maintenance, repairing even the most minor bits of damage before they accumulate and ultimately lead to the body’s demise. This is precisely the approach that biomedical gerontologist ubrey de Grey advises. In this issue of THE FUTURIST, he deA scribes potential treatments that could avert the cellular damage that leads to decay. As future researchers improve their work, such treatments would enable us to approach “longevity escape velocity” and live to be “A Thousand Years Young” (see page 18). The implications of this healthful, youthful immortality would be mind-boggling. Populations will grow as fewer people die off, so we’ll need even more food than we do now. That means improving agricultural technologies and food itself. Bioengineered food has gotten a bad rap in the last couple of decades, but at least one foodie has learned to stop worrying and love “Frankenfood.” Food journalist Josh Schonwald takes us on a tour of the work being done in bioengineering labs that will keep our future plates full and our palates pleased (“Engineering the Future of Food,” page 24). Another implication of longer, healthier lives is more time on our hands, and futurist Emily Empel observes that the world’s sex industry is poised to offer an ever-increasing variety of activities, products, and services (“The Future of the Commercial Sex Industry,” page 36). But this growth industry, particularly pornography, may have darker impacts on the human psyche and society, warns journalist Roger Howard (“Anticipating an ‘Anything Goes’ World of Online Porn,” page 42). ••• Participants at the World Future Society’s 2011 conference in Vancouver last July had the opportunity to hear from two of this issue’s contributors, Aubrey de Grey and Emily Empel. And Josh Schonwald is among the thought-leaders you’ll meet at the 2012 conference in Toronto. This is why we have described our conferences as a way to get the whole World Future Society experience live and in person. Other FUTURIST authors you’ll meet in Toronto include the principals of the Weiner, Edrich, Brown consultancy—Edie Weiner, Arnold Brown, Erica Orange, and Jared Weiner—as well as J erome C. Glenn and Ted Gordon of The Millennium Project; John M. Smart of the Acceleration Studies Foundation; diplomat and futures scholar Joergen Moeller; and many more. Learn more about WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver on pages 57-60, or visit us online at www.wfs.org/ content/worldfuture-2012. See you in Toronto! —Cynthia G. Wagner, Editor cwagner@wfs.org www.wfs.org

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

Future Scope Virtual Reality | Sci/Tech

Virtual Learning Environments Can real-world lessons be taught in virtual environments? Yes, and perhaps more effectively, according to researchers with the Inter-Life project. “Private islands,” or 3-D virtual worlds, allow young people to control their avatars in realistic, interactive settings to develop interpersonal, organizational, cognitive, and other skills. Given creative activities and tasks, they learn to cope with a variety of scenarios. “It’s a highly engaging medium that could have a major impact in extending education and training beyond geographical locations,” says lead researcher Victor Lally of the University of Glasgow. Source: Economic and Social Research Council, www.esrc.ac.uk.

Construction | Commerce

Through the Roof: Green-Home Boom Home buyers’ demand for energy efficiency and the use of sustainable materials will drive rapid growth in U.S. residential construction, according to the National Association of Home Builders. “Green homes” will grow from 17% of the residential construction market in 2011 to as much as 38% by 2016, resulting in a fivefold increase in revenues to $114 billion. Remodeling and new construction will both increasingly go green, as buyers seek to lower future energy bills and keep materials out of landfills. Source: National Association of Home Builders, www.nahb.org.

6. Collaboration to harness the power of “an increasingly conversational and participatory world.” Each of these megatrends will see breakthrough research and innovation in the years ahead, according to FutureMedia director Renu Kulkarni. Source: Georgia Institute of Technology, www.gatech.edu.

Pollution | Earth

Electric Cars’ Side Effects China’s electric cars may be causing more harm than the gas-powered cars they are increasingly replacing, warns a new study by engineers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The electricity used to power e-cars in China comes largely from coal-fired plants. While the cars themselves produce fewer emissions than gasoline cars do, the plants that power them produce acids, organic chemicals, and other harmful particulates, explains researcher Chris Cherry. China’s power plants are typically located far from population centers, thus mitigating the harmful effects of emissions. However, a better e-vehicle choice may be electric bikes. “E-bikes, which are battery-powered, continue to be an environmentally friendly and efficient mode of transportation,” says Cherry. Source: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, www.utk.edu.

Reproduction | Humanity

Drop in U.S. Teen Pregnancy Communications | Sci/Tech

Six Media Megatrends Tomorrow’s media will be even more personal and flexible, with the ability to filter out more of what we don’t want—and, indeed, to intuit just what that is. Six megatrends identified by Georgia Institute of Technology’s FutureMediaSM Outlook 2012 report are: 1. Smart Data that delivers what matters. 2. People Platforms that allow us to better customize our social networks. 3. Content Integrity to monitor our data vulnerabilities and vet sources. 4. Nimble Media to ease our movement across platforms. 5. Sixth Sense integrating all our senses in the digital “mixed reality.” 4

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Rates of teenage pregnancy, births, and abortions in the United States have fallen to the lowest level in nearly 40 years, according to Guttmacher Institute researchers Kathryn Kost and Stanley Henshaw. About 7% of girls aged 15 to 19 became pregnant in 2008, representing a 42% decline from 1990, when U.S. teen pregnancy peaked. Births declined 35% between 1991 and 2008, and the number of abortions declined 59% from its peak in 1988. “The recent declines in teen pregnancy rates are great news,” says Kost. “However, the continued inequities among racial and ethnic minorities are cause for concern. It is time to redouble our efforts to ensure that all teens have access to the information and contraceptive services they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies.” Source: Guttmacher Institute, www.guttmacher.org.

❑

Officers

Staff

President: Timothy C. Mack

Director of Communications: Patrick Tucker

Treasurer: Jay McIntosh

Business and Advertising Manager: Jeff Cornish

Secretary: Kenneth W. Harris

Meeting Administrator: Sarah Warner

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

Raj Bawa

Michael Michaelis

president, Bawa Biotechnology Consulting,

president, Partners In Enterprise

and adjunct associate professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Edward Cornish founder and former president, World Future Society

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

John Gottsman president, The Clarity Group

Kenneth W. Harris chairman, The Consilience Group LLC

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

Timothy C. Mack president, World Future Society

Jay McIntosh

Arnold Brown

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

Adolfo Castilla

visiting senior research fellow, ISEAS, Singapore

economist, communications professor, Madrid

John Naisbitt

Marvin J. Cetron

trend analyst and author

president, Forecasting International Ltd.

Burt Nanus

Hugues de Jouvenel

author and professor emeritus of management,

executive director, Association

University of Southern California

Internationale Futuribles

Joseph N. Pelton

Yehezkel Dror

founder and vice chairman,

professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

William E. Halal

John L. Petersen

professor of management science and

president, The Arlington Institute

director of Emerging Technologies Project,

program director, Strategic Foresight Program,

president, Ming Pai Consulting BV

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Jared Weiner

Barbara Marx Hubbard

vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

president, The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

Global Advisory Council

Sohail Inayatullah

European Futures Observatory

Raja Ikram Azam honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

Sandra L. Postel director, Global Water Policy Project

Peter Hayward

Mylena Pierremont

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

George Washington University

president, Consumer Foresight LLC

Julio Millán president, Banco de Tecnologias, and

professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Francis Rabuck director, Technology Research, Bentley Systems Inc.

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

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

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

Graham May

Alvin Toffler author

Heidi Toffler

principal lecturer in futures research,

author

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K.

The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific association dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the trends shaping our future. Founded in 1966, the Society serves as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future; it takes no stand on what the future will or should be like. The Society’s publications, conferences, and other activities are open to all individuals and institutions around the world. For more information on membership programs, contact Society headquarters Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time. 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. Telephone: 1-301-656-8274, Toll free: 1-800-989-8274, Fax: 1-301-951-0394 Web site: www.wfs.org • E-mail: info@wfs.org

World Trends & Forecasts Health Corporations Agriculture Medicine Health | Humanity

Chemical Tools for Treating Alcoholism A new study of the brain identifies how alcohol addiction starts—and stops. There is a saying, “once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,” and for many people who suffer from alcohol abuse, it rings true: The proclivity to abuse alcohol is lifelong and requires a lifelong commitment to keep it in check. But radical new approaches in prevention and treatment are in the works. Researchers are uncovering the exact mechanisms within the human brain that are responsible for alcoholics’ urges to drink excessively. These findings, the re-

searchers hope, will lead to treatments that not only ease the symptoms of alcohol dependence, but could actually erase the addiction itself. A study conducted at the Scripps Research Institute of the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) and published December 2011 in the journal Biological Psychiatry identified interactions between CRF (corticotrophin-releasing factor) and nociceptin, two naturally occurring peptides that are active in every human brain’s amygdala—the part of the brain that regulates moods and emotions. CRF triggers feelings of anxiety and fear, and in so doing seems to fuel alcoholics’ urges to drink. “CRF in the amygdala is recruited in the development of alcohol dependence and promotes anxiety in alcoholics,” says Marisa Roberto, a Scripps associate professor who led the study. “Thus, in a way, the CRF system is an aggravating trigger on its own during the development of alcoholism.” Researchers have known about CRF’s effects since the 1980s. Roberto’s study’s contribution, however, was a discovery about the second peptide, nociceptin: It negates CRF, and thereby prevents the negative mood-inducing effects. It also blocks some of the effects of alcohol itself. According to Roberto, Scripps researchers are now investigating compounds that might either adjust a recovering alcoholic’s noPHOTODISC

ciceptin levels or act like nociceptin and neutralize CRF. Roberto hopes that such future treatments could blunt recovering alcoholics’ alcohol cravings before they turn into relapses. “Our studies demonstrated that the nociceptin system is a promising target for the treatment of alcoholism,” she says. “Luckily, there are also nociceptin modulators in clinical development. Hopefully, one of these compounds will be tested in alcoholics, which may happen soon.” Drugs already exist to help recovering alcoholics abstain from alcohol. A nociceptin-related treatment might go a step further, however. Roberto says that they could possibly curb the abuse itself, even allowing an abuser to consume alcohol safely. If nociceptin treatments mitigate the effects of alcohol, as well, they might additionally help people who suffer from allergies or have other negative reactions to alcohol. Roberto cautions, however, that the benefits of nociceptin treatment would vary from patient to patient. “Alcoholics represent a heterogeneous patient population; that’s why there are different drugs. Usually, some alcoholics will respond better to one drug than another drug,” she says. “The more therapeutic options we have, the better.” Why We Drink The peptide CRF serves a healthy purpose: preparing us to respond to danger in our environment, says George Siggins, a Scripps institute professor of molecular and integrative neuroscience. We experience it as the “fight-or-flight response,” and without it, our hominid ancestors might never have survived the wilderness. “It [CRF] speaks to the cortex and helps regulate that structure to get the hell out of here, stop what you’re doing, whatever is required in the situation,” Siggins says. For alcoholics, however, that same fightor-flight response can be a destructive force: External stresses trigger alarms in the brain, and alcohol becomes the mechanism for shutting the alarms off. “We feel that a large percentage of alcoholics and alcohol-dependent persons are drinking because they are driven to drink

by anxiety triggered in the amygdala,” Siggins says. Siggins took part in a study that fed lab rats daily doses of alcohol and measured their brains’ CRF reactions. That study found that, as the animals continued to regularly consume alcohol, their brains’ reactions to CRF intensified: The nerve receptors that pick up CRF would grow more numerous, and the animals would experience stronger CRF reactions. That means that the subjects would progressively feel more anxiety and depression on a daily basis. In a human subject, Siggins says, that would translate to more pervasive and powerful cravings, day after day, for alcohol. “It’s a vicious cycle where the more you drink, the bigger the response to CRF,” he says. “The brain gets more responsive to CRF: more fearful, more anxious.” Siggins hails Roberto’s findings on nociceptin as critical because they identify nociceptin and chemicals related to it as powerful antidotes. Nociceptin could treat other addictions and mood disorders, as well. He notes that researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, are now studying nociceptin’s potential use in mitigating anxiety in general. Other researchers in the United States are exploring nociceptin’s treatment potential for cocaine and methamphetamine addictions.

“Some alcoholics will respond better to one drug than another drug. The more therapeutic options we have, the better.”

—Marisa Roberto, Scripps Research

Institute, UCLA

Predicting Propensity for Addiction Since CRF is in every human brain, researchers wonder why it incites alcohol abuse in some people in the first place. Siggins hopes that some answers may arrive through study of genes: In people who are predisposed to becoming alcoholics, the genes that code for CRF or for nociceptin might have irregularities. According to Adi Jaffe, a UCLA psychologist who specializes in substance abuse, medical tests indicate a variety of brain and genetic irregularities that could predispose individuals to becoming an alcoholic. For example, abnormalities in the brain’s serotonin and dopamine—two neurotransmitters that also regulate moods—can induce powerful cravings to drink to excess. “There is a collection of these predisposing biological influences,” says Jaffe. “The www.wfs.org

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World Trends & Forecasts

more of the influences you have, the more your biological system is predisposed.” Jaffe is frank about the complexity that alcoholism treatment presents, however. Although doctors agree that some people are more biologically prone to becoming alcoholics, no one can determine conclusively whether a given patient is. Likewise, there is no sure forecasting whether an individual who exhibits excessive drinking will progress eventually to full-scale alcohol dependence. “I know if a client is meeting criteria for dependence now, but that doesn’t give me any certainty that they will meet the criteria for dependence in 10 years,” says Jaffe. “I can do a blood test and have a pretty good idea of whether someone has cancerous tumors, but we don’t have that sort of test yet for addiction.” Jaffe anticipates that many of the mysteries will be solved in the years ahead as research uncovers more information about how human body systems work. More knowledge will lead to treatments that are better targeted toward all the unique conditions that may fuel a patient’s addiction. “I think that the notion that there will be a specific one that will eliminate addiction is far-fetched,” says Jaffe. “There are many factors that contribute to addiction—but we can use all the help we can get.” Prospects for Prevention Roberto’s findings about nociceptin are a potentially great help, in Jaffe’s opinion, since they offer new insights into the workings of the amygdala. “The amygdala and stress have been known to play a role in substance abuse for a long time. But this study exposes an extra level of the specificity in how they play a role,” says Jaffe. “This just helps explain the mechanism so that we can try different ways of interfering with it. And the more you understand about a mechanism, the more you can do to alter it.” If, as researchers suggest, certain biological irregularities might make someone more predisposed to becoming an alcoholic, then, hypothetically, medications that eliminate the irregularities might elim-

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inate the addiction disorder at the roots. Then the patient might no longer need to abstain from alcohol; safe consumption would be a feasible goal. Jaffe notes that, even today, recovery takes many pathways. Abstinence from alcohol is the goal that almost all substance abuse counselors urge. But of the patients who relapse, approximately 40% successfully take up moderate drinking. He encourages substance abuse counselors to recognize that safe drinking is attainable for some patients. “When clinicians look for what to recommend, the safest approach that they see is abstinence. But that’s like saying the safest way to avoid a car accident is not to drive a car,” Jaffe says. “You can be an addict meeting severe criteria, or one meeting mild criteria. And to say that they should both have the same treatment is like saying that someone with full-blown severe dia betes and someone with pre-diabetes symptoms both need the same treatment regimen.” Nociceptin and related compounds could lead to treatments that support all recovering alcoholics’ recovery goals, be they abstinence or moderate use. Some patients, for instance, might need to refrain from drinking for periods of time—not permanently—so that they can undergo counseling and resolve any stresses, thought patterns, or emotions that were driving their urges to drink. A treatment that cancels out CRF and thereby mitigates the stress that fuels alcohol cravings could make that recovery period easier. “If we can use a medication to improve people’s functioning, especially in early recovery so that they can use conjunctive behavioral treatments to support early recovery, then it’s another tool in their tool kit,” Jaffe says. Siggins agrees that treatments based on nociceptin might help many people who struggle with alcoholism. But he cautions against expecting that a successful nociceptin treatment will work for all patients. Alcoholism is “a multi-genetic disorder,” he explains. Several brain regions and dozens of genes can be involved. The specific ones differ from person to person. Siggins expects that different drugs—targeted toward different genes and brain

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Dates: 1-5 Oct 2012 or 22-26 Apr 2013 www.sbs.oxford.edu/scenarios

To learn more about how to transform your thinking contact caroline.williams@sbs.ox.ac.uk or +44 (0)1865 422 583

World Trends & Forecasts What’s Hot at WFS.org On the Futurist Blog, our writers offer uniquely forward-looking perspectives on current events. Future Libraries and 17 Forms of Information Replacing Books By Thomas Frey, posted March 7, 2012 Question: As physical books go away, and computers and smart devices take their place, at what point does a library stop being a library, and start becoming something else? Somewhere in the middle of this question lies the nagging fear and anxiety that we see brimming to the top among library insiders. … [read more] At the Eye of the Storm: Advice from the Future By William Halal, posted March 7, 2012 The “Crisis of Capitalism” has entered a more quiescent phase, leaving massive threats looming overhead like swords of Damocles. After being rocked by financial crises, climate change, political gridlock, and the Middle East in flames, the world seems to have entered an eerie calm reminiscent of the eye of a hurricane. … [read more] The Three Things You Need to Know About Big Data, Right Now By Patrick Tucker, posted March 5, 2012 Okay. You got me. I can’t really tell you everything you need to know about big data. The one thing I discovered last week—as I joined more than 2,500 data junkies from around the world for the O’Reilly Strata conference in rainy Santa Clara, California—is that nobody can, not Google, not Intel, not even IBM. … [read more] Future Day and Songdo By Samuel Gerald Collins, posted February 29, 2012 March 1 is the inaugural celebration of future day, and it’s got me thinking about urban futures again. On my futurist bookshelf at the moment: Aerotropolis, by John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay. It’s a business book, really: breathless descriptions of fabulous capitalists and the globetrotting edge cities they build. I’m reading it because South Korea’s Songdo is a poster child for this vision of the future. … [read more] The Birth Control Debate Is Really about Fear of the Entire Future By Eric Garland, posted March 5, 2012 America is deep in the throes of its presidential campaign season, never a time noted for its celebration of reasonable proposals, respectful counter-arguments, or civilized exchange between adults. But in the past few weeks, the United States has been the host to a national debate so bizarre you would have thought it was perhaps all a Saturday Night Live skit destined to go viral on YouTube. … [read more] Read these essays and more, and add your own comments to the conversation: www.wfs.org/blog

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areas—will work for different patients. Also, many patients will need combinations of several drugs. CRF is just one of the treatment targets, albeit a potentially very important one. “We’re chipping away at the tip of the iceberg. What lies below is anybody’s guess. But CRF is a good place to start,” says Siggins. —Rick Docksai Sources: Adi Jaffe, UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, www.uclaisap.org. Marisa Roberto, Scripps Research Institute, www.scripps.edu. George Siggins, Scripps Research Institute, www.scripps.edu.

Corporations | Commerce

“Rateocracy” and Corporate Reputation Real-time ratings will raise stakeholders’ expectations of businesses. By Robert Moran Today, consumers rate sellers on eBay, restaurants on Yelp, and local companies on Angie’s List, providing detailed product reviews online. Job hunters and employees can read and rate employers on Glassdoor .com. College students rate their professors on ratemyprofessors.com. Neighbors and friends can view each other’s reputations (and their own) at honestly.com. And Facebook’s more than 800 million users can endorse a product or organization by “liking” it. Soon, we will also rate corporations on their behavior and have real-time mobile access to the aggregated, stakeholder-generated reputation scores of nearly every corporation on the planet. We will use this information to reward and punish companies by buying their products or spurning them. We will have entered into a completely new era of corporate reputation, one in which reputation is radically transparent and extremely valuable. I call this new era Rateocracy because it will combine real-time ratings within a

transparent and democratic structure. All the necessary technologies and building blocks are in position to create a realtime, reputational rating system for corporations. Current rating systems will be knit together, and “ratestreams” will become as significant as “clickstreams” are today. Corporations will closely track the rise and fall of their reputational “credit rating.” They will begin to draw the link between their numerical reputational rating and growth, profitability, and employee retention. Corporate reputation, something that has been traditionally tracked on an annual basis, will have entered an entirely new era—the Rateocratic era. Rateocracy will be numeric and transparent, providing real-time data that push corporations to “live their purpose.” It will also increase public expectations, creating a virtuous “race to the top,” forcing businesses to compete in areas they may have never competed in before. Corporations in the Rateocracy Age While there will be many unforeseen impacts from this new age of corporate reputation, there are at least nine implications that will flow from Rateocracy. These are: 1. The New Balance of Power. Customers, suppliers, and employees will gain power in this new era of Rateocracy. And, relative to these groups, the corporation will lose power as it controls relatively less of its own reputation. 2. Role of Corporate Leader. The CEO of the future will need to work harder to align the corporation, its employees, and stakeholders around a shared vision. It will be increasingly difficult to sweep customer service and employee morale problems under the rug. CEOs of the Rateocratic era will have nowhere to hide, so they will have to be strong communicators and even better listeners. They will have to be as transparent as the new era. 3. 24/7 Reputation Management. While corporate reputation grows in strategic importance for firms, the tactical, day-to-day management of reputation will become critical. Corporations will build reputational dashboards that aggregate multiple rating sites and information flows, includ-

ing customer relationship management (CRM) data. The key will be managing reputation in real time by improving the quality of interactions with the firm and intervening before unhappy stakeholders voice their concerns on rating sites. This will undoubtedly boost the size of the current reputation management industry. 4. Feedback Loop. Much has been made of Peter Senge’s ideas around a “learning organization” and Henry Mintzberg’s “strategy as learning.” Life in this new age of corporate reputation will present the corporation with the tightest possible feedback loop across its entire stakeholder footprint. Some corporations will find unique ways to harness this information for competitive advantage, using their rapid learning as a core competency.

LAUREN GLASE PHOTOGRAPHY

5. Employees as Leading Indicators.

With employees already participating in rating their employers on sites like Glassdoor.com, we can assume that these internal rating systems will only intensify and that other stakeholders will look to these internal ratings as a leading indicator of business health. Employee assessments will function as “It will be increasingly difficult to the canary in the coal mine. This is already sweep customer service and embeginning to happen. ployee morale problems under the As just one example, rug.” Oracle CEO Larry —Robert Moran, president, StrategyOne US Ellison has a 78% job approval from the 1,011 Oracle employees who have rated his performance on Glassdoor. 6. Statistical Projectability. How close will these aggregate ratings of a corporation’s reputation track with statistically representative survey data? Given limited participation in most rating sites at the moment, we can only assume that this data is not yet robust enough to match rigorously collected survey data. But, as participation www.wfs.org

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World Trends & Forecasts Futurist Cues • How would the Rateocracy system, as author Robert Moran describes it, work for government agencies, schools, nonprofits, and other organizations? • How would your business or organization rate in the Rateocracy era? How will it change what you do and how you do it? • How might a not-so-ethical company or organization “game” the system, and how might it be caught out?

• Would consumers become weary of constantly being asked to rate their experiences? How might that be avoided? Perhaps the Internet of Things would automatically report problems to manufacturers and the overseeing rating service(s). Post your comments about this story at www.wfs.org, or send feedback to letters@wfs.org.

in these sites increases, the data should begin to converge. Even then, however, survey-based stakeholder data will still be needed to track a corporation’s reputation among critical, but small, stakeholder communities and as an independent check. 7. Great Expectations. Stakeholder expectations of corporate behavior will likely play a large role in the scores corporations receive. But expectations will vary by industry, region, and situation. For example, consumers have very different expectations of quick service versus formal dining restaurants, and those expectations will be factored into their ratings. Moreover, we already know that people in different cultures rate subjects in surveys differently. We can anticipate that aggregated, opensource corporate reputation data will reflect these cultural differences. And finally, we can expect that the macroeconomic situation as well as the track record of the company will impact its ratings. 8. Information Trends. As these reputational information sets evolve and converge, corporations will need to better understand seasonal trends (e.g., retailers getting a reputational bump from consumers during back-to-school shopping, but taking a reputational hit during the Christmas rush), reputational cycles, and eventdriven data spikes. For example, in the future, corporations will ask why a oneweek rise in employee ratings occurred. The data will show a spike, but the cause or causes will need to be determined. Was it positive earnings news announced by the 12

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CEO, the new announcement on operations safety, the preceding three-day weekend, or a combination of each? 9. Rateocracy Meets Augmented Reality.

At some point late in this decade, corporate reputation ratings systems and augmented-reality layers will begin to merge. Layar, the Amsterdam-based creator of the world’s first mobile augmented-reality browser, is already turning mobile phones into devices that enrich the visual environment of the user. When augmented reality and Rateocracy merge, corporate reputation data will be superimposed onto a company’s geographically based assets. Consumers will be able to purchase many different augmented-reality layers that enrich the visual overlay on their smartphones. These layers will “paint” companies’ buildings based on aggregated reputation scores. For example, imagine an augmented-reality layer available on a smartphone that aggregates all Yelp restaurant rating data at the corporate and individual store level. This augmented-reality layer will flash red for a restaurant with poor reviews and an abundance of health department citations, but will flash green for a restaurant with stellar reviews. This will play out across all storefront businesses. Game Changer? Some will contend that Rateocracy is an entirely new ballgame for corporations. But, in many ways, it is a very old ballgame and one that predated the large industrial societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As anyone who has grown up in a small, rural town can tell you, a local business’s reputation is very well known. There aren’t many secrets in small-town life. It was only since the advent of large cities, national markets, and labor force mobility that a level of anonymity arose. Rateocracy can be viewed as a tectonic power shift toward technology-empowered stakeholders, but it can just as easily be viewed as the construction of a digital village in which a business’s reputation returns to the immediacy of small-town life. Robert Moran is president of StrategyOne US, an

insight-driven consulting firm. He may be reached at Robert.moran@strategyone.com.

Agriculture | Earth

Rising Temperatures Stress Farmlands Climate change may mean more pesticide pollution, a German study warns. Pesticide contamination of the world’s waterways will be one likely byproduct of global warming, warns a study by Germany’s Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. The study’s authors conclude that, since rising global temperatures will trigger the spread of crop-killing pests throughout farmlands, farmers will deploy more pesticides, which will result in more

pesticide pollution of rivers and streams. “To obtain the same level of protection from pests, the farmer will have to use more pesticides,” says Matthias Liess, a study co-author. The study projects that, by 2090, average pesticide use across Europe will be twice the 1990 average, with some individual countries’ pesticide usage increasing to 23 times their 1990 levels. Streams in as much as 40% of Europe’s land mass will suffer insecticide pollution, the study predicts. Pollution already occurs because the chemicals seep from the farmlands into nearby waterways. Climate change will add to the mix, however, since the warmer climate will have heavier rainfalls, which will wash more pesticide residues into the waterways more quickly. Compounding this, warming climate will encourage Europe’s farmers to farm more, in general. There will be extended cultivation periods and tilling of whole new land areas. The study identifies northern European

“If we are able to reduce our expectation of the crop yield, we can reduce greatly the pesticide use.”

—Matthias Liess,

Helmholtz Centre

for Environmental Research

What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? “Moving, insightful, and provocative…Chorost does an impressive job of articulating how brain-to-brain communication could become real, and of exploring its implications for all of us.”

—Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement

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

and thought-provoking books of the year.”

—Steve Silberman, contributing editor, Wired Magazine

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

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World Trends & Forecasts

ANDRÉ KÜNZELMANN / UFZ

A farmer douses a crop field with a pesticide spray. Pesticide use is increasing in farm areas across the globe, according to ecologists. They expect use to accelerate in decades ahead due to increased pest activity brought on by climate change.

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countries, especially the Nordic and Baltic states, as facing the greatest risks: Warming temperatures will bring about comparatively bigger changes in their climates. Whereas Sweden, for example, is now colder than many insects would like, it will become suddenly more insect-friendly. Sweden’s farms will suffer unprecedented new infestations, and farmers will respond in force. The shock would be less for an already-warm (and pest-ridden) country, such as Italy. Pesticide runoff is already taking a steep environmental toll, according to pesticides expert Tomas Brückmann, a project manager for conservationist organization Friends of the Earth Germany. Populations of bees and butterflies have been decimated in much of Germany over the last 20 years, he says. So have populations of several species of birds, including the grey partridge, northern lapwing, and crested lark, since many birds feed on butterflies. “This is the chain,” he says. “The first to die are the butterflies. And then we have lower fitness of the birds. And if the birds May-June 2012

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are not fit, they are not able to produce young, or at least produce enough young.” Human communities, too, are impacted, according to Brückmann. He cites rising incidence of cancers, hormonal disorders, and other health problems in many parts of the world, and few explanations for the increases in cases except for the higher concentrations of chemicals in our environment. “We have doctors in Germany and elsewhere saying that patients are ill through the use of pesticides,” he says. As a remedy, Liess and his colleagues recommend digging “buffer zones”—strips of exposed soil, about 10 meters wide— along any waterways that run near farmland. Denmark has created extensive networks of buffer zones that work very effectively to this end. But the world will also need to cut back on pesticides, he adds. The result may be less food, but we could offset this if we just waste less food. Liess notes that, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, about one-third of all the food that the world produces every year is either thrown away or lost while in storage, transit, processing, or packing. “If we are able to reduce our expectation of the crop yield, we can reduce greatly the pesticide use,” says Liess. Brückmann approves of buffer zones. But he supports also the adoption of natural farming methods such as crop rotation—growing different crops in the same field season by season. He says that, by replacing the crops at the end of each season, farmers leave insects fewer opportunities to settle and breed in the plants. And it may be possible to grow bountiful harvests without pesticides, or practically any chemicals. Just ask the worldwide conservation federation Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), parent organization of Brückmann’s group. FOEI spokesperson Charly Hultén notes that, according to research by Swedish ecologist Artur Grandstedt, plants that receive chemical fertilizers grow larger and more quickly, but their immune systems and body parts are weaker and more susceptible to pests. So plants that are not treated with chemical fertilizers will better resist bugs and will need fewer pesticides in the first place.

FOEI encourages farmers to grow healthy plants naturally by substituting organic fertilizers and by implementing crop rotation, raising companion crops, using mechanical pest control, and working the soil to maximize distribution of soil nutrients. “Borders on fields can never be an adequate solution to the problem of pesticide pollution. The core of the problem lies on the systems level: Healthier soils, hardier plants, achieved through a different approach to agriculture,” says Hultén. —Rick Docksai Sources: Matthias Liess, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, www.ufz.de. The paper “Climate Change, Agricultural Insecticide Exposure, and Risk for Freshwater Communities” was published in Ecological Applications, 21(6), 2011. Tomas Brückmann, Friends of the Earth Germany, www.bund.net. Charly Hultén, Friends of the Earth International, www.foei.org.

Medicine | Sci/Tech

Nanobots to Fight Cancer Built from DNA, robots may deliver medicine where no doctor has gone before. Medical nanorobots may soon be leaving the Petri dish and making their way to a drugstore near you. A team of researchers from the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering has created a DNA-based nanorobot that can safely carry molecule-sized payloads, detect cancer, and attack that cancer with medicine. The bot itself is less of a drone and more of a complex piece of fabric. Hundreds of short, single-stranded DNA pieces wrap themselves around a scaffold, “like the warp and weft in weaving cloth,” according to researcher Shawn Douglas.

From the best-selling author of LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS comes “something important...something lasting.”* “The Nature Principle tackles the ambitious task of mapping our way to a more connected future...Page after page we learn that in working to heal the world through restoration, we end up healing ourselves.” - Orion magazine “You’ll not only understand why you should make or deepen your own connection to nature, you’ll know how.” - *San Diego Union Tribune “There is a great urgency to this work.” FEATURES AN UPDATE ON THE NEW NATURE MOVEMENT

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World Trends & Forecasts CAMPBELL STRONG, SHAWN DOUGLAS, AND GAËL MCGILL USING MOLECULAR MAYA AND CADNANO

These nanorobots developed by Harvard researchers are programmed to carry antigens to cancer sites and release their payload when they come into contact with cancer tissue.

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The mechanism for depositing the payload isn’t an electronic actuator, as you would find in a conventional robot, but a chemical reaction. When the nanobots meet up with a particular protein that can indicate cancer (in their experiment, Douglas and his team used a leukemic cell marker), the nanostructure unlocks itself and releases a cancer-fighting antigen. The process is similar to the way viruses attack cells; the primary difference is that Douglas’s nanobots don’t hijack the cell to reproduce, as natural viruses do. “Viruses (made of various combinations of protein, nucleic acids, and lipids) offer a good template for what materials work for performing complex interactions and manipulations of cells,” said Douglas in an e‑mail. The research follows (but does not necessarily build upon) the work of New York University chemistry professor Nadrian Seeman, credited with pioneering the field of DNA-based nanostructures to perform complicated tasks. May-June 2012

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But do these bio-based nano-creations still qualify as robots, or are they simply complex drugs? “There isn’t any established definition of a ‘nanorobot,’” said Douglas. “We asked robotics expert Rob Wood at Harvard about the term, and he said to describe what it does in general terms. We said that it senses friend or foe, and when a foe is sensed, it changes shape and attacks. He said this sounded similar to some military robots, and didn’t think the term was unjustified.” Writers and futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Robert Freitas have suggested that, in the year 2030, nanorobots will carry more oxygen to our blood, repair cellular damage, rid our bodies of toxins, and help us reverse-engineer a human brain. Specifically, in his landmark book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005), Kurzweil remarked that, in the 2020s, we could use complex nanomechanisms to “eliminate the accumulation of DNA transcription errors, one major source of the aging process. We could introduce DNA changes to essentially reprogram our genes. ... We would also be able to defeat biological pathogens ... by blocking any unwanted replication of genetic information.” Douglas says he “would be very surprised” if the more bold predictions of Kurzweil and Freitas came to pass. “We probably need a much better understanding of the basic science before we can achieve such sophisticated manipulations of our biology,” he said. Douglas’s own aspirations for the future of the field are relatively restrained in comparison. He expressed cautious optimism that, within 20 years, “there will be at least one FDA-approved treatment that employs nanoscale devices that can perform actions approaching the sophistication of simple viruses (cell targeting, payload delivery, or reprogramming the cell). I think reprogramming and repurposing existing viruses also sounds like a promising approach.” —Patrick Tucker Sources: “A Logic-Gated Nanorobot for Targeted Transport of Molecular Payloads” by S. M. Douglas, I. Bachelet, and G. M. Church, Science (February 17, 2012). Shawn Douglas (interview), Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, ❑ http://wyss.harvard.edu

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A Thousand Years Young By Aubrey de Grey

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et me first say very explicitly: I don’t work on longevity. I work on health. People are going to live longer as a result of the therapies I will describe, but extended longevity is a side effect—a consequence of keeping people healthy. There is no way in hell that we are going to keep people alive for a long time in a frail state. People will live longer only if we succeed in keeping them healthy longer. The problem of aging is unequivocally humanity’s worst medical problem. Roughly 100,000 people worldwide die every day of it, and there’s an awful lot of suffering that happens before you die. But I feel that the defeat of aging in the foreseeable future is a realistic proposition. We will have medicine that will get aging under control to the same level that we now have most infectious diseases under control. This article will describe what

Author Aubrey de Grey believes that, if we maintained human bodies as diligently as we maintain classic automobiles, we could achieve robust longevity.

aging is, what regenerative medicine is, and what the various alternative approaches are to combat aging and postpone the ill health of old age. I’ll then go into the details of the approach that I feel we need to take and what my expectations are for the future. Regenerative medicine is any medical intervention that seeks to restore some part of the body—or the whole

body—to how it was before it suffered some kind of damage. It could be damage that happened as the result of an acute injury, such as spinal cord damage. But it could also be damage that accumulated as a chronic condition over a long period of time. Aging is a side effect of being alive in the first place. Metabolism is the word that biologists use to encomAARON M. COHEN

pass all the aspects of being alive— all the molecular and cellular and systemic processes that keep us going from one day to the next and from one year to the next. Ongoing lifelong side effects of metabolism—i.e., damages—are created throughout life. For whatever reason, damage is not repaired when it occurs. So damage accumulates. For a long time, the amount of damage is tolerable, and the metabolism just carries on. But eventually, damage becomes sufficiently extensive that it gets in the way of metabolism. Then metabolism doesn’t work so well, and pathologies—all the things that go wrong late in life, all the as-

pects of age-related ill health— emerge and progress. Geriatrics versus Gerontology Traditionally, there have been two themes within the study of aging that aim to actually do something about this process. One is the geriatrics approach, which encompasses pretty much everything that we have today in terms of medical treatments for the elderly. The geriatrics approach is all about the pathology. It focuses on old people in whom the pathologies are already emerging, and strives to slow down their progression so that

it takes longer for those pathologies to reach a life-threatening stage. The gerontology approach, on the other hand, says that prevention is better than cure. This approach assumes that it will be more effective to dive in at an earlier point in the chain of events and clean up metabolism so that it creates these various types of damage at a slower rate than it naturally would. The effect would be to postpone the age at which damage reaches the level of abundance that is pathogenic. The two approaches both sound pretty promising, but they’re really not. The problem with the geriatrics approach is that aging is awfully

Eight Ways That Longer Lives Will Change Us More choices, more opportunities, and more wisdom to apply to society’s challenges—we will enjoy all of these in abundance when the ultra-long life and health spans that Aubrey de Grey describes become reality, according to Sonia Arrison, Pacific Research Institute senior fellow and a founder of Singularity University. In her new book 100 Plus, Arrison asserts not only that a new era of ultra-long life and health is coming, but also that we can count on it to effect these profound changes in everyday life: 1. People will be more personally invested in the planet’s health.

It can be hard to motivate people to action on climate change or resource depletion when the impacts will most likely hit hardest decades from now. “It’s the next generation’s problem,” some might say. We may think otherwise if we expect to be around when the years of reckoning come. The threats will personally matter to us, and we will act in the present to avert them. 2. Divorce rates will decline. Statistically, couples who marry young are more likely to divorce. So are couples who have completed fewer-than-average years of formal education. As people live longer, they will probably pursue

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more education and marry much later. Chances are better that, when they do marry, they will stay married.

3. Parents will be older and wiser. Adults will have children at

later and later ages. Such advanced ages could turn out to be the best years for childrearing: The parents will be more financially stable, more self-confident, more patient, and have many more years’ worth of life experience to impart to their children. 4. You’ll never be too old to keep working—or learning. Fewer

people will spend their “senior” years in retirement. They will keep working and advancing their careers toward the ends of their lives. Ergo, they will also keep learning. Educational systems will adjust to become ever more personalized to best serve each of the millions of adults who continually enroll in their training programs. 5. You’ll have time to pursue more dreams. People won’t have

to settle on a single career path for their lives. They’ll have time to spend a few decades pursuing one line of work and a few decades embarking on a completely different one. 6. More time is more money.

Savings and investment accounts accrue progressively more interest www.wfs.org

as time passes. So if we live longer, our retirement accounts will reward us for it—we’ll each enter our later years with many more years’ worth of compound interest at our disposal.

7. There will be more chances to enjoy the good things in life. There

is no need to spend all those extra years of healthy life working and studying. You’ll have the time and money to fit in more vacations and new hobbies, as well. Meanwhile, with the boosts to your health that life-extension therapies will have given you throughout your life, you’ll have far fewer medical bills to worry about. 8. Healthy competition will heighten among the world’s religious faiths. People living longer

and attaining more education will be more prone to question their existing faith affiliations and to switch to new faith communities if they deem the new ones suit them better. The onus will be on every religious denomination to be as welcoming and responsive as possible and to do its utmost to meet congregants’ personal and spiritual needs. —Rick Docksai

Source: 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, from Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith by Sonia Arrison. Basic. 2011. 251 pages. $25.99.

chaotic, miserable, and complicated. There are many things that go wrong with people as they get older, and they tend to happen at much the same time. These problems interact, exacerbating each other, and damage accumulates. Even later in life, as damage continues to accumulate, the pathologies of old age become progressively more and more difficult to combat. The geriatric approach is thus intervening too late in the chain of events. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not much better than nothing. So that leaves us with the gerontology approach. Unfortunately, the gerontology approach has its own problem: Metabolism is complicated. What we know about how metabolism works is completely dwarfed by the utterly astronomical amount that we don’t know about how metabolism works. We have no prospect whatsoever of being able to interfere in this process in a way that does not simply do more harm than good. A Maintenance Approach There are some Volkswagen Bugs that are 50 years old or more and still running. And the reason is because those VW Bugs have been extraordinarily well maintained. If you maintain your car only as well as the law requires, then it will only last 15 years or so. But if you do a lot more, then you can do a lot better. Maintenance works. Now what does that tell us about the human body? Well, quite a lot, because the human body is a machine. It’s a really complicated machine, but it’s still a machine. So there is a third way of combating aging by postponing age-related ill health. This is the maintenance approach. We go in and periodically repair the damage that metabolism creates, so as to prevent that damage from accumulating and reaching the level that causes the pathology of old age to emerge and to progress. Maintenance is a much more promising approach than either geriatrics or gerontology. First, the maintenance approach is preemptive, so it doesn’t have this problem of this downward spiral of the geriatrics approach.

Second, the maintenance approach avoids the problem of the gerontology approach because it does not attempt to intervene with metabolism; we merely fix up the consequences. In other words, we let metabolism create these various types of damage at the rate that it naturally does, and then repair the damages before they cause pathology. We can get away with not understanding very much at all about how metabolism creates damage. We just have to characterize the damage itself and figure out ways to repair it. That’s pretty good news, but it gets better. It also turns out that damage is simpler than its causes or its consequences. All the phenomena that qualify as damage can be classified into one of seven major categories: • Junk inside cells. • Junk outside cells. • Too few cells. • Too many cells. • Chromosome mutations. • Mitochondria mutations. • Protein cross-links. By “junk inside cells,” I am referring to the molecular byproducts of normal biologic processes that are created in the cell and that the cell, for whatever reason, does not have the machinery to break down or to excrete. Those byproducts simply accumulate, and eventually the cell doesn’t work so well. That turns out to be the main cause of cardiovascular disease and of macular degeneration. “Junk outside cells” means things like senile plaques in Alzheimer ’s disease. This creates the same molecular damage, but in this case it is in the spaces between cells. “Too few cells” simply means cells are dying and not being automatically replaced by the division of other cells. This is the cause of Parkinson’s disease, the particular part of the brain in which neurons happen to die more rapidly than in most parts of the brain and they’re not replaced. When there are too few of them, that part of the brain doesn’t work so well. But here’s the really good news. We actually have a pretty good idea how to fix all of these types of damage. Here is the same list of types of www.wfs.org

damage, and on the right is the set of approaches that I feel are very promising for fixing them:

Damage

Treatment

Junk inside cells

transgenic microbial hydolases

Junk outside cells

Phagocytosis by immune stimulation

Too few cells (cell loss)

cell therapy

Too many cells (death-resistant cells)

suicide genes and immune stimulation

Chromosome mutations

telomerase/ALT gene deletion plus periodic stem-cell reseeding

Mitochondria mutations

allotopic expression of 13 proteins

Protein cross-links

AGE-breaking molecules and enzymes

Stem-cell therapy replaces those cells that the body cannot replace on its own. That includes joint degeneration and muscular-skeletal problems. For example, arthritis ultimately comes from the degeneration of the collagen and other extra-cellular material in the joints, which happens as a result of insufficient regeneration of that tissue. For some other medical conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, we need to restore the functions of those cells that are already there by getting rid of the garbage accumulating outside them. Toward that purpose, there are phase-three clinical trials for the elimination of senile plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. This is a technology using vaccination that we at the SENS Foundation are extending to the elimination of other types of extracellular garbage. In fact, we now have an enormous amount of detail about how we’re going to reverse each of the seven categories of age-related damage, so that’s why I feel that my estimates of how long it’s going to take to get there are likely to be borne out accurately. •

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The SENS Foundation: Doing Something About Aging I’m the chief officer of a 501(c)3 public charity based in California. The mission of the SENS Foundation is to develop, promote, and enable widespread access to regenerative medicine as solutions to the disabilities and diseases of aging. Is there any competition in this work? Are other people trying other things? The short answer is, Not really. There are other people, of course, looking at ways to postpone aging and age-related ill health. But regenerative medicine is really the only game in town when we’re talking about serious postponement of age-related ill health. And SENS Foundation really is the hub of that concept. We are a charity, so if you are a billionaire, please see me! But of course it’s not just money we need. We need people’s time and expertise. If you’re a biologist, work on relevant things. Write to us and ask us for advice about what to work on, because we need more manpower in this area. If you’re a conference organizer, have me to speak. If you’re a journalist, come and interview me. It’s all about getting the word out. —Aubrey de Grey Details: The SENS Foundation, www.sens.org; e-mail foundation@ sens.org.

Case in Point: Cleaning the Cellular Garbage I’m going to talk about one example: the garbage that accumulates inside cells. I’m going to explain what transgenic microbial hydrolases are. White blood cells, called macrophages, sweep along a healthy adult’s artery walls to clean up miscellaneous detritus, typically lipo22

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protein particles that were transporting cholesterol around the body from one place to another and that got stuck in the artery wall. Macrophages are very good at coping with cholesterol, but they are not so good at coping with certain derivatives of cholesterol, such as oxysterols. These contaminants end up poisoning macrophages. The macrophages become unable even to cope with native cholesterol, and then they themselves break down, lodging in the artery walls. This is the beginning of an atherosclerotic plaque. The results are cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, or strokes. In the eye, this phenomenon causes macular degeneration. To combat this problem, we might adapt bioremediation technology from environmental decontamination. The technology that is used to break down pollutants in the environment could be adapted for biomedical purposes, breaking down the body’s contaminants. If we could apply this bioremediation process to our own cells, we could combat the initial process that turns young people into old people in the first place. A very simple idea. The question is, does it work? Bioremediation for getting rid of pollutants works really well: It’s a thriving commercial discipline. There are a number of oxidized derivatives of cholesterol, but the nastiest in abundance and toxicity is 7-ketocholesterol—public enemy number one in atherosclerosis. We have tried “feeding” it to many different strains of bacteria. Most of them can’t do anything with it, but we’ve found two strains of bacteria that gorge themselves on it. After only 10 days, the material is completely gone. The next step is to figure out how these bacteria are able to do this from a genetic basis. From there, we could try to turn 7-ketocholesterol back into native cholesterol. But there are other steps that we can use—remember that I said we’re looking to avoid the problem of things neither being broken down nor excreted. There are modifications that we can make to compounds that are toxic that simply promote their excretion rather than promoting their degradation. www.wfs.org

So that’s all pretty good news. But don’t get me wrong. This is really hard. This is a very ambitious, longterm project. The processes we hope to develop must work in vivo. What we are seeking is a truly definitive, complete cure for cardiovascular disease and for other pathologies caused by the accumulation of molecular garbage inside cells. Escape Velocity: From Longevity To Immortality? I do not claim that any of the work I’ve just described is going to be a “cure” for aging. I claim, rather, that it’s got a good chance of adding 30 years of extra healthy life to people’s lives. I call that robust human rejuvenation. And 30 years is better than nothing, but it sure does not equate to defeating aging completely. So what’s the rest of my story? The rest of the story is that it’s not something that’s going to work just on people who haven’t been conceived yet. It’s stuff that is going to work on people who are already middle-aged or older when the therapies arrive. This is fundamentally what it all comes down to. The maintenance approach is so cool because repairing damage buys time. At age zero, people start off with not much damage. Time goes on, they age, damage accumulates, reserve is depleted, and eventually, they get down to a certain point— the frailty threshold—and that’s when pathologies start to happen. Then they’re not long for this world. Now take someone who is in middle age. You have therapies that are pretty good, but not perfect, at fixing the damage. They can be rejuvenated, but not all the way. These therapies do not reduce the rate at which damage is created. Aging happens at the normal rate. Then we reapply the same therapies again and again. But consider that the interval between the first and second applications of these therapies to some particular individual may be 15 to 20 years. That’s a long time in biomedical technology, and it means that the person is going to get new and improved therapies that will not only fix the types of

damage that they could fix 15 years previously, but also fix some types of damage that they could not fix 15 years previously. So after the second rejuvenation, our hero is not only more thoroughly rejuvenated than he would be if he’d gotten the old therapies, but he’s actually more rejuvenated than he was when he got the old therapies, even though at that point he was chronologically younger. Now we see this phenomenon where we don’t hit diminishing returns on additional therapies. People over the long term will be getting progressively younger as they’re getting chronologically older. They’ll remain far away from reaching the frailty threshold, however long that they live. They will only be subjected to the risks of death and ill health that affect young adults. They never become more susceptible to ill health simply as a result of having been born a long time ago. There’s some minimum rate at which we have to improve the comprehensiveness of these therapies in order for the general trend in increased life span to be upwards rather than downwards. And that minimum rate is what I call longevity escape velocity. It’s the rate at which these rejuvenation therapies need to be improved in terms of comprehensiveness following that first step— the first-generation therapies that give robust human regeneration—in order to stay one step ahead of the problem and to outpace the accumulation of damage that they cannot yet repair. So is it realistic? Are we likely actually to reach longevity escape velocity and to maintain it? We are. Consider powered flight as an illustrated example: There are very big differences between fundamental breakthroughs and incremental refinements of those breakthroughs. Fundamental breakthroughs are very hard to predict. Mostly people think they’re not going to happen right up until they already have happened. Incremental refinements, meanwhile, are very much more predictable. Leonardo da Vinci probably thought he was only a couple of decades away from getting off the ground. He was wrong. But once the

Wright brothers got there, progress was ridiculously rapid. It only took 24 years for someone to fly solo across the Atlantic (that was Lindbergh), 22 more years until the first commercial jet liner, and 20 more years until the first supersonic airlines. Can we actually give more direct evidence that we are likely to achieve longevity escape velocity? I believe that we can. An Age-Busting Virtuous Cycle A few years ago I worked with others on a computer simulation of the aging process to see what the impact would be of these interventions coming in at a realistic schedule. We started by imagining a population of adults who were all born in 1999. Everyone is alive at age zero and almost everyone survives until age 50 or 60, at which point they start dropping like flies; hardly anyone gets beyond 100. Next, we imagined another population whose intrinsic risk of death at any given age is the same as for the first, but who are receiving these therapies. But they only start receiving them when they are already 80 years old. That population’s survival rate will actually mostly coincide with the first population’s survival rate, because obviously half the population or so is dead by age 80 and those who are still living are already in a reasonably bad way. But what if population number two started getting these therapies 10 years earlier, when they’re only 70? Initially, the same story is the case—there is not a lot of benefit. But gradually, the therapies get the upper hand. They start to impose genuine rejuvenation on these people so that they become biologically younger and less likely to die. Some of them reach 150, by which time they have very little chance of dying of any age-related cause. Eventually, there is exactly no such risk. And if they’re 60 years old when the therapies begin? Then almost half of them will get to that point. So we calculated, group by group. Here’s the real kicker: I was ludicrously over-pessimistic in the parameters that I chose for this simulation. I said that we would assume www.wfs.org

that the therapy would only be doubled in their efficacy every 42 years. Now, 42 years: That’s the difference between Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis and the Concorde! But even then, we unambiguously see longevity escape velocity. So it’s inescapable. If and when we do succeed in developing these rejuvenation therapies that give us those first couple of decades more of health and the postponement of agerelated ill health, then we will have done the hard part. The sky is the limit after that. Here is what it means. At the moment, the world record for life span is 122. We won’t be getting anyone who is 150 until such time as we do develop these technologies that give us robust human rejuvenation. But we will have done the hard part, so people not much younger than that will be able to escape aging indefinitely, living even to age 1,000. A thousand is not pulled out of the air. It’s simply the average age—plus or minus a factor of two—that people would live to if we already didn’t have aging, if the only risks of death were the same risks that currently afflict young adults in the Western world today. Should we be developing these therapies? We are ignorant about the circumstances within which humanity of the future will be deciding whether to use these technologies or not. It could actually be a no-brainer that they will want to use them. And if we have prevented them from using them by not developing them in time, then future generations won’t be very happy. So it seems to me that we have a clear moral obligation to develop these technologies so as to give humanity of the future the choice. And the sooner, the better. ❑ About the Author Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist and chief science officer of the SENS Foundation (www.sens.org). He is the author (with Michael Rae) of Ending Aging (St. Martin’s Press, 2007) and editor-in-chief of the journal Rejuvenation Research. This article draws from his presentation at WorldFuture 2011 in Vancouver.

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Engineering Tomorrow’s genetically modified food and farmed fish will be more sustainable and far healthier than much of what we eat today—if we can overcome our fears and embrace it. Here’s how one foodie learned to stop worrying and love By Josh Schonwald “Frankenfood.” Adapted from the forthcoming book The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food by Josh Schonwald. Copyright © 2012 by Josh Schonwald. To be published on April 10, 2012, by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. ALEKSANDER TRANKOV / JOE LENA / ISTOCKPHOTO

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the Future of Food The Plant Transformation Facility at the University of California, Davis, has been the scene of more than 15,000 “transgenic events,” which is the term molecular biologists use when they blast DNA from one life form into another. In room 192 of Robbins Hall, a brick building not far from the student union, thousands of microscopic plantlets grow in Petri dishes bathed in pink and fluorescent blue light. Here, molecular biologists can mix what were previously sexually incompatible species together using a gas-pump-like tool called the Helium Particle Delivery System. Using bullets (literally) made out of gold, they fire genes from one species into another in a bombardment chamber. The Davis lab has given birth to grapes spiked with jellyfish, tomatoes spiked with carp, transgenic squash, transgenic carrots, transgenic tomatoes. Another important site in genetic engineering history, an innocuous office building about a ten-minute drive from Robbins Hall, is the birthplace of the most audacious plant in the history of high-tech plants. Among biotech people and anti-biotech people, this plant, a tomato, needs no introduction. The so-called Flavr Savr was supposed to be the game changer—longer shelf life, better yield, better taste. Calgene, the company that created the Flavr Savr, claimed it could bring “backyard fla-

vor” to the supermarket tomato. Achieving “backyard flavor” in an industrial-scale, California-grown tomato has long been one of the holy grails of the $4 billion–plus tomato industry. During the pre-tomato launch hype-a-thon, the president of Calgene claimed that genetic engineering could not only bring us the tomato of our childhood dreams, but also remake the taste of the tomato, tailored to our every desire: “Eventually we’re going to design acidic tomatoes for the New Jersey palate and sweet tomatoes for the Chicago palate.” The Flavr Savr turned out to be the Edsel of the produce world, a spectacular failure not just for Calgene, but for the whole biotech industry. This purportedly longershelf-life tomato became the lightning rod for much of the antigenetically modified organism (GMO) movement. People learned about other transgenic crops—a potato with a chicken gene, tobacco with a firefly gene, and, perhaps most notoriously, a tomato with an Arctic flounder gene, which provided an image for a Greenpeace anti-GMO campaign. Nongovernmental organizations cried foul. Consumers were alarmed. It was an op-ed about the Flavr Savr where the term Frankenfood first appeared. As for the tomato’s taste, most reports said that, far from achieving backyard flavor, it was not that great.

By 1997, supermarkets stopped stocking the bioengineered tomato. The Flavr Savr was a financial disaster for Calgene. But that was almost fifteen years ago. One fall day, across campus from the Helium Particle Delivery System, I went to visit Kent Bradford, the director of UC Davis’s Seed Biotechnology Center and presumably among the best-positioned people at Davis to answer my burning question: Whatever happened after the Flavr Savr? The Culinary Potential of Frankenfood Genetic engineering obviously didn’t stop with the Flavr Savr de bacle; the use of GMOs has exploded. Many genetically engineered foods can be found throughout our food supply. Genetically modified soybeans and canola dominate the market, which means that most processed food— everything from your spaghetti to your Snickers bar—has GM ingredients. More than 90% of American cotton and 80% of corn crops come from GM seed. All of these crops, though, are what are called “commodity crops.” They’re not what you pick up at your local greengrocer. They’re industrial crops, secondary ingredients. Not what interested me. What I wanted to know is what

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“The process is costly and time-consuming, which partly explains why biotech crop development is largely in the hands of the agribusiness giants.” RED HELGA / ISTOCKPHOTO

was happening with the quest to achieve “backyard flavor”? And what I couldn’t get out of my head was this claim that tomatoes could be engineered for precise tastes— “acidic tomatoes for the New Jersey palate and sweet tomatoes for the Chicago palate.” What was going on? Did they just stop working on “sweet tomatoes for the Chicago palate”? Wouldn’t the Flavr Savr creators be intent on redemption, going back to the bench to try again? Or did everything just stop? Strangely, Bradford, a plant geneticist who has been at UC Davis since the early 1980s, shared my curiosity about the post–Flavr Savr world—he just had a different way of explaining it. “Yes. Where are all these output traits?” he said. (Input traits are breederspeak for what’s so often critical to agriculture—disease resistance, insect resistance, adaptability to particular environments. An output trait is breeder parlance for what I was looking for—traits that improve taste and texture, traits that could change the dining experience of the future.) Bradford had observed that, almost twenty years after the biotech revolution began, there were few signs of any “Second Generation” crops. The First Generation was the commodity crops: soybean, maize, cotton, canola, sugar beets. Most expected that, after the first wave of crops proved their worth, the next wave would be more consumer focused—better tomatoes, tastier lettuce. But biotech specialty crops (that’s the crop scientist term for produce) hadn’t appeared. In fact, a GMO specialty crop hadn’t been commercialized since 1998. Even Bradford, a longtime biotech be26

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liever, considered, “Maybe the genes weren’t working?” A few years ago, Bradford and his collaborator J amie Miller set out to find out “what was going on” with bioengineered specialty crops. They surveyed the leading plant science journals and tracked GM crop field trials—all subject to government regulation—from 2003 to 2008. Searching for citations related to specialty crops, they found that research not only had never stopped but was thriving. “There was research on 46 different species,” says Bradford. “More than 300 traits were being tested.” A lot of it was on input traits (disease, weed resistance), but breeders had also experimented with output traits. “It was happening at the research level, but it just didn’t move to the next step. It just stopped there.” There was an obvious explanation, Bradford says, sighing. “It was regulatory.” Post Flavr Savr, in response to growing consumer concerns about transgenic breeding, a regulatory process was created that treated genetically modified foods differently from conventionally bred crops. If you have iceberg lettuce, using classic plant-breeding techniques (crossing, back-crossing), the assumption is that the resulting lettuce is safe. There’s no requirement for pretesting. You just introduce the product into the market. But with GMOs, Bradford says, the attitude was that “it’s guilty until proven innocent.” A genetically engineered crop must pass review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration before it is commercialized. The cost could range from $50,000 to tens of millions of dollars to win regulatory approval. For every “transgenic event,” the genetic engineer must show exactly what genes went into the plant and how they function, and then prove how the plant makeup has been altered. That research is costly. So is plant storage. O n c e a t r a n s g e n i c c re a t i o n i s spawned at the Plant Transformation

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Facility, it is whisked to the UC Davis Controlled Environment Facility, where it will stay in a tightly secured warehouse. Or it will be airmailed to some other place, where it’ll live out its life in another intensely biosecure environment. The process is costly and time-consuming, which partly explains why biotech crop development is largely in the hands of the agribusiness giants—the Monsantos, Syngentas, and Bayer CropSciences of the world—who have the resources to undertake the process. With such high approval costs, big companies have favored commodity crops with market potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, not tens of millions. We talked about the reasons for what Bradford calls “the bottleneck”

OMER SUKRU GOKSU / ARTPIPI / ISTOCKPHOTO

for the biotech specialty crops. It was NGOs such as Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists that were the bogeymen, in his view. Big Organic, a $20 billion industry, had a vested interested in stopping GMOs. Back in 2000, when the USDA was developing the National Organic Program standards, the first draft did not prohibit genetically modified foods, but then activists launched an anti-GMO campaign, flooding the USDA with a tidal wave of letters—275,026, to be exact. The USDA then determined that genetically modified organisms would not be included under the standard for organic produce. Being deemed un kosher in the organic world is a hard stigma to overcome. The anti-GMO movement hasn’t lost momentum; the Non-GMO Project has become the fastest-growing food eco-label in North America, with sales eclipsing $1 billion in 2011. As for Europe: After a 12-year moratorium on GMO crops, the European Union greenlighted a GMO potato—but not for human consumption. It would be used to produce higher levels of starch, which is helpful for industries like paper manufacturing. In short, the European market is still overwhelmingly closed for genetically modified foodstuffs. What If the World Embraced Agricultural Biotechnology? According to the World Health Organization, 250 million children worldwide, mostly in the developing world, have diets lacking in vitamin A. Between 250,000 and 500,000 of these children go blind every year. Yet, there is a crop, developed more than 13 years ago, that is fortified with vitamin A compounds. If children unable to get vitamin A from other protein sources simply eat this crop, they will not go blind and die. It is named “golden rice” because of its yellowish hue, and every health organization in the world has declared it to be safe to eat. But golden rice was not bred through traditional means; it was bred in a lab. So golden rice is, by its opponents’ definition, Frankenfood, and therefore, like many other GMO

crops, it’s been ferociously opposed. Now let’s say that golden rice does get approved (as some predict it will in 2013), and let’s say it saves millions of children from starvation and blindness in Asia. Or let’s say bioengineered crops slow down the creation of algal dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. Or a low-fat, anti-cancer potato becomes a smash hit at McDonald’s. Consumer worries about GMOs evaporate, becoming as anachronistic as fears of microwave ovens causing cancer. The regulatory barriers are gone; transgenic plants are treated the same as any other. The Monsanto juggernaut is over; small, boutique companies and open-source plant breeders in the comfort of a Brooklyn loft have a chance to contribute to the vegetable economy. Then what happens? • Food will look different. There will almost surely be more varieties. Austrian heirloom lettuce varieties like Forellenschluss and heirloom tomatoes like the Brandywines and Cherokee Purples could become readily available. So many vege tables today aren’t commercially vi able because of disease vulnerabilities or production inefficiencies. But in a genetically engineered future, all the flaws that make them ill-suited for commercialization become mere speed bumps. “You could have disease immunity almost immediately,” says Bradford. “And it would be very easy to take care of these other variables. Instead of taking a decade to ready a crop for commercialization, it will take a matter of months.” It’s possible that colors would change. You could find pink lettuce and blue arugula—maybe with a green orange slice for St. Patrick’s Day. Color becomes malleable because it’s often a single trait. • Food will taste different. It is also likely, some geneticists say, that in 2035 some lettuces won’t taste anything like lettuce. The notion of tomatoes with customized flavor was a reckless ambition in the 1990s when the Flavr Savr debuted; modifying taste is among the most challenging tasks for plant geneticists. www.wfs.org

“With a few mouse clicks, geneticists say, they could choose from a range of flavors, textures, and colors.”

You can silence a gene in the potato genome, tuning down the bitterness or acidic quality, but it’s still a fractional impact on taste. Taste is complex. A tomato, for instance, has between five and twenty compounds that influence flavor. Changing flavor requires not one gene, but packages of genes, and the genes must be placed precisely. Then there is texture, inextricably linked to flavor. Modifying taste eludes technologists today, but in the next ten years, that could change, as bioengineers will be able to choose from a genetic cassette—stacks of genes that together confer desired traits. With a few mouse clicks, geneticists say, they could choose from a range of flavors, textures, and colors. “Think of it like Photoshop,” says C. S. Prakash, director of the Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at Tuskegee University. “At some point that won’t be a far-fetched metaphor.” It will be technologically possible, therefore, to create a Caesar salad without the Caesar dressing; the flavor of the Caesar could be bred into the lettuce. Textures would also be far easier to change. You could bite into an apple that has the consistency of a banana. In a biotech-friendly future, fruits and vegetables would merely be another frontier for adventurous and often mind-bending culinary pioneers. • We’ll see produce that doesn’t spoil. In a biotech future, the sell-by dates will be different; instead of rushing to eat your lettuce in a week, looseleaf lettuce could languish, unsealed, for a month or more. One of the huge problems in the produce industry is perishability, with close to •

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BARRETT & MACKAY PHOTOGRAPHY INC.

AquAdvantage® Salmon includes a gene from the Chinook salmon, which provides the fish with the potential to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon, according to maker AquaBounty Technologies.

one-third of all fresh fruits and vegetables produced lost to overripening or damage during shipment. But bioengineers are already making progress in changing the post-harvest behavior of plants. By having an enzyme shut off, an apple has been modified so that it won’t turn brown after it is sliced, and a banana has been engineered to ripen more slowly. Although small organic farmers are often the most hostile to technologized solutions and may be the least likely group to adopt high-tech crops, it’s possible that GMOs could change the farmers’ markets in places like Chicago or Buffalo. “In New York and Illinois, it’s pretty hard to grow a lot of crops because they’re going to freeze,” explains Dennis Miller, a food scientist at Cornell University. “But you could engineer in frost tolerance. You could extend the growing season and bring in more exotic crops into new regions. I don’t know if we’ll be growing bananas in upstate New York, but it would expand the options for locally grown fruits and vegetables.” How Frankenfood Will Improve Health Most breeders expect that the biggest change for consumers would be something that’s already familiar to any Whole Foods shopper. We already have calcium-fortified orange juice and herbal tea enhanced with 28

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antioxidants, but in an agbiotechfriendly world, the produce section would likely be overflowing with health enhancements. Orange potatoes enhanced with beta-carotene, calcium-enhanced carrots, and crops with enhanced antioxidants are already in the pipeline. By the 2030s, vegetables and fruits will be vitamin, nutrient, and beneficial-gene-delivery vehicles. To illustrate how this would play out, Prakash points to the work of Cynthia Kenyon, a University of California–San Francisco molecular biologist, who extended the life span of a ground worm by six times by changing a gene called “def 2.” While this is in the realm of basic science, Prakash also suggests that, if something like a “fountain of youth” gene is found to benefit humans, it could be bred into vegetables. By combining genetics and plant science, a whole new realm of products would likely appear. Some geneticists envision a future in which crop development would become a highly collaborative process: Nutritionists, geneticists, physicians, chefs, and marketers would work to develop new fruits and vegetables aimed at various consumer wants. Another Kind of Foodie Hero A scientist in a white lab coat doesn’t conjure the same feelings as a micro-farmer in a straw hat. Growing fish in a warehouse isn’t quite as www.wfs.org

stirring as pulling them out of a choppy Alaskan sea. A meat-spawning bioreactor doesn’t have the same allure as a dew-covered Virginia pasture. But it’s time to broaden the foodie pantheon. Let’s continue to celebrate our heirloom-fava-bean growers and our grass-fed-goat herders. Let’s carefully scrutinize the claims of nutritional science and keep a wary eye on new technologies, especially those with panacea-like claims from multinational corporations with monopolistic aims and a history of DDT and Agent Orange production. But let’s not be so black-and-white; let’s not be reflexively and categorically opposed to any and all technological solutions. Savoring the slowest food and foraging for wild asparagus shouldn’t be viewed as at odds with championing lab-engineered vitamin A–enhanced rice that could save children from blindness. Pairing a locally grown, seasonal mesclun mix from an organic microfarm with cobia, a saltwater fish grown in an industrial-sized warehouse, is not an incompatible, ethically confused choice. I make this point because of the rising tide of food-specific neo-Luddism in America. While well intentioned and often beneficial in its impact, this foodie fundamentalism is unfortunately often associated with a dangerous antiscientism. If we’re going to meet the enormous challenges of feeding the world’s stillgrowing population, we are going to need all the ingenuity we can bring to bear. My modest hope: Let’s keep an open mind. Let’s consider even the fringy, sometimes yucky, maybe kooky ideas. Let’s not miss opportunities to build a long-term sustainable future for our planet. ❑ About the Author Josh Schonwald is the author of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches From the Future of Food (Harper, 2012). He will be speaking at WorldFuture 2012, the World Future Society’s annual conference, to be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Unlimiting Energy’s Growth Below: Nanotubes self-assemble in a twisting pattern. Researchers are seeking ways to reduce the costs of nanotube production in order to make them a more viable sub stitute for steel, aluminum, copper, and other industrial materials. M. BANKEHSAZ AND B. I. YAKOBSON / RICE UNIVERSITY / COURTESY OF PNAS AND NSF

As costs decline and sophistication increases, smart materials could help unlock limits to growth.

By Tsvi Bisk

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The embryonic revolution in material science now taking place—specifically “smart materials” and superl ight materials— offers strong evidence that there are no limits to growth. So-called smart materials, as defined on Wikipedia, “are materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli.” They can produce energy by exploiting differences in temperature (thermoelectric materials) or by being stressed (piezoelectric materials). Other smart materials save energy in the manufacturing process by changing shape or repairing themselves in response to external stimuli. These materials have all passed the “proof of concept” phase (i.e., are scientifically sound), and many are in the prototype phase. Some are already commercialized and penetrating the market. For example, the Israeli company Innowattech has placed piezoelectric materials under a one-kilometer stretch of highway to “harvest” the wasted stress energy of vehicles passing over and converting it to electricity. This is called “parasitic energy harvesting.” The company reckons that Israel has stretches of road where the traffic could efficiently produce 250 megawatts. If this is verified, consider the tremendous electricity potential of the New Jersey Turnpike or the thruways of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Consider the potential of railway and subway tracks. We are talking about tens of thousands of potential megawatts produced without any fossil fuel. Thermoelectric materials can transform wasted heat into electricity. Some estimate that the wasted heat from industrial processes alone could provide up to 20% of America’s electricity needs—this would make cogeneration even more efficient. Cogeneration is already making headway around the industrialized world and still has tremendous unexploited potential; again, this 30

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would yield a tremendous savings in fossil fuels. Smart glass is already commercialized and can save significant energy in heating, air conditioning, and lighting—up to 50% savings in energy in retrofitted buildings (such as the former Sears Tower in Chicago). New buildings designed to take maximum advantage of this and other technologies could save even more. Since buildings consume about 40% of CHASTEK / TALBOTT / NIST America’s electricity pro- Buckypaper: Two-dimensional network of carbon duction, this technology nanotubes deposited in thin sheets could make up a alone could over time re- continuous electrically conducting network. At the macroscale, the material would be nearly transparent, duce electricity consumpyet 100 times stronger than steel per unit of weight. tion by 20%. Even greater savings in electricity could be realized by replacing incandescent and fluo- costs meet the rising costs of fossil rescents with LEDs, which use one- fuels, they will become commercialtenth of the electricity of incandes- ized and, if history is any judge, recent and half of the electricity of place fossil fuels very quickly—just fluorescents. The United States could as coal replaced wood in a matter of flatline its electricity consumption— decades and petroleum replaced gradually replacing fossil-fuel elec- whale oil in a matter of years. tricity production with alternatives. Conservation of energy and parasitic Superlight Materials energy harvesting, as well as urban But it is superlight materials that agriculture, would greatly cut the planet’s energy consumption and air have the greatest potential to transform civilization and ultimately help and water pollution. Waste-to-energy technologies introduce a “no limits to growth” could also begin to replace fossil era. I refer, in particular, to carbon fuels. Garbage, sewage, and all nanotubes—alternatively referred to forms of organic trash, agricultural, as buckyballs or buckypaper (in and food-processing waste are es- honor of Buckminster Fuller). Carsentially hydrocarbon resources that bon nanotubes are between 0.01% can be transformed into ethanol, and 0.002% the width of a human methanol, biobutanol, or biodiesel. hair, more flexible than rubber, and These can be used for transportation, 100 to 500 times stronger than steel electricity generation, or feedstock per unit of weight. Imagine the enfor plastics and other materials. ergy savings if planes, cars, trucks, Waste-to-energy is essentially a recy- trains, elevators—everything that cling of carbon dioxide already in needs energy to move—were made the environment and not the intro- of this material and weighed 1% of what they weigh now. Present costs duction of new CO2. These technologies also prevent and production methods make this methane from entering the environ- unpractical at present, but that in ment. Methane, a product of rotting finite resource—the human mind— organic waste, contributes just 28% has confronted and solved this probof the amount that CO2 contributes lem before. Let us take the example to global warming but is 25 times of aluminum. more powerful as a greenhouse gas. One hundred fifty years ago, aluNumerous prototypes of a variety of minum was more expensive than waste-to-energy technologies are al- gold or platinum. When Napoleon ready in place. When their declining III held a banquet of state, he prowww.wfs.org

University in England are working on a new electrochemical production method (in the prototype stage) that could produce 600 kilograms of carbon nanotubes per day at a projected cost of around $10 per kilogram, or $10,000 a metric ton. NIST This cost-saving Nanotechnology could make smart and superlight materials process will do for that will help reduce our energy use and lead to self-sufficiency. carbon nanotubes what the Hall– Héroult process did vided his most-honored guests with for aluminum. Nanotubes will bealuminum plates. Less-distinguished come the universal raw material of guests had to make do with gold choice, displacing steel, aluminum, plates. When the Washington Monu- copper, and other metals and materiment was completed in 1884, it was als. Steel currently costs about $750 fitted with an aluminum cap—the p e r m e t r i c t o n . N a n o t u b e s o f most expensive metal in the world at strength equivalent to a metric ton of the time—as a sign of respect to steel would cost $100 if this CamGeorge Washington. It weighed 2.85 bridge process (or others being purkg. Aluminum at the time cost $1 per sued in research labs around the gram (or $1,000 per kg). A typical world) is successful. Imagine planes, day laborer working on the monu- trucks, buses, cars, and elevators that ment was paid $1 per day for 10–12 weigh 5%, 2%, or even 1% of what hours a day. In other words, today’s they weigh today. Imagine the savcommon soft-drink can, which ings in conventional energy. Imagine weighs 14 grams, could have bought the types of alternative energy that would be practical. Imagine the posi15 ten-hour days of labor in 1884. Today’s U.S. minimum wage is tive impact on the environment of $7.50 an hour. In other words, using replacing many industrial and minlabor as the measure of value, a soft- ing processes and thus lessening air drink can would cost $1,125 today and groundwater pollution. The most promising use of nano(or $80,000 a kilogram). Then, in 1886, a process discovered indepen- tubes is to turn them into paper. dently by two chemists—American “Buckypaper” looks like ordinary Charles Marten Hall and Frenchman carbon paper. It appears flimsy but Paul Héroult—turned aluminum will revolutionize the way we make into one of the cheapest commodi- everything from airplanes to cars to ties on earth. Aluminum now costs buildings to household appliances. It $3 per kilogram, or $3,000 per metric is 100 times stronger than steel per ton. The soft-drink can that would unit of weight, and it also conducts have cost $1,125 without the process electricity like copper and disperses now costs four-tenths of a cent, or heat like steel or brass. Ben Wang, director of Florida State $0.004. Today, industrial grade carbon University’s High-Performance Mananotubes cost about $50–$60 per ki- terials Institute, claims, “If you take logram. This is already far cheaper just one gram of nanotubes, and you than aluminum in 1884 in real value, unfold every tube into a graphite if we use the cost of labor as the sheet, you can cover about twomeasure of value. Yet, revolutionary thirds of a football field.” Since other methods of production are now be- research has indicated that carbon ing developed that will drive the nanotubes could be a suitable founcosts down even more radically. For dation for producing photovoltaic instance, researchers at Cambridge energy, consider the implications of www.wfs.org

this statement. Several grams of this material could be the energy-producing skin of new generations of dirigibles—making these airships energy autonomous. These energyneutral airships could replace airplanes as the primary means to transport air freight. Beyond the Limits Is this a futurist fable, or is it entirely within the scope of development in the next 20 years (or even 10)? Modern history has shown that anything human beings decide they want done can be done in 20 years if it does not violate the laws of nature. The atom bomb was developed in four years from the time the decision was made to make it; putting a man on the Moon took eight years from the time the decision was made to do it. It is a reasonable conjecture that, by 2020 or earlier, an industrial process for the inexpensive production of carbon nanotubes will be developed, and that this is the key to solving our energy, raw materials, and environmental problems. The revolution in material science will help enable us to become selfsufficient in energy. It will enable us to create superlight vehicles and structures that will produce their own energy and obviate the need to pump oil or mine many resources. Carbon nanotubes will replace steel, copper, and aluminum in a myriad of functions. Whatever residual need we might have for such materials will be satisfied by the recycling of existing reserves already in the system. Such developments will help overcome the limits of growth and enable human civilization to become a self-contained system. ❑ About the Author Tsvi Bisk is director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking and author of The Optimistic Jew: A Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century (Maxanna Press, 2007). He is also the THE FUTURIST’s contributing editor for Strategic Thinking. E-mail bisk@ futurist-thinking.co.il.

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Visions By Patrick Tucker and Thomas Frey PHOTOS: PATRICK TUCKER

Futurists Review the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show Two Futurist editors rate the gadgets that may soon make a big difference in our lives. In January, the future descended on the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker and Innovation editor Thomas Frey took a look at the most interesting, futurerelevant innovations on the floor. In the following dispatch, they share some of their favorite picks from the event and cast an eye toward what the future of the Consumer Electronics Show could hold. Smart Clothing and Wearable Sensors Patrick Tucker’s pick, the Zomm Lifestyle Connect: This is a light,

Bluetooth-enabled fob that dialogues wirelessly and transfers data from (also enabled) heart monitors, glucose monitors, and other devices. In the

The TOSY SketRobo can draw you a portrait.

event of signal disruption, the heart monitor calls a “personal safety concierge,” who then calls the wearer, the wearer’s loved ones, doctors, etc., via the Lifestyle Connect. Creator Henry Penix gave a great live demonstration. He strapped the heart monitor to a wristband and disconnected it to simulate a signal block. Suddenly, a voice rose up from the Connect device (amplified through a speaker). It was a concierge calling from Tulsa inquiring about his health and offering to ring his family. The Lifestyle Connect

also allows you to call your personal safety concierge by pressing a button. ZOMM publicist Kiersten M offatt calls this the device’s “intended usage.” Tom Frey’s pick, AIQ Smart Clothing with soft padding that stiffens

upon impact, monitors heart rate and blood pressure: CES has a few examples of smart clothing companies like AIQ, but for most exhibitors their so-called smart clothing has little more than pockets for smartphones or space for video nametags. As part of our ongoing effort to monitor our own biological functions, it may be possible to design a fabric that serves as an optical lens into our inner selves. Think of this as a wearable CAT scan system with variable-adjust focal point settings, zoom powers down to a near-nano scale, and flexible built-in data- capture sensors. The fashion options here will be incredible. Robots and Drones Tucker’s pick, TOSY SketRobo:

The Zomm Lifestyle Connect sends an alert when your pacemaker’s signal changes alarmingly.

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The TOSY SketRobo will take your picture and draw you a sketch of yourself (for release in September). I love this because it represents a real step forward in visual recognition capability for consumer robotics. May-June 2012

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The Soft Kinetic sensor system. Says Tucker, “Here’s me playing the game; what I see is on the right and what the machine sees when it looks at me is on the left.”

Getting bots to make sense of what they see has long been one of the biggest challenges in the field and one of the main obstacles to more common use of robots. Most AI cars see with the aid of big SICK LMS200 laser range finders. This robot’s eyes (though still infrared sensors) are far smaller, and the picture it draws isn’t bad, either. Nice actuator control. Frey’s pick, AR Drone: I happen to be a big fan of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and already own an AR Drone. Unveiled at CES, the new Drone 2.0 features a 720p front-facing camera so that you can capture your flights in HD. There’s also a whole raft of new sensors, including an on-board magnetometer, so that it can always tell where the pilot is in relation to its flight path, and a new air-pressure sensor that allows it to be more stable when hovering. That said, these drones have very short battery life (10 minutes, maximum), and so far have little application outside of the hobbyist community. That will change when drones can take on more responsibilities. Interfaces Tucker’s pick, SoftKinetic: This was supposed to be the year of the in-

The Ford Evos concept car.

terface at CES. We’re going to find ourselves interacting with computers in a lot of different ways in the next decade, well beyond thumb texting. The Microsoft Kinect, part of the Xbox 360 game system (released last year), uses three infrared sensors to measure movement, allowing users to operate the computer via gesture and voice. The European group SoftKinetic had a similar device at CES that uses just one infrared sensor. Frey’s pick, the Leonar3Do 3: A 3-D modeling system developed by Hungarian company, Leonar3Do, the Leonar3Do 3 is the easiest way I’ve seen for you to create and visualize 3-D objects in space while sitting at your desktop. This integrated software and hardware platform offers a unique, truly immersive virtual-reality experience, in that you are able to see and interact with your virtual objects as you create them. The idea of “smart” contact lenses, the kind that can superimpose information on the wearer’s field of view, has been around for a while. But contact lenses are also being developed that use embedded sensors and electronics to monitor diseases and to dispense drugs. Such devices may eventually be able to measure the level of cholesterol or alcohol in your blood and flash up an appropriate www.wfs.org

warning. The first iteration of smart contact lenses are already on the market, but they were not seen at CES. Cars Tucker’s pick, Ford Evos: For motorists who subscribe to an Italian aesthetic when it comes to cars, the Ford Evos is breathtaking. The Evos is full of cutting-edge software and connects the driver to his or her “personal cloud.” Like some sort of KITT (the talking car from TV’s Knight Rider) made real, the car learns about your life, where you live and work, and then adjusts performance on an ongoing basis to better accommodate and serve thee. The lithium-ion battery has a 500mile range when charged. The seat monitors your cardiac activity while you drive, and the Evos watches the road and reads the position of other cars while in traffic, acting as its own co-pilot. Thomas Frey’s pick, holding out for future drones: Ford jumped on

the cloud-computing bandwagon with the new Evos concept car. But behind the flashy surfaces, chrome wheels, and tech trimming lies some far bigger opportunities. The next revolution in transporta•

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Visions

tion will be self-driving cars, and the adoption of this technology will change virtually everything in the field of transportation and urban planning. Google’s self-driving-car project has already racked up more than 200,000 driverless miles on highways. Before we have driverless passenger cars sold in any sizable quantities, we will see ground-based delivery drones hauling point-topoint cargo. Better to practice without passengers onboard to perfect the technology. Railroads and trucking companies should be worried, as this will displace much of their industry. Genome Sequencing Tucker’s pick, the Life Technologies Ion Proton™ Sequencer: This

device can read your genome (all 3 billion base pairs) in one day for $1,000, according to Mel Davey, software group leader for Ion East. Human genome sequencing isn’t new, but that time frame and price point is. “A genome sequence for $1,000 was a pipe-dream just a few years ago,” said Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at the Baylor College of Medicine (in a press release on the Life Technologies Web site). “A $1,000 genome in less than one day was not even on the radar, but will transform the clinical applications of sequencing.” The Ion Proton looks toward a very near future where a lot more people will be able to have the nuances of their genomes revealed, which further portends a health boom for consumers. More importantly, the amount of available information on genetics and congenital illness is about to increase exponentially, as more people get their genome read and thus contribute to the knowledge base on genetic disorders. That will further accelerate the development of new and perhaps genetically specific cures. That’s why this was my favorite invention at CES this year. In the

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The Ion Proton can read your genome in one day for $1,000.

next two decades, most of us won’t remember the gadgets and iPhone accessories that Samsung or Nokia tried to push on us in 2012. But if the human race is living a lot longer and healthier, it may be because of this device. Frey’s pick, Qualcomm Tricorder

(not present): On the first day of CES, the X Prize Foundation announced the Qualcomm Tricorder challenge to build a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 different diseases. The $10 million prize will go to the first person that can create a Star Trek-like medical tricorder. Sequencing is the first step. Once we have this information, can the StarTrek tricorder be far off?

and even Microsoft won’t be attending next year. Big companies are finding the expo less valuable than they did in the past. But there are still a lot of small companies here doing great and innovative work, much of it far more relevant to the future. Frey: After spending the past three days scouring the showroom floors at CES, watching people become overwhelmed by what they saw, I tended to be more underwhelmed by what I didn’t see. ❑

Final Thoughts Tucker: The products that most impressed me were the ones that epitomize the biggest technology trend of the next 10 years—devices that make use of the data you provide, even when you don’t know you’re providing data. A lot of the publicity about CES this year focused on the fact that Apple would not be debuting any new products, www.wfs.org

Tucker

Frey

About the Authors Patrick Tucker is deputy editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society. Thomas Frey is THE FUTURIST’s contributing editor for Innovation. He is the senior futurist and executive director of the DaVinci Institute, www.davinciinstitute.com.

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

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

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

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

• A subscription to World Future Review, the Society’s professional journal. An international editorial board referees all articles for this unique publication, which covers a wide range of futures-relevant subjects. • Complimentary registration for Professional Members’ Forums. (Join now to qualify for the 2012 Forum in Toronto.) • All benefits of regular membership in the World Future Society, including a subscription to THE FUTURIST, the Society’s bimonthly magazine on the future; discounts on books and other products; the Society’s yearly “Outlook” report of selected forecasts from THE FUTURIST; and a subscription to Futurist Update, a monthly e-mail newsletter. Professional Membership is $295 per year. A special rate of $195 per year is available for individuals belonging to educational or nonprofit organizations. Join online at www.wfs.org/professional or call 1-800-989-8274 weekdays (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time).

The Future of the Commercial Sex Industry

By Emily Empel As new technologies impact the products and services of the sex industry, other businesses will find new opportunities in the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oldest professions.

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y interest in the commercial sex industry began while choosing a theme for the “World Futures” course I was taking in 2011 at the University of Houston. I stumbled on a Wired article, “How Tech Tools Transformed NY’s Sex Trade,” by Sudhir Venkatesh, who presented a fresh perspective on the sex industry. His findings were fascinating. For instance, the most common investment of a New York City sex worker—after breast augmentation, dying her hair blonde, or befriending the hotel concierge—is buying a BlackBerry. Sex workers who own BlackBerrys are perceived as more professional and less likely to have sexually transmitted diseases. Additionally, the far reach of social media has changed the way prostitutes solicit business. In 2003, social media were in their infancy, and there was no such thing as Facebook; by 2008, prostitutes acquired as much as 25% of their clients from this channel. Technology transformed New York City sex work from an on-the-streets business to an online business that provides a safer, higher-paying, and more stable work environment for sex workers, according to Venkatesh. This shift in work practices in turn has lowered crime in the city. But instead of focusing on prostitution in the United States, I decided to expand my research to forecast the commercial sex industry more broadly. My definition of the “global sex industry” includes services and goods on a worldwide scale. Sex services include any offering that is contact-based, such as prostitution, massage parlors, or lap dancing. Sexual goods are mainly made up of the pornography and the sex toy market sectors. (And note, we are excluding from these definitions the billiondollar online dating industry.) In truth, authoritative figures about the sex industry are difficult to obtain, simply because much of the industry is underground, and the data is dispersed and not necessarily compiled by impartial parties. Most existOpposite page: In Bangkok’s red light district, Thai girls entice a Western tourist. © FOTORAV / ISTOCKPHOTO

ing research on commercial sex observes the industry from either an empowerment or an oppression para digm model, both of which have an element of advocacy. My research approach was to try to be as objective as possible. I merely hope to encourage futurists to take the subject seriously. The commercial sex industry remains an enigma within the developed world. Despite its pervasiveness, it is considered by many to be a “deviant enterprise.” According to a 2008 survey of more than 1,000 individuals in England, two-thirds of the population believes that paying for sex exploits women. At the same time, an estimated 80% of city workers in the United Kingdom take their clients to strip clubs annually as part of work entertainment. Multiple surveys conservatively estimate that 10%–15% of men in the developed world pay for sex. In Asia, the number of men paying for sex is closer to 40%. A reasonable conclusion to make based on these figures is that the consumption of sex services in Asia is more culturally accepted than in the United States. While the United States is typically considered the center of the global sex industry, sex workers in Asia contribute significantly to both employment and economic growth of their countries. In 1994, the International Labor Organization reported that the sex industry accounted for 2%–14% of GDP in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Additional studies report that sex workers add value to the development of their larger communities by financing certain infrastructure development projects. In order to understand how sex work may look in the future, the remainder of this article will focus on three trends that in my opinion will drive the commercial sex industry toward 2030. Trend 1: Client Preferences Are Dependent on Worker Region Male clients are seeking different sexual experiences in the developed versus developing world. In the United States, demand for the “girlfriend experience” is thriving. In other words, clients want more than sex from their sex workers. Supplewww.wfs.org

mental sexual experiences can create the perception of “love and affection.” Writer/blogger Jon Millward recently published an infographic, “Dirty Words: A Probing Analysis of 5000 Call Girl Reviews.” Millward derived his data set from UK sex worker advertisements and subsequent ratings (like Yelp ratings for sex workers). The keywords that he identified are almost indistinguishable from those listed on an online dating profile. According to 5,000 escort reviews, Millward found that clients “care most about the location being clean, discreet and with safe parking.” He also found that “oral-without- protection” still ranked highest out of services requested, but the “girlfriend experience” ranked above the “pornstar experience” and other specific requests. Additionally, “Johns” (i.e., men who pay for sex) often show affection toward their sex workers. As of 2010, indoor sex workers within prostitution were more likely to be caressed, kissed, and to receive mutual pleasure from a client. On the other hand, men engaging in the Southeast Asian sex tourism industry travel from abroad for sex in order to leave Western “female empowerment” behind. Global sex tourism represents the darker facet of sex work fueled by Westernized nations. Globally, women willing to perform unprotected sex are often more highly compensated. Sex workers who choose to use protection typically earn approximately 79% less than their counterparts. According to the Commission on AIDS in Asia, “Men who buy sex are the single-most powerful driving force in Asia’s HIV epidemics.” In Asia, there are seven times as many clients as there are workers. Yet, while a gap remains over the experience of sex workers and consumers in the developing and developed worlds, both regions are experiencing increasing value from the commercial sex industry. Trend 2: Legitimate Organizations Realize the Economic Value of the Sex Industry From an economic standpoint, a greater number of venture capital •

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firms and legitimate businesses like the Bank of Ireland, DirectTV, and Ackrell Capital are investing within the pornography industry. Even PETA, known for its racy “I’d Rather be Naked than Wear Fur” advertisements, recently announced plans to launch an .xxx site promoting animal rights through pornography. Feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys notes that the economic benefits of sex work also extend to individuals or companies not explicitly participating in the industry, such as “hotels and airlines, taxi drivers, bouncers, valets, clothing/makeup businesses, and alcohol companies.” In 2003, lobbyist Bill Lyon noted, “The porn industry employs an excess of 12,000 people in California … [and] pays over $36 million in taxes every year.” Though sex work is often dismissed in the eyes of the average person, the business sector is starting to give it serious consideration based on its potential to increase revenue. Economic value is evident in more than just private-sector businesses in the developing world. Philippine tourism benefits from the 40% of

male tourists who visit the country each year for sex. Countries in the developing world are building their infrastructures from revenue realized from sex work. For example, the number of phone sex calls in San Tome received from the United States increased from 4,300 in 1991 to 360,000 in 1993—an increase of more than 8,000%. The island taxed and used that revenue to build a new telecommunications system. Advocates for the legitimacy of sex work note that there are many positive ways countries can use the monetary resources to establish a higher standard of living for their constituents. Trend 3: Technologies Expand the Definition and Influence of Commercial Sex Sex-based services and products have become more private pursuits since the popularization of the Internet. More consumers are able to participate in the industry from the comfort of their own homes. Individuals engage with sex-based technologies in other private environments,

too. According to the Adult Video Association, 55% of films rented in hotels are pornography titles. At the same time, sales and rentals of X-rated DVDs decreased by 15% in 2006 as a result of cost-free pornography alternatives available through other media channels such as the Internet. Increasing competition has forced more pornography companies to explore alternative solutions in order to gain back lost revenue and market share. Technological innovations are also enhancing the experience of remote sex, robotic sex, and virtual sex worlds. In Japan, the Love Plus handheld device, which is similar to a Gameboy, is changing the definition of what constitutes a relationship. Some men are using these devices and traveling to Atami, Japan—a town trained to accommodate these visitors as if they were two real lovers—for lover-moons. Restaurants serve mini-cakes for the “female” avatar guests, and each hotel room has a jumbo screen with a superimposed image of these female avatars near the bed. Additionally, advancements in

UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME; UN-GIFT

The Darker Side of the Sex Industry: Slavery and Sex Trafficking First, the good news: Slavery is illegal throughout the world, and no state authorizes human trafficking of any kind. Just a decade ago, only a third of the countries studied by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had legislation against human trafficking, but by 2008, 80% did, thanks to passage of the UN Protocol against Trafficking in Persons. The bad news is that human traf38

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ficking is still a growing illicit business, second only to drug trafficking, and the vast majority of this activity involves forced prostitution of women and children. Unlike slavery’s position in nineteenth-century economies and society—when individuals were kidnapped, exported to foreign lands, and bought and sold in open markets—human trafficking today is www.wfs.org

clandestine, observes Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker. Moreover, modern slavery is rarely a permanent condition, unlike institutionalized slavery that created a permanent and inheritable subclass, he writes in The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, 2011). Because human trafficking is so clandestine, reliable data is difficult to come by, especially from countries

teledildonics allow virtual sex experiences to feel real, and virtual sex worlds create a sex environment that is, at least in theory, risk-free. Baseline Scenario If these trends continue, it is probable that 2030 will encapsulate a world in which sex work is pervasive in both the developed and the developing worlds. Sex workers in the United States and Europe will require their customers to provide mutual pleasure and other nonmonetary benefits to complement traditional payment, such as love and affection. In the developed world, the “girlfriend experience” will be complemented by the “boyfriend experience” for male clients. Smart technologies will help sex workers create safer, more profitable work environments. The growth of “me” marketing will allow individual workers to take ownership over their sex industry name and brand. At the same time, investments within technology will force sex workers to provide a type

of sexual intimacy that cannot be replicated by technology tools. Sex workers will have to not only develop new on-the-job skills, but also expand their social sensibilities and unique service offerings. Expect sex workers to engage in current retailing trends like collective discounts, online reviews, and strategic partnerships. By 2030, the emergence of new technologies will create new opportunities within the commercial sex industry, and may even expand sexual experiences beyond current standards. Technological innovations will encourage societal questions such as, “What is a relationship?” or “What constitutes cheating?” The legal system will continue to define what society considers to be appropriate virtual and real-life sexual behavior. Individuals may believe they are entering a virtual interaction independent of judgment from the “real” or physical world, but engaging within this space will continue to hold social stigma. “Virtual sex lives” will cater to all sexual preferences and will feature goods and ser-

vice add-ons to enhance each experience. There will be increased partnerships between virtual and real businesses, more across-border entities, and increased cooperation among commercial sex work sectors. The online space will create a greater demand for sex-based products and services, rather than eliminate the more traditional commercial sex sectors. As more mainstream companies invest within the commercial sex industry, the public face of sex work will shift from one that is nebulous and dark to one that portrays sex workers as real people. By 2030, legitimate investment will not only include pornography, but also expand into other profitable sectors, such as phone sex and some forms of prostitution. Mainstream funding will create an environment that is less dominated by criminal syndicates and more focused on producing legitimate sex work. Companies will become involved in product placement within pornography or the sponsorship of sex workers. Business enterprises will acknowledge that commercial

Commercial sexual exploitation happens in plain sight, such as in an open marketplace, as depicted in this public service video created by the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (www.ungift.org). The ad urges everyone to keep their eyes open to human trafficking.

where the practice is economically beneficial. UNODC estimates that total international human trafficking is a $32-billion-per-year business, and that 79% of this activity comprises sexual exploitation. And as many as 2 million children a year are victims of commercial sexual exploitation, according to the U.S. State Department. —Cynthia G. Wagner

Resources on Sex Trafficking International Labour Organization (ILO), www.ilo.org The Polaris Project, National Human Trafficking Resource Center, www.polarisproject. org/human-trafficking/overview Trafficking in Persons Report 24 (2008), Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State, www.state.gov/documents/organization/105501.pdf United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, www.unodc.org United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, www.ungift.org U.S. Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood, www.projectsafechildhood.gov

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Sex, Technology, and Machine Morality Apparently, not even the world’s oldest profession is immune from potential technological obsolescence. The commercial sex industry in Asia has already seen many human prostitutes replaced with “sex dolls” as an affordable and reliable alternative—and a way around anti-prostitution laws. As the dolls-for-hire industry embraces robotics, ethical questions will increasingly emerge, warns Intelligent Toys Ltd. CEO David Levy. For instance, a proliferation of sexbots could put human sex workers out of business, many of whom have no other viable means of supporting themselves. Other ethical questions likely to arise include whether it’s “right” for people to fall in love with (or even marry) their robot partners and whether future sexbots with artificial consciousness should be entitled to legal rights. Society’s experience with multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds such as Second Life has shown that the human impulse for sexual experiences outside of committed relationships can strain such relationships in the real world. On the other hand, a robotic sex partner that meets an individual’s excessive demands could help reduce sexual burdens on one’s human partner, Levy suggests. In some ways, a robotic lover may come to be viewed no differently from other service-oriented robots, such as caregivers for the elderly or playmates for children, says philosopher Blay Whitby of the University of Sussex. “Building caring systems of all sorts has great potential benefits,” says Whitby. “Prohibition would, on balance, be morally wrong. What is morally right is building and employing such systems in an ethical manner.” Sources: “The Ethics of Robot Prostitutes” by David Levy; “Do You Want a Robot Lover? The Ethics of Caring Technologies” by Blay Whitby, in Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics edited by Patrick Lin, Keith Abney, and George A. Bekey. MIT Press. 2012. Web site www.mit.edu.

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sex is an untapped opportunity for global brands to capture the attention of consumers to spur growth. Customers who prefer uninhibited, unprotected sex will continue to travel in order to fulfill their desires. As a result, some governments, especially those concentrated in Southeast Asia, will feel increased global pressure to prevent the spread of disease by implementing safe-sex laws and then imposing fines for noncompliance. The International Labor Organization may ultimately legitimize sex work in Asia. Sex worker health will become a priority in order to combat the HIV epidemic. Foreign governments will face a growing conundrum as the mistreatment of women (as judged by Western standards) increases, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases continues—a counterforce to the sex industry’s undeniable impact on development. Closing Thoughts Whether you approve or disapprove of the moral aspects of commercial sex work, or are simply indifferent, this fringe industry can hardly be discounted in the future. As investment firms and other organ i z a t i o n s f u n d m o re c o m p l e x research studies, there will be a subsequent call to account for the commercial sex industry across intersecting domains. Sociologist Laura María Agustin, author of Sex at the Margins (Zed Books, 2007), advocates for researchers to consider the unique experiences surrounding sex work in order to promote a more accurate understanding of how this industry affects global issues. Systematic research, coupled with an increased interest in commercial sex, will make sex work considerations more relevant within futures. ❑ About the Author Emily Empel is a trend spotter, marketing disciple, and futurist. This article draws from her presentation at WorldFuture 2011. Learn more about her interest areas by following her on Twitter, @localrat, or visiting her blog, www.localrat.com.

A Special Message from the President of the World Future Society

Because the Future Matters… Dear Reader,

The World Future Society Needs You ... because the more complex that the future becomes, the more minds we need at work: • scanning the horizon, • scouting the opportunities and risks ahead, • envisioning inspiring possibilities, • deliberating and debating alternative scenarios, and • leading the teams that will build better futures not just for ourselves, but also for the generations to come. For nearly half a century, members of the World Future Society have supported the publications, resources, research, and networking opportunities that have helped develop the field of futures studies. Over the years, we have expanded the foresight capabilities of leaders in government, business, academia, and civil society; enabled people from all walks of life to come to terms with rapidly accelerating change and create better futures for their families and businesses; and promoted the more specialized work performed by professional futurists. As we look to our own future, the Society is now faced with the challenge of expanding its mission to more people via new media ventures and education initiatives. Our goals include: • Building a better Web community for members, with easier access to futures materials and connections to colleagues around the world. • Creating a dynamic network of futurist groups at the local level, enabling communities, villages, schools, and organizations to collectively envision and build sustainable futures. • Developing a meta-curriculum of futures studies that enables foresight to be incorporated into all classroom studies and learning activities. • Cultivating young futurists by providing resources, networking opportunities, and other support through the Global Youth Foresight program. • Improving the training and education of both professional futurists and those who need to incorporate futuring methodologies in their own professional activities or personal pursuits. But our goals cannot be met without your support, and membership dues alone cannot sustain the future we hope to achieve.

8 Ways You Can Help the World Future Society

1. Make a generous, tax-deductible donation to the Society. Donors are gratefully acknowledged in THE FUTURIST each year, and those who donate student scholarships for the conference are also acknowledged in the conference program. Donate online at www.wfs.org/support 2. Volunteer your expertise in fund-raising, grant-writing, sponsorship sales, and partnership program development. Contact me, Tim Mack, at tmack@wfs.org or 301-656-8274. 3. Renew your membership—NOW! Not a member? Join now, for just $79 a year. Learn more here: www.wfs.org/renew 4. Consider giving gift memberships to all your friends, family, neighbors, clients, colleagues, mentors, and mentees. The first gift is $79, and the rest are just $65 each: www.wfs.org/gifts 5. Consider giving gift student memberships, just $20 a year each for fulltime students under age 25. 6. Become an Institutional Member, enabling your organization to receive all publications produced by the Society and special assistance in finding resources and making connections tailored to meet your needs. Learn more at www.wfs.org/benefits 7. Become a Professional Member, entitling you to a subscription to World Future Review and complimentary registration for the annual Professional Members’ Forum, in addition to all the other benefits of Society membership. Learn more at www.wfs.org/professional 8. Register for WorldFuture 2012, to be held July 27-29 in Toronto, ON, Canada. There is no better place to express your own ideas and pick up new ones. And there are many other ways that you can help spread the word about the World Future Society and its mission, resources, and activities: • Sign up to receive Futurist Update, the World Future Society’s free monthly e-mail newsletter, and share it with your own network of co-workers, friends, family, or clients: www.wfs.org/content/futurist-update • Follow the Society on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social- networking venues. • Join a local group of futurists to participate in book discussions, lectures, field trips, and other activities. Learn more about futurist groups, in both the real and virtual worlds, at www.wfs.org/chapters By taking action now, you will help the Society to sustain the services we have, develop new and useful services and products, promote educational efforts, and support the work of practicing futurists. With a general public educated to the benefits of futures studies, the field can only grow stronger—more people and organizations will recognize the critical need for foresight, because the future matters. Thank you for your support—now and in the future! Take care,

Tim Mack President tmack@wfs.org

Anticipating an “Anything Goes” World of Online Porn Increased exposure to more-intensive pornographic imagery and content online will make future generations less sensitive to its effects.

By Roger Howard

The Internet has become synonymous not only with the diffusion of information and the exchange of ideas, but also with the arousal of darker, more primeval human instincts. The Web is saturated by pornography, catering to every conceivable personal taste, attracting millions of worldwide followers, and generating billions of dollars in

revenues for their sponsors. Such images are easily accessible and immediately available at the click of a mouse and in the privacy of one’s own home. Such a powerful, pervasive, fastgrowing, and highly addictive phenomenon is already having enormous repercussions on every level. Research reported in Psychology To-

day has shown that it could be creating a new generation of young men who are so desensitized by extreme online images that they are wholly unexcited by ordinary sexual encounters. On a somewhat different level, allegations have also been made that Internet porn addiction has played a part in causing the current economic

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collapse: In 2010, The Atlantic reported that senior officials at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were busy accessing pornographic sites rather than monitoring the financial system prior to the collapse of leading banks. The influence of Internet porn is also seeping into our everyday world in all sorts of others way, changing the images that are used in advertising, the references made in conversation, and pushing all pop culture further t oward a “pornographic” level of imagery. In the years ahead, Internet porn will be even more influential than at present, bringing with it a number of social dangers that need to be recognized if they are to be avoided. Why Internet Porn Will Become More Pervasive One reason why Internet pornography is likely to become ever more pervasive in the future is that Internet usage in general is becoming heavier. More and more people across the world are either going online for the first time as basic, often second-hand, computers become more readily available and their prices fall, or else are using the Internet for a wider range of purposes, such as shopping, than ever before. Correspondingly, their exposure to Internet pornography increases in proportion to the time they spend online. In technical terms, the Internet is still also in its relative infancy and will become readily available on a much wider range of devices, such as mobile phones. In its next generation of development, the Internet could make its way onto a wider range of instruments, all of which will offer viewers far sharper images, a much quicker connection, and a more reliable service than at present. The introduction of 3-D images would be one such development, and what Aldous Huxley termed, in the Brave New World, “the feelies”—when the audience physically experiences some of the sensations depicted in the images—are not unthinkable. Finally, and more controversially, the boundaries of what is and is not

deemed to be acceptable are constantly shifting as people become accustomed to what surrounds them. Today, most of us have become used to images and language that would have been shocking even twenty years ago; in the same way, future generations will become exposed to images that are, by contemporary standards, beyond the limits of decency. From this premise it follows that, in the years ahead, there will be even more pornographic images than at present, even if some of those images elicit not outrage, as they would at present, but just mild disapproval. Perhaps they will not even be noticed at all. So the influence of Internet pornography is likely to be much more profound on every level than has been widely recognized. It will continue to influence people for the same reason that advertising influences people: Human nature is highly susceptible to the power of images and messages, even if some individuals are more susceptible than others. Appealing to deep instincts in human nature, the influence of Internet porn will continue to be particularly profound and be felt worldwide. And generating such vast incomes for governments, businessmen, and shareholders, it will also be an unstoppable force, even if the technological means do ever exist to effectively curb it. Accentuating the Gender Divide One consequence of the pervasive influence of Internet pornography will be to accentuate the gender divide between men and women. Although there are women who look regularly at such images, the overwhelming majority of followers are men, of all ages, background, and personality types. According to a study led by Brigham Young University family life scholar Jason S. C arroll, 87% of young men report using pornography, compared with 31% of young women. In addition, women who do regularly look at Internet porn are less likely to be drawn to more extreme varieties. On the premise that people’s behavior is influenced by the images they see, like those used in advertiswww.wfs.org

ing, it follows that men are likely to be drawn toward “varied” sexual practices that they have viewed online, while women maintain more “mainstream“ tastes. One consequence of this divide could be a rise in rates of divorce and separation, as women abandon partners whose sexual interests they feel unable to satisfy, or as men look further afield—to prostitutes or to online communities—to find compatible partners. The Internet has already been blamed for a rise in divorce as people search social networking sites to contact former partners (or find new ones), and this destructive trend is likely to continue. Conversely, there may be an increase in the number of heterosexual women cohabiting (platonically) with other h e t e ro s e x u a l w o m e n , o r w i t h homosexual men, as the habits of increasing numbers of heterosexual men become, in the eyes of these women, threatening and disturbing. Widening the gender divide will also have political repercussions in countries where women’s rights are repressed. If women have limited, or perhaps nonexistent, legal rights to escape relationships that are in some way abusive, then the influence of Internet porn on male sexual behavior could have a number of consequences. One is that more women will flee those relationships and take refuge, although that is not an option if they do not have the means to do so. But another possibility is that the victims will find ways of putting pressure on the cultural and legal norms that restrict their freedom. The most obvious example is the contemporary Islamic world, such as in Pakistan, where women currently have limited rights. In 2002, Mukhtar Mai, a young Pakistani woman who was gang-raped, fought back by testifying against her attackers, becoming a leading advocate of women’s rights, and founding a refuge for vulnerable women. The case has triggered a huge debate within Pakistan about women’s rights, and in 2006 prompted the lower house of Parliament to moderate rape laws that were heavily weighted against victims. As the influence of Internet porn becomes more pervasive, such controversies are likely to become •

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SCREEN CAPTURES: “KNOW WHERE THEY GO” PSA, PROJECT SAFE CHILDHOOD, USDOJ

Internet pornography is an adult world that is often easily available to children. The good news is that the percentage of youth experiencing unwanted exposure to online pornography declined from 34% in 2005 to 23% in 2010, according to a new study from the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center.

more common, not only within particular countries but beyond: The Mai case attracted huge international publicity and criticism of Pakistan, and President Musharraf tried to keep the case quiet because he did not “want to project a bad image of Pakistan.” Eroding the Distinction between “Man” and “Beast” While the increasing influence of Internet porn will accentuate the gulf between the two genders, it will erode other fundamental differences, notably the distinction between “man” and “beast.” This will necessarily have far-reaching implications for everyone. Porn erodes this distinction because it portrays humankind in its most primitive, animal-like condition, one in which copulation is removed from the wider context of emotions and responsibilities that have evolved over time and upon which civilization depends. In the animal kingdom, sexual instincts are simply satisfied by creatures that are hardly in a position to consider the possible consequences of their action or to gauge each others’ feelings or best interests. By contrast, in a state of human civilization, these instincts have been traditionally placed within a theoretical context of “consent” and “relationships,” in which 44

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“responsibility,” “commitment,” or, in most societies, “marriage” stand at the very center. But the animalization of humankind will inevitably have consequences that stretch well beyond the screens upon which we view Internet porn. Not only will those who participate in online action be labeled with such terms, but those labels will shape how we see each other. If each of us increasingly sees others more as “animal” than “human,” then it follows that our mutual respect is similarly eroded. Human well-being is traditionally protected by a framework of morals and manners that simply does not protect animals—other than sacred animals—and human life is sacred in a way that animal life is not. It is no accident that, when great atrocities have been committed, the perpetrators have never tired of degrading their victims, robbing them of their dignity, and undermining any respect that their persecutors might otherwise have for them. The most obvious example is of course Adolf Hitler, who infamously portrayed the Slavs as Untermensch— “inferior people” or “subhuman.” “Are Jews not worse than animals?” concentration camp guards would ask new recruits when they arrived at Auschwitz. Other perpetrators of mass killings have carried out comparable dehumanization of their www.wfs.org

own enemies, whether defined by class, religious beliefs, or other criteria: Stalin, for example, sought to eliminate the Kulaks and other “state enemies” on the grounds that they were merely “vermin.” It follows that, as the distinction between “man” and “beast” becomes increasingly blurred, crime levels will inevitably rise. And as people increasingly treat each other “like animals,” so, too, will the severity and brutality of those crimes. Individual women and children are the most obvious victims, but killings on every scale and of every type of victim are likely to become more common when our mutual respect is eroded. Purging Feelings of Guilt In the coming years, Internet porn will also continue to arouse feelings of guilt among some or even most of those who experience it. When it does so, there is a real possibility that some people could try to purge their feelings of guilt in a way that potentially leads to persecution and culminates in violence and bloodshed. The relationship between porn and guilt is a problematic one, because in some cultures and for some individuals, there is nothing remotely shameful about any pornography—even varieties that are, by contemporary standards, quite ex-

treme. This is true, for example, in places like the Netherlands and among younger age groups who reportedly see nothing wrong with such a practice. But it is also true that a significant number of consumers will be affected by feelings of guilt, even if they are perhaps unaware of them. This may be because many viewers progressively graduate from relatively moderate images to those that are increasingly extreme, finding that they have become immune to those they started with. This means that the Internet will still retain an indefinite power to shock and thrill, even if the senses of many viewers do become progressively and proportionately cauterized. As a result, just as many future viewers will still be as susceptible as their contemporaries to feelings of guilt about what they have seen. Another reason is that the religious framework within which many of those individuals exist is likely to retain its grip on public ideas and attitudes long into the future. In many societies, traditional religious teaching is likely to retain its strong disapproval of Internet porn, making its followers and addicts feel guilty about their actions. This is true not just of the Christian influence in the West, but also of the Islamic world. While some Christian countries have much more liberal attitudes than others to pornography in particular, and to sex in general— the Netherlands is in this sense very different from Britain—this underlying framework will still be strong enough to induce feelings of guilt in some people. Feelings of guilt, however, can often be a dangerous thing. Sometimes they can push people into fits of moralistic behavior, as they seek to clear their conscience by indulging in, for example, sudden acts of religiosity, or generosity toward charitable causes. If such actions are taken too far—for example, if they are exploited by potential beneficiaries— then they can be extremely damaging to those who undertake them. But there are other times when a guilty conscience poses dangers toward others. This is when a “moral pecking or-

der” eventuates. When one person feels guilty about something he or she has done, then it makes them feel less guilty to look down at someone else who they deem to be morally beneath them. This is why, in prisons, sex offenders in general and child abusers in particular are typically sectioned off for their own safety from their fellow inmates, who exculpate themselves by victimizing others. By the same simple logic, it was the harlots of London who came into the streets to dance with joy and jeer at Oscar Wilde after his conviction in 1895 for gross indecency with another man. It is also significant that a staunchly Protestant government minister in Northern Ireland, 60-year old Iris Robinson, made strongly homophobic remarks at the same time that she was involved in an extramarital affair with a 19-year-old man. It is just such a moral pecking order that will easily arise in the years ahead as Internet porn becomes more prevalent. It is likely that there will be periodic outbursts of quasimoralistic behavior that serve to alleviate guilty consciences, as well as witch hunts against vulnerable minorities. A parallel could be drawn with the public hysteria, culminating in violence, against pedophiles that broke out on both sides of the Atlantic in the course of 2000: In August of that year, mobs targeted the homes of individuals—some quite innocent—who were deemed to be “pedophiles.” It is conceivable that such outbursts of violence and hysteria could coexist, or alternate, with periods of religious fervor, comparable to the Evangelical Revival of the mid-nineteenth century, as people find other ways of clearing their guilty consciences. Internet Pornography And Its Impacts There is of course a huge irony about the impact of Internet porn. The Internet is a triumph of supreme human rationality, a medium of astonishing technical sophistication that is the creation of human ingenuity and intelligence. But at the same time, it is unleashing forces that are entirely irrational and emotive, bewww.wfs.org

cause so much of its content is appealing not to mankind’s thinking power but only to our deepest and darker instincts. However, there is nothing inevi table about any of the possible eventualities that Internet pornography can bring about in the decades ahead. It is possible that we can avoid the animalization of our innate nature, and of the world around us, if we are more aware of some of the dangers that Internet pornography poses. For example, even a modest amount of self-regulation on the part of Internet users might play some part in curbing these dangers. At the very least, it is more important than ever, given such potential dangers, that extensive research is undertaken into the effects that Internet images can have on human behavior. At the moment, many experts deny that there is any such link at all, even though there is ample testimony—not least from the huge sums of money invested by corporate sponsors—in the power of advertising. This needs much more research, and if we are better informed about just how strongly porn can influence us, then we may be better prepared to consider the dangers it brings and to work out how we can meet them. At the very least, it is necessary to challenge the frequently proffered notion that anything each one of us views on the Internet, whether pornographic or not, is just a private concern that has no bearing on anyone else. The power of the Internet has already eroded any distinction between private and public boundaries, and in the future will do so even more. ❑ About the Author Roger Howard is the author of four books on contemporary affairs, including The Arctic Gold Rush: The New Race for Tomorrow’s Natural Resources (Continuum, 2009). He is also a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, and numerous other publications. His previous article for THE FUTURIST was “The Politics of Climate Change,” November-December 2009. E‑mail howard1966@btinternet.com.

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By Michel Godet Reflections on the Field and Differences between Foresight and La Prospective

To Predict or to Build the Future? A pioneer from the French school of la prospective discusses the development of futures-studies methodologies and the imperative of making methods accessible to all.

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prospective, similar to the concept of “strategic foresight,” is the discipline devoted to shedding light on action in the present by using the power of possible and desirable futures. The father of the discipline in France, industrialist and statesman Gaston Berger (1896-1960), used a highly appropriate image: The faster you drive, the farther ahead your headlights should shine. La prospective acts like a spotlight designed not to forecast the future but to illuminate actions to take now, in the present. It really focuses on the now first. Berger said that the attitude in la prospective relies upon five prin ciples: see wide, see far, see deeply, think of the human factor, and take risks. To these principles, let me add my twist, three new ambitions: First, “see differently,” which means think outside the box, beware of clichés, and become aware of collective mirages. Second, “see together,” which is important now because in Berger’s day the idea was to enlighten the “prince” or decision maker. Even if there was collegiality among intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen who occasionally exchanged ideas, the vision was rather aristocratic. Futures exercises were not participatory with the meaning of integrating the actors, or stakeholders. And third, “have rigor for an intellectual non-discipline.” There are five conditions for rigor: pertinence, consistency/coherence, plausibility, importance, and transparency. Of course, to be a prospectivist (or futurist), you have to be a bit cheeky, nonconformist, and multidisciplinary, but you need methods, too, that help reduce the collective inconsistencies. These methods have to be both rigorous and simple enough to be appropriated—that is, used by as many others as possible. Throughout my career, the easiest thing was to make complicated methods, like scenario probabilization, whereas the hardest thing was to create simple methods that everyone could understand, e.g., prospective workshops.

Methods and Experience For some, including Berger himself, la prospective could be summed up in an attitude; for others, it absolutely required methods. Many people reject methods because they don’t understand them. Yet it is possible to show them the advantages of the methods—for example, their use in revealing variables that would not have been noticed otherwise. In 1972, during a nuclear energy study mandated by the French Atomic Energy Commission, the group took into account 51 variables. The structural analysis highlighted the importance of the variables of “sensitivity to external effects” and “site problems for the locations of plants.” This raised the issue of the importance of social acceptability in d e v e l o p i n g n u c l e a r e n e rg y. I t showed the problems that the EDF (French Hydro-electric Corporation) would actually have in trying to set up a nuclear plant in the municipality of Plogoff, where local protests (1978-1981) led to the project being canceled. Another challenge is to get people to think about the unthinkable. Basically, people tend not to hear what disturbs them. In other words, everything that pleases us is correct and what bothers us is wrong. In 1990-1991, a futures-thinking exercise for the French iron and steel sector in 2005 yielded six pertinent and consistent scenarios. The use of the Prob-Expert software that we developed showed that these six scenarios covered only 40% of the field of probable futures and actually revealed three new, far more probable scenarios that the experts had not even identified because those three went against conventional thinking. This case shows the advantage of “probabilistic interaction methods,” which take into account the interaction between events and verify whether the scenarios studied cover a reasonable part of the field of probable futures. Even though I introduced methods into the field of futures studies, I think that scenarios are overdone. Making scenarios is fine, but so what? Once a scenario is drafted, what do we do to take action, to www.wfs.org

make whatever we want to happen or not to happen? We should really be turning them into a project-based approach. The tools should be used appropriately. Methods are necessary, but to paraphrase the late French intellectual and surrealist André Breton, we must use all the levers; in other words, rigor, imagination, rational knowledge, emotional knowledge, left and right brain. I also believe that, if my impact has been through methods, it is probably because so few people have worked on them. I didn’t really try to develop new methods, because the existing toolbox already allows me to approach all problems. For me, the development of methods does not mean inventing new ones, but rather creating new frontiers where those methods may be disseminated and appropriated. And people have appropriated this teaching in different countries, adding their own culture each time. Without a lot of fanfare, I raised the funds to put the Prob-Expert prospective software online through the Entrepreneurs of the Future Circle. I managed to get all the tools uploaded so people can download them for free. Since 2003, the software online has been downloaded 40,000 times. I hope that my legacy to the field is that I trained people and “infected” many with the healthy prospective virus. I have copied the model of the Catholic Church of training foreign students who became teachers in their own countries. While there is great maturity in the field, la prospective is not a solid field in France; every year, newcomers arrive who do not know its history. All prospectivists or futurists should know a minimum amount of the history, development, and thinking of futures studies—foresight or la prospective—to avoid going back to square one. This way they can avoid some of the pitfalls.

What Is the Difference between Foresight and La Prospective? On an international level, la prospective is not a stable, uniform field at all. The same disciplines are not •

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Strategic Foresight and La Prospective: What’s the Difference? Strategic Foresight

La Prospective

Attitude and goals

Focuses more on pre-activity, prediction, and anticipation.

Focuses more on pro-activity and building the future.

Key success factor for innovation

Focuses more on technical changes. From Technological Forecasting and Social Change to emphasis on technology foresight.

Technical change is important but not essential.

Forecasting tools

Great influence of Rand Corporation in rationality (system analysis, Delphi) and of Herman Kahn (scenarios).

The same influences, plus historical and philosophical influences integrating actors and projects.

Positioning of scenarios

Central, reduced to a limited number of variables (Global Business Network).

Central with unconventional thinking, but with more variables, more rigor.

Often thinking out-of-the-box.

(Over)using morphological analysis.

Also used for storytelling, consensus, and communication.

Questionable because scenario building becomes an end in itself.

80% of innovation is low-tech (social, political, management, etc.)

Too many scenarios and not enough projects.

Final result and role of the Futurist/ Prospectivist

Client reports that feed stakeholders with knowledge-based visions.

Client reports are less important than the process involving clients as producers.

These visions are mainly produced by the futurist as an expert in the field.

The aim of futuring process is appropriation by end-users.

Futuring is used as an acceptance process.

Prospectivist is a coach who facilitates the collective production of knowledge. His or her expertise is not necessarily in the field. The prospectivist provides rigorous techniques for collective thinking and decision making. Table by Michel Godet

used in prospective research in all countries. In Great Britain, political scientists are the experts. It changes according to country, too. In the United States, practitioners have stayed close to the science of the future in the same way as there is a science of the past—history. An enormous problem today is the Anglo-American domination in the field, especially in Brussels. Obviously, we missed the chance to structure la prospective on a European scale and thus form a European community of la prospective. Several times I did try, unsuccessfully, to change things, but the European Commission in Brussels views la prospective through the prism of 48

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

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technology foresight. This type of prospective falls into the technological mirage that I have long been denouncing. We have to link fields, rather like a sociologist-demographer, who takes into account family and social factors. We do not want to have only a technological viewpoint; instead, we need to be multidisciplinary, using different levers. This always reminds me of the dream of the hammer, or the popular expression that for the hammer every problem resembles a nail. Life is not like that. The same tool does not work on every problem. In the English-speaking world, foresight, as it is usually called, often remains based on the Delphi method www.wfs.org

(consulting experts in a given field), based on technology, and with the ambition of foreseeing the future. The original sin of la prospective remains a temptation: Experts, consciously or unconsciously, want to play the part of oracle. We should remember that one meaning of foresight is actually intuition; i.e., the future is to be guessed. For us in the field, the future is to be built; in other words, a completely different approach from guessing or prophesying. The break between these approaches is significant, because the idea of a future to be created puts us initially in the situation of actors. So there is no international academy of la prospective or futures stud-

Author Michel Godet in Paris.

ies, and I doubt there ever will be. But this also means that la prospective is no longer a solitary pleasure. That’s new. Another positive step forward is how widespread the field has become. The newcomers tell the seniors that their practices are outdated because they think they need new methods; in other words, the ones that they themselves bring. The need for new methods remains to be seen. However, the trend toward using qualitative measures to understand phenomena is good. And using creativity sessions is a positive development for prospectivists/futurists. You have to put creativity in the workshops and to remember that what counts is not the final report but the process that leads to the report. A department manager at a store can create his future just as much as an executive can. Another trend in la prospective is that the issue of sustainable development has become dominant among futurists. The differences between the fields of sustainable development and futures studies have shrunk, because the goal of sustainable development is to keep the future open, to make choices in the present that are not to the detriment of future generations. In other words, thinking about humankind in a responsible manner. La prospective and sustainable development are sister concepts. Maybe the word prospective will even disappear from our vocabulary. Regardless, the idea of responsibility with respect to the long term is included in sustainable development.

What Legacy Do I Leave? Can I make a difference? And

what do I leave behind? These two key questions reflect the times and nature of futuring. Obviously we hope for positive answers. Today, more than before, I am following the political scene. It’s normal to be both a futurist and a “public intellectual,” because thinking for oneself by oneself doesn’t make much sense. Like the lookout during his watch on board the Titanic upon seeing the iceberg, my ambition is not to say “We hit an iceberg!” but to warn everyone so as to avoid collision. Good forecasts are not those that occur but those that lead to action. I feel that I am a player, too. I try to warn the leaders and citizens so that we can avoid problems. A problem well presented is already partly solved. I am sounding the alarm now on the problems of integrating increasing numbers of immigrants and stemming the demographic catastrophe on the horizon due to aging populations and rising dependency ratios in Europe. There rarely is consensus on the key or priority questions, so the objective of participatory futures exercises is to generate, through debate, more consensual priority decisions. My personal growth, which has been almost a round-trip back to square one, has meant being less interested in the future and more interested in the present, plus giving meaning to action. History constantly rewrites itself according to the needs of the present, so the ambition of la prospective is to illuminate present action in light of possible futures. La prospective is focused on the present, giving meaning to action, for action without a goal has no meaning. I also realized along the way that the goal is not everything. Going through the process all together is important. The goal is a pretext to the collective journey that creates ties among participants. The meaning of life comes through those ties. Wealth is really educated, fulfilled people in a society that has confidence plus projects: This phrase sums up my entire personal and prowww.wfs.org

fessional path, a result of the attitude of la prospective. You can see the coming together of my thoughts as a practitioner, citizen, man of action, project starter on the ground in terms of entrepreneurship and local development. Paradoxically, I also noticed that, besides accelerating change, inertia plays an important role. The greatest changes often come from inertia, a factor that has been underestimated. The world changes, but the problems remain, because they are linked to an invariable: human nature. Over time, men retain very similar drives that lead them to behave in a comparable manner in comparable situations. In short, they are predictable. As a consequence, we have to study human nature to understand phenomena. For me, la prospective has been and will always remain a passion. I tried to not only do it as a business, unlike some practitioners whom I criticize for not caring enough to pass on their know-how. The prospectivist, or futurist, commits to action, with a project, a dream. Already, the language denotes a sensitive knowledge: “dreams fertilize reality.” However, rigor and methodology are also needed. In short, both left and right brain must be activated. I pay attention to this intellectual blend. Without reason, passion is blind; without passion to fuel a project, reason leads nowhere. ❑

About the Author Michel Godet is an economist and professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where he holds the chair of Strategic Foresight. He is the founder and facilitator of the Entrepreneurs of the Future Circle, a joint program of the National Center for Entrepreneurship and the Foundation Prospective et Innovation. He is co-author, with Philippe Durance, of Strategic Foresight: For Corporate and Regional Development (UNESCO, with Entrepreneurs of the Future Circle, 2011). He is also a member of the French Academy of Technology. E‑mail: michel.godet@laprospective.fr. This article is adapted from an interview in the French online journal Grand Lyon, conducted by Cédric Polère, available at www.millenaire3.com.

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May-June 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2907 Division St., Suite 109, St. Joseph, MI 49085 Phone: 269-982-1830 Fax: 269-982-1541 E-mail: info@creatingthefuture.com Web: www.creatingthefuture.com Contact: Ed Barlow (staff: Sandy, Tammy, and Tresea) Relating influences of a changing world to industries, organizations, professions, communities. Presentations, strategic planning facilitation.

Joseph F. Coates, Consulting Futurist, Inc.

de Bono For Business

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.

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

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

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

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

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:

May-June 2012

Innovation Focus Inc. 111 E. Chestnut St., Lancaster PA 17602-2703 Phone: 717-394-2500 Web: www.innovationfocus.com Contacts: Christopher W. Miller, Ph.D.; Anne Orban, M.Ed. Innovation Focus is an internationally recognized consulting firm that brings innovation to all stages of product life cycle management and provides proven processes for deep customer understanding and meaningful innovation. Clients include: Kraft Foods, Kimberly Clark, WD-40, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Institute for Global Futures

The Greenway Group

THE FUTURIST

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.

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.”

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.

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Web: www.ipmp-bleiker.com Contacts: Annemarie Bleiker, Hans Bleiker, Jennifer Bleiker We offer a Leadership Boot-Camp for guiding complex problem-solving and decision-making efforts.

H.G. Hudson and Associates

Institute for Alternative Futures

Futurist Speaker Thomas Frey

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

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.

Institute for Participatory Management and Planning P.O. Box 1937, Monterey, CA 93942-1937 Phone: 831-373-4292 Fax: 831-373-0760 E-mail: ipmp@aol.com

www.wfs.org

KAIROS Future AB P.O. Box 804, S-10136 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: (46 8) 545 225 00 Fax: (46 8) 545 225 01 E-mail: info@kairosfuture.se Web: www.kairosfuture.se Contacts: Mats Lindgren, Anna Kiefer Values, work, technology, marketing. Methods: scenarios, studies, lectures, seminars, consulting. Public and private sectors.

Leading Futurists LLC 4420 49th St., NW, Washington, DC 20016 Phone: 202-271-0444 E-mail: jbmahaffie@starpower.net Web: www.leadingfuturists.biz Contacts: John B. Mahaffie, Jennifer Jarratt Futures consulting, workshops, scenarios, research, keynote talks to help organizations discover new opportunities and challenges. Members, Association of Professional Futurists.

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

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

Minkin Affiliates 135 Riviera Dr., #305, Los Gatos, CA 95032 Phone: 408-402-3020 E-mail: barryminkin@earthlink.net Web: minkinaffiliates.com Contact: Barry Minkin Keynote speaker, bestselling author, global management consultant, three decades linking emerging trends to consumer and market strategy.

Next Consulting 104 Timber Ridge Rd., State College, PA 16801 Phone: 814-237-2575 Fax: 814-863-4257 E-mail: g7g@psu.edu Web: nextconsulting.us

Contact: Geoffrey Godbey, Ph.D. Repositioning leisure/tourism organizations for the near future. Speeches, ideation, imagineering. Client list on request.

Jim Pinto Associates P.O. Box 131673, Carlsbad, CA 92013 Phone: 858-353-5467 E-mail: jim@jimpinto.com Web: www.JimPinto.com Contact: Jim Pinto Speaker and consultant: technology futures, industrial automation, global business trends, Internet business relationships.

Pinyon Partners LLC 140 Little Falls St., Suite 210, Falls Church, VA 22046 Phone: 703-651-0359 E-mail: pshoemaker@pinyonpartners.com Web: www.pinyonpartners.com Contacts: Peter B.G. Shoemaker; Dan Garretson, Ph.D. Quantitative and qualitative. Art and Science. However you want to characterize it, our distinctive combination of the hard-nosed and the deeply intuitive is perfectly suited for those navigating over the horizon. Expansive explorations of what’s next; engaging engagements with change; consultations, workshops, research, and talks aimed at creating future-oriented clarity, purpose, insight, and confidence. Member, Association of Professional Futurists.

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

David Pearce Snyder, Consulting Futurist The Snyder Family Enterprise, 8628 Garfield St., Bethesda, MD 20817-6704 Phone: 301-530-5807 Fax: 301-530-1028 E-mail: david@the-futurist.com Web: www.the-futurist.com Contact: Sue Snyder High-impact motivating presentations. Strategic assessments, socio-technologic forecasts/scenarios. Keynote addresses, strategic briefings, workshops, surveys.

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

SynOvation Solutions 455 Hazelwood Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 Phone: 415-298-3008 E-mail: info@synovationsolutions.com Web: www.synovationsolutions.com Contacts: Bruce L. Tow, David A. Gilliam Future-is-now resources to help you achieve key and mission-critical breakthroughs or creatively evolve your business to meet future challenges.

Synthesys Strategic Consulting Ltd. Belsize Park, London NW3 UK Phone: 44-207-449-2903 Fax: 44-870-136-5560 E-mail: www.hardintibbs.com Web: www.synthstrat.com Contact: Hardin Tibbs, CEO Synthesys specializes in using futures research to develop innovative strategies. Based in London UK, with international experience in both the public and private sectors, across many different industries. Projects include horizon scanning, strategic sense-making, scenarios, vision building, assumption testing, and strategy formulation, either as expert input or by co-production directly with leadership teams.

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

Connect!

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

van der Werff Global, Ltd. 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.

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

www.wfs.org

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

Book Review India’s Innovation Potential By Rick Docksai

India itself will strive to keep pace with its quickly modernizing economy. Two economists foresee India becoming a new global innovation center. To many global businesses, India is a good site for outsourcing basic services and operations. With time, however, India could gain a whole new reputation as a global innovation center that generates myriad new products and services of its own. London Business School professors Nirmalya Kumar and Phanish Puranam express this hope in India Inside. “The challenge is to move from ‘outsourced and made in India’ to ‘imagined and owned in India,’” the authors write. Negative stereotypes about India persist in some circles, according to the authors. Certain Western business leaders say that Indian entrepreneurs “provide services” but “don’t do innovation.” In fact, as the authors show, Indian innovation is flourishing and can continue to do so to greater and greater degrees. The number of patents that Indian developers filed in 2010 under the International Patent Cooperation Treaty topped the prior year’s number by 36.6% and beating by vast margins the worldwide average gain of 5.7%. Moreover, “escalating” numbers of Western companies, including Cisco, AstraZeneca, and G e n e r a l E l e c t r i c , a re o p e n i n g research and development centers on Indian soil. Indian innovation differs in kind from typical Western innovation, however. Western firms win acclaim 54

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

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for “visible” innovasound. And both govtion: tangible conernment officials and sumer products, such private-sector entities as iPads and the will need to devise Google search engine. better resources for Indian innovators’ funding new entrepregreatest strength is neurial ventures. “invisible innovaInfosys and other tion”: not so much Indian IT firms are new products but, stepping up to the rather, changes to the challenge and helping innovation and design to bring universities process itself. Indian and their curricula up businesses display a to speed. Some firms unique aptitude for are even founding finding ways to make their own master’s deR&D and production India Inside: The Emerging gree programs and more efficient and less Innovation Challenge to the campuses. West by Nirmalya Kumar and costly. Meanwhile, start-up Phanish Puranam. Harvard For example, Indian Business Review Press. 2012. venture-capital firms b u s i n e s s a n a l y t i c s 177 pages. $25.95. are advancing Indian start-up DenuoSource product development: patented Location AnVenture capital loans alyzer, a software tool that a busi- enabled tech start-up Zoho to deness can use to assess whether or not velop new software tools to maxito open a new store and what loca- mize office productivity, InMobi to tions would offer the biggest return devise new apps for mobile Internet on the investment. Additionally, a advertising, and both FusionCharts business can consult the software to and InfoSoft Global to develop new decide on whether to remodel or re- innovations in graphic data visuallocate existing stores. ization. With entrepreneurial innovation Each chapter of India Inside details coming of age, the decades-long not only the areas of progress taking “brain drain” of Indian university place within India, but also what graduates leaving for jobs overseas these developments mean for nonhas begun to decline. Growing rates Indian policy makers and multinaof Indian college graduates are stay- tional business leaders who plan to ing, and those who have already em- conduct business in or with India. igrated are coming back, thanks to The authors relate, for example, how contemporary India’s expanding multinational corporations can navieconomic opportunities and quality gate weaknesses in Indian intellecof life. tual-property protections and find India’s future success depends on qualified workers. three variables, however: its talent The authors do not say for sure pipeline, its intellectual property how successful India will be, but system, and the venture-capital sec- aver with certainty: “Developed” tor. First, the Indian government will countries’ current dominance over need to modernize the national creative product development is school and university systems. India over. currently has few world-class uni“The capacity for innovation per versities and few linkages between se will not distinguish the West from universities and industries. Conse- the East,” the authors write. quently, too few adults graduate The contemporary economic sucwith critically needed job skills. cess of this “BRIC country” is well The government will also have to known and has generated much assure foreign companies that intel- speculation in the global media. lectual-property rights are safe and K umar and Puranam assess the www.wfs.org

growth trends up close to help readers see what India’s modern-day economic growth is, what it is not, and what it could eventually be. India Inside is an authoritative source that any reader with a serious professional interest in India might want to consult. About the Reviewer Rick Docksai is an assistant editor of THE FUTURIST and of World Future Review.

Books

Brief

Edited by Rick Docksai Humanity Grows More Civil The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. Viking. 2011. 802 pages. $40.

Humanity is becoming more peaceful, and the proof is all around us, asserts Harvard psycholog i s t S t e v e n Pinker. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, he retraces the last few millennia of human history to show a clear evolution across the globe away from violence, war, and exploitation, and toward nonviolence, compassion, and equality. Armed clashes were endemic millennia ago, Pinker notes, and they typically entailed massive genocides and abuses of the defeated nations’ civilians. Even in peacetime, life was far from kind: Women and children were oppressed, animals were mistreated, and ethnic and religious minorities lived in constant dread of persecution. And slavery, torture, and public executions were routine practices.

But over the last thousand years, concepts of human rights and egalitarianism took root. Today, humanity is far more civil than it was even one century ago, Pinker argues. Rates of violent crime are far lower, and c ruelty toward one’s spouse, children, or household pets is no longer tolerated. The same goes for attacks against people of different ethnicities or religions. Wars are now a rarity, and when they do occur, they are far briefer and claim immensely fewer casualties. Although terrorism, slavery, and other offenses against human life persist, they are no longer socially accepted. Pinker outlines the forces behind this great shift. Reading, commerce, and democracy all exert humanizing influences. But more fundamentally, societal values have changed. Whereas past societies prized “honor” and the willingness to fight to defend it, above all else, contemporary society has come to recognize life itself as the highest good. He is hopeful that the civility trends will continue. Many people today assume that human nature does not change. Pinker ’s The Better Angels of Our Nature makes a compelling counterargument, and a scholarly case for hope that better days may truly lie ahead.

villages, and eventually cities to the climate conditions. Vann anticipates that throughout this century we, like those earlier generations, will have to adapt where we live and how we build to Earth’s climate. He sees trouble ahead due to climate change and population growth. Much of Latin America will be overcrowded by mid-century. Populations will double in 13 countries, among them Mexico and Panama. Since rising sea levels will engulf coastal areas, more people will amass onto North and South America’s inlands. Vann fears mass destruction of remaining rain forests to make way for farmland, and overall exacerbations of poverty and malnutrition. Communities will need to rely on technology to survive, Vann says, including disaster-proof building construction design, tornado earlywarning systems, and underground storm shelters. Development in South America will be safer if planners exempt more rain-forest areas from building. And no construction should take place on floodplains.

“Goodshop” for WFS The World Future Society needs your help! With the economy in a slump, nonprofits like WFS are having t rouble meeting their fundraising goals this year. In a show of support, more than 1,000 of your favorite Internet retailers and travel sites have joined forces with GoodShop.com, donating a percentage of all your purchases to your f avorite c harity at no additional cost to you! It takes just a few seconds to go to www.goodshop.com, select World Future Society, and then click through to your favorite store and shop as usual. Also, Yahoo! has teamed up with GoodShop’s sister site, GoodSearch.com, to donate a penny to your cause every time you search the Web. This is totally free, as the money comes from a dvertisers.

A More Crowded and Turbulent Planet Forces of Nature: Our Quest to Conquer the Planet by Barry A. Vann. Prometheus. 2012. 327 pages. $26.

Human population trends have always been at the mercy of Earth’s climate, says geographer Barry A. Vann. Since prehistoric times, nomadic people have migrated to where food and water were plentiful. When scarcities made hunting and gathering no longer an option, they would then settle and commence farming. Even then, they would adapt the layouts of farms, www.wfs.org

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The United States has long been a magnet for immigrations, but it will impose restrictions as its capacity to accommodate more immigrants declines and world population growth continues, Vann believes. More would-be immigrants will have to remain in their native countries, which will force those countries to improve their economic and domestic conditions and to develop vital building-design and natural-disaster-preparation technologies. Vann shows a keen eye for the patterns of history and what they can tell us about the future. Historians and futurists alike will find Forces of Nature an engaging read.

Persistence of Faiths The Future of God in the Global Village: Spirituality in an Age of Terrorism and Beyond by Thomas McFaul. AuthorHouse. 2011. 190 pages. Paperback. $18.04.

Religion thrives at the start of the twenty-first century, despite a plethora of predictions that it would die out a century ago, according to retired religion professor Thomas McFaul. In The Future of God in the Global Village, he looks at the myriad faith traditions that flourish today and the reasons for their continuing strength. For indigenous peoples, in particular, faith is a bedrock of identity and perspective amid the turbulence of twenty-first-century societal change. For people of all backgrounds, religion is a means to spiritual nourishment, community, and self-improvement—personal needs that McFaul asserts people will continue to feel and that no amount of technological innovation or improvements to material living stan56

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dards will in themselves satisfy. McFaul also notes the religious pluralism that, he states, is one of the major trends of our age. Today’s globalized world brings different religions into regular contact with each other to a degree never seen before. Furthermore, new religions are forming all the time and will probably continue to do so. Yet, McFaul observes, religious toleration is still far from universal. Extremists of every major faith tradition incite their followers against those of other faiths. Religion-on- religion strife in our age is much milder than that which transpired in past eras, thanks in part to the institution of secular democracy, but it remains to be seen whether new generations of theocratic leaders might undo democratization’s progress. It is imperative that the world’s religions learn to coexist, McFaul concludes. There will not be peace among the nations, he says, unless there is first peace among the religions. McFaul’s The Future of God in the Global Village is an ecumenical look at how religion, like human society itself, continues to evolve. Religious and non-religious readers both will find much of interest within this book.

Harnessing Heavenly Power Space Solar Power: The First International Assessment of Space Solar Power: Opportunities, Issues and Potential Pathways Forward edited by John C. Mankins and Nobuyuki Kaya. International Academy of Astronautics. 2011. 248 pages. PDF available for download from www.iaaweb.org (in Published Studies and Position Papers).

The world’s array of alternativeenergy systems is great, but it will not suffice to feed the enormous new energy demands that humanity will face in coming decades, forecasts the UN-chartered nongovernmental organization International Academy of www.wfs.org

Astronautics. This report’s authors see a better alternative awaiting us in “space solar power”: Earth-orbiting satellites and Moon-based robot stations that would gather the Sun’s heat and light energy and beam it down to Earth. Individual authors have discussed space solar power since the 1960s. But this report, which brings together researchers from Canada, the United States, and Europe, is the first-ever comprehensive international assessment of the concept. The authors explain, with richly colored photographs, diagrams, and charts, how these space-based systems would work, and why they could generate far more power than solar-energy generators on Earth. Solar satellites are feasible, they state, and much of the necessary technology already exists. If private companies and governments both commit to further invest in them and test them, we could deploy them in just another 20 years. The opportunities are vast, the authors argue. Not only could spacebased solar arrays churn out huge new reserves of affordable electricity for life on Earth, but they could also power human outposts on the Moon and Mars, new Earth-to-space transportation services, and whole new in-space industries of robots that assemble and maintain space satellites and space stations directly in lowEarth orbit. The solar-power satellites might also provide the boost needed to fly human crews to the ends of the solar system. The authors make a compelling case that space-based solar power could be just what humanity needs to break free of fossil fuels and life on Earth’s surface at the same time. Space Solar Power is an authoritative look at a radical solution to the world’s energy problems. ❑

Conference News: Spring 2012

WorldFuture 2012 Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver.

The annual conference of the World Future Society, to be held in Toronto, July 27-29, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel. Preconference Courses: July 26-27, 2012 • Professional Members’ Forum: July 30, 2012

The World Future Society’s annual conference is your chance to preview the biggest ideas from the leading minds at the forefront of foresight. Here are just a few of the headlines.

Keynotes • The Future of the Internet (Opening Plenary Session) Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and co-author of Networked, will explore not just what the Internet will be like in the future, but also its wide-ranging impacts on Lee Rainie everything from teenagers’ brains to consumption patterns. • Blindsided! (Closing Plenary Session) How can one guy sharing music with his friends catch an entire industry off guard? Jim Harris, author of Blindsided! will show the lessons we can learn from Napster’s Jim Harris Sean Fanning and other “blindsiders.”

• Using Quantum Computers to Build Artificial Brains (Saturday Luncheon) Computer scientist and entrepreneur Geordie Rose, recently named Canada’s Innovator of the Year, will show how his company, D Wave, is laying the groundwork toward a new type of computing that will tackle some of our most complex problems. The ensuing Geordie Rose advances in artificial intelligence will enable us to explore systems that mimic the behavior of humans in many areas of life, such as teaching, medical diagnosis, genetics, defense, and even scientific discovery. • The Immediate Importance of Imagination (Sunday Luncheon) Business futurist Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., will explore the new, better financial system that we could create if we harness our creativity Edie Weiner and foresight. She’ll show why she is certain that a better future of employment, wealth, and opportunity for all depends not on fixing our old economic sys-

Get the latest information and register online at www.wfs.org/content/worldfuture-2012

tems, but on using our imaginations to build new ones. (Note: The keynote luncheons are extra-fee events. Add one or both to your registration.)

WorldFuture 2012 Sample Speakers and Sessions • Reimagining the Future of Global Health, Wellness, and Health-Care Delivery—Innovations in both the design and delivery of medicine and health will be explored by Bob Schwartz, general manager, Global Design & User Experience GE Healthcare; Paul Chew, senior vice president and chief medical officer/chief scientific officer US, Sanofi; Joel Myklebust, deputy director of FDA’s Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories in the Center for Devices; Adriane Berg, founder of Joel Myklebust Generation Bold and co-host of the radio show Not for Profit Exchange; and RenéeMarie Stephano, president of Medical Tourism Association and chief editor, Medical Tourism Magazine. • When Ivory Towers Fall: The Emerging Education Marketplace—DaVinci Institute director Thomas Frey anticipates a wealth of opportunities in “next-ed” industries, as the tectonic plates upon which higher educaThomas Frey tion is now precariously perched shake up institutional futures. • Can Innovation Save the Planet?— Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human, will describe what technology might do for environmental conservation and reRamez Naam source sustainability. • Cultural Shifts Among Global Youths: Part III— Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., vice presidents Erica Orange and Jared Weiner continue their robust review of the social, social, technological, economic, political, demographic, and environmental trends that are Erica Orange currently impacting the future of young

people around the world, and the strategies that will help young people and their elders alike to meet the looming challenges. • Chemical Brain Preservation: How to Live Forever—Acceleration Studies Foundation founder and president John Smart will show how tomorrow’s doctors might remove a dying person’s brain, preserving both it and the memories and knowledge it stores, so that he or she John Smart can be revived at a later date. • Tomorrow Is Promised to No One: The Inevitability of Change—financial-industry expert Bob Chernow, CEO of the Tellier Foundation, will share his insights on commerce, energy, and water in the context of consistently proven long-term patterns of Bob Chernow business cycles and watersheds. • Exploring the Future Arts: Graphic, Sonic, Kinetic—William Crossman, founder and director of the CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures, and World Future Review managing editor Lane Jennings will explore new artistic formats and techniques, focusing on how artists ex- William Crossman ercise creativity while satisfying mass audiences. Visit our Web site for a complete list of confirmed speakers and sessions.

Saturday Specials • Scouting the Future with the Implications Wheel—In a special session Saturday afternoon, noted futurist educator and practitioner Joel A. Barker (author of Future Edge to Five Regions of the Future) and master trainer James W. Schreier will conduct a high-energy interactive workshop on the “Implications Wheel.” Participants will work in teams using the online software Joel A. Barker

to clarify an issue and generate both positive and negative implications. • Futurists:BetaLaunch 2012 Grand Opening— Saturday night we’ll see how dreamers, designers, and developers all come together to deliver their ideas, as select innovators introduce themselves at Futurists:BetaLaunch 2012. Meet tomorrow’s game changers and visionaries at this exciting and highly competitive expo!

Tweeting the Future Follow many of our speakers on Twitter before, during, and after WorldFuture 2012 by bookmarking or subscribing to this list: http://twitter.com/WorldFutureSoc/worldfuture2012speakers During the conference, participants will be live-tweeting with the official conference hashtag, #wf12 And you may follow the World Future Society @WorldFutureSoc and THE FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker @Theyear2030

Bonus Events: Master Courses and Education Summit Several opportunities to enhance your futuring skills and expand your networks will be available prior to the conference. The day-long Master Courses are $199. Friday’s day-long Education Summit is $149.

Thursday courses: • C-1 Introduction to Futures Studies, led by Peter C. Bishop. • C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp, with Jay Gary and Richard Slaughter. • C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future, led by Clem Bezold.

• C-4 Society 3.0: Technology Transformations in Society, Work, and Higher Education, with Tracey Wilen-Daugenti.

• C-5 The Human Dynamics of Creation to Effect Change, with Megan Mitchell and Marci Segal. • C-6 Identifying and Exploring Security’s Futures and What Can Be Done to Prepare, led by D avid Harries.

Friday courses and Summit: • C-7 An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting: A Case Study Approach, led by Riel Miller and Andy Hines.

• C-8 Futurist Writers’ Workshop, with Cynthia G. Wagner and Patrick Tucker. • C-9 Scenario Planning: How to Build and Use Scenarios, led by Adam Gordon. • C-10 Weak Signals and Minitrends: Foundations for Truly Innovative Organizations, with John Vanston and Rick Smyre. • Education Summit: Flash Forward, invites educators and futurists to collaborate to imagine the future of education. A circle of experts for the open forum will include Karen Grose, Jim Strachan, and Jim Morrison.

Get the latest information and register online at www.wfs.org/content/worldfuture-2012

WorldFuture 2012 Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver.

The annual conference of the World Future Society, to be held in Toronto, July 27-29, at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel. Yes! I want to meet, exchange ideas with, and learn from my futurist colleagues. Please reserve my place at the World Future Society’s WorldFuture 2012. I understand registration includes admission to all sessions, the welcome reception, entrance to exhibits, and a list of preregistrants. And if for any reason I am unable to attend, I may cancel and receive a full refund until June 29, 2012. Register by April 30, 2012

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Registration......................................................................................................................................................... $750. .............................. $800............................... $850....................... Member’s Rate................................................................................................................................................. $695. .............................. $745............................... $795....................... Senior Citizen 65 or older / Citizen of a developing nation................................................................ $640. .............................. $690............................... $740....................... Young Futurist under the age of 30.............................................................................................................. $125. .............................. $125............................... $150....................... (Please attach appropriate documentation.) 2-day Luncheon Package (with speakers) — $119............................................................................................................................................................................................................ Single Luncheons — $65 Select one: Saturday (with Geordie Rose) Sunday (with Edie Weiner)................................................................................................ PRECONFERENCE MASTER COURSES AND EDUCATION SUMMIT Thursday, July 26, 2012, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. C-1 Introduction to Futures Studies, Peter Bishop — $199 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp, Jay Gary — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future, Clem Bezold — $199 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-4 Society 3.0, Tracey Wilen Daugenti — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-5 The Human Dynamics of Creation to Effect Change, Megan Mitchell and Marci Segal — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-6 Identifying and Exploring Security’s Futures and What Can Be Done to Prepare, David Harries — $199 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friday, July 27, 2012, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. C-7 An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting: A Case Study Approach, Andy Hines and Riel Miller — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-8 Futurist Writers’ Workshop, Cynthia Wagner and Patrick Tucker — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-9 Scenario Planning: How to Build and Use Scenarios, Adam Gordon — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-10 Weak Signals and Minitrends: Foundations for Truly Innovative Organizations, John Vanston and Rick Smyre — $199. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E-1 Education Summit — $149. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ❑ Professional Members Forum, Monday, July 30, 2012 — $115 professional members..................................................................................................................................... Professional Membership — $295 ($195 nonprofit /academic rate) ❑ Renewal ❑ New (Join now to qualify for the Forum.).................................................... World Future Society membership — $79 ($20 for full-time students under the age of 25) ❑ Renewal ❑ New (Join now and take advantage of the members’ rate.)....................................................................................................................................................... Tax-deductible Contribution to Scholarship Fund (Your $125 contribution will make it possible for a student to attend, but every dollar will help.)............................ Total Name Method of Payment ❑ Check or money order enclosed. (Payable to World Future Society.)

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Hotel reservation forms will be sent with the acknowledgment of registration, or you can call the hotel directly at 1-416-361-1000 or 1-800-325-3535. Mention that you’re attending the WFS meeting to receive your special rate of $185 USD (single or double) per night. REFUND POLICY: If your plans to attend the conference change, you may receive a full refund until June 29, 2012. A $100 administrative fee will be charged for cancellations after June 29, 2012. No refunds will be given after July 13, 2012. Refund requests must be in writing by email, mail, or fax. Substitutions may be made at any time. Photo/Video Consent: This conference might be photographed, filmed, or audio or video recorded by management for future broadcast, publication, or promotion, including pictures of speakers and attendees or individuals in the audience. Your attendance at this event shall be deemed as your consent to have your image or likeness appear in any publication, broadcast, display, or other transmission or reproduction of this event in whole or in part.

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Feedback Send your comments to letters@wfs.org The Individual’s Role in Innovation

Bad Predictions and Good Futurists Regarding “The Best Predictions of 2011” (January-February 2012), I agree with pouring scorn on Harold Camping’s 2011 predictions of the Rapture (twice) as the worst predictions of the year. He clearly disobeyed the basic warnings of Jesus about naming dates, and he was an embarrassment to genuine believers. The predictions made me look for my copy of Richard Abanes’s book, End Time Visions: The Doomsday Obsession (Broadman and Holman, 1999). I think the title of the article is incorrect. Why? Because the World Future Society has over the years avoided predictions, like the proverbial plague, and rather emphasized trends and—where appropriate— forecasts. Alfred Sangster President Emeritus University of Technology, Jamaica

The article by Peter Denning, “Innovating the Future,” in the JanuaryFebruary 2012 issue had the sentence: “Innovation is one of the most studied subjects of all time.” It is hard to accept the concept that innovation, the product of research a n d re s e a rc h laboratories, could have been the “most studied subjects of all time.” Directed research is a rather recent human activity h a rd l y o l d e r than 300 years when the first machine made of metal parts, the Newcomen steam engine, was developed. I would suggest that the Bible is the most studied subject of all time and that practically no one studies innovation. They practice it, not study it. Once in a while, research personnel undertake brainstorming sessions. These were never very popular. Most research ideas come from gifted individuals who work alone. Einstein, for instance, wrote his 1905 papers without studying innovation or working with others. Microsoft was the prod-

uct of Bill Gates and Paul Allen. From 1700 to around 1900, the procedure used in developing useful ideas was usually a single person trying to solve a problem. After 1900, useful ideas came from research laboratories as well as from individuals. But innovation was hardly studied, either by the individuals or as part of the research laboratory’s agenda. Masse Bloomfield Canoga Park, California Reporting on Disaster with Compassion and Courage I’m inclined to search for the upbeat news of tomorrows. Scanning the November-December 2011 issue of THE FUTURIST, I initially and purposely passed over Patrick Tucker’s article, “Lost and Found in Japan,” and the dreary implications of reviewing the devastating and disastrous blows imposed by a torren-

Deliver the Future! You know how valuable membership in the World Future Society is, so why not share it with as many people as possible? Save on Sponsored Gift Memberships in the World Future Society, and deliver THE FUTURIST and other valuable benefits to all of your clients, customers, students, and colleagues. Consulting futurists, educators, workshop leaders, authors, and others may sponsor memberships for just $65 each after the first gift of $79—which may be your gift to yourself! And remember, Student Memberships are just $20. Make WFS membership a part of your package of deliverables. Visit www.wfs.org/gifts or call 1-800-989-8274.

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Feedback

tial tsunami in the Japanese archipelago. The article didn’t spark my interest—until I began reading it. I was deeply impressed with Tucker’s artistic style and compassionate journalistic coverage of a major calamity. Most important, he expressed an empathy that prompts readers to ponder and to contemplate what they might do to emulate similar thoughts and motivation. The photo selections and coverage (right down to facial expressions and body language) portrayed finding good amongst the catastrophes of sweeping change. I like to think that Tucker’s penetrating overview and perspectives will impart inspiration and impact meaningful thoughts to the benefit of readers. His gifted words touched my soul, impelling me to drop this note just to say thanks for this compelling coverage. Graham T.T. Molitor Fayetteville, Pennsylvania We Are All Living for the Future Thanks to my librarian wife, I now know about THE FUTURIST and its parent, World Future Society, but

Correction

why would a guy going on 83 concern himself with the years ahead? Because I have 10 grandchildren, two daughters, and two sons! Plus, I’m shooting for 100 (or more). The article “Updating the Global Scorecard: The 2011 State of the Future” by Jerome C. Glenn (November-December 2011) was particularly interesting. All of us alive today are living in/for the future, and how we prepare for it indeed is important. I’ll now look forward to future issues of your magazine, and urge others not aware of it to check their libraries, newsstands, and bookstores. I’m a fellow concerned about religion and its effect on people and societies; perhaps that issue will be addressed in coming months? Robert S. Corya Indianapolis, Indiana

In “A Competition for Lun a r E n t e r p r i s e ” ( Wo r l d Trends & Forecasts, MarchApril 2012), we incorrectly identified Naveen Jain as the founder of a company called Infosys. The company’s name is Infospace. The article stated that Naveen Jain had faced charges of insider trading. Jain, in fact, faced a civil lawsuit relating to the timing of stock trades based on insider information, and a Washington district judge ruled against him. Jain was never charged with insider trading by the SEC. Subsequently, the SEC wrote a brief on Jain’s behalf stating that the judge’s original ruling against Jain was in error.

magazine

News and Previews from the World Future Society

Futurist Update: News and Previews from the World Future Society is a free e-mail newsletter that keeps you up to date with the trends and breakthroughs that are creating the future! Stories in recent issues include: • Robotic vehicles modeled on ants’ brains and bodies could boost efficiency in factories and warehouses. • Experts debate the Internet’s long-term effects on the thinking skills of the younger, “Always On” generation. • Excessive screening of low-risk passengers may make airports less secure, because resources are diverted from identifying more-imminent threats. • A new tornado-prediction model could give people as much as a month’s notice of a twister potentially on its way toward their homes and businesses. Futurist Update also keeps you linked to World Future Society publications and activities—and the latest thinking from leading futurist bloggers. FREE! Sign up online: www.wfs.org/content/futurist-update

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

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World Future Society Programs The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization chartered in the District of Columbia, U.S.A., and is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization. The Society has about 25,000 members and subscribers in 80 nations. PUBLICATIONS

• The Futurist: A magazine published bimonthly, covering trends, forecasts, and ideas about the future. • Futurist Update: An e-mail newsletter available monthly to all members, covering a range of future-oriented news and useful links. • World Future Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight: A journal for futures practitioners and scholars, with articles on forecasting techniques and applications, profiles of futurists and organizations, and abstracts of current futures-relevant literature. ACTIVITIES AND RESOURCES

• Conferences: The Society holds at least one major conference per year, to which all Society members are invited. Most conferences cover a wide range of topics related to the future. Most conferences are in the United States, but the Society has also held meetings in Canada and Austria. • Groups: Futurist groups are active in a number of U.S. cities, such as Chicago, Washington, and Atlanta, and in more than two dozen countries. • Books: New books of special interest to members may be purchased through the Society’s partnership with Amazon.com. MEMBERSHIP PROGRAMS

• Regular Membership: Includes THE FUTURIST magazine; discounts on conferences and books published by the Society; and such other benefits as may be approved for members. Discounted memberships are also available for full-time students under age 25. • Professional Membership: Programs and publications are available to meet the special needs of practitioners, researchers, scholars, and others who are professionally involved in forecasting, planning, or other futureoriented activities, including education and policy making. Professional members receive all the benefits of regular membership, plus a subscription to the journal World Future Review, as well as invitations to Professional Members’ Forums, and other benefits. • Institutional Membership: The World Future Society’s Institutional Membership program offers special services for business firms, educational institutions, government agencies, associations, and other groups. Members receive all of the benefits of Professional Membership, plus copies of all books, monographs, conference proceedings, special reports, and other publications produced by the Society during the year of the membership; special discounts on bulk purchases of Society publications; assistance in locating sources of information, consultants, and speakers for conferences and meetings, getting information tailored specifically to the organization’s needs; and inclusion in the Society’s list of institutional members published on the Society’s Web site and annually in THE FUTURIST. For more information and an application, contact Membership Secretary, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814 www.wfs.org.

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May-June 2012

As Tweeted 3-D Printing, Lunar Manufacturing, and LEGO Dreams

MELBOURNE HEADSHOT COMPANY/ WENN.COM / NEWSCOM

What havoc might amateur garage manufacturers wreak? And what great new gadgets might consumers come up with? Twitter is an excellent medium for thinking “aloud.” One day, we were wondering about what the future might really look like once people start manufacturing their own stuff via 3-D printers—and making the inevitable mistakes along the way. @WorldFutureSoc: What’s the first thing you would make with a 3-D printer? (My guess: a mistake. So what happens to the toss-outs?) @zapgadget (Paul Bristow): That’s why you should use PLA [polylactic acid —Ed.] for your first #3d #printer tries. You can throw it in the compost heap! @thechaz (Chaz Carlson): New cell phone. Mistakes are put back into the replicator for recycling. Er... guess I’m getting ahead of myself. @WorldFutureSoc: Sounds like 3-D printing as a consumer manufacturing technology needs to include resource recovery/reuse. @frabuck (Francis Rabuck): Even IF you do 3D printing right, much material is wasted and NOT recyclable. Ask vendors about material reuse. @zapgadget: There’s also a project to recycle 3D printed objects in ABS [acrylonitrile butadiene styrene — Ed.]. Take a look at Filabot www.kickstarter.com/projects/rocknail/filabot-plastic-filament-maker @WorldFutureSoc: Cool! Would love to see innovations like this entered in our Futurists:BetaLaunch 2012 competition www.wfs.org/content/worldfuture-2012/ futurists-betalaunch-2012 #wf12 @WorldFutureSoc: #Futurist question of the day: What’s the first thing you’d make with a #3D #printer? (I’ve got “a hot mess” covered...) @finalcontext (Jamie Stanton): A “Venus of Willendorf” seems appropriate. @WorldFutureSoc: Alrighty: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Venus_of_Willendorf @brianlmerritt (Brian L. Merritt): with my #3D #printer I would make a portable lapstation for an iPad and wireless keyboard. No one makes a decent one! @ThFuturePerfect (Philippa Aldrich): Trabasack? bit.ly/w3Vlnf [www.thefutureperfectcompany.com/ also www.trabasack.co.uk/ —Ed.] @thechaz: Just let me know when 3D printers can 64

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2012

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Australian LEGO enthusiast Ryan McNaught built a replica of NASA’s Saturn V rocket in January 2012. The feat may have inspired our futurist tweeps to dream of the day when 3-D printers (machines that build objects layer-by-layer) will make better LEGO pieces—and facilitate lunar manufacturing.

create some nanobots that can replicate and produce biomechanical limbs. @zapgadget: Everyone does the same thing - spare parts for their #3D #printer & often extra parts for a friend who’s broken his #reprap @WorldFutureSoc: Great answers for “What’s the first thing you’ll make w #3D #printer?” Anything that hasn’t been invented yet? @Geofutures (Josh Calder): 1st thing w/ a 3D printer? A missing part for one of my son’s toys. @zapgadget: The other classic is Impossible lego bricks that you can’t buy #3d #printer #lego @WorldFutureSoc: And a time machine so I can go back and finish my childhood fantasy LEGO castle! @zapgadget: You are the WFS. Should be easy :-) @futurecheck (Marcel Bullinga): I would 1st make my own energy source, then a present for my lover @ianbremmer (Ian Bremmer): Meta-LEGO #allrights reserved @WorldFutureSoc: There should be #3D #printers on the Moon so all we’d have to send to the lunar manufacturers is the raw chemicals, not “stuff.” @ryonck (Richard Yonck): Moon regolith is oxygen, silicon, iron, calcium, aluminum, magnesium etc. Shapeways now uses Aluminide in #3D #printer @thechaz: Just make those printers able to convert moon rock, cosmic/solar radiation into useable materials. @sooz89 (Susannah Lindsey): still enthralled by @WorldFutureSoc ... @WorldFutureSoc: Thanks!! =D Follow the World Future Society (@WorldFutureSoc) and THE FUTURIST magazine (@TheYear2030) on Twitter at twitter.com.

Futuring

The Exploration of the Future By Edward Cornish, editor of THE FUTURIST and founder of the World Future Society. WFS. 2004. 313 pages. Paperback. $19.95 ($17.95 for Society members). Available on Kindle! Go to www.wfs.org/futuring for link. A “masterpiece” and “modern classic” in futures-studies literature, Edward Cornish’s Futuring is now required reading at major universities around the world, from Texas A&M to Tamkang University in Taiwan, and translated for Korean, Mongolian, and Arabic editions. Cornish’s enlightened, insightful writing has inspired seasoned professionals with a fresh take on futurism’s vital tools and concepts. This comprehensive guide to thinking about the future covers methodologies, key futures concepts, the rise of the “futurist revolution,” and six supertrends—and where they may lead us.

Get the Most Out of Futuring! Building the Future: A Workbook to Accompany Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish by Jill Loukides and Lawrie Gardner. WFS. 2006. 94 pages. Paperback. $17.50 ($15.95 for Society members). Futurist educators Loukides and Gardner of Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland have developed this thought-inspiring workbook to guide students through the key lessons of Edward Cornish’s text, Futuring. For each of the text’s 16 chapters—which cover supertrends, the nature of change, futuring methods, uses of scenarios, the origins and rise of futurism, and much more—the workbook: • Queries students on their prior knowledge and learning objectives, • Provides an outline, summary, and key terms, and • Prompts learners to evaluate their new knowledge about the future through critical thinking questions, activities, and self-study questions.

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Now Available!

Moving from Vision to Action Practical analysis of our multifaceted global problems and pragmatic strategies for addressing them highlight this volume of essays prepared for WorldFuture 2011. Topics explored range from the “New Enlightenment” to tactics for leveraging collective intelligence.

Moving from Vision to Action, edited by FUTURIST magazine editor Cynthia G. Wagner, was distributed free to all 2011 conference attendees and to Institutional Members Contributors Stephen Aguilar-Millan Michael Blinick Irving H. Buchen Choi Hangsub José Luis Cordeiro Inga-Lena Darkow Don C. Davis Wim J. de Ridder Gary Dehrer Tony Diggle David A. Gilliam Jerome C. Glenn Tobias Gnatzy Theodore J. Gordon Sirkka Heinonen Alireza Hejazi Anvar Idiatullin James H. Irvine Sofi Kurki David J. LePoire Thomas Lombardo Joseph N. Pelton John Renesch Sandra Schwarzbach Bruce L. Tow Heiko von der Gracht Verne Wheelwright Richard Yonck

of the Society. Now, the volume is available to the public, with a discount for World Future Society members. Part 1: Perspectives and Prospects brings today’s major trend drivers into historical perspective and offers ways to think about the human future in the context of accelerating change—some of which we cannot control, but much of which we can. Part 2: Futures and Futuring focuses on improving the basic equipment at our disposal not just for forecasting the future, but also for building a human ecosystem in which our visions may be realized. Part 3: Education, Information, Tools, and Resources addresses four key sectors in which our ingenuity for envisioning solutions (and acting upon them) could hold the greatest opportunities for improving the world’s future: technology, information, education, and energy. Part 4: New Directions and Leadership concludes with techniques both for generating better visions of the future and for becoming better leaders—perhaps the most critical tool of all for moving from vision to action.

Moving from Vision to Action edited by Cynthia G. Wagner. WFS. 2011. 433 pages. Paperback. ISBN 13: 978-0-930242-68-8. $29.95 ($24.95 for Society members). Order from www.wfs.org/wfsbooks or call Society headquarters, 301-656-8274