THE FUTURIST, May - June 2013 by World Future Society

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

www.wfs.org

The Robots Are Coming—to Work! Meet Baxter, your future co-worker By Rodney Brooks. Page 24

Highly Human Jobs: The Meaning of Work Page 29 Pop Goes the Algorithm: The Math of Making Hits Page 20 Women 2020: Taking Our Futures Back Page 36 PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

The Powers of Artificial Photosynthesis Social Networks Help Predict Epidemics Toward a Mercury-Free Environment … and more $5.95

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May-June 2013

About the World Future Society Why study the future?

What is the World Future Society?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free e-mail newsletter! Visit www.wfs.org.

May-June 2013 Volume 47, No. 3

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

about the future

ARTICLES 20 Pop Goes the Algorithm By Christopher Steiner

Pop bots. Page 20

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

Future Scope

World Trends & Forecasts: Energy, Information Society, Medicine, Psychology, Commons, Computing

49 Consultants and Services 60 Future Active 64 As Blogged: Sci-Fi and the Trans-simian Future BOOKS 52 Discovering How to See the Future A book review by Rick Docksai

Futurology is about more than foreseeing the future; its goals are to advance the future’s knowability. We can learn much from both the mistakes and the successes of foresight, says Michael Lee, author of Knowing Our Future: The Startling Case of Futurology.

Also reviewed:

The Efficiency Trap The Last Myth Think Like a Futurist The White Planet

When musicians like Norah Jones and Maroon 5 are “discovered” by a machine, it may be time to listen to the algorithms. But will engineers’ formulas make all music sound formulaic? A tech journalist describes how bots are not just picking the next great musical hits—they’re reaching for the musical stars.

24 Robots at Work: Toward a Smarter Factory By Rodney Brooks

46 Healthier Foresight Diets By Alireza Hejazi

Staying well-informed about the future can be a challenge for the average consumer, given the evergrowing variety of information sources from which to choose. It’s likewise difficult for futurist authors and publishers seeking to create a foresight “menu” that draws audiences’ attention amid a din of rival information alternatives.

Many fear that a robotic takeover of manufacturing jobs will keep humans out of work. But one inventor shows how tomorrow’s manufacturing robots will be smaller, smarter, and co-worker friendly.

29 Highly Human Jobs By Richard W. Samson

As automation takes many tasks out of people’s hands, there is still much work that humans can do to stay occupied, well-paid, and even happy. By letting go of our search for tasks that robots and computers can do better, we should be developing and leveraging our hyper-human skills, such as caring, creating, and taking responsibility.

Mimicking nature. Page 6

36 Women 2020: Our Selves, Our Worlds, Our Futures By The Futures Company A strategic insight and innovation consultancy explores how women’s expectations and actions are changing their own futures—and the world’s.

PLUS: Commentaries by Zhouying Jin and Sheila R. Ronis

Food futures. Page 61

COVER ILLUSTRATION: ALEKSANDAR VELASEVIC / ISTOCKPHOTO, RETHINK ROBOTICS

© 2013 World Future Society. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. THE FUTURIST is a registered trademark of the World Future Society. Printed in the U.S.A. THE FUTURIST (ISSN 0016-3317) is published bimonthly by the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. Included with membership in the World Future Society (dues: $79 per year for individuals; $20 for full-time students under age 25). Subscriptions for libraries and other institutions are $89 annually. Periodicals postage paid at Bethesda, Maryland, and additional mailing offices. • POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE FUTURIST, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. • OWNERSHIP: THE FUTURIST is owned exclusively by the World Future Society, a nonpartisan educational and scientific organization incorporated in the District of Columbia and recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit taxexempt organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. • CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Write or call Membership Department at the Society. 1-800-989-8274.

Tomorrow

in brief MICHAEL S. THORNE / UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

India’s Desire for Sons Keeps Population Rising © ISABEL TIESSEN PASTOR / ISTOCKPHOTO

High-resolution seismic images show massive piles of rocks at the boundary between the Earth’s mantle and core, which may induce cataclysmic eruptions—millions of years from now.

End of the World, in Slow Motion A planet-destroying volcanic eruption may be lying in wait, but the good news is that it won’t happen for another 100 million years at the soonest. Studies led by seismologist Michael Thorne of the University of Utah show that formations the size of continents are colliding about 1,800 miles beneath the Pacific Ocean on the bottom of the Earth’s mantle and above the core. The research is based on high- resolution seismic imaging and computer simulations showing

the slow movement of these massive piles of rock at the core–mantle boundary. This movement is creating a zone of partly molten rock the size of Florida, which Thorne believes may be the start of a hotspot plume supervolcanic eruption or a gargantuan flood basalt eruption. Such eruptions have happened in the past and are blamed for massive die-offs.

WordBuzz: Rotique

A Handle with Care

The concept of a rotating boutique, or rotique, was introduced by futurists Heather Schlegel and Emily Empel during their presentation on The Future of Shopping at WorldFuture 2012. Described as “an actively changing retail outlet that sells goods or services in a bazaar-like environment,” a rotique may be as mobile as a truck, as cozy as a tent, as versatile as a vending machine, as agile as a pop-up shop, or as small as a QR installation allowing customers to scan the item they wish to buy and pay for it on their smartphone.

Surgical precision is about to become even more precise, thanks to a smart instrument handle developed by Fraunhofer Institute engineers. The handle is outfitted with sensors that can, for example, measure how much force the surgeon is applying while tightening a screw; when the optimum force is reached, an LED lights up to signal the surgeon. The tool may help newer surgeons perform as skillfully as their more-experienced counterparts, says lead scientist Christof Giers.

For more information, follow Heather Schlegel (@heathervescent) and Emily Empel (@localrat) on Twitter.

Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, www.fraunhofer.de.

Source: University of Utah, www.unews.utah.edu.

Slowing down population growth in India has hit a stumbling block: the desire for sons. Despite a goal of smaller families, Indian women whose first child is a daughter are more likely to keep trying for a son, according to a study by Sanjukta Chaudhuri of the University of Wisconsin. One result is that Indian girls are more likely to grow up in larger families, with a smaller share of family resources and cascading dispar- Mother with two small children in Udaipur, India. A cultural preference for sons trumps ities in health and education. India is expected to become many Indians’ desire for smaller families. the world’s most populous Sources: “The Desire for Sons and country by 2025, so meeting Excess Fertility: A Household-Level the national goal of smaller famiAnalysis of Parity Progression in lies will require a cultural mind India” by Sanjukta Chaudhuri, Intershift to improve women’s status national Perspectives on Sexual and prospects and to challenge and Reproductive Health (Decemthe perception that sons are ber 2012). The Guttmacher Instimore valuable than daughters, tute, www.guttmacher.org. Chaudhuri warns.

Swabbing Water Out of Desert Air Just as beetles and spiders can quench their thirst with water collected from fog and humidity, humans may have found a way to harvest moisture from the air. A specially treated cotton fabric can absorb water droplets from misty air and then release the collected water as

it gets warmer. The material offers a potential solution for providing water for agriculture in desert regions. Developed by researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the fogharvesting cotton is coated with a polymer, giving it a sponge-like strucBART VAN OVERBEEKE / TU EINDHOVEN ture. The low-cost material could be used in deserts or mountain regions, where the nighttime air is misty. Unlike current fog-harvesting nets already in use, the coated cotton does not require strong wind flow and can be placed directly on ground where the water is needed. Materials researcher Catarina E steves displays a sample of polymer-coated cotton Source: Eindhoven that absorbs 340% of its own weight in water University of Technolfrom misty air. ogy, www.tue.nl.

About

this

Issue

A Publication of the World Future Society

Editorial Staff Edward Cornish Founding Editor

Cynthia G. Wagner Editor

Patrick Tucker Deputy Editor

Rick Docksai Associate Editor

Lane Jennings Research Director

Lisa Mathias Art Director

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

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

Robot Workers and Human Jobs As much as some people may not like it, we’re going to need robots to perform a lot of the tasks for which humans are not available. Populations are aging, and human labor is getting more expensive for manufacturing the things that economies want consumers to keep buying, so a fleet of smaller, smarter, more-agile robots could be a boon. In this issue of THE FUTURIST, Roomba developer Rodney Brooks introduces an industrial robot called Baxter, the star product of his new company, Rethink Robotics. Its sensor and its intuitive programming make Baxter an ideal co-worker (not a total replacement) for humans on the factory floor, says Brooks. See “Robots at Work: Toward a Smarter Factory,” page 24. But wait, what about jobs for people? As machines continue to supplant human workers in performing increasingly complex tasks, people will need to find ever more creative ways to remain employable. In fact, creativity itself is one of the “highly human skills” that will keep us in demand in the future economy, says workforce consultant Richard W. Samson. Businesses, too, can gain a competitive edge by aggressively “off-peopling” the tasks that machines can do more efficiently and affordably, and leveraging their highly human qualities, such as compassion and sense of responsibility. See “Highly Human Jobs,” page 29. One “knowledge job” that you may be surprised to see automated is that of music mogul. Data analysis of why popular music is popular—its rhythms, pitch, chord progressions, and so on—turns out to be an excellent prognosticator for hit songs, reports tech journalist Christopher Steiner. At the same time, the music business will remain wide open for human innovators and disruptors. See “Pop Goes the Algorithm,” page 20. A “highly human” economy may mean that the twenty-first century will be the century of the woman. In its survey of global trends, The Futures Company observes that women represent the world’s greatest underdeveloped source of labor and thus an untapped source of economic growth. Despite disparities in women’s social and political status around the world, their continued advances in economic participation and decision making will have an impact on organizations, institutions, and nations. Women are becoming innovative agents of change, and not merely adapters and consumers of the status quo. See “Women 2020: Our Selves, Our Worlds, Our Futures,” page 36. —Cynthia G. Wagner, Editor cwagner@wfs.org

Future Scope Trend scanners notebook Ethics | Humanity

Labor | Commerce

Do Male Scientists Cheat More than Females?

Farm Worker Shortages in the Americas

Fraud that results in the retraction of published research occurs at all points in scientific careers, from trainee to tenured faculty. Overall, males commit 65% of these frauds, according to research by Arturo Casadevall, Yeshiva University professor of medicine. While trainees commit more offenses than faculty members (40% versus 32%), the gender difference is less prominent at this level: 58% of student violators are male, compared with an overwhelming 88% of those at the faculty level. Casadevall’s study did not focus on the reasons for the greater propensity of male scientists to commit fraud, but he speculates that it is a high-risk venture and that males are more likely to take risks than females. At higher ends of the career spectrum, where a researcher is under pressure to win grants, the risk taking and competitiveness among males may also be an inducement to cheat. “The fact that misconduct occurs across all stages of career development suggests that attention to ethical aspects of scientific conduct should not be limited to those in training, as is the current practice,” says Casadevall.

The competition for farm workers may soon be heating up among the United States, Mexico, and Central America, as education and income levels rise and populations age, making agricultural work increasingly less desirable. Mexico is now in a transitional phase, as both an exporter and an importer of farm labor, report economists Philip Martin and J. Edward Taylor of the University of California, Davis. As Mexican laborers continue seeking work on U.S. farms, Mexican farmers with labor-intensive crops are increasingly relying on workers from Guatemala. The proportion of workers in agriculture is falling rapidly in Mexico and Central America, thanks to advances in educational attainment, according to Martin and Taylor. While U.S. policy makers review their labor and immigration policies for the future, American farmers may have to look further afield for workers, pay higher wages, or invest more in labor-saving equipment. Martin and Taylor’s study “Ripe with Change: Evolving Farm Labor Markets in the United States, Mexico, and Central America,” was published by the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Source: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, www.einstein.yu.edu.

Source: Migration Policy Institute, www.migrationpolicy.org.

Management | Commerce

Conservation | Earth

Toward Better Stupidity Management

Fewer Hunters Is Bad News for Ducks

Organizations may function more efficiently when no one questions the vision, but the risk of such “functional stupidity” is that people avoid speaking up when they see problems. Outcomes like sudden financial crashes become more likely in environments that suppress doubt and block communication, warns Mats Alvesson, professor of organization studies at Lund University in Sweden. Functional stupidity “is a double-edged sword,” says Alvesson. “It is functional because it has some advantages and makes people concentrate enthusiastically on the task at hand. It is stupid because risks and problems may arise when people do not pose critical questions about what they and the organization are doing.” Improved “stupidity management” would offer organizations the opportunity to weigh risks and explore alternative visions while keeping everyone on the team focused. Alvesson’s paper, “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organisations,” co-authored with André Spicer, was published in the Journal of Management Studies (Wiley).

Wild duck populations are soaring in the United States while the numbers of hunters are falling. While these trends may seem lucky for ducks, the falloff in hunting license fees means less revenue to support duck-habitat conservation, observes Mark Vrtiska of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. “Duck hunting has been a tradition for rural America for centuries, yet a cultural shift and changing attitudes has seen a slow decline in hunter numbers,” he says. Annual sales of duck stamps (hunting licenses) have declined 36% since the 1970s. Vrtiska notes, “Up to 98% of money raised by the duck stamps is used to purchase or lease habitat within the National Wildlife Refuge system.” Future wetland conservation efforts could thus be missing out on as much as $14.3 million a year if the number of hunters continues to decline. Vrtiska is lead author of the report “Economic and Conservation Ramifications from the Decline of Waterfowl Hunters,” published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin (Wiley).

Source: Lund University, www.lu.se.

Source: John Wiley & Sons, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/.

❑

Officers

Staff

President: Timothy C. Mack

Director of Communications: Patrick Tucker

Treasurer: Kenneth W. Hunter

Business and Advertising Manager: Jeff Cornish

Secretary: Kenneth W. Harris

Meeting Administrator: Sarah Warner

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

Edward Cornish founder and former president, World Future Society

Nancy Donovan

Raj Bawa

Graham May

president, Bawa Biotechnology Consulting,

principal lecturer in futures research,

and adjunct associate professor,

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Michael Michaelis

Clement Bezold

president, Partners In Enterprise

chairman and senior futurist, Institute for Alternative Futures

senior analyst, U.S. Government Accountability Office

Joyce Gioia president and CEO, The Herman Group

John Gottsman president, The Clarity Group

Kenneth W. Harris

Arnold Brown

Julio Millán president, Banco de Tecnologias, and chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

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,

Kenneth W. Hunter (chairman)

executive director, Association

University of Southern California

senior fellow, Maryland China Initiative,

Internationale Futuribles

Joseph N. Pelton

Yehezkel Dror

founder and vice chairman,

professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

chairman, The Consilience Group LLC

University of Maryland

Timothy C. Mack president, World Future Society

Esther Franklin

Timothy M. Persons

Eric Meade

executive vice president and director of cultural

chief scientist, U.S. Government Accountability Office

senior futurist and vice president,

identities, Starcom MediaVest Group

John L. Petersen

William E. Halal

president, The Arlington Institute

Institute for Alternative Futures

Mylena Pierremont

professor of management science and

president, Ming Pai Consulting BV

director of Emerging Technologies Project,

Carol D. Rieg

George Washington University

corporate foundation officer, Bentley Systems Inc.

Peter Hayward

Les Wallace

program director, Strategic Foresight Program,

president, Signature Resources Inc.

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Jared Weiner vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

president, The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

Global Advisory Council

professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

Sohail Inayatullah Zhouying Jin

European Futures Observatory

president, Beijing Academy of Soft Technology

Raja Ikram Azam

Eleonora Barbieri Masini

honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

Sandra L. Postel director, Global Water Policy Project

Francis Rabuck director, Technology Research, Bentley Systems Inc.

Paul Saffo managing director of foresight, Discern Analytics

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

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

professor emerita, Faculty of Social Sciences, Gregorian University, Rome

Alvin Toffler author

Heidi Toffler author

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 Energy • Information Society • Medicine • Psychology • Commons • Computing

Energy | Earth

Powering the World with Artificial Photosynthesis Humans are learning to mimic plant processes for producing sustainable energy.

By Thomas Faunce Imagine all built structures— buildings, roads, bridges—capable of making their own hydrogen fuel by using sunlight to split water. Imagine further that they can all absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrogen, turning it into food or fertilizer. Such an engineering feat would be the very blueprint for a sustainable world. Human structures Thomas Faunce at last would pay their own way in an ecosystem sense. More solar energy strikes the Earth’s surface in one hour of each day than the energy used by all human activities in one year. World energy consumption is currently about 450 exajules per year (EJ/yr), or 125,000 terawatt hours. Photosynthesis, the ultimate source of our oxygen, food, and fossil fuels, is a great invention of nature that has been deployed on Earth for about 2 billion years. In its present technologically unenhanced form, photosynthesis globally already traps around 4,000 EJ/yr of solar energy in the form of biomass. Photosynthesis can be viewed as the planet breathing: taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. But it can also be considered as the planet’s nervous system: generating a basic voltage that powers the world’s life. This is because photosynthesis takes light energy from the Sun and stores it in chemical bonds. In the 1800s, most people believed that only birds would ever fly. Likewise, most people today still believe that only plants can “do” photosynthesis. But we

are on the verge of not only fully replicating photosynthesis, but actually improving it through nanotechnology work under way by large national projects such as Caltech and Berkeley’s Joint Center on Artificial Photosynthesis, the Solar H2 network based at Uppsala University, the Solar Fuels Initiative (SOFI) based at Northwestern University, and Dan Nocera’s work at MIT and Harvard. Public policy and investment interest in developing the so-called Hydrogen Economy is critically dependent on a cheap, abundant non-carbon-based source of hydrogen (H2). This would either serve as a source of electricity via fuel cells or a liquid solar fuel itself, or be combined with carbon dioxide to form fuels such as methanol. In many developed nations, major energy policy documents have outlined the case for such a H2 fuel economy, particularly because of the need to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases. But they have then faced problems associated with the high cost of generating H2, as well as the problem of intermittency in renewable energy electricity supplies. The short-term benefits of recent bonanzas in coal seam natural gas and shale oil will also prolong humanity’s damaging dependence on “archived” photosynthesis fuels (fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, and oil), as will the subsidies that keep the prices of such fuels down and so make it harder for renewable energy technologies to compete. These problems would vanish if artificial photosynthesis could be routinely incorporated in all engineered structures on Earth, thus providing a cheap source of hydrogen fuel, oxygen, carbon-dioxide absorption, and soil nutrients.

GREG STEWART / NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

The major scientific challenges in artificial photosynthesis fall into three areas: light capture, water splitting (or catalysis), and carbon- dioxide reduction. In each of these areas, nanotechnology and synthetic biology present opportunities for significant improvements. • Light capture. Nanostructured materials or synthetic organisms are being developed to absorb photons from a much wider region of the solar spectrum. The advantage is that nanoparticles used on any surface drastically increase its surface area compared with standard materials. • Catalysis. A crucial component of photosynthesis is the protein known as photosystem II, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. As well as the centers mentioned earlier, new research at the Dutch and South Korean artificial photosynthesis projects, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, and the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College London now focuses on developing artificial watersplitting catalysts (currently fo- Artist’s concept of ultra-short X-ray pulse striking molecules containing manganese, a metal cused on manganese, nickel, that, with calcium and oxygen, forms the water-splitting catalyst in photosystem II. Researchers cobalt, and doped iron oxide) believe that a better understanding of this process will contribute to developing artificial that stay active for extended photosynthesis. periods of time or that can be easily regenerated and be photosynthetic technology may arise from the oil, coal, made from readily available and inexpensive materials. and natural-gas industries via international trade and • Carbon-dioxide reduction. Replicating how photosynthesis reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide may be investment law. the hardest challenge, yet perhaps the most significant GAP as a combined off-grid energy and climatefor humanity. CO2 reduction is a major focus of the artichange solution is a potential disruptor to corporations ficial photosynthesis groups working in Japan (for exrelying on abundant natural resources or cheap labor. ample, at Osaka University). An open-access model for research and marketing of GAP for solar food and fuel products, for example, could involve funding rules requiring public good liGovernance Challenges for Artificial Photosynthesis censing, technology transfer, ethical and social implicaNanotechnology deployed for the development of tions research, as well as rapid and free access to data. global artificial photosynthesis (GAP) offers both enPhotosynthesis, like the human genome, deserves the ergy security and a climate-change solution. Yet, major status of “common heritage of humanity” under interchallenges to the rapid global deployment of artificial national law so it can be kept as a legacy for future gen-

www.wfs.org

•

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

World Trends & Forecasts erations and not completely enclosed by patents. A GAP Project governance structure emphasizing international law might protect photosynthesis from excessive patents that promote inequitable or unsustainable use of the global commons. One mechanism for this could be a UNESCO Universal Declaration on Natural and Artificial Photosynthesis. Such a Declaration could place reasonable limits on private appropriation, encourage the management of the research on behalf of all, encourage active sharing of the benefits, prohibit weaponry developed using artificial photosynthesis, and preserve natural and artificial photosynthesis for research by future generations. Globalizing artificial photosynthesis technology will assist humanity to move into a “Sustainocene” epoch, where humanity is an environmental steward. We would have an ethical obligation to ensure that this epoch will last as long as the legacy that life has given us: some 2.3 billion years. It is a task that cannot wait and should be made the subject of a macroscience project, with attendant increase in resources and public-policy profile. Thomas Faunce holds a joint position in the College of Law and the College of Medicine, Biology, and the Environment at the Australian National University (ANU), http://law.anu.edu.au/staff/thomas-faunce. He is on the Board of Directors of the Energy Change Institute at the ANU. He is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow. His papers are accessible at http://law.anu.edu.au/staff/thomas-faunce?tb=5, and his latest book is Nanotechnology for a Sustainable World: Global Artificial Photosynthesis as Nanotechnology’s Moral Culmination (Edward Elgar, 2012).

rus. But the clinic has no equipment to analyze blood samples or find the cause of the inflammation. A clinic worker takes down the patient’s information, when the symptoms began, where he’s from, and whether he owns cattle, birds, or pigs. She uploads her findings to the ProMED-mail Web site. Across the world, an algorithm goes to work, weighing the information in the report against details contained in similar reports from other ProMED-mail users in the area and around the world. The algorithm rules that the encephalitis is probably the result of an emerging NiV cluster (since several similar reports have emerged from nearby clinics). Local health officials are now able to put in the right measures to, they hope, prevent an epidemic of a deadly disease. Timely diagnosis of infectious diseases is crucial for thwarting massive outbreaks. It’s also difficult and costly in some of the places where hotspots are most likely to flare up, such as in South Asia. A team of researchers has developed a diagnostic shortcut for resource-strapped communities. In a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, they describe an algorithm that can identify the specific pathogens causing certain illnesses by using information loaded into databases, as opposed to expensive lab diagnosis of blood samples. First, they established a dataset for different illnesses or symptoms, like encephalitis, and then cross-referenced that against 10 different known pathogens, like NiV, typhoid fever, etc. They also weighed environmental features such as the season and the fatality rate for people who suffered from that illness. Next, they COURTESY OF TIFFANY L. BOGICH AND SEBASTIAN FUNK

Information Society | Sci/Tech

Catching a Pandemic, Online Researchers use an algorithm to diagnose infectious disease a continent away. Scenario: A man is brought to a clinic in a remote village in Nepal. The patient is confused, has a severe headache, and is breathing laboriously. He’s had seizures, weakness, and vomiting. These symptoms suggest encephalitis, a type of brain inflammation that could be caused by a number of infectious diseases. The warning signs of a major outbreak are clear. The urgent question becomes: What infection is causing the symptoms? It could be the relatively easy to cure typhoid fever or the impossible to cure Nipah (NiV) vi-

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

•

www.wfs.org

Sebastian Funk (left) and Tiffany L. Bogich of Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, two of the authors of the paper “Using network theory to identify the causes of disease outbreaks of unknown origin.”

transform your thinking Oxford Scenarios Programme Strategic decisions often assume a ‘given’ context around the organisation, but what if the conditions of this context change - would these decisions be correct? Under what conditions could these assumptions be wrong and what new opportunities would yield from different assumptions? Scenarios planning explores ‘what if’; to prepare against uncertain times. Use this programme to learn scenarios processes and test the robustness and implications of strategic decisions against several alternative future environments.

Dates: 30 Sep – 4 Oct 2013 www.sbs.oxford.edu/scenarios

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

World Trends & Forecasts

Disease Aseptic meningitis Bacterial meningitis Chandipura Chikungunya Dengue Japanese Encephalitis Malaria Measles Nipah (NiV) Typhoid/enteric fever

TIFFANY L. BOGICH, SEBASTIAN FUNK

Visualization of the network of diagnosed outbreaks of diseases with the potential to cause encephalitis (colored) and outbreaks of encephalitis where the cause was removed (white). The inner network describes the strength and relationship of individual outbreaks to each other, while the outer ring gives the composition of the seven communities of disease that were found by the community detection algorithm. Each circle represents a single outbreak report. Lines connecting two nodes indicate shared traits between two outbreak reports.

pored through the 97 different reports of encephalitis in the ProMED-mail database to identify instances where brain inflammation had been observed in conjunction with a contagious bug such as dengue fever, meningitis, or NiV. To test the model, they removed the official diagnosis from the reports. The algorithm was left with just a few symptom key words like fever, neurological, headache, and other clues. The model was able to retroactively identify, with 80% accuracy, NiV, which occurs only in the spring and kills two-thirds of its victims. Other pathogens, like chikungunya fever, could be predicted with 75% accuracy.

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Clustering and Networking Disease Databases like ProMED-mail and GIDEON have made some disease clusters much easier to remotely detect, in part because they enable the spread of information not just between local health-care workers and global health organizations, but also between clinic workers in the same area who may be on the front lines of a potential outbreak and not know it. â&#x20AC;&#x153;In a way, the method is not all too different from syndromic [symptom-based] methods of disease identification practiced by doctors around the world, but it formalizes this process and yields the potential of link-

ing outbreaks of uncommon or new diseases that are gin” by Tiffany L. Bogich, Sebastian Funk, et al., Journal of the Royal not on the radar of local clinicians,” says Princeton UniSociety Interface (2013 10, 20120904, published online 6 February versity zoologist Tiffany L. Bogich, the study’s corre2013). sponding author. “It also provides an objective output Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, www.mailman. with probabilities attached to each potential disease columbia.edu. that could be causing an outbreak, so it takes much of the potential subjectivity out of the diagnostic process.” Have we reached an age where data and statistics outperform doctors and formal lab tests? Not yet. The same phenomenon that makes certain pathogens more conspicuous can make other illnesses more difficult to diagnose: Diseases, illnesses, and symptoms all tend to show up —Rafael Reif, President of MIT at the same time. Out of the original set of 97 cases of encephalitis, 54 had multiple diagnoses, such as dengue fever and meningitis, occurring simultaneously. Also, when one of the health-care workers jotted down information incorrectly, it threw the model off. “Real world information is often vague, minimal, and at times contradictory, so the challenge is to find ways to make good inferences (disease identifications) from such limited data,” says epidemiologist Stephen Morse of Columbia University, one of the paper ’s c o-authors and creator of the ProMED-mail site. But the potential to detect outbreaks much faster through the use of statistical models applied to field reports is clear. These tools will find their greatest value in places where deadly pathogens are numerous, diagnostic equipment is hard to find, and time is short. “What one could do with our method in real time is to give a quick and indicative evaluation,” says Bogich. “When lab diagnostics are The bold futurist Ray Kurzweil finds limitless potential in reversenot possible—either because it’s early on in an outbreak or capacity engineering the human brain to understand precisely how it works and in country does not exist—our using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. method offers a ‘quick and dirty’ alternative.” —Patrick Tucker

“A visionary work that is also accessible and entertaining.”

Sources: “Using network theory to identify the causes of disease outbreaks of unknown ori-

AvAilAble now wherever books Are sold • kurzweilAi.net

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World Trends & Forecasts Medicine | Sci/Tech

Long-Term Risks of Psychiatric Drugs More prescriptions could lead to more people suffering serious side effects. While it’s common knowledge that antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other psychiatric medications can cause short-term side effects, researchers acknowledge that no one knows for sure what long-term effects patients may suffer after taking these drugs for many years. Some studies indicate that long-lasting brain and bodychemistry changes, some of them irreversible, can occur. The issue raises concerns especially because sales of all types of psychiatric drugs, and the durations for which patients take them, have both risen markedly in recent years. As of 2009, Great Britain’s doctors were issuing twice as many prescriptions for SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a category of antidepressants and ADHD medications that includes Prozac, Paxil, and Strattera) as they were in the mid-1990s, according to studies published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Prescriptions for all antidepressants further rose by 9.6% in Great Britain in 2011, with around 2 million Britons taking antidepressants for several years or more. In the United States, prescriptions for the antianxiety medications Xanax, Ativan, and Valium saw respective increases of 29%, 36%, and 16% from 2005 through 2009, according to IMS health. Prescriptions for Ris perdal, a medication for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, grew by 45%, and prescriptions for the antidepressant Cymbalta skyrocketed 237%. As of 2011, one out of every eight Americans, including children and infants, was on a psychiatric medication. “Serious mental disorders have long been underrecognized and undertreated, so part of the trend reflects improved capture and treatment,” says Richard Friedman, a Cornell University psychiatrist and New York Times columnist. “We don’t know, though, to what extent people with nothing more than everyday sadness or anxiety are unnecessarily receiving them.” Friedman is concerned that many doctors might be overprescribing the drugs. Also, doctors are increasingly substituting more potent drugs for milder, safer ones. Friedman notes with alarm that more doctors are prescribing Xanax, Valium, and powerful antipsychotic medications for moderate insomnia and anxiety. “That’s a bit like killing a fly with a cannon,” he says, adding that doctors are also not making enough use of

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behavioral approaches. “Various relaxation techniques, particularly transcendental meditation—for which there is good empirical evidence of efficacy—can be very effective.” Meanwhile, overprescribing medications might be putting more patients at risk of harmful effects. Some studies of patients who regularly use antipsychotic medications have found higher-than-normal occurrences of brain-tissue shrinkage and tardive dyskinesia, a disorder characterized by physical tremors. Antidepressants may also raise risks of tardive dyskinesia. Some studies suggest that adults over 50 who take SSRIs have double the risk of bone fractures, and that women of all ages who take antidepressants increase their risks for cardiac death. Friedman cautions against making firm conclusions just yet. Many symptoms might have resulted not from the medications, but from the initial conditions. Schizophrenia and depression, for instance, can both damage brain tissues over time. He strongly favors more study. “In the United States, we have essentially a voluntary system of post-marketing surveillance that relies on individual practitioners to report adverse events. That means we are probably not capturing important data that could answer these questions,” he says. Peter Breggin disagrees. A psychiatrist who has helped many patients withdraw from medications and who has publicly denounced medications’ potential harms through a series of books and news-media appearances, he argues that we have plenty of data to act. “We’ve known from the beginning that psychiatric drugs would be damaging to the brain and mind. That evidence has been accumulating from year to year,” he says. “But that evidence is suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry, which has a firm grip on psychiatric practice.” Part of the drugs’ problem is that they work by impairing brain functions, Breggin argues. SSRIs, for example, obstruct brain cells’ absorption of serotonin, a neurotransmitter critical to regulating mood. This improves the patient’s mood in the short term, since more serotonin stays present at high enough concentrations to be active. Over time, however, the brain can “compensate” by slowing or stopping production of new serotonin. Eventually, nerve synapses themselves die. Then the patient needs a stronger medication and is at risk for even worse depression. “This probably contributes to the long-term apathy that these drugs produce, with a general decline in quality of life,” Breggin says. “All psychiatric treatments impair brain function directly as a part of their action. Just like with shock treatment and lobotomy, the

damage is the treatment. When you give an antipsychotic drug to someone who is disturbed, you lobotomize them, in part. What you get is a chemical lobotomy.” Nor do these effects necessarily go away once the patients wean off the drugs. Someone who is on a drug for a few years—or, in some cases, just a few months— can suffer biochemical disruptions and “chronic brain impairment” long after he or she has ceased taking it. “In the case where you have damage that is clearly demonstrable—that is, it’s the mind or the neurological system or the metabolic system—these things develop within months or less, and then it just becomes more frequent or worse as time goes on,” says Breggin. He warns that the numbers of patients who eventually come down with these symptoms are likely to increase in the years ahead, due simply to the sheer growth in the numbers of people who are on medications in the first place. As the numbers grow further, health-care systems everywhere will strain to help them. “So we’re talking about a massive problem, millions of people permanently injured by the drugs, there’s no doubt about that,” says Breggin, adding this grim caveat: “We can’t even begin to estimate the overall effect, because we don’t study for it.” Still, the risks of taking a medication are often far less than the risks of not taking it, cautions Ian Reid, a professor of psychiatry and mental health at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Depression and other such disorders are potentially debilitating, and a prescription drug is often the only reliable treatment option. “Depressive disorder is a painful and disabling condition that can kill. It ruins many lives, and while antidepressants most certainly have side effects and can do harm, just like any other treatment—including talking therapies, for that matter—properly used they can and do help many,” says Reid. “Folks who have never experienced serious mood disorder, or met sufferers, often have little conception of just awful the illness can be.” Side effects will not appear in every patient, he notes, and when they do, they are often manageable. Every patient should evaluate his or her health situation and the treatment options with a doctor and weigh all the pros and cons of treatment accordingly. Additionally, any patient can reduce the chances of suffering serious side effects by having a checkup with his or her doctor regularly—Reid recommends every six months. Further safety comes from maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle: eating properly, getting enough sleep, and minimizing alcohol consumption, or avoiding alcohol if the medications carry warnings against alcohol consumption. “All effective drugs are associated with side effects,

of course, and the issue here is balancing benefit versus harm,” says Reid. “This is by no means straightforward, and careful consideration is required in best matching medicines to individual circumstances, preferences, and experiences.” Drug safety might improve much in years to come, in any case, as communications technology improves, suggests Jay Herson, futurist and consultant on biostatistics and data monitoring who designed and analyzed clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies for more than 40 years. He says that digital communications networks make it easier for researchers to note new evidence on drug-related health effects and then relay it to the pharmaceutical company and to watchdog groups, news media, and government regulators. In fact, we might even be at risk of overreacting to alleged drug dangers that turn out later to be false. “We will have data being constantly streamed from physicians to drug companies to the government, and

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World Trends & Forecasts we’ll know about these things,” Herson says. “Regulators are going to have more data than ever before, and all the data could create an overzealousness. There will be false alarms.” But another, more positive trend could also emerge: a more cautious public. As consumers read more about medications and their potential harms, more of them might opt for nonchemical, lifestyle strategies to boost their health naturally and safely. Increased participation in yoga and meditation in recent years are examples of this, Herson explains. “We’re learning more about yoga and meditation every year. More and more people are directed, and the Internet helps a lot, to these alternatives. People learn that that may be all they need,” he says. “So there may be fewer people taking medicine.” The pharmaceutical companies will be more vigilant, as well, Herson hopes. They know that they lose financially if their drugs cause demonstrable physical harms to the consumers who take them. Companies that want to steer clear of lawsuits are finding ways to improve clinical trials, such as by using larger groups of people. “Once the word is out that there are these effects, the doctors don’t prescribe it anymore. And the pharmaceutical company will say ‘we don’t want a class action suit.’ When all of that is happening, the sales of the drug go down,” he says. “It doesn’t go on forever.” —Rick Docksai Sources: Richard Friedman, Cornell University, www.cornell.edu. Peter Breggin, Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, www.breggin.com. Ian Reid, University of Aberdeen School of Medicine and Dentistry, www.abdn.ac.uk. Jay Herson, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, www.biostat.jhsph.edu.

Psychology | Humanity

Virtual Empathy Superhero fantasies may increase impulses toward compassion. If you’re worried about seeming cold, calculating, and incapable of empathy, science has provided a solution: Pretend to be Superman. Researchers from Stanford University found that individuals became demonstrably more empathetic after engaging in a virtual-reality video game where they could fly.

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SCREEN CAPTURES FROM VIDEO COURTESY OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Fly like Superman (rather than a chopper pilot) to promote feelings of empathy and altruism.

The researchers took 60 subjects and asked them to strap on a pair of virtual-reality goggles. The subjects were then informed that they were in a video game with the ability to fly. One group was told they could clutch an imaginary helicopter joystick to direct a chopper. The second group was instructed to stretch their arms in front of them like the Man of Steel. The researchers piped in sounds of rushing air and even used heavy speakers to vibrate the floor, like a shaking helicopter. The objective of the game was to deliver a lifesaving shot of insulin to a child. When the subjects had completed the training, they were asked to sit with an interviewer to discuss the game. Here’s where the actual experiment began. During the mock interview, the questioner would pretend to accidently drop several pens. This is apparently a common means for assessing empathy levels in clinical psychological research. Subjects who leap to help the interviewer pick up pens within five seconds are displaying high empathy. Subjects who wait for the interviewer to start picking up pens before pitching in, or who make no attempt to help at all, are empathychallenged. The researchers found that the “Superman” group reacted much more quickly to the pen drop, retrieving 15% more pens than the “helicopter” group. Several of the subjects in the helicopter group made no attempt to clean up the mess at all. “We want to have a more precise understanding of why this occurs,” Jeremy Bailenson, an associate professor of communication, said in a press release. “What’s more important for encouraging altruistic behavior: being able to fly, or being active in choosing to help?” —Patrick Tucker Source: Stanford University, www.stanford.edu.

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FUTURIST editor Cindy Wagner (far left) greets students attending WorldFuture 2010 thanks to the generosity of Dr. Frank Maletz and his daughter, Kristin Maletz (third from right).

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World Trends & Forecasts Commons | Governance

Partnering for a World Free of Mercury Efforts against mercury pollution will gain strength under a new UN treaty. A number of mercury-containing consumer products will disappear from store shelves over the next seven years, as mandated by a first-ever global convention on mercury. The text of the treaty, which 147 member countries of the United Nations agreed to in January 2013, will be formally signed in October. The treaty recognizes the growing threat that mercury pollution poses to human health, and it requires its signers to curb mercury emissions from all industrial activity, particularly coal mining and burning, as well as mining for gold. The treaty’s signers commit to installing new mercury-pollution control systems on all new coal-fired power plants within the next five years and to retrofit

the control systems onto any already-existing coal-fired facilities within the next 10 years. The signers also pledge to cease production, by 2020, of a range of mercury-laced products, including thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs, and batteries. “If you still have a mercury thermometer in 2020, you will still be able to use it, but you won’t be able to buy a new one, because they won’t be manufactured anymore,” says Tim Kasten, director of the chemicals branch of the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), which has been documenting mercury’s growing threat to human health for several years. The UNEP’s 2013 Global Mercury Estimate report indicates a doubling of mercury levels in the world’s top 100 meters of ocean water over the last 100 years, and increases in rates of human neurological, behavioral, and physical disorders linked to mercury. The report traces nearly half of the world’s mercury pollution to Asia, with China alone responsible for a third of the global total. About 24% of the pollution stems from coal mining and burning, according to the report. Coal-powered facilities in North America and Europe now emit only a tenth of the mercury that they were releasing decades ago, thanks to widespread installation

Mercury Pollution in Our Mouths A number of other, more established industries produce additional mercury pollution, including naturalgas combustion, chlorine manufacturing, and—this may surprise some—dentistry. The production of fillings and other dental products worldwide uses around 340 tons of mercury yearly, of which 100 tons enters the environment as waste. Most of this comes from the amalgam, a mercury-laden waste product of dental fillings and restorations, which exits into ecosystems via dental offices’ wastewater. In the United States, dentistry emits 3.7 tons of mercury a year. But a dental office can eliminate more than 95% of its own mercury waste by installing an amalgam separator into its plumbing system to filter and capture amalgam particles. Unfortunately, uptake of amalgam separators has been slow: As of 2009, only 39% of U.S. dental offices had them, according to the Eco Dentistry Association. Marcella Lentini, the association’s marketing and member services manager, sees little hope for more widespread amalgam separator usage unless the government passes laws to require it. Currently, 11 U.S. states and 17 municipalities have made the fixtures legally required, and they have seen strong rates of compliance, she points out.

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“Our hope is that, when dentists—as caring healthcare professionals—understand the public health and safety implications of not properly disposing of mercury waste, they will make the right decision and voluntarily install amalgam separators. Unfortunately, the health of our planet may not be able to wait that long, and nationally mandated requirements may be necessary,” she says. As many as half of U.S. dentists also substitute dental fillings made with mercury-free materials, such as gold, glass ionomer, porcelain, and composite resins, Lentini adds. And she places further hope in one more key trend: healthier teeth. Rates of tooth decay have declined; if this trend continues, there will be fewer patients needing treatments—which may or may not use mercury—in the first place. “As the rates of dental decay continue to decline, in part as a result of better oral care habits by consumers like daily flossing and regular dental visits, there will be fewer teeth that require restoration and therefore less and less amalgam being used,” Lentini says. —RD Source: Marcella Lentini, Eco-Dentistry Association, www.ecodentistry.org.

of mercury-capture systems. These antipollution systems have yet to be added, however, to many coalpower facilities in China and the developing world. The treaty’s stipulations call for narrowing this technological gap among the world’s facilities as far as possible, Kasten notes. “It’s going to be a bit more of a gradual process for the existing facilities, since there are tens of thousands of them around the world. It’s going to take time, and it’s going to take some funding, as well,” says Kasten. Meanwhile, mercury pollution has more than doubled worldwide since 2005 from “artisanal” gold mining—e.g., amateur prospectors scouting for gold. Artisanal gold mining is a widespread source of income in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing areas. Since mercury is commonly used to help separate the gold from the rock, artisanal mining has become the number-one worldwide source of mercury pollution, emitting 727 tons into the environment every year, or 35% of the global total. The UNEP report expects artisanal mining and its accompanying mercury pollution to rise further in years ahead due to surging global prices for gold. The treaty does not prohibit or restrict artisanal mining—nor should it, according to Susan Egan Keane, a senior environmental analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of dozens of nonprofits that lobbied for this mercury treaty’s passage. There are artisanal mining methods that do not use mercury, she explains, and countries can solve the problem best by teaching the miners the mercury-free methods and providing them with the needed capital and equipment. “Laws on the books really aren’t that meaningful. People are desperate for this income,” says Keane. “What is meaningful is for countries to take up the cause of these miners.” In fact, promoting the new methods might actually make the miners wealthier. According to Keane, the mercury-free methods are more cost-effective and tend to yield more gold. “By training miners and teaching them new technologies, they can actually enhance their mining capacity. Right now they’re using a fairly inefficient process to obtain gold,” she says. Mercury travels in water and air, according to Keane, and this unfortunately makes it more dangerous globally: It can easily leave one locale and drift into another one far away. Communities in Europe and North America have, for instance, ingested mercury pollution that originated in China. She argues that this transborder drifting underscores further why it is important to have a global treaty. “Mercury is a global pollutant,” says Keane. “We can phase out mercury products and mandate mercury

controls in one country and it could still see mercury pollution.” —Rick Docksai Sources: Tim Kasten, United Nations Environment Program, www.unep.org. Susan Egan Keane, Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org.

Computing | Sci/Tech

Building a Quantum Computer By Geordie Rose

We are changing the way we build machines, so we may soon be able to build machines that are more like us. In the movie Prometheus, a work set in the future supposedly about our search for our own beginnings, one of the characters is an android named David. David is a lot more human in many ways than the human characters in the film. In the future, humanity is going to try to build things like David. We’re going to fail at first, because that’s the nature of big things. But just because you’re probably going to fail doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to do it. If we at my company, D-Wave, listened to everybody that said that you couldn’t build a quantum computer 10 years ago, we never would have tried. But we did try. And we succeeded. These two goals have a lot in common. The original goal of AI was not to build things that make you click on ads more. That wasn’t the reason that AI got started. The reason AI got started is because we wanted to build the things that were like those science-fiction robots. We wanted to build machines that behaved more like us. Over the years of failure, and determining how hard this problem was, people got disillusioned. Now, it’s not even talked about in polite company anymore, although it’s coming back a little bit. I never really cared what people think. I think that this is worth doing. And we should try to do it. … At D-Wave, we’re trying to build systems that use all different resources in a way that allows us to try a huge amount of things to try to build truly intelligent machines. Part of the reason D-Wave was a success was that we took the attitude that we couldn’t know in advance what the right answer was. We didn’t know what the right design was for a quantum computer. So how do

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World Trends & Forecasts D-WAVE

Geordie Rose of D-Wave Systems stands in front of the D-Wave One, the world’s first commercially available quantum computer.

you get around that? You try thousands of ideas as fast as you can. And you evolve the solution. So what we’re trying to do now is set up an infrastructure that will allow us to try tens of thousands of ideas, and narrow the solutions. We’re going to try to apply the things that worked well with building quantum computers to this even harder problem of building machines that are intelligent in the way that we think we are. Today, our computers are little clockwork universes that we’ve created within a chip. And those little clockwork universes can do an awful lot of things very, very well. But they are not like the way nature actually is. We know that nature isn’t clockwork, but that used to be a controversial point of view. The clockwork universe assumption, popular from the seventeenth century until the twentieth, was driven by an understanding of the world that was developed during the Enlightenment: that the universe has gears and clicks forward in a very deterministic and linear way. Therefore, if you know something at some point, you can always know what’s going to happen at another point. Nature is fundamentally different from a clockwork universe. It’s far more complex. Once you acknowledge that, you have to acknowledge that it’s possible to build

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machines that are not like our computers—machines that are like nature. These machines can solve problems that you couldn’t otherwise solve. Quantum computers are one type of machine like that. It’s the way that they do their computation that gives insight into something about the ontological nature of reality. What is actually out there? If we rely only our senses, we’ll never know. We see the world through lenses that are so thick, it’s amazing that we can know anything else about the universe other than what we see. The amount of data that’s inundating the room you are sitting—the cell-phone signals, the Internet, the gamma rays, even just the photons that you can see in that tiny little spectrum that we can see with our eyes— it’s such a tiny part of the universe. It’s fascinating we can do physics at all. But quantum mechanics takes that concept to a whole other level. You see, in quantum mechanics there’s a perfectly viable explanation for the way the world works, which is the idea that every time a decision is made, every time a potential becomes a reality, the whole universe forks and generates copies of itself. Our way of computing at D‑Wave is very different from the ways that people build computers today, architecturally. Our way is a lot more like a brain. It’s more like a neural network. Neurons, in this case, are molecular devices called qubits, or quantum bits. They’re like neurons, except they’re quantum. The progression of quantum computing technology over the last eight or nine years has been exponential. And the number of these qubits—neurons on the chip—has been steadily doubling every year for almost nine years now. As you get this number larger and larger, you start pushing into territory that allows you to do things that you simply can’t do with conventional approaches to computing. The benefits aren’t just speed. Nevertheless, there are a lot of things these computers can’t do well. Why aren’t there any New York Times bestsellers written by computers? The problem of making a machine that thinks like us is a lot like the problem of making a quantum computer—it’s the sort of problem where there’s no good reason why you can’t do it. Doing it right requires a lot of money. And time. But that’s not a reason to not do it. So perhaps in 10 or 15 years, it won’t be me telling you about this. It will be something that we created. Geordie Rose, founder and chief technology officer of D-Wave Systems Inc., is the creator of the D-Wave One, the world’s first commercial quantum computer. This article was adapted from his presentation at WorldFuture 2012, ❑ the annual conference of the World Future Society.

magazine

News and Previews from the World Future Society

Get to the Future First Futurist Update, a monthly e-newsletter from the World Future Society, is your link to the fast-breaking trends that are shaping the future. And it’s absolutely free. Here are some of the stories recently spotlighted:

Brain Pacemakers to Stop Memory Loss Cybernetic brain implants will help the elderly keep their memories.

Teachers More Fluent in Digital Technologies Than the Broader Population Today’s teachers are heavy technology users compared with the broader population; they’re better versed in digital technologies, and humanities teachers actually use digital technologies in their classrooms more often than do math teachers.

Self-Tracking on the Rise More people are tracking health indicators such as weight and sharing the information with a clinician. Researchers are hopeful that the boom in mobile tracking devices will help health-care providers track their patients’ health more efficiently.

Using Brain Scans to Predict Future Test Performance The brain’s electrical activity, detectable via electroencephalogram (EEG), predicts how well studied material has been incorporated into memory, and, thus, how well subjects performed on memory tests.

Cities Will Support 5 Billion Humans by 2030, but Fewer Other Species Urban areas around the world are expanding at twice the rate of their populations, reversing historic trends toward increased density within city limits. The result will be more loss of habitat and biodiversity.

Arts Organizations Learn to Juggle Digital Technology’s Pros and Cons While maintaining a vibrant and productive presence on social media can be time consuming, nine out of 10 arts organizations agree that it’s worth it. Edited by FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker, each issue of Futurist Update also includes a “best hits” list of recent posts on the Futurist Blog, highlights of FUTURIST magazine content, conference updates and other Society announcements, and important news for the futurist community.

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s a musician and writer, Ben Novak drove the car he could afford in 2004: a 1993 Nissan Bluebird. The vehicle propelled him around his hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, just fine. Novak’s main complaint about the car concerned its radio, which could capture only two FM stations out of the dozens broadcasting in the city. As somebody who spent every spare minute imbibing or playing music, Novak found this no minor aggravation. But he didn’t have money for a new car, so he left the dial fixed on the BBC, his only acceptable option. Being stuck on the BBC had its benefits. Novak was well armed for cocktail conversation on current events, and he could always crack off a new piece of intellectual fodder when chitchat grew stale. More important, he didn’t miss a short BBC report on technology developed in Spain that, the person being profiled claimed, could predict which songs would turn into pop hits. “I’m driving down the road listen-

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ing to this and I think, ‘That’s interesting,’” Novak remembers. “I could have just kept driving and forgot about it, frankly, but I was getting off at the next exit.” Novak hit his exit, drove to his house, and sat down in front of his computer. He brought up the Web site belonging to what was then called Polyphonic HMI. For $50, its algorithm would analyze any music file Novak uploaded. Potential hits earned high scores, duds got low ones. “I mean, for $50—it was such a small amount of money when you think about what it could mean in the long run,” Novak says. “So I did it.” Novak had written a song a few years before called “Turn Your Car Around” that he believed held significant potential. He uploaded the song and sat at his screen, waiting for a result. Finally, the Web site whirred to life with an answer for Novak. The algorithm behind the site used a number scale to rate songs. Anything more than 6.5 had decent hit potential. Anything past 7 had a hook made for the pop charts. Novak’s song

scored a 7.57—as high as the algorithm had scored many of the biggest rock hits of all time, such as “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by the Eagles. “I was really happy, obviously,” says Novak. “But it wasn’t really clear what came next.” In Spain, where Polyphonic HMI was based, the computer engineers who maintained the algorithm took note of the song for its high score. They pulled it down off the server and played it in the office. “There was clearly something there,” says Mike McCready, who ran the company. “Our guys played it over and over again.” A musician himself, McCready called some recording label contacts in Europe and got the song circulating. About two weeks after he submitted his song on McCready’s Web site, Novak’s phone rang. It was a representative for Ash Howes, a music producer in the United Kingdom with a few dozen hits in his pocket. He had a young British pop star, Lee Ryan, who needed more tracks to fill out his album. Howe thought Novak’s song would fit in well. In fact, he thought it could be a single. Novak quickly agreed to a favorable deal: He would get 50% of all royalties when the song was played on the radio, on TV, or in an advertisement. Novak’s song not only went on Ryan’s album but was also designated the CD’s first single. The song debuted at number 12 on the English pop charts, and for two months in a row it was the most played song in the UK.

At the Crossroads of Music and Technology Novak isn’t shy about crediting an algorithm. The music world is one in which a hair ’s width of luck can make an artist or keep him from being discovered. Algorithms that sniff out talent can change that.

“This whole music thing is just a huge gamble for anybody who goes into it,” he says. “This program, this Web site—it aligned the planets for me.” The algorithm that changed Novak’s life was devised by a group of engineers in Spain headed by M cCready, an American who took an odd path to becoming an authority on the technology that’s changing the future of music. “I had all these friends who were getting rich with Internet companies—or thought they were getting rich,” McCready says. “It seemed like the thing to do.” It indeed was the thing to do in 2000, and McCready went to work as the head of marketing for an online music start-up called Deo. The Swedish company fashioned itself as the first open marketplace for music. Musicians and bands could upload their music to Deo, where they could sell it directly to consumers. Like many companies born in that era, Deo had been infused with boundless optimism and a large pile of money. And just like hundreds of other start-ups, Deo had misjudged its appeal and market. Few people knew what a digital file was, and those who did were likely getting them illegally through sites like Napster. A year later, Deo ran out of cash and folded. The experience proved valuable for McCready as he got to spend a year at the crossroads of music and technology. During that twelve months, he met a small tech firm in Barcelona that had developed an algorithm for analyzing the underlying structure, patterns, and architecture of popular music. McCready spent time with the company’s engineers and concluded that the technology actually worked. He proposed forming a new

company built around the technology that would pitch to musicians and record companies. They called it Polyphonic. The algorithms behind Polyphonic work a wondrous dissection on the music they’re fed. The particular science behind the company’s algorithms is called advanced spectral deconvolution. The process breaks the songs up mathematically, isolating tunes’ patterns of melody, beat, tempo, rhythm, pitch, chord progression, fullness of sound, sonic brilliance, and cadence. Polyphonic’s software takes this data and builds three-dimensional models with it. By looking at, instead of listening to, the song’s 3-D structure, the algorithm compares the song to hits of the past in as objective a way as is possible. Putting a just-analyzed song on the screen with number-one tracks of the past shows a kind of cloud structure filled in with dots representing songs. The hits tend to be grouped in clusters that reveal their similar underlying structures. Get close to the middle of one of those hit clusters and, while you’re not guaranteed success, you’re in very good shape.

The Bot That Came Away With Norah When he was in Barcelona perfecting the algorithm, McCready ran as many to-be-released albums through Songwriter Ben Novak (left) uploaded his tune “Turn Your Car Around” to Mike McCready’s (center) Web site. McCready’s algorithm saw hit potential in the song—and it was, for British pop star Lee Ryan (right).

may never come. Polyphonic’s algorithm, McCready thought, could prove the answer.

The success of Norah Jones (right, receiving one of her 2003 Grammy awards from Elvis Costello) was predicted by algorithms.

Members of the band Maroon 5 arrive for their CD release party.

his bot as possible. It was these test cases that would reveal if the algorithm had any real power. The algorithm rated most of the unreleased CDs as ho-hum. But one, the algorithm said, contained nine likely hits out of 14 total songs. Those are B eatles numbers. McCready could hardly believe it. Nobody had heard of this artist, which made McCready worry that the bot was wildly wrong. But then the album, Come Away with Me, was released, selling more than 20 million copies and netting its artist, Norah Jones, eight Grammy Awards. Jones had found the clusters. “Some people describe a hit song as a brain itch,” McCready says. “And you scratch that itch by listening to the song over and over again.” The clusters were the itchiest spots, and McCready thought his company had struck upon the formula for identifying musical gold. The music industry already tried to pick its own hits, but it was only right 20% of the time. McCready’s tool, if it worked, would be the industry’s holy grail.

The A&R Bot Said, “I Don’t Hear a Single” Tom Petty’s 1991 song “Into the Great Wide Open” features a wellknown verse that refers to the record industry’s equivalent of a baseball talent scout: the A&R man. A&R (artists and repertoire) staff at record labels are the gatekeepers to the recording industry. They can make careers and launch a musician from obscurity to stardom. In the pop music world, A&R people’s jobs depend on finding singles. An artist without a single, as Tom Petty’s sardonic invoking of that cliché suggests, isn’t worth much. 22

THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP / NEWSCOM

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One problem is that A&R is an inherently subjective trade. It’s not baseball; a 100 mph fastball to one scout is a 100 mph fastball to another. There’s no denying that kind of raw talent that can be quantitatively measured so easily. With music, however, talent exists everywhere. But not all musical talent has the potential to appeal to mass audiences. Some of the most brilliant artists in the world may never become known outside a small circle of fans. Other artists whose musical talent may not be deeper than that of an average 8-year-old piano player can take over the world with one catchy pop lick. For that reason, music remains a business much like book publishing. The record labels depend on one album out of fifty to keep them profitable and justify the signing bonuses they dole out to new acquisitions. It’s only by casting a wide net that labels assure themselves of scoring the hits they need. A&R people who unearth more diamonds than average are well compensated. Those who consistently pluck stars from obscurity become legends; these rainmakers often ascend to become leading executives at the label. Even though A&R people are always hunting for promising artists, most of their signings come through personal relationships or direct referrals. The music business remains far from a meritocracy, even if merit is measured by the ability to hook teenage girls’ ears. But what if A&R could be made into a science? Being right just 30% of the time would be a giant improvement on the industry’s historical rate. And artists with a knack for pleasing listeners wouldn’t have to wait for that random connection or recommendation that www.wfs.org

Ben Novak’s success primed Polyphonic for what seemed like a high ceiling. Mike McCready’s tool also identified Maroon 5 as an act carrying a high probability of success before the public had any idea who the band was. The software certainly wasn’t right about everything. It’s given high marks to heaps of songs that never gained traction with wide audiences. But there was no denying that McCready had created something that worked, something that could shape the future of the music industry. Despite the promise of the technology, A&R personnel weren’t too keen on giving credence to a tool that, if it lived up to its claims, would threaten their jobs. Many A&R people and recording executives laughed at the notion that a machine had any place in their world. When told about the work and ideas behind Polyphonic, Lorraine Barry, the global marketing manager at Virgin Records, scoffed. “The modern-day A&R man—a machine, a computer program? A bit of a frightening thought,” Barry said. “I think it’s a marketing ploy. It’s pretending that it can be a science.” Whether the software has made the A&R game into a science will remain debatable. But there’s no denying that McCready’s crew wasn’t welcome within the industry. The music business isn’t renowned for being open to change. “I think it finishes just ahead of the Amish in that respect,” McCready says. The business model behind Polyphonic depended on the music industry utilizing it as a new A&R instrument. That bet proved cheeky. Polyphonic, for all its wizardry, wasn’t able to make any money. A&R people were loath to use a method that could hasten their own demise. Without their cooperation, Polyphonic floundered. McCready laid off staff and thought about what he’d do next after going from Nebraska farm boy to watch mogul to pop star and now tech founder.

Combing the Musical Data for Future Stars With little to lose, McCready changed his model. In 2008, he moved to New York and became friendlier with the music industry. He recapitalized with new investors and dubbed his company Music Xray. Just as before, he invited artists to upload their work to his site and databases, but now he also allowed A&R men and producers to post veritable helpwanted signs when they might be looking for a new tune or artist. Music labels, advertising firms, marketers, and music producers are often looking for a certain kind of sound. For instance, a music label may be on a mission to find the next Radiohead, or a marketing firm may think the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” is the perfect song for their television spot, but they can’t afford to pay the kind of money the Stones command. Unsurprisingly, when a legitimate talent scout at a major label issues a query looking for new artists, there’s usually an avalanche of responses. The same goes for when a movie producer posts a request for an original score or a particular kind of song for a soundtrack. As people in the music business will tell you, they’re very busy. Wading through thousands of submissions from random musicians—many of them mediocre or worse—isn’t something that will often crack their daily agenda. This is why established artists tend to get the lion’s share of new work. Finding new musicians takes too much time. This is where McCready’s algorithm comes in. It can quickly sort the right sounds from the wrong ones, allowing a music industry insider to find the closest match to their original query. In the instance of “Brown Sugar,” the algorithm would comb its databases of submitted music for the tracks that best imitate the riffs, beat, rhythm, style, and overall sound the Rolling Stones struck in that song. Or A&R people can simply look for the highest-scoring songs within different genres from the artists who have uploaded to Music Xray. M cCready’s warehouse of data grows larger each week. It’s quickly

becoming an encyclopedia of world musical talent, a heartening development for musicians out there, such as Ben Novak, who, as hard as they try and as talented as they may be, fear their work and sound may never make it out of their garage. It’s more than possible that many of our future music stars will be produced by Music Xray’s algorithm. It’s already happening, in fact. Since 2010, McCready has landed more than 5,000 artists opportunities with music labels and other commercial outlets. “I’m finally getting love letters from record labels,” McCready says. There will always be human decision makers at some level, he thinks, but his bot and its feel for the clusters of popularity will eventually change who the public ultimately hears. The efficiencies and the new breadth of artists that McCready’s model opens up to the music industry are such that it’s only a matter of time until the major labels—all labels, really—come to rely on an algorithm to pick the musicians they sign and the songs they market. It’s akin to when word processors first hit the market. At first, most people kept banging on their typewriters, as only the early adopters could see past the processors’ small screens, funky printouts, and the scary idea of keeping all of one’s work on a fiveinch floppy disk rather than on paper that could be seen and held. But eventually, screens got bigger, the software got better, and the idea of using anything else became nonsensical. That day is coming to the music world.

In the House of the Rising Bot It’s likely that one day we’ll see garage bands jamming out a track and then scrambling over to a laptop screen to see how that version fared in the 3-D world of hit clusters. Such quick affirmation in a creative field is rare. But it also begs the question: Rather than an explosion of variety, will algorithms lead to a music world of forced homogenization? It’s already true that a large chunk of the hits that populate the Top 40 were written by the same group of people. Martin Sandberg, for one, a www.wfs.org

Swedish songwriter who goes professionally by the name of Max M artin, got his start in the 1990s when he wrote a series of numberone hits for Bon Jovi, the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears. Since 2008, he’s written more than 10 numberone hits and more than 20 Top 10 singles, including “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” by Usher and “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry. Knowing that particular humans are gifted at writing hooks for the masses—and knowing what Mike McCready’s algorithm already knows about the general characteristics of hit songs—it’s easy to speculate that popular music could soon be ruled by bots. It’s a certainty that record labels will serve up whatever the tastes of the day happen to be— and little could be better suited for such a task than an algorithm tuned to spin out saccharine hits. But as bots move into the business of music creation, the door will be left open for disruptors. And whereas disruption usually comes from technology, it’s likely that pop charts, with what will certainly be a backbone of algorithmically conceived songs, will be left vulnerable to indie artists who create something truly different. ❑ About the Author Christopher Steiner is the co-founder and co-CEO of Aisle50, a start-up offering online grocery deals. He was previously a technology journalist at Forbes. Reprinted from AUTOMATE THIS: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World by Christopher Steiner with permission of Portfolio Books, a member of The Penguin Group, (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2012, Christopher Steiner.

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

Baxter is a two-armed robot, outfitted with sensors, that sells for $22,000 and is made by Rethink Robotics. PATRICK TUCKER

Robots at Work:

Toward a Smarter Factory By Rodney Brooks

THE FUTURIST

Many fear that a robotic takeover of manufacturing jobs will keep humans out of work. But one inventor shows how tomorrow’s manufacturing robots will be smaller, smarter, and co-worker friendly—and they’ll let manufacturers stop chasing around the world for low-wage workers.

May-June 2013

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www.wfs.org

n the next forty years, the world will be transformed by demographics. By 2050, the ratio of working-age people to retirees in Europe, much of Asia, and the United States will be very different from what it is today. The United States is also about to undergo a massive increase in the population older than 65, so policy makers are worried about how that will affect Social Security. But this shrinking of the workingage population doesn’t just affect national budgets. It affects services. There will be fewer workers to provide services to older people. More competition for those services means prices will go up. So productivity per worker will have to go up. To do that, we will need more robots to help people be more productive. This is why industrial robotics has become my focus. I became concerned about the lack of innovation in industrial robotics after spending time in Shenzhen, China, as we set up the production line for the Roomba vacuum cleaner. I saw people building a million robots a year and doing it by hand. This isn’t unusual in electronics manufacturing. Consider that the iPad is touched by 325 pairs of hands during assembly. That means that, despite growing interest and anxiety about automation and robotics taking away manufacturing jobs, most of our stuff—the low-cost consumer items that we buy from WalMart—is still made by hand. People sometimes think manufacturing is dead in the United States. In fact, manufacturing activity comprises a $2 trillion portion of the U.S. economy, very similar to the dollar value it comprises in China and Europe. In Japan, that number is about $1 trillion. The United States has kept that manufacturing activity by increasing worker productivity, which has gone up about 3.7% per year for 60 years—a good run. The United States has kept the higher-valueadded manufacturing and let the lower-value-added manufacturing go elsewhere. And the definition of “elsewhere” has changed over time. The manufacture of simple goods is constantly moving to the location

with the lowest wages. Ethically and environmentally, this is a complex and controversial subject. I argue that— from the perspectiveof business—it’s unsustainable. After the end of THE ESTATE OF GEORGE DEVOL World War II, there was an abundance The Unimate, the first industrial robot, debuted in 1961 in a GM of low-cost labor in factory in Ewing, New Jersey. The Unimate was a die-casting J a p a n , s o t h a t ’ s mold that placed hot, forged car parts into a liquid bath to cool them. where manufacturing moved. But as the Japanese economy recovered and the standard of supply chain short and responsive. living went up, the cost of making You can produce and ship closer to goods also went up. So low-cost where your engineers are located, so manufacturing moved to South you can innovate designs or develop Korea. After “the miracle of South new ones faster. You can tighten the Korea,” it moved to Taiwan. When loop between innovation and manuthe standard of living went up there, facturing. Your design-to-production manufacturing moved to the prov- cycle quickens, and you have fewer intellectual and property concerns. ince of Shenzhen in China. I used to be part of a company that These are just some of the reasons manufactured toys in China, but by for a company to keep its manufacthe late 1990s, much of the sewing turing operation close to where the work my company required for ro- rest of its operations are located. The question is: What will it take botic dolls we were selling was being done in Vietnam. We now see all for us to break out of the cycle of sorts of other low-wage and low- making cheap stuff by hand, where companies make expensive, valueskilled jobs moving to Vietnam. Businesses are constantly chasing added merchandise with machines this low-cost labor—people who are and automation, but low-value willing to do difficult work produc- products like toys with unskilled, ining low-value products. As the stan- expensive labor? This is a challenge dard of living goes up in these my company is trying to solve with places, education expands. That’s a robotics. good thing. But from the perspective of a manufacturer, a more intelligent A New Robot for a New Robot and skilled workforce simply has Economy less interest in these types of jobs. The first industrial robot develI’ve seen it myself. In Shenzhen, w h e re m y p re v i o u s c o m p a n y, oped in the United States went to iRobot, was building Roomba robot work in 1961 in a Ewing, New Jersey, vacuum cleaners, we tried to add an- GM factory. Called the Unimate, it other line. The factory manager said, operated with a die-casting mold “All my workers went off to col- placing hot, forged car parts into a liquid bath to cool them. At the time, lege.” Where will manufacturing activity you couldn’t have a computer on an go next? Thailand has had a tremen- industrial robot. Computers cost mildous industrial revolution in the last lions of dollars and filled a room. 30 years, as have Indonesia and Ma- Sensors were also extremely expenlaysia. Eventually, we will run out of sive. Robots were effectively blind, very dumb, and did repeated actions places where there is low-cost labor. For U.S. companies, making prod- following a trajectory. If you’ve watched the evolution of ucts closer to home, where they were designed, allows you to keep your industrial robots over the last 50

these 300,000 very small companies, we saw a large potential market. I, Baxter

Rodney Brooks is the inventor of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner and the Baxter factory robot.

years, you haven’t actually seen much innovation since the Unimate. These machines perform well on very narrowly defined, repeatable tasks. But they aren’t adaptable, flexible, or easy to use. Nor are most of these machines safe for people to be around. Today, 70% of the industrial robots in existence are in automobile factories. They’re either in the paint shop or the body shop. Go to a car factory in Japan or Detroit, you’ll see a body shop full of robots, but with no people. Go to final assembly and you’ll find all people, no robots. Industrial robots and people don’t mix. These machines are often heralded as money savers for factory owners and operators. But the cost to integrate one of today’s industrial robots into a factory operation is often three or five times the cost of the robot itself. It’s a job that demands programmers, specialists, all sorts of people. And they have to put safety cages around the robots so that the robots don’t strike people while operating. Unlike human workers, who can detect when they’re about to hit something with their eyes, ears, or skin, most of these machines have no sensors or means to detect what is 26

THE FUTURIST

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happening in their environment. They’re not aware. All of this speaks to a larger and fundamental flaw with the way factory bots are built today. In an increasingly interconnected world, industrial robots have not followed the information technology revolution. In our march to the future, we somehow left robots behind. Some colleagues and I decided to change that. We saw 300,000 small manufacturing companies in the United States with fewer than 500 employees. Almost none of these firms have an industrial robot, for some of the reasons outlined above. Almost all of these firms have relatively small production runs. That means they’re constantly changing the design and manufacturing procedures for what they produce. Some of these companies produce a wide variety of goods for other companies. They’re what are sometimes called job shops. They specialize in manufacturing a type of product that can be highly customized to an individual client’s needs. In a typical factory with an industrial robot, a production run is rarely less than four months. For these job shops, a run can be as short as an hour. In www.wfs.org

In September 2008, we started our company, Rethink Robotics, backed with capital from Charles River Ventures, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and other Boston and Silicon Valley players. We announced our first product launch on September 18, 2012. And we’re just starting to ship now. We build a robot named Baxter, a new type of industrial robot that sells for $22,000. Baxter is very different from existing industrial robots. It doesn’t need an expensive or elaborate safety cage, and factory operators don’t need to put it in a part of the factory where it’s segregated from the rest of the workers. It’s safe to share a workspace with. If you see a Baxter, you can actually go and hug it while it’s in operation. Baxter also works right out of the box. Typically, it takes 18 months to integrate an industrial robot into a factory operation. With Baxter, it’s about an hour. Baxter requires no specialized programming. A factory floor worker with only a high-school diploma, someone who has never seen a robot before, can learn to train Baxter to do simple tasks in five minutes. If you’re a manufacturing engineer, you can go deeper into the menu system and adjust and optimize settings for different tasks. More-complex tasks require a bit more training. Interacting with Baxter is more like working with a person than operating a traditional industrial robot. If the robot picks up something it shouldn’t on the assembly line, for instance, you can take its arm and move the robot to put the object down. (Don’t try that with a current industrial robot.) You don’t have to know anything about computer languages. It knows what you mean, and it does what you want. Baxter is outfitted with a variety of sensors, including depth sensors as well cameras in its wrists, so it sees with its hands. It’s constantly building and adjusting a mathematical model of the world in front of it, allowing it to recognize different objects.

RETHINK ROBOTICS

“Baxter is very different from existing industrial robots,” says Brooks. “It doesn’t need an expensive or elaborate safety cage and factory operators don’t need to put it in a part of the factory where it’s segregated from the rest of the workers.”

We made the robot simple and easy to use because we don’t think that it’s the customer ’s job to do costly engineering work on a product that he or she has purchased. We wanted to build a machine that was as intuitive to use as the iPhone. This means that ordinary factory workers are now empowered to be the programmers. They’re not in competition with these machines, because an average factory worker can serve as a supervisor to Baxter. A factory worker can show the robot a fragment of the task she is asking the robot to perform, and the robot infers the rest of the task. And if someone is interacting with the robot or doing part of the task, Baxter can figure out to just do the rest of the task.

We built Baxter for manufacturing, because in manufacturing we saw a good return on investment. But Baxter ’s potential extends beyond factory work: This is going to revolutionize the use of robots in research settings, as well. In the 1990s, the availability of low-cost mobile robots allowed thousands of researchers to work on a problem known as SLAM, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. That led ultimately to the Google self-driving car. Now for the first time, thousands of researchers will be able to afford two-armed robots, which we think will lead to similarly important new research. Some of that research will seem crazy, silly, or even dumb, but out of that we will see new applications for www.wfs.org

two-armed robots interacting with people. These applications exist in health care and eldercare, and a wide variety of other areas. We’ll find thousands of uses for this robot. We’ve only just begun. ❑ About the Author Rodney Brooks is a computer scientist and co-founder, in 1990, of iRobot, makers of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. He is the founder and chief technical officer for Rethink Robotics, www.RethinkRobotics.com. This article was adapted with the author’s permission from a presentation at the 2012 EmTech conference, which took place at the MIT Media Lab October 24–26, 2012. Learn more at www2.technologyreview .com/emtech/12/.

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

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Highly HUMAN Jobs By Richard W. Samson

As automation takes many occupations out of people’s hands, there is still much that humans can do to stay occupied, well-paid, and even happy. By letting go of our search for tasks that robots and computers can do better, we should be developing and leveraging our hyper-human skills, such as caring, creating, and taking responsibility.

ILLUSTRATIONS: © TUMPIKUJA / ISTOCKPHOTO

et ready for the next great occupational downsizing. The world is preparing to minimize the need for humans to perform “knowledge work” as well as simpler forms of service work. The basic reason for this projected shift is simple. Just as mechanical technology got complex enough to perform factory work more economically than human laborers with muscles and manual skill, so electronic technology is fast becoming complex enough to perform know-how work more economically than human brainpower. This contention applies to knowledge work in which information or definable know-how is paramount. However, future “knowledge work” that also involves highly human skills will abound—if we play our cards right. While it’s true that technical knowledge work may be a wise choice for years to come, we should be prepared for the sudden maturing of AI competition. In the near future, high-tech job openings are likely to exceed the supply of qualified applicants in many fields, such as computer science, especially in the United States. Looking ahead, honing highly human skills in tandem with a tech career offers a safety net.

So what do I mean by “highly human” skills and work? Essentially, they are things that smart machines cannot do, skills that are too quirky, unpredictable, emotional, or intuitive to program or automate— skills like perceptiveness, awareness, responsibility, and caring.

Global Mind Transplant What’s happening in the world today is a vast process of mental transplantation. Thanks to electronic advances, many of our mental processes—from memory to decision making—are being rapidly transferred into computers, microchips, networks, and mechanical devices of all types. It’s happening in a way that’s altering jobs, transferring wealth, and changing lives. I call this automation of more and more tasks “off-peopling.” Today, even the most high-tech jobs are being downsized and restructured rapidly. They’re not likely to resize, and some will disappear entirely. Electronic intelligence is now performing much of the mental work formerly done by secretaries and middle managers, accountants and governmental administrators, product designers and corporate planners, soldiers and salespeople, farmers and restaurateurs, stockbrokers and bank tellers, doctors and diplomats, drivers of delivery vans and drivers of industry. To a large extent, the human-toelectronic mental transfer is a fait accompli. Many of the things we used to figure out, organize, or remember are now being figured out, orga30

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“What’s happening in the world today is a vast process of mental transplantation. Thanks to electronic advances, many of our mental processes— from memory to decision making—are being rapidly transferred into computers, microchips, networks, and mechanical devices of all types.” nized, and remembered by siliconbased systems. No service or knowledge-based occupation is exempt. If your income rests on college or grad-school laurels, you might feel immune to impact, but you’re not. A few examples: • Legal profession. Programs that now search legal databases can be augmented to offer advice. Once that happens, would you bother to consult a lawyer on routine issues? Already, there are computer templates that let you write your own contracts or create your own will. • Medicine. Doctors explain the significance of symptoms and offer health advice. Now, so do many Web sites. Even TV ads offer information for self-diagnosis (however specious), urging us to just ask our doctors for prescriptions. Robotic surgery is coming on strong as an off-peopled profession. • Advertising. Ad agency personnel check rates in the various media, place ads, and track responses. Already, computers help perform many of these tasks. Software can generate names for new products, www.wfs.org

encroaching on the creativity of copywriters and account executives. • Computer programming. Even this profession is far from exempt from electronic takeover. Programming is one of the hottest areas for automation. Software developers constantly look for ways to get more code out of fewer people. As higher-level know-how is incorporated into electronic systems, every profession will feel the impact—even thought-intensive ones such as spacecraft engineering or particle physics. Artificial intelligence (AI) development has been proceeding apace in oil exploration, aerospace, health and safety, medical diagnosis, stock-market investing, defense, industrial production, and many other areas. One system uses AI to automate the layout of directories and catalogues. There are predictions that smart systems will soon be able to perform library research, digest the data, and present conclusions in written form. Even editors and authors are at risk! Broadly defined, AI includes expert systems, game playing, naturallanguage processing, neural networks, robotics, and other advanced applications. And even high-skill professions are affected by ordinary electronics as well as sophisticated software. But, while the mind transference takes place, there will continue to be work in knowledge-intensive occupations for two breeds of profes sionals: 1. Those who innovate to create the electronic replacement of people. An example is doctors who work with designers to perfect robotic systems that eventually dispense with the doctor—first for very routine operations (such as cleaning, disinfecting, and bandaging simple wounds), and then for more-complicated procedures. Another example is educators such as the Stanford professors w h o c re a t e d C o u r s e r a , w h i c h teaches hundreds of thousands of students globally versus just a few hundred locally, potentially reducing the need for many professors. 2. Those who combine “highly human” skills with their specialty. Such nonprogrammable skills are part of

the shift in employment, a movement from work that can be defined and systematized to work that absolutely requires the human element. After the intelligence transfer is mature, what then? A whole new kind of work may prevail, highly human work. And it’s available to some degree today.

The Jobs of Tomorrow You Can Create Now: The Human Edge The jobs of tomorrow that any of us can create right now are, simply, jobs involving tasks that electronic systems can’t perform—now, any time soon, or perhaps ever. Admittedly, computers trump us in many “mental” ways. Electronic systems beat us hands down in defined, structured areas where we’re weak or get bored. As electronic systems get smarter, we can only compete in the job market (or “task market”) by focusing on our highly human skills. All our highly human skills emanate from a single core quality. It’s the inner entity we treasure and are: our aliveness. In order for electronic systems to compete with us in our highly human areas, they would have to become aware and alive, like us. Consider what it means to be alive. We see objects, feel breezes, have emotions, develop intentions, and picture possibilities—all in living color. That’s our big differentiator. We’re conscious, vibrant; we glow with living presence and spiritual light. Furthermore, unique

among all creations, we’re meta- conscious, or self-aware. We know we’re alive and can control our thoughts and actions. Because we’re aware of our awareness, we are responsible and in charge. This self-awareness permits a number of functions that machines can’t attack well, if at all. • We’re great at sensory perception, while computers linked to sensors struggle to form composite impressions, and don’t really “see” anything at all. • We laugh; we feel pleasure, sorrow, and love. No competition at all from our machines. • We imagine new possibilities; electronic systems merely correlate and combine. (Some programs do generate sets of possibilities that may be called “ideas,” but it takes human sensibility to request, interpret, and appreciate them.) • We make choices based on subjective as well as logical considerations. Computers are limited by logic and fact. • Within complex environmental and social contexts, we can easily dream up speculations about why things happened. Electronic intelligence can’t even start to guess, though it can induce and deduce within data structures accessible to it.

“All our highly human skills emanate from a single core quality. It’s the inner entity we treasure and are: our aliveness.”

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• We have social skills. Electronics, no contest. • We benefit from epi-normal mental, emotional, and spiritual processes that are vast and only now beginning to be investigated by a few scientists: intuition and hunches, precognition, remote viewing, mind effects on cells and elementary particles, the placebo effect (healing through belief), lucid dreaming (often giving us insights and scientific hypotheses while we sleep), and more. • We have a subconscious as well as conscious mind, both scarcely understood. It’s unclear whether this dynamic duo could be effectively programmed into electronics. • Finally, we’re not only conscious but intermittently meta-conscious— aware of our awareness and therefore in control of it. These qualities, which uniquely fit us for the new employment, I call “highly human.” So where are the millions of highly human jobs? They’re really hard to find because most have yet to be created. By whom? • By you as job seeker. • By you as job holder wishing to better your situation. • By you as forward-looking entrepreneur or business manager who needs special help and a competitive edge. By and large, highly human jobs haven’t made it onto the job boards yet. We’re stuck in the old view of jobs as functional activities—tasks that are precisely what is being transferred to automatic systems. Today, highly human skills—such as perceptiveness, creativity, responsibility, and social acumen—are often greatly prized in the workplace, but too often considered “nice-tohave” supplements to the hard, process-oriented skills outlined in the job description. While many astute recruiters and hiring managers do look for highly human qualities in addition to specialized knowledge and experience, it needs to happen much more often. If you’re a job seeker, and the old job-finding process isn’t working, maybe you should try a whole new approach: Stop looking for a job! Instead, create the job you want by utilizing your highly human skills. •

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Strategies for Job Seekers There are three key ways to create the highly human work you want:

1. Get any job, any way you can, then transform it. Consider getting

yourself hired anywhere they’ll take you; then, rapidly upgrade your position. Do this by leveraging your highly human skills. For example, a young college graduate who couldn’t find a job in his major, marketing, took a job as a grocery-store checker. He used his social skills—friendliness and helpfulness—to build relationships with customers, fellow workers, and store managers. He used his perception to notice and fix problems, such as loose carts that posed a hazard in the parking lot. Leveraging his sense of responsibility, he arrived at work early and kept his promises and commitments. Soon he was considered indispensable and was kept on when an automated checkout line was installed, eliminating two checker jobs. When a job opened up in the meat department, he applied for it and was accepted. He quickly learned the requisite skills and sought to improve operations. Continuing to be friendly and helpful with customers, he learned that some were interested in grass-fed beef, which the store didn’t carry. Leveraging his initiative and creativity, he researched sources for this product and proposed a trial purchase to his boss. This led to a thriving new revenue stream, which caught the attention of higher man-

agement in the store chain. The young man was gaining a reputation as an up-and-comer. Ironically, he reflected, he just might be making the checker job into the kind of marketing position he originally sought. It doesn’t matter what your field, age, or situation are. Leveraging your highly human skills is the surest route to the work and success you want. If you can’t find the job you want, try wanting the job you can get—then molding it to your heart’s desire.

2. Volunteer, become valuable, then ask for pay. Suppose you can’t

find even a menial, low-paying job— the fate of millions in today’s economy. Rather than succumb to perpetual uselessness and despair by continuing the search, you might be better off making yourself useful even without pay. Volunteering lets you use your skills, serve real needs, and build your self-worth. Then you can add your considerable highly human skills to your volunteer efforts. Become exceptional, make a real difference. If the volunteer organization has paid positions, make sure you’re on the top of the candidate list. And those who run volunteer organiza-

“Instead of looking for a single employer, look for many. Instead of endlessly trying to land one big job, do a micro-search for miniature jobs.”

tions may also have connections with a wide range of potential employers among their benefactors and corporate sponsors. A middle-aged woman lost her husband and child in an auto accident. She needed a job to rebuild her fractured life. Formerly a medical transcriptionist, she applied for jobs as medical assistant, office manager, secretary, customer-service agent, and many other positions, without results. After six frustrating months, she volunteered to serve in the food pantry of a local church. Depressed and robotic at first, she gradually focused on her clients, and her spirits improved. It dawned on her that those who came for bread, milk, or eggs were often worse off than she was. She started asking about their situations and listened intently, nonjudgmentally. Compassion welled up in her; she took on more responsibility, invited more destitute people to come, and asked church and community members to contribute more food and money. More than they needed food, her clients needed an understanding ear, she concluded. She offered hers as much as she could and organized support groups for expanded communication and compassion. She also conscripted some of the clients to work in the pantry, expanding the operation while building their esteem. She made sure the church’s pastor knew of her need for income, and— impressed with her efforts—he began asking around. One of his flock, a psychologist who ran a family counseling service, needed an assistant who was good at listening and facilitating communication between disturbed individuals. The woman got the job and continued her pantry work on evenings and weekends. Her fractured life was starting to feel whole again. 3. Simply find a need and fill it with your services or new business.

Cut out the middleman. Rather than working for someone who serves customers or clients, go directly to the customers or clients. Set aside your job search if it’s taking too long. Find something people need that you can supply, and start supplying it for a price. 32

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www.wfs.org

Another way to look at this strategy is to consider it a multifaceted job search. Instead of looking for a single employer, look for many. Instead of endlessly trying to land one big job, do a micro-search for miniature jobs. An engineer at AT&T took early retirement. He had a good separation package but needed additional income. Jobs that suited him were few and far between. What could he do to make money other than work for someone? He reflected that friends often called him when they had problems with their personal computers and home networks. Skilled in that area, he wondered whether there might be a business in it. He let it be known that he was available for by-phone or in-person service calls, and a profitable stream of clients developed. Almost by definition, those who find a need and fill it leverage mul tiple highly human skills: observation, hypothesizing, creativity, decision making, planning, social skills, and responsibility. These skills surround and amplify the value of the technical skills that may sooner or later be automated. The engineer ’s technical knowledge was essential to his business, but so were his highly human skills. For example, it later dawned on him that most of his daytime clients were women, and that trustworthiness was a must if they were to let any strange man into the house. His business absolutely depended upon his spotless reputation for responsibility and ethical conduct.

Strategies for Job Creators Whether you’re a big-business manager or lone entrepreneur, a government policy maker or a nonprofit administrator, the strategy for developing a highly human organization and workforce requires a twofold approach. 1. Offload as many non–highly human tasks as possible from people to technology. 2. Then make your operation extraordinary by employing people to exercise their highly human skills. It does little good in the long term to have people keep on doing things

“Hypothesizing involves a mental leap, but the leap is toward what already exists rather than what’s new. When we’re hypothesizing, we’re looking for an explanation for a problem, for a state of affairs, or for a condition of nature. For example, Newton asked why apples fell to the ground as they did, and came up with the theory of gravity.”

that computers, online systems, automated machinery, and tech-efficient suppliers can do better and cheaper. You only hold people back from their highly human future and slow your organization’s growth. Organizations will thrive by enhancing and building on their creativity, concern for customers, determination, a sense of mission, and the common bond of shared effort— magical, intangible qualities that add value beyond mechanical efficiency or even bottom-line economics. Pursuing both strategies simultaneously allows your organization to humanize while you systematize. The trick is to help employees take on new highly human tasks while freeing them from boring responsibilities that can be systematized. You can also create new jobs that are highly human from the get-go. One emerging field with high potential is human–machine symbiosis, www.wfs.org

also called augmented intelligence. Unlike artificial intelligence, it does not seek to replace human thinking but to support it for quicker, better analysis, creativity, and decision making. The electronic part of the new AI does what computer systems do best—manipulate large databases and present raw conclusions, options, or scenarios—and leaves to people what they do best: directing, task setting, and making judgments and final decisions. There’s no doubt about who’s in charge. High-tech firms offering the augmented-intelligence systems are likely to grow and prosper. Other organizations—yours, perhaps—may profit from using the systems to empower your technical and management personnel. Making operations more highly human will help create much-needed jobs and give your organization a competitive edge, thanks to staff who are super-alert, quick to diagnose problems, and hyper-innovative.

Ways to Leverage Highly Human Skills 1. Basic Thinking Skills and Symbolism. These range from sensory

awareness to symbolic manipulation of that which is seen, heard, or felt. The key way to raise our consciousness with regard to symbols is to become more aware of their basic characteristic, ambiguity. That is, any symbol can mean a number of different things and shift meaning with ease. For example, apple can refer to •

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Highly Human Strategies for Policy Makers Policy makers have the opportunity to provide legislation and policies that will smooth the transition to highly human enterprises and jobs: • Stop propping up obsolescent industrial practices that only slow the transition to a thriving new economy. • S upport training in highly human job skills as well as high-tech ones (remembering that human technical knowledge will continue to be needed and prized for some time). • Provide incentives for organizations that lead the way to the winning new business model: the best of the human combined with the best of advanced technology, and in support of our sustainable future. —Richard W. Samson

a piece of the fruit, an entire apple tree, the flesh of the fruit (minus seeds and stem), the flavor which might be imparted to a cookie or soft drink, and so on. If we want to become more highly human, we need to become more aware of these “atomic-level” mental processes and intentionally invoke them from time to time. In particular, we need to pay more attention to neglected areas of our aliveness, such as our emotions. Our other highly human skills— the macro skills, from creativity to responsibility—all owe their existence to our micro-level or “atomic” mentality, just as organisms owe their existence to atoms. These macro-level skills include conscious monitoring and control, hypothesizing, creativity and imagination, subjective decision making, social skills, and responsibility. 2. Conscious Monitoring and Control. We keep our eyes and ears open

so we’re alert to what’s happening, particularly problems and opportunities. Then, when appropriate, we use our hands or speech to intercede—prevent a mishap, seize an opportunity, or make an adjustment. For example, let’s say you grow apples and you’re looking for ways to increase your income. You keep 34

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alert, constantly observing and thinking. One day, you notice a child eating candy-coated popcorn. Suppose the candy apple had not yet been invented. On the spot you visualize a candy-coated apple, and you’re off on a new line of business. As you develop the business, you keep on with your conscious monitoring. For example, you watch your pots of caramel candy and turn down the heat before they boil over. Or you notice in the newspaper that there’s going to be a craft fair in town; you ask a co-worker to set up a stand to sell your candy apples there. Perception comes naturally; so do speech and the use of our hands. But skill at monitoring and control varies widely. The better we get at it, the more we make the world correspond to our desires. 3. Hypothesizing. As with creativity, hypothesizing involves a mental leap, but the leap is toward what already exists rather than what’s new. When we’re hypothesizing, we’re looking for an explanation for a problem, for a state of affairs, or for a condition of nature. For example, Newton asked why apples fell to the ground as they did, and came up with the theory of gravity. In your candy-apple venwww.wfs.org

ture, you might similarly look for explanations: “My candy apples aren’t selling as well as they did last summer. How come? Is there a new competitor I don’t know about? Have customer tastes changed? Is it the weather? Is there a problem with the packaging? Or what?” The better we investigate, perceive, and analyze, the surer we are to find out what’s going on and make the right conclusions or adjustments. In science and engineering, as in business, the better we analyze, the more knowledge we gain and the more power we give to society. 4. Creativity and Imagination. We invent new things in our minds. Then we may let them remain fantasies, or fashion them in reality like the Wright brothers constructing the first airplane. Your original aha, visualizing a candy-coated apple, was of course an exercise of creativity. (It happened to employ the basic thinking skill of analogy: candy coating is to popcorn as candy coating is to apple.) Yo u a l s o e m p l o y c re a t i v i t y throughout the evolution of your business, dreaming up new options, possibilities, variations, and solutions. For example, suppose the reason your candy-apple sales are down is that a nearby apple grower has also gone into the business. Putting on your creativity hat you might develop a variety of candy-apple flavors: chocolate mint, coffee vanilla, etc. Do you also grow strawberries? Maybe you could dip them in caramel or chocolate. The more attention we give to fashioning new possibilities, the more impact we have on our incomes, lives, and all aspects of evolving reality. 5. Subjective Decision Making. After using creativity to develop two or more possibilities, we clarify what we’re after and then choose one of the possibilities. For example, suppose you had not yet come up with the candy-apple business and were considering alternative ways of marketing your apple crop. “I want to make the most money.… I could sell the apples as they are, make them into apple sauce and then sell that, or make them into

candy apples and then sell them in local stores…. Which is the way to go?” Later you would also of course use decision making to determine which new flavors of candy apple to introduce, or which marketing avenues to explore. The better we clarify what we’re after and analyze the criteria of choice, the better we do in business and life. 6. Social Skills. We interact productively with other people and get them to interact productively with one another. Social skills include leadership, responding to leadership, motivating others, listening, speaking, reading body language, organizing, conveying a vision, and inspiring enthusiasm. For example, you join a local service club to keep in touch. You learn from a fellow member that her church is looking for a good fundraiser. You figure a candy-apple sale would be ideal, but you don’t offer to sell your apples to the church. Instead, in a friendly way, you offer to donate 100 candy apples and to provide additional ones, if needed, at cost. You win appreciation for your generosity and also gain valuable public awareness for your product. The more we hone our social skills, the more friends we make and the more positive activity we generate in others. 7. Responsibility. Responsibility is the crowning realization of integrated, well-functioning self-consciousness. In a state of responsibility, we’re conscious and we know it. But there’s more. Our awareness includes other people as well as ourselves, ultimately all of humanity. Love and other values exist where there is responsibility, and we aim for goals that are ethical. For example, someone else in town starts to make and sell candy apples. You start dreaming up devious, not exactly legal plots for putting that person out of business, but catch yourself. Surviving in that manner isn’t worth it, you figure, and there could be retaliation. So you focus on ways to compete better by improving your product, service, and retail relationships. The more we hone our responsibil-

ity, the better we feel about ourselves and the healthier we make our community, industry, and society. Responsible behavior often sets us back temporarily, but offers the only path to our central goal: becoming more alive, connected, and powerful. Developing our highly human qualities is increasingly becoming our best career path, educational opportunity, and way to fulfill us as individuals—not to mention an imperative for our survival. And it can be used to generate enormous new wealth.

Why We Work All the highly human skills together add up to one thing, which is the very reason for work or any purposeful activity: It’s the electric state of aliveness that may best be signified by the word “happiness.” So it makes sense to focus on happiness as the overall skill we seek to perfect, and as the very goal of work. What’s the secret to this super- aliveness? Stop pursuing happiness; experience it instead. You’ll be most successful in finding or creating highly human work, regardless of circumstances, if you find pleasure each and every day, whether working, job-seeking, or engaging in personal activities. Make other people happier each and every day, in person, on the phone, online, professionally or personally. Simple techniques for doing this include: www.wfs.org

“Stop pursuing happiness; experience it instead. You’ll be most successful in finding or creating highly human work, regardless of circumstances, if you find pleasure each and every day.” • Being technically proficient, the best at what you do. • Listening attentively to what others want. • Living up to what you promise them. • Doing more than they expect. • Being happy and upbeat in dealing with them. Remember that making customers, a boss, or co-workers happy is the ultimate highly human skill. Those who do it best are the most in demand, the most secure, and the most fulfilled. ❑ About the Author Richard W. Samson is director of the EraNova Institute and has served as a consultant to IBM, AT&T, and other large organizations. This article draws from his book Mind Over Technology. Digital copies of a whitepaper based on the book are available from EraNova Institute, www.eranova.com. The author invites readers to go to the Highly Human Jobs Web site, http://highly humanjobs.ning.com, and register to share ideas, plans, concerns, approaches, roadblocks, and successes on developing highly human careers and organizations.

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Women 2020: Our Selves, Our Worlds, Our Futures By The Futures Company A strategic insight and innovation consultancy explores how women’s expectations and actions are changing their own futures—and the world’s.

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omen represent just under half the global population and are the fastest-growing group o f c o n s u m e r s worldwide. Yet , analyses of their role in society are often one-dimensional and linear. Usually, the examination focuses on how social and economic conditions exert changes on women’s roles and identities. This article shows that understanding women is important, both because they are potential new sources of growth and because the changes in how women think and act have repercussions for wider society and culture. There are four key dimensions in which women’s changing circumstances, attitudes, and behaviors are effecting change and raising new opportunities: • Decision making. • Workplace and the economy. • Communication and identity. • Innovation.

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Acknowledging that women effect change does not mean that women are always empowered to make decisions about their own circumstances. Before exploring the four dimensions, is it important to examine the diversity of women’s experience around the world. To this end, The Futures Company has developed the Opportunity Tension Framework. One of the key tensions that is often overlooked is the disparity between the rate at which women make economic progress and the rate at which they achieve social and cultural prominence. Clearly, changes in women’s economic role often outpace changes in their social agency. Labor policy, access to finance, access to education, legal and social status of women, and the business environment are among the factors we use to evaluate women’s access to opportunities for greater social agency. By taking workforce participation (a factor often taken in isolation as a proxy for progress for women) and charting it against five social factors used in the Economist Opportunity Index (primary and secondary education of women, citizenship rights, political participation, access to technology and energy, and gender empowerment), we can see interesting patterns that suggest different correlations between economic and social progress of women in different parts of the world.

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Patterns of Change Across the Opportunity Tension Framework Lagging: In the bottom left of the framework, we have markets where women have below-average economic participation and below-average rights and opportunities. Among these lagging countries are Turkey, Colombia, Egypt, and Nigeria. They are furthest behind, but the economic change curve will be steep when it happens.

Ones to watch: In the top left of the framework, we see markets where women have above-average economic participation and below-average rights and opportunities. Here, women’s participation in the formal economy has rapidly grown and outpaced their access to social rights and participation. Among these markets to watch are Brazil, Russia, China, Bolivia, and Ethiopia.

Understanding women’s decision making—in life stages, lifestyles, www.wfs.org

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Closing the gap: In the top right of the framework, we see places where women have above-average economic participation and above-average rights and opportunities. These countries—which include the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Australia—have a relatively established balance between economic and social progress for women, where change is slowing.

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and purchasing—is becoming increasingly important, in particular due to significant change for women in the area of control and choice. It is through their decision making that their ability to act as catalysts of change is manifested. As life expectancy increases, the traditional life-stage trajectory will change. By 2050, global average life expectancy is predicted to be 75 years (up from 65 years in 20002005); in developed countries, it will be 82 years. In North America and Europe, many people are choosing— and need—to work past traditional retirement age. Others see retirement as a chance to do something more fulfilling. Shifting life stages and lifestyle choices are starting to have a

marked impact on the shape and size of households. Remaining child-free is increasingly appealing, a lifestyle chosen by 43% of Gen X women in the UK and the United States. As they invest in themselves, women are delaying or forgoing marriage. In eastern Europe, cohabitation is becoming a common precursor or alternative to marriage, which—coupled with increasing divorce rates—accounts for a reduction in the number of marriages. Asians are marrying later, and less, than in the past. There has been a rapid increase in the number of women in Asia who remain unmarried and have never married or cohabited. In Thailand, the proportion

of women entering their 40s having never been married has gone up from 7% in 1980 to 12% in 2010; the rate in Bangkok is as high as 20%. The Economist has reported that in South Korea young men complain that women are on “marriage strike.” The decision of women to remain single is having a significant impact on the growing numbers of single-person households, a phenomenon that is gaining visibility through books such as Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric K linenberg (Penguin Press HC, 2012). The tension between tradition and modernity is sharpened as emerging markets develop. The pursuit of a TOM SALYER STOCK CONNECTION WORLDWIDE / NEWSCOM

Women and Urbanization in China China’s cities contain more than 690 million people, of whom 40% are rural migrants. Women who leave their agricultural villages for urban life are typically seeking the wages available in China’s factories. While many succeed in supporting the families they left behind, their departure means rural towns are often populated by the old and the young with few in between. Many women don’t take their children with them to the city, as China’s hukou resident-classification system means migrants do not have equal access to education and health-care benefits. However, the government is aware of a need to redraft these laws in the face of urbanization and social unrest, and plans to extend social benefits to a majority of migrant mothers by the end of 2012. Hukou is not the only source of inequality between urban and rural women. Rural areas generally

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have inconsistent, low-quality education systems that put rural women seeking professional urban work at a serious disadvantage. The government has implemented education initiatives to reduce the cost of education in the countryside and is encouraging skilled urban teachers to spend a few years Ditch digger in Dulan, Qinghai Province. To seek working in rural schools. While China’s urban popu- better opportunities in cities, many rural women lation is expected to increase must leave their children behind. by more than 130 million by 2020, there is a question as to whether the job market will keep cases surpassing the educational up with this growth. Currently, ex- and workplace representation of ports constitute a huge part of their male counterparts, many are China’s economy and are vulnera- investing in clothes, beauty prodble to a global slowdown. ucts, and housewares at a rate not To mitigate the problem that seen before. This increased purw o u l d re s u l t i f d e m a n d f o r chasing power challenges the Chinese exports falters, China norm of women as familial careneeds to develop a domestic con- takers and positions them as the sumer base. With urban Chinese potential backbone of an emerging women matching and in many consumer market.

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better life is tinged with a desire to keep the best of the past. Kavita Ramdas observes that women in most countries are both “viciously oppressed by cultural practices and at the same time the preservers of culture.” In Middle Eastern states, the roles of women are changing with greater opportunities and encouragement to work, drive, and vote, but there are also cultural and personal expectations to fulfill the traditional role of being the homemaker. Education has a large role to play in women’s expectations about marriage. In Iran, women now account for nearly 60% of university enrollments. A recent New York Times article notes that, having raised their horizons during four years of university, “many of these women have trouble finding husbands they consider their equals.” Online dating sites have proliferated that cater to particular tastes and criteria. Sites like Jdate.com (“The Leading Jewish Singles Network”) and Shaadi.com (positioned as “The World’s Largest Matrimonial Service” with offerings for those seeking Bengali, Gujarati, and Hindi partners, among others) allow women to play by the cultural rules and expectations while giving them more choice. Increased access to technology allows women to maintain social convention and loosen the limitations imposed on them. In Nigeria, women have started using mobile phones to make one-to-one business calls with male colleagues and clients, although it would be deemed inappropriate for them to meet in person without a chaperone. Technology creates precedents where the rules have not yet been set in terms of social conventions or gendered behaviors. As women become more economically active and gain greater independence, cultural norms gradually begin to soften. Even in markets

such as Iran, there are signs of change: In the last decade in Iran, divorces have more than doubled, prompting society to begin to accept single women. Change in terms of social conventions and opportunities for women is much slower than economic change, but it is happening. The Workplace and the Economy: From employee to economic powerhouse Big shifts in women’s relationship with and role in the workplace are having an impact on everything from national GDP to family life. How employers adapt to these changes will be central to their ability to make the most of the workforce. Women are the world’s greatest underdeveloped source of labor, as nearly half of working-age women are not currently active in the formal global economy. In the United States alone, the additional productive power of women entering the workforce since 1970 to the present accounted for about a quarter of the economy in 2011. For the past century, female workforce participation figures have grown steadily across the globe. While in some countries women’s workforce participation is starting to reach a plateau, in others women represent an untapped source of economic growth. But workforce participation figures obscure some important nuances. Women are more likely to be employed in the informal economy, and are less likely to occupy senior positions. Just 12 Fortune 500 companies are run by women. Women everywhere are also paid less than men for the same work. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, in most countries the average female wage is still less than 90% of the average male wage, and the gap is even wider in some markets: Women’s wages in Japan and South www.wfs.org

Korea, for example, are less than 70% of the average male wage. Even in markets where the pay gap is closing and pay parity (equal pay for equal work) is being achieved, this changes dramatically after a woman has a child—at which point the pay gap opens up again. Research shows that mothers who had previously never felt disadvantaged by their gender in the workplace may suddenly find themselves feeling side-tracked (or more accurately “slow-tracked”) in terms of pay and access to promotions. In many developed countries, women are more educated than their male counterparts. In fact, women now outnumber men in higher education everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa and China. But this is not translating into more women in leadership positions. As Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, reminded her audience at a TED conference, women still have a long way to go to gain representation in leadership roles: “Of the 190 heads of state, nine are women,” she reported. “Of all the people in parliament in the world, 13% are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top, C-level jobs and YONHAP / EPA / NEWSCOM

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Knopf, 2013), at a press conference in Seoul.

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The Changing Role of Women in the Arab World Traditionally, Arab women have been perceived as reserved in society, signified by a passive acceptance of religiously dictated dress codes. Their lack of political and economic standing contributes to their subordination to male counterparts. And where women have begun to stand up to political and societal injustices, they have faced severe gender-based harassment and punishment. However, with many Arab countries facing political instability, there is a growing sense that women can have a deeper and more equal role to play in modernizing society, and that they have the authority to begin shaping their independent and personal destinies within a modern world. In a recent survey, 82% of Arab women believed that the level of participation of women in the political and socio-economic agendas of their countries is moderately to substantially better than it was five years ago. This new model for the partici-

board seats, tops out at 15%–16%.... Even in the nonprofit world, ... women at the top are only 20%.” Change is slow: The management consulting firm McKinsey estimates that, at current rates of change, women will still account for fewer than 20% of seats on Europe’s executive committees in 2022. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Anne-Marie Slaughter made the case for “why women still can’t have it all.” She pointed toward a change of expectations for women in developed markets, which distinguishes the current generation of young women from the generation before them. Women born in the late 1950s and 1960s, who entered the workforce in the late 1970s and 1980s, believed that they could have it all. For them, that meant that “women should be able to have both careers and families in the same measure and to the same degree that men do.” 40

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patory role of women in the Arab world is seen at its starkest during the recent activism in the Arab Spring, which saw women young and old take part in political prot e s t s a c ro s s t h e G u l f . T h e y adopted roles typically reserved for men, which gave them a unique taste of political freedom and societal change. Arab women are becoming directly involved in political domains: Algeria’s elected parliament is now 31% female, the highest proportion in the Arab world and more than in many European parliaments. UAE’s first female minister, Sheikha Lubna, combines political and diplomatic expertise with business acumen. She leads trade-development strategy and has also launched her own perfume line. Independence and equality are high on the agenda for women within the Arab world, and as a result, traditional perceptions of female identity in these markets are increasingly untenable.

However, the younger women of the millennial generation (aka, Gen Y) increasingly anticipate trade-offs when it comes to starting a family. That is, many women feel that they face an either/or choice between family and career, and that in practice the two are mutually exclusive. The secret to resolving this tension seems to lie, overwhelmingly, in access to affordable child care. In the UK, the cost of child care for two preschool children represents a third of average household income. For many women, staying at home is more affordable than paying for child care out of the income they would earn in the workforce. An analysis of the Economist Intelligence Unit Women’s Economic Opportunity Index shows that the countries scoring highest in economic opportunity for women are also those with strong public policies for child-care provision. In Sweden, local municipalities are obliged to www.wfs.org

provide day care to children under 12 whose parents are working or studying. High-quality private day care is also available, costing between 1% and 3% of household income. Some encouraging changes are happening: Globally, 81% of large companies now offer flextime options in the recognition that this helps employees manage work/life balance and saves money. However, statistics such as these don’t acknowledge the distinction between companies that offer flextime options and workplace cultures that make it acceptable to take up the option without being judged by management or peers. One proposed solution to this lies in the behavioral-economics prin ciple of the “default option,” whereby people are more likely to select options that are considered mainstream, rather than being seen to go against the grain. In her Atlantic article, Slaughter proposes the normalization of face-to-face meetings during school hours and dialins outside of school hours. Other workplace biases that have impeded women’s progress are starting to change. In the past, the qualities rewarded with promotions and higher pay have been genderedmale qualities. A recent McKinsey survey in Europe found that, while 65% of men believe that the evaluation system in their company treats men and women equally, only 30% of women think it does. Characteristics typically associated with women include being “friendly, emotional, and unselfish.” But as Harvard business professor Robin Ely points out, these are not considered “leadership” traits— “assertive, self-confident, and entrepreneurial”—typically considered gendered male traits. What’s more, she adds, when women exhibit these characteristics they run the risk of being seen as “abrasive instead of assertive, arrogant instead of self-confi-

dent, and self-promoting instead of entrepreneurial.” However, there is a shift happening. In a world of project-based work, flatter teams, and matrixbased organizations, traditional ideas about what makes an effective manager are becoming less gendered “male.” While such norms are likely to change only slowly, more attempts by employers to address diversity in the workplace will likely yield organizational changes, including more value placed on retaining and developing women to board-level positions. A recent report demonstrated that companies with the most women on their boards of directors outperform those with the fewest women on their boards, with return on invested capital at 66% higher in firms with strong female representation. Fortune 500 firms with the best record of promoting women to senior positions, including their board of directors, are more profitable than their peers. Communication and Identity: From single role to multiple roles As the decisions women make and the role they play in society changes, so, too, does the way they think of and express their identities. How this is understood and reflected in popular and consumer culture will be central to the evolution of communications to, from, and among women. Women are faced with more choices than ever. While the types of choices and their breadth vary dramatically around the world, choice (expectation and reality of it) is a central dynamic in women’s lives. Women are thus under growing pressure in decision making, from prioritizing day-to-day activities to sequencing the stages of their lives. Much of this pressure is rooted in the tension between career and family. Working mothers are no longer ex-

ALESSANDRO DI MARCO / EPA / NEWSCOM

Speaking at a conference on Diplomacy in the Time of Twitter, “A Tunisian Girl” blogger Lina Ben Mhenni shares her experience of the 2011 Arab Spring.

ceptional, and in the developed world, both cultural and public policy changes are supporting the growing convergence of women’s roles at work and in the home. For example, the UK’s new paternityleave rules mean that parents will be legally entitled to share time off work during their baby’s first year. In Iceland and Germany, paternity leave entitlement is closer to that for maternity leave, allowing both parents to contribute to their child’s first months. Recent data suggests that urban American 20-something women are making more money than men of the same age. Similar data are seen in western Europe. With such dramatic changes in the roles women have in society, there are also shifts occurring in how women think of themselves and define their own identity. Historically, “femininity” has been defined in terms of men’s ideals of beauty and sexual attractiveness. We are now starting to observe an ideal of femininity defined by women themwww.wfs.org

selves: “Women want to be her because other women admire her.” Rather than seeking validation from outside, especially from males, women increasingly seek inner- directed goals in exploring their feminine identity. Pop artists such as Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj channel these new, more powerful visions of femininity, capturing young women’s imaginations and desire for selfexpression. Yet, this inner-directed feminine ideal remains in conflict with outerdirected definitions of success—the likeability problem. Research by Frank Flynn and Cameron Anderson of New York University shows that behaviors and attributes associated with success make men more likeable and women less likeable. This suggests that women may continue to feel pressured to choose between being successful and being liked. Women are taking control of communications media to leverage their collective power and even effect political change. For example, a number of female bloggers like Lina Ben •

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Mhenni (“A Tunisian Girl”) were important in inspiring others during the 2011 Arab Spring. Women are seeking more intimate networks that allow them to share information about themselves only with those they truly know and trust. HelloGiggles is a site where women can creatively connect in an entertaining and supportive environment—away from exposure to the negativity that often plagues other online discussion forums. Technology is providing more ways for women to build networks of support, trust, and information. From Mommy Bloggers (such as Stephanie Nielsen and Jessica Gottlieb) to resource sites made by and for women (mizville.org, BlogHer, iVillage), the Internet abounds with forums for women all over the world to come together and share. The scope and power of such sites range from consumer to political. There’s no doubt that women are the most effective users of the Internet for the purposes of communities of interest and activism. Innovation: From user to inventor Women have always found ways to use the products developed for them, often adapting or repurposing those that did not serve their needs well. Greater access to finance and increasing presence of women in the fields of tech and design means that women are changing their relationship with products: from being the user to being the inventor. Women represent a growth market that’s bigger than India and China combined, and yet 71% of women feel that brands consider them only for beauty and cleaning products. Manufacturers have been stuck in the rut of the “pink it and shrink it” philosophy of female product development. As women’s and men’s socially conditioned roles converge in the workplace, in parenting, in expres42

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sions of identity, in behavior, and so on, the products and services designed for them will also converge. This may mean more gender-neutral aesthetic designs, particularly in technology. More-sophisticated acknowledgement of biological and physiological differences between men and women will create the opportunity for a greater tailoring of products and services at different life stages, as well. The main influence of women as catalysts in innovation will be seen in three main spheres: • Design innovation shaped for women. Leader brands will make greater efforts to develop products for women that perform in terms of function and not just aesthetics, and that respond to the particular biological and physiological needs of women. • Innovation shaped by women. With more women entering the fields of engineering, design, and technology, and the emergence of crowdsourcing funding models, women will continue to invent solutions to meet their unmet needs. • Innovation for social good. In some cases, more women working in innovation and design means more solutions for social good. There are already some very powerful ex amples of innovations designed by women to improve lives by educating women on important personal issues. Prospects for Women in 2020 and Beyond Women increasingly have both spending power and social power, and they are shaping the future of society through their actions and choices. Changes that occur for women have a marked impact on the rest of society and on the economy. Looking back at the Opportunity Tension Framework developed by The Futures Company, we are reminded of how diverse women’s exwww.wfs.org

periences are both between and within markets. However, it is clear that economic development for women always happens faster than do changes in their social rights and participation. • Lagging markets. In places where women have below-average economic participation and belowaverage social participation rights, businesses and brands may find opportunities by focusing on where women are creating solutions and meeting existing needs themselves, and providing products and services that will in turn allow women to become more active and empowered consumers. Companies could also partner with aid agencies to champion women as the key to reducing poverty and increasing national GDP. • Ones to watch. In places where women have above-average economic participation but below-average rights and opportunities, businesses could expand previously male-dominated categories to women who are starting to become important consumers (e.g., tech, automobile, alcohol). Recognizing women’s role as the gatekeeper to a broader circle of consumers will be key in these markets, as more women become economically active. Brands also need to understand the tension between tradition and modernity—to support women in maintaining some of the conventions they want to preserve while still making progress. These markets are also likely to be a source of female talent and skills in previously male-dominated industries. • Closing the gap. In places where there is more balance between women’s economic participation and their social participation, opportunities for businesses and brands exist in emerging new life stages. As gender roles begin to blur, brands may explore new ideals of femininity (and masculinity), but there will still be a need to acknowledge the differ-

Getting It Right with Women By analyzing the shifts that we can expect to see in the four key dimensions of women’s lives, we can draw some conclusions about how leading organizations and brands will behave in the future. Leading organizations will be…. Dimension 1: Decision Making

Dimension 2: Workplace and the Economy

Dimension 3: Communication and Identity

Dimension 4: Innovation

• Welcoming newcomers: Seeking out opportunities in previously male-dominated categories, both in established and emerging markets—and finding ways to appeal to women as newcomers to the category. • Using the gatekeeper: Leveraging women’s role as purchaser on behalf of others to access other consumers in their spheres of influence. • Creating seamless interactions: Working to create greater synergy between online and offline brand and shopping experiences. • Helping women have their way, while playing by the rules: Finding ways to resolve the tension between tradition and modernity for female consumers.

• Making flexible working mainstream: Putting workplace policies in place that make it possible for both mothers and fathers to manage parenthood in a more balanced fashion, and making it a default part of work culture. • Hanging on to talented women: Developing systems to keep women motivated and rewarded and where necessary taking controversial yet proven methods such as setting quotas on leadership positions. • Reevaluating the metrics: Developing evaluation and promotion systems that reduce gender bias on the promotions ladder, and valuing the different socially conditioned qualities that women bring to the workplace. • Finding and funding hidden gems: Seeking out and investing in female entrepreneurs and innovators.

• Championing new ideals of femininity: Taking the lead on shaping new ideals of female identity that are more aligned with women’s real ideals (“women want to be her, because other women admire her”). • Becoming a part of their inner worlds: Giving women a reason to make brands a part of their private spaces for conversation in the online world. • Gaming for good: Leveraging women’s use of social gaming to develop new ways for them to play, learn, and interact. • Reinventing masculinity: Being smart about how men are portrayed in communications to avoid alienating women, and finding new identities for men as their traditional roles are eroded.

• Bridging the needs gap: Identifying places where women are creating “hacked” solutions for their needs and developing products and services to answer them. • Being body conscious in design: Adapting and developing designs to account for physiological differences between men and women. • Avoiding pinking: Tailoring functionality and not just aesthetics. • Inventing for new life stages: Seeking out opportunities for new product development arising from new demands and changes in women’s role and new life stages emerging from shifting lifestyle patterns.

ence in physiological needs between men and women. And more-flexible working patterns will need to be developed to retain female talent. ❑

Elisa Birtwistle, principal author About the Authors The Futures Company is an award-winning, global strategic insight and innovation consultancy. Unparalleled global expertise in foresight and futures enables The Futures Company to unlock new sources of growth through a range of subscription ser-

vices and research and consulting solutions. The Futures Company is a Kantar company within WPP with teams in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia. Web site www.thefuturescompany.com. This article was adapted from The Futures Company report Women 2020: How Women’s Actions and Expectations Are Changing the Future, written by Elisa Birtwistle, with research and writing contributions from Erin Bell, Eleanor Cooksey, and Louise Kennedy, and edited by Andrew Curry and Karen Kidson. The authors also thank Kat Braybrooke, community coordinator, Open Knowledge Foundation; Dayna Dion, cultural strategy director, Ogilvy & Mather; Caroline Hurford, public information officer, UN World Food Programme; Anab Jain, designer, futurist, and founder of Superflux; and Dr. Tracey Jensen, lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Newcastle. The full report may be downloaded from http://thefuturescompany.com/free-thinking/.

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Commentary: Women and the “Soft” Side of Innovation By Zhouying Jin The Futures Company’s “Women 2020” report clearly describes how women’s actions and expectations are changing the future. It lays a good foundation for further research and exploration. Additional considerations for women in the year 2020 should include not just the economic and marketing implications of the trends described, but also the role and the actions of women in future social development, political life, and even global governance. Among women’s multiple roles, I would also emphasize maternity. Women possess the maternal nature, giving them an attachment to humankind that manifests in a way of

pondering problems rather than solving problems. The maternal role will contribute to social harmony and world peace. And women’s growing role as innovators in the twenty-first century will enhance the capability of soft technology innovation—the intellectual technology around individuals, human thinking, ideology, emotion, values, worldviews, and human and organizational behavior. (As opposed to machine-based hard technologies like rockets, lasers, and computers, human-based soft technologies include innovations in processes and services, like business models, management consulting, social technology, and technology transfer.)

Feminine characteristics, including women’s ways of thinking, are suitable for this human-focused invention, creation, and innovation. Softtechnology innovation will provide a vast space for women to exert their creativity. Zhouying Jin is director of the Center for Technology Innovation and Strategic Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Science, and president of the Beijing Academy of Soft Technology, www.soft-technology.org. She is the author of Global Technological Change: From Hard Technology to Soft Technology (second edition: 2011) and a member of the World Future Society’s Global Advisory Council.

Commentary: Women’s World Beyond the Marketplace By Sheila R. Ronis “Women 2020” looks at multiple economic and social issues that impact the role that women play in the world. It is an amazingly optimistic view of a myriad of issues affecting women. The authors attempt to take a different point of view by studying not how the changes in the world will impact women, but “how women act as catalysts for fundamental changes, which are shaping not just their own world, but everybody’s world.” As a marketing study, “Women 2020” omits consideration of many serious issues that will impact women’s futures globally, particularly the basic lack of fundamental human rights in so many nations of the world. For example, the study neglects any discussion of human trafficking, where women and girls are exploited for sexual enslavement.

There is also little offered regarding those areas of the world where women are property and have no ability to defend themselves against violence and death. While these crucial problems— honor killings, female genital mutilation, the belief that men have the right to hurt and/or kill women for any reason—may not be obvious concerns for corporations and brands, they are a significant part of the global future of women that cannot be ignored. For instance, companies could certainly address the need for universal literacy for women as a strategy for improving livelihoods of their future workforces and customers. Ameliorating problems and providing basic human rights for women would make marketing to them a more viable option for growth and development.

The overall struggle that women have waged for millennia has indeed brought a marked improvement in their standard of living and overall rights in many areas of the world. The “Women 2020” report is an indicator of where women have made progress and what those changes are. But that struggle still has so far to go. Finding the next steps in addressing that struggle is another kind of opportunity—hidden in plain sight—that the corporate community should not overlook. Sheila Ronis is chair and professor, Department of Management and Communications at Walsh College, Troy, Michigan, and the former Vision Working Group leader of the Project on National Security Reform in Washington, D.C.

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Healthier Foresight Diets By Alireza Hejazi Staying well-informed about the future can be a challenge for the average consumer, given the evergrowing variety of information sources from which to choose. It’s likewise difficult for futurist authors and publishers seeking to create a foresight “menu” that draws audiences’ attention amid a din of rival information

Just as they strive after healthier food diets, consumers around the world are increasingly trying to improve their information diets. They study their information sources, just as they might study food options, to determine which sources will offer them the best value and greatest benefits for study or business. Making this determination is becoming more and more difficult, however, due to the ever-increasing number of futurist Web sites, blogs, e-newsletters, publications, networks, multimedia, and all other shapes of information services and products we receive in paid and nonpaid ways. How do we decide which information sources to use? We are in an ocean of information and are having a hard time staying afloat. Nevertheless, making sense of this information glut is a necessity if one is to achieve healthy foresight. I want to consider this topic from two perspectives: from that of information consumers and from that of foresight knowledge providers. How Users Can Set Up Healthy Foresight Information Diets Just as not every edible thing that can be found on this planet is useful to our health, not every futureoriented piece of information on the

Internet is necessarily useful to the development of our foresight knowledge. As we need to check our eating habits according to our physical health, we also need to check our information consumption habits periodically to ensure that we use healthy futuring stuff. And as sometimes it is necessary to modify our eating habits to control cholesterol levels, for instance, we need to change our foresight information resources or our own information consumption behavior in order to optimize our futures consciousness. People’s eating behavior is a reflection of what they prefer for their nutrition and health (or just what tastes good). In the same way, the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom they apply to their work and study are good signs pointing to their intellectual preferences and interests. Foods and nutritional products are usually ranked according to the amount of calories they can produce upon consumption. In a similar vein, different shapes of information like movies, Web sites, blogs, books, and other kinds of intellectual properties may be graded based on the quality of knowledge and wisdom they offer to their users. Changing knowledge consumption behaviors and setting up information diets are reciprocal phenomena. On the one hand, users reflect

alternatives.

their own likes and dislikes in their information purchase and consumption behaviors, and they obligate the producers to cater to their preferences by offering the services that those users will want to buy. On the other hand, the information providers struggle—through marketing and public relations—to influence users’ preferences and, by extension, their buying habits. Naturally, for many publishers and knowledge producers it’s a hard task to meet their customers’ expectations in the best possible way, and so for the users to find the best sources of information available. A global information explosion began in the final decades of the last century, and today it threatens our mental capacities. With so many shapes of information, we’re going to find it increasingly difficult to use information well. According to Michael Marien, director of GlobalForesightBooks.org, “similar to the growth of obesity, from lack of exercise and eating too many fattening foods and rich desserts, there is far too much frivolity and fluff in our ‘information diets.’ In a highly commercialized environment, it will be difficult to change our eating habits, even though the physical evidence of obesity is obvious; it will be far more difficult to seek some ‘right balance’ in our information-consuming habits.” Foresight analyst Richard Yonck considers the act of seeking and collecting information a compulsive behavior that can affect our mental abilities, especially our concentration and innovation capabilities. That may lead us to merely skim the surface, forgoing the wealth of knowledge and insight that could come if we’d only allow ourselves to go deeper. He avers: “Knowledge isn’t just about taking information in. It’s about savoring it, digesting it, letting it roll around inside of us, allowing it to bring forth new work and new ideas.” A 2012 survey by Pew Research Center on the future of the Internet reveals a similar finding. It projects a number of expectations that people usually have in using the information they find on the Web: Young people accustomed to a diet of

quick-fix information nuggets will be less likely to undertake deep, critical analysis of issues and challenging information. Shallow choices, an expectation of instant gratification, and a lack of patience are likely to be common results, especially for those who do not have the motivation or training that will help them master this new environment. One possible outcome is stagnation in innovation.

Users thus need to develop healthy diets for their foresight studies, and that requires setting up a realistic perspective. We know that every piece of information can sound sensible when we are looking into the future, including weak signals that are normally hard to identify in the first sight, but how should we collect and use all of this information? There are several key points to consider. First, futurists generally aim to shape the future, not predict it. In this sense, we need to gather the information that can be useful for building personal, organization, regional, or global futures. So we should always be skeptical of predictions and guesses. Instead, we should pay close attention to different types of change, including cycles, trends, emerging issues, and wild cards. Second, the quality of information varies. It can be defined in terms of originality and validity. There are many foresight information resources available through the Internet, but only a small number of them are really original and valid. Foresight information that is provided by recognized futurist organizations are usually reliable and can be trusted. However, the future is uncertain, and we should always be alert to rapid changes that happen in every environment against all data and information that we have in hand. Third, consider the connectivity of all STEEP components in scanning data we receive: Society, Technology, Environment, Economics, and Politics. Futurists usually scan all five areas, since all are interconnected. When we want to look at the alternative futures of an area, we should also bring the futures of other areas into account. In fact, we deal with a hybrid complex that should be www.wfs.org

looked at as an integrated whole. Fourth, there is an expiration date on foresight information. Just as we are keen to consume fresh food, we also need to put new and updated information into our foresight dish. Foresight is an ongoing activity and process; its output is fresh data and information. As users of these data, we always need to know their production and expiry dates, because the environment changes and using old foresight information can surely spoil our plans and lead our decisions and activities to irrecoverable failure. Fifth, foresight information takes many shapes. Futuring stuffs may be offered as maps, charts, tables, graphs, articles, monographs, short and long reports, books and textbooks, blog posts and comments, audio and video files, online multimedia, and so on. Each of these products has a certain message for a definite audience. Surely the users of a formal foresight report are different from the audiences of a foresight short video clip. It depends on our desired applications and goals. The key point to all these informative shapes is to use them according to their main message and in their right places. That is an important point that the users and providers should both consider. And sixth, our exploration of foresight knowledge makes it necessary to reach beyond our limited presentday needs. Working with knowledge that targets the future requires us to go beyond our past and present paradigms. We need to define the frontiers of new tomorrows in our work or study, where millions of people will be using a new kind of knowledge to do extraordinary things: foresight knowledge. There will be a competitive world where everyone tries to make the most of his or her foreknowledge. How Knowledge Providers Can Set Up Healthy Foresight Information Diets Today, the real value of foresight knowledge is an important stimulus for futurist authors and publishers because they deal with futureoriented information. If they fail to •

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meet their users’ needs and expectations, they may lose customers and eventually go out of business. So the first point that foresight knowledge providers should take very seriously is the “usefulness of information” that users pay for. People usually pay for firsthand information and original knowledge that could be really useful in their enterprises. You may have paid for a book, magazine, or other informative products you’d like to use in your study or work, but after receiving the material, you sadly found that the purchased item did not contain the information you were seeking. Would you buy another title from the same author or publisher? Probably not. Second, understand the importance of meeting users’ “intellectual expectations.” Information buyers like to pay for knowledge, not raw data. In recent years, many information providers have been pushed out of the market because they failed to satisfy their customers’ intellectual needs. Third, consider the value of “creativity.” In my view, creativity is key to producing useful foresight knowledge. If we excel at creating original foresight information and firsthand knowledge, then we stand better chances of attaining unique and dependable niches and audiences in even the most competitive information markets. There is no magic button to push and get it done, however. We futurist authors just need to think about people’s needs in the future. The interesting “10 Big Questions for 2100” that Marien poses in the October-November 2012 edition of THE FUTURIST are a great example: 1. How much global warming is ahead? 2. Will methane emissions eclipse carbon-dioxide emissions? 3. How high will sea levels rise? 4. Will we run out of essential resources? 5. How many people will there be in 2100? 6. What will be the “quality” of people (e.g., genetic enhancements, performance-enhancing drugs, etc.) in 2100? 48

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7. Will decent employment be available to all? 8. Will inequality and plutocracy continue? 9. Will the energy transition be a clear and rapid success? 10. Will nuclear weapons or bioweapons be our undoing? All futurists should consider these 10 big and overlapping questions— surely not the only ones to ponder, but good candidates for a short list that should be widely circulated and continuously updated. Fourth, consider the role of “attraction.” Thanks to the Internet, foresight knowledge production means no agent, no publisher, and no paper—just an author who meets readers’ interests. But the quality of information that a futurist author or consultant offers to clients is a matter of attraction. He or she needs to attract readers’ attention in new ways. Techniques like trend analysis may no longer respond effectively to the minds that are thirsty for foresight knowledge. Just as Dean Rusk said once, “The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today.” Yes, we need more speed. Fifth, remember that information consumption entails an investment. Making usefulness and attraction requires an investment of time and energy by foresight knowledge providers. Such an investment, if targeted at proper audiences, will bring desired benefits. Today, internationalization is the key to the future. More than ever, futurist authors need to consider other cultures’ values and favorites in their works. Meeting and talking to my audiences is what I love most about my futuring business—I find that they are, universally, pretty smart and fascinating people. Thanks to my good friends, this isn’t an accident, and every other futurist author may also make it happen by relentless effort and meaningful design. Sixth, be realistic. As foresight knowledge providers, we may have to focus on a unique audience at a definite time. This means we need to leave our normal generalist apwww.wfs.org

proaches and concentrate on the particular users or readers’ real needs. An entrepreneur needs to know about emerging markets that attract more investments and customers. Meanwhile, a dentist may be interested in knowing about dental technologies that are on the way to re define the services that he or she offers to patients. These foresight consumers are not necessarily interested in practicing foresight activities. They just want to have a reliable sort of foreknowledge that could advance their businesses. So, preparing special volumes of foresight knowledge at the order of certain customers and according to their entrepreneurial needs is a real business that requires a reasonable degree of realism. Consultant Dan Thies divides a successful information business into six steps: 1. Mapping out the foundations of your information business. 2. Developing magnet content. 3. Creating and deploying a news machine. 4. Attracting an audience. 5. Expanding your audience and content with relationship marketing. 6. Monetizing. Those steps also hold true for the foresight-information business today. There are many additional considerations that foresight-knowledge providers should keep in mind, such as the internal and external validity of their futures-research approaches and the reliability of information they provide by different futures techniques and methods. One thing, however, remains the same throughout all foresight efforts: The future is uncertain, and we are not going to predict it. We want to shape it in desired ways aimed at preferred outcomes. That’s the big secret to developing healthy foresight information menus and diets. ❑ About the Author Alireza Hejazi is a futurist and founding editor of FuturesDiscovery.com.

S P E C I A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

S E C T I O N

CONSULTANTS AND SERVICES

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

Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking

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.”

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

Alsek Research Economic Futures

Christensen Associates, Inc.

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

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

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

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

Aviv Consulting 15363 NE 201st St. Woodinville, WA 98072 Phone: 425-415-6155 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

Consultants

and

Services

The Futures Corporation

Innovation Focus Inc.

Leading Futurists LLC

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.

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.

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.

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

Institute for Alternative Futures 100 N. Pitt St., Suite 307, Alexandria, VA 22314-3134 Phone: 703-684-5880 Fax: 703-684-0640 E-mail: futurist@altfutures.com Web: www.altfutures.com Contacts: Clement Bezold, Jonathan Peck, William Rowley, MD Uses research reports, workshops, scenarios, and visioning to help organizations understand future possibilities and create their “preferred future.”

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

Institute for Global Futures 2084 Union St., San Francisco, CA 94123 Phone: 415-563-0720 Fax: 415-563-0219 E-mail: info@globalfuturist.com Web: www.GlobalFuturist.com Contact: Dr. James Canton Futures based keynotes, consulting and research for any vertical industry by leading futurist James Canton.

The Greenway Group 25 Technology Pkwy. South, Suite 101, Norcross, GA 30092 Phone: 678-879-0929 Fax: 678-879-0930 E-mail: jcramer@di.net Web: www.greenway.us Contact: James Cramer, chairman Strategic change, trends, forecasts, research. Architecture and design technology. Journals: Design Intelligence. Publications: The Almanac of Architecture & Design, How Firms Succeed, Design + Enterprise, Leadership by Design, Communication by Design, Value Redesigned.

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

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Institute for Participatory Management and Planning P.O. Box 1937, Monterey, CA 93942-1937 Phone: 831-373-4292 Fax: 831-373-0760 E-mail: ipmp@aol.com Web: www.ipmp-bleiker.com Contacts: Annemarie Bleiker, Hans Bleiker, Jennifer Bleiker We offer a Leadership Boot-Camp for guiding complex problem-solving and decision-making efforts.

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

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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 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.

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

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trends dealing with the dynamic and evolving field of town-gown relations.

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

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.

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

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

Book Reviews Discovering How to See the Future By Rick Docksai

Futurology is about more than foreseeing the future; its goals are to advance the future’s knowability. We can learn much from both the mistakes and the successes of foresight. The future may not be here yet, but all the causes and conditions that give rise to it are. If we study them thoroughly enough, we can get a surprisingly accurate picture of what is to come, according to futurologist Michael Lee in Knowing Our Future. He disagrees with those who say that the future is unknowable. We can know it; we just have to learn to read the patterns by which it emerges from the past and present. “Viewed through the lens of time, life on all levels, from cosmological

to social, behaves with Stanley Jevons corregularity and purpose, rectly foresaw a boom allowing us to estimate its in coal-energy confuture course,” Lee writes. sumption over the Toward that end, he next hundred years lays out a comprehensive leading to peaking “theory of futurology” for supplies, soaring enamassing foreknowledge ergy costs, and subseof the future and thereby quent harms to ecoorganizing more effecnomic development in tively for it. Worldwide many countries. And scholarship now has the celebrated author enough knowledge of H. G. Wells rightly how social systems work guessed that motorthat scholars who apply ized transport would such a theory to the study Knowing Our Future: result in large city cenThe Startling Case of of societies, institutions, ters growing around Futurology by Michael and natural systems can Lee. Infinite Ideas. 2012. transportation sysfigure out where they are 194 pages. $24.95. tems. heading. Yet, all three men In the late eighteenth also made many procentury, French philosopher Marquis foundly incorrect forecasts, as well. de Condorcet predicted that world- Condorcet, for instance, optimistiwide movements would win a num- cally expected that the progression ber of new rights for women, includ- of knowledge would fully erase ining the vote. A little more than a equalities between the sexes, races, century later—in 1893, to be exact— and social classes. Jevons had no inNew Zealand became the first nation kling that oil was about to gain tracin history to enact women’s suffrage. tion as a worldwide energy comOther great thinkers have made modity, and he believed that steam startlingly prescient predictions engines would still be a primary within the last few centuries. In 1865, mode of transportation by the late British economist and logician W. twentieth century—an obvious fail-

The Top 10 Forecasts of All Time In Knowing Our Future, author Michael Lee rates history’s top 10 forecasts, giving points for farsightedness, importance, and logic.

Club of Rome. Predicted: 1972. Fulfilled: from the 2008 credit c risis and subsequent euro zone crisis onwards.

8. Rise of famine due to overpopulation in modern era, Thomas

dicted: 1795. Fulfilled: from 1893.

dicted: 1901. Fulfilled: from debut of Ford’s Model T in 1908.

9. Outbreak of World War II due to German rearmament, Winston

1. The rise of equal rights for women, Marquis de Condorcet. Pre2. Peak oil for the United States and the world, M. King Hubbert.

Predicted: 1956. Fulfilled: 1970 (U.S.), 2000 (world). 3. The rise of economic globalization, Marquis de Condorcet.

Predicted: 1795. Fulfilled: from 1944 (Bretton Woods).

4. Slowing down of economic growth due to ecological and environmental constraints, with an end to all high growth by 2022,

5. Motorization of society in the twentieth century, H. G. Wells. Pre-

6. Decline of British global supremacy due to depletion of coal resources, W. Stanley Jevons. Pre-

dicted: 1865. Fulfilled: from the steep decline of coal production after 1925.

7. National restoration of Israel after lengthy exile and following a time of “outpoured wrath,” Eze-

kiel. Predicted: 593-571 BC. Fulfilled: 1948.

Malthus. Predicted: 1798. Fulfilled: from the Great Irish Famine of 1946-1851 to famine in North Korea in the 1990s.

Churchill. Predicted: 1933. Fulfilled: 1939.

10. Fall of the Berlin Wall,

J. Richard Gott. Predicted: 1969. Fulfilled: 1989. (Gott, an astrophysicist, used Copernican principles to calculate his prediction rather than extrapolating from geopolitical developments.) From Knowing Our Future, Michael Lee.

ure to think beyond the technological limitations of the present. And Wells thought that the world would unite into a socialist superstate—a case of extreme wishful thinking. Lee dissects these and other famous forecasts in history to show where each went right or wrong— i.e., what biases or errors of thinking the individual might have made that caused him or her to not see what would actually come to pass. Futurists must be mindful of the realities of culture, psychology, biology, and other laws that govern social systems, he notes. They must also keep aware of looming changes that could spark significant disruptions within the existing paradigms. Futurists who presume the future to be largely a continuation of the currently dominant present trends do so at their own peril. A more complete “science of the future” would guide researchers to make forecasts that steer clear of these and other errors of future thinking. Lee sees just such a science attaining maturity now. The discipline of futurology is undergoing more development and increasing practice, and Lee hopes that it will continue to do so in years to come. He explains the scientific and philosophical foundations behind it, including Albert Einstein’s theories of space-time and relativity, Pitirim S orokin’s theories of patterns that determine the evolution of social systems, and “biomatrix theory,” a school of thought that links natural and human social systems together into integrated, interactive webs. As futurology develops further, it will change the acquisition of knowledge itself: All disciplines of scientific research will become much more interdisciplinary. Science might even further meld with nonscientific branches of knowledge, including philosophy and theology. The “global brain” of the Internet will be a vital conduit for all of this knowledge integration. “The search for our future is yielding positive results,” Lee writes. This elevation of foreknowledge as

a science would hold great dividends for human society, he states. Humans would become truly pro active and organized toward creating better futures. Lifestyles will become more sustainable, and government and grassroots leaders will avert socioeconomic crises of all kinds before they happen. “We will feel more in control of our lives and societies, having learned that it is not just space that we must understand and conquer, but time as well,” Lee writes. “We will develop a new time-literate form of civilization.” Will such a bold forecast prove to be right? Or might Lee—like Wells, Condorcet, and the other great thinkers to whom he pays tribute— be guilty of too much optimism or of forgetfulness of hard scientific realities? Futures-studies experts and practitioners may conclude one way or another and argue one way or another accordingly. Almost all, however, may certainly find Lee’s ideas interesting. Knowing Our Future is a provocative and intriguing take on just how far the human mind could ultimately go toward mastering and directing humanity’s future.

Call for Papers The World Future Society’s quarterly journal World Future Review is refereed by a prestigious international Editorial Review Board. The editors are especially seeking papers and reviews that: • Describe or expand upon futuresstudies techniques and methodologies. • Are based on research, analysis, and modeling of presumed causes and potential developments affecting current social, economic, or political conditions. • Evaluate the actual outcomes achieved by government and corporate planning efforts and/or assess the common practices of professional futurists. • Profile futures-research practi tioners (whether individual, corporate, or governmental) and their contributions to the art and science of futures research. • Compare past efforts at forecasting and/or depictions of future societies in fiction or popular media with actual events and current trends. WFR is a journal primarily by and for professional futurists. But, because we seek to promote dialogue among communities of theoreticians, practitioners, and beneficiaries, assumptions as to the technical knowledge and sophistication of readers should be minimized. We urge contributors to avoid, or at least explain, any specialized terms or jargon not commonly used outside a specific discipline. To facilitate anonymous review, all identifying information about the author(s) should be on a separate attachment. Manuscripts should not normally exceed 6,000 words. Please upload manuscripts at our editorial Web site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wfr or e-mail them to Managing Editor Lane Jennings at lanejen@aol.com. For more information about World Future Review, including a link to the full submission guidelines, visit www.wfs .org/wfr

About the Reviewer Rick Docksai is associate editor of THE FUTURIST and World Future Review. E‑mail rdocksai@wfs.org.

The Road to Hell Is Paved with Efficiency The Efficiency Trap: Finding a Better Way to Achieve a Sustainable Energy Future by Steve Hallett. Prometheus. 2013. 310 pages. $18.

Cars boast far better mileage than they did decades ago, but gasoline consumption is at an all-time high and still rising. Cities everywhere have undertaken energy-efficient construction and planning, but domestic electricity consumption has kept on rising. And while world agriculture has steadily boosted crop www.wfs.org

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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

Book Reviews

output over the last 50 years, the number of malnourished people has stayed the same. The underlying problem is a societal fixation on efficiency, according to Steve Hallett, a Purdue University botanist and plant pathologist. Civic activists, lawmakers, businesses, and consumers all believe that, if we continue to make our technology and infrastructure more efficient, we will cure environmental pollution, resource depletion, and hunger. The exact opposite is the truth, Hallett counters: More efficiency simply enables more consumption. As cars and household products become more energy efficient, for instance, people buy more of them. Meanwhile, gains in food productivity and efficient housing construction cannot compensate for faster population growth and more people moving to cities. Inevitably, Hallett argues, reliance on efficiency could guarantee that we doom ourselves to resource exhaustion. Such a future is now inevitable and will probably grip the world in or around the 2030s, Hallett argues. Economic collapse, blackouts, food scarcities, and looting and violence will erupt everywhere. He is hopeful that the world community will transition through all of this if it can adapt. Instead of aspiring to be more sustainable, we should prioritize making our communities more diverse and resilient, creating economies that maintain wealth instead of trying to constantly grow it. Ramping up recycling, localizing electricity generation, and growing more food in our own neighborhoods or backyards instead of importing our produce are a few of the steps that Hallett proposes toward these ends. The Efficiency Trap may strike many proponents of green energy as harsh. Conventional environmentalists and business leaders both may 54

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disagree with Hallett’s premise, and some reviewers have thus understandably called the book “controversial.” The author is clearly out not to make new friends, but rather to honestly portray where the world may be heading. His book is frank, thought-provoking, and deserves a hearing among audiences every where. —RD

Worst Expectations The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us About America by Mathew Barrett Gross and Mel Gilles. Prometheus Books. 2012. 254 pages. $18.

The Last Myth has earned its place alongside Philip Zimbardo’s The Time Paradox and I. F. Clarke’s The Pattern of Expectation as one of the best books on humanity’s concept of “the future.” While its title promises an exploration of how apocalyptic thinking evolved, authors Mathew Barrett Gross and Mel Gilles also serve up answers to two other big questions: Why did humanity change from thinking that time is circular to linear, and how has the idea of progress changed from the Renaissance through today? All three ideas are woven together in a compelling, jargon-free narrative that is—no pun intended—revelatory. For example, there have been a number of points where people (granted, slowly) made a 180-degree change in how they think about time. In its earliest days, humanity interpreted life events as the forces of destruction seeking balance with the forces of creation. That changed into a concept of good continually battling evil. There was another period when people thought that every action was a repetition of what ancestors had done before them; there was nothing new under the sun. Over time, that opinion shifted to thinking each event is unprecedented and so history is leading us to some specific point, often utopian or dystopian in nature. www.wfs.org

The authors wrap up their work by highlighting two alarming trends. The first is that apocalyptic thinking has hit levels in the past decade in America that haven’t been seen worldwide in a thousand years. And second, the desire to view global events through an apocalyptical lens is clouding the ability to tackle real problems. Suffice it to say, The Last Myth will be found educational and enjoyable by historians, futurists, and anyone who wants a fresh take on the concept of time itself. —David H. Rosen

Moving Your Business Into the Future Think Like a Futurist: Know What Changes, What Doesn’t, and What’s Next by Cecily Sommers. Jossey-Bass. 2012. 254 pages. $27.95.

We could afford to exercise creativity and innovation much more than we typically do, says Cecily Sommers, president of the futurist nonprofit Push Institute. In fact, a business can incorporate innovation and creativity into its everyday operational practices, and make gains in productivity and time efficiency in the process. She explains how the process of recognizing the forces of change that structure our world can help you train your own brain to be more perceptive to impending change and new opportunities. This enhanced perception allows you to then realign your management practices to be fully prepared for what lies ahead. Sommers lays out the right ways—and the wrong ways—to go about innovation strategy and future-ready thinking. She also profiles individuals who exemplify the best approaches, including Doug Cam-

eron, a developer of biofuels technologies; Iqbal Quadir, who brought modern-day telecommunications to rural Bangladesh by founding Grameenphone; David Bloom, the Harvard economist whose “demographic dividend” concept won him a spot in Time magazine’s 2011 feature “Ten Ideas That Will Change the World”; and Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and an adviser to corporations, labor unions, and governments all around the world. Think Like a Futurist brings insights of psychology, history, commerce, and futures studies together into one reader-friendly volume that is written with the business leader in mind. Businesses in every industry must certainly be prepared for the future, and no matter what sector a business leader happens to be in, this book is likely to hold something of value for him or her. —RD

Reading the Ice The White Planet: The Evolution and Future of Our Frozen World by Jean Jouzel, Claude Lorius, and Dominique Raynaud. Princeton University Press. 2012. 306 pages. $29.95.

In summer 2003, heat waves scorched Europe and caused recordhigh numbers of European wildfires and heat-stroke deaths. By 2050, the summer of 2003 will be an “average” summer in Europe, while other parts of the globe will contend with never-beforeseen rates of flooding, droughts, avalanches, and other deadly natural phenomena, according to glaciologists Claude Lorius, Jean Jouzel, and Dominique R aynaud. Lorius has participated in more than

20 polar expeditions, and Jouzel and Raynaud have both contributed to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The authors base their forecasts on multiple studies of ice fields of the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica. Their missions drilled into the ice and retrieved samples of ice cores and running water for lab analysis. Within these samples, they explain, is a wealth of information about our global climate’s past and, more important, its future. Based on the patterns that the samples exhibit, our planet should now be entering a new global cooling period of increasing glacial formations. It is definitely not: Glaciers across the globe are retracting, temperatures are warming, and levels of

atmospheric carbon dioxide have risen in the last 200 years to higher levels than they have exhibited in the last 800,000 years. This warming trend is inevitably due to human activity, as it defies all natural explanations, the scientists contend. And it will grow worse. Even if the world community adheres to existing treaties on climate change, it can expect the world temperature average to rise 3°C by 2100. The White Planet is a portrayal not only of some stark conclusions about Earth’s climate future, but also of the painstaking work that the authors and other scientists have carried out over decades to arrive at them. It’s informative and engaging reading for lay audiences of all types. —RD ❑

Upcoming WorldFuture Meetings The World Future Society’s annual meetings are like a “global village in microcosm,” bringing together futurists from around the world to share ideas and vital information about the trends and events that will affect the world tomorrow. Make plans now to share the WorldFuture experience! July 19-21, 2013 WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon Hilton Chicago Chicago, Illinois, USA Preconference Master Courses—July 18-19, 2013 Professional Members Forum—July 22, 2013 www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2013-exploringnext-horizon

July 24-26, 2015 WorldFuture 2015 Hilton San Francisco Union Square San Francisco, California, USA Preconference Master Courses— July 23-24, 2015 Professional Members Forum—July 27, 2015

World Future Society’s 50th Anniversary! July 22-24, 2016 July 11-13, 2014 WorldFuture 2016 WorldFuture 2014 Washington Hilton Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek Washington, D.C., USA Orlando, Florida, USA Preconference Master Courses—July 21-22, 2016 Preconference Master Courses—July 10-11, 2014 Professional Members Forum—July 25, 2016 Professional Members Forum—July 14, 2014 Deadline to submit session and course proposals: Monday, October 28, 2013 “Wow full of ideas and content for discussion after returning from the #wf12 event. Plans starting already for #wf13. Watch for a stream of ideas for discussion as I unpack my bags and brain.” —Francis Rabuck (@frabuck, via Twitter) “Every session was like the countdown to ignition and lift-off for creating an even more insightful and sustainable future. Congratulations.” —Gary Marx, Center for Public Outreach Dates and venues may be subject to change. Visit www.wfs.org for the latest information, or sign up for FUTURIST UPDATE, our free monthly e-mail newsletter, at www.wfs.org/ content/futurist-update

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May-June 2013

PHOTOS: DAN DOWNEY FOR WFS

WorldFuture

2013

Exploring the Next Horizon

July 19-21, 2013 • Hilton Chicago Hotel • Chicago, Illinois, USA Preconference Courses: July 18-19, 2013 • Professional Members Forum: July 22, 2013 Meet the makers of tomorrow’s innovations at Futurists: BetaLaunch.

The World Future Society’s annual conference, WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon, will bring together the world’s premier minds to discuss the longrange future of science, technology, humanity, government, religion, and many other topics. This year’s event features MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte, visionary author Ramez Naam, geosecurity expert John Watts, and Ford Futurist Sheryl Connelly.

Confessions of a Corporate Futurist Sheryl Connelly has worked for Ford Motor Company for 17 years, the last nine of which has been as the Global Consumer Trends and Futuring Manager. As the corporate futurist, she identifies global trends that feed into functions across the entire company, including design, product development, and corporate strategy. Prior to joining the trends team, she spent Sheryl Connelly

eight years working in a variety of field positions for Ford Division, including wholesaling products to more than 140 dealers and assisting in the execution of new franchising agreements. At WorldFuture 2013, she’ll tell you about her “unlikely journey to becoming a corporate futurist and finding the job of my dreams.”

Exploring the Horizons of Your Futurist Career At WorldFuture 2013, career counselors will be on hand to help you begin or revive your career in futuring or explore other fields. Individuals considering a career change or who need help getting the most out of their present position are invited to sign up for a private session with a futureoriented career expert during WorldFuture 2013. This free career service, offered for the last two decades, is coordinated by Helen Harkness, PhD, founder of Career Design Associates Inc.

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Above: Emily Empel (left) and Heather Schlegel describe their work at the Best of Houston session.

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WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon will

feature more than 60 sessions, workshops, and special events over the course of two and a half days. Opening night kicks off with Futurists: BetaLaunch, a technology petting zoo where engineers, designers, and others will present their inventions to the 900 futurists expected to gather for the conference. New to the event this year, you won’t want to miss the…

22nd Century Lecture Series Moving Toward a Predictable Future with Big Data Patrick Tucker, deputy editor of THE FUTURIST will

describe how computer science, data-mining, and a growing network of sensors and information collection software programs are giving rise to “big data,” data sets so enormous that scientists don’t yet know how to manage them. These information treasure chests of data can be used to model future actions with Patrick Tucker ever-increasing precision. Drawing from his forthcoming book, A Future Ever Certain (Current, 2014), Tucker will discuss the dangerous future of humanity’s greatest invention, the future itself. Leadership of Technological Change: Ten Areas of Disruption, Strategic Opportunity, and Threat John Smart, president of the Acceleration Studies

Foundation, will give you an overview of how and why

Download the preliminary program or register online at wfs.org. our world gets faster and better every decade, and how to see and benefit from the next great steps in the human adventure. Learning and Creativity in 2100 Marci Segal, president of creativitylandinc, and Megan Mitchell, director

of Happen North America, will lead you through a co-creative journey to transcend the boundaries of today’s thinking. You will imagine using your passions and talents to align with a desired future state and synchronize with others to create one living symbol, beyond ego consciousness, so as to know another way to live that is emerging, possible, and potent.

Marci Segal

Megan Mitchell

A Possibility Tour Futurist Heather Schlegel will lead you on a tour of a variety of potential outcomes of our economy, as might be seen through the eyes of noted futurists of the past.

Heather Schlegel

Futuring in 2100 Acclaimed author Glen Hiemstra, founder of Futurist.com, says it was futurists who turned futuring into a verb.

Glen Hiemstra

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Futurist Writers Workshop participants concentrate on an exercise.

In doing so, futurists took our most basic and ancient human capacities—to remember, to anticipate, to imagine, to dream, and to plan—and turned them into a vocation. Glen has advised professional, business, and governmental organizations for two decades and served as a technical advisor for futuristic television programs. He is the author of Turning the Future into Revenue: What Businesses and Individuals Need to Know to Shape Their Future and co-author of Strategic Leadership: Achieving your Preferred Future, Kirkland, Washington, USA Healthy Aging in the 22nd Century: Envisioning Life in the Year 2100 Marta M. Keane, chief operating officer of the Jeffer-

son Area Board for Aging, says that just living longer without living better is not a goal. Discussions of longevity need to consider the quality of a longer life. What will the term “elder” mean in the future? And at what age will someone be considered an elder in 2100?

A Monetary System for the 22nd Century Stephen Aguilar-Millan, director of

research at the European Futures Observatory, says we may want to envision a world without money, but it is highly unlikely that such a world will come about. So key questions remain: What will money be like in the year 2100, who will issue it, and who will regulate it? Who will store it, and how it will be used?

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

Stepping Backwards into Eden Brenda Cooper, acclaimed science-

fiction author, will discuss how humanity is intervening in nature. From the Endangered Species Act through efforts Brenda Cooper to save coral reefs all over the world, we are managing an ever-growing array of habitat. The Wisdom Web: Global Governance in 2100 Marta M. Keane

No Limits to Growth Tsvi Bisk, director of the Center for Strategic Futurist

Thinking, will address a range of forecasts, including: The widespread adoption of vertical urban agriculture will enable an area the size of Ireland to provide enough food for 10 billion people. The rewilding of vast areas of the planet will result.

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Future of Shopping session participants experience new dimensions in retailing.

In 2100, a “wisdom web” of enlightened leaders oversees an inclusive network of global citizens who collaboratively anticipate challenges and formulate visionary goals, says Eric Meade, vice president at the Institute for Alternative Futures.

Eric Meade

and more at www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2013-sessions/ 22nd-century-lecture-series Tsvi Bisk

Don’t miss out on your chance to learn about the future and network with like-minded futurists from around the world.

WorldFuture

2013

Exploring the Next Horizon

July 19–21, 2013 • Hilton Chicago • Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Yes! I want to meet, exchange ideas with, and learn from my futurist colleagues. Please reserve my place at the World Future Society’s WorldFuture 2013. I understand registration includes admission to all sessions, the welcome reception, entrance to exhibits, and a list of pre-registrants. And if for any reason I am unable to attend, I may cancel and receive a full refund until June 21, 2013. Register by April 30, 2013

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PRECONFERENCE MASTER COURSES AND EDUCATION SUMMIT Thursday, July 18 — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ❑ C-1 Futuring: An Introduction to Futures Studies, with Peter C. Bishop — $249..................................................................................................................... ❑ C-2 Foresight Educators Boot Camp, with Jay Gary — $249........................................................................................................................................................... ❑ C-3 Wiser Futures: Using Futures Tools to Better Understand and Create the Future, with Clem Bezold — $249...................................................... ❑ C-4 Introduction to Strategic Futurist Thinking, with Tsvi Bisk — $249...................................................................................................................................... ❑ C-5 An Insider’s Guide to Foresight Consulting, with Andy Hines and Riel Miller — $249.................................................................................................. Friday, July 19 — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ❑ C-6 Succeeding in a New Normal World, with David Pearce Snyder, John Vanston, and Carrie Vanston — $249....................................................... ❑ C-7 Fierce Foresight: Creating Tomorrow out of the Changes of Today, with Michael Petty — $249.............................................................................. ❑ C-8 Balancing Logic and Imagination to Foresee the Future, with Marci Segal, Megan Mitchell, and Tom McMillan — $249............................... ❑ C-9 Introduction to 3-D Design, Printing, and Rapid Prototyping for Futurists, with Paul D. Tinari — $249.................................................................. ❑ C-10 Horizon Scanning: What’s Ahead? Building Capability within Your Organization, with Maree Conway and Elizabeth Rudd — $249...... ❑ E-1 Education Summit — $175.................................................................................................................................................................................................................. ❑ Professional Members Forum (Monday, July 22) — $115 (for Professional Members)......................................................................................................... Professional Membership — $295 ($195 nonprofit /academic rate)

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MAIL TO: World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. • FAX TO: 1-301-951-0394 • CALL TOLL-FREE: 1-800989-8274 (If outside the toll-free calling area, call 1-301-656-8274.) • E-MAIL: info@wfs.org • WEB SITE: www.wfs.org

Future Active News for the Futurist Community SCREEN CAPTURE FROM WILSON CENTER VIDEO

tem, http://millennium-project.org/millennium/ GFIS.html or www.themp.org. To watch the video of the GFIS launch at the Woodrow Wilson Center, go to: http://millennium-project.org/millennium/ presentations.html.

Hospice Leaders Attend Innovative Futuring Forum

Jerome C. Glenn, director of The Millennium Project, introduces the Global Futures Intelligence System during an event sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

Global Futures Intelligence System The Millennium Project unveiled its innovative Global Futures Intelligence System (GFIS) at a recent event in Washington, D.C. GFIS is an open-source collective intelligence system addressing the 15 global challenges identified by The Millennium Project’s 46 active nodes from around the world. The system allows subscribers to comment on any aspect of a challenge. These comments may generate discussion among users or a real-time Delphi. Newsfeeds, Web sites, videos, and books may be added to the discussions. This will allow for continuous updating of the challenges by a wider group of participants than have been previously involved. GFIS is currently in beta test. The 2012 edition of the organization’s State of the Future report, which updates the 15 global challenges annually, may be the last time this information is disseminated in this form, according to Jerome C. Glenn, director of The Millennium Project. During a talk at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on January 15, he described this as a major shift in the 16-year-old project’s global challenges program. —Jay Herson

More than 100 hospice and palliative-care leaders gathered in Hollywood, Florida, on January 22-24, 2013, to attend a Futuring Forum sponsored by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. In 2011, hospices provided care and services for 44% of dying patients in the United States. Forum participants brainstormed on the creation of innovative approaches to efficiently deliver hospice services— pain and symptom management,

home safety assessment, emotional and spiritual support, caregiver education, etc.—to even more family caregivers coping with serious and chronic illness. Futurist Clem Bezold, chairman and founder of the Institute for Alternative Futures in Alexandria, Virginia, urged hospice administrators to get involved with the emerging Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) by contracting at least for end-of-life care and demonstrating cost savings. It would be preferable, he said, for hospices to get involved with primary care providers earlier, before serious illness sets in. Bezold also stressed the need to utilize personal biomonitoring technologies. —JH For more information, contact: National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, www.nhpco.org.

Details: The Global Futures Intelligence Sys-

PHOTOS BY CLEM BEZOLD

Ideas brainstormed during the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Futuring Forum were captured by “graphic recorders.”

Dreaming Up the Future of Food Food grown on walls—both indoors and outdoors … nutritional advice from robots … food waste reclaimed for heat and energy. These are a few of the ideas of students from China’s Dalian Nationalities University, the winning team in the Dream Lab 2012 competition. A project of the British Council and Kingston University—in partnership with the Royal College of Art, the Design Museum, and the Science Museum—The Dream Lab challenge aims to promote stronger

ties between British industry and China’s most promising student designers. “The Dream Lab challenge not only gives Chinese students a taste of British education but also provokes ideas, creativity, and innovation,” says Ewan Evans, education marketing officer at the British Council China. “The expertise of postgraduates in supporting the Dream Lab teams and the input from Kingston University has been essential to assuring the success of the project.” —CGW Source: Kingston University, www.kingston.ac.uk. PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHNSON BANKS

The Futurist en Español The first issue of a Spanish-language edition of THE FUTURIST magazine was published in February 2013. Futurist en Español describes itself as a “bimonthly magazine that is dedicated to promoting research, analysis, and reports on issues of innovation, development, and technology.” Among the articles selected for the beautifully illustrated first issue are essays from “The 22nd Century at First Light” report, John Smart ’s forecast for television’s interactive future, and original stories such as a profile of physicist M a r c e l i n o

Mattioli.

Editor in Chief Oscar Espinosa Mijares explains that Futurist en Es-

pañol is the joint effort of Contorno, Centro de Prospectiva, and the Mexican national chapter of the World Future Society, WFS Capítulo Mexicano. These organizations “have come together in a strategic alliance to build a space for reflection, dialogue, and discussion,” providing a growing voice for futurists in the public agenda, he says in his opening essay to the readers. —CGW

Read Futurist en Español, February-March 2013 (PDF), at http://issuu.com/futurist_ espanol/docs/the_futurist_num_1.pdf Send feedback to Futurist en Español on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FuturistESP

Serving up inspiration for the Dream Lab 2012 challenge, Britain’s Science Museum hosted a “Future of Eating” event, with such offerings as “bush food” (top left: edible insects), “milli meals” (top right: printed foods), and “conversational canapes” (bottom: table cards with thought-provoking questions about the future of food).

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continued from page 64 tearing at one another as viciously as the zombies pawing at the doors and windows. The suggestion is that civilization is a flimsy screen that we employ to hide from ourselves the brutal truth of humanity’s innate villainy. MARKET SQUARE PRODUCTIONS / ALBUM / NEWSCOM How should we view these two competing interpretations of man’s demise in the context of the actual events of 1968? This was a year that saw the steady escalation of the Vietnam War beginning with Tet Offensive in January and the infamous My Lai massacre later that year, as well as race riots, p o l i c e c r a c k - Heroic zombie fighter (Duane Jones) in d o w n s a g a i n s t Night of the Living Dead. civil-rights marchers, and the suppression of war protests across the United States. Importantly, 1968 also saw the landmark signing of the Civil Rights Act, suggesting that, in the midst of chaos, man can actually become more sensitive to injustice and brutality, not less. Perhaps these movies are a

symptom of that. [For more on this, see David Rosen’s review of The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us About America by Mathew Barrett Gross and Mel Gilles, page 54.] —PT Back to The Futurist I don’t think any prediction appearing in the pages of THE FUTURIST has made me scratch my head more vigorously than the one authored by Nobel laureate Glenn T. Seaborg in the second issue of the newsletter, April 1967: “Intelligent Apes Become Chauffeurs.” Seaborg’s prediction was offered as an alternative for housewives who might be uncomfortable with the idea of robot servants. It was based on a forecast from the RAND Corporation that “by the year 2020 it may be possible to breed intelligent species of animals, such as apes, that will be capable of performing manual labor.” The RAND forecast, circa 1965, may have been inspired in part by the 1963 story upon which Planet of the Apes was based, La planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. But as we approach the year 2020, it seems likely that we will be spared worrying about uprisings (yet) from either simian or robotic chauffeurs, thanks to prospects for self-d riving cars and automated highways. In a transhuman (or trans-simian) future, our hope remains that human “advances” will lead to improvements in our own humanity, starting at the least with reductions in road rage. —CGW About the Authors Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST. Patrick Tucker is the deputy editor of THE FUTURIST magazine and director of communications for the World Future Society. ❑

Network with WFS Join the futurist community online via your favorite social-networking platform! www.twitter.com/WorldFutureSoc The World Future Society’s official Twitter page, managed by FUTURIST editor Cindy Wagner www.twitter.com/TheYear2030 THE FUTURIST magazine’s official Twitter page, managed by deputy editor Patrick Tucker If you Like the future, you’ll Like the WFS page, featuring stories and news from members and friends. World Future Society members are invited to connect with others on the Society’s official LinkedIn group. Make wfs.org your futures “home”! Come for the ideas, stay for the inspiration with thousands of fellow future builders.

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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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THE FUTURIST

May-June 2013

As Blogged By Cynthia G. Wagner and Patrick Tucker 20TH CENTURY FOX / ALBUM / NEWSCOM

Sci-Fi and the Trans-simian Future A televised marathon of the Planet of the Apes movies inspired a few thoughts about what science fiction thinks of the future of civilization. Of Apes and Futurists After shaking my head over spending nine hours of a perfectly good Saturday watching TV, I have a few thoughts about the Planet of the Apes series. Most interesting to me was that the legendary sci-fi film franchise was born at about the same time as the World Future Society. In fact, the Franklin J. Schaffner-directed original (1968) was probably being filmed when THE FUTURIST newsletter was putting out its first few mimeographed pages. Never having seen any of the Ape films before, I appreciated the opportunity to watch them in sequence. Following the original were Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). It’s hard not to be charmed by the wit and humanity of chimpanzee protagonists Cornelius and Zira, so they kept me committed to the marathon at least through the end of Escape. At that point, I really wanted to see how the idea of the future as multiple lanes on a highway leading to different destinations would play out. I think the writers really got it right on that particular view of the future. The idea of proactively changing the future was also strongly present, especially in Escape: The sinister Dr. Otto Hasslein argued for doing something about all the world’s problems, naming war and pollution (always big, but particularly critical in the late 1960s Zeitgeist) as most in need of attendance. But then his solution went after the wrong problem. He wanted to kill the smart chimps to prevent the future they represented. Nobody thought to address the issue that created the problem in the first place: a global pet pandemic. Chase scenes and warring simians had more plot potential, I suppose, than pharmaceutical R&D to create a vaccine that would save mankind’s beloved (and obedient) puppies and kitties. Much of science fiction serves as an allegory for the present, so the heavy-handed bomb worship in Beneath could be expected. Without putting too fine a point on it, all ends well for the planet at the end of Battle, thanks to the accuracy of Hasslein’s theory of lane changing. Species (races) begin to learn to live with diversity and equality, which was the only true hope for the future all along. —CGW

In Planet of the Apes, sympathetic simian scientists Cornelius and Zira (Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter) are astounded by the seeming intelligence of the human creature named Taylor (Charlton Heston).

Night of the Living Dead Ape The year 1968 also saw the birth of another genre of dystopian storytelling, the Night of the Living Dead franchise. The parallels between the ape apocalypse and the zombie apocalypse are remarkable, and both speak to a sudden and acute fear of the future. But they seem to take very different points of view on the cause of man’s ultimate downfall. Franklin J. Schaffner’s original Apes classic seems like a condemnation of society as a whole, for the polite way we go about institutionalizing our worst crimes. The apes walk, talk, and consider themselves very refined. But they are still apes capable of violence, brutality, tyranny, and, most importantly, racial oppression. The movie ends with the realization, on the part of the human protagonist, that man’s downfall has been caused not by apes, but by man. When we reached the apogee of human civilization, we destroyed ourselves. Therefore, it is our notion of “civilization” that is flawed. The apes are simply repeating our error. The planet of the apes is the planet of man. They are the same. George Romero’s zombie classic seems an indictment against human nature itself. Any pretense of civilization is swept away in the first few moments of the film. There is no caste system to revolt against. Before long, the human characters confined to the country house are continued on page 62

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