THE FUTURIST, September - October 2013 by World Future Society

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

K. Eric Drexler Reinvents Nanotechnology, page 14 One Man’s Mission to “De-Extinct” the Passenger Pigeon, page 40 Actions to Save the World’s Forests, page 45 PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Gaming the Neurotech Revolution The Tsunami Whisperer A Mindful Approach to Learning Predicting Pedophilia Saving Bucky’s Dome Home $5.95

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September-October 2013

The top 10 things that could be gone from our lives by 2030. (Hint: Don’t fall too much in love with your smartphone.) A special report by members and friends of the World Future Society, page 22

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

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September-October 2013 Volume 47, No. 5

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

Nano futures. Page 14

about the future

ARTICLES 22 Top 10 Disappearing Futures A special report by members and friends of the World Future Society, including:

Reforestation strategies. Page 45

Karl Albrecht Rob Bencini Jim Breaux Morton Chalfy Apala Lahiri Chavan Brenda Cooper John F. Copper E. Scott Denison Jed Diamond Daniel Egger Thomas Frey Lisa Gualtieri William E. Halal Lane Jennings

Liz Leone Josh Lindenger Lawrence Loh Frank McDonough Barry Minkin Alan Nordstrom Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira Jean Georges Perrin Neill Perry Alexandre Pupo Clayton Rawlings Michael Rees Paul Rux Paul Saffo

14 A Radical Future for Nanotechnology By K. Eric Drexler

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

Feedback

World Trends & Forecasts: Brain/Mind, Early Warnings, Education, Psychology, Legacies

58 Consultants and Services

BOOKS 56 Book Reviews

Black Code Intervention in the Brain Word of Mouse

40 The Great Comeback: Bringing A Species Back from Extinction By Ben J. Novak What if extinction could be undone? The disappearance of the oncenumerous passenger pigeon inspired one budding young geneticist to right a great ornithological wrong.

45 Disappearing Forests? Actions To Save the World’s Trees By Rick Docksai

Halting deforestation will require the cooperation and coordination of the world’s governments, businesses, and civil society. Networks of activists are

John Sagi Tom Schaffnit Harish Shah Jason Siko John M. Smart David Pearce Snyder Jason Swanson Joe Thomae Dan Tuuri Cynthia G. Wagner Benjamin C. Yablon Richard Yonck Carrie Anne Zapka

now slowing the destruction of forest areas, promoting sustainable farming and ranching practices, and restoring forest cover wherever possible. These efforts will not only benefit both human and forest well-being, but also help mitigate climate change.

52 The New Renaissance Is In Our Hands By Rolf Jensen

People’s trust in government, major businesses, organized religion, and other traditional institutions is at a historic low, but there is a silver lining: We are placing more and more trust in each other. An unprecedented age of individual initiative will soon be fully upon us.

64 Visions: Biodiversity “After Earth” By Patrick Tucker

Species loss is real threat, but what would a mass extinction event look like? How would we be affected? Biologist Joseph Levine looks at a future where less biodiversity has a very real effect on humans.

COVER ILLUSTRATION: © TODD ARENA, ARENA CREATIVE / BIGSTOCK

© 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

Survey Saturation?

VIDEO SCREEN CAPTURES VIA YOUTUBE / UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Streaming Is Music to Composers’ Ears

People are becoming less willing to participate in research surveys, suggesting that social research may become increasingly unreliable in the future. Without consistent numbers of data points over time, longitudinal studies may also be compromised, according to the Research Council of Norway. The Norsk Monitor survey, which measures changing values among Norwegians, now only gets an 8% full response rate of its telephone and written surveys. “This is far lower than in the 1980s,” says political science professor Ottar Hellevik, who heads the survey. Some researchers blame survey saturation due to marketers and others constantly seeking feedback from consumers. “Surveys are an important instrument for social science research in general. If this instrument starts to be compromised, we may need to introduce some form of regulation for who is allowed to conduct surveys,” says Hellevik.

Music composers are not fading away, as many have been predicting since the filesharing revolution and copyright battles began at the turn of the century. As music reaches more ears and earns more fans, more revenue for the composers is being generated via concerts, radio, and television. While composers have lost revenue to illegal downloading, their income from legal music streaming (e.g., from Spotify) has soared. Revenues increased by 70% from 2010 to 2011, according to Staffan Albinsson, a doctoral student in economic history at the University of Gothenburg. File sharing still poses a threat to music quality, Albinsson warns. “The most illegally downloaded music is probably also the most expensive music to produce,” he observes. “If the high costs cannot be recovered, this music won’t be there to enjoy.”

Source: Research Council of Norway, www.rcn.no.

Source: University of Gothenburg, www.gu.se.

Gloves Sense Hazardous Materials Turning blue when it senses is easy to handle and requires toxic substances nearby, a speno power supply. cially engineered glove offers Potential future applications protection for workers and techinclude the food industry, nicians in chemistry labs, the where the smart textiles could semiconductor industry, and be built into packaging and other areas where they may be warn of spoiled food. exposed to hazardous materials. The sensor glove, under deSource: Fraunhofer EMFT, velopment at Fraunhofer www.emft.fraunhofer.de/en.html. Research Institution for © FRAUNHOFER EMFT Modular Solid State Technologies, uses indicator dyes that react to the presence of toxins. Many of the substances that technical workers handle cannot be seen or smelled. While heat-imaging cameras and other highly sensitive measurHandling with care: Sensor glove ing devices can help releases blue dye, warning user of the protect the workers, the presence of hazardous materials. sensor-embedded glove

Brain waves recorded and transmitted by Wi-Fi enable engineering students to control a small helicopter.

Thought-Controlled Helicopter A small, four-blade helicopter (quadcopter) was recently sent soaring around a gym, successfully controlled by the thoughts of five different engineering students at the University of Minnesota. The students were each hooked up to an EEG cap fitted with 64 electrodes to sense their brain waves as they imagined using their right hand, left hand, or both hands to control

the quadcopter’s moves. The successful flight tests demonstrate progress toward the creation of mind-controlled devices to assist human cognitive and motor functions, according to engineering professor Bin He, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Neural Engineering. Source: Institute of Physics, www.iop.org.

WordBuzz: Happynomics Happiness is not just a psychological or social phenomenon; it is also a political and economic one. Governments are inching toward recognizing that their citizens’ happiness is a significant noneconomic indicator of national well-being. The business world is happily joining the rush to understand (and hopefully increase) consumer happiness. For instance, as the PR giant Burson-Marsteller notes, happy customers are loyal customers and share positive experiences with others (while unhappy

customers are even more vocal about negative experiences). So how happy are we? The Hedonometer’s Daily Happiness Average shows a downward trajectory based on Twitter trends, though things like birthdays and weekends continue to be quite pleasing (see www.hedonometer.org/index .html). Source: WPP Public Relations Reading Room, www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/ publicrelations/happynomics/. Tip via Gerd Leonhard, @gleonhard on Twitter.

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

The Case of the Disappearing Future They say you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, but I’m more inclined to think the opposite is true: out of sight, out of mind. I am often startled when the landline phone on my desk rings, and then the caller wants to fax something to me. Fax? Do we still have a machine for that? Where is it? Fortunately, before the very useful fax machine completely disappears, inventors have provided even more useful alternatives, such as e-mails to which we can attach photos, PDFs, and other digital communications. Some of these come to us on new kinds of telephones (called smartphones), which we may not actually use for talking to people. But guess what: As veteran forecaster Paul Saffo points out, even the smartphone may disappear—and sooner than you think. When we called for ideas about things that might be gone from our lives by 2030 (just 17 years from now), it was interesting how many people nominated the smartphone for eminent extinction. It’s #9 on our list of the “Top 10 Disappearing Futures.” Other “things” that may disappear, according to the more than 50 contributors to our crowdsourced report, include not just gadgets, but also processes: how we educate ourselves, how we work, and how we maintain our bodies. To get the big picture of what you won’t see in the future, check out the special report beginning on page 22. And keep the conversation going! Share your ideas at wfs.org. And if you’re worried about something that is already gone or is disappearing right now, take heart. There may be someone working hard to revive it. See geneticist Ben J. Novak’s report on his project to save the passenger pigeon (“The Great Comeback: Bringing a Species Back from Extinction,” page 40) and FUTURIST associate editor Rick Docksai’s report on forest restoration projects (“Disappearing Forests? Actions to Save the World’s Trees,” page 45). —Cynthia G. Wagner, Editor cwagner@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

Feedback Re: “Highly Human Jobs” by Richard W. Samson (May-June 2013) John Watts (@John_T_Watts, via Twitter): IMO Samson’s article misses the most important disruptive trends, most of which are already in nascent stages: • I do agree with shift in work/ employment structures, and the way we structure our families, live our lives, and raise our kids in using stores as shop fronts rather than sellers. Stores will become advertising for online/other sales. • The death of cable, and maybe cinemas, and therefore the way we generate and consume entertainment, and our culture generally. • Changes to the way we buy. Malls won’t disappear, but will change. Other big companies, like Sony, may follow Bose, Apple, and Samsung. • 3-D printing. Much of what is written will not come to pass. Some will, and in time it will inevitably change the economy. • Geopolitical power shifts due to emerging alternative energies. Not yet clear what this will look like but it will have a dramatic impact. • Wearable tech and gesture input for computers. Enough has already been said, but it’s the next evolution of our relationship with tech. • Internet 3.0: the virtual made real. Already occurring, the effect of the things that occur virtually affecting real-world activities. • “Personal”/commercial drones. This will become the next smart phone. Ubiquitous and will change how we undergo everyday tasks. • Autonomous cars. Already in prototype stage, but will fundamentally change so many facets of the way we live we can’t fully comprehend it. • Most important will be the convergence of different trends: city planning with autonomous cars or with Internet 3.0 and personal drones. All, of course, my personal opinion. There are so many possible trends anyone could (and maybe

should) draw up their own. [Ed. note: John Watts, a security consultant with the Noetic Corporation, was a keynote speaker at WorldFuture 2013 in July. His interview with THE FUTURIST, “New Tools for War and Peace: Technology Game Changers,” was published in the July-August 2013 issue.] Re: “As Blogged: Sci-Fi and the Trans-simian Future” by Cynthia G. Wagner and Patrick Tucker (May-June 2013) Nicholas (via wfs.org): Simian chauffeurs: What I do find interest-

ing is that by 2020 intelligent apes surely would be possible. I doubt it will happen, though, because experimenting on animals in this way to make them intelligent will probably be morally frowned upon. I’m also not sure what the purpose would be, considering robots et al. It would certainly be interesting to have an alien species to interact with, though, as I don’t think AI robots will be possible quite that early. Re: “Educating the Future: The End of Mediocrity” by Rob Bencini (March-April 2013) MSales (via wfs.org): I find that there is much to agree with and disagree with in Bencini’s article. I am committed to lifelong learning, and I am delighted to have access to the kind of high-caliber teaching available through Coursera and other MOOCs. Such courses provide useful and valid information that can be applied to a variety of ends. No degree is needed to advance insight and wisdom. Further, as one who recently paid off the college debt accumulated by a child who graduated from a selective college, it’s clear to me that traditional higher education is expensive. However, Bencini’s dismissal of the notion that “you must have a college degree to succeed” doesn’t seem to stand up to present-day facts. As mentioned on the front page of the New York Times on March

16th, repeated studies demonstrate that college graduates earn much more on average than nongraduates do. More important, he doesn’t seem to get what a great college experience is about. Higher education isn’t intended to “better serve the business community.” A good liberal arts education, in particular, is a setting in which one’s exposure to a broad range of information via a context in which one has the opportunity to learn how to concentrate prepares one to be a focused and engaged citizen of a democracy. This is especially true if one joins with other students to inquire deeply into a range of philosophical and scientific topics in a way that actually changes how a college does itself. The business community is better served by entrepreneurial self-organizers who know how to think systemically than it is by suck-ups who spent four years prepping for a job. One doesn’t need to go to college for a vocational degree. As Bencini points out, there are lots of institutions who are more than willing to exploit the unique talents of pubescent children to achieve narrow ends, and that may be just fine for some gifted kids and their families. Further, it may be the case that the majority of people who attend college are only there seeking employment. Certification works just fine for that and it’s cheaper. But, if you want to have a well-rounded and curious mind that grows through coinquiry with other students and teachers, that gets you through the separation from the contexts of parental oversight and the romanticism of localism into the beginning of adulthood and participation in the global community, graduating from a good college is still a good idea. ❑

Feedback Welcome Send feedback to letters@ wfs.org or comment online, on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Officers

Staff

President: Timothy C. Mack

Director of Communications: Patrick Tucker

Treasurer: Carol D. Rieg

Business and Advertising Manager: Jeff Cornish

Secretary: Kenneth W. Harris

Meeting Administrator: Sarah Warner

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

Edward Cornish founder and former president, World Future Society

Nancy Donovan senior analyst, U.S. Government Accountability Office

Joyce Gioia president and CEO, The Herman Group

John Gottsman president, The Clarity Group

Kenneth W. Harris chairman, The Consilience Group LLC

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

Timothy C. Mack president, World Future Society

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

Raj Bawa

Graham May

president/patent agent, Bawa Biotech LLC, and

principal lecturer in futures research,

adjunct professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K.

Clement Bezold

Michael Michaelis

chairman and senior futurist,

president, Partners In Enterprise

Institute for Alternative Futures

Julio Millán

Arnold Brown

president, Banco de Tecnologias, and

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

Adolfo Castilla

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

economist, communications professor, Madrid

visiting senior research fellow, ISEAS, Singapore

Marvin J. Cetron

John Naisbitt

president, Forecasting International Ltd.

trend analyst and author

Hugues de Jouvenel

Burt Nanus

executive director, Association

author and professor emeritus of management,

Internationale Futuribles

University of Southern California

Yehezkel Dror

Joseph N. Pelton

professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

founder and vice chairman,

Esther Franklin

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

executive vice president and director of cultural

Timothy M. Persons

identities, Starcom MediaVest Group

chief scientist, U.S. Government Accountability Office

William E. Halal

John L. Petersen

professor of management science and

president, The Arlington Institute

Mylena Pierremont

director of Emerging Technologies Project,

president, Ming Pai Consulting BV

George Washington University

Carol D. Rieg

Peter Hayward

corporate foundation officer, Bentley Systems Inc.

program director, Strategic Foresight Program,

Les Wallace

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

president, Signature Resources Inc.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Jared Weiner

president, The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

Sohail Inayatullah

Global Advisory Council Stephen Aguilar-Millan

professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Zhouying Jin president, Beijing Academy of Soft Technology

European Futures Observatory

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

Eleonora Barbieri Masini

Raja Ikram Azam

professor emerita, Faculty of Social Sciences,

honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

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 Brain/Mind • Early Warnings • Education • Psychology • Legacies

Brain/Mind | Sci/Tech

The Neurotechnology Revolution Has Arrived A futurist reviews brain-powered gadgets that may soon change our lives. ZACK LYNCH / NEUROGAMING

By Gray Scott When President Obama announced the $100 million Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative earlier this year, the message was clear: The age of neurotechnology has officially arrived. Many examples of transformative neurotechnology are making their way to market now. Brain–computer interface (BCI) devices with electrodes embedded into headgear can read the faint electrical activity along the scalp. You can control a computer, robot, or drone with the power of thought. In the near future, the BCI will allow us to extend the boundaries of our bodies and control our environments by operating computers and playing games inside of artificial reality “holodecks.” Using robotic avatars, we may be able to walk among the stars from the comfort of our homes. These advances could potentially unlock children from the grip of autism or allow advanced Alzheimer’s patients to regain the ability to communicate. Extraordinary innovations like the Mindwalker exoskeleton will allow people who have been paralyzed to interface and convert EEG signals directly from their brains into the robotic exoskeleton, and thus to walk again. And, as improbable as it sounds, several researchers around the world have already created crude forms of a “dream recorder,” which will be able to use advanced neurotechnologies to record and play back dreams. Let the NeuroGames Begin I recently attended the very first NeuroGaming Con-

Participants enjoy the brain game fun at San Francisco’s first NeuroGaming Conference.

ference and Expo held in San Francisco by Zack Lynch, author of The Neuro Revolution (Griffin, 2010) and founder of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO). The organization describes itself as “the first and only trade group that lobbies on behalf of neuro science-focused companies, brain-research institutes, and patient-advocacy groups across the spectrum of neurological disease, psychiatric illnesses and nervoussystem injuries.” Although the two-day conference and expo focused primarily on neurogaming, it also included a variety of neurotechnology companies, haptic technologies, design innovators, and investors. William Provancher of Tactical Haptics demonstrated his new handheld motion game controller with reactive grip and haptic control. Connected to a game, the device allows you to swing, push, and poke objects

TESLATOUCH

The TeslaTouch tactile interface could have gaming, educational, retail, and other applications.

around. The reactive grip handle has moving parts that shift in relation to what you do on the screen. As I pushed an object on the screen, I could feel the resistance. If I started swinging objects around, the handle would match the direction and the opposing direction, giving me a realistic feeling of centrifugal force. I was utterly shocked at just how accurate it felt, and that the device actually moves and shifts in your hand in real time. Ali Israr introduced possibly the most amazing new neurotechnology, called the TeslaTouch. This tactile touch interface is based on electrovibration phenomena and does not use any moving parts. You can experience the sensation of objects on a flat screen. TeslaTouch is composed of a transparent electrode sheet that is applied to an insulator layer. When you slide your finger on the electrode plate, you create an electrically induced attractive force, increasing the dynamic friction: the sensation of texture. Devices like the TeslaTouch could be used in gaming, educational, and retail software applications. Psychologically, the experience reinforces a sense of ownership, according to research from the Journal of Consumer Research. So this slight shift in perception could increase online sales—and transform retail as we know it. Wearable neurodevices are also coming on strong, but they need to be easy to wear and easy to put on before they reach wider adoption. I watched one company put a very complicated wet EEG sensor headset on a woman. It took five minutes of tweaking, twisting, and hair pulling to get it to operate properly and to receive a proper reading. The average consumer will never use a device that takes more than a few seconds to put on, and it must look amazing if you want early adopters to flaunt it. But an even bigger obstacle in neurotech acceptance

OCULUS

The Oculus 3-D virtual-reality headset.

might be the “barf factor.” During the NeuroGaming expo, Walter Greenleaf, director of The Mind Stanford Longevity Institute, talked about the “barfagenic zone,” the feeling of sickness that many virtual-reality users experience. I had a chance to test out this “zone” when I put on the Oculus Rift headset and walked through a virtual world filled with objects that I could move. The problem was that, when I walked forward and suddenly stopped in the virtual world, my real stationary body tended to lean backwards to counter the sudden stop. The brain is fooled into sending a message to the inner ear to calibrate and compensate. I was sitting down, so my brain and body had to figure out what to do. I repeated the movement inside the virtual-reality game several times and noticed that my body would lean back just a tiny amount, causing me to feel dizzy and sending me into the “barfagenic zone.” It is a problem that needs to be resolved. In fact, I watched several other attendees ask to stop the Oculus demo because of feeling motion sick. Neurotech corporations and organizations are not only looking to create fun and useful products, but they are also deeply interested in healing and helping humanity. The conference and expo gave me a clear understanding of the challenges and the potential that exists in the neurotechnology and neuroscience field. In some ways, we are closer than anyone can imagine to a new relationship between technology and our minds. It is inevitable: Humans and machines are merging. Neurotechnology is just one more step in humanity’s digital neuronal evolution into the neuronalverse. Gray Scott is a futurist, speaker, artist, writer, and editorial director of SeriousWonder.com. He is a contributing blogger for THE FUTURIST magazine and a professional member of the World Future Society. He lives in New York City.

www.wfs.org

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THE FUTURIST

September-October 2013

World Trends & Forecasts Early Warnings | Sci/Tech

The Tsunami Whisperer The Tohoku tsunami’s “acoustic signature” could have provided 15 to 20 minutes’ warning, researchers find. When an earthquake results in a tsunami, people in harm’s way have just minutes to flee to safe ground, away from the approaching wave. But once you know an earthquake has happened, how do you predict a tsunami will occur and how big that tsunami will be? Eric Dunham and Jeremy Kozdon of Stanford University have made a discovery in earthquake acoustics that may help to minimize future human loss. Their simulation used a model of the geography and data collected before, during, and after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. The simulation accurately predicted that the rupture would reach the seafloor. The study identified the conditions that an earthquake has to meet in order for its seismic waves to reach the seafloor and cause a t sunami. Most importantly, the model demonstrated that the earthquake’s sound waves could have served as a warning of the catastrophic tsunami. “We’ve found that there’s a strong correlation between the amplitude of the sound waves and the tsunami wave heights,” says Dunham. “Sound waves propagate through water 10 times faster than the tsunami waves, so we can have knowledge of what’s happening a hundred miles offshore within minutes of an earthquake occurring. We could know whether a tsunami is coming, how large it will be, and when it will arrive.” In the case of the March 11, 2011, Tohoku event, the earthquake’s “acoustic signature” could have warned of the tsunami 15 to 20 minutes before it reached Japan’s shores. Seismologists were perplexed by the pattern of events leading to the earthquake that triggered a devastating tsunami across Japan. The quake was uncharacteristic of earthquakes originating in the Japan Trench off the shore of Tohoku, the northeastern region of the country’s largest island. The rupture extended tens of meters further than seismologists had

Correction The name of the artistic director for the Diablo Ballet was misspelled in the July-August 2013 issue (“Dancing with the Crowds,” World Trends & Forecasts). It is Lauren Jonas. Visit diabloballet.org.

THE FUTURIST

September-October 2013

•

www.wfs.org

expected and reached the seafloor, causing rapid uplift of the floor and forcing a massive wave toward the shore. Dunham and Kozdon’s model could be adjusted to reflect different faults’ greatly varied compositions by examining tsunami-causing earthquakes specific to a given region. However, determining a fault’s acoustic signature, implementing devices to measure sound waves, and analyzing the potential threat could prove expensive. Every quake has site-specific characteristics, says Kozdon. The researchers hope they can use those to discover the “acoustic signatures that indicate whether or not an earthquake has generated a large tsunami.” —Keturah Hetrick Source: Stanford University, stanford.edu.

Education | Humanity

A Mindful Approach to Learning New research shows potential for “mindfulness training” to boost student productivity. Teachers often complain that young people have shrinking attention spans and are more r e s t l e s s . N o w, some schools are trying an ancient approach to this contemporary problem: mindfulness training. This highly effective and low-cost Meditation may help students control behavioral training their mind-wandering and improve their approach draws memory. from ancient Buddhist meditative practice and emphasizes calm awareness of the present moment. Mindfulness training has been shown to enhance memory and concentration while reducing “mind-wandering” or daydreaming. It also may help boost students’ academic performance. “By training on reducing that which may be inhibit© YURI ARCURS / DREAMSTIME

ing test-taking—such as mind-wandering—mindfulness is a means of reducing that which would be a negative effect on performance. So we have a positive effect by reducing a negative influence,” says Dawa Tarchin Phillips, a visiting research specialist in psychological and brain sciences at the University of California–Santa Barbara. Phillips, who completed Buddhist training in meditation instruction, assisted a recent UCSB study that trained university students in mindfulness and then assessed the training’s impact on the students’ performance on standardized tests. The researchers gathered 48 students and divided them into two groups: One would take a nutrition class for eight weeks, and the other would take a mindfulness class. Both classes met separately for 45 minutes, four times a week, during the eight-week experiment. The mindfulness class guided the students on daily meditation, as well as exercises in becoming more self-aware in eating, in communicating, and in interpersonal relationships. “What we’re trying to do is allow the students to identify mindfulness as a conductor of positive change in all aspects of their lives,” says Phillips. Every student took a battery of tests before the eightweek courses and afterwards: the verbal-reasoning sec-

tion of the GRE, plus some tests for memory capacity. Compared with the group who took the nutrition course, the group who took the mindfulness course scored higher on their second round of tests. Their GRE scores alone showed a 16-percentile rise, on average. The researchers attributed the mindfulness group’s higher scoring bump to their reduced mind-wandering. Mindfulness practices have been with us for thousands of years, according to Phillips, but they may be all the more relevant today given the technology-heavy environments in which young people grow up. They have multiple competing demands on their attention at all times, much of it entertainment- or multimedia- focused and coming from a plethora of communication devices. Learning to ground oneself and to concentrate on the present moment, as mindfulness training does, can be critically important skills for young people to develop so that they do not get overwhelmed. “I think that technological evolution has brought us to a direction where a higher function is demanded of us. We can’t just go back to the time before technology. The benefits for our society are too great for that to happen. But how do we address the obvious challenges? I think mindfulness can play a significant role in that,” Phillips says. Mindfulness is also a potential aid for the increasing

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World Trends & Forecasts numbers of young people who struggle with attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD). Frequent mind-wandering is a key symptom of this category of learning disorders, along with accompanying problems of impulsiveness and failure to read social cues. Phillips does not claim that mindfulness training will by itself be the solution for every young person with an attention-deficit condition, but he does suggest it as a way to help them cope with their more problematic symptoms. “Someone with ADHD might respond more slowly, since there are other dynamics at work, so they might need a more comprehensive approach,” he says. “Nevertheless, I think that the research of the relationship between mindfulness and ADHD is just beginning. There is a lot to explore. We find that mindfulness affects mind-wandering and executive capacity, and both of those are closely tied to ADHD. I think it could prove very valuable.” Many schools have started instituting mindfulness programs and found that they help students cope with many behavioral or learning challenges—not only ADD/ADHD, but also anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. The University School of Nashville (USN) is one of these schools. In 2009, USN middle-school director Jeff Greenfield visited two schools in California where all the students were regularly training in mindfulness practices. Intrigued, he and other USN teachers started their own mindfulness program at the outset of the fall 2010 school year. They dedicated the first five minutes of every school day to learning and practicing techniques of focused attention. Many of the school’s teachers keep up the practice, while others have incorporated supplemental methods that help students relax and focus during stressful situations, such as sports games and tests. “What kids really need is not for us to tell them to focus or relax, but to give them the specific tools to be able to do those things on their own. We can enable our children to better regulate their attention and emotions. We can help our students learn to focus their attention on the task at hand, to be more sensitive to others’ needs, and to manage natural feelings of anxiousness or worry,” according to Greenfield. More than 250 hospitals and universities across the globe now offer mindfulness-based treatments for emotional and behavioral problems. Agencies such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health continue to fund studies documenting mindfulness’s potential health benefits, according to Mindful Schools, a foundation that runs mindfulness training programs in elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States.

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Studies have confirmed palpable changes that mindfulness training makes in the brain. A 2010 analysis by Britta Hölzel, Massachusetts General Hospital psychologist, and six colleagues had 16 adult volunteers undergo an eight-week mindfulness training course; the subjects’ brains were scanned before the course and afterwards. Compared with a control group, the 16 test subjects exhibited increased density in parts of their brains’ hippocampus and cerebellum regions, associated with emotion management, learning, perspective, and memory. “The adult nervous system has the capacity for plasticity, and the structure of the brain can change in response to training. It is generally assumed that the increased gray matter results from repeated activation of a brain region, and previous studies have shown activation during meditation in brain regions identified here,” according to Hölzel and her colleagues. —Rick Docksai Sources: Dawa Tarchin Phillips, University of California–Santa Barbara, www.psych.ucsb.edu. Jeff Greenfield, University School of Nashville, Middle School, www.usn.org. Britta Hölzel, Meditation Research Lab, Massachusetts General Hospital, www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~lazar/team.html. Her paper “Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density” with co-authors James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, and Sara W. Lazara may be read online at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/.

Psychology | Humanity

Predicting Pedophilia Researchers hope to prevent individuals who are oriented toward children from acting on their impulses. When schools, day-care centers, and other institutions that cater to children are hiring, they commonly consult sex-offender registries and police files to make sure that the job candidates have not been arrested for pedophilia-related crimes. But it may be possible to screen out a potential pedophile before a sex crime ever takes place. A group of researchers in the Netherlands devised a pair of tests that they say distinguished with 90% accuracy men who were pedophiles from men who were not. Led by Matthijs van Leeuwen, assistant professor of psychology and communication sciences at Radboud

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World Trends & Forecasts University Nijmegen, the study consisted of 40 participants: 10 men who admitted to having attractions toward children; another 10 who admitted to not only having attractions toward children, but also acting them out on children; and a control group of 20 men who had only typical heterosexual attractions toward adult women. The men in both of the first two groups only identified themselves to the researchers under conditions of strict anonymity. In a rare exception for studies of pedophiles, none of the identified pedophiles had yet been convicted of any crimes. In the first task, the subjects listened to sequences of words, some of which were neutral, such as “earth,” “theory,” and “store,” and some of which were sex- relevant, such as “nude,” “love,” and “caressing.” As they listened, they would see pairs of categories appear on the right and left sides of a computer screen: “Sex- relevant” and “neutral” were the first pair; “child” and “adult” were the second. Each subject would click one button to designate each word as belonging to one category or another. This would go on for a few rounds, with the two pairs of categories first appearing one at a time, then simultaneously, and then switching back and forth from their respective sides of the screen. Each round, the researchers measured each subject’s reaction times for each image and button click. A subject who was not a pedophile, they theorized, would take less time to associate and click a sex-relevant word to an adult image. “It’s about to what extent you can categorize two concepts together,” van Leeuwen says. “You’re faster to categorize two concepts together if they are more strongly associated in your mind.” In the second task, the subjects were shown pictures of swimwear-clad adult women, men, boys, and girls, with various neutral or sex-relevant words on top of every picture. Again, the subjects were to click buttons for each word association as quickly as possible. As expected, the pedophile subjects made strong associations between sex-relevant words and children. By contrast, the non-pedophile subjects associated sex- relevant words with adult women. The study was an example of “implicit association” testing, which shows test subjects words and pictures and presents them with options of words and concepts to associate with them. Social scientists have used implicit-association tests since the late 1990s to test for socially undesirable attitudes such as racial prejudice and sexism, according to van Leeuwen. The tests have worked very well in these situations, he adds, which is why he and his colleagues decided to apply it to screening for pedophilia. The findings could guide the development of diagnostic screenings of men

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who are applying for jobs that involve working with children, the researchers suggest. “The basis is having the association. If you don’t have this, you won’t have the impulse to act on it,” he says. The tests are also extremely difficult to cheat on, he adds. Even a pedophile who knows how the test works and consciously tries to categorize the words as he thinks a non-pedophile would answer them could still be exposed as attempting to fake the task, since he will still inevitably take slightly longer to complete the exercises than the non-pedophile. “In principle, it’s very hard to fake because if you start thinking about it you’re going to get slower at responding,” van Leeuwen says. This test could not find any differences between the two pedophile groups, however. In other words, it doesn’t appear able to predict whether an individual who had pedophilic impulses will be more likely to act on them. “This comparison showed no clear link between having these associations and actual offending,” according to van Leeuwen. It is possible for some adult pedophiles to control their impulses and never molest children, according to researchers. But identifying a given pedophile’s likelihood of acting on the impulses is a challenge, and research has yet to devise a reliable method for it. This could, arguably, amount to labeling individuals as criminals when they have not committed any crimes, van Leeuwen acknowledges, and he notes that this fact could make the use of these tests for hiring purposes somewhat controversial. “If you screen out people, of course you screen out risks. But you’re screening them out for a behavior before they do it. You really are not sure if the people that you screen out were actually going to do it,” he says. At the same time, he notes, employers today use many forms of testing, such as polygraph tests and the Myers-Briggs personality type test, which have all encountered some criticism over their methodologies and yet still prove generally reliable. All studies of implicitassociation testing indicate that it is as accurate as any of them, if not more so, and that it at least merits further study. “I have no serious doubt that if it were used it would be a very efficient tool to help screen out pedophiles. This tool is quite valid,” Leeuwen says. “It’s certainly ready to be implemented very soon.” —Rick Docksai Source: Matthijs van Leeuwen, Radboud University Nijmegen, www.ru.nl. For additional information, see Project Implicit, https://www.project implicit.net/about.html (includes background on implicit association tests and allows you to take sample implicit association tests on a variety of subject areas).

Legacies | Futuring

IMAGES COURTESY OF FULLER DOME HOME ORGANIZATION AND TOPTENREALESTATEDEALS.COM

Saving Bucky’s Dome Home Efforts are under way to preserve the experimental architecture of R. Buckminster Fuller. As a futurist, philosopher, and inventor, Bucky Fuller (1895-1983) inspired legions of admirers to consider the impacts of their lifestyle and technology choices on the home we share, our “Spaceship Earth.” Now, one of the iconic artifacts of his sustainable-living experiments—a dome home based on Dymaxion principles—is itself becoming endangered. The Fuller Dome Home Organization recently held its first annual Dome Days festival in Carbondale, Illinois, to raise funds to restore the structure that Bucky built for himself and his wife, Anne, in 1960. At the time, the home took just seven hours to build, and the couple lived there through 1971. The dome design became famous worldwide when it graced the Montreal World Expo in 1967 (as well as Disney’s Epcot Center in Orlando). The organization aims not just to restore the structure’s interior and exterior, but also to fund and maintain the Dome Home’s museum.

The Fuller Dome Home, under construction in 1960.

Sources: Fuller Dome Home Organization, www.fullerdomehome.org, ❑ via TopTenRealEstateDeals.com.

Under the dome: Bucky Fuller in the study loft of his Carbondale, Illinois, home.

View of the Dome Home living room in 2012 shows need for restoration.

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Nanotechnology By K. Eric Drexler

The father of the concept of “nanotechnology” shows how the goals of atomically precise manufacturing got sidetracked and where its future really is. With technologies enabling us to make things with lower costs and less resource consumption, we could all live in a radically abundant world. In 1986, with the publication of my book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (Anchor), I introduced the world to a concept I had first described a few years before. This concept of nanotechnology has two key features: (1) manufacturing using machinery based on nanoscale devices and (2) products built with atomic precision. These features are closely linked, because atomically precise manufacturing relies on nanoscale devices and will also provide a way to build them.

Nanoscale parts and atomic precision together enable atomically precise manufacturing (APM), and this technology will open the door to extraordinary improvements in the cost, range, and performance of products. The range extends beyond the whole of modern physical technology, spanning ultra-light structures for aircraft, billion-core laptops, etc. At the time, I had no idea that nanotechnology would become an object of such fascination and specu-

ALEXANDR MITIUC / ISTOCKPHOTO

A Radical Future for

lation. At the outset, “nanotechnology” was simply a name I had chosen to label the concept of an APM-based technology, a name that occurred to me between the first and second drafts of Engines of Creation. Without the promise of APM-level technologies, nanotechnology in the broader sense would have progressed less quickly and very likely under a range of more traditional names. There would have been no abrupt takeoff of press coverage, no public fascination with a nanoscale robot mythology, and no reason for nanotechnology to infiltrate popular culture through books, movies, and computer games. Nanoscale particles and the like would never have been mistaken for a technology that could upend the world. Soon after the publication of Engines of Creation, feature articles and coverage in the popular press reached millions of readers within a few months. Science-fiction novels took up the theme in the years that followed, further exciting the public’s imagination. During this time, “nanotechnology” in the public mind grew into a vision of a futuristic technology based on tiny machines, loosely derived from my initial conception of high-throughput, atomically precise manufacturing. More than a decade ago, in support of a vision of atomically precise fabrication, President Clinton announced a plan for the world’s first national nanotechnology program. But soon after the program was funded, its leaders in Washington redefined “nanotechnology” solely in terms of scale, eliminating all mention of atomic precision. To qualify as a nanotechnology, it was merely necessary that structures have features with “dimensions of roughly one to one hundred nanometers.” AP nanotechnologies often satisfy this size criterion, but so do transistors on silicon chips and particles of ultrafine powder. This revised concept of nanotechnology had little in

common with atomically precise manufacturing using machinery based on nanoscale devices. The 1990s saw increasingly widespread confusion between near-term and long-term technologies, and this confusion suggested a close relationship, a narrow gap, or a short path from present technologies to prospects that had rightly been regarded as decades in the future. Nanotechnology, it seemed, had already arrived. The confusion, however, served to channel money to researchers who then had little incentive to explain the difference between nanoparticles and nanomachines. The incongruity led to tensions. Imagine the position of researchers specializing in making, studying, and applying the properties of very small particles. In the years before 1986, their studies had little cachet, yet in the early 1990s the world increasingly found their research exciting—provided they called it nanotechnology. Indeed, researchers from not just one but a host of fields were rewarded with interest when they referred to their work as nanotechnology—and why not use this label? The word in itself fit well enough, because their work was “nano” and also technology. As researchers followed one another in adopting this label, it began to serve a real purpose, bringing researchers together across academic boundaries to create new communities. Their differences sometimes strained any plausible sense of relationship, yet the banner of nanotechnology still brought them together, bringing the pleasure and rewards of long-overdue recognition. Something called “nanotechnology” seemed to explode. In those early days, the appearance of growth stemmed primarily from relabeling research, which became a well-known tactic for winning funding. People joked about this at conferences and asked a question that has never gone away— www.wfs.org

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“What is nanotechnology, anyway?” I know of no other field pasted together from pieces that had so little in common, and certainly none defined by a criterion as generic as size. These questions often came with a third question: “When will nanotechnology give us swarms of tiny robots that can build almost anything, atom by atom?” This was when the very idea of building with atomic precision began to raise ire. The concept had become closely linked with promises and dangers that seemed (and often actually were) absurd, and atomically precise fabrication machines— which were all seen as the same— had morphed into imaginary swarms of tiny, threatening, atomjuggling robots. The easy, uninformed response to this strange bundle of ideas was to deny that they made any sense. The promise of an AP technology revolution was still advertised, while the technologies themselves were first misunderstood, then rejected. Applications for a Revolutionary Nanotechnology What are the natural, practical applications of the physical capabilities of APM-level technologies, the applications that will matter to people and the Earth? What can be seen is enough to call for a radical reassessment of prospects for the twentyfirst century. In practice, a radical reassessment must begin incrementally, first encouraging inquiry into key questions (regarding potential technologies, timelines, implications, and policy options), and then hedging bets (intellectual, technological, financial, political, and so on) in response to what the answers suggest. The key physical capabilities include low-cost production of higherperformance materials, leading to higher-performance components and products of essentially every kind: stronger, lighter structures,

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more-efficient engines, greater safety, lower emissions, and vastly greater computational power. The advantages of atomic precision spill over into medicine, too, where molecular interactions are crucial. Cost is a crucial concern for technologies. Unless costs are affordable, even the highest-performance technologies will languish as laboratory curiosities. In the case of APM-level production technologies, however, high performance is virtually synonymous with low-cost production. Technologies that offer higher than high-end performance coupled to lower than low-end costs have been a rare and disruptive market phenomenon, yet this is what APM promises to deliver, and not just in one area of application. APM-level technologies will expand the range of accessible products that can be driven, worn, or used in sports or in daily life at home—conveniences, entertainment systems, and a broad range of consumer products. The impacts of new production technologies in the consumer sphere are easy to see; these start with deep cost reductions, but also embrace a range of both higherperformance and entirely novel consumer technologies. Transforming the Means Of Production From where we stand today, the coming transformation can best be understood through contrasts with current industrial technologies. As we’ve seen, the primary contrasts emerge from just two basic characteristics of APM-level technologies: the nanoscale size of components and the atomic precision of processes and products. As we’ve seen, there are several key implications of these from an applications perspective. First, nanoscale size enables extreme productivity as a consequence of mechanical scaling laws. In addition, small-scale, versatile, highly productive machinery can collapse globe-spanning industrial supply chains to just a few links, from raw materials to refined feedstock materials, from feedstocks to standardized microblocks, and then from microblocks to products that play roles 16

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as different as solar cells, spacecraft, car engines, concrete, computers, and medical instruments. Short supply chains and flexible production can enable radical decentralization. Second, atomic precision starts with small-molecule feedstocks, atomically precise by nature and often available at a low cost per kilogram. A sequence of atomically precise processing steps then enables precise control of the structure of materials and components, yielding products with performance improved by factors that can range from 10 to more than 1 million. And because precise processing embraces both products and byproducts, APM-based systems need not produce hazardous wastes. Both industry and APM produce physical products, yet their contrasts point to radical differences. The In-

ing them further (and perhaps faster) than expected. Since 1970, transistors have shrunk from dimensions of 10,000 to just 10 atomic diameters, yet from the beginning they’ve been built by methods that inherently lack atomic precision. APM-level technology can go much further, but the size of the step will depend on the performance of other technologies at the time, and those technologies will be a moving target. Indeed, specialized AP fabrication processes will likely enable hybrid-technology chips, smoothing the transition. Estimating potential advances measured against today’s technologies is more straightforward. One can expect reductions in energy consumption (comparing low-power processors with comparable capacity) from milliwatts to nanowatts,

“Producing patterns of atoms using APM-based technologies resembles producing patterns of bits using information technologies.” formation Revolution provides an alternative model. Producing patterns of atoms using APM-based technologies resembles producing patterns of bits using information technologies. Rapid production based on multipurpose, scalable platforms; independence from long, specialized supply chains; the potential for radical decentralization; the pivotal role of software and online data; new products without costly new physical capital; low marginal costs of production and distribution; the potential for rapid, global deployment of new products—all these characteristics are shared by both APM and information technologies, yet all contrast sharply with the characteristics of modern industry. Transforming Information Technologies APM-based production will boost the Information Revolution itself. At the physical level of information technologies, where rapid change is already routine, APM-based production can boost ongoing trends, carry-

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and reductions in processor scale from millimeters to micrometers—in volume, a factor of roughly 1 billion. Increases in single-core processor speeds will depend on the speed of digital devices, and fundamental physical constraints suggest that the remaining potential increase in speed will be less than the factor we’ve already seen in the evolution of transistor-based machines. Telecommunications costs have fallen even faster than the cost of computation. Current technologies enable transmission of many terabits per second through an optical fiber just tens of microns in diameter. While fiber data capacities continue to climb, free-space transmission is burgeoning; Wi-Fi delivers tens of megabits per second, and industry plans to multiply this by a factor of 100; the physical limits have yet to be reached. Here, too, APM-level technologies can both increase capacity and lower costs. On a per-unit-mass basis, the critical electronic guts of current telecommunication systems cost more than $1,000 per kilogram, leaving

room for thousandfold cost reductions. Potential performance improvements are harder to estimate, but will likely be large. Digital information systems interact with the world through sensors, displays, and control signals. Regarding sensors, laboratory devices and high-end commercial systems set a lower boundary on what to expect; in cameras, for example, device sensitivity can already approach quantum-limited, photon-counting performance, while a range of chemical sensors can detect single molecules (expect fast, nearly zero-cost DNA readers). Regarding image displays, arrays of devices for emitting light and changing reflectance already reach the resolution limits of human perception; the scope for improvement includes wearable devices and threedimensional, window-like image quality. And regarding control of mechanical devices, the most striking advances won’t be in the controllers, but rather in the range of devices themselves. Putting the pieces together, potential applications of APM-enabled information technologies include the realization of extreme forms of what has already been imagined, including ubiquitous computing, networking, information services, and surveillance. How much of that potential will be realized remains to be seen—or, stating it less passively, remains to be considered, discussed, proposed, negotiated, legislated, and implemented. Rebuilding Systems the Atomically Precise Way A natural, cross-cutting impact of APM-based production will be reductions in the purchase and operating costs of industrial-level capital goods, including the machinery used to move things, build things, and provide utilities such as water and electricity. • Construction Materials. In construction, APM-level technologies will improve the performance of materials, structures, and functional components while reducing the costs of their production and use. Because

most structural materials used in construction already have low costs per kilogram (concrete, for example), the impact of cost reductions may be modest and will be relatively sensitive to eventual APM costs. Functional materials, by contrast, have great scope for improvements. For example, vacuum aerogels, though costly and fragile today, can equal common glass fiber insulation at only one-tenth the thickness. (Aerogels are substance like silica but lighter and more porous molecularly.) With advanced fabrication, insulating materials as good or better can be both robust and inexpensive. Costs of assembly represent much of the cost of construction. Here one

ades ago, the cost of spaceflight blocked the dream of space settlement, but that barrier will drop. • Energy. APM-level technologies will increase energy efficiency across a wide range of applications and sometimes by large factors. Improvements in power-conversion efficiency, vehicle mass, thermal insulation, and lighting efficiency are examples. In ground and air transportation, the accessible improvements include tenfold reductions in vehicle mass and a doubling of typical engine efficiencies. Taken together, improvements like these enable deep demand reduction, while lower costs of production can enable faster replacement and upgrade of

A nanodesigned biomimetic membrane developed at Sandia Labs could greatly increase the availability of fresh water in the developing world.

SANDIA NATIONAL LABS

can see potential for substantial improvements through the production of low-cost, prefabricated, yet precisely customized segments of larger structures—lightweight, easy to move, and designed for easy assembly. • Transportation. Lower-cost production, stronger, lighter materials, engines with higher power density and efficiency, zero-emission energy sources—all these can lower the cost of transportation, including its environmental impacts. The greatest advantages will appear where costs are high and performance is critical, in aerospace systems in general, and space systems in particular. The cost of access to space today has surprisingly little to do with energy requirements and has everything to do with the cost, mass, and reliability of vehicles. Decwww.wfs.org

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systems already in place. Other attractions (cleaner, safer, higher performance, and so on) would likewise spur replacement of existing capital stock. On the supply side, improvements in costs and technologies can enable extensive and potentially rapid replacement and upgrade of energy infrastructure. The energy industry is highly heterogeneous, but every sector is capital intensive; reductions in the costs of physical capital will lower the cost of new installations of all kinds, facilitating replacement of capital stock at rates that could surpass any in historical experience. In particular, improvements in costs and technologies will boost solar electric power while making coalfired power plants (2,300 today) vulnerable to fast replacement. Indeed,

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when combined with efficient, inexpensive APM-enabled technologies for interconverting electrical and chemical energy, solar energy can provide both base-load electric power and liquid fuels on a global scale. Earth-abundant elements can be used to make efficient, nanostructured, thin-film photovoltaic cells, and the resulting electrical energy can be efficiently stored in conventional liquid fuels and recovered as electric power for use in vehicles or fixed energy infrastructure. To meet current global energy demand (about 15 terawatts, including wood and dung burned for heat) would require about 0.2% of the Earth’s land area, or about 1% of the area now used for grazing and crops. With sheets of tough, abrasion-resistant composite materials used in place of fragile photovoltaic panels, rooftops and roads could provide much of the area required. • Raw Materials. Raw materials and their uses are diverse today and will be diverse tomorrow. This complicates the question of how APMlevel technologies are likely to affect raw materials demand. APM can reduce the demand for scarce resources in two ways: (1) by enabling less-massive products to perform common functions (architectural and mechanical structures, electrical wiring, electronic systems, and so on), and (2) by enabling abundant elements (primarily hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, aluminum, and silicon) to substitute for scarcer materials (copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc, tin, and others) in most applications, and with better performance. These changes can greatly relieve the pressures of resource scarcity, now a growing cause for international tension. For materials that are still in demand, improvements in the cost and performance of industrial equipment can reduce the costs of mining, refining, pollution control, and remediation. (Note that earlier estimates of APM production costs took a narrow view of the economic context, and hence did not take account of prospective reductions in the costs of required raw materials and energy.) • Water. The growing scarcity of 18

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water for human and agricultural use ranks high on the list of global problems, all made worse by population growth, environmental degradation, and climate change. Abundant energy and improved, lower-cost capital goods can address this problem directly by lowering the cost of desalination and water transportation, drawing freshwater from the sea. Atomically precise fabrication can produce membranes with tailored water-transporting molecular pores, enabling higher performance systems for reverse-osmosis desalination, and (of critical practical importance) can lower the cost of producing, cleaning, and recycling membranes and other filters and surfaces subject to fouling. • Agriculture. Agriculture consumes more than 80% of the world’s freshwater supplies, and also pollutes them, tying resource and environmental concerns to the potential for improving agricultural methods. Across most of the twentieth century, grain production grew faster than population. That trend has flattened since 1990 and has begun to decline, while food prices have recently trended sharply upward. Concerns about the impact of climate change and water shortages have reinforced fears of a food shortage. Once again, APM-based production capacity improves the prospects for meeting demand while respecting environmental constraints. The world has increased food production by three main methods: by expanding the area under cultivation, by applying chemical fertilizers, and by planting crops with higher yield. Each of these methods faces diminishing returns as new fertile lands become scarce, the incremental benefits of fertilizers decline, and the potential for plants to be more productive approaches limits determined by temperature, soil, and available water—a limit that can destroy crops entirely in drought years. Enclosed agriculture (greenhouses, for example) can greatly increase and stabilize yields, largely freeing agriculture from constraints of temperature, soil, and water. Compared

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to unprotected environments, where the vagaries of location and climate determine growing conditions, using controlled environments can commonly raise the productivity of land by a factor of 10 or more. Optimizing growth conditions requires enclosures that control tem-

By José Cordeiro Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization by K. Eric Drexler. Public Affairs. 2013. 368 pages.

Eric Drexler is popularly known as “the founding father of nanotechnology.” He introduced the concept in his seminal 1981 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, establishing the fundamental principles of molecular engineering and outlining development paths to advanced nanotechnologies. Then he popularized the idea of nanotechnology in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, where he introduced a broad audience to a fundamental technology objective: using machines that work at the molecular scale to structure matter from the bottom up. He continued with his PhD thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the guidance of AI-pioneer Marvin Minsky, and published it in a modified form as a book in 1992, Nanosystems:

perature (usually warm, never too hot), humidity (usually high, but not saturated), and sunlight (typically bright, but diffused, not direct), and that provide soil with ample nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. A well-controlled enclosure can also exclude pests without using pesti-

cides, and can recycle nitrogen and phosphorous, retaining them to fertilize crops without contaminating streams. To accomplish this on a large scale requires an abundance of physical capital: the structural components for building the enclosures, the

equipment they must contain— pumps, pipes, and filters for water reprocessing, as well as heat pumps and thermal storage to regulate temperatures—and, finally, sources of power to make them all work. The rewards of expanding the use of enclosed agriculture would in-

Book Review: The Atomically Precise Revolution Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation. In Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, Drexler tells the story of nanotechnology from its small beginnings to its quick move toward a big future. He explains what ”nanotechnology” is and what it is not, and what we can do with it for the benefit of humanity. In Engines of Creation, Drexler defined nanotechnology as a potential technology with these features: “manufacturing using machinery based on nanoscale devices, and products built with atomic precision.” In Radical Abundance, he expands on his prior thinking, corrects much of the misconceptions about nanotechnology, and dismisses fears of dystopian futures replete with malevolent nanobots and gray goo. He clearly identifies nanotechnology with atomically precise manufacturing (APM) in order to avoid other incomplete or simplistic ideas. Drexler encourages us to think big—radically big. In 1986, he already talked about nanotechnology as the engine of abundance, but now he talks about radical abundance: Imagine what the world might be like if we were really good at making things—better things—cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale.… The global prospect would be, not scarcity, but unprecedented abundance—radical, transformative, and sustainable abundance. We would be able to produce radically more of what people want and at a radically lower cost—in every sense of the word, both economic and environmental.

“one-gram platform built with advanced technologies could provide teraflops of computational power (and much more, in bursts), together with a million-terabyte data storage capacity and better-than-human sensors, all with a power demand comparable to that of cell phone on standby.” In fact, he argues that new devices produced with APM will use radically fewer resources and less energy, and will be radically more efficient and stronger. Instead of using milliwatts, future devices will use nanowatts of power. We will produce much more for much less, while preserving the environment and improving it. Drexler makes many comparisons between the Information Revolution and what he now calls the APM Revolution. What the former did with bits, the latter will do with atoms: “Image files today will be joined by product files tomorrow,” Drexler writes. “Today one can produce an image of the Mona Lisa without being able to draw a good circle; tomorrow one will be able to produce a display screen without knowing how to manufacture a wire.” We are moving to a world of radical abundance, where nanotechnology will help to produce radically more, while consuming radically less, says Drexler. If he’s right, APM will change humanity and help solve the global grand challenges, from water to energy, from food to global health. ❑

What if industrial production as we know it can be changed beyond recognition? The consequences would change almost everything else, and this new industrial revolution is visible on the horizon. Imagine a world where the gadgets and goods that run our society are produced not in a far-flung supply chain of industrial facilities, but in compact, even desktop-scale machines. Imagine replacing an enormous automobile factory and all of its multi-million dollar equipment with a garage-sized facility that can assemble cars from inexpensive, microscopic parts, with production times measured in minutes. Then imagine that the technologies that can make these visions real are emerging—under many names, behind the scenes, with a long road still ahead, yet moving surprisingly fast.

APM rests on well-understood scientific and engineering principles that will support large-scale, low-cost production of advanced products, enable solutions to seemingly intractable global problems, and facilitate rapid draw-down of atmospheric CO 2 levels. Drexler describes how APM will radically reduce materials and energy costs since most future devices will be manufactured using very abundant and common elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and silicon, and at a very low cost of less than one dollar per kilogram. Photovoltaic systems using nanotechnology will power human civilization using only 0.2% of the Earth’s land surface, without using any more fossil fuels, and thus helping to improve the environment. Drexler tells us to consider that a

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About the Reviewer José Cordeiro is the director of the Venezuela Node of the The Millennium Project and Energy Advisor/Faculty at the Singularity University. His Web site is Cordeiro.org.

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clude not only higher yield per hectare, but also better food quality, freedom from pesticides, extended growing seasons (in many regions, year-round production), freedom from constraints of soil quality and available water, and protection from drought. From a biospheric perspective, benefits would include reduced water demand and contamination, and a way of supplying human needs for food while reducing the overall footprint of agriculture and relieving pressures that drive the deforestation of Amazonia. Cleanly increasing agricultural yields by a factor of 10 would change human life and the face of the Earth. Transforming Environmental Concerns Transforming the material basis of civilization can transform the impact of human beings on the Earth, perhaps for the better. Although lowering costs could enable greater destruction, I am persuaded that cleaner, low-impact technologies can lead to better net outcomes, provided that people who care about the fate of the Earth keep pushing to make it better. The prospect of greatly expanding production while simultaneously reducing environmental impact offers an opportunity to resolve some of today’s most intractable conflicts and to set a new pattern for how human civilization coexists with the rest of our world. Radical abundance can serve many purposes, including some that had seemed incompatible. Rather than thinking of radical abundance as “more,” or as a shift in a familiar trade-off, it’s better to think in terms of shifting entire trade-off curves upward, enabling outcomes that are better from a range of perspectives, including perspectives that seemingly clash. This can (and should, and might) change politics. • Environmental Restoration. Physical challenges can make environmental restoration costly or ineffective. To do a good job of repairing a strip-mining scar, for example, it may be necessary to move many millions of tons of rock and soil. Efforts to remove toxic chemicals and heavy 20

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“Unexpected prospects for averting the collision between civilization and the limits of the Earth offer reasons for hope where hope has been scarce.” metals from soils today are both expensive and incomplete. All points on the trade-off curves are unsatisfactory. Once again, APM-based production can improve the cost and performance of the necessary equipment. Beyond this, APM-level technologies can provide new capabilities for capturing and sequestering toxic materials from groundwater and soil, and for more subtle challenges of remediation. • Reversing the Primary Driver of Climate Change. With APM-based production and products, energy sources and most energy uses can be engineered for a zero net carbon footprint; liquid hydrocarbon fuels, for example, can be produced using hydrogen from water and carbon from recycled CO2. Reversing the effects of past emissions, however, would require atmospheric CO2 capture on an enormous scale—some 3 trillion tons—a remediation task that appears to be beyond the capacity of the industrial civilization that created the problem. The energy requirements are daunting. Even if CO 2 is captured with high efficiency, the necessary energy is roughly equivalent to 10 years of today’s total global electric power production. This reflects the irreducible thermodynamic work required to compress the entire industrial-era CO2 surplus from a dilute gas to liquid densities (roughly 1,021 joules). From an APM perspective, however, this challenge seems manageable. APM-level technologies can provide thermodynamically efficient means of capturing and compressing CO2 from the air, while the required energy could be provided in 10 years by scattered photovoltaic arrays with a total area 0.5% as large as the Sahara Desert (the equivalent of a single 200×200 km array). By these means, APM-based production could provide sufficient carbon capture capacity to return the

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Earth’s atmosphere to its preindustrial composition in a decade, and at an affordable cost. This places a solution to the CO 2 problem within reach—but only eventually, after an unknown and risky delay. Taken together, unexpected prospects for averting the collision between civilization and the limits of the Earth offer reasons for hope where hope has been scarce. As progress accelerates toward the APM revolution, we as a society would be well advised to devote urgent and sober attention to the changes that lie ahead, taking account of both what can be known and the limits of knowledge, as well. At the moment, however, even the basic facts about this kind of technology have been obscured by confusion and science-fiction fantasies. The aim of my most recent book, Radical Abundance, is not to convince, but to raise urgent questions; not to persuade readers to upend their views of the world, but to show how the future may diverge far from the usual expectations—to open a staggering range of questions, to offer at least a few clear answers, and to help launch a long- delayed conversation about the shape of our future. ❑

About the Author K. Eric Drexler, often described as “the founding father of nanotechnology,” is the author of Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (Anchor, 1986), Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (Wiley/Interscience, 1992), and Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization (Public Affairs, 2013). Adapted from Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization by K. Eric Drexler. Available from PublicAffairs, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2013.

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

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

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

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

• A subscription to World Future Review, the Society’s professional journal. An international editorial board referees all articles for this unique publication, which covers a wide range of futures-relevant subjects. • Invitations to the annual Professional Members Forums. (Join now to qualify for the 2013 Forum in Chicago.) • All benefits of regular membership in the World Future Society, including a subscription to THE FUTURIST, the Society’s bimonthly magazine on the future; discounts on books and other products; the Society’s yearly “Outlook” report of selected forecasts from THE FUTURIST; and a subscription to Futurist Update, a monthly e-mail newsletter. Professional Membership is $295 per year. A special rate of $195 per year is available for individuals belonging to educational or nonprofit organizations. Join online at www.wfs.org/professional or call 1-800-989-8274 weekdays (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time).

Top 10 Disappearing Futures A special report by members and friends of the World Future Society

Contents 1. Intolerance and Misunderstanding �� 23 John M. Smart, Daniel Egger, John F. Copper, Alan Nordstrom, Jed Diamond

2. Educational Processes.................... 24 Jason Siko, Jason Swanson, Dan Tuuri

Introduction One of my family’s legends (unverified) was that my great-grandfather invented the coin-operated newspaper-vending machine. He never patented it, however, so watching the gradual disappearance of this sturdy, useful invention—first from my apartment building’s lobby, and then from the sidewalks outside my office—leaves me with no sense of grand, despairing loss. Today, I can read whatever I want digitally, without ever having to bash a frequently failing machine that eats my quarters. For me, the saddest loss from my youth is the soda fountain, that countertop fixture in just about every drugstore in the United States a half a century ago. Folks could have a quick meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and cherry Cokes, and then buy sundries on the way out. As the car-crazy nation spread our lifestyles out into suburbs, it became easier and faster to order food at drive-through windows. Cars with cup holders reigned supreme, and the soda fountain disappeared. So, what else might disappear in the next 15–20 years? And will we miss these things much? The loss of newspaper vending machines hasn’t affected our access to news, for instance. Soda fountains were replaced by alternative methods of meal dissemination. But in some cases, things have disappeared irrevocably and irreplaceably, some for better (smallpox) and some for worse (passenger pigeons). One thing we might not see disappear: predictions. Though many futurists believe we would be better off learning to make “robust” decisions that enable us to adapt and succeed in a variety of potential future scenarios—without benefit of definitive forecasts—humans have always felt a compulsion to know the future with as much certainty as possible. And that is why we have gone to members and friends of the World Future Society, once again, to seek out their informed and eye-opening insights about the future—in this case, the future we may not see. —Cynthia G. Wagner, editor

3. Europe (Maybe, Maybe Not)............. 26 Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira, Neill Perry

4. Jobs and Workplace Processes......... 27 Thomas Frey, Paul Rux, Carrie Anne Zapka, Lawrence Loh

5. Stores....................................... 28 Barry Minkin, John P. Sagi

6. Doctors...................................... 29 Joe Thomae, Benjamin C. Yablon, Morton Chalfy

7. Paper—and the Places It Goes.......... 30 David Pearce Snyder, Lane Jennings, Karl Albrecht

8. Human Experiences....................... 32 Brenda Cooper, Lisa Gualtieri, Apala Lahiri Chavan, Richard Yonck, Elizabeth D. Leone and Jean Georges Perrin, Josh Lindenger, Michael Rees

9. Smartphones............................... 34 Paul Saffo, Harish Shah, E. Scott Denison, Alexandre Pupo and William E. Halal, Rob Bencini, Jim Breaux

10. Insecurity.................................. 36 Tom Schaffnit, Clayton Rawlings, Thomas Frey, Frank McDonough

More Missing Futures........................ 37 Dave Allman, Douglas Cornish, Peter Eder, LuAnne Feik, Virginia Holbert, Lester Kuhl, Jonathan C. Lippe, Werner Mittelstaedt, Gregory Pashke, Garry Schulz, Alexandru Tugui, and Ruth Wise

About the Authors............................. 38 22 THE FUTURIST September-October 2013 • www.wfs.org © 2013 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

1. Intolerance and Misunderstanding Disappearance of Endangered Languages, Economic Immigration Barriers, and Mass Religious Intolerance By John M. Smart The advent of wearable smartphones could accelerate the disappearance of endangered languages, but also lowering of economic barriers and of fundamentalist intolerance. By 2020, the ubiquity of wearable smartphones and the power of the conversational interface will give youth everywhere “teacherless education”; that is, conversation, both with remote peers and with the Web itself. For kids in developing nations, the killer app of teacherless education will be learning a more developed nation’s language at the same time they learn their own. Their wearable will “listen in” as they learn their native language and deliver the same words in the foreign language of choice, along with images, learning aids, and games that test proficiency. Of the roughly 6,000 languages spoken today, perhaps 3,000 endangered languages will no longer be spoken by children in 2030. Most other languages will have lost users as well, as the languages of developed nations with the most open cultures increasingly take their place. We’ll also see many more scientific, technical, business, social, and artistic “languages” (knowledge systems) taught from birth. English, the global language of business today, will benefit the most, bringing English-speaking nations as many as a billion new “virtual immigrants” by 2030. In the high-bandwidth 2020s, many economic barriers to participating in the global economy will disappear. Eager underemployed youth anywhere, speaking the same language and understanding the same global culture, will be able to work with large and small compa-

nies everywhere, vastly accelerating innovation and entrepreneurship. Those who learn English or another leading language from birth, rather than relying on automatic language translation, will gain the greatest new economic opportunities and cognitive fluencies. Leading languages have by far the largest semantic vocabularies, ALLEX MAX / BIGSTOCK and they allow the learner to world population reaches a new undeeply understand foreign cultures. Now for perhaps the most contro- derstanding of social connectivity. But in this hyperconnected sceversial prediction: As long as global science, technology, free trade, resil- nario with its streamlined “global” iency, and wealth continue to accel- communication, fewer people will erate, as I expect they will, all the be willing to invest time in learning major religions and ideologies will new languages and cultural immercontinue to grow more ecumenical sion. This unwillingness may then and secular. Mass fundamentalist re- reduce people’s capacity to observe, ligious intolerance will disappear. reflect, understand, and respect Political and religious fundamental- other opinions, leading to new culist backlashes will always be with tural misinterpretation and conflicts. We may thus see the rise of new us, but they’ll be increasingly small, weak, and short-lived, driven as al- conflicts as cultural understanding ways by short-term catastrophes. disappears. Rather than resolve conflicts, we will merely shift attention Amen! away. Rather than improve collaboration, it will change how we judge, evaluate, and create trust in our relaCounterpoint: Why Cultural tionships. Understanding May Disappear In 2030, we will navigate our social web and filter, judge, ignore, and By Daniel Egger classify at high velocity; the risk is that we will also transform our interIn shared social environments, we pretation into social realities that igcreate a single cognitive and percep- nore cultural contexts. tive understanding of complexity through language, words, stories, music, and other cultural elements. But this could change. Globalization Vanishing Languages and the with a “world language” can drive Rise of English and Chinese cultural distinctions—and sensitivity for them—to extinction. In the mid-2020s, technical barriers By John F. Copper in speech recognition, translation, By 2030, more than a third of the and speech synthesis will not exist anymore. Real-time mobile lan- world’s estimated 6,000 languages guage-translation devices are going will have disappeared. First to go to be available to the mass market. will be those spoken by only a small By 2030, their world market penetra- number of people. Unwritten lantion will surpass 80%. In this era of guages will also pass early. Other social connectivity, it will be possible languages, except for two, will expeto access everyone and any informa- rience gradual or rapid disuse. Most people are increasingly learntion. Without language barriers, www.wfs.org

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ing and using a “dominant” language such as English and/or Chinese, both of which are growing fast in terms of their number of speakers and their usage in business and science. English is the language of science and technology, education, business, the media, movies, and the global culture. It is the language of democracy. The English vocabulary is vast compared to other languages. Some call it the necessary or indispensable language. Chinese is the language of more people than any other and is becoming an important business language. China is also excelling in science and technology, registering more patents than any country in the world and publishing more scientific articles. Many predict that China will be the world’s dominant economic power and military power in two or three decades. The ability to speak both Chinese and English would allow one to communicate with half of the people on the planet. This figure will grow to 60% or more in 15 years. At that time, the dream of a universal language may be upon us. In the future, linguists and historians will be able to study the extinct languages, as they will be recorded and preserved. Bilingualism and multilingualism will keep the ones falling into disuse from becoming irrelevant, while most of the planet’s population will regularly use English or Chinese, or both.

The End of Religion, The Rise of Spirituality By Alan Nordstrom The most revolutionary change underlying the transformative era in the next half century is the demise of religion and the rise of spirituality. Society will outgrow doctrinaire belief systems accepted on traditional “faith” and inculcated by authoritarian intimidation. By 2030, the pervasive power of communication systems will enable human beings collectively to achieve a higher level of common sense, informed by advanced sciences (physi24

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cal, social, and spiritual) that make t h e w o r l d o f 2 0 1 3 s e e m n e o - Medieval. We will have stabilized our population sustainably. Our former penchant for exploitation and domination will have been sanitized by education, informed by humane values promoting cooperation and collaboration on common interests and mutual benefits. Aggressive, acquisitive, exploitative behaviors are deemed pathological and regressive, even primitive. Most distinctive in 2030 is the pervasive kindness and civility of human behavior. Only a generation earlier it would have been ludicrous to suppose that the outrageous violence of the 9/11 era could ever be transcended: ethnic cleansing, terrorism, financial exploitation, plutocracy. But the “Big One” finally brought inhumane humanity to its knees and its senses, waking us collectively to our radical sense of kinship and kindness.

Goodbye, Macho Man By Jed Diamond For millions of years, humankind lived in balance with nature, one voice among many in the chorus of life. But gradually we became disconnected from the earth and dominant over it: All other life on the planet must serve the needs of humans or die. In the words of the philosopher Martin Buber, our relationships changed from I-Thou (sustained connections to the external) to I-It (separated from the external). Using increas-

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ingly destructive methods of violence, macho man rose to the top. Cut off from his own feelings, he could more easily control nature, other men, women, and children. But this I-It relationship to the world is not only destructive to the life spirit, it is also unsustainable. When macho man lives as though he

2. Educational Processes Disappearing Public Education By Jason Siko Public schools are privatizing, and new ways of mastering and assessing the attainment of knowledge and skills are replacing the factory model of education. Public education in the United States will have all but disappeared by 2030, beginning with the primary and secondary systems that have been in place since the end of the nineteenth century. The decline of the public tertiary educational system will take longer, but will be due to the same factors. Technology will help to destroy the long-held traditions of grouping students by age. Smart systems will allow us to solve educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom’s “Two-Sigma Dilemma,” where education progresses through mastery learning and individualized instruction based on quality data analytics. As students progress, they are allowed to specialize earlier and earlier (much like athletics today)—so much so that no one has a generalized diploma, only certificates of competencies in skills that the workforce demands. While this sounds desirable, the process was handed over to a select few companies that were directed to maintain the status quo by the elite. This change was facilitated by the United States’ inability to fund public education, as state budgets con-

were separate from nature, thinking he could rule the world, it is like the brain thinking it could rule the body, demanding all the life-giving blood. “To hell with the kidneys, the lungs, or the spleen,” the head says. “I’m the most important organ in the body and I want more, more, more.” Macho man is on his way out. The

I-Thou man is replacing him, and there is a chance for humanity to return to a way of life that has sustained us for millions of years. Locally sustainable earth communities are emerging throughout the world, and men are learning to be kind to themselves, each other, and the wonderful planet we all share.

tinued to fail to generate the necessary revenue for all public services. Like current U.S. telecommunications and postal delivery systems, what the government initially set up will be handed over to three or four major companies. They will provide instruction and training online based on regional demand trends and forecasts from corporations in a particular geographic region. In addition, they will provide site-based technical and pedagogical support; the local companies will purchase the old school buildings to generate revenue for the state and convert them to tutoring stations and early childhood daycare facilities. While students could specialize and obtain employment (which lowers unemployment numbers significantly), their choices are limited; thus, upward mobility becomes nearly impossible.

tion. Advances in technology like learning analytics will allow educators t o p ro c e s s l a rg e amounts of data on students in order to get insights into how students learn best. These are signposts that point to a shift away from the mass-production education model and toward a future in which each student’s educational experience is truly individualized and tailored to how he or she learns best.

Education Abandons the Factory Model By Jason Swanson In the list of things that may potentially disappear by 2030, we might also include ways of doing things, or processes. And one process that could potentially disappear is the factory model of education, or the idea of “one size fits all.” There is already a strong case for this process to disappear in the future. Ideas such as an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for every student have garnered a lot of atten-

The End of Grade Point Averages

FRANCESCO SANTALUCIA / BIGSTOCK

By Dan Tuuri In 2030, the grade point average (GPA) will no longer be the primary instrument to validate academic achievement. The GPA is based upon the value that an instructor has provided a student. In many institutions, instructors define their own valuation of how points are distributed, in some instances with certain categories having little to do with the actual learning achieved. Furthermore, some instructors face pressures to inflate grades. www.wfs.org

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In recent years, even the U.S. government began to call for independent third-party testing of some programming. The inclusion of this data provided reference points of independent data that instructional staff could utilize for course and program improvement and could further develop comparative data between institutions. Recently, the concept of badges has also taken off. I believe we will continue to see these developed. Noted endorsements of specific skills that a person would need for success are much more valuable than a single identified reference.

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3. Europe (Maybe, Maybe Not) A World without a Unified Europe By Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira Long-term culture change will be needed to hold Europe together till 2030. The European Union will have to change a great deal if it is still to be around in 2030, but no one is currently focusing on the changes necessary to make the EU a success. In business mergers, attention to the differences in the organizational cultures of the merging companies is at the forefront of managerial concerns. But this has not been JAM-DESIGN.CZ / BIGSTOCK the case in the European merger. The European Union is basically a more socially oriented values, while merger of very diverse nations and southern European countries confaces the same kinds of issues as verge to take a more assertive companies do: How can we get dif- stance? ferent countries—where people with As Nobel Prize–winning econovery different values, attitudes, and mist Douglass C. North has said, beliefs live—to pool together their structural and institutional change unique knowledge capital to make cannot be disassociated from longthe merger a success? term culture change. This is where For instance, is it fair to say that Europe needs to focus its attention, highly assertive “Type A” Germans before it is too late for the dream of a think and act differently from the prosperous, long-lasting, unified “Type B” French, Italians, Irish, Europe. Finns, and Portuguese (to use the classification by Deanne N. Den H artog)? Ideally, these countries Counterpoint: Europe, would have similar economic as well Tear Down Your Borders as social behaviors. To lead Europe out of its predicament, a new vision is called for. Only By Neill Perry with a far-reaching common culture By 2030, with the advent of the will different governments and the people they represent share the view euro as a multinational currency, the that, for the union to prosper and to economic and commercial relationhave a sustainable future, they have ship among the nations of Europe to put in at least as much as they will have changed. Restrictions on trade are eliminated, helping raise want to take out. What should a European culture, the economic condition of the poorer common across its borders, look and countries. This eliminates the need feel like? Will northern European for formal borders between them, countries need to soften toward and as a result, a new central gov26

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ernment, United Europe, emerges. The old national borders serve as a way to maintain their history, cultural roots, and social distinction. Over the years, the differences between individual nations have dissipated. Merged into one larger central government, the former nations are now independent provinces with democratically elected officials who represent them in the central government of United Europe. With the elimination of the former borders and a common language, United Europeans have more freedom and independence. The combined resources increase United Europe’s economic and political clout, allowing it to compete against technological and industrial giants like the United States and China. The nations that meld into one larger country of United Europe strengthen their ability to provide products and services, raise their standard of living, and gain commercial and political influence globally.

4. Jobs and Workplace Processes Two Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030 By Thomas Frey As technologies disrupt economies, jobs will disappear. But learning new skills will keep people in business. By 2030, more than 2 billion jobs will disappear, roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet. This is not intended as a doom and gloom scenario, but rather as a wakeup call for the new skillsets we’ll need in the future. According to McKinsey’s Global Institute, 12 disruptive technologies are at the heart of this disruption: mobile Internet, automation of knowledge and work, Internet of things, cloud technology, advanced robotics, autonomous and near- autonomous vehicles, next-generation genomics, energy storage, 3-D printing, advanced materials, advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery, and renewable energy. Pay very close attention to these 12 technologies. They will be both the job destroyers and the job creators in our future. Here are a few examples of how this will occur: • Driverless cars will be on the verge of eliminating millions of driver positions. Buses, taxis, trucks, limos, UPS, FedEx, and more will be transitioning into driverless forms of themselves. At the same time, we’ll see a dwindling of parking lots, gas stations, traffic cops, and traffic courts, and fewer doctors and nurses will be needed to treat injuries. • Education will see a mass transition from teaching to coaching, as 90% of all traditional classes will take place online by 2030, even in K-12. • 3 - D p r i n t e r s w i l l d i s r u p t everything from manufacturing, to health care, to retail, to art, to construction and building materials. Printed clothing and shoes produced at the store you’re shopping in will replace garment districts around the world. Printed buildings and houses

will eliminate the need for contractors and building materials. Pill printers will replace entire pharmacies. • Automated manufacturing is already eliminating tons of jobs. Bots and drones will begin disrupting many other industries along with their base of employment. At the same time that billions of jobs are disappearing, we will be creating billions more. But to do so, we will need to streamline our systems and prepare for the skill sets and job demands of tomorrow.

Whither the Board of Directors?

The Coming Demise of Teamwork

By Lawrence Loh

By Paul Rux In his classic 2001 study Free Agent Nation, Daniel Pink observed a growing trend toward solo practi tioners instead of teams. He foresaw how relentless changes in technology and corporate greed would combine to reduce workers en masse to the level of office temps. It is hard to build teamwork around workers who constantly come and go. Despite a pop culture that lauds teamwork in sports, this is not the emerging workplace reality. So forget teamwork. Instead, coach creative “stars.” The powerful trend toward freelance workplaces signals the coming demise of teamwork. Get ready to move, re-skill, and coach innovative individuals as leaders.

Obsolescence of Fixed Pay-Per-Time Compensation By Carrie Anne Zapka Only museums will display punch-in time clocks. Future historians will view this artifact as a failed attempt to mechanize human behavior—an unfortunate result of the Industrial Revolution. Without punchclocks, neither performance nor www.wfs.org

compensation will be correlated to time. Dynamic pay-per-task networks will replace fixed annual salaries and hourly pay rates. Work will be negotiated between temporal workers and “workees”—those for whom work is performed. Compensation will be volatile. Real-time supply and demand, crowd reputation ratings, experience points, and recommendation networks will replace résumés and job titles.

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Gone will be the days when a seat on a company’s board of directors carries a sense of prestige, a sign of arrival, and a sure way to make big bucks. Over recent decades, a spate of corporate governance disasters has triggered fast and furious regulatory reforms, such as the U.K. Cadbury Report in 1992 and the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. Both of these have resulted in a significant tightening up of requirements, especially for being a company director. Many qualified and experienced personnel will thus no longer want to be directors, as the risks and liabilities are getting just too high and not worth the time and effort for the returns. And that is the hollowing out of the supply of directors. The corporate sector should go back to the basics. Stakeholders, especially investors, must take the company back from the directors, who are at present not necessarily selected by or even serving the interest of investors. Instead of the board, companies will experience investor activism in the form of direct corporate democracy. Investors will themselves elect representative, council-like mechanisms to take charge of corporate governance. Companies will be too important to be left to boards of directors, which will disappear by 2030.

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5. Stores Locations, Locations, Locations By Barry Minkin All the prime retail spots will be taken, but new distribution opportunities will emerge. By 2030, the best locations for retailers around the world will have been found and occupied. You can already find a Big Mac or Starbucks coffee even in the most remote corners of the world. By 2030, companies will be looking for innovative low-cost distribution opportunities. For example, since Starbucks controls the retail locations, are there profitable opportunities to control the many beverage cart locations? Innovative marketing channels will be the key to success. For instance, there are not a lot of candy stores in Russia, so Mars put kiosks in places like Red Square to sell its products. Gillette uses suppliers with trays around their necks to sell its blades in India. There are also opportunities to sell many other products once you have developed distribution channels. Colgate distributes more than 173 products in more than 50 countries, and some of these products are manufactured by other companies. Of course, the Internet will continue to help put “going out of business” signs in the store windows of retailers in marginal locations.

“Mommy, What’s a Store?” Consumerism in the Connected Age By John P. Sagi For Christmas shoppers at big stores, the most popular toys fly off the shelves—Furby, Monster High Dolls, Angry Birds, Legos. Parents frantically use their iPhones to check other stores and eBay for availability (and better prices), then leave the 28

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store to make the purchase. In the future, these toys will be replaced, but even bigger change is coming to the process of shopping. For example, my spouse recently went shopping for an iPhone. The Verizon store in the local mall had the very version of the phone she desired. The clerk then explained that her new phone was “being configured and on its way from the Midwest.” We couldn’t take our purchase home with us—it wasn’t even available in the store. Stores are gradually becoming mere demonstration places, due to several forces: 3-D printing allows localized and instant manufacturing; radio frequency identification (RFID) tracks products at every stage; rapid transport and augmented reality promise overnight delivery (soon perhaps via drones). Our central-

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ized, connected cities keep us ever local, and e-commerce connects us. By 2030, shoppers will not use “stores” as we know them, but may visit membership-accessed “Demo Docks.” Beginning with items such as electronics and clothing, you’ll browse online for specifications, capability, and pricing; you’ll then visit a local dock to “play” with the product using augmented-reality tools. These demo docks will market our favorite brands, and robots will show the items or clothes, very accurately responding to our questions. No expensive stock is on site, saving space and insurance costs. Completing the purchase online, the customer returns home, and the item arrives on the doorstep the next morning. No backorders, and no fights for the last “Furby”: Everything is available.

6. Doctors, Surgeons, and “Diagnostic Arts” Disappearing Doctors By Joe Thomae Adults will no longer need to visit a doctor’s office for routine checkups. By 2030, adult visits to a doctor for an annual physical, blood cholesterol screening, exams for prostate or breast cancer, and many other important but nonemergency consultations will be a thing of the past. Several trends will drive this change: 1. Technology will enable an accurate and personalized diagnosis in your own home. The ubiquity of smartphones and sensors tied to cloud computing will allow screening for chemical indicators for cancer, blood glucose and oxygenation levels, EKG, respiration rate, heart attack and stroke precursors, and more. The information will upload into a personal medical database, and no human will ever see it until your database alerts your doctor that something is amiss. 2. Patients will, after initial privacy concerns abate, begin to understand that regular, consistent monitoring of many health indicators will act in their favor, preserving good health and indicating potential catastrophic conditions. 3. Insurers will price policies and make coverage conditional on the use of this system of monitoring and detection. 4. The efficient economics of this system address the cost implications of socialized medicine and the looming doctor deficit. The public-health benefits begin to become evident as daily, real-time reporting of conditions like typical flu symptoms will aid in the delivery of medicines and enable people to avoid interactions where they might either become ill or spread their own illnesses. Users will be alerted to issues via algorithms that scan daily test results. Computers may send simple text questions to obtain more infor-

mation; if that questioning cannot resolve the issue, the computer will schedule an examination with an appropriate specialist. This system will not likely be used for early childhood pediatric exams, but parents will use the same daily monitor- DMITRIY SHIRONOSOV / BIGSTOCK ing hardware and software on children. This allows us to tures as possible will be built into catch childhood maladies early and these new medical service models, will allow new parents to gain valu- but it may always be better to have surgeons and patients in close proxable insights related to child care. imity, robotic assistant or not. The doctor shortage is largely due Operating without Surgeons to the fact that talented people who could be doctors are moving into By Benjamin C. Yablon fields in which their skills can be more richly rewarded. By 2030, only By 2030, America will be 150,000 the privileged will actually have doctors short, just as the median age their surgeons in the operating of the country’s baby boomers hits rooms with them; the rest of us had 72. A voracious consumption of better hope for highly stable commuhealth care will far eclipse what can nication grids. reasonably be provided by the current distribution model, but technological solutions are ready to fill the The End of the Art of void. Today, there are more than 200 Medical Diagnosis robot-assisted da Vinci Surgical Systems deployed across the United By Morton Chalfy States. Also in use are products such For centuries, medical diagnosis as the Socrates Robotic Telecollaboration System, which allows shared has been an art more than a science. control of robotic surgical assistants In the hands of its finest practition operating from different locations. ers, the art has saved lives and These machines dramatically de- averted disasters; in the hands of the crease the invasiveness of many pro- less than great, it has caused unneccedures, greatly improving recovery essary procedures, intense discomtimes. By 2030, this technology will fort, and sometimes death. Art will succumb to science as the be ubiquitous, allowing sought-after surgeons to perform procedures all massive power of machines like over the world without having to IBM’s Watson enable computers to learn from repetition. Over the next leave their offices. There are some obvious draw- decades, medical records will be fed backs to having your surgeon work- into “Doctor” Watson’s memory ing in a distant location. For in- banks, and diagnosis will become stance, what if the cardiologist scientific and statistical. Physicians will be able to do away performing your heart transplant lives in California and an earthquake with guesswork and prescriptions of hits, interrupting her connection “Let’s try this and see if it works,” with the robotic assistant whose me- and go right to “This is the likeliest chanical fingers are in your chest? As diagnosis and this is the likeliest many safety and redundancy fea- treatment for best effect.” www.wfs.org

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7. Paper—and the Places It Goes Paperless, Cashless, and Wireless by 2030 By David Pearce Snyder A futurist ponders the fate of his data when the world is finally paperless. I am a data-based forecaster, and for over half a century all of that data has been on paper. My colleagues and I learned about futures methodologies by reading print-onpaper books and professional journals, and we kept up with futureshaping trends and developments by reading magazines and newspapers, think tank reports, and tomes by policy wonks—all on paper, from

which relevant material was clipped or copied and filed. The long-term consequence of our paper-based operation is immediately apparent to anyone entering my office. The countertops are stacked with file folders in piles two to three feet high, over which rise bookcases filled with more files. On my desk, a dozen more piles of paper cover most of the surface. Most futurists I’ve met have offices that look very much like mine. But all of us also understand that, by 2030, all that paper will be gone. I’m having trouble dealing with that reality. Having all my information literally within arm’s reach has been the mainstay of my professional practice. With my paper data-

base, I know exactly—and feel kinesthetically—where all my facts are. To be equally certain of finding that same information in cyberspace would require me to master an entirely new set of skills. It would also require a level of confidence in information technology that I do not yet possess. Information and communication are dematerializing. Paper money will also disappear by 2030, and I’m perfectly prepared to live in a cashless future. Commerce will be cashless, phones will be wireless, and print will be paperless. I am prepared to live with the first two of those future realities. But I still find it hard to accept that I will no longer be surrounded by my © MICHAEL VENTURA

Futurist David Pearce Snyder in his office.

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easy-to-access, user-friendly paper database.

The Private Library By Lane Jennings Even 10 years ago it would have been inconceivable, but the evidence is growing and the trend seems clear: Instead of owning works that bring us knowledge, delight our senses, and stimulate our dreaming, we will soon become mere “borrowers” sucking on an electronic straw. My father collected books. Most of these simply interested him, a few directly helped in his profession, and the rest were useful reference volumes—dictionaries, encyclopedias, and bibliographies. But then encyclopedias and dictionaries were reduced from print to floppy disks; ultimately, they were rendered redundant by online sources more complete and current than any book could be. Without a multivolume set of The Great Books, a well-thumbed copy of Webster’s International Dictionary, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica in my living room, how will anyone know that I am still a scholar and a gentleman? Or will those terms themselves have become obsolete? O tempora, o mores, oh bother!

Paper Here Today, Gone Tomorrow By Karl Albrecht Communication has been digitizing inexorably, but not completely, for the past four decades. By 2030, we may finally see the disappearance of: • The U.S. Postal Service and Local Post Offices. The USPS is a classic example of a long-term “sitting duck” extinction. Decades ago, Sears, Roebuck & Co. left the mailorder catalog business, and “COD” (cash on delivery) service by the local post offices went with it. Private firms like Mailboxes Etc., FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others began stealing the business. Then technologies

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like the fax machine and then e-mail radically reduced the mailing of business letters. Most residential mail now consists of junk mail and bills; both are being steadily replaced by electronic options. • The Personal Check. Businesses spend billions of dollars annually to bill their customers and process the checks they mail. Electronic billing and online payments are slashing costs for both. The few customers who hold out will probably have to pay penalty fees for printed documents. • The Newspaper. Two forces will probably make the newspaper as we know it extinct. One is the information glut that is changing the reading habits of consumers; the other is the flight of advertising revenues to Internet monopoly sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and others. Attention spans are shrinking, information bites are getting smaller, and people seeking information expect it to be instantaneous. As conventional newspapers die or migrate to online platforms, publishers will try to develop pay-per-view models that reclaim their revenue streams. We may see the emergence of dynamically packaged online newspapers that compile stories, articles, and advertisements to suit the viewer’s unique preference profile. • The Magazine. Ditto what’s happening to newspapers. All popular magazines now have online versions, many for free. Most are struggling to maintain readership and subscription revenues, and online advertising has stolen a large part of traditional ad revenue. With a vast range of blogs, online news pages, streaming video, and online games, www.wfs.org

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the general public may be approaching a saturation point for information. Dynamic packaging of content will probably become the primary model for magazines as well as newspapers. • The Book. The physical book may not go extinct completely, because it offers certain subjective experiences not replicated exactly by electronic media. However, as publishers offer e-books at lower prices, and e-readers become cheaper and more available, e-books will almost certainly outnumber physical books. The two will probably co-exist. Selfpublishing will probably continue to grow rapidly. Video books, or “vbooks,” with chaptered video content presented in digital format, may also become popular, especially for educational purposes. Some physical book publishers, however, will probably go extinct because they fail to make the wrenching transition to a new and more risky publishing and distribution model. • The Greeting Card. Ounce for ounce, the traditional printed greeting card is one of the most ecologically wasteful products that people buy. The average useful life of a greeting card is about 15 seconds— perhaps a few minutes if it gets passed around at a party. Then it usually goes into the waste stream, or a bottomless drawer. As with books, cards might survive if they can be “repurposed,” or used to provide some additional value. Reusable greeting cards, for example, might become popular. Perhaps the card can be made edible, or even biodegradable, with seeds attached so it can give birth to a garden plant.

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8. Human Experiences The End of Anonymity By Brenda Cooper Living off society’s “grid” is getting harder. We may give up trying to live our quiet, anonymous lives. Today, our paychecks generally show up in our banks without touching our hands. We leave creditcard trails behind us, and our phones constantly beam our location to nearby cell towers so we can be helped in an emergency. But the average person we pass on the street may know nothing about us; to learn more, they need only obtain partial information and pay some money. Anonymity is tough, but it’s still possible to live off of the grid, even in developed countries—as long as you use cash for housing and food and don’t fly on a commercial airline. An anonymous lifestyle is certainly not for the faint of heart, but it’s possible. It will be far harder to remain anonymous in a cashless society

with multifactor logons to everything and biometric data that every public camera in the world can access. The loss of anonymity will hopefully cause increased accountability, decreased rates of many crimes, and a culture that is more careful. We will know more about each other, and it will be up to us as a society TATIANA GLADSKIKH / BIGSTOCK to choose how personal data is treated or mistreated. Not long from now, the difficult job of staying off the grid will be close to impossible for all but the ultra-rich (who may still be able to use personal assistants and shadow companies to stay partly invisible).

To navigate this future, we’ll need to assure that single mistakes don’t haunt people forever. We’ll need to find a way for financial details, health issues, and bedroom choices to remain cloaked. We need to become pre-

Bad Mood Is History: A Scenario I awaken in a bad mood. The bed is empty next to me and I suspect Liz is working again. She works too much. Without opening my eyes, I know it’s time to get up. Every morning, at 7 o’clock, the windows change from light-blocking to transparent. The late autumn sun fills the room. I peruse some wardrobe choices, my virtual mirror reflecting my image in each selection. I wait for my choice to rotate toward the front of the rack and proceed with my morning ablutions. As I head downstairs, our garden appears through the walls. The fall colors warm me. The walls appear

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completely transparent with the thin layer of LED. I open the window and the curtains billow in the fall breeze. It took some time to get used to seeing the curtains suspended in midair, like some domestic apparition. Now, I barely notice. I breathe in the fresh morning scent. As I move into the kitchen, news begins to flow on the walls. CNN knows my bad mood and sticks to light news. Madonna and Mick Jagger are going to have a baby. At past 70, Madonna says she feels vital and invigorated to be pregnant at the same time as her grand-

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daughter. With a life expectancy of 110 and the support of her record label, she is thrilled to bring a new pop sensation into the world. My thoughts of children have prompted the walls to display images of my sons as babies, toddlers, and eventually young men. Emotions flow. The warmth begins to repel this bad mood. With freshly brewed tea (my custom blend) in hand, I find my way to the office. Liz is indeed working. She smiles as I walk to her. We kiss tenderly. This is going to be another great day. —Liz Leone and Jean Georges Perrin

pared for our lives to be open electronic books.

The Death of Reflection By Lisa Gualtieri I love my smartphone as much as the next person and rely upon the immediacy of information access in my busy life. Is there a downside to this for me and for our society? Yes: the death of reflection. Being almost constantly connected—and agitated when not connected—means losing those moments when disparate ideas come together, when pleasant memories lead to inspiration, or when pondering a problem leads to innovation. Accessing and using too much information all the time stifles reflection and all of its benefits. Fitness, I believe, offers the solution of listening to one’s body, which is the antithesis of the quantified-self movement in which everything is tracked. When I run, I can feel last night’s overindulgence or, equally, last night’s eight hours of sleep. But all the devices to track where I am— my pace, the comparison to other women my age or my last run—distract me from the reflective process that often leads to great work after my run. Letting one’s mind wander and reflecting on both one’s internal thoughts and feelings and the external world leads to great ideas—and by that I don’t mean just new and better devices.

No More Waiting By Apala Lahiri Chavan Waiting will disappear by 2030. The concept of having to wait for something or someone is increasingly shifting to another verb, unwaiting. We once waited for the bank to open in the morning to be able to transfer money; waited for answers to our letters that arrived by post/ courier; waited to travel to a shop-

ping area, or even to a specific country/city to buy particular items. Or we waited in queues till we got to the front of the queue. We waited at airports till it was time to board the flight. And then waited in court for the next step in the process to happen, whether a property dispute or a divorce proceeding. There is no waiting anymore, really. The 24/7 access to the Internet via different devices means that we can do our money transfers at any time of the day or night, can shop for that specific item of clothing online whenever we want to. So whether we are at the airport or in the courthouse, we are not really waiting. We are immersed in a digital world doing other things, like e-mailing, reading news, watching a show, or shopping. Very soon, the “intelligent cloud” that always knows us will constantly serve suggestions based on our profile and location. And 3-D printers will help enable instant wish fulfillment. What will we need to wait for?

Whatever Happened to Free Will? By Richard Yonck Is free will disappearing? Are you reading this sentence because a chain of events going all the way back to the Big Bang set in motion everything that led up to this moment? Whether you agree with this premise or not, were you destined to do so? The concepts of free will and determinism have long been debated by philosophers. Logically, if the universe is governed by a great chain of cause and effect events, then it seems plausible that, given sufficient knowledge and computing power, we would be able to state every subsequent event at any point in time. Of course, this runs counter to our intuition and experience. The world—not to mention the universe—is so vast in its scale, complexity, and randomness that such notions seem naïve. It may be that we’ll soon discover just how much free will we actually www.wfs.org

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have. As our technological world becomes increasingly intelligent, we find ourselves at a threshold. The Internet of Things, smart dust, embedded intelligence—everything that contributes to our increasingly smart environment—combined with data mining and statistical analysis, herald a new era that may challenge our notions about free will and determinism. As ever more information about our actions becomes available from our environment, the ability to anticipate the statistical likelihood of our movements, our decisions, even our thoughts becomes possible. Which brings us to the question: Did we choose this path? Or were we destined to take it?

Losing the Ability to Get Lost By Josh Lindenger Humans are inherently curious. We have to explore. We are driven to figure out who we are and how we relate to everything around us. Over the last two decades, we’ve h a d a re v o l u t i o n i n m a p p i n g through the growth of localization technologies. Global navigation satellites, Wi-Fi based positioning, algorithms that map us around traffic— in the developed world, at least, location has become a given. By 2030, with the continual expansion of these technologies, getting lost will have all but disappeared. Whatever the interface ends up being at the time, we’ll be technologically tied to physical space at all times. Want to go somewhere? Paths present themselves to you. But what if we want to get lost? Will we miss the serendipity of new experiences? We humans have a need to explore, to fuel our curiosity and understand more about ourselves by experiencing new things. In losing our ability to get lost, we may rediscover in ourselves a new wanderlust: that, in the end, we not only want to get lost sometimes, but need to because it’s part of what makes us human.

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9. Smartphones Farewell, Smartphone. We Hardly Knew Thee By Paul Saffo Devices will be superfluous in the moreintimate age of conversational interaction. Looking back from 2030, it is hard to imagine just how central smartphones were to life in 2013—and how quickly they disappeared. Smartphones followed a trajectory similar to that other techno-antique, the PC, but the smartphone arc was even shorter. The first smartphones appeared in the mid-1990s, but it was Android and iPhone that changed the communications landscape. By 2010, anything with a physical keypad seemed as obsolete as a rotary-dial Princess phone, and voice took a back seat to apps, Angry Birds, and tweets.

I ro n i c a l l y, i t w a s voice that killed the smartphone. Robust AI-based voice recognition started to arrive in the mid-teens, and users discovered what they knew all along: We would much rather talk than tap. Driving d i re c t i o n s w e re s o much safer when spoken, allowing drivers to keep their eyes on the road. Tweet-sized quips were now uttered by AIs mimicking the voices of the celebrity dead. Even commerce became voicebased. Robust voice eliminated the need to design around screens, just as t o u c h - s c re e n t e c h n o l o g y o n c e pushed out keypads. Communicators shrank to the size of hearing

Say Goodbye to News at 6:00 Most Americans migrated to cable television from broadcast television; now, many are cutting the television cord altogether. We watch what we want, when we want, using Hulu or Netflix or other content delivery media. And we watch wherever we happen to be, using laptops, tablets, and smartphones. And advertising dollars that used to go to the networks are now going to social media delivered over mobile devices. The major networks will likely survive, probably becoming subsidiaries of one of the social network juggernauts (Google, Facebook, etc.), much like ABC network is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. What is becoming expendable—and will likely disappear—is the networks’ strings of local affiliates. These outlets are largely repeater stations of their larger networks. Except for their morning and evening newscasts, they provide little that is substantially different from the network’s product. The 6 o’clock local news once had the advantage of timing over newspaper delivery; now, it is behind virtually every other means of communication. The nearly 900 local TV affiliates just aren’t needed in the new mass communication marketplace. And despite how essential they seemed for all these decades, when they finally go away their collective presence will hardly be missed. —Rob Bencini

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aids, and their functionality melted into everything from eyeglasses, watches, and jewelry to vehicles and appliances. New functions such as breathtakingly accurate real-time language translation appeared (think Babel fish in Doug Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide), making these tiny devices essential and constant companions. Screens remained, but only as marvelous peripherals, not the center of communications activity. We entered the age of conversational interaction, and our relationship with digital technology moved from personal to intimate. Couples who couldn’t speak a common language fell in love and married. Sociologists cautioned users against over-attachment to voice-AIs to the exclusion of human contact. And at those rare moments when we happen to think back, we marvel that anyone could have ever communicated anything of consequence on a device as clunky and old-fashioned as an iPhone.

Computing’s Future Is Wearable By Harish Shah Thanks to Google, the world will soon see the commercialization of the first wearable computer for the

masses, with a head-mounted display to be worn like a pair of glasses by its users. Apple is also likely to soon release a wearable computer in the form of a smart watch, which has already been dubbed by many as the “iWatch.” The same Internet-based communication currently used on smartphones or computers will likely also be utilized on the wearable computers. The need for smartphones will thus simply start diminishing, especially as prices for wearables begin to decline. That the wearable will primarily be a computer, beyond being just a communication device, will be its most attractive feature. The first few years that wearable computers are on the market will likely be a phase of trial and error, when makers will be perfecting their technology, adjusting to the market, and meeting consumer needs and wants. Once this phase passes, we can expect history then to repeat itself, and our beloved smartphones will simply fade away, like pagers and other devices did before them.

The Concurrent Evaporation of Hardware and Privacy By E. Scott Denison Hold in your hand for a moment the sleek minimalist design that is your smartphone. Note the thin metal case, and touch the glossy, glass interface. If you like that sort of thing, then you should keep it around as an heirloom. By 2030, we will have dispensed with much of the hardware that we carry with us, including phones and laptops, car keys or key fobs, possibly even digital cameras. All these devices will move from silicon chips encased in industrial designs to smart surfaces, smart clothing, or biomechanically engineered microcomputers that have been implanted in or attached to the body. Retinal implants or contact lenses will carry the visual interface to the individual, or the user will transfer it to a variety of other “active surfaces” such as tables or walls. Each app will carry its own em-

Highway Signs In 2030, the ubiquitous fixed roadway sign will have all but disappeared. This scenario begins in the late 2010s, as attention turns to decaying infrastructure. Thanks to increasing federal tax revenues driven by the shale oil boom, state departments of transportation will begin funding projects to replace bridges, repave highways, and (as an unexpected consequence) replace and update fixed-message signs. Cars are becoming increasingly connected to their surroundings via GPS. The Internet of Place—connecting vehicles to traffic and roadway condition reporting systems—will emerge first in the more dense urban areas. Better information means there could even be fewer vehicles involved. The old signs could be replaced by active media signs equipped with two-way communications that interact with the vehicles (rather than the drivers). These active-media posts might be updated via fiber-optic links. Some of their graphics could be sponsored by local enterprises, thus putting an end to billboards as well as roadway signs. —Jim Breaux

bedded interface and, though true telepathy will still be a couple of decades away, gloves, rings, or bracelets could become the access point for manipulating the user interface. It may someday give way to subdermal implants that directly access brain imagery and transmissions to the microchips that are embedded in our bodies. As our computers become more invisible and hardware design becomes more bio-design, we will also see our privacy nearly completely disappear. Each surface will become “aware” of our presence and our activities. Our bodies will carry an internal GPS tracking capability. Watch out for intrusive messaging, hacking, and surveillance that may come ever so much closer to our thoughts, actions, preferences, and individuality.

Passing of the Dumb Interface, Keyboard, and Mouse

Ongoing trend analysis at the TechCast Project suggests that the •

Advanced IT Technologies Entering Mainstream Use Most Likely Year

Std. Dev.

Intelligent Interface

2019

4 years

Intelligent Web

2017

3 years

Virtual Reality

2019

4 years

Thought Power

2024

7 years

2024

8 years

Technology

Source: www.TechCast.org (2013)

By Alexandre Pupo and William Halal

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next wave of computerization will drive far more intelligent and convenient interfaces into mainstream use, relegating today’s dumb interfaces, keyboards, and the mouse obsolete—like the old slide rules and typewriters. Here is a summary of our forecasts in this area:

Humans may soon rely on these technologies to serve as virtual assistants and to automate routine mental work. Artificial intelligence, speech and emotion recognition and transla-

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tion, touch controls, and other interfaces are already entering the market. In some cases, we can extend the power of sheer thought to communicate at a distance. Experiments are finding ways that allow individuals to direct their thoughts into electrical signals that communicate silently

with computers, robots, and other people. Graphical interfaces, digital games, and augmented reality are converging to immerse us in artificial environments that simulate sensory experiences. Other trends show that the Web is evolving into an intelligent system that understands

spoken inquiries, gathers relevant information, and forms meaningful answers. Today’s dumb interfaces will soon give way to touch, voice, avatars, language translation, augmented reality, and thought. An earlier TechCast study dubbed this virtual lifestyle “TeleLiving.”

10. Insecurity Car Crashes Will Disappear by 2030 By Tom Schaffnit The convergence of technologies that connect and automate vehicles will keep us all safer on the road. Two technologies related to vehicle safety are converging to significantly reduce or even eliminate accidents. 1. Connected vehicle technology uses specific wireless connections to allow cars to “talk” with each other and provide a warning when a conflict situation exists that is likely to result in a crash. The vehicles each broadcast a short message a number of times every second. Other vehicles receive these broadcasts and compute a dynamic state map in order to identify potential conflict situations, such as hard-braking events up ahead in their lane of travel. 2. Automated vehicle technology. Google’s self-driving vehicle project has been able to demonstrate the convenience aspect of this advanced form of automated vehicle technology. Automobile manufacturers, meanwhile, have been conducting their own research programs and introducing automation features that assist with lane-keeping and help to maintain a safe distance from the car ahead, for example. These auto36

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mated vehicle technology deployments have mainly been based upon autonomous sensors located on the individual vehicles. A convergence of the two technologies, along with sensory fusion to allow the best use o f b o t h a u t o n o - OLEG GOLOVNEV / BIGSTOCK mous sensors and wireless communications from nearby vehicles, could lower costs and enhance consumer enthusiasm, ushering in connected, fully automated vehicles by the end of this decade. The disappearance of car crashes by 2030 could be a realistic possibility.

Nothing Left to Try? The End of Jury Trials By Clayton Rawlings In theory, a jury trial is a search for the truth in a way that ensures both sides can be heard. The jury itself is the fact finder. They determine what the truth is based on the evidence admitted before them. But the types of cases that juries are asked to consider will decline.

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Consider that there are now 35,000 fatalities and 400,000 catastrophic injuries in the United States every year from vehicle collisions. By 2030, robotic transportation will reduce these numbers dramatically. Robotic labor will reduce the number of workplace injuries on a similar scale. We will not have thousands of jury trials rendering personal injury verdicts, because we will no longer have the huge number of injury cases to be decided. Most drug crimes will no longer be enforced in criminal courts, as genetic manipulation and vaccinations to cure addiction will do away with these crimes. Sixty-five percent of all criminal prosecutions are drug related, so removing drugs from the equation medically will eliminate the need for juries to convict and sentence those involved in the drug trade.

More Missing Futures The End of Theft In the country of India, a car is stolen every 6 minutes, but in the state of Texas, a car is stolen every 5.5 minutes. As every business knows, theft is a major problem, with most viewing some percentage loss as unavoidable. However, that attitude is about to change. With improved security systems, vehicle theft has been dropping since 1998, and will be all but eliminated by 2030 with the Internet of Things. By 2020, more than 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, and by 2030, virtually every item of value will become traceable because of smart dust sensors. Next-generation manufacturing will automatically embed smart dust particles with sensors and transmitters into everything we own. Whenever a purchase occurs, items over a certain dollar value will be assigned to a personal ownership network that we control. Sensors in our clothing, cars, jewelry, shoes, and homes will be primarily used to detect everything from air quality to health irregularities, but they will also alert an “owner” when a theft has occurred. Whenever there is a “disturbance in the force,” officials will be notified. —Thomas Frey

Brain-scanning lie-detector tests already exist, but their results are still inadmissible, having failed to gain scientific acceptance as being reliable. Moore’s law suggests that we’ll see a scanner that will pass this last evidentiary hurdle in the next 10 to 15 years. When a reliable scanner can detect deception in the human mind, the need for a fact finder will be greatly reduced in all litigation. The fact finder (jury) will not be needed to know the truth. This new reality will do away with the swearing match that goes on today. When the end is no longer in doubt, litigants will settle cases rather than incur the expense of a jury trial that is doomed to fail. I predict that jury trials will all but disappear except for some special circumstances by 2030. They will be replaced by judicial intervention and summary judgment. When the facts are no longer in dispute, agreed settlements through mediation by both parties will become the norm, rather than the traditional jury trial.

Here is a selection of other things our readers suggested may disappear by 2030: • Accountants. Traditional accountants will be replaced by “Meta-digital Accounting (MdA).… Analysis of, and transactions involving, economic and financial data will be automated; no human presence is required.” —Alexandru Tugui • The American Dream. “Seventeen years from now the ‘Dream’ may not have totally disappeared, but expectations of achieving it will be smaller and may require two or three salaries for a family to have the American Dream that we had in the 1970s.” —Lester Kuhl • Artificial scarcity. “With the advent of 3-D printing and nanotechnology, the illusion of artificial scarcity should break down once … awareness of these technologies spreads and the implications of the capacity for global abundance becomes realized.” —Jonathan C. Lippe

• Circus animals. “By 2030, elephants won’t be balancing on balls, tigers won’t be jumping through hoops of fire, and bears won’t be tightrope walkers.... Animals are gaining support from a wide variety of organizations intent on protecting them by legislation and legal action.” —LuAnne Feik • Fire Trucks. “City managers recognizing the waste of sending 50,000-pound fire engines hurtling to a non-fire- related emergency will replace them with a modern communications system that provides rapid intelligence as to whether nature of the emergency. Instead, the more frugal option of SUV rescue sedans will be at the ready.” —Frank McDonough • Forest Fires. “Within the next few years, flying drone technology will advance to the point where solar powered micro-drones will be able to achieve month-long flights without interruption. Once accomplished, we will begin equipping drones with infrared sensors to monitor any fires activity inside a forest. “With proper fleet management, swarms of flying drones will be capable of detecting any fire before it reaches 100 square feet in size. Once a fire is detected, the drone network will instantly signal for fire extinguisher drones to fly over and extinguish it. “Within 10 years, virtually all forest fires will be eliminated. However, not all fires are bad fires, and society will begin to debate the much larger philosophical question of who will get to decide.” —Thomas Frey • Genders “will be nonexistent in civil law, in fashion, fragrance, and everyday life.” —Peter Eder www.wfs.org

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• Human service. Advertisements promoting the benefits of talking to a real person (rather than an AI entity) will disappear. “That’s because ‘real people’ aren’t as fabulous as we often make them out to be. They can be inconsistent, moody, and make mistakes. They suffer from a long list of cognitive biases and prejudices. … In contrast, the automated, intelligent systems being developed by Google, IBM, and others won’t suffer from any of those drawbacks.” —Garry Schulz • Intelligence “will be extinct by 2030—that is, the ability to think for oneself, to reason things out independently of a preponderance of false data coming in.” —Ruth Wise • Musical composers. “The music created by … algorithms can be saved to a computer/iPad with sheet music software. Entrepreneurs will present millions of pages to the public at a minimal cost. Festivals of spontaneously written music will flood the stadiums. Bye-Bye Sheet Music Pie.” —Douglas Cornish • Pennies and other coins are “becoming less useful, as parking meters, tolls, and public transit use smartcards and RFID technologies to streamline payment. Presumably by 2030 we will also see widespread acceptance of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.” —Virginia Holbert • Plastic “for packaging material will be replaced by sustainable packaging material and strategies for the reduction of packaging worldwide in 2030.” —Werner Mittelstaedt • Quiet in public places “will have disappeared, thanks to ubiquitous and intrusive electronic gadgets, visual and audio advertising everywhere, and ego-driven social manners.” —Peter Eder • Republicans and Democrats. “Both parties will be gone. They will have morphed into two new parties representing even more extreme i deals, and a viable third party will exist.” —Dave Allman, Elliott Wave International

About the Authors Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, business futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on professional achievement, organizational performance, and business strategy. E-mail Karl@KarlAlbrecht.com. Rob Bencini, MBA, is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) and economic futurist from North Carolina. He provides trend impact analysis for businesses and local governments. Web site www.robbencini.com; E‑mail rbencini@earthlink.net. Jim Breaux is a futures studies graduate student in the Foresight Master’s Program, University of Houston, College of Technology. He received the APF 2013 Student Recognition Award, Individual Graduate Student, for his paper, “Weather-Related Disaster Recovery.” He is an engineer by training and works with a major infrastructure engineering firm in Texas. E-mail breauxjw@gmail.com. Morton Chalfy is a poet and novelist living in California. E-mail mchalfy@gmail.com. Apala Lahiri Chavan is chief oracle and innovator at Human Factors International (HFI). She is an award-winning designer (International Audi Design Award), and has recently been made CEO of the Institute of Customer Experience (ice.humanfactors.com/), a nonprofit initiative by HFI to explore the future of global user experience. E-mail apala@humanfactors.com.

• Sex. “New technologies … will provide safe, sanitary, ubiquitous, consequence-free sexual pleasure. In-the-flesh interaction with other humans will be purely optional and increasingly rare— in fact it may come to be seen as a fetish rather than ‘normal’ sexual behavior.” —Virginia Holbert

Brenda Cooper is a technology professional, a science-fiction writer, and a public speaker who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She is associated with Futurist.com. E-mail brenda-cooper@sff.net.

• Shame. “We are losing our collective belief in what is right and wrong. Our shared ethos is giving way to a situational morality more dependent on who commits the infraction rather than the act itself.” —Gregory Pashke

John F. Copper is the Stanley J. Buckman Professor (emeritus) of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of more than thirty books. E-mail johnfcopper@gmail.com.

• Wilderness. “We are losing wilderness around the earth as the human population grows. More and more wilderness is being converted to farmland, mines, roads, towns and cities, and other human uses. Climate change is also significantly altering wilderness, even in protected areas. Aside from Antarctica, Greenland, deserts, parts of the United States (particularly Alaska), the Amazon, Canada, and Siberia, there likely will only be a few protected wilderness areas left for people to experience wild, primeval, undeveloped, and untrammeled areas—and those areas will all show varying signs of human imprints.” —Michael Rees

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E. Scott Denison is a design lecturer at Ohio State University. His article “When Designers Ask, ‘What If?’” was published in World Future Review’s Summer 2012 conference edition. E-mail scott@scottdenison .com. Jed Diamond is founder and director of MenAlive, a health program that helps men, and the women who love them, to live well throughout their lives. Visit MenAlive.com.

Daniel Egger is a business futurist, entrepreneur, and strategist, helping clients create a more comprehensive understanding of what could drive the future and how to influence the present. E-mail daniel@ foltigo.com. Thomas Frey is executive director of the Da Vinci Institute and the Innovation editor of THE FUTURIST magazine. His Web site is Futuristspeaker.com. Lisa Gualtieri, PhD, ScM, is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. E-mail lisa.gualtieri@tufts.edu. William E. Halal is professor emeritus of management, technology, and innovation at George Washington University, and president of TechCast LLC, a virtual think tank tracking the technology revolution. Visit www.techcast.org. Lane Jennings is managing editor of World Future Review as well as a poet. E-mail lanejen@aol.com. Liz Leone is an editor for Rodale and a medical editor for GSK. E-mail liz@lizleone .com. Josh Lindenger is a futurist hailing from Baltimore, Maryland, with a not-so-secret desire to re-explore what it means to “get lost” in cities using the techniques of psychogeography. You can find him at www.thefuturesunderground.com or as @jlindenger on Twitter. E-mail josh@ thefuturesunderground.com. Lawrence Loh is a faculty member at NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, where he teaches strategic management, global strategy, and corporate governance. He is also leading the Governance & Transparency Index (GTI) project, which ranks and publishes the corporate governance performance of listed firms in Singapore. E-mail bizlohyk@ nus.edu.sg. Frank McDonough enjoyed more than 40 years of federal service, holding senior executive positions in four U.S. government organizations. He is currently working on a book titled Advice to Fernando, with 50 chapters discussing how to succeed in high-level government jobs. Visit frankamcdonough.com/. Barry Minkin, author of The Great Unraveling (2012), 2020 Future Vision (forthcoming, 2014), and other books, is a futurist, speaker, and global management consultant. Visit minkinaffiliates.com.

Alan Nordstrom is a professor of English at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. E‑mail ANordstrom@Rollins.edu. Manuel Au-Yong Oliveira is an invited lecturer at the University of Porto and at the University of Aveiro (Portugal), Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal, and Researcher at INESC TEC (coordinated by INESC Porto), Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 378, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal. E-mail moliveira@fe.up.pt. Jean Georges Perrin runs a software company, focusing on content analysis and logistics. E-mail jgp@jgp.net. Neill Perry has many years of experience in the field of marketing and sales as an independent manufacturer’s rep. He writes on a variety of nonfiction topics, short stories, and how he envisions the future. E-mail 4neillperry@gmail.com. Alexandre Pupo is an information technology professional and editor for the TechCast Project. Clayton Rawlings is a licensed attorney in the state of Texas who has tried over 150 jury trials. He attended the Strategic Foresight program at the University of Houston under Peter Bishop. Web site HamptonandRawlings.com; e-mail Clayrawlings@ aol.com. Michael Rees is a natural resource planner with the National Park Service and has worked for the NPS for over 21 years. His views are his own and do not reflect the views of the agency. Paul Rux, PhD, is a lifelong professional educator. E-mail paulrux@paulrux.net. Paul Saffo is a forecaster with more than two decades of experience exploring the dynamics of large-scale, long-term change. He is managing director of foresight at Discern Analytics, www.discern.com, and a member of the World Future Society’s Global Advisory Council.

Harish Shah is an entrepreneur, consultant, coach, trainer, futurist, and sole proprietor at Stratserv Consultancy, Singapore. E-mail harish_shah@stratservconsultancy .com. Jason Siko is an assistant professor of educational technology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a graduate of the Futures Studies program at the University of Houston, whose interests include online learning, the gamification of learning, and the future of K-12 education. E-mail sikojp@gmail.com. John M. Smart is a technology foresight scholar, educator, speaker, and consultant. He is president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation. Blog: EverSmarterWorld.com. David Pearce Snyder is a consulting futurist and the Lifestyles editor for THE FUTURIST. E-mail david_snyder@verizon .net. Jason Swanson is a futurist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can follow Jason at twitter.com/JasonSwanson and www.eufo.org. Joe Thomae is a real estate asset manager. E-mail thomaej@gmail.com. Dan Tuuri is a faculty member in the College of Business and a student in the Doctoral of Community College Leadership at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. E-mail dan@tuuri.us. Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST. E-mail cwagner@wfs.org. Benjamin C. Yablon is a prominent attorney in Denver, Colorado, and author of two novels: Pure Life and its forthcoming sequel, The Chinese Dam. Visit www.PureLifeNovel .com. E-mail bcy@appletreepublishing.com. Richard Yonck is a foresight analyst for Intelligent Future LLC in Seattle. E-mail ryonck@intelligent-future.com. Carrie Anne Zapka is a microbiologist in R&D at GOJO Industries by day and an industrial and organizational psychology student by night. E-mail nuts4ideas@gmail.com.

John Sagi is a professor of business at Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, Maryland. He is on the board of AACC’s Institute for the Future. E-mail jsagi@aacc.edu. Tom Schaffnit is an internationally recognized expert in wireless telecommunications technology and co-author of The Comprehensive Guide to Wireless Technologies (first edition 1999, APDG Publishing). E‑mail tom@schaffnit.com.

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The Great Comeback: Bringing a Species Back from Extinction By Ben J. Novak What if extinction could be undone? The disappearance of the once-numerous passenger pigeon inspired one budding young geneticist to right a great ornithological wrong.

leven years ago, as an eighth grader from a school in Alexander, North Dakota, with fewer than 100 students, I won best project for my division of the State Science Fair. This victory would go on to decide the course of my life. I won with a project that was completely intellectual and had no experimental portion of any kind: It concerned the possibility of someday “cloning the dodo bird,” that iconic poster bird of extinction. At that science fair, a judge from the North Dakota Pigeon Association told me that the dodo bird was in the pigeon family. This fact nestled in my brain and grew. I had little conscious idea of what this i nkling of passion would soon become. A short time later, I was in a bookstore looking through a text on the history of conservation efforts by the National Audubon Society, a book I implored my parents to purchase for me. Thumbing through page after page, I came to a photograph. It was

a pigeon. Like the dodo bird, it was an extinct pigeon, but in shape it looked much more like the doves that flew over my prairie home and the pigeons that strut the streets of every city. It was the most beautiful bird I’d ever seen. I needed that photograph. This beautiful, bygone species is known as the passenger pigeon, and to the overcompensating Linnaean Latin science lovers it is Ectopistes migratorius. It was once the most numerous bird in the world, but this species succumbed to our activities. The last one died on September 1, 1914, her body found in her aviary at 1 p.m. The passenger pigeon was gone from the skies. I’ve made it my life’s work to bring it back. Finding the Materials to Do The Impossible I soon learned that I was too late to be the first one doing passenger piCOURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

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geon research. In the next year and a half, two papers would be published by two different labs studying passenger pigeon DNA. With these other groups conducting research, it proved to be difficult to get passenger pigeon samples. I shifted work to a new species and tried as hard as

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BEN J. NOVAK

Passenger pigeon specimens in the American Museum of Natural History.

I could to figure out how to get my hand into passenger pigeon research. I sent sample requests around the world for tissue to work with, hoping I could “sneak” it in amongst my current work until I got money for the expensive pieces of the process. I reworked the angle of the project and delved into harder-to-find rec ords: the archaeological specimens of the bird. Then, in February 2011, I went to Chicago’s Field Museum to sample mastodon fossils for my master ’s thesis project. I asked to visit the ornithology collection. Much to my surprise, Dave Willard, now the emeritus curator of birds at the museum, had seen my proposal for tissue many weeks earlier. In that moment, he was obliged to cut tiny spots of flesh from the feet of three passenger pigeon males shot near Troy, New York, 152 years ago. It was my first chance to ever hold the bird I love, and to see them so closely in hand was a culminating moment—one that, sadly, I feel more intensely now, looking back at the photographs of a smiling 24-year-old holding FMNH 47396.

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Tissue specimens cut from passenger pigeon toe pads.

Nine months later, I extracted the DNA and prepared it for sequencing, a process involving four very laborious days of work. Now I needed

the money to obtain the precious DNA code locked in what was now a tiny tube of clear liquid—almost a ghost of the once-living pigeon that

GARY KRAMER / U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

A band-tailed pigeon, close cousin of the extinct passenger pigeon.

flew over the trees of New York. My work has come a great distance since that tiny tube of clear liquid passed hands from mine into the lab tech at the sequencing facility. Just three weeks later, what was returned to me were digital files containing the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs of deciphered DNA fragments. In a sample like this, DNA might not come directly from the specimen; it can come from bacteria and tiny fungal spores growing on the specimen’s tissues during the century that it sat in a museum collection’s drawer. DNA from the curators— and eventually, even from myself— works its way into the tiny crevices of texture in the tissue. Two hundred thirty million DNA sequences resulted from the first run of my three passenger pigeons. Just 42

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over 250 million DNA sequences resulted from the second run. All of this DNA was held in between the thin glass walls of what to anyone would seem like a microscope slide; this is actually a flow cell for DNA sequencing, split into thin canals within the glass for DNA molecules to bind and replicate and be scanned throughout a process of repetitive binding reactions. Fragments of old dead DNA live out their final blasts of reanimated life in the reactions of our research, to become stagnant again in that flow cell for the rest of time—if anyone bothers to keep the cell. Mine is framed next to my passenger pigeon feathers. Of my nearly 500 million DNA sequences, about 50% of it is bacteria. A small fraction is human. And a

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small fraction is unknown in origin—a problem we won’t solve until we manage to sequence the DNA of every life-form on Earth. I know that there may be actually 40% passenger pigeon DNA in my data. Some of the unknown bits are pigeon DNA that doesn’t map to a previously published pigeon genome, that of the rock pigeon, because it is too different. Our DNA work with the band-tailed pigeon shows us that it is a much closer code reference to the passenger pigeon, proving to be its closest living relative. And thanks to that, as well, we now know that to rebuild a passenger pigeon we need to use the genome and tissues, as well as the potential parenting, of the band-tailed pigeon, Patagioenas fasciata. I’ve joined forces with a sweep of

other interested scientists to fully assemble the genome of the passenger pigeon and explore its natural history in a way that historical accounts have never afforded before. The Great Comeback The Great Comeback stands as one of the first de-extinction projects in the world. It will be the first project in history to bring an extinct bird back to life and set the precedent and protocol for this work in the future, from well-known birds to the ancient and mysterious. Imagine bringing back to life such legends as the dodo bird, once believed to be a mere Lewis Carroll fantasy; or the vibrant Carolina parakeet that brought streaks of green to New England winters; or the “penguin of the north,” the great auk. Birds such as these have inspired art and instilled a sense of beauty that has defined cultures throughout history. To build a future that includes them would be a powerful achievement, not just for science, but for humanity as a whole. Among these icons, the passenger pigeon stands out as potentially the m o s t s i g n i f i c a n t f o r e c o l o g y, research, breeding, and re-wilding prospects. How this work is formed is thus vitally important to the future of de-extinction. Project Phases The Great Comeback project’s five phases are as follows. Phase 1: Sequencing the genome and analyzing the genome. Goal: identifying the areas of the bandtailed pigeon genome to be modified and understanding passenger pigeon population biology and paleoecology. Phase 2: Cell research. Goal: producing cells that can be used to engineer a living passenger pigeon genome. Phase 3: Genome creation. Goal: synthesizing passenger pigeon DNA regions identified as significant in phase 1 and integrating these into band-tailed pigeon cells isolated in phase 2. Alter original cell line into multiple cell lines by inserting genetic diversity from phase 1 specimens.

Phase 4: Captive breeding. Goal: using altered cells from phase 3 to create rock pigeon/passenger pigeon breeding chimeras. These chimeras are used to breed pure passenger pigeons. Pure passenger pigeons produce a captive flock for sustainable population growth. Phase 5: Re-wilding. Goal: producing a naturally migrating and ecologically functional wild population of passenger pigeons. In the Beginning… Producing Technology The first big step of this project is producing cell cultures. Currently, this is a hot topic in avian biotech, as it is impossible to clone a bird in the way that mammals are cloned. Multiple pathways are being explored, so pursuing a variety of routes is necessary for our work. The main two cell types we are interested in are induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and primordial germ cells (PGCs). Ultimately, some type of germ cell, sperm, or PGC needs to be transmitted through a host parent to breed with passenger pigeons. The ideal host will be what in genetics is called a chimera, an organism derived from at least two distinct cell populations. In this case, one cell population would come from band-tailed pigeons and the other from passenger pigeons through techniques described below. Culturing PGCs directly to hold our passenger pigeon genome is the most efficient predicted route, but potentially the most difficult. Stem cells can provide multiple pathways for transmission of traits, as they may be able to be programmed into germ cells and even bypass that cell stage to produce sperm or egg cells. Stem cells can be worked with in the lab for many cell generations, which is necessary for the genome engineering we’ll need to do.

In short: Phase 2 focuses on developing the cell technologies to create a passenger pigeon breeding line. These cell technologies can be perfected in captive flocks of bandtailed pigeons and rock pigeons. The facilities for these birds can very well be the same facilities in which passenger pigeons will be bred and raised, and thus form an overlap between our phase 4 and phase 2 partners. Phase 3 takes the cells from phase 2 and the genetic understanding from phase 1 and creates a living passenger pigeon genome. This technology is being pioneered right now. We have already begun genome-sequencing work in a collaborative partnership with paleogenomics investigators Beth Shapiro and Ed Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and peripheral collaborators at the Smithsonian Institution who are interested in analyzing the species ecology. Sal A lvarez, a private bird breeder, has provided the necessary band-tailed pigeon embryos for cell culturing, and is lending his experience in dev e l o p i n g a c a re plan for captive b re e d i n g o f t h e new passenger pigeon. Advanced Cell Technology Inc., under the supervision of Robert Lanza, has joined the project for producing and experimenting with i PSCs. The lab of George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, will be handling the genome creation and engineering. The ability to synthesize sequences of passenger pigeon code into real DNA molecules has been improving each year from its inception in 2003. And as the synthesis of DNA increases in capability, it is simultaneously dropping in price. Synthesized passenger pigeon DNA code will be “written” into the genome of the band-tailed pigeon, swapping out the band-tailed pigeon DNA code for the equivalently posi-

“The ability to synthesize sequences of passenger pigeon code into real DNA molecules has been improving each year from its inception in 2003. And as the synthesis of DNA increases in capability, it is simultaneously dropping in price.”

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tioned passenger pigeon code in the chromosomes. In the end, a cell culture will exist that harbors the passenger pigeon genome. From this first cell culture, genetic diversity can be integrated, deciphered from the byproduct population genetic studies of this project. Immunity, or disease-fighting, genes, are one such type of gene in which multiple alleles in the population generate a healthy flock and keep inbreeding low. With multiple genetic cell lines, we can create a diverse population from the start of breeding, greatly increasing the efficiency of producing a viable species. The Hatching of a New Era These newly made passenger pigeon cells usher in the onset of phase 4. The production of a parent generation to host the passenger pigeon DNA depends upon the types of cells used to create the passenger pigeon genome. The type of parent created then sets the pace for captive breeding. Using PGCs—whether cultured purely or programmed from stem cells—will generate a chimera capable of breeding passenger pigeon chicks immediately. A second method that will yield passenger pigeons is to produce sperm from stem cells and use this sperm to inseminate band-tailed pigeons, creating hybrids (half bandtailed pigeon, half passenger pigeon). Artificial insemination is used extensively in modern poultry, with a high rate of success. By introducing the passenger pigeon sperm again to the first hybrid generation, we decrease the number of alleles descended from band-tailed pigeon. Repeating this step again and again will produce passenger pigeons with less than 1% band-tailed pigeon genes within five generations. From there, it can be almost completely bred out, similar to the concept of back breeding. The preparation and construction of phases 4 and 5 can begin. The needed facilities must factor in the requirements to raise passenger pigeons that behave naturally—a significant challenge for a species that will be born without its own parents, but not dissimilar to captive breed44

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ing projects that separate young from parents. Surrogate pigeon parents can be cosmetically dyed to resemble passenger pigeon coloration and fool chicks into seeing passenger pigeon parents. The life cycle of the passenger pigeon must be simulated from day one. The surrogate parents must be bred and trained several generations in advance to eat the same diet as the passenger pigeon. Weaning of the young at the precise time is important, as passenger pigeon development relies on the juveniles’ social cohort, rather than on parental guidance. Breeding facilities must replicate the forest environment where the passenger pigeons bred and lived in order to facilitate this social cohort formation. This will also force the birds to develop natural tendencies, such as foraging for food in the undergrowth rather than relying on provided food dishes. Zoo exhibits over the past century have emphasized habitat simulations, so, with the right team, much of this process is quite simple. These breeding facilities can be built at the same time that phase 1 and phase 2 are proceeding. The facilities should accommodate both rock pigeons and band-tailed pigeons for use as surrogate parents. The Challenges of Rerelease Releasing the species to the wild once a sustainable captive flock is produced represents the greatest challenge to the work, both biologically and politically. The regulatory issues for releasing these birds could be quite complicated, for instance. And communicating effectively about the science behind the project and its goals will be a challenge. One can anticipate alarms about any attempt to resurrect the dead (extinct). As for the biological challenges, a “soft-release approach” has shown to have the highest rate of success with bird species. This requires outdoor aviaries for raising birds, which exposes the birds to the habitat in a protected manner that allows them to acclimate. The passenger pigeon is a nomadic migrating species and needs to move from one area to an-

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other throughout the year: This will require multiple outdoor facilities in different zones. Here’s the good news. In finding their way across a new terrain, passenger pigeons may be able to rely on help from a relative. Homing pigeons can facilitate migration from one site to another, replicating exactly the historical way that passenger pigeon juveniles joined adult flocks. By using this cycle for several generations—moving from one site to another at random—it will be possible to train the slowly re-wilding population to move nomadically and not rely on any one site annually. Passenger pigeons in their historical abundance were too immensely dense in numbers to use the same spot more than a few seasons at a time, due to the available resources. Thus, the pigeons would cycle through different roosting and nesting sites over time, allowing regeneration. The first step here is to build up the population within the aviaries. This will also allow us to recreate the high-density social structure of the pigeons. Even at a small population size, the pigeons need to collectively learn the behaviors of the megaflocks they once were. As the population grows, they will be more densely packed into these aviaries. When the birds begin to fly from one site to the next in enormous numbers, and when the first generations ferry the next, we can take away the surrogate parents and surrogate flocks and take down the aviaries. The passenger pigeon will then rediscover the forests of its former habitat. At that point, we will have success: the de-extinction of the passenger pigeon. ❑ About the Author Ben J. Novak has studied ecology and evolution at Montana State University, specializing in paleontology, ecology, and genetics. His Great Comeback project is a Revive and Restore initiative under the Long Now Foundation, longnow.org/revive/projects/. Portions of this essay were adapted with permission from the Web site passengerpigeon.org/flights.html. Readers who are interested in joining the passenger pigeon de-extinction campaign are encouraged to visit the Great Comeback page on Facebook.

Actions to Save the World’s Trees BY RICK DOCKSAI

Halting deforestation will require the cooperation and coordination of the world’s governments, businesses, and civil society. Networks of activists are now slowing the destruction of forest areas, promoting sustainable farming and ranching practices, and restoring forest cover wherever possible. These efforts will not only benefit both human and forest well-being, but also help mitigate climate change.

PHOTOS: NASA AND (INSET) LANTHILDA / DREAMSTIME.COM

S THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ARE FELT ACROSS THE globe, Earth-conscious innovators pursue a list of technological wonders to offset our species’ carbon footprint: geoengineering, alternative energy, hybrid vehicles, etc. Each techno-fix shows some potential for success, and each might have a role to play in years to come. But let’s not forget one design feat that is fully within our means to deploy here and now: more trees. The efforts of governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations everywhere have begun to curb deforestation and bring some hitherto-destroyed forest areas back to life. As their efforts gain ground—and they can, with more support from citizens and communities worldwide—those trees will naturally reduce atmospheric carbon and boost both the planet’s health and ours.

The satellite imagery above shows vegetation across the globe. Dark green indicates forests. Inset photo: Swaths of rain forest in Brazil’s Panatanal region have been cut for farmland.

Global Forest Health Today Brazil hit a milestone in 2012: Forest loss that year, at 4,500 square kilometers, was the lowest since 1988—and a steep drop-off from the 27,000 square kilometers of forest cover that the country lost in 2004. Depletion of the Amazon’s forest cover had been widespread in the twentieth century as Brazil developed economically: The cleared forests made way for logging, cattle ranching, and farming of cash crops such as soybeans. Then, starting in the late 1980s, the government initiated measures to halt deforestation; more recently, it committed to bring-

can lead to improvements in farming and forest management.” Concerns over Brazil’s Amazon rain forests, which shrank by about 18% in the last century due to deforestation, have been growing steadily in Brazil and worldwide: The Amazon is home to between one-third and one-half of the world’s remaining tropical forest land. Another large share of world rainforest cover lies in Africa. Unfortunately it is in even more trouble. Impoverished African families and communities struggle to scratch out livelihoods from the land, as they have for generations, by foraging for wood to use as fuel and by clearing

BIDOUZE STÉPHANIE / DREAMSTIME.COM

Forests that disappear can sometimes be brought back, through community tree plantings, or “reforestation” efforts. This Thai villager has just planted a new mangrove tree in a forest in Satun, Thailand.

ing deforestation down to less than a fifth of the 2004 level by 2020. As of 2013, it is almost 80% there. Conservationists keep pushing for the forests’ viability over the long term. Deforestation continues, even if it is drastically reduced and no longer has the tacit acceptance of government and business leaders. “The situation is not stable yet. We have to consider we have a lot of achievements and good results, but we still have high rates of deforestation,” says Luis Fernando Guedes Pinto, certification manager for IMAFLORA, a Brazilian environmental conservation nonprofit that partners with the Rainforest Alliance. “We still need many interventions that 46

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forests to make way for small-scale farming. While Africans’ efforts to survive are indisputably justified, the toll on the continent’s natural resources is steep: Forests in Africa are being cleared nearly three times faster than the global average, according to the Forest Philanthropy Action Network (FPAN). Ghana and Nigeria each have only around 5% of the forest cover that they had 75 years ago. Particularly severe deforestation is also taking place in Liberia, Kenya, Uganda, and areas of Cameroon, Sudan, and Ethiopia. FPAN names small-scale agriculture as a principal contributing cause. Fuel needs are another cause,

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since communities comb their neighboring forests for wood chips and branches that they can feed to their wood-burning stoves. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, fuel accounts for about 80% of the wood that African consumers use every year. Worldwide, 32 million acres of forests—an area almost the size of Nicaragua—are cleared each year. This is an improvement over the rates of two decades ago: The net rate for global deforestation totaled 0.14% from 2005 to 2010, versus 0.20% from 1990 to 2000. Moreover, domestic forest acreage either held steady or grew during the 2005-2010 time frame in 80 countries, including China, Costa Rica, India, the Philippines, Russia, the United States, and Uruguay. Nevertheless, reduced global deforestation is still deforestation. While the world’s forests are shrinking more slowly, they are shrinking. And as they do, the Earth’s capacity for capturing and storing planetwarming carbon dioxide shrinks along with it. At the present rates, deforestation accounts for 10%–15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to FPAN, since every tree, when chopped, releases its store of carbon dioxide. As a comparison, guess how much carbon-dioxide generation traceable to human activity comes just from automobile traffic. According to the World Resources Institute, it’s around 15%.

Certifying Forest-Friendly Farm Practices Examples of remediation efforts are all around us. Governments, businesses, and nonprofit groups are teaming up to stop the human activities that are contributing to forest destruction and to bring back lost forest cover wherever possible. It is doable, but it takes a concerted effort, constant commitment by all to keep improving the methods and results. “If we just stop here and make everything ‘sustainable at today’s levels,’ that’s not really sustainable. We need to think differently. Simply just being a bit more sustainable

than we are now, I don’t think is going to cut it,” said Ian Cheshire, director of Kingfisher, a home- i m p ro v e m e n t re t a i l c o m p a n y. Cheshire spoke during the May 15, 2013, workshop “Greenovation: How the Certification and Sustainability Sectors Are Reinventing the Future of Their Industries,” which was convened in New York City by the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. Kingfisher is one of the millions of companies, farms, and ranches to whom the Rainforest Alliance has been administering training, certification, and continuing oversight and support in making their business practices as environmentally friendly as possible. The Rainforest Alliance formed in the late 1980s, when global awareness of the plight of tropical forests was on the rise. Bucking the stereotype of environmental activism locked in a war of wills against business interests, the organization was an early proponent of “smart wood”—i.e., procuring timber at moderate rates and with due concern for the forests’ health—and market-driven forestry certification, by which businesses could choose to learn environmentally healthy practices and receive recognition when they make those practices standard throughout their operations. The Rainforest Alliance works with the Sustainability Action Network (SAN), an organization whose activities include the development of standards of sustainable farming and ranching. The Alliance teaches these standards to participating farmers and ranchers and then follows up with them to make sure that they are making progress on their farms and ranches toward meeting the standards. Those who do meet the standards are officially “certified” and get to post a Rainforest Alliance seal of approval on their products’ packaging. “The whole point of certification is to give people directions or goals and to ensure that they’re moving in those directions, and to use the certifications to communicate to the world that they’re continuing to improve,” says Karen Lewotsky, manager of sustainable agriculture at the Rainforest Alliance. The Alliance has worked with

more than 11 million producers since its founding. As of March 2013, it has certified 174 million acres worldwide—added up, a land mass almost the size of Chile. Rainforest Alliance– certified farms now produce 10.2% of the world’s cocoa, 11.2% of its tea, and 15% of its bananas. Its share of the world’s coffee is smaller, at 4.6%, but the potential for growth is certainly there, given growing publicity. Kenco, Kraft, and McDonald’s all served Rainforest Alliance–certified coffee at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The standards include dozens of individual rules that cover the full range of environmental and human health, including requiring crop rotation, restrictive pesticide and fertilizer usage, the maintenance of minimum distances between crops, and the construction of protective barriers along neighboring rivers and other waterways. There are also guidelines for humane treatment of the farm animals and adequate pay, benefits, and labor conditions for all farm workers.

Certification also requires certain quantities of crops to be grown under the shade of trees. The bar is higher for coffee and cocoa farmers, who must keep at least 40% of their crops under the shade of forest cover. This rule isn’t in place just so that there will be more trees. Shadegrown coffee and cocoa plants require less water and fertilizer, in addition to producing more stable yields year-to-year. Also, the trees’ roots act as a buffer protecting waterways from harmful runoff and land erosion. The soil and any accompanying manure and agrochemicals cling to the roots instead of washing into nearby lakes and streams. The water ecosystems and, of course, the forests that feed off of them are all healthier as a result.

How Healthier Forests Improve Agriculture These forest-cover stipulations make economic as well as environmental sense. The coffee and cocoa farmers attest that the shade cover

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A coffee farmer on a Rainforest Alliance– certified farm in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region weeds by hand instead of using potentially harmful herbicides, and then uses the organic material he gathers for a compost pile.

The standards additionally include a stipulation that the farmers and ranchers set aside portions of their land as protected reserves on which no development will take place. As of 2013, certified farms and ranches across the globe have designated 28 million acres of land as protected reserves. www.wfs.org

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improves the flavor of their coffee crops. Since enough consumers seem to agree, the certified farmers earn a premium for their shaded coffee once it sells. The certification standards raise productivity, too: In Côte d’Ivoire, home to 40% of the world’s cocoa supply, certified cocoa farms grow

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508 pounds of cocoa per acre, compared with an average of 294 on the noncertified farms. Financial gains from certification extend to numerous other crops, as well. Overall, Ivoirians whose farms are certified are earning $161 per acre, compared with $45 per acre for noncertified farms. In March 2012, the Fazendas São Marcelo Ltda. chain of ranches in Brazil became the first-ever beef producers to gain Rainforest Alliance certification. The chain’s four ranches,

enjoy shade on hot days just as people do, explains Lewotsky. That makes a difference in overall cattle growth and the quality of the beef. Building embankments along the waterways is yet another sustainable practice that the ranches have put in place. The ranchers plant trees near the shores to hold off erosion, and they build rock paths near the water along which the cows may walk. As Lewotsky points out, the rock paths prevent the cows from plodding around in the mud and inadver-

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Cattle graze amid overhead trees, whose shade cover makes the cows more comfortable and benefits the surrounding ecosystem.

located in the Mato Grosso state of western Brazil and holding 60,000 cattle on 79,000 acres of farmland, has 32,000 acres of rain-forest land set aside as a buffer zone between the pastures and the forests. As a bonus to the environment, that reserve is also a popular shelter area for migrating birds and other wildlife. The cows get a natural feed that reduces methane emissions—no small perk, given that livestock are the source of 18% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the Rainforest Alliance. And their pastures are dotted with groves of trees, which give the cows shade cover from heat, wind, and rain. The green cover compensates for some of the forest land that the ranchers initially had to clear. It also makes the cows happier and healthier. Cows 48

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tently dislodging more of its dirt (and their own manure) into the adjacent water. In the year since the Fazendas group attained its certification, the Rainforest Alliance and partner nonprofits have been disseminating these same sustainable ranching methods to other cattle growers far and wide. Thus, more ranches elsewhere have also attained certification. And in March 2013, Gucci unveiled a new line of bags, all made using leather from Rainforest Alliance–certified ranches.

Sustainability Sells That McDonald’s, Kraft, and Gucci would all go through the trouble of adding certified-sustainable products to their inventories really isn’t a

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surprise. Demand for environmentally friendly products is growing among the world’s consumers. If a product is verifiably green, then a large number of potential buyers will choose it over a competitor product that isn’t, all other factors being equal. A 2012 poll from Harris Interactive found that 79% of Americans actively search for green products, and 31% say they would pay extra for products that were more environmentally sustainable than other products (versus 28% who said so in 2010). The number is higher, 45%, among 18- to 24-year-olds. A full quarter of U.S. adults in the survey identified environmental issues as “extremely” important. “Ultimately there is a certain level of profitability, and you’ve got buyers all over the world who are concerned about this,” says Lewotsky. “Buyers want that reassurance. They’re going into the store and saying ‘What am I willing to pay for?’” This same environmental awareness is likewise gaining traction among companies’ shareholders, who are becoming more likely to expect business operations to live up to standards of sustainability. Thus, the producers feel an incentive from above to replace environmentally harmful practices with more benign ones, and the retailers come under pressure to line their store shelves with green products. “There is an expectation. You look at almost any large organization these days you’re going to come across some sort of sustainability manager. They’re looking at how to increase sustainability in the company,” Lewotsky says. “That’s something people will seek out and will talk about. And you can do it at a lot of different places in the supply chain.” The process requires multiple levels of buy-in, however. “Certification is a great vehicle for bringing some of the messages across. But unless all of the stakeholders, particularly the government and industry, get together and get this done, we will only make a small dent on the issue of sustainability, unfortunately,” according to Daudi Lelijveld, vice president of sustain

Businesses Helping Businesses Be More Sustainable

h e t e a c o m p a n y Te t l e y latched onto sustainable growing and manufacturing in the early 1990s, and by the middle of the decade it had instituted resource-saving and ecosystempreserving measures within every step of its supply chain. Its leadership then decided to help other businesses to do the same. So it reached out to the multinational Unilever with a proposal that the two companies collaborate to monitor each other ’s supply chains. Unilever agreed and, in 1997, cofounded with Tetley the Ethical Tea Partnership. The initiative now has 50 tea makers under its umbrella. Each one commits to having teams of monitors regularly visit its tea plantations to ensure that the laborers work under fair labor condi-

ability at the Alliance-certified cocoa grower Barry Callebaut, which runs numerous sustainable cocoa farms in Côte d’Ivoire. Brazil is arguably a great test case in what can happen when stakeholders from many sectors work together. Starting in the 1980s, Brazilian government leaders were well aware of the slow death that the Amazon was suffering from human activity. The officials went to work cordoning off swaths of rain forest as national parks and enacting new legal curbs on forest destruction. In the last few years, the government has utilized satellite technology to step up these protective measures. Brazil’s space agency deployed satellites to gather data on forest cover all across the country, and the national environmental agency studied the satellite photos to spot signs of troubled areas and organize teams of on-the-ground monitors to visit the sites. “Brazil has had an outstanding space program for three decades, and so they’re using that technology to better monitor deforestation

tions and that standards for water use, energy consumption, chemical usage, waste management, ecosystem conservation, and other environmental indicators are all adequate. It’s not often that one hears of a business helping another business to improve its production methods, especially when both businesses are competitors—Unilever’s product line includes tea and other beverages. But Tetley’s leadership was willing to think beyond sheer competitive advantage, and the whole industry is arguably better for it. Tetley merged with Tata in 2000, and so its operations are now within the Rainforest Alliance network of certified businesses. Plenty of other businesses within this network share the Tetley executives’

throughout the region,” says Gary Hartshorn, president and CEO of the World Forestry Center. Government officials have seized 2,000 square meters of illegally cut timber in the past year alone. The confiscated wood gets sold at auctions, with the proceeds directed to environmental conservation programs. Meanwhile, IMAFLORA and other nonprofit groups have been teaching communities about the benefits of forest conservation and methods that the communities can employ to farm the land more sustainably. In meeting the nation’s goal of slowing deforestation, Brazilian leaders credit the combined efforts of public–private monitoring and corrective action with making a big difference in a relatively short time frame.

Meeting Africa’s Wood Demands Communities throughout Africa value their forests, but they also need to survive. Lack of infrastrucwww.wfs.org

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belief in the value of helping other businesses, even rival businesses, on sustainability. Kingfisher, for example, is leading open-source dialogues with other companies on developing performance indicators and recommendations for businesses to improve their impacts on the environment. It will disseminate the finalized methods over the next few years. “We cannot rely on the consumer to lead the change. It’s up to us to try and make a difference. It’s up to us to learn from each other,” said Chris Coates, director of sales for IndoTeak Design, a Rainforest Alliance-certified maker of teak wood products, during the May 2013 Greenovation workshop. —Rick Docksai

ture and lack of money leave too many Africans having to choose between either chopping down trees and overhunting, or not having food and fuel. If they and the rest of the world community want to save Africa’s forests, then economic improvement will have to take place, Hartshorn says. “Not knowing where the next meal is coming from, it’s understandable they might be running snares or hunting for bush meat,” he says. “It’s pretty fundamental that you have socioeconomic development that allows people to think about tomorrow and not just about today.” Africa’s forests face continued assaults from logging and the collection of wood for fuel. But FPAN sees great potential for relief from another form of sustainable industry: wood plantations. The planters maintain set plots of trees that they replenish with new seedlings continuously, ensuring steady incomes for themselves and consistent supplies of wood for the local markets. Plantations produce substantially

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more wood per acre than do natural forests. Domestic timber plantations are a sizable industry in certain parts of the tropics, though there are relatively few in Africa. FPAN projects that Africa could establish enough domestic timber plantations to supply wood fuels to all Africans who needed them, and that the amount of required land would be a mere 20% of the total square mileage of forests that are now being exploited. Helping African households obtain fuel-efficient stoves would be another huge improvement, according to FPAN. The organization estimates that, if Kenya’s 6 million rural households were outfitted with fuel-

parts of the globe, he notes. So private donors should consider offering financial support to help cover such subsidies, expand the distribution systems for fuels, and, in addition, help shore up individual republics’ struggling environmental protection agencies. World government leaders who want to help, meanwhile, might consider Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) agreements: i.e., paying developing countries not to clear their threatened forests. The receiving countries use the money for creating forest reserves, promoting land conservation within the communities

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At this tree plantation, young saplings are raised in rows within protective netting. Once they mature, they will replace the trees that loggers have previously cut.

efficient stoves, the country’s annual fuel wood consumption would be reduced by 50%. This would translate to 8.4 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere per year. Here, too, government cooperation with nonprofits can help, in this case for guiding the placement of new plantations and enacting incentives to spur consumer demand. B ernard Mercer, co-founder of FPAN, favors more plantations established close to urban centers and governmental subsidies to incentivize buying wood from plantations. Most of Africa’s governments are considerably weaker and more cashpoor than their counterparts in other 50

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that live on forested land, enacting and enforcing limits on logging, and restoring forest cover. The World Bank oversees several REDD programs, while the UN’s REDD Programme, founded in 2008, now provides funds to the forest-conservation programs of 16 partner countries, including Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Zambia. UN delegates from rain forest nations had been arguing for including REDD in climate-change-reduction initiatives precisely because of deforestation’s role in raising greenhouse-gas emissions. FPAN agrees and hopes to see REDD put in place in every

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country throughout Africa. But REDD programs are far from perfect. First, solid data on the partner countries’ present deforestation and their conservation efforts are sparse. It is an open debate as to how much good REDD programs have achieved for the targeted forest regions so far. Additionally, many African countries that are not yet REDD program partners might have great difficulty qualifying, due to inadequate governance, underdeveloped infrastructure, and poor public-sector and private-sector transparency. Also, there is too little data on forest degradation—i.e., forest environments not necessarily cleared in full, but critically damaged from being stripped of wood for fuel or due to wildlife populations being depleted by poachers, for instance. According to Mercer, a REDD program will be more effective when there are private-sector initiatives developing profitable REDD projects. Cap-and-trade mechanisms that would let businesses purchase and sell “forest-carbon credits” is one solution that Mercer strongly supports. In a 2011 interview with environmental news service MongaBay.com, he said that the enactment of an international forest-carbon-credit law would be “the best news for African governments.” He pointed out that a number of philanthropists and foundations are encouraging the admission of forest-carbon credits into the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

Economic Growth versus Forest Growth The lands that constitute presentday Costa Rica were solid forest when Columbus and his men set foot in the region in the 1490s. By 1987, slash-and-burn farming and ranching had left forests covering a mere 23% of the country, but forest cover rebounded to 57% of Costa Rica by 2007. What happened in that short 20year span to bring so much forest acreage back so quickly? World Forestry Center ’s Hartshorn credits many factors, including aggressive conservation measures and the im-

position of gasoline taxes to pay for land restoration. But he gives one factor ultimate importance: a growing economy. New jobs opened up in industries such as software, as multinationals like Intel set up new facilities in the country. Ecotourism also offered young people satisfying new careers that promoted the forests to the outside world instead of draining it of its resources. As a result, progressively more Costa Ricans found livelihoods in occupations other than farming, and consequently there were declining numbers of farmers seeking land for crops and herds in the first place. “There has been a lot of abandonment of pasture lands,” Hartshorn says. Industrial growth is typically not a trend that environmental activists presume to be a boon for the environment. That is understandable, since any industry can harm ecosystems if its operators go about it in the wrong way. But consider the ecological situation of Europe, North America, and other comparatively affluent parts of the world with the beleaguered forests of Africa. Those countries that are wealthier have cleaner air and water, healthier forests, and much larger swaths of protected land than their less-affluent counterparts, for the simple reason that with greater economic wealth comes more funding that can go toward conservation. Additionally, there are many more job opportunities in sectors that do not require felling trees to make way for subsistence-level farming.

Forest Conservation in a Hungry, Growing World The world community now understands the unique value of forests more than ever, and it is doing more than ever to make sure that healthy forests will stay with us forever. But the room for improvement is still vast, while the window of time for achieving it is drawing to a close. Today, 387.5 million acres of the planet’s forests are now safely under sustainable management. If the world community committed itself to it, we could restore another 3.7

For More Information Organizations: World Forestry Center, www.worldforestry.org Rainforest Alliance, www.rainforest-alliance.org World Resources Institute, www.wri.org Forests Philanthropy Action Network, www.forestsnetwork.org/

Publications: “State of the World’s Forests 2012.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2012. “About the UN-REDD Programme.” UN-REDD Programme. 2009 Moukkadem, Karimeh. “How Do We Save Africa’s Forests?” MongaBay.com. June 19, 2011.

billion acres of hitherto-destroyed or degraded forest land, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. But the planet continues to lose 35.8 million acres of forests each year. Human activity still encroaches on forests, and the near future bears troubling trends: Demand for beef is soaring, especially in China, India, and other emerging economies, adding to the pressure to clear more forest land for cattle. Add to this the compound problem of climate change, which not only threatens forests directly, but also compromises farmers’ crop yields, inducing them to possibly destroy more forest land to make way for more crops. The end result is more climate change: Trees sequester huge volumes of carbon dioxide when alive and release it when cut. So a vicious cycle will likely persist, progressively lowering both human and environmental health as it continues. Forest cover is one of our surest defenses against further global www.wfs.org

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warming, and one of the simplest ones to deploy. There is no technological innovating required to plant an acre of trees. The means have been with us for millennia, and the costs and risks are immensely less than constructing new arrays of solar panels or wind turbines or pursuing geoengineering schemes. Alternative-energy systems will indisputably form a critical component in humanity’s long-term progression toward sustainable living. It’s possible that some geoengineering ventures will also play a role. But the consensus among sustainability-minded activists, entrepreneurs, scholars, and public officials is increasingly clear: No longterm solution will be complete unless it includes protecting and expanding our forests. ❑

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

September-October 2013

The New Renaissance Is In Our Hands

By Rolf Jensen People’s trust in government, major businesses, organized religion, and other traditional institutions is at a historic low, but there is a silver lining: We are placing more and more trust in each other. An unprecedented age of individual initiative will soon be fully upon us.

e shall all spend the rest of our lives in the future. That’s why it is a fascinating subject. How will society change during the next 10 years when (we would hope) the economic crisis is over? We need answers. The Renaissance Society—a theory and a scenario—is our answer. How do you decide whether to buy a ticket to a new movie, or to purchase a new book? In an earlier era, you might have consulted professional reviews in the newspaper. Today, you would make your decision by listening to friends and colleagues, or even other consumers posting comments on Twitter and other social media channels. This is a case in point of a much larger change in the social and political fabrics of most Western societies right now: We are connecting more with our peers and placing our trust in “people like me.” This presents a significant shift in the way we comprehend our roles, responsibilities, and possibilities as individuals in our society.

OPPOSITE PAGE: ANDREAS MEHL / BIGSTOCK

From the First to the Second Renaissance We are heading toward a new type of society, driven forward by regular people rather than established, centralized institutions. It is a “Renaissance Society” in that the social situation is the same as that of the historical Renaissance era that emerged 600 years ago in northern Italy. At that time, the Vatican had lost its iron grip on the populations of Europe, due to two popes competing for power—one in Rome and the other in Avignon, France. Coupled with this was the extreme uncertainty brought on by recurring epidemics of plague. The resulting loss of trust in the established authorities unleashed an avalanche of energy and creativity. Gutenberg’s printing press accelerated the spread of new ideas, just as social media is doing today. What happened was soon called the Ren aissance, meaning a rebirth. It was a spiritual revolution in art, in science, and in the exploration of the world, a period we now view as the golden

age that succeeded the “dark” Middle Ages. Today, people certainly have much more personal freedom than their Renaissance-era counterparts. We have democracy, and we are immensely better educated. But still, society is a top-down one; it is organized as a hierarchy. Gradually, this hierarchy is becoming flatter, and it is happening because of better education and because of technology. Common people are transforming the social dialogue from a top-down one to a horizontal one because we trust “people like me.” That’s why a second renaissance is approaching in the Western world. We h a v e t h r e e megatrends re inforcing each other: The first is the declining trust in big institutions, the second is social media, and the third is new technology for manufacturing. Let’s have a look at the figures. They tell us where we are heading. According to Pew Research Center, the public’s trust in the U.S. government has declined from 75% in the 1960s to 25% as of 2010. The figures from other Western countries are similar: According to the Euro barometer, the percentage of UK voters who expressed trust in their government declined from an already-low 34% in 2005 to 21% in 2012. And the percentage of Danish respondents who said yes when asked “do you trust politicians to make the right decisions for the country” fell from 58% in 1971 to 32% in 2011, according to a survey published by the Danish business magazine Mandag Morgen and the market-research firm Synovate. CEOs of large corporations are only trusted by 45% of the U.S. population. In contrast, teachers are

trusted by 84%, according to Gallup. Confidence in organized religion declined from 68% in 1975 to 44% in 2011. Gallup has also asked adults about the chances that today’s youth will have a better life than their parents, to which 50% responded that it is unlikely. Put together, these figures are alarming because they represent a long-term trend, not just some reaction to the economic crisis. We can expect it to continue—and fear it may end in a revolution. However, we are not dealing with some ideological issue. It’s just that people are losing trust in their institutions and trust their own views more. Ordinary people are taking back responsibility for their own lives. That is not a revolution; it is a positive trend. A revolution is a protest. The ren aissance trend is not a protest, but a positive action that is not directed against top-down information, even though it is undermining it. The solution for all big institutions is a fundamental change in the way they communicate with the public. They must do what a few big companies have already started to do: join the horizontal dialogue. Social media have created a horizontal dialogue. The Internet has revolutionized the flow of information from a top-down, hierarchical flow to a horizontal one. People don’t need to go to the movies; they can stream whatever their friends recommend on Amazon or Netflix. Or they can make their own movies and find their own audiences: YouTube gets 800 million visitors every month. We are selling and buying on eBay, and we are publishing our own books. In some not-too-distant future, most of us will become au-

“Common people are transforming

the social dialogue from a top-down

one to a horizontal one because

we trust ‘people like me.’”

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thors, and perhaps even movie directors. The digital world, the world of bits, is transforming the social fabric of the rich nations of the world, and the renaissance trend is winning. The enabler is the Internet, the great equalizer of this century. Today, we have access to almost all of the same information as the government. The Third Industrial Revolution The world of bits is also invading the physical world, the world of atoms. A new industrial revolution is going to happen within the next 10 years. The first revolution was the factory; the next was the assembly line. The coming one is about nanotechnology and, especially, the 3-D printer. The 3-D printer produces all kind of objects, from vases to bicycles. It will make the one-person factory possible and eventually take the position of the assembly line as the way we produce stuff. Imagine millions of small factories manufacturing products and selling them all over the world. All of us can become entrepreneurs—thanks to the Internet market—and sell all over the world. The 3-D printer is not competitive in mass production, but it does not need to be: The consumer trend is toward personalized stuff. We want to tell our story through our products. Again, we have the trend from big to small, from the few to the many, from top-down to you and me—a truly horizontal world. The Renaissance Society is the scenario for Western societies, the most mature economies. The United States was extremely successful in creating economic growth in the last century. For Americans, the twentieth century was a golden era of materialism. They were proud of their manufacturing industry, and rightly so. While poverty still existed, most people had enough. Society had satisfied, more or less, our material needs, at least compared with past eras and compared with the rest of the world. This was—and still is— the material dream fulfilled. Now we’re looking for the next dream, a new era of growth—not 54

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material growth, but growth in thriving and happiness. In 10 years, we will supplement the GDP figures with the happiness index. Some

“Now we’re looking for the next dream, a new era of growth— not material growth, but growth in thriving and happiness.”

future president will promise not more wealth, but more happiness in society. In China and most of the rest of Asia, common people are now fulfilling their material dream, working just as hard as Westerners did when a bigger car and a bigger house was a realistic dream. The Asian material dream may be fulfilled in 20 years’ time, or even a little less. Until then, we have an asymmetry in dreams: material versus nonmaterial. However, the need to act in a forward-looking and creative way rests with the United States and the other most mature economies. Imagination and thousands of ideas are all necessary. How Will the Renaissance Society Transform the Way We Live? When the PC first appeared on our desks, when the Internet was invented, and when the mobile phone became our companion, it was impossible to predict what would happen. Great things happened because millions of people contributed with their ideas and innovations. At this moment, as in these past instances, we have only seen the beginning. Some clues to our future are appearing above the horizon: • The 3-D printer will enable mil-

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lions of entrepreneurs, or “makers” (former Wired editor Chris Anderson’s word for them), to start their own small factories. Today, a few hundred companies decide about the products we may need in a given arena, be it in technology, fashion, or anything else. When we have millions of small companies, an avalanche of ideas will emerge. A few years ago, a small company would sell to the local market and to friends. Thanks to the Internet and better search engines, the small company can reach a worldwide marketplace. • The government, especially on the local level, will transform into what Anne-Marie Slaughter in The WIRED World in 2013 calls “government as platform.” Imagine the government as just the control tower. It will not operate the planes like governments do (figuratively speaking) today. Family and neighborhood groups, who know their communities best, will take care of many of the services done by government. • If you want to start a company or make a film, you once would have to ask the bank for a loan. But now, you can ask the public—worldwide—to fund your project. If people like your idea, it will get funding. It has begun as just one crowdfunding Web site, Kickstarter .com, has funded 37,000 projects and raised $500 million since its debut in 2009. Remember, we have only seen the beginning. • The company may ask its R&D department to develop a certain idea, or it will ask the public—that is to say, it will crowdsource it. Somewhere in the world, some people will always have a better solution than the ones that the internal experts can offer. This way of outsourcing R&D is possible today thanks to the myriad Web sites connecting companies and outside experts. • For centuries, students have been attending classes where they sit and listen to some teacher and take notes. Online education is the new idea. The students will learn from home. It’s flexible, they have the best teachers in the world at their fingertips, and it will only cost a fraction of the price of offline education. Students still have to show up for the

Book Review: The Next Renaissance Is Global The Renaissance Society: How the Shift from Dream Society to the Age of Individual Control Will Change the Way You Do Business by Rolf Jensen and Mika Aaltonen. McGraw-Hill. 2013. 194 pages. $28.

Fourteenth-century Europe was arguably a grim place: recurring plagues, bloody wars, and high-stakes power struggles sowing discord among the kings and the papacy. But it was in this environment that the Renaissance emerged. In like fashion, the economic and social unease of our present day may be the incubator for an all-new Renaissance era that will sweep across the globe, argue Rolf Jensen, business advisor and “imagination officer,” and Mika Aaltonen, CEO and researcher. The dream of achieving material wealth through hard work ran deep in Western societies in the twentieth century and led to better living standards than the world has ever seen. That material dream has now taken root in Eastern societies and is attaining a similar result. Within a few decades, the Americas, east and south Asia, and

exams, however. One company, Coursera, cooperates with a lot of universities and already has 3 million students. Most of the students will not complete the study, but some will. At the moment, this type of worldwide education is free. It’s a small beginning, but soon, online study will transform one of the largest industries in any country. A new globalized industry will emerge with lower costs for students. • Marketing has been a top-down exercise for more than a hundred years—advertising in newspapers and on TV. That is about to end. Companies will have to join the horizontal dialogue—i.e., social media.

Europe will all be more or less equal in wealth. But while Asia’s economies keep growing, Western societies’ growth will stall unless they discover new dreams. The authors see potential new ones forming already. Individuals are pursuing innovation and ideas like never before and are increasingly basing their lives around personal fulfillment instead of the acquisition of material goods. This new “renaissance” is visible in such trends as collaborative, crowdsourced scientific research; “nomad” professionals who work primarily from their own homes or local cafés; and organized religious practice declining while individualistic spirituality takes its place. People are doing away with topdown management, hierarchy, and control, and are organizing themselves from the ground level up. What’s taking shape is a more individualized society—less manageable, but also richer and more diverse. Companies that want to attract

Many companies, like Procter & Gamble, are doing this already. Or they will have to communicate directly with the customer, just as Amazon, the leading online shop, is doing already, because they know from their database about the interests of each customer. You will only get the offers that are relevant to you. The future is about change. Socie ties have always changed, but the next 10 years could mean bigger changes than we have ever experienced before. It is not a revolution. It is not a protest. It is our society transforming gradually, like a glacier—slowly but surely. Seen in the www.wfs.org

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buyers had best make products that appeal to buyers’ values, aspirations, and personal identities— or, better still, offer products that customers can design and customize themselves, the authors advise. And if they want to optimize their own workforces, they must offer their employees opportunities to be part of a larger organizational mission and infuse sound ethics and values into all company operations. Jensen and Aaltonen present examples of companies that are exemplifying all of these new modes of business. The authors describe the emergence of this renaissance in the West, but Eastern societies should pay attention, too. Once Eastern consumers attain the West’s living standards, they will very likely want a new “renaissance” like the West, as well. At a time when countless commentators are expressing dismay over the excessive power and capital resting in the hands of a small g ro u p o f e l i t e s , J e n s e n a n d A altonen make a strong case for confidence that an equalizing shake-up really is in the works. The Renaissance Society is a refreshing and inspiring read for anyone with an interest in the future of commerce and global society. —Rick Docksai

longer term, we will have a new society, the Renaissance Society. ❑ About the Author Rolf Jensen is a futurist, consultant, and the chief imagination officer for the Dream Company. He is the author of The Dream Society (McGraw-Hill, 1999), which drew from his May-June 1996 article for THE FUTURIST. His latest book, with co-author Mika Aaltonen, is The Renaissance Society: How the Shift from Dream Society to the Age of Individual Control Will Change the Way You Do Business (McGraw-Hill, 2013). He may be contacted by e-mail at rj@dreamcompany.dk.

THE FUTURIST

September-October 2013

Book Reviews Edited by Rick Docksai The Weaponized Web? Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace by Ronald J. Deibert. McLelland & Stewart. 2013. 312 pages. $29.99.

The Internet’s evolution has taken a troubling new course over the last decade, according to Ronald Deibert, politicalscience professor and director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. Whereas its innovators used to promote open communication and the Web’s potential to connect users, they are now increasingly focused on surveillance and censorship. While cybercriminals do pose real threats, Deibert acknowledges, he finds that governments and businesses are having difficulty simultaneously keeping the Internet secure and ensuring users’ privacy and freedoms of information and association. As Web technology grows more sophisticated, it collects ever-growing troves of data about us and our everyday activities. Third-party companies and law-enforcement officers exploit this data with growing

impunity. This holds true not only in authoritarian countries, where governments use new Web surveillance tools to monitor and suppress dissidents and human-rights groups, but in democracies, too, where nationalsecurity agencies invest hundreds of millions of dollars yearly in software to both deter hackers and keep a watch on private citizens’ Internet use. Meanwhile, counterforces of vigilante Anonymous movements orchestrate denial-of-service and hacker attacks against corporations, government agencies, and individuals whose actions arouse their ire. While many observers admire the Anonymous groups, Deibert worries that they could cripple normal public discourse online if they become too active. Of further concern to Deibert, regulations prohibit many forms of experimentation with software and thus make systems everywhere needlessly vulnerable. Intellectualproperty laws and other regulations that are meant to protect IT entrepreneurs make it more difficult for the Web systems to adapt, even though criminal networks roll out new malware and cyberweapons with frightening speed.

Don’t Miss a Single Session! Listen to WorldFuture 2013 on Audio and Multimedia CDs. World Future Society partner IntelliQuest Media is offering both multi media CD-ROMs (which include available presentation materials and iPod or computer-playable MP3 files) and audio CDs playable on standard players. Individual sessions may also be ordered on audio CDs or downloaded as MP3s. To order your CDs, visit www.intelliquestmedia.com or call IntelliQuest Media toll free at 866-651-2586.

The environmental and socioeconomic challenges that the whole world faces make it all the more essential that we have an open and unimpeded global Internet platform for connecting people to work cooperatively. Deibert calls for civic leaders and government leaders everywhere to jointly develop rules and oversight structures that will protect Internet users from legitimate harms while affirming their rights to debate, discuss, and solve society’s problems. Black Code is a firsthand, highly technical look at the looming challenges facing the Internet, written by a tech expert who has spent years living and working in the thick of it. It will be interesting reading to anyone who is concerned for the Web’s future and what we can do to shape it.

Uses and Misuses of Neuroscience Intervention in the Brain: Politics, Policy, and Ethics by Robert H. Blank. MIT Press. 2013. 370 pages. $34.

Medicine’s capabilities for intervening in brain function are expanding rapidly, but might these interventions have unintended consequences? Political-science professor Robert H. Blank calls for an expansion of dialogue by the medical community with social scientists, policy analysts, and the media and general public about what the science can do and where it might progress. Blank delves into the latest directions in neuroscience scholarship and the conflicting theories surrounding each one. Scientists are increasingly recognizing the influence of emotions and instincts on politics, culture, and consumers’ buying and spending habits, he explains. They’re also learning how genes and the environment interact to predispose some individuals to aggression or to criminal and antisocial behaviors— one corollary of which is growing

use of neuroimaging in criminal trial proceedings to determine whether defendants’ brain wiring makes them prone to commit their suspected crimes and, if so, to what extent they can be considered accountable. Social scientists and brain scientists alike are reconsidering how we understand personal autonomy, personal identity, and individual rights. In addition, some advertisers hope to use neuroimaging to craft better marketing campaigns, even though the technology’s actual usefulness for marketing purposes is unknown. Some public-policy scholars suggest that new neuroscience findings on the roots of intergroup conflict and prejudices could hold implications for international relations and conflict resolution. Blank voices concerns over how general society will interpret the research. Our expanding knowledge about biochemistry’s influence on human behavior could, on the one hand, lead to more empathy for individuals who exhibit antisocial or psychotic behaviors, and expanded efforts to help them manage their conditions. On the other hand, it might result in forced interventions on individuals who exhibit problematic genes or neuroimaging results, and maybe the implementation of involuntary screening procedures that marginalize and restrict said individuals from mainstream society. Public discussion on all of these issues is deficient, Blank argues. When the media publicize neuroscience developments at all, they tend to misrepresent the science, oversimplify study findings, or overly hype certain developments and give viewers false hopes of impending wonder cures. Society will need a much more informed debate to make sound decisions on the science.

Intervention in the Brain is a work of weighty scholarship on an intriguing yet perplexing area of science. General audiences may find it to be heavy reading, but it will likely hold great appeal for brain-science scholars and researchers.

Making the Most of Our Web-Driven Future Word of Mouse: 101+ Trends in How We Buy, Sell, Live, Learn, Work, and Play by Marc Ostrofsky. Simon & Schuster. 2013. 256 pages. $24.99.

The Web’s effects on work, leisure, and life in general have been so transformative that people and businesses who stick to the same old methods will fall steadily behind, says venture-capital investor Marc Ostrofsky. But a bounty of new opportunities will arise for those that are forwardthinking and embrace change. Word of Mouse explores the Web’s future development and what it will mean for businesses and consumers. Mobile phone-based Web access, in particular, will empower consumers, businesses, and organizations to get more data, more quickly, and use it to make all kinds of better-i nformed decisions. Smartphones now connect users to information ranging from travel guides and meal recipes to job

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leads and medical advice. In coming years, expect voting, grocery shopping, and a variety of new financial services to be widely smartphone-accessible, too. Other software tools will feed users ever-larger volumes of information about their surroundings. Businesses and consumers alike should plan for the proliferation of facialrecognition software, digital billboards that change their ad displays in accordance with the viewer’s age and gender, and augmented-reality tools for users to look up data on any object or person in sight within milliseconds. Ostrofsky lays out a wide range of suggestions for how entrepreneurs, in particular, can use evolving Web technologies to their advantage. His insights cover suggestions for raising funds via crowdsourcing, creating and promoting your personal “brand” via s o c i a l - n e t w o r k i n g sites, and how to stay safe from malware and cyberattacks, among other topics. Word of Mouse is a practical guide to technology evolution and its ramifications for everyday living. Whether its readers are business owners, employees, or consumers, they’ll find a wealth of relevant and thought-provoking observations. ❑

THE FUTURIST

September-October 2013

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

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.

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

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

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.”

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.

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

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.

104 Timber Ridge Rd., State College, PA 16801 Phone: 814-237-2575 Fax: 814-863-4257 E-mail: g7g@psu.edu Web: nextconsulting.us Contact: Geoffrey Godbey, Ph.D. Repositioning leisure/tourism organizations for the near future. Speeches, ideation, imagineering. Client list on request.

Jim Pinto Technology Futurist 2805 Ocean St. #2, Carlsbad, CA 92008 Phone: 858-353-5467 E-mail: jim@jimpinto.com Web: www.JimPinto.com Contact: Jim Pinto Speaker and consultant: technology futures, industrial automation, global business trends, Internet business relationships.

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

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THE FUTURIST

September-October 2013

Consultants

and

Services

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

THE FUTURIST

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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www.wfs.org

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

Visions

continued from page 64 mosquitoes or bats or some other organism. Those pollinators need some place to live—and that’s another service ecosystems provide. The danger is that a bunch of economic drivers of global change are whittling away at the resilience and stability of the ecosystems on which we depend for those kinds of services. If those ecosystems collapse, the services they provide will disappear. THE FUTURIST: When these biological systems start to collapse, it’s not something that will show up on the news. But it actually affects the way consumers live in highly developed countries, and even in cities, right? Levine: Yes. One great example involves the metropolitan area of New York City and its watershed north of the city in New York State. Talk about a futurist! Whoever was clever enough to set aside enough watershed back then to supply New York City now was an incredible genius. Thanks to that foresight, New York City has always had some of the best, most reliably clean drinking water of any major metropolitan area in the world. That watershed area is under constant pressure for development of various kinds—industrial development, roads, residential development with septic systems, larger municipal sewage treatment facilities, and so on. A while ago, there was a plan to open up larger tracts within that watershed to more intense development. But people were intelligent enough to study the likely effects of that kind of development on the ability of that watershed to provide New York City with the water it needs. The city’s planners and researchers discovered that development in the watershed area would produce all sorts of tax revenues and other economic benefits. But the loss of ecosystem services from that kind of development would require the city to invest trillions—not even billions, but trillions—of dollars into a whole new range of water treatment plants, because the water would no longer be as dependably clean as it has been. We don’t normally think about services like that. The watershed ecosystem’s work, in terms of collecting, storing, and purifying water, is invisible to us, because it happens underground. We don’t think about what goes on underneath the roots of forests and beneath the sand and around the reservoirs. But those processes are very important. That’s just one kind of ecosystem service that affects people. For instance, if populations of pollinating animals continue to drop, it’s hard to conceive of what we would do. Again, human inventiveness and creativity are amazing. It’s possible that, if the threat to pollinators came from disease, or just temperature, or something like that, we might be able to breed a new, resistant strain of pollinators. But if pollinators’ habitat disappears, we might need to maintain them artificially, the

way that some farmers have for quite some time—carrying hives of European bees around the country, from one area that needs pollination to another. To do that for all farmers’ pollination needs, for all crops, everywhere, would involve a staggering amount of work. THE FUTURIST: Let’s talk about the Anthropocene, a term that’s in some of the videos on your site. My understanding of the Anthropocene is that it refers to an entirely new epoch—one not driven by natural cycles, like every previous epoch in the Earth’s history, but by human influence. This is why the prefix anthro, or human-made, defines this new epoch. In a post-human scenario like in this movie, how do you think about the effects of humanity on diversity, after the departure of humanity? How does post-human evolution differ from what we understand about pre-human biological evolution? Levine: The term Anthropocene is not yet universally accepted, but it’s being actively promoted in a growing number of scientific circles. There really is something to this idea that our species—our single species—has now become the most powerful force for change on the planet. We are a globe-changing force. We move un believable amounts of materials. We transform vast quantities of energy. We harvest enormous quantities of primary production from different parts of the planet. “Primary production” means the solar energy that’s captured by photosynthetic organisms and then used to produce either plant material or, ultimately, animal material that we consume, or other resources that we consume that are based on biological processes. That’s what’s important about the Anthropocene. But if we accept the existence of the Anthropocene, it would not be the first time that any organisms have changed global environments. Consider this: Oxygen is generated by photosynthesis. When plants first evolved photosynthesis billions of years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere had very, very little free oxygen in it. The process of photosynthesis itself is what gives us the concentration of oxygen that we now have in the atmosphere. To living systems, oxygen is a highly powerful oxidizing (or rusting) agent, so when oxygen levels reached a certain point, organisms had to evolve protection from the destructive effects of this highly reactive gas. A whole bunch of organisms couldn’t do that, and went extinct. A bunch of other organisms that once lived on the surface are now found only in places like deep mud where there isn’t any oxygen. So living things have changed the planet in the past. But this would be the first time that one single species has caused such dramatic change. And again, the issue here is the rate of change—the speed at which we’re transforming the planet. The fact that we can measure changes in a single human lifetime—and certainly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution—that is unprecedented. That’s overnight in biological, geological, www.wfs.org

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ALAN SILFEN / COLUMBIA PICTURES

Jaden Smith in Columbia Pictures’ After Earth. The film takes place 1,000 years after humanity’s flight from Earth.

and ecological terms. It’s so fast that organisms and ecosystems don’t have time to adapt to changes. Many people don’t have an appreciation for the difference between the speed of human-caused change and the much more gradual, natural change that occurs over what geologists and evolutionary biologists call deep time, millions of years. How many people really stop to think about that? THE FUTURIST: So in a post-human Earth—this is a question entirely out of ignorance—which of the species would be the most successful? Would we see a return of big, predatory megafauna, like lions, crocs, and wolves, that are close to extinction today? Or would these invasive species that, today, enjoy a symbiotic relationship with us—like rats, pigeons, and cockroaches—would they continue to spread and overwhelm the rest of the ecosystems that they’re in? Levine: Well, I can refer you to one person’s thoughtful reflection on that question. Dougal Dixon’s book After Man: A Zoology of the Future (St. Martin’s, 1998) is worth looking over. He arrived at his hypothesis after looking at the kind of species that do, in fact, survive mass extinctions. Survivors of mass extinctions tend to be what biologists call ecological generalists—or what most people refer to as weeds. A weed is anything that grows someplace you don’t want it. But in ecological terms, a “weedy” species is one that has high tolerance for extremes of temperature, extremes of water availability, and that kind of stuff. They’re almost indestructible organisms that live everywhere and reproduce quickly. And a lot of those are the kinds of species that are pestilential for us—cockroaches, rats, mice, starlings, 62

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crows in some places, cats in some places, dogs in other places. Dixon used those “weedy” criteria to select current species, and then he imagined how they might evolve over millions of years. What he came up with is entirely fictitious, but it’s one person’s intriguing way of looking at what might happen. In After Earth, the characters played by Will and Jaden Smith—Kitai Raige and his dad—get shipwrecked on Earth 1,000 years after humans left. The film is science fiction. It would not be entirely impossible for organisms to evolve some characteristics of the imaginary critters in After Earth. But it would take a lot more than 1,000 years for multicellular animals—things other than bacteria—to evolve major changes. That is like the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. But all good science fiction has elements of science and elements of fiction. I don’t see a problem with that. I’ve loved science fiction since I was a kid. I started reading it because my dad used to read copies of Amazing Stories magazine and Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine around the house. The value I see in sci-fi is in getting people intrigued with an idea about the future through fiction in a way that gets them to look for the elements of truth behind the story. That was the approach that we took to the Web site. About the Interviewee Joseph Levine is the co-author (with Kenneth Miller) of the high school biology program Miller & Levine Biology (Pearson, 2010; biology.com) and the creator of the Web site www.lifeafterearth science.com. ❑

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THE FUTURIST

September-October 2013

Visions By Patrick Tucker

Biodiversity “After Earth” Species loss is real threat, but what would a mass extinction event look like? How would we be affected? Biologist Joseph Levine looks at a future where less biodiversity has a very real effect on humans. The movie After Earth (2013, directed by M. Night Shyamalan) takes place following a massive planetary extinction event and various other calamities that have forced humans to flee the planet. The film begins 1,000 years after humanity’s departure. The remaining organisms have evolved to treat humanity as a hostile threat. Parts of the film were shot on the grounds of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) (www.ots.ac.cr) in Costa Rica, a center for research on biodiversity, tropical ecology, and climate change. The film’s producers asked Joseph Levine, a biology educator, text-book author, and course director at OTS, to create an educational Web site, www.lifeafterearthscience.com, to help students understand the film’s backstory. I asked him about the science behind the After Earth scenario. THE FUTURIST: There’s evidence that we may be on the verge of a mass extinction event as large as the Permian extinction that took place millions of years ago. What would a mass extinction event actually look like if it occurred today?

Joseph Levine: When people hear “extinction” they usually think of endangered species such as white rhinos, or pandas. That’s fine, because it’s a tragedy when any species disappears. But a mass extinction is very different, and much more serious. During a mass extinction, environments change so radically, and so many species disappear, that entire ecosystems collapse. And that’s important because healthy, functioning ecosystems provide very important services that the general public generally takes for granted. For instance, terrestrial ecosystems do a fabulous job of catching and holding rainwater, purifying it, storing it, and providing us with clean fresh water. Ecosystems also provide habitats for pollinating organisms to live in. You’ve probably caught wind of the problems we’re having with local pollinating insects. That’s not pleasant to think about, because almost all plants that we rely on for food, other than grasses, are pollinated by bees or

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Jaden Smith stars in Columbia Pictures’ After Earth, also starring Will Smith. COLUMBIA PICTURES

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