THE FUTURIST, November - December 2014

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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November-December 2014

Outlook 2015

THE FUTURIST’s roundup of the most thought-provoking forecasts of the year. Page 29

Could a Machine Have Predicted This? page 20 Tomorrow’s Employment Ecosystem, page 14 Libraries as Knowledge Creators? page 24

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Conference report, WorldFuture 2014: What If, page 39

Back Issues of The Futurist September-October 2014 (Volume 48, No. 5) Special Report—Futures Education: Teaching and Learning about the Future [Part 1: Foresight Education Programs and Courses; Part 2: The Houston Experience; Part 3: Real-World Futures Learning] • Our Global Situation and Prospects for the Future • Seven Big Challenges for Pakistan—and the Lessons They Could Teach • 10 Questions for Machine Intelligence

July-August 2014 (Volume 48, No. 4) WorldFuture 2014 preview issue: Looking at the Future through a Cartoonist’s Eyes • Visualizing the Future • Technolife of Romeo and Juliet in 2035 • Terra Nova: The Religious Quest for Tomorrow • Backing into Eden, Gardening the World: A Parable • Forest Futures in the Anthropocene: Can Trees and Humans Survive Together? • What Does Moore’s Law Mean for the Rest of Society? • Deconstructing the Future: Seeing beyond “Magic Wand” Predictions • Abandoning Ship Titanistad

May-June 2014 (Volume 48, No. 3) Mission for Worldwide Innovation • Euphoric, Harmless, and Affordable: A Trend Analysis of Sex • Where Will the Century of Biology Lead Us? • Rx Disruption: Technology Trends in Medicine and Health Care • Sniffing out the Future of Medicine • Adventures in Personal Genomics • Extending Pet Longevity: Our Companions in Sickness and in Health

March-April 2014 (Volume 48, No. 2) A World without Waste? • The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises • Blundering to Success? Learning from Failure • When Do I Get My RoboCop? Power before Superpowers • Robotic Technology to Preserve Wildlife: A Scenario • More Talk, Fewer Languages: Communicating in a Connected World • Learning without Schools: A Contrarian Future

January-February 2014 (Volume 48, No. 1) Water Futures: An Islamic Perspective • Causal Layered Analysis Defined • When the Economy Transcends Humanity • The Best Predictions of 2013 • Privacy and the Surveillance Explosion • Riding the Power Jacket

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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September-October 2014

FUTURES EDUCATION Teaching and Learning about the Future A special report by members and friends of the World Future Society Page 28 The State of Our Global Future, page 15 7 Big Challenges for Pakistan, page 22 WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Mars Can Wait. It’s Back to the Lunar Future Inequality as a Predictor of Civil War Sharing the Caring: Trends in Child Custody Unraveling the Mysteries of Alzheimer’s Disease

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Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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July-August 2014

What If...

Conference Preview Looking at the Future through A Cartoonist’s Eyes, page 14 Technolife of Romeo and Juliet, page 24 Forest Futures in the Anthropocene, page 34 What Does Moore’s Law Mean For the Rest of Society? Page 40 And much more!

PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Inventing Tomorrow’s Jobs Making Waves in the Cosmos Cities Helping Cities Mexico’s Dying Languages

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Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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May-June 2014

INSIDE MEDICAL FUTURES Thanks to technologies that promise to improve not only the practice of medicine but also the management of health, our bodies will be built better and last longer. See the special section beginning on page 31

Toward a More Perfect Sex Life, page 20 Our Pets in Sickness and Health, page 47 Mission for Worldwide Innovation, page 16 WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Good Robots Gone Bad Altitude’s Vertical Limit to Population Growth The Unexpected Tolls of Racism The End of the Earth’s Oceans?

3-D Printing Keeps on Growing Choosing between Happiness and Meaning

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Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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March-April 2014

Drones vs.

Poachers Toward a World without Waste, page 16 The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises, page 22

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

How Businesses Can Learn from Failure, page 30 WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Designing the Domestic Robot Does Smoking Drive Us to Drink?

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

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Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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January-February 2014

The Best Predictions of 2013 A roundup of the year’s most-intriguing predictions by experts from around the world. Page 31 An Islamic Approach to Water Management, page 19 Privacy and the Surveillance Explosion, page 42 When Virtual Workers Rule the World, page 27 Taking the Exoskeleton for a Ride, page 64 WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

Seeking Alien Life Primates as Planners Turf Wars?

Modeling Green Economies

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November-December 2013 (Volume 47, No. 6) Special Report—Outlook 2014 • Connecting with Our Connected World • Securing the Cyber City of the Future • The End of Public Promises? Governments and the Pension Deficit Disorder • Game Plan for a Future-Ready Workforce • Futurists Explore the Next Horizon • Evolution or Extinction? Humanity’s Future Legacy

Outlook 2014: More than 60 Forecasts for 2014 and Beyond!

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future

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Page 33

November-December 2013

Living Inside the Internet of Things Our cities and environments, and our experience of them, are poised to change dramatically as everything becomes increasingly interconnected. We explore the threats and opportunities of the age of ubiquitous computing. Pages 16 and 22

Governments Confront Their Pension Deficit Disorder, page 28 Game Plan for a Future-Ready Workforce, page 43 $5.95

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Futurists Explore the Next Horizon, page 47 Evolution or Extinction? Humanity’s Future Legacy, page 64 PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS

When the Bots Can Read Your E-mail, page 8 How the Brain Grieves Lost Futures, page 10 Impacts of Humanity’s Madding Crowds, page 12

THE FUTURIST has been published continuously since 1967. Back issues are available (print or PDF) for $5.95 each (plus $4.90 postage and handling for first copy and $0.95 for each additional copy of print editions). Most issues for the past 10 years can be supplied.

Call 1-800-989-8274 (weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) or use secure online ordering at wfs.org/backissues.

November-December 2014 Volume 48, No. 6

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas

about the future

ARTICLES 14 Trends at Work: An Overview of Tomorrow’s Employment Ecosystem

By Timothy C. Mack

The workplace landscape.

Page 14

DEPARTMENTS 2

Tomorrow in Brief

4

Anticipations

6

World Trends & Forecasts

• Modeling imprisonment as an infectious disease • Satellite images reveal good news for penguins • Advances in neurological rehabilitation • Seven future-shaping technologies

49 Consultants and Services 52 Reviews

• Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty • Ecovillages, Litfin • FUTURES: World Foresight Encyclopedic Dictionary, Olavarrieta, Glenn, and Gordon • Wired for Success, Aldridge and Harvatt • Avant-Garde Politician, Dror • Innovating for the Global South, Soman, Stein, and Wong • The Maker Movement Manifesto, Hatch • Measuring and Improving Social Impacts, Epstein and Yuthas • The Road to Reinvention, Linkner • Virtual Economies, Lehdonvirta and Castronova • Why Mars, Lambright

Where will work be in the future? And where will workers be? The economic, social, and technological landscape is shifting rapidly. Here are some of the major trends altering the future workplace.

20 The Future of Futurists: Can a Machine Produce This Forecast?

By Randall Mayes Artificial intelligence is becoming a disruptive force in growing numbers of knowledge-age professions—and futurism is not immune. Whether machines are able to conduct useful analysis and forecasts—i.e., whether the futurist “Singularity” is near or not—is subject to debate.

24 Library Futures: From Knowledge Keepers to Creators

By Sohail Inayatullah As both the location and creation of knowledge become democratized and decentralized, libraries and librarians are rethinking their relationships with

the communities they serve and the knowledge they help preserve—and produce.

29 OUTLOOK 2015: Top Trends and Forecasts for the Decade Ahead

Computers will know exactly what you mean and when you’re lying.

They’ll take over many jobs but accelerate economic growth. These are just a few of the most thought-provoking trends and forecasts explored in THE FUTURIST in the past year.

39 When Futurists Ask “What If” Reports from WorldFuture 2014

The World Future Society’s 2014 annual conference in Orlando inspired serious and imaginative reflections on the world’s future—and that of futurists themselves.

56 Futurists and Their Ideas: Why Pop Futurism Fails An interview with Karl Albrecht

Futurists need a healthy skepticism of overhyped predictions about the “next big thing.”

“What If” highlights.

Page 39

© 2014 World Future Society. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. THE FUTURIST is a registered trademark of the World Future Society. Printed in the U.S.A. THE FUTURIST (ISSN 0016-3317) is published bimonthly by the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814, U.S.A. Included with membership in the World Future Society (dues: $79 per year for individuals; $20 for full-time students under age 25). Subscriptions for libraries and other institutions are $89 annually. Periodicals postage paid at Bethesda, Maryland, and additional mailing offices. • POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE FUTURIST, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. • OWNERSHIP: THE FUTURIST is owned exclusively by the World Future Society, a nonpartisan educational and scientific organization incorporated in the District of Columbia and recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit taxexempt organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. • CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Write or call Membership Department at the Society. 1-800-989-8274.

Tomorrow

in brief COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

WordBuzz: Oldsplain

Eye Sensor

Our staff was recently discussing office furniture, and the term “typing table” came up, mystifying one of our younger colleagues. A senior staff member oldsplained by giving a brief description of the object, showing an example in her own office; it’s where a printer now sits (largely unused).

In the increasingly multigenerational workplace, older workers may notice their younger colleagues rolling their eyes when hearing something oldsplained to them (i.e., explaining antique terms or concepts). Have patience; you’ll also need it when younger coworkers have to nerdsplain something to you.

A sensor built into your eye could track tiny changes in pressure and alert you when you need to see your doctor.

Developed at University of Washington, the sensor would be embedded with Eye sensor would be embedded in the eye and placed in an an artificial lens artificial lens, with its antenna circling the perimeter and during cataract the sensor and radio frequency chip inside. surgery. The device would monitor pressure that provide ongoing monitoring, it could potentially damage the could be a boon for patients at Source: University of Washington, optic nerve. risk of glaucoma, who currently www.washington.edu.

Because the device would LYNDA WILLIAMS / COURTESY OF NSF

Disruptive Impacts of Interruptions Office workers are interrupted an average of six times an hour; some workers welcome the breaks if they’re bored with the task at hand, but the interruptions could compromise their performance, according to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

In a study using an essaywriting task, researchers evaluated the performances of a group who were interrupted several times with unrelated tasks, and a control group who were not interrupted. The es-

Medical minerals? Blue and white clays in the Oregon deposit, separated by a vein of rock containing sulfur.

Clays vs. Superbugs The union of biomedicine and geochemistry may have produced a new, all-natural weapon against superbugs, pathogens that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Mineral clays have long been used in folk remedies to fight infections, and now scientists are learning how they work.

Using clay samples dug up from a volcanic deposit near Crater Lake, Oregon, researchers from Arizona State University found that the clay’s rapid uptake of iron impaired the me-

tabolism of bacteria such as E. coli and S. epidermidis.

Further research on the clays could lead to the discovery of new antibacterial mechanisms, “which would benefit the health-care industry and people in developing nations,” says biogeochemist Lynda ­Williams. “A low-cost topical antibacterial agent is quickly needed.”

Source: National Science Foundation, www.nsf.gov.

only have their pressure checked several times a year.

“No one has ever put electronics inside the lens of the eye, so this is a little more radical,” says Karl Böhringer, a UW professor of electrical engineering. “We have shown this is possible in principle. If you can fit this sensor device into an intraocular lens implant during cataract surgery, it won’t require any further surgery for patients.”

says of the interrupted group yielded fewer words and were scored lower by independent graders.

To minimize interruptions, “turn off your cell phone and disable notifications such as e-mail while trying to complete an important task,” recommends study co-author Cyrus Foroughi, a PhD candidate at George Mason University.

Source: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, www.hfes.org.

Saving Leonardo For all his inventiveness and foresight, Leonardo da Vinci didn’t choose the best way to ensure his work would last a half millennium into the future.

For example, a red chalk drawing from the 1500s, believed to be a self-portrait, is at risk of vanishing.

What the drawing is experiencing is yellowing due to exposure to humid storage conditions; the loss of contrast is causing the image to fade.

Restoration specialists believe they have identified the molecule causing this yellowing: lightabsorbing molecules known as

chromophores.

“Chromophores within cellulose absorb the violet and blue range of visible light and largely scatter the yellow and red portions—resulting in the characteristic yellow-brown hue,” explains physics professor Olivia Pulci of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Now the challenge is to determine whether the damage can be halted or even reversed.

Source: American Institute of Physics, www.aip.org.

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

A Message

from the

CEO

A Publication of the World Future Society

By Amy Zalman Editorial Staff Edward Cornish Founding Editor

Cynthia G. Wagner Editor

Rick Docksai Senior Editor

Keturah Hetrick Staff 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 Patrick Tucker, Editor at Large Timothy Willard, Biofutures Richard Yonck, Computing and AI

Business and Advertising Jeff Cornish Business Manager

Contact Us Letters to the Editor: letters@wfs.org Subscription/Address Change: info@wfs.org Advertising: jcornish@wfs.org Submissions/Queries: cwagner@wfs.org Permission/Reprints: jcornish@wfs.org Back Issues/Bulk Copies: jcornish@wfs.org Press/Media Inquiries: azalman@wfs.org Partnerships/Affiliations: azalman@wfs.org Conference Inquiries: conference@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 info@wfs.org www.wfs.org/futurist

“The future of future studies has never looked brighter. International conferences dealing with the future are now are attracting world-renowned scholars. New techniques of social and technological forecasting are developing.”

Promotional fodder for a futurist conference? Not exactly.

These hopeful words were written by Edward Cornish, in the inaugural edition of “Futurist: A Newsletter for Tomorrow’s World,” distributed for the very first time on July 1, 1966. He mailed them to readers via post on mimeographed sheets, laboriously typed.

But what is actually so striking about that first 1966 version of the Futurist, is not how old-fashioned it is. What is amazing, rather, is the profound relevance of the issues discussed. From the ethical issues surrounding the “biological revolution,” to the diplomatic challenges of protecting the global commons, to the power of computing to change radically how we organize society, the first Futurist takes up some of the most enduring of human challenges.

It all sounds strikingly familiar to me. And what it tells me is that the World Future Society continues to lie at the center of the work of futurists—who go by many names, but share the desire to understand and work with others toward shaping desirable futures. My first three months as the WFS CEO (I took the position in July) confirm my confidence. No day goes by without affirmation that within and beyond our membership, all over the world, there are women and men eager to connect with each other in order to learn, teach, play, investigate, promote, connect and ultimately collaborate in shaping futures.

But we are also receiving member feedback that in order to support our existing members and add new ones, we need to transform, modernize and upgrade the services we offer. Most important of all, we need to guarantee that today’s futurists have access to more information and far greater direct contact with each other across the full spectrum of today’s communications platforms.

We are still at the beginning of our reorganization, but plans are already underway for a multi-year set of innovative activities.

Among the exciting changes already in view at WFS are a major overhaul of the Futurist magazine, a revitalized website and online presence, more robust communications and newsletters, new dedicated member-only exchange networks, updated member benefits and new programs.

Once these plans come to fruition, I am confident that the future of the World Future Society could not be brighter.

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

Anticipations

By Amy Zalman

Unsteady States: Power Shifts in the International System The influence of nation-states is being bypassed or undermined by growing numbers of nonstate actors, ranging from militant insurgents to humanitarian aid workers. We need to build new partnerships and frameworks for anticipating how these changes will unfold.

Many of the world’s most talented and lucid thinkers in a range of fields—and many in past pages of THE FUTURIST—have made the case that the information revolution, globalization, the rise of networks, and corresponding shifts in the ways that societies, communities, and markets function will pitch us into a radically transformed political world. In this new world, the international system of centralized states and our shared international understanding that governance flows (or should flow) from states could be turned on its head.

In Washington, D.C., where I live, the challenge to the international system is a recurrent motif. Behind closed doors and at think tank roundtables, conversations continually return to concerns about the murky difficulties of governance in this era of compromised sovereignty.

Leading thinkers and policy makers are acutely aware of the complexities of the era. Brent Scowcroft, among that august group of elites whose commentary carries great weight, has said he suspects that, in coming years, “we will see a gradual erosion of attitudes committed to the total independence of the nation-state and its responsibilities” (National Journal, May-June 2012). Despite the mild tone, the statement is extraordinary: National sovereignty is the conceptual bedrock of the current international system.

The declining power of sovereign states may not appear to make headlines as readily as crises of the day.

But take a closer look, and it is not

difficult to see that the erosion of sovereign power is a typical theme in the daily news.

As I sit down to write this editorial in August 2014, independent actors are finding all manner of ways to challenge state power, all over the world. Insurgencies are seemingly everywhere. In Iraq, the Sunni militant organization, the Islamic State (IS), seizes town after town while the Iraqi government and military stand by virtually helplessly. At the SyrianLebanese border, Lebanese military and government officials are similarly tested in efforts to protect civilians and refugees from IS fighters. In western China, confrontations between the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs and Chinese police lead to death tolls in the dozens.

But not all challenges to states are violent. In Manhattan, hedge fund manager Paul Singer uses the legal system to force the state of Argentina into debt collapse. And not all challenges appear as threats. In West ­Africa, many of those ministering to victims of Ebola are volunteer aid workers from nongovernmental organizations such as Doctors without Borders or religious missions. In the United States, large-scale partnerships between corporations and the state—such as a deal between Amazon and the CIA to provide cloud computing—call into question the boundaries of the public sphere.

Whether threatening or supportive, nonstate players may be one of the factors undermining the most basic structures of the modern state, as we have come to understand it. If

Amy Zalman, CEO and president of the World Future Society

Scowcroft is right, it is imperative that global leaders prepare for this emergent geopolitical landscape.

The World Future Society has historically been committed to promoting our understanding of the societal and civic aspects of our lives. In 2012, WFS member Clement Bezold and board member Nancy Donovan co-founded the Public Sector Foresight Network with the support of Kenneth Hunter, chair of the WFS Board. PSFN offers a collaborative forum for those involved in foresight for public-sector organizations, providing the opportunity to share their aspirations, work, methods, experiences, and results. In seeking to explore potential futures, and actively to support networked forms of government, PSFN members are at the vanguard of preparing for shifts in the power landscape.

Today, WFS is positioning itself to advance the understanding of the futures of governance through dedicated programming and initiatives designed to help decision makers, policy planners, and strategists better understand and plan effectively for a future of governance through nonstate actors.

Our first event will take place this November at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., at a continued on page 55

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

Officers CEO & President: Amy Zalman Treasurer: Kenneth W. Hunter Secretary: Les Wallace

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

Joyce Gioia president and CEO, The Herman Group

John Gottsman president, The Clarity Group

Kenneth W. Hunter (chair) futurist and writer

Timothy C. Mack executive editor, World Future Review

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

Robert P. Moran partner, Brunswick Group

Mylena Pierremont president, Ming Pai Consulting BV

Clement Bezold

Julio Millán

chairman and senior futurist,

president, Banco de Tecnologias, and

Institute for Alternative Futures

chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico

Arnold Brown

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

chairman, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

visiting senior research fellow, ISEAS, Singapore

Adolfo Castilla

Ramez Naam

economist, communications professor, Madrid

computer scientist and author

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

Carol D. Rieg (Vice Chair)

director of Emerging Technologies Project,

corporate foundation officer, Bentley Systems Inc.

George Washington University

Les Wallace

Peter Hayward

president, Signature Resources Inc.

program director, Strategic Foresight Program,

Jared Weiner

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc.

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Amy Zalman

president, The Foundation for Conscious Evolution

CEO and president, World Future Society

Sohail Inayatullah professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan

Global Advisory Council Stephen Aguilar-Millan European Futures Observatory

Raja Ikram Azam

Zhouying Jin president, Beijing Academy of Soft Technology

Francis Rabuck director, Technology Research, Bentley Systems Inc.

Paul Saffo managing director of foresight, Discern Analytics

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

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

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

honorary chairman, Pakistan Futuristics Foundation

Sandra L. Postel director, Global Water Policy Proj­ect

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

Graham May

Raj Bawa

principal lecturer in futures research,

president/patent agent, Bawa Biotech LLC, and

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K.

adjunct professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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 Criminal Justice • Species • Medicine • Invention

Criminal Justice | Governance

Modeling Imprisonment As an Infectious Disease A unique model could help us to understand racial disparities in imprisonment rates.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and it has quadrupled since the “war on drugs” began, reaching what many call epidemic proportions. But not all citizens are equally susceptible to imprisonment: Black Americans are incarcerated at six times the rate of whites, according to Department of Justice statistics.

In a recent study, Virginia Tech researchers examined whether incarceration does indeed spread like an epidemic; if so, the way that it spreads could help to explain the disparities in these incarceration rates.

The researchers modeled the spread of incarceration in the same way that is commonly used to track the spread of an infectious disease. They found that, much like disease-based epidemics, imprisonment can be “transmitted” across a prisoner’s social networks. For example, when a person is incarcerated, his or her family is more likely to feel greater financial and/or emo-

Simulation results and actual California incarceration rates.

tional stress: Aggressive behavior, depression, and lower income can all stem from a family member’s imprisonment, and are all associated with increased ­criminality.

What’s more, “an individual’s incarceration can expose his or her family and friends to a network of criminals, thereby exposing them to criminal norms,” the researchers explain in a study published by the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. “These factors may increase the criminality of the incarcerated person’s family and friends, thereby increasing the probability that these family members and friends would themselves be ­incarcerated.”

“Official bias” also plays a role in the spread of incarceration: Members of a prisoner’s social network are more likely to be watched and targeted by police and more likely to be convicted by courts, resulting in increased risk of incarceration compared with a lawbreaker who doesn’t have any friends or family members in jail. Even in cases when criminality doesn’t increase among a prisoner’s network, members of that network are more likely to be caught and convicted as a result of their conKRISTIAN LUM, ET AL. tacts alone.

The study noted that not all of a prisoner’s contacts are equally susceptible to later incarceration. A prisoner ’s brother or adult child, for example, is at greater risk than the prisoner’s friend.

And, as a prisoner’s sentence increases, his or her network is more likely to be affected, and more likely to see more-­ extensive transmission.

The study found that racial disparities in incarceration still stood, even after controlling for legal factors, social context, and the relative number of crimes

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

committed. One model used incarceration rates beginning at 1% for separate white and black populations.

Over a simulated 50 years, the white population’s incarceration rate leveled off at about 1%, while imprisonment among the black population increased to 7% as a result of the network pressures that had been introduced by each prison sentence.

One important takeaway from the study is that the “contagious” nature of imprisonment exacerbates existing biases in criminal conviction and sentencing. For example, black men convicted of drug possession are more likely to be given longer prison sentences than white men with the same conviction; the researchers thus conclude that harsher sentencing may actually result in higher levels of criminality. Incarceration “contagion” also may lead to criminal behavior in individuals who would likely have been otherwise law abiding.

“Research clearly shows that this epidemic has had devastating effects on individuals, families, and entire communities,” said Kristian Lum, the paper’s lead author who, at the time of the study, worked at Virginia Tech’s Bioinformatics Institute. “Since our model captures the emergent properties of the incarceration epidemic, we can use it to test policy options designed to reverse it.”

—Keturah Hetrick Source: “The contagious nature of imprisonment: an agent-based model to explain the racial disparities in incarceration rates,” by ­Kristian Lum, Samarth Swarup, Stephen Eubank, and James Hawdon, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface (June 2014).

PHILIP McDOWALL

Adélie penguin incubates chicks. Satellite imagery reveals overall increase in Adélie populations, particularly in Eastern Antarctica and the Ross Sea.

JOHN GRIFFIN / STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY

Species | Earth

Satellite Images Reveal Good News for Penguins Tracking a bellwether species of penguin offers insights on Antarctica’s ecology.

In the search for more accurate data on the numbers and health of Adélie penguins in Antarctica, researchers have turned to high-resolution satellite imagery of the unmistakable evidence of living creatures: their waste.

Avian poop, known as guano, shows where the penguins are actively living, breeding, and eating, as well as what they are eating and how much of it. This data is vital to scientists studying the impacts of climate change, to biologists seeking to understand population

Using satellite imagery of penguin guano (excrement), researcher Heather Lynch of Stony Brook University concludes that populations of Adélies have experienced net gains in the past 20 years.

dynamics of seabirds and marine mammals, and to policy makers negotiating ecosystem protection ­agreements.

On a global scale, the Adélie penguin population is

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World Trends & Forecasts RON NAVEEN

Medicine | Sci/Tech

Advances in Neurological Rehabilitation From exoskeletal braces to nanofiber suits, new technologies aim to restore functionality.

By Gisele Peterson

Aerial view of Adélie penguin colony at Paulet Island.

nearly 3.8 million breeding pairs strong, and 53% larger than estimates of 20 years ago, according to a study by Stony Brook University ecologist Heather Lynch and University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering researcher Michelle LaRue. Their new calculation includes both the growth of known colonies and the discovery of 17 previously unknown or unsurveyed colonies, and subtracts numbers from 13 previously known colonies that could not be found using the satellite imagery.

Populations of Adélie penguins were stable or growing in Eastern Antarctica and the Ross Sea, offsetting more rapid declines on the Antarctic Peninsula, according to the study, “First global census of the Adélie Penguin,” published in The Auk: Ornithological Advances.

The Adélies are important to monitor not only because they are a species of concern for conservation, Lynch notes, but also because they are indicators of changes in the food chain in the Southern Ocean, specifically in the distribution of their marine prey—krill and fish.

“We believe this is a landmark study with data that provides not only information on the population dynamics of Adélie penguins but injects critically needed information into the ongoing negotiations regarding the implementation of Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean,” Lynch said in a press statement.

The use of high-resolution satellite imagery has become vital to ecological research, and has become a particularly popular tool for studying the dynamics of Antarctic species such as penguins, seals, and whales.

One reason is that the landscape is relatively simple, enabling satellite-based surveys of Antarctic biology at previously unimaginable scales. —Cynthia G. Wagner Source: Stony Brook University, www.stonybrook.edu.

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Rehabilitation therapy became a medical specialty in 1947, driven by the demand of returning World War II soldiers. During its first 50 years, the field taught patients how to use crutches and wheelchairs to compensate for damaged parts of the body.

In the future, rehab devices will become much lighter, smaller, and perhaps invisible, embedded in patients’ own bodies. Recent trends support “an increased emphasis on treatment techniques and technology to promote neurological recovery,” according to Brad ­Aiken, director of Rehabilitative Medicine at Baptist Hospital in Miami and a medical science-fiction author.

Machine-assisted treatment benefits both patients and therapists; machines don’t get tired and can perform precise movements with accurate timing.

In one example of therapeutic robotics, a patient tries to move his arm to hit designated targets on a computer screen. If the patient fails, the computer takes over and guides the arm through the correct movement. This approach applies game theory to strengthen the body and induce structural reorganization in the brain. A side benefit is that patients consider this form of therapy fun.

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is another new ALPHASPIRIT / BIGSTOCK

Future rehabilitative technologies may be no more cumbersome to patients than a pair of long, high-tech underwear.

LISA MATHIAS / WFS

Brad Aiken, director of Rehabilitative Medicine at Baptist Hospital Miami, speaks at WorldFuture 2014.

Aiken predicts that neurological rehabilitation technology will progress dramatically in the coming years.

One goal is for brain–computer interfaces to be integrated into an exoskeletal brace: The FES system would bypass the damaged area of the brain or spinal cord by sending thought waves to the motors controlling the continued on page 12

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technology, wherein electrodes are placed on muscles to stimulate contraction and correct movement. FES devices can help a patient walk normally by shocking the muscles in the leg. It is also employed on hands using gloves; the bad hand is stimulated by—and then mirrors—the good hand’s movement. Patients have seen marked improvement with both robotic and FES therapy, says Aiken, but the equipment is expensive and not available in most rehab facilities.

Exoskeletal devices can be life altering, allowing a formerly wheelchair-bound person to stand, walk, and climb stairs. While this option is currently too expensive for most individuals to purchase and only available in lab environments, the future may include quadriplegics walking among us, Aiken suggests.

Brain-to-computer interfaces have been successfully tested in the lab, enabling a woman locked in her body to guide the curser on a computer screen, and thus control objects in the room via the screen. In order for patients to attain fine motor control, multiple stimulators will need to be placed throughout the body. The systems will also need to be self-powered and made of materials that the body will not reject.

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World Trends & Forecasts continued from page 9 brace. And the exoskeletal braces will become lighter and more compact, thanks to nanofibers.

In the future, nanofiber suits could thus offer new freedoms for paralyzed individuals: “Ultimately, the goal of whatever we do with all this stuff is to be able to regain the control of our body through using only thought waves to move the arms and legs of a paralyzed individual, basically replicating what able-­ bodied people can do,” Aiken says. “If we can get very good at doing this, it would be no more cumbersome than wearing a pair of long underwear.”

Gisele Peterson is vice president of operations at Flagship Financial Services LLC in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

This report is based on Brad Aiken’s presentation at WorldFuture 2014: What If. For more information, see www.bradaiken.com. To order an audio recording of the presentation, visit IntelliQuest Media at www.intelliquestmedia.com/store/.

Invention | Sci/Tech

Seven Future-Shaping Technologies The U.K.’s Royal Academy of Engineering has named the seven most future-shaping technologies of the year. The engineering projects awarded are those that “have the potential to bring radical innovation to their fields,” according to an Academy announcement.

The awards are part of the Academy’s Engineering for Growth campaign.

The research fellows and projects honored are: 1. Software inspired by the human ear, Emmanouil Benetos, Queen Mary University of London. Audio analysis, or machine listening, is the THUFIR / BIGSTOCK process of extracting specific sounds for analysis in such work as surveillance, crime detection, and music indexing. Benetos’s work aims to develop algorithms that mimic what the human ear does naturally to discriminate between useful sounds and noise.

2. Better materials for safer reactors, Ben Britton, Imperial College London. The long-term goal of a low-­

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November-December 2014

3. Novel carbon-fiber composites for large-scale and sustainable applications, Soraia Pimenta, Im-

perial College London. Pimenta’s work with composite materials reinforced with carbon, recycled, or natural fibers aims to lower both manufacturing costs and environmental impact in automotive manufacturing and aerospace construction.

4. Next-generation prosthetic limbs,

Alex Dickinson, University of Southampton.

Dickinson’s work with lower-limb amputees aims to predict how residual tissues change with different activities, which affects comfort and mobility with prostheses.

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OSTILL / BIGSTOCK

5. Turning data transmission around, Martin PJ ­ avery, University of Glasgow. The advent of optical fibers L accelerated the communications revolution, but they are approaching the limits of their capacity. Lavery’s work will involve using special properties of light to develop high-capacity, secure communication networks.

6. Visualizing blood flow in the brain, Thomas Okell,

Engineers honor the top problem-solving innovations.

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carbon energy future means continued reliance on nuclear power for the foreseeable future. Britton’s work will focus on predicting and improving the performance of alloys used to build reactor cladding, tubing, and heat exchangers.

DIGITALISTA / BIGSTOCK

University of Oxford. Angiography shows the blood flow in arteries, and perfusion shows the blood in brain tissue; both visualizations enable doctors to make accurate diagnoses noninvasively, but the tests are time-consuming and require separate scans. Okell’s work aims to develop ways that these measurements can be performed and recorded simultaneously.

7. A language for computers of the future, Antoniu Pop, University of Manchester. Computer processing demands have left single-core systems in the dust, but current programming languages cannot exploit the parallelism required in multi-core processing. Pop’s work aims to create a new programming language to overcome this problem, as well as to investigate new computation models.

“Each of the seven research projects addresses un­ resolved or critical issues in a specific engineering field and has the potential to lead to significant breakthroughs, benefiting both the research community and industry,” according to the Academy announcement.

Source: Royal Academy of Engineering, www.raeng.org.uk.

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Trends at Work: An Overview of Tomorrow’s Employment Ecosystem

By Timothy C. Mack Where will work be in the future? And where will workers be?

The economic, social, and technological landscape is shifting rapidly.

Here are some of the major trends altering the future workplace.

W

hen we think about the future of work, the first thing we usually want to know is what kinds of jobs will be available, how many, how much they’ll pay, and what we have to do to prepare for them. We then consult resources like the official reports regularly generated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) concerning job categories that are undergoing change, in terms of both the numbers of workers within each category and what they’ll do.

For example, the current BLS projections for the years 2012 to 2022 show likely growth for the categories of network systems and data communications analysts, personal and home-care aides (also healthcare industry human resources, marketing, etc.), computer software en-

gineers (high end), and veterinary technicians (assistants).

More job openings are also expected for nurses, health-care technicians and administrators, massage and yoga practitioners, car service and shoe repair personnel, as well as retail salespeople, administrative aides, customer relations, janitorial services, and teaching assistants.

The BLS expects that the fastestgrowing job categories of all will include organizational psychologists, interpreters, occupational therapists, and genetic counselors. Finally, not surprisingly, the highest-paying jobs in the next decade include veryhigh-skilled medical specialists: oral surgeons, obstetricians, orthodontists, and pediatricians.

These projections are not at all surprising; in fact, they are rather simi-

lar to those of past BLS reports.

However, the depiction of job growth as a “no surprises” straight line does not necessarily forecast what may actually happen in the years ahead. While the fields of health and education have long been economic bulwarks in both lean and prosperous times, new technologies are rapidly being introduced in many sectors, especially those sectors where industries are facing special challenges or undergoing dramatic change.

How New Jobs Are Created Let us first consider some of the dynamics guiding the creation of new jobs. One guiding process is simplification. Functions often get combined because this proves more

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effective or efficient, such as when new needs arise, when new technologies enable combining these functions, or when new problems develop that demand creative solutions. This dynamic is a reflection of the creative side of the economy, and this creative side is what will drive much of job growth in the twenty-first century.

One approach to clarifying this rather complex process is to examine the new trends affecting the workplace in the United States. New social dynamics can drive new product development, thus building new markets and creating new jobs. For example: • Increasing corporate and government surveillance is likely to stimulate more privacy products.

• Widening income gaps may lead

to a growing security industry, as the “haves” protect their holdings.

• The sheer abundance of identical products is raising the perceived value of handcrafted items.

• New technological capabilities are making augmented reality a vi­ able alternative for many (boosting wearable computing tools and personalized learning markets).

• Information overload is driving many to consider adopting new lifestyles that offer more chances for solitude and simplicity.

• Sleep psychology is enabling an industry of sleep-enhancing products.

• Communications technology acceleration is stimulating the growth of digital agents, or buyer bots, on the Internet.

Yet, even driverless cars, teacherwww.wfs.org

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less schools, and pilotless planes will still need maintenance (so, ground crew, mechanics, cleaners, and similar services will not disappear).

Re-visioning New Job Development In addition to solving new problems—including those created by new technologies—other dynamics also affect the future workforce, careers, and job creation. For example, as previously discussed in THE FUTURIST, job retrofitting will involve adding new parts to older tasks or moving them to new settings, such as into outer space—e.g., lunar waste management. Existing job descriptions are shifting and blending to match new conditions— e.g., an environmental health nurse

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would address personal health plus the environment; an “agri-restaurateur” would blend farming plus hospitality, cooking, and food service.

(See “70 Jobs for 2030,” JanuaryFebruary 2011.)

According to McKinsey & Company, 85% of new jobs involving knowledge work also require new problem solving and strategic skills.

Accordingly, another approach to foreseeing the shape of tomorrow’s workforce is to evaluate what abilities will be needed to meet the challenges of the future. These may well include creativity, analytical problem solving, teamwork and collegiality, enhanced mental flexibility, and increased decision speed, combined

with the ability to test and validate both complex assumptions and interactive dynamics.

New tools will also be needed to cope with problems created by social and professional fragmentation and dysfunction, such as navigation through increasing complexity, improved pattern recognition, crisis resolution, communications skills, selfdirected learning, and cyberliteracy.

According to the MIT Sloan Management Review, no more than 10% of the individuals in a typical organization or commercial enterprise today possess the ability to look beyond existing rules and goals to create new directions. Therefore, twentyfirst-century managers seeking high-

performing employees will value: • Intelligence more than mere experience.

• Commitment and loyalty to organization and task ownership.

• Work ethic, including a desire to lead.

• Personal integrity—particularly when facing difficult ethical dilemmas.

• Teamwork and likability— smart, hard-working people who like to work with other smart, hardworking people.

Technological Unemployment While it has long been economic gospel that innovation would al-

Trends Altering the Workplace Landscape Among the many broad trends affecting the future workplace and workers are: • More workplace flexibility will be demanded by new highly skilled workers, but most workers will also accept the need to work longer total hours.

• The “workplace” for any given job is likely to continue to spread over multiple time zones or continents, with workers connecting through a growing range of media channels.

• There will be a greater premium placed on knowledge workers who ask constructive questions concerning an employer’s mission, as well as their customers, market values, desired results, and evolving marketing and business plans.

• Workers and managers will focus more on simplifying workloads versus just getting it all done, which reduces the risk of missing critical innovation opportunities.

• Managers will promote health and wellness programs that focus on helping workers quit smoking, lose weight, or deal with depression, because healthy employees are more productive and miss fewer days because of poor health.

• Employers will embrace less-expensive

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employee recruiting through social networks (this reached 94% of employers this last year, reports Jobvite.com). And hirers are relying more on critical thinking skills tests like the Collegiate Learning Assessment, rather than on just college grades and degrees to assess candidates.

• More than 75% of U.S. employees are almost continuously looking for work while employed, and they hold nearly a dozen different jobs on average before age 35.

• Employers are using personal reputation (strong track records) to make hiring decisions and 75% of jobseekers are using company “brand” in the same way, even accepting a lower salary to work with a desired firm.

• Approximately one-third of Americans in the workforce (17 million workers) are freelance contractors and consultants. This means more people working from home without employer-sponsored health-care benefits.

• And 30% of U.S. workers are on flextime when working from home (or other locations) two to three days a week. As well, some studies have found increased productivity of as much as 15%–20% for these flextime workers.

—Timothy C. Mack

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ways find new ways to employ workers faster than they were rendered obsolete by automation, it is not clear that this will continue very far into the twenty-first century. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers pegs the unemployment rate a decade from now at one in seven, as technology finally begins to be recognized as a permanent substitute for human labor, even in white-collar professions like accountancy, legal work, and technical writing. White-collar automation could ultimately take over some 47% of all white-collar job categories, Summers has warned.

Since the Industrial Revolution first began, new jobs were always being created even as old jobs were being done away with or drastically changed. However, while both the highly skilled (such as lawyers and doctors) and the largely unskilled (such as farmhands, dockworkers, and manual laborers) tended to benefit from these newly created jobs, those workers with middle-range skill sets did not. Like the hand weavers once thrown out of work by steam-powered looms, mid-level managers and accountants are facing the same sort of risks today.

Work automation today isn’t just about efficiently repeating standardized tasks. And patterns of implementation of automation vary by industry, country, and economic sector.

For example, in Japan, robotics are likely to be at the center of new manufacturing, but in India, human labor continues to hold its own, as it is still relatively inexpensive.

This shuffling among new technologies and potential business responses is what sets the pace for social change. As The Economist has pointed out, 10 years ago no one believed that self-driven cars would ever be viable, let alone at the verge of commercialization.

Computers will soon be able to perform detailed image processing on X rays, text-mine legal materials, and turn out fault-free analyses of tax forms by breaking these dauntingly complex cognitive tasks into smaller and smaller task units.

While automation has often been said to help workers rather than replace them, surely one of the first

markets for self-driving cars will be the taxi-cab industry. In fact, taxis have already been on the receiving end of a disruptive technology: Uber ’s ride-sharing app, which allows users to summon others when they need a ride, thus disrupting the already-in-place taxi-management system. Strikes, aggressive regula-

lation may push smaller businesses out of that market.

Technologies in the Tool Kits Mobile media at work is becoming the primary versus secondary worker network, so employers will need to support complete intercon-

“This shuffling among new technologies and potential business responses is what sets the pace for social change. As The Economist has pointed out, 10 years ago no one believed that self-driven cars would ever be viable, let alone at the verge of commercialization.”

tion, and even legislation have all been responses to competition perceived as unfair throughout Europe and the United States.

“Unfair competition” is also on the way from machine analysis, which is becoming sophisticated enough in such areas as text-mining legal documents that it could soon surpass the abilities of paralegals or other skilled humans. This proficiency is a matter not just of speed, accuracy, and cost, but also of the ability to critically assess logical relationships and suggest successful legal strategies—and then present those assessments in innovative graphic formats that laypersons can easily grasp.

Some work functions, such as fastfood service, are not likely to be costeffective to automate. Moreover, the ad hoc and interactive nature of a burrito production line like at Chipotle Mexican Grill (where specific customer preferences require a customized response and worker agility) could flabbergast an automated system or else forcibly streamline the process to the point of alienating consumers.

Another thing to consider is that the push for increasing the minimum wage could reduce the availability of job opportunities for lowskilled or language-challenged workers nationwide, as such reguwww.wfs.org

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nectivity. “Gen Mobile” is a behavioral demographic with a preference for nontraditional work hours, flex­ ible work locations, and Internet connectivity. These items may at times be traded off against premium salary levels in job negotiations.

BYOD (bring your own device) policies are expanding distributedcore communications architectures, with sync and share files as the base.

Of course, the challenge here is to successfully walk the productivity line between not enough connectivity and much too much.

While the selection and hiring of personnel still remains an art rather than a science, there has been some progress in quantifying (and thus potentially automating) the process for domains such as open-source programming. The growing use of “engines of meaning” in human resources and other areas will be driven by big data analysis and ongoing improvements in AI capabilities—and add to downsizing in another white-collar area.

Transformation of Travel and Meetings Industry One of the most wide-reaching influences on the future of work worldwide is the business travel and meeting industry. Not only a powerhouse behind business hiring and

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project negotiations, the industry also offers a framework for training and business-practice benchmarking globally.

In 2013, global business travel surpassed 432 million trips, with business being conducted in hotel rooms, lounges, lobbies, meeting rooms, conference breakout sessions, and

similate it. Attendees at meetings are often stressed by this massive overload of new information and tend to “zone out,” because their brains can’t digest it all. One idea is to avoid 7 a.m. sessions, but have more evening sessions and networking events at other times of day, when greater effectiveness is possible.

of work, however. There will be some body-language data recorded that could be mined for meaning, but more-complex electronic opportunities for mutual persuasion and influence that rival face-to-face encounters are not likely to be competitive for some time.

Shifting Markets and Jobs within Those Markets

“When imagining a future marketplace and future customers, don’t forget that customers may not be locally or even nationally based.

The globe is now everyone’s backyard.”

other impromptu/informal settings.

This includes interactive research meetings, where audiences are polled electronically on issues, values, and preferences. In addition, sessions are increasingly being ­s imulcast globally and locally, so ­interactivity and attendance at sessions can run in parallel.

A growing challenge for business conferences is convincing employers of the return on investment from live meeting attendance and how it is possible to partner with both on-site and remote attendees at the same conference to achieve business goals.

And as the ease and reliability of international connectivity increases, the need to provide value for live attendees coming from further away at greater expense also increases.

Meeting managers can do this by better understanding business training and ways to maximize the effectiveness of the learning experience offered by conferences and meetings.

Strategies include: • Understanding neuroscience and how we learn—expanding the range of delivery systems at conference—repetition and skill-building (Maker Faire model) activities.

• Discerning how to effectively move from knowledge to learning, and thus avoid overloading an audience with information beyond the point where they can process and as18

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• Enhancing the engagement of all the senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) and maximizing the use of more flexible, open-space organizing approaches.

• Encouraging person-to-person collaboration and supporting creative gamification activities (interactive content that encourages engagement) and “hackathons,” such as problem-solving exercises and the building of new solutions for existing problems.

Of course, the biggest transformative technology in the business meeting world is a potentially very disruptive one, that of 3-D holographic imaging. In the United States, Cisco Systems has had a TelePresence product in the marketplace since 2013. Straightforward videoconferencing includes a clear sense of watching long-distance participants on a screen, but Cisco TelePresence provides both the sense of “in-thesame-room” participation and the opportunity for long-distance third parties to observe this holographic interaction as if it were a conventional meeting. Now Microsoft, which has been working on a competitive technology for decades, is utilizing a Skype base for its Viewpoint product, now nearing beta development.

It is not clear how soon either technology will broadly affect the world

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The transformation of markets has been a major impact of new communications technology, and one significant impact has been the growth of prosumers—individuals and groups who are both producers and consumers. For example, the DIY “maker” movement is being accelerated by rapidly expanding 3-D/4-D printing (the latter incorporates interactive features in the final product that continue to increase their utility after printing).

When imagining a future marketplace and future customers, don’t forget that customers may not be locally or even nationally based. The globe is now everyone’s backyard, which drives a whole new set of logistics (outreach and delivery) and imposes new values, shaped by the number of different cultures one must now work with.

The diversity of both domestic and overseas markets is increasing and becoming easier to track, which means there will be a need to develop multiple marketing channels to more effectively address different languages, customs, education, income, etc. (and all the job positions thus created).

Change is ravaging the retail industry: change in how people shop (mobile point of sale), and change in how people congregate (disappearance of the mall and the mall rat).

The Internet offers user-friendly systems that allow customers to search and select products, handle sale and distribution (for pick up or delivery to store or home) from their armchairs or offices.

This has led to the global decline of the shopping mall—transforming the shopping experience and the lives of those who worked there.

Shopping center vacancies have almost doubled since 2006—some

Workplace Demographics One workforce group where changes are proving to be dramatic and lasting is among those over age 55. In 2012, only Japan reported 30% or more of its citizens older than 55 years of age, but by 2030, there will be 64 such countries in that category (the United States alone will have 34%, and Europe will be the oldest region with 36%).

Health remains the top reason for early retirement, but 39% leave for more leisure. Most are also looking for new solutions to protect against rising health-care costs, including the cost of long-term care.

In contrast to previous Sunbelt migrations in the United States, retirement-in-place is growing much more common, even in Snowbelt areas.

The end of the boomer “boom” in 2030 already suggests that a slowdown of economic growth may be coming.

Meanwhile, another workforce cohort of concern are the many millennials who have not gone on to college. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that employed millennial-age (now 25–32 years old) highschool graduates were earning an average of $18,000 less annually than college graduates in the same age group. As well, they were four times more likely to be unemployed (12%) and three times more likely to live below the poverty line (22%).

In contrast, average retirement-age workers now work 4.2 years past their projected retirement date, and almost 70% consider seeking employment of some kind after officially retiring. This can include flexretirement and volunteering in order to use one’s life skills to assist nonprofits.

Certainly a big change is coming in Social Security. The twentieth-­ century Social Security model was built on an assumption of 150 workers for each retiree. By 2030, we should expect that ratio in the United States to be down to two workers for each retiree. That definitely means significant policy change, as millennials will represent 30% of the electorate by 2030—and 12% unemployment for those with only a high-school diploma portends civic discontent. Given the fact that there will be 80 million millennials in the United States by 2020, they will be a political force to be reckoned with.

The postretirement job market will require successful candidates to focus on their personal core competencies, especially among those re-careering beyond age 55. Besides the growth of peer-to-peer services from the elderly to the elderly, there is also the significant growth potential in collateral markets, including construction of new service facilities (e.g., community, assisted-living, and nursing homes). In addition, smart-home tech (health monitoring, security, connectivity) also brings with it positions in managing, installing, and repairing the hardware and software to run a smart home, as these collateral industries grow.

have the potential to change the way we see work in the near future.

Many boomer retirees appear to be moving away from the idea of “working for money alone” (or at all). An increasing number of retirees aim to provide value to society as volunteers without being rewarded in a traditional manner. In contrast,

“To combat these challenges, employment strategists will need imagination, new communities and networks, and new communications strategies. This will require thinking creatively, and people are still ahead of artificial intelligence in that department.”

many high-school-graduate millennials agree that work and the identity it provides may not be at the center of personal or social life, often seeing work as “just a job to get by” (42% on the Pew survey).

As the manner in which individuals and their demographic cohorts view the world of work changes, and as social values evolve, these shifts in attitude and action shape the future of work just as much as technology and economic forces. The future has always been the outcome of a broad range of interactive factors, and shifts in attitude drive human behavior as much or more than automation or recessions. ❑

Beyond the Workplace Horizon We have considered a number of less-conventional futures for the world of work, but only skimmed the truly adventuresome, such as the eventual impact of 3-D printing (additive manufacturing). Will it become a veritable horn of plenty, which could supply all human wants and thus nullify the need to “work to live”? While the physical and economic specifics shaping this “Black Swan” outcome are yet unclear, cultural and values dynamics www.wfs.org

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with vacancies above 40% and many retail centers approaching failure.

The causes of this retail failure include the global recession, the new ways consumers use technology to shop, and facility overexpansion alongside the U.S. housing boom.

The fact that failing shopping centers have the lower rents often leads marginal businesses to “fail together,” while the strongest tenants consolidate in better locations.

To combat these challenges, employment strategists (including employers, workers, and policy makers) will need imagination, new communities and networks, and new communications strategies. This will require thinking creatively, and people are still ahead of artificial intelligence in that department.

About the Author Timothy C. Mack is the former president of the World Future Society (2004–2014) and executive editor of World Future Review. His previous article for THE FUTURIST, “Privacy and the Surveillance Explosion,” was published in January-February 2014. E-mail tcmack333@gmail.com.

THE FUTURIST

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The Future

By Randall Mayes

Artificial intelligence is becoming a disruptive force in growing numbers of knowledge-age professions—and futurism is not immune.

Whether machines are able to conduct useful analysis and forecasts —i.e., whether the futurist “Singularity” is near or not— is subject to debate.

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of Futurists: Can a Machine Produce This Forecast?

As futurists, we scan articles for social trends and developments in emerging technologies, analyze them, and write scenarios or enlist panels of experts to provide short and long-term forecasts. Ultimately, the results help inform policy makers who are trying to solve complex world problems and businesses that have to make decisions regarding the bottom line.

What about the future of our own profession, futurism? Advances in data and cognitive analytics, struggling media companies, and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) are among the trends driving advances (and disruptions) in the knowledge industry, including foresight professionals.

Decision making is becoming increasingly automated in data-intensive fields, including military intelligence and a wide range of commercial applications, such as health care, education, energy, journalism, and finance. AI applications are not directly aimed at replacing futurists, but the major tools used by futurists are among those becoming increasingly automated (to wit, “predictive analytics”).

So, are the days numbered for human futurists laboriously scanning the Internet, analyzing trends, assembling expert panels, and writing forecasts? With the advances in the knowledge industry, how will the human–machine relationship change in future forecasting?

For futurists, trend analysis and forecasting require scanning quantitative and qualitative data sets. This data includes volumes of unstruc-

tured qualitative data, content not organized in databases (for example, the open-ended comments that respondents provide on surveys, in addition to their numerical choices).

Analysts at International Data Corporation, a provider of market intelligence, estimate that as much as 80% of data is unstructured, and it is continually growing. Using the machine-learning technique of natural language processing, AI researchers have made significant progress in fusing the two types of data by giving unstructured data numerical values and then linking these values with structured data.

With machine learning, AI has also made breakthroughs in automated journalism. Today, robot journalism is more common than most people would suspect. Machines can scan the articles I used to research this article. However, can they compete with humans analyzing scanned content? This is the divisive and unresolved issue.

Moravec’s paradox states that computers currently have greater than adult-level intelligence in working with numbers, but they only have a one-year-old’s perception ability. To some, this has led to skepticism regarding the potential of cognitive analytics. This split on AI’s capabilities has led to two scenarios for the future.

The Singularity Is Not Near While the AI era officially began at a conference at Dartmouth College in 1956, many experts feel that, except for a few successes, AI has

failed to deliver on the promise of developing intelligent machines.

Most of us are familiar with the successful search engines Google and Bing for data mining, and the computational knowledge or answer engines Wolfram|Alpha and IBM’s Watson. IBM is currently working with Watson technology to design advanced analytics capabilities in the health-care industry. AI could potentially provide hospitals, physicians, and patients better access to critical and timely information and more-efficient diagnoses and treatments.

In order to address Moravec’s paradox and develop advanced cognitive analytics, AI researchers are turning to cognitive neuroscience. A current goal of AI research is to take what it learns about the brain and place it on neuromorphic chips (i.e., microprocessors that mimic the architecture of the brain).

• Brain Simulation. Reverse engineering is one method that AI researchers are using to simulate the brain’s neural networks. Ventures such as the European Union’s Human Brain Project, Obama’s Brain Initiative, The Human Connectome Project, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science are dedicated to better understanding human brain circuitry. IBM’s SyNAPSE project is developing software using billions of neurons and trillions of synapses to create a model of the neocortex, the area of the brain responsible for perception, memory, and recursive hierarchal thinking.

In order to see neuronal connections forming and firing in real time, AI researchers are developing non­

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST November-December 2014 21 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

invasive and nondestructive brainscanning technologies using nano­ robots. Artificial neural networks used in neuromorphic chips do not need to eat or sleep, but they generate heat and consume power at a large scale. The brain evolved to operate energy-efficiently. With advancements in nanotechnology, AI researchers aim to make neural circuits energy-efficient also.

• Brain Emulation. Mind uploading is a method that AI researchers use to emulate the brain. This can take place either by scanning a biological brain and transferring it into a computer system or by 3-D virtual reality. But would an emulated brain have consciousness?

Currently, there is no consensus on what consciousness is or how billions of parallel neuron interactions result in this emergent state. Despite the mysteries of consciousness, economist Robin Hanson, inventor of the “Ideas Futures” market, does not think mind uploading is an issue.

“It requires three technologies to be good enough: computers, scanners, and cell modeling,” says Hanson, a former AI researcher. “Computers are getting cheaper, scanners are getting cheaper and better resolution, and we keep getting better models of more kinds of cells. If we scan to get enough info, then model the cells well enough, and have enough computers to run the simulation of the models, then the inputoutput of the emulation of the brain will be the same as the input-output of the original brain. It will act like it is conscious.”

If AI is successful in developing advanced cognitive analytics for military and commercial applications, futurists will have the opportunity to use a more powerful holistic system of the brain for forecasting. AI researchers are hoping to create cognitive hardware that is complementary to cognitive systems like Watson. Watson, like the left brain, focuses on language and analytical thinking, while neuromorphic chips address the right brain and pattern recognition.

However, some AI researchers are not so optimistic. In an MIT Technology Review editorial, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, argues that 22

THE FUTURIST

“Do we really need to copy the brain’s architecture?”

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the Singularity isn’t near. The need for specialized knowledge to understand the detailed mechanisms of human cognition and consciousness will activate the complexity brake and decide the rate of scientific ­progress.

The Singularity Is Near The complexity brake argument is based on the assumption that we will need to simulate or emulate the brain to develop advanced cognitive analytics. However, as Ray Kurzweil points out in How to Create a Mind (Viking, 2012), “The mathematics of how Bernoulli’s principle produces wing lift is still not yet fully settled among scientists, yet engineering has created the entire world of aviation. We do not need to understand the detailed physics of semiconductors to model a transistor.”

Kurzweil also refers to the basic algorithm of the neocortex as the pattern-recognition theory of mind.

Evolution designed this algorithm, and we don’t fully understand its details, either. This raises the question, do we really need to copy the brain’s architecture, or just create simplified models that can accomplish the same purpose?

• Natural Language Processing.

This field combines computer science, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and linguistics to enable machines to understand and process human languages. Natural language processing algorithms are based on machine learning, the process of software learning from

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known properties in training data.

Although humans create natural language processing algorithms, the reason IBM’s Watson beat the top two Jeopardy champions and IBM’s Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov is because software can understand hundreds of millions of pages of journals, articles, and blogs, or study past chess matches, and thereby acquire knowledge on its own.

“Facts, qualitative and quantitative, require a minimal amount of heuristic understanding, most of which is gleaned from repetition in the data,” says Saratendu Sethi, senior director of Advanced Analytics R&D at SAS Institute. “Thanks to the Internet there are also huge databases of human curated facts, such as Wikipedia and IMDb, which AI can use to validate and enhance fact centric algorithms.”

By recognizing patterns in text, similar to software that filters out spam by keywords in e-mail subject lines, AI can uncover new trends and relationships. SAS’s Sentiment Analysis software allows businesses to detect patterns of positive and negative sentiment related to various commercial products. Futurists can also use this software for establishing public opinions related to drug legalization, or the collapse of the Chinese economy, or even advances in AI. • Associative Memory. Another approach to building systems that emulate the brain is to learn about data points where they intersect in real time, rather than applying predetermined models and logic, says Manuel Aparicio, a neuroscientist and co-founder of Saffron Technology.

“Those companies that are simulating and emulating the brain are going in the wrong direction,” according to Aparicio. “We take what we know of the brain and why it is so good at pattern processing, and then apply this knowledge to make better machines.” Saffron accomplishes this by identifying relationships, analyzing the strength of relationships based on correlation, count, and context in the text.

In the 1990s, intelligence analysts began using machine learning for text data mining. More recently, the

U.S. Special Forces contracted Saffron Technology to use AI during the worst years of the Iraq War, when roadside bombs were devastating U.S. forces. The Special Forces made the decision to find the bombers, not the bombs; the effects were dramatic in preventing attacks.

• Robot Journalism. Real-time news generation, driven by CNN, the Internet, bloggers, and social media, has altered consumers’ consumption patterns. This has led struggling media companies to transform their business models, due to the loss of print advertising and subscriptions.

A solution that allows publishers to cover topics that are cost-prohibitive is automated or robot journalism. Not only are robot journalists and editors less expensive than human journalists, but they can also more quickly perform fact checking, proofread, check for plagiarism, and meet timelines.

For certain types of reporting, automation already replaces journalists. Automated Insights is reporting on numbers-based stories (sports games, stock market activity, and even traffic and weather reports)— stories that are the low-hanging fruit of journalism, requiring no added investigation or analysis. In addition to business, real estate, and healthcare news coverage, Automated Insights generates personalized sports content for customers via its publication StatSheet.

In the near future, sensors that can detect traffic accidents, crime, and weather in metropolitan areas could enable automated robots to report breaking news on the Internet or television. Areas that lack good data feeds (e.g., breaking news on a riot) are difficult to automate today.

“However, as sensors become more prevalent you’ll begin to see even those kinds of stories automated,” says Robbie Allen, CEO of Automated Insights, which is already working with many large media companies.

Robotic story production may be unstoppable. “In the next decade, 90% of journalism will consist of mass produced, ultra cheap computer generated stories,” according to Narrative Science CTO Kris

­ ammond, whose Quill software H uses templates for news and sports coverage.

Even the aspects of journalism that seem highly human are now automated by software. “The real skill of an excellent journalist … is the ability to find a unique human angle in a story and to write it in a way that inspires readers,” says Steve Omohundro, president of Possibility Research and Self-Aware Systems. “Sites like ViralNova have developed systems for identifying viral stories and creating headlines that grab reader ’s ­attention.”

A Radical Future: Will Machines Replace Futurists?

A common theme in Kurzweil’s books is that evolutionary processes, biological and technological, accelerate as the result of increasing levels of abstraction. The products grow exponentially in complexity and capability. Kurzweil refers to this phenomenon as the law of accelerating returns. Assuming he is correct, futurists and AI experts can use past rates of scientific and technological progress to predict future rates and provide reasonably accurate scenarios for the future.

For forecasting in the short term, Aparicio envisions two devices—one that performs question-and-answer operations, like Wolfram|Alpha and IBM’s Watson, and the other a neuro­ morphic chip that notices patterns and points out things that are possibly of interest. With the ability to do some thinking on your behalf, these chips will enable more-informed decisions and predictions in every data-intensive field.

But, for now, machines will not replace journalists, analysts, or futurists. Since we are overwhelmed with big data, machines will help us perform our jobs better and faster.

“With the volume and velocity of data these days, there is little time for the most important of the investigative process: analytic thinking. By automating the reading/scanning and writing sides of the workflow, the human brain has more time to do its best work,” says Aparicio.

Will AI become disruptive to futurists? Not in the foreseeable future. www.wfs.org

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For the longer term, several factors would have to occur, including the convergence of the right mix of enabling technologies and economic conditions.

Moore’s law will result in moreadvanced computing power. Computers still use the basic architecture created by John von Neumann in 1945. With separated memory and processing units, this requires mul­ tiple steps between the memory and CPU for data processing, referred to as the von Neumann bottleneck.

Even with parallel processing, the current architecture is inadequate to process the continually growing big data that futurists are now working with for forecasting.

Moore’s law will also lower the cost of automated forecasting. Out of necessity, governments and businesses will turn to competition models for development, as was the case with standardized educational testing. Students experience more standardized testing of essays from grade school through high school as the result of Common Core Standards, on university applications, and an increasing number of online courses. In order to accommodate all of these essays being generated, educational testing companies are turning to machine scoring of essays in order to remain competitive in their bids for scoring contracts. In the past, many people were skeptical of machines grading essays. Today, machine scoring is a common practice.

Once this perfect storm of conditions occurs, machine capabilities will equal or surpass human capabilities. Machines will then have the ability to produce this forecast. Combined with cost effectiveness, they will have the ability to disrupt ­futurists’ jobs. ❑ About the Author Randall Mayes is Field Editor for Digital Economy at TechCast Global, www .techcastglobal.com, and author of Revolutions: Paving the Way for the Bioeconomy (Logos Press, 2012). His previous articles for THE FUTURIST include “Putting Machine Testing to the Test” (January-February 2014) and “Where Will the Century of Biology Lead Us?” (May-June 2014). He may be contacted at randy.mayes@duke.edu.

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Library Futures: From Knowledge Keepers to Creators

As both the location and creation of knowledge become democratized and decentralized, libraries and librarians are rethinking their relationships with the communities they serve and the knowledge they help preserve—and produce.

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By Sohail Inayatullah

T

he future of libraries appears bleak, from many perspectives: ­Demographically, credentialed librarians are aging; technologically, the information explosion has led to the cybrary, or e-library. The age-old tradition of the library as “the collection” is now being challenged, as is who should organize and collect that information.

In Australia, libraries are increasingly being perceived as costs rather than investments in the exploding global knowledge economy. Indeed, one political leader considers librarians merely glorified typists.

Under threat of possible defunding, one state librarian immediately began to articulate a strategy forward to transform the library system. The analysis and scenarios below are based on workshops held with citizens, stakeholders, and librarians from this Australian state, and many other regions around the world.

Foresight work for libraries is not new. For example, I previously led a workshop at the city level that explored four different futures of the library. These four scenarios were: 1. The lean, mean, information machine, focused on market needs even at the risk of becoming the McLibrary.

2. Return to community, to civilizing citizens—a place of meeting as opposed to an information distribution center.

3. The center for knowledge expansion, with librarians becoming highly skilled knowledge navigators.

4. The offshore call center, essentially the death of the library, swallowed up and outsourced by the market of global digital content suppliers.

What was clear from this exercise was that the library as currently constituted would not continue.

Library Futures in Historical Context

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As stable as libraries seem, the institution of the library has changed www.wfs.org

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throughout history. The advent of the printing press moved book making and collecting from the monastery and out of the painstaking efforts of monk scribes. Libraries became largely private and were considered elitist, since they benefited only the few who could read; then libraries became a public space, funded by the public instead of by wealthy benefactors.

And now, the recent digitalization of the world is leading to even more dramatic transformations. Confronted with competition as knowledge bases, libraries must redefine themselves, their services, business models, and missions. In a world of edutainment and peer-to-peer information sharing, libraries could become not just warehouses of knowledge, but also laboratories for creating it.

For the recent strategy sessions in Australia, a wide variety of stakeholders—board members, librarians, citizens groups, community boards, corporations, and others—were all called on to articulate alternative futures of the library. This enabled everyone to break from the traditional mind-set of the future as business as usual, where experts keep on doing what they have always done, even if it no longer meets the changing external reality or their vision.

The library leadership team was clear that, while scenarios were part of the solution, it was more important to find a new narrative that could shape the cultural changes required to invent the new library.

These futures sessions were conducted in the context of innovations and transformations already under way in the library, such as changes in room design (greener, more informal), co-location (e.g., in shopping centers, as part of city redesign), and experimentation with 3-D printers.

The goal of the sessions was to disrupt the organization so that a range of new visions could emerge for consideration. Part of the success of this process was that other localities also followed suit. Of course, they, too,

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faced similar and continuing budget issues and challenges from citizens, including a drop in numbers of books loaned and tensions with publishers on the sharing and pricing of e-books.

Creating Narratives and Scenarios The process that led to the new narratives and scenarios was a modified “six pillars” foresight process, which consists of: 1. Mapping the future—searching for the critical pushes, the emerging images of the future, and the historical weights.

2. Anticipating the future—searching for emerging issues that challenge the current map of the future.

3. Timing the future—a search for macrohistorical patterns.

4. Deepening the future—analyzing core metaphors and myths of current and future libraries, using Causal Layered Analysis.

5. Creating alternatives through scenario planning.

6. Transforming the future through visioning and backcasting.

Two parts of this process are crucial: the expression of anguish and personal challenges that the librarians faced and the exploration of alternative futures. What stood out most in the working sessions was the desire to change in order to meet the changing needs of citizens. The future was not just about adapting to the information explosion, but about the desire to co-create and to make the library a more active space of knowledge creation, as opposed to a passive, museumlike receptacle of books.

A dominant story was that librarians felt “caught between two worlds”—the world of the collection and the emergent globalized, privatized, customer-led world challenged by shrinking budgets. This was not a denial of, or aversion to, the world knowledge economy, but an acknowledgement of the painful environment they inhabited.

But this was not the only story.

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Some participants commented that the library was like a butterfly, in the midst of transformation. For them, this meant excitement and exploration. Others felt that the metaphor of the butterfly was too rigid. A more apt metaphor—given that librarians were in the midst of this dramatic shift without a clear end state—was that libraries were a puzzle with parts that keep being created, with no final solution in sight.

One participant, a science-fiction aficionado, saw librarians’ role as the builders of holodecks, as in the Star Trek television series. They create the informational and knowledge rules allowing citizens to experience other worlds. The library was thus still structured with clear roles for the librarian, but within that space, citizens could explore and live in “amazing new places.”

Furthering this idea, another participant saw the future library as the relationship between atom and electron, a sharing of energies. This meant moving from the expert model of classification and curation to the co-sharing, co-creating, and indeed co-curation model of knowledge. This is a model described by R. David Lankes in The Atlas of New Librarianship (MIT Press, 2011).

Each of these metaphors pushed the boundaries further. But perhaps the metaphor that was most convincing, and had the greatest traction, was that of the innovator in the gardens. In this story, the librarian is the experimenter, willing to take conceptual risks, to play, and to rethink in-

formation and knowledge.

While this storytelling was imaginative, it was based on a reality of angst. Watching market pressures challenge what these library professionals believed was a public good, an ethical right, was demeaning and depressing. Many of the librarians participating in these workshops and at many levels of governments clearly would have preferred the stable world of organizing books and continuing the grand tradition of what is good, true, and beautiful.

But they knew the external world would not allow this past to continue. New futures were required.

New stories linked to systemic changes and a shift in worldview were necessary.

Visioning New Futures for Libraries To begin to see the power of foresight in creating a new future, the workshop participants conducted a Causal Layered Analysis of the old and new stories.

In the alternative future, measures of books loaned became people entering the space of the library (physical and virtual). Systemic changes included moving from books to new technologies and ensuring that libraries were redesigned to take full advantage of them. The worldview shift was from expert to co-creation.

And finally, the story changed from the “keeper of the collection” to the “innovator in the gardens.”

Causal Layered Analysis provided

Future Libraries: Causal Layered Analysis Current

Emergent

Litany

Budget based on books loaned

Budget based on people traffic

Systemic

Books organized by categories controlled by librarians budgeted by governments

Workshops, 3-D printing, braincaps, virtual programs, books, and e‑books. Redesigned library spaces

Worldview

Expert

Co-curation, co-creation

Myth/Metaphor

Keeper of the collection

Innovator in the gardens

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Where Ideas Breed: Libraries as Liquid Networks Information no longer resides solely—and statically—in books. So libraries need to become “liquid networks” for ideas, says Thomas Frey, executive director of the ­DaVinci Institute and the Innovation editor of THE FUTURIST. Frey proposed this new view of libraries at a recent “Future of Libraries” conference organized by the American Library Association at the Library of Congress. If our goal is to find a place to amass and organize all our ideas before they evaporate, new technologies have provided numerous alternatives to publishing books and shelving them in large buildings—podcasts, blogs, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, and an array of cyberhosts for sharing pieces of our minds.

“We literally have thousands of placeholders for our momentary flashes of brilliance,” says Frey.

a map forward: a new story, a new worldview, a new strategy, and a new way to measure the future. But while the vision and strategy were powerful, this group—and other libraries where the futures process has been conducted—also desired to explore alternative futures, to mitigate risk, and to find alternative solutions.

Four scenarios have stood out over the past few years of workshops I have conducted with library professionals. These are: • The Digital Dinosaur. In this scenario, the operating narrative is “libraries are quieter than ever.” Fewer citizens borrow books. The median age of the librarian keeps increasing.

Budgets continue to be slashed, as legislators believe that market mechanisms can better serve the needs of citizens. After all, are not Google and its successors better collectors and

“Much like planting seeds into the freshness of damp soil, these memes have the organic potential to spring to life bursting into a colorful bouquet.”

But what happens when other innovative idea depots displace our favorite social and intellectual networks? Do we really expect Wordpress and Blogger to last as long as the Library of Congress?

“The reality is that most public and private companies tend to have a rather short life expectancy, and some concepts come with a far longer gestation period,” Frey observes. “That’s where the more stable storehouses of information at public libraries come into play.”

The Library of Congress itself is aggressively capturing and archiving this massive flow of data surging through the world’s databases, servers, and clouds. That’s nearly half a billion tweets a day,

organizers of information?

In this scenario, publishers still do not allow the sharing of e-books among local, city, and state libraries, ensuring the final nail in the institutions’ financial coffin. Niche spaces continue, for example, in rural areas or poorer nations where broadband costs are still high and Internet penetration is low.

• The One-Stop Shop that facilitates co-creation with the community. In this scenario, the operating narrative is “the heart of the community.” Even while fewer citizens borrow books, more citizens physically visit libraries and e-visit cybraries.

Libraries work with citizens to cocreate knowledge and information.

This type of co-creation and community happens in a number of areas, such as conducting workshops for the elderly on financial planning or retirement futures, or using 3-D www.wfs.org

•

according to Frey. This is part of the Library’s goal to preserve firstperson history, and suggests how the liquid network paradigm of libraries could take shape in the future.

“Every social network, discussion forum, or live webcast has become a cosmic breeding ground for liquid networks and how ideas often have sex with other ideas,” he says. In other words, ideas need a place to mingle, attract each other, and procreate.

Using iterative business models based on sharing ideas and inviting comments, feedback, and collaborations, libraries could thus transform themselves into an “environment for clustering great epiphanies.”

Source: “Liquid Networks: A Breeding Ground for Ideas” by Thomas Frey, Futurist Speaker blog (August 12, 2014), www.futuristspeaker.com.

printers and other new technologies to create interactive and “wearable books” (devices such as those developed by MIT’s Media Lab enabling readers to feel the same sensations experienced by characters in the story). The physical library could even move into airports or other city spaces—for example, using traditional phone booths as mini-libraries.

Librarians in this future would need to give up some of their expertise; rather than being the ones with the answer (“where is this book?”), they will navigate with other techsavvy citizens to envision and coproduce new potential realities.

They would still organize the library space and nurture continuous innovation.

One Australian local library has already noticed the beginning of this future, where visits now exceed books loaned—wisely tying its bud-

THE FUTURIST

November-December 2014

27

BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY

“Librarians [could] begin to imagine the library as a safe place to virtually go where no one has gone before.”

get to “people through the door.”

• The Amazing New Place. While the first two futures deal with immediate and the medium-term future, this third future is longer term.

Based on long-promised developments in brain science and virtual reality, librarians begin to imagine the library as a safe place to virtually go where no one has gone before.

In this future, librarians would work with AI companies to create virtual educational spaces. These could include reenactments of major historical events or possible scenarios of the world in the future. While private companies will certainly lead in this area, libraries would become places where such holodecks or braincaps (direct brain–computer interfaces) are available to the public.

Librarians move from being knowledge navigators to being experience creators and navigators.

At heart in these last two scenarios is the notion of trust, as Lee Rainie, director of Pew Research Center ’s Internet and American Life Project, has suggested. Libraries retain the space of public good in a market-oriented world. Citizens need to believe that librarians will act in their best interest and not for profit. Legitimacy is foundational.

Philanthropic organizations will be as important to libraries in these scenarios as public support is to ensure stable funding. Generally, when the issue of charging a minimal fee 28

THE FUTURIST

has been raised, librarians are incredible cautious, as this starts a slippery slope toward widening knowledge gaps. There needs to be a space where information is truly free.

• Library as Publisher. This fourth scenario emerged not from the various groups participating in the foresight process, but from the state library’s own innovation team, which sought to create a new publishing platform. The library would radically change from collecting, organizing, and storing books published by others to becoming a publisher ­itself.

While the obstacles to this future are many, there appears to be an open niche between self-publishing and being a major multinational publishing house, with its cost challenges. Young, up-and-coming authors could get their start by publishing with a local library. Other citizens could then “like” the book or publicize it. As well, libraries could lead in the new arena of publishing smart interactive and wearable books.

Which Way for Libraries?

Certainly, these scenarios are not mutually exclusive. There will be many libraries and librarians who go the way of digital dinosaurs, as the asteroids of the digital and brain revolutions and the waves of privatization lead to their extinction. And

November-December 2014

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www.wfs.org

there may be places for retro-libraries—as with long-playing records, a return to quality and social equity.

With the move to greater social connection, rethinking the physical space of the library becomes a way to draw in the crowds—those looking for help in the e-world and those looking for safe places to connect in new arenas in the knowledge economy.

The braincap virtual future is longer term and dependent on virtual technology actually working and software being developed that can create new knowledge spaces. (Work in this area includes the virtual reality experiences developed by Oculus Rift, for instance.) The last scenario of libraries as publishers is likely a niche innovation. However, it could become a new source of income and connectivity that could well help libraries not just survive the immediate future, but flourish in the long term.

What is clear for librarians is that they can be at the center of a global knowledge revolution. However, to do so, they will need to challenge their traditional story of the keeper of the collection.

In any case, that traditional story—library as archive, librarian as search engine—is nearing its end; networks of networks of computers and servers can do those functions much better, though they still can’t tell a story about it.

The expressed preferred narrative for future libraries—innovators in the gardens—provides flexibility and purpose, and helps librarians rewrite their future. ❑ About the Author Sohail Inayatullah is a professor at Tamkang University, University of the Sunshine Coast, Macquarie University, and Metafuture .org. He is also a member of the World Future Society’s Global Advisory Council. His previous article for THE FUTURIST, “Causal Layered Analysis Defined,” appeared in the JanuaryFebruary 2014 issue. His e-mail address is sinayatullah@gmail.com.

Outlook 2015

Top Trends and Forecasts for the Decade Ahead

INTRODUCTION Tomorrow’s computers will know exactly what you mean, and they’ll be able to tell when you’re lying. They’ll take over many jobs, but accelerate economic growth to such an extent that we may not have to work after all—or we’ll invent more creative and useful occupations for ourselves. The key to our future will be our adaptability, and in that regard, let’s hope we are able to keep up with the rats.

These are just a few of the intriguing trends and forecasts you’ll find in this latest edition of Outlook, a roundup of the most thought-provoking possibilities and ideas published in THE FUTURIST magazine over the past year.

The forecasts collected in the World Future Society’s annual Outlook reports are not intended to predict the future, but rather to provoke thought and inspire action for building a better future today.

The opinions and ideas expressed are those of their authors or sources cited and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Future Society. For more information, please refer to the original articles cited. Back issues of THE FUTURIST may be purchased at www.wfs.org/backissues.

—THE EDITORS

INSIDE OUTLOOK Work and the Economy, page 2 Innovation and Exploration, page 3 Environment and Resources, page 5 Health and Well-Being, page 7 Policy, Governance, and World Affairs, page 8

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

OUTLOOK 2015 WORK AND THE ECONOMY

Advances in artificial intelligence could create a rapidly accelerating economy, but one that pushes more human workers aside.

Two billion jobs will disappear by 2030.

The good news is that the jobs replacing those disappearing occupations are being invented now.

Technological and economic forces will wipe out countless job categories, but more will rise in their place, says FUTURIST innovation editor Thomas Frey. Among the job-inventing industries on the rise are 3-D printing, commercial drones, biofactories, personal rapid transit systems, and innovative new living and learning environments, such as micro colleges and senior living solutions.

Thomas Frey, “Inventing Tomorrow’s Jobs,” July-Aug 2014, p. 6 © LUVEMAK / DREAMSTIME

The challenge of building a truly intelligent machine may boil down to scanning a human brain down to every minute detail and then constructing a computer that perfectly emulates it. Engineers could achieve this in another 30 to 75 years.

Once they do, billions of fully operational, independent-living emulations of human beings—“ems,” for short—could be living and working among us.

Whole new cities of ems might emerge, while un­ employed humans everywhere compete with these robotic minds for jobs.

Keep in mind that a rapidly growing economy could offer more opportunities for specialization, as well as more varied cultural opportunities—music, art, and novels, for instance. It could also lead to bigger gaps between rich and poor nations, firms, and individuals.

Robin Hanson, “When the Economy Transcends Humanity,” Jan-Feb 2014, p. 27

Teachers may be glad to be replaced by machines when it comes to grading papers. And AI will offer fairer, faster scoring.

Climate change could increase the costs of doing business; it could also offer more business opportunities.

Enterprises everywhere should brace for major impacts from climate change. On one hand, it will raise the costs of doing business in many sectors by disrupting production and supply chains, raising insurance rates, sabotaging electricity and water sources, and causing mass migrations of many workforces to safer locations.

On the other hand, thawing of the Arctic will create new shipping, mining, and oil-drilling opportunities, and demand will surge for new businesses that help consumers withstand extreme weather and climate turbulence.

Organizations need to weigh the potential risks and costs of climate change and factor adaptation into their strategic planning, recommend researchers from A. T. Kearney in Germany.

World Trends & Forecasts, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 7

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OUTLOOK 2015

Raising academic achievement in the United States has largely meant raising standards—and conducting more standardized testing. Add on the growing numbers of students in online courses who also need to be assessed, plus a demand for more-sophisticated assessment of students’ skills, and we see a grading crisis before us.

Machine scoring to the rescue! Artificial intelligence is not yet ready to replace trained educators (who can easily spot when a test taker is faking it in an essay: “Queen Isabella sailed 1,492 ships to Columbus, Ohio”); however, AI scoring offers greater consistency and objectivity, as well as relieving humans of labor-intensive work. As machine learning advances, look to automated scoring to give students and teachers a boost.

Randall Mayes, “Putting Machine Testing to the Test,” Jan-Feb 2014, p. 6

A looming pension crisis could engulf state and local governments.

Jurisdictions throughout the United States have been paying out pensions and health-coverage programs for retirees since the Great Depression, but these retiree benefits have swelled up in recent years to consume nearly 20% of municipal budgets, on average. They could reach nearly 50%, or even 75%, in the next few decades if current trends continue.

Every local government will need to find ways to

cut spending while fulfilling its legal obligations to support its retirees, or else face bankruptcy like Detroit in summer 2013.

Rob Bencini, “The End of Public Promises? Governments and the Pension Deficit Disorder,” Nov-Dec 2013, p. 28 The talent shortage in the United States and other developed countries will grow, as baby boomers retire and younger workers fail to pick up the needed skills.

By 2020, three-fourths of U.S. jobs will require higher skills—and they’ll offer higher pay. About 122 million workers will be needed, but only 55 million will be qualified for these jobs, warns workplacetrends consultant Edward E. Gordon.

At the heart of the crisis is the shrinking labor pool with the necessary training, says Gordon. High-order competencies are becoming the basic minimum requirement for essentially all U.S. jobs, he asserts, but the absence of those skills among American workers leaves up to 5 million available jobs vacant.

The skills crisis already happening in the United States, Europe, and Japan will extend to China, India, and other emerging economies, Gordon argues.

Edward E. Gordon [interview], “Game Plan for a Future-Ready Workforce, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 46; David Pearce Snyder, “Futurizing Workers for Future Work” [review of Future Jobs by Edward E. Gordon], July-Aug 2014, p. 52

few decades. A new supercomputer at the University of Texas–Austin recently used word-meaning models, logic algorithms, and grammar and syntax analysis to accurately predict the meanings of sentences 85% of the time.

National-security agencies of many countries would look forward to using such computers to gather more intelligence from more sources in less time. But these artificially intelligent spying machines also pose many dangers to individuals’ privacy and security.

World Trends & Forecasts, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 8 Soldiers will gird up in iron suits. So will elderly civilians.

Even the best-trained soldiers tire out when carrying heavy loads over long distances. In the future, robotic exoskeletons fitted over their bodies would give them a boost, allowing wearers to use a remote control to move their arms, legs, and torsos, with mechanical amplification in every motion.

Some designers envision senior citizens in civilian life using exoskeletons, too, to stay mobile even as their bodies lose strength and vitality.

Patrick Tucker, “Riding the Power Jacket,” Jan-Feb 2014, p. 64 PATRICK TUCKER

Knowledge workers, say goodbye to IT departments.

The bring-your-own-device trend in today’s workplace is leading to tomorrow’s bring-your-own-app protocol. Workers impatient with official IT department solutions are increasingly opting for other consumer services—e.g., Dropbox for sharing large files with clients, according to a survey by LogMeIn Inc. and Edge Strategies.

One impact may be that the already shrinking talent pool could dwindle further as employers demand more skills from their new hires—not just content knowledge, but also a portfolio of technical capabilities. Look for investment in training to offset depletions to in-house IT support.

Future Scope, July-Aug 2014, p. 4

INNOVATION AND EXPLORATION Computers will perfectly understand our words— and may use them against us.

Computers that intuit the meanings of words and sentences, like humans can, might be among us in a

OUTLOOK 2015

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OUTLOOK 2015 Computer chips will shrink to the size of dust—and become just as ubiquitous.

A fully operational, wireless-communications computer chip no bigger than a grain of sand has been built by University of Michigan engineers. Computer chips this small will eventually become cheap to manufacture. Once they do, we could see them ­everywhere—in household appliances, food products, bridges and buildings, and even rivers and streams. And the chips will connect all of these objects to the Internet.

We will operate with more real-time data about ecosystems and human-made structures than ever before, while household items will maintain themselves largely on their own.

Richard Yonck, “Connecting with Our Connected World,” Nov-Dec 2013, p. 17

Hybrid materials will blend the properties of living and nonliving things.

Bacteria and other living things that are engineered to do what nonliving materials can do—such as conduct electricity or emit light—will help us build more-efficient energy systems and structures that heal themselves, according to MIT engineers.

Tomorrow in Brief, July-Aug 2014, p. 2 AURORA FLIGHT SCIENCES

thousand rhinos alone were illegally killed in 2013.

Poachers are supported by a modern and wellfunded intelligence network, according to activist Aliyah Pandolfi. Using aerial drones, rangers can survey thousands of square miles of reserved areas more effectively and using fewer resources to identify poachers.

Tomorrow in Brief, Mar-Apr 2014, p. 2; Princess Aliyah Pandolfi, “Robotic Technology to Preserve Wildlife: A Scenario,” Mar-Apr 2014, p. 35 Plants that “talk” to us could become our allies in ecosystem monitoring.

Thanks to research from the University of Rome’s W-LAB, plants may be turned into natural biosensors. Plants constantly respond to pests, sunlight, and other stimuli, so their electrical signals would provide us with more information than an artificial device could.

Tomorrow in Brief, May-June 2014, p. 2

Smarter sex toys: The technologies of intimacy will become more interactive—and more intimate.

Future sex toys will be more personalized, thanks to technologies that enable devices to store user preferences—such as vibrations that respond to a musical playlist.

Karen Moloney, “Euphoric, Harmless, and Affordable: A Trend Analysis of Sex,” May-June 2014, p. 22

Microbes will help us colonize space.

Drones will become vital tools for environmental management and protection.

Aerial drones could offer better views of inacces­ sible ecosystems, such as the richly biodiverse but remote Peruvian cloud forest.

Underdeveloped infrastructure makes it difficult to collect information in such areas, so Wake Forest University researchers are developing minuscule unmanned flying vehicles that could collect higher-resolution images than can be obtained from satellites.

Drones are also being added to the arsenal for park rangers fighting poachers of endangered species. In South Africa’s Kruger National Park, more than a

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OUTLOOK 2015

Molecular biologists today are learning to alter the genes and amino acids in microbes to do things like digest dust and secrete construction-capable brick mortar. Future space missions might bring cultures of microbes like these with them. When the human crew lands on a new planet, the microbes could go to work synthesizing materials that the humans could use for building permanent space habitations.

Adam Rutherford, author of Creation, reviewed by Rick Docksai, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 51

Teleportation is getting closer, photon by photon.

Moving physical matter from one place to another has long been the impossible dream of science fiction, but physicist Juan Yin of the University of Science and Technology of China claims to have teleported entangled photons over a distance of about 60 miles.

While vacationers should make more-traditional travel arrangements for the foreseeable future, teleportation technologies will advance over the next several decades.

Gray Scott, “Visualizing the Future,” July-Aug 2014, p. 22

NASA

enough to detect any such biomarkers, but future instruments possibly could.

World Trends & Forecasts, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 10

ENVIRONMENT AND RESOURCES © 5XINC / ISTOCKPHOTO

The path to Mars goes through the Moon first.

As anxious as we may be to send humans to Mars, most of the world’s space agencies have a return to the Moon at the top of the agenda. One reason is that the lunar surface may be richer in useful materials, such as rocks with condensed molecules of hydrogen and oxygen, which, if heated up, could produce air, water, and rocket fuel for explorers.

The Moon could also provide a better base for long-term encampments, with tunnels that could shelter inhabitants from radiation, meteors, and temperature extremes.

World Trends & Forecasts, Sep-Oct 2014, p. 6 EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY, NASA, M. KORNMESSER (ESA/HUBBLE) AND STSCI

More animal species will go extinct wherever human population density increases.

The likelihood of any given animal species going extinct this century rises in direct relation to the rate of human population growth in the country where the species’ habitats are found, according to a University of Ohio study.

Growing population density in the United States puts more species at risk: The researchers project that 11 new species will be threatened with extinction in the United States by 2050. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a projected 20 new species will be threatened by mid-century.

World Trends & Forecasts, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 12

More power for more people will strain electricity supplies. Increasing demand may drive development of renewables.

If extraterrestrial life is out there, we will develop the tools to find it.

Life may exist on one or more of the planets that astronomers have discovered orbiting other stars.

And we don’t have to visit them to find out: Life will leave signs of its presence in the form of biomarkers in its planet’s atmosphere, according to Lee Grenfell, a German Aerospace Center researcher. For instance, large quantities of nitrous oxide and methane might be a biomarker; oxygen would be another.

Our present-day telescopes are not powerful

Fossil fuels will continue to supply most of the world’s electricity past 2050, if current trends continue. However, aging nuclear power plants are being decommissioned, and fossil fuel plants may increasingly be replaced or retrofitted to take advantage of falling costs of renewable energies.

To meet the needs of the 1.2 billion people without access to electricity now, as well as the 3.7 billion additional people who will be expecting electricity by 2050, the world will need to embrace a wider range of supply sources, including renewables and technologies that increase energy efficiencies.

In Pakistan, for instance, demand for energy will increase sevenfold by 2030. The nation currently im-

OUTLOOK 2015

5

OUTLOOK 2015 ports 75% of its energy, but has large untapped renewable resources of its own. Pakistan’s hydropower plants are now operating at only 15% of potential, and 70% of its uncultivated land could be used for producing biofuel crops.

Jerome C. Glenn, “Our Global Situation and Prospects for the Future,” Sep-Oct 2014, p. 19; Imran Ali, “Seven Big Challenges for Pakistan—and the Lessons They Could Teach,” Sep-Oct 2014, pp. 23-24

If the trend holds, it could slow climate change slightly and buy us time to implement climate solutions.

World Trends & Forecasts, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 11 Biomass could become a staple transportation-fuel source.

Longer growing seasons and warmer temperatures are causing many tree species to age in place more quickly, according to a Duke University study that observed 65 species in 31 U.S. states. Around 80% of the observed tree species exhibited accelerated life cycles.

Future Scope, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 4

Sweden is striving now to achieve a tenfold increase in domestic biofuel production, aiming to provide the transportation sector one-third of its fuel from biomass sources by 2030.

There are pros and cons to such an effort. Pro: The nation would achieve a transportation sector that is carbon-neutral, as well as some degree of freedom overall from fossil fuels. Con: The farm sector will have to divert much of its cropland from growing food to growing fuel.

Tomorrow in Brief, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 2

ORNL

OREGON DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY PHOTO BY J. PRICHER

Many forests will grow old before their time.

Mega-fires in forests around the world will become more frequent.

Plants will offset some climate change by ingesting more carbon dioxide.

Certain species of trees are ingesting more carbon dioxide as the atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels rise, according to researchers at Duke University and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The researchers are not sure how many of the world’s tree species are raising their CO2 intake, or if those that do will continue to do so indefinitely.

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OUTLOOK 2015

A “perfect storm” of factors will lead to more-­ frequent and more-intense forest fires, including climate change that has created hotter and drier conditions, rapid growth of homes and communities near forests that endangers more people and property, and influxes of invasive insects and diseases that have weakened trees.

In the U.S. West, an increase of global temperatures of 4°C to 6°C by the end of the century could increase the annual area burned by a factor of two to five.

David Bengston and Michael J. Dockry, “Forest Futures in the Anthropocene: Can Trees and Humans Survive ­Together?” July-Aug 2014, p. 36

Urban forests could keep humans better connected to nature and each other.

As the planet becomes more urban (70% of the population could eventually be city dwellers), forests

and their services will be integrated into the human ecosystem.

Urban forests will help keep air pollution in check by sequestering carbon, as well as aiding in flood control and providing habitats. There are even emerging urban foraging movements among those gathering natural sources of food and medicine.

David Bengston and Michael J. Dockry, “Forest Futures in the Anthropocene: Can Trees and Humans Survive Together?” July-Aug 2014, pp. 36-37 Small-scale energy for households could one day come from rainwater.

UNITEC

A microturbine system fed by rainwater is under development by researchers at the Technological University of Mexico.

So far, this miniature hydropower system (called Pluvia) can only create enough electricity to recharge 12-volt batteries (useful for small appliances or LED lamps), but even this could be a boon in poor communities.

Tomorrow in Brief, July-Aug 2014, p. 2

The rodents will rise! Rats could play a moreprominent role in Earth’s ecosystems.

Rats are very adaptable, and as they are introduced to different environments, rat populations will outcompete native species by evolving in myriad ways to suit their new habitats, predicts geologist Jan ­Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester.

“So there will be future thin rats, future fat rats, slow and heavy rats, fast and ferocious rats, probably future aquatic rats,” he says. Other animals that may follow this pattern of highly competitive adaptability include domestic cats, rabbits, and goats.

Tomorrow in Brief, May-June 2014, p. 2

Earth’s oceans will disappear entirely—in about a billion years.

The Sun, like all stars, will become brighter over the course of its life. Gradually increasing solar radiation means that the Earth’s temperature will rise over hundreds of millions of years.

With this increasing temperature, water will begin to vaporize. Because water vapor is a greenhouse

gas, the increased atmospheric water vapor will cause the planet to heat even faster and, in about a billion years, will cause the oceans to boil and evaporate completely, predicts a team of meteorological scientists writing in the journal Nature.

While there isn’t much we can do about this situation today, researchers are incorporating more data and devising better models for understanding the Earth and its systems, which will give us better tools to work with on more immediate climatological and meteorological problems.

World Trends & Forecasts, May-June 2014, p. 10 Wise local gardeners will feed the world.

The world’s agricultural systems will suffer much damage this century from environmental crises and the depletion of the raw materials that fertilizers, fuels, and farming equipment require.

As the troubles unfold, it will fall to private, gardening-savvy individuals to feed themselves and their communities. Local farming, small-scale livestock cultivation, and home aquaculture will all be lifesaving skills, if communities everywhere promote them and scale them up far and wide.

John Michael Greer, author of Green Wizardry, reviewed by Rick Docksai, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 52

High-value goods from low-value woods could help restore the world’s forests.

It’s become economically difficult to keep forests clear of small trees and shrubs killed by disease or insects, but new markets are emerging to make this low-quality resource worth harvesting. For example, computer casings could be made from wood, and smartphone screens could be made from wood-based nanomaterials—which are also being explored for other uses such as sensors in paper to detect moisture, chemical pollutants, etc.

David Bengston and Michael J. Dockry, “Forest Futures in the Anthropocene: Can Trees and Humans Survive Together?” July-Aug 2014, p. 38

HEALTH AND WELL-BEING Swallow that sensor! Better health through big data.

Future medicine will rely on an array of sensors collecting and reporting on the status of your body.

Digestible sensors that you swallow will store and transmit data about your body. Sensors embedded in your teeth will recognize when you eat, drink, cough, or smoke. And sensors under your skin will constantly measure vital signs and alert health-care pro-

OUTLOOK 2015

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OUTLOOK 2015 fessionals when something is wrong.

Other health technologies on the way: • Robotic nurse assistants will help prepare for and perform basic procedures, such as drawing a patient’s blood.

• Intelligent surgical knives will minimize blood loss and tissue damage.

• Biomaterials and drugs could be 3-D printed on demand.

• Individual genome sequencing will offer personalized (and more-accurate) diagnoses.

Bertalan Meskó,“Rx Disruption: Technology Trends in Medicine and Health Care,” May-June 2014, p. 31 We will engineer ourselves to be ageless and disease-free.

Doctors 20 or 30 years from now might treat diseases, not by administering antibiotics, but by altering patients’ genomes so that their bodies will ward off the diseases on their own, says José Luis Cordeiro, chair of The Millennium Project’s Venezuela Node.

He further envisions these gene-based therapies going into wider practice to render us as a species immune to every major disease and disorder. We will likewise genetically thwart the aging process and keep ourselves looking and feeling young and healthy indefinitely.

Rick Docksai, “Futurists Explore the Next Horizon,” Nov-Dec 2013, p. 51

Future dreams may be sweeter, thanks to specially designed aural enhancements.

An app for soothing sounds that evoke pleasant experiences—such as walking through the woods or on a sunny beach—helps sleepers to have more pleasant dreams.

Similar treatments may one day be used to help individuals experiencing depression or other psychoUNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

logical problems, according to University of Hertfordshire psychology professor Richard Wiseman.

Tomorrow in Brief, July-Aug 2014, p. 2 Plasma will offer a new weapon against antibioticresistant bugs.

As deadly pathogens form resistance to more and more antibiotics, pharmaceutical researchers are seeking alternative weapons to keep disease in check. They may have found one in plasma, a unique state of matter that has no definite shape or volume but carries positive and negative charges. Its composite molecules can destroy the targeted microbes on contact.

The next challenge is to learn more about how plasma affects healthy cells, so as not to cause un­ desired side effects.

Tomorrow in Brief, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 2

Touch-sensitive prosthetics will give users a better feel for their environments.

As sophisticated as some artificial arms, hands, and legs are, with ever greater ranges of motion, they don’t quite feel like natural body parts. University of Chicago researchers are now hoping to give patients better functionality by reproducing neural patterns, conveying sensory information from a robotic hand back to the brain.

Tomorrow in Brief, Mar-Apr 2014, p. 2

Synthetic biology could pave the way for improved medical treatments.

Organ demand far outweighs supply, and 3-D printed organs could save countless patients on organ transplant waiting lists. Malaria and other diseases could also be treated with bioengineered drugs.

On the other hand, synthetic biology could also potentially be misused, such as by bioterrorists bent on recreating and releasing deadly viruses.

Randall Mayes, “Where Will the Century of Biology Lead Us?” May-June 2014, p. 26

POLICY, GOVERNANCE, AND WORLD AFFAIRS Growing disparities in wealth portend increased potential for civil war.

Social scientists warn that income inequality within a country may be an early warning sign of civil struggles ahead. Ethnic and religious schisms, overall poverty, and incidents of political extremism are other factors monitored for potential strife by researchers at Germany’s University of Tübingen.

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OUTLOOK 2015

One indicator that researchers look at is whether or not wage growth lags behind or outpaces growth of per capita GDP; when people’s paychecks don’t keep up with the rest of the economy, then inequality is probably increasing.

Regardless of actual income levels, however, it is the inequality that has been correlated to increased uprisings, historically.

World Trends & Forecasts, Sep-Oct 2014, p. 9

KETURAH HETRICK

Nahuatl Mazatec Chinantec Chocho Ixcatec Triqui

Mixtec Cuicatec

While the Internet won’t usher in an age of democracy for all, or even help to replace fallen leaders with democratically elected ones, it will allow protestors to better organize protests, educate the public, and advocate for their positions.

Futurist business consultant Karl Albrecht warns that even in China, where leaders have resisted the democratization of the Internet, the costs to economic development and social prosperity will be seen as too high.

“Chinese leaders … will be increasingly forced toward a middle-road policy, hoping that rising prosperity will siphon off some of the populist anger that seeks expression in the online subculture,” he says.

Karl Albrecht, “The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises,” Mar-Apr 2014, p. 25

Chinese, Russian, and other languages will play a greater role in online content.

English dominates the Web now, but 6.1% of online content is in Russian, and a quarter of the Internet’s users are Chinese. While English content grew only 300% from 2000 to 2011, Chinese grew nearly 1,500% during that time, and Russian content grew by 1,825%.

The bad news is that only 5% of the world’s languages appear online, and the Internet will hasten extinction of many rarer languages, like Malagasy, says Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media.

“We face two challenges,” he observes. “Helping small languages survive online and building bridges between content in different large languages.”

Patrick Tucker, “I Speak, You Speak, We All Speak ­Internet,” Mar-Apr 2014, p. 42

Spanish may ultimately conquer indigenous languages in Mexico.

A third of the world’s languages are in danger of extinction, but the problem is severe in Mexico, where some 60 of 143 indigenous languages (42%)

Zoque

Zapotec

Amuzgo Chatino

Listen up, leaders of China! Social media will become increasingly important in political uprisings.

Mixe

Chontal

Huave

are at risk. Even in bilingual families, Spanish is the primary language of classrooms and workplaces.

The government is interested in preserving Mexico’s native languages in schools, but bilingual curriculums are hard to implement because teachers are not necessarily fluent in the local languages.

World Trends & Forecasts, July-Aug 2014, p. 12 Liar, liar, brain waves on fire! Brain scanning could one day replace jurors as finders of facts.

Increasingly sophisticated neuro-technologies will enable the legal system to spot when suspects, witnesses, and police are telling the truth or inventing fictions. Truth comes from the place where the brain stores memories, while lies come from the brain’s fantasy-generating regions.

As functional MRIs become more widespread, look for brain-wave detectives in the courtroom.

Clay Rawlings and Rob Bencini, “What Does Moore’s Law Mean for the Rest of Society?” July-Aug 2014, p. 41

Driverless cars could reduce burdens on courts— and put auto insurance companies out of business.

As automated vehicles increasingly replace human-driven ones, the numbers of deaths and catastrophic injuries will drastically decline, along with lawsuits and the need to insure humans and vehicles against drunk or sleeping drivers, road rage, and other ills. Accident liability will be manufacturers’ responsibility.

Clay Rawlings and Rob Bencini, “What Does Moore’s Law Mean for the Rest of Society?” July-Aug 2014, p. 41

Militaries will be able to read the minds of potential traitors, preventing insider attacks.

Veritas Scientific, a Maryland-based neuroscience technology company, is developing an insider-threatdetection system called HandShake. Using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), HandShake measures brain ox-

OUTLOOK 2015

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OUTLOOK 2015 VERITAS SCIENTIFIC

officers with instantaneous information not only on incidents that are happening now, but also on ones that may happen in the near future.

The Visual Analytics Law Enforcement Toolkit (VALET), designed at Purdue University, generates real-time alerts on criminal activity, traffic incidents, and other occurrences that merit police attention. In addition, the system has “temporal prediction” algorithms that are said to predict future traffic activity, crimes, and civil disturbances with 95% accuracy.

Tomorrow in Brief, Jan-Feb 2014, p. 2 PURDUE RESEARCH FOUNDATION

ygenation and other neural signals to determine a person’s animosity and potential to act upon it.

The specific goal of the research is to see how likely an Afghan soldier would be to turn on a U.S. soldier he’s supposed to be cooperating with. Other applications could include preempting suicide attempts, according to Veritas founder Eric Elbot.

World Trends & Forecasts, Mar-Apr 2014, p. 12 CRDF GLOBAL

Religious values may become a key consideration for developing policies on such issues as water management.

Science collaborations may bring distrustful nations closer together.

Despite its science sector’s extreme isolation from the rest of the global science community, the North Korean government values scientific and technological development. Collaboration with U.S. researchers could also bolster Korean researchers’ reputations.

According to members of the U.S.–DPRK Scientific Engagement Consortium, formed in 2007, this “nonofficial diplomacy” could help North Korean scientists contribute to their country’s resource-management challenges, while U.S. scientists could benefit from North Korean expertise in biodiversity-rich ecosystems along the Korean border.

World Trends & Forecasts, Mar-Apr 2014, p. 13

Data will give police a new weapon for fighting crime.

A new data-analytics system could provide police

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Many Muslim-majority countries face prospects of intensified water shortages in coming years, but they could find the basis for workable water-supply strategies within the tenets of Islam.

The religion’s texts affirm both water’s value and the responsible use of the Earth’s resources. Countries that adapt these principles into legal measures that promote efficient water consumption, wastewater recycling, desalinization technology, and sustainable farming practices may keep their populations adequately hydrated well into the foreseeable future.

Syeda Mariya Absar, “Water Futures: An Islamic Perspective,” Jan-Feb 2014, p. 19 ❑ © NANCY PALUS / IRIN

Reports from WorldFuture 2014

When Futurists Ask “What If” The World Future Society’s 2014 annual conference in Orlando inspired serious and imaginative reflections on the world’s future— and that of futurists themselves.

PHOTOS: LISA MATHIAS FOR WFS

Stacey Childress (NewSchools Venture Fund) offers a vision of personalized public education.

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ho are futurists, what do they do, and for whom d o t h e y w o r k ? S e l f -­ reflection among futurists (or “foresight professionals”) was at the top of the agenda for the more than 500 participants at WorldFuture 2014: What If, which took place July 11-13 in Orlando, Florida.

“Futurism” is something that many people in the general public do not understand, although it is a subject of enormous fascination. The future sparks the imaginations of ­science-fiction writers as well as any-

one who has ever pondered the potential answers to a “what if” question.

But do they take it seriously? Perhaps not, said renowned technology forecaster Paul Saffo, as witnessed by those who demand perfectly accurate predictions and yet do not ­l isten to what they don’t want to hear (climate change deniers being a leading example).

Futurists need to be teachers, and they need to do a better job of helping people become more comfortable with uncertainty, Saffo said.

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST November-December 2014 39 © 2014 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

Writer Joe Tankersley of Walt Disney Imagineering also reminded futurists to guard against being too ­focused on trend hunting and storytelling. The “great sharing economy,” for instance, turned out to be just another business model: Uber is basically another kind of taxi service, he noted.

To a v o i d t h i s kind of mind-set, futurists need to be good historians.

“What’s my purpose [as a futurist]? To help clients build betJoe Tankersley: Futurists ter tomorrows,” should be better historians. Tankersley said.

Futurists working in the public sector have a broader “client” to serve, as the panel on the Futures of African Americans noted. As a newly elected commissioner in Orlando, Regina Hill overcame a criminal past that, she observed, is not unusual in the city’s fifth district: Graduation rates are less than 50%, and convicted felons are greater than 60%. And this not just an Orlando problem; it is an urban problem generally in the United States, she said.

“We lag behind in education,” Hill said. “There is a cultural, generational divide. If my mother didn’t go to college, and her mother didn’t go to college, our aspiration isn’t really college, it’s to get a job. So there are no skills.”

To address these problems, Hill said she plans to bring more role models into the community, such as sororities, fraternities, retired schoolteachers, and those in the arts and theater, to give hope to children.

CEOs, too, have been encouraged to start investing resources and “sweat equity” in the community to build up new leaders.

“And I do believe the best handout is a job. That gives our community dignity; it gives them pride,” Hill said. Jobs, education, and culture help bring a vision of the future to the community, she concluded.

—Reported by Cynthia G. Wagner 40

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Taking the Future Seriously Means Understanding Its Past Wise futurists should remember to look to the past as well as ahead to the future. Technology forecaster Paul Saffo noted the origins of foresight in our ancient history, singling out the Oracle at Delphi as a model that futurists today should try to emulate. Saffo, co-founder of Discern Analytics, has more than two decades of experience helping corporate and governmental clients prepare for the future.

The Pythias, the priestesses who maintained the Oracle and delivered forecasts to its visitors, were much more sophisticated than most of us today realize. They did not predict so much as they provoked their visitors to think actively about the future.

The fabled King Croesus was a cautionary tale on this distinction.

He asked the Pythia whether or not he should invade Persia, and she responded, “A great empire will fall.”

He presumed that she meant Persia and proceeded to invade, only to lose and be conquered in turn—the empire that would fall was his.

Saffo explained that Croesus is an example of what can happen when a listener does not ask the right questions. The forecast itself is not enough. It is just one step in the much larger task of trying to make sense of what we do not yet know.

“A forecast is just the mid-point in the process that begins with the question and all of the preparations leading up to the forecast,” he said.

Futurists should accordingly strive to be comfortable with the idea of uncertainty—and be honest with their audiences about it, Saffo advised. A futurist is successful when he or she gets the audience to think about what lies ahead and to make workable preparations for it.

“Our act of forecasting isn’t about predictions. It’s about mapping uncertainty,” he said. “The whole point of forecasting is to engage the petitioner in the process. They are not bystanders. They must engage by knowing themselves and appreciating uncertainty.”

That said, Saffo still urges futurists to work in tangibles, such as setting

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Paul Saffo urges futurists to help the public handle uncertainty.

specific time frames whenever they make forecasts about the future.

“The goal, I think, should be: No forecast without an expression of time frame. Professionally, we need to get more serious about this,” he said. And increasingly, futurists will need to be savvy at working with hard data.

Big data is taking on a growing role in foresight and will continue to do so, according to Saffo. Whereas futurists have traditionally offered “qualitative” scenarios about what the future might hold, their clients nowadays will increasingly expect them to utilize statistical models and computer simulations to offer findings that have numerical data to back them up.

“Methodological change is in the wind. More and more quantitative stuff is going to be the core of our business,” he said. “Intuition will matter as much as ever. It’s just going to take more work to get to the point where we trust our intuition.”

And as always, futurists will also need to have excellent communication skills. Saffo said that he considers it a personal failure when a client does not take his forecasts seriously and suffers a setback later on as a result. The burden is on the futurists to make clear to their clients why the forecasts deserve consideration.

“If the client didn’t listen, it means that I didn’t communicate well enough,” he said. “Imperfect tools are good enough as long as we communicate well.”

—Reported by Rick Docksai

Keeping Up with a Fast-Evolving Internet Lee Rainie doesn’t strongly selfidentify as a futurist. As the director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, he specializes in surveying the present— specifically, present-day attitudes toward (and uses of) Web technology. But the people he surveys have much to say about the Internet’s future, too.

“I am the least future-oriented person, probably, in this room,” he told the WorldFuture 2014 audience. “But we do these surveys about the future of the Internet. And my hope is that the smart people that respond to these surveys will give us some clues on the things that matter.”

Rainie shared findings from the 2014 Future of the Internet, an annual poll launched in 2004 by the Internet & American Life Project. Input from 2,551 survey respondents went into this edition, which focused on how the Internet would progress by 2025. Not surprisingly, respondents saw much that they liked and much that they did not.

The Internet of Things—i.e., proliferation of devices other than computers connecting to the Internet, including health-monitoring devices, parking meters, and thermostats— wasn’t a factor in 2004, but it is now.

And it will become a bigger and bigger factor as 2025 approaches, Rainie said.

Connectivity in general will keep growing, as well. The survey respondents anticipated more and more of the world’s people not only gaining Internet access, but having it at all places and at all hours.

“The whole globalized, sensitized, wearable Internet is on its way and will be a fact of life in the next 11 years, particularly in developed countries, but throughout the globe,” said Rainie. “More bandwidth and more online activities will be things that we will all take for granted.”

Survey respondents were largely favorable toward all of this. When asked, “Will the Internet of Things have widespread and beneficial effects by 2025?” 83% said yes. And when asked, “By 2025, will there be significant changes for the worse in

h ow p eop le g e t a n d share content online?”

65% said no.

When Rainie and colleagues asked respondents to further explain their answers, however, some underlying concerns came out. Many respondents acknowledged some degree of worry about each of the following: • Internet abuses and abusers will evolve in scale. Those who engage in bullying, stalking, and crime will gain new capacity to cause harm, and they will use it.

• Governments and corporations will intensify their surveillance of private individuals, leading to a widespread loss of trust in the Internet among users.

• New regulations on i n f o r m a t i o n s h a r i n g Lee Rainie outlines findings on the future of the Internet: might go too far and ob- Connectivity will keep growing, but so will abuses. struct legitimate sharing of ideas and content.

• Commercial pressures could how the Internet contributes to political partisanship and a breakdown of threaten the flow of information.

• Socioeconomic fissures might civil dialogue. Divisive discourse is a widen as less-advantaged people— problem on the Internet, he agreed. who either lack access to Web tech- But that’s only because the Internet nology or the necessary skills to use gives those who are ignorant and uninformed more opportunities to it—will fall further behind.

• National governments will im- voice their erroneous views.

“We argue about much more stuff pose more security and political controls over Internet use within their than we used to. Ages ago, newspaborders, leading to more blocking, pers really defined what people filtering, segmentation, and overall talked about. They put up parameters on what was legitimate to talk balkanization of the Web. It’s noteworthy that respondents about and what was not. Now, every often viewed government regulation aspect of human behavior is eleas part of the problem rather than a vated, including wrongness,” he solution. Quite a few respondents said.

But fortunately, those who are betheld little hope that lawmakers would be savvy and fast-acting ter-informed have a platform, too. enough to resolve the Internet’s And Rainie banks on them prevailing in the end. problems.

“There is more stupidity evident on “Many of them told us that regulators are only now responding to the Internet, so that’s distressing to things that were cutting-edge seven people. But the long run of history is or eight years ago, and that we will that the stupid don’t win,” he said. “If you hold too long to inaccurate belief, never catch up,” Rainie said.

—RD Another widespread concern was you get opposed by history.” www.wfs.org

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Entering the Data Era Each industrial revolution is driven by transformations in communication, energy, and mobility, observed cognitive scientist Om ­M arwah in his session, “The Data Era.” The steam-powered printing press, coal, and the locomotive engine guided the first Industrial Revolution; the next will be powered by the Internet of Things, renewable energy, drones, 3-D printing, and selfdriving cars. The greatest driver will be data.

“Data is becoming currency,” said Marwah. “Organizations today generate a lot of value from the data they produce.”

And the more data an organization can produce on each individual, the better a company can target its marketing to that person, and the more likely that person is to buy a product or service.

A combination of targeted advertising, 3-D printing, and drone delivery will also cause a shift in our con-

sumption patterns: An app on your phone will be able to suggest purchases based on your schedule and needs. Marwah offered the following example: Charles has a date tonight. His refrigerator knows that he has no champagne, so an app asks if he would like to buy a bottle on his way home from the gym. It also offers to donate $2 to Charles’s favorite charity if he buys a second bottle.

Charles makes the purchase, satisfying both himself and the advertiser.

Predictive analytics can also help solve social problems, Marwah noted. Technology will be able to prevent a student from failing in tenth grade by intervening when he shows signs of struggling to keep up with material in second grade.

It will cost the same to deliver quality educational materials to 10 students as it will to educate 10,000; as Internet access increases and laptops become far more affordable and

Om Marwah puts predictive analytics into a narrative about life in the data era.

common, students across the world will have access to a wide range of educational services, said Marwah.

—Reported by Keturah Hetrick

The Importance of Planning: Public Health 2030 There are more than 3,000 health departments in the United States alone. While public health is evolving, these departments aren’t evolving in tandem, due to their varying visions of the future. Scenario planning is one way to help public health departments to overcome inconsistencies and plan for a wide range of circumstances.

Clem Bezold and Trevor Thompson of the Institute for Alternative

Futures (IAF) explored possible scenarios for public health programs in the year 2030. Thompson explained that each set of scenarios that IAF creates includes “expectable, challenging, and visionary scenarios to facilitate preparation, imagination, and aspiration among public health departments.”

The presenters argued that officials should be prepared for worstcase public health scenarios. More

importantly, however, they should take into account the plausibility of each scenario, as well as plan for aspirational scenarios in order to increase the likelihood of an ideal future. “[We want] to use the power of futures to say, What might be out there, and how does that relate to what might be surprisingly successful?” Thompson explained.

—KH

Clem Bezold and Trevor Thompson offer scenarios for public health planners.

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Learning from the Smartphone Industry Futurists can learn a lot from the smartphone industry’s lessons, according to David Wood, co-founder of Symbian and chair of London ­Futurists.

In an increasingly disruptive technological environment, the ability to integrate different types of technology is often the difference between failure and success for companies.

Amazon achieved rapid success with the Kindle, thanks in part to the device’s effective combination and integration of different types of technology. Wood cites the combination

of cheap digital storage, customizable software, and energy-efficient screens as a large part of the Kindle’s success.

While new technologies often seem to pop up overnight, there’s more to each product’s developmental narrative than the public is aware of, Wood noted. Devices tend to emerge slowly, and it takes a long time to develop products and introduce them in a way that will be popular with audiences. For example, tablet computers had been in the works for decades before the iPad’s mainstream success in 2012. In 1983,

Steve Jobs announced his vision for “a great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes.” And in 2002, Bill Gates introduced the Tablet PC, to the world’s indifference.

We can learn not only from the successes of companies such as ­A pple and Amazon, but also from the failures of companies like Motorola and Nokia. Companies often fail when they lose sight of their vision for one or two great products and try to produce a large number and range of products instead.

—KH

Latin America in 2030 and Beyond Dominican Republic may be faHenderson pointed Bitar also predicted mous in the United States for its abil- t h a t L a t i n A m e r i c a to Brazil’s continity to produce skilled baseball play- would see a “new face ued need for enviers, but there’s obviously much more of democratic developronmentally to the island country’s story. Trade, ment.” The middle class responsible investagriculture, finance, manufacturing, is growing, resulting in ing, for example. and tourism are all important to the greater mobilization and Countries like India Dominican Republic’s future, ac- demands for solutions and China have alcording to former three-term presi- to social problems like ready shown how dent Leonel Fernández. He ex- inequality and violence. societies can thrive H a z e l H e n d e r s o n , Leonel Fernández of Dominican without m a s s i v e plained his plans for the country’s infrastructure developments, includ- founder of Ethical Mar- Republic. coal or nuclear ing a turnpike, a center for higher kets Media, talked about power plants by ineducation, and a train system, to cel- Brazil’s goal of reducing vesting in smaller, ebrate the coming bicentennial in inequality. In the past few years, Bra- village-owned wind generators and zil has “brought about 40 million other green technology.

2044.

Sergio Bitar, a former senator and people from really abject poverty “It’s good for us to remember, state minister of Chile, spoke on into the beginnings of being able to when we see all the breakdowns goLatin America’s assets and the im- join the middle class,” she said. ing on around us, that breakdowns pediments to a better future. The reHowever, the world’s fifth-largest drive breakthroughs,” Henderson gion has great interstate peace, is country has much left to work on. said.

—KH making great gains in democracy and human rights, has positive population growth, and is rich with natural resources. However, Latin America will need to overcome its fragile institutions, regional violence, socioeconomic inequality, and low productivity.

“I foresee two major changes for the next decade,” Bitar said. The first “is the end of the natural resources pool.”

The region will slow down its resource production, leading to calls for economic diversification and specialization, he Sergio Bitar of Chile.

Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets Media. believes. www.wfs.org

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Left to right: Trevor Haldenby, Kevin Russell, Gray Scott, and Ramez Naam, science-fiction authors explore Utopia.

Science Fiction Symposium The World Future Society’s 2014 conference was the first to cast a unique spotlight on science fiction as a source of inspiration for futurists. The day-long Science Fiction Symposium, organized by Brenda Cooper, also offered sci-fi authors and fans the opportunity to learn more about the resources and tools available to them from futures studies.

Fiction as a Futuring Tool Science fiction is a tool for imaging possible futures and technologies. It can give us a vision about a desirable future, or show us what to avoid. In either case, it inspires us to strive for a better tomorrow.

According to Tom Lombardo, director of the Center for Future Consciousness, “Science fiction is a testing ground for thinking and imaging the future.” He described sci-fi as a contemporary influence on the future, affecting the way we live and speak. “Science fiction is the think tank of the future.”

Madeline Ashby, a strategic foresight consultant and a science fiction novelist, expanded on this idea.

“Change makes us uncomfortable as humans,” she said. “Science fiction is one of the few facets that discusses change.”

When developing products or technologies, we need to imagine offbeat uses and unexpected consequences, Ashby explained. Before a technology is brought to the public, for instance, the producers should consider, “How will it go wrong?”

When the words science fiction are spoken, most people envision written stories, but movies and television have also inspired many people to think futuristically: “Is what I have read or seen possible? How can I make that happen?” These are types of questions that can spark the imagination and redirect our future.

Trevor Haldenby, a designer, futurist, and digital storyteller, broadened the areas of science fiction to include the Internet and other technologies. His work uses game theory to build alternate realities; he described the use of smartphones to find alien portals in a user’s city—an actual app currently available.

Haldenby also discussed fictional companies pre44

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sented on the Internet and Facebook and the effects of those sites on viewers. This “transmedia futuring” brings the story to life across multiple media ecologies, he explained.

The panelists concluded that science fiction is useful for futurists to visualize possible tomorrows and plan various scenarios to help individuals and organizations to thrive in the future.

—Reported by Gisele ­Peterson

What Current Science Fiction Should Futurists Read?

Participants at a panel on story recommendations agreed that futurists should read both science fiction and science fact.

Brenda Cooper, a futurist and science fiction author (The Creative Fire and The Silver Ship and the Sea), stated, “Futurists should write and/or read science fiction to give an emotional look at the ideas a futurist is trying to portray.” Science fiction reaches the reader through an emotional connection with the story.

Tom Lombardo agreed, stating that “science fiction is the most popular look at the future. Good science fiction is a synthesis of future science and emotion.” It engages the reader.

Science fiction can be relevant and more predictive of reality than either the author or the reader expects.

Brad Aiken, a medical doctor and science fiction author, discussed the medical science fiction story he wrote as a parody, Questioning the Tree, which portrays a future where doctors are not allowed to touch their patients; the only available tools for medical professionals are

Science Fiction Symposium organizer Brenda Cooper (right) chats with a participant.

scanners and questions prompted by a computer to obtain a diagnosis.

Recently, Aiken said, a friend went to the doctor and the physician just typed information into a laptop, not engaging with the patient. After the appointment, the friend called Aiken to say, “Oh, no, your story is true.”

Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning stories and novels are a good place for a beginning science-fiction reader to start. After you have found authors you enjoy, you can follow those. References from friends are also useful, and most well-loved stories are also well-reviewed.

Magazines that the panelists recommended included Analog, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed. Short science fiction is also available in anthologies and podcasts. Recommended recent novels include Existence by David Brin, Afterparty by Daryl Gregory, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, and Nexus by ­Ramez Naam.

—GP

Science Fictional Dystopias: We’ve Been Warned!

The Science Fiction Symposium gave sci-fi writers the opportunity to reflect on the more dystopian books and movies in their genre, and on their influence on current writers.

Ramez Naam (author of Nexus and Crux) argued that “so many dystopia stories and movies are just plain wrong.” Either their hypothesis or their science is off the mark. He suggested that looking at dystopian stories as “self-defeating prophecies” might be a better analysis than “self-fulfilling prophecies.” Solyent Green, Day after Tomorrow, and 1984 are all good examples of “self-defeating prophecies,” he said.

Zoltan Istvan (author of The Transhumanist Wager) said the use of dystopia is a means of creating interest-

ing stories. It is a literary device to create conflict as a source/reason for the protagonist to leave those problems behind in search for something better. Good examples include George Orwell’s 1984 and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Istvan also discussed the concept of designer children as portrayed in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Tim Mack, executive editor of World Future Review, observed that the horrific stories coming out of the Soviet Union during Stalin’s reign inspired Brave New World. Devices developed in science fiction, such as transparent holographic computer screens, inspired readers to ask, “Can we do that?”

Symposium moderator Brenda Cooper posed the question, “What current works have warnings?”

Mack noted that the Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer) contained a “warning” story line, and the current NSA problems are an example. Istvan recommended the Matrix trilogy, whose message was that we need to preserve something human versus the machine.

Naam said he hated the premise of Gattaca (1997 film written and directed by Andrew Niccol) but appreciated the effective delivery of the message against totalitarianism. He also admired Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a film about Captain America rebelling against authority and the continuous war against terror. And he noted that The Water Knife (by Paolo Bacigalupi, forthcoming) does an excellent job of warning about water shortages in a dystopian world.

Trevor Haldenby recommended Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) and District 9 (2009) as excellent warnings of a dystopian world. Both films present a society that is frightening and horrible, not necessarily sparing the privileged few.

Similarly, WALL-E (2008, Andrew Stanton) portrays a world that is essentially destroyed and left to caretaker robots, but the privileged minority escapes into space to await signs of life nurtured back from the dead by the caretakers. Haldenby noted the technique in WALLE of using flashbacks to show the privileged initially in their “real life” forms before slowly degenerating into the cartoonlike forms of the movie.

—Reported by Robert M. Wagner www.wfs.org

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Speed Futuring Focuses on “What If” Participants were given the opportunity to digest the ideas emerging throughout the conference during the Speed Futuring breakout session.

Led for the third year by moderators Erica Orange, vice president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., and FUTURIST editor Cindy Wagner, the discussions centered on the major conference categories (Earth, Commerce, Humanity, Sci/Tech, Govern­ ance, and Futuring), with reporters from each group summarizing the discussions and taking questions from the other groups.

The participants were clearly inspired by the conference theme and

Participant Fran Rabuck responds to Speed Futuring report.

offered an array of imaginative “what if” ideas in their respective topics.

For instance, the Earth group (reported by Alexandra Whittington) pondered, What if by 2030 we had a healthy global environment, which would Erica Orange consist of, among other things, healthy drinking water. How would we achieve that c o r p o r a future? One of the suggestions was tions? an environmental bill of rights—giv• W h a t Cindy Wagner ing the Earth “human” rights. if judges The Sci/Tech group (reported by r e c e i v e Josh Davis) honed in on the ques- support and campaign dollars—will tion, What if we design with users in they still be impartial? mind? This group reflected on the • W h a t i f c o m m u n i t i e s h a d responsibilities that science and tech- greater control of taxation and the nology professionals have for the dollars raised? rest of the world, as builders of tools • What if equal job opportunity that can facilitate others. across borders allows more robust The Governance group (reported learning?

by Dan Tuuri) produced perhaps the • What if collective bargaining longest list of “what if” questions, dissolves? including: • What if a student demonstrates • What if corporations become learning in new ways that change recognized as having human rights? how we teach?

Would equality be based by em• What if adult literacy does not ployee size? By dollar? How and improve? when will they have a voice?

• What if communities incorpo• What if state and local govern- rated futuring in their discussions? ments recognized citizen status of —CGW

Best of Houston Foresight At “Best of Houston Foresight,” selected students presented their projects from the University of Houston’s Foresight graduate program.

National performance is most often measured by gross domestic product (GDP)—and that’s a problem, said student and EY (Ernst & Young) News consultant Laura

Schlehuber.

“[GDP] is the main factor when countries’ leaders determine national economic policy,” Schlehuber said.

GDP is the sum of a country’s exports plus its personal, government, and business spending on goods and services, minus its imports. GDP growth is often conflated with

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growth of citizens’ well-being. But just because a country’s overall expenditures are growing doesn’t mean that its citizens are better off. More spending on public health crises or on prisons doesn’t mean that individuals are making more money, Laura Schlehuber presents her foresight project. that inequality is shrinking, or that citizens are happier. When used as a dicator (GPI), Schlehuber explained. primary indicator of economic GPI supplements economic data health, GDP can actually mask a with social and environmental faccountry’s problems. tors. Using GPI instead of GDP gives A better measure of national per- policy makers a more-complete picformance is the Genuine Progress In- ture of an area’s overall performance

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Honors, Tributes, and Welcomes Great future-minded men and women built the World Future Society up. More future-minded men and women will keep it going. During WorldFuture 2014, future builders past and future were honored.

Tim Mack, who served as WFS president for 10 years (2004-2014), introduced his successor, Amy ­Z alman, to the conference participants. Mack also paid tribute to his predecessor, WFS founder Edward Cornish, who retired earlier in 2014.

A video was played during the opening session to describe Ed’s motivation for forming the Society and to showcase some of its early supporters.

Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, was among the great future-minded leaders who provided valuable support for the World Future Society in its earliest years. He has written more than 50 books on the planet’s health and its prospects for the future, many of which he generously allowed to be adapted as articles for THE FUTURIST magazine. Brown was thus named the 2014 recipient of the Society’s Distinguished Service award.

“I’ve always felt close to the organization, and to Ed and Sally, of

course, from the beginning,” he said.

“We shared the same sort of interests and concerns about the future. … So it’s always been an intellectual closeness and, on my part, a lot of personal respect for Ed and everything that he’s done. The World Future Society reflects his interest, his values—almost his reason for being.”

Tribute was also paid to the late Arnold Brown, chairman of the futurist consulting firm Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., and a longtime Society board member (chairman, 2006-2007). Jared Weiner, vice president of WEB, spoke of Brown’s dedication to the Society and of his role in helping both him and his wife, ­Erica Orange, to become successful futurists in their own right.

“His ongoing counsel, his presence at these meetings, his wicked sense of humor—which many of you can attest to—his unwavering integrity in the face of quick-money trends services, his willingness to share his inquiry and foresight wherever and whenever, are parts of his being that we shall never forget and that shall grace the legacy of the World Future Society for many years to come,” Weiner said.

Finally, in introducing her ideas for the future of the World Future Society as the new CEO and president, Zalman expressed optimism

during the conference closing plenary session: “The topic of the future is hot stuff, absolutely on fire,” she observed.

“All over the world, people sense that we in our communities and on our planet are entering transformative times. We are curious, we have trepidation, we are exhilarated. It is a really good time to be a futurist.”

Zalman was previously the U.S. Department of Defense Chair of ­Information Integration and a professor of Strategic Studies at the National War College. At WorldFuture 2014, she pledged to reaffirm the Society’s value to current members and to launch substantive outreach initiatives to new communities by establishing specialized schools of thought, or “hubs.”

“The organization will always be rooted in its fundamental concern and interest in the future of all of us—humanity,” Zalman said. “WFS has incredible breadth. What that means is that we can produce and convene smaller, focused exchanges among professionals in high impact fields about specific future concerns.

WFS has access to the talent to empower and enable serious, original contributions in niche professional arenas.”

—CGW [Rick Docksai contributed to this report.]

and allows them to make informed decisions that are still both data driven and future focused.

Kurt Callaway, a student with a background in software engineering and business analysis, spoke on the future of harvesting material resources from asteroids and comets.

Callaway’s scenario begins in 2033, when he predicts that humans will be “routinely present” in and beyond low-Earth orbit.

While it will take years for us to harvest water from space, its presence will allow astronauts to stay in orbit for longer. If we space explorers can convert space water to hydrogen fuel, launch costs could be lowered significantly—up to 90% in some cases, according to Callaway.

Back on Earth, metals harvested from space will have an even more

drastic impact. Callaway pointed out that aluminum was once more valuable than gold. After efficient aluminum smelting technology became widespread, the alloy became much more common and cheap, leading to its widespread use. He predicts a similar pattern for rare metals: If we can mine platinum and other expensive metals in space, their prices will plummet and they can be used in new ways.

Engineer Jim Breaux spoke on the future of emergency preparedness.

He used the futures wheel, a futures visualization tool that maps changes and consequences, to examine reactions caused by population growth in the coastal United States.

More housing will be needed to accommodate a larger population, resulting in new housing regulations

and increased home costs. This will give rise to inflation and will lead to more nontraditional housing units.

Breaux predicted a proliferation of high-rise buildings and mobile homes.

Greater population means that the coasts will have greater political representation at the federal level. Projects aimed at protecting coastal areas from disaster will increase.

Emergency evacuations will also become more difficult. New laws will be enacted to deal with difficulties and to prosecute the rising evacuation fraud. Private businesses will form to fill the need for efficient evacuations of large populations— but resources won’t be evenly distributed, and wealthier Americans will have priority in major evacuations, Breaux predicted.

—KH

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THE FUTURIST

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Colleges Looking Forward to the Future A well-rounded education has always included knowledge of history.

But now, schools need to start emphasizing the past less and the future more, according to a team of university educators in the session on Creation of a Future Forward College.

Speakers Larry Darlage (Tarrant County College, Texas) and Butch Grove and Benita Budd (Wake Tech Community College, Raleigh, North Carolina) described how their own campuses are reformulating their curricula and classrooms to better prepare their students to be successful twenty-first-century professionals and citizens.

“In a time of exponential change, there is a need for imagination, creativity, and education that looks forward,” said session moderator Rick Smyre, president of Communities of the Future. He described this forward-thinking education as one that would teach students to be comfortable with change and uncertainty, to exercise all sides of their brains, to solve problems collaboratively, and

to be perceptive to “weak signals” of new trends.

Grove and Budd added another trait for this “future-forward” learning: It would do away with professors leading classrooms. At Wake Tech, students are asked what they would like their professors to teach and how to teach it. The campus also established a Center for Strategic Futures, with large forum discussions bringing faculty members and participating students together. The talks covered community transformation, leadership, megatrends, and other future-related subjects.

“The idea was to see this transformation of student learning with the students and not have it be a topdown approach. It needs to be a grassroots process,” said Grove.

Meanwhile, at Tarrant County College, Darlage and colleagues have added new elements of innovation and community engagement into the planning processes that they use for managing academic programs and campus facilities. Tired of

seeing elaborate master plans get drawn up and then gather dust on shelves, Darlage launched an Innovation Forum for quickly developing new ideas. Anyone in the community could personally offer Darlage or another professor an idea to be presented to an independent committee of college officials and faculty that would review it and score it. If it received a high enough score, it could go into action.

Darlage recalled one day when the mayor visited him and told him of an old library that was no longer in use. The campus could hold evening classes there, the mayor suggested, and he offered a below-market price for the space. Within six months, the committee approved the idea, and Tarrant County College has been offering classes there ever since.

“We’re really excited about the Innovation Forum,” Darlage said. “I think it’s something that will carry us into the future. It’s adaptable, and it’s based on weak signals that come forward.”

—RD

Learners Take Charge of Education Stacey Childress, CEO of New­ Schools Ventures Fund and former deputy director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, closed WorldFuture 2014 with her vision for a public education system that will better inspire and prepare students for success.

The United States is spending twice as much on education as it did 40 years ago, but students aren’t achieving more, Childress said.

Progress has flatlined. When eighthgrade students are asked if they want to attend college, 95% say they intend to go to college. Yet many students’ realities are far grimmer than their middle-school ambitions. Less than three-fourths of students receive high school diplomas, and only 37% are adequately prepared for a college-level curriculum by graduation. Among low-income students, the picture is even bleaker: Half graduate from high school, and 17% are prepared for college. Only 8% of 48

THE FUTURIST

low-income students graduate from college within six years of high school graduation.

“Should all kids go to college?

Probably not,” said Childress. “But I believe all kids ought to have that choice, and it should be a real choice that’s in their hands.”

Childress is optimistic about the future; she believes that, in the next decade, technology will give students more agency and control over their own education. They will be able to access and track their own progress, giving them a sense of ownership. Schools will create customized curriculums for each student, optimizing both students’ and teachers’ time. And collaborative learning will allow students to use their own strengths to help their classmates to learn.

“Today’s young people are the most diverse and connected generation in history,” said Childress.

“They deserve learning experiences

November-December 2014

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that meet them where they are, and prepare them and inspire them to make the most of every amazing, ambitious aspiration they have.”

—KH

Contributors Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST. Rick Docksai, former senior editor of THE FUTURIST, is a writer and editor for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Read his full report on the opening plenary session of WorldFuture 2014 at www.wfs.org/blogs/rick-docksai.

Keturah Hetrick is staff editor of THE FUTURIST and managing editor of Futurist Update.

Gisele Peterson is vice president of operations at Flagship Financial Services LLC in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Robert M. Wagner is a retired U.S. Naval officer and currently an instructor with the prison ministry Bridges of America, providing training in construction skills for inmates.

S P E C I A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

S E C T I O N

CONSULTANTS AND SERVICES

A

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

Karl Albrecht International

Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking

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

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

Alsek Research Economic Futures

Christensen Associates, Inc.

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.

Common Sense Medicine Alternative Futures Associates

shops. 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.

2331 Mill Rd., Suite 100, Alexandria, VA 22314-3134 Phone: 703-684-5880 Fax: 703-684-0640 E-mail: futurist@altfutures.com Web: www.altfutures.com Contact: Clement Bezold, Jonathan Peck Vision and scenario development, strategic planning, trend analysis, workshop design and facilitation, presentations, keynotes, consulting.

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

Atlas Safety & Security Design, Inc.

CREO Strategic Solutions

The Futures Lab

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.

PO Box 840, Kittery, ME 03904 Phone: 415-450-1515 Contact: Kevin Fickenscher, MD Email: drkevin@creostrategicsolutions.com Healthcare is undergoing dramatic change that extends far beyond the financing of healthcare.

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

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.

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

Futurist Speaker Thomas Frey

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

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. Work-

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 engi-

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

Consultants

and

Services

neer. 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.

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

Institute for Global Futures

Minkin Affiliates

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.

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.

Institute for Participatory Management and Planning

Next Consulting

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.

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

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

Members, Association of Professional Futurists.

Institute for Alternative Futures 2331 Mill Rd., Suite 100, 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 Uses research reports, workshops, scenarios, and visioning to help organizations understand future possibilities and create their “preferred future.”

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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.

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.

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

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

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

Qi Systems 35 Seacoast Terr., Apt. 6P, Brooklyn, NY 11235 Phone: 718-769-9655 E-mail: QiSys@msn.com Web: www.qisystems.org Contact: Ronn Parker, Ph.D. Spectrum Counseling: conflict resolution, con-

scious evolution, martial arts, meditation methods, mindbody strategies, transformational learning.

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

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

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

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

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

TechCast Global, Inc.

van der Werff Global, Ltd.

3342 Maud St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016 Phone: 202-994-5975 E-mail: info@techcastglobal.com Web: www.techcastglobal.org Contact: William E. Halal, president, TechCast Global Inc. TechCast Global 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 Global among the best systems available, and Google ranks it No. 2 or 3 out of 45 million hits. TechCast Global also gives presentations, conducts customized studies, and performs most types of consulting related to technology and strategic change.

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.

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

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: 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.

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.

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THE FUTURIST

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51

Reviews EMMANUELLE MARCHADOUR / COURTESY OF EHESS.FR

Democratizing Capital

By Cynthia G. Wagner

The future will become even more unevenly distributed.

The old adage that nothing is certain but death and taxes is being turned on its head in the twenty-first century: Those with the technological and financial resources (the “haves”) are pursuing ever more innovative ways to escape both.

Leaving aside the immortality issue (though longer human life spans will likely have dramatic economic impacts), the issues that most concern Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics are increasing income and wealth inequality, the increasing gap between public and private wealth in the world’s richest countries, and the consequences of these gaps globally. Societies in which a tiny minority has more, gets more, and keeps more are fundamentally undemocratic.

Piketty’s solution (and no need for a spoiler alert—he reiterates this throughout Capital in the Twenty-First Century) is for a global progressive tax on capital: global so that, for instance, multinational corporations and wealthy jet setters cannot hide assets in tax havens; progressive so that those who have more are taxed at higher rates than those who have less; and capital rather than income, because most of the inequalities are due to more-rapidly rising returns on property, stocks, and other capital assets while workers’ paychecks stagnate (the big exception being the rising class of supermanagers and elite sports and entertainment celebrities).

The formula that Piketty uses to express this basic inequality is r > g; that is, return on capital (profits, dividends, interest, rents, etc.) is greater than the growth of income or output.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Belknap/ Harvard University Press.

2014. 685 pages. $39.95.

Thomas Piketty is a professor at the Paris School of Economics, EHESS.

It implies, among other things, that “wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages,” he explains. “The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.”

As a scholar, Piketty spends much of the first half of his book decrying the lack of consistent and reliable historical and international statistics on which to base his analysis, and he pleas for better data, particularly from government sources. By “better,” he means not just reliable and consistent, but also transparent, for a “truly democratic debate cannot proceed without reliable statistics,” he writes.

As an educator, Piketty labors to make his subject comprehensible to a wide audience. For example, he uses well-known characters from novels, such as Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot, to illustrate the social and economic realities of life leading to the Belle Époque—contemporary history’s most unequal world. Indi-

viduals relying on income from their capital (rentiers) had a fairly predictable life before them at that time.

Those without capital could hope to educate themselves sufficiently to earn a rare position of prominence, but they would never achieve the wealth and status of someone taking possession of an inherited fortune.

This is why a good marriage was so crucial to Jane Austen’s heroines (think also of the predicament of Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary).

Futurists may appreciate several aspects of Piketty’s approach to his material, including his multidisciplinary mind-set: Capital is not just an economic issue, but also a political and sociological one. He also has a futurist’s understanding of the uncertainty underlying various scenarios. He focuses on the potential consequences of present political, economic, and social trends and of the actions we may (or may not) take to alter their outcomes.

Among the future scenarios that Piketty urges us to consider is this: “Will the world in 2050 or 2100 be owned by traders, top managers, and the superrich, or will it belong to the oil-producing countries or the Bank of China? Or perhaps it will be

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

owned by the tax havens in which many of these actors will have sought refuge.”

The latter scenario is one that Pike t t y a rg u e s c o u l d b e a v o i d e d through more transparent and consistent data in banking and other global transactions.

Piketty’s key proposal, the progressive annual tax on global wealth, is addressed most fully in Chapter 15, “A Global Tax on Capital,” and he emphasizes that this is a utopian idea: “It is hard to imagine the nations of the world agreeing on any such thing anytime soon.” But he observes that the merit of utopian thought is that it gives us goals and standards to work toward. Striving for transparency of financial systems is a step toward increased ­democracy.

“The primary purpose of the capital tax is not to finance the social state but to regulate capitalism,” he writes. “The goal is first to stop the indefinite increase of inequality of wealth, and second to impose effective regulation on the financial and banking system in order to avoid ­crises.”

Capital in the Twenty-First Century is not an indictment of the lifestyles of the rich and famous; those among the superrich who misuse their capital to the point of impoverishing themselves bring on their own punishment. But the misuse of wealth as power is a far greater concern to democracies, as is increasingly the case in the United States. (Piketty deals extensively with the rise of the ­supermanager as a key attribute of the unique and complex form of inequality emerging in twentieth- and twenty-first-century America.) Even those benevolent billionaires (Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett) who have pledged to give back much of their wealth do so at their own, undemocratic discretion.

Piketty’s contribution to the (hopefully democratic) debates ahead is to clarify the issues and the consequences we will face: “Without a global tax on capital or some similar policy, there is a substantial risk that the top centile’s share of global

wealth will continue to grow in­ definitely—and this should worry everyone.”

About the Reviewer Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST.

Guided Tour of the World’s Most Sustainable Places Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community by Karen T. Litfin. Polity. 2014.

223 pages. $24.95.

Our world needs creative solutions to rein in resource consumption, climate change, and ecological destruction, says Karen Litfin, an associate professor of political science who specializes in environmental policy. She finds many promising solutions in “ecovillages,” communities that have systematically transformed daily living to balance human wants and the biosphere’s limits.

Litfin profiles 14 ecovillages that she visited over the past several years. Her tour includes: • Auroville, a community of Tamil villagers and European immigrants in India. Tamil villagers produce all of the community’s food and household items on site and receive living wages for their labor. The community also features extensive solar- and wind-energy systems, plant-based sewage treatment, compressed-earth building techniques, and a nature reserve of 3 million trees that is one of the only places on Earth where bio­ diversity is increasing.

• Sieben Linden, a community of 150 residents on 200 acres of farmland in eastern Germany. Residents thrive on vegan agriculture, adhere to a “peace contract” with the wildlife, and incorporate passive solar design, rainwater catchment, and straw-bale construction into their houses and public buildings.

• Svanholm, a Danish ecovillage www.wfs.org

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that has successfully lived out a commitment to community-wide “income sharing” since its founding in the 1960s.

The 14 ecovillages span North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, and they embody a diverse cross-section of cultures and lifestyles. All, however, are living models of the sustainability that the whole world must adopt to avert ecological and societal catastrophe.

They grow their own food, build homes with no more materials than necessary, and maximize safe processing and recycling of waste.

Each one also shares resources, such as cars, tools, food, and living space, which brings per capita consumption to far below the global average.

And all decide pressing community issues through public forums in which every community member gets a say.

There are many such communities besides these 14, Litfin adds: Brazil is home to a thriving ecovillage culture, and Russia and Israel both have about 200 ecovillages. Litfin finds hope for the whole world in communities such as these: They can teach bigger cities and towns valuable lessons on how people can live in harmony with each other and with their ecosystems.

—Rick Docksai

Vocabulary Building for Foresight Professionals FUTURES: World Foresight Encyclopedic Dictionary edited by Concepción Olavarrieta, Jerome C. Glenn, and Theodore J. Gordon.

The Millennium Project. 2014. English and Spanish versions available. PDF via download ($50) or CD-ROM ($50 plus shipping) from millennium-project.org/millennium/FUTURES .html.

A vital new tool has been added to the foresight profession’s toolkit in this “encyclopedic dictionary” comprising more than 1,000 terms, in-

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Reviews

cluding not just definitions but also usage, derivation, source citations, and English/Spanish translations.

The project developed over the course of a decade and drew from a global network of some 500 foresight professionals. While many of the terms in the dictionary are not exclusive to futurists (e.g., virtual reality, environmental ethics, cyber culture, edutainment), their inclusion highlights the depth and breadth of futurists’ required vocabulary; the entries for such terms are thus indeed “encyclopedic.”

—CGW

Future-Ready Universities Wired for Success: Real-World Solutions for Transforming Higher Education by Susan C. Aldridge and Kathleen Harvatt.

American Association for State Colleges and Universities (www.aascu.org). 2014. 191 pages. Paperback. $20.99 plus shipping.

Higher education is in a tenuous position as enrollments and graduation rates drop, public funding shrinks, marketing and overhead costs soar, and rising numbers of graduates suffer unemployment, under­e mployment, and student-loan defaults.

Authors Susan Aldridge, former president of several universities, and Kathleen Harvatt, a communications professional who has worked for the University of Maryland University College and Sallie Mae, assess the challenges and draw this conclusion: Colleges and universities can survive, but only if they significantly adapt their operations and instruction.

The authors point out new directions that some universities are already testing, with impressive results. These include interdisciplinary programs that make learning more adaptable, internal reforms to boost productivity and cost-effectiveness, and collaborative programs among 54

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multiple universities that achieve more even while funding sources remain sparse.

They also describe new financing models, such as UniversityNow’s work-study arrangement, under which employees of local organizations get to take classes and get re­ imbursed by their employers in full.

And they show how some universities are adapting their teaching styles to keep pace with the changing needs of the students—such as Carleton College, whose Science Education Resource Center published a how-to guide for incorporating role-playing, collaborative student research, gamebased learning, and other creative twists on standard classroom instruction into lesson plans. They further explore the far-reaching impacts that massive open online courses (MOOCS), distance learning, and online education in general are having and will continue to have on higher education as the years progress.

Many more universities can begin their own change processes, too. The authors discuss how a university can decide what changes to make, and how it might gather the necessary data and measure results, all while avoiding the costly errors that can accompany poorly planned change efforts.

Wired for Success is excellent reading for university professors, administrators, policy makers, and anyone else who is concerned with the future of higher education. Aldridge and Harvatt offer much useful guidance on what colleges and universities can do to be fully relevant to twenty-first-century students and their world.

—RD

Briefly Noted Avant-Garde Politician: Leaders for a New Epoch by Yehezkel Dror. Westphalia Press (Policy Studies Organization). 2014.

350 pages. Paperback. $17.50.

Humanity faces steep existential crises in its future, and few political leaders are aware of them, much less doing anything to cope with them,

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www.wfs.org

says Yehezkel Dror, political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Instead of statecraft, the avant-garde politician should conduct “humanitycraft,” which involves pondering on longer-term futures of the human species and all its component parts.

Dror argues that our species’ future will depend on us creating new institutions that are better-equipped to foresee and act upon what lies ahead.

Innovating for the Global South: Towards an Inclusive Innovation Agenda edited by Dilip Soman, Janice Gross Stein, and Joseph Wong. University of Toronto Press. 2014. 185 pages. $22.95.

The world has made some progress in relieving poverty and improving health in the world’s poorest countries, but it will take new methods and tools to achieve more in the years to come, in the view of University of Toronto scholars Dilip Soman, Janice Gross Stein, and Joseph Wong. The three—all members of the university’s Global Innovation Group—call for “scalable” new solutions for improving life in the Global South. They and 10 fellow scholars discuss what these solutions might look like and what ground rules might guide their development.

The Maker Movement Manifesto by Mark Hatch. McGraw Hill Education. 2014. $26.

The guiding principles of the Maker Movement can be summed in nine simple concepts: Make, Share, Give, Learn, Tool Up, Play, Participate, Support, and Change. The CEO of TechShop, a workshop and fabrication studio that hosts makers from all over the world, believes “we are standing on the foundation of the largest explosion of creativity, knowledge creation, and innovation in all of human history.”

Measuring and Improving Social Impacts: A Guide for Nonprofits, Companies, and Impact Investors by Marc Epstein and Kristi Yuthas. BerrettKoehler. 2014. 254 pages. $29.95.

Growing sums of money are pour-

ing into social causes, and businesses and business groups are increasingly taking inventory of how their operations impact the environment and society. But how well is the money being spent, and to what degree are the business leaders’ good intentions translating to meaningful change?

Business professors Marc Epstein and Kristi Yuthas walk readers through a method for measuring an organization’s social impacts: the Social Impact Cycle. This cycle revolves around five questions: what will you invest, what problem will you address, what steps will you take, how will you measure success, and how can you increase impact?

The Road to Reinvention: How to Drive Disruption and Accelerate Transformation by Josh Linkner. JosseyBass. 2014. 260 pages. $27.99.

As the world grows increasingly competitive, the need to reinvent will touch individuals, companies, and even communities. Those who have grown comfortable with the status quo are the most vulnerable, warns tech-turnaround guru Josh Linkner, CEO of Detroit Venture Partners, who encourages reinventers to strive for the “10X Factor”— aim to be 10 times better than the competition.

Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis

by Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova.

MIT Press. 2014. 294 pages. $45.

Because it is not based on scarcity, digital economics differs fundamentally from traditional economics and requires new thinking. And yet, virtual resources can indeed be scarce: avatars and other game items are bought and sold with real money.

This text covers economic decision making in the virtual world, touching on such hot topics as the digital currency Bitcoin.

Don’t Miss a Single Session! Access WorldFuture 2014 Audio via the Online Learning Center.

World Future Society partner IntelliQuest Media is offering both flash drives

Why Mars: NASA and the Politics of Space Exploration by W. Henry Lambright.

Johns Hopkins University Press. 2014. 320 pages. $49.95.

(which include available pre-

Fulfilling our dreams of going to Mars may depend more on politics than on technology. Covering the history of Martian exploration from the beginnings of NASA and the success of robotic explorer Curiosity, political scientist W. Henry Lambright notes that moving forward will require consensus building among many government and nongovernmental interest groups. ❑

files) and access to the

sentation materials and iPod or computer-playable MP3 Online Learning Center.

Individual sessions may also be ordered and downloaded as MP3s.

Visit www.intelliquestmedia .com or call IntelliQuest Media toll free at 866-651-2586.

Anticipations

continued from page 4 one-day symposium about the role of nonstate participants—such as private firms and nongovernmental organizations—in multilateral governance forums like the Nuclear Security Summit, the G-20, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Partnership Facility, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Our partners in this work include

the Stanley Foundation, a global governance think tank based in Muscatine, Iowa, and the Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) based at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. Our partnership is founded in our shared concern that existing state-centric frameworks will not be adequate for meeting global/international governance needs of the near and far future.

The objective will be to devise new terms to reflect the reality that the very www.wfs.org

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structure of the international system is changing in front of our eyes. Many of these terms do not yet exist, so it will be our task to tease them out and develop them. The relationship between governments and private citizens is undergoing a transformation. At WFS, we intend to be at center of understanding and anticipating how this transformation will unfold and how it will impact all of us. ❑ Amy Zalman is CEO and president of the World Future Society. E-mail azalman@wfs.org.

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Futurists

and

Their Ideas

An interview with Karl Albrecht

Why Pop Futurism Fails Futurists need a healthy skepticism of overhyped predictions about the “next big thing.”

A former physicist and military intelligence officer, Karl Albrecht is an executive advisor, consultant, speaker, and author. Among his books focusing on professional and organizational achievement and strategy are Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success (Pfeiffer, 2009) and Practical Intelligence: The Art and Science of Common Sense (Pfeiffer, 2007).

THE FUTURIST: Do you refer to yourself as a “futurist”? If so, how do you explain the profession to other people? And if not, what would you say your profession is?

Karl Albrecht: I identify myself as a management con-

sultant by occupation, and a futurist by avocation.

Many of the engagements I’ve been involved with have included analyzing trends, events, speculations, predictions, and forecasts in the context of strategic thinking.

I’m usually less involved in making predictions and more involved in using them.

That experience has given me a particular slant, or bias, about what makes a useful forecast. I can’t afford to be advising executives to bet their organizations’ futures on questionable predictions, no matter how trendy or dramatic they seem.

Over the years, I’ve evolved a basic set of four criteria, which I use to gauge any kind of forecast: 1. It should be anchored in some relevant context: What is the expected impact, on what, and for whom?

2. It should be time-bounded: In what year, or range of years, is it expected to come to fruition?

3. It should be verifiable: What observable criteria will we take as evidence that it has come to pass?

4. It should be confidence-rated: All predictions are guesses, and we might as well admit it by attaching an estimate of uncertainty to the statement. Plus or minus how many years? What confidence percentage do we attach to it—70%, 80%, 90%?

What’s the most useful futurist tool in your toolkit?

My most useful futurist tool is what Ernest Hemingway referred to as having “a built-in automatic crap detector.” Whenever I read or hear a grand, glittering, bold prediction about the “next big thing” that’s going to revolutionize the way we do this or that, I immediately ask: Where is this coming from? Who’s promoting it? Is there a commercial or self-interested agenda behind this, or is it the result of a carefully reasoned analysis from an uncontaminated viewpoint?

We’re living in an age of hyperbole. The frenzied media environment amplifies everything, to the point where those who are vying for our attention must exag-

“Every new idea deserves a hearing,

but the overcaffeinated rhetoric of pop futurists does little, I believe, to lend perspective and discipline to the

process of thinking about where things are going.”

gerate, sensationalize, titillate, pander, or appeal to our voyeuristic tendencies in order to get their messages into our brains. Truth, balance, perspective, and objectivity are the inevitable casualties of this polluted thought field.

Every new idea deserves a hearing, but the over­ caffeinated rhetoric of pop futurists does little, I believe, to lend perspective and discipline to the process of thinking about where things are going.

What “wild card” keeps you awake at night?

The prospect of a global spasm—a cataclysmic failure of some piece of the unfathomably complex world infrastructure that interlocks commerce, information, technology, capital, energy distribution, food and water supply, and unstable Third World political processes. Some event, such as a runaway cyberwar between nations, might cause a domino-like collapse in the world megasystem that could make the 2008 financial collapse seem like a minor gas pain.

If we’re not extinct in another 10 years, I hope to see human minds outperforming computers, not being replaced by them. Maybe we can teach people to use their brains at some level approaching their evolutionary potential.

Brag a little. As a futurist, what do you think you’ve gotten most “right”?

First, my favorite failed prediction: With the arrival of the personal computer, the Dvorak keyboard—with its

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

superior ergonomic arrangement of keys—would replace the 100-year-old QWERTY keyboard. I’m still waiting.

My favorite bull’s-eye was the “dot-bomb” crash of 2000. I predicted this in a presentation to the international advisory board of one of Wall Street’s mega-firms, as well as in other situations. I saw through the “digital mania” and recognized that Internet start-ups were burning through investor cash at terrifying rates, many with no coherent business model, plan, or even product.

Venture capitalists, who should have known better,

became hypnotized with the new “tulip bulb” mania, and threw money at just about any geek who claimed to have an idea. When the cash ran out, the venture capitalists closed their wallets, tech stocks cratered, and the whole stock market went south. It was a case of “too much, too soon,” and it took another five years for “e‑commerce” to become viable. ❑ Karl Albrecht’s most recent article for THE FUTURIST, “Deconstructing the Future: Seeing beyond ‘Magic Wand’ Predictions,” appeared in the July-August 2014 issue. His Web site is www.KarlAlbrecht.com.

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WorldFuture 2015 Enthusiasm Grows for WorldFuture 2015 in San Francisco Excitement is already building for the World Future Society’s San Francisco conference next year, with recordbreaking early-bird registrations. The 2014 “What If” meeting in Orlando this past July earned high praise from participants, many of whom said they were even more eager to meet up again in San Francisco.

“It’s great having so many futurists in the same place!” —Simon A. “Spending time at the World Future Society Conference Just completed my mind stretching in anticipation of a workout.” —@igoeco “Thank you @WorldFutureSoc Until next year! See you at San Francisco.” —Green Light Alliance

CAN BALCIOGLU / SAN FRANCISCO TRAVEL ASSOCIATION

San Francisco, a city that has perpetually reinvented itself, has been called the innovation capital of the world. And the conference hotel, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, is ideally situated, with stunning views and easy access to the best that the Bay Area has to offer.

The early-bird deadline to register for WorldFuture 2015 has passed, but you can still save $300 off the onsite rates if you register by October 31.

WorldFuture 2015 will be held July 24-26, 2015, at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square in San Francisco, California.

Register now for $300 off the final rate! http://www.wfs.org/worldfuture-2015