Blogs

Eight Things to Know About Asia in 2012

Unlike my favorite literary greats (Orwell, Huxley, Shteyngart, Atwood, H.G. Wells and Murakami to name a few), I have little confidence in predicting humanity’s future overall. As a long-time Asia-watcher with fairly strong training in socioeconomics, I am a tad more assured that my insights on opportunities and challenges East of the prime meridian will be worth a bit more than night soil (although an increase in biogas plants puts this assurance at great risk). Hence, in the Year of the Dragon, here are eight things you should know:

The Future of International Piracy

Pirates are awesome. Economics: also awesome. The combination?

A recent report uses data from 1500 Somalian pirates to look at the future of international piracy. The conclusion? Incidents of piracy are on the rise.

Why is the USA Slipping Behind in Life Expectancy?

Living in the USA is killing people, quite early. Prodigious wealth and scientific achievement isn’t keeping Americans around very long. Quite the opposite. Longevity rankings tabulated by the United Nations show the North American behemoth wheezing behind in 36th place, with a croak-time of 78.3 years, dying nearly four years earlier than the durable Japanese (82.6). Cubans live as long as Americans; Chileans and Costa Ricans live longer; so do workaholic South Koreans (2,357 person-hours) and hard-drinking Finland, where alcoholism is the #1 cause of death.

Time is Running Out to Save Planet Earth

In the days of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, people lived in fear of a hypothetical nuclear world war that would obliterate human civilization. Today, civilization’s end is no longer hypothetical: It’s a certainty unless we restructure how we as a species live, work, play, and even think.

Driverless Cars: A Driving Force Coming to a Future Near You

If you were traveling between Boston and Washington, DC, and had the choice of either flying or riding in a driverless car, which would you choose?

Under good conditions this is an 8.5-hour drive vs. 4-5 hours flying – driving to the airport, wading through security, boarding the flight, landing, and commuting to your destination when you arrive.
Keep in mind that the first wave of driverless vehicles will be luxury vehicles that allow you to kick back, listen to music, have a cup of coffee, stop wherever you need to along the way, stay productive with connections to the Internet, make phone calls, and even watch a movie or two, for roughly the same price.

Will Asia Lead?

Will Asia lead the world in green technologies and in the political-economic transition to sustainability? Can Asia bury past conflicts and create stronger regional institutions including perhaps, step by step, an Asian Union? In what ways could Asia’s traditional cultures – Islamic, Tantric, Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist and Vedic – be resources in inventing an alternative more hybrid cultures?

Futurist Update

In the Current Issue:

  • CES: The Future Is Now-ish
  • MIT Scientists Discover Memory Gene
  • January 2012 Prediction List Roundup
  • Disease Hunters Follow the Night Lights
  • Better Nanotubes for Better Electronics
  • Inventors Wanted
  • What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine (Members Only)

Receive Futurist Update in Your Inbox

We don’t share your email address with anyone and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The Futurist

In the Current Issue:

  • Eight Grand Challenges for Human Advancement
  • Crossing the Species Boundary: Genetic Engineering as Conscious Evolution
  • Innovating the Future: From Ideas to Adoption
  • Welcome to the Future Cloud: Five Bets for 2025

Interviews

How to Read Minds: THE FUTURIST Interviews Neuroscientist Jody Culham

Your secret plans aren't so secret after all. Last year, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which reveals blood flow within the brain, Jody Culham and her fellow researchers at the University of Western Ontario discovered that areas of the brain associated with motion exhibit increased blood flow not only when acting but also when considering whether or not to act. In the January-February issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, we look into the study. Culham explains her work and its applications to FUTURIST magazine deputy editor Patrick Tucker.

The Futurist Interviews Jim Motavalli, author of High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry

Electric vehicles have existed as a concept since the 1890s, but now the technology is finally here to make them a standard consumer vehicle of choice, according to Jim Motavalli, environmental writer, in his new book, High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry (Rodale, 2011).

World Future Review

In the Current Issue:

  • A Banquet of Consequences: Living in the “Nobody-Could-Have-Predicted” Era
  • Development Strategy by Design: The Future of Strategy
  • The Turn: A Response to Arthur C. Clarke Award
  • The Deadly Cocktail: Nationalism, Populism, and Inequality Watson: Pathfinder for Global Business?
  • Six Worlds of Tomorrow: Representing the Future to Popular Culture
  • Sustainable Development and Long-Term Strategic Management
  • Featured Futurists: Interviews with James Spotila, Peter Lewis, and Seang-Tae Kim
  • Abstracts of Recent Futures-Related Writing

Reviews of New Books

Communicating with the Future: How Re-engineering Intentions Will Alter the Master Code of Our Future

A business that wants to survive and thrive must do more than simply plan for the future, says Thomas Frey, the DaVinci Institute’s executive director and senior futurist. He advises future-wary businesses everywhere to take personal ownership stakes in creating the future.

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World

Image of The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World
Author(s): Paul Gilding
Publisher: Bloomsbury Press (2011)
Binding: Hardcover, 304 pages
List Price: $25.00

In World War II, the United States and its Allies rallied their citizens to labor, sacrifice, and produce like never before to defeat fascism. Ecologist Paul Gilding expresses hope in The Great Disruption that, as the depth of the climate crisis hits, the world will in like fashion launch into wartime-like mobilization to avert ecological and socioeconomic catastrophe.

The Precarious Human Role in a Mechanistic Universe

Image of The Precarious Human Role in a Mechanistic Universe
Author(s): John F Brinster
Publisher: Xlibris, Corp. (2011)
Binding: Paperback, 514 pages
List Price: $23.99

Religion’s influence upon society has waned in the past century, and it will continue to wane in the years to come, forecasts John F. Brinster, retired Princeton physicist and psychologist. He looks forward to secularism gaining progressively more ground over the next few generations.
More and more people will practice spirituality, but fewer and fewer will practice religion.

Community Leadership 4.0: Impacting a World Gone Wiki

Image of Community Leadership 4.0: Impacting a World Gone Wiki
Author(s): Carolyn Corbin
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (2011)
Binding: Paperback, 258 pages
List Price: $15.99

As society changes, so must leadership practices, says Carolyn Corbin, president of the think tank Center for the 21st Century, in Community Leadership 4.0. She describes the skills that a twenty-first-century leader must have to navigate globalization and nonstop technological change.

Learn about the future of ...

Commerce

Pirates are awesome. Economics: also awesome. The combination?

A recent report uses data from 1500 Somalian pirates to look at the future...

Earth

In the days of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, people lived in fear of a hypothetical nuclear world war that would obliterate human civilization. Today...

Futuring

Will Asia lead the world in green technologies and in the political-economic transition to sustainability? Can Asia bury past conflicts and create...

Humanity

Pirates are awesome. Economics: also awesome. The combination?

A recent report uses data from 1500 Somalian pirates to look at the future...

Sci/Tech

If you were traveling between Boston and Washington, DC, and had the choice of either flying or riding in a driverless car, which would you choose...

Governance

Pirates are awesome. Economics: also awesome. The combination?

A recent report uses data from 1500 Somalian pirates to look at the future...