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The AI Chasers
MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks,  Adaptive A.I. Inc. founder Peter Voss, Self-Aware Systems founder Steve Omohundro, Powerset CEO Barney Pell, and Google research director Peter Norvig discuss how they see AI developing in the years ahead.  A special supplement to the March-April issue of THE FUTURIST.
 

Retiring Retirement

Life-cycle expert Maddy Dychtwald, who will be attending WorldFuture 2008, says that planning for life past 65 is more important now than ever before.

Fighting the Cult of the Amateur:
 A Web 2.0 Critic Takes on the Confederacy of E-Dunces
Web entrepreneur Andrew Keen argues that the user-driven content frenzy of the Internet, in which anonymous posters can say virtually anything they want, has led to increased incivility in Web-based discourse as well as critically compromised the reliability of Web-based information.

 

Report from the Luxury Frontier
There are more billionaires and more millionaires inhabiting the globe than ever before in human history. And with economic growth accelerating in places like China and Russia, it's a safe bet that luxury marketers have a bright future. To find out what's on the minds of the world's wealthy, and what, besides big bucks, they might have in common, we went to Larry Bean, editor-in-chief of Robb Report magazine, which covers the luxury lifestyle like no one else.

Whither, Western Civilization?
Is Western civilization bound for collapse? In the November-December issue of THE FUTURIST, we broach the issue with celebrated editor and historian Lewis Lapham.
 

Imperial Parallels
The military and economic power of the United States has invited comparisons between America and the ancient Roman Empire. What, if anything, can the United States learn from Rome's decline? For answers we turned to Cullen Murphy, Vanity Fair editor at large and author of the recent book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America.  Part of the November-December 2007 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.


 

Ending the Oil Era
Reliance on oil is a major environmental concern among industrialized nations, particularly the United States, which uses and imports more oil than any other country. Oil dependency is emerging as a major national security issue as well. As part of our July-August issue, THE FUTURIST presents this interview  with Former CIA Director James Woolsey on ending the oil era. 

Learning to Look Up
One of cosmology's leading stars is astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Tyson was recently appointed to serve on the nine-member commission on the Implementation of the U.S. Space Exploration Policy (the "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" commission). In his teaching, public lectures, and popular writings, Tyson inspires the world with ideas about the universe.




 

Germinal Choice Technology: Our Evolutionary Future
Like human cloning, technologies giving us control over our genetic destiny will be developed, whether they are banned or not. Gregory Stock, author of Redesigning Humans and director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at the University of California, Los Angeles, explains what these new technologies are, how they may be used to prevent disease and extend our lifespans, and how they may alter our social institutions. See exclusive video of Stock's presentation at WorldFuture 2007.


 

A New Look at Utopias
WorldView 2002 conference chairman Arthur B. Shostak, a sociology professor at Drexel University, has taught several courses on utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares. Based on his 40 years of teaching experience, plus contributions from 34 fellow scholars and 10 students, he has just published a compilation of source materials and sample course outlines for college use. Utopian Thinking in Sociology: Creating the Good Society (American Sociological Association, 2001).



 

Anti-Terrorism Should be a Top Priority for National Security
Just days before the September 11, 2001, apparent terrorist attack on the United States, including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the World Future Society spoke with futurist author and speaker Marvin Cetron on the global threat of terrorism.