About This Issue

Visions and Visionaries for 2020

This issue of THE FUTURIST begins a special series focusing on new ideas from individuals who have fresh and important ideas about the future of their various specialties. The 2020 Visionaries series will continue through 2010, covering technology, the environment, economics, social change, and other key aspects of the future.

First up are education and health, with communications scholar Janna Anderson on taking education out of the classroom, Mark Bauerlein on literature in the age of hypermedia, breast cancer research activist Andrew Hessel on open-source drug development, and nanotech pioneer Robert A. Freitas Jr. on prospects for nanomedicine. See the special section beginning on page 00.

With this issue, you will also see some changes to THE FUTURIST’s popular World Trends & Forecasts section, which we hope you’ll like! We’ve added more brief news stories to help extend the diversity of our coverage beyond the “DEGEST” categories (demography, economics, government, environment, society, and technology), though this thematic structure will still inform the editors’ story selection process.

As always, your feedback is welcome.

Cynthia G. Wagner

Managing Editor

cwagner@wfs.org

P.S. Janna Anderson is one of many futurists you’ll meet at WorldFuture 2010 in Boston next July. See page 00 for more information. Pictured: Kevin Fickenscher (left) will also speak in Boston; here, he closes the 2008 conference with Molly Coye.