Contents for
January-February 2010
Volume 44, No. 1

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  Order the January-February 2010 (Volume 44, No. 1) Issue Published by the World Future Society
                                  

Tomorrow in Brief
Sustainable Sources of Biofuels
Musical Detection Software
Can Happiness Be Acquired?
Long-Term Impacts of Bad Shoes
Pollution without Borders
WordBuzz: Genobility

 

 

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How to Feed Eight Billion People
 By Lester R. Brown
The world is entering a new food era. It will be marked by higher food prices, rapidly growing numbers of hungry people, and an intensifying competition for land and water resources that crosses national boundaries when food-importing countries buy or lease vast tracts of land in other countries. Because some of the countries where land is being acquired do not have enough land to adequately feed their own people, the stage is being set for future conflicts. PDF Available.
 

Deciding Our Futures
 As the world becomes more complex, the likelihood of making poor decisions about our future increases, as does the cost of bad outcomes. This special section offers insights from futurists on ways that we can come to grips with the flaws in our decision-making processes and improve our strategies for making critical decisions about the future. PDF Available.
1. Decision Making Under Pressure by Stan Shapiro
2. Decision Modeling by The Futures Group International
3. Robust Decision Making: Coping with Uncertainty by Robert J. Lempert, Steven W. Popper, and Steven C. Bankes
4. Managing Your Mind by Michael J. Mauboussin

 

2020 Visionaries
 Don’t be alarmed, but the next 10 years could be the most significant in the history of the human race. The unsolved problems of the last century have grown in size and urgency. In a series of essays to run in this magazine throughout 2010, we hope to bring you some answers. In this first series of essays, we tackle health and education.

Andrew Hessel showcases his vision for open-source drug manufacturing and noted nanoscientist. Robert Freitas details the medical future of nanorobotics.  Janna Anderson and Mark Bauerlein — present two distinct visions for education in the twenty-first century.

Foresight Conquers Fear of the Future
 By Edward Cornish
 “I’m scared,” the young man confessed. “I’m starting my eighteenth year in a world that makes no sense to me. All I know is that this world I’m living in is a shambles and I don’t know how to put it together.” ... Today’s youth are growing up in the midst of radical social and economic transformations. Now is the time to develop the most critical skill for effectively managing their careers and personal lives: Foresight.

Visions
 The Dymaxion Dream Reincarnate
 By Cynthia G. Wagner
One could not help but smile when Volkswagen introduced its trim little concept car, the L1, at the 2009 auto show in Frankfurt. Smile, with nostalgia for futures past … and for visionary inventor R. Buckminster Fuller. The future is, and has been for some time, streamlined.

Stewart Brand’s Environmental Heresies
 Futurist and ecologist Stewart Brand believes that the Green movement must move swiftly and decisively to embrace technological solutions to climate change—several of which many leading environmentalists have spent their careers campaigning against—including nuclear energy, genetic modification, mass urbanization, and geoengineering. Review by Aaron Cohen.

Collecting Wisdom about the Future
 In October 2008, major U.S. financial institutions crashed, and economies around the world went into recession. In March 2009, an asteroid passed within 77,000 kilometers of Earth; had it made impact, it would have obliterated all life within an 800-square-kilometer area. What do these two events have in common? According to Millennium Project scholars Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu in the 2009 State of the Future, both were near-total surprises. Review by Rick Docksai.

 

  		 Purchase a PDF of the January-February World Trends and Forecasts Section 

The Science of “Tipping Points”
Many complex systems—including natural habitats like lakes, animal populations, financial markets, and even the human brain—exhibit “early warning” behaviors prior to big, disruptive changes.


Arctic Species at the Cliff’s Edge
Climate change will affect species in the Arctic in surprising ways.


Saving a Tribal Language
Cultural knowledge may disappear with dwindling native populations.

Smarter Trash
Imagine a trash can that actually sorts your recyclables for you—and then tells you how much money your garbage is worth.

A Search Engine that Listens
The Internet may not be making us smarter, but it may be getting smarter about us.

Murderous Economics
Rates of violent crime go up when public investment in social systems goes down.
 

Fate of the Galaxy
The Milky Way has a bright future ahead of it—literally—predicts Ohio State University astronomer Stelios Kazantzidis.

Networked Learning
Many college students gather in small study groups to help each other get ready for tests and term papers. But on one new Web site, they can find a study group that spans the entire globe.
 

Reinventing the Music Business
The music industry continues to search for a sustainable long-term model for the digital age.

Retirement Crisis for Hispanic Americans
A tougher road is foreseen for already marginalized minority populations.

 

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