A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future
May-June 2009 Vol. 43, No. 3
Forecasts for the Next 25 Years
Wild Cards in Our Future
In the January 2009 issue of Futurist Update, the World Future Society’s free e-newsletter, we invited readers to submit their ideas of “wild cards” that futurists need to be looking at critically right now. This section showcases a few of the responses.
What is a wild card? According to FUTURIST editor Edward Cornish, author of Futuring: The Exploration of the Future, a wild card is “an unexpected event that would have enormous consequences if it actually occurred.”
Many wild cards are disasters, such as an asteroid striking the Earth. However, a wild card might be highly beneficial, such as a revolutionary technology that leaves zero carbon dioxide, or a surge of peaceful co-existence among long-standing enemies.
The “advantage” of disaster scenarios, in terms of futurists, is that they give clear and urgent reasons for thinking ahead, whereas the possibility of a pleasant surprise does not normally inspire a need for planning. Some obvious exceptions to that complacency are when we unexpectedly receive a marriage proposal or a job offer, or learn of a new baby on the way—all of which require a great deal of futuring skills.
As you examine the following wild-card scenarios, think about the trends that may lead up to these surprise events, what might be done to prevent them (or promote them, in the case of beneficial wild cards), and how you, your family, business, and community might prepare for a world that has suddenly become quite different.
And if you can think of other wild-card scenarios, feel free to share them with us. —Cynthia G. Wagner
Cynthia G. Wagner is managing editor of THE FUTURIST. E-mail cwagner@wfs.org.
For more on
wild cards and other tools of foresight, see Futuring: The
Exploration of the Future by Edward Cornish (WFS, 2004), which may
be ordered at
www.wfs.org/futuring.htm.
Join WFS for $59 per year and receive THE FUTURIST, Futurist Update, and many other benefits. Or order a printed copy of the May-June 2009 issue.
_____________________________
READER RESPONSES
4.21.09
Here's my Wild Card. We, the peoples of the earth, have come to a critical time in our evolution. There is a quickening afoot, a serious movement involving hundreds of thousands of people across the globe to do things differently. I’m not referring to improving corporate productivity, exercising more, ingesting better foods, taking vitamins, or finding more lucrative ways to invest our personal financial resources. No, this Wild Card Movement is much more intrinsic to the very fabric of our way of life. Most of us feel this change, even if we personally aren’t seriously affected yet or we can’t actually put our finger on exactly what it is. Yet, if we’re aware enough to focus our eyes and our minds on the obvious—hidden in plain sight so to speak, we see daily evidence of it in the strangest of places. I can name countless examples from my everyday life. For decades this movement has been simmering in the background of our daily lives, hiding in the shadows, trickling out of hidden places in a slow, but steady pace. With the development of the internet and its subsequent user friendliness, the pace of this change has been dramatically sped up because now there is more access for people around the world.
This evolution of ours is no less dramatic than the one from ape to human, if in fact we did make this leap. It’s no less dramatic than the development of our frontal cortex and the size of our brains. Yet this current transformation of our species is one undertaken not from nature per se, but rather it is undertaken with knowledge aforethought. It is, for most of us in one form or another, a conscious undertaking. None of us can point to a stranger on the street and say with certainty it is happening to that person or to this one because it does not technically show itself on the outside. It is an entirely internal transformation and if seen on the outside, it is exhibited only by usually under-whelming changes in actions, though the thoughts accompanying those actions may be intense. The change in any one human is relatively subtle to friends and family, yet to the one undergoing this process it is extremely powerful and extraordinary, eventually resulting in the rebirth of a totally different sort of human being. From Homo Sapien to Homo Luminus or as some have said, Homo Spiritus.
This Wild Card, this transformational process, is happening in all countries, in all religions, in atheists and the devoutly religious alike. It feels a little like the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. We’ve been under a spell and asleep to the Knowing. Our Prince, in the form of our own mind, has finally come to give us the kiss of a true love to awaken us to the joy that awaits. We somehow Know and are, in some fashion, ready, even if we don’t initially realize it. As little as a couple of decades ago there wasn’t the current readiness for this change. Many things are now finally in place to help us along the path. There is no leader of this movement, no exhilarating exciting personality who professes to have all the answers, no savior. Most of those who have surfaced as teachers and guides along the way are in actuality learning right along with the rest of us, though perhaps they are just the tiniest bit ahead and have as their purpose in this lifetime to help the rest of us along in our journey. This is a far cry from a cohesive movement at this juncture, yet it is strengthening daily. The Knowing is too new, too buried in our subconscious. As individuals we are still feeling our way through, and in fact, we are typically downright distrustful of those who claim to have the answers. We’ve been there and done that and found it lacking. We’re waking up to something new and we’re learning to trust in something much greater, something we’ve had closed off to us for most of our evolution—our own Mind. This is not the typical analytical mind we’ve all become used to using, though we must all start here. Our new Mind is much more noble and creative. It’s able to connect with something much greater than itself.
Quantum Physics tells us thoughts carry a specific vibration and like vibrations tend to be attracted to other like vibrations. The Wild Card which I believe is already deeply embedded in our midst is our own souls attempting to reengage with the part of ourselves that Knows we are One with All That Is. In this re-membering we are creating global energies, carrying a high vibrational frequency that will eventually magnify exponentially. Because these energies are vibrating at such a high frequency, this magnification will eventually cancel out the lower negative vibrations of fear, anger, retaliation, and even war. Look inside yourself. You are the Wild CardBetsy Cagle
__________________________________
4.20.09
Regarding "Wild Cards In Our Future" (May-June 2009), I suspect that we will all bear witness to a fascinating "wild card" playing out when the first true Internet generation enters the workforce. These are the kids who began using the web when they were two or three years old.
I'm of the first TV generation. I saw first hand how different my thought processes were from my parents' thinking. I suspect that this generation's thinking has been formed by hyperlinks—that they think the way hyperlinks work—i.e,. their thinking will be exponentially different from ours. My guess is that they may think non-linearly. They'll make connections between things that seem completely unconnected to the rest of us. This, in effect, is "open source" thought.
As an organizational development enthusiast, this fascinates me. The implications of this wild card phenomenon for organizations could be staggering. Among other things, I think that the whole concept of command-and-control might be so totally alien to this younger generation that they'll simply refuse to work in such organizations.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. Tel. 301-656-8274. E-mail info@wfs.org. Web site http://www.wfs.org. All rights reserved.