Comment:
One issue always concerns me about the 'future', as I read daily in the papers, etc of land and forest being cleared in Malaysia and the Amazon for houses and buildings....... Who will decide when to stop, and say, OK THIS IS THE LAST HOUSE TO BE BUILT, THE LAST INCH OF FOREST TO BE CLEARED, THE LAST RIVER TO BE POLLUTED..................  Why dream about the future when we are "screwing" the Earth anyway we can......
William Teo 
william.0510@gmail.com

Comment:
I am a WFS member and current Ph.D student. Over the past several years my interest in the future as a field of study has intensified. It seems though, that even those in academia are not very well versed in the study of the future as a viable field, much less worthy of a dissertation. Your president's message is right up my alley...modeling as a means for intelligent forecasting. I am considering transferring to another university to complete my doctorate...without moving to Hawaii or Houston, can you or another reader assist me in finding a place to engage in scholarly future studies? Gratefully, Jeff
Jeff McGee
jeff_mcgee01@comcast.net

Comment:
Who are futurists? and Where are they? The fact is that knowledge itself has been thought of as a male pursuit in many instances; and a WHITE male pursuit at that. The UN Beijing conference was able to open up room at the table for women as knowledge bearers in the academe, and in the past five years with the economic ascendance of China and India, we see more attention being paid  to knowledge bearers coming out of the East.  But by in large, you are right, there is an unsettling assumption, or perhaps it is better said, a disquieting silence regards the absence of women and people of color at the gatherings of those who style themselves as futurists. The reality is that we are all in this global spaceship together. It is obvious to many of us that we cannot continue as we have in the past. I think the WFS by virtue of its name is rightly poised to take on leadership to ensure that more voices of the World have a space at the table. We may not even have to look far for right!

Here in the US, there are representatives of all peoples of the world. For this reason, I am hoping that this year with a theme like Fostering Hope & Vision for the 21st Century, the Conference will do something to begin to break the paradigm shift. We are aware of our global connections, our planetary destiny if you will. We are aware that the individual futures that follow the various fault lines of oppression, exclusion, wars, xenophobia if not countered with our collective attempts to create global futures that honor our diversity  etc., may cause our mutual self-destruction. The WFS Conference can no longer be simply a place of intellectual browsing, it must become a place where people consciously engaged in thinking about and planning our global future can come together to create and tell the stories that will carry us onward and forward on this our collective journey. I am sure there are ways in which this absence can be noted in this year's event. Change will happen when those at the table finally decide that they are not complete in the absence of the other.  The World Future Society has many of the prerequisites necessary to be an agent of change as far as developing a global perspective of futures and a global array of futurists. All you really need is the desire to make that change.
Claire Nelson
clairen@iadb.org

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Comment: Unfortunately, we live in an era where there are different kinds of future, depending on which side of the world you live. and people are reinventing the wheel here and there.  It's my sense, having been in the eastern side of the world, that the upgrading rate is even faster than it was in the West between the 50's and today. Figure what could happen if we helped by providing real information instead of hiding our knowledge. If we could consider the world as "one", humanity could progress much faster.
Just  my 2 cents.
Best Regards,
Massimo
massimo@grandmedia.si

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