Cynthia Wagner's blog

Editor's Query: Disappearing Futures. What is likely to be here today and gone tomorrow? Many things we once thought we couldn't live without are now hard to find even in antique shops. And not just "things," but institutions, values, resources, diseases, languages, and people have all come and gone from our lives.

As much as some people may not like it, we’re going to need robots to perform a lot of the tasks for which humans are not available. Populations are aging, and human labor is getting more expensive for manufacturing the things that economies want consumers to keep buying, so a fleet of smaller, smarter, more agile robots could be a boon.

We're now just a couple of years away from the 2015 imagined in Back to the Future Part II (BTTF-II), and I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't seen the movie (directed by Robert Zemeckis, co-written with Bob Gale)  since it first hit theaters in 1989.

From the editor's desk: About the May-June 2013 issue of THE FUTURIST

As artificial intelligence technology advances, the event horizon known as the Technological Singularity draws near. Does that mean we must begin preparing for the inevitable domination of our robotic overlords?

After shaking my head over spending nine hours of a perfectly good Saturday watching TV, I have a few thoughts about the Planet of the Apes marathon that just ran on AMC. Most interesting to me was that the legendary sci-fi film franchise was born at about the same time as the World Future Society. In fact, the Franklin J. Schaffner-directed original (1968) was probably being filmed when THE FUTURIST magazine was putting out its first few mimeographed pages.

Many years ago when I took a stone sculpture class, I learned that, to see something clearly and accurately, you need to turn it around and view it from another angle.

I've been brooding on something for a while, hesitant to write about it. But it's a quiet Sunday afternoon, so here goes.

Recently our magazine (more specifically, one of its most popular bloggers) was criticized for an anti-female bias. What sparked the criticism was the blogger's post listing the year's most "shocking" quotations about the future. What shocked some readers was the fact that all the individuals quoted were male. The inference from this omission was that the blogger--and hence the World Future Society--was telling women to shut up.

We would be in a Golden Age for innovation, were it not for beggar-thy-neighbor national policies in the global innovation race. Encouraging the theft of intellectual property, discriminating against foreign tech firms, and manipulating currency are among the practices referred to as innovation mercantilism.

We at World Future Society were saddened to see the news early this morning that legendary science-fiction author Ray Bradbury died yesterday at the age of 91. According to our founder, Edward Cornish, Bradbury was one of the first members of the World Future Society. ("The Search For Foresight: The Society's First Members")

Celebrity Apprentice has crowned a new Trump champion, a faux partner in the business of celebritizing business. So it's time to see if there are in fact any teachable moments. I count six lessons to learn (or unlearn).