A Search Engine that Listens Breakthrough in computer speech-recognition.

The Internet may not be making us smarter, but it may be getting smarter about us. Recent breakthroughs in speech-recognition technology point toward a future where Web crawlers recognize more of the words we speak.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis have developed a type of search engine that works for spoken words in television broadcasts. Other similar speech-recognition programs attempt to match what the system hears to words stored in a digital database. The Fraunhofer program recognizes syllables and pieces together spoken words based on their small parts, allowing for almost 99% accuracy, the researchers claim.

“Our system is based on a syllable thesaurus instead of a word thesaurus,” according to researcher Daniel Schneider. “Conventional speech recognizers can only discern a limited number of words, while the total number of words in existence is too vast to handle. The number of existing syllables, on the other hand, is manageable. With about 10,000 stored syllables, we can make up any word.”

The program is also able to differentiate between speakers and scan thousands of hours of broadcasts in just a few milliseconds, the researchers assert. Users can look for bits of spoken dialogue based on when comments were made, what was said, where, or by whom.

Students, detectives, or snoops could also use the program to analyze surveillance footage (provided people's words are clear enough to be heard on the recording). As more people spend more time under the lenses of cameras, and as more footage from those cameras and devices goes online, some interesting if not troubling implications for privacy emerge. A spoken-word search engine could one day theoretically allow someone with little more than a smart phone to look up any recorded conversation between any two people that's occurred virtually anywhere a microphone was present.—Patrick Tucker

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, www.fraunhoher.de .

Arctic Species at the Cliff’s Edge

Climate change will affect species in the Arctic in surprising ways. Olivier Gilg, Benoît Sittler and Ilkka Hanski, writing in the journal Global Change Biology, warn that rapid arctic heating, already pushing species like polar bears closer to extinction, will also interfere with the breeding habits of the collard lemming. The seemingly small change could have disastrous consequences for a number of species that feed on the lemmings, such as snowy owls, Arctic foxes, the long-tailed skua (a seagull-like bird) and the stoat (also known as the short-tailed weasel), all of which could have further ripple effects on other animals across the globe later this century.

“Small changes for lemmings can indeed induce huge changes at the community level, because lemmings are almost the only prey for the predators in the high Arctic. So if lemmings decline and stop cycling, their predators will either disappear or focus on alternate prey (if any), and in turn the latest will also decline,” Gilg told THE FUTURIST.

In their report Gilg, Sittler, and Hanski present a number of scenarios showing how temperature and snowfall changes will affect lemming behavior. Among the most important factors in their study are the growing likelihood of longer arctic summers and a poor quality snow layer during winter. Lemmings typically dig deep snow tunnels and breed in the snow during the winter so that their offspring can emerge in the spring with several months to feed on freshly thawed vegetation. The sudden arrival of lots of lemmings in the spring (sometimes referred to as “lemming peaks”) provides food for the Arctic foxes, owls, and skua. Only the wily weasel (stoat) can burrow into the lemmings’ dens to hunt them during the region’s colder months.

A longer summer would seem to be good for the lemmings, as this would increase the time available for the younger members of the species to forage and grow before the onset of harsher conditions. But the shorter winter season means less time for breeding. The result is far fewer lemmings in the spring for the predator species to feed on. The change in lemming breeding habits will likely change the predators’ habits as well, the researchers conclude. All of these disruptions will add to pressure the animals already face from encroaching populations of other alien species attracted to the north’s rapidly rising temperatures, like the red fox and seagulls.

The researchers’ scenarios show that the change in the lemming population is likely to reduce skuas’ breeding at both of the two Greenland areas the researchers modeld for, (two completely uninhabited areas of one million square kilometers in size.) In one scenario, the snowy owl disappeared from at least one of the areas and experienced much lower breeding in the second. The breeding success of the Arctic fox was reduced by a factor of two, and the stoat population decreased significantly in one location and went extinct in another.
“Our results underscore the fragility of the dynamic interactions between the lemmings and their predators, because the life-time reproductive success of the predators is much dependent on the years of high lemming density. Even a moderate advance in snow melt has a potentially great impact on the community, and it may ultimately cause the local extinction of some of the predator species,” the authors write. “The lemmings themselves do not commit suicide as foreseen for centuries, but their spectacular high-amplitude cyclic dynamics might as well be ‘thrown off the cliff’ by climate change.”

Many researchers argue that the rapid climatic and biota changes playing out in the Arctic provide a window to how temperatures and animal behaviors will shift as a result of climate change. The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the planet. By the end of this century, the globe is forecast to warm anywhere from 4 to 7 degrees Celsius; the Arctic is forecast to heat up 6 to 9 degrees. As previously reported in THE FUTURIST, oceanographers have forecast that the Arctic Ocean could experience iceless summers by 2040, and one model holds that the arctic could be ice-free during the summer months in just 11 years.

The Arctic also provides a relatively ideal setting of the analysis of weather patterns on animals, as it hosts the earth’s simplest vertebrate community. There are few species that can survive in the harsh terrain, and their interactions tend to be more direct and more observable. Importantly, the change in the breeding and survival patterns of arctic species will have less-predictable effects for other animals as well.

“The dynamics of this community influence the dynamics of other terrestrial vertebrates through indirect effects and across several trophic levels, hence the dynamics of this community have important consequences for the structure and functioning of the Arctic biota,” the researchers note.

“Changes are now occurring so rapidly and impact the ecosystems so strongly that species and even communities will not be able to cope and to adjust,” said Gilg. “Many arctic species will likely disappear within just years or decades, and what happens in the Arctic should be regarded as a summary of what will happen next in countries with more temperate climates.”—Patrick Tucker
Source: “Climate Change and Cyclic Predator-Prey Population Dynamics in the High Arctic” by Olivier Gilg, Benoît Sittler and Ilkka Hanski, Global Change Biology (2009). Personal interview.

Books in Brief

Can Antarctica Survive?

Antarctica 2041: My Quest to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness by Robert Swan with Gil Reavill. Broadway. 2009. 290 pages. $24.99.

Antarctica’s long-term survival is in question, warns Robert Swan, a researcher who has led expeditions to both the North and South poles. In 2041, he explains, the international treaty protecting Antarctica from human development is up for review. He fears that human development might win, due to the continent’s vast oil, natural gas, and mineral resources, and the likelihood that—if current consumption trends continue—existing oil wells will be mostly drained and no longer sufficient to sustain industrialized civilization.

Swan tells of his ventures on the tundra and his observations about its already-troubled health: disintegrating ice, accumulating trash, and the permanent discoloration of his own eyes from the solar radiation that penetrated the depleted ozone layer above. He expresses his hope that human civilization will find the will to protect this last wilderness.

Space-Based Energy Solutions

Energy Crisis: Solution from Space by Ralph Nansen. Apogee. 2009. 203 pages. $24.95.

An energy source that is nondepletable, available to everyone, environmentally clean, and in a form we can easily use—we have yet to find it on Earth, but it is there for the taking in space, argues space engineer Ralph Nansen. He presents a bold and far-reaching plan to deploy satellites that will capture solar radiation from the sun and beam it to earth for use in generating immense new quantities of electricity.

Plans for such satellites have been under way since the 1970s, he explains, relating the historical background of America’s space program and technical details of the structures that a hypothetical solar-satellite system would include. It would be a very long-term solution, he cautions: Government agencies and businesses would have to commit many years of development and huge initial investments. But if human beings muster the foresight to go through with it, the reward will be a new era of low-cost energy that the entire world can enjoy.

Futurism, Kid-Style

2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids by Amy Zuckerman and James Daly Dutton. 2009. 32 pages. $16.99.

Kids in 2030 will still have to eat their vegetables, but genetic engineering will make those greens taste far yummier. School will still be in session, but most kids will be excited to go. What child wouldn’t look forward to teacher-led holograph tours of the pyramids of Egypt; multimedia centers where talking computers help students create dynamic video presentations; and gym classes replete with virtual-reality baseball and “smart” trampolines?

In 32 richly illustrated pages, business writer Amy Zuckerman and education writer James Daly give young readers a snapshot of daily life as it might look when they grow up. Dogs “speak” to people via voice simulators, kitchen appliances interact with users, and humanoid search agents converse with you and help you find whatever information you need.

Other, less far-fetched amenities include energy grids powered mainly by wind and solar generators, recycling of nearly all garbage, and suburban “eco-villages” whose buildings are specially insulated to keep out excess heat.

Many of these marvels will be familiar concepts to career futurists, but they will come alive for the first time to young readers—and maybe inspire them to engage in their own futures thinking.

Career—and Life—Hunting

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2010: A Practical Manual for Job Hunters and Career Changers by Richard N. Bolles. Ten Speed Press. 2010. 311 pages. $18.99.

The job search as career coach is not a matter of looking for available positions; it is one of self-discovery and personal futuring.

In this “hard times” edition of the job-search guide that Richard Bolles has published annually since 1970, he explains that job seekers will have the most success if they undertake a “life-changing job hunt”: taking a thorough personal inventory of what one enjoys, brainstorming of job environments where one will use these skills and interests, and planning to contact individuals who can help find jobs that offer opportunities to use these skills and interests.
With anecdotes, step-by-step instructions, and engaging charts and graphs, Bolles shows how to undertake this introspective job hunt. He maps out the multitude of available aids one can find along the way, such as Web sites, unemployment agencies, networking groups, and many others.

On a Lifetime of Community Building

Odyssey of a Practical Visionary by Belden Paulson. Thistlefield Books. 2009. 757 pages. $24.95.

In the mid-twentieth century, while communists and anticommunists across the world were locked in ideological warfare, futurist and community organizer Belden Paulson went about his own peaceful quest to change the world. Now he tells his story, with all the people who shared in it and the history he witnessed.

Paulson relates his post-college journey to Sardinia in 1950 as a work-camp humanitarian helping towns rebuild from the lingering damage of World War II. He then decided to stay and co-found Italy’s first settlement center and resettlement camp to help Sardinia’s war refugees join the neighboring towns as self-sufficient working citizens.

Paulson continued his community-building in Wisconsin, where he helped establish High Wind, a community powered by renewable energy and designed for maximum cooperation and closeness to nature among its residents. While at High Wind, he established the Plymouth Institute, a futurist think tank.

Paulson’s activism as a futurist led him to participate in the World Future Society’s 1980 globla conference in Toronto, an account of which is included in this memoir.

Through his lifelong “adventure,” as he calls it, Paulson has held fast to the conviction that anything is possible, and that all of us are bound by the ties of global interdependence. He challenges readers to rethink how they see the world and realize the opportunity that each of us has to commit to building a more perfect world.

New Leadership Skills

Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World by Bob Johansen. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2009. 191 pages. $26.95.

Self-serving leadership is about to become obsolete, according to Institute for the Future scholar and board member Bob Johansen. He expects the next 10 years to be a “threshold decade” of greater volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Leaders who wish to steer their organizations through all the turmoil will need to be able to look beyond their own personal interests and collaborate with the broader system of which they are parts.

Johansen identifies 10 fundamental skills that every leader will need to possess to be effective, and he explains how he or she can implement them into everyday practice. These skills include the “maker instinct,” clarity, dilemma flipping (turning problems into opportunities), and quiet transparency (being open and authentic without advertising).

Making Education More Effective

The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity by W. Norton Grubb. Russell Sage Foundation. 2009. 400 pages. $35.

Increased funding does not guarantee improved school performance, according to Berkeley education professor W. Norton Grubb. Despite lavish funding, he says, many U.S. school districts lag far behind others in the quality of education they offer their students. Those students will consequently be at a steep disadvantage throughout their adult lives.

Grubb cites evidence that schools often waste or misallocate the resources they have, in part because they operate by outmoded top-down management styles in which leadership does not work in tandem with teachers and the communities. With more collective decision making, schools might function more effectively.

Grubb describes new approaches to reorganize schools and school districts to make them more collegial, democratic, and equipped for meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Bringing Garbage Cans into the 21st Century

Imagine a trash can that actually sorts your recyclables for you—and then tells you how much money your garbage is worth. Currently being developed at Georgia Tech, Smart Trash receptacles are being touted as an ecologically sound method of waste disposal that’s easy and rewarding to use.

Trash receptacles equipped with scanners that read bar codes and other product tags would record much of what is thrown away, along with the items’ potential resale value. They would then relay that information to recycling centers via WiFi. Recycling centers would set aside anything hazardous or toxic for treatment, storage, and safe disposal. Anything of value would be auctioned off, with proceeds going to the consumer, who would have the option of receiving cash back or applying the earnings to next month’s sanitation bill.

The cash incentive and user-friendliness of Smart Trash technology is intended to encourage more consumers to recycle and also enable them to easily recycle many more items than the current system allows, such as consumer electronics, for example. Developers are betting that the benefits for consumers (not to mention the environment) will outweigh any embarrassment of leaving yet one more digital trail behind.

Source: Georgia Institute of Technology, www.gatech.edu.

Collecting Wisdom About the Future

2009 State of the Future by Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu. Millennium Project. 2009. 100-page paperback plus a CD-ROM with 6,700 pages of research. $49.95. Order from World Future Society, www.wfs.org/wfsbooks.htm.

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.

“No one knew it [the meteor] was coming,” the authors write. “The time between its discovery and close approach was very short. Few people knew the global financial crisis was coming; fewer still forecast its breadth and depth.”

As a commission that advises the United Nations’ global efforts to raise living standards, lower disease rates, and relieve hunger, the Millennium Project anticipates—and seeks to avert—disasters of all kinds. It continually surveys more than 2,700 researchers for which trends they expect will shape world events over the coming years, and releases their combined observations in its annual State of the Future reports.

Like preceding reports, the 2009 edition identifies 15 Global Challenges that only worldwide action will be able to solve. The 2009 also present an overall outlook for life on earth over the next decade in its State of the Future Index, and synthesizes researchers’ analyses about conditions in the world at large via real-time Delphi studies and other forecasting exercises.
On the plus side, according to the researchers, the world now has fewer conflicts, global development assistance is growing, poverty reduction continues, women are gaining a greater voice in governments and organizations internationally, and scientific and technological progress keeps accelerating. On the minus side, fewer countries are governed by democratic governments; population growth trends portend more people lacking food and water; climate change is altering animal and insect patterns; new infectious diseases, including 20 drug-resistant “superbugs,” have emerged over the last 40 years; and worldwide energy demand could double by 2030.

The global recession and its long-term impacts have given the researchers much to discuss in this report. So has the growing concern worldwide over climate change. The authors hope that new national and international systems might effectively respond to both.

“The global financial crisis and climate change planning may be helping humanity to move from its often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood,” they write.
This year’s State of the Future Index projects global development over the next 10 years post-recession, alongside a “baseline” projection scenario in which the recession never took place. The comparison is a concrete tracker of the recession’s impacts: The first projection shows greater scarcity of food and potable water, higher poverty rates, stifled research and development, and hampered economic growth.

Yet we have an opportunity to build a new, better global economy, the authors argue. In a chapter unique to this edition, 217 international questionnaire participants offer ideas on the elements that this new economy might include: a higher priority on ethics at all levels; new definitions of GNP and GDP; global commons supported by international agreements; “collective intelligence,” by which leaders are able to draw from universal banks of information to guide their decisions; and updated educational systems.

At least one reason for hope is cited: Instantaneous- communication technologies provide the means for people across the world to know the world’s problems and to act collaboratively to solve them.

“Mobile phones, the Internet, international trade, language translation, and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve the prospects for humanity,” the authors write.

Ethical decision making also seems to be making progress. More than 5,000 businesses signed on to the UN’s Global Compact, pledging to use global ethics. The International Criminal Court, international treaties, and new International Organization for Standardization guidelines are setting norms for national governance. Social media, ethics commissions, and NGOs all are keeping public officials accountable. Corporate social responsibility, ethical marketing, and social investing are increasing.

If one seeks evidence of new collective intelligence, this report itself surely provides it. With more than 2,700 participants from around the world since 1996 contributing to these assessments, the annual reports are as well-researched and all-encompassing as any. Readers will find a grand overview of the trends—both positive and negative—likely to shape world events in this century and beyond.

About the Reviewer
Rick Docksai is a staff editor for THE FUTURIST and World Future Review. E-mail rdocksai@wfs.org.

Deciding Our Futures

Futurists offer a toolbox for improving decision making.

As the world becomes more complex, the likelihood of making poor decisions about our future increases, as does the cost of bad outcomes.

Psychologists refer to two types of decision-making strategies: intuition and reason. Intuition is faster and often emotional, while reason is slower and logical. As the pace of our world accelerates, intuition may increasingly trump reason; "going with the gut" can be an efficient way to decide, but it can also lead to more errors.

It is becoming harder to make good decisions because it has become risky to simply rely on expert advice: Expertise has become fractured into smaller and smaller areas, leaving a gap in areas in which we may be unknowledgeable. Experience leaves us ill-prepared for judgments about wild-card events. And intuition is often based on biases that may lead us in the wrong direction.

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.

- Editors

The Dymaxion Dream Reincarnate

By Cynthia G. Wagner
Volkswagen showcases the “purposeful aesthetics” of earth-friendly design.

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.

In a description strongly reminiscent of that for the Dymaxion car, which Fuller designed and built in the 1930s, VW outlines its philosophy for the latest car of the future in a press package:

In developing both prototype generations of the L1, (pictured right) Volkswagen simply questioned everything that typically characterised an automobile. The key starting point was body construction, and a core question was raised here: How would a car have to look and be built to consume as little energy as possible? The logical answer: extremely aerodynamic and lightweight.

Thus, aerodynamically designed and built with lightweight materials, the 838-pound, one-liter vehicle (with a fuel economy of 240 mpg) may be on the market by 2013 — realizing a vision for efficient transportation that’s more than 75 years old.

Is this the reincarnation of Fuller’s Dymaxion Car we see before us? The new vehicle is at least a worthy descendent, bearing traces of its ancestor’s noble silhouette.

VW’s L1 is far smaller than Fuller’s Dymaxion car, with room for just two passengers (one sitting behind the other), while Fuller’s vision accommodated a larger American family of up to 10 passengers.

Fuller’s Dymaxion concept extended beyond vehicle design to housing and even global mapping. As the Buckminster Fuller Institute defines it, Dymaxion (dynamic maximum tension) was an engineering concept built on “the idea that rational action in a rational world demands the most efficient overall performance per unit of input. [Fuller’s] Dymaxion structures, then are those that yield the greatest possible efficiency in terms of available technology.”

The principles of energy efficiency are the legacy that VW has inherited from Bucky Fuller, affectionately known as Earth’s friendly genius. But Walter de Silva, head of design for the Volkswagen Group, emphasizes the L1’s more modern appeal — its “purposeful aesthetics” — as a feature no less significant to the car-buying public and, hence, to the future of personal transportation.

About the Author

Cynthia G. Wagner is managing editor of THE FUTURIST.

For more information about Volkswagen AG, visit www.volkswagenag.com. For a review of the L1, see “VW’s One-Liter Car Is Finally On Its Way” by Jens Meiners, Car and Driver (September 2009).

For more about R. Buckminster Fuller, visit Buckminster Fuller Institute, www.bfi.org.

IN THE PRINT VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE, THE PHOTOS RUN WERE PUBLISHED IN “CRITICAL PATH TO AN ALL-WIN WORLD: BUCKY FULLER DESIGNS THE NEW AGE” BY BARBARA MARX HUBBARD, THE FUTURIST, JUNE 1981.

The photos above are from Car addicts.com, and Tommytoy, respectively.

The Fate of the Galaxy

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

Using computer models, he concludes that, in the far future, the host of smaller satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way will merge with it. When they do, the gravitational forces will puff up the Milky Way’s stars and other matter to create luminous stellar rings or flares.

Many scientists expect this merger. They speculate, however, that it would tear the Milky Way apart—one tough break for whatever life forms inhabit the galaxy at the time.

Kazantzidis’s computer models are based on the real-life movements of other galaxies similar to the Milky Way, and project a much more hopeful future.

“The satellite galaxy impacts don't destroy spiral galaxies. They actually drive their evolution,” he says.
It is an evolution that has already been going on for billions of years, he adds. The continous pull from the satellite galaxies might explain why the Milky Way has its namesake nebulous haze.

“Every spiral galaxy has a complex formation and evolutionary history,” says Kazantzidis. “We would hope to understand exactly how the Milky Way formed and how it will evolve. We may never succeed in knowing its exact history, but we can try to learn as much as we can about it.”—Rick Docksai

Source: Stelios Kazantzidis, www.ohio-state.edu.

Foresight Conquers Fear of the Future

By Edward Cornish
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.

“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.”

The young man bared his soul to an invisible audience during a radio call-in show. Other callers agreed with his dismal assessment of the state of the world. Nobody offered an answer for his fears.

Bill Moyers, the TV interviewer, happened to be listening that night and was profoundly affected by what he heard.

“Such lamentations,” Moyers commented later, “are deep currents running throughout the liberal West today. Our secular and scientific societies are besieged by violence, moral anarchy, and purposelessness that have displaced any mobilizing vision of the future except hedonism and consumerism.”

Moyers put his finger on what may be a key challenge faced by many young people today: their inability to think realistically, creatively, and hopefully about the future. Instead, these young people suffer from what can be described as “futurephobia.”

Some futurephobes have an acute version of this malady, like the young man described by Moyers, but most futurephobes simply focus on their immediate circumstances and drift into the future without thinking much about it at all. Either way, they may drift into financial or other kinds of trouble.

The connection between poor foresight and serious problems is widely recognized by psychologists and sociologists. Yale sociologist Wendell Bell asserts that some authorities “go so far as to claim that all forms of deviant, criminal, and reckless behavior have the same fundamental cause: the tendency to pursue immediate benefits without concern for long-term costs, a disregard for inevitable and undesirable future consequences.”

Successful self-management, says Bell, requires understanding and giving appropriate value to the likely consequences of your actions. If you have little or no foresight, you cannot think realistically and creatively about your future, so you cannot steer your career and personal life toward long-term success.

Poor foresight can threaten not just the careers of emerging adults, but even their lives. Young people lacking foresight are prone to act recklessly — drive too fast, use drugs, play with guns, commit crimes, and even kill themselves (or others).

On the other hand, when young people do manage to develop good foresight, they can think realistically, creatively, and hopefully about the future. So empowered, they can aim their careers toward achievable goals and cheerfully accept the burdens of responsibility and self-discipline required for success. Barack Obama is a recent example of foresight-empowered success.

The New Urgency of Foresight

Older people are prone to dismiss the problems of youth as just a normal part of growing up, but the fact is that today’s youth are coming of age in a world undergoing an unprecedented transformation powered by multiple technological revolutions. These technological advances, all occurring simultaneously, are overturning the world’s economies and undermining long-established institutions, careers, and lifestyles.

Amid such turbulence, making a good decision concerning one’s career or private life can be highly problematic, and the demographic group most acutely affected are young people moving into adulthood. These emerging adults have entered a time of life when parents and teachers have diminished power to guide them, so young people must make critical decisions by themselves at a time when their experience of the world is limited and their brains are still immature. (Foresight, scientists say, is largely a function of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which does not reach maturity until about age 25.)

Adding to the challenge of making appropriate decisions in today’s world is the fact that knowledgeable and trustworthy advisors are now less available to emerging adults. In bygone days, most young people lived in villages or small towns where people got to know each other well, enabling the elders to offer wise counsel for a young person trying to find a suitable job or marriage partner.

In today’s highly mobile mass society, young people roam the world and can choose among thousands of potential careers and mates in countless different locations. In principle, the abundance of choice offers wonderful opportunities, but it can pose a baffling conundrum for an emerging adult with little experience of the world.

Making matters worse for many young people, technological advances have eliminated most of the jobs that could be learned quickly and paid enough for an 18-year-old to live on and maybe support a family. Now, getting a decent job is likely to require years of training at a college or university during which time the student earns little or no money and may go heavily into debt.
Improving Youth Foresight

Ironically, it was fear of the future that led to some of our most useful foresight tools.

Relatively little was done to create a science of foresight until after World War II, which had led to the development of rockets and atomic bombs. Frightened that the Soviet Union might use the new superweapons, the U.S. Air Force established the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, as a “think factory.” The main task of RAND’s scientists and scholars was to think about future wars — how to fight and win them.

To fulfill their mission, the RAND scientists had to think seriously about the future, and in the process they developed a variety of methods for thinking more scientifically about the future than had ever been done before. Mathematician Olaf Helmer and his RAND colleague Norman Dalkey developed the Delphi technique, a way to refine and synthesize scientists’ forecasts of future technological developments. In addition, Herman Kahn developed his scenario technique for exploring the implications of possible future events. The scenario method is now widely used in government and business.

Meanwhile, Arnold Brown, Edie Weiner, and others refined ways for identifying and analyzing social trends. Today trend analysis is widely recognized as one of the most useful ways for identifying significant developments in technology and society and anticipating outcomes.

Many of the methods developed since World War II can now be used in simplified forms by young people and by teachers or others trying to help young people gain a practical understanding of what is happening in the world now, where things are going, and the opportunities that young people have to make valuable contributions to human welfare as well as succeed in their chosen careers and personal lives.

The task now is to make foresight into a recognized life skill that can empower young people to think more clearly, constructively, and hopefully about the future. The World Future Society has already initiated several projects for improving youth foresight, and more are under development.

Young people interested in participating in a Society conference now can attend at a reduced rate of $125 ($150 on site) and many members have been donating funds to cover one or more full scholarships for young people.

In addition, the Society recently sponsored a High School Essay Contest, and the first group of winners was announced in July. Other programs will be instituted as funding becomes available.

If we can equip today’s young people with good foresight, we can all be much more optimistic about their future and ours.
About the Author

Edward Cornish, founder of the World Future Society, is editor of THE FUTURIST and a member of the Society’s Board. His book Futuring: The Exploration of the Future provides a readable description of the futures field, including many of the methods now in use. It may be ordered from the World Future Society for $19.95 (member’s price $17.95). Go to www.wfs.org/futuring.htm

Reinventing the Music Business

The music industry continues to search for a sustainable long-term model for the digital age. Recently, industry leaders, musicians, and policy makers gathered to search for innovative solutions at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit in Washington, D.C.

“It’s chaos, the music industry right now,” said Greg Kot, music critic for the Chicago Tribune, during a panel discussion. “But chaos is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Nowadays, musicians have the option of signing to a label (large or small), relying on outside investment, or finding the time, energy, and money to manage everything themselves—the do-it-yourself approach. Convincing fans to microfinance their efforts is a fourth possibility, and a bit riskier. Each choice comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Speaking at the conference, Emily White of Whitesmith Entertainment emphasized that what’s best for an artist depends on a number of factors, including where artists are in terms of their careers and where they ultimately want to be.

In other words, just because independent musicians now have the power to tap into the global marketplace from their laptops doesn’t mean that the “middle man” is obsolete. On the contrary, White pointed out that having to constantly promote and market one’s own music takes a great deal of effort and leaves less time to focus on actually making music. It is probably a task better left to others.

Nevertheless, even with an army of publicists behind them, bands need to take advantage of social networking sites to connect with fans, spread the word about their music, and gain support. As a number of speakers and panelists pointed out, social networking is a huge component of a successful promotional strategy that also includes giving away MP3s for free.

Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR insisted that musicians should view MP3s first and foremost as a method of self-promotion that can lead to other financial opportunities. Music sales form only a small fraction (possibly even the smallest fraction) of a band's revenue. There is greater financial opportunity in licensing recordings (for use in movies, television shows, games like Rock Band, and commercials, for example).

Legendary band manager and artist advocate Peter Jenner predicted that music sales will never recover now that anyone can effortlessly copy an MP3 file, arguing that music producers need to move beyond outdated industrial models of mass production. The Internet is a communications medium, and actually functions more like a radio station than a large store, he said. In other words, music is a service rather than a product.

The popular European Web site Spotify is one of a small handful of recent start-ups intent on offering music as a service under a blanket licensing system. As co-founder Daniel Ek explained, Spotify offers subscribers the ability to stream millions of recordings for a monthly fee. There is also a more limited, ad-supported free version.

Such online music services, which enable users to access virtually any music at any time without having to download it, could render peer-to-peer file sharing—the industry’s white whale—a thing of the past. Spotify users can share and collaborate on playlists, there are applications for Facebook and other social media, and the basic interface is simple to use. One music critic has said that it’s like having the entire iTunes library on your laptop or phone. So far, Spotify has been enthusiastically received in France, Spain, and the U.K.

There are no gatekeepers, so independent artists’ creative output is just as easily accessed as that of those on major labels. Ek pointed out that independent music makes up approximately 25% of what users are listening to. A more even playing field for musicians is one of the great advantages of digital media, but it faces a potentially large challenge.

Net Neutrality

Internet service providers, in the interest of increasing profits, could put bumps in that level playing field, warned Michael Bracy, co-founder and policy director of the Future of Music Coalition and co-owner of Austin, Texas-based independent record label Misra. Bracy noted that ISPs can make exclusive arrangements that direct consumers to certain large, corporate marketplace sites and slow down or even block access to competitors’ sites. Some ISPs might offer different tiers of service, where consumers would pay a premium in return for increased options.

The result might be a few large corporations controlling the digital music sphere in much the same way that they have American commercial radio, where independent and local artists face insurmountable obstacles in order to get airplay. Summit speaker Senator Al Franken pointed out that, without regulation, ISPs would have the power to transform a free, open, democratic system into a corporate pay-to-play system where those that can’t compete financially simply aren’t allowed in. Currently, “a garage band can stream songs just as easily as a multiplatinum superband,” he said, “but recently, business executives from top ISPs have declared their interest in offering prioritized Internet service to companies that can pay for it.”

This wouldn’t just affect the music industry. Determining what content moves at what speed across servers threatens innovation across the board, Franken warned. And restricting innovation would adversely affect the economy as a whole. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission is currently working on regulations to keep the Internet neutral.

—Aaron M. Cohen

For further information: The Future of Music Coalition, futureofmusic.org.

Saving a Tribal Language

Cultural knowledge may disappear with dwindling native populations.
When languages disappear, so do oral histories and cultural knowledge. As minority indigenous cultures face rapidly dwindling populations, the future of their heritage grows dark.

In America’s northern Plains, the Assiniboine tribe has shrunk to just 50 living members in Montana who are fluent in its language, Nakota. The Assiniboine separated from the Sioux some 400 years ago, developing their own linguistic and cultural forms, according to Raymond DeMallie, an Indiana University anthropology professor.
DeMallie is leading a project to preserve the oral history of the tribe, with plans to publish a dictionary of the language and two volumes transcribing oral histories that were recorded nearly 25 years ago.

The Assiniboine tribe had long been neglected by linguists and anthropologists because they were believed to have been closely related to the Sioux; they were also incorrectly identified with the Stoneys of Canada, according to DeMallie. This mistaken identity led to neglect by scholars pursuing the larger and better known indigenous cultures.

Armed with new digital audio technologies that can visually represent sounds for precise analysis, DeMallie and his team will be able to replay difficult passages of the recorded material, consult with other experts, and render more accurate translations.

The Assiniboine traveled farther north than did the Sioux, and the culture was greatly influenced through intermarriage with the Cree tribe and with French and Canadian fur traders, DeMallie explains. The oral culture is rich with stories incorporating European folktales.

But of particular importance to cultural anthropologists is the effect of one of the tribe’s key distinctions: It survived as hunters without benefit of horses. Unlike other Plains tribes, the Assiniboine relied on pre-horse hunting techniques, such as communal buffalo drives. Knowledge about their unique survival strategies could thus be preserved in the oral histories and stories collected.
Source: Indiana University, www.indiana.edu.

Stewart Brand’s Environmental Heresies

By Aaron M. Cohen
A maverick environmentalist advocates saving the planet via nuclear power, mass urbanization, genetically engineered food, and geoengineering.

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand. Viking. 2009. 316 pages. $25.95.

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.

Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, and co-founder of The Long Now Foundation and The WELL, has never had any trepidation about seeking out controversial solutions or endorsing emerging technologies. As he sees it, climate change is the single largest threat looming over humanity. It comes down to a simple choice, he writes: “We finesse climate, or climate finesses us.”

The first item on the agenda is a carbon-free future. Brand argues that this is well within reach and that the technological know-how is already in place — all we need to do is get over our nuclear fears.

A 2002 tour of the notorious Yucca Mountain project led Brand to rethink his long-held opinions on nuclear energy. He began to balance potential benefits against potential drawbacks. In the process, he learned that the risk of cancer is much higher from fossil-fuel production and usage; that oil, natural gas, and hydrogen are much more explosive; that trace radiation technically isn’t bad for you; and that nuclear energy is historically associated with deproliferation efforts — not nuclear weapons programs.

Brand makes nuclear energy the leading component of his green energy plan and presents a strong case that it is economical and safe. (The arguments he presents against greater investment in wind and solar technology are far less persuasive, however). He also endorses the proposition, quickly gaining acceptance, that booming megacities are facilitating an increasingly beneficial arrangement between humans and the environment. “Urban density allows half of humanity to live on 2.8 percent of the land,” he writes. “Soon that will be 80 percent of humanity on 3 percent of the land. Consider just the infrastructure efficiencies.”

Brand goes on to declare urban slums, home to more than half of city dwellers, to be the new sustainable communities. Intentionally or not, “squatter cities are Green,” he says. For example, urban farming and rooftop agriculture have their roots in squatter cities, where such practices were born of necessity if not ideology. He argues that squatter cities must be improved and incorporated within larger urban structures.

With the energy crisis and overpopulation under control and everyone comfortably ensconced in megacities, the next question is how to feed everyone. Brand advocates what he sees as the next logical step in what has been an ongoing process ever since humans began domesticating crops thousands of years ago.

Like nuclear power, genetically modified crops have long been the bane of environmentalists, but Brand believes it’s time to rethink the issue. The benefits of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are myriad, he argues. Crops modified to grow without being tilled prevent carbon in the soil from being released in the atmosphere. So called Bt crops (engineered with a gene from the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium) reduce pesticide use. Other technologies reduce the amount of water or fertilizer needed to grow crops. Still others may help reduce methane emitted from the animals that consume them (including humans).

The main hindrance comes from the private sector in the form of corporate licensing practices and intellectual property law, which can prevent farmers in the developing world from taking full advantage of agricultural aid. Taking his cue from the open-source software movement that he’s been a strong advocate for over the years, Brand pushes for what he calls “open-source biotech,” which he believes is very much a possibility. If environmental scientists develop non-patent-protected seeds with ecology and international aid in mind, they may be able to contain food and water shortages, keeping them at more manageable, localized levels.

Saving what is arguably his most controversial proposition for last, Brand writes that large-scale geoengineering efforts are now imperative. Relying on systems dynamics, he shows that it’s too late to completely prevent or mitigate climate change even if humanity somehow miraculously reverses course at the last minute. More drastic measures must be considered. Finding ways to engineer the planet with a light touch is a tricky proposition, to say the least, and implementing such solutions even trickier, but Brand is cautiously optimistic that it can be done.

The moral of the story is that, in the face of imminent climate change, we must search for innovative high-tech solutions and embrace what Brand calls “the freedom to try things.” This thoroughly researched and highly readable book presents a compelling if controversial argument for how best to confront the challenges ahead.

About the Reviewer

Aaron M. Cohen is a staff editor for THE FUTURIST and World Future Review.

Tomorrow in Brief

Sustainable Sources of Biofuels

Native prairie plants may provide an alternative source of fuel that does not cut into food supplies. As societies increasingly demand crop-based biofuels to reduce dependence on petroleum, the rapid diversion of corn from food to fuel has many people worried about feeding tomorrow’s hungry. Now, environmental science researchers led by Michigan Technological University’s David Flaspohler advocate the use of diverse native prairie plants for bioenergy instead of relying on agricultural crops such as corn. Native crops are also better for preserving the habitats of birds and other species, and maintaining biodiversity is good for the long-term health of the ecosystem, according to the researchers.

Source: Michigan Technological University, www.mtu.edu .

Pollution without Borders

Most of the world’s air-quality problems are local, but non-domestic sources of pollution are an increasing concern around the world, according to the U.S. National Research Council. As developing countries become more industrialized, they are emitting more ozone, particulates such as soot and dust, mercury, and organic pollutants such as DDT. All of these pollutants can travel across continents; for instance, satellite observations have attributed plumes in central Oregon to polluted air masses that took eight days to travel from East Asia, where man-made emissions are expected to rise in coming decades.

Source: “Global Sources of Local Pollution,” National Research Council, Committee on the Significance of International Transport of Air Pollutants. National Academies Press, www.nap.edu .

Long-Term Impacts of Bad Shoes

Whether it’s a sexy stiletto or a stylish sandal, cute but high-risk shoes could cost you long-term foot pain, warn researchers from Boston University School of Public Health. Women are more prone to make poor footwear choices than men are, and thus put themselves more at risk of sprains, muscle strains, fractures, and a variety of foot pains from toenail to heel. The researchers recommend choosing low-risk shoes, such as athletic and casual sneakers, and avoiding high-risk shoes—high heels, sandals, and slippers. Performing stretching exercises can also help reduce the effects of bad shoes.

Source: “Foot Pain: Is Current or Past Shoewear a Factor?” by Alyssa B. Dufour et al. Arthritis Care & Research (Wiley-Blackwell, October 2009).

Plagiarists Beware: Musical Detection Software

Popular music has frequently borrowed from classical composers such as Mozart and Rachmaninoff, but now when songwriters borrow even a sequence of chord changes from one of their contemporaries, cries of plagiarism can be expected. Melody detectives will soon have new software to help predict whether a specific plagiarism charge would hold up in court, thanks to tune algorithms developed by computer scientists at Goldsmiths, University of London. The program models court decisions for cases of alleged tune theft; when tested on U.S. court cases, the model predicted 90% of the decisions correctly. The benefit for songwriters and their publishers would be that they could test their tunes against any similar preexisting melodies, assuring themselves and their fans of the new songs’ originality.

Source: Goldsmiths, University of London, www.goldsmiths.ac.uk.

Can Happiness Be Acquired?

Are some people just born happy while others are doomed to despair? Psychiatrists have plied patients with psychotropic drugs and long-term therapy sessions without altering their happiness, says Robert Cloninger, professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis. However, by redirecting clinical treatment toward enhancing patients’ character development, their overall life satisfaction and well-being can be improved. To achieve happiness, Cloninger prescribes a psychoeducational program for improving self-directedness (by becoming more calm, accepting one’s limitations, and letting go of fear and conflict), cooperativeness (by working in the service of others), and self-transcendence (awareness of the roots of negative emotions), all traits that are essential for well-being.

Source: Robert Cloninger, Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110; http://psychobiology.wustl.edu/cloninger.html .

Heartbeat Monitored by Phone
A new application for your smart phone will let you send your heart rate directly to your doctor’s office. The iStethoscope, developed by University College London computer scientist Peter Bentley, comprises an audio amplifier that filters sounds from the built-in microphone to transmit clear signals of your heartbeat to the cardiologist. Bentley foresees such devices becoming more powerful and cheaper than traditional medical equipment, eventually putting an array of monitoring and diagnostic instruments in everyone’s pockets.
Sources: University College London, www.ucl.ac.uk. Peter Bentley, iStethoscope Pro, www.peterjbentley.com.

Tech Support for Homeless
Homeless people may be placed in permanent housing more quickly, thanks to portable technologies that reduce the cumbersome paper-based inspection and matching processes of housing services.
New York City’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is teaming with IBM and global Bay Mobile Technologies to deploy handheld devices for field inspectors to file reports, photos, and other documentation on available apartments, providing DHS case workers real-time information on what repairs are needed before placing clients in their new homes.The devices have already increased the number of inspections that DHS performs every month by 57%, and in turn the number of leases signed increased by 25% in one year.

Sources: New York City Department of Homeless Services, www.nyc.gov/dhs. IBM, www.ibm.com/services. Global Bay Mobile, www.globalbay.com/public-sector.html.

Retirement Crisis among Hispanic Americans
The future hardships that many Americans are already bracing themselves for as they approach retirement will hit Hispanic Americans even harder, according to a new study by Americans for Secure Retirement and the Hispanic Institute. Reasons: Hispanic Americans have saved less for their futures, are less likely to be covered by employer-sponsored retirement plans, and have inadequate financial literacy. The retirement crisis that many foresee is due to increased longevity and inadequate financial planning. Some 60% of middle-class Americans will outlive their money, according to the study. These trends will become especially critical to the rapidly growing Hispanic American population, who are largely employed in service-related fields that do not provide retirement plans or enough income for workers to save on their own. The study recommends educational programs for the Hispanic American community emphasizing alternative retirement savings options, such as lifetime annuities, which can help build retirement savings and guarantee secure future incomes.

Source: Americans for Secure Retirement, www.paycheckforlife.org .

Kids Need More Places to Play
Two-thirds of American children now fall short of the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity, and one reason is that they lack a safe place to play within walking distance.
Building more safe places to play could reduce childhood obesity and improve juvenile health and well-being overall. U.S. child obesity rates have nearly tripled since 1980.
The nonprofit organization KaBOOM has launched a Playful City USA campaign to honor imaginative ways that local groups have promoted play. Among the programs showcased in KaBOOM’s “Play Matters” report:
• Boston, Massachusetts’s Schoolyard Initiative has transformed 70 schoolyards into colorful and engaging outdoor classrooms and places to play.
• Boulder, Colorado’s Freiker Program (for “frequent bikers”) uses incentives to increase the number of children biking or walking to school. Kids can use solar-powered “Freikometers” that count their bike trips, earning points for prizes.
• Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s Switch Program encourages kids to switch what they do (from nonphysical to physical activities), switch what they view (reducing television viewing time), and switch what they chew (to increase fruit and vegetable consumption).
Source: KaBOOM, http://kaboom.org.

Developing “Middle Skills”
The recession may have severely suppressed employment growth, but economic recovery will depend on a workforce that is prepared for the jobs that will open. And the recovery may be led by the middle, according to a study by the Workforce Alliance and the Skills2Compete campaign.
Middle-skill workers ranging from carpenters to radiology technicians will be needed in the key industries that are benefiting from federal funding, such as construction, health care, manufacturing, and transportation. In Rhode Island, more than 42% of job openings between 2006 and 2016 are projected to be middle-skill jobs, compared with 26% for low-skill and 32% for high-skill jobs.
To overcome the middle-skills gap, the study recommends that employers invest more in training of lower-skilled employees, that jurisdictions invest more in vocational and two-year college programs, and that individuals invest more in their own skills through post-secondary schooling, vocational training, or apprenticeships.
Source: The Workforce Alliance, www.workforcealliance.org.
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Wild Plants as Protein Source
Wild lupins growing in the mountains of Andalusia in Spain could come to be a useful source of protein and fiber, according to researchers at the Fat Institute (CSIS) and the University of Seville.
Lupins are legumes, a principal source of vegetable protein in the human diet, and they are rich in fiber and polyphenols. The researchers studied six wild species of lupins, focusing on their amino acids, digestibility, and other nutritional factors. Whether the plants are cultivated as food or not, their seeds offer rich nutritional properties, the researchers conclude.

Sources: Javier Vioque Peña, Fat Institute (CSIC), www.ig.csic.es. Platforma SINC, www.plataformasinc.es .