In This Issue:
Ghana’s Promising Future
Loneliness in an Interconnected World
Preventive Care Could Save Trillions of Dollars
Specialists versus Generalists: Lessons from Figure Skating
Click of the Month: Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc
News for the Futurist Community
While far from the epicenter of the most recent global financial crisis, much of Africa was severely impacted by it. Faring better than its neighbors is Ghana, which has nearly halved its poverty rate since 1992, sustained a 5% average annual growth rate, and held peaceful elections in 2004 and 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“You do sense a country that is moving forward,” says Peter Allum, IMF mission chief for Ghana. “There’s an enormous amount of energy and excitement there on the streets. You also see the poverty, and it makes you realize what a challenge lies ahead for the country in terms of job creation for these young people.”
Foreign investment from recession-afflicted countries has dried up, and Ghanaians working abroad have had less money to send back home, notes IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky. So building up economic resilience domestically has become more imperative.
Gold and cocoa exports have kept Ghana going, but moving forward may require it to develop another source of new wealth: oil. Ghana is unlikely to become another Saudi Arabia, says Lipsky, “but it could be producing enough oil to satisfy its domestic needs with some left over for export. The key to Ghana’s future growth, of course, is to use this newfound wealth wisely.”
SOURCE: International Monetary Fund
The average American today has only a third as many friends as 25 years ago, and one-fourth have no close confidants at all, according to recently released data from medical researchers. The Internet may be largely to blame, says Michael Bugeja, author of INTERPERSONAL DIVIDE (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Many people have a swarm of friends on Facebook, but do they ever call? “Friending” is not the same as “befriending”—being a friend—Bugeja notes, arguing that instead of creating a global village, the Internet has distracted and distanced us from each other.
One impact is that lonely people have no one to turn to in hard times, whereas during the Depression people relied on each other. Now, when people can no longer afford the communications devices they’ve come to rely on instead of people, they become truly isolated. As a result, suicide rates may increase, even among young children, Bugeja warns.
Robots in the classroom, “power teaching,” and innovative problem-solving strategies will all be explored at the annual Education Summit immediately preceding the opening of WorldFuture 2010 in Boston, July 8-10, at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel.
The Summit will address the challenges and opportunities of demographic and technological transformation to improve learning in the future. DETAILS,
Futurists looking to enhance their own skills will also have a variety of learning opportunities before the conference gets under way. Courses range from introductory to advanced, such as how to build and use scenarios and using patterns of inventions to predict the future.
The conference program itself boasts an outstanding lineup of speakers, such as journalist Michael Rogers, former “futurist-in-residence” for the New York Times Company. Rogers will explore what it will mean for us to live more of our lives “virtualized”—a social transformation that he argues is as potentially impactful as the rise of cities.
Health-care practitioners need to broaden their focus to include greater preventive care, urges Kevin Fickenscher, Dell Perot Systems vice president of strategic initiatives.
During a recent presentation to the Washington, D.C. chapter of the World Future Society, Fickenscher declared that preventive care is one way to repair the overstressed U.S. health-care system.
The key challenge to fixing health care is reducing the financial stresses on the system, he says. By shifting the emphasis to include prevention as well as treatment, Fickenscher estimates that the health-care industry could save trillions of dollars and improve the quality of life for many.
Preventive health care entails focusing on larger cultural issues such as lack of exercise, diet and nutrition, and smoking. However, the current financial incentives for medical practitioners encourage them to conduct medical tests to diagnose a disease—but not to instruct their patients to eat healthier and exercise more before health problems develop.
Fickenscher will speak more on these critical issues at the World Future Society’s annual meeting in Boston in July.
Questions about figure skating’s future recently arose from 2010 Olympic silver medalist Yevgeny Plushenko (Russia). In interviews following the competition, he observed that the gold medalist, Evan Lysacek (USA), had failed to perform a quadruple jump. Without proficiency in that maneuver, claimed Plushenko (himself an Olympic champion in 2006), figure skating cannot progress as a sport.
While many in the (non-Russian) media dismissed Plushenko’s comments as sour grapes, he raised an interesting issue: Should the sport (or any profession) value the specialist above the generalist?
After the Salt Lake City Games eight years ago, figure skating changed its scoring system to eliminate (or at least reduce) national bias and corruption among the judges. Now, all elements of a competitor’s program are to be scored, minimizing the influence of spectacular jumps (which some argue are too damaging to young athletes’ bodies anyway).
In this environment, for Plushenko to claim that only the quadruple jump matters in skating would be like saying only home runs matter in baseball. On a baseball team, there may be many specialists: Without excellent pitching and precision fielding to counter the sluggers at the plate, baseball games would always have double-digit scores and last three days.
The difference is that, in skating (and in many professional activities), there is no team of specialists working toward a goal of general excellence. Rather, the individual must strive to perform at the highest possible level in a variety of specialties. Whether this ethos is sustainable for the future depends on how highly we value specialized excellence—or how effectively we build our teams.
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17-21 May or 6–10 September 2010, £4,750 (ex VAT) all inclusive, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
This programme helps you identify the crucial drivers of change shaping the wider context. With the future in mind, you will learn how to develop strategies, policies or programmes to prepare your organisation for tomorrow's turbulent and uncertain business climate.
DETAILS/CONTACT: mailto:caroline.williams@sbs.ox.ac.uk http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/execed/strategy/scenarios
A fresh new look and unique resources are featured on the Web site of this pioneering business-future consultancy, led by chairman Arnold Brown, president Edie Weiner, and vice president Erica Orange, all of whom have been frequent contributors to WFS publications and conferences.
In the “From Our Files” section, WEB offers five years’ worth of downloadable archived working papers drawn from research analyses for their clients.
Don’t miss their Futurist Glossary, showcasing ideas so unique that they require a new vocabulary for futurists and trend watchers: e.g., “accumulous cloud” (information accumulating in data-rich cloud computers) “betweenity” (time between life stages), and “dividual” (a person fitting in more than one demographic or lifestyle category).
STRATEGIC FORESIGHT SEMINAR: The University of Houston’s Strategic Foresight Seminar is an intensive, five-day, project based workshop, running May 17-21. Sponsored by the Futures Studies in Commerce program and conducted by Peter Bishop, the seminar offers a certificate in strategic foresight. Registration is now open, with seating limited to 25 participants. DETAILS and REGISTRATION
* WRITING IN AND ABOUT THE FUTURE: The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, will be hosting Creative Nonfiction’s all-day conference on Writing the Future on March 20. Panelists include New York Times interface specialist Nick Bilton, social publishing visionary Richard Nash, and Lee Gutkind, author of ALMOST HUMAN.
Editor’s note: Writers interested more in writing about the future may also want to check out the Futurist Writer’s Workshop at the WFS conference in Boston
* CALL FOR PAPERS: THE JOURNAL OF FUTURES STUDIES will be publishing a special issue February 2011 on “Path Breaking and Path Creation.” Editor Victor Tiberius is seeking papers of 5,000 to 7,000 words offering insights on path dependence theory and futures research. DETAILS and SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
* HIGH SCHOOL ESSAY CONTEST: The World Future Society is now accepting entries for its second annual essay contest for high school students. Essays should explore the impacts of trends on future career choices and what we can do to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. The winner will receive $300, a three-year membership in the Society, and complimentary registration at WorldFuture 2010 in Boston.
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FUTURIST UPDATE: News & Previews from the World Future Society is an e-mail newsletter published monthly as a supplement to THE FUTURIST magazine. Copyright © 2010, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA. Telephone 1-301-656-8274; e-mail mailto:info@wfs.org Web site http://www.wfs.org
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