9.14.10 Futurists Release Top Ten Forecasts for 2011 and Beyond

Bethesda, Maryland - The OUTLOOK 2011 report from THE FUTURIST magazine examines the key trends in technology, the environment, the economy, international relations, etc., in order to paint a full and credible portrait of our likely future. The magazine has released the top ten forecasts from Outlook 2011, plus more than 300 forecasts from previous reports, on the World Future Society’s Web site.
http://www.wfs.org/Forecasts_From_The_Futurist_Magazine
Among the ten most provocative forecasts from this year’s report:

1. Physicists could become tomorrow’s leading economic forecasters. Unlike mainstream economists, who rely on averages, econophysicists study complex systems, feedback loops, cascading effects, irrational decision making, and other destabilizing influences, which may help them to foresee economic upheavals.

2. Environmentalists may embrace genetically modified crops as a carbon-reduction technology. Like nuclear power, genetically modified crops have long been the bane of environmentalists, but Stewart Brand, author of Whole Earth Discipline, argues that there are myriad benefits to them as C02 sinks.

3. Search engines will soon include spoken results, not just text. Television broadcasts and other recordings could be compiled and converted using programs developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis.

4. Will there be garbage wars in the future? Trash producers in the developed world will ship much more of their debris to repositories in developing countries. This will inspire protests in the receiving lands. Beyond 2025 or so, the developing countries will close their repositories to foreign waste, forcing producers to develop more waste-to-energy and recycling technologies.

5. The notion of class time as separate from non-class time will vanish. The Net generation uses technologies both for socializing and for working and learning, so their approach to tasks is less about competing and more about working as teams. In this way, social networking is already facilitating collaborative forms of learning outside of classrooms and beyond formal class schedules.

6. The future is crowded with PhDs. The number of doctor-ate degrees awarded in the United States has risen for six straight years, reaching record 48,802 in 2008, according to the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates. One- third of these degrees (33.1 %) went to temporary visa holders, up from 23.3% in 1998.

7. Cities in developed countries could learn sustainability from so-called slums in the developing world. Dwellers of "slums," favelas, and ghettos have learned to use and reuse resources and commodities more efficiently than their wealthier counterparts. The neighborhoods are high-density and walkable, mixing commercial and residential areas rather than segregating these functions. In many of these informal cities, participants play a role in communal commercial endeavors such as growing food or raising livestock.

8. Cooperatively owned smart cars and roads will replace dumb, individual gas guzzlers. With 800 million cars on the planet to serve 7.8 billion people, personal transportation is a dominant force in our lives. But the emergence of car-sharing and bike-sharing schemes in urban areas in both the United States and Europe have established alternative models and markets for fractional or on-demand mobility, says MIT's Ryan C.C. Chin. He and his fellow engineers with the MIT Media Lab have designed a car system that could serve as a model for future cities.

9. Fighting the global threat of climate change could unite countries—or inflame rivalries. Nations with more sophisticated environmental monitoring systems could use data to their advantage, perhaps weakening an enemy by failing to warn it of an oncoming storm or other catastrophe. They could also fudge their own, or their rivals', carbon output numbers to manipulate International legislation says forecaster Roger Howard.

10. We may not be able to move mountains with our minds, but robots will await our mental commands. Brain-based control of conventional keyboards, allowing individuals to type without physically touching the keys, has been demonstrated at the universities of Wisconsin and Michigan. In the near future, brain e-mailing and tweeting will become far more common, say experts. A group of undergraduates at Northeastern University demonstrated in June that they could steer a robot via thought.

All of these forecasts plus dozens more were included in the report that scanned the best writing and research from THE FUTURIST magazine over the course of the previous year. The 2011 Outlook report was released as part of the November-December 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, available on October 1, 2010.

THE FUTURIST has also made public the contents from Outlook 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010—more than 300 forecasts in all—relating to the decades ahead.

The Society hopes this report, covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology, will assist its readers in preparing for the challenges and opportunities in the coming decade.
THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine published continuously since 1967 by the World Future Society and is a principal benefit of membership.

The magazine is also available in newsstands throughout the United States.
Among the many influential thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST are: Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Vaclav Havel, Hazel Henderson, Margaret Mead, Robert McNamara, B.F. Skinner, Nicholas Negroponte, David Walker, Lewis Lapham, Arthur C. Clarke, Kofi Anan, and Ray Kurzweil.

The focus of THE FUTURIST is innovation, creative thinking, and emerging trends in the social, economic, and technological areas. More information can be obtained at www.wfs.org.

Editors: For more information on Outlook 2011, THE FUTURIST magazine, or the World Future Society, feel free to contact World Future Society president Tim Mack, 301-656-8274 ext. 104, Tmack@wfs.org, or director of communications Patrick Tucker at 443-756-4205 or ptucker@wfs.org. More information about the World Future Society may also be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org.

CONTACT INFORMATION
Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
443-756-4205 (cell)
Ptucker@wfs.org