Futurist Update 2011 Issues

Futurist Update: News and Previews from the World Future Society is a free Monthly e-mail newsletter sent to all World Future Society members. Nonmembers are welcome to sign up too! We don’t share your email address with anyone and you can unsubscribe at any time. There is no better way to experience the world of tomorrow — today.

December 2011, No. 12, Vol. 12

In this issue:

Anticipating “Insider Threats“
Instant Information Helps Consumers Make Healthier Food Choices
Forecasting Asia’s Growing Pains
Microinsuring the Future for Ethiopian Farmers
Inventors Wanted
What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine (Members Only)

Anticipating “Insider Threats”

Can treason be predicted? A team of scientists from Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, and other institutions has launched a two-year, $9 million project to find out.

Principal investigator David A. Bader and his colleagues are looking to extrapolate meaningful patterns from very large (zetabyte) data sets--including the e-mails, text messages, file transfers--of individuals in operational environments. The team will use machine learning, anomaly detection algorithms, and other tools in hope of revealing the likelihood of a soldier or government employee turning into an “insider threat.“

“Our goal is to develop a system that will provide analysts for the first time a very short, ranked list of unexplained events that should be further investigated,” said Bader.

The project is being supported by the Defense Advanced Project's Research Agency (DARPA) and the Army Research Office.

Source: Georgia Tech

Instant Information Helps Consumers Make Healthier Food Choices

U.S. food and beverage manufacturers are required to put standardized ingredients labels on their products. But this information may not be complete for consumers with specific concerns about the contents, such as additives like preservatives and food coloring. Enter Fooducate, a year-old start up that seeks to guide shoppers through the minefield that is the typical American grocery.

Fooducate’s app allows the consumer to scan bar codes on the food packages to get detailed analysis of the contents, along with recommendations for alternatives based on what other shoppers have chosen instead.

“Users have submitted more than 250,000 products and updates to the Fooducate database, which is the most comprehensive and current nutrition data source in the U.S. today,” claims Fooducate.

Source: Fooducate.com.

Thank you to Tech Cocktail for the story tip!

Forecasting Asia’s Growing Pains

Asia’s growth will strain the resources of the entire globe by mid-century, according to Charles Morrison, president of the East-West Center. Morrison told business leaders at an Asia-Pacific Business Symposium that, by 2050, Asia will own more than half the world’s automobiles and more than half of global GDP.

With all the development come vulnerabilities. Asia’s most rapidly growing cities will be more susceptible to natural and human-made disasters, Morrison warned. Also, large human and animal populations living close together raises the risks of new disease pandemics.

It may take up to four days for an ejection of charged particles and magnetic streams to produce magnetic storms on Earth, so more-accurate forecasts of the timing of these impacts could, for example, give airline operators the opportunity to reroute traffic and power companies time to work around potential outages or other problems.

Meanwhile, by 2050, 40% of Japan’s population will be over 60 years old, and less than 9% will be younger than 15, creating a future demographic disaster as fewer young people will be able to support their elders. And environmentally, water scarcities already afflict parts of Asia due to increased farm and livestock production.

“There are uncertainties about how to handle the enormous challenges Asian countries face,” said Morrison, who called for more dialogue among the region’s nations.

Source: The East West Center

Microinsuring the Future for Ethiopian Farmers

A relatively new area of aid similar to microlending schemes focuses on helping the world’s poor protect themselves against natural disasters.

One such microinsurance program, called HARITA (Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation), allows farmers in Ethiopia to protect their crops against losses due to changes in the weather. The program tracks weather indexes and issues payouts automatically, relieving the farmers of bureaucratic burdens.

Following a drought in 2011, HARITA issued payments of more than $17,000 to 1,800 farmers in seven Ethiopian villages, according to program partners Oxfam America and Earth Institute at Columbia University.

HARITA is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Swiss Re. Since it was launched in 2009, the program has grown to cover 13,000 households in 400 villages.

Source: Earth Institute, Columbia University

For more on microinsurance, see Microinsurance for Megadisasters, World Trends & Forecasts, THE FUTURIST, May-June 2007.

Inventors Wanted

Do you have an invention or startup that will change the world? The World Future Society has issued a call for inventions and innovations from breakthrough startups, who will compete in the second annual Futurists:BetaLaunch expo in Toronto next July.

Futurists:BetaLaunch (F:BL) serves as a technology expo where engineers, designers, and others can present their inventions to the 1,000 futurists expected to gather for the Society’s annual conference. Also in attendance will be venture capitalists such as Moon Express founder Naveen Jain and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

All inventors selected to present their inventions at F:BL will receive a complimentary registration to the WorldFuture 2012 conference ($750 value). The deadline for entry is March 15, 2012.

What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine?

A selection of articles, special reports, and other future-focused material on our Web site that you might have missed. Members may sign in to read and comment. Not a member? Join now at http://www.wfs.org/renew.

Outlook 2012

Environmental threats and energy source opportunities; in vivo organ and tissue printing and buildings that self-adapt to weather fluctuations. These forecasts and more appear in THE FUTURIST’s annual roundup of thought-provoking ideas. Read more.

Purchase a PDF download. Members: Login for free access.

Check out Cynthia G. Wagner's video of the editors’ selection of the Top 10 Forecasts.

Fighting AIDS through Genome Editing

A new treatment might genetically adapt us to resist HIV. Read more.

Virtual Games Bring Currency to Real Life

Young entrepreneur Brian Wong sees mobile games invading real life. Read more.

November 2011, Vol. 12, No. 11

In this issue:

DARPA to Put 3-D Printers in Schools
Building Nano Communication Networks Like Bacteria
Models Predict Impacts of Solar Explosions
Cyberwarfare and Other Threats
WFS President Timothy Mack Addresses French Embassy
What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine (Members Only)
What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine (Public)

DARPA to Put 3-D Printers in Schools

The U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) plans to put 1,000 3-D printers (rapid fabrication devices) into high schools across the United States as a way to encourage American young people to go into engineering and particularly manufacturing.

The project is one of many investments that the agency will make over the next five years to help high schoolers build STEM skills. These investments are critical to grow an educated twenty-first century workforce, says DARPA director Regina Dugan. The hollowing of America’s manufacturing base has direct effects on national security, Dugan told participants at National Academy of Engineering event in Washington, D.C., in October.

“Norm Augustine, former president of Lockheed Martin, projected that if current trends in the manufacturing of defense aircraft continue, by the year 2054, the entire department of defense budget would be necessary to purchase one airplane. Obviously, that trend is not sustainable,” she said. “The question is not whether manufacturing is essential to our national security, diplomatic, and economic health as a nation… Rather, the question is how best to revitalize our manufacturing base.”

Source: DARPA. Watch the NAE event here.

Learning from Bacteria to Build Nano Communication Networks

A Georgia Tech team has received a $3 million grant to explore how bacteria interact on a molecular level to form networks. The research may one day guide the design of nanodevices able to communicate with one another and accomplish tasks at the nanolevel of one billionth of a meter in size, which could lead to future breakthroughs in nanorobotics.

“The nanoscale machines could potentially be injected into the blood, circulating in the body to detect viruses, bacteria, and tumors,” says researcher Ian Akyildiz. “All these illnesses — cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, asthma, whatever you can think of — they will be history over the years. And that’s just one application.”

Source: Georgia Tech

Models Predict Impacts of Solar Explosions

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is developing models to improve their predictions of space weather activity and its impacts.

Specifically, they are looking for ways to minimize the effects of big blasts of plasma that the Sun may eject, interrupting vital electrical power grids radio and satellite communications systems, such as Global Positioning Systems.

“This advanced model has strengthened forecasters’ understanding of what happens in the 93 million miles between Earth and the Sun following a solar disturbance, says Tom Bogdan, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. “It will help power grid and communications technology managers know what to expect so they can protect infrastructure and the public.”

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Military Planners Meet to Discuss Cyberwarfare and Other Threats of 2028

Military personal, academics, and diplomats met in Virginia October 25-28 for Unified Quest, a seminar war game to explore the geostrategic environment of the future.

“The purpose of this symposium is about plausible strategic landscapes,” said Col. Kevin Felix, director of the Army’s Future Warfare Division. “The four working groups were given wide latitude to work towards 2028, and it was about bringing in the right folks.”

The threat of future cyberwarfare attacks emerged as a particular concern. “We may be facing more asymmetric threats, in the cyber environment in particular,” Felix said.

FUTURIST magazine deputy editor and WFS communications director Patrick Tucker gave the opening keynote to the symposium. He emphasized the shifts in the geostrategic landscape that the United States was facing as a result of changing population dynamics, resource exhaustion, and the empowerment of individuals due to how the rapid spread and advancement of information technology. The latter phenomenon has both positives and negatives from a defense standpoint, said Tucker. (Tucker is also the editor of this newsletter.)

Source: United States Army

WFS President Timothy Mack Addresses French Embassy

World Future Society President Timothy Mack addressed the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., on November 1, describing the importance for leaders to think strategically about the future.

“The foresight analyst cannot simply be an advisor who comes, looks, speaks, and leaves. It is my belief that foresight analysts (or futurists) have a responsibility to determine not only the best paths to the future but the most viable ones, and then to stay the course and see change for the better through to completion,” Mack said in his address.

Mack served as moderator for the event, which included Michel Godet and Philippe Durance, co-authors of Strategic Foresight for Corporate and Regional Development, and consulting futurist Joseph F. Coates, who offered “A Comparative View of La Prospective and Traditional Techniques Used in the U.S., Great Britain, and Much of Europe.”

Among the attendees were WFS founder Edward Cornish; Institute for Alternative Futures chairman Clem Bezold; FUTURIST magazine contributing editor David Pearce Snyder; biostatistician Jay Herson; Donna Heivilin of the International Alliance for Women; and Jay Gary of Regent University.

What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine?

Outlook 2012

Updating the Global Scorecard: The 2011 State of the Future

By Jerome C. Glenn

The world could be better off in ten years than it is today, but only if decision makers can work together to meet global challenges, according to The Millennium Project. Read more.

Investigating the Future: Lessons from the “Scene of the Crime”

By Charles Brass

Futurists investigate clues and evidence to attempt to answer difficult questions, much like crime-scene investigators. But while CSIs try to determine things that have already happened, futurists look to what may yet happen, and what we can do now to influence it. Read more.

What’s in THE FUTURIST (public)

Lost and Found in Japan

By Patrick Tucker

While the world turned its attention to the frightening prospects of a nuclear catastrophe in post-tsunami Japan, another crisis was being dealt with, quietly, humbly, and with pragmatic determination. Read more.

THE FUTURIST Interviews Jim Motavalli, author of High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry

Electric vehicles have existed as a concept since the 1890s, but now the technology is finally here to make them a standard consumer vehicle of choice, according to Jim Motavalli, environmental writer, in his new book, High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry (Rodale, 2011). He sees a huge market growth ahead for electric vehicles, and for hybrid vehicles, as well. Read more.

Tomorrow in Brief

Metal Theft on the Rise?
Virtual Lab Rats
Solar Ivy for Walls
Robotic Caregivers
Aquariums as Farms

October 2011, Vol. 12. No. 10

In this issue:

Tone of News Predicts Broad Social Behaviors
Building Stronger Skyscrapers, Faster
THE FUTURIST Presents an Evening with Aubrey de Grey
Progress in Improving Global Literacy Is Steady, but Slow
Votizen Wins Disruptathon Social Media Competition
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG

Tone of News Predicts Broad Social Behaviors

Properly analyzed, the tone of news articles can predict large areas of the future, according to Kalev Leetaru, a researcher at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

First, you need a lot of news items; Leetaru’s sample sets ran into the millions. Then you need the right parameters; Leetarau began with 1,500 dimensions of human emotions. Finally, you need a supercomputer capable of petascale processing (more than one quadrillion operations per second).

Using a large, shared-memory supercomputer called Nautilus and a 30-year archive of global news, Leetaru was able to pinpoint the location of Osama Bin Laden within a 200-kilometer radius of Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the terrorist leader was eventually found. His model also retroactively predicted the social uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.

"News is increasingly being produced and consumed online, supplanting print and broadcast to represent nearly half of the news monitored across the world today by Western intelligence agencies.… Computational analysis can yield novel insights to the functioning of society, including predicting future economic events," Leetaru writes in his paper Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global Media Tone in Time and Space published in the September 5 edition of the journal First Monday.

Source: “Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global Media Tone in Time and Space”

Special thanks to Alireza Hejazi for this tip!

Building Stronger Skyscrapers, Faster

Building a skyscraper around a core wall, or vertical spine, could speed up the construction process as well as enhance the structural resistance to earthquakes and high winds.

Purdue University civil engineering professors Mark Bowman and Michael Kreger are spearheading a project to develop this speedier construction technique.

Traditional core walls are made from reinforced concrete and are produced one floor at a time. The new technique sandwiches concrete between steel plates; the hollow structure is strong enough to allow the surrounding construction to proceed on several floors at once.

On a 40- to 50-story building, the core wall system could save three to four months of construction time — and, hence, offer significant dollar savings, according to Bowman.

“The idea has been used in England, but not for high-rise buildings and not in seismic locations,“ says Bowman. “We are talking about extending it to high rises and in zones where you get significant lateral forces from earthquakes or high winds. So it’s got to be suitable for Chicago or cities on the West Coast.”

Source: Purdue University.

THE FUTURIST Presents: The Immortal Life? An Evening with Aubrey de Grey

On October 12, Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK, will discuss prospects for extending the human life span indefinitely at the Community College of Baltimore, an event sponsored by THE FUTURIST magazine. http://www.wfs.org/content/wfs-fall-events.

De Grey is the chief science officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. He is also editor-in-chief of Rejuvenation Research, a peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging. He received his BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000, respectively. He’s also author of the bestselling book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.

Dr. de Grey will explain: (1) why therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining life span of the typical 60-year-old may well arrive within the next few decades, and (2) why those who benefit from such therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and will thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age.

This event will take place on October 12 at 7 p.m. at the J-137 Lecture Hall, Essex Campus, Community College of Baltimore, 7201 Rossville Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21237-3899. Register here.

Progress in Improving Global Literacy Is Steady… but Slow

Today, 793 million adults around the world — about 64% of whom are women — lack basic reading and writing skills, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Using the most recent data available (2009), the Institute reports that more than half of the world’s illiterate population resides in South and West Asia, while sub-Saharan Africa represents 21.4% of the human population who cannot read.

“However, rates can vary widely across countries in a region. In Mali, for example, merely 26% of the population is literate in contrast to Equatorial Guinea where 93% of the population can read and write,” according to the Institute.

The researchers state that literacy rates have risen 2.3% in the past 10 years, and 10.6% in the past 20 years.

Sources: UNESCO, Download the PDF

Votizen Wins Disruptathon Social Media Competition

Pete Ericson’s most recent Disruptathon Social Media Innovation Forum wrapped up in Washington, D.C., on September 27, bringing together technology watchers, venture capitalists, and start-up founders from around the Mid-Atlantic. Disruptathon bills itself as an open innovation contest, “a wholly interactive, highly competitive showcase for the most disruptive future thinkers across all industries.”

Various start-ups get two minutes to pitch their ideas to a crowd of peers. The D.C. event’s winner in every category was Votizen a social network that “allows its members, Votizens, to claim their voter profile, learn about issues and elections, and take collective action with other committed voters through social media. Backed by the original investors in Facebook and Twitter, Votizen is an independent company and is not affiliated with any political party, candidate or special interest group.”

Other participating start-ups of note to futurists included:

Full Circle: a Bethesda, Maryland, start-up that “allows you to identify and communicate with other members nearby and search or filter members by profile details, keywords, interests or likes.”
And Trendspottr, a Web service that identifies real-time trends and trending information from Twitter and Facebook for any search query.

Disruptathon will partner again with THE FUTURIST magazine for Futurists:BetaLaunch, to be held in Toronto as part of WorldFuture 2012.

Source: Disruptathon

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Member’s Only)

Turbulence-Proofing Your Scenarios

By Rick Docksai

Investing in an effective scenario-planning exercise and using the experience wisely can have a big payoff for organizations. Read more

The Uncertain Future of the English Language

By Edward Cornish

Parlez vous “Globish”? If English is your only language, you’re probably doing okay now. But you might not be prepared for the future, suggest the authors of Globish and The Last Lingua Franca Read more

September 2011, Vol. 12 No. 9

The Importance of Chance in Wealth Concentration
Climate Engineering Technology Assessment
Succession Planning for Companies
Prescription Drug Abuse Is on the Rise
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Chance Favors the Concentration of Wealth in Fewer Hands

Wealth accumulation might be due to a number of factors: hard work, intelligence, lack of ethics, or all of the above. Wealth concentration, on the other hand, is determined primarily by chance and the effect of compounding returns, according to a study published in the journal PLoS One.

The distribution of wealth is far more uneven than popular economic models would suggest, report researchers Joseph E. Fargione, Clarence Lehman, and Stephen Polasky. Given a situation where "all individuals have equal talent and begin with the same amount of capital," an increasingly smaller number of investors accumulated an ever larger share of wealth at the expense of the other investors.

The researchers also found that larger concentrations of wealth decrease diversity within the economy, which decreases the amount of additional wealth that economy is able to create.

A separate report from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies found that, of the 100 highest paid American CEOs of 2010, 22 made more in compensation and benefits than their companies paid in taxes.

Sources: “Entrepreneurs, Chance, and the Deterministic Concentration of Wealth” by Joseph E. Fargione, Clarence Lehman, and Stephen Polasky, >PLoS One, PubMed Central.

“Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards forTax Dodging” by Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati, Institute for Policy Studies.

Assessing Climate Engineering Technologies

A majority of climate scientists in the United States support a federal program to explore methods for engineering the Earth's climate (otherwise known as geoengineering). These technologies aim to protect against the worst effects of manmade climate change, according to a new technology assessment from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

“Climate engineering technologies are not now an option for addressing global climate change, given our assessment of their maturity, potential effectiveness, cost factors, and potential consequences,” the report concluded. The majority of the experts who participated in the assessment agreed that, if geoengineering is going to be effective in the next two decades, research should begin now, because so little is known about how to change the Earth’s climate, much less how to do so with minimal risk.Among the futurists contributing to the assessment were Jamais Cascio and World Future Society board member Kenneth Hunter.

Sources: “Climate Engineering: Technical Status, Future Directions, and Potential Responses” (GAO-11-71, July 28, 2011)

WFS Fall Events You Won't Want to Miss

The World Future Society and THE FUTURIST magazine are pleased to announce several upcoming noteworthy events for future-interested folks in the Mid-Atlantic region. Visit the WFS Fall Events page to register and learn more and register. http://www.wfs.org/content/wfs-fall-events.

2011 State of the Future The 15th Anniversary Edition Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The world is in a race between implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems. So, how are we doing in this race? What’s the score so far? What are some strategies to improve our prospects? Jerome C. Glenn, author of the State of the Future series will address these and other topics. Register

How to Put Your Brain on the Internet (and Would You Want to?) A Presentation by Michael Chorost, author, World Wide Mind, World Future Society-Washington, D.C. Chapter, Thursday, September 15, 2011

Author Michael Chorost will show emerging technologies that allow brain activity to be read and altered in unprecedented detail. He’ll outline what a future "World Wide Mind" could look like and ask: Would people want to be part of it? Register

THE FUTURIST Magazine Presents: The Immortal Life? An Evening With Aubrey de Grey, Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Succession Planning Increases—and Decreases—among U.S. Companies

The number of U.S. organizations with formal succession plans has declined over the past five years, according to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). These processes aim to ensure that top employees have the necessary preparation to advance into key positions.

Only 23% of companies were likely to have a formal succession plan in 2011, compared with 29% in 2006, reports SHRM. On the other hand, informal succession planning rose from 29% of organizations in 2006 to 38% in 2011. The study notes that, if the staff size of the organization is too small, then those in charge may not see the need to formalize such a plan, although there may be an informal plan in place.

Whether formal or informal, such long-term planning benefits many organizations. Identifying and developing employees to take on more leadership can help make transitions such as expansion, restructuring, and the retirement of top-level executives more efficient. Experts believe that internal recruitment and development plans should be regularly updated rather than remain fixed or stagnant.

“The number one reason organizations are not developing formal succession planning is because more immediate projects are taking precedence—not surprising given that organizations are focusing their energies on dealing with an uncertain economic outlook,” says Evren Esen, manager of the Survey Research Center at SHRM. “Still, succession planning has significant strategic implications for organizations and should not be Still, succession planning has significant strategic implications for organizations and should not be put on the back burner, especially during times of economic volatility.”

Esen believes that planning would likely increase if human resource departments were more involved. According to the report, human resources departments are in charge of succession plans approximately 40% of the time.

Source: Society for Human Resource Management

Prescription Drug Abuse Is on the Rise in the United States

According to a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the percentage of opiate-related admissions at substance abuse treatment centers that fell were related to painkillers (as opposed to other opiates like heroin) increased from 8% in 1999 to 33% in 2009. Heroin use mostly accounted for the other opiate-related admissions. The number of prescription painkiller users totaled around 7% of total admissions.

Close to 2 million individuals over 12 were treated for substance abuse in the U.S. during 2009. Alcohol abuse accounted for the majority (42%), but opiates finished second, at 21%. Marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines rounded out the top five, which together account for more than 95% of all admissions.

The report further points out that close to half of those admitted for alcoholism also abused other substances. One positive trend seems to have emerged, however: The report notes that treatment admissions for cocaine use dropped during this period (from 14% to 9%).

Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

The Futurist Interviews Matthias Mordi, Empowering Africans Through the Internet

Internet connectivity is spreading across Africa, and it is giving rise to new waves of civic activism, according to the nonprofit Accender Africa. Nigeria alone saw the numbers of Internet connections triple between 2000 and 2008—to 24 million, up from 8 million—according to the organization.

Five Principles of Futuring as Applied History

By Stephen M. Millett

A historian and futurist offers a theoretical framework for developing more credible and useful forecasts. The goal is to help individuals and organizations improve long-term foresight and decision making.

News and Events for the Futurist Community

Winners of The 2011 Possible Futures Film Contest Announced
Upcoming WFS Chapter Meetings: Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, Nevada
Soon to be Published: The Great Growing Up by John Renesch
Free Business Foresight E-Publication from Alireza Hejazi
Upcoming WFS Chapter Meeting in Vancouver, B.C.

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

The Troubling Future of Internet Search

Data customization is giving rise to a private information universe at the expense of a free and fair flow of information, says the former executive director of Moveon.org.

Finding Connection And Meaning in Africa

A doctor discovers meaningfulness in a simpler, survival-oriented culture.

The Sounds of Wellness

Music may have charms to suppress the savage gene.

Fast Fashion: Tale of Two Markets

Should retailers put the brakes on quick-response manufacturing?

The Gamification of Education

Why online social games may be poised to replace textbooks in schools.

Biomimicry to Fight Blindness

Doctors design neuron-compatible implants to restore lost eyesight.

August 2011, Vol. 12, No. 8

In this issue:

Gene Mutations and Flu, New Breakthroughs in Prediction and Detection
Harvesting Wasted “Junk” Energy
Tracing the Tsunami’s Glow
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

News and Events from the Futurist Community
The Futurist Interviews Longevity Expert Sonia Arrison
Hands-Free Headset Computer Declared “Best in Show” at Futurist Conference
Escaping the Filter Bubble

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

The Coming Robot Evolution Race
Exploring New Energy Alternatives
The Accelerating Techno-Human Future

Gene Mutations and Flu: New Breakthroughs in Prediction and Detection

Researchers have discovered a method to predict how a particular gene will spread through a population, providing insight into how animals evolved and will continue to evolve in the future. The method could show which mutations are beneficial to the organism and which are not, under various types of migration. The findings, published in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, could also help doctors understand how viruses spread among people.

“Suppose we are speaking of the spread of epidemics. A virus can jump from one individual to another during a single encounter. The migration pattern in this case is then the network of people meeting each other.… An epidemiologist could use our formulas to compute the best way to limit encounters between individuals and therefore slow the spread of epidemics,” says Professor Bharum Houchmandzadeh, lead author on the study.

On a related note, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic and Syft Technologies have developed an easy breath test that can detect the presence of H1N1, specifically peak levels of nitric oxide (NO), roughly three days after exposure to the H1N1 vaccine. Increased nitric oxide levels are a typical biological reaction to influenza.

The breakthrough could help health workers avoid unnecessary vaccinations and thus better manage vaccination stockpiles in the event of an outbreak.(It could also ruin the upcoming movie Contagion.)

Sources: Download the paper on predicting mutation survival here: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/13/7/073020

Syft Technologies: http://www.syft.com/images/Documents/MediaReleases/h1n1_vacine_medrel.pdf

Harvesting Wasted “Junk” Energy

From the vibrations filling the air when jets take off to the waves generated by radio and television transmitters, our environment is full of largely wasted energy. Now, researchers are seeking ways to capture that energy and turn it into useful sources of electricity.

At Georgia Tech, a rectifying antenna used to convert ambient microwave energy to DC power was developed by a team led by electrical and computer engineering professor Manos Tentzeris. The gathered power could be used for wireless sensors, RFID tags, and other monitoring tasks.

“There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it,” says Tentzeris. “We are using an ultra-wideband antenna that lets us exploit a variety of signals in different frequency ranges, giving us greatly increased power-gathering capability.”

Researchers are also targeting the “junk” energy from road and airport runway vibrations. At the University of Buffalo, physicist Surajit Sen and his colleagues have taken a mathematical approach to studying energy exchange between particles. They discovered that altering the surface area of adjacent particles can change the way energy moves, thus making it possible to control the energy channeled.

“We could have chips that take energy from road vibrations, runway noise from airports—energy that we are not able to make use of very well—and convert it into pulses, packets of electrical energy, that become useful power,” says Sen. “You give me noise, I give you organized bundles.”

Sources: Georgia Tech http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/device-captures-ambient-energy/

University of Buffalo http://www.buffalo.edu/news/12733

Tracing the Tsunami’s Glow

The March 11 tsunami that hit off the coast of Japan has given one researcher a unique glimpse into how these massive waves form and move—information that could save lives the next time a tsunami strikes.

Researcher Jonathan Makela of the University of Illinois and his fellow authors discovered that tsunamis have particular visual signatures which, when viewed from a high enough altitude using special lenses, gives the tsunami a type of low-red glow. This enabled them to essentially forecast when and how the waves from the March 11 tsunami would hit the island of Hawaii. The finding could help emergency workers in locations that were vulnerable to tsunamis better prepare for destructive waves.

“What we show in the paper, in addition to the first optical images of this signature, is the advantage of using a camera system with a wide field of view as compared to other observing methods that have been used in the past—namely, GPS receivers. The network of GPS receivers are not terribly dense on Hawaii and so one cannot get a sense of what the wave structure looks like. From the single imaging system, we can observe a 10⁶ km² area of the upper atmosphere and see the waves encroach on Hawaii from the northwest. This is the ‘forecasting’ capability (vs. ‘prediction’) that this technique would present. … Essentially, we observed the waves in the atmosphere an hour ahead of when the [March 11] tsunami reached [Hawaii]. An imaging system on a GEO satellite would enable observations over the open ocean,” according to Makela.

Source: “Imaging and modeling the ionospheric airglow response over Hawaii to the tsunami generated by the Tohoku earthquake of 11 March 2011,” in Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, L00g02, 5 Pp., 2011. http://europa.agu.org/?view=article&uri=/journals/gl/gl1113/2011GL047860/2011GL047860.xml&t=2011,makela

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

News and Events from the Futurist Community

Edited by Aaron M. Cohen

Upcoming Event: Robots Invade Washington, D.C.
Upcoming Event: DaVinci Inventor Showcase
Hudson Institute Book Forum on the History of the Future
WorldFuture 2011 Wraps Up
New Series of Multimedia Reports Showcases Potential Engineering Breakthroughs
Singularity University and Expo 2015 Announce Partnership

The Futurist Interviews Longevity Expert Sonia Arrison

In her book 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith (Basic Books, 2011), Sonia Arrison tracks the advancements of “life-extension” medical techniques, which undo the damage that our bodies incur over time. She spoke to FUTURIST assistant editor Rick Docksai. Read more

Hands-Free Headset Computer Declared “Best in Show” at Futurist Conference

Futurists got up close and personal with ten novel ideas and inventions at Futurists:BetaLaunch (F:BL), the World Future Society’s first idea and solution expo and competition. F:BL was moderated by event partner Disruptathon and held in Vancouver July 8-10 during WorldFuture 2011: Moving from Vision to Action, the Society’s annual conference.

Disruptathon has announced that the Golden-i headset computer, a collaboration between technology firm Kopin and phone maker Motorola, was voted “Best in Show” and “most buyable” of the inventions showcased at F:BL. Golden-i was also voted the entry that most “makes me feel like I’m in the future, now!” by WorldFuture 2011 attendees. Read more

Escaping the Filter Bubble

By Eli Pariser

The board president of MoveOn.org warns that more-personalized Internet searching may have hidden side effects. Read more

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

The Coming Robot Evolution Race

By Steven M. Shaker

Homo sapiens may have “won” the evolutionary race to perfect humankind, but artificial intelligence and robotics will evolve faster and farther. Rather than compete with them, we may do well to make them our allies and co-evolve, suggests a technology trend analyst. Read more

Exploring New Energy Alternatives

By David J. LePoire

What is most likely to satisfy our energy needs in the future—wind farms and photovoltaic arrays, or something yet to be invented? Options for the world’s energy future may include surprises, thanks to innovative research under way around the world. Read more

The Accelerating Techno-Human Future

By Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz

Technology and humanity are co-evolving in ways that past generations had never imagined possible, according to the authors of The Techno-Human Condition. This is not necessarily a good thing, they warn. With unprecedented levels of innovation come new societal tensions and cultural clashes. People everywhere are challenged to adapt to accelerating change. Read more

July 2011, Vol. 12, No. 7

In this issue:

Artificial Meat Cuts Beef Carbon Footprint Up to 96%
How to Hacker-Proof Your Cybernetic Implants
The Arctic's Monitor in Space
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Artificial Meat Cuts Beef Carbon Footprint Up to 96%

Techniques for producing meat without harming animals have been shown to produce fewer greenhouse gases than conventional livestock farming.

A new study from University of Oxford PhD candidate Hanna Tuomisto and her colleagues has shown that artificial or "cured" beef resulted in 78%–96% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and required 82%–96% less water.

Consumption of livestock and particularly beef has been on the rise in recent decades. The United Nations expects demand for livestock-based food to double between 2000 and 2050 as the developing world and countries like China increase meat consumption. In many respects, beef is an unparalleled source of protein, but livestock production currently accounts for 18% of GHGs worldwide, a larger portion than the transportation sector.

"The results show that cultured meat production emits substantially less GHG emissions and requires only a fraction of land and water compared to conventionally produced meat in Europe. Energy requirements of cultured meat production are lower compared to beef, sheep, and pork, but higher compared to poultry," the authors of the study write.

They deduce that an additional $160 million in research and development is needed before a commercialized product can be brought to market. The researchers' findings were published in the Environmental Journal of Science and Technology.

Source: Purchase the paper "Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production" here. Further Reading: FUTURIST deputy editor Patrick Tucker and author Robert Frietas discuss the future of food, including artificial meat, with Wired magazine writer Eliot Van Buskirk: read more.

How to Hacker-Proof Your Cybernetic Implants

In 2009, Carol Kasyjanski made history becoming the first American to receive a pacemaker that wirelessly broadcast her private cardiovascular data to her doctor. This allowed her doctor to remotely monitor her health.

In the following years, wireless communication has become an increasingly common aspect of implantable medical devices (IMDs). That new capability can be great for patients, allowing their doctors to more effectively "check up" on them and without a drive to the hospital.

The downside is that these devices are left open to hacking, which could make sensitive patient data vulnerable to theft or even put lives at risk. IT-enabled pacemakers, in particular, can be programmed to deliver a voltage surge directly to the heart.

A team of researchers from MIT have developed a "shield" for IMDs. A thin metal strip is implanted over the medical device, within the patient, to block unauthorized commands.

"The shield uses a novel radio design that can act as a jammer-cum-receiver. This design allows it to jam the IMD's messages, preventing others from decoding them.

Source: MIT. "They Can Hear Your Heartbeats: Non-Invasive Security for Implantable Medical Devices" by Shyamnath Gollakota et al.

The Arctic's Monitor in Space

The extent of sea ice in the Arctic this spring was the third lowest recorded by satellites, according to the European Space Agency, whose new CryoSat mission has just released its first map of sea-ice thickness.

CryoSat's sophisticated imaging technologies enable researchers to measure the height of ice above the water line and to calculate its thickness. The objective of measuring changes at the points where ice meets the ocean is to monitor the effects of climate change.

The satellite's highly detailed data enable scientists also to see the effects of wind stress on the ice sheet. And CryoSat's wide range of view even includes parts of Antarctica, allowing nearly pole-to-pole coverage.

Source: European Space Agency [Editor's note: Arctic specialist Lawson Brigham will be discussing the implications of such issues in his Saturday keynote luncheon on "The New Maritime Arctic" during WorldFuture 2011 in Vancouver. Details here.

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG

WorldFuture 2011 Speaker Forums

The Futurist Interviews Librarian Futurist David Lankes

As more information moves online, traditional libraries are losing relevance, but librarians are becoming more important than ever. This is according to R. David Lankes, author of The Atlas of New Librarianship (MIT Press, 2011). Rick Docksai, assistant editor for THE FUTURIST, spoke with Lankes about his book and his views on libraries' future. Read more

My First Meltdown

By Patrick Tucker

THE FUTURIST — July-August, 2011

Japan's nuclear disaster carries a number of important lessons, such as how and when to deploy a worst-case scenario. While working in Kyoto, THE FUTURIST's senior editor observed Japan's nightmare and the costs of poor communication during a crisis.Read More.

News and Events for the Futurist Community

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Our Naked Data

By William Saito

THE FUTURIST — July-August, 2011

The ease of communicating on modern networks has meant a rise in data vulnerability. A security specialist outlines the steps that the IT industry should take to protect consumers from data attacks—and itself from reactionary regulators.Read more.

Eroding Futures: Why Healthy Soil Matters to Civilization

By Lester R. Brown

THE FUTURIST — July-August, 2011

The earth beneath our feet is the Earth’s infrastructure for the resources that sustain our civilizations—and our futures. A leading agricultural policy expert shows what we must do to save the soil. Read more.

June 2011, Vol. 12, No. 6

In this issue:

Researchers Warn of Greenhouse Oceans
DARPA Launches 100-Year Starship Study
New Model Predicts Pace of Design Innovation
The Virtual Economy Valued at $3 Billion
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

Escaping the Filter Bubble
Future Prospects for the Smart Era
News and Events for the Futurist Community

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

WorldFuture 2011 Conference Forums
World Trends & Forecasts from the May-June issue of THE FUTURIST

Researchers Warn of Greenhouse Oceans

The world’s oceans may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. As more dead zones (patches of ocean severely deprived of oxygen) are being discovered, scientists exploring prehistoric mass marine extinctions now believe another round of extinctions is likely.

“What’s alarming to us as scientists is that there were only very slight natural changes [in the Late Cretaceous period] that resulted in the onset of hypoxia in the deep ocean,” says Martin Kennedy of the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. This suggests a vulnerability to the more-rapid increase of CO₂ that is predicted over the next 50 years. It’s like “hitting our ecosystem with a sledgehammer,” he says.

Nature may have its own cure for “greenhouse oceans,” however. Kennedy and fellow researcher Thomas Wagner of Newcastle University observe that certain minerals in soils help in collecting and burying organic matter dissolved in seawater. And burying the excess carbon helps to restore marine oxygen concentrations and to cool the planet-oceans and all.

Source: University of Adelaide http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news45241.html

“Clay mineral continental amplifier for marine carbon sequestration in a greenhouse ocean” by Martin Kennedy and Thomas Wagner (posted May 16, 2011) is available from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/12/1018670108.full.pdf+html?sid=31daf44c-6579-4b6a-b08d-7606a300a4ca

DARPA Requests Information for 100 Year Starship Study

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is requesting ideas and information to help get the recently launched 100 Year Starship Study a little further off the ground. Specifically, DARPA is interested in business model proposals for sustaining private investment in long-distance interstellar travel over the next hundred years or longer. (The project will be free of government funding and oversight.)

The 100 Year Starship Study, a collaborative effort between DARPA and NASA, is an initiative to develop what the organizations are calling “the next era of space exploration” — an endeavor that is projected to extend over the next few generations.

Sources: 100 Year Starship Study, 100yearstarshipstudy.com. DARPA, http://www.darpa.mil.

New Model Predicts Pace of Design Innovation

A new mathematical model for predicting how quickly given technologies will improve could enable policy makers and venture capitalists to pick tech winners from losers a lot more easily. The model measures a design’s cost and complexity to forecast how easily it might be upgraded, or innovated compared with other designs.

“It gives you a way to think about how the structure of the technology affects the rate of improvement,” says Jessika Trancik, assistant professor of engineering systems at MIT, one of the authors of a recent paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found that, the more complex a technology, the more time, effort, and money will go into improving it and the slower it will get better.

How might the model be used? Pretend for a moment that you’re a venture capitalist and you have to pick between two companies that make solar cells. Each company is marketing its own patented design; one converts more of the sun’s energy into electricity, but the other is easier to build. The model can tell you which of one of the two to invest in on the basis of whether the benefits of one (efficiency) are justified by the costs (complexity). The price of material and other factors may also be entered in to refine the calculation and provide a better prediction.

The researchers hope the model will also help designers improve their products and manufacturing processes.

Sources: MIT http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/accelerated-discovery-0517.html.
Read the paper, courtesy of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/12/1017298108.full.pdf+html

The Virtual Economy Valued at $3 Billion

The Virtual Economy — roughly defined as exchanges of virtual goods, links, and digital labor such as tweeting — is valued at $3 billion, according to an April report commissioned by the World Bank. The report also lays out future growth areas and growing service sectors for the Virtual Economy. Among them:

Third-party online gaming services. An example would be outsourcing to other players the boring parts of a video game to earn more points, a practice also known as “gold farming.”
Microwork, defined as work in micro-sized units, like image tagging or brief transcription. Microwork works “similarly to how Taylorism and scientific management transformed manufacturing work in the late 19th century. The resulting microtasks and tools can then be optimized for maximum productivity, as well as distributed to new and innovative labor sources, crowdsourcing platforms being one,” say the report’s authors.
“Cherry blossoming” refers to small marketing-related digital tasks, such as “liking” a brand’s Facebook page against a small pay.

“Entrepreneurs should focus on digital micro-work that benefits society. Examples include transcribing books, translating documents, and improving search-engine results,” said Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology and the study’s main author.

Sources: World Bank http://www.infodev.org/en/Document.1056.pdf, Vili Lehdonvirta (personal site) http://virtual-economy.org/blog/world_bank_virtual_economy_rep.

Advertisement

There’s still time register for WorldFuture 2011. Among the speakers you won’t want to miss are Lance Secretan — award-winning columnist, Fortune 100 CEO, and author of such books as Inspire! What Great Leaders Do — plus longevity expert Aubrey de Grey, GAO senior analyst Nancy Donovon, technology futurist Ramez Naam, (author of More Than Human), and MAKE magazine editor Dale Dougherty

Save $50 Off the On-Site Rate. Click Here to Register Online Now.

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

A selection of articles, special reports, and other future-focused material on our Web site that you might have missed.

Escaping the Filter Bubble

By Eli Pariser

The former executive director of MoveOn.org warns that more-personalized Internet searching may have hidden side effects. Read more

Future Prospects for the Smart Era

By Timothy Mack

The President of the World Future Society lays out how smart technology will change the way we live and work. Read more

News and Events for the Futurist Community

Edited by Aaron M. Cohen

Earth Policy Institute Celebrates 10th Anniversary
Students Will Address Global Issues at Upcoming Design Science Lab
Calling All Professional Futurists: A Research Study Seeks Input
Play a Game to Find the Future at the New York Public Library
Tech Cocktail Teams Up With Futurists:BetaLaunch
Humanity+ and Parsons Co-Host Upcoming Conference

The Futurist Interviews the authors of The Techno-Human Condition

Arizona State University engineer Braden Allenby and Arizona State science and society professor Dan Sarewitz, authors of The Techno-Human Condition, talk to FUTURIST magazine assistant editor Rick Docksai about humanity’s capacities to keep up with innovation. Read more

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Members may sign in to read and comment. Not a member? Join now at http://www.wfs.org/renew.

WorldFuture 2011 Conference Forums

World Trends & Forecasts from the May-June issue of THE FUTURIST

May 2011, Vol. 12, No. 5

In this issue:

Synthetic Photosynthesis?
New Recommendations for In-Vitro Fertilization May Save Lives
New Institute Seeks to Solve “Grand Challenges"
Making Smartphones Smarter about Energy Use
Olaf Helmer, Futures Pioneer
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the World Ahead
Global Megacrisis: Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives
Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

Solar Power from the Moon
The Futurist Interviews Ecologist James Spotila
News and Events for the Futurist Community

Synthetic Photosynthesis?

A solar cell that could mimic photosynthesis—the process that plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy—has long been deemed impractical due to the high costs and instability of its materials. Now, a new artificial leaf that overcomes these problems has been developed by a team of researchers led by Daniel Nocera of MIT.

Powerful and inexpensive catalysts made of nickel and cobalt can split water into its component hydrogen and oxygen, with 10 times the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, according to Nocera.

To be used as a power source, the hydrogen and oxygen would be stored in fuel cells. With the artificial leaf, a single gallon of water could produce a day’s worth of electricity for one house in a developing country, Nocera reported to the American Chemical Society meeting in March. —Cynthia G. Wagner

Source: American Chemical Society, http://www.acs.org

Will Limits on In Vitro Fertilization Save Lives?

Assistive-reproductive technologies that result in multiple births may be behind many of the admissions to neonatal intensive care units. As many as 17% of newborns receiving care at one Canadian hospital were from such multiple births, according to a study led by Keith Barrington of the University of Montreal.

Of these infants, roughly 91%, or 75 babies, were twins or triplets whose mothers used in vitro fertilization or IVF. Health problems among them were serious: “There were six deaths, five babies who developed a brain bleed, and four babies who developed a potentially blinding eye condition,” Barrington reports.

Barrington and his colleagues now advise that the number of eggs implanted during an IVF procedure should be limited to one to prevent twinning. While this could decrease the number of babies born with birth defects, it may also result in women being forced to undergo additional IVF procedures before conception.

New techniques for pre-implantation genetic screening, such as that developed by researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), could help doctors improve the chances for genetically healthier fertilized embryos prior to IVF implantation. Using the new technique, doctors can screen embryos for almost all structural and numerical chromosomal abnormalities and implant the embryos within 12 hours, which increases chances for successful pregnancy.

Sources: University of Montreal http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20110414-le-financement-de-la-procreation-assistee-comporte-de-grands-bienfaits.html
Keith Barrington’s paper, published in the Journal of Pediatrics (Canadian): http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0022-3476/PIIS0022347611001806.pdf
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona http://www.uab.es/servlet/Satellite/latest-news/news-detail/improvements-in-embryonic-preimplantation-genetic-screening-techniques-1096476786473.html?noticiaid=1302676660322

New Johns Hopkins Institute Seeks to Solve “Grand Challenges”

The new Johns Hopkins Systems Institute, initiated in April, will bring together experts in engineering, medicine and public health, education, and other areas to generate innovation and long-term solutions for health-care delivery, infrastructure, education, and energy.

“The complex problems in these areas don’t lend themselves to simple solutions that rely only on engineering and technology. The solutions will have to integrate other factors, such as socioeconomic, education and cultural issues, to be viable on the large scale,” says Mo Dehghani of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Institute’s director.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, http://releases.jhu.edu/2011/04/04/systems_institute/

Breakthrough Will Make Smartphones Smarter about Energy Use

If you own a highly capable smartphone that can play high-definition movies and games, take photos, and connect you to the global positioning system with a flick of the wrist, then congratulations. You also own a power-hungry device that needs constant recharging. All that capability is part of the problem. Even though you can only use one app at a time on the iPhone, your device is doing a lot processing you don’t see, such as storing videos, dialoging with servers, and hooking up with satellites, and it’s doing all that all the time.

Wonyoung Kim, a Harvard University graduate student, has developed a tiny DC-DC power converter to help the chips in your so-called smartphone use energy with a bit more intelligence. Kim’s multi-core voltage regulator (MCVR) would work to keep each chip in the device from drawing too much power when not in use, and then draw power quickly during instances of user demand.

“Including the MCVR on a chip would add about 10% to the manufacturing cost, but with the potential for 20% or more in power savings,” says Kim.

Source: Harvard University, http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/multi-core-voltage-regulator

Olaf Helmer, Futures Pioneer

A mathematician who helped bring scientific rigor to speculation about the future, Olaf Helmer died in Oak Harbor, Washington, on April 14, less than two months from his 101st birthday.

Helmer (ranked number 37 on the Encyclopedia of the Future’s list of the world’s 100 most influential futurists) is best known as the co-inventor of the Delphi forecasting methodology — the systematic polling of experts in multiple rounds to create an authoritative consensus about some aspect of the future.

He was a “legendary futurist,” notes Paul Saffo, president of the Institute for the Future, which Helmer co-founded after departing the RAND Corporation in 1968.

It was important, Helmer believed, to use this new methodology for the public good and not exclusively for military strategy. Many of Helmer’s early papers on Delphi polling and other futures work are available at RAND. —Cynthia G. Wagner

Sources:
RAND: http://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/h/helmer-hirschberg_olaf.html
Olaf Helmer on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Helmer

WorldFuture 2011: Moving from Vision to Action promises to be a fun, fast, and information-packed weekend, but have you considered taking a “deeper dive” into a particular futurist area at a preconference course? These sessions, held on the Thursday and Friday before the opening General Session, take an in-depth view of important topics. Follow the links below to learn more and register for these sessions or luncheons.

Preconference Courses
Thursday, July 7

Friday, July 8

Education Summit
Thursday and Friday, July 7-8
Education and the New Normal

Don’t forget to register for luncheon sessions before these special events sell out. Register online.

Saturday: The New Maritime Arctic: Global Connections
Lawson W. Brigham, distinguished professor of Geography and Arctic Policy, University of Alaska–Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska

Sunday: Prospects for Defeating Aging Altogether
Aubrey de Grey, biomedical gerontologist, chief science officer SENS Foundation, editor-in-chief, Rejuvenation Research, Cambridge, United Kingdom

We hope to see you there.

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the World Ahead

By James H. Irvine and Sandra Schwarzbach

Breakthroughs now emerging in biotechnology, robotics, and other key areas bear the potential to reshape life on Earth. Two military analysts describe the 20 innovations that will have the biggest impacts in the near future, plus five prospective technologies that could have major repercussions in the longer term. Read more

Global Megacrisis: Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives

By William E. Halal and Michael Marien

Two futurists map out the convergence of multiple global challenges, offering divergent viewpoints — one optimistic and one pessimistic — on the likelihood of successfully meeting these challenges and turning them into global progress. Read more

Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise

By Julian Cribb

Global commercial trends threaten farmers’ livelihoods — and the global food supply along with them, argues an agricultural policy watcher. The consequences for human beings everywhere could be dire.Read more

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

Solar Power from the Moon

By Patrick Tucker

A Japanese company is pitching an alternative energy plan that’s out of this world — and potentially the largest public infrastructure project in human history. Read more

The Futurist Interviews Ecologist James Spotila

By Rick Docksai

The author of Saving Sea Turtles: Extraordinary Stories from the Battle Against Extinction warns that ocean-going species throughout the world face other dangers: fishing, coastal manufacturing, excess tourist activity, and climate change. Read more

News and Events for the Futurist Community

Edited by Aaron Cohen

Barry Kellman Speaks at BWC PrepCom.
Robert Atkinson and 1X57 Are Among DC’s Tech Titans.
Arthur C. Clarke Foundation Honors Elon Musk and Freeman Dyson.
Olaf Helmer, developer of the Delphi Method for forecasting, has died.
Envisioning the future of museums.
Learning opportunities for futurists and educators at WorldFuture 2011.
The Institute for Alternative Futures announces international competition for scenarios.

April 2011, Vol. 12, No. 4

In this issue:

Japanese Early Earthquake Warning System Saved Lives
Hydrogen as a Fuel Source Comes Closer to Viability
Planting Grass Over Corn Could Reduce Surface Temperatures
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

News and Events for the Futurist Community
The Futurist Interviews Neuroscientist Eliezer Sternberg
Rethinking Colleges from the Ground Up

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society
Avatars and Virtual Immortality
World Trends & Forecasts: The High Cost of Bad Habits / Demographic Impacts on Climate Change

Japanese Early Earthquake Warning System Saved Lives

In the minutes preceding the largest earthquake in the history of Japan, millions of people got a glimpse of the future. Television broadcasts were briefly interrupted by the crisp, telephonic ringing. A bright blue box appeared on the screen showing the eastern coast of Japan and a large red X off shore depicting the epicenter for the massive jolt of seismic activity.

The tragedy in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami would have been far worse if not for the early earthquake warning system, which issued an alert to television stations, radios, trains, and even cell phones in the seconds before the 9.0 quake hit. The system was originally put in place in 2007 and is maintained by Japan’s Meteorological Agency. It uses a network of approximately 100 seismographic sensors to detect the P waves (low level initial tremors) released by seismic activity. The P waves telegraph the size of the secondary S waves, which are much larger and cause far more damage.

“The alert is issued automatically,” Satoshi Harada of Japan’s Meteorological Agency told FUTURIST UPDATE. “Once the seismometer detects the signal, they transfer to headquarters. [The alert] is processed and issued to the public.”

The system also shuts down high-speed rail service along Shinkansen (bullet trains), which can travel in excess of 300 miles per hour. There are—to date—no reports of Shinkansen derailments resulting from the earthquake.

Sources: Personal Interview, The Japan Meteorological Agency http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/how.pdf

New Breakthrough Improves Viability of Hydrogen as a Fuel Source

Running cars on hydrogen rather than oil has long been the dream of many in the science and environmental communities. But hydrogen remains an impractical fuel alterative, because in gaseous form it’s hard to get enough of it onboard a vehicle to power the car over a significant distance. In liquid form, hydrogen can be very dangerous and can’t be stored for long periods.

Many in the field have focused on developing liquid ammonia compounds that can store hydrogen safely. Scientists at Los Alamos National Lab have claimed that they have made a breakthrough in this area that could make increase the viability of hydrogen as a fuel significantly.

The chemical compound ammonia borane has a relatively high hydrogen storage capacity but is prohibitively expensive. The Los Alamos scientists have found a way to return hydrogen (in sufficient volume) to spent ammonia borane, thus making the fuel usable again, so spent fuel can be repeatedly recycled.

The car of the future may include an ammonia borane tank that can be used and sent back to the factory for recharge at relatively low cost.

Source: Los Alamos National Lab http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/drive_toward_hydrogen_vehicles_just_got_shorter.html

Grassing Over Cornfields Could Reduce Surface Temperatures

New research from Stanford University shows that planting grasses and other perennial plants in the place of corn, soybeans, and other annual (cash crop) species in California and surrounding states would not only help mitigate man-made climate change, but would also result in lower ground temperatures, at least locally.

“We’ve shown that planting perennial bioenergy crops can lower surface temperatures by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit [1°C] locally, averaged over the entire growing season,” said scientist David Lobel, “That’s a pretty big effect, enough to dominate any effects of carbon savings on the regional climate.”

Perennial plants such as switchgrass release much more water vapor into the air on a yearly basis than do crops like corn. Water vapor helps cool surface temperature. “Locally, the simulated cooling is sufficiently large to partially offset projected warming due to increasing greenhouse gases over the next few decades,” the authors write in their paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a related study, Lobel and other researchers found that corn and maize crops are more susceptible to small increases in climactic temperature than had been previously thought.

Read the full paper, “Direct climate effects of perennial bioenergy crops in the United States” by Matei Georgescu, David B. Lobell, and Christopher B. Field: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23121/PNAS-2011-Georgescu-1008779108.pdf

Click of the Month: Japan Matters for America http://www.japanmattersforamerica.org/

Events playing out in Japan may seem far removed from the United States, but Japan matters for America more than you might think. In November 2010, the East West Center created a Web site showing the cultural, economic, and scientific exchanges by prefecture and U.S. congressional district. Some of the information you’ll find: Japanese foreign direct investment in the United States and Japanese exports, sister city programs, the number of Americans living in Japan, and foreign student exchanges.

Advertisement

Education and the New Normal

The WorldFuture 2011 Education Summit, July 7-8, 2011, Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Learn more and register here.

What does the “new normal” of shrunken classroom budgets, greater reliance on information technology and the ongoing science and math skills shortage mean for the future of education? Join fellow futurists this summer in Vancouver to solve these and other questions during our two-day WFS-exclusive Education Summit. This year’s speakers include FUTURIST magazine authors Maria H. Andersen, David Pearce Snyder, and Tom Lombardo among many others.

Sessions include:

Defining the “New Normal” for Education
Education as a Service
Where’s the “Learn This” Button?
Learning in Depth: A Simple Innovation That Can Transform Schooling
A New Education Vision: Reinventing School-to-Employment Systems for Knowledge-Based Global Economies
The New Tech Network
Jump-Start Your Career as a Foresight Educator
Reinventing Educational Activism by Creating Linkages: Technology, Content-Driven Collaboration, and Financial Literacy
A New Century: A New Instructional Paradigm
Educating the Wise Cyborg of the Future
Deconstructing the Education Monopoly in the United States
Futurists and the Future of Education

WorldFuture 2011 Education Summit: $295 for WFS members/$345 for nonmembers. Learn more and register here.

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

News and Events for the Futurist Community

Edited by Aaron M. Cohen

A list of upcoming events and updates from the international foresight community. Read more

The Futurist Interviews Neuroscientist Eliezer Sternberg

Eliezer Sternberg, a Tufts University School of Medicine doctoral candidate and the author of My Brain Made Me Do It, spoke with Rick Docksai, staff editor for THE FUTURIST, about where brain research might proceed in the decades ahead. Read more

Rethinking Colleges from the Ground Up

By Thomas Frey

The great reset has not yet finished its resetting process, and colleges are moving quickly into the crosshairs, with government funding, grants, and student loans all harder to get. With a mindset steeped in tradition, college leadership is pushing institutions to be, as the U.S. Marines like to say, “the best they can possibly be.” But being the “best” is meaningless when the rest of the world wants “different.” In this op-ed, futurist Thomas Frey examines what’s next. Read more

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Relationships, Community, and Identity in the New Virtual Society

By Arnold Brown

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

As we spend more of our social lives online, the definitions of relationships and families are shifting. A business futurist offers an overview of these trends and what they imply for organizations in the coming years.

Plus: Avatars and Virtual Immortality

By William Sims Bainbridge

Already, many people have information technology agents, but these agents are so simple we do not ordinarily think of them as such.

World Trends & Forecasts: The High Cost of Bad Habits / Demographic Impacts on Climate Change

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

March 2011, Vol. 12, No. 3

In this issue:

Harvard Recommends Deemphasizing College Education
Internet Nears 2 Billion Users, Worldwide
Carbon Dioxide’s Impacts on Plant Evolution
Cities Play Role in Wage Inequality
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Understanding Technological Evolution and Diversity
Health Care Special Feature
Demographic Impacts on Climate Change

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

The Futurist Interviews Space Expert Edgar Choueri
Future Active: News from the Futurist Community
What Hath Hawking Wrought?

Harvard Report Calls For Less Emphasis on College Education

“College for all” has been the mantra of education reform for decades. A new report from Harvard Graduate School of Education argues that greater emphasis on vocational training, apprenticeships, and technical job training outside of a formal college setting would better serve America’s young people.

“Behaving as though four-year college is the only acceptable route to success clearly still works well for many young adults, especially students fortunate enough to attend highly selective colleges and universities. It also works well for affluent students, who can often draw on family and social connections to find their way in the adult world. But it clearly does not work well for many, especially young men,” say the researchers in their report, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century.

They point to the fact that men make up only 43% of enrolled students on American college campuses, that 30% of African Americans and fewer than 20% of Latinos in their mid-20s have an associate’s degree. The United States now has the highest college dropout rate in the industrialized world.

Most other advanced nations, notably Germany, place more emphasis on vocational training in high school. Structured programs that combine work and learning better enable adolescents to grasp how they’ll market and use their skills in the real world. “Consequently, these [vocational training] programs are not designed to serve those with a history of school failure.”

Read the full report here: http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf

Internet Nears 2 Billion Users Worldwide

The Internet reached 1.97 billion users worldwide in 2010, according to market research by Internet World Stats. Among the chief areas of growth were Twitter and Facebook, which saw 100 million and 250 million new users, respectively.

According to Twitter’s internal data, 25 billion “tweets” were sent in 2010. Asia led the world in Internet users, with some 825 million people online compared with 266 million in North America. However, North America led in percentage of population online, with 77% of Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans having access to the Internet, versus 21% of Asians.

Almost 30% of the global population now uses the Internet, which grew 14% in 2010, putting it on track to exceed 2 billion users by the end of this year.

Sources:
Internet World Stats: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Twitter Blog: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/12/stocking-stuffer.html
Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-has-more-than-600-million-users-goldman-tells-clients-2011-1
RoyalPingdom: http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/

Rising Carbon-Dioxide Levels Could Change Plant Evolution

Increased carbon-dioxide levels could alter what sorts of plants thrive, which plants die off, and how plants interact with insects in the future, according to scientists at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

The researchers studied how different species of milkweed responded to increased levels of CO₂. They found that the exposed plants tended to grow larger, but different species responded to elevated CO₂ levels in strikingly different ways.

For instance, most of the plants responded to the extra carbon dioxide by decreasing their levels of cardenolide, a toxin that works to fend off insects, but some milkweed strains increased their production of the poison. Many caterpillars that feed off of milkweed are very picky about the plants they eat and are likely to be more attracted to those with less poison, giving the more toxic milkweed strains a competitive advantage that could spread throughout the population, or cause other unforeseen effects.

Source: University of Michigan http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=8268

Cities Play Role in Wage Inequality

The United States has a higher degree of wage inequality than almost any other Western industrialized country. The average American CEO brings in more than 10 times what he or she would have earned in the 1970s and 300 times more than the average worker. A new study from researchers at the University of Rochester and Brown provides a surprising explanation: City size is one the main drivers of wage inequality.

“Demographic groups and industries disproportionately located in larger cities experienced larger increases in their wage dispersion in larger cities than in smaller cities,” authors Ronni Pavan and Nathaniel Baum-Snow write in their study.

In cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, capital and technology are more readily available; the labor pool is larger; and markets are more accessible. In other words, it’s much easier to get incredibly rich in a big city than it is in the rural countryside. It’s also easier to command higher pay for higher skills, but harder to command average pay for mediocre skills.

“The skill premium has grown more in larger cities than in smaller cities and rural areas,” they write.

Source: University of Rochester http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3762

Read the paper: Inequality and City Size by Nathaniel Baum-Snow and Ronni Pavan, University of Rochester http://tinyurl.com/4rubmw6

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Understanding Technological Evolution and Diversity

By Kevin Kelly

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

From the depths of the Amazon basin to the streets of Tokyo, technology is always evolving. Here, a Wired founding editor describes what technology wants — and what we can learn from observing the “technium,” the technological ecosystem. Read more.

Health Care Special Feature

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

From Hospital to Healthspital: A Better Paradigm for Health Care by Frank W. Maletz; Health Insurance in America After the Reform by Jay Herson and David Pearce Snyder; Could Medical Tourism Aid Health-Care Delivery? by Prema Nakra; Bike to the Future By Kenneth W. Harris

Demographic Impacts on Climate Change

By Aaron M. Cohen

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

Scenarios examine effects of population size, age, and migration on carbon emissions. Read more

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

The Futurist Interviews Space Expert Edgar Choueri

By Rick Docksai

Future Active: News from the Futurist Community

By Aaron M. Cohen

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

What Hath Hawking Wrought?

By Edward Cornish

THE FUTURIST — March-April 2011

February 2011, Vol. 12, No. 2

In this issue:

Soundless Submarines
Interactive Window Shopping
Faster Battery Recharging
MIT Report Calls for More Interdisciplinary Research
Energy Demand Could Skyrocket by 2050
New Year’s Prediction Roundup 2011
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)
- State of the World Dispatch
- Dangerous Times: The Futurist Interviews Christopher Fettweis
- Your Spring 2011 Futurist Reading List
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)
- A Convenient Truth About Clean Energy
- Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age
- The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living

Soundless Submarines Are Closing In

A cloaking technology that bends sound waves could render submarines and other underwater objects undetectable to sonar or ultrasound sensors. The technique, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois, employs a highly engineered “metamaterial” to bend the waves around an object, much as light is bent to make objects invisible.

Stealth submarines are an obvious potential military application for acoustic cloaking, but the researchers also see possible medical applications, since many medical scans rely on sound waves. The metamaterial could theoretically be used in a bandage that would curb disruption or interference from other body parts that sometimes interfere with ultrasound scanning, thus making these scans more accurate.

Source: University of Illinois http://engineering.illinois.edu/news/2011/01/05/newly-developed-cloak-hides-underwater-objects-sonar

Interactive Store Windows Watch You Watching Them

A new interactive store window will allow passersby to shop even after store hours. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have developed a system using a series of cameras to take detailed pictures of potential customers as they approach the store window. A software program then transforms the shoppers’ hand and eye movements and facial expressions into commands.

For instance, if a woman points to a designer handbag in the window, an image of it will appear on a display behind the shop window. When she points to a button, the handbag rotates on the screen to give the shopper the full view.

The system is still in prototype phase, but the Fraunhofer researchers will be demonstrating it at the CeBit Fair in Hannover, Germany, March 1–5, 2011.

Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010-2011/13/interactive-window-shopping.jsp

New Material Could Reduce Charge-Time for Batteries by a Factor of 40

Lithium-ion batteries can charge far faster than they do in most laptops, but rapid charging exposes these batteries to premature failure. Now, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new nanomaterial that could allow lithium-ion batteries to charge 40 times faster.

Dubbed a “nanoscoop” because of the distinctly ice cream cone-like shape of the particles, the material absorbs the stress that occurs when battery anodes are charged rapidly.

“Charging my laptop or cell phone in a few minutes, rather than an hour, sounds pretty good to me,” says engineering professor Nikhil Koratkar. Electric automobiles may also one day benefit from the breakthrough.

Results of the project will be published in the journal Nano Letters.

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute http://news.rpi.edu/update.do

Download the paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl102981d

MIT Report Calls for More Interdisciplinary Research

The ongoing merger of life, physical, and engineering sciences could revolutionize biomedicine, MIT researchers claim in a new white paper. The report authors call this fusing of disciplines convergence.

Successful examples of convergence in the fields of medicine, engineering, and computer science include brain grafts for treating cerebral disorders and injury, computational biology for immune response, and imaging technology to prevent blindness.

The report says that, in order for convergence to meet its fullest potential, the National Institutes of Health should encourage investigation that crosses research disciplines. The agency should also reform the peer-review process for interdisciplinary grants, the researchers contend.

Source: MIT http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/convergence-0104.html

More-Populous World May Demand 16 Times More Energy by 2050

If the global population rises to 9.5 billion by 2050, and every one of those people adopts the American standard of living, global energy demand could increase by a factor of 16 according to a recent paper by a team of University of New Mexico biologists and other researchers.

The article published in the journal BioScience finds that that low infant mortality, electronics consumption per person, and various other high-standard-of-living variables are closely correlated with energy consumption per person.

“The vast majority of nations we analyzed (74%) increased both energy use and GDP from 1980 to 2003 and exhibited positive correlations [in standard of living] across the 24 years. For example, from 1850 to 2000, while the global human population grew fivefold, world energy use increased 20-fold and fossil fuel-use rose more than 150-fold,” the authors write.

Correlation is not the same as causation. The researchers acknowledge the possibility that future technologies may make the U.S. standard of living less energy intensive. Regardless, the correlations they point out are compelling in the light of continued global dependence on fossil fuels.

Sources: http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/110107_study_finds_energy_limits_global_economic_growth.html

Download the full paper: http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/resources/Davidson.pdf

New Year’s Prediction Roundup 2011

The beginning of a new year always brings with it a flood of predictions appearing in various media outlets. This year was no exception.

IBM announced its annual list of Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five years. This year’s list included 3-D telepresence, transistors that will improve the storage capacity of batteries by a factor of 10, the sensor-smart grid, predictive analytics for personalized commutes, and temperature efficient data-storage centers. (IBM is in the process of developing products along all these lines, of course.)

The site Ilookforwardto.com ran a list of 10 diseases that will find cures 2020, including Alzheimer’s.

Journalist and tech-watcher Galen Gruman, writing for InfoWorld, added a list of technology predictions for the next decade. Among his forecasts: iPhones and tablet PC sales will surpass laptop sales by 2014. By 2020, says Gruman, “miniaturization and image-projection technologies, coupled with previous 3D gesture technologies, allow mobile devices to be wearable components that combine wirelessly with each other and other nearby devices to provide a less obtrusive mobile computing environment.”

The dawn of 2011 also saw a number of stories taking a more reflective approach to the perennial look ahead.

The New York Times ran a series in its Opinion section under the topic heading: “Why Do We Need Predictions?” Contributing authors included inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Stacy Schiff, and Harvard psychologist David Ropeik, the later of which predicted a “bright future for futurism.”

Chris Morris, writing for the Web site Bankrate.com, put together a list of five banking predictions that missed the mark, which included the demise of the credit card.

ABC World News ran a year-end report on predictions made by top thinkers back 1931 and sought out World Future Society president Tim Mack for comment. They were “people who were in business, people who were prominent because of one expertise and they were asked to suddenly assume an expertise in an area they hadn't thought much about,” Mack said on behalf of his forecasting predecessors, whose rather fanciful forecasts included such things as an air-car hangar in every home.

Mack was also featured on a Voice of America broadcast that aired internationally, where he shared some recent forecasts from THE FUTURIST magazine.

Sources:

IBM: “IBM’s Top Five Predictions for 2015” http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33304.wss
Bankrate.com: “5 Banking Predictions That Missed the Mark” http://www.bankrate.com/finance/savings/5-banking-predictions-that-missed-the-mark-1.aspx
I Look Forward To: The Eradication of Illness—10 Diseases We’ll Cure in the Next 20 Years: http://www.ilookforwardto.com/2011/01/the-eradication-of-illness-the-diseases-well-cure-in-the-next-20-years.html
InfoWorld: “Where Mobile Technology is Heading, From 2011 to 2020” http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/where-mobile-technology-heading-2011-2020-402?page=0,1&source=footer
The New York Times: “Why Do We Need Predictions?” http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/27/why-do-we-need-to-predict-the-future
ABC World News: “Were They Right? Great Thinkers of 1931 Predict What 2011 Will Bring” http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/great-thinkers-1931-predict-2011-bring/story?id=12529759
VOA: “Outlook 2011 Examines How Technology, Environment, Economy Shape the World” http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Outlook-2011-Examines-How-Technology-Environment-Economy-Shape-the-World--112501949.html
World Future Society’s special report Outlook 2011: YouTube (Top 10 Forecasts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ATGbiydIcM Order the full report: http://www.wfs.org/specialreports

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

State of the World Dispatch

Web Exclusive

Major changes are under way in developing-world agriculture, said presenters at the Worldwatch Institute’s 15th annual State of the World Symposium. The event’s presenters discussed many new techniques that African farmers are adopting and never-before-seen partnerships that they are forming with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and government agencies to increase crop yields and relieve world hunger while simultaneously battling climate change and environmental degradation. Rick Docksai reports. Read more.

Dangerous Times: The Futurist Interviews Christopher Fettweis

Web Exclusive

The twenty-first century will probably be the most peaceful hundred years in human history, according to Christopher Fettweis, Tulane University political scientist and author of Dangerous Times? The International Politics of Great Power Peace. In this interview with WFS editor Rick Docksai, Fettweis considers ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other global hotspots as exceptions to—rather than rules of—modern geopolitics. Read more

Your Spring 2011 Futurist Reading List

Michael Marien presents this list of more than 114 forthcoming books of relevance to futurists ... and anyone else looking to make a brighter tomorrow for themselves, their organization, or the planet in 2011. The list includes titles on medicine, economics, the environment, government, education, business, and technology. Read more

Take our poll! What does it take to be a futurist?

http://www.wfs.org/content/what-does-it-take-be-futurist

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

A Convenient Truth About Clean Energy

By Carl E. Schoder

THE FUTURIST — January-February 2011

The Earth is awash in energy; we just need new infrastructure to tap it. A chemical engineer shows how we could break free of fossil fuels by deploying the power of ammonia and hydrogen. Read more

Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age

By John M. Eger

THE FUTURIST — January-February 2011

The future workforce will need to be more innovative, argues a communications and public policy scholar. While math and science are important, they need to be infused with the creative spark that comes from the arts. Read more

The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living

By Thomas Frey

THE FUTURIST — January-February 2011

A new breed of workers, equipped with über-geek data-capturing tools, are about to usher in a whole new information era. Read more

January 2011, Vol. 12, No. 1

In this issue:

Batteries Not Included
Too Much Texting Leads to Risky Behaviors, Study Finds
A New International Network For Climate Monitoring
The Future of THE FUTURIST
What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Special Section: 70 Jobs for 2030
The Future of Medicine: Are Custom-Printed Organs on the Horizon
Asia Redraws the Map of Progress

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning
THE FUTURIST Interviews Open-Source Expert Josh Lerner
The iPad and the Future of Television

Batteries Not Included

U.S. policy makers may have lofty goals for moving the United States toward wind and solar energy, but if they’re going to realize those ambitions, they’ll have to invest more in battery and superconducting technology. This is according to a newly issued report from the American Physical Society, entitled Integrating Renewable Electricity on the Grid. The report also calls for a national renewable electricity standard to help to unify the fragmented U.S. grid system — an important step in the wider adoption more wind and solar power.

Among the report’s other recommendations:

The U.S. Department of Energy should devote more research dollars to basic electrochemistry research to identify the materials best suited to a twenty-first-century electric grid.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should put together a marketing white paper (also called a business case), laying out the costs, benefits, and possible implementation strategies for renewable power generation. They can then use this in deciding on a regulatory framework.
The National Weather Service and other weather forecasting agencies should settle on a uniform standard when describing how much (or how little) power might be obtained from wind under different conditions.

“We need to move faster to have storage ready to accommodate, for example, 20% of renewable electricity on the grid by 2020,” says George Crabtree of Argonne National Laboratory, who served on the report writing committee. “By devoting the necessary resources to the problem, I am confident that we can solve it.”

Source: American Physical Society: http://www.aps.org/about/pressreleases/integratingelec.cfm

Too Much Texting Leads to Risky Behaviors, Study Finds

Teenagers who send more than 120 text messages per school day are 84% more likely to have used illegal drugs, were almost twice as likely to have been in a physical fight, and were far more likely to have engaged in a variety of “risky behaviors” such as smoking and binge drinking, according to a new study from Case Western Reserve University.

“The startling results of this study suggest that, when left unchecked, texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected are associated with unhealthy behaviors among teenagers,” says Scott Frank, lead researcher on the study. “This may be a wake-up call for parents to open a dialogue with their kids about the extent of texting and social networking they are involved with and about what is happening in the rest of their lives.”

Frank admits that the data doesn’t indicate that social networking is a direct cause of risky behavior, only that there is a clear overlap. So while some sort of relationship exists, the nature of it remains murky.

The findings of the report were presented at the American Public Health Association’s November 2010 meeting in Denver.

Source: Case Western Reserve University, http://case.edu/think/breakingnews/hypertexting.html

A New International Network for Climate Monitoring

The recently concluded United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, may not have produced the breakthrough international agreement on carbon reduction that many were hoping for, but at least one good partnership has come out of the event.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) used the convention to put together a global network to track countries’ progress toward cutting emissions and supporting environmental efforts in developing countries. The Open Climate Network (OCN) will bring together independent research institutes around the world to “provide consistent and peer-reviewed information on major economies’ actions on climate change,” according to a WRI statement.

“Major economies have made high-level commitments to tackle climate change, but it has been difficult to access information about their progress that is consistent and trusted at the international level.… OCN fills this gap by tapping the world’s leading research institutes to develop a highly credible source of information about countries’ progress,” said Jennifer Morgan of WRI.

Researchers hope the network will improve upon the work of official agencies doing climate and carbon reporting. This may reduce disputes about different countries’ claims about carbon and climate change. Another goal of the network is to provide financial support to developing countries to preserve wild forests and vegetation (to absorb carbon).

To date, OCN partners include institutes and think tanks from Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Mexico, India, and Japan, among others. WRI hopes to add additional partners from the UK, Brazil, and South Africa soon.

Source: World Resources Institute, http://www.wri.org/press/2010/12/news-release-independent-global-network-launched-track-countries-climate-change-progre

The Future of THE FUTURIST

Edward Cornish, the founder of the World Future Society, has announced that he will be transitioning to a new role at THE FUTURIST magazine as futurist-in-residence. Cornish first began work on THE FUTURIST in 1965, which he originally conceived as a newsletter for the Society.

“While I was pondering what to call my projected newsletter, Time magazine solved my problem by publishing an extraordinary essay entitled, ‘THE FUTURISTS: Looking Toward A.D. 2000’ (February 25, 1966). This essay focused on precisely the kind of people whose work fascinated me, such as Herman Kahn, Olaf Helmer, Buckminster Fuller, and Bertrand de Jouvenel,” Cornish recalls in his memoirs.

He continues, “By referring to them as ‘futurists’ Time had validated the term.… Strongly encouraged by this development, I began preparing a prototype newsletter called THE FUTURIST based on my collection of newspaper articles, books, reports, etc., related to the future.” THE FUTURIST magazine first appeared as a formal magazine in 1967.

Cornish’s memoirs, The Search for Foresight, describing the birth of the World Future Society are available for free online at http://www.wfs.org/content/search-for-foresight.

Cynthia Wagner, long-time managing editor, will take over as editor of THE FUTURIST magazine.

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Members Only)

Special Section: 70 Jobs for 2030

THE FUTURIST — January-February 2011

“Job creation” starts with innovative thinking, so we invited some of the best futurist minds to envision where the ground may be most fertile for future opportunities.

Emerging Careers and How to Create Them By Cynthia G. Wagner
A Clash of Ideas and Ideals on the Jobs Front By Patrick Tucker
The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living By Thomas Frey
Careers for a More Personal Corporation By Jim Ware
Managing Our Feelings By Joyce Gioia
Careers Inspired by Nanotech Trends By Anne Gordon
Online Community Organizer By Seth Godin
Digital Identity Planner: A Scenario By Timothy Ferriss
Fixing Our Machines and Ourselves By Charles Grantham
Personal Care Coordinator By Alexandra Levit
Future World Shapers By Alireza Hejazi
Unmanned Cargo Vehicle Operator: A Scenario By Karen W. Currie

The Future of Medicine: Are Custom-Printed Organs on the Horizon?

By Vladimir Mironov

THE FUTURIST — January-February 2011

Medical researchers are creating robots that can bioprint new tissue and organs directly into patients’ bodies while performing surgery — without assistance from doctors. Read more

Outlook 2011

THE FUTURIST — November-December 2010

Recent Forecasts from the World Future Society for the Decade Ahead

In the next 10 to 30 years, society will have to learn to deal with “peak everything” — an epoch of critical scarcities of a broad range of resources. Unexpected sources of expertise — such as physicists advising us about the economy — will guide us through hard times. And genetic tampering with crops will gain more acceptance if it solves critical environmental and resource problems, such as resistance to climate change and reducing the release of carbon into the atmosphere.

These are just a few of the forecasts in the latest edition of the World Future Society’s annual Outlook report, in which the editors have selected the most thought-provoking forecasts and ideas appearing in THE FUTURIST over the past year. These are not “predictions,” but rather glimpses of what may happen, warnings of potential problems that could be avoided, or prescriptions for better futures we may wish to begin working toward. Read more

Asia Redraws the Map of Progress

By Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

THE FUTURIST — September-October 2010

Over the last 30 years, unique opportunities for high and persistent economic growth have blessed Asia, and policy makers grabbed them with both hands. Global growth was high, commodity prices were low, and a growing labor force turned China into the world’s top manufacturer. Meanwhile, there was not much pressure to heed environmental warnings. The policy challenge for Asia’s political leaders was primarily to manage economic growth. All of that is changing. This article draws from his forthcoming book, How Asia Can Shape the World, which he will discuss at WorldFuture 2011. Read more

What’s Hot @WFS.ORG (Public)

The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning

By Maria H. Andersen

THE FUTURIST — January-February 2011

Future learning will become both more social and more personal, says an educational technology expert. Read more

THE FUTURIST Interviews Open-Source Expert Josh Lerner

Web Exclusive

In The Comingled Code, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman describe the open-source phenomenon and the ways in which it will, or will not, benefit the different types of businesses, organizations, and government agencies that use it. Read more

Tomorrow’s Interactive Television

By John Smart

THE FUTURIST — November-December 2010

There is not nearly enough quality choice, specialization, and personalization on television, argues technology forecaster John Smart. He says that access to tens of thousands of specialty channels, a variety of content-aggregation options, and collaborative filtering by peer and trusted expert rankings would better serve U.S. social needs. Such a system will enable all those who wish to do so to eliminate unpersonalized advertising. What we need, according to Smart, is two-way communication: person-to-person and many-to-many, not one-to-many. The iPad is the first step. Read more

Note: Smart presented on the future of television at a TedX event in Del Mar in June, 2010. Catch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6qaI_PJtdg.

Calling All Inventors

Do you have an idea or gadget you would like to showcase at WorldFuture 2011? World Future Society conferences are great opportunities to meet with potential sponsors and network with fellow visionaries, scientists, engineers and designers from around the world. If you think you’ve created the Next Big Breakthrough, let us know at info@wfs.org