Demography: How to Live Beyond 100

Your odds of living to celebrate your one-hundredth birthday are higher than ever, says University of Georgia gerontologist Leonard Poon.

Adults aged 100 or more are a fast-growing population group throughout the industrialized world, Poon notes. Most industrialized countries now average one centenarian per 10,000 residents, but the figure is moving toward one in 5,000.

“One can observe over the last century that the oldest of our population increased from a negligible number to an appreciable proportion,” Poon writes in Aging, Biotechnology, and the Future.

Poon gives the average 60-year-old a 1% chance and the average 80-year-old a 0.5% chance of becoming a centenarian.

Life-span is 30% determined by genes and 70% determined by environment, according to Poon. In 1992, he compared a group of centenarians with groups of adults in their 80s and 60s, finding a common thread of healthy living among most of the 100-or-older group: They had exercised regularly, eaten breakfast daily, consumed substantial amounts of carotenoids and Vitamin A, and refrained from smoking and abuse of alcohol.

“Human attitudes and choices may underlie the secrets of longevity,” Poon suggests.

Many centenarians, however, reach their ripe old ages despite health choices that most doctors would not like. Jeanne Calment, whose 122 years won her the Guinness Book of World Records' entry as the oldest human being, smoked until her 120th birthday.

“They are not all exemplary: Some people smoked, some drank heavily,” says L. Stephen Coles, co-founder of the Gerontology Research Group, which researches centenarian health. “There is no particular thing you could point to that you could say ‘If you do this, you will live to one hundred.’”

The deciding factor, Coles told THE FUTURIST, is genetics. He notes that many centenarians' parents lived into their 90s.

“If your parents lived long, you will probably live long,” he says.

Robert Young, claims researcher for the Gerontology Research Group, adds that being a woman also helps. In the research group's database of 4,000 “supercentenarians” — people who live more than 110 years — 90% are women.

Young attributes the gender imbalance to basic physiological differences: Women's bodies naturally last longer than men's. He says that women are statistically more likely than men to survive gunshot wounds and heart attacks, and they live with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases for far greater lengths of time.

“Women are designed for endurance, whereas men are designed for peak strength,” Young says.

However, a healthy lifestyle does help, no matter what your gender or genome might be.

“As a doctor, I cannot tell you to go smoke just because Calment did,” says Coles. “She lived in spite of her bad habits, not because of her bad habits.”

Coles encourages individuals of all ages to extend their lives as long as they can by taking good care of their health.

“They have to lead an exemplary lifestyle. It's important for people to live a long time so that they are around when aging intervention treatments become possible,” he says. — Rick Docksai

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Sources: “What Can We Learn from Centenarians?” by Leonard Poon, in Aging, Biotechnology, and the Future edited by Catherine Y. Read et al. The Johns Hopkins University Press, www.press.jhu.edu. 2008. 266 pages. $45. Order online from the Futurist Bookshelf, www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.

L. Stephen Coles and Robert Young, Gerontology Research Group. Web site www.grg.org.

Predicting Supercentenarians

Gerontologist Leonard Poon surveyed 137 supercentenarians in a 2000 study and observed five predictors of living long past age 100:

1. Gender. On average, women survived 1,020 days after reaching 100 years. Men averaged only 781.
2.Family longevity. The age of death of the centenarian's fathers was positively associated with the days of survival of centenarians. No effect was found for the mother's age of death, though.
3. Income and social support. The centenarians who talked on the phone often, had a caregiver, and had someone to help on a regular basis all tended to live longer than centenarians who did not.
4.Anthropometrics. Less body fat and higher waist-to-hip ratio correlated positively with survival after 100 years.
5. Cognition. The centenarians with higher cognitive abilities tended to live the longest.

Source: Leonard Poon.

Demography

November-December 2008 Vol. 42, No. 6

How to Live Beyond 100

A very long life is one part nature and one part nurture.

Government: Civilian Peacekeepers

U.S. military officials do not hope that a new volunteer force will help them win wars. They hope it will prevent wars from starting in the first place.

The Civilian Response Corps, a body of U.S. government employees with vital professional skills, deploys to troubled parts of the world to consult local officials and help develop sagging infrastructures. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hails the new corps as a means to a more peaceful future.

“In a world as increasingly interconnected as ours, the international state system is only as strong as its weakest links,” Rice says. “We cannot afford another situation like the one that emerged in 2001 in Afghanistan.”

Corps members are now serving in Afghanistan as well as Chad, Iraq, Haiti, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Sudan.

Rice argues that achieving lasting stability in zones that had experienced violence was a job that the military could not do alone; civilian experts have an important role to play.

The corps includes 250 active members who would deploy within 48 hours to the scenes of crises and 2,000 standby members who would be called up as needed. All members hold permanent jobs in other government agencies as doctors, lawyers, engineers, agronomists, police officers, public administrators, and other important roles.

Rice has consistently opposed missions in which military personnel take responsibility for peacekeeping and stabilization. During the 2000 presidential campaign, she sparked fierce denunciations in Europe when she said that then-candidate George W. Bush would remove U.S. troops from Kosovo because, as quoted by Agence France-Presse, “We don’t need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten.” She added that “extended peacekeeping detracts from our readiness for global missions.”

But by 2006, chaos in post-Saddam Iraq convinced General John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, that combat operations would never succeed without good peacekeeping.

“We need significantly more non-military personnel … with expertise in areas such as economic development, civil affairs, agriculture, and law,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated the call to Congress for civilian help in a November 2007 speech that expressly asked for a cadre of civilians that would help secure peace.

“We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military,” he said, adding that he was “for strengthening our capacity to use ‘soft power’ and for better integrating it with ‘hard power.’”

Congress unanimously approved the new corps and gave it a $248 million budget for the 2008 fiscal year.

Ann Vaughan of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker organization that lobbied for the new corps, sees it as a sound investment.

“This legislation is a critical first step toward changing the way the U.S. engages the world,” she says. — Rick Docksai

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WHO Global Database: Data for Saving Lives” World Health Organization. Web site (June 1, 2008).

Government

November-December 2008 Vol. 42, No. 6

Civilian Peacekeepers

A new U.S. operation hopes to stop wars before they happen.

November-December 2008 Tomorrow in Brief

Biological Brains for Robots

Robots may learn how to find their way around their environments and avoid obstacles, thanks to biological brains developed by researchers at the University of Reading in Britain. Cultured neurons are placed onto a multi-electrode array, which picks up signals generated by the cells. The signals drive the movement of the robot; as the robot approaches an object, signals stimulate the brain, and the brain’s output moves the robot, with no input from humans. The researchers hope that the work will lead not only to robots that learn, but also to improved understanding of neurological diseases and disorders of humans.

Source: University of Reading, Research Publicity, Whiteknights, P.O. Box 217, Reading RG6 6AH, United Kingdom. Web site www.rdg.ac.uk.

Alcohol Consumption Declines

Beer guzzling is on the way out in the United States. Alcohol consumption over the past 50 years has declined, particularly beer consumption, and more people say that they are nondrinkers, reports a team of researchers led by Yuqing Zhang of the Boston University School of Medicine. The researchers attribute the long-term decline to medical studies noting the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, which has been linked to improved cardiovascular health and other positive effects, as well as studies noting the ill effects of heavy consumption.

Source: “Secular Trends in Alcohol Consumption over 50 Years: The Framingham Study” by Yuqing Zhang et al., The American Journal of Medicine (August 2008), published by Elsevier, Radarweg 29, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Web site www.elsevier.com .

Ivory Poaching Imperils Elephants

The elephant death rate in Africa has reached 8% a year, a level that surpasses the 7.4% annual death rate that led to urgent measures to save the species by banning the trade of ivory. The African elephant population is now less than 470,000, down from more than 1 million when the ban was first enacted in the late 1980s, reports University of Washington biology professor Samuel Wasser. “If the trend continues, there won’t be any elephants except in fenced areas with a lot of enforcement to protect them,” he says. His research indicates that most remaining large groups of African elephants will be extinct by 2020 unless a renewed international effort is launched to halt poaching.

Source: University of Washington, Office of News and Information, Box 351207, Seattle, Washington 98195. Web site http://uwnews.org.

Compressed Air May Cut Energy Costs

The concept of storing compressed air underground for use in generating electricity may be an idea whose time has come. Sandia National Laboratories researcher Georgianne Peek believe it could offer a solution to high energy costs. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) facilities would function like batteries; air is driven into an underground geological formation during low-demand times; when it’s needed, the electricity is generated from the compressed air used in modified combustion engines. CAES storage facilities are being considered by several U.S. utilities to store the abundant wind generated in Iowa and other places.

Source: Sandia National Laboratories, News Room, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185-0165.

Bartering with Fuel

With runaway inflation making it nearly impossible to pay for food, rent, and other necessities with local money, Zimbabweans have turned to bartering and using innovative alternative forms of currency, such as gasoline coupons. The coupons are obtained from fuel stations in exchange for foreign currency, offering a more stable money system in a country where inflation is officially estimated at 2.2 million percent a year and more than 15 million percent according to independent economists, according to the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks. The fuel coupons and their use as a “clever type of barter trade” have become the norm in Zimbabwe, according to economic analyst John Robertson.

Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Web site www.irinnews.org .

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Tomorrow in Brief

THE FUTURIST
November-December 2008 Vol. 42, No. 6

COPYRIGHT © 2008 WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. Tel. 301-656-8274. E-mail info@wfs.org. Web site http://www.wfs.org. All rights reserved.

Technology: Organic Solar Collection, The Scent of the Future

A breakthrough in concentrated photovoltaics may soon be available.
Revisiting a largely abandoned concept from three decades ago, a research team at MIT has developed a new solar concentrator that is cost-effective as well as energy-efficient. Advocated as a better way of utilizing the sun's energy output, and practically doubling the performance of existing solar panels while greatly simplifying the process, this development could make photovoltaic systems much more commercially viable in the coming years.

Most large-scale solar power operations are set up as systems of rotating mirrors that follow the path of the sun over a wide region and channel its rays into solar cells — silicon-based semiconducting devices that collect and store the energy. Cooling systems are in constant use to keep the large solar panels containing the devices from overheating. This method is less effective, more expensive, and more cumbersome than it should be, critics have long complained. The result is that energy from fossil fuels is currently still much cheaper to produce on a large scale. However, that may change soon, thanks to the MIT researchers, led by assistant professor of electrical engineering Marc Baldo.

In the MIT project, luminescent solar concentrators resembling windows absorb the sun's rays via thin films of organic color dyes that are applied in specific ratios to the surface of the glass panels. The light is then reemitted through the glass to small solar cells positioned around the edges of the panes. These solar cells take up less space, utilize less semiconducting material, and do not require extensive cooling systems or separate panels to house them. The “windows” themselves also occupy less space than the mirror system.

The glass panels can gather light while remaining stationary, they increase efficiency up to 50%, and the light can travel much farther. “We were able to substantially reduce light transport losses, resulting in a tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells,” says team member Jon Mapel.

Ultimately, the cost-effectiveness of the new system may be its greatest advantage. After all, if ordinary pieces of glass can be converted into high-tech solar concentrators, then the technology becomes that much more accessible. Current systems could even be retrofitted with the new concentrators at very little cost. All of this will go a long way toward making the cost of solar electricity more competitive with that of the conventional grid energy.

According to the research team, if everything goes as planned, practical and affordable solar energy could be available on the market within the next three years. Three of the inventors on the team (Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, and Shalom Goffri) have just launched a start-up, Covalent Solar, with the help of several entrepreneurial grants from MIT, to commercialize the technology. For now, ensuring that it will come with at least a 20-year guarantee is the next step (the color-dye process currently remains stable for about three months). The team is already hard at work finding ways to increase the stability of these potentially revolutionary photon collectors. — Aaron M. Cohen

Sources: MIT, News Office, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. Web site.

National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230. Web site.

The Scent of the Future

Consumers didn't need to be told that Jazz Diet Pepsi was about to hit store shelves; they could smell it. The soft-drink company had placed an ad laced with scents of black cherry and French vanilla in the October 2006 edition of People magazine.

Four months later, British travel agency Thomson Holidays sprayed its store windows with a scratch-and-sniff scent of coconut suntan lotion, in order to remind those passing by that they, via Thomson Holidays, could leave February's icy chill for beaches in sunnier climes.

Since catchy jingles and flashy graphics are ubiquitous, many companies are hoping that nice smells will prove a new way to attract c

Demography: Eat Right for a Healthy Brain

Yet another reason to watch your weight: A new study says that it could cut your future risk of dementia by as much as 20%.

“There is a strong correlation,” says May Beydoun, postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-author of the study. “The rates of dementia increase with the rates of obesity.”

The study reviewed 10 previously published reports on dementia and obesity. Beydoun and co-author ­Youfa Wang, assistant professor of international health, found the incidence of dementia to be 20% higher among obese adults. Incidence of ­Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, was 80% higher.

“Preventing or treating obesity at a younger age could play a major role in reducing the number of dementia patients and those with other commonly associated illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease,” according to Wang.

There is reason for worry. World Health Organization data for 193 surveyed countries indicates that 160 saw their populations’ overweight and obesity rates increase between 2002 and 2005.

WHO expects the problem to get worse in the years ahead, projecting that the numbers of overweight and obese adults, respectively 1.6 billion and 400 million in 2005, will total 2.3 billion and 700 million by 2015.

Most of the increase is in developing countries. The biggest increases in female obesity between 2002 and 2005 were in Haiti and Bangladesh; for males, Cambodia and Vietnam.

“Obesity and obesity-related diseases are now becoming a disease of poverty,” says Daniel Epstein, WHO public information officer. “Even if people are poor, they can get more caloric intake.” Epstein blames some of the problem on the increased availability of fast food, which tends to beat its healthier alternatives in price and convenience.

“If you go to a store and buy fresh fruits and fresh salad makings, it does turn out to be more expensive and more time-consuming than just feeding them junk food,” Epstein says. Fast food is also aggressively advertised. “A guy might see five fast-food commercials in one day. He might see one government commercial that says ‘Eat right. Take care of your kids. Feed them healthy foods.’”

There have not been nearly enough campaigns that might counter the advertising, according to Caitlin Carlson, communications officer for international aid group Mercycorps.*

“Our health teams aren’t seeing it. It hasn’t gotten the kind of responses that other problems like AIDS and hunger have,” she says.

Beydoun hopes that this study will help raise awareness of the long-term rates of obesity.

“There are more efforts to be done, especially on younger children and other adults. I’m not sure how much action is taking place now, but there are clear signs that we need to work more on this,” she concludes.—Rick Docksai

Sources: Public Health News Center, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, E3144, Baltimore, Maryland 21205-2179.

WHO Global Database: Data for Saving Lives” World Health Organization. Web site (June 1, 2008).

Demography

Sept-October 2008 Vol. 42, No. 5

Eat Right for a Healthy Brain

A study shows why losing weight could save you from brain damage.

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Economics: Majoring in the Unusual

For high schoolers plotting their future careers, these are confusing times. On the one hand, there’s cause for optimism: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) pro­jects that the U.S. economy will add 15.6 million jobs in the decade between 2006 and 2016. But those jobs won’t be evenly split across regions or industries.

Many economic sectors, like manufacturing, will see declines in the number of new workers they take on. New entrants into the labor force will be forced to compete with workers overseas for the best jobs. How does the modern college freshman navigate this uneven terrain? One strategy is to plan for a degree in an unusual field. The newest edition of They Teach That In College!? published by College & Career Press, offers a few fresh insights.

“Business, Social Sciences/History, and Education are the most popular college majors today, but not every student has the interest or aptitude to be successful in these fields,” the editors write in the introduction. “Additionally, many of these fields are glutted with graduates who are forced to take lower-paying jobs or positions that are unrelated to their field of study.”

The book details 96 unusual majors representing fast-growing fields with good salary prospects. “The major had to capture our imagination—in short, it had to be fun, and hopefully, interesting to our readers,” write the editors.

Among the most eye-catching:

• Sustainable Business. The popularity of the green movement is ­creating opportunities for more environmentally conscious capitalists. Sustainable business is defined as building and maintaining business profitability while employing practices that promote local communities and respect the environment. Interested high-school students should take classes in conventional business, environmental sciences, and biology.

• Computer and Digital Forensics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies this as a specialization in the private detective field. While many conventional gumshoes (as they used to be called) spend long nights in seedy bars hunting down sources, or camped outside of motels to catch cheating spouses, digital forensics experts work in clean offices, retrieving and analyzing digital evidence found on cell phones, PDAs, and digital networks. BLS rates the future opportunities for qualified computer forensic investigators as “excellent.”

• Comic Book Art. Once the refuge of awkward teenagers, the market for comic books and graphic novels in the United States has grown 12% since 2006, hitting $705 million in April 2008. The surprising success of companies like Marvel Entertainment, which owns such properties as Spiderman, X-Men, and The Hulk, shows there’s money in doodles and ink. The company’s stock price has risen from $13 per share to $34 per share in the past five years. Many publishing experts consider comics and graphic novels the key growth area for print publishers in the years ahead.

• Nanoscience/Nanotechnolgy. Nanoscience, or the study of objects one-billionth of a meter in size, will be among the most important technological fields of the twenty-first century—of use to such industries as biotechnology, materials science, energy, and agriculture. “The field is relatively new and will grow dramatically. Consumer products containing nanotechnology are already on the market, including cosmetics, stain-resistant clothing, and batteries. As the need for alternative ­energy arises, nanotechnology will become more prevalent in solar cells,” says Alissa Agnello, an instructor of nanotechnology at Seattle Community College, which offers a nanotechnology degree.

• Strategic Intelligence. Think Harvard is selective? The most exclusive degree-granting program in the United States, the National Defense Intelligence College’s program in strategic intelligence, is open only to members of the U.S. military or federal employees with Top Secret clearance. But if you’re qualified, there’s no faster route to a job spying on foreign governments, or as it’s more politely known, “information gathering.”

Perhaps the most practical and potentially rewarding major is the relatively new field of entrepreneurship. Starting your own company requires a working knowledge of a variety of different fields, such as accounting, economics, and advertising. But for those willing to put in the time, ­entrepreneurial success pays well. Self-employed individuals report the highest levels of job and career satisfaction. While they comprise only one-fifth of the U.S. population, the self-employed make up more than 75% of U.S. millionaires. Now that’s a useful major.—Patrick Tucker

Source: They Teach That In College!? Second Edition. College & Career Press. 2008. 344 pages. Paperback. $22.95.

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Economics

Sept-October 2008 Vol. 42, No. 5

Majoring in the Unusual

“Out of the box” college programs for Generation Y.

Technology for September-October 2008

Designer Isotopes

Rare-isotope research brings supernova processes down to Earth.

A new line of rare-isotope facilities, due to open in the next eight years in locations around Europe and North America, will collide atoms at high speeds to make them radioactive. The goal is to jumpstart processes that do not now take place anywhere on Earth, but that are commonplace in the cores of exploding stars.

The stellar collisions create isotopes, which are variations of the original atoms plus or minus a few neutrons. The new facilities will enable astronomers and astrophysicists to work directly with elements they could never get hold of until now.

The rare-isotope facilities “would extend nuclear research from the domain of stable or near-stable nuclei familiar in everyday life to nearly the full range of nuclei that exist in nature’s most exotic stellar environments,” according to the National Research Council.

These facilities might also provide more clues to what took place in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang that most scientists believe marked the emergence of the known universe.

The studies would have many earthly implications, according to Bradley Sherrill, associate director of research at the Michigan State University rare-isotope facility National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

“If we want to understand where gold comes from, we’ve got to understand these processes that go on in stars. We know it originated in stars, we just don’t know how. These experiments with isotopes could help answer those questions,” says Sherrill.

Sherrill says that researchers of many scientific disciplines not related to space would stand to benefit. National-security experts, for example, could apply the added knowledge about atomic reactions to undertake “nuclear forensics”: If a terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon, agency researchers could identify which country supplied it.

“Hopefully no one will ever have to use it,” says Sherrill. “My hope is that it could be an important deterrent if those supplying the nuclear weapon knew that it could be identified exactly where the material came from.”

The isotope research could also help physicians find new, lower-impact ways to scan patients and treat them using particles instead of scalpels and X-rays, the NRC notes. Instead of risky surgical procedures, physicians might opt for radioadioactive “scalpels” that destroy tumors and other diseased tissue by striking them with decayed particles.

Rare-isotope facilities might also make nuclear energy safer to use. Certain high-energy neutrons destroy radioactive waste. These radiation-defusing neutrons are hard to find on earth, but replicating the processes of star cores could make rare or nonexistant particles common.

“The elements found on earth, the ones stable against weak decay, are only a small fraction of those transiently produced in stars,” the NRC states.

The U.S. Department of Energy has taken interest in rare-isotope research, but the United States is a relative latecomer to the rare-isotope game. Japan has been producing rare isotopes at its RIKEN facility since 2006. Canada, France, and Germany are all on schedule to open new isotope facilities between 2010 and 2015. —Rick Docksai

Sources: Bradley Sherrill, National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University, 1 Cyclotron, East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1321.

National Research Council of the National Academies, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001.

Beaming Data across the Cosmos

Lasers beat radio waves for speed and accuracy in communications. Data exchange between satellites could be increased a hundredfold by using lasers instead of radio waves, according to German researchers. Laser beams are also easier to focus than radio waves.

Data exchange requires bandwidth—the more data, the more bandwidth required. Space research and development is running up against radio waves’ bandwidth limits, making laser technology more attractive.

In the most recent satellite-to-satellite test of technologies developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT), transmission equivalent to about 400 DVDs worth of data per hour was achieved. Such rates would make it possible to transmit large data packets between satellites or between Earth and satellites.

Physical and mechanical challenges to laser-based satellite communications remain. Communications lasers in space are activated by pump modules, which must be resilient against the vibrations and forces of launches, and then survive harsh conditions in space, such as radiation and extreme temperature variations.—Cynthia G. Wagner

Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology, ILT, Steinbachstrasse 15, 52074 Aachen, Germany.

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Technology

Sept-October 2008 Vol. 42, No. 5

Three Forces Shaping Our Future

Review by Aaron M. Cohen
Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change the Way You Live and Work by Robert J. Shapiro. St. Martin’s Press. 2008. 358 pages. $26.95.

Three powerful global forces are currently reshaping humanity’s near-term future, writes former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Robert J. Shapiro in his new book Futurecast. These forces are globalization, an aging world population, and America’s unchallenged position as the world’s sole military superpower. Analyzing them, Shapiro creates a “global blueprint” that charts the likely course of the planet over the next decade and a half.

Most of the discussion revolves around the impact of globalization, which Shapiro believes will produce the greatest amount of change, as it breaks down barriers and opens up economies. He argues that the United States (along with the rest of the world) has no choice but to embrace globalization, despite its drawbacks and limitations. In fact, globalization will ultimately favor the United States and China, while creating much greater economic challenges for Europe and Japan (whose economies are significantly less productive overall). Indeed, the economic futures of America and China are intrinsically linked, for better or for worse, now that China has emerged as an economic superpower. One reason for this connection is the seemingly endless shift of production jobs to China, which provides a seemingly endless supply of low-skilled, low-wage workers.

“A decade from now, America will still be the world’s largest and most technologically advanced economy, and the one with the greatest impact on everyone else,” Shapiro writes. “But nothing will stop globalization from destroying job security for millions of Americans, along with their European and Japanese counterparts.” By the year 2020, the vast majority of manufacturing jobs will have permanently relocated to the developing world.

Shapiro reminds the reader that China’s economy is more than three times what it was 15 years ago, and he believes that its rapid economic ascension will continue unabated, as China has now become a key trading partner attractive to foreign investors. However, China’s economic growth may be happening too quickly. The rest of the country is struggling to keep up with the changes, including implementing key environmental and product safety regulations. Also, the vast majority of the workers who contribute to the growing economy remain greatly impoverished. Due to these struggles, China’s economic success is not guaranteed. Shapiro argues that China needs a more liberal political system to manage its liberalized economic system—conditions that are already in place in the United States. Shapiro also disagrees with the view that India will soon emerge as an economic force, and labels India “still a backward economy decades away from global economic influence.”

Longer Lives, Smaller Families

In addition to globalization, Shapiro also notes that an unprecedented shift from large families with short life-spans to small families with significantly longer life-spans is currently taking place across the globe. In Japan, “the median age will hit fifty by 2020.” Population change is something that can’t be legislated or regulated, Shapiro argues, and the economic ramifications of the shift will be felt everywhere. Labor forces will contract and economic growth will be stymied, the vast number of retirees will create a financial crisis for government pension programs in virtually every country that has them, the standard of living will drop, and taxes will increase sharply. The global health-care crisis will inevitably extend to China, where approximately 80% lack medical care: “For the nearly 80% of Chinese without insurance or the private means to pay, doctors won’t see them and hospitals won’t admit them, regardless of how sick or injured they are.” New technologies will only drive up the cost of medical care, which “inevitably will create enormous social and economic stresses in every major country over the next ten to fifteen years,” Shapiro writes.

While the U.S. will likely remain the dominant superpower with no direct challengers, Shapiro finds that the threat of terrorism is one of two wild cards that have the potential to unpredictably alter the projected future outcome. He analyzes what effects different terrorism scenarios might have on the new global economy before briefly identifying different means of technological advancement (the other wild card), including nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technologies, and their effect on the market as well.

The passages discussing climate change expose the one major weakness of the book, however, for Shapiro doesn’t devote much of his powerful analytic skills to an in-depth discussion of the impact of global warming. Instead, he optimistically foresees nanotechnological breakthroughs leading to clean energy, making climate change a “manageable problem,” without elaborating much on what that implies. The topic requires more thoughtful analysis.

Shapiro’s writing style lacks the colloquial, hand-on-your-shoulder approach of award-winning journalists who have tackled similar subject matter, but when he delves into the specifics of the new global economy, his prose is engaging, and infused with real energy. At times repetitive, Futurecast would be more effective if it were more concise, but it succeeds in giving the reader a sophisticated awareness of many of the major challenges and unexpected developments in store for us within the next 15 years.

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Three Forces Shaping Our Future

Sept-October 2008 Vol. 42, No. 5

VISIONS: Virtual Health

By Patrick Tucker
Teachers may despise them, parents may loathe them, but video games are a fact of modern life. Global video game sales are estimated around $12 billion annually and growing. The movement to harness the power of games for good has likewise been building and is gaining momentum in some unlikely quarters. A recent Games for Health conference in Baltimore played host to not only software developers but also health professionals looking toward a future where medical train training, even treatment for certain conditions, can be delivered in the form of playable software.

The Starlight Starbright Foundation is one of the emerging leaders in using video games as a component of patient education. The Foundation produces a game called Quest for the Code, which it has distributed to 1.5 million kids suffering from asthma. “With asthma, the problem was kids weren’t managing the disease,” according to Starlight Vice President Joan Ford. “Either they didn’t know how to identify symptoms or were afraid of being stigmatized for stopping play to use an inhaler.” Inside the game space, players can advance only by taking the necessary steps to manage symptoms.

On the other end of the spectrum, a 3-D immersive game called Zero Hour (from the Virtual Heroes company) is designed not for patients but for medical personnel and first responders. The player can try out different roles in emergency scenarios, such as an earthquake, bombing, or saran gas attack.

In the future, game trainers like Zero Hour will replace formal instruction for most medical workers, according to Bruce Jarrell of the University of Maryland Medical Center. He predicts that doctor and nurse shortages will pressure health-care providers to find new ways to recruit and train medics faster and more effectively. That means allowing them to train wherever they might be and evaluating medics in training in real time outside of classroom settings. “How do you train 100,000 physicians, or even a million patients to care for themselves?” he asks.

Mark Baldwin of Mind Habits sees video games not only educating patients but also, in limited capacity, actually helping them to cope with psychological issues like low self-esteem, which can be a major contributor to stress. Players engaging in the Mind Habits game are rewarded when they click on positive images and confidence- reinforcing messages. The idea that simply clicking on pictures of people smiling could lower anxiety may seem specious, but Baldwin has conducted a controlled study on the hypothesis and published his findings in the Journal of the American Psychological Association. When repeated often enough, the trick works, he says. Because the game is online, players can also track their progress over time and even see how stressed they were on certain dates, as well as how their stress levels have improved.

The total market for what are being called serious games—as in games that exist for

more than entertainment purposes—is more than $150 million, according to Ben Sawyer, one of the founders of the Games for Health initiative. He estimates that health-related games comprise 20% of the serious games space. In the future, he sees exercise gaming (also known as excer-gaming) going more and more mainstream and teachers using games to channel the excess energy of their most rambunctious students—rather than sending them to a corner when they act out. But his real hope is that video games will transform public health.

“What we’re trying to do is change the interface to health care,” he says. “The interface to games — there’s no argument about how great and fantastic it is. The interface to health care, no matter how you define it, the way you go to a doctor’s office, the way you fill out a form, fantastic it isn’t.”

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VIRTUAL HEALTH

Sept-October 2008 Vol. 42, No. 5

When Avatars Come Out to Play

Review by Rick Docksai
The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World by Wagner James Au. HarperCollins, www.harpercollins.com. 2008. 274 pages. $25.95.

As a young boy, Philip Rosedale wanted to change the world. In 2003, he would do just that by launching Second Life, recounts tech journalist Wagner James Au. In The Making of Second Life, Au takes readers on a tour of the online world that he calls “the best candidate to be a key feature in the Internet’s next generation.”

“Even if you have no home inside it now, odds are that you eventually will (or at the very least, find yourself becoming an occasional visitor),” Au writes.

Au spent three years as avatar Hamlet Linden, an “embedded journalist” who traversed Second Life’s cities, wastelands, and continents to report daily on its most newsworthy developments.

Second Life is an online world whose whole interior is formed and developed by registered users, or “Residents.” Residents interact as three-dimensional online personas, or avatars, and buy or sell a wide range of goods using Linden dollars. Second Life sets virtually no limits on what avatars look like, what they can build their surroundings into, or what kinds of commerce they can conduct.

“Everything within Second Life is given form and substance by its Residents,” Au writes.

He argues that, while many online worlds came before Second Life—Everquest, World of Warcraft, Active Worlds, and There, among others—the freedom of Second Life Residents to create and recreate their domain makes Second Life unique.

“In most online worlds, reality is part and parcel a conception of the company that created it,” he writes, arguing that it makes Second Life far more likely to impact real life than other online worlds. He recalls numerous examples from his travels of seeing it do so. Real-world adults dated and married after meeting each other in Second Life, and real-world relationships have ended because one partner was having affairs with other avatars in Second Life.

Au shares success stories of individuals who earned real-world income by selling services in Second Life: Jason Foo, an unemployed Iraq war veteran, earned $450 per week from running a Second Life casino. Alyssa LaRoche, a retired consultant, created the Second Life fashion line Preen, generating as much as $4,000 a month by selling clothes and accessories to avatars.

Real-world businesses, nonprofit groups, and politicians also have sought greater publicity by holding events as avatars in Second Life. These include the American Cancer Society, which has hosted virtual fund-raisers, and onetime U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner, who became an avatar in September 2006 to speak to other avatars about his campaign.

That someone might use Second Life for professional reasons hardly surprises Au at all: “Any real-world business or enterprise that can be enhanced or leveraged by a 3-D world has a future at stake here,” he writes.

But how big a stake?

Au’s descriptions and anecdotes, while amusing and intriguing, leave questions about Second Life’s ultimate importance largely unanswered. The American Cancer Society was highly successful long before Second Life was born. And Warner’s avatar wielded little real-world electoral power: Warner is today a forgotten also-ran in the 2008 presidential race.

And if Second Life’s user freedom is a strong selling point, Au’s own numbers do not suggest it. He notes that, in mid-2007, Second Life had 500,000 active subscribers. He also notes that World of Warcraft had at that time around 9 million.

Even the buzz surrounding Second Life is relatively modest. Steve Rubel, an Edelman Digital marketing executive who publishes technology blog Micro Persuasion, noted that Technorati, a search engine that searches only blogs, recorded 12 times more blogosphere mentions of YouTube than of Second Life.

“Second Life is not growing nearly as fast as many perceive or as rapidly as other communities that encourage participation,” Rubel notes.

Au demonstrates in The Making of Second Life that Second Life is a remarkable test case in the capacities of virtual technology. He offers useful resources and tips for businesses hoping to establish a presence in Second Life, including a helpful glossary. But is he right in predicting that Second Life will become the Internet’s Next Big Thing? That remains for readers, and avatars, to find out.

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A World Where No One Ages

Review by Rick Docksai
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime by Aubrey de Grey, with Michael Rae. St. Martin’s Press, www.stmartins.com . 2007. 389 pages. $26.95.

Is there really a Fountain of Youth? Soon, it could be more than an old folk tale, asserts Aubrey de Grey in Ending Aging. Within this century, the self-described antiaging activist argues, science could discover how to reverse the human aging process, enabling people to live for a thousand years or more — and to do so free of arthritis, cancer, dementia, and other ailments that people today associate with growing old.

“There will quite simply cease to be a proportion of the population that is frail and infirm as a result of their age,” he writes. De Grey identifies several types of accumulating human tissue damage that cause the symptoms of old age, and “rejuvenation therapies” that might undo each. One type of damage results from accumulations of waste compounds within cells. A2E buildup in retina cells, for example, ends in maculardegeneration. De Grey sees a solution in soil bacteria. Enzymes from these bacteria could be conveyed into human cells and spur the cells to more effectively flush out waste compounds.

Also, many of the body’s cells simply die without getting replaced. This contributes over time to heart attack damage, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and much of the general enfeeblement of the body that accompanies aging. Stem-cell research could generate healthy new replacement tissue.

De Grey sees many signs of hope in today’s breakthroughs, and he urges the public to take an active interest. Right now, he writes, that interest is lacking, and public officials hesitate to fund antiaging research, lest they get caught spending tax dollars on “pipe dreams.”

De Grey exhibits great optimism about defeating age—perhaps too much optimism. While lauding a youth-filled future, he ignores many likely complications. If people live a thousand years or more, would the earth become overpopulated? How much would rejuvenation treatments cost? What new disparities would emerge as an affluent few live healthily indefinitely while most other s around them wither and die? In a time of rising income inequalities, booming populations, and escalating health-care costs, these questions are worth asking. The closest that de Grey gets to answering them is a dismissive admonition that there are risks and that “we should work to preempt [them] by appropriately careful forward planning.”

Ending Aging is more of a how-to treatise than a vision for the future. But it is a how-to treatise for achieving one of humankind’s oldest dreams — eternal youth. If his argument is incomplete, it is intriguing nonetheless. And if the book leaves nagging questions unanswered, it also poses compelling new questions about what is possible, given time and sufficient imagination. —Rick Docksai

A World Where No One Ages

July-August 2008 Vol. 42, No. 4

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An Economic Approach to Saving the Environment (and Ourselves)

Review by Aaron Cohen
The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability byJames Gustave Speth. Yale University Press, www.yalebooks.com. 2008. 295 pages. $28.

“All we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy.”

So states James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, in his new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World. He argues that the devastation of the natural world is inextricably linked to the rampant overconsumption of resources in an increasingly successful global economy. The solution, therefore, is to transform the most destructive features of capitalism (such as unbridled corporate power and consumerism’s flawed ideology that one can gain happiness through acquiring material possessions) in order to prevent environmental disaster.

A former White House advisor and founder of the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit environmental think tank, Speth believes that the global economy is increasing at an unsustainable rate. Corporations and wealthy industrialized countries bear much of the blame for resource depletion, and they are continuing to exploit natural resources at a dangerous pace. “The planet cannot sustain capitalism as we know it,” Speth maintains. It’s time to transition into what he terms a “post-growth society.”

There are ways to reform the current capitalist model so that the market both protects and restores the environment. The solution requires multiple approaches, such as market-based incentives and stronger environmental regulations, including government regulation of large corporations. Speth argues that we must do away with market fundamentalist approaches and begin to hold large corporations accountable to society, not just to their shareholders. Calling for more environmentally friendly products is one of the first steps that consumers can take.

“Even at levels of consumption that are high and growing,” Speth writes, “consumers can at least insist on two green things. First, they can shift purchases to products and services where the making and the use of the product are carried out in a more environmentally friendly way. And second, they can insist that provisions be made for the recycling and reuse of consumer products.” Yet, instead of simply being content to follow the current trend of “green consumerism,” people must also reduce the amount that they consume. In other words, not buying paper towels is still a better alternative than switching to a “forest-friendly” brand.

Speth also takes on the mainstream environmental movement in which he has been a leading figure for the past four decades. He argues that it has failed to substantially protect the environment by working within the system, and that a new approach is necessary. In other words, if trying to create change from within the system doesn’t work, then it’s time to change the system. Speth argues that, since corporations dominate the U.S. government as well as its economy, the only possible realistic solution is for the public to take on more responsibility and demand greater corporate accountability. Throughout the book, the environmental movement’s “ultimate insider” asserts that we must mobilize people on the outside, starting at the grassroots level, if any real progress is to be made.

Are these solutions hopelessly idealistic and impossible to achieve? Speth’s passionate argument is convincing— it can be done, but it will require a great deal of effort. Speth sees two possible futures, two paths that humanity can choose to take: the one that we’re currently on, which leads straight into the abyss, and another, which bridges the divide and leads us toward a more sustainable future.

An Economic Approach to Saving the Environment (and Ourselves)

July-August 2008 Vol. 42, No. 4

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India’s Progress Reducing Child Labor

New economy’s need for skilled labor sends India’s youth back to school.
Schooling has traditionally not been an option for many children in India’s rural families. With poverty widespread and high skilled jobs scarce, rural children typically have had to leave school early and join the workforce, earning what little they could to help feed their families.

But technology may be changing things for the better. Tech-based industries are growing quickly around India and are desperate for educated workers. Newly available jobs in software design, engineering, and communications promise young people lifestyles that they could never achieve with manual labor. Growing numbers of parents are taking note and are urging their children to stay in school.

School enrollment in India has consequently made a boost. UNESCO reports that, whereas 82% of boys and 69% of girls completed primary school in 2002, 87% of boys and 82% of girls completed primary school in 2005. Secondary school enrollment rose from 55% of boys and 41% of girls in 2002 to 59% of boys and 49% of girls in 2005.

“[Parents] see that there is this upward mobility, and the people who are benefiting are, more often than not, educated,” says Leona Christy, program manager for Pratham USA, the U.S.-based support arm of Pratham, one of many Indian education advocacy groups that work for more and better Indian schools.

In villages around India, parents and village leaders attend Pratham sponsored workshops on teaching and school administration methods. They also organize into PTA-like groups that press teachers, school administrators, and district officials for needed building improvements and more rigorous curricula.

“The concept of holding the government accountable is slowly building up,” says Christy. Pratham field coordinators teach parents basic math and reading, and also encourage parents to have their children read in front of them. Even if the parents cannot read, they can see if their children struggle over words.

Without parental advocacy, teachers may collect their salaries but skip teaching their students. If parents see a child is not learning, they can take the matter up with the teachers or school authorities.

These developments mark a considerable change from years past, when those parents might have expected their children to forgo study for work.

“Many would have said to you, ‘Why would we [send our children to school]? They are only going to work on the farm, anyway,’” Christy says. “Now, they are seeing the opportunities.”

Even those children who remain on the farm benefit from more schooling. Educated farmers are better able to weather food price fluctuations, droughts, and crop diseases by supplementing their farming income with nonfarm income, according to Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University professor of Indian political economy.

“They now find some other employment for a few months of the year. Sometimes they come into factories; they just come in for short periods and then they’re gone,” he says.

Education also enables farmers to stay more attuned to farming innovations. In 2006, the food and tobacco company ITC undertook construction of 6,500 “e-Choupal” kiosks (choupal is a Hindi word for village meeting place) that consist of crop depots with computer terminals. Farmers now can come with their produce, then go online to check market prices and sell at the best prices. They also can check weather reports, learn new farming practices, or shop for household and farming supplies. The information they glean leads to greater crop yields, higher profits, and cheaper pesticides, but getting these benefits requires literacy and computer skills.

In general, service industries — computer software, telecommunications, real estate, marketing, and other knowledge-based, high-skilled enterprises — have become increasingly important to India’s economy since the 1990s. The CIA World Factbook reports that, while services employ less than one-third of India’s labor force, they account for more than half of its economic output. That output has pushed India’s economy skyward: Gross domestic product grew on average 7% a year from 1997 through 2005, and by 8.5% in both 2006 and 2007.

Such a boom would end quickly, though, without a steady supply of educated workers. That supply has long been wanting in India, where, historically, only the children of the most affluent Indian families have received good educations.

The Indian government declared a long-term fix in December 2002 with the passage of the 86th Amendment, which decreed “free and compulsory education” for all children ages 6 to 14 by 2010. The government would build schools in communities that lacked them and hire new teachers to better staff the existing schools. It would also examine all schools, old and new, to make sure that all buildings and utilities were in working order.

In 2006, the government further encouraged youth education with a ban on children’s employment in the domestic and hospitality sectors. It referred children who were found working in these sectors to the National

Child Labor Projects, which provides them education and rehabilitation services.

The law cannot rescue every child. Economic desperation still pushes many poor families to put their children to work. Mira Kamdar, a World Policy Institute senior fellow who has written numerous articles and books on India, has come across more than one child servant at a well-to-do house during her visits to India.

“These people can’t afford not to have their children work. A child in these families who doesn’t work basically doesn’t eat,” Kamdar says, noting that more than half of India’s population lives on less than 50¢ a day. “India remains, for all the growth and the tens of millions enjoying a First World lifestyle, a very poor country.”

Still, the CIA World Factbook states that poverty has declined 10% since 1997. And many of those in India who remain poor are increasingly hopeful.

“There is a recognition among them that education is a way out of poverty,” says Panagariya.

— Rick Docksai

Sources: “Web Kiosks Lure Indian Farmers as Retailers Target Rural Market,” by Subramaniam Sharma, Bloomberg News (May 15, 2007).

“India Against Child Labour,” World of Work (December 2007), International Labour Office. Interviews: Leona Christy, Pratham USA.; Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University; Mira Kamdar, World Policy Institute.

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Government

July-August 2008 Vol. 42, No. 4

India’s Progress Reducing Child Labor

The 21st Century Writer

Originally published in THE FUTURIST magazine, July-August 2008
By Patrick Tucker
It’s a snowy February Monday in midtown Manhattan. Publishing magnate and tech guru Tim O’Reilly’s “Tools of Change” conference has just opened at a Marriott off Broadway. The timing is fortunate; publishers HarperCollins and Random House have just announced that they will be offering more book content online and au gratis. The affable O’Reilly—who has been urging publishers to go digital since the early eighties—refuses to gloat (much). “They weren’t even trying to keep electronic copies [of manuscripts],” recalls O’Reilly. “You look at these announcements today, they seem too little too late,... but it’s allowing them to start innovating, to become part of the technology process.”

“Twenty years ago, people wouldn’t have listened,” says Sara Domville, president of F+W Publications book division. “They’ll listen now.”

As the publisher of an extremely popular series of computer manuals, O’Reilly is a bright star in a field of drab. Dubbed the “guru of the participation age” by Steven Levy in a 2005 Wired profile and a “graying hippie” with a “hostility toward traditional media” by author Andrew Keen, O’Reilly makes millions of dollars promoting open source at his conferences and selling do-it-yourself know-how to anyone who browses the computer aisle at Barnes and Noble. His message to the world’s publishing elite exudes a Wizard of Oz simplicity: Give more product away on your Web site, thereby attracting more people to sell on something pricier than a book— like a bunch of books or a conference ticket. The approach works for him at least. Some 900 publishing execs from Simon and Schuster, Norton, etc., have paid $1,100 apiece (on average) to learn how to give content away.

“I think I’m optimistic,” said Sonia Nash of Random House, echoing the uncertainty of the attendees, editors, and publishers from around the world eager to find some reason to feel good about the future of what they sell.

Reading, Writing, and Publishing In the 21st Century

For people who make their living selling words to readers—and indeed for readers themselves—these are times of upheaval. The information technology revolution has led to an explosion in textual content. More people are engaging in more conversations, sharing more opinions, learning more, and learning faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. The site Blogherald.com counted more than 100 million blogs as of October 2005. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 93% of U.S. teens aged 12–17 used the Internet in 2006; among them, 64% have created content, up from 57% in 2004. We’ve entered an era where the acts of thinking, writing, and to a certain extent publishing are indistinguishable, and where charging money for editorial content is becoming an ever trickier proposition. Book publishers, newspapers and magazines, writers, and readers are experiencing these same IT trends in very different ways.

For readers and the educated curious, the information revolution means immediate access to thousands of sources for minimal cost. It also means the opportunity to become a source, trustworthy or otherwise, and to share an opinion with the world the second the whim strikes to do so.

For many writers, particularly nonfiction writers, it means leaving newsrooms (often reluctantly) to join the online world of blogs, vlogs, and RSS feeds where the pace of news is accelerated, traditional journalism practice is routinely scoffed at, and the pay is modest at best. Even popular bloggers like Om Malik, senior writer for Business 2.0 magazine, report that the money from ad clicks related to their blog content is barely enough to cover the cost of blogging. A recent New York Times article points out that, due to growing competition, many bloggers feel they have to copy, paste, and post almost 24 hours a day. Bloggers complain of sleep disorders and weight loss. Three tech bloggers have died in the last few months from maladies associated with work exhaustion.

For many magazine and newspaper publishers, the goal now is to transition into a more Web-focused business model quickly. For book publishers, the mission is to make an industry built on a fifteenth-century technology viable in the twenty-first century. That means reinventing the concept of the book for the digital age. Theirs* is perhaps the biggest challenge.

Many of the execs at the Tools of Change conference hope that O’Reilly can lead them to greener pastures. He's secured a permanent place in history for coining “Web 2.0,” shorthand for the user-driven Internet and the culture of snarky chat-room speak, scandalous celebrity photos, and YouTube flameups that goes with it. Kids today talk, breathe, and sweat Web 2.0. But are emoticon-laden screeds and homemade YouTube videos going to save “the book” or just further our cultural transition away from print literacy?

Is O’Reilly—unwittingly perhaps— selling a Trojan horse?

Fatal Revolution

To get a sense of how market trends are affecting publishing, it’s important to understand how those trends break from, but also mirror, those of the past. In the 1700s, when booksellers came to replace the aristocracy as the primary patrons of the literary arts in England, writers such as Henry Fielding and the Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith decried the phenomenon as a “fatal revolution.”

Fielding wrote a dramatic satire on the subject called The Author’s Farce, and Goldsmith railed ceaselessly against book merchants even as he profited by them. To wit: “You cannot but be sensible, gentlemen, that a reformation in literature was never more necessary than at the present juncture, when wit is sold by the yard, and a journeyman-author paid like a journeyman-tailor.” Goldsmith argued that, while booksellers commissioned a greater number of works than did the aristocrats, the quality of writing was deeply compromised by the process of commercialization; literature was suffering a spiritual death as a result.

Today’s fatal revolution takes the opposite form. Publishers are concerned that market forces will hurt their ability to sell carefully edited and packaged material, or compel them to relinquish editorial control to readers—essentially outsourcing their jobs to the masses. According to Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly, giving up control will be a hard sell. “There’s a lot of snobbery in the book business,” she said. “Book publishers are used to being the people who decide what others get to read. That’s breaking down against their will.”

Recent data shows just how resistant publishers are to today’s trends. While the world of online content is expanding (more content coming from more people all the time), the world of published books is contracting. Book publishers are finding it harder to back first-time authors, authors who aren’t already famous, or even established writers who aren’t selling. In June 2007, U.S. publishers reported a 3% increase in the number of titles released for 2006, but that followed double-digit declines in titles released during 2004 and 2005. Extrapolate those numbers forward and you arrive at a future where the books that are brought to print serve not to bring new authors and ideas to the public but to commemorate the already famous in book form.

Seth Godin, marketing expert and author of Survival Is Not Enough and Free Prize Inside, contends that that future is already here. “The book is a souvenir,” he excitedly told his Monday morning audience. “Once you realize you’re in the souvenir business, you’ll play by different rules.”

To Douglas Rushkoff, best-selling author of Media Virus and Innovation from the Inside Out, the key to book publishing in the future is recognizing that readers are after more than information. They’re seeking an intellectual connection with an author and a community experience organized around an idea. Publishers have to look at what is still scarce, says Rushkoff. “While the book isn’t scarce, I’m scarce. I can only be in so many places. So there are a lot of different experiences that attend the book that [readers] should be participating in, to think about the book as a way to promote a set of ideas. How to work with those ideas is limited.”

Those attendant experiences can include lectures, classes, even parties. The more personal the experience, the more people are willing to pay for it. The book party is hardly a new invention. The trick, said Rushkoff, is to think of the books as marketing materials for the event and the author, not the event as marketing for the book. “Every time I do a big talk, I have to arm wrestle the publisher to help me sell a thousand, five thousand books to the people who want them… They want them at a discount because they want 5,000 copies. In reality, if I’m going to get $5,000 on a talk, my publisher should get half of that money and should help me administrate the talk and get books out.” Frank Daniels, COO of Ingram’s digital group, believes U.S. publishers have a bright future, but only if they think of themselves as purveyors of information packages rather than printers.

“Right now, when you say ‘book’ you’re thinking of 300 pages bound in something, delivered, and consumed in one period of time,” said Daniels. “What is the new metaphor for the book? Is it something that exists more like a TV show? That’s episodic? That’s consumed in one sitting, or later? Or is it something more like a Web site and a Web environment? You both own it and sub scribe to it? As we create a platform where editors can be creative in their thinking process, then we will truly begin to break the metaphor for the book and have an experience for our consumers that they will consume and continue to consume.”

According to Daniels, textbooks (hardly the most glamorous fiefdom in the book kingdom) actually represent the best opportunity to bring a wide variety of talents—audio creation, film, even acting—to bear on the job of publishing, leading to a variety of possible monetary transactions that can occur around a single product or “book.”

“The beauty about the Kindle,” Daniels said of Amazon’s newest handheld e-reader, “isn’t that the device is great. The device is terrible. But the buying experience is wonderful.… We want to make it so that it’s as easy to do digital stuff as it is to buy a book. As we get that done, publishers will say, ‘Yes. There is a market there. I now want to add some video and audio and create a truly different metaphor.’”

O’Reilly agrees that transcending the traditional concept of the book will be essential for publishers in the decades ahead. “A lot of people think of publishing as printing books on paper, paper between covers, those objects in bookstores,” he said. “I always thought that publishing was about, first of all, understanding what matters, figuring out how to gather information, and then gathering readers who that information matters to. There’s a kind of curation process. What the Internet has done is bring us new methods of curation,” meaning, presumably, finding publishable material and refining it. “A lot of publishers are fighting those models instead of saying ‘This is new stuff that helps us do what we do better.’”

The first step for publishers, according to O’Reilly, is to realize that the information coming from readers is as valuable as the information they give to readers in book form. The next step is to involve the reader in the publishing process.

“A really great example,” he said, “is a session here from a company called Logos Bible Software. Who would think of these guys as doing really cool stuff? They basically publish electronic editions of really obscure religious texts or scholarly texts that are used by people in religion. Would you like your Liddell and Scott’s Greek–English Lexicon online? Guess how they do it? They basically have community pricing software where they have people vote on whether or not they would buy the book.… They’re actually harnessing the community to set prices and to tell them which products to publish. That’s cutting edge.”

Stephen Abram, a past president of the Canadian Library Association, took the argument a step further.

Publishers, he said, need to “stop telling and start listening, to start working from the reader’s, the user ’s, the experiencer ’s contact in. Then they can start creating the products that actually match the behaviors of their user base. In many markets, the traditional publishing formats are misaligned with what needs to happen.”

The reading of static text is a poor substitute for a visceral experience and always has been, said Abram. Plain text sufficed because there was no alternative, no superior way to convey complex data. That’s changed. Abram argued that it’s up to publishers to pick among the available media tools—including video clips, audio files, even virtual reality—and pull them together into a package that facilitates learning, not just reading.

“Do you want your cardiac surgeon to walk into your room before he does your surgery and say, ‘I read the article last night’? No, you want him to have had a thousand experiences putting his hand in someone’s chest and know what it feels like. It should be just like an experience a car mechanic has where he can put his hand on the hood of your car and say it’s the manifold because he’s seen it, heard it, smelled it a thousand times.”

The future of the book as conjured by O’Reilly, Abram, and Daniels is one where the end-users (what used to be called “readers”) give specifications to an editor for the product they want—a combination of movie clips, animations, software applications, possibly even games functioning in a multifaceted learning product accessible across platforms.

The question becomes, who does the writing?

The Future Writer

In the 1990s, most news publishers responded to the rise of the Web with the assumption that Web sites could serve as advertisements for newspapers, but weren’t likely to replace papers themselves. Others began tweaking their business models to fit what they saw as the new market conditions—creating more content and giving more of it away, incrementally. A few, like Daniels, who was working at the The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1993, saw the Internet as a gamechanging technology for journalism.

“When Mosaic came out, we began doing Web sites and publishing on the Internet,” Daniels said. “What we learned was that it’s all around story. It’s about creating the opportunity for consumers to get information in the most effective way possible— what they want, when they want it, at the time they most need it. We began telling [news] stories in multimedia with audio and interactive graphics and video back in 1994.… We sold all our newspapers but one in 1995.”

Across the United States, newspapers and magazines are focusing their resources more and more on their Web sites. In the process, they’re giving voice to an entirely new breed of digital journalist even as they show the door to news department veterans. Many writers are justifiably alarmed by the shift, but, according to Daniels, writers who are willing to view themselves as storytellers first and foremost, who are eager to incorporate new technology into the writing process, have a bright future.

“What’s the biggest thing that held up Hollywood in recent years?” he asked. “The writers went on strike. They’re the ones who put the story together.”

Read differently, in relation to books, this means that the cloistered author—holed up in some wooded cabin to perfect his or her tome—has become an artifact of history. Today, cultivating and communicating with a reader base has become an essential component of building a platform and positioning oneself as viable to publishers, particularly for nonficiton. O’Reilly reported that more than 70% of literary agents advise their clients to blog at least five hours a week.

Beyond blogging, this means that the writers of the future (both fiction and nonfiction) will work with Web designers, software writers, and other professionals to create product.

The more ambitious among them will likely start the process before ever approaching an editor with a manuscript. For many young writers, and writers outside of the United States, that’s already standard practice.

Japanese novelist Yoshi became a cross-continent media sensation when a novel he had first texted into his cell phone became so popular that it went on to sell more than 2 million copies as a printed book. He’s not alone; half of Japan’s top 10 best-selling books last year started out as cell phone–based.

The good news is, you don’t have to be a Tokyo text-novelist to take advantage of technology as a writer. In a conversation last fall, Lewis Lapham, historian and long-time editor of Harper’s magazine, acknowledged that his first response to electronic media was “denunciation.” Lapham’s newest publishing venture, a journal called Lapham’s Quarterly, represents his first foray into multimedia content generation.

“The Web site is not just a translation of the journal onto the Web. They’re different. They’re different media. I’m trying to do an analogous thing, give a sense of the past. But I’m also doing a radio program with the same premise. These are separate media. There are things you can do on radio, on the Web, that you can’t do in print and vice versa.”

To Lapham, the crudeness, silliness, and uncultured quality of today’s Web culture is a symptom of the immaturity of the new medium and the youthfulness of its users. The change will be gradual. “We’re still playing with it like it’s a toy,” he said of the Web. “We don’t yet know how to make art with it. McLuhan points out that the printing press was 1468, it’s a hundred years before you get to Cervantes, to Shakespeare.”

The Same Language

Shakespeare seems a far cry from where we are today. An unremarked consequence of our new information age—one that will influence readers, writers, and publishers in the future—is that bad writing, chat speak, text, millions of message board posts that come from and lead nowhere, are having a cheapening effect on all written content. As veteran journalist Mitchell Stephens has pointed out: “Editors and news directors today fret about the Internet as their predecessors worried about radio and TV, and all now see the huge threat the Web represents to the way they distribute their product. They have been slower to see the threat it represents to the product itself. In a day when information pours out of digital spigots, stories that package painstakingly gathered facts on current events—what happened, who said what, when—have lost much of their value.”

Consider French management professor Philip M. Parker’s recent invention of a system that can aggregate all the available information on a subject into book form in just minutes. According to the New York Times, Parker has “written” more than 200,000 such books.

The idea that the practice and craft of writing can simply retool itself for the digital age overlooks the fact that the Web is giving rise to totally unique forms of expression, a writing that is different from the kind traditionally found in books. YouTube clips, animations, and other video applications account for more than 60% of Internet traffic today. The proportion is growing rapidly. While very little of this visual content has any monetary value (the most ad revenue a YouTube clip has made has been $25,000), there is a seemingly ceaseless supply of it, as well as numerous vehicles for distribution.

What does Web 2.0 portend for the written word itself? O’Reilly has an opinion on that, too. In addition to being a Web enthusiast, he is himself a bibliophile. He graduated from Harvard, won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate Greek fables in 1976, and later wrote a biography of Dune author Frank Herbert. He disagrees with the notion that the Internet is spurring us toward something like a postliterate age, but he acknowledges that technology inevitably changes that which it comes in contact with, including forms of communication.

“Look at Notre-Dame de Paris,” he said. “The novel is not about the hunchback so much as it is about the church, and the idea of sculpture as a way of communicating stories. In the preliterate era they told the stories through these churches.… Victor Hugo was lamenting the loss of that stone literacy, where people would look up at the church and know what it was about. Yes, something was lost. But we gained a lot. I remember a conversation I had at our open source convention with Freeman Dyson, the physicist. He said something wonderful; someone asked him what do you think about the fact that we were losing something or other, and he said, ‘We have to forget, otherwise there would be no room for new things.’ That’s an important thing to take.… Be accepting of the losses and the gains.”

“Reading isn’t going to go away,” agreed Abram, “but it’s only one aspect. Probably, it will be some combination of reading, visual conversations, and lessons. What you’re authoring is contributing to a corpus that is significantly larger than it is now, electronically. Most of the important stuff will have been converted 20 years from now. We can convert the entire Library of Congress for $9 billion right now, which, in terms of national priorities, is only five weeks of Iraqi conflict. It’s doable. It used to be undoable. The corpus, the ability to create cultural context, is going to change the nature of how culture is expressed.”

Lapham was likewise dismissive of the notion that IT is bringing us to the brink of postliteracy, but he acknowledged that written material will likely never regain the cultural primacy it enjoyed in earlier centuries. “The written word will survive because there are things you can do with the written word that you simply cannot do with film or with radio. I don’t know if it will be a mass medium,” said Lapham. “The large majority of mankind is passive. The change comes from the active minority. Those people will continue to read. Books will continue to be read. Maybe the more popular forms of writing will be taken over by video games. But it’s up to members of your generation to teach young people how to read and what the difference is between reading literature and sifting data.”

Rushkoff sees new kinds of information systems springing to life next to writing, and sees this as part of a grand evolution in human communication. “Just because things became written down, we didn’t lose oral culture,” said Rushkoff. “Read Walter Ong [author of Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word]. We changed, but we still talk to each other, dance for each other. We do them in different situations. The written word is cool. It’s for a certain kind of thing. The more media we have to exchange, the better we understand what the biases are. The written word is abstract, contractual. It launched monotheism, ethics; it launched evolution. It was really important for a lot of things, and that will remain. But visual media will lead to other kinds of insights.”

For lovers of literary writing, who are now watching the marketplace and Internet erode the remains of nineteenth-century print culture, these assurances may not be particularly consoling. We have no choice but to accept them. Arguing against the forces of digitalization is as much a losing battle as cursing the coming of the evening tide. But before we invest ourselves too deeply in this future, consider this: If new technologies expose the biases inherent in print and text, so the converse is true as well; that the written word is uniquely suitable for revealing the myopias of our digital age. If poor old Oliver Goldsmith were alive today, he might argue that critical reading abilities, cultural literacy, and traditional literacy were never more vital than the present, when Linux writers are regarded as the modern incarnation of holy monks and the newest Facebook application is treated with the deference of an illuminated manuscript. Coding skills are highly marketable in the twenty-first century. We, as a civilization, are duty-bound to encourage technological know-how. However, before we make the mistake of convincing ourselves that a knack for writing software is more valuable than the ability to simply write well, we might consider looking anew at the souvenir that is the book. One day, computer programs—these objects of our fascination and frustration—will learn to write themselves. And we’ll be left with our ideas, however grand or shallow. #

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The Marriage of Inventions

Review by Patrick Tucker
The Coming Convergence: The Surprising Ways Diverse Technologies Interact to Shape Our World and Change the Future by Stanley Schmidt. Prometheus Books. 2008. 336 pages. $27.95

It is eighteenth-century France; Joseph Marie-Jacquard has just invented a mechanical loom that uses punch cards to weave cloth in a set pattern, a device that—when eventually combined with electronics—will lead to the invention of the PC. Two hundred fifty years later, the tech bubble pops, sending the prices of overhyped computer and Internet companies tumbling.

In 1896, Orville Wright tests the hypothesis that a machine heavier than air can fly, so long as the wings are shaped a certain way and there is sufficient propulsion. The experiment is a success. About 100 years later, thanks to innovations in building construction as well as flight technology, terrorists steer hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Center and U.S. Pentagon, killing thousands in a matter of minutes and setting off a series of events affecting many millions more for years to come.

Jacquard and Wright never imagined their inventions would cause such disasters. They could not have anticipated how other inventions or innovations would merge with their own creations to produce new technologies, opportunities, and perils. In The Coming Convergence, physicist, science-fiction writer, and Analog editor Stanley Schmidt argues that, as the pace of technological discovery accelerates, the world will witness more rapid and startling convergences over the next 50 years.

Schmidt begins by outlining key technological comminglings that have occurred throughout history, and their mixed results. The invention of the microphone made possible the amplification of “quiet” instruments like the guitar, leading eventually to the electric guitar and to rock and roll. The same technology, combined with the piano, produced the synthesizer and eighties New Wave—a bold step forward or an unfortunate one, depending on your affinity for that particular genre.

The technology of X-ray diffraction, which can be used to analyze the molecular nature of an object being X-rayed, led to the science of genetics and the mapping of the human genome. In the years ahead, genetic science will propel biotechnology to ever higher plateaus, helping researchers find cures for diabetes and even certain types of cancer. But genetics is also allowing millions of parents practicing in vitro fertilization to select the sex of their offspring and even screen for conditions like autism, fulfilling, in part, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World scenario.

What discoveries and innovations will create the convergences of the coming decades? In 2002, the National Science Foundation published Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, a report that identified key technologies likely to shape the future; chief among them were nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science.

“The report,” says Schmidt, “describes a ‘golden age’ and a ‘renaissance’ but will such a future really be that, or an unprecedented kind of horror—or something in between, with elements of both?... Powerful technologies can be used for powerful benefits or great harm.”

The degree of benefit or harm caused by these new convergences will depend greatly on how nanotechnology advances in the coming years, says Schmidt, stating, “That area, perhaps more than any other, holds the potential to interact so strongly with all others as to produce changes far beyond anything else in human history.”

He forecasts that, while biotechnology, information technology, and artificial intelligence will all advance in the next few decades, the impact of advanced nanotechnology on all three fields could radically transform human existence. Nanomedicine could bring forth in situ replacement organs. Nano-engineered artificial red blood cells (respirocytes) could hold oxygen longer than their organic counterparts, allowing people to hold their breath under water for hours on end. Space vehicles constructed from carbon-walled nanotubes would be both more durable and lighter than those made from titanium, allowing such craft to ferry humans ever deeper into space.

Nano-designed computer processors might show up in cybernetic implants (allowing for higher brain functioning), or in high-performance computers, and eventually massive parallel processing. Nanofactories could reconfigure bulk raw materials at the molecular level, transforming trash into clothes, materials, or even food.

None of these forecasts will be especially new to anyone who has read the work of K. Eric Drexler, Ray Kurzweil, or J. Storrs Hall, whose book Nanofuture (excerpted in the September-October 2005 issue of

THE FUTURIST) Schmidt draws from heavily. But for the uninitiated, Schmidt provides a good summary of the most popular forecasts of the day. Where Schmidt’s book stands out is in the strength of his historical narrative. In his careful retracing of the connections and convergences of the past, he reminds us that innovation— whether manifest in a better machine or a better system—isn’t a static process. It’s a chaotic back and forth between inventors, their creations, and society, a process very much beyond any one person’s control.

The Marriage of Inventions

July-August 2008 Vol. 42, No. 4

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Young, Single, and Spiritual

Can traditional religions reach out to the MySpace generation?
Unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt,” warns Princeton University sociology professor Robert Wuthnow in his new book, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion.

He argues that, faced with slightly declining overall attendance numbers, despite a 40% U.S. population increase since 1972, American congregational leaders should focus on meeting the needs of young adults. To do so, they’ll need to create church and synagogue experiences that respond to the cultural shifts taking place.

Young single adults pose a special problem, according to Wuthnow. Though a substantial number of them choose to attend religious services, many more do not, because today’s organized religions typically emphasize traditional family values. As a result, children, married couples, and the elderly can easily find the support they need through their congregations, but there are very few programs and social opportunities available for singles between the ages of 20 and 45. Nor do they share with their married counterparts one of the main reasons to go to services: to set a good example for their children.

If post-boomers generally take a more individualistic, improvised approach to spirituality than did their grandparents prior to settling down, then they are conforming to trends set by the baby boomers themselves —with one significant difference. In general, post-boomers are postponing marriage and children until later in life. The longer that individuals postpone involvement with organized religion, the less likely they are to include it later. As a result, Western religion’s influence over mainstream U.S. culture may continue to wane. In order for congregations to prosper, they must find ways to cater to the needs of young singles, or what Wuthnow terms “the unmarried majority,” as well as newlyweds and families.

“Religious congregations could be a more important source of assistance and support for young adults than they presently are,” Wuthnow argues. “Instead of investing so heavily in programs for children and the elderly, they could focus more intentionally on ministries to young adults. They could be less content to provide activities for married couples with children and work harder at programs for single adults with questions about marriage, work, and finances, or with interests in serving their communities or building relationships. To meet these challenges, though, religious leaders would have to reflect seriously on what it is that might attract young adults.”

Some denominations of the major Western religions are already forging ahead and finding new ways to appeal to what they perceive to be an increasingly disenfranchised and disillusioned group. The Concord First Assembly in Concord, North Carolina, is an evangelical megachurch that reaches out to everyone — including younger single adults — and adjusts its marketing strategies accordingly. In the case of the MySpace generation, this means appealing to their collective sense of individuality, as well as their technophile tendencies. Concord’s “Underground” community for young single adults offers espresso, pool tables, satellite TV, and free wi-fi.

They meet Sunday evenings, rather than Sunday mornings, and Underground’sprofile can be found on the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook. Significantly, Underground presents itself as a small, intimate group, separate from the rest of the megachurch’s congregation.

Reaching out via the Internet is a relatively simple approach that congregations can take to attract younger members. It is highly likely that a young person seeking a congregation in his or her community may shop around on the Internet beforehand, since a majority of American households now have Internet access at home. But the potential for religious organizations to recruit the younger generation via the Web is just beginning to be realized, as religious Web sites by and/or for the younger generation begin to appear.

Christians can find a virtual online community at TheOoze.com (founded by a disillusioned former megachurch pastor and self-described postmodernist), and also at FermiProject.com. If you’re Jewish, Aish.com is there to answer your questions. The popular Internet dating site JDate.com is dedicated to helping young Jewish singles connect with their community and faith, and Beliefnet.com is a popular interreligious site.

However, while the Internet will likely become the medium that people turn to most often when seeking religious information, it is unlikely that the virtual church, synagogue, or mosque will replace its real-world counterpart anytime soon. According to Wuthnow, younger people are more prone to seeking out religious Web sites if they already happen to be churchgoers, as a way to supplement their churchgoing experiences, network with other members of the faith, and enhance their religious lives. Listening to religious podcasts by priests or rabbis may augment, but not supplant, the church or synagogue experience.

— Aaron M. Cohen

Sources: After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University Press, 2007. The Barna Update: Media and Technology, www.barna.org.

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Society

July-August 2008 Vol. 42, No. 4

Young, Single, and Spiritual

Discovering The Future

By Paul Crabtree
For good reason, H.G. Wells is often considered to be the “father” of futurism. In the September-October 2007 edition of THE FUTURIST, I discussed some of the amazingly accurate predictions of Wells in his nonfiction book Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought, published in 1901. In that seminal volume, Wells attempted to analyze and describe the probable sequence of developments over the course of the twentieth century in a number of pivotal areas, such as transportation, cities, societal relations, government, education, and warfare. He achieved an overall predictive success rate of 60%–80%. Many of these predictions were specific and detailed enough to preclude guesswork and luck as explanations for his success. Though he had a few misses, mostly in terms of predicting social and demographic changes, his accomplishment must nonetheless be judged as an amazing achievement and one that begs for further investigation into how he managed it. His 1902 address to the Royal Society of England provides some startling clues. Among the tools in the Victorian futurist’s arsenal:

• Clockwork universe assumption.
One pillar of Wells’s argument in his speech to the Royal Society, “The Discovery of the Future,” is the nineteenth- century concept that all future events are predetermined by past events. If we knew all that happened in the past, strict cause and effect principles would allow us to predict the future, like a fall of dominoes.

Quantum physics and chaos theory would later invalidate this theory of an absolutely knowable correspondence between past and future events, but in 1901, Wells’s postulate that the past and the future were determined was an orthodox scientific view.

• Inductive thinking.
Wells argues that inductive thinking allows one to build up an understanding of the broad outlines of future history in the same way that archaeologists slowly build up an understanding of the history of previously unknown societies of the past—i.e., by “the comparison and criticism of suggestive facts.” Instead of looking at an array of archaeological facts and relationships and inferring what the past must have been like, Wells suggests using existing or researched information to infer a future state of affairs. Aside from really unknowable large-scale events—an asteroid impact being one of his examples—Wells proposes that such inferences can be reasonably accurate.

• Law of large numbers.
Forecasting the future can make use of statistical probability. While discrete human actions and very detailed events may not be individually predictable because we do not know all about the present or past, on a large scale involving many people and events, a broad trend becomes more apparent and historical aberrations tend to even out. As Wells scholar Patrick Parrinder says of Wells’s use of this idea, “We are concerned with something like the ‘actuarial principle’ used by insurance companies in determining their premiums. Though individual outcomes are wholly unpredictable, certain sorts of average outcomes in human affairs can be predicted with fair accuracy.”

In arguing for the law of large numbers and broad historical forces, Wells is careful to add that he doesn’t believe in the “Great Man” theory of history. He believes that even individuals in authority react to events more than drive them. Humanity, Wells believes, can influence the details of history but rarely if ever alter major historical trends.

• Science as a predictive discipline.
Scientific procedures, principles, and results provide a basis for prediction, says Wells, pointing out that scientific knowledge is inherently predictive. He argues that science is not science unless it al lows one to successfully predict phenomena— the course and timing of planetary movements, the diagnostic course of disease, the result of chemical combinations, etc. In “Discovery of the Future,” he advocates a general expansion, codification, and joining together of predictions from the various scientific disciplines.

• Future-oriented mind-set.
Wells rejects a logical divide between the past, present, and future as a mistaken product of our personal experience. For Wells, a futurist mind-set means having a mind that “thinks constantly and by preference of things to come, and of present things mainly in relation to the results which must arise from them.” The opposite way of thinking, says Wells, uses the past (rather than calculated future results) as a guide to future action. This mind-set tends to assume that conditions in the past will apply to the future rather than anticipating changes. Change cannot be ignored, cautions Wells, citing both the grand timescale of evolution and the pace of human change in his own time.

• Change drivers.
Not mentioned in his “Discovery of the Future” presentation, but arguably a key assumption in addition to the predictive methodological components enumerated above, is the proposition that scientific and technical progress is both inexorable and a principal driver of changes in the human condition. This, of course, is the central theme of Wells’s Anticipations. Curiously enough, the driving role of science and technology in human affairs is not covered in the “Discovery” talk. Instead, Wells invokes a more encompassing agent of change in the form of a universal, almost teleological need to change and evolve:

We look back through countless millions of years and see the will to live struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape.… We watch it draw nearer and more akin to us ... its being beats through our brains and arteries ... thunders in our battleships, roars through our cities....

• Disciplined web of implications.
Later in life, Wells tended to be less optimistic than he was in 1902 about the possibility of making successful predictions. Evidently Wells’s work on the screenplay and 1936 film Things to Come had humbled him somewhat. In a subsequent radio broadcast entitled “Fiction about the Future” he details the difficulty he had imparting a realistic feel to the scenes showing the distant future on the motion picture screen. He says the difficulties of depicting the small details of everyday life—hairstyles, clothing, and furniture—defeated the best efforts of his research and imagination. Despite his belief that the film had not been convincing enough, the successful predictions about the future included in Things to Come as well as the book it was based on represent a tour-de-force somewhat comparable to the predictions made in Anticipations.

An approach that Wells used in writing successful future-oriented fiction, which he discussed in the

“Fiction about the Future,” broadcast no doubt applies to his predictions in general. This is to create a web of detailed, plausible implications “by rigorous adherence to the hypothesis” and by excluding “extra fantasy outside the cardinal assumption.”

Wells’s Predictive Building Blocks As a System
At first glance, the elements outlined above look more like discrete considerations than parts of an ordered whole:

• Clockwork universe assumption.
• Inductive thinking.
• Law of large numbers.
• Science as a predictive discipline.
• Future-oriented mind-set.
• Change drivers.
• Disciplined web of implications.

When these principles are expressed in an active voice, relationships can be seen among them. Assume prediction is possible (clockwork universe); gather data and relationships and see what you learn (inductive thinking); identify central tendencies (law of large numbers); rely on logic, math, and science (science as a predictive discipline); identify areas to be evaluated for change impacts (future-oriented mind-set; identify key trends and forces (change drivers); and pursue central tendency causal impacts as far as possible while assuming other things unchanged (disciplined web of implications).

These actions can be reordered and H.G. Wells’s fiction writing expertise no doubt provided him with an ability to create scenarios. Together with the forecasting steps diagrammed above, Wells’s predictive process can be seen to be highly systematic, not merely inspired guesswork. It has, in fact, similarities with the development and use of a modern iterative computer-based forecasting model. But it isn’t mechanical. Rather, in its inventiveness and its reasonability, it speaks to the very best of humanity. ❑

About the Author
Paul Crabtree retired from the U.S. federal government after serving in a number of analytical and managerial positions. He now devotes much of his time to research and writing on technological innovation, forecasting, and related issues.

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Discovering The Future

May-June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 3

New Clocks: It's About Time

What time is it?” is more than a casual question to physicists, engineers, and other specialists whose work depends on ultra-precise measurements of time.

At present, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures located outside of Paris calculates global time by averaging data received from 300 atomic clocks at laboratories round the world. But this system of telling time may soon be out of date as researchers pursue ever more accurate time measurement.

Separate teams of researchers in Germany and the United States have succeeded in developing optical clocks that use lasers to capture strontium atoms and measure their frequencies. The new clocks can measure oscillation (pendulum swings) at higher ranges of frequency than the standard atomic clocks used today. As a result, future clocks may measure time far more precisely than today’s clocks.

Current atomic clocks measure the oscillation of the movement of cesium atoms. “Optical” clocks refer to the use of lasers to capture the atoms and measure their frequencies; the German and U.S. teams have both developed optical clocks using strontium rather than cesium atoms. The result could be clocks that measure time in intervals thousands of times smaller than now possible with cesium clocks, according to the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), a partnership of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado–Boulder. JILA’s strontium clock has already surpassed the accuracy of NIST’s cesium clock, currently used for the U.S. time standard. The strontium clock would neither gain nor lose a second in more than 200 million years, compared with NIST’ s 80-million-year accuracy claim.

Researchers at Germany’s national metrology institute, Physikalisch- Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), have also achieved success with their strontium-based optical atomic clock. Both the JILA and PTB methods use laser beams to capture strontium atoms that are supercooled and held for measurement. The laser excites some of the atoms, and then another laser forces the unexcited atoms to emit a light, which is then detected and measured in a “comb” of laser frequencies to accurately count the clock’s “ticks.”

In addition to strontium, other optical clocks are being designed based on calcium, mercury, aluminum, and ytterbium, each offering different advantages, according to JILA researchers. The pursuit of ever more precise time measurements is vital for synchronizing telecommunication networks and for deep-space communication.

It is not yet clear which specific optical clock that the world’s precision timing labs are designing will prove most effective—and thus win the race to become the future international time standard.—Cynthia G. Wagner

Sources: NIST, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 1070, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-170. Web site www.nist.gov/public_affairs/clock/clock.html . JILA, University of Colorado, 440 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440. Web site http://jilawww.colorado.edu/research/metrology.html . PTB, Bundesalle, 100, Braunschweig 38116, Germany. Web site www.ptb.de .

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Technology
May-June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 3

New Clocks: It's About Time

Social Machines

Review by Patrick Tucker
The Design of Future Things by Donald A. Norman. Basic Books. 2007. 231 pages. $27.50.
“Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, simple or direct than does Nature. In her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous,” Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci once remarked. Former Apple vice president Donald Norman’s Design of Future Things is very much rooted in this Leonardesque sentiment. The short, conversational book serves as both a meditation on the nature of human–machine interaction and a warning: invention that ignores the human, the artful, and the natural will fail both conspicuously and disastrously. “We are confronting a new breed of machine with intelligence and autonomy, machines that can indeed take over for us in many situations,” Norman writes. “In many cases, they will make our lives more effective, more fun, and safer. In others, however, they will frustrate us, get in our way, and even increase danger. For the first time, we have machines that are attempting to interact with us socially.”

We spend ever more time conversing with machinery. In the obvious sense, this means more interfacing (the technologist’s preferred term) with a wider variety of devices: selecting from an assortment of rinse cycles on our washer; setting lighting systems, motion detectors, and security devices as we leave the house; starting up the car; programming the MP3 player, GPS computer, and even the cruise control before actually hitting the gas.

As our interfacing opportunities increase, so does the potential for human–object miscommunication.

Machines may work like clockwork, but they handle surprises like robots— which is to say, poorly. We rely on them when we shouldn’t and find ourselves (ironically) lost after following the directions of a computer that can neither see nor drive, mopping up after a stubborn washer that refuses to stop when we open the lid midcycle, apologizing to the police on our doorstep for our well-intentioned but overly vigilant security systems.

What’s missing from the human– machine relationship, says Norman, is a sense of respectful partnership. His book is full of examples of what a better tête-à-tête might look like. A Microsoft Cambridge “smart” home actually seeks to make its occupants smarter, allowing family members to leave messages on digital surfaces viewable anywhere throughout—or outside—the house. It’s a vision of home as digital administrative assistant rather than as butler. A Georgia Tech smart home can watch you cook and—if you have to break away to answer the phone—remind you where you left off. Bad memory? The house also monitors your prescriptions and can let your family do the same. After all, who knows you best?

“Both groups of researchers could have tried to make the devices intelligent,” Norman points out. “Instead, both groups devised systems t h a t would f it smoothly into people’s life styles. Both systems rely upon powerful, advanced technology, but the guiding philosophy for each group is augmentation, not automation.”

Automobiles are another example of machines that could become less automatic and more “social.” Radio frequency identification and similar technologies already allow cars to communicate with tollbooths, so why not with other cars? It will be a long time before such car-to-car collaboration eliminates the need for traffic lights and speed limits. In the meantime, cars that could better negotiate their position, speed, and distance with one another would most certainly prevent wrecks.

What’s most important, says Norman, is that the inventors of the future transcend the binary distinction between the practice of art and the science of engineering and move toward a comprehensive “science of design.” The notion harkens back to sixteenth-century Florence, a time and place where broad knowledge and boundless curiosity were considered as valuable as narrow expertise or a declared major. If a more generalist approach yields objects that better reflect the coherence of nature— rather than the whim of marketers—then the objects of tomorrow will be unquestionably smarter. ❑

About the Reviewer

Patrick Tucker is the senior editor of THE FUTURIST and director of communications for the World Future Society. E‑mail ptucker@wfs.org .

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Book Review

Social Machines

May-June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 3

The Arts as Engine for Growth

Tradition-minded economists may not have much respect for the arts as an agent of growth, but creative industries—music, books, painting, and galleries—do earn a lot of money, especially for cities.

A recent report from the U.K.- based Future Laboratory showed that some 625,000 Londoners worked in a creative organization such as record companies, dance companies, museums, and orchestras, and that these arts industries contributed some £21 billion (about $41 billion) to the London economy. And a 2007 report from Americans for the Arts (findings announced May 2007) showed that the nonprofit arts and culture industries generate a yearly average of $166 billion in economic activity for the United States.

“Most Americans understand that the arts improve our quality of life,” says the organization’s president and CEO, Robert L. Lynch. “This study demonstrates that the arts are an industry that stimulates the economy in cities and towns across the country. A vibrant arts and culture industry helps local businesses thrive.”

The Future Lab report (which includes both nonprofit and for-profit arts) reveals that the arts are the fastest- growing segment of the U.K. economy. But some economists contend that the arts aren’t a monetary driver so much as a beneficiary of economic growth that occurs elsewhere.

“There has to be some prosperity in order for the arts to flourish,” says Dutch economist and artist Hans

Abbing, author of Why Are Artists Poor? (University of Amsterdam Press, 2002). Abbing concedes that the arts can bring in a great deal of money and help already high-earning businesses earn more, but he insists that creative industries don’t serve as a catalyst for economic growth so much as they reflect growth taking place nearby. “Somewhere where everyone is poor, there’s no money to support the arts. But as soon as you get the poor people next to the rich people, there’s something happening.”

London, in many ways, provides a case in point. In addition to hosting a large number of artists, London is also experiencing an explosion of wealth, suggesting that the two trends might be linked. The financial services provider Barclay’s Group forecasts that approximately 8 million U.K. households (one in four) will be dollar millionaires by the year 2016.

Abbing is skeptical of any report that claims to measure the economic value of something as intangible as the arts. He insists that some such reports overlook or downplay the relationship between private wealth and the arts in order to advocate arts subsidies that aren’t as effective in producing either wealth or art. However, he does admit that mainstream economists are increasingly recognizing the value of the arts, particularly for cities.

“The economists I know, cultural economists, are beginning to understand how important arts can be, particularly for municipal governments, and also how important it is that governments be competitive in attracting the arts,” says Abbing. “If all the artists go to Amsterdam, the rest of Europe will suffer, yes?”

—Patrick Tucker

Sources: The Future Laboratory. Web site www.thefuturelaboratory.com . Americans for the Arts. Web site www.americansforthearts.org .Plus author interviews.

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Economics

The Arts as Engine for Growth

May-June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 3

The Daughter Also Rises

The combination of a centuries old preference for male children, new sex-screening technologies, and better opportunities for women in the workplace are playing out in some surprising ways throughout Asia.

Researchers with the United Nations Population Fund report that the use of ultrasound equipment and amniocentesis, unleashed on the market 30 years ago, has led to the selective abortion of so many female fetuses that the male-to-female ratio in many Asian nations has skewed toward a greater number of men. An average of 120 males were born for every 100 females in China and India in 2005, a trend that could worsen as these technologies become more widespread. Meanwhile, more women in Asia are gaining access to education, entering the workforce, and delaying marriage. As a result, the pressure on women to bear a son is decreasing.

In many Asian countries, sons traditionally take on the role of supporting their parents in old age, but daughters become part of their husbands’ families and support their birth parents less and less as they mature and marry. Having a son has thus served as a sort of social insurance policy; not so with daughters.

The cost of marrying off a daughter can also be high. In parts of India, the bride’s family is responsible for paying a dowry to the husband, and in South Korea—as in many other parts of the globe—the bride’s family is expected to pay for the wedding ceremony and celebration, which can be quite lavish. Son preference has historically led to high death rates for female infants. Neglect of female infants in households where there is more than one child, and especially in those with more than one female child, remains a tremendous problem in many developing Asian nations. But demographers assert that, with family sizes falling, the use of ultrasound or amniocentesis to determine the sex of fetuses and abort unwanted ones has grown more rapidly.

French demographer Christophe Guilmoto, writing for the United Nations Population Fund, has warned that a dearth of women will affect “the stability of the entire marriage system.” Many men at the bottom end of the economic ladder, he says, will likely be unable to marry, which could translate into an increase in violence against women. Other demographers see the issue differently. “Approaching this issue as a concern about future marriage markets simply misses the point. And it’s based on bad math,” says Sidney B. Westley of the East-West Center.

“The evidence from South Korea suggests that son preference diminishes with economic development, but do we want to wait that long?” Westley and co-author Minja Kim Choe, writing in the journal Asia Pacific Issues, note that rapid fertility decline and changing marriage preferences have a greater effect on the number of women in the marriage market than does sex-selective abortion.

The fact that most Asian men prefer to marry younger women is one factor in the perceived lack of marriageable women. Westley and Choe see this as a surmountable obstacle. “By 2020, if a Chinese man in his late 20s is looking for a bride in her early 20s,” they write, “he will be facing odds of 119 men for every 100 women. In South Korea, the odds will be even worse—at 123 men ages 25–29 for every 100 women ages 20–24.… If aggregate numbers are the only thing that matters in a marriage market, then the solution for Asia’s bachelors is simple: Marry an older woman.”

Another factor is that women in Asia, as in the rest of the world, are gaining better access to education making more money, and taking on additional financial burdens. When women are forced to quit their jobs, they risk losing the investment they made in their education and being shut out of management positions later on. As a result, the financial incentive to marry and have children is diminishing.

Demographers are in agreement that son preference can have a devastating impact on a nation’s economic and social welfare—often resulting in the systematic neglect and even starvation of young girls. Some governments are finally catching on to the problem. China and India have instituted aggressive programs to counteract the social and economic pressures leading to son preference.

In January 2007, China announced that it would crack down on sex-selective abortions and put in place increased protections for baby girls. The government also began paying a small allowance to elderly, rural parents with no living children, only one child, or two daughters.

In India, the Directorate of Family Welfare in Delhi has launched a nationalistic ad campaign encouraging families to value their daughters. In 2003, India began a welfare program to help homeless women care for their children with stipends that were twice as high for girls as for boys.

But not all governments are taking such proactive steps. For instance, the UN researchers recommend that Nepal and Vietnam move quickly to adopt policies similar to those in place in China. The government of more-developed South Korea has been reluctant to put pro-girl policies in place. According to Westley and Choe. “This contrast suggests that China and India may achieve morebalanced birthrates and better survival statistics for girls well before they reach the high level of economic development that South Korea currently enjoys.” —Patrick Tucker

Sources: “How Does Son Preference Affect Population in Asia,” by Sidney B. Westley and Minja Kim Choe, Asia Pacific Issues (September 2007), plus author interviews.

“Asian Son Preference Will Have Severe Social Consequences, New Studies Warn,” United Nations Population Fund, October 29, 2007. Web site www.unfpa.org .

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The Daughter Also Rises

Demography
May-June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 3

Climate Change and Global Conflicts

"Cold" wars have existed throughout history; now we may see heat wars.

Traumatic climate cooling may have launched wars in the past, like the Little Ice Age of the mid-sixteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. Cold-induced stresses on agriculture led to wars, famines, and population declines, an international team of researchers believes. Now, they warn that future climate change that turns up the heat could also increase conflicts.

Sudden changes in temperature don't directly cause conflict, but they do disrupt water and food supplies. Shortages of such critical resources can lead people to rise against their governments or invade neighboring countries, according to research led by University of Hong Kong geographer David Zhang and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To study the relationship between climate and conflict, the researchers collected data on temperature change and wars from A.D. 1400 to 1900. They discovered that cycles of turbulence followed historic low temperatures, with tranquility restored during more-temperate times. Sources for the study included a database of 4,500 wars, assembled by co-author Peter Brecke of Georgia Tech, and climate records reconstructed by paleontologists from historical documents.

The researchers found that there were nearly twice as many wars per year worldwide during cold centuries as there were during the milder eighteenth century. More than 80% of countries around the world experienced more wars in a cold climate, according to Zhang.

The researchers reason that the link between climate shock and conflict is the supply of food: Decreases in agricultural production trigger increases in food prices, and when grain prices reach a certain level, wars erupt.

Population growth and decline are also affected by these climate change driven conflicts, the researchers believe. After peak periods of war in Europe and Asia, such as during the frigid seventeenth century, populations declined. In China, population dropped by 43% between 1620 and 1650, then rose dramatically between 1650 and 1800, when the next cooling period began, bringing another global demographic shock.

"Climate change may have played a more important role on human civilization than has so far been suggested," says Zhang. The depletion of resources on which livelihoods are based is the most critical effect of such change and is "the root cause of human miseries—e.g., wars, famines, and epidemics."

Abrupt global warming is upon us now, they warn, and may pose just as dire threats to resource supply and demand as did global cooling in centuries past.

"The speed of global warming is totally beyond our imagination," says Zhang. "Such abnormal climate will certainly break the balance of human ecosystem. At the moment, scientists cannot accurately predict the chain of ecological effects induced by climate change. If global warming continues, we are afraid that the associated shortages of livelihood resources such as freshwater, arable land, and food may trigger more armed conflicts (e.g., Darfur in Africa) or even general crises in the world."

As Brecke of Georgia Tech points out, global warming may have some beneficial effects in the short term, but "with more droughts and a rapidly growing population, it is going to get harder and harder to provide food for everyone and thus we should not be surprised to see more instances of starvation and probably more cases of hungry people clashing over scarce food and water."

Human beings are unlikely to sit still with such dire prospects before them, notes Zhang. Responses to resource shortages extend beyond fighting over dwindling crumbs of bread and drops of water, but include economic change, trade, technological and social innovation, and peaceful resource distribution. In eighteenth century China, for instance, the frequency of war decreased "because the Qing emperors had united all troublesome tribal states in the western and northern marginal areas," the authors write. "We hope that positive social mechanisms that are conducive to human adaptability will play an ever more effective role in meeting the challenges of the future."--Cynthia G. Wagner

Sources: "Global Climate Change, War, and Population Decline in Recent Human History" by David D. Zhang et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 20, 2007).

University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong.

Georgia Institute of Technology, Research News and Publications Office, 75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 100, Atlanta, Georgia 30308.

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Government
March-April 2008. Vol 42 No. 2

Climate Change and Global Conflicts

Fighting the Urge to Fight the Urge

Every day, we pressure ourselves to control our impulses—to work harder rather than go home early, to avoid sugar, carbohydrates, and transfats; to save instead of spend; and to exercise courtesy rather than snap at the barista who flubbed our order. Meanwhile, we can't ride the subway, turn on the TV, or open a magazine without finding an ad urging us to self-indulge. Balancing these two competing forces sometimes seems impossible. A new report from two Canadian researchers suggests why: Our capacity for self-control is far shallower than we realize.

"People have a limited amount of self-control, and tasks requiring controlled, willful action quickly deplete this central resource. Exerting self-control on one task impairs performance on subsequent tasks requiring the same resource," write Michael Inzlicht and Jennifer N. Gutsell in their article in the journal Psychological Science.

In their experiment, Inzlicht and Gutsell separated 40 individuals into two groups. In both groups, participants were fitted with EEG monitoring equipment and made to watch a disturbing wildlife documentary. One group was asked not to display any reaction to the gruesome subject matter; the other group was instructed simply to watch the footage and not proscribed a reaction. Afterwards, both groups completed a rapid-fire color-matching test requiring a controlled response. The test showed that people who had suppressed their reaction to the documentary (measurable via the EEG readout) performed less well on the color-matching test.

According to the authors, the study "suggests a neuroscientifically informed account of how self-control is constrained by previous acts of control [and] that mental fatigue can occur relatively quickly and affect tasks unrelated to the depleting activity." In other words, exercising control on one task makes it harder to exercise control on the task immediately following.

Though we have a shallow and finite reserve of willpower, self-control can improve over time, much like a muscle can be trained. The trick is knowing how to train your will. Simply slowing down and thinking clearly about an impulse (rather than reflexively giving in or denying it) can build self-control, says Inzlicht.

Setting specific self-control goals also works the control muscle. Cordelia Fine, author of the book A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives, suggests that exerting self-control in one area, though it depletes willpower in the short term, can help the brain build up willpower over time. "What psychologists are already beginning to see are ways in which the mind gradually takes on a preconscious gatekeeping role to keep tempting thoughts and ideas out of consciousness—a form of willpower-lite," she says.

Focusing your willpower on a specific objective—like not ordering red meat off the menu—rather than trying to fight every impulse you're faced with over the course of a day increases your chances of eventually being able to conquer the temptations one at a time. This, in turn, will help you develop the tools to accomplish more goals.

Ego also plays a significant role in whether we surrender to—or resist—tempting urges. We often associate giving in to impulses with a relaxed state of mind, but someone who is anxious because they constantly feel like a social outcast will have a more difficult time resisting temptation than someone who feels comfortable in their social surroundings.

"Coping with a stigmatized social identity" exhausts willpower, says Inzlicht. People who feel stigmatized are more likely to indulge in socially inappropriate behavior, which can further increase their sense of alienation.

Fine hopes that research papers like Inzlicht and Gutsell's will encourage people to explore how the environments we construct can sap our will in the way they make us feel.

"The philosopher Neil Levy has recently argued that so long as we continue to focus on how to build up our internal resources, we will overlook the equally—if not more—important issue of how to structure our surroundings in order to bolster self-control," says Fine. "Research shows that ego-depleted participants are more likely to make impulse buys, to spend more, and to eat more unhealthy snacks that they'd rather not have eaten. We can struggle to find ways to harden the moral sinew—but perhaps we should be thinking, too, about the contribution of our willpower-draining surroundings to our failures of self-control."--Patrick Tucker

Sources: "Running On Empty: Neural Signals for Self-Control Failure" by Michael Inzlicht and Jennifer Gutsell, Psychological Science (November 2007).

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Society
March-April 2008. Vol 42. No. 2

Fighting the Urge to Fight the Urge

High-Tech Service for Hotel Guests

"Clocky," the elusive, perky robotic alarm clock, is just one of the gadgets getting a workout at the University of Delaware and Courtyard of Marriott's Teaching Hotel. Clocky's pesky behavior notwithstanding, the goal in creating the experimental guest room (X-room) is to develop technologies that make traveling easier for an increasingly demanding clientele.

Among the features you may find in tomorrow's accommodations:

• Digital peephole: A video camera captures the view of your visitor at the door and displays it on an LCD screen inside.

• High-resolution digital photo frame to keep your family's smiling faces close by.

• In-room workout with Wii, Nintendo's popular exercise gaming system.

• Bedside room-environment control panel allowing you to turn up the heat or turn down the lights.

• An air-powered shower head and an ionic hair dryer that save water and energy.

• Flameless electronic candles for romantic ambience.

• Lights that turn themselves off after sensors inform them that you've left the room.

The X-room's features are being tested by actual guests and hotel staff, according to Cihan Cobanoglu, associate professor of hospitality information technology. "Our goal is to determine the acceptance levels of these technologies and the impact they make on guest satisfaction and staff efficiency," he says.

Source: Cihan Cobanoglu, University of Delaware, Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management, 14 West Main Street, Raub Hall, Newark, Delaware 19716. Web site www.cihan.org.

Adorable but annoying: "Clocky," the robotic clock, gives a hotel guest one chance to wake up when the alarm goes off. If the guest presses the "snooze" button, Clocky will jump off the nightstand and rush around the room looking for a place to hide. The next time the alarm goes off, the guest has to find the clock to turn it off.--Cynthia G. Wagner

Source: Cihan Cobanoglu, University of Delaware, Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management, 14 West Main Street, Raub Hall, Newark, Delaware 19716.

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Technology
March-April 2008 Vol. 42, No. 2

High-Tech Service for Hotel Guests

Lunar Habitat Gets Antarctic Test

It looks like something your kids want to play in at the fair, but NASA's inflatable lunar habitat will have to survive harsher conditions than a few hundred toddlers' karate kicks.

To test the habitat under the most extreme natural conditions possible, developers of the prototype will deploy it for a year on the harsh, frigid landscape of Antarctica. Inside, the sophisticated inflatable habitat is heated, insulated, powered, and pressurized, with an eight-foot ceiling and 384 square feet of living space. It is also equipped with sensors allowing engineers to monitor its performance.

"Testing the inflatable habitat in one of the harshest, most remote sites on Earth gives us the opportunity to see what it would be like to use for lunar exploration," says Paul Lockhart, director of Constellation Systems for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

The Constellation program aims to send humans back to the moon by 2020, first for short stays and then for longer durations, thus requiring a durable homestead. And because the habitat must be transported along with hardware and fuel—125 pounds worth for every pound of supplies launched—it needs to be lightweight as well as strong, according to Lockhart.

Partnering with NASA is the National Science Foundation, which will study improvements in packing and deploying the habitat, as well as its power consumption and damage tolerance. --Cynthia G. Wagner

Sources: National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230.
NASA Innovative Partnerships Program,

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Environment
March-April 2008 Vol. 42, No. 2

Lunar Habitat Gets Antarctic Test

U.S. Competitiveness Showing Weakness

The United States remains the most economically competitive nation in the world, but signs of weakness loom on the horizon, according to the World Economic Forum. Following the United States at the top of the Forum's "Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008" are Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany.

"The United States confirms its position as the most competitive economy in the world," notes the report's co-editor, Columbia University economics professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin. "The efficiency of the country's markets, the sophistication of its business community, the impressive capacity for technological innovation that exists within a first-rate system of universities and research centers all contribute to making the United States a highly competitive economy."

The recent problems in the U.S. housing market, especially with the flood of defaults on so-called subprime mortgages, raised warning flags among the world's analysts on the overall health of the U.S. economy, as well as its impacts globally. The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was followed by a global credit crunch, notes Sala-i-Martin.

In developing its most recent Global Competitive Index, first introduced in 2004, the World Economic Forum used both publicly available data and its own Executive Opinion Survey, polling 11,000 business leaders in 131 countries. The Index rankings are based on 12 key indicators of competitiveness: Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labor Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication, and Innovation.

A second part of the report focuses on business competitiveness, since not all countries scoring high on economic competitiveness can translate that into business dominance, according to the report's co-director, Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter. For instance, the high wages found in Switzerland, Norway, and Spain are "much above the level supported by their competitiveness," he notes.

"Many countries have achieved progress by opening up to the world economy, stabilizing macroeconomic policies, and removing internal barriers to competition," says Porter. "Our findings reveal the need to build underlying microeconomic competitiveness to translate these gains into sustained prosperity. If improvements in the business environment and company sophistication fail to materialize, . . . nations expose themselves to declining competitiveness and are vulnerable to economic and social risks."

Source: World Economic Forum, 91-93 route de la Capite, CH - 1223 Cologny/Geneva, Switzerland. Web site

Top 10, Global Competitive Index 2007

Based on their high scores on macroeconomic stability, market efficiency, innovation, and other factors, the world's most competitive economies are:

1. United States

2. Switzerland

3. Denmark

4. Sweden

5. Germany

6. Finland

7. Singapore

8. Japan

9. United Kingdom

10. Netherlands.-Cynthia G. Wagner

Source: World Economic Forum -

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Why Some Economies Grow and Others Don't

Review by Lane Jennings
Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Economic Development, edited by Benjamin Powell. Stanford University Press. 2007. 440 pages. Paperback. $29.95.

In 1970, Sweden ranked fourth among OECD member nations in terms of average personal income. By 1990 it had dropped to ninth, and in 2003 it was only fourteenth. Ireland, one of the poorest nations in Europe for the past two centuries, surged from number 21 on this same list to take over Sweden’s old spot at number four. And it did so in just 13 years, from 1990 to 2003. What happened? And, more important, how can other nations imitate Ireland’s example and avoid Sweden’s mistakes?

For Making Poor Nations Rich, editor Benjamin Powell, research fellow at the Independent Institute and assistant professor of economics at Suffolk University, has assembled a collection of essays by economists from several countries that all point to the same answer. And that answer is.... But wait, first let’s look more closely at the question.

Scholars and politicians have often puzzled over why some communities and nations enjoy power and affluence while others struggle merely to survive. Compare Africa and China. Both cover huge areas and have abundant natural resources, but they also have large undeveloped regions and a population heavily concentrated in a few locations. Yet today, China has a unifying culture and a booming economy, while most of Africa remains culturally fragmented and desperately poor.

History tells part of the story. But only a part. In their book Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (Basic Books, 2000) [reviewed in THE FUTURIST January-February 2001], Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington noted that the relative importance that different societies assigned to concepts like work ethic, education, equal justice, and planning ahead were often instrumental in exploiting assets and overcoming disasters and constraints.

In his introduction to this book, editor Powell zeroes in on two sets of values within a community or nation that, he believes, largely determine how affluent its citizens become and how long they stay that way. There are "cosmological beliefs," he notes, that involve how a particular culture answers or chooses to ignore the big philosophical questions of life. For example, "What is the meaning of existence? What is justice? What makes a government legitimate?" Cultures differ dramatically over such issues and will fight fiercely to defend their traditional beliefs if they feel threatened. But for most people, cosmological questions do not determine economic success or failure.

What counts more, Powell argues, are a culture’s "material" beliefs—specifically, what activities are considered legitimate ways to make a living. Farming, tool making, and specialized crafts are all common examples. But many cultures have held these productive occupations in surprisingly low esteem. Often, higher prestige and material rewards go to activities like land owning, rent collecting, trade for profit, war for conquest, and simple banditry. Professions such as law, advertising, stock trading, banking, and public administration fall somewhere in between. They can all make valuable contributions to improve the overall quality of life for the general population, but without adequate constraints on their activities, individuals who practice these occupations can become "vampires," consuming the goods and wealth of others and providing no tangible benefits in return.

In the view of Powell, and perhaps of most economists (certainly of those who contributed essays to this book), it is individual greed—the desire for maximum profit for minimal effort—that makes the economic world go round. In any culture, most active, inventive, and able individuals will turn their talents toward the most attractive ways available to accumulate material comfort and social prestige.

So here is the secret of economic success: A country’s standard of living rises so long as those activities it most encourages are productive (e.g., manufacturing and innovation) rather than nonproductive (bureaucratic red-tape handling, for instance) or destructive (bribery, usury, blackmail, or military conquest). But if unproductive or destructive activities seem more likely to bring sure and lasting rewards, a country’s "best and brightest" tend to use their talents in these areas. As a result, the economic well-being of the general populace begins to stagnate and eventually to fall.

Other contributors to the book examine how legislation and policies can play key roles in achieving and sustaining economic development.

Mancur Olsson Jr., late professor of economics at the University of Maryland, emphasizes the importance of contracts. Only those nations where courts respect private property rights and enforce contracts fairly are going to attract foreign investment and motivate local entrepreneurs.

Robert Lawson, professor of economics at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, offers thought-provoking statistics to prove his contention that those societies that prize and protect "private property, rule of law and free markets [consistently outperform] ... those that are less economically free." To critics who complain that unrestrained free markets ultimately pull society apart into two groups—the very rich and the very poor—Lawson replies, "there is simply no evidence that economic freedom creates greater income inequality." Moreover, evidence shows that even lower income people in economically freer countries live longer, are better educated, and enjoy higher material standards of living than their counterparts in less-free countries.

These essays on policy are followed by case studies assessing areas of the world today with less-than-flourishing economies—including Africa, Latin America, and Sweden.

Despite decades of technical aid, investment, and advice, the vast majority of people in many African nations remain poor, with few prospects for improvement anytime soon. George Ayittey, a native of Ghana and now an economist at American University in Washington, D.C., believes he knows the reason. Western aid-givers, he complains, have consistently believed the promises of smooth-talking African leaders and too seldom provided any help directly to African people. In country after country, material and money intended for development projects have been diverted by members of the governing elite to enrich themselves and their supporters. Well-meaning Europeans and Americans ignore or simply do not know that a market economy depends on "secure property rights, free flow of information, rule of law, and mechanisms for contract enforcement. Because these processes ... are missing in most African countries," Ayittey warns, "so are the free markets."

Dan Johansson, a research fellow of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm, reports that Sweden’s once flourishing economy began to slide in the 1950s because government social programs intended to provide cradle-to-grave security for all citizens produced many unintended consequences. Increasingly complex laws and ever-rising taxes discouraged businesses from expanding and private citizens from saving and investing. Without the economic growth that only business and private investment can generate, Sweden now finds itself unable to make good on its promises, as more citizens leave the workforce for retirement and fewer young workers step up to take their places.

The book concludes with encouraging success stories from nations in Asia (China, India), Europe (Ireland), and even Africa (Botswana), whose economic achievement illustrates Powell’s belief that encouraging small-business entrepreneurs is the best way to achieve and maintain general affluence.

While a few essays are dry and technical, most of the writing here is vivid and intelligent. Futurists will be particularly interested in the essays by James A. Dorn on China’s key achievements and remaining economic needs, as well as the assessment of India’s prospects for attaining world prominence in trade and culture by Parth J. Shah and Renuka Sane.

About the Reviewer
Lane Jennings is research director of THE FUTURIST and production editor of Future Survey.

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March-April 2008 Vol. 42. No. 2

A New Bill of Rights for Americans

Review by Michael Marien
Constitutional protections authored centuries ago can hardly be expected to protect citizens coping with the massive changes wrought by technological progress and other trends, according to futurist Joseph F. Coates.

Businesses constantly revise their rules to stay competitive and to enhance productivity and long-term success, so why shouldn't nation-states? The basic rules governing the United States are, for the most part, more than 200 years old. Is it time to seriously consider an update?

Futures consultant Joseph F. Coates has issued a blunt warning in a short book entitled A Bill of Rights for 21st Century America:

Many, if not most, of our problems of governance have their source in the two hundred year old Constitution and Bill of Rights, framed for their time but which, despite incremental evolution, misfit our present and our foreseeable future.

Rethinking the U.S. Constitution is a huge job, but, as a start, this fearless, fresh, and thoughtful "monograph" considers the Bill of Rights—the 10 amendments added to the Constitution in 1791 and extended in subsequent amendments. America's Bill of Rights is seen by Coates as a cornerstone of democratic thinking, a success in growing the nation, and a world model for human rights.

But times have changed, and we must consider America's new context. As enumerated by Coates, issues requiring a new or radically modified Bill of Rights include economic globalization, the changing nature of war, massive worldwide migration, changes in health and health care, the growth of intellectual property, new technologies, new crimes, new family structures and sexual norms, urbanization, and more. He also stresses the need for international cooperation on many issues such as global warming and terrorism.

Coates considers the relevance of the current Bill of Rights in light of these trends, and today's fast-paced, technology-dominated society. The First Amendment, on freedom of speech, the press, and religion, still stands as a strong safeguard of American liberty. The Third Amendment, on quartering soldiers in time of peace, is obviously no longer relevant.

Other amendments need rethinking and refinement in light of new technologies: The Second, on the right to bear arms (in light of new weapons technologies); the Fourth, on unreasonable searches and seizures (in light of the information age and our computerized society); the Sixth, on the right of a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury (in light of complex cases involving technology); and the Eighth, on cruel and unusual punishments (in light of new techniques for more intimate invasions of the mind).

Revision of existing amendments, however, is a relatively small part of this discussion-starter. The main part of the wide-ranging monograph offers extensive discussion of 10 potential candidates for addition to the Bill of Rights.

1. Family Structure and Composition acknowledges the family in both its traditional form and in recently evolving forms as legitimate, thus giving fair and equal access to benefits extended to the nuclear family.

2. Assured Employment. As automation decreases the number of jobs, every American up to age 70 would be entitled to employment commensurate with his or her skills. This amendment also guarantees the unrestricted right to form labor unions.

3. Useful Education. Because education is increasingly key to employability, every citizen and resident would be entitled to an education commensurate with his or her abilities.

4. Universal Health Care. Everyone from birth to death would be entitled to a baseline of reasonable quality care. This measure should restructure the medical system and greatly lower costs.

5. Privacy in the Information Technology Age deals with 11 areas of contemporary privacy abuse in our infotech age of abundant information gathering and storage.

6. Equality of Voters eliminates the archaic Electoral College and replaces it with direct voting for president.

7. A Reformed Judicial System replaces the adversarial system of justice with nonadversarial processes, so as to "grossly simplify vast areas of law and especially of regulation."

8. Unimpeded International Travel gives all citizens the right to freely move to or return from any other country.

9. Open Government makes all information about all meetings fully public in terms of attendees, notes, commentary, and input, thus allowing citizens to see that a wide range of ideas have been heard in regard to potential plans.

10. Freedom from Torture assures that no citizen or visitor is subjected to any form of torture, including degradation or humiliation. Anyone involved in committing an abusive act will have the next two levels of command held equally responsible.

Is Coates's proposed Bill of Rights utopian? Revolutionary? Or merely a liberal/progressive wish list? Arguably, any or all of these dismissive (or flattering) labels might apply. But this is not the hot and hyperbolic manifesto so often issued by would-be world changers or society changers. One might object to one or more of the proposed new amendments, or quibble with certain phrasings, but such objections are beside the point. Rather, this monograph is primarily a call for deliberation, for considering the changed and changing societal context.

Coates ends his reflections with several recommendations, including creating a Web page devoted to changing the Bill of Rights, as well as a series of blogs and an ongoing dialogue in the media; forming a National Commission on the Bill of Rights; encouraging state legislatures to organize committees; and getting support from 10 or 20 large foundations to facilitate understanding and discussion.

To put it another way, what would the Founding Fathers do if they were to reappear among us in the early twenty-first century? As reasonable and thoughtful leaders concerned about the common good, they would surely encourage a movement for updating their Bill of Rights (and perhaps the Constitution) for our times. And they would thank Joe Coates for initiating a long-overdue discussion based on today's emerging realities—a process that would serve the long-term national interest.

About the Reviewer

Michael Marien is editor of Future Survey. In the interests of full disclosure, author Joe Coates is a Future Survey Advisor. Also see "Updating the Ten Commandments" by Joseph F. Coates (THE FUTURIST, May-June 2003).

A New Bill of Rights for Americans

January-February 2008 Vol. 42. No. 1

A Bill of Rights for 21st Century America by Joseph F. Coates. Kanawha Institute for the Study of the Future (www.kanawhainstitute.com ). 2007. 93 pages. Paperback. $12.99. Available from the Kanawha Institute or the Futurist Bookshelf, www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.

Genetic Ethics and Superbabies

Drawing the line between preventing ailments and bestowing genetic advantage.

Genomic research has been on a sprint since 2003, when researchers with the International Human Genome Project completed their map the nucleotides that form human DNA. Some researchers believe that in the next few years, science will be able to recognize and possibly eliminate a most of the world’s congenital diseases (through a process called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD) and better treat many other diseases at the cellular level.

Genomics may also enable otherwise healthy individuals to change their own DNA to improve athletic prowess or brain power, or allow the wealthy to artificially conceive genetically "superior" offspring. As new gene treatment options spring into existence, many people are seeking the line between legitimate gene therapy and superhuman enhancement.

“The conceptual problem arises the moment we consider that some of our most valuable medical interventions are enhancements,” writes bioethicist Ronald M. Green in Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice. “Vaccines are a leading example. Almost no one is naturally immune to smallpox, polio, measles, whooping cough, or any of the other diseases that we vaccinate against.

"When we are inoculated, the DNA in our white blood cells undergoes irreversible genetic changes, initiating the synthesis of antibodies to many viruses and bacteria. Vaccinations make us superhumans, but no one ridicules enhancements of this sort. In most places in the United States and other industrialized countries, a child cannot enter school unless he or she is vaccinated,” Green points out.

There are several types of genetic enhancement, each with its own ethical, and practical, strengths and weaknesses.

Somatic gene modification involves treating or changing the adult genes in a patient. A hypothetical example of somatic enhancement would be gene doping, in which an athlete takes a substance to “trick” his DNA into producing more testosterone on a regular basis.

Alternatively, germline gene modification is done before birth, usually during the embryo stage. A Germline therapy for immunodeficiency could involve removing the sickle cell anemia gene from a developing embryo. One example of germline enhancement would be imbuing a developing embryo with certain characteristics seen as desirable, thus "designing a baby."

Somatic therapy is the less controversial of the two. Many researchers believe it holds the most promise, though meaningful breakthroughs in somatic therapy are still several years away.

Germline therapy may be more practically achievable. According to the Johns Hopkins Genetics and Public Policy Center, PGD has been used to screen for 1,000 genetic disorders. The therapy is also more provocative.

“I have been in the gene therapy field since 1987,” says Dr. Markus Grompe, a fellow at the conservative Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person. “It was very clear from day one that [genomics] could be used to change our species genetically by manipulating the germ line, i.e. making transgenic humans. There has been a consensus from day one that this would be off limits, ethically." Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics has likewise argued against tampering with the human genome.

Inoculating children in the womb against serious diseases or disorders is not, on its face, controversial. But is manipulating cells to guard against traits that are merely undesirable ethical or unethical? Who gets to draw the boundary? As Green points out in his book, physical unattractiveness, or even plainness, can have real consequences over the course of human lifetime in terms of lost status and earning power. Is homeliness a disorder that should be treated genetically? What about being of a certain sex? The Mastertons, a British family, made headlines in the United Kingdom when they appealed to the government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for the right to determine the sex of their offspring by screening the fertilized eggs to be implanted. The Authority denied the request. Couples in the United States can use PGD to screen their baby's sex without restriction.

Babies by Design suggests four basic principles for distinguishing between gene manipulation that is ethical and that which is somewhat less than scrupulous.

1. Genetic interventions should always be aimed at what is reasonably in the child’s best interests. “A child’s likely consent is a rough-and-ready first test," writes Green, "but it should always be measured against the broader standard of what the larger community regards as being reasonably in the child’s best interests."

2. Genetic interventions should be almost as safe as natural reproduction. According to Green, parents' wishes are an important part of the moral equation in determining what is ethical and what isn't. These wishes, he says, "have weight and should be respected so long as the child is not likely to be seriously harmed. . . . Where enhancement is concerned, we should factor into our thinking the prospect of added benefit for the child. If rational adults can invite some risks in undergoing cosmetic plastic surgery or a laser eye procedure, parents can also accept some added risk for their future child to give these benefits.”

3. We should avoid and discourage interventions that confer only “positional” advantage. “Some requests for gene enhancements, like sports doping, could produce a tragedy of the commons," argues Green. "Parents seeking a sports champion might try to have a child with an elevated red blood cell function. At its extreme, this request could significantly increase the child’s risk of heart disease. Once many other parents started doing the same thing, the result would be no competitive advantage for anyone—bought at the price of increased health risks for all."

4. Genetic interventions should not reinforce or increase unjust inequality and discrimination, economic inequality, or racism. “Gene enhancements could widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots,” Green points out. “We should think of effective ways or either controlling or increasing access to them.”

Regardless of whatever guidelines governments enact, individuals frightened by the potential of gene science—or offended by the mere notion of it—will surely persist in the belief that the human genome is too precious to be tampered with. Yet, millions of others will likely turn to genetic science to help safeguard their children against disease, confer desired traits, or even imbue their offspring with physical or mental advantages. Just as the science of genetic manipulation is only in its infancy today, so the debate about what constitutes ethical genetic enhancement has barely begun. —Patrick Tucker

Source: Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice by Ronald M. Green. Yale University Press. 2007. 270 pages. $26.
Society
January-February 2008 Vol. 42. No 1.

Genetic Ethics and Superbabies

Money from Trees

Rising support for carbon caps means new choices for farmers and landowners.

Growing food and raising livestock contribute more carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere than does transportation, according to the United Nations. Agriculture is one of the leading causes of deforestation, a key global warming contributor. By some estimates, 35% of the Earth's surface (not under ice) is devoted to food production, primarily to livestock cultivation. Bio-waste from cows, goats, pigs and other livestock accounts for roughly 37% of the methane in the atmosphere. Yet, farmers and ranchers will probably be among the first to profit from tomorrow's low-carbon economy.

In a new Duke University report titled Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low-Carbon Economy, scientists from universities across the United States provide a guide to help farmers and landowners tap into and trade their lands' precious carbon-storing properties.

"Farmers can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it as soil carbon by changing tillage practices," the editors write in the introduction. "If farmers and forest landowners can be compensated for their actions to reduce emissions or sequester greenhouse gases, they can benefit economically from these efforts."

Using low-till or no-till farming practices and raising smaller animals that produce less waste (such as sheep instead of cows) have measurable impacts on reducing carbon output. Today's farmers and ranchers also have the option of converting their land to carbon depositories or "sinks," by allowing trees to grow larger before logging or by replanting grasslands and forests.

But is there any money in it?

"Recent studies by Kansas State University and others have indicated that carbon [offsets] could be an $8 billion market for agriculture," reports Dick Wittman, a member of the Agricultural Carbon Market Working Group.

The Low-Carbon Economy

However slowly or subtlety, the transition toward a low-carbon economy is already underway. Some 35 developed countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, vowing to reduce their carbon output by 5 % to 8% below 1990 levels. One of the most popular methods for meeting reduction goals is the cap-and-trade system, wherein regulators set a total carbon allowance or "cap" for carbon emitters such as electric utilities, factories, or, in the case of the Kyoto Protocol, entire nations. The carbon emitters can then turn to the free market to meet their cap by:

• Investing in cleaner technology or more-efficient business practices to reduce their emissions.

• Purchasing allowances from other emitters that have reduced their CO2 output.

• Buying carbon "offsets," which remove carbon from the air from individuals or entities such as forest owners and carbon-sink operators.

The potential profit for landowners from cap-and-trade may be big. In 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency found that, as the price of offsets rose, the number of farmers and landowners who expressed interest in participating in the offset market grew steadily. But for a trade system to work, governments must enact and enforce CO2 caps. While several individual U.S. (e.g., California, Maryland, and New York) have adopted mandatory carbon reduction goals, neither China nor the United States, the world's two largest emitters of CO2 respectively, has yet adopted caps on carbon emissions at the national level. Observers believe that mandatory emissions caps are a near certainty in the future. In a recent Stanford University poll, 85% of Americans surveyed said that they believed global warming was probably happening, and 73% favored mandatory restrictions on power generators, even if those restrictions resulted in a $10 rise in their monthly electric bill. Only 47% supported the somewhat more lenient cap-and-trade solution. The Duke researchers suggest that, if cap-and-trade were better understood and more rigorously enforced, carbon markets would realize greater public support.

"A comprehensive cap on carbon will guarantee reductions in global warming pollution while stimulating new technologies. Designed well, it will move people to sequester in carbon in the ground and in forests," they conclude.—Patrick Tucker

Source: Harnessing Farms and Forests in the Low-Carbon Economy: How to Create, Measure, and Verify Greenhouse Gas Offsets, edited by Zach Willey and Bill Chameides. The Nicholas Institute for Environmental and Policy Solutions. Duke University Press. 2007. Web site www.dukeupress.edu

Environment
January-February 2008. Vol 42. No. 1

Money from Trees

Poetry in the Digital Age

Poetry is arguably one of the most intimate and spiritually connecting forms of public communication that humanity has yet devised, an art that speaks from one heart to another. Is there any place for a computer in this relationship?

To judge from the crude verse-generating programs one might typically stumble across on the Internet ("Poetry CreatOR" or "RoboPoem," for instance)—which spew programmed textual nonsense—the answer is a resounding No. But there are many ways in which the computer has succeeded in bringing new inspiration to writers and new ways to connect with audiences.

The computer enables the artist (poet) to communicate with more than text, adding images, movement, and sound; this capability is affecting both writing and the reader's experience, argues literary scholar Maria Engberg of Uppsala University in Sweden.

"The way digital poetry experiments with language raises questions and challenges conceptions of literature that were formed by printed books," she says.

Experimentation is not new to poets: Even the constraints of the printed page permitted visual enhancements through the arrangement of words on a page and the additions of illustrations; adding music to words creates songs. The multimedia age permits and encourages new ways of approaching poetic communication, such as three-dimensional installations in virtual reality, which invite direct participation of the reader/viewer.

English-speaking poets John Cayley, Stephanie Strickland, and Thomas Swiss are among those whose work Engberg has analyzed. Cayley's multimedia piece "riverIsland" uses video editing to morph words and letters, creating what he calls "a navigable text movie with sound."

"Reading becomes one way to use the poem," says Engberg, "and the reader becomes an active do-player. But the poems can also eliminate that possibility, leaving the reader to be a viewer looking at the digital poem."

Similarly, the interactive poem "City of Bits" by Thomas Swiss incorporates vibrant graphics mimic an urban landscape that invites the reader/participant to "stroll" from one page to the next by clicking on an icon of a walking man.

Traditionalists may be intimidated by Cayley's detailed instructions for navigating the digital poem, but others may appreciate the opportunity to experience a poetic grace in a digital environment too often dominated by the more violent sensibilities of gaming. —Cynthia G. Wagner

Sources: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden. Web site www.uu.se ."riverIsland" by John Cayley, http://homepage.mac/com/shadoof/net/in/riverisland.html. "City of Bits" by Thomas Swiss, http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/swiss/cob/index.html#

January-February 2008. Vol. 42. No. 1