Futurist Inventors to Flock to Toronto

4.9.12
For Immediate Release

Contact:
Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor, THE FUTURIST magazine
Director of Communications
World Future Society
ptucker@wfs.org
(443) 756-4205

Futurist Inventors Flock to Toronto

The World Future Society has announced the winners of the second annual Futurists: BetaLaunch (F:BL), a technology and innovation showcase. Engineers, designers, and other future-makers will present their inventions to the 1,000 futurists expected to gather for WorldFuture 2012, the Society’s annual conference. The winners receive a complimentary pass to the conference, to take place July 27-29 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where a Best In Show will be chosen.

“We had a hard time selecting only a handful of entries from the large number of quality submissions this year. We're extremely excited to bring these future-changing inventions to the public," says World Future Society President Timothy Mack.

The F:BL 2012 winners are:

Senstore
…is bringing Star Trek's medical tricorder to life with intuitive interaction and diagnosis.

Sensory Acumen
…offers a new take on “smell-o-vision,” giving your gaming and entertainment experience that extra level of realism.

BiDi Screen
…will revolutionize how we interact with electronics, using hand gestures instead of clicking or tapping a screen.

Kids Talk Radio
…trains student backpack journalists internationally with a focus on science and technology reporting.

The Mission Business
…creates immersive, cross-platform theater events to thrill audiences with educational entertainment about near-future technology.

Filabot”
…helps bring 3-D printing home with its personal filament maker, which uses recyclable plastic to create filament.

ComposeTheFuture
…is a free social network that allows futurists to predict, plan, and promote a better future.

Play2thefuture
…will use games to educate players about serious world issues while challenging inventors to develop real solutions and compete for crowd-sourced funding. Gameplay will give people the opportunity to select the best solution to be funded.

OCAD University – Strategic Foresight & Innovation program
…trains students to address complex, socially important issues through designing for creative social futures.

Life Technologies
…offers affordable whole-human-genome sequencing in just hours instead of days or weeks.

Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D
…has created the Cyberhero League, a social platform that will enable children to actively impact the welfare of people, animals, and the environment through everyday activities.

I3 BioDesigns
…has developed a life-saving garment that treats jaundice in newborns and allows babies and parents to bond in those first few days of life.

B-TEMIA
…gets people on their feet with wearable dermoskeletons.

Where and When is the Event?

The Futurists: BetaLaunch showcase will be held in conjunction with WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver, the annual conference of the World Future Society, to take place at the Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel.

Additional speakers at this year’s event include Intel's top futurist Brian David Johnson; Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project; and Geordie Rose, inventor of the world's first commercial quantum computer, alongside more than fifty other presenters from across the globe discussing health care, technology, governance, education, and more.

World Future Society

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2010). Others in attendance typically include business leaders, government officials, scientists, corporate planners, and forecasters from across the globe.

You can learn more about the conference by visiting www.wfs.org.

Learn more about Futurists: BetaLaunch at www.wfsbetalaunch.com or contact Patrick Tucker at ptucker@wfs.org or call (443) 756-4205.

For journalists in Toronto, Patrick Tucker will be available to meet in person to discuss F:BL and the conference during the last week of April. Contact him to schedule an interview at 443-756-4205 or ptucker(at)wfs.org

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

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

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

Motorola Headset Computer

The Golden-i is a computer headset with full voice, audio, and PC capabilities. According to Nicole D. Tricoukes, Business Innovation Manager at Motorola Solutions, “this new category of wearable computer provides handsfree remote control and instant access to digital information and broadcast programming. Access is also available for Internet services, including streaming video over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, allowing simultaneous real-time interface with multiple mobile devices, servers and networks. These unique capabilities are enabled through a gesture- and voice-recognition-based user interface."

(Contact: Nicole D. Tricoukes • www.mygoldeni.com)

Disruptathon

Disruptathon is a Virginia-based company that seeks to foster innovative and disruptive thinking for the purpose of growing business and improving the economy. “We accomplish through live public and private open innovation events where innovative concepts and products rise to the top. Our Innovation Discovery platform enables live feedback and analysis of ideas and presentations,” according to Pete Erickson, CEO. At WorldFuture 2011, Disruptathon used a set of event kiosks to allow conference participants to anonymously vote on which innovations and ideas they felt had the most potential.

Futurists:BetaLaunch

Futurists:BetaLaunch—presented by the World Future Society, THE FUTURIST magazine, and 1X57 and sponsored by Bentley Systems, Google, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Cynergy—featured inventions and innovations alongside their inventor/innovator.

Besides the Golden-i, nine other innovations and ideas were selected to be showcased in this year’s event. The following information was provided by those participants.

This year’s Futurists:BetaLaunch event was covered by the Vancouver Sun, CBC Canada, Byte magazine and Xinhua news, the largest news agency in China.

The World Future Society

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006) and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2010). Others in attendance typically include business leaders, government officials, scientists, corporate planners, and forecasters from across the globe.

FUTURIST magazine editor Cynthia Wagner contributed to this release

Longevity Expert Aubrey de Grey Comes to Baltimore to Discuss the End of Aging

The World Future Society, Publisher of THE FUTURIST,
7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • U.S.A. 301/656-8274 • 443 756 4205 / fax 301/951-0394 • www.wfs.org
For Immediate Release: 9.13.2011

Contact:
Patrick Tucker
Deputy Editor
THE FUTURIST magazine
Director of Communications
The World Future Society
ptucker@wfs.org
443-756-4205

Click Here to Register

(Bethesda)

On October 12, Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK. will discuss prospects for extending the human life span indefinitely at the Community College of Baltimore, an event sponsored by THE FUTURIST magazine.

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

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

Where and When is the Event?

This event will take place on October 12 at 6 p.m. at the J-137 Lecture Hall, Essex Campus, Community College of Baltimore, 7201 Rossville Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21237-3899. Register here

Sponsors:

THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine published continuously since 1967 by the World Future Society and is a principal benefit of membership. The magazine is also available on newsstands coast to coast in the United States. The focus of THE FUTURIST is innovation, creative thinking, and emerging trends in the social, economic, environmental, and technological areas.

The Community College of Baltimore Community Book Connection:
Each year the college selects a book that it recommends to the community. Students are urged to read the book, and faculty at the Community College of Baltimore are urged to include it or selections from it in their courses. A series of cultural and academic activities—films, plays, dance performances, debates, panels, and lectures—are organized to support the project. The goals of the Community Book Connection are to enhance student and community learning, to strengthen our common human and intellectual bonds; and to demonstrate the many ways that classroom learning is deeply connected to our lives in the everyday world.

This year's chosen book is Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This event coincides with that selection.

To learn more, contact:
Patrick Tucker
Deputy Editor
THE FUTURIST magazine
Director of Communications
THE WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY
Ptucker@wfs.org
443-756-4205

THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases its Top Ten Forecasts for 2012 and Beyond

December 5, 2011.

Bethesda, Maryland - The World Future Society is pleased to release the top ten forecasts from its most recent Outlook report, published in the November-December 2012 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.

THE FUTURIST magazine examines key developments in technology, the environment, the economy, international relations, etc., in order to paint a full and credible portrait of our likely future. Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, and the end of the Cold War. The forecasts are meant as conversation starters, not absolute predictions about the future.

The Society hopes that this report, covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology, will assist its readers in preparing for the challenges and opportunities in 2012 and beyond.

THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases its Top Ten Forecasts for 2012 and beyond.

Forecast #1:

Learning will become more social and game-based, and online social gaming may soon replace textbooks in schools. The idea that students learn more when they are engaged—as they are when playing games—is helping educators embrace new technologies in the classroom. In addition to encouraging collaborations, games also allow students to learn from their mistakes with less fear of failing.

Forecast #2:

Commercial space tourism will grow significantly during the coming decade. By 2021, there will be 13,000 suborbital passengers annually, resulting in $650 million in revenue. Many companies are currently working to make commercial space flight a viable industry, according to Melchor Antuñano, director of the FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute.

Forecast #3:

Nanotechnology offers hope for restoring eyesight. Flower-shaped electrodes topped with photodiodes, implanted in blind patients’ eyes, may restore their sight. The “nanoflowers” mimic the geometry of neurons, making them a better medium than traditional computer chips for carrying photodiodes and transmitting the collected light signals to the brain.

Forecast #4:

Robotic earthworms will gobble up our garbage. Much of what we throw away still has value. Metals, petroleum, and other components could get additional use if we extracted them, and robotic earthworms could do that for us. The tiny, agile robot teams will go through mines and landfills to extract anything of value, and then digest the remaining heaps into quality top soil.

Forecast #5:

The dust bowls of the twenty-first century will dwarf those seen in the twentieth. Two giant dust bowls are now forming, in Asia and in Africa, due to massive amounts of soil erosion and desertification resulting from overgrazing, over-plowing, and deforestation, warns environmental futurist Lester R. Brown.

Forecast #6:

Lunar-based solar power production may be the best way to meet future energy demands. Solar power can be more dependably and inexpensively gathered on the Moon than on Earth. This clean energy source is capable of delivering the 20 trillion watts of power a year that the Earth’s predicted 10 billion people will require by mid-century.

Forecast #7:

Machine vision will become available in the next 5 to 15 years, with visual range ultimately exceeding that of the human eye. This technology will greatly enhance robotic systems’ capabilities.

Forecast #8:

Advances in fuel cells will enable deep-sea habitation. Fuel cells such as those currently being developed for automobiles will produce electricity directly, with no toxic fumes. This advance will eventually make it easier to explore and even colonize the undersea world via extended submarine journeys.

Forecast #9:

Future buildings may be more responsive to weather fluctuations. “Protocell cladding” that utilizes bioluminescent bacteria or other materials would be applied on building facades to collect water and sunlight, helping to cool the interiors and produce biofuels. The protocells are made from oil droplets in water, which allow soluble chemicals to be exchanged between the drops and their surroundings.

Forecast #10:

The end of identity as we know it? It may become very easy to create a new identity (or many identities) for ourselves. All we will have to do is create new avatars in virtual reality. Those avatars will act on our behalf in real life to conduct such high-level tasks as performing intensive research, posting blog entries and Facebook updates, and managing businesses. The lines between ourselves and our virtual other selves will blur, to the point where most of us will, in essence, have multiple personalities.

All of these forecasts plus dozens more were included in Outlook 2012, which scanned the best writing and research from THE FUTURIST magazine over the course of the previous year.

THE FUTURIST has also made public the contents from Outlook 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 more than 300 forecasts in all relating to 2012 and beyond. http://www.wfs.org/forecasts.htm

THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine published continuously since 1967 by the World Future Society and is a principal benefit of membership, read by 25,000 members worldwide. The magazine is also available in newsstands throughout the United States.

Among the many influential thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST are Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Hazel Henderson, Robert McNamara, B.F. Skinner, Nicholas Negroponte, David Walker, Lewis Lapham, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Kurzweil.

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

Editors: For more information on Outlook 2012, THE FUTURIST magazine, or the World Future Society, feel free to contact Patrick Tucker at 443-756-4205 or ptucker@wfs.org. More information about the World Future Society can also be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org.

CONTACT INFORMATION

• Patrick Tucker
• World Future Society
• Email ptucker@wfs.org
• Web site www.wfs.org
• 443-756-4205

Futurists Open Contest for World-Changing Inventions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
11.21.11
Contact
Patrick Tucker
443-756-4205
Bethesda, Maryland—The World Future Society, a nonprofit scientific and educational organization, has issued a call for inventions, innovations, and breakthrough startups to showcase in the second annual Futurists: BetaLaunch expo in Toronto next July.

Futurists: BetaLaunch (or F:BL) serves as a technology petting zoo where engineers, designers and others can present their inventions to the 1,000 futurists expected to gather for the Society’s annual conference.
The inaugural F:BL event in 2011, co-produced with 1x57 and sponsored by Disruptathon, was a huge success. "Futurists presented Bold Visions at the BetaLaunch expo in Vancouver," said Eric Mack of BYTE magazine, published by Information Week. The conference was also covered in the Vancouver Sun and by CBC Canada, MarketWatch, and Xinhua News, the largest news agency in the People's Republic of China.

Interested participants may learn more or enter the competition at:
http://www.wfs.org/content/Worldfuture-2012/futurists-betalaunch-2012

The World Future Society

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.
The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006) and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2010). Others in attendance typically include business leaders, government officials, scientists, corporate planners, and forecasters from across the globe.

Where and When is the Event?

The Futurists: BetaLaunch showcase will be held in conjunction with WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver, the annual conference of the World Future Society, at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 27-29, 2012. Learn more about the conference at www.wfs.org.
All inventors selected to present their inventions at F:BL will receive a complimentary registration to the WorldFuture 2012 conference ($750 value). Travel costs are the responsibility of each inventor. Learn more about Futurists: BetaLaunch at:
http://www.wfs.org/content/Worldfuture-2012/futurists-betalaunch-2012

Futurist Inventors to Converge on Vancouver

Issued: 5.24.11

(Bethesda, Maryland)The World Future Society and 1X57 have announced the winners of the first annual Futurists: BetaLaunch (F:BL), a technology and innovation showcase. Engineers, designers, and other future-makers will present their inventions to the 1,000 futurists expected to gather for WorldFuture 2011, the Society’s annual conference.

“This year, we had over 60 excellent submissions for Futurists: BetaLaunch and could accept a handful of entries,” said Lisa Donchak, Google associate and one of the F:BL judges. “We were surprised and impressed by the quality of each submission.… We hope WorldFuture 2011 attendees enjoy getting up close and personal with the final selections. We’ll be exhibiting a phenomenal range of inventions, big and small,” she said in a taped segment, available on the Futurists: BetaLaunch Web site.

You can also register for WorldFuture 2011 here.

Among the F:BL 2011 winners:

Primer Code Hero
…changes the gaming platform by making all knowledge playable.

SmartUp
…coaches the brain to optimize intelligence, wellness and productivity, relying on spacing effect, human coaching and context.

Guardian Watch
…allows anyone with a mobile device to stream video and report emergencies in real-time, alerting local law enforcement and members of your neighborhood with your GPS location and a visual of the the scene.

The Thermoacoustic Engine
…generates electricity from any fuel or heat source (including sunlight, gas or biomass) with extraordinary efficiency, simplicity and reliability.

TechShop
…is the first membership based, do-it-yourself (DIY) workshop and fabrication studio, providing its members access to a vibrant, open community of highly creative people and high-quality machines, tools and software.

Seasteading
…or floating cities, will allow for experimentation with new ideas for government, by approaching government as industry and by following the spirit of entrepreneurism, injecting innovation and competition into government, leading to better societal architecture.

SkyTran
…or “packet switching for people” will revolutionize centuries old human-guided transport.

The Non-Invasive Diagnosis Device
…will permit individuals to self-diagnose for blood borne diseases.

The Headset Computer
…is a head-worn, mobile computer headset with full voice, audio and PC capabilities.

StartSomeGood
…provides social entrepreneurs with a platform to raise start-up funds and build a community of supporters — all in a fun, engaging and community-driven way.

Portapure
…treats any river, stream, or lake water safely enough to drink — anywhere in the world.

MAKE founder Dale Dougherty to Open Futurists: BetaLaunch

Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of MAKE, and general manager of the Maker Media division of O'Reilly Media, Inc. will speak at the WorldFuture 2011, in conjunction with Futursts: BetaLaunch and WorldFuture 2011. Dougherty helped found O'Reilly Media, Inc. with Tim O'Reilly. Dougherty was developer and publisher of Web Review, the online magazine for Web designers. “MAKE Magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. We celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will,” according to the company’s Web site.

Where and When is the Event?

The Futurists: BetaLaunch showcase will be held in conjunction with WorldFuture 2011: Moving from Vision to Action, the annual conference of the World Future Society, to be held at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre hotel in Vancouver, Canada, on July 8-10, 2011.

Additional speakers at this year's event include longevity expert Aubrey de Grey, senior analyst of the GAO applied research methods group Nancy Donovan, leadership expert Lance Secretan, author Ramez Naam (More Than Human), and futurist and innovation advocate Thomas Frey.

World Future Society

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006) and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2010). Others in attendance typically include business leaders, government officials, scientists, corporate planners, and forecasters from across the globe. You can learn more about the conference by visiting www.wfs.org. Learn more about Futurists: BetaLaunch at http://wfsbetalaunch.com/ or contact Jennifer Boykin at jboykin@wfs.org or call 301-656-8274.

World Future Society Welcomes Finance Expert Bob Chernow To Its Board of Directors

5.10. 2011. (Bethesda) Bob Chernow, a finance expert and futurist from the Milwaukee area, has joined the World Future Society's board of directors.

Chernow is perhaps best known for successfully predicting the S&L/Mutual Savings Bank crisis years before its massive impact on the U.S. stock market.

"Deregulation and the lack of oversight led me to predict the collapse of the industry – something that I tried to prevent in a series of speeches and articles to the industry,” he wrote in an article for BizTimes, where he serves as an online columnist. “In addition, the 'guns and butter' policies of President Lyndon Johnson and President Richard Nixon’s imposition of price controls (without making changes in the economy) made inflation inevitable. The lack of any response made me understand what it means to be a 'Cassandra.' You can see the future, but you are cursed that no one believes you!"

Chernow later predicted the late 2007 subprime mortgage collapse by examining non-enforcement of bank regulation, fraud in appraisal and credit reports, the use of interest-only loans, and ARMs, among other factors.

Prior to entering business and finance, Chernow worked in the area of intelligence at the Special Forces Warfare Center (Green Berets) and later in Army Intelligence, both during the Vietnam War. He created a spread pattern analysis system to project enemy positions. He explains that, because he didn't have access to a computer at the time, he "used an index card system of all intelligence gathered over a decade, true or false. It allowed us to develop an institutional history and to use uneven data to project what would occur." He calls this his first foray into the field of foresight methods and futurism.

Chernow has played an active role in the Society for decades, having attended every World Future Society conference since 1980. He hopes to focus on grants and donations.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

Contact:
Patrick Tucker
Senior editor
THE FUTURIST magazine
Director of Communications
The World Future Society
ptucker@wfs.org
443-756-4205 (Direct)

5.10.11 Leadership Expert Lance Secretan to Address World Future Society Meeting in Vancouver

Lance Secretan, award-winning columnist, Fortune 100 CEO, and author of such books as Inspire! What Great Leaders Do, will address the World Future Society's annual meeting in Vancouver this July.

The event, WorldFuture 2011: Moving from Vision to Action, will take place at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre hotel in Vancouver, Canada, on July 8-10, 2011. WorldFuture 2011 serves as the annual meeting of the nonprofit World Future Society, but registration is open to the public.

Secretan advises 30 of Fortune's magazine's "Most Admired Companies," and 12 of Fortune's "Best Companies to Work for in America." The magazine Leadership Excellence ranked him among its top "100 Most Influential Thinkers on Leadership.".

WorldFuture 2011

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year, where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006) and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2010). Others in attendance typically include business leaders, government officials, scientists, corporate planners, and forecasters from across the globe.

Other speakers at this year's event include longevity expert Aubrey de Grey, senior analyst of the GAO applied research methods group Nancy Donovon, and Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human.

More information can be found at the World Future Society Web site, www.wfs.org or by calling 301-656-8274.

2. 7. 2011 Cynthia G. Wagner Becomes Editor of THE FUTURIST Magazine

Contact:
Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
The World Future Society
Ptucker@wfs.org

[Bethesda, Maryland] Cynthia G. Wagner has been named Editor of THE FUTURIST magazine, published by the nonprofit World Future Society. Wagner will be taking over the magazine from Edward Cornish, who founded Society and its flagship publication, THE FUTURIST, in 1966.

“For 44 years, I have had the privilege of serving as Editor of THE FUTURIST magazine. I would like to thank all of you for your support during our journey along the frontiers of the future. It has been a thrilling ride,” Cornish remarked in an essay, available on THE FUTURIST's Web site.

Cornish will be transitioning to a new role as futurist in residence at the magazine where he will write about the past, present, and future of futurism. “After thinking and writing about the future for more than four decades, I believe I have learned some things about foresight,” he remarked.

Cornish is also the author of the book Futuring: An Exploration of The Future.

“I am fortunate to have learned the business from one of futurism’s founders, a visionary of visionaries. I draw not only from Ed’s insatiable curiosity as a journalist, but also from his critical judgment about what really matters,” said Wagner.

Wagner first came to THE FUTURIST as an editorial assistant in 1981 and has been managing editor since 1992. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Grinnell College and an M.A. in communications, magazine journalism, from Syracuse University’s S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

“Right from the start, she proved to be a highly capable editor and quickly developed into an outstanding one,” remarked Cornish.

Wagner’s first issue as editor, the March-April 2011 FUTURIST, hit store shelves last week. The issue features a special section on the future of health care and articles by celebrated technologist and writer Kevin Kelly and the prolific author and scientist William Sims Bainbridge.

Among the many influential futurists, experts, and public figures who have contributed to THE FUTURIST over the past 45 years are Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore Jr., Newt Gingrich, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Vaclav Havel, Margaret Mead, Robert McNamara, B.F. Skinner, Nicholas Negroponte, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Kurzweil, David Walker, Glenn T. Seaborg, Hazel Henderson, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Douglas Rushkoff, Clay Shirky, Robert James Woolsey, and Helen Fisher.

THE FUTURIST was nominated for a 2007 Utne Independent Press Award for Best Science and Technology Coverage.

Daniel Bell, Sociologist and WFS Member, Dies at 91.

Sociologist Daniel Bell, one of WFS’s first members and a speaker at our 1975 conference, dies at the age of 91.

Following is a brief obituary that ran in the Associated Press
Daniel Bell, influential sociologist, dies at 91

1/26/2011 9:18:00 AM
Associated Press/AP Online/USA TODAY
Online original

By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK - Daniel Bell, a leading sociologist of the past half-century who wrote groundbreaking books about the demise of revolutionary politics and about the economy and lifestyle of what he helped label a "post-industrial" society, has died. He was 91.

Bell died Tuesday at his Cambridge, Mass., home after a short illness, said his son, David Bell.

Daniel Bell was a teen radical who in middle age became an apostle of pragmatism. He is credited for at least two seminal works: "The End of Ideology," which predicted a post-Marxist, post-conservative era, and "The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society," in which he prophesied the shift from a manufacturing economy to one based on technology.

"Many people would testify to his influence, and I am one of those," said Nathan Glazer, his longtime friend and fellow sociologist. "He always had large ideas. He was enormously energetic and had an amazing memory of names and dates. And some of his ideas about what was happening to society were very much on target."

Bell's other books included "Work and Its Discontents," "The Reforming of Education" and "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism," which explored how a bourgeois economy coexisted with an anti-bourgeois culture.

"A corporation finds its people being straight by day and swingers by night," he wrote.

Bell was extremely proud that a new edition of "The Reforming of Education," originally published in the 1960s, was recently released, David Bell said.

For decades, Bell was a public intellectual, a "New York intellectual." He was a widely quoted essayist; a co-editor of The Public Interest, a founding neo-conservative journal; and a professor of sociology at Harvard University and Columbia University, where he helped mediate a campus rebellion in 1968.

Bell's influence sometimes reached the White House. In 1979, "Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism" helped inspire pollster Patrick Caddell to have President Jimmy Carter give a speech, what became known as the "malaise" speech, on the country's apparent spiritual crisis. Bell himself was among the many intellectual and political leaders Carter would summon for advice on what to say.

Although Bell was linked politically to Public Interest co-founder and neo-conservative "godfather" Irving Kristol, he left the magazine after a few years and followed no single line of thinking. He believed in free elections and a regulated economy, but also valued cultural and moral tradition and scorned contemporary art. He defined himself as a liberal in politics, a socialist in economics and a conservative in culture.

His story was archetypal: The son of Jewish immigrants, his first language Yiddish and first religion politics. Growing up poor on Manhattan's Lower East Side, his father having died when Bell was 10 months old, made him a dedicated socialist - at age 13.

"When I had my Bar Mitzvah," he once recalled, "I said to the Rabbi, `I've found the truth. I don't believe in God ... I'm joining the Young People's Socialist League.' So he looked at me and said, `Kid, you don't believe in God. Tell me, do you think God cares?'"

By his teen years, he knew English well enough to read Marx and John Stuart Mill and study dialectical materialism. At City College of New York, he received a degree in sociology, but otherwise was steeped in debates with classmates Irving Howe, Kristol and Glazer, their gatherings recalled in the 1998 documentary "Arguing the World."

After graduating from CCNY, Bell briefly attended Columbia as a graduate student but dropped out to write for the liberal journal The New Leader, where he soon became managing editor. In the 1940s, he taught at the University of Chicago and served as labor editor of Fortune Magazine.

Skeptical of Marxist formulas, he was more of a "socialist," with a small "s," than a Socialist. His first book, "Marxian Socialism in the United States," was an exploration of why a Marxist revolution never occurred in the U.S., even during the Great Depression. His conclusion: Socialists were too rigid, too programmed, for what was an essentially unprogrammed country.

Bell was writing essays throughout the 1950s and they were collected for "The End of Ideology," published in 1959 and the source of debate for years after. Bell believed that the disasters of Stalin and the Nazis and the rise of the welfare state had made extremism of both left and right obsolete. He predicted an era of more practical dreams, based not on theory, but on experience.

"The ladder to the City of Heaven can no longer be a `faith ladder,' but an empirical one," he wrote, "a utopia has to specify where one wants to go, how to get there, the costs of the enterprise, and some realization of, and justification for the determination of who is to pay."

His book was celebrated as a manifesto of common sense and mocked as delusional for predicting ideology's demise on the eve of the century's most rebellious decade. Sociologist C. Wright Mills called Bell's book "a celebration of apathy" and insisted radical change was under way, led not by workers, but students.

"Let the old women complain wisely about 'the end of ideology.' We are beginning to move again," Mills wrote.

But Bell defended "The End of Ideology," calling the uprisings of the '60s more cultural than economic and arguing that the decline of the Soviet Union and its influence on Eastern Europe had indeed finished off an era of slogans and personality cults.

"Ideology has become an irretrievably fallen word," he wrote, adding, sadly, "and so is sin."

His later works offered closer looks at a world with a smaller manufacturing class and, in his opinion, a decline in standards of art. "The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society," published in 1973, was a "venture in social forecasting" that anticipated an economic shift from muscle to knowledge, from horse power to brain power, from "a goods-producing to a service economy."

Bell noted a decline in the percentage of blue-collar jobs, of the proletariat that would lead a presumed Marxist revolution. He envisioned "the pre-eminence of the professional and technical class," and that the manufacturer of computers would be as central to the final decades of the 20th century as the maker of automobiles had been to the middle decades.

In 1980, he would call the new society "an information society" and foresee "the emergence of a new social framework of telecommunications" that would determine "the way knowledge is created and retrieved, and the character of the occupations and work in which men engage."

"The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism" came out in 1976 and extended upon his ideas about post-industrial culture, an increasingly structured economy coexisted with ever more unbounded private life. "The greatest single engine in the destruction of the Protestant ethic was the invention of the installment plan, or instant credit," he wrote.

Bell was an admirer of such early modernists as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, but he disdained the 1960s counterculture and its "preachments of personal freedom, extreme experience ... and sexual experimentation." Whatever boundaries challenged by Joyce and others in the 1920s had long vanished, Bell believed. What remained was "the shambles and appetite of self-interest."

Bell's own life was not without experience. He was married three times, most recently, in 1960, to literary critic Pearl Kazin, who years earlier had been involved with poet Dylan Thomas.

"He was a terrific father, a wonderful friend and a generous individual," his son said Wednesday. "He was an extraordinary talker with a huge range of jokes, that he called stories, that he'd deliver with perfect timing. He was always able to hold everyone's attention."

He is survived by his wife, son, daughter Jordy Bell, and four grandchildren.

A private burial service is planned for Friday, his son said. A memorial service in the spring is pending.

---

Associated Press Writer Mark Pratt in Boston contributed to this report.

3.9.11 Futurists Issue Call for Inventions

Bethesda-Maryland—The nonprofit World Future Society has issued a call for inventions and innovations to showcase at the first annual Futurists: BetaLaunch, this summer in Vancouver. The Futurists: Beta Launch or F:BL will serve as a sort of technology petting zoo where engineers, designers or others can present their inventions to the 1,000 futurists expected to gather for WorldFuture 2011, the Society’s annual conference.

“Recently, the global community of the World Future Society was polled about what futurist ideas they would most like to examine. The results confirmed what we suspected; futurists love ideas, innovation and look to us [The World Future Society] to help them keep on top of coming technological breakthroughs,” says Jennifer Boykin, World Future Society director of development.

WorldFuture 2011
Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than 80 countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006) and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2010). Others in attendance typically include business leaders, government officials, scientists, corporate planners, and forecasters from across the globe.

“Because of their passion, conference attendees are key purchasers and influencers for markets serving innovation, inventions, learning, and new technologies of all kinds,” according to Boykin. She hopes that F: BL will allow inventors “to connect in a very personal way with an audience of people who can help you launch your idea.”

Where and When is the Event?
The Futurists: BetaLaunch showcase will be held in conjunction with WorldFuture 2011, the Annual Conference of the World Future Society at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre hotel in Vancouver, Canada on July 8-10, 2011. You can learn more about the conference by visiting www.wfs.org.

F:BL will be physically located in the conference exhibits area. The call for inventions will close on April 15, 2011. The World Future Society will notify all entrants of selection decisions by May 1, 2011.

All inventors selected for the conference will receive a complimentary registration to the conference ($750 value.) Travel costs are the responsibility of each inventor. Learn more about Futurists: BetaLaunch at http://wfsbetalaunch.com/ or call 301-656-8274.

Futurist of the Year Award Nominations Now Open

Since 1975, the World Future Society has honored individuals for a lifetime of distinguished service. Recipients have included media critic Marshall McLuhan (1980), Futuribles International founder Bertrand de Jouvenel (1980), inventor Buckminster Fuller (1982), author Isaac Asimov (1986), and more than a dozen others.

Now, the Society has created a special award--named for its founding president, Edward Cornish--to recognize outstanding achievement in ongoing futures work or the effective promotion of foresight in any endeavor. The award may be given to acknowledge a specific project, publication, consulting activity, or other work that advances futures methodologies or increases the broader understanding and application of foresight techniques.

The Society’s first Edward Cornish Award: Futurist of the Year was presented during WorldFuture 2010 to Theodore J. Gordon, senior fellow of the Millennium Project.

The Society announces that nominations are now open for the next annual award. There is no fee for nominators or nominees to enter this award program. Nominations are open to any individual or organization involved in futures work anywhere in the world. The nominations will be presented to the WFS Board of Directors, who will select the recipient.

The winner will be announced at WorldFuture 2011: Moving from Vision to Action, the Society’s annual meeting to be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 8-10, 2011. There will be no monetary award for the winner.

Nomination Guidelines and Selection Criteria

The winner will be selected on the basis of work completed within the past 12 months, demonstrating an effective application of foresight (including classroom or consulting work) or innovation in foresight methodology with wide potential applications. Nominations may be here.

Restrictions:

The nomination essay and application must be submitted in English; however, documents submitted in support of the nomination may be in other languages, if accompanied by an executive summary in English. Membership in the World Future Society is not a requirement for either nominators or nominees; however, only Professional Members of the World Future Society may vote on the nominations selected.

Nominations and all supporting materials must be received at World Future Society headquarters by Monday, January 3, 2011.

Submit using the online form here or by e-mail to cwagner@wfs.org. Interested participants can also write to Edward Cornish Award: Futurist of the Year, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814.

THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases It's Top Ten Forecasts for 2013 and Beyond

For Immediate Release 10.9.2012

CONTACT INFORMATION

• Patrick Tucker
• World Future Society
• Email PatrickMcMillenTucker@gmail.com
• Web site www.wfs.org
• 443-756-4205

THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases It's Top Ten Forecasts for 2013 and Beyond

Bethesda, Maryland - The World Future Society is pleased to release the top ten forecasts from its most recent Outlook report, published in the November-December 2012 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.

THE FUTURIST magazine examines key developments in technology, the environment, the economy, international relations, etc., in order to paint a full and credible portrait of our likely future. Each year since 1985, the editors of have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, the 2008 economic crisis, and the end of the Cold War. The forecasts are meant as conversation starters, not absolute predictions about the future.

The editors hope that this report, covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology, will assist FUTURIST readers in preparing for the challenges and opportunities in 2013 and beyond.

THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases its Top Ten Forecasts for 2013 and beyond.

1. Neuroscientists may soon be able to predict what you’ll do before you do it.

The intention to do something, such as grasp a cup, produces blood flow to specific areas of the brain, so studying blood-flow patterns through neuroimaging could give researchers a better idea of what people have in mind. One potential application is improved prosthetic devices that respond to signals from the brain more like actual limbs do, according to researchers at the University of Western Ontario. World Trends & Forecasts, Jan-Feb 2012, p. 10

2. Future cars will become producers of power rather than merely consumers.

A scheme envisioned at the Technology University of Delft would use fuel cells of parked electric vehicles to convert biogas or hydrogen into more electricity. And the owners would be paid for the energy their vehicles produce. Tomorrow in Brief, Mar-Apr 2012, p. 2

3. An aquaponic recycling system in every kitchen?

Future “farmers” may consist of householders recycling their food waste in their own aquariums. An aquaponic system being developed by SUNY ecological engineers would use leftover foods to feed a tank of tilapia or other fish, and then the fish waste would be used for growing vegetables. The goal is to reduce food waste and lower the cost of raising fish. Tomorrow in Brief, Nov-Dec 2011, p. 2

4. The economy may become increasingly jobless, but there will be plenty of

work. Many recently lost jobs may never come back. Rather than worry about unemployment, however, tomorrow’s workers will focus on developing a variety of skills that could keep them working productively and continuously, whether they have jobs or not. It’ll be about finding out what other people need done, and doing it, suggests financial advisor James H. Lee. “Hard at Work in the Jobless Future,” Mar-Apr 2012, pp. 32-33

5. The next space age will launch after 2020, driven by competition and “adventure capitalists.”

While the U.S. space shuttle program is put to rest, entrepreneurs like Paul Allen, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos are planning commercial launches to access low-Earth orbit and to ferry passengers to transcontinental destinations within hours. Challenges include perfecting new technologies, developing global operations, building new infrastructure, and gaining regulatory approval. “The New Age of Space Business,” Sep-Oct 2012, p. 17

.

6. The “cloud” will become more intelligent, not just a place to store data.

Cloud intelligence will evolve into becoming an active resource in our daily lives, providing analysis and contextual advice. Virtual agents could, for example, design your family’s weekly menu based on everyone’s health profiles, fitness goals, and taste preferences, predict futurist consultants Chris Carbone and Kristin Nauth. “From Smart House to Networked Home,” July-Aug 2012, p. 30

7. Corporate reputations will be even more important to maintain, due to the transparency that will come with augmented reality.

In a “Rateocracy” as envisioned by management consultant Robert Moran, organizations’ reputations are quantified, and data could be included in geographically based information systems. You might choose one restaurant over another when your mobile augmented-reality app flashes warnings about health-department citations or poor customer reviews. “‘Rateocracy’ and Corporate Reputation,” World Trends & Forecasts, May-June 2012, p. 12

8. Robots will become gentler caregivers in the next 10 years.

Lifting and transferring frail patients may be easier for robots than for human caregivers, but their strong arms typically lack sensitivity. Japanese researchers are improving the functionality of the RIBA II (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance), lining its arms and chest with sensors so it can lift its patients more gently. Tomorrow in Brief, Nov-Dec 2011, p. 2

9. We’ll harness noise vibrations and other “junk” energy from the environment to power our gadgets.

Researchers at Georgia Tech are developing techniques for converting ambient microwave energy into DC power, which could be used for small devices like wireless sensors. And University of Buffalo physicist Surajit Sen is studying ways to use vibrations produced on roads and airport runways as energy sources. World Trends & Forecasts, Nov-Dec 2011, p. 9

10. A handheld “breathalyzer” will offer early detection of infections microbes and even chemical attacks.

The Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer under development at Stony Brook University would use sensor chips coated with nanowires to detect chemical compounds that may indicate the presence of diseases or infectious microbes. In the future, a handheld device could let you detect a range of risks, from lung cancer to anthrax exposure. Tomorrow in Brief, Sep-Oct 2012, p. 2

All of these forecasts plus dozens more were included in Outlook 2013, which scanned the best writing and research from THE FUTURIST magazine over the course of the previous year.

THE FUTURIST has also made public the contents from Outlook 2006 through 2012, more than 400 forecasts in all relating to 2013 and beyond.
http://www.wfs.org/forecasts.htm

THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine published continuously since 1967 by the World Future Society and is a principal benefit of membership. The magazine is also available in newsstands throughout the United States.

Among the many influential thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST are Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Seth Godin, Timothy Ferriss, Robert McNamara, B.F. Skinner, Nicholas Negroponte, David Walker, Lewis Lapham, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Kurzweil.

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

Editors: For more information on Outlook 2013, THE FUTURIST magazine, or the World Future Society, feel free to contact Patrick Tucker at 443-756-4205 or PatrickMcMillenTucker@gmail.com More information about the World Future Society can also be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org.

CONTACT INFORMATION

• Patrick Tucker
• World Future Society
• Email PatrickMcMillenTucker@gmail.com
• Web site www.wfs.org
• 443-756-4205

01.1.11 The First Futurist Update of 2011 Looks to Energy, The Environment, and What's Hot @WFS

Check out the January, 2011 issue of Futurist Update here.

12.1.10 January-February 2011 Issue of THE FUTURIST released

Click here to go to the January-February 2011 FUTURIST with more than 70 job titles for 2030 and beyond.

10.01.10 November-December Issue of THE FUTURIST released.

Click here for the table of contents of the November-December 2010 issue, featuring Philip Zimbardo, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow and Helen Fisher.

4.9.2010: More than 1,000 Futurists Will Gather in Boston to Discuss Tomorrow's Technology and Environment

4.9.2010

Contact: Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
World Future Society
301-656-8274
ptucker@wfs.org

More than 1,000 Futurists Will Gather in Boston to Discuss Tomorrow's Technology and Environment

BETHESDA MD: More than 1,000 futurists from around the globe will meet in Boston this July (8-10) to discuss sustainability, technology, and the future of the human race at the annual conference of the World Future Society.

"Economic, digital, and cultural globalization is accelerating, as are the perils and possibilities of our new interconnected age," says Society President Tim Mack. "According to one scientist with whom I spoke recently, if today’s consumption and growth patterns persist we'll need four more planets by the end of this century. The time to change the way we live and work is upon us. As our knowledge increases, our time horizons are shortening. Much of what ten years ago was called the distant future is now the present. We've booked an incredible array of speakers to share their ideas on using tomorrow's technology to transition to a more sustainable and prosperous civilization."

Some of these speakers include:

Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil has been described as “the restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal, “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes, and “the rightful heir to Thomas Edison” by Inc. magazine, which ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology, and he's been inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame. He's received 19 honorary doctorates and honors and has written six books. His latest book, The Singularity Is Near, was a New York Times best seller, and has been the number-one book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.

At WorldFuture 2010, Kurzweil will discuss his recent findings on the reverse engineering of the human brain to create an artificial general intelligence in advance of his forthcoming book How the Mind Works and How to Build One.

Also speaking at WorldFuture 2010, Dennis Bushnell, the chief research scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, will present a talk on how to transition to an environmentally sustainable global society. Bushnell will tell conference goers about the new research and breakthroughs — from IT to quantum physics — that humanity will use to overcome the looming dangers of climate change.

"Humans are now responsible for the evolution of nearly everything, including themselves," says Bushnell. "The ultimate impacts of all this upon human society will be massive and could 'tip' in several directions."

Sociologist Karen Moloney will address Men and Women: The Battle for Supremacy. Moloney follows a long line of feminist writers to speak at World Future Society events, such as Betty Friedan.

Lee Rainie, the director Pew Internet & American Life Project and the former managing editor of U.S. News & World Report, along with Janna Anderson, Mike Nelson, and Barry Wellman, will discuss a future where wireless devices are embedded in everything—including us; cameras record activity in all public spaces; databases catalogue our online moves; massive data centers allow our information to be sorted and understood in new ways; the physical environment changes as “the Internet of things” and “everywhere” applications spread; software exhibits humanlike thinking; and direct brain-to-computer interfacing is common. These are just some of the future scenarios the Pew Internet & American Life Project survey gathered from a wide array of experts.

WorldFuture 2010, the annual conference of the World Future Society. will take place July 8-10 at The Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006).

More information and registration can be obtained from The World Future Society's Web site. www.wfs.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society

443-756-4205
Four. Four. Three. Seven. Five. Six. Four. Two. Zero. Five.

12.21.09: Futurists Release Top Ten Forecasts for 2010 and Beyond, Plus Hundreds More.

NEWS RELEASE

Publisher of THE FUTURIST,
7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450 • Bethesda, Maryland 20814 • U.S.A. 301/656-8274 • fax 301/951-0394 • www.wfs.org
12.21.09

Contact: Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
World Future Society
301-656-8274
ptucker@wfs.org

Futurists Release Top Ten Forecasts for 2010 and Beyond, plus hundreds more.

Bethesda, Maryland - The OUTLOOK 2010 report from THE FUTURIST magazine examines the key trends in technology, the environment, the economy, international relations, etc., in order to paint a full and credible portrait of our likely future. The magazine has released the top ten forecasts from Outlook 2010, plus more than 250 forecasts from previous reports on the World Future Society’s Web site.
http://www.wfs.org/forecasts.htm

Among the ten most provocative forecasts from this year’s report:

1. Your phone will tell you when you’re in love. Mobile devices are enabling new spontaneous connections in real-world settings, including love connections. One day soon, your phone will play matchmaker, recommending that you introduce yourself to someone nearby whose online profile displays tastes or passions similar to yours. Impossible? An iPhone application called Serendipity is currently being commercialized by MIT researchers. -Erica Orange, "Mining Information from the Data Clouds," July-Aug 2009, p. 17

2. In the design economy of the future, people will download and print their own products, including auto parts, jewelry, and even the kitchen sink. Rapid prototyping, or 3-D printing, and devices like the RepRap self-reproducing printer are allowing people to design, customize, and print objects from their home computers. In the future, cheaper versions of these devices could disrupt manufacturing business models, resulting in far cheaper products individually tailored to every customer’s desire. -Thomas A. Easton, "The Design Economy," Jan-Feb 2009, p. 43

3. The era of brain-to-brain telepathy dawns. Neuroscientist David Poeppel says that telepathic communication between brains is possible, so long as "communication" is understood to be electromagnetic signals and not words. Technologies like magnetoencephalography, which pick up the various signals the brain sends out, could be used to pick up specific signals and convey them. If you could train your brain to signal in Morse code, sensors in a helmet could pick up the message and send it to another helmet. -Patrick Tucker, "Reinventing Morality," Jan-Feb 2009, p. 23

4. Tomorrow’s inventors will spend their days writing descriptions of the problems they want to solve, and then letting computers find the solutions. Invention programs like Gregory Hornby’s "evolutionary algorithm" have been used to invent real-world objects, such as a special space antenna, based entirely on engineering specifications. Continued advances will increasingly rely on cross-fertilization between the fields of biology and computer science. As a result, we will develop not only software that can produce better inventions but also inventions that are able to adapt to their environments. -Robert Plotkin, "The Automation of Invention," July-Aug 2009, p. 24

5. Micronations built on artificial islands will dramatically shift the face of global politics. New forms of government and unusual political models will begin to emerge, including corporate nation-states, religious states, tax-free zones, single-function countries, cause-related countries, and even rental nation-states, where organizations can "rent a country" for a year or two to test a specific project. -Thomas Frey, "Own Your Own Island Nation," May-June 2009, p. 30

6. Young people will read more, and the old will play more video games. According to the 2007 American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed some surprising findings. In 2007, adults aged 75 and older spent nearly twice as much time playing video games (about 20 minutes) as they did in 2006. Teens aged 15–19 spent twice as much time reading as they did before (about 14 minutes) and less time using a computer for games or casual surfing. -World Trends & Forecasts, Nov-Dec 2008, p. 14

7. Ammonia may become the fuel of choice for cars by 2020. As a candidate source for hydrogen used in fuel cells, ammonia (comprising one nitrogen and three hydrogen atoms) is plentiful, easier to liquefy than methane, and emits nitrogen rather than carbon, thus having fewer negative impacts on the climate. -J. Storrs Hall, "Ammonia, the Fuel of the Future," Sep-Oct 2009, p. 10

8. Algae may become the new oil. According to researchers at a Department of Energy plant in New Mexico, single-celled microalgae, grown in pond water, produce a biofuel that is lead-free and biodegradable, emits two-thirds less carbon dioxide and other pollutants than gasoline, and can run any modern diesel engine. Even better, algae require only a fraction of the land area of biofuel-producing crops. -Robert McIntyre, "Algae’s Powerful Future," Mar-Apr 2009, p. 25

9. Radical methods of altering the planet may be the only way to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Geoengineering may be inevitable because, even if humans could instantly end all greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures would continue to increase for the next 20–30 years, triggering feedback loops and more warming. Potential megascale geoengineering projects include sending space mirrors into orbit, sequestering carbon in the ground in biomass charcoal, and increasing the amount of carbon that the ocean can absorb by forcing plankton blooms in the seas. -Jamais Cascio, author of Hacking the Earth, reviewed by Bob Olson, July-Aug 2009, p. 51

10. The existence of extraterrestrial life will be confirmed or conclusively denied within a generation. New space missions and advanced computer technology could confirm the existence of extraterrestrials soon. Scientists using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have found that at least 20%-and perhaps as many as 60%-of Sun-like stars could have rocky planets. Next generation, AI-driven space probes may allow us to plot the location of every planetary body in the known universe. Among the more than 300 extra-solar worlds already discovered, probably one has some form of life, according to Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer and director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative. -Gregory Georgiou, "The Real Life Search for E.T. Heats Up," Nov-Dec 2008, p. 20

All of these forecasts plus dozens more were included in the report that scanned the best writing and research from THE FUTURIST magazine over the course of the previous year.

This year, THE FUTURIST has also made public the contents from Outlook 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, more than 250 forecasts in all relating to 2010 and beyond.
http://www.wfs.org/forecasts.htm

The Society hopes this report, covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology, will assist its readers in preparing for the challenges and opportunities in the coming decade.

The 2010 Outlook report was released as part of the November-December issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.

THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine published continuously since 1967 by the World Future Society and is a principal benefit of membership, read by 25,000 members worldwide. The magazine is also available in newsstands throughout the United States.

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

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

Editors: For more information on Outlook 2009, THE FUTURIST magazine or the World Future Society, feel free to contact World Future Society president Tim Mack, 301-656-8274 ext. 104, Tmack@wfs.org, or director of communications Patrick Tucker at 443-756-4205 or ptucker@wfs.org. More information about the World Future Society can also be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

9.14.10 Futurists Release Top Ten Forecasts for 2011 and Beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.21.09 Don Tapscott to Address World Future Society Conference

4.21.09
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
World Future Society
301-656-8274
ptucker@wfs.org

Don Tapscott to Address World Future Society Conference

BETHESDA, MD: Don Tapscott, professor, and chairman of the nGenera Innovation Network, bestselling author of the book Grown Up Digital, and WorldFuture 2009 keynote speaker is a strong believer in the “Net Generation.” In this interview with World Future Review, he says that technology is, indeed, affecting the lives, values, and development of teens. But, he says, contrary to a lot of popular opinion, the Internet isn't making kids dumber or less sensitive, it's enabling them to transform society for the better.

Read World Future Review's interview with Don Tapscott here.

"I’m very concerned about the negative portrayal of this generation," he says in an exclusive interview with World Future Review, published by the World Future Society. This is kind of the central issue to me. You have the biggest generation ever—they’re coming into the workforce, [into] the marketplace, into society. With them, and from their experience growing up, is a whole new culture. It’s a culture of collaboration and innovation and speed and integrity. This culture is meeting up against all of our traditional institutions. We’re in the early days of a huge generational clash. If we older people don’t smarten up and listen to them and learn from them as opposed to doing the opposite."

At WorldFuture 2009, the annual conference of the World Future Society, Tapscott will discuss how the digital generation will bring a new high performance, high collaboration culture to the workplace, and a new spirit of global awareness to the marketplace. He'll explain how to look toward youth culture and see the contours of a new future for the planet.

WorldFuture 2009: Innovation and Creativity in a Complex World, the annual conference of the World Future Society will take place July 17-19, 2009 at the Hilton Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Professional Members' Forum: July 20, 2009.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

This year's speakers include: Ambassador John W. McDonald, Robert D. Atkinson, former project director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, labor expert Edward E. Gordon, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, longevity expert Michael Zey, bioweapons workplace John Challenger.

More information and registration can be obtained from The World Future Society's Web site. www.wfs.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

4.20.09 Labor Expert and Futurist John Challenger to Speak at World Future 2009

4.20.09
Contact: Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
World Future Society
301-656-8274
ptucker@wfs.org

Labor Expert and Futurist John Challenger: Unemployment Trends are Improving, Jobs Of The Future Will Create Growth

BETHESDA, MD: John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, is one of the most quoted labor and employment experts in America. He’s become a regular fixture on CNN, CBS, and a host of other networks and is a featured speaker at WorldFuture 2009, the annual conference of the World Future Society. He recently told THE FUTURIST magazine that he's begun to feel more optimistic about the U.S. labor market.

"The rate of layoffs in the last two months has dropped. That rate is still high, but it’s decreasing. We’re not in a roaring recovery, but [it’s] a faint signal that the worst of the worst is over. On the one hand, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. continue to vanish, but on the other, the layoff rate in the financial sector seems to have stabilized. We talk to human-resources people around the country on a casual, anecdotal basis; the people we’re speaking with are taking whatever measures they can to avoid making layoffs. They don’t want to be short-staffed in the event of a turnaround."

In an exclusive interview, he went on to discuss labor shortages, immigration, the emerging employment scene in China and India, and jobs that might exist in the future.

The current recession, expected to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, probably won't put to rest old concerns about looming labor shortages, says Challenger. He says that individuals and companies seeking competitive advantage should position themselves now for the opportunities of the future, a subject he will address in depth at World Future 2009, the annual conference of the World Future Society.

WorldFuture 2009: Innovation and Creativity in a Complex World, the annual conference of the World Future Society will take place July 17-19, 2009 at the Hilton Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Professional Members' Forum: July 20, 2009.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

This year's speakers include: Ambassador John W. McDonald, Robert D. Atkinson, former project director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, labor expert Edward E. Gordon, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, longevity expert Michael Zey, bioweapons expert Barry Kellman, and bestselling author of Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott.

More information and registration can be obtained from The World Future Society's Web site. www.wfs.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

4.20.09 Bioweapons Expert Barry Kellman: Dangers of Bioviolence Growing

4.20.09
Contact: Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
World Future Society
301-656-8274
ptucker@wfs.org

Bioweapons Expert Barry Kellman: Dangers of Bioviolence Growing

BETHESDA, MD: Barry Kellman, DePaul University weapons expert, says bioviolence will become a greater threat as the technology becomes more accessible. He wrote on the subject for the May-June 2008 article in THE FUTURIST (PDF). Shortly afterward, last December, a congressionally-chartered bi-partisan panel made headlines in the U.S. when it reported that a bio-attack was likely in the next five years. Kellman will address WorldFuture 2009 The annual conference of the World Future Society this July on the threat of bio-violence. He'll discuss how governments might better protect their citizens from one of the biggest threats of the 21st century.

In an exclusive interview with THE FUTURIST magazine, Kellman stated the three most important step the governments should undertake to prevent a bio-terror attack is to coordinate efforts

Governments must, he said, "Enhance global preparedness for bio-attacks. Preparedness includes hardening targets (e.g., locking air circulation systems of major venues), improving biosurveillance and disease diagnosis, facilitating global development of countermeasures, and establishing a platform for rapid global delivery of vaccines/antidotes."

At WorldFuture 2009, the annual conference of the World Future Society, Kellman will discuss how bioviolence will become a greater threat as new technologies become more accessible. Emerging scientific disciplines (notably genomics, nanotechnology, and other microsciences) could pave the way for a bioattack. New policies are needed, he says to reduce these dangers.

WorldFuture 2009: Innovation and Creativity in a Complex World, the annual conference of the World Future Society will take place July 17-19, 2009 at the Hilton Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Professional Members' Forum: July 20, 2009.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

This year's speakers include: Ambassador John W. McDonald, Robert D. Atkinson, former project director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, labor expert Edward E. Gordon, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, longevity expert Michael Zey, bioweapons workplace John Challenger, and bestselling author of Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott.

More information and registration can be obtained from The World Future Society's Web site. www.wfs.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

3.17.09 Free Lessons in Futuring From the World Future Society

3.17.09
Contact: Patrick Tucker
Senior Editor
THE FUTURIST
Director of Communications
World Future Society
301-656-8274
ptucker@wfs.org

Free Lessons in Futuring From the World Future Society

Beginning in March, World Future Society President Tim Mack will offer a series of ten free lessons in the use of foresight through the Web site of the World Future Society, http://www.wfs.org/fundamentals/ . The weekly lessons, e-mailed to subscribers, offer straightforward explanations of the futurist profession’s most useful “futuring” techniques, with practical examples of they are used and resources for finding more information. The lessons include:

Innovation Enhancement

Technology Trends

Trend Analysis

Scenarios

Visioning, and more.

“We’ll look at every aspect of strategic planning, from how to assemble an effective Delphi panel to the newest and most cutting edge computer modeling techniques,” says Mack. The goal is to put these valuable tools into the hands of as many people as possible.

Since its inception in 1967, the World Future Society has served as a leader in foresight and has endeavored to help its members plan for the unimaginable. Members of the Society successfully forecast the rise of the Internet, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the subprime housing meltdown.

The role of leader is not one the Society takes lightly, according to Mack. He says the current economic downturn further showcases the value of foresight in terms of spotting dark clouds on the horizon.

“The speed and scope of the global economic collapse carries two important lessons. The first is that our world is more interconnected and our systems of governance and finance are far more complex than many had realized. The second lesson is that, from an organizational standpoint, having a sense of many different possible futures is the key to adapting quickly in times of crisis. Knowing the potential opportunities and risks that will play out in the future business environment, especially ‘black swans,’ is the difference between prosperity and catastrophe.”

When the lessons of foresight are correctly put into place, the results are often--if ironically--better than the best expectations, says Mack.

Mack has edited the oldest and best respected professional journal in the foresight area, Futures Research Quarterly, since 1985. In June 2004, he also assumed the presidency of the World Future Society. He served on the board of the MIT Enterprise Forum, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based nonprofit group offering marketing, financial, and technology services to new and innovative companies.

As a change consultant, Mack assisted the U.S. General Services Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense in developing strategic planning and change management strategies for such challenges as innovation enhancement, privatization of public services, Superfund clean-up, and transportation planning. He has managed global trade issues and technology trends at the local, state, federal, and global levels, working with clients on many continents, including the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs (ranked Number One globally three years running by the Foreign Experts Bureau in Beijing). He also spent five years as a vice president at WPP Ltd., which at the time was the largest management consulting and market communications company in the world. He’s been quoted as an expert futurist in The Financial Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Diplomat, the Korean Times, and many other major world publications.

Mack has testified as an expert witness before the White House Conference on Small Business and is currently working on a book on the social and economic impacts of the Internet on modern society and the global economy.

Fundamentals of Foresight is a free series of quick briefings on how you can better prepare for a changing world. Interested individuals can sign up at http://www.wfs.org/fundamentals/

About the World Future Society

The World Future Society is an association of people interested in how social and technological developments are shaping the future. It endeavors to help individuals, organizations, and communities see, understand, and respond appropriately and effectively to change. Through media, meetings, and dialogue among its members, it raises awareness of change and encourages development of creative solutions. The Society takes no official position on what the future will or should be like. Instead it acts as a neutral forum for exploring possible, probable, and preferable futures.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where, participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

Membership is open to anyone who would like to know more about what the future will hold. Members come from all walks of life. They include sociologists, scientists, corporate planners, educators, students, and retirees. They are thinking people who seek a better future for themselves and society.

The World Future Society has published numerous books, including Futuring: The Exploration of the Future by Society founder Edward Cornish, as well as several print and electronic journals, including The Futurist, a bimonthly magazine focused on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging social, economic, and technological trends. The Futurist is available in newsstands coast to coast.

Among the thinkers and experts who have contributed to The Futurist are: Gene Roddenberry, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Vaclav Havel, Hazel Henderson, Margaret Mead, Robert McNamara, Betty Friedan, Nicholas Negroponte, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Lester R. Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Douglas Rushkoff, Joel Garreau, Ray Kurzweil, former CIA Director James Woolsey, Lewis Lapham, and former U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker.

Editors: Direct questions to director of communications Patrick Tucker, 301-656-8274 (ext. 116), or ptucker@wfs.org. More information about the World Future Society may be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

8.14.08 Future Survey Editor Michael Marien Receives World Future Society Distinguished Service Award

Future Survey Editor Michael Marien Receives World Future Society Distinguished Service Award

Bethesda, Montgomery August 14, 2008 Discoveries

(PRLEAP.COM) Bethesda, Maryland — Michael Marien, long-time editor of Future Survey, received a distinguished service award from World Future Society President Tim Mack during the closing session of WorldFuture 2008 in Washington, D.C., July 28. Marien served as editor of the Future Survey newsletter since 1979. He will retire by the end of 2008.

In his acceptance speech at the Washington Hilton, Marien thanked World Future Society founder Ed Cornish, for "allowing me complete freedom" in creating and editing Future Survey, an experience he described as "thirty years of unsupervised play."

Future Survey has received accolades from such writers as Washington Post columnist Joel Garreau and Kevin Kelly, former editor at Wired magazine.

In 2005, Kelly declared on his Web site, Cool Tools, "Michael Marien summaries the current crop of future-oriented books and articles. Because he seems to read and see EVERYTHING published in the realm of the Next, no matter how obscure or academic, his comparative evaluations of books are astoundingly useful. Each issue I usually discover one or two great works of forecasting I had not known about. But more importantly, Future Survey extracts the key ideas from piles of mediocre books — books I no longer have to bother with. Marien synthesizes these reviews into emerging notions, which then become indispensable for tracking mega trends, not mere fashions and fads. Marien has been doing this for 20 years, and his database of 5,000 reviews (available online) is as good a history of the future as we have. For his almost single-handed crusade to tame the uncertainty of what-is-coming, Marien should get a medal."

A YouTube video of Marien’s acceptance speech is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS08s2ttR7Q

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

For information about WorldFuture 2008, contact the World Future Society at 1-301-656-8274 or e-mail director of communications Patrick Tucker, ptucker@wfs.org, or Susan Echard, sechard@wfs.org, vice president for membership and conference operations, or check the World Future Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org, where videos from WorldFuture 2008 are available online.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
410-342-9152

8.13.08 Futurist Magazine reveals the future of flying cars, undersea habitation, teleportation, and artificial intelligence

Futurist Magazine reveals the future of flying cars, undersea habitation, teleportation, and artificial intelligence

Bethesda, Montgomery August 13, 2008 Discoveries

(PRLEAP.COM) In a special report for THE FUTURIST magazine, former White House adviser Marvin Cetron, former International Space University Dean Joe Pelton, and FUTURIST staff editors Aaron Cohen, Rick Docksai, and Patrick Tucker survey the myths and realities of popular science-fiction scenarios. They explore the present-day realities of flying cars, teleportation, artificial intelligence, and undersea habitation.

"In the 1960s, television productions and movies like The Jetsons, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Star Trek infected the American psyche with images of a glittering tomorrow where people commuted to work via flying car, lived under the sea or in space ships staffed by disembodied AI programs, and even teleported. Forty years later, like it or not, these sci-fi clichés have formed our cultural expectations of the future," write the editors in the introduction.

Among the ideas addressed:
* Where flying cars will—and will not be—available in the decades ahead.
* The new "competition" to build ocean habitats.
* DARPA’s plan to turn a Star Trek vision into a reality.
* The connection between neuroscience, quantum computing, and making an artificial intelligence than can perform 10 to the 18th calculations per second.

This special section of the September-October 2008 edition of THE FUTURIST can be obtained online at www.wfs.org/futurist.htm . Exclusive interviews with Seasteads head Patri Friedman, "Skycar" creator Paul Moller, and others are also available for free from THE FUTURIST Web site.

Individuals can pick up the September-October issue of THE FUTURIST for $4.95 at bookstores and newsstands, or write the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Ave., Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814. Order online at www.wfs.org .

THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine focused on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging social, economic, environmental, and technological trends.

Among the thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST are Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Richard Lamm, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Vaclav Havel, Hazel Henderson, Margaret Mead, Robert McNamara, Betty Friedan, Nicholas Negroponte, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Lester R. Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Douglas Rushkoff, Joel Garreau, William J. Mitchell, and U.S. Comptroller David M. Walker.

Editors: To request a review copy of THE FUTURIST magazine, contact Patrick Tucker, 301-656-8274 (ext. 116), or ptucker@wfs.org. More information about the World Future Society may be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

07.02.08 More than 1,000 Futurists to Converge on Washington D.C. for World Future Society Conference

More than 1,000 Futurists to Converge on Washington D.C. for World Future Society Conference

Bethesda, MD July 02, 2008 Discoveries

Bethesda, MD: Futurists from such organizations as UPS, NASA, George Washington University, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security, and from countries all over the world will converge on the Hilton Washington for the annual conference of the World Future Society, July 26-28.

Among the confirmed speakers, Bill Drayton, CEO, founder, and chairman, Ashoka: Innovations for the Public; Dennis M. Bushnell, chief scientist, NASA Langley Research Center; Dave Barnes, senior vice president and CIO of UPS; Marvin Cetron, president, Forecasting International, Inc; Leon S. Fuerth, former national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore; Jerry Allan, president, Criteria Architects, Inc; Maddy Dychtwald, executive vice president, co-founder, Age Wave; and AI expert Ben Goertzel among dozens of others. Complete list available at www.wfs.org.

The topics covered will include:
* Future[s] of Energetics;
* Trends in Education: Implications for the Future;
* Is It Immoral to Seek to Be Immortal?: The Promise and Perils of Advances in 21st Century Biomedicine;
* Forecasting the Technology Revolution;
* The Coming Global Crisis of Maturity;
* The Future of Law Enforcement;
* Futuristic Investing in the Financial Markets: Where Are the Assets of; Tomorrow?
* The Future of Virtual Worlds;
* The End of the Written Word.

"I will never forget attending my first World Future Society annual conference," writes this year’s conference chairman, Nat Irvin II, on the Society’s Web site. "What I remember most was the sheer excitement of seeing hundreds of people from all over the world engaged in serious debates about the future. The Hilton bustled with scientists, economists, historians, philosophers, business people, academics, teachers, ordinary people debating and presenting new ideas about the social, political, economic, and technological trends and events for the next hundred years."

WorldFuture 2008 will take place from July 26-28 at the Hilton Washington, Washington, D.C. Interested individuals can download a conference program, read selected speaker interviews, or register online at www.wfs.org . Registration is $595 for Society members, $650 for non-members.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

For information about WorldFuture 2008, contact the World Future Society at 1-301-656-8274 or e-mail director of communications Patrick Tucker, ptucker@wfs.org, or Susan Echard, sechard@wfs.org, vice president for membership and conference operations, or check the World Future Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274

6.06.08 FUTURIST Magazine Asks, What is the Future of Publishing?

FUTURIST Magazine Asks, What is the Future of Publishing?

Bethesda, Montgomery June 06, 2008 Publishing

(PRLEAP.COM) BETHESDA MD—The Internet is forcing traditional print publishers to innovate or perish. The same might be true of the written word itself, according to THE FUTURIST magazine, on stands now.

The cover feature of the July-August issue, titled "The 21st-Century Writer," features interviews with tech-guru and publishing magnate Tim O’Reilly, best-selling author Douglas Rushkoff, Canadian Library Association former president Stephen Abram, and Frank Daniels, COO of Ingram’s digital group. The article and the interviews are available for free online at http://www.wfs.org/futurist.htm .

"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," says Patrick Tucker, the article’s author. "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."

Individuals can also pick up the July-August issue of THE FUTURIST for $4.95 at bookstores and newsstands, or write the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Ave., Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814. Order online at www.wfs.org.

THE FUTURIST is a bimonthly magazine focused on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging social, economic, environmental, and technological trends.

Among the thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST are Gene Roddenberry, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Richard Lamm, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Vaclav Havel, Hazel Henderson, Margaret Mead, Robert McNamara, Betty Friedan, Nicholas Negroponte, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Lester R. Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Douglas Rushkoff, Joel Garreau, William J. Mitchell, and U.S. Comptroller David M. Walker.

Editors: To request a review copy of THE FUTURIST magazine, contact Patrick Tucker, 301-656-8274 (ext. 116), or ptucker@wfs.org. More information about the World Future Society may be obtained from the Society’s Web site, www.wfs.org

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Tucker
World Future Society
Email World Future Society
301-656-8274