I began to see the future not as a totally impenetrable realm about which we can know absolutely nothing, but rather as an exciting frontier, offering enormous possibilities but also extraordinary dangers. We cannot possibly know everything that lies ahead, but with effort we can glimpse the possibilities of our future. This weak but incredibly valuable knowledge is critically important if we are to make wise decisions. Foresight is the secret ingredient of success.
Since I was a journalist, I began to think about how other people could be made aware of the possibilities of the future and perhaps could do a better job of dealing with the innumerable problems that humans must confront. Perhaps we could even find better ways to avoid future wars.
By 1965, I was mentioning to friends that I would like to start a magazine about the future. I knew that the Ford Foundation had put up the money to launch a magazine for the social sciences called Transaction. One of my friends, sociologist Hans Spiegel, arranged for me to meet with Fred Crosland, a Ford Foundation representative, who was attending a conference in Washington. However, Crosland told me that Ford was extremely unlikely to fund another magazine and there was little point in my applying.
After that disappointment, as well as several other efforts that went nowhere, I had another idea. Perhaps there was an association somewhere that served the needs of people interested in the future. Arthur C. Clarke had dedicated his book Profiles of the Future to his “colleagues in the Institute of Twenty-first Century Studies,” so I wrote to him inquiring about the Institute. But Clarke wrote back that the “Institute” was imaginary: He was simply referring to people like himself who were interested in the future.
I also wrote Dandridge Cole, a General Electric futurist who was forecasting future developments in space exploration at the company’s Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, research laboratory. Cole would certainly know if there was such a society, but he wrote back that he knew of no such organization, though he thought there should be one.
Sadly, the day after writing me, Cole died of a heart attack while doing calisthenics in his office. News of his death stunned me. I knew of no one else who might take the lead in establishing an association for the future. It also occurred to me that, even if there were someone willing to take on the task, just how would he find others to help him? People interested in the future were scattered across the world and they worked in many different occupations. I had thought that Dandridge Cole would already be in contact with future-oriented people and could readily assemble them, but I began to recognize that it might not have been easy for him to do so. Even if he knew such people, probably only a few would be willing to do the practical work of creating a society.
So, for a time, I thought that I would just have to forget about my idea for a magazine and a society for the future. But I also began to brood about trying to get such a group going myself. I knew nothing about how organizations get started—my sociology professors never discussed that topic—but I was sure you had to have people in contact with each other. I could see how a group of people living in the same community or working together daily could form a group, but people seriously interested in the future seemed to be few in number and scattered across the world. They also worked in many different fields. How could they be located, contacted, persuaded, and nagged into actually doing the organizational work?