Your challenge to reflect and comment on the World Future Society as it celebrates its fortieth anniversary led me to carefully review my stash of saved FUTURIST issues. Over the past 23 years of subscriptions, I have saved 29 issues, but two stand out as special.
The first was the December 1983 issue devoted to Orwell’s 1984. I was a high-school sophomore when I read the book in 1954, and it always intrigued me. I believe it served as a major motivation in my early interest in the study of the future. Thanks to the insightful leadership of Ed Cornish, the magazine revisited Orwell’s novel 30 years later and gave it a fresh perspective—and another challenging look forward.
The second was an article that appeared in the March-April 1988 issue. Written by Hank E. Koehn, it was entitled “Living and Dying with AIDS: One Futurist’s Struggles.” The author, a prominent futurist and banker, reflected on his six-month-long battle with AIDS. It dealt with how the disease changed his view of life and his understanding of himself.
When I first read Koehn’s article, I felt moved about the AIDS scourge and this futurist’s grasp of its crushing reality. Rereading it almost 20 years later, I still feel moved — and yet thankful for the progress that has been made.
For me, THE FUTURIST and the World Future Society have been a source of ideation, a provider of forecasting facts and suppositions, a cornucopia of ever evolving benchmarks, which I have used to stimulate, clarify, and modify my own thinking and work.
Peter F. Eder is THE FUTURIST’s contributing editor for Marketing and Communications and is an experienced marketing services executive.