In This Issue...
* Skills Gap Is Widening
* The End May Be Near for Big Tobacco
* The Millennium Project’s Latest Projects
* Click of the Month: The World Mind Network
* News for the Futurist Community
* What's Hot @WFS.ORG: Back from the Future
Since the global recession has forced many employers to cut costs—including labor costs—one area may need a resurgence of investment: training.
U.S. employers continue to struggle with finding new hires who have not just the basic skills, but also higher-level critical thinking and creativity skills, according to a new report from The Conference Board. Since the education system is not supplying young workers with these skills, companies may have to devote more of their own resources to bringing workers up to their required skill levels.
Some options include providing internships and working more closely with community colleges. The goal should be to prepare workers before they go out into the job market.
"It is a losing strategy for employers to try to fill the workforce readiness gap on the job. They need to be involved much sooner to prepare new employees to succeed," according to Donna Klein of Corporate Voices for Working Families, which worked with The Conference Board on the report.
SOURCE: The Conference Board
http://www.conference-board.org/utilities/pressDetail.cfm?press_ID=3693
EDITOR'S NOTE: For more on future jobs and the talent shortage, see the September-October 2009 issue of THE FUTURIST featuring John Challenger, Edward Gordon, and Alexandra Levit.
The recent move by the Obama administration to put tobacco regulation under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration was hailed by leading tobacco experts as another step forward in the 100-year march toward eradicating tobacco consumption in the United States.
Tobacco use has declined from 42% of the U.S. adult population in 1965 to 20% in 2007, thanks to taxation, restrictions on advertising, and warning labels, according to researchers Michael Fiore and Timothy Baker of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
To accelerate this trend, the researchers urge regulators to increase excise taxes on tobacco, eliminate nicotine in all tobacco products, ban all cigarette advertising (including sponsorships and other promotional activities), and provide counseling and medication for every smoker who wants to quit.
“The progress made in reducing tobacco use over the last 50 years should in no way temper our commitment to further reductions," says Fiore. "If appropriate steps are taken, a tobacco-free nation can be achieved within a few decades.”
SOURCES: University of Wisconsin–Madison
http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/15373
“Stealing a March in the 21st Century” by Michael C. Fiore and Timothy B. Baker, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH (June 2009)
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/7/1170
FDA and Tobacco Regulation
http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformati...
If you're reading FUTURIST UPDATE only, you're not benefiting from the valuable trends, forecasts, perspectives, insights, assessments, reviews, interviews, and overviews found in THE FUTURIST magazine, the principal benefit of World Future Society membership.
For just $59 per year ($20 for students), you'll increase your futures knowledge by 600% (360 pages a year of THE FUTURIST versus 60 pages of UPDATE).
Learn more about THE FUTURIST and WFS membership programs and benefits at http://www.wfs.org/member.htm
The Millennium Project's annual STATE OF THE FUTURE report this year brings added excitement to our field, as it is joined by the release of the newest version of the comprehensive FUTURES RESEARCH METHODOLOGY CD-ROM.
FRM Version 3.0 is a 1,300-page collection of peer-reviewed chapters fully describing the most important tools that should be in every futurist's kit, including Delphi polling, trend-impact analysis, scenarios, scenario planning, "robust" decision making, "genius" forecasting, and more.
2009 STATE OF THE FUTURE comprises a 100-page paperback serving as an executive summary and a CD-ROM containing some 6,700 pages of research, offering the most comprehensive look at the challenges and opportunities we now face.
Both of these valuable publications bring futures researchers the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and authoritative information available on not just where we are going, but how we will get there.
The Millennium Project
http://www.millennium-project.org/
http://theworldmindnetwork.net
Lest you still think social networking on the Web is a waste of your time, here is an opportunity to deploy the real world-changing tools of the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.
Among the projects established by World Mind Network members are a forum for improving science education co-moderated by Nobel laureate Peter Doherty (1996, Physiology or Medicine) and an interactive blog on the world economic crisis co-hosted by another Nobelist, Edmund Phelps (2006, Economics).
Music and literature also offer ripe opportunities for social networking on the site, including poetry challenges to fit the 140-character limitations of Twitter (though I confess I thought I'd never see a tweet as lovely as a tree.)
* BRAZIL HOSTS CONFERENCE ON INNOVATION MANAGEMENT: The VI ICIM 2009—International Conference on Innovation Management will be held December 8–10 in São Paulo. The focus will be on the issues, challenges and opportunities of adopting sustainable development and its systemic approach. Speakers include such prominent international futurists and thinkers as Hazel Henderson, Jerome C. Glenn, David Harries, Paul Werbos, Zhouying Jin, and many others. Deadline for submitting papers is August 31.
DETAILS: http://www.pucsp.br/icim/
Prof. Dr. Arnoldo de Hoyos, arnoldodehoyos@yahoo.com.br.
* SYMPOSIUM ON THE FUTURE: The New Media Consortium (NMC) will host a virtual Symposium for the Future, a live online event, October 27–29, 2009. Keynote speakers Gardner Campbell of Baylor University; Beth Kanter, social media activist; invited speaker Anne Haywood, NMC program consultant to the National Geographic Society; and colleagues from around the world will explore the emerging shape of education over the next five years and beyond. DETAILS and REGISTRATION: http://www.nmc.org/2009-future-symposium
* HOUSTON'S FUTURES EDUCATION PROGRAM GROWS: The successful transition of University of Houston's futures program to the central campus has resulted in growth. This fall, program director Peter Bishop will be joined by economist Kay Strong, now a futurist by training. She will work to infuse futures thinking into the undergraduate curriculum building toward a UH minor in futures studies. Strong will continue working with teachers in Houston area schools to help futurize their courses. DETAILS: http://houstonfutures.wetpaint.com/
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What"s Hot @WFS.ORG
WorldFuture 2009, the Society's conference in Chicago (July 17–19), is now history, but we hope participants left with many stimulating new ideas and energy for a variety of projects ahead.
* Opening the conference was GROWN UP DIGITAL author Don Tapscott, who outlined the many changes that our institutions need to make to enable the "Net generation" to succeed. "We do everything the opposite," he said, such as taking away all the collaborative tools that young people use to augment their learning processes. "Give them a license to self-organize.... Give them the feedback they need and want to get better." View excerpt from Tapscott's presentation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNWrBns_KRA
* Bioethicist Arthur Caplan explained why the abortion debate will be supplanted by new debates over whether to use genetic technologies to enhance our children. He warned that those urging the overturning of Roe v. Wade would theoretically be allowing government in the future to mandate that parents use technologies to perfect their children, throwing out the right to have imperfect children along with their right to privacy. Caplan is co-editor of THE PENN CENTER GUIDE TO BIOETHICS (Springer, 2009). Order from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826115225/thefuturistbooks
* In what many attendees called the meeting's scariest presentation, law professor Barry Kellman detailed the imminent threat of bioviolence: conflicts fought with new weapons that "have the capacity to do far more damage than nuclear weapons." Viruses such as smallpox, polio, or the measles could be synthesized or genetically manipulated to be impervious to vaccines and released intentionally into the public. Kellman argued for a global covenant among scientists to prevent this scenario.
* Workplace futurist John A. Challenger noted that many of our concerns today, such as labor shortages, immigration, retirement, and globalization, are not new trends, but the recession has put them in a new context. For instance, when baby boomers saw their retirement savings disappear, many stayed in the workforce and thus helped alleviate labor shortages. The three big areas of future job growth, he said, are health care, energy, and global business. See his article, along with that of fellow conference speaker Edward Gordon, in the September-October 2009 FUTURIST. View an excerpt of Challenger's presentation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E9ZtzqVWkY
* An experiment in live reporting during the conference via Twitter attracted several participants, who offered their immediate impressions of various sessions and links to longer reports on their own Web sites. Surf the tweets and re-tweets at www.twitter.com/worldfuturesoc