WFS Home › The Futurist › 2012 Issues of The Futurist ›

March-April 2012, Vol. 46, No. 2

Articles

Nuclear Power's Unsettled Future

By Ozzie Zehner

A year after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan, prospects for the nuclear power industry worldwide are far from certain. An energy policy scholar assesses the key economic, environmental, political, and psychological hinges on which nuclear power’s future now swings.

A World Wide Mind: The Coming Collective Telempathy

By Michael Chorost

The Internet plus humanity equals hyperorganism, a merger of man and machine that may result in global mindfulness.

Thriving in the Automated Economy

By Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

Two management experts show why labor’s race against automation will only be won if we partner with our machines. They advise government regulators not to stand in the way of human–machine innovation.

Hard at Work in the Jobless Future

By James H. Lee

Jobs are disappearing, but there’s still a future for work. An investment manager looks at how automation and information technology are changing the economic landscape and forcing workers to forge new career paths beyond outdated ideas about permanent employment.

Rethinking "Return on Investment": What We Really Need to Invest In

By Timothy C. Mack

Innovation means more than inventing new products for the world’s growing populations to consume. Innovation also means solving the problems created by consumption. By investing in sustainable innovation and creativity now, we will enhance our future returns.

A Future of Fewer Words?: Five Trends Shaping the Future of Language

By Lawrence Baines

Natural selection is as much a phenomenon in human language as it is in natural ecosystems. An ongoing “survival of the fittest” may lead to continuing expansion of image-based communications and the extinction of more than half the world’s languages by this century’s end.

From the Three Rs to the Four Cs: Radically Redesigning K-12 Education

By William Crossman

The battle against nonliteracy has focused on teaching everyone to read and write text. But new technologies that facilitate more holistic learning styles, engaging all of the learner’s senses, may open the locked stores of global knowledge for all. Instead of reading, ’riting, and ’rithmetic, we’ll move to critical thinking, creative thinking, “compspeak,” and calculators.

Visions: Toward Better Space-Weather Forecasts

By Cynthia G. Wagner

Scientists hope to help avert devastating impacts of solar outbursts.

Departments

Tomorrow in Brief

  • Cars That Generate Power
  • Childhood Cancer Survivors’ Children
  • Open-Source Robot Blueprints
  • Big Tobacco’s Future: Up in Smoke?
  • WordBuzz: Mistweetment

Future Scope

  • Can Food Supply Meet Doubled Demand?
  • End-of-Life Indecision
  • Religious Awakening in China

Future Active

  • Atlas of European Values
  • Doomsday for the Arts?

World Trends & Forecasts

Search The Futurist Archives for material going back to 1992.

March-April 2012, Vol. 46, No. 2