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July-August 2010

Order the July-August 2010 issue (vol 44, no. 3) of THE FUTURIST

Remaking the Car, Remaking the City

Visionaries 2020 Part IV

Ryan C. C. Chin of the MIT Media lab discusses MIT's much-remarked CityCar concept. The car itself presents a radical—and welcome—break from driver-vehicle interaction to which we're accustomed, but the real genius of is how it integrates into a larger organism of city life. In the Media Lab's Smart Cities model, the car of the future is one component in a broader and more sane transportation system reflecting the way people actually interact with the urban environment, and with one another.

Also, young computer scientist Jason Clark will share his company's vision for re-starting the tech startup. He and his allies at Syntiant say companies can be philanthropic and make money at the same time; and they're proposing a bold new business model to do exactly that.

Illustration by William Lark / MIT Media Lab

FutureView

By Cynthia Wagner

The Internet has so transformed our lives that we may forget how recently it came about. Interestingly, one of the industries it’s transformed most radically—journalism—was in the process of changing anyway. When futurists were first outlining scenarios for electronic news delivery, they didn’t foresee the overwhelming demand for interactivity, nor the consequences of multitudes of competing information sources.

What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

In his newest book, The Shallows, Atlantic essayist Nicholas Carr shows that neurological and cultural effects of heavy Internet use are becoming more observable and measurable. As our reliance on ever brighter and faster Internet content increases, a new force is taking hold across the culture of the Web-connected world, leading to changes in reading habits and even in human brains. Review by Patrick Tucker

Life Among Clones

In How to Defeat Your Own Clone: And Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution, two authors offer a lighthearted erudite look at the many directions that biomedicine could lead society. Review by Rick Docksai.

Books in Brief

  • 2048: Humanity’s Agreement to Live Together
  • The Economics of Integrity: From Dairy Farmers to Toyota, How Wealth is Built on Trust & What That Means for Our Future
  • Global Sources of Local Pollution: An Assessment of Long-Range Transport of Key Air Pollutants to and from the United States
  • Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
  • Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making
  • Towards Human Emergence: A Human Resource Philosophy for the Future
  • The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World
  • Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century

Tomorrow in Brief

  • Solar Power at Micro Scale
  • “Skinput”: Human Skin as Touchpad
  • Conquering Phobias Pharmaceutically
  • Tattletale Pills
  • Biodegradable Packaging from the Dairy

Future Scope

  • Rx: New Medical Specialties
  • Cheaper Fashions Change Faster
  • Gluten Intolerance on the Rise
  • Design Out Unwanted Noise
  • State Prison Population Declines

World Trends and Forecasts

Scanning the Future of Law Enforcement: A Trend Analysis

By Eric Meade

To understand the potential futures of crime and justice, one must explore a full range of issues, the connection of which to law enforcement may at first seem tangential at best. Our perspectives and behaviors relative to crime and justice are informed by larger changes taking place around us—socially, technologically, environmentally, economically, and politically. Scanning the horizon for trends and developments that may influence the future of crime and justice informs our strategies to create the future we prefer.

Trends Shaping Tomorrow’s World: Forces in the Natural and Institutional Environments

For nearly half a century, Forecasting International has been tracking the forces that shape our future. Some 20 years ago, we codified our observations into a list of trends that forms the basis for much of our work. For each of our projects, we compare the specific circumstances of an industry or organization with these general trends and project their interactions. This often allows us to form a remarkably detailed picture of what lies ahead. Part II of this report covers trends in energy, the environment, technology, management, and institutions. PDF available.

Part 1: Economic and Social Trends and Their Impacts.

Youth at Risk

By Gene Stephens

A quick scan of research on the subject of “youth at risk” yields a plethora of statistics and analysis of varying scope (worldwide or nation by nation). The United Nations estimates that the world today has 3 billion people under 25, and the youth population is projected to increase to 3.5 billion by 2020. In a new look at the plan he proposed a dozen years ago, a criminal-justice scholar draws on the insights of a Delphi panel of experts to develop new strategies for improving the prospects for today’s at-risk youth. PDF available.

Visions:

Garden Atriums: A Model for Sustainable Building

By Stuart Rose

When THE FUTURIST first reported on the Garden Atrium sustainable housing project we created in southeastern Virginia (March-April 2002), it was just under way. Since then, as the project has moved slowly toward completion, I began to research what we had not initially included in our project that would be essential to sustainable living. PDF available.

World Trends and Forecasts

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