My First Day in the Future

Thirty years ago today, I started work at the World Future Society. My title was to be "editorial assistant," and my starting salary was six figures--counting both sides of the decimal point. It was a recession, and I'd just finished my master's work at Syracuse in magazine journalism. I was happy to be employed, and happy to be back home in Bethesda.

I was hired by Ed Cornish, then president of the Society and editor of THE FUTURIST. The old office on St. Elmo Avenue was actually the "new" office to the existing staff, having moved off of Ed's porch just nine years earlier.

The existing staff numbered about two dozen or so employees, but I wasn't certain who was part time or full time, volunteer or paid. There were about as many people working just on the conference planning as there were on the editorial staff. Some of us had electric typewriters (self-correcting!), but Ed and a few others still relied on manuals.

On my first day, I was greeted by another first-day employee, Patty McNally, hired for reception duty and a key member of the membership and conference staff. We also had a Bookstore in those days, and a Bookstore Manager, Julia Larson.

Ed was a little unsure of what to do with me on my first day; his administrative assistant, Sarah Warner, wasn't there that day, and she was the one who was supposed to create some work for me to do. So Ed handed me some newspaper clippings and had me start filing them.

My rebellion at the Society began fairly quickly. I'd spent a year as a file clerk before going for my master's. I'm not an especially ambitious person, and there were plenty of editors above me in status, but this seemed a waste of an expensive education. I did not file newspaper clippings on my second day at WFS. (It was also suggested that I might work some with the conference staff. I said no.)

As I got to know the office and the staff and the work over the next few months, I got editing assignments first from Lane Jennings, editor of the World Future Society Bulletin (an ancestor of Futures Research Quarterly and World Future Review), and from Eric Seaborg, the assistant editor of THE FUTURIST (and, incidentally, a son of WFS board member and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Glenn T. Seaborg).

One thing I learned very quickly at WFS is that job titles are kind of pointless. You really do pitch in and do what needs to be done. I helped piece together ads for the conference that would appear in our publications. I still do that a bit. At the first conference I attended (the 1982 general assembly on Communications and the Future), I helped out in the press room. Later, I started taking pictures and reporting on the conference for the magazine. I still do that, too.

Over the years, the staff grew smaller as those communications technologies we speculated about increased our productivity. When I started at THE FUTURIST, I wrote stories in long hand on notepads. When they took away our Selectrics and gave us PCs, I finally learned how to compose on the keyboard.

As our operations became more sophisticated and our old "new" office became more dilapidated, we moved to our "new" new office a block away. Just in the last few weeks, our old headquarters was finally torn down, making room for affordable housing. It's a good use, in my opinion. I've always loved Bethesda's mixed-use ethic, and affordable housing near the Metro is a very good idea indeed.

It's great to know they are still building the future on St. Elmo Avenue.

Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST.