The collective intelligence of futurists from around the world was
gathered at the 2004 conference of the World Future Society in Washington, D.C., this past
summer. On the agenda were terrorism, globalization, energy, life extension, brain/mind
research, and much more. During the two and a half days of presentations, workshops, and
informal exchanges, some 950 professionals, leaders, and other forward thinkers
demonstrated that foresight is not only possible, but vital to the human future.
The conference gave futurists the opportunity to share their insights on
critical issues such as terrorism, which gained new urgency when the security threat level
was raised in downtown Washington as the conference got under way. Defense analyst Marvin
Cetron distributed questionnaires to conference attendees in order to obtain the best
futurist thinking on the likelihood of specific terrorist threats, such as attacks on Air
Force One, oil pipelines, and U.S. landmarks or public facilities.
Why question futurists on such matters? Because futurists were the only
ones to come up with the scenarios that were so painfully played out on September 11,
2001, Cetron asserted. For a 1993-1994 Pentagon-commissioned (but never released) study on
terrorism, Cetron's consulting firm Forecasting International Ltd. interviewed a range of
futurists to help the defense community see potential problems in an entirely new way.
Among those supporting Cetron's conference survey on site was
systems-thinking specialist T. Irene Sanders, who observed, "The reason to
look at futurists' thinking in dealing with terrorism and other issues is that, like with
smart mobs, it's interdisciplinary thinking, [offering] multiple perspectives on the same
issue."
The World Future Society itself will move more successfully into the
future by capitalizing on this strength of multidisciplinary perspectives, suggested new
Society President Timothy C. Mack, who also served as the chairman of the
conference.
At a press conference, Mack announced several new Society initiatives
and partnerships with such organizations as the American Society of Association
Executives, the National League of Cities, the National Academy of Public Administrators,
the Shaping Tomorrow network, World Futures Studies Federation, the Millennium Project,
and the Global SchoolNet Foundation. The Society's goal, he said, is "strengthening
the field into something more collegial, collaborative, and not so niched, but rather more
interactive and synergistic."
The Decentralization of Energy
Energy for the future is one of the great challenges that policy makers and futurists are
now taking on as the price of oil climbs to record levels. The future energy regime will
be decentralized and decarbonized, said Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation
on Economic Trends and author of The Hydrogen Economy.
He observed several historical trends at play, including the rise of the
Internet as a communications medium giving individuals more power and control. "There
is anthropological significance in this decentralization," said Rifkin. "Every
auto, home, and office will have its own fuel cell, and everyone will be on their
own." The biggest beneficiaries may be the people of developing countries, who
"have no power because they have no power." Meanwhile, he noted, each new energy
source to gain dominance throughout history—from wood to coal to petroleum—has
become cleaner than the previous regime, so the coming shift to hydrogen and fuel cells
bodes well for the environment as well as for individual autonomy.
"This will be the Third Industrial Revolution," said Rifkin.
"Decentralized communication and distributed generation of energy will force us to
change other institutions [as we move] from a fuel economy to a market economy to a
dispersed economy." The decentralized energy regime will follow the democratic
Internet model of peer-to-peer sharing; control will not be top down, but rather in the
hands of "communities, coops, and kids."
Reverse Engineering the Brain
Some futurists have asked whether the explosive development of new technologies
should be curbed, since their impacts may yet be unknown and are potentially dangerous.
but award-winning inventor Ray Kurzweil argued that "to relinquish
technologies because they could be used for ill means giving up their good uses—and
it also means totalitarian control."
Kurzweil traced the exponential growth in communications, genetics, and
other technologies, observing that our tools are doubling in power every year.
Understanding of the human brain, too, is growing, thanks to new scanning technologies
that can see into living brains in real time. Eventually, we could reverse engineer the
brain, resulting in an "intimate merger" of humans and machines by 2029. The
merger of machine and human intelligence could lead to new experiences such as
full-immersion virtual reality, with specially designed experiences and realities as new
forms of art.
"Thought hyperlinking" could be another intriguing possibility
of brain engineering, enabling people to share their ideas directly, or even explore each
other's minds, said British futurologist Ian D. Pearson, co-author of Business
2010. It might also be possible to engineer your emotions: Brain research combined
with new technologies could yield emotional self-control tools, such as anger management,
he suggested. However, such technologies raise the question of whether they could (or
should) be imposed on people by government, employers, or others. "There's always
going to be good and bad uses of technology."
The Skills Revolution
Machine intelligence may surpass and possibly supersede the human brain, but there are
already signs that humans will use machine intelligence to enhance their own competence.
A "skills revolution" is under way in which "people
everywhere are getting more education," according to James N. Rosenau,
professor of international affairs at George Washington University and author of Distant
Proximities: Dynamics Beyond Globalization. "Television is exposing more people
to ideas and skills they were never exposed to before," he said. "And
technologies such as the Internet allow people to search for obscure ideas. These forces
interact and accelerate the pace of the skill revolution, which is bound to continue with
new generations."
People's growing ability to communicate with each other is empowering
groups to act in a more coordinated way. An example of that empowerment, according to Ann
Florini of the Brookings Institution, occurred on September 11 when passengers on one
of the hijacked airliners succeeded in diverting it from its target, crashing it in a
field instead. Also, in New York after the World Trade Center towers collapsed,
"there was no panic," Florini pointed out. "Individuals, in an
uncoordinated manner, took care of each other. These are good indicators of an
empowered-people movement, of a Skills Revolution."
If individuals are becoming more intellectually empowered, then couldn't
groups capitalize on that growing intelligence? Shouldn't groups actually hold more
intelligence than individuals? The concept of "collective intelligence"
frightens some people, who associate it with "herd mentality" or, worse, with
the Star Trek villain "Borg," noted Craig Hamilton, managing
editor of What Is Enlightenment? magazine. Collective intelligence may also conjure
images of Nazism, mass hysteria, and a mob mentality.
Another danger of collective intelligence is that in practice it becomes
"collective stupidity" when individuals in the group fail to express misgivings
about the group's conclusions or to ask pertinent questions, Hamilton said. Citing the
work of psychologist Irving Janis and of Wisdom of Crowds author James Surowiecki,
Hamilton suggested that creating a climate of questioning and incorporating greater
diversity in groups can help turn group stupidity into collective wisdom to which all
members of the group can have access.
"This is happening in corporate circles and in education,"
said Hamilton, as more effort is made in "trying to get individuals into groups where
this higher wisdom can emerge."
The Future Problem Solving Program is one example of efforts in
education to seek higher wisdom. In this innovative program, teams of high-school students
are offered a strategy for approaching their topic, but they usually figure out their own
strategy, according to Program directors Jeanne Carlson and Laurel Petersen.
The kids also quickly self-organize within the teams by their individual strengths,
weaknesses, and approaches: Some are "problem" kids and others are
"solution" kids.
Letting kids "self-organize" this way might be good for the
future. Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., pointed out that, in
the past, kids playing on the streets in Brooklyn or the Bronx would get chosen for teams
only if they played well. "If you don't get picked, you go home and practice your
violin or play with your chemistry set, then grow up to become a great musician or
chemist," she said. But today, everybody "gets" to play soccer whether
they're good enough or not, so the future will see a bunch of terrible soccer players and
no musicians or chemists, she warned.
