FUTURIST UPDATE
News & Previews from the World Future Society
July  2003

IN THIS ISSUE: * Man-Machine Merger * Chaos Theory and Alcoholism * Beware of Cats * Click of the Month: Forecasting Dictionary * Doug Michels

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MAN-MACHINE MERGER
Are human beings on their way to becoming cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs? The advent of wearable computers, portable power sources, "ambient intelligence," and even thought-controlled prosthetics makes the science-fiction scenarios of "RoboCop" and "The Terminator" fame increasingly plausible.

Contributing to a spate of recent literature debating the pros and cons of a man-machine merger is NATURAL-BORN CYBORGS by Andy Clark, director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University.

Certainly, embedded technologies that improve our functioning can be a boon to humanity (pacemakers, for example, that help the heart beat, or cochlear implants that stimulate auditory nerves). But a downside is that the invasions of privacy and security we already experience with technologies such as the Internet could become nightmares when those technologies are ubiquitous, invisible, and built-in.

"Do I really want the government--or worse, Microsoft--to have access to all my movements, ingestions, consummations, and consumptions?" Clark asks. "The joys of the electronic trail and ubiquitous computing suddenly pale against the threats of electronic tattling and ubiquitous interference."

Clark has less fear about a posthuman future than do many of his contemporaries, for "it is our basic human nature to annex, exploit, and incorporate nonbiological stuff" into our lives, he writes. The issue is how to do this in ways that do not diminish our humanity but shape it for the better. ORDER THE BOOK: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195148665/thefuturistbooks

CHAOS THEORY AND ALCOHOLISM
Chaos theory may help scientists understand alcoholism's complex impacts on behavior, believe researchers at Ohio State University.

Alcoholism is a complex, dynamic, and oscillating set of patterns, much as weather systems and the stock market are, according to Keith Warren, an assistant professor of social work.

"Chaos theory is applicable to alcohol abuse because it can help us understand sudden changes in the behavior of a system, unpredictability, and irregular behavior," he says. For example, behaviors that might indicate recovery could actually be part of a natural cycle in the disease, according to Warren, who suggests that most treatments for alcoholism don't last long enough to ride these waves of recovery and relapse.
SOURCE: Ohio State University, http://www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/alchaos.htm

EXCITEMENT BUILDS FOR SAN FRANCISCO CONFERENCE The World Future Society staff is in a whirlwind, gearing up for one of the most fascinating conferences ever--WorldFuture 2003, coming to the glorious Hyatt Regency San Francisco at Embarcadero Center in less than a month. Great news! There's still time to register--and to get a discount of $70 off the on-site fee (the deadline is June 30). You can also sign up for the two exciting preconference tours: the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where the world's greatest physicists come to unlock the secrets of subatomic particles (Thursday, July 17, 1-5 p.m.), and San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation (Friday, July 18, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.)

BEWARE OF CATS
Feral cats are a growing problem for an increasingly urbanized planet, bringing diseases into crowded places and competing with natural predators for food sources.

A University of Florida study notes that some 15 million feral cats in Florida are spreading rabies and other diseases and threatening the livelihoods of such endangered species as the Lower Florida Keys marsh rabbit, the Key Largo cotton mouse, and the Florida scrub jay, among other Florida species. The study recommends against people releasing any cats into the wild.

Increased urbanization also attracts greater numbers of feral cats, dogs, and other interlopers to cities' overflowing garbage pails.

Undomesticated migrants bring all sorts of problems with them, according to historian and sociologist Franz Schurmann, writing for the Pacific News Service. The rapid rise and spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), for example, has been partly blamed on animals such as the civet cat.
SOURCES: University of Florida, http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2003news/feralcat.htm
Pacific News Service (June 6, 2003), http://news.pacificnews.org/news/

CLICK OF THE MONTH: FORECASTING DICTIONARY
http://morris.wharton.upenn.edu/forecast/dictionary

The unique Forecasting Dictionary bridges the knowledge gap between professional futures researchers and people who just hope to gain a little insight about tomorrow.

The database of terms was prepared by J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and the author of PRINCIPLES OF FORECASTING. Examples:

* Delphi technique: "A method for obtaining independent forecasts from an expert panel over two or more rounds...."
* Backcasting: "Predicting what occurred in a time period prior to the period used in the analysis."
* Nowcasting: "Applying a forecasting procedure to obtain an estimate of the current situation...."
* Seer-sucker theory: "No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, seers will find suckers."

The database is searchable by key word, or you can click through to a list of all defined terms. The site was programmed by Jason Cotton with support from the International Institute of Forecasters.
ORDER PRINCIPLES OF FORECASTING:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0792374010/thefuturistbooks

VISIONARY ARCHITECT DOUG MICHELS
"World architect" Doug Michels, a futurist and founding member of the iconoclastic Ant Farm design group, died June 12 in Australia while hiking to a whale observation point at Eden Bay. He was less than three weeks shy of his sixtieth birthday.

Michels and the Ant Farm were best known for the Cadillac Ranch monument in Amarillo, Texas, where in 1974 the group embedded 10 used Cadillacs headfirst into the ground, their tail fins leering at the sky. The Cadillacs have now been painted black in tribute to Michels.

On the day that news of Michels's death spread by e-mail around the world, dozens of friends, colleagues, and admirers shared deeply personal experiences in a "virtual wake." Frequent collaborator Peter Bollinger wrote, "Despite the fact that for a lot of his life he operated 'outside of the traditional rewards structure' (as we'd become fond of quoting), his legacy and impact will be felt by so many and be so enduring."

Over the years, FUTURIST readers have been treated to three cover stories of work inspired by Michels. A special "Visions" essay showcasing this work will appear in the September-October issue.
DETAILS: "Cadillacs All Turn to Black in Memory of Artist," AMARILLO GLOBE-NEWS,
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/062303/new_news062303-1.shtml
Obituary, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/features/1955440
Tribute site: http://www.well.com/user/parasw/dougmichels/

FUTURIST UPDATE: News & Previews from the World Future Society is an e-mail newsletter published monthly as a supplement to THE FUTURIST magazine. Copyright © 2003, World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. Telephone 1-301-656-8274;  mailto:info@wfs.org; Web site http://www.wfs.org.

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