Realizing the Vision

Most important to me were the notes I got from two people working in downtown Washington who said they were very interested in the proposed World Future Society. One was social psychologist David Goldberg, advance planning officer in the U.S. Office of Education’s Bureau of Research. The other was Charles W. Williams Jr., a staff associate in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Science Resources Planning.

I arranged to have lunch with each of the two prospective collaborators and discuss the project with them. Both seemed genuinely enthusiastic and ready to get started immediately on making the proposed World Future Society a reality.

Williams, in turn, discussed the project with his boss, Henry David, who agreed that a society such as we proposed could be a resource for NSF’s Office of Science Resources Planning. David agreed for Williams to support the effort and gave Williams a free hand in doing so. As a result, we were able to hold our organizational meetings at the National Science Foundation, though David himself did not attend.

At our initial organizational meeting, held on August 3, 1966, we constituted ourselves a steering committee to finalize plans for the project. Thereafter, we met about once a week during August and September to work out the various issues that arose. Early in these deliberations, I was contacted by Peter Zuckerman, a systems designer at the System Development Corporation, and he also became an active member of the steering committee.

Also participating regularly in these early meetings was Paul Mahany, a tall, bearded editor who worked for my friend Rowan Wakefield, head of the Washington office of the State University of New York. Mahany gave me considerable advice on editorial and other issues, but he remained mostly silent during the steering committee meetings.

Another noteworthy participant was Robert Horn, a political scientist who had developed “information mapping,” a technique for displaying extremely complex information so people can understand it better. He later founded Information Mapping, a company now located in Waltham, Massachusetts. Other people participated in one or more meetings but did not attend regularly and had little influence on our plans.

Goldberg and Williams did most of the talking during these organizational sessions. Zuckerman, Mahany, and I kept pretty quiet. I think the three of us wanted to keep our project moving forward as quickly as possible and preferred for others to do the talking, except when we felt strongly about something.

The group was remarkably well agreed on what we wanted the Society to be: an independent, politically neutral scientific and educational association for people interested in serious thinking about the human future. We were not interested in arcane or esoteric methods of predicting the future, nor in idle fantasizing about the future. We insisted on approaching the future in a rational, scientific manner that would provide practical foresight for individuals, organizations, and even humanity as a whole.

Though we agreed easily on the basic philosophy and approach of the society, several points of disagreement surfaced. Williams envisioned a professional scientific organization with special qualifications for membership. Such an organization could maintain high standards and have credibility in the scientific and academic communities. I appreciated Williams’s concerns, but I felt that everyone has a stake in the future and may have useful information and ideas. More practically, I couldn’t see a reasonable way to qualify people for membership in the Society as I envisioned it. Whatever our prerequisites for membership, we would likely exclude people we would want to include. For instance, if a doctorate were required for membership, neither Williams nor Zuckerman nor I would qualify. If a college degree were required, neither my friend John Dixon nor Bucky Fuller would qualify. Were most of us to be disqualified from membership in the organization we were creating?

Goldberg, the only one of us with a doctorate (in social psychology), seemed somewhat conflicted on this question: He had spent considerable time earning his “union card” in academia, but he also had been profoundly influenced by the student rebellions on U.S. campuses during the 1960s. In fact, he brought to one of our meetings a former University of California professor of English (Stuart Miller) who had decided the rebelling students were right and, as a result, had quit his post and gone into soul-searching and humanistic psychology.

After considerable debate, the steering committee worked out a compromise: There would be no prerequisites for membership in the Society, but the Society would provide special services for people with a professional or scientific interest in the future.

We also agreed that the Society would be completely international, and membership dues would be the same for people everywhere in the world.

A second bone of contention was the name “World Future Society.” I had struggled with the name issue myself when I first began thinking about an association for people interested in the future. I came up with quite a few names, and eventually chose “World Future Society” as the best option. But I had been most uncertain of my choice, so I consulted with my friend Lewis de la Haba. Lew was a journalist in public relations whose judgment I respected. After I gave him a list of alternative names, Lew thought a minute and said, “Why not just call it the ‘World Future Society’?”

De la Haba’s endorsement seemed to validate “World Future Society,” much as Time’s approval had validated the term futurist. So I used the name “World Future Society” in my prototype issue of THE FUTURIST. But Goldberg objected strongly to that name, mainly because the word “future” was singular; he thought it should be “futures” (plural). In this way, we would be stressing that people do not have a single fixed future but a wide variety of alternative futures they can choose among.

Eventually a compromise was reached: The name would be World Future Society, but we would add a subtitle proclaiming our Society to be “An Association for the Study of Alternative Futures.”

At that point we were ready to create a new prospectus for the Society summarizing our plans. This prospectus included a Statement of Objectives, which Williams prepared:

1. To contribute to a reasoned awareness of the future and the importance of its study, without advocating particular ideologies or engaging in political activities.

2. To advance responsible and serious investigation of the future.

3. To promote the development and improvement of methodologies for the study of the future.

4. To increase public understanding of future-oriented activities and studies.

5. To facilitate communication and cooperation among organizations and individuals interested in studies of, or planning for, the future.

The prospectus listed 21 programs that the proposed Society might undertake, including THE FUTURIST, a “scholars’ supplement to THE FUTURIST,” a “forum for futurists,” book services, and conventions.

Copies of the prospectus were sent to a number of people we knew and respected, along with an invitation to offer their comments, criticisms, and suggestions. These people were also invited to come to a special “feedback” session on October 18 at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington research institute with a leftist orientation.

At this feedback session, there seemed to be relatively little objection to a society devoted to the future, but a number of people reacted very negatively to the name World Future Society. Other names were proposed; for example, John Caffrey of the American Council on Education, suggested calling the organization “the De Jouvenel Society,” in honor of the French futurist whom he and I so much admired.

This disagreement over the name horrified me because I suddenly envisioned an interminable series of contentious and unproductive meetings just to decide what to call the society!

I kept quiet about my misgivings, and over the next few weeks, my worst fears seemed to be confirmed as more people reacted negatively to the name “World Future Society.” On the other hand, the alternative names that were proposed failed to gain traction.

To resolve the dispute, Goldberg took it upon himself to poll people on what name they preferred. Since he had strongly opposed the name, I wasn’t sure he could be trusted to perform this task fairly. But he did, and to his chagrin, about half the people queried liked “World Future Society” best. No other name attracted more than one or two votes.

So Goldberg admitted defeat, and we moved on to the question of who should be the initial officers of the Society.

I planned to edit THE FUTURIST and felt that would be a heavy responsibility in itself. I definitely did not want to be an officer as well. After all, I had set out to organize the Society merely as a means of having a sponsor for the magazine I dreamed of. I simply assumed that others would take on the organizational roles.

Zuckerman, who was a Certified Public Accountant, had already volunteered to be our treasurer. So the key issue became who would be our president. Peter and I left it mainly to Goldberg and Williams to sort out this issue, but a dispute developed; and, as the wrangle dragged on day after day, I became increasingly exasperated.

To get around the impasse, I decided to claim the presidency for myself by virtue of having brought the group together in the first place. I saw my becoming president as a temporary expedient. I thought it would be easy to settle the presidency issue later when we had more people to take on the officer roles.

So I rather arbitrarily assumed the presidency and appointed Goldberg and Williams as vice presidents. It was not in my nature to be so high-handed, but I was determined to keep us moving ahead. The others acquiesced to this arrangement.