Putting the Future on the Map

When the conference ended, we could take considerable pride in what the Society’s members had accomplished. To begin with, our volunteer conference committee had brought together the largest group of futurists ever assembled, and it had stimulated thousands of people to think seriously about the human future, many probably for the first time.

Highly respected government officials and business executives attended, demonstrating that futurists were no longer being viewed as eccentrics. Thanks to the 50 journalists attending our meeting, articles about the conference appeared in newspapers in San Francisco, Paris, New Delhi, and elsewhere—and the articles were quite friendly and respectful.

The scholarly papers presented at the conference along with very thoughtful oral presentations proved to be so numerous that our staff was overwhelmed, and we could not publish a post-conference report on the proceedings as we had planned, though we did use papers and reports from the conference in THE FUTURIST or in other ways. This experience led to our current practice of publishing a volume of papers before a conference rather than later. This practice means that a conference volume can be distributed to registrants when they arrive, allowing them to have an immediate reference to the thinking of conference speakers.

The 1971 conference provided the world’s first “manpower exchange” for futurists seeking jobs or employers wanting to hire a futurist. At least one futurist actually got a job at our meeting: A General Electric executive hired Ralph Hamil for a job at the corporation’s New York headquarters. I had been using Hamil as an assistant editor for THE FUTURIST, but we could only pay him for one day a week. Despite my loss of his services, I was delighted for him to get a full-time job through the Society.

The conference also was probably the first meeting ever held of future-oriented educators. Professors giving courses in futures studies were able to meet, exchange syllabuses, and compare notes during the conference. In addition, political scientists attending the meeting set up an informal information exchange under the leadership of Kenneth W. Hunter of the U.S. General Accounting Office. (Years later, Hunter became the Society’s treasurer.)

A Futures Information Consortium was formed as a way to improve the exchange of information about the future. The Consortium’s coordinator was Michael Marien of the Educational Policy Research Center at Syracuse University. (In 1979, the World Future Society began publishing Mike’s newsletter Future Survey—a unique publication of exceptional quality. The Society has proudly published Future Survey ever since.)

The success of the Society’s first conference greatly encouraged all of us who participated in its creation. The committee succeeded magnificently in enabling people to communicate across the cultural barriers that separated them. We also achieved a modest international stature, and the study of the future had taken a major step forward. We felt we had at last put the future on the map!

These achievements strengthened my belief that the Society was on the right path—except that we weren’t really on any path at all! The Society was a unique institution, and there was no clear path for us to follow. So instead of being path finders we had to be path makers, and our precarious financial situation meant that each step we took on that path might be our last.