Thinking Creatively     in Turbulent Times

Foreword		Executive Summaries		Contributors
WFS Home Page		WFS Publications		WFS Conferences

Executive Summaries

I. THE PATH OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE IN THE FUTURE

The Digital Future: An Alternate View
By Jan Amkreutz and Timothy Mack
Western society is well into the "Digital Age," the economic and social implications of which have provoked heated debate. While "Cassandras" worry over such issues as the dot-com bust and the potential displacement of humans in the coming Age of the Machine, a more realistic view of the digital future is needed.

Where Science Is Headed: Sixteen Trends
By Joseph F. Coates
The scope and impacts of science are enormous, so it is practical and necessary to analyze the trends marking the path of science into the future. The trends most likely to shape the overall scientific enterprise in the next decade or two include the blurring distinctions between science and technology and between basic and applied sciences; the fact that research is becoming more interdisciplinary, yet academia fails to note or support this interdisciplinarity; basic and applied research is rapidly globalizing, and in the United States this means science is in the hands of growing numbers of foreign-born researchers. Other trends include outsourcing of field work, the dominance of English as the language of science, pressure from science funders for results-oriented research, and the growing challenge of scientific authority by amateurs and hobbyists, as well as the significance of their contribution to the scientific knowledge base.

Microtechnology and Biological Design
By William Holmes
Microtechnology is the art of manufacturing products plainly visible under a light microscope. The convergence of microtechnology and biological design will have a profound effect on our way of life, yet nothing really new is needed--only incremental improvements of microtechnology products already in use. Cell-sized bioparts functioning like muscle, sensory, neural, and structural cells can be assembled into human-sized structures with biological characteristics. For instance, bioclothes will provide physical support and protection from cold and harm, while monitoring the body's shape, tension, motions, and internal physiologic signals. Modified cells within the body will be organized into a network for individual cell care, guided by their owners through bioclothes. Other developments: Robots, themselves biostructures, will assemble furnishings and even houses from bioparts. Small-scale, home-based manufacture will flourish, ultimately leading to near self-sufficiency.

II. FUTURE-ORIENTED STUDIES

Traps in Futures Thinking--and How to Overcome Them
by Mika Mannermaa
Unsuccessful forecasts throughout history provide a wealth of lessons on how limited our ability is to think of the future credibly. The most-common traps in futures thinking are "This is it!" thinking, paradigm blindness, trend-faith, cultural contempt, overenthusiasm and disparagement of everything new. One example of the "This is it!" trap was the "End of History" discussion started by Francis Fukuyama, who failed to recognize that evolution on the globe has no end station. When thinking of issues like the global economy or ideologies, we should be aware that development is likely to continue for generations.

Strategies in futures thinking can help us avoid these traps. For instance, to overcome paradigm blindness, take care that you don’t read only journals, magazines, and Web pages of your own discipline. In every organization trying to avoid traps in futures thinking and being thirsty for success, whether operating in business, administration, education, or in the academy, it would be good to have a kind of disturbance generator to keep you awake in front of the turbulent future(s).

Understanding the Political-Economic Pendulum: The American Example
By John Smart
Historically, the United States has shifted back and forth, like a pendulum, from centralized, plutocratic political-economic domination to a decentralized, democratic culture. We are currently in a plutocratic cycle, but as the accelerating capabilities of technology empower individuals, we may see a swing back toward a more democratic political and economic atmosphere. Strategies that individuals can use to thrive in the digital future include becoming more comfortable using the Internet and other technologies for everyday activities, as well as honing your own professional technology skills and adopting the latest IT for your business.

Innovating for the Future
By Patrick A. van der Duin
Innovation processes are by definition forward looking, but innovation takes time. After the initial idea for an innovation has come up, new and future developments in the economy, society, and/or technology can render the idea obsolete. To create a commercially successful new product or service, innovators can benefit from the methods of futures research, such as gathering new information (or even knowledge) about future developments, so that current innovation processes can be adjusted. A case study shows how one R&D organization uses scenarios in its innovation processes.

Models of Change, with Examples of Key Issues in the Future Studies Field
By Linda Groff
Change is the norm, but its pace is accelerating. Older models that help us understand change and its dynamic impacts include linear change, evolution, cyclical change, and dialectical change between thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Newer models of interest to futures researchers include step jump models (sudden shifts in a system without a prior breakdown), evolutionary spirals, series of S-shaped curves of breakdowns and breakthroughs, and chaos.

 III. URBAN FUTURES

Imagineering Cities: Creating Livable Urban Futures in the 21st Century
By John Ratcliffe and Elzbieta Kraczyk
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and the forces of rapid technological change, expanding economic globalization, and profound cultural shifts mean that urban land-use planning and development are ever more important. Cities need to "imagine ahead and plan backwards." Case studies of Bilbao, Dublin, Lyon, and Vancouver show how different futures approaches can be applied to help urban planners and decision makers deal with issues ahead and envision and reposition their cities for the future.

The Rise of Telecities: Decentralizing the Global Society
By Joseph N. Pelton
The rise of overcentralized megacities is a dangerous trend, exposing countless millions to potential environmental catastrophe, rapidly spreading epidemics, terrorist attacks, and other threats. The answer is telectities, vast communication networks that are free from perils brought about by centralization. It is better to move and concentrate ideas than people.

"Adding On" to the Nation: Housing a Bigger America
By David Pearce Snyder
U.S. population will double in the next century, a daunting prospect for a nation already fighting a losing battle against urban sprawl. Architects and urban planners must strategize now to house, school, and transport an additional 290 million Americans, who also will be vastly different from today's Americans: They will be older, for instance, and increasingly living with impairments that all buildings and public facilities will need to accommodate.

IV. EDUCATION

How to Transform an Entire School System: The Future in the Present Tense
By Francis M. Duffy, John F. Horne III, and G. Thomas Houlihan
Challenges that educators face in their present when thinking about transforming their school systems include political pressure to improve schooling and emerging societal trends that portend great changes. From lessons learned in such case studies as the Chugach School District in Anchorage, Alaska, and Pearl River School District in Pearl River, New York, the authors offer strategies for transforming schools and school districts for the future, such as improving districts' relationships with their surrounding communities, including businesses.

V. THE PENSION CRISIS

The Opportunity of a Lifetime: Reshaping Retirement
By Michael Moynagh and Richard Worsley
A two-year project in the United Kingdom studying the future of retirement examined the reasons retirement is on the public agenda, notably the "pensions crisis" and longer life expectancy. The project also looked at the pressures on workers to retire later and how employers will respond, as well as the role of state pension arrangements in promoting a less age-based and more fulfilling view of retirement in the years ahead.

 VI. AUTOMATION'S FUTURE

The Wolf Is Here: The Impact of Telepower
By Howard F. Didsbury Jr.
Society is increasingly challenged to do much, much more with fewer and fewer workers in worthwhile, well-paying jobs. Telepower increases our ability to meet this challenge, but at great cost: more fragmentation in society, replacement of humans and human contact with virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and growing risks to democracy and governance.

The Government of the Future Is Intelligent: Citizen in Control, Government in Control
By Marcel Bullinga
Networked smart environments embedded with computer technologies may soon enable governments to download all relevant laws and regulations into every machine you use or building you enter, keeping you safer and making everything work better. This age of automatic law enforcement will mean more privacy for law-abiding citizens but less privacy for law-breakers--and consequently less crime.

VII. HEALTH CHALLENGES

Emerging Diseases: New Threats from an Old Nemesis
By Tyler Kokjohn, Kimball E. Cooper, and Laszlo Kerecsen
Infectious disease is not a thing of the past. Despite spectacular advances in medicine, some diseases are increasing as novel infectious agents appear, pathogenic microbes evolve, and etiologic agents expand into new geographic regions. Changing disease patterns can sometimes be linked directly to economic, medical, and environmental changes brought about by humans, but are often not foreseeable. The future challenge is to recognize and manage emerging diseases quickly to ensure they do minimal harm. Without directed surveillance and proactive mitigation efforts, emerging diseases could produce an unwelcome countertrend to hoped-for human health enhancements and projected life-span extensions.

The American Drug Abuse Epidemic: Policy Failures, Better Approaches, Societal Barriers
By Donald B. Louria and Amiram Sheffet
Over the past 50 years, there have been four simplistic approaches to illicit drug use: reduction in supply, long incarceration of users and small-time sellers, treatment of users, and mandatory urine testing of students and at the work site. Each of these has failed. Reducing supply is difficult given the constant demand and the potential profits. Long incarceration of nonviolent, small-time sellers and users is cruel, and does little except increase our already swollen jail population. Intensive treatment succeeds for only "motivated" users, and then only for about 30% (even less with follow-up of more than one year). Mandatory urine testing is an invasion of privacy, focuses on the wrong student population, and does not appear to work.

A better approach requires systems thinking; this allows a focus on interacting variables that either promote or reduce illicit drug use. Prevention requires a focus on reasons for drug use; two important reasons are peer pressure and boredom. One potentially effective approach is to involve young people in activities they find exciting and interesting so they have an antidote to boredom and drug-promoting peer group pressure. Primary prevention is a much better and, potentially, a far more effective approach. The drug scene can be reduced, but will be with us, to some extent, because of other societal and individual variables that encourage such use, including a sensate culture with a focus on hedonism.

VIII. RENEWED IMPORTANCE OF A SPACE MISSION

Using the Resources of Space to Provide Employment and Prosperity on Earth
By Lester Kuhl
The exploration of space will require a large resource commitment by a nation but with the correct project definition and financial approach such a project can be an asset to a nation's economy.

The current approach by the scientific community to solicit interest in space exploration as a "research project" is shortsighted and counterproductive. The major technical issues of the project have long been solved but the financial issues to pay for a project of this size have not been resolved. The exploration/commercialism of space can be a positive economic venture thereby making it a positive political venture. This venture can be used to generate "jobs" and not be thought of as one that is competing for resources of other national priorities. With this approach the exploration of space takes on a whole new meaning.

An alternative approach to exploring space focuses on constructing a transportation system first, then looking at possible financial approaches to pay for the development of the transportation system.

IX. THE FUTURE OF SPORT

The Future of Sport
By Robin Gunston
Sports, particularly the Olympic Games and team-based sports, have long been part of the human culture. Possible futures of sport will be influenced by trends such as the treatment of sport as entertainment and big business, the growing preference for individual rather than team sports, and the changes in club ownership, as well as terrorism and technological impacts. Four possible long-term scenarios are "Technosport," "Religiosport," "Machosport," and--the preferred scenario--"Valuesport." Global Community Games, a new worldwide, volunteer-led initiative, could become the key to achieving a better future of sport.

 X. PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHTS/VALUES

Future Life-Forms among Posthumans
By Jose Luis Cordeiro
As we begin to ride the wave into human redesign, the destination is still largely unknown. But despite all the unanswered questions, we have a number of clues that can help us speculate as to what we truly mean by the posthuman organism--including the striking acknowledgement that in all likelihood not just one type of posthuman awaits us, but several.

We will reengineer our biological constitutions and introduce silicon, steel, and microchips into ourselves. Some may choose to reside in computers as conscious wave patterns, while others will convert themselves into durable robots and venture out into space. Simultaneously, we will create entirely new forms of life, including artificial intelligence and perhaps even a global consciousness.

Humanity's monopoly as the only advanced sentient life-form on the planet will soon come to an end, supplemented by a number of posthuman incarnations. Moreover, how we reengineer ourselves could fundamentally change the ways in which our society functions and raise crucial questions about our identities and moral status as human beings.

Creativity, Innovation, and Visionary Thinking: Becoming All You Can Become
By Lynn Elen Burton
While it is true that extraordinary people like Leonardo da Vinci, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Aung San Suu Kyi, Thomas Alva Edison, the current Dalai Lama of Tibet, and Oprah Winfrey, are all known for their unique genius, one can also identify many common characteristics underlying their successes. Examining creative thinking in terms of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator can help us understand how these extraordinary people tap into their strengths and abilities to create and think in innovative ways and to parlay their skills into success.

The Material Culture of Happiness
By Francesco Morace and Tiziana Traldi
Debates on the failure of capitalism to make people happy through wealth have focused much attention on the significance of the study of happiness for forming public policy. The Future Concept Lab has been following these debates and has undertaken a long-term research journey into the territory of happiness. This new field of social research can make a positive impact not only on policy making, but also on the world of consumption and on the private sector in general. Some key happiness trends could be employed in "happy marketing," a new perspective and new sensitivity toward the consumer world.

Tribe, Empire, or Global Commonwealth
By W. Warren Wagar
The greatest issue confronting humankind in the 21st century is how we shall govern ourselves. Two powerful antithetical forces, tribalism and globalization, appear to be our only options, but there are others. Some argue that the United States can act as the world's policeman and the guardian of the new global economy, while others hope for a condominium of affluent powers, including the United States, capable of jointly assuring stability in the world order. Proposals also abound for transforming the United Nations into the leading player in a new global security system. Unfortunately, for many reasons, none of these forces and projects can save civilization from unraveling in the course of the 21st century. The only sane alternative is a democratic global commonwealth, which today seems hopelessly out of reach, but may yet become attainable in the wake of crises so potentially lethal that they leave humankind with no other choice.

Evolving Future Consciousness Through the Pursuit of Virtue
By Thomas Lombardo and Jonathan Richter
Society's increasingly intense focus on the present has led to a frenzied, fragmented world. People possess more wealth, material goods, and technological conveniences than ever before, but face chronic stress, anxiety, loss of control, deteriorating trust and connectivity, and escalating depression. Most importantly, our sense of the future is narrowing and weakening. A constructive approach for addressing these problems and improving the quality of our lives focuses on developing a core set of character virtues for the future: self-efficacy and self-responsibility; order, integration, and direction; courage, faith, and freedom; wisdom and the love of thinking; reciprocity and balance; and evolution and transcendence.

The Coming Conflict Between Science and Spirit
By William E. Halal
The nature of consciousness is one of the central issues of our time. Computer power should match the human brain about 2020, setting the stage for a grand test of a paramount scientific question: Is there a substantial difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence? New evidence supports the scientific view that consciousness arises out of the physical brain alone; other evidence supports the idea that a "spiritual" dimension indeed exists. One scenario depicts humanity bumping up against the limits of science, which would force us to recognize the metaphysical qualities of humankind that lie beyond information. But an alternative scenario sees the study of consciousness producing a new scientific revolution, much as Darwin shattered the belief that humans differ from animals and Freud dispelled the conviction that human thought is rational.

Reflections on Teaching about Utopias: Oh, What a Lift That Phantom Offers!
By Arthur B. Shostak
Sociologists are strategic allies of futurists in the effort to understand the concept of utopia. Utopian study dates back to Comte and nowadays features the seminal work of Daniel Bell, W. Warren Wagar, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and Wendell Bell, among many others. But we must now improve our teaching of the subject to ensure its place both in academia and in practical futures building. The neglect of utopias in sociology textbooks is both costly and unwarranted. Undergraduate students need academic attention to utopias. Fortunately, many fine new teaching aids are available, and teachers themselves can drawn on their own classroom experiences helping young adults profit from this extraordinary topic.

 XI. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

New Paradigms in World Trade and the Global Economy
By Hazel Henderson
The traditional "Washington Consensus" theories of world trade are overly simplistic and ignore the new mobility of capital and the role of politics and powerful corporations in setting trade rules that are now seen as unfair and ignore social and environmental costs. A new model of sustainable world trade would build on the concept of comparative advantage--a cooperative "niche" strategy--as opposed to the current erroneous focus on competitive advantage.

The Future of Sustainable Development: A European Perspective
By Ruth Kelly, Lorcan Sirr, and John Ratcliffe
We are living in times of turbulence and complex changes without precedent in history. It is becoming increasingly evident that humans are an intrinsic component of nature, in that their actions affect both the biotic and abiotic environments, and are in turn affected by everything that shapes those environments. In evolutionary terms, population growth, societal restructuring, exhaustion of natural resources, and technological advancements have usually been so slow as to be indiscernible during an individual lifetime. However, in the past two centuries the global economy has shown exponential growth, transforming the character of the planet and especially of human life. If this rate of transformation is sustained without strategic planning for the future, the consequences for the long-term well-being of humanity are frightening. Anticipation of and preparation for the future are essential to achieving sustainable development. However, the potential for linking futures thinking to debates about sustainable development is very undeveloped at the global level. This paper examines the future of sustainable development in Europe, with specific reference to the application of the growing field of futures thinking as a vehicle to achieve it.

The Culture of Growth and the Culture of Limits
By Richard D. Lamm
Two opposing views of humanity's future--one espousing continued growth and the other cautioning us on limits--have led to a chasm of mutual incomprehension. But by examining the assumptions and prognostications of these two opposing views, we can see reality more clearly and make better choices regarding our use of resources for the future.

Opportunities and Challenges of the Future Transamazonic Connections in South America. What Could One Expect?
By Michael Edgard Ridia
Plans for creating transportation connections across South America's Amazon face numerous opportunities and challenges. The future viability of using ports in the Pacific Ocean for trade between the Brazilian Amazon regions and the Asia Pacific Zone depends on such factors as the unitary cost for different alternative routes. This paper analyzes complete estimates for the whole route, including all the multimodal connections. It also describes the impact of these connections in the Amazon Forest, including both economic opportunities and environmental risks. This analysis can serve as an example for other regions struggling to balance the goals of sustainable development with the pursuit of key projects in areas with immense natural resources.

Return to Top

COPYRIGHT © 2004 WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY
7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814.
Tel. 301-656-8274. E-mail info@wfs.org. Web site http://www.wfs.org.
All rights reserved.