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The World According to Futurists
There is no good dictionary definition of a "futurist." There are very few people working full-time with this job title anywhere in the world. Andrew Zolli is not only an exception to this rule, he is helping to create that missing definition. In an interview with GAIN magazine, he explained the field of futures research this way:
As it sounds, futures studies is the principled study of the possible, probable, and preferable future of institutions and societies, and the steps required to bring about those futures. Futures work isn't primarily about specific, short-term 'prediction', such as 'in 2 years consumers will like X', or 'in 3 years the market will do Y'. Rather, futurists tend to look at futures that are 10 or more years away, examined through the lenses of demographics, technology, the social science, aesthetics, industry, geopolitics and ecology. You'll notice I said 'futures' and not 'the future'; the reason is that choice and human agency play a big role in shaping the many futures we face. What this work starts with is the very premise that the future is indeed 'influencable' and we need to broadly engage our imaginations and think in a whole-brained way and systematically about changes.
To get a better idea of what futurist work encompasses, read below about some of the visions that Andrew Zolli and others have articulated…possibilities for our world in the future.
Zolli on e-commerce (from IndiaLine net.VIEWS, October 4, 1999):
"There will be an explosion in e-commerce oriented around the buying and selling of digital content, in addition to commodity products. So, rather than buying compact-discs, you may be purchasing the music itself, in a specially encrypted format."
Richard Slaughter, President of the World Futures Studies Federation, on the environment (from NEW SCIENTIST):
"Unfortunately, the most likely futures are pretty awful — scenarios that no sane person would wish to live in. This scenario is based on the continuing human impact on the global environment. Global warming is bad enough, but there's also the impact on other species, on wildlife extinctions, on soil loss or tropical forests — basically, gross and sustained simplifications of Earth's life-support systems. We have to learn to rein in this growth. But growth is the engine of a capitalist economy, so this is a very tough question — how to move to a form of development which satisfies human needs but doesn't wreck the life-support systems while we are doing it."
Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA, on genetic technology (from the World Future Society Web Site):
"In the future, what is really going to matter to us is our biology, because we are biological creatures. The notion of having chip implants in our brains sounds a little seductive until you imagine the realities of going in for brain surgery — a risky operation — and the actual benefits you'd have to be offered in order to be willing to subject yourself to that kind of an operation. Repairing deficits of one sort or another is something that we will do, and there have been all sorts of implants related to that. But the idea of going into a person who is healthy to try and expand their ability to recall tunes or something is very unlikely and not very realistic."
Marvin Cetron, author, on global security (from the World Future Society Web Site):
"I see an ominous trend in the growing number of people who live in nations ruled by fundamentalist religious extremists. Such regimes (for example, Afghanistan, Iran, Chechnya, and Sudan) are frighteningly effective at controlling public access to media and information, stifling debate, and promoting stereotypes that make compromise appear intolerable. They may not direct terrorism, but their official policies and actions clearly enable and encourage unofficial groups and desperate individuals to plan and carry out terrorist acts."
William E. Halal, director of the George Washington University Forecast of Emerging Technologies, on the future of computers (from the World Future Society Web Site):
"Optical computers. A computer that operates by light waves rather than electricity will be available in about 2015. All of the components for optical systems are in place: lasers for coding light waves with information and for reading the information, fiber optics for carrying light waves, and CDs for storing information in hard form. Optical systems will replace current computer technology within 20 years at the most.
These computers will be incredibly powerful. A single optical fiber as wide as a human hair can carry about a hundred channels of information now; it may soon carry a thousand. We will begin to reach the limits of our present computer paradigm in about five years. When that barrier is reached, optical computers will become the new paradigm, delivering limitless information at the speed of light. That's exciting."
To read more of Andrew Zolli's predictions for the future, read James M. Pethokoukis' interview with Zolli from Next News.
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