In a bit of serendipity, there were three different articles published this week on futures and foresight work, detailing what a futures company concerns itself with and how these firms go about their work. Writing in Quartz, friend of Foresight Alliance Scott Smith detailed some of the reasons why the futures field has seen a…
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AndSpace Consulting and Foresight Alliance have completed a Weak Signals Report for the Industrial Research Institute, identifying 23 “new patterns of emergent change” that will impact research management over the next 25 years. The Industrial Research Institute is an association of companies and government laboratories dedicated to making technological innovation more effective by networking practitioners…
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I’m pleased to report that an article I co-authored for The Futurist in 2012 has landed on the magazine’s list of its most popular stories of the year. Co-written with my longtime friend and colleague Chris Carbone, who serves as director of insights and research at Innovaro, “From Smart House to Networked Home” describes how…
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Fictions about the future and present realities engage in a perpetual exchange. Many scientists and inventors recount being inspired by a particular Star Trek gadget or science fiction movie. Here’s an intriguing example that suggests how tight these loops can get: the designers of the computer game Call of Duty: Black Ops II wanted to…
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So, the 2012 election cycle is in our rear-view mirror, and the political media is only half-jokingly running stories on possible 2016 contenders. In the immediate aftermath of November 6, there have been two dominant stories about the election, the demographic challenges facing the Republican party and how unprepared the Republicans were for losing. As someone who…
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I am by no stretch of the imagination an economist. But a recent paper and a recent book on the long-term prospects for sustained US economic growth—and the discussion they generated—captured my attention, perhaps because it makes a forecast that builds on centuries of history. I’ll do my best to briefly describe the paper’s thesis…
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Earlier this year the polling firm YouGov undertook a survey for Professor Benjamin Valentina at Dartmouth. The results offer some interesting insights into how Americans view our country’s future interactions with China and broader role in the world. Staying on top — Fifty-three percent of Americans say that is is “very important” for the United…
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I have an article on the future of human rights in the current issue of The Futurist magazine. (Download the article in PDF — courtesy of the World Future Society, www.wfs.org.) I note that human rights are being transformed by “several powerful, positive trends … centered around changes in values and new technology.” I suggest…
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A report last week about the continued decline of the cost of genetic sequencing got me thinking about genetic privacy. The fabled “$1,000 genome” is coming into view, the pricepoint at which full sequencing can begin to be part of routine medical care in the developed world. That pricepoint also opens sequencing up for non-medical…
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In May 2008 I gave an interview with TV Week magazine in which I discussed the future of television. In the interview I said: Eventually, that’s going to be what the TV networks as they exist now are going to have to do. Not just create programming and release it at certain times. Rather than…
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