CYBERSECURITY

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org Summer 2015 

of Investment for the Science of 

Six Key Areas 

CYBERSECURITY 

Conversations with NEWT GINGRICH, 

ELAINE KAMARCK, PETER SCHIFF 

and DENNIS KUCINICH 

Conversation with The Futurist: 

Gina Bianchini 

How Trends in Interpersonal 

Relationships Will Disrupt our Social 

and Business Traditions 

Transforming Society by Teaching 

Everyday People the Characteristics of a 

Modern Hero 

An Interview with Science Fiction Writer 

Tobias Buckell

WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY 

EMPOWERING FUTURISTS. SHAPING FUTURES. 

3220 N STREET NW #161 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20007, USA 

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WFS.ORG 

The World Future Society is the first membership 

organization in the world for people who research, 

envision and create potential futures. Our mission 

is to improve decision-making about the future 

by empowering futurists, fostering networks 

and advancing knowledge and action on futurecritical 

issues. 

The organization was founded in 1966 by Edward 

Cornish, who went on to write Futuring: Exploring 

the Future, a foundational text still used in many 

classrooms today.Prominent early members 

included Buckminster Fuller, Robert McNamara, 

Arthur C. Clarke, Herman Kahn and Alvin and 

Heidi Toffler. 

Today, the World Future Society provides robust 

tools, cutting-edge ideas and opportunities 

to collaborate through its newsletters and 

publications, events and conferences, and a 

global chapter network in countries around 

the world. 

The World Future Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit 

educational and scientific organization, 

incorporated and located in Washington, D.C. 

The WFS Transformation: 

In order to support the urgent need for 

anticipatory decision-making in a complex and 

rapidly changing world, WFS has embarked on 

a multi-year modernization and transformation 

designed to culminate in WFS “2.0” by 2017. WFS 

2.0 will be the world’s premiere ecosystem for 

empowering futurists, igniting dialogue about the 

future and shaping futures. 

WFS.ORG

Summer 2015 

Volume 49, No. 1 

A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas 

about the future 

Six Key Areas of Investment for 

the Science of Cybersecurity 

see page 10 

DEPARTMENTS 

3 Letter from the Editor 

5 Letter from the CEO 

30 Consultants and Services 

ARTICLES 

8 Conversation with The 

Futurist: Gina Bianchini 

By Amy Zalman 

A wide-ranging interview with this 

entrepreneur, investor and futurist, 

currently the CEO of social networking 

startup Mightybell. 

10 Six Key Areas of Investment for 

the Science of Cybersecurity 

By Dan Geer 

An erudite overview of the current state 

of cybersecurity, and how scientific 

approaches toward it will help us in the 

near future. 

16 Looking Backward: 

Conversations with Newt Gingrich, 

Elaine Kamarck, Peter Schiff 

and Dennis Kucinich 

We take a look back 10 years at diverse 

predictions about international relations, 

the global economy, innovation, 

and more. 

22 Looking Forward: 

How Trends in Interpersonal 

Relationships Will Disrupt our 

Social and Business Traditions 

By Helen Fisher 

Transforming Society by Teaching 

Everyday People the Characteristics 

of a Modern Hero 

By Philip Zimbardo 

Two famous academics give their takes 

on the future of how we live as people 

and as societies. 

26 Last Word: How Science 

Fiction Makes Better Futurists 

An Interview with Science Fiction 

Writer Tobias Buckell 

By Brenda Cooper 

One science fiction writer interviews 

another about how the genre bears on 

professional futurists. 

Conversation with 

The Futurist: 


see page 8 

Conversations with Newt Gingrich, 

Elaine Kamarck, Peter Schiff 

and Dennis Kucinich 

see page 16 

Transforming Society 

by Teaching Everyday 

People the 

Characteristics of a 

Modern Hero 

see page 24 

Interview with Tobias Buckell 

see page 26 

COVER PHOTOGRAPH: SHUTTERSTOCK 

© 2015 World Future Society. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. THE FUTURIST is a registered trademark of the World Future Society. Printed in the U.S.A. 

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE FUTURIST, 3220 N Street Northwest, #161, Washington D.C., 20007. • OWNERSHIP: THE FUTURIST is owned exclusively by the World Future Society, a 

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of the Internal Revenue Code. • CHANGE OF ADDRESS: Email to info@wfs.org or call: +1-800-989-8274. 

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Summer 2015 1

OFFICERS 

CEO & President: Amy Zalman 

Treasurer: Jennifer Rose 

Secretary: Les Wallace 

DIRECTORS 

Evan Faber 

aide to the CEO, Change.org 

Joyce Gioia 

president and CEO, The Herman Group 

Zhan Li 

strategic foresight analyst, 

University of Southern California 

Eric Meade (Chair) 

principal, The Whole Mind Strategy Group 

Mylena Pierremont 

president, Ming Pai Consulting BV 

Gabriela Prada 

director of Health Innovation, Policy and 

Evaluation, The Conference Board of Canada 

Jennifer Rose 

vice president, corporate controller, 

Summit Materials, LLC 

Les Wallace 

president, Signature Resources Inc. 

Jared Weiner 

vice president, Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc. 

Amy Zalman 

CEO and president, World Future Society 

GLOBAL ADVISORY COUNCIL 

Stephen Aguilar-Millan 

European Futures Observatory 

Raja Ikram Azam 

honorary chairman, 

Pakistan Futuristics Foundation 

Raj Bawa 

president/patent agent, Bawa Biotech LLC, 

and adjunct professor, 

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 

Clement Bezold 

chairman and senior futurist, 

Institute for Alternative Futures 

Adolfo Castilla 

economist, 

communications professor, Madrid 

Marvin J. Cetron 

president, 

Forecasting International Ltd. 

Hugues de Jouvenel 

executive director, 

Association Internationale Futuribles 

Yehezkel Dror 

professor, 

Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

Esther Franklin 

executive vice president and 

director of cultural identities, 

Starcom MediaVest Group 

William E. Halal 

professor of management science and 

director of Emerging Technologies Project, 

George Washington University 

Peter Hayward 

program director, 

Strategic Foresight Program, Swinburne 

University of Technology, Australia 

Barbara Marx Hubbard 

president, 

The Foundation for Conscious Evolution 

Sohail Inayatullah 

professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan 

Zhouying Jin 

president, 

Beijing Academy of Soft Technology 

Eleonora Barbieri Masini 

professor emerita, 

Faculty of Social Sciences, 

Gregorian University, Rome 

Graham May 

principal lecturer in futures research, 

Leeds Metropolitan University, U.K. 

Julio Millán 

president, Banco de Tecnologias, 

and chairman, Grupo Coraza, Mexico 

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller 

visiting senior research fellow, 

ISEAS, Singapore 

Ramez Naam 

computer scientist and author 

John Naisbitt 

trend analyst and author 

Burt Nanus 

author and professor emeritus 

of management, University of 

Southern California 

Joseph N. Pelton 

founder and vice chairman, 

Arthur C. Clarke Foundation 

Timothy M. Persons 

chief scientist, 

U.S. Government Accountability Office 

John L. Petersen 

president, The Arlington Institute 

Francis Rabuck 

director, Technology Research, 

Bentley Systems Inc. 

Paul Saffo 

managing director of foresight, 

Discern Analytics 

Robert Salmon 

former vice president, 

L’Oreal Corporation, Paris 

Marcio de Miranda Santos 

executive director, 

Center for Strategic Studies and 

Management in Science, Brasilia, Brazil 

Maurice F. Strong 

secretary general, U.N. Conference on 

Environment and Development 

The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific association dedicated to 

promoting a better understanding of the trends shaping our future. 

Founded in 1966, the Society serves as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future; 

it takes no stand on what the future will or should be like. The Society’s publications, conferences, 

and other activities are open to all individuals and institutions around the world. 

For more information on membership programs, contact WFS by email at info@wfs.org. 

3220 N Street NW, #161, Washington DC 20007 

Telephone: 1-301-656-8274, Toll free: 1-800-989-8274 

Web site: www.wfs.org • E-mail: info@wfs.org

letter from the editor 

A Publication of the World Future Society 

Editorial Emeritus 

Edward Cornish (Founding Editor) 

Editorial Staff 

Mark Drapeau 

Publisher and Executive Editor 

Daniel Schweon 

Staff Editor 

Alexandra Morrill 

Art Director 

Contact Us 

Advertising inquiries: info@wfs.org 

Submissions/Editorial Questions: 

mdrapeau@wfs.org 

Other queries: mdrapeau@wfs.org 

THE FUTURIST 

World Future Society 

3220 N Street Northwest, #161, 

Washington D.C., 20007, U.S.A. 

Telephone: 301-656-8274 or 800-989-8274 

info@wfs.org 

www.wfs.org/futurist 

Welcome to the beginnings of a new magazine. 

I am very pleased to be serving as the interim 

publisher and executive editor of The Futurist. 

In this role, I will be reassessing both the business-side 

and editorial-side to create a financially viable publication 

creating valuable content aligned with the long-term 

vision of the World Future Society. 

These changes won’t happen overnight, but we have 

been working behind the scenes to put The Futurist on a 

strong new trajectory. 

Today, I hope you enjoy this Summer 2015 issue, in 

which we have begun some small experiments with 

content and design. Next, you can expect a Winter 2015 

issue, for which we are actively planning an extensive 50- 

year retrospective of both the archives of The Futurist and 

of the World Future Society as a whole. 

Then, in 2016, you can look forward to something 

entirely new. 

I’ll be sharing much more of my vision for The Futurist 

with you in…the future. Meanwhile, I promise that what’s 

coming will be fresh, interesting, and relevant to your life 

and work. I won’t be doing this in a bubble, but rather in 

close collaboration with WFS CEO Amy Zalman and new 

staff. I will also be forming an advisory board of diverse 

people to help me plot the right course and steer our way 

through it. 

I also welcome your comments and feedback as 

World Future Society members. Please tell me what you 

have liked, and have not liked, in the past. Let me know 

about potential features you would find useful. Along the 

path to making The Futurist as valuable as possible to its 

readership, I’d also like to know what else you read and 

why. What value does it add to your life? What does it lack? 

You can reach me anytime at mdrapeau@wfs.org. 

Thank you for entrusting me with this opportunity. 

I look forward to working with your vibrant community. 

Mark 


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World Future Society members enjoy a range of 

benefits, from participation in a cutting-edge 

global community to original and curated content, 

discounted event access, and opportunities to 

engage in special projects. 

Members include professionals from the public 

sector, corporate domain, academia, science, 

technology and the arts, as well as those who 

are engaged in shaping the future of their 

communities, institutions, nations and planet. 

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analysis in technology, science, 

governance, business and the arts 

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conference that provides a platform 

for the best thinkers, ideas and 

projects shaping our global future 

• Subscription to The Futurist magazine: 

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offers in-depth features about 

the personalities, inventions and 

discoveries that will impact the future 

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dedicated to building regional 

leadership 

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Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn 

• Offers and discounts from our partners: 

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conferences and products 

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP, $295 

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WFS also offers a separate 

membership tier for individuals 

across the private and public 

sector who use foresight tools and 

methods professionally. Professional 

membership includes all the 

benefits of general membership, 

and also: 

• Networking opportunities with 

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around the world 

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a message from the ceo 

DEAR FELLOW FUTURIST, 

In 1966, Edward Cornish had the powerful insight that 

the world needs an organization to serve as a “neutral 

clearinghouse for the exchange of ideas about the 

future.” Armed with that insight, and many dedicated 

volunteers, he founded the World Future Society, a nonprofit 

501(c)(3) corporation based in Washington D.C. 

Today, the accelerating rate of change in areas from 

technology to the global economy to our social and civic 

lives make the need for such a global organization to 

champion intelligent, imaginative approaches to the 

future even more acute. 

That organization is the World Future Society. For 

fifty years, WFS has served as the world’s largest and 

most impactful organization to advocate for thoughtful, 

systematic, approaches to understanding the future. Yet, 

conditions today are different than they were 50 years 

ago. As a result, we needed a new kind of WFS to serve 

the emergent needs of a global community. 

When I took on the job of WFS CEO one year ago, I 

pledged to ensure that WFS successfully serves its mission 

for at least another 50 years, by spearheading a 

multi-year transformation and modernization program. 

Here are some of the broad elements of this program for 

which I have been laying ground in the last year: 

Become even more global. WFS has always been 

remarkably international. Today we have members in 

over 80 countries, with 80% of them in the United States 

and 20% in other countries. In order to support a global 

community and enhance foresight on transnational 

issues, I will continue the groundwork laid this year to 

strengthen our international chapter network and, by 

2017, to develop new, regionally-focused activities. 

Strengthen member benefits. WFS would not exist were 

it not for our members, and it is critical for WFS going 

forward to provide individual and institutional members 

with meaningful returns on their investment, such 

as global professional networking, educational and 

work opportunities, as well as access to unique research 

and analysis, to name a few. 

Establish a digital-first and multimedia content 

strategy. WFS was born in the print era, and its print 

magazine The Futurist is remembered fondly all over the 

world as an important part of many childhoods. Now, 

we will combine our efforts in print with a variety of 

other communications mechanisms to better reach our 

global network and support more effective global information 

and knowledge exchanges. 

Increase our gender and age diversity. WFS and the 

field of foresight will benefit from greater diversity, 

and I am confident that WFS has a strong community 

to offer a diverse community of futurists. I will be 

working in the next few years to reach out to women 

of all ages, to students, and to young and mid-career 

professionals globally. 

Amy Zalman, CEO 

and President of the 

World Future Society 

Strengthen ties between futures work and active decision 

making on future-critical issues. In the first two 

generations of WFS, the field of futures studies was 

established. As a result, today there are many techniques 

for better understanding what might and could 

unfold. Going forward, WFS will also be an advocate of 

strong action: by promoting foresight as a leadership 

skill, enhancing institutional capacity, and improving 

decision making on future-critical issues. 

Modernize and update The Futurist magazine. 

The Futurist magazine and brand has been an important 

benefit to many in our community over the years. Recognizing 

that importance, I am delighted to introduce 

with this issue our new interim Publisher and Executive 

Editor, Mark Drapeau, who has taken the reigns for the 

remainder of 2015 and will be taking steps toward a 

complete re-envisioning and re-launch in 2016. 

My agenda is ambitious, and it won’t happen overnight. 

But the World Future Society has a crucial message to 

relay: that we have the capacity to understand and act 

in ways that shape better futures: for ourselves, our 

communities, our businesses and governments, and our 

planet. Such an important message deserves all the 

energetic focus we can bring to it. 

Warm Regards, 

Amy 

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Summer 2015 5 

© 2015 World Future Society • All rights reserved.

THE WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY 

2014 DONORS: 

Thank You 

THE WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY IS DEEPLY GRATEFUL TO OUR 2014 DONORS. 

Your financial contributions are playing a vital role in keeping the practice of 

foresight and future-critical issues in arenas such as the environment, the global 

economy, governance, and everyday life in view of decision-makers and citizens 

around the world. 

Contributors to the Susan Echard Scholarship Fund supported activities at the 

annual conference and new initiatives for students in 2015 and 2016. 

This year, your contributions also helped WFS begin the important process of 

modernizing and transforming our program benefits, global network, and digital 

infrastructure. To learn more about how you can help shape the future, read 

more about the WFS transformation at http://www.SupportWFS.org. 

The WFS is chartered under U.S. laws (District of Columbia) as a nonprofit, tax 

exempt scientific and educational association and recognized by the U.S. Internal 

Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the 

Internal Revenue Code. Gifts are deductible on U.S. income tax returns. 

If you would like to make a donation to the Society, please call us at +1-301- 

856-or donate online at http://www.SupportWFS.org

THE WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY 

OUR CONTRIBUTORS 

INSTITUTIONS 

Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc. 

The Morning Star Company 

Oracle Education Foundation 

INDIVIDUALS 

Mikel Aizpurua 

Katherine Antal 

Tom Bliffert 

Karen Carnahan 

Denise Cavanaugh 

Jose Luis Rodriquez Cervantes 

Douglas Congdon 

Brenda Cooper 

Edward Cornish 

Mike Dababie 

Victor Daniels 

Richard A. Feder 

Michael Francoeur 

Cameran Frisbee 

Rodrigo I. Galindo 

Nicholas St. George 

Edward Gordon 

Linda Groff 

Bonnie Haufe 

L. Fielding Hower 

Henry G. Hudson 

Barbara Hulka 

Kenneth W. Hunter 

Anvay Idiatullin 

Ernest H. Jernigan 

Nico van Klaveren 

Guido George Lombardi 

Sam Lovalenti 

Bernard Maloney 

Michael Marien 

Gary D. Marx 

Om Marwah 

W. N. Mathews 

Michael Maw 

Lawrence C. McSwain 

Robert Moran 

Mack B. Pearsall 

Stevens Pendleton 

John S. Reidy 

William Rowley 

Edwin G. Sather 

Larry Smead 

Eileen Swerdlick 

Judy Tatman 

Dean Thacker 

Edward Thomas 

Joel Ticknor 

Paul Tinari 

Daniel Tuuri 

Nicole Trapp 

Charles Unger 

Les Wallace 

Robert Wells 

Phil Witkowicz 

Greta and Marvin Zalman 

Kathleen Zellmer 

Peter A. Zuckerman

conversation with the futurist 

By AMY ZALMAN 


The serial entrepreneur, 

investor, and ‘closeted 

futurist’ talks about the global 

competition startups face, 

dating apps, military tactics 

and being an introvert. 

I arrive at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco fresh off a 

flight from Washington, D.C., where I’ll have just enough 

time to hang out with Gina Bianchini at the Bloomberg 

Technology Conference before she herself needs to catch 

a flight. Later today, she’ll be sitting on a panel named 

“Management Tips from Hackers,” ostensibly about the 

differences between how engineers and MBAs view management. 

Engineers and MBAs certainly tend to dress differently. 

I’m relieved when Gina arrives wearing the same thing 

I am— the San Francisco tech business uniform— jeans, 

jacket, black high-heeled pumps. It’s a welcome change 

from the Washington fashion scene of dark suits and the 

occasional seersucker. Glad I got the memo. 

After trying a few locations, Gina and I (with some 

help from her publicist) carve out a relatively quiet space 

in the main lobby, downstairs from the main hall where 

the conference activities are occurring. The entire place is 

alive with energy; “bustling,” I’d recall later. Bloomberg’s 

brand essence is something like a cross between a movie 

set and a spa, with extremely good-looking people migrating 

between a cornucopia of yogurt, nuts, berries, 

and herbal tea, makeup chairs, TV cameras, and conference 

talks. It’s actually not unlike their headquarters on 

Lexington Avenue in New York, I think to myself. 

Gina’s startup, Mightybell, is top of mind for her, and 

she repeatedly comes back to it as a foundation of sorts 

throughout our conversation. The company has raised a 

few million dollars in venture capital, and has a freemium 

business model. “For me, it’s about the power of 

context in terms of uncovering and creating different 

kinds of relationship dynamics, especially among people 

who don’t already know each other, because I think that 

that is the piece that wasn’t possible 20 years ago without 

a lot of work that today can be instantaneous,” she says 

when I ask her about big vs. small, or general versus specialized 

social networks. 

Gina 

Bianchini 

Software that authentically recreates the atmosphere of 

a cocktail party or business networking event is a bit of a 

Holy Grail in the tech industry at the moment, with giants 

like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft (with Yammer) 

and upstarts such as Mightybell and Slack all funded and 

elbowing for space. It’s not easy. First, the code must leverage 

the “power of context” to uncover new relationship 

dynamics between people who don’t know each 

other. Then, software needs to “break the ice,” which presumably 

isn’t any easier digitally than at a hotel bar. 

Gina herself has sought this Holy Grail for a while. In 

2004, she co-founded (with Marc Andreessen) another 

platform for forming custom social networks, Ning. It 

launched in October 2005, perhaps ahead of its time. 

While it had novel features and successfully attracted the 

likes of everything from the informal government employee 

social network GovLoop to the bands Linkin Park 

and Weezer, it has also gone through business model pivots 

and layoffs. She left as CEO in 2010, when she became 

an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture firm Andreessen 

Horowitz. 

But she’s confident that Mightybell’s vision is oriented 

in the right direction for the future. “Our strong belief is 

that technology gets better and better at surfacing the 

right people to each other, the most relevant people to 

each other. Then the probability of making new relationships 

goes up significantly. It’s not a guarantee. But it 

goes up significantly.” These are the “modern guilds for 

8 THE FUTURIST Summer 2015 • www.wfs.org 


the 21st century,” she tells me later. 

Our chat isn’t all work, as we quickly develop chemistry 

with each other. I find her extremely personable, at 

ease, comfortable in her own skin. She volunteers to balance 

my iPhone on her lap during the interview to capture 

the conversation. 

The discussion wanders into classic interview question 

territory– What’s something most people don’t know 

about you? “I’m actually an introvert. A pretty outgoing 

introvert. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more introverted 

and I feel like I want more time to read and think 

and just reflect on all of the different trends going on, especially 

because I’m a systems thinker.” 

I can actually begin to see how working on the automation 

of developing valuable relationships might appeal to 

her nature. She goes on at length to describe how as she’s 

gotten older she takes a more disciplined approach to 

taking a step back to reassess all the information available 

to find the right things to be focusing on. “I think 

this is incredibly important, and more important than 

anything else I do,” she tells me. 

I accuse her of being a closeted futurist, and she laughs 

and compliments me for saying the nicest 

things about her. Her laugh is hearty, and 

there is plenty of authentic laughter 

throughout our conversation. We also 

keep getting interrupted by her many 

friends and acquaintances at the conference; 

at one point, Padmasree Warrior– 

one of the keynote speakers– drops by. 

As a woman working in technology, 

and a high-profile serial entrepreneur at 

that, she has strong views about struggles 

and successes in startup land. Not surprisingly, 

she thinks Mightybell has contributions 

to make here. “A start-up CEO 

today is smarter and more informed and 

sophisticated than when I started as a 

founder and CEO in 2000.” [She was the 

co-founder and president of a media company 

named Harmonic Communications, which was acquired 

by Dentsu. Marc Andreessen was on the board.] 

She goes on at length about the culture of sharing and 

transparency that makes Silicon Valley a particularly 

unique place for entrepreneurs to ply their trade. It’s a salient 

point– a world-class tech hub isn’t merely the result 

of a lot of people with technical skill working at high 

density. Silicon Valley does have something special, 

which she believes Mightybell is capitalizing on and contributing 

to. But she doesn’t see why that can’t scale beyond 

the Valley, and even beyond tech, into industries 

that haven’t traditionally been geographically clustered 

or contained transparent cultures of constant learning 

and growing. 

Her vision is effectively to offer extreme transparency 

as a service, breaking down barriers and empowering everyone 

from small businesses to teachers to learn from 

each other. “At Mightybell, we want to be that infrastructure 

for creating the kind of innovation that is happening 

“... understanding, 

respecting and 

appreciating people 

from different 

perspectives and 

backgrounds is I think 

the number one job 

requirement of a 

founder in 2015” 

in these pockets. We want to bring it to as many people 

around the world as possible.” 

Our conversation touches on the truly global nature of 

business, including startups, in the modern age. The oftheld 

notion that Silicon Valley companies are just competing 

with each other is a fallacy. Rather, ”what we are 

actually seeing today is that we collectively… are competing 

on a global basis from day one. So understanding, 

respecting and appreciating people from different perspectives 

and backgrounds is I think the number one job 

requirement of a founder in 2015 and is certainly one I 

take seriously.” 

I ask her about where she gets her inspirations and the 

knowledge that help to guide her as a businessperson. 

She’s certainly eclectic (“You have to pay attention to 

everything, everywhere”), with favorite “brain candy” 

magazines that include InStyle and Vanity Fair, to apparently 

a strong interest in how people connect and form 

different kinds of relationships via dating apps. 

“What’s happening with Tinder is really interesting but 

actually what’s happening with Grindr is interesting as 

well. How do you start to think about the things that are 

transactional relationships and what are 

the things that are relationship relationships. 

Only by remixing all of the things 

we are starting to see in other areas into 

our particular mission, how do we help 

professionals that don’t know each other 

yet, but may have a lot in common, 

whether it’s by topic or by stage of business 

or numbers of years in the teaching 

profession or by what you teach.” 

As for books, she just began reading 

retired General Stanley McChrystal’s 

new book, Team of Teams, which concerns 

optimizing for speed and adaptability 

rather than command and control. “A lot 

of it is interesting to see from a military 

perspective, as opposed to a business or 

engineering perspective.” A brash 

straight-talker (which sometimes got him in hot water), 

McChrystal is a highly respected Army Special Forces 

officer. 

More generally, she uncovers a lot of her best ideas not 

from large conferences (ironically), but rather from oneon-one 

conversations with people that are both very similar 

to her, and “people who have completely different 

backgrounds that I can learn from.” 

Her work with a non-profit called Endeavor supports 

this learning process for her. It’s an organization that 

identifies and supports high-potential entrepreneurs in 

developing nations. “What I love about Endeavor is that 

I’ve met some of the most inspiring people who I learn 

from… I walk out of these meetings humbled,” helping 

also to give her a holistic global perspective on the business 

she’s in with Mightybell (and perhaps her calling in 

life): helping people form unique and fruitful relationships 

to learn from each other. ■ 


Six Key Areas of Investment 

for the Science of 

CYBER 

SECURITY 

By DAN GEER 

Cybersecurity is perhaps the most difficult 

intellectual profession on the planet. The 

technical basis for that which needs security 

changes rapidly, and we have sentient opponents. 

We have no real ability to perform controlled 

experiments, yet uncontrolled natural experiments 

are all around us all the time even though data 

quality from those natural experiments is a 

constantly confounding issue. 

SHUTTERSTOCK 



Editor’s note: 

When I heard Dan Geer’s talk at 

the recent ‘Suits and Spooks’ conference 

in New York City, I was 

spellbound. His unique speaking 

style combined with erudite thinking 

on many cybersecurity topics 

made for a fascinating learning 

experience. 

I wanted to publish his ideas without 

losing the magic of the in-person 

experience. While this is truly 

one of those “you had to be there” 

situations, this humble magazine 

is doing its best to deliver it to 

you. Here is Dan’s talk in (nearly) 

unedited form. –MD 

T 

here are fields where it 

seems as if scientific progress 

has a certain cadence, a 

certain predictability, a pace 

of progress akin to lava 

overspreading a coastal plain, a 

largely stable forward velocity. That 

does not seem to be the case with cybersecurity, 

where breakthroughs occur 

with an event-rapidity that I just 

don’t see elsewhere. Maybe I’m just 

not looking hard enough, but we 

seem to be so much closer to the 

work factor of a fire department than 

to the work factor of an accounting 

firm, to pick two examples approximately 

at random. 

One of the questions we have yet 

to answer is whether vulnerabilities 

are sparse or dense; if and only if 

vulnerabilities are sparse does it actually 

make sense to allocate the effort 

to find them or reward those 

who do. If vulnerabilities are dense, 

then treasure should not go to finding 

them but to making systems resilient 

to them. I ask about this in 

varied settings; I get strong — and I 

mean strong — opinions over the 

full range of dense to sparse. Smart, 

knowledgeable people say “too 

dense to measure” while other 

smart, knowledgeable people say 

“too sparse to measure.” That’s not a 

trick question. It is a steering question 

like no other. 

In the meantime, it seems to me 

that we are near a fork in the road, a 

fork where one road is that of generating 

provably defect-free code followed 

by long term, brutally rigor- 

ous change control while the other 

road is that of moving target defense, 

rapid release, DevOps, et cetera. 

These alternatives seem both 

antithetical yet promising and both 

are fed by real scientists making real 

progress, but after having chosen 

one road switching to the other at 

some later time seems likely to be infeasible. 

As with the ”availability 

calculus,” do we maximize the mean 

time between failures or do we minimize 

the mean time to repair? We 

cannot do both nor, therefore, should 

we try. 

The question of whether cybersecurity 

is yet a science is a hard one. I 

am sorely tempted to answer the 

question “Is cybersecurity a science?” 

with “Getting closer, but not 

yet” — to say, in other words, that 

we are in the pre-paradigmatic stage 

with a variety of schools of thought. 

We then first ask about candidate 

paradigms of cybersecurity. If they 

exist and have turned over from 

time to time, then my answer would 

be simply wrong and cybersecurity 

may already be a science. But let me 

repeat the one thing that may make 

cybersecurity different from all else - 

we have sentient opponents. The 

physicist does not. The chemist does 

not. Not even the economist has sentient 

opponents. We do. What puzzles 

we have to solve are not drawn 

from some generally diminishing 

store of unsolved puzzles, nor could 

our theories completely explain all 

observable fact thus reducing our 

worries and our work to engineering 

alone. There is something different 

about a search for truth when there 

isn’t any, or at least any that lasts 

long enough to exhaustively explore. 

Science tends to take us places 

where policy cannot follow. Policy 

tends to take us places where science 

cannot follow. Yet neither science 

nor policy can be unmindful of 

the other. Both science and policy 

heavily influence, if not control, the 

possible futures we might find ourselves 

inhabiting. It is clear that policy 

is having ever-greater difficulty 

in keeping up with science, yet science 

without policy limits is inevitably 

dystopian. 

In past months, very well-informed 

individuals have warned 

about advances in the fields of both 

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Summer 2015 11 


artificial intelligence and genetic engineering 

as being likely to introduce 

irreversible, unintended effects that 

are permanently incompatible with 

fundamental values. I side with the 

above in both cases, as I believe advances 

in cybersecurity are likewise 

introducing irreversible and unintended 

effects that are permanently 

incompatible with fundamental values. 

So, if we are to help science and 

policy help each other, what are we to 

do? It may be that making predictions 

is the core value. In that vein, I 

will confine myself to six points 

where I see science, including applied 

science, asking us to look ahead. 

Identity 

Miniaturization will continue its 

long-running progression and as a 

consequence, devices will continue 

to proliferate into spaces in which 

they were never before present. Burgeoning 

proliferation demands device 

autonomy, and will get it. For 

autonomy to not itself be a source of 

irredeemable failure modes, devices 

will have individual identities and 

some degree of decision-making capacity. 

As device counts grow, device 

identity eclipses (human) user identity 

because user identity can be derived 

from device identity insofar as 

the proliferation of devices means 

that users are each and severally surrounded 

by multiple devices, devices 

whose identity is baked into 

their individual hardware, as is already 

the case in mobile telephony. 

There is then neither need nor 

process to assert “My name is Dan” 

as Dan’s several devices will collectively 

confirm that this is Dan, perhaps 

in consultation with each 

other. As per Zuboff’s Laws 1 , all devices 

are therefore sensors and as 

the devices themselves have immutable 

device identities, Dan’s claim 

to being Dan is decided algorithmically. 

And distally. 

Cryptographic keys for users thus 

become irrelevant, as devices will 

have them, thereby freeing users 

from key management much less 

password drills. The Fifth Amendment 

is entirely mooted as Courts 

have already ruled that only something 

you know is protected thereunder, 

not something you are or 

have, that is to say that production 

of devices under subpoena cannot 

be thwarted. 

The longstanding debate over 

whether identity should be namecentric 

(where “Dan” is the identity 

and some key is an attribute of 

“Dan”) or key-centric (where the key 

is the identity and “Dan” is an attribute 

of that key) is thus decided in favor 

of key-centricity though the keys 

are now held in a fog of small devices. 

This setting mimics how a stratum 

of elite people carry neither identification 

nor money - in the context 

of their retinue there is no need for 

such. 

For the result of this data fusion to 

not be a unitary identity for the individual 

user, policy will have to demarcate 

data fusion with a vigor it 

has never before dared. 

Ownership as perimeter 

The paradigm of cybersecurity has 

long been perimeter control, but that 

same proliferation of devices rewrites 

the calculus of what is a perimeter. It 

is clear that the design of the Internet 

as we now know it rests on two principles 

above all others: preferential attachment 

and end-to-end communication 

protection. Preferential 

attachment yields scale-free network 

growth that, in turn, maximizes network 

resistance to random faults; 

Internet build-out could not have 

happened otherwise. The end-toend 

principle is and has been the 

fuel for innovation as end-to-end 

scales whereas permission brokering 

does not. 

Both of those principles are under 

stress. First, the S-curve of name-addressable 

Internet growth passed its 

inflection point in November of 

2008, and since that time growth 

rates have slowed. Second, random 

faults no longer comprise the availability 

risk they once did, all the 

while carriers and governments 

alike clearly want non-preferential 

attachment, carriers in their desire 

for economic hegemony, free-world 

governments in their desire for attribution, 

and unfree-world governments 

in their desire to manipulate 

information flow. 

Add in the proliferation of small 

devices and the paradigm of cybersecurity 

can no longer be perimeter 

control. For example, let’s count cores 

in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801. 

The central CPU is 4 cores, the Adreno 

330 GPU another 4, Video Out is 

1 more, the Hexagon QDSP is 3, the 

Modem is at least 2 and most likely 4, 

Bluetooth is another 1 as is the USB 

controller and the GPS. The Wi-Fi is 

at least 1 and most likely 2, and none 

of this includes charging, power, or 

display. That makes somewhere between 

18 and 21 cores. In the vocabulary 

of the Internet of Things, I ask 

you whether that is one thing or the 

better part of two dozen things? It is 

pretty certain that each of those cores 

can reach the others, so is the perimeter 

to be defended the physical artifact 

in the user’s pocket or is it the execution 

space of those cores, each and 

severally? 

I looked at seven different estimates 

of the growth of the Internet of 

Things as a market phenomenon — 

everything from smart electric meters 

to networked light bulbs to luxury 

automobiles - and the median is a 

compound annual growth rate of 

35%. If perimeter control is to remain 

the paradigm of cybersecurity, then 

the number of perimeters to defend 

in the Internet of Things is doubling 

approximately every 24 months. 

So what is to be the perimeter of 

control from a cybersecurity point of 

view? Is it ownership that demarcates 

perimeter? More and more of user capability 

is controlled by licensure, not 

ownership in the dictionary sense of 

the word “ownership.” The science is 

taking us away from ownership conferring 

cradle-to-grave control towards 

a spectrum of temporally constrained 

permission granting; I can 

buy a $200,000 John Deere tractor, 

but not until I accept a software license 

agreement. I can give you my 

bed, but I cannot give you my 

iTunes. Self-driving cars are perhaps 

as good an illustration as any; overthe-air 

auto-update of firmware will 

not be optional in either time or 

place and vehicle-to-vehicle communication 

will do route selection in the 

name of the common good. In the 

digital world, nothing comes without 

strings attached. 



“...science will be under the gun to encode human 

ethics into algorithms that will thereafter free run” 

Control diffusion 

As has been shown in finance, if one 

entity can do high speed trading 

then all must, but whereas predatory 

and/or unstable trading is subject to 

regulatory control, cyber predation 

is not, and cyber predators have zero 

legacy drag. As such, turning over 

our protections to machines is inevitable. 

Science and startups alike are 

delivering a welter of automation for 

protection, most not involving recondite 

algorithms but rather bigdata 

fueled learning about what is 

normal, the better to identify that 

which is not and thus suspect. 

I leave to any policy discussion the 

question of whether the speeds at 

which cybersecurity automation 

must run will even allow occasional 

interruption to ask some human operator 

for permissions to act, or must 

cyber ‘kill decisions’ be automated on 

the argument that only when so automated 

can they respond in time? If 

the latter holds, and I am certain that 

it will, science will be under the gun 

to encode human ethics into algorithms 

that will thereafter free run. 

Put differently, I predict that it is in 

cybersecurity, per se, where the argument 

over artificial intelligence will 

find its foremost concretization. As an 

example of an unevaluable vignette, 

the self-driving car will choose between 

killing its solo passenger or fifteen 

people on the sidewalk. Many 

are the examples of airplane pilots 

sacrificing themselves to avoid crash 

landing in populated zones. Would 

you willingly ride in an altruistic vehicle? 

Coupled with algorithmic user 

identification, control will enter a 

state where trust is multi-way, not 

one-to-one. It is hard to overestimate 

just how much the client has become 

the server’s server. Take JavaScript, 

which is to say server-side demands 

that clients run programs as a condition 

of use, or web screens recursively 

assembled from unidentifiable 

third parties; the HTTP Archive says 

that the average web page now 

makes out-references to 16 different 

domains as well as making 17 JavaScript 

requests per page, and the JavaScript 

byte count is five times the 

HTML byte count. A lot of that JavaScript 

is about analytics, which is 

to say, surveillance of the user. 

But as a practical matter, any important 

control (such as for medical 

emergencies) needs an override. Barring 

national security situations, 

such override is closer to a failure 

that must not be silent. That is to say 

that if the pinnacle goal of security 

engineering is “no silent failure,” 

then the as yet unmet challenge is 

how to design cybersecurity such 

that it never fails silently. There is 

scientific work to be done here - full 

automation of cybersecurity maximizes 

the downside cost of falsely 

positive indicators of attack. 

Communications 

provenance 

Provenance of network traffic will rise 

to new importance unrelated to quality 

of service or transport neutrality. 

Executives delegating correspondence 

handling to their assistants 

have heretofore driven delegation 

of credentials; as devices proliferate, 

delegation of credentials and authority 

becomes a necessity across 

the board, at least for First World 

digerati. Take loading a web page in 

a browser: the browser does proxying, 

nameservice lookup, etc., and

eventually loads that page plus subsequent 

web page dependencies, 

probably from other sites. In other 

words, there are various levels of 

“who” actually requested what, 

such as what piece of JavaScript invoked 

Google Analytics. As a oneoff 

experiment, I looked at the topmost 

page of cnn.com; there I found 

612 HREFs across 38 hosts in 20 domains 

even without evaluating the 

30-odd JavaScript’s there. Competent 

scientists are studying the issue 

of how to characterize multi-dimensional 

attack surfaces, and we 

should attend their results. 

Because cybersecurity is to remain 

the driving reason for egress 

filtering, provenance — as in “Who 

ordered this page?” — is the crucial 

variable for intelligent flow control. 

If cyber integrity of the browser 

platform itself is to remain the topmost 

user goal, then agency - again 

as in “Who ordered this page?” — is 

likewise the most important variable 

for permission decisions. 

This need will be met with traffic 

analysis extending into the execution 

environment. When the general public 

came to need encryption, the 

commercial sector caught up to the 

military sector in the application of 

cryptography within a decade. 

Now the marketers are driving the 

commercial sector to catch up to the 

military sector in traffic analysis. 

How the traffic analysis that marketers 

demand (and will get) meshes 

with the traffic analysis 

of end-users delegating human authority 

to their growing constellation 

of devices remains to be seen, but 

with dual demand for traffic 

analysis, the commercial sector will 

fill that demand one way or another. 

But even if the public and the 

marketers want some kind of traffic 

analysis that is of a toy variety compared 

to what the military sector 

needs, there are two other considerations 

at play. One is that a nonnegligible 

fraction of Internet backbone 

traffic cannot be identified by 

protocol, i.e., it has no provenance 

and is likely peer-to-peer. While intentionally 

obscure traffic may as 

easily be pedophiles as heroic freedom 

fighters, in a world where machines 

provide cybersecurity by 

learning what is normal so as to tag 

“Science is rapidly teaching us that everything is 

unique if examined at close enough detail.” 

what is abnormal, the pedophiles 

and the freedom fighters will stand 

equal chances of being blocked, if 

not outed. 

The other consideration is junk 

traffic, meaning traffic whose emitter 

is on autopilot but whose purpose is 

long defunct. Years ago, my colleagues 

spent some time trying to 

figure out what was calling one of 

our dialup numbers. In the end, it 

turned out to be an oil tank in an 

abandoned building that was outfitted 

to request a fill when needed, 

and we had inherited the number to 

which such requests had once gone. 

Junk traffic will have to be dealt 

with via provenance or some discoverable 

correlate of provenance. Perhaps 

we will remanufacture spam 

detection for this purpose. Perhaps 

traceability will become the rule of 

law as soon as geolocation applies to 

the Internet as much as it now applies 

to cell phone triangulation. 

Everything is unique 

Science is rapidly teaching us that 

everything is unique if examined at 

close enough detail. Facial recognition 

is possible at 500 meters, iris recognition 

is possible at 50 meters, and 

heartbeat recognition is possible at 5 

meters. Your dog can identify you by 

smell; so, too, can an electronic dog’s 

nose. Your cell phone’s accelerometer 

is plenty sensitive enough to 

identify you by gait analysis. A photograph 

can be matched to the camera 

from which it came as well as a 

bullet can be matched to the barrel of 

the gun through which it passed. 

Some apartment building owners 

now require that tenants provide a 

DNA sample of their dog so that unscooped 

poop can be penalized. 

When everything is detectably 

unique, decision support of many 

sorts becomes possible. Assessing 

nuances (such as whether you are 

angry) will be embedded in automatons. 

Accountability will doubtless 

be extended to ever more minor behaviors. 

That heartbeat recognition 

technology is already slated to be 

part of automobiles. Courtroom alibis 

will soon be backed by cybersecurity-like 

evidence, noting that because 

an alibi involves evidence of 

“Some apartment building owners now require that 

tenants provide a DNA sample of their dog so that 

unscooped poop can be penalized. ” 

innocence rather than of guilt, the 

privilege against self-incrimination 

is not implicated and is, instead, subject 

to compelled disclosure. The testimony 

of spouses against each other 

will be unnecessary — their devices 

will do. 

Opaqueness is forever 

Where data science spreads, a massive 

increase in tailorability to conditions 

follows. Even if Moore’s 

Law remains forever valid, there 

will never be enough computing, 

hence data driven algorithms must 

favor efficiency above all else. Yet, 

the more efficient the algorithm the 

less interrogatable it is; that is to 

say, the more optimized the algorithm 

is, the harder it is to know 

what the algorithm is really doing. 

The more desirable some particular 

automation is judged to be, the 

more data it is given. The more data 

it is given, the more its data utilization 

efficiency matters. The more its 

data utilization efficiency matters, 

the more its algorithms will evolve 

to opaque operation. Above some 



adoption that makes them critically 

essential? 

The need for what we have heretofore 

called cybersecurity is now so 

varied that it is no longer a single 

field but many. There are perhaps 

1000 cybersecurity startups in some 

stage of the funding game, a fair fraction 

of them spinouts from highly focused 

university research projects. 

Generalists such as myself cannot be 

replaced—there is too much for the 

novitiate to learn. The core knowledge 

base has reached the point 

where new recruits can no longer 

hope to someday become competent 

generalists, serial specialization is the 

only broad option available to them. 

As I said earlier, cybersecurity is 

perhaps the most difficult intellectual 

profession on the planet. Ray Kurzthreshold 

of dependence on such an 

algorithm in practice, there can be no 

going back. As such, if science 

wishes to be useful, preserving algorithm 

interrogatability despite efficiency 

seeking, self-driven evolution 

is the research-grade problem now 

on the table. If science does not pick 

this up, then Larry Lessig’s characterization 

of code as law is fulfilled, 

and permanently so. 

Implications: 

Why this matters 

There is no argument whatsoever 

that the proliferation of devices and 

information are empowering. Technology 

is today far more democratically 

available than it was yesterday 

and less than it will be tomorrow: 3D 

printing, the whole “maker” community, 

DIY biology, micro-drones, 

search, home automation, constant 

contact with whomever you choose 

to be in constant contact with, instrumentation 

of every stripe and caliber, 

the steady migration of military 

technology to general government 

use thence to the rich thence to the 

lumpenproletariat - these are all examples 

of democratizing technology. 

This is perhaps our last fundamental 

tradeoff before the Singularity occurs: 

Do we, as a society, want the comfort 

and convenience of increasingly technologic, 

invisible digital integration 

enough to pay for those benefits with 

the liberties that must be given up to 

be protected from the downsides of 

that integration? If, as the late Peter 

Bernstein said, risk is that more 

things can happen than will, then 

what is the ratio of things that can 

now happen that are good to things 

that can now happen that are bad? Is 

the good fraction growing faster than 

the bad fraction or the other way 

around? Is there a threshold of interdependence 

beyond which good or 

bad overwhelmingly dominate? 

Now that we need cybersecurity 

protections to the degree that we do, 

to whom does the responsibility devolve? 

If the worst laws are those that 

are unenforceable, what would we 

hope our lawmakers say about technologies 

that are not yet critical but 

soon could be? Do we forbid becoming 

critically dependent on them 

when it is the sheer magnitude of 

weil is beyond all doubt correct; 

within the career lifetime of nearly 

everyone in this room, algorithms 

will be smarter than we are, and they 

will therefore be called upon to do 

what we cannot - to protect us from 

other algorithms, and to ask no permission 

in so doing. Do we, like 

Ulysses, lash ourselves to the mast or 

do we, as the some would say, relax 

and enjoy the inevitable? What 

would we have science do? What are 

the possible futures you will tolerate? 

What horses do you want not let out 

of the barn? ■ 

Do you want to learn how to create 

the future in an era of accelerating 

change and complexity? 

Join our one-of-a-kind program 

embraced around the world! 

Discover the future... 

Create it today! 

This article is an edited version of 

remarks given at the Suits and Spooks 

conference (suitsandspooks.com), 

June 19, 2015 in New York, NY. 

www.TheFuturesSchool.com 


looking backward 

Conversations with 

NEWT GINGRICH, ELAINE KAMARCK, 

PETER SCHIFF and DENNIS KUCINICH 

Every four years, the U.S. National Intelligence Council publishes its Global Trends Report for the incoming or returning 

U.S. President. It is also released publicly as a tool for policymakers, academics, and others to use. The report gives a 

viewpoint on trends in topics that include economics, demography, ecology, energy, health, governance, security, identity, 

and geopolitics, and provides a framework for thinking about the next 20 years. 

The Futurist thought it would be insightful to look backward almost ten years at Global Trends 2025, now that we’re 

roughly halfway between its publication and the end of its ‘shelf life.’ Noteworthy and throught-provoking scenarios laid 

out in the report for a newly elected President Obama included: 

• U.S. influence and power will wane, and the United States will face constricted freedom of action in 2025. China and 

Russia will grow in influence. Wealth will also shift away from the United States toward Russia and China. 

• A broader conflict, possibly a nuclear war, could erupt between India and Pakistan. This could cause other nations to 

align themselves with existing nuclear powers for protection. 

• Rising world population, affluence, and shifts in Western dietary habits will increase global demand for food by 50% 

by 2030. Some 1.4 billion people will lack access to safe drinking water. 

After its publication, this magazine interviewed four experts with a range of backgrounds and viewpoints about the report. These 

conversations with Newt Gingrich, Elaine Kamarck, Peter Schiff and Dennis Kucinich span numerous topics that are very top-ofmind 

in 2015, including STEM education as a national security issue, student debt loads, a “RAND for cybersecurity,” the possibility 

of a failed Mexico, the ambition and limits of a rising China, and the power of American innovation. 

As we anticipate the upcoming Global Trends 2035 report to come after the next Presidential election in November 2016, 

this short retrospective highlights the promise and challenges of forecasting policy-related issues twenty years out. 

INTERVIEWER: To what extent do 

you agree with the key points 

outlined in the Global Trends 2025 

report? 

NEWT GINGRICH: The influence and 

power of the United States may 

decline, but this will not be a decline 

in our economic, political, or military 

strength. Rather than the United States 

enjoying the role of the world’s lone 

superpower, as we do today, the 

influence of other countries such as 

India and China will increase in 

relative terms. As the countries with 

the two largest populations, India and 

China will certainly have a voice in the 

next quarter century, and their current 

economic growth, along with the 

attendant increase in their military 

strength, will support that voice. 

With respect to India and Pakistan, 

the United States can do much in the 

way of reducing tensions between 

them. What we are witnessing is a 

continuing ascendance in the strategic 

importance of both nations. The November 

2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai 

have raised tensions between India 

and Pakistan considerably. The United 

States can continue to work with both 

nations to reduce these tensions, find 

common ground where possible, and 

forge a cooperative relationship between 

them. 

INTERVIEWER: Are the events laid 

out in the report inevitable? 

NEWT GINGRICH: Nothing is 

inevitable. In my book, Implementing 

the Art of Transformation, I provide a 

point of reference for considering 

what the decades ahead may look like. 

There will be more growth in scientific 

knowledge in the next 25 years than 

occurred during the past 100 years. 

We are exceeding, by four to seven 



CREDIT:SHUTTERSTOCK 

times, the rate of change of the past 25 

years. This means that, by even the 

most conservative estimate, in the next 

25 years, we will experience the scale 

of change experienced between 1909 

and 2009. 

INTERVIEWER: How might the 

negative scenarios be averted? 

NEWT GINGRICH: Access to natural 

resources and energy may be the most 

important challenge the world faces in 

the next quarter century. We must 

develop a strategy for global energy 

abundance that maximizes both 

production and the efficiency with 

which energy is used. This sort of 

strategy would have a significant 

positive impact toward reducing or 

preventing future conflicts. 

INTERVIEWER: How might the U.S. 

government, and how might U.S. 

citizens, cope with a state of 

diminished influence, a wealthier and 

more powerful Asia, and intensified 

competition over resources? 

NEWT GINGRICH: Education will be 

the key issue that determines our 

continued strength and prosperity in a 

world where China and India have 

increased influence. If you read A 

Nation at Risk, published more than 25 

years ago, it makes clear that the 

education of our children is a serious 

national security concern and that 

parents, administrators, teachers, 

lawmakers, and leaders of this nation 

need to view it as such and respond 

accordingly. Finding innovative ways 

to dramatically improve how our 

children learn - especially in math and 

science - will make the biggest 

difference for our future. 

INTERVIEWER: What do you see as 

the worst-case scenario, and the bestcase 

scenario, of the above events 

coming to pass? 

NEWT GINGRICH: Within the key 

points you provide, the worst-case 

scenario would be a belligerent China 

and a resurgent and belligerent Russia. 

Likewise, a complete breakdown in 

relations between India and Pakistan 

and a corresponding threat of nuclear 

war would be destabilizing to the 

entire world. 

Obviously, the best-case scenario 

would be increased cooperation and 

stronger, closer relationships among 

the United States, China, Russia, India, 

as well as Pakistan. A common 

recognition of the future threats to our 

livelihood that the global community 

faces as our populations increase and 

our needs for greater amounts of energy 

increase is essential. This recognition 

by all today and cooperation in 

achieving solutions would do much in 

terms of growing the global economy, 

as well as enabling health and prosperity 

for all. 

INTERVIEWER: Might decreased 

geopolitical influence, with increased 

power in China, actually be good for 

the United States in some way? 

NEWT GINGRICH: It depends. We 

have a choice with China: cooperation 

or competition. Certainly if we 

strengthen our relationship with 

China, an economically and militarily 

strong China would be within our national 

interests to maintain stability in 

the Western Pacific region. 

INTERVIEWER: What is the report 

overlooking? 

NEWT GINGRICH: The report doesn’t 

look closely enough at the impact of 

a failed Mexico. A failed state on our 

southern border is a significant 

national security threat to the United 

States. 

INTERVIEWER: What would you add 

to the above list of key points? 

NEWT GINGRICH: Cybersecurity. As 

we continue to integrate computers 

into every single aspect of our lives, we 

are creating a significant vulnerability 

to our very livelihood. What we need 

today is a cyber think tank staffed by 

the generation today that lives and 

breathes in the electronic world. The 

institution would be set up much like 

the RAND Corporation was, with 

the exclusive purpose of ensuring the 

survivability of our networks 

and data. 


INTERVIEWER: What’s the most 

important trend that will shape U.S. 

policy in the next two decades? 

NEWT GINGRICH: Increasing 

worldwide demand for energy with 

decreasing resources. We must take 

concrete steps today to become energy 

independent. 

INTERVIEWER: What can we begin 

doing now to ease our transition into 

this new world? 

NEWT GINGRICH: We must make 

smart choices today that are an investment 

in our future. We need to fundamentally 

transform litigation, regulation, 

taxation, education, health, 

energy, infrastructure, and our national 

security apparatuses. The policies 

that we have in place today reflect 

the realities of the twentieth century. 

We can’t compete globally with our 

current laws, systems, and obsolete 

bureaucracies; they don’t have the 

flexibility or effectiveness required to 

manage the issues of the day. All of 

this seems to be a huge undertaking 

— and it is — but it can be done. It 

must be done. 

*** 


you think the above outlined points 

— such as a wealth migration from 

the United States to Asia, potential 

war between India and Pakistan — 

are likely? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: I don’t see a 

shift in wealth away from the United 

States toward Russia or China, especially 

not Russia. That’s too pessimistic 

precisely because the structural 

components of innovation in the 

United States — culturally, legally — 

are so strong. The cultural and legal 

components for innovation in the rest 

of the world are, frankly, so weak. 

Broader conflict between India and 

Pakistan? I don’t see the United States 

allowing that to happen. I think that, 

as bad as the United States has been 

when it comes to predicting asymmetric 

warfare, the United States is adept 

and prepared for more traditional 

kinds of warfare. We monitor nuclear 

materials around the world carefully. 

As for rising world population and 

affluence, surely we’re already seeing 

shifts in Western dietary habits. There 

will be increases in world population, 

in demand for food, and in affluence, 

but this will be countermanded by the 

downsides of Western dietary habits 

— such as obesity and all the diseases 

that come from obesity — and there 

“Education will be the key issue that determines our 

continued strength and prosperity in a world where China 

and India have increased influence.” 

will be significant environmental 

problems resulting from the provision 

of all this food. This is a pretty 

complicated situation. Countries may 

take countermeasures instead of 

adopting Western dietary standards, 

for both environmental and human 

health. 

INTERVIEWER: What you are saying 

is that the primary focus in the United 

States must be maintaining a culture 

of innovation and economic openness? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: That includes 

controversial things like keeping fairly 

open immigration. Immigration is one 

of the best sources of American talent, 

and so we have to be careful not to 

give in to those who would cut off 

immigration. There are a lot of things 

that go into the American economic 

competitive advantage, from 

education to innovation. 

Fundamentally, we’re the most 

innovative economy in the world. 

There are very few signs that any of 

the other big economies will surpass 

the United States in innovation. 

INTERVIEWER: What about an 

apocalyptic scenario, where being more 

innovative economically and 

producing goods valued higher than 

goods produced elsewhere doesn’t 

matter? How likely is that? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: Isn’t that the basis 

of economic growth? Why would 

growth deteriorate other than in a severe 

recession? We’re not going to be 

in a severe recession until 2025, if 

that’s your time frame. In the short 

term, everybody has a problem, but 

between now and 2025 there will be 

new business cycles. We’ll likely lead 

the world out of the current downturn. 

INTERVIEWER: Okay, but might one 

of these other developing nations 

develop an innovation model to 

match that of the United States in the 

decades ahead? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: The big question 

is China, because China certainly 

has an entrepreneurial people and culture. 

But they still have an overhang 

from their communist era. When it 

comes to information, they’re still a 

closed society. It’s hard to imagine a 

society being truly innovative when 

there are so many restrictions on freedom 

of speech, as there still are in 

China. If that would change dramatically, 

and certainly the Internet is 

pushing at it to change, then China 

could become very innovative. 

The second thing about China is 

that they still have significant corruption 

problems and they don’t have a 

rule of law that respects contracts. It’s 

hard to attract significant investments 

from people when investors have 

doubts about getting their money 

out, or when there’s the question of 

state nationalization of industry. It’s 

not a legal structure that fosters innovation. 

Until that changes in other 

parts of the world, people will still 

come to the United States to develop 

new products. 

INTERVIEWER: What about the 

theory that the U.S. consumer market 

is tapped, that real consumer growth 

lies in other countries because of the 

amount of debt the United States has 

accrued as a nation? Is it overly 

pessimistic to think the U.S. is played 

out as a consumer market? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: It’s not overly 

pessimistic for the short term. There’s 

still a lot of debt to be worked off in 

the U.S. economy. However, there is a 

very large generation coming up, the 

millennial generation. They’re bigger 

than the baby-boomer generation. 

They’re now in high school and in college. 

They’ll need to purchase homes 

and consumer durables. They’ll have 

children. As people work themselves 

out of debt, and as a new generation 

that doesn’t have this debt (because 

they’re kids) become adults, you can 

see a return to a more normal set of 

consumption patterns in the economy. 

Hopefully, you won’t see a return to 



overconsumption. We’ve swung dramatically 

from buying everything 

with money we didn’t have to buying 

nothing. Clearly there’s someplace in 

the middle. 

INTERVIEWER: The issue of the 

amount of debt that is being placed on 

the backs of younger generations is of 

great concern to me. The average 

college graduate carries $19,000 in 

school loans and an additional 

$12,000 in credit-card debt before they 

get out of school. When you add on 

future entitlement spending (Social 

Security and Medicare) as the baby 

boomers retire, the cost begins to sound 

significant. Many young people are 

leaving school with bleak job prospects 

and burdens that the generation before 

them didn’t have. How would you rate 

that as a challenge for the United States 

going forward? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: When you talk 

about debt to future generations in the 

U.S. economy as a whole, that’s different 

from school loans. People get upset 

about loans, but loans are politically 

and practically a different thing. I 

think there will be 10 hard years. 

That’s how long it will take for the 

overspending to move its way out. 

Eventually, people will need to buy 

cars, refrigerators, and houses again. 

That, plus whatever the Obama administration 

does by way of government 

spending, should help younger 

people to get jobs when they get out of 

college. 

INTERVIEWER: You think it will take 

10 years to fully move out of this 

current downturn? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: It depends on 

how effective the stimulus package is 

and how quickly it succeeds in doing 

two things: It has to stop the rise in 

unemployment, and it has to get the 

credit markets moving again so that 

the banks have some trust and can 

start lending to people forming new 

businesses. Then you start having a 

more normal economy. That’s why for 

the time being, frankly, spending is a 

“Internationally, the biggest challenge is to deal with 

terrorism more as an intelligence matter and less as a 

military matter.“ 

lot more important than thinking 

about deficits. Once the economy gets 

moving again, then you’ll have to confront 

the deficit crisis. If the stimulus 

works to really get the economy growing 

again, you’ll grow out of some of 

the deficits. The question is, what is an 

acceptable level of debt as an aspect of 

GDP? Who knows if we’ll ever get 

back to the Clinton administration levels? 

But Certainly by the time we’re 

coming out of this recession, hopefully 

the next administration will be poised 

to reinvent government and try and 

get inefficiencies out of government. 

INTERVIEWER: Assuming that we do 

absolutely nothing correctly in the 

next 15 years, the intelligence report 

on 2025 has outlined what looks like a 

very bad worst-case scenario. What’s 

your worst-case scenario? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: If we do 

everything wrong in the short term, 

we face a long period of deflation and 

unemployment. It becomes more difficult 

to meet our international obligations 

and maintain our military force. 

Then you begin to see some of the 

darker scenarios that we started this 

conversation with. But there is also a 

feeling that the U.S. economy has 

enough flexibility in it that people will 

work out of the present situation. 

INTERVIEWER: What do you think is 

the most important trend to shape 

U.S. policy over the next two decades? 

ELAINE KAMARCK: Domestically, 

the aging population. That will determine 

a lot of government spending, 

because elderly people vote and are 

sophisticated about influencing the 

government. The probability of being 

able to achieve any significant savings 

out of either Medicare or Social Security 

is pretty slim. And so that will be 

the most significant domestic problem. 

Internationally, the biggest challenge 

is to deal with terrorism more as 

an intelligence matter and less as a 

military matter. The Bush administration 

treated the war on terror as if it 

were a war, including invading countries. 

When we see terrorism stop, it’s 

almost always the result of something 

similar to effective police and detective 

action rather than military action. 

The U.S. military, for all its talents, 

isn’t well suited to the prevention of 

terrorist plots. We need to build better 

alliances, and do better international 

police and intelligence work to preempt 

plots. That’s a change from the 

way the Bush administration dealt 

with the problem. 

*** 

INTERVIEWER: In your television 

interviews and your books, you talk a 

lot about the wealth transfer to Asia. 

According to your Web site, it’s one of 

the key components of your 

investment strategy at EuroPacific 

Capital. To what extent do you agree 

or disagree with some of the scenarios 

in the Global Trends 2025 report? 

PETER SCHIFF: Rising influence in 

Asia? I definitely agree with that, 

China more so than Russia. But there 

are other countries in the equation, like 

India. Japan will also have more clout 

in 2025. It won’t only be China and 

Russia that will see an increase in their 

influence and wealth. I think the 

United States will see a reduction in its 

economic, political, and military power. 

We’re in serious trouble. Our economy 

is a mess, but more worrisome is that 

the U.S. government is poised to completely 

destroy it. What Obama is seeking 

to do could ruin the economy. 

The economy is a mess because of 

bad fiscal and monetary policy in the 

preceding years. But what we need in 

order to recover is more capitalism, 

more free markets. We need more savings 

to make credit more available to 

businesses that could borrow to build 

more factories and start producing 

again to repair the industrial base. We 

should make repairs to our infrastructure, 

but only when we can afford it. 

There’s a lot of serious work to be 

done. Unfortunately, President Obama 

seems intent on building roadblocks 

that will just prevent market forces 

from correcting the problems in our 

economy. By assuming more and 

more control and micromanaging 

our economy, by making the government 

bigger, our economy is going 

to be much less dynamic. The standard 

of living is going to fall more 

precipitously than would otherwise 

be the case. 


We’re going to recreate another 

great depression, only this one will be 

worse than the one the government 

created in the 1930s. 

INTERVIEWER: How can individuals, 

particularly people in the United 

States, cope with the trends you’ve 

laid out? What’s an action plan for 

them? 

PETER SCHIFF: Their action plan is 

to get out of U.S. assets entirely. Don’t 

hold bonds or U.S. currency. Get out 

of U.S. real estate. U.S. assets are going 

to lose substantial value, especially 

relative to assets in other parts of the 

world and certain commodities. 

People need to understand that U.S. 

assets are going to be substantially 

marked down. 

INTERVIEWER: Is this something that 

will have an effect geopolitically and 

militarily going forward? 

PETER SCHIFF: Of course. As the 

dollar loses value, it becomes more expensive 

to maintain the military — to 

supply it with food, fuel, and ammunition. 

Most of U.S. military equipment 

runs with imported components 

and imported parts. If we’re going to 

keep our planes in the air, our tanks 

rolling, and our ships steaming, we’re 

going to have to import more expensive 

foreign components. We have 

military bases all around the world. 

As the dollar loses value, it’s more expensive 

to maintain those bases. 

INTERVIEWER: What about the 

argument that the United States will 

maintain its dominance because it has 

a unique culture of innovation, with 

the world’s best universities? 

PETER SCHIFF: We don’t have a 

unique culture of anything. American 

citizens aren’t innately smarter or 

harder working than people anywhere 

else. We’re no better than the Italians, 

the French, the Mexicans, or the Chinese. 

What enabled Americans to be 

so much more successful than people 

of other countries was that we were 

freer. We had a better system of government 

because we had a constitution 

that limited the power of government, 

so we had minimal regulation 

and minimal taxes relative to the rest 

of the world…Now, I think, there’s 

more entrepreneurial capitalism going 

on in places like China than there is in 

the United States. 

INTERVIEWER: Many developing 

nations face tremendous political 

uncertainty in the years ahead. To 

what degree will they become more 

open? To what degree will they 

become more democratic? Will there 

be social upheavals? 

PETER SCHIFF: There will be social 

upheavals in the United States. We’re 

going into a situation with severe economic 

hardship in this country. The 

“What enabled Americans to be so much more successful 

than people of other countries was that we were freer.” 

inflation that the U.S. government is 

unleashing will lead to spectacular increases 

in the cost of living. Ultimately, 

it will lead the Obama administration 

to implement price controls 

for products, including food and energy, 

which will result in food and energy 

price wars. When people are cold 

and hungry, there’s a tendency to 

commit crimes, and this will lead to 

social unrest. There are a lot of problems 

in that respect coming to the 

United States. There’s also the chance 

the United States government will act 

in much more oppressive ways. I 

think the U.S. government might start 

seizing assets from its citizens, such as 

precious metals and foreign stocks. 

There could be outright confiscation 

and seizure. Moving money out of the 

country could be very difficult. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you think there is 

any chance that the U.S. government 

would begin to pursue an open 

market strategy? 

PETER SCHIFF: I don’t see that happening 

soon. I see a lot more damage 

occurring in our economy before 

Obama comes to that revelation. But 

hopefully he comes to it in time. The 

failure to come to it in time will produce 

a hyperinflation. The dollar will 

be wiped out completely. That economic 

crisis will be far worse than the 

one we’re dealing with today. The 

United States will not be the largest 

economy based on GDP well before 

2025. It will be China. The United 

States will still be behind Japan and it 

will no longer be in the top 20 countries 

in per capita GDP. We’ll see a 

significant reduction in our stature in 

the world. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you think China 

and Japan will be able to shift from 

being export economies toward being 

economies that stimulate domestic 

consumer spending? 

PETER SCHIFF: They will certainly 

be consuming a lot more domestically, 

particularly China. But Japan 

and a lot of countries that are now exporting 

to the United States will simply 

export to other countries. For instance, 

Japanese exports to China will 

pick up significantly. It’s certain that 

a country that’s going to see one of 

the most dramatic increases in domestic 

consumption will be a country 

like China. 

INTERVIEWER: When does it get 

very bad for the United States? 

PETER SCHIFF: When the only 

buyer left for U.S. debt is the Federal 

Reserve itself, that’s when hyperinflation 

kicks in. That’s when the bond 

market plunges and consumer prices 

really take off. That’s when we’re really 

up against a serious crisis. 

INTERVIEWER: That can happen 

anytime between now and… 

PETER SCHIFF: That can happen any 

day. It could happen tomorrow morning, 

next year, two years. You just 

don’t know. The fact is it will happen. 

Even Bernie Madoff knew he would 

be found out eventually. Ponzi 

schemes can’t go on forever. That’s 

why they’re illegal. If you could make 

it work then it wouldn’t be illegal. 

*** 


you find these scenarios to be 

credible? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: I would suggest 

that such reports are interesting, 

but they’re not constructive because 

they don’t allow for our ability 

to change the direction of events. If 

the United States does not take 

control of its economic destiny, and 

if the country keeps spending money 

on wars and allowing the accelerated 

creation of material wealth - 

either through the instrumentation 

of government of because of the 

theft of Wall Street — certainly 

the United States will be in a precarious 

position. 



When it comes to the globe, we 

need to look at ourselves not as a nation 

apart from other nations but as 

a nation among nations. We need to 

come into resonance with the founding 

principles of this country and its 

first motto: E Pluribus Unum (out of 

many, one). We are one people, not 

just fifty states, but we’re also one 

with a world that is increasingly 

interconnected. Why not rally 

around these ideas to save the world 

from scarcity, from drought, and 

from hunger? We need to do that 

now, not in 2025. These warnings 

that we get from economists, from 

environmentalists, from people who 

study global trends are warnings 

we should pay attention to not because 

they predict the future but because 

they give us a snapshot of 

what’s happening today. We can 

change the outcome. 

INTERVIEWER: Getting more 

specific, what do you see as the most 

important trend that will shape U.S. 

policy over the course the next two 

decades? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: The trend toward 

a more equitable distribution 

of wealth. In the last few decades, 

the United States has become a massive 

machine where all the instruments 

in government were aimed at 

accelerating the creation and accumulation 

of wealth. The last administration 

put in place more than a 

trillion dollars in tax cuts that went 

to the wealthiest 1% of the U.S. population. 

Our military spending is 

used to accelerate the accumulation 

wealth of the nation through war 

and huge amounts of defense spending. 

Our environmental policies deteriorated 

the quality of our air and 

water and appreciated the financial 

assets of companies who contaminated 

our environment. Our energy 

policies accelerated the accumulation 

of wealth by turning over our 

energy supply to the oil companies. 

These companies [were able to] determine 

the kinds of energy we had. 

We’ve allowed insurance companies 

to run our health-care systems. One 

hundred million people in the United 

States are either underinsured or uninsured. 

Massive displacements are going 

on economically because people 

can’t afford health care. You can look 

at every system of government over 

the last few decades and you can see 

how special interests have allowed 

the acceleration of the creation of 

wealth. We’re living with the culmination 

of lack of regulation. This lack 

resulted in fraud. We need to have 

a system that causes a more equitable 

distribution. 

INTERVIEWER: Global collaboration 

seems to be one of your focal points. 

What sort of future opportunities do 

you imagine for the United States to 

collaborate with the developing 

world to improve the future? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: We have an opportunity 

to stop looking at it as a 

world that needs to be developed. 

These distinctions need to be challenged. 

There’s a lot about the “developed” 

world that I don’t find particularly 

acceptable, such as the 

geography of nowhere. This is where 

everything looks alike, where local 

cultures are obliterated by concrete. 

This is an aspect of the so-called developed 

world. We need to come 

into rhythm with the natural world. 

We shouldn’t be talking about the 

developing world. We should be 

talking about the natural world. 

INTERVIEWER: Do you envision a 

way to achieve this equilibrium you 

talk about and maintain the supplyside 

economic system? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: We can’t sustain 

the system we have in place. We 

already know that. It’s predatory. It’s 

broken down — why should we revive 

it? 

INTERVIEWER: Some might argue 

that supply-side economics over the 

last two decades has led to an 

increase in quality of life, especially 

parts of the world outside of the 

United States. On that note, one of 

the key issues in the Global Trends 

report is how the shift to Western 

dietary habits in many parts of the 

world, particularly in Asia, is one of 

the primary drivers putting strain on 

freshwater, because as people switch 

to eating more meat they deplete 

groundwater. I think this speaks to 

your broader point: How do you 

convince other people not to follow 

the growth path that the United 

States has established? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: I think that 

most of the rest of the world sees 

that supply-side economics is a failure. 

If we want to restore our credibility 

with the people of other nations, 

we need to reject the canards 

of the past and start talking about 

human values that have proven to be 

sustainable. We need to set ourselves 

“When it comes to the globe, we need to look at ourselves 

not as a nation apart from other nations but as a nation 

among nations.” 

on a path where there are jobs for all, 

housing for all, education for all, 

health care for all, retirement security, 

clean water, clean air, a sustainable 

food supply, and peace. This is 

not a pipe dream. All of this is 

achievable. We have it within our 

reach, but we have to change our institutions 

so that [those] institutions 

can respond and evolve with human 

potential. 

INTERVIEWER: Which institutions 

in particular? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: Every institution. 

Jefferson talked about the fact 

that institutions come from the mind 

of man and evolve with the mind of 

man. They have to change. They are 

our products. They didn’t make us, 

we made them. 

INTERVIEWER: Why do you think 

it’s important for individuals to take 

their future seriously? 

DENNIS KUCINICH: I think it’s important 

for individuals to live joyously. 

I think we need to live without 

fear of the future and enjoy the 

moment, live it to the utmost, and 

live it with great heart, love, and 

courage. That’s what I think we 

should do. If you do that, the future 

will take care of itself. ■ 

This article is a slightly edited version 

of one that originally appeared in the 

July-August 2009 issue of The Futurist. 


looking forward 

We wanted to take a few pages, featuring two essays, to reflect 

on how the study of the future relates to the way we live. The 

first essay by anthropologist Helen Fisher discusses how trends 

in interpersonal relationships will affect many traditions, 

institutions, and policies. The second essay by psychologist 

Philip Zimbardo takes a look forward at how formal research into 

heroism by ordinary people faced with extraordinary 

circumstances can have wider benefits for society as a whole. 

Enjoy. —MD 

How Trends in Interpersonal Relationships Will Disrupt 

our Social and Business Traditions 

By HELEN FISHER 

Marriage has changed more in the past 100 years 

than it has in the past 10,000, and it could 

change more in the next 20 years than in the 

last 100. We are rapidly shedding traditions that 

emerged with the Agricultural Revolution and returning 

to historical patterns of sex, romance, and attachment 

that evolved on the grasslands of Africa millions 

of years ago. 

Beliefs in virginity at marriage, arranged marriages, 

the concept that men should be the sole family breadwinners, 

the credo that a woman’s place is in the 

home, the double standard for adultery, and the concepts 

of “honor thy husband” and “until death do us 

part” are vanishing. “Hooking up” (the refreshed term 

for a one-night stand) is becoming commonplace, 

along with living together, bearing children out of 

wedlock, women-headed households, interracial marriages, 

homosexual weddings, commuter marriages 

between individuals who live apart, childless marriages, 

betrothals between older women and younger 

men, and small families. 

Our concept of infidelity is also changing. Some 

married couples agree to have brief sexual encounters 

when they travel separately; others sustain long-term 

adulterous relationships with the approval of a spouse. 

Even our concept of divorce is shifting. Divorce used 

to be considered a sign of failure; today it is often 

deemed the first step toward true happiness. 

These trends aren’t new. Anthropologists have many 

clues to life among our forebears; the dead do speak. A 

million years ago, children were most likely experimenting 

with sex and love by age six. Teens lived to- 



CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK 

gether in relationships known as “trial marriages.” Men 

and women chose their partners for themselves. Many 

were unfaithful, a propensity common in all 42 extant 

cultures I have examined. When our forebears found 

themselves in an unhappy partnership, these ancients 

walked out. A million years ago, anthropologists suspect, 

most men and women had two or three long-term partners 

across their lifetimes. All these primordial habits are 

returning. 

But the most profound trend is the rise of what sociologists 

call the companionate, symmetrical, or peer marriage: 

marriage between equals. Women in much of the 

world are regaining the economic power they enjoyed for 

millennia. Ancestral women left camp almost daily to 

gather fruits, nuts, and vegetables, returning with 60% to 

80% of the evening meal. In the hunting and gathering 

societies of our past, women worked outside the home; 

the double-income family was the rule, and women were 

just as economically, sexually, and socially powerful as 

men. Today, we are returning to this lifeway, leaving in 

the dustbin of history the traditional, male-headed, patriarchal 

family - the bastion of agrarian society. 

This massive change will challenge many of our social 

traditions, institutions, and policies during the next 15 

years. Perhaps we will see wedding licenses with an expiration 

date. Companies may have to reconsider how 

they distribute pension benefits. Words like marriage, 

family, adultery, and divorce are likely to take on a variety 

of meanings. We may invent new kinship terms. Matriliny 

may become common as more children trace their 

descent through their mother. 

Emergent industries are booming as they take advantage 

of our tendencies to marry later, then divorce and remarry. 

These include Internet dating services, marital mediators, 

artists who airbrush faces out of family albums, 

divorce support groups, couples therapists, and self-improvement 

books. As behavioral geneticists begin to pinpoint 

the biology of such seemingly amorphous traits as 

curiosity, cautiousness, political orientation, and religiosity, 

the rich may soon create designer babies. 

For every trend there is a countertrend, of course. Religious 

traditions are impeding the rise of women in some 

societies. In countries where there are far more men than 

women, due to female infanticide, women are likely to 

become coveted and cloistered. An aging world population 

may cling to outmoded social values, and population 

surges and declines will affect our attitudes toward 

family life. 

Adding to this mix will be everything we are learning 

about the biology of relationships. We now know 

that kissing a long-term partner reduces cortisol, the 

stress hormone. Certain genes in the vasopressin system 

predispose men to make less-stable partnerships. 

My colleagues and I have discovered that the feeling of 

romantic love is associated with the brain’s dopamine 

system—the system for wanting. Moreover, we have 

found that romantic rejection activates brain regions 

associated with profound addiction. Scientists even 

know some of the payoffs of “hooking up.” Casual sex 

can trigger the brain systems for romantic love and/or 

feelings of deep attachment. 

“Emergent industries are booming 

as they take advantage of our 

tendencies to marry later, then 

divorce and remarry.” 

What will we do with these data? One forwardthinking 

company has bottled what our forebears 

would have called “love magic.” They sell Liquid 

Trust, a perfume that contains oxytocin, the natural 

brain chemical that, when sniffed, triggers feelings of 

trust and attachment. 

We are living in a sea of social and technological 

currents that are likely to reshape our family lives. 

But much will remain the same. To bond is human. 

The drives to fall in love and form an attachment to a 

mate are deeply embedded in the human brain. Today, 

84% of Americans wed by age 40, and with the 

expansion of the roles of both women and men, new 

medical aids to sex and romance, our longer life 

spans, and the growing social acceptance of alternative 

ways to bond, I believe we now have the time 

and tools to make more-fulfilling partnerships than at 

any time in human evolution. 

The time to love is now. ■ 

This article is a slightly edited version of one that originally 

appeared in the November-December 2010 issue of 

The Futurist. 


looking forward 

Transforming Society by Teaching Everyday People 

the Characteristics of a Modern Hero 

By PHILIP ZIMBARDO 

What is a hero? I argue that a hero is someone 

who possesses and displays certain heroic attributes 

such as integrity, compassion, and moral 

courage, heightened by an understanding of the power 

of situational forces, an enhanced social awareness, and 

an abiding commitment to social action. 

Heroism is a social concept, and like any social concept 

it can be explained, taught, and modeled through 

education and practice. I believe that heroism is common, 

a universal attribute of human nature and not exclusive 

to a few special individuals. The heroic act is 

etraordinary; the heroic actor is an ordinary person - until 

he or she becomes a heroic special individual. We 

may all be called upon to act heroically at some time, 

when opportunity arises. We would do well, as a society 

and as a civilization, to conceive of heroism as something 

within the range of possibilities for every person. 

“Research into the component 

attributes of heroism and their 

practical application can have farreaching 

benefits for society.” 

But rarely do we hear about ordinary men and 

women who have, by circumstance or fate, done something 

extraordinary for a greater cause or sacrificed on 

behalf of fellow human beings. Today’s generation, perhaps 

more than any preceding one, has grown up without 

a distinct vision of what constitutes heroism, or, 

worse, has grown up with a flawed vision of the hero as 

sports figure, rock star, gang leader, or fantastic super 

hero. This is why I formed the Heroic Imagination Project 

(heroicimagination.org), or HIP, which seeks to encourage 

and empower individuals to develop the personal 

attributes that lead them to take heroic action 

during crucial moments in their lives, on behalf of others, 

for a moral cause, and without expectation of gain. 

HIP is committed to realizing this goal in three ways. 

First, we conduct and support new research that will expand 

society’s understanding of heroic behavior. Second, 

we have created new educational programs in 

schools and on the Web that coach and mentor people in 

how to resist negative social influences, while also inspiring 

them to become wise and effective heroes. Finally, we 

have created public engagement programs that involve 

people everywhere to take our heroic pledge and to sign 

on to one of our many emerging programs. 

Research on Heroism 

One of the most fundamental and unique aspects of our 

mission is its focus on encouraging new empirical 

research on the nature and dynamics of heroism. There is 

a dearth of information on this idea, at least partly due to 

the changing definition of heroism over the last 30 years, 

and the earlier focus in psychology on the dark side of 

human nature. To build this new body of research, we are 

partnering with major universities and will sponsor 

promising doctoral candidates who devote their research 

to questions around this issue of heroic behavior. 

Research into the component attributes of heroism 

(ethical behavior, leadership, courage) and their practical 

application (defiance of unjust authority, whistle 

blowing, facing physical danger) can have far-reaching 

benefits for society. We need to better understand the 

neurological and psychological basis of such phenomena 

as action versus passivity at the decisive moment. 

The components of our research initiative include 

Web-based surveys of self-selected individuals, 

analysis of a program of senior volunteers, and laboratory 

studies of the personal, social, and neurological 

roots of heroic behaviors. 

Implementation of Our Findings 

Everyday heroism is the highest form of civic virtue. It 

transforms the personal virtue of compassion into 

meaningful social action. To that end, we will work to 

instill in all people, particularly in young people, the 

self-confidence and the ability to readily perform deeds 

that improve the lives of other individuals and society 

as a whole. We believe it begins by adopting, and internalizing, 

the mind-set of a heroic imagination - I can be 

a hero when the opportunity arises. 

We have developed specific program modules for 



scholastic, non-profit, and academic audiences, with one 

for corporate audiences forthcoming. Our initial program 

was launched in middle and high schools and 

provides young people with tools to encourage heroic 

self-identification. The aim is to fortify their moral 

framework and coach them to act beyond their comfort 

zone—but wisely so. 

Why Heroism? 

This exploration into heroism was spurred by recent 

research that shows how otherwise exemplary individuals 

can be easily persuaded, when their social framework 

is skewed or altered, to perform acts that go 

against conscience, and behave in ways they would ordinarily 

find despicable. My Stanford Prison Experiment 

(1971) reflected such an outcome, and my findings 

have been frequently validated since, including the recent 

actions of American military police guards at Abu 

Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004. 

I testified during the trial of one of the U.S. guards accused 

of mistreating prisoners in that incident. My mes- 

sage was this: It’s imperative for our society to acknowledge 

how situational forces can corrupt even good 

people into becoming perpetrators of evil. It is essential 

that all of us learn to recognize the situational and systemic 

determinants of antisocial behaviors. What’s more, 

I argue, we must actively seek to change this paradigm 

by encouraging and empowering individuals to make 

the difficult but moral decision—the decisive heroic 

choice - when faced with challenging circumstances. 

By redefining these ideas for contemporary audiences, 

we can popularize and energize the concept of 

everyday heroism around the world. In doing so, HIP 

hopes to be the catalyst for individuals to transform 

their passivity and reluctance to come to the aid of those 

in need into the positive social action heroism. Ideally, 

HIP will become a social movement that sows the seeds 

of heroism everywhere. ■ 

This article is a slightly edited version of one that originally 

appeared in the November-December 2010 issue of 

The Futurist. 

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK 


final word 

By BRENDA COOPER 

How Science Fiction 

Makes Better Futurists 

An Interview with Tobias Buckell, Science Fiction Writer 

I’m very lucky to count Tobias Buckell 

among my friends. I first met Toby a 

decade ago at an intimate writing retreat 

we were both invited to. He’s smart, 

global, and courageous, a very fine 

writer and speaker, and a perfect subject 

for a short interview about the value 

of science fiction authors to the field 

of futurism studies. There’s even a 

summer reading list – enjoy! 

BRENDA COOPER: Hi Toby. 

You’ve set Arctic Rising, Hurricane 

Fever, and other work in a 

near future that has been seriously 

altered by climate 

change. How did you decide 

what would change? 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: I was very 

lucky in that a lot of the 

Tobias 

research had already been 

Buckell 

done for me. I started reading 

documents related to the IPCC 1 

reports and was reading stuff coming out from Task 

Force Climate Change 2 . Add into that the legal challenges 

being faced by Pacific Islanders who were figuring out 

how to plan for the dissolution of their homes, and things 

began to click into place for me. 

Unlike most science fiction that I write, I actually 

didn’t have to make many decisions in the background 

for these books in terms of making up worlds; I just 

kept encountering challenges people were already 

facing or trying to plan to face. Fictionalizing them 

was the trick, not finding them. 

BRENDA COOPER: I found myself as interested in 

your predictions for social change as I was in the climate 

science. Can you describe a few things that you 

consider likely scenarios from your recent work? 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: There are a lot of undercurrents 

and assumptions we make about the nature of work, 

corporate structures, and who should benefit from that 

which are fairly unique to the last fifty years. Quarterlybased 

shareholder capitalism doesn’t seem particularly 

sustainable, and I’m fascinated by the small bits of 

green shoots you see in the areas of employee-owned 

businesses, or more businesses that hand employees a 

cut for their hard work. 

On the other hand, I do think the increased nature of 

contract work will continue. While I used the ideas of 

freelance spies in Arctic Rising as an extreme, it’s not 

that far out of hand. And I imagine we’ll see more and 

more of society having to adapt to the fact that most of 

the workforce will be temporary. We’re already seeing 

some services being built to handle that, from changes 

in U.S. healthcare to companies that create banking 

accounts specifically designed to buffer freelance cash to 

even out the flow. 



“…I believe the best science fiction can be 

unfettered and give us a thirty thousand foot 

view– one that can inspire people to make 

something a reality. ” 

BRENDA COOPER: In 

what ways do you think 

that working futurists 

might learn from reading 

science fiction? 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: William 

Gibson once pointed 

out that when he came up 

with many of the concepts 

he was famous for, the 

experts told him there 

wasn’t enough bandwidth 

to make it work. Had he 

remained constrained by 

the on-the-ground reality 

and not used his imagination, 

he wouldn’t have had 

nearly the influence he did. 

Likewise, I believe the 

best science fiction can be 

unfettered and give us a 

thirty thousand foot view– 

one that can inspire people 

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK to make something a reality. 

When we focus on the 

function and use, it can point out something that is 

needed that might be currently beyond our grasp. I am 

thinking of tricorders from Star Trek; the cyberspace of 

William Gibson; visions of societies arranged differently. 

By jolting ourselves out into different paradigms 

we exercise that great muscle: imagination. 

sions trading program to cut way back on it. It is the 

same with the ozone layer, which is in much better 

shape. But now those tools are off the table due culture 

wars, not because we lack the ability to tackle it. 

BRENDA COOPER: What makes you the most hopeful? 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: The rapid technological growth 

rate of solar and battery efficiencies. 

BRENDA COOPER: The World Future Conference this 

year is about “making” the future. While that can obviously 

refer to 3D and 4D printing, in what other ways 

are we making the future right now? How might we go 

about “making the future?” 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: Remaking roads. Other than a few 

places in Europe we are oriented toward cars, which are 

an amazing technology that allow a great deal of independence. 

But with paint and planters we can redesign 

for humans fairly effectively. We still put a great deal of 

our budgets into new roads and are struggling to maintain 

roads. But network simulations of traffic show that 

more roads don’t equal less traffic. I’m hopeful to see 

more design around human beings, rather than our 

tools. And I say that as someone who owned a sports 

car and loved it. ■ 

BRENDA COOPER: Are there particular authors that 

you would recommend? 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: I think futurists should be reading 

Ramez Naam, Ken Liu’s short science fiction, 

Madeline Ashby, Cory Doctorow, Paolo Bacigalupi, 

Charles Stross (in particular his Halting State and Rule 

34 novels), Karl Schroeder (check out Lady of Mazes for 

a novel, or any of his short fiction), Afterparty by Daryl 

Gregory, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson– that’s 

a good start! 

BRENDA COOPER: What frightens you? 

TOBIAS BUCKELL: Climate change. It’s something 

hard to recover from, and it has become such a political 

leverage point. Politicians were able to use an emis- 

1 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 

2 

Task Force Climate Change is a U.S. Navy study group, 

first stood up in 2009. 


CONTRIBUTORS 

GINA BIANCHINI is an entrepreneur and 

investor. She is the founder of Mightybell, a 

specialized professional network site, and an 

Entrepreneur-in-Residence at venture capital firm 

Andreessen Horowitz. Bianchini was previously the 

co-founder and CEO of Ning, the co-founder and 

president of Harmonic Communications, and prior 

to that held positions at CKS Group and Goldman 

Sachs & Co. 

TOBIAS S. BUCKELL is an award-winning 

science fiction author and futurist. His accolades 

include nominations for the Nebula and Prometheus 

awards for his novel Ragamuffin, and the Campbell 

Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer (Finalist). 

His latest book is the technothriller Hurricane Fever 

(Tor Books, 2014). 

BRENDA COOPER is a technologist, futurist, 

and science fiction author. She is currently the chief 

information officer of Kirkland, Washington. She is 

also the co-creator of Futurist.com, an introductoryto-intermediate 

level website about futurism. She 

has been an author for 26 years, with numerous 

published novels and short stories to her credit. 

Her most recent book is Edge of Darkness (The 

Glittering Edge) (Pyr, 2015). 

DR. HELEN FISHER is an anthropologist 

who studies gender differences and the evolution 

of human emotions, best known as an expert on 

romantic love. She is the author of numerous 

books including the highly regarded Why We 

Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic 

Love (Holt, 2004). She is also the chief scientific 

advisor to Chemistry.com and a visiting research 

associate in the Department of Anthropology at 

Rutgers University. 

DR. DANIEL E. “DAN” GEER is a computer 

security analyst and risk management specialist. He 

is currently the chief information security officer for 

In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit venture capital firm investing 

in high-tech companies for the purpose of keeping 

U.S. intelligence agencies equipped with the latest 

technologies. He has earned many accomplishments 

and accolades in the computer science community, 

including the 2011 USENIX Lifetime Achievement 

Award (“The Flame”), which recognizes “singular 

contributions to the UNIX community of both 

intellectual achievement and service that are not 

recognized in any other forum.” 

DR. NEWTON LEROY “NEWT” GINGRICH 

is most recognized as the former Speaker of the 

United States House of Representatives (1995-1999) 

and former candidate for the 2012 Republican Party 

presidential nomination. Prior to serving in the U.S. 

House of Representatives beginning in 1979, he 

was a history professor at West Georgia College. 

Post-speakership, he has been involved in many 

activities that include founding the Center for Health 

Transformation, serving on the U.S. Commission 

on National Security/21 st Century, and serving as a 

fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the 

Hoover Institution. He has also authored many nonfiction 

and fictional alternate history books, and he is 

a prolific book reviewer. 

DR. ELAINE C. KAMARCK has been a 

lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy 

School of Government since 1997, after a career 

in politics and government. She is also a senior 

fellow in the Governance Studies program at the 

Brookings Institution. At the Kennedy School she 

served as Director of Visions of Governance for 

the Twenty-First Century and as Faculty Advisor to 

the Innovations in American Government Awards 

Program. At Brookings she is the founding director 

28 THE FUTURIST Summer 2015 • www.wfs.org

of the Center for Effective Public Management. She 

previously served in the White House from 1993 to 

1997, where she created and managed the Clinton 

administration’s National Performance Review, also 

known colloquially as “reinventing government.” She 

is the author most recently of How Change Happens 

–Or Doesn’t: The Politics of U.S. Public Policy (Lynne 

Rienner, 2013). 

DENNIS KUCINICH is a former member of the 

U.S. House of Representatives, where he served 

the state of Ohio from 1997-2013. He has twice 

(2004, 2008) been a candidate for the Democratic 

nomination for President of the United States. Prior 

to joining Congress, he served as the Mayor of 

Cleveland, Ohio (the youngest in the city’s history). 

Long a progressive proponent of environmental 

initiatives, sustainability practices, and human rights 

issues, he was the 2003 recipient of the Gandhi 

Peace Award of the Religious Society of Friendsaffiliated 

organization Promoting Enduring Peace. 

PETER SCHIFF is an economist, financier, 

radio talk show host, and author. He is the chief 

global strategist and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, 

a financial broker/dealer in Connecticut, and host 

of The Peter Schiff Show. In 2008, he served as an 

economic advisor to Ron Paul’s campaign for the 

Republican nomination for President of the United 

States. He has appeared as a guest on many 

news programs and is frequently quoted in major 

publications. He is the author of a half dozen books, 

including the best-selling Crash Proof 2.0: How to 

Profit from the Economic Collapse (Wiley, 2011). 

PATRICK TUCKER is currently the technology 

editor for Defense One. He was previously deputy 

editor of The Futurist, where over nine years he 

bylined more than 180 articles. His other writing, 

particularly about emerging technologies, has 

appeared in many other publications including Slate, 

MIT Technology Review, and Utne Reader. He is 

the author of well received The Naked Future: What 

Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every 

Move? (Current, 2014). 

DR. AMY ZALMAN is the CEO and president 

of the World Future Society, the world’s first and 

largest membership organization for futurists, the 

advancement of foresight, and advocacy on behalf 

of future-critical issues. She is also the founder 

of Strategic Narrative, a digital clearinghouse for 

resources and expertise that helps governments 

and private sector clients influence outcomes and 

shape behaviors using the principles of storytelling 

and narrative. Her writing and public speaking has 

been featured in many forums around the world. 

She is also a member of the board of the Council for 

Emerging National Security Affairs. Immediately prior 

to joining WFS, she held the title of Department of 

Defense Chair of Information Integration at the U.S. 

National War College. 

DR. PHILIP ZIMBARDO is a professor 

(emeritus) in the Department of Psychology at 

Stanford University, where he has worked since 

1968. Prior to that he held academic positions at 

Yale University, New York University, and Columbia 

University. His research career has focused on topics 

that include time perspective, shyness, terrorism, 

madness, and evil. He is perhaps best known for his 

1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, an investigation 

into the causes of conflict between guards and 

prisoners. More recently, he has been the author of 

books that include The Lucifer Effect: Understanding 

How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, 2007), 

and has founded the Heroic Imagination Project, a 

non-profit dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday 

life. Among many accolades, he received the 2012 

American Psychological Association Gold Medal for 

Lifetime Achievement in the Science of Psychology. 


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Strategic assessments, socio-technologic 

forecasts/scenarios. Keynote addresses, 

strategic briefings, workshops, surveys. 

Strategic Futures® 

Strategic Futures Consulting Group, Inc. 

113 South Washington St., Alexandria, VA 22314 

Phone: 703-836-8383 Fax: 703-836-9192 

E-mail: info@strategicfutures.com 

Web: www.strategicfutures.com 

Contact: Ron Gunn or Jennifer Thompson 

Strategic planning, succession planning 

including mentoring, executive coaching, 

organizational change facilitation, and matrix 

management assistance. 

SynOvation Solutions 

455 Hazelwood Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 

Phone: 415-298-3008 

E-mail: info@synovationsolutions.com 

Web: www.synovationsolutions.com 

Contacts: Bruce L. Tow, David A. Gilliam 

Future-is-now resources to help you achieve key 

and mission-critical breakthroughs or creatively 

evolve your business to meet future challenges. 

Synthesys Strategic Consulting Ltd. 

Belsize Park, London NW3 UK 

Phone: 44-207-449-2903 Fax: 44-870-136-5560 

E-mail: www.hardintibbs.com 

Web: www.synthstrat.com 

Contact: Hardin Tibbs, CEO 

Synthesys specializes in using futures research 

to develop innovative strategies. Based in London 

UK, with international experience in both the 

public and private sectors, across many different 

industries. Projects include horizon scanning, 

strategic sense- making, scenarios, vision 

building, assumption testing, and strategy 

formulation, either as expert input or by coproduction 

directly with leadership teams. 

TechCast Global, Inc. 

3342 Maud St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016 

Phone: 202-994-5975 

E-mail: info@techcastglobal.com 

Web: www.techcastglobal.org 

Contact: William E. Halal, president, TechCast 

Global Inc. 

TechCast Global is an online research project 

that pools the knowledge of 100 experts 

worldwide to forecast breakthroughs in all fields 

of science and technology. Results are updated 

in real time and distributed to corporations, 

governments, and other subscribers to aid in 

their strategic planning. The project has been 

featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, 

The Futurist, and various journals. The National 

Academies consider TechCast Global among 

the best systems available, and Google ranks it 

No. 2 or 3 out of 45 million hits. TechCast Global 

also gives presentations, conducts customized 

studies, and performs most types of consulting 

related to technology and strategic change. 

Town and Gown Relations 

Kemp Consulting, LLC 

P. O. Box 342, Meriden, CT 06450-0342 

Phone: 203-686-0281 

E-mail: rlkbsr@snet.net 

Web (consulting): www.rogerlkemp.com 

Web (background): www.rogerkemp.org 

Contact: Roger Kemp, MPA, MBA, PhD, President 

Dr. Kemp has been author and editor of over a 

dozen books dealing with issues relating to cities 

(towns) and colleges (gowns). He gives 

keynote speeches, strategic briefings, and 

does futures research and consulting on 

emerging trends dealing with the dynamic and 

evolving field of town-gown relations. 

21st Century Learning LLC 

10 Jamaicaway, Suite #18,Boston, MA 02130 

Telephone: 978-204-2770 

Email: charlesfadel@gmail.com 

Web: www.21stcenturyskillsbook.com 

Contact: Charles Fadel, founder and bestselling 

author: 21st Century Skills; visiting 

scholar, Harvard GSE and MIT ESG. 

Education’s futures, as impacted by 

Technology, and along the dimensions of 

Knowledge, Skills, Character, and 

Metacognition. Keynotes and seminars on 

global education; education technology; 

neuroscience of learning; creativity & 

innovation; artificial intelligence & 

augmented intelligence. 

van der Werff Global, Ltd. 

4958 Crystal Circle, Hoover, AL 35226 

Phone: 888-448-3779 Fax: 888-432-9263 

E-mail: terry@globalfuture.com 

Web: www.globalfuture.com 

Contact: Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC 

Confidential advisor to corporate leaders 

worldwide on global trends, executive 

leadership, and strategic change. 

Xland sprl 

111 Av Grandchamp, Brussels, Belgium 1150 

Phone: 32-475-827-190 Fax: 32-2-762-46-08 

Web: www.xland.be 

E-mail: xland@skynet.be 

Contact: D. Michel Judkiewicz 

Trend analysis, scenarios, forecasting 

opportunities/threats based on strong and 

weak signals for resilient strategies. 


Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org November-December 2014 

$5.95 

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org September-October 2014 

WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS 

Mars Can Wait. It’s Back 

to the Lunar Future 

Inequality as a Predictor 

of Civil War 

Sharing the Caring: Trends 

in Child Custody 

Unraveling the Mysteries 

of Alzheimer’s Disease 

$5.95 

PLUS: WORLD TRENDS & FORECASTS 

Inventing Tomorrow’s Jobs 

Making Waves in the Cosmos 

Cities Helping Cities 

Mexico’s Dying Languages 

$5.95 

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org May-June 2014 


Good Robots Gone Bad 

Altitude’s Vertical Limit to Population Growth 

The Unexpected Tolls of Racism 

The End of the Earth’s Oceans? 

3-D Printing Keeps on Growing 

Choosing between Happiness and Meaning 

$5.95 

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org March-April 2014 


Designing the Domestic Robot 

Does Smoking Drive Us to Drink? 

Microalgae to Feed and Fuel the World 

Why We Love the Apocalypse 

… and more! 

$5.95 

Join World Future Society for 

just $79 per year and receive: 

• THE FUTURIST magazine 

• Exclusive digital access 

• Futurist Update e-newsletter 

• Discounts on books 

• Conference invitations 

Call 1-800-989-8274 or 1-301-656-8274 

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org January-February 2014 

WoRld TREndS & FoREcASTS 

Seeking Alien Life 

Primates as Planners 

Turf Wars? 

Modeling Green Economies 

$5.95 

Join World Future Society for 

just $79 per year and receive: 

• THE FUTURIST magazine 

• Exclusive digital access 

• Futurist Update e-newsletter 

• Discounts on books 

• Conference invitations 

Call 1-800-989-8274 or 1-301-656-8274 

BACK ISSUES OF THE FUTURIST 

November-December 2014 

(Volume 48, No. 6) 

Trends at Work: An Overview of Tomorrow’s Employment Ecosystem • The Future of 

Futurists: Can a Machine Produce This Forecast? • Library Futures: From Knowledge 

Keepers to Creators • OUTLOOK 2015: Top Trends and Forecasts for the Decade Ahead • 

When Futurists Ask “What If”(Reports from WorldFuture 2014) • Futurists and Their 

Ideas: Why Pop Futurism Fails 

September-October 2014 


Special Report—Futures Education: Teaching and Learning about the Future 

[Part 1: Foresight Education Programs and Courses; Part 2: The Houston Experience; 

Part 3: Real-World Futures Learning] • Our Global Situation and Prospects for the Future 

• Seven Big Challenges for Pakistan—and the Lessons They Could Teach • 10 Questions 

for Machine Intelligence 

July-August 2014 


WorldFuture 2014 preview issue: Looking at the Future through a Cartoonist’s Eyes • 

Visualizing the Future • Technolife of Romeo and Juliet in 2035 • Terra Nova: The 

Religious Quest for Tomorrow • Backing into Eden, Gardening the World: A Parable • 

Forest Futures in the Anthropocene: Can Trees and Humans Survive Together? • What 

Does Moore’s Law Mean for the Rest of Society? • Deconstructing the Future: Seeing 

beyond “Magic Wand” Predictions • Abandoning Ship Titanistad 

May-June 2014 


Mission for Worldwide Innovation • Euphoric, Harmless, and Affordable: A Trend 

Analysis of Sex • Where Will the Century of Biology Lead Us? • Rx Disruption: 

Technology Trends in Medicine and Health Care • Sniffing out the Future of Medicine • 

Adventures in Personal Genomics • Extending Pet Longevity: Our Companions in 

Sickness and in Health 

March-April 2014 


A World without Waste? • The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises • Blundering 

to Success? Learning from Failure • When Do I Get My RoboCop? Power before 

Superpowers • Robotic Technology to Preserve Wildlife: A Scenario • More Talk, Fewer 

Languages: Communicating in a Connected World • Learning without Schools: A 

Contrarian Future 

January-February 2014 


Water Futures: An Islamic Perspective • Causal Layered Analysis Defined • When the 

Economy Transcends Humanity • The Best Predictions of 2013 • Privacy and the 

Surveillance Explosion • Riding the Power Jacket 

Outlook 

2015 

THE FUTURIST’s 

roundup of the most 

thought-provoking 

forecasts of the 

year. Page 29 

Could a Machine Have Predicted This? page 20 

Tomorrow’s Employment Ecosystem, page 14 

Libraries as Knowledge Creators? page 24 

Conference report, WorldFuture 2014: What If, page 39 

FUTURES EDUCATION 

Teaching and Learning about the Future 

The State of Our 

Global Future, page 15 

7 Big Challenges 

for Pakistan, page 22 

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org July-August 2014 

What If... 

Conference Preview 

Looking at the Future through 

A Cartoonist’s Eyes, page 14 

Technolife of Romeo and Juliet, page 24 

Forest Futures in the 

Anthropocene, page 34 

What Does Moore’s Law Mean 

For the Rest of Society? Page 40 

And much more! 

INSIDE MEDICAL FUTURES 

Thanks to technologies that promise to improve 

not only the practice of medicine but also the 

management of health, our bodies will be built 

better and last longer. See the special section 

beginning on page 31 

Toward a More Perfect Sex Life, page 20 

Our Pets in Sickness and Health, page 47 

Mission for Worldwide Innovation, page 16 

Toward a World 

without Waste, page 16 

The Information Revolution’s 

Broken Promises, page 22 

How Businesses Can Learn 

from Failure, page 30 

An Islamic Approach to 

Water Management, page 19 

Privacy and the Surveillance 

Explosion, page 42 

When Virtual Workers Rule 

the World, page 27 

Taking the Exoskeleton for a 

Ride, page 64 

A special report by members and friends 

of the World Future Society Page 28 

Drones vs. 

Poachers 

Conservationists have a new 

weapon in their battle to save 

endangered species. Page 35 

The Best Predictions of 2013 

A roundup of the year’s most-intriguing predictions 

by experts from around the world. Page 31 

THE FUTURIST has been published continuously since 1967. Back issues are available (print or PDF) for $5.95 each 

(plus $4.90 postage and handling for first copy and $0.95 for each additional copy of print editions). Most issues for 

the past 10 years can be supplied. 

Call 1-800-989-8274 (weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time) or use secure online ordering at wfs.org/backissues.

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future www.wfs.org Summer 2015

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