Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions, Second Edition

• The Global MegaCrisis 

• Eroding Futures: Why Healthy Soil 

Matters to Civilization 

• The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the 

World Ahead 

• The Coming Robot Evolution Race 

• A Convenient Truth about Clean Energy 

• Relationships, Community, and Identity 

in the New Virtual Society 

• Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise 

• The Singularity’s Impact on Business 

Leaders 

• The World Is My School 

• Global, Mobile, Virtual, and Social: 

The College Campus of Tomorrow 

• Technology’s Role in Revolution 

• Asia Redraws the Map of Progress 

• Strategies for Living a Very Long Life 

• Building a Better Future for Haiti

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions, 2nd Edition. World Future Society. 2011. 

Introduction 

Futurists are a unique breed of thinkers, 

who aren’t content with simply being told 

what the future may be like. They have an 

urgent need to know how other prognosticators 

arrive at their conclusions, they question 

the levels of uncertainty about these forecasts, 

and—more importantly—they want 

their own tools and resources for understanding 

all aspects of the future. 

For this second edition of the World Future 

Society’s exclusive report for its new members, 

the editors of THE FUTURIST magazine 

have selected recent articles that deliver 

the best possible introduction to what futurists 

do. 

We begin with an overview of the global 

problems we now face, as two prominent futurists 

offer their unique perspectives on 

four different scenarios for how the world 

may address these problems. 

The remainder of this report comprises 

thought-provoking articles that cover the six 

principal areas of futures analysis: Science 

and Technology, Earth, Humanity, Commerce, 

Governance, and the field of Futuring 

itself. 

We hope this introduction to the future 

will show you that the urgent warnings all 

around us can inspire innovative breakthrough 

solutions that will help us all build a 

better tomorrow today. 

Cynthia G. Wagner 

Editor, THE FUTURIST 

Overview 

2 

The Global MegaCrisis: Four Scenarios, 

Two Perspectives 

By William E. Halal and Michael Marien 

Sci/Tech 

9 

The Top 20 (Plus 5) Technologies for the 

World Ahead 

By James H. Irvine and Sandra Schwarzbach 

18 

The Coming Robot Evolution Race 

By Steven M. Shaker 

Earth 

22 

Eroding Futures: Why Healthy Soil Matters to 

Civilization 

By Lester R. Brown 

30 

A Convenient Truth about Clean Energy 

By Carl E. Schoder 

Commerce 

35 

Relationships, Community, and Identity in the 

New Virtual Society 

By Arnold Brown 

41 

The Singularity’s Impact on Business Leaders: 

A Scenario 

By Barton Kunstler 

48 

Why Farmers Need a Pay Raise 

By Julian Cribb 

Humanity 

51 

The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of 

Personalized Learning 

By Maria H. Andersen 

57 

Global, Mobile, Virtual, and Social: 

The College Campus of Tomorrow 

By John Dew 

Governance 

62 

Technology’s Role in Revolution: 

Internet Freedom and Political Oppression 

By Evgeny Morozov 

66 

Asia Redraws the Map of Progress 

By Joergen Oerstroem Moeller 

Futuring 

72 

Strategies for Living a Very Long Life 

By Verne Wheelwright 

78 

Building a Better Future for Haiti 

A discussion with Raymond Alcide Joseph, Paul Joseph, 

and Emmanuel Henry, conducted by Timothy Mack 

and Cynthia G. Wagner

By William E. Halal and Michael Marien 

Global MegaCrisis 

Four Scenarios, Two Perspectives 

Two futurists map out the convergence of multiple global challenges, 

offering divergent viewpoints—one optimistic and one pessimistic— 

on the likelihood of successfully meeting these challenges and turning 

them into global progress. 

Killer pandemics, financial meltdowns, 

runaway global warming, 

environmental decay, nuclear war, 

cyberdisasters: These catastrophes 

are becoming increasingly routine 

headlines. But as the mainstream 

press focuses only on individual extreme 

events, attention is drawn 

away from an issue far more complex: 

the convergence of multiple 

problems into a Global MegaCrisis. 

This article offers an explanation of 

this complex issue, as well as four 

plausible scenarios based on how we 

and our institutions approach it. 

The Global MegaCrisis cuts across 

all sectors in an era of multiple transformations. 

The Iraq War demonstrated 

the limits of U.S. military 

power, and the 2008 global financial 

crisis highlighted the limits of deregulated 

markets. With these founda- 

tions of the old global order shaken 

badly, the growing threat of climate 

change, looming energy shortages, 

huge government deficits, terrorism, 

and a host of wild cards now form a 

complex interplay of destructive 

forces that are straining established 

systems to the breaking point. These 

multiple threats converge like a 

multi-vehicle freeway pileup in slow 

motion. If it had not been bad mortgages 

and arcane derivatives, other 

driving forces in these complex systems 

might have caused roughly the 

same type of global failure. And 

more failures seem all too likely. 

The Global MegaCrisis: What Is It 

And What Does It Look Like? 

The MegaCrisis, simply defined, is 

a global environmental and eco- 

nomic collapse or near collapse, 

along with attendant problems of 

rising prices, mass protests, widespread 

psychic stress, and lawlessness. 

We present the following tentative 

outline to better paint a picture 

of what MegaCrisis might look like. 

Some Trends Driving the MegaCrisis 

• Climate Change, No Matter 

What. The year 2010 marked the hottest 

year (and decade) on record. The 

world has already seen a 1°F temperature 

rise, and an additional 4°–6° rise is 

likely even if all proposed actions are 

taken. Expect possibly 10°F in the next 

few decades if greenhouse gases keep 

growing. In addition, the projected 

sea-level rise in the 2007 Intergovernmental 

Panel on Climate Change 

(IPCC) report was 16 inches by 2100; 

now it is about three to six feet by 2100. 

2 Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions

Complicating this first point is the 

fact that reducing CO 2 

is costly. The 

science indicates that greenhouse 

gases must be reduced by 60% from 

1980 levels to avoid severe climate 

change. This would cost roughly $20 

trillion, or about 1% to 3% of global 

GDP, if done soon, but would be far 

more costly if done later. The problem 

is even more daunting because 

most developing nations are likely to 

industrialize, and most industrialized 

nations are likely to grow, increasing 

all these threats over the 

long term. 

• Political Will to Reduce CO 2 

Is 

Lacking. There are as yet no global 

agreements that would decrease carbon 

emissions significantly. Meanwhile, 

China, India, and the United 

States are planning to build a total of 

850 coal-fired plants, adding five 

times as much CO 2 

to the atmosphere 

as present treaties intend to 

reduce. 

• Methane May Be Worse Than 

CO 2 

. Keep your eye on methane, a 

potent greenhouse gas that is 23 

times worse than CO 2 

, although it 

doesn’t stay in the atmosphere as 

long. Large quantities of methane 

are being released from thawing tundra 

in the Arctic region, and still 

larger quantities may be released 

from icelike methane clathrates on 

the ocean floor in coastal areas. 

• Freshwater Is Becoming More 

Scarce. Nearly a billion people lack 

clean water, and 2.6 billion lack good 

sanitation. Water tables are falling on 

all continents, and the World Bank 

estimates that, by 2025, half of the 

world population could face water 

scarcity due to climate change, population 

growth, and increasing demand 

for water. Unless major 

changes occur, global water shortages 

are likely to cause mass migrations, 

higher food prices, malnutrition, 

and major conflicts. 

• Recession Likely to Last for 

Years. The Great Recession that began 

in 2008 is often compared to the 

Great Depression of 1930, which 

lasted until 1940. The International 

Monetary Fund forecasts growth for 

the next two years at slightly above 

2% in developed nations, although it 

should remain at 8% in the developing 

world. Some economists think 

unemployment rates between 8% 

“Suddenly, many of the concerns we were forewarned 

of over recent decades are at hand.” 

and 9% are quite likely for several 

years, much like Japan’s “lost 

decade” in the 1990s. 

• Severe Institutional Failures. 

The near collapse of the world’s financial 

system in 2008 highlighted 

structural failures in the financial industry, 

government, and other institutions. 

A study of 1,500 CEOs 

noted: “The world’s leaders think 

their enterprises are not equipped to 

cope with complexity in the global 

environment.” Nobel Prize–winning 

economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote, 

“The financial collapse may be to 

markets what the Berlin Wall was to 

Communism.” 

• Cyberwarfare/Cyberterrorism. 

Computer hacking is growing, commensurate 

with the boom in global 

e-commerce. U.S. military networks, 

nuclear facilities, banks, air-trafficcontrol 

systems, and electrical grids 

are under constant attack. The U.S. 

Naval War College was shut down 

by hackers for more than two weeks 

in 2006. The threat is so great that 

one expert suggested installing 

“cyberwar hotlines” similar to the 

special phones that the United States 

and Soviet Union used to avoid nuclear 

Armageddon. 

• Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

The old status quo of MAD (mutually 

assured destruction) may have 

kept two superpowers locked in a 

stalemate, but it is no longer viable 

with nine contending nuclear powers 

(and more likely to emerge, including 

terrorist groups). Between 

1993 and the end of 2009, the Illicit 

Trafficking Database recorded 1,784 

nuclear trafficking incidents. 

Suddenly, many of the concerns 

we were forewarned of over recent 

decades are at hand. The future is arriving—and 

with a vengeance. There 

is a palpable and widespread fear 

that the present world is unsustainable 

and that events could easily 

spin out of control. Scientists are 

convinced that a 60% reduction in 

carbon-dioxide emissions is needed 

to stave off ruinous climate change, 

but achieving that goal looks so unrealistic 

that many are girding to 

withstand a significant rise in sea 

levels, scorching heat, withering 

droughts, and more extreme weather 

patterns. Policy makers in major 

world capitals, including Washington, 

are seriously considering geoengineering 

the planet as a last-ditch 

effort to stave off disaster. The Mega- 

Crisis represents what could occur if 

the human species fails to transform 

its economies, technologies, politics, 

and lifestyles into something more 

sustainable within the next two decades. 

Debating the Global MegaCrisis 

And Its Outcomes 

With these political, financial, and 

ecological crises threatening the 

world, the two of us engaged in a 

spirited e-mail discussion, later published 

in World Future Review (“Letter 

to the Editor: A Dialogue Between 

William E. Halal and Michael 

Marien,” June-July 2009). We then 

published a survey on TechCast.org 

to encourage discussion and to learn 

what others think. The survey summarizes 

our differing views and asks 

TechCast experts and visitors to 

evaluate the severity of the Global 

MegaCrisis and the probability of 

four alternative scenarios. 

The four scenarios run along a 

single axis from pessimistic to optimistic. 

This enables us to focus on alternative 

outcomes for the entire 

world or entire societies moving 

through a period of crisis. 

Scenario 1: Decline to Disaster 

The world fails to react to the 

Global MegaCrisis in time. Indecision 

reigns due to too many choices, 

too many entrenched interest 

groups, and too few resources to 

make necessary changes. Huge government 

deficits persist, leading to 

failures of public services and an inability 

to make crucial transition investments 

in energy, education, and 

infrastructure. Governments are unable 

to reform financial systems, 

curb global warming, reduce military 

spending, or conquer deficits. 

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions 3

Most corporations remain focused 

on short-term profit. Technological 

advances are shelved, delayed, controversial, 

or fail to help. Climate 

change accelerates, thanks in part to 

large amounts of methane complementing 

the carbon dioxide being released 

into the atmosphere, resulting 

in more extreme weather events, 

massive migrations, and crop losses. 

The bottom line: a global economic 

depression, crippling energy shortages, 

ecological collapse, local and 

regional wars, rampant terrorism, 

crime, corruption, and more. 

Scenario 2: Muddling Down 

Halfhearted, inadequate actions 

result in the apparent paradox of a 

high-tech dark age. Political stalemates, 

general ignorance about the 

complexity of the problems, and lack 

of resources stymie all but the most 

modest changes in financial systems, 

governance, energy, and education. 

The promise of new technologies is 

only partly met, and pollution and 

population pressures continue as the 

world population passes 7 billion in 

late 2011. The effects of climate 

change become even more extreme. 

Meanwhile, recovery from the Great 

Recession is slow and uneven, and 

the number of failed states rises. Local 

wars and terrorist attacks increase. 

Despite claims of progress by political 

and corporate leaders, high 

unemployment persists and the 

quality of life declines for most 

people. 

Scenario 3: Muddling Up 

Governments and corporations act 

slowly, but with increasing knowledge. 

Mounting threats spur generally 

successful efforts. Far more sophisticated 

information technology 

(IT) and artificial intelligence (AI) 

provide powerful technical capabilities 

to help counter the challenges. 

The sense of urgency builds as problems 

increase, so public attitudes 

shift enough to favor needed 

changes, and reasonably good leadership 

is able to provide guidance. 

There are relatively minor disasters 

along the way but little that is catastrophic 

for an entire region or the 

planet. A rudimentary but functioning 

global order emerges to manage 

this advanced society in time to 

avert widespread disaster. Many 

new problems arise nonetheless, but 

most are adequately addressed. 

Scenario 4: Rise to Maturity 

The transition to a new global order 

is made quickly and easily. Governments 

and corporations act wisely 

and with determination, and are supported 

by the majority of people. The 

world surpasses the United Nations 

Millennium Development Goals of 

halving poverty by 2015, and many 

countries approach ecological 

sustainability (at least as it is currently 

defined). A conversion to clean, 

renewable energy happens quickly 

and provides a solid boost to many 

national and regional economies. 

Early Survey Results 

As of January 2011, our exploratory 

survey has been completed by 

60 responders, and more replies are 

coming in. It’s not a random sample; 

these are smart and thoughtful 

people. Here is the breakdown of responses 

to the initial question, “How 

severe is the potential threat posed 

by the Global MegaCrisis?” 

Table 1. Severity of the 

Potential Threat 

Severity Respondents (%) 

Catastrophic (Decline 

to Disaster) 

Could be the end 

of civilization for 

many if not all 

Severe (Muddling 

Down) Major declines 

in central 

aspects of life 

Bad (Muddling 

Up) Serious challenges 

likely to be 

met in time 

Overblown (Rise 

to Maturity) Problems 

greatly exaggerated; 

technology 

and the market 

can handle them 

Don’t Know / Too 

murky and can’t 

even make a guess 

22% 

60% 

13% 

4% 

2% 

Table 2. Probability of 

Four Scenarios 

Scenario Probability (%) 

Decline to Disaster 

World fails to 

react, resulting in 

accelerated climate 

change, widespread 

energy and water 

shortages, economic 

depression, conflict, 

etc. 

Muddling Down 

World reacts, partially, 

but problems 

continue to outdistance 

policies and 

technologies. Ecological 

damage continues, 

as does increased 

poverty, inequality, 

and 

conflict. 

Muddling Up 

World reacts out of 

need. Policies and 

technologies help 

make headway on 

problems. Widespread 

disaster 

avoided, but many 

problems remain. 

Rise to Maturity 

World transitions to 

a humane and 

responsible global 

order. 

25% 

35% 

28% 

12% 

We also asked respondents to estimate 

the probability for each of the 

four scenarios along the pessimism– 

optimism axis. This question frames 

the issue differently, but produces 

roughly the same general results: a 

60% probability for the two most 

pessimistic scenarios, compared 

with a 40% probability for the two 

most optimistic. 

The rough timetable for these 

four scenarios is estimated as follows. 

Note that the Muddling 

Down scenario is thought to occur 

earlier than the others; indeed, 

some think it has already begun. 


Here are the dates that respondents 

suggested: 

Table 3. Mean Arrival Dates 

Scenario 

Year 

Decline to Disaster 2029 

Muddling Down 2023 

Muddling Up 2027 

Rise to Maturity 2033 

Many respondents identified the 

key problems as chronic failures in 

governance, leadership, and cultural 

attitudes. They also believe that, despite 

such failures, humanity has a 

proven capacity to survive, usually 

by muddling up. 

Halal’s Analysis: 

The World Is Entering an 

Advanced Stage of Evolution 

Despite the enormity of the challenges, 

there is reason for hope. Advanced 

IT, along with the rise of 

green technologies and other new industries, 

will help spur an economic 

upcycle starting about 2015, and it is 

likely that the Global MegaCrisis 

will be largely resolved by 2020. 

That is why I rate the four scenarios 

as follows: Decline to Disaster, 10%; 

Muddling Down, 25%; Muddling 

Up, 60%; Rise to Maturity, 5%. 

The forces involved are so historic 

and powerful that a long-term evolutionary 

perspective is necessary to 

understand what is taking place. 

Our work at the TechCast Project 

shows that the Global MegaCrisis is 

the inevitable result of high-tech globalization 

that is causing what we 

call a “global crisis of maturity.” This 

is a critical growth phase in the life 

cycle of the planet, marked by unprecedented 

transition points in climate 

change, energy consumption, 

economic systems, and all other facets 

of an emerging global order. We 

also believe that the relentless advance 

of information technology is 

driving a transition to an advanced 

stage of civilization powered by new 

technologies, interrelated global sys- 

tems, adaptive social institutions, 

mounting knowledge and intelligence, 

and global consciousness. 

By combining our 70 forecasts of 

technology breakthroughs, we are 

able to produce “macroforecasts” 

that suggest that the Muddling Up 

scenario could occur in about 10 

years, give or take three years. 

Worldwide e-commerce is likely to 

take off in about five years to form a 

rudimentary version of the “global 

brain” that futurists have long anticipated. 

Around 2020 or so, we are 

likely to see second-generation computing 

(optical, nano, bio, and quantum) 

and artificial intelligence that 

can automate routine knowledge. 

These developments will enable 

people to concentrate on values, beliefs, 

ideologies, and other higher 

levels of thought and to focus most 

of their attention on solving crucial 

global challenges. This constitutes 

the next logical phase in the progression 

of society from agriculture to 

manufacturing, services, knowledge, 

and even consciousness itself. 

The central role of IT/AI is a game 

changer because it shifts the relationship 

between humans and machines 

in profound ways. Contrary to the 

assertion that AI will surpass human 

abilities, AI liberates us from mental 

drudgery and releases the unique 

human capability for higher consciousness 

at the very time that the 

world faces unprecedented challenges. 

This is hardly a coincidence, 

but rather the playing out of historic 

forces in the evolutionary cycle. 

Sure, there will be lots of information 

overload and confusion, because 

the world is struggling to take 

responsibility for its future or suffer 

enormous consequences. However, 

pollster John Zogby’s research 

shows a “fundamental reorientation 

of the American character: away 

from wanton consumption and toward 

a new global citizenry in an 

age of limited resources.” 

Events are likely to culminate 

around 2020, when we expect IT/AI 

to mature and the threats to reach intolerable 

levels as the global GDP almost 

doubles. Yes, the situation 

looks bleak, but it’s always darkest 

just before the dawn. The rise of consciousness 

can be seen even now in 

the way the economic crisis has pro- 

voked a widespread awareness of 

the need to transform business and 

government institutions, stabilize 

the world’s financial system, promote 

renewable energy, and halt climate 

change. 

It is not possible to know much 

more about this coming “Age of 

Global Awareness,” just as we never 

could have guessed that the Information 

Age would entail us being 

virtually inseparable from our PCs, 

laptops, and smart phones for practically 

every waking hour. I suspect 

we will use what I call “Technologies 

of Consciousness” to see us through 

the crisis of maturity. 

Technologies of Consciousness 

(ToC) are methods that shape awareness, 

emotions, values, beliefs, ideologies, 

choices, and states of mind. 

The ToCs in this survey range from 

so-called “hard” ToCs, such as artificial 

intelligence, biofeedback, virtual 

reality, and even cybernetic brain enhancements, 

to “soft” or “social” 

ToCs, such as collaborative enterprise, 

conflict resolution, and even 

meditation and prayer. 

The key tool in the ToC arsenal is 

the little-used power of collaborative 

problem solving. In a knowledge 

society, collaboration creates new solutions 

that can benefit all parties, 

but this is not yet well recognized. 

Maybe this collaborative article can 

serve as a small example. 

When we (Michael Marien and 

myself) started working together 

on this project, I thought many 

times that we could not go on because 

our views were so strikingly 

at odds. We were dealing with a 

tough issue, of course, but the 

problem was exacerbated because 

both of us have thought about 

futures for many decades, but from 

different perspectives. One of us is 

guardedly optimistic, while the 

other is decidedly pessimistic (albeit 

hoping to be proven wrong). 

By examining our differences in the 

light of compromise, we made important 

breakthroughs. Collaboration 

is a powerful approach to 

problem solving—and possibly the 

single best way to resolve the 

Global MegaCrisis. Technologies of 

Consciousness such as those mentioned 

above could greatly encourage 

collaboration. 


Marien’s Analysis: 

Infoglut, Ignorance, Indecision, 

and Inadequacy 

The two of us agree that both a 

Global MegaCrisis and an IT/AI explosion 

are under way, and that 

there are other technology revolutions 

ahead, as nicely summarized 

by the TechCast Project. The question 

is: Will the IT/AI explosion 

make things better? It is indeed “a 

game changer,” and it will change 

many games—for good and ill. It 

could bring convergence of thinking 

about important global issues and 

move attention to “higher levels of 

consciousness.” It is also just as 

likely to cause further information 

and growing inadequacy.” As a consequence, 

I rate the four scenarios as 

follows: Decline to Disaster, 20%; 

Muddling Down, 60%; Muddling Up, 

20%; and Rise to Maturity, 0%. 

Certainly there is more consciousness 

about global issues nowadays, 

and some actions are being taken to 

improve global governance. There is 

growing awareness of climate 

change. The “greening” of communities, 

businesses, and governments is 

under way in many places, and there 

is a veritable gold rush to develop a 

wide variety of clean energy technologies 

(for example, ExxonMobil’s recent 

claimed investment of $600 million 

to produce liquid fuels from 

algae). And yet the latest assessglut, 

fragmentation, degraded consciousness, 

indecision, and, ultimately, 

half-baked inadequate action. 

Based on the first decade or so 

of the Internet and vastly expanded 

information abundance of all sorts, I 

see no reason for unfettered optimism, 

which is simply wishful 

thinking in the end. 

In my essay “Futures Thinking and 

Macro-Systems: Our Era of Mal- 

Adaptive, Non-Adaptive, and Semi- 

Adaptive Systems” (World Future Review, 

April-May 2009), I argue that 

our increasingly complex social systems 

are adapting in the wrong direction, 

not adapting at all, or only 

partly adapting, which could well result 

in the paradox of “improvement 

Recently Published Books 

Other perspectives on the Global MegaCrisis 

To provide a broader sense of the MegaCrisis, we offer 

a summary of the problem as seen by a variety of 

prominent futurists and other writers. 

It is important to realize that there is no shared language 

on the general global condition. Nor is there any 

shared approach. Some writers use a balanced perspective 

that looks at both pessimistic and optimistic indicators, 

but most decidedly take one side or the other. 

Here is a sampling of both general overviews and onesided 

views. 

Perhaps the best starting point is the “State of the 

Future Index” in the Millennium Project’s annual State 

of the Future report, assembled by Jerome C. Glenn, 

Theodore J. Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu (The Millennium 

Project, 2010). The Index reviews 30 trends to 

provide a “report card for humanity,” divided into four 

categories: where we are winning (improved literacy 

rate, more Internet users, improved life expectancy, 

etc.), where we are losing (fossil fuel emissions, unemployment, 

terrorist attack casualties, etc.), where there 

is little change (HIV prevalence, for example), and 

where there is uncertainty (infectious diseases, for example). 

How the trends are weighted is problematic, 

however, and there is doubt as to whether the 30 indicators 

cover all essential developments. 

A recent report prepared by the Rockefeller Foundation, 

along with Peter Schwartz and the Global Business 

Network, parallels somewhat the four single-axis 

scenarios presented in our article. Scenarios for the 

Future of Technology and International Development (2010) 

provides four scenarios for the next decade or so in a 

2x2 matrix along two axes: strong versus weak political/economic 

alignment, and low versus high adaptive 

capacity. The scenarios are “Hack Attack” (an unstable 

and shock-prone world, with weak governments, thriving 

criminality, and dangerous technologies), “Lock 

Step” (tighter top-down government control after a 

2012 pandemic, with limited innovation and growing 

citizen pushback), “Smart Scramble” (an economically 

depressed world, with local makeshift solutions and 

“good enough” technology addressing a growing set of 

problems), and “Clever Together” (a world of highly 

coordinated and successful strategies addressing global 

issues). A free PDF is available at www.RockFound.org; 

Global Foresight Books selected this as its Book of the 

Month for November 2010. 

Essential reading, as always, is provided by Lester R. 

Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, in World 

on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic 

Collapse (W.W. Norton, 2011). He warns that “ecological 

and economic deficits are now shaping not only our 

future, but our present. … [T]he ‘perfect storm’ or the 

‘ultimate recession’ could come at any time.” 

In The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will 

Change Everything (for the Better) (Bloomsbury USA, 

2011), Paul Gilding, a faculty member of the Cambridge 

University Program for Sustainability Leadership, sees 

loss, suffering, and conflict in the coming decades, as 

our “planetary overdraft is paid,” but believes that 

compassion, innovation, resilience, and adaptability 

will win out. 

John L. Petersen, founder of The Arlington Institute, 

focuses on a wide range of converging global trends, 

breakdowns, and breakthroughs in A Vision for 2012: 

Planning for Extraordinary Change (Fulcrum, 2008), concluding 

with an exploration of various possibilities after 

a massive catastrophe, ranging from a failed global 

system to a new world of global cooperation and har- 


ments of climate experts are increasingly 

dire—thus, “improvement and 

growing inadequacy” seems likely. 

The biggest blind spot in the IT/AI 

vision has to do with governance. In 

the “Rise to Maturity” scenario, governments 

and corporations do the 

right thing—and are supported by 

the public. This happens even in the 

more likely “Muddling Up” scenario. 

It may be desirable, but it is not likely 

in our chaotic new information environment 

of tweets, twitters, trivia, 

sound bites, floods of e‐mails, superficiality, 

commercialism, and ever 

more fragmentation. Huge deficits, 

run up by many governments, are 

leading to draconian cuts in essential 

services and inattention to decaying 

or inadequate infrastructure, while 

fueling overreactionary fears that we 

are headed toward fiscal ruin, “evil” 

socialism, and/or unwelcome centralized 

global government. 

Also, despite the hyperabundance 

of information, there is no evidence 

that people are better informed 

about current affairs today than they 

were in the past. Newspapers and 

magazines are closing down or 

shrinking their coverage of national 

and global issues. In the United 

States, financially stressed schools 

and colleges are still deficient in 

civic education, let alone serious 

futures education, and socioeconomic 

inequalities continue to grow. 

We may still see some shift to en- 

lightened views, but, more likely 

than not, too little too late. And it 

may well be offset or rolled back by 

simplistic reactionary movements. 

Granted, Facebook and Twitter 

have sparked a spectacular and welcome 

string of regime changes in the 

Middle East. However, once the postdictator 

euphoria passes, the harsh 

realities of rising prices and a bulging 

youth population in need of employment 

may lead to further discontent. 

This is not “doom and gloom,” but 

mainstream social-science thinking, 

based on my synthesis of hundreds of 

recent books on environmental issues, 

governance, IT impacts, and education. 

Perhaps we can return to an undisputed 

path of evolutionary progress, 

mony with nature. His brief version, “A New End, A 

New Beginning,” appears in the World Future Society’s 

2009 conference volume, Innovation and Creativity in a 

Complex World. 

Another and still broader view of world-scale systems 

crises and civic collapse by the 2020s, to be followed 

by “our maturity as a species,” is provided by 

Duane Elgin in The Living Universe (Berrett-Koehler, 

2009). 

Acceleration: The Forces Driving Human Progress by 

Ronald G. Havelock (Prometheus Books, 2011) makes a 

strong and thoughtful case for long-term progress of 

humanity, and a somewhat successful attempt to address 

various “fears for the future.” However, the 15- 

page annotated bibliography is a bit spotty, with favorable 

comments on Julian Simon and John Naisbitt, 

negative reviews of Paul Ehrlich and the 1972 Limits to 

Growth report, and no consideration of Lester R. Brown 

and current thinking of the vast majority of climate scientists. 

An upbeat view looking beyond the Great Recession 

is provided by urbanist Richard Florida in The Great Reset: 

How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post- 

Crash Prosperity (Harper, 2010). This is countered with 

the grim view of Dystopia: What Is to Be Done? by Canadian 

sociologist Gary Potter (CreateSpace, 2010), who 

sees capitalist-driven disaster already afflicting at least 

one billion people and coming soon for the rest of us. 

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by 

UCLA geography professor Jared Diamond (Penguin, 

2005) was a best-seller for more than six months and is 

still relevant. Our Final Century: The 50/50 Threat to Humanity’s 

Survival by UK Royal Astronomer and Cambridge 

professor Martin Rees (Basic Books, 2003) covers 

a broad range of science and technology risks and is 

also still very relevant. 

Severe climate change scenarios in particular deserve 

our attention. Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and 

National Security Implications of Climate Change, edited 

by Kurt M. Campbell of the Center for a New American 

Security (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), offers three 

plausible scenarios: Expected Climate Change by 2040, 

Severe Climate Change by 2040, and Catastrophic Climate 

Change in the 2040-2100 period, as average global 

temperatures rise to 5.6°C above 1990 levels. 

In a more popular style, former U.S. Assistant Secretary 

of Energy Joseph J. Romm provides three scenarios 

in Hell and High Water (Morrow, 2007) on developments 

in three periods: 2000-2025, 2025-2050, and 2050-2100 

(when a sea level rise of 20–80 feet will be “all but 

unstop pable” if current trends continue). A longer-term 

view of our world in 2050, 2100, and 2300 is enabled by 

University of Washington geologist Peter D. Ward in 

The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World without Ice Caps 

(Basic Books, 2010), who argues that sea-level rise will 

happen no matter what we do. 

Our own previous contributions to thinking about 

the MegaCrisis include Democracy in the 21st Century by 

Michael Marien (Future Survey Mini-Guide #3, 2008), on 

problems of democracy and today’s ill-informed citizens, 

and Technology’s Promise by William E. Halal 

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), which covers TechCast 

forecasts of the technology revolution. 

—William E. Halal and Michael Marien 

Note: Longer reviews of many of these books are 

available online at GlobalForesightBooks.org. 


Defining and Anticipating the 

Global MegaCrisis 

How to Define the Global MegaCrisis 

At the personal level, it is a MegaCrisis to lose one’s 

home, job, and/or spouse. At the community level, a city 

or state (like Haiti) reeling from high unemployment 

and/or a natural disaster is in a MegaCrisis. In a broader 

sense, a MegaCrisis is more than a “catastrophe,” and it 

can bring about a natural turning point in social evolution. 

It is thus not only a threat but may also be an opportunity. 

The Global MegaCrisis is a constellation of major issues 

such as climate change, ecological collapse, economic 

depression, nuclear threats, and/or high-impact 

wild cards that threaten civilization. Worth noting is that, 

in the most hopeful scenario, the Global MegaCrisis 

could initiate the creation of an advanced stage of development 

based on knowledge, high technology, and 

global community. 

How to Understand the Global MegaCrisis 

Trends such as those listed in this article suggest that 

we are moving toward a MegaCrisis, and there are many 

other indicators to consider as well. If Iran demonstrates 

a nuclear bomb, for example, this would heighten the 

chances of war, which could destabilize the Middle East 

and deepen a global MegaCrisis. Many would argue that 

failed or failing states, such as Somalia and Haiti, are already 

in a condition of MegaCrisis. There will always be 

contending perspectives when it comes to anticipating 

crises and gauging their severity. However, avoiding the 

issue, forestalling painful but necessary changes, or simply 

thinking, “it can’t happen here” will increase the 

probability of catastrophe. 

What Might Happen When the Global MegaCrisis 

Arrives? 

Could it be the beginning of “The End” (complete extinction 

or major decline in civilization)? Or could such a 

breakdown ultimately lead to a breakthrough—a shift in 

global consciousness, for example—as Ervin Laszlo and 

others have postulated? Such a transition could be rapid 

or slow. It could be a clear upturn or downturn, or mixed 

paths, as in our “Muddling Down” and “Muddling Up” 

scenarios. The uncertainty is huge. What is certain is that 

sharply differing visions of what is likely to happen will 

be hotly contested, as illustrated in this article. 

—William E. Halal and Michael Marien 

“We may still see some 

shift to enlightened views, 

but, more likely than not, 

too little too late.” (Marien) 

but it will require a major restructuring 

of industrial-era knowledge and education/learning, 

especially adult/voter 

learning, and serious consideration of 

ethics and the quality of public discourse. 

What Halal refers to as “Technologies 

of Consciousness” are not a 

solution in and of themselves. 

Your Turn 

You have now encountered four 

scenarios and two differing arguments 

about which direction the 

world is heading in. Now it’s your 

turn to think and respond—and to 

encourage others to do the same. We 

invite readers to take the MegaCrisis 

Survey at www.TechCast.org. ❑ 

Halal Marien 

About the Authors 

William E. Halal is professor emeritus at 

George Washington University and president 

of TechCast LLC (www.TechCast.org). 

Portions of this article are adapted from his 

forthcoming book, Through the MegaCrisis: 

The Technology Revolution to a World of 

Knowledge, Intelligence, and Global Consciousness. 

Michael Marien is the founder and former 

editor of Future Survey, published by WFS 

for 30 years, and is now the director of 

GlobalForesightBooks.org. 

Despite their differences, Halal and 

Marien share the common bond of having 

studied for advanced degrees at the University 

of California, Berkeley. 

The authors gratefully acknowledge contributions 

to this analysis by Jerome C. 

Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, 

and Mike MacCracken, chief scientist at the 

Climate Institute. Readers are invited to 

take the MegaCrisis Survey at www.Tech- 

Cast.org. E-mail comments to halal@gwu 

.edu and mmarien@twcny.rr.com. 


The Top 20 

(Plus 5) 

Technologies 

for the 

World Ahead 

By James H. Irvine and 

Sandra Schwarzbach 

Breakthroughs now emerging in biotechnology, 

robotics, and other key areas bear the potential 

to reshape life on Earth. Two military analysts 

describe the 20 innovations that will have 

the biggest impacts in the near future, 

plus five prospective technologies that 

could have major repercussions in the 

longer term. 


A 

bout 10 years ago, we at the 

Naval Air Warfare Center in 

Southern California set out 

to determine how emerging technologies 

might change armed conflict 

over the next 25 to 50 years. We selected 

200 new technological applications, 

projecting out their growth 

and how they might influence future 

military strategy and warfare. 

Our conclusion: These technologies 

would be major drivers of not 

only future military affairs, but of 

virtually all of human life. From 

these 200, we examine here what we 

consider the top 20 innovations that 

will have the greatest effect in the 

near term; in addition, we’ve selected 

five other feasible technological 

developments that could significantly 

change our world in the more 

distant future. 

1. Computer Technology 

Computing power has increased 

by a factor of 10 6 since 1959. Based 

on present-day central processing 

technology, we can expect a 10 8 further 

improvement in the next 30 to 

40 years. Advances of up to 10 18 (100 

quintillion) could result, if any of the 

following innovations (which already 

exist at the laboratory level) 

undergo further development: 

• Parallel processing. 

• Advanced computer architecture. 

• Special function processing 

chips. 

• Special function analysis chips. 

Such a level of enhanced computer 

performance would require much 

more advanced production technologies, 

including new chip production 

technologies; new types of computer 

chips, circuit elements, and computer 

architectures and software; 

and a projected 10 5 improvement in 

telecommunications-transmission 

rates over the next 25 years. 

2. Ubiquitous Computing 

Household appliances and many 

other items in our everyday lives 

will be embedded with cheap and 

barely detectable microchips, sen- 

sors, microcontrollers, and microprocessors 

that sense our presence, 

anticipate our wishes, and read our 

emotions. Imbued with these tiny 

yet powerful computing components, 

appliances and consumer 

products will become “intelligent.” 

They will interconnect and communicate 

with each other via network 

grids. 

The ubiquitous-computing phenomenon 

will be further enabled by 

three new technologies: 

• MEMS. Micro-electro-mechanical 

systems integrate items such as 

sensors, computers, data storage, 

and transmission systems onto a 

single computer chip. MEMS are 

small, low mass, lightweight, low 

power, and easy to mass produce. 

They also measure a wide range of 

physical phenomena, such as acceleration, 

inertia, and vibration. They 

can be analytical instruments to 

measure biological or physical states 

and can also be active response systems. 

• Bots. Formally known as semiintelligent 

specialized agent software 

programs, bots can automatically 

sort data based on set preferences, 

keep track of specific dynamic data 

sets (such as checkbook balances or 

inventories), maintain schedules and 

calendars, and track movement of 

things and people while integrating 

them with outside events. Bots are 

also capable of interacting with other 

computer software and other bots on 

their own initiative to accomplish 

tasks independently of a human 

user. 

The general deployment of bots is 

projected to occur in the next seven 

to 10 years, pending the rollout of 

more advanced processor hardware. 

Masses of bots and bots-inhabited 

equipment will work together without 

human initiative—or even human 

knowledge—to automate large 

portions of society’s routine activities. 

Bots will also manage computer 

networks. By 2025, the Internet will 

have evolved into a bot-coordinated, 

bot-directed “information grid” that 

connects billions of devices, nodes, 

and sensors to each other. Under bot 

management, the Internet will be 

much more dynamic than it is today. 

• Swarm technology. Network 

command-and-control system architecture 

will be very unlike that of 

networks today. The ability to understand 

and manage the collective 

movements, reactions, and interactions 

of masses of interconnected 

items will be critical. Swarm technology—i.e., 

decentralized arrays of 

agents or programs interacting locally 

with one another and with 

their surroundings, thus carrying 

out “intelligent” large-scale behavior 

(much like an ant colony, bacterial 

culture, or school of fish)—will be 

important in the near future for controlling 

and managing this new system. 

3. 

Human Language 

Interface for Computers 

Another great technological advance 

of the next 20 years will be the 

development of computers with 

human-language interfaces that fully 

comprehend human words—both 

spoken and written—and their 

meanings and that will talk, listen, 

and read aloud in humanlike voices. 

Some applications will permit information 

retrieval using natural language 

and automated foreign language 

translation for print and 

voice. Also, semi-intelligent personal 

search agents will use humanlanguage 

interfaces to search the Internet’s 

databases and archives to 

compile information in specialized 

fields of knowledge and areas of interest 

based on the human user’s 

specific interests and wishes. 

The human language computer interface 

could potentially transform 

society from a written culture to one 

relying more on verbal interactions. 

This interface will also automate a 

large number of voice-based activities, 

such as placing orders, asking 

directions, and executing verbal instructions 

to perform complex tasking. 

The education system and service 

area will both become more 

automated. 

4. Machine Vision 

Machine vision that will become 

available in five to 15 years will 

grow more sophisticated over time. 


The Socio-Technological Age Progression 

Agricultural Age 

Developed machine vision will have 

capability far beyond the range of 

the human eye (infrared, ultraviolet, 

multispectral). Robotic systems 

equipped with machine vision will 

recognize, classify, sort, and manipulate 

objects and respond to changes 

in their environments in unique 

ways. They will be put to a wide variety 

of industrial, laboratory, and 

surveillance uses, such as automatic 

guidance systems for vehicles and 

accident avoidance systems for machinery. 

5. Robot Technology 

We are now in the process of developing 

human-directed, virtual 

presence machines capable of 

remote-controlled movement and 

manipulation of objects. These devices 

are often called robots, which 

they are not. The technology to build 

real robots is on the way, however. 

In the near-term future, our world 

will be driven by two emerging technologies 

that are advancing simultaneously: 

robotics and biotechnology. 

These technologies will overtake information 

technology and give us a 

new Socio-Technological Age around 

the year 2025. This new age will continue 

for 50-plus years. 

The technologies needed to build 

Robotic-Biotech Age 

Information Age 

Post-Industrial Age 

Industrial Age 

4000 BC AD 1740 1960 1995 2025 2050 2075? 

robots that can perceive their surroundings, 

move themselves, and 

perform tasks without human oversight 

should reach fruition between 

2015 and 2025. By 2040, robotlike 

machinery will inhabit the world 

alongside people, doing much of the 

work. 

As robots enter the mainstream, 

they will probably exert major economic 

and societal impacts. On the 

positive side, labor productivity will 

vastly increase, which could be lifesaving 

as populations of retirees will 

swell in the developed world. Replacing 

the retiring labor force with 

high-tech robotic equipment will ensure 

that economies remain productive 

enough to support their retirees. 

Additionally, hundreds of thousands 

of new jobs could become available 

for human professionals who possess 

the skills to program robot-tohuman 

interface systems, movement 

control, harm-avoidance systems, 

vision packages, tasking systems, 

and speech-recognition programs. 

At the same time, major disruptions 

of the world’s workforces 

could result. Studies estimate that 

robots could replace as much as onethird 

to one-half of human labor in 

some industrial and service sectors. 

Additionally, robot technology could 

almost completely take over agriculture 

and displace most, if not all, of 

the world’s farm workers. Even 

worse, this precipitous fall in human 

labor will probably occur at a rapid 

pace: in about a five- to seven-year 

period. 

6. Telecommunications 

Revolution 

Mass interconnection of computerized 

data systems has enabled 

people and machines to talk to each 

other at high data rates. These data 

rates will get progressively higher 

over the next half century. Optical fiber 

network transmission systems 

will continuously increase their capacities 

and reach transmission capabilities 

as high as 100 terabytes per 

s e c o n d o n c e n e w p h o t o n i c s 

switches, photonics circuit elements, 

optical routers, and plasmon 

switches—all now under development—go 

into widespread use. This 

will ultimately produce a seamless, 

all-optical network for data communications 

four to five times more 

powerful than the current one. 

The next telecommunications revolution 

will offer mass sharing and 

transfer of databases, unrestricted 

worldwide communications and an 

ability to locate and communicate 

with anyone, a much higher diffusion 

of work via telecommuting, 

rapid and widespread dissemination 

of knowledge (unlimited access for 

everyone to the sum total of knowledge 

of the human race), and a much 

wider variety and availability of education 

and entertainment. 

7. Fullerene Chemistry 

In September 1985, Nobel Prize– 

winning chemist Rick Smalley discovered 

the original C 60 

molecule, 

buckminsterfullerene (“buckyballs”), 

which comprised 60 pure carbon atoms. 

In 1990, a means to mass produce 

buckyballs was discovered, 

making them available for largescale 

study and establishing the new 

field of fullerene chemistry. Since 

then, chemists have learned not only 

how to form fullerene molecules, but 

also how to attach other kinds of 

molecules to them and build new 

structures and materials, such as 

nanotubes and graphene. 


Nanotubes are hollow, tubelike 

structures composed of carbon atoms. 

They are very strong under linear 

tensile loads, conduct electricity 

with little resistance, can store items 

in their hollow interiors, can filter 

substances that pass through them, 

and conduct heat better than any 

other known material. Researchers 

are exploring carbon nanotubes’ potential 

commercial uses as fiber in 

composite structures, as superconductive 

wire, and as a storage 

medium for hydrogen fuel. Other 

uses may include transport mechanisms 

for fluids in and out of the 

body, as molecular sieves and filters, 

superconducting interconnections on 

circuit chips, computer memory storage 

devices, thermal regulators, and 

small electric plasma guns. 

Graphene, first produced in a lab 

in 2004, is a flat, two-dimensional 

carbon fullerene consisting of a carbon 

sheet just a few atoms thick that 

can be extended indefinitely along 

its edges. It is an amazingly good 

conductor of electricity and has 

many potential uses in the electronics 

and semiconductor industries. 

Graphene ribbons made on an industrial 

scale, for example, could be 

used as connectors on computer 

chips. An experimental nanoscale 

graphene transistor was first demonstrated 

in a laboratory in April 2008. 

Large-scale production of graphene 

wafers could produce a new 

class of semi-superconducting substrate 

with which to build computer 

chips. This would make possible 

several revolutionary advances in 

chip technology: development of a 

superconducting substrate layer to 

connect components, processing elements, 

and multiple core dies and 

development of graphene-based 

super conducting transistors. 

Graphene wafers might also make 

Johnson junctions, induction 

switches, and “Y” switches work at 

room temperature. These three devices 

are three times faster than transistors, 

but at present they only work 

at cryogenic temperatures. If, by using 

graphene wafers, engineers successfully 

made them work at room 

temperature, they could create extremely 

efficient electrical networks 

that would not require active switching—i.e., 

fewer moving parts and 

fewer resources required. 

8. 

Multi-Level Coding 

System in DNA 

Scientists now recognize that DNA 

has at least six levels of coding. 

Some birth defects, cancers, and 

other genetic disorders may not actually 

be the result of genes themselves, 

but of coding errors in these 

Emergence of the New Social Structure 

Agricultural Age 

Social Structure 

Aristocracy 

Intellectuals & Artists 

Merchants 

Artists & Craftsmen 

Agricultural Workers 

Industrial Age Social 

Structure 

Upper Class 

Intellectuals & Knowledge Workers 

Merchants 

Post-Industrial Age 


Upper Class 

Intellectuals & Artists 

Merchants & 

Entrepreneurs 

Urban Bohemians 

Information Age 


Upper & Ruling Class 

Intellectuals 

Developers of Intellectual Goods 

Cultural Sycophants 

Entrepreneurs 

Robotic-Biotech Age 


Upper & Ruling Class 

Intellectuals 

Developers of 

Intellectual Goods 

Cultural Sycophants 

Entrepreneurs 

Industrial Workers 

Skill & Knowledge 

Workers 

Knowledge Workers Sub-Class 


Workers 

Knowledge Workers Sub-Class 

System Knowledge Workers 

Sub-Class 


Workers 

Retirees 

Bio-Med Sub-Class 

Bio-Med Sub-Class 


Service Workers 

Retirees 


Agricultural Population 


Retirees 


Agricultural Population 


Working Poor 


Social Wards 

Working Poor 

(unskilled but trainable for 

routine tasks) 

Social Wards 

Under Class 


Working Poor 

(unskilled but trainable for 

routine tasks) 

Social Wards 

Under Class 


outer layers of the DNA system. 

Some of the “non-gene” control layers 

may be easier to manipulate than 

the classic, first-line gene layer. Recent 

discoveries have opened several 

new lines of genetic research, making 

this the dawn of a new era in 

molecular genetics. 

9. 

Biotech Analysis 

Instrumentation 

At present, only about 40% of the 

population reacts favorably to a new 

drug. The rest have either minimal 

reaction or adverse reactions. As 

knowledge of human bio-metabochemicals, 

but how to interpret the 

results. Too few tests have been conducted 

to establish the normal level 

of most of these chemicals in the human 

body. By the mid-twenty-first 

century, we will have enough data 

analyzed to tell what chemicals, proteins, 

and enzymes are normal in the 

human body; whether their physical 

form is a mutation or merely a normal 

statistical variation; and 

whether certain measurements are 

metabolic disorders or just normal 

variations of human metabolism. 

This information will have a significant 

impact on health. 

10. 

“Biochemists’ ultimate goal — of 

a full-scale biochemical computer 

model of human genetics, biochemistry, 

and all their interactions — 

will be available within 10 to 20 

years.” 

Development of new instruments 

to examine biological phenomena is 

revolutionizing the fields of biological 

research and medicine. One of 

the most important new instruments 

is the DNA microarrays, which are 

compact robotic systems that detect 

DNA and other biochemical matter. 

Modern microarrays’ detector systems 

are made with postage-stampsized 

coated glass wafers. Each wafer 

includes a grid of strands of DNA 

that only bind to their complementary 

DNA matches (or alternatively, 

dots of some biochemical reagent). 

The grid elements can measure the 

presence and level of a given gene or 

gene product (mutants, abnormal 

variants, dysfunctional genes) in a 

sample. These wafers can also find 

and analyze chemical and biological 

compounds within the body. Current 

machines are only capable of statistical 

samples. Scientists would like a 

machine capable of analyzing the entire 

human genome and its biochemical 

environment with all its variants 

in a single pass. It will probably be 

the late 2020s before a full human 

body biochemical scan can be performed. 

At present, however, our greater 

challenge is not how to detect the 

Human Biogenetic– 

Chemical Computer Model 

New biotechnology and computer 

science breakthroughs are revealing 

the body’s biochemical 

secrets 

and spurring creation 

of new methods 

for attacking 

metabolic and genetic 

disorders. We 

have begun to examine 

the body’s 

biochemical nature 

t o d e t e r m i n e 

whether it is functioning 

correctly 

and is in balance 

and to determine 

what effect this balance 

or imbalance has on health. 

Biochemists’ ultimate goal—of a 

full-scale biochemical computer 


and all their interactions—will 

be available within 10 to 20 years. 

The amount of data and calculations 

involved will require a larger computer 

than available today, but this 

deficiency will be overcome within 

that time. 

By the mid-twenty-first century, 

we will have a working computer 


and major portions of their 

interactions. This will permit the 

modeling of an individual’s genetics 

and biochemistry, which can be used 

to diagnose and isolate individual 

biochemical deficiencies, including a 

number of conditions that today 

may be considered psychological but 

are actually statistical variations in 

metabolism. This will also be used to 

determine the effect of drugs and 

nutrients. 

11. 

Treatment of Hereditary 

Diseases 

The human race is now afflicted 

by some 4,000 hereditary diseases 

caused by genetic abnormalities. 

These diseases have until now 

largely been untreatable. However, 

the new knowledge of gene structure 

and function could possibly lead to 

new treatments. Eventually, genetic 

intervention could prevent or treat a 

large number of diseases. More successful 

treatments might be possible 

via selected artificial protein therapy 

and/or micronutrients. 

It is also possible that this new biotech 

knowledge will uncover a variety 

of “minor” genetic diseases that 

people haven’t recognized or have 

assumed to be normal variations. 

Since these minor diseases affect a 

larger portion of the working population 

than the major hereditary disorders 

do, mitigating or curing them 

could lead to bigger increases in 

workforce productivity and performance. 

12. 

Control of Bio-Metabolic 

Disorders 

New means will arise to measure 

how the body is working at a biochemical 

level and to assess the 

body’s biochemicals (types and 

amounts) and whether the body metabolism 

displays proper balance. 

Biochemical “retuning” will treat a 

number of chronic, long-term conditions—including 

Parkinson’s disease, 

Alzheimer’s, and possibly even 

the aging process itself—by supplying 

chemical compounds that the patient’s 

body does not have in order 

to realign the biochemical functions. 

13. 

Blood and Tissue 

Matching of Drugs 

continued on page 15 


© LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LAB 

© LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LAB 

WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY 

Nanotechnology (#18): A nanoscale 

conveyor belt, composed of nanotubes, 

ferries atom-sized particles to a microscopic 

construction site where they can 

be assembled, one atom at a time, into 

molecular structures. This conveyor 

built, which was designed at the Lawrence 

Berkeley National Laboratory, exemplifies 

the nanotech manufacturing that 

Irvine and Schwarzbach expect will 

become commonplace in the next 10 to 

15 years. 

AIST 

Nanotechnology (#18): This nanomotor’s 

yellow rotor blades spin 

33,000 cycles per second on a nanotube 

axle. The device is virtually 

frictionless, so it will not wear down 

with use. Measuring about one threehundredths 

of the diameter of a human 

hair, it is the world’s smallest 

nanomotor, but its Lawrence Berkeley 

National Lab designers predict that 

versions five times smaller could be 

built in the future. Nanomotors such as 

this one lend credence to Irvine and 

Schwarzbach’s forecast that nanotubes 

may serve many engineering uses. 

Tissue Engineering (#15): This 

artificial liver, made with real, 

living human cells, is held on 

display at the Wake Forest 

University Baptist Medical Center, 

in North Carolina, where a 

university medical research team 

constructed it. It is an example of 

the many replacement organs 

that Irvine and Schwarzbach 

hope medical teams will soon be 

able to compose in their labs. 

© HDW 

Robot Technology (#5): The humanlike 

HRP-4 robot, developed by the 

Japanese government’s National 

Institute of Advanced Industrial Science 

and Technology, in conjunction with 

Japanese firm Kawada Technologies, 

has enough range of motion in its arms 

to lift a soda bottle and pour its contents 

into a glass. Robots will continue 

to gain capability and take up more 

types of work for their human creators, 

according to Irvine and Schwarzbach. 

Fuel Cells (#20): Hydrogen fuel cells power this Class 214 submarine, built by 

German designer Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH (HDW). Since hydrogen 

fuel cells will keep a submarine running for days at a time under water, Irvine and 

Schwarzbach believe that they will make large-scale ocean colonization easier to 

achieve. 


continued from page 13 

lism advances, however, clinicians 

will learn to group patients into biometabolism 

classes and tissue-type 

groups to determine who will benefit 

from a specific drug and who will 

have adverse reactions. Use of biometabolism 

classes and tissue-type 

groups will be widespread by 2050 

and result in increased drug effectiveness, 

fewer negative drug reactions, 

and lower drug-treatment 

costs. 

“Understanding how the brain operates 

on an individual basis will 

permit society to match the individual 

to task performance, to individualize 

educational programs, and to 

identify and mitigate mental illness.” 

14. Tissue Engineering 

The creation of self-replicating biomaterials 

for healing wounds and 

bone fractures, including the combining 

of synthetic materials and 

structures with living cells, is another 

area of scientific exploration. 

Tissue engineering will revolutionize 

body and wound repair, organ transplantation, 

and surgery in general. 

New polymers that satisfy safety 

and effectiveness requirements are 

being researched and developed for 

many surgical uses, including tissue 

scaffolding, bone grafts, cartilage repair, 

tissue regeneration, wound repair, 

and tissue joining. Soon, artificial 

organs and body parts will be 

available for replacement surgery. 

Research programs are now under 

way to develop artificial ears, hearts, 

pancreases, lungs, kidneys, livers, 

and legs. 

15. Neurotechnology 

Neuroscientists have developed a 

set of scanners capable of determin- 

ing how and where the brain performs 

specific functions. The new 

brain-scanning and brain-mapping 

tools are opening up a whole new 

understanding of how humans think 

and act. Using them, researchers can 

observe brain activity, measure its 

intensity, chart the general pattern of 

brain operation, and identify the 

type of chemical reactions occurring 

in the brain. 

Brain-scanning technology will 

soon be upgraded by the use of 

atomic magnetometer sensors—a 

new magnetic sensor technology 

that uses cesium vapor as a sensing 

element. These devices are 100 times 

more sensitive and 1,000 times faster 

than present sensor elements. They 

will, with time, better discern how 

people think, how the brain performs 

tasks, how thought processes 

differ among individuals, and what 

those differences mean in relation to 

task performance and personality. 

The new knowledge of brain operation 

and its effects 

will be one of the 

major, socially transforming 

events of 

the twenty-first century. 

Understanding 

how the brain operates 

on an individual 

basis will permit 

society to match the 

individual to task 

performance, to individualize 

educational 

programs, 

and to identify and 

mitigate mental illness. 

16. Neuropharmacology 

We can now see the operation of 

the brain. We can also systematically 

study and measure the effects of nutrients, 

micronutrients, and drug 

treatments on the brain and on various 

mental conditions. This has led 

to the new science of neuropharmacology—the 

study of how we change 

the brain’s operation through the use 

of drugs, food, and other nutrients, 

micronutrients, and proteins. Over 

time, this field will apply knowledge 

of the brain’s biochemical operations 

to systematically treat mental disorders 

and mental conditions 

pharma ceutically, as well as enhance 

people’s natural mental abilities. 

17. Cellulose-to-Glucose 

Process 

One of the major goals of the biotech 

and chemical industry is the 

production of glucose, the principal 

food of many microorganisms, from 

cellulose. If cheap, plentiful glucose 

were available, microbes could be 

genetically engineered to make almost 

anything. An economical cellulose-to-glucose 

process would revolutionize 

the world’s chemical 

industries and allow the conversion 

of much agricultural cellulose-based 

waste into useful raw materials. 

18. Nanotechnology 

Instrumentation has begun to permit 

us to see and manipulate matter 

at a nano level—10 -6 to 10 -9 meter— 

the level of atoms and molecules. 

This has created the new field of 

nanotechnology. The ability to create 

smaller structures using modern 

chip-manufacturing technology will 

permit us to change and modify materials 

one atom or molecule at a 

time and to develop super-fine powders, 

quantum dots, and nanotubes. 

These capabilities have now started 

to shrink things into the “upper 

nano” range—a range that advancements 

in production technology will 

push us into over the next 10 to 15 

years. The scale of objects will continue 

to shrink, and some useful 

upper- nanoscale devices and phenomena 

will be developed and deployed. 

19. 

Chaos Theory and 

Complexity Models 

Our world is much more complex, 

interconnected, and dynamic than 

we once thought. New mathematical 

concepts are challenging the rationalized, 

deterministic, scientific 

models of the Industrial Age. The Industrial 

Age paradigm held that 

there is one best way to organize a 

given thing and that, in all cases, a 

given “rational” outcome is predetermined 

by nature. The new scientific 

paradigm will ultimately replace 

this older mentality. 


The new Information Age is being 

driven by applied technology and by 

two major advances in theoretical 

science that are altering our view of 

how the world works: an ecological/ 

ecosystem model, which supports 

ecological and environmental diversity, 

and modern chaos and complexity 

theories, which emphasize 

unpredictability, self-organizing systems, 

and the coexistence of the linear 

and the random. In the near 

term, this paradigm shift will significantly 

change people’s views of 

society, of themselves in relation to 

society, and of how the world and 

the greater universe work. 

20. 

Fuel Cells to Allow 

Deep-Sea Habitation 

A major effort is under way to develop 

advanced fuel cells for cars. 

The greatest social effect of fuel cells 

will not be in automobiles, however, 

but in the opening of the undersea 

world to exploration and habitation. 

Fuel cells that produce electricity directly, 

without producing toxic 

fumes as a byproduct, will bring 

down the costs of submarines and 

keep them running for days as opposed 

to hours. This will permit human 

exploration and—eventually— 

colonization of the continental 

shelves and the shallow oceans. 

Fuel cells will lead to the development 

of extensive deep-sea business 

sectors and myriad human habitations 

out in the ocean. Mining operations 

to exploit the shallow ocean 

floor’s mineral wealth, as well as 

commercial aquaculture enterprises 

to exploit the ocean’s biological resources, 

will follow. Earth’s available 

resource base will expand significantly, 

and Earth’s population— 

which could reach more than 9 billion 

people by mid-century (or even 

11 billion if medical advances extend 

average life spans)—will have much 

more room to grow. 

Five Future Technologies and 

The Problems They Could Solve 

Several technologies yet to come 

could significantly affect the nature 

of our world. Our top five are as follows: 

1. Superconductivity at room tem- 

perature. When certain metals and 

ceramics are cooled to ultra-low temperatures, 

they become superconductive—i.e., 

they can carry huge 

amounts of electrical current for long 

durations of time without losing any 

of the current’s energy as heat. Diverse 

work is going on in making 

materials superconductive 

at room 

temperature. If it 

succeeds, we could 

substantially increase 

the efficiency 

of electrical machines 

and power 

grids and also develop 

new types of 

computer chips, improved 

medical-imaging 

devices, and high-efficiency 

ion drives for space vehicles. 

2. Low-cost space lift. Lifting objects 

into orbit is expensive—a problem 

that slows human improvement 

in space capabilities. The advent of a 

cheap space lift would allow exponential 

growth, and perhaps a new 

technological age. It would be attainable 

either by politicians agreeing to 

the massive funding needed for such 

a development or by some unforeseen, 

dramatic technological breakthrough. 

Neither, however, can be 

guaranteed to happen within the 

next 25 years. 

3. Artificial intelligence of humanlevel 

capability in computers. The 

development and widespread use of 

AI of human-level capability in computer 

systems stands to be one of the 

major advances in computer technology 

over the next 75 years. AI claims 

have been made for 40 years, but to 

date, they have not delivered. Furthermore, 

there appears to be no current, 

fundamental breakthrough that 

will alter this in the near future. 

However, research grants bolster 

those who think that the big breakthrough 

is right around the corner. 

4. Cellulose-to-liquid-hydrocarbon 

path. A number of new, synthetic 

fuel processes can produce diesel 

fuels from agricultural products. The 

means now exist for converting vegetable 

oils into biodiesel fuel, protein 

matter into diesel oil, various agricultural 

substances into synthetic oil, 

and sugars and starches into fuelgrade 

ethyl alcohol. Unfortunately, 

“A successful low-grade, agriculturalproduct-to-fuel 

path would enrich agricultural 

economies throughout much 

of the world.” 

all these biosynthetic fuel processes 

are much more expensive than 

fossil-fuel generation, largely due to 

the costs of harvesting and processing. 

One lower-cost option may exist, 

however: converting low-end agricultural 

waste (largely cellulose) into 

synthetic oil. A number of experimental 

processes to derive fuel from 

cellulose waste are now in R&D. A 

successful low-grade, agriculturalproduct-to-fuel 

path would enrich 

agricultural economies throughout 

much of the world, and in addition 

make energy independence more 

attainable for communities everywhere. 

5. Improved medicine and life 

span. The question is not whether 

we are going to get some life-span 

extension, but how much: Will the 

extension be a moderate increase in 

life expectancy of 100 to 120 years, a 

significantly increased life expectancy 

of 150 to 170 years, or a very 

significant life extension of 250 to 

300 years? Conversely, radical life 

extension could lead to life spans of 

1,000-plus years. 

Life extension has both positive 

and negative social implications. It 

will alleviate suffering caused by age 

deterioration and will result in a 

longer-lived, more productive workforce. 

On the other hand, it may 

cause issues with pension plans, Social 

Security, life insurance, and other 

retirement programs. It could result 

in overpopulation, food shortages, 

pollution, wars for resources, and extinction 

of species. Another important 

consideration is that of control: Who 

would determine how this precious 

technology would be shared? 

The Effects of Emerging 

Technologies on Society 

As the technology areas covered in 


vated terror, and régime-based terror. 

Members of the emerging generation, 

operating under the new paradigm, 

are much more likely to see 

themselves as cellular automata— 

trying to optimize themselves in 

their environment—rather than as 

governors of the universe. Whether 

this is good for society as a whole is 

not yet known, but it will represent a 

new social viewpoint. 

New socio-technological ages tend 

to produce new social structures and 

new social mores. Historical precedent 

suggests that this new age will 

also produce a new and different societal 

basis for war and the use of 

military force, along with a new social 

perception of the legitimate application 

of war. 

“Technological progress alone is relatively slow at 

driving social change. However, the near future will 

see society change markedly as a result of new 

emerging technology and demography.” 

level, will require recognition that 

specialized knowledge is necessary 

and that all classes serve useful functions 

and are needed for society to 

operate properly. 

It is usually hard to change the direction 

of society, absent great social 

perturbations, such as war or economic 

disaster, which can force 

rapid social change. In an age of 

peace and prosperity, it takes a long 

time to modify social norms, regardless 

of the level of new technological 

progress that occurs. Technological 

progress alone is relatively slow at 

driving social change. However, the 

near future will see society change 

markedly as a result of new emerging 

technology and demography. 

This need not be any cause for 

alarm. With some exceptions, most 

of the changes described portend to 

be highly positive. Barring bad luck 

and bad management, the world 

will—when all the technologies are 

deployed—be a better place to live 

in. 

❑ 

this article advance along their individual 

development curves, their 

combined effect will remake society 

as we know it. Ultimately, they will 

give humankind two new sociotechnological 

ages in the first half of 

the twenty-first century: the Information 

Age and the Robotic-Biotech 

Age. The current Information Age, 

which should continue for the next 

20 to 40 years, is being driven by advances 

in computers, telecommunications, 

and electronic instrumentation, 

plus major advances in 

materials, space, energy, and manufacturing. 

The Robotic-Biotech Age will follow 

at around 2025, driven by the simultaneous 

advances of robotics and 

biotechnology, and reinforced by advances 

in nanotechnology, materials, 

and manufacturing technology. The 

Robotic-Biotech Age will continue 

for 50-plus years, until another great 

technology emerges as a new force 

in the world. 

The Information Age came on very 

quickly and will be relatively shortlived 

(about 50 years). Society and 

social structure will not have had the 

time to fully adjust before the next 

wave of technological innovation 

comes along. This speed of change is 

going to continue for the next 50 to 

75 years as the current wave of 

emerging technologies matures. 

In the twentieth century, many 

people viewed the philosophical 

movements to which they belonged 

(communism, fascism, various radical 

nationalisms, socialism, social democracy, 

liberalism, etc.) as belief systems 

that would and should govern 

how the world runs. In the name of 

these systems, 500 million people 

died by war, genocide, war-related 

famine and disease, politically moti- 

It is possible to project with some 

certainty the social structure of both 

the new Information Age and the 

Robotic-Biotech Age (see graph on 

page 19). With each transition to a 

more advanced stage of civilization, 

certain things transpire: 

• The social structure acquires an 

increasingly large number of small, 

specialized niches. 

• There is a significant increase in 

the number of players in the political 

power structure. 

• There is an increasing spread of 

knowledge out to the masses. 

• The average person’s standard 

of living goes up. 

• Human control over nature increases. 

As society has advanced, class 

structure has become more complex. 

In the later Information Age and 

Robotic- Biotech Age, there will be 

simply too many classes for a dominant 

one to emerge. The complexity 

of the new social structure, coupled 

with the rise in general knowledge 

Irvine 

Schwarzbach 

About the Authors 

James Irvine is director of the Revolution 

in Military Affairs Program at the Naval 

Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division 

(NAWCWD) in China Lake, California. He 

has worked as a systems engineer for the 

U.S. Navy for the last four decades, and 

has authored numerous studies on future 

military geopolitics and technology. E-mail 

james.irvine@navy.mil. 

Sandra Schwarzbach is senior strategic 

analyst for the Naval Air Warfare Center at 

China Lake, California. She advises the Office 

of the Secretary of Defense and the 

Chief of Naval Operations on security issues 

and contributes regularly to Department 

of Defense planning initiatives. She 

has also taught courses on military strategy 

development and participated in the design 

of multiple weapons and weapon systems. 

E-mail Sandra.schwarzbach@navy.mil. 


The Coming Robot 

By Steven M. Shaker 

Homo sapiens may have “won” the 

evolutionary race to perfect humankind, but 

artificial intelligence and robotics will 

evolve faster and farther. Rather than 

compete with them, we may do well to 

make them our allies and co-evolve, 

suggests a technology trend analyst. 

Some people believe that humanity’s 

evolutionary advance 

into the future is 

driven by how our genetic 

pool responds and adapts to climate 

change and cultural and societal dynamics. 

These external factors contributed 

to how we evolved in the 

past and became human. Extending 

that same evolutionary view forward 

by a few hundreds of millions 

of years, we arrive at comedic vision 

of our collective future: We’ll have 

become creatures with a huge forehead 

for expanded cranial capacity 

and a small body due to lack of any 

manual labor, etc. 

Most futurists, however, realize 

that we now have the means to 

shape and influence our own evolu- 


The Asimo robot from the 

Honda Corporation, shown 

here at every stage of 

development, represents 

the past, present, and 

future of robotics. 

HONDA 

Evolution Race 

The Robotic Ecosystem 

The robot animal kingdom is filled with 

strange critters. The Boston Dynamics 

“Big Dog” robot (top right) can carry 

hundreds of pounds of equipment across 

hard terrain. 

AeroVironment’s “nano hummingbird” 

spy drone can fly 11 mph and hover in 

the face of 5 mph wind gusts. 

University of Essex professor Huosheng 

Hu’s robot fish mirrors the movement of 

an actual fish to an eerie degree and has 

been displayed at aquariums around the 

world. 

MIT professor Sangbae Kim’s cheetah 

robot concept would stand at 80 cm, with 

limbs composed of carbon fiber. The 

Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency recently commissioned the firm 

Boston Dynamics to build a cheetah 

robot based on a similar design. 

BOSTON DYNAMICS / AEROVIRONMENT / HUOSHENG HU / SANGBAE KIM 


“We will adapt our DNA to 

more readily accept the 

enhancements from 

nanotechnology and other 

bionic devices.” 

tion and cause substantial change 

within periods spanning only hundreds 

and thousands of years. The 

interplay between our ability to map 

and manipulate our own DNA, as 

well as to integrate mechanical 

mechanisms into our own physiology, 

is driving this evolutionary adaptation. 

We will adapt our DNA to 

more readily accept the enhancements 

from nanotechnology and 

other bionic devices, and we’ll engineer 

these to synch up with our 

DNA improvisations. As a result, humanity’s 

evolutionary momentum 

will spiral quicker and quicker. Fashion, 

self-image, and social bonding 

will influence the “look and feel” as 

much as utility. So hopefully, humans 

won’t resemble the Borgs of 

Star Trek, except for those of us making 

an aesthetic choice to do so. 

Writers such as Joel Garreau, author 

of Radical Evolution (Doubleday, 

2005), have suggested that accelerating 

technology could lead to an evolutionary 

bifurcation between the 

haves and have nots. Economic, religious, 

philosophical, and cultural 

views may prevent some geographical 

or demographic groups from participating 

in actions advancing their 

self-evolution. 

The masses of humanity may not 

be able to afford such enhancements 

to themselves or their offspring. 

Those who can obtain genetic and 

artificial organ replacements may be 

able to live longer and healthier, and 

thus will be more likely to survive 

and reproduce. It is possible that, 

over time (that is, in much quicker 

periods than afforded through natural 

evolution), genetic differences between 

humans who augment and al- 

ter their genetic code 

may differ enough 

from those who do 

not. The variance may 

prevent interbreeding. 

This would lead 

to the creation of a 

separate new species. 

Now, a new competitor is also 

emerging on the scene. This one is 

all artificial, with no flesh or DNA. 

The arrival and evolution of humanoid 

robots competing against cyborgs 

and those humans who have 

resisted change may be reminiscent 

of the competition between Homo sapiens, 

Neanderthals, Homo erectus, 

and the “hobbit” people of the Indonesian 

island of Flores. 

Competition in Robotic Evolution 

Homo sapiens chauvinists like to 

think we were the fittest for survival 

and outcompeted the other hominids. 

We did have some fine competitive 

traits, but our success has to do 

with some degree of luck. 

There were two points when Homo 

sapiens almost went extinct. Between 

195,000 and 123,000 years ago, Earth 

was in the middle of a glacial phase 

and the Homo sapiens population was 

estimated to have gone from about 

10,000 inhabitants down to as few as 

600 people. Approximately 70,000 

years ago, drought may have shrunk 

the human population down to just 

2,000 folks. However, this was soon 

followed by the “flight out of Africa,” 

which led to a rapid expansion 

both in geography and in numbers 

for mankind. What a very exciting 

and competitive ancient world that 

Homo sapiens resided in! Machine 

evolution will be both more exciting 

and far more rapid. 

Certainly, machinery endowed 

with artificial intelligence does not 

have to be robotic; it may be like 

HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and 

reside within a computer’s memory 

core, or be part of a networked set of 

computers. Robots do not need to be 

humanoid like the Asimo robot developed 

by Honda. They can be 

wheeled or tracked unmanned vehicles 

like Stanley, the self-driving 

car that completed the 2005 DARPA 

Grand Challenge race. They could 

have multiple legs like Boston Dynamic’s 

famous Big Dog robot. 

There are far better forms for robots 

than “human,” depending on 

what the robot is designed to do. But 

robots that are designed to perform 

multiple chores previously done by 

humans—from throwing out the 

garbage to walking the dog to repairing 

a satellite—will likely be humanoid 

in nature. These humanoids 

would be our most immediate competitors. 

Accelerating Robotic Evolution 

Some scientists and science commentators 

have expressed skepticism 

that sentience could ever be 

created in a machine setting. They’re 

impatient that humanistic AI has not 

yet been achieved, even though researchers 

have been aggressively 

pursuing artificial intelligence for 

decades. 

Others disagree. Hans Moravec, 

the renowned roboticist at Carnegie 

Mellon University and author of 

Mind Children (Harvard, 1990), predicts 

that robots will surpass human 

intelligence by 2030, will develop 

humanlike consciousness, will be 

aware of the world and social interactions, 

and will gain the ability to 

replicate themselves and pace their 

own evolution. Physicist Michio 

Kaku, author of Physics of the Future 

(Doubleday, 2011), predicts that 

helpful robots performing the role of 

butlers and maids will be available 

by the year 2100. He is unsure how 

intelligent they will be, but they will 

have the capacity to mimic all sorts 

of human behavior. 

Whether either Moravec or Kaku 

is off by a decade or two, or even 


configured their PCs with tens of billions 

of bits of RAM. 

If one accepts the comparison of 

computer bits to neurons as described 

by Moravec, then the computer 

’s growth in evolution expanded 

each decade what it took 

Mother Nature to achieve every 

hundred million years. Moravec calculates 

that human engineering of 

artificial intelligence is occurring at 

10 million times the speed of natural 

evolution. 

An approach to AI called embodiment, 

or embodied embedded cognition, 

maintains that intelligent behavior 

occurs out of the interplay 

among the brain, the body, and the 

world. Some philosophers, cognitive 

scientists, and AI researchers believe 

that the type of thinking done by the 

human brain is determined by certain 

aspects of the human body. 

Ideas, thoughts, concepts, and reasoning 

are shaped by our perceptual 

system—our ability to perceive, 

move, and interact with our world. 

Roboticists such as Moravec and 

Rodney Brooks (founder of iRobot 

Corp. and Heartland Robotics Inc.) 

maintain that, in order to achieve 

human-level intelligence, any AI-endowed 

system would have to deal 

with humanlike artifacts, and thus a 

humanoid would be the optimal robot 

to achieve this. 

The new field of evolutionary robotics, 

like its namesake of evoluseveral 

hundred years, it is really 

insignificant when compared 

to the glacial pace of natural 

evolution. In his 2000 

paper “Robots, Re-Evolving 

Mind,” Moravec compares the 

evolution of intelligence in the 

natural world with the progress 

occurring in the field of information 

technology. 

Natural intelligence evolution 

starts from wormlike animals 

with a few hundred neurons 

occurring more than 570 

million years ago. Very primitive 

fish that appeared 470 million 

years ago had about 100,000 neurons. 

One hundred million years 

later, amphibians with a few million 

neurons emerged from the swamps. 

One hundred fifty million years 

later, the first small mammals appeared 

and had brain capacities with 

several hundred million neurons. 

The bigger co-inhabitants at the 

time, the dinosaurs, had brains with 

several billion neurons. 

After the extinction of the dinosaurs 

65 million years ago, mammalian 

brains also reached sizes of several 

billion neurons. The first 

hominids of about 30 million years 

ago had brains of 20 billion neurons. 

You and I, and our contemporary 

human colleagues, have brains operating 

with approximately 100 billion 

neurons. 

Compare this to the artificial intelligence 

evolutionary track beginning 

with the first electromechanical computers 

built around 1940, which had 

a few hundred bits of telephone relay 

storage. By 1955, computers had 

acquired 100,000 bits of rotating 

magnetic memory. Ten years later, 

computers had millions of bits of 

magnetic core memory. By 1975, 

many computer core memories had 

exceeded 10 million bits, and by 

1985, 100 million bits. By 1995, larger 

computer systems had reached several 

billion bits. By the year 2000, a 

few personal computer owners had 

“[Hans] Moravec 

calculates that human 

engineering of artificial 

intelligence is 

occurring at 

10 million times the 

speed of natural 

evolution.” 

tionary biology, relies on the 

Darwinian principle of the reproduction 

of the fittest. This 

view posits that autonomous 

robots will develop and evolve 

from interaction with the environment. 

The fittest robots will 

reproduce by observing their 

interactions with the environment 

and incorporating mutations 

that increase their survivability. 

Humans will be unable to 

match the rapid evolutionary 

jumps afforded to completely 

artificial beings, even with advances 

in cybernetics and genetic engineering. 

Robotic humanoids will only be 

limited by the laws of physics and 

not by those of biology, which even 

genetic engineering can’t alter. 

Hopefully, the sort of destructive 

competition that eliminated the rivals 

to Homo sapiens in the past—including 

such competitors as Homo 

erectus and the Neanderthals—will 

not be repeated in the next evolutionary 

stage. 

In the best possible future, non-altered 

humans, humans with cybernetic 

implants, and robotic humanoids 

will learn from each other, 

borrow and share technology, and 

engage in friendly collaboration, cooperation, 

and competition to benefit 

all. In considering which robotic 

designs to support or, on the national 

level, to fund, that seems a 

good ideal to aim for. 

❑ 

About the Author 

Steven M. Shaker is an executive 

in a market research 

and training firm. He is an 

authority on technology assessments, 

forecasting, and 

competitive intelligence. He 

is co-author, with Alan Wise, 

of War Without Men: Robots on the Future 

Battlefield (Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1988) 

and, with Mark Gembicki, of The WarRoom 

Guide to Competitive Intelligence (McGraw- 

Hill, 1998). E-mail steve.shaker@cox.net. 


Eroding 

Futures 

Why Healthy 

Soil Matters to 

Civilization 

By Lester R. Brown 

© MARK WRAGG / ISTOCKPHOTO 


The earth beneath our feet is the Earth’s 

infrastructure for the resources that 

sustain our civilizations—and our futures. 

A leading agricultural policy expert shows 

what we must do to save the soil. 

Th e s i g n s t h a t o u r 

civilization is in trouble are 

multiplying. During most 

of the 6,000 years since 

civilization began, we lived 

on the sustainable yield of the 

Earth’s natural systems. In recent 

decades, however, humanity has 

overshot the level that those systems 

can sustain. 

We are liquidating the Earth’s natural 

assets to fuel our consumption. 

Half of us live in countries where 

water tables are falling and wells are 

going dry. Soil erosion exceeds soil 

formation on one-third of the 

world’s cropland, draining the land 

of its fertility. The world’s evergrowing 

herds of cattle, sheep, and 

goats are converting vast stretches of 

grassland to desert. Forests are 

shrinking by 13 million acres per 

year as we clear land for agriculture 

and cut trees for lumber and paper. 

Four-fifths of oceanic fisheries are 

being fished at capacity or overfished 

and headed for collapse. In 

system after system, demand is overshooting 

supply. 

For past civilizations, it was sometimes 

a single environmental trend 

that was primarily responsible for 

their decline. Sometimes it was multiple 

trends. For ancient Sumer, de- 

Chart created by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers illustrates the importance 

of soil as a foundation for society and the future stability of civilizations. Because of 

soil’s importance to so many critical issues, the researchers encourage soil scientists to 

broaden their focus to entire ecosystems. 

PNNL, WWW.PNL.GOV 

cline could be attributed to rising 

salt concentrations in the soil as a result 

of an environmental flaw in the 

design of their otherwise extraordinary 

irrigation system. After a point, 

the salts accumulating in the soil led 

to a decline in wheat yields. The Sumerians 

then shifted to barley, a 

more salt-tolerant crop, but eventually 

barley yields also began to decline. 

The collapse of the civilization 

followed. 

Although we live in a highly urbanized, 

technologically advanced 

society, we are as dependent on the 

Earth’s natural support systems as 

the Sumerians and Mayans were. If 

we continue with business as usual, 

civilizational collapse is no longer a 

matter of whether but when. We now 

have an economy that is destroying 

its natural support systems and has 

put us on a decline and collapse 

path. We are dangerously close to 

the edge. Among other actions, we 

need a worldwide effort to conserve 

soil, similar to the U.S. response to 

the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. 

On March 20, 2010, a suffocating 

dust storm enveloped Beijing. The 

city’s weather bureau took the unusual 

step of describing the air quality 

as hazardous, urging people to 

stay inside or to cover their faces 

when they were outdoors. Visibility 

was low, forcing motorists to drive 

with their lights on in daytime. 

Beijing was not the only area affected. 

This particular dust storm engulfed 

scores of cities in five provinces, 

directly affecting more than 

250 million people. It was not an isolated 

incident. Every spring, residents 

of eastern Chinese cities, including 

Beijing and Tianjin, hunker 

down as the dust storms begin. 

Along with the difficulty in breathing 

and the stinging eyes, there is a 

constant struggle to keep dust out of 

homes and to clear doorways and 

sidewalks of dust and sand. The 

farmers and herders whose livelihoods 

are blowing away are paying 

an even higher price. 

These annual dust storms affect 

not only China, but neighboring 

countries as well. The March 20 dust 

storm arrived in South Korea soon 

after leaving Beijing. It was described 

by the Korean Meteorological 

Administration as the worst dust 


JAMES YOUNG / USDA-ARS 

In a U.S. pasture, the land shown on the right has been 

stripped by grazing goats. With more than 30 times as 

many goats and sheep as the United States has, northern 

and western China’s farmlands are at risk, as the loss of 

protective vegetation exposes topsoil to wind erosion. 

JACK DYKINGA USDA-ARS 

Low-till farming versus deep-till? Conventional deep-tilling techniques 

(right) expose soil to erosion and disrupt the work of microbes and 

earthworms, according to the U.S. Agricultural Research Service. But 

low-till farming and covering land with crop residue offer greater protections 

for the soil. 

Civilization’s Earthy Foundation 

The thin layer of topsoil that covstorm 

on record. In a similar event in 

2002, South Korea was engulfed by 

so much dust from China that 

people in Seoul were literally gasping 

for breath, reported Howard 

French for The New York Times. 

Schools were closed, airline flights 

were canceled, retail sales fell, and 

clinics were overrun with patients 

having difficulty breathing. Koreans 

have come to dread the arrival of 

what they call “the fifth season”— 

the dust storms of late winter and 

early spring. 

While people living in China and 

South Korea are all too familiar with 

dust storms, the rest of the world 

typically learns about this fast-grow- 

ing ecological catastrophe when the 

massive soil-laden storms leave the 

region. In April 2010, a National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration 

(NASA) satellite tracked a dust 

storm from China as it journeyed to 

the east coast of the United States. 

Originating in the Taklimakan and 

Gobi deserts, it ultimately covered 

an area stretching from North Carolina 

to Pennsylvania. Such huge dust 

storms carry off millions of tons of 

topsoil, a resource that will take centuries 

to replace. 

ers much of the planet’s land surface 

and is typically measured in inches 

is the foundation of civilization. Soil 

is “the skin of the earth—the frontier 

between geology and biology,” 

writes geomorphologist David 

Montgomery in Dirt: The Erosion of 

Civilizations. After the Earth was created, 

soil formed slowly over geological 

time from the weathering of 

rocks. This soil supported early plant 

life on land. As plant life spread, the 

plants protected the soil from wind 

and water erosion, permitting it to 

accumulate and to support even 

more vegetation. This relationship 

facilitated an accumulation of topsoil 

that could support a rich diversity of 

C. G. WAGNER / WFS NASA IMAGE COURTESY OF JEFF SCHMALTZ, MODIS RAPID RESPONSE TEAM, NASA-GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER 

The People’s Garden at U.S. Department of Agriculture 

headquarters in Washington, D.C., displays examples of 

soil-friendly agricultural techniques, including drip irrigation 

and coverage with crop residue. 

Thick dust clogs the air over China’s Taklimakan Desert, September 

2010. Soil erosion is not just a local problem (and one that may take 

centuries to repair), but also a global problem, as the wind carries 

away topsoil to the other side of the world. 


plant and animal life. 

As long as soil erosion on cropland 

does not exceed new soil formation, 

all is well. But once it does, 

it leads to falling soil fertility and 

eventually to land abandonment. 

Sadly, soil formed on a geological 

time scale is being removed on a human 

time scale. 

Soil erosion is “the silent global 

crisis,” observes journalist Stephen 

Leahy in Earth Island Journal. “It is 

akin to tire wear on your car—a 

gradual, unobserved process that 

has potentially catastrophic consequences 

if ignored for too long.” 

Losing productive topsoil means 

losing both organic matter in the soil 

and vegetation on the land, thus releasing 

carbon into the atmosphere. 

The 2,500 billion tons of carbon 

stored in soils dwarfs the 760 billion 

tons in the atmosphere, according to 

soil scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State 

University. The bottom line is that 

land degradation is helping drive 

climate change. 

Soil erosion is not new. It is as old 

as the Earth itself. What is new is 

that it has gradually accelerated ever 

since agriculture began. At some 

point, probably during the nineteenth 

century, the loss of topsoil 

from erosion surpassed the new soil 

that is formed through natural processes. 

Today, roughly a third of the 

world’s cropland is losing topsoil at 

an excessive rate, thereby reducing 

the land’s inherent productivity. An 

analysis of several studies on soil 

erosion’s effect on U.S. crop yields 

concluded that, for each inch of topsoil 

lost, wheat and corn yields declined 

by close to 6%. 

In August 2010, the United Nations 

announced that desertification 

now affects 25% of the Earth’s land 

area, threatening the livelihoods of 

more than 1 billion people—the families 

of farmers and herders in 

roughly 100 countries. 

China may face the biggest challenge 

of all. After the economic reforms 

in 1978 that shifted the responsibility 

for farming from large 

state-organized production teams to 

individual farm families, China’s 

cattle, sheep, and goat populations 

spiraled upward. The United States, 

S S S S S Dust Bowl Redux S S S S S S 

Dust storms provide highly vis ible evidence of soil 

erosion and desertification. Once vegetation is removed 

either by overgrazing or overplowing, the wind begins 

to blow the small soil particles away. Because the particles 

are small, they can remain 

airborne over great distances. 

Once they are largely gone, leaving 

only larger particles, sandstorms 

begin. These are local phenomena, 

often resulting in dune 

formation and the abandonment 

of both farming and grazing. 

Sandstorms are the final phase in 

the desertification process. 

In some situations, the threat to 

topsoil comes primarily from overplowing, 

as in the U.S. Dust Bowl, 

but in other situations, such as in 

northern China, the cause is primarily 

overgrazing. In either case, 

permanent vegetation is destroyed 

and soils become vulnerable to 

both wind and water erosion. 

Giant dust bowls are historically 

new, confined to the last 

century or so. During the late nineteenth century, millions 

of Americans pushed westward, homesteading on 

the Great Plains, plowing vast areas of grassland to produce 

wheat. Much of this land—highly erodible when 

plowed—should have remained in grass. Exacerbated by 

a prolonged drought, this overexpansion culminated in 

the 1930s Dust Bowl, a traumatic period chronicled in 

John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. In a crash 

program to save its soils, the United States returned 

large areas of eroded cropland to grass, adopted strip- 

cropping, and planted thousands of miles of tree shelterbelts. 

Three decades later, history repeated itself in the Soviet 

Union. In an all-out effort to expand grain production in 

the late 1950s, the Soviets plowed 

an area of grassland roughly equal 

to the wheat area of Australia and 

Canada combined. The result, as 

Soviet agronomists had predicted, 

was an ecological disaster—another 

Dust Bowl. 

Kazakhstan, which was at the 

center of this Soviet Virgin Lands 

Project, saw its grainland area peak 

at just over 25 million hectares in 

the mid-1980s. (One hectare equals 

2.47 acres.) It then shrank to less 

than 11 million hectares in 1999. It 

is now slowly expanding, and 

grainland area is back up to 17 million 

hectares. Even on the remaining 

land, however, the average 

wheat yield is scarcely 1 ton per 

hectare, a far cry from the 7 tons 

per hectare that farmers get in 

France, western Europe’s leading wheat producer. 

Today, two giant dust bowls are forming. One is in the 

Asian heartland in northern and western China, western 

Mongolia, and central Asia. The other is in central Africa 

in the Sahel—the savannah-like ecosystem that stretches 

across Africa, separating the Sahara Desert from the tropical 

rain forests to the south. Both are massive in scale, 

dwarfing anything the world has seen before. They are 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, FSA/OWI 

COLLECTION, [REPRODUCTION NUMBER, LC-DIG-FSA-8B38282] 

Son of a farmer in Cimarron County, 

Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl. Photographed 

by Arthur Rothstein, April 1936. 

caused, in varying degrees, by overgrazing, overplowing, 

and deforestation. 

—Lester R. Brown 


and underweight. 

Africa, too, is suffering heavily 

from unsustainable demands on its 

croplands and grasslands. Soil scientist 

Rattan Lal made the first estimate 

of continental yield losses due 

to soil erosion. He concluded that 

soil erosion and other forms of land 

degradation have cost Africa 8 million 

tons of grain per year, or 

roughly 8% of its annual harvest. Lal 

expects the loss to climb to 16 million 

tons by 2020 if soil erosion continues 

unabated. 

On the northern fringe of the Sahara, 

countries such as Algeria and 

Morocco are attempting to halt the 

desertification that is threatening 

their fertile croplands. Algeria is losing 

100,000 acres of its most fertile 

lands to desertification each year, according 

to President Abdelaziz 

Bouteflika. For a country that has 

only 7 million acres of grainland, 

this is not a trivial loss. Among other 

measures, Algeria is planting its 

southernmost cropland in perennials, 

such as fruit orchards, olive orchards, 

and vineyards—crops that 

can help keep the soil in place. 

Mounting population pressures 

are evident everywhere on this continent 

where the growth in livestock 

numbers closely tracks that in human 

numbers. In 1950, Africa was 

home to 227 million people and 

about 300 million livestock. By 2009, 

there were 1 billion people and 862 

million livestock. With livestock demands 

now often exceeding grassland 

carrying capacity by half or 

more, grassland is turning into desert. 

In addition to overgrazing, parts 

of the Sahel are suffering from an extended 

drought, one that scientists 

link to climate change. 

The incidence of Saharan dust 

storms—once rare—has increased 

10-fold during the last half century, 

reports Andrew Goudie, professor of 

geography at Oxford University. 

Among the African countries most 

affected by soil loss from wind erosion 

are Niger, Chad, Mauritania, 

northern Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. 

In Mauritania, in Africa’s far west, 

the number of dust storms jumped 

from two a year in the early 1960s to 

80 a year recently. 

And the impacts are global. Dust 

storms leaving Africa travel westa 

country with comparable grazing 

capacity, has 94 million cattle, a 

slightly larger herd than China’s 92 

million. But when it comes to sheep 

and goats, the United States has a 

combined population of only 9 million, 

whereas China has 281 million. 

Concentrated in China’s western 

and northern provinces, these animals 

are stripping the land of its protective 

vegetation. The wind then 

does the rest, removing the soil and 

converting rangeland into desert. 

Wang Tao, one of the world’s leading 

desert scholars, reports that, 

from 1950 to 1975, an average of 600 

square miles of land turned to desert 

each year. Between 1975 and 1987, 

this climbed to 810 square miles a 

year. From then until the century’s 

end, it jumped to 1,390 square miles 

of land going to desert annually. 

China is now at war. It is not invading 

armies that are claiming its 

territory, but expanding deserts. Old 

deserts are advancing and new ones 

are forming like guerrilla forces 

striking unexpectedly, forcing Beijing 

to fight on several fronts. 

While major dust storms make the 

news when they affect cities, the 

heavy damage is in the area of origin. 

These regions are affected by 

storms of dust and sand combined. 

An intense 1993 sandstorm in Gansu 

Province in China’s northwest destroyed 

430,000 acres of standing 

crops, damaged 40,000 trees, killed 

67,000 cattle and sheep, blew away 

67,000 acres of plastic greenhouses, 

injured 278 people, and killed 49 individuals. 

Forty-two passenger and 

freight trains were either canceled or 

delayed, or simply parked to wait 

until the storm passed and the tracks 

were cleared of sand dunes. 

Other Regions in the Dust 

While China is battling its expanding 

deserts, India, with scarcely 2% 

of the world’s land area, is struggling 

to support 17% of the world’s 

people and 18% of its cattle. According 

to a team of scientists at the 

Indian Space Research Organization, 

24% of India’s land area is slowly 

turning into desert. It thus comes as 

no surprise that many of India’s 

cattle are emaciated and over 40% of 

its children are chronically hungry 

ward across the Atlantic, depositing 

so much dust in the Caribbean that 

they cloud the water and damage 

coral reefs. 

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous 

country, reports losing 867,000 acres 

of rangeland and cropland to desertification 

each year. While Nigeria’s 

human population was growing 

from 37 million in 1950 to 151 million 

in 2008, a fourfold expansion, its 

livestock population grew from 6 

million to 104 million, a 17-fold 

jump. With the forage needs of Nigeria’s 

16 million cattle and 88 million 

sheep and goats exceeding the sustainable 

yield of grasslands, the 

northern part of the country is 

slowly turning to desert. If Nigeria’s 

population keeps growing as projected, 

the associated land degradation 

will eventually undermine herding 

and farming. 

In East Africa, Kenya is being 

squeezed by spreading deserts. Desertification 

affects up to a fourth of 

the country’s 39 million people. As 

elsewhere, the combination of overgrazing, 

overcutting, and overplowing 

is eroding soils, costing the country 

valuable productive land. 

In Afghanistan, a UN Environment 

Programme (UNEP) team reports 

that in the Sistan region “up to 

100 villages have been submerged 

by windblown dust and sand.” The 

Registan Desert is migrating westward, 

encroaching on agricultural 

areas. In the country’s northwest, 

sand dunes are moving onto agricultural 

land in the upper Amu Darya 

basin, their path cleared by the loss 

of stabilizing vegetation due to firewood 

gathering and overgrazing. 

The UNEP team observed sand 

dunes as high as a five-story building 

blocking roads, forcing residents 

to establish new routes. 

An Afghan Ministry of Agriculture 

and Food report reads like an epitaph 

on a gravestone: “Soil fertility is 

declining,... water tables have dramatically 

fallen, de-vegetation is extensive 

and soil erosion by water 

and wind is widespread.” After 

nearly three decades of armed conflict 

and the related deprivation and 

devastation, Afghanistan’s forests 

are nearly gone. Seven southern 

provinces are losing cropland to encroaching 

sand dunes. And like 


many failing states, even if Afghanistan 

had appropriate environmental 

policies, it lacks the law enforcement 

authority to implement them. 

Neighboring Iran illustrates the 

pressures facing the Middle East. 

With 8 million cattle and 79 million 

sheep and goats—the source of wool 

for its fabled Persian carpet-making 

industry—Iran’s rangelands are deteriorating 

from overstocking. In the 

southeastern province of Sistan- 

Balochistan, sandstorms have buried 

124 villages, forcing their abandonment. 

Drifting sands have covered 

grazing areas, starving livestock and 

depriving villagers of their livelihood. 

In Iraq, suffering from nearly a 

decade of war and recent drought, a 

new dust bowl appears to be forming. 

Chronically plagued by overgrazing 

and overplowing, Iraq is 

now losing irrigation water to its upstream 

riparian neighbors—Turkey, 

Syria, and Iran. The reduced river 

flow—combined with the drying up 

of marshlands, the deterioration of 

irrigation infrastructure, and the 

shrinking irrigated area—is drying 

out Iraq. The Fertile Crescent, the 

cradle of civilization, may be turning 

into a dust bowl. 

Dust storms are occurring with increasing 

frequency in Iraq. In July 

2009, a dust storm raged for several 

days in what was described as the 

worst such storm in Iraq’s history. 

As it traveled eastward into Iran, the 

authorities in Tehran closed government 

offices, private offices, schools, 

and factories. Although this new 

dust bowl is small compared with 

those centered in northwest China 

and central Africa, it is nonetheless 

an unsettling new development in 

this region. 

Food and Forage 

One indicator that helps us assess 

grassland health is changes in the 

goat population relative to those of 

sheep and cattle. As grasslands deteriorate, 

grass is typically replaced by 

desert shrubs. In such a degraded 

environment, cattle and sheep do 

not fare well, but goats—being particularly 

hardy ruminants—forage 

on the shrubs. Between 1970 and 

2009, the world cattle population in- 

Restoring Earth’s Soil Foundation 

Restoring the Earth will take an 

enormous international effort, one 

far more demanding than the Marshall 

Plan that helped rebuild wartorn 

Europe and Japan after World 

War II. And such an initiative must 

be undertaken at wartime speed before 

environmental deterioration 

translates into economic decline, just 

as it did for the Sumerians, the 

Mayans, and many other early civilizations 

whose archaeological sites 

we study today. 

Protecting the 10 billion acres of 

remaining forests on Earth and replanting 

many of those already lost, 

for example, are both essential for restoring 

the planet’s health. Since 

2000, the Earth’s forest cover has 

shrunk by a net 13 million acres each 

year, with annual losses of 32 million 

acres far exceeding the regrowth of 

19 million acres. 

Thus, protecting the Earth’s soil 

warrants a worldwide ban on the 

clear-cutting of forests in favor of selective 

harvesting, simply because 

each successive clear-cut brings 

heavy soil loss and eventual forest 

degeneration. Restoring the Earth’s 

tree and grass cover, as well as practicing 

conservation agriculture, protects 

soil from erosion, reduces 

flooding, and sequesters carbon. 

We also need a tree-planting effort 

to both conserve soil and sequester 

carbon. To achieve these goals, billions 

of trees need to be planted on 

millions of acres of degraded lands 

that have lost their tree cover and on 

marginal croplands and pasturelands 

that are no longer productive. 

Planting trees is just one of many 

activities that will remove meaningful 

quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. 

Improved grazing and 

land management practices that increased 

by 28% and the sheep population 

stayed relatively static, but the 

goat population more than doubled. 

In some developing countries, the 

growth in the goat population is dramatic. 

While Pakistan’s cattle population 

doubled between 1961 and 

2009, and the sheep population 

nearly tripled, the goat population 

grew more than sixfold and is now 

equal to that of the cattle and sheep 

populations combined. 

As countries lose their topsoil, 

they eventually lose the capacity to 

feed themselves. Among those 

facing this problem are Lesotho, 

Haiti, Mongolia, and North Korea. 

Lesotho—one of Africa’s smallest 

countries, with only 2 million 

people—is paying a heavy price for 

its soil losses. A UN team visited in 

2002 to assess its food prospect. 

Their finding was straightforward: 

“Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic 

future; crop production is 

declining and could cease altogether 

over large tracts of country if steps 

are not taken to reverse soil erosion, 

degradation, and the decline in soil 

fertility.” 

During the last 10 years, Lesotho’s 

grain harvest dropped by half as its 

soil fertility fell. Its collapsing agriculture 

has left the country heavily 

dependent on food imports. As Michael 

Grunwald reported in the 

Washington Post, nearly half of the 

children under five in Lesotho are 

stunted physically. “Many,” he 

wrote, “are too weak to walk to 

school.” 

In the Western Hemisphere, 

Haiti—one of the early failing 

states—was largely self-sufficient in 

grain 40 years ago. Since then, it has 

lost nearly all its forests and much of 

its topsoil, forcing it to import over 

half of its grain. Lesotho and Haiti 

are both dependent on UN World 

Food Programme lifelines. 

A similar situation exists in Mongolia, 

where over the last 20 years 

nearly three-fourths of the wheatland 

has been abandoned and wheat 

yields have started to fall, shrinking 

the harvest by four-fifths. Mongolia 

now imports nearly 70% of its wheat. 

North Korea, largely deforested 

and suffering from flood-induced 

soil erosion and land degradation, 

has watched its yearly grain harvest 

fall from a peak of 5 million tons 

during the 1980s to scarcely 3.5 million 

tons during the first decade of 

this century. 

Soil erosion is taking a human toll. 

Whether the degraded land is in 

Haiti, Lesotho, Mongolia, North 

Korea, or any of the many other 

countries losing their soil, the health 

of the people cannot be separated 

from the health of the land itself. 


S S References and Resources S S 

Data, endnotes, and additional resources can be found on Earth Policy’s Web 

site, at www.earth-policy.org. Also see: 

• Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R. Montgomery (University of 

California Press, 2007). A geomorphologist argues that we are running out 

of sufficient soil to feed future populations, making a case for organic inputs 

and conservation. 

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Viking Penguin Inc., 1939) puts environmental 

damage into a human context. 

• Food and Agriculture Organization (www.fao.org) provides information 

on soil and soil resources, conservation, desertification, land assessment, 

plant and crop nutrition, and more. 

• NASA’s Earth Observatory site (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov) offers 

satellite imagery showing the extent and impacts of dust storms, droughts, 

and more. 

• U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (www.ars 

.usda.gov) oversees the National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory, among 

many other programs promoting innovation in resource management. 

S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S 

tices on 37% of all cropland, reduced 

annual U.S. soil erosion from 3.1 billion 

tons to 1.9 billion tons between 

1982 and 1997. The U.S. approach offers 

a model for the rest of the world. 

Another tool in the soil conservation 

toolkit is conservation tillage, 

which includes both no-till and minimum 

tillage. Instead of the traditional 

cultural practices of plowing land 

and discing or harrowing it to prepare 

the seedbed, and then using a 

mechanical cultivator to control 

weeds in row crops, farmers simply 

drill seeds directly through crop residues 

into undisturbed soil, controlling 

weeds with herbicides. The only 

soil disturbance is the narrow slit in 

the soil surface where the seeds are 

inserted, leaving the remainder of the 

soil covered with crop residue and 

thus resistant to both water and wind 

erosion. In addition to reducing erosion, 

this practice retains water, raises 

soil carbon content, and greatly reduces 

energy use for tillage. 

In the United States, the no-till 

area went from 17 million acres in 

1990 to 65 million acres in 2007. Now 

widely used in the production of 

corn and soybeans, no-till has spread 

rapidly, covering 63 million acres in 

Brazil and Argentina and 42 million 

in Australia. Canada, not far behind, 

rounds out the five leading no-till 

countries. Farming practices that recrease 

the organic matter content in 

soil also sequester carbon. 

Lessons of the Dust Bowl 

The 1930s Dust Bowl that threatened 

to turn the U.S. Great Plains into 

a vast desert was a traumatic experience 

that led to revolutionary 

changes in American agricultural 

practices, including the planting of 

tree shelterbelts (rows of trees 

planted beside fields to slow wind 

and thus reduce wind erosion) and 

strip cropping (the planting of wheat 

on alternate strips with fallowed land 

each year). Strip cropping permits 

soil moisture to accumulate on the 

fallowed strips, while the alternating 

planted strips reduce wind speed and 

hence erosion on the idled land. 

In 1985, the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture, with strong support 

from the environmental community, 

created the Conservation Reserve 

Program (CRP) to reduce soil erosion 

and control overproduction of basic 

commodities. By 1990, there were 

some 35 million acres of highly erodible 

land with permanent vegetative 

cover under 10-year contracts. Under 

this program, farmers were paid 

to plant fragile cropland in grass or 

trees. The retirement of those 35 million 

acres under the CRP, together 

with the use of conservation prac- 

duce soil erosion and raise cropland 

productivity such as minimum-till, 

no-till, and mixed crop–livestock 

farming usually also lead to higher 

soil carbon content and soil moisture. 

In Kazakhstan, the 3 million 

acres in no-till seemed to fare better 

than land in conventional farming 

during the great Russian heat wave 

and drought of 2010. 

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the 

Sahara is moving southward all 

across the Sahel, countries are concerned 

about the growing displacement 

of people as grasslands and 

croplands turn to desert. As a result, 

the African Union has launched the 

Green Wall Sahara Initiative. This 

plan, originally proposed in 2005 by 

Olusegun Obasanjo when he was 

president of Nigeria, calls for planting 

a 4,300-mile band of trees, nine 

miles wide, stretching across Africa 

from Senegal to Djibouti. Senegal, 

which is losing 124,000 acres of productive 

land each year and which 

would anchor the green wall on the 

western end, has planted 326 miles 

of the band. A $119-million grant 

from the Global Environment Facility 

in June 2010 gave the project a 

big boost. Senegal’s Environment 

Minister, Modou Fada Diagne, says, 

“Instead of waiting for the desert to 

come to us, we need to attack it.” 

One key to the success of this initiative 

is improving management practices, 

such as rotational grazing. 

In the end, the only viable way to 

eliminate overgrazing on the twofifths 

of the Earth’s land surface classified 

as rangelands is to reduce the 

size of flocks and herds. Not only do 

the excessive numbers of cattle, 

sheep, and goats remove the vegetation, 

but their hoofs pulverize the 

protective crust of soil that is formed 

by rainfall and that naturally checks 

wind erosion. In some situations, the 

preferred option is to keep the animals 

in restricted areas, bringing the 

forage to them. India, which has successfully 

adopted this practice to 

build the world’s largest dairy industry, 

is a model for other countries. 

A Sustainable Plan to 

Preserve Soil 

Conserving the Earth’s topsoil by 

reducing erosion to the rate of new 


S S S S S S Plan B Budget S S S S S S 

Goal 

Funding 

(billion dollars) 

Basic Social Goals 

Universal primary education 10 

Eradication of adult illiteracy 4 

School lunch programs 3 

Aid to women, infants, preschool children 4 

Reproductive health and family planning 21 

Universal basic health care 33 

Total 75 

Grand total 185 

U.S. Military Budget 661 

Plan B Budget as share of this 28% 

World Military Budget 1,522 

Plan B Budget as share of this 12% 

Source: Military from SIPRI; other data at www.earth-policy.org. 

Goal 

Funding 

(billion dollars) 

Earth Restoration Goals 

Planting trees 23 

Protecting topsoil on cropland 24 

Restoring rangelands 9 

Restoring fisheries 13 

Stabilizing water tables 10 

Protecting biological diversity 31 

Total 110 

S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S S 

seems like a reasonable goal. Since 

this costs roughly $2 billion in the 

United States, which has one-eighth 

of the world’s cropland, the total for 

the world would be $16 billion annually. 

The second initiative on topsoil 

consists of adopting conservation 

practices on the remaining land that 

is subject to excessive erosion—that 

is, erosion that exceeds the natural 

rate of new soil formation. This initiative 

includes incentives to encourage 

farmers to adopt conservation 

practices such as contour farming, 

strip cropping, and, increasingly, 

minimum-till or no-till farming. 

These expenditures in the United 

States total roughly $1 billion per 

year. Assuming that the need for erosion 

control practices elsewhere is 

similar to that in the United States, 

we again multiply the U.S. expenditure 

by eight to get a total of $8 billion 

for the world as a whole. The 

two components together—$16 billion 

for retiring highly erodible land 

and $8 billion for adopting conservasoil 

formation or below has two 

parts. One is to retire the highly 

erodible land that cannot sustain cultivation—the 

estimated one-tenth of 

the world’s cropland that accounts 

for perhaps half of all excess erosion. 

For the United States, that has meant 

retiring nearly 35 million acres. The 

cost of keeping this land out of production 

is close to $50 per acre. In total, 

annual payments to farmers to 

plant this land in grass or trees under 

10-year contracts approaches $2 

billion. 

In expanding these estimates to 

cover the world, it is assumed that 

roughly 10% of the world’s cropland 

is highly erodible, as in the United 

States, and should be planted in 

grass or trees before the topsoil is 

lost and it becomes barren land. In 

both the United States and China, 

which together account for 40% of 

the world grain harvest, the official 

goal is to retire one-tenth of all cropland. 

For the world as a whole, converting 

10% of cropland that is 

highly erodible to grass or trees 

tion practices—give an annual total 

for the world of $24 billion. 

Altogether, then, restoring the 

economy’s natural support systems—reforesting 

the Earth, protecting 

topsoil, restoring rangelands and 

fisheries, stabilizing water tables, 

and protecting biological diversity— 

will require additional expenditures 

of just $110 billion per year. Many 

will ask, Can the world afford these 

investments? But the only appropriate 

question is, Can the world afford 

the consequences of not making 

these investments? 

❑ 


Lester R. Brown is president 

of Earth Policy Institute and 

author of World on the Edge: 

How to Prevent Environmental 

and Economic Collapse 

(W.W. Norton & Company, 

2011), from which this 

article was adapted with permission. He 

may be contacted at Earth Policy Institute, 

1350 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 403, 

Washington, D.C. 20036. Web site www 

.earth-policy.org; e-mail epi@earth-policy.org. 


A Convenient Truth 

About Clean Energy 

By Carl E. Schoder 

The Earth is awash in energy; 

we just need new infrastructure 

to tap it. A chemical engineer shows 

how we could break free of fossil fuels by 

deploying the power of ammonia and hydrogen. 

The prototype Hydrogen Hub electricity system can power a building complex with 

anhydrous ammonia fuel. The system captures energy from renewable energy sources 

and stores it in anhydrous ammonia. 

© JACK ROBERTSON / NORTHWEST HYDROGEN ALLIANCE 

© STEFAN BAUM / DREAMSTIME.COM 

Gas stations will make way for vehicle refueling stations that generate energy on-site 

via solar and wind power. This scene on the Dahme River outside Berlin, Germany, 

shows one such present-day refueling station. The boats draw power from the solar 

energy reserves. 

The convenient truth is that the 

world does not have an energy 

shortage; it simply lacks an energy 

infrastructure capable of using 

the abundant source of solar energy 

that we receive from the sun every 

day. The current worldwide demand 

of about 363 terawatt-hours per day 

could be met by covering just 0.5% 

of the world’s land area with silicon 

solar panels. Doing so, and building 

out other necessary infrastructure requirements, 

could meet our energy 

needs and eliminate dependency on 

nonrenewable petroleum. 

As we examine our energy future, 

we should keep in mind three fundamental 

requirements: 

1. Abundance. Because of the 

value that energy gives us in improv- 


ing the quality of life, the long-term 

abundance of an energy source and 

of the materials required to produce 

it is very important. 

2. Cleanness and greenness. 

Clean, green energy is important because 

we only have one Planet Earth. 

When we pollute and damage it, we 

are destroying our home. 

3. Widely distributed availability. 

Moving energy from point to point 

is an energy-consuming and wasteful 

practice, so ease of transport and 

accessibility are important considerations 

in building the energy future. 

Energy Supply 

We typically refer to fossil fuels as 

sources of energy. In reality, fossil 

fuels are stored forms of potential 

energy created from solar energy 

ages ago, so the real source was the 

sun. These fossil fuels are nonrenewable 

sources of energy; formed over 

eons, they are now being spent in a 

matter of decades. 

Gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, ethanol, 

methanol, hydrogen, and electricity 

are not true sources of energy because 

they need to be converted 

from other sources into these more 

convenient forms. Whenever one 

type of energy is converted into another 

type of energy, some of the 

source energy is lost as waste heat or 

friction (entropy). This entropy 

waste is one of many reasons why 

the conservation of all natural materials—including 

petroleum—is for 

the betterment of society. 

Solar energy, however, is different; 

it is constantly being generated and 

radiated into the universe. Any solar 

energy that we do not use becomes 

wasted light and heat energy, dispersed 

into the empty void of space 

as a sort of dark, weak energy that is 

unavailable for our use. 

A basic source of energy is fusion 

energy, which is in fact the primary 

source of all energy in the universe. 

Our sun is a fusion energy source, as 

are all of the billions of suns in the 

universe. Our sun has been producing 

reliable fusion energy for several 

billion years and is estimated to have 

a remaining life of more than 4.5 billion 

years. All we need is an infrastructure 

to collect and utilize the already 

ample solar energy it sends 

our planet’s surface daily—more 

than 2 million terawatt-hours. 

How much solar energy do we receive 

from the sun? Let us look 

briefly at the sources. 

Amount of Solar Energy Available 

There are four major types of energy 

sources that we get from the 

sun: heat, wind power, photosynthesis 

(biomass cultivation), and photovoltaic 

power. Heat is what warms 

the earth and makes it livable as a 

planet. Wind power is available, useful, 

and relatively inexpensive, but it 

is too limited to fulfill worldwide demands. 

Biomass is also an available 

option, but as a product of photosynthesis, 

it is less efficient than photovoltaic 

generation of electricity. Also, 

the competition for resources among 

agriculture, forestry, and energy must 

be carefully and cautiously evaluated 

before considering the use of biomass 

for energy on a large scale. 

Now let us look at how much photovoltaic 

solar energy is available 

from the sun. Starting with National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 

Solar Constant data measured 

at the stratosphere, we can estimate 

the average amount of sun continuously 

reaching the Earth’s surface at 

174 watts per square meter, which obviously 

varies by latitude, season, 

cloud cover, and other variables. In 

the region from the southern tip of 

Greenland in the north to the outer 

rim of the Antarctic Circle in the 

south, where most of the energy demand 

is and where most of the solar 

energy generators would be constructed, 

the amount of continuous 

solar exposure is greater than average, 

so the 174 watts per square meter 

is a valid and conservative value for 

estimating solar generation potential. 

Energy Storage 

The key to fundamental requirement 

#3, availability of energy, is 

storage. We shall now examine ammonia 

as a viable carbon-free energy 

storage option. 

Ammonia (NH 3 

) is a compound of 

one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen. 

We are specifically interested 

in anhydrous ammonia (without water) 

as opposed to aqua ammonia, 

and with dissociated ammonia (the 

nitrogen and hydrogen components 

are split, with the resulting dissociated 

ammonia gas comprising 75% 

hydrogen by volume). 

Since dissociated ammonia is a 

gas, it is not a convenient storage 

medium. However, the combination 

of a tank of anhydrous ammonia 

connected to an on-demand ammonia 

dissociator is a surprisingly efficient 

energy storage and supply system. 

The “ammonia/dissociator” 

combination compares favorably 

with fossil fuels in volumetric energy 

density. 

In addition to its reasonable energy 

densities, ammonia and hydrogen 

are carbon-free energy sources. 

To be completely carbon-free, the 

source of hydrogen for the manufacture 

of the ammonia must be by water 

electrolysis. The electricity to 

electrolyze the water would be most 

efficiently provided from solar energy 

sources, such as photovoltaic or 

solar thermal collectors. An advantage 

of the anhydrous ammonia/dissociated 

ammonia energy storage 

system is that, by comparison, current 

battery technology is 15 to 60 

times bulkier by volume. 

The Carbon-Free Energy World 

Of the Future 

I envision a combination of onsite 

and remote energy-generating 

facilities of appropriate sizes to be 

designed for the residential, commercial, 

industrial, and transportation 

energy sectors, with the emphasis 

on on-site facilities. A typical 

on-site, carbon-free energy system 

would consist of: 

• A solar array (PV or thermal). 

• An electricity converter system 

capable of supplying both DC and 

AC electricity. 

• A water electrolysis system. 

• A unit for extracting nitrogen 

from air. 

• A Haber-type ammonia generator 

making anhydrous ammonia 

from hydrogen and nitrogen. 

• An anhydrous ammonia storage 

tank. 

• An on-demand ammonia dissociator. 

• Various pumps and compressors. 


The Aswan Dam in Egypt (pictured above) and other hydroelectric dams would be great sites 

for future solar-energy plants, according to Schoder. The solar plants could store their extra 

electricity in the dams’ reservoirs and harness it during nighttime hours. 

U.S. Energy Consumption, Current and Potential 

A wind turbine would be a desirable 

addition in areas of strong wind 

power. All of these system components 

are currently manufactured, 

but research and development 

would be required to provide a better 

variety of sizes and capacities for 

the various energy sectors. 

Let us design an energy system using 

the United States as an example, 

though the principles will be applicable 

to the whole world. We will 

look at the areas of housing, commerce, 

manufacturing, and transportation. 

The numbers are rounded calculations 

based upon U.S. Energy 

Information Agency (EIA) data for 

2004 through 2007. Estimates can be 

made into the future using population 

extrapolations. 

The U.S. Energy Consumption table 

shows average annual consump- 

© DRAGONEYE / DREAMSTIME.COM 

(Average annual consumption, in Terawatt-hours) 

Fossil-Fuel Renewable Energy Total Consumption 

Energy Sector 2004-2007 2050 2004-2007 2050 2004-2007 2050 

Residential 1,814 36 146 1,924 6,247 2,046 

Commercial 1,122 22 35 1,135 5,242 1,239 

Industry 5,804 116 571 6,259 9,714 6,439 

Transportation 8,218 164 127 8,059 8,370 8,224 

U.S. Total 16,959 339 879 17,376 29,473 17,948 

In a scenario assuming that 98% of energy is supplied by renewables, the United 

States could see 98% reductions of electricity retail sales and electrical system energy 

losses, and an overall savings of 39% in total average energy consumption by 2050. 

Source for 2004-2007 figures: U.S. Energy Information Agency Annual Energy Review, 

2008. Author’s projections for 2050. 

32 Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions 

tion for the four energy sectors and a 

what-if scenario involving the essential 

removal of all fossil fuels for energy 

generation. The numbers for 

2050 show a future transition from 

fossil-fuel energy generating plants 

to mostly renewable-energy generating 

facilities, including the use of anhydrous 

ammonia with on-demand 

dissociators for space heating at 

night and when solar energy is limited. 

This would be supplemented as 

needed with some remote renewable 

energy generating facilities in areas 

of high wind or solar insolation. 

This change would have tremendous 

benefits in energy conservation, 

CO 2 

emission reductions, safety, 

and improved security. The numbers 

show a 39% decrease in U.S. energy 

consumption from more than 29,400 

terawatt-hours per year to less than 

© CHERYL CASEY / DREAMSTIME.COM 

Work crews gather on a Florida 

beach in the wake of the June 2010 

Gulf Coast oil spill. Schoder points 

out that even though fossil-fuel 

electricity may now cost less per 

kilowatt than many renewable alternatives, 

it carries many hidden costs, 

such as unexpected environmental 

disasters. 

18,000 terawatt-hours per year. 

There would also be a reduction in 

CO 2 

emissions of about 98% from 

current energy generation using 

mostly fossil fuels. In all, it would be 

a huge step to a brighter, cleaner, 

and safer world of the future. 

It will be imperative to maintain 

an adequately up-to-date electricity 

grid. The grid will have a significantly 

diminished load, but it will 

still have to provide flexibility, load 

leveling, and backup for inevitable 

equipment and system failures, as 

well as the variability of local climate 

changes that affect solar energy 

generation. In addition, there will be 

some demand for large, remotely located 

solar-energy generating plants 

in areas with above-average solar insolation, 

such as the southwestern 

United States, to add energy to the 

grid as backup power. 

Consumption by Energy Sector 

• Residential consumption. U.S. 

households consume about 6,247 terawatt-hours 

of energy per year (not 

including energy used for transportation). 

But that total would transition 

to about 2,046 terawatt-hours 

per year in the homes of the future 

using on-site generation. The future 

household would have an on-site energy 

system to provide on-demand

A Diagram of the Carbon-Free Energy System of the Future 

Power Grid 

Sunlight 

Wind 

Homes, residences, farms, commercial, and industrial 

facilities 

Variable size on-site energy facilities 

Transportation refueling stations 

On-site energy facilities 

Remote solar energy farms in areas of exceptionally 

high solar insolation 

Large scale, on-site renewable energy facilities 

Remote wind energy farms in areas of exceptional 

wind intensity 

Wind turbines with AC generators to supply electricity 

to the power grid 

Fossil fuel refineries; nonfuel uses only 

On-site energy facilities to supply petrochemical raw 

materials to manufacturers of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, 

plastics and asphalt 

Existing nuclear energy plants 

cilities. The U.S. industrial sector 

could shift to running on only twothirds 

of its present level of electricity 

consumption by 2050. Industrial 

facilities would also have on-site energy 

generating facilities similar to 

those described above but with an 

even greater variation of sizes and 

components. Existing industrial 

plants with limited open land may 

need to supplement their on-site 

generation with grid-supplied electricity 

from solar facilities in the 

southwestern United States (another 

reason to maintain the electric grid). 

• Transportation. Present-day 

“gas stations” would be replaced by 

transportation refueling stations that 

charge batteries and dispense anhydrous 

ammonia. Almost all transportation 

fuel would be generated onsite 

using photovoltaic and wind/ 

solar energy facilities. This would 

practically eliminate the transport of 

fuel by trucks on the highway system, 

which would reduce transportation 

consumption by about 146 

terawatt-hours per year and signifielectricity 

and dissociated ammonia 

(75% hydrogen) for a 24-hour-perday 

energy supply. The house would 

have electric heat and/or a furnace, 

which would be fueled with dissociated 

ammonia. It would also have a 

dispensing station to provide electricity 

and ammonia to the family’s 

fuel-cell cars fueled by dissociated 

ammonia. A farmhouse would have 

a larger anhydrous ammonia synthesizer 

and storage tank for fertilizing 

crops. 

• Commercial buildings and facilities. 

Commercial buildings and facilities 

would reduce consumption to 

about one-fifth of current rates. 

Future commercial buildings would 

have systems similar to residential, 

but with a broader range of capacities. 

The facility would have electric 

heat and/or a furnace, which would 

be fueled with dissociated ammonia 

and a dispensing station to dispense 

electricity or ammonia to the business’s 

fuel-cell cars fueled by dissociated 

ammonia. 

• Industry and manufacturing fa- 

Oxygen to air 

Nitrogen from air 

Water 

Oxygen to air 

Nitrogen from air 

Water 

Fossil Fuels 

Waste heat and 

spent fuel rods 

Enriched uranium 

cantly reduce the danger of collisions 

and spills on the highway system. 

An example of the transportation 

vehicle of the future is the Apollo 

Energy Systems electric car designs, 

such as the Silver Volt II, which has a 

patented propulsion system supplied 

by an anhydrous ammonia fuel 

tank. Research and development is 

needed to design similar propulsion 

systems for trucks, buses, trains, and 

airplanes. 

Lowering the Costs of Energy 

Solar energy has been wrongly 

conceived to be very expensive compared 

with fossil fuels. This is probably 

due to the idiosyncrasies of internalizing 

and externalizing various 

costs of energy. As the recent Deepwater 

Horizon’s oil platform explosion 

and resulting leak has shown, 

such costs have not been planned for 

and will now have to be added to 

the future cost of the supply of fossil 

fuels. The area of the costs of fossil 

fuels is indeed a messy, murky, 

smelly oligarchic sea. 

With the gradual buildup of a 

photovoltaic infrastructure, electricity 

and dissociated ammonia (75% 

hydrogen) will become the primary 

energy source for stationary needs 

and for transportation and other mobile 

needs. However, petroleum and 

other fossil-fuel resources will continue 

to be valuable and necessary 

commodities, since fossil resources 

have other uses than the production 

of energy. One-eighth of U.S. oil is 

not burned as fuel, but is instead 

used to make other materials, such 

as asphalt for roads and buildings, 

as well as fertilizers, plastics, pharmaceuticals, 

and other chemical 

products. 

There will be no serious abandonment 

or obsolescence of petroleum 

facilities. Older facilities will gradually 

be phased out and not replaced. 

New high-efficiency refineries can be 

built to supply feedstock for the nonenergy 

products of fossil resources. 

High-efficiency vehicles, machinery 

and systems, as well as conservation, 

will be needed to move toward energy 

sustainability. 

Over several decades, the world 

will go from a primarily carbonbased 

energy system to a primarily 


“solar-ammonia-hydrogen” energy 

system. Carbon-dioxide emissions 

will be greatly reduced, and global 

warming may cease to be a problem. 

The environment will be cleaner, 

safer, and more secure. Underwater 

oil wells will no longer be needed. 

Oil spills will be a thing of the past. 

In addition, the new solar technologies 

will be a source of significant 

new jobs. 

Creating the desired solar-ammonia-hydrogen 

infrastructure will require 

the strong cooperative support 

of governments throughout the 

world. Governments must rethink 

their energy policies by reducing or 

eliminating the hundreds of billions 

of dollars in annual subsidies for fossil 

fuels and incorporating all costs— 

including extraction damages; CO 2 

buildup; resource depletion; air, soil, 

and water pollution; acid rain; and 

biodiversity losses—into the price of 

fossil fuels. Security costs should 

also be included in the price of fossil-fuel 

energy and nuclear energy. 

The model for this approach exists 

today in many European nations 

whose governments are already using 

taxes and incentives to fund new 

renewable energy infrastructures. As 

Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General 

Electric, has said, “Europe today is 

the major force for environmental innovation. 

European governments 

have encouraged their companies to 

invest in and produce clean power 

technologies.” 

One way of covering the infrastructure 

building costs would be a 

worldwide “carbon tax” or “resource 

extraction tax” on all carbon-containing 

fuels, like petroleum, natural 

gas, and coal. It would essentially be 

a fee charged for resource depletion. 

Implementing this tax would motivate 

consumers to burn up less gasoline 

and force businesses to innovate 

in green technologies. This is a classic 

case where an old quote of former 

Senator Jack Kemp is applicable: 

“Tax that which you want to discourage 

and subsidize that which you 

want to encourage.” 

A tax of 5% might be a fair starting 

point. The proceeds would be used 

to build plants that manufacture 

photovoltaic-grade silicon and silicon 

photovoltaic panels. Soon after 

start-up, these plants would be con- 

verted to run on photovoltaic electricity 

generated by panel arrays 

manufactured on-site. 

Where possible, these plants 

should be located near sites of abundant 

sand and water. Sites near hydroelectric 

dams are ideal because 

the plants could harness the dams 

for potential energy storage by using 

excess photovoltaic electricity to 

pump water uphill into the reservoirs 

as a source of potential energy 

for nighttime use. Four ideal locations 

would be near Hoover Dam 

outside of Las Vegas, Nevada; near 

Grand Coulee Dam in Washington 

state; near the Aswan Dam in Egypt; 

and near the Three Gorges Dam in 

China. 

Around 90% of the photovoltaic 

panels produced by the plants 

would be sold for residential and 

commercial rooftop photovoltaic 

electricity generating units. Low-interest 

loans must be made available 

to buyers, initially, to subsidize the 

capital costs until manufacturing 

supply and panel efficiency are optimized. 

The remaining 10% of the 

photovoltaic panels produced by the 

plants would be installed at the site 

to supply electricity to the local electrical 

grid for grid-supplied electricity. 

This approach would continue 

until the world’s current electricity 

demands are met from renewable 

energy sources. 

The carbon tax funds would also 

be used to build photovoltaic solar 

panels to supply electricity to “filling 

stations” for recharging electric vehicles 

and making hydrogen by electrolysis 

and anhydrous ammonia to 

supply fuel-cell vehicles. The arrays 

of panels would be built over the 

highway roadbeds so as not to use 

additional land area. I believe that it 

would even be possible to build airplanes 

that would fly using dissociated 

ammonia or liquid hydrogen as 

a fuel. 

The world will then have converted 

to a primarily solar-ammoniahydrogen 

energy world, free of its 

dependence on fossil fuels. Any remaining 

coal, petroleum, or natural 

gas reserves left at this time would 

be put into restricted feedstock reserves 

for pharmaceuticals, plastics, 

and petrochemicals. The result 

would be a sustainable, carbon-free 

world energy supply for centuries to 

come. 

Rethinking the “Good Life” 

Our sun will not last forever. However, 

if we convert to a carbon-free 

energy system, we should be able to 

extend our comfortable life on Earth 

for several billions of years. How we 

do this is up to us. We can continue 

to eat our free lunch of fossil fuels 

until their depletion, or we can start 

now to convert to a carbon-free energy 

system in a well thought-out 

manner over the next 40 or 50 years. 

We, the global community, have to 

make a choice between cheap, dirty, 

harmful fossil fuels or slightly more 

expensive clean energy, which is 

available but for which we lack the 

appropriate infrastructure. The cost 

of a world with vastly less climate 

change, terrorism, and environmental 

damage is to readjust our priorities 

and pay more for energy and 

less for war and for damage from climate, 

environment, and weather 

problems. 

A significant contribution to our 

current world energy situation is the 

consumption creed that has been 

pushed upon us by the marketing geniuses 

of the global corporations. The 

public has been enticed by those corporations 

to buy more and save less. 

I believe that, if we continue this 

consumption cult, we will be bringing 

on serious problems, such as climate 

change and religious wars, and 

much unnecessary suffering. On the 

other hand, if we insist on a resource 

depletion fee or carbon tax instead of 

begging for cheap oil, these problems 

can be avoided. A long-range 

solution in the form of carbon-free 

energy is feasible and doable if we 

plan now, spend for the future instead 

of the present, and conserve 

more while spending less. ❏ 


Carl E. Schoder is a retired 

chemical engineer and lifelong 

Sierra Club member. 

He previously served electronics 

firm Varian Inc. in 

multiple capacities: process 

engineer, laboratory manager, 

plant process engineer, and corporate 

manager for environmental compliance. 

E‐mail cschoderrvm@charter.net. 


By Arnold Brown 

Relationships, Community, and 

Identity in the New Virtual Society 

As we spend more of our social lives online, the definitions of 

relationships and families are shifting. A business futurist offers 

an overview of these trends and what they imply for organizations 

in the coming years. 

The future of business conferences? A 

virtual boardroom meeting in Second 

Life. Professional associations will 

hold more and more events and meetings 

in virtual spaces as well. 

ILLUSTRATIONS: LINDEN LAB 

In India, where for centuries marriages 

have been arranged by families, 

online dating services such as 

BharatMatrimony.com are profoundly 

changing embedded traditions. 

MyGamma, a Singapore-based mobile 

phone social networking site, has 

millions of users throughout Asia and 

Africa, giving social networking capability 

to people across continents—no 

personal computer necessary. 

In China, individuals have been participating 

in wang hun (online role-play 

marriages). These gaming sites are 

causing actual married couples to get 

divorced on the grounds that this constitutes 

adultery—even though no faceto-face 

meetings ever took place. 

And Web sites such as GeneTree 

.com and Ancestry.com, which offer inexpensive 

cheek-swab DNA tests, link 

up people throughout the world who 

have similar DNA, thus combining genealogy, 

medical technology, and social 

networking. 

Clearly the Internet has radically reshaped 

our social lives over the span of 

just a couple of decades, luring us into 

a virtual metaworld where traditional 

interactions—living, loving, belonging, 

and separating, as well as finding customers 

and keeping them—require new 

protocols. 

Two avatars share a moment 

together in the virtual world 

Second Life. Could this represent 

the future dating experience 

(at least the positive side 

of it) as our social lives move 

increasingly online? 

Relationships Take on a 

Digital Dimension 

The future of falling in love may be 

online. Dating sites, once considered a 

gimmicky way to meet and connect 

with new people, have grown immensely 

in popularity, thanks in part to 

the convergence of information technologies 

and digital entertainment. Facili- 


tating and managing relationships 

online is projected to become close to 

a billion-dollar industry in the 

United States in 2011. 

In the new Virtual Society, we will 

see an increasing transition from basic 

matchmaking sites to sites that 

enable people to actually go out on 

online “dates” without ever leaving 

their desks. While face-to-face dating 

will never entirely disappear, the 

process—and even relationships 

themselves—will happen more and 

more in virtual space. 

Especially for young people, relationships 

made in virtual space can 

be just as powerful and meaningful 

as those formed in the real world. 

Additionally, as more people gain 

access to broadband technologies, an 

increasing number are seeking social 

connectivity this way. There are already 

at least 500 million mobile 

broadband users globally. The speed 

and flexibility with which people 

communicate and socialize online 

will likely only continue to increase. 

Technology doesn’t just bring 

people together, though. As Douglas 

Rushkoff points out in Program or Be 

Programmed (OR Books, 2010), cyberspace 

creates a temporal and spatial 

separation from which it becomes 

seemingly easier to accomplish unpleasant 

interpersonal tasks. Hence, 

the techno brush-off: breaking up with 

a significant other via e-mail or text 

message. 

This will increasingly be a dominant 

fixture of the global youth culture. 

Young people everywhere link 

up through IM, Twitter, blogs, smartphones, 

and social networking sites 

that are proliferating at an accelerating 

rate. This is a critical point for 

businesses to understand. The 

emerging generation is part of what 

is, in essence, a vast new crossborder 

empire. It is marked by an instant 

awareness of what’s new, 

what’s hot, what’s desirable—and 

what’s not. This is the group that 

pollster John Zogby, in his book The 

Way We’ll Be (Random House, 2008), 

calls the First Globals. His research 

shows that their expectations of 

products and services will be vastly 

different and that they will force 

businesses to redefine their offerings. 

Young people will not, as their elders 

did, simply adapt to the tech- 

substantive feel to online relationships. 

The more real and satisfying 

these relationships can be made to 

seem, the more they will attract and 

hold people, and the more money 

they will generate. 

Commercialized virtual venues 

such as upscale bars and coffeehouses 

could even be looked to as 

testing grounds to develop the social 

skills necessary to form meaningful 

human relationships. Businesses 

could use game applications like 

Mall World or Café World on Facebook 

as platforms to advertise various 

specials that occur in virtual 

space, ranging from coupons for 

those aforementioned simulations of 

bars and coffeehouses to discounts 

for two to “live” streaming concert 

events. Advertising boards could 

promote online activities and events 

such as speed dating in a virtual 

nightclub setting. All this will dramatically 

change the nature of relationships. 

As social researchers have pointed 

out, the Internet is programming us 

as well, starting at an early age. For 

example, there are combination social 

networking and gaming sites for 

children such as Disney’s Club Penguin. 

Children are developing social 

skills within these virtual worlds. 

What this will mean in terms of how 

they will start, maintain, and end 

“real” friendships and relationships 

in the future is anyone’s guess. 

But the Internet can also strengthen 

family ties because it provides a continuously 

connected presence. In 

Norway, for example, one study 

showed that college students were in 

touch with their parents on average 

10 times a week. Young people use 

mobile devices to Skype, text, upload 

photos and videos to Facebook, 

and more, with increasing frequency. 

Cyberspace enables families and 

friends to converse, in effect, as if 

they were in the same room. This is 

part of the reason that the Millennial 

generation reported feeling closer to 

their parents than did their older siblings 

during adolescence, according 

to the Pew Internet and American 

Life Survey. 

So what does all this tell us? For 

one thing, the temporal and spatial 

“here-and-now” limitations that formerly 

characterized social interacnology. 

The new youth cyberculture 

will continue to find ways to adapt 

the technology to their needs and 

desires. For example, Ning, created 

in 2005 by Netscape co-founder 

Marc Andreessen, enables people to 

create their own individual social 

network—not join a preexisting 

world but actually build their own. 

A Web site called paper.li creates a 

personalized newspaper for you everyday 

based on whom you follow 

on Twitter and whether or not they 

said anything particularly important 

in the last 24 hours (as measured by 

retweets). Your friend’s brilliant blog 

post about last night’s St. Patrick’s 

Day party could appear directly next 

to Tim O’Reilly or Bruce Sterling’s 

most recent missive on China’s Internet 

policy. It’s hard to imagine a local 

newspaper providing that sort of 

personalized content. 

But online relationships are not exclusively 

reserved for young people. 

As the elderly become more comfortable 

with the Internet, they will increasingly 

turn to alternative spaces, 

such as virtual worlds, to find company 

or meet people with similar interests. 

By 2008, more than 20 million 

social networkers in the United 

States were over the age of 50, according 

to a study by Deloitte. There 

have been a slew of media reports 

playing up the fact that many seniors 

are joining Facebook and Twitter, 

as well as becoming an increasingly 

significant part of the growing 

commercial activity in virtual 

worlds. 

Commercializing Communities 

More and more people regard the 

virtual world as a place where they 

can establish and maintain safer, less 

demanding relationships on their 

own time. Ease, flexibility, and relative 

anonymity will continue to be 

three key components of dating online. 

Monetization will happen 

quickly, as virtual restaurants, movie 

theaters, concerts, and even wedding 

chapels are established. 

In addition to using virtual worlds 

as test markets for real-life products 

and services, as is done now, businesses 

will offer a much wider variety 

of virtual products and services. 

Having these options would give a 


owling leagues. The big mistake 

that the fearful always make is to 

equate change with destruction. The 

social turmoil of the 1970s was heralded 

by such observers as “the destruction 

of the family.” But the family 

did not die; it just changed—and 

it is still changing. 

Similarly, social capital is not going 

away; it is too intrinsic to human 

nature, although aspects of it may 

well be changing, and it is important 

that you view these changes objectively 

if you want to understand 

what they are and what they mean 

to you. 

Social ties are being created, 

strengthened, and—yes—weakened 

in an almost unbelievable variety of 

ways. This has to entail, as well, the 

remaking and establishing of both a 

deeper and a shallower social capital. 

Someone with more than 3,000 

Facebook friends probably has more 

than 2,000 shallow friendships, but 

there’s a tremendous amount of variety 

in that number; some of these 

friendships are viable clients, others 

may be service providers, others 

may be long-term friend prospects, 

or secret crushes, or members of a 

social circle to which the person with 

3,000 friendships wants access; some 

of them will be annoying people encountered 

only once at a party, betions 

such as dating and family gettogethers 

have broken down. The 

composition of, and behavior in, relationships 

and households in the 

future will therefore change seriously. 

These trends are powerfully 

affecting how companies and organizations 

will design, sell, and market 

a wide range of products and services 

to consumers, with a growing 

emphasis on individualization and 

personalization. For instance, if relationships 

and families are more virtual, 

we should see an increase in the 

construction of new kinds of singleperson 

housing units or dual sleeping 

quarters. 

Family formation will need to be 

flexible and adaptive. The nuclear 

family was a response to the Industrial 

Age, in large measure replacing 

the extended family that characterized 

the Agricultural Era. It spurred 

vast economic shifts and led to new 

multibillion-dollar industries, from 

autos to washing machines to personal 

telephones. We are already seeing 

indications that the family is 

morphing into other forms as the 

Virtual Age approaches. Employers 

and governments will see their social, 

human resources, financial services, 

and benefits programs challenged, 

as the new economy takes 

great advantage of these multiple, 

newly unfolding personal relationships. 

For instance, should a “virtual 

spouse” be able to claim the Social 

Security benefits of a partner? The 

easy answer is, of course not. But 

what if it’s the virtual spouse who is 

charged with monitoring the health 

of an aged parent remotely? What if 

he or she does the household billpaying, 

or even contributes half of 

the household income? In other 

words, what if the virtual spouse 

performs many if not all of the tasks 

associated with a traditional spouse? 

And should the same polygamy 

laws applied to regular marriages 

also apply to virtual marriages? 

Should such marriages be subject to 

the same taxation laws? 

With the advent of an electronic 

era, many social scientists and other 

“experts” decried what they saw as a 

loss of social capital—the so-called 

“Bowling Alone” theory—because 

people were supposedly decreasing 

their participation in such things as 

The Reality of Virtual Feelings 

Advances in brain research and multisensory perception could play 

an important role in the development of virtual relationships. Neural 

devices already allow people to control electronic equipment such as 

wheelchairs, televisions, and video games via brain–computer interfaces. 

One day soon, avatars may also be controllable this way. 

Virtual reality may become so advanced that it could trick the brain 

into thinking the invented images it is responding to are real—and 

human emotions would follow accordingly. Avatars will cause people 

to feel love, hate, jealousy, etc. And as haptic technologies improve, 

our abilities to respond physically to our virtual partners will also improve: 

Sexual pleasure may be routinely available without any interhuman 

stimulation at all. 

If it becomes possible to connect virtual reality programs directly 

to the brain, thoughts and emotions may also be digitized, rendered 

binary and reduced to 0s and 1s. Feelings of satisfaction and pleasure 

(two key components in any relationship) could be created between 

avatars without any “real” stimulus at all. But would they be real 

or mimetic? 

Once humans begin to perceive virtual social interactions as actually 

having occurred, it will greatly impact individuals, relationships, 

communities, and society as a whole. 

—Arnold Brown 

grudgingly given the status of 

“friend” to avoid seeming rude. All 

of these friendships have their own 

unique value. But Facebook sees 

little difference among them outside 

of how they are designated in privacy 

settings (some people can see 

more private posts than others). Outside 

institutions don’t recognize any 

distinction among these virtual 

friendships, if they recognize such 

friendships at all. 

Sociologist Richard Ling has labeled 

the new communication phenomenon 

micro-coordination—as 

people are constantly planning, coordinating, 

and changing plans because 

their cyberconnections are always 

on. University of Southern 

California sociologist Manuel 

Castells says that adolescents today 

build and rebuild social networks 

via constant messaging. This is 

helped by the fact that they have 

what he calls “a safe autonomous 

pattern,” in that their parents are 

only a speed dial away. 

Sociologists describe two kinds of 

social ties: strong ties of family members 

and those with shared values, 

beliefs, and identities; and weak ties 

to acquaintances and other people 

with shallower connections. Accord- 

continued on page 40 


By William Sims Bainbridge 

Avatars and Virt 

Deceased people always left 

active legacies in the memories 

of the survivors who 

knew them, and in the consequences 

of the deeds they performed 

in life. Now, a very great variety 

of avatars and agents in virtual 

worlds is extending the scope of action 

for a growing number of living 

people, potentially continuing their 

active existence after death and fulfilling 

the fantasies of religion 

through information technology. 

A hint of the human future can be 

found on Aldor Rise in Outland’s 

Shattrath City in the massively 

multi player online role-playing 

game World of Warcraft. There stands 

Caylee Dak, an Elf huntress, with 

her nightsaber panther, Dusky. Her 

function is to bless any member of 

the Alliance who brings her a poem 

beginning, “Do not stand at my 

grave and weep, I am not there, I do 

not sleep. I am in a thousand winds 

that blow, across Northrend’s bright 

and shining snow.” As an avatar, 

Caylee Dak is an active memorial for 

a player named Dak Krause, who 

died of leukemia in 2007, dressed exactly 

as she was when she served as 

his avatar in this virtual world, now 

providing a hint of immortality for 

his departed soul. 

Avatars need not reflect the person 

precisely, and indeed World of Warcraft 

calls them characters rather 

than avatars, suggesting that they 

have some independent nature. 

Thus, before we even begin to catalog 

the full range of avatars and 

agents that already exist, we should 

realize that they are expressions of 

the self, and the self may be expressed 

in many ways. I had 22 

World of Warcraft characters, and invested 

more than 700 hours of my 

own existence in each of two of 

them, Maxrohn and Catullus. 

Maxrohn, a human priest, was 

named after my uncle, Max Rohn, 

who was an Episcopal priest and 

something of an adventurer; he once 

taught me a judo move that could 

break a man’s arm. Thus, Maxrohn 

was a mixture of me and my uncle, 

and we all are partly reflections of 

the family members who have 

shaped our own characters. Catullus 

was based on the ancient Roman 

poet of that name, and I have published 

an essay bylined “Catullus,” 

in the form of a letter from him to a 

supernatural being, namely me, 

about his own sense of being real. 

Some recent gamelike virtual 

worlds, notably Star Trek Online and 

Dungeons and Dragons Online, allow 

one to have four or five secondary 

avatars operating at once, and to set 

their degree of autonomy. In a very 

real sense, these secondaries are programmable 

by the user, because one 

may set ahead of time which actions 

each one can perform, and then in 

real time give them commands or 

leave them to operate autonomously. 

Their degree of artificial intelligence 

is low, but not entirely negligible, because, 

for example, they learn which 

enemies are doing the most damage 

to them and respond accordingly. 

When an artificial person has some 

degree of autonomy from control by 

its owner, we call it an agent. 

Already, many people have information 

technology agents, but these 

agents are so simple we do not ordinarily 

think of them as such. Your 

answering machine acts in your 

stead when it says, “Sorry I’m not 

home now, please leave a message.” 

Many companies use speech-recognition 

technology in more-sophisticated 

systems that can ask and answer 

questions, and it is just a matter 


WILLIAM SIMS BAINBRIDGE 

Already, many people have 

information technology 

agents, but these agents are 

so simple we do not ordinarily 

think of them as such. 

Sagittarius Sylvanus is author William 

Sims Bainbridge’s Dungeons and Dragons 

Online avatar. 

ual Immortality 

of time before you will be able to do 

this with your home machine. Some 

investors use trading agents, programs 

that execute automatic stoploss 

actions in the stock market or 

follow more complex investment 

strategies without moment-tomoment 

supervision. If you ever 

rented a movie from Netflix and rated 

it afterward, or bought a book from 

Amazon.com, something like an 

agent representing you now exists 

inside the company’s recommender 

system. These online businesses use 

data like movie-preference ratings 

and book purchases to advertise 

your favorites to other customers, 

aggregating your data with data 

from many others. This allows your 

personal preferences to operate 

somewhat autonomously, akin to an 

agent who votes for which movies or 

books should be promoted to customers 

like you. 

The picture accompanying this 

article shows Sagittarius Sylvanus, 

my primary Dungeons and Dragons 

Online avatar, being magically protected 

by Fayden Maeleth, an Elf 

healer. Although the same species 

as Caylee, she lives in a different 

world, has different abilities, and is 

a secondary avatar rather than a 

primary actor. Across all 15 virtual 

worlds I have inhabited, I have had 

50 primary avatars and an equal 

number of secondaries, yet one 

thing is missing: persistence. Two of 

my favorite gameworlds have been 

shut down: The Matrix Online and 

Tabula Rasa. To become permanent, 

virtual worlds must become important. 

One way they might do this is 

to give the avatars enough autonomy 

that they can continue to function, 

even when their owners are 

offline, doing useful work that 

would justify the low cost of maintaining 

their subscriptions. Our avatars 

and agents will not only help 

us and expand our scope, but in the 

very near future they will also cooperate 

with each other, forming mutually 

supportive virtual teams. 

Over the hundreds of hours when 

Dak Krause operated Caylee, his 

World of Warcraft avatar, he made a 

vast number of decisions that expressed 

his own individual nature. 

All of his actions were temporarily 

stored in the gameworld’s computer 

server and could have been 

used as the raw material for an artificial 

intelligence program to learn 

how to play the game the way he 

did—quite achievable with today’s 

technology. If that had been done, 

Caylee could be playing a far more 

complex role—perhaps as a guard 

in Auberdine, the Elf seaside 

town—responding in the same 

ways that Krause would have to enemy 

attacks or requests for help 

from new players. 

As people gain more and more avatars, 

agents, and other technologybased 

expressions of themselves, the 

scope for action during their lives increases, 

and the possibility of life after 

death becomes progressively 

more real. Buckminster Fuller said, 

“I seem to be a verb.” 

I say, “I am a plural verb, in future 

tense.” 

❑ 


William Sims Bainbridge is a sociologist 

currently managing the review of grant proposals 

in human-centered computing, and 

author of many books, including God from 

the Machine: Artificial Intelligence Models 

of Religious Cognition (AltaMira, 2006), 

The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in 

a Virtual World (MIT Press, 2010), and 

Multiplayer Online Games (Morgan and 

Claypool, 2010). 


continued from page 37 

ing to some researchers, the Internet 

and, in particular, mobile devices are 

enabling the strong community ties 

to be reinforced, often at the expense 

of the weak ties. At a time when 

technology is being lauded for encouraging 

diversity and facilitating 

cross-cultural communication, there 

is, consequently, a strong and growing 

countertrend: digital tribalism. 

Aside from strengthening ties to 

family and close friends, people are 

using the technology to find others 

with whom they share important affinities, 

ranging from genomes to beliefs 

to lifestyle choices. This digital 

form of tribalism is an unexpectedly 

strong trend, as observed by social 

critics such as Christine Rosen. 

Information—including product 

and service information—spreads 

electronically with speed and power. 

Effectively getting a positive message 

on a tribal network could well 

be tomorrow’s best marketing strategy. 

Although the tribal identity can 

be deep and solid, brand connections 

may not necessarily be so. 

Maintaining the connection will require 

constant monitoring of the 

electronic tribal village and quickness 

to reposition or reinforce when 

required. 

Bridal showers, for instance, can 

be attended by distant guests 

through Skype, and e-registries allow 

gift givers to view what others 

have bought. There is much room 

for innovation here, in terms of 

bringing people together who would 

not otherwise be in the same place 

for business meetings, financial 

planning, meal sharing, celebrations, 

and more. Associations might capitalize 

on online events for far-flung 

and numerous businesses, professionals, 

and friends and families of 

members. Employers might do the 

same for their employees’ personal 

networks, perhaps offering discounts, 

education, job postings, and 

new products to all “friends of 

friends.” 

Expat workers and members of 

the armed forces might be more easily 

enabled to stay in touch with 

their families if their employers organized 

better around online communications 

and communities. This 

“All this could lead to growing confusion about 

identity. We will go from ‘Who am I?’ to ‘Who, 

when, and where am I?’” 

would ease the burden on relocated 

personnel, improve morale, attract 

more people, increase productivity, 

and spin the sale of products and 

service to these populations. This 

could also be true for alumni networks 

and other diaspora groups. 

The Identity Industry 

Social scientists make the distinction 

between a found identity and a 

made identity. The found identity is 

one created by your circumstances— 

who your parents were, your ethnic 

background, your religion, your sex, 

where you went to school, your profession, 

and all the other external 

factors that people use to categorize 

and describe you. The made identity, 

on the other hand, is the one you create 

for yourself. It is how you wish 

to see yourself and how you want 

others to see you. 

In the past, people who wanted to 

escape what they saw as the trap of 

their found identity did such things 

as change their name or appearance. 

They moved somewhere else. Now, 

and increasingly in the future, technology 

will let you make and remake 

your identity at will—virtually. 

This extraordinary, even 

revolutionary, development will profoundly 

affect fundamental societal 

values such as trust and reliability. 

In addition to engaging directly 

online with other individuals, you 

can also interact with them through 

avatars, the images that represent 

you (or an idealized version of yourself) 

in virtual worlds. Each virtual 

world requires a separate avatar, so 

in effect you can be as many different 

people as there are virtual 

worlds. In the future, you will be 

able to create avatars that will literally 

take on lives of their own. They 

will, once created, be able to “think” 

on their own, without further input 

from you. They may be able to perform 

intensive research tasks for 

you, start and even manage online 

companies, maintain your social relationships 

by reading your Facebook 

updates and blog posts and analyzing 

them for significant news so 

you don’t have to. 

Increasingly, over time, distinctions 

between real and virtual identity 

will become less sharply defined, 

particularly for people who 

spend substantial amounts of time in 

the virtual world—or some enhanced 

combination of the real and 

the virtual. A company called Total 

Immersion combines 3-D and augmented 

reality technology on the Internet, 

inserting people and physical 

objects into live video feeds. According 

to the company’s Web site, “this 

digital processing mixes real and virtual 

worlds together, in real time.” 

All this could lead to growing confusion 

about identity. We will go 

from “Who am I?” to “Who, when, 

and where am I?” What in the twentieth 

century was seen as a problem 

that needed treatment—multiple 

personalities—will increasingly be 

seen in the twenty-first century as a 

coping mechanism, greatly affecting 

the evolving economy, as multiple 

personas split their expenditures in 

multiple ways. 

Companies that provide such services 

will be a great growth industry 

as we move further into the “Who 

are you, really?” era. 

❑ 


Arnold Brown is the chairman 

of Weiner, Edrich, 

Brown, Inc., and the coauthor 

(with Edie Weiner) of 

FutureThink: How to Think 

Clearly in a Time of Change 

(Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006). 

E-mail arnold@weineredrichbrown.com. 

Web site www.weineredrichbrown.com. 


By Barton Kunstler 

The Singularity’s 

Impact on Business 

Leaders: A Scenario 

How will technologically enhanced individuals 

collaborate with “normal” employees? 

Artist’s concept of an “enhanced” worker. 

It would be unwise for business leaders 

to assume that they will have complete 

control over technologically enhanced 

individuals when the Singularity occurs, 

warns author Kunstler. 

ERIC HOOD / ISTOCKPHOTO 


The “Human Singularity” refers 

to the radical fusion of the human 

body with technology to 

achieve levels of mental acuity and 

physical ability that eclipse anything 

humans have previously known. 

This would represent a singular 

event in human history: For the first 

time, people would be driven by 

laws other than those governing organic 

life. A broad front of converging 

core technologies may make individuals 

with such abilities 

commonplace by 2030 — if not 

sooner. Indeed, steps are already being 

taken to achieve this goal. 

One critical social function that 

will be affected by the Singularity is 

leadership, a chief defining factor of 

a society’s values, relations, and objectives. 

Leaders will bear much of 

the burden of social evolution when 

the “Enhanced Singular Individuals” 

(ESIs) of the Singularity Era enter the 

boss’s boss, and three people you’ve 

never seen before. Your boss keeps it 

short and sweet: “We’re giving you 

three new analysts. We want daily 

reports on their performance — not 

just the usual, but how they think.” 

“Okay,” you say, “but....” One of 

the unidentifiables steps forward 

and fills you in. When she’s done, 

your jaw drops. 

“Three new analysts” sounds 

harmless enough — maybe even a 

good thing. But here are their profiles: 

Sandra is a six-foot-tall woman 

with perfect musculature and an IQ 

somewhere in the 400s. Her wealthy, 

well-connected parents had access to 

the latest biotechnology. They 

wanted the best for their daughter 

— or perhaps they coveted “the 

best daughter that money can 

buy” — and had her bioengineered 

to their exact specifications. She is a 

genius in math and technical skills 

and an extreme sports enthusiast. 

Like a grandmaster in a high-school 

chess club, Sandra is amused by the 

intellectual problems that Norms 

grapple with. She intends to eventually 

become an influential player in 

international affairs. 

Whenever Kevin tackles a tough 

problem, nanobots in his bloodstream 

pump oxygen into his brain. 

Other nanobots monitor his body’s 

vitamin, mineral, and enzyme content, 

and produce whatever he needs 

for peak performance. Kevin glows 

with health and charisma, thanks to 

the nanocomputers he inhales once a 

year. The trillions of molecule-sized 

machines operate as parallel-processing 

computers that stimulate brain 

regions and meridian nerves, which 

operate sluggishly in most humans. 

This enhancement allows him to 

read other people’s emotional states 

and even translate their neuronal activity 

into readable thoughts. He has 

instant access to countless databases 

and can process dozens of complex 

variables almost instantaneously — a 

task that could keep a team of analysts 

busy for days. 

Darius is truly an experiment-inprogress. 

A web of carbon nanotubes 

has been threaded along his skin. 

These nanotubes have no specific 

function — they’re not geared toward 

increasing his intelligence or finegeneral 

population of “Norms” 

(those without technological enhancements). 

The leaders of every 

organization and group will be compelled 

to come to terms with the 

ESIs’ advanced capabilities and the 

tensions, ambitions, and alliances attendant 

upon them. 

A Mixed-Ability Workplace 

Scenario 

You are hard at work as director of 

SCOTT DOUGHERTY / LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Carbon nanotubes (illustrated above) are incredibly strong and resilient, compared with 

organic matter. Such breakthroughs in nanotechnology would increase human mental and 

physical capabilities in unprecedented ways. 

a regional desk at a government security 

agency when your boss calls: 

“Er, ah, come over to my office right 

away.” You hurry over, already 

frowning. Did one of your agents 

screw up? Did war break out along a 

border you were supposedly monitoring? 

When you arrive, you find the associate 

director there, along with 

some military brass, your boss, your 


The Singularity: A Glossary of Terms 

The Singularity: Originally used to describe black 

holes and the singular, distinctive laws of physics 

that apply within them and nowhere else, “Singularity” 

now may also refer to the radical fusion of the 

human body with technology to achieve levels of 

mental acuity and physical ability that eclipse anything 

humans have previously known. 

Enhanced Singular Individuals or ESIs: The author’s 

term for people enhanced by Singularity technology. 

Norms: The author’s term for unenhanced or “normal” 

people. 

Nanobots: Molecule- or atom-sized machines measured 

in billionths (nano-) of meters, currently a focus 

of the growing field of nanotechnology. Theoretically, 

a huge number of nanobots can be introduced 

into the human body and programmed to trigger a 

wide range of physical and psychological effects. 

Carbon nanotubes: Very strong cylindrical filaments 

of carbon a few nanometers wide, with many potential 

uses. Their integration with the human body, as 

suggested in the author’s scenario, is purely speculative 

but probably achievable. Even if not placed 

under the outer skin, nanotubes may one day be 

capable of interacting intimately with physiological 

processes. 

DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, 

created to pursue cutting-edge research. DARPA is 

already engaged in the development of Singularityoriented 

technology. 

Super-senses: Dramatically heightened vision, hearing, 

taste, smell, and touch. Advances have been 

made with corneal modifications that lead to exceptional 

night vision. Unlike with contact lenses or 

hearing aids, the goal of super-senses is not to see or 

hear at optimum human levels, but to go well beyond 

them. 

Rogue enhancer: A likely denizen of the Singularity 

era, who operates in a shadow economy or criminal 

underworld and uses genetics, nanotech, and other 

technologies for his or her own gain. 

— Barton Kunstler 

tuning his health, for instance. Instead, 

they emit varying frequencies 

that activate his entire physiology in 

unpredictable ways. Darius is thus 

subject to tremendous flashes of brilliance, 

with results that can barely be 

translated into coherent human 

terms. His incredible physicality 

combines with his freakish intellect 

to make him ideal as both an analyst 

and a covert agent. Over time, he expects 

to rise through the ranks of the 

intelligence system. At least that’s 

what he thought at first and what he 

still tells his handlers. However, as 

he figures out which frequencies 

trigger what states of consciousness 

(information that only he is totally 

privy to), he realizes that the potential 

power of his particular Singularity 

technology is far greater than his 

handlers suspect. 

Forces Driving an Enhanced 

Future 

The true Human Singularity will 

only occur with the advent of ESIs 

whose entire physical, psychological, 

emotional, social, and mental development 

is defined by technological 

enhancements permanently installed 

in their bodies. 

The Singularity will be shaped by 

a continuous stream of scientific advances 

— for instance, the interface 

between biological and synthetic systems, 

especially between humans 

and robotic devices. Advancements 

that have already been achieved to 

varying degrees include improved 

brain function, implants that offer 

“superhuman” sight or hearing, 

cloned mammals, species hybrids 

(created by grafting a trait from one 

species to a member of another), and 

translation of a person’s neuronal activity 

into his or her actual thoughts. 

The accelerating development of a 

few key technologies such as nanotechnology, 

bioengineering, supercomputing, 

materials development, 

and robotics is propelling the Singularity. 

Dark horse technologies that 

can contribute include wave dynamics, 

virtual reality, biofeedback, holography, 

and cultivation of “higher” 

levels of consciousness. 

Public pressure is also contributing 

to the Singularity’s development due 

to interest in improving the quality 

of human life, intelligence, and taskspecific 

performance. Many people 

also believe that humanity’s survival 

depends on its ability to transcend 

current human limitations and operate 

more effectively at a “metahuman” 

level in solving such prob- 


What It Will Mean to Be “Human” 

It may be tempting to compare Enhanced Singular 

Individuals (ESIs) to comic book and movie 

superheroes, whose stories often contain keen social 

and psychological insights. ESIs, though, will not be 

superheroes, nor will they be robotic cyborgs or other 

popular stereotypes. They will be of many different 

types. Some ESIs will have one talent while others 

will possess abilities they can apply in different ways. 

No phone booths for them; their gifts will be integral 

to their everyday identities. 

ESIs will be subject to unfamiliar, unpredictable, 

and complex psychological and social forces. As their 

numbers grow, they will transform twenty-firstcentury 

society and its notions of excellence, 

achievement, and leadership. In short, the Singularity 

will change what it means to be not only human but 

also a leader among humans. 

ESIs will possess a range of abilities (in varying 

combinations) that can be grouped under three broad 

categories: mental, perceptual, and physiological. 

Mental 

• Extraordinary intelligence, memory, and learning 

capacity. 

• Ability to read others’ thoughts. 

• Remote control over technology via mind energy or 

“thought waves.” 

• Mind enters digital networks as an active agent. 

• Mind-to-mind interfaces, mind sharing, and group 

minds. 

• Exploration of “higher” states of consciousness and 

“psychic” powers. 

• Ability to interfere or intervene with others’ neural 

processes and to control one’s own. 

• New areas of learning and exploration — hidden 

worlds revealed. 

• Ability to generate mental models of higher orders 

of complexity. 

Perceptual 

• Hyper-enhanced “super senses.” 

• Extrasensory “sixth, seventh, and eighth senses” 

such as sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, ability 

to perceive imprints of past events in one’s 

environment, and remote sensing. 

• Sharing the sensory experiences of others in real 

time. 

• Extreme proprioception (sensory awareness of 

internal bodily activities), resulting in ability to 

control and improve physical and mental 

operations. 

Physiological 

• Every bodily system more efficient and powerful; 

advances in longevity. 

• New levels of mind/body integration. 

• Increased speed, strength, agility, balance, flexibility, 

coordination, and elasticity. 

• Robotic implants of organs, bones, muscles, 

ligaments, etc. 

• Cross-species genetic implants for strength and new 

mental perspectives. 

• New limbs: artificial, regrown, genetically 

engineered, nano- enhanced. 

• Increased speed at which signals travel along and 

between nerve cells. 

• Greater ability to withstand cold, pain, and extreme 

deprivations. 

• Regulation of key bodily functions: chemical, 

temperature, heart rate, immune system. 

— Barton Kunstler 

social-enhancement mechanism. 

Communities demonstrate their values, 

their assumptions about human 

nature, their aspirations, and even 

their relationship to the environment 

by the way they assign, assert, and 

acquiesce to leadership. 

The Singularity will disrupt leadership’s 

traditional patterns by alterlems 

as war, pollution, climate 

change, poverty, and injustice. 

Management and Leadership 

In the Singularity Era 

Leadership emerged within mammal 

and early human bands because 

it was an efficient survival and 

ing human traits that have shaped 

leadership for millennia. Reimagining 

leadership for the Singularity era 

should begin now, while the technology 

is still in its early stages, because 

we will face immense social and environmental 

change in the coming 

years, and the old ways of leadership 

will no longer suffice. 


A Quick Guide to the Singularity 

The Singularity — What Is It? 

The Singularity “is a future period during which 

the pace of technological change will be so fast and 

far-reaching that human existence on this planet will 

be irreversibly altered. People will combine our brain 

power — the knowledge, skills, and personality 

quirks that make us human — with our computer 

power in order to think, reason, communicate, and 

create in ways we can scarcely even contemplate today,” 

according to Ray Kurzweil, writing in the 

March-April 2006 issue of THE FUTURIST. In his 

various novels, Hugo Award winning science -fiction 

writer Vernor Vinge has portrayed the Singularity as 

a sudden explosion in human intelligence. 

The Technologies Behind the 

Singularity 

1. Genetics. Our ability to manipulate the human 

genome will allow us to turn the expression of certain 

genetic traits on or off, resulting in longer life 

spans and fewer instances of congenital illness, according 

to biotech researchers such as Gregory Stock 

and Ian Wilmut. Some future watchers believe we 

may use genetic science to improve our brains and 

greatly enhance our physical performance as well. 

Aubrey de Grey, author of Ending Aging (St. Martin’s, 

2007), has stated that genetic science could expand 

the human life span well beyond 150 years. 

2. Nanotechnology. This refers to the manipulation 

of objects less than one-billionth of a meter in 

size, literally designing medicines and other products 

on the molecular level. Nanotechnology is confined 

mostly to materials science, but some doctors 

are finding medical applications. A research team 

from the University of Texas was able to send gold 

nanoparticles directly into tumors (in mice) and then 

irradiate the particles, releasing heat. This improved 

the mice’s response to radiation therapy. Robert Freitas, 

author of the Nanomedicine series, has stated that 

future nano-robotic therapies could make us stronger, 

smarter, and healthier than we are today by several 

orders of magnitude. 

3. Artificial intelligence. Computer intelligence 

will surpass all biological (regular human) intelligence 

by the year 2030, according to Kurzweil. 

Long before then, people will incorporate computers 

into their biological functioning and thinking 

through cybernetic implants and nano devices. 

— Patrick Tucker 

The Singularity world will be characterized 

by a global, networked, 

technocratic civilization with a population 

of 8 to 12 billion people. 

Nation-states will be weakened in 

favor of regional alignments, global 

organizations, and large, powerful 

networks devoted to specific causes 

or interests. ESIs will be living sideby-side 

with Norms. Leaders’ tasks 

will be to maximize ESI potential, resolve 

conflicts among ESIs as well as 

between ESIs and Norms, establish 

new leadership approaches for 

unique situations arising from ESI– 

Norm disparities, and establish a new 

basis for social cohesion. ESIs who 

become leaders will likely be confident, 

literally “plugged-in” technologically, 

and either completely or erratically 

rational. 

ESIs may rely too heavily on their 

enhanced abilities when making decisions 

without understanding their 

own unenhanced traits. The disparities 

between their Singularity level 

and “normal” abilities may cause 

some ESIs to experience intense anxiety. 

Many ESI leaders may prove unreliable 

and only able to process narrow 

decision paths. Relationships 

based on awe at outsized talents may 

be marked by intimidation or uneasy 

emotional ties, and successful ESI 

leaders will, at least at first, produce 

a sense of awe. Norm leaders in this 

era may be suspicious, angry, and 

confused. The most successful Norm 

leaders, however, will cultivate their 

own gifts and leverage them for tactical 

advantage (for instance, “If you 

can’t out-calculate them, you must 

out-intuit or out-feel them”). 

Many ESIs and Norms will be 

newly disenfranchised to some extent. 

The question is, will they work 

toward common causes and goals or 

compete with one another? Smart 

leaders on both sides of the enhanced 

divide will encourage collaborative 

initiatives. There will be a growing 

demand for consultants and trainers 

who can assist bewildered leaders in 

understanding such issues as “What 

do Norms really want?” and “Running 

a Family Business with Your 

ESI Sibling.” 

The Post-Singularity 

Workforce Scenario 

Continues 

As you reflect on your three new 


staff members, you realize that everyone 

must now discard the baseline 

assumption that we will always 

exert control or leadership over technology. 

In this case, “technology” refers 

to a whole other type of human. 

For the first time in human history, 

the locus of leadership has shifted 

from the strictly human to beings 

with greater mental capacity than 

our own. Deeply engrained assumptions 

about power and leadership 

will begin to disappear because a 

cultural concept loses strength as its 

experiential underpinnings erode. 

Entirely new types of interpersonal 

and group dynamics will arise that 

transform the requirements and per- 

ception of leadership. 

At the same time, you figure that 

many traditional leadership paradigms 

will still be applicable and directly 

relevant for several reasons. 

Radical social change does not 

equate to overturning the most fundamental 

psychological and organizational 

responses to personal and 

group relations. The new ESIs may 

be extraordinary people, but they are 

people nonetheless. Just like everyone 

else, they should respond to 

your fair distribution of assignments 

and rewards, and to the open and 

personable nature that has served 

you so well in political situations. 

Someone has to have the skills to 

bring coherence to complex societies, 

and so forth. Still, those abilities may 

not produce the expected results 

with these new ESIs. The methods 

and tools of leadership must undergo 

serious renovation. 

As the first weeks pass, you notice 

a new dynamic in your department. 

Your staff of 35 Norms has sensed 

something different about the three 

new colleagues, although you are not 

allowed to even hint to your staff the 

truth about their new co-workers. 

This is your first leadership task 

pertaining to the Norm–ESI situation: 

Identify the cause and nature of the 

concerns slowly building up in the 

office. The strong relationships 

ALPERIUM / ISTOCKPHOTO 

What form will leadership take in the Singularity 

era? And what will Enhanced Singular Individuals 

be capable of accomplishing? 


certainly justifies a successful career. 

But one of your analysts pushes a bit 

more. “Look,” she argues, “if there 

are more where they came from, the 

rest of us are going to face increasingly 

limited options.” You say 

something encouraging, but you 

both know — and soon the whole office 

knows — that there is no easy 

resolution to such concerns. 

Another six months passes, and 

you’ve adapted your leadership style 

to address these tensions. You can no 

longer be the wiser, more experienced 

natural leader that you’ve 

been to the rest of your staff because 

the ESIs derive their own — possibly 

superior — understanding via their 

own mysterious ways. The ESIs do, 

however, need help navigating a 

professional world from which 

they’ve been sheltered for most of 

their lives, so you adopt a more 

avuncular role that gradually makes 

you more attuned to the personal 

concerns of the rest of your staff. You 

were always good at the political, 

team-building aspects of the job, but 

now that you’ve had to shift the 

value that you provide as a leader to 

accommodate the ESIs, you find the 

whole office appreciates the more relational 

“you.” 

The atmosphere not only thaws 

from the earlier tension but becomes 

looser. People discuss their work 

more animatedly with one another, 

meetings are more challenging, and 

everyone seems to enjoy the giveand-take. 

Once, during a meeting, 

Darius said, “It’s not all about what 

we know or how fast we process. We 

are not computers, after all; we’re 

people, and insight is qualitative.” 

Likewise, Sandy conceded, “There 

is a richness within each person’s perspective 

that I hadn’t expected. Their 

experience and emotional lives, the 

way they solve problems — even if 

they can be frustratingly slow — often 

provides us with fascinating material.” 

It is not lost on you that the three 

ESIs on your team are unselfconsciously 

condescending toward the 

Norms, like Cro-Magnons who are 

really delighted to find that Neanderthals 

also can think. The ESIs naturally 

assume that they are superior 

to the Norms — an assumption that 

the Norms do not share. Nonetheyou’ve 

established enable you to do 

some casual intelligence gathering 

among your people, from which you 

discover that the staff is confused 

and daunted by the ESIs and the 

thorough and unerring analyses that 

emerge so rapidly and with so little 

prior experience. 

You decide to talk things over with 

the ESIs themselves — at least they 

know they’re different. But the conversations 

don’t lead to much. All 

three say they are perfectly happy 

before you even have a chance to 

ask. 

So what makes these three ESIs 

tick? How do you motivate them? 

Do they even need motivation? And 

motivate them for what? What’s 

your job anyway? To make sure they 

don’t shine too bright and upset the 

political and personal balance in the 

department? To motivate them to operate 

at their maximum level of performance, 

if you can even figure out 

what that is? And how do you manage 

the threat that the ESIs’ superior 

skills pose to Norms’ careers — including 

your own? You realize that 

throughout society there’ll be a need 

to reduce ESI–Norm tensions that 

will arise with the inevitable shifts in 

status and wealth as members of the 

two groups compete. 

You have other questions that 

make you think the whole thing may 

end up driving you crazy. Are these 

guys patented? Do they need to be 

maintained or upgraded? How long 

before they become obsolete? Then 

what happens to them? If you have 

to fire one of them, where do they 

go? 

Over the next six months, your unease 

intensifies. Several of the Norms 

in the office have become friendly 

with the three ESIs, occasioning tensions 

between those Norms and 

other staff. And even though you 

have not let anything slip about the 

ESIs’ identities, your people are 

savvy and they’ve surmised the general 

truth. A few have approached 

you and asked outright if their prospects 

for advancement have diminished 

as a result of the extraordinary 

performance of the three new hires. 

You tell them, truthfully, that they 

are not in direct competition, that 

there are many tracks for advancement, 

and that their own expertise 

less, the Norms do find themselves 

unconsciously deferring to the ESIs. 

You realize that each step forward 

generates more complexity, more dilemmas, 

new tensions. You wonder 

what the limits are to your ability to 

adjust. You also wonder what is going 

on in the minds of the three ESIs, 

and what will happen when more 

ESIs come into your office or replace 

Norm staff, and how much longer 

the details of the ESIs’ enhancements 

can be kept secret from their coworkers. 

In the year since Sandra, Kevin, 

and Darius arrived, you’ve heard 

from others suddenly confronted 

with managing, working for or with, 

or interacting with ESIs. You realize 

that the increasing irrelevance of 

Norm staff in the face of highperforming 

ESIs affects every level 

of society. Your staff is already trying 

to cope with what they perceive as 

their own growing obsolescence, and 

you’re even having doubts about 

your own relevance. ESIs could easily 

become a separate class and 

quickly rise to leadership positions; 

they will also likely develop new 

skills as their self-awareness and experience 

increase. New ESI agendas 

will emerge beyond the scope of the 

scientists, handlers, and managers 

who create and guide them, further 

undermining traditional hierarchies 

and managerial norms. Rogue enhancers 

will also create new types of 

ESIs, for better or worse; certainly a 

criminal underworld specializing in 

Singularity technology will arise. 

As a leader, you recognize these 

emerging challenges to your own 

abilities. Perhaps the time will come 

when you are no longer deemed adequate. 

Then you’ll either retire or 

perhaps ask to be enhanced. ❑ 


Barton Kunstler is an 

account executive for IST 

Energy and the educational 

director of Chess Corps in 

Brookline, Massachusetts, 

which applies brain-based 

learning methods to teaching 

and coaching chess. He is the author of 

The Hothouse Effect (AMACOM, 2003) and 

writes for The Huffington Post. E-mail 

barleeku@comcast.net. 


Why Farmers Need 

a Pay Raise 

Global commercial trends threaten farmers’ livelihoods— 

and the global food supply along with them, argues an 

agricultural policy watcher. The consequences for human 

beings everywhere could be dire. 

MILANLJ / DREAMSTIME 

By Julian Cribb 

Above: A corn field 

withers in a summer 

drought. Many of the 

world’s farms are suffering 

from depleted water 

supplies and degraded 

ecosystems, according 

to Cribb. Innovative 

water-management 

and land-management 

practices could help, he 

adds, but farmers will 

need much more funding 

to implement them. 

The world’s farmers 

need a pay raise, or 

else, come mid-century, 

the other 8 billion 

of us may not 

have enough to eat. 

As the Earth Policy 

Institute notes, the 

w o r l d p ro d u c e d 

more grain than it 

consumed throughout 

the 1970s, 1980s, 

and 1990s. Today, those surpluses 

are gone. While the world harvested 

20.4 million tons of grain between 

2001 and 2010, it consumed 20.5 million 

tons. This gap may sound small, 

but it will surely widen later this 

century as the world population and 

food demands continue to rise. 

At its “How to Feed the World” 

meeting in October 2009, the UN 

Food and Agriculture Organization 

stated that world food production 

would have to increase 70% by 2050 

to adequately feed the growing 

world population. This would require 

an investment of $83 billion a 

year in the developing world alone. 

However, it also noted, “Farmers 

and prospective farmers will invest 

in agriculture only if their investments 

are profitable.” 

Unfortunately, farming in the last 

few decades has not been particularly 

profitable. The real prices of 

rice, wheat, soybeans, and maize fell 

by an average of 2%–3% per year between 

1975 and 2008, according to 

University of Minnesota economists 

Julian Alston, Jason Beddow, and 

Philip Pardey. 

Cheap food is a boon for consumers, 

but not for farmers and not for 

the planet. Among the effects are 

disincentives for farmers to grow 

more food, leading to reduced agricultural 

productivity gains, a disincentive 

to young people to work in 

agriculture, huge wastage, and 

spreading ill-health in society. Cheap 

food prices also reduce national and 

international investment in agriculture, 

as investors consider farming 

less profitable than other opportunities. 

Because of the disincentives to 

investment, farmers cannot adopt 

more sustainable and productive 

farming techniques so readily. 

The dramatic increases in world 

crop prices in 2008 and 2010 have 

not made farming more profitable. 

The reason is a growing imbalance 

in market power between farmers 

and the businesses that dominate the 

food supply and input chains. 


HARSHMUNJAL / DREAMSTIME 

They earn lower profits when commodity 

prices are higher. 

Farmers are thus trapped between 

muscular globalized food firms that 

drive down the prices of their produce 

and muscular industrial firms 

that drive up the cost of their inputs. 

The economic message now reaching 

most of the world’s farmers from the 

market is “Don’t grow more food.” 

As a result, world food output is increasing 

too slowly to meet rising 

demand, overall farm productivity 

gains are sliding, and yield gains for 

major crops are stagnating. 

A visibly worried farmer scans his crop field in India. Insufficient government support, 

decreasing profit margins, and fewer young people taking up farming is making life more 

difficult for the world’s farmers, according to Cribb. 

Two decades ago, most consumers 

bought their farm produce from local 

farmers in local markets. In the 

twenty-first century, market power 

is increasingly concentrated in a very 

small number of food corporations 

and supermarkets sourcing food 

worldwide. The food corporations 

minimize their input costs by paying 

farmers less for farm commodities. 

The power of the farmer to resist 

downward price pressure has weakened, 

as farmers in rich and poor 

countries alike now compete intensely 

with each other to sell at the 

lowest possible prices. 

KOMELAU / DREAMSTIME 

Villagers in Krisrooa, 

Kenya, wait in line to 

draw small rations of 

food from a local food 

station. While hunger 

is already a reality in 

much of the developing 

world, Cribb 

warns that it will grow 

much worse unless 

countries channel 

more funds into 

developing their 

agricultural sectors 

and ensure a steady 

global food supply. 

At the same time, the manufacturers 

of fuel, machinery, fertilizer, 

chemicals, seeds, and other farmers’ 

necessities have grown much larger, 

more globalized, and more powerful. 

This makes it easier for them to 

raise the cost of their products. 

When farm commodity prices rise, 

the industrial firms increase the 

prices of their wares, often by far 

more. In 2008, when grain prices 

rose 80%, fertilizer prices went up 

160% in some cases, while oil 

reached to $160 a barrel with proportionate 

increases in farm fuel costs. 

Many farmers have noted the irony: 

Global Resource Degradation and 

Productivity Decline 

In a recent satellite survey, FAO researchers 

reported that 24% of the 

Earth’s land surface was seriously 

degraded, compared with 15% estimated 

by an on-ground survey in 

1990. The FAO team noted that degradation 

was proceeding at a rate of 

around 1% a year. This degradation 

is caused primarily by the low profitability 

of agriculture, which drives 

many farmers (especially in poorer 

regions) to overuse their land. If we 

continue to sacrifice 1% of the 

world’s productive land every year, 

there is going to be precious little left 

on which to double food production 

by 2060. 

Much the same applies to irrigation: 

“In order to double food production 

we need to double the water 

volume we use in agriculture, and 

there are serious doubts about 

whether there is enough water available 

to do this,” Colin Chartres, director 

general of the International 

Water Management Institute, told 

the 2010 World Congress of Soil 

Science in Brisbane, Australia. 

Solutions to land and water degradation 

are fairly well known and 

have been shown to work. Unfortunately, 

most farmers cannot afford to 

implement them, even though many 

would like to do so. 

As a result, world agriculture is today 

primarily a mining activity. We 

all know what happens to mines 

when the ore runs out. 

University of Minnesota economists 

Alston, Beddow, and Pardey 

attribute much of the productivity 

decline to falling investment world- 


wide in agricultural science, technology, 

and extension of new knowledge 

to farmers. In the United States, 

public expenditures on agricultural 

R&D grew 3.6% a year from 1950 to 

1970, but only 1.7% a year from 1970 

to 2007. 

“A continuation of the recent 

trends in funding, policy, and markets 

is likely to have significant effects 

on the long-term productivity 

path for food staples in developed 

and developing countries alike,” 

they write. 

The role of low returns in discouraging 

farmers, in both developed 

and developing countries, from 

adopting more productive and sustainable 

farming systems cannot be 

ignored. While a few highly efficient 

and profitable producers continue to 

make advances, the bulk of the 

world’s farmers are being left behind. 

Since small farmers feed more 

than half the world, this is a matter 

of some concern. 

Cuts in support for farm research 

have been inflicted in most developed 

countries and even in places 

such as China, where the level of agricultural 

R&D support is falling as a 

proportion of the total science investment. 

With agricultural R&D 

comprising a mere 1.8 cents of the 

developed world’s science dollar in 

2000, you can get a very clear idea 

how unimportant most governments 

now consider food production to be. 

Solving the Food Challenge 

Although most experts agree that 

we should be seeking ways to double 

food output sustainably over the 

coming half century, the ruling economic 

signal is: “Don’t do it.” We 

could obey the economic signal and 

allow agricultural output to gradually 

fall behind—but that will expose 

8 billion consumers to massive unprecedented 

price spikes, imperil the 

poor, and maybe start wars and topple 

governments. It will not benefit 

farmers nearly as much as would 

stable, steady increases in their incomes, 

which would provide incentives 

for investment and innovation. 

Policy makers need to move much 

faster and farther toward totally free 

trade in agricultural products, thus 

encouraging efficient producers 

Food Becomes Scarcer and Costlier 

Ominous warning signs lie 

within the most recent data on 

global food production. Farming 

sectors everywhere are contracting. 

Agricultural employment in 

the European Union fell 25% between 

2000 and 2009, according to 

the European Commission. In all, 

according to the International Labor 

Organization, worldwide agriculture 

shed more than 550,000 

jobs between 2001 and 2007, a 

4.7% decline. 

Should these trends continue, 

all of the basic resources for food 

production will likely become 

much scarcer. Global food supplies 

will tend to tighten over 

time, making the world more vulnerable 

to sudden unanticipated 

shortages and price spikes whenever 

seasonal conditions in key 

farming regions are unfavorable. 

Food prices soared to record 

highs in 2008, according to the 

UN Food and Agriculture Organization 

(FAO). The agency warns 

that we may witness many more, 

around the world. But we also need 

to be aware of the universal dangers 

of undervaluing agriculture as we 

approach the greatest demand for 

food in all of history. Here are a few 

ways to address the issue: 

• Consumers, supermarkets, and 

food processors could agree to pay 

more for food so as to protect the resource 

base and enable farmers to invest 

in new technologies. 

• Governments could pay farmers 

a social wage for exercising proper 

stewardship of soil, water, atmosphere, 

and biodiversity, separate 

from their commercial food production. 

• Regulations could limit the practices 

or technologies that degrade 

the food resource base and reward 

those that improve it. 

• A resource tax could be imposed 

on all food to reflect its true cost to 

the environment to produce; proceeds 

could be reinvested into researching 

and implementing more 

sustainable farming systems. 

and more extreme, price spikes if 

we continue to ignore the plight 

of agriculture. The FAO’s November 

2010 Food Outlook report 

notes that, since 2008, harvests of 

cereal, wheat, and coarse grain 

have declined by several percentage 

points each. Further, due to 

stagnant production, food prices 

will likely rise to record-high levels 

this year, and unless production 

expands substantially, high 

demands will lead to critical food 

shortages in many parts of the 

world. 

“With the pressure on world 

prices of most commodities not 

abating, the international community 

must remain vigilant against 

further supply shocks in 2011 and 

be prepared,” the report states. 

Sources: Eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.ec 

.europa.eu. 

International Labor Organization, 

www.ilo.org. 

Food and Agriculture Organization, 

www.fao.org. 

• Markets could be established for 

key farm resources that offer farmers 

higher returns for wise and sustainable 

farming practices. 

• Public education programs 

could be launched to demonstrate 

how to eat more sustainably, and industry 

education programs could 

showcase sustainability standards 

and techniques. 

If we all want to eat securely in 

the future, it is imperative that a 

more serious debate take place about 

how to deliver fairer incomes to 

farmers worldwide, countering the 

unintended effects of overwhelming 

market forces against farmers. ❑ 

J. CARL GANTER 


Julian Cribb is an author, 

journalist, editor, and science 

communicator, and principal 

of Julian Cribb & Associates 

consultancy in Nicholls, ACT, 

Australia. His latest book is The Coming 

Famine. E-mail Julian.Cribb@work.netspeed 

.com.au. 


The World Is 

My School: 

Welcome to the Era of 

Personalized Learning 

By Maria H. Andersen 

Future learning will become 

both more social and more 

personal, says an educational 

technology expert. 


ILLUSTRATIONS: SCOTT SPENCER, DIANE LABOMBARBE, MARTIN MALCHEN / ISTOCKPHOTO 

Humans have always been 

learning, but how we learn 

has changed over time. The 

earliest means of education 

were highly personal: Oral histories 

passed from adults to children, informal 

or formal apprenticeships, and 

one-on-one tutoring have all been 

used in the early history of most cultures. 

It’s only been in the last two 

centuries that we’ve used formalized 

systems of mass public education 

(aka industrialized education). 

Certainly, personalized learning is 

the more effective method. In 1984, 

educational researcher Benjamin 

Bloom found that average students 

who were tutored one-on-one outperformed 

98% of students who 

were learning via conventional 

methods (this is referred to as 

Bloom’s two-sigma problem). However, 

personal learning is not cost-effective, 

and so we currently educate 

students in batches of 20, 30, or even 

200 students at a time. This is likely 

to get worse before it gets better, 

with prominent philanthropists like 

Bill Gates declaring that “the best 

lectures in the world” will be online 

within the next five years. Certainly 

we can use technology to deliver 

those lectures to thousands, or even 

millions, of students at a time, but a 

lecture does not automatically produce 

learning any more than attending 

a class does. 

Mass education is adequate, as 

long as students are highly motivated 

to learn and get ahead of their 

peers. In developing countries, a student 

who is successful in education 

will be able to climb the ladder of 

personal economic prosperity faster 

than those who are not successful. 

But in industrialized countries, 

where prosperity is the norm, an education 

does not necessarily translate 

into a significantly higher standard 

of living. In these countries, 

there is no longer a large economic 

incentive to learn, so the motivation 

to learn must become intrinsic. As 

we re design en masse education, we 

must address learners’ intrinsic motivations, 

which means that education 

must circle back to being personal 

again. 

The vision of a modern education 

built around personalized learning is 

not new, but it is definitely tantaliz- 

cently that affect how we spend our 

free time. Facebook, now with 500 

million users, has disrupted normal 

social interactions in a little over six 

years. Micro-blogging exploded 

when a Web site simply invited us to 

answer the question: What’s on your 

mind? Twitter users now send more 

than 50 million tweets per day, and 

big news stories break first on Twitter—in 

real time and with eye witness 

accounts. As big as Twitter is, there 

were more people playing Farmville 

(a social media game on Facebook) 

at its peak than there were active 

Twitter users—a fact that has not 

gone unnoticed by game designers 

and educators. These Farmville players 

are choosing to spend their free 

time for collaborative activities (their 

“cognitive surplus,” as media scholar 

Clay Shirky puts it) plowing virtual 

soil and planting virtual crops. 

These innovative social disruptions 

have happened quickly, but not 

from within the existing organizational 

structures. For example, Facebook 

did not disrupt phone communication 

by changing the nature of 

phone calls or phones. Facebook 

built an entirely new system that 

eventually circled back around to 

phones by the way of phone apps. In 

the same way, the trick to developing 

a personal learning system is to 

abandon thinking about how to 

build it from within the existing eduing. 

Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond 

Age (Spectra, 1995) shares a 

vision of personalized learning in 

the future via an interactive book 

that possesses a conversational interface 

(CI) and “pseudo-intelligence,” 

a kind of artificial intelligence (AI) 

that is inferior to human intelligence. 

It’s likely that we’ll see decent conversational 

interfaces within the next 

decade, and certainly applications 

like Google Voice are moving us 

much closer to this reality. AI that is 

capable of directing the learning 

needs of a human will take much 

longer, developing in the next 20–50 

years, but we can’t wait that long for 

the technology to catch up with education. 

The need for personalized 

learning exists in the here and now. 

So how does one bridge this vision 

of the future with the realities of the 

present? 

Learning Technologies Today 

Let’s start by taking stock of the 

personalized technologies for information 

that we already have. We 

have software that stores the content 

we like (e.g., Evernote, Posterous) 

and software that merely stores the 

location of that content (e.g., Diigo 

or Delicious). Even traditional media, 

like books, now have parallel digital 

systems that allow for note taking, 

highlighting, and bookmarking (e.g., 

Kindle, Nook, or iPad). While it’s 

useful to store and search information, 

I would venture that we rarely 

go back to look at the information 

we mark for storage. 

This is a problem; for deep learning 

to occur, we need to have repeated 

exposure to the information, 

along with some time in between for 

reflection. We need to give our brains 

a repeated opportunity to process 

the information we take in so that it 

becomes knowledge, understanding, 

and wisdom. This means we’re going 

to have to find time in our busy 

lives to reflect on the information 

that flows past us on a daily basis, 

and we’re going to need some kind 

of technology that keeps us on track 

with our learning goals. 

While it seems outrageous that we 

could find any more time in our 

busy lives, consider some of the disruptive 

changes we’ve seen quite re- 

“For deep learning to 

occur, we need repeated 

exposure to information 

plus time for reflection.” 


cational system and to begin pondering 

how such a system could be developed 

outside of education. 

Educational institutions form a vast 

interconnected network, and while 

small changes can occur within the 

system, individual parts only have 

the ability to flex within their existing 

boundaries. For a personalized 

learning system to take hold inside 

education, it will have to be built on 

the outside. 

A Simple Idea: Learn This 

Let me propose a realistic scenario 

of what a true personalized learning 

system might look like and how it 

would function. We first have to create 

(1) a new layer of learning media 

in the background of the existing Internet 

and (2) an ecosystem of software 

to easily manage the learning 

media we engage with. In the same 

way we’ve integrated buttons like 

Twitter ’s “Tweet this” and Facebook’s 

“Like” at the end of videos, 

articles, and other media, imagine 

we now add a button for “Learn 

This.” Clicking this button (anywhere 

you find it) would bring you 

into an interface to help you learn 

the content. 

We don’t need a humanlike artificial 

intelligence to begin this journey. 

The technology for such a journey already 

exists and is simple enough to 

use with traditional learning methods. 

In the first version, learning 

should simply be by way of Socratic 

questioning, where questions are 

used to analyze concepts, to prod at 

the depth of knowledge, and to focus 

on principles, issues, or problems. 

Socratic questions are elegant because, 

unlike with other formats (e.g., 

multiple choice), learners must selfgenerate 

the answers rather than rely 

heavily on the ability to recognize a 

correct answer when they see it. The 

personal learning system would use 

a spaced repetition algorithm (SRA) 

to reintroduce the Socratic questions 

over time so that biological memory 

is more likely to grasp onto the ideas 

and information. For now, let’s call 

this system SOCRAIT (a play on “Socratic” 

that includes SOC for social, 

AI for artificial intelligence, and IT for 

information technology within its 

name). 

For example, suppose I read an 

article about digital copyright in educational 

settings, and I decide that 

it’s important for me to remember 

some of the details of this article. At 

the end of this article, I choose 

“Learn This” to add a question to 

my SOCRAIT question bank. Two 

options would appear: (1) write your 

own question or (2) choose from a 

list of questions written by others. If 

I choose the first option, I might 

write a simple question and answer 

for myself: “What are the allowable 

uses for copyrighted video in an educational 

setting?” Following this, 

I’d write a short summary or clip a 

few sentences of content from the 

article to summarize the answer to 

the question. Along 

with the question and 

answer, SOCRAIT 

w o u l d s a v e t h e 

source URL (link 

to the content), 

Learn This! 

SOCRAIT Questions 

for “The World Is 

My School” 

and I could tag the question with 

metadata tags I indicate (e.g., copyright, 

digital copyright, and education). 

Later in the day or the week, when 

I have some down time, I could reengage 

with SOCRAIT. Here’s how 

it would work: I read or listen to a 

question, answer it in my head or 

out loud, view or listen to the answer, 

rate my understanding, and go 

to the next question. Since the learning 

is tailored to intrinsic motivations, 

learners could rate their own 

ability to answer a question (e.g., 1 = 

I have no clue, 2 = I knew some of it, 

and 3 = I nailed it!), and SOCRAIT 

could make decisions based on these 

ratings. If your rating of understanding 

is low or spotty, the system 

would offer to send you back to the 

source for another look. Notice that 

there is no need to develop software 

to verify the answers to 

questions—if you aren’t good at 

rating your own understanding 

(we call this metacognition), this 

will come out later in the process, 

and you’ll have to learn to get better 

at it. 

With a rudimentary computer 

interface, like the one imple- 

Author Maria H. Andersen 

offers the following questions 

as sample Socraticlearning 

prompts for readers 

of this article. 

• What technologies are we likely to see in personalized learning 

systems on the 20–50 year horizon? 

• What arguments are made for the likelihood that we can 

“find” the free time to engage in a personal learning system? 

• Why are Socratic questions and spaced repetition algorithms 

(SRA) an elegant solution to the personalized learning problem? 

• How are responses evaluated in the proposed SOCRAIT system? 

• What evidence do we have that people will be willing to put 

in the cognitive energy to create a learning layer on the Web? 

• How could SOCRAIT be used by journalism to improve the 

revenue stream? 

• How would the SOCRAIT model change the way we consume 

media? 

• What are Socratic scholars and what function do they serve? 

• If SOCRAIT were implemented, how would the role of educators 

shift? 

• What is the “game layer for learning” and why is it necessary 

for something like SOCRAIT to work? 

• What is needed to build a system like SOCRAIT? 


mented in Google Voice, there’s no 

reason why SOCRAIT couldn’t be 

voice-based and available anywhere 

we interact with computers (e.g., cell 

phones, tablets, auto navigation systems). 

This would allow us to improve 

our learning while performing 

other tasks: commuting to work, 

making dinner, or walking the dogs. 

Initially, the so-called “Pareto’s Vital 

Few” (the 20% of people who get 

80% of the work done) would be the 

ones who would be most interested 

in creating and engaging with questions. 

But as the connectedness of 

the system matures, the need to 

write your own Socratic questions 

would lessen. Authors and media 

creators would write their own questions, 

targeting comprehension of 

important ideas and facts. Media 

consumers would be able to choose 

from a list of questions, perhaps seeing 

a sorted list based on their indicated 

learning priorities. Two readers 

of the same article would see 

different questions at the top of their 

“suggested questions” based on tags 

of the content. In some cases, the 

user might choose to pay for curated 

or reputable content so that their 

learning can later be certified by an 

employer, educational body, or organization. 

Personal Learning’s Implications 

For Education 

Now let’s take a step back and 

look at the big picture. Any content 

that exists on the Internet (or is connected 

to the Internet) would be 

tagged with Socratic learning questions 

and metadata for subjects. 

Learners would have their own bank 

of questions, personalized to their 

own learning interests. As a result, 

instead of learning that is designed 

around a physical place (e.g., 

schools), an educational space (e.g., 

learning management systems), or a 

person of authority (e.g., instructor), 

this system is designed around the 

learner. 

It goes without saying that the implications 

for education are huge. In 

the space of a few years, we could 

develop a completely separate content 

learning system that’s incredibly 

flexible and personalized to the interests 

of the learner. The architec- 

ture needs to develop organically 

around Web-based content and grow 

tendrils into everything we produce 

in the future. It will take some time 

to go back and create a learning 

layer to integrate with all the content 

that we already have, but as we’ve 

seen from projects like Wikipedia, 

there are people willing to contribute 

their time and energy to these kinds 

of tasks. Wikipedia became the largest 

encyclopedia ever assembled 

within a mere six years after its creation, 

and was built using less than 

1% of the time that Americans spend 

watching TV every year (as calculated 

by Clay Shirky). 

A system like SOCRAIT has the 

potential to benefit other industries 

outside of education. For example, 

modern journalism has been struggling 

with a problem of income 

stream. While revenue has shifted to 

online advertising, it is not enough 

to shore up the industry. At present, 

the vast majority of Internet content 

is free and, as Chris Anderson argues 

in his book Free (Hyperion, 2009), it’s 

not likely to change. How do you get 

readers (or viewers) to pay for something 

that they already get for free? 

The answer: Add something to the 

content that’s not already there. If 

readers or viewers had the ability to 

quickly add reputable questions to 

their learning bank, this would be a 

value-added service. Cleverly, the 

“For a personalized 

learning system to take 

hold inside education, 

it will have to be built 

on the outside.” 

“To learn, to analyze, 

to innovate, and to 

think creatively, we 

must internalize some 

of the information we 

process.” 

media content would remain free, 

but access to the question bank 

would require a one-time payment 

or ongoing subscription by the consumer. 

This would certainly help 

modern journalism (or the textbook 

industry) to shore up their revenue 

stream. 

A New Learning Ecosystem 

Books like Nicholas Carr ’s The 

Shallows (W.W. Norton, 2010) cause 

us to question whether we might be 

trapped on the information superhighway—stuck 

on the line between 

data lanes and unable to scoot forward 

or backward. Twitter users regularly 

use the phrase “drink from 

the fire hose” when referring to their 

experience of dipping into the live 

data stream. Information, whether it 

be from radio, television, print, Web 

media, or social networks, is coming 

at us too quickly; all that most of us 

can do is surface-skim, rarely pausing 

to reflect or think deeply. To 

learn, to analyze, to innovate, and to 

think creatively, we must internalize 

some of the information we process. 

An entirely new ecosystem could 

grow up around this Socratic learning 

system. Certainly a ratings system 

for questions could be built using 

the technology developed by 

companies like Netflix. For example, 


“Your friends John and Iveta chose 

this question. Would you like to see 

other questions/media they chose 

for this topic?” If you choose to do 

so, the questions you see when you 

add content to your question bank 

could be filtered by your existing social 

networks. Rather than showing 

all the possible questions in existence 

for that media (which could become 

a fairly lengthy list), you could 

choose to see only the ones people in 

your social network have also used. 

So far, I’ve discussed how the system 

would work if you engaged in 

reading and watching media as you 

do today. However, such a system 

could also shift how and when we 

seek out content. After all, a lot of 

time is wasted in modern education 

by re-teaching content that some of 

the learners already know. There is 

no incentive for students to get 

ahead when the reward is sitting 

through a lecture on something 

they’ve already learned. 

Imagine: When you need to learn 

something new, you could subscribe 

to a curated collection of questions 

on that topic. For example, “Digital 

Copyright 101” might be a collection 

of questions developed by somebody 

who teaches digital copyright 

policy to beginners. The truly fascinating 

shift is that you wouldn’t necessarily 

start by consuming the media 

that goes with the questions. 

Instead, you would simply start answering 

the questions in your bank. 

As you encounter learning questions 

that you can’t answer, you could 

dive into the content at those points 

in time—this is the exact point between 

boredom (with things you already 

know) and frustration (with 

things you don’t know), the point to 

engage in learning. 

Testing Knowledge Acquisition 

Almost immediately after the personalized 

learning architecture is in 

place, we will need a new educational 

industry tasked with certifying 

knowledge and understanding. 

For lack of a better name, let’s call 

these folks “Socratic scholars.” Their 

job will be to rate how well you 

know what you claim to have 

learned. For example, let’s say I’ve 

engaged with and theoretically 

“When you need to 

learn something new, 

you could subscribe to 

a curated collection of 

questions on that topic.” 

learned 500 tagged questions on biochemistry 

to prepare for teaching a 

new class. In order for this to count 

toward my professional development 

hours, my college asks me to 

certify the learning. I pay for a Socratic 

scholar who specializes in 

chemistry to rate my knowledge. We 

meet either in person or via the Web 

(more likely) and have a discussion 

about the questions in my learning 

bank on biochemistry. 

The scholar has access to the 500 

questions I say I’ve mastered and 

asks me to answer a random selection. 

Of course, this is where it 

would be valuable to have reputable 

questions in my learning bank (from 

authors, researchers, scientists, and 

leaders in the field). Since the scholar 

can see both my questions and the 

answers (linked back to original content), 

it should not be difficult to ascertain 

whether I have, in fact, mastered 

the knowledge and concepts as 

I have claimed. Because the certification 

is human-to-human, and not 

human-to-machine, the nuances of 

human language would be understood. 

So if the language of the verbal 

answer and the language of the 

written answer don’t match up exactly, 

that wouldn’t be a problem. At 

the end of the session, the scholar 

would “grade” my understanding of 

the 500 questions on biochemistry, 

and I could provide this certification 

to the human resources department. 

In many respects, this is a much 

better system than what we have to- 

day. For most certification of learning, 

we simply look at a transcript. If 

the class is listed, we assume the 

learner has that knowledge. Of 

course, knowledge ages—sometimes 

it evolves into understanding or wisdom, 

and sometimes it fades out of 

existence. The fact that I earned a 

chemistry degree in 1996 does not 

mean you would want to hire me as 

a chemist today. Ideally, you’d want 

me to recertify before I entered the 

“chemist” job pool. Biological memory 

is not reflected in the metrics of 

transcripts or grade point averages. 

I am not saying that this “certified” 

content knowledge equals the 

ability to function as a practitioner in 

the discipline. Even a diploma only 

indicates that the educational system 

has walked you through some series 

of appropriate paces for the discipline. 

Skills like critical thinking and 

creativity are often lost in education 

(especially in science and technology) 

because there is such an incredible 

amount of content to cover. 

However, if the content knowledge 

moved outside the educational system, 

then educators could focus on 

the learning that surrounds technical 

knowledge instead (e.g., problem 

solving, analysis, creativity, applications). 

Let’s imagine what would happen 

if a robust Socratic learning system 

was at the heart of the educational 

system. A learning coach (a more appropriate 

term for the teacher or instructor 

in this learner-centered environment) 

will designate some core 

material that he or she wants you to 

learn. For example, in calculus, I 

might use a set of 500 curated concept-oriented 

questions from a wellknown 

calculus textbook author, 

with each question linking to supporting 

media. Every student would 

be working on those questions, and 

so, as a learning community, we’d all 

work on that together. I would hope 

that this doesn’t sound like too radical 

a departure from normal. 

This is where it changes: Because 

every student has different interests 

and career ambitions, I would also 

require that each student find an additional 

100 questions tagged with 

both calculus and tags that are of interest 

to that student. For a student 

studying to be a doctor, questions 


tagged with medicine or epidemiology 

might be appropriate. For a student 

going into business, questions 

tagged with marketing or management 

might be more appropriate. 

As the learning coach, my job is no 

longer to “deliver content” to the 

students. SOCRAIT does that. Now I 

can use my time to help students 

search for good questions, help them 

to understand the content they are 

learning, provide activities to help 

them work with the concepts or connect 

the material in an applied way, 

and foster discussion with other students 

on these topics. 

When it comes time to certify the 

learning for each student, it is done 

by an oral interview in which I have 

access to the common questions and 

the personalized questions for each 

student. Even if I’m not an expert on 

all the personalized questions, the 

answers are provided and the content 

is related to a subject of my expertise. 

Again, I only have to ask 

about a random selection of questions 

to be able to assess understanding. 

At the end of the semester, all 

students have learned their own personal 

versions of calculus, while still 

learning a core of common material. 

Such a system has implications for 

lifelong learning “on the job,” too. 

Instead of holding mandatory training, 

a human resources department 

could push out a bank of Socratic 

questions to all their employees 

about safety, new initiatives, mission 

statements, etc. For example, to train 

employees on Occupational Safety 

and Health Administration (OSHA) 

compliance, the employees would be 

invited to add a curated list of 40 

questions about OSHA policies. Each 

question would lead back to a source 

that provides the necessary content 

to answer the question. After two 

weeks, someone in HR can act as the 

Socratic scholar and spend five minutes 

with each employee to test his 

or her knowledge of the policies, using 

a random selection of questions. 

A Game Layer for Learning 

Futurist John Smart writes about a 

coming “valuecosm” within 10 to 20 

years, when we’ll be able to program 

our apps or avatars to make decisions 

for us based on what we say is our set 

of values. The real question is 

whether learning can become one of 

our new values, especially in the 

United States. In 2009, The U.S. Bureau 

of Labor Statistics estimated that 

the average American adult spent 

more than five hours per day on leisure 

activities (close to three of those 

leisure hours watching television) 

and about 30 minutes per day on educational 

activities. Given the 10:1 ratio 

of leisure to educational activities, 

is American culture likely to embrace 

learning as a choice? Initially my answer 

was no, but then I began to 

think about video-game design. 

Entrepreneur Seth Priebatsch 

spoke at TEDxBoston (2010) about 

building a “game layer on top of the 

world.” What if one of the game layers 

we create surrounds learning? 

The same game dynamics used to 

build successful video games (e.g., 

appointment dynamics, influence 

and status dynamics, and progression 

dynamics) could be deployed to 

make learning the game itself. While 

this might still be a hard sell for the 

average adult, there will be subpopulations, 

such as early technology 

adapters, who will see the immediate 

value in cultivating and 

learning from their own question 

banks. Children who grow up learning 

with a Socratic question system 

might gain learning values naturally 

and carry these to their adult lives. 

A successful Spaced Repetition Socratic 

Learning System (SRSLS) 

would have to entice you to keep to 

specific goals, like answering 50 

questions per week or answering 100 

questions with a certain tag in the 

next month. Any of these goals could 

be incentivized with points (1 question 

answered correctly = 1 point), 

incentive rewards for meeting certain 

goals (“you’ve earned your Silver 

Calculus badge for 100 questions 

learned”), and social status levels 

(“Maria has just become a Calculus 

Master—can you do it too?”). 

Those engaged in formal education 

would participate with a far 

greater intensity of daily questions 

than those who are in the workforce. 

However, the wise worker would 

continue to learn, albeit at a slower 

pace. Résumés would boast levels of 

knowledge on particular topics and 

stats on the intensity at which you 

participate in learning. 

Let’s Build It 

A diploma has become a social signal 

to stop learning. In today’s 

world, where technical knowledge 

doubles every two years, this is absolutely 

the wrong thing to do. Careers 

shift overnight, and industries 

collapse rapidly. We have to learn, 

and learn faster than we ever have 

before, in order to stay ahead of the 

problems we are now creating. 

The content for a system like 

SOCRAIT already exists; it is the architecture 

and interface we are missing. 

This new learning medium needs 

to be an interconnected network of 

user-generated, or author-generated, 

Socratic questions with a seamless 

question-management interface. The 

architecture needs to remain open so 

that anyone can create questions on 

any content, and any developer can 

build applications for the computing 

device of his or her choice. 

A system for personalized learning 

will not grow from inside formal education. 

Education is like a field 

that’s been overplanted with only 

small patches of fertile soil. Too 

many stakeholders (parents, unions, 

administration, faculty, etc.) compete 

to promote various ideas about how 

to change, acting like weeds or 

plagues that choke off plant growth. 

The fresh and fertile soil of the open 

Web can foster the quick growth of a 

personalized learning system. Then, 

like a good fertilizer, it can be used 

to replenish the soil of formal education 

and help us to reach that “Holy 

Grail” of education: personalized 

learning for all. 

❏ 


Maria H. Andersen is the 

Learning Futurist for The 

LIFT Institute at Muskegon 

Community College, Muskegon, 

Michigan. She has degrees 

in mathematics, 

chemistry, biology, business, 

and (ABD) Higher Education Leadership. 

She is considered an expert in educational 

technology and has been studying, researching, 

speaking, and writing about the 

future of education and learning for several 

years, including at the World Future Society’s 

2010 meeting. E-mail busynessgirl@gmail.com 

or search @busynessgirl on Twitter. 


Global, Mobile, Virtual, 

and Social: The College 

Campus of Tomorrow 

WFS COLLAGE / IMAGES: JOACHIM ANGELTUN, OLEG BABICH / ISTOCKPHOTO 

In 1972, visionary futurists Robert Theobald and J. M. Scott 

wrote one of the most interesting works related to education 

in the field of future studies, Teg’s 1994: An Anticipation of the 

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR 

Near Future. Like many significant 

studies of the future, Teg’s 1994 

was written as a work of fiction, in 

this case about a college student 

named Teg and her experiences as 

an “Orwell Scholar” in the year 

1994. 

What makes Teg’s 1994 significant 

is the nature of the future of 

higher education that Theobald 

and Scott envisioned and how 

much of it has come to pass. In 

many ways, Teg’s 1994 can also 

provide valuable insights into the future of higher education 

that this fictional student’s own children and grandchildren 

might encounter over the next 25 years. 

Theobald and Scott were able to fairly accurately describe 

many of the trends in higher education that have actually occurred 

over the intervening 37 years. This includes a description 

of a worldwide computer system that provides Teg with 

opportunities to conduct her own research, as well as communicate 

with her peers; campus locations around the world that 

enable her to conduct her studies in different geographical settings; 

a faculty member who serves as a mentor, with whom 

she corresponds by e-mail; and pharmaceuticals that stimulate 

concentration and reduce the effects of adolescent hormones. 

By John Dew 

An educator and strategic planner 

outlines the trends leading 

to a long-forecast future for colleges 

and universities: Global 

standardization of education 

content and accreditation, 

greater diversity in the student 

body, and more options for 

where, when, and how learning 

takes place. 

© PHOTODISC INC. 


If Theobald and Scott were writing 

today, they might craft a sequel to 

Teg’s 1994 around the following 

trends that are shaping the future of 

higher education, also commonly referred 

to as tertiary education in 

other countries. 

1. Globalization of education that 

leads students to study outside their 

home country and to respect various 

cultural settings. This globalized education 

embraces English as the 

world language of convenience, 

while still supporting and honoring 

other languages and cultures. 

2. A growing, but frustrated, need 

to harmonize the framework, definitions, 

and subject matter content of 

higher education programs around 

the world. 

3. Continuous changes in technology 

that impact learning, including 

the use of the Internet, the digitizing 

of all the world’s books, the complete 

transition of all technical journals to 

electronic format, the ascendency of 

online teaching and instructional designers 

over classroom teaching, and 

the use of ever changing technology, 

such as iPods and iPhones to deliver 

educational content. 

4. The changing role of faculty that 

diminishes their engagement in 

classroom teaching. 

5. The changing nature of students, 

most of whom are already working 

adults who want to further enhance 

their knowledge and skills. 

6. A continued need but a changing 

role for residential campuses, as 

they become the headquarters for 

global educational enterprises and 

the gathering places for academic rituals 

and tribal events. 

Globalized Learning 

Education is shrinking the world, 

and the world is shrinking the educational 

enterprise. On the one hand, 

universities in the United States, 

Australia, and Europe are increasingly 

enrolling students from other 

nations while also encouraging and 

enabling their students to study 

abroad. Many U.S. institutions are 

establishing partnerships with universities 

in other countries to offer 

U.S. degree programs in these countries. 

On the other hand, China is exporting 

the teaching of Chinese lan- 

Technology that supports higher 

education continues to evolve at a 

rapid rate. The once-valued library 

stacks and reading rooms full of 

printed periodicals are being replaced 

by semantic search engines, 

online book collections, and electronic 

journals. 

Technology will continue to transform 

teaching. Freshman math 

classes are already being replaced by 

computer-based math teaching labs 

on many campuses. Large lecture 

courses are being replaced by courses 

taught online. Small discussion-oriented 

courses are being replaced by 

online courses with live chat rooms 

or asynchronous discussion boards, 

taking advantage of social networking 

to turn learning into a cooperative 

activity. 

All of these changes support the 

ability of students to pursue their 

higher education from anywhere and 

at any time. Faculty are already putting 

class lectures onto small files for 

students to play on iPods and listen 

to while they go jogging. 

New technology for proctoring 

students’ online exams now allow 

students to take tests from any location 

under supervision. Online delivery 

already takes college courses to 

the smallest rural communities in 

America and to students around the 

world. This trend will continue and 

grow as young people growing up in 

the homeschooling movement move 

directly into college programs without 

setting foot on a campus. Online 

courses are also providing new acguage 

and culture through the 

establishment of Confucius Institutes 

at universities all around the world 

and increasing the quality and quantity 

of tertiary institutions at a rapid 

pace. 

Higher education institutions in 

South America are seeking accreditation 

with U.S. regional accrediting 

bodies. Many postsecondary institutions 

state that preparing their students 

for living in a global society is 

a key part of their educational mission. 

This growing emphasis on 

global interaction provides much of 

the pressure for the second major 

trend, harmonization. 

Harmonizing International 

Educational Standards 

In the increasingly global economy, 

multinational entities such as corporations 

and nongovernmental organizations 

demand more standardization 

in higher education’s structure 

and content. Corporations are already 

actively guiding efforts to 

standardize the content of curricula 

in key fields such as engineering and 

business, exerting influence on specialized 

accrediting agencies whose 

approval colleges and universities 

must have for credibility. 

The disparities in educational 

structure among different nations 

and regions is constantly creating 

headaches: There is no international 

standard for a baccalaureate or a 

master’s degree, for instance, and 

there is also wide variation among 

nations in quality assurance of academic 

programs, faculty credentials, 

and educational support services. 

These discrepancies create problems 

for students as they move internationally 

to obtain a global education, 

as well as for employers in assuring 

their workforce is properly prepared. 

Despite the barriers, the pressure 

for harmonization mounts. It is only 

a matter of time before governments 

and multinational entities begin to 

establish alliances that will impose 

global standards in terms of structure 

and definitions, if the higher education 

community does not work 

this out for itself. Colleges and universities 

are being challenged to reexamine 

their historical approaches 

and enter into discussions that create 

a great amount of discomfort and 

discord within the complex perspectives 

of different academic disciplines. 

Efforts such as the Bologna 

Process in Europe (implementing 

comparable degrees, credit systems, 

and other standards) are a harbinger 

of what is to come globally. 

The drive to harmonize can also be 

seen in assessment of student learning, 

where objective evidence of student 

learning based on standardized 

examinations will become the global 

norm, rather than the subjective 

evaluations of faculty using hundreds 

of different assessment methods. 

Technology’s Impacts on 

Teaching and Learning 


COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR 

The electronic proctor: Remote Proctor 

device is widely used in Troy 

University (Alabama) eCampuses in 

place of a human test proctor. A 

camera with 360-degree video image 

range is connected to the student 

test-taker’s computer and verifies his 

or her identity through fingerprint 

identification. 

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, USED WITH PERMISSION OF ZHAO WUJUN 

Zhao Wujun, a student from Xian, China, demonstrates Tai Chi at a program sponsored by the 

Confucius Institute in Troy, Alabama, one of several such institutes established around the 

world by China to help export its culture and language. 

PHOTO © 2008 MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES 

Classroom at Michigan State University 

integrates multimedia technology with 

face-to-face learning.

OPEN YALE COURSES, HTTP://OYC.YALE.EDU/ 

financing benefits after their service 

is complete. Such a movement would 

accelerate the trend toward an older 

student body and would significantly 

disrupt the current model for 

residential campuses. As the student 

population continues to change, metrics 

that are primarily based on the 

assumption of a full-time 18- to 

22-year-old student population that 

are used to evaluate tertiary institutions, 

such as the U.S. News and 

World Report rankings, will become 

increasingly misleading. 

From Roman Architecture to Freshman Organic Chemistry, more postsecondary 

courses are being offered on sites like Open Yale, with content available on YouTube 

and iTunes. 

cess for students with disabilities 

and for students who want to complete 

an undergraduate or graduate 

degree while serving in the military. 

“Going to college” no longer 

means going to a particular place for 

a particular number of years. It increasingly 

means engaging in a 

structured approach to higher education 

in whatever physical environment 

is most suitable for the learner. 

The Changing Demography 

Of College Populations 

While most people envision the 

traditional 18- to 22-year-old when 

they hear the term “college student,” 

that image no longer reflects the actual 

demographics of college students. 

In the United States, the college 

student body increasingly 

comprises working adults. 

Fewer and fewer young people 

and their families will have the economic 

capacity, or the willingness to 

assume large amounts of debt, required 

for full-time college study, 

unless supported by academic scholarships. 

Instead, they will opt for 

part-time study, combining community 

college and online university 

courses to complete most degrees. 

The exceptions will be in the performing 

arts, sciences, and engineer- 

New Roles for Educators 

The faculty have always been the 

core of the college or university, but 

their role is rapidly changing. The 

full-time faculty of the future will reflect 

current trends in three ways. 

First, full-time faculty will increasingly 

serve as the guardians of a 

body of knowledge in their discipline. 

They will engage in the international 

discussion about the content 

and equivalence of academic courses 

and programs, working with other 

practitioners in their field through 

the auspices of specialized accrediting 

bodies. 

Second, full-time faculty will continue 

to devote more of their time to 

conducting research and publishing 

or performing in their field. They 

will thus contribute to the body of 

knowledge in their field and reing 

fields, which will continue to require 

significant amounts of time for 

laboratory work or performance that 

cannot yet be done online. But even 

in these areas, there will be technical 

innovations that will open up new 

possibilities for students to study 

online. 

A movement toward national service 

could further accelerate this 

trend, as young people would work 

first and then use their education- 

University of Washington has 

created mobile-access applications 

for iPhone (center) and 

BlackBerry users, with access to 

courses, videos, news, campus 

maps, and other resources. 

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 


PHOTO © 2008 MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES 

Michigan State University marching band on parade. Even in the globalized, mobilized educational environment, there will be a compelling 

human need occasionally to join fellow students in the campus community, says author Dew. 

inforce their role as the critical evaluators 

of what constitutes that body 

of knowledge. 

Third, full-time faculty will spend 

more time as mentors, either in the 

face-to-face setting or online, as envisioned 

by Theobald and Scott. They 

will teach a combination of honors 

courses at the undergraduate level 

and mentor graduate students in advanced 

studies and learning to conduct 

research. 

Large institutions will continue to 

utilize graduate students for teaching 

undergraduates, but will also increasingly 

deploy adjunct faculty 

who are scholar-practitioners. The 

overall content of academic degree 

programs and the content of most 

courses will be guided by curriculum 

committees consisting of full-time 

faculty. These committees will ensure 

that programs and courses meet the 

international expectations required 

by accrediting agencies; this will ensure 

harmonization and compatibility 

of course content with the body 

of knowledge, enabling students to 

pursue their education globally. 

College Campuses and 

“Homecoming” 

Despite these trends, the residential 

college or university will con- 

tinue to exist, even though the enrollment 

on campus may become a 

shrinking percentage of an institution’s 

total enrolled population. Affluent 

parents will still value the opportunity 

to send their young 

student “off to college” as a reliable 

way to help them mature. 

Many academic programs in the 

performing arts, sciences, and engineering 

will still require study that is 

best accomplished on a campus, 

which will help keep residential halls 

occupied. Moreover, many institutions 

will use their residential campus 

as the organizational glue to 

hold the institution together (like a 

corporate headquarters) and as a 

place to gather a critical mass of fulltime 

faculty and administrators. 

The campus will be the home base 

for popular athletic programs that 

promote national visibility and tribal 

identity; as such, there may always 

be a need for “homecoming,” as 

campus provides a touchstone where 

students may come (often for the 

first time to set foot on the campus) 

to wear the school colors. 

Teg’s Children 

By now, Theobald and Scott’s 

character Teg would have had children 

of her own, and those children 

would most likely be headed for 

college by 2020. Unlike their fictional 

mother, this next generation 

of college students really will be living 

wherever they want and taking 

many (if not all) of their courses online. 

They will interact with other 

students from all around the planet 

and may even complete degrees that 

are accredited by international accrediting 

agencies, giving them even 

more maneuverability in the global 

workplace. 

Teg’s children—and their twentyfirst-century 

peers—truly will be the 

global, mobile learners that education 

futurists have envisioned. ❑ 


John Dew is the associate 

vice chancellor for institutional 

research, planning, 

and effectiveness at Troy 

University. As a strategic 

planning facilitator, he 

worked with what eventually 

became Lockheed Martin Corporation for 

23 years. He also facilitated strategic planning 

at the University of Alabama, Louisiana 

State University Law School, the University 

of California–Bakersfield, and other highereducation 

institutions. 

His address is 231 Adams Administration 

Building, Troy University, Troy, Alabama 

36082. E-mail jrdew@troy.edu. 


By Evgeny Morozov 

Revolutions depend on people, not 

on social media, and the Internet 

both promotes democracy and 

thwarts it, says a foreign-policy 

scholar. Cyber-utopians be warned: 

Authoritarian regimes are adapting 

to the Internet age. 


The only place where the 

West is still unabashedly 

eager to promote democracy 

is in cyberspace. Enthusiastic 

belief in the libe 

r a t i n g p o w e r o f 

technology, accompanied 

by the ir resistible urge to 

enlist Silicon Valley start-ups in the 

global fight for freedom, is of growing 

appeal to many policy makers. 

In fact, many of them are as upbeat 

about the revolutionary potential of 

the Internet as their colleagues in the 

corporate sector were in the 1990s. 

We shouldn’t give the Internet too 

much credit, however, and we 

should probably give it credit for

some of the negative things that are 

happening. We shouldn’t be biased 

and just look at the brighter side. We 

should be more critical in thinking 

about its impacts. 

The idea that the Internet favors 

the oppressed rather than the oppressor 

is marred by what I call 

cyber-utopianism: a naïve belief in 

the emancipatory nature of online 

communication that rests on a stubborn 

refusal to acknowledge its 

downside. 

Cyber-utopians ambitiously set 

out to build a new and improved 

United Nations, only to end up with 

a digital Cirque du Soleil. Failing to 

anticipate how authoritarian governments 

would respond to the Internet, 

cyber-utopians did not predict 

how useful the Internet would prove 

for propaganda purposes, how masterfully 

dictators would use it for 

surveillance, and how sophisticated 

modern forms of Internet censorship 

would become. 

Fidel Castro’s Twitter page has 

been around for a few years. But 

very few people in Cuba own computers, 

because the Cuban government 

restricted the sale of computers 

to its population, so most of them 

just don’t have the equipment to 

tweet. They don’t have Internet 

cafés. They do have a small blogging 

culture, a few bloggers who have to 

be very careful. The government 

modified the restrictions on computers 

only a short while ago, so I 

wouldn’t expect Facebook or Twitter 

to matter much in Cuba in the next 

five to ten years. 

Take a closer look at the blogospheres 

in almost any authoritarian 

regime, and you are likely to discover 

that they are teeming with nationalism 

and xenophobia. Things 

don’t look particularly bright for the 

kind of flawless democratization 

that some expect from the Internet’s 

arrival. 

Likewise, bloggers uncovering 

and publicizing corruption in local 

governments could be—and are— 

easily coopted by higher-ranking 

politicians and made part of the anticorruption 

campaign. The overall 

impact on the strength of the regime 

in this case is hard to determine; the 

bloggers may be diminishing the 

power of local authorities but boost- 

ing the power of the federal government. 

Authoritarian regimes in Central 

Asia, for example, have been 

actively promoting a host of e-government 

initiatives. 

Normally a regime that fights its 

own corruption has more legitimacy 

with its own people. From that perspective, 

I wouldn’t go so far as to 

say that the Internet is making the 

government more accountable, but I 

would say that it is making local officials 

more responsible. 

The government may be eliminating 

corruption in the provinces, 

making the people happier, but that 

doesn’t mean that they’re eliminating 

corruption at the top. So the distribution 

of corruption might be 

changing. But I do think government 

might use the Internet to solicit more 

citizen input. That won’t undermine 

the government. It will bolster its legitimacy. 

It’s not paradoxical. The fact that 

the government is soliciting their 

opinions does not mean that the 

government is listening to them. It 

wants to give the people the impression 

that it is listening to them. In 

some sense, it creates a semblance of 

democratic institutions. It’s all about 

creating a veneer of legitimacy. 

The Internet’s Role in 

Middle Eastern Revolutions 

Digital activists in the Middle East 

can boast quite a few accomplishments, 

particularly when it comes to 

documenting police brutality, but I 

don’t think the Internet will play 

much of a role in Middle Eastern 

democratic revolutions compared 

with other factors. The things to 

watch for are how the new leaders 

shape the new constitutions and 

how they deal with the elements of 

the previous regimes. All those 

things are far more important than 

what happens online. I wouldn’t bet 

that the Internet will be a great help. 

As for the extent to which these 

new regimes become democracies— 

it’s a wild guess for anyone, me included. 

They have a chance, but outcomes 

will depend upon many 

factors, including internal policies 

and external conflicts. I don’t buy 

into the cultural notion of Arabs not 

being ready for democracy. Democ- 

racy in the Middle East may succeed. 

But it will depend on how they work 

with the existing challenges. 

The revolts were driven by people 

who had economic grievances and 

were politically oppressed. They 

turned to the Internet to publicize 

their grievances and their resistance. 

The fact that new media and blogs 

were present probably set a different 

tempo to the revolts. If the Internet 

were not around, the regime might 

be tempted to crack down in a much 

more brutal way. The revolts themselves 

would be taking a different 

shape, and they may have happened 

three to six months later. 

It’s hypothetical to say how today’s 

democratic revolutions would 

have happened without the Internet, 

but revolutions throughout history 

are driven by cultural factors. The 

events probably would have happened 

differently and probably 

would have turned out differently. 

We have to entertain the possibility 

that these events could have been 

much more violent and taken much 

more time if they hadn’t had the 

publicity that they had thanks to the 

Internet. 

But ultimately, a regime’s response 

to a revolt depends on the regime, 

not on the Internet. Just because 

people can tweet and blog doesn’t 

stop the Libyan government from instituting 

a violent crackdown. 

In all, it’s hard to generalize based 

on the future of the Internet. We 

don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach 

to every country. We adapt 

our policies for each country. That’s 

how foreign policy works. But with 

the Internet, we have a tendency to 

generalize that this must be how it 

works everywhere, and that isn’t the 

case. 

How Russia Handles the 

Internet and Activism 

While civic activism—raising 

money for sick children and campaigning 

to curb police corruption— 

is highly visible on the Russian Internet, 

it’s still entertainment and 

social media that dominate. In this 

respect, Russia hardly differs from 

the United States or countries in 

western Europe. The most popular 

Internet searches on Russian search 


engines are not for “What is Democracy?” 

or “how to protect human 

rights,” but for “What is love?” and 

“how to lose weight.” 

The Kremlin supports, directly or 

indirectly, a host of sites about politics, 

which are usually quick to denounce 

the opposition and welcome 

every government initiative, but increasingly 

branches out into apolitical 

entertainment. From the government’s 

perspective, it’s far better to 

keep young Russians away from 

politics altogether, having them consume 

funny videos on Russia’s own 

version of YouTube, RuTube (owned 

by Gazprom, the country’s stateowned 

energy behemoth), or on 

Russia.ru, where they might be exposed 

to a rare ideological message 

as well. 

Many Russians are happy to comply, 

not least because of the high 

quality of such online distractions. 

The Russian authorities may be on to 

something here: The most effective 

system of Internet control is not the 

one that has the most sophisticated 

and draconian censorship, but the 

one that has no need for censorship 

whatsoever. 

I don’t think there is anything 

unique about Russia per se. It’s just 

that the government is smarter than 

the Egyptian government was about 

how to use the Internet. The Egyptian 

government didn’t do anything 

online. It didn’t engage in propaganda, 

deploy bloggers, or launch 

cyberattacks. They missed the train. 

I think the difference is that the 

people who built up the Russian Internet 

ended up working for the 

government. The Egyptian government’s 

approach to the Internet was 

very shallow, and it had to pay the 

price, eventually. 

Giving everyone a blog will not by 

itself increase the health of modernday 

democracy; in fact, the possible 

side effects—the disappearance of 

watchdogs, the end of serendipitous 

news discovery, the further polarization 

of society—may not be the price 

worth paying for the still unclear 

virtues of the blogging revolution. 

This does not mean, of course, that a 

smart set of policies—implemented 

by the government or private actors—won’t 

help to address those 

problems. 

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of 

Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov. 

PublicAffairs. 2011. 408 pages. $27.95. 

Revolutions Require Training 

And Organization 

The people who were instrumental 

in making the Egyptian revolution 

happen weren’t new to politics. 

Almost all of them were part of existing 

political and social forces. 

They had had plenty of training and 

organization by various Western 

foundations and governments. I 

In 2009, reports that dissidents 

in Iran were using Twitter 

prompted many Western 

commentators to proclaim 

that social media was fomenting 

a democratic Iranian revolution—only 

to be disappointed 

when the “revolution” 

fizzled and died. 

New America Foundation 

fellow Evgeny Morozov 

attributes the 

commentators’ misplaced 

hopes to cyber - 

utopianism, a wides 

p re a d b u t n a ï v e 

expectation that the 

Internet will empower 

oppressed 

peoples and advance 

democracy. 

According to Morozov, cyberutopians 

failed to anticipate that 

authoritarian regimes would also 

benefit from the Internet. In fact, 

such police states as Belarus and 

Iran pay bloggers to spread 

prop aganda and frequent socialnetworking 

sites to monitor dissidents. 

Other states, such as 

Russia, disseminate crass entertainment 

through video-sharing 

sites to distract viewers from social 

and political issues. 

Morozov debunks many 

widely held assumptions about 

how politically repressive states 

and their opposition both work. 

He follows with advice for democratic 

lawmakers who want to 

help the dissidents. 

Pro-democracy 

lawmakers must 

engage with the 

Internet, he says, 

but they must observe 

how it imp 

a c t s d i f f e r e n t 

countries in different 

w a y s a n d s h a p e 

their policies accordingly: 

What works in 

Tunisia might not 

work in Burma. Also, 

they must never treat 

Web-based platforms 

as substitutes for diligent, committed 

human activists who mobilize 

people to action in real life. 

The Net Delusion is a sobering 

assessment on the limits of Internet 

activism. It has practical advice 

for policy makers and nonprofit 

activists across the globe. 

—Rick Docksai 

don’t think the view of this as being 

a spontaneous revolution was true. I 

myself have been to several democracy 

workshops in Egypt. I wouldn’t 

necessarily view these people as 

atomized individuals. They have 

been trained offline. 

But of course, you wouldn’t have 

heard as much about it. Who’s paying 

for those workshops? It’s the 

U.S. government and U.S. founda- 


Web users fill the seats at an Internet café in Chengdou, China. 

Despite the hopes of some democracy activists, the profusion of the 

Internet in China has so far not undermined China’s authoritarian 

political system. As New America Foundation scholar Evgeny 

Morozov argues, authoritarian regimes around the world are adapting 

to—and sometimes prospering from—the spread of digital media. 

tions. In this sense, Facebook and 

Twitter are much better covers, because 

the uprisings they enabled appeared 

to be spontaneous. It would be 

very misleading to suggest that all the 

connections forged by these activists 

are virtual. Revolution is much more 

about building human networks. 

In 1996, when a group of high-profile 

digerati took to the pages of 

Wired magazine and proclaimed that 

the “public square of the past” was 

being replaced by the Internet, a 

technology that “enables average citizens 

to participate in national discourse, 

publish a newspaper, distribute 

an electronic pamphlet to the 

world … while simultaneously protecting 

their privacy,” many historians 

must have giggled. 

From the railways, which Karl 

Marx believed would dissolve 

India’s caste system, to television, 

that greatest “liberator” of the 

masses, there has hardly appeared a 

technology that wasn’t praised for 

its ability to raise the level of public 

debate, introduce more transparency 

into politics, reduce nationalism, and 

transport us to the mythical global 

village. 

In virtually all cases, such high 

hopes were crushed by the brutal 

forces of politics, culture, and economics. 

Technologies tend to overpromise 

and underdeliver, as least 

on their initial promises. 

Which of the forces unleashed by 

the Web will prevail in a particular 

social and political 

context is impossible 

to tell 

without first getting 

a thorough 

theoretical understanding 

of 

t h a t c o n t e x t . 

Likewise, it is 

naïve to believe 

that such a sophisticated 

and 

m u l t i p u r p o s e 

technology as 

t h e I n t e r n e t 

could produce 

identical outcomes—whether 

good or bad—in 

countries as diverse 

as Belarus, 

Burma, Kazakhstan, 

and Tunisia. There is so much diversity 

across authoritarian regimes. 

I wouldn’t have much hope in the 

Internet in North Korea. First, it’s a 

country with some of the fewest Internet 

connections in the world. And 

second, average North Koreans have 

been brainwashed to such an extent 

that you have serious psychological 

challenges that you can’t overcome 

just by using blogs and Twitter. It 

would be much harder than for a 

country like Belarus, for example, 

where one-third of the country is online. 

Mobile phones might play a 

role in getting more information out. 

But it’s unlikely that Facebook or 

Twitter will play much of a role. 

Policy makers need to abandon 

both cyber-utopianism and Internetcentrism, 

if only for the lack of accomplishment. 

What would take 

their place? What would an alternative, 

more down-to-earth approach 

to policy making in the digital age— 

let’s call it cyber-realism—look like? 

Cyber-realists would struggle to 

find space for the Internet in existing 

pillars. Instead of asking the highly 

general, abstract, and timeless question 

of “How do we think the Internet 

changes closed societies?,” they 

would ask “How do we think the Internet 

is affecting our existing policies 

on country X?” Instead of operating 

in the realm of the utopian and 

the ahistorical, impervious to the 

ways in which developments in domestic 

and foreign policies intersect, 

© PIERO CRUCIATTI / DREAMSTIME.COM 

cyber-realists would be constantly 

searching for highly sensitive points 

of interaction between the two. 

They wouldn’t label all Internet 

activism as either useful or harmful. 

Instead, they would evaluate the desirability 

of promoting such activism 

in accordance with their existing policy 

objectives. 

Cyber-realists wouldn’t search for 

technological solutions to problems 

that are political in nature, and they 

wouldn’t pretend that such solutions 

are even possible. Nor would cyberrealists 

search for a bullet that could 

destroy authoritarianism—or even 

the next-to-silver bullet, for the utopian 

dreams that such a bullet can 

even exist would have no place in 

their conception of politics. 

Instead, cyber-realists would focus 

on optimizing their own decisionmaking 

and learning processes, hoping 

that the right mix of bureaucratic 

checks and balances, combined with 

the appropriate incentives structure, 

would identify wicked problems before 

they are misdiagnosed as tame 

ones, as well as reveal how a particular 

solution to an Internet problem 

might disrupt solutions to other, 

non-Internet problems. 

Most important, cyber-realists 

would accept that the Internet is 

poised to produce different policy 

outcomes in different environments 

and that a policy maker’s chief objective 

is not to produce a thorough 

philosophical account of the Internet’s 

impacts on society at large, but, 

rather, to make the Internet an ally in 

achieving specific policy objectives. 

For them, the promotion of democracy 

would be too important an activity 

to run it out of a Silicon Valley 

lab. 

❑ 


Evgeny Morozov is a contributing 

editor to Foreign 

Policy, visiting scholar at 

Stanford University, a 

Schwartz fellow at the New 

America Foundation, and the 

author of The Net Delusion: 

The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (Public 

Affairs, 2011). E-mail evgeny.morozov@ 

gmail.com. 

This article draws from his book as well 

as an interview with staff editor Rick 

Docksai, which may be read at wfs.org. 


By Joergen Oerstroem Moeller 

Asia 

Redraws 

the Map of 

Progress 

DUNCAN WALKER / ISTOCKPHOTO 

Balance of economic, if not political, power 

is shifting from West to East. A diplomat and 

scholar argues that, if Asia is to rise to the 

challenges that this power shift will bring, 

it must not emulate the more destructive, 

materialistic values of industrialized society. 

Over the last 30 years, unique opportunities 

for high and persistent 

economic growth have blessed Asia, 

and policy makers grabbed them 

with both hands. Global growth was 

high, commodity prices were low, 

and a growing labor force turned 

China into the world’s top manufacturer. 

Meanwhile, there was not 

much pressure to heed environmental 

warnings. The policy challenge 

for Asia’s political leaders was primarily 

to manage economic growth. 

All that is changing. Global growth 

is slowing, commodity prices are expected 

to continue rising, and oil 

supplies are declining. Alternative 

energy sources are available—but for 

a price. Starting in 2015, the labor 

force will shrink in China while it 

continues to rise in South Asia. Environmental 

problems demand far 

more resources, and the United 

States can no longer be counted on 

as a stabilizing power. Indeed, there 

is a risk of Chinese–American tensions 

catapulting the Pacific trade 

and growth engine into trouble. So 

creating the conditions for economic 

growth becomes a policy challenge— 

and it’s a whole new situation. 

Asia cannot do without economic 

growth. Over the preceding decades, 

a large part of the population has become 

accustomed to an almost permanently 

rising living standard, considered 

to be a kind of prescriptive 

right. Many political regimes find 

that their legitimacy in the eyes of 

their people depends on constantly 

rising prosperity. But the demographic 

composition is changing, 

with more elderly people calling for 

more welfare, more pensions, and 

better health care. Large infrastructure 

investments are necessary, not 

the least in South Asia, which is destined 

to take over from China as the 

next home of low-cost, labor-intensive 

manufacturing. Meanwhile, investment 

in research and technology 

is becoming more costly as Asia 

moves from catching up with the 

West to searching for new breakthroughs—a 

more laborious and 

costly exercise than simply improving 

existing technology. 

The weaker fundamentals will 

force Asia to find a growth pattern 


other than the mass consumption of 

America and Europe, which, if pursued 

successfully, would result in an 

implosion of Asian societies as natural 

resources become unavailable. 

Mass consumption for a couple of 

hundred million people in the West 

cannot with a stroke be extended to 

between 1 and 2 billion people. 

Something has to give, and that 

something is the perception of economic 

growth, which makes people 

feel that their living standard is improving. 

For the last 200 years, the world 

has lived and lived well with what 

may be termed American-style capitalism, 

which hit full throttle in the 

twentieth century. It was a combination 

of economic and political elements 

that fit admirably well together. 

Adam Smith’s dictum that the 

pursuit of wealth by individuals coalesced 

into higher wealth for society 

as a whole, because society’s wealth 

is the accumulation of individuals’ 

wealth, proved largely correct. 

Easy access to natural resources 

gave the impression that they were 

unlimited. Transport opened up for 

new markets, giving access to raw 

materials hitherto out of reach. Technology 

improved productivity, keeping 

inflation in check. Population 

growth boosted the economy. The 

nation-state served as the political 

framework and mechanism for distribution 

and as the administrative 

infrastructure for industrial growth. 

Asia accepted this worldview at 

the peak of its ascendancy during 

the second half of the twentieth century. 

The rise of Asian economies has 

depended primarily upon using this 

Western model as a guide to growth. 

Nothing is more striking than 

Asia’s jump into the global politicaleconomic 

system forged after 1945. 

This system was not truly global, but 

an institutional setup designed to 

further American preponderance 

and to secure American interests all 

over the globe. It worked because 

the American model was regarded 

as attractive and, in the eyes of a 

large majority, had proved itself. It is 

no wonder that a “Washington consensus” 

embracing an economic freemarket 

model like the American one 

was forged at the end of the twentieth 

century and adopted by the two 

leading global economic institutions, 

the International Monetary Fund 

and the World Bank. 

Now, as Asia gradually takes over 

as the global economic powerhouse, 

people are beginning to realize that 

this model was and is a Western 

one—suited to Europe and America, 

but not able to sustain global development. 

Asia has achieved as much 

as possible by emulating that model 

and borrowing from its principles. 

Now, however, awkward challenges 

not inscribed in the textbook of 

American-style capitalism must be 

tackled. In short, Asia must find and 

develop its own way ahead; it has to 

invent a new economic and societal 

model. 

Asian Demography and the 

New Economic Model 

Over the next 25 years, demographic 

factors will bring tremendous 

changes and challenges for the 

whole of Asia. 

First, three groups of countries 

emerge: (1) those with a falling population, 

consisting of Japan (still the 

world’s second-largest economy), 

South Korea, and a few others; (2) 

those nations with a stagnant and 

gradually falling population (notably 

China); and (3) those with a rising 

population, including India, Paki 

s t a n , B a n g l a d e s h , Vi e t n a m , 

Indonesia, and the Philippines. 

Demographic divergence is not a 

recipe for stability. Economically, it 

almost certainly starts a transfer of 

labor-intensive, low-cost manufacturing 

from China to countries with 

a rising population requiring investment 

to equip and house new industries; 

China will experience a swing 

from low-cost to more value-added 

production, putting strains on the 

education system. On top of that, 

there is the sensitive question of 

whether skilled workers will be allowed 

to migrate among countries 

according to where they find the 

highest wages. If yes, productivity 

will go up; if not, productivity will 

be held back, and animosities of ethnic 

and/or religious character may 

pop up. The first omen of these 

problems will soon be seen, as the 

Chinese labor force starts to shrink 

in 2015 and the size of total popula- 

tion follows between 2025 and 2030. 

Second, the number of people in 

the age bracket above 65 years will 

rise markedly in China. The surging 

increase of the elderly, which has already 

happened in Japan, will put an 

enormous strain on society and will 

require services that are not embedded 

in the current societal system. 

Today, Chinese society presumes that 

the family takes care of the elderly. 

That arrangement worked well for a 

SINGAPORE SKYLINE BY BLUENEMO / ISTOCKPHOTO 

“A large part of the 

population has become 

accustomed to an 

almost permanently 

rising living standard, 

considered to be a kind 

of prescriptive right.” 

long time, but now with the smaller 

core family and more singles, the 

younger generation is not willing to 

shoulder this burden. The fact that 

the savings rate in China continues 

to be well over 40% suggests that 

people expect to pay for social welfare 

themselves. The problem, however, 

runs deeper: People may be 

able to pay for the services, but the 

services have to be provided by 

somebody—the public sector or private 

institutions. Meeting this demand 

will require large investments 

in infrastructure and training of 


CHINESE BUSINESSWOMAN BY ZHU DIFENG / ISTOCKPHOTO 

“Asia must find and 

develop its own way 

ahead; it has to invent 

a new economic and 

societal model.” 

people to perform care functions. So 

far, these preparations have hardly 

started. 

Third, the difference in fertility 

among ethnic and religious groups 

will change the composition of Asia’s 

population. Twenty-five years from 

now, there will be fewer ethnic 

Chinese and more ethnic Indians and 

Malays. There will be more Muslims 

and Hindus, and a smaller share for 

religions and philosophies rooted in 

Chinese culture. The most significant 

development takes place for the 

share of Muslims. Globally, Muslims 

increased from 16.5% in 1980 to 

19.2% in 2000 and are forecast to be 

30% in 2025. As 69% of the world’s 

Muslims live in Asia, it is a certain 

conclusion that the share of Muslims 

will go up. The impact will be most 

visible in India, where 13.4% of the 

population currently adheres to Islam, 

but concentrated in the north of 

the country. It is conceivable that 

A tremendous effort has been put 

into universities, but with mixed results 

so far. The number of graduates 

rises fast, but doubts persist about 

the quality of their education. 

Asian countries have long sent a 

large number of students to the 

United States. These students used 

to opt for staying in America after 

graduation, but the pendulum is 

now swinging the other way. A majority 

of Chinese and Indian students 

in the United States now say they 

want to return home to pursue careers, 

according to several reports. 

The reason they give may be a barometer 

for the future of technology 

in Asia: Career prospects are judged 

to be better in their home countries 

than in the United States. 

Much will depend on how well 

Asian education systems cope with 

the challenge of matching future 

skills with future demand for those 

skills. The education system must 

work under the pressure of turning 

out students now with the skills necessary 

for the future. 

The system must anticipate what 

the economy needs tomorrow and 

adapt curricula before it happens. 

That means schools must offer training 

and skills not in demand now, 

but judged to be so in 10 or 20 years. 

That is very difficult, and the stakes 

are high. The U.S. experience shows 

heavy costs for failing to anticipate 

future skills needs: Productivity fails 

to reach its full potential, undermining 

competitiveness; meanwhile, 

people in possession of the soughtafter 

skills reap a premium, deepening 

social inequality. The combined 

result is an underperforming econsometime 

between now and 2040 

one or more of the Indian states will 

have a majority of Muslims and be 

governed by Muslims. 

This is not necessarily synonymous 

with problems, but if the 

emerging trend of religions holding 

stronger command over behavioral 

patterns remains in place, tensions 

among groups inside and between 

countries may intensify. 

Trends in Technology 

and Education 

Asia may be an economic powerhouse, 

but it is not yet a technological 

pathfinder. Admittedly, Asia excels 

at improving existing technology 

and has taken over much manufacturing, 

but so far very few inventions 

can trace their roots back to Asia. 

Having said this, there can be little 

doubt of Asia’s growing technological 

strength. The three top spenders 

on R&D are the United States, Japan, 

and China. China is publishing 

120,000 scientific articles annually, an 

achievement only surpassed by the 

United States, with 350,000. The 

strong upward trend in patents and 

scientific articles augurs a future 

leading position for China. Japan is 

filing the largest number of patents 

worldwide, but China’s filing rate is 

increasing explosively. Most of 

Japan’s patents are filed by companies 

that make them dormant unless they 

intend to use them—which often is 

not the case. Selling to competitors 

that may turn the patents into new 

products is simply not “on.” Many 

of the Chinese patents are held by a 

very limited number of companies, 

notably telecom giant Huawei, casting 

doubt over how widespread innovation 

and invention is. 

This raises a broader question of 

how well technology and innovation 

are embedded in Asian societies. To 

reap the benefit of the heavy outlays 

in R&D, a country must be geared to 

turn technological novelties into new 

products, refine them, achieve highquality 

goods, and finally set up organizations 

to market, sell, and deliver 

after-sales service. Here, almost 

all Asian countries seem to be behind 

the curve. Moving into high tech 

calls for a societal effort encompassing 

education, the financial sector, 

government services at both the local 

and national levels, protection of 

intellectual property rights, corporate 

governance, and a domestic 

market guaranteeing increasing returns 

to scale as a platform for global 

expansion. Many Asian countries 

have some of these assets, or soon 

will, but not the whole panoply; 

moreover, the true art of the game— 

to combine these assets based upon 

long experience—is yet to be acquired. 

Matching Education to 

National Needs 


omy and growing social problems. 

In countries with large and growing 

populations moving upward on 

the economic and technological ladder, 

the performance of the education 

system will be pivotal for stable 

and relatively harmonious growth. 

Otherwise, imbalances jeopardizing 

social harmony will result. An enormous 

number of dissatisfied people 

due to training with no economic 

value and an economy desperate for 

skilled workers and technological 

staff is a recipe for economic weakness 

and social unrest. 

Five Scarcities: Food, 

Commodities, Energy, Water, 

and a Clean Environment 

A common thread in analyses of 

the global economy is a focus on the 

need for higher personal consumption 

in China to replace U.S. consumption 

as the driver. This thinking 

may be correct in the short term, but 

it is catastrophic when looked at in a 

broader context. 

There is ample evidence for a 

forthcoming era of shortages in five 

vital areas governing economic activity: 

food, commodities, energy/ 

oil, water, and clean environment. 

These resources are interrelated, and 

efforts to solve one problem with existing 

methods invariably lead to 

deepening problems for one or several 

of the other shortages. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization 

reports that global food production 

will need to increase by 

more than 40% in 2030 and by 70% 

in 2070. China, Japan, and Korea are 

net importers of food, and India is 

just above self-sufficiency. A number 

of geographical areas around the 

world have potential for higher food 

production, but few are found in 

Asia. 

China, India, Japan, and Korea all 

depend upon imports of commodities. 

Little can be done to change 

that, apart from investing in overseas 

mining, which reduces the economic—but 

not the political—uncertainty. 

Energy needs have pushed all major 

Asian economies into becoming 

heavy importers of oil, but oil is not 

the main source of energy—coal is. 

About 70% of China’s energy supply 

comes from coal, as does 55% of 

India’s. Relying on coal with existing 

technology aggravates the already 

dire environmental prospect, explaining 

why China is pouring billions 

of U.S. dollars into clean coal 

technology. However, forecasts indicate 

that China will continue to be 

the world’s largest emitter of carbon 

dioxide, and in 2015, India will have 

moved into the number-three position. 

Large parts of China and India are 

already in the grip of water shortages; 

the Chinese government is 

drawing up a financially ambitious 

(but environmentally dubious) plan 

of turning some of the country’s 

main rivers around to channel water 

toward the dry northern regions. 

Degradation of the environment is 

threatening continued economic expansion. 

The World Bank estimates 

that the costs to China of air and water 

pollution range up to 5.8% of 

gross domestic product—an enormous 

sum that swallows up about 

half of China’s economic growth. 

If prevailing forecasts turn out to 

be correct, global warming will aggravate 

these problems. Under a pessimistic 

scenario, the decades ahead 

will see declining agricultural output 

in all of China, all of South Asia, and 

most of Southeast Asia. Even if crops 

can be made to benefit from increased 

carbon dioxide, agricultural output 

will still decline in all of South Asia 

and most of Southeast Asia. 

Forces Threatening 

Asia’s Future 

Strategists have often pondered 

the prospect for war between two or 

three of the juggernauts—China, 

India, and Japan. In fact, however, 

none of them threatens another’s vital 

interest. The three nations may 

compete for influence and play the 

good old game of being a nuisance 

by seeking influence in each other’s 

backyard—as China is doing in 

Myanmar and Sri Lanka, much to 

the chagrin of India—but basically it 

stops there. 

Over the last few decades, the 

threats to nation-states have changed 

PATHATHAI CHUNGYAM / ISTOCKPHOTO 

“Much will depend on how 

well the Asian education 

systems cope with the 

challenge of matching 

future skills with future 

demand for those skills.” 


“Global food production 

will need to increase by 

more than 40% in 2030 

and by 70% in 2070.” 

completely. Threats emanate from 

non-nation-state players aspiring to 

delegitimize the political system. 

One vehicle for doing so is to undermine 

the government system’s ability 

to function, thereby opening a 

window of opportunity to establish 

control over populations and to impose 

a different societal model. This 

is the lesson from Iraq, Afghanistan, 

the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Threats 

may also come from disruptive nation-states 

(rogue states), terrorists, 

and criminal organizations aiming to 

disrupt the functioning of global systems. 

The legitimacy of the political systems 

in China and India rests upon 

their ability to ensure rising living 

standards and human security. Political 

stability requires social stability, 

which requires adequate numbers of 

jobs, which requires economic 

growth, which requires a firm anchoring 

in economic globalization. 

So it is no coincidence that first 

China and then India have joined 

economic globalization and its institutions. 

There is much talk about China 

and its growing military muscle, but 

all indications are that China’s leaders 

worry more about domestic unrest 

than military aggression. Foreign 

powers enter this equation only as 

instigators of social unrest, which explains 

the Chinese sensitivity about 

the Dalai Lama, Tibet, Taiwan, the 

Uighur people, and the Falun Gong 

religious movement. India seems to 

be more relaxed, but behind the curtain 

the same kind of problems harass 

policy making: The Indian states 

go their own way, and terrorist 

groups of both political and religious 

nature cast doubt upon the state of 

human security. 

Political leaders do not see war as 

a continuation of politics by other 

means, but rather as the ultimate catastrophe 

throwing their nations into 

chaos and wiping out decades of 

hard work that gave their populations 

a better life. They do not harbor 

aggressive designs toward any other 

nation-states or see gain of territory 

as a reasonable objective. They have 

enough already on their plates. The 

Chinese perception of Taiwan is that 

it is part of China, and as long as this 

perception is not disturbed, things 

can go on as they have for years. 

Only one point may trigger an 

armed conflict, and that is a Chinese 

attempt to divert the water flowing 

from the glaciers in the Himalayas 

away from the Indian rivers to 

China. If China does this, India will 

see its survival under threat, legitimizing 

any action it takes to ensure 

that the water still flows to India. 

China is well aware of Indian concerns. 

Some observers see a future war 

between China and the United States 

as an almost certain result of the U.S. 

decline and Chinese ascension. This 

projection is based on the theory that 

no superpower has ever been replaced 

by another one without a war. 

That observation can be disputed, 

but suffice it to note that, if such a 

war erupts, the trigger will likely be 

declining interest in economic globalization. 

That cannot be ruled out, 

especially if the U.S. economic downturn 

continues and allows China’s 

economy to knock the United States 

SOUTHEAST ASIAN FARMER BY LEEUWTJE / ISTOCKPHOTO 

off its perch. And even if the United 

States were to win a war, the costs 

would be tremendous and in a bestcase 

scenario only postpone the ultimate 

decline of American power. 

A New Paradigm for Growth 

We often take present social structures 

for granted and forget that the 

architecture of societies undergoes 

change all the time. The industrial 

model—with mass consumption as 

the economic driver, freely using raw 

materials, focusing upon the individual, 

and built on the nation-state— 

has been with us for 200 years, but is 

by no means an indispensable part 

of human civilization. The successor 

to the industrial model is in the 

wings, and we may not have to wait 

long for it to emerge. 

New trends may emerge and 

shape a new societal model. A more 

likely scenario, however, is a comeback 

for classic values that are embedded 

in traditional societies but 

have been lost in industrialized culture. 

Based on its cultural heritage, 

Asia is much closer to supporting 

such a reversal than the Western 

world, especially the United States. 

The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, 

Christianity, and Islam) tend to view 

nature as of secondary importance 

because God is regarded as above 

nature and God created man. So the 

exploitation of nature and its resources 

introduced by industrialization 

met no religious obstacles. 

Asia’s religions and philosophies 

take a different view. One of the key 

messages in Hinduism is the presence 

of God in everything. A river or 


FARM IN DONGCHUAN, CHINA, BY JIANG YAN / ISTOCKPHOTO 

“The two crucial challenges to the current 

worldview—to change the pattern of materialistic 

consumption and switch from individualism to 

group behavior—find support more in traditional 

Asian values than in Western ones.” 

BONGEUNSA TEMPLE AND GANGNAM IN SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, BY MIN-GYU SEONG / ISTOCKPHOTO 

while the law and litigation are for 

non-civilized people—those who do 

not know or who reject common values. 

In Japan, the equivalent code is 

a mix of Buddhism and Shinto called 

syncretism. 

The two crucial challenges to the 

current worldview—to change the 

pattern of materialistic consumption 

and switch from individualism to 

group behavior—find support more 

in traditional Asian values than in 

Western ones. 

That Asia can and perhaps will 

find solutions to its problems by invoking 

traditional values may be 

countered by the fact that, so far, 

very little of this has been seen. Asia 

has happily jumped into the box of 

Western values, adopting them almost 

unchanged. 

However, there is little doubt that 

continued application of this model 

will lead Asia—and the world—into 

disaster. Arnold Toynbee taught that 

civilization is built upon “response 

to challenge.” To avoid a meltdown 

in the maelstrom of environmental 

degradation, social unrest, and competition 

for ever scarcer resources, 

Asia must respond. It is possible— 

maybe even plausible—that this response 

will take the form of reintroa 

tree can be holy. Buddhism does 

not set human beings above nature, 

as the Abrahamic religions do. Confucianism 

and Taoism teach that 

people are part of nature, and so human 

beings do not have the right to 

exploit nature. 

Both China and India have long 

been governed by the “rule of man” 

instead of the “rule of law.” By 

adopting a common set of values, 

people knew how to behave vis-à-vis 

others and did not rely on written 

texts such as laws or regulations. 

Values and ethics governed relations 

among citizens. Conflicts were rare, 

and most of those that surfaced were 

solved by mediation, such as by elders 

or highly esteemed individuals 

who could find common values in 

opposing views. Typically, there was 

no “winner,” but rather an attempt 

to resolve disputes in a way that all 

parties can live with. 

The Confucian Code of Rites (Liji) 

controls civilized behavior by laying 

down norms, ethics, and values. The 

law is only brought into the picture 

when dealing with people who do 

not respect shared values and therefore 

fall outside civilized behavior. 

Relations between civilized people 

are governed by ethics and values, 

ducing cultural values that have 

been dormant—but not forgotten— 

during Asia’s industrialization. 

What has not yet fully been understood 

is that the modern worldview 

is moving away from distribution of 

benefits—ingrained in the industrial 

model and mass consumption—to 

burden sharing imposed by increasing 

scarcities. The societies that find 

the key to doing this, minimizing 

friction among their citizens and 

with the rest of the world, will be the 

winners. 

❑ 


Joergen Oerstroem Moeller 

is a visiting senior research 

fellow at the Institute of 

Southeast Asian Studies in 

Singapore, an adjunct professor 

at Singapore Management 

University and 

Copenhagen Business School, and a member 

of the World Future Society’s Global Advisory 

Council. He is a former Danish ambassador 

to Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, 

Australia, and New Zealand. Web site 

www.oerstroemmoeller.com; E-mail 

joergen@oerstroemmoeller.com. 

This article draws from his forthcoming 

book, How Asia Can Shape the World, 

which will set out in a more elaborate way 

the views expressed here. 


ÖZGÜR DONMAZ / ISTOCKPHOTO 

Strategies for Livi 

Advances in science and medicine 

promise to increase both the 

quality of human life and life expectancy. 

If the current research assaults 

on cancer and heart disease 

are successful, there would be a major 

impact on the lives and probable 

longevity of baby boomers, who will 

be in their 70s and 80s in 2025. A 

great many boomers could live very 

long lives, possibly fulfilling the prediction 

by antiaging physician Ron 

Klatz that more than half of baby 

boomers will live healthy lives beyond 

100. 

Increasingly, medical science is 

also providing crucial repairs and reconstructions, 

such as tissue, hip, 

and knee replacements, with organ 

replacements a promise for the 

future. These advancements offer individuals 

the ability to deal with 

conditions that would otherwise be 

confining or crippling. 

Beyond the research that is increasing 

life expectancy, science is 

also exploring ways to extend the 

human life span beyond 120 years. 

Research into telomeres and telomerase 

suggest that it may be possible to 

prevent the shortening of telomeres 

or possibly rejuvenate them. If successful, 

this could be one avenue toward 

increasing life spans. (A telomere 

is a region of the chromosome 

that protects it from deterioration.) 

There are broad implications for 

society as people live longer or much 

longer lives. The lengthening of life 

may be gradual or sudden. If both 

cancer and heart disease become 

“curable” by 2025, there could be a 

substantial leap in longevity. The impacts 

could be enormous. The U.S. 

Social Security system, for example, 

could be in serious trouble. 

On the other hand, boomers who 

realize that they may live to 100 and 

still be healthy could elect to stay in 

the workforce for an extra decade or 

more to build up their retirement 

plans and maintain their current incomes. 

Moreover, working seniors 

anticipating very long lives may 

postpone their withdrawals from Social 

Security in order to maximize 

their income when they do start collecting. 

So if the human life span is extended 

beyond 120 years, then immortality, 

or at least extremely long 

lives, must be considered. What will 

people do to keep life interesting, 

whether they live extra decades or 

extra centuries? If you were told that 

you could live to 110 in good health, 

how would that change your life? 

What would you do differently than 

you would if you expected your life 

to end in your 80s? Instead of only 

expecting several years of retirement, 

you’d be getting decades. 

Life at 140? 

Here is how to think about the 

“quality of life” as you grow older— 

much older. Will you be happy with 

your life in your 90s, or even your 

140s? What would provide a preferred 

quality of life, or happiness? 

Would simply being alive and 

healthy be sufficient? 

To start, we can divide our lives 

into six personal domains or categories, 

then project some of the major 

forces that will affect these domains 

in the future and outline personal 

strategies for addressing these forces 

and creating a positive outcome. 

These domains are: 

1. Activities. 

2. Finances. 


Personal futuring will get more complicated in the 

future. Try planning for your “old age” when you might 

live to 120—or longer! A futurist offers some tips. 

By Verne Wheelwright 

ng a Very Long Life 

3. Health. 

4. Housing. 

5. Social. 

6. Transportation. 

Within this format of personal domains 

we will explore some of the 

impacts and choices of a very long 

life for individuals, considering both 

positives and negatives in each domain. 

Activities: Keeping Busy 

As a Centenarian 

If you do live to be 100 or more, 

what will you be able to do, and 

what will you want to do? 

If people know they can live long, 

healthy lives, they may extend their 

present careers, plan for or choose 

multiple careers, do volunteer work, 

or stop working altogether. They 

may seek further education, whether 

in preparation for a new career, to 

upgrade their skills, or just for the 

learning experience. Others may 

turn a hobby into a new career. Some 

individuals may find that a career as 

a full-time or part-time caregiver for 

a spouse or parent(s) has become 

their new role. 

The decision to retire from work is 

more than a financial decision; it is a 

decision that affects every domain, 

although most obviously the activities 

domain. If you retire at 65, what 

will you be doing in your 80s, 90s, or 

possibly much longer? If you are 65 

now, you will only be 80 in 2025, and 

expectations are high that benefits 

from advances in treatment of heart 

disease and cancer will increase your 

life expectancy. Those advances may 

be sufficient to take you to 2040. By 

then, it is possible that the human 

life span may also be increased. 

• The Future: For those who want 

to work late into life, there may be 

challenges. Some careers—such as 

airline pilots, military personnel, police 

officers, and even teachers—have 

mandatory retirement rules or laws 

in place that limit the age of workers. 

Some countries have mandatory retirement 

ages, but worldwide, attitudes 

and rules are changing. By the 

time the baby boomers reach their 

80s, the barriers may be gone. 

Will you want to work full time, 

and if so, to what age? A recent 

article in BusinessWeek details the 

growth in demand for temporary 

and contract workers. This is an area 

that may prove attractive to older 

workers who have their own health 

insurance (Medicare in the United 

States) and wish to take breaks between 

employment assignments. 

“As healthy lifetimes extend beyond 100, 

people may cycle through multiple careers 

and continued education.” 

Discretionary time appears to be important 

to people, and the ability to 

take temporary leave, then return to 

the labor force from time to time, 

may appeal to older workers. 

Individuals who elect to stop 

working will have time to pursue 


sports and hobbies, travel, and 

spend time with grandchildren or in 

their later years even great-great 

grandchildren. A current generation 

in retirement has found that technology 

has provided broad access to information, 

instant news updates, entertainment, 

easy communication 

worldwide, and lots of ways to fill 

time. Yet, a life filled with little more 

than television, reading, or e-mails 

can become unsatisfying or even 

boring. 

For many people who are aging in 

good health, this may be a time for 

adventure. That may include extensive 

travel, time in the wilderness, 

outdoor sports, or participating in 

events for which they have not had 

time during their working lives. Another 

option that older people are 

taking advantage of is education. 

Many are returning to school to take 

your leisure time. Therefore, learning 

opportunities and periods of formal 

or informal training may still be 

among your activities. 

Finances: Paying for 

The Future 

Finances—income, expenses, investments, 

insurance, credit cards, 

debt, taxes, and assets—is the domain 

that usually receives the greatest 

attention when people start planning 

for retirement and their future 

in later years. In large part, this is because 

your financial situation can either 

enhance or limit your options in 

all other domains. If you don’t have 

adequate income to cover your 

needs and your wants, your life will 

be restricted. 

Currently, even those who do have 

retirement savings may find that 

“One effective strategy is to learn, at any age, 

to live below your means.” 

advanced degrees to prepare for new 

careers or simply for the learning experience. 

As healthy lifetimes extend 

beyond 100, people may cycle 

through multiple careers and continued 

education. The increasing availability 

of college courses online and 

course materials from top-quality institutions 

may further the desire for 

higher and higher education. 

One thing favoring older people 

who want to continue working is the 

ability to work from anywhere. 

Computers, the Internet, smart 

phones, online software, conferencing, 

and a growing array of tools allow 

people to work successfully outside 

of traditional offices, because 

the tools can follow the worker. 

• Strategies: As you think about 

your own future and the possibilities 

of a very long life, consider what activities 

will keep you enthusiastic 

about life when you are 100 or even 

150. What would you like to be doing 

at those ages? 

Keep in mind that even staying 

up-to-speed with rapidly changing 

communications and entertainment 

technologies will demand much of 

what seemed enough for a lifetime 

20 years ago no longer yields sufficient 

income to pay all the bills. Income 

and assets may also be reduced 

upon the death of a spouse, 

and expenses can skyrocket with a 

serious illness. 

One major investment for most 

families is their home. In the past, 

people (and lenders) expected mortgages 

to be paid off before retirement, 

but attitudes appear to have 

changed, so some elders will be 

forced to continue working in order 

to meet their obligations. In 2007, 

about 68% of older homeowners 

owned their homes free and clear, 

according to the Administration on 

Aging, which suggests that nearly a 

third of older homeowners still carry 

a mortgage. 

• The Future: One important 

question every individual should answer 

is, “How long must I work before 

I can afford not to work for the 

rest of my life?” Once you know the 

answer to that question, you can 

then develop strategies that meet 

your financial needs and your preferred 

lifestyle. 

What will be the long-term source 

or sources of your income? What 

events could interrupt or reduce 

those sources? For example, many 

seniors have invested in certificates 

of deposit (CDs) because they were 

secure. The problem they discovered 

is that, when the economy falls, interest 

rates on CDs also fall, reducing 

income. Other investments, including 

stocks, bonds, commodities, 

currencies, and real estate, are also 

vulnerable to market changes. 

• Strategies: One effective strategy 

is to learn, at any age, to live below 

your means. 

Do not be too trusting. Older 

people are targets for fraud and 

scams. 

Decide who will manage your 

money, either as your adviser or as a 

representative if you are no longer 

able to manage. If you (or you and 

your spouse) are managing your 

money and investments now, could 

your spouse take over the responsibility 

for managing your finances 

very late in life? If not, who? 

Be extremely cautious about giving 

control over any of your assets to 

any one individual, no matter how 

close or competent that individual 

may appear. Multiple individuals, as 

in a trust, may be safer. A trust is a 

legal vehicle that can include several 

people who should be protecting 

your interest. An additional consideration 

is that a trust may exist for 

many decades, while individual advisers 

may not. 

Health: Staying Alive 

And Thriving 

Health encompasses your physical 

and mental health, including health 

care, nutrition, exercise, medications, 

and prevention of illness or injury. 

If you are sick or disabled, the 

overall quality of your life may be 

affected or limited. There are some 

health conditions that can be managed 

with regular medication. High 

blood pressure or enlarged prostate 

are examples of conditions that can 

affect the quality of your life, but can 

be controlled with regular treatment. 

Diabetes can generally be managed 

with monitoring and careful attention 

to diet. 

All of these conditions become 


“Your body and mind will still require 

maintenance and care to avoid illness 

and prevent deterioration.” 

more common as one gets older, so it 

is not unusual for people in their 70s 

and 80s to take multiple medications 

every day to control or manage their 

conditions. Yet, most of these people 

are able to enjoy high quality of life. 

• The Future: The big changes in 

medical science that are on the horizon 

will be largely related to cures 

and repairs, followed by maintenance. 

More types of cancer will be 

controlled or cured, adding many 

years of life for recovered patients. 

New treatments will replace chemotherapy 

and radiation, relieving patients 

of some of the severe effects of 

treatment and improving quality of 

life. 

Although medical science will 

probably reduce many of the risks of 

disease and death, science may not 

be able to stop the aging process in 

the foreseeable future. Your body 

and mind will still require maintenance 

and care to avoid illness and 

prevent deterioration. 

You should plan to work at keeping 

your body healthy and in good 

condition. The physical condition of 

your body when you are 50 or 60 

will provide the foundation for the 

rest of your life. If you enter your 60s 

in buoyant health and physical condition, 

you have a much better 

chance of retaining that condition 

into much later life. If you are already 

declining in health and physical 

condition at 60, you will have to 

work extra hard to get up to normal 

and to maintain good health. 

Alzheimer’s and other brain conditions 

or diseases appear directly 

associated with aging. Research is 

promising, but could take decades to 

find answers for some conditions. In 

the meantime, there appears to be 

considerable benefit in mental and 

physical exercise, as well as in maintaining 

multiple social relationships. 

• Strategies: Some powerful advice 

comes from James Rowe and 

Robert Kahn, authors of Successful 

Aging (Dell, 1998). They offer three 

Housing: Planning 

Where to Live 

Substantial numbers of people 

over 60 move to a different address. 

For many, this is simply downsizing 

from the family home, but for a great 

number, this is an opportunity to 

move to a new neighborhood, a 

warmer climate, get out of the city, 

or even move to a different country. 

Some become “snowbirds,” living in 

a northern climate part of the year 

and in a southern climate the rest of 

the year. As elders have aged, there 

has been a progression from homes 

to care facilities (or with relatives), to 

nursing homes, or to hospices. 

• The Future: Historically, about 

30% of noninstitutionalized elders 

live alone, and most of those are 

women. This statistic may change 

dramatically if life expectancy increases 

substantially in the future. A 

number of housing alternatives have 

come into existence over the past 50 

years: group homes, adult communities, 

retirement communities, continuing 

care retirement communities, 

and assisted living facilities, each offering 

advantages and alternatives. 

An increasingly popular option is receiving 

care at home. 

As people grow older, they may 

find themselves or their spouses in 

any of four different stages of life: 

• Independent. 

• Vulnerable (needs some help). 

• Dependent (requires care daily). 

• End of life (daily care or hospice 

care). 

Each of these four stages can take 

place in a family residence, but some 

preparation of the home is necessary; 

the last two stages often require a 

full-time caregiver. The alternative is 

a care facility, such as an assisted livspecific 

components of successful 

aging: avoid disease, engage with 

life, and maintain high cognitive and 

physical function. 

Nobody gets sick or injured on 

purpose, but a lot of people have 

health problems simply because they 

are not taking precautions to prevent 

those problems. Smoking and inhaling 

polluted air make people sick, 

but millions of people worldwide 

continue to smoke and breathe polluted 

air every year. Improper diet 

can cause diseases, including diabetes, 

but again, millions have the 

problem but have not changed their 

eating habits. 

Inoculations can prevent disease, 

regular screenings can detect disease, 

and simple hygiene can stop 

bacteria from gaining a foothold. So 

yes, it is possible to avoid many diseases, 

illnesses, or conditions by being 

aware of your health and taking 

reasonable precautions. 

Strive for early detection of any 

disease or condition with screenings 

and regular examinations. 

Exercise your brain and your body 

throughout your life. The human 

mind and the human body both 

seem to thrive on exercise. Diet is 

also very important in this area. Both 

the brain and the body need the 

right nutrients. 

You should also be aware of how 

to protect your mind and body, including 

your eyesight, hearing, 

joints, organs, and skin. 

If you become sick, suffer injury, 

or have surgery or other problems, 

get completely well as quickly as 

you can. Do the therapy. These are 

not times to waste energy on anger, 

self-pity, or pride, but times to focus 

all your energy on making as full a 

recovery as possible as quickly as 

possible. Why quickly? When you 

have a weakness in your body or 

mind, that weakness may make you 

vulnerable to some other illness or 

injury. 

When medications are prescribed, 

take them for as long as the doctor 

says to continue. If in doubt, ask. 

People have strokes, die, or suffer serious 

consequences from stopping 

medication inappropriately. 

Take advantage of medical technology 

whenever it is appropriate. 

Older people often suffer for years 

from problems that can be treated. 

Knee and hip replacements are examples 

of currently available remedies, 

and many more will be developed 

in the coming years. 


ing or nursing home. 

• Strategies: What kind of housing 

would you prefer if either you or 

your spouse needs long-term care? 

Think in terms of your first three 

choices, because different conditions 

may require different solutions. Or 

you might approach the subject from 

the opposite direction: Which are the 

least-desirable choices for long-term 

care? Nursing homes should be considered 

if skilled care is required, so 

it is important to know what is available 

and what the differences are between 

nursing homes. The Medicare 

Web site (www.medicare.gov) offers 

Nursing Home Compare, which can 

give you valuable insights into comparing 

nursing homes, and also offers 

alternatives. 

Even before you make any kind of 

move, make your present home safe 

and easy to live in at all ages. Consider 

preparing your home for caregiving 

should it be necessary on a 

temporary basis or longer. 

You and your spouse will benefit 

by discussing, understanding, and 

writing down each other’s housing 

or care preferences for each potential 

future life stage. 

Social: Relationships 

Matter 

The Social realm covers your relationships 

with family, friends, acquaintances, 

co-workers, advisers, 

and other people. 

One of the first things that people 

notice when they retire from fulltime 

work is that they have lost their 

social “roles.” For years, they have 

been associated with a career, a company, 

and a position, and all of this is 

suddenly gone. Also for years, they 

have spent large amounts of time 

with co-workers, clients, and even 

competitors, many of whom they 

viewed as friends. Suddenly, the link 

is broken, and all those people are 

no longer a real part of one’s life. 

Some friendships will continue, but 

most will probably fade quickly. 

Roles may change in other ways as 

well, such as when one spouse becomes 

responsible for care for the 

other, or when a child becomes 

responsible for a parent. 

In many cases of role loss or change, 

people go through the equivalent of a 

grieving process (denial, anger, bargaining, 

depression, and acceptance). 

In the case of retirement, some will be 

relieved and ecstatic to be free. In either 

case, they eventually find new 

roles and go on with life. 

In earlier generations, older 

people who became widows (or 

widowers) or required care moved 

into their children’s homes. This still 

occurs, yet a significant number of 

older people indicate that they will 

seek other alternatives, as they do 

not want to burden their children. 

• The Future: Although there is 

an expectation that baby boomers 

may live very long lives, many 

people in the generations ahead of 

the boomers are already living very 

long lives. Some boomers may find 

themselves in their 80s and caring 

for parents who are centenarians. 

Who will be your family and your 

friends when you are in your 90s or 

older? A recent poll of 100 centenarians 

suggested that being close to 

family and friends was the most important 

factor in healthy aging. 

If your parents are boomers or 

younger, they may live past 100. If 

their health fails, will you participate 

in their care or management? 

As people live longer, they are 

likely to have larger extended families. 

At 100, you might have four or 

five generations of living descendants. 

Think about those numbers 

and assume approximately 20 years 

between generations. When you are 

100 or more, your children could be 

80, your grandchildren 60, your 

great grandchildren 40, your greatgreat 

grandchildren 20, and your 

great-great-great grandchildren infants. 

A person who lives to 150 

might be a great-great-great-greatgreat 

grandparent! 

As you grow older, friends and 

family members will die. One of the 

great concerns of many very old 

people at the present is that they 

have no friends. They have lost their 

social networks. This suggests that 

maintaining and continuing to build 

your social networks may be very 

important. 

Further, when people move to 

nursing homes or other institutional 

settings, it can become very difficult 

to maintain normal social relationships 

with friends. Suddenly your 

friends must always come to where 

you are, and under whatever rules or 

surroundings are imposed by the 

caregiving organization. If you are 

suffering from Alzheimer’s or are too 

sick to talk with visitors, this probably 

doesn’t matter. But if you are still 

healthy and able to socialize, you 

may be better off to explore other alternatives. 

That may involve remaining 

in your own home and receiving 

whatever assistance you need there, 

or moving to a facility that supports 

your efforts to maintain relationships 

with friends and family. 

Computers, the Internet, and networking 

have already changed how 

people socialize. Families that have 

spread apart over great physical distances 

are able to exchange e-mails 

frequently and talk together face to 

face on their computers with the aid 

of webcams and services such as 

Skype. It seems logical to expect that 

new services will be introduced that 

keep families, friends, and acquaintances 

in close contact, possibly with 

the aid of 3-D avatars or holographic 

“At 100, you might have four or five 

generations of living descendants.” 

images as technologies are enhanced 

and new approaches introduced. 

• Strategies: Make an effort to build 

and nurture relationships with family 

members and friends at every age level. 

Anticipate that individual roles 

will change, particularly upon retirement, 

but at other times as well. 

Become involved in organizations 

where you can contribute your time 

and your knowledge while interacting 

with other people. 

Participate in activities and organizations 

wherever you have an interest. 

There are several legal documents 

that every individual should consider. 

Preparing these documents 


“The future may usher in new alternatives 

for personal transportation, such as 

exoskeletons that can help you stand, walk, 

run, and perform other personal activities.” 

will assure that your interests are 

protected or met in the future: 

• Will. 

• Directive to physician (e.g., 

“Do Not Resuscitate”). 

• Medical power of attorney. 

• Financial power of attorney. 

Transportation: 

Alternatives for Mobility 

Transportation encompasses all of 

your various mobility needs and the 

methods available, including walking, 

personal transport, and public 

transportation. 

In the United States, the automobile 

is probably the most important 

form of personal transportation. 

Consequently, a driver’s license can 

be very important to people of any 

age, including seniors who are often 

at risk of losing their driving privileges 

due to an age-related condition, 

such as poor vision. Older 

people have most of the same needs 

as the rest of the population. They 

must go to food markets, doctor appointments, 

pharmacies, and elsewhere 

to meet their needs. 

Some senior-living facilities offer 

transportation for their residents, an 

important service. Some communities 

provide door-to-door bus services, 

but other public transportation 

follows a fixed route or may not be 

manageable. 

Even more important than transportation 

as we usually think about 

it is mobility—i.e., the ability to get 

around in the most basic sense, 

walking. For individuals who are 

unable to walk, or are limited, there 

are options, including wheelchairs, 

scooters, or other aids to mobility. 

• The Future: The future may usher 

in new alternatives for personal 

transportation, such as exoskeletons 

that can help you stand, walk, run, 

and perform other personal activities. 

Wheelchair technology has already 

evolved into chairs that can 

climb stairs and raise the passenger 

to eye level to hold a more normal 

conversation; other innovative products 

will be introduced as well. 

Scooters and motorized wheelchairs 

have become common, enabling 

people who would otherwise be disabled 

to live independent lives. 

One of the exciting technologies 

on the horizon is intelligent or selfdriving 

cars. Driverless systems are 

being tested, largely as a result of the 

successes in the DARPA competitions, 

and are expected to be available 

to the public before 2020. This 

technology could fill a substantial 

need for older drivers, presuming 

that licensing requirements are adjusted 

to recognize driverless cars. 

• Strategies: Beyond automobiles, 

each individual or family must consider 

what their transportation 

needs will be in the future. Is it important 

to be near bike paths, a waterway, 

an airport, or a rail station? 

Try to anticipate your transportation 

and mobility needs about 10 

years in advance. Is your home suitable 

if you would need to use a 

walker or wheelchair? Is it near public 

transportation or car-sharing services? 

If you move to a new home, 

consider how you will meet your 

transportation needs if you can no 

longer drive or provide your own 

transportation. 

Conclusion: Preparing Your 

Personal Future 

Exploring these six domains 

within each individual’s life offers 

an opportunity to see life from different 

perspectives and at great 

depth. Most important, the domains 

provide platforms from which to explore 

the long-term future in detail. 

The discussion here should raise 

questions in each domain that readers 

can explore on their own. 

Overall, one valuable inference that 

can be drawn here is that people of 

any age who are in good health today 

should be prepared to live to be centenarians. 

Obviously, not everyone 

will reach 100, but the numbers are 

increasing. It appears worthwhile to 

develop a strategy or at least a contingency 

plan for living beyond 100. 

For the younger generations, say 

younger than 50, it is reasonable to 

expect that life spans will increase 

during your lifetime and that your 

“People of any age who are in good health 

today should be prepared to live to be 

centenarians.” 

potential for a very long life will rise 

dramatically. 

For all ages, an effective strategy is 

to create a personal strategic plan for 

the next 10 years of your life, then 

update it regularly. Beyond that, you 

can create a vision of your future at 

110, or, if you are under 50 now, a vision 

for life at 150. 

Then you will be prepared for 

whatever life brings. 

❏ 


Verne Wheelwright is an internationally 

recognized professional 

in the field of Foresight 

and Futures Studies. 

He is the author of It’s YOUR 

Future … Make It A Good 

One! (2010) and The Personal 

Futures Workbook, which is available as 

a free download at www.personalfutures.net. 

This article draws from his chapter in the 

World Future Society’s 2010 conference 

volume, Strategies and Technologies for a 

Sustainable Future (WFS, 2010). 


Building a Better 

Future for Haiti 

The former Haitian ambassador to the United States visited the 

offices of the World Future Society in January, seeking help for 

rebuilding his country. This remarkable meeting offered the 

Society the opportunity to outline the futuring process and to 

clarify what it can—and cannot—do. 

PHOTOS: KENDRA HELMER, USAID 

Rebuilding Haiti, both in towns and in rural areas, will require foresight and collaboration. Top: A worker moves plywood past a mural depicting 

transitional shelters. Bottom: Cabbage grows at USAID-funded facility to train farmers in sustainable water management. 


Left to right: Raymond 

Alcide Joseph, Ambassador 

of Haiti to the United 

States (2004-2010); 

Timothy Mack, President, 

World Future Society; 

Emmanuel Henry, retired 

executive of Panasonic; 

Cynthia G. Wagner, 

Editor, THE FUTURIST; 

Paul Joseph, son of 

Ambassador Joseph, who 

works as a futurist, activist, 

and humanitarian. 

WORLD FUTURE SOCIETY 

At its small office in downtown Bethesda, Maryland, the World Future Society recently welcomed 

Raymond Joseph, the former Haitian ambassador to the United States. He was accompanied by 

his son, Paul Joseph—a futurist and activist—and Emmanuel Henry—a retired Panasonic executive. 

The goal of the meeting was to explore ways that futuring tools can help rebuild a nation. 

Joseph is an ambitious man. Not only does he want to save his own country, but he also wants 

Haiti to become a role model for other countries written off as “failed states” with no futures. 

As one of many would-be candidates in Haiti’s 2010 presidential election whose eligibility was 

revoked (allegedly because he had abandoned his duties as ambassador in order to make a bid 

for the presidency), Joseph conceded that his ambitions are political. The first thing his country 

needs, he said, is leadership based on trust. 

The Josephs and their compatriot Henry, who helped manage the “Friends of Raymond Joseph 

for President” campaign in 2010, spoke with Society President Timothy Mack and FUTURIST 

magazine editor Cynthia G. Wagner on January 13, one day after the first anniversary of Haiti’s 

devastating earthquake. 

The following is an edited transcript of the discussion that took place in our office. 

Raymond Joseph: I was in Washington 

at the time [when the earthquake 

struck Haiti on January 12, 

2010]. The [Haitian] leadership was 

absent, they were not to be seen anywhere, 

so all of a sudden I became 

the face of Haiti for the world. And I 

had to make the first decisions in the 

first 48 hours, to get help to the 

country. 

Based on that, quite a few of my 

friends, both Haitian and foreign, 

came to me and said, “You know 

what? We need new leadership in 

Haiti. You should consider the president’s 

candidacy,” which I did. And 

for no reason at all, they disqualified 

me. 

Mack: Let me speak frankly to 

you. I believe they felt they had lots 

of reasons, because you posed a 

threat. You were too well known and 

too popular. 

Raymond Joseph: Yes, because of 

that I was a threat. Yesterday I wrote 

a piece in The Wall Street Journal, and 

in there I say what needs to be done 

if we’re going to get Haiti back on 

track. And what I said should be 

done is for the president who’s there 

now, whose term ends February 7th, 

to exit on February 7th with his team 

and not try to hang on as he wants to 

until May 14th. Because in three 

more months, he will not be able to 

accomplish what he could not do in 

five years. 

I was quite forceful in that and 

quite forceful last night again, repeating 

it. Now, what I seek in 

[terms of] government for Haiti is a 

large coalition, and that’s what I’m 

working for, that’s why I stayed in 

the country after they disqualified 

me. They thought I was going to go 

back abroad. I did not do that. 

I feel that we need to look at ways 

of changing Haiti. And to do that, 

we have to change the leadership. 

That’s what I’m working on. 

But besides changing the leadership 

of Haiti, people know that I 

have some ideas for the future. One 

of the ideas I have is about energy, 

… and another major idea for us is 

reforestation. 

To get moving on these things, I 


feel that we have to entice 

a percentage of Haitian 

intellectuals and professionals 

living abroad. … 

According to the Inter- 

American Development 

Bank, that’s 83% of our 

intellectuals and professionals. 

I feel we have to 

entice a percentage of 

them to come back. 

Wagner: To reverse the 

brain drain. 

Raymond Joseph: To 

reverse the brain drain. 

So, knowing that you work with the 

future, I felt I may come and tell you 

what I think I need. 

Mack: Well, let us be honest in the 

sense of full disclosure. We [the 

World Future Society] are a convening 

and a publishing house. We do 

articles on a range of issues, but certainly 

one of the most powerful stories 

that we are able to tell is the 

story of organizations, countries, 

and even individuals who have 

taken their own future under advisement 

and are working to make it 

better, in order to avoid repeating 

the mistakes of the past and improve 

the quality of life for those that cannot 

speak for themselves. 

Wagner: I would welcome an 

article that would tell the rest of the 

world what it is you need, step-bystep. 

How do you build a future? 

Mack: Another thing we should be 

clear about: The Society is in fact a 

neutral clearinghouse, and that gives 

us our authenticity and the trust that 

we have with our readers. But also it 

makes us very interested in finding 

the truth and making it clear to an 

international audience. And that international 

audience is spread across 

citizens and academics, policy makers, 

corporate leaders—a wide range 

of people who would be very interested 

in the future of Haiti. 

Wagner: We also tell stories when 

other media outlets aren’t interested 

in them. And that is a very big problem 

with the attention span in the 

United States. We had this horrific 

crisis in Haiti with the earthquake, 

and people reached out to their fellow 

man, because that’s what we humans 

do. 

Mack: But we don’t do it for very 

long. 

Raymond Joseph 


Wagner: We don’t 

do it for very long, 

and that’s the media 

problem that we have. 

And that’s where I 

think THE FUTURIST 

is very different. We 

had a story on alternative 

technologies that 

are very low cost—energy, 

water filtration, a 

bicycle built for cargo. 

That’s the kind of 

story that doesn’t really 

make headlines, 

so that’s what we try to do: focus attention 

on problems and how they 

can be solved. The story of Haiti’s 

potential catastrophes was very well 

known to people who were watching 

the trends. 

You mentioned reforestation—that 

was the first thing that came to my 

mind. If you’re starting to rebuild 

the country, you need to build the 

natural resources back up and get 

your entire population involved, one 

person at a time: “Plant one tree and 

you will help your country.” That’s 

very motivating and it’s very doable. 

Mack: Right. And we’ve seen reforestation 

models in other parts of 

the world (Mongolia, 

for example, which is 

very arid) work very 

well. 

Wagner: Getting into 

the politics of international 

aid: People become 

very frustrated 

when their donations sit 

on the docks and don’t 

go into the country. 

Then you come into the 

problem where people 

want to help you and 

Timothy Mack 

then stop helping you. 

And you can’t have that 

stop. You still need people to contribute, 

but for your own people [to 

contribute as well]; they’re the ones 

who live there. They also can contribute—more 

than they think they 

can. 

Mack: And as well, self-reliance is 

a strong position to negotiate from. 

When the country is rejuvenating itself, 

you don’t have to rely on what I 

would call unreliable assistance. 

Wagner: You also don’t need the 

experts to do the futures for you. We 

h a v e f o u n d t h a t c o m m u n i t y 

groups—in Michigan, for example— 

have been very useful in dealing 

with the auto industry crisis in their 

own communities. They get town 

hall groups together to start discussing 

“Where do we want our community 

to be? What do we want?” You 

start with that vision, and then you 

work back and build the steps to get 

there. The term for that is “backcasting.” 

You can call it “envisioning the 

future,” whatever you want to, but it 

is a process, and communities can do 

that. 

Mack: It is a trusted process, and 

it’s worked well elsewhere. That 

point is very important, because it 

seems to me one of the great crises 

that Haiti faces—and perhaps one 

you respond to—is the trust in the 

present government. That must be 

addressed, and that trust must be rebuilt, 

regardless. 

Wagner: So part of the enticement, 

of bringing the intellectuals back 

into Haiti, has to be from Haiti itself. 

Raymond Joseph: Right. 

Mack: The chance is for them to 

have a real hand in building Haiti’s 

glorious future. It’s much more possible 

for change to occur in smaller 

countries. The United 

States is so large and it 

has so many people 

wrestling for the future 

of the country, while 

Haiti has one national 

culture instead of 40 national 

cultures, as we 

see in the United States. 

And a vision that can be 

built with a country that 

has a scale that is workable 

and a sense of the 

national culture is extraordinary 

and could 

be done very quickly. So 

I’m saying that there are real opportunities 

here. 

Raymond Joseph: So if I understand, 

you work in the realm of 

ideas. 

Mack: And the possible, too; we 

work not just in the realm of ideas, 

but in the realm of making those 

ideas practical and implementable. 

Paul Joseph: If I may, I would like 

to have the theme of this meeting go 

from the possible, which is the art of 

politics, to the implementable. I

talked with some friends of mine at 

the church I go to; we have our goals 

set out for our congregation for the 

year, and I said one of the things we 

have to approach every one of our 

goals with is, How do we get it 

done? 

Part of the reason that I set this 

meeting up was because I understood 

the synergies between the two 

entities. Wheaton College anthropology 

[indicating Raymond Joseph, who 

holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology 

from Wheaton College in Illinois], 

political destabilizer, and very successful 

at it. You’re the futurist, that’s 

anthropology and projections, the 

modeling of case histories. 

Mack: Right. 

Paul Joseph: Then, here you have 

here the editor [indicating Wagner], 

he’s an editor [indicating Raymond 

Joseph]—that’s how the destabilization 

of the Duvalier regime came 

about, through the newspaper my 

father and my uncle founded. I 

looked at all the synergies, and I 

thought you’re speaking the same 

languages, just not in the exact same 

animal, for lack of a better term, with 

which Haiti now is identified. In 

shaping the future of what the country 

can be, that [becomes a] blueprint 

that you can use as a model. If another 

Katrina hits someplace else, or 

a tsunami, here’s what happened in 

Haiti, and here’s how we rebuilt, 

here’s what we’re doing in Mongolia, 

here is what’s going on there. 

Mack: Right. And one [goal] is to 

bring implementable, on-theground, 

transportable, and affordable 

technologies that can be put in 

place quickly. We certainly heard a 

lot about the use of communication 

technologies in Haiti, where when 

the networks were cut off, the people 

were able to keep communications, 

information, flowing about need, 

about damage, about fatalities, about 

the immediate triage that was required. 

Those were very helpful.… 

As we all know, Haiti will always 

be in the path of harm. And I don’t 

mean politically, I mean from the environment, 

from the growing problems 

that we see with climate 

change, from the instability of the 

land. We really focus on how new 

technology affects people’s lives—is 

it practical? One of the things that 

happens in a country which has seen 

crisis is that entrepreneurial forces 

come from around the world— 

largely from the United States—and 

say, “I have such a wonderful deal: 

I’d be glad to share this technology 

with you, only five million dollars.” 

Wagner: That was the other point I 

think we can make about starting 

small and at the grassroots. We talk 

about new technologies, but there 

are also social technologies. And one 

thing that I think would be very implementable 

would be the microlending 

programs that have been 

very widely … 

Raymond Joseph: Microfinance. 

Mack: Yes, microfinance. 

Wagner: Yes, absolutely, lending to 

your neighbors, community lending: 

“What do I have that can help you?” 

But what you face is a collection of 

problems, and the decision has to be 

made, what do you tackle first? 

Mack: And of course the biggest 

problem you face is leadership. 

Raymond Joseph: That’s it, that’s 

it. 

Mack: And how do you get the 

strong leadership that is necessary to 

make this change even be considered. 

Paul Joseph: This is where I feel 

the first step had to be made. I 

thought that all day and last night as 

well, and how specifically the World 

Future Society can help, because it 

has such an extensive reach. These 

two men [indicating Emmanuel Henry 

and Raymond Joseph], with their collective 

experience, have a vast 

wealth of knowledge and an extensive 

network in Haiti. If you want 

the facts, if you want the figures, if 

you want the information that very 

few people know and you show that 

you can use it to the best advantage 

of the country, I’m sure they would 

be willing to make some of it available. 

… 

Now, where that information can 

best be utilized and with the right 

parties, … that’s the way that the 

story of what’s gone wrong with 

Haiti can gain a much larger international 

audience and institute the 

changes instead of the OAS [Organization 

of American States] and the 

UN and whoever else saying, “Let’s 

have a runoff of the candidates” in a 

fraudulent election already. Change 

that story to, let’s say, “If you have a 

runoff of this kind of election, then 

you deny, historically speaking, the 

legitimacy of the United States’ 

birth, because it was a country that 

rebelled against unjust rule.” You 

have to support the rebellion against 

unjust rule today, or the hypocrisy is 

too outlandish. 

… 

Wagner: [But] if you can outline 

the vision of your future, that’s the 

story that we can tell. 

Mack: We can certainly help you 

with shaping that story. And we can 

help you with telling that story. But 

the telling may be on a little longer 

timeframe than the immediate 

March crisis … or, you know, the 7th 

of February. 

Wagner: Think of this as postcrisis 

thinking. 

… 

Raymond Joseph: Mr. Mack here, 

he says: Work on the blueprint, the 

future you want to see. And then 

come and visit and see … 

Wagner: And instruct us. 

Mack: Right.… It seems to me the 

first step would be for us to put together 

a list of people you should be 

talking to. 

So let me ask you, What are your 

next steps? What are you hoping to 

accomplish in the next few weeks? 

Raymond Joseph: My next steps. 

That’s what I’ve been working on. 

Since I was bumped off the ballot, I 

have stayed in Haiti and worked 

with various candidates—some who 

were running, and some who were 

not running—and looking towards 

having a large coalition for future 

change. That’s my goal. I’m not even 

considering myself as a candidate 

for the president of Haiti. 

Mack: Well you know who comes 

to mind, I mean, you look at South 

Africa and the history of South Africa, 

you know, there were years and 

years of struggle. No, I’m not suggesting 

you should spend any time 

in prison like Nelson Mandela, but 

another name in that group is Desmond 

Tutu: you know, people who 

had not a formal role in the government, 

but enormous influence. 

Raymond Joseph: That’s the way 

I’ve been through the years, you 

know? I fought the dictatorship of 

Duvalier, I fought against Aristide 


and … his kind. And I was condemned 

for death in absentia. 

Mack: Yes, I know that. And, as 

you know, some people who are 

condemned to death in absentia had 

it come and visit them.… 

Raymond Joseph: What I have 

tried to do in the past, building a coalition 

of ethical leaderships, has 

been successful. Since they have 

bumped me off the ballot as for the 

presidency, I’ve come back. Now we 

have quite a few candidates for presidency. 

I want to tell them you cannot 

all be president of Haiti, but you 

can all work for change. 

Mack: Yes. You can all be friends 

of Haiti. 

Raymond Joseph: Exactly. So, let’s 

work together to do this. And immediately, 

the next thing I’m doing is to 

help annul the election that took 

place, which was not an election. 

That’s what I’m working on right 

now. 

Mack: Are you also working on 

observers for the coming elections, 

too, or is that something that will 

happen no matter what? 

Raymond Joseph: We haven’t gotten 

there yet. However, the first 

democratic elections in Haiti, in 

1990—December 16th—I was the 

one that signed the agreement with 

the OAS back then. I was the representative 

of the country to the OAS; 

the UN took that agreement and expanded 

on it, and we had 3,000 observers 

in Haiti the week of the elections. 

So I’m used to doing that. And 

I will want to—in the elections coming 

up, after we get through this harrowing 

year—to have the best observer 

teams. I brought President 

Carter to Haiti in 1990, and others. I 

want to get to that point in the next 

elections coming up, which will 

probably be in a year, because this 

thing here that they’re trying to 

patch up, they cannot patch it up. 

They’re trying to patch it up at the 

level of the presidential elections. 

However, the fraud was widespread. 

It was at the legislative [level] also. 

Mack: And that may be very selfdefeating 

in the sense that a weak 

government does not last, especially 

if that government is clearly 

founded on fraud. 

Raymond Joseph: Exactly. 

Mack: We know many people, but 

mobilizing them within days or 

weeks—I would be honest with you 

and say it’s unrealistic based on our 

capabilities, our staff, and our resources. 

However, mobilizing 

the kind of organization 

for change that you’re 

talking about, and helping 

you not only put together 

a plan, but also 

[figuring out] who 

should be part of that 

and give you some nonprofits 

from a range of 

areas, or at least people 

that are not seen as political 

to say, “Yes, this is 

the direction, this is 

how Haiti should think 

about its own future,” we can be 

helpful with that. 

Paul Joseph: … and because they 

don’t have any political allegiance as 

well. They’re more credible because 

they’re not interested for the profit 

motives. 

Raymond Joseph: And to be frank 

with you, since the earthquake, Haiti 

has had too many NGOs, so much so 

that now they’re calling Haiti “The 

Republic of NGOs.” They’re saying 

ten thousand. There’s no coordination. 

Mack: They all have their own 

agendas, and therefore they step on 

each other. 

Raymond Joseph: And you don’t 

see what they accomplish. 

Wagner: There’s duplication and 

gaps. 

Mack: Also, they are there to accomplish 

what they are built for, 

which is their own, their own … 

Paul Joseph: … agendas. 

Mack: Not just agendas; their own 

pride. You’ve seen that. You know, 

NGOs are very proud. And they are 

very moral, but not always in a good 

way: “Maybe you should change the 

way you live your life because I say 

so.” Too much of that in NGOs. 

Let me just say one last thing, 

which is, I think that what we bring 

is tools for the people of Haiti to use, 

as opposed to rules for the people of 

Haiti to follow. 

Henry: That’s well said. 

Raymond Joseph: Good. That’s 

well said. I will take that. I want to 

take that sentence. 

“Haiti has too 

many NGOs, 

so much so that 

now they are 

calling Haiti 

‘The Republic 

of NGOs.’” 

Raymond Joseph 

Henry: And when you have ten 

thousand NGOs, everybody wants 

to pull you in different directions. 

“My direction is better; yours is better,” 

and nothing is accomplished, 

nothing is 

achieved. 

Mack: But we’re very, 

very pleased that you 

would come here and 

talk to us about this, 

and we want to be as 

helpful as we can. 

Raymond Joseph: 

And I’m going to tell 

you, also, Paul has tried 

to get me to talk to various 

people, and you 

know … 

Mack: Some you say, 

“Yes,” some you say, “No.” 

Raymond Joseph: When he talked 

about you, I said I want to come. Not 

because I know you’re going to help 

me solve the problem right away, 

but that you can help me think about 

the future. 

Mack: And one of the things we 

can do is bring together a group that 

could meet with you at some time in 

the future, when you have a better 

sense of what the next year, for example, 

is going to look like. That 

we’d be very interested in. And certainly 

we know a lot of groups that 

were active in Haiti in a positive 

way, more in the way that I described, 

bringing tools to the people. 

Henry: More the tools than the 

rules! 

Paul Joseph: Yeah! 

Mack: Yes. 

Raymond Joseph: Yes. 

★ ★ ★ 

Editor’s note: Three days after our 

meeting, on January 16, exiled dictat 

o r J e a n - C l a u d e “ Baby D o c” 

Duvalier returned to Haiti, accompanied 

by heavy security. Ousted President 

Jean- Bertrand Aristide also returned 

from exile, arriving in 

Port-au-Prince just two days before a 

runoff between the two top vote getters 

in the disputed 2010 election. 

The results were not known at the 

time of publication. 

❑

Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions, Second Edition

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