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Dream, Design, Develop, Deliver: From Great Ideas to Better Outcomes
Àå¹Ù¿ï  2012-12-28 08:12:42, Á¶È¸ : 2,263

Dream, Design, Develop, Deliver: From Great Ideas to Better Outcomes
Subject(s): Futuring

Rick Docksai
KAZ OKADA FOR WFSLee Rainie
KAZ OKADA FOR WFSBrian David JohnsonBy Rick Docksai
A better future doesn¡¯t happen on its own. We create it with our ideas, plans, and actions. In July, hundreds of futurists from around the world took the opportunity to ¡°dream, design, develop, and deliver¡± the future together at WorldFuture 2012.
The world¡¯s problems, and their solutions, may be too complex for any one group to solve. The more than 600 futurists meeting in Toronto for the World Future Society¡¯s annual conference in July came together in large groups and small for lively discussions about how the world community might set in motion the best future possible.

People have always sought out membership in groups, but the last few years of the Internet¡¯s evolution have fueled an unprecedented movement worldwide toward networked behavior, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center¡¯s Internet & American Life Project, told the attendees at WorldFuture 2012: Dream. Design. Develop. Deliver.

Futurists: BetaLaunch Showcase
By Patrick Tucker
Seven teams participated in the 2012 Futurists: BetaLaunch design and idea expo, and ¡°best in show¡± went to The Mission Business. Made up of students from Toronto¡¯s OCAD University, The Mission Business is a Toronto design collective that produces connected live-action and online entertainment experiences. They create immersive, cross-platform theater events to educate audiences with educational entertainment about near-future technology.

One method they employ to do this is the creation of real ad campaigns for fictional companies, such as synthetic biology maker ByoLogyc. Faux ByoLogyc CEO Chet Getram even made an appearance at F:BL and helped the team win the interactive ¡°best in show¡± prize.

¡°By exploring the world of ByoLogyc through live-action events and online media, audiences challenge their assumptions about the future, helping us understand the future of entertainment, the evolution of technologies like synthetic biology, and how corporations and organizations can anticipate the future needs and values of customers,¡± Mission Business founder Trevor Haldenby said in a statement. For more information, visit: The Mission Business, www.indiegogo.com/ZEDTO.

The other innovations showcased at this year¡¯s F:BL were:

•Filabot, a device that uses recyclable plastic to create filament for 3-D printing. Filabot is the work of Tyler McNaney of Rocknail Specialties LLC. Details: http://rocknailproducts.com
•ComposeTheFuture is a social network to help users predict, plan, and promote a better future. Details: http://signup.compose thefuture.com/
•Life Technologies and its Ion Proton Sequencer will offer whole-human-genome sequencing in one day for $1,000 by the end of 2012. Details: www.lifetechnologies​.com/us/en/home.html
•The Cyberhero League is a social platform that helps kids earn points and interact with great nonprofits through fun activities and good work. Details: www.cyber​heroleague.com
•I3 BioDesigns BiliSuit is a fiber-optic LED garment used to treat newborns with jaundice. The innovative garment is being developed by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and was presented to conference goers by Tiffany Pressler. Details: www​.uams.edu/bioventures
•B-TEMIA, a Canadian company, has launched a wearable dermoskeleton that can relieve stress and weight on critical muscles and joints. The skeleton system is for use on the battlefield or wherever someone has a long way to walk, lots of stairs to climb, or just has trouble getting around. Details: www.b-temia​.com
¡°For me, the BetaLaunch was fascinating because of the diversity of backgrounds in reference to the people attending,¡± said Anastasia Kilani, lead artist of the Cyberhero League. ¡°Although each person was there with their own ideas and interest, it felt like a huge and beautiful collaboration of the people in our world looking to participate in making a better future for all¡¦. Over all, the BetaLaunch was a huge success and I look forward to seeing what will be chosen next year!¡±

Patrick Tucker is deputy editor of THE FUTURIST, director of communications for the World Future Society, and Futurists: BetaLaunch coordinator.
Future Food and Health: A WorldFuture Sampler
By Joyce L. Gioia
The Taste of Tomorrow: Super Burgers and the Next Big Fish
On tomorrow¡¯s dinner plates, look for the ¡°guilt-free, heart-attack-fighting super burger,¡± said Josh Schonwald, author of The Taste of Tomorrow (Harper, 2012). ¡°Grown in a test tube or cultured in a petri dish, this alternative meat will require a lot less water and land to harvest, contain no antibiotics or growth hormones, and will not even be susceptible to diseases [such as] Mad Cow,¡± he said.

Moreover, creating our food supply in the laboratory virtually eliminates greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, the best bonus is for overweight consumers: This ¡°meat¡± will have the fat profile of an avocado.

¡°With soaring rates of meat consumption in China and India, this ¡®new meat¡¯ can¡¯t come soon enough,¡± said Schonwald.

Fascinated by the statements of marine aquaculturist Daniel Benetti, Schonwald also explored ¡°the seafood of the future.¡± Benetti made bold claims that he had found ¡°the next big fish,¡± cobia. With the appearance of a shark, cobia grows six times as fast as salmon, is high in omega-3s, and tastes like popular and expensive Chilean sea bass and halibut. At the same time, it ¡°adapts bizarrely to living in a cage.¡±

The two major types of fish farming are open-ocean aquaculture and land-based recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). In RAS like the low-salinity aquaculture at Virginia Cobia Farms, growing fish in large vats is very efficient and eliminates the problems of open-water farming: There is no risk of fish escapes, efficient water recyclers conserve water, and recycled fish waste is used to produce energy. Pompano and yellow tail are already grown this way, and little-known barramundi are sturdy and perfect for aquaculture.

Schonwald concluded with a simple recipe for future diets: ¡°One, go to farmers¡¯ markets. Two, eat GMO [genetically modified] papayas. And three, buy fish that were raised in indoor recirculating systems.¡±

Scenarios for Primary Care In 2025
Four possible scenarios for the evolution of primary care in the United States were presented by Clem Bezold, chairman of the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF).

In the first scenario, ¡°Many Needs, Many Models,¡± patient-centered medical care is expanded. Electronic medical records support providers, and consumers enjoy cell-phone applications to monitor their vital signs, as well as digital health agents, gaming, and social networking. Employers drop their health-care coverage, and workers participate in Health Insurance Exchanges with lower-cost health care. Unfortunately, significant disparities remain in access and quality of health care.

The second scenario, ¡°Lost Decade, Lost Health,¡± features recurrent severe recessions. There are more significant shortages of primary-care providers and declining physician revenue, compared with the first scenario. Patients with good insurance have access to great care with advanced technology; however, there are more uninsured people, and many turn to black-market care and unreliable advice online.

The third scenario, certainly the most optimistic view of the future that Bezold offered, is ¡°Primary Care That Works for All.¡± In this scenario, the United States has near universal health-insurance coverage, and everyone receives primary care. With an expanded team of providers, this positive picture addresses (and solves) all major issues by providing local, social, and economic foundations for equitable health and proactive electronic records. Here, capitation also leads to reduced costs.

In the fourth scenario, ¡°I Am My Own Medical Home,¡± a high level of technology-enabled self-care, with high-deductible insurance, is available. Wellness and disease management, noninvasive self-biomonitoring, personal health records, and digital avatars providing health coaching all support consumers in maintaining their health. With all of this self-care, health-care costs drop significantly, and, not surprisingly, the demand for human primary-care providers also declines.

Bezold concluded by polling the audience to gauge how likely or preferable each of the scenarios was. Almost all in attendance preferred ¡°Primary Care That Works for All,¡± though they were less positive about its likelihood.

Joyce L. Gioia is president and CEO of The Herman Group, www.hermangroup.com.
Education, Agency, Crisis, and Emergence: A WorldFuture Sampler
By David Hochfelder
When Ivory Towers Fall: The Emerging Education Marketplace
Education stands on the threshold of dramatic changes, according to Thomas Frey, executive director and senior futurist of the DaVinci Institute. Traditionally, education has meant teaching: content delivery from experts to novices. Build some dorms and academic buildings, attract famous faculty, and you have a university.

However, the hyperconnected world of the twenty-first century will upend this traditional model. Frey predicted that education will focus on learning instead of teaching and will not be tied to physical campuses. Four primary trends are shaping this landscape:

1. Technologies that shorten the distance between students and experts.

2. Emerging social contexts that will emphasize learning over traditional content delivery.

3. A new courseware industry that will make education asynchronous and more affordable.

4. Experimental emersion camps.

The college of the twenty-first century will not have a physical campus, dorms, credit hours, sports teams, or even four-year degrees, Frey concluded.

Our Role in Shaping the Future
The idea of human agency is a central, though often unacknowledged, aspect of futures work, according to Jennifer Jarratt and John Mahaffie, principals of Leading Futurists LLC. Human agency is our ability to shape more positive futures in both small and large ways.

Jarratt and Mahaffie identified several types of futurists who consider human agency important to their work:

•The Advocate persistently works for large-scale societal changes.
•The Undercover Futurist seeks to instill futures thinking in existing organizations without self-identifying as a futurist.
•The Reframer succeeds in changing how people think about the world or themselves.
•The Personal Futurist encourages individuals to use futures methods and tools to anticipate and plan for their futures.
•The Citizen Futurist uses futures thinking in social and political activism.
•The Accidental Futurist comes to realize that she has been doing futures work all along, at work or through social activism.
What all these futurists share in common is their desire to promote human agency and expand our possibilities.

Global MegaCrisis: How Bad Will It Get? What Strategies?
The biggest question confronting humanity is whether we are facing a global resources and climate-change crisis, and, if so, what to do about it.

Veteran futurists Michael Marien (GlobalForesightBooks.org) and William Halal (TechCast.org) have been debating this issue for the past three years. They have published four scenarios: ¡°Decline to Disaster,¡± ¡°Muddling Down,¡± ¡°Muddling Up,¡± and Rise to Maturity.¡±

Halal claimed that new information and energy technologies right over the horizon will enable us to make a seamless transition to a prosperous, post-carbon world.

Marien worried that we are woefully unprepared to meet the challenges of scarce, expensive resources and a changing climate.

Richard Slaughter, director of ForesightInternational.com.au, shared Marien¡¯s concern. Slaughter has been warning that this crisis is the ¡°biggest wake-up call in history,¡± and he wondered if our species can mature in time.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, professor at University of Waterloo and author of The Upside of Down, said that our future is not determined either way, that human agency will shape our future. To successfully confront these challenges, he called for deep changes in society, including changing how we think about energy, economics, and politics.

Lessons from Three Decades of Futures Research
Negative visions of the future are easier to build than positive ones. This is because scenario builders are often unaware of the emergent properties of the systems they study, said Jay Ogilvy, visiting lecturer and former dean of Presidio Graduate School and the co-founder of Global Business Network. Emergent properties are not predictable from the existing states or properties of those systems.

Ogilvy pointed out that consciousness and language are emergent processes. For instance, in principle, there could not have been a first word, and there is no such thing as half a language.

Emergence is a sudden change of state of a system, like the transition from water to ice. Taking emergence into account encourages holistic systems-based thinking that focuses on distributed relationships instead of discrete and separable causes and effects. Paying greater attention to emergent phenomena will make it easier for futurists and planners to build positive scenarios.

David Hochfelder is an assistant professor of history and associate director of the Public History Program at University at Albany, SUNY.
Rainie shared the findings of a consensus of more than a thousand researchers about this phenomenon of ¡°networked individualism¡± and its potential to create sweeping changes in how the world processes information and conducts business. These changes might even bring about the end of currency, university systems, and other time-honored institutions as we know them.

¡°Individuals have a lot more power and a lot more pressure, but they manage it better by operating within networks,¡± he said. What¡¯s critical is that the world must be aware of these and other changes coming up and plan for them now. An optimal future is attainable, but only if we act in the present to create it.

¡°If you drive conversations about these kinds of things, you might change the future. You might have smart people thinking about the drivers and the downsides, and might help to make this world a better place,¡± said Rainie.

Joining Rainie were dozens of internationally recognized futurists and innovators, such as Intel futurist Brian David Johnson, speaking about the myriad innovations and societal developments that are irrevocably changing health care, energy, robotics, and many other fields of human endeavor.

As a futurist who works for an engineering company, Johnson said he is held to rigid accountability for his predictions: ¡°Forecasts become technical specs.¡± But rather than predicting the future, he promoted the idea of developing visions of the future that are actionable—visions that we can build.

Perils of Blindsiding
Futuring is also about being prepared for the future that others are building. Confectionary giant Mars Inc. suddenly lost huge amounts of revenue about four years ago. Why? Was it other candy companies stepping up competition? No: It was due to the proliferation of SMS messaging, and young people preferring to spend more money on mobile texting services than on chocolate bars. Management consultant Jim Harris, author of Blindsided!, cited Mars¡¯ dilemma as a prime example of the unanticipated changes in environment that can catch any business off guard.

¡°When these trends begin to shift, companies best get in early on the change, rather than wait until it rolls over on them,¡± he said.

No business or organization can predict what new challenges will emerge in years ahead, he pointed out, but they can make sure that they will be as responsive and adaptable as possible. The key, he said, is innovation.

¡°Innovation is the flipside of blindsiding. Innovation is the solution, is the antidote to avoid being blindsided,¡± he said. ¡°The best way to predict the future is to create it.¡±

[Editor¡¯s note: For more of Harris¡¯s examples of blindsiding, see ¡°Innovate or Else¡± .]

Reports from Singularity University
Some of the conference¡¯s boldest forecasts belonged to José Luis Cordeiro, director of The Millennium Project¡¯s Venezuela Node. He co-hosted the session on ¡°The Singularity University: Team Projects to Change the World¡± with Anna Trunina and Nikola Danaylov, both recent graduates of the Singularity University.

Cordeiro described momentous advancements in humans¡¯ capacity to rewire the brain, the genome, and the body in general. Just as computing power keeps exponentially rising, so might the human life span, Cordeiro suggested. He noted that laboratory researchers have enabled mice to live three times the average for their species; flies, four times the average for theirs; and worms, six times their species¡¯ average life expectancy. Similar catapults forward in human longevity might be feasible before long—possibly in as little as 20 or 30 years.

¡°We are going to see the death of death,¡± he said. ¡°You who are students today will be members of the first immortal generation.¡±

Cordeiro also foresees, within two or three decades, creation of the first artificial brain. Japan¡¯s Riken Brain Institute, he noted, is actively pursuing the creation of a computer that equals the human brain in capacity by 2018.

¡°We will conquer the final frontier, which is not really space, but the human brain,¡± he said.

With further developments in biotechnology and genomics, medicine will similarly attain vast new powers over our genes. Cordeiro pointed out the increasing ease with which researchers can copy an individual¡¯s entire genome: Whereas the first genome took 13 years and cost $1 billion, a medical team completed it in 2010 within four weeks and for a mere $10,000. In 2020, it could cost $10 and take one hour. Following this, researchers may master the art of adding, deleting, or modifying a person¡¯s genes as desired.

¡°We will design our children. We will design our descendants,¡± Cordeiro asserted. ¡°If you like the eyes of someone, the nose of someone else, the hair color of someone else, you will be able to channel all those genes and create your own designer baby.¡±

Representing Singularity University alumni, Trunina and Danaylov presented their innovations to conference goers. Trunina gave a presentation on PrimerLife, a Web-based platform that she helped develop. An individual obtains a copy of his or her family¡¯s genetic history and logs onto PrimerLife to consult with other users and with registered physicians on what the genetic indicators all mean.

Trunina explained that personal genotyping is a rapidly growing market, but there are few services out there for consumers to make sense of the data that their genetic charts contain. PrimerLife addresses this. It is a great way for users to understand what their genetic indicators actually mean for their health and how they might develop a long-term health plan accordingly.

¡°Genome and biological data will become the primary platform for building a strategy of human life,¡± she said.

Political corruption is the societal problem that Corruptiontracker.org, which Danaylov helped to launch, aims to fix. This site is a crowdsourced software app, available for download now in Apple¡¯s iStore, by which people anywhere can report corruption.

It¡¯s an app that Danaylov hopes could save lives. He pointed out that innocent people needlessly suffer and die because of dishonest or exploitative behaviors by their leaders: 83% of earthquake building collapse deaths in the past 30 years were in countries that were anomalously corrupt, while a lack of oversight in China¡¯s train systems has led to deadly train collisions.

¡°Corruption has a very serious direct cost in terms of lives lost. It¡¯s not just a problem on paper. It¡¯s a real life-threatening problem,¡± he said.

By increasing awareness among all the globe¡¯s publics about corruption, however, Danaylov hopes that the app could foster more dialogue about existing problems and how to solve them. People in the affected countries could confront their political systems¡¯ failures, and do so with support and guidance from concerned citizens of other countries.

¡°Intelligence outside a community is always greater than intelligence inside,¡± he said.

Singularity University itself received a few words of praise from Andrew Hessel, cellular biologist who founded the open-source research firm Pink Army Cooperative and, in addition, is on Singularity University¡¯s faculty. He spoke of his frustrations with traditional university systems that stratify fields of study into separate departments that interact little with each other, and in which every department generally resists new ideas. Singularity University stands apart because of its integration of all disciplines and its zealous pursuit of new ways of thinking.

¡°I¡¯ve been with this group since 2009, and I¡¯ve never had to push an idea uphill. In fact, I learn how to push my boundaries out a bit more,¡± he said. ¡°They have a vision that is a fearlessness about looking into the future, one that is different from what you see in most universities today.¡± [Editor¡¯s note: a video clip of Andrew Hessel¡¯s impromptu presentation at the Singularity University session is available at the World Future Society¡¯s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/WorldFutureSociety.]

More Monitoring, More Health
Medicine will find better ways of matching patients with effective, safe pharmaceutical treatments than today¡¯s standard clinical trials. It has to: Clinical trials use test populations that are too small and too homogenous, so a drug can pass clinical trials but still turn out to be ineffective or even harmful for many patients. Jay Herson, himself a data analyst who worked in clinical trials for more than 30 years, outlined the problem and some solutions in his talk, ¡°The Future of Global Drug Safety.¡±

Personalized medicine could be a driver. Patients might consult not only with doctors and nurses, but also with software programs—provided by doctor groups and insurance companies—that observe and advise each patient directly. The program could work with biosensors in your home to obtain information about your personality, lifestyle, and even credit-card purchases and emails to discern what drugs and treatments will work for you, and what lifestyle changes you need to make.

¡°Siri could give advice based on personality,¡± Herson said. ¡°It could judge, for example, that this patient is not a morning person, so wouldn¡¯t give him or her any new suggestions until the afternoon.¡±

The doctors, on their end, will get continuous, instantaneous flows of data from those same apparatuses on their patients¡¯ blood, sleep patterns, and other vital signs, and will make fast decisions accordingly. They will know if a patient is taking a prescription and complying with treatment or not—all by virtue of nanoparticles, engrained within the medications, that the electronic sensors will detect. Just as important, they will know if the same prescription or treatment is causing the patient a bad reaction.

¡°Big data allows for the merger of health-care delivery, clinical trials, and post-market surveillance,¡± Herson said. ¡°Practicing health providers will have safety like never before.¡±

That said, adverse effects to drugs will probably still occur, albeit less often. Herson explained that any given drug may affect a given patient differently due to interaction of outside environmental factors with the drug and the patient¡¯s behavior, lifestyle, and diet. Also, no medical innovation can control for individual patients choosing to overdose or to use other people¡¯s prescribed drugs.

¡°There will always be adverse events, and we will always be learning, even when we know more about personalized medicine,¡± he said.

At the macro level, pharmaceutical companies and health-provider networks will accumulate and share extensive databases of patient outcomes. They will plug in to patients¡¯ home biosensors and will be notified immediately if someone reacts badly to a drug or treatment.

¡°What we need is early safety signals, some continuous form of surveillance. We need patient-level data,¡± he said.

Of course, all of this robotic surveillance of one¡¯s daily living may sound bizarre and frightening to people today. But Herson noted that today¡¯s millennials will be the adults by then, and they may be far more comfortable with all the monitoring.

¡°People will be digital natives and used to going to computers in everyday life and having surveillance of all their activities,¡± he said.

The Future of Quantum Computers
Quantum computers are already solving problems too complex for even the most powerful conventional computers. Geordie Rose, creator of the D-Wave One computing system, thinks that quantum computing just might be the key to true machine intelligence. In his keynote presentation, ¡°Using Quantum Computers to Build Artificial Brains,¡± he discussed the nature of quantum computing and its implications.

One premise of quantum mechanics is that, every time a decision is made, the whole universe forks and generates copies of itself only marginally different from that original decision. In like fashion, a quantum computer sees more than one possibility, generates copies of each, and then uses information from each and combines them to solve a problem.

A conventional computer can calculate far more rapidly than a human but cannot make decisions, per se. It can only follow prewritten instructions. A quantum computer might be able to make decisions, which will open up many new possibilities for robotic action.

¡°One example is autonomous robots in hostile environments like Mars,¡± Rose said. ¡°Those robots will be exposed to things that their designers did not know about a priori, and they will need some autonomy to make some decisions on their own.¡±

Quantum computers are increasing in computing power. Rose presented the historical trajectory from Calypso, a computer chip with four qubits (quantum bits), in 2002 to Vesuvius 3, a computer chip that debuted this year with 512 qubits. He forecasts that in 10 years, someone could design a chip that holds millions of qubits. Then there is no telling just how smart upcoming lines of quantum systems could be.

¡°Hopefully, in 10 to 15 years, it won¡¯t be me giving this presentation. It will be something that we created,¡± he said.

Innovative Approaches to Earth Conservation
People striving to reduce their ¡°carbon footprints¡± by cutting back electricity use, eating less meat, and so on mean well, but their efforts will not in themselves curb climate change and pollution, according to Ramez Naam, senior associate at the Foresight Institute. In his session, ¡°Can Innovation Save the Planet?¡± he stressed that society will have to combine sustainable behaviors with the rollout of new green technologies.

¡°It has to be based on innovation,¡± he said.

Innovations have already dropped the cost of solar power from $20 a watt 30 years ago to around $1 today—roughly on par with coal, oil, and natural gas, Naam said. He also spoke highly of research and development in lithium-ion batteries, which he said could eventually give electric cars the same range as combustible-fuel-powered cars of today.

¡°Energy storage is a bigger problem than energy capturing, but there is no reason to believe that we will not solve it,¡± he said.

Naam turned to the related subjects of water and food. Stores of freshwater are running low throughout the world, and projections are that the global community will have to increase food yield 70% by 2050. Both problems are solvable, he argued: The amount of energy required to desalinate water has dropped by a factor of nine since 1970, and improved farming methods are already enabling farmers to grow the same amounts of produce with one-third to one-half less energy and water than they needed in the 1970s.

Furthermore, in industrialized nations, food yield is twice what it is in the world as a whole. Naam is hopeful that more developments, particularly in genetic crop modification, could lead to even bigger farm productivity gains in years to come. On a related note, he reported that the European Union¡¯s science advisor concluded recently that genetically modified crops have no more adverse health effects than average crops.

¡°Ideas are the ultimate resource. They grow over time, and they are the only one that accumulates over time,¡± he said. ¡°Ideas find substitutes for resources.¡±

Naam also argued for taxes on carbon-dioxide emissions. If anti-tax critics contend that it would harm the economy, then a government could even lower the income tax in direct proportion to the carbon tax increase, so that the overall tax implementation is revenue-neutral.

¡°Tax the bad, not the good,¡± Naam advised. ¡°Whatever you tax, you will get less of it.¡±

Bringing a Country Together on Sustainability
For a country to effectively stop environmental degradation and adopt environmentally healthy ways of life, it needs committed action both at the top levels of leadership and at the grassroots, observed Kenneth Hunter, chair of the WFS Board of Directors, and Zhouying Jin, senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in their joint session, ¡°Systemic Solution to Achieving Green Economic Growth and Sustainable Development.¡±

Hunter and Jin noted that China and the United States both fall short: China has a lot of top-level action, but not grassroots activism, while the United States has grassroots activism but ambivalent top leadership. Also, both countries¡¯ leaders tend to overly focus on the near future, but might move eventually toward action that is more integrated, cohesive, and oriented toward the long term.

¡°We are dealing with very large and complex systems, and it requires large management systems,¡± Hunter said. ¡°But local communities and companies are where things have to actually happen. That¡¯s where the integration has to take place.¡±

Jin presented an ideal model for action called the Long-Term Strategic System Integration Model (LSSIM). Its characteristics include attending to the goals of environmental sustainability, social welfare, and economic growth all at once. Continuing innovation, road maps for progress, and verifications to check results are other key components, along with exercising strategic management at the micro, macro, and meso levels.

Serious problems persist in China, according to Jin, and many of its renewable-energy businesses are struggling. For example, 30% of its photovoltaic companies have cut production in the last few years. Jin stated that a comprehensive strategy and the use of futures studies to formulate strategic goals will be necessary to achieve truly sustainable outcomes.

¡°China has taken a solid step in developing a green economy, and its future plan is also exciting. However, for really actualizing green development, the challenges are severe,¡± she said. ¡°The only option is to fundamentally change the development mode.¡±

The Future Is Ours to Create
¡°You can¡¯t let the future happen to you. We all have to be active participants in our future. We all have to have a vision for it, and we all have to have an opinion about it. We all have to do something,¡± said Intel futurist Johnson.

This year¡¯s WorldFuture participants came from many places and professions, and they doubtless had a multitude of differing opinions about the future. But all would have agreed with Johnson¡¯s statement. It¡¯s indeed vital that people and organizations everywhere participate actively in creating the future.

In that spirit, the World Future Society will continue to be a gathering place for future-minded people everywhere, both now and in years to come.

About the Author
Rick Docksai is an associate editor for THE FUTURIST and World Future Review. Email rdocksai@wfs.org.

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