Publications

Citation

(2002), "Publications", Foresight, Vol. 4 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2002.27304bae.001

Publications

Publications for listing in this section should be sent to Graham May, Reviews Editor, foresight, Principal Lecturer in Futures Research, Leeds Metropolitan University, School of the Built Environment, Brunswick Building, Leeds LS2 8BU, UK.

Note: items including a code (e.g. FS 22:8/373) are abbreviated versions of abstracts selected from Future Survey, published by the World Future Society (for more information see http://www.wfs.org/wfs/fsurv.htm)

Communications Policy in Transition; The Internet and BeyondBenjamin M. Compaine and Shane Greenstein (Eds) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001 425 pages, £30.95, ISBN 0-262-03292-9

Digital Futures: Strategies for the Information AgeMarilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner, Library Association Publishing, London 2001, 288 pages, £39.95, ISBN 1-85604-411-4

A Digital Gift to the Nation: Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital and Internet AgeLawrence K. Grossman and Newton N. Minow, (The Century Foundation Press, New York, NY, 2001, 280 pp, $15.95, FS 23:12/579)

At critical turning points in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America's future was transformed by three bold public investments in an educated citizenry:

1. 1.

   in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance set aside public land to support public schools in every new state;

2. 2.

   in 1862, the Morrill Act led to establishing 105 land-grant colleges, which created America's preeminent system of higher education;

3. 3.

   in 1944, the GI Bill made the USA the best-educated country in the world by profoundly expanding educational opportunities for the 20 million Americans who fought in the Second World War.

Without any one of these far-sighted investments, the USA would not be the great nation it is today.

This report proposes a fourth initiative – a multibillion-dollar digital opportunity investment trust – that would advance the legacy of these earlier initiatives and open the door to a knowledge-based future for Americans as well as the world. The Trust would serve as a venture capital fund for America's non-profit educational and public service institutions, with funding coming from federal government auctioning of the publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum (the twenty-first century equivalent of the public lands of an earlier time). It would be dedicated to innovation, experimentation, and research in utilizing new telecom technologies across the widest range of public purposes, especially delivering public information and education to all Americans throughout their lifetimes. The Trust would have the potential to strengthen our economy, educate our children, train teachers, improve worker skills, serve people with disabilities, and enrich the lives of older adults. Background papers in this volume discuss the nascent age of broadband, governance models of the Trust, the research university in the information age, the promise of the digital age for renewing civic culture, public service telecoms in the digital age, putting the Web to work for nonprofits, the critical role of children's TV, strengthening the communications capacity of community groups, reforming public radio stations (to allow non-profit associations to express public opinions), and public TV in the digital age (as part of a Democracy Center that promotes informed debate and enables citizens to discuss issues).

e-Sphere: The Rise of the World-wide MindJoseph N. Pelton, Quorum Books, Westport CT, 2000, 262 pages, £56.50 ISBN 1-56720-390-6

HyperReality: Paradigm for the Third MillenniumEdited by John and Nobuyoshi Terashima, (Routledge, London and New York, NY, 2001, 165 pp, $20.95, FS 23:12/585)

What comes after the Internet? HyperReality (HR) is a hypothetical communication infrastructure made possible by information technology. It allows co-mingling of physical reality with virtual reality and human intelligence with artificial intelligence. It is a technological capability like nanotechnology and human cloning, that does not yet exist but is maturing in laboratories. Something like HR will emerge in this century. It may not be called HyperReality or take the precise forms described here, but "the essence of what we call HR will be there and it will change the world". Chapters describe the definition of hyperreality, applications (telemedicine, manufacturing on demand, designing and furnishing a house, traveling, education in a 3D HyperClass), HR as a technological paradigm, hypervision (teleporting 3D images of people, things, and places that are distant from each other), virtual humans, artificial life in HyperReality (communication between humans and robots), hypertranslation of languages, pedagogical design for a HyperClass on the Internet, and the bright and dark sides of hyperleisure (benefits to the aged versus catering to every self-indulgent dream). The editors conclude by envisioning four stages of popular commercial developments:

1. 1.

   HR with PC and Internet (starting 2005): HR is currently being adapted at Waseda U for use on the Internet, serving as a popular platform for introducing some aspects of HR and for trials of some applications.

2. 2.

   Flat-screen HR (starting 2010): in the next decade, digital high definition TV (HDTV) will replace the kind of TV we have known for the past 40 years; people using it would be less conscious of the edges of virtuality than they are with a PC monitor.

3. 3.

   Room-based HR (starting 2015): flat screen technology will be more pervasive, and walls and ceilings in rooms will be wired for information as they are wired for electricity today, creating HyperMuseums, HyperShops, HyperTheaters, HyperKitchens (enabling coaction with a gourmet chef), HyperNurseries (where an AI nanny tells fairy stories), HyperBedrooms (where an AI nurse monitors a patient), etc.

4. 4.

   Universal HR (starting 2020): as with radio and the telephone, the first use of HyperReality will be restricted to place; in due course, HR will become portable and accessible anywhere. If HR becomes the dominant medium of the information society, it could facilitate the trend toward the age of the individual and an age of multiple universes.

Humanity 3000: Symposium No. 1 Proceedings(Foundation for the Future, Bellevue WA, 2001, 690pp, $10.00, FS 23:12/593). (Proceedings available on CD-ROM or on the Web site, www.futurefoundation.org)

The Foundation, established by inventor/businessman Walter P. Kistler in 1996, seeks to promote research and reflection on the long-term survivability of humanity. Following the first seminar in April 1999 (Seminar No. 1 Proceedings, Fall 1999; FS 22:1/005) and a second seminar in September 1999 (Seminar No. 2 Proceedings, Aug 2000/373p; FS 23:5/249) this much larger Symposium with 67 participants was held in Seattle in August 2000. Participants and some of their chief concerns include:

• •

  Walter Truett Anderson (technological change as the leading edge of evolution and emergence of a multicentric system of global governance);

• •

  Wendell Bell (need to select the right values and sociocultural practices, and expand social boundaries to include all people);

• •

  Clement Bezold (just and efficient use of resources, capacity to mature and evolve as social and spiritual beings);

• •

  George Bugliarello (adoption of a universal code that guarantees humane values and behavior);

• •

  William H. Calvin (the problem of outdriving our reaction time, in that the future is arriving more quickly than ever);

• •

  Joseph Coates (the rising awareness that we are in change, the flat progress in committing institutions to a truly long-term perspective, regress in educating the public on long-term perspectives – particularly positive futures);

• •

  Dee Dickinson (the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn);

• •

  Duane Elgin (the ability of the human family to mature from adolescence to early adulthood, and to reduce our environmental impact on Earth);

• •

  Andre Gunder Frank (scientific advances often beyond social capacity to adapt to them, return of Asia to dominance and centrality in the world);

• •

  Jerome C. Glenn (sustainable ways to collaborate in improving the human condition);

• •

  Susantha Goonatilake (shift to Asia and non-Eurocentric views);

• •

  William Halal (trends likely to coalesce into a Global Crisis of Maturity between 2030-2050);

• •

  Francis Heylighen (development of a universal worldview that ties all our knowledge together; emergence of a "global brain" computer network);

• •

  Barbara Marx Hubbard (evolution of consciousness to a unitive stage; synergy among emerging capacities of humankind);

• •

  Sohail Inayatullah (ending inner and outer poverty, multicultural ways of knowing, a planetary civilization with strong local culture and economies);

• •

  Anthony Judge (reducing dependency on simplistic and impoverished metaphors);

• •

  William W. Kellogg (evolution of some kind of global governance to deal with problems of climate change, pollution, and depletion of natural resources);

• •

  Ervin Laszlo (evolution of a mind-set that can enable 6+ billion people to live in peace and reasonable well-being);

• •

  Magoroh Maruyama (our present intellectual orientation among inbreeding academics; outbreeders are the most important human resource in the future);

• •

  Graham T.T. Molitor (proliferation of global nation-states – 300 in Africa; 200 in Eastern Asia – and semi-farcical micro-states, as well as urban mega-regions);

• •

  Robert Muller (rapid reform and transformation of the UN system into the first Evolutionary, Cosmic Earth and Humanity Organization);

• •

  Elisabet Sahtouris (the major shift in human evolution to behaving like an animal choosing to evolve, which requires a new kind of thinking, a new kind of behavior, and a new morality);

• •

  Ziauddin Sardar (endurance and full flowering of diversity; new and pragmatic modes of dissent);

• •

  Edward O. Wilson (repair and maintenance of the crumbling substructure of the world's natural resources).

Other sections encompass key topics of interest to participants (evolution, governance/ethics, humans, sci/tech, sustainability, wild cards), selected thoughts on threats and opportunities, transcripts of symposium discussion sessions (past and present trajectory workshops, future trajectory workshops, critical factors conversations, critical factor fishbowl sessions), interviews (with Michio Kaku, Ervin Laszlo, and Edward O. Wilson), background papers, and a debate on whether humanity will be able to manage the critical factors necessary for survival (with Barbara Marx Hubbard and George Bugliarello as proponents of the resolution, and Ziauddin Sardar and Siro Polo Padolecchia as opponents). Hubbard argues that we are in a natural process of evolution driving us toward being able to fulfill these factors; Sardar responds that we are increasing our ability for self-delusion and compounding the problem of survival by accelerating our arrogance, creating a "breathless culture" that cannot make wise decisions, let alone direct conscious evolution. Lively discussion follows.

Memoirs of the FutureW. Warren Wagar (Global Pubs, Binghamton, NY (pmorewed@binghamton.edu), 2001, 259pp, $19.95, FS 23:12/594)

Wagar's autobiography ("my personal contribution to an understanding of the mind-set of the futurist") reviews the main ideas in many of his 16 books, how they got published and received, how his thinking has changed and why, and adds personal reflections on his health, travels, and family life. Some observations and reminiscences:

• •

  Futures Studies: "serious study of the future is the most important task in the world; foolish or wise, dead-accurate or wildly wrong, such study is humanity's best hope for gaining control of its destiny".

• •

  Juvenilia: born in 1932, "the boy-philosopher of West Walnut Street" (Lancaster PA) wrote Philosophy of Progress in 1945 (151 pp.) and a 1946 sequel Toward Which We Strive (101 pp.), while initiating a weekly newspaper, The Wagarian; by 1951, Wagar had read the entire oeuvre of H.G. Wells – well over 100 volumes.

• •

  Manifesto: thinking of pursuing a quasi-messianic career in 1954 as a writer of Wellsian books akin to The Open Conspiracy, Wagar and his lifelong childhood friend Hudson Cattell each published manifestos to initiate a movement for global reconstruction (Wagar argued that the only future worth considering was the global future of Homo sapiens).

• •

  Wagar's First Book: H.G. Wells and the World State (Yale UP, 1961), "a lightly touched-up" Yale doctoral dissertation, "received a surprising number of reviews in prominent places", notably Saturday Review.

• •

  The Prophet Unleashed: The City of Man: Prophecies of a World Civilization in Twentieth-century Thought (Houghton Mifflin, 1963), on the recurring dream of world integration and the case for an integrated world economy in the future, got good reviews but had "a dismal sales record" in hardcover (the Penguin paperback, however, eventually passed the 10,000 mark).

• •

  Blueprint for a New World Civilization: Building the City of Man (Grossman, 1971) was a call not for the integration of existing cultures but for a world revolution to construct a new culture (under "Fission and fusion", it introduced the theme of the world simultaneously coming together and falling apart in the midst of the great explosion of change).

• •

  A rejected grant proposal: made in 1971 to the Office of Education, a "program for the study of world integration" was proposed, with John McHale (also at SUNY-Binghamton) as co-director.

• •

  "History of the future" course: inaugurated in 1974 at SUNY Binghamton, it has been taken by some 7,000 students (the course explores main trends in history, recent research on the shape of the future, visions of the future, and preferable worlds of the next 100 years).

• •

  "World War III" Course: first offered in 1983, it also covered alternatives to war and was especially relevant because of the strong upsurge in fears of nuclear cataclysm during the Reagan years.

• •

  "An imaginative binge": reciting "the events of the future in graphic detail", the first edition of A Short History of the Future (U of Chicago, 1989), which anticipated the implosion of capitalism, the triumph of socialism, and the final redundancy of socialism over 200 years, received many and varied reviews; with the collapse of the Cold War, the plausibility of the first part fell to zero.

• •

  The Second Edition: the first edition imagined the "Catastrophe of 2044" where the Soviets occupied Israel and the USA retaliated with nuclear weapons; the 1992 edition imagined the USA with a third party Leftist woman president and undergoing civil war, but still ending up with the same 2044 nuclear catastrophe.

• •

  The World Party: although there is "no inkling of it on the political horizon", a transnational party firmly committed to democratic integration of all peoples, with or without the aid of chaos in the world-system, is essential to steer us through the storms of the next century.

The Politics of MisinformationMurray Edelman (Cambridge U Press, New York, NY, 2001, 139pp, $44.95, FS 23:12/598)

"Our common assumption is that the acts of Homo sapiens are basically rational and that mistakes in reaching conclusions are the exception. On the contrary, mistakes are so common that rationality is probably the exception." We are often unable to see the whole picture and so make decisions that are based on a small part of the relevant total. There are often deliberate efforts to mislead the public in order to increase sales and profits. For the same reasons the historical record is often misleading. The future is often depicted in a false light so as to marshall support for particular actions or policies. For example, advocates of war always depict victory as inevitable, while advocates of particular economic policies see them as bringing prosperity and solutions to current problems. Perhaps the most common illusions are those that depict inherent superiority in some nationalities, races, colors, ethnic groups, social classes, or in one of the genders. Virtually all political groups and individuals benefit at times from misleading and inaccurate assumptions and accordingly have an incentive to create and disseminate such beliefs. More often than not their proponents probably accept them as valid, though some are cynically manufactured to serve political purposes. A very high proportion of the beliefs that guide political conduct and political rhetoric accordingly are myths. Social practices and the economic system are enormously complex, so it is necessary to adopt simplifying models, sometimes in the form of metaphors, to grasp and discuss them at all – a process that manifestly lends itself to elevating misconceptions to the status of dogma. "Misconceptions about what causes what and about links among phenomena encourage support for misplaced actions that fail to address the causes of problems and so perpetuate the status quo." When a particular version of reality serves our interests, we are likely to define reality in terms of that version. "It is likely that all but a small minority of [discussions on current issues and public affairs] are based on false beliefs, false information, false premises, and false logic."

Chapters consider images that dominate our language and thinking, claims about social change, the abuse of authority (most likely and common when the hierarchical superior is most insecure and frequently wrong), public opinion (an exceptionally ambiguous and volatile idea, readily subject to mistaken beliefs about past or current content), institutions, the use of language in respect to social change, contemporary beliefs about crime (which serve to perpetuate and reinforce inequalities), and social science discourse ("the usual objective of social science research is to find confident conclusions and avoid uncertainties, regardless of a clear history of the sciences that teaches that few conclusions are certain").

Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st CenturyIndependent Task Force on Strategic Energy Policy Challenges (Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 2001, 130pp, 10.00, FS 23:12/563)

Report of a task force co-sponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University (Houston) and the CFR, concerned with the lack of a comprehensive energy policy in the USA for many decades. "As the 21st century opens, the energy sector is in critical condition. A crisis could erupt at any time from any number of factors and would inevitably affect every country in today's globalized world." Possible crises include oil supply disruption in the Middle East, an accident on the Alaska pipeline, an attack on the California electric power grid, or a revolution in Indonesia paralyzing the natural gas supplies to Japan and Korea. The easiest approach is to continue muddling through, with free market solutions and marginal strategic petroleum reserve management. A second option is to take a narrow, near-term approach by expanding supply. But long-term problems require long-term solutions. The best option is to develop "a comprehensive and balanced energy security policy with near-term actions and long-term initiatives addressing both the supply side and demand side." Supply-side response alone will not suffice, and national solutions alone cannot work. The consequences of inaction could be grave, and delay will simply raise the costs.

Task Force recommendations include:

1. 1.

   deter and manage international supply shortfalls;

2. 2.

   remove bottlenecks to energy supply, both domestically and internationally;

3. 3.

   review the size of the strategic petroleum reserve and fill to its present capacity;

4. 4.

   convene a national energy security summit to develop a national consensus on energy policy objectives and means;

5. 5.

   accelerate demand-management efforts at home and internationally (e.g. establish new and stricter CAFE mileage standards, promote government use of alternative fuels, promote energy-efficient technologies);

6. 6.

   maximize efforts to develop every clean source of domestic fuel supply (promote efficient development of natural gas, development of clean coal technologies, resolve nuclear power spent fuel disposition);

7. 7.

   accelerate completion of the US oil and natural gas reserve inventory as mandated by Congress (e.g. it could well turn out that the estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas resources in the Rocky Mountain Overthrust could be a more cost-effective target for exploitation than the ANWR);

8. 8.

   create an appropriate comprehensive statutory framework for electricity restructuring and for reestablishing a capacity cushion for US power supplies (today's highly fragmented regime has reduced the reliability of the US power grid and impeded investment in new capacity);

9. 9.

   spur non-OPEC oil and gas production increases (Mexico and Russia are especially important; see 23:12/573);

10. 10.

    develop a credible international stance on global warming and other environmental issues;

11. 11.

    lay the foundation for new global energy institutions that govern international investment and trade in energy.

Strategies for Electronic Commerce and the InternetHarvey C. Lucas Jr, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, 265 pp, £22.50 ISBN 0-262-7306 0603

Understanding Economic ForecastsDavid F. Henry and Neil R. Ericsson (Eds) MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2001, 207 pp., £17.95, ISBN 0-262-08304-3

World Energy Outlook 2001 Insights: Assessing Today's Supplies to Fuel Tomorrow's Growth International Energy Agency (OECD, Paris, 2001, 421pp, $150.00, www.iea.org.books, FS 23:12/561).

The IEA is an autonomous body established in 1974 within the framework of OECD, carrying out a program of energy cooperation among 25 of the 30 OECD Member countries. This 8th volume in a series first published in 1993 analyzes the main forces driving trends in global energy production and supply. "Our key message is that the world possesses abundant supplies of energy. Proven energy reserves are more than adequate to meet projected demand growth until 2020 and well beyond. But massive investment in energy infrastructure will be needed to exploit these reserves." The six chapters are devoted to:

1. 1.

   Oil supply outlook. Proven oil reserves will be sufficient to satisfy demand to 2020 that will reach 114.7mb/d (up from 74.5 mb/d in 1997 and 95.8 mb/d in 2010); enormous volumes of unconventional oil are in Canada and Venezuela and further reductions in production cost are expected; global oil production need not peak by 2020 if necessary investments are made.

2. 2.

   Natural gas. Resources are abundant and can easily meet expected surge in demand through 2020; proven gas reserves have doubled in the past 20 years and the ratio of reserves to annual production is now at 60:1; estimated remaining reserves represent 170-200 years of supply, exploiting world gas resources will require massive investment in production facilities and transport infrastructure.

3. 3.

   Coal. World reserves of coal are well dispersed and represent about 200 years of production at current rates; demand will depend largely on whether clean-coal technologies can meet environmental concerns while also producing electricity at competitive rates.

4. 4.

   Renewables. The share of renewables in the global energy mix will probably remain small (4 per cent share of electricity generation in 2020) in the absence of determined government interventions; if strong efforts are made to promote and subsidize renewables, their share could rise to 9 per cent in 2020.

5. 5.

   Uranium. Known resources for nuclear-power production are equal to some 250 years of current consumption.

Energy supply beyond 2020. Production costs will be more important to long-term supply than the resource base; conventional oil production is expected to peak first although technology could delay the peak; the role of renewable energy is likely to become much more important; some governments may expand or introduce nuclear power, but there will be countervailing pressures to abandon it unless safety and environmental concerns are met; hydrogen technology holds out the prospect of large-scale energy supply.