THE FUTURIST

Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future | www.wfs.org | MayJune 2011

Timeline to 2040
The breakthroughs youll see in 2010, 2020, 2030, and beyond.

THE FUTURIST
Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future | www.wfs.org | JulyAugust 2011

Solar Power from the Moon

An unexpected source of renewable energy

THE FUTURIST
Forecasts, Trends, and Ideas about the Future | www.wfs.org | MarchApril 2011

A Brighter Future
Predictions of what lies ahead for Americas cities

CONTENTS
DEPArTMENTS
3 Tech Know: News in Brief
HIGHLIGHTS: Eye Exams via Smart Phones The Brccoli Plan Word Buzz: Complexipacity Cancer Mortality Rates are Declining

FEATUrES

68

18

A Realistic Energy Strategy

TSVI BISK Energy policy must be realistic or it wont work, but clean and sustainable energy is more realistic than you may think

18

39 Emerging Technology and the Global Crisis of Maturity

WILLIAM E. HALAL As technological development surges, the ability of institutions to handle change is stifled by outmoded social systems.

48 Saving the Environment: Five Creative Approaches

CLIFTON ANDERSON The actions of five individuals offer insights into how best to move toward a more sustainable future.

19 52

Feedback Consultants and Services 55

What I Have Learned

EDWARD CORNISH The editor of THE FUTURIST got a real education working for the World Future Society

39

BOOkS
57 Book Reviews: New and Noteworthy 60 Imagining an American Utopia
ARTHUR B. SHOSTAK In a post-Bush United States, four successive administrations work to improve democracy and the quality of life in sociologist Herbert J. Gans utopian narrative

68 VISIONS: Imagineers in Search of the Future

GARY DEHRER In 1955, Walt Disney Imagineers achieved virtual reality with Disneyland. Six Imagineering principles explain how they did it.

61

Too Free for Our Own Good?

RICK DOCKSAI reviews Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature is at Odds with Economicsand Why it Matters by Peter A. Ubel

TrENDS
6 10 12 14 16 Economics
Oil Exports May Soon Dry Up

Environment
New Greenhouse Gas Threat

Technology
Google Searches Its Future

Society
Racial Prejudice Declines in Britain

Demography
Hooked Up or Just Hooked?

TECH kNOW
NEWS IN BRIEF

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help reduce its costs. biological experimentation. using fewer resources in the process.
2 THE FUTURIST | March-April 2011 | www.wfs.org

Software that can take over the routine aspects of experimentation could An artificial experimenter developed at Britains University of South-

ampton autonomously analyzes a projects data, builds hypotheses, and chooses the experiments to perform, according to one of the developers, PhD student Chris Lovell of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. The program will also help detect anomalies in error-prone areas such as The next step is to join the AI software with automated platformslabs on

a chipto perform the experiments requested by the artificial experimenter,

Source: University of Southampton, School of Electronics and Computer Science, www.ecs.soton.ac.uk.

THE FUTURIST | March-April 2011 | www.wfs.org

TECH kNOW
NEWS IN BRIEF

Eye Exams via Smart Phones

The Broccoli Plan

TRENDS 10%
promotes crop biotechnology.
Source: www.bangkokpost.com

the increase of global plantings of genetically

modified crops in 2010 compared to the prior year, according to a study which has been released by an organization that

Need an eye exam? Theres an app for that. A $2

smart-phone application could tell you in minutes what prescription eyeglasses you need. Developed by the MIT Media Labs Camera Culture research group, the NETRA (Near-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment) combines software with a small, lightweight plastic viewfinder that clips onto your smart phone. Within minutes, NETRA can diagnose whether someone is nearsighted or farsighted, or suffers from astigmatism or the vision loss associated with aging. The researchers claim that NETRA is safe, fast, accurate, and easy to use. Currently being field-tested, the device is intended primarily for use in poorer communities, such as those in the developing world, that lack access to proper eye care. While eyeglasses themselves can be inexpensive, the testing equipment up until now has been fairly cost-prohibitive, especially for those in underdeveloped areas.
Source: MIT Media Lab, www.media.mit.edu/press/netra

INNOVATIONS THIS MONTH

Bristol-based engineers have built a lightweight bicycle from a new form of nylon as strong as steel, a substance they hope could revolutionise British manufacturing.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Portable Food Tester

Making Personal Data Vanish

Denizens of online social-networking sites have long been warned about leaving unflattering information about themselves where it could later be found and used against them by future employers, loved ones, or voters. Even deleting posts does not eradicate them from Internet archives. Now, computer scientists at the University of Washington have put expiration dates on data: After a set time, e-mails, chat messages, and Facebook postings would self-destruct. The prototype system, called Vanish, tags a time limit to any text uploaded through a Web browser. The system encrypts messages with a secret key that is divided and spread among random computers in a file-sharing network; as turnover occurs in the network, those leaving the netowrk unknowingly take parts of the key with them, leaving the message undecipherable.
Source: University of Washington, www.u.washington.edu

New sensing technologies developed by researchers at Germanys Fraunhofer Institute may enable food suppliers to determine the right time for bringing produce to market for purchase by consumers. The system, based on metal-oxide sensors, checks the emission of volatile

23%

of LinkedIn contacts are also Facebook friends.

Nutritionists tell us that broccoli is one of the healthiest foods for us, but this super veggie must be shipped from far away to reach markets where it isnt so easily grown. For instance, 90% of broccoli sold on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard is shipped from California and Mexicowith less than desirable environmental impacts. To s o l v e t h i s p r o b l e m , researchers led by Cornell University horticulturalist Thomas Bjorkman are developing new strains of broccoli that can tolerate the more-humid East Coast climate. Once the right varieties have been developed, the project will also train local growers and marketers, organizing them into production networks. With USDA support, the team aims to develop a $100 million broccoli industry on the East Coast over the next 10 years.
Source: Cornell University, www. cornell.edu

In addition, 63 percent of the Facebook profiles analyzed in the study had at least one employer listed, further showing the lines are more than blurred between professional and personal networking. The survey had a large sample size: 5,000 MyWebCareer users were profiled and their online presences analyzed.
Source: survey conducted by MyWebCareer

At the TED 2011 conference this week, Google has been giving rare

gases that reveal ripeness, over-ripeness, or rottenness of produce. The goal is to make more-portable devices that have the same levels of sensitivity as equipment used in food laboratories, reducing waste if fresh produce is purchased before (or after) its time.
Source: Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, www.fraunhofer.de

demos of its self-driving cars. TED attendees have even been allowed to travel inside , on a closed course. The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificialintelligence software that can mimic the decisions made by a human driver.
Source: tech.slashdot.org

45%

of college undergrads (out of 2300 surveyed)

show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing. Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.
Source: Associated Press

Catching up with the Stars

The Hubble Space Telescope has enormously accelerated astronomers ability to detect star movement, from 50 years with ground-based telescopes to just a few years. It is Hubbles razor-sharp visual acuity that enables the measurement of the stars motion, so predicting stars future movement has likewise been speeded up: Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore have collected Hubbles images from 2002 to 2006 to simulate stars projected migration over the next 10,000 years.
Source: Hubble Site, http://hubblesite.org

HONG KONG residents can enjoy astoundingly fast broadband at an

Cancer Mortality rates Are Declining

In the United States the youngest age groups have experienced the steepest decline in cancer mortality, at 25.9% per decade, according tot he researchers. And even the oldest groups have experienced a 6.8% per decade decline, thanks to improved screening and treatment.
Source: Van Andel Institute, www.vai.org

astoundingly low price. It became available last year, when a scrappy company called Hong Kong Broadband Network introduced a new option for its fiberto-the-home service: a speed of 1,000 megabits a secondknown as a gigfor less than $26 a month.
Source: www.nytimes.com

WordBuzz: Complexipacity
How well can you or your organization handle complexity? Coined in 2008 by designer Tom Snyder, brother of futurist David Pearce Snyder, complexipacity refers to the capacity to assimilate complex ideas, systems, problems, situations, interactions, or relationships.
Source: David Pearce Snyder, Snyder Family Enterprise, www.the-futurist.com. Download Snyders presentation on complexipacity at www.wfs.org/wf09Complexipacity.pdf

THE FUTURIST | March-April 2011 | www.wfs.org

THE FUTURIST | March-April 2011 | www.wfs.org

TECH kNOW
NEWS IN BRIEF

Calorie restriction and Healthy Aging

Antiaging researchers have long recognized the role of calorie restriction on increasing life spans, but such diets have negative side effects, such as reduced fertility. The key to overcoming this problem may be to reduce consumption of specific nutrients rather than simply consuming fewer calories, according to researchers at University College London Institute of Healthy Ageing and Max Planck Institute the Institute for Biology of Ageing. In their studies with female fruit flies, the scientists found that varying the types and amounts amino acids could affect longevity and fertility, while altering vitamins and lipids had little impact. One particular amino acid, methionine, was found to be crucial to increasing life span without decreasing fertility. Since there are many similarities between fruit flies and humans on a genetic level, the scientists are optimistic that finding the right balance of amino acid consumption could extend life spans without compromising fertility or sacrificing our favorite foods.
Source: Max Planck Society, www.mpg.de/english. Amino-Acid Imbalance Explains Extension of Lifespan by Dietary Restriction in Drosophila by Richard C. Grandison, Mathew D. W. Piper, and Linda Partridge, Nature (December 3, 2009), www.nature.com

Personalities Predict Successful Medical Students

Conscientiousness will stand a student in good stead at the beginning of medical school, while extraverts are at a disadvantage, according to a study of Belgian medical students, led by University of Minnesota psychology professor Deniz Ones. However, extraverts (assertive and warm) and those scoring high on agreeableness and altruism tend to excel later as they go through the seven-year curriculum, facing the challenges of interacting with patients and performing as interns. Personality traits predict the acquisition of knowledge, persistence on tasks, and performance in patient interactions, and thus should also be considered in medical school admissions, says Ones. This process could thus help schools identify individuals most likely to thrive not only as students, but also as doctors.
Source: University of Minnesota, www.umn.edu

U.S. Companies Optimistic about China retirement

An overwhelming majority (90%) of American companies doing business in China are optimistic or slightly optimistic about the five-year outlook for Chinas growing domestic market, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. What makes China a bright spot on an otherwise bleak business landscape is, simply, its population of consumers. Companies in China that are focused on producing goods for the Chinese market, rather than exporting Chinese goods back to the U.S. were less likely to be impacted by the global downturn. Of the American companies surveyed, 74% ranked China as a top-three investment priority, and nearly 20% ranked it number one, AmCham reports.
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, www.amcham-shanghai.org/ AmchamPortal

Planning Trends

Decisions about retirement increasingly include such issues as managing health-care costs, developing an incomewithdrawal strategy, and evenfor the recently retired;unretiring. About 40% of financial-planning clients who are in or near retirement are asking for help in making lifestyle changes, reports the Financial Planning Association. Fear of outliving ones income has become a growing concern, especially as the

record Number of Doctorate Degrees

The number of doctorate degrees awarded in the United States has risen for six straight years, reaching a record 48,802 in 2008, according to the National Science Foundations Survey of Earned Doctorates. One-third of these degrees (33.1%) went to temporary visa holders, up from 23.3% in 1998. Science and engineering doctorates have increased by more than 20% in the past decade and by 3.2% from 2007 to 2008. Computer science had the largest rate of increase (7.9% in 20072008 and nearly double in the past decade). In contrast, doctorates in non-science and engineering fields have declined, particularly the humanities (down 7.1%). One exception is education, which awarded 2.1% more doctorates in 2008 than in 2007.
Source: National Science Foundation, www.nsf.gov

forces of a weak economy and soaring health-care costs converge. Demand for personalized approaches to planning has grown: Nearly half of the planners surveyed reported gaining between four and 10 new retirement income clients in the last year.
Source: Financial Planning Association, www. fpanet.org

An Index for Climate Change

Data sets on four key climate indicators are being used to create the worlds first climate-change index, so that the complexity of the planets systems can be distilled to a number that everyone can follow, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, a research network of 10,000 scientists, is focusing on sea levels, global temperature, Arctic sea ice, and atmospheric CO2 levels. The index is intended to provide an annual snapshot of the planets systems, giving policy makers and other nonscientists an accessible overview of the complex interactions of these variables.
Source: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, www.igbp.net

Carbon Dioxides Long-Term Impacts on Plants

Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide is both good news and bad news for the plants of the world, according to researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For instance, both genetically modified soybeans and the weeds that theyve been modified to resist could be stimulated by increased COO2 levels. Some species, such as the longleaf pine, would also get a boost in water-use efficiency, thus becoming more tolerant of droughts. But the pines fitness may threaten the growth and survival of the plants lying below their canopy, as well as the insects and microbes on the forest floor, warn the researchers. Moreover, fast-growing invasive weeds could become even more troublesome as CO2 levels increase to a predicted 550 parts per million by 2050.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, www.ars.usda.gov

THE FUTURIST | March-April 2011 | www.wfs.org

THE FUTURIST | March-April 2011 | www.wfs.org

from the Moon

A Japanese company is pitching an alternative energy plan thats out of this worldand potentially the largest public infrastructure project in human history. By Patrick Tucker

Solar Power

An artists rendering of how this new technology might work

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The year is 2050 and its morning on the Moon. The Sun is rising over a landscape that is bleak and featureless with one exception: a wide belt of photovoltaic panels that cuts across the ash-gray lunar surface like a straight river. Not a single astronaut is in sight, but a troop of robots is busily making repairs to the installation where tune-ups are needed. Beneath the panels, superconducting cables are ferrying the Suns power to transmission centers. The power will be beamed to a receiving station near the Earths equator, and from there, it will be distributed to energy-hungry cities and towns across the globe where it will keep the lights on in offices, hospitals, and schools. Meet the LUNA RING, the brainchild of Tetsuji Yoshida and his colleagues at CSP, the research arm of Shimizu, one of the largest construction firms in Japan. The LUNA RING is an idea that could only come from the land of the rising sun, a country boasting many of the worlds best-known technology companies, like Sony, Hitachi, and Panasonic, but also saddled with a shortage of natural resources. The LUNA RING speaks to a future global need thats keenly felt in the present in Japan, a nation now also coping with the impacts of the devastating March 2011 earthquake on its nuclear power capacity. My very optimistic forecast is 25 years, Yoshida told me when I visited the company headquarters in Tokyo last November. He explained that this is the time required before they could even begin the lunar-surface activity, assuming that Japan, the United States, or some other investor was actually willing to fund the project. The scale is so huge; I dont know how long it would take to construct. We may have to adjust the plan and the scale, he says. If the most exciting part of Yoshidas job is coming up with bold engineering concepts, the most difficult part, except for the math, is keeping peoples expectations realistic. Shimizus company president, Yoichi Miyamoto, was hoping to pitch the raising the bar to the Moon. Its very challenging, a good project for a company like Shimizu. So this is a type of campaign for us, says Yoshida. satellite increases. These wouldnt be simple Sputniks, either, but rather floating power stations a kilometer or so in diameterfar larger and more complex than any communications satellites in space today. The ongoing maintenance costs of the network would thus be enormous. Mankins testified that the cost to build the system would be more than $250 billion in present-day dollars. The program concluded in 1979, leaving many questions unanswered. Then, between 1980 and 1981, the U.S. energy crisis ended, and interest in space-based solar power hit a wall. Fifteen years later, NASA initiated a three-year Fresh Look Study. A brief Exploratory Research and Technology Program followed. The agency found that many of the technical obstacles it first faced decades ago no longer seemed so insurmountable. Photovoltaic arrays in the 1970s could convert into power roughly 10% of the solar energy that struck them. By 1995, they were far more efficient and much lighter. New ideas were on the table, such as satellites that used inflatable trusses rather than metal to decrease object weight. Mankins himself ditched the dispersed satellite network scheme and came up with a new idea for designing, building, and launching satellites. In his 1995 plan, many thousands of smaller, identical solar-gathering modules come together to form a much larger whole, the same way that thousands of similar ants come together to form colonies and millions of quite similar Web sites and Web servers form the Interneta super-organism, Mankins calls it. The logistics of building and launching a type A mini-satellite 9,000 times (then type B, then type C) is less daunting than figuring out how to launch a few extremely complex, independently functioning machines. Mankins calls this realization his eureka moment. It led me for the first time to believe that space-based solar power was technically possible, he says. Despite this encouraging progress, the question remained: How do you conduct tens of thousands of satellite launches, keep the devices working together collecting and transmitting energy safely, and keep the maintenance costs under control? According to Yoshida, this is the wrong series of questions.

The Moon-Based Power Station

A solar collection satellite launched from Earth, even using the most advanced materials available in 2011, would weigh close to 10,000 tons, says Yoshida. This number, he later explained in an e-mail, is his estimation of the weight of a 1-million-kilowatt power plant in geosynchronous orbit. So heavy and hard to control, you will need so many rocket launch pads. Too much money. So we chose the Moon as a power station, he says. We already have a natural satellite, one with minerals and resources. And it already receives sunlight across its surface area. The Moons face receives 13,000 trillion watts (terawatts) of solar power continuously. This is 650 times the amount of power the entire human population would need to continue to grow economically, according to space power expert David Criswell. Solar collection on the lunar surface would be 10 times more efficient than it is on Earth, where our ozone and rich atmosphere make solar collection less efficient.

A Feat of Futurism
To the jaded technology watcher, the LUNA RING may read not so much bold as old-fashioned. In the projects size and scope, the faith it expresses in large-scale and long-term, government-funded initiatives, it harkens back to the 1970s, a decade synonymous with many things, not least of which was U.S. space program euphoria. It was during the 1970s that the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA first conducted a series of studies on the feasibility of sending energy to Earth from satellites. These studies, called the Satellite Power System Concept Development and Evaluation Program, were nothing less than an exercise in super-futurism, with a group of scientists from around the world writing back and forth in reports, letters, and journal articles, trying to design something in the distant future using tools and technologies that did not exist in the present. The proceedings of the program note more than a few major obstacles to collecting and transmitting power in space. The space infrastructure requirements were projected to be significant, John C. Mankins, the manager of the Advanced Concepts Studies Office of Space Flight, told Congress in 1979, in what might be considered something of an understatement. The program explored a variety of concepts, design plans, and scenarios. One proposal emerged as a leader: a network of dozens of satellites working together to catch solar energy and beam it to Earth, rather than a single satellite. But even with a network, the objects and their solar arrays would need to be enormous to do the job: large enough to collect and transmit 5 gigawatts of power each, according to Mankinss testimony. (They would be transmitting power for use in the United States exclusively.) Sending objects into orbit becomes more costly and complicated as the size of the

Heres how the LUNA rING would work.

Robotic staff. The lunar base would require some human personnel, but the bulk of the work on the Moon would be performed by robots that were remotely controlled. Japan has been conducting experiments with robotic giant arms in space since the 1997 launch of the ETS (Experimental Test Satellite) No. 7. I dont think [it will be] a big problem to control the robots on the Moon, Yoshida says. Panels. Sending enough photovoltaic arrays to encircle the lunar equator would require a lot of costly launches and burn up a lot of rocket fuel. The LUNA RING plan calls for the robotic construction of those panels on the Moon directly from lunar soil. This increases the overall efficiency and energy savings of the program compared with others. It also bumps up the complexity level of the proposal considerably. Photovoltaic panels are constructed from silicon, which makes up 23% of the lunar surface. The Moon also hosts aluminum and aluminum oxide, which factor into many solar cell designs. Theoretically, we have enough materials on the lunar surface to build solar panels, Yoshida says. But finding significant deposits of these minerals is a lot harder on the Moon than on Earth, where the formation and movement of oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams created accessible mineral deposits. Theres no concentration of these minerals, says Yoshida, so all these resources are spread over the lunar surface. Once constructed, those panels would produce a lot of power. A 4 400 km portion of the lunar solar belt would produce power equal to the energy consumption of Japan, says Yoshida. A 30 400 km portion would equal the energy consumption of India.

My very optimistic forecast is 25 years, Yoshida told me, when I visited the company headquarters in Tokyo last November.
project to potential investors with a start date on the Moon of around 2035. Yoshida sees this as ambitious, to say the least. The technical, practical, and monetary obstacles to building a solar laser power station on the Moon are unprecedented. But the LUNA RING is buildable. Photovoltaic panels, remotely guided robots, and microwave transmission and lasers are already proven technologies. The LUNA RING is simply raising the proverbial bar on the current state of innovation

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Sixty by 400 km would power the United States, and a 400 400 km square would collect enough energy to satisfy the power needs of the entire human population, by Yoshidas calculations. Laser transmission. Like those solar-based power plans from the 1970s, the LUNA RING would beam energy to Earth in one of two ways, using either a microwave or a laser. Microwave transmission experiments have been ongoing since the 1960s and space laser studies since the 1980s. In that time, science agencies have demonstrated power transmission in space, between orbiting objects and the Earth and between planes and the ground. These, h o w e v e r, w e r e l o w - l e v e l power exchanges. The most famous of these took place in Goldstone, California, on June 5, 1975; the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully transmitted 34 kilowatts of power over a distance of 1.5 kilometers. A space-based power station would have to transfer a lot more power a lot farther. More tests will be conducted around the world between now and 2015, including in the Tokai region of Japan where researchers are working with a 2 kilowatt infrared laser. This isnt a lot of power, eithernot enough to run a car, but sufficient to boil water in a matter of seconds.

I believe that the first [space-based power] pilot plant could (with funding) be on orbit within 1015 years; waiting for a lunar base to be established first would delay the availability of space solar power by decades, he wrote in an e-mail. From time to time, Shimizu develops a very visionary future large-scale engineering concept that they then articulate to a broad audience. Their LUNA RING concept is only the latest of these. John Hickman, a member of the board of advisors of the MarsDrive project and author of Reopening the Space Frontier (Common Ground Publishing, 2010), is known as a space-policy realist. Hes argued that the problem with most super-large space

David Criswell writes, From time to time, Shimizu develops a very visionary future large-scale engineering concept [] their LUNA rING concept is only the latest of these.
projects is that they require too much from potential investors: too much up-front capital, too much patience, and too much faith. If attracting capital for projects using proven technologies like communications satellites remains difficult, imagine the difficulty of attracting sufficient capital to construct a mining facility on the Moon or terraforming Mars or Venus, he wrote in his 1999 essay, The Political Economy of Very Large Space Projects, a critical analysis of why mega-scale space schemes almost never get off the ground. The United States is another potential investor, if not for the LUNA RING, then for some competing space-based solar power program, perhaps of the sort that Mankins has suggested. The Obama administration has made repeated statements in favor of alternative-energy research initiatives and big public works. But the administration is also facing record deficits, a Congress fighting to repeal its signature health-care program, a retirement wave of historic proportions, and reelection in two years. Pitching a speculative and fantastically expensive lunar energy project to the American people under such conditions would be a loser. An energy plan beyond the realm of cost considerations? Its an optimistic idea, even more so than sending robots to the Moon to build solar panels. In broaching it, Yoshida is also acknowledging that the greatest impediment to space-based power isnt rockets or robots or physics; its a dearth of public resources. A project of such size and scope would require the willingness of hundreds of millions of souls to reembrace government-funded space programs. It would require sacrifice in the form of higher taxes, cuts in other areas, or both. At present, this seems beyond the capacity of the developed world.

Over the Moon

Reaction to the LUNA RING among space experts whom THE FUTURIST contacted was optimism tempered by skepticism. Criswell is a long-time advocate for using the Moon as a power station. Although hes a cheerleader, he acknowledges that much more research needs to be done before a Moon-based power plan can attract serious consideration. Much of that research would have to take place aboard the International Space Station, which, according to Criswell, presents something of a problem. The fully staffed International Space Station will be hard pressed to do its few authorized experiments in low-Earth orbit and keep the station operating. It doesnt have the capability to support the logistics for a major lunar infrastructure project or the staff to monitor lunar surface operations, he said. However, the station does provide the operational experience for building other specialized facilities in orbit about the Earth and Moon and on the Moon for power production. Power from the Moon would have to travel 10 times farther to get to Earth than would the same juice collected from a satellite. Mankins believes that a giant wireless transmitter floating in space would need to play a part in sending microwave or laser power from point A to point B. Robots building solar arrays out of lunar dirt? Maybe one day, Mankins says, but he insists that, when space-based solar power comes to light, it will have to use hardware built on Earth, at least initially.

About the Author

Patrick Tucker is the senior editor of THE FUTURIST magazine and the director of communications for the World Future Society.

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BOOk rEVIEWS

Alarmingly Practical Advice For Doomsday

How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times by James Wesley Rawles. Plume. 2009. 153 pages. Paperback. $17.

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Workplaces for Changing Times
Change Design: Conversations about Architecture as the Ultimate Business Tool by NBBJ and Bruce Mau. Greenway. 2009. 250 pages. $59.95.

Civilization is still standing now, but that does not mean it always will, cautions survival expert James Wesley Rawles in How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It. Wed better know what to do in the event of a deadly viral pandemic, major asteroid strike, unprecedented hyperinflationary (or deflationary) economic depression, third World War, or any other global disaster, Rawles argues. He spells out all the hazards that we activities that you can organize in your own workplace. Change Design is a delightful showand-tell of architectural improvements and their benefits. Artists, business leaders, and professionals of all kinds may find it informative and inspirational. with the governments of neighboring states Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The program, however, lacks any lawmaking power. It only organizes public education campaigns, distributes grants to citizen cleanup projects, and sets nonbinding guidelines for state officials. This voluntary approach light-green conservation, as Ernst calls it failed miserably. Fauna and animal life across the bay remain in jeopardy, and its fishing industries have collapsed. There is no substitute for political action and litigation, Ernst concludes. However, he sees the Chesapeake Bay Programs light-green approach being repeated in estuaries around North America and beyond. He hopes that conservationists will change course and accept confrontation as necessary for reform. Ernsts Fight for the Bay is an incisive look at an important ecosystem and what communities everywhere can learn from it. Researchers, environmentalists, and political activists of all kinds may find it an enlightening read. might face in a post-disaster society: looting, armed violence, food shortages, etc. Then he lays out steps we can take now, such as taking survival-training courses, designing shelters, and stocking them with necessary supplies. He even offers a chapter on disaster-proof financial security: savvy investments to make now, earning income in the midst of a major recession, and bartering in the wake of a true disaster. If all of these musings sound alarmist, he explains, consider that the world today is increasingly dangerous and fraught with uncertainty worldwide terrorist movements since the early 1990s and the 2008 meltdown of markets across the globe are proof. enlargement from degenerating into urban sprawl. If successful, they will design mixed-use neighborhoods that treat all residents with equity. They will also harmonize urban and rural areas, and live in accordance with their regions natural resource and water supplies.

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Surprising Facts About the Brain

Brain Sense: The Science of the Senses and How We Process the World Around Us by Faith Hickman Brynie. AMACOM. 2009. 274 pages. $24.

New physical-therapy regimens that relieve amputees of phantom-limb pain (pains in the empty spaces where those parts used to be). Brynie points to newly discovered ways that the brain constantly reshapes its own structure and replacing circuits or even memories that had been lost or damaged. She also describes recent observations about how the brain perceives reality: Our brains have minds of their own, she says. In other words, no two people will taste, smell, or feel in the same way. Brynies Brain Sense is a fascinating look at what it means to be human and conscious. It is also an exciting preview of treatments that doctors might one day achieve.

office buildings. Case studies include the Banner Health hospital complex, designed to accommodate systematic growth over the next 20 years; Boeing, which brought manufacturers and designers two groups that had always worked separately together into one facility, thereby resolving problems more quickly and cutting production time in half; and developer City Developments Limited, which custom-builds high-rises with ventilation, shading, and rainwater-sequestration features to maximize sustainability and comfort. Accompanying these stories are essays on the nature of design, the future of workplaces, the relationship between building design and personal values, and hope for resolving tensions between executives and designers. The volume also includes descriptions of change-design

What the Chesapeake Bay Can Teach Conservationists

Fight for the Bay: Why a Dark Green Environmental Awakening is Needed to Save the Chesapeake Bay by Howard R. Ernst. Rowman & Littlefield. 2009. 144 pages. Paperback. $19.95.

The brain is much more dynamic than scientists used to think, according to science and health writer Faith Hickman Brynie in Brain Sense. She takes readers on a tour of how the brain and the senses interact, sharing discoveries that she says have dramatic implications for brain research and medical practice. Examples: Monkeys using their own brain waves to control robotic arms. Patients blinded by strokes regain some of their vision by retraining their eyes with computer-assisted visual exercises.

Pollution has reduced more than 400 water ecosystems around the world to dead zones, notes U.S. Naval Academy political-science professor Howard Ernst in Fight for the Bay. For conservationists trying to save these ecosystems, the eastern United States Chesapeake Bay serves as a cautionary tale. Since the early 1980s, Ernst explains, a publicly funded Chesapeake Bay Program has coordinated bay-restoration efforts

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Imagineers in Search of the Future

In 1955, Walt Disney Imagineers achieved virtual reality with Disneyland. Six Imagineering principles explain how they did it. By Gary Dehrer

1. Area Development.

In reviewing Walt Disneys plan to have everyone enter Disneyland at Town Square, amusementpark experts questioned why there was only one entrance. They also questioned the expense of Town Square, especially since it was not going to produce any revenue. Disney responded that this entry space was designed to create an essential first impression and special mood for his guests. All guests had to enter the Park the same way to share an identical illusion. Even the Main Street transportation, which included a fire wagon and horse-drawn trolleys, was not intended to make any money but to help add to the overall sensory experience. Town Square was to serve as the gateway to Disneylands virtual reality.

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2. Blue Sky.

Disneyland was the first project for Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), which was created on December 16, 1952, as part of WED (Walter Elias Disney) Enterprises. Walt Disney, considered to be the foremost Imagineer of modern times, had built a major animation and film studio by the early 1950s. WED was to address all Disney activities outside the film studio and this would come to include Disney parks, resorts, special attractions at Worlds Fairs, cruise ships, and other diverse entertainment activities. Disneyland offered the Imagineers an opportunity to demonstrate that anything is possible. In explaining the secret of his success, Walt Disney had one word for it: curiosity. Theres really no secret about our approach, he said. We keep moving forwardopening up new doors and doing new thingsbecause were curious. And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. Were always exploring and experimenting. And curiosity was forever wrapped in endless Blue Sky possibilities that begged to become realities.

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4. Dark ride.

Dark rides formed the backbone of Fantasylands entertainment experience, as special effects could be used to further create illusion and magic. In 1965, John Hench, one of Disneys first and longtime Imagineers, rendered a concept sketch that would evolve into Space Mountain, housing a dark-ride roller coaster. The Space Mountain ride was finally achieved in 1975 as Tomorrowland continued to be reworked. Hench said, The ride is above all an experience of speed, enhanced by the controlled lighting and projected moving images. But it evokes such ideas as the mystery of outer space, the excitement of setting out on a journey, and the thrill of the unknown.

3. kinetics.

On an inspection tour of Disneyland when it was under construction, Walt Disney spent several hours riding around in a Jeep accompanied by several people, including Joe Fowler, his construction boss. Departing from Town Square, Disney and his small party drove over to Sleeping Beautys unfinished castle, where he described all of the attractions and how everything would look in full color. He was describing the kinetics of Fantasyland and how the carousel horses would be leaping. Disney realized that transferring stories from film to real-life three dimensionality would be challenging but knew his guests could use their imaginations in the Park just as they did in movie theaters. Thus, the Park experience would become believable, allowing guests to trust and enjoy the attractions and illusions.

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5. Elevation.

Imagineering ushered in the concept of threedimensional storytelling. Imagineers detailed the images and settings they felt important to telling stories through mood and sensation. Even Main Street, U.S.A., had a story to tell. John Hench explains, Mood is created mainly by the sensation of carefully orchestrated and intensified stimuli, of color, sound, form, and movement. Disneylands Main Street, U.S.A., which represents the main shopping street in an idealized American turn-of-the-century small town, is a good example of mood created by sensation that results in enhanced reality.

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6. Show.

Crucial to the virtual-reality creation was its cast of characters. To further create his Disneyland illusion, Walt Disney instituted his Disneyland University, which would train Park personnel to not just do their jobs, but to perform as though they were onstage. Employees were expected to be happy and cheerful, further creating the feeling of an optimistic world. They would follow special protocols and a dress code to help guests feel comfortable about participating in the show. Adding to this inclusive effect were Mickey and Minnie Mouse, along with other Disney cartoon characters, who would join guests in the Park. These costumed walk-around characters were meant to mingle with guests, posing for pictures but remaining silent. The physical impact of the walk-around characters enhanced the show and produced a convincing and compelling fantasy environment for adults and children alike.

TRENDS IN BRIEF

FOrECASTS
Word Watch: Pre-vivor
New words often offer clues to new trends. The term pre-vivormeaning an individual who takes extreme preventive measures to ensure survivalsuggests a new, more extreme level of proactivism. As used by Baylor Medical Center breast surgeon Valerie Gorman, the term refers to women at risk of developing breast cancer who opt for preemptive bilateral mastectomies, or those who have developed cancer in one breast choosing to remove the remaining healthy breast. Comment: Becoming a pre-vivor may seem extreme, but as change accelerates and complexity grows in all areas of life, risk assessment is becoming more and more imperative. The sooner that a risk is identified and acted upon, the more likely survival becomes.
Source: Baylor Health Care System, Marketing and Public Relations, 2001 Bryan Street, Suite 750, Dallas, Texas 75201. Web site www.baylorhealth.com

First comes love, but what comes next?

Many have been quick to find the cause of these changes, citing the slumping economy, a growing income gap, high divorce rates and the rising trend towards cohabitation as factors that might help explain the delay to marry as well as the marriage gap. The actual reason for the tendency to either delay marriage or never marry at all may be much more complicated. Whatever the reason, these trends arent likely to reverse anytime soon.
More Americans are choosing to play the waiting game when it comes to saying I do. Currently, men, on average, are waiting until 28 and women until 26 before walking down the aisle.

Median age at first marriage

23 23 25 26 27 28 29

20

21

22

24

25

26

27

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020*

*projected data

According to data from the Census Bureau, marriage rates have been in a long-term decline, with more young adults saying I dont to tying the knot. For the first time in over a century, the number of single adults has surpassed the number of married couples.

Liquid-Wood Toys
A bioplastic made of renewable liquid wood rather than petrochemicals could be an ideal component for toys. The material, known as Arbofoam, was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Germany. Though bioplastics using cellulose from wood have been used in other products, they have been unsuitable for toys because of additives such as sulfur. Arboforms sulfur content was reduced by 90%; the next challenge was to find suitable additives that keep the bioplastics from dissolving in watera big problem since children tend to suck on their toys or leave them out in the rain.
Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology, Joseph-von-Fraunhofer-Strasse 7, 76327 Pfinztal, Berghausen, Germany. Web site www.ict.fraunhofer.de

Percentage of all persons age 15 or older who were married

68% 64% 61% 59% 56% 52% 47%

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2008

2020*

*projected data

Toward a More Multilingual Military

The U.S. military needs to improve its foreign-language and cultural skills to operate more effectively, according to Congressman Vic Snyder (Democrat-Arizona), chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. In todays and tomorrows national security environment, the demand for these skill sets may be even greater, given the range of missions our military personnel can be called on to perform, he says. Language and cultural skills can save lives and even prevent conflict. The Subcommittees report calls for increased support for foreign language study in the U.S. educational system, though it did not make clear how schools are to predict where future military interests may be.
Source: U.S. House of Representatives, House Armed Services Committee, 2120 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515. Web site http://armedservices.house.gov

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