In part 1 I touched briefly on some of the restrictions that, if we’re not careful, models can impose on our visions of the future. By focusing on known variables and extrapolating both the consequences of the interactions of those variables and the interactions themselves, models can lure the unsuspecting into a belief that these [...]

It is true, and even some futurists forget, that not all change is radical or fast or even noticeable. Sometimes change will be entirely predictable. But we also know that sometimes, indeed, it will be radical, fast, and very noticeable, and the difference between those two states, and in the choatic interstice between them, is [...]

As you may have noticed, since you’re reading this, provocative titles drive readership. Why? Because words matter, and people pay attention to words when those words don’t melt into the same ol’ same ol’ drone of technocratic chatter.

In our work, we constantly struggle to use language as a tool to communicate, rather than simply as an artifact to convey that work of some sort has happened. Often this means that we must struggle to define a grammar and vocabulary for our clients that is effective but not foreign. And, occasionally, we find that only once you’ve spent a significant amount of time and energy around a concept embodied in a particular word do you realize you no longer believe in the power of that word to express what is really going on. “Sustainability” is one such word.

One of the things that we keep at the forefront of all of our government work is that policy making is about the future. Good policy is an attempt to bring about a particular vision of a particular future. For that reason, its development benefits from a strong, disciplined futures orientation, for instance: a recognition [...]

Futurists rarely talk about the impossible. Indeed, we spend much of our professional lives telling people nothing is impossible. When pushed, we’ll talk about probabilities and improbabilities, but we just can’t commit to impossible. With one exception: it is impossible to know the future. Instead, like quantum physicists, we imagine a cloud of potential futures. [...]

The five issues I’ve highlighted below – wetland management, electricity markets, internal migration, water management, and rural revitalization -  all present significant challenges to policy makers at mid-century, and to those of today looking forward. Each comes about thorough a common constellation of trends that we’re already tracking.  And, while these five certainly don’t represent [...]

Over the last few years we’ve seen a number of stories cropping up from all over the world of governments – both local and national – paying students to attend school. These programs have covered elementary, secondary, and tertiary schooling, and are proliferating. Currently there are a number of counties and cities in the US [...]

A recent mid-day radio program here in Washington DC had a couple of very well-informed, well-educated, and articulate commentators talking about the green economy. One, at some point early in the hour went out of her way to say something along the lines of ‘that [something] is a trend…well no, I don’t mean trend as [...]

In the midst of this economic upheaval, like in those that preceded it, there is a palpable tension amongst developed nations between innovation and risk aversion.  In a globalized economy, with energy security looming as one of the central concerns of the next many decades, risk aversion is particularly dangerous on at least two fronts: [...]