Friday Forward: A chat with futurist John Mahaffie
Every Friday, I post a new E-mail chat with a forward-looking thinker about the road ahead. Today, our prescient Friday Forward prognosticator is futurist John Mahaffie. He is a principal with the consulting firm Leading Futurists in Washington, D.C. Mahaffie is also coauthor of the 1997 book 2025: Scenarios of U.S. and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology. In his spare time, he helps manage a team of grade schoolers in the creative-problem-solving program Destination Imagination.
Next News: Today's exploration of science and technology
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Next News: What trends do you see developing over the next 10 to 25 years that the average person today has little awareness of?
Mahaffie: A lot of trends have become so widely discussed as to be famous and even cliché. In fact, there is some danger that people get tired of the "same old future." But there's plenty more to explore. Several big trends that are under the radar for most people are:
The emerging economies' rising prospects. Countries like China and India are making the news for taking jobs away from Americans. But the real trend we should be focusing on is not their ability to do production and service jobs more cheaply. Businesses in those and other developing countries are becoming more capable across the board. In addition to taking jobs from the United States, they are becoming outright competitors for work around the world. For example, India's Tata Consultancy Services provides top-notch talent to clients around the world, not just in India. It is a peer competitor for some American and European consultancies, not just on price, but on quality.
Brain science. The neurosciences are moving forward across the board, with progress in clinical psychology, functional MRI (fMRI) brain studies, brain interfaces, etc. Within a decade, we will be applying far more of our learning from brain science to job design, product design, education, marketing, mental health, etc. People will undoubtedly resist some of the scarier aspects of this—could machines be made that could read my mind?—but the general advance in understanding of the brain will bring change throughout our lives.
A social values shift to more post-consumerist values. More people will make decisions about their lives and lifestyles rooted not in the desire to have more stuff, but in other considerations, such as quality and meaning in life. This will force business to rethink much of what it does and how it appeals to consumers. Meaning will join money as a motivating force for people.
Next News: What trends do you often hear talked about but think may not play out the way people expect—if at all?
Mahaffie: People's ideas about the future are usually too positive, too negative, or too simplistic. Here are some examples:
Flying cars—too positive.
This is a dream and expectation of a lot of folks, including every member of my son's elementary school class a few years ago. We may get there, but it's hard to imagine it happening within the next 10 or 15 years. For one thing, we can't even manage traffic on today's roads yet. Also, there are no aeronautic technologies that are good prospects for lift and propulsion that aren't extremely noisy and fuel hungry.
Big brother—too negative.
"Big brother" technologies such as ubiquitous video monitoring and networks of sensors are emerging now, all around us. We've got a lot to do to make them work well and to avoid the problems and very real privacy issues that are a part of them. But those technologies are the keys to good things, like making the world safer and cleaner.
Human cloning—too simplistic.
The bad ideas about cloning blot out the good. We don't expect to be able to produce exact duplicates of people. If nothing else, the time it takes to raise a human to maturity is at least 18 years, so evildoers can't suddenly spring clones on us for some evil purpose. Also, nurture takes over from nature and shapes how a human behaves. In cloning we won't be readily able to control the nongenetic part of a person's development. It is much more likely that we'll clone body parts—useful ones. For example, if you need a new kidney, as many people do, it will be practical to make you one that is an exact tissue match.
Next News: What kind of computer do you have?
Mahaffie: I use a Toshiba laptop in what they call the desktop replacement category. That means it's kind of heavy. It's the only computer I have, so I need it to be portable, but adequate for daily use on my desk, too.
Next News: What is the most recent electronic device that you have purchased?
Mahaffie: I set up a wireless router for my home, which is also my workplace. I like to be totally mobile—front porch to back deck—while working or playing on the computer. Visitors can get online easily too, a nice plus.
Next News: What magazines or Web sites do you read that the average person may not have heard of?
Mahaffie: The trick is to find sources you can rely on to help you encounter important stuff. You can always dig deeper with a tip from an E-mail news source. Don't put up with sources that don't yield their worth in ideas, information, and insight. Click delete or unsubscribe—time is too short.
In addition to the mainstream news sources, I depend on:
Slashdot
Its members post science and technology news, share commentary, and otherwise act as a sensor network across the landscape of science and technology, finding out about and interpreting what's happening. You can get a daily E-mail feed from Slashdot.
Magportal
You never know what you might get from Magportal, but its editors find interesting and useful stuff from all over the place. They offer a weekly Hot Articles feed.
GreenBuzz e-Newsletter
This Web site and its weekly E-newsletter cover business activities related to the environment. It's a great source for seeing what business is doing—how far it is willing to go—on environment.
Utne
Utne's weekly E-newsletter magazine is a reliable source for things on progressive lifestyles, politics, and philosophy. Often new things come from those progressive parts of our society and become important and mainstream.
Next News: What is the last book you read that gave you some insight into the road ahead, and why?
Mahaffie: I read a lot of history. Some people will tell you that history is a predictor of the future, but I don't believe that. History teaches us, however, how human systems work and how people change. It also gives us a comparison for how far we've already changed.
I recently read John Steinbeck's The Log from the Sea of Cortez. It's about a scientific journey he made with a biologist friend around the Baja peninsula. They went there in 1940. I read the book while traveling to Baja in December 2003. A striking and sobering realization is how much of the sea life has disappeared, from overfishing, pollution, etc. Without question, we have to reckon with the environment and how to live sustainably now, or many more of our ecologies will be ruined as the Sea of Cortez is.
