Glen Hiemstra, Founder of Futurist.com

The Future in 50 Years, 100 Years, 200 Years

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:49:59 -0500

By Glen Hiemstra, Futurist.com

On January 9, 2013 Discovery Channel Canada broadcast a short interview with me on the show Daily Planet. The questions had to do with developments that I see in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years. I did a lot of thinking prior to the interview about these time frames, and I’ll be summarizing these ideas in blogs to come, perhaps one grand article.

One question was, “what will be a breakthrough similar to the Internet in 50 and 100 and 200 years?” My thoughts began with the idea of the disappearance in 50 years of the boundary between what we now think of as the online and offline (or real) worlds. In 50 years, devices we carry or imbed will have so completely integrated these two worlds that there will only be “the world” and that world will combine the real and the virtual in a seemless and constant way.

For now, link to the 3 minute video interview here. Discovery uses some nice graphics to illustrate our conversation.

Glen Hiemstra Interviewed on Daily Planet, Discovery Channel Canada 2013

State of the Arts 2012 update

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:22:28 -0400

I had previously mentioned that you would be able to watch the State of the Arts 2012 event online and here it is! I’ll include my favorite segments below, which include an introduction of Hollywood, Health & Society by Sandra de Castro Buffington, and an early look at the philanthropic video game Cyber Hero League with Dana Klisanin.

Building with the eco-brick

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 13:20:59 -0400

As population increases, more homes need to be built. As population and consumption increase, so will our piles of garbage. So, it’s safe to say that in the future we need to build more homes and efficiently dispose of more garbage. How can we build more homes while putting less garbage into landfills? If you skeptically answered “build homes with garbage?” you are correct. The eco-brick is Susanne Heisse’s brilliant answer to alternative trash management. As founder of Pura Vida, Heisse designed the eco-brick out of a plastic bottle stuffed with inorganic trash that, when sufficiently stuffed, can be used as a building block for homes and schools. As of today eco-bricks have been used to build more than 200 schools and several homes throughout Central America. Watch this video and learn more about the super simple, super effective eco-brick.

Innovation’s TEN points of access

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:38:47 -0400

Last week the Ten Conference drew quite the multidisciplinary crowd to the beautiful Sleeping Lady Resort in Leavenworth. Given the innovative and futuristic nature of Ten, all types of people attend- from artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs to publicly traded people.

That’s right, Mike Merrill is the world’s only publicly traded person. From profession to obsession, you can skillfully orchestrate almost every part of this man’s life by purchasing stock in him here. Peter McGraw runs HURL, the Humor Research Lab that focuses on what makes things funny. Beth Kolko uses her company Shift Labs to design innovative health technologies for low resource communities. Shift Labs opts for a more forward-thinking approach to research, encouraging anyone with any background to send in their inventive ideas and solutions to fuel the search for solutions to global issues.

In fact, this cross-discipline collaboration mentality is a major theme throughout TEN. New York’s renowned DIY bio lab, Gen Space, is dedicated to promoting citizen science and access to biotechnology. Anyone with an interest in biotech can show up to learn and play. Actually the entire conference is separated into 10 categories with engaging titles like Hackademia and Makerspace that playfully urge you to have fun with science and technology. If you’re interested in learning more, check out the One to the World broadcast of TEN (coming soon) and be sure to show up next year!

Through art anything is possible

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:37:27 -0400

This weekend I had the privilege of attending an exciting and relatively new endeavor called the State of the Arts 2012 Symposium in the Vortex Dome at LA Center Studios. Held by c3: Center for Conscious Creativity, the purpose of this symposium is to foster creative and innovative ideas from various arts communities that intend to put them into action, and awaken a new kind of future for all of us.

Joining creativity scientists like Dr. Robert Bilder with mindfulness educators like Diana Winston, this event is brimming with possibilities that push the boundaries of what is possible when art frolics with the future. Almost every type of art has a representative at this event. Dr. David Lindsay Wright represents the future of film by combining his international expertise in Futures Studies and filmmaking. Be on the lookout for his newest project, f3, which is sure to raise awareness and cultivate innovation through film on a global scale. Psychologist and video game creator Dana Klisanin is cooking up a revolutionary game that turns playtime into an opportunity to make a real impact on the world’s most complex challenges. Cyberhero League will soon be launching a Kickstarter campaign, so don’t miss your chance to support the development of the game and ultimately, the world.

From video games, to film festivals, to dance performances, storytelling is a big theme throughout the symposium, as most art can be interpreted as a form of storytelling. According to Sandra de Castro Buffington, Director of Hollywood Health & Society, TV storylines can and should be used as a method to reach out to society. Writing television shows with a purpose in mind truly does make an impact on the future. Hollywood Health & Society uses research and industry outreach to create storylines that portray real world experiences. Through these storylines, writers are able to embed valuable messages about important health and social issues, oftentimes offering resources and solutions to the public.

These are just a few of the exciting artistic projects that are being born and bred right now to enact real change for a better future. A special thanks to c3 Founder Kate McCallum for her dedication to keeping this stimulating symposium alive- now let’s bring it up to Seattle!

The city, the future and you – 2030 battleground for sustainability

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:35:43 -0400

This is Part 1 of Chapter 5 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

We are debating the eventual title. We started with two choices: “Downtown” and “Shine…The Rebirth of American Cities.” Which do you like? We hope you will find the subject of interest and follow this book in serial form. A reader has suggested, “City Transformation?” So far, “Downtown” with a subtitle is leading. What do you think?

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CHAPTER FiVE - Part 1
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

BLOG ONE CHAPTER FIVE

Setbacks and hard times are not permanent. Life goes on. There are as many possible “futures” as there are a range of possibilities and potential discontinuities. The dark clouds will give way to sunshine. The choice is up to you. In case you’ve been wondering, the future starts here. Let’s look at what’s coming next.

Expect unprecedented economic growth to put pressure on resources. Emerging demand will outstrip supply and at the same time climate change will have a greater impact on national and global security. Deforestation, agriculture, urban development and manufacturing have always and will continue to shape the world. If we continue our present journey - if we fail to mitigate the effects of climate change - we will expose ourselves to instability and conflict.

Climate Change is the major environmental force. The emergency management community in the United States expects the most visible impacts to occur from natural disasters. Events like Hurricane Katrina can have national security implications domestically and abroad. And still, we continue to invest trillions of dollars in global urban development designing and building in areas of chronic systemic risk.

Cities will have to compete as never before. Greatness will take money and talent. Talent will attract investment that will create jobs. Companies will locate where the talent is. People and jobs will create the wealth cities need to become great. And the circle will be complete. Right enough. But the human brain is hardwired for speed. We get a kick from the danger, the buzz that comes from going fast. Like most of us, transnational corporations operate on an ethic of unbridled economic self-interest, maximizing profits with little regard for ecological costs. Booming, hard-driving competitiveness
raises value issues. Our system of growth, and the system of nature have collided. What’s clear is that our obsessions are costing us the Earth.

Urban development started around 3,000 B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia. Ancient cities were both ‘organic’ and ‘planned’. They weren’t just places where people lived together. They were hierarchies of power and socialization; walled citadels that grew up around marketplaces. Early cities were all about wealth and conquest. In time, urban economies wove themselves into national and international economies. People became units of production and consumption and grew increasingly disconnected from nature, until now.

By 2030, cities will be a battleground for sustainability. America’s response to the challenge of global climate change will define our ability to compete globally. Without cities, a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy as a way and as a means for implementing sustainable development, will always remain an aspiration rather than a reality. Solo survivalism will not work. It will take a village, and we each have a lot of learning to do. Transition times will mean stretching and growing in ways we have never had to before. Even now, people are creating a safety net of resilience that will enable our local communities to survive in peace and security.

In the near future, local initiatives will enable local communities to decouple, even to disconnect if necessary. They will settle local affairs in order to go it independently in the event of shocks to the larger system. They will address potential systemic collapses in the industrial supply system, everything from medicine to food to cars. Think about it. The production of products and services that make our economy run is constructed by a global network of suppliers all over the world – even in unstable regions. An accident or political problem in any number of countries could be disastrous. That’s the risky side of globalization. When one link in that chain is broken, there is no fallback. If and when push comes to shove and communities lose the ability to trade with each other, there will need to be a framework in place to survive. Here is the trick question – how can local communities become both locally more self sufficient, and fully plugged into the beat of the global economy, simultaneously?

Future national security will be a complicated challenge. Great cities will be smart and innovative, committed to proven solutions. Industry clusters will give cities a competitive advantage when it comes to economic development and business attraction. But for clusters to sustain a long-term advantage, research will be necessary. The re-birth and revitalization of American cities will take universities and the young minds they produce.
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[Glen Hiemstra is the Founder of Futurist.com, and curator of Dothefuture.com. Dennis Walsh is a sustainability futurist from Canada best known for his work as the first publisher of green@work. Contact us through futurist.com]

A challenge to Chamber of Commerce

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:34:13 -0400

Today I had the privilege of addressing the Council of State Chambers as they gathered at the Coeur d’Alene resort in Northern Idaho. This organization consists of executives from each state Chamber of Commerce. It was a great opportunity to share my view of future trends and issues and in particular to bring to them my concerns about the challenge we have in the United States to rebuild an economy that begins, once again, to generate a regularly increasing standard of living for the middle class.

As readers of this blog know I’ve been writing about this challenge for a while, in particular since I addressed it in my 2006 book, Turing the Future Into Revenue. It has been thirty years, nearly, that the middle class has seen their incomes flat-lined, with a few good years here and there. This is in contrast to the years 1946 to the middle 1970’s, when the U.S. economy built the greatest middle class ever. Now four forces work together to make it very difficult to recreate those years - technology, global labor competition, public policy, and a national values shift.

A high-tech, information intensive economy tends to drive wealth toward smaller groups of people. Competition from global labor holds back wage gains. Public policy beginning in the 1980s has tended to favor the concentration of wealth. And recently I’ve been thinking that there has been a values shift along the following lines. There was a time, I think, when people went into business to do something great, and if they got wealthy that was a by-product. Now I wonder if the order has been reversed, and people go into business to get rich, and if they do something great or worthwhile, that is a by-product. I might be wrong about this, its just an observation on popular culture, but I think I may have something.

Bottom line is that the Chamber execs were very receptive to this challenge: how do we re-create the conditions to once again build a larger middle class whose incomes go up on a regular basis. I think it can be done, even in today’s world, which is admittedly different than the post-war period. But this, I think, is the great economic challenge today.

The city the future and you – being real

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:30:40 -0400

This is Part 4 of Chapter 4 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER FOUR - Part 4
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

We can do nothing to change the past, but we have enormous power to shape the future. Once we grasp that essential insight, we recognize our responsibility and capability for building our dreams of tomorrow and avoiding our nightmares.

The new wave of sustainability is strategic and opportunity driven. Knowing that and doing something about it are two different things. We can talk all day about urban agriculture and community forestry but our brains see what our brains want us to see. It likes to make things up. Our minds are complex and are often our own worst enemies when it comes to being happy.

Really. Our own brains that we know and love deceive us into thinking something is right when it is really wrong, that we’re in love when we’re not, that we’re happy when we’re really not. Recognizing and debunking the traps our mind leads us into is essential to realizing any lasting happiness. And when it comes to sustainability, our minds often try to trick us into thinking we would be happier doing nothing.

We imagine a laid back life of leisure, deceiving ourselves into thinking this kind of lifestyle makes us happy. The truth is, “chilling” can lead to idleness and that can lead to boredom and depression. We are industrious, creative beings by nature.

We need challenge and accomplishment to be happy. But the deception doesn’t stop there. The mind tricks into thinking we’ll be happy if we get the right job or the right house or the right car or whatever. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with wanting better things but things don’t automatically make us happy. The high they create is temporary high. It wears off. Lasting happiness is a bottomless pit that can never be filled.

The mind never gives up. 24/7 it tells us lots of things are beyond our control. And the media doesn’t help matters much. The way crime and terror is sensationalized in the news can lead us to think that bad guys are everywhere, around every corner. The point is crime and terror are overrated. We can and should do something to change the world and not always fro selfish reasons.

Forty years ago, Chattanooga, Tennessee was one of the most polluted cities in the United States. Air pollution was so bad that cars had to drive with their headlights on in the middle of the day. Men who worked downtown had to bring a change of shirt to wear after going out to lunch because their shirts turned gray from walking outside mid-day. It was a harsh national indictment of a city already plagued by a faltering economy and racial tension that prompted the newly-formed EPA to do something about it. The EPA allocated literally billions of dollars to downtown redevelop the cities downtown. Thirty years to plant 10,000 trees downtown, but Chatanooga came out on top.

We have the power to shape the future. Cleveland is doing just that, embracing urban agriculture. The city has created an “urban garden district”. Land designated as part of the district can’t be rezoned for another purpose without a public hearing. That’s a huge step forward. Things can get complicated when it comes to raising farm animals in the cities. Cleveland’s code allows all livestock with one exception, cows aren’t allowed in residential neighborhoods. Even Seattle permits urban agriculture. But for that city, it’s more of a quality-of-life issue than a strategy for urban renewal.

P-Patches - neighborhood gardens - have existed in Seattle for forty years. But as cities grow in population and land coverage, urban agriculture is only part of the bigger picture. Community forests are another part of what a healthy and sustainable living future really means. At the interface between people and the built environment, community forests are already everywhere in every city; there to provide economic and social value.

You do not know what tomorrow may hold. As for America’s future, assumptions that the best days are over may turn out to be wrong. One day we may all live a new American dream; one of justice and peace and equality for all. Don’t be discouraged. Success is just around the corner for us. Colonel Sanders didn’t start franchising his KFC restaurants until he was 65, forty years after he started serving chicken at his little service station. Never let your mind trick you into giving up.

There is another chapter ahead. Keep moving forward and you will come to a chapter that will pull it all together and make sense of it all. America, the future is all up to you.
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The city, the future and you – urban farming

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:29:24 -0400

This is Part 3 of Chapter 4 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER FOUR - Part 3
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

A society, economy or country is neither great nor successful simply because it amasses the most wealth. It’s not always about money. Health is wealth as well.

Cultural endowments like architecture, streetscapes, and historic sites are considered important economic resources in cities around the world. The World Bank finances heritage conservation. Projects are designed to increase city livability by preserving streets and neighborhoods built at a human scale. By preserving their heritage, cities create a unique sense of place, and that ironically attracts investors.

Child obesity has grown to epidemic proportions in this country. Children need access to safe outdoor places, especially children who live in low income neighborhoods. A few years ago, first lady Michelle Obama introduced the Let’s Move Outside! initiative to solve childhood obesity within a generation by encouraging families to get active in nature.

The Outdoors Alliance for Kids recently released the “America’s Great Outdoors” report with input from more than 100,000 Americans. The report recommends increased Department of the Interior investments in their “Youth in the Great Outdoors” initiative including support for their “Trail to Every Classroom” professional development program for teachers. Partnering with communities, the Alliance works to improve urban parks and to provide outdoor opportunities where most Americans live. The key benefits - 6.5 million jobs created every year from outdoor activities together with the obvious health benefits of spending time outdoors.

Isn’t it true? Everything old is new again. Across the nation, urban gardens and farms are sprouting on empty lots, parkland and in schoolyards. It isn’t the first time U.S. cities have ventured into the agricultural landscape. It’s happened before during major economic downturns, and the 20th century’s world wars. 20 million World War II victory gardens produced nearly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. When the war ended, victory gardens disappeared.

It’s well worth the effort. Cities are embracing agriculture not only to combat hunger and air pollution but also to make themselves healthier and more sustainable. Regardless, most city zoning doesn’t recognize agriculture. Urban growers and agricultural businesses are waiting for the law to catch up while cities scramble to update ordinances to regulate and even facilitate urban agriculture. Zoning rules are tricky. Urban farms can’t use chemical fertilizers and pesticides like industrial farms, so organic farming is common.

In a 2010 study, “Growing Food in the City: The Production Potential of Detroit’s Vacant Land”, researchers at Michigan State University in East Lansing concludes that urban agriculture could supply Detroit with more than three quarters of the vegetables and almost half of the fruits to meet the cities needs.

There are more than 400 community gardens and farms operating throughout the city. Most exist outside of the law because Detroit zoning doesn’t recognize agriculture as a permitted use. That is an unintended consequence of state laws designed to protect rural farms from urban sprawl.
In the mid-range future we expect to see development of high-rise urban agriculture, multi-story buildings that combine living and working spaces with entire walls and terraces dedicated to commercial scale agriculture. Such concepts have become popular in architecture design contests, and before long the first real development is bound to be attempted.

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The city, the future and you – including nature

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:28:18 -0400

This is Part 2 of Chapter 4 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER FOUR - Part 2
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

There is no single formula for achieving more sustainable cities. It’s not just a technical matter. Social sustainability and a healthy community need to be part of the vision. Great cities need to maintain a unique identity, diversity and authentic character. That’s a given. But, when it comes to green or new urbanism, the question is, “How do we tackle the enormous challenge of transforming neighborhoods, districts and communities? How we can re-think the way we design, build and operate in future?

Your future will be a different world. You will change it. The system is failing. You know it and you have no interest in propping it up. To be truly great cities will need money and talent. They will need you because the acquisition of talent leads to investment and investment creates jobs.

A new report from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) confirms that denser, mixed-use cities are greener and more productive at less cost to the tax-payer and the environment. Co-produced by academics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, the report argues investing in the Green Economy will trigger greener, smarter economic growth. Greener cities will, in turn, deliver more jobs, increased social equity and a better quality of life. In the midst of all the chaos that has become “life”, quest for meaning and for spirit are alive and well.

The notion that “city is city and nature is nature and never the twain shall meet” is one of the worst en vogue ideas in architecture and city planning circles. If the biggest things we build are our cities, then it is one of the biggest mistakes we can make to exclude the experience of nature from people who live in them. There is growing evidence of an innate human need for contact with nature.

Urban brains are susceptible to stress, particularly social stress. City dwellers have high levels of anxiety and can suffer mood disorders. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship between environment and mind. Nature and natural settings in cities promote social interaction, physical activity and mental health. People enjoy nature in cities, especially when they have been extensively deprived.

We are in trouble with nature, as evidenced by global warming and species dying. It will only get worse if we continue to banish nature from the city. If we do not dramatically celebrate nature, there will be serious consequences. But if we can learn from nature and come to understand our cultural foundations in nature, we will begin to understand how to design sustainable cities. Great cities know that a clean and healthy environment is critical to quality place. The design of quality places balances environmental, economic and social considerations.

Quality places preserve open space and increase property values. That’s nothing new. Kansas City, Missouri, landscape architect George E. Kessler, predicted that new parks and parkways would increase real-estate values. In the late 1800s, city officials took Kessler’s advice and made new parks and connector boulevards the main organizer in this Midwestern city, a choice that was never regretted. Designers and developers of golf courses know that people will pay more to live near open space.

The Wall Street Journal reports that developers building golf courses these days do so primarily to attract people to high-priced developments. Merely being in a golf-course community, even without a direct fairway view, can add more than 20 percent to the value of a home site … being located next to the golf course can add another $15,000 to $20,000. And if the view includes a pond tack on another $15,000. Future cities will create golf courses, greenways, and urban waterfronts to attract businesses and tourists while increasing real-estate values.

Successful greenway projects across the United States have already served as new “main streets” where neighbors meet, children play and community groups gather. Reconnecting the city to the waterfront is a major future opportunity for cities and towns.

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The city, the future and you – how to compete

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:27:10 -0400

This is Part 1 of Chapter 4 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER FOUR - Part 1
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

BLOG ONE CHAPTER FOUR

Cities are at a crossroads. It’s time to step into the future. For some, the challenge is great; for others, insurmountable. The question now is, “Where do they go from here”?

Cities are in competition. To be successful, cities have to be competitive. They have to compete for people and for jobs. And to be competitive they have to be great: That is the theory anyway. Greatness – you guessed it – means making choices. To reach up for the new, you must let go of the old. Like an Olympic athlete, it takes a world of sacrifice and a willingness to change; to fix what doesn’t work. And these days that is a problem.

Sometimes it seems like cities are much more interested in survival than coming out on top. Success means adapting and constantly changing. Failure to adapt leads to disappointment and missed opportunities and that is not sustainable. If you are going to succeed, you have to enter the race. Survivalist cities avoid collapse, entering the race through innovation; innovation that has to happen faster and faster all the time, hoping to transition into the next wave of growth.

Seattle, Washington did that some time ago, committing to Kyoto goals and persuading 590 other U.S. cities to do the same under the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Soon after that, San Francisco became a leader in green building. Austin became a world leader in solar equipment production and made great strides in preserving open space. And Chicago invested hundreds of millions of dollars to revitalize its parks and neighborhoods building some of America’s most eco-friendly downtown buildings and becoming a leader in green roofs. But New York City - with densely packed housing, reliance on mass transit and walking, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s green policies – may have made themselves the greenest of all. When it comes to economic growth and the creation of jobs, the denser the city the better.

What does a great city look like? Like it or not, the trends tell us the future belongs to town centers, main streets, and mixed-use development. And national chains are listening. Wal-Mart and most of the other big box stores are planning new urban stores in cities all over America, while as many as 400 former Wal-Mart stores and other big boxes sit vacant on commercial strips across the country.

In great cities, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is a growing trend. Designed as a neighborhood community and organized around a pedestrian spine that extends out toward a grid of walkable tree-lined streets and parks, these developments promote a walkable, pedestrian friendly community. Downtown centric rail transit networks increase mobility and easier access to jobs. The Urban Land Institute predicted in its 2011 emerging trends report that any new development in the United States will focus on infill. The new norm is small infill projects with access to public transportation and retail stores. And for that reason, most analysts agree that cities and urban neighborhoods are the new land of opportunity for retail.

Such ideas are a reflection of the New Urbanism, which was born in Miami decades ago, at the hands of the city-planning duo Ms. Plater-Zyberk and her husband Andres Duany. Architects Duany Plater-Zyberk’s (DPZ) designed the island community of Aqua in Miami Beach, and master planned some of the city’s older areas. Challengers argue that, “density is not the cure-all and that wealth can’t be created just by crowding people together”. They say if density was the cure all then the super-dense metropolitan areas in emerging Asian countries would be richer than American cities.

It isn’t an easy transition. Cities still struggle to get the “mix” right. But they have an incentive. In America at least, multi-phased redevelopment projects can make cities more resource efficient, Mixed-use development ties into efforts to revitalize America’s downtowns. Changes to city centers are being made one block at a time and they are becoming profitable places for businesses to locate.

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South Africa, the future and big data

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:26:09 -0400

It was a whirlwind tour in Johannesburg, South Africa this week, one that I hope is repeated sooner than later. Two impressions of this trip stand out.

First, the client that invited me to Johannesburg, SAS South Africa. SAS is a company focused on high performance analytics of what is called, these days, big data. They are quite an amazing company, started some 35 years ago a University consortium led by UNC, still headquartered in North Carolina, but now with offices around the world. Historically they have done business analytics, such as watching for credit card fraud, or assisting large retailers in assessing and predicting sales patterns. The story they told at this Executive Forum quite literally changed my own image of the future. Vice President for Platform Research and Development Paul Kent described the new architecture to which they have migrated their analytics, from essentially single computers to parallel processing, meaning racks of so-called “blades” of computers. Parallel processing is nothing new, of course. But, when Paul illustrated how processing times for various analytics have come down in the last 18 months from two days to a few minutes or from 4.5 hours to 60 seconds, I knew the world has indeed changed. Imagine, he said, a room of company decision makers wishing to run various sales forecast simulations. Formerly they could re-set assumptions and hit run, and come back the next day to see how it looked. Now they can re-set parameters, hit run, and see the results in a minute, thus enabling them to run many simulations in a single meeting. Pretty mind-blowing stuff.

Second impressions, the city, the country, the people. I was fascinated and not completely surprised that what people, from the many press events we did to the executive audience to every taxi driver, wanted to talk about the future of the country. On the one hand South Africa has joined the MBRIICS countries considered to be the global leaders in growth in coming years. Hope has run extremely high since the revolution of 1994, and South Africa is indeed still the leading economy in Africa. They have been hit quite hard by the global downturn, however, with a growth rate that has fallen by more than half, though they are still growing. But the number one issue on everyone’s mind is what to do about the very extreme wealth gap in the nation – they are ranked among the most severe in the world in terms of the gap between the top and the bottom. Readers of mine know that I have been speaking on the growing wealth gap in the United States, something I first noted in my book in 2006 as a major issue for the future if not addressed.

A fundamental challenge in South Africa, as in the United States these days, is how to build an economy that ignites, or re-ignites the growth of a middle class – with more people joining the middle class and middle class wages increasing again, something that has happened only sporadically in the U.S. over the past 30 years and has barely happened in South Africa. This is neither a simple, nor a trivial matter. The success of democratic capitalist societies depends on growth in opportunity, not its opposite. We had many discussions of these issues, as compared to the standard future trends listing that is typical of many of my engagements. I found it refreshing and challenging.

A final impression. I was struck by the beauty of Johannesburg – varied neighborhood districts spread over a hilly countryside. And I was more struck by the determined optimism of the people I met, an eagerness to take a significant role on the global economic stage. As I pointed out to the audience, in the states people mostly ask me, “are our best days behind us?” In Johannesburg, from the press to the client to others I spoke with the dominant question was, “How can we build the future?” Despite deep frustrations in the country with the slowness of change (highlighted by the mine strikes going on while I was there this week), still the dominant mood that I felt was a palpable energy for tomorrow.

On CNBC Africa, Glen Hiemstra

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:25:10 -0400

Right now I am in Johannesburg, where I am to speak to the SAS South Africa Executive Forum on high performance analytics and big data tomorrow, Sep. 12, 2012. While here SAS has arranged a number of media appearances including this interview on CNBC Africa last night.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist, author, speaker, consultant, Founder of Futurist.com, and founder and Curator of DoTheFuture.com. To arrange for a speech, workshop or consultation contact Futurist.com.

The city, the future and you – new models

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:23:23 -0400

This is Part 4 of Chapter 3 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER THREE - Part 4
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

Imagine for a minute that it is all up to you. Work with us on this. What if we really are at the beginning of an economic and social transformation? Are there technologies available to make that transformation? The good news is there are and some of them make economic sense.

When it comes to cities, modeling whole systems is problematic. The challenge is complex, even overwhelming, though becoming easier as computing power increases. But what if you could break that challenge into groups of smaller, less complex, challenges.

The challenge is to find the best technologies and integrate them into high performance products. That could be a good business opportunity but that would take collaboration. Universities, government and the business community would have to be involved. Everyone would bring an entrepreneurial spirit to the party. That doesn’t happen very often. That’s where you come in. Think about it. If you had the vision, you could seize the opportunity and help to create new opportunities.

South Korea is showcasing the world’s first zero carbon business building in Incheon, near the capital, Seoul. It was built at a cost around $8 million U.S. dollars and uses 66 different technologies, including solar and geothermal. The new Bullitt Foundation headquarters in Seattle seeks a similar goal. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a mission to develop U.S. military based to be net zero in energy and carbon emissions – with no net energy imports and no carbon output.

An even bigger dream, near Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, consists of six main buildings, one street, 101 small apartments, a large electronic library, and the Masdar Institute. This is Masdar City, an eighteen billion dollar project right in the middle of an Arabian desert. A few hundred people live there traveling in driverless electric cars, along shaded streets cooled by a huge wind tower and a Big Brother-style “green policeman” monitoring energy use. Eventually if the economics can work the dream is to house tens of thousands in Masdar, and to act a model city of the future. Showcase cities are critical in the important process of culture change toward sustainability.

In the near future, you will work in offices embedded with sensors to monitor and maintain the environment. Most offices will be outfitted with wall-sized screens that project 360-degree views of videoconference participants. How cool is that? It’s coming. Billions of dollars are going into making sustainable offices and the greener, the better.

Green and sustainable also has to be attractive – why live in a green city if its dull and boring? When you think of any successful city – London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Sydney – what do you think about? You think of fun, exciting, inviting and economically vital places to live, work, and play – and oh by the way if they sustainable then all the better.

A high-speed ferry service runs every 20 minutes between Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The ferry blurs the boundaries of the five boroughs and integrates the city. Economic incentives will revitalize Pier 6, which remains the largest port on the American east coast and provides seven billion dollars in business revenues. Pier 6 is being transformed it into a park where Brooklynites will watch open-air films on summer nights or stroll up to Brooklyn Bridge, where the waterfront has been converted into glorious green public space.

Canada’s west coast Dockside Green is in the forefront of global urban planning. Located in Victoria, British Columbia, some say Dockside Green is the eco-community the world is talking about; a showpiece of sustainable design and technology. This is a new-generation, 15-acre mixed-use waterfront community designed to reflect a more responsible approach to the environment. Dockside Green is a triple bottom line development with shared focus on economic, environmental and social goals. (The xyz triple bottom line means the development is successful economically, environmentally and socially.)

With a total of 1.3 million square feet of residential, office, retail and commercial space planned, it raises the bar for the future of sustainable harbor front communities. Dockside has won awards for their development including residential, live/work, retail, office, light industrial uses and extensive public play areas and cultural centers.

There is only so much water in the world; only so much topsoil; only one atmosphere; and only so much CO2 that can be stuffed into that atmosphere. We need a new vision for the planet. One that is socially vibrant, ecologically restorative and economically sound. Dockside Green redefines sustainable waterfront living as we know it. Superior building practices have transformed the site from a contaminated industrial wasteland into a healthy, lively community. It is truly unique, created around the principles of smart growth, green building and sustainable community design in harmony with nature. Imagine that.

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Beyond Oil 2012 – Commerce month is here at the Next Fifty

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:22:13 -0400

Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute founder and author of “Reinventing Fire” is the first to give a presentation at this year’s Beyond Oil Conference, one of the first events to kick off Seattle’s Next Fifty month of commerce.

Lovins opens his presentation, aptly named Reinventing Fire, by asking us a question: “What if we had energy do our work without working our undoing?” According to Lovins, today 90% of America’s energy comes from non-renewable sources. Oil is risky. Prices yo-yo for both user and buyer, and at this point it’s costing the U.S. $6B per day. Add that to the environmental impacts and the fact that petroleum products are a finite resource and we have a problem. What’s the first step to fix the problem? Make automobiles oil-free. Technology makes electrification accessible. Lovins gives an example of an electric car that has only 14 parts, meaning 99% less tooling, 2/3 smaller powertrain, less time spent and eventually, less cost. In the end, Lovins asserts that first we need to get efficient and then we need to switch fuels, keeping in mind that electricity is key to the new energy era.

After other speakers remind us of electric trolley cars and the Bonneville Power Administration, John Boesel, CEO of CALSTART gives his presentation, entitled Multi-Fuel & Tech Future=Choice & Optimization. Boesel’s main objective is to explain and promote the EV Employer Initiative. This initiative encourages companies to offer their employees on-site electric vehicle charging stations. Google has some of their 300 parking spaces equipped with solar canopies and EV chargers. Not only does this make long commutes possible for electric vehicle drivers, but the charging stations also serve as workplace showrooms, inspiring conversations and informing more people about the benefits of electric vehicles.

Bob Lutz of GM talks about his love of electric vehicles, especially the Chevy Volt, and warns that as long as gas cars are cheaper to buy and run, driving electric will be a hard sell to consumers. In the end, Lutz affirms that accessible and affordable petroleum in its various forms will be around a long time before the long-term solution ultimately becomes electric cars.

Hosted by Event Chair Steve Marshall, Beyond Oil offers us a diverse array of professionals with interesting perspectives on the roles oil and renewable energies will play in the future. It’s safe to say this conference gives audience members plenty of valuable insight into the numerous possibilities that we face as we think about moving from oil to renewable energies like wind and solar power. I want to know how we can get Lovins’ presentation shown to all U.S. auto manufacturers and policy makers. And how do we provide irresistible incentives for companies to utilize the EV Employer Initiative? If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to share!

The city, the future, and you – sustainability leadership

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:20:22 -0400

This is Part 3 of Chapter 3 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER THREE - Part 3
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

You and I have a responsibility to change the world. Even as others resist change or wish to go back in time, life is too short to pretend that we can just wait or go back. The question we all face is whether we just sit back on the couch, grab a cold one and say, “Well that’s just the way it is, nothing I can do about it.” Or whether we are willing to do what we can to shape a better future.

Cities are at a crossroads with little choice but to change direction. Our minds deceive us into thinking something is right when it is really wrong. We imagine living a life of leisure, deceiving ourselves into thinking this kind of a life will make us happy. The truth is that idleness is boring and even depressing.

You are an industrious, creative being. You need challenge and accomplishment to make you truly happy. There is nothing wrong with wanting better things but these do not automatically make us happy. They may create a temporary high that quickly wears off. It’s a bottomless pit that we can never fill.

The good news is that the decline of weakly managed large cities is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Cities can tackle infrastructure gaps. They can improve planning. And more importantly, provide high productivity jobs. Countries like the U.S. and Britain hope that so-called social entrepreneurs can help find answers to those challenges. Young public-private partnerships and social entrepreneurs have a role to play. Cities are broken and in many cases social entrepreneurs are fixing them.

Building better cities in the future is not about more controls, taller fences, or more effective leadership from the top; it is people and their willingness to change – to become sustainable. The new wave of sustainability is strategic and opportunity driven. For business, it is a response to a changing economic landscape (borrowed wealth and externalized social costs are unsustainable) and to world context. It is a backlash against environmental negativity. In reality, it is celebration of inspiration and the power of people to ignite emotion.

To build better cities, we need to work together. Everyone can be powerful influencers setting trends for others to follow. Here is something cool. Celebrities have jumped onto this environmental bandwagon by embracing issues from animal rights through to deforestation and famine. Crowned ‘Queen of Green’ by Vogue magazine, Cameron Diaz is not just a pretty face. She lives sustainably. Her MTV show Trippin’ takes viewers on eco-adventures to endangered habitats around the world.

Leonardo DiCaprio sets a benchmark for people in the public eye. DiCaprio wrote, produced and narrated The 11th Hour, a documentary in 2007. He partnered with Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer on a limited edition Aquaracer 500M timepiece, with sales benefiting two of his favorite causes. And he maintains a blog on environmental issues and green living.

Daryl Hannah is an organic gardener and strives to “carbon-neutralize” herself living in a house that is off the grid. Hannah is a long time environmentalist who has previously been arrested for green causes.

There is a new breed of fashion designer whose aesthetics match their ethics. For example, Natalia Allen established herself as the design futurist early in her career by setting out to design sustainable fashion from the farmers field to the recycle bin for used clothing. She has become a sought after global leader and consultant to fashion companies. Ethical fashion is growing in status from a trend into a full-fledged movement.

One thing is clear – public spending for large-scale new programs is difficult. Global warming will accelerate as systems operate past their capacity. Without skillful management, cities will become centers of decay, gridlock and pollution. Tuition increases, student protest rallies and staggering cuts to the state budgets are a running narrative. In thirty years, the United States is expected to be a majority minority nation. Social challenges like reducing poverty and improving education will not go away easily. But at least people are trying in a myriad of ways to address these issues. And while the global economy remains a conflicting, confusing mixture of boom and bust economies, it is encouraging to know that some people are out there working together for change.

Where all of this is leading us is uncertain. What this has to do with cities is open for discussion. You might say that uncertainty is the new normal. The old order has been so shaken that it has become impossible to describe exactly what the present or future holds. And yet, more and more people are asking, “Where are we headed? What is the vision of the future?”

One thing is certain: we are all at the beginning of economic and social transformation to a sustainable world. Crises are, after all, tremendous opportunities. Ten years from now, youth will make up the majority of the global population, this despite the age wave going on at the same time. So, the future is all up to you.

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Michio Kaku on the future

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:19:14 -0400

Shape shifting, invisibility cloaks, artificial intelligence. Michio Kaku talks about what we can expect to see in the future and what our intelligence level is now.

The city, the future, and you – declining infrastructure

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:18:03 -0400

This is Part 2 of Chapter 3 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER THREE - Part 2
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

This is a great day to be alive, don’t let it pass you by. The economy may be down, but in tough times, you’ve got to draw a line. What goes on around us should not limit us. The truth is it shouldn’t, but it does.

No mayor in America brags about his city shrinking. No council member wants to hear that her ward no longer exists. It’s like admitting defeat. But the reality is declining cities are less desirable for everyone for many reasons.

Shrinking cities aside, the population of the United States could hit 420 million by 2050. If that happens, there are serious questions about how the infrastructure is going to handle the strain. How bad is the situation? Considering much of that infrastructure is buried and records of the locations of all the underground pipes and cables are often unavailable or incomplete, we know it’s not good.

An inefficient electrical grid causes losses billions each year for U.S. businesses. And what about water? Dams are aging. Some wastewater systems are more than 100 years old. The EPA estimates a million miles of sewer underground across the U.S. Raw sewage spills accidentally from systems designed to carry only sewage, not waste water. Waste gurgles from manholes and rushes down streams and rivers somewhere in the country every day. The U.S. needs to spend some two trillion dollars to rebuild its infrastructure. No one really thinks that is likely to happen in the face of budget deficits.

Our nation’s economy and our quality of life require highways. Next to safety, congestion is a critical challenge facing our highway system. Americans spend over 4 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. The problem is more obvious in urban areas, where decaying transportation systems cost the American economy billions of dollars in lost time and fuel every year. U.S. transit systems are rated poorly by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It seems transit use is increasing faster than any other mode of transportation even as transit funding is on the decline. An estimated 25% of nearly 600,000 bridges in the U.S are rated substandard. Think of what that could mean; closures, even collapse.

In cities themselves poor construction and development practices can make earthquakes more deadly than they need to be. The 2012 earthquake that killed more than 220,000 people in Haiti is a perfect example. Port-au-Prince has nearly three times as many people — many of them living in poverty — and more poorly built shanties than it did 25 years ago. Had the same quake hit in 1985 instead of 2010, the death toll would likely have been far less. In February, an earthquake 500 times stronger than the one that struck Haiti hit an area of Chile that was less populated, better constructed, and not as poor. Chile’s bigger quake caused fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Not all cities are declining. We’ll read about those later. Cities often prosper when they reduce inequalities. They are learning to transform a potentially negative environmental impact to a positive one. These cities are part of the solution, the answer to the demands and challenges of the future.

Groups of people have recognized the urgency for infrastructure investment for sustainability, even as Tea Party activists have been advocating disinvestment. That political movement wants nothing to do with smart growth or sustainability. And above all, nothing to do with the United Nations’ Agenda 21, a two-decade old document addressing sustainable development in the cities around the world. And that raises some interesting questions about civic engagement that may take some soul-searching.

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By Glen HiemstraOn September 5, 20120 comments The city, the future, and you – shrinking cities

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:54:22 -0400

This is Part 1 of Chapter 3 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here on futurist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER THREE - Part 1
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

Hard times are not for all time. We missed the signs and got caught in a bad place. But life is too short to waste in the wrong place. The question is, What are going to do about it?”

Cities are at a crossroads. You know that. We all know that. The question is, do we want to change course?

Yours may be the first generation in decades to face worse economic prospects than your parents and even grandparents. You deserve better. And you know what, we believe that you will make things better by laying the foundation of a new American prosperity and by driving a vibrant green energy economy. You and others like you will reinvent and rebuild our nation’s infrastructure. You will do that by galvanizing the immense potential of the private sector through innovation and creativity. That’s what it is going to take. The need for local innovation is greater than ever before.

The problem is many American cities are in trouble, their economies failing. There are social issues that have not been dealt with. At the same time there are cities that are rebounding, improving. A new attitude, a new awareness is growing, and all over the country.

Skeptical? Consider this: the decline of weakly managed large cities is neither inevitable nor irreversible. But for our cities and towns to function successfully, we must make them great. We must make them sustainable. Sustainability cannot happen at the global scale - that is far too vast to be knowable or controllable. It will take cities capable of addressing the social, economic and political imbalances in the world. At this scale such problems can be resolved. It is time for optimism. We are, after all, more optimistic than realistic by nature. Without optimism, our ancestors wouldn’t have accomplished much.

We are entering a new era, the era of cities. It is difficult to imagine anything more intriguing. Cities are disorganized, yet promising; unruly, yet filled with creative potential. Cities are inspirational, magical places. Centers of artistic and intellectual creativity, seats of political power, focal points of invention and discovery, cities are the engines of economic development. Across the globe, metros with populations over one million account for more than half of the world’s economic output and nine of every ten innovations, while housing roughly one out of every five people.

Did we say cities are shrinking? Every sixth city in the world is contracting. Yet other cities grow. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, there is no limit to how big or fast a city can grow and growth can’t continue without sparking an environmental crisis. Growing cities have to face the fact that cities consume two-thirds of our total energy and produce over 70% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. Some people say that urban life is out of balance. Uncontrolled urban development can’t continue.

Thankfully, there is a deeper side to American culture. Under layers of advertising and hyper-consumerism, there’s a move to simplify life, to free up space, budget and time. Some of us are looking for a new less stressful way of life. Some have decided that owning less “big stuff” like houses and cars makes sense. There are signs that older American cities have been slowing down. And they’re reinventing themselves.

The idea goes against the stream but it appears that if cities can grow in a smart way, they can shrink smartly. A case in point: If you want to see what the future of America might look like, drive through Detroit. Confused?

It seems governments are genetically programmed to grow when they can, and to ossify when they cannot. Detroit is an extreme example, but America is full of school districts, townships, counties and cities that made sense once but no more. You might say Detroit, like many other cities, missed the signs and got caught in a bad place. But as we said life is too short to waste in the wrong place. And so, cities are at a crossroads with little choice but to change course.

Like it or not some cities are growing too fast and some are slowing down. Many are shrinking. Blame it on lack of planning if you like. That’s where problems begin. But in the end, slower population growth creates problems of its own.
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The city, the future, and you – be the change

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 21:42:29 -0400

This is Part 4 of Chapter 2 of our book on the future of cities, being written wit Dennis Walsh. Our plan is to publish a new book blog nearly every day for the next couple of months. We will publish them both here onfuturist.com and on dothefuture.com. Later we will compile the blogs into an e-book.

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CHAPTER TWO - Part 4
by Dennis Walsh and Glen Hiemstra

50 years ago the first group of Freedom Riders boarded a bus in Washington, D.C., and headed south to lead the charge against American racial segregation. Their plan was to defy Southern social order by traveling as an interracial group through Southern cities before ending their tour in New Orleans. The Freedom Rides took a step toward doing what they felt was right at great personal risk and with no guarantee of success.

Others joined them in “Doing the right thing”. And it wasn’t long before the environmental science came into the emerging social movement. News of the Vietnam War shocked America with stories of birth defects and environmental poisoning caused by chemical defoliation of Vietnam’s jungle. There were protests against Dow Chemical recruiters on campus. Nixon devoted his 1969 State of the Union message to the environment, signing the National Environmental Policy Act saying that “the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debts to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water, and its living environment. It is literally now or never.” Can you imagine a political leader saying that today, and meaning it? They will, someday, but only when public pressure rises again.

It was 1970, the same year as the anti-Vietnam Moratorium and Earth Day took off led by a new generation of students less revolutionary than the SDS. New environmental organizations were created to lobby and advocate within the system: the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters. There was an incident involving the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York. Buried toxic waste forced entire neighborhoods to be abandoned. A few years later, dioxin contamination forced the evacuation of Times Beach, Missouri. And by the latter half of the 1980s, the global chemical industry knew it was in trouble, its environmental reputation in tatters.

Against this cultural backdrop, American cities were in a slump. Downtown storefronts were failing. Industries were down sizing. Shopping centers were expanding on the outskirts of the city. Suburbs grew, freeways expanded, bus and rail lines died, the great hollowing out of cities was nearly complete.

Influential feminist writer and urban planner, Jane Jacobs saw this coming. Jacobs became involved in urban activism, spearheading local efforts to oppose the top-down neighborhood clearing and highway building championed by New York City Parks. Jacobs became the chairman of the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway, in reaction to Moses’ plans to build a highway through Manhattan’s Washington Square Park and West Village.

To Jacobs, cities were living beings and ecosystems. She saw each element of a city – sidewalks, parks, neighborhoods, government, economy – functioning together synergistically just like natural ecosystems. Modernist urban planners of the time seemed to reject people living in complex communities. They often preferred to separate residential, industrial and commercial.

Jacobs disagreed with them. She was an urbanist, an activist who wrote about a fresh, community-based approach to city building, advocating “mixed-use” urban development and challenging traditional approaches that blamed high density for crime, filth, and a long list of other problems. Jacobs considered high concentrations of people vital for city life: A critical mass of people is capable of supporting more vibrant communities. To Jacobs, the ideal city meant diversity; mixed uses, short blocks, buildings old and new and in different states of repair and density. New York City’s Greenwich Village was her version of a vibrant urban community.

Once again, we stand at a crossroads. In one direction lies business as usual, the road we have traveled for decades. The other path leads to a far brighter future. We cannot wait for some future generation to make this change. We need a revolution in humanitarian values. Only then can we hope to create a more stable basis for world peace. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
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