The Choice is Yours

column by Gregor Wolbring 

August 15^th, 2009 

http://politicsofhealth.org/wol/2009-08-15.htm

This is a short column. I covered the state of the future publication last year. It’s again out and, as I think it’s interesting reading, I write about it here again. Most of the info is taken directly from the webpage without paraphrasing. The 2009 State of the Future is written and compiled by Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu from the Millennium Project.  

This “report card on the future” distills the collective intelligence of over 2,700 leading scientists, futurists, scholars, and policy advisors who work for governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, universities, and international organizations. The 2009 State of the Future comes in two parts: a 100-page print executive summary and an attached CD containing about 6,700 pages of research behind the print edition and the Millennium Project's 13 years of cumulative research and methods. Some unique features not available in other global assessments include:

• International assessment of 35 economic elements of the next economic system that could help improve the human condition over the next 20 years;

• 15 Global Challenges Prospects, Strategies, Insights;

• State of the Future Index with and without the world recession;

• Emerging international environmental security issues;

• applications of the Real-Time Delphi technique;

• 750 annotated scenario sets;

• and much more futures intelligence on technology, environment, governance, and the human condition.

It is produced by the Millennium Project with its 32 Nodes (groups of futurists and organizations) around the world, which collect, feeds back, and assesses insights from creative and knowledgeable people on emerging crises, opportunities, strategic priorities, and the feasibility of actions.

The executive summary can be found here.

This is new in the 2009 report.

The Choice is Yours:

It seems the State of the Future is something many people should give their input on whether its retroactive on the 2009 report or through involvement in the commenting phase of the 2010 report. Any feedback could lead to a better product. A short (about 2 minutes) video version of each of the 15 Global Challenges is available on YouTube 
And every year there is a - World Competition for Highschool Students, Academics and Teachers  Addressing the Global Future. I think not enough high school students take advantage of this opportunity. For this year you can have a look at  Global Millennium Prize 2009- Click on the category you fit on the right side of the page  

As usual, the more people participate the more they can shape the future.

 
All of the "The Choice is Yours" articles till June 2009 can be found here, after June 2009 here

Gregor Wolbring is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. He is Affiliated Scholar, Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, USA; Part Time Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa Canada; Adjunct Faculty Critical Disability Studies, York University, Canada. He is a science and technology governance scholar, a disability/vari-ability/ability studies scholar, and a health policy and science and technology studies researcher. He is the Chair of the Bioethics Taskforce of Disabled People's International. He publishes the Bioethics, Culture and Disabilitywebsite, authors a weblog on NBICS and its social implications and on  Ableism and Ability Ethics and Governance  and contributes to the What Sorts of People blog.

Please contact the author for additional information on this article or for other references at gwolbrin@ucalgary.ca

© Gregor Wolbring, All Rights Reserved, 2009. Please contact the author for permission to reprint