The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S., founded in 1966. .[1]
The Society investigates how social, economic and technological developments are shaping the future. On the Society's Web site, it says that it seeks to help individuals, organizations, and communities observe, understand and respond to social change appropriately and investigates the benign effects of applying anticipatory thinking to society.
Through its magazine The Futurist, media, meetings, and dialogue among its members, it endeavors to raise awareness of change and encourage development of creative solutions. The Society takes no official position on what the future may or should be like. Instead it seeks to provide a neutral forum for exploring possible, probable, and preferable futures.
Members
The World Future Society has members distributed worldwide in more than eighty countries. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join this society and actively engage in its programs and events. The Sociey holds an annual conference during July, which usually features keynote speakers and one-or two-day courses dealing with the future.
Chapters of the World Future Society are active in cities around the world.
Membership is open to anyone who wishes to join and can afford it. The society claims that its membership includes sociologists, scientists, corporate planners, educators, students, and retirees. [2]
Web site
The society’s web site features digital library resources about futurism and content from the society's various publications.
Publications
The World Future Society publishes numerous books, including Futuring: The Exploration of the Future (Oct. 2005), written by society founder Edward Cornish, as well as several print and electronic journals, including:
- The Futurist, a full-color bimonthly magazine that reports on a technological, societal, and public policy trends. Among the thinkers and experts who have contributed to THE FUTURIST in the past year are: MIT architecture scholar William G. Mitchell: Washington Post writer Joel Garreau; inventor Ray Kurzweil; Foresight President J. Storrs Hall; Daniel Barnett of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on flu pandemic; Former Harper's editor Lewis Lapham; Center for Strategic International Studies senior fellow Edward N. Luttwak; Pulitzer Prize nominee James Martin; U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker; and former CIA director Robert James Woolsey Jr. among many others.
In 2009, THE FUTURIST published articles by forecaster and Smart Money columnist Jamais Cascio, NASA chief research scientist Dennis Bushnell,[2] Financial Times economist Martin Wolf,[3] workplace expert John Challenger, and Wall Street Journal Gen X columnist Alexandra Levit[4]. The magazine published exclusive interviews with former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, serving U.S. congressman Dennis Kucinich, [5]Harvard evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser, as well as inventor (and WorldFuture 2010 featured speaker) Ray Kurzweil.
THE FUTURIST featured coverage on:
- Powering an energy-hungry civilization with uranium, sunlight, wind, the gulf stream, garbage, ammonia, algae, other sources.[6]
- The potential impact of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology on invention and manufacturing, [7]
- Changing the weather to combat climate change,[8]
- How to create your own artificial island nation, [9]
- The job market of the twenty-first century, [10]
- The future of national security in the age of cyber warfare by former White House advisor Marvin Cetron,[11]
- The influence of neuroscience on traditional ideas of morality, [12]
- World Future Review published bimonthly by the World Future Society as a peer-reviewed academic jounrnal about the practice of foresight. The journal is edited by World Future Society President [3] Timothy C. Mack.
- Futurist Update, a monthly electronic newsletter with topical items of interest to the futures community;
- Outlook, an annual report offering members selected forecasts that can help them anticipate events of the future;
- Learning Tomorrow, a quarterly electronic newsletter with articles of on a wide range of education or training subjects written by WFS members and education professionals around the world.
- Future Times, a quarterly Web journal about the World Future Society and its activities plus a column on new technologies written by WFS President Timothy C. Mack.
References
- ^ [1]
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Blog Dennis Bushnell article from THE FUTURIST magazine, reposted
- ^ THE FUTURISTInterview with Martin Wolf, May-June 2009 edition
- ^ Encyclopedia Britannica Blog Levitt Op-Ed from THE FUTURIST magazine reposted
- ^ The Encyclopedia Britannica Blog Interviews with Newt Gingrich, Dennis Kucinich, others, reposted from the July-August 2009 edition of THE FUTURIST
- ^ THE FUTURIST magazine table of contents, September-October 2009 edition
- ^ THE FUTURIST magazine table of contenst, July-August 2009 edition
- ^ THE FUTURIST magazine table of contents, May-June 2009 edition
- ^ The New York Times Idea Blog, featuring THE FUTURIST magazine, June 10, 2009
- ^ THE FUTURIST magazine The table of contents from the September-October 2009 issue
- ^ THE FUTURIST magazine table of contents, September-October 2009 edition
- ^ The Reinvention of Morality, THE FUTURIST magazine, January-February 2009
The Washington Diplomat interviews World Future Society Tim Mack about foresight techniques and the history of the World Future Society.
A Chicago Tribune story dated July 16, 2009 discusses the World Future Society and its Chicago conference that year.
CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood featured a story about THE FUTURIST magazine in the episde airing September 5, 2009.
External links
- World Future Society (WFS) official website
- [4] The Search for Foresight, an autobiographical history of the World Future Society by Edward Cornish.
- [5] The bio of Timmothy C. Mack, taken from the World Future Society's Web site.
>[6]A Financial Times article about futurism citing Edward Cornish
