Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
This article was originally published in Teach magazine.
For most of the 18 years I’ve written this column, I’ve focused on how education will change. This time, I’m going to focus on why it must change, and it relates to the purposes of education.
There are two major schools of thought about the purpose of education, and for some strange reason, most people believe they are mutually exclusive. One school believes that education should primarily be devoted to the enlightenment of the individual, to equip them with the mental tools to enable them to appreciate the fine and important things of life, and to enable them to contribute to their society and the world. The other school believes that education should provide the individual with the skills they need to get a good job and a vocation, so that they can support themselves, contribute to the economy, and enjoy the material things of life. Both are right, and they are actually mutually supportive, not mutually exclusive – but that’s a topic for another day. (more…)
Tags: America, America's future, American economy, automation, Canada, Canada's future, Canadian economy, education, employment, foreign competition, future, future of employment, future of jobs, jobs, labor force, teachers
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Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
What follows is a summary of a presentation I delivered to the World Education Congress of Meeting Planners International in Vancouver, Canada at the end of July, 2010. This was part of a series of “Flash” presentations, each limited to 15 minutes, which didn’t leave a lot of time to elaborate. I’ve fleshed some of the points out here, but the most important reason for approaching the future in this way is that it is never shaped by just one thing, but rather by a confluence of forces, many of which are conflicting.
The next 10 years will dramatically change your life and almost everything in it. And while there are lots of things likely to change, I’d like to focus on 10 that will be of particular importance to you personally, to our society, and to the meeting planners generally.
Someone always benefits from change – and those who will benefit most will be those who prepare most successfully for what’s to come. Since I’m necessarily going to have to be brief, I would encourage you to contact me if you’d like to discuss any or all of these 10 points. (more…)
Tags: America's future, ascent of women, automation, automotive industry, Canada's future, climate change, computer intelligences, economic uncertainty, electronic health records, employment, energy, energy revolution, everyday robots, future, future of energy, future of health care, future of oil, future of pharmaceuticals, green economy, health care, health care revolution, health care threats, increased productivity, longevity, meeting industry, meeting planning, MPI, oil, peak oil, pharmaceuticals, political turmoil, robots, sex trade, social turmoil, status of women, the next 10 years, the purpose of life, transhumanism, women
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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
And now that we’ve officially embarked on Summer, it’s time for something completely different, as Monty Python famously remarked.
Mathematics is a thing apart, like nothing else in our world. It’s a human invention (I think), but not like other inventions. It exists in our minds and nowhere else – although its effects are felt everywhere since science, engineering, and technology have adopted it as their language. Yet, despite the fact that most people lump math and science together, they are very different. (more…)
Tags: God, intelligent questions, math, mathematics, Monty Python, philosophy, reality, something really different, the mind of God, the nature of reality, what is real
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Monday, March 29th, 2010
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
‘America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.’
– Abraham Lincoln
Unless America and Americans force a drastic change in the country’s direction, the American dream is dead, and America’s place as the leader of the world is over. I find this intensely distressing and worrisome, and have hopes that the situation may yet be retrieved, but the time available is short. Americans have repeatedly overcome fearsome odds throughout their history to survive and thrive, but if there were ever a time when they needed true grit, self-sacrifice, and a willingness to cooperate with other Americans of different backgrounds, politics, and beliefs, it is now. (more…)
Tags: America, America's future, American economy, American politics, Bush, demographics, education, financial disaster, future, government finance, Medicare, Obama, Social Security, Tea Party movement, teachers, teachers unions
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Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
This is the second of two parts on the future of health care over the next 25 years, which I developed from a series of different, but related, presentations I made to a wide assortment of organizations. The first part, which dealt with what such a system might be like, was published on March 5th. This part covers how we might get from here to there.
There are three principal issues that will drive health care over the next quarter century: an aging population; technology; and money. They are linked, but different. Let’s start with demographics. (more…)
Tags: 5-FU, baby boomers, colorectal cancer, demographics, doctors, financing health care, Fluorouracil, Genetech, genetic programming, genetics, Genetics*Squared, Gleevec, health, health care, health care future, health care politics, Herceptin, medical research, medicine, new drugs, Novartis, pharmaceutical research, pharmaceuticals, research, robots, technology, the future of health care
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Friday, March 5th, 2010
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
This is a collation of a number of presentations I’ve made in the last few months to groups involved in health care, pharmaceuticals, and even food processing. It encapsulates a lot of what I believe will happen in health care over the next 25 years. Because it’s over 6,000 words in length, I’ve cut it into two parts. This first part will deal with what health care is likely to look like in 25 years’ time. The final part will deal with how we might get there from here.
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To begin, I need to impart a sense of the dramatic changes that are going to occur in health care over the next quarter-century. Intellectually, we all know that there are going to be a lot of changes, and significant ones to boot. Emotionally, though, I really doubt if any of us believes, in our heart-of-hearts, just how dramatic these changes are going to be. (more…)
Tags: 2035, biotechnology, future, future medicine, future of health care, future of medicine, future of pharmaceuticals, future of the pharmaceutical industry, future scenario, health, health care, medicine, pharmaceutical industry, pharmaceuticals, scenario, technology biosciences, year 2035
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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
The world is experiencing another pandemic, this time of a relatively little-known disease. While most people have never heard of celiac disease, they may wind up contracting it, and if enough people get it, it may spell the end of the pizza industry, as well as commercial disaster for the sale of normal breads, cakes, pastries, and other baked goods, plus it will deliver an enormous financial blow to grain farmers[i]. Allow me to first explain, and then speculate. (more…)
Tags: autoimmune, autoimmune diseases, celiac, celiac disease, Crohn's, Crohn's disease, disease, epidemic, future, futurist, MS, Multiple Sclerosis, pandemic
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
This is the second in a series of blogs on the likely events of the next 10 years.
If we’re lucky, 2010 could be a lousy year. If we’re unlucky, 2010 could be a disastrous year, worse than 2008, because there are potential nasty surprises lurking out there. Such surprises could precipitate another, even worse financial crisis, and dump us into a global depression, instead of the recession from which we are now emerging. I’m going to deal with the issue of the nasty surprises in a later blog, so just for the moment, I’m going to assume that none of them will happen, and the economic future will unfold about as it looks now. And, although I’m looking out to the year 2020, I’m going to start by looking at 2010 on its own before moving beyond there.
The Prospects for 2010
America is out of its recession, but I would hesitate to call what we have now a recovery. It’s true, U.S. GDP grew by a reported 3.5% in the third quarter of 2009, but that was, in many ways, misleading. In the first place, it was heavily influenced by government stimulus, especially the “cash for clunkers” program. Since government stimulus will be tapering off in 2010, and the car incentives are finished, this source of economic strength will be missing. But even more revealing, barely was the ink dry on the reports of 3.5% GDP growth when they were revised downwards to 2.8% – an unusually large and rapid downward revision.
To see what’s ahead for the U.S. economy, let’s start with public sentiment. One of my favorite indicators of economic strength is the frequency with which the word “recession” appears in the mainstream media (“MSM”). This indicator has been known and used for decades, but before the Internet, you had to be in the MSM to have the ability to perform this count. In 1995, I realized that I could do it myself using Googles’ news website, and since September of 1995, I’ve done just that every week, and then graphed the results. Here’s how this graph looks today (the X-axis has been inverted since “recession” is inherently a negative idea):
© Copyright, Richard Worzel, December 2009.
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Tags: 2010, 2020, America, American economy, Brazil, Canada, Canadian economy, China, currencies, Europe, global economy, greenback, India, loonie, outlook for 2010, outlook for 2020, Rapidly Developing Countries, RDCs, recession, recession indictor, trade, U.S. dollar
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Monday, December 14th, 2009
This is the first of a series of blogs contemplating the developments out to the year 2020. There will be at least four more in the weeks to follow.
Ten years seems like an eternity if you’re talking about technology, but is almost nothing if you’re talking about the Earth’s environment, which tends to shift at the pace of geological changes. Yet, the next 10 years should refute that idea. I expect we will see measurable shifts in climate that will effectively end any serious debate over climate change. Despite this, there will still be extremists on both sides of the debate shooting at each other – and anyone else who happens to get into their line of fire.
That being said, how do I expect things to change over the next 10 years? Let me tackle this from the bottom up:
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Tags: 2020, climate, climate change, David Suzuki, ecology, environment, George Kukla, global warming, next 10 years, R.E. Munn, Rudi Dornbusch, water
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Friday, December 4th, 2009
This is a continuation of last week’s discussion of risk management, which appeared under the title Risk Management for 2009 and Beyond.
Now let’s turn to some of the methods that can help you with risk management. Remember at the beginning I told you that risk management involved asking the right questions about what might happen in the future, and then making the best plans you can to deal with events that occur? So, how do you ask the right questions? The future is such a broad topic that you can’t usefully think about it all, all at once. Accordingly, if you ask vague, general questions about the future, you’ll get vague, useless answers. Instead, look for ways of breaking the future into manageable parts. I’m going to give you two ways of doing this, both related, with the second one of particular value for the kinds of risk management you do. The general process is called scenario planning, and the second part is called Wild Card scenarios. Let’s start with the overall process
Our society seems to feel that if you can’t decide exactly what’s going to happen, if you’re not prepared to be manly and decisive, then you are somehow defective. Yet, my opinion is: the future is inherently unpredictable, so why fail at something that’s impossible when there’s a better alternative? And that better alternative is to consider a range of possible futures, then think through how you would deal with each one if it happened – to come up with a Plan B to deal with a Future B. (more…)
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Friday, November 27th, 2009
What follows is an amalgam of presentations I made to two risk management groups in very different sectors: one in health care, and the other in insurance. The principles are the same, even though the immediate concerns may differ.
Let me start by defining risk management as the process of asking the right questions about what might happen in the future, and then preparing the best plans you can to deal with events that might occur. Hence, if there’s a major pandemic, and if you’ve considered that possibility, have a plan prepared to deal with it, and the plan works reasonably well, then you have adequately managed that risk.
And yet, I very much doubt that any contingency plan, no matter how well you prepare it, will deal with everything that happens – you will still be caught by surprise in some regards. This is why you always need to do a “lessons learned” assessment after each crisis. Your task in risk management, though, is to both to be able to cope with problems as they arise, and to be prepared to change your plans when new, unexpected developments occur.
I’m going to approach risk management from a futurist’s viewpoint, not from the body of risk management literature, so my view will be different from the risk management texts that are out there. (more…)
Tags: America, American economy, banking crisis, banks, Canada, Canadian economy, crisis, drug research, environmental scanning, flu, flu pandemic, governance, health care, health insurance, influenza, outlook for 2010, pandemic, pharmaceutical research, pharmaceuticals, recession, risk, risk management, Spanish flu
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Friday, November 6th, 2009
Two topics that are consistent hot buttons in the corporate world are innovation, and leadership. Both are in high demand for conferences, seminars, and workshops. Yet, what is not quite as apparent is that the two are related: one can lead to the other. (more…)
Tags: corporate management, enthusiasm, excitement, future, innovation, leadership, motivation
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Thursday, October 15th, 2009
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
An edited version of this article first appeared in the November/December 2008 edition of Teach magazine.
In my last blog, I talked about how we both can and should move away from the local monopoly of whatever teachers happen to be available to a given student. To recap, what I am proposing is that each student’s curriculum be customized to suit the talents and interests of that student, and that instruction should be focused to emphasize that student’s learning style and emotional intelligence. I also suggested that the instructors should be selected based on who would be the right fit for that student instead of giving the student whoever happened to be nearby. To do that would, almost inevitably, rely on new ways of using technology. In particular, this approach would depend on distance learning to make available educators who might not be nearby, self-directed learning at the student’s pace, plus using technology to supply and support the information flow and gauge the student’s accomplishment. I also suggested that each student’s progress should be monitored by his computer, using biometrics. This would assess their interest, engagement, and motivation, but under the supervision of a human tutor or guide who would intervene when difficulties or uncertainties arose.
This time, I’d like to talk about how we might accomplish this. Right at the outset, though, I should say that I do not know how this will happen, only how it might happen. Predicting the future accurately and consistently is not given to humans, including (or perhaps especially) me. (more…)
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Sunday, September 6th, 2009
Teachers from Socrates up to the present have taught in much the same way: by lecturing in person to a group of listeners. There is a lot to recommend this approach, not least that we are all familiar and comfortable with it, and it’s simple to do: take people interested in learning (or who are required to be present), add someone who knows the material, and presto! You have a class. Everything else is a frill. Add to this that we know the large majority of in-person communications is non-verbal, and lecturing has a power that goes beyond the mere conveying of data or information.
But there are two major drawbacks of in-person lecturing: it imposes a de facto geographic monopoly on education, and a one-size-fits-all mentality on teachers and students alike. Let’s look at the geographic monopoly first, and then segue into differentiated instruction for each student.
(more…)
Tags: education, future of education, society, teachers, teaching
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Friday, August 14th, 2009
Have we hit bottom? Are we starting up? Yes, and no. Yes, we’ve probably hit bottom. No, we’re not starting up – at least the United States isn’t, and most of the developed world will see feeble growth at best. Yet, the global economy is growing, and we are seeing the biggest disparity ever between the developed and developing countries in terms of growth. Recent reports indicate that the rich countries (the “developed” ones) will show a decline in real GDP of about -3.5% for 2009, while the developing countries, led by China and India, will see growth of about +5% – a difference of 8.5%. How can this be? And what happens next?
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Tags: America, American economy, Canada, Canadian economy, global economy, green shoots, recession, recovery
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Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
The polarization of American politics is evident from the way that Republicans and Democrats seem to loathe each other. They scream at their counterparts; they rant for the cameras; their surrogates in the press besmirch each other as worse than foreign enemies. Indeed, the fact that John McCain, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for president, in his concession speech urged his followers to support Barrack Obama as president, was seen as a betrayal by Republicans. And the fact that President Obama has tried to reach out to moderate Republicans at times is seen as a betrayal by the Left, and an attempt to colonize and domesticate the center of American politics by the Right. (Let’s ignore, for the moment, that broadening your base is smart politics, and frankly what any smart president or national leader should do. The fact that George W. Bush made no attempt to reach out beyond his narrow, partisan base, save in the dying days of his administration, is merely one of many pieces of evidence that confirms my belief that he wasn’t a smart president. It has also left his party in dire straits.)
Now, American politics has always been a blood sport, right back to the conflicts between Jefferson and Adams, Hamilton and Aaron Burr, or Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. I can remember the first presidential election I was old enough to be aware of, Eisenhower versus Stevenson in 1956, where the popular jingle that made the rounds was crudely partisan: “Whistle while you work; Stevenson’s a jerk; Eisenhower’s got my power, so whistle while you work.” (My folks were Republicans.) But what’s happening today is much worse, dangerous to Americans and the rest of the world as well, and it all comes back to something we learned about in high-school social studies: gerrymandering.
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Tags: America, America's future, American politics, geopolitics, gerrymandering
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Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
And now, as Monty Python once said, for something completely different.
Have you ever tried to explain the game of (Major League) baseball to someone who knows nothing about it? I tried once, back in the 1980s, to explain it to my (English) father-in-law, and found to my dismay that baseball is a game that doesn’t have rules, only exceptions. Allow me to illustrate.
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Tags: baseball
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
I’ve been a free trader all my adult life. I studied international trade in university, watched it develop with the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement in the early 1970s, and have seen the amazing consequences of globalization, which has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of desolate poverty. Moreover, it makes sense: free trade is merely an extension of occupational specialization, so that just as it makes sense for the cobbler to make shoes and sell them to the farmer in exchange for food, it makes sense for countries to do what they do best, and trade with each other.
Of course, freer trade (because we don’t really have free trade) has a downside. It creates winners and losers. Some folks do very well out of free trade, including consumers who get cheaper goods, plus those who are capable of competing and finding new markets. Some folks lose their jobs, as those jobs migrate to other places where the wages are lower, or there’s a natural advantage. I remember hearing one labor leader, who represented workers at GM when those workers were on strike, saying in a radio interview that “We’re not going to let workers in other countries take our jobs just because they’re willing to work for lower wages.” I thought to myself: here’s somebody who’s really out of touch with reality: why should you be able to keep a job if there’s someone else who can do it as well, but for less money? Of course, if you have the job and are losing it, you will naturally object that it’s unfair. But I can’t see as you can make a reasonable case to anyone not related to you that you are entitled to that job.
But my purpose here is not to defend free trade, but, perversely, to warn about one of its unintended consequences. The fundamental (and correct) premise of free trade is that it destroys older jobs, and creates new jobs that offer better pay and working conditions. But it does that only if workers have the ability to fill more demanding jobs that require more thought and higher levels of education. Otherwise, workers wind up competing by cutting their wages or taking poorer, less rewarding service jobs. (more…)
Tags: America's future, American economy, Canada's future, economy, employment, free trade, global economy, jobs
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Monday, June 15th, 2009
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
All developed nations are struggling with health care because of their aging populations. In America, for instance, the Great Debate is on, chock full of noise and nonsense, about providing universal health care. Those opposed say that it is socialized medicine, and therefore a sin, and bad. Those who are for it say health care is a human right, and therefore a virtue, and good. And I can’t (or won’t) resist adding a couple of asides: (more…)
Tags: demographics, government finance, health care
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Monday, June 8th, 2009
by futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.
I’ve written about robots on several occasions before, but want to revisit the subject because the arrival of robots is imminent, and portends more than just science fiction characters come to life. First, let’s review where we are.
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Tags: economy, robots, society, technology
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