Futures

Futures

Doug Belshaw  //  

Oct 30 / 11:25am

The need for futurists

From Wired article, The Future needs Futurists (July 2005):

Being a futurist sure sounds like a fun job. Observe the world at large, amass predictions and inspire awe at one's visionary talents.

But is there a future in it?

According to the Association of Professional Futurists, prospects are starting to look quite promising. As companies and government agencies grapple with the seemingly scorching rate of technological innovation and change, more are engaging the services of self-described futurists for advice on how to adapt.

"Making future forecasting more of a formal field could be a great step toward moving some of the techniques into public policy," said Howard Rheingold, a futurist and author. "I'm not saying it's possible to predict the future, but grappling with what's happening today and where it's going is an important priority that seems to be ignored on the policy level." 
 

For those wanting to train as futurists in a more conventional setting, academic options are limited. The University of Houston Clear Lake and the University of Hawaii at Manoa run two of the better-known programs offering master's degrees in futures studies and alternative futures, respectively.

In many ways, techniques employed by futurists don't fit into traditional academic disciplines. Futurists, Jarrat says, aren't as dependent on numerical data as other forecasting professionals such as insurance industry actuaries or stock market analysts. Although she incorporates demographics or economic data in her research, Jarrat says her conclusions tend to be "more qualitative than numerical."

In an age of relentless technological progress, such an approach has an advantage. While computers are quite adept at making numerical forecasts, for the foreseeable future it will still take a human to interpret what the numbers mean, said Ian Pearson, futurist at British Telecom.

"Computers are hopeless at handling subjective information," he said.

Filed under  //  futurism   Howard Rheingold   qualifications   quotation   training   Wired  

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Oct 30 / 11:08am

The future of solar power?

This graph is via Cool Infographics who cites a Fast Company article from December 2008:

At the left-hand, present-tense end of the scale, solar power is a microscopic pencil line of gold against the thick, dark bands of oil and natural gas and coal, an accurate representation of the 0.04% of the world's electricity produced by solar power as of 2006. The band grows slowly thicker for 20 years or so, and then around 2040 a dramatic inversion occurs. The mountain-peak lines indicating the various fossil fuels all fall steeply away, leaving a widening maw of golden light as solar power expands to fill the space. By 2060, solar power is the largest single band, and by 2100 it is by far the majority share.
...
"The hypothesis of SunPower," Werner tells me, his argument bottom-line blunt, "was take a high-technology, high-efficiency solar cell and mass-produce it at low cost. And it worked." He slides a small pane of glass out of a file folder. It's about the size of a household floor tile and inlaid with a blue-black hexagonal pattern. This is SunPower's PV cell, which, at 22% efficiency, holds the world record for a commercial product. (The industry average is about 16%.) He holds it up for my inspection, and I notice the hexagons are identical to the ones on the tabletop between us, which turns out to be a large SunPower panel mounted on four legs. "As you create this market for solar," Werner says, "you create the opportunity to scale. And so what happens is, you innovate your way down the cost curve."

 
Filed under  //  article   energy   FastCompany   graph   power   quotation   solar  

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