Don’t be alarmed, but the next 10 years could be the most significant in the history of the human race. The unsolved problems of the last century have grown in size and urgency. Issues such as climate change, governmental fiscal imbalances, the demographic shift to older populations, depleting resources, and increasing technological complexity could cause major disruptions in the next decade as our species arrives at what futurist William Halal calls a “crisis of maturity.”
Some of the questions we will have to address in the next decade include:
* How do we deliver inexpensive and reliable health care to a rapidly aging population?
*How does a civilization maintain economic growth and prosperity in the wake of overdevelopment, misuse of wealth, and profligate exploitation of resources?
*Will the Internet bring democracy and freedom to the people of the world who live under authoritarian rule? Or will nondemocratic regimes appropriate the power of information technology to spy on their own citizens?
*What’s the best method for educating our children for an ever-more competitive and demanding economic environment?
In a series of essays to run in this magazine throughout 2010, we hope to bring you some answers. We will ask 20 individuals, each with a unique vision and a unique voice, to share with you their hopes, fears, and ideas for the next 10 years and beyond. Some of these voices offer a new approach to the problems that we’re facing today. Other voices highlight an issue or dilemma that will grow as a major concern. All of these individuals offer solutions, and all are highly independent.
Why is independence important? Look closely and you’ll see signs that a global shift is occurring. Technological breakthroughs and globalization are imbuing ordinary people with new powers, from the street activist in Beijing organizing a flash demonstration on his phone to the entrepreneur in Kenya who’s just made a biofuel breakthrough.
History has seen the transfer of power from mobs to empires and from empires to states and corporations. This most-recent transmission of control, from giant institutions to small groups and citizens, could be our last if we fail to wield power properly.
We have the opportunity to redefine “progress” for a new era. Technology and globalization are presenting us with opportunities to build entirely new futures from the ground up.
In this first series of essays, we tackle health and education. Andrew Hessel showcases his vision for open-source drug manufacturing and noted nanoscientist Robert Freitas details the medical future of nanorobotics. Then two teachers — Janna Anderson and Mark Bauerlein — present two distinct visions for education in the twenty-first century.
Let the visioning commence. — Patrick Tucker

By John M. Smart

The elephant in America’s living room right now is that there is not nearly enough quality choice, specialization, and personalization on television. According to many social critics, 70 years of lowest-common-denominator, mass-produced, big-business-driven TV content and news has hobbled Americans’ education and narrowed their worldview. It has stunted their social participation and increasingly distracted them with entertainments, as in decadent Roman times.
Those who want sustained, in-depth television coverage of any particular issue; who want more transparency, accountability, foresight, and the ability to measure progress (in their own or their party’s terms) on an issue; who strive to see the United States in global context; and who desire collective action to fix a problem are today unable to use society’s primary electronic medium. They can’t use it to interact with their fellow citizens or to produce programming worthy of their communities.
As the Internet advances, however, this is beginning to change.
In recent decades, many European and Asian developed countries have become more equitably regulated in media ownership and transparency, and they are much further along in wired and wireless access to the Internet than the United States. Not coincidentally, these countries also have superior educational performance, much stronger social safety nets, more-extensive personal rights, and greater citizen participation in governance. Many, including Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, are centers for world-leading manufacturing run by high-paid workers.
The same can no longer be said for the United States, as demonstrated by the nation’s persistent trade deficits and the 60-year collapse of steel, auto, and manufactured goods industries. Only 4% of all American firms and 15% of manufacturers do any exporting at all, according to Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth College. The export economy has so little diversity that just 1% of U.S. firms account for 80% of exports.
But perhaps the deepest problem that the United States faces, as documented by the Gini coefficient, is that the rich–poor divide has grown so much in the last 40 years that it now rivals emerging nations, countries like Venezuela, Argentina, China, and Mauritania. Meanwhile, the developed countries mentioned earlier have all become more income equal over the same time period. Data-backed books like Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s The Spirit Level (Bloomsbury Press, 2009) document that income inequality leads to greater crime, educational failure, illiteracy, unemployment, poorer health, teen pregnancy, obesity, mental illness, homelessness, class warfare, and political deadlock.
Ingenuity and the right incentives can fix these problems, but the United States will first need new groups of citizens that recognize them as problems. U.S. leaders don’t have the ability to change the system on their own. Furthermore, as the income gap data suggests, these leaders are increasingly among the ultra rich, so they may not be motivated to change the system.
To change this state of affairs, access to true Internet television, not the walled gardens that cable companies offer American consumers, will be a critical piece of social equity.
I argue that access to the Internet’s media universe in our living rooms, with appropriate content controls for youth, should be the right of every citizen in a developed society. It’s also something that the major telecommunications companies like Verizon and cable companies like Comcast want to slow down, according to testimony from public-interest groups like Public Knowledge, the Center for Public Integrity, and even industry groups like the Competitive Telecommunications Association.

How Television Could Rise From the Wasteland

Robert Putnam’s perceptive book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon and Schuster, 2001), chronicles the loss of social identity and interpersonal relationship complexity that occurred in U.S. towns and communities from the nation’s 1950s zenith to today’s nadir. Putnam names a number of culprits for this, but principally blames television.
Network television steals our eyeballs out of complex, two-way, social interactions in human space. It focuses us instead on one-way electronic messages. In The Assault on Reason (Penguin, 2007), former U.S. Vice President Gore says that average American consumers have seen a steady loss of complexity in the political conversation in the last 50 years, and the quality of American media is directly to blame. Network television is, on average, a “vast wasteland,” and has been so for decades, as then-newly appointed FCC chairman Newton N. Minow said in his famous speech in 1961.
TV production quality now rivals the movie studios, and programming choice has slowly expanded over the years (as noted in The Economist’s May 2010 report on the future of television, Changing the Channel). But compared with video on the Web, which includes user-created channels like YouTube’s Disco project and peer-to-peer offerings, television is less competitive than it was. Cable television gave U.S. viewers first 50, then 90, then 150 channels of slightly more interesting wasteland.
I argue that access to tens of thousands of specialty channels, a variety of content-aggregation options, and collaborative filtering by peer and trusted expert rankings would better serve U.S. social needs. Such a system will enable all those who wish to do so to eliminate unpersonalized advertising. What we need is two-way communication: person-to-person and many-to-many, not one-to-many. What we need is an electronic re-creation of the interactivity of the 1950s communities that Putnam chronicles, but in digital space, with the modern world’s collective intelligence and diversity. Social networks are a start, but not nearly enough. Web 3.0, comprising TV-quality peer-to-peer video delivered on the Web, will be the next major step in this progression.
Film and television remain among the least competitive and democratic of all media. They have historically high development costs (your average Hollywood movie costs more than $106 million). We’ve seen small cracks in the film distribution monopoly in the last decade, with all the new documentaries produced by “filmanthropists”—folks who mortgage their house and self-finance low-budget films with $100,000 of capital or less. Many of these filmmakers can now make their money back, plus a small profit, just by using the personalized Netflix content distribution and rating system (“you told me you liked this film, so you may also like this new film”), which surfaces such niche films for users to consider. Most of these films would never get on cable TV or the retail floor in any Blockbuster or Hollywood Video store. More recently we also have Netflix’s Watch Instantly (streaming video), iTunes movies, and a few other Internet outlets for independently produced specialty content.
Imagine how much more important, entertaining, and educational video we will see once most of us have Internet televisions at home, managing our access to thousands of online video aggregation environments. Want to see a three- to five-minute public domain film summarizing a Wikipedia page? You’ll be able to pay 25 cents for it through the iTV of tomorrow, and eventually someone will make that film for you (and all of us), and make a profit. The media marketplace will be forever splintered. The old media corporations, and their big federated ad clients, will have given up trying to keep the lid on our choice. The new video universe will finally have arrived for everyone.

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Four scenarios for Indonesia in 2010 were launched on 1 August 2000 at the Proclamation Statue in Jakarta. A quarter of a million copies were slipped into newspapers around the country. They contained four pictures of what Indonesia might look like, in the form of stories entitled 'On the edge', 'Into the crocodile pit', 'Paddling a leaky boat', and 'Slow but steady'.
These were not predictions of the future, nor were they strategic plans. They did not describe some utopian future or even one we would quite like, but simply possibilities that might occur because of what we do today.
One of several approaches to picturing the future is known as scenario planning. Scenarios are a tool to help us perceive different futures, each of which is influenced by decisions we make today. Put simply, they are a combination of stories - written or oral - that make up a bigger plot. A scenario gives a multi-perspectival picture of a complex future. Precisely because the future is unpredictable, scenarios are good planning tools.
Creating a scenario is a dialogical process that brings together different visions and interests. The aim is to bridge the gap between key analyses of present day problems and various possibilities in the future.
Our view of 'the future' usually contains three elements: what is likely to happen, what I would like to see happen, and what might happen. The first leads to prediction, the second to subjectivity (wishful thinking). But scenario planning emphasises the third - what might happen.
Scenario building has been much used in international business, but it has also been used at the national level. Perhaps the most famous example of the latter is the South African Mont Fleur process. In 1991/92 South Africans came up with four scenarios of what might happen there in ten years time (2002). In 1997/98 Columbians produced Destino Columbia, with four possible futures for the year 2013. Most recently, Guatemalans built three scenarios that they named Vision Guatemala. The small island state of Singapore has been using scenario planning since 1993. Japan has three scenarios for the year 2020.
The steering committee for Future Indonesia 2010 consisted of about thirty individuals - academics, human rights workers, politicians, economists, businesspersons, religious figures, military, and others. They were supported by the Future Indonesia Working Group, including Asmara Nababan, Marzuki Darusman, Binny Buchori, Emil Salim, HS Dillon, Felia Salim, Emmy Hafild, as well as some facilitators - Daniel Sparringa, MM Billah, Edy Suhardono, and Rudolf Budi Matindas. These groups wrote the preparatory studies and then spread the word to many different groups all over Indonesia.
It all began with a meeting in Bogor early in 1999, where activities were set in train to eventually come up with the Future Indonesia scenarios (Indonesia Masa Depan). The idea was to stimulate discussion, fresh thinking, and debate among Indonesians about the future of their country. We hoped that some collective consciousness would be born within society that tomorrow is the result of our actions and decisions today. We also hoped people would not stay trapped in mutual recriminations over the problems of today or yesterday, but would set out on a constructive journey in search of the alternatives stretched out before us in the future. This way, we hoped, the Indonesian public would take part in thinking about Indonesia's tomorrow, and become involved in creating that future.
Various groups within society, each as varied as the other, then began taking initiatives. They engaged in dialogue, while avoiding dogmatism. It began in East Java in July 1999, where about thirty quite different individuals from all over the province came together. For three days, they tried to build future scenarios for Indonesia in 2010, from an East Java social perspective.
Similar dialogues followed in other cities and regions, among them Medan, Mataram, Riau, Makasar, Samarinda, Pontianak, Palangkaraya, Bali, Yogyakarta, West Java, Kupang, Jayapura, Central Java, and Jakarta. Fourteen dialogues were held in all.
The results of all of these dialogues were then compiled and synthesised in a national dialogue meeting attended by representatives from each region.
A great number of fresh ideas came out of this dialogical process, as did much anxiety and sharp criticism about what kind of future Indonesia was heading for. Among the matters most often raised in the discussions were these: centralisation and decentralisation, injustice, religious conflict, the growth of democracy after Suharto (including cynicism about it), law enforcement, gender issues, constitutional amendments, national leadership, environmental and cultural exploitation, state involvement in the economy, relations between Javanese and non-Javanese, and the role of the police and military.
All these issues could be divided into two groups - those that mainly concerned people in Java and outside Java. Participants within Java focused more often on the rule of law, whereas those outside Java focused on (de)centralisation. However, civil society issues concerned everyone, whether within or outside Java.
New ideas are not always readily accepted, and so it was with this dialogical project. Depending on their region of origin or their personality, people responded in many and varied ways. People outside Java often felt suspicious there was some hidden agenda at work in the project. Inside Java, on the contrary, suspicion was far less. It generally revolved around the question of who would benefit from this dialogue, where the money came from, and whether there was a 'conspiracy' behind it. It was an exhausting process that now and then broke out into frustration when confronted by these various 'bad' thoughts.
Very clear explanation was especially required when speaking about the concept of the scenario. Unless misconceptions were cleared up here at the very beginning, they were likely to reinforce already existing prejudices. However, as the dialogue proceeded, suspicion, pessimism and cynicism tended to recede. Sometimes the dialogue closed in quite a touching atmosphere, as people said with tears in their eyes that their suspicions had been unfounded. Whichever wise person said that democracy is expensive and exhausting, said a true thing.
Scenario planning is a clever instrument to explore the views that live within society. Straight from the heart, these views can then become the basic capital for a strong civil society in Indonesia. Ironically, the Future Indonesia dialogues often threw up some strange contradictions. At a moment when so many participants had the opportunity to represent the strength of civil society, they often spoke like government spokespersons. As a result, it was hardly surprising if at times the vision put forward was no real alternative to the dominant vision produced and reproduced by the state. Even more saddening was the discovery that many participants seemed to retain the New Order perspective that there is only one truth. This made it very difficult to make the necessary linkages leading to a new future.
However, scenario planning is a vital tool in learning democracy. In several regions, the dialogue forum became a medium for reconciliation between various elements of society that had hitherto been at odds with one another over the spoils of office. Even if they did not become a collective movement, the forums bore witness to a new possibility and created a space that brought people together without regard for the attributes of power, politics, ethnicity, religion or social standing. Let us hope that this kind of dialogical process can continue, drawing on the lessons that have already been learned. The choice is ours - we, the people of Indonesia. And Indonesia's future is made today.

Rumah ramah lingkungan bukan hanya menjadi trend. Kini perilaku dan sikap ramah lingkugan telah menjadi gaya hidup. Banyak yang bisa diubah dari pola hidup Anda untuk bersikap ramah lingkungan, termasuk rumah Anda.

Lingkungan yang seimbang akan memberikan efek positif bagi lingkungan dan alam. Dengan membatasi penggunaan terlalu banyak elektronik akan mengurangi dampak global warming. Berikut beberapa tips untuk rumah ramah lingkungan:

1. Tambahkan jendela di rumah Anda. Banyak jendela berarti akan lebih banyak cahaya yang masuk dan udara juga akan terasa sampai ke dalam rumah. Sehingga tidak perlu banyak menyalakan lampu dan memakai Ac.

2. Pilihlah elektronik dengan energi yang rendah. Menurunkan konsumsi energi berdampak baik untuk lingkungan selain itu Anda dapat lebih irit dalam pembayaran listrik.

3. Ganti lampu rumah dengan bola lampu dengan watt lebih rendah. Lampu ini memang lebih mahal dari yang biasa, namun bola lampu ini bertahan lebih lama. Telah terbukti bahwa jenis bola lampu ini tidak hanya rendah energi,
pencahayaannya pun lebih terang.

4. Lebih memperhatikan konsumsi air. Jangan biarkan air terlalu lama mengalir. Misalnya saat mandi atau mencuci piring sebaikanya bila sedang sabunan air dimatikan kerannya. Hal ini membantu pengiritan air.