The three-year feasibility study of the Millennium Project recommended that special mechanisms be created to allow the participation of people who might not be found by the usual methods of The people who are receiving this questionnaire were selected by one of the follow methods such as recommendations of the AC/UNU's Millennium Project's Planning Committee, recognized contributions to futures research, publications identified during a preliminary literature search, and recommendations of people identified by one of the other methods, and self-selected by subscribing to the Project's public listserv. This is one response to that requirement for allowing for participation by those not found by other methods.
This first activity of the Millennium Project is a world-wide effort to collect and synthesize judgments about emerging global issues and opportunities that may affect the human condition. You are welcome to participate.
It is the Project's intention that this work will provide information to decision makers and educators to add focus to important issues, clarify choices and improve the quality of decisions by making by making future opportunities and dangers more explicit.
Enclosed is the first round of a three round inquiry referred to as the "Global Look-Out" panel. Its purpose is to identify largely unrecognized or seriously misunderstood current developments that may have important future implications. Our formal panel includes about 200-300 futurists and scholars around the world. We also seek new participation of those with fresh thinking, and important insight that might not be recognized by our more standard ways. If you decide to participate, we would appreciate your completing and returning the attached questionnaire by 1 May 1996. We will then collate the results and form a second questionnaire that will be sent to you as soon as possible. The Global Look-Out panel is expected to be compete with three rounds and results will be sent to you and included in the annual Millennium Project's annual State of the Future Report.
As in other studies of this sort, participants will be listed in Project reports, but their names will not associated with any particular answers - your answers will be kept confidential. Please submit as many emerging issues or developments as you wish, but please submit at least one. We would prefer that you respond to this and later questionnaires via e-mail if that is possible. If not, then please respond via fax or airmail. Please see the enclosed instructions.
Elsewhere on this homepage are background and up-dates the Project
Sincerely yours,
Theodore J. Gordon, Director
Jerome C. Glenn, Co-director
AC/UNU/Millennium Project
This first round poses several questions about emerging developments in your field(s) that have future global significance.
You will be asked to identify current developments that may result in future world issues or opportunities and are not yet generally known outside of your field(s). Three examples are given and you are invited to modify these if you wish and add your own developments to the list.
You will also be asked for your judgments about the nature of the future problems or opportunities that may come from the developments you have added and to propose at least one goal or strategy for each development. Please also include any references and notes about the developments you have identified. Space is provided for you to add five developments, but your questionnaire will be included even if you only add one development. You may add more than five developments if you wish, but please include you judgements about consequences and goals for each development that you list.
The second round questionnaire, which will be sent to you in several weeks, will include a summary of the responses to this questionnaire. Newly suggested developments - which might have been suggested by only a single individual - will be provided to the group as-a-whole. You will be asked to provide several judgments about these developments. The second round will also include questions relating to world scenarios that derive from the responses to the first round questionnaire.
Some weeks later, the third round will focus on policy and provide the most relevant ideas as judged by the Global Look-Out panel from earlier rounds for your information and comment.
Please complete the questionnaire and return it to us by May 1, 1996. If possible, please respond by e-mail to: jglenn@igc.org otherwise fax to (202) 686-5179 or mail to: AC/UNU/Millennium Project, 4421 Garrison St. NW, Washington, DC 20016 USA
No matter which mode of response you choose, please include your name and post mail address, and - if possible - your electronic mail address, phone number, fax number, and resume (if you do send your resume, please indicate if it can be added to the Millennium Project's homepage on Internet).
ROUND 1 QUESTIONNAIRE In this questionnaire you are asked to focus on important developments that you think are underway today, particularly in your areas of expertise, that presage world problems, issues or opportunities and are not yet generally known or are seriously misunderstood outside of your field(s).
The criteria for identifying the most important developments include: magnitude or severity of impact, number of people who may ultimately be affected, possibility that policy or human actions can make a difference, imminence of impacts, permanence or irreversibility of effects, and current lack of a responsible decision maker or leadership to address the development.
These developments should have already begun in some small way, but have important implications for the future that are unrecognized or misunderstood. Please also include any references and notes about the developments that you have identified at the end of each development you list.
Three examples of developments are listed; please feel free to change or add to these three examples, in addition to adding your own developments after the three examples. For each development you list, please:
1 = Demographics and Human Resources
2 = Environmental Change and Biodiversity
3 = Technological Capacity
4 = Governance and Conflict
5 = International Economics and Wealth
6 = Integration of these five or whole futures
7 = Other (please specify).
Three examples are given below. Again, your comments on the three examples are welcome, but please add to the list one new development before returning the questionnaire. Space for you to add an additional five developments is provided. You may add as many new developments as you wish.
1.1 Development: HIV is present in 25% of the adult population of essentially all cities in sub-Sahara Africa.
1.2 Potential Consequences: Drastic reduction in the number of bright young people who would ordinarily take over leadership positions; some forms of re-colonialism; fleeing tourism; acceleration of brain drain; collapsing population growth. "By the year 2010, demographers estimate that AIDS will have lowered life expectancy from 66 to 33 years in Zambia, from 70 to 40 in Zimbabwe, from 68 to 40 in Kenya, and from 59 to 31 years in Uganda," according to a National Academy of Sciences (USA) report.
1.3 Potential goal: Once immunization and or treatment of AIDS is discovered, production of a television and radio program on a new morality that also gives immunization and or treatment delivery information that is so entertaining that at least 50% of Sub-Saharan Africans listen to it daily.
1.4 Domain: 1, 4, and 5
1.5 References and Notes: Caldwell and Caldwell, "The African AIDS Epidemic," Scientific American, March 1996. And "Preventing and Mitigating AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: Research and Data Priorities," National Academy Press ISBN 0-309-05480-X
2.1 Development: Increasing appearance of estrogen mimicking compounds in the environment resulting from the breakdown of plastics, insecticides, and other manufactured materials.
2.2 Potential Consequences: Potentially diminished fertility and reproductive capacity of males of all species, including human males, disappearance of some species, backlash against chemical and industrial industries, rise in organic agriculture, pressure for cloning research, sperm banks more popular.
2.3 Potential goal: Coordinated research and funding by producers of these compounds to produce substitution compounds that do not affect reproduction, and production of a simple self-administered diagnostic test to determine current status of these compounds' existence in the body, current effect on the subject's body, treatment options.
2.4 Domain: 2
2.5 References and Notes: "Our Stolen Future: How We are Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence & Survival - A scientific Detective Story" by T. Colbourn, D. Dumanoski, and J.P. Myers, 1996.
3.1 Development: Nanotechnology (or molecular engineering) - construction atom by atom on the scale of a nanometer (one billionth of a meter). In 1990, Don Eigler of IBM moved individual xenon atoms to spell IBM on a nickel plate. The National Nanofabrication Facility (NNF) at Cornell University now has a US $4 million annual budget and 250 graduate students. Other research labs are also expanding.
3.2 Potential Consequences: Improvement of manufactured products with less pollution, energy, and cost making a cleaner industrial revolution economically available to the poorest of countries. Understanding of how nature's green plants' nanotechnology food factories work. Repair of aged tissues and organs extending human life span. Integration of biology and technology for improved bionics enhancing human capacity.
3.3 Potential goal: Develop nano-robots with artificial intelligence that can be programmed for multi-purposes from countering AIDS and other mutating viruses to converting some forms of pollution.
3.4 Domain: 2
3.5 References and Notes: Ralph C. Merkle's homepage http://nano.xerox.com/nano Merkle heads the Computational Nanotechnology Project at Xerox PARC in PALO ALTO, California. The National Nanofabrication Facility (NNF) at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, is the largest facility of its kind and allows external use of its labs for research. Book, The Silicon Man by Charles Platt (charles@phantom.mindvox.com)
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Any Additional Comments are most welcome:
Thank your very much for completing the first round of the Millennium Project's 1996 Global Look-Out questionnaire. Return prior to 1 May 1996 via Email toClick here to return to the main menu of the Millennium Project Home Page