Associate Professor Mariana Todorova, Millennium Project, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

I met Ted Gordon in July 2015 at the Millennium Project meeting in San Francisco, which preceded the World Future Society conference. This was my first year with the Millennium Project after meeting Jerry Glenn in Orlando in 2014.

At the conference itself, he spoke extensively, captivatingly, with incredible erudition and the transmission of interdisciplinary ideas about “Black Swans”. Immediately, the possibility of collaboration occurred to me, connecting the identification of “Black Swans” as a phenomenon with the methodology I had developed for forecasting – counterfactual analysis and counterfacts.

Ted believed in me unequivocally. In 2017, we co-authored our article in the World Future Review: “Report on a Study of Counterfacts as a Future Research Technique for Forecasting for Future Developments.” And in 2019, Palgrave MacMillan, Springer published our book “Future Studies and Counterfactual Analysis. Seeds of the Future.”

Ted was a world authority who had the courage to share his giant intellectual achievements with me at the beginning of my academic journey. His legacy is both inspiring and a responsibility. I hope it remains forever in the Pantheon of the world and American intellectual futurists.