Jose Cordeiro, MBA, PhD

The loss of Ted has been a tragedy for all of us futurists, and particularly in The Millennium Project family, which he cofounded with Jerry. Ted was a pioneer in futures research and an inventor of many futures methodologies, in fact, Ted developed more foresight techniques than anyone else in history, and that is a major claim for future generations!

He was also a mentor and a friend. Even though his reputation preceded him, I first met him in person during 2000 at the World Future Society annual conference, and he impressed me so much, that I told him and Jerry that I wanted to help and create the Venezuela Node of The Millennium Project. That was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship throughout the years.

From the beginning, I was very enthusiastic about his work about the Delphi method and the RT Delphi and contributed in all his studies since he started with this methodology then. I also loved the State of the Future Index (SOFI) methodology and coordinated with him the SOFI for Latin American countries during several years. I was also very happy to collaborate with him on some projects using Cross Impact Analysis and Trend Impact Analysis, and thrilled to help writing some scenarios and Delphi surveys.

We also worked together in the “2030 Latin America: Delphi and Scenarios” study that eventually became a very successful book that we promoted all over Latin America, and I even had the possibility to present in sessions about Latin America with the World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland, and Lima, Peru). This was the start of more initiatives about Latin America and Spain, including the creation of the Ibero-American Foresight Network RIBER (Red IBERoamericana de Prospectiva), where he was one of our major supporters.

Ted also came to Venezuela for our futurist annual conference of the World Future Society Venezuela, even if Caracas was in turmoil during his trip. In fact, we could not find a hotel for him, and I offered instead to stay in my parents’ home in Caracas, and he gladly agreed, while we kept on trying to find a hotel for him during two days. He also invited me to stay in his homes in Florida and in Connecticut, and teased me about flying planes, but I sadly could not manage to make those visits.

Besides a great futurist, Ted was also a great family man, with a beautiful wife and a wonderful family. His wife Annie was always happy and full of life, I loved talking to her, until unfortunately she passed away recently. This was of course a tragedy for him, but Ted kept working until the last minute, including the current AGI study with The Millennium Project.

In 2022, I told him that we had to collaborate in the Future of Life Institute competition about AGI in 2045, he gracefully agreed and probably worked more than me in our proposal, which ended up being one of the winners for The Millennium Project as a whole, and it represents a memorial to his genius, so I am really excited to review it in the year 2045, and everyone should see it with his ideas, visions and scenarios.

The week when Ted died, I was going to write to him trying to convince him about cryonics, just in case, since we had already talked about human cryopreservation before, and I also had mentioned it to Jerry. Very sadly, he died while I was traveling in Central America, and I never had the chance to tell him once more how much I admired him and how much I owed him in my own life. A great human being is gone, and we have to stop this tragedy of aging and death.

My personal goal now is to accelerate the advances towards indefinite life extension and, as Plan B, cryonics should be considered by everyone. We are living in an incredible time thanks to science and technology, as Ted believed too. My view is that we are between the last human mortal generation and the first immortal generation, and we should not lose more wonderful people like Ted. Fortunately, we might be able to recreate most of Ted by the year 2045, thanks to all his great legacy and public accomplishments that have shaped history and molded the future.

So, this is to you dear Ted: see you back here in 2045…

Futuristically yours,

La vie est belle!