How creative are you when thinking ahead?

Planning for the future is a creative process. You have to be well-informed in many fields and know techniques of forecasting. But you also have to be imaginative and creative. The three questions here measure normative aspects of creativity.

Question 1. Is the NASA official accurate in his forecast that by 2035 a woman on a lunar or a Martian colony will probably not need to come back to Earth to have a baby?

This is actually an irrelevant question. A single-track.

By 2035 not only will there be large colonies of people on the moon and on Mars—a lot of other advances will have been made:

• By 2035 women will not carry babies in the womb. We will have moved beyond today's asexual insemination—embryo transfer—sur­rogate mothering—frozen embryos. We will have total in vitro repro­duction (ectogenesis). The entire process of fertilization and gestation will take place in wholesome synthetic wombs. We may also reproduce through cloning.

• By 2035 reproduction will be totally preplanned. Computerized screening of stored sex cells will lead to cross-fertilization of the best features of different donors (mosaic births).

In 2035 therefore where anyone will be will have no bearing on reproduction.

Question 2. It has often been projected that the sun-belt regions of the world will be the most populous in 2020 because retirees from the north will keep pouring in. Is this accurate?

The answer is no.

• In 2020 we will have solar satellites. Any region of the planet will be able to switch on abundant sunshine. There will be no "sun belt."

• "Retirement" will be an alien concept. Rejuvenation techniques and more radical procedures will enable people to stay vigorous indef­initely.

• We will have plenty of leisure. But we will not converge on any one region of the planet. The most popular vacation places may not even be on Earth.

Question 3. Is the World Bank accurate in its projection that the Earth's population will reach ten billion in 2050 and that most of the increase will take place in "poorer countries"?

This projection has several flaws:

• In 2050 there will be an Earth population and extraterrestrial populations. Millions of people will permanently live away from this planet. Population increase will not be an issue.

• There will be no "poorer countries." In 2050 there will be no "countries"—only continental and hemispheric units. And no "pov­erty" because today's global economy still in its early stages will by then have matured and phased out the imbalances of wealth that exist today.

People who make projections such as the three examples given here are not familiar with the dynamics of progress. Most projections are clumsy extrapolations from today's conditions. They are as off target as predictions made by "authorities" decades ago. For example John Foster Dulles the U.S. secretary of state indicated in 1954 that "Japan should not expect to find a big U.S. market because the Japanese do not make the things we want."

Then there was the president of the Michigan Bank who in 1903 advised his clients not to invest in the automobile: "The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad."

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 903