Future Options for the Greater Caribbean Basin

Prospecta Caribe 2013

September 5, 2013

Jerome C. Glenn The Millennium Project

The Future will be more complex and change

more rapidly…than most people think

• The factors that made such changes are changing faster now, than 25 years ago

• Therefore, the next 25 years should make the speed of change over the last 25 years seem slow

• Hence, we need to upgrade our assumptions about what is possible, and how to think about the future

• Development projects should leap frog as mush as possible; e.g., pure meat, tele-education, seawater agriculture, 3-Printing, tele-medicine, synthetic biology, tele-one-person businesses, tele-nations, computational science, etc.

Next Mega Trend: Conscious-Technology

When the distinction between these two trends

becomes blurred, we will have reached the

Post-Information Age

HUMANS BECOMING CYBORGS

BUILT ENVIRONMENT BECOMING INTELLIGENT

1985

2000

2015

2030

Age / Element Product Power Wealth Place War Time

Agricultural Extraction Food/Res Religion Land Earth/Res Location Cyclical

Industrial Machine Nation-State Capital Factory Resources Linear

Information Info/serv Corporation Access Office Perception Flexible

Conscious-Technology Linkage Individual Being Motion Identity Invented

Simplification/Generalization of History and an Alternative Future

How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?

1

How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?

2

How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?

3

How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?

4

How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives?

5

How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?

6

How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?

7

How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune microorganisms be reduced?

8

How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?

9

How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction?

10

How can the changing status of women improve the human condition?

11

How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?

12

How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?

13

How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?

14

How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?

15

How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?

How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?

How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?

How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?

How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives?

How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?

How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?

How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune microorganisms be reduced?

How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?

How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction?

How can the changing status of women improve the human condition?

How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?

How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?

How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?

How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?

15 Global Challenges–the Agenda today

Future of Education is Increasing Intelligence: both Individual and Collective Intelligence

How to increase Individual Intelligence

1. Responding to feedback

2. Consistency of love, diversity of environment

3. Nutrition

4. Reasoning exercises

5. Believing it is possible (placebo effect)

6. Contact with intelligent people or via VR simulations

7. Software systems and gaming

8. Neuro-pharmacology (enhanced brain chemistry)

9. Memes on classroom walls and else where, for example: intelligence is sexy

10. Low stress, stimulating environments, with certain music, color, fragrances improves concentration and performance

11. Longer term:

• Reverse engineering the brain (President Obama)

• Applied Epigenetics and genetic engineering

• Designer microbes to eat the plaque on neurons

How to Increase Collective Intelligence

• It emerges from the integration

and synergies among

• data/info/knowledge

• software/hardware

• experts and others with insight

• that continually learns from

feedback

• to produce just in time knowledge

for better decisions • than these elements acting alone.

An Application of Collective Intelligence:

Global Futures Intelligence System at www.themp.org

Global Challenge Menu in GFIS

1. Situation Chart: Current Situation; Desired Situation; and Policies

2. Report (detailed text) on the challenge from State of the Future

3. News items (automatic news feeds – searchable)

4. Scanning (annotated, rated information)

5. On-going Delphi questionnaires to collect expert judgments

6. Public comments

7. Discussion groups

8. Computer models (mathematical and rules-based), and conceptual models

9. Resources: websites, books, papers, videos

10. Updates – all edits

11. Digests – Recent scans, edits, discussions

Observatorio del Caribe Colombiano: First Subscriber LAC to GFIS

1. Beatriz Bechara de Borge

2. Berena Vergara Serpa

3. Fernan Acosta Valdelamar

4. Luz Angelica Saumeth De Las Salas

5. Philip Wrigth

6. Sofia Lisbrant

7. Carmen Elena Ocampo Lopez

8. Antonio Ortega Hoyos

9. Yunaris Coneo Mendoza

10. Jonker Santamaria

Caribbean Basin Public Situation Chart

Leap-Frog Activities

Current Status Next Steps Comments Synergies

Sea Water Agriculture

FAO, World Bank,Eritrea (Seawater Forest Initiative), Mexico (Seawater Foundation, Bahia Kino), UAE (UAE University), Australia (Seawater Green House), Oman, others

National Youth Corps to plant seagrass, contact Seawater Greenhouse (UK) Seawater Foundation (US), See investments (in-water and on-beach agriculture)

IDB, China, FAO, USAIS, PAHO for food process plant feasibility study, Youth Corps for production and consumption

Growing meat and leather without animals

Initial demonstration-tions to attract investors

Review Univ. of Maastricht and others research, contact New Harvest, others

Improved protein and iron foods, Meals for Youth Corps, FAO global PR plan, invite business investors

Tele-Caribbean Basin Brain drain programs filing, alternative: Tele-Jamaica

Create website to match development needs with Caribbean clubs overseas

Integrate all development programs into tele-Caribbean Basin web site

Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Synthetic Biology… the next Revolution

Prices are going up…

Food

Energy Water

High Food Prices – Long-Term

1. population growth

2. rising affluence especially India & China

3. diversion of corn for biofuels

4. soil erosion

5. aquifer depletion

6. the loss of cropland

7. falling water tables and water pollution

8. Increasing fertilizer costs (high oil prices)

9. Market speculation

10. diversion of water from rural to urban

11. Increasing meat consumption

12. global food reserves at 25-year lows

13. climate change

13. Increasing droughts

14. Increasing flooding

15. Melting mountain glaciers reducing water flows

16. And eventually saltwater invading crop lands

Salt Water Agriculture: Saves H2O for Cities & Sequests Carbon

Growing Pure Meat without Growing Animals

August 5th a London chef cooked and served first public taste test for hamburgers grown from cow’s cells with growing/killing a cow

If\then Nano-

technology

Synthetic

Biology

Internet of

Things

3D Printing Conscious-

Technology

Augmented

Reality

Nano-

technology xxx

Synthetic

Biology xxx

Internet of

Things xxx 3D Printing

xxx Conscious-

Technology xxx Augmented

Reality xxx

Emerging Technologies Table

Computational Science

Computational biology

Computational Chemistry

Computational Physics

All Accelerate with Moore’s Law

Some Elements of the Next Economic System

• Capitalism/Socialism/Communism – early industrial age systems

• Next system too complex to understand to day – but some seeds

can be; 32 seeds identified and assessed by the Millennium Project

• Simultaneous knowing – time lags changed or eliminated in

information dissemination with much greater transparency.

• Non-ownership, as distinct from private ownership or collective/state

ownership (e.g. The Internet and open source software)

• Alternatives to continuously creating artificial demand and growth

• One-Person Business - Self-employment via the Internet—

individuals seek markets for their abilities rather than jobs

One-Person Businesses Find markets around the world for what you are interested in doing not non-existing jobs

Google does it again!

How many one-person businesses could this create? Tele-tourism? visit the Pyramids in Egypt, the Louvre in Paris?

Wise to invest in a diverse set of new creative economic activities

• Internet of things with universal high speed Internet

• Increasing intelligence (individual and national)

• 3-D Printing

• Synthetic Biology

• Nanotechnology

• Retrofitting buildings for energy production

• One-Person Businesses (massive training programs)

• Youth Corps to plant seagrass

… May become a TransInstitution

UN Organizations

NGOs and

Foundations

Universities

Governments Corporations

The Millennium Project

Purposes of the Millennium Project

• Create a global and on-going capacity to improve thinking about the future

• Make that thinking available through a variety of media for consideration in

• policymaking

• advanced training

• educational curricula

• public education

• Continually respond to feedback, to accumulate wisdom about potential futures

49 Millennium Project Nodes... are groups of experts and institutions that connect global and local views in:

Nodes identify participants, translate questionnaires and reports, and conduct interviews, special research, workshops, symposiums, and advanced training.

Some additional recommendations for the Caribbean Basin Region and Nations

• How could Caribbean Basin Nations make a difference with Climate Change?

• Initiate a UN General Assembly Resolution calling for a US-China 10-year climate change goal with a NASA-like program to implement it… that others can join in.

• Invite the most creative businesses from synthetic biology to nanotech to invest in the development facilities that could reduce greenhouse gas production

• What might the Observatory do for regional futures?

• Create Regional State of the Future Index

• Create and maintain a regional futures situation chart on your website

• Create a regional collective intelligence system

• Produce a Caribbean Basin State of Future report

• Initiate Tele-Nations (matching those overseas with development back home)

• Help up-grade Government Future Strategy Units for Heads of State Offices

25 years ago there was no World Wide Web.

25 years from now: What will be emerging?

And from what?

For further information

Jerome C. Glenn

The Millennium Project

4421 Garrison Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016 USA +1-202-686-5179 phone/fax

Jerome.Glenn@Millennium-Project.org

www.StateoftheFuture.org

www.themp.org (Global Futures Intelligence System)