Foresight

The 21st Century: a better world or a brave new world

Federico Mayor, Jérôme Bindé

Based on the world report, The World Ahead: our Future in the Making, this article identifies four major challenges which we face at the dawn of the 21st century: peace…

Unesco and the years ahead

Michel Batisse

Against a background of global change and major demographic, social, economic, political and technological trends, this article explores the future role of Unesco…

Food security in the 21st century and in the role of biotechnology

Per Pinstrup‐Andersen, Marc J. Cohen

Although global food production has consistently kept pace with population growth, the gap between food production and demand in certain parts of the world is likely to…

The power of information: transforming power structures in the new millennium

Ian Pearson

Power structures today are manifold and complex. Tomorrow’s world will be more complex still. This paper aims to explore just a few of the many future issues surrounding…

Future employment and ageism in Britain

Séan Rickard

In common with all developed countries, the population of Britain is ageing. Much has been written about the impact demographic change will have on our societies in the…

A new framework for environmental scanning

Richard A. Slaughter

This paper suggests that environmental scanning (ES) has been restricted to parts of the external world and has largely overlooked the inner one. In fact the inner/outer…

The world in 2050: a normative scenario

Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon

This article presents a scenario based on the inputs of 550 futurists, scholars, business planners and policy advisers from around the world. Their views on global…

The Internet in twenty years: cyberspace, the next frontier?

Riel Miller

Few dispute the very strong likelihood that within twenty years the global information infrastructure, often referred to as the internet or “the net” will become as…