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FutureSource

Jul 18, 2013

Why Cities Still Need Nations (and Vice Versa)

By Peter Engelke

Cities are fashionable these days, and for good reason. Global demographic shifts have been forcing a much broader awareness of urbanization’s tremendous scope and scale. As a result, people are discovering or rediscovering the many virtues of city life, helping to spark awareness that when cities function well, they drive economic growth and technological innovation, […]

FutureSource

May 28, 2013

Strategic Foresight: Planning for the Unknowable and the Unavoidable

By Catherine Putz

We do not have to predict the future in order to plan for it. The core concern of strategic foresight is not a simplistic identification of what technology we will use in twenty years, for example, but what effects technological change will have on our national interests. Understanding geopolitical and technological tides will assist policymakers […]

FutureSource

Feb 28, 2013

Meet the New Meat

By Catherine Putz

According to the US National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) Global Trends 2030 report, the earth’s population will be pushing 8.3 billion (up from 7.1 billion in 2012) by 2030. This population growth, combined with ongoing urbanization and rising incomes, will increase the world’s demand for food.

FutureSource

Nov 29, 2012

Bureaucrats in Space

By Hanna Camp

Recent advancements in space technology and commercial space industry promise to spur a dramatic surge in space tourism and research in the coming decades. While space enthusiasts might celebrate the news by calculating whether their retirement funds can be made over as space-jump funds, the bureaucratically-inclined have a good reason to worry: the current system […]

FutureSource

Nov 20, 2012

The Rise of Commercial Outer Space

By Hanna Camp

Faced with deep cuts in its operating budget, NASA has undertaken efforts to broaden international cooperation and establish a domestic commercial space industry. With the space shuttle now retired, NASA needs a way to get large amounts of cargo and personnel into space, and private companies are the only ticket up. 

Space Technology & Innovation

FutureSource

Jun 22, 2012

How Government Thinks – and How it Should

By Josh Kerbel

It is common knowledge that increasing societal complexity (i.e., interdependence and interconnectedness) is challenging the fundamental business models of an ever-growing range of industries. Thus, the entertainment, technology, manufacturing, information—the list could go on and on—industries are all under pressure to change the ways they think.

FutureSource

Jan 23, 2012

In Search of Sand Piles and Butterflies

By Banning Garrett

“Disruptive change” that produces “strategic shocks” has become an increasing concern for policymakers, shaken by momentous events of the last couple of decades that were not on their radar screens – from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the 2008 financial crisis and the “Arab Spring.”