The State of the Future

What a treat this is. Just look at these covers of a series of gigantic books from the United Nations. You have got to love it. Check out the table of contents from the 2007 edition:

1. Global Challenges (1,100 pages)

2.1 Global State of Future Index (286 pages)
2.2 National State of Future Indexes (89 pages)
2.3 Global Challenges Assessment (94 pages)

3.1 Normative Scenario to the Year 2050 (21 pages)
3.2 Exploratory Scenarios (41 pages)
3.3 Very Long-Range Scenarios-1,000 years (23 pages)
3.4 Counterterrorism-Scenarios, Actions, and Policies (40 pages)
3.5 Science and Technology 2025 Global Scenarios (21 pages)
3.6 Global Energy Scenarios 2020 (103 pages)
3.7 Middle East Peace Scenarios (91 pages)

4.1 Future Science and Technology Management and Policy Issues (400 pages)
4.2 Nanotechnology: Future Military Environmental Health Considerations (21 pages)

5. Education and Learning 2030 (59 pages)

6. Future Ethical Issues (69 pages)

7. Global Goals for the Year 2050 (24 pages)

I mean, why isn't everyone getting it? Well, it's not available for download, and no one has summarized it in the wikipedia article, though that place does lead you to entities like the futures wheel and the World Transhumanist Association...

Anyways, enough surfing. Back to the executive summary, which contains a lot of bunk about "genetically increased intelligence", "chemical brain enhancement", "artificial microbes enhancing intelligence", and "Web 17.0".

Okay, okay, we get the point. You have something about making humans more intelligent. I feel there is quite enough intelligence already in this world, it just doesn't get to be The President.

Paleontologists have observed that intelligence is a just another of those evolutionary experiments in the life history of this planet, like fish growing legs and coming onto the land, or lizards growing to gigantic proportions. Time may yet prove that it was a tragic mistake.

Maybe if it came onto us as a species gradually over a period of ten million years, rather than what appears to be a sudden big bang a hundred thousand years ago, one could have more confidence that it wasn't going to end in tears.

I can't tell from the summary whether any apocalyptic scenarios made it into the report, or if these were ruled out as being not interesting. The last two paragraphs could be included in a mundane manifesto, however.

There are many answers to many problems, but there is so much extraneous information that it is difficult to identify and concentrate on what is truly relevant. Since healthy democracies need relevant information, and since democracy is becoming more global, the public will need globally relevant information to sustain this trend. We hope the annual State of the Future reports can help... decision-makers and educators who fight against hopeless despair, blind confidence, and ignorant indifference -- attitudes that too often have blocked efforts to improve the prospects for humanity.