Institute For The Future

Slate magazine's Josh Levin spoke with IFTF's Jamais Cascio, as well as Global Business Network futurists, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, about the forecasting the end of America in his article "How is America going to end?" The article dives into scenario-based forecasting, particularly IFTF's 50-year scenarios from the 2009 Ten-Year Forecast spring retreat, which Levin attended. Levin also visited IFTF in June to develop a video about "The Long Crisis" scenario from the 2009 Ten-Year Forecast. Below is an excerpt from the article, which can be read in full here.

Futurologists are generally fairly sanguine about man's ability to save himself, even if they do delight in thinking up dystopias. Jamais Cascio, a former GBN employee who now consults for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Institute for the Future, is a connoisseur of disaster scenarios—worlds torn asunder by ocean acidification and nanoscale weapons—that you weren't aware you should be terrified of. For IFTF's Ten-Year Forecast spring retreat—attended by corporations like Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Nokia, and Wells Fargo—Cascio went beyond the program's usual decadelong timeframe to write up three 50-year forecasts, each laying out a distinct vision of the next half-century. One of the timelines, the "Long Crisis," begins with "global storming," a run of catastrophic weather events around the world. By 2023, the United States has defaulted on its debts to China. Eventually, in the aftermath of Global Famine II, the U.S. breaks into eight pieces. On the plus side, African biohackers find a cure for AIDS in 2026. Yippee! Cascio insists that the "Long Crisis" isn't merely a scary story. Rather, his goal is to goad policymakers into dealing with the century's biggest challenges: climate change, Sino-American relations, the global food supply. "What futurists and scenario planners provide is a wind tunnel of sorts," Cascio says. "The scenarios we construct allow organizations to test their strategies, to test their decisions, to say, If we follow Course X, what kinds of outcomes might we expect as the world around us changes?"

Click here to watch the interview with Jamais. For the full timeline of "The Long Crisis" 50-year scenario, click here.