Hank Lederer is an “anticipatory thinker” who plots trends. From this plotting, he hopes to predict all the great (and not-so-great) things that might await us in the future, from cryogenics to extraterrestrial colonies. He is a futurist, and he is my tax accountant.
Each spring when my kitchen table overflows with W-2s and 1040s and Schedule Cs, our discussions inevitably veer from Roth IRAs to not-yet-invented scientific gizmos. “In the future,” he told me recently, “virus-sized computers will be able to go inside you and change your genes. Nanotechnology-computerized systems will run through your body and check for bad DNA. You’ll need a computer to doctor up your genes so you won’t get old. People will be able to live as long as they want, or at least until they get bored, or they have an accident. I don’t think people will want to live more than two hundred years, though. They’ll probably just get bored and kill themselves, but that’s my opinion.” A morbid thought, to be sure, but part of me wonders whether Hank has computed the additional taxes that will be assessed over a doubly long lifetime.
Occasionally, I join my accountant at a meeting of the Minnesota Futurists. Saturday mornings in St. Paul, the group gathers at the home of Earl Joseph, who worked for 20 years as a professional futurist for Unisys. In the front hall of his Summit Avenue mansion—a beautiful building that is situated squarely in the past—Joseph has placed a crystal ball. But he’s quick to let me in on the joke: They don’t predict the future, like psychics. They study “Anticipatory Sciences,” which extrapolate past and present trends into the future. In other words, if you can imagine something, it can come true. I was confused. What’s the difference between anticipating and predicting the future? Hank explained, “There are so many variables that you don’t know what the hell is going to happen. That’s when a leader or a group comes in and says what they want to see happen.” Presumably, futurists then will be in a good position to make helpful suggestions.
The group of 19 futurists gathered around a huge dining room table. Sweet rolls and coffee were passed around. Announcements of new discoveries—everything from kitchen gadgets to genetic engineering—were heralded. If any of the group had successfully predicted these advances in a previous meeting, they did not gloat or claim credit at present. According to the Minnesota Futurists, robots are now more proficient speakers and can translate numerous languages. Several more gaseous and Earthlike planets have been discovered. A 3,000-foot-tall solar and wind-power tower will be erected in Australia for $380 million, and it will produce 200 megawatts of power. Meanwhile, petroleum companies that can’t dig in Alaska have moved to Siberia, where there are hardly any environmental regulations. This last development was not received well. One futurist chimed in, “What’s the energy solution? Big towers! Washington would be a perfect place for windmills because of all the hot air.”
The main topic of our recent meeting was intelligent agents (“IA”), which are essentially computer programs that can learn. “The ultimate intelligent agent will bring me here to Earl’s house and I’ll just sit back and read the paper while it drives,” Hank informed me. “I want it to have emotions, or rather to understand emotions. Then to shut up if I’m in a bad mood. It’s software that can learn and be your friend.”
“Whether you’re using a vacuum cleaner or a refrigerator, you’re going to need intelligent agents,” Earl said. Hank concurred. “They’ll be embedded in the walls, windows, everything. They will counteract vibrations to keep your house silent. They will replace the roads with smart roads, which will have microscopic computers in them that will automatically repair themselves. This is far-out stuff.”
The discussion digressed into all the possible applications and misuses of IA. “There’s lots of Doomsday scenarios when you get these computers going,” Hank said. “I love high tech; it’s people that are no good!” I could see the statement appealed to him, as both an accountant and a futurist.
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