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522 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1992)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0522 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE The new millennium is only a decade away. We can already see the swell of interest and the almost magical effect of focusing attention on the future that the nearness of a change in century is producing. The millennium is a landmark, a point for stocktaking and reevaluation. For many, it seems to be a social inflection point marking the move into a world substantially different, for better or worse, from the one we now have. Another force driving interest in the future is the rapid globalization of the U.S. and other national economies and the undeniably vigorous new compe- tition accompanying this next level of socioeconomic integration. Also emerging are global issues that are intrinsically long-term in their development and resolution. Consequently, they open up speculation about the future and evoke strong political positions. Examples are the threats of nuclear weaponry, the concern for nuclear power, and fear of global warming from the greenhouse effect. As the interest in the new millennium grows, we can confidently expect that crackpot or insubstantial predictions, forecasts, forebodings, and antic- ipations will proliferate. Therefore, it seems timely to present a stocktaking of where we stand with regard to a solid understanding of the future. This issue of The Annals is a showcase for professional futurists, for people who earn all or a substantial part of their livelihood in the systematic exploration of the future. Why the emphasis on professional? The reason is simply that one of the plagues on the exploration of the future is a tendency for prominent people to respond automatically and without serious, analytical thought to questions about the future of their activities or even about subjects with no connection to their activities. The result is intellectual noise that easily drowns out more coherent messages. This issue of The Annals samples topics that have received substantial attention from futurists and demonstrates by example the richness of ap- proaches useful in exploring the future. For those who become hooked on the systematic exploration of the future, there is a bibliographic essay on how to dig deeper and how to keep up with futures literature. The editors' hope for this issue of The Annals is that it will affect readers in several different ways. We hope to make them more aware that the future can be systematically explored and make them more sophisticated, skeptical readers of material about the future. Last but not least, we would lure them into launching or promoting a systematic study of the future of some subject of great interest and importance to them. 8

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