High Schools of the Future
“Boot Camp”

by

“The only thing we have to fear Is when, as a species, we don’t believe in the future anymore.”

Yves Behar, Brandjam, 2007. P.vii   

Imagine the calendar reads September 1, 2015, and Lynn, a teenage daughter of yours, is off with a smile and an air of high expectation to her magnet public High School of the Future. A learning community that take tomorrow to heart, it resemble other schools devoted to the Performing Arts, the Sciences, International Affairs, the Health Sciences, and so on - but this time the focus is on the creative study of possibilities, perils, and policies. As well, it offers an opportunity for teenagers to test out whether they want to become career forecasters. As wannabe futurists, they get to try out the role, and resolve whether this is their Calling. 

Lynn prepared for this special experience in a nationwide public school system that re-oriented around 2010 to emphasize futuristics. By 2015 youngsters could identify future-shaping lessons from the Past. Uncover their own hidden assumptions about the future. Draw insights into the future from the Arts. Appreciate the place of futuristics in every school subject.  Recognize progress being made in shaping a finer future at home and abroad. Understand the dynamics of future job creation. Understand Globalization. And draw on ideas from one another, and from concerned adults (teachers and their parents, relatives, neighbors, etc.). 

Coming up to a revamped school building – spacious, airy, light and distinctly modern-looking - Lynn smiles at architecture that helps raise ambition and morale, architecture with clues to preferable futures.

The school grounds host an operating windmill busy generating electricity. At its base signage explains its cost, its rewards, and when, with savings from reduced consumption the school expects to make back its investment in a wind system. The names of area venders are noted. 

A Buckminster Fuller dome serves as a portable classroom or a large greenhouse. Administrative offices have glass walls so students can look in and staffers look out. An expansive open-space floor plan boasts many live plants. Rooftops are covered with sod and plants to help influence inside temperatures. Creative outdoor art signed by the maker – a teacher or a student – enlivens the setting. And a small fleet of official school cars, many, or even all of them advanced hybrids, or electronic cars, or high-tech diesels, are parked outside.  

Anyone stepping inside knows they are in a very imaginative place. The lobby contains a giant replica of our planet, with the ceiling indicating distances to the Sun and fellow planets. A video system circles the space, making available streaming electronic news of the moment. Dynamic electronic display cases feature colorful accounts of current and proposed future-shaping educational projects at the school or around the world – displays rich in photos of current teachers and students.  

Building hallways sparkle with student art on futures subjects, along with artwork from the covers of science-fiction magazines and from brilliant illustrators (such as Florida’s Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows, etc.). Photos – perhaps taken by students themselves – highlight newly constructed area buildings that are getting wilder all the time, as bold architects design buildings that are “whimsical, sensual, and possessed of a substantial wow factor.” (1) 

Lynn’s classrooms have the architecture, furniture, coloration, and “feel” of a Mars-or-Moon-base. Or an ocean-floor Domed Colony. Or an inter-stellar "Star Ship". Or any other such simulation, provided it stretches the imagination, intrigues the mind, and augments one’s education. (As schools should be places students wanted to be these "Gee Whiz!" settings have much to recommend them). 

Green-oriented students like Lynn raise edible fish (Tilapia, etc.) in on-site tanks in the school basement. A campus greenhouse features cutting-edge experiments with plants that might prove a new food sources. The school’s workshops (computer repair, graphic arts, robotics, space technology, etc.) explore the use of experimental materials, as from nanotechnology and biotechnology. Rain and soiled water from the lunchroom kitchen (or even the toilets) is recycled and made ready again for use by grounds keepers and building cleaners on site. 

A decided effort is made to employ cutting-edge learning aids, and even serve as beta test sites for technologies still not ready for the market. Clicker technology, for example, tickles Lynn as it sets students against one another in a good-natured competition they respond to a quiz by pressing the right key on a hand-held clicker. A projection screen at the room’s front tracks their responses in real time, showing with eye-catching graphics like small spaceships who knows what – anonymously, of course, for each student.  

Teachers appreciate their ability to record data from individual students, and transfer it through wireless technology in real time to a classroom computer program. They learn what is or is not getting across, and to which learner, especially those who do not dominate discussion. (2) 

Lynn also likes using an advanced pen-computer that uses micro-dot reading technology to enable her to draw a calculator on a piece of paper, for example, and use it to perform everything from additions to square roots by tapping on it. (3) She also employs a headset that lets users control simple actions, as within computer games, by using their thoughts. (The device measures electrical activity in the brain, and works with soft ware to let users record a particular pattern they associate with a command used in the game, such as move right, or lift that object. To execute the command, the helmet wearer need only think the thought. (4) 

Naturally, attention goes to computer-based gaming and simulations. The very popular SIMS series, and Civilization lV, Rise of Nations, etc., help players take prudent risks in pursuit of objectives, make ethical and moral decisions, work in teams, and employ scientific deduction – all matters of import in futuristics. Lynn especially likes Internet-based massively multiplayer operations (5). For example, Tabula Rosa, a science-fiction game is complete with ethical parables and problems. (6) 

As for Lynn’s high school courses, 15 are required and many electives add more spice to her high school years. Listed below in alphabetical order, they share one characteristic in common: they are “tough fun” experiences, in that they are demanding, bit also fascinating. 

1) Assessment Processes. Students gain familiarity with major techniques for assessing large-scale social programs. The background, formulas, strengths, and limitations of Social Impact Assessment, Social Indicators, and Technological Assessment warrant close study, as these tools are critical in taking the measure of an organization or social system that purports to help change our future.  

A useful cogent model here, the U.S. Army’s “After Action Review,” asks – What was supposed to happen? What happened?  And what accounts for the differences? (7) Wannabe futurists might want to also ask the question – And what can be done to bring intent and results closer together? 

2.Claims. Social Impact and Technology Assessment methodologies operate at a fairly high level of generalization, and commonly look at large matters, like entire social systems, or major components thereof, or entire technologies. It is vital to also get experience in testing claims for far smaller items, the plain vanilla sort of conventional things promoted as significant future-aiding items.  

The market, for example, is now being flooded with new “Green” products (and old repackaged ones) hyped as good for the environment. With foods labeled not only as good for your health, but also as capable of preventing illness. With new coiled light bulbs hailed as better for countering climate change, and so on. Wannabe futurists ask - Are they?  

3.Collapses. Students profit from a clearer understanding of why plans to stay on top of future often fail, that is, why the problem-solving abilities of societies give out? While large social systems, like ours, are inherently unstable, and “complacent oligarchies, like soft cheese, turn rancid in the sun.” (8) Unless high-schoolers clarify their thoughts in this vexing matter they are unlikely to help prevent repeat tragedies.

Attention goes to the decline and fall of Greece and Rome, the disappearance of Aztec and Mayan Civilization, the ancient African Kingdoms, the Chinese “Middle Kingdom” Empire, and other classic cases about which a good deal is known (and more is always being learned).  

Here, as throughout a futures-oriented curriculum, attention goes to lessons bearing on future-making, lessons teen-agers find inspiring, despite their origins in disillusionment, despair, and ruin. While large systems, like the United States, are difficult to keep on course, their capacity for adaptation or even renewal remains considerable.

4. Community Service. Wannabe futurists spend considerable after-school time helping, but also studying organizations trying 24/7 to make a difference. They are encouraged to go to a site likely to initially prove somewhat uncomfortable, as across race. ethnic, or sexual orientation boundaries (and thereby, likely in time a rewarding socialization experience).  

As helpers they should be available for almost any role thought valuable by the organization, as learning is possible almost everywhere (e.g., dishing out meals in a Food Kitchen for the homeless, washing floors in a Center for Abused Women, etc.): there should be no goal of securing only clean office work.  

After having settled in, the student should be charged with diplomatically seeking answers to a bevy of questions that deal with future-shaping matters; e.g., Does the organization have a long-range plan for its future?  If so, when was it drafted, how, and why? What controversies did it resolve, and with what effect? What controversies did it leave unresolved, why, and with what effect? How much use does the Plan actually get, why, and with what effect? How is it kept fresh?

And, above all, how might explicit use of futuristics possibly help improve the organization’s Plan, and, significantly aid the organization? A written Report covering these matters is a large part of the course requirements. 

5. Disputes. Likewise, controversies in forecasting warrant close attention. It is vital that wannabe futurists learn to adopt a healthy sort of skepticism where high-profile disputes and disputants are concerned. A case study, for example, is made of clash between glaciologists who, looking at the same melting phenomena, do or do not forecast a rise this century in the world sea level. Some expect a three-foot rise – thereby threatening extraordinary coastal damage, and the re-location of hundreds of millions, with much ensuing hardship. Others, however, warn of six feet. And a few scoffers, of only six inches. (9) How is a high school student to find adopt a position– so as not feel paralyzed - when the experts are in sharp disagreement? 

Coming closer to home wannabe futurists could ask whether or not the school lunch program should offer milk or meat from cloned animals (cows, goats, and pigs) and their offspring. (FDA approval, after over six years of study, came early in 2008). Some parents can be expected to hail related cost-savings and product upgrades (leaner and larger cuts of meat). They note cloning “has the potential to produce products are safer, healthier, and tastier – bacon that has heart-protective Oemga 3’s, say, or milk produced by cows that are stronger and thus need fewer antibiotics.” (10) Opponents, however, are likely to charge cloning causes suffering to animals, citing a 2008 EU Study Group finding. (11) They may also warn darkly of imagined safety risks from what they call “Frankenfood.”  

After patiently studying both sides, and considering the material offered by such companies as Cyagra, Trans Ove Genetics, and ViaGen, students might ponder why, “like abortion and capital punishment, biotechnology inspires knee-jerk rhetorical passion rather than rational debate.” (12) In due course, they might urge school buy-in, or, explain why this is not their recommendation. 

Students learn some people will cheer future-shaping products or trends others fear or jeer; e.g., “Does a world of a million video channels on your iPhone sound exciting to you, or like a living hell of mindless dreck? Do you think stem-cell therapies will lead to better lives, or just prolong a painful and expensive process of aging and dying?” (13) They learn how to take sides, or, find a way between extreme positions, and how to disagree without becoming disagreeable. 

6. Limitations. Wannabe futurists need to understand why forecasts have often been off the mark. They need to appreciate the toll taken on futuristics by today’s weak theoretical models of change, reliant as they are on the social sciences, the youngest and least reliable of the sciences. They need to understand why our mathematics and statistics are only as good as data entered, and that “stuff” often has critical gaps, can be out-dated, and sometimes even is false. They need to be reminded that correlation does not necessarily imply cause. 

Once limitations have been studied, energizing attention is paid to many ways forecasting tools stronger now then five or 10 years ago.  Futurists work hard at remedying obvious faults, propping up weak links, inventing fresh tools, and in 101 other ways, trying to pass along a finer art that the one they inherited. The more wannabe futurists learn about these efforts – and the limitations that are their source – the better. 

7. Love and Human Sexuality. Called elsewhere “Sex Education,” this course enables teenagers to upgrade what most have learned primarily from peers or very uneven sources in our sexually saturated culture. Better still, attention is paid to the enriching place of caring, dedication, intimacy, and love in such matters. 

The school’s model relies on well-schooled volunteer juniors and seniors who join their teachers in conducting outreach educational sessions for new students. Skits and interactive activities deal with abstinence, alcohol/drugs, dating violence, HIV/AIDS, sexual decision-making, sexual harassment, and talking with parents. Additional topics include alternative sexual preferences, contraception choices, and insights from the art of love (ala Erich Fromm’s classic book).  

As well, classroom discussion considers the future of our culture’s saturation with sexual matters, the possible impacts of a male “fail safe” contraception pill, guidelines for sexual relations among the first residents of a Moon or Mars Colony, and the impact of reproductive technologies that makes childbirth by a female human an option (normal fetuses could be conceived extra utero, and brought far along by equipment originally developed to keep premature babies alive). 

Course materials are available online 24/7 (via a teacher-assigned password, and it has hypertext features to allow for advanced learning, the better to help a teenager develop informed, sound, and healthy feelings and views about love and human sexuality. 

8. Methods. An energizing course focuses on the “how to” mechanics that set this art form apart and above fortune-telling, mysticisms, and pop culture nonsense. Youngsters should make hands-on age-appropriate use (ala John Dewey) of such challenging tools as -  

Chaos and Complexity Theory; Computer Modeling

Cross-Impact Analysis; Delphi Poll Techniques

Environmental Scanning; Expert Interviews

Futures Wheels; Games; Relevance Trees; Scanning

Scenario writing; Science Fiction; Simulations

Technological Forecasting; Trend Analysis

Trend Extrapolation; Science fiction, and –

Visualization.

Embedded in the methods course are exercises in use of the specialized language of futurists: 

ambient energy, androids, biogenesis, bio-interactive materials.

brain-enhancing cognitronics, “black” biology (germ warfare, etc.), cybergenesis, cyborgs, digital platforms, genomic profiling,

holography, molecular manufacturing, Ocean-current power, species coalescence and dominionization, etc.

More, of course, are added all the time. While admittedly odd on first contact, the concepts can and should be mastered, as they merit a place in a student‘s mental tool kit.  

9. Perils. An especially challenging course assesses trends that pose vertigo-inducing glimpses of a perilous future that warrant pro-active concern. For example, democracy is increasingly imperiled, as there is a systematic effort to weaken or even eliminate counterparts of our Bill of Rights in many countries (the former Soviet Union, Middle East countries, etc.) Edicts, “laws,” and religion proclamations diminish freedom of assembly, smother civic society, and silence critics.

Wannabe futurists study threats that are high probability/high impact ones, and ongoing responses.  

10) Possibilities. This course explores imaginative ideas capable of radically altering the future … ideas yet to win implementation, but no less important for that. Students learn how to get past knee-jerk disbelief. Suspend judgment. Do research. And reach judicious estimates of the desirability, plausibility, and overall merits of proposals some hail as brilliant, others dismiss as far-fetched.  

Typical of a “wild idea” that gets attention is the American Solar Plan. It proposes a massive solar energy infrastructure theoretically capable by 2050 of providing 69 percent of America’s electricity and 34 percent of our total energy needs. A vast area of photovoltaic cells (30,000 square miles) would be erected on otherwise barren land in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in massive underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours. Large solar concentrator power plants would also be built. A new direct current high-voltage power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity everywhere. 

This project would displace 300 large coal-fired power plants and 300 more large natural gas plants and all the fuels they consume. It would help make us independent of overseas oil (dependence would be cut from 60 to zero percent). It would drop our carbon dioxide emissions by 62 percent of our 2005 figure. As well, this Grand Plan would fundamentally cut our trade deficits, and ease political tensions in the Middle East, lower our military costs, and increase domestic jobs.  

Relying on only incremental improvements in solar technology, the project could cost as much as $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050, but proponents insist this is a bargain in terms of energy and environmental gains. (14) They contend the climate change crisis requires “all of us to think boldly about what should be done, and not be intimidated by the problem’s large scope … we can’t be afraid to think big.” (15) 

Critics, however, note that as of 2008 solar power cost three to five times as much as coal (depending on the technology used). They doubt it will be cost-worthy soon, especially as it only represents less that one-tenth of one percent of the global energy market. (16) The American Solar Plan, they conclude gets way ahead of itself – a damming judgments wannabe futurists could well evaluate. 

Independent of the specifics of any reform scheme, students should take away from this course an appreciation of the indispensability of bold risk-taking: “We can advantage only when we embrace risky breakout ideas. Our survival depends not on sticking to what works, but on making leaps that let us predict new challenges and seize on new opportunities.” (17) 

11.  Reforms. This exciting course focuses on actual reform campaigns, as they are arguably second only to methods in importance in the entire futuristic curriculum. Students learn how to assess reform ideas put forward as future-shaping tools … assess, and help improve or dispute the best of them.  

Typical is an effort underway in 2008 in Hudson, New York, to “import” ideas based in the derelict shantytowns of Tijuana, Mexico, as a template for re-development of its own low-income area. . The plan would feature creating a co-op grocery, communal gardens, playgrounds, an outdoor amphitheater, and “incubator spaces” for arts or job training. Proponents see here “the seeds of a vibrant social and architectural model, one that could be harnessed to invigorate numbingly uniform suburban communities …” (18)  

Naturally, overseas reforms, especially those seemingly transferable. warrant special attention. Israel, for example, announced early in 2008 that it has decided to make the country a laboratory to test the practicality of an environmentally clean electric car. Purchasers will get a subsidized car, and pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, eliminating concerns about the fluctuating price of gasoline.  

While only a few thousand are expected on the road in 2009, over 100,000 electric cars should be there by the end of 2010, and 10 percent of all now being driven should be replaced annually. Promoters maintain, “the beauty of [the test] is that you have a real place where you can get real human reactions. In Israel they can control the externalities and give it a chance to flourish or fail. It needs to be tested … and the Israeli government is to be commended for trying it.” (19) 

After studying such future-shaping reform ideas, native or foreign, students come up with their own tentative answers, and take these via the Internet to knowledgeable parties here and abroad, the better to learn the strengths and weaknesses of their ideas – and then revise them. If students who at first rejected the reform later admit to a twinge of belief, and if those who rushed to embrace it later admit to a twinge of doubt, much sound learning is likely to have been achieved. 

12. Science Fiction. The special world of science-fiction literature can barely be introduced in only one course, but an attempt is made nevertheless. Its extrapolations can serve as a “lens through which to examine the human condition in all of its ramifications.” (20) Dedicated to conceiving the inconceivable, the genre is “more than just entertainment. It’s a crash course in using your imagination, in sharpening your ability to speculate. … it’s ability to encourage that streak of curiosity in kids and even adults is enormous.” (21) 

13.Slighted Futures. Teenagers learn about the future of over-looked peoples in the Adriatic countries, Africa, the Baltic nations, Central America, the Pacific Isles, and South America. As schooling in America was primarily Euro-centric, China and the Middle East only recently began to get overdue attention: “We’re moving into a very new world, one in which countries from Brazil to South Africa to India and China are getting richer, stronger, and prouder. For America to thrive, we will have to develop a much deeper, richer, more intuitive understanding of them and their peoples.” (22) 

14. Social Competences. As all too many teenagers are naïve about behaviors many adults have learned the hard way, a required course promotes the arts of conversation, diplomacy, etiquette, and related life management and social skills. For to effectively and efficiently share forecasts is to first be able to raise confidence in one’s person. 

Accordingly, to enlarge a behavioral repertoire wannabe futurists first discuss the desirability of cultivated taste, a talent for listening, politeness, wit, and the like. Once this is clear, they gain practice in these matters through sophisticated role-plays; e.g., skits that explore how to ask or respond to unsettling questions. Employ sophisticated language with flair. Apologize for an unintended faux pas. Defend oneself against a sharp-tongued critic. And, come to appreciate the sagacity of the anonymous aphorism – “Do something every day you are afraid of.” 

To promote self-assurance and savoir-faire, students learn how to order a meal in an upscale restaurant or a hoi polloi dive. “Go native” as part of a global assignment without going overboard. Read social clues in foreign settings. As well, they are introduced to the right and wrong ways of banking, using credit cards, arranging for loans, signing business agreements (co-signing, purchase, rental, etc.), and investing in the stock and futures markets. And, in 101 other demanding situations, do themselves proud.  

15. Utopian Ideas. Young people need help appreciating historic musings about ideal societies, and how to create and maintain them. This sort of poetic, and yet also utilitarian thinking can serve as a welcome antidote to the enervating notion this is as good as it can get. Rather, a utopian blueprint can be turned into a real-world project, be embodied in measured achievements, and help produce a successor ideology capable of stimulating and justifying still further gains (along with testy diversity and vexing contradictions).  

Utopian writers contend, “the age of imagination is not over. Utopias are not opposed to reality; on the contrary, they are one of the elements on which it is built … one of its essential components.” (23) They insist the enormous scale of the challenges today – climate change, terrorism, looming food and water shortages, etc. - “may require quantum leaps [in reforms] ... more utopians proposing ‘dreams to live by, more public intellectuals issuing impassioned wake-up calls, and more public citizens hungry to foresee and act.” (24) 

Naturally, classroom time includes the thoughts of critics, and of recently failed ventures (“ … New Utopia, an intended sea-based libertarian micro-nation in the Caribbean degenerated with breathtaking predictability into nonexistence and scandal.”) (25)  

Attention should go as well to successful modern applied examples of utopian thinking, such as The Farm (Kentucky) and other communes here and abroad, the entire Scandinavian nation complex, and the small Kingdom of Bhutan, where a “Gross National Happiness” Index helps a democratizing monarch measure progress and minimize the toll modernization can take. As well, of course, the Environmental Movement worldwide fits in here, especially as key members are busy promoting what they call “Greenopia.” (26)  

Key to assuring success here is informed, passionate, and unfettered public debate, The sooner young minds, especially those of wanabee futurists, wrestle with the ideas of outstanding utopians – Plato, Rousseau, More, Saint-Simon, and coming closer to date, Ernest Callenbach, Paul Goodman, Jacques Fresco, R. Buckminster Fuller, Ivan Illich, Paolo Solari, Jim Wallis, and the inspiring like – the more likely their minds and spirit are to become as creative and nuanced as they wish.  

Primacy of Asking.  Whatever the subject matter, emphasis goes to ratcheting up the quality of questions than on taking satisfaction from any tentative answers. The goal is to establish a cycle of inquiry. Wannabe futurists learn to appreciate why a high school physics teacher very deliberately told his students - “At our present level of ignorance, we think we know …” (27) Accordingly, the course emphasizes the taking of eclectic inquiry strategies. Students are encouraged to keep noodling away at a problem, the better to arrive at tentative answers superior to any first good-enough ones.  

Summary. For far too long we have lacked a place in the K-12 world where futurism is center stage, where it is the “second profession” of the adult staff, and the preoccupation of a self-selected body of wannabe forecasters. For too long young people like Lynn – curious about the gains and limitations of spending a career as a long-range forecaster – have had no place to go to test it out. With high schools of the future we set this right. 

Colorful, cutting-edge, and unapologetically demanding, their required courses can add much to the tool-kit graduates take with them. As well, they should whet the appetite for a post-high school education in advanced futuristics, and thereby show America it has finally gained a first-rate feeder source for well-schooled forecasters ... for talented teenagers like your daughter Lynn, who, over her lifetime will enjoy the cachet of a degree from the world’s first public “boot camp” for wannabe futurists.

Footnotes

1) Lacayo, Richard. “Curveballs Are in Play.” Time, March 20, 2006. P. 98.

 2) Hu, Winnie. “Students Click Answers, and a Routine Quiz Becomes a Game. “ New York Times, January 28, 2008. P. A-22. 

3) Helft, Miguel. “LeapFrog Hopes for Next Hit With Interactive Reading Toy.” New York Times, January 28, 2008. P. C-3.

4) Wingfield, Nick. “Wii Fit, Other Innovations Unveiled.” Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2008. P. D-6. 

5) Boutin, Paul. “A Sense of the Future.” Wall Street Journal, January 26-27, 2008. P. W-8. 

6) Nicholas Carr, as quoted in Reiss, Spencer. “Do you trust Google?” WIRED, January 2008. P. 42. 

7) Anon. “Conceiving the Future.” The Economist, February 9, 2008. P. 89. 

8) McWilliams, James E. “Food Politics, Half-Baked.” New York Times, February 5, 2008. P. A-23. 

9) Eric Rignot, a longtime student of ice sheets at both poles for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as quoted in Revkin, Andrew C. “In Greenland, Ice and Instability.” New York Times, January 8, 2008. P.E-4 (1, 4). 

10) McWilliams, “Food Politics,” New York Times, Op. Cit.  Cloning “deserves a fair hearing, one in which impassioned language  yields the floor to responsible discourse.” 

11) 11) Kanter, James. “Europe’s Ethics Panel Says Cloning Harms Animals.” New York Times, January 18, 2008. P. C-4. 

12) Zweibel, Ken, et. al. “A Solar Grand Plan.” Scientific American, January 2008. P.PP. 64-74.. 

13) Rennie, John. “Big and Small Solutions.” Scientific American, January 2008. P.8. 

14) Richtel, Matt and John Markoff. “A Green Industry Takes Root Under the California Sun.” New York Times, February 1, 2008. P.C-9 (C-1, 9)

15) Marshall Monroe, as quoted in Hammond, Keith H. “Do You believe in Magic?” Fast Company, November 2006. P. 43. 

16) Ouroussoff, Nicolai. “Learning from Tijuana: Hudson, N.Y., Considers Different Housing Model.” New York Times, February 19, 2008. P. E-5 (1,5) 

19) Wolfensohn, James D., the former World Bank president, and a modest investor in the project, as quoted in Erlanger. Steven. “Oil-Free Israel Is Set to Embrace Broad Project to Promote the Use of Electric Cars.” New York Times, January 21, 2008. P. A-7. 

20) Anders, Lou, ed. FutureShocks. New York: ROC Book (New American Library), 2006. P. 2 

21) Robinson, Frank M. Science Fiction of the 20^th Century: An Illustrated History. Portland, Oregon: Collectors Press, 1999. P. 246 

22) Zakaria, Fareed. “The Power of Personality.” Newsweek, December 24, 2007. P. 41. 

23) Flichy, Patrice  (translated by Liz Carey-Libbrecht). The Internet Imaginaire. Cambridge, MASS.: The MIT Press, 2007 ed. PP. 207-8. 

24) Belasco, Warren. Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. P. 266. “I doubt very much such problems can be overcome through pragmatism alone.”  

25) Mieville, China. “Floating Utopias.” In These Times, October 2007. P. 25 (24-28) 

26) Freed, Eric Corey, “Building in Sustainability,” in The Green Media Group. Greenopia: The Urban Dweller’s Guide to Green Living. Santa Monica, CA: The Green Media Group, 2007. 

27) Anonymous teacher quoted in Christy, John R. “My Nobel Movement.” Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2007. P. A-19.