Encounters with the Future: A Forecast of Life Into the 21st Century

by Marvin J. Cetron

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 007010347X
• ISBN13: 9780070103474
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 308 Pages

Customer Reviews

Forecasting the future is very important

It is important to predict the future because times are changing so fast that we can no longer prosper by using old responses to future events; we need better information about tomorrow. Although this 1983 book is dated and many of the forecasts are no longer helpful, it is still useful as the techniques and approaches have not changed. "The trends that help to shape national events are always influenced by a country's vital signs, which are just as important and just as easy to check as the blood pressure, temperature and pulse of a person. The vital signs to look for in a country are the signs that indicate political, economic and social stability. These signs include a country's birth rate, how it takes care of injustice, its treatment of dissidents, its relations with the press, the frequency with which it changes commercial regulations and goes out on strike, where it sends its elite to be educated, what it pays in salaries to its military officers. The most stable country in the world is Sweden, where the uppermost tenth, make two and one half times what the lowest tenth earn. Using income difference as a guideline, the unstable countries in the world are Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Argentina, where the upper tenth earn more than 40 times what the lower tenth makes. Iran fell in part because the earnings in the upper tenth rose to where they were 38 times what the lowest tenth earned." Other factors contributing to Iran's fall were the high unemployment rate of young males who were the backbone of the revolution that broke the Shah.Cetron is a professional forecaster whose work is based on the analysis of trends and indicators, synthesis of data and the extensive use of computers; he tells us how Forecasting International predicted the fall of the Shah of Iran, unrest and instability in Poland, the coup d'etat in Turkey, political changes in India, the warlike position of Iraq, and the 1973 Arab oil embargo. This book is about forecasting a crisis before it becomes a crisis and anticipating trends and developments in fields as diverse as medicine and religion. The value of the book is not the success of the forecasting but in drawing attention to problem areas; where important trends are well established and irreversible, the success rate of forecasting improves. The chapter 'Religions of the Future' points out that Southern Baptists and Mormons are the fastest growing while Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists are losing members. The least liberal, the least tolerant religion in the world is now the fastest growing religion in the world. There are 450 million Moslems worldwide and in America there are twice as many Moslems as there are Presbyterians. Until recently, Americans believed in family ties, traditional religion, sexual restraint, the work ethic, free enterprise and the natural superiority of the American way. Almost all of these old values have been challenged first in literature, then in behavior and school curricular. "This