What about the era just beyond tomorrow? Hi-tech wonders? Extended lifespans? Artificial intelligence and genetic engineering? Come take a futurist's guided tour in my recently published (and net accessible) articles, interviews, and essays about the future.

TEACHING SCIENCE THROUGH SCIENCE FICTION: I recently wrote an article for the Reading for the Future website concerning my interest in promoting a full discussion of the potential for using science fiction to teach science.

"Once the sole province of nerdy young men, science fiction has become a central port of our culture's myth-making engine, now engaging girls, women, and adults of all ages. Yet the breadth of SF and its ultimate importance can be difficult for a non-aficionado to grasp."

MILLENIUM MADNESS: For a broad-spectrum look at the future, from near-term effects on biology, medicine and democracy all the way to issues of transcendence and human immortality (or at least living a very long time), see a series of three articles that were originally commissioned in late 1999 for AOL's Online Magazine, to commemorate the new Millennium.

"Something deeply human keeps us both fascinated and worried about tomorrow's dangers. We all try to project our thoughts into the future, using special portions of our brains called prefrontal lobes to envision, fantasize, and explore possible consequences of our actions, noticing errors and evading some mistakes."

SEEING THE FUTURE: Carrying these themes a little farther, here's an essay on exploring the near future, titled "Can We See the Near Future? The Odd Way We Design our Destiny," which supplements a transcript of my interview on the Public Television show Closer to Truth.

"About a hundred years ago, people all over the world began drifting away from priests, kings and national flag-totems, transferring their loyalty instead to fervid ideologies -- models of human nature that allured with hypnotically simplistic promises. Often viciously co-opted by nation states, these rigid, formulaic, pseudo-scientific incantations helped turn the mid-20th Century into a hellish pit."

THE MEME WAR: In light of the tense and tragic events of September 11, 2001, I've posted here a portion of a speech I gave in 1989... one that seems -- rather eerily -- to predict much of what we've seen happen. It's about a war between basic worldviews, or "memes," that are rooted far deeper in our hearts and minds than even nations and religions -- the things that we often think we are fighting about. Take a look, and judge for yourself if the predictions were prescient.

"There are presently four major worldviews battling over the future of this planet. These four combatting worldviews have little to do with all those superficial slogans that people have let themselves get lathered about in this century. Things like communism, capitalism, Islam. We have seen wars and death aplenty, but they weren't fought over such simpleminded ideologies. Not really."

GEORGE ORWELL: Two anniversaries prompted essays about important works that affected our lives in the late Twentieth Century. In the first, a speech given at the 2000 Orwell Conference at the University of Chicago to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, I talk about how the greatest works of science fiction do not attempt to predict a future as much as prevent their own scenarios from coming true - an aim that Orwell achieved with fantastic success.

"History is a long and dreary litany of ruinous decisions made by rulers in all centuries and continents. No convoluted social theory is needed to explain this. A common thread weaves through most of these disasters; a flaw in human character -- self-deception -- eventually enticed even great leaders into taking fatal missteps, ignoring the warnings of others."

2001: NOT A SCIENCE ODYSSEY: In the second article, commissioned to recognize the arrival of the year for which the epochal film 2001: A Space Odyssey was named, I discuss the unique light that the film sheds on a modern cliché... the absurd and easily disproved, yet tediously-repeated plaint that human wisdom hasn't kept pace with our technology.

"It is our attitudes that have undergone a transformation unlike any in history. All kinds of unjust assumptions that used to be considered inherent -- from racial, sexual and class stereotypes to ideological oversimplifications -- have been tossed onto the trash heap where they long deserved to go, in favor of a generalized notion of tolerance, pragmatism and eccentricity that seems to grow more vibrant with each passing year."

Y2K-NOT: Did anyone notice how the much-feared and ballyhooed "Y2K Bug" fizzled? See my brief essay titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Y2K" predicting this outcome, at iMP Magazine.

"The Y2K computer glitch, by attracting so much media attention, has seemingly acted as a sort of lightning rod for paranoiac fantasies, drawing much of the inevitable fin-de-siècle panic into a fairly harmless set of doom scenarios, none of them involving fire from the sky or Last Judgement. At worst (according to Y2K apocalypse warnings), we will all spend a few months eating canned food by candlelight, while listening to the Bill Gates trial ("It wasn't my fault!") on solar powered radios."

BURNING GENIUS: Read an article I published in Slashdot, titled "Giordano Bruno After 400 Years: A Pain in the Neck Who Would Be Treasured Today," which commemorated the 400th anniversary of the day when that profound eccentric was burned at the stake for views that would nowadays have made him a rich and famous crackpot.

"Few people know of him today. Tourists blink in puzzlement at his statue, now standing in the Roman square -- the Campo de Fiori -- where the Inquisition incinerated him. But his name wasn't always obscure. With a colorful personality and a flood of unconventional opinions, Bruno was a sensational figure as the 17th century drew to a close -- a prominent Renaissance thinker who, true to that complex era, mixed philosophy, religion, logic and mysticism while preaching a daring worldview that helped set the stage for what we now know as science."

See also my pages for speaking & consulting and events & appearances for past and future appearances where I've discussed or debated this issue, which many people feel will be central to deciding what kind of society our grandchildren inherit.