Institute for the Future

[David Morris]

Found @ Boing Boing:

http://www.iftf.org/

Guardian Article on IFTF:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,1975785,00.html#article_continue

Piles of rubbish clutter the streets of the new urban sprawls. In
overloaded hospitals, patients lie in corridors, victims of a
pandemic. Water prices have rocketed, and temperatures have nosedived
with a premature slowing of the Gulf stream.

Welcome to dystopian Britain, a thoroughly miserable snapshot of the
country's woes come the middle of the 21st century. While the bleak
scenario might seem unlikely at present, Sir David King, the
government's chief science adviser, is urging policy-makers not to be
complacent. A bleak future will only be avoided if they understand the
threats and what new technologies might come to the rescue.

Professor King, a Cambridge chemist, decided more than 18 months ago
that government departments needed to ensure their future policies
were scientifically better informed. He set up two reviews, which have
just been completed. One charted trends likely to affect Britain in
the next 50 years or so. The other picked out emerging scientific and
technological breakthroughs that will help shape that future. Link

Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/52012564-8fcf-11db-9ba3-0000779e2340.html

Chinese astronauts walk on the moon, the world has splintered into
currency blocs after an international exchange rate shock, and even
robots have the vote.

It sounds like the exaggerated vision - utopian or distopian according
to taste - of a parlour futurologist. But these scenarios of what life
might be like around the middle of the century have emerged from 270
rigorously researched papers commissioned by the government that
together purport to be the world's most extensive look into the
future.