FUTURES RESEARCH

9118 – Future Observatory 3 – The US Millennium Project and WFS

One of the few other organisations we, as the Futures Observatory, became involved with was the US equivalent of our own operation.  This was a much bigger organisation than our own.  Where there was just myself and Avril in the UK, and really that was all that was needed, the Americans had a number of staff in an office in Washington.  In theory they were actually part of the United Nations University, which is based in Japan, but we never saw any real evidence of that.  Their full title was the Millennium Project  of the American Committee of the United Nations University.

Even so, it was its two leaders who drove the whole thing forward. Both of them had come out of NASA and in particular out of the Apollo programme which put men on the moon. Ted Gordon, the older of the two, had been in charge of the third stage of the Apollo rocket.  He was particularly interesting, however, in terms of the part of project that was never completed.  The intention had been to launch a modified third stage which would have contained a full scale laboratory in its fuel tanks; which would have been landed on the moon. It would have provided the base for the American astronauts to remain on the moon for a period of time.  Like many other long range plans it was cancelled by Richard Nixon.  That was a tremendous pity since his decision put back the exploration of space by the number of decades.

The other, younger, leader was Gerry Glenn. He was a cousin of the American astronaut and senator, John Glenn.

However, both of them were intent on building the Millennium Project into an internationally recognized organization, and I guess they succeeded. Their form of research was slightly different to our own, with an element of Delphi thrown in (where Ted had been the original developer of this approach) relying more on interviews undertaken by the various international members.  Thus one of my main jobs was to visit the various opinion formers in the UK and interview them on the specific subject being investigated.  It was a fascinating experience, and allowed me to gain entry to meet some fascinating people such as the editors of the Observer and Economist.

Once a year it also enabled me to go to their own conference, where other members from around the world met to discuss developments.  Mostly these took place in Washington; the first was in the conference centre of the Smithsonian. I'd never realised that all the open space between Smithsonian buildings was actually occupied by underground administrative suites. The second was in the conference suite of the World Bank.  There were typically about 20 of us, from around the world.  I used to be especially impressed by the Russian delegate, a girl who had the inside track on the Kremlin and was an adviser to the Dumar.  But there were similar level delegates from all the countries.

However, events used to be dominated by Gerry Glenn who was a forceful character, especially after the Ted Gordon had a heart attack and had to take life rather more easily.  As you might expect, Gerry did not welcome my own interventions.

I guess the main difference was that their approach tended to be quite focused on the issues which Gerry, in particular, thought important. At that point in time my own research was, on the other hand, very open-ended. I quite simply wanted to map the future without any bias put into it by my own direct questions.

The last meeting I went to, before my heart trouble cut out my travel, was in Chicago. There we met in the conference suite of Motorola's University.  While we were there the Board of Motorola were having a crisis meeting at the other end of the building.  It was a period when Nokia and Ericsson had suddenly taken the lead away from Motorola in the mobile phone market. As a result, Motorola itself had lost its way.

It was also when they had spent a fortune on developing the Iridium project of satellite telephones.  I remember the President of Motorola joining us to explain what they were up to, and in particular to proudly show us their new satellite phone. This was the time when mobile phones had already decreased in size to the point where they fitted into your shirt pocket.  The mobile phone he showed us was as sizeable as a large brick, much as the very first mobile phones had been.  In addition, it was not clear what the market was; since the Metropolitan market, which would where most mobile phones were sold, wanted miniature sets and the deserts of the world, where nothing else would operate, would hardly be full of affluent individuals. In fact, it was a disaster and effectively went bankrupt -- though it was, and still is, a major development for the Third World.

We were in Chicago because it was the venue for the World Future Society conference. At the time I was also head of the British chapter of the World Future Society, but was unable to put on any dedicated events -- though I invited to members along to the meetings with the Strategic Planning Society. This was the first and only WFS conference I attended. It was held in the Hilton hotel, where I found myself in a room with two bathrooms -- I only used one of them!  It was an interesting conference and my main paper went down very well. The tradition was that people walked in and out of the various meeting rooms as people presented their papers, and you judged how successful they were by how few members of the audience you lost. In fact I gained a few people during my presentation and got a good round of applause as well as some interesting questions.

I went to Chicago dreading that the place would be the pits.  I suppose my image of it was very much that set by Al Capone. In fact, at the time, they were desperately trying to raze to the ground anything to do with him of the cosa nostra gangs. However, I thought they were going too far in destroying history.

The reality is that Chicago is a lovely city. That is mainly down to my favourite architect, Mies Van Der Rohe, who taught at the University and designed many of the city's most beautiful skyscrapers. In particular, I saw these skyscrapers on a walking tour with the Chicago Architectural Association.  It really was fascinating to see these wonderful buildings and to learn of their history.

I also went to the Chicago Art Institute which has a wonderful selection of impressionists.  So much for Chicago being an uncultured city.  At the time Richard Daley - son of the infamous Mayor Daley -- was a very successful mayor and had put in place some splendidly un-American (social democratic) policies. As a result, the city had become so attractive that people were actually moving back into it, from the suburbs.  Indeed, in the evening rush hour the traffic jams were going into the city rather than out of it.

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