"500 years from now the average life span will be 800 years," said futurist Watts Wacker (firstmatter.com(1)) who appeared on Monday night's show. He commented that silicon and carbon are beginning to fuse and that the "Six Million Dollar Man only costs about $12,000 today."

Wacker also discussed his book The 500 Year Delta(2), which posits that civilization has gone through major changes approximately every 500 years. He suggested that the current age of reason is giving way to a new age of paradox where people are able to comfortably hold seemingly contradictory viewpoints, such as believing in both Darwinism and Creationism.

Two tools that Wacker said he uses to study the future, are "content analysis" which looks at such things as the amount of media coverage a particular subject gets, and "scenario planning." He mentioned that some of the most long-lived companies are those that grow into other areas than those in which they initially succeeded in. Curiously, he said that while companies such as Coca Cola may have drafted a 500 year plan, "the longer out you look, the more you tend to focus on the here and now."

1. http://www.firstmatter.com/
2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887309119/ctoc/

Bumper Music

Bumper music from Monday June 02, 2003