Will we always fly in cylindrical tubes with wings?

With the Boeing Dreamliner 787 making its first international appearance at the Farnborough air show this week in the UK, I thought it would be good to post a bit about the future of commercial airliners.

I have always been fascinated by designs for concept airplanes. Looking at pictures of futuristic fighter planes and airliners in books as a child was probably one of the reasons I studied aerospace engineering as an undergrad. I always wanted to know what new type of plane was next. Wired's Autopia has been reporting on some interesting new designs, from new boom-less supersonic jets to super efficient airliners to Airbus's Concept Plane.

Everything that I have been reading details concepts that are focused primarily on improved fuel efficiency and a better passenger experience (more luxuries, entertainment choices, bigger seats and windows, improved cabin air and lighting, etc.). Do today's current economics of commercial air travel and the existing airport network infrastructure prevent any radical leaps in aircraft design? Will we always fly in cylindrical tubes with wings that fly around 500-600 mph?

I want to better understand what it could take to dramatically change our future flying experience. Will flight times ever be cut in half? Will smaller air taxis catch on for regional flights? Will we see new physical designs like the blended-wing body? Today's advances are impressive and technically significant, but I am afraid that we are going to be stuck with marginal evolutionary improvements in our air travel experience in the coming future.

OK, the u-shaped tail and integrated engines are pretty cool...

Speaking at WorldFuture 2010 in Boston

I don't get a chance to do much public speaking with my current job, but I was lucky enough to be asked by a colleague to participate on a panel of corporate foresight experts at the upcoming World Future Society's WorldFuture 2010 conference in Boston on Saturday, July 10th. I'll be part of a four-person panel discussing "Foresight in the Corporate World: Trends and Approaches That Leading Companies Use to Navigate a Fast-Changing World".

I'll mainly be giving an overview of the forward-looking techniques that IBM uses across the company, what challenges we see in the future, and an overview of our Smarter Cities concept. I haven't been to a WFS conference since 2002 in Philadelphia, so I am looking forward to attending. I was in the same city for the 2005 and 2009 conferences (both in Chicago), but I spoke at the Association of Professional Futurists development seminars instead. So, if you are going to be at WFS in Boston, stop by and say hello. I'll provide a full write-up here after the conference.

I also wanted to post a great piece of art that a graphic faciliator created while I was presenting at corporate strategy retreat at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland this past February. Truly a great guy, and I am thankful he took the time to do this. I think it sums up the field of foresight/futures quite nicely, and it shows that we can never take ourselves too seriously...

Where Has All the Optimism Gone?

Welcome to Watchers of Tomorrow! This blog will be my forum to talk about my thoughts about the future, trends and emerging issues I feel are important, and a place to try out ideas for my introductory course on corporate/business foresight techniques.

This will be a recurring topic that I post about, but I am wondering if we are in a distinct period of pessimism about the future that is hampering our ability to solve global problems. This could be because of a lack of compelling visions to believe in, too many real and self-imposed constraints to our actions, and global systems that have too much inertia and cannot be changed radically. I definitely think this is true in the United States, but I am unsure what the rest of the world thinks about this.

The global recession, tepid recovery, austerity plans, environmental catastrophes, scandals, prolonged wars and security situations, diminishing trust in institutions, all contribute to this general negative view of the future. We don't seem to be able to solve any problems any more. We are told that the solutions to our problems are to do more with less - less money, less energy, less people, and less opportunity. I fear we are becoming trapped by the economic, technological and social systems that have made us so successful. We are now just playing on the edges, holding on.

There was an interesting recent editorial in the New York Times entitled, "When Greatness Slips Away", by Bob Herbert. It is related to this increasingly negative view of the future in that we feel more and more helpless when it comes to the problems of our time. We cannot rise to the great challenges any more with a sense of "can do" and optimism. We can't win a war, can't stop an oil leak, can't jump start the economy, can't save our cities, can't fly to the moon, can't negotiate peace, can't shift to renewable energy...are we really in an era of "can't", or is this just a difficult transition period?

I think that the fine fictional philosopher and scientist Reed Richards sums it up (below) quite well in a speech he gave in a recent issue of the Fantastic Four comic. He is speaking to a group of individuals at what looks like is a Singularity University conference. He states that people are increasingly afraid of the future and believe we should plan for a world where we fight over increasingly limited resources. He proposes instead of trying to desperately preserve what we have, we should risk more to see what we can truly achieve.

Those are just some of my initial thoughts on the subject. I'll revisit it now and again and try to build some sort of theory and supplement with examples. I hope I am wrong about this trend, but unfortunately, I don't think I am.