Setting a new direction for public and private transport in Sydney

Global Security Risks – Evaluating probabilities and managing potential negative outcomes

Book Retailing and Publishing in Australia: survival in a digital age

The digital age has reshaped many industries, but book publishing has change more than most. Books aren’t going away but the way we read them is definitely changing. Fergus Neilson asks how can the industry survive and what will the future look like?

There was a time when printing the Bible in the ‘vulgate’ rather than in Latin was a capital offence. The initial introduction of paperback books by Penguin in the early 30s failed. Their eventual and enthusiastic adoption by Woolworths drove a level of success and growth that was seen by traditionalists as the beginning of the end for book retailing.

Telecommunications: When the future calls how will you answer?

There was once a time when people were unable to carry on conversations using voice telephones. Many years of innovation have brought us to where we are today – in a world dominated by a variety of communication devices. What will the technology of the future look like?

When I was hitch-hiking around the US and Canada as a university student in the late sixties, I sent just two postcards home to my mother during the entire two months I was away.

Now the gap-year children of my school friends won’t let a day slip without texting or skypeing home. Ten years ago there were no iPhones or iPads. Now they are universal and Apple was briefly, during the first week of August 2011, the most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation.

Cyber Security: The bedrock for a better society or a cookie jar for scammers, terrorists and commercial opportunists?

The rise of the digital economy has brought with it a host of new issues surrounding cyber security. Like other countries around the world, Australia is still grappling with its cyber safety future.

Population: Is it really the 800 pound gorilla lurking in our shadows?

The world’s population is predicted to exceed seven billion during 2012. The changes brought on by this ever increasing growth are the subject of much debate in Australia and around the globe.

When my father was born in India in 1902, the total world population was near enough 1.5 billion. When I was born in the UK in 1949 it had reached 2.5 billion. By the time my nephew’s first child is born in Sydney next year, total world population will have just gone over seven billion. This is an increase of over four-and-a-half times in 110 years. Compound that with an estimated five-fold increase in the average global GDP per capita over the same period and it is possible that we are looking at a 23-fold increase in the impact of humanity on a planet that hasn’t gotten any bigger in the last 110 years, and won’t be getting any bigger in the future.

The Futures Project

The Futures Project (TFP) believes that it is better to shape the future than to wait until the future hits the fan, and that accessing the wisdom of crowds is not only a sounder basis for looking into the near future than the predictions of individual pundits, but is also the best way to re-engage a broader populace with the vital processes of government and business decision making – to the benefit of all.

The Futures Project is a business and public policy consultancy that applies multi-disciplinary expertise to the formulation of issues and alternative near future scenarios designed to engage a global community of individuals interested in shaping, rather than just reacting to, social, political, technological and economic futures.

The Futures Project operates on the basis of three core hypotheses: