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copyright 1976 by Julian Bond
Social problems of the 70s and 80s
Despite that, I've been asked speak about the future.
To discuss the future at all is risky; none of us knows for sure what the next few minutes may bring.
Futurists even have their own language - they discuss the post-industrial, post-scarcity, superindustrial, globally homeopathic, post-affluent, prefigurative society that may, they say, be soon upon us. Their models are developed through trend [illegible] extrapolation, cross impact analysis, mutual causal paradigms, and transformational matrixes, predicted on resometrics, technotronics, synergetics or anticipatory democracy within either macro or micro systems.
We can surely expect much change by the year 2000.
25 years from now our world's population may be 6 billion people. We may have by then developed the ability to create ourselves through genetic engineering, to create a race of men and women less hostile ] 2 to each other, less selfish of their own resources. We may be able to alter our weather, as well as our consciousness.
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[the following text in a handwritten blue bracket] Within only three years, 50 per cent of the world's population will be reached by television, and 50 per cent of the world's goods and services will be produced by the multi-national corpotation.
We are changing from an industrial econemy into a service economey, an economy in which service availability and informational ability will become the currency of the future. [end blue bracket text]
We are sure to go through a series of violent and non-violent wars of redistribution like the current crises over who can charge how much for all.
[The following sentence is handwritten.] No one of course can plot or plan the future unless we're able to know the past and describe our present.