Just about the last thing a futurist wants to do is make a prediction. And before this millennium thing got started, few people asked them to. Fortune 1000 companies such as AT&T, IBM, Motorola and Honeywell were happy to pay futurists for their enlightened projections—forecasts, the futurists call them—on where the next hot market, product or regional war would be. And the futurists could go home safe in the knowledge that their employers expected them to hedge a bit, that by forecasting the future they might actually be changing it.
Then we came along. Small Business News asked a few of these professional prognosticators to gaze into their Pentium-powered crystal balls and predict … er, forecast … some major events or developments in the year 1999. These futurists are no ordinary psychics: Their discipline has been recognized by the American Academy of Sciences since 1969. Prestigious institutions including the United Nations and the Defense Logistics Agency listen to their reports. And big companies pay big bucks for their wisdom. Herewith, a peek into the penultimate year of the second millennium.
“I’m going to predict that the Y2K problem will be a fizzle,” says Earl Joseph, president of Anticipatory Sciences, Inc., who used to forecast for Sperry-Univac Corp. before contracting his services to IBM and others. While technologists are getting exercised about the Millennium Bug, Joseph and others believe business and governments caught enough of the problem in time to prevent the lights from going out and world from plunging into darkness. On the other hand (a favorite phrase of futurists), “It doesn’t take too many companies having a problem for it to have a domino effect,” Joseph says.
Fizzle or not, someone’s going to make a killing on Y2K, expects Tim Mack, principal at AAI Research, a strategic and political trend analysis firm for Philip Morris Companies, Inc. and Defense Department. Agreeing with Joseph that the Year 2000 problem will be something less than an apocalypse, Mack adds that profit opportunities have made and will continue to make new millionaires in dealing with the threat, perhaps even after Jan. 1, 2000, has come and gone. If disaster strikes, Mack says, it may be due to unforeseen links or connectivity between Y2K compliant organizations and noncompliant ones.
A deflationary recession by fourth quarter 1999, according to Greg Schmid, director of strategic planning at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. “Every other business cycle downturn we’ve had has been generated by inflation coming from bottlenecks,” notes Schmid, who has consulted (futurized?) for Deutsche Telekom, Allstate Insurance and Chase Manhattan Bank. “The worrisome thing is a deflationary cycle, in which a recession is generated by a fall or collapse in prices.” The result, Schmid believes, could be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Or not. “There’s no recession; are you kidding?” scoffs James V. McTevia, chairman of McTevia & Associates, which consults for NationsBank and Ford Motor Co. The coming year will see a slowing, though, he predicts (McTevia has been a management consultant for more than 40 years, so he lacks the futurists’ bane for commitment). “This is certainly not the time to expand. This is certainly not the time to have your capital tied up in buildings and equipment. This is the time to have some liquidity.” Repair rather than replace that aging machine. Cut expenses. Trim your labor force. “Sit tight,” McTevia advises. “The country is well. There’s just going to be a slowdown.”
“The prospects for war with Iraq are really good,” thinks Howard F. Didsbury, special studies director for the World Future Society, the grandfather of futurist associations. “And this time we’ll probably go in with paratroops and everything.” Will the American people stand for it? “Saddam Hussein is nobody’s fool,” answers Didsbury. Hussein is banking on Americans’ squeamishness when confronted with large body counts of dead American soldiers. “Presidents in the United States historically have taken military action, and then the public follows it.” War with Hussein could throw a lot of predictions about the economy into the hopper, Didsbury and other forecasters note.
The forward thinkers add a few forecasts to their list; 1999 will see:
• The first human clone, possibly overseas, since the backlash in the United States is likely to be cyclonic.
• New third-party challenges. Minnesota Reform Party Gov. Jesse “The Body” Ventura “is going to make over government in the Hollywood style,” says Joseph in St. Paul, Minn.
• Electronic books as the hot new household appliance. It’ll be cheaper to transmit books electronically, Joseph notes, and friendlier to the environment.
• Instantaneous credit. Schmid thinks lenders will install computer programs that monitor your saving and spending activity and instantly qualify and notify you for loans.
• Customized biopharmaceuticals. Drugs that not only fight cancer, but fight your cancer, are coming to market. “If you can reach 2020,” Joseph believes, “you’re going to live a long time.”