The Search for Foresight: How THE FUTURIST Was Born (Part 1)
By Edward Cornish
Did you hear our exciting news about the digitization of the archives of The Futurist, WFS’s magazine which ran from 1966–2015? Interested in learning more about the history of the World Future Society?
WFS presents Ed Cornish’s memoir “The Search for Foresight” which was written in six parts for The Futurist magazine and published in honor of the organization’s fortieth anniversary in 2007. It’s a fascinating read about the society’s beginnings. The memoir explores Cornish’s motivations for creating the WFS and chronicles his collaborations with other thinkers of his age — including Isaac Asimov, Margaret Mead, and Arthur C. Clarke — to create the community that we are a part of today. Check it out!
Back in 1960 I would never have dreamed that within a few years I would become something called a “futurist” and take a leading role in creating the World Future Society. As a future futurist, I failed completely to anticipate my own future!
My life in 1960 was rather idyllic. After spending six years working all hours of day and night as a United Press correspondent in five different cities of America and Europe, I had secured a nice quiet 9-to-5 job with the National Geographic Society in Washington. All I had to do was write feature articles on science, natural history, and geography. For me this was like paradise. I got married, and my wife and I bought a comfortable house in the suburbs where we lived with our two young sons. We socialized with neighbors and friends.
But far away from Washington, the Soviet Union and its allies were threatening to overturn noncommunist regimes around the world, and the United States and its allies felt increasingly imperiled. In South Vietnam, Communist rebels menaced the newly independent government; in East Germany, the Communists were tightening their grip on Berlin; and, in Cuba, Fidel Castro’s rebels had toppled a noncommunist government and were now allying Cuba with Moscow.
To make matters worse, the Soviet Union and the United States were in an arms race, focused largely on building nuclear rockets that could obliterate cities thousands of miles away. Both nations now had thermonuclear weapons, whose power dwarfed the horrors wrought by the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
John F. Kennedy was elected president in November 1960, and, as soon as he assumed office, he began responding forcefully to Communist expansionism. Kennedy went to Berlin to reassert American support for West Berlin’s independence. He sent thousands of American military “advisors” to assist the South Vietnamese government in resisting Communist aggression, and he approved an invasion of Cuba to oust the Castro regime.
These moves demonstrated American determination not to tolerate further Communist advances, but they also antagonized the Soviet leadership. As tensions increased, both the Soviet Union and the United States accelerated preparations for war.
War between two nations armed with thermonuclear rockets was too ghastly even to think about. When an obscure physicist named Herman Kahn at the RAND Corporation did think seriously about the consequences of a thermonuclear war, he was roundly denounced as some kind of monster, like the half-maniac, half-bionic “Dr. Strangelove.” True enough, Kahn’s 1960 book On Thermonuclear War may well be the scariest book ever written, but only because the facts are so horrendous. The human mind has difficulty comprehending a war in which millions of people might die on the first day of the war — and most of the survivors would wish themselves dead.
My work rarely touched on politics, but it was impossible to be a journalist working only five blocks from the White House and a member of the National Press Club and not be aware of the increasing international tension. My office window looked out on the Soviet Embassy just across Sixteenth Street, and my colleagues and I knew that FBI agents were stationed in nearby buildings to monitor the comings and goings at the Embassy. When we crossed the street, we joked about the FBI eavesdropping on our conversations.
When the Soviet Union sent a new ambassador to Washington, I went to the Press Club to hear him speak. The ambassador was a seemingly genial fellow named Novikov, who spoke excellent English and gave a friendly speech. We journalists applauded enthusiastically, so the event became a love feast of Soviet–American amity. Unfortunately, our friendly reception seems to have misled the ambassador into thinking that the United States would not go to war even if the Soviet Union supplied Cuba with nuclear missiles. In any event, this Soviet miscalculation almost brought about thermonuclear war.
During the mounting crises of 1961 and 1962, I experienced a personal crisis. I had to assume that the Soviets had one or more nuclear missiles aimed at Washing- ton, and, at any moment, such a missile might be launched, either intentionally or accidentally. So what should I do? Just ignore the mounting danger?
I had no power to prevent the march toward Armageddon, but I could at least get my family and my- self someplace far away. It would not be easy, but it was possible. I got literature from the Australian Embassy and began seriously thinking about moving my family there. I agonized for months over this question, but it became clear that my wife would not go with me, so if I did I would have to leave her behind and probably my sons as well. I was not ready for that, so I remained in Washington, hoping that the crisis would pass but continuing to agonize. The year 1962 was the darkest period of my life psychologically and perhaps also for my wife, who was very much affected by my own anxiety.
The 13-day Cuban crisis in 1962 has been described by historian Arthur Schlesinger as the most dangerous moment in history. Some of President Kennedy’s advisors urged him to order an immediate “preemptive strike” by U.S. missiles to keep the Soviets from obliterating us first. Happily, we’ll never know what would have happened if their view had prevailed, because the crisis was resolved after an extraordinary meeting — outside normal diplomatic channels — between a journalist whom I knew slightly, John Scali, and a Soviet contact who had the ear of the Kremlin. The Soviet leaders finally became convinced that the Americans might really be crazy enough to launch a missile attack against them, so they called back the ships carrying nuclear weapons to Cuba.
Sharing Fears With Friends
My intense anxiety slowly subsided, but the years of growing crisis left me with an obsession: Is there any way to decide what may happen in the future? We desperately need better knowledge of the future if we are to make intelligent decisions, but there seemed to be no way to get it.
I shared my concerns with various friends, partly because I hoped that they would help me in some way and partly because talking about it relieved my anxiety. I don’t believe I really expected that one of my friends would enable me to find answers to the questions that obsessed me. But one of them actually did.
This friend was John Dixon, my oldest and most unusual friend. He and I met when we were 6-year-old schoolboys in New York, and through the years, we always stayed in touch though our careers took us in very different directions. I followed my father and grandfathers into journalism, while John went his own unique way. He always did.
One of John’s “hobbies” was going after people doing interesting things. While we were still in school, John got Albert Einstein to solve a math problem assigned by one of the teachers. (No other kid came up with that solution to the homework problem!) After college, he persuaded the comprehensive designer Buckminster Fuller to give him a job, so John went around the world putting up Bucky’s signature domes in places as remote as Afghanistan. Along the way, he made friends everywhere with people whose work interested him. Many of them, like John and Bucky, seemed to have their eyes on the future.
When John relocated to Washington, we renewed our friendship. He got a job setting up an office for the Xerox Corporation, whose new copying machines were far better than any other manufacturer’s. John’s special task was to demonstrate to scholars the extraordinary usefulness of Xerox photocopiers. Once the scholars realized how much Xerox machines could help them in their work, they would demand that their institutions spend millions of dollars acquiring Xerox machines.
John’s strategy was to get scholars and scientists to send him their papers. He would then select the papers sure to interest specific scholars. Then he would have his staff send out photocopies to the designated recipients. Since John had a keen sense of what individual scholars were most interested in, his system worked beautifully. Scholars around the world became entranced with Xerox copies, and John acquired countless devoted and grateful admirers.
In this unique way, John established close contact with Bertrand de Jouvenel, a French economist who had become interested in how we can know more about the future; sociologists John McHale and Daniel Bell; and scholars at the RAND Corporation who were doing pioneering work in the use of scenarios and Delphi polling as tools for anticipating and preparing for possible future developments in military and political affairs.
John also began sending me papers he thought would interest me, and, since he knew me exceptionally well, his papers proved priceless. If I hadn’t had John’s help, I would never have learned about these scholars working on the future, and I also would not have heard of de Jouvenel’s book The Art of Conjecture, which was published in Monaco. I immediately ordered a copy and, when the book arrived, read it with growing excitement. De Jouvenel opened my eyes to what should have been obvious but I had failed to see due to my misconceptions of the future.
The Future as Frontier
I began to see the future not as a totally impenetrable realm about which we can know absolutely nothing, but rather as an exciting frontier, offering enormous possibilities but also extraordinary dangers. We cannot possibly know everything that lies ahead, but with effort we can glimpse the possibilities of our future. This weak but incredibly valuable knowledge is critically important if we are to make wise decisions. Foresight is the secret ingredient of success.
Since I was a journalist, I began to think about how other people could be made aware of the possibilities of the future and perhaps could do a better job of dealing with the innumerable problems that humans must confront. Perhaps we could even find better ways to avoid future wars.
By 1965, I was mentioning to friends that I would like to start a magazine about the future. I knew that the Ford Foundation had put up the money to launch a magazine for the social sciences called Transaction. One of my friends, sociologist Hans Spiegel, arranged for me to meet with Fred Crosland, a Ford Foundation representative, who was attending a conference in Washington. However, Crosland told me that Ford was extremely unlikely to fund another magazine and there was little point in my applying.
After that disappointment, as well as several other efforts that went nowhere, I had another idea. Perhaps there was an association somewhere that served the needs of people interested in the future. Arthur C. Clarke had dedicated his book Profiles of the Future to his “colleagues in the Institute of Twenty-first Century Studies,” so I wrote to him inquiring about the Institute. But Clarke wrote back that the “Institute” was imaginary: He was simply referring to people like himself who were interested in the future.
I also wrote Dandridge Cole, a General Electric futurist who was forecasting future developments in space exploration at the company’s Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, research laboratory. Cole would certainly know if there was such a society, but he wrote back that he knew of no such organization, though he thought there should be one.
Sadly, the day after writing me, Cole died of a heart attack while doing calisthenics in his office. News of his death stunned me. I knew of no one else who might take the lead in establishing an association for the future. It also occurred to me that, even if there were someone willing to take on the task, just how would he find others to help him? People interested in the future were scattered across the world and they worked in many different occupations. I had thought that Dandridge Cole would already be in contact with future-oriented people and could readily assemble them, but I began to recognize that it might not have been easy for him to do so. Even if he knew such people, probably only a few would be willing to do the practical work of creating a society.
So, for a time, I thought that I would just have to forget about my idea for a magazine and a society for the future. But I also began to brood about trying to get such a group going myself. I knew nothing about how organizations get started — my sociology professors never discussed that topic — but I was sure you had to have people in contact with each other. I could see how a group of people living in the same community or working together daily could form a group, but people seriously interested in the future seemed to be few in number and scattered across the world. They also worked in many different fields. How could they be located, contacted, persuaded, and nagged into actually doing the organizational work?
The Birth of The Futurist
Eventually it occurred to me that perhaps I myself could start a newsletter devoted to the future, and that would put me into contact with others interested in the future. Though I had failed to get funding for a magazine, I could afford to start a simple newsletter without any help from others. I knew only a few “futurists” to send it to, but they might know a few others, and gradually a network of futurists would be created. Then perhaps we could organize a society for the future, especially if there were a few of us who could meet regularly and work out the details of setting up an organization. A key step would be finding people who could meet as a group. Perhaps there were other people beside myself in the Washington area to join in a Society- creating effort.
So I began preparing an initial newsletter and I also drew up a prospectus for a “Society for the Future.” This typed and crudely reproduced prospectus, running seven single-spaced pages, noted the increasing pace of social and technological change was generating interest in the future and a need to anticipate future changes. As evidence, I mentioned de Jouvenel and his Futuribles group in Paris.
“At present,” I wrote, “scholars and experts concerned with the future operate in relative isolation from each other. Yet the electronics engineer, the demographer and the sociologist are all talking about the same world. Hence it would seem useful for those interested in the future to have forecasts brought together in a regular and systematic way, perhaps through a journal. It might also be useful to have a broad-based organization devoted to study of the future. Such a society, open to anyone interested enough to pay dues, could encourage a cross-disciplinary approach to social and technological forecasting. It might provide a communications network for funneling ideas about the future to appropriate government agencies and congressmen. Its file of members would be a list of individuals in various fields who could be consulted by scholars and public officials.”
“The study of the future might help the cause of world peace. Almost all the world’s leaders share a common vision of the future: they all agree that their peoples must and will become more affluent, and this common ideology of progress seems to offer some hope for an eventual solution to present international political disagreements. As people become more future-oriented, that is, more conscious of the dynamic nature of human institutions and ideologies, they may become less rigid in their insistence on time-worn customs and beliefs that have been largely outmoded. It should then be easier to find areas of agreement. Thus serious study of the future which all men will share in common may offer a kind of counterweight to the burden of traditional grievances and present fears. Perhaps the ‘conquest of the future’ may provide what William James called ‘a moral equivalent for war.’”
The prospectus went on to describe in some detail the journal that the Society for the Future might produce, since I was still largely focused on creating a substantial publication devoted to the future. However, I also discussed the practical issues of operating a society: governance, recruiting members, funding, etc.
The prospectus, written in 1965, reflected my continuing fear of war and search for some practical means of dealing with it. Besides my dread of thermonuclear war, I had been outraged as President Kennedy and later Johnson sent increasing numbers of American soldiers into Vietnam. When I was a news correspondent based in Paris, I had the sad duty of editing reports from our correspondents in Vietnam when French — not American — soldiers were fighting and dying there. I had despaired over the sufferings of my beloved France, and now I was boiling with rage that we Americans had learned nothing from the French experience.
While I was pondering what to call my projected newsletter, Time magazine solved my problem by publishing an extraordinary essay entitled, “THE FUTURISTS: Looking Toward A.D. 2000” (February 25, 1966). This essay focused on precisely the kind of people whose work fascinated me, such as Herman Kahn, Olaf Helmer, Buckminster Fuller, and Bertrand de Jouvenel. By referring to them as “futurists” Time had validated the term. In 1966, Time was probably the best-read publication among serious Americans, so a Time essay devoted to a subject made it important, whether it really was or not.
Strongly encouraged by this development, I began preparing a prototype newsletter called THE FUTURIST based on my collection of newspaper articles, books, reports, etc., related to the future. I also developed a mailing list of people who might be interested in a newsletter about the future, but I couldn’t come up with more than about 40 or 50 names. So I decided to enclose several copies of the newsletter and suggest that the recipients forward copies to anybody they thought might be interested.
To cast a wider net, I looked through directories of corporations and made a list of executives whose job titles suggested they should have an interest in the future, such as “Manager of Corporate Planning.” I also went through the Congressional Directory, looking for government officials whose jobs suggested they should be interested in the future.
After typing up my final version of THE FUTURIST, I had it printed by a firm in Washington, and began the task of addressing envelopes to the people I had identified. By this time, my wife Sally was taking an interest in the project, and she got our young sons (now numbering three — Tony, Jeff, and Blake) to help stuff the newsletter into envelopes.
The response to THE FUTURIST was extraordinary. Scores of people, many quite prominent, wrote back asking to be put on the mailing list, and many had strong words of support.
Buckminster Fuller said that he thought the newsletter was excellent and was sending the copies to his “most trusted associates.” One of them turned out to be my old friend John Dixon, who showed me the copy Bucky had sent him. It had a handwritten note at the top: “John, I think this is something you should look into.”
Olaf Helmer wrote saying the newsletter “photocopies well,” and he was sending copies to his colleagues within the RAND Corporation. Herman Kahn said he planned to look me up on his next visit to Washington. Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, asked to be put on the list, as did U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman. Others who wrote in included noted authors like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Realizing the Vision
Most important to me were the notes I got from two people working in downtown Washington who said they were very interested in the proposed World Future Society. One was social psychologist David Goldberg, advance planning officer in the U.S. Office of Education’s Bureau of Research. The other was Charles W. Williams Jr., a staff associate in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Science Resources Planning.
I arranged to have lunch with each of the two prospective collaborators and discuss the project with them. Both seemed genuinely enthusiastic and ready to get started immediately on making the proposed World Future Society a reality.
Williams, in turn, discussed the project with his boss, Henry David, who agreed that a society such as we proposed could be a resource for NSF’s Office of Science Resources Planning. David agreed for Williams to support the effort and gave Williams a free hand in doing so. As a result, we were able to hold our organizational meetings at the National Science Foundation, though David himself did not attend.
At our initial organizational meeting, held on August 3, 1966, we constituted ourselves a steering committee to finalize plans for the project. Thereafter, we met about once a week during August and September to work out the various issues that arose. Early in these deliberations, I was contacted by Peter Zuckerman, a systems designer at the System Development Corporation, and he also became an active member of the steering committee.
Also participating regularly in these early meetings was Paul Mahany, a tall, bearded editor who worked for my friend Rowan Wakefield, head of the Washington office of the State University of New York. Mahany gave me considerable advice on editorial and other issues, but he remained mostly silent during the steering committee meetings.
Another noteworthy participant was Robert Horn, a political scientist who had developed “information mapping,” a technique for displaying extremely complex information so people can understand it better. He later founded Information Mapping, a company now located in Waltham, Massachusetts. Other people participated in one or more meetings but did not attend regularly and had little influence on our plans.
Goldberg and Williams did most of the talking during these organizational sessions. Zuckerman, Mahany, and I kept pretty quiet. I think the three of us wanted to keep our project moving forward as quickly as possible and preferred for others to do the talking, except when we felt strongly about something.
The group was remarkably well agreed on what we wanted the Society to be: an independent, politically neutral scientific and educational association for people interested in serious thinking about the human future. We were not interested in arcane or esoteric methods of predicting the future, nor in idle fantasizing about the future. We insisted on approaching the future in a rational, scientific manner that would provide practical foresight for individuals, organizations, and even humanity as a whole.
Though we agreed easily on the basic philosophy and approach of the society, several points of disagreement surfaced. Williams envisioned a professional scientific organization with special qualifications for membership. Such an organization could maintain high standards and have credibility in the scientific and academic communities. I appreciated Williams’s concerns, but I felt that everyone has a stake in the future and may have useful information and ideas. More practically, I couldn’t see a reasonable way to qualify people for membership in the Society as I envisioned it. Whatever our pre-requisites for membership, we would likely exclude people we would want to include. For instance, if a doctorate were required for membership, neither Williams nor Zuckerman nor I would qualify. If a college degree were required, neither my friend John Dixon nor Bucky Fuller would qualify. Were most of us to be disqualified from membership in the organization we were creating?
Goldberg, the only one of us with a doctorate (in social psychology), seemed somewhat conflicted on this question: He had spent considerable time earning his “union card” in academia, but he also had been profoundly influenced by the student rebellions on U.S. campuses during the 1960s. In fact, he brought to one of our meetings a former University of California professor of English (Stuart Miller) who had decided the rebelling students were right and, as a result, had quit his post and gone into soul-searching and humanistic psychology.
After considerable debate, the steering committee worked out a compromise: There would be no prerequisites for membership in the Society, but the Society would provide special services for people with a professional or scientific interest in the future.
We also agreed that the Society would be completely international, and membership dues would be the same for people everywhere in the world.
A second bone of contention was the name “World Future Society.” I had struggled with the name issue myself when I first began thinking about an association for people interested in the future. I came up with quite a few names, and eventually chose “World Future Society” as the best option. But I had been most uncertain of my choice, so I consulted with my friend Lewis de la Haba. Lew was a journalist in public relations whose judgment I respected. After I gave him a list of alternative names, Lew thought a minute and said, “Why not just call it the ‘World Future Society’?”
De la Haba’s endorsement seemed to validate “World Future Society,” much as Time’s approval had validated the term futurist. So I used the name “World Future Society” in my prototype issue of THE FUTURIST. But Goldberg objected strongly to that name, mainly because the word “future” was singular; he thought it should be “futures” (plural). In this way, we would be stressing that people do not have a single fixed future but a wide variety of alternative futures they can choose among.
Eventually a compromise was reached: The name would be World Future Society, but we would add a subtitle proclaiming our Society to be “An Association for the Study of Alternative Futures.”
At that point we were ready to create a new prospectus for the Society summarizing our plans. This prospectus included a Statement of Objectives, which Williams prepared:
1. To contribute to a reasoned awareness of the future and the importance of its study, without advocating particular ideologies or engaging in political activities.
2. To advance responsible and serious investigation of the future.
3. To promote the development and improvement of methodologies for the study of the future.
4. To increase public understanding of future-oriented activities and studies.
5. To facilitate communication and cooperation among organizations and individuals interested in studies of, or planning for, the future.
The prospectus listed 21 programs that the proposed Society might undertake, including THE FUTURIST, a “scholars’ supplement to THE FUTURIST,” a “forum for futurists,” book services, and conventions.
Copies of the prospectus were sent to a number of people we knew and respected, along with an invitation to offer their comments, criticisms, and suggestions. These people were also invited to come to a special “feedback” session on October 18 at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington research institute with a leftist orientation.
At this feedback session, there seemed to be relatively little objection to a society devoted to the future, but a number of people reacted very negatively to the name World Future Society. Other names were proposed; for example, John Caffrey of the American Council on Education, suggested calling the organization “the De Jouvenel Society,” in honor of the French futurist whom he and I so much admired.
This disagreement over the name horrified me because I suddenly envisioned an interminable series of contentious and unproductive meetings just to decide what to call the society!
I kept quiet about my misgivings, and over the next few weeks, my worst fears seemed to be confirmed as more people reacted negatively to the name “World Future Society.” On the other hand, the alternative names that were proposed failed to gain traction.
To resolve the dispute, Goldberg took it upon himself to poll people on what name they preferred. Since he had strongly opposed the name, I wasn’t sure he could be trusted to perform this task fairly. But he did, and to his chagrin, about half the people queried liked “World Future Society” best. No other name attracted more than one or two votes.
So Goldberg admitted defeat, and we moved on to the question of who should be the initial officers of the Society. I planned to edit THE FUTURIST and felt that would be a heavy responsibility in itself. I definitely did not want to be an officer as well. After all, I had set out to organize the Society merely as a means of having a sponsor for the magazine I dreamed of. I simply assumed that others would take on the organizational roles. Zuckerman, who was a Certified Public Accountant, had already volunteered to be our treasurer. So the key issue became who would be our president. Peter and I left it mainly to Goldberg and Williams to sort out this issue, but a dispute developed; and, as the wrangle dragged on day after day, I became increasingly exasperated.
To get around the impasse, I decided to claim the presidency for myself by virtue of having brought the group together in the first place. I saw my becoming president as a temporary expedient. I thought it would be easy to settle the presidency issue later when we had more people to take on the officer roles.
So I rather arbitrarily assumed the presidency and appointed Goldberg and Williams as vice presidents. It was not in my nature to be so high-handed, but I was determined to keep us moving ahead. The others acquiesced to this arrangement.
The Society is Born
At last, we were ready to announce the formation of the Society, but we felt we needed to do it in a public manner with an audience. While we were mulling over this issue, my old friend John Dixon called with the exciting news that Robert Jungk, a celebrated German author and futurist, was coming to Washington. We hastily arranged for Jungk to speak at a luncheon in Blackie’s House of Beef, a large Washington restaurant, and telephoned invitations to everyone we thought might be interested.
And so on October 28, 1966, about two dozen of us gathered for lunch at the restaurant. I welcomed Jungk when he arrived and, feeling rather nervous, pinned a crude name tag on him. Charles Williams, our vice president, acted as master of ceremonies. Tall and serious in manner and speech, Williams commanded instant respect. Furthermore, he represented the august National Science Foundation. Nobody could doubt that we were serious people — not just science-fiction fans or followers of some mystical cult. I was delighted at the way Williams led the meeting, which went very smoothly.
In his speech, Jungk told us that the world’s biggest lack is a lack of foresight. He compared the founding of institutions concerned with future studies to the founding of universities in the fourteenth century.
After Jungk spoke, we announced the formation of the World Future Society and said membership was open to everyone.
And so the Society became a reality. Well, sort of a reality. We were an organization with no members, no employees, no money, and no products or services. Clearly a lot had to be done — and fast — if the Society was not to be anything but a failed dream.
Still, for those of us on the steering committee, the luncheon gave us a wee feeling of triumph.
“The Search For Foresight” was published in six parts in ‘The Futurist’ magazine in 2007. Part 2, which explores the first steps of organizing a society for the future, is coming soon.
Edward Cornish was born in New York City in 1927 and had a long career in journalism. He founded the World Future Society in 1966 and spent many years as the organization’s president and editor of its magazine, The Futurist. He passed away in August 2019.
