An Interview with American Futurist Peter Schwartz Mr. Yang, presenter of the CCTV English

An Interview with American Futurist Peter Schwartz

Mr. Yang, presenter of the CCTV English Dialogue Programme

Peter Schwartz, chairman of the Global Business Network and senior partner of Monitor Group

Y: To my knowledge, you are a futurist. What makes a futurist？

S: Well, I think it's two things. One is someone who is .just hopelessly fascinated by the future. One is someone thinking about the future, but perhaps more importantly, interested in influencing the future, helping to shape a better future. I think most people in the profession of future studies in one way or another are interested in trying to produce a better future. A futurist, I think, uses serious methodology. We study economics, politics and technology and social changes to try to understand the deeper forces that create the future, it's a rigorous discipline that forces you to think systematically and imaginatively about the future.

Y: So what are you doing and what have you done to change the future？

S: We work with large companies, start-up companies, entrepreneurial companies and even countries. For example, I am going from here to Singapore where I do a great deal of work with the government in Singapore -- the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Defense and Singapore Airlines. So Singapore has adopted some of the messages that I have developed in scenario planning and have been using those to think about and plan the future Singapore.

Y: What are the major forces that would change the future of the world？

S: Well, politics of course, also economic development, especially important in these days, science and technology, and even more important are environmental forces.

Y: But science and technology can create a happy future and can produce disasters, such as nuclear technology and human cloning.

S: You know the history of human kind over, say, the last 500 years, since the scientific revolution, life for human kind has really got much better. We really wouldn't want to go back to the 15th century. The revolutions in science and technology improved healthcare, improved education and transportation, energy and so on. Life is a lot better today because of science and technology. And on the whole I think the progress that has come from science and technology has benefited human kind. Well, it's true that you have got more powerful technology that can do harm. One person or a few people can kill a vast number of people. That is something that is genuinely worrying. However, we have been very fortunate in that we have been very judicious in our use of that technology.

Y: One negative impact of chemical or biological weapons could be the destruction of the environment. Do you think environment also accounts for a good part of our concern about our future？

S: Absolutely. I think most people are very concerned about the consequences of industrial economic development on the environment -- air pollution, water pollution, the loss of species, the loss of habitat. This is really a big issue. However, I am quite optimistic about the future development. First of all, we have now become concerned about it. And if you look at many cities around the world, for example, their water supplies, they are cleaner today than they were 25 or 30 years ago, because we have explored new technology of water purification and of much cleaner automobiles. The automobile today is 95 percent cleaner than the automobile of 20 years ago.

Y: Not the case for developing countries.

S: I think that is true. You know there is an equation and it goes like this the environmental impact is the product of the number of people times the economic statistic times the technology they use. But we are slow in our population growth dramatically on the earth. The UN has lowered its long-term popu

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C．NG