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The future is not as you are being told.  It has been commandeered by groups that wish to forward their ideological viewpoint.  This is important because, one, it means that the public discourse and, by extension, the creation of laws, policies and programs, are based upon a future that will never happen and two, you are basing your life planning upon a future that will never happen.

By subscribing to The Future 101 and dedicating one to three hours per week to its study, you can completely solve the second problem and, if there are enough subscribers, begin to make inroads on the first problem.  If you become an ambassador for The Future 101, as many of my subscribers are, we can really change the public discourse to something far more productive.  We can create what is currently missing with our political, intellectual and cultural leaders, an inspiring vision of the near future that can be positively affected by actions we can take today.

The Transformation is a set of twelve events that will completely reshape the world and usher in the global, Information Age civilization.  Here, I provide an Abstract for each of the twelve events.  The Future 101 premium service will provide detailed and fully cited articles exploring each event in depth.  I will recommend additional reading assignments.  Here, I also provide articles that elaborate on some of the more important events and interactions.  These also will be greatly elaborated upon in The Future 101.  Again, additional reading will be suggested. 

While the next thirty years will be a complex time with much turmoil, to me, the most important message that The Future 101 contains is this.

Between 1875 and 2000 Real GDP per Capita in the U.S. increased by 1,286%.  Through the implementation of advanced robotics and A.I., between now and about 2040, a similar percentage increase will take place.  This time, nearly all of the world will catch up to the U.S. standard of living.  This will drive virtually all of the world's population up Maslow's Hierarchy so that cultures will reflect a primary emphasis on esteem, self-actualization, personal development and transcendental issues.  In other words, while counter-intuitive for many people, the Income Explosion will actually sound the death knell for materialism as a central theme of Western culture.

What does a 1,286% increase in household income mean, in practical terms?

• The average household income will increase to around 600K 2012USD.
• 80% of households will have incomes that would put them in the upper 1% today.
• The upper 20% of  households will have annual incomes above 1.5 million 2012USD
• The minimum hourly wage will be about 95 2012USD
• If the poverty level remains a constant percentage of the minimum wage, the poverty level for a family of four will be 287,421 2011USD
• The average home price will be about 2.5 million 2012USD
• Because homes will be built to higher standards of quality in material and construction and will be highly automated, the average new home square footage will increase from its current 2,400 ft² in the U.S. to about 7,000 ft²

Even a family living on the earnings of one person at the minimum wage will have a 700K 2012USD house and a couple of 40K 2012USD automobiles.  A moderate quality diet will require no more than 4% or 5% of the family budget.  In other words, they may be comparatively poor, but, in no way, will they be absolutely poor.  We will have, at last, eradicated poverty as we know it.  Again, I emphasize, these conditions will prevail over nearly the whole world.

The cultures of today are dominated by thoughts and discussions that revolve around the lower levels of Maslow's Hierarchy.  The News is full of stories about hunger, homelessness, income disparities, poverty, inadequate health care and crime.  For most people, it is extremely difficult to think outside of the box that insufficient income creates.  What happens when we are liberated from these concerns?  What happens when everyone has adequate shelter, food, clothing, health care and safety?

You should be thinking about it, because that is the world in which you will find yourself.  That is the world within which public policies will be formulated and implemented.  Clearly, we should, as a society, attempt to ameliorate current poverty and suffering within the context of our values.  However, primarily we should be considering ways to hasten this approaching Gold Age.  It is the positive and practical vision that is so desperately needed today.

The second most important message of The Future 101 is this.

Currently underpopulated regions will become the new centers of civilization.  These population centers will be comprised of a lattice of boutique villages populated by highly affluent, very mobile communities that are generally defined by a Culture of Affluence.  These areas, often coastal, tropical or subtropical and arid, will be enabled by new energy sources, desalination technologies and defarmed food production.  They will lack national identity and will have negotiated cultural independence from the surrounding remnants of the Nation States. Because of the defarming, most of the world's land areas will become either natural or engineered biodiversity parks.

What is that likely to mean for you?

• You will likely enter an Enterprise Network, undertake a new, highly lucrative Information Age career and 'jump to the Knowledge Class.'
• Over time, your Knowledge Class career will enable you to 'live anywhere.'  There is at least a 50% chance that this means relocation to a 'boutique village', often in a different region of the world.
• Over time, while you may or may not retain an ethnic identity, you will likely replace your national identity with a cultural identity.
• You will plan for a 'Finely Crafted Life' that emphasizes a lifestyle facilitative of your unique interpretation of self-actualization.

We are on the verge of a true Golden Age.  However, first, between now and about 2025, Western civilization is going to experience a social, political, cultural and economic train wreck.  The beginnings  are being aggressively reported and commented upon by the Pundits, Professors and Politicians.  What is not be reported upon is that 'this, too, will pass.'  By taking meaningful action we can reduce the impact of this train wreck and hasten the arrival of the Golden Age.

• As the implementation of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence accelerates, technologically induced unemployment could exceed 20% before decreasing again.
• Put simply, with everyone moving to new locations and to much larger and higher quality houses, nearly all the current housing inventory will become functionally worthless.  The Northern Industrial Age urban areas will begin to die.
• Corporations will fade to be replaced by Enterprise Networks.  This means 'jobs' will permanently disappear in favor of owner-operators.
• The ascent of Maslow's pyramid will cause differences between groups to become principled and cultural rather than primarily economic.  This, combined with several other factors, will tear the Nation State asunder.

We all received the mythologies, values, cultural literacy and instincts of the Industrial Age.  However, Information Age problems, which the train wreck entails, will not yield to Industrial Age solutions.  For example, the Industrial Age attempts to lower unemployment, when applied to the Information Age problem of technological unemployment will actually make it worse.  The correct solutions, when considered from an Industrial Age mindset, do not make sense.  Consequently, if we are to decrease the severity of the train wreck, the first thing we must do is educate people on the emerging global, Information Age civilization and its mechanisms.  That starts with you subscribing to The Future 101 and then becoming an Ambassador for the Information Age.  We will likely be less than dramatic in our success, but every bit helps.

This vision of the near future, despite being completely at odds with the views promulgated by the ideologically driven "Pundits, Professors and Politicians', is rigorously supported in The Future 101 subscription.  It is the future that you need to understand.  It is the future for which you need to be planning.  It is the future that you should assist in injecting into the public discourse.

The $54.95 per year and 50 or 100 hours of study per year of The Future 101 is going to make you, over time, a very well informed person.  You will make superior life decisions because of it and you may even gain early entrance into this profoundly affluent Information Age civilization.  It will also make you the informed and valuable ambassador for the positive future that awaits us.  In this sense, I say that subscribing to The Future 101 is the first step in 'Saving the world by saving yourself.'  I can't guarantee that subscription will indemnify you against the 'train wreck.'  However, your prognosis will most assuredly be very superior to the one where you do not subscribe. 

So, this is my 'hard close.' If we are to make significant improvements in the current outlook, we need to get influencers like you well educated on The Transformation.  We need to build a community of people who are planning their Information Age future, not attempting to 'fix' their broken Industrial Age present.  In other words, we need you to 1) subscribe to The Future 101 and then, do the work, 2) become an ambassador for the Golden Age by influencing your network and 3) create and implement a personal Information Age action plan.


This is the 'Save the world by saving ourselves' strategy.  It is an altruism/self-interest win-win.  Although it may not be apparent now, it is the only solution to the problems that face us.  It is the only way to lessen the severity of the train wreck. 

They say that the first casualty of war is the truth.  Well, we are in a cultural war and the truth long ago was sacrificed to ideological goals.  Every single day you are bombarded by News stories intended to drag you back to an Industrial Age world view and get you mired in fruitless political arguments.  Article after article will give you evidence that one cultural mythology is correct or another one is false.  It may involve Climate Change or income disparities or whether most people favor abortion rights or the death penalty. 

If you turn a cynical eye toward your News sources you will see that virtually every article is either attempting to destroy or reinforce a moral, ethical, political or cultural attitude.  Your vote is wanted.  Your donation is needed.  Whether it imparts an objectively supportable world view or a rational expectation of the future is not relevant.  They are not interested in your education, they are interested in influencing your behavior. 

When you subscribe to The Future 101, it is entirely different.  We will look at an issue and then examine the evidence.  The evidence will come primarily from peer reviewed papers and government white papers.  It will not come from The Huffington Post or Scientific American or Town Hall save to contrast and compare the attitudes of Industrial Age ideologies.

The longest journey begins not with a single step but rather with the realization that one ought to be elsewhere.  Are you on the correct road?  Does the road take you where you think it does?  Will the people you meet along the way be a help or a hindrance?  These are questions that have answers whether you think about them a little or you think about them a lot. The Future 101 subscription will not answer all of them.  But it definitely can make a valuable contribution to your understanding.

Lastly, because the community of subscribers will have forums, your subscription will also become a portal to an extraordinary community.  These people, by virtue of their subscription, are clearly people of exceptional intelligence and well-tempered vision.  As you read The Future 101 and learn about the Transformation, many potential career, social, political and cultural opportunities will likely occur to you.  This community, as an added benefit, constitutes a valuable source of collaborators and investors for whatever projects you may wish to undertake.  The more you and your fellow subscribers act as ambassadors for The Future 101, the larger the community will become and the more valuable an asset it will become.

So, in conclusion, I ask you to begin your road to the Information Age by subscribing to The Future 101.  It is a nominal financial commitment.  It is a somewhat larger time commitment.  However, it is very small in both regards compared to, say, a college education or buying into a franchise.  It is not the journey.   However, if you have decided that you ought to be elsewhere, it is a first step.  Of course, I do also welcome the intellectually curious. 

Hope to see you inside,

Michael Ferguson