Think-tank VP's talk to focus on the future and global trends

Erik Peterson doesn't know exactly what the year 2025 will look like, but it's his job to get a pretty good idea.

Peterson is senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and director of the Seven Revolutions Initiative, a broad-based effort to forecast key trends out to the year 2025.

Peterson researches long-range strategic issues and developing innovative educational programs geared to leaders in government, business and other fields. He's made presentations to Colin Powell, several U.S. senators and FBI director Robert Mueller.

"Our mandate is to look at systematic trends," Peterson said last week. "We look out to the year 2025 and beyond. What are the big forces at work, and what do they mean for all of us?"

On Wednesday, Peterson will share some of his findings at Southeast Missouri State University. The talk, called "Seven Revolutions -- Looking out to the year 2025," will be at 7 p.m. at Dempster Hall's Glenn Auditorium. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door.

The "Seven Revolutions Initiative" considers the long-term implications of global trends at work today and addresses the question of what the world will look like in 20 years. During his presentation, Peterson said he focuses on the seven areas in which change is expected to be the most "revolutionary."

Those fields are:

* Technology: CSIS and Peterson believe there will be three major drivers of technological change over the next 25 years: computation (or information technology), genomics (the study of genetics) and nanotechnology (which involves studying and working with matter on an ultra-small scale).

* Population: In effect, Peterson says, many of the populations of developed countries will actually be smaller in 2025 than they are today. Over the same period, the developing world will experience an enormous youth bulge. Reconciling those two demographic movements is the primary challenge of the revolution in population.

* Resource management: Food, energy and water will work in concert with many of the other revolutions to affect the overall health of the environment over the next two decades.

* Knowledge: Economists have traditionally pointed to the three "factors of production": land, labor and capital. In the information economy that is materializing, Peterson says, all of these will be overshadowed by a new and primary factor: Knowledge.

* Economic integration: The growth rate has steadily increased an average of more than 3.6 percent anually in the last 25 years and is expected to continue through 2050.

* Conflict: A threat looming over nations is cyberwarfare, substate, nonstate or even individual actors are now powerful enough to destabilize targeted states and societies.

* Governance: The global revolutions CSIS has identified will severely test the capacity of organizations, from nongovernmental organizations to corporations to international organizations and national governments.

What Peterson takes away from all of this is that he sees a split outcome for the future -- what he calls "hyper promise" and "hyper peril."

"I see us moving into a future that is ever more promising with ever more threatening dangers," he said.

Peterson hopes that people who come to his talk Wednesday will take away enough information that "arms them to think about their future," he said. "It seems that people are always worried about tomorrow instead of what their world is going to look like in five to 10 years."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137

Want to go?

Who: Erik Peterson

What: Presentation, "Seven Revolutions -- Looking out to the Year 2025"

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Glenn Auditorium, Dempster Hall

Info: Show Me Center Box Office, 651-5000