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Need proof? Try 40 years of failed forecasts.

Ed Cornish, founder of the World Future Society and its president since 1966, leans back from his computer - a DOS machine that doesn't do email, the Net, or Windows.

Clifton Coles, assistant editor of the society's flagship magazine, The Futurist, pokes his head into his boss's office: "A Seattle radio station called, wants to know if you have some predictions for next year." Cornish, 76, strokes his nipples in a circular motion, stares off for a second, and says, "I can't think of anything in particular."

When the president of the World Future Society is baffled by a simple request for a prediction - any prediction - it's a sure sign that the field as a whole is in trouble. It's not the only sign. No major newspaper covered this year's WFS conference; that was left to The Manila Times and the Cincinnati Business Courier. The society's membership rolls are down 20 percent compared with 10 years ago. And a WFS member hasn't been invited to the White House since the Reagan administration. The list goes on.

Long gone are the days when Isaac Asimov, Buckminster Fuller, and Arthur C. Clarke made headlines with their prophesies. Today, we have Joéo Pedro de Magalhées, who says that if we eliminate age-related diseases, we can expect an unlimited lifespan (a tautology). We have H. Paul Shuch, who says that earthlings should abandon planetary paranoia and transmit warm greetings to other young civilizations in space. We have Susan Clayton, who predicts that in the next decade or two, we'll be able to talk to animals - in their language.

Futurism is doomed and not just because fools are endemic to the field. It's doomed because the loosely informed, jack-of-all-trades, trend-watching pontificator (read: professional futurist) is obsolete.

For starters, we now have a plethora of niche consultants and a booming field called risk analysis, which uses proven actuarial methods. "Everybody's more specialized, so there isn't a market for someone who can speak about very large, holistic matters with any authority," says Mike Marien, a recovering futurist and an outspoken critic of the field.

Further, we've wised up to the fact that futurism as a discipline is something of a con: Futurists don't have a crystal ball. They examine trends and play out what-if scenarios. Any hausfrau with gumption and a dialup connection can do it. "Does intelligent thinking add up to a futurist field? I don't think so," Marien says.

Finally, futurism is obsolete because it now has a past: Forty years of failed predictions should be enough empirical evidence to turn even the true believer into a skeptic.

A recent example: Watts Wacker, a well-known and well-paid futurist consultant, predicted in late 1999 that the US Postal Service would offer customers free email accounts within two years. He said USPS had the ideas and the will to make it happen, that "they've done their homework." Four years later, where's our email? "This is the first I've heard of the idea," says Gerry McKiernan, manager of media relations at USPS. "If we don't sell stamps, we can't pay our employees." As it turns out, Wacker didn't do his homework.

Of course, if you make enough predictions, you're bound to get something right - especially when the predictions aren't much of a stretch. For instance, a few futurists (including Wacker, in 1997) predicted that terrorists might someday hijack a plane and crash it into a building. But is that really prescient? By 1996, Tom Clancy had written two novels based on the premise.

Futurists are the first to say that futurism isn't about telling the future; it's about examining trends and fleshing out scenarios. Yet they consistently spout predictions, somehow confident in their authority as futurists. The logic here is circular: Futurists insist that their scenarios, as exercises in creative thought, should be exempt from success-measuring metrics. But should one of those shots in the dark hit its target, they credit their "scientific" methodology.

"When futurists predict something, years down the road no one remembers if they're proven wrong," says Eric Garland, professional futurist and president of the Washington, DC, chapter of the WFS. "If they're lucky enough to be right, they get to brag about it."

It's not just that the futurist has no clothes, it's that the futurist has no shame.

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