(00:00:00) Good morning, everyone. It's 10 o'clock Rich deep in in St. Paul welcoming you to our Saturday morning program a special welcome to listeners in central Minnesota who are with us this morning. We'll get to our program a part of which will feature listener call into our studio guests after we take a brief look at weather information at last report. The Twin Cities had light snow falling at least in some parts of the Metro region - 14 Celsius that 7 above Fahrenheit in Duluth right now partly sunny and nine below Fahrenheit Rochester reports light snow and nine above st. Cloud cloudy and 12 below Fargo-Moorhead sunny and 26 below at nine o'clock Sioux Falls sunny and 11 below and it'll clear right now snow and 12 above a winter storm in Northern Texas is reportedly headed our way spreading heavy snow through Iowa and Nebraska and some of that snow will find its way into southern Minnesota later today and tonight and therefore a heavy snow warning has been posted for Southeastern Minnesota with four inches or more of new snow expected in that area. All of southern Minnesota is under a Travelers advisory with 1 to 3 inches of snow expected heavy snow is also expected in Southeastern, Iowa and Southern Wisconsin today The Dakotas will see partly cloudy skies with a few snow flurries eyes today across the region will range from 5 to 10 below in the North through the 20s in the Southeast. That's 20 Above The Travelers advisory we mentioned is also in effect for the Twin Cities today variable cloudiness is forecast with occasional snow or snow flurries this morning and some of that snow our that snowfall should increase up to 1 to 2 inches of new Snow by this afternoon and this evening the highs in the Twin Cities today should range from a tube of to 10 above and do not get any higher than that and drop throughout the day and lows tonight will be very cold low as 15 below to 20 below in the Twin Cities some of the roads in southern Minnesota are currently a bit challenging for drivers this morning. The State Department of Transportation reports two inches of snow fell overnight in the Owatonna area and therefore Fair. Conditions Prevail in that part of the State Interstate 90 from Dexter to the Mississippi River is reported snow cover recovered. Although crews are plowing and sanding at this hour well in our state st. Paul Studios with me this morning is dr. Arthur Hawkins of the school of education at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis among the labels people have given him is that a futurist we'll be talking with dr. Harkins about that label and what it means to him in a few minutes. (00:03:08) When I think of the future, I have a vague feeling that there's going to be some really big changes coming up because I seems like for the last seven or eight years when I've been looking just at the economy in this country all the buying on credit the debt the huge amount of debt that individuals have the prices. I think it's got to stop somewhere and I just kind of for myself. I think that I'm trying to be as flexible as possible and I'm trying to for myself understand some of the more basic things in other words some of the way that my grant some of the ways my grandmother did things. I think that I have to learn a little bit about those kinds of things because I think that we're going to be in for some hard times in the in the next 20 30 40 years. I really feel optimistic. The future I'm really impressed by technology and I think that we get we stand really good chance for going places because technology is really good, but I worry a little bit because of the political scene, which is why I'd like to build a house underground in case a nuclear fallout, but then if there is a nuclear war, I guess it wouldn't be worth sticking around for afterwards anyway, and I also like to hope that people have learned from the past. Not to mess up the future, you know from Wars and things like that that they won't let that sort of thing happen again. So I lean in that direction that is optimistic future beans solutions to me solutions to our problems of today. I think particularly of space and energy world hunger I think the future is opportunity for solutions to these problems and others being on the downhill side of of life. I mean, I'm retired. I'm happy. I mean, I have a nice retirement and I Look to enjoy as much of what's left is far as I can as far as the Lord will permitted see and I I'm sure that things are. Whatever develops. I mean I would be on the sidelines and looking in. I mean I was when I was younger, I mean I was interested in progress and all that. But now I mean I more or less reaping the fruits of the Harvest. Let's put it that (00:05:41) way when I think of the future I think of Economic Security for myself and my family as well as what is going to be happening in the next 10 20 possibly even 40 years and what I will be doing at that time and how I feel that I can be secure in that time. (00:06:08) The future (00:06:10) can range from five minutes from now to Forever Forever is too far to think I prefer to think of the five minutes from now. (00:06:20) I don't think I'm a particularly good person to talk to about this because I don't I don't think about the future too much anymore. And the reason for that is that is it I've learned. That it is just too unpredictable. It. Isn't that I don't. I don't set my life in a direction that will have some meaning in years to come. It's just that I know that I can't I can't depend on the fact that things will go the way that I see them. Well my thoughts about the future at this point, I that I've decided it's not good to worry about the future that I'm just going to let things happen. I have some thoughts about preparing myself for three children in college sometime down the road and personal changes right now will mean finding money to support them in the way to which they've become accustomed even though I can't afford it. I am very concerned about my children growing up and not having enough of everything that they need and and finding 50 years from now that Minnesota is uninhabitable because of the energy Needs I think I see. Probably the biggest Factor would be energy and being basically in a technical occupation changes coming and how we generate energy and you both generation and use of (00:08:00) energy. And those are some thoughts of some MP our staff people here at Minnesota Public Radio at our ksjn studios in st. Paul people with whom I spoke earlier this week about their thoughts of the future what the word means to them and plans they've made for it and with me in the studio. As I said a few minutes ago is Art Harkins of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He teaches in the school of education there and one of the labels that he has settled with at least for the time being is that a futurist and I wonder are tough you would begin our program this morning are discussed new discussion of the future by a telling me what it means to you. (00:08:38) Well, I was very impressed with what I heard from the tape of the people you interviewed rich in that the bottom line seems to be uncertainty people are concerned about the future from a standpoint of money for their children or the duration of time from five minutes to Infinity. But basically they are concerned. It seems to me whether it's about energy or anything else because of the uncertainty involved so a futurist Is a professional who doesn't reduce uncertainty about the future just gives you more options to choose from as the future unfolds. So the whole idea of predicting the future is not what we do. No one can do that and I'm afraid if they were able to I'd be bored to death with the results because you know, what would happen from one moment to the next so the future is a place of options if you can think about generating them now and that's what the profession of Futures research is (00:09:34) about. Why is it important for us to be thinking about the future we've come through a period in our history not so long past where there was a great emphasis on the present and a great emphasis at least on the surface of things to think about the here and now why is it important for us to be thinking about the future? Well, (00:09:53) there are a number of ways to deal with that. Let me just pick one of them that I think is practical think about science fiction and you normally think About the future or some possible or wildly hypothetical future out there somewhere, but now think of Science Fiction another way literature, which you are reading in the present which was written in the past. In other words, you're looking at and historical view of some wild or very plausible future written by someone who may already be dead or not writing science fiction anymore. Well, what I'm driving at is that when we look at time out there in the future, we have to look at it from now in the present. And so what we can learn to do from this point of view is bringing the future into the present and manipulate it think about expand on it discuss on it. And of course teach classes about it at study groups about it. Take out some of the fear And add in some of the choice that we were talking about (00:10:57) earlier. How can you do that? How can you bring the future into the (00:11:00) present? Well, I think you look around your planet and you find out what people are doing now and many people I'm afraid because they get most of their news from television or from tabloids. Do not do that. One of my favorite devices with a an off-campus group is to approach them in a halt as or discussion and say gee here are five things that people are thinking about for the future. How long do you think it will be before they occur? And most of the time people will put 10 20 30 years or never on developments which already have occurred. In other words. I've always given them things that are going on now or a part of history and people will tend to push them into the future not knowing that they're already around us. So the bottom line is know what's going on now and you'll know a lot about possible Futures in front of us. (00:12:02) What are some of those things that you present to those people and they often think they'll never occur are in fact already (00:12:09) exists. I think some of the more interesting things are lifestyle Alternatives that maybe maybe develop more in some parts of the world and others. I'm thinking particularly of California and on the Riviera people tend to think of the nuclear family as the only kind of structure within which marriage can occur for example legitimately. And the nuclear family is just one of tens of different types of family structures in the world. Weaponry is another area that people tend not to know much about particle beam weapons Stinger laser guns in the rear turrets of B-52s Electronics is another area speaking in speaking computers computers that are able to understand speech our forecast for the early 80s artificial intelligence that is electronic equivalent of human intelligence forecast for the mid to late 80s. Well, these are things that are in the labs in various stages of development over already out in the field so to speak and it seems that many people just aren't aware of them. And so the future is first job is to make people aware of the present that may seem to be the job of the sociologist but in are frayed it falls to the future is more often than (00:13:28) not one of the thoughts that I have when you talk about the latest developments in weapons technology. Or the latest developments in computer technology is a feeling of being very small and being overwhelmed and I don't have a science background a per se and how can we possibly keep up with all of the distractions and all of the demands for our attention that go on just to just to keep our lives going from day to day go to the grocery store see to it that the kids get to enough clothes on those kinds of things to be thinking about the latest in computers. (00:14:04) Well, that's a good question. And I tend to be a little bit bifurcated about it. I think certainly the world is complex and one has to be as complex as as the world or one can't understand it and that's a big tall order of the Renaissance person kind of order but this can be a cop out a rationalization to to say that I have to run to the grocery store. I have to get to the kids to the ice skating rink. I have to go to a cocktail party. I don't have time to read I can't attend lectures. I And take trips to professional meetings and I think that this is a convenient socially approved cop-out for people of normally very high orders of intelligence and upper middle class background who find it easier to to Leave it to Beaver if you like and and just sort of died intellectually or confine their their curiosity to to the question, you know, I wonder if tonight's quiche will turn out that sounds a little unfriendly, but I think that that the human race is an experiment. I do not think of this in ecclesiastical terms, but rather in very secular terms and when a good mind isn't helping us deal with emerging Alternatives or helping us generate alternatives for possible future use whether that mine is in the ghetto in the result of bad education and and other Problems whether it's in Orono contemplating tonight's quiche. I'm afraid it's a loss to the human (00:15:40) race. How do you get to those mines? (00:15:44) Well, I think you you have to avoid the ritualised techniques and and unfortunately many of us in the Futures area have been pulled into some of those ritualised techniques. I'm thinking now of workshops and classes. These are usually designed not to upset people because after all people who run them need to have a steady clientele they're in trouble, but I think that these are all right up to a point of familiarisation, but I think we need to infiltrate the lifestyle area as let us say a sudden Insight that one wishes to become a master chess player or a an excellent flutist would infiltrate the lifestyle area assuming that the drive were strong enough. We need to get in there and especially as the society becomes more as we call it post industrial or an information based society in which Leisure and the opportunities to pursue it in all kinds of intellectual and related areas increases. I think we need to as Futures researchers or future studies people find ways to create what we might call new types of professionals and they may be housewives in the North side or the south side or in Fargo or down in Rochester wherever they may be any kind of person of age or so-called social class background, but if they can help us deal with generating and evaluating Alternatives in energy education lifestyle religion economics politics Transportation pollution control and so on we can use them (00:17:31) now when you say we wear the access points or The where can the Homemaker in Rochester or the plumber in Eden Valley plug into to a group or find people of his or her feeling about all of (00:17:50) this? Well, I think that we need to use the telephone lines differently. Now, this is going to be a pragmatic response in part. We're coming on the point when when it will be possible for every middle-class home at least two to seriously contemplate having a computer in the home which can interact with computers anywhere connected by phone line. Now, it doesn't take too much imagination to think of Housewives a turning from soap opera to the terminal and beginning to interact with other Housewives at first perhaps on questions that have to do with home management, but gradually and that's not a small area and then expanding outward to questions such as is for example State bicameral representative government structure. The only way to go from the standpoint of involving the people in decision-making in the state and that of course is a higher order question or we could put university courses into those terminals or we could conference with those terminals with television or with data displays on the screens on those Terminals and we can do this 24 hours a day these Housewives if they are provided with the proper what we call software or courseware or materials to learn with could become a graduate-level competent in a number of areas in a relatively short period of time and one of those areas could be the development and the analysis of or the cost-benefit evaluation of alternative futures for child-rearing in the areas of diet in areas of exercise medical control medical assistance and Creation in the like so we I think we've just got to find ways to put educated and educable people to work improving our sense of where we could go how we could get there what it would cost us in benefit benefit us if we took one choice as opposed to another and this is to me what the great human experiments all about and to to see it all sort of reduced to the level of a handful of experts around the state in politics business universities and related places that strikes me as a stream misuse almost an immoral misuse of the the real talent in the state, which is not confined to professionals. And so the one way to get people involved is to get them in communication and we need organizations to do that. And I think we need technologies to do that such as home. (00:20:34) Shooters, we're talking this morning with art Harkins of the University of Minnesota School of Education a futurist and we're talking about Ways and Means of planning for the future. And if you're interested in talking to Art Harkins this morning, you can give us a call. If you live in the Twin Cities area. You can call us at 2 2 1 1 5 5 0 I'll give that number again. It's 2211550. If you live outside the Twin Cities metropolitan area, but in the state of Minnesota, you can call us toll-free at 1-800-695-1418. 1-800-695-1418. We were waiting for callers and I see some lines lighting up already people are listening. I want to ask you a question about current thoughts and ideas about the future or at least what I might imagine would be say on television or in the film's we talked the other day about Battlestar Galactica. Star Wars Close Encounters, those are the kinds of things that might come to my mind if somebody asked me about well, what do you imagine for the 21st or 22nd century? What's your opinion of some of those films and television (00:21:46) programs? Well it varies I when (00:21:49) I was 18 in terms of preparing us for are getting us in into thinking about the (00:21:53) future. Well, I don't think they do. I think that they give us a sense of that Hardware that some Futures could bring about and I'm speaking of you know, mile-long space ships and guns that goes up in the night and and they they they undermine all of this. It seems to me with a refusal to deal with the implications of these kinds of events or these kinds of Technologies for religion for decision making for economics for familial structure for the kinds of things people live in in other words, they concentrate on the tools now, let me Sort of enter a caution. I'm not displeased that Battlestar Galactica is on the air. I don't watch it. But I am sorry that it isn't a lot better than it is and I recall that when the film 2001 A Space Odyssey was broadcast by NBC it achieved a I think it was a 67th position in the viewed the top 100 shows of the week 67. I think as quality goes up in science fiction presented on television viewers go down. So there's something that needs to be done and I'm not a media expert. I'm not a dramatist, but I think that if one were to contrast reading the texts of some of the transcripts made from Skylab astronauts when they were actually up there with the dialogue on Battlestar Galactica. Would be the difference between human beings discussing what it's like to live in space on the one hand and actors cavorting around on an expensive set on the other. (00:23:45) There are some listeners on the line this morning art. Let's go to the first caller right now. Good morning. Yeah, I'll do that. If you're anywhere near your radio and your calling is be sure to turn the volume down so that we don't get that feedback. (00:24:00) Okay, I like this your guests talking about when he brings out questionnaires about the computers that of today and people say that maybe in 10 years, they'll be here. I'm not that familiar with computers. Could he explain what some of the things can be just talking and things like that (00:24:21) art question about computer technology and (00:24:24) well, I'm not a computer specialist, but I like to keep up with computers because they have a potential meaning for my occupation my profession that ranges from the end of it to some explosive interesting developments in it. It seems that the Stanford Research Institute several years ago projected the emergence of human level equivalent electronic devices for the late 80s, but these projections are coming closer now to the middle 80s I think if you if you look at the Texas Instruments learning AIDS, let me suggest something you could read three or four months ago businessweek did about a twenty page article on Texas Instruments and the cover showed one of their learning AIDS the talking dictionary the automatic language translation machines that kind of thing are set for around the early 80s on the date and shelf now. (00:25:24) This is a machine that you can speak to in the English language or the others presumably and get inaudible responses from (00:25:32) all right and dictionaries that you simply asked to define a certain word and it will and audible way they spoke in fashion. It will also show it on a screen probably in print. When you when you talk about this kind of stuff and you look at what most teachers do form in formal education in the classroom ticket takers do and lots of other sort of functionaries in the society do and then you have to start raising some questions about whether these computers are going to be a boon or Bane and and if they're going to be a boon how and what we're going to do with the people and my bottom line there is people are not being very well used when their brains are not being excited and when they are not trying to achieve something that hasn't been achieved before so that to me replacing teacher say 80 percent of the teachers with this cheap electronic highly effective electronic Hardware to me I look at that as freeing up those eighty percent of the teachers to do something better with their lives (00:26:37) rather than putting them out of work. Yeah. Okay. So there's an article in a recent issue of Business Week Magazine that people could go to right Get more information about computer technology. We have another listener on the line and we're listening for your question or comment this morning. Good morning. Could you tell us where you're calling from? (00:26:53) Please call me from Minneapolis. Okay. Thanks. Well and many other things that you discussed I agree with the business of using calculators and things to free the teacher or I think you do make the student lazy when a little child of six or seven has a hand computer to add when he doesn't use his own brainpower and I think people are inclined to get a little lazy and if you push a button but that that's just one of the things those things that bothers me about the future is I think the future is here when we have all these machines and all these fantastic weapons to kill each other thousand times. I think that's what worries me as a mother and as a woman when I've had children and my son's one of my son's is past the age of of going to war but the other is just 17 and what bothers me more is Control that certain governments have over making words. What why can't we work for peace? Peace seems to be a dirty word. We always talk about war and War games and defense in the enemy and I think the negativism is driving me a little crazy if we look to the Future and I think of Close Encounters as one of the most beautiful kinds of pictures where there was. Hope I walked out of the theater feeling. Hope Star Wars which was all killing and and blowing things up upset me quite a bit for the future to me would be more calming if we're thinking of a way to keep the peace can we have computers whirring each other instead of people killing each other this kind of sort of blown my mind and I think we've got to start thinking of Peace instead of War we have this war mentality that goes on between nations where old men sit in rooms and decide the future of young men where they don't have a future. You have a comment on that and your futuristic attitude. I think I'm in awe of yours. Well, okay, we've had Wars and we have the hardware to destroy much of the biosphere. If not all the sentient life in the biosphere. But I many of the technologies that have resulted in such things as thermal nuclear bombs can be the source of such things as thermonuclear power or spacecraft propulsion systems that can drive us to the nearby star systems. In other words. I think we have to look at where we are. I don't think that the atomic weapons that are in the silos up in North Dakota are in the future there right now. And I think that the Baseline is to know where we are and then begin to look at where we could go and I must say I would rather convert all those weapons to to fuel sources for Thermo nuclear plants and For propulsion systems to take us out and find out some things about nearby star systems than I would to see them used the way they could be (00:29:54) art when you say knowing where we are that seems like a simple phrase but yet an extremely complex bit of information. It's more than a bit. Does this take us back to what we talked about a little bit ago about collating all of the data that we can get our hands on and theories and schemes and whatnot into some sort of a system to which many people can have access, (00:30:17) you know, and I think you know that it's unlikely that that all things being equal. It's unlikely that the representative political system is going to suddenly decide that people ought to know more than they know and therefore we ought to set up these highly candid sort of decentralized Delivery Systems that will tell people such things as how many nuclear weapons there are and where they're targeted and what the real dangers are of radiation and bacteriological. Weapons and so on people are going to have to go out and find that out and boy that finding out where you live finding out where you've come from and trying to make sense of this in terms of where you want to go is a lifetime of potential lifetime of endeavor and you know, the human experiment needs as many nervous systems involved in this as it can possibly get and I've just reified the human experiment but that's my secular religion coming out. So I share the caller's concerns and I think we have to begin converting these swords to plowshares. (00:31:26) Okay. There are more listeners on the telephone line. And before we go to the next one, let me give the numbers out again in the Twin Cities 22115502211550 out of the Twin Cities, but in the state of Minnesota one 865 to 9701 Hundred six five to ninety seven hundred that's a toll-free number and let's go to the next caller. Good morning. You're on the air. (00:31:51) Good morning. I really want to affirm the discussion that's going on. And I really like what the point that the woman brought up as a mother and a very loving caring person and converting all of our energy and talent from war-making which seems to be a historical email concept to peacemaking which seems to be a female concept and I want to ask you art. If you have really thought about what you were saying prior when you talked about terminals in the in the home When you talk about Housewives becoming a societal experts in dealing with issues, I'm really Disturbed on your mindset in terms of lifting the home manager up to the PHD level and I have to challenge your thinking in terms of a male and you're talking about Housewives. I think what you're saying in terms of turning your brain on is terrific that there's a lot more to life than quiches and or know, it sounds like you're from that part of town, but I I'm disturbed and really really have to ask you have you thought it through with the changing role of women and what you are implying in terms of prescribing woman's role as becoming experts in the home as well as the file experts because it doesn't address the question. That that still keeps her economically independent or economically dependent on the mail and how does she provide for herself? When the reality when you say we have to know where we are now in order to know when we can go what does she do if the male decides not to come home? Well, I if we were not on the air, I could have a number of alternative ways of dealing with this but let me pick the one that's good for the air. I think that that the the question of the relation the economic relationship between the sexes in let's say the the changing middle class American society is is one that It's sort of it sort of minor. I think that the real question is how can women helped us survive and how can women help us increase the quality of life? And if this means that they leave the home to work downtown and and this brings more money into the home and this is you know, what helps them. That's fine. If it means that 5 percent or 10 percent of the women want to sit on a terminal why they're raising their very young children at home perhaps with or without a man's help and you know, the process achieve a PhD level in forecasting technique to me. That's great. But you see it's the choice that's not there for many women. Now as the choice isn't really there for many men know who headed the the benefits shall we say of a of a college education, which was no education really and the benefits of a highly conforming experience or An experience that push toward conformity in their in their formative years, you know, the many of us need to grow and I think we need to find ways to minimize the economic tension between the sexes in this Society in order to facilitate that growth and I won't apologize for my bottom line being intellectual growth and its application to the emerging future choices of the society, but I may be missing something in the question. I am not my hormone structured name a program you get that direction. (00:35:42) Are you still there? Do you have a comment about that? Nope, not there? Okay. Well, let's go on to another caller. And before we do that. Let me give you the numbers one more time. Very quickly 2211550 in the Twin Cities. 1-800-662-2386. I'd the Twin Cities but in the state of Minnesota, the time is 24 minutes before 11 o'clock, and we're talking about the future and how to think about it and plan about it with our Harkins of the University of Minnesota. You're on the air. Morning, (00:36:09) good morning. Dr. Harkness have two questions for you. The first question is would you be interested in having at least opening discussions relative to working with the Statewide Recreation and Leisure Association concerned with future roles of recreation? Yes. Okay, I would like to as I am running to Fat a bit and it can only help me please the directly beautiful. I guess I can leave my you know name and number and all that with the with the people at the station and maybe we can get in contact with each other. Second question I have is is there any place for myself and other people that are listening to you could pick up even for a small price or Gladys whichever a kind of beginning introductory structured readings list relative to Futures. That's something we we can provide I think there is a group in the state of Minnesota called the Minnesota future. This has been an organization in existence here for about 10 years. It was started by Earl Joseph of Sperry univac Corporation. And and it is a branch or a chapter of the world future Society the world future Society has around 40,000 members now and the Minnesota future. So I think have around 800 dues-paying members. The first thing I will do when I leave the studio at 11 o'clock. It will be to call the president of that organization in Minnesota futurists in situ this request. The number of the Minnesota futurists again is 45623954 people who wish to become members and that would be through calling it normal business hours Monday through Friday. Give the number again, please sure it's for 562395 in the area code six. One two, (00:38:01) okay, do they have an address in the Twin Cities? You know, (00:38:03) I am remiss I don't have it with me. Okay, so they call that (00:38:07) number Monday? Ready at 9:00 to 5:00. They should get some response. Yes (00:38:11) information about membership would be sent out right away and we'll pay immediate attention to the idea of a basic reading (00:38:17) list before we go to the next caller. The caller's question about Recreation makes me think about the fact that it seems to me that when talking about the future. We're not just talking about technology at least not in the sense of computers or fighter jets or things like that. This man's question. I'm assuming is is dealing with may be developing new better different more interesting ways of exercising or recreating and that is not necessarily does not necessarily involve any technology and I guess I tend at least to think more in terms of Technology when I think about the future. (00:38:53) Well, I think that there is a problem on our part those of us who professionally are involved with this area because we have tended To go along with that kind of natural association between the future and exotic Hardware. Well, I suppose it enables us to make contact with people and some conversational or professional way more quickly or less threatening Lee than let's say talking about the future of such soft ideas as new family structures or alternative secular religions or sacred religions or alternative economic systems, and we could go on and on I think that willy-nilly we're going to be forced into looking at some of these soft things because without that you can't really be too comfortable about how people are going to to put together the intellectual or the emotional or the other kinds of tools necessary to judge the hard systems like the computers or the artificial intelligence or the implants in the body such as direct brain interface. Oops. That's my language electronic said that interact directly. The brain for various purposes or three-dimensional television worn on the body and seeing through a visor pull down over the eyes that sort of exotic stuff has all sorts of implications for how we live and whether we want this sort of stuff in our lives is is the that's the bottom line not just at the stuff is there so we have a I think we need the help of the religionists. I really do and I we're not getting it. I think we're not getting it done. I think we need the help of the people who are who are self regarded as the secular philosophers and we're not getting that in fact the if I may complain for one sentence the the humanists tend to be removed from the question of how to deal with these sort of soft and hard Futures and how they interact or they tend to take a knee jerk reaction all hard technology. That's high technology. Bad technology really the human body is an excellent example of high technology. And I don't know very many humanists who automatically would say that the human body is a bad thing, maybe some religionists. But but the humanness aren't used to thinking of the human body as an example of hard technology Nature's technology. We can improve on the human body and Recreations one way to do it. And so our implants such as artificial endocrine glands. (00:41:29) Okay, there's some listeners who've been patiently waiting. Let's go to the next one. Good morning. (00:41:34) Good morning. Where you calling from, please I'm Olivia Minnesota. Very good. Hi. My name is Dale Ruble. I'm a farmer. Okay, and I guess I might make it a larger vation first and then ask the question for me. There's some talk about the future and I think that the opportunities in the future just unlimited and maybe they always were but it seems from where we stand or sit right now. They're just no limit. - what what the future holds no about I guess I'm most interested in computers and what they might do. I've been following the many computers as they've come on and they've come on SO awfully fast that they're here. No question about it. Now. My question is what about these Terminals and the availability perhaps in the future of information from colleges universities and especially their libraries on computer programs that might be able to be brought out to the the home computer it is there anything being done on that? Well, it's possible. Oh, it's possible. It's very possible. Now. The first thing you have to do is convince legislators and University administrators and planners that this is a good idea when they are more concerned in a Go away, it seems with building buildings maintaining buildings requiring people to drive through the 40 below snow to get to the buildings to park their cars which won't start later in the afternoon and you know to go to libraries where everything is checked out or stolen or torn up or not available. Now, we have to think from the vantage point of electronic Information Systems rather than physical information systems such as libraries and campuses when you can do that, you've made the jump in point of view that would enable us seriously to think about having all kinds of educational opportunities University and otherwise offered in every single home every single church every single meeting place and even Street Corner in the state of Minnesota by Satellite by microwave by Lee telephone line and by other kinds of Hardware, but To get this Hardware you have to convince people that building campuses and maintaining buildings and more parking lots and you know building a new law school that you know wasn't really necessary to some of us and already is having problems meeting at student quotas really have to go where the people are and I think that's what under what's underlying your question. How do we get these these mini computers and these other hardware systems connected to the to the ideas that they can convey and and the education that can provide. (00:44:37) So right now for this gentleman, there isn't a system that he could tap into. (00:44:42) Yes. There is as a matter of fact the Minnesota educational computer Consortium can be tapped into from the home and I will not say over-the-air what the particular computer brand is that enables you to do this. I will say that it's cheap it you can buy it in the Twin Cities area. I know for under $300. And you can tap into the mix system from your home with this the exact details of that. I'm sure can be obtained by just simply calling Mech during work hours. (00:45:10) And that again is the Minnesota (00:45:11) educational computer Consortium. (00:45:13) Okay. They are they in the Twin Cities. (00:45:15) Yes, right through the Twin Cities (00:45:17) directory. Somebody would call directory assistance, right? Okay other people are waiting. Good morning. We're listening for your questions and comments. (00:45:23) That's good morning. Are you doing can you tell us where you calling (00:45:27) from? Yeah, but okay, go ahead. (00:45:44) Well, I would say that the that the the presentation of Alternatives alternative ways to spend your money is what Madison Avenue is all about with the notion, of course that their preferred Alternatives be chosen by you over and against the preferred alternative some other Ad Agency now, I'm not suggesting that the Philosopher's go out and perform Madison Avenue slights of hand on people. I am suggesting that they do that. They do that simply by stressing their point of view and its virtues over and against the the Lesser points of view and their faults or defaults. The the I think that my image of one kind of Minnesota future is that there will be many of these points of view available to far more people more hours during the day perhaps 24 hours during the day so that so that they have a chance as citizens of the state or as members of the human experiment to play with these ideas talk about them improve on them reject them modify them whatever to become involved in the philosophical discourse, whether it's sacred or secular in nature and I think when you when you structure an education system that's afraid of these things or it's Were you have costs that are so high tuition and otherwise that people tend to be cut out of these kinds of potential discourses and and patterns of analysis. Then you have a faulty system you have a system and not serving human needs in the way that it might. So I'd like to see the electronics help us that way (00:47:22) another listener with a question and comment. Good morning. Can you tell us where you're calling from, please? (00:47:26) Yeah. I'm calling from both. Oh, okay. Go ahead. And my question is I've been listening to your talking today about some of the grand schemes of people proposed and I've done a lot of reading on this from a physics student at the University and I've heard things like, you know, going the stars and terraforming worlds and forming world that of asteroids and things like this and really Grand schemes. It's not really cool, you know, like mining asteroids and completed country riddle and honest and I guess my question is do you think that this is So we're going to be realism I you know, I've looked at it and I looked away American society is tending right now and I'm wondering if this is actually going to happen because if you look at the way research budgets and how spending is going toward technology used to be the big thing right around World War II and things like that towards technology helped us win that war and then pushes on and people really Pro it but now people are going the other way and a lot of that is good. I think but the thing when they're cutting down budgets for NASA and things like this, do you ever think that these things are come going to come about I see them coming about and computers because I work with computers, but I kind of have a hard time thinking that they're going to come up out with regular Technologies. Well, I think when one when one equates the grand engineering scheme with with an a grand cost scheme up in the billions in the case of space mining on the order of 100. 300 billion one has to to contextualize this grandness and all of a sudden when you do that in certain ways. The grandness becomes the minuscule take a look at the State Highway systems take a look at the amount of money being spent on new Canal construction down in the southern states billions and billions and billions of dollars a year take a look at the amount of money that goes into various sectors of the budget and you find that the notion of putting up solar power satellite stations or the notion of mining asteroids and sending the results of that mining back for use here or a building colonies on the moon or near the moon. But this this is this is pretty cheap stuff and generally spread over a number of years 10 to 20 years such that the percentage of GNP involved is on the order of one to four percent, but generally one to two percent and I don't know I think it's a matter of values. I think it's a matter. A vision I think it's a matter of vested interests whether or not we do these things and I think we're more right now. We're more adjusted to the concept for example of shale oil than we are to the notion of solar power satellite stations. I for one think environmentally and otherwise, it would be better to go to the Solar Power Systems then to mine the Shale oil or it would be better to bring asteroid nickel and iron back then to continue tearing up the north north and range. But again the you know, when you can measure these things in dollars, you can measure these things in distances physical distances and poundage and tonnage and propulsion specific impulse and so on but when you finish you have to say, yeah, but what do we really want to do? And that's a human thing and we need a lot of help here. I think in in from the Philosopher's the anthropologists in the housewives in Orono to help us. contextualize our decision-making options with respect both of the high-cost things that go on in space for example to end a high-cost things that go on on the ground and I'm thinking in the latter case of Education, which doesn't (00:51:16) Nine minutes before 11 o'clock. We're talking to Arthur Hawkins who is a teacher at the University of Minnesota and the school of education and who is a futurist and we invite you to call in and ask him a question or give us your comments about the future and how to plan for it or whether it should be planned for at all. The number to call is to to 11550 in the Twin Cities. There are some phone lines open right now to to 11550 and if you live outside the Twin Cities, but in the state of Minnesota call us toll-free at 1-800-669-9133 have about seven minutes more for some callers and questions and we have one on the line right now. Good morning. Where are you calling us from please. (00:51:57) My name is Ken Ralph and I'm calling from Cologne, Minnesota. What part of the sad state is that? It's just Southwest of the Minneapolis about 40 miles. (00:52:07) Okay, very good. Go ahead with your questions or (00:52:09) comments. Okay on dealing with the discussion of the energy and and the here now concept I firmly believe that I'm sure the technology is here already for well, like solar energy as a last question or to discuss and then we had a long discussion. Then I heard on the air of how we deal with our social economic system in accepting or using those systems. I can see what a threat as solar energy maybe to current Delivery Systems for power and and things like that. How do we help our legislators find ways of making our current socio-economic system except The technology and utilize it like I heard a one speech given on the same station dealing with the fact that within five years. We could bring down the cost of the solar electric cell to less than the cost. It would cost to light our street lights from the commercially available power system. But of course that would lose a lot of Revenue to these these companies. Well, I think you've touched a nerve I think in many of the areas we've discussed this morning. The problem of knowing how to handle the human cost of change has come up and you know, let's face it NSP executives are human beings and so their stockholders people who make their lives their livelihoods out of building Weapons Systems are human beings for their Americans are Soviets or Japanese teachers who may lose their lose their jobs or be subject to retraining and replace replacement within the the overall mechanism of the great Clockwork. Marketplace are human beings and they they have to be considered that way. So my Approach is positive. I would say if we can cut costs to people who need electricity in their homes by using new types of I'm thinking of of ocean skis new types of solar cells great, but at the same time it's what an equal amount of energy into figuring out how NSP can diversify or how many Gasko can diversify if we're going to have a new type of housing. Approach to housing construction such as underground housing. Let's let's look at what that might do to the conventionally trained Carpenter or to the to the contractor who isn't ready for that yet. And I'm not talking about a planned approach that levels out everything but rather a an approach that that is respectful of history as well as excited about future options to improve The Human Condition now when when a power company or university stands directly in the path Of improving The Human Condition and shows no willingness to consider alternatives to what it will be doing in the future. Then I think we have more than an educational problem on our hands and I think persuasion is call for and that could be legislative and we do need I think a sensitive informed legislature which is concerned not only about maintaining the status quo but improving it and they'll have to help in that area. (00:55:43) Okay, we have about four more minutes left in this program actually about three and a half and so we'll go right to to the next caller. Good morning. Good morning here on the year. (00:55:52) Thank you. I'm calling from Roseville and I myself am very optimistic about some of the possibilities for the future but I'm afraid I must take issue with the general mood that you seem to have set and then the mood I get from other Futures. So I've spoken to and that is of being a very single-minded the Motion of lack of emotion a very sterile explanation very sterile alternatives. For example, you discussed education procedures in the home and you discuss learning facts and reading and accelerating yourself to a very high point but get this to me isn't education is learning how to think learning how to synthesize ideas and learning how to learn. I was very struck this morning in the beginning of the show by interviews of the staff and the the girl I believe it was who said I wish I could learn more about how my grandmother did things learn from from the from the history and you complain about the futurists being non connected with the humanist. And is this all seems to go together this kind of a problem. Well, I think your your your sentiments are shared at the Sendai. I think that there is a distinction between synthesizing information and simply memorizing. I think there's a difference between being a sterile intellectual and a full person and I think that if you want to look at systems of the present and past that have produced conditions that tend in those directions, you don't have to look very far. So if you and others like you can help the human experiment in the direction of more synthesis more full approaches to to you know, human beings as individuals and keep us away from 1984 scenarios or from you know, just misusing our options. That'll be fine. I think there are certain problems here that time doesn't allow us to go into but one sentence on it. I think that One has to watch for Nostalgia. I think there's a difference between respecting and reveling in the complexities of history and locking onto a handful of images from the past bringing these images to the position of metaphors and sort of living in them. That may be all right, but it's it's not the kind of synthesis where the future options and metaphors are involved that I think you have in mind. (00:58:39) The time is coming up on one minute now before 11 o'clock and I'm afraid we're not going to have any more time to get to callers. There are still a few on the line and we're sorry, maybe we'll we'll get dr. Hawkins in the studio again soon and and continue this discussion. I want to thank you art Harkins for being with us this morning and want to go and mention too were once again, the Minnesota futurists as a group that is dealing with the kinds of things that we've been talking about a Twin Cities area phone number that can be called Monday through Friday a business hours. Is for 5623954562395 with a 612 area code a winter storm in Northern Texas is reportedly heading our way as we reported at the outset of this program. And because of that there is a heavy snow warning posted for Southeastern Minnesota with up to four inches of new snow expected this afternoon and this evening. All of southern Minnesota is under a Travelers advisory with 1 to 3 inches of snow expected and that Travelers advisory applies for the Twin Cities as well. Well the time in 15 seconds will be exactly 11 o'clock. And we invite you to stay tuned for Oscar brand and voices in the Wind on these NPR stations.