This blog strives to be experimental in order to find formats that work best for our readers. While our first issues presented leading ideas of interest, we now try becoming more interactive. This issue shifts focus to describe approaches for putting strategic foresight into action.

ASCE Future World Vision Project  The American Society of Civil Engineering has been conducting an exciting strategic foresight effort in which TechCast was invited to participate. Below, ASCE’s Jerry Buckwalter sums up his ambitious strategic project to transform civil engineering for a world of high-tech infrastructure. The article shows how major technological advances and converging global trends make various “new worlds” possible over the coming decades. When finished, the final program will operate online as a computer simulation, allowing engineers to explore and experience cross-disciplinary solutions to various scenarios.

Invitation to Solve the Global MegaCrisis    The global pandemic and its ensuing recession are adding new threats to the mounting climate crisis featured in our previous issue. With all these hazards escalating, Bill’s Blog thinks it is time to address the broader Global MegaCrisis. We invite readers to submit 100-word strategies that offer a compelling path through the existential challenge posed by climate change, global pandemics, gross inequality, financial meltdowns, autocratic governments, conflict and terrorism and other threats  making up the MegaCrisis. The submitted strategies (send to Halal@gwu.edu) will be presented in the following issue of Bill’s Blog, pooling our collective knowledge into insightful conclusions.

Global Depression  As stock markets plummet due to the coronavirus disruption, the editors offer our TechCast forecast on Global Depressions.

We look forward to hearing from you. The Editor