SAN FRANCISCO, July 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Next week, Black Hat, producer of the world's premier information security events, will celebrate its 15th anniversary in Las Vegas with more than 6,500 high-level security experts, bringing together a community of public and private sector security professionals, academics and researchers. Experts from around the globe will be revealing the newest cyber security research, from breaking vulnerabilities to important findings that impact everything from global cyber espionage to personal computing. Black Hat is commemorating its storied history by bringing back five of the original 1998 speakers: Jeff Moss, Bruce Schneier, Marcus Ranum, Adam Shostack and Jennifer Granick, who will share their vision of security for the next 15 years with their panel, "Smashing the Future for Fun and Profit" on Wednesday, July 25th. For more information and to register before the online registration deadline of July 20th, please visit http://www.blackhat.com.

Over the past 15 years, a unique and neutral forum has been created at Black Hat, where the security community can come together public, private and independent practitioners to exchange research, theories and experiences with the common goal of managing the ever-evolving threat landscape. The first Black Hat "futurist panel", being held on July 25th at 10:15am, brings together these industry veterans to discuss today's cutting edge research and emergent technologies, while reflecting back on where the security community has come from.

"No matter which incidents you examineor which ones your enterprise must respond toone thing is clear: security is not getting easier. The industry relies upon the Black Hat community to bring them timely security research and education," explained Black Hat General Manager, Trey Ford. "Bringing back these renowned experts is our way to celebrate the security community's past, present and future."

Online registration for Black Hat USA 2012 ends Friday, July 20th. Register now to save $400 on this year's show, featuring nine tracks and forty-nine live, onstage demonstrations presented by more than one hundred of the community's most respected security researchers.

Sponsors of this year's Black Hat include Diamond Sponsors: Qualys, Microsoft and Lookingglass Cyber Solutions; Platinum Sponsors: Accuvant LABS, Blue Coat Systems, Core Security, Cisco, IBM, Lieberman Software, LogRhythm, Mykonos Software, RSA, Symantec, Trustwave and Verizon.

To request media credentials to the event please see http://bit.ly/BHUSAmedia.

Follow Black Hat on Facebook; Black Hat on LinkedIn; #BlackHatEvents on Twitter; Black Hat Events on Flickr.

About Black Hat Black Hat provides briefings and training to leading corporations and government agencies around the world. Black Hat differentiates itself by working at many levels within the corporate, government, and underground communities. This unmatched informational reach enables Black Hat attendees to be continuously aware of the newest vulnerabilities, defense mechanisms, and industry trends. Black Hat Briefings and Trainings are held annually in Europe and Las Vegas. Black Hat is produced by UBM TechWeb. More information is available at http://www.blackhat.com.

About UBM TechWeb UBM TechWeb, the global leader in technology media and professional information, enables people and organizations to harness the transformative power of technology. Through its three core businesses media solutions, marketing services and paid content UBM TechWeb produces the most respected and consumed brands and media applications in the technology market. More than 14.5 million business and technology professionals (CIOs and IT managers, Web & Digital professionals, Software Developers, Government decision makers, and Telecom providers) actively engage in UBM TechWeb's communities and information resources monthly. UBM TechWeb brands include: global face-to-face events such as Interop, Black Hat and Enterprise Connect; award-winning online resources such as InformationWeek, Dark Reading, and Network Computing; and market-leading magazines InformationWeek, Wall Street & Technology, and Advanced Trading. UBM TechWeb is a UBM plc. company, a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.

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Black Hat Marks 15th Anniversary By Bringing Back Experts Who Presented 15 Years Ag

Acclaimed global futurist, best-selling author and business forecaster Jack Uldrich has been selected to deliver the opening keynote address at this year’s National Rural Economic Development Association Annual Meeting. ...

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Global Futurist and Business Forecaster Jack Uldrich to Keynote Economic Development Summit

(Helios Entertainment) - Cover, The Inventor by Rave Mehta and Erik Williams.

The Inventor, Helios Entertainment

Hey, they say that the truth is stranger. In The Inventor, part-time writer and full-time engineer Rave Mehta and artist Erik Williams have crafted a graphic novel based on the life of Nikola Tesla, the oddball physicist and futurist, born in 1856, who developed modern alternating current (AC power).

While he never possessed super powers, the real-life Tesla was just about as quirky as any fictional mad scientist, particularly in his later years, when he tried to convince Great Britain to fund him in the development of a death ray. (He was unsuccessful.) In fact, Tesla was such a bizarre and compelling person that he has frequently been recruited to be a character in fictional works, including the historical fantasy novel and film The Prestige and the sci-fi TV series Sanctuary.

But even though The Inventor is told through highly dramatic, superhero-worthy artwork, Mehta and Williams stick to the facts, following the inventor from his origins in Serbia through his immigration to the United States and his rivalry with inventor Thomas Edison. Tesla came to this country with a few dollars and a dream, Mehta recently told Wired magazines Underwire blog. The material, emotional and spiritual battles he endured are what The Inventor is about.

Aaron Leitko

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Graphic novel stars Nicola Tesla, inventor of AC power and an oddball physicist

FROM THE SHOW As robotics evolves in tandem with computing, robots will soon be mobile and intelligent enough to provide home health care, says Intel futurist Brian David Johnson.

Not only will they be able to keep an eye on the elderly and others who need home care, but also we will be able to customize them with apps, just like an iPhone.

Join the conversation on Facebook or Google+ and share feedback with The Gavin Newsom Show at @GavinOnCurrent.

The full interviews with Brian David Johnson, Kara Swisher and Tim Ferriss air this Friday at 11 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT.

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Robots will improve home health care

By: Paul Solman

Wednesday we feature the second of our interview outtakes with inventor/author/futurist Ray Kurzweil. (Tuesday's installment: the melding of man and machine.) In our broadcast story, which debuted on Making Sen$e Monday, Kurzweil explained that his recipe to combat aging entails taking 150 pills a day. You can find more details at a supplements business he runs, rayandterry.com, which features, we were excited to see, items like "healthy chocolates." You can also read yourself into old age with his three books on nutrition: "The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life," "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever" and "Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever."

But in case you still think your time is of some value, this video is a more economical look at Kurzweil's daily regimen.

Name: Bob Fults

Question: Saw your piece on student loans. One trillion dollars owed by 37 million? That's an average of $30,000 per student. That's not a crisis. It's a car. Buy a used car. Put your SUV payment against your loan and you're out in five years. Why are you people making this look like more than it is?

Paul Solman: Partly because we in the media like to dramatize things to make them seem important and get your attention. And partly because student loan debt is actually a crushing burden for many, especially in the current jobless maybe-it-is/maybe-it-isn't recovery. We talked to several folks so crushed by student loan debt, they've been forever scarred. We were all set to interview one debt-beset woman in her 70's, but she pulled out at the last minute, too embarrassed to talk on camera or even let us publish the details of her case here.

Look, an average is just a statistic. If the average is $30,000, then there's a person who owes $45,000 for every one who owes $15,000.

Joel Bernanke expects to owe a reported $400,000 by the time he graduates. I don't suppose we should worry about the son of Fed Chairman Ben (and besides, he's becoming a doctor). But as we reported here on July 6, students who carry a heavy debt load are not taking public service jobs they would have otherwise sought. The evidence is well summarized here.

The main point, though, is that we're talking 37 million Americans in total. The fact that journalists have a penchant for drama should not obscure the fact that millions of them are struggling with student debt, including young people who work at our own program. And the irony is that the most responsible among them -- those who pay their debts diligently -- are the most burdened.

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Ray Kurweil's Immortality Cocktail; And a Student Loan Skeptic

Andrew Zolli, author of Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, says we might not be able to change the future, but we can figure out how to survive it. Photo: PopTech/Kris Krug

Andrew Zolli is a funny kind of optimist. As a futurist, he thinks it may be too late to pull the world back from many of the most dire global crises, including climate change, financial meltdown, and the energy crunch. But in that unpleasant future he sees an opportunity to embrace what he calls resilience thinking, an approach that could enable the world not to avoid disaster but survive it. In his new book, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, the PopTech impresario describes a car hurtling toward a cliff, Thelma and Louise-style. In the car are two groups of problem solvers: Risk mitigators and risk adapters. The first, the risk mitigators, held the moral high ground when the cliff was still a long way off as they sought a way to turn the car around. But Zolli thinks we may be past the point of a global U-turn. He says the people who need the worlds attention now are those in the other group, the risk adapters, who are working on building a better parachute.

Wired Business: How did you first get turned on to the idea of resilience thinking?

Zolli: Several years ago we started to notice something really interesting, and that was organizations and institutions and innovators were increasingly working not to steer us away from the big systemic challenges and risks that we face but were really beginning in a concentrated way to think about how to withstand those risks and disruptions and challenges. Big organizations the IBMs and Nikes of the world, foundations like the Rockefeller, the State Department these big organizations and lots of smaller social entrepreneurs and organizations, they were all converging on the same conversation. When you see that across the spectrum under the surface you get the sense that, wow, the tectonic plates are moving here.

Wired Business: Why is resilience a concept thats important to embrace now?

Zolli: We are in a world where were closer and closer to the cliff. Not just in climate change, but in global economic systems, global energy systems. Were closer to different cliffs across the board, and the systems are tied to one another. If we go over one cliff, we may pull ourselves over other cliffs. Our current system of globalization, for all its wonders and benefits, is like a giant hairball: If you pull one string, its not clear what other strings you might be yanking along with it.

Wired Business: Whats changed in recent years that makes you think it may be too late to bring the world back from the edge?

Zolli: Im in my 40s. I came to adulthood in the 1990s. I got out of school and came into the labor pool in the decade when the Soviet Union was collapsing. America was able to scale down its military and spend a giant peace dividend. Clintonian economics reigned. The global economy was about ideas, creativity, the end of history. It was going to be peaches and gravy as far as the eye could see. And in the middle of that you had the advent of the web, which sort of put a giant exclamation point on the whole thing. What was the decade we got right after that? A decade demarcated by global acts of terrorism followed by international wars that ended with a global financial crisis. It may come to be seen as the suckiest decade in a very long time. I think whats happened is there is an appreciation that we live in an era of intrinsic volatility and disruption and surprise. Global systems have created vulnerabilities, fragilities and disruptions. We need a new way of thinking about systems that bolsters them and makes them better at handling those disruptions.

Wired Business: So how do you actually define resilience?

When we let systems over-optimize, we often create systems that are really in danger even when they look like theyre doing their best.

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It's the End of the World, And I Feel Fine: 10 Questions with Andrew Zolli

Watch Video Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been a key voice in our occasional series on the future of technology. The latest installment on the advent of immortality debuted here on Making Sen$e July 9 . As with economist Paul Krugman , our extended interview with Kurzweil included many fascinating bits that didn't make the final cut. So we continue Tuesday with one of them -- a ...

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Buying Gold and Futurist Ray Kurzweil on Melding of Man and Machine

Acclaimed futurist, business forecaster and best-selling author Jack Uldrich has been selected to deliver a series of upcoming keynote presentations to the utility industry. Uldrich will review major industry trends, including advances in renewable energy, natural gas, battery technology, solid-state transformers and transmission wires as well as discuss the importance of change management in ...

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Energy Futurist Jack Uldrich to Keynote Series of Utility Industry Events

Computers will soon be able to pass the Turing Test, convincing human judges that they too are humans, says Ray Kurzweil.

Photo courtesy Chris Devers

Kismet the robot at the MIT Museum.

Futurist and tech inventor Ray Kurzweil told an audience this week that by 2029, computers' reasoning will be on par with that of humans, the Wall Street Journal reports. Kurzweil made the declaration in an onstage interview at the Journal's CFO Network annual conference in Washington.

By 2029, Kurzweil predicts, computers will have the capacity to pass the Turing test--a criterion proposed in 1950 by English mathematician Alan Turing to determine whether a machine can "think." Passing the test would mean that a human judge could not distinguish between artificial intelligence and human thoughts.

Kurzweil based his argument in the rate of technological innovation, the Journal reports: As technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, things that seemed like science fiction years ago will soon become attainable, he said.

Some of Kurzweil's other seemingly sci-fi predictions included humans eventually being able to store knowledge outside of their brains, to access when needed, and the implantation of tiny computers into a person's body to help stave off disease and live longer, according to the report.

The idea of sentient computers matching wits with humans brings about obvious comparison to a litany of science fiction horror stories. But Kurzweil says he is not worried about deploying the sentinels.

"We're not creating these machines to displace us," he said in the interview. "We create these machines to make ourselves smarter."

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Futurist: Computers to Outsmart Humans by 2029

Acclaimed healthcare futurist and best-selling author, Jack Uldrich has been selected to deliver two keynote presentations to health-related association's in Iowa and Maine this week. Uldrich will focus on future trends in healthcare as well as discuss the need for "unlearning."Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) June 21, 2012 Popular keynote speaker, healthcare futurist, and best-selling author, Jack ...

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Healthcare Futurist Jack Uldrich to AddressTwo Health-Related Associations

SAUSALITO, Calif., June 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With the Supreme Court's decision on the healthcare reform act expected within the week, both hope and fear are building that the Court will stop healthcare reform in its tracks. But a healthcare futurist argues that the real reforms in healthcare will survive with or without the law.

"The really big changes already happening in healthcare aren't riding on the legislation. They are driven by economics," according to Joe Flower, a healthcare industry analyst and futurist who has worked with the World Health Organization, the U.S. Defense Department, and many Fortune 100 corporations. "The big secret inside the industry is: Better healthcare costs less. It has to. Some in the industry have figured this out, and others are just hoping no one will notice."

According to Flower, "We can expect a very different, and quite a bit smaller industry over the coming years. But this is not really about cutbacks or rationing. The industry is just now realizing that the only way to do healthcare for significantly less money is to do it better, smarter, leaner, to get to people with more help, earlier -- especially the five percent of the population who consume half of all the healthcare resources," he says. "The changes we are seeing are fundamental, they are growing, and there's really no going back." Flower is a frequent healthcare speaker and consultant for groups like the American Hospital Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and numerous hospitals, health plans, employers and pharmaceutical companies across the industry.

Flower's new book, Healthcare Beyond Reform: Doing It Right For Half the Cost, tells the stories of aggressive experiments and rapid change in America's largest industry. "The industry is huge. If it were a country, U.S. healthcare would be the sixth largest economy in the world. And it's been very stuck," he says. "With all the political noise, people have assumed that the only way to change healthcare is to pass a reform act in Congress. In fact, we are at a tipping point. Companies, health systems, states, Native American tribes, the VA, business coalitions, even some health plans, have been trying practical new ways of paying for healthcare, new ways of bringing it to people. And some of those experiments have been succeeding -- driving down costs while helping people be healthier. These new programs are changing the industry from the inside out."

Flower, who helps businesses and the healthcare industry prepare for change, estimates that the U.S. could get better healthcare for all Americans for half as much as it pays today. "That's a conservative estimate. Smarter healthcare is so much cheaper. Do it right, and we could save $1 trillion per year. In fact, that is the only real answer to reducing the federal deficit."

About Joe Flower

Joe Flower is the CEO of the Change Project, Inc., based on a converted Navy tugboat in Sausalito, Calif. He is member of the American Hospital Association's speaking faculty, and serves on the board of the Center for Health Design. His clients have included diverse organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control, the UK National Health System, GE Healthcare, and Kaiser Permanente.

For more information, please go to: Website: http://www.ImagineWhatIf.com Book website: http://HealthcareBeyondReform.com Photos: http://www.imaginewhatif.com/press/photos/

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Healthcare Futurist: Supreme Court Can't Stop Healthcare Reform

At the Pitney Bowes Insights Conference (#InsightsCon) this week in New Orleans, MSNBC commentator and "Futurist-in-Residence" at The New York Times, Mike Rogers, gave his thoughts on what the future of technology might hold for the average person.

He said that if you look back eight years ago to 2004, there was no iPhone, a 24" LCD TV cost about $3000 and Facebook existed only at Harvard. Now, iPhones are driving an explosion of mobile apps, 24" LCD TVs cost about $200, and Facebook has nearly 900 Million users.

Rogers said that two primary things will make progress faster in the next eight years. Moore's Law will continue to impact the speed of data processing and people will adopt technology faster than they used to. He also said that three things will become more pervasive:

The last item is most interesting. Essentially, Rogers believes that we will all develop "digital personalities" that will "carry us as we move through the virtual world." Digital personalities, he said, are the derivatives of social networks. So, how we represent ourselves in the future may depend on a digital persona. While I'm not sure that differs tremendously from our online profiles on Facebook or LinkedIn, the social networks today seem to be more static. That is, your personal information doesn't change unless you change it. I believe he is suggesting that there will be more dynamic interaction with the virtual world.

Lastly, he believes that our mobile devices will become more intelligent and the they will be personal concierges ... a more advanced version of Apple's Siri. The devices will not only tell us when we have our next appointment but will capture the frequency with which we visit places and make recommendations based on past personal preferences. For example, let's say you arrive late to work three times in the past week. Your mobile device might suggest to you that you rise earlier or take a different route to work. To me, this sounds less like "big brother" and more like "nagging mom."

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Futurist Takes Look, uh, Into the Future #insightscon

On July 6, 2012 the Network Event will introduce an impressive line-up of keynote speakers and panellists including Rob Adams, U.S entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author; Sarah Gibbs, co-founder of Trilogy; Tim Longhurst, futurist; Vinny Lohan, founder and CEO of OneBeep; and Chris Quin, CEO of Gen-i Australasia.(PRWEB) June 13, 2012 The ICEHOUSE Network Event is all about looking to the ...

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ICEHOUSE Network Event Headlines Leading Entrepreneurs and Futurist

Ray Bradbury, who died this week at the age of 91, had rather a lot in common with??Peter Drucker???and it wasn't just longevity. For one thing, both men rejected the label of "futurist" even though they were known for being remarkably farsighted. "People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do ...

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Ray Bradbury, the Non-Futurist Visionary

Jim Carroll will talk about innovation and transformation strategy

Jim Carroll, a respected author, columnist, media commentator and consultant who links future trends to innovation and creativity, will deliver the keynote address during the Opening General Session of WEFTEC 2012 this fall in New Orleans, LA. The opening session will kick off the Water Environment Federations (WEF) 85th annual technical exhibition and conference, a five-day event that is expected to draw thousands of water quality professionals and exhibitors to the New Orleans Convention Center from September 29 to October 3, 2012.

As one of the worlds leading international futurists, trends and innovation experts, Carroll has provided strategic guidance and insight to some of the most prestigious organizations in the world. He is recognized worldwide as a thought leader and authority on global trends, rapid business model change, business transformation in a period of economic uncertainty, and the necessity for fast paced innovation.

We live and work in a period of unprecedented change, said Carroll. Intelligent infrastructure concepts continue to emerge from the hypothetical to the real while new design methodologies and concepts challenge water professionals to keep ahead of these fast paced developments. I'll cover the key trends that will provide challenge in the future and outline how to turn them into opportunity."

The theme of this years Opening General Session will focus on A New Direction for WEF and tie into the organizations new Strategic Direction that was announced earlier this year. Carrolls presentation on innovation and transformation strategy is expected to frame the larger program theme and provide some tools and tips for how to achieve a higher level of success through significant, transformative change.

This is a very exciting time for the water profession and specifically for the Water Environment Federation as we continue on this new path to drive innovation in water, enrich the expertise of the water sector, and increase awareness of the value of water, said WEF Executive Director Jeff Eger. We believe that Mr. Carrolls insights and experiences will help reframe the important work of the water sector in the twenty-first century and reveal the incredible opportunities that come from a relentless focus on innovation and creativity.

Scheduled for Monday, October 1 in the Conference Auditorium of the New Orleans Morial Convention Center, the opening session will also feature remarks from Eger and 2011-2012 WEF President Matt Bond as well as recognition of the 2012 Stockholm Junior Water Prize winners.

Recognized as the largest annual water quality conference and exhibition in the world, WEFTEC 2012 offers access to 142 technical sessions, 24 workshops, more than 1,000 expert speakers, six facility tours, and nearly 900 exhibitors (to date). In addition, this years event will include a new Innovation Pavilion, Stormwater Pavilion, expanded exhibition hours, new mobile sessions, and more!

Dont miss out register by July 13 to receive the Super Saver Discount. Visit http://www.weftec.org for registration information and for the latest conference details.

About WEF Founded in 1928, the Water Environment Federation (WEF) is a not-for-profit technical and educational organization of 36,000 individual members and 75 affiliated Member Associations representing water quality professionals around the world. WEF members, Member Associations and staff proudly work to achieve our mission to provide bold leadership, champion innovation, connect water professionals, and leverage knowledge to support clean and safe water worldwide.

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Futurist, Trends, And Innovation Expert To Deliver Keynote Address At The Opening General Session Of WEFTEC 2012

Giant of science fiction writing fueled renewed interest in futurist literature with Fahrenheit 451 among scores of other works Share your favorite Bradbury quotes here Despite the exhortations of Mr Electrico, a carnival sideshow act with an electrified sword who demanded that a 12-year-old Ray Bradbury "live forever!", one of the most well-loved and highly-regarded modern writers of the ...

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Ray Bradbury, hero of the SF universe, dies at age of 91

There was, quite simply, no writer like Ray Bradbury, the futurist who brought science fiction into the literary mainstream.

Many of his 30 books are classics including The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and Dandelion Wine.

And his work in the early post-WWII years reflected both the wonders and growing fears of rapidly advancing technology.

But Bradbury, who died Tuesday at 91, never considered himself a science fiction writer. That term he reserved only for his most important book, Fahrenheit 451.

That 1953 dystopian work, named for the temperature at which paper ignites, was an eloquent denunciation of book-burning.

Reuters

Ray Bradbury

But Bradbury would later say it was less about censorship and the threat from Big Brother, [than the one] from little sister [and] all those groups . . . who want to impose their views from below.

These days, of course, the threats from above must be considered too particularly those posed by folks who think modernity can best be held back with multiple head loppings.

Below, above it makes no difference: Bradburys book remains relevant because the threat to free expression is timeless and so very dangerous. Not for nothing was the author awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush. RIP.

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Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012

MEDIA RELEASE

Thursday 7 June, 2012

ICEHOUSE Network Event Headlines Leading Entrepreneurs and Futurist

The ICEHOUSE Network Event is all about looking to the future. On July 6, 2012 the Network Event will introduce an impressive line-up of keynote speakers and panellists including Rob Adams, U.S entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author; Sarah Gibbs, co-founder of Trilogy; Tim Longhurst, futurist; Vinny Lohan, founder and CEO of OneBeep; and Chris Quin, CEO of Gen-i Australasia.

The world's business landscape is changing at a rapid pace. As entrepreneurs and business owners, it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges of running a business, without stopping to think about the impact of upcoming trends.

"It's a challenge to get a start-up or an owner-managed business with big ambitions off the ground. Often times the business owner is so focused on building their product or servicing their clients, they have little time for anything else, said Andy Hamilton, CEO of The ICEHOUSE. The ICEHOUSE Network Event is a great opportunity for business owners and entrepreneurs to hear from people who walk a similar path. It is also an opportunity to take a step back to consider the impact of evolving business trends and get inspired by the success stories of others.

Rob Adams, a leading U.S. entrepreneur, is a panellist at the Network event as part of a two week visit to New Zealand mentoring local businesses and investors. An expert in market validation, Dr Adams is also a globally recognized speaker on entrepreneurship, product and financing strategy. He is on the faculty of the MBA program at The University of Texas at Austin, and is an active angel investor and board member for several start-ups. He has founded or financed more than 40 companies that launched more than 100 products with transactions exceeding one billion dollars of capital.

Dr Adams said, Launching new products or start-ups is tough. More than 65 percent of new products fail. If we switch over to start-ups, the failure rate jumps to 90 percent. Market validation aims to increase these odds through the use of a series of common business practices that, when assembled in a unique way, can prove the validity of a market opportunity. The process is very similar for both start-ups and established companies and looks for concrete evidence of an opportunity before considerable amounts of time and money are invested pursuing it. New Zealand

has a great environment for early stage businesses. Im looking forward to visiting again to share and learn from Kiwi business leaders.

As a futurist, Tim Longhurst is a passionate advocate for innovation and collaborates with organisations to think about the future. He identifies trends and helps organisations adapt to a changing world. Mr Longhurst will talk about three key future trends that are redefining our lives and the opportunities these bring.

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Network Event Headlines Leading Entrepreneurs and Futurist

The name P.G. Wodehouse normally does not spring to mind when talking about futurists. Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke and Alvin Toffler certainly, but Pelham Grenville quite definitely not!

Wodehouse is someone one would associate with Bertie Wooster and the inimitable dolichocephalic, fish-eating Jeeves. Some may conjure up visions of the muddle-headed Lord Emsworth and his magnificent beast the Empress of Blandings.

But the die-hard Wodehouse fan will also tell you about Rupert Psmith and his other schoolboy stories. Though often ignored and somewhat hard to find, many unusual nuggets lurk in these innocuous tales.

It is to one of these that I would draw attention. Titled An International Affair, it was published in The Captain in 1905, and can be found in the Project Gutenberg free eBooks collection called The Politeness of Princess and Other Stories'.

The story is rather prescient it reads like the classic tale of the neighborhood mom-and-pop store facing the giant retailer. You could easily substitute the latter today with Walmart or Carrefour.

Oliver Ring, the American owner of Ring's Come-one Come-all Up-to-date Stores, happens to be passing through the lazy English countryside town of Wrykyn, home to the boy's school bearing the same name. The shop windows in Wrykyn resemble those in every other country town in England, having no initiative and none of that quality that would arrest the pedestrian's progress.

In America, Mr Ring reflected, they did these things better, and then it dawned upon him that this was the perfect place for setting up one of his mega stores.

We are told that of Mr Ring's Come-one Come-all Up-to-date Stores are well known all over the world, with offices in Broadway, New York and others in Chicago, St. Louis and St. Paul within America. Overseas offices exist in London, Paris and Berlin which basically amounts to saying everywhere in the world.

In Mr. Wodehouse's words, The peculiar advantage of Ring's Stores is that you can get anything you happen to want there, from a motor to a macaroon, and rather cheaper than you could get it anywhere else.

Of course, what he was describing was the early twentieth century, when one can only guess where these multitudes of products are produced. Not China, perhaps.

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P. G. Wodehouse, futurist

Ray Bradbury has died at the age of 91. He wrote such classics as The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. Futuristic tales from a man who never used a computer, or even drove a car.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Some sad news this morning, the world has lost a literary giant. Author Ray Bradbury died last night, after a long illness. He was 91 years old. He wrote such classics as "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" - futuristic tales from a man who never used a computer or even drove a car. NPR's Arnie Seipel has more on Bradbury and his curious life.

ARNIE SEIPEL, BYLINE: Ray Bradbury grew up during the Great Depression. He said it was a time when people couldn't imagine the future and Bradbury's active imagination made him stand out. He once told WHYY's FRESH AIR about exaggerating basic childhood fears, like monsters at the top of the stairs.

RAY BRADBURY: As soon as I looked up, there it was, and it was horrible. And I would scream and fall back down the stairs. And my mother and father would get up and sigh and say, oh my God, here we go again.

SEIPEL: He dove into books as a child. Wild tales from authors Jules VerneBradbury dove into books as a child. Wild tales from authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells captivated Bradbury - and made him dream of becoming a great author. So he started writing, churning out a short story every week during his teens. After his family moved to Southern California, he would escape to the basement of the UCLA library. There, he'd focus on his craft.

BRADBURY: For 10 cents a half-hour you could rent a typewriter. And I thought, my gosh, this is terrific! I can be here for a couple hours a day. It'll cost me 30, 40 cents, and get my work done.

SEIPEL: Bradbury made his mark in the literary world with "The Martian Chronicles," a collection of short stories released in 1950. During the height of the Red Scare, he set off a warning flare about censorship with his signature work, "Fahrenheit 451" - and he did so in a controversial new magazine: Playboy. The story was later printed as a novel, and in 1966 director Francois Truffaut introduced movie audiences to this bizarre society Bradbury created: one in which firemen burned books to keep the masses completely ignorant but couldn't extinguish their curiosity.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FAHRENHEIT 451")

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The Curious Life Of Futurist Author Ray Bradbury