Inception of Foresight

Dear Mr. Director,

 I would like to inform you about my foresight researchs for our organization. World economy, technology, and population is changing with uncontrolable accelaretion. In this changement, all nations are making long-term strategies in the name of foresight to diagnose the future aspects of sectors. In this perception, I shaped an research paper in the light of information of nations researchs and analysis. I think it is essential to build foresight for our company to specify future actions on the future trends. The objective is to inform you about future analysis and to create our foresight vision.

1.        Balancing humankind’s need for energy with the environmental cost to our planet is a major challenge. Demand for energy is forecasted as increasing 50% by the year 2025 with most of these being fossil fuels. Currently over 1.6 billion humans have no access to electricity and 2.4 billion rely on plant material, vegetation, or agricultural waste as an energy and heating source. Our fossil fuel consumption is escalating and could double. Meanwhile, Earth’s glaciers are receding, the CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere have nearly doubled, and world temperatures, recorded since 1861, were the hottest in three of the past five years. 1998 was the warmest of record, 2001 came in the second warmest and 2004 was the fourth warmest. In the light of these information, it can be cited that, Mcdonalds Co. must make new investments to construct efficient restaurants and also to construct environmentally green energy plants. Therefore, Nanotechnology will help fill our need for energy solutions through more efficient lighting, fuel cells, hydrogen storage, solar cells.

2.        Water is one of the Earth's most precious natural resources. Most of it is saltwater. Fresh usable water is only 3% of the world’s supply and two-thirds of that is frozen in glaciers, ice caps and icebergs. The remaining 1% is available for human consumption. Today 1.1 billion people don’t have access to safe water and 2.4 billion lack sanitation facilities. 80% of developing world diseases are water-borne with an estimate of 3.4 million deaths, mostly children, in 1998 of water-related diseases.Demand for fresh water is increasing. Agriculture currently uses 70% of the world’s water supply. To feed 2 billion more by the year 2030 there will be a 60% increase in demand on the water supply. Considering the current rates of consumption, population and development, some two-thirds of the world population will be affected by droughts by the year 2050. Therefore, Mcdonalds Co. must make new investments to the cleaner water technology. For that case, nanotechnology will provide part of the solution for this challenge through inexpensive decentralized water purification, detection on the molecular level of contaminants, and greatly improved filtration systems. Therefore, we can consturct new facilities to purify water and thus, they will give us cost efficiency at operations of restaurants.

3.        Humans are living longer lives. At the turn of the century, men and women expected to live to 48 and 51 years respectively. That life expectancy is now 74 and 80 years and could be significantly longer with anti-aging advancements currently being researched. At the same time, 30 new highly infectious diseases have been discovered in the last 20 years. These diseases account for 30% of the deaths worldwide and include HIV/AIDS, Ebola and the Avian Flu. HIV/AIDS, the most critical threat, has killed 22 million and infected 42 million. In 2003 roughly 5 million people became infected worldwide. AIDS according to a United Nations study is increasingly becoming global as it spreads rapidly to Eastern Europe and Asia. Cancer kills over 500,000 people and 1.5 million are diagnosed annually in the United States. According to the World Cancer Report, there could be a 50% increase to 15 million new cases in the year 2020 primarily attributed to an aging population worldwide. For that  reasons, we should make investments on the products that give improved health and longevity. We can take a look for nanotechnological improvements, that is making tremendous progress in the medical field. These applications will be inexpensive and give rapid diagnostics, new methods of drug delivery, and faster development of new drugs. Some longer term and even more powerful nanotechnology solutions will repair DNA and cellular damage and customize drug therapy.

4.        There is an ever-increasing demand for natural resources and living space for humans, while toxics continue to build up in our water and soil. Biodiversity is being destroyed world wide with 7 million hectares of forest being lost annually. Half of our world’s forests and a quarter of our coral reefs are gone. We already have been take a step through the efficiency of packaging, etc.. However, we should widen the efficiency operations via the nanotechnology. For instance, it will provide solutions through precision pollution monitoring using nanosensors, lower energy needs due to lightweight strong materials, and reducing the use of harsh cleansers through the applications of nanocoatings to surfaces. A more advanced nanotechnology solution will be building our products with molecular-level precision through the use of productive nanosystems, resulting in virtually no chemical waste. To summarize, this will both improve our profile of being steward of nature, and operations.

5.        The earthly challenges facing humanity are the result of our heavy demand on resources and raw materials. Many of these materials can be found in space but the expense to extract them is a major barrier. In addition to cost, other obstacles to developing space are safety, reliability, and performance. According to the National Space Society there are four reasons why we need to pursue space exploration and colonization. These reasons—survival, growth, prosperity and curiosity—all point to the fact that we, as a species, want more room. Space exploration will give us a means to monitor the health of our planet, a source of resources and an outlet for our imagination. At this pace,  nanotechnology will create the ability for humans to operate in space more safely. Applications where nanotechnology will impact space exploration are propulsion fuels, coatings, structural materials, smart uniforms, electronics and life support environments. These will be more efficient, stronger, self-healing and lighter than what is currently available.

 To sum up, as many nations stated that foresight is a requirement that, it has an important role to analyze future actions. Therefore, we must take actions to the foresight, and define our long term strategies accordingly.

Best Regards

Ali BARAN