Futurist: Technology is Changing Teens For The Better

BETHESDA, MD: Don Tapscott, professor, and chairman of the nGenera Innovation Network, bestselling author of the book Grown Up Digital, and WorldFuture 2009 keynote speaker is a strong believer in the "Net Generation." He says that technology is, indeed, affecting the lives, values, and development of teens. But contrary to a lot of popular opinion, the Internet isn't making kids dumber or less sensitive, it's enabling them to transform society for the better.

"I'm very concerned about the negative portrayal of this generation," he says in an exclusive interview with World Future Review, published by the World Future Society. "This is kind of the central issue to me. You have the biggest generation ever-they're coming into the workforce, [into] the marketplace, into society.

With them, and from their experience growing up, is a whole new culture. It's a culture of collaboration and innovation and speed and integrity. This culture is meeting up against all of our traditional institutions. We're in the early days of a huge generational clash. If we older people don't smarten up and listen to them and learn from them as opposed to doing the opposite."

At WorldFuture 2009, the annual conference of the World Future Society, Tapscott will discuss how the digital generation will bring a new high performance, high collaboration culture to the workplace, and a new spirit of global awareness to the marketplace. He'll explain how to look toward youth culture and see the contours of a new future for the planet.

WorldFuture 2009: Innovation and Creativity in a Complex World, the annual conference of the World Future Society will take place July 17-19, 2009 at the Hilton Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Professional Members' Forum: July 20, 2009.

Founded in 1966 as a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Washington, D.C., the World Future Society has members in more than eighty countries around the world. Individuals and groups from all nations are eligible to join the Society and participate in its programs and activities.

The Society holds a two-day, international conference once a year where participants discuss foresight techniques and global trends that are influencing the future. Previous conference attendees have included future U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974), Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1975), behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (1984), age-wave expert Ken Dychtwald (2005), U.S. comptroller general David M. Walker (2006), and scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (2006).

This year's speakers include: Ambassador John W. McDonald, Robert D. Atkinson, former project director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, labor expert Edward E. Gordon, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, longevity expert Michael Zey, bioweapons expert Berry Kellman, and workplace John Challenger.

More information and registration can be obtained from The World Future Society's Web site. www.wfs.org