We live in one of the most tumultuous and exciting times in human history. With our cultural, political, economic, and spiritual systems colliding, breaking down, and transforming in the mixing bowl of the twenty-first century, it is very difficult to predict what the world or our lives might look like even a few years from now. For the next issue of EnlightenNext magazine, we’ve decided to peer into the crystal ball and find out what the future—unpredictable as it may be—might have in store for us. We’ve spoken to a number of our favorite visionaries, asking them questions such as “How bad do things have to get before they get better?” and “What game-changing social or technological innovations are on the horizon?”

In this first installment in a series of EnlightenNext interviews with futurists, associate editor Joel Pitney speaks with Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau, author of the bestselling book Radical Evolution, about some of the new technologies that he says not only could help us tackle some of our most difficult challenges but may also dramatically alter what it means to be human. Drawing on a wealth of research into emerging trends across several industries, Garreau envisions a future where memory pills greatly enhance our learning capacities, nanotechnology makes solar our most efficient source of energy, and bioengineered bacteria cleanse the atmosphere of excess CO2. Despite our current economic crisis, the good news according to Garreau is that it is in times of crisis that society is most willing to accept the radical new ideas that will help to define the world of the future.

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