Over the past half-century, we have seen leaps in technological capacity and economic globalization that would have baffled previous generations. But with our current global financial crisis, many are suggesting that this rapid growth has come at a very high price and we are seeing the dark side of modernity’s rise exposing itself before our very eyes. Not everyone, however, is so pessimistic.

In the latest installment in our series of interviews with some of today’s top futurists, EnlightenNext speaks with two avid optimists about where they see us heading in the near future, specifically in the realms of technology and the economy.

In the first dialogue, senior editor Elizabeth Debold talks to Patricia Aburdene, author of Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism. While many critics of our current economic system are banging the drums of victory over the current economic collapse as evidence that they were “right all along,” Aburdene is more interested in transforming our system of capitalism than she is in critiquing it. Aburdene, who is one of the leading voices in the movement to expand the corporate bottom line to value more than just profits, says the companies that will thrive in the future (like Google, Apple, and Medtronic) will be those that develop a more holistic and sustainable approach to business.

In the second segment, senior associate editor Ross Robertson enters the techno-utopian world of inventor, author, and pioneering transhumanist Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil, who has spent the past four decades researching the rate of technological change and using it to predict what kind of mind-blowing advances we might expect to see in our lifetimes, exudes an unbridled passion for the future. He gives Robertson the inside scoop on some of the most important innovations that he sees coming down the pike in the next three years that, according to Kurzweil, will transform the energy industry and significantly extend human life.

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