These days, one of my primary avocations is future studies. I'm a professional member of the World Future Society and the Association of Professional Futurists.

Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine. Here are the editors' top 10 forecasts from Outlook 2008:

1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025. Globalization and technological innovation are driving increased prosperity.

2. Wired-clothing: Technologies and tastes will revolutionize the fashion business.

3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief US foreign-policy concern.

4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.

5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event, a biodiversity collapse 100 to 1,000 times greater than any previous extinction since the dawn of humanity.

6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.

7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.

8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080.

9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic.

10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities. Electronically enabled teams in networks, robots with artificial intelligence, and other non-carbon life-forms will make financial, health, educational, and even political decisions for us.

The Outlook 2008 report was released as part of the November-December 2007 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine.

Top 10 forecasts for 2008 and beyond: http://www.wfs.org/Nov-Dec%20Files/TOPTEN.htm

Forbes - The Futurists: http://tinyurl.com/362wwu

YouTube: FUTURIST Magazine's Top 10 Forecasts for 2008 and Beyond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKYY_8iqaB0