I&E Keynote Speakers Have Their Eyes To The Future

Keynote Presenter – Peter Bishop, PhD is an Associate Professor of Human Sciences and Chair of the graduate program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Dr. Bishop specializes in techniques for long-term forecasting and planning. Dr. Bishop's presentation at the I&E is titled "Making Sense of the Future - A Journey into Future Time."

The goal of the conversation is to take a long look at our planet, home to six billion people; some producing and consuming at unprecedented rates, altering the land, air, and water that evolved over millions of years. We are spilling over borders, changing countries, and cultures alike. This is a vivid picture of past, present, and future technologies and how they have swept away everything in the path. Our latest technology -- the microprocessor -- is changing work, family, government, and values in novel and startling ways.

And what of the technologies to come? Bishop asks participants to investigate the future of our nation, bending and flexing to respond to the waves of change. A successful nation, now older, seeks less government while, at the same time, struggles to retain its quality of life in the face of technological change and global competition. These are forces which impact the news every week, touching our lives on a daily basis. Knowing what to expect, you will become confident, even excited, about the prospect of a new and challenging future. This presentation will challenge you to apply critical and speculative thinking to assist in anticipating the future.

Keynote Presenter – Jim Kenzie is Canada's foremost automotive journalist. He has been Chief Auto Reviewer for The Toronto Star's Wheels section, Canada's leading automotive publication, since its inception in 1986. He appears on "Kenzie's Korner" on TSN'S Motoring, Canada's most-watched automotive television program. His work also appears in a variety of magazines, newspapers, and websites around the world.

Kenzie offers up at his appearance "The Future Of Cars And The People Who Drive Them." Traffic safety has always been a three-legged stool consisting of the balance between the car, the road, and the driver. What developments will drive progress in the next decades? Kenzie says that he doesn’t have a crystal ball, but he has some interesting and provocative ideas, starting with the vehicles themselves. If we’ve gone from driving cars with computers in them to driving computers with wheels on them, how much more technology will we have in our vehicles in the future?

The main progress made in road design is that increasingly, we drive on divided highways. It is one of the more interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive facts that our fastest roads - freeways - are statistically our safest roads. This is because the hardest crash to survive is a head-on, and that’s pretty rare on a controlled-access freeway. Still more can be done, and a discussion on what that entails is in order; this is a crucial element of Kenzie's presentation.

Finally, in terms of the people behind the wheel: The U.S. fatality rate in vehicle crashes is not ten times that of Canada (as would be expected based on population) but almost fifteen times. Seat belt compliance in Canada is ninety percent while it is only seventy percent in the U.S. Why, and what can be done in the future to address this most neglected piece of the safety triad – the driver? Gain from Kenzie some insights into what fleet managers and industry affiliates can do to address our cars, our roads, and our driver behavior in the future.

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