To think about the future requires optimism. Depression can't see a future at all, fear doesn't want to see one, anger laments that it won't be like the past.

But as the German novelist and writer Martin Walser recently observed, "there is no presence that isn't crying out for a future". There are at least three strong reasons for planning a future: ethics (things may not remain the way they are), philosophy (the presence is nothing but the confluence of past and future) and physics (the "arrow of time" or entropy is irreversible).

So we turn to Baltimore resident, Johns Hopkins Fellow and former Special Advisor for Innovation at the State Department Alec Ross to learn about the future and "how the next wave of innovation and globalization will affect our countries, our societies and ourselves" (book cover), Ross has written a whole book about the future. But he isn't just a blue-eyed optimist writing "the typical techno-utopian fantasy" nor is he the whiny pessimist issuing a "the luddite jeremiad" (quotes from the Forbes review of his book). In his recently published book The Industries of the Future he "strikes a calm tone, never ceasing to consider the human cost of technological progress" (Forbes). Ross responds to his own question of "what is next after digitalization"? and shows both the possibilities and risks of what he thinks will come.