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2000 PAGE
The Turn The End The Start The Idea The Spirit The Year

The Millennium--
A Spring Time for the Human Spirit


by William L. Renfro

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled. That this Act may be cited as "The Third Millennium Jubilee Act."

The Congress of these United States finds and declares:
(1) Saturday, January 1, 2000 marks the dawn of
the Third Millennium:
(2) the governments and people of the world look to
the next millennium with anticipation, expectation, hope,
and confidence in the continuing progress of humankind:

With these words the National Millennium "Commission" will be established by the 104th Congress. Draft legislation has been prepared that follows traditional celebratory commissions such as the Bicentennial Commission, the Constitution's Bicentennial and the Quincentennial of Columbus. This is what Congress will pass if no better idea is availablethe opportunity for a unique foresight effort to look ahead is at hand. It is a springtime for the human spirit, full of hope and promise. As with every spring there is the responsibility to make the most of the new opportunity. The question is:
What are our goals?
How shall we meet them?
What kind of a formal effort will we need?

There are many possible ways for Congress to organize the official government recognition and celebration of the millennium: from a traditional "National Commission" to a Congressionally chartered public corporation to a foundation to loose knit "forum." Some 60 countries already have official millennium projects that serve a models. To decide what form the US effort should take, we need first to decide what we want to do and then select the best form.

The Millennium:
Years Away or Now?

Many of us already live in the Third Millennium. Most of the cars and housing of the year 2000 have been built. 99% of the value of education for this millennium has been realized: we are now educating for the next millennium. The new Millennium's first:

-Doctors have started medical school;
-Lawyers are college sophomores;
-College graduates are high school juniors and the first children educated entirely in the Third Millennium were born last year.
-Our new construction projects are for the Third Millennium. The major figures of the last presidential election are already on the laying field.
-The first president of the Third Millennium is probably already a household name and the presidents of the first half of the next century have been born.
-The leaders of Third Millennium are being identified every day.
-How much of your life is already in the Third Millennium?

Past celebratory commissions have served as clearinghouses for ideas, programs, projects and schedules. Unlike past efforts, the millennium is not a uniquely US celebration. There will probably be a gathering of the tall ships, but not necessarily in the US. Do the American people want more than an update of these past celebrations? As futurist Joe Coates said at the founding of the National Millennium Committee, we need a national discussion on what we want for the Millennium. What is your personal version of our national or global vision for the next Millennium?

Past celebratory commissions have primarily commemorated history, recent history, at least in comparison to a millennium. Few efforts of past celebrations have looked forward to the future. The dawn of the Third Millennium invites us to do more than a retrospective with a longer perspective. It invites us to look to the future. We do this naturally on personal anniversaries and collectively on public ones. Our New Year's Resolutions are testimony to this tradition. Every new decade we take a longer look. The Third Millennium is a quadruple set-point: a new year, a new decade, a new century as well as the new Millennium. (Imagine the 10th or 100th Millennium!)


Imagination is more important than knowledge
-Einstein

Imagination rules the world
-Napoleon

If you don't have a dream, you can't make a dream come true
-South Pacific

The past may be prologue, but imagination is the future
-Renfro

The Third Millennium invites us to move from our small cyclesdaily, monthly, seasonally, annualto the grand scale of human history . . . and to think in multiple century, even millennial dimensions. From the perspective of the year 2000, Socrates and Homer are only a couple of cycles away, Tutankhamen, only one more. As distant history draws closer, so also does the future.

Consider this Millennium: We established governments based on the consent of the governed. We discovered discovery, and with it, science, medicine and the art of learning. At the half-way point, the age of discovery, we proved the world round and discovered new worlds beyond our horizons. We created music and set it free. We harnessed fire and rain, not to mention light and lightening. We split the atom and tapped the power of the stars. We moved communications from notes to nano-seconds and computing from pencils to pico-seconds. We mastered flight, stepped towards the stars and reached the edge of time and the universe with our minds. And how much of this was just this Century?

The Third Millennium
In Our Lifetimes

-Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the Third Millennium" becomes
the most popular recording in history
-CBS presents Walter Cronkite: The Third Millennium: You will be There
-First cases of Mille-mania reported
-President proposes Millennium Summit: Visions for Humankind
-Computer programming rendered irrelevant as conversational natural
language software allows voice interaction. Hackers replaced by yackers
-Congress establishes "National Foresight Academy"
-Breakthrough in animal communicationwhales tell history of the world
-First commercial domestic robots: "Ann D. Morf" and "HuMaid" sell out
-First artificial intelligence liability suit: computer guilty of "soft headedness."
-Para-psychics demonstrate mental image transfer technique.
CIA panics, launches R&D on anti-psychic systems
-First AI systems alone in classrooms
-Beethoven's 250th birthday bash draws 10 million to Bonn birth place
-Yackers' "Dr. Know" software able to diagnose 95% of ailments with a
98% confidence level. AMA's interactive "Dox R Us" unable to compete
-100 millionth robot joins labor force
-Animals suspend communication pending response to demands
-National Science Foundation publishes: A Research Agenda
for the Millennium: Discoveries Yet to Be
-Arnold Palmer joins Boeing in first lunar golf course and
designs anti-orbital, lunar friendly golf equipment
-New particle, the graviton, discovered. Physicists demonstrate gravity control
-Inspired by Copeland's "Fanfare," Brewstera blue whale, joins Bach,
Beethoven and Brahams as the great composers with
the debut of her "Symphony in Sea."


If this past be prologue, what dreams can the Third Millennium hold? Our imaginations stumble to keep pace. However, the past is no longer prologue: the past no longer prepares us for the pace of unprecedented change. Even with the great accomplishments, the great changes of the past, we have left the greatest challenges to the voyage ahead. Realizing them promises great adventure and sheer exhilaration

As we mark the passing of one epoch, one millennium, we have the inevitable mandate for taking an assessment of where we are, what we have accomplished for humankind in this millennium.
Candidate Projects
for the Millennium

Space Fireworks
Lunar Fireworks
Foresight Education for all levels
Music: Fanfare for the New Millennium
Stewardship for the Blue Marble
New Millennium Resolutions for Humans
Global dialogue on the Next Millennium
A New Ethical Order
A National Foresight Capability
Your Ideas?_________________

This assessment of where we are, this finishing of the past and attendant celebrations leave us poised for our future, ready for the next cycle, the next season, to the renewal. All of the hopes and dreams of a springtime in the human spirit await us. Let us begin a dialogue on these dreams, on our visions of the next thousand years.

What is your vision? What projects do you propose? How will celebrate this springtime, this renewal of the human purpose and spirit? Share your ideas with your friends and colleagues, elected representatives, The World Future Society and The National Millennium Foundation.

Source: This article, first published in 1987, was updated in "The Futurist" magazine, under the title of "A World Future Celebration," v29, n2, March-April 1995, p. 28. Descriptors: Future in popular cultureAnalysis, CivilizationHistory.

Author: William L. Renfro is the founder of The National Millennium Foundation, Washington, DC. Phone: 1-202-662-7406, FAX 1-202-662-7035.


The Turn The End The Start The Idea The Spirit The Year
The Meaning of the Year 2000

How do we get beyond the Y2K Computer Crisis? Is millennial fever and techno-phobia distracting the church at the advent of the third millennium? How must the church change in order to be relevant to the 21st century? Let your views be heard on our bulletin-board. Enter the Magi Forum...

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Revised: June 1, 1999