I wrote the following as part of an oped directed at the media industry. My profound belief is that we need to give people sense of vision and possibility. They no longer can imagine what a better future might look like. And while the news media necessarily surfaces all the problems we face, it has been the realm of the arts and sciences that have given us a sense of what could be. This initiative from the SCI FI Channel hopes to get the media’s creative imagination going. It is easy to imagine how the world comes apart while it is much harder to imagine how we creatively address the challenges we face today. The conversation on this blog is about creating a fertile dialog on how to express our hopes not just our fears.

Today in the U.S. and most of Western Europe, a majority of people believe that our children will be worse off than we are now. According to the Pew Center, this stunning lack of optimism, ranges from 80 percent in France to around 70 percent in Italy and Germany to 60 percent in the U.S. and Britain. We are the first generation in over a century that does not share a vision of hope and progress, despite the fact that more people are better educated, and enjoying longer, healthier lives at higher economic standards. At the same time, our knowledge-enabling technologies continue to accelerate, empowering the individual and driving tremendous new value and opportunities. By any measure, we Americans are vastly better off than our nineteenth century predecessors. So why has our faith in the future faded? Why do we doubt the march of progress and our own capacity to overcome the challenges of today and tomorrow?

To understand the roots of this pessimism we need to consider our enduring sources of optimism. As Westerners we have long shared a belief in the continued, combined momentum of science and technology, the wisdom of democratic governments and individual citizens, and the fairness of free-market economies to create opportunities and improve our lives. In the U.S. especially, this virtuous circle between change, growth, and progress was the dominant ethos of the 1950s and early sixties. Such optimism—and sense of unlimited possibility—was exemplified by the space program and science fiction, which together inspired an entire generation to embrace and create the future. But now too many of us see change without progress and a world coming apart—more the dark dystopias of Blade Runner and Mad Max than the energy and adventure of Flash Gordon and Star Trek.

During the last 40 years we lost faith first in science and technology, then in politics, and finally in the economic engine of progress. It was Silent Spring, smog, and Chernobyl. It was Vietnam, Watergate, hanging chads, and Katrina. It was oil crises, stagflation, a dot-com boom turned bust, and Enron. Now, with cloning, bio-terror, and cybercrimes, science and technology seem poised to cause, not solve, problems. Government is viewed as out of touch if not corrupt and incompetent. Business, according to many, is rigged to reward an undeserving few, while diminishing prospects for the rest. And let’s not forget global climate change. It seems even the Earth has turned against us. Is it inevitable that the future will be worse than the past?

The answer is no. The challenges we face are no more daunting than those encountered by earlier generations. Even the twentieth century was afflicted by two world wars, a deep depression, and the Cold War threat of nuclear destruction. Today’s challenges are certainly huge: climate change, managing the political tensions of a very complex world, and bringing the next few billion people out of poverty, among them. But to address these challenges we must believe again in the future and the people and institutions that can build it with us: the scientists who will launch the next-generation Apollo projects and breakthrough inventions; the entrepreneurial business executives whose companies will provide good jobs, robust incomes, and high-value, low-carbon products and services; the emerging Jeffersons, Lincolns, Roosevelts or Kennedys who will provide visionary political leadership. Above all, we must believe in our power as individuals to make a real and lasting difference.

Already there are signs that we may be turning the corner from pessimism to optimism. But to firmly restore our faith in the future urgently requires credible results and powerful stories. For starters, the world of science and technology must deliver on clean, cheap energy and more affordable, quality health care for all. Businesses must embrace authentic social responsibility in a world of increasing transparency. And the innovation and energy that we see in state and local governments must infuse the moribund Beltway. The 2008 elections are an opportunity for us to demand that the candidates articulate and commit to their visions of the future, with concrete proposals, milestones, and metrics in support. Likewise, if each of us vows to make one new contribution—recycling, volunteering, funding a worthy cause—the multiplier effect on our civilization and our future will be profound.

The media can also play a catalytic role by showing imaginative, inspiring visions of where science and dreams can take us, both here on Earth and in the frontiers beyond. Our better future is not a boring, pristine utopia, but a dynamic world full of drama: human desires and emotions, relationships and passions, aspirations and fears. The media can set these stories in futures where prosperity, freedom, clean air, and human dreams thrive rather than in shattered, polluted landscapes. Once again, science fiction can be used to engage and inspire a new generation to discover, explore, and innovate solutions, individually and together. Imagination—with a healthy dose of hope—is the resource we most need to make the future great again.