AAI Foresight Remembers Graham T. T. Molitor

AAI Foresight ¹ was saddened to learn recently of the death on June 22 of pioneering futures analyst Graham T. T. (Thomas Tate) Molitor. He was eighty-three years old. His long association with the World Future Society (WFS) included serving as its vice president and legal counsel, as well as a frequent conference speaker and contributor to the association’s publications and research projects.

Molitor was a lawyer, political scientist, and consultant by profession, serving the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Considered an encyclopedic source—and deft analyst—of data relating to trends, he drew upon his data knowledge and many futurist connections as chair of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of the Future—a monumental five-year project that was published in two volumes by Macmillan Library Reference in 1996 (coedited by Molitor with George Thomas Kurian).

Molitor’s work in politics included conducting opposition research for Nelson Rockefeller’s two presidential campaigns in 1963–1964 and 1968. He then worked with the White House in the 1970s, first serving as research director for the White House Conference on the Industrial World Ahead and then joining the White House Committee on Social Indicators. He also worked as a legal counsel in the U.S. Congress and served with the assistant chief of staff at the Pentagon.

This work in the public sector led Molitor to perceive how different jurisdictions arrive at their decision making, which begins with individuals’ ideas about what should be done, and to note that change comes to different places at different times. “This observation led him to the idea of forerunner jurisdictions—nations or areas [such as Sweden and California] that tend to be on the leading edge of change—as well as laggard jurisdictions, which typically cling to old ways,” wrote Futurist editor Edward Cornish (July–August 2011).

Among Molitor’s most notable contributions to The Futurist was the groundbreaking article “The Next 1,000 Years: The ‘Big Five’ Engines of Economic Growth” (December 1999), in which he outlined the dominant forces on our horizon, including the Life Sciences Age beginning in 2100, the Megamaterials Age (2200–2300), the New Atomic Age (2100–2500), and a New Space Age (2500–3000). His very long-term perspective led him to conclude that “the human condition has steadily, incrementally improved.”

Molitor was also a good friend and neighbor, opening his home—and vast personal and professional library—to futurists working in or visiting the Washington, D.C., area. Taking his concern for the future to this personal and neighborhood level, he served as chairman of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Commission on the Future from 1987 to 1989.

“He was one of the larger than life first-generation futurists, who built his craft on forecasting from the rigor of trend analysis, from bio-tech, to consumer goods, to food and nutrition, to government services,” says Jay Gary, adding that Molitor “donated his library to the Regent University’s foresight graduate program.”

Molitor is survived by his wife, Carlotta. Friends, colleagues, and others feeling Graham Molitor’s influence have offered tributes on the Facebook page of Sohail Inayatullah, who first reported the news of Molitor’s death. Read more at Inayatullah’s post for August 16, 2017.