What is a futurist? Not a fortune teller, oracle or prophet. Futurists are simply people who take foresight seriously, applying past and emerging trends to envision how our lifestyles and industries will develop in the years ahead.

But the future isnt what it used to be: What was once a field dominated by experts such as Future Shock author Alvin Toffler or artificial-intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil is now becoming one that involves more amateurs, as large-scale information and the processing power to analyze it become more accessible. And thats a welcome development to most of the pros.

Really, anybody who has a prefrontal cortex is a futurist, says Patrick Tucker, communications director of the World Future Society. We spend the vast majority of our time thinking about the future. This is where we plan, where we create actions we are going to commit ourselves to.

Next weekend, Toronto will host the World Future Conference, bringing together people from disparate fields to discuss how the world is changing and how it ought to.

Next in food: Mass-produced fish and sub-Saharan flavours

Taking saltwater fish and raising them in a warehouse 500 kilometres away from the sea may not sound appetizing at first.

But putting [fish] indoors in higher-density areas, as unromantic as it sounds, has a lot of benefits, says Josh Schonwald, journalist and author of The Taste of Tomorrow. It eliminates a lot of the problems that have been associated with traditional aquaculture fish escaping and breeding with native populations, as well as unsightly coastlines and a general negative impact on marine ecosystems.

That may be how well get our protein, but what about the flavours of the future what global cuisine will be the next Thai? Mr. Schonwald says our hunger for ethnic exploration will lead us to the one area that has been off the radar for most North Americans: the foods of sub-Saharan Africa, such as chicken yassa, egusi soup, shrimp piri piri, jollof rice and baobab juice.

African fusion [is] already happening in the UK there's a small company called Bim's Kitchen that is introducing African-influenced condiments, like African ketchup spiced with distinctively African peppers, a curried egusi sauce and smoky baobab barbecue sauce.

Exposure to new cuisines can also alter our attractions or aversions to certain tastes, Mr. Schonwald says such as bitterness. In his book, he profiles a man who is trying to introduce radicchio, a bitter salad green enjoyed in Italy, to Americans.

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Four ways futurists see the world changing, from food to technology