An expert on change ponders how global trends will impact the nature of travel.

 uturist Andrew Zolli has a remarkable ability to connect the dots and sift through the lightning-quick changes that are transforming the world at the confluence of technology, sustainability, and globalism. His foresight and strategy firm, Z + Partners, helps some of the world's top organizations and governments navigate the tides of global change. Zolli is a National Geographic fellow; curator of Pop!Tech, a leading idea forum; and a board member of BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Worldchanging.com, which tracks the future of sustainability. And, yes, he travels. A lot.

Zolli is featured in "One on One" in the July/August 2007 issue of National Geographic Traveler. Watch the video above for highlights from the interview. Here's more of what he had to say.

Humans are living longer, so what impact do you think that will have on travel? In the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, we had three- and four-generation families living together. Since the 1950s. two-generation families have been the norm. Leave it to Beaver was Mom, Dad, Wally, and the Beav.

When you were in college, when you outlived your income, where did you go? You went back home. That's happening with retirees. There are slightly more people over 85 leaving Florida than there are entering Florida. And the reason is that people are outliving their income. We're evolving from the two-generation nuclear family to a three- and four-generation family—more like that early 20th-century family. Multigenerational households are growing faster than any other type of dwelling arrangement. Big retailers are starting to play with the idea of creating stores where three and four generations of women will shop together.
 
We'll see lots more of that kind of thing in travel not just because Grandma is living with us, but because she is as fit as a fiddle. She is doing 50 one-armed push-ups! She won't slow us down.
 
College graduates take an average of almost six years to get a four-year baccalaureate because they take time off and reverse decisions. They have time to play in their lives. And if you live to be 150 there will be an expansive second adolescence during which travelers can trek around the globe. 

Will travel evolve to where you can replace real travel with a virtual experience?  We won't replace real travel with digital technologies. We'll use higher resolution digital capture and better storytelling technologies to amplify reality and augment travel by making our experience of place richer. Not everyone can afford a flyover through the canyon. Being able to bring that kind of experience will matter enormously. 

In the future, it would be useful to take our GPS-enabled cell phone so we can review all geo-located commentary not just of experts and editors, but of fellow travelers. We are seeing that emerging now. Another phenomenon is the Yellow Arrow sticker, a bottom-up social science experiment which I do not completely endorse because it involves a minor amount of actual graffiti. You plop a sticker—which carries a telephone number and an SMS code—on a streetlight pointing toward a place or object. There are thousands of these stickers just in New York City alone, so if you see one, you can dial the code to access material about, say, the sushi bar around the corner that you would never know about. 

Eventually, we won't need to physically disturb the environment. We'll see a kind of wikifying of travel. That's really exciting because as many people as National Geographic Traveler can reach, there are so many more people out there who have expertise and influence and can encourage people to go. We are living through a participation revolution.