Newspaper and Magazine Articles
Forbes ASAP Breaking Away (December 4th, 1995)
Breaking Away
Dr. Tomorrow Is In Today
From a houseboat in Vancouver's Coal Harbor, a 75-year-old futurist
earns $450,000 a year.
By Albert Warson
How many people do you know who include a full-color photo of their
brain scan on a business card? How many 75-year-olds do you know with
the nerve to call themselves "Dr. Tomorrow"? And how many men a decade
past retirement age have you met lately who live on a houseboat and
earn $450,000 (U.S.) a year? None? Meet Frank Ogden.
With an ability to adapt to change that would be enviable in someone
half his age, Ogden has established himself as a futurist with solid
credentials and a demonstrable flair for promotion. From his
electronics-packed floating headquarters in a Vancouver harbor, he
collects global intelligence about emerging technologies via satellite
dish, short-wave radio and the Internet. Then he analyzes the
information and recycles it into newspaper columns, speeches, CD-ROMs,
books and radio sound bites. Not bad for someone born just after World
War I whose formal education ended with high school graduation.
Ogden was born in Toronto of British parents and grew up in a suburb of
Philadelphia. After high school he went off to Miami Beach, working as
a deck-hand on small banana boats between Cuba and Miami. When World
War II broke out, he returned to Canada and spent the next six years
flying coastal patrols mainly in the North Atlantic (he still holds
licenses to operate fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, gliders and
hot-air balloons). After the war he moved to Toronto and took up a
string of sales and management jobs. He married at 30, had a son and
daughter (who occasionally looks after the fulfillment of book orders
in Vancouver) and then divorced.
He landed in Vancouver in 1961 and for the next seven years worked as a
researcher and therapist at a private psychiatric hospital that also
treated alcoholic patients with the then-legal LSD. Ogden went on three
acid trips, he says, to better understand where patients were going
under the drug's influence. That job was followed by a
two-and-a-half-year stint as the manager of a Montreal rock music
station, then a two-year contract to teach creative thinking at the
Ontario College of Art. This position might have been his last-a boat
he chartered to take art students to Haiti foundered in a storm and he
narrowly escaped drowning.
In the early '70s, Ogden "retired" to Haiti with a girlfriend for two
years. They were so fascinated by genuine, backwoods voodoo that they
took part in a five-day "purification by fire" ritual that climaxed
when their hands and feet were thrust into flames 12 times. Neither was
harmed, and Ogden earned his spurs as a deputy voodoo priest. With
little coaxing, he'll show you the symbols of his rank.
When real life sternly beckoned, Ogden took a job in Vancouver picking
sites for expensive homes on the slopes of Grouse Mountain near the
city's downtown. In 1976 he had a futuristic-looking houseboat built
for about $17,000 and over the years added another $11,000. In
modifications. He moved into the two-story, 20-by-40-foot houseboat and
started installing the latest electronic monitoring and computer gear.
Thus equipped, Ogden began to peer into the future.
From his equipment-packed, futuristic houseboat in a Vancouver mooring,
Frank Ogden (upper left) beams down English-language news feeds from
all over the world, mines them for information on future technology
developments, and--as Dr. Tomorrow--producer lectures, CD-ROMs, and
best-selling books.
Since then, he has never had to worry about running out of fascinating
details on emerging developments--ceramic houses, software that
translates Japanese into English at 1,000 words a minute, robots
constructing office buildings, self-guiding cars that run on
carbon-dioxide, clothing that reacts to outside temperatures,
insulating paint, outdoor air-conditioning, virtual reality shopping,
talking posters, biocomputers, aeroponic cultivation, holographic
manufacturing and so on. Tapping $30,000 worth of high-tech gear in his
houseboat (see box, page 22), he constantly merges several streams of
electronically harvested details into apparently unrehearsed and
unscripted seminar-presentations, and synthesizes his findings into
weekly columns for some 40 newspapers across Canada.
Despite a hectic schedule, Ogden isn't inclined to slow down, or stay
at his current pace. Beginning on New Year's Day, his 70-second audio
clips, sponsored by satellite telephone and television dish companies,
will be syndicated on as many as 125 radio stations every day. He
calculates that could add up to $38,000 a year to his income.
The video clipping service that served as the springboard for Ogden's
current business might have been lucrative enough for most people
entering what some--not Ogden--call the leisure years. Using a 24-hour
satellite monitoring system and voice-activated taping of
English-language news and public-affairs programs geared to specific
interests, he provided 17 clients with tailored news at a cost of $750
to $1,000 a month.
"Business executives usually don't get home in time to watch the 6
o'clock news, and they can't watch more than one channel at a time," he
says. "I prepared videotapes of specific coverage that corporate and
government clients were interested in. This was a good business, but a
lot of work."
In 1986, with the encouragement of a friend, Ogden discovered public
speaking, and after a few free experiments in front of service-club
audiences, the public discovered him.
Ogden commands an average $5,000 fee for a typical 90-minute seminar
presentation, although he notes that "my record is six and a half
hours." He doesn't give himself any preparation time. "I don't know
what I'm going to say until I get up on the platform. I never use a
text; anybody who has to put a speech in writing is incompetent." Most
of his current six-figure flows in from about 60 to 70 international
speeches a year, his column and book royalties. His latest book is
Navigating in Cyberspace: A Guide to the Next Millennium, which Ogden
hustles at speeches for the retail price of $24.95 ($29.95 in Canada)
--about a 50% markup from his own discount.
Ogden doesn't concentrate on any particular industry or profession. His
1995 schedule has put him in front of audiences drawn from
telecommunications professionals, computer and satellite technicians,
teachers, nurses, hospital executives, marketers, financial planners,
real estate developers, bankers, accountants, agronomists and cattle
ranchers. In the course of a given month, hundreds of people will call
and ask Dr. Tomorrow to explain the future to them.
Where does he muster all the energy? Jogging around Vancouver's densely
wooded Stanley Park? Working out? Ingesting some complex vitamin
cocktail? None of the above. His only physical exercise is lugging
baggage, including a presentation suitcase with slides, videos and
samples of high-tech products, in and out of airports and hotels. Ogden
has taken vitamin E for years, and if it doesn't have a tonic effect,
then it's certainly not hurting. If he is at all stressed, it doesn't
show. And if he's on an occupational treadmill, it's one he designed
and doesn't want to get off. Taxed at 59% at provincial rates, he may
not be able to afford to get off anyway.
Ogden's futuristic houseboat sometimes seems less home than crash pad
(or should that be splash pad?). He figures he logs about 200,000 air
miles a year on the speaking circuit; on research trips to Asia,
Africa, South America and the Middle East; and on personal
peregrinations. He and his second wife, Carol Baker, a travel writer
who is fluent in Spanish and French and able to manage in Arabic, spend
a few months every summer in places such as Morocco, Kenya, Mexico and
the Canary islands.
Of course, it would never occur to Ogden just to sprawl on a beach
during a holiday. Or even to relax after work. "When I spoke to a
professional group in the Bahamas a few years ago, I spent a few days
with Jacques Cousteau's son, visiting the world's largest saltwater
fish pond. I'm always digging stuff up wherever I go... . It gives me
more to talk and write about."
Asked about the possibility of a third book, Ogden says he wants to top
his previous disk and CD-ROM versions by having the next book
"reverse-engineered" on a crystal the size of a sugar cube and inserted
on the inside back cover. The text could apparently be transmitted by
infrared light to a variety of surfaces, including a television screen.
That this technology isn't available yet doesn't bother Ogden at all.
"Picture a hollowed-out brick containing the disk of the first book and
another with the CD-ROM of the second book. On the sides will be
excerpts from this crystal, written in hieroglyphies. We'll illustrate
how we've gone from stone tablets to the ability to write on individual
atoms in a crystal."
This sounds like a stretch, even for Dr. Tomorrow, until he mentions
that the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico recently
succeeded in putting the information equivalent of 12,000 floppy disks
on just 560 atoms.
HOUSEBOATER with a VIEW
Change. The average shelf today in Tokyo for consumer electronics
product is only 90 days. After that it's toast.
Competition. The cost of obtaining a new customer is 10 times as high
as retaining one already in the door. Yet few companies or
organizations are spending anything to keep business they already have.
Then they wonder why they fly away.
Developments. High-rise and office towers are the ghost towns of
tomorrow. The communications age requires less space.
Future. Ninety percent of everything we'll interact with by the start
of the Third Millennium hasn't yet been developed.
Information. An information elite is developing. They see more, hear
more and know more. They make more money. They have more influences.
They thrive where others merely survive.
Jobs. No job is sacred. Even the Vatican is broadcasting messages via
satellite.
Knowledge is doubling every 16-18 months (most of it coming from
outside North America). It is therefore impossible to know everything
about anything. Your best hope is to learn how to access information
inefficiently.
Libraries. Within years, a crystal will hold the library of Congress.
Stop worrying about the forests. They have found new friends in
technology.
Manufacturing. Better late than never? No. Better never than late.
Specialties. Don't specialize. Train for a flexible attitude and open
state of mind. Question everything you have ever learned. Virtual
Reality. VR will affect humanity more than the automobile.
* Note: Frank Ogden's Hardware equipment list, although printed in
Forbes ASAP, is constantly being upgraded, so we have not
listed it here. (Editor.)