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Futurist Ivan Potter on Purchase's Frontier Future

West Kentucky Journal

You could say that the Jackson Purchase hasn’t been frontier territory since, well, since Andrew Jackson was President.  But now, in the 21st century, the federal government is proposing a new system that would classify the Purchase as Frontier and Remote, or FAR.  Researchers and policymakers with the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services say the new FAR area codes will help such regions improve access to public services as well as food and household goods. Futurist Ivan Potter is also the publisher of West Kentucky Journal, an online publication, and in a recent article, he writes that even though this possible reclassification has slipped under most people’s radar, it could have far-ranging effects. Todd Hatton speaks with Potter to get a sense of what the pros and cons of living on the frontier. 

Todd Hatton hails from Paducah, Kentucky, where he got into radio under the auspices of the late, great John Stewart of WKYX while a student at Paducah Community College. He also worked at WKMS in the reel-to-reel tape days of the early 1990s before running off first to San Francisco, then Orlando in search of something to do when he grew up. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Murray State University. He vigorously resists adulthood and watches his wife, Angela Hatton, save the world one plastic bottle at a time.
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