Sentence:  Two multibillion-dollar industries—the computer manufacturers and telephone companies—had each developed its technologies separately. But as <WSD>futurist</WSD> Howard Rheingold suggests in his book "Virtual Communities", the industries inadvertently gave private consumers access to those billion of dollars by selling them a tiny device to link the two technologies together: a computer modem. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  One who studies and predicts possible futures.