Then he is catching a plane to Cape Town for a well-earned break from his day job, which, as director of the three-year-old school, comprises a rather tall order: "To formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be."
The South African has dabbled in the macro-management of the future for a while now. He was vice-president of the World Bank and before that formulated the bank's development policy. He left the Development Bank of Southern Africa to work at the World Bank.
For three years now he has headed a school with 15 institutes that sound like the action unfolds in an improbable, yet eerily familiar, future universe.
Energy materials, ageing, carbon emissions, nanoscience, bio-ethics, migration, emerging infections, and stem cells are where it's at.
So, naturally, I plan to get a reading from his crystal ball and I have to do it fast. First off, though, I want to know what has most surprised him in his three years at the helm of the good ship "The Future".
"The medical miracles. We are really at the frontiers of that research. Seeing my first cardiac stem cell was remarkable - the ability to create any cell in the body by programming one cell. It's an amazing thing to think that anyone with a broken spine can walk again."
Heady stuff.
"I am surprised by the decline in fertility. I spent many years thinking about overpopulation; I am no longer so concerned. In about 30 years' time - except in Africa - all regions of the world will be below replacement level."
He tells me I should be worried about my future because my contemporaries and I will never retire.
"By the time you are 70, (South Africa is an exception, but if you find yourself anywhere other than Africa) you will be in the majority. There will be relatively few young people to push you around in a wheelchair, and retirement ages and pensions are likely to be redundant.
"The idea that you will be healthy and working in your 80s will make the degree that you took in your 20s obsolete, so there will be life-long education.
"And, if elderly people keep their jobs indefinitely, when will young people become senior themselves?
"But what is always in the back of my mind, as my heart is in development, is: 'Who is going to have access to these advances?'
"There is no doubt that there will be huge leaps for people who can afford it. In England, half the children being born now will live beyond 100. But South Africa's average life expectancy has fallen by 20 years."
This disparity, cautions Goldin, will be the crux of the challenge facing South Africa in the not-so-distant future. How do we best make use of the rapid technological advances, and who will have access to the upside?
"The combination of technology, the pace of innovation globally and the availability of resources make things possible in the 21st century that were not in previous centuries. This is the upside.
"Not least connectivity - a school kid in Soweto has the same access to information as one in New York or London. But you have to be able to use that access in a productive way, and know what to do with it.
"Take the health sciences as a burning example. The question of who has access to what, and how, is already chugging doggedly into the South African public domain and promises heated debate in the coming years.
"In South Africa, the benefits of global advances can be shared - the potential exists, but many people are dying of the most basic diseases."
How the solutions are mobilised in everyone's interest is crucial, stresses Goldin.
"I am learning that opportunities are great, but might lead to unintended consequences. We are only now realising the impact of the industrial revolution in terms of climate change. Understanding the impact of these technologies is crucial."
He turns his attention to our increasingly small world.
"Globalisation has brought integration both politically and culturally.
"Connectivity, fibre-optics, the web, cellphones - all bring immense possibility and accelerate the ability of South Africans, both the state and the individual, to access and integrate with the world at an unprecedented level, while providing the world with access to the breadth of South African talent. It's fantastic, this leapfrogging of ideas and potential at the same time."
But, he continues: "Integration has an underbelly - dependency. The more integrated we become, the more South Africa is affected by factors beyond its control. In the global financial crisis, South Africa did all the right things and was still negatively effected. I am a strong believer that the benefits of integration far outweigh the costs. But we need an understanding of the underside of dependence and interdependence."
So how does he feel about the future?
"Very optimistic. The risks are greater than ever before, but the upside potential is much greater than I once thought."
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