Institute For The Future

Shift Change & The International Year of Cooperatives

It’s the International Year of Cooperatives and I just saw Shift Change, a great new documentary that’s got me more jazzed about them than ever. I...

Welcome to Flatland!

In the world of work, the focus is on skills

A New Civics for Smart Cities

I recently gave a keynote at the 2012 Code for America Summit, held at San Francisco's Mission Bay Conference Center, on "A New Civics for Smart...

Is Crowdsourcing on the Verge of a Breakout?

Next week, IFTF will be one of the participants in the annual CrowdConf event reviewing progress in crowdsourcing. Looking through the topics to be...

The Magic of KidsTech: A Matrix of Well-Being

My friends and I like to joke about how parents survived in the “olden days”--that is, the pre-I-Phone and pre-i-Pad era of childrearing.  “How did...

Maker Education and The WikiSeat Project

If you are a student, a teacher, a maker, or a thinker, I'd like to invite you to participate in a project I've been developing called WikiSeat, and I...

The Future of Kids' Play: Cross-dimensional Playgrounds

Educational? Yes. Therapeutic? Possibly. But these are side benefits; at heart, play is about fun. And the future of play is about taking all the...

TacoCopter and the Imminent Age of Drones

We’re at the ground floor of the Drone Age....

Seeking Silicon Valley: A Map for Discovering and Making the Future

IFTF has been mapping the intersections between technology, the human experience, and the future for more than 44 years. We use these mapping...

The Rise of the Underground Bio-Economy

We like to look to hidden places to find some of our most intriguing signals about the future--and in this case, an unusual crime seems to be pointing...

Reimagining Work

One of the paradoxes of technological change is that as new tools are introduced, people often remain tethered to their existing tools and practices....

Migration's Magical Realism

The experience of migration, of moving to a new habitat or locale, brings with it a magic-like experiences of the new environments. The relationship...

CBS Talks to Mike Liebhold on Future of Smart Devices

Sumi Das from CBS interactive stopped by the Institute for the Future this week for a video an interview with Mike Liebhold exploing IFTF's ideas...

Reimagining the Future of Higher Education: From STEM to SEAD

Design and art have long been viewed as distinct fields of inquiry from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), but the contemporary...

Antarctica After the Ice

During the time of the dinosaurs, Antarctica was covered with tropical rain forests. Overtime, as the planet cooled, and ice caps formed on the...

A Lesson in Designing Nudges from the World of Crime Prevention

The BBC has a great article up exploring subconscious efforts to fight crime through design. Among the ideas: Cover walls and buildings with pictures...

The Fascinating Future of Cloud Diagnosis

Via a slightly old article in Good Magazine comes word of a great student project out of Australia called StethoCloud that is aimed at using the...

At Talkoot, Small Makes for Big Changes

On July 30-31, the Institute for the Future, in collaboration with Aalto University in Finland, invited a dozen practical visionaries to reveal the...

Anya Kamenetz Tells What's in Store for Education

Author Anya Kamenetz came in recently and presented some hard truths on education. First of all it is wildly expensive. Second, it is not accessible...

Designing Tech for Social Change Part II

If you missed Part I, click here....

Hacking Security at Toorcamp

You might expect that a hacker camp, like Toorcamp, is full of shady individuals who want to break into your computer and steal your data. Often...

Aligning Business and Community Interests: A Recipe for Hope in Volatile Times

Robert H. Girling’s latest book, The Good Company, uniquely sets the business in the broader context of its relationship with people, the environment...

The Great American Hacker Camp

Toorcamp is a social technology event populated by hackers and makers, held at Neah Bay in Washington state. I am writing from the fog covered...