IFTF's Future Now draws on research and forecasting at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, CA think tank specializing in the future of technology, health, and organizational change. It began in September 2003.
My most recent Fast Coexist piece is up - taking a look at a concept I wrote about in 2010 called Embedded Health, which argues that the future of health design is to...
Since one of my research beats at the Institute is to track the emergence of weird, misguided, and yet, at times, brilliant packaged foods, I'd be remiss in my duties if I...
Institute for the Future and Sharable.org will be hosting Camilo Ramada for an event at the IFTF office in Palo Alto on Monday, January 30th from 6-9pm. Camilo implemented the most successful complementary currency system in South America, the C3, which is now accepted by the Uruguay government...
I enjoyed, but was also a bit disappointed by, a recent Health Affairs article by David Erickson and Nancy Andrews looking at the role that community development could play in contributing to community-wide health and...
2011 was a year of transition and change. In 2012, science and technology conflicts and controversies become a resource for locating change and what it means for the future.
Scientific and technological controversies are similar to...
It’s that time of year again. The global holiday of January 1, and with it, the annual ritual of self-improvement: setting New Year’s resolutions. It’s a time when we’re called on to reflect on our lives and the behaviors we might want to change—and bombarded with ideas on how...
My latest piece for Fast Company's Co Exist site is up here - making the argument that the coming future of big data could erode our ability to think and focus on long-term futures. It...
Regenerative medicine will replace, restore, maintain, or enhance tissue and organ functions, dramatically improving patients’ health and quality of life, and potentially reducing the cost of their care. Tissue engineering will heal diabetic foot ulcers, reducing the...
Remember blogs? Sometime back in those post-traumatic stress syndrome-laced 2000s known as the early aughts, noughts, or (my favorite) the ooze, the web became usable on a mass scale. Blogger, TypePad, and Wordpress all launched or relaunched in 2003. In that same year the CSS...
At IFTF, we're always looking for new tools to better understand future possibilities--and our 2010 Science, Technology and Well-Being map highlighted a new tool for personal health foresight: Stem cell research. The basic idea is this: the tools of regenerative medicine, which now enable...
A couple months ago, Good had a great feature about the idea of a fitness desert--essentially, a place where, due to some combination of environmental and social factors, getting out, walking...
It’s exciting to think of the world as a highly connectedplace, where people, goods, and ideas spread easily and freely to the larger global population. Through Twitter, you can hear about what is happening on the ground during a protest in a city thousands of miles away, and through the...
