IFTF Staff Posts
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Financing the Business of a Healthy Life: Social Health and Well-being Innovation
When thinking about the future of health, it’s natural to look first at emerging technologies— indeed, part of this year’s Health Horizons research is going to focus on technological innovation. But looking at technology alone misses a big part of the picture. Social innovations, new systems people will use to improve well-being (some driven by technology but some not), are likely to transform...
Future Work Skills 2020
Global connectivity, smart machines, and new media are just some of the drivers reshaping how we think about work,...
Science Hack Day SF
I went to the Science Hack Day not knowing what to expect. This is the second year that Ariel Waldman – a fellow researcher at IFTF – has put this event...
Your World Redefined - the Serious Business of Augmented Reality
IFTF's Mike Liebhold is featured in the Ericsson's Business Review cover story on the transformative world of augmented reality. The dreams of sci-fi writers and movie makers are explored here--playing out on...
Grumpy, Happy Collaboration: The Drug of Futurists
On Wednesday, August 3, at 10:28am I got a "mention" ping from Tweetdeck. This is the message I received:
@askpang @futuryst @dunagan23 @thezhanly Gentlemen? "The Singularity is Boring" an Open Collaborative "Mock"-Up http://bit.ly/qaCm1u
Going to the google doc, I came across the title...
Shop Class, Makers, and The Future of Education in California
Imagine taking a class in high school where you can create a tool for eating your favorite food. Maybe you want a special set of chopsticks to eat your homegrown salad, or a high-tech polymer spork to scoop up the latest in laboratory grown nutrients. What you decide to build is limited only by the imagination. And if this is your first time deigning and manufacturing something, do not fear,...
Collaborative Drawing Games and the Future of California
This past week I've been working - alongside the other interns - on an interactive tool to help people engage with issues facing the future of California. Excited by the notion of people sketching out their own ideas about what the future might look like, I wondered: how might drawing be used to generate ideas about where and how we live?
I began thinking...
Games of Improvisation and Bodystorming for the Future of California
We have the questions, we know the answers and Specimens for Improvisation are two games about the future of California that I have been developing and prototyping during my internship at the IFTF.
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Envisioning the Future of Drugs in San Francisco
This past week we interns each built a prototype for a game to engage with the future. We considered this task to be a smaller version of the final project that is the culmination of this internship. Since we had but five days to design and complete our prototype, it was a challenge to identify a problem of the appropriate size. My "play-space" shrunk from neural enhancement to...
Week 1: Interns get hacking
For 24 hours starting on June 23 at 2:00pm, we IFTF interns racked our brains for a small "Hack Day". IFTF affiliate Ariel Waldman had briefed us with general guidelines and some sample projects from past Hack Days. But the space of possibilities was wide open. Our goal was to progress from the mind-map phase to the throw-something-together phase on...
Karim Ahmad introduces Future States
On Tuesday, David Evan Harris hosted a visit from Karim Ahmad of ITVS to share his work on FUTURESTATES, an online series of short films - each made by a different filmmaker - that explore current social issues in the form of speculative narratives set in the future. With two...
Interns Week 1: A crash course in futures thinking
During the first week of our summer internship program, the members of IFTF organized a series of talks and activities, presenting the history, methodology and toolset of the Institute. First off, Matt Chwierut provided his insights on the California Dreaming project through an exercise identifying...
IFTF Summer interns arrive
On Monday we welcomed 5 new faces to join IFTF for a six week summer intern program.
Left to right: Nicolas, Dan, Zach, Melissanthi & Joe
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Bob Burton visits IFTF
Author & neurologist Robert Burton visited IFTF today and treated us to a conversation building from the principles of his book, On Being Certain: Believing You're Right Even When You're Not.
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Youth Leaders Make the Future
On June 16 from 8am-1pm, Institute for the Future and the Center for Creative Leadership will host a Train-the-Trainers module on Futures Thinking, designed for those who work with young people on leadership and self-development. Registration is now...
Anticipating the Future of Aging Through Action Types
Born amidst the hope and affluence that followed the end of the Second World War, the baby boomer generation is different than the generations that came before and after. For one, it’s bigger, but more than that, it is the first generation that actively sought to transform the world. By most accounts, they succeeded. But the changes they ushered in are complex and fraught with unintended...
Augmented Empathy
Today, at IFTF's Technology Horizons workshop on the Future of Open Fabrication, Dominic Muren spoke on the future of manufacturing.
His presentation was great and led me to explore his site, where you can see a wealth of ideas--some of which relate to fabrication, but also others like this...
Exploring Social Production in Education
One of the key themes of our Ten-Year Forecast retreat last month was the concept of social production - production that draws on contributions from large networks of people, enabled by social technologies, to create new kinds of wealth. Last week, Marina explored what social production might mean for the world of education when she addressed the...
Reflections on the 33rd Annual Ten-Year Forecast Retreat
Re-balancing our unsustainable, massively inequitable world seems daunting, but we have no other choice. We see a decade of unprecedented change and re-invention on the horizon. Some of the futures we forecasted point to widespread collapse of existing institutions and infrastructures, others to radical transformation and the emergence of new systems. However, one thing is certain: whichever...
What is the Relationship Economy?
Today, IFTF Research Affiliate, Jerry Michalski came to IFTF to share about his work on the Relationship Economy.
The next social and industrial order has more to do with abundance and trust than with scarcity and stickiness. The key assets are trusted relationships....
