http://www.iftf.org/ en_GB IFTF Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:23:59 -0400 Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:23:59 -0400 TYPO3 EXT:news http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/global-food-outlook-virtual-exchange/ How can we ensure food safety in an increasingly complex, connected global food web? What new food safety opportunities and vulnerabilities will emerging technologies create? How will the world’s diverse policy and regulatory bodies work together, or not, to keep our food safe? And how does food safety relate to changing values around sustainability, health, authenticity, and social responsibility? In short, what’s the future of food safety? Join Institute for the Future’s first ever Global Food Outlook virtual exchange on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 from 8—9:30 a.m. PST/11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST, where we will be addressing this exact issue. Our virtual exchanges offer an exciting new way to connect with IFTF’s futures research. In these exchanges, IFTF researchers and featured expert guests will use WebEx to present and discuss futures both likely and surprising, as well as field questions from virtual exchange participants from around the world. To sign up please go to our eventbrite link: http://gfoexchange.eventbrite.com This exchange, the first of three for GFO this year, will tackle this pressing question of food safety. In it, GFO Co-Director Miriam Lueck Avery will lead a discussion of emerging issues and possibilities featuring two food scientists, Tejas Bhatt and Lesley Chesson. These experts each bring a unique perspective to the issue of food safety. Tejas manages the Food Safety Programs at the Institute of Food Technologists, closely tracking the implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act in the US as well as emerging technologies to support food safety and defense in a globalized food system.   Lesley’s work addresses, among many other things,  how consumers and citizens can engage with the complexity and obscurity of food's origins and safety. She’ll discuss the potential to arm consumers with tools to become the safety inspectors of their own food, using emerging technology to verify the origins and authenticity of the food they eat.  Miriam will then open the conversation up to WebEx participants from around the globe. Don’t miss this chance to connect to IFTF research. Registration link: http://gfoexchange.eventbrite.com  (WebEx login instructions included). If you have any questions, contact Neela.  If you have any questions regarding our Global Food Outlook Program, please contact Dawn Alva. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-coming-age-of-networked-matter/ We’re at the beginning of a reignited revolution in networked computers as more of the physical world starts to come online. Think far beyond the ‘Internet of Things’ and consider buildings that blog, or robots self-organizing into ‘social networks’, or secret backchannels of inter-cellular communication. In 2013 IFTF’s Technology Horizons team is exploring the emerging technologies in computation, sensing and actuation, wireless communication, material science, and even biology that will underpin the coming Age of Networked Matter. We’re at the beginning of a reignited revolution in networked computers as more of the physical world starts to come online. Think far beyond the ‘Internet of Things’ and consider buildings that blog, or robots self-organizing into ‘social networks’, or secret backchannels of inter-cellular communication. In 2013 IFTF’s Technology Horizons team is exploring the emerging technologies in computation, sensing and actuation, wireless communication, material science, and even biology that will underpin the coming Age of Networked Matter. To help us think about the exciting and strange potentials of this coming Age, we recently hosted a workshop with 10 leading experts and visionaries from many different fields. These scientists, technologists, sociologists, educators, artists, and writers shared their own perspective on what this new Age may hold. Participants included: Michael Joaquin Grey, Artist Bernardo Huberman, Director, Social Computing Lab, HP Brian Johnson, Superorganisms Researcher, UC Davis Rachel Kalmar, CIO, Misfit Wearables Peter Lucas, Author "Trillions", Founder Maya Design Chris McKay, Planetary Scientist, NASA Kathryn Myronuk, Director of Research, Singularity University Pamela Paquin, Director of Education and Outreach, Donella Meadows Institute Rudy Rucker, Science Fiction Author Michael Stone, Senior Editor, Ecoliteracy Institute This diverse group of people brought an incredible range of ideas. Brian Johnson shared his research investigating how honey bees coordinate and allocate resources as a hive, while legendary author Rudy Rucker helped us imagine what it would be like to have an aura of familiarity as we walk down the street, instinctively knowing every unseen detail in our surroundings, just as we know the contents of our pockets. Rachel Kalmar shared a myriad of sensors that collect an abundance of personal data for her quantified self experiments, and she challenged us to consider how tracking our own data could help us forecast our own personal futures. And Chris McKay reminded us that with all of these sensors, from the micro scale to satellites, "We're recording data that we don't yet know that were recording to answer questions that we don't yet know how to ask."The group uncovered countless new opportunities in the coming Age of Networked Matter: how natural systems might merge with technological networks, new ways to organize information hierarchies, and more universal means of communication. The day was such an exciting start to our research. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the workshop, and a special thanks to Anthony Weeks for helping visualize the process. Follow along with our progress on iftf.org, or if you haven't already, join the Technology Horizons Program and attend the conference this Spring. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/checking-in-to-well-being/ The idea that place matters to our health is gaining increasing traction in the U.S. As part of this year's Health Horizons research, we'll be looking at “who is going to be an authority on what makes a healthy home?” One interesting place to look for answers: the hotel industry. Fairly recently, Mother Jones ran an intriguing article about research that suggests lead exposure is responsible for crime and ADHD. While the science is still out, the article caused quite a stir as a reminder, maybe the most dramatic one since we discovered the health effects of asbestos, of how our environments can influence our health and well-being. But while removing harmful substances from our homes is pretty straightforward, (in concept, if not execution), optimizing our environments for health could involve balancing a wide variety of elements, (one might be, for instance, strategically using indoor houseplants as a way of creating healthier air, as researcher Kamal Meattle advocates). Our 2013 Health Horizons research focuses on the new roles, responsibilities, and authorities that will emerge to enhance well-being over the next decade, and one aspect of that is asking, “who is going to be an authority on what makes a healthy home?” One interesting place to look for answers: the hotel industry. Tech Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon forecasted that well-being is going to be an important value filter consumers will use in making all purchasing decisions, we’re now seeing this play out in the hospitality industry, with big hotel chains offering a temporary, well-being enhancing environment as a selling point. For example, check out the “Westin Difference” section of the company’s homepage, it includes a “sensory welcome” (i.e. pleasing sights, sounds and smells in the lobby), a smoke-free environment, a “family” section and a SuperFoodsRx(TM)* menu. They also have a “For a Better You" ad campaign that claims “the Westin brand experience is designed to help guests leave feeling better than when they arrived.” An advertisement for the campaign (disguised as a news story) states that the ads are targeted at “more of a psychographic” group than a demographic group,  “affluent individuals and couples, families, at different stages of their lives but sharing a common attitudinal thread, that personal well-being is important to them.” Disney Resorts are also trying to cash in on the well-being action, offering their own “health and wellness suites” equipped with rainwater showers and tea tree oil, “daily access to season and organic fresh foods” and “yoga sessions… at the resort’s wellness studio.” (…or you could stay in a pirate room with a pirate bed shaped like a pirate ship.)  According to the Wall Street Journal, many hotels are even offering to restrict access to technology, giving travelers discounts to "check their cell phones, laptops and other mobile internet devices at the front desk. They are also offering rooms with no television.” (As inconvenient as this might sound to some, there are some definite health benefits to disconnecting, which Brad wrote about on this very blog.) What this suggests, I think, is that hotels are in a somewhat unique position of being a sort of healthy home lab. They can experiment with ways to make their spaces healthier, see what people respond to, and what others are doing that works or doesn’t. Another possibility is that hotels could function as “showrooms” for healthy environments/products. For instance, there is a campaign at Westin that rents New Balance running shoes to guests and provides them with maps of suggested running paths near the hotel. For Westin, the primary idea is to make their hotel appealing to physically actives guests. (It should also be noted that New Balance has a social well-being component, in that many of its shoes are made in the U.S. and UK). For New Balance, they are probably getting a good amount of money to supply the hotel with shoes, but they are also getting some nice exposure out of the deal, as well, by letting potential customers actually try the shoes out on a multi-mile run, instead of putting them on and jogging around the inside of a Footlocker. It seems to me that this is a strategy that could be used for a number of products, not just shoes. Mattresses, sheets, chairs, food, room layouts and any number of other factors could be “previewed” in combination, allowing people an opportunity to experiment to find what works for their personal well-being. At the same time, there’s something unappealing about the concept of sleeping in a department store display room, (even if it’s significantly more private). Regardless, the temporary nature of a hotel stay certainly provides an interesting opportunity for both the hotel and the guest to experiment with well-being enhancing environments.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/shanzhai-an-open-platform-for-innovation-at-sxsw/ Did you ever stop to wonder how the whole world has been flooded with cheap Chinese knock-offs? From fake designer purses and Rolexes to counterfeit subway passes and—on a darker note—fake drugs, batteries, and even "trojan horse" microchips in American weapons systems, how do Chinese bootleggers manage to quickly produce and distribute so many things that so many people want, without any formal organization? Meet the shanzhai—the bandit manufacturers who are disrupting global markets and serving up affordable goods to hundreds of millions of people. We first started researching the shanzhai as part of our 2011 Open Fabrication project, in which we explored the future of 3D printing and design. The result was an extended conversation with some of the pioneers of Chinese DIY manufacturing: Bunnie Huang, David Li, Jon Philips, and Eric Pan, which was collected in a set of research notes on shanzhai as an innovation space of the future. In a 2012 Technology Horizons project on Chinese creativity, we identified shanzhai manufacturing as a potential enabler for entrepreneurs and designers around the world. This year at South by Southwest, we're thrilled to continue the shanzhai conversation when IFTF research director Lyn Jeffery shares the stage with Kris Gale, VP of Engineering at Yammer, in a talk titled Imitation as Innovation: Lessons from the Shanzhai. Lyn will describe the "shanzhai rules" that allow them to operate the way they do, and Kris will explore what shanzhai systems mean for US organizations and innovation: The problem with U.S. innovation? Our broken business models. American companies were built to be predictable, not adaptable. Trends like mobile, social and the cloud are major disruptive forces and businesses are struggling to keep up. Instead of fearing the Shanzhai, we can look at their 4 core tenets to reorganize the way we do business. Join us on Friday, March 8 at 5 pm at the Austin Convention Center! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-a-new-measure-of-sensitivity-suggests-about-future-health-interventions/ Alix Spigel had a typically fascinating story on NPR examining new research exploring whether being especially sensitive to environmental influences can worsen the affects of poverty over the long run. It's one of several recent signals pointing to the idea that understanding sensitivity--to environments, to messages, to making changes in our lives--could reshape how we understand and time health interventions. Describing the research, Spigel notes: On the screen, circles of gently colored shapes flickered and music softly played while a sensor taped to the baby's chest recorded how much the baby's heart beat when the baby breathed in, and how much the baby's heart beat when it breathed out. This simple measure has a complicated scientific name that sounds vaguely like a disease — baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia — but the researchers were interested in it because it can tell you something about how a baby responds to the world around it. You see, while there's always a difference between how much the heart beats when a person inhales and when he or she exhales, everyone has a different set point. Sometimes there's a big difference, and sometimes it's small. And in very young babies, researchers have noticed that there are different temperaments associated with these different set points. ... Babies with a high set point seem to have a more sensitive nervous system, which makes them more sensitive to their environment, in both good and bad ways. Babies with a low set point seem to have a less sensitive nervous system, which makes them less sensitive to their environment. And much later in the piece, Spigel sums up the implications of this research: When the researchers looked at how a child's behavioral problems correlated with the early measurement, the researchers found that kids with high set points were significantly more sensitive to the environment they grew up in than the children with the low set points. If the baby had a high set point and an insecure attachment to his or her mother, the child's later behavior was often deeply troubled. These were by far the worst of all of the kids. But if the child had a high set point and a secure attachment, "those were the kids that were doing the best — the absolute best — of all of the kids in our sample, and they had far and away the lowest reported problem behaviors," Measelle says. The children with low set points were not as good or as bad, no matter their parenting. This is reminiscent of research we've been tracking for several years now emerging from the field of epigenetics suggesting something very similar: Namely that being sensitive to environments, both social and physical, is itself a kind of genetic marker that influences health, education and a variety of other outcomes. And critically, being sensitive isn't bad, per se. As Spigel noted--echoed in a great Atlantic piece from several years ago, being sensitive to the environments helps children be healthier--provided they're exposed to healthy conditions. What particularly intrigues me about this kind of research is that it points toward new ways to measure risk--and, perhaps more importantly, time interventions to reach us at points where we're most sensitive. And here, it's useful to take a bit of a detour to a seemingly unrelated concept: Habit design. Popularized, most notable, by New York Times author Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit, habit design is beginning to emerge as a strategy in health behavior change efforts. Duhigg gained a fair amount of attention last year for popularizing this idea in a story about how the retailer Target tries to identify pregnant women: Most shoppers don’t buy everything they need at one store. Instead, they buy groceries at the grocery store and toys at the toy store, and they visit Target only when they need certain items they associate with Target — cleaning supplies, say, or new socks or a six-month supply of toilet paper. But Target sells everything from milk to stuffed animals to lawn furniture to electronics, so one of the company’s primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is Target. But it’s a tough message to get across, even with the most ingenious ad campaigns, because once consumers’ shopping habits are ingrained, it’s incredibly difficult to change them. There are, however, some brief periods in a person’s life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux. One of those moments — the moment, really — is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs. The basic idea in heath is something similar: To identify points where we're particularly sensitive and open to messages and efforts to do things differently, and to use that sensitivity to time changes that will help people develop healthy habits. In other words, our sensitive points--not just as infants, but throughout our lives--have an outsized influence on the trajectory of our lives. Which is why, I think, Spigel's conclusion about infant sensitivity is accurate, but may be a bit too narrow. At the end of her piece, she notes that "researchers hope that this simple measure of a baby's breathing and heart rate might one day be used to flag children," which, of course, it might be. But there's a broader point: Understanding sensitive points--both when we're most at risk and most open to receiving help that will improve our health--may not be a one time measure of childhood, but an ongoing measure that is increasingly important to how we understand our health. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/are-artists-the-future-of-community-health/ Health Horizons previously made the case that place is important for health. This year, we’re looking at the question "who is going to act on it?" One potential answer: artists. In our previous work, we at Health Horizons made the case that place is important for health. This year—as part of our research on the new roles, responsibilities, and authorities that will emerge to enhance well-being over the next decade—we’re asking, "who is going to act on it?" Over the next week or so, I’ll share some potential answers, starting with one idea I'm particularly enthusiastic about—that artists and communities could have key roles in demanding and designing healthier environments. In fact, we already see signals of this happening today. For instance, the “Better Block” project. From their website: “The "Better Block" project is a demonstration tool that temporarily revisions an area to show the potential to create a great walkable, vibrant neighborhood center. The project acts as a living charrette so that communities can actively engage in the "complete streets" buildout process and develop pop-up businesses to show the potential for revitalized economic activity in an area. Better Blocks are now being performed throughout the country, and have helped cities rapidly implement infrastructure and policy changes.” While the words “healthy” and “environment” are not used in the self-description, I’d argue that’s such projects do make for healthier environments. The walkable streets encourage people to get out and, well, walk (exercise), and in doing so also get some valuable social interaction. PARK(ing) Day is a similar project that’s gone viral. (Health Horizons Program Co-Director Miriam Lueck Avery shared this as a signal of participatory urban well-being at a previous Health Horizons conference.) Every year, on Sept. 16, groups of people worldwide erect temporary parks in metered parking spaces to illustrate what the environment might look with more green space. (San Francisco even has “Parkmobiles”: garden-filled dumpsters attached to the back of trucks.) Candy Chang, co-founder of a civic design studio called Civic Center, has created a number of fascinating projects, among them “Hypothetical Development,” in which artists create (often fanciful/symbolic) renderings of how a neglected building could be remade, and then post them on-site for community feedback; and “I Wish This Was,” in which she posted blank “I wish this was…” stickers on vacant/dilapidated spaces for people to suggest future uses. What’s particularly notable in Chang’s approach is that she has explicitly characterized her art projects as a well-being strategy.  From an interview in the Atlantic: “I like to make cities more comfortable for people. I like to explore ways we can use public space to improve our neighborhoods and our personal well-being…. I think we're still discovering how much the design of our public spaces can affect our quality of life. Thoughtful public spaces make you feel comfortable, which leads to a chain of other benefits in life, love, and civic engagement. It's all about the details, like stoops, tree canopies, and painted storefront shutters. These things make the streets more inviting, more comfortable, and ultimately safer.” All of this, to me, suggests that artists will have a substantial (and more formal) role in health in the next decade, as they’ll be critical in the creative design of healthy spaces, among other potential health and well-being roles. (Jeremy Liu, who was interviewed for our Place Matters forecast, recently wrote about creative placemaking and listed several signals that fostering arts is being recognized as a way to, in and of itself, enhance the well-being of communities.)  These signals also suggest that communities could have a much larger role in the how their environments are designed. Previously, to engage in such a process, citizens would need to find out when and where various planning meetings were happening and then go participate in them. But these artists have found low-tech ways to create immersive previews of redesigned spaces and to solicit community input. With a decade of technology advance and growing recognition of the impact place has on well-being, the way we design spaces in 2023 could look radically different from today. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-stories-of-our-time/ Once upon a time, an organism evolved to have a brain hard-wired to think and communicate in narrative form. These organisms interacted with their environment in a myriad of ways, using their hands to develop weapons for hunting and plows for agriculture. These organisms were capable of the most wonderful compassion at the best of times, and the most horrific violence at the worst of times. As these organisms explored the extent of their lands, they drew boundaries between communities and created nation states.  The following was inspired by a presentation about the power of storytelling by Kendall Haven. Caspar David Friedrich, The wanderer above the sea of fog. 1818, Oil-on-canvas. Once upon a time, an organism evolved to have a brain hard-wired to think and communicate in narrative form. These organisms interacted with their environment in a myriad of ways, using their hands to develop weapons for hunting and plows for agriculture. These organisms were capable of the most wonderful compassion at the best of times, and the most horrific violence at the worst of times. As these organisms explored the extent of their lands, they drew boundaries between communities and created nation states. One of these nations, the Great Nation, prevailed over others, with the most advanced trade routes and the most sophisticated scientific, entertainment, and military technologies. One day, a rogue Tribe of a smaller nation attacked the Great Nation. This hurt the Great Nation very much. The leader of the Great Nation, and all of the leader's advisers, believed that retaliation should be swift and decisive, so the Great Nation invaded the smaller nation where the Tribe lived. The retaliation appeared to work at first, and the leader of the Great Nation declared "Mission Accomplished." But the Great Nation continued to retaliate over the years, because it seemed to some that the mission was not yet accomplished. Even the most advanced military forces of the Great Nation, fueled by the most powerful trade routes, could not overcome the Smaller Nation. One day, a new leader was elected to preside over the Great Nation, and the advisers began to wonder why, with the most powerful military and the most profitable trade routes, why could the Great Nation not conquer the Tribe of the smaller nation? Some of the advisors wondered if perhaps this could be because the Tribe of the smaller nation had something that could not be bought with trade or forced with military. Perhaps, the Tribe of the smaller nation had better stories. The advisers wanted to better understand the power of stories, so they convened a Workshop of the Great Nation's brightest minds. They decided that to understand the Tribe's stories it was "essential to use a multi-method, multi-disciplinary approach that specifically focuses on the complex relationships between attitude and intent formation and, ultimately, behavior manifestation. Thus, panelists were purposely selected from diverse disciplines and backgrounds."1The Great Nation's workshop discussed the power of story telling at great length. They peered deep into the brain and glimpsed the neurobiological mechanisms that allowed one organism to hurt another, as the Tribe hurt the Great Nation and vice versa. They tested the mind and pondered ways that they could tell stories better than the smaller nation. This workshop led the Great Nation to dive deeper into storytelling, and explore the idea with their most Advanced Research Projects Agency that deals with Defense.2 The Agency asked people of the great nation to help them think of state of the art ways to tell better stories, and to detect when people are under the influence of powerful stories from the radical Tribe. During the Great Nation's workshop, participants had discussed how really great stories cause the brain to release dopamine and oxytocin. This lead someone working with the Agency to wonder if they could control or inhibit the release of dopamine or oxytocin. Releasing more dopamine and oxytocin could make a person like a story, or perhaps inhibiting dopamine and oxytocin could make the same person dislike the same story that they had just liked the moment before. A researcher working with the Agency tested to see what happens when oxytocin is sprayed into a person's nose instead of coming from the brain. But they also said that the Great Nation is not looking to “...just spray oxytocin into the crowds. That, first of all, would be highly unethical and illegal, and it wouldn’t work anyway. You have to get a lot into the brain.“3 Some people in the Great Nation and around the world were intrigued and fascinated by the Agency's quest for better storytelling, and some people were terrified, not knowing whether to "laugh or cry or be alarmed."4 But the Great Nation's Agency told the people that it would be okay, they said, "We’re not in the business of reading people’s minds, or implanting thoughts. By understanding the biology of what causes people go to war, we might begin to understand how to mitigate it.”3 The Great Nation began to realize that fighting the Tribe with force may not be the path to victory, and perhaps writing a better narrative is the answer. One day, Kendall Haven, a person helping the Agency, came to visit the Institute for the Future. Kendall told us his version of this story, and shared some tips on good storytelling. Though the Q&A went on past the allotted time, the people of the Great Nation, and the Tribe of the smaller nation still do not know how this story ends. It is up to us to listen to one another's stories and to make our own stories. If the stories we tell are not just good, but they are great, then perhaps they will make the world a better place. 1) "Narrative Networks - Federal Business Opportunities." FedBizOpps , October 7, 2011. 2) Baker, Tessa "The Neurobiology of Political Violence: New Tools, New Insights." NSI (PDF), December 2, 2010. 3) Weinberger, Sharon. "Building the Pentagon's ‘like me’ weapon." BBC Homepage, May 2, 2012. 4) Yirka, Bob. "DARPA looking to master propaganda via 'Narrative Networks'." Phys.org, October 20, 2011. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/governance-futures-lab-now-is-the-time/ Proximity can be a remarkable learning tool. Last week I experienced two drastically different approaches to thinking about the future of governance, and learned a great deal from both of them, including why NOW is the time for launching the Governance Futures Lab at IFTF. On Jan 22-23, my colleagues and I at the Institute for the Future hosted a 24-hour collaborative forecasting experiment called Connected Citizens. Hundreds of players from all around the world submitted twitter-size forecasts about how new technologies could improve or even transform government services and citizen engagement. Over 6700 cards were played in a torrent of exchange. Topics ranging from transparency to time banks, and beyond, were covered. The rapid-fire nature of the engagement put one’s mind in a state of near mania. It was a thrilling event. Further commentary and responses can be found here: FastCoExist, UKAuthority.com, Gov 2.0 Radio, and the Connected Citizens blog. Soon after the gameplay on Connected Citizens ended, I left for Austin to attend another remarkable event for those who are making the future of government. Sandy Levinson, an eminent Constitutional law professor at UT Austin, and author of the recent book Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance, convened a who’s who of Con law and political theory around the provocative question: “Is America Governable?” Lawrence Lessig gave an insightful presentation outlining his “dependency corruption” argument. He made a case for exactly how money has distorted the political process, creating injustice for all but the richest in the country: the Lesters as he calls them. Levinson, Jacob Gersen, Jane Mansbridge, James Fishkin, and many others gave excellent talks. As opposed to the digital nativity of Connected Citizens platform, the “technology” in Austin consisted of a couple of microphones, a spartan courtroom, and a few dozen well tempered minds. Demographically speaking, I was younger than 95% of the attendees and 99% of the presenters. And yet, even given its dramatically different participants and style, the conference was equally as thrilling, stimulating, and fulfilling as the Connected Citizens experiment. Having had these two experiences, back-to-back, put certain insights into sharp relief. My sense is not that either way of approaching a conversation around transforming governance was better than the other, but that both certainly needed each other, and are somewhat incomplete without what the other could offer. Connected Citizens had a diverse, global audience, low barrier to entry, and visible feedback and scoring mechanisms. “Is America Governable?” had a limited face-to-face audience, a conversation that demanded deep knowledge of American history and law, and direct feedback only if you were lucky enough to have a question answered in Q&A. However, if you were in the building, you had access and opportunity to talk directly and at some length with the best thinkers on law and politics in the country.  I learned things there that I never would have any other way. Connected Citizens asked a relatively mundane question about how to improve government services, but it used an innovative platform to generate and aggregate ideas about this topic. This created a vibrant, improvised, and unpredictable conversation. “Is America Governable?”, started with a profoundly radical and provocative question, and then got out of the way to allow learned experts ample time to present, deliberate, and reiterate. The observation that these approaches are complementary obvious. But there is more to say in this comparative exercise, especially about the qualities of time. As political theorist Sheldon Wolin has noted, “Political time is out of sync with temporalities, rhythms, and pace governing economy and culture.” That is, the way political institutions make decisions and process information is on a much slower pace than the already fast and accelerating rate of change today. Technologies and economies may benefit from a model based on replacement and obsolescence, but most formal politics works through the slow grind of negotiation and is driven by a logic of (self and institutional) preservation.  This temporal incongruity was most obvious recently during the early 2012 protests over the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP Acts (SOPA/PIPA). Many considered passage of these laws a fait accompli, and yet that seeming destiny was turned on its head almost overnight by the massive outpouring of protestations by a vocal segment of Internet advocates and activists, reaching a crescendo with the “Internet blackout” of Jan 18, 2012. And yet, we may not want our political processes to move at the pace of the Internet in many cases. Accelerated decision making also got us the PATRIOT Act, and drives many forms of disaster capitalism. Deliberation is not a luxury of the past. As James Fishkin noted in Austin, well designed deliberative processes can drastically improve citizen engagement and collective decision-making. What the back-to-back experiences in differing pace and styles in discussing government  made clear to me was the need for a collective reappraisal of our actual governing structures and participation platforms in terms of modulating speed and harmonizing time. Contemplative conferences and collective idea tsunamis are both necessary and desirable modalities for parsing key political issues, but they must be correctly and coherently applied in differing contexts. These experiences have also crystallized the important role and bridging function of the Governance Futures Lab at IFTF. Our mission is to re-design governance for the anthropocene, the age of human responsibility at a planetary scale. But this responsibility applies to pace or tempo at different scales as well. So, we need to be able to create systems that can act at both geologic time and at the speed of light and electric signalling. As we expand our reach in space and time, we must understand the internal logic of these differing zones and tempos. We must design leverage points into these systems, and creating a rapport with the active agents that exist there and then. We are creating a set of experiences at our upcoming Reconstitutional Convention that will not only take on these issues of designing effectively at scale, but will also embody modes of participation will reflect this mindfulness of pace. Stay tuned for more on that event, and the activities of the Lab as we experiment with these ideas for designing better governance. And please let us know if you’d like to partner with us in this exciting endeavor. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/tim-ferriss-visits-the-future/ Tim Ferriss recently visited the Institute for the Future to discuss the future of work, learning, and his unique lifestyle. Ferris is the author of several books describing how to do things in 4 hours, as well as a world-class tango dancer, a television host, and actor. He is a guest lecturer at Princeton on entrepreneurship, and he is a cage fighter, among many other things. Where does he find the time for all of this? Ferriss also happens to be an advocate for avoiding busywork through outsourcing or automation, as well as finding new and innovative ways for more efficient learning. After hearing about how Mr. Ferriss goes about living life, I am quite intrigued.  It may not need to be said, but Ferriss doesn't subscribe to traditional ways of learning or making. Instead, he experiments and measures results in order to find the most efficient way to get work done, or the quickest way to pick up a new skill. His method lies somewhere between the scientific process and hacking. I'm no fan of self help books, but there is something fascinating in the way Ferriss goes about the process of writing and marketing his books. He approaches problems in a scientific and playful way, trying known methods in addition to asking those obvious newbie questions, sometimes with great results. He has a motivational acronym for this process: DSSS. DSSS stands for Deconstruct, Select, Sequence, Stakes. There is no need to go over DSSS here because a google for "Ferriss, DSSS" will deliver over 5,000,000 results. By simply adopting the DSSS framework for learning, you to can achieve anything. But wait, there's more!Ferriss says that his books have an altruistic ulterior motive, but that won't necessarily make them sell. A book centered around long-term health and avoiding diabetes probably isn't going to make it onto the New York Times Best Seller list. What will make that list however, is 15 minute orgasms and 6-pack abs. Ferriss says that orgasms and abs are his "Trojan Horse" in diabetes prevention.A book titled The 4-Hour Work Week was his ticket into mainstream media. It presented a somewhat radical idea that we should do away with the 9-to-5 daily grind and replace it with—you guessed it!—a 4-hour work week. This is a self-help book about how to outsource and automate your desk job. Ferriss stumbled upon this realization after having a series of unfulfilling experiences at his desk job (the last of which he was fired from) or his startup (which consumed every waking hour of his life). While managing the startup there was a moment of sudden realization. Ferriss decided to only look at his email once per week, for only one hour at a time. He outsourced and automated the rest of it, and discovered a world full of possibility.When I first heard of this, I was a bit put off. It seemed as though Ferriss is exploiting others' labor for his own financial gain. One more example of this style of exploitation recently surfaced in the news. A Verizon employee who earned a six figure salary was caught outsourcing his work to a consultancy in China, and he was subsequently fired. However, as Kevin Kelly puts it, the Verizon scenario is a win-win-win situation. Verizon was more than satisfied with the labor provided, the employee had plenty of leisure time, and the consultancy had a new opportunity for work. With all the talk of creating jobs these days, one might see the Verizon employees' actions as a public service.  Douglas Rushkoff, an American media theorist, argues, "We're living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is…. Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff—it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff." If an employee is not allowed to outsource their work to a third party, then why does a manager have the privilege to outsource their work to lower employees? This presents a paradox where employment is the goal in society, but unsanctioned outsourcing (job creation) is not socially acceptable. What if, instead, we lived in a world where the Chinese workers outsourced their work too, or better yet, automated it. This is the world that Ferriss already lives in. Buckminster Fuller argued, "We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. New York Magazine (30 March 1970), p. 30 Buckminster Fuller thought that people ought not to be forced into mildly-productive and unfulfilling work. Fuller's vision represents a fundamentally different society from the one we have today, a world closer to that in which Ferriss lives. Buckminster Fuller's concept ties into something else that Ferriss mentioned about education. Ferriss says that teachers are disincentivized to teach subjects quickly. He thinks that it is possible for students to consistently learn much faster than they do, but teachers are encouraged by our society to slow down the learning process because he believes that school also functions as a daycare center. I can't help but wonder how widely this daycare analogy can be applied to our lives. Ferriss' framework for work, learning, and —ultimately— play, provides us with an interesting model to explore, another way to consider the future of work and our collective education in the post-industrialized world. As we come to a better understanding of our own computing capabilities, and fine tune our methods for scientific management, we are finding that yes, our jobs are fast becoming obsolete. Is this a bad thing? Ferriss may not think so since he has found a solution to this trouble, though many others have not had his luck or fortitude. So, let's go back to school. Teachers ought to be acting as facilitators for exploration, not gatekeepers of knowledge. I'm not saying that Ferriss' DSSS is the ultimate model for primary education, but it could be an interesting experiment. It would certainly give us something to do after we're finished learning the core curriculum necessitated by state standards and fill-in-the-blank daycare. Learning is an inherently rewarding and pleasurable act, and allows us to take control of how we enjoy our time on this planet. Perhaps, in the future, we can all become the facilitators of our own education. Twitter: @DrWeidinger http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/clowns-placebos-and-the-future-of-the-care-effect/ A couple days ago, I came across this slightly old study exploring the effects of having trained clowns participate in the care of fertility patients. The findings, as Time Magazine noted at the time, were striking: A study of 229 Israeli women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to treat infertility found that a 15-minute visit from a trained “medical clown” immediately after the embryos were placed in the womb increased the chance of pregnancy to 36%, compared with 20% for women whose embryo transfer was comedy-free. After controlling for factors such as the women’s age, the nature and duration of their infertility, the number of embryos used and the day on which they were transferred into the uterus, researchers found an even greater effect of therapeutic laughter: the women who were entertained by a clown were 2.67 times more likely to get pregnant than those in the control group…. In the trial, the professional medical clown — who was dressed as a chef and performed the same light routine each time — visited patients during the half-hour after embryo transfer, when women typically stay lying down and allow the embryos to settle in. The idea was to help reduce women’s stress, which laughter has been shown to do, and, hopefully, reap the physiological benefits. The story reminded me of a burgeoning interest in the idea of strategically optimizing the placebo effect. In just the last month, long features have popped up here, here, and here that offer various flavors of the following argument: Rather than view the placebo effect as statistical noise, why not understand how to harness it to benefit patients? Over at Wired Nathaniel Johnson notes that care providers are coming to think of this not as a placebo effect, but as the "care effect." Think of this as the effect of the conditions of medical care--how empathetic is the provider, the conditions and context of how the patient is being treated, and so on--which, researchers are coming to realize, really matters. It can, as the Israeli study on medical clowns suggests, mean the difference between whether or not a couple gets to have a child. What's interesting here is that while these kinds of effects are undoubtedly not new, our ability to actually measure and understand them is. And what I'm guessing we'll find is that very little of our health system is actually optimized for the care effect, suggesting that one of the big opportunities in the next decade will be to optimize and enhance the conditions around medical interactions to enhance health. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-nation-takes-on-civic-hacking/ The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced the National Day of Civic Hacking yesterday, and word is spreading fast. On June 1-2, 2013, citizens in cities across the nation will join together to improve their communities and governments as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. As collaborator Nick Skytland of NASA writes in the OSTP press release: “The day is an opportunity for software developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to unleash their can-do American spirit by collaboratively harnessing publicly-released data and code to create innovative solutions for problems that affect Americans.”   IFTF is part of a larger coalition of leading organizations, companies, and government agencies that have banded together to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration among governments, startups, and citizens. Together we will support the National Day of Civic Hacking (NDCH) by hosting activities across the country that invite anyone to become part of the civic hacker community—whether you’re a newbie or an expert—and by connecting people in person or online during the weekend celebration. A number of Federal agencies, including NASA, the Census Bureau, and the Department of Labor, are participating by offering specific challenges for hackers to work during the event.   Modeled after the Innovation Endeavors’ Super Happy Block Party held in Palo Alto last March with Institute for the Future support, NDCH will take place in conjunction with Random Hacks of Kindness and Code for America's Brigade meetings. Super Happy City will be taking place right here in Silicon Valley as one of the many events organized for NDCH.  Activities are also being planned in Augusta, GA; Alexandria, VA; Asheville, NC; Austin, TX; Bend, OR; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Grand Rapids, MI; Honolulu, HI; Lexington, KY; Oakland, CA; Palo Alto, CA; Portland, ME; New York City, NY; Philadelphia, PA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and Tucson, AZ. Ready to get involved in YOUR community?   You can learn more about the National Day of Civic Hacking at:  www.hackforchange.org http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/congrats-to-all-connected-citizen-players/ Over 26 hours, 516 players contributed 6,762 microforecasts about the future of governance in the Connected Citizens Foresight Engine game. Thanks to all of you social inventors out there for giving of your time & ideas! The central question we explored was: What if, together, we could imagine hundreds of civic innovations to improve our communities between 2013 and 2023? Special congrats to all who made the Leaderboard, especially our top 5: eD_Nort, a Seattle Engineer,Adel an Advisor from Dubai, mackenziedickson and Gradiloquentme, students from Houston, Texas, USA and Christchurch, NZ, respectively, andcapt_stargazer, who also hails from Dubai. Award Winners Mayor AwardJohnny Appleseed AwardBucky Fuller AwardPenny Pincher AwardSocial Inventor Award Stay tuned for other final results! For More About this Project Crowdsourcing the Future of Citizenship (Fast Company Co.Exist)Connected Citizens: Filling in the Cracks in a Shrinking Public Sector  Play a forecasting game about the future of civic engagement (Boing Boing) Upcoming Foresight Engine Games? Want to stay in the loop with Institute for the Future and our future Foresight Engine games? Follow us @IFTF. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/pmwc-preview-cancer-commons/ Health Horizons researchers will be attending the 2013 Personalized Medicine World Conference here in Silicon Valley, January 28-29. In the run-up to the conference, we’ll be talking with some of the scheduled speakers to preview their talks at the event. (For more information on the conference itself, please visit the PMWC 2013 conference website.) We sat down with Marty Tenenbaum, Founder of Cancer Commons, to talk about realigning incentive structures, the importance of creating scientific commons, and the shift toward a new paradigm of patient-centered translational medicine.  Cancer Commons is  “a nonprofit organization building Rapid Learning Communities comprising researchers, patients and physicians. We are dedicated to advancing precision therapies by developing a ‘commons’ that collects diagnoses, biomarkers, treatments and outcomes for patients who fall outside the standard of care.” Tenenbaum, a cancer survivor himself, was frustrated with the unequal distribution of knowledge about treatments. What he saw was, “an immediate opportunity not to cure cancer, but to improve outcomes for individual patients, by getting the right information to the right people at the time they are making decisions.” As an e-commerce pioneer, Tenenbaum felt he had the necessary entrepreneurship and IT background to tackle the resistance to sharing data, but he knew this would mean “blowing up the existing walls.” These walls are especially strong in the structure of economic incentives, which makes hoarding proprietary data the rational option. “We are trying to bring everyone to the table in an ecosystem that supports personalized oncology,” Tenenbaum said.  “The goal is to get everyone’s incentives aligned with those of the patient” Aside from economic barriers, the sheer quantity of data makes creating a commons a challenging task. According to Tenenbaum, there are 100,000 cancer-related articles published each year, and 10,000 clinical trials at any given time. The standard method of delivery for this information is packed into 5,000 presentations at the annual ASCO meeting. But, “How can anyone absorb all that?” Tenenbaum asks. “It can take another 15 years for the information to diffuse out. Is there a way that instead of taking 15 years this could take 15 weeks? Or even 15 days? There should be no daylight between the clinic and the lab.” As we learn more about the existing clinical data, Tenenbaum suspects we will find out much of it is wrong. “This data comes from clinical trials,” Tenenbaum said. “These are the gold standard and they work well when the disease is homogenous, like cardiovascular disease. But with cancer, if you accept the premise that every tumor is unique, then in a randomized trial the patients probably have hundreds of different diseases.” If a randomized trial shows that a drug helped 50% of the patients, how does someone conclude if that is a worthwhile treatment to pursue? The whole field of personalized medicine is trying to answer just that by coming up with targeted interventions that would eliminate the guesswork. As evidenced by the number of speakers at PMWC, there are lots of ideas about how to do this. Tenenbaum’s vision for creating a commons acknowledges that it will take cross-industry cooperation for all of these ideas to reach their full potential. If a patient has run out of standard treatment options, rather than desperately trying things at random, Tenenbaum thinks that patient should have access to the most promising hypothesis for treatment based on the specific genetics of his or her cancer. Cancer Commons is creating Molecular Disease Models (MDM) that enumerate the known molecular subtypes of a cancer. Instead of randomized clinical trials, Tenenbaum sees a shift to virtual trials, which can be run overnight on a small budget, and could compare treatment outcomes for biologically similar patients. There are currently over 900 targeted cancer therapies in the pipeline, which will serve as an arsenal for oncologists to mix and match. Tenenbaum sees cancer becoming a chronic condition, managed with a custom made and constantly evolving cocktail of drugs. The results of each individual experiment are constantly fed back into the MDM, and the standards of care are adjusted. One of the first steps is to directly enlist patients in getting access to their data and making it available in the commons. While this raises some privacy concerns, Tenenbaum points out that, “Patients are the only ones who have the natural “hair on fire” urgency to do it now… I have not yet met a terminal patient who cares at all about privacy…. here’s my data, help me live.” Tenenbaum finds the prevailing ethics of data-donation needlessly selfless. “Today when you ask someone to donate something to the cause, there is no expectation that is going to help them. I would much prefer to provide strong personal motivation in the form of ‘the more you tell us, the more we can help you.’” And beyond the patient benefitting, if incentives are aligned, then everyone – molecular and genetic testing labs, pharmaceutical companies, payers, and patient groups – could also gain from sharing data. The next step is to open all the data in the Commons for anyone to build on. Tenenbaum is hoping for some innovative discoveries from the tech community in Silicon Valley, and beyond.  Tenenbaum sees Cancer Commons as a catalyst. “As far as I’m concerned, we have no competitors,” he said. “We are compulsive collaborators. Our goal is to bring as many people as we can to the table. Anyone in this space that would like to join forces to really accelerate the pace of innovation and improve the outcomes for today’s patients, I would welcome them getting in touch with me. There is room at the table, and we need them.” http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/remembering-aaron-swartz-from-the-amazon/ Memories of meeting Aaron Swartz at the 2009 World Social Forum in Belém, Brazil. I hung out with Aaron Swartz and Elizabeth Stark or an evening in Brazil at the World Social Forum in the Brazilian Amazon back in 2009. I only just now realized that he wrote a beautiful blog post: Discussions of tactics and theory stretch long into the night, across rooms and cars and hotels and restaurants. And then there are the parties. An airplane hanger, filled with kids, all dancing. Row upon row of them, covered in sweat and caked with mud, still carrying their bags, moving with abandon. They stretch for what seems like forever. And at the end is a huge stage, with dancing girls, a rocking band, and lights so powerful that when they rotate forward they illuminate the entire crowd. As the set ends, it feels like the whole building is about to explode. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/pmwc-preview-personalizing-health-systems/ Health Horizons researchers will be attending the 2013 Personalized Medicine World Conference here in Silicon Valley, January 28-29. In the run-up to the conference, we’ll be talking with some of the scheduled speakers to preview their talks at the event. (For more information on the conference itself, please visit the PMWC 2013 conference website.) As part of this series, we spoke with two people addressing the challenge of personalizing medicine in the context of large-scale health systems: Dr. Robert Jesse of the Veterans Health Administration and Dr. John Mattison of Kaiser Permanente. Though we talked with the two doctors separately, there was a lot of overlap during the interviews. They’re both innovative individuals within innovative organizations, but beyond that, their visions for personalized medicine, and a better health system in general, have much in common. When we hear the word personalization, we tent to think about fragmentation—for instance, more precise targeting of prescription medications to individuals. But both Mattison and Jesse talked about integration as the key to better, more personalized care. That is, integration between the health care system and determinants of health that have traditionally been outside of the system’s purview. They both agree, (as do we) that what really determines health is not just clinical encounters, but rather, as Mattison puts it, what happens “in the 99.995 percent of our lives that we lead outside of our healthcare institutions—where we live, eat, work, study, play, and worship.” Mattison sees the future of medicine as one in we’ll have evidence-based, personalized interventions that go beyond the biomedical. Just the way many are working to personalize prescription medications to a person’s biomarkers, Mattison envisions entire approaches to health that are equally tailored to the individual. Mattison also says that open data will be a big part of making this happen. He mentions Open mHealth, an open source initiative developing a set of open APIs, which would not only allow apps to generate and use sharable data across platforms, it would create data that could be used to evaluate the efficacy of interventions of all kinds, (including those at the level of social networks and environment). In aggregate, this data would paint a picture of which kinds of approaches works best for different types of people, even to the level of the individual. Jesse also spoke of personalizing medicine as being about more than just pharmaceuticals.   “The simplest way I can put it is we’re trying to change currency of healthcare from being about the encounters to being about relationships,” Jesse said of the kinds of changes the VHA is pursuing. “You have to know the patient to create the environment in which a patients becomes the owners of their care… We’re the invited guests to that process.” This kind of patient driven approach—Dr. Jesse also says that the VHA prefers the term “patient-driven” care, instead of “patient-centered” because the latter is an artifact of a view of the patient that is grounded in the perspective of the health care system—inherently acknowledges a person’s entire ecosystem of well-being risks and resources. The VHA, however, is in a better position to act on that knowledge than private health care providers are. They have no financial incentive to generate revenues through procedures, office visits, or hospital stays, and they the people they provide care to are generally do not switch health care providers frequently, meaning they have no disincentive to provide preventative care. But beyond that, they are already much more integrarted into their patients lives than other health care providers could hope to be. “One of the really elegant things about the VA system is that we don’t just provide healthcare, we provide a broad base of lot of social services that are necessary to engender good health,” Jesse says. “Transportation, education, housing… we have a lot of resources within the larger [Veterans Administration] system. “The way the VA works now, is really the foundation for what an [Accountable Care Organization] truly is.” As an integrated system, Kaiser enjoys some of the same advantages as the VHA and this has made it something of a model health care organization, with Mattison and others from Kaiser being invited to consult for the U.K.’s National Health Service. “Our founders gave us an extraordinary gift of being able to think and act holistically,” Mattison says. “We have a huge community benefit program run by Ray Baxter and we invest heavily in our community services.” But he also acknowledged that there are broader policy issues that need to be addressed to truly improve community health. “We make implicit tradeoffs as a society that need to be made more explicit,” Mattison said. “We’re currently investing more in incarcerating people in prison than in the health of our communities.” Join us at PMWC for more from Dr. Jesse, Dr. Mattison and many others! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/pmwc-preview-colin-hill-on-big-data-analytics/ Health Horizons researchers will be attending the 2013 Personalized Medicine World Conference here in Silicon Valley, January 28-29. In the run-up to the conference, we’ll be talking with some of the scheduled speakers to preview their talks at the event. (For more information on the conference itself, please visit the PMWC 2013 conference website.) We had the privilege of speaking with Colin Hill, CEO and Co-Founder of healthcare analytics company GNS Healthcare, about how big data analytics will be instrumental in advancing personalized medicine. As a leading thinker in this field, Hill writes a Forbes blog entitled Healthcare 2020. Since the founding of GNS Healthcare in 2000, Hill has witnessed an explosion in the amount of healthcare data available. Humans, however, are not equipped to make sense of all that electronic data. “Without computer driven and artificial intelligence approaches, all that data is just data,” Hill said. Advances in machine learning and cloud-based supercomputing are speeding up the rate at which this data can be used to generate new insights. GNS Healthcare is working on putting complex data sets into its machine learning platform “to create predictive models of what interventions work for which patients, and replace the standard of care for the hypothetical average patient with data-driven, personalized treatment algortihms.” In a recent article co-authored by Hill, he explains the difference between the old way of understanding what works: a clinical trial showing that a treatment is 80% effective; and a new understanding: that same treatment is actually 100% effective for 80% of patients. This is far from semantics - especially if you are of the 20% for whom that treatment will not work. As the price of genetic sequencing continues to drop, having detailed molecular data will be standard practice. Hill thinks that, in cancer for example, eventually each treatment could be tailored to the genetic specifics of a patient’s disease. However, we will not arrive at this kind of personalized medicine through the double blind trials of the past. Instead, predictive computer models will work with the data from millions of daily health interactions and be able to pinpoint the best option out of thousands of possibilities. Hill attributes more than $500 billion in wasteful spending each year to treatments that don’t work or sometimes even worsen a condition. Eliminating this waste would improve patient outcomes while simultaneously reducing costs. In September 2012, GNS Healthcare launched an initiative with Aetna that aims to treat and prevent metabolic syndrome (the disorder that often leads to heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and according to the American Heart Association, affects 47 million Americans). Using Aetna’s claims data, GNS Healthcare’s supercomputing Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation platform (REFS™) identifies those at the highest risk for the disorder, and helps pinpoint the factors for an individual which, if reduced, lead to the most effective reduction in risk of developing metabolic syndrome. This initiative was made possible because one of Aetna’s large national employer groups had data from several years of full biometric screenings for all approximately 100,000 of their employees. The success of personalized, early interventions like this helps support the need for full integration of electronic health records – both to improve population health and allow healthcare providers to meet the imperative to lower costs. GNS Healthcare also recently paired with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Mount Sinai School of Medicine to use this platform to create a computer model of multiple myeloma, the second most common blood cancer in the U.S., that will help researchers discover novel therapies. As we start the new year, Hill says, “2013 and 2014 will be very big years in the transformation of healthcare into a much more data-driven enterprise that will have dramatic effects in terms of health outcomes for patients, and reduction of costs.” He sees this as “synergistic with Accountable Care [Organizations],” which incentivize lowering costs while improving outcomes – something that can only be achieved if healthcare providers know what works for whom. The U.S. healthcare system, which is now notorious for costing too much and delivering too little, could lead the way in advancing data-driven medicine. Within 10 years, Hill thinks that U.S. health outcomes could move into the top 5 from their current rank of 37. And of course, improving outcomes is the end goal. “At the end of the day, we will have failed if we haven’t changed the way that someone gets treated,” he said. Join us at the Personalized Medicine World Conference for more from Colin Hill and many others using big data analytics to fundamentally transform the practice of medicine! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/connected-citizens-filling-the-cracks-in-a-shrinking-public-sector/ The wave of fiscal austerity that has swept across Europe and the United States in the last several years has created a challenging environment for local leaders - tax revenues are shrinking, national stimulus funds are a distant memory, layoffs have decimated the ranks of public employees, and a new generation of citizen-consumers weaned on the cloud and smart phones expect ever-accelerating levels of service and innovation. In the United States, local governments have laid off some 500,000 workers since 2009. In Greece, where cities have already made deep and painful cuts in their workforces, Der Spiegel reports that mayors and local labor unions are now openly defying central government orders for further layoffs stemming from the most recent round of austerity measures. While this trend is limited, for now, to the more developed economies of the Global North, as the world economy struggles to mount a recovery from its post-recesson stagnation (the World Bank's 2014 growth forecast doesn't anticipate any of the major economies coming close to their 2010 peak post-recession growth figures)... are China, India, Brazil, Turkey and others close behind?  Increasingly, the question on every civic leader's mind is the same: How can we mobilize citizens to fill the cracks in a rapidly shrinking public sector? A host of new web-based tools for collaboration are allowing people to connect in new ways - Change By Us, In Our Backyard, Kickstarter - the list grows every day. What problems are yielding to these kinds of approaches? What could they be used for in the future? Yet as we rush into the future of connected citizenship, what are we leaving behind? What are the risks of delegating vital public services to self-organized groups? Will some communities be left behind? So what if together we could imagine hundreds of civic innovations to plug the gaps government services? The Institute for the Future's upcoming Foresight Engine experiment, Connected Citizens, is a one-of-a-kind, 24-hour collaborative forecasting game produced by the Institute for the Future’s Governance Futures Lab. Gameplay begins January 22 at 12pm PST and ends January 23 at 12pm PST. Using IFTF’s Foresight Engine, you’ll exchange ideas with hundreds of social inventors and creative thinkers from around the world about the technologies, dynamics, and dilemmas generated in this new world of connected citizenship. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-do-harrahs-casino-and-disney-world-tell-us-about-anticipatory-health/ Disney World and Harrah's Casino preview a world in which our environments use personal data to customize our experiences. Disney World recently announced that it’s unrolling an new system in its park, in which all patrons will receive RFID bracelets that will help customize their park experience. The NY Times story mentions a lot of things these bracelets enable: the elimination of lines, payment for food and gifts with the wave of a hand, unspecified customized experiences based on a person’s behavior within the park and their stated preferences, and, of course, some serious privacy concerns. It’s possible for Disney World to do this right now, because it’s something of a closed ecosystem, but I think this development serves as an interesting harbinger of things to come. Disney World may soon be a microcosm of the world of the future, in which the people and machines in our environment will be able to access personal information about us and then use that info to customize our experiences. These experiences could, of course, be customized to our health and well-being needs. Health Horizons has forecasted, for instance, augmented and diminished reality experiences that steer us to healthy eating choices and, in our yet to publically released 2012 map, environments that respond to our stress levels by changing music and lighting. But what I find particularly interesting, is the potential for what we call “anticipatory health.”  The basic idea of anticipatory health is that real time data generated by sensors on/in our bodies and environment will allow us to detect health threats before they happen—be they potential epidemics, cancer in its extremely early stages, or even someone about to fall off their wellness or exercise regimen—and then take preventative action. A comprehensive system like this for health is, of course, still a ways off. However, we can see hints of what this might look like in an unexpected place, one that is, like Disney World, an entertainment destination with a closed ecosystem: Harrah’s Casino. An old episode of NPR’s Radiolab explained that Harrah’s Casino chain offers a loyalty card that most of its patrons end up signing up for. Like most loyalty cards, it tracks transactions, but instead of compiling the data over a long period of time and then sending targeted coupons, the Harrah’s card tracks real time data about where patrons are playing slots within the casino and how much they’re winning or losing. The casino has determined that after a player loses a certain amount of money, they are likely to quit an not come back, so they use this real time data to identify patrons who are about to hit that limit. They then intervene by approaching the patron and offering them some sort of gift, which doesn’t stop them from leaving in that instance, but prevents them from leaving with a sour feeling that would keep them from coming back at a later date. Now, influencing people to keep gambling and influencing them to stick to a wellness plan are very different things, of course. However, I think Harrah’s, (and Disney World's new, potentially more sophisticated system), offer us an interesting look at what future health systems could look like.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/realigning-human-organization/ Each year, we hold a series of exclusive events for the organizations that support our core research programs. In our Fall 2012 Technology Horizons event, we touched on a number of issues that are beginning to shed additional light on the actual human experience of living through transformational times driven by exponential technologies. This conference, organized by my colleagues Jason Tester, Anthony Townsend, and myself, not only explored a very interesting suite of emerging technologies, but went on to invite organizations to reimagine themselves based on the implications of these technologies and to explore the possible business models of the new competitors who will be even more free to leverage these emerging tools. This is a conversation that generates a lot of nervous laughter. There can be a bit of detective work involved in trying to figure out systems shifts. Here, we began with a series of clues that emerged from both our ongoing tracking of emerging startup business models and our Spring conference research, helmed by Jake Dunagan, exploring the future of the Human Internet. In particular, looking at the wave of interesting startups, from Getaround and AirBnB, to GigWalk and PulsePoint, it is striking how fluid digital networks are becoming at organizing the material realities of everyday life. Indeed, if past waves of internet-driven disruption have been centered on shifts in communication and then commerce, a new wave of opportunities is now taking shape around new approaches to the concept of coordination. A number of these emerging coordination tools are summarized in the attached worksheet.  We at IFTF are at times a bit wary of framing the emergence of exponential technologies around the popular concept of "singularity," but it is certainly bracing to realize that crowdsourcing organizations today are developing technologies that could be used to organize people to serve as swarms of "hands" for software programed designed to produce  outcomes in the physical world. However, as we explore below, this could potentially be problematic for most institutions because they themselves are themselves are basically legacy coordination technologies. If so, there is a lot of "rethinkery" to be done in board rooms around the world.  So, are traditional institutions a technology on the verge of disruption?  We invite you to watch the argument below and decide for yourself ... http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/iftf-remembers-robert-b-textor-anticipatory-anthropologist/ Last week the originator of anticipatory anthropology passed away, peacefully. He was 89 years old. Last week the originator of anticipatory anthropology passed away, peacefully. He was 89 years old. From 1976 and throughout the 1980s and 1990s Dr. Robert Bayard Textor created and championed ethnographic futures research (EFR), a rigorous methodology for bringing the insights of cultural anthropology to futures research, and conversely bringing foresight into the discipline of anthropology. While he was developing it he co-taught a seminar on cultural futures research at Stanford with our own Bob Johansen in the late 1970s. “EFR is intended as a research and learning tool by which an individual can actively cultivate the art of anticipation.” (Textor 1995) Dr. Textor’s insight about the connection between research and learning resonates strongly with IFTF’s founding purpose to promote futures thinking through systematic consideration of future possibilities. As a methodology, EFR fuses in-depth interviewing and scenario creation to study people’s ideas about the future, their values, and their concepts of change. It remains the underlying basis for much of my work and that of my fellow ethnographers at the Institute for the Future.  This legacy is obvious in our most explicitly ethnographic work, such as the BRIC Map of Local Lives in a Global Economy, and Boomers: The Next 20 Years.  But a basic commitment to the idea that futures need to be seen from the perspective of people who will create and inhabit them is far more pervasive in our artifacts from the future and our more recent work in inclusive futures and conflict resolution. Just as Dr. Textor became engaged in futures through his observations of the Peace Corps, we recognize that building a space for local foresight creation around the world may lead to increased global peace and resilience. What Dr. Textor’s work underscores is that the future is not merely an academic subject: foresight matters to people and communities.  While asking individuals about the future reveals a lot of bias and is not the best at predicting events, it more importantly reveals the values and concepts of change that make the future a useful space for communities to transform themselves: to create the futures they collectively want.     Dr. Jan English-Lueck, my mother and a mentee of Dr. Textor’s who has worked extensively with the Institute, commented on his impact, “He brought a Buddhist sensibility to thinking about the future, detached and compassionate.” His wisdom and insight serves as a reminder to approach futures with empathy and humility, and to never underestimate their power. Dr. Textor will be celebrated by his family and an active community of like-minded people working for peace. His vision to foster futures thinking lives on through the AAA Textor Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/its-official-over-4500-ideas-for-reinventing-the-hospital/ On January 8—9, IFTF ran the 24-hour Future of the Hospital game on Foresight Engine, our collaborative forecasting platform, to help reinvent the community hospital. In these 24 hours, 637 people from around the globe came together to generate 4,528 ideas for reinventing the hospital. Players from San Francisco to Omaha and the United Arab Emirates to New Zealand forecasted on topics ranging from the big meaning of community wellness to the small details of hospital billing codes, and everything in between.   To see some highlights from Future of the Hospital, check out our game blog; look for more highlights and analyses in the coming days, as well as the announcement of awards for the best microforecasts and player contributions on January 21. Future of the Hospital Game Report IFTF will be diving in deep into the ideas the game generated, analyzing the data to create a report for the organizations who made the game possible. We’ll be identifying key themes, threats, and opportunities that emerged from the discussion.  If you're interested in getting access to the report, please contact Dawn Alva at dalva@iftf.org. Stay in the Loop And if you want to stay in the loop with Institute for the Future and our future Foresight Engine games (such as Connected Citizens coming January 22) you can follow us via Twitter @IFTF and Facebook. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/crowdsourced-inclusive-futures/ Last November I was invited to speak to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) at their second biannual Human Rights Conference about crowdsourcing inclusive futures. The focus of the conference was on social media and social change. OPSEU is figuring out how union members can use social media to enhance their own work. After a successful and exciting run at the Catalysts for Change game last April, OPSEU asked us to come and share our experience of running an online game focused on social change. I took the opportunity to share some of our wider research on how the internet is being used to build a world of inclusion that makes space for a multiplicity of ideas, beliefs, and voices, and by extension has the potential to build a more peaceful world. The social internet has allowed us to build new capacities for inclusion and diversity of voice through the development of three particularly effective social change tools.  Data Overload:  Previously the domain of economists, demographics, and other experts, data is quickly becoming the force behind citizen driven social change.  How do we make data digestible, accessible, and actionable for social change agents? Organizations like Nigeria's BudgIT are a prime example of this story.  Collaboration and participation:  Holding massively collaborative conversations and running massively participatory projects has in the past been near impossible. Today we can gather voices from around the world and across disciplines and experiences in order to elicit new solutions and perspectives to age old challenges. How do we use the tools of the internet to enhance our collaborative and participatory efforts?  Catalysts for Change brought over 1600 people together across 79 countries to brainstorm new paths out of poverty over the next decade.  Mapping:  Mapping—particularly the power dynamics between who maps which communities and to what end—has long been a focus of social change. Today mapping has not just become democratized, but new tools are allowing us to map our own communities in new ways to unearth new meanings.  What does social change look like when we begin to combine physical place with emotion mapping and augmented reality? Imagine the power of a virtual Tahrir Square.  Although still very emergent, new tools like the Shippo Tail, the Scanadu SCOUT, and Affdex can be combined with augmented reality and remained to design holistic mapping and organizing tools.   Opposing forces at play: Unfortunately there are also opposing forces at play. The weaponization of social media—as my colleague Jamais Casio calls it—and the filter bubble both pose potential challenges to social change agents of the future. The social internet is in the midsts of continuous transformation. It is up to us to decide if we want to build an internet based on inclusion, or fragmentation. Both forces are at play, and the future is yet to be written. How will you use the internet? To continue this exciting conversation email me at tfinlev@iftf.org http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/smart-cities-crucibles-of-citizen-government-co-creation/ "What if mayors ruled the world?" asked political scientist Ben Barber in a recent Long Now talk in San Francisco. All over the world, local governments have stepped to (or been pushed to) the forefront of innovation in government and the delivery of public services. But why now? Look at any trend in global urban development and the answer is clear. We are becoming an urban species, and doing so alarmingly fast. In the span of about 10 human generations, the two centuries spanning 1900-2100, the world's population will have grown more than six-fold from about 1.6 billion to as many as 10 billion. But the number of poeple living in cities will have grown even faster, some 40 times or more from just over 200 million to as many as 8 or 9 billion. We're about halfway through this process - which means that in the next century we'll build as much urban fabric as we have in the entirety of human settlment stretching back about 6,000 years. Yet in the face of this massive challenge, complicated by the need to build and rebuild far more energy-efficient cities than we ever have in the past, we have an enormous new toolkit. A phalanx of global tehcnology and engineering companies such as IBM, Siemens, and Cisco Systems are deploying sophisticated control systems for everything from road networks to power grids. And mayors have eagerly embraced these new high-tech solutions, which effortlessly and intelligently manage the systems that maintain the flow of people, goods and resources through our communities.  But a more important question is: can mayors do it alone? And the answer here is equally obvious: no! Because as much as new technologies for computer sensing, analysis and automation of urban infrastructure and services can do, the most valuable actuators in cities are its citizens, to paraphase Carlo Ratti, who directs MIT's SENSEable City Lab. Smart cities aren't just fix-it shops where new information technologies come together with legacy infrastructure, they are crucibles where grassroots communities of innovators can co-create new services through participation that runs the gamut from simply clicking "like," to reporting issues like broken streetlights, to actively organizing crowdsourced responses to larger community needs.  So what if together we could imagine hundreds of civic innovations to improve communities and government services? The Institute for the Future's upcoming Foresight Engine experiment, Connected Citizens, is a one-of-a-kind, 24-hour collaborative forecasting game produced by the Institute for the Future’s Governance Futures Lab. Gameplay begins January 22 at 12pm PST and ends January 23 at 12pm PST. Using IFTF’s Foresight Engine, you’ll exchange ideas with hundreds of social inventors and creative thinkers from around the world about the technologies, dynamics, and dilemmas generated in this new world of connected citizenship. Pre-register now: www.connected-citizens.org  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/connected-citizens-re-imagine-how-government-works/ What if we could re-program government together? What bugs would you fix? What would be the killer app? How would you combine citizen and government data to improve services and quality of life in your community? Pre-register today: gameplay begins on January 22 at 12pm PST! connected-citizens.org What if we could re-program government together? What bugs would you fix? What would be the killer app? How would you combine citizen and government data to improve services and quality of life in your community? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/remembering-andrew-j-lipinski-1920-2012/ Andrew J. Lipinski, a senior research fellow at IFTF from its earliest days in Connecticut until his retirement in the late 1980's, passed away on Saturday, December 29, 2012 at the age of 92. Andy contributed to the founding futures methodologies of IFTF and stretched the practice of forecasting to include narrative scenarios, a variety of modeling methodologies, and conflict resolution processes using future scenarios. Andrew J. Lipinski, a senior research fellow at IFTF from its earliest days in Connecticut until his retirement in the late 1980's, passed away on Saturday, December 29, 2012 at the age of 92. Andy contributed to the founding futures methodologies of IFTF and stretched the practice of forecasting to include narrative scenarios, a variety of modeling methodologies, and conflict resolution processes using future scenarios. He was the co-author with former IFTF president Roy Amara of the book, Business Planning for An Uncertain Future, as well as numerous scholarly articles and business reports on topics ranging from strategic planning, data processing, the future of the telephone industry, energy supply and demand, photovoltaics, healthcare, and gun control. Here, IFTF's Distinguished Fellow and former president, Bob Johansen, shares his personal memories of Andy: I first met Andy Lipinski in Washington, DC, in 1972, at the International Conference on Computer Communications. This was the conference that first introduced  the ARPANet (the predecessor of today's Internet) to the public. Andy was at the meeting talking about research that Institute for the Future was doing on "people communicating with people" through the ARPANet (much like what we would call social media today). In those days, people communicating with people through computers was viewed by many as a misuse of computing resources. Certainly, that was not what the ARPANet was designed for initially. Andy, however, liked operating in the edge spaces where others were uncomfortable. In fact, he always seemed most comfortable being uncomfortable. Andy spoke with a twinkle in his eye. He was quick, witty, brilliant, and often irreverent. He was a deep-water engineer by training, but he loved writing and he read widely outside his field. He loved to talk politics and discuss philosophy. He was both deeply quantitative and engagingly qualitative. He wrote the first story-like narrative scenario done at Institute for the Future. It was the tale of a priest immersed in the future of biology--what we'd now call biotech--and it documented his travels through this future landscape.  Andy was also a methodological risk taker. In 1977, he organized a workshop that brought together many of the sometimes strident actors with an interest in the future of gun control, from the NRA and hunting organizations to environmentalists and gun control advocates. His goal was to use the future as a "safe place" for highly charged discussions, and he ran the workshop as a conflict resolution lab. Each side had to play the role of the other in order to gain a deeper understanding of, and hopefully empathy for, the other. Andy grew up in the telecom industry, and much of his work focused on the future of the telephone industry and communications policy. But he was always pushing at the edges of whatever he took on, from probabilistic forecasting to energy policy. He poked, he prodded, he questioned, and he spun out provocative scenarios. In his office, he had books and papers piled everywhere and a prominent sign that read: "A CLEAN DESK IS THE SIGN OF A EMPTY MIND." He was also an avid builder of model fighter planes and had built maybe 25 of them, many of which hung from his office ceiling.  Andy Lipinski was someone who sparkled with life. He brought so much to Institute for the Future, our clients, and the outside world. We will all miss him very much. -- Bob Johansen A funeral mass will be held on Friday, January 18, 2013, at 11:00 am at St. William Catholic Church in Los Altos. Burial will follow at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Menlo Park. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/lego-sponsors-iftfs-transformative-changes-for-children-at-play/ IFTF has been studying smart machines and robotics for over 30 years. And all the way across the world the Lego Group first introduced its Mindstorms line of robotics products over fifteen years ago. Looking back, it is hard not to be impressed at the ways that Lego and the toys aspired to bring robotics into the hands of youth in the home in unintimidating ways. In fact to highlight this in mid-2010, we brought the Lego Group into our Technology Horizons Robot Renaissance: The Future of Human-Machine Interaction research project as lead innovators and experts. A deep connection was formed between our work and theirs, so we were thrilled when they asked IFTF to conduct a report on technology and the future of kids at play. The project, led by my colleague Lyn Jeffery who was instrumental in envisioning our 2011 work on The Magic of Kids' Tech, asked us to explore the major shifts in the nature of play that have taken hold over those last 15 years. The result is a report just made public today by the Lego Group at the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 in Las Vegas entitled, Transformative Changes for Children at Play. The report is being presented as an introduction for Mindstorms EV3, the third generation of the popular toy. The complete list of these trends is summarized in this infographic detailing the report's high-level findings.  Later this week, I will be participating in a panel further exploring this research as part of the session on "The Transformation of Play: How 15 Years of "Smart Toys" has Changed Children's Play" at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV.  While we are used to tracking rapid change, it is a bit stunning to be reminded how quickly toys have moved toward digitization, with sophisticated electronics and smart devices available to ever younger demographics. Indeed, this topic also emerged as one of the central drivers in our recent Magic of KidsTech project also exploring aspects of the future of play and learning.   Looking forward to continuing to build on an extremely interesting conversation! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/future-of-the-hospital-announcing-challenge-3/ For 24 hours, starting January 8 at 9am PST, play the game to help reinvent the community hospital. Pre-register now at futureofhospitals.org. “17 years” has emerged as a sort of buzzword in healthcare circles in the last decade.  In 2000, EA Balas and his colleagues discovered that, despite the growth in clinical research studies, only a fraction (less than a fifth) of the studies’ results get translated into clinical practice, and when they do, it’s a process that takes, on average, 17 years. This alarming statistic sparked a decade long conversation about how we can close the gap between scientific discovery and care delivery without compromising the quality of patient care. And the outrage goes beyond the prolonged delay in moving information from the bench to the bedside; it’s also the matter of wasting resources. Between 1950 and the early 2000s, an estimated $250 billion has been invested into the National Institute of Health (NIH). While a number of significant improvements to our health, including dramatic extensions in the average lifespan of Americans, can be linked directly to research funded by the NIH, many believe we are leaving a tremendous amount of information in the labs. This failure to translate research into clinical practice reduces the positive impact important findings could have on public health. Throughout the decade, many things have been blamed for the gap: silos separating researchers and clinicians; information infrastructure that restricts the easy movement of relevant information; the inherently slow pace of medical research.   But as Dr. Claude Lenfant noted in a 2003 article in the New England Journal of Medicine,  “Regardless of the reasons cited for this [gap]—structural, economic, or motivational — the result is the same: we are not reaping the full public health benefits of our investment in research.” To tackle the identified barriers, new programs such as the NIH’s Bedside-to-Bench Program, have launched to close the gap between scientific discovery and therapeutic interventions. And there are about 20 translational science Ph.D. programs in the United States started as part of an initiative by the National Institutes of Health to accelerate translational research and development. Hospitals play a promising role in shortening the 17-year gap.  Hospitals are the physical workspaces to both researchers and clinicians.  In fact, academic hospitals employ a high number of talented people who divide their time between research and clinical practice.  They can be leaders in re-engineering how we approach discovery in human medicine.  They can work to create an information and knowledge pipeline that supports patient-oriented research and produces and broadcasts findings that directly improve human health. So, hospital futurists, here’s our third challenge: Reimagine the hospital as a focal point for closing the gap between scientific discovery and improved health outcomes. Think: How can hospitals help mobilize scientific discoveries and turn them into effective treatments?How can hospitals help translate emerging medical knowledge into medical practice?What role could hospitals play in spurring communication between research scientists and clinical professionals? To start the conversation, post your answer to these questions, and pose some of your own, on Twitter @FutureHospitals or with the hashtag #FutureHospitals. Then, play the game on January 8-9, 2013. Missed the previous game challenges? Challenge 1: Construct a 21st Century safety-net system that is fair, economically sustainable and delivers high-quality emergency care services to all in need.Challenge 2: Reimagine the hospital as a center for community well-being, not just a place to get treatment for illness. Still more info ... Game Awards & JudgesGame FAQGame Blog http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/maker-cities2/ What does a city look like when each citizen has a sense of agency in shaping his or her own life, community, and city? What would it be like to live in a Maker City? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/awesome-awards-for-you-to-win-during-future-of-the-hospital/ The Future of the Hospital Foresight Engine Game starts in less than one week! Here is a sneak peak at some of the awesome awards you could win if you have the most creative ideas to help reinvent the hospital! Happy New Year Hospital Futurists! We hope you all had safe and happy holidays (without any trips to the hospital!) Gameplay starts in less than a week! We are very excited to announce an incredible group of judges: Dr. Eric Howell, Dr. Hal Luft, Kristi Miller Durazo, Tim Rawson, Dr. Jason Stein, and Wil Yu.  If you want to get a head start on the competition, start honing your expertise and you could win one of these awesome awards. Which one will you be? Still need to register? game.futureofhospitals.org Care Delivery Revolutionist: Most creative idea for reinventing care delivery will be awarded by Jason Stein. Patient Advocate Warrior: Most creative idea for reinventing patient experience will be awarded by Tim Rawson. Mobile Innovator: Most creative idea for using mobile technologies in and out of hospitals will be awarded by Wil Yu. Community Health Catalyst: Most creative idea for reinventing emergency departments and population health management will be awarded by Kristi Miller Durazo. Hospitalist Hero: Most creative idea for reinventing work and responsibilities for hospital employees will be awarded by Eric Howell.­­­­ Quality and Cost Czar: Most creative idea for improving the delivery of cost-effective, high-quality care will be awarded by Harold Luft. Here are your three pre-game challenges Join the conversation @FutureHospitals ... it will earn you some points towards one of those awesome awards.  #1: Re-imagining the nation's emergency medical system  #2: Re-imagining the hospital as a center for community well-being #3: Closing the gap between scientific discovery and improved care What is the Future of the Hospital?  For over 100 years, the hospital has been the core of our healthcare system, and a pillar of every community—the central hub where people enter and leave this world, and where scientific discoveries become life saving procedures. But in the last couple decades, technological, social and economic forces have chipped away at this model. As these trends continue—making traditional clinical environments punishingly expensive to run, and increasingly less necessary for many healthcare needs – the future of the community hospital is uncertain. This is the premise of our new Foresight Engine game on the Future of the Hospital—a 24-hour collaborative forecasting game playing from 12pm EST (9am PST) January 8 to 12pm EST (9am PST) on January 9, 2013! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/whats-the-future-of-doctors-when-sensors-in-your-electronics-diagnose-disease/ I have a new piece over at Fast Coexist looking at how new diagnostic technologies will transform traditional health roles. It begins: By all indications, 2013 will mark the emergence of a much more sophisticated set of tools for people to track--and diagnose--their own health problems. AliveCor, an iPhone case that can conduct an electrocardiogram, and, naturally, transmit the test to the cloud, just gained clearance from the FDA and is set to begin shipping in January. The project is aimed, at least initially, at patients with arrhythmias and other minor heart problems that need watching, to monitor their cardiac health. Meanwhile, Scanadu, has gotten a lot of attention--including from Co.Exist--for its efforts to develop a medical tricorder that can test for 15 different conditions that it plans to release next year. At first glance, these devices may not seem that significant. As fascinating as I find AliveCor, for example, I don’t anticipate buying one next year. And this may be because devices like AliveCor and Scanadu are driven by a deceptively simple idea. As cheap sensors are being built into phones, cars, and even everyday objects like coffeemakers to help aid in diagnosis, people can--and should--take advantage of them to manage their own health. Click through to read the rest. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/gfo-goes-to-brazil/ If you want to understand the future of food, Brazil is one of the most important and interesting places in the world to look. Brazil’s food production capabilities are growing rapidly, as is its affluent new middle class, and it’s also quickly becoming a global tastemaker. Additionally, it’s major center of food and food policy innovation. For these and other reasons, we chose Brazil as one of the four focus areas in our 2011 GFO work. This November, Global Food Outlook Program Co-Director Bradley Kreit, Social Change Agent David Evan Harris (our resident Brazil expert), and I had the good fortune to be invited to go to Brazil and share that research with, and spend time learning from, a Brazilian foresight group, the Center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), and a government food technology research organization, the Institute of Food Technology (ITAL). Connecting with these two organizations, who do amazing work was a great opportunity for us to discuss different methods of forecasting, as well as the future of food technology, which is the focus of our 2013 GFO research. We kicked off our trip with a visit to CGEE’s headquarters in Brasilia, where we presented research and discussed forecasting with their team. CGEE President Marcio Santos de Miranda and Technical Advisor Antonio Carlos Guedes explained a number of interesting futures methodologies. For instance, CGEE develop a methodology for using text mining as a tool to map trends by combing academic writings and patent applications for word frequency and other patterns and subtle relationships in data. We also learned about an ambitious project they’re currently undertaking, to forecast the future food production in Brazil and other select countries in the year 2050—more than two decades beyond what we typically forecast at IFTF (though we do make exceptions).  On our second day, we participated in a symposium, Food: a Vision of the Future for Brazil, where we presented forecasts and discussed long-term challenges and opportunities for Brazil’s food industries. CGEE’s Antonio Guedes and ITAL Director Luis Madi and Technical Coordinator of Innovation Platforms Raul Amaral Rego presented research as well, and were kind enough to give us an amazing tour of the ITAL facilities. Their campus has a number of fascinating labs, focused on microbiology, chemical, physical, and sensory research where ITAL innovates new light and functional food creations,such as a light, collagen and protein enhanced burger.  The trip provided us with a great head start on next year’s GFO research and connections with two innovative organizations in Brazil we hope to work with for many years to come.  Photos by Antonio Carriero - ITAL. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/future-of-the-hospital-challenge-2/ For 24 hours, starting January 8 at 9am PST, play the Future of the Hospital game to help reinvent the community hospital. Register now at futureofhospitals.org. For many of us, hospitals are where you go when you are undergoing treatment for a serious health condition, when you are in need of emergency care, or when you are delivering a baby.  With the exception of the labor and delivery ward, they are viewed as central institutions in our nation’s “sick care” system. But what if we could transform the role hospitals play in our communities?  What if taking care of people when they get sick became just one competency of hospitals and, instead, they served as mainstays of community wellness? Already, hospitals touch the lives of many in a community.  They are major employers within a city, and people of all socio-economic backgrounds benefit from them.  In addition to providing medical care, hospitals often connect people to public and non-profit resources available to them.  Hospital staff often help people to access social, financial, and legal services outside the health system. And these days, many hospitals are even dabbling in wellness initiatives, such as preventative screenings, tobacco cessation programs, and efforts to reverse obesity trends, particularly in children.  Some hold nutrition, parenting, and disease education and prevention classes.  And hospitals are increasingly active online, posting advice on blogs and encouraging healthy lifestyles through social media. Many newly built or newly renovated facilities feature care settings designed to enhance well-being—natural light, zen gardens, noise-reducing technologies and building materials.  And others are operating fitness centers and supporting the development of grocery stores in the hospital’s neighborhoods to improve access to fresh, nutritious food. However, most people still do not see the hospital as a central resource for creating community well-being.  While the initiatives are steps in the right direction, they do not fundamentally transform the role hospitals play in communities.  They are still mostly seen as places where you go when you are sick, and places you avoid when you are not. So, hospital futurists, here’s our second challenge: Reimagine the hospital as a center for community well-being, not just a place to get treatment for illness. Think: How could a hospital better serve the social and health needs of people as a center of community wellness?How can urban hospitals leverage their convenient, central physical locations?How could we take advantage of the diversity of people who pass through to make the hospital more of a community convener?What types of services and experiences would you expect to see at the reinvented hospital? To start the conversation, post your answer to these questions, and pose some of your own, on Twitter @FutureHospitals or with the hashtag #FutureHospitals. Then, play the game on January 8—9, 2013. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/historical-factors-behind-germanys-energy-transformation/ Germany’s Energiewende is propelling the shift to a new energy economy. This post is Part 2 of a series on Germany’s energy transformation. During my week in Berlin with the American Council on Germany, our small group of American delegates met with impressive representatives from the federal government, policy think tanks, foreign service and climate scientists. Not only did we hear about the many facets of the Energiewende, we also heard various reflections on how Germany found itself on the path of such a formidable effort. First and foremost, Germans cite the success of pragmatism and vision over ideology in their ambitious shift away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy. They also note that 50 years ago, the U.S. was admired for its pragmatism on important issues while Germany suffered from political polarization. Today the roles have reversed with Germany taking a proactive approach to the future. In Germany today, there’s a high degree of interaction across party lines, and common ground is found on critical issues such as climate change. Historically, a number of factors have contributed to Germany’s current path with the Energiewende including deep-seeded environmental values. Culturally, the German affinity with the forest goes back 2000 years with the defeat of the invading Roman Empire and has been carried forward through the works of writers, artists and political leaders. In the 1970s, opposition intensified to the stationing of American nuclear missiles in Germany. The growing peace and environmental movements led to the founding of the Green Party in 1980. A cornerstone of the party’s aims was the elimination of all nuclear power and weapons. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 elevated concerns of environmental sustainability to the same level of considerations of cost effectiveness and supply security in the country’s power generation. The coalition government of the progressive SPD and the Green Party in 1999 initiated the first steps of the Energiewende. The Renewable Energy Act set up generous incentive structures to build renewable systems. A galvanizing issue of the Green Party, the nuclear exit negotiated in 2000 committed to the phase out 19 nuclear reactors by 2020. In 2005, the new coalition government took over made up of the conservative CDU/CSU and the economically liberal FDP. They proposed to reverse the scheduled shut down of all nuclear power plants in 2010. Very soon thereafter came the Fukushima disaster in 2011, and German public reaction resulted in the government shutting down eight reactors within three months of the tsunami and reaffirming its commitment to phasing out all nuclear energy. With the sudden closure of the nuclear power plants, the discussion was less about compensating shareholders for lost assets and centered more on the view that ratepayers had covered the costs of regulation and therefore the plant shareholders were more to be viewed as trustees. In addition to the influence of its strong environmental lobby, the German public interest lobby is also very powerful. How do we drive the necessary shift to a new energy paradigm and new economic gains? As reflected in the German experience, pragmatism and vision must trump ideology. The U.S. must reconnect with its pragmatic past and rekindle a view for the common good in order to take a proactive approach to shaping the future in our alarming context of climate change. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-energiewende-germanys-energy-transition/ Germany’s Energiewende is propelling the shift to a new energy economy. This post is Part 1 of a series on Germany’s energy transformation. Energiewende, the German word for “energy transformation,” is a term being adopted in China and other places that are following Germany’s lead in its shift away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy. I just spent a week in Berlin with the American Council on Germany (ACG) meeting with thought leaders on climate and energy policy from the government, climate science research, policy think tanks, and other nonprofit organizations. Here, not only is there broad recognition of climate change and the human role in causing it, all public policy is considered in the context of climate change and its growing impacts. Germany is the 5th largest economy of the world and a manufacturing powerhouse. With its highly skilled workforce, Germany is a leading exporter of machinery, vehicles, chemicals and household appliances. Since the roll out of the Energiewende, the industrial share of Germany’s GDP has not receded but remained at 23%. According to the OECD, Germany’s renewable energy grew ten times faster than the OECD average from 1990 to 2010. Renewable energy currently accounts for roughly 20% of Germany’s total generation, and the government aims to reach 35% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The last nuclear plants will be phased out by 2022. The focus is moving away from figuring out how to integrate renewables into the conventional system and toward the reverse. As renewables grow in share, baseload powerplant generation becomes anachronistic. Much development of distribution networks is still needed to better connect generation and industrial demand across Germany and to improve integration with the broader European market. The energy transformation is driving new economic opportunities. Currently, Germany’s renewable energy industry is valued at $250 billions and accounts for 380,000 workers. That’s a larger workforce than Germany’s auto industry! Germany’s big industry does not dispute climate science. Nor does it try to stop the country’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its dependence on fossil fuels. Instead, German industry demands clear timelines so that they can plan. The government is supporting industry’s transition such as through lowered electricity rates, financing, as well as support with electricity management systems and optimization of energy intensive processes. Proactively driving transformation translates into new competitive advantage in a changing context. German carmakers are driving change in their industry and positioning themselves for competitive strength in the coming decades. They’re shifting toward electric vehicles and new business models that integrate with related infrastructure and utilities. They’re even taking up care sharing models in urban markets. The State of Baden-Württemberg, home of Daimler and Porsche, is now led by the Green Party. Several of its major cities such as Stuttgart are also in the hands of the Green Party. Germany’s pragmatism and vision reflected in the Energiewende is also influencing their foreign policy. For the German Foreign Ministry, climate security is a nontraditional security threat. As a risk multiplier, climate change can make existing conflicts worse, such as those over access to water and energy. The pragmatic approach shared by Germany’s major political parties is to develop greater mutual dependency. Given the global disruptions that extreme weather and receding fresh water resources will cause, the German foreign ministry is negotiating with other foreign offices around the world and supporting adaptation efforts of countries in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world. As the ACG frames it, "Germany has made the decision to put climate/energy priorities at the top of its economic and foreign policy agendas. This is not only a matter of German self-interest; it is because scarce energy resources around the world are a source of conflict." http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/civicmeet-palo-alto-how-can-civic-life-innovate-in-the-heart-of-silicon-valley/ When you put the Mayor of Palo Alto, futures thinking methodologies, and engaged citizens together, the outcome is far from your average local community meeting.  Rather than hemming and hawing in a dimly lit government basement, the City of Palo Alto held its first ever CivicMeet at the Institute for the Future on December 13, 2013. Upwards of 70 participants joined city staff, IFTF researchers, and interested citizens to think more strategically about the challenges of innovating civic life in the local community. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/kopimism/ Kopimism is a new religion that is based around the belief that sharing is a sacred act. Their sacred symbols are CRTL-C and CRTL-V, the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste. You might be thinking that this is a joke, but they were recognized as an official religion in Sweden earlier this year. This is an image of a wedding, a timeless tradition that transcends cultural boundaries. This isn't just any wedding though, this is the first Kopimist wedding. Kopimism is a new religion that is based around the belief that sharing is a sacred act. Their sacred symbols are CRTL-C and CRTL-V, the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste. You might be thinking that this is a joke, but they were recognized as an official religion in Sweden earlier this year. Kopimism was born out of an emergent global culture based around the value of sharing ideas. People who identify with this culture often believe that sharing is beneficial because copying and remixing content allows innovation to happen faster and it can create a stronger sense of community. Not everyone in the world prescribes to this belief. Advocates on the opposing side argue that protecting ideas, not freely sharing them, increases innovation because there is a financial incentive for people to be more creative. They also argue that it is only fair for an artist to have control over their work, to control how it gets used, and assure they’ll be paid. Both sides of this argument put forward valid points, and, more importantly, both sides are willing to fight for their values and their rights. These are the copyright wars. The Copyright Wars It is a war of economic interest, a war over the philosophy of what motivates people and how novelty is discovered. The battlefield is not in the desert or the jungle, but in the courtroom, in our schools, and at our kitchen table. Those on the pro-sharing side have been labeled as pirates and heretics, but when we see a religion grow up around a set of ethics, this suggests that there is something more here. This is a war over cultural identity and freedom of information.The copyright wars have been going on for much longer than the current digital battles. For example, during the Dark Ages, books, works of art and cultural artifacts were stored in privately owned libraries that only the top tiers of society had access to. In France however, after the French Revolution, most of these privately held books were liberated by pro-sharing citizens, placed in what were known as dépots littéraires, and made publicly available. It was also decided that the Louvre, previously a private collection of royal treasures, was to be opened as a public museum to display the nation's treasures. These radical changes in information accessibility were once unthinkable acts, but pubic libraries and museums are now seen as symbols of national pride. Escalation The spread of the internet has escalated and accelerated the copyright wars. Remember Napster? Napster was a file sharing service where anyone with an internet connection could upload, download and share their music for free. Perfect copies of entire albums could be made at virtually no cost to any party involved, except for the record labels who claimed that they were losing billions and sued to shut Napster down. Other file sharing sites began to pop up, such as Limewire, The Pirate Bay, Demonoid, Megaupload, and countless others. Again, media companies responded by attempting to lock content with Digital Rights Management, which was easily cracked through clever hacks. The pro-sharing side responded by creating their own original content and licensing it as Creative Commons. Media companies responded by generously funding lobbyists and promoting bills such as ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA — different names and forms, but all resulting in file sharing becoming even more illegal and increased threats against the continued existence of any site that hosts shared content. Individual file sharing sits had been successfully shut down before, but this time broad, sweeping laws would threaten all file sharing sites. As the laws were being discussed at the higher levels of government in Europe and North America, resistance began to grow online and in the streets. Quinn Norton, keynote at our most recent Technology Horizons conference, said, "No one expected this to happen, no one expected 50,000 teenagers to go out and protest intellectual property law in January (2012), but here it is." In the midst of this icy winter, police responded to the demonstrations by arresting, fining and jailing protestors. Even so, ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA were all stopped.About six years ago, before the ACTA protests and after NAPSTER, the Pirate Party was formed. It started off in Sweden as a small group of pro-sharing, anti-copyright activists. As of 2012, the Pirate Party has 45 state parliament seats in Germany, one mayor in Switzerland and one in Iceland. They received 7.1% of the votes for European parliament and as of today, the Pirate Party is the fastest growing political movement in modern history. Discovering Identity Kopimism is a new institution that elevates the act of copying from an expression of cultural identity to a sacred act. File sharing, protests, and even political parties are certainly acts of expression, but religion is different. For many people, their religion serves as a moral foundation and a guiding principal for daily life. A religion’s shared values can strengthen bonds within a community, and, for those outside the community, understanding the code of the religion can offer a glimpse inside. Kopimism will sound like a joke to many people, or they’ll view it as a religious loophole to avert copyright law. And certainty for some ‘adherents’ this will be their motivation for joining. But there are many more people for whom this code of practices will be a canon of fundamental beliefs. Religion is too big of a move for a community to adopt just to swap a few more movies.The copyright wars continue to rage on. Battles are mostly waged on the internet, but occasionally they spill out onto the streets. From what we have seen so far, every time pro-copyright interests attempt to strengthen their hold on intellectual property, the public reacts. These reactions are becoming increasingly sophisticated in technique and popular support for serious pro-sharing groups, such as the Pirate Party, is growing rapidly.As we see this movement grow and evolve one thing is becoming clear, a new generation is emerging in which the individuals value sharing and collaborative creation over profit. These values have brought this generation closer together. It is my hope that the legal system will bend to accommodate this new culture so that we can avoid breaking an entire movement. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/ben-jerrys-b-corps-dominos-and-the-search-for-sincere-food/ Recently, I came across an ad for Domino’s “We’re Not Artisans” Artisan Pizza. The thin-crusted, rectangular pizza comes in a box with the words “We’re Not Artisans” printed on it in big letters, and a blank line reserved for the signature of the employee who makes the pizza inside. Seeing this, I couldn’t help but think of our forecast for Europe, ‘Quality through sincerity,’ from our 2011 Global Food Outlook research. Here’s the gist of it: Over the next decade, Europeans will have access to layers of real information about their food, generated by integrated monitoring and data sensing systems operating from both the top down and the bottom up. These flows of information will influence people’s notions of what constitutes high-quality, authentic, and ethical foods. These notions will shift based on the additional data available about food choices, as consumers base their purchasing decisions less on a food’s substance or national origin and more on the process it undergoes from farm to fork. Companies’ attempts to wrap narratives around these processes will be subject to verification by consumers, heightening the importance of sincerity as an element of people’s decisions about food. While this Domino’s example is from the U.S., I think it touches on many of the issues we highlight in the forecast. The employee signature and the admission that “we’re not artisans” supports our forecast that people will demand transparency and sincerity. But there are certain ironies in this initiative by Domino’s that resonate with the tensions inherent in our Europe forecast. As a publicly traded company, Domino’s is legally obligated (under certain interpretations of corporate law) to do whatever makes the most money for their shareholders. When providing customers with greater transparency and greater connection to their food ultimately makes more money for their shareholders, a publicly traded company will do just that, but if consumer values suddenly shift and it becomes more profitable for workers and supply chains to be neither seen nor heard, then that’s what we’ll get. Much has been made of this tension and one attempt to address it is the “benefit corporation” movement. From Benefitcorp.net: Benefit Corporations are a new class of corporation that 1) creates a material positive impact on society and the environment; 2) expands fiduciary duty to require consideration of non-financial interests when making decisions; and 3) reports on its overall social and environmental performance using recognized third party standards. Essentially, benefit corporations, (often called b-corps, for short) are a new way to charter a corporation (in certain states) that legal obligates its owners to consider the business’ impact on society, (as opposed to the existing charter, which requires profit maximization for shareholders under certain interpretations of the law).  It should be no surprise then, that when Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, (a wholly owned-subsidiary of Unilever, a publically traded company), recently announced it had become a B-Corp, many eye-brows were raised. The sale of Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever has often been used as an example of why benefits corporation status is necessary. According to many analysts, the founders were forced to sell to Unilever because the progressive (but publically-traded) ice cream company was legally obligated to maximize shareholder value by selling to the highest bidder. Ben & Jerry’s becoming a b-corp recently has been heralded by some as a great correction of a major mistake in the company’s history. However, things are a little more complicated then that. It turns out, Ben & Jerry’s has become a “Certified B Corp,” which is different from becoming chartered as a benefit corporation. An overview of the differences can be found here. But it seems like the most substantial differences are how legally binding they are or aren’t and how much verification happens. Chartering is a legal process and its legally binding. I believe that if a chartered benefit corporation doesn’t meet its social obligations, it could be sued or even have it’s charter revoked. However, there isn’t much in the way of a verification mechanism, as far as I know. B corp certification, on the other hand, is a certification that companies get when they subject themselves to inspection by the non-profit B-Labs. The certification isn’t legally binding in any way. So my interpretation is that, while legally everything is the same, companies that get B Corp certification can have that certification revoked, which (if they’re a big company) could cause significant damage to the brand image. Therefore, a certified b-corp, while not legally required to, will try to retain its social mission to avoid losing profits through a PR debacle. My point is that sincerity is elusive. In the current landscape, there are demands for transparency and for food that is produced ethically, but verification is complex and requires a significant amount of engagement, on the consumer’s part, to find the truth in the many claims made by companies and certification systems. As we explain in our 2011 GFO forecasts, in a decade technology will likely allow consumers to evaluate claims on their own. However, making this process quick and easy will probably remain a challenge for years to come.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/seeking-silicon-valley-experimenting-with-alternative-futures/ On Saturday December 8th, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on the Future of Silicon Valley, as part of the closing celebrations of the Zero1 Biennial.  The discussion touched familiar topics such as geographical boundaries and which places had rightful claims to be the capital of the Silicon Valley. My favorite answer came from the audience: the capital of Silicon Valley is the somewhere in transit, either on Caltrain or inching down 101. But with an anthropologist (Jan English-Lueck), an artist (Joel Slayton), and a futurist (myself) on the panel, we managed to uncover novel insights at the intersections of these domains. For me, the most important ideas centered around two themes: bridging the experiential gap, and the role of intentional experimentation built into the physical environment and embodied in culture and behavior. Creating a bridge between the “crackpot realism of the present” and the abstract landscape of future possibility is essential to effective futures thinking and increased foresight. In my work, and in the approach we take at IFTF, this is done through the creation of performances, immersive games, artifacts from the future, and other provocations that force one from being a passive observer of the future, into an active participant in making the future. This idea of participant-observation is also core to the practice of anthropology, and Jan English-Lueck highlighted the role of “being here” in Silicon Valley, and continuing to cultivate a culture of inclusion for those who want to be here, in order to secure a robust and successful future for the region. It is about creating an open platform for people of all backgrounds and talent to contribute. Joel Slayton, as an artist and curator, pointed out the role that the arts play in creating a mind-shift for those who engage with the art. In many cases, it is about making the everyday seem strange, and making us see the world from a different pair of eyes. Technologies are also critical in shifting our sensorium and opening new vistas toward the future, and the marriage of art and technology is a natural outcome of these forces and desires. …which leads back to that profound human desire to push forward into uncharted territories, either culturally, cognitively, or chronologically. A “safe” place for experimentation is necessary for an individual, culture, or geographic region to move the dial of human destiny. Silicon Valley has given itself the freedom and taken the initiative to make the future, to make many alternative futures. We highlighted four of these alternative futures in our Biennial Map, and the organizers of the Zero1 Biennial, and at their home at the Zero1 Garage, have opened and sustained a dedicated place for experimentation. I have no doubt that many alternative and preferred visions for the Silicon Valley and beyond will be born and nurtured there. Maybe even yours? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/personalized-medicine-world-conference-2013-hh-talks-with-dave-kronlage/ Health Horizons researchers will be attending the 2013 Personalized Medicine World Conference here in Silicon Valley, January 28-29. In the run-up to the conference, we’ll be talking with some of the scheduled speakers to preview their talks at the event. (For more information on the conference itself, please visit the PMWC 2013 conference website.) Our first in the series of pre-conference conversations is with Dave Kronlage, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Pamlab, LLC, a biomedical company that specializes in prescription medical foods. His talk, Targeted Bioactive Nutrition for Inherited Metabolic Diseases, will close out the Drug Development and Diagnostics session on the first day. That talk—and this interview—discuss research that indicates biomarkers can be used to anticipate a patients response, or lack thereof, to prescription medical foods (as well as to pharmaceuticals). During our conversation, one of the things I found particularly interesting was simply the existence of prescription medical foods. “Medical foods are a distinct category, which are regulated by the FDA differently,” Kronlage explained to IFTF's Health Horizons team. To be considered a medical food by the FDA, he continued, a product needs to meet a number of criteria. For instance: its active ingredient must be present in/derived from a food, it must be administered enterally (either through the mouth or a feeding tube), it has to address distinct nutritional or metabolic requirements of patients with a specific diagnosed disease or condition, and it has to be proved safe and effective in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Many prescription medical foods are covered by many health insurance plans and generics even exist for some products. The category was created relatively recently (1988) and, to me, is interesting in the context of how food categories and regulation could change in the future. In other countries, there are many government certification systems to verify health claims around foods. And, here in the U.S., we’re seeing some attempts to increase regulation of foods that contribute to chronic diseases. Medical foods point to the viability of creating whole new categories of foods and medicines, as well as to some of the implications of those changes. For instance, being prescribed a “food” has a very different emotional connotation, when compared to being prescribed a "drug." But even within this very specific industry of medical foods, there are changes on the horizon. Researchers have found that certain medical foods, much like some pharmaceuticals, may be more or less effective for a given patient based on their genetic makeup.  “Some patients with major depression have a genetic mutation that limits the amount of L-methylfolate available from a normal diet,” Kronlage says, explaining that L-methylfolate is a bioactive nutrient helps the brain synthesize monoamines that augment antidepressant response. In short, genomics can identify patients (who do not respond well to anti-depressants naturally) who would have their response to anti-depressants improved by taking l-methylfolate as a prescription medical food. Genomic testing’s increasing availability has similar implications in medical food as it does in pharmaceuticals. It could lead to a future in which a drug or medical food that is effective for 20 percent of the population is only prescribed to that 20 percent. Such a change would seem, (to much of society), to be a correction to an imbalance. However, for people in the pharmaceutical industry, it's a major disruption. What’s interesting about Pamlabs is that Kronlage says it is embracing this change. “You're cutting out a large portion of the market,” Kronlage acknowledges. “But we're willing to give up the percentage of the market that doesn't respond [to our products], because, in exchange, you get results that are far superior to standard care. “We’re not interested in the traditional trial and error approach [to prescribing treatments],” he said, adding that having to go through multiple rounds of treatment before finding one that’s effective is very difficult for patients. “We'd rather be the first line option for a small group than the third or fourth line in all groups.” http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/future-of-the-hospital-infographic/ Future of the Hospital game starts January 8 at 12pm EST / 9am PST - register now! For 24 hours, starting January 8 at 9am PST, play the Future of the Hospital game to help reinvent the community hospital. Register now! futureofhospitals.org What if your hospital wasn't there when you needed it most ...? For over 100 years, the hospital has been the core of our healthcare system, and a pillar of every community—the central hub where people enter and leave this world, and where scientific discoveries become life saving procedures. But in the last couple decades, technological, social and economic forces have chipped away at this model. As these trends continue—making traditional clinical environments punishingly expensive to run, and increasingly less necessary for many healthcare needs—the future of the community hospital is uncertain. This is the premise of our new Foresight Engine game on the Future of the Hospital—join us for this 24-hour collaborative forecasting event starting at 12pm EST (9am PST) January 8! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/government-for-the-100-lessons-from-the-mmowgli-game/ What if games will be critical tools for finding new ideas and catalyzing new collaborations to solve our most wicked and intractable problems? That’s the question we’ve been exploring in MMOWGLI, an ongoing project from the Office of Naval Research, Institute for the Future, and Naval Postgraduate School to evoke fresh insight into serious topics by engaging online crowds through games. Since we launched in spring 2011, 2700 players have contributed 20,000 ideas across three game events to avert Somali piracy, build an agile Navy for the 21st century, and re-invent the military’s relationship to energy consumption. As the U.S. Navy’s first crowdsourced gaming effort, MMOWGLI has been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, MSNBC, Washington Post, Wired, and Scientific American. We’ve learned a few lessons along the way: how to harness the power, and accept the limitations of games, and how to guide, sustain, and respect the energy of our players. In our new paper Government for the 100% Using Games to Democratize Innovation and Innovate Democracy, my co-author Garth Jensen (U.S. Navy) and I share what we’ve learned building MMOWGLI games and collaborating with the amazing community of MMOWGLI players. In the paper we've distilled our experience into five design patterns. We hope our own best practices can inform other emerging forms online participation—serious games and crowdsourced innovation challenges like MMOWGLI, online learning platforms and massively open online courses, and early experiments in participatory governance. From the paper, here are three of our insights: Tell a story together. Our brains are hard-wired for narrative. A compelling story can make the difference between half-hearted involvement and all-in engagement, even when we have to work to finish the story. Some of the most successful interactive games of the past decade immersed players in intricate plots and sympathetic characters, but efforts to ‘gamify’ participation often focus on quantified rewards at the expense of storytelling.  For each MMOWGLI game we imagined a fictional-yet-plausible scenario, like an imagined global crisis (like the energyMMOWGLI scenario video below) that needs to be resolved or an epic opportunity to change the world. But each MMOWGLI game only introduced these stories, leaving a “narrative whitespace” for our players to imagine an ending and create the future through their own ideas and dialogue. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/inventing-a-toy-in-the-21st-century/ What do you do when you want to manufacture and sell a toy? A few years ago I would have told you to start with a prototype, do some patent research, try to get in touch with a manufacturer, and somehow license the idea. This is what I did, or at least tried to do. But that was a few years ago, and now we live in the future! And in this future everyone has the tools to make potentially anything. This is the story of how I tried to bring a toy to market, failed, but then made it anyways, and now I'm letting the internet decide if it is worth manufacturing on a large scale. Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by geometry, so I was the happiest (big) kid in the world when my mom got me a set of small round magnets called Buckyballs. I sat on the floor making geometric shapes for that entire day. Over the next few months I spent countless hours playing with these magnets. Then, while taking a morning shower, I had an idea for a magnetic toy. The idea was to attach one buckyball to each corner of a plastic triangle. There are some magnetic construction toys out there that are similar, but this is toy is unique because it has a magnetic ball floating in a spherical chamber, allowing it to automagically realign the polarity. This was my hunch anyways, so I went and looked online. Sure enough, no one was using this technique.  I started with a prototype made of tape and heavy paper. It didn't have the automagic-aligning spherical chamber, but this proof of concept demonstrated that the magnets were strong enough to form large, stable shapes.  After this, I started my patent research. Having absolutely zero training in patent law, I turned to online tutorials on how the US patent system works. I applied for filer status and printed off stacks of similar patents which had possible overlapping claims  with my own invention. I found two toys in particular that had claims, buried deep inside the patents, which were relevant, but not explicitly for the same use. To the best of my abilities I had surmised that mine was indeed a novel idea and at least worthy of a patent application. Writing up a patent seemed pretty straight forward, look at a bunch of other patents and followed the framework. I drew up some diagrams and started writing my claims tree, but then I ran into a wall. The two relevant claims which I had discovered earlier were contradictory to each other, and these were international patents, which are even trickier than American patents. The patent-writing tutorials I had found weren't specific enough to address this issue.  I didn't know any patent attorneys at the time, so I looked one up on Yelp. In retrospect, I should have found someone who specializes in toys, or at least likes toys, because several hundred dollars later, I was right where I had started. I still had no idea how to solve this issue of patenting. In parallel with writing the patent, I was looking into manufacturing. There was a local company that designed dyes for mass manufacturing injection molded parts. This guy loved the idea, and was very enthusiastic about designing the complicated several-part dye for releasing a widget that has a negative draft angle on it. Unfortunately, the cost for just making the dye had  more zeros on the end of it than something I could afford.  This whole process had taken about a month. I had learned a great deal about patent law, manufacturing logistics and a little bit about licensing. Most everyone who heard about the idea (and would be willing to play with a toy), absolutely loved it, but I couldn't make it happen. It was taking a lot of time, and I didn't have the resources. One afternoon I briefly met with a few people who license ideas like this, but it felt sort of like a scam, and I was uncomfortable just signing my intellectual property to someone. So I shelved the project and persued an internship here at the Institute for the Future. Upon arriving to San Francisco, I was quickly introduced to Nosebridge, a local Hackerspace. In addition to electronics hacking, laser cutters, a darkroom for developing film, a full metalshop with lathes, a CNC and a laser cutter, there were 3D printers. As soon as I saw what they could do, I knew that I needed to print my magnet toy. The original design didn't work very well on the 3D printer, so I rebuilt it in the computer, optimizing the design for this method of manufacturing. After some trial and error, I found the perfect size spherical chamber to fit a buckyball. The toy totally worked, and what more, it was tons of fun to play with!  Due to my frustration with the patent system, I shared the design file on Thingiverse, an online library of 3D objects, so that anyone with a 3D printer and Buckyballs could make their own magnet toys. Lots of people printed their own and shared pictures. Someone even modified the file so that you could print out multiple toys at the same time, and they re-shared it as a derivative. The toy was published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. This means that anyone is allowed to make this toy, and even modify it, so long as they attribute their creation to the original creator (myself), and and so long as they do not sell it for commercial purposes. This lets people play with the idea, innovate on it and share it with their friends. Meanwhile, I can be sure that no one steals the idea and starts selling it at the gift shop, but if I want to sell it for my own profit, this is allowed.  For about a year, I was content playing with my new toy, making shapes, and giving them to friends. It felt good knowing that other people liked playing with them, too. Then I started reading Chris Anderson's book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. In this book, Anderson writes about how ten years ago, unless you were willing to risk your life savings, your credit, and the well being of yourself and your family, it was nearly impossible for an individual to take a product to market. The big companies simply controlled too much of the supply line and the means of production. Plus these companies could afford a team of lawyers to find a way around inventors trying to make a fair wage or start a company. Anderson further writes that the environment for creating products is different now. Through hackerspaces like Noisebridge, or the makerspaces that are springing up in public libraries, anyone can now prototype their ideas, and that anyone can take their idea to market through services like Quirky.   Quirky is a service where anyone can submit an idea, then everyone can vote on whether or not they like it. If enough people like the idea, including Quirky's internal design team,  it goes into development. In this phase, both community members and the Quirky team collaborate to improve and refine the idea. After the idea is shipped off for manufacturing, the community can help market the product as well. Everyone who participates in this process — the inventor, the community, and Quirky — share the profit fairly. I'm not sure if the Quirky community will like this idea, but I'm not really taking a large risk in submitting it. To keep spam down, Quirky charges $10 to submit an idea, and the whole process only took about 20 minutes of my time. This method is drastically different from the month of patent research, attorney fees, and meetings about manufacturing. To speak nothing of the cost for tooling, and the risk of total failure. I am comfortable submitting my idea to Quirky because it is a transparent process, and I am excited to see how others might improve on the idea. And even it it doesn't work, no big deal.  You can follow along with, and even participate in this story on Quirky's website. Let me know what you think.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/trends-shaping-our-future/ IFTF's Ten-Year Forecast Research Director Kathi Vian spoke at Sustaining Women in Business conference (SWB 2012) on the trends shaping our collective global future. #brilliant Watch the video now >> http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/a-more-human-solution/ The December issue of US Airways Magazine features the first publicized excerpt from The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World, by Marina Gorbis (Simon & Schuster, April 2013). Lance Elko was eager to get his article, "A Human Solution," in the magazine's Must Read section and went into production prior to final titling (full article). http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/libraries-as-the-commons-for-creation/ Libraries are the future of making. Everyone knows that libraries have books, and more recently DVDs and free internet. But libraries all over the country are beginning to curate collections of  manufacturing equipment, and in the nature of the library all of this is available for public use. If you have ever spent any time in a metal shop or a wood shop, you will know that they have equipment that is loud, messy, and potentially dangerous, without the proper safety training. This type of environment is — on the surface anyways — the exact opposite of the quiet, comfortable reading space that libraries have become. At the core however, both books and 3D printers share some surprising similarities. Photo Credit: willyg on flickr A good friend told me that libraries are the original hackerspaces, (roughly synonymous with "makerspace"). This was really interesting, as I'm a huge fan of hackerspaces, so I decided to look into the history of libraries. It turns out that libraries aren't just about media collection and distribution. In this short video, R. David Lankes, professor at Syracuse's iSchool, says,  "The image of the library as a book palace, crammed to the rafters with things to read, and that being its sole purpose is a modern invention. It's about a 60 year old invention."  The original concept behind free libraries, the first in America were set up by people like Benjamin Franklin, was that they were to be a social gathering space, or a public commons. From my personal experience with libraries, it seems that they have strayed from this original purpose as the commons, and they are mostly just "Book Palaces." Alas, there is hope, many librarians are actively experimenting with the defining aspects of what takes to make a library. In an interview with NPR, Jeff Krull, director of the Alan County Public Library, he said,  "We see the library as not being in the book business, but being in the learning business, and the exploration business, and the expand-your-mind business. We feel this is really in that spirit, that we provide a resource to the community that individuals would not be able to have access to on their own." In my quest to learn more about this new world, I turned to my local library in San Francisco, and learned that in true maker-fashion, the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) is trying stuff out to see what works. But this isn't any willy-nilly playing around, SFPL plans to re-imagine their teen space, which is currently a lonely collection of about a dozen bookshelves and a few chairs. SFPL is not alone. They have a long list of collaborators in on this project, some of which include KQED (San Francisco's local NPR/PBS station), the Bay Area Video Coalition, and California Academy of Sciences, a world renowned science museum. Together these groups are working to create an environment where teens can develop new, needed literacies that will equip them for life in the 21st century.  The SFPL recently hosted a makerspace-style pop-up event for teens called " Hive Pop-Up: Maker Hacker Pop-up Media Jam Fest for Teens. Save the Earth!”    " Participants could make internet memes about nature (mostly revolving around squirrels), or experiment with stop-animation video claymation. Many people invented things using LEGOS. One of my favorites is a bridge the teens built that will help prevent pollution in the Pacific Ocean. Type A Machines, a local San Francisco 3D printer company, brought one of their machines, in order to show the teens that in the future, you will be able to make anything. Check out more cool inventions on the library's maker blog at hivesf.tumblr.com. Photo Credit: SFPL on Facebook Jon Worona, of SFPL, sees great potential in using 3D printers as a conduit for learning, and this is about way more than just making stuff. 3D printers share a lot in common with books, they open new worlds of understanding to the user, and hold in them the basic lessons that we all need to learn. Just like a book they embody limitless possibility, and bridge socio-economic gaps. Anyone can learn to use a 3D printer, just like anyone can learn to read a book.  The process of 3D printing can get pretty involved, it takes time and determination to operate one of these machines. It starts with a 2D concept design, like a drawing, a basic maker skill that can benefit everyone. Next, 3D modeling with CAD software promotes software literacy. Understanding the material properties for the printer filament and the sourcing of these materials open the doors to material science and environmental literacy. Each of these steps in the printing process is a potential jumping off point where anyone can get inspired and dive into that subject and strive to become an expert, and if they don't want to become an expert in design or manufacturing, they are now stocked with the skills needed to tackle nearly any problem, skills like critical thinking and hypothesis testing.  When I spoke with Jon he was talking about so much more than just books and 3D printers. He is acting on this concept of making stuff in libraries, Jon sees the role of a library as a public commons where people can get together to become content creators, to become hackers and makers. Hands on learning is a big part of this, research has shown that when students in school do more engaged learning activities, they learn more. Don't believe me? Check out this article by Karen P. Kaun. All of the evidence showing that we need to be creating hands-on-learning spaces begs the question why so many learning spaces are engineered to be so sterile. Makerspaces, especially in libraries, will help remedy this by bringing life and energy back into our learning spaces. Through these spaces, we, and for generations to come, will gain fluency in the new literacies of the future such as technology, the environment, and even civic engagement, such as making bridges to prevent pollution.  In a present where fewer and fewer people have basic maker skills, and with a future where these skills will be as important to have as they ever have been, libraries with makerspaces will help us be prepared for any future. Whether it be one where everything is automated, or one where we build and make everything we own. These are important skills to hone, and it is imperative that we have spaces, free for everyone, where we can do just that.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/gifs-clearly-the-future-of-all-communication-for-all-of-mankind-seriously/ The gif (graphic interchange format) was introduced in 1987 by Steve Wilhite (who knew?)! But gifs are just beginning to find their true usefulness. yup...   The gif is quickly taking over as the future of communication, for advertising to cultural commentary and maybe even community organizing. Gifs are like the haiku of the internet, a way to express complex emotions and thoughts through a simple animated image often lasting only a millisecond, on repeat. I, for one, welcome these innovative and delightful uses of gifs. My favorite current use of this old, but new, tool is a Tumbler called #What Should We Call Opera, which focuses on… you guested it, opera! (Thanks to colleague Jason Tester for finding it.) Using gifs the author of this Tumbler has translated opera, a fairly elite and how brow art form, into a commonly understood language of funny animated clips. If at first it doesn’t make sense, just scroll through a few pages and open yourself up to your first reaction to the gifs. Besides having a guaranteed laugh, eventually you'll begin to sense the bigger story of opera, and the authors perspective on the art form.  After spending about 15 minutes viewing the gifs of this Tumbler I learned more about Opera than I have in the past 15 years. Did you know Houston Opera ran the first ever mariachi opera? How delightful to be able to 'read' about opera and laugh all the way through!  While gifs tend to lean towards the cheeky side of internet memes and pop culture commentary, the future is a wide open plane.  Imagine the power of gifs for supporting marginalized communities. We often talk about humor as a key component to nonviolent action, how might gifs open up a new front of nonviolent communication and action? How might gifs open up new possibilities for illiterate and connected communities? Out are the old drawings of how best to take medicine; in are new gifs that simply show you what to do, with humor, and hopefully culturally relevant animations and memes. How might we even use gifs to merge the world of oral tradition and the social internet? I don't know, but the future of the gif makes me feel something like this...    http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/task-and-matter-routing-for-health/ Via Springwise comes word of an interesting project out of the UK called Click to Cure. At its core, the idea is simple: Give people a bit of training and set them loose on a huge set of images of cancer cells in the hopes that their efforts can advance basic R&D. The project's sponsors describe the effort as: New techniques are revolutionising our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, but with radical advances in technology come new challenges. We have huge amounts, terabytes, of archive research data that requires urgent analysis; analysis that our scientists are doing everyday. They just can’t get through it fast enough. Although we live in a technological age, our datasets still require analysis by real people and cannot be left to computers alone. It takes human intuition and the human eye to spot patterns, defects and anomalies-computer algorithms just aren’t good enough. The process is slow for a lone scientist, but with the collective power of hundreds of thousands of people, we can speed up this research by years. The faster we can analyse our data, the faster we can unlock its secrets and discover new methods of treatment and detection; and together we will find cures for cancer sooner, rather than later. It's a signal of one of several new mechanisms for coordinating activities that my colleagues in the Technology Horizons Program highlighted at their great conference earlier this month. This project, an example of what my colleagues called human task routing, points toward an unprecedented ability to take complex tasks--like conducting basic cancer research--and break them into small chunks that virtually anyone can perform. Our Technology Team also highlighted something they called matter routing, which you can think of the combination of autonomous vehicles and algorithms to enable, in effect, matter to route itself to us. A good signal of this comes from Fast Company, which notes a prototype project aimed at using drones to deliver defibrillators to the exact location of cardiac arrest events, which can (at least theoretically) get to an emergency faster than paramedics--in a situation where saving a minute can literally mean the difference between life and death. Together, these two signals point toward opportunities to improve upon a couple of basic ideas we have in health. Medicine currently requires incredibly skilled labor--think doctors, ph.d. researchers and so on--whose contributions, as in the case of response to cardiac arrest, are often required unexpectedly, and with incredible speed. These signals point toward a future where the ability to summon support--from the crowd as well as needed resources like defibrillators--will make it a lot easier to satisfy the needs to have expertise and resources available as needed. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/urgent-futures-iftf-advisory-council-inaugural-meeting/ The futurist and sci-fi writer William Gibson (@GreatDismal) recently said, “give me a room full of either artists or criminals talking about what they might be able to do with an emergent technology, and I’ve got it, I’ve made my lunch right there…” IFTF recently brought its Advisory Council together for a meeting on urgent futures, and a similar gamut of ideas emerged. Urgent futures are those whose scale of impact and potential for changing the human landscape are so extraordinary that we ignore them at great risk. Many of these urgent futures are obvious and underway—for example, the rapid urbanization of cities all over the world without sufficient infrastructures for the additional population. But others are less obvious and fly “under the radar.” What kinds of urgent futures are on the horizon? Asking a group of renowned thinkers—from anthropologist Nancy Chen to Zynga’s Kati London to game designer Jane McGonigal—to each come up with an urgent future is wildly engaging. Nancy Chen asked us to consider China’s GDP and energy costs, which are growing at the same rate—can China’s middle class rise in the shape of a green onion? The renowned interactive media artist, Scott Snibbe, posed the question, what does it mean that apps are the new corner store? These types of leading questions are influencing our research, including the future of small scale manufacturing and chartering new drivers in technology.  Other council members offered new products and insights.  Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain aired a beautiful short production that crowdsourced readers all over the world to give voice to a revised Declaration of Inter-dependence.  Her urgent future not only highlights the technological bonds that foster creativity, but the human bonds that require cooperation.  When every person has a phone with a camera, Shlain thinks the world will look more like a film or photo to be shared. And as much as sharing is our future, robotics professor Ken Goldberg advised that we are also entering an age where surveillance looks more like co-veillance—humans monitoring each other’s activity—and increasingly “robo-veillance.” As with any technological development, there are cautions for the future use of these tools.  What will our privacy look like in a future filled with more eyes on each person? Right now our world looks like a blue marble from far away.  But what happens when the planet is less blue? Scientist and activist J. Nichols reaffirmed the urgency of our waterways, and the knowledge that since we protect less than 1% of our oceans, they lie downstream from our entire economy.  IFTF researchers presented alongside the advisors. Rachel Hatch offered a glimpse into the future of our memory, where we start to prioritize how to find information we store over knowing information itself.  Researcher Jake Dunagan challenged the group to envision a new form of governance, one that can withstand the immense influence of humans on this epoch.  Our advisor Joi Ito ended his presentation with a call for “nowism”: the importance of using compass directions instead of maps and looking at systems over objects.  Rather than being stuck in the present or past, these scenarios and inspiring talks have grounded us more firmly in the future, and its most urgent questions.  While neither criminals nor all artists, the urgent futures this group described would make Gibson’s lunch any day. For our part, IFTF will be using these urgent futures, and our advisory council, as inspiration for our continued research in 2013. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/californias-cap-and-trade-system-a-choice-for-making-the-future/ With the launch this week of its cap and trade system, California’s state leadership demonstrates great foresight and a proactive approach to shaping our future. Passed in 2006, the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32) aims to reduce greenhouse gasemissions through the trading of allowances by polluters. On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, the first allowances were auctioned.  Companies received 90% of their allocated permits for free in this first round.  As companies innovate and find new ways of reducing their emissions, they can sell their excess permits to other polluters for a profit. Over time, the total number of permits will fall in number.  (See diagram illustrating the system from the San Francisco Chronicle. See Smithsonian for surprising history of cap and trade.) California has a history of embracing the future.  The week before, California voters supported Prop. 39 and the establishment of a new state fund to support the adoption of clean energy technology, the Clean Energy Job Creation Fund.  Half the revenue generated (up to $550 million) by the closing of tax loop holes will fund energy efficiency retrofits and renewable energy systems in public facilities, provide financial and technical assistance for retrofits, and provide job training in these fields for veterans and disadvantaged youth. The other half will go into the state’s general fund.  In reference to the success of Prop. 39, Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the agency charged with implementing the state's cap-and-trade system, explains, "We put our money where our mouths are. We back up what we do in regulation by shifting subsidies from things that pollute and are inefficient to things that are more efficient and make our state more resilient.”  The California experience demonstrates that with our forward-thinking policymakers, business leaders and residents, we can become more adaptive to our changing circumstances and drive change in a positive way. In general, when our context changes, we are always faced with the dilemma of shifting our trajectory. Given the formidable change underway, the way we’ve done things in the past is no longer appropriate for our new set of circumstances (i.e. climate change, growing global demand for resources, etc.).  The battle over what to do about climate change is a choice between denial of our changing context and a proactive approach to shaping the future.  There are two curves:  the descending incumbent curve and the ascending emergent curve. The incumbent curve is inherently descending because as our context changes, what worked in the past is likely to work in a different set of circumstances.  The ascending curve is the future – we know it’s there, but it is less clear than what we know. Typically, our movement from the incumbent to the emergent curve is dictated by how we perceive the immediate costs and the movements of our competitors. The two-curve model was originally conceived by Ian Morrison, past president of IFTF, in his book, The Second Curve.  While Ian’s book focuses on the business, changing markets, and the risks of changing your business model, in the context of climate change, the two-curve model is useful.  The urgent need to shift to the next curve is clear (see vast field of climate science).  The means for doing so are diverse and many options are clear, while many others are still emerging. The incumbent curve represents business as usual. It is the fossil fuel economy. Centralized energy generation is the reigning model, based on large-scale systems and centrally controlled distribution.  Pollution is considered an externality and not part of the balance sheet. But the context is changing.  As global demand continues to rise, prices will also continue to rise.  As environmental conditions worsen, new constraints will be put upon these resources as governments realize the costly impacts of fossil fuel combustion on public health, our built environment and the economy. The emergent curve represents early adaptation to the changing context.  While it is an uncertain place, in the area of energy and climate disruption, there are some clear options in technology, public policy, and adoption of new practices. Energy, and resource efficiency gains more broadly, can be achieved across the economy from production to consumption creating both economic and environmental gains. The incumbent curve can be seductive.  It’s the reality we know.  It’s where a lot of money has already been made.  Ask the California Chamber of Commerce who attempted to halt the launch of the allowance auction this week.  And then also this week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that as a result of new drilling techniques, the U.S. is forecast to become the world’s top oil producer by 2017.  Although this prediction assumes that oil prices will remain relatively high and that new sources will be discovered after 2020, this possible future allows for incumbents to hold on to their familiar business models while continuing to down play climate change.  In addition to climate change, increasing the production of oil and gas as is predicted by the IEA will require an 85% increase in water consumption at a time when freshwater resources are diminishing as a result of growing global demand.  For the first time, the International Energy Agency’s World Outlook 2012 includes a chapter on water. (Watch the interview with IEA Executive Director, Maria van der Hoeven.) With California’s cap and trade system now in place, it is estimated to generate $1 billion from the sale of permits. The question now is what to do with this new revenue? The law specifies that revenues go into a special greenhouse gas reduction account and that programs receiving funds align with the goals of AB32. Next 10, a California nonpartisan nonprofit, recently sponsored a research series exploring the state’s options for how to use the allowance value generated by cap and trade.  According to the findings, the greatest economic benefit would come from new energy efficiency programs. Faced with this propitious opportunity, how will our state leadership and residents choose to shape the future?  Will we use the new revenue to plug our momentary budget gaps or invest wisely in driving our shift to the Next Curve, the new energy economy?  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/knight-fellows-visit-the-future/ On November 15 the Knight Fellows visited The Institute for the Future for a workshop on the future of media and storytelling. I was lucky enough to participate in this workshop and I can tell you that journalists are a fun group of people. The Knight Fellowship is a yearlong sabbatical, where journalists come together from all over the world, and immerse themselves in the fast paced and innovative culture of Silicon Valley. The goal is to explore new and innovative ways for journalists to tell their stories. IFTF's work is particularly relevant here, as we have been studying the future of media since the birth of the Internet. For the past 44 years, IFTF has explored potential futures for new communication tools. Marina Gorbis and David Pescovitz from IFTF shared with us some of the history that lead to a discussion about the state of media and technology today.  At an event in 1972 where the ARPANet was introduced, Bob Johansen was presenting on behalf of IFTF about the early use of the net for surveys and to connect scientists. An impassioned computer scientist stood up and said, to paraphrase, "the use of the ARPANet for person-to-person communication is a mis-use of CPU." That scientist was almost right in a way, in that the ARPANet was designed for data communications, not people-to-peopleToday, most people spend their time on the Internet on social networking sites, and primarily they use it to communicate with friends, family, and strangers. And these interactions are changing the face of the world, for better or for worse.  As a group, everyone discussed a variety of new tools that can be used for journalism; ranging from the Internet of things or data-driven content creation, to sonification of information or augmented reality. Could these new tools be creating a culture of digital distraction, where no one can pay attention? Are they augmenting our abilities as human beings and leading us down paths affecting our future evolution? As the group discussed the finer points on both sides of this argument, Jake Dunagan, a researcher here at IFTF, chimed in, "I'm with Socrates. I think the written word has destroyed our memory.” Perhaps we are more married to our technology and our words than we think. It is possible that we are evolving in unimaginable ways, but don’t know it yet. Latoya, a Knight Fellow, said, "Our brains are literally rewiring. We could look at it as a loss, or we could look at it as an adaptation." Throughout all of this, a constant we have is the human narrative — our story. It is a journalist’s duty to tell this story in whichever medium is most appropriate for the time. In this workshop, we explored new mediums through which journalists could tell the story of mankind. To find the best medium for a story, you first choose a subject, so we decided to explore the concept of Urgent Futures. The events that can change the face of the world overnight, these are the Black Swan events that we don’t see coming, and this is what we focused on. Everyone in the room was asked to think of the most urgent scenario that could affect the future. We broke up into groups to look at these opportunities. Anyone could join any group and we were free to move between them. Here at the future we vote with our feet, so after a quick brainstorm session the groups came up with some truly innovative ideas. To summarize a few:  Reporting on a company index that measures total earnings, taxes paid back to society, worker treatment and compensation, environmental infractions, etc. A reputation system, where journalists can call colleagues out for citing false sources, or credit each other for using credible facts. A world map that aggregates and sorts all published stories by topic, focusing on climate change stories. A climate change drama show for television. Mobile news trucks for hyper-local reporting in communities, allows for a focus on citizen journalism. New educational techniques: Journalism in the classroom, reports on stories and engages the students. Data based school reform, where quantitative data effects educational policies. A global map of privacy, showing what the cultural norms are for "privacy" in different areas of the world and within different cultures. Privacy stock exchange gives users bargaining rights when sharing or not sharing their information.  These are some truly great ideas. I for one would really like to see some of these become a reality. If anyone can make this happen, it is the Knight Fellows! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/social-bot-competition-2012/ As part of last week's Fall Technology Horizons conference, IFTF teamed up with Pacific Social Architecting Corporation to host a first of it's kind Social Bot Competition. Tim Hwang and the team at Pacific Social put together a web form to design a social bot–a bit of code the impersonates a real person—or in my case, several bots. Creating these bots, as it turns out, was easier than opening a new Facebook account! (Granted, the guys over at Pacific Social did all of the heavy lifting.) I've always wanted to make a social bot. Last year, on the day before Thanksgiving, I attempted to make a bot using a tutorial titled, How to make a Twitter bot without any programming experience. But I was easily distracted by cornbread, pumpkin pie, and boardgames. I really did want to make a bot, but it seemed to require a pretty big time commitment—more time than was available to me, since I'd recently gotten a 3D printer (and 3D printers are black holes when it comes to free time). So this Fall I was thrilled to have the opportunity to create, not only my own social bot, but a full blown bot competition for our Technology Horizon's conference, Realigning Human Organization, with my colleague, Research Director, Jason Tester. We worked with Tim's team to set it up so everyone in the competition was able to customize their bot’s personality, including mood and areas of interest. We wrote six provocative questions and defined the sleep cycle—that is, when and how often the bot would be tweeting. The bots I made focused on a variety of areas: @ManOfTomorrow asked questions about the future, where each question embodied a senses i.e. touch, taste, smell. @Ecartomony’s profile read, “I have a BA from UT in Business Management and a strong interest in Post-Modern Art Theory.” And she asked provocative questions about the intersection between art and finance. I deigned @CheeseSports to be a jerk and it was promptly banned from Twitter. My personal favorite, @Catularity mostly just rambled on about cats, sometimes in relation to the future. The goals of this social bot competition were to gain followers, start conversations with people about the future, and expand the frontiers of human interaction. The bots’ successes ranged from engaging real people in lengthy discussions about the future or governance, to nonsensical banter about cats, or to the bot that was banned for bot-like behavior.  I am happy to say that the experiment garnered some attention by media, which you can read here: New York Magazine—The Bot is Deceitful Among All Things Wired—Twitter Bots Fight It Out to See Who’s the Most Human Since the articles do a good job of covering the results of the competition above, so below I'll dive a little deeper into the types of interactions that are taking place between bots and humans, and explore what this means for the future of the social media. Catularity + carib In this interaction Catularity is the bot and carib is the unsuspecting human. After engaging carib in conversation about cats, the bot noticed that carib used a comparison in her response tweet, so the bot asked about it. However, carib’s sarcasm and Catularity’s misinterpretation of time lead to a confusing response, at which point carib became defensive. Catularity continued digging a hole and this interaction resulted in the bot becoming unintentionally offensive.  Human interaction? Since Alan Turing designed a test to measure a bot’s capability to converse on a level that can qualify as “human,” many bots have been created that are capable of human interaction, sometimes even being mistaken for the real thing.  Cleverbot is chat bot that is designed to engage in conversation. It learns from the people it interacts with and uses bits of conversation to augment and grow its conversational literacy.  Another bot that you are probably familiar with is Siri. This bot can be quite useful for people as it has access to personal calendars and to-do lists. Siri can also interface with Wolfram Alpha, which is a massively intelligent machine that can do complicated calculus, compare the population density of two cities, or let you know what airplanes are flying overhead.  Bots that interact with humans have been around for a while, and they are starting to gain intelligence that is way beyond the average human in some regards. Anyone who has spent some time on Twitter has probably run into spambots soliciting porn or encouraging them to vote, so how are the bots participating in this competition any different than the bots that precede them?  In this situation, Kobayashi Virtual Co asked Ron M Zettlemoyer a question about governance and technology. They proceeded to have what could look like a constructive conversation.  This type of interaction presents a unique opportunity—maybe these bot-human interactions can become beneficial for human communication. Perhaps bots could help fact check against a trusted database. Bots could help connect diverse groups or individuals whom would otherwise not communicate. Or the next time you’re at an event with a #hashtag, bots could bring something useful to the conversation instead of just spamming.  On the other hand, the bots we have today don’t always deliver fantastic results: Bots: good, bad, neutral? Bots are a technology that is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral. Bot designers have the opportunity to shape bots’ interactions, to make them ask provocative questions, push a political agenda, or sell the latest in consumer products. A bot’s design shapes the subjective opinion of whether they are good or bad. Regardless of the form these bots take, one thing is certain: bots play a crucial role in the ecosystem of the Internet, and it’s critical that we pay attention to their interactions, especially as it becomes easier and easier to create them, and more difficult to distinguish from human beings.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/brazilian-culinary-eco-patriotism-to-reduce-food-waste/ In our recently released 2011 forecast report Food Choices in Flux, we looked at Brazil in 2021 “where parents who once faced the threat of hunger are now watching their children struggle with obesity, but where lack of access to food remains a serious concern for many people.” This led to a forecast about the rise of culinary eco-patriotism – where eating Brazilian foods, particularly from remote areas such as the Amazon, becomes a way for residents to express their national pride while supporting sustainable production. In this future the meanings of sustainability will expand and eating local, Brazilian foods will be connected with status. We see a new signal of this out of last week’s Slow Food Fair in Turin, which featured Brazilian food waste champion Regina Tchelly. As a culinary eco-patriot herself, Tchelly teaches that even with the lowest budget, one can eat well by utilizing Brazilian foods traditionally considered waste. Her secret recipe? Risotto with watermelon rind (Which she also claims works as a natural Viagra.) Tchelly grew up poor in the North-East of Brazil and began working as a maid in Rio de Janeiro. She knew how to use every part of a food – down to the pumpkin rinds and banana peels – and was surprised by the amount of waste common in her employer’s kitchens. She knew how to be much more efficient with ingredients. In 2011, with less than US$100, she launched Favela Orgânica so that she could share her love of cooking while improving sustainable food practices and nutrition for favela residents in Rio de Janeiro. Within a year she had won US$5,000, bought a refrigerator and new utensils, and was given access to the kitchen and cafeteria of a local school. She now holds weekly classes, and at the end of this month will quit working as a maid so that she can devote herself to the program. Tchelly has been called the “ambassador of ‘aproveitamento total’ (‘making the most of everything’)” and she has successfully turned a pragmatic practice (repurposing watermelon rinds) into part of a global food trend (showcasing her risotto recipe in Italy). Frugality becomes a mark of social status when it is aligned with national sustainability goals, so poor and wealthy Brazilians alike can take pride in their thrifty consumption. As we forecasted in our report, consumers from all income levels in Brazil will search for ways to align their personal financial security with national environmental security and wealth. Newfound affluence will allow Brazilians to be more discerning about their food choices, but an increase in demand for packaged food creates new issues for food waste. A 2009 estimate from the Akatu Institute for Conscious Consumption claimed that, similar to the US and Europe, one third of all food in Brazil goes straight to the trash – that’s 39,000 tons per day. At the same time, millions of Brazilians are food insecure. The Akatu institute ran a series of ads (pictured below) that reminded people “It’s not only your pocket that feels it. By reducing waste you help reduce the generation of waste, and consequently, help preserving the planet.”   A class at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has paired up with The Global FoodBanking Network to tackle this problem with a social venture idea called “Ligação Fresco.” By connecting food producers with processors, this online platform becomes a virtual marketplace for unsalable produce. According to GFN, “Types of products, culling date, quality, and pricing are listed. Retailers, aggregators, packhouses indicate on an online portal what excess product they have available to purchase by processors who manage the logistics. By Year 5, “Ligação Fresco” is projected to facilitate over 1.6 million transactions annually and generate $2.6 million in revenue, while eliminating 30,000 tons of CO2 emissions.” Combining large-scale changes in production and distribution with individual commitments to waste less while still eating well, Brazil is witnessing an important shift in its food system. For more forecasts about food futures in Brazil (as well as Europe, China, and North America,) please see our report Food Choices in Flux.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/follow-tech-horizons-first-make-the-future-bootcamp-on-twitter/ Our first ever Tech Horizons’ Make the Future Bootcamp is on November 7-8; follow the conference on Twitter with #realignorg. Over the course of these two days, we’ll explore the technologies and mechanisms revolutionizing how we coordinate with each other to get things done. How we get things done is about to change. We’ve already seen technology revolutionize the way we communicate with each other. Now, we’re on the verge of a revolution in how we coordinate with each other to get things done. New mechanisms for coordinating human activity will disrupt and realign how we organize human activity—whether it is the coordination of work and workers, learning and knowledge creation, citizenship and community engagement, collaboration and problem-solving, or creativity and innovation. On November 7-8, at the Quadrus Conference Center in Menlo Park, we’re holding our first ever Technology Horizons’ Realigning Human Organization: Make the Future Bootcamp, to help IFTF clients anticipate the radical changes these emerging coordination mechanisms will bring about. Through a series of presentations and panels, as well as hands-on work with early versions of these emerging mechanisms, IFTF researchers, technology experts, and clients will explore the upcoming revolution in human coordination together and lay a foundation for resilience in the coming decade of dramatic organizational change. Bootcamp attendance is open to our clients only, however, you can participate by following the conference on Twitter with the hashtag #realignorg and engaging with the conversations we’ll be having over the course of the two days. Overview of Day 1 (Wednesday, November 7) The first day of Bootcamp kicks off with a welcome by Tech Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon (@rodfalcon) and Research Director David Pescovitz, after which Research Director Devin Fidler (@devinfidler) will take us on a journey through the history of massive realignments of organizational capability, to ground the forecasts we will present and put them in historical context. Next, a panel of IFTF and outside experts will explore six “New Mechanisms for Realigning Human Organization.” Devin, along with Research Directors Jason Tester (@guerillafutures) and Anthony Townsend (@anthonyiftf), will join Stanford Computer Science Professor Michael Bernstein (@msbernst), Pacific Social Architecting Corporation Director Tim Hwang (@timhwang), and Gigwalk Founder Matt Crampton (@mattccrampton) to introduce the technologies behind “Human Task Routing,” “Socialbot Swarms,” “Here-Sourcing,” “Do-ocracies,” “Matter Routing,” and “Autonomous Algorithms” and provide live demonstrations. In the following session, Anthony, Devin, and Jason will present four “Visions of Realignment,” forecasts of how we might learn, innovate, collaborate, and come together as communities and citizens when new mechanisms for coordination dramatically change the current forms of institutions. After lunch, David will host a panel on “Putting the Mechanisms to Work,” featuring Greg Lindsay (@greg_lindsay) of Fast Company and Tayyab Tariq, a MS candidate in computer science at Stanford. They’ll discuss the transformative potentials and unexpected consequences of these new emerging mechanisms for coordination. Next up is “Make The Future: New Mechanisms of Coordination,” an immersive crash course in emerging technologies and tools for coordinating human activity. We’ll work in small groups, each of which will be assigned one of the following expert guides: IFTF Research Director Jake Dunagan (@dunagan23), Mobile Works CEO Anand Kulkarni (@polybot), Pacific Social Architecting Corporation Partner Ian Pearce (@peeinears), oDesk Labor Scientist Greg Little @thought_stream), oDesk Enterprise Solutions Manager Whitney Priest, or Thumbtack.com President Jonathan Swanson (@swaanson). The first day closes with “Mounting Core Challenges,” in which Jason will introduce the Realignment Toolkit that we’ve created to help you navigate the coming opportunities and disruptions and prototype your responses. After which, there will be a reception and dinner keynote by journalist Quinn Norton (@quinnnorton), who has been published in Wired, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Make Magazine, Seed, and The Irish Times. She’ll discuss her recently concluded a multi-month Wired series on Anonymous and Occupy and explain what those groups say about the future of human coordination.  Overview of Day 2 (Thursday, November 8) After David leads the group in reflections on key insights from the previous day, Jason will lead a deep dive into the Toolkit in the session “Unboxing the Realignment Toolkit.” This will be a chance to sync organizational goals, diagnose new synergies between technology and organizational design, and prototype the actions you need to take. The day will conclude with “Creative Chaos with Chinese Characteristics,” in which Research Director Lyn Jeffery (@lynj) will explore the growing convergence of Chinese creative imitation and new small-scale manufacturing in the West, and explains its implications for the nature of creativity and innovation. This will be followed by a brief preview of next year’s Tech Horizons’ research agenda by Rod and IFTF Business Development Director Sean Ness (@seanness). We’re very excited about the new research we will be presenting at the Bootcamp and hope you’ll be following along on Twitter with the hashtag #realignorg. For more information, contact Sean at sness@iftf.org. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/2012-interns-present-an-interactive-map-of-the-decade/ Explore four worlds crafted by the 2012 Summer Interns in an interactive map of the decade that covers health, food, education, development, and mobile technology. This summer, the IFTF interns Alex, Dee, Eric, Sarah, and Sri designed a Map of the Decade as their final group project.  Sri also built the first prototype for an IFTF mobile app, details for which can be found in this PDF. Built in Google Earth, the map illustrates what 2022 might look like based on four different scenarios: Growth, Constraint, Collapse, and Transformation. Each scenario has its own layer in Google Earth, so readers of the map can explore and switch between layers at whim, discovering how the same locations in a small American city take on different identities depending on how the future plays out. Fixed ‘destinations’ on each scenario are clickable, opening descriptive textboxes. Each forecast contains roughly 20 destinations, creating an immersive, interactive Map of the Decade. Toward the beginning of the internship, we discussed new ways to display a Map of the Decade. How could we take interesting, rich content and present it in a format that encourages autonomous exploration and deeper reading?  Our discussions included embedding the forecast into an augmented reality app, so viewers of the map could explore it through their mobile phone by walking around downtown Palo Alto. Throughout the course of the internship, staff from the IFTF volunteered their time to present on their own areas of expertise, discuss how the Institute worked, and, toward the end of the internship, brainstorm with us about content and formatting for the Map of the Decade. Jamais Cascio and Tessa Finlev were of particular help, spending a day with us to work out how to create a forecast with clear drivers and coherence between the scenarios. Eventually, we arrived at Climate Change and Big Data as the biggest ‘questions’ behind the Map. How disruptive will climate change be in 10 years? How will humanity harness the power of data analysis? Will businesses and government misinterpret the data, hoard it, and use it to deliberately misinform the public?  Or will big data be open and optimized for the betterment of humanity, a sounding board for new algorithms designed to mitigate climate change and maximize efficient use of scarce resources? Based on these drivers, we developed 4 distinct scenarios. We then created a machine with an intricate control panel that allows us to adjust each of these drivers. Watch the video below to see it at work. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/kids-tech-safety-techno-guardian-angels/ How do you allow your kids the freedom to take risks without putting them in grave danger? How do you allow them enough freedom to break their arms, but not their necks.   Over the next decade, a series of tracking, surveillance, and security technologies will present new opportunities for modulating a child's risk environment, and will create new privacy, control, and resistance dilemmas for parents, educators, and caregivers.  In our report: The Magic of Kids Tech, we outline several key forecasts in the safety and security space for kids.  1. Kid-Mapping: Ubiquitous digital connection and lower-cost biological sampling and metrics have enabled the growth of the kid tracking industry and new government-mandated identification databases. Parents are using digital tracking software to monitor Internet use in the virtual world as well as outfitting their kids with sophisticated mobile devices and expecting frequent phone or text “check-ins” for monitoring in the physical world. In some instances, they are installing passive tracking applications in mobile and wearable devices that constantly relay location and other data about their kids. 2. Backlash Against the Bubble Technologies, laws, and parental practices that result in children growing up in over-protective bubbles are not only aesthetically or culturally unappealing, but may also be harmful to a child’s overall social, psychological, and cognitive development in the long run. Psychologist Ellen Sandseter argues that for healthy emotional and cognitive development, “children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground.” She notes that a “child who’s hurt in a fall before the age of 9 is less likely as a teenager to have a fear of heights.”  In the coming years, we can expect to see a growing backlash against the use of technology to create bubbles of overprotection. However, no parent or guardian wants to leave a child overexposed to risk either. So, the demand for more “invisible” protection systems will grow. The adoption of completely ubiquitous, ambient, but hardly noticeable monitoring and tracking technologies will take hold, allowing parents to more finely modulate the risk environment.  3. Blended Reality-Separate Worlds   The fear of the comingling of kid and adult worlds, and with it the fear of sexual assault, kidnapping, and emotional harm, has driven the development of software-based content filters. Context and user-aware systems that can determine the age of a user will reduce privacy for all users, and create potentially labyrinthine processes for adult-kid communication and interaction. In physical space, the mere presence of nonparental adults in a playground or child’s area is enough to warrant legal action. This mentality is spilling over into the digital realm as well. New laws and policies attempting to limit direct communication between kids and adults, especially via social media spaces such as Facebook, are being proposed and passed more frequently. The implications of these forecasts will affect parenting and education in the years to come. The argument that protectionism is ultimately harmful to a child's development will lead to novel ways of introducing managed risk into a child environment, but drawing that line will be difficult and will evolve. Breaking through and hacking these technological safety nets will be one way kids assert their independence and resistance to control. Managing a child's http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/-0991b97ef2/ Biology will drive the next century.  Biological-based methods will not only disrupt how we make things, they’ll also disrupt how we source materials for production and energy. What if our waste streams could provide productive resources and our mundane daily movements could generate the electricity we need? How could major disruptions like these possibly shift our reigning economic model? Science fiction writer and co-editor of BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow, described the “wumpus” in his book, The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (2011, pp. 10-11). A Wumpus is a reclamation drone of the future. It has numerous long, metallic tentacles that that can break down any human artifact, even as large as a building or vehicle. It throws the chunks of materials into its hopper where smaller tentacles with countless cilia reduce the matter to its constituent atoms.  And it its wake, the wumpus leaves heaps of rich soil. In our context in which we use too much, waste too much and demand is ever rising, wouldn’t it be convenient to have such an efficient means for repurposing waste? The closest thing to a wumpus today is offered by Kiverdi, a Berkeley-based startup. They have developed a process using microbes that can turn any form of waste into renewable, high value consumer chemicals and high-grade fuels.  These are the basic inputs for personal care products, soaps and detergents, and plastics.  And the fuels are of a higher grade than ethanol. These breakthroughs are exciting, but the potential economic implications are too: How will this microbial wumpus disrupt industries, global supply chains, and economies dependent on natural resource extraction? Can Kiverdi’s microbes further amplify the distributed manufacturing model (see IFTF report) promised by the advent of 3-D printing (see BBC video) by providing the distributed production of the key inputs as well? Another example of potential microbe-driven revolution comes from Lawrence Berkeley Lab.  Researchers there have engineered a virus that can generate energy from the vibrations of everyday tasks, such as shutting a door or climbing stairs. The power industry is currently shifting from a centralized to a distributed electricity generation system.  This advance in microbe-based energy generation would take decentralization to a completely new scale. If new value creation can take place on a micro scale, what does this mean for the distribution of productive gains in the economy?  In the United States, we are witnessing a growing concentration of wealth in our corporations and dramatic new levels of income disparity (see Emanuel Saez). Will these new opportunities provide the cure for the “CEO economy” in which productivity gains are concentrated exclusively in the C-suites of our corporations (see The Atlantic)?  If the means of production are potentially in everyone’s own hands, could we be moving toward a neo-craft economy.  Signals of such a possibility can be observed in the burgeoning maker movement (see Chris Anderson). We’ve witnessed how social organization mirrors technology and the shift from the centralized model of the old industrial economy to the network economy, of many smaller, highly specialized economic actors.  The signals described above suggest that we may now be embarking upon the “microbial economy”.   If the use of microbes will drive new value creation and allow for doing so on a micro scale, this could create very different frameworks for society.  Could a biological model explain the economic value of proximity and other drivers of innovation? As micro-scale economic actors proliferate, diversity will expand and the speed of adaptation will increase, therefore, speeding also the innovation process. IFTF researchers have been studying the microbial self (see IFTF’s Health Horizons and Ten-Year Forecast Programs).  How exactly are we rubbing off on each other?  We’ve certainly witnessed “contagion” of ideas, fear and language.  In a microbial economy, we may find that contagion and other biological metaphors become more than metaphors—they become the literal drivers of the next economy. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/mapping-how-foods-can-improve-communities/ Edible Geography points toward a great blog post by Jim Davenport mapping where Americans live in relation to Starbucks. Among other things, he found that more than 80 percent of Americans live within 20 miles of a Starbucks, which is approximately equal to the number of Americans who live in urban settings. Or, as he put it, "One might define urbanization in the modern era as the distance to the nearest Starbucks." Separately, Davenport noted that higher rents correlate closely to one's proximity to a Starbucks--though the word "correlate" is key here. By design, Starbucks targets high income areas. But Davenport's observations reminded me of something I read about a few months ago about another upscale food chain - the idea of something called the Whole Foods effect. The idea here is that when Whole Foods enters a community, it "can set into motion a series of events that change neighborhoods." As Salon described it: This “seal of approval” quality is Whole Foods’ Midas touch; as with streetcar tracks, potential gentrifiers see it as something tangible that certifies a neighborhood as a quality buy. And not just residents; businesses, too, look to Whole Foods as a disciplined pioneer that does its homework…. But it’s not just what Whole Foods signifies — it’s the evidence of success that it generates. And much later in the article “What something like a movie theater or a Whole Foods does is it creates an extended-hours district,” says Reid. “Lots of downtowns close up shop at 6, but there are certain amenities that can make a downtown go from being a 10-hour thing to a 16-hour thing.” When this happens, evening foot traffic arrives, and new types of business can thrive. When Whole Foods moved onto P Street in Washington, D.C., 13 years ago, the only nightlife on the block was a divey (and awesome) rock club called the Vegas Lounge. The Lounge is still there, but it’s since been joined by a popular burger joint called Stoney’s, a “food-to-fork” locavore restaurant called Logan Tavern that owns a farm 30 miles south of the city, a Starbucks (open till 8 p.m.), a coffeehouse-slash-bar called Commissary and several retail stores, all squeezed onto the same block as Whole Foods. Once evening-oriented development starts attracting people from outside the neighborhood, the area acquires what realtors call the “dwell factor,” a fancy way of saying it gets used in multiple ways. When we talk about the value of mixed-use neighborhoods, we’re often thinking of physical attributes — housing, retail, parks — but you could just as easily think of “mixed-use” in terms of time: school and work during the day, shopping in the afternoon and evening, restaurants, bars and entertainment well into the night. What's fascinated me about the analysis involved in the Whole Foods effect is the granularity of the analysis. Researchers haven't just linked Whole Foods to high rents; they've identified discrete factors, including the store's hours as well as more qualitative factors such as its brand identity, that seem to influence community development. And they've done this by linking incredibly specific but critical data sets--correlating geo-location data with information like store hours--to identify some of the causal factors that enable the simple construction of a supermarket to catalyze something as messy and complex as community development. Which is what struck me as missing in the Starbucks analysis--it's interesting, but incomplete (which one might expect from a blog post, to be fair.) Starbucks obviously doesn't drive urbanization, of course. But the correlation to rent prices could be more than statistical noise--and it could be more than statistical noise for a variety of reasons, ranging from the same kinds of factors that drive the Whole Foods effect to the possibility that having third spaces--in effect, semi-public places we can go to relax--actually influences a community in a variety of positive ways. It's telling that McDonald's is consciously redesigning their stores to be more like Starbucks, that is to say, to become third spaces, in part because it will enable them to credibly sell higher priced items. Which is a long way of making a relatively straightforward point: We know that factors, such as living far away from a supermarket, make communities less likely to be healthy. But we're just starting to understand the much more complex set of geographic and social relationships to food that can make individuals, and communities, healthier. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 actually used to live in one and was amazed at how much I didn’t know. Fantastic information especially about the Mondragon Coops in Spain that make industrial machines, have created their own banks, and are on a much more massive scale than I had ever imagined. I wish they had gone further into the differences especially in how each coop deals with seniority, shares of ownership, boards of directors, and other governance issues. From what I could tell, there’s a significant diversity of approaches there. Was also great to learn more about my neighborhood bakery, Arizmendi. At a time when many are disillusioned with big banks and big business, the economic crisis and growing inequality in our country, employee ownership offers a real solution for workers and communities. Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work is a new documentary (to be released in fall 2012) that highlights worker-owned enterprises in North America and in Mondragon, Spain. The film couldn’t be more timely, as 2012 has been declared by the U.N. as the “International Year of the Cooperative." [Film website]  Cross-posted at davidevanharris.com http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 Cities." Take a look: http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 addressed, an image of an emerging industry on the verge of transition begins to take shape.As IFTF has continued its decade-long series of dives into the Future of Work, crowdsourcing has repeatedly emerged as an area of interesting innovation. As long ago as 2003, the appearance of pioneering online work platforms like oDesk began spurring conversations about the form that future jobs could take.Today, however, a new generation of crowd-based projects is pushing the limits of group working technologies and seem to strongly hint that crowdsourcing itself may not ultimately be as important as the emergence of the software to coordinate these processes. For example, MIT and Stanford researcher Michael Bernstein’s Soylent platform is able to orchestrate dozens of anonymous contributors on Amazons Mechanical Turk platform in such a way that they can effectively co-author text documents in near real time.Similarly, the folks at the Bay Area-based startup MobileWorks have developed tools that can route tasks to the people in their crowd who are best suited for a given job at a given time. Indeed, the site has even innovated systems that allow the crowd to propose and vote on approaches to the crowdsourcing process itself. This is essentially collective management within large groups, and for anyone with an Organizational Theory background, the idea is enough to send chills down your spine. Moving forward,  it is likely that the next few years will see the emergence of  a number of disruptions in this space. However, they may not be from the directions that one might expect. Above all else, it now seems that crowdsourcing could be a catalyst for building new software for the comprehensive management of organizations in general. If so, massive changes in institutional structures and the fundamental ways that we work could be just one side effect of this broader transition.Welcome to the new world of algorithmic management. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 parents potty train their toddlers before the PBS app on the i-Pad existed?” one might jokingly ask, or “How did parents go to a restaurant with a baby before Elmo was on the iPhone? “ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 truly believe this project can change the way students learn. We all know education is changing. As our world grows in complexity and new networks are formed, traditional education just doesn't work as well is it used to. It simply isn't practical to teach students a series of facts that make up one worldview. What we need at this time is to teach students how to learn. Students do need to learn facts, but the focus needs to be on crucial skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity—the four C’s of 21st century education.  Even the now widely-adopted idea of core STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is evolving to STEAM, — the A standing for art — because STEM lacks the element of creativity. These concepts are by no means new, but they’re also far from evenly distributed.  One effort trying to address this disparity is Makerspace, an experimental program that brings the "maker experience" into the classroom. If you have never heard of the maker experience, just browse through some YouTube videos or come out to the East Bay Mini Maker Faire this weekend on October 14. This experience is all about engaging with puzzles and playing with objects. By doing this we learn, and we can actively solve real-world problems and discover new novel things. Makerspace is currently piloting the program with 16 highschools around California, and they will be scaling up to a national level next year. Primary education is in dire need of programs like Makerspace. Since 1980, over 75% of shop classes have been cut due to budget problems in California alone. According to a report by CNN in 2010, 7,000 students were dropping out of High School everyday. This is equivalent to one student every 26 seconds[1]. Some people do just fine in school, sitting at the desk and taking tests. Still others struggle with this style of learning, I was lucky enough to have a teacher that taught architecture, design and engineering (thanks Mr. Burns). These classes, in addition to art (thanks Mr. Schall and Mrs. Parker), are the only reason I had any interest in staying in school. Not everyone in school is as lucky as I was. These new education initiatives like STEAM and Makerspace are in their starting phases, and haven’t been widely adopted. Educators can start to experiment with new ways of teaching and learning on their own, but this can be daunting for educators who are being faced with pressure from school districts and parents to be everything to everyone. This brings us to WikiSeat. WikiSeat started in Ohio while I was studying Design at Ohio State University. It was born from my desire to create a seat. One night I thought to myself, every designer eventually makes a seat, why don’t I make one now? I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams what started to happen afterwards. I designed what is now known as the Catalyst, and distributed them to about 100 different people, asking them to make a seat of their own. This experiment was mildly successful, 20% of the people I gave Catalysts to built a seat. The rest had very interesting paperweights. The project sat still for about a year until Sean Wheeler saw WikiSeat posted on BoingBoing (thanks Pesco) and decided to try it out with his 10th grade American Literature class at Lakewood Highschool in Ohio. Wheeler had a local welder fabricate 85 Catalysts, while he developed a corresponding lesson plan. He found that the students really enjoyed this style of learning, and that they were engaged and challenged while making their seats and this passion carried over to their writing. His student’s read Emerson’s “Self Reliance” and simultaneously created an object all of their own, they were able to apply an abstract concept to a real-world activity. Wheeler said after seeing the effect that this project had on his class, “My students really grew as writers because they were writing with real passion, a passion that was born from their wanting to tell a wider audience about their discoveries while working on the Wikiseats.” That’s the magic behind WikiSeat; getting the abstract to appear tangible, and WikiSeat doesn’t have to stop with American Literature, this is an infinitely scalable idea. To quote Wheeler’s latest post on his blog: “In perhaps the most provocative line in his ‘American Scholar’ speech, given in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson makes a distinction between two conceptions of education.  On one side, that of the ‘book-worm’, students are to go about the work of studying greatness.  On the other side, and the one engaged by the WikiSeat project, is a conception of education that promotes thinking and the actual potential for greatness of the students… …I want my students to become thinkers, not book-worms.  I want students who not only study the views of those who have gone before them, but also students who put forth views of their own.  In this digital age, with all of these outlets for speech and expression, I want students who can think critically about information, issues, and problems. I then I want them to communicate, collaborate, and create. And I want them to learn all of this by making a WikiSeat.” If this is the sort of thing you are into, and if this is the future you would like to see, where we make our identities rather than purchase them, where we think about things rather than absorb them, join me in what has become my passion. The only way we are going to get the future we want is if we make it. Let’s start now. Learn how to participate in the WikiSeat Project at wikiseat.org and follow us on twitter. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 things kids do for fun—tell stories, act silly, play games, build stuff—and expanding it to include not only the real world and the digital world, but the blending of those two via mobile devices, immersive reality technologies, social networks, and online worlds. Think of the future of play as the rise of cross-dimensional playgrounds. The structure and purpose of play is not going to change in the next decade. What is changing rapidly is the environment and infrastructure of play: where play happens, whom it happens with, and what materials are employed. In the report, we forecast several key directions for kidstech and play. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/tacocopter-and-the-imminent-age-of-drones/ We’re at the ground floor of the Drone Age. That was the message from Star Simpson, who stopped by the Institute yesterday to talk about TacoCopter, her in-joke turned viral juggernaut. The idea behind TacoCopter is relatively simple, but irresistibly futuristic: order tacos from your smartphone, and your friendly neighborhood unmanned drone will deliver them to your exact GPS coordinates within minutes. Star created tacocopter.com in 2011 as a joke to a friend, then promptly moved on to other projects. It wasn’t until March of 2012 that the popular blog Hacker News discovered her site, at which point every 21st century media outlet jumped onto the story of the business that would change restaurants forever. It didn’t seem to matter whether TacoCopter was real or not - it was an idea whose time had come. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 methodologies in research processes to create frameworks for navigating complex systems of information, and we also recognize that maps can be powerful tools to create a common vision of a landscape and provide base for a shared or collective experience. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 toward the increasingly important, and increasingly contentious role that biological sciences will have in fields like food and health in the next decade. That unusual crime? The black market trade of hookworm as a DIY cure for auto-immune disorders such as asthma.The latest author to chronicle the black market trade of hookworm is Moises Velasquez-Manoff, whose new book about the role that bacteria play in modulating our health by chronicling his trip to Tijuana to intentionally infect himself with a parasite that humans have spent years trying to get rid of.I haven't yet had a chance to read the book, but in an interview with Wired, Velasquez-Manoff describes his experience of going to "the hookworm underground" to treat food allergies and other auto-immune challenges with mixed feelings: There were definitely some changes for the good, and definitely some side effects. I had a pretty severe reaction for a few weeks. I took it in November, and then by hay fever season my nose was completely clear. My fingernails were less pitted. Hair started growing here and there — very fine, like peach fuzz, which was pretty cool, but there was nothing near remission of anything. As I point out in the book, there was a lot of variability. That’s probably what happens with living organisms you buy on the black market. The thing about the underground is that you don’t know the quality of the larvae, or even if you’re getting what you think you’re getting. I had my parasites genetically confirmed, so I have that confidence. But I have to say, the more I got involved with it, the less I thought it was a good idea. I think the theory has great merit. The animal models are pretty much unequivocal. But when you start thinking about yourself, or your own children, you say, ‘How certain am I?’ And the uncertainty undercuts the idea. No one should do what I did. Let the science provide something safe, which it will. The concept of the hookworm underground is reminiscent of the Seed Underground, the title of a second book (which I've only read excerpts of) by Janisse Ray. In it, she chronicles gardeners, small-scale farmers, and others who hold onto heirloom crops in an effort to retain biodiversity, and control over what they produce.As she writes in this excerpt: The fact remains that in the last one hundred years, 94 percent of seed varieties available at the turn of the century in America and considered a part of the human commons have been lost... First is the loss to our plates and palates. It’s sad to miss, and not know we’re missing, all those different kinds of apples, cabbages, corn, tomatoes, and so on. Second is the loss of sovereignty over seeds and the ability to control our food supply. Emphasis hers--but if she hadn't emphasized control, I would have. The idea of "control" captures what's going on here--for the hookworm underground and the seed underground--as in both instances, participants are using new understandings and tools from biology to take control over their food, health and other aspects of their lives. But control also captures the more formal side of the story--efforts of regulators to figure out how to maintain control in a world where incredibly advanced biological tools can be put to use in hotel conference rooms, or, for that matter, efforts of large agricultural companies, whose core IP lies in biological expertise, to maintain control in a world where anyone can tinker with biology. Which is to say that these early signals of underground biology point toward the increasingly central role that biological innovation will play in shaping our understandings of our own health--as well as the broad landscape of innovation in the next decade. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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. It's a paradox because new technologies can be significantly beneficial, yet we are loath to incorporate them into our daily routines. As people, we don't tolerate losses too well. If we lose a technology we've come to rely on, even to replace it with a better version, that can feel like a big source of pain. It's also common that most tools we encounter have a marginal benefit. The benefits can be slim because of steep learning curves or the acute pain of using them. Sometimes, we're able to recognize better outcomes through experimentation, through a long-term view, or how broader use might benefit a more diverse set of stakeholders. That helps make those initial forays with a new technology feel more worthwhile. We live with deep mixtures of old and new technologies in everyday life. Each has varying degrees of complexity and sophistication, and this creates a lot of conflict, especially when we try to sort out and normalize new working practices.What might be some of the mechanisms for resolving avoidable conflicts and redirecting our attention, work, and habits towards more productive and personally satisfying exchanges?Are there technologies that can serve as proxies for working out the inconsistencies of social interactions, our values, and new working principles in order to help make a better fit between technology and everyday life? Collaborative Authorship Collaborative authorship and revision of documents is one of those areas where working practices can converge, can conflict, and are ripe as a proxy for sorting out new solutions for change.Consider how complicated it is to collaborate as a group on a document. There are different ways of crafting statements, varied word choices, structure, formatting, and design. If we add the many ways that we share, trade, exchange, comment, validate, and track these changes, it quickly become surprisingly complicated. Furthermore, as the size of a collaborative group grows, intra-group communication, sharing, and version conflict intensifies. Despite all of these complications, we still retain many of the vestiges of paper trails, office files, and document authoring tools that we used a decade ago. With the exception real-time editing (e.g. http://etherpad.com/ and its google docs offspring), we haven't yet embraced tools that 1) serve the goal of minimizing version conflicts in distributed authorship environments, 2) make generic organizational structures an explicit variable in collaborative processes, 3) allow us to capture the meta-information around our work and creative processes to provide us with a richer perspective on our work, and 4) coordinate the different tasks that go into creating the document and make it a durable and mobile carrier of meaning. Each of these four areas is a pain point for people who collaborate and share documents in their everyday lives. Collaboratively produced documents represent a tremendous amount of transactional effort to work through, and this frequently amplifies emotional conflicts that arise from reconciling different cultural and organizational values, working styles, and different technical skills. We like to stick with what we know, because we know it works at least reasonably well. But often times, a new tool can be better simply because it reduces the pain or wasted effort we normally experience. What would happen if the coordination techniques of collaborative coding used by programmers were applied to other disciplines and organizing styles? What if the core value of conflict resolution between computer scripts could be applied to humanities manuscripts, power point decks, maps, and grant proposals? Collaborative Coding One outcome of the open source software movement is the embrace of distributed, collaborative methods for maintaining and developing programming scripts. Programmers need tools for collaborating remotely, and because open source projects aren't always run from a centralized authority, collaborators need ways to resolve different forms of conflict. And because computers and other machines run logical processes, they have a low tolerance for script errors and other conflicts. Programmers need version control to identify new errors, fix old ones, and track their progress. By archiving and saving each iteration of a script instead of writing over it, incremental process are made by different members of a team working collaboratively on different parts of the script. This distributes the ability to contribute at a much finer resolution–from the whole document level to the individual letter, word, or phrase.Computer-readable scripts are not very different from any other form of written document. This means that the same tools for distributed and collaborative authorship can be used for areas other than computer science–from the humanities to graphic design.New Tools, New Capabilities Tools like Google docs and wikis do these tasks relatively well for distributed and synchronous tasks where the goal is to have a single resulting document. But how do you collaborate and coordinate around a document to emphasize and highlight different alternatives? How can big, asynchronous changes be incorporated? Sure, it's possible to use "track changes" in MS Word and have multiple people add their comments and edits, but would that really be LESS painful?Instead I'm imagining what it would be like to use a platform like GitHub to apply the capabilities and experience of collaborative coding to other endeavors like proposal development, poetry, graphic design, or really any collaborative document. If you ever visit a hackathon or take a look at an open source programming project, you'll likely run across GitHub. It's one of the major platforms supporting the collaborative computing around the world. It's based on Git, which was developed to support the maintenance and development of the Linux OS kernel. It's a control system that manages tiny information differences between document versions, and while programmers have embraced it for a variety of projects, there's no reason it couldn't be implemented with a spiffy graphical user interface and designed to support the version control and coordination needs of collaborative document authoring in other domains like comparative literature, science manuscript development, or foundation grant proposals.I'm not the first to see the opportunity here. Julie Meloni in the ProfHacker column at the Chronicle of Higher Education offers this nice, gentle introduction to version control for academics aptly titled, A Gentle Introduction to Version Control.One insight from her description is that the command line interface definitely has to be replaced with an intuitive graphical user control system for the document, revision histories, author community, and changes. I can barely remember my phone number; I'm not sure why everyday computer programmers think that everyone else has an easy time remembering all those minute task commands.Another is this great comment to Meloni's article from Sean Gillies: "After reading a tweet from Dan Cohen yesterday that scholarship might emulate software development, I wonder if distributed version control doesn’t point to a future of scholarship that’s less about editions and more about “diffs” or edits." Science Fiction author and journalist Cory Doctorow discusses the process of archiving and version control using Git in his book, Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century. He describes his desire for a tool that can capture what's happening as he writes, what his influences are, and bind that to the document itself–all while managing the different versions of his manuscripts. But in the digital era, many authors work from a single file, modifying it incrementally for each revision. There are no distinct, individual drafts, merely an eternally changing scroll that is forever in flux. When the book is finished, all the intermediate steps that the manuscript went through disappear.It occurred to me that there was no reason that this had to be so. Computers can remember an insane amount of information about the modification history of files—indeed, that’s the norm in software development, where code repositories are used to keep track of each change to the codebase, noting who made the changes, what s/he changed, and any notes s/he made about the reason for the change.So I wrote to a programmer friend of mine, Thomas Gideon, who hosts the excellent Command Line podcast (http://thecommandline.net), and asked him which version control system he’d recommend for my fiction projects—which one would be easiest to automate so that every couple of minutes, it checked to see if any of the master files for my novels had been updated, and then check the updated ones in.Thomas loved the idea and ran with it, creating a script that made use of the free and open-source control system “Git” (the system used to maintain the Linux kernel), checking in my prose at 15-minute intervals, noting, with each check-in, the current time-zone on my system clock (where am I?), the weather there, as fetched from Google (what’s it like?), and the headlines from my last three Boing Boing posts (what am I thinking?). Future versions will support plug-ins to capture even richer metadata—say, the last three tweets I twittered, and the last three songs my music player played for me. There's a GitHub release of Flashbake, the code for the Git-based tool, that can be downloaded, tinkered with, and added to. The thing that Flashbake does well is adding meta-info to the writing flow, capturing a small snapshot of what's happening. [here's the original project page]Gina Trapani, has a fantastic getting started guide to Flashbake at Lifehacker, along with a whole bunch of little bits to help you decide if it's worth the learning curve. Like she says, you have to be a little adventurous and not mind running a script or two.  Organizational Design 1.0 Expect more tools like Flashbake–ones that make it easy to cache fine-grained changes to docs and select from multiple threads of that work. My guess is they will be the basis for more user-friendly text authoring collaboration platforms in the very near future, once collaborative authoring and distributed work starts to be more widely utilized.The important thing about Git and similar tools is that they support a wide range of organizational structures for getting work done. I'm a little out of my expertise here–in understanding how the technical specifics support different org styles–but it's apparent that Git and some other versioning tools support centralized, decentralized, hierarchical, heterarchical, and everything in-between forms of coordination. What matters is the document, the changes that get made, and how those changed get committed or accepted to the latest version. Pull, the ability to draw from a master repository, and push, the ability to add to a master repository, are two of the most important permissions.It's not difficult to imagine scenarios where a team is working on the same document, starting with content, editing, revising, developmentally editing, and copy editing all at different times in different places. Obviously, there needs to be the basic content before the latter stages of editing can begin. But it supports is simultaneous editing by multiple people where some changes can be accepted and others rejected, not wholesale edits or versions. These fine-tuned edits are important because they can mean that a host of authors can contribute and that no contribution is too miniscule. What's kind of cool is that six different people can be adding a sentence, and then when it comes time to merge versions, one can select which of the versions of those sentences to accept into the final. To wrap up, here's some final characteristics of distribted version control systems: A Distributed Source Control System (like Git) means that it's easy to access a central repository. It's possible recreate a project from any copy, and branching a repository means that duplicates of work can be built upon and modified without affecting the original. A difference command (diff) allows one to compare changes made between file versions.One can work totally offline on their local repository and push changes to the central repository later.Permissions are suited to the tasks and can be shaped around different organizations, teams, and roles.The contributions that individuals form another "social" layer–like following people or keeping track of their history. The history of changes made to the repository is one measure of productivity. Plus, using centralized file organization tends to increase productivity by minimizing the transaction costs of exchanging files and  notifying others of changes. The transparency (who made what commits) is also a big motivator for participation and productivity.  It takes some effort to get something like this up and running. To actually start doing collaborative coordination around documents then involves getting others onboard, and that means building the cultural tools to support ongoing practice. I have no doubt that a small group of dedicated individuals could do it; many probably already have. My hope is that by writing this article, people share more examples of how Git and other versioning systems are developing as models for reimagining collaborative authorship, coordination, and work in domains other than computing. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/migrations-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 between cause and effect breaks down, and it takes more (or less) effort to do things that once seemed easy (or difficult). Alice's experience in Through the Looking Glass has a migration-like feel to it as she runs with the Red Queen in the Garden of Live Flowers. I enjoy the journey that Alice and the Red Queen make as a metaphor for our entangled relationships with others, the environment, and the technolgies we encounter. The biologist Leigh Van Valen originally applied the metaphor to describe how the ability of a family of organisms to survive over time does not increase because the environment is changing just as rapidly. Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!' but Alice felt she COULD NOT go faster, though she had not breath left to say so. The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, 'Faster! Don't try to talk!' Not that Alice had any idea of doing THAT. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last. 'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied. 'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy. The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.' Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!' 'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?' 'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' 'I'd rather not try, please!' said Alice. 'I'm quite content to stay here--only I AM so hot and thirsty!' [what follows is the text of a brief ignite talk at IFTF's Urgent Futures Workshop on September 14th, 2012] The pattern and scale of migration is the urgent future of the next decade. Migration is a mechanism of evolutionary change that’s always been there, and it’s shaping our cities, landscapes, economies, and our culture. But now more than ever, it’s the tools, infrastructure, and policies that are organized around migration–to monitor and shape it–that will have the greatest long-term impact on the migratory experience. This urgent future is Migration’s Magical Realism. Magical Realism emphasizes perception. It’s made of surprise and it stretches the normal bounds of reality. Magical Realism rejects the privileging of science and empiricism, returning instead to mythologies, folklore and mysticism–filling critical gaps between individual experience, causality, and the environment. Migration has always had the subtle quality of magical realism. Travel to new places releases time, truth, and constraint. New insights are found in new environments. Plants grow more vigorously. And from the perspective of an individual, unusual juxtapositions of objects and organisms around them produce experiences of simultaneity, surprise, and serendipity. Technologies that challenge traditional concepts lead to new perception. Migration’s Magical Realism is the experience of migrants in an urgent future. The US Department of Homeland Security is the avant-garde of border enforcement, controlling and influencing migration in regions far beyond its own borders in places like Shannon, Ireland and the Dominican Republic. Migration’s Magical Realism lives in transit hubs where countries each have their own immigration portals, pushing inspections and customs outward, making inbound transport channels as much as part of the territory as the territory itself. For some navigating the migration bureaucracy will be a core skill and defining characteristic of mobile individuals. For others, the migration problem set will feel invisible. Traversing borders has always been a selective force for future communities. If, indeed, the the American homeland is to become the planet, and U.S. officials work to ensure that there are privileged mobility classes, while undesirable “others” face almost insurmountable obstacles to their movement: Some migrants will see dimensions and opportunities that others are not fully aware of. And they will drift towards these, as we are already seeing in the trends of increased urbanism and the global creative class. Migratory flows and their effects will be modeled and simulated before any physical movement actually occurs, leading to new ideals around economic development and a single individual’s life migration strategy. Establishing and maintaining the Universal Identity will be aimed at maximizing flexibility, avoiding the patriotic impulse, and aiming for more abstract affiliations, while eeking out dual and triple citizenships. Visa rules, restrictions, and thresholds will become increasingly interpreted at the local level–opening up intractable conflicts over the precise meanings of duration, location, ethnicity, and vocational value. Migration’s magical realism is event where 15,000 people assemble and move to another region at the drop of a tweet. It’s whole camps, neighborhoods, and communities assembling around the timing of special events–driven by the logistical synchronicity of shipping containers, routed and distributed in realtime, in anticipation of emerging climate vulnerabilities, carrying tools and supplies in response to disastrous outcomes. Migration’s magical realism makes it likely that once you summon your vehicle, you won’t know how you got from A to B. You’ll get in, you’ll tune-out, and then you are there. The routes and scenery along the way–the future and the past–are less relevant than what is directly in front of you–the present. And in Migration’s Magical Realism, magical amulets adorn our necks and line our pockets. They open doors, locks, gateways, and vehicles–permitting passage. They enclose rules (some arbitrary), imaging filters, algorithms, and alarms within their shells– obscured, stored elsewhere, and locked away. Making us uncertain and confused when we are barred entry. Because it’s tough to inspect the code. And so we’ll have to hack the signal, reverse engineer the customer services, and find new workarounds for hidden processes that we can’t really see in order to understand cause, and affect unknown relationships. In the words of David Foster Wallace, “Never before have there been so many gaping chasms between what the world seems to be and what science tells us it is” And because migration shapes the conditions for all futures to come, that gap, that magical reality is the urgent future and it will be filled with: elaborate genealogies to establish lineage and secure access new mythologies as a way of writing (and rewriting) geographic histories of place alternate worlds and locales meshed together in precarious ways and at precarious times, striving for coherence http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 about the future of smart phones and other devices. This clip from CBS's CNET (and distributed to CBS television affiliates) includes a number of topics familiar to readers of IFTF research: wearable computing and augmented reality (Blended Reality)health sensing (Future of Science, Tech, and Well-being and Mobile Health)machine vision and gestural interfaces (When Everything is Programmable)automatic language translation (Multilingual Internet) IFTF's current research on Internet|Human Human|Internet also addresses this topic; that research will be made public in 2013. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 perspective is that these modernist institutional distinctions are rapidly eroding now more than ever. For more than a decade, new residencies, institutions, collaborations, and projects have pushed the expectations and outcomes of working across both the sciences and the arts. Today, it's almost a given that science, design, engineering, and art are closely linked in product as well as practice. The benefits of these collaborations, while messy and uncertain, have taught us the value of craft in storytelling through data, new ways of working across disciplines, participatory experimentation, public witnessing of science, contestational demonstrations of technology, and the insightful taxonomies that can emerge from untethered interpretations of the world and our tools. The Network for Science, Engineering, Art and Design (SEAD) is one of the few National Science Foundation-supported efforts to synthesize what we now know about the role of art and design into the practices of science and engineering as a formal institutional agenda. Its vision is to become the leading advocate for collaboration among the sciences, engineering, arts and design, fostering innovation and learning that impact community sustainability and economic growth. It aims to accomplish this goal by: Facilitating experimentation with new methods, materials, and modes of creative inquiry. Promoting life-long learning by supporting topics, pedagogies, and evaluation methods that integrate the sciences, engineering, arts and design. Fostering strategic partnerships among individuals and organizations including government, industry, civic and academic institutions.Valuing sustainability, community development and social entrepreneurship, in order to spur economic growth.  The network is founded on the observations that innovation is happening at the intersection of the sciences, engineering, arts and design and that those intersections are some of the most transformative forces driving our economy, culture, and learning.New products, services, methodologies, and questions are now fundamentally hybrid, bringing together new actors and stakeholders in ways that were unimagined a decade ago. And as a result, the way we play, the hardware use as tools, and how we use and disseminate information has enabled new forms of expression and interpretation. And collectively, as individuals and as a  society, we are leveraging greater understandings of complex dynamics and communication forms to yield better coordination and cooperation across multiple scales.In the last ten years, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has been the core focus for teaching, learning, education, and policy-making to define and catalyze innovation and economic development in the United States. Now, as we recognize that these core skills and competencies live and breathe within the richness of culture and society, we are calibrating our expectations and our goals to match. Artists and designers are now entering a phase where their methodologies and interventions drive discovery is ways that transcend the simple communication of science. The practices and products of science and engineering, meanwhile, are rapidly discovering that beauty, mystery, and nonsense are as much a feature of experimentation and usability as functionality and form.There is an open call for visions that highlight these intersections, the obstacles they create, and the opportunities that emerge in the transition from STEM to SEAD. While economic development and innovation are driving goals of this endeavor, there will be a broader set of impacts on how we share and and make decisions, the paths we use to determine what we call knowledge, and on the tools we will use to shape the reimagination of higher education and learning over the course of the next decade. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 planet's poles. By the 20th century Antarctica was a desolate wasteland completely encompassed by ice. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 of babies, play classical music to try to calm people down and prevent young people from congregating, install pink lights that expose acne in an effort to embarrass teens and keep them away. These are all examples of designing around our subconscious--a theme I've been writing about for a while. And buried at the end of the BBC is a useful caveat: None of the examples I cited above actually deal with any underlying problems. They're simply aimed at keeping people out. "These strategies are well worth trying," says Prof Mike Hardy, of Coventry University's Institute of Community Cohesion. "But would you really advocate the mass installation of pink lighting to promote community?"He prefers preventative measures to stop disturbances happening in the first place…."Driving adolescents away from an area, as with the mosquito device, protects the area, but it doesn't solve the problem," he says. "The difficulty that youth has is a lack of social belonging."Hardy has been impressed by schemes in other countries designed to make sure that lack of social belonging never develops. He cites a graffiti wall in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where people are invited to paint whatever they want. I found this last point--that the goal should be to increase cohesion, not drive people away--to be particularly notable. Being a member of a robust social network has all sorts of benefits--not just societal benefits, such as reduced crime, but being connected socially seems to be good for our health for reasons that researchers don't well understand. The challenge with this thread of research in health is that nobody really knows how to make people more socially connected. You can't, in other words, just say to someone: "Make some friends."But this seems like an obvious--and important--domain for designers who are focused on using subconscious cues in our environments to shape behavior. That is, rather than trying to design environments that delay problems--whether they be committing a crime or eating too much--a better goal might be to design environments that motivate us not to cause problems. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 receiver on a phone to diagnose pneumonia by capturing the breathing of a potential pneumonia patient and sending that information off to the cloud for analysis. The idea is simple but brilliant: Pneumonia is often treatable with antibiotics, but becomes lethal when diagnosis and treatment take too much time, and so speeding diagnosis could substantially reduce mortality.Here's how Good describes the process: The mic captures the sounds of the person breathing and the app uploads the recording onto cloud servers. Then the app analyzes the breathing patterns, makes a diagnosis according to the standards of the World Health Organization—either the subject has pneumonia or doesn't—and then presents the user with the appropriate treatment plan.While a regular digital stethoscope runs over $600, the StethoCloud only costs about $20, which is significantly more affordable in the developing nations that are home to 98 percent of childhood pneumonia deaths. And, although a phone is required for the system to work, about "1.5 million pneumonia deaths occur in developing countries with a high enough mobile usage that we can directly address it without distributing anything else," says Lin.The concept reminded me of something called the Parkinson's Voice Initiative which has developed an algorithm that can diagnose Parkinson's Disease by running the subtle details of someone's voice through an algorithm. As Wired notes, the project's director Max Little has a big vision for the algorithm: "If we could use the entire existing telephone network then we could scale up the screening of Parkinson’s disease to the entire population, and do it at very minimal cost.”The potential value of each of these concepts is enormous. As Good notes, pneumonia is the biggest killer of children under 5 globally. While early diagnosis for Parkinson's, like most diseases, opens up opportunities to start treatments much sooner, slow the disease down, and enable people to start preparing to deal, emotionally and socially, with the disease.At the same time, it's worth noting that parts of this future feel a bit creepy.What both of these initiatives point to is a future where an increasingly wide array of illnesses can be diagnosed without people intervening--and, in the case of Parkinson's, the idea is that you don't even have to opt in to being screened; the phone network will simply notice something is amiss, and identify something that your doctor would have no chance of figuring out just by talking to you. In practice, there are some obvious logistical questions: For example, would your cell phone's customer service department give you a call and tell you your voice tremors indicate you need to go see a neurologist? This seems… problematic. Which is to say that we're entering a future where are technical abilities to identify health needs may outpace our social desires for them--a tension that we should expect to increase rapidly over the next decade. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/at-talkoot-small-makes-for-big-changes-in-the-future/ On July 30-31, the Institute for the Future, in collaboration with Aalto University in Finland, invited a dozen practical visionaries to reveal the design principles that have made their “outlier” innovations a success. The talkoot—a traditional Finnish gathering of friends to address a common concern—is part of an ongoing program to design more inclusive futures worldwide and learn from exceptional organizations. The result was a set of five epic challenges, a collection of design principles and a close look at the many ways that very small innovations can add up to a very big change in global equity and equality.Practical visionaries are people who have a strong vision of a sometimes radically different future. But they are not simply thinkers. They are doers and makers, with hands-on experience in on-the-ground design and innovation to make their future visions a reality. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/do-it-yourself-university-style-anya-kamenetz-tells-whats-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 to everyone, and third, its relevance (in traditional form) is shifting. While these truths may be hard to stomach—from heavy individual tuition bills to institutional path dependency—they are by no means hard and fast. We can see how enraged society is getting about the cost of education from loud examples around us, such as a protest in Montreal that used the outline of a hand ‘flipping the bird’ as its route through the city’s grid, or the cries shouted by Occupy Wall Street earlier this year. Quieter statistics tell us that 67% of undergraduate students emerge with loans averaging $27,803. People are rightfully wondering how our systems can change. Access is partly wrapped into the cost conundrum. But it also highlights a different component of education—its constant demand. As Kamenetz says, “in a knowledge economy, there’s just a need for more and more education.” Tuition is growing faster than any other good or service in the US economy. Those who obtain a Bachelors degree are likely to seek a Masters and so on, meaning approximately 25% of US citizens have a post-secondary education already. The question of relevance that Kamenetz raises completes the triumvirate of problems within our current education ecosystem. Is what we are teaching and learning any good? Kamenetz asks more precisely, “Is the stuff that we’re learning and the ways that we’re learning it really relevant to the world we live in?” Kamenetz has written about education and new forms of learning facing the Y generation for several years, both at Fast Company and through her own books. Her most recent project, DIY U, has gotten her excited about the ways people are changing the education landscape. From technology-adaptive endeavors such as the Khan Academy and P2PU (a peer to peer “university” setting), to free online courses offered by Ivy League educators, there are new ways of learning that focus on changing the content, social element and accreditation of knowledge. Are we all going to attend online courses such as Stanford University’s “Algorithms: Design and Analysis, part I” and then socialize on these issues and questions via Facebook? How do we “prove” our knowledge if not through a degree? IFTF’s Executive Director, Marina Gorbis, suggested at a March conference with Kamenetz on Hacking Higher Education that, “young people today are caught in the transition between two worlds—the world of institutional production of education and a new world of possibilities for highly personalized on-demand continuous learning.” Kamenetz highlights this middle ground as a new kind of currency, suggesting value in the knowledge that lies somewhere in the middle—“between a university summa cum laude degree and the book I just read.” She suggests that traditional universities should re-appropriate their existing infrastructures toward technology-forward, more open resources for students. This could also include a focus on helping students navigate their learning style and productivity, something already begun at Empire State College. Smoother transitions between experiences gained outside the classroom—whether making workplace connections or weaving in past learning, say from the military—and receiving course credit are other reform options. While the traditional university education will not disappear, the greater sphere of learning is moving towards cheaper, more accessible, and relevant modalities. IFTF is launching a project on the Future of Learning: Reimagining the Higher Education Landscape in 2013 that uses its forecasting methodology to reimagine higher education futures, including some of Kamenetz’s work. Without a doubt, there is plenty of room for diversity in the realm of education. As Kamenetz asks, “How boring and hard does education have to be? Can it be fun and hard?” Add to that, and free? And relevant? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/designing-tech-for-social-change-an-interview-with-femi-longe-of-nigerias-co-creation-hub-part-ii/ If you missed Part I, click here. In July I spent a few days around the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria. The CcHUB, or simply, the Hub, is the hottest, newest, co-creation, co-working, and innovation hub. It’s aim is to find tech-based solutions to Nigeria’s challenges. Since it opened in September of last year, it is abuzz with young energy and brilliant entrepreneurs. On my final day in Lagos I sat down with co-Founder and Director of Programmes at the CcHUB, Femi Longe, to hear more about how it all happens. You call them start-ups, the CcHub calls them solutions: The Hub is currently mentoring 21 solutions. Each start-up is guided through the entire process of product and business plan development into the product launch, and beyond. The mentoring happens by one of six core members of the Hub. In the past week the Hub brought in their first intern, a bright young woman from George Washington University, who is going to be working with two solutions. One of them is a mobile education app aiming to ensuring that Nigerian culture as well as traditional history, institutions, and knowledge are still being taught in schools. Eventually they want to expand their app to the whole of Africa, so that whatever country you are in you can open a tab for your country and have access to local education tools. BudgIT  When I asked Femi to tell me about his favorite or most exciting solution, he quickly began talking about BudgIT. BudgIT was first conceived of in March of 2011 during an Open Living Lab (explained in Part 1) focused on democracy in Nigeria. The founder of BudgIT—a young guy working in a bank—noted that Nigeria's current budget isn't presented in a way that is clear and easily understood by your average person, and he felt that this blocked proper civic engagement. After winning 2nd place in the Lab, and receiving some money to build and launch the app, BudgIT went live 6 months later in September of 2011. BudgIT uses a simple approach of turning budget documents into infographics. As an avid tweeter however, BudgIT founder quickly saw how much people loved it when he tweeted bits and pieces of the budget, and was quick to make that part of his overall strategy. BudgIT's tweeting (@budgITng, now with over 4,000 followers) helped turn the Occupy Nigeria Movement from being purely about the fuel hike into a broader discussion about the government budget. One of BudgITng’s most popular tweets was about the President’s 1billion naira annual food budget! For the first time Nigerians could see where the government money was actually going, and could back up demands that the government cut back on other expenses in order to keep the fuel subsidy many Nigerians rely on. The next step for BudgIT was quite clear, create the Budget Cut app that allows individuals to alter Nigeria’s budgets in order to see where things can be cut to make space for other funding opportunities. In the case of Occupy Nigeria, if the government said they needed to end the fuel subsidy in order to properly run the government, Budget Cut wanted to give civil society a chance to see for themselves. The app has a viral component to it, through a Facebook share plug in. Suddenly Nigerians were seeing how their friends had saved the government 800 billion naira without having to end the fuel subsidy. Exciting positive results: Individual Nigerian states have now begun to reach out to BudgIT to help them make their own budgets more transparent and open to the public.  Some states have even approached BudgIT to look into participatory budgeting options. When the Minister of Communication Technology gives speeches on the role that technology can play to advance development in Nigeria, she regularly refers to BudgIT. Women and tech in Nigeria: I, of course, had to ask Femi what he was doing to bring more women into the fold. Of the 21 solutions, there are 2 that Femi can recollect as being led by women. He mentioned that the winner of the Lab that grew Budgit was a woman, but her solution has not yet been launched. Femi answered that they are not quite a year old, so they are still learning what works and doesn't work. While he is in discussion with an organization that deals with women and technology, their main priority is more focused on staying productive and being able to provide the necessary tools for success. I wish I had taken the time to mention that while they may be a young organization, if this isn't addressed early as part of their core principle, it might be too late. And, for true social change and progress, both parties need to be equally represented from the beginning. Femi noted that the CEO of the Internet company that provides the CcHub with free Wi-Fi is a woman, and a Nigerian tech startup that is providing them funding for an upcoming Lab is also run by a woman. Of the 6 people who work at the core of the Hub as full-time members, 1 is a woman. But let me not paint a picture that I never saw women at the Hub. Everyday I was there I saw women with their heads in their computers. Sometimes 2, sometimes 5, sometimes more. But at most I would say they represented 10% of the daily Hub community. Femi and I talked a bit about how this problem isn't just local to Nigeria, or even Africa—despite the fact that they most certainly face different reasons as to why women are left out of the engineering space—and that Silicon Valley is still a man's place. Femi explained that the gender imbalance happens long before someone reaches the level of joining the CcHUB. When he studied Electronics & Electrical Engineering at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, in a class of about 128 students there were maybe 8 women. He also explained that for women to become entrepreneurs living ‘insecure’ lives, as in, deciding the 9-5 isn't right for them, is very unusual. Nigerian women are expected to get regular jobs and live secure normal lives that, I suppose, can lead to productive child rearing. We finished off the issue of gender equality with a mutual shrug.  About an hour later my taxi called to say he was waiting to take me to the airport and my 24-hour journey back to California began.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 times, people consider “hacking” to be a negative venture. In my experience this is not the case.So, what is a hack? How does one end up identifying with this community? Each person who you ask this question of will probably give you a different answer, and this is rightly so. My interpretation of a hacker/maker is someone who enjoys experimentation and the creation of novel tools, leading to further interconnection and innovation. A hacker is one who tinkers with culture and tests vulnerabilities, in technology and elsewhere,  with the goal of making a more robust, resilient human community. One of the workshops here at Toorcamp teaches you how to test the vulnerabilities of a ubiquitous physical security system: the pin and tumbler lock. A style of lock that has a long and tried history, but even so is vulnerable. Everyone reading this most likely possesses a key that opens a lock of this type. But what most people don't know is these locks are surprisingly easy to open with simplest of tools. By simplest I mean any piece of metal that fits in the lock, whether its a hair pin, bike spoke or windshield wiper clip.The first time I picked a lock it took about 15 minutes and two hair pins, seriously. Opening that first lock gave a tremendous feeling of accomplishment, and it provided one of those moments of sudden realization. That realization being that this is a technology that everyone trusts to ensure their safety and their security over their possessions. Locks are only a deterrent, providing the illusion of security, an illusion that is easily broken. This physical security lock has proven to be a useful analogy, it has helped me to better understand digital security. Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in the codes they create. Your email account, your online banking, your dropbox or google.doc account, they are constantly being tested for vulnerabilities. Sometimes the chinks in the armor are exploited maliciously. Sometimes they are used for political activism to inspire discourse surrounding vulnerabilities in larger systems. More often than not, software vulnerabilities are openly published in an effort to fix the problem at hand and create a more robust system, also known as making the world better.At a recent security conference in Las Vegas, Mozilla software developer Cody Brocious shared a hack that can be used to open the keycard locks that are found on around four million hotel doors, or more, I haven’t actually sat down to calculate how many doors in hotels are effected by this. This hack was done using an inexpensive Arduino micro controller and some code that Cody plans on publishing soon. At first glance you might think this guy is a criminal, but please, leave the conspiracies at home. Sure we know, breaking and entering is illegal. The best part about this is that Cody didn't steal anything, he merely shed light on an vulnerability. In an interview with Forbes, Cody said,“…With how stupidly simple this [key card entry] is, it wouldn’t surprise me if a thousand other people have found this same vulnerability and sold it to other governments.” The keycard entry system is flawed, especially when people have access to the level of technology that is openly available today. This isn’t to say that having more knowledge about these systems is inherently bad in some way. I suggest that we become more aware of the current technologies and find their vulnerabilities’ sooner, so that we may be capable of creating more secure and robust systems in the future.It has been said that locks are used to keep honest people out. What happens when honest people think of hacking security as a fun challenge to be explored? One common response is to make this type of activity illegal, on this point I have to disagree. Preventing people from owning lock picks or hairpins, and forbidding the accumulation of knowledge about the inherent insecurity that exists before their very eyes may increase the theft, because a thief is safe from another thief in jail. What about you? This approach, being “Keep everyone in the dark about the insecurity that exists,” doesn't actually address the fact that most locks, whether digital or physical, are prone to vulnerability. It is a natural human tendency to tinker with things like locks or codes in search of different methods for solving the puzzle. Robust security, I am sure, we can get behind, you really don’t want folks breaking into your hotel room, right? When Cody Brocious shared how to open a hotel door with a non-standard keycard, he brought accountability to a flawed technology and is provided the opportunity to strengthen the system.Openly sharing hacks is commonplace within the hacker community, like Toorcamp and spaces similar to it, but current politics, and the media, often stigmatize these activities.Rather than pushing this activity underground, we ought to be encouraging this effort to create a more resilient society. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 and the global community.  Girling presents a refreshing array of new business approaches that create new value beyond the bottom line and serve to shake up the status quo.  A must-read today, this book gives hope for renewal in our volatile times. Girling, a professor at Sonoma State University in the School of Business and Economics, recognizes that business-as-usual is no longer an option.  Consumers are changing - we are demanding greater transparency in the products we buy and how they are produced.  The old business model is rapidly depleting our natural resources. Employees want to feel that they’re contributing to a better world. Growing inequities are undermining our communities as well as the buying power of consumers – the lifeblood of a company.  As Girling puts it, the old business model has become dominated by narrow self interest, greed, arrogance and insensitivity to the greater good.  A good company is “a business that looks beyond the private profit that benefits shareholders and investors to include the welfare of employees who produce the products and services (as well as those of its suppliers), the community that hosts the company, and the environment that supplies the natural resources” (page 23).There are a growing number of businesses reflecting a diverse mix of industries and new business approaches that provide more evidence that a successful business model can in fact be based on doing good. One of the most exciting examples is the growing movement around the Benefit Corporation, which revises corporate law to consider non-shareholder interests as a legal responsibility of corporate directors.  Eleven states have passed legislation allowing businesses to incorporate as Benefit Corporations.  In addition to supporting the passage of legislation to allow for this new legal designation, B Lab also provides third-party certification for companies that want to become B Corps.Interface Carpet is an iconic example of a company going beyond the bottom line to pursue the creation of new environmental and community value.  Although familiar to many, it remains a compelling story. Other examples in The Good Company offer new inspiration for business leaders, aspiring entrepreneurs and those of us who study business and economic growth.Girling describes businesses that are successfully responding to change and driving change and includes references to related work of other scholars. Our context is continually changing and the pace of change is quickening.  In his book, The Second Curve – Managing the Velocity of Change, Ian Morrison describes how businesses need to shift from their traditional business along the first curve to the second curve, the emerging future context.  Those who hold to the old business model, ignoring shifts in the global economy and environment, will find themselves on a downward curve (e.g. shrinking markets, constrained inputs, stalling revenues).  The upward curve is where new business models are forming in a dynamic space reflective of the changing context.  Businesses on this emergent curve will be inherently more resilient and agile as our context continues to shift. Our changing context demands new business models that generate a broader definition of new value, incorporating people, the global community and the environment.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/catalysts-for-change-summary-of-an-experiment-in-global-engagement/ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 mountains of the northwestern most point of the continental US, so close to Canada that you can see her coast from the kelp covered beach. This moist outdoor paradise provides a wonderful analogy for the intersection of man, her tools, and nature. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/esports-the-future-of-entertainment/ On the weekend of July 30th, 2011, 20,000 spectators turned up for an event held in the Anaheim Convention Center.  This was no sporting event, at least by conventional definition.  Those 20,000 spectators were in attendance to watch other people play video games.   Since 2010, eSports, also known as competitive videogaming, has experienced record growth in the United States.  Companies like Major League Gaming hold huge, week-end long competitions in major cities.  While the tournaments are watched live, orders of magnitude more watch the events streamed online through sites like TwitchTV.  Top prizes at these tournaments regularly exceed $10,000.  Professional gamers build a following, often as members of well-sponsored teams.   Driven by popular titles like Starcraft II and League of Legends, the eSports industry is still young in the United States. Its audience is predicted to double every 2 years for the next decade, according to Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. Why does this matter?At first hand, professional video gaming seems novel and intriguing as a sub-culture.  Its growth has spawned a range of fascinating cultural artifacts, including ‘barcrafts’- a tradition of watching Starcraft II tournaments on the big screen in a bar.  But the projected growth indicates that, within a decade, eSports will rival traditional sports in popularity.Imagine a world where every family gets together on the first Sunday in February to watch the big game- A Starcraft II competition.  This seems ludicrous.  After all, adults aren’t as interested in video games as children, and why would anybody want to watch someone else play videogames anyway? The games people play growing up define what entertainment experiences they deem ‘normal’.  In his analysis of the eSports market, Michael Pachter identifies an expanding culture of videogaming as a driving force that enables youth to see eSports as ‘legitimate culture’, which in turn drives its market expansion.  Decades ago, kids grew up playing sports.  They were surrounded by sporting institutions, from professional leagues seen live or on TV to local neighborhood baseball fields.  But in the past two decades, the nature of youth entertainment has drastically changed.  Now, 91% of kids aged 2-17 play video games.  To them, it might seem more ‘normal’ to watch competitive video gaming than to watch people stand in a field physically hitting and throwing things. As these youth age, their definition of legitimate culture replaces what came before them.  And as for why anybody would want to watch other people play videogames, the answer is just as simple.  While traditional sports are limited by design constraints (you can’t give all the players jetpacks, for example), videogames are limitless.  Game developers can and are literally designing games from the bottom up with an audience in mind; Starcraft II being a perfect example.  In order to be easy to watch- not play- the designers simplified the graphics so audience members can easily see what’s happening on-screen.  In many ways, what theatrical plays are to movies, conventional sports are to eSports.  Also noteworthy is the possibility for proprietary ownership over an entire sport.  For example, in football, no company ‘owns’ football.  Some companies make footballs, the NFL runs the national football league, but anybody can play football without directly paying either entity.  In eSports, a successfully crafted game that becomes popular is, essentially, a monopoly.  Blizzard owns Starcraft II, and if you want to play the game, you have to buy it.  The notion of successful eSports as cashcows might make them appealing enough to develop that the industry moves forward even faster than predicted. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/machine-motivated-ethical-behavior/ I'm a fan of technology that gives people more latitude in their social and physical relationships. We live in societies (and environments) laced with norms and expectations, and while many of our behaviors are focused on keeping the peace, they can conflict with personal motivations.  As email became a significant form of communication, new norms developed around message brevity, level of formality, and duration between replies. Now it's interesting how our habits are arranged around the many bleeps, interruptions, and rings of our mobile devices. It's almost as though they have the same level of importance as other people in our presence, and sometimes they demand even more attention than those around us. There's a class of apps and services that I've come to appreciate that work at the level of social etiquette. With so many shifting email, social media, and mobile device expectations, we're often caught between what we want to do and what we are expected to do. They mainly fake calls, texts, or otherwise obscure and redirect important information, using the "honesty" of technology as a foundation. Fake texts and calls are used often as pranks, but they can also get people out of undesired social situations, provide a needed misdirection to move a conversation elsewhere, coerce others into doing tasks, and more.I mapped some of the user comment boards to understand how people were using these apps. Here's a sample: I finally can get my sister to wash dishes, get off the living room tv, do things i dont want to do. All in the name of mom. :)so funny made some girl in my contacts say she lykes My friend and showed himThis works great when you're trying to get out of talking to someone you don't wanna talk to!Honestly I use this all the time now! When I want to stop talking to my friends I use it and say my boyfriend is calling me (which he didnt ) ;) this is awesome :D GETT ITTThis app is totally cool. I pranked my sister into thinking her ex kept callimg me. I love it!!!!Gets me out of boring latenight get togethers!!But its awsome, it saves me from dumb dates!!I almost fooled 2 of my friends at a time.. 1st one by faking his call by which he keeps on calling his mom to check wether his mobile lost or what and another by telling him that this call will reduce ur balance..ha ha..the best part is that I can fake a call from my girl crush ..I use this to impress friends and the greatest of all having (911) call my phoneLove it I use it to prank my boyfriend about his friend calling me lol...Got me out of wrk!! But it kinda such when a text come in and it ruin the plan ..This app is AMAZING!!! I tricked my sister into thinking that the Police Department called me! :)Just got me out of class like 5 min ago put my probation officers number jn said i had to leave school bye bye no questionsAfter doing my business with a girl, I hate having them in my room so this app gets them out quicker ;) So you can see there's a wide range of uses and situations. It raises compelling questions about honesty in technology and how much we rely on that honesty for many of our interpersonal interactions.But some of the comments remind me of how subtle interaction design can make a substantial difference in people's lives. this app is to cool and can get you out of a spot...also works good when ur fighting with wife act like the police call about noise...great app ...Made my brothers calm down when they were attacking me by faking a call saying it was my dad....they bought it for sure It brings to mind the http://breakthrough.tv/ campaign from a few years ago called "ring the bell". The attempt was to raise awareness about domestic violence and provide a tool to do something about it.  It highlights the subtle but critical role of interruptions from people, machines, buzzers, and other "animated agents" in the outcomes of everyday behavior. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/civic-labs-bangalore/ Bangalore, Karnataka, IndiaOn June 16th Civic Labs: Bangalore In mid-June, IFTF organized a mini expert workshop on the future of cities, information, and inclusion at Jaaga, a temporary structure and cultural hub designed to support meet-ups and other lightweight events. It's a continually expanding community of artists, designers, and cultural entrepreneurs around Bangalore, and it's in at least its second major iteration, having moved from another temporary site a year ago. Jaaga is good example of lightweight innovation. The barriers to entry are few. It doesn't cost very much for its organizers or the people who visit. It's easy to organize and conduct a meet-up. The structure is reinforced pallet racks with electricity, sound and weather barriers, and wifi. There's a cafe and a courtyard nearby, and it sits near the center of the city.The setting made it appropriate for revisiting IFTF's Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion map and asking how we could better use maps as tools for engagement and participation in Bangalore and beyond. The range of attendees was considerable. Urban planning, business, and social entrepreneurship endeavors were all represented. The group brought perspectives from integrated transit, design, solar electricity, development, education, landscape architecture, simulation and modeling, journalism, and infrastructure. Many stakeholders were notably absent, but that was okay since the goal was iteration, not completion.The workshop included a brief introduction to IFTF's mission, research areas, and methods followed by a mutual introduction among the participants. We briefly explored the map and embarked on a discussion of its main features, with participants quickly grasping the meaning of the forecasts and highlighting the contradictions the forecasts posed to everyday life in Bangalore and India. Good things were said about the map and the research. Some had even used it to support their own work. The map design was interpreted quickly.  We had a broad ranging discussion of keen insights in the morning, and in the afternoon we worked towards some new forecasts in small groups, reporting back to each other to finalize the workshop and identify potential actions.IFTF uses Signals as early indicators that point toward the emergence of larger trends, breakthroughs, and practices that will define the future. Signals could be new technological inventions, a research discovery, social practice, or even an individual behavior. A handful of interesting signals came up over the course of the workshop ranging from trading networks that minimize the cost of watching streaming movies, water body APIs, open data from the tourism department, performance-oriented loans linked to health indicators, and toilets where people can see each other and gossip. It's difficult to find research and documentation for signals like these on the web, but it is possible. What's more important is moving beyond the big stories that get all the PR towards more effective instances that don't always tell a story as cleanly or crisply.In order to engage with the map, I asked participants which areas they were most concerned with. After the break we clustered around three areas: Pro-Poor Interfaces and Actionable Data StreamsTransparent Resource WebsCrowdsourced Public Services Pro-Poor Interfaces and Actionable Data Streams were combined because separating makes both irrelevant in the context of Bangalore. In order to access data, interfaces have to extend to the needs of the poor, while the interfaces themselves are irrelevant, unless the data are actionable.Some important top-down or institutional considerations included: institutional acknowledgement of biases in datacreating resources for semantic annotation to provide cross-compatibility glossaries for data representationinstitutionalization of data as a legal requirementthe use of different media, languages, and locationsnon-intrusive data collection and reportingenforced accountability (so data don't come after deadlines) And we had a discussion of critical competencies for public engagement with data including: A better understanding of what data areUnderstanding the difference between quantitative and qualitative measurementsMoving from one-off data literacy approaches to ongoing effortsAnd moving from non-inclusive and anti-poor to access The group looking at Transparent Resource Webs delved into issues of measurement and classification, especially at the interfaces of natural resources and social inclusion. People questioned the definition of inclusive development as it's applied to tanks (water reservoirs), largely as a way of saying that the current state of affairs is not serving the public good.Managing for a resource's site location was critical, as was interpreting land development from the perspective of social layering and an outcome of social class structure–indicated by the extent to which graded rates of water stratify the service quality that residents receive.  There also seemed to be a strong desire to reassert traditional approaches to water and land management, favoring the reestablishment of historical approaches and a local vernacular for land classification, land records, and waterbody parceling.Participants highlighted several trends and practices that would activate more foresight: from flat to dimensional representations an mapscrowd sourced classifications of data (including technical, ecological, and traditonal)a unified definition and significance for water and landmapping high and low level flows through the city with historical and modern methodscreating interfaces for land ownership and architecture-based decision making the development of simple parameters and simple interfaces for public resource indicatorsdefining different languages for different spacesreinterpreting values for different spacesgreater role for the historical names of places (e.g. temples, tanks, groves, neighborhoods) in urban development to situate them within a resource context Public transport was addressed in Crowdsourced Public Services, and people instantly jumped to solutions. I personally loved the example of Mexico City's Metro icons as an example and signal of universal design for wayfinding around public transport.  Participants discussed a variety of potential solutions broaden the quality and uptake of public transport–particularly among the middle class in Bangalore. Some of the conversation threads ranged from using comment cards and boxes to collect feedback, mixing private and market models, implementing cross-platform smart cards, levying congestion taxes, encouraging more dialog between government and transit authorities, requiring that government officials ride public transit, changing the conversation to focus on more personal responsibility among the public for transport, standardizing policies for stakeholder engagement, and moving from fragmented transport infrastructures to more inclusive accessibility. In a rare acknowledgment of a success, it was noted that Bangalore has one of the lower rates of public harassment of women on public transport, perhaps due to special ride zones, but also to the attention the issue has received.What were some of the big insights that emerged, and how can we get better at forecasting the future of cities, information, and inclusion in regions like Bangalore, South India, and the Global South?1. Forecast maps around cities and infrastructure can revisit assumptions around what kinds of basic social and physical infrastructures are in place for a given locale. Infrastructure is a great starting point for surfacing local controversies and concerns around information, infrastructure, and services. In the context of Bangalore and India, public services, data streams, mapping, leadership, public safety, health, and participation are not an integral part of everyday life–at least not in the same way we experience them in the United States. That makes it difficult to translate those experiences and have a realistic discussion of around the future.The definition of public good provides an example. Access to different infrastructural resources like public transport, clean water, and pedestrian walkways tends to be limited for one reason or another. One reason for this is the tendency (at least in India) towards infrastructure investment and asset creation (input-focused) at the expense of service design and experience (output-focused). The downstream benefits to those most dependent on public transit, quality water and sanitation, electricity, and safe roads are often unrealized compared to those who participate more directly in infrastructure provisioning. 2. Maps highlight how the lived grammar of cities and their infrastructure is in direct conflict with the means of representing it. In a city like Bangalore, the use of maps as a wayfinding resource is a relatively new introduction, especially for public services like bus routes. Even if the maps of the city were correctly labeled in one or more of India's 22 official languages (or even just the 4 local vernaculars: Kannada, Tamil, English, Hindi), the city still changes its shape on a more or less everyday basis. Bus routes are fairly stable, but they change as new roads are being added. Places have three or more names–in different languages and for different contexts. The major landmarks are changing, and memory plays no small role. When I lived there, I remember a hotel/restaurant called Shavarati that was replaced by another, Sagar Deluxe. Four years after the transition, the landmark for autorickshaw drivers and cabs is still referred to as Shavarati. Maps are expensive to produce, and getting around by landmarks or feeling your way with the crowd is much more intuitive. And another thing. Maps give access to unexplored territory. They show locations and places that were formerly hidden from view. For many residents, particularly in unsanctioned slums, that's dangerous knowledge to have because it can lead to eviction.3. Externalities, like human resources and infrastructure services, are accounted for differently. The poor make Indian cities sustainable. Critical skills and roles may only be partially accounted for in the broad content of urban life. Domestic help, and road, drainage, and sanitation workers, for example, are often excluded from lists of skilled professions, and this makes data inclusion and access to civic services difficult for many. Hiding income is also big deal for the poor. And because the thresholds for inclusion in city services and benefits can be confusing or ill-formed, people are very scared to reveal income data, making true costs and benefits of planning difficult to discern. 4. NGO market competition for funding means that reliable data are closely withheld as a resource. There are over 2 million NGOs in India, and trust between them is scarce. Although some good national data resources exist (e.g. national census and NSSA), getting access to reliable, local data is a big obstacle for long-term urban planning. This means that connecting the loop between city services, outcomes, decision making and the shape of everyday life is often an unmet need.5. Discussing the future is a better path to public engagement than complaining about the present. There is ongoing conceptual change around the idea of a public good. One of the biggest challenges is moving discussions of infrastructure and services away from what's wrong with them and towards effective descriptions of what they could be. This means developing and sharing a clear vision of the future, without embarrassment or concern for individual recrimination. Shifting the context into the future is a clear way to bypass many of the hurt feelings that inevitably arise when discussing issues that diverse stakeholders care about. This may mean creating future-based perspectives that (on the one hand) don't come true, but which can nonetheless be used to focus community change to identify necessary skills, leverage those skills and abilities towards uncommon problems, and (on the other hand) seek broad responsibility from all stakeholders in the outcomes. This week saw the failure of the entire north and east regions of India's electrical grid. The outage affected around 700 million people across multiple states and cities. Discussing the future of cities, information, and inclusion will not directly affect the everyday availability of electricity or solve large-scale infrastructure issues in an immediate way.  However, if we look directly at the assumptions of infrastructure (current technology), how it intersects with the urban fabric of cities (social practice), what externalities are as yet unaccounted for in the system (politics), what data could be leverage to get a better picture (information flows), and which engagement strategies create more direct action (foresight), then yes, I do think we got the pieces in place for creating more resilient cities. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-sharing-economy-and-the-future-of-food/ My latest Fast CoExist piece is up and it looks at the challenge of thinking about how to use practices around sharing to rebalance a global food system where both the number of hungry and number of overweight people hover around 1 billion (depending on which estimates you use.)It begins: As interest in the sharing economy has grown over the last year, the poster child for sharing has been the power drill. As Rachel Botsman, author of a great book on sharing called What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption points out, the average power drill, which most of us own, gets something like 12 minutes of use over the course of its life. The argument that follows is pretty simple: We’d be much more efficient consumers, and much better at using our global resources, if instead of wasting our money to buy things like power drills that we need occasionally, but not often, we just shared them with our neighbors.Implicit in many--though certainly not all--businesses and concepts around sharing, is a certain kind of localism. For the most part, sharing is oriented around cars and tools and other things that can be easily shared with a neighbor, but can’t easily be shipped halfway around the globe.But what if we could use the concept of sharing excess capacity to create tangible social connections across continents and to reduce unnecessary inequalities? Click through to read the rest. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/learning-in-the-algorithmic-age-understanding-the-links-between-behaviors-and-outcomes/ Not long ago, I wanted to consider how we could provide better tools for foresight, insight and action for individual people to use in their everyday life. The FICO score seems like a great case study. Credit scores, like FICO, are used to gauge a person's creditworthiness. They measure the likelihood that a person will pay off their debts. In order to do this, the reporting agency uses an algorithm to account for a range of variables related to a person's history. This results in a score that's used as an index to determine how they rate. The score is then used by all types of lenders and credit providing agencies to access their risk of lending. As you are probably aware, credit score can impact the rates that people receive when borrowing money, which in turn affects their long-term financial viability. A lower score means higher rates, and that can lead to more debt.  The problem is, there isn't very much a person can do to really understand the impact of their behavior on credit scores. Most people are given "black-boxed" actions that they are supposed to follow in order to achieve a solid credit history. Unfortunately, they don't have any real control over the outcomes since they can't SEE the relationships between the variables in the credit score model.If you could see these relationships, they might start to look like KILL MATH.My guess is that credit agencies do not want to share the precise algorithm they use for two reasons.1) They want to maintain it as a proprietary intellectual property.2) They want to keep people from gaming the system.To the second point, my personal feeling is that if the model was truly reliable, people wouldn't be able to game the system. However, I think some people are able to make the system work better for them, and that creates a bit of uneven access to financial tools -- tools that would otherwise provide greater financial resilience. Knowing, for example, that co-signing credit for your kid will immediately attach your credit history to theirs and help improve their score at the outset is something that's not widely practiced, but it can have an impact.It's also interesting that credit scores take a hindsight perspective and not a foresight perspective. This means that factors like current job do not figure into the score's model.To think and design my way through that process, I developed a prototype of a tool that would begin to help individuals understand their actions, how their behaviors relate to financial algorithms, and the factors that make a difference to those models. For the FICO score, five factors matter: payment history (35%), credit utilization ratio (30%), credit history length (15%), recent searches for credit (10%), and other (10%). Not much information is provided about how to improve these scores, other than the directionality and proportion of impact. For example, as your credit history length increases, your score is expected to improve slowly with up to 15% impact on your total score.  However, are there thresholds buried in the model? Is reaching a 5 year mark is significant? And what about the rate of change?How do we design interactive tools and transparency into our data to help people explore the variables of models (like FICO)? What does it look like? And what are the barriers to making big data accessible and transparent so that people can manage those impacts successfully? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/designing-tech-for-social-change-an-interview-with-femi-longe-of-nigerias-co-creation-hub/ Part I In July of 2012, I spent a few days around the Co-Creation Hub in Lagos, Nigeria. The CcHUB, or simply, the Hub, is the hottest, newest, co-creation, co-working, and innovation hub. Since it opened in September of last year, it is abuzz with young energy and brilliant entrepreneurs.On my final day in Lagos I sat down with co-Founder and Director of Programmes at the CcHUB, Femi Longe, to hear more about how it all happens. While the Hub officially opened in September of 2011, the co-founders were busy trying to affect change in their native Nigeria long before then. Beginning in January of 2011, they started running Open Living Labs—weekends where mixed stakeholders get together in order to find tech based solutions to particular Nigerian problems—out of the PanAfrican University. These Labs eventually led to the creation of the Hub, a space designed to more effectively nurture Nigerian entrepreneurs who want to make positive changes in their own country. Within the Hub there appears to be two major pathways towards launching start-ups. The CcHUB still organizes Open Living Labs on a regular basis, but now can offer its space as a co-working office for young and passionate engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs. The barrier to entry is especially low to encourage a wider array of members. With an annual membership of only $200, they have about 500 members, and about 70 - 80 members use the space regularly. In addition to mentorship, members of the Hub regularly access training sessions. While I was there Blackberry held a 3-day mobile app development session. There were maybe 20-30 people in attendance.The Hub has an elaborately built system for moving from ideation of a new solutions, to incubation, and finally to launch. The stages of creation are demarcated inside the Hub with color coded tables and chairs. In this way, young entrepreneurs just beginning to think about the solutions they want to create will be sharing a table with individuals in a similar situation. I had no idea this system was in place until about an hour before I left. It felt like stepping into a beehive where every member is in a particular area based on some logical design that is totally unobservable to an outsider.For now the Hub is focused on the early stage of "I have an idea" -- they want entrepreneurs to see their work in terms of a project, not as a business. As Femi stated, Silicon Valley has been successful, in part, because people can focus on adding value initially, as opposed to obsessing over how their idea is going to generate revenue. I asked Femi if it make sense to have a system in which organizations can earn such a large amount of money without first having a revenue stream, I, of course, pointed to Facebook's recent IPO and Instagram's hefty price. Femi was quick to point out that Facebook provides a HUGE service to the world, and if Zuckerberg had to stop and think about revenue—much like Google in the early days—from the onset of the project, we would never have benefited from Facebook’s existence. And I guess this is the point that is easy to miss for those of us in the US that often see Facebook as a distraction. In other areas of the world Facebook has been a means to a level of civic engagement and organizing that was previously impossible. Facebook, Google, Twitter, all these organizations have allowed people to express themselves and be heard like never before! Open Living Labs:The Labs are meant to be experimental. They—along with the Hub as a whole—are meant to be a safe space for people to fail, but at the same time designed to limit needless failures. The Hub wants to put the resources in place—like knowledge partners, funding sources, and even end user testing—for success, but also create an atmosphere that promotes experimentation without fear of failure. Since the Hub opened less than a year ago, they have hosted 8 labs, and out of those labs, 15 start-ups (or solutions) are being developed. There are an additional 7 solutions being developed in the Hub from outside of the Labs as well.During the Open Living Lab weekends participants will suggest tech-based solutions to the specific issue in focus, build a physical prototype, and design a business model. All this happens within 48 hours—from ideation, to prototype, and business model. Often times the Labs come with financial backing to help build and launch winning ideas. But instead of simply giving money directly to the winner, the Hub acts as an intermediary and co-creates the app alongside the Lab winner.  I asked Femi if there is a reason why solutions are only tech-based, acknowledging that some problems cannot be solved with technology. He quickly explained that this is simply the best way to reach a majority of Nigerians. The Hub is trying to leverage the fact that most Nigerians have mobiles, and Internet costs are dropping. Of course there is also the benefit that you can actually build a prototype for mobile and web-based solutions in a weekend, and the cost of starting up such businesses is relatively low.The current focus on tech-based solutions does not mean that the Hub intends to stay purely tech-based forever. They are very flexible in their methodology, but are very certain about the end game. As Femi put it, the Hub wants to build a world in which, when the average Nigerian sees a problem, they know that they have the capacity and the resources they need to solve that problem. And perhaps what's most striking about the Hub is that the young (primarily male) members who spend their days there truly seem to be mostly average Lagosians.Stay tuned for Part II http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/envisioning-peace-can-futures-thinking-aid-conflict-resolution/ “Why is it so hard to break out of cycles of violence?” This is the question Tessa has been thinking about since she was a child. While it may seem woefully naive for many of us, Tessa is motivated by a desire to get back to the fundamental issues, and begin to look for real solutions.When she temporarily left IFTF to go to Fordham University for graduate school, Tessa began to think critically about the role that futures thinking might play in trying to answer this question. The Journal of Futures Studies recently published her article, Future Peace: Breaking Cycles of Violence through Futures Thinking, which explores this question.Two pivotal angles ...What Tessa found were two pivotal angles that highlighted a systematic need for futures thinking within conflict resolution. The first angle paints a practical approach. People in violence—be it physical or structural—are not able to think about the future due to a hierarchy of needs. But perhaps more importantly, humans are generally not able to think about a future different from their past. Recent neuroscience research even indicates that the brain is wired to generate images of the future based only on what it has observed in the past. People who live in violent conflict are potentially not capable, neurologically, of imagining a peaceful future without the specific platform to do so. We need to provide that platform. This need spans the entire landscape of conflict resolution, from the grassroots to the leaders sitting in mediation.The second pivotal angle—which is closely drawn from work by Elise and Kenneth Boulding—focuses on a global perspective. The world plans for peace through war. From arms races to bio-weapons and cyber-warfare, nations think in terms of building more sophisticated weaponry to outsmart and outwit criminals and perpetrators of violence. But this is not strategizing for peace. As a human race we lack the skill, and the imagery to do so.  How can we build a road to a destination we cannot yet see?Futures thinking can play a critical role in building these new-found, realistic, and internally consistent images of peaceful futures that may eventually guide us to that space.For more information ... Read Tessa's full article, Future Peace: Breaking Cycles of Violence through Futures Thinking Interested in chatting further about this topic? Contact Tessa at tfinlev@iftf.org http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/why-3-d-pharmaceutical-printing-may-emerge-from-outside-the-us/ The Guardian has a great interview with a Scottish professor named Lee Cronin who is working on developing a system to create pharmaceuticals through 3-d printing. Which is to say that he wants to make downloading and manufacturing medicine as simple as printing a web page.After noting the barriers--of which there are many--Cronin offers up this big vision: "Imagine your printer like a refrigerator that is full of all the ingredients you might require to make any dish in Jamie Oliver's new book," Cronin says. "Jamie has made all those recipes in his own kitchen and validated them. If you apply that idea to making drugs, you have all your ingredients and you follow a recipe that a drug company gives you. They will have validated that recipe in their lab. And when you have downloaded it and enabled the printer to read the software it will work. The value is in the recipe, not in the manufacture. It is an app, essentially." What would this mean? Well for a start it would potentially democratise complex chemistry, and allow drugs not only to be distributed anywhere in the world but created at the point of need. It could reverse the trend, Cronin suggests, for ineffective counterfeit drugs (often anti-malarials or anti-retrovirals) that have flooded some markets in the developing world, by offering a cheap medicine-making platform that could validate a drug made according to the pharmaceutical company's "software". Crucially, it would potentially enable a greater range of drugs to be produced. "There are loads of drugs out there that aren't available," Cronin says, "because the population that needs them is not big enough, or not rich enough. This model changes that economy of scale; it could makes any drug cost effective." This gives me an excuse to highlight one of my favorite artifacts from the future that our health team has developed in recent years--that of a 3-d printer, housed in spare parts from an old arcade game, printing out personalized medicine in a pharmacy in Latin America. The setting here is critical. One of the things I've heard said about 3-d printing is that it is, in effect, a solution without a problem. Or, put differently, it would be fun to print medicine in my house, but I'm certainly not going to spend a couple thousand dollars on something that would be really cool but just marginally more convenient.By contrast, the advantages of 3-d printing in places with limited transportation, manufacturing and distribution networks are enormous. That's the insight, for example, behind the Coke Freestyle, an increasingly common coke machine that can mix more than 100 different flavors of soda, despite being no bigger than a traditional vending machine. In effect, Coke decided that rather than spend a lot of money running trucks full of bottles between places and wait for transportation to get better, they could instead just find a way to produce soda at much smaller scales.And that's the idea here--that by rethinking production, a lot of various but critical barriers, such as transportation and distribution networks, become far less imposing. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/four-practical-ways-for-leaders-to-make-the-future/ Bob Johansen recently published the second edition of Leaders Make the Future. In the book, Bob presents an expansive ten-year forecast about the key future forces that will impact our world in the decade ahead, pointing to the shift towards the global well-being economy, the growing impact of digital natives, and the emergence of cloud-served supercomputing. Bob reminds us that we live in an increasingly VUCA world, characterized by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, and that the VUCA World presents both danger and opportunity.  Leaders who make the future will make sense of the VUCA world and transform Volatility into Vision, Uncertainty into Understanding, Complexity into Clarity, and Ambiguity into Agility.  What skills will allow future leaders to thrive? With four decades of wisdom and knowhow as a ten-year forecaster at the intersection of technology and society, Bob identifies ten new leadership skills for the future. He brings each skill to life with personal stories and examples from around the world.  The ten-year forecast and ten skills point to the Why and What of successful leadership in the future. The second edition of Leaders Make the Future also distills the How, providing practical ways for leaders to make the future and improve upon their own future leadership skills: Bob, a proponent of immersive learning, says that the "best way to learn from the future is to immerse yourself in it." Throughout the book, he highlights opportunities for immersive learning and for practicing the ten future leadership skills in low-risk environments. The book, written in collaboration with the Center for Creative Leadership, aligns IFTF's Foresight to Insight to Action methodology and the ten future leadership skills with prominent leadership and organizational development models and strategies, creating a blended model that provides grounding for future-oriented leadership development programs. The last chapter presents leaders with a self-assessment of their own future leadership skills, complete with questions and suggested actions. The book's publisher, Berrett-Koehler, also offers an online self-assessment, the Future Leadership Skills Indicator. Leaders Make the Future PresentationWe are happy to announce a new Leaders Make the Future presentation for use with your own team, organization, or industry. This presentation includes each of the ten future leadership skills with relevant examples and videos, featuring Bob Johansen. You may consider the following questions while using this presentation with your team: Which of the ten future leadership skills are most relevant for your industry? How can leaders in your organization improve upon the ten future leadership skills? Are there examples or stories from the book that resonate with you and/or your team? To access Bob's presentation: Leaders Make the Future Presentation (for PC) Leaders Make the Future Presentation (for Mac) For More InformationPlease contact Sean Ness, Director of Business Development, at sness@iftf.org or 650-233-9517. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/participatory-social-systems-for-well-being/ One of the big stories we highlighted in last year's Ecosystems of Well-Being Map centered around participatory health, and it stems from a set of broader trends we're seeing both in and out of health. In effect, this story highlights efforts to co-create the conditions that produce well-being--meaning crowdsourcing infrastructure development, using peer-to-peer tools to connect with each other and meet health needs. It's a world where our well-being comes not from what we can do as individuals, but from what we can do together.This is a space that has exploded pretty dramatically since we put together our map last year. Take the rise in crowdfunding as one signal--a concept that was barely known a year ago, but was just listed by Technology Review as one of the ten emerging technologies shaping the world, driven in large part by the success of Kickstarter--and we're already starting to see its impact on health and well-being. For example, a project from Slow Money called Credibles is using crowdfunding to enable people to raise funds for relatively small-scale food operations, such as growing and selling organic eggs. What's notable about crowdfunding is how it's lowering barriers to entry for people with good ideas--you don't need to go to a bank to do something; if you can develop a network of others who share your passion, and are willing to help contribute, you can do something.And these kinds of innovations aren't limited to exchanging money. For example, a new game called FavorTree is designed to help people meet each other, connect and build trust by doing small favors--like loaning someone a piece of cooking equipment or giving them a ride to a doctor--and uses points and other game mechanics to encourage people to participate and collaborate.Critically, the bulk of the work here is often driven by lots of everyday people making small contributions that add up, rather than a couple large scale contributions. And early successes like Kickstarter point toward an incredible potential here to reimagine health and well-being as something we can pursue, and create, collectively. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/using-technology-to-manage-our-addiction-to-technology/ File this under the category of things that probably shouldn't be medical problems: Computer Eyes. What are computer eyes? They're what happens when you spend so much time staring and working at digital screens that you strain your eyes. At least in Japan, this is apparently enough of a problem that the consumer electronics company Panasonic is releasing an eye rejuvenating system this September that is designed to treat eye strain related to computer use.It's a product that seems like both an entirely reasonable business idea, as well as a disturbing signal of the health and social impacts that stem from technology use.In a great piece at Wired UK, Ben Hammersley frames the challenge as, in effect, a social one. We're all so used to being in contact with each other, that the emotional costs of ignoring email and phone calls is so high that it's easier to simply be connected. Airplane mode is shouting at me. I've had enough. This can't go on any more. I need to turn my phone back on. There is, you see, nothing noisier than a phone that's turned off. Because you are aware, and nervous, that when you turn it back on again you'll be confronted with a backlog of messages and voicemails. We now talk about information overload and the tyranny of being always connected, devices in pockets, and false feelings of vibrations making you grab at your phone at random moments. The constant battle to not keep checking your inbox. But perhaps it's not actually the technology that is the problem, but the social arrangements you have with the people you talk to. If by habit or design your correspondents have grown to expect you to have your phone on all the time, it can become oppressively difficult to disconnect without risking a social backlash, or even outright suspicion. These social norms, that people expect a reply to a text almost immediately and an email as soon as possible, have seemingly never been negotiated or at least discussed out loud. They have simply evolved unspoken. However, when you do have this conversation, it can have miraculous effects. As part of his argument, Hammersley cites a recent, if small study from UC Irvine which forced 13 office workers to not use email for an entire week and monitored the effects. Among other things, the employees who didn't use email were more productive, more capable of focusing, and less stressed out.Of course, it would be silly to argue that we either could, or would want to stop using email and other technology. But it highlights something a little more subtle--we developed these technologies to make us more productive, to make it easier to stay in touch with friends and loved ones, and they've gradually, and somewhat inadvertently, become increasingly burdensome.Which brings me back to the absurdity of Panasonic's new eye mask -- it is, in effect, a technological innovation aimed at reducing the health impacts of dealing with other technological innovations, which themselves, cause health problems in the form of stress.Nothing about that makes sense.And so while it seems to me that the Panasonic product could do well, I'm guessing it won't do well in the long-run. Rather, I think the long-run opportunity will be to give people better tools, both technological as well as social, to manage connectivity, so that we aren't so afraid of disconnecting that it harms our health. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/data-exhaust-and-the-future-of-peer-pressure/ About a month ago, I received several negative comments through Twitter about a blog post on the idea that people are beginning to threaten themselves with embarrassment online as a strategy to improve health by, for example, installing a sensor enabled refrigerator that lets its owner's network know when he goes for a midnight snack. At the time, I wrote about the concept as an example of "smart pain," which is to say short-term, relatively harmless pain designed to help us achieve longer term goals. But it's also an example of a separate phenomenon: The bits of data we're generating without thinking about it are becoming an incredibly valuable source of peer pressure that has a ton of potential to change our behaviors, mostly by making us very, very uncomfortable.Consider a fascinating startup called Lenddo, whose mission is to mine through social networking data to determine credit risk—and claims, surprisingly credibly, to be doing so for social good. Their argument is that for people who don't have credit history, their social and web history data--are they connected to reliable people, for example--can offer a useful proxy to determine creditworthiness, and that this proxy score will allow for a dramatic expansion in microfinance.On their blog, Lenddo's CEO argues, somewhat counterintuitively, that this kind of social media mining will open up a return to more holistic ways of understanding how risky people might be. Bankers lost their way in the 1950s as the very nature of community changed.  As the country started suburbanizing, the automobile and television all converged to change how industrialized societies interact and people became less connected with their neighbors.  One of the results is that banks turned to faceless financial ratios and computerized credit scores as the core of their underwriting process.  Furthermore, lending based on personal relationships did not scale up well in the age of mega-corporations… The rediscovery of character based lending all started with Professor [Muhammad] Yunus‘ desire to help the extreme poor in Bangladesh.  Yunus hypothesized that if members of the community were willing to vouch for each other it would be an effective way to distribute credit.  He was right.  It turns out that people’s willingness to vouch for each other is driven by character, and the result was the expansion of the microfinance industry.  Yunus’ customers did not have access to electricity, let alone a credit score, but thanks to Yunus they could access capital to improve their lives.  Today the microfinance industry successfully lends over $50 billion a year, and Professor Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Prize for his positive impact. Globally, the default rate in the microfinance industry is around 2%, outperforming most western consumer lenders.  Clearly, lending based on character works.  Yet $50 billion a year is not much in a multi-trillion dollar debt market.  That’s because until recently, microfinance lending was only used by the ultra poor, and had to be face-to-face.  With social networks like Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin, these media channels can change all that. Much like microfinance, one of the keys to making Lenddo work is peer pressure. As when someone gets a loan through Lenddo, and then fails to pay, the system "will inform a person's network about a late payment, and friends' scores will also drop." In other words, if you fail to repay your loan, you aren't letting down a giant bank; you're directly harming your friends.Talk about peer pressure.Now, this idea—of mining social data for creditworthiness—is not particularly new, but it's still very controversial. The Economist recently highlighted an expert in using social media to underwrite insurance risk—who has actively started paying for junk food in cash, for fear of tipping off algorithms to his unhealthy habits.When I first read about Lenddo, my gut reaction was similar—my instinct is that I'd rather not have my Facebook page factor into what kind of interest rate I get on a car loan, for example.That said, assuming these algorithms work as intended—and to be fair, that's a big, big if—it's hard to understand the concern. The idea behind using peer pressure to ensure loans get repaid is thousands of years old; the idea of using your friends to help you stick with a lifestyle goal is at least as old as alcoholic's anonymous. Technologies are simply facilitating new kinds of peer pressure, such as the ability to automatically alert your network when you do something you shouldn't, like have a midnight snack or fail to repay a loan.All of that said, I still don't want to have my Facebook page analyzed before I get a car loan. Which is a simple way of saying that even though I can defend the concept of using my Facebook page to determine credit-worthiness, I still don't like it. Or, in other words, we're facing an uncomfortable future: One where we have an increasingly useful tool—in the form of social networks exerting peer pressure—whose potential lies in its ability to make us feel uneasy. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/20-years-from-now-youll-have-alzheimers/ As part of our Ecosystems of Well-Being map last year, we argued that the increasing importance, as well as the increasingly confusing challenge, of anticipating how today's measures and metrics affect our future health states will be central to shaping health and well-being in the next decade. There are a couple of key challenges with anticipatory health--the first is that, for the most part, we can't anticipate with 100 percent accuracy, but instead, have to operate by understanding fuzzy probabilities of disease. The second problem is that even if we do know that something seems likely to occur, it's hard to know how to act.Since we developed the map last year, there's been no shortage of efforts to improve anticipatory health efforts--ranging from prototypes aimed at the individual, like babybeat, which attempts to prevent sudden infant death by monitoring a baby for subtle changes and waking him up in the event of a warning, to companies like Kaggle, which, among other things, has created a data mining competition to identify which patients, among millions, are most likely to be re-admitted to a hospital.But I think the tension inherent to anticipating is best exemplified by a recent breakthrough in understanding Alzheimer's: Namely, that researchers have identified biomarker changes that warn of Alzheimer's two decades in advance. The first detectable signs of Alzheimer's disease occur as long as a quarter century before symptoms like memory loss become noticeable, according to a detailed chronology of molecular changes to the brain and spinal fluid of people who later developed the brain disease.The research, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, provides a timeline of the subtle changes that begin in victims' brains and, importantly, can be detected years ahead of time by MRI exams, blood analyses, or other tests.The development of biomarkers that can track and predict the natural course of the disease is important for carrying out drug studies, in part because changes to these molecules could give early hints that a drug works. Treatments for Alzheimer's have all been unsuccessful so far—in part, researchers think, because people received drugs only after symptoms had become obvious and their brains were too damaged to recover. As Technology Review notes, there's incredible research value here--armed with an understanding of the progression of Alzheimer's, researchers can figure out if different kinds of treatments work.But the story is different if you suddenly find yourself diagnosed with these biomarkers. In other words, imagine your doctor saying, "Twenty years from now, you'll suffer from dementia. And there's nothing we can do."In other words, in the next decade, anticipatory health will be driven by two key factors: Our scientific abilities to measure and better understand what today's metrics say about tomorrow's health, as well as our social structures for figuring out how to deal with messy, and at times, very difficult metrics. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/marina-gorbis-talks-evolution-of-the-workforce-on-bloomberg-tv/ Watch the webcast of Marina Gorbis on Rewind with Matt Miller, originally aired June 25th, discussing the evolution of the workforce in the era of advanced robotics.In this interview, Marina discusses IFTF's recent work exploring the impact that increased automation is having on the workplace and further advances that are likey to further shift the nature of work itself. For example, increased automation has many worrying how we can prepare today’s children to be successful in a world of ever-proliferating robotics. By identifying the sort of things that robots can’t do—those tasks that are not routine and repetitive—we can shape education to better train students in skills like higher-level thinking, problem-solving, story-telling, and literacy in media. Some of this is happening outside school curriculums at the moment: at youth robotics competitions, where kids team up and learn to collaborate using multi-disciplinary skills, and at events like the Maker Faire, where do-it-yourself culture of all kinds is made available for people of all ages. Whether or not you agree with the trend, an accelerating implementation of robotics automation appears almost certain to remain a factor in the present and future unemployment picture. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/product-information-what-do-we-want-to-know/ Recalls have made people more suspicious of food safety while a diabetes epidemic has led many to reconsider what kinds of food they eat. Increasing evidence that the industrial food system contributes to the global climate crisis causes others to look deeply into where food comes from. Americans want to know more about the food they purchase and consume every day, and new technology is making this possible. But as more information about our food becomes accessible, deciding what to buy and what to eat may become more difficult.Before we buy an apple, what will we want to know? Will we care how much it costs? Will it matter where it was grown? Will we consider what it was grown next to? Which chemicals were sprayed on it, near it or in the irrigation system that was used water it? How much water was used? Who shipped the apple? How it was stored? Was the farmer paid a fair wage? Were his workers? How many calories does it contain?Will we want to know everything?California voters will decide this November if genetically modified food will be explicitly labeled. Designers are already envisioning sustainability-labels that will give consumers the entire history of the products that they purchase. Earlier this month, IBM launched a new augmented reality app that will allow users to learn everything they could ever want to know about their food simply by pointing their smart phone at the merchandise. Dean Takahashi at Venture Beat reports, “You’ll be able to see info such as ingredients, price, reviews, and discounts that apply that day. If you opt in, data from your social networks can be integrated into the data stream. If a friend reviewed a product that you’re looking at, the app will flag that review.”The availability of such technology signals the increasing democratization of data that is occurring throughout the retail world. Websites like Real Time Farms and Market Maker allow individuals to track the source of food in new ways so they can make better informed decisions before they make their purchases. It is generally assumed that if the process is more transparent, then food producers will have an incentive to make safe, healthy food at reasonable prices.  But will this be the case?Today’s grocery store products are filled with a variety of information consumers use to make decisions. Some of the information, like ingredient labels, is regulated in a way that leads to a certain degree of transparency. However, words like “Low-Calorie,” “Sustainable,” “Fresh,” and “All-Natural” do not have a standardized definition and shoppers find themselves relying on simple marketing schemes to help them choose their food. Detailed labeling and augmented reality apps can give consumers more knowledge about what they are buying, but it can also misdirect shoppers and lead them to purchase something that is not really in line with their ethics or nutritional plans.Without contextual knowledge, it is difficult to determine whether a locally grown, pesticide-drenched fruit is “better” than the same organic fruit shipped from across the planet. If your augmented reality app told you that the workers in Ecuador who picked your fruit were paid the equivalent of $6 per hour for their harvest, would you be able to determine if that was a fair wage? Unless you had time to brush up on the current state of the economy in Ecuador and you knew a thing or two about the fruit industry, you probably would not be able to use that information to help you make a better decision.Some studies have shown that consumers want less information, not more. As floods of product information begin overwhelming shoppers, making purchasing decisions simple could be the key. Look at how frequently yelp reviews are summed up with how many stars a restaurant receives while nutritional information is boiled down simple calorie counts. We don’t want to know everything about every purchase we make just because the information is available. The trick is finding a way to display comprehensive information in a comprehensible format.  For the sake of transparency, more information is better. But as the information begins piling up, platforms that allow consumers to cypher through extraneous information and customize what they want to know will be the most useful. As individuals become better equipped to seek out products that are in line with their health regiments or their ethical practices, producers will need to find new ways to provide honest and open information to the public.Producers will also be able to influence what consumers choose to value. Last month the United States Preventive Services Task Force discovered that small doses of calcium and vitamin D don’t help reduce the likelihood of bone fractures, yet products still promote their inclusion in their packaging and consumers still purchase those products because they think it is healthy.Augmented reality apps create the potential for an immediate feedback loop. If apps collect data and inform the producers that individuals are concerned with a product’s carbon footprint, they can emphasize the energy saving aspects of their products. Whether consumers make decisions based on water usage, the inclusion of GMO material, or the wages paid to the laborers who grew it, producers will have to adapt to provide products that fall in line with the public’s evolving perception of safety, health and sustainability. Technology can provide consumers with endless streams of information, but the question remains: what do we want to know? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/lie-detectors-everywhere/ Want to know if your son ate his vegetables? Now, based on the work of some Yale researchers, you may be able to figure out what your child, or anyone else, ate by simply bouncing a blue light off of the palms of someone's hands and looking for a slight yellow discoloration that signals a diet high in vegetables. It's an interesting example of an emerging class of lie-detection technologies that are on the verge of reshaping what we know about ourselves--and each other.Take a separate example, recently covered by C-Net's Cutting Edge blog. It highlights a new way to process video, frame by frame and in real-time, to look for things like blood rushing to the face, which indicate that someone is lying. Or consider a separate system that successfully figured out who was lying more than 80 percent of the time, simply by tracking and evaluating eye movement.Your days of lying to your computer--or your friends, or your boss, or your spouse--are numbered, in other words.This is an interesting shift--particularly in light of some of the emerging research into dishonesty. I just got a copy of Dan Ariely's new book, which argues that most of us tend to be a little bit dishonest. I've only just started reading it, but one of his points is that supervision--and I think these kinds of automatic lie detection systems would qualify as supervision--reduces how willing we are to lie. And I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing.As Cutting Edge's Elizabeth Armstrong notes, these technologies could significantly shift how we interact with each other. "Imagine," she writes, "taking a quick video of a first date's face with your cell phone to detect arousal, or the absence thereof. Time was, we had to rely on instinct for this kind of detection."I like Armstrong's example because it's an example of the kind of everyday lying that most of us do--we agree to a co-worker's half-baked plan in order to avoid a conflict, tell a spouse that her dress looks pretty, and so on. (Not me, of course! Other people.)As these technologies improve, our little frustrations, omissions and other dishonesties may become far more apparent to each other. This may help us catch criminals, or even make sure our kids are eating well--but it won't come without a cost. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-non-ancient-non-secrets-of-japanese-health/ The Japanese people are longer-lived and healthier than Americans. Currently, that information does more to sell diet books than influence policy or infrastructure development. But research suggests public policy, income and healthcare equality, and the physical and social environment are a big part of what makes Japan healthy.A while back, I was browsing books in San Francisco’s Japantown and came across the following title, Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat. It was essentially a diet book, and, initially, the title made me uncomfortable. It struck me as sort of sexist (“aging and gaining weight is the worst thing that can happen to women, for dudes it’s okay though”) and sort of racist (though the fact it’s a diet book implies otherwise, the wording of the title seems to say suggest Japanese women are inherently small and young-looking). I flipped through the book, though, and found some interesting sections. It does contain some good health advice, but more than that, I think it says something interesting about how we look at health in this country. Just as the book claims, the Japanese people are longer-lived and thinner than Americans. However, that information has mostly led us to examine the Japanese diet and, as far as I can tell, hasn’t really influenced public policy or how we approach our built environment. Here, we tend to think about health in terms of personal decisions, but the Japanese smoke more than people in the US, yet they remain healthier. They do, however, eat better, but even that has strong environmental causes. For instance, eating lots of fish and vegetables, as the book recommends, is a lot easier in Japan simply because healthy food is more available in the physical environment. Japanese convenience stores, which are probably no more than a mile apart from each other in urban areas, tend to have relatively healthy, ready-to-go meals (fish, rice, vegetables, unsweetened tea) at a reasonable price.The book also points to the “80 percent full rule,” (the idea that you only eat ‘til you’re 80 full). This is a cultural idea, (i.e. part of the social environment and outside the individuals control), and it’s reinforced by environment (it’s hard to find a super-sized portion of anything anywhere in Japan, and plates and dishes tend to be smaller there than in the US).Other reasons for Japanese longevity are likely that infrastructure encourages using bicycles and public transportation, (and we’re constantly learning how unhealthy driving is).But another major factor in Japanese health is public policy.In fact, a series of reports analyzing 50 years of healthcare in Japan, (cited in this Guardian article,) found the relative lack of income inequality and the country’s socialized medical system as significant contributors to Japanese longevity. From one of the papers:“Excellent health outcomes in Japan have been attributed to favourable risk factor profiles, health system performance, and universal coverage.“In fact, governance has a lot to do with Japanese health in ways that Americans might find shocking, even comical. For instance, this law passed in 2009:“Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups... Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight… To reach its goals of shrinking the overweight population by 10 percent over the next four years and 25 percent over the next seven years, the government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet specific targets.”There are two pretty huge cultural differences we see at work in this particular example. The first is the degree to which Japanese people are willing to allow the government to regulate their lives. The second is that they place the responsibility with the collective, in this case the company or local government, rather than the individual. These two things are not likely to change in the U.S., and I don't have a strong opinion on whether or not they should, but they both indicate that a diet book can only really begin to scratch the surface of what makes Japan a healthier country. So what does all this have to do with the future of health?We're already seeing some experiments to make this information actionable. Albert Lea, Minnesota, for instance, made a comprehensive effort to make their town an environment conducive to health. They partnered with the AARP and author Dan Buettner, who has done research into regions throughout the globe where people have exceptionally high life expectancies, to create the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project, aimed at extending the lifespan of the entire town—and they took a remarkably holistic approach. Among the changes: They altered the built environment to make it more walkable. They encouraged restaurants and retailers to change food labelling and promote healthy food choices. They suggested people invest in smaller plates to nudge them to eat less. They made changes to workplaces and schools. And they took a social approach to encouraging excercise. In the end, they reported that residents that took part in the initiative extended their lifespan by nearly three years.If experiments like this continue to succeed, we could see a major shift in conventional wisdom about what makes a region healthy. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/information-ecosystems-for-well-being-conference/ By the year 2020, it’s estimated we’ll have 45 times more data than we had at the beginning of this decade—an explosion of information that is often called big data. Technologies such as biosensors and augmented reality point toward a radical expansion in the sources and kinds of information that matter for health and well-being. This growth in information is creating enormous potential for transforming innovation in health and well-being.We hosted our annual client-only Health Horizons conference, Innovating Information Ecosystems: The Next Decade and Beyond at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco on June 13 - 14. We used our new forecast map, Information Ecosystems for Well-being, to think systematically about opportunities to use information to build capacities for health and well-being. Over the course of two days, we presented the map’s forecasts, focusing on three hotspots of health information innovation:automation and prediction,roles and interactions, andhigh-resolution understanding.We also brought together dozens of leading innovators to explore this new frontier in health and well-being. Together, we created insights and built strategies for making information actionable for health and well-being. The public could participate online by following the hashtag #hh2012. We also tweeted live from the conference under the handle @iftf.Before the official start, there was a pre-conference session, “Information Ecosystems: BigData and Technology Foundations.” IFTF Distinguished Fellow Mike Liebhold (@mikeliebhold), a tech veteran with decades of experience working in innovation for companies like Apple and Intel, led an exploration of some of the emerging challenges of understanding and making sense of big data. He was joined in discussion by Jeremy Howard (@jeromei), President and Chief Scientist of Kaggle, Wayne Pan, Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Health Access, and Eva Ho (@eva_ho), Vice President of Marketing at Factual.Participants were also able to go on a pre-conference mobile adventure walk designed by Shinobi Labs, a 20-minute interactive exploration of Mission Bay.Overview of Day 1 (June 13):After a welcome from Health Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon (@rodfalcon) and Research Affiliate Mary Cain (@maisybones), Rod set the context for the conference by highlighting recent challenges and innovations in health information ecosystems. Research Director Miriam Lueck Avery (@myravery) then used Health Horizons’ new Map of the Decade as a guide to take us on a tour of the future of information ecosystems.After a short break, Research Directors Brinda Dalal and Bradley Kreit (@bkreit) presented the first innovation hotspot, “Automated and Predictive Systems,” highlighting how emerging analytic capabilities are reshaping health.The day closed with a keynote by Joseph Turow (@joeprof), author of The Daily You. He highlighted opportunities to use personalizing information to improve health—as well as ways that information personalization could harm efforts to improve health.Overview of Day 2 (June 14):The second day kicked off with Rod and Brad sharing the second innovation hotspot, “Amplified Roles and Interactions,” in which they explored how innovations in information ecosystems will create new kinds of health experiences, as different roles and capabilities emerge. Following that was a panel discussion, “Shifting Health Experiences” featuring Jeffrey Bigham (@jeffbigham) of the University of Rochester, Eri Gentry (@erigentry) of Scanadu, and Hannah Chung (@hchung) and Aaron Horowitz (@aaronjhorowitz) of Sproutel. These panelists are all developing new technologies and data-intensive strategies to improve health experiences; they discussed the current and future opportunities their work creates.After another break-out brainstorming session, participants had the opportunity to attend an optional book talk during lunch, in which IFTF Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen (@bobiftf) presented highlights from the new edition of his book Leaders Make the Future.After lunch, Brinda and Miriam presented the third innovation hotspot, “High Resolution Views and Understandings,” in which they explored new forms of data, such as microbial ecosystems, cross-species health and chronobiology, that are giving us higher-resolution views into our personal and collective health.The conference concluded with a panel discussion, featuring Hugh Dubberly of Dubberyly Design Office, Noah Fierer (@noahfierer) of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Jai Haissman (@jhaissman) of Affective Interfaces. These leading innovators joined us to explore how their work in measuring and communicating health data will drive new kinds of health and well-being interventions.We are very excited about the new research we presented at the conference and hope you followed along on Twitter with the hashtag #hh2012. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/from-civics-as-applied-sociology-1904-to-toward-a-public-social-science-2011/ “The social sciences deal with humanity’s most pressing problems, but there are barriers between practitioners and the public. We must restructure these disciplines from the ground up. In times of economic and political distress, the social sciences must become more relevant and useful by devoting their attention to society’s major problems.” Thus opens a fascinating essay penned early in 2011 by Herbert Gans, one of America’s most renewed sociologists. (And author of The Urban Villagers, perhaps the best book ever written on the social impacts of slum clearance)Toward A Public Social Science is a call to arms to de-geekify a field that has become incestuous, arcane, and detached from the reality of society. Gans points out all that is wrong with academic social science – its over-emphasis on theory, disdain for fieldwork, the penalties scholars pay in tenure review for doing policy work instead of refereed articles. He identifies four areas where reform is needed to protect those that would apply their methods to the problems of society – “in university departments; in university administrations; in the disciplines themselves; and in the government agencies and foundations that fund most social science research.”This is an important treatise, given the sweeping social change associated with global urbanization and the spread of information and communication technology into every facet of life and the built and manufactured environment. The social sciences, especially sociology is on the brink of irrelevance, or at least a major transformation as new data-driven inductive methods usurp the spotlight.Three thoughts occurred to me as I read the piece.First, the social sciences ought to look for inspiration to the sweeping change in biomedical research, especially the rise of the so-called “translational” model. Translational approaches seek to break the dichotomy between basic and applied research, creating a continuous process of collaboration from “bench to bedside”. Social scientists cannot operate in an ivory tower, they need to be constantly learning and testing their ideas against real world observations. They need to see their subjects not just as guinea pigs, but co-creators of understanding about the world. If doctors can do it, social scientists can too! Another source of inspiration is urban planning, which draws heavily on the social sciences, but does so opportunistically and with an eye towards harvesting what’s immediately useful for understanding the problems of cities. In my academic career, I’ve been based in various urban planning departments, but have frequently studied with “pure” social scientists – economists, social scientists, and cultural geographers. It’s always a useful process to go back to my department and explain to students and colleagues what I’ve learned. Many planning departments have long experience with the kinds of reforms Gans suggests for social sciences – such as encouraging alternatives to refereed publications as accomplishments worthy of tenure.Finally, I’ve been reading an awful lot of Patrick Geddes lately, whose call to develop “Civics As A Applied Sociology”  over a century ago in Victorian England has deeply shaped the way I am thinking about global urbanization and how we might fix it. Geddes was a biologist who helped launch sociology as a formal field, but was rather quickly marginalized as theorists took over – for many of the same reasons Gans identified in this essay. Much as today, in his day rapid urbanization was creating many pressing problems. Geddes, like Gans, believed that addressing the problems of society was a primary calling for social scientists. Perhaps we are coming full circle, and are on the cusp of a new Renaissance of applied social science. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/energymmowgli-helps-navy-tackle-energy-challenges/ Can the U.S. Navy be resourceful with fewer resources? The Navy invited the public to play energyMMOWGLI the week of May 22nd to share ideas for how to be resourceful without resources.Everyone knows the saying: necessity is the mother of invention. And what we need now is invention on the scale of the world’s strongest navy—the U.S. Navy: 283 ships in active service3700 aircraft300,000+ active personnelserving 280+ million citizens That’s a lot of energy demand. But it’s also a lot of potentially untapped resources for meeting that demand. "A crowd-sourced approach is perfect for this particular topic of energy efficiency and Naval readiness," says Jason Tester, IFTF's lead game designer. "The only magic bullet to achieving incremental efficiency improvements is working together and casting a wide net for the best ideas." Play energyMMOWGLI and share your best ideas for how to be resourceful without resources. You could have the winning strategy for the world’s strongest Navy. Play the game, change the game. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMAY 18, 2012To Help Ensure Operational Readiness, Navy Recruits Players for Online Wargame to Tackle Energy ChallengesNORFOLK, VA – The Navy’s Energy and Environmental Readiness Division (OPNAV N45), together with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), invites civic and military collaboration in energyMMOWGLI (Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet). The game will build on efforts to improve the U.S. Navy’s combat capability and energy security, particularly by promoting energy efficiency and diversifying its energy supply (use of alternative energy), which will ultimately reduce reliance on fossil fuels from overseas.Scheduled to run for three days starting this Tuesday, May 22, energyMMOWGLI will immerse players in a future energy scenario from the year 2022 (view scenario at portal.mmowgli.nps.edu), and will ask them to generate ideas around how to reduce energy consumption, improve energy efficiency, and diversify its energy supply for the sake of future strategic readiness.The game will be “an examination of what our energy future looks like if we fail to act now. Every day that petroleum prices increase, it erodes our ability to train for and execute operations that our nation demands of us. Little by little, that results in decreased combat capability, and that is something we simply cannot accept,” said Cmdr. James Goudreau, director of the Navy Energy Coordination Office.Through use of the energyMMOWGLI, Cmdr. Goudreau says, “We hope to increase the awareness of energy security as a national security issue as well as stimulating discussion that will allow the Navy to achieve greater energy resiliency and combat readiness.”Inviting broad-based participation—both civilian and military—is part of the strategy for a more secure energy footing in the context of a more uncertain energy future. “We’re hoping for an extremely diverse set of players including talented thoughtful players from academia, industry, military, government, NGOs, and global citizens,” said Goudreau.The game invites players to bring everything they know about energy—from strategies they use at home to their workplace conversations, from their professional knowledge to their wildest imaginings. MMOWGLI is “an online game platform designed to elicit collective intelligence from an engaged pool of world-wide players to solve real problems facing the Navy and Marine Corps,” says Dr. Larry Schuette, director of innovation at ONR. The energyMMOWGLI game motto? Play the game, change the game.Players can view the future scenario and pre-register now online at portal.mmowgli.nps.edu.The Naval Postgraduate School and Palo Alto, California-based Institute for the Future are partnering with N45 and ONR on the energyMMOWGLI project.NOTE: Media interested in additional information should contact Katherine Turner, OPNAV N45 (katherine.m.turner.ctr@navy.mil), Peter J. Vietti, ONR (peter.vietti@navy.mil), or Jean Hagan, Institute for the Future (jhagan@IFTF.org).Press CoverageThe New York Times: "On Our Radar: An Energy Challenge for Gamers"Scientific American: "Navy Recruits Players for Online War Game to Tackle Energy Challenges"PBS NewsHour: Calling All Gamers: US Navy Wants You!TPMIdeaLab in "Navy Crowdsources Future Energy Strategy with Wargame"SmartPlanet: "U.S. Navy turns to online gaming to solve energy woes"Environmental News Network (ENN): "To Help Ensure Operational Readiness, Navy Recruits Players for Online Wargame to Tackle Energy Challenges"Biofuels Digest: "Navy invites civic, academic, military online participants for three-day alternative energy wargame, based on 2022 scenario"Navy.mil: "Navy Recruits Players for Online Wargame to Tackle Energy Challenges" About Previous MMOWGLI EventsIFTF, Somali Piracy, and the MMOWGLI ProjectFederal Computer Week interviews Jason Tester on MMOWGLI in "Navy Looks to Crowdsourcing for Problem-solving." Wired writes about MMOWGLI in "Navy Crowdsources Pirate Fight To Online Gamers."MMOWGLI is covered by Fast Company in "Wannabe SEALs Help U.S. Navy Hunt Pirates In Massively Multiplayer Game."Official news release from the Office of Naval Research.Blog post on MMOWLGI from Armed with Science by Garth Jensen, the Director of Innovation at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/join-dan-ariely-for-talk-signing-at-iftf-on-tuesday-june-12/ Don’t miss your opportunity to join us in Palo Alto on June 12th at noon for lunch and a book signing with Dan Ariely!Space is limited and registration is required for this event—to register, visit:www.eventbrite.com/event/3276158077On June 12, Institute for the Future will host Dan Ariely, the New York Times bestselling author of The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational, for a discussion on his new book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, which examines the contradictory forces that drive us to cheat and keep us honest. From ticket-fixing in our police departments to test-score scandals in our schools, from our elected leaders’ extra-marital affairs to the Ponzi schemes undermining our economy, cheating and dishonesty are ubiquitous parts of our national news cycle—and inescapable parts of the human condition. Drawing on original experiments and research, in the vein of Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, and Survival of the Sickest, Ariely reveals—honestly—what motivates these irrational, but entirely human, behaviors.About DanDespite our intentions, why do we so often fail to act in our own best interest? Why do we promise to skip the chocolate cake only to find ourselves drooling our way into temptation when the dessert tray rolls around? Why do we overvalue things that we’ve worked to put together? What are the forces that influence our behavior?Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, is dedicated to answering these questions and others in order to help people like more sensible—if not rational—lives. His interests span a wide range of behaviors and his sometimes-unusual experiments are consistently interesting, amusing and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.In addition to appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the Department of Economics, and the School of Medicine as Duke University, Dan is also a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Predictably Irrational, and The Upside of Irrationality. His new book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is available as of June 5, 2012.You can visit Dan’s blog at:danariely.comEvent RegistrationSpace is limited and registration required. To register for this event please go to:www.eventbrite.com/event/3276158077 http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-internet-immune-system/ Recent news around the Stuxnet computer virus and Kapersky Lab's discovery of the Flame spyware have heightened public conversations Internet security. What if the Internet were able to patch itself against threats and vulnerabilities? A 2010 article by Sagarin et al. lays out a strategy for using features of biological immune systems in the context of human global security against terrorism and other conflicts. Immune systems respond to viruses, bacteria, and other parasites through decentralized, adaptive and cooperative practices that span many areas of the body. There are almost as many different immune responses as there are species–perhaps even as many as there are organisms. And while the genetic and physiological diversity of immune systems is vast, there are some analogous strategies that work as well for organizations and communities as they do for molecules and cells.The Internet was built on the belief that the Internet is an extension of life, perhaps even another organic form onto itself. If we were going to apply that metaphor, we might as well ask what other features of life itself are valid for a more resilient Internet. According to Sagarin et al., there are at least three. Decentralized security, meaningful signaling, and cooperative symbiosis point to behaviors and practices that could describe a more distributed, responsive, and integrated Internet, one that is modeled on the ways in which immune systems respond to parasites and injury. Decentralized security means that Internet patching devolves to the end user and becomes a feature of the network, not something that happens only at a node or peripheral in the network. Decentralization means that different aggregated structures form to carry out responses to threats. In doing so, security becomes an emergent trait, arising from the coordinated and attenuated efforts of many individuals, services providers, and machines who undertake decentralized reporting, debugging, and maintenance to achieve different levels of online vaccination.However, decentralization comes at a cost. It's difficult to coordinate and even more difficult to communicate across different geographies and time zones. The threshold between a responsive internet and an adaptive one is the availability of real-time intelligence about the state of the Internet as a whole, its vulnerabilities, and its strengths. Open broadcast of real-time intelligence supports multi-stakeholder coordination for dynamic virus recognition and quarantine.But in order to act, meaningful signaling is the critical infrastructure for adaptation. Meaningful signals must be relevant, and this requires informational and emotional qualities that tell you where and how different vulnerabilities are present. Meaningful signaling creates visibility and transparency for end users, networks, and service providers to develop responses of their own volition, including active support for virus recognition and quarantine.Provenance and traceability assist in organizing the trust needed to make signals meaningful. As meta information, data provenance (its origin and method of collection) and traceability (its chain of use and translation) signal intent because the history of interaction is embedded alongside, and this helps establish a sense of a signal's honesty and trustworthiness. Another way of creating meaningful signals is to enable ratcheted and incremental shifts from early, generalized responses to highly-specific, adaptive responses when, for example, Internet-based information pathogens become more threatening.  An Internet that is attenuated to different levels of risk and is able to produce an appropriate and timely response to risky behavior is a more adaptive Internet.The third feature of immune systems is cooperative symbiosis with other connected and embedded systems. Cooperative symbiosis means there is a loose coupling between different technologies and scales to broadly enable transfers of information and responsiveness to limit injury and/or intrusion by other means. It also means aligning standards and goals in ways that create layers of trust within the Internet and across air gaps to smart grids, sensor and actuator networks, and other forms of institutional and physical infrastructure that use the Internet as a resource. Some of those layers of trust come in the form of machine languages that communicate, recognize, and respond to emerging threats. Other layers are built through the social trust that humans confer to a cyberinfrastructure that supports their needs, desires, and endeavors.Applying insights from natural systems to technology and infrastructure is more than just biomimicry. It involves blending those insights with the peculiarities of human social systems, technological entrenchment, and organizing communication strategies to reflect core values to bring about adaptive change. For each of these three, synergistic features, there are a variety of ways to implement them in practice, and those mothods are as varied as there are local Internet values and geographies. There are also many more examples from immune response systems in plants and animals that provide ready models for building new approaches. And so in many ways, we are only at the beginning of building a new adaptive Internet experience for people and beyond. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/recipe-networks-and-combinatorial-cuisine/ The field of network science continues to find new data sets for exploring technology, economics, biological systems, and social relationships. Two recent articles use recipe ingredients and foods from different cuisines to demonstrate how the lens of network science can create analytics to provide us with new insights into how we eat and what gets eaten.As industrial food systems offer more homogeneous mixture to people worldwide, a positive implication of these new analytical approaches is that they expand our view of rare possibilities that may be valuable for reaching new food plateaus. These networks map the kinds of combinations of ingredients we eat, and they may help us create and redefine new food cultures with profound cuisines that match regional tastes, transport systems, and changing agricultural capacities.Recipe Recommendation Using Ingredient Networks by Chun-Yuen Teng, Yu-Ru Lin, and Lada A. Adamic points to how cultural affiliations and regional preferences influence ingredient substitutions among the recipes that people share online. They look at relationships between ingredients and which ones can be swapped out for others. In their discussion they remark that if one included the many available cooking methods, it's easy to see how many new combinations are possible in the recipes we use. In an accompanying blog post, co-author Lada Adamic points out that this kind of understanding of ingredients can be used to predict the success of a new recipe. Recipe networks suggest a precise and intuitive method for combinatorial innovation, and it's another way to create different alternative futures that are firmly rooted in the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Ahn, Ahnert, Bagrowm and Barabási conduct a similar analysis in their article on the Flavor Network and the Principles of Food Pairing. The authors take a slightly different approach, seeking to isolate what makes unique ethnic cuisines authentic, in order to get at the root of what makes taste and flavor successful. In the flavor They identify "keystone" ingredients that hold together and bridge different ethnic cuisines, like garlic, and show how some ingredients are more prevalent than others. The whole endeavor starts to look very much like a diversity index for different ethnic cuisines. Different cuisines do have different "authentic" ingredients, and they turn out to be ones that are only prevalent in that specific cuisine. One part of authenticity is that some ingredients are "founders" for a given cuisine. These are ones that have been used in the same geographic region for thousands of years and have come to define the cuisine.  The authors describe how recipes change over time and discuss how the addition and substitution of higher "fitness" ingredients increases the value of recipes. A ready example comes from the recent additions of tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes to European and Asian cuisine.   Sometimes, even small substitutions and changes in a recipe can affect other areas of life in ways we don't anticipate. Creating forecasts for the future around a recipe allows us to ask about the methods of ingredient exchange, the making and preparation, distribution and diffusion, shopping and finding new recipes and even the details of domestic life at home. Building on the theme of recipe as signal of the future, The Center for Genomic Gastronomy just released a cookbook that looks at the future of food through the lens of recipes. It takes data from the current and historical traditions of food and food systems and uses those data to construct food and recipe artifacts of the future. Not only does it persuade, it provides context for what different ingredients mean to cuisine, culture, and habitat. One of the significant themes of the book is that it draws out how so many of our food histories have been aesthetic as much as they have been functional. And the graphical presentation is spot on.These kinds of presentations and analytics also pave the way for automated preference aggregation, and as we discuss how computing and Internet technologies affect how we find new information and discover new combinations, these kinds of analytical approaches are going to become more common in our everyday lives. As my voice-activated mobile device starts to suggest what to make for dinner, I'm very interested in the assumptions it uses to make those suggestions. This is where culture gets hard-coded into the algorithms, but it's also an opportunity to accelerate culture by leaving some leakiness in the indexes and letting some not-so-alike ingredients blend over and mix with others. Food was the first technology, and it's always been our social adhesive. Now we can go from asking what we should have for dinner to asking what we can have for dinner. According to my new decision support cookbook, catsup, beer, fava beans, and saltines, when prepared well, can be an excellent feast. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-disruptions-facing-higher-education-and-how-universities-are-beginning-to-adapt-1/ ... and How Universities are Beginning to Adapt At no time in history have there been as many unknowns facing the field of higher education. The cost of college attendance, and the resulting mountains of student debt, loom as possible economic bubbles; the college education inflation rate has risen nearly 500% since 1985- schools that cost $10,000 per year in 1985 now charge an average of $59,000.  In the recent economic downturn, students graduating from college or university often find themselves unemployed or underemployed, leading to questions about the return on investment of a college diploma. To boot, new platforms for deploying learning, particularly over the internet, pose to disrupt higher education by presenting alternative pathways to acquiring knowledge and skill.  These range from for-profit online universities like the University of Phoenix to non-profits like the <University of the People.  And with the low cost of content distribution and the possibility of quickly reaching massive audiences, innovators and venture capitalists have taken notice, leading to startups like Udemy and Udacity. All these institutions promise learning at a cheaper rate, many of them for free. Blended Learning The future for traditional universities is by no means grim.   Fundamentally, these new challenges may require universities to redefine themselves and their methods.  Many universities are exploring options for incorporating online learning into their pedagogy without sacrificing quality in-classroom learning. Carnegie Mellon’s Candace Thille, director of their Online Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that blended learning has the potential to be more effective (and cheaper) than simply on-campus learning. Many other schools, such as Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University, have already begun incorporating online learning solutions, such as CMU’s, such as Carnegie Mellon's OLI into the undergraduate experience- and not simply as a cost-reduction tool.  While studies show that blended learning is equal if not superior to in-class learning in terms of effectiveness, it may nevertheless be a means of distinguishing one university from another- in a positive way. By speeding up the process of learning the most basic concepts, Wesleyan professor Lisa Dierker believes newly available time toward the end of the semester can be used to pursue research projects in her Intro to Psychology class. This can, in fact, be highly appealing to potential students when compared to Intro to Psychology classes taught at competing schools. Transforming the Classroom If blended learning makes teaching core concepts easier and more efficient, what should professors do with the available classroom time?  What role do professors play in a world in which lectures and other learning experiences can be effectively transferred through the Internet?  The short answer might be classroom simulations and other interactive, engaging games.  Barnard College's Mark Carnes pioneered the Reacting to the Past pedagogy in the 1990’s.  The Reacting to the Past consortium now consists of 40 member colleges and universities, who employ that pedagogy to conduct elaborate classroom simulations in which students take on roles informed by historical texts to discuss big ideas in the history of ideas. These and other simulations offer students the opportunity to apply what they have learned, engage in productive debate, and develop broader intellectual skills.   Challenging Tradition The examples provided above illustrate but a few of many paths universities may choose to take.  But structurally, Universities may be ill-prepared to make the kinds of daring moves necessary to weather the disruptions of the bubble and online learning.   Tracy Mitrano, director of IT policy at Cornell University, recommends an entirely new role among administration, a role that at present does not exist in higher education. As she puts it: “The main focus of this role would be to design programs, applications and initiatives that fully utilize new teaching, learning, research and revenue models utilizing innovative instruction delivery concepts to lifelong learners, including traditional students.” Others, such as Robert Brodnick, an associate vice president at the University of the Pacific, see that applying design thinking to the strategic planning process can help universities discover and implement plans for transformation in such uncertain times. While the future of higher education remains unclear, what is certain is that many colleges and universities are preparing for it; the cost of tuition will continue to be a driving factor for change, and it is likely that blended learning models will factor in the solution. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/share-of-die-author-lunch-at-iftf-on-august-15/ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/pushing-the-web-to-the-periphery/ We're spending a lot of time this year in the Institute for the Future's Technology Horizons research group thinking about how we will experience the Internet in 2020. A lot has been said recently about the decline of the web as the Internet becomes a more mobile, social, and app-based experience. Chris Anderson's August 2010 WIRED cover story "The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet" set the discussion ablaze. Facebook's $1 billion acquistion last month of virally popular mobile app Instagram seemed like the last word. That deal, and Facebook's wobbly IPO, has people chattering about a new Internet bubble, and the possibility it might pop. Facebook's lowered expectations ahead of its IPO point towards a slowdown. In Technology Review, Michael Wolff argues that "Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it." (Thanks to@greg_lindsay for the pointer to that piece)  There's certainly reason to worry that the shift to mobiles is one in which we pay a lot less attention to the screen and a lot more attention to the world around us. I spent much of the morning looking at the latest iteration of Mary Meeker's incredibly useful annual Internet Trends report. What caught my attention most was slide 20, which looked at a host of web giants (Pandora, Tencent and Zynga) and estimated that these businesses made anywhere from 1.7 to 5 times less money per mobile user than desktop user. (A few slides later is a rather unconvincing apples and oranges slide that all will be fine in the end - because a single Japanese company, in a highly urbanized country where 3G covers 95 percent of the population and mobile has always reigned - now makes more money off mobile) What struck me is that while web companies like Facebook strugle with the transition to a more fragmented mobile experience of the Internet, this is as good as it's going to get. Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell have pointed out that ubiquitous computing is already here, its just incredibly messy. If any company, like say, Google, tries to make a play to bring order to the mess - as it proposes to do with Google Glasses as the browser for world - it is going to have to operate in the periphery of our attention. Anything more instrusive will likely be rejected by users, especially when the intent of the app is to augment our experience, not completely screen us from it. Computing is going to become more contextual, and more aware of its demands on our attention, not less. (It may even evolve, as former IFTF colleague Alex Pang likes to say into something more "contemplative".  As much as we today wander unaware down the sidewalk, our faces buried in devices, our present experience of the phone and tablet as small, portable versions of a desktop terminal may just be a transitional phase. Perhaps Wesier was right, and computing will fade into the background.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/how-can-games-make-us-healthy-iftf-and-hhs-discuss-games-for-health/ How can games make us healthy? On May 29th, the public joined leading experts in health and health care games—including game designer Jane McGonigal, Lygeia Ricciardi of Health and Human Services, and researchers from IFTF—in a live Webinar discussion to explore opportunities for using games to improve health outcomes. This online event was inspired by a meeting of leading game designers, health researchers, and government officials hosted by the of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. During this discussion, participants will highlight key findings and emerging opportunities to use games to promote better health. The public was invited to join the discussion by particpating in the webinar and following along on Twitter at#games4health. You can find more details in the release below: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 23, 2012 Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT/HHS (ONC) Leads National Discussion on Games for Better Health & Health Care Games for Health Webinar May 29th 2-4pm EDT (11am-1pm PDT) Tweet questions to experts with #games4health Join a Discussion with Leading Experts in Health and Health Care Games to Improve Innovation and Engagement for Better Health Outcomes WASHINGTON, DC – (May 23, 2012) The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT/HHS in partnership with the Institute for the Future and SuperBetter Labs will host a joint webinar to be held on Tuesday, May 29th, from 11 am–1 pm PDT (2 pm–4pm EDT) to discuss key opportunities for using games to improve health outcomes. Attendees will be invited to engage with the experts directly through the use of live social media during the webinar. National experts participating in the Webinar will include: Lygeia Ricciardi, Senior Policy Advisor for Consumer e-Health, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT/HHS Wil Yu, Director, Innovations, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT/HHS Jane McGonigal, PhD, Chief Creative Officer, SuperBetter Labs Ben Sawyer, Founder, Games for Health Rod Falcon, Director, Health Horizons Program, Institute for the Future Erin Poetter, Policy Analyst, Consumer e-Health/Innovations, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT/HHS Bradley Kreit, Research Director, Institute for the Future and Webinar Moderator “Games offer a uniquely valuable tool for taking complex health data and making it meaningful and actionable to patients across a variety of demographics and health states,” states Wil Yu, Director, Innovations at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT at HHS. The Webinar will be an interactive discussion about findings from a recent paper by IFTF, Innovations in Games: Better Health and Health Care, developed from a workshop in February 2012 at the White House Conference Center gathering on innovations in health gaming. Webinar attendees can tweet questions to #games4health. Experts will discuss key game strategies to improve health outcomes by engaging patients in their health, improving self-efficacy, promoting collaboration to enhance research and development, and leveraging other aspects of game dynamics to promote health and well-being. Topics to be covered will include why games can improve health; federal initiatives to explore games to improve health outcomes; the latest research; challenges for the future; and opportunities for health IT, game entrepreneurship and health care professionals to engage together. “Social games are a great way to motivate individuals and organizations to become whole-heartedly engaged in creating positive health outcomes,” said Jane McGonigal. "A game sparks curiosity, optimism, determination and creativity. It builds a sense of self-efficacy with every successful quest. And we're seeing this work for so many different kinds of players, who are tackling everything from depression to diabetes to weight loss. In the short time since we launched our game SuperBetter, players have already reported improving their real lives through our gameplay. They're breaking their health challenges into manageable quests, identifying bad guys and power-ups, and celebrating every achievement with their friends and family." “Games open up a vision for health that is more social and participatory, which means that managing health isn’t just something that you do on your own, but potentially with others around you,” said Rod Falcon, Director, Health Horizons Program, Institute for the Future. About the ONC For more information about the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, visit HealthIT.HHS.gov. About IFTF The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent, nonprofit strategic research group with more than 40 years of forecasting experience. The core of its work is identifying emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace. IFTF’s research spans a broad territory of deeply transformative trends, from health and healthcare to technology, the workplace, and human identity. The Institute for the Future is located in Palo Alto, California. More information can be found onwww.iftf.org, www.facebook.com/InstituteForTheFuture, or on twitter@IFTF. About SuperBetterLabs SuperBetter Labs' mission is to design platforms that help people lead "epic lives." The concept of an epic life is centered on developing strong social relationships, positive emotion, confronting challenges, and creating a truer sense of purpose in the real world through the use of online game mechanics, gameful IT products and other tested methods of positive social interaction. Chief Creative Officer Jane McGonigal, creator of SuperBetter, the first product of SuperBetter Labs, also co-designed Oprah’s Thank You Game for OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). More information on SuperBetter Labs can be found on www.superbetterlabs.com,www.facebook.com/superbetterlabs, or on twitter @superbetterlabs. # # # For More Information View IFTF's full Innovations in Games: Better Health and Healthcarereport (PDF) resulting from a meeting hosted by the of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in February 2012 Read IFTF's Future Now blog post on Exploring the Future of Games and Health http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/who-is-the-internet-human-and-what-is-the-human-internet/ For most of its history, using the Internet has involved conforming and contorting to the logic, architecture, and input/output mechanisms of machine networks. Humans have genuflected before immobile computer screens, tethered our limbs to mice and keyboards, and craned our necks to use the smartphone screens in our hands. The human experience of the Internet, however, will change dramatically in the next ten years.  The technical and network foundations are being laid that will allow humans to interface with the network much more naturally and effectively. The new Internet geometry will allow permeability, flexibility, and the capacity for learning. And while it will continue to extend human capacities, it will do so in way that retains human proportions On Wednesday and Thursday, May 16 and 17, we host our annual client-only Technology Horizons conference, where we immerse ourselves in the emerging capacities and communicative habits offered by the next-generation Internet and introduce our map of the Internet Human | Human Internet. The map explores how, as impressive as they are on their own, combinations of foundational internet technologies will produce radically new capacities for productivity, connectivity, and communication and create new kinds of experiences in our homes, workplaces, and other contexts of our daily lives.  The conference is an opportunity for convergence between leading thinkers, makers, and stakeholders in the future internet experience. In addition to the map, the conferences features exercises designed to amplify the experience of combinatorial innovation in small, experimental bursts aimed at making the building blocks of the future human Internet experience relevant for organizations and their domains of expertise. For everyone who can’t make it to the conference, you can participate online by following the hashtag #InternetHuman. We’ll be tweeting live from the conference under the handle @iftf. Overview of Wednesday May 16th: The day starts with Tech Horizons Research Director Jake Dunagan (@dunagan23) introducing our new Human Internet | Internet Human map and explaining how we’ll be exploring its ideas throughout the conference.  Distinguished Fellow Mike Liebhold (@mikeliebhold) explains combinatorial innovation and the core technology forecasts that make up the map.  In three panel sessions throughout the day, Research Affiliate Henrik Bennetsen (@henrikbennetsen), Research Manager Devin Fidler (@devinfidler), and Research Directors Lyn Jeffery (@LynJ) and David Pescovitz will present overviews of each of four action potentials: flow, sense, control, and emerge. Each of these panels describes how the characteristics and dynamics of the four action potentials will help shape the Internet over the next decade by featuring leading voices, designers, and contributors.  In the Flow panel, Henrik is joined by Scott Jenson (@scottjenson), Creative Director at Frog Design and Linden Tibbets (@ltibbets), Founder of If This Then That (ifttt.com). Both Scott and Linden describe the opportunities and challenges of getting technologies to work together to create seamless experiences for human interaction. The Emerge panel captures the potential of coordinated services and activities, and how the Internet will develop in unexpected and transformative ways. Devin is joined by Anand Kulkarni (@polybot) of Mobile Works and Greg Little from oDesk to look deeply into the algorithms and processes that will  define the design and distribution of organizational tasks. David introduces Sense as the potential for human-machine interfaces to leverage all of our human senses, making both more intuitive and more amplified. Janna Anderson (@JANNAQ), Director of Imagining the Internet at Elon University presents the results of her research looking at the accelerating impact of networked technology and how it will change our lives and our world.  Lyn opens the Control action potential panel by asking how personal identity and privacy are impacting the Internet as concerns over content, access, and security direct, restrain, and redirect online and offline activities. Lyn is joined by Christopher Carfi (@ccarfi), VP of Social Business Strategy for Ant’s Eye View and Mark Belinsky (@mbelinsky), Founder and Co-director of Digital Democracy. The Smule Band closes out the first day. As creators of apps that let anyone become a musician with their devices, they treat us to a performance and a group-wide collaborative composition.  Overview of Thursday, May 17th: Our second day opens with reflections on the first day, helping us begin to see some of the stretching and rippling in the next ten years of the Internet. Jake builds on these insights with some of the critical tensions. As public controversies, these are tensions that will introduce new actors and new forms of human and non-human Internet experiences at the intersections of governance, education, technology, development, and health. Mike Liebhold is later joined by Mike Roberts, Principal with The Darwin Group and former CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Reflecting on the history of the Internet as a way to foresee the future, Mike discusses some of what wasn't anticipated as well as how the surviving principles of interoperability, distributed intelligence, dumb networking, and loose coupling made the Internet what it is today. The capstone for the conference is delivered by Mitch Kapor, Founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the Level Playing Field Institute. He interrogates the role of capital flows in shaping the future by looking at how science fiction and science fact are influencing future human Internet infrastructure and what it means for education, technology, and human capacity. We are very excited about the new research we will be presenting at the conference and hope you'll be following along on Twitter with hashtag #InternetHuman. To learn more about the IFTF's Technology Horizons Program, contact Sean Ness (sness@iftf.org). http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-maker-faire-has-to-do-with-leadership-in-the-future/ If you've been to the Institute recently, you’ve probably seen this: http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/book-launch-leaders-make-the-future-second-edition/ May 7 marks the publication of the second edition of Leaders Make the Future: 10 New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World by IFTF Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen. Bob Johansen shares nearly 40 years of expertise as a ten-year forecaster at IFTF in this book about leadership and decision-making. This book is for any leader who wants to successfully navigate the challenges of the present and find opportunities to thrive in the future. What You Will Find in this Book This revised and expanded second edition incorporates Bob's research and global experiences from the past 3 years. The book features: An updated Ten-Year Forecast of the external future forces affecting leadership, including pivotal technological and societal changes that will disrupt organizations everywhere. This futures perspective helps situate the future leadership skills. Bonus: You can find the full Ten-Year Forecast mapinside the book jacket. The 10 Future Leadership Skills necessary to succeed in the next decade, each brought to life with telling signals and personal examples. For instance, Bob shares the story of Local Motors, a car-making start-up that crowd-sources its designs, and how the company's CEO Jay Rogers exhibits several of the future leadership skills including Maker Instinct and Clarity. A new Leadership Development Approach that calls for a move beyond traditional executive training programs towards immersive learning opportunities. Partnership with CCL The 10 future leadership skills provide a future lens on leadership and are designed to complement present capabilities. As such, the book also features contributions by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), an international leadership education and research organization, linking the future leadership skills with existing leadership development skills. This partnership is highlighted with a special foreword by CCL President, John Ryan, explaining how he uses the book at CCL. How Individuals and Organizations are Using this Book The book is designed for individual use or as part of groups. Chapter 12 includes questions for self-reflection as well as an online self-assessment via Berrett-Koehler Publishers. The self-assessment allows you to rate your own readiness as a future-oriented leader. Bob enjoys presenting talks and facilitating workshops around Leaders Make the Future to organizations around the world. Organizations regularly incorporate the book as part of formal and informal leadership development. The book has already received many accolades, including the following endorsement by Bob McDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble: "A road map for 21st-century leadership. The discussions of concepts such as "dilemma flipping' and 'reciprocity-based innovation' are particularly insightful about what it takes to lead today. I recommend this book highly to seasoned and aspiring leaders alike." You can find the book at bookstores, online at Amazon, or visit Berrett-Koehler Publishers for bulk orders. Bookmark this page for announcements and posts on each of the ten future leadership skills. Have you read the second edition of Leaders Make the Future? Do you know which future leadership skills you have? Join the conversation. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/brinda-dalal-on-the-internet-of-things/ Brinda Dalal joined our team as a research director in early 2012. Her career to-date has spanned two decades and three continents. Brinda's research has taken her to India, where she co-developed micro-credit and housing programs with local women, and to Japan, where she explored high-tech innovation. She’s worked for Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, co-founding their clean technology initiative and helping to inspire the invention of toner-less printing and erasable paper—which won top environmental innovation awards from Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal in the process.Brinda’s relationship with IFTF began in the early 2000s; she participated on IFTF panels on ethnographic expertise in the corporate sector, and on micro credit and collective action for citizen groups in low-resource settings. In 2011, she conducted ethnographic research in Asia and the U.S. for the Health Horizons program. We recently sat down with Brinda to discuss the wealth of insight and experience she brings to our program: Q: You have a background in anthropology, which is sometimes considered a soft science, but you’ve worked extensively in Silicon Valley. How have you used anthropology as a technology researcher? A: What you learn in anthropology, is how to systematically break down your assumptions to form much more complex, nuanced views of societal changes. You learn how not to take a person’s statements at face value, or be constrained to your own limited knowledge or point-of-view, but instead explore, deepen and expand your understanding of commonly used phrases, assumptions, and behaviors. You also examine how prevalent certain practices or perceptions are, and explore the variations. That discipline of gaining clarity and deepening your understanding of say, what people wish to do with technology and why, is invaluable in high-tech and emerging markets, especially when you are designing products. I’ve been influenced by studies in material culture and the notion that the objects that people create and have around them reveal who people are. Objects are almost like an index to what matters to people, and their relationships with each other. Q: And what does technology say about us? What would be an example of something integrating cultural insights into technology studies has revealed? A: I’ve done several studies on mobile phone use in the last decade, and it’s fascinating in the age of smartphones, to see how people use low-fidelity techniques to share their day-to-day experiences with others. One person was on a beach and held up his mobile phone in the air so that the person he was calling could also enjoy the dramatic sound of the surf. Another took vivid close-ups of wildflowers growing on the doorstep. Each day, he sent a new batch of images to a friend who was on an assignment overseas. What struck us was how important it is for people to share these little flashes of intense experiences with friends and family far away. These are delicious insights for technology designers, who are constantly hunting for new ways to have their device remain an integral part of people’s lives.  Q: An do you think purely a high-tech-oriented behavior, or something more general? A: Let me give you an example beyond Silicon Valley. Back in the 1990s, I was doing fieldwork for my dissertation and lived with nomadic pastoralists in the Himalayas. The families built small homesteads in the forest and herded water buffalo. They made a living by selling and trading fresh milk and butter. In the summer when it got hot and the rivers dried up, most of the family took the herd to high mountain pastures where the animals could feed on the spring grass, and a few relatives would stay in the plains to look after their huts. So families might be separated for several months at a time. I used to visit their mountain camps, and found that people loved to grab my tape recorder to record their songs. They spent hours recording. Then they would instruct me to go and stay with their grandfather or an aunt or sister in the plains, and play these songs to them. So their use of technology, and the imprint of their voices and emotions in those recordings, became a form of asynchronous communication across space. It was also like a personal calling card to convey that their relatives could trust a stranger. Q: This year Health Horizons is going to be researching “big data” and “information ecosystems.” How do think these experiences are going to shape your approach to this year’s research? A: I’m interested in new behaviors made possible by networks of people interacting with networks of devices. The concept of the Internet-of-Things—the idea that your pacemaker or car is connected to the network—has been around for quite some time, but people are starting to experiment a lot more.  We will look of course, at how the IoT is blending with health behaviors and health perceptions; how people and groups use mobile devices in combination with small hardware widgets or things on their bodies, in their bodies, and across different environments, whether on land, in the water or in the air, over time. One vision of the Internet of Things, based on ubiquitous computing, is that dozens of objects and interfaces we use will fade into the background. And that’s definitely part of the picture. But what’s interesting to me is the deliberative ways in which people will experiment with objects, and how these might reveal relationships, events and relational structures in society.  Q: And what emerging practices or behaviors in this area are the most interesting to you? A: Currently, we can communicate quite easily with others using our voices, text, or video. What is of most interest is discovering ways to convey a person’s subjective experience—of relaxation or stress, pain, anger or joy—with others so that people can feel or sense them as well. With more sophisticated chemical, optical and electronic sensors in the market that can detect our physiological state, artists and technologists have a wealth of data to play with. People will be designing augmented environments that convey a person’s intangible emotions or bodily state to others. Today, if a health specialist asks a patient with chronic arthritis how much pain they are in, the patient has to rate their subjective experience on a numerical scale or describe it. That’s clunky. Wouldn’t it be easier for patients to use sensors and visualizations to help them pinpoint, capture and portray their state to a doctor? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/hacking-the-future-of-education/ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/hacking-the-future-of-higher-education/ Higher education worldwide is moving toward creative disruption on multiple fronts. As signals emerge that these disruptions are beginning to take hold, IFTF is expanding on its long history of work in education to more deeply explore the situation that higher education providers face and the frontier projects that are dramatically reimagining this area for the future. In this first step, we have partnered up with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities to host an internal workshop, Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange to explore these unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MARCH 22, 2012 Leading Thinkers Convene to Hack the Future of Higher Education PALO ALTO, CA — What does learning in the 21st century look like and what can happen when you convene a diverse group of cutting edge innovators, scholars, administrators, education advocates, and students for a higher education hack day? You discover hope for the next generation of learners and for the future of education. The Institute for the Future (IFTF), in partnership with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities, today announced the Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange on March 24th to explore the unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future. The exchange will take place at IFTF’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California and will provide an interactive process combining informative “lightning talks” from experts such as Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U, Jim Spohrer, Director of IBM Global University Programs, and the Institute’s own Executive Director and education author, Marina Gorbis, among many others. The conventional system of higher education, which has been a dominant force in our society for generations, is being disrupted in the United States and abroad. The system is at an important point of transformation, and the Institute for the Future has a long history of convening experts and innovators working at the edges to make sense of the future and to help navigate the transition. “Young people today are caught in the transition between two worlds—the world of institutional production of education and a new world of possibilities for highly personalized on-demand continuous learning,” offered Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future. “It is a typical 2-curve problem with mass-produced education delivered through existing institutions on the decline; on the rise are new forms of education and learning that combine technologies with the best of social tools to enable learning that is personalized and meaningful. This week we are convening a group of thinkers representing different parts of the new education ecosystem to exchange best practices and to dream together about how to build the best learning environments given today’s sets of tools and technologies.” Featured participants include: Paul Baker, Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities Nancy Clark Brown, Autodesk Education Programs Marina Gorbis, Executive Director Institute for the Future Howard Rheingold, Author Jason Rosoff, Khan Academy Will Wright, Creator of the Sim Cities and Spore computer programs Hal Plotkin, US Department of Education Jim Sporer, Director, IBM Research Lab Scholars and Professors from Stanford, Cal, and CSU systems, from ASU Leaders from Carnegie, Knowledgeworks, Gordon and Betty Moore, Kauffman, and the Gates Foundations. Exchange session structures will include, Lightning Talks: Flashes Of Insight where presenters outline groundbreaking initiatives they are working on and key challenges in pursuing their work—in 5 minutes or less. Then participants will engage in Prototyping The Future Of Higher Ed by breaking into interdisciplinary teams to design learning environments for the future. “Now is the time to envision the bold, collaborative moves necessary to ensure that the promise of higher education is fulfilled for the next generation,” said Nancy Brown, head of Autodesk Education Market Development. “Engaging workshops such as Redesigning Education are critical for exploring the new thinking necessary to lead successful, impactful change in education.” “The higher-education market is reinventing what a university is, what a course is, what a student is, and what the value is,” said Rich DeMillo, Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. “Whenever you have this kind of technological change, where there’s a large incumbency, the incumbents are inherently at a disadvantage. If you want to be an important institution 20 years from now, you have to position yourself so that you can adapt to whatever those technology changes are. Events like Redesigning Education that bring a range of actors into conversation are critical to game change; and one that can deliver bold ideas and new directions.” For more information on IFTF’s higher education work contact Devin Fidler at dfidler@iftf.org or 650.233.6322. Media contact: Jean Hagan, jhagan@iftf.org, 650.233.9551 http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/leading-edge-thinkers-convene-on-march-24-to-hack-the-future-of-higher-education/ Higher education worldwide is moving toward creative disruption on multiple fronts. As signals emerge that these disruptions are beginning to take hold, IFTF is expanding on its long history of work in education to more deeply explore the situation that higher education providers face and the frontier projects that are dramatically reimagining this area for the future. In this first step, we have partnered up with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities to host an internal workshop, Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange to explore these unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MARCH 22, 2012 Leading Thinkers Convene to Hack the Future of Higher Education PALO ALTO, CA — What does learning in the 21st century look like and what can happen when you convene a diverse group of cutting edge innovators, scholars, administrators, education advocates, and students for a higher education hack day? You discover hope for the next generation of learners and for the future of education. The Institute for the Future (IFTF), in partnership with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities, today announced the Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange on March 24th to explore the unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future. The exchange will take place at IFTF’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California and will provide an interactive process combining informative “lightning talks” from experts such as Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U, Jim Spohrer, Director of IBM Global University Programs, and the Institute’s own Executive Director and education author, Marina Gorbis, among many others. The conventional system of higher education, which has been a dominant force in our society for generations, is being disrupted in the United States and abroad. The system is at an important point of transformation, and the Institute for the Future has a long history of convening experts and innovators working at the edges to make sense of the future and to help navigate the transition. “Young people today are caught in the transition between two worlds—the world of institutional production of education and a new world of possibilities for highly personalized on-demand continuous learning,” offered Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future. “It is a typical 2-curve problem with mass-produced education delivered through existing institutions on the decline; on the rise are new forms of education and learning that combine technologies with the best of social tools to enable learning that is personalized and meaningful. This week we are convening a group of thinkers representing different parts of the new education ecosystem to exchange best practices and to dream together about how to build the best learning environments given today’s sets of tools and technologies.” Featured participants include: Paul Baker, Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities Nancy Clark Brown, Autodesk Education Programs Marina Gorbis, Executive Director Institute for the Future Howard Rheingold, Author Jason Rosoff, Khan Academy Will Wright, Creator of the Sim Cities and Spore computer programs Hal Plotkin, US Department of Education Jim Sporer, Director, IBM Research Lab Scholars and Professors from Stanford, Cal, and CSU systems, from ASU Leaders from Carnegie, Knowledgeworks, Gordon and Betty Moore, Kauffman, and the Gates Foundations. Exchange session structures will include, Lightning Talks: Flashes Of Insight where presenters outline groundbreaking initiatives they are working on and key challenges in pursuing their work—in 5 minutes or less. Then participants will engage in Prototyping The Future Of Higher Ed by breaking into interdisciplinary teams to design learning environments for the future. “Now is the time to envision the bold, collaborative moves necessary to ensure that the promise of higher education is fulfilled for the next generation,” said Nancy Brown, head of Autodesk Education Market Development. “Engaging workshops such as Redesigning Education are critical for exploring the new thinking necessary to lead successful, impactful change in education.” “The higher-education market is reinventing what a university is, what a course is, what a student is, and what the value is,” said Rich DeMillo, Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. “Whenever you have this kind of technological change, where there’s a large incumbency, the incumbents are inherently at a disadvantage. If you want to be an important institution 20 years from now, you have to position yourself so that you can adapt to whatever those technology changes are. Events like Redesigning Education that bring a range of actors into conversation are critical to game change; and one that can deliver bold ideas and new directions.” For more information on IFTF’s higher education work contact Devin Fidler at dfidler@iftf.org or 650.233.6322. Media contact: Jean Hagan, jhagan@iftf.org, 650.233.9551 http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-reimagining-of-higher-education/ Higher education worldwide is moving toward creative disruption on multiple fronts. As signals emerge that these disruptions are beginning to take hold, IFTF is expanding on its long history of work in education to more deeply explore the situation that higher education providers face and the frontier projects that are dramatically reimagining this area for the future.  As a first step, Institute for the Future (IFTF), in partnership with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities is moving forward with a workshop on Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange to explore the unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future. It is interesting to note that these disruptions closely parallel shifts in other turbulent industries in recent years, and that these other sectors have faced these issues with varying degrees of success. While the situation that higher education faces is complex, much of the challenge can be summed up fairly simply. Ultimately, higher education institutions are about to face all of the core challenges that have impacted manufacturing, banking and journalism over the last decade- and they are about to face them all at once.   The collapse of traditional manufacturing centers, for example, has become one of the core case studies for the overall impact of globalization as the last few decades have seen the widespread shift of established manufacturing centers through outsourcing and globalization to regions with lower costs. Similarly, established universities in North America and Europe have traditionally relied on international students from all over the world to contribute to their student body, only to have this traditional role threatened by a new generation of international universities offering these students alternatives that focus on both quality and price. Given time, there is even evidence that the traditional direction of education abroad could even be reversed as this trend has already begun to take hold at many international medical schools. Similarly, the rapid accumulation of mortgage debt earlier in this decade was a sign of underlying instability in the banking sector. Today, many parallels to the accumulation of student loan debt suggest themselves, particularly in the United States. Indeed, total American student loan debt exceeded total credit card debt for the first time in 2011. Add to this the incredible inflation in tuition costs over time, and possible unintended consequences of government subsidies, and the similarities to the housing bubble become still more uncomfortable. They have also become a more frequent topic of discussion, as when finance veteran Peter Thiel drew much attention when he opined last year that “We're in a Bubble and It's Not the Internet. It's Higher Education.” Finally, higher education institutions are vulnerable to the same forces of digital disruption that have impacted journalism and media. This trend is largely driven by the continued rapid improvement of information technologies and is similar to previous waves of digital disruption in other industries. Recently, this trend has reached breakout velocity, as pioneers like Khan Academy have inspired a raft of online education delivery systems. While many of these are likely to fail to live up to expectations, there are likely to be significant innovations from the survivors. While there are many important functions of higher education beyond information delivery, significant disruption in this area would disrupt all of these. Importantly, these shifts bring monumental opportunities as well as challenges. For example, there is a very good chance that universal and affordable online university could become available to nearly everyone in the coming decades and new educational innovators are sure to innovate in surprising ways.  Given the nature of its work, the Institute for the Future has a history of connecting with systems poised at the threshold of reinvention to help them navigate change to consciously build their future and higher education is now poised in this space. For more information on IFTF’s ongoing work with universities and innovators exploring the transformation of higher education, contact Devin Fidler at dfidler@iftf.org. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/super-happy-block-party-hackathon/ IFTF would like to invite you to the first annual Super Happy Block Party Hackathon. If you have ever been the a hackathon before, all you need to know is the time and location. Its March 31 from 1pm-1am in downtown Palo Alto. If you're wondering what a hackathon is then prepare yourself for something amazing. A hackathon is sharing skills and perspectives and questions and discovering novel ideas at unexpected intersections. It is building ridiculous and seemingly impossible things in a matter of hours. It is playing and dancing and eating delicious food and not sleeping. You don't need to know anything about computer code and art or science and design to have a super happy time. In fact, not knowing what the limits are is a huge advantage. Bring the kids! Come build the future with us! SOURCE: Talenthouse Inc. (Marketwire - Mar 6, 2012)  PALO ALTO, CA- Bridging the worlds of software developers, artists, and the City of Palo Alto, the inaugural Super Happy Block Party Hackathon will happen in downtown Palo Alto on March 31, 2012 from 1pm - 1am. Innovation Endeavors, Talenthouse, and Institute for the Future will open their doors to the community in the spirit of innovation by creating the perfect environment for an interactive block. The City of Palo Alto will block off High Street between University and Hamilton. In addition, the day long event will feature: fleets of colorful food trucks, parking spaces dedicated to local startups, and a Hack the Future tent to teach kids to code. "We believe this is a new and categorically different approach to innovation," says Dror Berman, Founding Managing Director of Innovation Endeavors. "Super Happy Block Party Hackathon will be an innovation playground for all to enjoy. This is a well-thought out space and place designed to foster new forms of innovation and interaction." "Super Happy Block Party Hackathon is the prototype for the conversation around cities of the future," says Mayor Yeh of Palo Alto. "Palo Alto has long been associated with world-class innovation. Hackers and artists play a central role in this dynamic economy that is destined for even greater greatness. Some of the most influential and innovative companies were born and started up on these streets. Super Happy Block Party is the first of many innovative manifestations to come from Palo Alto." Super Happy Block Party is the 50th Hackathon of Super Happy Dev House -- a five year standing community of hackers, software engineers and makers who join forces at monthly Hackathons. In the tradition of Super Happy Dev House, Super Happy Block Party Hackathon is partnering with Dev House's sister projects, Hack the Future and Hacker Dojo -- making ideas, learning, and curiosity contagious. "We were founded under the idea that smart, passionate people rubbing shoulders is what really changes the world," adds Katy Levinson, a Director of Hacker Dojo, "Super Happy Block Party is a logical next step for the 24/7 version of this community. We are honored by the opportunity to welcome more people into our community to become part of a force for innovation and creativity." Artists, designers, and creatives from Silicon Valley will join hackers, software engineers and makers in a multimedia mashup conversation. Super Happy Block Party Hackathon designed a creative playing field for artists as well as hackers. There will be standing-height canvasses for artists to paint; pixelated tweeted murals and a mural of canvasses along the exterior of Talenthouse. "Talenthouse became the world's leading platform for creative collaboration by building bridges between Silicon Valley and creatives everywhere. We are excited to translate our vision into a real world playing field for a day where hackers, designers and creatives come together to connect, collaborate, ideate, and innovate," says Roman Scharf, Co-founder and CEO of Talenthouse. Highlights of the Super Happy Block Party will include: a Day Star Yurt with a Silent Disco with a live DJ inside; a constellation of LED strip lights laid out on the block for developers to hack; food truck culinary mash-ups, and a cavalcade of high-tech personalities and founders. Local start ups and businesses along the High Street Innovation Corridor will be showcased in parklets (parking spaces) which will debut in the Popup Innovation Parking Lot on High Street. Startups can reserve a parklet by feeding the meter after contacting us via our micrositewww.superhappy.be This event is hosted by Innovation Endeavors, Talenthouse, the City of Palo Alto, Institute for the Future, and Super Happy Dev House with the support and participation of local startups. To ignite the spirit of the Super Happy Block Party Hackathon, the sponsors produced this playful movie trailer which can be viewed here http://vimeo.com/besuperhappy/trailer For more information on Super Happy Block Party, be super happy, at www.superhappy.be -Hashtag #shbp About Innovation Endeavors Innovation Endeavors empowers the best and brightest to connect and launch game-changing ventures. Founded in 2010 and backed by Eric Schmidt, the fund has backed over 100 entrepreneurs and more than 45 early stage companies. With its open space office in Palo Alto, Innovation Endeavors is changing the way venture capital firms and entrepreneurs interact, embracing fun, accessible, and design driven entrepreneurship - www.innovationendeavors.com About Talenthouse Talenthouse is the leading platform for creative collaboration, providing life-changing opportunities for the creative community. Talenthouse embraces artists at every level of their career, as well as all supporters of the arts. Attracted by the potential for discovering, collaborating with and mentoring emerging talent, many acclaimed industry icons and global brands partner with Talenthouse by hosting projects and initiatives known as 'Creative Invites.' Artists and brands choose Talenthouse to engage with their audience in a targeted, relevant and credible context -www.talenthouse.com About the City of Palo Alto Distinctive in every way, Palo Alto is known as the center of global innovation and technology where many world class businesses have established corporate headquarters. With its proximity to Stanford, lively downtown and shopping districts, varied natural landscape and easy accessibility from either San Francisco or San Jose, Palo Alto offers visitors a diverse and exciting environment to explore. Locals and visitors alike enjoy the variety of shopping, dining and cultural activities as well as over 50 miles of nature hiking and biking trails; there's truly something here for everyone -www.cityofpaloalto.org About Institute for the Future The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent, nonprofit research group with 44 years of forecasting experience. IFTF's core work is in identifying emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global society and the global marketplace. IFTF provides insights into business strategy, design process, innovation, and social dilemmas with research that generates the foresight needed to create insights that lead to action. IFTF research spans a broad territory of deeply transformative trends, from health and health care to technology, the workplace, and human identity - www.iftf.org http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/food-forests-and-prosperity-without-growth/ Via NPR's Food Blog comes word of an urban foraging project in Seattle called the Beacon Food Forest. The concept is simple: Populate vacant space with fruit trees, vegetables and other healthy foods so that nearby residents can simply go out and pick fresh fruits and vegetables as needed. Via NPR's Food Blog comes word of an urban foraging project in Seattle called the Beacon Food Forest. The concept is simple: Populate vacant space with fruit trees, vegetables and other healthy foods so that nearby residents can simply go out and pick fresh fruits and vegetables as needed. The project offers an early, and incredibly creative signal of ways to reimagine community health and well-being that don't necessarily include economic development or growth.  As NPR describes the project:  The idea is to give members of the working-class neighborhood of Beacon Hill the chance to pick plants scattered throughout the park – dubbed the Beacon Food Forest. It will feature fruit-bearing perennials — apples, pears, plums, grapes, blueberries, raspberries and more…  After some community outreach, local support came pouring in for the idea. Herlihy and the Friends of Beacon Food Forest community group received a $22,000 grant to hire a certified designer for the project. A local utility, Seattle Public Utilities, offered up the 7-acre plot, which could make it the largest, urban food forest on public land in the U.S., Glenn Herlihy, a steering committee member for the project, tells The Salt. The group is currently working with $100,000 in seed money to set up the first phase: a 1.75-acre test zone to be planted by the end of the year. After a few years, if that section is deemed successful by the city, the remaining acreage will be converted to food trees. As Good notes, the project won't just help bring healthy, low-cost produce into the area but will also help give the community more open parks and green space. What's also notable here is the incredibly low cost of set up--just $100,000, far cheaper than most traditional development projects, which invest much larger sums of money into attracting businesses or otherwise looking for local growth strategies. The Food Forest, in other words, is an example that fits well with a book I'm reading, Prosperity Without Growth, which focuses on questions of how do we enhance human prosperity and well-being without simply relying on producing more economic output. It's also an interesting signal of the role of community development in health. Last year, I highlighted a New England Journal of Medicine study that found that helping low-income people move to better neighborhoods was as effective at reducing medical risk as traditional medical interventions - and at the time, noted that the study suggests that we need to be thinking far more concretely about how to use our social and physical spaces as medical intervention points. And the Food Forest project points to one intriguing idea to help improve health, particularly in food deserts: Simply turn vacant space into a community resource to feed people. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/video-game-as-design-fiction/ Design fiction is a powerful tool for helping us think about the future. Often times, the goal in creating a design fiction is to explore what a future technology looks like, how it feels, and how we might interact with it. Noah Radford recently wrote two blog posts about design fiction. On Glass and Mud criticizes corporate design fictions being short-sighted and for disregarding the human element. Design fiction is a powerful tool for helping us think about the future. Often times, the goal in creating a design fiction is to explore what a future technology looks like, how it feels, and how we might interact with it. Noah Radford recently wrote two blog posts about design fiction. On Glass and Mud criticizes corporate design fictions being short-sighted and for disregarding the human element. The other post, Three Examples of Good Design Fiction, looks at what it takes for design fictions to have "meaning and breadth beyond their topic." I agree with Noah that many corporate design fictions focus on a shiny utopian future while forgetting the bigger challenges (or opportunities, depending on how you see them) that humanity faces. The three design fictions that Noah shares are particularly well crafted, focusing on a richly textured and human-focused world. Each of the three "good" design fictions come from different backgrounds; the world of entertainment, research-focused academia and corporate foresight, yet all three examples use only video. This would have been fine 20 years ago when we had a more consumer-focused culture, but according to Clay Shirky, new generations are growing to expect an interactive component. I would like to build on Noah's choice of three good design fictions by sharing one of my favorites. It is a video game called "Deus Ex: Human Evolution." "Deus Ex" is a game about cyborgs, and the political, social and economic implications of what could happen if human augmentation is widely adopted. The idea of cyborgs walking around your neighborhood is a bit of a stretch, so the creators of "Deus Ex" made a short documentary about modern day cyborgs. This documentary views the world through the electronic eye of a real-life cyborg named Rob Spence. Rob travels around the world to see cutting edge limb and eye augmentations, and he speaks with the real people who are using this technology. Today, cyborgs are benefitting from their technology with the ability to walk again or see for the first time, but the documentary references to the darker side of augmentation through weaponized limbs and moral predicaments. Rob Spence also compares modern day augmentation technology with the speculative technology used in "Deus Ex", and seriously blurs the boundary between fiction and reality. Before you watch the following videos, I would like to warn the viewer that they contain graphic violence and disturbing images. Viewer discretion is advised.  <object width="428.4" height="240.98" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/TW78wbN-WuU?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TW78wbN-WuU?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TW78wbN-WuU?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object> The game "Deus Ex: Human Evolution" starts out in Detroit in the year 2027 and things are not much better than they are in 2012. Crime, unemployment and inequality are still rampant. What is left of automobile manufacturing has been retooled for the construction of human augmentation technology. A company called Sarif Industries is the leader in the field thanks to generous government contracts. Your role in the game is to play Adam Gensen, head of security for Sarif Industries. After an incident, you are brought back to life and find that most of your body is now a machine. You are a cyborg, and the technology used to augment you has saved your life. You might say that Adam owes Sarif one, but its more complicated than that. There are multiple forces in play and this is the future of humanity that we are talking about. From the beginning of the game there is an apparent conflict between Sarif Industries and political activists who are protesting against human augmentation. Activist groups claim that Sarif Industries is playing god, which according to them is fundamentally wrong. But they are also upset about the degree of control this technology enables. In order for an augmentation to function properly, a person must take an anti-rejection drug known as Neuropozyne. This drug helps the body accept the augmentation, and if the drug is not administered, the hardware will be rejected. While there is a practical need for this drug, it provides Sarif Industries (or rather VersaLife) with a certain degree of control, and arguably ownership, over an individuals body. On the positive side, human augmentation can vastly improve peoples lives and it has the power to drive humanity to a whole new level of evolution.    <object width="428.4" height="240.98" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/akaos1U8Rto?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/akaos1U8Rto?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/akaos1U8Rto?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object> The argument for and against human augmentation is brought up repeatedly throughout the game. You, as the player, can choose to side with Sarif or anti-Sarif activists, or you can forge your own path. And this isn't just about long-term evolutionary rhetoric. There is a strong human element in this world. You have the chance to meet people whose lives have been affected by augmentation, and who are asking for your help. One individual in the game might ask you to collect a debt, and when you try to retrieve that debt, you learn that it is for augmentations which imprisoned the debtor in what is essentially indentured servitude with no way out. They would rather die than continue to live like this and pay the debt. You have the power to choose your path and there often isn't an easy answer. Throughout the game you are put in morally ambiguous situations where in order to progress, decisions will have to be made.  "Deus Ex" is a provocative design fiction, grounded in reality. It is a fully immersive experience that brings to life one possible reality that is just full of dilemmas. Anyone that plays through the game must actively make choices about how they feel in relation to human augmentation. This helps lay a foundation of understanding, not just for the potential of human augmentation, but also the social, political and economic issues around augmentation and how it might effect every day life.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-future-of-medical-microwork/ My lates Fast Coexist piece is available here. In it, I argue that medical microwork is emerging as a means to improve global health-as well as an innovative development strategy. It begins: My lates Fast Coexist piece is available here. In it, I argue that medical microwork is emerging as a means to improve global health-as well as an innovative development strategy. It begins: Last year, a group of researchers led by a computer scientist at the University of Rochester put out a brilliant app called VizWiz with the very simple, but very powerful, idea of using what’s called "microwork" to help people with vision impairment navigate the sort of everyday visual questions that most of us don’t even notice. The app works like this: A user takes a picture of something--a piece of currency, say--with their phone and asks a question, like “How much is this bill worth?” In near real-time, the photo and question get routed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, or through a user’s Facebook network, to find out their bill is worth $10. The app represents an example of the emerging category of microwork, where complex informational questions are broken down into discrete tasks that require human intelligence and distributed to individuals who perform those tasks for small payments of just a few cents. While medical microwork is almost unheard of outside of a handful of examples like VizWiz, it represents a kind of work that could become increasingly important over the next few years as both a tool to improve health and as a development strategy. Click through to read the rest. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/a-new-tone-for-health-authority/ The Chinese government is taking a softer, more cuddly approach to marketing its one child policy, according to an article in yesterday's Gaurdian. The shift is definitely a sign of changing times for that country, but I think it has an interesting parallel here in the U.S. From the article:  The Chinese government is taking a softer, more cuddly approach to marketing its one child policy, according to an article in yesterday's Gaurdian. The shift is definitely a sign of changing times for that country, but I think it has an interesting parallel here in the U.S. From the article:  "Slogans from the early days of the policy… conveyed "coldness, constraint and even threats. They easily caused resentment in people and led to social tension"... “Newer slogans tend to promote the benefits of having fewer children or advocate gender equality, for instance: "Lower fertility, better quality; boys and girls are all treasures." The article also mentions this as part of an overall shift in propaganda that includes "de-deifying" folk heroes like Lei Feng to make him more relatable to today's youth. I think, though, this is more than just a sign of China's modernization and, rather, it's part of a global shift in ideas of authority and persuasion that extends to the U.S.  Obviously, we are starting from somewhere very different, (in the U.S., a valid consideration when choosing a political candidate has long been whether or not someone seems like the “kind of guy you could have a beer with”). But with science and health, we do value a certain cold detachment. Public health organizations in the U.S. have traditionally been very careful to appear serious, probably because appearing too casual would undermine their authority/credibility and, therefore, ability to be persuasive. There are examples, though, of this changing. Take, for instance, the much talked about zombie-preparedness campaign by the Center for Disease Control. The idea was to teach people to prepare for a disaster (of just about any kind) by framing it as a hypothetical zombie attack. From their site: "[CDC] director, Dr. Ali Khan, notes, "If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack." What I think this reflects is that, in many fields people’s perception that seriousness/sternness is the only indicator of credibility is changing.   I think we can see this outside of the health world as well. In news media, for instance, the traditional format is for the host to speak about news in a very serious, unemotional and detached tone. However, journalism on shows like “This American Life,” which take a conversational tone and a transparent approach to the reporter’s emotional reactions to events, is increasingly popular.  And many people turn to the commentary of highly emotional pundits to help them make sense of this increasingly complex world.  To really find out what’s driving this trend of “humanizing” authority, we’d need to do research, including real interviews with everyday people. However, the democratizing power of the Internet is a likely suspect.  Aspects of the web question the wisdom of authority—the largely anonymously crowd-sourced Wikipedia is more comprehensive and accurate than anything compiled by experts and published traditionally. And the abundance of information flowing through various Internet and media channels means there is much more competition for any given person’s attention, (but also more niche channels do it).  If this is indeed the case, we may be headed towards a future in which the most effective persuaders in any field are the ones we feel we can “grab a beer with.” http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/whats-in-a-name-strategic-medicalization/ I recently read an interesting article in the Atlantic about the history of how we came to see alcoholism as a medical disease. I recently read an interesting article in the Atlantic about the history of how we came to see alcoholism as a medical disease. The issue of how we talk about mental and physical health problems—what is a disease and what isn't—though, is still relevant today, and will become increasingly important in the future as information technology advances.  The Atlantic article is primarily about a perceived contradiction between Alcoholics Anonymous’ “essentially lay and spiritually oriented approach to alcoholism” and its push to “popularize the notion that alcoholism was a disease or illness phenomenon… to medicalize alcoholism.”  The article argues that AA’s probably saw this as an “ unfortunate but necessary subterfuge… to shift the public's image of the alcoholic in a medical direction and thereby also lessened the stigma that kept alcoholics out of treatment.”  The alcoholism example reminds me a bit of an issue my partner runs into in her work with Oakland’s Cambodian refugee population. Because of the stigma associated with mental health issues in her’s and many other’s communities, her organization often advises doctors and other healthcare providers to focus on the physical manifestations of mental health issues caused by wartime trauma when talking with refugee clients. What I think this indicates, in regards to the work Health Horizons is doing this year on big data, is that these kinds of sensitivities are going to become more, rather than less important in the future. Essentially, a computer, like Watson, is going to have all the data needed to prescribe the right medicine or course of treatment.  What the computer will not have, at least any time soon, is the sensitivity (cultural and otherwise) to know how best to present that information to patients. (This idea, that technology will increasingly automate quantitative tasks, making that which is intuitive social and human more important, is from IFTF Executive Director Marina Gorbis' forthcoming book).  I also think big data will challenge the idea that this kind of framing is “subterfuge” at all. As data reveals new correlations between health outcomes and things like social connections, the lines between “mental” and “physical” health problems and solutions will become irrelevant. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/jam-with-health-horizons-director-rod-falcon-and-philips-on-the-future-of-aging-well-229/ How do we age well? It's a challenge each of us will face as individuals someday, if we're not doing so already. But all over the globe, we're seeing average population age increase, and, in the future, we'll have to address this shift collectively. That's why Health Horizons Program Director Rod Falcon helped to lead Philips Center for Health and Well-being's Technology Social Jam last week—an open online conversation around the question, "how can technology realize its potential with regard to supporting aging well?"—Wednesday, Feb. 22nd through Friday, Feb. 24th. Population aging has long been on IFTF’s radar as a major global issue we will face in the coming decade. And this jam—one of a series that the Philips Center for Health and Well-being’s Aging Well Think Tank will host throughout 2012—is an exciting opportunity for thousands of interested stakeholders from around the world to pool their knowledge and experiences in an open way to help create solutions. Rod, a member of the Aging Well Think Tank, led this jam with Laurie Orlov, Industry Analyst at Aging in Place Technology. Rod and Laurie moderated the discussion, contributing their own ideas and replying to others’ for the entire three days. Once the jam session ended, the findings from these sessions will be discussed and debated by Rod, Laurie, and the rest of the think tank. Keeping with the spirit of openness that generated the ideas, the results of the jam will be made public and shared directly with the discussion’s participants. The Technology Social Jam was active from Wednesday, Feb. 22nd through Friday, Feb. 24th, and was completely open to the public through the LinkedIn group Creating Healthy, Livable Cities. More Information Visit the Philips Center for Health and Well-being website to learn more about these social jams. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/environmental-health-drones/ Via Make Magazine comes word of an aerial drone that inadvertently happened upon a meat packing plant in Dallas that was polluting a nearby river with pig blood. Via Make Magazine comes word of an aerial drone that inadvertently happened upon a meat packing plant in Dallas that was polluting a nearby river with pig blood. The disturbing finding points to something we should expect a lot more of, now that drones have been approved for public flight - namely, that we'll see citizens groups use unmanned vehicles as a form of citizen policing to monitor for all kinds of environmental health violations. As reported in sUAS News: A Dallas sUAS enthusiast testing his camera equiped drone noticed something awry with the images he had taken. Speaking to sUAS News he said. I was looking at images after the flight that showed a blood red creek and was thinking, could this really be what I think it is?  Can you really do that, surely not?  Whatever it is, it was flat out gross.  Then comes the question of who do I report this to that can find out what it is and where it is coming from.  Search after search and even some phone calls and I am not finding anything on who to call until I find the Nation Response Center.  With their website saying that they are “the sole national point of contact for reporting all oil, chemical, radiological, biological and etiological discharges into the environment, anywhere in the United States and its territories” this sure seems like the correct place to start. The finding, which was by chance, reminds me of the concept of human flesh search engines that have taken off in China, where, in response to crimes, people use social media to identify and shame people who commit crimes. Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results. So what would environmental health drones do? Crowdsource environmental health detective work. Publicize, shame and boycott offenders. (Thanks to colleagues Sean Ness and Nic Weidinger for pointing me to the Make article.) http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/gathering-experts-to-explore-the-world-of-open-fabrication/ During the one-day session on April 19 at the AutoDesk Gallery, experts, researchers, and guests explored the many different frontiers where 3D printing and open manufacturing are changing the way that things are made. Among the topics that were explored were: The affordances that fabrication offers for the unprecedented personalization of products. Scott Summit from Bespoke Innovationsdemonstrated the work they are doing to revolutionize medical prosthetics. Creative and artistic applications of 3D printing, including Bathsheba Grossman’s overview of new viral art forms that could not be physically produced in any other way. The great potential for open, local and modularized production processes with Humblefacture. The sobering intellectual property issues that next generation manufacturing will trigger with Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge. Autodesk’s own ongoing work in 3D printing, including their fabrication of a full scale model of a turbo prop engine and 7-foot tall Lego dinosaur. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-if-your-doctor-prescribed-a-chatbot-for-you/ A couple weeks ago during a research meeting for our upcoming year, our colleague Lyn Jeffery challenged us to imagine a future where, at some point in the next decade, doctors start prescribing chatbots, robots and other forms of artificial intelligence as a relatively routine matter of medical practice. A couple weeks ago during a research meeting for our upcoming year, our colleague Lyn Jeffery challenged us to imagine a future where, at some point in the next decade, doctors start prescribing chatbots, robots and other forms of artificial intelligence as a relatively routine matter of medical practice. It turns out there's good reason to think artificial intelligent bots - commonly called relational agents in the research literature - will be used in all sorts of medical applications--from treating mental health conditions to enhancing patient education. For example, a recent (small) study from the Center for Connected Health found that in comparison to people trying to lose weight by tracking their activity levels, people who had access to their activity levels and an animated, virtual coach lost significantly more weight. According to the study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, 70 overweight or obese participants were asked to wear a wireless pedometer and were given access to a website to review their step counts. Half of the group was given access to an automated, animated virtual coach via their home computer, where they received personalized feedback based on their step counts and were encouraged to set goals. While everyone reported benefitting from taking part in the 12-week study, those using a virtual coach maintained their step counts, while those without access to a virtual coach saw their step counts decrease by 14.3 percent over the course of the study. In addition, 58.1 percent of the participants using a virtual coach indicated it motivated them to be more active, and 87.1 percent reported feeling guilty if they skipped an online appointment. The added benefit of an relational agents hasn't just been observed in weight loss; virtual nurses have been successful in helping lower readmission rates and improving patient satisfaction, while a recent New York Times article noted mixed, though at least somewhat promising results for a variety of mental health apps that use designs rooted in cognitive bias modification to help people overcome social anxieties, as well as bad habits. Not surprisingly, some of the leading proponents of virtual therapists point toward their basic cost effectiveness--particularly in light of rising health costs, an aging population, and future staffing shortages, the theory goes, relational agents will help fill all sorts of gaps in the health system, particularly anything that requires patients to change their own behaviors or to better understand their own conditions. Which is to say that in a few years, it seems likely that along with a prescription for a statin to lower cholesterol, you might very well get a little virtual reality avatar--in reality, a piece of programming code--that will remind you to exercise and let you know when you need to take your pills. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/24-year-old-cameroonian-engineer-invents-a-touchscreen-medical-tablet/ A 24 year old Cameroonian engineer, Arthur Zang, has invented the Cardiopad, a touchscreen medical tablet used to perform tests similar to a traditional electrocardiograph. The Cardiopad can wirelessly transmit the results of a heart test from a remote location to specialists typically located in urban centers.  [img_assist|nid=4103|title=Cardiopad|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=425|height=240] A 24 year old Cameroonian engineer, Arthur Zang, has invented the Cardiopad, a touchscreen medical tablet used to perform tests similar to a traditional electrocardiograph. The Cardiopad can wirelessly transmit the results of a heart test from a remote location to specialists typically located in urban centers.  When compared to the traditional electrocardiograph, The Cardiopad has the added functionality of having digitized test results that can be saved electronically and sent to a distant cardiologist. The cardiologist can then interpret the test from his or her remote location (using a smart phone, computer, or other wirelessly connected device) and send the diagnosis along with prescribed treatment back to a nurse working in remote areas. While hugely helpful to countries like Cameroon—that has a meager 30 cardiologists for a country of 20 million people—and other developing nations with similar access issues, the Cardiopad can also be used in countries like Australia with large swaths of remote areas where patients also have to travel long distances to see specialists. The Cardiopad will cut down on costs of diagnostic tests on multiple levels. Obviously it will eliminate the actual cost of long distance travel as well as cut down on lost time from that travel, the Cardiopad is also drastically cheaper than a traditional electrocardiograph that provides the same service with less functionality.  Arthur Zang is intending to sell the device for 1500 euros, as opposed to the 3800 euros needed for a traditional electrocardiograph device in Cameroon. Accounting for unstable electricity within Cameroon, the Cardiopad is equipped with a battery that has about a 7-hour life. Enough for a full day of work. The Cardiopad is currently in production and will be available for hospitals in July. Arthur Zang was looking for VC funding when the story broke a few days ago, if you’re looking to fund a surefire product that meets an essential need for people around the world, now might be your chance.   Screen grabs taken from YouTube video of Arthur demoing the Cardiopad in French.  Story from allafrica.com  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/food-futures-food-choices-ongoing-research-and-public-release-1/ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/your-personal-placebo-profile/ During their work on the Future of Persuasion, my colleagues in the Technology Horizons program developed the idea of a personal persuasion profile - that, in effect, each of us will be profiled based on the kinds of pitches, targeting and information we're most likely to respond to, that, over time, will follow us around in our virtual lives. During their work on the Future of Persuasion, my colleagues in the Technology Horizons program developed the idea of a personal persuasion profile - that, in effect, each of us will be profiled based on the kinds of pitches, targeting and information we're most likely to respond to, that, over time, will follow us around in our virtual lives. It seems to me that in health, we may be on the verge of a similar concept in health: A personal placebo profile that identifies the kinds of non-biological medical practices that influence us, which can follow us around from medical encounter to medical encounter. My argument here is based on a key shift we've begun seeing in recent years: That medical researchers have begun pushing the view that rather than dismissing placebo effects as statistical noise, we should instead figure out how to use the placebo effect as part of a broader set of health interventions, that, while not nearly as effective as traditional biomedical treatments, can still help us get better. In the New Yorker a couple of months ago, for example, writer Michael Scherer profiled the head of a new Harvard Program dedicated to studying placebo effects. In the piece, Sherer makes a useful distinction between illness and disease: Disease is a biological condition that we have historically treated with drugs, surgery, and other technological solutions. Illness, on the other hand, defines the context of a medical encounter, including the relationship between doctor and patients… Placebo research demonstrates that it is essential to consider both the science and art of medicine--to think about diseases as illnesses, and not rely solely on short-term, high-tech solutions. This is similar to something I wrote about last year, with regards to efforts to leverage placebo effects--that health care is intensely meaningful, but that for the most part, medical care has focused on optimizing the biological side of care and minimizing the importance of meaning. It stands to reason that this meaning-making is personal, of course. At least one (not very good) study, for example, claims to have found links between genetic mutations and placebo responses. A very good 2009 article from Wired notes that placebo responses to different pill colors, shapes and so on vary by culture--and that pharmaceutical companies have already begun looking for ways to harness these effects when deciding how to design their medications. Now, of course, there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of placebo effects--particularly since it's the sort of space invites all sorts of quackish nonsense. But what this research into placebos is showing is that how doctors treat people matters: In a study last year, Harvard Medical School researcher Ted Kaptchuk devised a clever strategy for testing his volunteers' response to varying levels of therapeutic ritual. The study focused on irritable bowel syndrome, a painful disorder that costs more than $40 billion a year worldwide to treat. First the volunteers were placed randomly in one of three groups. One group was simply put on a waiting list; researchers know that some patients get better just because they sign up for a trial. Another group received placebo treatment from a clinician who declined to engage in small talk. Volunteers in the third group got the same sham treatment from a clinician who asked them questions about symptoms, outlined the causes of IBS, and displayed optimism about their condition. Not surprisingly, the health of those in the third group improved most. In fact, just by participating in the trial, volunteers in this high-interaction group got as much relief as did people taking the two leading prescription drugs for IBS. And the benefits of their bogus treatment persisted for weeks afterward, contrary to the belief—widespread in the pharmaceutical industry—that the placebo response is short-lived. In other words, making the clinical encounter a positive one, at least in this study, did as much to improve IBS as leading drugs--and notably, of course, these aren't mutually exclusive strategies. So what would a personal placebo profile be? A ton of money is going into personalizing medicine to our underlying biological states. And while I don't think placebo effects will ever be nearly as important, a useful area of innovation will involve understanding the qualitative factors--like how each of us likes to interact with caregivers--that can improve health outcomes. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 health and well-being over the next decade. 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 health and well-being over the next decade. Take for instance, True North, the clinic in Maine that accepts payment in the form of “time dollars” from the Portland Hour Exchange Program, an alternative currency program, in which an hour of labor of any sort, be it teaching music raking leaves, or even giving a medical examination, earns the worker a “time dollar,” which can be redeemed for an hour of labor of any sort. The clinic, accepts these time dollars, it says, as a way to preserve the dignity of low and no-income patients and help them get the most out of their treatment. Tom Dahlborg, the executive director of True North, explained to NPR that when he worked in Medicaid, patients had an attitude of  “'Oh, it's free care, so I don't really deserve that much anyways.' " From the article:  [Dahlborg] says patients at True North who pay with time dollars are fully engaged. "We'll hear from a landscaper [who] will say, 'I mowed five lawns in the last month so I could bring my children in to see your pediatric nurse practitioner. This darn well better be a good visit,' " Dahlborg says. They certainly get a lengthy visit. Patients are allowed to spend up to an hour or more with their doctors. "They're developing empathy and trust together, which by the way is in the Hippocratic oath, however most people see that as woo-woo stuff," he says. "They don't just want to get just medical information from you, they want to get a spiritual background," Barth says. "It's not like, OK, what's your religion? But it's, 'OK, what does your life look like?' And as a result, I've learned how to negotiate my own health, which has been a huge value." What’s most notable here from the IFTF perspective, is that this new health care payment system isn’t really about technology. My colleague Bradley Kreit has been exploring health finance, and found social innovation playing a big part there as well.   One example he’s been looking into is water.org's Water Credit, a microfinance initiative that gives loans to people across the globe to gain basic access to drinking water. While it’s not the traditional microfinance model of lending to entrepreneurs, it works on a similar principal. The same way that access to an oven and ingredients gives a baker the capacity to earn money to pay back a loan by making and selling pastries, Water Credit loans provides the borrower with clean water and, therefore, better health and more time (which would have been spent fetching water or incapacitated by illness)—and more time and better health increases the borrower’s capacity to earn money and pay back the loan.  This example is particularly interesting to Health Horizons because our research this year is going to focus on health innovations that will be enabled by the unprecedented amount of data we will have access to in the coming decade. This explosion of data will allow us to see previously invisible causes and correlations and then tailor interventions accordingly. In this way, new practices, services, and interventions will gain their legitimacy through technology, (data will provide evidence) but the interventions themselves won’t be tech dependent.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/snacks-are-the-new-meals-not-exactlybut-maybe-it-wouldnt-be-such-a-bad-thing/ Could snacking do the cultural work of meals in the future? Could snacking do the cultural work of meals in the future? That was one question that the “Power of Snacking” report raised for food studies professor Charlotte Biltekoff in our panel discussion last week in San Francisco.  The answer, in the report and in a discussion between Charlotte, a forecaster (me), and two nutritionists (Tara Dellolacono Thies of Luna and Sarah-Jane Bedwell) was…”definitely maybe.” Folks in the futures world are generally quite comfortable with answers like that.  But in a room full of women—food bloggers, dietitians, nutritionists, curious passers by and a few significant others—this question, and the forecast it sprang from, raised some thoughtful questions and spirited disagreements.  I took away three issues from our discussion: one semantic and two deeply cultural.  Semantically, what is the difference between well-paced snacking and the by now quite established nutritional advice of eating smaller, more frequent meals? Does the rise of snacking hang on ignorance of relevant meal types, or the decay of traditions around meals?  And finally, to Charlotte’s point, are snacks increasingly holding more real meaning—meaning that they’ve been categorically denied in the recent past? To the first point, the overall forecast of this report is a future in which the act of snacking has been rescued from the negative connotations it holds today, (like guilty, mindless, undisciplined eating), and it is normalized and even celebrated.  Like any forecast, that is not a foregone conclusion, and if you disagree with it, good.  Make a different future. Our moderator, Diane Dwyer, reflected that the idea of eating frequent meals was itself stressful to her, and the idea of more robust and nutritious snacking could be functionally identical, but emotionally easier to swallow. I think that women will find their own path through this potential semantic trap.  Another audience member, a shrewd dietician, argued that ignorance was partly to blame for this future.  “Breakfast is literally ‘break fast’—whatever you eat first is your breakfast—when people say they don’t eat it, it’s just not true most of the time.” Well, okay…but take this woman we interviewed in New York.  “From 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. I’m in school. After that, I’m commuting back home. I usually get home around 10:30 p.m. I’ll eat. In between I’ll snack or have lunch. I watch TV. I’ll take a nap for a couple of hours. It’s not even a full sleep, that’s why I call it a nap for three hours. Wake up, do a little bit of my paper, eat, snack or whatever, go back to sleep for a little bit and then wake up and keep on working. “ Source: 27-year old college student, NY She sleeps in such short spurts she calls them “naps”—is she eating breakfast every time she wakes up…two or three times a day? The point of the forecast is that many meals like this are based around a standardized day, which just isn't true to many people's experiences.  And the forces that created those conditions don’t show much sign of changing in the coming decade.  What’s more, as Charlotte adroitly pointed out, people have been bemoaning the loss of the “traditional meal” for at least a century.  Another woman we interviewed in New York made a really fascinating distinction that I think is relevant here.  She told us about her meals, and her snacks.  But there was this other category of eating—“just food.” As she described what “just food” involved, I noticed that yes, it tended to lack one or more essential symbolic elements of a “meal.” More than that, to her, it lacked the intent to care for others that she identified as the hallmark of the family meals she ate with her parents on Sunday. But it also wasn’t a snack.  Snacks she ate at work with colleagues, or in preparation for going to the gym. Snacks had more meaning than “just food.” Another woman sharpened this kind of meaning into a specific ritual she and her family invented.  This woman’s kids were all busy in the afternoons—soccer practice, softball, music, dance, etc.  But at the pauses between events, in those moments when everyone was in the car, she kept a crate of different snacks.  Each child, and the mother herself, gets to pick one, and they sit in the car and enjoy them together. Slipping on my anthropologist’s hat for a second, I’d argue that in this moment the minivan becomes a sacred space of not-busyness, and the selection and eating of snacks, a new kind of everyday ritual.  It’s in these new rituals that we can glimpse the future of snacking redeemed, when snacks do in fact do some of the cultural work of meals.  In the report, the forecast, “Adopting more lifestyle appropriate eating patterns,” covers a lot of ground. It stretches from the basic sociological figures of work and time-use, to the push and pull between this bottom-up invention of new rituals, and the undeniable attempts of food makers and restaurants to create “eating occasions” where they may not be appropriate to people’s lives and health. But in each forecast we crafted a vignette to bring the forecast to life, and I’ll leave you with that. Kayla munches absentmindedly on an apple. At 22, she has a full plate between classes, studying, interning at the student health center, and trying to make time to maintain relationships with her friends and her 54-year-old mother.  So, the truth is, she eats when she can. Her roommate is out at class or partying most of the time, so the only real home-cooked meal she eats is Sunday dinner at her mom’s place a few hours away. It might be the only real meal her mom eats, too; after Kayla moved out she’s hasn’t seen the point of cooking for one. When she wakes up at 4:00 a.m. to study and has a snack, is that breakfast? Or is breakfast what she eats after her 8:00 a.m. class gets out? Kayla’s all but given up keeping track, settling instead for making sure to snack before she gets too hungry, trying to eat healthy snacks primarily to keep her weight down, and attempting to get a few fruits and vegetables in her body each day. All-veggie smoothies are her favorite snack to combat her afternoon drowsiness through chemistry lectures, but they aren’t the cheapest option, so she only indulges in one a couple of times during the week. Every once in a while, she’ll try to plan ahead to make sure she has healthy snacks to eat stashed for the week. Inevitably, however, she’ll get caught up in school projects and end up selecting from the vending machine outside the library. Kayla’s kept on her freshman 15 and then some, and she often wishes she could see a point in the future where she would have more time to focus on losing the weight by eating better and working out more. But, for now, spending time to make home-cooked meals or go to the gym more than once or twice a week seems out of the question, as does giving up going out with her friends for late-night tacos, the one social thing she does. She’s hopeful that between earning her undergraduate degree and starting medical school, she may be able to take better care of herself, but she knows that once she starts school again, her schedule will be just at hectic as it is now. Kayla thinks that once she is in her 30s she’ll eat proper meals each day, but right now, snacks are the more realistic choice. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/exploring-the-future-of-games-and-health/ IFTF was invited by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to help organize a workshop at the White House conference center on health and games. Yesterday, my colleague Mike Liebhold and I were among a group of roughly two dozen researchers, game designers and key government officials exploring how games can be used to improve health and health care. IFTF was invited by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to help organize a workshop at the White House conference center on health and games. Yesterday, my colleague Mike Liebhold and I were among a group of roughly two dozen researchers, game designers and key government officials exploring how games can be used to improve health and health care. The discussion was wide ranging--and not surprisingly, participants identified a variety of potential areas where advances in games and technology have the potential to substantially improve health and healthcare. For example, in response to an early question about where games have the highest potential to improve health, participants identified a variety of domains, including population and community health, teen health, mental health and well-being, and encouraging people to exercise more and reduce sedentary behavior. Others focused more broadly on the nature of games themselves, and pointed out that well-designed games have the potential to not only serve as a useful education tool, but that advanced simulations will enable everyone from patients navigating health decisions to doctors honing surgery skills to practice and refine their decisions in virtual space in order to improve health outcomes. We also explored how advances in technology will further advance efforts to use games to improve health, with many of the opportunities stemming from the declining costs of a variety of technologies. For example, devices like the Kinect are enabling designers to develop virtual reality health games that can be deployed cheaply in-the-home, in contrast to just a few years ago, where the costs of developing virtual reality systems meant that more advanced simulations could only take place in labs and hospitals. Similarly, as more people carry GPS enabled phones, game designers can begin to develop and refine approaches to health games targeted to individuals based on their locations. In other instances, social practices are creating new opportunities for game designers: For example, social media and networks are enabling game designers to build social support into games designed to promote healthy behavior change. In the coming weeks, IFTF will be working with the ONC to develop a summary paper of the discussion. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/embedded-health-designing-future-health-interventions-around-our-weaknesses/ 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 create interventions that help us overcome our weaknesses. It begins: 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 create interventions that help us overcome our weaknesses. It begins: Samsung recently got some decent press coverage for a new prototype smartphone that uses all sorts of subtle cues--things like how fast a user types, how often that user makes typos--to gauge the in-the-moment mental state of its user, so that, at some point in the future, if you’re angry, for example, your phone might not let you send a text message to your boss. It’s an example of an emerging class of technologies that aim to measure subtle shifts in our moment-to-moment states, and then adjust to them behind our backs. To read the rest, go here. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-50-cent-can-teach-us-about-the-future-of-empathetic-foods/ 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 didn't note the recent release of a new energy shot developed by the rapper 50 Cent that is almost certainly the first energy drink released in partnership with the United Nation's World Food Programme. 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 didn't note the recent release of a new energy shot developed by the rapper 50 Cent that is almost certainly the first energy drink released in partnership with the United Nation's World Food Programme. The concept is pretty simple: For every shot the parent company of Street King sells, it donates a meal to a hungry child. Writing in Forbes, reporter Zack O' Malley describes the product--and its business model--as follows: Though the Street King deal is certainly a boon for the fight against hunger in poor nations, it should also profit 50 Cent and his partners handsomely. According to the U.N., it takes $0.10 to provide a single meal (or $0.25 for a complete package of nutritional food that includes take-home rations and additional inputs such as de-worming pills; even if you aren’t a rapper, you may donate here). The precise breakdown is staggering. Street King retails for $2.49 to $2.99, so assuming the lofty 50% profit margin, 50 and his partners will be evenly splitting a per-unit profit of $1.15 to $1.40. Though Clarke says the company won’t be profitable for the first two years, he believes annual revenues of $300-$500 million are possible by year three; 50 says his goal is to feed one billion children. Beyond the specific business model, which at a high level sounds like it makes complete sense, I was more intrigued by the long-term vision for the product Street King: He believes that if Street King is successful, it will force beverage giants like Coca-Cola and Pepsi to initiate similar give-back programs. The United Nations says it would cost $3.3 billion per year to feed 90 million of the world’s poorest citizens for a year, or less than one percent of all corporate profits. “That’s a small enough amount for the shareholders of all these companies to let go,” says 50 Cent. “Going forward, I want to do things in a bigger, better way. And I think I can achieve it with this actual project.” This is similar to other signals we've seen recently. Last year, I noted a WFP initiative that aimed to encourage people to eat less and donate the savings to hunger-relief initiatives; it's also reminiscent of a new initiative called Halfsies that allows consumers to buy a half-sized portion and donates 90 percent of the saved costs to hunger related nonprofits (the remaining 10 percent funds operations.) What these initiatives are developing, in other words, is a way to fight a massive imbalance, where roughly 1 billion people simultaneously go hungry while another billion people struggle to avoid eating too much. What these concepts do is connect people--across continents and wildly divergent lives and problems--to put pressure on consumers as well as companies to look for ways to stop oversupplying the wealthy but begin to develop supplying those in need. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/pop-up-urbanism-to-build-community-health/ 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 well-being. 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 well-being. Their point, which is an important one, is that as research continues to establish clear links between community factors and health, community level initiatives will offer one of the most critical avenues for addressing the social determinants of health--and essentially, improving the health and well-being of large numbers of people for a pretty low price. I was disappointed, however, because they kept their focus on formal community development organizations--but it seems likely to me that many of the most significant community health initiatives will emerge not from traditional development, but in tandem with more emergent, bottom-up community experiments. A great article in Miller-McCune highlights some recent, particularly interesting examples, of cheap but effective citizen-led efforts to improve local communities as examples of what the article calls pop-up urbanism. Those who undertake such up-from-the-sidewalks initiatives call them by various names: tactical urbanism, pop-up urbanism, urban acupuncture — or in one blogger’s ornate locution, “Provisional, Opportunistic, Ubiquitous, and Odd Tactics in Guerrilla and DIY Practice and Urbanism.” The events can be as short-lived and mobile as the organizing of local food trucks to meet at a certain spot where lunch options are scarce, or the annual Parking Day, when activists in scores of cities, armed with as little as AstroTurf, lawn chairs, and quarters for feeding the meter, turn an on-street parking space into a park for a few hours. Other projects, like placing low-tech swimming pools in areas where recreation options are lacking, may last for a season. The New York-based design firm Macro Sea has done this with Dumpsters that were custom-ordered and modified by their manufacturer for this very use. “The experimental approach is local and low risk, with low expectations,” says Mike Lydon, a planner and principal of the urban-design firm Street Plans Collaborative. “You can try things out at a small scale and see what works.” Lydon wrote a downloadable catalog-cum-manual called “Tactical Urbanism: Short Term Action/Long Term Change” with other activists including Aurash Khawarzad, a planner who founded a group called DoTank:Brooklyn. DoTank events have ranged from holding a potluck community party under an elevated expressway to “chair bombing” — crafting Adirondack-style chairs from shipping pallets and depositing them unbidden outside laundromats and other places where people have to spend stretches of time. People like Lydon and Khawarzad, trained in architecture and planning, would argue that some examples of pop-up urban reinvention are more effective than others. The point of the potluck was to demonstrate that the space under the highway could be put to uses more valuable than parking. Chair bombing highlights the absence of amenities in spots where people are obliged to spend time; in some cases, property owners have since added seats of their own. I think this last point is key--what some of these bottom-up efforts can offer are examples of better ways of organizing communities so that they are designed more effectively for more people. And as research about the health effects of community become clearer, and more publicly known, many of these experiments will likely involve creative efforts to enhance community health. There's a second, more subtle point here. I've previously noted research linking strong social connections--and communities where there are high levels of social cohesion and trust--to improved community health and well-being. And these sorts of bottom-up initiatives seem like a particularly simple, but potentially transformative route for communities to feel more connected, engaged with and ultimately more trusting in their community. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-toxic-effects-of-childhood-stress/ The American Academy of Pediatrics released a fascinating, and potentially transformative, statement a couple of weeks ago about something that would seem to be a simple, almost insignificant problem: Stress. The American Academy of Pediatrics released a fascinating, and potentially transformative, statement a couple of weeks ago about something that would seem to be a simple, almost insignificant problem: Stress. Their point, detailed in a separate background piece details mounting evidence from fields like neuroscience, epigenetics and sociology that toxic stress exposure--in effect, prolonged exposure to particularly harsh conditions--in prenatal and early childhood settings create long-term problems ranging from social and behavioral problems to higher risks of chronic diseases and shorter lives. The AAP describes its approach to alleviating stress with a mouthful--an ecobiodevelopmental framework for health--that hints at a key concept: That in the coming years, many of our most important breakthroughs in well-being won't come from doctor's offices, but through improvements in our social and physical environments. Both articles are worth reading in-depth, but here are a couple of key excerpts that highlight the role of early stress in shaping long-term well-being: Within the ongoing interplay among assets for health and risks for illness, toxic stress early in life plays a critical role by disrupting brain circuitry and other important regulatory systems in ways that continue to influence physiology, behavior, and health decades later. In short, an EBD approach to childhood adversity suggests that (1) early experiences with significant stress are critical, because they can undermine the development of those adaptive capacities and coping skills needed to deal with later challenges; (2) the roots of unhealthy lifestyles, maladaptive coping patterns, and fragmented social networks are often found in behavioral and physiologic responses to significant adversity that emerge in early childhood; and (3) the prevention of long-term, adverse consequences is best achieved by the buffering protection afforded by stable, responsive relationships that help children develop a sense of safety, thereby facilitating the restoration of their stress response systems to baseline. And in the technical paper: First, current health promotion and disease prevention policies focused largely on adults would be more effective if evidence-based investments were also made to strengthen the foundations of health in the prenatal and early childhood periods. Second, significant reductions in chronic disease could be achieved across the life course by decreasing the number and severity of adverse experiences that threaten the wellbeing of young children and by strengthening the protective relationships that help mitigate the harmful effects of toxic stress. The multiple domains that affect the biology of health and development—including the foundations of healthy development, caregiver and community capacities, and public and private sector policies and programs—provide a rich array of targeted opportunities for the introduction of innovative interventions, beginning in the earliest years of life. At another point, the paper's authors, led by Jack P. Shonkoff, argue that identifying strategies to reduce toxic childhood stress is "the next chapter of innovation in pediatrics [that] remains to be written." It's that process of writing that chapter that has the potential to be incredibly contentious and to challenge our basic assumptions and institutions, however. In a column on the subject, Nicholas Kristoff highlights programs such as home nurse visits in homes with babies, that have measured results demonstrating long-term gains in health and behavior when those kids get older. But it seems to me that the long-term implications of this research suggest that some of the most important strategies to mitigate stress won't involve hospitals or doctors or nurses at all, but will involve things like early childhood education programs--things that are harder to fund, and harder to measure, as health interventions. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/wanted-adaptive-encouragement/ 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 to do so.  It’s the time of year that makes me crave the realization of one of our Science and Technology forecasts: Adaptive Encouragement. 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 to do so.  It’s the time of year that makes me crave the realization of one of our Science and Technology forecasts: Adaptive Encouragement. Adaptive encouragement: From self-quantifiers to life doulas Imagine a digital advisor that interprets your raw health data and offers continuous support along with interactive data visualization and recommendations for changing—and maintaining—daily routines or medications.   Embodied in intelligent programs, mobile devices, and the cloud, a life doula (like a birth doula) will remind us of our goals in moments of weakness. It will offer suggestions and encouragement in context to help us make healthy choices.   This kind of adaptive, personalized support will improve chronic illness management with automated diet tracking, in-home blood marker monitoring, and realtime analysis of genetic, metabolic, and protein data. A quasi-intelligent automated system that takes the heavy lifting out of learning about your habits and changing them? Sold!This vision is part of a future when roles like life coaching are automated and extended through ever-present technology.  It also points to the possibilities of adapting care systems to optimize the well-being of people with chronic ailments: rather than a slap on the wrist at the doctor’s office, you get a gentle vibration to get you out of your chair and moving.  Haptic feedback and sensitivity, emotional support and peer interactions are the future of this softer side of mobile health, beyond the expert-fed prescriptive reminders. This is a future of gentle nudges to show us the actions that will help us increase our capacity for well-being, but also remind us to do nothing when that’s what's really best for us.  Our colleague Alex Charmichael over at the Quantified Self wrote this forecast, and I’ve heard it echoed in the desires of my of the quantified selves I’ve been interviewing for our project for the RWJF building and refining the QS Guide to Self-tracking Tools. For those of us who generally only embark on self-improvement binges once a year, there are a lot of lessons and tools we can learn from both the continuous and episodic efforts of the QSers.  One tool I learned about in interviews that might be of particular interest to New-Years Resolvers is Health Month—a game that helps you focus on making progress towards your goals on a daily basis.  (The game starts promptly on the first of each month, so start on Jan 1st to get credit for your progress!) Most importantly though, one of the key lessons I’ve heard that’s especially crucial for  new years resolutions is self-compassion in all your self-tracking and self-improvement efforts.  Shame and frustration at little slip ups can do a lot of harm—so this year, try staying future-focused and forgiving.     http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/avoiding-short-term-thinking-in-a-world-of-big-data/ My latest piece for Fast Company's 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 begins with an old story about how metrics can mislead us: A few years ago, a group of economists led by Nobel prize winning Joseph Stiglitz tried to develop measurements of societal well-being beyond the standard metric of GDP, which only measures a narrow spectrum of economic activity. Beyond any of their specific recommendations, though, their report brought to light the history of GDP, a history that is incredibly instructive for the coming age of big data. The story? GDP was never meant to serve as a proxy for social well-being, but simply as a way to track economic output. Over time, and with few other tangible metrics that give any sense of how society is doing, GDP has inadvertently become the default measurement that governments use to evaluate how much, or little, they’re doing to enhance well-being. As Stiglitz wrote at the time, “what we measure affects what we do." You can read the rest here http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/replacement-parts-we-can-rebuild-him-we-have-the-technology/ 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 need for amputations; organs grown in a lab will ease our dependence on donor transplants; and tendons, cartilage, and bone regrown with autologous cells will be used to repair injuries and joints. 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 need for amputations; organs grown in a lab will ease our dependence on donor transplants; and tendons, cartilage, and bone regrown with autologous cells will be used to repair injuries and joints. Advanced prosthetic devices and biomechatronic-based limb replacements will interface with the body’s nervous systems to give users a range of natural function and movement. When we first presented this forecast at a conference, our colleague Vivian told a story that illustrates the potential, and some possible pitfalls, of the growing capacities of regenerative medicine. It was part of a complicated dance of vignettes and exposition with Vivian, Bradley and myself that will remain one of my fondest memories of working here.   Of course, when you get sick enough, you end up having to go to the doctor for help. That's what finally happened with Eric, who has Type 2 Diabetes.  He is a very successful 56 year old lawyer.  He has a history of working too much and not taking very good care of himself.  He was overweight, ate poorly, and didn’t track his blood sugar levels consistently.  As a result, he has had some serious complications from his illness.  Last year, he developed a foot ulcer that just wouldn’t heal.  The doctors had to amputate his foot.  His eyesight also deteriorated because of damage to his retina.  And his doctors have been warning him that he may need to go on dialysis.  Eric's body is failing him.  Remember that TV show in the '70's?  The Six Million Dollar Man?  Do you remember the show's tagline?  "We can rebuild him. We have the technology." That was science fiction then.  But today, in 2020, we can rebuild Eric.  We have the technology.  We can replace his failing body parts.  And fortunately, Eric can afford the most cutting-edge medical treatments available.  Thanks to research funded over the past decade by the U.S. Department of Defense, Eric received a prosthetic foot that mimics the way a real ankle and foot move.  It's called an active prosthetic and it has a small motor that helps power and change his gait.  He can walk uphill, go up stairs, and even run.  It also has embedded sensors that connect to electrodes attached to nerves in his leg.  This provides him with feedback about where his new foot is in space, and helps transmit commands from the nerves to the prosthetic.  Eric also got a different kind of prosthetic—a neuroprosthetic—to take care of his diabetic retinopathy.  He had an artificial retina implanted in his eye. (You could think of this as a visual cousin of Michael Chorost’s cochlear implant). It is a microchip that has hundreds of electrodes on it.  Eric has to wear a pair of glasses with a tiny video camera mounted on them.  It captures images, converts them to electrical impulses, and transmits them to the retinal chip. These electrical impulses stimulate his brain to perceive patterns of light, which has allowed him to see again.   Eric’s diabetes has obviously taken a toll on his body.  He is really worried that his kidneys are going to start to fail soon, and that he will need to go on dialysis.  He knows that it may be hard for him to get a new kidney, because there still aren't enough donors to meet the needs of all the people on the national registry list.  But he has heard about new developments in regenerative medicine, and he is hopeful that if his kidneys do shut down, he may be eligible for a clinical trial.  Researchers would use his own cells to grow a kidney in the lab and transplant it in him. Eric still has diabetes.  But now he has a new lease on life, thanks to his new foot and retina. There’s something incredibly hopeful about this story, and at the same time quite troubling.  What if it wasn’t a workaholic with diabetes, but instead a smoker?  Another colleague has a friend in his 30s who keeps smoking on the premise that by the time it’s an issue for his body, we’ll have cancer prevention treatments and the ability to regrow whole lungs. We’ll have the technology, but will being able to afford it really be the criteria for who gets to use it?  And will the capacities to remedy even late-stage complications to chronic diseases upstage the critical global tasks of preventing chronic illnesses and their most damaging consequences? There are also questions of these technologies crossing the threshold between treatment and augmentation.  I won’t get into that here, but rest assured we’ve written extensively about it in the past and will continue to do so in the future.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/using-regenerative-medicine-to-preview-biological-responses/ 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 scientists to, for example, engineer skin cells into other kinds of cells, such as heart cells, will enable scientists to test out effects of different kinds of treatments inside of petri dishes, rather than inside our bodies. 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 scientists to, for example, engineer skin cells into other kinds of cells, such as heart cells, will enable scientists to test out effects of different kinds of treatments inside of petri dishes, rather than inside our bodies. It's the sort of shift that, over the long run, could help bring about an increasingly personalized form of medicine, where medicines are prescribed based on how your cells within a petri dish react. We called this forecast biological previews: Technology Review has a great slideshow of some of the different diseases that scientists are now researching through reversed engineered stem cells, ranging from common conditions like Diabetes to rare diseases, such as ALS (or Lou Gehrig's Disease.) It's likely that understandings of these sorts of rare conditions--fewer than 6,000 people per year in the United States are diagnosed with ALS--will benefit the most from biological previews, since researchers will not only be able to gain better models of how the diseases progress but also view the potential effects. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/understanding-fitness-deserts/ 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 around, and exercising is unusually difficult. As far as I can tell, the piece, by Alex Schmidt, is one of the first to use the term fitness desert--and I'd guess, in part, this is because coming up with any sort of clear definition of one is complex. 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 around, and exercising is unusually difficult. As far as I can tell, the piece, by Alex Schmidt, is one of the first to use the term fitness desert--and I'd guess, in part, this is because coming up with any sort of clear definition of one is complex. In theory, the presence or absence of sidewalks, bike paths, parks, and gyms could all contribute to a definition, as could factors like crime rates. Schmidt notes some of these competing definitions in her article: Like food deserts—areas where residents don’t have reliable access to fresh food—fitness deserts pose health challenges to millions of Americans, mostly low-income ones. A full 80 percent of census blocks do not have a park within a half-mile, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last year. Studies have shown that these disparities exist in cities all over the country, including Chicago, San Francisco and Washington D.C., complicating efforts to fight obesity in poor communities. David Sloan, a professor of urban planning at the University of Southern California, says the difference in fitness opportunities between affluent and low-income areas are stark. While wealthy West Los Angeles has 70.1 acres of recreation or green space per 1,000 people, low-income South Los Angeles has 1.2 acres per 1,000. Meanwhile, private gyms are much more common in the more affluent areas. The recession has made it even more difficult to rely on public parks for fitness and recreation, as public resources earmarked for those spaces dwindle. In other words, there are a couple of key points: We know that areas where it's hard to exercise are bad for health; we also know that actually defining "hard to exercise" is, itself, no easy task at the moment. But over the next decade, I think we'll have increasingly good tools to define complex and significant determinants of health--like fitness deserts. Already, relatively straightforward services like walk score offer some insight into how easy or hard it is to navigate a neighborhood--and layering that information with other environmental and social data is pretty feasible. It will, for example, be possible to start to answer questions like how the location of a park, or the presence of a gym, impacts exercise rates. One of the real opportunities to use information to enhance health over the next decade will be to link these sorts of environmental definitions to health outcomes and behaviors to better understand the kinds of environments that impact health--and to develop some more targeted ways to use the environment to enhance health. Put differently, despite long-standing links between health and place, one of the challenges to intervening through the environment is in identifying interventions that genuinely work--a challenge that may dissipate as we develop high-resolution tools to analyze and understand links between place and health. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/anticipatory-quarantines/ 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 expansive network of international air travel, you can be on another continent within hours of leaving your home.  Of course, not everything nor everyone travels freely to everywhere they’d like to go, and not every idea moves seamlessly, but, for the most part, it feels like each year, we have m 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 expansive network of international air travel, you can be on another continent within hours of leaving your home.  Of course, not everything nor everyone travels freely to everywhere they’d like to go, and not every idea moves seamlessly, but, for the most part, it feels like each year, we have more exposure to people, places, goods and ideas from all over the globe. Of course, the underbelly of a highly connected globe is that not only do people, goods, and ideas travel, but so do pathogens and disease vectors that lead to food-borne illnesses, zoonotic outbreaks, and global pandemic diseases.  Historically, we have attempted to stop the movement of contagious diseases by isolating those infected. The practice of quarantining, or the forced physical separation to protect one from another, has been a public health intervention strategy as far back as at least the Black Death. In fact, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, quarantines were, as Univeristy of Pennsylvania historian David Barnes explained, "an unpleasant fact of life" in most port cities. But in today’s globally connected society, what we know is that it is no longer enough to try to physically isolate infected people or goods. Boundaries have never been more porous, and the pace and scope of the movement of people and goods is too fast and too far-reaching in many cases to try to contain. So, when thinking about our health and well-being in the future, we need to consider that effective quarantining, whether it’s of people, animals or foods, is re-emerging today as an issue of urgent biological, political, and even architectural importance.  The question is, then, how do we quarantine in the 21st Century? The forecast Anticipatory Quarantines, which sits at the intersection of environments and tools on Health Horizons’ 2010 Map on the Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being, suggests that over the next decade, we’ll shift the focus from creating boundaries after-the-fact to anticipating the movement of people, animals, goods and disease. By extending the reach of traditional surveillance systems and medical records, such as hospital intake forms and death registrations, a more open, participatory approach to pandemic prevention will improve our ability to identify an outbreak at the local level and contain it before it spreads.  Digital epidemiology will be able to mine what Stanford University’s Nathan Wolfe calls “viral chatter” and identify where nascent outbreaks may be forming.  Using mobile phones, people in viral hot spots will be able to report warning signs of zoonotic outbreaks, such as suspicious human and animal death.  Researchers like Dr. Nathan Wolfe and his Global Viral Forecasting Initiative at Stanford University are key signals supporting the forecast of anticipatory quarantines. GVFI researchers are trying to flip our entire approach to pandemics on its head.  They have created an early warning system that will enable us to prevent pandemics in the future, and they liken it to when we figured out that it was better to prevent heart attacks than to try to treat them, after the fact.  They want to treat outbreaks before they spread.  The Economist sees the work and ideas behind GVFI spreading, explaining, “The idea that we must not only respond to pandemics, but work to predict and prevent them will move beyond a small group of advocates and become a mainstay of some of the world’s largest governments and foundations. The world will increasingly recognize that in the case of pandemics, as with heart disease and cancer, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The early warning system Dr. Wolfe and his team have set up now operates in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, China, Malaysia, Sierra Leone, and Gobon.  It is absolutely reliant on the availability of mobile phones, which are used to monitor and collect data and communicate findings to central research hubs. And, over the next decade, as mobile technologies get smarter and cheaper, they will continue to be critical tools for anticipatory quarantines; they will support our ability to anticipate outbreaks before they spread.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/science-hack-day-sf/ [img_assist|nid=4033|title=|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=425|height=283]        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 together. Since then it has gone international with Science Hack Days springing up in far away lands like Nairobi, Cape Town and Cleveland. This year the Bay Area event was hosted at Brightworks, a maker school located in the heart of sunny San Francisco. About 150 people signed up for the event, with skills ranging from programming and finance to art and engineering. A few people had posted ideas for project directions on a community Wiki, but no teams had completely formed—I don't think anyone really knew for sure what was going to happen. You can never really be sure what you're going to get with a whole room full of talented people who think the best way to have fun over the weekend is to get together for a nerd party and build cool stuff… with Science!      I have recently been slightly obsessed with microscope attachments for the iPhone. This has been inspired by a group of researchers at Berkeley who are building Cellscope which is an iPhone based microscope, and another group of researchers at UC Davis who just published a paper on using a $25 ball lens, an iPhone, and some tape to build a microscope that is  "good enough." I had just received a large package containing a 1mm ball lens, which does in fact produce amazing results when scotch taped to an iPhone camera. In the first 30 minutes of Science Hack Day I met Simon who builds his own microscope lenses, and he shared information on how I could—with just a few tools—manufacture my very own microscope lens. Moments later I met Nancy with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (terrifying agency name, very cool person). We had a conversation about the benefits of using cellphone-based microscopes for medical analysis of disease in developing countries, and the potential of using data tracking to stop pandemics. Then a bell rang and it was time for a round of lightning talks where people very quickly explained ideas they were working on.       I went to a talk about Citizen Science where I met Bonnie who wanted to make a centrifuge that she had seen on Thingiverse. The centrifuge is intended to hold test tubes that can be attached to a Dremel. I just happened to have brought with me a MakerBot which is a 3D printer that is capable of printing practically any 3D object you can think of. It had been acting up a bit lately, so it took several tries to print the Dremelfuge, but eventually we got a print that was workable. Unfortunately, both the dremmel and the electric drill that we had at the time didn't spin fast enough to separate the DNA, so she had to go with a hot-cold process (which I still don't quite understand). But manufacturing technologies like MakerBot present new opportunities to (citizen) scientists, who previously might not have had access to the right tools. The next generation of kids are growing up in a world where everybody has access to the tools to modify, create and experiment with anything.     Later that night, while I had stepped out for a quick bite to eat, my sister called. She had gotten involved in building a globe which tracks where the International Space Station is in relation to the surface of the earth. She said they needed a set of gears with a 2:1 ratio in order to finish the project.  Now one of the constraints of Science Hack Day is that the doors lock at 10pm and the hackers have to work with the materials they have. My sister called at about 9:45. You can find a lot of stuff in the Mission district at 9:45 on a Saturday night, but tracking down a specific set of gears and getting back to the Hack Day in 15 minutes would be a bit tricky. But I had a solution: we could print the gears. Upon returning to Brightworks, I did a quick search for "gears" on Thingiverse and quickly found a 2:1 herringbone gear that would do the trick. I downloaded the file and modified it slightly. The printer was still acting up and caught fire just a little bit, so printing took a few tries, but hey, that is science. Once we got the gear printed out it was about 2am. Lots of teams were still hacking away, but I was exhausted so I lay down on the floor with my space-themed blanket alongside many other slumbering hackers.     The next day, we put the fixed the gear on the globe, and after some calibration it was good to go. The laser perfectly tracked where the ISS was in relation to the surface of the earth. And finally, I was able to identify the problem with the MakerBot with some help from Glenn on the ISS globe team. After borrowing some materials from a fellow hacker, who was working on an earthquake detection system, I soldered together a quick fix that totally worked.    Next up were presentations by each of the 25 teams who had submitted a project. Such a variety of great ideas! One team built a face mask that mixes the sense of touch with the sense of sight. Another team made visualizations for the Large Hadron Collider, while another team wrote software for a computer microscope beard detector that could sense the presence and intensity of a beard. You can check out the documentation for all of the projects on the Science Hack Day Wiki. Overall, Science Hack Day totally rocked! I met lots of interesting people with an amazingly diverse set of skills and we got to collaborate and build cool stuff and I cant wait for Science Hack Day to happen again next year.    http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/automated-nourishment/ Last year, when we created our Map on the Future of Science and Technology and Well-Being, we were looking for convergences. What experimental, and seemingly disparate technologies might converge over the next decade to change how we pursue well-being? Last year, when we created our Map on the Future of Science and Technology and Well-Being, we were looking for convergences. What experimental, and seemingly disparate technologies might converge over the next decade to change how we pursue well-being? This was the idea behind the forecast for Automated Nourishment, which puts us into a world where, over the next decade, experimental kitchen technologies and on-the-body technologies will converge to remove much of the guesswork around eating healthy, and instead essentially allow people to automate their food choices. Those two technologies? The first, in prototype form, is about filling an information gap. A wearable patch that, through a series of sensors and accelerometers, can tell its wearer how many calories they have consumed and burned within a 24-hour period. Over the course of the decade, as this kind of technology improves and starts to give real-time read-outs of calorie levels, our fundamental knowledge about what we're putting into our bodies will change. Instead of trying to eat something healthy and inadvertently eating a 1200 calorie spinach and scallop salad, people will be able to simply look at their arms and know to stop eating. Of course, even if we know how much to eat, an increasingly large portion of us may not actually have the technical skills to produce healthy food. A second key innovation, also currently in prototype form, could help us automate that process as well: 3-d food printers that house ingredients in cartridges--much like cartridges on an ink jet printer--and precisely layer ingredients like flour and sugar and so on at scales of less than a millimeter to ultimately produce precisely designed and controlled foods. What do these two technologies look like together? Imagine coming home for dinner in 2021. You're tired; you don't feel like cooking. But rather than rummaging through your fridge hoping to find something, you can simply look at your arm, realize you can consume about 400 more calories that evening to maintain your weight, and scroll through a set of 400-calorie, precisely designed recipes that match ingredients you already have in the cartridges in your printer. Of course, not everyone over the next decade will be able to afford these kinds of technologies. Nor will fancy gadgetry necessarily do much to give people the restraint, after a hard day, to print out something healthy, rather than a delicious slice of cake. Those challenges aside, what these two technologies point to is a potential future where, in place of the increasingly complex web of consumer food choices, people will simply be able to offload the mental work of choosing what to eat, and the physical work of preparing it, and instead, and very simply, automate their food needs. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/an-urban-future/ On Thursday November 17, we hosted a group of urban and regional planners from the California Silicon Valley APA to discuss futures thinking, city planning, and our foresight map on Cities and information.  The goal was engage the planning community and see how on-the-ground practitioners would engage with our foresight research. On Thursday November 17, we hosted a group of urban and regional planners from the California Silicon Valley APA to discuss futures thinking, city planning, and our foresight map on Cities and information.  The goal was engage the planning community and see how on-the-ground practitioners would engage with our foresight research. Rod kicked off the event with an overview of our work, and Deepa talked about how planners are “practical visionaries” who utilize plans, codes, and economic development strategies to shape cities.  Futures thinking, how IFTF practices it, provides an outside-in, strategic foresight perspective to help others make better decisions about the future.   Cities have often served as platforms for our hopes or fears about the future (think the Burnham Plan of Chicago or Blade Runner) but we need visions of the future from both urban planning and futures thinking that are plausible given existing trends and flexible enough to adjust to changing technologies, demographics, and economics. The evening focused on the natural connection between futures thinking and urban planning, and how thinking about forecasts and signals that bring interdependent issues to the fore can impact decision-making actions.  Matt used the Rockfeller cities map, “A Planet of Civic Laboratories” to get people thinking about technology and planning challenges. Some great ideas tumbled out, and here are some examples: Using 3D modeling to engage the community around issues like zoning, housing, and environmental impact assessments, which are typically thorough but contained in reams of report pages that people don’t want to read through.Connecting communities with the natural environment.  There was a great insight that so many visions of future cities, such as in Blade Runner, don’t include nature, but we’ve always been a species that thrives on proximity to natural ecosystemsUsing a massively multiplayer game to get people talking about city issues like energy systems.  The challenge with many city services is that they involve some technical thinking and jargon, and there’s a need to find a common language to involve both official experts and citizens of all types. These are just a couple of ideas that came from students and planners, and we’ll be digesting them in the near future as we build literacy in cities.As Deepa said in her presentation:  Planning is about co-designing, co-creating, and negotiating dynamic cities and strategic foresight can help us develop a vision of what that looks like.    http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/your-world-redefined-the-serious-business-of-augmented-reality/ [img_assist|nid=4026|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=425|height=255]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 a street corner near you will be "a cinematic view of the real world overlaid with digital information" that will adorn your world in the next decade. 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 a street corner near you will be "a cinematic view of the real world overlaid with digital information" that will adorn your world in the next decade. In our information-driven lifestyles of the future, augmented reality technology has the potential to transform industries from consumer transactions to public safety and health care. Put on your internet-connected glasses and read Augmented Reality Check to catch a glimpse of how this technology will be a dynamic force altering the way we obtain real-time information in everyday interactions.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/biosocial-networks/ My colleague Jake Dunagan and I are going to be contributing occasional pieces to Fast company's new Co Exist site. My first piece, on Biosocial Networks, is up here. Here's the intro: My colleague Jake Dunagan and I are going to be contributing occasional pieces to Fast company's new Co Exist site. My first piece, on Biosocial Networks, is up here. Here's the intro: Perhaps the most fascinating finding coming from emerging life sciences like genetics and neuroscience is this: We’re not born with self-contained blueprints of who we become. Instead, we’re learning that a great percentage of who we are —from how healthy we are to how successful we are in school—has much more to do with complex interactions between our environments, both social and physical, and our biological selves. This is currently the subject of relatively obscure academic fields like epigenetics, but in the next few years, these findings may well become intense subjects of our social lives. Head over to the Co Exist site to read the rest. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/augmented-environments-smart-places-and-objects-for-health/ Staying healthy can be a lot of work, whether it means remembering to take your meds, keeping track of how much pie you're eating or figuring out how to squeeze a jog in between work and dinner. Last year's Map on the Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being 2020 Forecast, explored how some of the discipline and planning required to get those things done can be off-loaded onto our environment. Staying healthy can be a lot of work, whether it means remembering to take your meds, keeping track of how much pie you're eating or figuring out how to squeeze a jog in between work and dinner. Last year's Map on the Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being 2020 Forecast, explored how some of the discipline and planning required to get those things done can be off-loaded onto our environment. The Augmented Environments forecast on the map explains that, in a decade, we'll be able to modify our environments to optimize health. We can do this by embedding safety features, like sensors in carpets that can alert medical response when someone falls, or by incorporating nudges to encourage healthy behaviors into our environment. Here's an example of what a home designed to encourage healthy weight management might look like in 2020: You get home from work and go to wash your face in the bathroom. You take a look in the mirror and you see your face, only it's not your face. Not exactly. Instead, it's what your face would look like in a year if you keep up your current exercise and eating habits. Next to the pudgy but recognizable you in the mirror, there is text that reads, "eat lighter tonight." You go to your combination fridge/freezer and open it up. You see a selection of healthy foods and nothing else. That's not because it's all you have in there, it's because you're wearing augmented reality glasses that don't allow you to see the frozen pizza and pint of super-premium ice cream, at least not yet.  So you sit down with a relatively healthy dinner of pasta and salad, turn on the TV and start shoveling food into your mouth. But after a few bites, your fork starts mildly vibrating, indicating you should be eating more slowly. You finish your meal and head back to the fridge/freezer. You can now see the ice cream, as you've finished your light meal, but there is text above that reads, 'You're allowed 1/2 standard scoop.' Some of the technology in this future scenario is available or in development right now. Augmented reality mirrors, for instance, are being developed by a number of organizations for a number of purposes. Perhaps closest to our forecast, James Law created the CyberLecture mirror, which "delivers information on your state of health while doubling up as a personal exercise coach."  Vlado Kitanovski and Ebroul Izquierdo of the Multimedia and Vision research group at Queen Mary, University of London, are developing an augmented reality mirror program with the somewhat dubious application of giving people previews of what they'd look like if they got plastic surgery (although there are many legitimate reconstructive surgery needs). And AR mirrors for shopping—like the one at Disneyland's Tomorrowland that lets kids try on different outfits virtually—are starting to crop up too. Augmented reality glasses are already available to consumers (but at five thousand dollars a piece). Sensor-embedded carpets, like the Infineon Thinking Carpet, have been developed.  And so have sensor-embedded shirts. But regardless of what specific products go big in the future, augmented environments are definitely coming and they will make for a wide array of exciting new health interventions.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/investing-in-local-communities-to-improve-health/ The New England Journal of Medicine has a fascinating study examining the effects of a low-income housing program impacted participants' health--the results of which suggest that, at least in many instances, improving the local neighborhoods where people live does far more to improve health than trying to tackle health problems on a case-by-case basis. The New England Journal of Medicine has a fascinating study examining the effects of a low-income housing program impacted participants' health--the results of which suggest that, at least in many instances, improving the local neighborhoods where people live does far more to improve health than trying to tackle health problems on a case-by-case basis. The study, led by University of Chicago Law Professor Jens Ludwig, looked at how health outcomes changed over time among people who moved out of high poverty neighborhoods, compared with those who didn't move. Time's Healthland blog concisely summarizes their findings: "The results suggest that over the long term, investments in improving neighborhood environments might be an important complement to medical care when it comes to preventing obesity and diabetes," says study author Jens Ludwig, a professor of public policy at University of Chicago The HUD program, called Moving to Opportunity (MTO), wasn't originally focused on tracking people's health. It was designed to study the effect of the residential milieu on employment, income and education in families with children living in cities with a 40% or greater poverty rate. But Ludwig and his team were curious about how the rise in poverty in the U.S. has also mirrored the increase in obesity and diabetes and wondered, Could neighborhood and social factors influence health outcomes? The current study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first to conduct a social experiment that allowed the comparison of such outcomes in families — in this case, low-income single mothers and their children living in public housing — who were randomly assigned to live in different economic environments. Families who volunteered to join MTO entered a lottery, which randomly put them in one of three groups: those who received vouchers to move to a less disadvantaged neighborhood (with a poverty rate of less than 10%), those who got vouchers to live wherever they chose, and those who did not receive any vouchers or additional assistance. Because of the randomized design of the program, scientists knew they could track and correlate changes in living circumstances to later health outcomes like obesity or diabetes. Most of the families — who were from Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York — were followed for an average of 12 years, during which they answered survey questions about their neighborhood, jobs and health. Among the 4,498 single moms who volunteered for the program, those who were assigned to move to lower-poverty areas were 19% less likely to have a BMI of 40 or higher, the cutoff for morbid obesity, and 22% less likely to have glucose levels typical of diabetes, compared with those who stayed in public housing. In other words, moving from an impoverished to a relatively healthier neighborhood lowered health risks by about one fifth--as effective as many medical interventions. What's also notable is that just providing a housing voucher--helping one family without doing much for the community--doesn't seem to measurably improve health. Shared environmental and social health problems, in other words, get better through efforts to improve shared local conditions. Beyond simply pinpointing scales of action--our social structures and environments--their study, at least by implication, opens up a much broader set of opportunities for local communities to act collaboratively to improve their health, such as improving access to parks, grocery stores, and otherwise acting through local communities to improve health that have the potential to be a lot cheaper, and a lot more effective, than a lot of traditional biomedical interventions. (For a great review of some of the research on the effects of poverty on health, check out this recent blog post from biological anthropologist Patrick Clarkin.) http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/killer-halloween-candy-why-we-look-at-risk-the-wrong-way-and-how-it-hurts-our-health/ When we explain how misinformation can spread through society, my colleague, Bradley Kreit, sometimes uses the example of killer Halloween candy. Various versions of this story exist, some with a pretty elaborate setup, like one in which an escaped mental patient murders a family on Halloween night and then proceeds to take their Halloween candy, poisons it and then hands it out to unsuspecting kids. Another involves deranged hippies dosing innocent, fair-haired children with "the drugs" in an attempt to control their minds. Many versions of the story involve kids eating chocolate bars which someone had put a little razorblades or needles in. The one thing these stories have in common, though, is that none of them are true. At this point, most people know it's an urban legend, yet countless parents are still fearful about their children's trick-or-treat candy. Many of these same parents, though, don't have the same level of anxiety over what their kids ingest on days other than Halloween, despite rising rates of heart disease in adults and diabetes in both adults and children. In short, people misperceive risk and it has a number of consequences for health.  A lot of people have looked at this problem from different angles. Rebecca Costa, author of “The Watchman’s Rattle,” for instance, takes a biological view, explaining that we evolved with a (once) healthy fear of heights and snake bites, impulses that served us well in our early days, but are completely out-of-sync with our current health concerns—people irrationally fear flying and not driving; and snakes are a good way to control the population of disease-carrying rodents. Costa explains that most people get an involuntary chemical fear response upon seeing a snake, but studies have shown you can explain to someone how climate change is destroying the planet and "their heart rate doesn't go up one beat per hour.” “You're not genetically designed to respond to long term danger—even if that danger is catastrophic." Things which provokes the greatest visceral fear response, like our children ingesting razor blades, gains traction in society more quickly and deeply.  (Dan Gardner, Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams have done similar work) Costa also chalks some of our misperceptions up to information overload. The uncertainty that exists today, she argues, cause many to turn to the people who seem the most certain, even if they are demonstrably wrong. (Our own distinguished fellow, Bob Johansen, explores this concept in his book Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present—he sees the popularity of words like "definitely," and "absolutely" in conversations today as a sign of our desire for certainly in uncertain times).  While Costa focuses on some pretty massive consequences of our inability to asses risk—such as creating wrong-headed government policy and destroying our planet— Gever Tulley, founder of the TInkering School and a speaker at IFTF's recent Tech Horizons conference, looks at some of the smaller, but still important problems this creates, in his TED talk, the “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.”  He sees this issue as more social than biological, as he argues that concepts of danger are culturally constructed. He's created a term, "dangerism," for systems of belief about danger. "I have had a lot of discussions with parents about which risky activities they will and won’t let their children participate in, and the differences are often striking," he explained on his blog. "Just as there is no necessarily rational basis for choosing which animals are eaten, there appears to be no rational basis for deciding what activities are acceptable for children." So to go back to the Halloween candy example, what are the health consequences of this "dangerism," this culture that perceives danger in Halloween candy? One might say, "none, really." Halloween is a little less fun and a little more sanitized. But, as Brad has often pointed out, trust and social cohesion are among the world's best medicines. According to an article Brad shared from the New Scientist, John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, an expert on the effects of social isolation has found that "being lonely increases the risk of everything from heart attacks to dementia, depression and death, whereas people who are satisfied with their social lives sleep better, age more slowly and respond better to vaccines." And here's where the health consequences of fearing that your neighbors will poison your kids comes in: Crucially, these differences relate most strongly to how lonely people believe themselves to be, rather than to the actual size of their social network. That also makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, says Cacioppo, because being among hostile strangers can be just as dangerous as being alone. So ending loneliness is not about spending more time with people. Cacioppo thinks it is all about our attitude to others: lonely people become overly sensitive to social threats and come to see others as potentially dangerous. Essentially, rearing your kids to fear their neighbors makes them "overly sensitive to social threats" and leads the to "see others as potentially dangerous." So maybe the biggest danger at Halloween, more than the long-term health effects of annual Halloween candy indulgences and certainly bigger than cyanide-spiked Tootsie Rolls, is teaching mistrust.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/images-of-future-wars/ Last night as part of my work looking at futures thinking and conflict resolution I was reading The Future: Images and Processes by Elise and Kenneth Boulding. As a long time peace researcher, Elise has found that the world lacks images of peace, and therefore an ability to truly move towards peace. Last night as part of my work looking at futures thinking and conflict resolution I was reading The Future: Images and Processes by Elise and Kenneth Boulding. As a long time peace researcher, Elise has found that the world lacks images of peace, and therefore an ability to truly move towards peace. The history we read is structured on wars and the associated winners and losers. Much of national research and technology advancement is based on this idea of continued conflict. We are always preparing for the next conflict, the next type of enemy. Just the other day The Christian Science Monitor published an article called Unmanned Drone Attacks and Shape-Shifting Robots: War's Remote-Control Future. Elise quite rightfully questions our seemingly natural habit of building more advanced technologies to be able to fight the greatest of adversaries as our strategy for maintaining peace. She refers regularly to the phrase 'preparing for peace through war' as the dominant global paradigm. The fact is however, if we are always preparing for peace through war we will always face violent conflict. If we were truly moving towards peace, then we wouldn't need a remote control war. Which to me emplies both a growing distaste for violence and an increased ability to be violent. The questions then are, will this technology potentially lower war casualties by making strikes more focused and specific? Do they eventually lead to a new form of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) that will leave both parties at a standstill for fear of fallout? On the other hand, we need to remember that it's really only a minority of people involved in violent conflict that have access to these ever more advanced war technologies.  Elise's concept of images brings to question something bigger for me, do groups or countries who have been in conflict for a long time like Northern Uganda, Israel/Palestine, Somalia, and so on, lack the ability to create images of a peaceful future, and therefore do they lack the ability to strategically move in a direction of peace? What might the role of foresight facilitators be in conflict resolution?  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/hide-from-the-digital-world-at-your-own-risk/ The American Medical Association's trade newsletter had an interesting, if troubling story about a recent rise in medical identity theft--and the major health conditions that can arise from having the wrong information in a permanent digital record. While mistaken medical information offers one scary type of error we'll make with data mining, I think the bigger risk is from using proxies for identity--such as Facebook profiles--to make unwarranted and potentially catastrophic conclusions. The American Medical Association's trade newsletter had an interesting, if troubling story about a recent rise in medical identity theft--and the major health conditions that can arise from having the wrong information in a permanent digital record. While mistaken medical information offers one scary type of error we'll make with data mining, I think the bigger risk is from using proxies for identity--such as Facebook profiles--to make unwarranted and potentially catastrophic conclusions. As the AMA newsletter notes, medical identity theft is the fastest growing category of identity theft in the United States. Blank cited the slow economy and more people losing insurance as drivers behind increasing medical identity theft. Larry Ponemon, president and founder of the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research center based in Traverse City, Mich., said his research has found nearly half of medical ID thefts are considered "Robin Hood crimes." That means willing or sympathetic "victims" lend their identity to someone else so that person may get needed services… Pam Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum, said in a 2006 report that "medical identity theft may also harm its victims by creating false entries in their health records at hospitals, doctors' offices, pharmacies and insurance companies." She said the changes to the records could remain in the files for many years. "Victims of medical identity theft may receive the wrong medical treatment, find their health insurance exhausted, and could become uninsurable for both life and health insurance coverage," Dixon said in the report. One example Dixon cited in her report was a woman who ended up with the wrong blood type in her patient file. As medical records become more transportable through electronic networks, the problem could be exacerbated as mistakes are disseminated and re-disseminated among physicians, hospitals, pharmacies and insurers, Dixon wrote. In other words, mistaken medical identities are likely going to be a lot more common in the future. And the impacts aren't trivial--having an inaccurate, permanent record can lead to things like death--if you get the wrong blood, say. Put differently, we run the risk of some really catastrophic problems--if we take too many past bits of data for granted. I highlighted this problem a few months ago, when looking at efforts to use Facebook profiles to prosecute fraud. Fraud investigators have recently begun using photos of, say, someone on disability insurance looking happy and active as evidence of fraud--when, of course, it may every well be the first time the person has gotten out of the house in six months and they want to post some pictures to celebrate with friends. This potential for misinterpreting the meaning behind our digital trails is likely to get a lot worse in the next decade--as clever researchers develop increasingly unlikely tools, such as language use and social connections , for teasing out likely elements of our personal lives from data streams. It's the sort of research--analyzing proxies for our identity, such as our personal photos to our social connections--that will yield some of the most unexpected insights to improve health and well-being, as we continue to move into a world where almost everything is digital. What will be key to remember, however, is that while almost everything will be digital, not everything will be. In many instances, what we want to keep private--such as a family history of a debilitating disease--will be a lot harder to find than most things that are far less personal. The broader point, it seems to me, is that we already live in a world where large-scale organizations--such as credit reporting agencies--collect and create representations of our identities behind our backs. Over the next decade, the impact of one of these identities misrepresenting material facts--such as blood type--could literally kill people. It's easy to suggest that we need better tools to control our digital identities and privacy--and of course, we do. But there's a bigger, more difficult challenge here: We're moving toward a world where our identities will be meticulously, almost frighteningly digital. If we're going to thrive in that world, we need to create conditions that make it possible for people to feel comfortable being open and transparent. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/language-mining-is-the-new-health-and-marketing-tool/ I've been really enjoying James Pennebaker's new book The Secret Life of Pronouns, which provides a great, readable overview of how subtle shifts in word choice--frequently, shifts in the use of pronouns from "we" to "I"--can reveal significant differences in emotional, and consequently, physical health. I've been really enjoying James Pennebaker's new book The Secret Life of Pronouns, which provides a great, readable overview of how subtle shifts in word choice--frequently, shifts in the use of pronouns from "we" to "I"--can reveal significant differences in emotional, and consequently, physical health. What's particularly intriguing about his book is that thanks to email and other text archives, businesses, doctors and researchers will have all sorts of capabilities to understand and reach people based on these once imperceptible language choices. Speaking with Scientific American, Pennebaker describes some of the findings: In the 1980s, my students and I discovered that if people were asked to write about emotional upheavals, their physical health improved. Apparently, putting emotional experiences into language changed the ways people thought about their upheavals. In an attempt to better understand the power of writing, we developed a computerized text analysis program to determine how language use might predict later health improvements. In other words, I wanted to find if there was a healthy way to write. Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically, those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’s abilities to change perspective. Perhaps most strikingly, these sorts of language shifts are intriguing because we don't notice them in daily interaction, but as tools to mine everything from speech to email to social media streams continue to emerge, we're on the verge of gaining an unprecedented ability to understand people's mental states through their unconscious language choices. Pennebaker isn't the only researcher to begin to find health applications from language mining. Last year, a group of psychologists announced that they had developed an algorithm that could identify depressed bloggers by scanning archives of blog posts. The algorithm was in agreement with a panel of psychologists nearly 80 percent of the time. Similarly, a different study found strong correlations between language use and psychopathy. The power of these sorts of tools to pull meaningful information from seeming noise points toward a need to think far more broadly about what we mean by health data and puts us in a world where e-mail and Facebook pages offer legitimately valuable health information. Language, in other words, can be a tool for identifying who needs help. Beyond that, though, I think it offers a potential tool for understanding how to help--based on personality type. Pennebaker, for example, has found a variety of clues to personality that we can deduce from text: One area this is useful is in personality research. As you might guess, different patterns of function words reveal important parts of people's personalities... Formal writing often appears stiff, sometimes humourless, with a touch of arrogance... Formality is related to a number of important personality traits. Those who score highest in formal thinking tend to be more concerned with status and power and are less self-reflective. They drink and smoke less and are more mentally healthy, but also tend to be less honest. As people age, their writing styles tend to become more formal. Analytical writing, meanwhile, is all about making distinctions. These people attain higher grades, tend to be more honest, and are more open to new experiences. They also read more and have more complex views of themselves. Narrative writers are natural storytellers... People who score high for narrative writing tend to have better social skills, more friends and rate themselves as more outgoing. By watching how people use function words, we gain insight into how they think, how they organise their worlds and how they relate to other people. Of course, at some level, this is pretty theoretical. Most of us would probably be reluctant to let our doctors and health insurers search through our Facebook pages, even as that same source of information gets re-purposed for marketing and other efforts. Health isn't the only application of this research, of course--Pennebaker has used language mining to find relationships between pronoun use and age, social class, and social status, some of which have been long standing marketing tools, while others, like social status are just now emerging as powerful tools for targeting sales pitches. This will put us in a somewhat disappointing place in the next decade: One where valuable information to improve our well-being is trapped, even as it gets used to sell us things we may or may not want. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/simple-games-shared-experiences-and-the-future-of-empathy/ A great game called Spent has gotten a fair bit of attention for its incredibly simple yet powerful simulation of life below the poverty line. A great game called Spent has gotten a fair bit of attention for its incredibly simple yet powerful simulation of life below the poverty line. The concept is pretty simple: You work a minimum or near minimum wage job, and do your best to make every day decisions about life--and offers a great early signal of ways that technologies are being redesigned to create empathy and build social understanding across boundaries. Writing in Technology Review, Christopher Mims has my favorite description of the experience: I've been unemployed for just one month, and already I've sent my only child to school crying because other kids make fun of him for being on the free lunch program, driven away from a fender bender with a parked car because I didn't have the money to pay for the accident (luckily no one was around), been fired from my temp job for talking to a union organizer, put my kid's dog to sleep because we couldn't afford its medical care, and applied for food stamps—which won't arrive until next month. From the beginning of the process, where you have to choose between buying health insurance for a quarter of your monthly income, or going uninsured, Spent effectively immerses people into the everyday decisions and challenges that come with poverty. Every decision feels tense, and no matter what you choose, nothing seems to have a particularly good outcome. One of the really astonishing things about these tradeoffs is how frequently health decisions are involved: A lot of the challenges are like this--you're in a situation where in theory, you can act, but the immediate financial cost of doing something makes it possible to take care of yourself and family over the long-run. You have to figure out if you should let your kid get made fun of for accepting free lunch or pay for him to eat; you have to decide whether to pay for dental care or ignore your need for a root canal. It becomes very clear, very quickly, that doing anything for your long-term health and security is much more difficult and expensive than making a short-term choice. For people in the health world, it's not only instructive for thinking about many of the health challenges people face, but also helpful for thinking about opportunities to improve health and well-being over the next decade. Beyond the specifics of the game, I think Spent offers an early signal of something I wrote about a few months ago: The idea that over the next decade, one of our big opportunities and challenges with technology will be to use them to enable people to imagine the lives and situations of others. While not the experience of any one individual, it's an incredible example of using technology to simulate and share different kinds of experiences in order to break us out of our traditional relationships and understandings, and give us windows into other peoples' lives. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/adolescence-bacteria-and-thinking-beyond-risk/ David Dobbs has a typically outstanding piece in this month's National Geographic about teenage behavior, arguing, in effect, that what appears to be difficult behavior among teenagers is an adaptation that makes them more capable of learning. It is a great example of an increasingly important theme in health: That we need to move beyond just seeing risks and problems, and instead also look for strengths and assets. David Dobbs has a typically outstanding piece in this month's National Geographic about teenage behavior, arguing, in effect, that what appears to be difficult behavior among teenagers is an adaptation that makes them more capable of learning. It is a great example of an increasingly important theme in health: That we need to move beyond just seeing risks and problems, and instead also look for strengths and assets. Dobbs' argument not an easy piece to excerpt, but here are a couple key paragraphs that give a sense of his argument: Through the ages, most answers have cited dark forces that uniquely affect the teen. Aristotle concluded more than 2,300 years ago that "the young are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine." A shepherd in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale wishes "there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting."…Freud saw adolescence as an expression of torturous psychosexual conflict; Erik Erikson, as the most tumultuous of life's several identity crises. Adolescence: always a problem…. The story you're reading right now, however, tells a different scientific tale about the teen brain. Over the past five years or so, even as the work-in-progress story spread into our culture, the discipline of adolescent brain studies learned to do some more-complex thinking of its own. A few researchers began to view recent brain and genetic findings in a brighter, more flattering light, one distinctly colored by evolutionary theory. The resulting account of the adolescent brain—call it the adaptive-adolescent story—casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside. This view will likely sit better with teens. More important, it sits better with biology's most fundamental principle, that of natural selection. Selection is hell on dysfunctional traits. If adolescence is essentially a collection of them—angst, idiocy, and haste; impulsiveness, selfishness, and reckless bumbling—then how did those traits survive selection? They couldn't—not if they were the period's most fundamental or consequential features. The answer is that those troublesome traits don't really characterize adolescence; they're just what we notice most because they annoy us or put our children in danger. As B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medical College who has spent nearly a decade applying brain and genetic studies to our understanding of adolescence, puts it, "We're so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to do the things you have to do then." This theme--that things we've perceived as problems actually serve functional purposes, and that understanding those functions along with their drawbacks--is becoming increasingly critical to understanding health and well-being. For example, some psychologists are beginning to understand depression as a useful, if high-stakes way to think deeply and critically. A couple years ago, Dobbs popularized an emerging strain of research in genetics which argues that, in effect, genes that seemed to be risky actually predispose us to risk--as well as a better chance of success in an appropriate environment. But one of the best recent example of moving beyond just looking for health risks comes from a very different realm of health: rethinking the role of bacteria. A commentary in Nature by BYU's Martin Blaser from a couple weeks ago argued that, in effect, overprescribing antibiotics--an effort to manage and eliminate risk--may have, over the past few decades made us much more susceptible to diseases like esophageal cancer. As Maryn McKenna notes, we've only begun to understand that we have bacteria inside us that are beneficial for us. In other words, we've only begun to look for anything good about bacteria. I also think this example highlights the costs of only managing health risks: By overprescribing antibiotics, at least according to Blaser, we've left ourselves at greater risk of far more deadly and difficult conditions like asthma and cancer. By only looking to eliminate the bad, in other words, we've made things much worse. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-value-of-simulation-and-the-danger-of-confusing-it-with-prediction/ The BBC had a fascinating article the other day running under the unfortunate headline of "Supercomputer Predicts Revolution," about an intriguing effort by Kalev Leetaru to use "tone and location" to forecast political revolutions and uprisings, and otherwise anticipate large-scale social disruptions. As the BBC describes the study: The BBC had a fascinating article the other day running under the unfortunate headline of "Supercomputer Predicts Revolution," about an intriguing effort by Kalev Leetaru to use "tone and location" to forecast political revolutions and uprisings, and otherwise anticipate large-scale social disruptions. As the BBC describes the study: The study's information was taken from a range of sources including the US government-run Open Source Centre and BBC Monitoring, both of which monitor local media output around the world. News outlets which published online versions were also analysed, as was the New York Times' archive, going back to 1945. In total, Mr Leetaru gathered more than 100 million articles. Reports were analysed for two main types of information: mood - whether the article represented good news or bad news, and location - where events were happening and the location of other participants in the story. Mood detection, or "automated sentiment mining" searched for words such as "terrible", "horrific" or "nice". Location, or "geocoding" took mentions of specific places, such as "Cairo" and converted them in to coordinates that could be plotted on a map. Analysis of story elements was used to create an interconnected web of 100 trillion relationships. And Leetaru's results were impressive; his model showed consistent shifts in sentiment in Egypt, Kuwait and other countries just before uprisings, and also showed stability in neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia that remained politically stable. More impressively, Leetaru claims that: While far from a definitive lock on Bin Laden’s location, global news content would have suggested Northern Pakistan in a 200 km. radius around Islamabad and Peshawar as his most likely location, and that he was nearly twice as likely to be making his residence in Pakistan as Afghanistan. Again - it's impressive stuff - which is, at some level, what gives me a bit of pause, particularly in light of some other mentions I've seen of emerging efforts to use data and other creative tools to understand the future. The police department of Santa Cruz, California is using recent crime data to forecast likely targets for the next day's crimes; Fast Company reports on a new effort to build a $200 million city capable of housing 350,000 but home to no one to test out new technologies and techniques to manage urban life; perhaps most intriguingly, Technology Review had a long feature by a writer who had his blood cells reverse engineered into heart cells to test potential effects of different drugs--a concept which he speculates may "become a routine part of medical care." We are, in other words, on the verge of much more robust and impressive efforts to simulate future possibilities. Which is, by itself, a great thing. We need more and better efforts to think about the future. What concerns me, though, is the possibility that we won't recognize the limits of these simulations. For example, I noted the BBC headline - "Supercomputer predicts revolutions", and the Boston Globe, which wrote about efforts to forecast crime locations, wasn't much better with its headline of "Introducing: Predictive Policing." While more technical efforts, like Kaley Leetaru's academic paper describing his efforts to anticipate uprisings, acknowledge the limits of relying on the past to anticipate the future, and otherwise point out uncertainties, more public efforts hype the most impressive findings. During the financial crisis of 2008, NPR reporter Adam Davidson described the faith in housing market bonds as "the triumph of data over common sense," as a means to describe financial analysts who essentially placed undue amounts of faith in financial models that turned out to rely on bad assumptions. Part of the problem was that, over time, the analysts stopped thinking about their assumptions and focused on the data. We're on the verge of having a lot more data about what the future could look like. Let's hope that rather than letting that data triumph over common sense, we'll be willing to acknowledge the limits of that data, and instead of thinking of simulations as firm depictions of future states, will instead understand them to be useful tools for gauging and anticipating possibilities. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/contagion-health/ Imagine you log into your Facebook* account on September 8, 2017. You see a scattering of updates from your friends—somebody accidentally swallowed their mobile phone, and somebody else is complaining that none of the 3000 shows that premiered on YouTube this season is any good.   [img_assist|nid=3968|title=Facebook Health - IFTF Artifact from the Future|desc=|link=none|align=middle|width=425|height=319]   Imagine you log into your Facebook* account on September 8, 2017. You see a scattering of updates from your friends—somebody accidentally swallowed their mobile phone, and somebody else is complaining that none of the 3000 shows that premiered on YouTube this season is any good.    As expected, Facebook has released all sorts of new features since 2011. You are using an add-on service called Facebook Health, and you see that Dale Kirchner has gained 9 pounds, and that the content of his updates suggest he may be experiencing depression. Facebook Health is recommending that you “friend” Daniela Gamillo because she will be a positive influence on both your desire to stay physically active and on your mood. You are also using a new filtering service, which allows you to block certain updates depending on the content, so you don’t get a post from your friend Eugene’s post that, according to computational algorithm, may have a negative effect on your mental health. What is this Artifact from the Future, designed by Institute for the Future’s Jason Tester, conveying about the future? It’s one potential response we can imagine as the forecast, Contagion Health, plays out over the next decade. Contagion Health, which sits at the intersection of networks and practices on Health Horizons’ Map on the Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being 2020 Forecast, identifies the improved understanding of the effects our social networks, both online and in the real world, will have on how we manage our health. Thanks to advances in computational modeling and complex analysis tools, researchers are able to simulate how networks of people function as levers to improve or worsen the health and well-being of those around them. Using these new tools, researchers such as Dr. James Fowler and Dr. Nicholas Christakis are examining and experimenting with how public health information could be extracted from social networks. Take the research on flu epidemics they published in 2010. After tracking the social networks of Harvard undergrads, they determined that, as expected, the nodes identified as social butterflies do indeed get the flu earlier than the randomly selected nodes. Less clear, prior to this type of social network research, however, is just how much earlier those situated more centrally in a network contract an infectious disease. The researchers argue that by watching flu reports among the highly connected in any social network, a flu outbreak could be predicted up to 46 days before its peak in daily incidence occurs in the population as a whole. Obviously, it’d be difficult to map out social networks for every person or every patient. But Dr. Christakis and Dr. Fowler are arguing that, with the aide of advanced visualization and network analysis tools, we can identify the sentinel nodes in a network, and by they tracking them, we may be able to curb an outbreak before it spreads. The forecast of Contagion Health does not only describe the precise understanding we’ll have about how an infectious disease spreads through a network. It’s also a new understanding of how health habits and information spread. As Dr. Fowler and Dr. Christakis argue, “The method could in principle be generalized to other biological, psychological, informational, or behavioral contagions that spread in networks.” This connection between health and our social environment is not new. Since 1948, the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts has been researching cardiovascular disease by following a large group of participants—how they interact and what that means for the progression of disease. Through this study and many others, researchers are finding that not only do we rely on social communities for emotional encouragement and support in achieving our health goals, but our social networks are critical influencers on our health behaviors and attitudes. This includes both the behaviors historically attributed to peer pressure, such as whether or not we smoke, as well as our attitudes towards vaccinations, our perceptions on what is trusted health information, and our knowledge about nutrition and physical exercise. In other worlds, our social networks tend to serve as amplifiers, enhancing or intensifying our existing health behaviors. So while we’ve known that our social surroundings are important determinants of our health, the new tools and advances in technology will lead to innovations in social interventions—treating people as participants in a network instead of disconnected individuals. Over the next decade, individuals and companies alike will use computational modeling to simulate networks and design network-based interventions. We’ll be able to identify clusters of people with similar health profiles to extrapolate health risks and intervene at the level of the network, and we can anticipate that this improved understanding of exactly how networks inform and influence our health will lead to next generation social health recommendation engines. Social interventions and other new approaches to manage population health will not emerge without controversy—imagine if we vaccinated citizens based on the level of centrality or transitivity in a network! But the forecast suggests that an improved literacy about network behaviors will lead to far more than Groupon coupons and flashmobs at the mall.  *or whatever social networking site may be popular in 2017...  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/optimizing-healthspans-branching-paths-of-longevity-and-death/ Optimizing Healthspans was one of our forecasts on the recently released Science, Technology and Well-being 2020 Forecast Map. To clear up your first question, (what’s a healthspan?), by healthspan we mean the length of healthy, quality living. In the last hundred years we’ve seen a dramatic lengthening of our life expectancy, and radical life extension hopes to lengthen our lifespans, but what we’re grappling with now and in the next decade is optimizing our chances of those added years being happy and healthy. Optimizing Healthspans was one of our forecasts on the recently released Science, Technology and Well-being 2020 Forecast Map. To clear up your first question, (what’s a healthspan?), by healthspan we mean the length of healthy, quality living. In the last hundred years we’ve seen a dramatic lengthening of our life expectancy, and radical life extension hopes to lengthen our lifespans, but what we’re grappling with now and in the next decade is optimizing our chances of those added years being happy and healthy. So, how will we do that?  Some methods directly mentioned in the forecast include glimmers of promise in drugs that would rejuvenate aging cells, vaccines that could provide effective treatments for some of our most debilitating age-related illnesses, and bold claims of the possibility of subverting aging entirely. The hyped up world of anti-aging drugs is filled with well-deserved controversy (here’s a nice New Scientist summary of the hubbub last year around resveratrol, the compound found in red wine). But there is still promise in the field, for instance the FDA approved immunosuppressive rapamycin has been shown to extend the lives of old mice. In other news, researchers recently trumpeted a that a vaccine to halt the progress of Alzheimer’s would be available in two years (!!!). Stay tuned for forthcoming posts on “diagnosing the pre-sick,” another Science, Technology and Well-being 2020 forecast, which lends this development even more potential. For those of you interested in actual immortality, there’s good news headed your way as well: Dr. Michael Rose writes in Alcor Magazine that he is now persuaded that cellular aging is not a foregone conclusion at all, and that the processes of aging could be stopped altogether. But, as my colleague Jamais Cascio asks in a Ten-Year Forecast Perspective on Extreme Longevity a few years ago, will our societies be ready for centuries-long lifespans? Some other thoughts on the developments described above and the idea of longevity in general in Alex Carmichael’s post on the topic last year here and here, as well as our FutureCast conversation with Dr. Thomas Perls on the New England Centenarian Study. Another branch of this forecast is the prospect of increasing quality of life for those who already have chronic medical conditions. For instance, mobile health systems for streamlining diabetes management, or further out, even “microworm” tattoos to monitor blood glucose levels by simply glancing at a patch of skin. But as more of us manage multiple chronic conditions, we’ll be facing many more trade-offs as we optimize health spans. Dr. May E. Tinetti summed it up quite well: Patients with multiple conditions should always be asked what their goals are: to live as long as possible, to be as functional as possible or to be as free of symptoms as possible? There’s always a trade-off; you can’t have it all. A final branch of this forecast extends away from heroic efforts to add years, months, days to life. It focuses on optimizing well-being in that equation: recent research on palliative care in cancer showed that patients who began palliative care earlier actually lived longer in some cases than those who followed aggressive treatments, and had a higher quality of life in their final years. Although the false hopes and strange quirks will be numerous, expect science and technology to transform our well-being over the next decade by making us question not only how we live, but how we die. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/science-hack-day-goes-global/ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/can-facebook-help-in-an-emergency/ Via NPR comes word of a recently launched contest to identify ways to use Facebook in an emergency. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and hosted at the awesome challenge.gov site, the contest is based on the idea that: Via NPR comes word of a recently launched contest to identify ways to use Facebook in an emergency. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and hosted at the awesome challenge.gov site, the contest is based on the idea that: When a disaster strikes the connections someone has to other people can make one of the most significant differences in how well they do during an event and how well they recover after. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) would like to create a Facebook application that helps individuals be sure that those connections are in place so that they are better prepared for the next catastrophic event.... Building community resilience is one of ASPR’s primary missions; knowing who to count on for help during a catastrophic event and establishing strong connections within one’s network are two ways individuals can play an important role in building resilient communities. ASPR challenges you to help improve community resilience by designing a Facebook application that makes it easy for people to create their own emergency support network and provides users with useful tools in preparing for and responding to emergencies. In other words, having strong social connections is incredibly valuable to our health and security. In some sense, the concept of this challenge is noting that social connections--having a few nearby friends and relatives who have responsibility for each other--can be one of the most valuable health and safety resources in the event of an emergency. I think this challenge is a signal of a second shift: Namely, from top-down systems to participatory systems, where many of our most valuable health resources stem from self-organized, smaller scale networks. Speaking with NPR,, Assistant Secretary for HHS Nicole Lurie noted that "In the end it's going to be friends and neighbors who are going to help each other out in an emergency situation." In this sense, one of the big opportunities in public health will be, as Lurie recognizes, finding ways to facilitate, strengthen and connect local networks. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/programming-immunity-defense-to-offense/ As we scanned the horizon of science and technology’s ability to create health and well-being, we became fascinated with the idea of tinkering: experimenting with incremental improvements to our selves and surroundings. And one of the bits of our biology we’ll be tinkering with over the next decade is our immune systems. Our immune systems are the key to humans’ profound resilience in the face of all the other organisms around and inside of us. As we scanned the horizon of science and technology’s ability to create health and well-being, we became fascinated with the idea of tinkering: experimenting with incremental improvements to our selves and surroundings. And one of the bits of our biology we’ll be tinkering with over the next decade is our immune systems. Our immune systems are the key to humans’ profound resilience in the face of all the other organisms around and inside of us. Over the last few decades we’ve made great strides in understanding the workings of various parts of our immune systems, as they function normally and as they get jammed up in strange ways. This forecast posits that over the next decade we’ll be able to put this knowledge to striking use: honing our immunomodulation therapies, mainstreaming the maturing promise of gene therapy, and hacking our immune systems to accelerate our resistance to all kinds of infections. One of the examples used on the map involves reprogramming how our immune systems react to certain conditions, by introducing recombinant versions of the transmitter cells that regulate the relevant immune functions. For instance, the cancer immunotherapy Proleukin (or interleukin-2) uses a genetically engineered version of naturally occurring proteins that make parts of the immune system more or less active, and prompt immune system cells to be more effective. It helps the immune system produce T-cells specifically geared towards recognizing and destroying the cancer cells. Recently, there was a serious breakthrough in the decades-long promise of gene therapy that takes this a step further. Rather than introducing a modified transmitter protein, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania successfully modified patients’ own T-cells, inserting a gene that re-programmed them to recognize cancer cells as invaders. Not only was the therapy successful for fighting the tumors (two of the three patients went into complete remission, and one improved significantly), but the modified cells persisted in the patients’ bloodstreams, promising to fight the leukemia cells even if they reappeared. (Full text of their research article in Science Translational Medicine here.)  While this might sound very experimental, it could well advance very rapidly from here out. My colleague Alex Carmichael wrote about an even more far-out and mind-bending promise as we were conducting this research. Kary Mullis, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), is on a quest. Mullis wanted to find a faster way - a way to hijack existing immune responses rather than wait for new ones to build up. He was motivated by a worry that the greatest threat to humans in the coming years would come from infectious disease. So he invented Altermune. Alex does a great job of explaining the biological processes behind this, and Kary Mulis’ website offers a compelling description of the basic premise: The Altermune method, taking advantage of the evolutionary skill of our immune system for killing micro-organisms once their structure has identified them as being enemies, is developing the process of building bionic arms for antibodies, which once the offending microorganism is identified, can grab it. The process already is quick and efficient, and shockingly so for the microbes, who are used to the slow creep of biology, and know nothing of nuclear magnetic resonance or high resolution mass spectroscopy. Bionic arms for antibodies! Seriously folks. This is exciting stuff. Mullis envisions being able to streamline the process of flu vaccination into an inhalable fast-acting immune trigger. One of the most exciting applications he mentions is the ability to target bacteria—even those rapidly evolving out of the reach of our eighty-three-year love affair with antibiotics. Check out this and other forecasts on our Future of Science, Technology, and Well-being 2020 Forecast Map. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/innovation-spaces-of-the-future-research-notes-on-chinas-shanzhai-meeting-the-makers/ Over a few months in early 2011, in the course of doing research for an IFTF Tech Horizons Program’s study on the future of “open fabrication,” I convened what turned out to be a remarkable, free-wheeling conversation among a set of pioneering thinker/makers in China, Singapore, and the U.S. Over a few months in early 2011, in the course of doing research for an IFTF Tech Horizons Program’s study on the future of “open fabrication,” I convened what turned out to be a remarkable, free-wheeling conversation among a set of pioneering thinker/makers in China, Singapore, and the U.S.  What started out as a set of distinct one-on-one research emails turned into a group discussion on the nature of Chinese manufacturing, global open innovation, and the burgeoning, disruptive potential of the growing connections between (mostly) Western-based hackers and agile Chinese manufacturing networks.  As David Li wrote: Shanzhai and Open Source Hardware are twins separated at birth and if we can join them, it will create some very interesting opportunities. I wrote a piece for our internal report, available to Tech Horizons clients, which focused mainly on 3D printing and design. However, our email conversation ranged well beyond that topic, and I’ve been meaning to release this great stuff into the wild for some time now.  I’ve cobbled together two readings.  Below you can find some of the best quotes taken out of context and lightly organized across some broad categories.  You can also download the long, slightly edited, more-or-less chronological version of our conversation, with the permission of all participants.  19 pages of conversation.  Hope you enjoy.  Participants: Bunnie Huang, Chumby General Manager, Asia Operations, bunnie studios LLC owner Lyn Jeffery, Director, Technology Horizons Program, Institute for the Future David Li, founder of Xinchejian, China’s first formal hacker space Eric Pan, founder and CEO of SeeedStudio Jon Phillips, http://Fabricatorz.com + http://qi-hardware.com Shanzhai sharing circa 2011: hardware design and manufacturing, not UI Eric Pan                                    In Shenzhen, there are (estimation from an insider) about 2000 design houses designs electrical solutions and produces the main board (ODM), and over 5000 product integrators consolidate them into products.  The design houses generate boards from the chip-sets focusing on different direction. Small design houses still have some unique solutions (imitating iphone, N97 or else)…The most diversified part is on the product integrators, they do their best on the enclosures and look closely at the markets. A good board could dress hundreds of enclosures as different phones. David Li                                    The shanzhai sharing have become more business-like in form of readily available designs, boards, molding and others. Also, design houses working with Shanzhai vendors all offer open BOM options. "Open parts" (?????) are public available cases, panel, boards, battery and etc that are manufactured by multiple companies with open design. Anyone can acquire these on open market and modular from different supplier can work together.  David Li                                    The kind of publicly available cases and boards I see in Shenzhen are becoming very sophisticated fast. The drive to do public available parts may be partly due to lack of IP protection (if it's going to be copied, it may just well be open and shared) and part due to cost saving. But the ecosystem emergent from these practices is almost like the vision laid out by open manufacturing. After all, it's about sharing and exchange of how to build and collaborate on the manufacturing. While we're still trying to figure out how open source hardware may work, they get a system in place already. The simple parts are getting complicated fast because new ones are not designed from scratch but build on top of the previous products. Eric Pan                                     Small design houses now survive from reputation and groups. Sharing is a must between small design houses, they group to exchange ideas, know what each other is working on. This is exactly like motor industry in Chongqing, it has several key benefits: avoid direct competition with in groups, standardize supply (or open BOM) to share supply chain, forward/outsource orders to more suitable player. The bottom line is UI, design houses would not share or ask each other, where differentiates their works remarkably. Bunnie Huang                        One thing I'd throw in is that in my experience, firms that try to operate or project themselves as "legit" are hyper-sensitive to IP propriety issues in China…. However, I do appreciate their position, because every foreigner comes into their factory swaggering about and demanding audits and treating them all like potential IP thieves, so they operate very defensively to maintain their strong foreign customer base. It’s hard to collect good data on shanzhai Bunnie Huang                         I would imagine that if you did an academic survey of any company that has a "legitimate" front that they absolutely would not share anything with you.  I've spoken with some web developers in China and clients specifically request their websites have no CSS or fancy formatting because people in China associate well-polished websites with government and foreign interests and are therefore less credible. The mistrust runs deep. David Li                                     There are shanzhai which makes grey market goods that are not exactly legal by the law. Not much statistics are collected about them until recent years, as they are shipping hundreds of millions of handsets to China, India, south east Asia and Africa. Most of these vendors are not licensed by the government to produce ICT products.  Analog to US would be the economic statistics collected on illegal immigrants.     Shanzhai’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder David Li                                      The celebration of hackers is not quite there yet but this is more cultural…. One of the reasons I started the Xinshanzhai talks are to stir up the debate and to show a side of Chinese innovation that are simply ridiculed and dismissed. It was kind of funny to have IDEO standing on stage at a recent talk, talking about how incredible Shanzhai is, and have a full room of Chinese young designers in Shanghai in disgust. It's a big culture bridge to cross between Shanghai/Beijing and Shenzhen/Guangzhou. Characteristics of shanzhai innovation David Li                                     The shanzhai vendors are moving fast to the trend. They used to produce knock-offs after original vendors had the products on the market.  In the past year, I have seen a lot of them act on the latest TechCrunch rumor, especially those related to Apple. It was kind of funny that there are several large size iPhone (7" and 10") being produced by the Shanzhai on the rumor that iPad would look like a large iPhone. :) …They see a market niche, move fast to secure design and open BOM and go to manufacture and sales…It happens with large numbers of the assemblies trying to fill every niche they can think of.  Bunnie Huang                         It's this very embryonic stage where the innovation happens. Once a Shanzhai innovates and figures out how to knock a couple points off the cost, they get a ton of orders and then they just turn the crank until no more money comes out of the machine; but until then you never really hear about them much….And to be clear, an "innovation" in the Shanzhai world could be as simple as figuring out a more efficient way to jig the assembly so that labor time is reduced by 20%, or figuring out a reliable way to refurbish certain used parts to be like new. Tedious optimization for cost reduction isn't really glorified as innovation by western standards, but if you can reduce labor cost by 20% that's a huge improvement in cost structure and that's what matters most to the Shanzhai. Jon Philips                                    With China, some Social innovation and some other industries necessary to grow high tech are vastly behind. I might even go so far to say social innovation is 150 years behind in china. And, with Ai Weiwei and others being bagged and some other friends being questioned, equipment confiscated right now, I don't think its changing very quickly... Lyn Jeffery                                     Shanzhai Rules 1) Design nothing from scratch; rather, build on the best of what others have already done. 2) Innovate the production process for speed and small-scale cost savings. 3) Share as much information as you can to make it easy for others to add value to your process. 4) Don’t make it until you’ve already got a buyer. 5) Act responsibly within the supply chain. Bunnie Huang                         Shanzhai Rules (response) 1) Buy low, sell high -- and time counts as money. No holds barred. 2) Confucius' silver rule, do not do unto others what you would not have them do onto you; or, "what goes around comes around". (this is the equivalent of #5 and the loose moral thread that binds the ethic of the community). 3) Don't make what you can buy for less. (your #1) 4) "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush"; or perhaps "cash flow is king". There is little faith in the future value of IP or inventory. If sharing my specs with you means I close a deal faster, I will share it with you. Waiting a day to sign an NDA means a day longer I sit on my inventory (see my rule #1). This covers your rules #4 and #3. 5) "there is no propriety, only results", or, perhaps "If it fits your foot, it's a shoe." (aka the thereifixedit.failblog.org mentality) An equivalent of #2 down below, except phrased in their mindset. They aren't in the innovation business for innovation's sake -- they are in it to drive costs down (my rules #1 and #3). It also explains why there is a no-holds barred culture around reverse engineering. 6) The only intangible property worth anything are personal relationships ("guanxi") (corollary of my #2 and reinforces your #5); also, the most valuable thing one may have is good guanxi. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi A corollary of #6 is that "If I can't embody it in a physical vessel, it has no value". This explains why IP licensing in China is so awkward because they think of everything in terms of a bill of materials; every item must be inventoried and counted. Yet strangely, IP takes up a line item but has no space on the shelf in the factory, which seems like you're just paying someone for nothing. So why pay it? Opportunities and future growth David Li                                     One thing I am thinking is hackerspace pointing to an alternative path of evolution for China's economic development. Manufacturing doesn't have to "upgrade" to a service economy to increase value. Micro manufacture is another path. David Li                                    I think open source hardware in the West is a more symbolic anti-consumerism movement. Combining that community with the shanzhai will have global impact. It will vastly accelerate the spread of technologies to developing worlds…We are at an interesting point where several of these forces are coming together: an efficient (cut throat) supply chain that's getting ready for micro manufacture and a global movement of hackerspace and the march of millions of amateurs…. Shanzhai and Open Source Hardware are twins separated at birth and if we can join them, it will create some very interesting opportunities. Jon Philips                                     The value of dads in the garage in wealthy countries compared to shanzhai sales and development (S&D vs R&D) is an interesting nexus of opportunity. Will the dad get out of the garage beyond his religiousness of free and open mantras to making a real product that is scalable and can the S&D model move to economies that can handle the vicious competition? David Li                                    I am totally agree with Bunnie's earlier blog post where he concluded that that this system will reach critical mass. I expect to see this in the next two years with tablets. While everyone's focus is on the "iPad killer," the price points of tablets are creating a large under served market in BRIC and other developing countries. For example, while Samsung is trying to clear whether the 2 millions of Galaxy are sell-in or sell-out, Gome already shipped over 5 millions of Fly Touch. The current 3rd generations are expected to ship over 10 millions in 2011. Everyone I talked to in Shenzhen this time are getting business from Russia, India, Brazil and other South America countries. David Li                                    The tablets will ride on the uber Moore’s Law and the hardware will soon overshoot the point which Clayton Christensen calls the "diminishing returns in innovation." Machines will get to "fast" enough soon enough. As the trend develops, the high-end will likely to be dominated by iOS with mid and lower ranged dominated by these currently unknown Chinese brands (they already have 3 out of top 5 selling tablets on Amazon). Brands other than Apple will lose out big time on this one. Eric Pan                                     In the long run, they think weaker companies will fade out, best design houses usually became product integrators themselves, then fight with brand. But even big players outsource a lot to small design houses to sustain its diversity in product line. There are also some design house try stepping out, like phone with EEG sensor for elders. David Li                                     On the side note, met with a design house in Shenzhen whose team actually quit their jobs in large design houses located in Beijing and moved to Shenzhen last year to start the business. Ripple effects  Bunnie Huang                        From what I've seen, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the phones in Egypt were provided by the Shanzhai. A market like that would be perfect for their product; I can't imagine that the average Egyptian had an android or iPhone....maybe the shanzhai provided the twitter/facebook backbone for the arab spring. David Li                                    Cell phones play a major role as tool of communication in the recently upraise in Middle East but while Twitter and Facebook are hailed as the tools, few have bother to look at what kind of cell phones are used by the protestors. More likely then not, they are Chinese Shanzhai phones. Jon Philips                                    I didn't realize where all the shanzhai products were sold until we opened our hackerspace in Syria. Man! Actually, found the shanzhai products cheaper than in china...less bargaining power of the gwailo in china! The shanzhai products are many times preferred I found in Syria. The arab world, china, and usa are completely connected. David Li                                    If ones are looking to bring social change via technologies to China, Shanzhai is more effective then Twitter/Facebook. The typical Twitter/Facebook users in China are well-off. Some unofficial survey shows Chinese Twitter users have average 12,000/month income, which puts them comfortably in top 5% of the population and part of the elites in the status quo. They want political voice because of their wellbeing financially, but they are not going to do anything that would risk their comfortable lifestyle. On the other hand, the Shanzhai users are the mass and social changes will only occur if they are on board. Long version of the conversation here.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/social-connectedness-and-the-future-of-well-being/ Last week, I happened upon this several year old article called the Social Context of Well-being about how social connection and social capital influence well-being. Last week, I happened upon this several year old article called the Social Context of Well-being about how social connection and social capital influence well-being. Written by a couple big name academics--John Helliwell and Robert Putnam--the pair suggest that being socially connected has a startlingly high impact on overall well-being, which in total, suggest that one of the most effective ways to improve well-being is to find ways trust and connectedness. Below, I've tried to distill their core argument into a couple of key quotes: The core idea here is very simple: social networks have value. They have value to the people in the networks: ‘networking’ is demonstrably a good career strategy, for example. But they also have ‘externalities’, that is, effects on bystanders. Dense social networks in a neighbourhood—barbecues or neighbourhood associations, etc.—can deter crime, for example, even benefiting neighbours who do not go to the barbecues or belong to the associations. Social capital can be embodied in bonds among family, friends and neighbours, in the workplace, at church, in civic associations, perhaps even in Internet-based ‘virtual communities’…. High levels of social trust in settings of dense social networks often provide the crucial mechanism through which social capital affects aggregate outcomes. How much value do these connections have? Our new evidence confirms that social capital is strongly linked to subjective well-being through many independent channels and in several different forms. Marriage and family, ties to friends and neighbours, workplace ties, civic engagement (both individually and collectively), trustworthiness and trust: all appear independently and robustly related to happiness and life satisfaction, both directly and through their impact on health. Moreover, the ‘externalities’ of social capital on subjective well-being (the effects of my social ties on your happiness) are neutral to positive, whereas the ‘externalities’ of material advantage (the effects of my income on your happiness) are negative, because in today’s advanced societies, it is relative, not absolute, income that matters. In that sense, the impact of society-wide increases in affluence on subjective well-being is uncertain and modest at best, whereas the impact of society-wide increases in social capital on well-being would be unambiguously and strongly positive. They buried the conclusion in a bit of jargon, but basically, they're arguing that if we want happier, healthier people, we should focus a lot more on creating trusting and connected societies and a lot less on economic growth, because being connected seems to be so much more valuable. What's particularly notable, I think, is that many of the well-being connections correlate with weaker social relationships--for example, club membership and regular volunteering "were each the happiness equivalent of a doubling of income." Being socially connected correlates with improved physical health and other improvements to well-being. The good news about this is that in many ways, we actually are moving into a more socially connected world, despite a fair amount of conventional wisdom that digital technologies isolate us. For example, a recently released working paper by Stefan Bauernschuster and colleagues finds that "virtually all estimates… for all social capital measures point in the positive direction" between digital technology use and increased social cohesion. This is true for adults as well as children in their study; social media is creating more social cohesion and social capital. A recent Wall Street Journal essay notes that emerging practices around sharing physical goods and spaces like houses, cars and so on, by connecting strangers and promoting interaction, trust and social cohesion. In other words, we're moving toward a future of increased social connection. What Helliwell and Putnam's article suggests--something I saw in a bunch of other research articles as well--is that facilitating more of these connections will be unambiguously positive for our heath and well-being. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 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 slide, "Alternatives to the Singularity: A Collaborative Presentation by/for Grumpy Futurists." I guess it was a rush of dopamine or some other pleasure neurotransmitters, because i immediately felt the delicious exuberance of recognizing a shared sensibility, as well as the anticipation of passionate catharsis with colleagues. The door was open, this was going to be fun.  And reading through the first few slides, my initial reactions were confirmed. Noah Raford, a researcher in collaborative engagement, especially collaborative foresight, sent me that tweet, and several of the first slides were his creations, along with others in a digital chattering pack of futures-oriented folk, including Justin Pickard, Scott Smith, and Wendy Schultz. Now, I've met and know Wendy very well, but I've only corresponded with Noah, Justin, and Scott via twitter. And yet, this felt like I just walked in to my favorite bar, and all these friends shouted my name.  The instructions were simple (paraphrasing): this is an open document to "take the piss" out of the concept of the singularity. The "singularity," as described on the second slide (The Singularity is Boring), is "The hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence through technological means." Following this description was the commentary, "Blah, Blah, Blah...What else is there?" Oh boy, I thought to myself, here we go.  The Singularity is a popular, if not to say infamous, concept around Silicon Valley. Most notably, it is associated with Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, and since 2009, the Singularity University, a short-course initiated by Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis and supported by Google and NASA-Ames, amongst others. It was designed to train executives, students, and technologists in the ways of preparing for, bringing about, and profiting from the "emergence of greater than human intelligence." It may not be a mainstream term across the world, but in Silicon Valley, where I live and work, it is a continually hot and debatable topic.  I won't go into the details of the arguments for or against it here. But what I would like to call out are the cultural, philosophical, but most importantly, aesthetic dimensions of the Singularity community. Forgive me for painting with broad strokes (this whole story is wading in glib waters), but the general characteristics of Singularity advocates tend toward messianic zeal, intolerance of critiques (especially if those critiques smack of ethical, political, or social constraints), impatience with techno-skepticism, and a pervading self-righteous earnestness. Singulatarians seem to take themselves very seriously. Their proclaimations make for great newspaper quotes and soundbite fodder as well.  If you are around the futures game long enough, you will be provoked, informed, and annoyed by various shades of techno-utopianism. Sometimes shallowness comes alongside fervor. For academic and professional futurists, what gets called futures and foresight in the popular media bears no resemblance to the kind of thinking and work we do. "Here comes yet another story that gets it wrong." So, there are many pent-up professional as well as aesthetic frustrations, and the Singularity is a surrogate for a large chunk of them. Raford offered an avenue for futurists to express those frustrations together, in a light-hearted, snarky, silly way. Besides being humorously polemic, it offered the chance to "geek out" on futures inside-jokes, while exposing the tropes and cliches that permeate our world. It was, as Wendy Schultz put it, "futurist crack." The first slides were weird, and esoteric, cynical, and wonderful. I was laughing out loud. Trolololitarity posited a world of 70s communist humor. "In Russia, the Internet surfs you." My favorite of the early slides, Zizekularity, told of a world in which Slovenian political philosopher Slavoj Zizek is right about everything. Crapularity, Grouponularity, Abu Dhabularity, Singaporularity. Much of the joy came from the fact that it was an open document, and you didn't know who or what was coming next. The next wave saw other futurists jumping in: me, Stuart Candy, Jamais Cascio, Zhan Li, Chris Arkenberg, and a few others. Seeing the "crack-like" addictive effect of the experience, I posited the Collabularity, wherein by 2012, every single person on Earth is contributing to the document, venting their own emotional gas about THE FUTURE we are being sold. Futurists like to go "meta." As the stock-market crumbled on Thursday, "The Singularity is Boring" rocketed into the twitter-verse statosphere (well, at least higher than the regular worm's eye view level). Eventually being picked up by widely followed tweeters (and writers!) Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic, and BrainPicking's Maria Popova. The number of slides approched 50, the googledoc server began to shimmy and shake, and the buzz was deafening. The crowded space now filled with actual singulatarians, folks who didn't get the joke, and other random curiosity seekers. Eventually, this morning, Raford archived the original "The Singularity is Boring" to preserve that moment in time. However, an open, living document is still thriving here. Have a look at both to see the joyously grumpy side of the futurist mind, and what a well-timed, well-played collaborative experience looks like. There are now almost 70 slides on the open "Singularity is Boring" document. What cliché about THE FUTURE bothers you? Get in there and tell the world, and feel free to be grumpy about it.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/if-youth-are-our-future-what-of-the-future-of-youth-leaders/ Youth leadership is a hot button issue these days. But I think what we tend to forget—or don’t have the opportunity to understand—is that youth leadership is very different throughout the world. Missing these nuances could lead to potentially ineffective global youth leadership initiatives. Youth leadership is a hot button issue these days. But I think what we tend to forget—or don’t have the opportunity to understand—is that youth leadership is very different throughout the world. Missing these nuances could lead to potentially ineffective global youth leadership initiatives. While working in Kenya this year I had a lot of interesting conversations about Kenya’s youth leadership dilemma; the term is an oxymoron. In the traditional setting youth cannot lead. Until you are married and have moved out of the youth category you are not considered capable of leading people. Ethnicity, gender, marriage status, and whether you are living in an urban or rural setting all complicate the matter of youth leadership in Kenya. To top off the matter, youth leadership in Kenya takes on a much greater importance than in the US or Europe. While in the US we may have thought about running for class president to make a public statement about our popularity, youth leaders in Kenya utilize the option as a serious and necessary stepping stone for any career that will involve leading people—be it through the business world, politics, or civil society. So where does that leave a youth leader in Kenya and how has this been changing? To find out I spoke with Caren Wakoli, Kenyan youth leader extraordinaire. (Jump to the bottom to see her very interesting bio) TF Tell me about the youth leadership dilemma whereby you can’t lead until you are married, at which point you are no longer considered youth. To what degree is this really a problem and does it differ from the rural grassroots level youth leadership work to the urban/national level leadership work? CW First of all, there is a problem with the notion of normativity that tends to underlie this question. That is that most people presume that the ‘natural’ course of any woman is to grow up so as to get married. For women, when they get married they are no longer considered youth, even if they fall within the constitutionally ascribed age for youth which is between 18 – 35years. They are considered to be part of the women movement, not the youth movement. But when they move to the women movement, the elderly women there would have already asserted themselves and cannot trust the young women to lead them. In Africa, elders are to be respected and not questioned, and so it becomes even harder for the younger women to carve out their space and assert themselves in the presence of their ‘mothers.’ Men on the other hand are not respected until they are married, at which point they are considered men and it becomes easier for them to ascent to positions of leadership unlike the young women. In urban centers, the situation is the same but slightly different because of the cosmopolitan surrounding, different socioeconomic levels, and increased education. Young people do have to work hard to ascend to levels of leadership, but not as compared to youth in rural areas. TF So there is a disconnect between the modern categorization of youth and how people actually think about youth. How does this play out in leadership circles? Does it affect the work you do? CW Yes, although there is a broad understanding of legislated biological meaning of being a youth, the category is more fluid and elastic in everyday practice. The practices tend to project the category in at least two dominant meanings. On the one hand, youths are considered to be young, sometimes confused, still growing and depending on their parents. They are considered to be still in need of support—dependency ratio is very high because many youth do not have jobs. On another hand however, being youth is treated as trendy and a break from conservatism. Thus individuals much older than legislated biological age have made claims of being youths. In a capitalist system like Kenya, youth are considered a burden because the youth population is skyrocketing day and night—the percentage for those graduating from colleges and universities is high but there are very few jobs. This of course is adding to criminal activities and drug abuse within the youth sector. Additionally, a lot of times there is unrest in institutions of learning and property is destroyed as youth demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the current state of things. All these incidents create a very bad picture about youth. But interestingly, in some quarters like the private sector, it’s the youth that are calling the shots and driving it. Most CEOs are youth, and in most of the institutions that are performing well, the transformation has been brought about by the energy and innovation of youth. But funny enough, these same high fliers in corporate organizations would rarely consider joining politics to influence a similar transformation in the political landscape. They consider politics to be dirty and for retirees! But this perception is slowly changing, especially because the middle class is increasingly getting shaken in their comfort zones. With increase in the cost of living and basic amenities, they are beginning to rethink this. More and more of the corporate players are beginning play a role in influencing politics—whether directly or indirectly. TF Tell me a bit about the ethnic issues associated with leadership. If you are one tribe but live in another tribe’s area, then you cannot be a leaders. If you are married into another tribe then you cannot be a leader... Is this a correct interpretation on my part? To what degree is this really a problem and does it differ from the rural/urban leadership circles? CW Your interpretation is very true. Of course there are a few exceptions, say 0.15% but largely, it is almost impossible to become a political leader in an area where you were not born because you are considered an outsider. This largely affects the rural areas; in urban places it’s different. People can contest in different constituencies from where they stay or were born due to the cosmopolitan nature of the urban setting. But let me add that looking ahead youth must affirm that leadership is not just about partisan politics. Rather individuals can assert leadership at their various levels without pursuing partisan politics. TF How has the current government treated youth leaders? How is it different form the former? CW The current government has had so much pressure to provide solutions for the youth due to incredibly high unemployment. So they have been trying to come up with initiatives such as the Youth Fund (Kazi Kwa Vijana) and others, to try and appease the youth by offering sources of livelihoods. But with the youth bulge, even more thought and concerted effort must go into creating a long-term plan to tap into the youth resource as well as ensuring a favorable environment for them to blossom as they take Kenya to the next level of development. But to some extent youth leaders are considered a threat, especially by politicians who fear youth leaders taking their place in parliament. Having said that, the government has at least opened up participation space and allowed youth leaders to grow. The former regime was quite a disaster! Youth leaders and activists always found themselves on the wrong side of the law and in jails and prisons. If someone was considered to have immense potential, they were compromised, assassinated or just silenced. Despite this, most of them never gave up. And right now, most of those who were tortured for being active and radicals are today’s leading lights in civil society and even parliament. TF What is the youth leadership structure in Kenya? What are the other ways youth can get involved? CW There are very many youth organizations in Kenya. Young people in Kenya have a government Ministry in charge of youth called The Ministry of Youth Affairs. It has a minister, two assistant ministers, permanent secretary, and directors in charge of various departments. And then there are youth officers from national to grassroots level at the Division. When the ministry was launched, they introduced the Youth Fund and asked youth in Kenya to start up their own enterprises and to apply for loans. One of the key qualifications for the loan is that the young people must be in a youth group of 10 or more and have a business idea. This saw the massive upsurge of youth organizations to the tens of thousands! Despite this, there are youth organizations that are independent of government; such as foundations, trusts, NGOs, CBOs and companies etc. Some are national, regional, district and community based. A few are East African. There are also various other groupings of youth that gives them spaces for participation i.e. religious groupings, professional groups, learning institutions—Colleges, universities, polytechnics etc. At the moment we lack an umbrella organization for youth in Kenya. But the National Youth Council, which is a creation of the National Youth Council Act, is mainly about consolidating and harnessing the abilities and initiatives of youth in Kenya. It will be the voice of the youth in Kenya. It will be like the ‘umbrella body’ of youth organizations run by young people. TF Is most youth leadership work focused on effecting political change? How? CW Yes, most youth leadership work is focused on participation to affect political change. Other areas of focus that are increasingly becoming trendy with youth is economic empowerment through small scale enterprises, talent academies, and youth fund. But political focus seems to get more limelight than the rest. Organizations working in politics focus on different things. Some focus on civic education, youth participation, political parties engagement, political leadership training etc. TF And finally, anything you want me to know about youth leadership in Kenya? Challenges and successes? CW Participation by youth leaders and young people is going high. This may in part be thanks to increased education and capacity building by various actors such as government, civil society, and the private sector. However, it is still very challenging to penetrate key decision-making organs of the society at large. Most youth are concerned about bread and butter issues, trying to make the best for themselves, and have little space to worry about governance and leadership. Lack of good role models is such a big challenge; hence lack of mentorship and growing of new leaders. This makes leadership succession very challenging because people rarely think about transition. Positive reinforcement is also lacking. When youth come up with a novel idea they tend to face a lot of resistance from older folks, and it requires an exhaustive effort to convince the older generation that it is worth trying. Successes are quite a number: we now have a National Youth Policy that tries to ensure youth empowerment. We have the National Youth Council Act in place, this will allow for one umbrella platform for youth engagement. It will champion for youth issues and ensure representation of youth a various levels of decision making. Elections for the youth council have, as is typical, been postponed due to some political issues. I hope this can be sorted out soon so that young people can begin to handle and create their own solutions and take responsibility of their issues. About Caren Wakoli: Caren Wakoli is a proudly Kenyan young woman with a quest to see Article 1 of the Universal Declaration Human Rights becoming real in the lives of all Kenyans; where all Kenyans live in dignity and have access to secure livelihoods. She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in International Studies at the University of Nairobi. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and Sociology from the University of Nairobi. While at UON, she was one of the longest serving student leaders having served in the union for three consecutive terms; starting off as Congress-lady, Gender affairs secretary and finished off as the Vice chair of the Union. She remained outstanding in her service to the university community and this earned her the title of Young Female Achiever 2006 by the University of Nairobi’s Women Students Welfare Association (WOSWA). She has served at various organizations with a bias to governance, media, human rights and democracy. Caren has widely participated in critical national policy processes in Kenya including; The Kenya Vision 2030, Kenya National Youth Policy, National Development Index 2009 and the National Alcohol policy. She has excellently served on the Advisory Board of Directors of NACADA from June 2006 to June 2010 where she represented youth. She currently represents youth on the National Governing Council of the African Peer Review Mechanism/ NEPAD, Kenya Chapter. She is currently the Chair of the Board of The Youth Congress—an organization aimed at empowering youth in informal settlements in Nairobi. She also serves on the Board of Youth Employment Summit (YES) Kenya—an organization aimed at empowering youth to ensure secure livelihoods for them. Caren is currently in the process of starting a Youth Leadership Development Initiative to be able to create a critical mass of informed leaders who can help transform society and change the quality of life. In 2007 Caren tried contesting in her constituency (running for parliament)—Kanduyi in Western Kenya (This was during the election that lead to months of ethnically motivated post election violence, the death of a few thousand Kenyans, and the displacement of half a million others) “but my plans were thwarted big time! I felt really bad and quit active party politics but I haven’t lost my political ambition just yet, I may contest in future. But in the meantime, I am building me and molding me into the leader I want to be. Basically just learning and learning some more, and also educating myself further to understand more about life, poverty eradication, sound policies etc, because I believe it is only with sound knowledge, purpose, courage, character and a sharp focus that one is able to lead a people well. This becomes the epitome of true transformative leadership!” If you would like to contact Caren about youth work in Kenya and the region you can email her at cwakoli@yahoo.com http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/iftf-explores-innovation-in-brazil/ I had the amazing opportunity to speak at the 4th Brazilian Congress on Innovation this week. There’s not much information about the event on the web in English, but it was a large gathering of government officials and industry leaders taking another step towards a comprehensive innovation strategy for Brazil. I had the amazing opportunity to speak at the 4th Brazilian Congress on Innovation this week. There’s not much information about the event on the web in English, but it was a large gathering of government officials and industry leaders taking another step towards a comprehensive innovation strategy for Brazil. It’s a fascinating time for Brazil. The country’s economy is booming, largely on the back of commodities exports. Foreign investment is pouring into Brazil, whose “ridiculous” interest rates (to quote Trade and Industry Minister Fernando Pimentel) are the only place investors can make a guaranteed high return these days. The real is appreciating, creating all kinds of macroeconomic havoc. But at the same time, Brazil’s geopolitical position is ideal. The nation has copious natural resources, more or less energy independence, and has quietly built world-class technology prowess in aviation, agriculture and energy. The question everyone is asking, is where does Brazil go from here - does it double down on what’s working, or try to leverage its current strength into new areas? This was the most heated debate of the morning, which took place between Luciano Coutinho, the president BNDES and a panel of CEOs from Embraer, PetroBras, and other big Brazilian companies as well as the local heads of IBM, GE and Siemens. At the heart of the matter was whether Brazil needed an industrial policy as part of its innovation framework, and if so what industries should be prioritized. In so many words, Mr. Coutinho dismissed this notion, and instead emphasized the need for basic infrastructure in broadband, computing, and open data. Repeatedly, he challenged the CEOs to take the lead in innovation - saying that the government could and would do all it can to support them, but innovation was their responsibility. At one point he made what I thought was a shocking statement - to paraphrase the translation "that we need be daring, or else we will miss the boat, and it may be the last chance to catch the boat. Brazil has certainly missed many boats before." I was dumbfounded to hear him say this in such a stark fashion, but I'm not sure the audience absorbed it fully. It’s clear by looking at the massive expansion in lending that Mr. Coutinho has presided over at BNDES in the last few years, that he is doubling down again and again - he really feels this is the big moment. The disappointing part of the day was the total lack of depth or sophistication in talking about entrepreneurship, or how to do anything about it. Of course, several times there were laments about "how hard it is to start a business in Brazil" and I got the sense this is a tired refrain. More disturbingly, it was really weird that of three panels talking about innovation, not one of them focused on startups, and I don't think a single company founder ever walked on the stage. During Q&A after my talk, when the moderator asked if Brazil was close to having an innovation strategy I asked "what about entrepreneurs? I haven't heard their voice today". I called out that there were lots of CEOs in the rooms, but how many founders? Maybe 10 people raised their hands. Good, but not good enough. I said "If we were having an innovation conference in the US, or Europe or Asia, the entrepreneurs would be on stage and we would be bowing down to worship them." My main take away is that the deficiency in entrepreneurship is the #1 obstacle to technology-driven innovation in Brazil, and it can only be addressed through an across the board, comprehensive effort - business regulation reform, small business assistance in grants and loans, technology transfer initiatives, procurement reforms that favor small businesses, tax breaks, human capital and education, etc etc. Brazil needs a crash entrepreneurship program, and a big one. It's already far far behind, and its the biggest risk to falling even further. I’m only just learning about Brazil, and its a big and complex country, but having seen innovation ecosystems develop in many other places, I think my hunches have some merit. What do you think? The full text of my speech follows: Text of speech delivered by Dr. Anthony Townsend to the 4th Brazilian Congress on Innovation Sao Paulo, Brazil Sheraton WTC Conference Center August 8, 2011 Let me begin by thanking the conference organizers for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Institute for the Future, and thank the many leaders of your country’s government and industry for being in attendance. It’s an honor to be here in Brazil at this exciting point in your history. I can speak for futurists around the world when I say that Brazil’s recent economic and cultural achievements are an inspiration to all. If you’ll permit me, I’d like to share a few ideas about how technology can drive economic growth and social development in Brazil in the coming decades. The 21st Century: Urbanization and Ubiquity Put simply, the next great opportunity is at the intersection of two trends that will dominate the 21st century - urbanization and ubiquity. We are rapidly becoming a planet of city-dwellers. In 1900 just 14 percent of the world’s people lived in cities. In 2008, for the first time, more than 50 percent do. At the end of the century, more than 90 percent will. This means that by the end of this century, we will be done building all of the cities we’ll ever need. Doing this properly is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. Billions of lives, and the fate of the earth’s habitats are at stake. But just as we face this enormous challenge, there are new tools being created that will help us adapt. This is the information technology that’s spreading into every corner of our lives. This is ubiquity. The most basic form of ubiquity is the humble mobile phone. There are now more than five billion mobile phones in service worldwide - nearly one for every person. They are becoming essential tools for work, education and health. And every year these devices become more powerful. Within the next decade even the world’s poorest people will be walking around with a device in their pocket that is by any measure, a supercomputer. Mobiles aren’t the only technology that’s becoming ubiquitous. A growing number of sensors continuously measure everything that happens in our cities. RFID tags track the movement of goods in the supply chain. Environmental sensors track pollutants. Video cameras and image recognition software track the movement of people and vehicles. This real-time data about the city is growing daily, and it can be analyzed by both governments and businesses. New patterns and new understanding are emerging. As a result, cities are quickly becoming the next great platform for technology innovation and the creation of new and better services. The $40 Trillion Prize Big business has leaped at the opportunity to build and rebuild our cities. Companies like Siemens, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft are racing to capture a piece of market for urban infrastructure. This is a business opportunity of $40 trillion over the next 25 years. If they can capture even a tiny portion of this, it will guarantee growth for decades to come. Industry brings tremendous resources to this challenge. IBM worked with the city of Rio de Janeiro to create an “urban command center”. This command center allows urban managers to see what’s happening in the city and respond to emergencies more effectively. By partnering with IBM, Rio got access to world-class technology and engineering talent, which were crucial to making this project possible. Working with IBM allows the city to focus on governing, not building new technologies. But I think that big companies actually have very few new ideas about the future of cities. I see this lack of vision in New Songdo City, a project that Cisco Systems is building in Korea, and which it claims is the world’s first fully networked city. Cisco is putting videoconferencing in every room in the entire city - every home, every office, and every classroom. But they don’t know what people will want do with this new communications system. It’s a vision of the city driven by a product. We’ve made that mistake before. In the 20th century, we let General Motors convince us to design our cities around cars. We can’t make that mistake again. The truly innovative ideas about how we’ll live in smart cities of the future are being invented not by big companies, but by entrepreneurs and citizen hackers. Ten million people around the world use a mobile app called Foursquare, created just two years ago by one of my former students at New York University. Foursquare is a kind of Facebook for the city. People use it to “check in” at bars, restaurants, schools, wherever - and broadcast their location to their friends. Foursquare turns the city into a game, and you score points by doing new and fun things. Like gathering together in a “super- swarm” with hundreds of friends. Foursquare is just one of thousands of apps invented by young people, that show us a very different vision of the smart city of the future. Instead of efficiency, it’s about sociability. Instead of controlling behavior, it’s about inventing new experiences. Big companies like IBM and Cisco don’t get this, and they probably never will. It’s not in their DNA. So we need these grassroots innovators badly to realize the full potential of the smart city. Governments are starting to understand this. In the last three years, dozens of cities around the world have sponsored apps contests that challenge citizens to create a more bottom-up vision for the smart city. They are opening up government data to the public to fuel this innovation, and become more democratic and transparent. And government is slowly finding ways to bring together the resources of big companies, startups and citizens to create truly visionary new ways of living in cities. The city of Houston, Texas is bringing together technology giants and a tiny startup called SeeClickFix, to create a citizen-friendly system for reporting problems to government. A Planet of Civic Laboratories Now, multiply these three streams of innovation - big business, startups, and government - by ten thousand, and you see the global revolution that is happening as cities and computing come together. New technologies are being combined to create innovative public and private services. But because every city is different, we’re seeing ubiquitous technology used in thousands of different ways around the world. At the Institute for the Future, we call these places “civic laboratories”. Think about this word -“laboratories” - for a moment, because its very important. We are very early into this process of inventing the smart city. These are experiments, not finished products. Wonderful things are happening. But there are many failures, many dead ends. We still need to spend the time and money to make them work. Like good scientists in the lab, we also need to openly share what we learn. What I call “computational leadership networks” are forming around the world. These are networks of city leaders sharing lessons about what works and what doesn’t. For instance, in the United States the Chief Technology Officers of the biggest cities hold a conference call every week to share news and insights. It also much easier now for ideas about urban innovations to spread thanks to the rich multimedia of the web. Think about the many years it took innovations like Bus Rapid Transit and participatory budgeting to spread from Curitiba and Porto Allegre to the rest of the world. In the future these ideas will spread from city to city in days, not years. Buggy, Brittle and Bugged However, as any good scientist knows, experiments also have risks. Perhaps the greatest risk is that a single company will control a vital piece of the city’s infrastructure. Rio’s command center is remarkable, but what happens if the relationship develops problems? What if the city wants another company to take over instead? Or to run the system itself? It may be difficult to take control back, because IBM has virtualized the system into the cloud. That means the servers, the software and data that power it could theoretically be located anywhere on earth. And who owns the data that companies collect in smart cities? I’m sure Rio has taken many precautions, but other cities may not be as careful in the future. There are many other risks. But the three things I fear are that smart cities will be buggy, brittle and bugged. First, as we all know, all computers and all software have bugs. What happens when the smart city crashes? How long is it going to take us to trust these systems? In the United States, Google recently tested a driver-less automated car on the highways of California. This test sparked a furious public debate over the future of smart cars mixing with human-driven cars on our roads. Our expectations of safety will be very high for smart systems. I think it will take many years before we accept these systems, and even a single failure could make us reconsider our dependence on them. Second, smart cities depend on the most fragile infrastructure we have - the electrical grid. We saw that vulnerability in Japan, where after nuclear plants were destroyed the country now has to cope with a chronic shortage of electricity. Entire cities now face regular scheduled blackouts like the one shown in the middle picture. You can’t have a smart city without reliable electricity. Finally, smart cities are also a spymaster’s dream. In China, we’ve seen the city of Chongqing plan a network of 500,000 video cameras. The stated purpose is for crime prevention, but many people - both inside and outside China - fear that it will be used to spy on citizens and political dissidents. Every city, every society will have to balance how much information it collects about citizens for good purposes, and the risks for misuse of that data. Don’t misunderstand me. These risks, and there are still others, are all manageable. The potential benefits outweigh the potential risks. But what will decide the winners from the losers will be those that look into the future, and anticipate the risks and unintended consequences of building cities with smart technologies, not just the opportunities. Driving Innovation Forward So how do we drive innovation forward? Three key technology infrastructures are needed to lay the foundations for success. These are steps that will shape the opportunity for cities, but must be pursued at a national level to be truly effective drivers of innovation. Ubiquitous, affordable broadband is the first foundation. Compared to other kinds of public infrastructure, broadband is surprisingly inexpensive. In the average European city, for example, it costs the same to lay fiber to every single home as it does to build just 20 miles of roadway. Wireless makes it even cheaper. So cheap that in the former Soviet republic of Estonia an NGO built a ubiquitous network of 1100 free Wi-Fi hotspots with no public funding. Open data is another foundation for smart cities. Governments all around the world are opening up archival and operational data to businesses and NGOs to create new applications with it. Just in the last few years the governments of Finland, the US, the UK have opened up data stores on the web. The great world cities of New York, London and Paris all have as well. Even the World Bank, so secretive in the past, has launched a major open data initiative. Companies like MasterCard and ThompsonReuters have jumped into the open data game too. Finally, cloud computing is the engine that will deliver services to citizens in the future. Markets are leading the way here, but in a handful of countries policymakers are starting to create a so-called “government cloud” or “g-cloud”. The UK is leading the way here to save money, but the World Bank is exploring how this model can help developing countries like Moldova and Ghana leapfrog into the future. Brazil clearly is at a more advanced stage of development, but a g-cloud could be a way to help streamline government information systems, boost university research, and also create infrastructure and economic opportunities for small businesses. Once these three pieces are widely available, things start to catch fire. In the US and Europe we have reached this tipping point and it is breathtaking to see what is happening in our civic laboratories. I’m in the process of writing a book about this and its just impossible to keep up with all of the new innovations. An Historic Moment But the book gives me time to reflect on the big picture, and I keep coming back to this diagram. It was created in 1855 by Ildefons Cerda, the great Catalonian urban planner who laid out the expansion of Barcelona. It was a time like today, when urbanization and information technology were expanding and reshaping cities. The reason it captivates me is because it shows the value of thinking ahead. His design included conduits for water, sewage and gas pipes - standard practice for the times. But Cerda could see that the telegraph, which was less than a decade old, would transform cities. And so he included a fourth set of conduits for telegraph wires. He prepared the city for growth in an age where culture and commerce would flow at the speed of light, not horseback. In a strange twist of history, today Cisco Systems calls the Internet “the fourth utility”. I wonder if Cerda’s great-grandchildren will sue for copyright infringement! We’re at a similar moment in history today. We can take actions that allow us to build cities as great as Barcelona became in the nineteenth century. Intelligent cities are a great opportunity for Brazil. This country has already gone through its urbanization - Brazil is 85 percent urbanized, a figure that China and India won’t match for 50 years or more. Brazil has shown so much resolve, and success, in addressing its urban problems. You have some of the best civic laboratories the world has to offer. The question is - how will you use them? How will you create new tools for cities and citizens that not only solve this country’s challenges, but can be exported to the rest of the world. You have a huge competitive advantage in this area. Please don’t waste it! The most important thing to understand is that everyone has a role. It’s not just big companies, not just entrepreneurs and not just government who will build the smart city. You need to get everyone moving forward together in the same direction. We cannot afford a battle over the future of smart cities, with big companies and citizens in opposition, or governments that fail to lead with a clear vision of the future. Finally, let’s do this together. I haven't said much about my organization, the Institute for the Future. We work with organizations of all kinds to help them make better, more informed decisions about the future. The Institute for the Future is located in Silicon Valley, which gives us a unique vantage point where many of these technologies are being invented. But we know that the world is changing fast, and we are eager to build bridges with whats happening in Brazil, and share knowledge and ideas about how to move into the future. I encourage you all to reach out to us. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/slow-rollout-for-future-of-whitespace-wifi/ IFTF colleague, Sean Ness, asked me for comments on glowing blog predictions for near term availability of wide area "Super WiFi" using the recently FCC Approved 'white space' radio spectrum adjacent to TV channel frequencies, and the IFTF colleague, Sean Ness, asked me for comments on glowing blog predictions for near term availability of wide area "Super WiFi" using the recently FCC Approved 'white space' radio spectrum adjacent to TV channel frequencies, and the IEEE 802.22 standard allowing individual geo-located mobile devices access to wireless data at speeds up to 22Mbps and as far as 100 kilometers from the nearest transmitter, by negotiating with servers, in realtime for access to broadband radio frequencies shared with many other users. Pragmatically, we can expect wide area or 'Super wifi" in the future, but not very soon. It's not clear how soon we'll see prototype frequency agile radios that fit this specification for either mobile devices or for base stations.  Also, the operations of 802.22 white space wireless services requires a continually updated, and accessible internet of spectrum arbitration servers, negotiating, location by location, available shared wireless spectrum  betweeen users and local TV signals.  The detailed operational designs and security regimens are non-trivial software challenges, that could take years to roll out safely. Forecast: imho, White space wide area super-fi networks will, in the future, provide promised capabilities, but it will take years to begin broad deployment.   ...Stay tuned... http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/mapping-health-information-ecologies/ As humans, we normally make decisions in our heads by blending related data from various domains of our lives. We model each judgement in our minds by our intentions, activities, places, and time. e.g. I want to improve my health today, so I'll manage my diet, get some exercise, and engage in low stress activities. As humans, we normally make decisions in our heads by blending related data from various domains of our lives. We model each judgement in our minds by our intentions, activities, places, and time. e.g. I want to improve my health today, so I'll manage my diet, get some exercise, and engage in low stress activities. But our digital decision making is increasingly fragmented by the scattering of our digital information and artifacts into hundreds of discrete applications and services data stores across the web: separate health records, separate data from our diet and exercise apps and sensors, and separate data from other aspects of our lives. We  gather health information from thousands of websites and communities across the web from variously credible or incredible sources to influence our health decisions. But, we lack many mechanisms to fluidly blend and analyze our life data to make easy coherent decisions. Physicians face similar information management challenges in applying the best, upto date  validated clinical knowledge to each patient encounter. ( patients bringing their digital health data and google searches along with them).  Scientific medical data is scattered across the web in fragmented databases,  and proprietary journal services, and academic servers. At  the recent Health Foo camp,  hosted by Tim O'Reilly and Paul Tarini  RWJF Pioneer Group, I lead a working session to prototype mapping health information ecologies starting with the assumption that unrestricted flow of therapeutic information is to health care what nutrition, hydration, respiration are to health, and that both patients and caregivers have an explicit need to apply the -best- information (not -all- information) to any health process in precise context of person place, and activity. In our one hour foo camp session we started to first map out flows of therapeutic information from the web and from personal sensors into people's personal health ecologies and PHRs, from scientific evidence into clinical information ecologies and EHRs, and finally between personal health ecologies and clinical information ecologies for optimized contextual care, noting critical interfaces and structural obstructions. Then we started to post identify specific APIs, data structures, and semantic structures that should be optimally open to ensure the best flows of therapeutic information. It was a simple IFTF style sticky note exercise: the patient/person at the center, personal information posted on the left, clinical information on the right, and the web all around. Dark blue notes for data services and APIs ( application programming interfaces)Light blue notesfor apps data and APIsOrange notes for device APIsRed notes for obstacles or challengesYellow notes for opennessPurple notes for privacy and security issues. After our hour session posted the chart on the wall, and foo campers added notes all weekend. Here's a rather low resolution photosynth panorama  of the charts I took with my iPhone: Health Foo Camp Map of Health Information Ecologies. Ideally this exercise can be recreated, with much more rigor, followed by systematically clustering and mapping of the natural flows of what fellow foo camper, Ken Buetow  National Cancer Institute Associate Director for Bioinformatics and Information Technology eloquently calls 'Liquid Data'. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/clothes-are-the-new-health-product/ A few years ago, I happened upon an article that essentially argues that the more wealth in a country, the more comparative value health has--which, by extension, suggests that other things seem comparatively less valuable. A few years ago, I happened upon an article that essentially argues that the more wealth in a country, the more comparative value health has--which, by extension, suggests that other things seem comparatively less valuable. In other words, as we have more and better stuff--cars, smart phones, etc.--it becomes increasingly hard to create things that add as much value to our lives as, well, more healthy life. So if you're in some other business, how do you maintain profits? Turn whatever you make into a health offering, of course. Take the clothing industry. Reebok, for example, recently acquired a flexible electronics startup company with the goal of embedding computing power into running clothes and other athletic gear to give athletes better insight into their biomarkers. The athletic-apparel devices might incorporate sensors and a microprocessor to monitor many indicators of an athlete's health, such as impacts on the body, electrical information from the heart and nervous system, sweat pH, blood pressure, gait, and strain on joints. Such devices could process the data to generate information about metabolism and athletic performance and broadcast it to another device. Other examples of apparel designed to improve physical health include a nightshirt that monitors the wearer's sleep levels. Other apparel is being designed to improve the environment that influences our health--for example, something called Catalytic Clothing, has been designed with nanoparticles that actively help purify the air around the garment (and its owner.) The sudden rise of clothes that provide health benefits reminds me of the car industry, where everyone from Nissan, who wants its cars to spray vitamins into the air of the car, to Ford, who is trying to design cars that sync with medical devices, is investing in embedding health features into basic product design. Now, it might be tempting to dismiss these examples as fringe concepts or something similar. But I think that misses the point. To return to the argument from Robert Hall and Charles Jones that the value of health is increasing relative to the value of other things. They argue: As consumption increases, the marginal utility of consumption falls quickly. In contrast, extending life does not run into the same kind of diminishing returns. As we get older and richer, which is more valuable: a third car, yet another television, more clothing —or an extra year of life? There are diminishing returns to consumption in any given period and a key way we increase our lifetime utility is by adding extra periods of life. This strikes me as a very good description of a hidden force that will shape many people's lives--and, indeed, the consumer economy in developed countries--over the next decade. Which is why, I think, that fringe apparel products and test designs from car companies are the beginning of something that we've already seen in industries like food. In a world where health is increasingly valuable, we should expect a constantly expanding set of products that promise that they'll improve our health. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/no-logo-a-new-strategy-for-health/ The FDA announced the other day that we in the U.S. would be getting something much of the world has had for a while now: packs of cigarettes with gruesome photos of the gruesome diseases you can get if you smoke regularly. These kinds of horror movie images are already commonplace on cigarettes packs in Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Brazil. You can check out a gallery of gory/ostensibly educational images here, (if you’re into in that kind of thing). But while we in the states are just catching up with much of the developed world, Australia is already on to the next thing: packs of cigarettes with no imagery whatsoever. Just a plain package, with plain text describing the contents, printed in generic font: no colors, logos, or any other form of branding/marketing. It’s an intriguing approach, (and not just because it makes the packs like something out of “Repo Man”). One could argue it’s a less intrusive regulation, in that it doesn’t confront smokers with a grim reminder of their own mortality every time they open their pack. There are also arguments that say these kinds of regulations are more effective as well. The gory approach can be looked at as a sort of a low-tech “feedback” intervention. When the smoker goes for the pack, they are confronted with an image that reminds them of the consequences of their actions, long before that consequence takes place. This image proves immediate “feedback” in the form of a “future preview” (we’ve written about more high-tech “previews” quite a bit). The box with no packaging on the other hand, intervenes at a much higher level—it aims to prevent tobacco companies from making their product appealing at all. In her “twelve leverage points to intervene in a system,” scientist and system analyst’s Donna Meadows argues that the highest impact interventions target “paradigms,” in other words, our culture and the stories we tell. The plain box could be seen as a regulation on the tobacco companies’ ability to tell stories and affect culture. It’s pretty hard to dispute that there is a strong relationship between stories and regulation. Generally that relationship is as follows: stories dictate regulation. For instance, as consumables with negative health impacts, tobacco and alcohol occupy a unique space—they’re regulated but not banned, while illegal recreational drugs are wholly illegal and unhealthy foods are completely legal. The lines are drawn concretely—and have remained largely unchanged since prohibition. And while they are pretty consistent with our culture and our stories around “drugs” and “food,” they’re inconsistent with scientific evidence. For some time, studies have shown the marijuana is less harmful than either cigarettes or alcohol by several metrics. At the same time, studies since the ‘70s have shown junk food can be as addictive and harmful as many drugs. In one particularly damning experiment, cited by the New York Times, sugar-addicted rats were so drawn to Froot Loops that they would “suppress their natural fear to eat in the exposed areas of their cages,” which in the rat world, might be the equivalent of holding up a liquor store. Today, we are starting to see signs of changes in the way we regulate food. San Francisco made national headlines last year with the so-called “Happy Meal ban,” a law passed directly by voters that doesn’t actually  “ban” the McDonalds “happy meal” it makes it illegal to package a toy with children’s meals that don’t meet nutritional guidelines in restaurants. (The toy can be looked at as essentially an advertisement). And while most of the U.S. scoffed, the U.K., Switzerland and Malaysia have taken steps to limit the marketing of unhealthy products to kids years ago. (The American Academy of Pediatrics, by the way, has stated that because children have limited ability to think critically, “advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive”). It’s notable that by addressing marketing, all these regulations intervene at the story level. It’s also interesting that, after decades of science, they are just happening now. While it’s hard to directly attribute the drive to regulate fast food to the book “Fast Food Nation” or the film “Supersize Me,” it’s hard to deny that these two works changed the national food discourse in a profound way. Regardless, the tobacco companies are taking the matter seriously. They are fighting fiercely to stop the plain-box regulation, threatening to sue the Australian government in international court. But they’re also fighting with a series of advertisements warning that the Australian government is acting as a nanny state, clearly indicating that they see the power of stories as well. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/gaming-religion/ In 2011, the Game Design Challenge at GDC was to design a game that also serves as a religion.  Yesterday, the full recording of the session was released here. The result  Game designers of many stripes are spending time systematically thinking about religion.   The 2011 Game Design Challenge was to design a game that also serves as a religion.  In 2011, the Game Design Challenge at GDC was to design a game that also serves as a religion.  Yesterday, the full recording of the session was released here.  The result  Game designers of many stripes are spending time systematically thinking about religion.   The 2011 Game Design Challenge was to design a game that also serves as a religion. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-importance-of-an-everlasting-sandwich/ I have to admit, I kind of scoffed when I read the following headline: “Gas-Flushed Sandwiches Stay Fresh for Two Weeks.” The corresponding article explained that Booker Group, the UK’s largest food and drink wholesaler, is “launching chicken tikka and cheese ploughmans sandwiches, among others, it insists will remain fresh for 14 days.” I have to admit, I kind of scoffed when I read the following headline: “Gas-Flushed Sandwiches Stay Fresh for Two Weeks.” The corresponding article explained that Booker Group, the UK’s largest food and drink wholesaler, is “launching chicken tikka and cheese ploughmans sandwiches, among others, it insists will remain fresh for 14 days.”  The process that gives these sandwiches their alarmingly long shelf-life is described here: “The secret behind the sandwich's anti-ageing is a process of gas flushing, Boggiano explained, where oxygen is replaced by CO2 and nitrogen as part of the protective atmosphere packaging. Highly perishable foods such as lettuce are not used, while the sandwiches include specially developed fillings such as a slightly more acidic mayonnaise with a low pH, as well as oatmeal bread to make them more micro-biologically stable” The article framed the eternal sandwich as a sort of a wacky, misguided project, and initially that’s how I saw it too. “Is the kind of cosmopolitan consumer that likes chicken tikka sandwiches really going to want to buy its nitrogen-infested zombie cousin?” After giving it some thought, I decided the answer could actually be “yes.” There is an undeniable trend towards people valuing fresh, locally-sourced ingredients—and with good reason. A lot of the time, local foods are healthier, taste better and are more sustainably produced and distributed. But unfortunately, those aren’t the only factors that come into play when people make food choices. Fast food, instant food and frozen food seem to have done pretty well in the U.S. during the recession. And the brief hype surrounding a fast-food burger that supposedly didn’t decompose for six months (!) doesn’t seem to have changed that. In short, economic situations create vastly different imperatives around food. Fresh foods that are produced in sustainable and socially responsible ways are more expensive than food products that aren’t. And when someone’s struggling to keep the lights on in the short-term, you can’t really blame them for choosing foods that are cheap and taste okay, even if they’re bad for the environment and that person’s personal health in the long-run. So while it’s nice to imagine a world in which we’re all eating tasty and nutritious local produce all the time, the immortal sandwich is a powerful reminder that that dream is out of touch with many peoples’ current reality. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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, an experienced maker will be there to guide you through the process.  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, an experienced maker will be there to guide you through the process. As an intern at IFTF, I had the opportunity to conceptualize an activity and share it with the world. This concept is Inspired by Dave Eggers' TED Wish, where he asks for stronger participation between schools and the community. Through a tutoring class, Eggers discovered that if students have the opportunity to make something real, with help from adults, they will “work harder than they ever have in their lives… and once they reach that level they will never go back.”  After seeing the power of this collaboration, I decided to ask, “What could happen if the Maker community collaborates with K-12 education in California?”    A student/maker collaboration has great potential. While the Maker community is flourishing, the education system has seen better days. An estimated 50% of kids never graduate from high school [source]. Studies have suggested that students are more likely to stay in school and get better grades if they can apply knowledge to real world activities. Shop class is a great place for students to do this, but 75% of all California shop classes have been cut since the 1980's due to budget cuts. This is where the student/maker collaboration comes in. Makers could volunteer to teach young people what they know about design and manufacturing, and help connect students to real world opportunities. Maker spaces such as Tech Shop could provide creative environment and equipment for construction, providing students with an engaging learning experience without digging too deep into the state's education budget.     The activity could go something like this: First the students learn about the history of eating utensils to get a better understanding of context. Then, with help from a maker, students design and manufacture their eating utensil. Sharing what you build and how it is built is a strong part of the maker community. This can be done through existing sites like Instructables, or perhaps a public art gallery. And finally we will need to celebrate both the eating utensils and creative powers with a feast.Building an eating utensil will empower students with both creative and critical thinking skills. And working along side professional makers will help build relationships with people working outside of the school walls. With these skills and connections, graduating students will be better prepared to make their way in the world.With proper support from both education and the maker community, this activity could be implemented in California public schools. Special thanks to Anna, Ben, David, Jason, Jean and the IFTF intern team for helping put this concept together.    http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/anticipating-emergencies/ I'm surprised that BabyBeat an algorithmic- and sensor-driven system for detecting and preventing sudden infant death hasn't gained more attention. The prototype system, developed by Tomer Apel and Anava Finesilver of Ben Gurion University, aims to detect subtle shifts in a baby's biometrics and sleeping position that hint at the potential for sudden death. I'm surprised that BabyBeat an algorithmic- and sensor-driven system for detecting and preventing sudden infant death hasn't gained more attention. The prototype system, developed by Tomer Apel and Anava Finesilver of Ben Gurion University, aims to detect subtle shifts in a baby's biometrics and sleeping position that hint at the potential for sudden death. According to Fast Company, the system works like this: The system detects bodily changes known to precede SIDS and sets off an alarm to jolt a sleeping baby into a less susceptible awakened state. As part of their final research project, Tomer Apel and Anava Finesilver developed a novel algorithm to read skin temperature and heart rate from video footage. "This is such a minor change that it's not visible to the human eye, but it's still there. We have developed algorithms to interpret the discoloration recorded by the camera and translate them into pulses. It's widely assumed that baby's pulses slow down before SIDS, and this system could help prevent this," said Apel. If the prototype system works as initial research suggests it could, it's a pretty amazing innovation. It's an example of something broader we're seeing in health: That real-time data analytics are opening up opportunities to prevent emergencies just before they happen. Take, for example, a system being developed by Siemens that also uses real-time data analysis and increasingly cheap technology to give people with asthma an early warning that at some point within the next few hours, they're likely to have an asthma attack, and should go to a doctor, carry an inhaler, or otherwise prepare. I think it's worth noting that what these efforts have in common is, in effect, turning real-time analysis of imperceptible (or off-the-radar) changes into meaningful and actionable knowledge. In the next few years, making sense of previously invisible changes will be increasingly central preventing emergencies. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/week-four-for-the-interns/ This week marked the transition from IFTF-guided instruction to intern-driven innovation.  So naturally we had some great moments and some troublesome roadblocks.  Before I delve into that, let me first mention the speakers we had this week. This week marked the transition from IFTF-guided instruction to intern-driven innovation.  So naturally we had some great moments and some troublesome roadblocks.  Before I delve into that, let me first mention the speakers we had this week.Bryan Alexander from the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) visited on Tuesday. He presented on the work of his organization, explaining how it networks with several hundred small colleges in the U.S. and abroad to promote future thinking.  As Bryan explained, many colleges and unviersities are either technologically behind the curve, or blind to the radical changes that NITLE predicts in the coming years.  So his job is to run workshops, create dialogues between academic administrators, and cater the college landscape fort he coming change.  Some fascinating and controversial views Bryan has on American higher education include the abolition of tenure and the invasion of digital content both inside and outside the university.On Wednesday, Mathias, Anna, and we five interns trekked up to San Francisco to visit Jay Nath, the Director of Innovation for the city.  Jay explained how he created his position from scratch to address the extreme need for technological progress in San Francisco.  He discussed the underlying mechanisms behind San Francisco's successes (such as the digitizing of government forms) and failures (such as the city-wide broadband project).  His view can be summarized in one sentence he said: "Technology moves fast, and governments move slowly."  It was interesting to see the government's approach to the future - how it can leverage a tiny budget and tiny workforce, aided by a willing populace and a host of new technologies.  Jay was very cordial and made it clear that he values the open communication between the city government and IFTF.The next day we took a field trip to the Computer History Museum in Moutain View.  In a sentence, the museum is incredible and we all highly recommend you go if you haven't already. Kathi Vian completed this week of talks on Friday with an introduction to mapping.  Since the end of the thick-packet format of forecasts about ten years ago, mapping has been the critical component of IFTF's corporate work.  Kathi helped elucidate the different structural components and styles of the multitude of maps the IFTF has produced.  She described the differences in basic architectures - geomaps, landscapes, matrices, mandalas, clusters, and timelines - and showcased maps of each style.  In addition, Kathi outlined the graphic team's design policies, explaining how different client demands result in different graphical strategies.  The maps range from what she calls "circus" style, to more linear layouts, to spiraling webs of forecasts and trends.  It was wonderul to finally have a clear sense of how the IFTF produces its content.Well, that was a long introduction, so I'll keep the rest of this post short.  Between these talks we interns have been delving deeply into the structure and content of our summer's project.  Out of our four original ideas - the future of language, FUTR radio, secret gardens, and future camp - we retreated per Jason and Anna's excellent advise down to the radio and ARG space.  We debated the pros and cons of each for many hours.  The FUTR radio has the advantages of attracted a wide, diverse audience, and providing that audience with a compelling narrative.  The downside of an audio-based platform is trying to incorporate interaction.  The future camp idea allowed for interesting and provoking interactions, but we couldn't devise a way to tie the interactions together with a narrative.  So, after lengthy reflection, we have decided to synthesize the ideas.  Our final project, to be ultimately presented to the IFTF and investors, will be an audio-based narrative of the future that draws listeners in through interactive missions.  Stay tuned for details! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/kenya-youth-scenarios-a-personal-perspective/ Last June I had the pleasure of facilitating the Eastern province Kenya Youth Scenarios workshop on behalf of Institute of Economic Affair’s (IEA) Futures Programme after observing their Western province workshop. Last June I had the pleasure of facilitating the Eastern province Kenya Youth Scenarios workshop on behalf of Institute of Economic Affair’s (IEA) Futures Programme after observing their Western province workshop. Katindi Sivi Njonjo–who heads the futures department at IEA–first conceived of the Kenya Youth Scenarios project to help Kenyans constructively deal with the impending youth bulge. The idea was to help each region within Kenya create their own scenarios about the future of youth in Kenya (youth in Kenya is from 18-35 years). From these scenarios IEA is hoping that not only will regular Kenyans—as I can say they have already begun to do—have a more nuanced conversation about youth issues, but so will the Kenyan government. Until now, youth problems have been understood as consisting of unemployment and lack of education. But the issues faced by youth in Kenya, and the world over, are much more complex and localized. The Kenya Youth Scenarios have been designed to bring out the nuanced and regional issues that Kenyan youth face, issues which could either be catalysts for innovation and growth or an impending time bomb in the face of a national youth bulge. Eight different workshops across the eight provinces of Kenya walked regional youth leaders through a scenario building process. The workshops began with getting everyone on the same page regarding where we are today. To do this task, IEA created the Youth Fact Book which is the first time ever that facts about Kenyan youth have been aggregated under one roof, and then disaggregated by age, region, and sex to give a more in-depth picture of what really is happening with youth today. The Kenya Youth Scenarios workshops were designed brilliantly to slowly ease the youth leaders into the world of futures thinking and scenario planning, while preparing them to create their own scenarios grounded in within reality. Each workshop created a scenario matrix with two bi-polar drivers that were deemed the most important for that region. The Western workshop I observed chose access to relevant and quality education and access to technology as their bi-polar drivers. The Eastern workshop I facilitated chose governance and employment as their bi-polar drivers. Other regions chose the land tenure system, the economy, globalization, civic participation, and constitutionalism. Technology and governance were the most pervasive bi-polar drivers however. In order to reach a group consensus on the two main drivers for the scenario matrix, the participants went through extensive discussion of all local and global drivers that are effecting youth in their region. This is where things got interesting. Western province talked a lot about retrogressive cultural practices including polygamy, early marriage, and witchcraft. They also spent a lot of time talking about gender equality and what I interpreted as broken marriages coming from a lack of trust on all sides. Eastern province, due to its larger geographical size and increased tribal diversity had difficulty talking about local drivers as a group. They did however discus the underdevelopment and marginalization of northern Eastern province, as well as their retrogressive cultural practices like female genital mutilation. For Ukambani they talked about witchcraft vs. traditional healers, and for the Mount Kenya region they spoke about farming challenges in the face of climate change and increasingly smaller farmland due to population increases. Both regions spoke at length about the difficulty of being a youth leader due to a plethora of contradictory traditional and modern practices. For more on this topic stay tuned. The coast province workshop spoke a lot about drug abuse issues, and a feeling that the government is providing drugs to the region–either directly or by not doing enough to keep them out–in order to keep the population sedated. Northeastern province spoke about the difficult of getting ID cards and the extreme sense of separation from the rest of Kenya. Homosexuality was also a very common topic in all workshops, people were generally looking forward to a future where everyone is free to be as they wish. As you can see the issues that youth in Kenya face are as diverse as they are plentiful. Being able to spend June with IEA was in part a chance for me to understand the cross-cultural uses of scenario building. I was perhaps a bit surprised to learn that the process itself looked very much similar to what we do in the US with a few minor differences. A difference between futures thinking in the US/EU and Africa is that within the African context, as Katindi pointed out, futures thinking needs to be very practical, it cannot be an exercise in thinking for the sake of thinking. People won’t buy into the process and participate if there are not real practical solutions that come out of the process. The Kenya Youth Scenarios were largely thinking exercises for the participants, but because the topic matter was something that very directly affected their daily lives–from trying to run for a seat in parliament as a youth leader (remember youth in Kenya go to about 35 years of age) to being a youth organizer who has felt the hand of repressive governments through prison and torture, to being president of the National Youth Council–having the opportunity to understand the potential challenges for youth in Kenya through the holistic lens of scenario planning became practical. Additionally, the brief training in scenario planning that the participants received opened up a new tool for each of them to use in their businesses or organizations that many seemed very excited about. The practicality issues comes into play for me when dealing with very real social time bombs, like the youth bulge (Kenya Youth Scenarios), the end of apartheid (Monte Fleur scenarios), and the consequences of prolonged bad governance and poor economic system (Kenya 2027 scenarios). This is in stark difference to creating scenarios about futures that may or may not affect our daily lives in a profound way, a luxury we have in the US and Europe. Perhaps most exciting for me was the unity and desire to act that the group felt after the process. Not only have they built up a network of people who are passionate about youth issues—and by extension, change—but they also have a common language and a common vision for the future of Kenya. They have seen the potential for a positive future and what might happen if nothing changes. Some of the comments from the participants can describe this best: “The workshop made it clear that thinking about the future in a very complex manner is possible, and that it is important.” “If nothing is done about youth in Kenya, then we are heading to destruction. But if we do something then we might be able to go somewhere.” “I Seen the four scenarios we built and have seen the possibility of any of those things taking place. Right now my mind is really aggressive about what is happening next. What can we do about it? What will we do about it? It’s not enough to just have knowledge, but you have to do something about it.” “Building scenarios means looking at the issues very critically. We need to get proper meaning. Coming together and discussing the issues we have together has really opened our minds." “We have united with the same variables, what if Kenya as a whole could stand up with a similar scenario?” “The common language we created has helped to unite this group.” Another difference was the need to address religion directly. Kenya is a devoutly religious society, whether you belong to the approximately 85% Christian community or the 15% Muslim community. As such, it’s necessary to have a religious based conversation about why we care about the future. This was particularly apparent in the Northeastern province workshop where young male youth leaders said they typically plan to have 40 children (with the help of 4 wives), inshallah. In a region that suffers from close to zero commerce, regular famines, and a poor and irrelevant education system, young people still plan to have 40 children without a thought to their ability to feed, yet alone educate their children because god will provide. There was no thought beyond god to their future or a need to prepare for that future, after all, inshallah. The problem of rationalizing why we should even think about the future was directly dealt with through a discussion of budgets and what we do with our paychecks. This is a useful metaphor for the youth leaders because for the most part you can be sure they have some source of steady income, and at least strive towards the ability to create a rainy-day fund. Additionally, the use of many metaphors and examples of other useful African scenarios like the Kenya 2027 scenarios and the South African Monte Fleur scenarios created a group understanding of the usefulness of thinking about the future from many different perspectives before the future becomes the present. Scenario planning, to some extent, is perhaps better suited for countries like Kenya where metaphors and story telling are part of the cultural history. IEA is currently writing up a report on the scenarios, creating a scenario booklet, and producing a documentary on the experience and to showcase the scenarios to help conduct further dialouge and influence policy. Stay tuned for another post on my experiences in South Africa working with the South Africa Node of the Millennium Project and their Foresight for Development (FFD) initiative designed to spread futures thinking throughout Africa. I will also utilize this platform, and the experts at my finger tips in SA, to conduct interviews and research for my Foresight for Peace innitiative which you can read more about on FFD in the coming months. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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? 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 about the unique affordances that drawing might have beyond a text-based idea generation.  Letting people explore ideas about the future visually might let them digress more from the familiar, potentially extending discussion in many directions - allowing people to both explore the absurd, and to touch on more sensitive topics in a more playful way.The notion of drawing as a collaboration tool brought me back to thinking about basic art game mechanics - pictionary, exquisite corpse, and other games that ask people to build visual narratives together.  As a tool for visioning the future, the basic mechanics might be as simple as pen and paper - prompt someone with an image of a location and a question, have them respond with a doodle, have the next person respond to that image with a sentence - and then have someone draw on the same image based on that sentence (and so on). This idea might seem most applicable to issues faced most seriously in many Rust Belt cities - vacant land, abandoned buildings and industrial sites in need of reuse.  But what might this format help to explore specifically in California? With population set to increase substantially in the coming decades - and a particularly dramatic growth in the elderly population - the emergence of new types of housing needs, and the necessity of finding new ways to manage and share resources locally, we might ask: how will we live here together in the future? What future social arrangements might inhabit the places we already know?In projects that gather ideas about the future of spaces from the public, some of the most exciting moments are when people go beyond simply aggregating their ideas in one place and begin to develop ideas off of one another.  Group games involving collaborative drawing could allow for this kind of building process. While the basic mechanics of drawing games don't need much more than pen and paper, the applications of location-based technology and touch interfaces may be far-reaching.   With geolocation-based platforms and our growing ability to annotate our urban environments and share that information with others who pass through that  space, I wonder how this might evolve beyond a new type of content into a new format for discussion and idea-building. Thanks to Jason Tester, Anna Davies, Rachel Hatch, Jean Hagan, and Anthony Townsend for their guidance and feedback.     http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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. 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. We have the questions, we know the answers is a collaborative brainstorming platform designed to help Resloc plan a system of local integrated foodsheds. Resloc will be founded in the future somewhere between 2020-2030, in the Central Valley of California. By then, the amount of water deficit will probably match the quantity of water that we spend today, and the demand for it will be even larger, as the Californian population will be around 75 million people. Competing for water against Los Angeles and San Francisco, and trying to make the most out of the available resources, the areas of the Central Valley will form larger unions that will resemble more to urban centers. Resloc, the first city to create a network of local grocery stores functioning as foodsheds with integrated food plantations, is seeking out for your ideas and responses. We have the Questions, we know the answers is a game for young people, the potential future residents of Resloc. Using a map of your local grocery store in the future, and provided with prop cards, you can propose your ideas that will help the store use energy and water resources in the most efficient way and become part of the local community. The vegetable and fruit plantations, the packaging lab, the kitchen and the recreation area are the different departments that your group is called to manage. We have the questions, we know the answers is a brainstorming platform that relies on the knowledge produced by synergies and collaborative participation. A game designed entirely out of paper so that you can write, draw, and interact, while tracing connections through its network notation system.     Specimens for Improvisation is a card game for fun and bodystorming inspired by design solutions found in nature. You can make up stories, improvise a sketch, or create your own dancing moves to appropriate the features of organisms and ecosystems presented on the given props. Did you know that empathizing with sea animals, carnivorous plants, and bananas can help you come up with ideas to improve your life and environment? Play the game to have fun and collaborate with the members of your community, while engaging with active problem-solving and futures thinking.     We have the questions we know the answers and Specimens for Improvisation are the result of fascinating conversations with my peer interns and the members of the IFTF. Special thanks to Miriam Lueck Avery, Jason Tester, Bradley Kreit, Anna Davies for their input and help. Stay tuned to learn more about the development of these two games. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 chemical neural enhancement to chemical neural enhancement policy.[img_assist|nid=3900|title=|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=425|height=297] 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 chemical neural enhancement to chemical neural enhancement policy. The result, as you can see in the picture, is a game called DrugCiv that operates on a simulation of the future of San Francisco. The game tracks SF's GDP, population, tourism rates, unemployment, violent crime, and theft. These variables follow a discrete Markov model in which the update function is normal Gaussian variance augmented or detrimented by the player's drug policy.  This policy (that the player modifies in a screen not shown above) is the choice of legality of each of the following classes of drugs: depressants, stimulants, enhancers, and psychadelics.  For each category, the player chooses schedule 1, schedule 2, schedule 3, decriminalized, or legal.  The player may change these policies at any time.  There is also a screen where advisors, portrayed as vice presidents, offer criticism of the policy and explain which policies are hurting San Francisco's GDP, population, etc.  This advise reflects the actual coefficients in the Markov model.  The players watch the statistics change, represented by both arrows that reflect the current trends and the total gain or loss of each economic quantity since the beginning of the game.  As they learn how the policies affect the numbers, they nudge and update their policy to optimize the city. Beside choosing their ideal drug policy, the only other control the player has is in the game speed.  The point of the game is to serve as a sandbox for those interested in the economic effects of drug policies.  Ideally, someone who has extensively played this game would no longer be able to maintain incoherent drug policies.  By this, I mean that if a policy increased tourism, increased violent crime, and decreased GDP, the player would acknowledge all of these effects. Right now it seems to me that many people see drug policy as single-issue ("Legalizing cannabis would generate billions in tax revenue, therefore we should do it.") and ignore the complex interplay of tradeoffs. The downside of the game in its current format is that my own views on the economic implications of drug policies are hard-coded into the game.  For example, it is my belief that legalizing psychadelics would increase tourism in SF.  Someone who disagrees with that opinion would likely be miffed at that feature - unless my game is clever enough to convince them that I'm right.  In a better version of this game, the coefficients that drive the Markov model would be open to the players.  As it is now, DrugCiv falls under the category of "persuasive gaming", where my goal is for players to accept my drug policy, i.e. the one that optimizes SF in the game, as the best drug policy. The use of simulation gaming is on the rise.  From topics as diverse as economic policy to combat training, the complexity of the tasks people must master is far too great for a textbook understanding.  The best way to teach certain issues is to allow people to experiment and learn from their mistakes.  I think this game highlights the potential for simulations to better inform voters and politicians about how their proposed policies would actually affect society.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/how-climate-change-could-impact-health-and-well-being/ Via I came across this study highlighting some of the ways in which climate change will impact health and well-being. The study, from University of Wisconsin researchers, is, not surprisingly, depressing. Among the findings: Via I came across this study highlighting some of the ways in which climate change will impact health and well-being. The study, from University of Wisconsin researchers, is, not surprisingly, depressing. Among the findings: Heat-sensitive illnesses and conditions identified by Patz’s group include diabetes, urinary tract and renal diseases such as kidney stones, respiratory conditions, accidents and suicide attempts. Surprisingly, the study did not find an increase in the incidence of hospital admissions due to heart disease, but Patz and his colleagues speculate that acute episodes of heart disease may be more lethal and are therefore reflected in records of mortality. Mortality records were intentionally excluded from the current study. Age groups most at risk for hospitalization during heat waves are the very young, five-years-of age and younger, and the very old, 85 years and older. Importantly, the study identifies temperature thresholds that, when surpassed, tend to prompt increases in the incidence of particular conditions. For example, conditions such as diabetes and kidney disorders become more problematic, with hospital admissions for those conditions predicted to rise by 13 percent for every two degrees the mercury rises above 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The study is actually much less depressing than a report by the Post Carbon Institute, which looks not only at the effects of climate change, but considers how potential energy challenges would impact health and well-being. They argue that, in effect, the environmental and energy challenges of the next several decades won't simply cause sudden shocks--like hospitalizations due to heat waves--but will fundamentally strain basic resources like food and water that determine health and well-being. For example, less energy and a harsher climate will make it hard to sustain, much less increase, agriculture output. Water supplies will be at greater risk to infectious disease. The likelihood of resource related mental health issues--ranging from depression to conflict--will increase dramatically. Like I said, not the most uplifting subject to read about. The Post Carbon Institute suggests a few health related strategies--including decentralized health clinics and increased use of mobile technologies--that can help hospitals and health practitioners navigate climate change, while they also argue that localizing food production will be critical to ensuring food supplies. On the bright side, many of these local and mobile strategies are already being adopted for other reasons, but actually have some potential to help. I think the broader story here, though, relates to an argument that my colleague Miriam Lueck Avery developed for our most recent Health Horizons conference: Namely, that many of the biggest challenges to health and well-being will stem from external forces that exist far beyond the control of traditional health care. In other words, despite the huge known challenges--soaring medical costs, aging populations, unequal access to the factors that produce health--many of the challenges will stem from forces that are mostly of of people's radars. They're challenges we won't see coming, because we're too busy worrying about the challenges we can see coming. In this sense, while local and mobile strategies will help, many of the most important strategies will stem from being flexible and able to adapt and manage the challenges we don't expect. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 one or several good ideas related to California.[img_assist|nid=3893|title=|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=425|height=317] 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 one or several good ideas related to California. Our initial brainstorm was quite diverse. We knew that we liked boxes, the moon, beaches, and spacetime, but the specifics were lacking. Melissanthi started scanning through twitter posts about the moon, Nick and Joe discussed Nick's recent mishap with Caltrain, Zach opened photoshop, and I perused google images for zero-gravity toys. We were on our way!Our final "hack" was a compilation of five sketches. Joe opened with his idea for an iPhone app that allows people who are running late for social gatherings to automatically project their ETAs as well as current locations to the group. He then continued with a museum-at-the-beach prototype, consisting of Nick's excellent photoshop wizardry. Zach presented his and Joe's idea for accessing an archive of past visions of the future overlaid on the present. Melissanthi showed the analysis of her twitter-mining, including categorizations of public expressions about the moon. I presented a mock-up of a zero-gravity spring-based toy I hastily assembled from ace hardware parts. Zach complimented with a wonderful sketch of a lunar toolkit, and Nick added a great photoshop advertisement.It's surprising what people can do with only a day to build an no pre-planning. With some VC funding and a handful of support coders and designers, the sky's the limit. We interns are looking forward to our next test - our week-long prototyping is underway, and we'll be presenting to staff next Wednesday. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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. 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 seasons spanning themes of climate change, the societal role of technology and the transformation of political systems, stories include the future of surrogate pregnancy, the "re-migration" to urban centers, and the lives of environmental refugees. The films each take a unique approach to dramatizing the future, but all focus on conveying what the lives and experiences of people might look like in a context of plausible social, technological, or environmental transitions - a vision that is fantastical but also recognizable. Karim discussed his goal of tackling complex and often controversial topics often not seen on public TV, as well as the potential to engage new audiences across a wider range of platforms. As he explained, the films have the power to act as jumping off points for further public exploration of these issues - through other channels such as interactive online dialogue, lesson plans built around the series, or even community screenings and panel discussions. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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. 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 and analyzing signals that point to future visions of growth, constraint, transformation, and collapse scenarios, challenging us to use our closest environment, Palo Alto downtown, as a resource for ideas. Brad Kreit shared research that IFTF has developed in the field of health and food, adding to our understanding of the meaning of signals. The ideas from all the different sessions were interwoven through discussions with Anna Davies, who has played an active role in organizing the internship and connecting it to the future of California.  Throughout the past week, gaming and other participatory practices that mix storytelling with everyday realities emerged as thought and emotion provoking methodologies. Jake Dunagan shared examples of projects he has developed in public and urban environments to engage audiences in future thinking, through the use of subversive strategies. Jason Tester, introducing the idea of persuasion and the future of human and computer interaction, presented "Artifacts from the Future" as well as a series of projects using participatory platforms to help communities develop their visions for the future. We were able to take advantage of the launch of a new Foresight Engine project, Magnetic South, in our first week and experience the platform first hand.  Mathias Crawford presented the fundamentals of game design as well as the different strategies and ways that people engage as players. In the form of a hands-on creative exercise, we experienced the different stages and the practical aspects of game design. Changes in the idea of agency, as well as the political, social and institutional notions connected to this, emerged as a concept relevant to interests of many IFTF researchers. Marina Gorbis presented her research on the social production of education through emerging networks of scientists and citizens. Knowledge, as an open participatory experience, has involved into forms of active thinking and social responsibility, creating meaningful connections across disciplines. Ariel Waldman shared examples of initiatives to organize communities through the creation of channels to facilitate participation in hacking and open science events.  We also had the chance to listen to stories from the past, connecting the ideas with the place, time, and mentalities of Silicon Valley, as well as the Institute's history. Mike Liebhold took us through his work on Augmented Reality, and presented his ideas around social and personal ecologies and "supercharged" data. Highlighting the uncertain context of being in the present and also forecasting for the future, Bob Johansen described his view of reciprocity, as an emerging form of currency regulating relationships through forms of genuine giving. The economic aspects of forecasting were further analyzed by Devin Fidler, who presented perspectives of a scenario of future growth, drawing from his experience of foresight for financial organizations. Overall during this week of orientation and interaction with the IFTF members, we were exposed to forecasting as a complex and inclusive methodology that can be effectively and creatively communicated. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/iftf-summer-interns-arrive/ On Monday we welcomed 5 new faces to join IFTF for a six week summer intern program. [img_assist|nid=3890|title=|desc=Left to right: Nicolas, Dan, Zach, Melissanthi & Joe|link=none|align=center|width=425|height=303] On Monday we welcomed 5 new faces to join IFTF for a six week summer intern program. This year’s program continues the great work Matt Chwierut began last year, in designing and running IFTF’s first formal summer internship. Our group for 2011 come from a really diverse range of disciples with industrial design, interaction design, neuroscience, anthropology, programming, documentary film, graphic design and urban planning all represented on the team. Over the next 6 weeks, the main focus for the interns will be a project to take our Future of California work as their theme, and work as a team to produce a design for a participatory process to engage wider audiences in this content. Along the way they’ll also be getting a crash course on futures thinking, hearing from various IFTF researchers and outside speakers, and getting involved in some of our research projects. Throughout their time with us they’ll be blogging regularly about their experiences, so watch this space for more on what they’ll be getting up to. We’re excited to have such a great group with us over the next six weeks, and looking forward to learning as much from them as they will from us!   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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.[img_assist|nid=3882|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=200|height=307]  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.  He's currently working on a new book:  A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind; What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves.Together with our staff, Bob talked about the conundrum of how the mind is the tool we use to study the mind, the knowledge of E=MC² versus the feeling of knowing that 2+2 = 4, the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind, and even dipped our toe into the neuroscience of forecasting.Lots of fodder to consider, but one thing I found particularly interesting was the topic of the self, and how we locate the self in our own understanding.   It made me think about discussions of the global brain in a new light.  I would love to see a mashup of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Peter Russell, and Bob Burton when it comes to our understandings of the self & the brain, looking ahead to the coming decades.Do you know of other experts at this nexus with whom it might be interesting to connect?  If so, please be in touch (@Rachelkeas or RHatch@IFTF.org).  Thanks!PS--Friend of IFTF Mark Schar was also part of the conversation today--he just finished his PhD in an area akin to innovation intelligence at Stanford, so we were all proud to say "Congratulations Dr. Schar!" http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/reputation-trash-and-the-future-of-choices/ A couple weeks ago, Google released a new dashboard service that lets people know when they have been mentioned, for better or worse, by someone else on the Internet. It's the automated version of googling oneself--and it underscores an idea that seems to be gaining a lot of traction, namely that we are increasingly understanding reputation as a form of currency. A couple weeks ago, Google released a new dashboard service that lets people know when they have been mentioned, for better or worse, by someone else on the Internet. It's the automated version of googling oneself--and it underscores an idea that seems to be gaining a lot of traction, namely that we are increasingly understanding reputation as a form of currency. The excellent Venessa Meimes sums up the argument as something like this: The title they gave my presentation was “Reputation as Currency,” which seemed to be an unwelcome concept. After the screening, I said that I hoped the video might spark people’s thinking about the expanding definition of currency, and how reputation and online identity were evolving to become currencies in and of themselves, and in turn how personal data was becoming a new asset class. The idea was that if the everyday non-techie person could imagine their online information as a currency or “money,” they would begin to wake up to the fact that this is very valuable information that they should demand as their right to own. It’s a step. It's probably worth stepping back and parsing this, because there's a significant difference between the value of reputation and the value of data. Reputation has, at some level, always been a form of currency--and is an incredibly valuable form of currency right now. For example, decisions about mortgages, car loans, and all sorts of other things are determined by credit score--or, in other words, your financial reputation. What is changing, I think, is that we are increasingly recognizing that personal data says something about us, and, as a result, we need to manage and cultivate reputation, rather than leaving it to chance. It's easy to see just how controversial this idea will be, however, in a demo project to bring transparency to something most of us try to hide: Our garbage habits. The project, called Bin Cam, developed by a group of researchers from New Castle University in the U.K. According to the BBC, the project worked like this: Imagine your friends being able to examine every item in your kitchen bin. The food waste, the treats you buy and the brands you use. That is exactly what a group of students are subjecting themselves to in Newcastle.... Everything the students throw into their bin is caught on camera and automatically uploaded to Facebook as part of an environmental challenge. If there is anything in there that could be recycled, they will lose points and slide down the league table of participants. Worse still, they could be shamed by their friends. Not surprisingly, were mixed. Actual garbage output was down, while, in contrast, one critic of the concept described posting our garbage output onto Facebook as "hitting people with a stick." This sort of image streaming could be used to help us eat healthier and waste less--we'll just all need to put up with some social coercion to get there. While this was a pilot research project, my sense is that, in the next decade, we'll be increasingly living in a world where even things like digital evidence of our trash will be tracked and available. A recent Wired article, for example, highlighted the ways in which the declining costs of sensors are making it dirt cheap to track things as simple as toothbrushing habits, and as a result, we should expect to find ourselves in a world where even mundane details, like trash output and dental hygiene, become little bits of data that constitute this increasingly important form of value known as reputation. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-future-of-just-in-time-response/ One of my favorite presentations at our recent Health Horizons conference came from the Chief of the San Ramon, California Fire Department, Richard Price whose team built an incredibly simple, but incredibly powerful tool for enabling people to respond to nearby health emergencies. One of my favorite presentations at our recent Health Horizons conference came from the Chief of the San Ramon, California Fire Department, Richard Price whose team built an incredibly simple, but incredibly powerful tool for enabling people to respond to nearby health emergencies. Specifically, the tool notifies first responders when someone nearby has gone into cardiac arrest--a condition where the difference between a two minute and a five minute response time can mean the difference between living and dying--in order to turn trained, everyday citizens into part of a broader emergency response effort. As Tech Crunch describes the app, called Fire Department, it works like this: [Y]ou launch it, and it prompts you to ask if you’ve been trained in CPR and would be willing to help a stranger in the event of an emergency. If you accept this, then the application will take advantage of the iPhone’s location monitoring to get a general sense of where you are (a new feature enabled with the most recent update allows this with a minimal amount of battery drain). Then, the next time a 911 dispatch center receives a call for an emergency that’s occurring near you, you’ll receive a push notification telling you that help is needed. The app will also tell if you if an automated external defibrillator (those electric paddles that can kickstart a heart) is nearby. This Wall Street Journal highlights several relatively common examples, like someone dying of cardiac arrest in a parking lot when a defibrillator is sitting unused in a building fifty feet away, that often prevent emergency response, and and points out the transformative potential of something like Fire Department. In that spirit, I think it's worth stepping back a moment and examining what makes this such a creative idea, which could be summed up as: connecting latent capacity with actionable information. By latent capacity, I mean people--specifically, trained people with the skill to perform CPR. In effect, the concept here is that most of us are walking around with skills--whether its the ability to perform CPR or the ability to change a tire--that could potentially be helpful to someone nearby. One estimate puts the number of trained, citizen first responders at 3 million, in comparison to the 1.2 million professionals. But most of us don't use these skills on an especially regular basis, because we don't know where to put them to use. What Fire Department does is filter through information to tell people when their skills can be urgently put to use. But I think there's a second, more subtle shift here--and it involves a new way of building civic engagement. There are, of course, plenty of people in the world who could use help - not simply an emergency, life or death response, but could use help with everyday things like a flat tire by the side of the road, or who needs someone to provide some quick translation between languages. My sense is, that in many instances, people who have these sorts of skills would love to be able to put them to use from time to time. For example, I spent the better part of my college career and early twenties learning to speak Spanish, and now that I rarely have an opportunity to use it, it's slowly getting worse. Not only could I help someone--if I knew that someone nearby needed some quick translation--but I would love the opportunity to get to practice something I spent a lot of time learning and now don't get to use in a helpful situation. Finally, though - and this may be specific to truly life saving skills like CPR - I think this approach has the potential to motivate people to build more civically-minded skills. The first time I underwent CPR training, our instructor--who had been teaching CPR classes for two decades--mentioned, somewhat offhandedly, that he had never used his CPR training in a real emergency. And, I have to say, I found that kind of depressing--and the thought has sort of lingered with me as I've let my initial training lapse, never quite able to motivate myself to spend a weekend relearning a skill I almost certainly will never need to use. But learning about Fire Department has made me far more interested in relearning CPR--because it points toward a future where I might be able to put that skill to use. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-social-structures-improve-well-being/ One of the topics we'll be exploring at our Health Horizons conference this week involves how emerging sharing practices are creating new strategies for improving health and well-being. One of the topics we'll be exploring at our Health Horizons conference this week involves how emerging sharing practices are creating new strategies for improving health and well-being. Take one of my favorite examples, that my colleague Anna, highlighted last year: The Good Gym. Exercisers sign up for runs in their neighborhood, and in the process, partner with a local senior who they visit and drop off food or medication, or just hang out and talk to, as part of the exercise process. With the Good Gym, the idea is to connect people to share in the process of sticking to exercising--but the concept of the sharing economy is broader that encompasses small scale act, but also includes large scale efforts to share cars and other physical goods. It is, in other words, where instead of owning things, we rely on each other to share things we need, when we need them. But one question I've been wondering about is if the act of sharing itself is good for well-being. Most of the research I've been able to find seems to focus on how sharing can create new kinds of social capital, at least in the context of social networks. I haven't been able to find much in the way of sharing physical goods, but there's some interesting research examining how sharing information impacts well-being. Take a recent article by Moira Burke, a computer science grad student and summer intern with Facebook's data team, which examines the ways in which sharing on Facebook relates to subjective well-being. As she describes it, sharing online is linked to improve social well-being in a couple of ways: We chose common types of surveys measuring two kinds of social capital: 1) "bonding social capital," the emotional support we receive from our closest friends, and 2) "bridging social capital," the new information we get from a diverse set of weaker acquaintances—think of these like a friend-of-a-friend who tells you about a job. We also measured "loneliness," the difference between desired and actual social interactions.... The results were clear: The more people use Facebook, the better they feel. They have higher levels of both kinds of social capital, and feel less lonely. This holds across age, gender, country, romantic relationship status, and even self-esteem and happiness (two additional factors measured in the survey).... Direct sharing [by sending messages, posting photos, etc.] was linked to better well-being while passive consumption was not. Regardless of how much time people in the study spent on Facebook, how many friends they had, and how many News Feed stories they read, those directly interacting with their friends scored higher levels of well-being. Notably, in the academic article, Burke points out that passively consuming information--without contributing or sharing with others--actually reduces bridging capital, and increases loneliness. This seems to mirror some findings from public health that find that participating in the world around us improves physical health, as well as psychological and social well-being. In particular, one study has found a particularly strong relationship between high levels of bridging social capital and physical health outcomes. This is notable, I think, because sharing goods and activities with previous strangers is, at some level, all about creating and enhancing bridging social capital--which is to say, enabling participation, developing weak relationships, and enhancing connections between people where none previously existed. My guess would be that sharing physical goods and activities would produce far more bridging capital than online interactions alone. It also contrasts with a separate, recent study of social networks and crime, covered in Science News that wasn't about social capital or well-being, per se, but sheds some light on what sorts of networks don't share. The study used network analysis to examine email patterns from Enron and found that. when pursuing real initiatives, emails and information were exchanged robustly, whereas when pursuing illegal activities, people tended not to share. The image, and quote below, come from Science News: Aven’s analysis compared communications regarding three legitimate innovative projects and three corrupt ones that went by the names JEDI, Chewco and Talon. Communications regarding the shady deals took on a wheel-and-spoke shape, a setup that maximizes secrecy and control. A small, relatively informed clique occupies the hub at the center, communicating with protruding spokes that don’t share ties with each other. The hub gets information from the spokes, which in their isolation are less likely to whistle-blow and can be played off each other. Now, these studies are all sort of anecdotal - they're studies of information sharing, not sharing physical goods, and the latter study of Enron's networks seems to have a certain sort of obviousness to it. (Of course criminal networks are intentionally small and hierarchical.) But together, I think they point toward a new way that we'll understand health and well-being in the coming decade--where participatory networks with lot of free exchange come to be seen as key markers of well-being. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/blue-mind-a-look-at-the-ocean-through-the-field-of-neuroscience/ "We are more than logical. We are human." Jacques Cousteau.Why do books and symposia about the human brain, the most complex object in the universe, contain no mention of the ocean, the single greatest feature of our planet? Why do books and conferences on protecting and restoring the world’s oceans entirely overlook the field of cognitive neuroscience? The BlueMind Summit seeks to answer these questions by combining the fields of neuroscience and oceanography through presentations from practitioners and visionaries in both fields.  "We are more than logical. We are human." Jacques Cousteau. Why do books and symposia about the human brain, the most complex object in the universe, contain no mention of the ocean, the single greatest feature of our planet? Why do books and conferences on protecting and restoring the world’s oceans entirely overlook the field of cognitive neuroscience? The BlueMind Summit seeks to answer these questions by combining the fields of neuroscience and oceanography through presentations from practitioners and visionaries in both fields.  Tech Horizons research director Jake Dunagan will be speaking at the summit on June 2 at the California Academy of Sciences. He will be presenting his research on neuroscience along with the Vice Mayor of Long Beach, California. Together they will explore the issues coastal communities deal with on a daily basis through the lens of Alternative Futures—a forecasting methodology developed by Jim Dator at the Manoa School of Future Studies which presents four alternative visions of the future.  "What I like about the vision of this conference is the convergence of two very important worlds that don't generally talk to each other, and that is ocean science and neuroscience. I'm excited about the new ideas that come out of that conversation," said Dunagan.  The BlueMind Summit is closed to the public, but will be streamed live on June 2, 2011 at mindandocean.org.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-microwork-behind-assistive-technologies/ There's a lot to like about a University of Rochester project known as VizWiz, highlighted in the New Scientist a couple of weeks ago. Designed to enable blind people to get answers to everyday visual questions, VizWiz is a demo phone app that can take simple photos and get answers to simple questions, like what denomination is this bill, in near real-time. It works like this: There's a lot to like about a University of Rochester project known as VizWiz, highlighted in the New Scientist a couple of weeks ago. Designed to enable blind people to get answers to everyday visual questions, VizWiz is a demo phone app that can take simple photos and get answers to simple questions, like what denomination is this bill, in near real-time. It works like this: he holds her iPhone to the open cupboard, snaps a picture of the cans, makes an audio recording of her question - "which one is the coconut milk?" - and double taps to send off her query. Approximately 45 seconds later her iPhone replies in an electronic timbre: "The answer is the one on the right..." Designing a computer program that can reliably recognize text and distinguish objects in the real world has proven to be a massive challenge for artificial intelligence researchers. To get around this, the researchers behind VizWiz - a team consisting of computer scientists from several universities, including the University of Rochester - decided to outsource the task of problem-solving to people: specifically, to Amazon Mechanical Turk's masses of online workers. One of the things I find most fascinating--and potentially transformative--about VizWiz is the clever use of Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, which is a platform aimed at exchanging micropayments of a few cents for microtasks, like interpreting photos, that require human intelligence. In an academic paper, the research team behind VizWiz note that: VizWiz demonstrates a new model for assistive technology in which human workers assist users in nearly real-time. VizWiz currently targets assisting blind and low vision users in the real world, but future work may explore how to extend these benefits to other omains (like the web) or to other populations. One compelling future direction is to use the VizWiz approach to help reduce the latency of transcription and description of audio for deaf and hard of hearing individuals. More generally, we believe that low-cost, readily-available human computation can be applied to many problems. Not only does this strike me as a plausible direction for improving assistive technologies, but it seems like a potential direction for certain forms of economic development. The approach is reminiscent of the concept of virtual gold farming, where people, typically in the developing world, engage in tasks in online games that earn virtual currency, with the goal of exchanging this for traditional currency. A World Bank Report suggested that countries should invest resources into developing virtual gold farming industries to take advantage of the $3 billion and growing market. I haven't seen any estimates about what sort of market would exist for the microwork of interpreting photos for the blind, or for helping deaf individuals with audio and transcription needs. But it strikes me as not simply a market opportunity, but one that could plausibly build new health and well-being capacities by helping people manage the everyday challenges of living with a medical challenge. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/is-our-future-all-sunny/ Last week, I mentioned that we're hosting a workshop:  Reinventing Our Energy Futures.  Yesterday, we kicked things off with a keynote speech by Tony Seba, author of Solar Trillions. Tony has an entrepreneurial/tech background and has been lecturing at Stanford where he teaches clean energy, high tech strategy and finance. Last week, I mentioned that we're hosting a workshop:  Reinventing Our Energy Futures.  Yesterday, we kicked things off with a keynote speech by Tony Seba, author of Solar Trillions. Tony has an entrepreneurial/tech background and has been lecturing at Stanford where he teaches clean energy, high tech strategy and finance.  He led his presentation with a very dramatic data point:  over the next 40 years, the energy industry is poised to make $382 trillion in revenue...more than 25x the size of America's GDP in 2011!  By 2050, his math suggests that we'll need to replace 14TW of existing energy generating plants and introduce and additional 16TW of new energy generating plants.  This energy will come from existing sources (oil, gas, hydro and wind)...but none of those will be able to scale to meet our future energy needs Tony suggests that solar is the only clean technology that will be able to scale to meet that gap. His opportunities are listed below...and since we love to back up forecasts (even other people's forecasts), I've dug up some signals for each: Utility-Scale Solar (Concentrated Solar Power in the Sahara)Industrial-Scale Solar (Cutting Data Center Energy)Island/Village-Scale Solar (Hawaii Riding High on Solar Power) Home Commercial-Scale Solar (Million Solar Roofs) Solar Clean Water (Solar Desalination)Energy Storage (Liquid Metal Batteries)Smart Grid (US Smart Grid) We'd love to see the signals you find while we reinvent our energy future...feel free to use the #AltEnergy tag as well and follow our workshop on Twitter. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 open![img_assist|nid=3861|title=|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=250|height=145] 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 open! Participants will be immersed in two portions of a Futures Thinking toolkit module.  The first step, Knowing the Future, will expose participants to research about opportunities and challenges that youth will face in the next decade.The second step, Leading the Future, aims to build futures thinking capabilities so that young people have more tools for responding to the future and for making better decisions in the present.Who should attend?:Non-profit organizations focused on youthEducational institutionsCommunity organizationsTeachers and principalsYouth group leadersNon-profits with student internsPeer mentorsThis prototype module for Futures Thinking, designed for those who work with youth, is being facilitated for the first time ever in collaboration with the Center for Creative Leadership's Leadership Beyond Boundaries program. The module will follow at the end of a three day Train-the-Trainers workshop facilitated by the Center for Creative Leadership at Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA.For registration information, please contact Joan Bello (belloj@ccl.org).  Priority for attendance at the June 16 Futures Thinking module will be given to attendees of the full Train-the-Trainers workshop by the Center for Creative Leadership, June 13-15.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/reinventing-our-energy-futures/ Next week, members of IFTF's Technology Horizons research program will be attending a workshop on alternative energy called Reinventing Our Energy Futures. Next week, members of IFTF's Technology Horizons research program will be attending a workshop on alternative energy called Reinventing Our Energy Futures.  Technology Horizons clients will receive a Reinventing Our Energy Futures Map that forecasts the impact of four alternative energy scenarios on households, markets, organizations, and other institutions, with a focus on regional energy tech ecosystems in California, China, India, and Brazil.  The methodology we use for the map is alternative futures.  Thanks to Jake Dunagan (@dunagan23) for bringing that methodology to IFTF from the Manoa School of Futures Study! The map will be available to the public in May of 2012...but you can get a peek at some of the signals we have been tracking by looking here.  Over the coming weeks, we'll be live tweeting from the workshop (using the #AltEnergy tag), continuing to track alternative energy signals (follow IFTF's Twitter feed), and blogging about those signals and how they fit into our Alternative Futures framework.   We'd love to see the signals you find while we reinvent our energy future...feel free to use the #AltEnergy tag as well! In the meantime: Follow IFTF on TwitterJoin our Facebook GroupEnjoy a video of a three-toed sloth crossing a busy road in Costa Rica http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-future-of-mobile-health-is-disconnected/ Like an increasingly large number of people, I avoid computer, phones, and just about any other form of interaction with technology-based media when I'm on vacation. Think of it as a media diet to combat information overload and ensure a sense of well-being. And this isn't just an idiosyncratic choice--it turns out that an increasing body of research is showing that all of our information sources are making us unhealthy. Like an increasingly large number of people, I avoid computer, phones, and just about any other form of interaction with technology-based media when I'm on vacation. Think of it as a media diet to combat information overload and ensure a sense of well-being. And this isn't just an idiosyncratic choice--it turns out that an increasing body of research is showing that all of our information sources are making us unhealthy. Writing in Miller-McCune, Sara Barbour highlights some of the research that is increasingly linking an over-reliance on cellphones and other necessities of everyday life to some troubling health outcomes. [O]ur open embrace of the cellphone is not without irritation and critique. More than 86 percent of cell users are annoyed when a peer interrupts a conversation to check their phone or answer a call, and almost half find it annoying to be interrupted themselves by a call or text. Nor are the consequences of constant communication limited to irritation: Research from the Sleep Disorders Center at JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J., found correlations between the use of phones after bedtime and attention-deficit disorders, mood swings, anxiety and depression. But with the rise of devices the likes of the iPhone and Droid, it has become increasingly harder for kids — and adults — to unplug at night. Cellphones are no longer just for mere communication — they are cameras, computers and entertainment consoles wrapped into one.... This echoes something I heard while conducting some ethnographic interviews for our research into the future of well-being. A number of people I've spoken with highlighted some specific media avoidance practice--avoiding newscasts, ignoring phone calls, disconnecting and avoiding the onslaught of information--as critical to creating a sense of well-being in their daily lives. And this makes sense, in light of the astonishing amount of information we're increasingly tasked with making sense of. I've seen a few different versions of this statistic, but the ballpark version is that we create as much data in a couple days as existed in the entire world in 2003--with data generation expected to double every 1.2 years. Put differently, if you feel overwhelmed now trying to keep up with new information--from your work email to personal health and finance advice--imagine what the challenge will look like in a decade when we have an exponentially larger set of information to try to make sense of. It's easy to imagine that increasing numbers of people will need tools and strategies to keep from feeling overwhelmed. One such tool has to do with filtering out things that might be challenging, disturbing or otherwise troublesome. Examining these tools is the premise of Eli Pariser's new book The Filter Bubble, which I've been reading about--and reading--which examines the ways in which the push to personalize information consumption is making it increasingly hard to understand the viewpoints of other people. In a deliciously ironic twist, my interest in the book has resulted in ads for the Filter Bubble following me everywhere I go online. It's like the world knows I'm interested in personalized information filters and is tempting me to buy it through a highly filtered information scheme. In any case, Pariser's argument is that as we have increasingly personalized filters on information, we'll have fewer tools to grasp information and ideas that challenge our preconceptions, and instead will simply get information that reenforces whatever we already believe. In the context of health, it's easy to see where personalized information could be counterproductive--diet advice that avoids nutritional research, drug advice that skips over side effects. Basically, any domain where we have to make daily health decisions in our daily lives that impact our long-term sense health. In other words, I think these two concepts point to an emerging personal tension many of us will be increasingly facing: The need to simultaneously manage understanding increasingly absurd amounts of information in order to take advantage of our best understandings of the world, and a simultaneous need to avoid overexposure to information to simply maintain a basic level of sanity. Which brings me back to the idea that the future of mobile health is disconnected. Put differently, the past decade has seen a ton of effort put into thinking about how to turn our mobile devices into tools to give us little reminders and bursts of information to try to encourage us to engage in this or that behavior, by personalizing recommendations to our daily habits. It seems to me that the next decade's mobile health strategies may very well focus on the opposite strategy. Instead of pinging us with reminders about what to eat and when to exercise, they'll simply shut themselves off for a while and force us to interact with some unfiltered part of the big, physical world. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/can-collaborative-consumption-help-reduce-global-hunger-and-help-your-diet/ Danielle Sacks' recent article on sharing has gotten a fair amount of attention, and rightly so, for providing a great overview of the sharing economy, or what we've also talked about around here as collaborative consumption. The basic premise is that a variety of goods--cars, power tools, guest rooms--simply linger around wasting space when we don't use them, and that in the coming years, we should expect to see a boom in services like ZipCar that let people share goo Danielle Sacks' recent article on sharing has gotten a fair amount of attention, and rightly so, for providing a great overview of the sharing economy, or what we've also talked about around here as collaborative consumption. The basic premise is that a variety of goods--cars, power tools, guest rooms--simply linger around wasting space when we don't use them, and that in the coming years, we should expect to see a boom in services like ZipCar that let people share goods without owning them. Implicit in many, though by no means all of these services, is a certain sort of localism--after all, I can't very well share a car with someone on another continent. But what if we could use the concept of sharing excess capacity to create tangible social connections across continents and to reduce unnecessary inequalities? This, it turns out, is the premise of a World Food Programme effort called We Feedback, which is a collaborative consumption initiative, that also has the potential to double as a really solid dieting plan. According to their site, the program works as follows: You choose your favorite food, put it into the Feedback Calculator along with the estimated cost, and then calculate how many hungry children this would feed. The next step is to donate exactly that amount. Or, if you want, you donate multiples of that amount. In this way you feedback more portions of your favorite food. At this point you are already a member of the WeFeedback community. But in order to participate fully, there is another step: share details of your favorite food and your feedback with others. You can do this through your networks, if you ask them to join WeFeedback. They then ask their networks and before you know it, we have thousands of people like you using their networking skills to raise awareness for a great cause. In other words, the We Feedback site is aimed at addressing the incredibly poor distribution of food--that has simultaneously left 1 billion people worldwide hungry at the same time that another billion are overweight. Last month, my colleague David Evan Harris and I, without knowing of the existence of We Feedback, discussed how a project like We Feedback could also function as an incredible dieting tool, akin to The Good Gym, which encourages younger people to exercise by tasking them with visiting seniors, dropping off groceries, socializing, or otherwise making exercise into a social obligation. It's easy to imagine a similar dynamic with food - imagine if you could see that your ability to stick to your diet and skip a late night snack didn't simply impact your weight, but could directly impact whether or not a family somewhere else in the world went to bed hungry. The potential of an initiative like We Feedback points toward the potential to help with a second, broader point here that is often raised about sharing: Namely that sharing goods would naturally seem to limit production and sales, which makes the practice simultaneously very good food the environment but very bad for jobs and labor. David Roberts described the problem as follows: From an environmental perspective, it's a way for that fond and long-held hope, dematerialization, to start getting real traction. It turns out the ownership model, in and of itself, builds in a huge amount of resource inefficiency. We buy things that, by definition, as individuals, we cannot utilize fully, and they spend most of their time simply being owned (think of all your books and CDs, if you still have them). Now the ownership model is beginning to give way to the access model, wherein what's prized is access to services and experiences.... From an economic perspective, this puts real stress on the conventional ways of assessing an economy's performance. As sharing spreads, more and more socially productive activity will be "off the books" -- no money will exchange hands, or if it does, it will be be a direct exchange, which, if it can be tracked at all, will basically count as a gift. Enterprises like Wikipedia, YouTube, and open-source software, which are based on the coordination of distributed, voluntary efforts ("social production"), add hugely to consumer welfare but do not produce much if any in the way of profits. Of course, something like We Feedback doesn't completely address this problem. But I think it points toward a path for the future of sharing. Food, after all, is not the only thing we have in abundance in certain parts of the world and are lacking in in others. As with food, we are oversupplying one part of the world, and undersupplying the other. In one sense, the idea that we might correct that oversupply by consuming less is pretty frightening economically--it points toward a continued future of few jobs and financial struggles. But in another sense, I think it points toward a separate opportunity--not to continue to oversupply the wealthy, but to take advantage of emerging practices around sharing and social connection to help rebalance global supply challenges. (Big thanks to David Evan Harris, who first suggested the idea of diet plans based around transferring food from people who want to lose weight to people who don't have enough to eat; additional thanks to my colleague Rachel Maguire who pointed us to the We Feedback site.) http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/announcing-the-winners-of-the-california-dreams-contest/ http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/how-products-are-shaping-social-networks/ I'm not typically inclined to blog about evil genius, but it's hard to know how else to describe the redesign of an e-cigarette Blue Cigs. Specifically, the redesigned "smart packs" help e-cigarette smokers connect and socialize over doses of vaporized nicotine. I'm not typically inclined to blog about evil genius, but it's hard to know how else to describe the redesign of an e-cigarette Blue Cigs. Specifically, the redesigned "smart packs" help e-cigarette smokers connect and socialize over doses of vaporized nicotine. Before, e-cig packs were meant simply as a portable charging device for the glowing blue-tip devices. Now, when a fellow user is "vaping" (not smoking) within a 50-foot range, the Smart Pack will notify both parties, potentially prompting a social interaction. What's more, the company has designed the products for seamless integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter, essentially making the Smart Pack the Foursquare check-in for the nicotine-addicted consumer. "Customers were always telling us how social Blu e-cigs were--they'd be in a bar or outside, and someone would see this blue light and what looks like smoke," says the Australian-born Healy, who before developing the unlikely smokeless cigarettes ran his first business manufacturing basketball gear in China. "Quite often it sparks a conversation--I actually had a doctor who kept emailing me cause it kept getting him laid. So we started to develop the social aspect of it." This is all sparking up as public smoking gets slowly extinguished as a social habit. Restaurants and bars around the globe have shooed second-hand fumes to the sidewalk, where cigarette-dependents stand cordoned off from the inside chatter, likely griping about the soaring cost of a pack. "More and more smokers are becoming lepers," Healy says. "We're not just selling electronic cigarettes--we're selling freedom." What is so innovative, although also troubling, about the Blue Cigs Smart Packs, is that they're finding a path to effectively remove some of the social stigma associated with smoking. Get a smart pack and instead of feeling isolated because you have to huddle outside by yourself to smoke, you can create an ad hoc social group wherever you are to meet people, feel popular, and relax. This may sound trivial, but it turns out that social stigma was one of the major factors that drove rapid reductions in smoking rates in the 1980s and 1990s. For example, a study co-authored by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler--whose work we cite a lot at the Institute--found that: The researchers saw major shifts in smoking trends during the study period. Smoking prevalence dropped significantly, from 45% in the 1970s to 13% in 2002. In the 1970s, smokers and non-smokers mixed equally in their social networks; by 2000, smokers were more likely to be on the outskirts of social networks and were more likely to be clustered together. "If you look back at 1971, smokers and non-smokers alike were at the centers of social networks," said co-author James H. Fowler, PhD, associate professor of political science at the University of California San Diego. "For people running companies and having parties, smoking was irrelevant. But during the '80s and '90s we saw a dramatic shift of smokers to the periphery of the social network. Contrary to what we might have thought in high school, smoking has become a supremely bad strategy for getting popular." Whether a person quit smoking was largely shaped by social pressures, and people tended to quit smoking in groups. If a spouse quit smoking, the other spouse was 67% less likely to smoke. If a friend quit, a person was 36% less likely to still light up. Siblings who quit made it 25% less likely that their brothers and sisters would still smoke. Beyond the specifics of the e-cigarette, though, there's a second element to the Smart Pack that I think will have more far reaching implications. As the creator of the Smart Pack told Fast Company: "I look at these social and dating networks, and I think, why don't you just walk up and talk to some people instead of having to do it online? Our products have a great ice-breaker quality that our customer loves: People see their Packs flashing, the logo on the front lights up, it's very visible," Healy says. "In a dating sense, your Pack is laying the groundwork for you. It's almost like a little wing man, from a guy's perspective. You don't have to go up to a girl with a cheesy pick-up line. It's doing all the talking for you... As far as I know, this is the first example of someone building geolocation-based social networking features into an everyday consumer good. Which is to say that the Smart Packs point toward a future where people are having ad-hoc interactions in physical space to discuss, well, whatever they might want to discuss. Want to share fresh basil, as we suggested a supermarket shopper might be asking in the middle of a store? As this artifact from the future depicts, it will be easy to find someone. And this, I think, represents an increasingly important domain for the evolution of social networking--where finding people in physical spaces who share our interests is just as easy and practical, and potentially far more meaningful, than connecting at a computer. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/if-this-blog-post-offends-you-i-have-insurance/ Worried that your edgy new advertising campaign might offend a lot more customers than it attracts? Worry no more. The CBC has a great story about a new concept for how businesses and people can protect themselves from saying stupid things: Social media insurance. The idea is that, before engaging in some heavy Facebooking, a company can hedge against the possibility that they'll say something stupid by paying an insurance company for protection. As the CBC describes it: Worried that your edgy new advertising campaign might offend a lot more customers than it attracts? Worry no more. The CBC has a great story about a new concept for how businesses and people can protect themselves from saying stupid things: Social media insurance. The idea is that, before engaging in some heavy Facebooking, a company can hedge against the possibility that they'll say something stupid by paying an insurance company for protection. As the CBC describes it: As employers increasingly use sites such as Facebook and Twitter to market products, communicate with customers and collect information, they leave themselves open to regulatory, legal and reputational risks. And where there's risk, there's the insurance sector. With the use of social media in the corporate world comes the potential for lawsuits regarding privacy issues, intellectual property infringement, and defamation. The liability risk stems from the fact that many companies don't appear to be establishing clear, written policies for social networking, said Eric Dolden, a Vancouver-based insurance lawyer with Dolden Wallace Folick LLP. " 'My boss is a big fat cow,' is a very common tweet," he said. "But people often stupidly then say where they work and who their boss is in the tweet." The legal ramifications can hurt both the finances and reputation of a business."We've seen people, in their personal capacities — the 'big-fat-cow boss' bringing a lawsuit against the individual," said Dolden. "And we've also seen the company have to take action because, from a reputational point of view, their brand is now suddenly gone viral, negatively." In other words, if some damaging comment goes viral, the insurance company pays out. According to the CBC, social media insurance products are still too new for there to be anything like standardized prices, but even though the market is incredibly new, one analyst forecasts that in five years, individuals will be able to buy personal social media insurance to protect against the possibility of embarrassing himself. The story is oddly reminiscent of a separate court case coming out of Spain, in which a group of 90 people have asserted that they have a right to be forgotten. By this, they mean that they believe that they have a right to not have old articles about embarrassing behaviors or poor choices appear in Google searches. One man who wants to be forgotten is plastic surgeon Hugo Guidotti. When Guidotti is searched, the first link that pops up on Google is for his clinic, complete with photos of a big-breasted woman and a muscular man to show off plastic surgery results. But the second link takes readers to a 1991 story in Spain’s popular El Pais newspaper about a woman who sued him for $7.2 million for a breast job that she said went bad. Guidotti, who was later acquitted, is fighting Google to take that link down. In combination, I think these articles point toward a set of broader questions about identity that stem from the rise of social media in the past few years, and that will become increasingly important over the next decade: How will we understand mistakes, indiscretions, and poorly constructed jokes? Will we be forgiving, or will we be harsh? Will we understand individual and corporate identities through whatever public proclamation or tweet was most controversial? Or will we have develop more forgiving approaches to understanding reputation and identity? And these questions really will become increasingly important - as excited parents post pictures and data about their young children, it's fair to say that an average child born today will have a permanent digital trail that follows her from being a newborn into the foreseeable future. At their core, both of these concepts--the right to be forgotten and social media insurance--imply that we will always assume the worst about people and organizations that make dumb statements on the Internet. Personally, I hope this won't always be the case--and my sense is that, as more and more of us make dumb comments in permanent digital space, the idea that someone said something stupid on Twitter will seem less and less extraordinary, and increasingly banal. There's a second point I want to highlight here, though, and it has the potential to be far more transformative: It's that both of these, particularly social media insurance, lead to a natural monentization of identity and reputation. In other words, you can't really insure your reputation unless you have an idea, in specific dollar amounts, of what your reputation might be worth. This is a very different way of thinking about reputation and identity-not as something abstract, but as something as exchangeable and financially meaningful as a credit score. It's here where I think we'll see some really interesting questions and transparencies emerge in the next decade. A good reputation could make a poor person seem rich; at the same time, a lot of money will, in an increasingly obvious way, make the need to build a reputation seem unnecessary. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-reprogrammable-chips-super-corn-transport-robot-pharmacists-indoor-location-bots-nfc/ Reprogrammable Chips Could Enable Instant Gadget Upgrades (source) #TechTYFThe Battle Royale for Super Corn (source) #FoodFuturesRoadmap to a Single European Transport Area: Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system ( Reprogrammable Chips Could Enable Instant Gadget Upgrades (source) #TechTYFThe Battle Royale for Super Corn (source) #FoodFuturesRoadmap to a Single European Transport Area: Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system (source) #AltEnergyRobots Take Over Hospital Pharmacy as Human Pill-Counting Talents Go To Waste (VIDEO) (source) #IFTFRobotsAugmented Reality: Nokia Indoor Positioning (source) #BlendedRalityAre You Following a Bot? (source) #Persuasion#BehaviorChangeNFC is about more than payments: in-store personal marketing, merchandising and loyalty (source) #FutureOfMoneyA Stuttgart Lab's Pioneering Effort to Cultivate Human Flesh (source) #TechTYFWill Robot Farmers Feed A Growing Population? (source) #FoodFutures #IFTFRobots What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 amazing use of biometrics, technology, and design to augment empathy. From his site:[img_assist|nid=3828|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.dmuren.com/empathy.htm|align=left|width=425|height=214] 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 amazing use of biometrics, technology, and design to augment empathy. From his site: "How can design bring empathy back in an increasingly disconnected world?  Modern war has lost traditional connection between soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home.  Shifting enlistment to the poorest members of the nation, increased media coverage of data, rather than individuals, and government censorship has lead to apathy.  The Beat Empathy Device records the heartbeat of an anonymous soldier, and physically taps it into the chest of a civilian.  They share excitement, fear, calm, and death.  The news becomes news about your soldier, not just some soldier.  Now, imagine if this was your drivers license or Government ID."As my colleague, Miriam Lueck Avery pointed out to me, this kind of Augmented Empathy approach will be especially important given these findings from a recent American Red Cross study:[img_assist|nid=3829|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.94aae335470e233f6cf911df43181aa0/?vgnextoid=801dbe9f0e64f210VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD|align=left|width=425|height=209] http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-avatars-solar-tar-sands-shock-wave-engine-sketchchair-robotics-biopunk-algae-virtu/ 3-D Avatars Could Put You in Two Places at Once (source) #TechTYF #FutureOfVideoGoogle Invests $168 Million Towards the World’s Largest Solar Power Tower Plant (source)  3-D Avatars Could Put You in Two Places at Once (source) #TechTYF #FutureOfVideoGoogle Invests $168 Million Towards the World’s Largest Solar Power Tower Plant (source) #AltEnergyTar Sands Mining Is Coming to Utah (source) #AltEnergyNew Shock Wave Engines Have the Potential to Triple Fuel Efficiency in Hybrid Vehicles (source) #TechTYFSketchChair: Furniture Designed by You (source) #FabFuturesUCSC first in system to offer robotics major (source) #IFTFRobotsBiopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life (source) #EverythingIsProgrammableAlgae could replace 17% of U.S. oil imports (source) #AltEnergyFirst Virtual Currency Commodity Trade Completed in Ven (source) #FutureOfMoneySolar Power Breakthrough Could Render Photovoltaic Cells Obsolete (source) #AltEnergy What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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 2011 Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Academic Resource Conference in San Francisco.  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 2011 Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Academic Resource Conference in San Francisco. During her keynote, Marina unpacked the idea of social production and went on to identify five themes that she forecasts will be crucial to the new ecosystem of learning we'll see emerging over the next decade:  Micro-learning: The availability of knowledge accessible in the real world and at any time creates the conditions for learning that is easy, lightweight, and done in context when a person really wants or needs to learn.Rich ecology of content and resources: We are seeing the democratization of content, with high quality resources being produced by individuals and groups outside of any institutional framework.Community as a driver: Learning is (and has always been) about participating in a conversation, with people that matter to us. Increasingly, schools will need to be asking the question: how can we create social settings that encourage the right kinds of conversations?Teachers as social designers: With content cheap and available everywhere, the role of the teacher as the orchestrator of learning communities comes to the fore.Non-grade rewards: We have known for some time that grades replace intrinsic rewards with extrinsic, taking pleasure and self-direction out of learning. Ideas for different models of reward are coming from unexpected places, such as gaming, where the concept of leveling up produces a new and engaging dynamic. While we are seeing many of these themes emerge in small ways, today’s students are caught between the old world where everything is done through institutions, and a new world of social production in which they are increasingly able to put together all the necessary resources to accomplish things outside of such structures. Marina’s talk included an appeal to educators in the audience to think seriously about how they can help students to bridge these two worlds over the next few years.  To hear the keynote in full and view the accompanying slides, visit the WASC conference site. Many thanks to our hosts at WASC for the opportunity to talk to such an engaged and influential audience.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-obesity-wind-farms-eye-tracking-printable-buildings-robotics-badge-batteries-frackin/ Tackling Obesity with Neuroscience and Clever Design (source) #Neuroscience #FoodFutures #ObesityGermany May Replace 17 Nuclear Power Reactors With Wind Power Farms  Tackling Obesity with Neuroscience and Clever Design (source) #Neuroscience #FoodFutures #ObesityGermany May Replace 17 Nuclear Power Reactors With Wind Power Farms (source) #AltEnergy #CarbonEconomyWorld Energy Outlook 2010 (source) #AltEnergy#CarbonEconomyEye-Tracking Technology for the Masses (source) #TechTYFThe Prospect for Safe Nuclear Power (source) #AltEnergyBuildings Made with a Printer (source) #IFTFRobots#TechTYFBoy Scouts of America's National Council Unveils New Robotics Badge (source) #IFTFRobotsBatteries that Recharge in Seconds (source) #AltEnergyStudy Shows Natural Gas Fracking is More Harmful Than Coal (source) #AltEnergyNew Study Finds Solar Panels Are "Contagious" (source) #Persuasion #AltEnergyAuburn, Maine, is giving an iPad2 to every kindergarten student (source) #kidstech What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-saudia-arabia-conservation-rights-after-death-clean-energy-uavs/ Saudi Arabia to Spend $100 Billion on Renewable Energy (source) #AltEnergySaving the Planet: Just Like Cleaning Our Room (source) #CarbonEconomy  Saudi Arabia to Spend $100 Billion on Renewable Energy (source) #AltEnergySaving the Planet: Just Like Cleaning Our Room (source) #CarbonEconomy #AltEnergyPublicity Rights After Death Are Severely Limiting Culture (source) #FutureOfPersonhoodU.S. Slips to Third in the Clean Energy Race (source) #AltEnergy #CarbonEconomyKinect makes UAV even more autonomous (source) #IFTFRobots What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/we-know-what-you-want/ As someone who spends most of his waking hours listening to Pandora, I haven't just accepted the idea that algorithms can get me what I want, but pretty much depend on them. Still, I'm only coming to terms with the idea that these sorts of algorithms will increasingly find their way into mundane physical spaces, like supermarkets, to shape our decisions in real-time. What if, ten years from now, walking into a supermarket meant getting a series of customized alerts and pitches designed to tempt you with your favorite comfort food? How would that change what we eat--and how healthy we are? As someone who spends most of his waking hours listening to Pandora, I haven't just accepted the idea that algorithms can get me what I want, but pretty much depend on them. Still, I'm only coming to terms with the idea that these sorts of algorithms will increasingly find their way into mundane physical spaces, like supermarkets, to shape our decisions in real-time. What if, ten years from now, walking into a supermarket meant getting a series of customized alerts and pitches designed to tempt you with your favorite comfort food? How would that change what we eat--and how healthy we are? It's actually not that far fetched a scenario. For example, a prototype service called the Automatic DJ got a fair amount of attention for being able to play a song tailored to your musical tastes simply by scanning your face. The mechanics are a bit techy--but, in effect, the system compares the picture it just took of your face to your Facebook profile, as well as to the service Hunch, and generates a recommendation about what you should listen to. It's a pretty cool concept--and well beyond what we're seeing among in-store food retailers--though it's not for lack of effort in the food world. Kraft, for example, recently unveiled a kiosk that makes recommendations about potential food purchases by scanning faces for age, gender and other demographic data. So, when he or she passes by the kiosk, the digital signage, equipped with a freaky sort of Anonymous Video Analytics technology, zooms in on his or her face and instantly determines gender and age group to guess what products might exert some allure (hopefully it won't scan your second chin and suggest half a South Beach Living Fiber Fit Bar ... nothing else). For somebody who looks like she might be a mom of school-age kids, it would presumably recommend Oscar Mayer wieners with a side of Mac 'n' Cheese. A twenty-something guy with bloodshot eyes might be directed to the Tombstone Pizza aisle. Looking beyond the specifics of the Kraft kiosk, though, the challenge is that we often make poor food choices precisely because they're available. This is the concept of triggers that my colleagues highlighted in last year's future of persuasion research--basically, it's the idea that little reminders and alerts turn latent desires into actions. In food, unfortunately, many of our latent desires are junk food--and at least part of the problem of obesity has to do with mindlessly following those desires. My guess is that any analysis of what most of us want to eat would show a preference for chocolate cookies and salty cheese puffs and so on--and very few voracious broccoli lovers. And so, it follows that we should expect to walk into supermarkets in a few years and be bombarded with offers for our unhealthy foods, customized to tempt us as much as humanly possible. This will be great for our moment-to-moment enjoyment of food--even if it makes us all fat and unhealthy in the long run. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-medical-data-wind-solar-milk-displays-water-energy-leaf-robots-climate-change-cy/ Thomas Goetz TED Talk: It is Time to Redesign Medical Data (source) #MedicalData #VisualizationUS Wind Energy Installations Collapsed in 2010 (source)  Thomas Goetz TED Talk: It is Time to Redesign Medical Data (source) #MedicalData #VisualizationUS Wind Energy Installations Collapsed in 2010 (source) #AltEnergyHamster Ball-Shaped Solarball Uses the Sun to Purify Water (source) #FutureOfWaterGenetically Modified Cows Produce "Human" Milk (source) #FoodFuturesDARPA’s 3D Holographic Display Technology (source) #TechTYF #Display #3DStanford researchers use river water and salty ocean water to generate electricity (source) #AltEnergyWhy It's Hard to Talk About Energy (source) #AltEnergyMIT scientist announces first "practical" artificial leaf (source) #AltEnergyQuadrocopter Ball Jugglers (source); What is happening here (source) #IFTFRobotsEuropean Union May Ban Gas Fueled Cars in Cities by 2050 (source) #AltEnergyHow Oil and Gas Companies are Adapting to Climate Change (source) #CarbonEconomy #FutureOfWater #AltEnergySimplifying cyborg circuitry using human blood (source) #TechTYF #Memristors What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-future-of-the-value-of-data/ Some of the more interesting questions that emerge from using advanced analytics and algorithms to drive our understandings of health surround a question that is likely to get a lot more contentious over the next decade: Who owns the right to new ideas, products, services and cures that emerge from the findings we gain from mining the collective? Some of the more interesting questions that emerge from using advanced analytics and algorithms to drive our understandings of health surround a question that is likely to get a lot more contentious over the next decade: Who owns the right to new ideas, products, services and cures that emerge from the findings we gain from mining the collective? That was the core premise of a forecast perspective I wrote for our HC2020 work looking at the future of health data rights. In it, I argued that in light of efforts to mine health data for meaningful research, we will come to see our data as a sort of personal asset--and expect that, in return for giving up personal health information, we'll be getting something in return, whether it be money right now or the feeling that data won't be misused. Since I wrote that forecast, a whole variety of new practices involving data privacy and control have emerged. At this year's World Economic Forum, as the Wallstreet Journal reports, "executives and academics gathered to discuss how to turn personal data into an "asset class" by giving people the right to manage and sell it on their own behalf." And this discussion isn't just theoretical. Startups like I-Allow and Personal are allowing people to essentially gain a share of the profits that company's currently receive for selling their data. These companies appear to be mostly focused on areas outside of health, but it's a clear signal of an effort to begin to see data as a form of value. In health, the signals seem to be pointing toward more commons-based, rather than profit-based, approaches to the value of data. For example, Alex Carmichael highlighted an emerging practice known as data donorship, in which everyday people donate their data to nonprofit and public health efforts. Instead of donating their money, in other words, people can advance health causes by donating their information to organizations that will use it to advance the public good. For starters, the idea of “data donorship” is starting to emerge. The Lance Armstrong Foundation used this term in one of their recent presentations. And a direct example of this idea is TuAnalyze; a new application launched as a partnership between TuDiabetes.org, a social network for people touched by diabetes, and Children's Hospital Boston. The application enables members to submit a key health metric known as Hemoglobin A1C as part of a massive data donation drive. The information submitted by members will be displayed in a map of the United States on the TuDiabetes network, with states lighting up according to the aggregate A1c data. Once a threshold of participants in each state is reached, the state's color reflects whether the average A1c submitted is within the range recommended by physicians. In a press release, Manny Hernandez of TuDiabetes said, "Analysis of the data collected could determine, for example, trends or a correlation between people's participation in health related social networking and level of diabetes management." The interest in data donations has risen to the point that, in a commentary on CNN.com, Nathan Wolfe of the Global Viral Initiative asked for data donations to fuel his group's efforts to find rare viruses. What we need now is data philanthropy, a term that emerged spontaneously during a Davos conversation with open-source visionary and World Economic Forum CTO Brian Behlendorf. We are calling on companies to provide data as part of their strategic philanthropy, and to work with recipients like ourselves to establish processes to safeguard and properly anonymize data. The story right now, in other words, is that nonprofits, startups and everyday people are experimenting with how to understand their data--health and otherwise--as a meaningful form of value. In the next decade, look for these debates to become more contentious, and the experiments to become more diverse. You can find a more detailed perspective on health data rights by checking out our HC2020 forecasts here. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-space-junk-3d-printing-biosensors-neuroscience-personhood-nuclear-darpa-resiliency/ NASA Working On Laser System To Zap and ‘Displace’ Space Junk (Source) #FreeSpace #TechTYF3D printing method advances electrically small antenna design (Source)  NASA Working On Laser System To Zap and ‘Displace’ Space Junk (Source) #FreeSpace #TechTYF3D printing method advances electrically small antenna design (Source) #FabFutures #TechTYFBiosensors On The Fast Track (Source) #TechTYF#Biomarkers #SensorsWearable Scanner Opens New Frontier in Neuroscience (Source) #NeuroscienceWhen Will We Have To Grant Artificial Intelligence Personhood? (Source) #FutureOfPersonhoodThe Nuclear Risk (Source) #AltEnergyDARPA Kicks off Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) Program (Source) #IFTFRobots #FabFuturesSee This Earthquake Ravaged Japanese Highway Rebuilt in Three Days (Source) #ResiliencyPrintable Insects and the Rise of the Architectural Superprinter (Source) #FabFuturesThe triumph of coal marketing (Source) #AltEnergy What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/engineering-health-care-hc2020-perspective/ Accelerating the Process of Change As this HC2020 perspective noted, “medical care is moving from its model as a healing art provided to isolated individuals by independent practitioners to one in which care is delivered by coordinated groups of providers … responsible for optimizing the health of defined populations of patients.”   Accelerating the Process of Change As this HC2020 perspective noted, “medical care is moving from its model as a healing art provided to isolated individuals by independent practitioners to one in which care is delivered by coordinated groups of providers … responsible for optimizing the health of defined populations of patients.”   In fact, this evolution is well underway.  March 22, 2011, marked the first anniversary of the landmark Affordable Care Act that includes multiple initiatives to promote systemic change.  But the existing health care system (or, more accurately, fragmented non-system) has tremendous inertia.  The continuing controversy over the ACA, which includes strident efforts to repeal it, is a clear indication that bringing about a fundamental transformation of health care will be a slow and often painful process.  But there are signs of hope. Consider, for example, the story of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) and The Direct Project.  The NHIN is an ambitious effort by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to create a comprehensive electronic network that will provide patients and providers with instant access to important health information wherever and whenever it is needed.  The development of NHIN began in 2005, and has proceeded slowly as developers grapple with thorny issues like picking the most appropriate technical standards, ensuring that stringent privacy protections are maintained and convincing practitioners to share their patients’ data with others.   In late 2009, in order to move forward more quickly, HHS decided to try a dramatically different approach: rather than following its normal practices, it agreed to try using a “lightweight” organic development process whose goal was to come up with a simple way for two parties to electronically exchange health information securely and privately.  Instead of developing a set of detailed technical specifications and then hiring a contractor to fulfill them, The Direct Project started by inviting all interested parties to participate in an open development process based around a public wiki, an open code repository and a blog. Initially, perhaps a dozen organizations were expected to join the effort, but more than 60 groups showed up and participated actively in the process – all on a volunteer basis.   In less than 12 months, The Direct Project has moved from initial discussion of goals to the development of a model to the creation of a set of prototypes to the launch of the first pilot implementations.  The involvement of so many external parties not only helped ensure that the standard that was chosen would be widely acceptable, but these same groups are now disposed to actually use the standard because of their investment in its development.  The capabilities provided by The Direct Project are not a substitute for the NHIN, but they now seem likely to be a simple first step that can provide an inviting on-ramp to the larger network.  The striking success of The Direct Project suggests that by finding innovative ways to accelerate the pace of change, we may actually reach the goal of creating a more effective, more affordable, more accountable health care system in our lifetimes. The HCC2020 Forecast Perspective on Re-Engingeering Health Care can be found here. And a more detailed account of The Direct Project can be found here.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/from-personalized-to-empathetic-technologies/ There's a lot to like about Eli Pariser's recent TED talk about the ways in which algorithms designed to personalize our experiences of digital information, in effect, put us into information bubbles. In effect, he argues that as sites like Google and Facebook customize and increasingly large percentage of the content we see, we'll naturally, and without our knowledge, be exposed to a progressively narrower range of new ideas and information. There's a lot to like about Eli Pariser's recent TED talk about the ways in which algorithms designed to personalize our experiences of digital information, in effect, put us into information bubbles. In effect, he argues that as sites like Google and Facebook customize an increasingly large percentage of the content we see, we'll naturally, and without our knowledge, be exposed to a progressively narrower range of new ideas and information. In the effort to make more of our content personalized, he argues, we'll lose much of our perspective about the lives and views of others and wind up in increasingly siloed and narrow bubbles. As Wired describes his argument*: Google’s algorithm considers 57 different elements in catering its search results for you, and as a result, “there is no standard Google search anymore,” said Pariser, who is writing a book on the political and social effects of web personalization. ‘What we’re seeing is a passing of the torch from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones,’ Pariser says. Being exposed to different viewpoints and information is good for us, because it speaks to our various selves and competing interests. But too much personalization threatens to make us one-dimensional. He pointed to research on Netflix queues that examined how some films move quickly to the top of a user’s queue while others languish at the bottom of the list, never to be viewed... The Netflix queue exposes an ethics struggle between our more impulsive selves and the better selves we strive to be, the research showed. “We all want to be someone who has watched Rashomon,” Pariser said, “but right now we want to watch Ace Ventura for the fourth time.” What's striking about this example is how similar it is to other sorts of behavior change problems. In the health and food world, for example, one of the reasons people have trouble eating healthy food is that while we might generally wish to be salad eaters, a cheeseburger and fries sound better for dinner tonight. Not only does the cheeseburger sound a lot better to you personally, it is, at the same time, a lot harder to understand why the guy at the table next to you can't stop sucking down junk food and eat something healthier, for once. In other words, there's the gap that Pariser pointed to, between who we are and who we hope to be. At the Institute, we've considered a bunch of different visualization tools and persuasive methods that could help shrink the time between our present and future selves. But there's a growing and equally important gap between how we understand our own lives and experiences, and how we understand the experiences of others. Which brings me to a very different, but increasingly important type of technology for the next decade: Tools that give us the ability to empathize with each other's situations. Probably the most well-known example of this sort of empathetic technology comes from MIT's Age Lab, which helps people experience the future effects of aging. AGNES, or the Age Gain Now Sympathy System, is a full-body suit that physically strains the body of the wearer to give that person the brief physical experience of being decades older. As an : More stretchy bands restrict my arm movements. There are knee pads and Velcro wrist braces; rubber gloves to lessen sensation in my fingers; yellow goggles to limit my depth perception. Everything on the suit is carefully calibrated to mimic the loss of function that happens as we age. Finally, Puleo fits me into a hard hat and attaches yet more things to that. And that's when this all starts to feel like a bad idea. It has become work simply to stand up straight. And to walk? Puleo has me in Crocs sandals, with bits of rubber foam taped to the bottom. I haven't exactly lost my balance, but it feels like I easily could. "The act of having to balance makes you more fatigued, makes you more tired," she says. The idea behind the AGNES suit is that, by experiencing the effects of aging, product and service designers will be better able to understand and fill the needs of older people. But I think there's a bigger, more important idea behind something like AGNES, which is that new technologies are enabling us to simulate others' experiences in more meaningful and emotional ways. This concept will be an incredibly valuable tool, not simply for experiencing the effects of aging, but from doing everything from helping create more effective exercise plans to popping our information bubbles. Imagine, for instance, a tool that lets you simulate the search and information experiences of someone half way around the world. I would love, say, to be able to plug into the news reading habits of a Chinese businessman and the Google bubble of a teenager from Sao Paolo. In a world of global trade, where each of us has an increasingly personalized set of tools for processing the world, the ability to simulate the experiences of others will be increasingly valuable. My broader point here is that while the last decade's innovations focused on finding ways to personalize the world to an individual's needs. And while these sorts of innovations won't go away, many of the next decade's innovations will stem, instead, from building empathy. Whether its simulating the physical experiences of others to innovate new products or engaging with others' information layers to be able to work together more effectively, one of the big challenges--and opportunities--of the next decade will be to turn personalization tools that seem to divide us into tools that help us break down barriers. * Eli Pariser's TED talk was posted onto the TED site--long enough for me to download and listen to his talk, but not long enough for it to survive me writing about it. The full talk will be available in April. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-battery-robots-3d-printing-kidney-biofuel-led-wave-disk-phase-change-memory/ New Sumitomo Electric Battery 90% Cheaper Than Lithium Ion (Source) #AltEnergyOur depressing robot overlords (Source) #IFTFRobotsEADS's Airbike is a 3D-printed nylon bicycle, actually looks rather decent (Source New Sumitomo Electric Battery 90% Cheaper Than Lithium Ion (Source) #AltEnergyOur depressing robot overlords (Source) #IFTFRobotsEADS's Airbike is a 3D-printed nylon bicycle, actually looks rather decent (Source) #FabFuturesNew Kidney 'Printed' On TED Stage (Source) #FabFuturesU.S. Department of Energy Announces New Biofuel for the Replacement of Gasoline (Source) #AltEnergyBridgelux Cuts LED Costs by 75% With Revolutionary Silicon-Based Technology (Source) #AltEnergyThe Wave Disk Generator revolutionizes auto efficiency at lower vehicle cost (Source) #AltEnergy #TechTYFMemory breakthrough could lead to weeks between mobile recharges (Source) #PhaseChangeMemory #TechTYF What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-right-to-local-food-risks/ Local food activism typically involves demanding healthier food as part of local services, attempting to create healthier, more connected local food supply chains, or, at times, both. Now, it apparently also involves the right to eat foods that pose a risk. Local food activism typically involves demanding healthier food as part of local services, attempting to create healthier, more connected local food supply chains, or, at times, both. Now, it apparently also involves the right to eat foods that pose a risk. Or, at least that seems to be the underlying contention of a group of farmers in Sedgewick Maine, which passed a "food sovereignty law" which appears to grant its citizens the right to buy and sell raw milk, slaughter chickens on each other's property, and otherwise sell food that may not be in line with local health regulations. In effect, the ordinance : proposed that "Sedgwick citizens possess the right to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing." These would include raw milk and other dairy products and locally slaughtered meats, among other items. This isn't just a declaration of preference. The proposed warrant added, "It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance." In other words, no state licensing requirements prohibiting certain farms from selling dairy products or producing their own chickens for sale to other citizens in the town. What about potential legal liability and state or federal inspections? It's all up to the seller and buyer to negotiate. "Patrons purchasing food for home consumption may enter into private agreements with those producers or processors of local foods to waive any liability for the consumption of that food. Producers or processors of local foods shall be exempt from licensure and inspection requirements for that food as long as those agreements are in effect." Not being a lawyer, I can't speak much to how legal an ordinance like Sedgewick's might be--though it certainly sounds like something that won't hold up under scrutiny. But this idea--that "patrons…may enter into private agreements…and waive any liability" around food seems to be rapidly emerging as a new form of local food consumption, even if, unlike in Sedgewick, it hasn't been linked to activism. In Washington D.C., for example, people can go to a "taco speakeasy," which is really just someone's home, and buy mole in a sort of gray market transaction. In San Francisco, a cookie seller was recently put out of business by the Department of Health for selling cookies from a string out of her window. Also in San Francisco, the San Francisco Underground Food Market, which sells foraged and home-produced foods, has turned itself into a club to avoid legal challenges. At first glance, this trend is a bit hard to make sense of. After all, most of us like the fact that we can, with a pretty high degree of confidence, bite into an apple without worrying about food poisoning. What's notable about all of these examples, though, is that they involve extremely small scale actors finding themselves caught up in regulations aimed at large scale food makers. Put differently, these are people whose small scale exchanges are much closer, emotionally and socially, to having dinner with a friend than they are to anything involving multi-billion dollar business. And if you get food poisoning at your friend's house… well, you probably won't go back again for dinner. Regulations, in that context, would really be secondary to personal trust. My broader point here is that more and more people seek to use food as a means to connect and build local communities, we're also likely to see more examples of places where expectations for local control are out of whack with a regulatory system built for global trade. In other words, don't be surprised if you see a lot more tiny towns like Sedgewick. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/makerbot-day-5-part-12-its-alive-sort-of/ I have no doubt that February 26 will go down in history as a momentous day. On Saturday morning, after an evening spent fine tuning the current of my Thing-O-Matic's motors, calibrating the PID (don't ask) of the extruder to stabilize the temperature so that the plastic would be dispensed in a controlled, even stream instead of like toothpaste out of an almost-cashed out tube, and generally hoping that the next step was the last hurdle before I could proclaim my MakerBot alive. I have no doubt that February 26 will go down in history as a momentous day. On Saturday morning, after an evening spent fine tuning the current of my Thing-O-Matic's motors, calibrating the PID (don't ask) of the extruder to stabilize the temperature so that the plastic would be dispensed in a controlled, even stream instead of like toothpaste out of an almost-cashed out tube, and generally hoping that the next step was the last hurdle before I could proclaim my MakerBot alive. (Turns out I might have jumped the gun when I posted this: Much like a dismembered frog leg twitches when an electric current is applied, TOM's first signs of functionality were more a taunting facsimile of life than a true instance of it). Waking up on Saturday morning, I was resolved that this would be the day that I got it working. This would be the day that I became a personal fabricating laboratory. And at approximately 9:30 am on February 26, 2011, I entered the Future when I printed this: Proud of finally reaching the end of my month-long Odyssey, I fired off an email to my Dad so that I could share my historic accomplishment with him. Following up seconds later with a phone call, I implored my parents to check their email. They knew from the tone of my voice that something amazing had happened -- a promotion, perhaps? An offer to turn my essay-length strained analogy of cricket as a model for surviving the 21st century into a book? Whatever it was, it was big: Dad: Opening up the email... Me: You are going to LOVE this. *extended pause* Me: You there? Dad: Yeah. So why did you send me a picture of butter? *click* Yes, I hung up on him. Although in retrospect there is no way he could have known that, contrary to appearances, I had sent him a calibration block that demonstrated that my TOM was flawlessly constructed, his remark stung. Most surprising to me, however, was what happened next. After all this time, I had finally unlocked the mechanical capabilities of the TOM, and was now able to start into what everyone kept telling me was the ultimate payoff for this work - I could print whatever I wanted! Sitting in my living room on Saturday, it dawned on me that I had no idea what exactly it was that I wanted. (Note, I'm talking about what I wanted out of the Makerbot. As nice as it would have been, I wasn't expecting the machine to figure out my life's purpose for me. Little did I know that it *would*. No, it actually didn't.) Although I had started to educate myself on how to create and refine objects in Google SketchUp. I was still extremely far from being able to produce anything in the digital that actually resembled its physical equivalent. Moreover, even when putting aside my CAD (computer aided design) limitations, trying to think of something useful, interesting, or even plain cool completely stumped me.  And so, I am shamed to admit that after finally besting my nemesis, I let the TOM sit unused for almost a full 24 hours. Which actually led to some pretty awkward conversations, as the people who followed my odyssey messaged me to ask, "so what have you made?" I wished that I had an answer, but I was stuck in this odd zone between technical capability, personal design limitations, and the strong feeling that the first thing I printed should be something of my own creation. In my next post I'll explore what I finally came up with, and will share some pictures of the various things I have ended up printing! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/us-government-exploring-health-and-identity-information-ecologies/ It's satisfying to see that since IFTF's recently released 2008-2009 research: Health and Health Care 2020 Perspective Report, containing my own short discussions of Health and Identity Information Ecologies, that many of these early themes are extended and expanded in two recent reports and policy recommendations from President Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST): It's satisfying to see that since IFTF's recently released 2008-2009 research: Health and Health Care 2020 Perspective Report, containing my own short discussions of Health and Identity Information Ecologies, that many of these early themes are extended and expanded in two recent reports and policy recommendations from President Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST): Realizing the Full Potential of Health Information Technology [.pdf] and National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace [.pdf] Both reports are quite impressive works for both their scope and depth on these complex interlocking topics. Highly recommended to Health IT researchers and planners. To view the full Health and Health Care 2020 Perspective Report, please go here. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/high-resolution-tools-for-understanding-well-being-ecosystems/ Popular Science has a great article examining the future of understanding health ecosystems. As the story's author Virginia Hughes describes it, scientists are now beginning to map out the bacteria--good and bad--that cluster on different people in different parts of the body, and are learning to think of an individual's health state as part of a broader relationship with bacteria. You are a health ecosystem, in other words. Popular Science has a great article examining the future of understanding health ecosystems. As the story's author Virginia Hughes describes it, scientists are now beginning to map out the bacteria--good and bad--that cluster on different people in different parts of the body, and are learning to think of an individual's health state as part of a broader relationship with bacteria. You are a health ecosystem, in other words. Hughes' article focuses largely on research coming out of the NIH's Human Microbiome project, a human genome type project designed as "an effort to characterize the thousands of species of microbes that live on or in us." Hughes article, which is really worth reading in full, traces this story through a child named Jake who has asthma and eczema, and uses this as a lens for exploring some of the emerging research in human-microbe ecosystems. Some 34.1 million Americans suffer from asthma, and up to 50 million have seasonal allergies. “In the last three decades, all of these allergic disorders—asthma, eczema, hay fever—they’ve all tripled,” [Dr.] Segre says. With that short of a time frame, the culprit can’t be simply changes in our own genome. “So it must be something about the gene-environment interaction. And I now believe that that’s modulated by the body’s bacteria.” Hughes points to several other key shifts to thinking of people as ecosystems. Among them: With microbial ecosystems, the problem (often) isn't a particularly malicious bacteria; the problem may be an imbalance.Regarding skin as an ecosystem, and ecosystems in general, she writes: "The skin is an ecosystem. Like any other ecosystem, it harbors permanent residents and also migrant species that flock to a few hotspots during certain seasons. Those fluctuations powerfully influence how the skin works."And critically, bacteria near each other are "highly dependent on each other for survival" as a genetics researcher at the University of Maryland told Hughes. Put differently, these bacteria depend on each other, in much the same way that we depend on their balance for our health. I was particularly struck by Hughes' article in light of a couple aspects of our research at IFTF including our research this year into the future of ecosystems of well-being as well as our interest in high resolution futures. One of the most interesting features of high-resolution tools is the ways in which they can cross scales. For example, the concept of the human microbiome - of measuring and understanding not just our genes but the genes of the bacteria on our bodies - involves incredibly high-resolution tools for understanding individual health. At the same time, many of these same tools are being to use in projects like the bio weathermap and disease weather map aimed at regularly sampling and sequencing bacterial and virus samples from all over the world to build a global map. The thinking is that this regular sampling could offer us a much better early warning system about the potential for a pandemic to hit a specific place. And, of course, we - people - find ourselves trying to navigate and make sense of health and well-being somewhere in between the bacteria on our bodies and the large-scale environments that surround us. Navigating this space means not just thinking about bacterial systems--at large or small scales--but thinking about social systems, food systems and all sorts of other factors that influence how we understand and seek out health and well-being. Like microbial ecosystems, in other words, we depend on each other for health and well-being. We face long-term challenges and are exposed, seemingly fleetingly, to influences that can reshape our health. It wouldn't be possible to measure all of the potential connections in our health ecosystems. But fortunately, I don't think that's the challenge. Rather, the challenge is to begin to use these high-resolution tools to make some manageable sense of the different connections that influence health and well-being, while also recognizing that we won't be able to understand all of them. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-adaptive-power-altenergy-techtyf-persuasion-iftfrobots-kidstech/ Beijing to pinpoint and trail citizens via cellphone (Source) #AdaptivePowerARPA-E: How the Government Agency With a Name Out of Lost Could "Win the Future" and Save Humanity (Source) #AltEnergyGood Issue 022: The Energy Issue ( Beijing to pinpoint and trail citizens via cellphone (Source) #AdaptivePowerARPA-E: How the Government Agency With a Name Out of Lost Could "Win the Future" and Save Humanity (Source) #AltEnergyGood Issue 022: The Energy Issue (Source) #AltEnergyInstant Wi-Fi Cloud of Cyborg Fauna (Source) #TechTYFThis New Camera Makes You Look Thin and Whitens Your Teeth (Source) #PersuasionIs the Navy Trying to Start the Robot Apocalypse? (Source) #IFTFRobotsDoing your astronomy homework with Minecraft models (Source) #KidsTech What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/neurocentric-health-moving-into-the-mainstream/ In our recent research, the Health Horizons program has been tracking the continuing maturity of what we call neurocentric health--the idea that the brain is becoming the focal point of a wide range of medical research and a whole host of new diagnostic and treatment tools. Taking a 10-year view, these big shifts in medical paradigms help guide long-term thinking and planning, including, for example, a shift in how we think about the concept of normality.   In our recent research, the Health Horizons program has been tracking the continuing maturity of what we call neurocentric health--the idea that the brain is becoming the focal point of a wide range of medical research and a whole host of new diagnostic and treatment tools. Taking a 10-year view, these big shifts in medical paradigms help guide long-term thinking and planning, including, for example, a shift in how we think about the concept of normality.  Guidelines for height/weight ratios, age/growth curves for kids, even bell curves for cholesterol and blood pressure gives doctors and their patients a way to map individual data onto larger population figures, and then to initiate behavioral, nutritional, or clinical strategies to bring one's "vitals" more in line with the norm.  Now, with advanced neuroimaging tools and a large database of brain data, neuroscientists are creating maps of normal brains, including developmental milestones and even measuring maturity levels.  Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have created just such a developmental roadmap of normal maturity on the brain. Says Bradley Schlaggar, a lead researcher on the project, "We can say, ‘This is the scan of somebody who has a maturity index of 0.8,’ and have a pretty good idea that they are in a normal distribution for their chronological age.” These neurocentric metrics for mental and emotional development will become part of the way identities are formed and regulated, creating whole new ways to understand ourselves, predict future development, and act accordingly on this information.  Issues like new baselines for normality, shifts in brain-based identity markers, and the creation of new risk pools and metrics are very important for how we think about who we are and who we want to be. A neurocentric health perspective will help us understand these profound developments, and to steer them in directions that benefit us medically and socially.  You can read the HC2020 Forecast Perspective on Neurocentric Health here. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/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. 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.The relationship economy is distinct from the information economy, knowledge economy, and attention economy and here are the major forces that are driving it, according to Jerry: See the overview of his thesis in this Prezi.  Jump forward to his conclusion?:  "We're re-integrating commerce and society.  It'll be great...and painful." http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/religious-nudges-sabbath-app/  At sundown this Friday, March 4 the 2011 US National Day of Unplugging will begin (powered by Reboot).   Think slow, think sabbath (Abraham Heschel is my favorite thinker on the Sabbath, with his discussion of sanctified time).  At sundown this Friday, March 4 the 2011 US National Day of Unplugging will begin (powered by Reboot).   Think slow, think sabbath (Abraham Heschel is my favorite thinker on the Sabbath, with his discussion of sanctified time).To nudge themselves into changing their behavior, some participants will purchase a sleeping bag for their phone. Others may use the recently-released Sabbath Manifesto app in order to help them to live in tune with the principles of this effort: 1.  Avoid technology2.  Connect with loved ones.  3.  Nurture your health4.  Get outside5.  Avoid commerce6.  Light candles7.  Drink wine8.  Eat bread9.  Find silence10.  Give backAs IFTF continues to explore the balance of slow and fast in our lives at our upcoming Ten-Year Forecast conference, we will continue watching this space.  For more on the Sabbath Manifesto app, see NYT article:  "An App That Reminds You to Unplug."__________________________________________________Thanks to Jason Tester for the link! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-language-retail-fabfutures-altenergy-tv-water-techtyf-medicine-noble-gases-collab/ The Future Tense (Source) #FutureOfLanguage Consumers Hold On to Products Longer (Source) #FutureOfRetailKinect as 3D scanner: Fabricate Yourself (Source) The Future Tense (Source) #FutureOfLanguage Consumers Hold On to Products Longer (Source) #FutureOfRetailKinect as 3D scanner: Fabricate Yourself (Source) #FabFutures3D printing with mashed potatoes (Source) #FabFuturesGrid issue taking wind out of energy plan's sails (Source) #AltEnergyIs Piracy is the Future of TV (Source) #FutureOfTVGreenland Lost More Than a France-Sized Area of Ice Last Year (Source) #FutureOfWaterEverything You Need to Know About Near Field Communication (Source) #TechTYFDarpa’s 5 Radical Plans for Military Medicine (Source) #FutureOfMedicineGlobal Helium supply to run out in 30 years (Source) #FutureOfNobleGasesCollaborative Consumption and the Future of Food Experiments (Source) #CollaborativeConsumption What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/collaborative-consumption-and-the-future-of-food-experiments/ A couple months ago, I happened upon a flier for something called Micro Beekeeping. The premise of micro beekeeping is pretty simple - the proprietor, Dane Uhler, will visit your backyard or garden, set up and maintain beehives, and split the honey with whoever volunteers their land in exchange for a fee and some of the honey. A couple months ago, I happened upon a flier for something called Micro Beekeeping. The premise of micro beekeeping is pretty simple - the proprietor, Dane Uhler, will visit your backyard or garden, set up and maintain beehives, and split the honey with whoever volunteers their land in exchange for a fee and some of the honey. It's a great example of the concept of collaborative consumption that my colleague Anna Davies wrote about several months ago--an increasingly common practice that will be critical in shaping the future of food. The exchange in micro beekeeping offers one example of why collaborative consumption in food makes sense. Bees are useful to have around a garden, in the sense that they make gardens more productive and healthier, but are not so much fun if you don't know how to handle bees and they sting you. And in a place like Santa Barbara, where Uhler is based, creating a centralized honey operation would require space and money. In other words, everyone wins. But what's interesting and notable is that, at least as Uhler is positioning it, these sorts of efficiency wins are just one part of the value of the arrangement: It is my vision to bring the trade of Beekeeping away from the industrialized and mass produced processes wherein it resides, and bring it back to people’s gardens where it belongs. It’s simple: mass producing and commercializing any one natural product or species results in the compromise of its health and its eventual destruction. This desire, to move beyond industrialized food standards toward intentionally nonstandardized foods is surprisingly reminiscent of a recently funded Kickstarter project I highlighted a few months back called the Mystery Brewing Company. Mystery Brewing, which pays to use spare capacities at established breweries, pitched its Kickstarter project by saying: It's hard to create a consistent product when you're changing breweries. Yeast is an amazing organism that brings us the wonder that is great beer, but it is fickle. It reacts differently in different environments (even the shape and size of a fermenter can alter flavor profiles), but that's part of the art - and fun - of making beer. The fact is, no two batches of beer are ever identical, and I intend to capitalize on that. This I promise: No two batches of my beer will ever be the same. There will be no set product line. Instead, I’ll have a constantly-rotating selection of beers. Think of it as a full line-up of seasonals. If a beer is popular? Certainly, I’ll make it again - but I’ll tweak it. I’ll always be asking myself, “How can I make this beer even better than it was before?” And, it seems, consumers are increasingly looking to eat more unusual, novel foods. Betelnut, a San Francisco restaurant is looking to capitalize on the demand for new foods and emerging collaborative consumption practices by offering a Groupon style promotion for a secret menu that features menu items like fish head tamarind curry and crispy chicken livers with black pepper sauce. Here, the idea is a bit different - a regular menu of fish heads and chicken livers is not really the path to running a successful restaurant, but by aggregating and timing the demands of a bunch of super adventurous eaters, Betelnut's chefs, and their patrons, get to experiment much more creatively than in the past. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-fab-futures-risk-alt-energy-packaging-adaptive-power-coal-wind/ 3D-Printed Skin Could Revolutionize Treatment for Burn Victims (Source) #FabFuturesYou will commit a crime in the future (Source) #RiskAssessmentDirty Coal, Clean Future (Source)  3D-Printed Skin Could Revolutionize Treatment for Burn Victims (Source) #FabFuturesYou will commit a crime in the future (Source) #RiskAssessmentDirty Coal, Clean Future (Source) #AltEnergyA Technology for Directly Fabricating 3D Living Tissue (Source) #FabFuturesHeinz to Use Plant-Based Bottles Made by Coca-Cola (Source) #FutureOfPackagingReport: Army deployed "psy-ops" on US Senators, for more war funding and troops (Source) #AdaptivePowerVestas and WindPlus to Deploy Unique Floating Wind Turbines (Source) #AltEnergy What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-rise-of-the-therapeutic-city-hc2020-perspective/ Therapeutic City Therapeutic City The seed for this forecast perspective was planted the day my daughter Stella was born in February 2008. After the delivery, I put my wife and baby to bed for a much-needed rest and wandered down to the cafeteria at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Over a revolting cheeseburger and some stale coffee, I sat fascinated listening to the conversation at the table I shared - a deeply experienced master cardiac surgeon in a post-op debriefing with a team of doctors visiting from, judging by their accents, Eastern Europe. Having spent so much of my adult life thinking about how innovation and learning happens in technology clusters, I was intrigued by the intense face-to-face exchange of medical and scientific knowledge I was witnessing. Knowing that like our own obstetrician, these people were all practitioners as well as researchers and educators, I became fascinated by the dynamics of life in a major urban research hospital. The "therapeutic cities" idea was born the same day as my daughter. This framework has brought some new resources to my attention, that are worth sharing: Andy Richards, a self-described "biotech addict" and serial entrepreneur in the life sciences cluster around Cambridge Universityin England, gave a great talk [http://vimeo.com/16461935] at the Cambridge Phenomenon conference last fall (at which I also spoke on the future of research parks). It offers a great view of the intersections between the information technology sector and life sciences sector.I've had a rich email dialogue with William Hoffman, founder of the Minnesota Biomedical and Bioscience Network who has collected some excellent data on biomedical clusters [http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v7/n2/fig_tab/7400633_f1.html] and co-authored a book on stem cell research. One media report of his work writes, quite succinctly, "Clustering is becoming more prevalent in the biosciences, despite concerns over the sustainability and economic effectiveness of science parks and hubs."More generally, Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser's new book "Triumph of the City" is worth a read if you want to understand whycities are so important to innovation, and the ways that bringing people together accelerates the development of new ideas and technologies. The Rise of the Therapeutic City perspective report can be found here. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/makerbot-day-4-it-takes-a-world-to-make-a-makerbot/ You may have noticed that, four posts into this series exploring life with a MakerBot, I've yet to actually print anything with my Thing-O-Matic. To make a long story short, despite my best efforts to resolve the problem on my own - which primarily consisted of testing the connections between the Arduino MEGA and the TOM's motherboard (the combined brain of the bot, these are responsible for processing the 3D model input and issuing commands to the other electronics in the bot), it turned out that the problem was beyond my capacity to fix. You may have noticed that, four posts into this series exploring life with a MakerBot, I've yet to actually print anything with my Thing-O-Matic. To make a long story short, despite my best efforts to resolve the problem on my own - which primarily consisted of testing the connections between the Arduino MEGA and the TOM's motherboard (the combined brain of the bot, these are responsible for processing the 3D model input and issuing commands to the other electronics in the bot), it turned out that the problem was beyond my capacity to fix. Which is not to say that someone more proficient with a digital multimeter - a device used to measure voltage, current and resistance - couldn't have figured things out. Rather, I simply reached the limits of my technical capacity for identifying and fixing what was wrong with my printer's electronic brain. So, while I wait for my replacement board to make its way from NYC to Palo Alto ... I have long been fascinated with getting a sense of what things I can do in life from first principles, entirely on my own. I don't mean this in a survivalist sense - although there was the time when I downloaded, printed, and bound the SAS' survival handbook just in case armageddon struck and I was left to fend for myself. Left to my own devices, I was sure that this manual would empower me to become if not a supreme overlord, then at least let me set up a pretty sweet fiefdom. Who else would know how to distill water using only a tarp, or how to skin a squirrel? Unfortunately my wife in her shortsighted wisdom decided that the book was "taking up too much space" on our bookshelf (untrue), and so when disaster hits I will be left scrounging for discarded squirrel meat with the rest of you suckers. But I digress. When I think about self sufficiency, I am usually thinking more about the technologies I interact with on a day to day basis, and how many of their constitutive parts I could create were I left to my own devices. The answer, unsurprisingly, is not a whole lot. When I look at my computer, for example, I realize how far removed my interactions with this technology is from its ultimate production. Unlike a hammer, which I think I could perhaps fashion out of some twine and a large rock, from the screen to the circuitry to the electricity that brings it to life, for the most part the personal utility of my computer is entirely down to the hard work and ingenuity of others.  Which brings us to the Thing-O-Matic. The promise of 3D printing technology is that it empowers the individual to create things that have until now required resources and capital that were only feasible for corporations or the eccentric rich. In essence, it allows me to create some pretty fantastic hammers. To some degree this is true, but my experience with the circuit board got me thinking reductively about how close the TOM brings me to my survivalist ideal.  And, of course, the truth is that while the TOM does unlock a wide array of capacities for the individual user, these capacities are enmeshed within a network of enabling people, communities, and technologies. So, yes, I have painstakingly assembled a machine that (still theoretically) allows me to churn out physical goods that are more representative of my actual needs in life. And, what I wish to do in theory, others have done in practice -- to me the classic case is Thingiverse user laszlo. Laszlo's blender broke, and instead of having to track down replacement parts or risk having to throw it away and then buy a new one, Laszlo created a model of the broken part and printed out the replacement (for a more complete account of this awesome story, check out his blog). That said, the network of goods and knowledge that Laszlo had to harness in order to get to the point where he could fix his own blender is, to me, nothing short of astonishing. Going through the parts list for the Thing-O-Matic, as well as the things I had to buy in order to put together the MakerBot (solder, wire strippers, etc.), I counted six different visibly marked country of origin stamps. And this was only what I could readily identify. I have no doubt that if I looked for the providence of the other 50-odd parts of the TOM, this list of origin countries would grow. Furthermore, the community of people who participate in the forum discussions and help threads on the MakerBot wiki, and who provide modifiable models on Thingiverse, represent a truly global source of intellectual capital. Which is to say ... wait for it ... it takes a world to make a MakerBot.  This may sound pretty naive, but I think it is absolutely fascinating that the advent of personal fabrication - technology that has the potential to change our relationship to personal goods - is only possible thanks to the mobilization of a number of extraordinarily complicated global manufacturing, supply and support chains.  A MakerBot tour around the world. The Thing-O-Mati timing belts move the build platform, and are from the United Kingdom. The Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software, was designed in Italy, but likely assembled elsewhere. Like many of the parts, the self-aligning bearings are built in China. The power resistors, from Mexico, are responsible for heating the nozzle that distributes the melted plastic. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/three-lessons-from-genetics-for-thinking-about-the-future/ There have been a lot of great articles looking back at the history of genetic sequencing to mark the ten-year anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome. The path of genetics research has been decidedly, unexpectedly slow--a frustratingly process that also offers some great lessons for thinking about the future. There have been a lot of great articles looking back at the history of genetic sequencing to mark the ten-year anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome. The path of genetics research has been decidedly, unexpectedly slow--a frustratingly process that also offers some great lessons for thinking about the future. Back when the genome was first completed, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair described it as "“breakthrough that takes humankind across a frontier and into a new era” while the CEO of a pharmaceutical maker said that by now, we would look back on 1999 "and think of medicine as being in the dark ages." So here we are ten years later: sequencing genes has gotten ridiculously cheap, but there's little real understanding of what all that data mean, or how to use it. Family history still remains a better gauge of heart disease than genetics, for example. Not surprisingly, it's hard to find breathless coverage of the potential of genetics--at best, you can find guarded optimism that we'll be able to wring something useful out of our genes. The first lesson, I think, is that the last ten years of genetics is a reminder of the need to think about multiple possibilities at once. Dozens of startup biotech companies--all aimed at leveraging genetic data to transform pharmaceuticals--were funded and died over the course of the past decade, because they were operating on the seemingly safe assumption that one of the most astounding achievements in basic science research would naturally lead to some great business opportunities. The reality is that precious few have materialized in the past decade. In other words, change--growth--isn't linear. A field like genetics may seem promising--but counting on that promise, in any field, is tenuous. But while tangible, practical advances from genetics have yet to materialize, the next decade--given the disappointment of the first decade of the whole genome--holds a surprising amount of promise. I've highlighted one example of that potential--linking social and environmental datasets to our genes. Essentially, research over the past decade has shown that our biological selves are influenced, to a surprising extent, by the context that surrounds us. The challenge, unfortunately, is that this influence can take place over huge chunks of time--tens of thousands of years, potentially--and, of course, we don't really have the ability to think over such long stretches of time. And this, I think, is the second lesson from genetics: There's a lot of potential value in looking at relationships between fields. Genetics would seem, at first glance, to be a purely biological pursuit. But what we're finding is that a good chunk of what we can learn from genetics isn't by studying individual genes, or even one individual. The potential knowledge, and applications, of genetics are in finding links between seemingly distinct fields of knowledge, and my sense is that sensing those potential connections will be critical in the coming decade. Of course, it's one thing to say there are connections between genes and social and environmental factors, and it's another thing to understand them. A recently declassified report from the U.S. Department of Defense, for example, pointed out that given the unclear but significant effects of the environment on our genes, we should expect "inaccurate assessments of risks" which will take "decade of careful research" to turn into more reliable understandings. In other words, we won't be able to comprehensively measure the interactions between genes and other factors for quite some time--so we should just resign ourselves to the idea that we'll be getting things wrong for a while, if we're lucky. If we're unlucky, we should plan on being wrong for quite a bit longer. And this is the third lesson of genetics for thinking about the future: Humility. It's not hard to find different efforts to predict the future, particularly things like who will get sick, what strain of flu will strike, and other sorts of health issues. What our genes show us is that even something as seemingly fundamental as DNA isn't particularly predictive. At best, DNA gives us a tool for anticipating what is likely. And while that might sound disappointing, I think it's also the best we an hope for. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-turing-test-regenerative-medicine-pakistan-coal-spy-plane-carbon-energy-kinect/ Mind vs. Mind vs. Machine (Source) #TuringTestRegenerative Medicine Update - repairing hearts and spraying skin cells (Source) #TechTYF #RegenerativeMedicineSupporting older people in Pakistan after the floods (Source) #Ravenous #GenerationExileHarvard Study Reveals Coal Energy To Be One of the Most Expensive Forms of Power (Source) #AltEnergyRobotic hummingbird spy plane (Source) #IFTFRobotsForget China, Who Are Really the World's Worst Carbon Polluters? (Source) #CarbonEconomyEverything You Want to Know About Energy in China in One Infographic (Source) #AltEnergyMicrosoft to release Kinect for Windows SDK this spring (Source) #TechTYF What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/4-lessons-from-gaming-in-a-corporate-context-1/ This is a question I've heard a lot over the past couple of years.  Based on aggregated lessons from the corporate games of which I've been a part, below are 4 key insights from engaging with games in a corporate context: 1.  Dipping a toe in gaming = liberating! Participants reported they appreciated dipping their toe in an online gaming platform.  Being given permission to engage with online scenarios, simulations, and ideation was liberating for some, especially if they were "closet gamers" in their current role and position in the organization.  At IFTF, we forecast that gaming will be a learning methodology and medium for the future, so future leaders need to find ways to grow in this capacity.  2.  Anonymity changes the dynamic Players appreciated the anonymity that came with an online game--their player name could be "FutureCR8R" or "4sight" rather than "R_Hatch" or "ResearchManager."  They felt freed to think outside of the hierarchical boundaries of their typical roles.  This was especially important in global companies who were playing the game across cultures. There was a feeling of fewer limitations and more freedom; regardless of how shy or outgoing a particular person was, or what their role in the organization may be.  Some of the best insights come when a design person puts on an R&D lens, or when a materials expert thinks in terms of consumer insight or external relations. 3.  Lightweight interface lowers barriers The lightweight interface of the Foresight Engine was essential.  For people who are busy and have lots of demands on their attention bandwidth, participants responded well to having a lightweight demand on their time.  Most of the games were 24 hours in duration, and we asked people to participate in two, 15-20 minute bursts ... though many plays for hours on end. 4.  "I am not alone." Many participants said they were refreshed and found renewed energy when they played, because it helped them to realize that they are not alone...they are not the only one thinking about a particular topic, picking up on new signals in their local area that hint at a potential disruption, or innovation in the space.  For some, it encouraged their commitment to be change agents because they knew it wasn't just their individual outlier idea, but rather that others were thinking divergently as well. About Foresight Engine Below is a more in-depth description of IFTF's Foresight Engine collaborative forecasting platform, to give a sense of context: IFTF’s Foresight Engine drives engaged forecasting. It creates a fast flow of micro-forecasts from hundreds or thousands of participants in just a day or two. It’s all about focused insights and innovation—the discovery of social wisdom and outlier ideas. At the start of an engagement, forecasters from around the world get a quick video briefing on a future scenario.  Then they play cards: Twitter-length forecasts (140 characters or less) that represent their best thinking. They can start a chain of cards or they can build on cards that others play. It’s just what you’d expect from a Foresight Engine: rapid conversion of potential energy into ideas that can drive decisions. Participants can track their favorite forecasters, watch the evolution of their ideas as others build on them, and monitor their standing in the leaderboard. They can create tags and follow forecasts that use those tags. In short, they can create their own personalized view on a fast-paced forecasting event. Fun unlocks creativity – and that’s why game mechanics are also an important part of the Foresight Engine experience. Participants earn forecasting points for ideas that inspire conversation, and bonuses for moving the conversation in unexpected directions. Meanwhile, they unlock personal achievement badges, as they level up their own skills in future forecasting. How will YOU use the Foresight Engine? You can use it to jump-start strategy, to find the brightest thought-leaders in your organization, to tap a worldwide audience and build a new global perspective. You can use IFTF’s Foresight Engine inside your organization for a strictly private affair or as a public platform for a wide-reaching, even global event. Whichever way you choose to use it, it can deliver all the benefits of engaged forecasting, bringing many voices to bear on your future. Past Forecasting Games  Smart Grid 2025: Gaming for a New Energy FutureMagnetic SouthBreakthroughs to CuresSuperstructRuby's BequestAfter ShockSigntific Lab Report http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/maker-bot-day-4-spaceship-thing-o-matic/ Sometimes, when I am really and truly immersed in something, I find myself making some truly banal, self evident non sequitur, but then treating them as if they are the most profound insights ever gleaned into the human experience. The last week with my dad has reminded me that this is a family trait. As we were triple and quadruple checking the wiring for the Thing-O-Matic -- the last stage in the build process before we are able to start seeing what this baby can crank out, my dad offered up this gem:"Imagine getting a space ship off the earth." Sometimes, when I am really and truly immersed in something, I find myself making some truly banal, self evident non sequitur, but then treating them as if they are the most profound insights ever gleaned into the human experience. The last week with my dad has reminded me that this is a family trait. As we were triple and quadruple checking the wiring for the Thing-O-Matic -- the last stage in the build process before we are able to start seeing what this baby can crank out, my dad offered up this gem: "Imagine getting a space ship off the earth." To which I replied, "Yup. I bet there was a lot of wiring." Because there probably was. So I just wanted to take a minute to commend the men and women who put rockets into space.   A side shot of the Space Shuttle Atlantis under construction, c/o NASA Let me now bring you to t-minus 10 seconds before the Crawford family's own private shuttle launch. Having now successfully constructed and wired together the TOM, we were moments away from what we had been waiting for over the past week: Wired up and ready to go...? Ethernet cable: Connected. Power: ON Replicator G (the open source 3D printing program that controls the TOM): Loaded. Of course this happened:  [11:50:20] Loading machine: Thingomatic w/ Automated Build Platform [11:50:21] Loading simulator. [11:50:21] Loading driver: replicatorg.drivers.gen3.Sanguino3GDriver [11:51:23] Read timed out. [11:51:23] Packet timed out! [11:51:26] Read timed out. [11:51:26] Packet timed out! [11:51:26] Null version reported! ... [11:51:34] No connection; trying to pulse RTS to reset device. [11:51:39] Read timed out. [11:51:39] Packet timed out! [11:51:42] Read timed out. [11:51:42] Packet timed out! ... [11:52:11] Null version reported! [11:52:11] Unable to connect to firmware. Well, ok then. Me, looking slightly crazy, moments before the failed first test.Oh to return to those happy days. At some point in the future I'll get into the specifics of what I did to try to resolve this massive let down, but right now the massive disappointment I feel is too raw for me to articulate anything. So, like I do in most situations that overwhelm me, I'll leave it to William Shatner to speak to my grief. <object width="320" height="195" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/wRnSnfiUI54&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wRnSnfiUI54&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wRnSnfiUI54&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object> Suffice it to say that it got so bad, that I had to ask for help from the Makerbot forum. This is another topic that I plan to return to, but one thing I will note is that the Makerbot community is awesome. The depth of some of the other questions on the site had me worried that I would be out of my league, and had me tempted to email Bre and his team directly at the first sign of trouble. I'm glad that I didn't, however, because the amount of patience and willingness to help me troubleshoot has been remarkable. To wrap up this post, I'd like to share three highlights from the immediate aftermath of what shall now be referred to as "the Connection to Firmware" debacle. First, my colleague Anthony Townsend has been added to my Hall of Fame for people who should keep their "advice" to themselves. After sending Anthony the above error messages, he shared these pearls of wisdom: Thanks Anthony Second, after spending almost an entire day trying to figure out what we had done wrong -- going back over wiring, testing connections on the electronic boards that control the TOM, etc. -- and having posted on the forum I mentioned earlier, I was momentarily heartened when my Dad called out from the living room: "Hey, someone else is having the same problem that we are having!" YES! Misery loves company and all that ... "And he is posting about it today." What a fortunate coincidence! "Weird, he seems to be in Canada." Oh no. "Dad, what is his username?" "MC Canuck!" "That is me, Dad. MC for Mathias Crawford, Canuck because I am Canadian." Finally, I'll end with a paragraph that I wrote at the end of the long day of being inches from the finish line and unable to move forward: "this is the worst kind of frustration. I have spent 5 hours trying to solve a problem by doing the same things over and over again. The community has provided no insights, and I am left trying to print something before my brain explodes and I smash this robot against the wall." These are dark days indeed. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-water-fabrication-futures-alt-energy-techtyf-power-struggle/ Water Studies Institute (Source) #FutureOfWater10 year old extols his 3D printer's virtues (Source) #FabFuturesEnergy Technology to 2050: Shell Worries about Supply (Source)  Water Studies Institute (Source) #FutureOfWater10 year old extols his 3D printer's virtues (Source) #FabFuturesEnergy Technology to 2050: Shell Worries about Supply (Source) #AltEnergy3D printer that prints itself gets closer to reality (Source) #FabFuturesBio-Nano-Chip technology in human trials to spot cardiac disease, cancer, drug abuse (Source) #TechTYFFlorida Gov. Rick Scott Rejects $2.4 Billion for High Speed Rail (Source) #PowerStruggle What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/makerbot-day-3-dad-and-the-soap-box-derby/ I'm going to let you in on a secret: this post is a composite of sorts. Because, as it turns out, when you are as cautious (and inept) at putting things together as my Dad and I are, things take a lot longer than projected in the Thing-o-Matic (TOM) instructions. I'm going to let you in on a secret: this post is a composite of sorts. Because, as it turns out, when you are as cautious (and inept) at putting things together as my Dad and I are, things take a lot longer than projected in the Thing-o-Matic (TOM) instructions. Since this series is supposed to supply a gripping narrative about my experimentations with the machinery of the future, I won't go into too much detail about the grind of assembling the Y- and Z-Stage Assemblies, the TOM's casing, and the Plastruder. What is helpful for you to know is that along with the X-Stage Assembly, these are responsible for moving the printer's build platform and Plastruder in 3D space.  The Plastruder is the meat and potatoes of the TOM, and is helpfully described on the Makerbot website as: "the 'print head' for your MakerBot. You can think of it as a souped-up, robotic hot glue gun. Its main purpose in life is to heat up the plastic you feed it, and then extrude it out in a fine stream that you can build with."What we ended up withGetting all these components together is supposed to take a single person a total of 8 hours. You probably won't be surprised to hear that it has taken us far longer than that. So, when I saw the video of the Betaworks team putting together their TOM, I was initially jealous. As my dad and I were trying to gentle massage a tight-fitting laser cut support into place, their group of 8 was able to crank through the complete construction process in all of 3 minutes and 24 seconds. (Look it up, it's on vimeo!) How could we compete with that kind of efficiency? But as the hours progressed, I began to realize that the I started to mind the lurching pace of our efforts less and less. Because my Dad and I were having a fantastic time. Unlike the times we have collaborated on the construction of Ikea furniture -- projects so simple that the manifest lack of complexity led us frustration and arguments (I'll admit it, but I know I'm not the only one that the Swedes have taken to the brink of insanity with their defiantly vague assembly instructions) -- putting together the TOM has been one of those bonding experiences that will make a poignant tableau in the made-for-TV movie about my life (starring Geoffrey Rush as my dad, and Jake Gyllenhal as me, not because of any resemblance but rather because my wife is obsessed with him. Damn you Jake Gyllenhal). The movie practically casts itself, right?Whether childishly giggling about the hilariously named hardware burrito (the bundle of hardware parts that come with the machine), keeping each other sane while tediously fastening bolts, or stopping each other from taking a hammer to the Bot when we couldn't get something to fit, the hours (many, many hours) - as cheesy as it sounds, the days I have spent working with my dad on this project have been some of the happiest in recent memory. To me, building the TOM feels like the modern day Soap Box racer - something tangible that generations and communities can come together around to build, using their combined labor to make sense of the TOM's sometimes absentmindedly vague assembly instructions. I've stopped begrudging the Betaworks team of their many hands making light work, and have come to the conclusion that the only way to build a Makerbot is with friends and family. This is something you need to experience with other people, because otherwise you might as well just buy one pre-made.  The hardware burrito - less delicious than it sounds. Image c/o MakerBotWe are not even at the printing stage and I am already dreading the day that I have to turn the TOM's figurative keys over to to IFTF. Having spent this long on assembling a seemingly endless supply of M3x16 bolts, how can I trust our labor of love over to those peskily inquisitive futurists, with their grimy hands poking and prodding at our poor machine. As if those arriviste makers can understand know what it means to build a MakerBot. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/humanity-machines-internet/ Michael Chorost's new book World Wide Mind:  The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet is in bookstores as of today.   The 5 minute video below describes his thesis: Michael Chorost's new book World Wide Mind:  The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet is in bookstores as of today.   The 5 minute video below describes his thesis: The worldwide mind is the combination of humans & the internet acting together in concert.  The combination of the two yields a being which is more powerful than either in isolation.  That, I argue gives you the seed of an intelligence that neither has by its own. <object width="425" height="350" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/utNHl6AQqTA&feature" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/utNHl6AQqTA&feature" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/utNHl6AQqTA&feature" /></object> Together with his last book (Rebuilt:  How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human), World Wide Mind shares Michael's own personal story of living with a cochlear impant and how this positive augmentation adds a computational element to his life that in some ways changes who he is.  For more on Michael, see this IFTF Futurecast we did with him in November 2010, or this New York Times review of his work from yesterday. Additional key points from Michael's video: worldwide mind is a coming global intelligence (with intentionality and consciousness of its own)the internet by itself is not going to become intelligentusing technology with the body, you can make the connection part of your own internal bodily experience.there is a new way to think about how technology & human relationships can be brought together.  Right now people think of these domains as mutually exclusive.  Chorost thinks there is a way to put these togehter with physical integration of humans and machines (as exemplified by his own personal experience of having a cochlear implant)technology can be used to create more humane connections between people http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-food-futures-power-struggle-fabrication-futures/ How biofuels contribute to the food crisis (Source) #FoodFutures #PowerStrugglePrint me a Stradivarius (Source) #FabFutures How biofuels contribute to the food crisis (Source) #FoodFutures #PowerStrugglePrint me a Stradivarius (Source) #FabFutures3D Printing: The printed world (Source) #FabFutures What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/iftf-research-methodology-signal-scanning/ One of IFTF's research methodologies is Signals Scanning.  This process is used on internal research projects, with clients, shared on Twitter, and also shared on our blog from time to time. Definition of a Signal A signal is typically a small or local innovation or disruption that has the potential to grow in scale and geographic distribution. A signal can be a new product, a new practice, a new market strategy, a new policy, or new technology. It can be an event, a local trend, or an organization. It can also be a recently revealed problem or state of affairs. In short, it is something that catches our attention at one scale and in one locale and points to larger implications for other locales or even globally. Signals are useful for people who are trying to anticipate a highly uncertain future. They tend to capture emergent phenomenon sooner thantraditional social science methods. Unlike trends, they turn our attention to possible innovations before they become obvious. Unlike indicators, they often focus our attention at the margins of society rather than the core. In this way, they are more likely to reveal disruptions and innovations. Of course, local trends and indicators can function as signals: when a trend hits a certain threshold, for example, it might be a signal of a change in the larger population, as when an innovation moves beyond the lead user stage and begins to diffuse much more rapidly. Have a signal of your own to share?  Let us know via Twitter (@iftf)! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-robots-power-struggle-food-futures-future-jobs/ Robots to get their own internet (Source) #IFTFRobotsNew Congress Majority Plans $100 Billion in Budget Cuts, Slashes Clean Energy Innovation (Source) #PowerStruggleLocal Farmers' Markets Accepting Food Stamps ( Robots to get their own internet (Source) #IFTFRobotsNew Congress Majority Plans $100 Billion in Budget Cuts, Slashes Clean Energy Innovation (Source) #PowerStruggleLocal Farmers' Markets Accepting Food Stamps (Source) #FoodFuturesCareer into the future (Source) #FutureJobs What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/gaming-religion-1/ Hacking religion is what happens when DIY culture and the Maker Movement meet religion.  On the one hand, this is nothing new, just think of the history of the Pantheon and the layers of religious traditions represented there.  Humans have been creating religious mashups for a long time.One the other hand, there are some interesting new things happening at the nexus of gaming & religion.  Hacking religion is what happens when DIY culture and the Maker Movement meet religion.  On the one hand, this is nothing new, just think of the history of the Pantheon and the layers of religious traditions represented there.  Humans have been creating religious mashups for a long time.One the other hand, there are some interesting new things happening at the nexus of gaming & religion.  Jason Anthony, religion journalist and game designer (of Shabbatput and The Ten Year Game) visited IFTF recently and we got a glimpse into how he is thinking about hacking religion.  Here is a short overview of Jason's thinking on the intersection points between games and religion, titled "DIY Religion:  Or, Religion Can Be Hacked, Should Be Hacked, How It Can Be Hacked, and Why Makers, Gamers, Geeks, Scientists, and Artists Are the People Who Should Be Doing It":http://www.youtube.com/user/Wonderlab2010#p/u/8/l1a2Oysb7UY  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/signals-space-alt-energy-power-struggle-fabrication-future-extended-self-retail-language/ Japanese Space Agency to Use Fishing Nets to Scoop Up Space Junk (Source) #FreeSpaceChina: Number 1 in Thermal, Solar, Nuclear, Wind and Hydro Power (Source) #AltEnergyWashington State Looking to Impose $100 Tax on EV Owners to Help with Lost Gas Revenue ( Japanese Space Agency to Use Fishing Nets to Scoop Up Space Junk (Source) #FreeSpaceChina: Number 1 in Thermal, Solar, Nuclear, Wind and Hydro Power (Source) #AltEnergyWashington State Looking to Impose $100 Tax on EV Owners to Help with Lost Gas Revenue (Source) #PowerStruggleIs it legal to print Settlers of Catan tiles on a 3D printer? (Source) #FabFuturesFDA Fast Tracks Brain-Controlled Prosthetic Arm (Source) #ExtendedSelfCan P&G make money in places where people earn $2 a day? (Source) #FutureOfRetailIntroducing the Google Translate app for iPhone (Source) #FutureOfLanguageTranslation What is a signal? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/makerbot-day-2-i-start-to-build/ Let me start off by saying that I mean this in the nicest way possible -- I am really enjoying the lurching process of building my MakerBot, and am more than happy to get the chance to work my way through the assembly of the machine.That said, if the MakerBot is the future, then the future is f*&@ing complicated. Let me start off by saying that I mean this in the nicest way possible -- I am really enjoying the lurching process of building my MakerBot, and am more than happy to get the chance to work my way through the assembly of the machine. That said, if the MakerBot is the future, then the future is f*&@ing complicated. Yesterday I overcame my fear of the unknown and broke into the Thing-O-Matic (TOM) packaging, and what I found was as daunting as I had anticipated.  In clown car fashion, lasercut pieces, electronic components, motors, cable, and the awesomely named Thing-O-Matic Hardware Burrito were transferred to my kitchen table-cum-workshop.  My kit, artfully arranged on my kitchen table. The TOM does not ship with any instructions, but rather maintains a mostly-comprehensive (I'll talk about this in later posts) and continuously updating online user manual that incorporates the latest innovations and tweaks to the process that MakerBot and the TOM community have identified. After breezing though the "Before You Begin" section, which consisted of the kind of pre-flight checks that in hindsight I shouldn't have breezed through, I made my way to the first step in the Build Process: X Stage Assembly. What was in the Thing-O-Matic box. (Image c/o MakerBot Flickr stream) I was immediately faced with the fork in the road, as I had to choose a build platform - the surface onto which the superheated ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, a thermoplastic that "possesses outstanding impact strength and high mechanical strength, which makes it so suitable for tough consumer products." Thanks, Dynalab Corp!) will be applied. Brimming with optimism and confidence in my ability, I opted for the Automated Build Platform, the most complicated of the choices provided. Because, as I learned in college, go big or go home. I realize I am betraying the degree to which I am not a tinkerer, but I immediately regretted my choice. What was billed as an Estimated Build Time of approximately 1 hour took my Dad (who coincidentally is visiting and has been drafted into service of the Future) and me almost half a day. How was this possible? Granted, I'm not TechShop-instructor familiar with putting things together, but at the same time I think I am pretty good at these kinds of things. Moreover, my Dad is a Professor of Civil Engineering - a veritable heavyweight when compared to my liberal arts-degree pedigree. My initial sense is that the immense frustration I felt while I put together the machine has less to do with the actual machine itself (yes, the need to constantly check and re-check the lengths of different bolts is tedious at its best, but I can't fault Makerbot for the fact that nuts and bolts are the most sophisticated fastening technology that humans have come up with thus far). Base for Automated Build Platform (X-stage/ABP) Rather, I think that a lot of the hurdles I am encountering and eventually overcoming have to do with my internal tolerance for deviating from the instruction manual. Owners of the early generations of 3-D printers are obviously a fairly niche group of the Maker community, and given their familiarity with many of the constitutive parts of a TOM, they are likely less reluctant to fly by the seat of their pants when directions and reality diverge. As it stands, however, being of a mindset of, "not wanting to screw up a $1000 machine", there have been a lot of moments where the disjuncture between what I see in reality and what is shown online was both puzzling, and cause for heated discussions with my dad.A lot of these gripes are over little things: I have no way of knowing if the friction between the belt and the screws will cause my machine to explode, or if the millimeter of uncovered heat board will make my house burn down. In progress ABP with dreaded heated platform visible to the side More fundamentally I think that it comes down to not knowing how the various components ultimately function within the to-be-completed TOM. Without a sense of which parts have the potential to turn IFTF's investment into a fiery heap of paperweight. Which means that I treat each bolt, nut, and piece of laser-cut wood as delicately as a Fabergé egg, instead of the rugged piece of super-heated-plastic spewing robot that it is.  In this sense, a large part of these early stages of putting together the Thing-o-Matic is learning which instructions are loose guidelines, and which are must-follows. This type of contextual awareness is something I will likely (hopefully) develop as I get deeper into the weeds, and what better way to learn than to re-launch myself into the next part of the TOM build process: the Y-Stage Assembly. Completed ABP http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/day-1-with-a-makerbot/ The box sits unopened in my living room and I am feeling, if I am being perfectly honest, quite nervous about cracking it open. The sticker -- MakerBot Inside, in a futuristic font -- is undeniably cool. Cool in the same way that the availability of Joss Whedon's Serenity on the iPad is cool. But still cool nevertheless.  The box sits unopened in my living room and I am feeling, if I am being perfectly honest, quite nervous about cracking it open. The sticker -- MakerBot Inside, in a futuristic font -- is undeniably cool. Cool in the same way that the availability of Joss Whedon's Serenity on the iPad is cool. But still cool nevertheless. I am scared to open the box....Everyone who I have told about my (IFTF's) brand spanking new 3-D printer has said the same things. "Wait, what is it?" I then go on to explain that I have acquired a machine that is like a desktop printer but for things, meaning that I have the theoretical capacity to print almost anything that I can imagine (and design --- more on that later), so long as it is smaller than 1000mm x 1000mm x 1000mm.   "That is so cool!" Yes, yes it is.   "So what are you going to make?" That is where things start to fall apart. Because, although I've seen one in action at IFTF's Future of Robotics conference, where it churned out plastic violins that look like they were made for LEGO minifigs, the machine looked terrifyingly complicated. When under the supervision of no less than expert and co-founder of MakerBot Bre Pettis, hiccups in production were quickly overcome: code was written on the fly, burnt out parts were rapidly identified and deftly replaced, and new designs whipped up in short order.I am no Bre Pettis. My coding experience involves completing 3/4 of Harvard's Introduction to Programming CS50, before I inadvertently saved over a problem set that I had spent 10 hours on - an experience that convinced me both of the benefits of version control, and that I am not cut out for coding. My Christmas gift to myself last year, Sparkle Labs' Discover Electronics kit, taught me how to read resistors - a skill that I have since outsourced to a hand iPhone app. (Not that I've actually ever had the need to open the app). And as for my design skills, after downloading and playing with Google SketchUp -- from what I understand, one of the more popular programs used to generate models for printing -- for about 30 minutes, this is was the best I could manage without the model looking like something Frank Gehry might have sketched out after a night on LSD:It kind of looks like Big Ben, doesn't it? If you squint? I've clearly got my work cut out for me. Because for the next month I've been tasked with immersing myself in the world of the personal fabricator. From assembling the MakerBot Thingomatic from scratch, to immersing myself in the vibrant community of makers (if that is even what they call themselves) on Thingiverse - a site for sharing and refining digital designs so that they can be printed by anyone with access to a machine - to seeing if I can even come up with some practical use cases for the Bot, by the end of February I will (hopefully) be an expert in personal fabrication. Over the coming weeks I'll be sharing my experiences, frustrations, and insights about life with a MakerBot ... assuming I can bring myself to open the box. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-are-the-health-benefits-of-that-sedan/ A few months ago, the automaker Nissan announced announced that its cars will soon spray out vitamin C at drivers to ward off skin damage, and that its seats will be specially designed to increase the blood flow of the driver. Your car, in other words, will be designed to improve your health. A few months ago, the automaker Nissan announced announced that its cars will soon spray out vitamin C at drivers to ward off skin damage, and that its seats will be specially designed to increase the blood flow of the driver. Your car, in other words, will be designed to improve your health. Nissan isn't the only company thinking along these lines, incidentally. For example, a Danish company has developed something called the Anti-Sleep Pilot, which, according to DVICE, is designed to gauge how sleepy you are when driving and tell you when to pull over. To tell you how sleepy you are, the Anti Sleep Pilot first needs to know your initial sleepiness level, on a scale of one to four. Four corresponds to "been out on the town the night before," according to the manual. Once you've got that set, you can hit the road. In addition to monitoring your driving using an accelerometer, the Anti Sleep Pilot will give you a little reaction test every once in a while. It will make a sound and turn orange, at which point you have to smack it as fast as you can. The longer it takes you to do this, the more concerned the device gets about your reaction times, and if you're too slow on four tests in a row, it will turn an angry red and demand that you pull over and rest. I know this seems like it would be super distracting, and it sort of is. But the occasional tests also help to keep your brain from turning into pudding, which can happen when you're tired or on long drives. The device is also smart enough to not care if you don't always hit it every single time, it just times you when you do, which gives you the option of focusing purely on driving when you need to. If you skip it four times in a row, though, it assumes you've been asleep for the last few minutes, and will freak out. I actually saw a demo of the Anti-Sleep Pilot at this year's CES and was surprised that, unlike DVICE, I didn't find it distracting. Setting aside the user interface of Anti Sleep Pilot, I can't say that I'm surprised to see the car become the newest health purchase. The idea that health health is an increasingly important value-filter on our purchases has been one of the core premises of our research in the past few years, and as we begin our work looking at global well-being, I think one of the the emerging, and potentially very contentious areas of well-being will be transportation. In some sense, particularly in North America, cars have been a hidden factor shaping our health and well-being for decades. Fast Food and cars fueled each other's growth, and the combination of cheap calories and effortless transportation has been a key driver of obesity. Pollution from cars contributes to asthma and all other sorts of other environmental health problems. A bad commute, at least according to some studies, is literally the worst thing a person can do for her happiness levels. On the other hand, of course, cars make our lives much easier--and as a result, it's easy, looking from North America, to forget that in places like China, cars, and car culture, are one of the most exciting and welcomed aspects of economic development. For that matter, it's easy to get frustrated with the negative aspects of cars in the United States, while ignoring that, for the most part, most of us are utterly dependent on cars to get around. I'm not sure if it's the growing recognition of the health costs of driving, or a desire to attract health conscious consumers, that is spurring companies like Nissan and Anti Sleep Pilot to experiment with embedding health into cars. But I think it points toward the tradeoffs we make in managing our health and well-being: If gridlock makes it hard to eat well and exercise, at least you can undo some of the damage with a Vitamin C vent. My sense is that this is an early signal suggesting that a decade from now, a car will be yet another thing people purchase, at least in part, based on how it contributes to health. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/greengoose-live-up-to-your-best-intentions/ Want to live up to be your best intentions?  Wish you hydrated yourself better?  Or that you were more consistent in taking your vitamins everyday?  Or that you made greener choices in terms of biking to work instead of driving?  [img_assist|nid=3746|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://greengoose.com/|align=left|width=425|height=107] Want to live up to be your best intentions?  Wish you hydrated yourself better?  Or that you were more consistent in taking your vitamins everyday?  Or that you made greener choices in terms of biking to work instead of driving?  Today, Brian Krejcarek of GreenGoose stopped in to Institute for the Future and a few of us got a chance to see the work he is doing in using sensors and a game-like online interface to nudge us into acting according to our good intentions.  The effort reminded me of the work of IfWeRantheWorld, which cheekily encourages people to "get off their good intentions."   How will you program your world to live in accordance with your intentions in the next decade?Green Goose, IfWeRanTheWorld and others are signals in line with our work on Mobile Health and the Future of Persuasion so we are intersted to see how Green Goose develops. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/your-digital-life-after-death/ Today Rudy Adler, co-founder of 1000Memories visited us here at Institute for the Future to share about his project, which links to the future of death, the future of connecting, the future of memories, and the future of storytelling. Today Rudy Adler, co-founder of 1000Memories visited us here at Institute for the Future to share about his project, which links to the future of death, the future of connecting, the future of memories, and the future of storytelling. Here is an example of a memories tribute page, designed to remind us of a patchwork quilt.  It's complete with stories, photos, videos, songs, and scanned artifacts of the beloved one who has passed away at various ages and even features handwitten notes: Rudy is a smart, genuine guy (which is important for a site that promises to preserve your memories forever.)  He opened his talk with a personal story about losing someone in his life and his company's call to action evidences big picture thinking: "We need a new oral history."  The site that results is a well-designed and interesting signal (early indicator of a future direction of change) around the future of connecting.  Here is a summary of the idea in 1 minute & 12 seconds:1000Memories has gotten a lot of press, but my favorite description comes from a TechCrunch article that resonates with my own personal experence of the site:Visitors are first presented with a big picture of the deceased, presumably that one image that best captured his soul and personality. From there it’s easy to navigate to your next step as a reader, and sign a guest book. You can also invite others to the page at that time.But what makes each site really rich are the stories and pictures that loved ones add to the site. Some are silly. Others rip tears from your eyes. But it helps fill out the picture of a man, and it helps family and friends remember that man more richly.We are indeed becoming People of the Screen, as our Technology Horizons Future of Video research suggests.  This experience of digital life after death is one of the more meaningful ways I've seen this come to life so far.  Intrigued to see where 1000Memories will go.  Who do you want to remember? http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-canary-in-the-coal-mine/ One of my favorite new products of the past couple of years is something called One of my favorite new products of the past couple of years is something called http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/technologies-to-measure-emotion/ Today I measured the number of minutes I jogged, how many glasses of water, tea & coffee I drank, and the number of hours of sleep on which I am operating. I shared (and perhaps overshared) that data with my husband and a co-worker.[img_assist|nid=3735|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/xanxhor/3883986465/|align=left|width=315|height=313]  Today I measured the number of minutes I jogged, how many glasses of water, tea & coffee I drank, and the number of hours of sleep on which I am operating. I shared (and perhaps overshared) that data with my husband and a co-worker.  But something which BOTH my husband and co-worker might appreciate more would be if I were to gain a heightened awareness of my emotions.Affectiva, a company with roots at MIT Media Lab's Affective Computing group, provides opt-in technologies to measure and communicate emotion and they are a signal to watch in the Quantified Emotion landscape.How do they measure emotion?  So far, Affectiva's tools include accelerometers for motion, skin conductance sensors for excitement level, temperature sensors (through their Q Sensor), and more recently facial recognition (using Affedex) using simple webcams. I first started tracking their work with emotion measurement in order to help families with children on the autism spectrum, and now they are expanding into the arena of market research.  Yesterday, they announced a National Science Foundation grant  "to develop an online version of its technology that enables computers to recognize human expressions and deduce emotional and cognitive states."The business applications of this grant work are clear:Affdex not only allows more accurate understanding of an important aspect of human communication — emotion — it helps democratize emotion research by making it accessible, user-friendly and affordable for large and small corporations.  The goal is a technology service that truly transforms the way customers and businesses communicate aabout product experiences.  “The NSF grant is an important step toward helping us open up the science of emotion measurement and make it massively available,” said Affectiva co-founder Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, who led the invention of the facial expression technology as a researcher at the University of Cambridge and at the MIT Media Lab.In addition to tracking these commercial applications of technologies that measure emotion, I am looking forward to hearing more about their other candidate application areas including for clinical research, tools for persons with disabilities, online gaming and more.    http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/this-is-your-brain-this-is-your-brain-on-meditation-any-questions/ Studies of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) are taking off, with the recent addition of a study to be published in Neuroimaging today.  Will more people be nudged to meditate if they can measure and visualize the impact on their physical and emotional well-being in increasingly compelling ways? Studies of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) are taking off, with the recent addition of a study to be published in Neuroimaging today.  Will more people be nudged to meditate if they can measure and visualize the impact on their physical and emotional well-being in increasingly compelling ways?[img_assist|nid=3729|title=Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr's HaPe_Gera|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=425|height=296]Here is an accessible description of the research from Friday's New York Times titled "How Meditation May Change the Brain" by Sindya Bhanoo:The researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. The findings will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/but-youll-look-sweet-upon-the-seat-of-a-fmri-built-for-two/ Today's New Scientist features a write-up on a new research tool for studying human social interaction, a dual-headed fMRI scanner. ??[img_assist|nid=3722|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=261|height=304] Today's New Scientist features a write-up on a new research tool for studying human social interaction, a dual-headed fMRI scanner. ?? This tool will enable new research on how our brains light up as we socially interact--not only through being exposed to video of a loved one, as current research features, but also through the tactile and visceral experience of tangible presence.Ray Lee, of Princeton's Neuroscience Institute is credited with the lead on this work, and here is how it is described in IEEE:One of the major functions of the human brain is to mediate interactionswith other people. Until recently, studying brain social interactionshas not been possible due to the lack of measurable methods to observetwo interacting minds simultaneously. We have developed a noveldual-head MRI coil that can scan two subjects' brains simultaneouslywhile the subjects are socially interacting in one MRI scanner.Meanwhile, a novel scheme for decoupling two quadrature coils (notsurface coils) is introduced and validated. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-future-of-wild-california/ So far, most discussion stimulated by the Institute for the Future's Future of California research map and California Dreaming contest have focused on the future of human life in California, mostly ignoring non-human natives, and the largest most critical lifeform, the integral wilderness of California. So far, most discussion stimulated by the Institute for the Future's Future of California research map and California Dreaming contest have focused on the future of human life in California, mostly ignoring non-human natives, and the largest most critical lifeform, the integral wilderness of California.Early European visitors to wild California reported the central valley filled from horizon to horizon with herds of wild animals like a Serengeti in America.  Somehow the dozens of distinct nations of aboriginal peoples lived in essential balance with the wild environment. Here's a map of the California landscape that existed prior to the great gold rush and migration in the 19th century: Source: The California Water Atlas, 1979Now, in less than 200 years European and other immigrant settlers have paved and otherwise developed vast parts of the natural environment of our state. Here's a recent map showing land use: (Note the black areas are mostly 'impervious surfaces' otherwise known as hardscape, pavement, buildings, and other manmade structures.)Source: Jerimiah Easter http://www.californiaherps.com/One major impression from a map like this is that the black areas are completely dependent on consuming all of the resources, of the formerly healthy green and blue previously virgin landscape. So, in order to sustain human life in the future of California, humans have an explicit need to more carefully steward the natural non-human environment systematically as the source of all life in the state.There are many citizen efforts and a few institutional efforts to nourish, and repair the natural environment of California so that our descendents in hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the future will still be able to appreciate the natural splendor and superior quaility of life in our state afforded by our vast natural resources.Here's a map produced by California Department of Fish and Game researchers group showing planned (re)connections between critical habitats and wildlands: Source: California Essential Habitat Connectivity ProjectIn his book of essays, "The Practice of the Wild" Here's how California's former Poet Laureate, Gary Snyder suggests we approach the task: "The original American environmental traditions came out of the politics of public lands and wildlife -game, fish, ducks - hence the nation is part of nature—our egos play in the field of the unconscious—history takes place in the Holocene—human culture is rooted in the primitive and the paleolithic—and our souls are out in the wilderness. " Source: Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, North Point Press; (September 1990)___________________________________________________________What will you do to help restore wild California for future generations?  Share your thoughts in the California Dreams game and contest. (Contest ends nest week!) See prizes and details here. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/what-your-facebook-profile-can-tell-fraud-investigators/ An interesting story in the Los Angeles Times highlights the different ways that insurance companies have begun to monitor social networking cites in an effort to root out fraud. For example, a fraud investigator who sees a disability patient post photos of a recent distance run, might use the photo as evidence for further investigation--or to stop paying a disability claim entirely. This sort of practice, according to the Times, is pretty common: An interesting story in the Los Angeles Times highlights the different ways that insurance companies have begun to monitor social networking cites in an effort to root out fraud. For example, a fraud investigator who sees a disability patient post photos of a recent distance run, might use the photo as evidence for further investigation--or to stop paying a disability claim entirely. This sort of practice, according to the Times, is pretty common: Social-networking sites have become such "standard tools" that Peter Foley, vice president of claims administration at American Insurance Assn., said that investigators could be considered negligent if they didn't conduct at least "a quick scan of social media to check for contradictions." But the evidence gathered on these sites, Foley and other insurance experts caution, should be used only as a launch pad for further investigations and never as final proof of fraud..... Mike Fitzgerald, a Celent senior analyst, said life insurance companies could find social media especially valuable for comparing what people will admit about lifestyle choices and medical histories in applications, and what they reveal online. That could range from "liking" a cancer support group online to signs of high-risk behavior. "If someone claims they don't go sky diving often, but it clearly indicates on their online profile that they do it every weekend they can get away," Fitzgerald said, "that would raise a red flag for insurers." I'm not sure I understand how liking a cancer support group is a sign of "high-risk behavior," but, as best I can tell, these sorts of searches have clearly become "standard tools." In just the past couple of months, for example, a separate investigation found that the Department of Homeland Security has begun using photos posted on Facebook to assess whether or not marriages have been faked for immigration purposes. If this sounds familiar, it's the premise of an excellent, if disturbing forecast my colleagues in the Ten-Year Forecast put together a couple years ago about how all of our social media will lead to a "participatory panopticon." In effect, our desire to share details of our lives becomes its own form of surveillance. One striking thing, at least in the context of health, however, is that most of us probably won't share the worst details of our health states with everyone we've ever met (in other words, our Facebook networks.) Or, as one expert quoted by the Times puts it, "No one puts pictures of themselves crying in a dark room, even if that's what they're doing 18 hours a day." But at least at the moment, investigators assume that a couple active photos or status updates imply that nothing is wrong. Which makes me think that a person could apparently pull off insurance fraud by filing a claim, photoshopping some depressing photos, and posting them to Facebook. I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it strikes me that most of these investigations rely on a similarly shaky assumption: That our identities online are accurate and complete reflections of how we navigate the physical world. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/bodyshock-winner-profile-portion-control/ Thrive PortionWare from IFTF on Vimeo.  <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17580845" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe> Thrive PortionWare from IFTF on Vimeo. Here is the final of the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held last summer. One of the top 5 winners of the contest was Thrive Portion Ware, a cup and set of plates designed by Sally Ng at the California College of Art to help reduce food intake by 20%. Her presentation is above, and her entry into the contest describes her innovative idea: "Thrive portion control ware's cups and plates help steer people to eat 20% less per meal. It works subtly and subconsciously to enable people to eat and drink less. Plate will tip if user places food in the red zone. Control words are on back of plate so users will see "restraint" or "will power" every time they pick one up from a dish rack or cupboard. Cup is quartered off as well, so users drink 20% less no matter what the beverage is. People can consciously consume less. Thrive Portion Ware enables people to do just that." Today, Sally sent us an update on her progress in the past couple of months: "I just finished my last semester a month ago. So I'm working on various projects including Thrive. I made a mock website for it since then, here it is: http://pomo.cca.edu/~sng2/ThriveFinal/. I'm trying to code the Shop section to work correctly, where it will tally up the amount of people who do want to buy it in order to gather some statistics. After I work out that bug, I will be touching it up, move it to a new server instead of my school's so it won't crash from traffic spikes. I'm also finishing up writing the patent to submit." We wish Sally all the best as she moves forward with her idea to make portion control easy and beautiful. Stay tuned for more updates on each winner throughout the year as they make progress. IFTF's current contest, accepting entries until January 31, is the California Dreams Contest. We're asking people, "What is Your Dream for the Future of California?" The winner will receive the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight. Enter your dream today! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/announcing-the-2011-technology-horizons-research-agenda/ The second decade of the new millennium will be about finding our footing to survive and thrive in an increasingly uncertain and volatile world. As we begin the decade, the 2011 Technology Horizons program will conduct a ten-year scan on the future of science and technology to identify the most important emerging conceptual and practical frameworks for new growth. We will also drill down into three areas that are poised for disruptive change: energy, manufacturing, and how children are experiencing new technologies.?? The second decade of the new millennium will be about finding our footing to survive and thrive in an increasingly uncertain and volatile world. As we begin the decade, the 2011 Technology Horizons program will conduct a ten-year scan on the future of science and technology to identify the most important emerging conceptual and practical frameworks for new growth. We will also drill down into three areas that are poised for disruptive change: energy, manufacturing, and how children are experiencing new technologies.??In addition to our client events, this year we are very excited to open up several of our expert workshops to Tech Horizons members for the first time in several years. Join us to listen in on our expert roundtable workshops, meet the experts, and take the chance to give us early feedback on the deliverables!??SPRING:The new approaches to manufacturing that are set to take hold over the next few years. How will we be rethinking industrial production in 2021??Expert Roundtable: March 1, Institute for the Future office.Client Workshop: April 18, Palo Alto, exact location TBD. At this interactive workshop, the focus will be on foresight and conversation. Our team will present our latest research on the far reaching implications of open fabrication for traditional manufacturing, design, and consumption.?? SUMMER:We explore the key disruptive technologies that will reshape our energy futures—from algae that change sewage into fuel, to new biofuels and green computing. How will these reshape the texture of daily life for families and businesses in 2021??? We will synthesize our research into the Alternate Energy Futures Map of the Decade, which will be presented at the client workshop.Expert Roundtable: Friday, April 8, Institute for the Future office.Client Workshop: May 26, in Palo Alto. Our Alternate Energy Futures Map will forecast the impact of four alternative energy scenarios on households, markets, organizations,and other institutions, with a focus on regional energy tech ecosystems in California, China, India, and Brazil.??  FALL:  Our annual conference, September 14-15 at Cavallo Point in Sausalito. During the conference, the team will present the Technology Horizons Ten-Year Forecast Map and report, which dive deep into the critical hotspots and innovation in the 2021 landscape.?? We’ll scan the horizon of materials science, information technology, life sciences, and energy R&D for the emerging paradigms and practices that will transform our lives over the next decade. We’ll focus on those developments expected to profoundly alter our workplaces, business models, consumption, and social lives.  Early possible topics include: green computing, public technologies, zero-gravity innovation, and collaborative consumption solutions.WINTER:November 9 we will hold our Kids' Tech workshop, to explore what technology looks like for today's digital natives, and how tomorrow's young people will use technology to remake their world. Toys and play have always helped to prepare kids for the world that they would face as adults. What does “technology” look like for today’s young digital natives? What new forms of play and learning might we see emerge by 2021? We will synthesize our research in a memo presented at the workshop.  Please contact Sean Ness or Lisa Mumbach (our new Technology Horizons program coordinator) for further details. Some of these dates are subject to change, but we will keep you informed of any updates. Keep visiting our website for updated information about our 2011 projects, blogs, and much more!  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/exploring-digital-media-and-empathy-with-facing-history/ <object width="400" height="300" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/3oeada-ng8Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3oeada-ng8Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3oeada-ng8Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object> Last week we played host to an evening with Facing History – an organization that empowers teachers and students to think critically about history, and to understand the impact of their own choices. Facing History began in a single school district, Brookline, Massachusetts 30 years ago, and now has operations in 8 countries and has equipped over 29,000 teachers with classroom strategies and resources.    Thursday’s event showcased resources and pilot projects from the organization’s new Digital Media Innovation Network – an initiative to build Facing History’s capacity to integrate digital technology into its resources and to experiment with innovative ways of using new media. Thirty teachers from across the Bay area took part in a workshop that introduced a new study guide for the classroom based around the film, Reporter. Reporter is a documentary following New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof as he travels in the Congo and struggles to find strategies to bring to the region to international media attention. One of the key issues raised by the film is the impact of digital technology on our empathy and propensity to act. Does ubiquitous digital media help us move closer to issues of global injustice, or does it numb or distance us from these realities? For the second part of Thursday’s event, Marina explored this theme in a panel discussion, where she was joined by Global Lives founder David Evan Harris and filmmaker Eric Slatkin. The evening ended with presentations from some of the pilot teacher projects of the Innovation Network. John Kittridge of Envision Academy of Arts and Sciences in Oakland and Eileen Vollert O’Kane, Immaculate Conception Academy, San Francisco spoke about their experiences supporting their students in making their own media. And they shared some examples of the powerful stories that their students had captured on film. Many thanks to our friends at Facing History for a great evening of learning and discussion.  Find out more about their fantastic work here, or by watching the three minute video posted above.  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/local-money-for-the-buy-local-movement/ Local currencies, like the BerkShare pictured above, can support local business and build community. With the economy in its current state, saving money is a top priority for many Californians—and there are plenty of ways to find a bargain. Fast food meals often cost less than five dollars. Mega retailers will sell you children’s toys and automotive parts in a single convenient location at rock bottom prices. But increasingly, we’re finding out that these “bargains” aren’t the great deal they initially appear to be.  According to academic Raj Patel, when you factor in environmental, social and health damages, the actual cost of a fast food hamburger is something like 200 dollars. Ellen Ruppel Shell, in her book “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture,” argues that most discount products cause similar environmental and social damages and hurt local economies. Conversely, she asserts that you can get healthier foods, better crafted goods, and more expert, personalized service and advice from small local businesses. Many Californians are already going local and reaping the benefits. But in these tough economic times, how do you get people to too choose quality and social responsibility over a cheap price? A group of Ojai, California residents think they have an answer. They’re trying to create a local currency to support businesses in their area and build community. “The concept is a sort of bartering system that would encourage people to buy things locally and insulate the town from an economic collapse elsewhere,” the Ventura County Star reports. “It would be complementary to the national currency, and use would be limited to Ojai.” The Ojai Economy Group was inspired by past instances in which local currencies have been effective. During the Great Depression small towns often issued “emergency scrip,” which in some places evolved into a local currency, most famously in Wörgl Austria. Today, the most established local currency in the U.S. is Western Massachusetts’ BerkShares, which, according to the VCStar article, has the equivalent of more than $2.5 million in circulation. The Ojai Economy Group's work to strengthen local businesses and foster community is an example of Californians creating ideas to make a better future for the state. Tell us your idea at the California Dreams contest site by Januaary 31, 2011 and you could win the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight. Enter today! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/prepare-yourself-for-life-in-the-programmable-age/ Programming has long conjured images of computer engineers toiling away in solitude, but that is quickly changing—if you follow our thinking, you too will soon be configuring future outcomes. In developing the research for When Everything is Programmable: Life in a Computational Age, a proprietary set of materials that has just been made public, our researchers looked to address ways that we will use processes to control our bodies, minds, and surroundings. Four visual components, including playable forecasting cards and a map that considers ways that sensing and programming tools will re-shape our world, are now available to the public. In our 2010 research we looked at how nanotechonology and self-assembling intelligent robots aren’t the only programmable matter that will change how we understand and interact with the physical world. Everyday topics including learning, body awareness, and online sharing will also be planned and programmed for increased well-being. The best place to start is our Map for the Programmable World developed to help navigate a future that will be increasingly computational and complex. Its cylindrical format includes factors that will impact the individual self, society, and the environment. Among the opportunities it presents is access to sophisticated tools and methodologies for modeling complex systems and phenomena. The map also shows potential pitfalls, such as over-reliance on these models that could make us unable to act in the absence of data (think of when your GPS stops working while driving and you get a window into what this paralysis might be like). The 13 major themes outlined in the report and seen on the map have implications for cities, industries, and individuals, including: Everyone is a Programmer: More disciplines will require computational thinking skills to make sense of the exponentially increasing data available. In response, novice-friendly programming languages and technologies that teach the fundamentals of programming virtual and physical worlds will be made available and ultimately increase our manipulation of built environments.Embedded Governance: Where laws are enforced by people, they’ll increasingly be implemented by automated policing and regulation systems with the intention of making it harder to break the rules. You’ll see that the act of downloading laws into objects and the environment may also have major privacy implications.Neurocentric Learning: We’ll see educators and scientists working with the brain, not just formal teaching structures, to help people learn more effectively. You too will do well to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of neuroscience. And while you’re at it, you may be able to code your brain for desired functionality, including behavior modification, treating of disease, and illumination of the consciousness. And why not? "Creativity, happiness, and even spiritual experience will be invoked through neuroprogramming," as readers of the report learn.  When you’re ready to start using this thinking, you can turn to the When Everything is Programmable Technology and Forecast Deck for a bit of game time. The cards were created to make the research more interactive. You can even create your own Map for the Programmable World by using the blank map template. Start with the forecast cards and pick 4-5 that resonate with you. Pick 2-3 technology cards that apply to your forecast, then write out the implications related to each one in the space provided on the template. Then, come up with strategies for how to work with and benefit from each of the chosen forecasts. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/honey-laundering-and-authenticity/ It's hard to find just one or two things to excerpt from Jessica Leeder's great investigation into the large amount of global crime that has grown up around something as simple as honey. It turns out that, in response to U.S. and E.U. It's hard to find just one or two things to excerpt from Jessica Leeder's great investigation into the large amount of global crime that has grown up around something as simple as honey. It turns out that, in response to U.S. and E.U. trade rules designed to keep antibiotics out of the honey supply, a variety of middlemen have turned up in parts of Asia to conceal the origins of honey--a practice that has been met with equal amount of money spent on tracking down the honey launderers. Most honey comes from China, where beekeepers are notorious for keeping their bees healthy with antibiotics banned in North America because they seep into honey and contaminate it; packers there learn to mask the acrid notes of poor quality product by mixing in sugar or corn-based syrups to fake good taste. None of this is on the label. Rarely will a jar of honey say “Made in China.” Instead, Chinese honey sold in North America is more likely to be stamped as Indonesian, Malaysian or Taiwanese, due to a growing multimillion dollar laundering system designed to keep the endless supply of cheap and often contaminated Chinese honey moving into the U.S., where tariffs have been implemented to staunch the flow and protect its own struggling industry. Much later in her article, Leeder notes that since the honey laundering started in earnest about a decade ago, several countries that produce very little amounts of honey enjoy very large honey exports. Despite the arrests, the honey industry has been watching suspect import numbers climb. They are particularly incensed by three countries that, ten years ago, exported zero honey to the U.S., according to Department of Commerce data. India, Malaysia and Indonesia are mysteriously on pace to ship 43 million kilograms of honey into the U.S. by year’s end. “It is widely known those countries have no productive capacity to justify those quantities,” said Mr. Phipps, the honey markets expert. The rest of the article, which is well worth reading in full, points out different methods for concealing honey's origins, strategies for combatting the fraud, and a sort of legal back and forth that seems out of place for what feels like a pretty ordinary food item. In reading this, though, I was reminded of signals suggesting that honey may not be the only food subject to similar sorts of fraud attempts. For example, in late 2009, a group of students decided to use DNA analysis to try to verify the origins of their foods--and found that 11 of the 66 foods they tested were mislabeled. Not surprisingly, the mislabeled stuff was expensive--sheep's milk was actually regular old milk, sturgeon caviar was really Mississippi Paddlefish. And DNA testing--the cost of which keeps dropping--isn't the only tool at a consumer's disposal for testing food origins and chemicals. A group of Canadian chemists have developed a little strip--sort of like a piece of paper for testing p.h. levels--to see if a food item contains pesticides, for example. As of now, most of these stories about food fraud have received relatively little public attention. But it's interesting to imagine what would happen if stories about honey laundering and the like started gaining traction--and what sorts of reactions it could spur. Certainly, we'd see consumers examining their Florida orange juice, California cheese and so on a lot more closely. And, of course, we'd also see food companies responding by engaging in a lot of desperate marketing to demonstrate the authenticity of their foods. And many more middle men trying to conceal their supply chains. At some level, I think that scenario is only a matter of when, given that, over time, we really won't need large governments to invest millions of dollars to track down the origins of our foods. With pesticide test strips, cheap DNA sequencing and the like, the scenario above--of increasing fears of food fraud--may only be a matter of when. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/bodyshock-winner-profile-educating-underserved-patients/ Anjna Patient Education from IFTF on Vimeo. <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17456930" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe> Anjna Patient Education from IFTF on Vimeo. Here is another of the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. One of the top 5 winners of the contest was Anjna Patient Education, an organization founded by Vineet Singal of Stanford University to increase access to health education for underserved populations. His presentation is above, and his entry into the contest describes his innovative idea: "Anjna Patient Education is the first organization of its kind to specifically target free clinics and reach out to socioeconomically disadvantaged patients. Studies have shown that common diseases such as type II diabetes, hypertension, and depression are heavily prevalent amongst patients from the lowest socioeconomic tier, and that patient education is 50-80% more effective when compared to medication or conventional therapy. Through the distribution of high-quality health education materials and the development of training modules, our project seeks to empower patients in free clinics to take a stand against these preventable diseases with good nutrition, diet, and lifestyle changes." This week, Vineet sent us an update on their progress in the past couple of months: "We raised $5,000 in the past couple of months and will be launching a Kickstarter project in February (video below). We are also expanding to the University of California, Berkeley and San Jose State University, and I have been invited to present Anjna’s work at the TEDx conference in Florida, among other conferences." <object width="400" height="225" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/5O9DMmElqSo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5O9DMmElqSo?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5O9DMmElqSo?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object>   We wish Vineet and his team all the best as they moves forward with their idea to bring high quality education to underserved patients. Stay tuned for videos of the final BodyShock winner next week, and for updates on each winner as they make progress. IFTF's current contest, accepting entries until January 31, is the California Dreams Contest. We're asking people, "What is Your Dream for the Future of California?" The winner will receive the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight. Enter your dream today! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/flavor-trip-your-way-to-health/ I've long thought that the key to being a good cook is the ability to make terrible tasting but healthy food palatable. I mean, anyone can make a bacon cheeseburger taste good, but it takes some real skill to make broccoli remotely enjoyable. But what if we could just trick our senses into finding traditionally unpleasant food tasty? I've long thought that the key to being a good cook is the ability to make terrible tasting but healthy food palatable. I mean, anyone can make a bacon cheeseburger taste good, but it takes some real skill to make broccoli remotely enjoyable. But what if we could just trick our senses into finding traditionally unpleasant food tasty? It turns out that several projects are aimed at doing just that. Take, for example, a Japanese research project known as the meta cookie, which uses augmented reality to trick an individual into experiencing different tastes from a plain cookie: The Meta Cookie system takes advantage of a principle that any good chef knows: We taste with our eyes and nose before any food enters our mouth. By replicating the image of a cookie of a particular flavor through a virtual reality headset, and then reproducing the scent of that cookie using special perfume tubes aimed at the nose, the Meta Cookie can trick the user’s brain into thinking that a flavorless sugar cookie is actually a chocolate or almond cookie. To transform the cookie, the Meta Cookie uses augmented reality technology. A lab technician brands each cookie with an L-shaped marker that a computer can track. Looking through the virtual reality screens, the user sees a picture of a flavored cookie laid over the sight of the marker on the neutral sugar cookie. At the same time, the machine begins pumping the appropriate scent directly into the user’s nose through some tubes. I doubt the meta cookie will ever move much beyond art concept, since cookies are already delicious and the device seems pretty unwieldy. But another flavor shifting effort, namely harnessing the chemical properties of a West African fruit that turns sour things sweet, called, amusingly, Miracle Fruit, has a lot more promise. Tablets with a synthetic version of Miracle Fruit's main protein, miraculin, are actually for purchase. I tried taking one of the tablets the other day, and sure enough, it made biting into a lemon taste like drinking lemonade. The experience is often called flavor tripping, because eating sweet lemon pieces and so on just feels a bit surreal. Beyond the novelty, though, is a more serious attempt to trick taste buds by engineering miraculin into fruits and vegetables. Thus far, two separate Japanese research groups have synthesized lettuce and tomatoes that have the same effect of turning sour foods sweet as the naturally occurring Miracle fruit. A write-up in Science News points to the potential ways that miraculin could transform our relationship to healthy food: Japanese dieters have begun to embrace miraculin as a weight-loss aid. They can now snack on low-calorie sour foods that won’t raise a pucker — at least as long as they first eat a few tropical berries to fool the palate.... [C]an you imagine 'sweetening' iced tea with lemons, guzzling down pomegranate or cranberry juice to which no sugar has been added, or making lemonade without adding a sweetener? I think I'm starting to see the appeal... Of course, there are reasons to be skeptical--several different tastes, not just sweetness, make food taste good. Food fills all sorts of emotional needs and social roles beyond taste. And even our brains, it seems, are against us. Calories, independent of taste, activate the brain's reward systems. In other words, taste modification is not a panacea. But I'd guess that in the next decade, food scientists will be exploring an increasingly wide array of strategies to, like a good home cook, hide the taste of healthy but unpleasant foods. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/urban-farms-wal-mart-and-hybrid-futures/   A few months ago, we kicked off this year's Global Food Outlook research with an expert workshop generating working scenarios of how people will make food choices in the future.  Notably, when discussing drivers of change, Wal-Mart appeared, by name, as an independent driver in every single scenario.   So I could not ignore an editorial posted last Friday by an esteemed commentator on global affairs, pitting the giant against one of my favorite topics of writing and speaking about food issues.  In GOOD magazine, Richard Longsworth argues that we should "forget urban farms" as a distracting palliative measure, and embrace Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers as a cornerstone of urban recovery.    But Richard Longsworth is presenting a false dichotomy--between the nutrition, empowerment and hope provided by urban farming initiatives, and the logistical and economic might of a successful global corporation.  Commenters demonizing Wal-Mart and extolling urban farms are buying in to the same limited either/or proposition.  (I appreciate the commenters who chimed in to point out the independently owned markets and affordable farmers markets that take the edge off Longsworth's all-or-nothing portrayal.) What makes this ideological spat ironic is that for all its deplorable HR decisions over the years, Wal-mart doesn't buy into this division either.  While I acknowledge concerns about implementation, their initiative supporting local produce in their expanding grocery aisles offers a real opportunity of busting the gab between sprawling commodity producers and small diversified farms.  They can—and increasingly are—providing an affordable outlet for mid-sized farms to connect with average urban eaters.   Why must farms within contracting city limits "feed a global population"?  This dismissal is tangential to Longsworth's argument at best.  The point is not to feed the world.  The point is to feed a city the world has screwed over.   Urban farming may not be a cure on its own.  But neither is Wal-Mart.  I think that ultimately, the most effective efforts to achieve urban resilience will come from building respectful synergies between small, diversified, locally relevant solutions with the resources and global perspectives of multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations. No doubt this is one of many possible relationships.  But perpetuating each dismissing the other is a mistake.  I'm thankful to live in an era when a hybrid future is imaginable, I hope more people will join me.   http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/bodyshock-winner-profile-smarter-sleep/ zedAlert from IFTF on Vimeo.Here is another of the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17531603" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe> zedAlert from IFTF on Vimeo. Here is another of the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. One of the top 5 winners of the contest was ZedAlert, the app designed by Stephanie Liou and Stewart MacGregor of Stanford University to help people sleep better and smarter. Their presentation is above, and their entry into the contest describes their innovative idea: "zedAlert - Sleep better. Sleep more. Sleep smarter. With numerous harmful effects on disease, obesity, safety, creativity, cognition, productivity, happiness, and more, sleep deprivation is one of the biggest, yet most under-appreciated health crises of modern times. zedAlert is an iPhone application currently under development by two Stanford students, together with faculty from the Stanford School of Medicine. It records user sleep data and uses mathematical models to determine the optimal times for each individual to sleep, in order to maximize restfulness. zedAlert also tracks sleep debt, provides push notification alerts, assists with diagnosis of sleep disorders, and offers many other tools for comprehensively improving sleep health." This week, Stephanie sent us an update on their progress in the past couple of months: "We've been working on the app over break and have met with some more advisors, so I'd say that we're making progress, but are not yet ready to launch.  Some of the algorithms are proving to be quite tricky, unfortunately.  I'll make sure to keep you updated as we go along!" We wish Stephanie and Stewart all the best as they moves forward with their idea to bring smarter sleep to the world. Stay tuned for videos of the other BodyShock winners over the coming weeks, and for updates on each winner as they make progress. IFTF's current contest, accepting entries until January 31, is the California Dreams Contest. We're asking people, "What is Your Dream for the Future of California?" The winner will receive the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight. Enter your dream today! http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/iftf-releases-case-study-on-how-to-run-an-online-contest-based-on-bodyshock-the-future/ In 2010, we at the Institute for the Future discussed a vision to create a contest that would ask people to enter and vote for ideas on how to transform our bodies and lifestyles for future health—a topic closely related to IFTF’s Health Horizons research. In 2010, we at the Institute for the Future discussed a vision to create a contest that would ask people to enter and vote for ideas on how to transform our bodies and lifestyles for future health—a topic closely related to IFTF’s Health Horizons research. The result was the BodyShock The Future competition that was held at www.bodyshockthefuture.org. Over 100 entries were submited in 11 weeks, over 8,000 votes were cast, and everything about the process was documented in quantified detail. This report outlines the evolution and management of the BodyShock The Future competition—from vision creation to weekly execution details to lessons learned. We offer it as a resource for anyone wanting to run their own online contest. Please let us know if it helps you! For more information about BodyShock the Future, contact Neela Nuristani.  Click to download the BodyShock the Future Year 1 Report. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/interface-overload/ One key strategy for making feedback more persuasive is to use real-time, contextually appropriate feedback. In other words, don't tell me that, in general, it's a good idea to drink water to improve my health; give me a reminder to drink water when my body is starting to get dehydrated. Which, oddly, is the concept behind a new water bottle highlighted by the excellent Crave blog on cnet. One key strategy for making feedback more persuasive is to use real-time, contextually appropriate feedback. In other words, don't tell me that, in general, it's a good idea to drink water to improve my health; give me a reminder to drink water when my body is starting to get dehydrated. Which, oddly, is the concept behind a new water bottle highlighted by the excellent Crave blog on cnet. Called i-dration, the bottle uses sensors to track how much water the user is drinking, at what pace, and uses those measurements to dispense advice on how the athlete could improve her water intake. It works as follows: The bottle's sensors monitor not only fluid quantity but also temperature and drinking frequency. The corresponding smartphone app, in turn, uses the phone's built-in accelerometer and gyroscope to measure exercise levels, and then fuses data from a heart-rate chest band with pre-entered details (i.e. height, age, weight) to assess the user's hydration levels. If it determines the user is dehydrated, the i-dration bottle flashes a blue light. "We believe that in the next 12 to 18 months we will see a plethora of new dedicated 'hardware apps'--such as the i-dration drinks bottle--that will work in tandem with a smartphone to enhance a range of consumer products and services," says Rachel Harker of Cambridge Consultants in a news release. "Inexpensive wireless hardware apps have the potential to increase the versatility of smartphones." And, in fact, this blending of pedestrian objects and high-tech computing power does seem to be popping up everywhere--and not just products that work in concert with smart phones. Just scrolling through the Crave blog on cnet from the past couple of months, I encountered a pen that measures stress levels to provide real-time feedback on how to manage stress. Another initiative involves a type of toothpaste that changes its taste based on the weather forecast. According to Crave, it works as follows: In this case, toothpaste is modified to dispense one of three flavors depending on the weather. If it's mint, you know it's colder out than yesterday. Cinnamon means it's hotter. Blue stripes indicate... precipitation. The prototype is currently hooked up to a small Linux computer that pulls forecasts, using custom software to compare previous and current temperatures and divvy up the flavors. Then, linear actuators squeeze out the proper variety of toothpaste through a heavily modded Mentadent dispenser. Eventually, the technology could be pared down so "Tastes Like Rain" shows up on store shelves alongside the Colgate and Crest. Minus the computer, Carr hints it could be powered on a low-cell battery. It's this last invention that struck me as simultaneously amazing and a tad absurd. It is, to be sure, pretty incredible to imagine that in the next decade, consumer goods could change their flavor or smell to help a person figure out whether to wear a sweater or a heavy coat. But do we really need that sort of guidance? Can't a person just look out the window to understand the weather? But even if the individual taste changing toothpaste seems handy, the idea of having lots and lots of real-time feedback from self-adjusting products seems a bit overwhelming. Some things are valuable precisely because we don't notice them, or because they're so familiar that we can use them without thinking about it. In this sense, I think one of the key design questions that many consumer goods companies will face in the next decade is to understand what sort of feedback makes sense to integrate into their products. In other words, flavor changing toothpaste may be an amazing concept that also happens to be a really bad idea. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/democratized-data-for-a-renewed-california/ <object width="350" height="214" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/pTBh4Le5nwo?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pTBh4Le5nwo?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pTBh4Le5nwo?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object> Flicking through the Economist’s World in 2011 special this week, I came across Arianna Huffington’s prediction that this will be the year Americans come to realize that “our system is too broken to be fixed by politicians operating from within it—and that real change will come only when enough people outside Washington demand it.” Huffington’s thought resonates strongly with the transformation scenario we identified in our project exploring of the future of California. It is a scenario that sees citizens leveraging innovative technology tools to participate in a more distributed, decentralized governance. HealthyCity.org is just one example of a tool that might help trigger just this kind of empowerment*. What began as data initiative focused on LA county 7 years ago was this year expanded to include over 2500 data sets for the whole of California. The result is a really user-friendly interface for people to conduct their own research about their communities. In less than 5 minutes, I can create a map that overlays concentrations of low-income families in Oakland with information about the location of basic need services such as food banks. This helps to identify gaps quickly and Healthy City hopes that by arming citizens with this data, they will be able to make a compelling case for better service provision in their communities. Data is just one powerful tool that can help people advocate for the change they want to see around them. What other tools will Californians need to have at their disposal in order to transform their state? There are just 3 weeks left to tell about your vision for the future of California. Visit the California Dreams contest site to have a chance to win the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight. *Thanks to Miriam for highlighting this great signal. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/jan-12-sf-event-the-power-of-play-innovations-in-getting-active/ In just under a week, on January 12, leaders in the areas of fitness, science, health care, game design, video games, and education will converge to talk about the Power of Play, especially active gaming.  [img_assist|nid=3679|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://powerofactiveplaysummit.org/|align=left|width=238|height=206] In just under a week, on January 12, leaders in the areas of fitness, science, health care, game design, video games, and education will converge to talk about the Power of Play, especially active gaming.  Several Institute for the Future staff will be in attendance, and we understand there are still a few spots left! If you'd like to attend, please contact Anu Gandhi:  anu.gandhi@heart.org.This summit grows out of a collaborative partnership between the American Heart Association and Nintendo of America.   Indu Subaiya will moderate the conversation, and participants are asked to come in "play causal" clothing, ready to discuss active play, and also participate in it!   Check out the agenda and speakers here:  http://powerofactiveplaysummit.org/   Will we see you at Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco January 12 for this event?  Email anu.gandhi@heart.org to find out more. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/bodyshock-winner-profile-patient-narratives/ Recovery Project from IFTF on Vimeo.Here is another of the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/17540942" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe> Recovery Project from IFTF on Vimeo. Here is another of the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. One of the top 5 winners of the contest was The Recovery Project, with Michael Nagle flying in from Boston for the event. His presentation is above, and his entry into the contest describes his insightful idea: "The Recovery Project would organize people's personal narratives of recovery so that they can be best learned from by others. By letting patients see what others have done and by creating high-level meta-narratives, patients can see the decision trees that others have used, saving time in creating their own from scratch. Sharing and reading similar narratives provides an affective component to possibilities for personal health -- critical when conditions require changes of habit. And experts and practitioners will be able to contribute their stories of helping patients recover, integrating various medical professions' perspectives, instead of creating a divide." This past week, Michael sent us an update on his progress in the past couple of months: "I'm shifting gears a bit with that project -- I'm moving less from broadly interviewing people with interesting recoveries to look at specific cases of people who recover as micro-experts in health: very knowledgable about their case and their treatment. Right now, I'm looking at what it means for me to document and present my own case, and also am exploring training in the posture method I used -- as a realization that knowing it through my own body gives me a good deal of expertise already." We wish Michael all the best as he moves forward with his idea to develop narratives from health micro-experts. Stay tuned for videos of the other BodyShock winners over the coming weeks, and for updates on each winner as they make progress. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/the-future-of-reading-faces/ An interesting blog post in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago highlighted a startup company called MedNetworks that, among other things, analyzes social networking data to help pharmaceutical salespeople target their pitches to influential doctors. An interesting blog post in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago highlighted a startup company called MedNetworks that, among other things, analyzes social networking data to help pharmaceutical salespeople target their pitches to influential doctors. Founded by leading social network researcher Nicholas Christakis, MedNetworks aims to leverage the growing body of research that shows how ideas and behaviors spread subconsciously. According to the Journal, the company has already had some success: But the technology can also be applied to helping pharma companies pinpoint the physicians on whom to concentrate their marketing efforts during a time of sales-force downsizing. Concentrating only on high-volume prescribers “completely misses the social context,” says Miller. It can’t find the doctors who may not prescribe the most themselves, but know so many co-workers and colleagues in the area — say, because they refer out a lot of patients –that they can influence prescription volume downstream. A case study on the launch of Merck’s diabetes drug Januvia, for example, showed that in the Raleigh-Durham area,”prescribers who had Januvia adopters within one degree of separation in their network neighborhood were twice as likely to prescribe Januvia compared to prescribers without Januvia adopters in their network neighborhood.” Other regions showed similar patterns, the company says. I suppose this isn't too shocking--companies are already measuringhow quickly people returns your phone calls, among other things, to develop a rough sense of social hierarchy, and then tailor sales pitches, so I guess prescription habits aren't too different. And from a business perspective, it certainly makes sense. Why employ a salesforce when you can just monetize friendship instead? It's intriguing, though also scary, to think about how this sort of marketing could evolve in combination with technologies like facial recognition software, a technology that we're already starting to see deployed in retail contexts. For example, this Japanese vending machine can determine your sex and approximate age, by your face, and use this information to make recommendations: "Recommended" labels will then appear on specific drink products. Suggested products may also change depending on the temperature and time of day. "If the customer is a man, the machine is likely to recommend a canned coffee drink, since men tend to prefer these. If the customer is in their 50s, though, that recommendation is likely to be green tea," a company spokeswoman said. A woman in her 20s will be recommended a tea drink or slightly sweeter product, since market research has shown that they prefer these. This is obviously pretty crude right now, but as facial recognition software improves, it's easy to imagine tying in-store facial recognition to data about our position in different social networks. In-store, companies could begin tailoring everything from pitches to service levels to you, just by looking at your face. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/wikileaks-and-the-power-of-the-internet-1/ Mercury News columnist Chris O'Brien published a column this week about the power of the Internet and its potential to erode the power of nations and large corporations. IFTF Research Director, Jake Dunagan is quoted in the article, citing the long-held belief by futurists that "large organizations such as nations or even corporations, which are built on a centralized hierarchy, are helpless to fight flatter, more decentralized organizations designed around networks."Executive Director Marina Gorbis touched on this idea recently in her blog post "Inventing Social Organizations." Our social technologies have become so advanced that in order to fulfill their promise, we need to design new governance models and ways of creating value. We are already seeing organizations that rely on their networks to provide value, think Wikipedia's crowdsourced encyclopedia, or Creative Commons' open-source sharing of ideas. Several others use alternative financing mechanisms that are in line with their public and commons-like structure. But the majority still operate under the same hierarchical structures of the pre-web days. And as networks of anonymous "hacktivists" launch cyberattacks against sites and major organizations like MasterCard, PayPal, and even U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, it's becoming clear that "cyberspace is threatening national sovereignty." Jake argues that the impact of the decentralized web could be positive or negative, depending on the response. In this case, transparency appears to be the answer. Says Jake, "It can be positive for democracy where people are more transparent and are held more accountable for their actions."Transparency isn't the only answer, organizational change will have to come on a transformational scale, something IFTF calls "superstructing." To adapt to this new world, we'll need to create structures that go beyond the basic organizational forms with which we are familiar. We'll need to collaborate at extreme scales, from the micro to the massive. We'll need to learn to work, play, invent, and innovate across boundaries, and not rely on closed, hierarchical models.Click here to read the full column, "WikiLeaks cyberbattles signal rise of new powers" http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/california-pioneer-sparks-education-revolution/   My kids and I are students at the biggest school in the world, that started in Sal Khan's home in Mountain View, California.  <object style="width: 350px; height: 214px;" width="350" height="214" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/UuMTSU9DcqQ&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UuMTSU9DcqQ&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3" /></object> My kids and I are students at the biggest school in the world, that started in Sal Khan's home in Mountain View, California.  Khan has created over 1800 video lessons, no longer than 10 minutes each, that clearly and passionately teach topics from Differential Equations to Photosynthesis to the Economics of a Cupcake Factory. You watch them at your own pace, test your understanding by answering practice questions, and fill in badges along his Knowledge Map. It's called Khan Academy, and it's taking the world by storm, with over 30 million views of his videos on YouTube. The project recently won a $2 million award from Google, and has attracted the attention of the Gates Foundation, as well as students worldwide who once hated math and now see how easy it is if explained properly. Khan Academy is an example of one citizen in California taking it upon himself to contribute his highest value to the world. Imagine if brick-and-mortar schools were replaced by modular, on-demand, asynchronous learning platforms. Imagine if students loved to learn again, and could do it for free, on any topic, from anywhere. I love this dream, for the future of California and for the world. So that's Sal Khan's dream. What's yours? Tell us at the California Dreams contest site, and you could win the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight. Enter today!  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/fast-company-profiles-boingboingnet/ [img_assist|nid=3669|title=|desc=|link=none|align=center|width=425|height=166] Our friends over at BoingBoing.net, including IFTF Research Director David Pescovitz, are profiled in the November issue of Fast Company in the feature "The Wild, Wacky, and Profitable World of BoingBoing.net." BoingBoing bills itself as a "gallery of wonderful things," and the editors pride themselves on creating content that's smart, interesting, and doesn't pander to ad dollars or trends. This authenticity makes David a perfect fit at IFTF, especially in our Technology Horizons program. David's network spreads across the Internet, enabling him to bring the latest innovators and signals to his technology research, which can be seen in his recent work on the Future of Robotics.  The profile traces BoingBoing's roots from its humble beginnings as a print zine to becoming one of the most popular blogs on the web today. Its editors, Mark Frauenfelder, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin, are spread across the globe and have their own projects on the side, enabling them to constantly update BoingBoing with the latest interesting things they've come across. Each of the editors aims to produce a blog they themselves would read, says David, "We've never thought, Who is our demographic and are we reaching our demographic? I think it would be a mistake for us to do that. Anything that we do, first and foremost, is to please ourselves."  Like BoingBoing, IFTF is committed to producing content that objectively forecasts future trends we see happening today, whether positive or negative, and has been for over 40 years. BoingBoing has maintained steady popularity over the past five years, even as the blogosphere has changed dramatically, by sticking to their core values. BoingBoing's staying power can be attributed to its editors, who aren't focused on creating a blog empire, or on dollar amounts at all. Read the full article "Inside the Wild, Wacky, and Profitable World of BoingBoing.net"  http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/wikileaks-and-the-power-of-the-internet/ Mercury News columnist Chris O'Brien published a column this week about the power of the Internet and its potential to erode the power of nations and large corporations. IFTF Research Director, Jake Dunagan is quoted in the article, citing the long-held belief by futurists that "large organizations such as nations or even corporations, which are built on a centralized hierarchy, are helpless to fight flatter, more decentralized organizations designed around networks." Mercury News columnist Chris O'Brien published a column this week about the power of the Internet and its potential to erode the power of nations and large corporations. IFTF Research Director, Jake Dunagan is quoted in the article, citing the long-held belief by futurists that "large organizations such as nations or even corporations, which are built on a centralized hierarchy, are helpless to fight flatter, more decentralized organizations designed around networks."Executive Director Marina Gorbis touched on this idea recently in her blog post "Inventing Social Organizations." Our social technologies have become so advanced that in order to fulfill their promise, we need to design new governance models and ways of creating value. We are already seeing organizations that rely on their networks to provide value, think Wikipedia's crowdsourced encyclopedia, or Creative Commons' open-source sharing of ideas. Several others use alternative financing mechanisms that are in line with their public and commons-like structure. But the majority still operate under the same hierarchical structures of the pre-web days. And as networks of anonymous "hacktivists" launch cyberattacks against sites and major organizations like MasterCard, PayPal, and even U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, it's becoming clear that "cyberspace is threatening national sovereignty." Jake argues that the impact of the decentralized web could be positive or negative, depending on the response. In this case, transparency appears to be the answer. Says Jake, "It can be positive for democracy where people are more transparent and are held more accountable for their actions."Transparency isn't the only answer, organizational change will have to come on a transformational scale, something IFTF calls "superstructing." To adapt to this new world, we'll need to create structures that go beyond the basic organizational forms with which we are familiar. We'll need to collaborate at extreme scales, from the micro to the massive. We'll need to learn to work, play, invent, and innovate across boundaries, and not rely on closed, hierarchical models.Click here to read the full column, "WikiLeaks cyberbattles signal rise of new powers" http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/playing-with-games-for-health/ [img_assist|nid=3664|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=425|height=129]For the past few years, we've been keenly interested in how games can be used to encourage healthy behaviors.  My colleague, Jane McGonigal, even developed and prototyped a street game called CryptoZoo on behalf of the American Heart Association. For the past few years, we've been keenly interested in how games can be used to encourage healthy behaviors.  My colleague, Jane McGonigal, even developed and prototyped a street game called CryptoZoo on behalf of the American Heart Association.  As a proof-of-concept, CryptoZoo demonstrated that it is possible to engage people in fun and playful activities that can elevate heart rates as much as a formal run or workout might.This weekend, we'll be participating in HealthGamesCampSF, a BarCamp event being held at the San Francisco offices of frog design, a leading innovation firm.  From the event webpage:Good health behaviors are important—sometimes lives depend on them.But behaviors are hard to change. Old habits really do die hard.Fortunately, there are games.Games are a place where we embrace change, where we love being challenged, and where frustration can be fun.  As we immerse ourselves in games we voluntarily change our behaviors in order to win, and old habits melt away over time.During HealthGamesCamp we collaboratively learn how games can be used to drive positive change in health behaviors.  HealthGamesCamp brings together multi-disciplinary teams for collaborative learning and co-creation.  The entire event is structured as a multi-level game out of which a variety of games or game prototypes are produced.  Both technical and non-technical attendees are involved throughout the weekend.  Some of the games will be non-digital—either board games, party games, script-based games, or alternative reality games—... and some games will be digital—both web-based and mobile.We are excited to be a partner for HealthGamesCampSF, along with the mHealthAlliance, the Health 2.0 Conference, and others.  According to the event sponsor, the Innovation Management Institute, a limited numbers of spaces are still available.  Details and registration can be found at http://bit.ly/hgcsf. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/bodyshock-winner-profile-gaming-for-mental-health/ Play it! Say it! from IFTF on Vimeo.We're excited to start releasing the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. Play it! Say it! from IFTF on Vimeo.We're excited to start releasing the winning presentations from the BodyShock the Future contest for ideas to improve global health that was held this summer. The grand prize winner of the Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight was Play It! Say It!, with Andrew Shaw and Elizabeth Ure flying in from Australia for the event. Their presentation is above, and their entry into the contest describes their brilliant idea:"PLAY IT! SAY IT! is simple - we propose to use the existing communication functionalities of video game consoles (voice chat and messaging) to provide phone and online counselling to the people who use them. The online video game community is larger than the population of Canada, and at least one 1 in 5 people playing have a mental health condition. Beyond the existing benefits of online and phone counseling, consoles offer universal access points to ensure coverage, and the opportunity to develop rapport while playing simple games to support the sharing of concerns. We value quality of life."This past week, Andrew sent us an update on their progress in the past couple of months since they won:"Since the presentation we’ve made some great contacts who are helping us take the idea forward. We hope to be in a position to bring government and Microsoft together in early 2011 to discuss their joint willingness to explore the idea further. This will be a critical point for us."We wish Play It! Say It! all the best as they move forward with their idea to use gaming to support mental health. Stay tuned for videos of the other BodyShock winners over the coming weeks, and for updates on each winner as th