Institute For The Future

Migration's Magical Realism

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

CBS Talks to Mike Liebhold on Future of Smart Devices

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

Reimagining the Future of Higher Education: From STEM to SEAD

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

Antarctica After the Ice

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

A Lesson in Designing Nudges from the World of Crime Prevention

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

The Fascinating Future of Cloud Diagnosis

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

At Talkoot, Small Makes for Big Changes

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

Anya Kamenetz Tells What's in Store for Education

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

Designing Tech for Social Change Part II

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

Hacking Security at Toorcamp

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

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

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

The Great American Hacker Camp

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

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...

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...

Civic Labs: Bangalore

Bangalore, Karnataka, IndiaOn June 16th Civic Labs: Bangalore...

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...

Learning in the Algorithmic Age

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...

Femi Longe on Designing Tech for Social Change

Part I...

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...

3-D Pharmaceutical Printing Outside the U.S.

The Guardian has a great interview with a Scottish professor named Lee Cronin who is working on developing a system to create pharmaceuticals through...

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...

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...

Using Technology to Manage 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...