Institute For The Future

A powerful Q&A forum for you and your organization from IFTF Vantage.

Moderated one-hour Q&A sessions with experienced futurists, IFTF Vantage Ask a Futurist webinars are a forum for you to ask questions and hear answers from IFTF futurists drawing on insights from years of research and experience. Ask a Futurist webinars are free and open to all, and previous sessions are archived and available below.

Designing Sustainable Futures

We are facing incredible challenges over the next decade. Climate change is already contributing to a range of negative effects, including the deterioration of supply chains, water shortages, health risks, extreme weather conditions, and consumer backlash. But organizations who face these challenges with urgency and a sense of long-term possibility will be well-positioned to build resilient, profitable businesses as part of a climate-positive future.

In this session, IFTF researchers share recent research on becoming a climate-positive organization and how a sustainability function within a large consumer goods company designed a climate-positive future by reimagining its distributed production and reevaluating sustainability reporting metrics.

Social VR Leading Edge Behaviors

Lyn Jeffery, strategic design and foresight practitioner, researcher, lecturer, and IFTF Distinguished Fellow and Vanessa Mason, IFTF Research Director, discuss Social VR leading-edge behaviors research, a methodology used in ethnographic foresight (full report here).

IFTF has a long history of using a variety of research methodologies that go beyond exploring the possibilities of emerging technologies in a technical sense to understand the changing human experience and values. The methods of ethnographic foresight anticipate emergent futures by understanding the values, behaviors, and toolsets of future-facing people in the context of their daily lives. By looking at each individual as an expert futuremaker, leading-edge behavior research uncovers stories of experiences in the present that are likely to grow in scale and/or importance in the future.

Technology Forecasting

Director of Research for IFTF Vantage Brad Kreit explores IFTF's approach to technology-related forecasting in a conversation with IFTF Research Director Vanessa Mason. Learn how IFTF combines a deep understanding of both technology and societal forces to identify and evaluate discontinuities and innovations in the decade or more. For more than 30 years, IFTF's approach to technology forecasting has been and remains unique—we put people at the center of our forecasts.

Future of Work and Its Impact on Health

IFTF Research Director Rachel Maguire and Blue Shield of California Foundation Senior Program Officer Rachel Wick discussed our two year foresight collaboration to explore how present and future work conditions will impact the health of workers, their families, and their communities. They walk through the urgent questions that drove this research and what it uncovered about how some work arrangements, technological forces, and economic policies are contributing to new health risks and declining overall well-being of workers, their families, and the community at large. Read the full report here.

Future of the Attention Economy

IFTF Ambassador to the Future Daria Lamb hosts a conversation with Tim Hwang, Data & Society Researcher and author of "The Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet," and Ben Gansky, artist, designer, community organizer, and researcher focusing on the politics and social aspects of data ecosystems.

Optimistic Futures with Jacques Barcia

A conversation exploring optimistic futures with award-winning journalist, author, and futurist Jacques Barcia and IFTF Vantage Research Director Vanessa Mason. Jacques' core interests are in the futures of narratives and narratives about futures. He is co-founder of Futuring Today, a network blending foresight, design, and science fiction to prototype futures.

Future of Families

Self-driving cars, augmented reality, AI—there are a set of technological changes we all know are on the horizon. But it's not the same with visions of social change. IFTF Vantage Research Director Ben Hamamoto and Family Story Project Executive Director Nicole Rodgers talk about our recent, jointly-released report, Families in Flux: Imagining the Next Generation of the American Family. They discuss how the family could change profoundly in the coming decades and pull out implications for institutions and organizations.

Design Futures

IFTF Research Director Jake Dunagan  explores how media, design, and immersive experiences help people feel futures. Jake’s focus is the examination of social invention and the redesign of systems in light of current and emerging tools and knowledge. He has conducted research, written, and lectured on a wide range of topics, including strategic foresight, governance design, comprehensive cognitive design, intellectual property, judicial foresight, kids’ technologies, Internet law and politics, mobility, and the future of learning and work. 

Our Magical Future—Science, Art, and the Imagination

Futures thinking calls for us to imagine different possibilities. Creative mediums like art and science fiction are vital tools in every futurist's toolkit, making what's imagined feel more real and provocative. David Pescovitz, editor/partner at the influential tech/culture website Boing Boing, and IFTF Editorial & Research Director Mark Frauenfelder discussed how art and science fiction can allow us to create present-day provocations that build possible futures. 

Full-Spectrum Thinking: How to Escape Boxes in a Post-Categorical Future  with author Bob Johansen

Full-spectrum thinking is a creative mix of skills, literacies, and mindset. It  unlocks clarity while challenging certainty. IFTF Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen, author of the new book Full-Spectrum Thinking, talks with IFTF Vantage Research Director Vanessa Mason about his book and addresses questions about learning to see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world.

Feeling Our Way Into the Future with Jane McGonigal

Emotions play a powerful role in our responses to foresight—and can both compel us to take action and paralyze us in overwhelm. IFTF Director of Games Research + Development Jane McGonigal and IFTF Vantage Research Director Vanessa Mason answer questions about gaming, simulation, and how we can feel our way into the future.

For more information about partnering with IFTF Vantage, please complete an information request form or reach out to:

John Clamme  |  jclamme@iftf.org  |  650.233.9566

Sean Ness  |  sness@iftf.org  |  650.233.9517