Institute For The Future

From #20forecasts: Waste mining pushes against planned obsolescence

Did you know one metric ton of circuit boards contains 40-800 times as much gold as one metric ton of gold ore? Not to mention that up to 40% of...

Thought for the Future of Food

In late September, IFTF's Rebecca Chesney shared our food futures research at Five Thot's Idea People Thinking: Food event. From the relationship...

Announcing Human-Machine Futures: Technology Horizons 2015 Research Agenda

Each year, IFTF’s Technology Horizons Program conducts original research examining the underlying shifts taking place in science and technology,...

Cory Doctorow: Redesigning a Broken Internet

Building and maintaining a global communications network is a tremendous accomplishment. Unfortunately, our internet is broken in relation to the laws...

From #20forecasts: "Machines get a social life"

In 1999, then Procter & Gamble assistant brand manager (and now famous MIT technologist) Kevin Ashton pointed out that computers – and therefore the...

From Telepresence to Copresence

Have you seen this hysterical four minute video called A Conference Call In Real Life? If you haven’t, treat yourself to a watch right now:...

From #20forecasts: Spark of a Nanorevolution

It’s the stuff of science fiction. Graphene is two dimensional material that has the potential to change how we interact with our three dimensional...

My Transcontinental Journey to Explore our Food System

What can 10 days on a train teach us about our future food system? Sarah Smith shares what she learned about managing waste, sourcing locally, and...

Reworking Health: Translating Siloed Research into Medicine

The topic receives almost daily media coverage—from the incredible potential and dangers of data mining health records to how big data is changing the...

Artifact Engine

When thinking about the future, it is important to start somewhere. Especially if we believe that the future is something that we, as humans, can...

Reworking Health: Personalizing Space for Mindfulness

At IFTF, we’ve been writing for a while now about all the ways that our environments impact our health and well-being. From spaces that nudge us...

The #My2024 Declaration

This declaration is a collective creation. Written and curated by members of the LGBTQ community across ages, backgrounds, and across the United...

#My2024 Bonus Mission—Rally! October 13, 2024

It’s October 13, 2024—ten years since you signed on to the My2024 Declaration. The movement has tackled so many of the big issues in that...

#My2024 Bonus Mission—Celebrations! Oct 9-10, 2024

It’s October 10, 2024—the anniversary of the game-changing My2024 event. You can trace so much of what’s good and important in your life back to the...

The Latest Buzz from #My2024

Check out the buzz from #My2024 and join the conversation at My2024.us, #My2024, and...

IFTF's New Foresight Engine Debuts: Collaboratively Forecast the Future!

IFTF's next-generation Foresight Engine platform aims to build scaled-up conversations about urgent futures. What's new in the updated version? Read...

Reworking Health: Embedding Care Protocol Adherence

A couple of years ago, I happened upon one of my favorite descriptions for a world where virtually everything we own is networked: The Internet of the...

Highlights from our Open Cities Conference #opencities2025

Take a quick journey through our 2014 Technology Horizons program's conference, Open Cities: How the Maker Mindset is Reinventing Urban Life. Over two...

Join the #My2024 Inspiration Team to Imagine LGBTQ Futures!

IFTF is looking for LGBTQ volunteers to help us inspire and provoke responses for upcoming My2024 online event to imagine our lives as LGBTQ people in...

Announcing an Open Source Guide to 21st Century Movements

On September 25-26, Institute for the Future hosted a writing jam to kickstart the Open Source Guide to 21st Century Movements, a resource for anyone...

Bringing Joy into the Future of Work

Help us design the future of work for joy! 2014 Future for Good Fellow Wellington Nogueira is seeding a movement to bring joy into the future of...

Reworking Health: Contextualizing Science in Retail Settings

Brick-and-mortar retail has been struggling for quite a while. But it has one thing that’s sorely needed in the health world: human...

Announcing Open City / Art City Featured Artists

Institute for the Future and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are teaming up for the Open City / Art City Festival on October 4 in San Francisco, a...

IFTF Hosts Future of Learning Workshop with SJUSD

On September 17–19 IFTF partnered with SJUSD, Cross & Joftus, and Enterprise Development Group, to explore the frontiers of the new learning ecology...