Institute For The Future

From #10YF2014: 3D-Printed Cities

During the 2014 Ten-Year Forecast Annual Retreat, Jamais Cascio explored the potential of 3D printing to change the way we rebuild, restore, and...

As Fitbits for Feelings Emerge, Whither Empathy?

Are we losing touch with one another? Are we sinking towards something like Roman civilization, when bloodthirsty spectators eagerly watched men fight...

Maker Cities NYC Immersion Storify now available

On May 20-21, our Maker Cities team led a group of research sponsors on a discovery journey into the maker culture of New York. Now you can share the...

#MakerCities and NYC Museum Media Labs: Day 1!

Alex from the Maker Cities team at Day 1 of our hackathon with NYC Museum Media Lab Meetup Group.

From #10YF2014: The End of Prisons

The 2014 Ten-Year Forecast explored the landscape of change over the next decade by inviting attendees to contemplate ten projects that—if...

Maker Cities and NYC Museum Media Labs

If we set aside the traditional view of art museums as places to store and view art, what new roles open up for these institutions in cities where...

Myanmar Futures Exchange 2014

It's become a truism of our age that the world is changing at an accelerating pace, and uncertainty is great. I recently returned from a place where...

How Block by Block Creativity can Mute the Effects of Inequality

As politicians grapple with the corrosive effects of gross economic inequality on a long-term macro scale, what kinds of things can be effective on a...

IFTF Gallery for the Future hosts first popup exhibit

The IFTF Gallery for the Future presents our inaugural exhibit, a collection of video works by the Global Lives Project, produced from 2004 to 2014....

Announcing IFTF's 2014 Fellows

The unknown, urgent future calls for practical visionaries who ask provocative questions and seek actionable, impactful answers. The IFTF Future for...

10YF2014: Recoloring the World

On May 1-2, the 2014 Ten-Year Forecast Annual Retreat explores the landscape of change over this next decade by inviting attendees to contemplate ten...

Maker Cities in Transition

On April 16, IFTF's Maker Cities partnered with the Global Lives Project to host a panel and knowledge sharing event in San...

#IFTFWork: Automated fast food and swarming?

IFTF has been looking at the future of work for many years. We know that work is breaking apart and being reassembled in a different way today than...

Maker Cities at Burning Man Global Leadership Conference

On Sunday, April 6th, Alex Goldman and Rebecca Chesney spoke at the Burning Man Global Leadership Conference in San Francisco. See what ideas they...

Maker City Shenzhen: Global Hub for Makers and Manufacturers

Leading up to our Maker Cities immersion in Shenzhen's maker culture, here are four of our China + makers research pieces from the last three years....

Urban Acupuncturists: Mexico City Maker Field Report #1

From March 19-20, IFTF’s Technology Horizons program traveled to Mexico City to explore its emerging maker culture, community, and movement. It was an...

[Freespace]: Experiencing the Commons

Your faithful social investigator hit the streets with the Inventor's Toolkit in hand to explore the opening of the new [Freespace] (1011 Market...

Future of Peacebuilding

Tessa Finlev on new networks of nonviolence

Leapfrog Democracies @ Personal Democracy Forum

UPDATE: We've added a video of David Evan Harris' talk on Leapfrog Democracies at the Personal Democracy Forum 2014 below....

Inventing a New Internet: Learning from Icarus

In Greek Mythology, Icarus was able to fly on wings made of wax and feathers, but he flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax, and he fell into...

A+? B-? Californians start grading their state

What do Californians care about? Ken Goldberg, robotics professor at UC Berkeley and IFTF Advisor, is asking just this question. Yesterday, his Data &...

Cryptocurrency: a new way of organizing and shaping the world

Beyond the hype, the scandal, and the early failures, there still lies the promise of a new way of organizing and shaping the world. And it’s only...

IFTF News from the Future - Spring 2014

Check out highlights from our recent past and near future!

Futures Thinking is the New Design Thinking

Now that we can build anything, we should stop asking “what can we make?” and instead ask, “what should we...