Institute For The Future

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...

The Learning Shelter: Making a Deep Impact on Homelessness

The maker community helped Marc Roth go from homeless to hacker. Now he wants to help others find shelter and obtain jobs with The Learning Shelter....

Artifact from the Future: Just In Time Manufacturing Saves USPS

Your friendly neighborhood mail truck is now your custom wedding gift truck, too. Using state-of-the-art 3D fabbing, the postal service has turned...

Artifact from the Future: Choice Reducer 5000

An app for your augmented reality glasses that blocks from view the foods that you shouldn’t eat. Instead, the app shows minutes of treadmill time to...

Can Extreme Learning Be An Extreme Sport?

As we are riveted by the breathtaking performances of snowboarders, downhill racers, and speedskaters at the Sochi Olympics, I wonder: Is there a...

Remaking Systems – Seeing Maker Cities First Hand

In 2014, IFTF’s Technology Horizons program is taking clients on a journey to cities around the world to get immersed in global maker culture. Cities...

Government Service of the Future? Visions from Dubai

IFTF conducted the research for the UAE's Museum of Future Government Services, an experiment in design fiction that explores the future of health,...

Future of Learning: From Assigning to Enticing with Content

Finally, disruption has come to education. Many would agree it’s been too long in coming. Now, the same forces that have disrupted every other sector...

Overheard at Burning Man

What happens when you use the Social Inventor's Toolkit to investigate Burning Man?

Artifact from the Future: Species Design Symposium

The NovoGenesis Institute offers a million-dollar award for a new predator targeting exploding populations of cephalopods, primarily squid and...

A free ride for public health?

There is a need to design systems that bring awareness to the health implications of everyday actions. This provides a critical feedback loop that...

IFTF at Creating Change 2014

What could the next 4, 6, even 10 years mean for your life, your work, your organization, or the LGBT movement? How many futures—plural!—are you ready...

Our Favorite ideas from over the weekend on Maker Cities!

Maker Cities, our massively multiplayer game for prototyping the future of cities, has been live for almost a week! The game’s first challenge, called...

Personalized Medicine and Lifestyle

Health Horizons was a media partner for the 2014 Personalized Medicine World Conference, January 27-28. We spoke with Dr. Jeffery Bland before the...

Artifact from the Future: Give Some Spit, Get a Free Ride

You’re immune to impulse buys at check-out, but this one is different—a local ‘stress map’ of San Francisco built from epigenetic...

Open Medicine and the Future of Patient Engagement

Health Horizons was a media partner for the 2014 Personalized Medicine World Conference, January 27-28. We spoke with Dr. Kogelnik before the...

4 capabilities of a SynchroniCity

You can think of a SynchroniCity as the ultimate Maker Cities, with rapid fabrication, on-demand delivery, a micro-economy of location-based gigs, and...

Our favorite ideas from day 1 of Maker Cities: SynchroniCity!

We’re thrilled so many players joined for the launch Maker Cities yesterday and the first weekly challenge, called SynchroniCity. The game is off to a...

Artifact from the Future: The Cost Of Water

What if we just can’t break our water habit in California? What if climate change cuts down the Sierra snowpack by end of century?...

A Future of Personalized Depression Treatment

Health Horizons researchers will be attending the 2014 Personalized Medicine World Conference here in Silicon Valley, January 27-28. In the run-up to...

Welcome to the SynchroniCity

IFTF's Maker Cities online game officially launches with the first challenge, SynchroniCity. Play the game. Remake the world in the SynchroniCity....

Makers Will Create the Future of Cities

Yesterday, I came across Makers Create the Future, Mark Kleszczewski's article about the emerging maker movement on Business Xpansion Journal. His...

Artifact from the Future: Keep Calm & Capture Carbon

Thanks to air-scrubbing trees and other carbon capture tech, Planet Earth is on track to hit carbon emission...