Institute For The Future

#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...

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...