Institute For The Future

Designing for Self-Control

Via the Nudge Blog, I was reminded of a computer program called Self Control that allows a user to block his own access to email, Twitter and Facebook...

Designing the future of health care . . . or is it really about designing the future of health?

At IFTF, the Health Horizons Program is spending time looking at the latter and considering how design thinking may apply to the future of health. ...

Continuous glucose monitoring in the blink of an eye

Imagine a contact lens that could continually and non-invasively monitor your biomarkers and health indicators?  That is the potential of an...

FutureCast: Re-imagining the suburbs

IFTF will be hosting our second FutureCast on Thursday, December 17, at 11:00 am Pacific Time. Jerry Michalski will be in conversation with guests...

What's up Doc? Did you remember to wash your hands?

A couple of years ago, Atul Gawande described in the New Yorker a study designed by Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins in which he implimented a...

How did you sleep last night?

As my colleagues know, that I am blogging at this hour of the morning is an indication that I have had a bad night's sleep.  I am not alone....

IFTF Researcher Testifies at Senate Hearing on Research Parks and Job Creation

Yesterday, I traveled to Washington to testify at a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on "Research Parks and Job...

The Future of Finding Nothing

Systems Biology has begun to gain attention as one of several new life sciences aimed at fundamentally reshaping the ways we understand how humans...

Neurocentric Retail

One of the questions I've begun to wonder about as we continue looking into the role of neuroscience in the future of health is where we'll start to...

Do We Have Mathematical Instincts?

At our Health Horizons conference earlier this week, we spent some time discussing the challenges of communicating future risks to every day people...

IFTF Comments on Senate Bill for Science Park Grants and Loans

Respectfully submitted by Anthony Townsend Research Director Institute for the Future

REMINDER: Join us for our first FutureCast

Guest expert: Arthur Brock on the future of alternative currency and open money...

FutureCast: Arthur Brock on Alternative Currencies

IFTF is happy to announce that we will be introducing a new FutureCast podcast series, starting Friday, November 20, at 11 am Pacific Time. Our first...

Betting on Risky Genes

A provocative feature in this month's Atlantic on a new way to think about genetic variations: Not as switches that confer or protect against disease...

IFTF announces new FutureCast series...starting November 20

IFTF is happy to announce that we will be introducing a new FutureCast podcast series, starting Friday, November 20, at 11 am Pacific Time. Our first...

Scratch and Computational Thinking

I've been thinking a lot about the growth in programming and computational skills that will be required in a world in which Everything is...

Mapping Kenya's largest slum

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When Everything is Programmable Digital Stories

As a part of the year-long Technology Horizons Program research task, When Everything is Progammable: Life in a Conmputational Age, the research team...

Behavioral Genetics in the Court Room

A court in Italy has shortened the prison sentence of a convicted murderer due to the prisoner's heightened genetic predisposition for violence,...

Democratizing Food Science

Earlier in the week, I was trying to pass along a research article to a colleague and inadvertently sent her a recipe for home-brewed...

A fun twist on skip-stop elevators and stairs

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A trail of breadcrumbs leads to food facts

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Please Complete a Genome Scan with Your Mortgage Application

Certain genetic mutations can significantly contribute to the amount of credit card debt a person holds, according to a new study by Jan-Emmanuel...

In Defense of Generalists

The last decade has been witness to the rise of the geeks. What began as a glorification of tech entrepreneurs making it big from the rise of the IT...