For Future Reference - Institute For The Future

Over the next decade, today's connected world will be explosively more connected. Anything that can be distributed will be distributed: workforces, organizations, supply webs, and more. The tired practices of centralized organizations will become brittle in a future where authority is radically decentralized. Rigid hierarchies will give way to liquid structures. Most leaders—and most organizations—aren't ready for this future. Are you? It's too late to catch up, but it's a great time to leapfrog. Noted IFTF futurist Bob Johansen goes beyond skills and competencies to propose five new leadership literacies—combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews—that will be needed to thrive in a VUCA world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This book shows how to (1) forecast likely futures so you can “look back” and make sure you're prepared now for the changes to come, (2) use low-risk gaming spaces to work through your concerns about the future and hone your leadership skills,

In less than ten years, more than a half billion people will be trying to earn a living in the on-demand economy. It’s up to all of us to make sure this new economic system works for everyone. To help spark transdisciplinary research and development of Positive Platforms, IFTF’s Workable Futures Initiative, with the support of the Ford Foundation, hosted Positive Platforms Jams at our offices in Palo Alto while fellow travelers in our global network held satellite events at community hubs and hacker spaces in Helsinki, Milan, Barcelona, Dublin, and other cities around the world. During the Positive Platforms Jams, Designers, engineers, policymakers, and labor organizers gathered for two days to hack away on platform prototypes, replicable design frameworks, new financial tools, data management systems, and methods to tease out the hidden problems inherent in many platform models.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with UC Berkeley computer scientist and artist Eric Paulos< about wild ideas for wearable technologies, from sensor-laden temporary tattoos to fingernail display screens.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with Joel Murphy, co-founder ofOpenBCI, about the implications of low cost, open-source brain-computer interfaces.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with inventor and MacArthur "genius grant" recipient

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with Murray Robinson, founder of Molquant, about new tools designed to make sense of the big data within the human genome.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with evolutionary biologist Tamsin Woolley-Barker, author of Teeming: How Superorganisms work to Build Infinite Wealth in a Finite World, about what insects and fungi can teach us about politics, successful organizations, and the dilemmas of decision-making.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with neuroscientist and IFTF fellow Melina Uncapher, CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Applied Neuroscience that brings scientific research about our brains to critical social issues.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with chemist Kendra Kuhl, CEO of Opus 12, about her technology for recycling carbon dioxide into useful fuels and chemicals.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with rogue biophysicist Josiah Zayner about affordable tools for DIY genetic engineering and how to hack your biome.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Institute for the Future researchers Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz talk with University of Southern California roboticist Nora Ayanian about what robots can learn from humans working together, and vice versa.

IFTF Research Director Bradley Kreit discusses IFTF's research into the technologies and societal forces that will transform when, where, how, and why we communicate in a world of ambient media.

A discussion with Miriam Lueck Avery, Research Director at Institute for the Future, on how wearables, implantables, and wireless networks will connect our communities and alter our anatomies.

A discussion with Rod Falcon, Director of the Technology Horizons Program at Institute for the Future. In his 1854 book, Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Thoreau's assertion is as valid today as it was when he made it over one hundred and sixty years ago. Whenever we shape technology, it shapes us, both as individuals and as a society. We created cars, and cars turned us into motorists, auto mechanics, and commuters. Over the centuries we’ve populated our world with machines that help us do things we can't or don't want to do ourselves. Our world has become so saturated with machines that they’ve faded into the background. We hardly notice them. We are reaching a new threshold. Our machines are getting networked, and enabling new forms of human machine symbiosis. We're entering a new era where fifty billion machines are in constant communication, automating and orchestrating the movement and interactions among individuals, organizations, and cities. Institut

In 2013, Mike Zuckerman, a self-described culture hacker, attended the White House’s National Day of Civic Hacking. Inspired by what he’d learned there, Mike returned to San Francisco and founded [freespace], an organization that focuses on sustainability and urban tactical development. In the spring of 2016, Mike went to Greece where he spent four months rehabilitating an abandoned clothing factory in the industrial sector of Thessaloniki, turning it into a humane shelter that he and his colleagues named Elpida. Unlike the official migrant camps in Greece, where refugees have little say in the day-to-day operations of the camp, Elpida put its 140 residents in charge, and the results were remarkable. Not only is Elpida much less expensive to run on a per person basis than official camps in Greece, the residents don’t suffer from boredom, restlessness, and disengagement like they do at NGO-run camps. As a pilot model, Elpida offers hope and improved living conditions for refugees in a place where no other NGO

I wish Scott Barry Kaufman had been my college professor. Scott gives extra credit for daydreaming in his classes. That would have been an easy A for a space case like me. Scott is the scientific director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The Imagination Institute's mission is to "make progress on the measurement, growth, and improvement of imagination across all sectors of society." One of the ways it’s doing this is by conducting retreats with different groups of people, such as educators, evolutionary psychologists, standup comedians, and futurists, to learn how they use their imaginations in their work. In May 2016, I participated in The Imagination Institute’s two day “futurists retreat,” held at Institute for the Future's Palo Alto headquarters. This interview with Scott took place on the morning of the second day of the retreat.

When computer scientist Andreas Antonopoulos first heard about bitcoin in 2011 he dismissed it as “nerd money.” Six months later he happened on bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s now-legendary white paper written in November 2008. This nine-page, dryly-written document unrolled a blueprint for a system that would replace large swaths of the financial services industry with a globally-distributed encryption-based transaction network that wasn’t owned by anyone. After reading the white paper, Antonopoulos’ mind was blown. “This isn’t money,” he realized, “it’s a decentralized trust network,” with applications extending far beyond digital currency. Antonopoulos says he became “obsessed and enthralled” with bitcoin, “spending 12 or more hours each day glued to a screen, reading, writing, coding, and learning” as much as he could. He said, “I emerged from the state of fugue, more than 20 pounds lighter from a lack of consistent meals, determined to dedicate myself to working on bitcoin.” Five years later, Anto

The Internet we know today is only one possible interpretation of the original vision of an open, peer-to-peer network. Think of it as a first-generation Internet, built on a fragile global network of vulnerable codes subject to abuse and even collapse. This Internet is failing from too close an encounter with a triple shock: a massive economy built on mining terabytes of personal data, ubiquitous criminal penetration of financial and identity networks, and pervasive state intruders at all levels and at every encrypted hardware and software node. Today we also see efforts to address the Internet’s vulnerabilities. But these are just the first steps toward a resilient Second Curve Internet. In the Institute for the Future's new Second Curve Internet Speaker Series, we’ll explore the critical elements necessary to reinvent the Internet, gathering leading minds together with IFTF’s deep experience thinking about technology and the ways of communicating, coordinating, and organizing in the changing world around