As part of the track Main Sequence Ventures partner Phil Morle and I had a conversation on The Next Blur: How To Be Ready for a World of Accelerating Change, essentially how to think strategically about 2050 for entrepreneurs and business leaders.  

Here are some highlights from what we covered:

Framing thinking about 2050

Main Sequence recently ran a 2050 workshop for the leaders of its portfolio companies, focusing on the interactions between different technologies, which generated this chart (click here or on the image for a zoomable image).

To give us context on the path to 2050 Phil ran through some of the massive shifts over the last 30 years, including the interaction of rapid technology development and society.

“There are probably some two way interactions. But you’re starting to see the particles all hit each other, so you can start to think through the world and see all these things affecting each other. 

The beautiful thing that happened in the workshop is when we started joining dots together, creating a noise of ideas and connections. It’s like a neural network. 

All the AI people hadn’t even thought about quantum. So when they understood what quantum computers were about to be and they started thinking about AI they started realizing they could do more. And then all the people making healthcare solutions realized that if AI can do that because of quantum oh my god, I can do all these things. There are going to be all these all these ripple effects. So it became a super interesting conversation.

It just gets really, really interesting. I think these things are colliding so quickly today, they’re making each other go faster and faster and faster.”

Why the world is accelerating 

I followed by discussing some of the forces leading to the acceleration of change in technology, society, and business.

“Everyone’s been saying forever that the world is changing faster and faster. So is it actually going faster and faster, accelerating? The evidence seems to be that it is indeed accelerating.

There are a number of underlying factors. The first and most important one is connectivity. Simply whenever somebody comes up with an idea we can immediately communicate and collaborate around the world, which wasn’t the case not too long ago. Another fundamental shift is preprint and open access journals. There used to be a massive gap from development of scientific research to that being available, whereas now with preprint everything’s immediately available. The acceleration of knowledge is increasing.

Another development which has been absolutely fundamental is open source. Many of the lower levels of the technology stacks are open source, so people can immediately go to higher levels of value creation. Of course another development feeding on itself is AI, machine learning and generative AI are able to design capacities to be able to do things faster and better.

One of the shifts that is often ignored is health care, where when we have longer, healthier lives and better abilities, we’re able to spend more time doing things rather than tending to our diseases, thinking more and better. Better healthcare means more people have more resources and more time to accelerate. There is a whole array of other driving forces, all of which are feeding on themselves.”

Foresight methodologies

I then spoke at a high level about foresight methodologies.

“If you look at every single foresight methodology, essentially it incorporates two key aspects: understanding the trends and the driving forces, and overlaying the uncertainties.

For any trend – which is data from the past pointing to today – possiblities include: will this trend will continue as it is? will it accelerate? will it decelerate and reduce? Or will it stop and reverse? In fact, many trends have reversed for various reasons.

Foresight is a structured approach to thinking about the future. We cannot predict the future. But there’s a whole array of different methodologies we can apply by observing past developments in data patterns, what we can call a trend, thinking about the scope of the uncertainties, and combining those.

[Scenarios] must be multi dimensional worlds. These are the tools we have to do effective planning for building businesses, developing new technologies, creating better societies, and all the other good things everyone here is doing.”

AI as copilot for future thinking

Phil shared the “Forces to 2050” future scenario generator that Main Sequence has created to allow founders to explore possibilities from the intersection of technology, geopolitical, and social forces, and the rationale for it.

“When people try to use AI to write a blog post about the future, we all just know how awful and generic that’s going to be. But it’s not going to be like that forever. It’s going to get better and better and help me to get there. It becomes my job to teach my AI to write good stuff and to do that quicker. I have to work on that with prompt engineering and visual production.

[The generator] is not making great science fiction writing. But as a co pilot for an innovator it’s useful if you’re about to start a company in that space. That’s interesting. What if that did happen? What if I could make that happen?

What if that could be my job in 10 years? Like back testing your career, how could I be that person? What do I need to learn to get there? It’s helping me think.”  

Lessons for long-term thinking and strategy

These were just some highlights of the discussion, there was a lot more, including Phil and I running through some examples of charting long-term company trajectories, the critical challenge of getting timing right. and using backcasting as a strategy tool.

The overarching frame for the conversation is that we not only must think about the long-term in our ventures, we can. There are a whole set of tools, methodologies, frames, and approaches that are incredibly useful for founders, boards, investors, and government leaders. 

Phil and I both have a mission to share this thinking. The SxSW Sydney session was a step on that path.

To learn more go to the Thriving on Overload website, which includes full details on the book, as well as on the Thriving on Overload Interactive Course, which offers in-depth learning on the topic, the Thriving on Overload podcast, which includes all the interviews I did for the book, and a growing set of resources to help people thrive, including our weekly Tips for Thriving newsletter.

I am currently busy promoting the book and working with clients to help their executives and teams thrive on overload, while I continue my futurist work, including extensive keynote speaking and strategy facilitation.

How we can all be our own futurist

The way the book came about is that I worked long and hard on a proposal for a book about how to think about and create the future. My agent told me that futurist books are very hard to sell, however there was one chapter in my proposed book, titled “Thriving on Overload”, that he could sell if I made it into a book.

He was absolutely right that it was a better idea, with far broader reach and impact. In writing Thriving on Overload I distilled the lessons I had developed and refined over more than two decades working as a futurist, making them applicable to anyone whose work involves working with massive information.

Yet below the surface the book is in fact a kind of futurist manifesto, laying out the mindset we all need to be aware of change today and equipped to shape a better future.

The underlying themes of the book of how we can open ourselves to meaningful signals and change, make sense of the world, and perceive opportunities for systemic change are in essence providing the tools for us to all be our own futurists.

To see the possibilities of the future and act to create them we need to integrate the paradoxes of being wide open to ideas and signals, while also tightly focused on what is relevant and will support useful action.

This requires applying both our often well-developed skills of analysis as well as nurturing our often less-applied capabilities for synthesis.

We need to be whole to see the whole, and from that take the action that will create a future we want to live in.

I’d love to hear your reflections if you read the book.

I find I am frequently asked where all the female futurists are. The discussion on why the profession of futurist appears to be so male-dominated has grown in recent years.

I know many outstanding female futurists, so whenever I am asked I point to a range of exceptional futurists to show that there are indeed many women in the field. However it is true that many are not as well known as they should be.

As such I thought it would be useful to compile a list of the world’s top female futurists, for those who are looking for diversity in their insights into the future. The following list provides a brief profile of 178 fabulous female futurists [up from 78 in the original list of September 2015, 143 in the update of November 2015, 158 in January 2018, 167 in February 2017, and 178 in the 2018 revision].

It is tricky defining a futurist, so while we have largely selected those who describe themselves as working in this space, we have also included others whose work is largely that of exploring the future.

We have limited this list to those who have a significant profile and impact, but I’m sure we have missed some who should be included. If you would like to suggest other prominent female futurists we should consider for updates to this list, please complete the form at the end of this page.

Summary list

The premise of the podcast is asking for 5 points of inspiration for impact in my life. I chose to speak about:

• Shobogenzo, the foundation text of Soto Zen
• The pivotal impact of open source software
• Keith Johnstone, the godfather of improvisational theater
• The belief in the possibility of creating a glorious human future
• Bondi Innovation and the potential of local talent communities

Below is a transcript of what I shared about Keith Johnston and improvisional theater. His work has been a central influence in my life and how I see the world. In a world that largely teaches us from birth to be highly constrained, we need to learn to free ourselves.

I may share some more from the podcast another time, or if you want more, have a listen to the full episode!

When I was younger I went to a Theatresports show. I loved it, so I went to do some classes. Very soon I was introduced to the book Impro by Keith Johnston, which is one of my few favorite books in the world. He was seminal, in that he really invented improvisational theater. Though the movement has since gone in many directions, it’s the ultimate foundation of the thinking.

His book is a marvel in terms of laying out the fundamental beliefs. One of them, which many others have expressed in other ways, is that school or education is a way of destroying our inbuilt creativity, building restraints around how we think.

As he puts it, an adult is not a developed child, a child is not an undeveloped adult, but an adult is an atrophied child.

So we need to come back to that ability to let ourselves out. Ourselves and the society around us starts to put these barriers to ask, ‘should I say that?’, ‘should I do that?’ ‘how do I want to be seen?’ As opposed to improvisation which is all about coming back to letting yourself out completely, immediately, without censorship, without barriers. That is the way to be able to find yourself.

So many people are so constrained in how they interact with the world. Whereas improvisational theater is just a way to get back, to take away all those barriers. One of the fundamental precepts of improvisational theater is that you never say No or But, it’s always Yes and it’s always And. You’re always adding, you’re always taking what you’ve got and building on it.

This actually ties in very much to open source, which is about adding. It also comes back to Zen, in the sense that this is about you, who you are. In fact if you’re truly getting into a state of being able to improvise theater, you are discovering who you are. You’re taking away the barriers to allow yourself to flow, to allow the ideas to come out, to be able to be yourself truly for a moment.

For more inspiration from Keith, watch his TED video:

1. Are specifically focused on futures and foresight methods
2. Have a reasonable number of members
3. Are formally organized
4. Are currently active

Identified associations and categories

The list is split up by the scope of each association. We have categorized five associations as global in scope and ten associations that are more targeted on a specific region or nation. Another four associations are even more focused on particular sectors.

Global

Since the late 1960s, there have been two primary futurist organizations—the similarly named World Future Society (WFS) and World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF). Many smaller associations either split off or partnered with one of these two associations.

WFSF is still going strong. However, there was much confusion about the future of the WFS after it was sold in 2015. The amount of information previously available on the website was reduced to a single page, and the annual conference was cancelled for two years. However, a conference will be held in August 2018, and WFS appears to be primed for a resurgence.

In 2002, the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) broke off from WFS to provide an added association for deeper discussion of the advancement of futures and foresight methodologies. At first the APF was primarily focused on members in the US and UK. However, soon after the WFS went quiet, the APF expanded its membership to include nearly 500 members from more than 30 countries.

The two remaining global associations—The Millennium Project and the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF)—could easily be argued not to belong in the list. The Millennium Project is more like a network of volunteers, but it functions much like an association with annual meetings, annual output, and internal communication channels. The IIF may not be expressly aligned to futures or foresight, but many professional futurists rely on the work of J. Scott Armstrong who founded IIF. The forecasting association can be seen as a subset of futurist associations. Other forecasting networks were considered but did not fit within our parameters.

National/ Regional

Many of the members in the national/ regional associations, such as the Dutch Futures Society and the Finnish Society for Futures Studies, may also be members of other associations. However, the these smaller scale associations enable members to network with other futurists who speak the same language and are more interested with culturally specific issues.

Futuribles was founded in 1960 by Bertrand de Jouvenel , a giant in the field of futures studies, and belongs with the WFSF and WFS in stature and prominence. However, it is not quite at a global level, but it is heavily international.

Sector Specific

None of the sector specific associations are global, but they are expanding. Communities of the Future is probably the most loosely organized association on our list. However, it has expanded far enough internationally, more than 11 nations, with enough formal organization to warrant its inclusion. The Public Sector Foresight Network (PSFN) is another splinter group from WFS and is related to the Federal Foresight Community of Interest (FFCOI) in the US. It is heavily international and growing closer to being global.

Organizations we didn’t include

There were several clubs, meetup groups, and defunct associations that were not included in the list. For instance, Canada’s Foresight Synergy Network is more an informal network than a formal association. Also, the African American Future Society is currently too small with too little activity to be considered an association by our requirements. The American Planning Association is a formally organized association, but they are not specifically focused on futures and foresight methods even though many of their members use these methods.

Also, Shaping Tomorrow founded The Foresight Network with a Ning social media website that boasted more than 10,000 members. At one point they had a board who were driving the network toward association status complete with annual meetings, but it never quite developed. However, we hope that all four organizations will continue to grow and develop value for the communities they serve which is why I mention them here.

Who did we miss?

All of associations on the list fit within the parameters specified above. If you know of a futurist association that fits those parameters and which we may have missed, please contact us so we can consider them for inclusion on the list.

Image: Magnus Hagdorn

Asimov not only invented the word “robotics,” his “Three Laws of Robotics,” first written as part of a short story in 1942, have had a massive impact on framing how people think about the development of artificial intelligence and the field of robotics itself.

Outside scientific domains, Asimov’s many writings have also inspired several popular movies including Bicentennial Man and I, Robot. His IMDb page shows contributions to various televisions series throughout his life, as well as a number of posthumous writing credits.

Perhaps most amazing are Asimov’s many accurate predictions on the Internet and what the world would look like in this decade. Several were in made a famous article published in The New York Times in 1964, which envisioned life in 2014.

Below are some of Isaac Asimov’s most accurate predictions.

On robotics:

“Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.”

“Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with “Robot-brains”*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver.”

On space:

“By 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a manned expedition will be in the works.”

“Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space.”

On the human race:

“Not all the world’s population will enjoy the gadgety world of the future to the full. A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively.”

“Mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.”

On solar energy:

“Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas — Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical.”

On what would become smartphones and tablets:

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books.”

On food:

“Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming.”

On the Internet:

Further noteworthy and prophetic statements from Asimov emerged during a 1988 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers.

“Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries, where you can ask any question and be given answers, you can look up something you’re interested in knowing, however silly it might seem to someone else.”

“Now, with the computer, it’s possible to have a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species.”

“One essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things, and another essential part would be a printing mechanism on which things could be printed for you. And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions’ although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice.”

Image source: Zakeena

I have for too long had too many ventures. I desperately needed to limit the scope of what I was doing, which I have done. (More on that in another blog post soon.)

Focus on the future

This allows me to focus on being the futurist, thinking and communicating in multiple formats about the future and what we need to do now to create the future we want.

It also gives me that modicum of space to come back to the path of self-discovery that is at the heart of all our lives.

Rediscovering myself through my journals

I have kept a journal in various guises since I was 16. Simply putting thoughts into words on paper can immensely clarify your thoughts and feelings.

Keeping a journal also allows you to read back to get perspective on your life, and recover ideas and attitudes from your younger self that would otherwise likely be lost.

Over the last couple of months I have been reviewing some of my journals, particularly from my early 20s as I entered the workforce.

One discovery is how true to the aspirations of my younger self my life has turned out. My attitudes and thoughts then planted the seeds for who I have become.

Compelled to write books

Since I was young I have wanted to write books. The publication of my first book in January 2000 was a marvelous threshold to reach.

I imagined that I would write books consistently for the rest of my life. I have been very disappointed that I have only written 4 books so far.

This has been not least because I have undertaken too many ventures and not had the time to write. One of the most important reasons for me to restructure my work to give me more space was so I can write my next book this year. (I’ll share more on this before long.)

While until recently I hadn’t looked at it for some time, over time I compiled a list of titles of books that I wanted to write. There are over 100 book titles on the list.

Of course I will never write more than a small fraction of the those books, but I do hope to make a little dent in that list.

Continuous sharing

I’ve recently realised that it is crazy for me to wait to share my ideas until I can write a full book on these topics.

I have the early workings of many of these books, some in note form, some just in my mind.

I also have many ideas recorded in my journals that are early seeds, and need to be developed a lot further. However it is far better to share these ideas in their formative shapes rather than wait until they are fully developed, which quite possibly will never happen.

New phase of blogging

Since I have changed the structure of my work I have been a far more active blogger, after doing very little for several years before last November.

From now I intend to share far more of myself, writing about ideas and personal reflections I’ve captured in my journal over the years, and the topics that really matter to me.

I am very fortunate to be a futurist, in that everything is relevant to my work, including my own personal journey from past to future.

Stand by for some – at times – quite different kinds of content on this blog. As everything I’ve shared since I started this blog in 2002, it will all be true to myself, just sometimes more personal than it has been before.

Thank you for being with me on the journey! :-)

Image: Marcus Sherwood – photo of me and Ian busking in Molard

Soon after I arrived in Tokyo I found a Zen master, Nishijima-Sensei, who held weekly meditation sessions followed by lectures in English on Shobogenzo, the foundation text of Soto Zen.

Later I lived for a year in his Zen Dojo, commuting to my day job as a financial journalist, following the center’s principles of meditating twice a day and doing the daily chores that sustained the community, and taking the Soto Zen Buddhist precepts.

This time helped me resolve one of the issues I had grappled with since I had entered the workforce. Zen teaches us that the only thing that exists is the present. Yet if there is only the present, how and why should we work in the present to create the outcomes we desire in the future?

The answer is simple, though it took a long time for me to truly understand it.

Work is central to Zen practice, you cannot have true Zen practice without work. When I went on sesshin – intense retreats in Buddhist temples – the days were filled not only with meditation and lectures, but also work such as sweeping or preparing food. The work was not just an activity, it was a form of meditation. We were to be fully and completely engaged in what we were doing, existing purely in our activity.

Work can be sweeping, cooking, gardening or motorcycle maintenance, or it can be planning, writing, coding, designing or selling. Work of course should be always worth doing, driven by a desired future, whether it is a cleaner room, a useful software application, or a better society.

This doesn’t mean that all work is done with the spirit of Zen, in fact little is. Work is often done in a distracted state, disturbed with irrelevant thoughts about places, people and times that are not in the present.

Work must be done for its own sake. It has an intent, but that is not relevant in performing the work. If it is done begrudgingly or only in order to create outcomes at another time, it takes you away from the present, away from the only moment that exists.

As such the focus is on doing the work to the very best of your abilities, completely immersed in the now of the work, knowing but not necessarily even being aware in the present that it is to create a future that is better than now. That focus and frame means that the work and outcomes are usually far better than if they are done in a distracted state.

Understanding this is not to say that I live it fully each day. However even with my constant future focus I strive to live and work completely in the present.

There is no conflict between living fully in the present and working towards the future.

In fact doing that creates not just a better future, but a life that is truly lived in the eternal now.

Image: el_ave

Coverage in over 100 major publications from more than 30 countries helped to garner many, many millions of views, attract critics galore, and generate substantial debate.

While I don’t believe in predictions because they will almost always be wrong, I made an exception in this case, in order to provoke news industry executives and to stimulate useful strategic action to respond to a changing industry landscape.

The first date on the timeline – US in 2017 – is now demonstrably wrong (though possibly not vastly – we will see).

I have written an extensive review of the timeline, its original intent, and where the predictions stand now: Review of the Newspaper Extinction Timeline: what we got wrong and the future of news from here.

Please do read the review if you have any interest at all in the future of news or in futures thinking.

The timeline was widely mis-interpreted as an attack on the news industry. While I understand that it would be viewed as negative, for me the most important issue was never whether we continued to have news-on-paper, but rather how we could create a positive future for news.

Hanging on too long to a dying medium instead of focusing on growing channels was most likely to jeopardize the future of any news organization, as has been proven to be the case.

Almost all my futures work for client organizations is fundamentally about creating the future. The future does not happen, it is created. By far the best reason to engage in futures thinking is to understand what you need to do to shape the future positively.

I also believe that the future of news and the news industry will be at the heart of how we create a positive future for humanity. Unless we are well-informed we will not be able to build a positive future, individually or collectively.

That is why I have launched a new publication, Creating the Future of News. Its intent is to support a positive future for the news industry, by providing analysis, data, and a forum for constructive conversations and sharing.

The publication is still in Beta, but already has substantial data and other resources.

Please visit the site, join the community, and get involved.

Predictions are not valuable unless they inspire useful action. Rather than simply look at the future, we need to work to create the future. And the best way to do that is to help the right ideas, people and resources to connect.

I hope Creating the Future of News supports that in some way large or small. Being right or wrong doesn’t matter. Contributing in whatever way possible to creating a better future does.

Image: Paul Reynolds

As such I was delighted to be commissioned by Commonwealth Bank to create a report in collaboration with their team: The Commonwealth Bank jobs and skills of the future report (12.4MB), to share useful insights for individuals, families and organisations what we can do today to shape a positive future of work for all Australians.

The report has been launched this morning and can be downloaded here (12.4MB).

In coming days I will be sharing a number of elements of the report on my blog, as well as some of the media interviews stemming from the report. For now here is the introduction to the report, which summarises the core ideas. The report content is of course equally relevant to any countries, not just Australia.

INTRODUCTION

Ross Dawson
Futurist and Author