For Future Reference - Institute for the Future

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. Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a non-profit think tank in Silicon Valley, that helps organizations and the public think about long term future plans to make better decisions in the present. In this episode of the IFTF podcast, Mark Frauenfelder, a research director at IFTF interviewed Rod Falcon, IFTF's Director of the Technology Horizons Program, which combines a deep understanding of technology and societal forces, to identify and evaluate these discontinuities and innovations in the near future. Rod discussed Tech Horizon's recent research into how machine automation is becoming an integrated, embedded, and ultimately invisible part of virtually every aspect of our lives.

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 was able to provide in this kind of support. Mike has been working with Institute for the Future as an affiliate since 2014 and recently accepted an IFTF fellowship to help uncover and study new paradigms for restoring vulnerable places and space, such as post-disaster sites, informal refugee settlements, and decaying urban neighborhoods.  I spoke to Mike about his work at Elpida in August, 2016, just days after he returned from Greece.

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, Antonopoulos’ work has paid off. The 43-year-old entrepreneur is one of the most respected experts in bitcoin and blockchain technology, and he regularly shares his expertise with businesses and organizations around the world. His 2014 book, Mastering Bitcoin, was called the “best technical reference available on bitcoin today,” by Balaji Srinivasan, the CEO of 21.co, and has received high praise from Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation. My name is Mark Frauenfelder. I’m a research affiliate at Institute for the Future, a nonprofit thinktank that helps organizations and the public think systematically about the future in order to make better decisions in the present. In January 2016, IFTF launched the the Blockchain Futures Lab, a research initiative and a community for “identifying the opportunities and limits of blockchain technologies and their social, economic, and political impacts on individuals, organizations, and communities over the coming decades.” I spoke to Antonopoulos to get his thoughts on the current state of blockchain technology and where it’s headed. What he had to say to be surprising and enlightening. To learn more about Institute for the Future and the Blockchain Futures Lab, visit IFTF.org

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 us. We're honored to feature the visionary Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) as our first speaker in the series. Cory is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger. His forthcoming book, Information Doesn't Want to be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, examines copyright law and the ways in which creativity and the Internet interact today—and what might be coming next. A limited number of early copies will be available for purchase at the event.