PinnedPlaying the FutureA little-known board game of forecasting and the futures that might have been. It’s just before Christmas, December 1967. Hollywood star and soft-drink mogul Joan Crawford reaches across the dining table of her Manhattan apartment, and slides a final $1 billion-dollar bill onto the game board. …Futures Thinking22 min readFutures Thinking22 min read
Aug 5, 2022Transformers: Robot Writers in DisguiseDevelopers are in experimental mode with GPT-3, a powerful new AI language model, but there’ll soon be a time when one of its successors will write our movie and TV dialogue, pop songs, and advertising copy. This is a previously unpublished essay from mid-2020. Every year or so for the…6 min read6 min read
Published inPractical Futuring·Nov 23, 2021The Perils of PredictionThere is a downside to too much certainty. “Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?” In 1993, Americans were treated to a series of outstanding TV and print advertisements from US telecommunications giant AT&T. …Future4 min readFuture4 min read
Published inPractical Futuring·Nov 23, 2021The Time to Talk About the Future is Before You Need ItPre-hearsing the future includes getting comfortable with new words One of the many difficult, disconcerting elements in the ongoing pandemic crisis is one that is often the most overlooked: a lack of preparedness to talk about this difficult future that we’ve found ourselves in. I don’t mean talking about pandemics…Future4 min readFuture4 min read
Published inPractical Futuring·Updated Feb 25, 2021Making Space for FuturesCreating a physical terrain for anticipation Over the course of the fall and winter, I was privileged to sit for a number of interviews and podcasts in support of the launch of our book How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange. During several of those interviews…Future7 min readFuture7 min read
Published inPractical Futuring·Aug 11, 2020Calibrating the Future: Designing Purpose Into ProvocationsCreating written or fabricated artefacts to communicate and engage audiences with possible futures is probably the most fun part of working in the futures field. As a final step in a much longer process, artefacts often offer the widest latitude to create and land experience with the intended audience. …Future6 min readFuture6 min read
Published inPractical Futuring·Jun 1, 2020Managing Abyss Gaze In a Time of Difficult FuturesListening for signals when the news is dark This is part of an ongoing series created to supplement our upcoming book, “How to Future: Leading and Sensemaking in an Age of Hyperchange,” to be published in September 2020 by Kogan Page. …Future8 min readFuture8 min read
May 12, 2020In Devs, Silicon Valley Gets Its Own Well-Deserved Folk HorrorScience and supernature collide in the technological idyll. *Warning: This essay contains plot spoilers.* Forest: Everything we do is predicated on the idea that we live in a physical universe, not a magical universe. Katie: Are you doubting that? Forest: Not the physical universe. …Technology13 min readTechnology13 min read
Published inPractical Futuring·Mar 15, 2020Mapping Impacts and ImplicationsA simple tool for sketching possible futures — in a crisis. These are crazy times. The good news is, right now we’re seeing multiple spontaneous efforts sprouting in parallel, all trying to make sense of and map out the longer-term impacts of COVID-19. The scale and scope of its reach…Future5 min readFuture5 min read
Published inPhase Change·Mar 12, 2020Sailing the Seas of SuperdensityThoughts on making a collaborative map of uncertainty (This essay originally appeared as a guest post for Superflux in October, 2013) About two and a half years ago, I wrote a blog post titled “The Future is Here Today, and It’s Superdense“. The phrasing was a reference to the apocryphal…Future6 min readFuture6 min read
