2018 Ten-Year Forecast
2018 Ten-Year Forecast Summit: Looking Back | Moving Forward
Whether you are concerned about declining trust, the impacts of automation, or how to find the signals amongst the noise, the IFTF 2018 Ten-Year Forecast provided experiences, tools, and networks to empower us to build better futures for all.
In 1968, IFTF’s founders wrote:
“We live in a period of rapid and vast change. As change quickens in tempo and widens in sweep, the risks and opportunities that confront us call increasingly for expanded efforts to lead the course of events, rather than be led by them. An awareness of the future has thus become more important to the present than ever before.”
Fifty years later, we are living through another moment of historic opportunity—a period of institutional and societal transition where the consequences of our present-day decisions, investments, and priorities are greatly scrutinized. Many of our assumptions, models, and myths are facing unprecedented challenges. Trust in our institutions has slipped precipitously. The paths forward for our organizations, governments, and social contracts feel unusually precarious.
Just as our founders urged, we must move beyond short-term thinking,market strategy and innovation. Now more than ever, we need tangible visions of possibilities that connect the past, the present, and the future.
Book-ended by keynotes from Silicon Valley historian / author Fred Turner and acclaimed author / documentarian / media theorist / professor Douglas Rushkoff, over the course of Looking Back | Moving Forward: Ten-Year Forecast 2018 Summit, we spent 3 days together diving into a profound set of forces shaping the coming decade. We enjoyed conversations with filmmaker / author / educator Nora Bateson, New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist / author Thomas Friedman, associate professor Lonny J Avi Brooks, experienced interactive storytelling at its best with Flash Forward producer Rose Eveleth, and gained insight from many others.
Remodeling Trust: IFTF Vantage Research Theme for 2018
Whether shopping for a favorite brand of baby food, diagnosing a perceived illness, or deciding where to invest, issues of trust emerge at every step. To guide our decision-making we rely on credible sources of information, enforceable contracts and guarantees, and communities of individuals whose life experiences are comparable to our own. Since the earliest efforts to organize human societies, we’ve modeled trust from these building blocks of our society.
Today, as our services and interactions reach across the globe through complex digital networks, the bedrock of trust is eroding. Beyond widespread questions about fake news and a post-truth society, we find a more profound set of technological, social, and institutional transformations disrupting the landscape of trust by upending the foundations of our institutions and authority structures across the business, civic, and social spheres.
This emerging landscape will challenge us to remodel trust to build, maintain, and communicate with our partners, neighbors, and customers. As the future unfolds, how will we remodel trust to anticipate risk and clarify action?
Learn More
For more information about partnering with IFTF, attending the next Annual Ten-Year Forecast Summit, and receiving exclusive early access to our newest research:
- Learn about becoming an IFTF Vantage Partner
- Contact John Clamme | jclamme@iftf.org | 650.233.9566