Institute For The Future

IFTF's New Foresight Engine Debuts: Collaboratively Forecast the Future!

Our next-generation Foresight Engine platform aims to build scaled-up conversations about urgent futures

#My2024

Today we launch our next-generation Foresight Engine collaborative forecasting platform with My2024, a 10-day online event to jump-start a national conversation about the future of the LGBTQ movement in America, in partnership with the Arcus Foundation.

My2024 starts with a 48-hour rapid-fire online event to capture the future visions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer participants as they create a public manifesto of ideas for change to positively impact the LGBTQ movement in the next decade. Following the initial 48-hour round of visioning, participants will spend eight days pursuing missions that emerge from the Foresight Engine, living the futures they imagine as they pursue those missions, and reporting the details of their 2024 lives in their social media streams.

What's new?

IFTF’s Foresight Engine, which we've used to engage large groups from around the world to forecast the horizon of possibilities for everything from poverty alleviation to the future of the hospital, is newly redesigned to promote even bigger and deeper conversations about the pressing social, economic, and environmental futures we face. We've worked with organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and University of California at San Francisco, and now we're partnering with Arcus to involve over 50 organizations from around the United States as catalysts for a national conversation.

“At IFTF, we know that online social platforms and games are powerful tools for breaking through the limits of our current thinking. They use collaboration, competition, and creativity to build cooperation toward tangible change,” said Jason Tester, IFTF Research Director.

The new Foresight Engine platform:

• Supports participation via mobile devices so more people can contribute to the conversation wherever they are.
• Integrates with Twitter and Facebook, allowing users to log into My2024 from their Facebook accounts and add their visions of the future directly from their personal Twitter streams.
• Dynamically maps and visualizes ideas and builds to allow players to see the impact and growth of their contributions, as well as deeper understanding of connections across topics discussed.
• Keeps momentum going with real-time feeds of the latest platform activity.
• Allows players to embed video, photos, and media into their ideas.
• Has greater capability for multiple provocation videos and challenges to inspire discussion of a broader range of topics.
• Extends thinking about the future to more audiences with more community engagement abilities than ever before.

Foresight Engine is the brainchild of renowned author and game designer Jane McGonigal, who invites users to “Unleash your imagination with us. Tell us the changes YOU want to see in the world. Together, we’ll figure out what we need to do today to make the best futures possible.”