Institute For The Future

Not a Form but a Philosophy of Our Time - Part 1

Part 1 of 4

A generation striving to define ourselves in this strange saga of the 21st century, the mainstream media accuses Millennials of rejecting mentors, ruining the housing market and the NFL, and being lazy, selfish, and materialistic. The first generation to come of age with the Internet, underemployed and buried beneath student debt in this interconnected world of global challenges, hope for our generation is bleak.

This August, the Millennial Trains Project began to shatter these perceptions and craft a new narrative for our pioneering generation. Packing 24 of us into vintage train cars straight from the 1950s, we embarked on a journey through America that operated on the assumption that given structured openness and time, our generation has the intrinsic motivation to put our idealism into practice. 

The Millennial Trains Project was a mixture of TED-on-wheels, intensive leadership training, and project-based learning. Each participant hitched a ride by crowdfunding $5,000, together raising $120,000 from a thousand contributors who powered our train. Coming together in San Francisco from all corners of America, we prepared to pursue individual projects ranging from food waste to poetry. The early adopters of this moving innovation platform, we had absolutely no idea what exactly to expect.

Sponsored by the Institute for the Future, my project on the train was a continuation of the work done at Governance Futures Lab's ReConstitutional Convention in April. I took IFTF's Social Inventor's Toolkit on the train with the intention of asking citizens across the country to think about their preferred form of governance. Teaching people from a wide range of geo-cultural backgrounds how to use the Toolkit, my experiences showed me how anyone can envision their preferred future and become mindfully intentional system designers in their own neighborhoods.

My personal questions on the Millennial Trains Project were, "What kind of governance system do we need to better face the challenges of the 21st century and beyond? What does it mean to engage in human-centered system design?"

We started off the trip with our missions in mind, and the goal of pursuing each of our 24 projects during the 6 hour whistle stops:

• San Francisco
• Salt Lake City
• Denver
• Omaha
• Chicago
• Pittsburgh
• DC

What became abundantly clear over the course of the journey, however, was not the differences in our missions—which were quite diverse—but rather what transcended them: a burning desire felt by our generation to fearlessly pioneer into the rapidly shifting territory of the 21st century.

Taking the old Zephyr route from California to Chicago then the Capitol Limited route from Chicago to DC, everyone on the train experienced mile by mile the great vastness of the United States. Passing through the flickering scenery of expansive wheat, rolling rivers, tumbling hills as we left California to the desolate expanse of desert in Utah ... then weaving through the tall cliffs of the Rocky Mountains, miles and miles of corn in the Midwest, Brothers Grimm-esque foggy forests in Pennsylvania, abandoned industrial buildings, and anonymous, glowing cities in the post-midnight hours; we coasted down the tracks into the bubbles of urban life only after immersing ourselves in the oft forgotten in between.

Continue to Part 2 >>

For More Information

• Governance Futures Lab
• Governance Futures Lab and the Millennial Trains Project
• Social Inventor's Toolkit

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Lindsea K. Wilbur is an IFTF Research Affiliate.