Institute For The Future

Games aid preparation for the zombie apocalypse

Kids everywhere have a new excuse for playing games instead of doing their homework—it turns out the right games could improve their likelihood of...

3 New Invaluable Work Skills for 2018

As the nature of work is changing, so too are the skills required to succeed in the workforce. This blog post examines 3 new critical skills for...

From #20forecasts: The microbiome mediates the war on germs

Since James Watson and Francis Crick first described the structure of DNA in 1953, the double-helix has provided a blueprint for creating and...

Health Aware World: Health Horizons Fall Conference

On November 12 and 13 the Health Horizons team will convene an incredible group of experts, entrepreneurs, and healthcare innovators to explore life...

From #10YF2014: Magna Cortica

Featured in The Atlantic: “The Not-So-Distant Future When We Can All Upgrade Our Brains”...

From #20forecasts: Waste mining pushes against planned obsolescence

Did you know one metric ton of circuit boards contains 40-800 times as much gold as one metric ton of gold ore? Not to mention that up to 40% of...

Thought for the Future of Food

In late September, IFTF's Rebecca Chesney shared our food futures research at Five Thot's Idea People Thinking: Food event. From the relationship...

Announcing Human-Machine Futures: Technology Horizons 2015 Research Agenda

Each year, IFTF’s Technology Horizons Program conducts original research examining the underlying shifts taking place in science and technology,...

Cory Doctorow: Redesigning a Broken Internet

Building and maintaining a global communications network is a tremendous accomplishment. Unfortunately, our internet is broken in relation to the laws...

From #20forecasts: "Machines get a social life"

In 1999, then Procter & Gamble assistant brand manager (and now famous MIT technologist) Kevin Ashton pointed out that computers – and therefore the...

From Telepresence to Copresence

Have you seen this hysterical four minute video called A Conference Call In Real Life? If you haven’t, treat yourself to a watch right now:...

From #20forecasts: Spark of a Nanorevolution

It’s the stuff of science fiction. Graphene is two dimensional material that has the potential to change how we interact with our three dimensional...

My Transcontinental Journey to Explore our Food System

What can 10 days on a train teach us about our future food system? Sarah Smith shares what she learned about managing waste, sourcing locally, and...

Reworking Health: Translating Siloed Research into Medicine

The topic receives almost daily media coverage—from the incredible potential and dangers of data mining health records to how big data is changing the...

Artifact Engine

When thinking about the future, it is important to start somewhere. Especially if we believe that the future is something that we, as humans, can...

Reworking Health: Personalizing Space for Mindfulness

At IFTF, we’ve been writing for a while now about all the ways that our environments impact our health and well-being. From spaces that nudge us...

The #My2024 Declaration

This declaration is a collective creation. Written and curated by members of the LGBTQ community across ages, backgrounds, and across the United...

#My2024 Bonus Mission—Rally! October 13, 2024

It’s October 13, 2024—ten years since you signed on to the My2024 Declaration. The movement has tackled so many of the big issues in that...

#My2024 Bonus Mission—Celebrations! Oct 9-10, 2024

It’s October 10, 2024—the anniversary of the game-changing My2024 event. You can trace so much of what’s good and important in your life back to the...

The Latest Buzz from #My2024

Check out the buzz from #My2024 and join the conversation at My2024.us, #My2024, and...

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

IFTF's next-generation Foresight Engine platform aims to build scaled-up conversations about urgent futures. What's new in the updated version? Read...

Reworking Health: Embedding Care Protocol Adherence

A couple of years ago, I happened upon one of my favorite descriptions for a world where virtually everything we own is networked: The Internet of the...

Highlights from our Open Cities Conference #opencities2025

Take a quick journey through our 2014 Technology Horizons program's conference, Open Cities: How the Maker Mindset is Reinventing Urban Life. Over two...

Join the #My2024 Inspiration Team to Imagine LGBTQ Futures!

IFTF is looking for LGBTQ volunteers to help us inspire and provoke responses for upcoming My2024 online event to imagine our lives as LGBTQ people in...