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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, exploring how they’ll re-construct the ways we live, work, and play over the coming decades. In many cases, the outlines of such transformation are already visible, as the proliferation of small-scale discoveries, innovations, and experiments hint at things to come.
Our 20 Combinatorial Forecasts, for example, examine these frontiers in detail, exploring the arrival of new technological forces as they arise from the collision of decades worth of advancements.
Using analytical techniques derived from anticipatory anthropology, we fuse deep technical expertise in areas ranging from machine learning to synthetic biology with scenario creation to study people’s ideas about the future, their values, and their concepts of change.
Our research serves private clients and the general public, with the aim of helping both individuals and organizations develop the insight and strategies needed to preempt the most exigent challenges emerging in today’s volatile world.
In 2015, IFTF’s Technology Horizons Program will focus on the integration of humans and artificial systems, identifying what opportunities—and what conflicts—are likely to emerge as the result of our inexorable coevolution with machines.
Our research will expand into three areas, falling under the banner, Human-Machine Futures (full research agenda):
An Automated World
From the dawn of irrigation to the invention of the Internet, machines have helped humanity do work that makes us more efficient, extend our lifespans, and enable us to do the seemingly impossible with the push of a button. Over the past quarter century we’ve witnessed an astounding march towards increasingly automated systems, whether it be the proliferation of algorithmic trading or the growth of e-commerce.
But what will happen as these systems move from the realm of supporting human activity to supplanting it? This segment of our research will investigate which innovations are leading a world where it must consider not only what happens when humans combine with machines, but what happens when they replace us?
On June 16-17, 2015, we’ll host an insight workshop presenting the first six months of our research on the subject, exploring which companies and technologies are emerging as significant players in the world of automation, and what organizations and society writ-large can do to get ahead of any potential disruptions.
Body Area Networks
Over the next decade, among the most revelatory technologies will be the suite of hardware and software applications that track and connect us from inside our pockets, on our wrists, or even inside of our bodies. Extending far beyond the Quantified Self movement, the array of new technologies that will enable brain-to-machine communication or allow virtual environments to layer on top of the real world, are creating a rich new field—Body Area Networks.
This segment of our research will examine what possibilities are opened when human and machines integrate to both enhance and track the most intimate components of our lives.
Humans+Machines+Other Biologies
Beyond automated systems and Body Area Networks, the third component of our 2015 research agenda will examine what happens when human and machines connect with other biological life. From terraforming to carbon sequestration, we’ll explore how a wide range of new technologies are not only changing the way we interact with ourselves, but how we interact with the world around us.
In a series of combinatorial forecasts on the future of biology, we’ll offer a deep dive as to what this looks like, exploring everything from new materials to manufacturing techniques.
ANNUAL FORESIGHT RETREAT
On October 22-23, 2015, we’ll host our Annual Foresight Retreat, giving members and attendees a chance to immerse themselves in human-machine futures, identify strategic insights, and get hands-on experience with innovation processes and tools with a network of technology innovators, makers, and disruptive thinkers.
[+TECH]
Finally, IFTF will tour a range of cities globally, bringing our +Tech series on the road, to connect with communities of makers, hackers, and civic innovators, highlighting the transformative work they are leading, and explore the emergence of new realities happening as a result of human and machine integration.
For more information ...
If you’d like to follow our research as we publish it publicly, please connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, where we’ll post regular updates and insights from our research.
Peruse Technology Horizons' full 2015 Research Agenda for more details. For more information about becoming a member, please contact Sean Ness:
- [email protected]
- 650.233.9517