Institute For The Future

Jane McGonigal at Aspen Ideas Festival 2016

Thinking about the far-off future isn’t just an exercise in intellectual curiosity. It’s a practical skill that, as new research reveals, has a direct neurological link to greater creativity, empathy, and optimism. In this session from master game designer and acclaimed futurist and IFTF researcher Jane McGonigal, you’ll learn three practical habits that will increase the power of your imagination:

Jane begins her talk with an invitation, asking us all to challenge and stretch our powers of imagination. She then goes on to explain:

"... in my line of work I spend a lot of time helping people imagine things that are really hard to imagine. And what is my line of work? Well, I'm a game designer. And I'm also a futurist.

I research what the future might be like. I talk to people about the future they might live in some day. And this is not exactly a common combination of career paths, as far as I know I'm the only game designer futurist, but these two lines of work do have one important thing in common.

As a game designer and as a futurist I see it as my job to transport people to worlds that don't exist, to imaginary places. Whether they are a virtual world or whether they are a world we might live in someday, a world that might come to pass or might not come to pass. And my goal as a game designer and as a futurist is to make sure that when people leave these imagined worlds that they feel more creative, more optimistic and most importantly, that they feel more confident and certain of their own capability to transform those worlds."

Read full transcript of Jane's talk »
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