Future Now
The IFTF Blog
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Please join me and create a Future for Good
Dear Friends,
When I envision a future for good, I see a world in which science has been made accessible to all. This is the future that I have been exploring as part of my Future for Good Fellowship at Institute for the Future. The Fellows at IFTF are a group of emerging social inventors and leaders from diverse sectors working together to anticipate the future.
A few years ago, IFTF staff reached out to me and offered resources and an office space for me to organize Science Hack Day SF.
Have you ever been to a Hack Day? It's basically a weekend in which people from a variety of different backgrounds get together in the same physical space to see what creative, useful and clever solutions they can rapidly prototype in 24 consecutive hours. In the case of Science Hack Day, unexpected yet delightful collaborations happen: particle physicists team up with designers, marketers join forces with rocket scientists, and programmers partner with school kids.
Not long ago these types of collaborations would be rare, but now our community of science hackers is actively creating the future of science. Science Hack Day helps inform the decision-makers in technology, science, government, business, academia and civic society that IFTF convenes.
I feel fortunate to be part of the Future for Good Fellowship program. Since joining this special cohort of social inventors who are exploring urgent futures, my work has evolved to become more future-focused. The time and support that IFTF provided me has been instrumental in my success as an independent scientist with a wide portfolio of projects that make space exploration and science more accessible for anyone to contribute to.
As IFTF looks ahead to next year's class of Future for Good Fellows, I will be watching to see what kinds of urgent futures they will explore. I look forward to supporting them—I hope you will too!
There are only a handful of institutions in the world doing this critical work, and IFTF is at the forefront. Please make a donation to IFTF to support our exciting work in the year ahead.
All my best to you,
Ariel Waldman
Future for Good Fellow
Institute for the Future
P.S. Consider learning more about our Future for Good Fellowship program.
Institute for the Future, founded in 1968, is an independent 501 (c)(3) nonprofit research and consulting organization based in Palo Alto, California. IFTF explores a wide range of future possibilities, connecting humanity’s biggest challenges with the greatest opportunities for transformation. We are living in a time of urgent futures—developments and opportunities with such extraordinary potential for changing the human landscape that we must pursue them now.