Institute For The Future

SUPERSTRUCT: Welcome back, Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals!

We have good news to report and some exciting research to share. First, the good news: A few weeks ago, the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) honored SUPERSTRUCT as the "Most Important Futures Work of 2008!" This prestigious honor belongs to you, and to the entire global community of more than 7000 Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals. Superstruct was the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game – and it truly was the collaboration of the players that made this future so compelling, and so different from any previous forecasts.

Your contributions to Superstruct helped the Institute for the Future (IFTF) build a rich, diverse perspective on the challenges we’ll face over the next decade–and the surprising strategies we might try to solve them. In total, we told more than 1000 stories about our lives in 2019, launched more than 500 discussions, and invented more than 500 superstructures focused on the future of energy, food, health, security, and society. All of these ideas and conversations remain archived online for you to continue to explore and think about, at www.superstructgame.org

So what’s next for Superstruct?

For the past five months, IFTF’s Ten-Year Forecast Team has been analyzing the collective body of Superstruct work, in light of other major perspective essays on new forms of governance, networked citizens, geoengineering, and superstructed realities. We’ve focused our Superstruct research on the following question: What is the next major evolutionary phase for human organization?

And today, we are pleased to share with you the first round of findings.

These Superstruct findings are the first in the IFTF Annual TYF: Superstruct Series. With these we present to you the first 50-Year Scenario, "The Long Crisis". and "Superstructing Outcomes", five ways "you'll know you're superstructing when..."

Over the next few months, we will be publishing additional Superstruct results online, including the next in the series: "Superstruct Strategies"— 7 actionable strategies that emerged during our game analysis.  You’ll be able to follow the series and download the materials at our 10 Year Forecast RSS feed.

We’d be delighted to hear your thoughts on the research. And we’re working on a number of new forecasting games at IFTF! Watch the IFTF website for announcements of future forecasts you can participate in.

We hope you’ll join us in our next immersion into the future.