Technology Horizons
feedThe Technology Horizons Program combines a deep understanding of technology and societal forces to identify and evaluate discontinuities and innovations in the next 3 to 10 years. We help organizations develop insights and strategic tools to better position themselves for the future. Our approach to technology forecasting is unique—we put people at the center of our forecasts. Understanding humans as consumers, workers, householders, and community members allows IFTF to help companies look beyond technical feasibility to identify the value in new technologies, forecast adoption and diffusion patterns, and discover new market opportunities and threats.
Lyn Jeffery | Director, Technology Horizon Program
For more information on membership in the Technology Horizons Program, please contact Sean Ness at sness@iftf.org or 650-233-9517.
IFTF Announces Public Release of Report Exploring the Future of Video
IFTF is pleased to announce the public release of the Technology Horizons Program’s 2009 publication, The Future of Video: Becoming People of the Screen. The report provides a deep exploration into our research on the future of video as a new medium for entertainment, information, and communication. As video becomes increasingly ubiquitous, we will all soon become people of the screen...
IFTF on GOOD
This past month Jake Dunagan and I started a series of posts over on GOOD magazine's website. The posts focus on both explaining what Futures thinking is to an intellectually and practically engaged audience, and on provoking thought about some of the major systemic challenges our...
In Memoriam: William Mitchell
I learned with great sadness about the loss of William Mitchell, 65, this past friday after a long battle with cancer. Bill was the chair of my Ph.D. committee, a mentor and a friend.
Bill's influence on my life has been profound - his 1996 book "City of Bits" arrived on my desk just weeks after I began my master's studies in urban planning at NYU. Not only did it confirm my hunch that...
Our Plastic Century
I’ve been swimming in some murky waters lately (and that doesn’t include the Gulf of Mexico). While conducting research on plastic pollution over the past year, I’ve been inundated with images and information about the impact of plastic on our oceans, our environment, and our health. Many of these images have literally made me sick. Those emotional responses have been driving...
David Evan Harris interviewed by Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society
IFTF's David Evan Harris was interviewed at Harvard University's...
On Volcanoes, Telecommunications and Travel Substitution
Over the last week, as the sudden eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano disrupted air travel throughout Europe, many people and organizations fell back to the dense and multi-functional communications web that has grown up between cities and continents over the last 20 years. Cisco and other companies with a big commercial stake in a rapid expansion of videoconferencing heralded the...
Robotics For Sustainability
As you may have read earlier in the week, this week we here at IFTF have been collaborating with the American Chemical Society on a new Signtific Lab thought experiment. In "Robotics for Sustainability" we have been seeing some fantastic conversations about the future of chemistry, robotics, and...
Calling all chemists...(and roboticists)
NOW IN PROGRESS: Join us for a new Signtific Lab thought experiment at acs.signtific.org.
Are you a chemist? Do you have an interest in chemistry? Would you like to help us envision the role of chemistry in robotics and sustainability?
We need your ideas. We want your comments and questions. Robotics could play a world-changing role in the...
A Methodological Interlude: Alternative Futures and Deductive Forecasting
The "Manoa School of Futures Studies," led by Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii, has been training students (including me) in the theories and methods of futures studies for almost 40 years. The prevailing philosophy of the program is that "the future cannot be predicted, because 'the future' doesn't exist." Instead futures research and forecasting should be directed toward developing and...
A Map for the Programmable World
A Map for the Programmable World
The map created for our Technology Horizons Fall conference in 2009, When Everything is Programmable is now available to you!
Millennia ago, young couples in Egypt prayed to fertility gods with the hope of receiving the gift of a child. Much later, Native Americans performed ceremonial dances to pray for rain and a bountiful harvest...
The Future of Social Networks is Storytelling Part 2
Last week, in Part 1, I wrote about my frustration with the ephemeral nature of social network conversations (cacophony would be a better word). There remain very few possibilities for layering stories on top of the raw torrent of data being producing by the real-time web.
I think there are two places where a more narrative-driven future for...
The Future of Social Networks is Storytelling, Part 1
I write this at the risk of becoming a pariah. I know that the whole Internet industry - driven in equal parts by oversharing Bay Area technorati, brand-monitoring New York ad men, and follower-culting LA celebrity bimbos (male and female) - is agog at the potential of the real-time web. There's even a conference about it. Conversations, it goes, are the next new thing.
It took...
When Everything is Programmable Digital Stories
As a part of the year-long Technology Horizons Program research task, When Everything is Progammable: Life in a Conmputational Age, the research team created a digital story—a scenario of of the future—in three parts to accompany the research released for the 2009 Fall Exchange. The story follows "Omar"—a doctor working at Seattle Grace in about 2019—as he moves through his day and...
The Future of Real-Time Video Communication report released
What is the future of real-time video communication and what will it feel like to live and work in a world where real-time video is ubiquitous?
Skype commissioned IFTF to research and start a conversation about this question and much more in this newly-released report.
Video technologies are improving dramatically and rapidly, supporting mobile and ubiquitous real-time...
The Future of Real-Time Video Communication
What is the future of real-time video communication and what will it feel like to live and work in a world where real-time video is ubiquitous?
Skype commissioned IFTF to research and start a conversation about this question and much more in this newly-released report.
Video technologies are improving dramatically and rapidly, supporting mobile and ubiquitous real-time...
Persuasion, Coercion, and MLK
For many years now, serious academic researchers have been looking closely at the concept, technologies, and implications of persuasion. This Spring, the Institute for the Future is embarking on a very exciting research program to look at the state of persuasion as it stands today, how persuasive technologies and techniques might evolve over the next ten years, and what persuasion will feel...
Applying Superstruct Design for an Augmented Reality Developers Camp
Recently a few colleagues and I organized an Augmented Reality Developers Camp - a perfect example of a "Superstruct" an idea introduced In 2008 by Jane McGonigal, Kathi Vian, and the IFTF Ten Year Forecast team.
Su`per`struct´ v. t. 1.To build over or upon another structure; to erect upon a foundation. Superstructing is what humans do. We build new structures on old...
Mapping Kenya's largest slum
Kenya has begun an impressive project to map Kibera, it's largest slum. Although Kibera has an estimated 1 million inhabitants, the...
When Everything is Programmable Digital Stories
As a part of the year-long Technology Horizons Program research task, When Everything is Progammable: Life in a Conmputational Age, the research team created a digital story—a scenario of of the future—in three parts to accompany the research released for the 2009 Fall Exchange. The story follows "Omar"—a doctor working at Seattle Grace in about 2019—as he moves through his day and...
In Defense of Generalists
The last decade has been witness to the rise of the geeks. What began as a glorification of tech entrepreneurs making it big from the rise of the IT industry, has now permeated every aspect of society. Single-minded obsession with obscure endeavors, hyper-specialization, and technical nerdery of all sorts are glorified across the board. But is such geekery really a good way to foster talent?...
