Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward EP 130: Futures of Democracy with Jake Dunagan
Jake Dunegan, a visionary operating at the intersection of futures thinking and political systems, shares how experiential futures can help us reimagine governance for the 21st century challenges we face.
Drawing from his fascinating journey from anthropology to futures studies, Dunegan shares the moment he discovered a manuscript on "Quantum Politics" that proposed revolutionary ideas about constitutional design based on uncertainty rather than mechanistic balance. This epiphany eventually led him to establish the Governance Futures Lab at the Institute for the Future, where he pushes for nothing less than a renaissance in political system design thinking.
- Background in anthropology exploring fundamental questions about why people do what they do
- Discovered futures studies through a manuscript on "Quantum Politics" that proposed redesigning the US Constitution
- Co-created the Reconstitutional Convention in 2013 to bring together diverse thinkers to redesign political systems
- Developed experiential futures approaches to make possible tomorrows tangible today
- Led the Hawaii 2050 project creating immersive experiences of alternative futures
- Created pandemic simulations years before COVID-19 that explored prioritization of vaccines
- Founded the Governance Futures Lab at Institute for the Future to support political system design
- Believes our current governance structures aren't equipped for 21st-century challenge
- Emphasizes the importance of emotional connection to future possibilities, not just intellectual understanding
- Advocates for embedding futures thinking throughout our systems rather than treating it as a specialized activity
- And we find out where the best tacos and food trucks are in Austin, Texas
The conversation explores Dunegan's groundbreaking work in experiential futures—creating immersive, tangible experiences that help people feel possible futures rather than just intellectually understand them. From the Hawaii 2050 project that created four radically different versions of Hawaii's future to pandemic simulations developed years before COVID-19, Dunegan demonstrates how making futures visceral can change decision-making in profound ways.
Find Jake at jakedunegan.com or on BlueSky as dunegan23.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Welcome to the Think Forward Show. Let's explore the future together. Welcome, friends and fellow big thinkers. We're diving deep into the future of democracy and governance with a visionary who lives at the intersection of futures thinking, political systems, design and experiential futures. He brings a fascinating background in anthropology, visual media and future studies to his work at the Institute for the Future's Governance Futures Lab. In this conversation, we'll explore how governments can better prepare for radical change, why our current systems may not be equipped for 21st century challenges and how experiential futures can help us feel and understand possible tomorrows in ways reports and white papers simply can't. From pandemic simulations for the CDC to redesigning Hawaii's future through immersive experiences, his work challenges us to think differently about governance, not just tweaking what exists, but fundamentally reimagining what's possible. So buckle up for a journey through constitutional conventions, rinse laboratories and the powerful ways in which we can make the future tangible today. Welcome to episode 130, the Futures of Democracy with Jake Dunnegan. Jake, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hi Steve, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, you and I have known each other for a long time and I know a lot of people who are in the futures field, are familiar with you from many different things in governance and experiential. But, uh, for those who don't know you, let's, uh, let's kind of start with your, your background, your journey okay, yeah, um, it's always the the uh determination of whether take the long road or the short road.
Speaker 2:I'll I'll try to do an efficient road, and then we can just name a few milestones along the way, and then we can pick up some of those themes as we go. But so well, I think it's relevant. I grew up in Alabama, outside of Birmingham.
Speaker 2:So, not the most oriented place or culture, and I appreciate it, I have no ill will to it, but it was a lot of backward looking to be honest, in the past, sort of thinking about that, and I sort of always yearned for the future and looked, you know, try to look at what's next. And so, coming out of that, my intellectual background started in anthropology and so I was very attracted to why people do what they do. I mean really fundamental questions Like why does this group of people eat this food and pray to this God and this other group, that's you know their neighboring culture, do something totally different? I'm just fascinated by that. Why do people do what they do? As a fundamental question? Let's run through all my work. So I, you know, really like that holistic thinking, that the kind of thick description I guess is a term of ethnography, like looking at the details, really really honing in the material culture, why people believe what they do, things, beliefs that are embedded in material culture. Those were kind of fascinating elements of anthropology and that kind of evolved toward anthropology of media as I went along, really really also fascinated in a similar way why people or how people represent themselves, what they create visually and then how does, in a sense, a more meta conversation around how do anthropologists, how do you represent a culture accurately or fairly, or, you know, rigorously and usefully? And that sort of got me into the sort of media visual anthropology sphere and I was really fascinated by that point, by questions of how is truth created, how does representation work, what happens when we look at other cultures, and how to create meaning within. You know a genre, for example, of documentary film or ethnographic film.
Speaker 2:I really had not thought about futures very much. Well, part of my origin story is that I started a bookstore as an undergrad and a box of books would often boxes of books would often sort of show up on our doorstep from professors that wanted to get rid of them, and in one of those boxes was a book called, uh, quantum politics. It was actually a manuscript. It was, like you know, pre-publication manuscript and I, you know, looked at that and started reading that uh, and that was a series of thought experiments about redesigning the us constitution based on quantum physics rather than Newtonian physics, so not a mechanical world of balance, of power and separation and sort of individually bounded political subjects, but really what happens when we influence reality or that things are less certain and that certainty and predictability are fugitive, and how would you design a clinical system around that? So that was kind of a lurking thing that really sparked my interest and while in the meantime I'm going on spending years in anthropology, but after my master's in anthropology I went back, started kind of thinking about things that really got me excited and I refound that work and that thinking, cutting through a lot of steps.
Speaker 2:That got me in touch with a guy named Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii. That was at that point where I discovered future studies. I didn't know that it existed, but immediately it was like one of those epiphany moments. Okay, it's got the big picture, thinking of anthropology, it's thinking about systems, it's thinking about culture, it's holistic, but it's running the tape forward and saying we're not just trying to understand and sort of explain that. We're like how can we use that, what could we do with that information? To think about redesign, improve the world in some way, and so I really liked that applied part and that sort of set me off the path to the University of Hawaii, studied with Jim Dator and you know, I guess, ultimately became a futurist in that way. So I'll stop there. You know there's a lot after that part of the story, but that's kind of the beginning, I always talk about the accidental futurist.
Speaker 1:I don't think anybody comes to this. You know directly, you know, I think that's always an accidental thing, that kind of they discover it and curse. You know directly, you know, I think that's always like it's accidental thing, that kind of they discover it occurs. You know, yeah, it's not like you know oh, lawyer, or an engineer like it.
Speaker 2:It lives in the margins and you have to kind of almost, as you say, accidentally or you know, serendipity, find your your self to it. Oh, it exists, and then, okay, it resonates with me. So, yeah, I'm one of those folks, for sure.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned um the the uh constitution. Like is that where the reconstitutional uh congress convention came from.
Speaker 2:So we're starting from yeah yeah, so, uh, the reconstitutional convention was, uh, a gathering that um, me and others at the Institute for the Future created in 2013,. So going a ways back now is not up to the task of dealing with 21st century challenges Structurally, that there are fundamental failures built in to the systems that we're living under and that electing the next right person is probably not going to solve the problem. So it's very much a kind of designerly, architectural, structural approach to that. How do we redesign? In this case? You know we're thinking about the constitution, and mostly the us constitution. Although it was, it was a global um gathering. Uh, we had, we had satellite uh gatherings all around the world, but it was really to get minds across different disciplines from, you know, constitutional law professors to designers, to artists, to futurists, to weirdos, to journalists, creatives intellectuals.
Speaker 1:There's actually a category. There's actually a category of weirdos. There's actually specific classification.
Speaker 2:I'm an honest to you. In that one, the very cherished category, I kind of catch all for hype. So we got together. We had a process that was based on more or less on Jim Dator's political system design class that he ran at the university of Hawaii, which you know. We can go into the details of that, but there's a there. It's not just like, hey, what would we create. There's actually a fairly systematic way of thinking about it at a fundamental level to not just like, oh God, how can we tweak the voting system. It's really like what are the, what are our values, what is reality, what is human nature? We take those as design parameters and then say let's operationalize that into something that actually works. And so that was a kind of test run of that model. We have a toolkit and things that we've done, but really successful in the room. You know, a lot of great ideas, um, for lots of reasons, that sort of just um. You know we kind of pushed it forward, but I would love to see I mean, that's one of my main goals in life is to see a kind of Renaissance and political system design thinking, uh, and get more ideas out there. You know, I think.
Speaker 2:I think part of our problem is is a little bit of challenge of the imagination and what is possible now with new technologies and you know, as you might guess, you have new scientific insights about the human mind, about organic self-organizing systems, about, you know, the kind of social physics of the world, uh, the way we communicate our global reach.
Speaker 2:All of those things are in play and I don't think we fully uh internalize or process those into ways that we can operationalize. That. It's hard and it goes back to the beginning, because the quantum physics, our quantum politics book, was great at analyzing the failures of mechanistic thinking and why we need to do that. Really operationalizing quantum physics into a political system extremely difficult. There are very few things that were, you know, even novel. I mean things like, you know, sortition and random representation and some things you know that that might be interesting to do. But the challenge of operationalizing, you know, modern, difficult, complex views of reality, we're still there and so that's sort of part of the overall goal is well, we need to try and we need lots of different ways to attack that problem.
Speaker 1:So what are the unique challenges to working with government institutions on futures projects? It's such a you think of traditionally commercial business strategy. Obviously, your dog has an opinion on this as well. You know, Zoom does a good job of being perfect, I always apologize.
Speaker 2:I can't hear you, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, they're good there it all started with the South Korean reporter for CNN when his kids walked in the back. That was just my favorite of all time.
Speaker 2:We're all in the same. There's no favorite of all time. We're all in the same. There's no difference of existence anymore. We're all together.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean like doing projects like this, is it no, yeah, so how do you approach futures work with institutions like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, part of that original question was unique challenges and I don't think any of these are gonna sound unique. For better or worse, I think it's a problem many with business, it's a problem with nonprofits, others that I work with, you know I work and teach at educational academic institutions and governments as well. You know a lot of barriers or you know hurdles to get over to do good futures work. Some are cultural and some are structural. I mean a big, you know big thing for me. You know, as an anthropologist you might guess that I would skew toward culture, and I do, and it's extremely important. But I think a lot about structure and think structure matters deeply to how things are organized.
Speaker 2:So on the cultural side, you have kind of you know, risk aversion cover your ass. Like you know I don't want to take any chances or do anything. That sort of calls attention negatively to myself. So there's a, there's a lot of risk averse, fear, fear, failure kind of stuff out there. Yeah, structurally, uh, just a lot of, just a lot of negative or perverse incentives to doing anything new.
Speaker 2:So are you, you know, are you rewarded for taking a chance? Are you rewarded if you take a chance and fail. You know, are you rewarded for a plan that might take five or 10 years to really see the fruits of? Meanwhile? Your evaluation cycles, whether it's quarterly, you know business reports, or you know two or four year election cycle you know like the incentive structure to push for long-term thinking is difficult. So you know you have some cultural biases, uh, against pushing into the future. You have a lot of kind of structural incentive that are uh pushing against it.
Speaker 2:And yet things do happen. Uh, you know, and often, unfortunately, often, it's uh, you basically have to learn the hard way or get to the point where the status quo is, is glaringly obvious that it's not going to be sustainable and you have to try something else. So there's a lot of freedom in crisis moments, you know, to sort of take away that the mainstream status quo, normal way that we're doing things, is not sustainable anyway. So we got to try something. So often we have to get to those kinds of crisis points or you know sort of wait a few years and then oh, yeah, you're right, let's, let's actually go with with that idea or go with, you know, let's really invest in the future this time so I it kind of bridges the get, bridges the conversation, because I would like to kind of get into experiential futures as well.
Speaker 1:But the the you had a, you did a project with Stuart Candy on the state of Hawaii. Right, and there were a few of them, correct. There's a 2051, you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the, the, the. You know the kind of um uh anchoring project or kickoff project that that Stuart and I and of course Jim Dator and others in the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies were involved in. Uh later on, after Stuart and I left, john Sweeney and others did 2060, and you know there are tendrils of of that ecosystem of projects that came out.
Speaker 1:Is that where experiential were you both, like you know, kind of did it come from that or did it? Well, what was more like chicken and egg? Did you guys work on other things and then use it to do the State of Hawaii project, or did you the State of Hawaii project kind of called for it and it almost kind of burst experiential?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit of both, but in hindsight. So the project itself was kind of X and Y. We were like what needs to happen here? So a little bit of background.
Speaker 2:The Hawaii 2050 project came was inspired by, in many ways, the Hawaii 2000 project which was done in 69, 70, 71 in Hawaii and it was still to this day one of the most participatory or futures projects ever done. So the whole state of Hawaii, you know the main newspaper, were running articles every day, there were workshops and gatherings and meetings. It was very much on people's minds. You know, you fast forward to 2000 and some of the least desired futures for Hawaii were the ones that they were that people were living in, so overcrowded, you know, reliant on imports, you know sort of tourism driven, military driven, so kind of a fragile economy that hadn't diversified. And you know, oh, this feels just like California. You know we've lost our sense of place. So a lot of the things that were happening in 2000 were the least preferred futures from the point of view of what people were saying in 1970. So you know, stuart and I and Jim were, you know you just take that as as, uh, a challenge, like why did that happen or explain why did we get? You know you did this great thing. It's sort of ticked all the boxes of you know really smart futurists and community engagement and government buy-in and media support and all of that, and you ended up it didn't. It didn't work.
Speaker 2:So, you know, just trying to get real honestly, and that was our main motivation, how do we make something like this work? And you know, part of our insight. Again, in retrospect it looks like you know, oh, that's obvious, you were in visual anthropology, stuart was, you know, working in media himself. You know, oh, of course you would do something that's a little bit more immersive. Or you know, media rich. But no, we were really. It really came from that motivation.
Speaker 2:How do we make it stick? And part of our at least hypothesis or premise for this is making it stick means sticking it here in your gut, not just here intellectually, and oh, these are possibilities that can happen. No, what does it feel like? What would it? What if we could? I mean, this was also part of our logic.
Speaker 2:If you could take somebody from 1970 and time travel to 2000,. This is what it feels like to live in that world Would they have made different choices you know so broadly, they as a person, but also as a society Would people have made a different, made a series of different choices along the way if they knew the outcome? They knew what it felt like to live in Hawaii they didn't want to live in in 2000. In Hawaii, they didn't want to live in in 2000. So our motivation or goal or hypothesis was if people could feel what the future might be like, maybe they'll think about things differently. And there's another thread of my work in neuroscience and neuro politics you know in the neuroscience of foresight, which you know, some of those insights are have become relevant.
Speaker 2:But basically, people can't make decisions without an emotional side to things. If their emotional core is disconnected from their rational side, it's almost toxic. People can't really sort of get to the point of making a decision. We, you know, we wanted to instill and install a sort of visceral, emotional, uh feeling embodied, kind of experience of that with again with the premise that oh, maybe, you know, maybe that would move the needle a little bit on when people are pushed to certain kind of decisions, they might choose a better path. So that was the overall premise and and um, you know, we did, we did the Hawaii 2050 event 600 people.
Speaker 2:We created four radically alternative versions of the future of Hawaii using Jim Dator's alternative futures method. So you know the future of Hawaii using Jim Dator's alternative futures method. So you know, a continued growth story, a collapse version, a post-collapse version of Hawaii, a kind of discipline or constrained version and a high-tech transformation version. So they were really different places. I think, not places maybe other than the continued growth that people or maybe collapsed to, but at least showing them alternatives.
Speaker 2:And then you, and then you process that through a conversation like what are the things you liked about this one or that one you know? And then action steps what, what could you do to make the things that you like happen? Make the things you don't like not happen? So that's a another critical part of this is the is the follow-up. This is not just an art, it's really, it's a process, the, the art and the performance and the immersion is really a vector or doorway, an invitation to do the work, which is talk about it, process it and then, ultimately, hopefully, make better decisions is are anything that came out of that being implemented or being used as guides?
Speaker 1:because I know 26 has been like they keep revisiting it. But has anything, yeah, yeah, impact you?
Speaker 2:know? Um, I think, well, part of it. Yeah, here's. Here's another answer to your, to your, uh, what is it like to work? Challenges, working with government.
Speaker 2:But we did that event with a plan to take little miniature versions of that to all the other islands, you know, to sort of continue that process and repeat that process in smaller, segmented form. But for whatever reason, I don't know if we were too successful or that, you know, it was just not. It scared people in the kind of energies that were generated and unleashed. But basically that was put aside. We were told no, we're not going to do that again. We're going to go to high school gymnasiums and write on the board you know what do you think sustainability is? And we're going to just list it on a whiteboard and then gather those and call that, you know, a process.
Speaker 2:So we were a little bit frustrated that the energy was sort of, from our point of view I'm sure you know maybe they had other reasons it felt very political and and, again, risk averse. But, um, you know, we we saw this as a a sort of momentum, a snowball effect happening, uh, that that we really didn't get to execute on. That said, the energy in the room, even though the officialdom might have pulled back the sort of cultural ripples we kept hearing about stories of people having got excited, doing kind of grassroots kind of work that was going on as well. So the cultural ripples, I think, were important Now, practically, as you mentioned, and we mentioned 2060, a follow-up project a few years later. You know, I think that was sort of birthed out of the, the unfulfilled energies that were unleashed and in that case, uh, uh, I believe, uh, in the official process of, of, of, uh, deliberating new laws and why you have to think about future generations, I think they put policy in place that future generations have to be considered, not in some sort of formal environmental assessment report, but so it's a little bit symbolic, honestly, probably more than with teeth, probably more than with teeth.
Speaker 2:But you know, start with that symbolism of even thinking about future generations. As you consider, new legislation was an important outcome of the overall sort of thing that was going on.
Speaker 1:So we've been talking about, you know, hawaii and the experiment, and I mentioned, I said, the word experiential futures. You know, we're both design futurists, which is kind of this kind of moniker um, futures is the experiential is the process. I think design futures is the practice itself. Um, the method, methods, but um, how would you define it? You know it's been around for now 13 years, 15 years, 20 20.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how would you how?
Speaker 1:would you define? I know there's other dun and ravey, there's other people that are.
Speaker 2:You know different kinds of, but yeah, I mean what yeah, yeah, and you know these are, um, you know we can get into, uh, some of the pedantry of, uh, of nomenclature and who's doing what. But from our point of view as futurists, experiential futures is really trying to use rich media, immersive experiences, performance, tangible artifacts to bridge the gap. This is a phrase that my friend and colleague, stuart Candy, likes to use. We're basically bridging the gap between the lived present and possible futures, in a sense, to try to pre-experience or pre-live or pre, you know, memories of, of futures that haven't happened again. You know, kind of touching on the neuroscience point, we tend to think about the future in terms of what we've experienced in the past. I mean, that's a it's a natural thing that to to, to say, you know, sort of intuitive like oh yeah, we imagine the future, you know, based on what we've seen. That that's our roadmap, um, you know and know, and there's a thing that, uh, andy Clark, uh, cognitive philosopher, talks about predictive processing. So we're always sort of running through simulations in our minds of the future, but those are often and they almost always are based on what's happening now and experiences from the past.
Speaker 2:So what we're trying to do is create artificial memories, in a sense or artificial experiences of possible future, so they make them thinkable no-transcript, what it feels like later on. You can, you can, you know, throw a thousand different references to them and signals of change and all that to kind of intellectualize and fill in that gap. But having that emotional connection to I want that or I don't want that is also a, you know, a kind of button or lever that we want to engage in this as well and make sure that that a kind of full bodied, full mind experience of the future is useful. And you know, just to, to sort of wrap up, uh, that the usefulness is everything for us. You know, like our, our artifacts and experiences are really creative.
Speaker 2:They're fun, they, they sort of stand alone as a, as an, an experience or, you know, a creative endeavor. But that's not the work and we never see that and you know that that in some ways distinguishes us from, maybe you know, uh, how some speculative designers or others go about. You know, it's a little bit more about the thing. For us it's really about the payoff in the end. Uh, what, what changes? What do these new experiences do to make us reconsider how we think about the future and the path that we take?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you mentioned earlier on. You talked about emotion. I think that immersion, that ability to touch, taste, feel, experience the future, it just really puts it in view, versus, like you get scenarios in a report, they put it in a drawer and it it doesn't affect your daily life right now.
Speaker 2:That's our enemy. Dismissal is our enemy, and that's what we've been fighting in the beginning, you know is how can we be undismissible or at least fight against that to you know, I've already mentioned all the cultural and structural things how can we fight against that where this cannot be ignored or this must be thought of, and sometimes that means scaring or, you know, creating an emotional action, a reaction to that. Uh, does that kind of work at least you know?
Speaker 1:that's, is that what makes it a S you know, like experience, experiential futures project successful? It's, it's like the provocation, the action itself the, the, the reaction and the reaction and the result. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know. So for me, like if, if no, if nothing changes again, if, uh, if people just have a good time or they're provoked, but it doesn't have a noticeable impact, then I wouldn't call that successful.
Speaker 2:And the tricky part is, uh, staying with these projects and finding out how, like five years later, that that you know experience you had actually, you know the, the, the connecting the dots from that moment to a changed decision is difficult. So saying that success means something changed you know, positively doesn't mean we always have that data, unfortunately. And so you know we often will, we'll, we'll try it, we'll see the result, or we'll see it many years later. Or people even have forgotten that that was you know we often will, we'll, we'll try it, we'll see the result, or we'll see it many years later. Or people even have forgotten that that was, you know, maybe one of the sources for why they made shifted strategy or, you know, change something along the way. So it's a little bit slippery, uh, uh, uh, one-to-one, you know, return on investment oh, you had this experiential future and then this change, nevertheless, that that must remain our goal.
Speaker 1:This is again in the terms of social foresight and in service of trying to create better futures. It has to change something in my mind to be successful. It can't just be a great experience. That experience has to pay off in some positive way. Well, you did a uh simulation for the cdc. It was a pandemic simulation. Like when did you do that? What? When did you want it? When did that happen?
Speaker 2:that was that. Oh well, uh, we did a project, uh, with a kind of arts grant from the mayor, where we had a. This is 2007 and you know we're one of the three scenarios that we put on the streets in a kind of guerrilla style in Chinatown. So this is an arts grant for the Chinatown district in Honolulu and one of those three scenarios was a kind of post-pandemic world. Part of the reason why and this is sort of the subtle subtleties of this work you know we didn't want to, we didn't want to put stuff on the street as if a pandemic was happening.
Speaker 1:So we were cognizant of, you know, yelling fire in a theater and you know, oh, you mean just you were trying to kind of display it in in real real space, you know, and yes, yeah, it was unannounced.
Speaker 2:It was. You know, there were no. Uh, oh yeah, that would that would be like war.
Speaker 1:That'd be like war of the worlds. That would be, like, you know, the world's broadcast first of all this is one of the greater bureaus too.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's probably on our minds. Or, you know, like the yes Men, who do kind of satirical, you know, provocations and things, you know that kind of culture, jamming stuff was influential to us. So it was a post-pandemic scenario and we did this self-directed no-transcript when it was going to happen. We knew there was going to be a global pandemic, um, and so they funded, uh, another stage of that sort of pandemic oriented experience which we designed as a, uh, augmented reality game which at the time 2007, 2008, 2009 was very, very popular, you know, so serious gaming and to role-playing a world without oil and things were happening at the time. And so we designed a augmented reality game which would be kind of interactive.
Speaker 2:There'd be phone calls you could make, there'd be you know videos that you would see that pop up and things like that, so you'd play this future and play a simulation in a more interactive way. Well, I don't know if anybody remembers this anymore from the memory hole, but swine flu happened, and I think around March of 09. And yeah, and you know, that was, you know for a minute, going to be the big one and people were really scared. So we had this emergent, we had this augmented reality game around a pandemic outbreak and meanwhile, the week we were going to launch, swine flu happened and so we had to, you know, the reality, at least at that point, caught up to us, and so we redesigned the game as an emergent reality game up to us, and so we redesigned the game as an emergency reality game and we you know we're, we were, uh, you know, sort of giving more practical information in real time.
Speaker 2:For that, one of the things that stood out for me from that experience was you know, we had a um, we had a kind of uh uh in the game, uh, uh, uh a sense of how do you prioritize? Who gets vaccines first, which you know has become quite interesting. So, is it first responders? Is it, you know, people that are out in public. Is it essential workers and things like that.
Speaker 2:So we were at that point trying to play test how would people really react to who gets it first and when? You know, uh late, you know later on the the vaccine politics have emerged quite uh saliently over time, so that was kind of interesting. It stood out in retrospect, but yeah, so you know, kudos to them for for at least entertaining the idea of of communicating in a different way that maybe would be more effective than just trying to tell people, you know, here's a checklist like live it, what would you do what? How would you really react to that? So yeah, that was quite an interesting project and, as I said, quite interesting. That reality sort of bit us.
Speaker 1:That's what we're about to launch. I've read a lot of dystopian fiction in my time and I think they say you're nine meals from anarchy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I believe, oh yeah, In the future's world. You've got to really get out there, and you probably know this Jim Datert's famous saying any useful statement about the future should at first appear to be ridiculous. So if you're not really pushing out there, if things sound very conventional or kind of plausible at first glance, you're probably not doing justice to what's in store. And so you've really got to push the edge to get ahead of how, how things are changing.
Speaker 1:I hope. I hope that's the case with super shifts when it comes out in April and there I'd put a design fiction piece through the book. So the prologue is an introduction to a family in 2040. And they experienced basically, like the singular, like an anomaly, they but it's nobody's really talked about after the singular, like what happens right so we kind of go through the super, each super shift, each of the nine the.
Speaker 1:The beginning part moves through the weeks after that and then the prologue I'm sorry, the epilogue goes 200 years in the future. And it is like you said, like it's like I don't believe it. But you're like, yeah, I think I always think of data. I'm like am I doing my job right? Like, am I doing? Am I doing it? Am I pushing it? The plausibility where it's like, yeah, it sounds kind of, but yeah, it's kind of wild, but yeah. And then I'm like excellent, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I totally get that. So you've taken all of this right. You take governance, you take experiential futures, you take your futures work and then Institute for the Future, which is where you are right now, among your other things. But the governance lab that you run, I mean I know you through the design futures coursework you do and we become friends over the years. But the did they pitch you on it? Did you pitch that like, how did that come about? How did your? How did your tenure in the institute there kind of go?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, uh, we'll just start, we'll just keep it to the governance futures lab. And I've been at the Institute at that point for three, four years and they you know the the kind of different kinds and you know skunk works and big kind of Silicon Valley experimental mode, and so the Institute was sort of playing that space as well and I pitched you know we need a, you know we need a political system design lab of some sort. Obviously, I've already gone into great detail about some of the influences on that, but you know we're still, we're still facing a challenge where, you know, you know this was of course, also after the global financial collapse, so so the idea of systems failures or limitations, to say the least, were salient and that it's going to take more than you know a hero politician to solve this, and so that was the core of it. So why don't we create, formalize in some more direct way, a place where we can gather thinking around system design, political system design, which there weren't? You know, mentioned data's class. There's bits and pieces, certainly a lot of political think tanks and things like that working on different issues. Political system design and the governance futures lab is not about who's going to win the next election or even a particular kind of policy. It's really architectural or that was the goal, you know kind of a renaissance of political system design.
Speaker 2:And you know, I mean in the sense the kind of thinkers that were writing the Constitution to a degree like how do we think about I already mentioned operationalizing the world, we want to see the values we want to see in the future very, I would say, opportunistic way of thinking about how do we do that? Because there weren't, you know, we were in a way trying to make the case for that so there weren't buckets of saying you know, you know funders who had money to throw at a particular issue because it was sort of didn't fit neatly in any of those categories. So we've, since the beginning, we've been very sort of opportunistic, working with mayors or getting a little bit of funding to do the reconstitutional convention and things like that. So you know, I've enjoyed that, I've enjoyed sort of working at the margins, but I do wish that things had been accelerated sooner so that we can look at structural issues involved in our economic, environmental, cultural, political systems and get a little bit further ahead of that rather than being reactive to some of those dynamics that you know, I think we've seen play out over time. So, yeah, that was the goal.
Speaker 2:And you know, again, we're still in that same, in a sense, that same mode. Where can we have a positive impact? Where can we get people thinking about things other than just the what's, what's in front of them? You know the crisis mode that we're all in. We really need to think about designing systems for the future. You know, uh, we're we're so caught into the present right now, no matter where you're coming from, like the present has such a deep sort of almost black hole sense of us. There's always gonna be a future. You know, um, I think you were saying that before even after the singularity, there's always going to be something else after that, and so we're just trying to remind people that there's something else after that, and we should really get serious about contributing to that and for that world too well, it's the paralysis of the present and a lot of people just you know it's easy for us to talk about thinking of the future, as a lot of people can't.
Speaker 1:They just have a tough time with it. You know they're just so much and it's just even their lives, the stress of their day, Like they don't really want to Right, Just trying to get through the day, through the week. So it's just like they can 10 years, they could care less, but even just in business most people.
Speaker 1:Most people have their jobs. Are they going to be there in 10 years? I always thought government would be more acclimated to futures work because of the we'll call it the long-term managerial class. They're always there. They're putting their 20 in and retiring. The parties change but they don't. The parties change but they don't right and they to them. Obviously there are political policies and agendas and I think that's also where your governance lab comes in. It's like how do you implement futures? Thinking like in an outcome, like how do you look at, deal with possible futures with the type of government structure? How do you deal with political systems?
Speaker 1:I think that's right you know, um you know, andy hines just put out po is uh after capitalism book. So, um, yeah, it's like what is the next kind of system? I don't think it's star trek's monetary system. If you've ever read the economics of star treks, it just doesn't work uh, we also need a hell we just need a hell of a lot of energy and abundance.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and yeah, and experiments. Well, what you started with there was really stuck with me too is just a little bit of um, a little bit more patience and respect for people that are trying to deal with their everyday existence and to not vilify. Oh, you should be thinking about the future. Why are you so present oriented? No, I mean, yeah, you know, we, we see some of the downfalls of doing that, but you can't blame people for that. Their lives are now, we live in the now and I've got to get by and I, you know I've got to get by and I, you know I've got to make sure my power stays on because it's freezing here, you know. So you can't, you can't sort of you know the sort of arrogance of thing. Why aren't you a visionary? Or why aren't you thinking about longer, about the future? Why aren't you doing this?
Speaker 2:You know a lot of things are stacked against people and just giving them the room and the patience and respect to to have that, but also not stop there and you don't get to wallow in and only thinking about the future, because if you're doing that, you're never going to get ahead.
Speaker 2:You know you're, you're always going to sort of be fighting what's going on in front of you and never actually leading toward the future. So you got to be just a little bit more. I mean there's, you know there's modes for for futures work, sometimes provocation, but sometimes it's it's more like a counselor or a coach or a helper that's trying to support you as you move forward. And honestly, I think experiential futures helps with that too. Uh, when you're overloaded, having a more full bodied, you get to use different senses. You get to use different things other than your overwhelmed mind at times, and I think that's powerful for ways to to sense the future when you're sort of overwhelmed by the present, which is often the case, yeah, I'm, my work is around, I, I have a approach called spectrum, uh, foresight, and I look at.
Speaker 1:I'm a big world building person and as a designer, I look at personas like there are people that exist in the world, in this, in Whatever possible futures. There are these people. And then there's a range of experiences. I know Dater's alternative futures take more of a. Is it a collapse, is it a transformational? I look at there's people that are living in that future that it's a collapse for them. That's right, or it's a transformation. You just don't you know.
Speaker 1:So it's like, how do you, how do each of those people you have to address that so that people, so that when you have to plan or strategize for the future, you're addressing the needs of all the people that will live in that future, right? So, um, yeah, like our government, you know, with the, this is being taped a couple days after the inauguration. It's a peaceful transfer of power, but it's also a radical change of policies from four years to four years to four years, no matter which administration it's in. And it's like how some people are like, oh my God, it's a doom scroll, or other people are like it's just magical golden age or just what? What is it in between? So all those people exist. So how do you address the needs of everybody you know? So I think it's good I think, experiential.
Speaker 1:I think for me, design futures, experiential futures, is a great way to help with that, because people just used to those things from the future. We're channeling stewart if you're listening, your ears are burning and you both things of the future, like you guys are both. You know it's a great game. If anybody hasn't tried it, you'll look it up. But for me, like, where do we go? Like, where does experiential futures go the next decade? You know the possible futures for experiential futures, if you will. That was just so cumbersome to say. But yeah, I mean it's kind of, what are those? What does it look like for you? What's the outlook? You're?
Speaker 2:kind of a yeah, you know, I mean, I think the goals and the need has not changed. You know, I think we still need to get out of the present, we still need to feel what different futures are like. And again, you know whether, wherever you're coming from, the present is so strong right now and it really um, in some way keeping us from thinking about other futures. There'll be a future after trump.
Speaker 2:there'll be a future after the next administration you know, um, and so just just remembering that and and knowing and again sort of feeling what that might be like, and keeping at least your eye, pull your eyes up every once in a while to see that horizon. So those goals are still going to be the same. The spate of technology and opportunities and places for this, I think, is really evolving. It's quite interesting. Obviously, we haven't even mentioned we'll get thrown out of the Futures Club in an hour conversation. We didn't mention AI, but you know that's.
Speaker 1:I was trying. A lot of my conversations kind of went there. I figured that might be for part two because. I figured we could come back, you and I could come back in the summer and kind of see, like Project Stargate just got announced, which I think my wife and I were talking about.
Speaker 1:This I equivocate that to building the naval fleet in pre-World War II, in the 30s, or ramping up production, because not only is it about battling in an information war or a cyber war, but it's also about, instead of like making physical things here, they have to create and figure out how to do individualized medicine, protein full, like all the things that ai could do with a, with super intelligence is here, and that is again like yeah, well, I figured, well, I figured we'll get into that, you know, but yeah, and we brought it up.
Speaker 2:If there's anything you want to mention, please, please, yeah yeah, well, you know the way I see technology and you know, again, this is influenced by folks like Andy Clark and extended mind theory. You know that we, we don't just think in our heads and our brains, even we think in our bodies obviously, experiential futures, but we live in a cognitive ecology. I've got this computer in front of me which is different than if I just had a notebook, you know, with pen and paper. That's a different cognitive ecology, right. So you add artificial intelligence into the mix, you know, you add these generative AI, you add large language models. That changes cognitive ecology, that changes how we think, that changes how thinking is possible. So I like to think about designer, futuring environments kind of holistically. And then what, what are the elements that that go in there? So if you think about the future experiential future, the future of experiential futures, you're right, it is a mouthful. The ways that we have those experiences and the technologies and the affordances of those new cognitive ecologies to learn, I mean, for a while, ever, you know everyone's like oh, vr is the. You know, that is what, what a diverse technology, and maybe there's still a future for that. I think it's a little more niche, but that's one way to do an experience. I really like the visceral, tangible. You know interactive, spatial parts of doing that. So I think that'll still be part of the mix. But you know adding AI, speed running through visualization, where we used to have to go to a designer and we would, you know, sort of tweak things for days or weeks or more to come up with an artifact. You know that you can speed run through to get about 90 percent of the quality within seconds. And you think about that because all of this, you know, is a designed feedback loop, as I mentioned, the bridge to the future, but you don't just stay over there. Feedback to the present. What did I learn? What can I take from this simulation that influences where I want to go, and so the speed, the cycles of those feedback loops for futuring and thinking about and immersive and experiencing futures are shrinking. So what can we do with those faster loops of learning and how do we turn that know again into action? So I think there's I'm excited about. You know, uh, you don't want to just sort of uh, offload a lot of your thinking to the machine, because I think there's loss there, but using it within an ecosystem and to play that feedback loop out a little bit more richly and and you know the speed of that I think that's an important structural factor for that.
Speaker 2:Another part of it is where. Where does experiential features take place? And this you know, I mean stewart and I and many others have, you know, consciously tried to find different locations for it, whether it's on the street of chinatown and honolulu, whether it's in a convention center for i-2050, whether it's in a boardroom, whether it's in in a UN meeting, you know, or working with mayors, the location or museums. You know I haven't mentioned Museum of the Future as a touch point for design futures and experiential futures, but there's a whole movement out there for future oriented museums, and so the kind of public space I mean museums are in a sense our public memory and our public discussion of how we learn and represent ourselves to each other. So the museum space is quite interesting.
Speaker 2:So the locations of experiential futures, I think, are still in the process of expanding, and so you put those two things together and I think you start to see, maybe you know, in the hopeful future that we can actually have somewhat more guidance. If not, we're not going to have certainty, but just a way to sort of play out things before we make a decision and have to learn the hard way Again. That's another one of our enemies Always do we have to always learn the hard way. Well, maybe I'm maybe overly hopeful, but if we can play out and see a little bit more efficiently, less cost, faster, more responsive to the moment I'm in, where that decision-making input, by considering the future, becomes more present to me, then I think maybe it has a bigger impact and a bigger role. And then at that point, expansion of this methodology and thinking, I think would continue to grow quite profoundly continue to grow quite profoundly well.
Speaker 1:It also relates to, like you and I, before the, we started taping, we're talking about the role of the futurist, like an interview victoria mulligan did with paul zaffo right at the five future form, and you know I'm I'm debating myself whether it's is it is it a job function like a job, job role, sorry, job role, or a like function and skill set right, right. And I think about experiential design, like it's the role of the designer changing, it's not just being and it's it's evolved. I think about the last 30 years of design, what you did 30 years ago versus 10, 20, 20, and now, like you said, you could rapidly prototype things if you have the right prompts, and that can be scary but it can be also liberating because you're not sitting there doing more of the mundane. You can really tackle more problems, bigger problems, and use experiential design or other things to really go out, because you have this space now but, you know, use it as a futurist.
Speaker 1:Where do you see the? Do you see the role kind of becoming more prominent and specific? Because there's so many people that call themselves? But I don't think joe, and I joe, joe, joe laporte, I talked about some mcdonald's. It's an actual field of study. You can't just call yourself that, but it's like do you think it'll become more skilled? Like what do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think it will. You know, and I'm not necessarily advocating that what Sappho said was basically we don't need more futurists, but he wasn't saying we don't need more future in our world, in our lives, as I understand and I agree with that, that framing, you know, I think we will have more futures out there. I think people are very interested in this, I think, you know, for lots of reasons, coming at it from, you know, social side, or governance side, or technology side. Often it in this the field, it's always in sort of half like, oh, is it collapsing or is it growing? Um, but I do think it will continue to to be kind of interesting and trendy in some ways. But you know, that's fine, uh, but really what I would prefer is if we embedded foresight into the world in a more direct way, into our systems, into our thinking and, and to you know, our technologies, uh, uh, a precursor to experiential futures.
Speaker 2:We were very influenced by Wendy Schultz and she had a concept or around ambient futures. Can we, can we just make futures thinking, uh, threaded through, uh, you know, conversations, threaded through our technologies, threaded sort of ambiently existing in the world, so that we can have that interface with the future, and that was a really interesting thought. I kind of lead to that too. How can we get the future to matter in the present and how can we make it be a difference that makes a difference to how we see the world, and so you know, in that sense, that's where I would. You know both, and. But I would love to see, even more than more futures in the world, more futures threaded through the physical and cognitive spheres that we live in and hopefully design those cognitive spaces, those interactive spaces, to actually have a positive impact, or, you know, um, at least give ourselves a chance to where the future can matter to the present.
Speaker 1:So I'm useful and poured away I'd like it to become well, I'm on a kind of mission to democratize it.
Speaker 1:Like design thinking was last decade, but I would like it to become a like talent-based courseware, like negotiation or difficult conversations or you know your project you know project management, you know like all the, all those like masterful things, you have to have to be a, I would say, a complete functioning business or you know government, like to to be, you know, productive. And I think in getting that mindset, it's built into it that way, versus like, oh, I'm going to go off and do specials, that like I do the future state when I need to, or it's over there, it's it's just basically within you. I think that's, it's a vision. I think we can achieve that. I think AI is going to speed up a lot of the processes in which we do things, so it becomes more easily and accessible in the way we ask and do stuff. It still requires a human element, but it again takes away the barriers to do things.
Speaker 1:So, this amazing career you've had and you know you've done so much for the field Like what do you? You've got a lot of years you know, ahead. I always like to you know, kind of ask this like a legacy question, like how do you want the work to be remembered, like the impact you've had? You know, when your kids, you're talking to your grandkids like what you're proud of, your career, like I did this.
Speaker 2:I, this is great. So well, you know, I mean you don't want to get so grandiose. I mean I would love to just see better, livable worlds. You know, yeah, my kids now. But you know, uh, whatever, whatever pain and transformation we're going through.
Speaker 2:Now I want to come out on the other end where, you know, it's just kind of back to the question how do we want to live as humans? I mean, this is something, from the very start, that's been influenced by me. We are, we are rubbing up against, you know, crisis. We're in the crisis because I don't think anybody's happy with the way they're living, or not enough. You're sort of agitated and dissatisfied for whatever reason.
Speaker 2:So I would love to contribute to a world where we have an honest conversation and not as if it's some sort of monolithic thing there are different ways to live but where people can ask serious questions about how do we want to live and then we have a way to design that.
Speaker 2:The way to contribute to that that's where my sort of democracy hat comes in is like can can we create systems where people can have an influence on the kind of outcomes they want and maybe steer toward living in worlds that they actually enjoy living in uh and feel a little bit of agency toward getting there in some ways. So that's kind of the big, grandiose goal uh of it. You know, and, and, and, in other sense like just uh, uh, you know, just having a positive impact at very local levels. You know, I teach uh. I've seen, you know, people who have not heard of future studies. This is not a precise number, but I find that when I'm teaching classes, about 10 to 15% of people that take the class it's a life changing thing. They didn't know it existed, it really like.
Speaker 1:How did they find it? How did they just choose for that Like?
Speaker 2:well, you know, to be a class that they take that they didn't realize that it was futures or it's just part of a curriculum, like I used to teach at California College of the Arts and they had a strategic foresight class within their design strategy MBA program. So it was an elective, so somebody would take it, you know, oh, this might be interesting. Or you know, at UT I teach experiential futures to a combo med school, design school program in design. So you know it's an elective. So you know they, they must already be interested at some level. But often they don't really know what they're taking.
Speaker 2:But the first, the first parts of the class are always like disabusing of what you think it is trying to to tell you what it is. Um, everybody gets something out of it, I hope. But I really found that that there's a there. You know, a good percentage of students are like oh my God, I needed this. I didn't realize that, uh, it's, it's going to change how I do. And I've had students who've gone off and become futurists and that weren't even you know that wasn't their intention ever. They weren't already coming into the room thinking they would do that, um, just like we all did. You know the accidental future is just kind of in that sense. Um, so, having those sort of maybe life improving or life altering impacts on a one-to-one student human, you know, at a workshop somebody hears about something that that positively changes them or that opens a doorway to a kind of career or life that they didn't see. So at that level too, I hope you know to have had uh, when the story is told some positive impacts there.
Speaker 1:That's great. So where can people find you and learn more about? I mean, obviously you have a lot of stuff on research net or you know research gate, yeah, but where, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a little Christmas bar down the road, a year round Christmas bar. You can find me there in Austin, excellent, excellent. Otherwise, yes, I have a website, jakedonegancom. You know. Go there with all caveats that haven't been updated in a long time, but you can get something there. Not I've sort of pulled back from social media, but I'm just a remain of a minor president on blue sky, duncan 23 at blue sky. Um, and then, yeah, you know I'm, I'm at the institute so you can reach out to me uh, there directly. Uh, you know, uh, never popular enough to be flooded with with people, so I I that means I can keep an open door. We'll see if that changed. Yeah, I'm always keen to talk to people and uh see where they're at and see how futures can be useful or I can help in some way.
Speaker 1:That's great. And the most important question of all of it where's, what's your favorite taco and your barbecue spot in Austin? Uh, people want to know. People want to know these things. These are important things, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, almost any gas station is going to have pretty good tacos, so I'm not going to pick a chain.
Speaker 1:Gas station tacos, not gas station sushi, but gas station tacos, you know not in Austin.
Speaker 2:I've had some gas station sushi. It's pretty darn good.
Speaker 1:Interesting my favorite barbecue you know.
Speaker 2:I mean it's pretty darn good, interesting, okay, yeah Well, my favorite barbecue, you know. I mean, franklin's is actually good, you know that's the big thing If you can stand in line. If you can stand in line, it absolutely is. No, I'm never going to stand in line, but if it crosses my path it's pretty good. But I love this food truck on South Elmore called Brown's Barbecue. Nice more called brown's barbecue. You know I like brisket but I also like uh pork barbecue.
Speaker 2:So sometimes I skew toward places that can do pork barbecue. So brown's barbecue it's a. It's a truck, nice uh, on south lamar, so that's, that's a good one that maybe people hadn't heard of awesome well, jake, I'm gonna do part two, I'm sure soon.
Speaker 1:This is great. Uh, thanks for, uh, thanks for being on and uh, let's thank you.
Speaker 2:We'll talk thanks steve, yeah, if part two is in six months, the world will be completely different exactly. That's the whole thing so we can process together. It's a day-by-day uh story, exactly. Yeah, just let me end with that. Thank you, thank you thanks for listening to the think forward. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
